We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Phil Crescenzo Jr a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Phil, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Dedicated & Consistent focus on improvement.

In a business that is stressful , many in my field tend to fade after a few short years, or never make significant progress on the business challenges.

Willingness to break down simple tasks and strive to do them better at every chance has helped me carry the company through many tougher times that others could not. I try to learn from every experience and improve our clients outcome as a result.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am the branch manager for a mortgage lender operating in South Carolina, where i relocated to 12 years ago.

I started in the mortgage industry in entry level sales and customer service positions to learn and obtain knowledge and gain experience.

My specialty is pushing through challenges for clients needing approvals, less than perfect credit history in some cases, prior bankruptcy, incarceration, other personal issues and maybe they have been given poor advice and have a tough time getting out of it.

It can be just as much ( if not more ) psychological. Traumatizing even. So what I really appreciate about my career is the ability to impact a situation, change the outcome, and make a way to get someone to a goal that is really important to them.

That is what makes this different. I guess I am most proud of the fact that I have really achieved a lot of milestones in the business but it does not change how I operate or how hard I work. I think most would probably be focusing on money but I am focused on opportunities for the team, the people, and the partners that we help.

Not just an approval ( which is great when that happens ) that someone did not expect, but it’s our realtors paycheck on the line too. So it’s even more important.

It’s not something we take lightly on my team and we don’t want to forget why we are trusted. To get the loan approved and closed for the client and partners.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Follow up and consistency in a target segment of the market place , not taking every loan scenario or loan product, but focusing on what we are good at, and being diligent in making that brand stand out in the market.

Word of mouth , and direct follow up , and closing every file possible that we gave our word to.

These are the effective strategies that have proven over and over again, year after year.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The biggest shift and pivot by far was Covid and the rules that impacted lending. Self employed clients ( shut downs ) had to face additional scrutiny, some workers were not active or had hours cut, as a few examples.

During that time, many of our competitors were refinancing clients to very low rates, but this team stayed focused on our purchase clients, builders, and realtors.

This has proven to be the right decision and has allowed strong relationships to grow during those boom years. We have also experienced many successful closings in our branch year over year, which is not the case for most of the industry. We are fortunate and believe our focus on the people and doing good business has proven to be recession proof.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://N1mortgages.com
• Instagram: nationonesoutheast