It was quite a challenge, quite intense. I ended up developing acne for the first time in my life! Anyway, working very hard outside my comfort zone but with a can-do attitude, I succeeded. Within six months I established them as a broker, learning everything about how to get approval from the lender. I already knew a little bit, but I had never really had to set up somebody from the ground up. I did that, and then I managed them for a few good years. I was managing their underwriting department and working with telemarketing, which had a different sales manager. That helped me learn the process of starting a company.
Question: Were you affected by the downturn of the economy in 1995?
Tyler-Pires: Absolutely. The first downturn in the economy is what gave me my next push in life. The company that I had started with decided to close their mortgage division—they couldn’t make enough money so they moved out of state—and I had to get out. I then started a processing company of my own in Orange County, CA, and transformed that from just a loan processing company to a mortgage brokerage. 1995 was when Lighthouse Financial Inc. was born and we’ve been successful ever since.
Question: How did the economy’s second downturn in 2000 affect you?
Tyler-Pires: I was affected by it, but we were careful. We’ve always been careful on overhead, and I’m not one of those companies that grew super fast. Our model, our way of working, has always been to take care of each client, and our focus has always been on client service. Some companies, over the years, caught the greed bug and wanted to grow super big super fast, and then when this downturn happened they couldn’t survive. In 2000, I had to part with my partners—a couple of builders and a title company. So my company got transformed again from having all these partners to just me. I became the sole owner of my company, even though it’s a corporation.
We had survived all this. How? You have to be flexible in times like that. The thing that can never change is your outlook on how you treat each client. That’s the only thing that’s going to help one have longevity in this industry. People will continue to work with you not just one time, but time and time again if you keep that mindset. If you don’t keep that mindset on every loan, and I’ve seen plenty of those people in the industry, then when the downturns happen they disappear. They die.
Question: What separates you from the others? What’s your magic?
Tyler-Pires: What separates me is how I work with each client. When I talk to a client, I bring a lot of knowledge. How does that knowledge translate? A lot of people say, “I have knowledge” or “I have experience.” Well, to a client that sounds nebulous. But when they sit down with me, we can make a step-by-step plan with their goals in mind and they completely understand the process. I was just talking to a client this past weekend at an open house. She had come up from Inland Empire. She has a home there, and she’s retirement age, and she has wanted for a few years to sell that home and buy a place close to our amazing Southern California beaches. She could not envision what she has to do for a second and third home, so she was saying to me, “Okay, I haven’t listed my house yet, but can I put an offer for this place?”
They just don’t understand the process. When you have my kind of experience, I can sit down with someone like her and within thirty minutes formulate a plan that’s clear-cut, telling her what the pitfalls are along the way, so that she can understand why she needs to do something first, and why this second, and why this third. When you work with a client like that, and you are able to explain the pitfalls and the things that happen step-by-step, they start cooperating and allow you to do the things that are necessary. When a client approaches a green realtor, he could say, “Oh, you’ve got to do this first,” but when he can’t really explain the nitty gritty of each step, people get scared and back off. At the end of the day, those realtors don’t do the things they need to do in order to be successful.
Buying a home and selling a home is a high pressure, emotional situation. It’s a very intense process. If you have someone next to you who can guide you and calm your fears and explain the reasons why things are happening, it just makes all the difference in the world. When I bring up the mortgage part, even more so. Another example: I was working with a client in May, helping him buy a very small condo in Irvine, CA for $286,000. When we went to see the property, the listing agent said, “Are they all cash?” and I said, “No, there’s financing.” The agent said they can’t qualify. I asked, “Why can’t they qualify?” She answers, “Because this project is very difficult.” Me: “Tell me why it’s difficult.” Her: “I don’t know.” Me: “Is it the owner occupancy?” I asked some specific questions, and after doing some digging we found out that it’s not really as difficult as she thought it was. If you fit the parameters for an unoccupied (like the Fannie May parameters), you are able to get an exception, and my client fit.
