07: Mike Jensen

Chris Suarez (00:00):

I'm excited to introduce to our community and incredible leader. in his own right. Mike Jensen , Mike has held leadership positions in companies, such as DeWalt, the Coca Cola company, PepsiCo GM. And for the last decade, he has held a leadership role with Academy mortgage, which is where I met him.

He served as a member of the board of directors, the chief growth officer, the chief marketing officer, as well as the vice president of corporate development. And although. We could probably spend an hour talking to Mike about,  corporate growth, about profitability, about, business strategy.

Today, we're going to have a conversation about what he has done, to create what I believe is a different kind of company, a company that's built on purpose, a company that has built a following and a loyalty effect around experiential living. And as we talked, when I realized for the first time was here as a leader that actually developed tactical and strategic ways to really build.

An experiential life for not just his employees, his 10 99 contractors, but also his customers and the families of those employees, contractors and customers. Before we jump in, I want you to know that there are a few things that hopefully you take away that you write notes about or take notes on.

and you think about after this interview, I've never heard it put so well, from any CEO or leader in a company, Mike said he looked around one day and you realize that people in his organization were doing well. I think they were making money. They were profitable. And he said, you did well.

But we want you to do good. And that struck me as such a difference in perspective. And so that began this conversation around perspective and again, he had a model for perspective, phrased it as his three key model. He said, we recognize that if we could change the pace, change the place.

That will lead to a change in perspective and listen, as he tactically share strategies on a change perspective of our people, really leadership is all about behavioral change and perspective shifting, and he shares strategically how you can do that within any organization, 

And then lastly, I'll just share my big takeaway, was all about giving as. Many of you know,  we started a public charity experience giving, right.  

We believe that giving is,  not just a financial, thought, but also, an activity and a, I never heard it put so well.

Mike said that he believes that there are different kinds of giving there's transactional giving, which is writing a check, which is easy for most of us to do. But he said then he found that there was transformational giving and he tied giving to three teas, right? Time, talent, and treasure.

And he shared that when you combine those three teas, right? when you take your time and you take your talent and you take your treasure, then that leads to transformational giving, Another model. for us to follow. So with that, yeah. I want to introduce you to Mike Jensen, please listen from beginning to end, we're going to jump right in actually, because there's just so much good information.

we'll forgo the normal introductions and we're just going to let Mike, Ron, thanks for listening. And again, at the end of this podcast, if it touched, if it helped you, if you found value, please share it, email it to a friend, give us a review. it's by, during this mission that we will all lead towards more experiential life.

Alright, thanks guys for listening.

Mike, why don't we just jump right in, in lieu of going through introductions and telling people a little bit about you. Why don't you share with us who you are, what your perspective is on how that's been shaped? What do you do?

Mike Jensen (04:17):

Going back to business school, went to PepsiCo, and then in marketing and sports entertainment, and then went to Coca Cola and what's called brand marketing. It was in brand marketing management for a long time left that, wanting to private equity for several years and pop back out into the corporate world at TMAC.

and then after probably three years there, I made my way to beneficial finance and was asked to head up marketing, do some different things there. And while I was there, we tried to take a look at it, what we could do as an organization that would help build and improve upon the lives of our employees, rather than just being able to provide a paycheck, which is (00:05:00) important.

but we said, what else can we do to develop their lives and help them achieve? Yeah, no, their potential. And one of the things we was that we did while we were there caught the eye of Adam Kessler, who was the owner and CEO of Academy mortgage. And Adam said, I'd like to talk to you for a little while about what you were doing during, see if you wouldn't mind helping us.

And I said, sure. And, he and I connected and we started talking about what he wanted to do with the organization here and. What he wanted to do and where my heart was. And I think his heart was, aligned. And I said, listen, I'm happy to help. if it's just in a kind of consulting capacity, totally fine.

Let me know how I can be of help. And he said, I'd like to leverage our business for more noble purpose in that noble purpose is. To help our people become their best selves. The business is doing well. It will always, probably do well, but can we do it? You good? All right. doing well. And so he and I started talking.

