The goal was to be the best. And when I got into mortgage, but I want to be the best mortgage owner like I want to be the best owner in the NBA and WNBA is that based on how much money we make, or is Alabama championship ruined, and while the fan experiences and the impact in the community, like that's how I'm measured, what I tell you, if people was like, like, you can do anything you want, and I used to have a saying, and I still use it as why not me. We used content
microwave, why not us? Like why can't we be the number one mortgage company country? Why not you WM and know what happened. We are the number one mortgage company that
your lives listening to part two of my awesome conversation with Matt Istria, the owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. If you haven't yet listened to part one, be sure to check that one out first. Without further ado, here's part two of my amazing conversation with Matt. So you're 23 years old, and your dad had this 12 person little side business mortgage company that you really didn't know much about you started in operations and learn the mortgage process from the ground up and became
CEO in 2013. And two years later, you WM was the number one wholesale mortgage lender in the country where it has remained ever since. When you first went to work there, you said, you fell in love with mortgages, something most of us will need one day, but something that almost none of us will ever dream about. What's cool or sexy
about mortgages? And what's your advice to those about to join the workforce or early to mid career executives who want to work at what we would consider sexy companies.
Yeah, so it was it. And I fell in love with mortgages, it's probably a little bit overstatement, because like mortgages or mortgages, right, but I love the competition. I love the business of business. I love being in business, I love competing. I love trying to get better every day. I love solving problems. I love competing to try to improve myself, like I'll say today, like, I'm a CEO, I've been here 20 years are coming, I will This is the worst I'm going to ever
be I'll be better tomorrow. And in five years, I'll be even much better than I get better every single day. And that's my drive. And so my drive is to win. So like, I don't know, if it's sexing mortgage like, I like to compete, I like to win, I like to try to be the best at what I can be, I try to be the best dad I can be. I tried to be the best nine year old football and basketball coach and 10 year old, but like, I like to compete and be the best I can be every day. And that's just part of who
I am. And so whether it's mortgages, like if you want to get into some sexy industry, like go be true to yourself, find a place with opportunity, and then go compete every day. Be the best, like people are like, oh, I want to be this one day like okay, well, you got to do, like, be great today, you got to be the best version of yourself today. And then build on that tomorrow. And then every day to get to this big goal.
People want to like, oh, yeah, sometimes people like, you know, they let their, you know, they have these big dreams, but their work ethic does not show towards those dreams. Like, you know, what's the saying? Like, you know, you know, you know, your, your work ethic of today is not aligned with your dreams of
tomorrow. Right? Like, oh, I, I want to be this but you're not willing to come in at 4am Like, someone's gonna outwork you, it's gonna be me or someone else, someone's gonna outwork you with a better attitude, and they're gonna get there faster.
And so I guess my perspective is like, that you don't need to find the sexy business or what's cool these days, gotta go find because you can make money in anything like find, find me the best artists in the world, the best guitarist in the world, the best musician in the world, the best doctor in the world, the best mortgage guy in the world, the best podcast person in the world, guess what, they probably
make a lot of money. So focus on being the best at something that you love, and that you enjoy and competing at, and you'll make money. I
was always taught and believe that education is the single greatest investment we can make on our future. When we hire people from or intern program, we hire people here at jump, Sandy and my other portfolio companies, we do look at GPA a little bit, we don't want to hire someone who has a 2.8 GPA unless they have three jobs or supporting their family. They're playing a sport in school and have other very material obligations. But we really don't care at the end of
the day about GPA. And I tell everybody, in our summer intern program and a lot of young professionals that at the end of the day, GPA doesn't really matter. When you show up your first day of work. No one cares where you went to school. No one cares where you what your GPA is, you're ready to go. And you're just like everybody else. What's your view on the importance of education? And how do you view at GPAs? When you hire a UW N?
