With brokers leaving the industry, industry leaders provide keys to keep good brokers
As the mortgage market tightened post-pandemic with rising rates and affordability challenges, it wasn’t just homebuyers and sellers moving to the sidelines. Many industry professionals decided to change careers. Two industry leaders stress improved coaching to keep good brokers around.
Jamie Cavanaugh (pictured top left), chief integration and growth officer at Be My Neighbor Mortgage, and Corrina Carter (pictured top right), owner and CEO of CMS Mortgage, discussed the topic at the Equity Prime Mortgage (EPM) The American Gift (TAG) event in Atlanta.
Economic uncertainty has led to elevated interest rates. Those rates and affordability issues have made being a mortgage broker challenging. These market conditions have caused some brokers to leave the industry. Cavanaugh and Carter believe that good coaching can keep more good brokers from departing.
Carter said the first step in coaching employees is communication, which is the ability to understand them and help them.
“One of the things is knowing your people and knowing what they’re going to do before they do it,” Carter said. “Really understanding how you’re going to lean in, but can you get them to lean into you. What we talk a lot about at our company is how we wrote out our roles and our policies. And what we do is to make sure that people have the strength and understand what they’re going to be doing on a daily basis to help with leadership, including in their role.”
For those brokers who have stayed in the industry, Carter believes they will benefit over the next few months as business begins to pick up.
“Everyone got in (the industry) in 2006, and everybody got out in 2009,” Carter said. “So now, a lot of people who are left, you have to really coach them through what’s needed and what your position is there to do. And if you don’t know what your position is to do within yourself, then how can we coach somebody else through how to do that?”
Hiring based on character
Cavanaugh said that when executives are looking to hire lending professionals, it is not necessarily about finding someone who already knows how to do the job.
“When I started hiring for character instead of experience, or in addition to experience, it made a huge difference,” Cavanaugh said. “Because the bottom line is, you can teach anyone how to do the work. But you can’t teach someone discipline. You can’t teach someone time management, and you can’t teach someone to care equally about the people we serve as you do.
“And nobody will care as much about your business as you do.”
Carter said the key to reaching those employees is to coach them without making it feel like they’re being coached.
“In our community, we call it more massaging,” Carter said. “We want to understand you. We want to feel what you’re feeling. We want to also get to know where you’re coming from. So, I use more of the philosophy of, ‘Can we just have this conversation? Where are you today? What are you doing?’ Not, ‘We need to catch up. We need to do a one-on-one. We need to do this, this month.’
“How do you stay front and center without them knowing you’re front and center? That is an extremely hard leadership skill to do. Because that leads you to know the next step before they know what their next step is.”
Having tough conversations
Being a leader also means having tough conversations with your employees to ensure they’re meeting the standard you've set.
“I’m going to say this as woman to woman, don’t mistake our kindness for weakness,” Carter said. “Because when we go in the office and we shut the door, they understand. If I shut the door behind them, he knows we’re going to have a talk. It’s really about understanding that you can have that honest conversation. And they take critiquing from you, but you take the critiquing back.”
Cavanaugh agreed that the tough conversations shouldn’t surprise employees as long as you have set clear expectations.
North Carolina mortgage brokers Mike Alberico and Alec Conrad of Carolina Mortgage Advisors urge originators to "get back to basics" in a tough market. They emphasize becoming advisors to clients' needs amidst high rates and low inventory. https://t.co/yBtHMEX4vT
— Mortgage Professional America Magazine (@MPAMagazineUS) June 18, 2025
“I’ve had some memorable, difficult conversations over the course of my career,” Cavanaugh said. “I’ve had tears, I’ve had screaming, and yelling. I’ve had it all. The only way that I’ve been able to go home and sleep at night is having set forth the expectations clearly, giving the tools, and providing honest feedback along the way.
“When I’m having these conversations, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Because the reality is, if somebody is surprised about that conversation, that’s on you. Somewhere, somehow there was a major miss in them understanding what you wanted.”
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