Where do you want to live? I always tell kids where do you want to live? You went live in Chicago. We went live in Michigan. You I live in Indiana, Illinois, California, pick where you want to live, and then find a company that provides opportunity for you to grow. I don't care if your job is 35 grand a year or 75 grand a year, like you don't need that much money to start. Like too many people make decisions based on money and they always will regret it the rest of their
life. You got to make many decisions on what you enjoy doing, what your goals and dreams and aspirations are. I'm trying to be great every single day. Money Follows success. Go win, go be successful money will follow you around everywhere you go.
Welcome to In Search of Excellence where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is
Matt Ishqiya. Matt is the Chairman and CEO of United Wholesale mortgage, the largest wholesale mortgage lender in the United States, which are $931.9 million in net income in 2022, which as of this morning has a market value of $8.37 billion. Matt owns 71% of the company shares that are worth $5.9 billion, which places Matt at 156 on the Forbes 400 in early 2023. Matt and his brother Justin bought a majority stake
in the NBA is Phoenix Suns. And WNBA is Phoenix Mercury and the deal that valued the team at an NBA record $4 billion that was a member of the Michigan State Spartans basketball team that went to three Final Fours. It won the NCAA championship in 2000 is the author of the book running the corporate office lessons and effective leadership from the bench to the boardroom, and is a very generous philanthropist who has given away more than $50 million. Matt, it's a true pleasure to
have you on my show. Welcome to In Search of Excellence.
Well, thanks for having me. Glad to be here with you.
You're born and raised in a Jewish family in the great town of Birmingham, Michigan, which is also where I grew up. Your mom was a schoolteacher, your dad, Jeff was a lawyer and entrepreneur, he tells us about the influence your parents had on you and the values they instilled in you, including your Jewish heritage. And as part of that, can you tell us about your dad's yellow notepad?
Yeah, so you know, my parents are great. They still live in the same house I grew up in, you know, it's about two miles from where I live right now. And I learned so much from them about, you know, my mom about structure and accountability with score. She's a teacher for 25 years in Pontiac. And so all I knew is she was a fifth grade teacher and I had to do my homework and follow up with some of them. My father was all about doing right by people and an amazing work
ethics. And so he was, you know, he's an attorney. So an attorney still goes to work every day, 75 years old, and learned from him about, hey, always take care of other people do right by other people, and good things will come back your way. And if not, you still did a good, you took care of people, you did the right thing. And so, but also the work ethic of my dad used to go to work every morning before I got up. And he came back, you know, to have dinner with our family coach me my brother in
sports. And then he go back to you mentioned the yellow notepad. He's a lawyer. So you start, you know, back then then you have computers, so you'd just be working again, when me my brother went to bed. And so that work ethic that drive was all I ever knew was you work hard to have success. And that's really was the foundation of what has helped me be successful in business and in life, along with my older brother, Justin, too.
We'll talk about the mortgage business in a little bit. And the fact that was only a 12 people when he took it over. But he had a number of different business, what other businesses did he own? And what were you learning about him always dabbling and starting this business in that business?
Yeah, my dad is a serial entrepreneur. He loves business. He loves people. He loves trying things he loves. He started he had an alarm company, he tried to eventually try to title company at a restaurant, all while still being a lawyer all day, every day. And so just, you know, I learned is like, Listen, you can try things. And sometimes they work great. And sometimes they don't work. And you can adjust. My dad bought a couple buildings and tried to rent them out. Like, he just
tried to do everything. He was constantly hustling. And so I saw that as a kid. And all I knew is Mike. My dad works really hard. He's always trying to find ways to make money and provide for his family. And he did a great job. And my mom was a teacher. So she was steady with great health insurance. You know, my dad was out there trying to, you know, health insurance, and she was a teacher make an impact on kids. And that's just all I knew. And so
you learned a lot. And that's when you you learn about your surroundings like my kids see what I do. And they learn from me and you kind of learn from your parents in a lot of respects. And my parents were great, great people to learn from.
We're going to talk basketball in a minute, but tell us what you're like as a kid kind of from time you were five years old to 15 years old before you picked up a ball and started playing seriously.
You know, as a kid, I was always competitive. I always wanted to play I wanted to play against anybody. anything whether it's checkers, whether it's basketball, there's football, like I just like to play and compete, and I didn't like to lose. So I'd always work hard on it to try to be the best. That's why basketball became my thing was because I didn't need someone to play with me. I didn't have my brother to play with me or my dad or my mom. I could just go shoot baskets or dribble by myself.