Yeah, so good question. So I think we're aligned on part of it. And maybe I have a slight different take on part of it as well is like, like, I don't care about their their GPA. I don't care about what school like, like you went to Harvard, you're the smartest guy in the room, like you said, or you graduated high school. Doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is what you do
here. Right? And so what you do in our four walls and so how do I find someone with heart with a work ethic with attitude with drive to be great, and that's what I'm looking for because I Can Teach mortgages like, in this day and age, knowledge is becoming a commodity. Experience is different. But knowledge is a commodity. I can teach anybody mortgage, it's not that hard. It's not that smart. Like you can teach anyone like people can
teach. But I can't teach her. I can't teach someone who's gonna say I care that I'm going to show up early, I'm going to stay late. I'm going to do whatever it takes to make that client happy. Like I can't. So how do I find those people? And so like, how do you find them? You ever do an interview with someone like, Hey, what's your worker that I have a shitty work ethic and I want to show up late all the time. They didn't ever say that to you. So how do you find
it? So to your point, sometimes finding good GPA, or someone that's completed a task, whether it's a sport, a former athlete, a military veteran, or someone that's completed things that's like, Okay, I know, they'll finish something that shows work ethic that's like a first, then when they come up with interview
30am, they show up at 930. To show up at 915. I started to like, put all these things together to find out who's my guy, my gal who's gonna be on my team. And those are things I look at, because I don't I think you can teach someone anything, right? If we're talking about brain surgery, or like some crazy like, for the most part, like 99% of jobs I can teach you, I can learn them too. And it comes down to my work ethic and attitude. How do you find work
ethic and attitude? By the way, the attitude question I ask is this, give it away my stuff, but this is why I asked him like, Hey, why do you want to come work at UWS my mortgage company? They're like, if their first answer is like all my other company, Flagstar or Rocket Mortgage, I hate them. Because this, this and this, they say negative things. Like that's not my kind of guy or gal. Like be respectful. Don't badmouth your
current or past company. Say, Hey, listen, you know, I, you know, wasn't a great fit for me at the last company I've read so much about you, WM I really think there's a better fit. For me, that's a positive attitude, even if they gotta gotten fired or treated horribly at that last coffee, I don't want to hear about that I want to hear about going forward and why you want to be part of this. And so I
look at those things. And those are big parts of the determining factor of work ethic, attitude, heart.
I think one of the most overlooked thing is in fact how people project themselves when they get to the office. Attitude is king. I teach right out of the gate, the most common ask question in the world is how are you and it's something 99% of people in the world get wrong? They say I'm good. And I equate that to a GPA good. Is a B, do you want to be in the workforce to succeed? You got to be an A, I'm great. I'm fantastic. I'm having an amazing day. You can be creative and say
I'm verging on superb. It just sets the tone and the mood immediately in your interaction or a meeting and a whole different plane than if you just say I'm good. And of course we don't like the fair answers. I'm okay. I had a tough weekend. Those are just terrible answers. Yeah,
no, it's great. You say I'm doing great. How are you doing today? Life good for you like what's going on? Like, be a human being, like, that's who I want around me. I want people that are engaged and energetic and passionate about being a person, you know. And by the way, one of the things when you come into my office security, like they're there, they're checking like, are you talking to the security guy and being friendly? Or are you like, Hey, I'm here to see Matt, and just
kind of give me your ID? Or you're like, Hey, how are you? How's this place? How long you've been here? What's your name? Nice to meet you. Like, are you a human being? Those are who we want. And that's why we tell young people all the time,
the call and I had a nice conversation, by the way, exactly. Along those lines before, before you You joined. Let's talk about something often overlooked by everyone. I think the intangible sometimes are more important than the tangibles because at the end of the day, people can sell mortgages, they can look at a balance sheet, they can prepare a financial statement, but talk about how important the little things are to our success.
