Rose Wiihelmy

I attribute my success to having mentors who were willing to invest in me and take a chance on me. I had someone who was willing to say, 'I know you don't know Excel, I know you don't totally know business operations, but you're asking a lot of questions about why we're spinning up this call center function, so why don't I bring you under my wing and teach you?' That's really how I got my start. Two of my biggest mentors have been Bobby Green, who currently is a Director of Operations at Zillow - I've worked with her for the last 7 years, and she's been instrumental in helping me grow, gain confidence, and just giving me opportunities. The other is Joe Ziebert, who I worked with at Psycho and Anchor, and he's now Chief Revenue Officer for Mortgage Cadence. He's really big on celebrating your wins, giving you credit, putting you out there, and really investing in people and wanting to get to know them and what they're trying to do with their career and helping them get there. Having people who created a safe space for me to ask questions and who wouldn't just let me drown but would give me the life preserver when I needed it - that's been huge.

The best piece of advice I've received is don't be afraid to ask questions, because chances are, if you don't know, somebody else has the same question, and it's better to clear up those knowledge gaps sooner rather than later. It's a lot more expensive to go back and clean up and redo than it is to just say, 'Hey, I have a question about this, why are we doing this, or how does that work, or just explain to me the rationale behind it.' I feel like so many people are sometimes afraid to ask why, and they're just so focused on doing. But the why is just as important as doing the task, because if you don't know why you're doing it, you could end up with a four-headed monster.

The biggest thing I would say is find a mentor, find people who are willing to invest in you and help you stretch. That's how I got my start - I had someone who was willing to take a chance on me and teach me, even though I didn't know Excel or business operations. The best thing you can do is find somebody who's a safe space for you to ask those questions to, someone who will invest the time in you, and not just say, 'Oh, go do this, I'll be over here if you need me.' You want someone who will give you the freedom to learn and gain confidence, but who won't just let you drown - they'll come and give you the life preserver when you need it. Don't be afraid to ask questions, because if you don't know something, chances are somebody else has the same question too.

One of the biggest challenges is getting people to agree and align. Building a business is really a math equation, but it's more about how you deal with the different people and the personalities and the way that people like to work, so that you can use people's strengths to your advantage. It's about getting people to agree and align to that vision and being motivated to help you accomplish that vision. Another challenge is finding a strategic advantage - you don't always want to just be the lowest-priced lender, because that's just a race to the bottom. You need to have a stronger why and know what you're doing beyond just chasing a dollar, otherwise you're going to run yourself in circles. As far as opportunities, I would say specifically in the private lending space, there's a lot of opportunity to lean into technology and potentially consider standardization. The biggest difference between private non-QM lending versus traditional lending is that the agency side has standards and a unified format, whereas in private lending you don't have that. The fragmentation is a blessing and a curse - it helps if you're good at what you do because there's not somebody that can easily replicate it, but it creates complications when you try to do something like correspondent lending.

My values are authenticity, openness, and curiosity. I also believe in being okay with making a mistake and not being afraid to fail. You're going to make mistakes - it's how you bounce back from it, and what you do with that mistake, and if you learned from it that will catapult you forward. Otherwise, you're just going to get stuck in 'I'm not good at this,' and it's going to slowly erode your confidence. So just taking the chance to really learn from past things, whether they went well or not so well, is important to me.