And that's what I used to do all the time. And so I was a kid that loves sports. I did okay in school, pretty good at school. But really, that's because my mom required that of us. But I just loved, love competing and love playing sports. And that's what I did all the time. After school, you just play in the neighborhood play sports against the neighbors, competing anything I could do. So
you love basketball, that was your thing. And at the local and state level, you were an amazing player you played for Detroit's youth McCabe team from 13 to 16 years old. You played on the Michigan Mustangs Amateur Athletic Union team, the AAU team, which finished second in
the nation. As a senior at C home high school, which is a mile from where I grew up, and where my brother went, you're scoring 23 to 24 points a game were named Jewish Athlete of the Year by the Detroit News, and were one of the top players in the state. When your friends were going on Friday nights, you focused on your game because you had a dream of playing in the
NBA. I do a lot of mentoring and coaching, particularly with college students, young professionals, many of them are not only going out on Friday nights, but are also going on a weekday nights as well. How important is it to our success to make sacrifice and give up short term happiness for long term happiness, regardless of where we are in our career?
Yeah, that's a great question. And that's actually the key to success. In my opinion, there's a couple of things you got to hit on there. One is, you have to sacrifice you can't be everything to
everyone. So am I even my voice because I talked about like, we have singular focus be the best mortgage originator wholesale mortgage, like we're the number one mortgage company in America, we focus on one thing I don't try to do at eight different businesses, I try to dominate one thing, it's hard to be great
at everything. So it's hard to be a great basketball player, you want to be a great basketball player one day, but you also like to go out every Thursday, every Friday, every Saturday, you like to go to you know, on vacations you like to, you know, be the best TV show connoisseur, you know, every TV show that's ever been on, you can't be everything, you got to focus, you got to focus on something like so I believe. Like, for me, it's my three children. I focus on the three
children. Every single day, my kids, I coach them I'm involved with, I'm not with them, I'm running my mortgage business, or now the Phoenix Suns in mercury. That's it, I don't have that much fun. I'm not like, like, doesn't mean I can't go and have a drink doesn't mean I can't go out to dinner and like and have enjoy life. But you if you want to be great, you have to sacrifice what everyone else
gets to do. For years in my career, like for 15 straight years, 17 straight years, I would get up and be in my office suit and tie like I am right now at 4am 4am here in the office every day, stay till 7pm I went home and you know, finish up my day. And you know, back then didn't have kids even though I did have kids, I have dinner with my kids and put in the bed. That was it. Well, you know, no one cared on February 19 2014, that I was doing all these things before anyone knew who I
was. But I had been doing it for 10 years already sacrificing, staying up late, sacrificing going out to parties, like sacrificing to get to where I'm at today. And it takes years and years of sacrifice to be great. And so sacrificing a Friday or Saturday night if you want to be great. Now you've got to prioritize what matters more, some people. And by the way, it's perfectly fine. love their Fridays and Saturday nights and love going out and drinking every week. Like that's cool,
like, do whatever you do. But you can't have both aspirations. You can't do both.
When I was at Michigan, we could joke about Michigan, Michigan State we'll talk about Michigan State in a minute. The grades were very important to me. I thought all right, I want to go to graduate school. I ended up going to Northwestern law school. But grades were critical and it will allow me the opportunity to get great jobs. I was in the law library not every night till 10 o'clock when we had nothing going on. I think cram for a test. I did sacrifice I would go out not as much as my friends
did. But I would sit there and think Alright, is this is this really worth it telling myself I think at the end of the day, that it was worth it at the end of the day. In fact, it was worth it allow me go to a really good law school and allowed me to go to to get a good job right when I graduated, it was interesting. I was visiting one of my daughters at Wisconsin week before last I just came back from Cornell, my daughter, they're both they're twins, they're seniors. And they go out
a lot. And it's very different. And I was telling them I had a very different cause experience than you did. But they're great students. They get along they're very well adjusted, but at some point I thought alright, maybe I went too far to the extreme. Not having as much of an experience in college as maybe some of my friends did. And certainly what they're doing they have a they have a good life. They're having fun.