Yeah, well, it kind of seemed that we were just talking about like intangibles or like all those things that are subjective. They're not like, you know, attitude, work ethic, or like, all like knowledge, like balance sheet, like anyone can read it and go through it, you can teach someone that and so I look for things that are better that difference makers, things that are different about people, that things that people really want to be great at, like, like, what are you about? Are you about
just you know, yourself? Or are you about the team? Right? Are you about knowledge and all my experience and here's my I was a vice president here I was, uh, I was, you know, this, this and this or you about, like, what are we about here and how do we be successful and so I think the intangibles are much more and I won't say sometimes more, much more important than the tangibles in 99% of jobs. There are always some jobs that are
exception. So you know, you know, I could have the best attitude and work ethic and heart but I'm not really the Phoenix Suns one on their basketball team. I'll still take Kevin Durant right or DEVIN BOOKER. Like so. There's so things are certain talent and skill sets no matter what that you can't overcome. But 99% of jobs I think it's hard, carrying it's intangibles more than the tangible things
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with Bill Davidson. And so I go to Detroit, who for those people that don't know was a member of the Forbes 400. He owned the Detroit Pistons basketball teams, he built the largest Glass Company for cars in the world, a company called Guardian glass. I went in I met with I remember walking into his office and it was like a football field, how long I had my hand
out waiting to meet him. And at the end of it, I said, Bill, did you ever think you would be a billionaire one day and he paused and looked at me and he said, I never doubted it for a minute. And that was the end of our meeting. And I thought okay, I had dreams, I wanted to be successful. When you were growing up, your mom and dad told you you can do anything you want. So let's talk about a few of these days, march 2 2002, senior day, you said you lived
your dreams. You played in front of 14,759 people at Spartan Stadium every year, January 22nd 2021, United Wholesale mortgage went public and then December 20 2022, you bought the Phoenix Suns? What's your advice to all those people out there who have dreams who said I can never do this or I can never do that or the probability of being successful in creating a huge company or being a billionaire or whatever it is they want to do? Looks like it's less than 0%.
I love it. So whereas I say you can do it, you can do whatever you want to do now I would tell people is you don't dream big enough. I didn't dream of those things. My goal was to make the NBA. I never thought about billions or millions. I've never, I mean, never crossed my mind. You know that that wasn't the goal. The
goal was to be the best. And when I got into mortgage, but I want to be the best mortgage owner like I want to be the best owner in the NBA and WNBA is that based on how much money we make was out by how many champions ruined, and why the fan experiences and impact in the community. Like that's how I measured. And so when I tell you people was like, like, you can do anything you want. And I used to have a saying and I still use it as why not me? We use content
Miko, why not us? Like why can't we be the number one mortgage company country? Why not UW M. And you know what happened? We are the number one mortgage company that got it. Years later I said it is us. It is us. People at Wells Fargo, they're not working as hard as me the people at rocket words. They don't care as much. They're not working like I do. Like and like we had a crate that and so what I tell people is dream as big as you could dream and then dream
even bigger. And then say when what's important now what do you got to start doing right now to get to that dream? A lot of people have dreams, but they don't put the work in. Like you're gonna have to sacrifice a lot of stuff to be what you said a billionaire I got I don't think of money, I think of like, be the best. If you want to be the best. Money always follows the best people. So like, that's how I think about it. And so dream bigger than a lot of people don't dream big enough.
Even I didn't dream big enough people didn't dream big enough in business. I Oh, I want to one day do this, like think crazy big and then work towards it. And usually good things happen. Let's
talk about being a leader, especially at a big company. So many CEOs I know, work in this tower, they lose touch with our customers, they're not responding to emails, they just don't really know what's going on. They have an executive team, they have a direct reports, whatever it is, they really lose touch with what made the company successful. Talk to us about no meeting Thursdays, and how you respond to emails even at 330 or four in the morning from every person who writes one.