So the first journey that we took essentially was taking what we were already doing here, which were incentive trips for top producers and re positioning them. To do good. And the idea being that, we would send our top producers to nice places to sit in the sand and put their feet in the water, which is great, nothing wrong with it.

But we said, can we do something better? can we look to provide them with an experience that will transform their lives? Because we're in the business of transactions, just like you are, as as a real estate agent. And we said, transactions are important, but what can we do to transform people's lives?

And yeah, we looked at that and say, I have platform and said, let's take our people and provide an experience them and allows them to get off the grid to help a community who doesn't have maybe the resources necessary. but has all of the desire. To improve their lives. And where would that be?

What would it look like? How could it work? We locked in on a small village in Guatemala with the help of some work we had done previously with a nonprofit organization down in that area. And this village was in the what's called the Alta Vera pads mountains in what they call the cloud forest, hide above everything else.

And the focus was to build a water system and build a school. And that we would take our very top performers. In fact, we stretched our incentive targets, even higher. We take our very top performers and a family member or a good friend, and we would go into the alphabet pass mountains and spend the week building a school, building a water system, living in a tent.

essentially living off the man and we did that. And the response from our organization was really strong in two ways. One, those who participated in the trip had seen each other in the past as competitors, because they were all comparing themselves to each other, based on how much production they were doing, somebody was in Arizona, somebody was in California, somebody Maryland.

That's all they really knew about each other was a name and the number. They'd see each other on these other trips that we took, but they didn't really mix and mingle. they had to on this trip, they had the sweat next to each other. In some cases they were a little sick maybe because the food and the diet was different.

but they spent time with each other. And with each other's family members digging, living in a common space in a little camp of pencil, it's like a big boy scout.  working with those that, were in the middle and getting to know what their life was like by shadowing them, making flat corn tortillas, grinding corn, harvesting corn.

They live the life of the people in that village. And over the course of the week are people not only became very aware. Of how different their lives were, but in some ways how similar their lives were to these families, that they were helping. And it cost a lot of them to pull back and say, we've got a lot.

Chris Suarez (09:26):

One of the things I really appreciate about you, Mike is , How do you view the word perspective and actually I'd love for our audience to hear really what shapes perspective, how to drive behavioral change through perspective, and maybe even tactically, how your organization has done that.

Mike Jensen (09:46):

For us, it was as simple as we wanted to change their pace. Their place. And that would change their perspective, that experience of pace to the place, change your perspective, then caught fire. (00:10:00) And we decided that we would continue to offer that is a, an experience for our loan officers and that extended to our employees over time.

And we've continued to do that. What happened for the business is that it strengthened our retention amongst employers, excuse me, amongst employees. Because if they ever were thinking about maybe going somewhere else, because the money was better over here, or they, thought that there was a different or better opportunity over there, it was interesting how much that experience kept them tethered to us.

Not only because of the experience itself, but because they experienced it with their family and their families would say, there's no way you're leaving. that was such a great experience. I want to go on another one. I want to go on another. And what happened was that our folks started to unite and they built this kind of connective tissue amongst all themselves so that, all of that muscle started to drive the business because of a unity around who we wanted to become, who we are.

We're as an organization from a cultural standpoint, they appreciated the fact that we were investing in them and an experience that would transform them and their perspective along with their family members. So it worked for the business, it worked for the cause, which also we said we wouldn't trade on.

We wanted to make sure that the cause was something. That had legs in that I believe would have sustainability. And so we committed to that cause for a couple of years and tell the village said, we're good. We don't need your help anymore. We can do this on her own. So that kept our people tethered.

To the cause beyond just that script as well. They wanted to know what was going on in the lives of those families that they had been with. They wanted to know what was going on in regards to, who they were working next to Laying block. They wanted to keep in touch with those folks.

And so it developed a sense of community. Which, was extending the experience. So that's where we started. And we said, look, we want to continue to develop these types of experiences. How do we do it in a more meaningful way? And how do we help more people, not just our employees, but how do we extend it beyond the boundaries of a lot of Mala.

And so then we started to look at other opportunities. We looked at opportunities. In Peru, we did one in Peru, which was incredible. We did it at 11,800 feet. And as we started to do this, your organization started to grow. People started to hear more about who we were as an organization, not what we do.