Yeah, well listen, let's make sure it's good. I know what your podcast was about. But life's goal was not money and success and power like it's happiness, and happiness can be achieved by many different ways. Some can be by success in business. Some can be by going out three nights a week with their wife, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend We're just buddies. And that's cool too. Like, you got to find ways before you can even try to be
great in anything. You got to figure out what your goal is, and what makes you happy. And then you work towards it. But if you say, makes me happy is to be able to do X, Y, and Z with a business, then you can't do all these other things. And I'm not saying you can't ever it's not like I don't go out and have fun, but you got to balance it. You've got to prioritize my kids are my priority, then my business and then a distance. Third is all those other things you got to balance those things.
This episode of In Search of Excellence is brought to you by sandy.com. s a n d e.com. We're a Yelp for beaches and have created the world's most comprehensive beach resource by cataloging more than 100 categories of information for every beach in the world, more than 100,000 beaches, and 212 countries. sandy.com provides beach goers around the world with detailed comprehensive and easy to use information to help them plan their perfect beach getaway at
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. We have a summer intern program we have 32 to 36 kids every summer I talked to my kids friends i Five kids have free in college. The most worrisome aspect of their life is no one really know what they want to do they have anxiety in their
future. And it's really takes a central center focal point in their college career and even a young professional life. What's your advice? To most of the college students out there who really don't know what they want to do? How do they deal with their anxiety?
Well, so I hear this a lot. When I speak at college and people I got to figure out what I'm going to do. Like you don't have to figure out what do you do? You're 2122 25 years old, 30 years old, still young, you have plenty of time to figure these things out what I figured I was like, What do you like doing? And it's not necessarily like people I like teaching. They're like, like, I find like the actual things I like like I like winning, I like
competing. I like like there's certain and so then it's okay, so my business happens to be a business where they show the numbers, the biggest mortgage lender and we weren't in the top 10,000 In our number one, like because I found a business and the thing that I like, and I can see the results. And so you got to find out you don't have to find out like I want to. And also people don't know kids don't know, like, back to the thing. someone's like, I love
teaching. That's what I want to do, Matt, I'm sure but I'm a great. Okay, so what are you going to do? Well, but the problem is, I don't want to teach at a school. I'm like, Listen, I have a company of 7000 people, we have 65 trainers who teach adults, like you love children? Or do you love teaching people things and skills, because you can. People don't realize there's so many jobs and opportunities out
there. They only know what their parents may tell them or what they grew up around, rather than exposing themselves. So the big advice to me is expose yourself to as many different internships or people and networking as possible, and then find out what you really like. Because most people don't really like teaching, they might love kids. And that might be a different path than if they like teaching them maybe it's training. And maybe it's coaching, maybe it's
learning new things. And maybe it's like, gosh, I love learning new things all the time I want to be you know, you find something that is your path. And the last part I'll say is like 90% of people I talk to you, they're young. They're like they're pressured to like know what they're going to go do with
my major and all this stuff. But what I tell them is no, they always end up happy is that find a company that you are aligned with in his in like a fun place to work with other young people, you have 35 summer interns at your company, that's a fun place to work like you're around other people that are like you go there, don't go to like the big corporate job that doesn't have other people that are your age, that are trying to grow like you
got to find a place. The more important in finding what you want to do is finding what you would like to do is it like being competitive are and where you want to live and where you want to be at. As the company.
You mentioned fun picking a thing or a company where where does passion. Calculate into this? You get the advice you should you won't be successful unless you're passionate about what you do. Is that true? And what if you can't find passion and don't know what it is?
We'll see people that's what I'm trying. I'm trying to like explain his hard times explain it. Like passion is like you can say man have a passion for basketball. Matt, you have a passion for mortgages, but I promise you I didn't wake up with a passion for mortgages, right? That's not like, the fun thing to do. And so what you find is I have a passion for competing and
winning. And so people like I if my mortgage company if I closed my mortgage company tomorrow, and I went and figured out like I would start a business where I could track my numbers, see where I am versus the competition, and I try to win I try to find innovative ways to be the best in the wallet what I do. That's my passion winning and competing. It's not mortgages. It's not necessarily been basketball. I love basketball, but it's not like I could go do I could we get it on
a football team. Like I like to just compete and And when. And so I guess I take a step back from like, what that passion is my passion is art. Okay? Is it art? Or is it creating things, if it's creating things, let's talk about like, and then you start to figure out things that you really enjoy. And that's just what's worked for me.
