"I had no experience, no background, no nothing coming into this industry"
The author F. Scott Fitzgerald who famously said “There are no second acts in American lives,” might have reconsidered the sentiment had he met Gay Veale (pictured).
To Veale’s peers, her military background is a well-known part of her professional pedigree. What many don’t realize is that she had already reached middle age by the time she decided to enter the mortgage industry.
“I had no experience, no background, no nothing coming into this industry,” she told Mortgage Professional America during a telephone interview. Veale was among the speakers at the recent Fuse annual conference staged by the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts (AIME) that took place in Las Vegas.
As military matters figured prominently during the event, she was pressed into service to participate in a panel discussion on the theme titled “Enlisting Veterans into the Mortgage Industry.” But it was during her turn as a spotlight speaker at the event that many of her peers learned of her late start in the mortgage game.
Read more: Loan officer goes from military to mortgages
She began her speech by uttering the number 51 in dramatic fashion, complete with pregnant pause. “This is the age that I was when I entered this industry,” she then told the hushed crowd. Veale told MPA how she was instructed to mimic the style of her speech to that of the popular TED talks. Those sessions are put on by TED Conferences LLC, an American-Canadian non-profit organization that posts international talks online for free distribution under the slogan “Ideas worth spreading.”
Veale said of her approach to her Spotlight session: “They left it up to me, but they really wanted me to focus on my story,” she said, describing her former military duty that had commanded her first act – the details of which she shared with MPA in a previous profile. “They asked me to make it TED talk-ish and leave the audience with something.”
And boy, did she. “What I left people with is that it’s never too late to start over or reinvent yourself,” she said. “For me, that was at age 51. If you have an existing brokerage, maybe you’ve been wanting to make a change but you’re scared,” she told the audience. “Don’t be scared. Get out of your own way and do the things you want to do. You have to overcome those fears and know that people want you to be successful.”
Veale knows from fears. After a long military career, she feared making ends meet: “I was intimidated by this commission-only thing,” she said. “Going from a guaranteed income my whole entire adult life to not knowing what my next paycheck was going to be was very, very scary.”
Her sole familiarity with the industry was by virtue of buying a couple of homes in the past, she noted. But then again, she followed the lead of her friend and real estate broker, she added: “I blindly trusted her. She didn’t have time to explain the mortgage process. I didn’t have a clue what I was getting into.”
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As it happens, next month marks her professional anniversary having entered the industry in November 2020. In her first year as a loan officer, she originated 50 units with more than $18 million in volume. Based in Colorado Springs, Colo, she is licensed in 11 states with near-exclusive focus on VA home loans and veteran education as loan officer at Epoch Lending.
After feeling like she had no support while in the throes of changing fields following a 30-year military career, she credits AIME members with continual support as she navigates her second act. “The good thing is this massive support network,” she said. “There’s a huge network of people in the broker community who want to help you – that are willing to help you!” she said. “I’ve heard that wasn’t always the case in this industry but what I’ve always had is love and support and help at my beck and call.”
Perhaps the collegiality is rooted in the Great Recession when brokers were unfairly cast as villains in the all-too-real drama of the housing collapse, MPA posited. Or maybe it’s the growing galvanization around the message that “brokers are better” that’s become a clarion call of sorts for AIME?
“Having not been in the industry at that point, I really don’t know where it comes from,” she said of the unflagging support she’s gotten in entering the AIME fold. “Sometimes I feel like I’m listening to the elders at the campfire - listening to them tell stories of what it was like and learn from that especially because, number one, you don’t want to be there again. And number two, it provides context to where we are now. We weren’t always united, but we are now There’s no way somebody like me can be successful without that.”
Maybe it’s true that life begins at 50.