They started to look at us, not necessarily as a mortgage company, but they look at us as an organization who wanted to nurture and develop their people outside of the business. We wanted our people to become leaders in their communities, leaders in their families. We wanted these experiences to enrich their lives.

So they become better people. So we took trips to Peru. We went to Ecuador and we started to get more involved in Ecuador. And we've got a village down there that we. I don't want to say adopted, but we've laid foundation with, and we've built, a little bit of a village down there to take us each time we come.

And then we're also letting that village use those facilities. for other people that want to come down there and help them. We spent time in Africa doing the same thing. We spent time in Budapest doing the same thing, a variety of different kinds of projects. We built a huge dam in Peru. we have to get heavy equipment airlifted up there.

we, helped, the disabled adult facility in Budapest and, refurbing that facility, and then also with harvesting. So we harvested corn with all of them. And usually what we'll do in addition to taking our people in is we'll consult and work with those villages to make sure that what we're doing.

Is what they believe needs to be done, not what we believe needs to do them so that it truly is beneficial. oftentimes we'll take a doctor and a dentist down with this as well. And in some cases where the dental is needed, the first trip we went on to Guatemala pulled 752, because there was just such a need and it's fun to watch people who have never in their life or never would even imagine themselves pulling teeth.

Within 10 minutes of instruction from the dentist side by side, with the dentist, if somebody has shot over to you. those are experiences that happen in these types of trips. Maybe the best experiences that happen are those that happen without being crafted or planned. I'll give you one small example.

We had a couple that, travel to our first trip and then came on our second trip. And then most of the people that participate in these are repeat offenders. They keep coming back. Cause they were like, I want that again. It's great. they were struggling as a husband and wife and it (00:15:00) was obvious, obvious to just those who knew them, but obvious to everybody, because.

When you're in a tent and you're surrounded by 30 or 40 other tents and you get cranky with somebody, you can hear it. And unfortunately, they were really struggling and we were there at a time when a bunch of thunderstorms came through and it was nothing but mud and rain for two days. And we were trying to work standard.

it was not ideal. But one night we had heard them squabbling and bickering and we could tell it just wasn't a good scene. One night, the rain stop, the clouds part. It started to get human. Everybody took their rain flies off the tent. It was quiet. And all of a sudden you could just hear out of that tent, where there had been bickering and fighting, just laughing, real soulful, laughing, and then crying.

And nobody dared asked what was going on, but the next morning I asked a loan officer said, Hey, is it really good? I say, good. It felt like things were a little bumpy. What changed? And he said, I don't know how to explain it outside of the fact that this experience had us both on edge because we have everything we need anymore.

Financially from a service standpoint, everything instantaneous. So it puts some pressure on us and it highlighted right, perhaps that we don't need each other as much as we should. And so we were relying on each other more here and it was hard, really hard, and we were grumpy. And when the rain we stopped, took that ring off and looked up and we saw the stars that we have never seen in our life.

You said we just simultaneously broke out laughing and then crying. And then I had a really good conversation and just totally each other. We need to work on our marriage. And he said, you know what? That trip I think has saved our marriage. And he told me that two and three years later. And how and why I have no idea, but for us, in my opinion, that was all worth it.

and we get a lot of those kinds of stories where people are like, this changed my relationship with my son or my daughter. And that's what those stories, those trips are about what experiences are about me as well. So we did a bunch of those, right? and then we said, what other kinds of experiences can we build to help our people?

And so that led to a variety of other types of experiences that are different from that in terms of execution, but in principle, very similar in terms of nurturing and developing our people and families and. And helping others in communities of need or just people in. So anyway, hopefully it gives you an idea of how we got started down.

Chris Suarez (17:40):

Awesome.  one of my big takeaways and let's just go back to that husband and wife, you changed their pace, right? You put them in a new place.

And all of a sudden a perspective, right? a wildly deeply held perspective shifted. And I think that's the, that's this, Almost secret or hidden effect of living experientially. I think, I've never really heard it that way and I love it. Those three P's like pace and place and perspective, but the only way we do that is if we focus on changing the experience or living experientially, which your company is mastering, which is pretty awesome.