Yeah, I respond to him. He is you know, you emailed me and I respond right away everyone who emails me I respond to, especially we, you know, it's so from a business perspective. I'm trying to connect with people, because I can learn from people all day, I'm always craving the better. Now my normally Thursday, just something I've done for 15 years now. And it's been great. What nobody Thursdays basically is like, I won't take a meeting on a Thursday. Like all day, everyday, Thursday, there's no
meetings. All I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come in early, get my work done, clean up my emails, and I go walk the floor. I try to talk to different people. Not my executives, not my direct words. The people actually do the job guy to me. Hey, what do you guys working on? What project? Is this? Okay, what where's that? Let me see it. How's it going? And then we talk 10 minutes, 15 minutes, two minutes sometimes, and I keep moving. And I check in with your Hey, what's one thing I go into?
What can we do? What's one thing you changed about the company? Have you were the CEO? Oh, what about this? What's one thing you love? Well, they don't ever change that. I asked these questions to people all the time. I walked the floor. I smile I say hello. I don't you're not allowed to take your phone. I don't walk with my phone out, I've never showing that anything's more important than them. I always have my phone in my pocket, I walk, I make eye contact, I smile, I say
hello. And I talk to people every day, every Thursday, excuse me, I do this every day. But on Thursday, that won't take a meeting. Because if I take meetings, I'll be in my office from 6am to 6pm, every 15 minute meetings, and it's just not as effective as me getting out and talking to the people. And so that's, that's really important
to being successful. And that's how you stay close, I talk to clients, I still run a sales meeting on Wednesdays, most of the time where I run it with 1000s of people watching in person that are there, and I go and I talk to the clients, I go speak with our clients, I go to their offices, like you got to be in the weeds of your business to be successful. And it starts with knowing your people and knowing your clients. We've
talked about work ethic a bunch. And I've always said that work ethic is the single greatest determinant to your success, not only your professional life, but in your personal life is as well. I think a lot of people, especially the young professionals I've talked to and even some mid career professionals, I've I've been a mentor to people in their 40s and 50s, who just wonder why they're not as successful as they should be. And we go through a exercise and I say, Well, do you have a good work
ethic? And they say, Yes, I said, Well, what does that mean? You get in at 4am. When I started my company, I get in at
30am When I started have kids, like you I'm a very good Dad, I'm home for dinner every night, I've maybe missed five things for my five kids and 22 years now of being a dad, I'm fortunate that I'm in a position that I can do it. But I go I eat I read, I go to whatever, sporting events, they have clubs, performances, whatever it is, and then I go back down in my office and I do work. But I think people really underestimate that really fine line that separates that 1% from
the other 20% or 50%. Can we talk just a little bit more about that? And what's your advice to people who really are not working as hard as they should? Or is there a point where you're working too hard?
Yeah, well, I don't know if there's a point to work on. It's I think your work ethic. And I throw an attitude is the biggest determinator of success. And the only other one I like to throw and talk a little bit about the you got to put yourself in position for success to opportunity. That's why some people go to like a
job. It's like, oh, I'm at this big corporate company like you're you're not going to go places that promote from within go places that will give you an opportunity sometimes go to entrepreneurial companies, or at least companies that will show a path for success, but work ethic and attitude are everything. And to your point about work ethic.
Like I think every person watching this right now, and hearing us talk right now could definitely get better with their work ethic, it could be as simple as like, Hey, do you need eight hours of sleep, can you get away with seven and a half, like I'm about six hours, I'm 930 to 330 9:30pm to 330. Now with the sun's and Mercury, the late games on, I'm going to bed a little later and sleep a little later. But like six hours
is all I need. Okay, and maybe that's not everybody, maybe someone who's seven, but people don't need nine. So they're just take that extra hour like you don't have to give up everything in your life. You don't have to be to this extreme, extreme extreme. But, you know, if you're someone that says like, I just like to sleep my eight hours, and I like to get, you know, like I like to work out, it takes me a couple hours to get ready in the morning. And I need to go to work for eight
hours. And that gets like, that's great. And it's a great life. If that's what makes you happy, then keep doing it. But if you want to be the elite or the elite of your business, you have to make sacrifices, like we talked about earlier, and somebody was sacrificing sleep. Sometimes it's sacrificing TV. Like I don't know what the cool TV shows are anymore. I don't watch TV. This is a basketball game. I'm not watching anymore.
