What if the hardest season you’re in is also the most important one?

I want to tell you about the day I got completely blindsided.

I was a Regional VP. My team was producing. We were making a significant amount of money for the bank every single month — and I know that for certain because I monitored the numbers meticulously. An outside firm was brought in to evaluate the residential division and came to the same conclusion. Profitable. Performing. By every measure, doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing.

And then the new bank president decided to exit retail mortgage entirely.

Just like that — the entire division was out of a job.

The word spread at lightning speed. And before I had even fully processed what had happened, it seemed like every mortgage company and their grandmother was calling with some offer for the team. Which sounds flattering until you realize you're still in the middle of mourning a sudden loss, trying to regroup, and now also being asked to make what felt like one of the most monumental decisions of your career — while the people who were counting on you were watching every move you made.

I was not okay. And I did not have the tools yet to know what to do with that.

What I know now that I didn't know then

I recently came across something from Dr. Lee Warren that landed with a clarity I wish I'd had back then.

Two things can be true at the same time. 

The loss was real. The blindside was real. The weight of responsibility for those people was real. And — also true, at the exact same moment — something was being set in motion that would eventually lead me exactly where I was meant to be.

I couldn't see the second truth at the time. All I could see was the meaning I had made of it. The story I told myself about what it meant that this had happened, what it said about my future, what it said about me.

And that story, while completely understandable, was not the whole story.

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to find the other truth. A few years, if I'm being honest — and I didn't have all the tools and frameworks I have now. I was on the personal growth journey, but I was working with what I had.

And then about a year after they had exited retail mortgage, the bank called me. They had realized it wasn't the best idea and wanted to reenter. They asked me to spearhead it.

I turned them down.

Not out of bitterness. Not to prove a point. But because I had done enough work by then to see clearly what I couldn't see in the middle of the blindside — my values and theirs didn't align. And I had outgrown that chapter.

Going back would have been going backwards.

The loss was real. And it was also protecting me from staying somewhere that was never fully aligned with who I am. Every twist and turn that followed led me to the work I do today. And I couldn't be more grateful.

If something in here is already sitting with you — I'd love that conversation. Simply send me a message.

Where this shows up in your world

The mortgage industry right now is handing out blindsides at a pace nobody anticipated. Nearly 40,000 loan officers have left since 2021. A recent survey found that 63% of those still here believe the country is already in — or on the brink of — a recession. Buyers are frozen. Margins are compressed. Agent relationships that took years to build are producing less than they should.

That's a lot of weight. And weight creates stories.

The story that the pipeline is half of what it was because the market is broken and there's nothing to do but wait it out. The story that the agent relationship that still hasn't converted means the effort wasn't worth it.

Those stories might be partially true. And they are not the whole story.

Every previous cycle in this industry has produced the same pattern — the LOs who came out the other side stronger weren't the ones who had it easier. They were the ones who used the pressure to get clearer about who they served, sharper in how they showed up, and more intentional about the relationships worth building. Not because the market cooperated. Because they decided the hard season was also the most important one.

Two things can be true at the same time. This is genuinely difficult. And it is also refining you in ways you won't fully see until you're on the other side of it.

The practical work

Think about the hardest thing happening in your business right now — the thing you've made a decision about, given a meaning to, built a story around.

Now ask yourself: what if that story is only half true?

What's the other thing that might also be true — sitting right alongside it, waiting to be seen?

You don't have to feel it yet. You don't have to believe it yet. Just ask the question. That's where the shift begins.