Mike Jensen (18:22):

 We're trying. We're hoping it'd be great to get to mastery such a nice compliment what we're trying. and does it have business benefit? It does, but that's not the reason we're doing it. Yeah, because we believe the couple of things. One, the best form of philanthropy is employing people.

Yeah. And helping them to become their best selves because in doing that. There's a trickle down effect. Hopefully we've seen it where people then reach out to help others become their best selves. And so it's regenerated, right? So that's number one, number two. this idea of living in the transactional world, which we all do, right?

Everything's instantaneous, it's at our fingertips. oftentimes.  is a trade down in, while it provides some initial stimulus, whether it's financial or emotional or whatnot, it doesn't really oftentimes have the power to transform. And we think people are really hungry for meaning.

And if there's a way that we can assist, we can't necessarily either the ones that create it, they create a great participant. But if we can help them create that meaning, We think that's a valuable role to play as a business as well. That's a role we should play.

Chris Suarez (19:40):

You talk about creating a community within the workplace. How do you do that? How do relationships come into play there? 

Mike Jensen (19:50):

We all live in communities and it's interesting.

the neighborhood I live in as a community, but it's not the same community that (00:20:00) neighborhood used to be maybe 30 or 40 years ago for a couple of reasons. One, we all work so much more. When we used to. And so the workplace is becoming a community. And so the workplace is really going to be a community.

It needs to be a community where you nurture people outside of what they contribute to the workplace. We need to find a way to nurture them, help them grow, help their families grow, Find ways in which they can develop that sense, not directly benefit the business. It needs to be. Our relationship.

And what we have found is that the strongest currency in our economy is relationships. That's what, from a business standpoint, from a personal standpoint, that currency, when you invest in that currency of relationships, that currency does nothing. And then when you run into tough challenges along the way, and be in business, or whether it be in person.

That currency holds it doesn't drain out as quickly as maybe transactional currency. And so there's just some real benefit to it. and I think people see that it's a natural law, but sometimes we look past the Mark that makes any sense, you think, 

Chris Suarez (21:18):

As you look at the benefit, the business benefit of the community, you've built by making your workplace and actually outside of the workplace, this community a human need is community.

In fact, that's right. That's the goal for mass Laos said that, Hey, this is a basic need and we can never get to enlightenment. or you define it as being their best self until that community is there? this idea that we're saying spending less times in the physical community, around our houses and neighborhoods and communities, and more time at work, which is it's very true, Over the last 30, 40, 50, 70 years that has happened. Do you find that's a, it's a by the byproduct of that is retention of employees and your business model was also built on a bit of independent contractors as well.  what has retention been like for your organization because of it?

Mike Jensen (22:12):

Yeah. Super perceptive question on your part. Yes, one of the business benefits is retention. if I looked at the business benefits of building a culture and, in a community. based on serving, based on providing experiences that are transformational, the business benefits are immediately threefold.

One is the attraction. It's attractive to people who are hungry for meaning and are void of that in their lives, which is a pretty big population. Unfortunately, we see that it resonates with them. So from a recruiting standpoint, people look at us and say, You're different, like really different. And that's interesting to us, right?

Cause the same or different. And if you're the same and you're different in degree, they, my interest rates are a little awkward, a little down. There's not enough difference to really attract people, whether it be consumers or employees. So it's attractive,  it's got this kind of magnetic power.

That's one helpful for us in attracting the right people. Number two when they are here, they become more engaged in being productive because they feel more committed to the organization because of what the organization provides and gives back. And I'll give you a case experience on, and we can measure that and greater productivity, is something that everybody's looking for because there's yield and there's efficiency. And then number three is retention. Yes. We have greater retention amongst those that we want to keep. And those things don't match the books while they're good people. It's okay. It filters them out more quickly and then we don't have to drag along.

so there's a natural selection. And as a result, we do have greater retention as well. So those business benefits. From a profitability standpoint are significant. No doubt. It also helps us and, attracting the right type of partners from a realtor standpoint, a builder standpoint. I don't want to overuse this term.

