For a young man in his early 20s, he recalled the money was pretty good: “It worked for me as a single young guy where I was able to make more money than I’d made in any prior jobs and be able to learn some things as I went along.”
The novelty begins to wear off
But the novelty soon began to wear off, particularly after working in the merchant cash advance field he likened to a payday loan for businesses. “I didn’t really find a way of moving up in my career by continuing in that path,” he said. “The industry had a bad reputation. Some unscrupulous companies ruined it for the rest of them. Even if you wanted to do good business, the companies didn’t have the best interest of the consumer in mind, in my opinion.”
He decided to move on to other things: “It was 2007 when I ended that that part of my career,” he said.
By 2012, he found himself at Green Light Loans as a loan officer. “The mortgage business was hot again,” he recalled hearing from friends in the Orange County section of California. “There was a lot of buzz. Green Light in Irvine, California was my introduction to the mortgage business.”
It was something of a defining moment, he suggested. “It was a motivating experience because it was the first time I was introduced to heavy competition and compared to my peers with metrics in a really big way. I’m a competitive guy, and the competitive side in me came out and that made me push myself to the next level and work hard.”