Going back to high school you graduate Seaholm and could have played d3 division three basketball, and instead you went to Michigan, stay where you are walk onto the basketball team, which at the time, was one of the best basketball programs in the country under their amazing coach Tom Izzo, your first three years, you went to three Final Fours and won three big 10 championships and you won the national championship in 2000. Against then number five, Florida by a score of 89 to 76.
In your four years on the team, you won 114 games, which I think is the winning is for your career, big 10 history. Academically, you graduated with a 3.6 GPA with a degree in finance. And we're a three time Academic All big 10 honoree. On the court, you said that you were the 14th best player on your 14 person team. And while you may not have looked it up on the court, and very rarely played, you are considered the most popular guy on the team. You are the guy who lifted
everybody's spirits. And we're the team comedian, you imitated your coaches, you would lie in your room, a Prentice mishpat, who hated that, and your room was the central meeting place for all the guys when you are on the road? How important is it to having a great personality to our success? And how important is it to have a great sense of humor to be a leader.
So I think those are great questions, I think it's important to have a sense of humor and a personality, but it's also important to be who you are. And you know, my personality is I like to engage with people, I haven't earned the respect to my teammates, I still have to earn respect to my 7000 teammates here at UW M. And now my teammates out in Phoenix with the mercury in the suns. And so it's earned it was
respect by our work. And everybody by being that guy isn't like the guy that I say, I'm gonna be on time I show up on time, or I show up early, you got to do all those things, you got to be some of the cares about other people, like you actually got to take time to get to know his husband, or his wife or her husband or vice versa, like whatever it may be, like, you get to get to know people and know their kids in the world I live in today, back then, I don't know what matters to these
guys, and like spend time and relate to people. Just just be myself. And so I think being humorous and personality, that all that matters. But really what matters is Be who you are. And people like being around people that are friendly and caring and check in with them.
And so I think so often people are like, Hey, so, you know, I got 700 leaders here, I can't be that lead teams of six 810 12 people, whatever it may be, like, how do I show someone that I care, I'm like, showing you care, you actually gotta care you you can't show someone you care you actually. So I care about my teammates. And then what happens? You know, they do they care about me back. And we
built this relationship. And that was part of the culture at Michigan State Basketball fostered by Tom Izzo and Mateen cleaves, and that we now carry on to UW M, the mortgage company. And now we're doing in Phoenix with the sons in the mercury.
One of the reporters are on a piece on you for the Detroit News in 2000. And Ted said that every championship team needs a guy like you to win and relieve the pressure and help bring the camaraderie and the DNA together. To the sons have that guy today.
Yeah, I think so. So I you know, I think the sons, I think every team needs camaraderie, Leadership, Culture, family atmosphere, caring about one another, and also realizing that the team is bigger than the person. And that's hard. And pros, even in college is hard, because in college, you're trying to make it to the pros and pros they're out of are trying to get that contract that opportunity. Like when you realize that we can be greater than our sum of our
parts. That's when you're really special, because there's a lot of really talented basketball teams, the NBA, and the WNBA. And it's not always the most talented team wins. It's a team with those talents. And the best chemistry combined wins and chemistry or fit, however you want to vote that matters. And sometimes, having all superstar players doesn't win if everyone's out there for
themselves. And sometimes having everyone that's all about the team, but you can't you got a bunch of managers that aren't that good of players, you're not going to win either. So you have to have that balance of talent, and fit or chemistry, some people call it and I think that's really important. And so that the sons have that. Now, does that mean we win a championship? No, it means you still got to play it out, because other teams might have that too. But you got to
compete. And, you know, I think we're in position to compete at the highest level. But it does not guarantee anything, just like at Michigan State, we had a lot of those things that Michigan State but it didn't guarantee we won a national championship. But we got to the final for three straight years. And we had a great, great run of success. In my fourth year, we had a lot of fit and chemistry. Just we lost a lot of players in NBA, we didn't have the talent.
And that's why we didn't make it to the final four that year.
So who won the songs would be considered the glue the core of the team? Is that the captain? Is it a role player? Or is it someone that isn't playing very much?