It's not virtue signaling. But it's helping people understand. Who we are, and if that's attractive to the right partners, it cuts out the friction in how we do business as well. It helps build non-transactional trust and builds more vulnerability for us amongst partners. And that's a quicker path and a more efficient path to getting business done.

So there are some real business benefits for sure. Do we do it specifically for that reason? No. Do we know that those business benefits exist? Yes. , do we invest in, does it make it easier to invest in those things because it's reciprocal, it comes back to us. Absolutely.

Chris Suarez (24:55):

Let me go back to something you said earlier.  You did well now we (00:25:00) want you to do good, Or that it's doing well, allows you to do good. Do you think one has to come before the other? , can you place the doing good before the doing well? What's your perspective on that as an organization?

Mike Jensen (25:12):

Yeah. I don't know if one has to come before the other, in an organization, depending on the size of the organization, depending on kind of the heritage of the organization. and habits in the organization. One might need to come before the other, for example, if you, as an organization, start it out in sending people with service, And then asking them, you look, I want you to work really hard to go spend five nights in the dirt  depending on the culture of that organization to start. It might not work because they're still looking for incentive versus motivation and so it's somewhat dependent and I think on the culture of the organization and individuals it's dependent on what their intrinsic motivators are.

So the example would be okay. We have folks on the sales side, who's. Motivators are more financial perhaps than anything else and nothing wrong with it, but we believe there needs to be a healthy balance of not just financial, but serving and doing good in our, in some of our ops roles or even in some of our, hourly positions, there is a desire to certainly financially improve their lives.

But just observation, from my perspective, there have been more interest in maybe more understanding of the challenge and sometimes those who are in need phase, and there's almost more of a desire on their part to participate in do good sometimes because. They just may be more sensitive to it because they may be more surrounded by her more in that environment when you don't know if that's the right way to position it.

But there seems to be a little bit more understanding of those challenges. For example, in the home office, while we have a lot of individuals, Who Aren't able to participate in those trips or initially when we changed it, now we allow employees to participate in trips. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that.

It's not just an incentive trip, it becomes more of an employee trip. But initially, the only way you could participate in those trips was if you earned it as a loan officer based on volume. We had a lot of people saying, I really want to do that trip. how can I do that?

I'm not a loan officer. I can't participate in two things that we found that were interesting, as we said to ourselves, yeah, we want this experience to be for everyone. And some of these folks just couldn't do it on their own. How can we structure something where we can put in place a grant or a scholarship like program where essentially we cover a good portion of the trip and then others have to match it.

The take on. It was immediate when we put it out there for our employee base. It didn't matter if they were $15 an hour employees or salaried employees. We had an immediate rush of interest because we were willing to meet them halfway. And it wasn't coming out of their pocket only. And so we extended that to a broader pool.

And what we've seen is two things. One. Those that may be economically would be a little more challenged to pay for that make up the biggest portion of those who want to do it. The other thing that we've seen, which is just encouraging, and I think fantastic is that a lot of our loan officers who have participated are secretly putting money into that fund and sponsoring those who can't afford it because they want them to have the experience too.

That is the magic of it, because what that does is it softens everyone's heart to some degree. And it creates a much more enduring sense of community in the business because people hear about it. you don't know who it is all the time, but they know. That, you know what, Hey, this person ended up going and it would have been a struggle for them.

It would have been a lot for them to contribute, but somebody sponsored them. Who did it now? We're not going to tell you because they don't want to know. So that's happened, which has been great out of that. What we've seen is the home office department saying, how can we do a better job of serving here in our local area?

Cool. So one of the things out of several that's happened is. We as a company and this was driven by the employees this time, they said, look, you'd like to adopt. What's called the boa volunteers of America, teen homeless shelter up in Salt Lake. And we're going to sign up and we're going to provide at least one, two, maybe three meals a week where the employees are contributing their time.

They're contributing the food. And as a team, they're going up and we've got department too. It's just part of their, every week. And (00:30:00) every other week schedule, they go up, they do it. And so they're finding ways to do good. And as individuals, whether their level of well is this financial level or this financial level or whatever it may be.

