Keith grew up on a cattle ranch and worked oil fields and mining before hitting rock bottom in 1997, scrounging coins for gas and diapers. A chance meeting led him into mortgages as a telemarketer. He survived the 1998 rate drop and 2008 crash to build a 25-year career he credits to persistence and faith.
1997.
1998.
About 25 years.
That's not an overnight success. That's 25 years of this. Then you go back before that. I got to take it all the way back to high school. I was working in the, on a cattle ranch. My family had a cattle ranch. And that's what was my first real. I mean, my exposure to work was day one, I think my parents didn't even let me sit there as an infant. I was like, you got to do dishes or something, right? We learned as kids, never let your parents find you sitting because they will find something for you to do. So if you're going to sit, you better be hiding. And that was how. How we went about life. And then you did the cat and yours. Never any sitting. You was constantly working and you start to understand business. The actual simplest business plan in the world, which is planting crops and harvesting crops and taking care of the crops, that kind of thing. So that's where that started. And I realized when I was in high school, I want, I felt like there's something more to do with my life. So I tried the college courses in my senior year. And I hated that crap. In fact, I was really good at picking locks. And that's how I was able to engineer the seed that I got all through high school so I could graduate because I couldn't stand doing the schoolwork. I figured out how to get people their tests. I figured out how to take those tests. I figured out how to trade that for homework and for attendance, because I did. I was hunting. I was four wheeling and I was snowboarding more than I was doing anything else when it comes to high school. So then I was able to engineer getting out of high school halfway through my senior year. And I went to work in the oil fields of Wyoming. And then from there I went to work running heavy equipment and driving truck. And I ended up in the mines of northern New Mexico in 1997. And that was the greatest job I ever had. It was amazing. Absolutely loved that job. But they shut down the project. So then miners typically are like, they're like military guys. They always go to the next mine. Everybody's moving around to the next place. And I came back to Arizona, my, my wife and infant son. Here I was driving back and forth 10 hours one way to go to work for 13 shifts. And I couldn't find work to save my life. Everywhere I applied, I was over qualified, overqualified, overqualified. And then it got to a point where we were so broke that my wife gave me a coupon for free diapers as I'm walking out the door, go get to go apply for a 10 an hour truck driving job to haul landscape rock. And I got there and again I got the exact same response, this BS word overqualified. And I didn't understand. How can you be overqualified for something you the good at it, you're not. You can either do the job or you can't. I didn't understand it. So as I'm leaving there wiping tears, I get in my truck, I started up to drive away and I've got my coupon to go to the store, get those diapers. My gas light comes on in my truck and I'd not driven that truck very far on a gas light to know how far you can get. So I found the closest grocery store that had a gas station on the corner. So I pulled up to a pump, I had a debit card. That's all I had. I said a quick prayer, I swiped my debit card and I got a decline for having an overdrawn account. So I rummaged to my truck to hoping to find a lost dollar. I found some coins, I locked the doors and I started walking that parking lot. And what seemed like a couple of hours had passed. I collected enough change to get 2 gallons of gas. Now this is 1997, right? Gas is 80 some odd cents a gallon different than what we're paying now. And people still carry change. So yep, I had the ability to get enough of it to exchange that time for that gas. I went inside, I found those, those diapers. I stood in line with that one item to go check out with a damn coupon. Just it seemed like another punch to the face. And as I'm walking out with my head down, avoiding all eye contact, I heard my name being called. And I turned to see a guy that I used to work with when I was running heavy equipment. He ran the office. I was one of the guys who ran one of the crew. He asked me how things were. I explained a little bit of what I just explained to you guys, but very, very, I glazed off it really, really quickly because I didn't want to share where I was at. It was embarrassed. He said, let's go to dinner. I told him I did. I can't afford dinner. He goes, no. I got a gift certificate to Red Lobster from a client, Mike. Okay, cool. So my wife and I met him for dinner and that's where he shared with me that he was in the mortgage industry. He slid me a business card for a broker shop and he Connected with his branch manager. So I called those guys, see if I could at least check this out. I had no idea what, what this was. The only thing I knew about mortgages was the old man, the old lady losing their farm to this thing called the mortgage. So it was very, very negative in my mind. And that was the things that you watched on tv, right? The old black and white movies. So I shaved, I cut a foot off of my hair, my mom bought me some business like clothes and I went in and interviewed and they started me as a telemarketer in 1997. And let me just tell you, there's no more miserable place in the freaking world to start in any industry as a telemarketer. That freaking sucked. But I got to understand the lang, right? So that was a beating itself. I was learning the language and talking to people and I convinced them after I generated 10 leads and I can I work a couple of these, these leads. So then they introduced me to another loan originator, said hey, he'll train you on your first 10 deals. And I went through that and then, you know, it took me, I was able to get a job driving truck to Sacramento and back and then try and work in the office three days a week. And that was miserable. I quit that. Driving a truck to California, through California every week is. There's nothing worse in the world except telemarketing. I think that. And then I got another job. I was able to get back on, hired on with a company that I was digging swimming pools for. I get up to get up every day at 3am, be in the yard by 4, be back by noon, be in my office by 2 every day for a single, for an entire year sleeping four hours a night till the rate dropped below 7% in 1998. And I was able to actually replace that income with enough deals coming in. Prayerfully considered leaving the second job and just doing the one. And I've never looked back since. And it's been, it's been been, it's been brutal. It's been a brutal battle. You got all that. You got the crash 2008, you got the cycles, got all these beatings that have, have happened in my world. And it was honestly, if I didn't have that negative of an experience and if I could find a job that was going to keep me in that, that world that I was in as a, you know, heavy equipment operator or a truck driver, I'd probably still be doing that. But I needed people to make my life that miserable to the point That I was walking a parking lot, and not just walking a parking lot, but the timing had to be perfect. If I picked up too many coins too quickly, I would have gotten that gas too early, and I would not have seen Keith. If I didn't find coins fast enough and it took me longer time, I would not have seen Keith. The timing was absolutely perfect. And so when I look on that prayer that I said to get my. My debit card, to go through the decline, at first felt like the prayer was unanswered, but in reality it was. Greatest answer I could have ever gotten.
Yes. Yes. Fate, Destiny. I don't know how many words we could think of to. To relate to that story, but wow. Yes. Divine intervention. That's right. That's right. That's right.
Had just. I just. I'm. I'm so blessed that it worked or it didn't work. And they had to go through that and the beating that came after that. Again, just because God steps in. And I'm going to say that there's many comments. People can tell me there's no such things. I don't give a damn what you had to say. I know where I was at and what I was dealing with at that time, because God stepped in. He didn't literally just drop $10 million in my account. No. He said, here's. There's two bucks out there. Go get that $2. Yeah. And then go do this. And then go do this. And 25 years later, here's where we said.
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