Like and I haven't for years, I don't know, like people's like Game of Thrones or the I don't know, the cool shows or these days, like I just don't do it. Like I focus on, on my kids and my business. And that's what I focus on. And it's hard to be great at everything. And so I think that sacrifice we talked about earlier, along with that
work ethic. And like, you just got to figure out like in Bailey, it's not only in business, you could you could be you wanna be the best husband in the world, the best wife in the world, you got to put the work and they're gonna be the best
dad in the world. Like, I I'm going and coaching kids sports on Friday nights, I'm coaching basketball, fourth grade girls basketball, like, I'm giving up other opportunities to do that, because that's what I care about most my children, I'm sacrificing things for my kids and my business. And you can't you can't do everything you can't you only got 24 hours in a day.
One of the things that's made me successful over the years is something that I call extreme preparation, which means that if someone's preparing three or four or five hours for a meeting or a presentation are prepared 1020 30 In one case is 70. For a meeting that we once had with Marriott Corporation as part of my beaches company Sandy, can you give us some examples of extreme preparation and how they contributed to your success and how important they are in our lives and in our future success?
Yeah, well, I have been taken to the extent like I do that for every phone call I make we even our salespeople are can we require them to have what we call a game plan sports analogy, right? What's your game plan for the call? What are we trying to accomplish? What are the things we need to talk about? What did they want to talk about? How do we make it effective? And so preparation leads Success. And if you don't prepare, if you call me I just call you right back. Hey, I'm
not prepared for this call. I don't know what it's about. I haven't done my research. I haven't done my work. I'm not gonna be as good as if I did. Right. Black and white. Same thing, like we talked about people like, Have you done any role plays? Right? If you didn't roleplay before you call on his big client want to make this, like you got a call with this new broker of ours? Have you roleplayed it? Have you prepared
it? If you've done your research, you know, what companies he used to work at and you found your things that are aligned that he was he went to Alabama university, you went to Michigan State, but you went there when Nick Saban was the coach and he's got he loves Nick Saban? Have you done that work to prepare for that call for that chance that football comes up and you can hit on it? Or you just calling it because you want to do business with the guy that's in Alabama and do a
mortgage business, right? Like, everything is about preparation and being more doesn't mean you're gonna win, doesn't mean it's gonna work out. But I promise you, the more prepared you are, the more chance of success you have. And so I'm 100% aligned with that
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home and abroad. And to make sure you're never disappointed by a beach visit again, plan the perfect beach trip today by visiting sandy.com. That's www.sand.com the link is in our show notes. Stay Sandy my friends. Let's talk about the Phoenix Suns for a minute. What was the feeling when that deal closed and you look around and talk to your kids. And you walk into locker room for the first hiring said Holy shit. I can't believe I own an NBA basketball team after spending $4 billion doing it.
You know, it was such a such an unbelievable feeling. And the truth is, it's only gotten better and better every single day. Like it's been so much fun running this organization with great people learning like I'm a fan, I'm a basketball fan. So these guys have, I'm talking to some of these players. Oh my gosh, I watched them with my kids. Like I'm so excited. Like, so it's
been so much fun. The business side, the basketball side, the fan experience, the implant impacted me and community like I look at it like you know, I'm the owner, but like, it's the community's asset. It's their team, it's Phoenix's team, my job is to work for them, serve them make the fan experience amazing. Put the best winning product on the court as
possible. Really do great things in the community investing, like how do I do great, and I will get like I took another job like I worked for them and but it's been so much fun being involved. And I love basketball. So I know the game pretty well playing for Izzo and being around and coaching, right. So I know that
I enjoy it. And I feel like I can make an impact in a positive way and the fans experience the community and also on the winning while we're taking care of the team members, the culture at that organization.