It's irrelevant. They're doing good. To answer that question. It's almost case-based. I wish that I had a really clear cut answer, but what we try to do is sit back and say, you know what, because we've done well, we can do good, but even if we weren't doing well, we're going to continue to do good. And we've done that in a couple of patients where,  when it's going to difficult the actual year, we have not backed off on those types of service expeditions and the service trips.

When we otherwise couldn't just come out. We said, no, this is who we are. This is what we'll do. . 

Chris Suarez (30:46):

It's interesting. I'm not, I'm a firm believer that money is a satisfier, but mission is a driver. And, that may not be the case for every human. And when you build your organization, like you've built it.

Every human in your organization will fall into that. They may be financially driven, right? Like for instance, your salespeople, you want them economically and financially and money driven, right? Like that starts to drive then you've almost changed who they are by shifting their perspective. And then they become mission-based. She begins to drive them because they've done good. 

Mike Jensen (31:25):

Yeah, I think it's a very astute judgment, right? In terms of how that as an intrinsic motivator drives people versus an extrinsic, which is incentive-based right. And We've said these aren't really incentive trips.

They started out. Cause it's just how we've labeled them and talk to each other about the trip. What they really are is motivators. They're motivational grips. They motivate people to do better in the business so they can participate once they participate. It continues to motivate them to be better people.

And that's an intrinsic drive as opposed to an extrinsic drive. It's interesting. As you talked through that,. I agree with where you're at in regards to, some people are money driven. Some people are mission driven money to satisfy. Our mission is a driver. I absolutely believe that we tend to try and we haven't codified it this way and trying to look for when we're looking particularly on the leadership front and say, look, there are two balances we want to, as we look at people, understand what we call EAP squared.

Their ego and economic drive is one side of the equation. And in the sales world, you want people to have an economic drive if they're able to drives too high. That's a little challenging too, right on the opposite side is principles and purpose. We want that score to be pretty high as well.

If we get somebody that's really high on the ego and the economic side, but really low on the principles and purpose side, it's not a good fit.  We would rather have it flipped around the other way, but we do love to have is, they have that economic drive and the principles and purpose drive as well.

And it's fairly, matched up fairly well, but  I think that what we have discovered and found is that when we find people who have principles, when they are purpose driven, they tend to be the people that. Are more sustainable for us as an organization. They tend to be the people that are more productive.

We don't run into the challenges of turning people in and out of the organization. So we develop greater trust in the organization as a result. And we think it lifts the potential of organization. It's a hard balance because that's an idyllic world. But, we run into challenges all the time and we  sometimes .

Have to check ourselves and say, are we being selfish on this? Are we being ego and economic driven on this? Let's pull back a minute and think about it. And it requires constant self-inventory and  that's a hard thing. You've got to try to be honest with yourself and sometimes we all don't want to be honest with ourselves.  

Chris Suarez (33:53):

 I want to  dig into one more thing. so you have a background in some of the most recognizable. Companies and organizations in the country, dare I say the world, right? The wall, Coca Cola, Pepsi co. and actually all those companies are known for giving back and philanthropic activity.

And, I oftentimes believe that giving money easy for organizations.  in my world. The easiest thing for me to do right now is to write a check to give, and there's a place for that and it's necessary and it's needed, something you said, right at the start was that your people got to live the life of the people in that village. come from organizations that give billions and billions of dollars away. And now you're at the heart of the organization that has built this mission. In fact, in your mission statement, it's caring about your employees and caring about serving others and you've actually put them in the environment or experienced giving, not just writing the giving. What's your thought on that?  how do you separate those two and how do you value those two types of giving? 

Mike Jensen (35:09):

Yeah. perceptive again, on your part. As we talked about earlier, it's transactions versus transformations and writing a check is a transaction largely while it's representative of the organization.

it, it doesn't have the power. To transform the givers who are participating in it has the power to transform those who are receiving because it's currency that's necessary. And that's a good thing. And I would never discourage that. But in order to really realize the full potential of a transformational economy, we decided that you have to allow people to not only participate in.

By curiously not active giving, right? Or even if you yourself are writing a check, which is good, and that's a good thing, but to get the most out of it, you have to be able to give of your time, your talent and your treasure, all three things. And so if you're in a position or your organization can allow you or can foster.

And create the opportunity to give up your time with talent, your treasure, then you maximize the experience. You maximize the transformational opportunity that exists, right? Whether it be serving in the middle of Ecuador, building a school there, or whether it be serving the teams, That are just 15 minutes down the street that are struggling.

Yeah, you're still giving up your time. Your talent is a little different and we're trying to figure out how to better be that as well. How do we take our workforce in addition to giving their time, you ended up some of their treasurer, right? How do we leverage the skill sets, the talents that they have, make those available to communities in need or people in need?

That's a little trickier, but I think once we find. The way to better do that. We've done it a little bit here and there, but the way we can find an ability to do that. so they're contributing their strengths then I think, it's we'll hit a home run on, this is the right mix that provides the most amount of meaning to people because those three elements are really what you have to do,  Really what you have to give others. And so if we can find a way to leverage all three of those, then I think we'll be. On a better path as well. it's interesting this last I'll give you one last example and maybe this will help illustrate it. So this past year, as you mentioned, the challenges that we've had with COBIT and as an organization, we were set to take another correct with the organization.

We were originally going to Israel. And it was going to be an immersive cultural experience. We were going to participate in the culture so that we could feel what it was like to be those people, to some small degree we were going to serve in that community. as Cobra got closer, we knew that we couldn't do it.

We've tried to reposition. Let's figure out if we can take our folks somewhere else and do that. We tried that started to get worse. We had to reposition again. We said, look, we're one book to do this in the fall. And then as Cobra continued to hang around, we don't think this is going to work. We just don't know that we can do it this year.

How do we build the next one experience for our people where we're not all together, but that allows them to contribute their time, talent and treasure. And have an experience of their own with their family. It won't be an immersive experience as a group, but maybe it can be individually. So we decided that we would take an amount of money that we would normally contribute to the trip.

And instead of just holding it back and saying, we'll do it next year, we gave all of those who qualified that amount and said, we're giving you this amount with these two conditions. One, you have to use it to create an experience that will transform and change, right? The lives of either somebody in need.

So it can be a foundation, it can be a school, it can be, somebody who's bill or to change your lives in your family, by doing something with your family that you normally wouldn't do. And that can be service-based as well. Or it can be, look, you've got an ill sister-in-law who doesn't have the financial means, and they've had a hard time as a family.

We want you to get together or as a couple or as partners, whatever it may be. Talk about how you'll take this money and utilize it to create an experience that changes your life and the lives of others. We want you to send (00:40:00) into us what that's going to be. And based on that, we'll grant you that capital.

And then we want to hear the stories. So what's been great. There's some really good stories that are starting to come in, whether it be a look, you know what we, this is high school football team in this rural area. Hasn't got new equipment for literally 15 years. You don't have enough to pay a full time person yet.

It's the heart of the town. We want to give our 10 K to the football team to buy new equipment and to pay some of these coaches who are volunteers. Okay, great. Sounds fun. But that's your choice? How are you going to contribute to making it work versus just stroking the check to how are you involved?

We've had folks talk about, Hey, you know what two kids from Ghana, about 10 years ago, they came out of the slave camps. We want to take them back. They have not seen it. They came over when they were two and four. We want to take them back to where they came from and we want to serve for a couple of weeks in that community.

That's what we're going to do. Fantastic. Do that, Share with us that experience and let us share it with the rest of the organization. What happens now. And as we gather, all of these stories is that we've got this. it's a collection of stories that everybody can somehow participate vicariously.

And so the organization in that sense will share in that immersive experience. So it wasn't exactly what we had hoped. It could be in the sense of, you can all go down and serve together, but we said, let's just find another way to do it. And so for this year, that's what we're going to do. And.