Okay, so we talked about work life balance, so many successful people I know have just they're workaholics. They don't spend time with their kids. I know that you coach your kids basketball teams. By the way. I coach herb Simon's sons. I spoke to her last week. He says hello, by the way. Herb is one of my favorite guys. He feels the same about you, by the way. So what what's it like being an NBA owner and you're
coaching your girls? Basketball team, people must think this is the greatest thing on the planet.
Yeah, well, I think they do when we win, and the girls have fun. You know, what do we try to do every single weekend? So yeah, I coach my daughter's basketball coach, both my son's basketball team that coach their flag football coach their baseball, like I love being involved with my children. And I love also bringing positivity to young kids, whether they're 910 1112 year old girls, or 12 year old boys or eight year old boys or whatever it may be like I like
to bring positive energy. We don't we don't talk like I might be the basketball owner about like, we don't sit there extra knowing everything I'm talking about. Like, listen, when your teammate makes a good shot, high five are on the way back. That's what we do every single time. A when someone makes a bad play, like, Hey, it's okay. We'll get it the next time. We're teammates. I'm learning we're teach you much more than
basketball. We're teaching skills in life and personality and high five and when someone's sad, like we go up and hug them. And like when someone's doing great, like we're high five, and I'm and like when our team loses to us and we beat them. Like we're shaking hands and be respectful. And if we lose, we tell them great game. Like that's the stuff I love. Like I love being around my kids. I love seeing them learn and develop. I mean, I love it so much. It's the best thing. How
important is giving back to our success? And what's your advice to people who think you have to have money to give back? Well,
money giving back is only one part of it and people give back a lot without $1 Time, money. Or just spreading the word is giving back like helping people sharing things on social media about things like I'm big on giving back in any way you can doesn't mean money. We have a thing here called adoptive family, we adopt 150 families where everyone kind of raises money. And some people can't put any money into it. But they can go shopping for the presents for
the family. Some people can't even have the time and yet, but they can wrap the presents. And some people can put money in and do some of it. And some people can pick out the items. And some people can go deliver the items, like everyone has a role in making a great impact in those families lives. And so we do that all the time here. And so it's not about money. It's about time, it's about care. It's about trying to make an impact in a positive way.
Before we finish today, I want to go ahead and ask more open ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, fill in the blank to excellence are ready to play. Alright, let's do it. The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is work ethic and attitude always wins. My number one professional goal is
to get better every single day. My
number one personal goal is
get better every day be the best dad I can be. The
one thing in my life I'm most proud of is my three children
and how they're growing up and how I can impact their lives every single day.
The one thing I've dreamed of doing for a long time, but haven't done is
who would have been buying an NBA team, but I just did that. And so I got to recalibrate the goals. But it's me. I don't have another one right now. I'll think of it.
If you could have any player in the NBA join the Phoenix Suns today. Who would it be?
They're already on my team, DEVIN BOOKER, Kevin Durant, Brad Beal those. I said is so it was was your quick hot fire. But I said if I could start seeing with anybody at based on age and talent skill sets, DEVIN BOOKER and I got him. I'm very, very lucky.
If you could go back in time, the one piece of advice that you would give your 21 year old self is
to dream even bigger, to dream bigger. And don't don't listen to people that don't believe in you. Because you can believe as long as you believe in yourself, you can do it.
If you could be one person in the world, who would it be?
Oh, my kids, they got it pretty good. They gotta got a great dad and the great mother and my kids. I've got like to start over. I'd like to be younger again and do this again.
The one question you wish I'd asked you is
man, I know you did a great job. I feel like I covered it. Like I love talking about work ethic, attitude. Business personal. I think we covered almost all of it. I think you did a great job. I appreciate being on the podcast.
Man. I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. You're a fantastic role model tremendous success, and I know everyone's gonna love the show today. I appreciate you for being here.
Thanks for having me. Have a great day.