We hope that it will provide for those that are really serious about trying to extract as much as they can out of it, in terms of victim experience, then it'll provide that opportunity for them to do it. And we'll start to share those stories with the organization, as we hear about, 

Chris Suarez (41:52):

That is, my God's one of the most brilliant responses to that question around, Giving right giving of our time.

you've there's those forties, right? Time, talent, treasure winds up being transformational. I think the big takeaway for me is that. By writing the check, you absolutely can transform someone's life, , a human's life, a family's life, a culture begins to transform you. We've done that.

and actually from a far you can do that. You can write those checks and have other people help that . Village in Ecuador or . the community in Ghana or Budapest. but the difference. When you're doing it and you're experiencing the giving up your time and giving of your talent and giving up your treasure, it's actually transformative for both parties.

And I don't know that I thought about it that way before , but you're At a certain point in time. And I think we all wake up and say, Gosh, it's awesome to transform someone else's life. And sometimes we use that as an excuse,  we're head down and all we do is focus on work and we're transforming boys' lives and people's lives and customers' lives and clients' lives.

Yeah. But we never take a moment and transform our own or our own families. By allowing ourselves the time, talent and treasure. And I believe that if we don't do that, we will wake up one day and still be empty, no matter how much we've transformed other people, those lives and perspectives. we didn't dual transforming.

And just so you know, and I'll post it in the show notes. I watched a couple of your organization's videos. I watched the one from Peru and. And yeah. That the community's lives are being changed and transformed even by the relationships that you've formed, but so are your people, so are your loan officers and their employees, and there it is a huge takeaway for me, time, talent, treasure, and you wind up dual transforming both of those that you serve, and those that are serving, I think that's really, 

Mike Jensen (43:50):

That's , hopefully the magic in it, Is that comes about, and I appreciate you recognizing that it cause. I think that's what we're hopeful is happening. It doesn't always, but, we're trying to find more and more ways to make that happen. And, we've said several times we've had lots of organizations say, like, how do you do this?

 it may be a secret sauce in regards to who we are. We're not secretive about it. We're happy to help others. Anybody that comes along and said, Hey, can you help us figure this out? It, because we believe that income, I have an abundance theory as opposed to a scarcity model, right? There's an abundance of opportunity to serve and lift people.

And we shouldn't treat that as a scarce resource. and for those who really are committed to doing that, there's no reason not to help them.  if there are listeners, then have interesting questions, we're absolutely happy to talk and help them think through that because we just think that's what, that's the noble purpose of business used to help transform one.

That's the reason it's a vehicle to do. 

Chris Suarez (44:48):

Mike, I'll just wrap up by stating that, as I looked, and got to know your organization over the last couple of years,  the noble purpose, And that's actually even on your mission statement page, that your company (00:45:00) believes that you have a noble purpose.

You guys are living it out. And as you say, helping others and bringing them along. With you on that noble purpose, even a 45 minute conversation today gave our audience some real models to be able to do that. All we need to do is take a step back and say, gosh, how do I step in and change someone's pace and change someone's place to be able to change their perspective.

And then once we take that model layering in . That time, talent, treasure into transformation brings us all the way back to what you started with that you say, , most businesses are transactional. Most brilliant businesses are transaction-based business, but you said  we're gonna take a mortgage industry highly transactional and make our business transformative.

You continue to do that. And I think every single one of us can take a step back and say, how do I move from being transactional to transformative in my business for our people, for our customers. and for those that might not be our people and our customers, but we can serve them because they need to.

So I appreciate your time. where can people find more, find out more about your company as a, as 

Mike Jensen (46:07):

A whole MC. Yeah. I think that, if they just go to our website, certainly that will give them some perspective. There's an opportunity to get a better understanding of our culture there. and this sounds probably not like we're optimizing as well as we should, but talk to our people, reach out to our people and ask them.

What it is that they love about the organization, why it's good for them, and the evidence should be found in people. And if it's not, then that's where we're failing. We need to do a better job of helping our people. You understand me, but I'd say talk to our people, look for Academy or Academy loan officers or employees anywhere and talk to them and hopefully they'll share the same.

Kind of testimony, so to speak of what we do, so I appreciate it, Chris, this has been a really great discussion. I appreciate you adding texture to the conversation and the richness that you added to this idea is helpful for me as well.

It gives me some things to think about improving upon. So I really appreciate the conversation. It's been great. My pleasure, 

Chris Suarez: (47:07):

Mike, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much.