You know, I don't you know, we got a lot of new guys. And so I've only been out there for a week of training camp and I haven't got a chance to spend time with them and Frank Vogel might be able to answer that better or DEVIN BOOKER, who's the leader along with Kevin Durant and so everyone's kind of figuring out
there They're their role. And you know, we got we got great veterans like Eric Gordon, who've been around the league a long time, we got great young players that have come in and actually show some leadership skills and have done some great things. We've got everything in between. And so, you know, I don't have that player to tell you about right now is I spend more and more time and see the season evolve, that will happen if we want to have a chance to be the best. And I think that
will happen. And it starts with Frank Vogel, the leader of the program on the court as the coach, but then DEVIN BOOKER, who's 26 years old about to turn 27 who's one of the best players in the NBA and and hopefully gonna be here for the long term along with Kevin Durant. And all right, we got all these great guys, Brad Beal. And so we'll see how it all comes together right now. But that's part of that gelling timing training camp preseason. And then as the season starts,
are you looking for your next great gift to surprise a friend colleague or loved one plus speeches makes the perfect gift. This best selling bright and beautiful coffee table book by Randall Kaplan features stunning drone photography from exotic beach locations around the world is the perfect housewarming gift a great addition to any home or
office. And a fun and creative alternative to bringing a bottle of wine to somebody's house for dinner bliss speeches is available for purchase on Amazon, where it has glowing reviews and a five star rating get your next amazing gift and order to copy uplift speeches by clicking the link in our show notes. After four years of Michigan State, you thought that
maybe you want to be a coach. So you stay to fifth year and we're an assistant coach, student assistant coach, to coaches where you're attending meetings and film sessions and got to study the coach on the bench during the games. After that you had an opportunity to join the coaching staff of Mike garland at Cleveland State University, which would have made you one of the youngest division one basketball assistant coaches
that year. At that point, you're 23 years old and sort of at a crossroads in your career deciding if you wanted to take that job, or join your dad's small 12 person mortgage business. So like a lot of people, you went to somebody whose opinion you respect for advice. What did coaches tell you that impacted your decision? And what lessons did you learn playing basketball sitting on the end of that batch that contributed to your huge success?
Yeah, so a lot of lot of things in there. The first thing is, you know, Tom is a great guy, he cares about his players. And when he cares about your players, they care about your back, and I respect him still to this day. Talk to him quite frequently. And of course, I have my father as well, in my mother, but my father from the business side talking about what to do. So when I met with Coach Izzo about it, you know, to go and be an assistant coach in Division One in college, we've
been like, unbelievable. And, you know, going through the things with him and figuring out and then seeing like, what my dad, you know, has in his life and like, gosh, what do I want? What matters most to me? And at that point, you know, coaches have said something interesting, but what if you could take some of the things you learned from basketball and, and apply it to business and be something bigger
than a head coach. And I thought to myself, what's bigger than being a head coach, that's the best job in the world like that. That'd be the dream. And so, but then I talked to my father, and I saw some things that he was gonna say, gosh, maybe I could go try this for a year and go learn, I got to know what a mortgage was a mortgage company, what does a mortgage company do?
It's boring. But I took the competitiveness, the drive to be great, the work ethic, the positive attitude, and I've applied it to the mortgage business. And next thing I know, I fell in love with that. And my passion isn't mortgageable My passion is getting better every day, inspiring people leading people coaching, getting and winning. And that's what I was able to apply to. So I actually wrote a book about the things I learned from Michigan State basketball, apply to the
business. And, you know, there's so much I could talk for hours and hours about that stuff.
How much money were you going to make as an assistant coach? And how much money did you make your first year at the mortgage company? And as part of that question, what's your advice to everybody out there, especially young professionals, kids coming out of college, on the importance of money, where it's often the number one factor in deciding where they go to work?
It's such a silly factor people, I get it, like I was 23. Also, I made $18,000 a year on a college college degree playing basketball, right? I think the college basketball job would have been maybe like 35 40,000 45,000, like it would be more money. But you have no responsibilities when you're 20 to 23 years old. If you have no
kids, you're not married. Like you don't have to take like if you are literally like, you got to go out and you have seven eight years to build to build your life in a build yourself. Like money should be third, fourth or fifth opportunities should be first. Right? Where do you want to live? I always tell kids, where do you want to live? You want to live in Chicago. We
went live in Michigan. You wanna live in Indiana, Illinois, California, pick where you want to live, and then find a company that provides opportunity for you to grow. I don't care if your job is 35 grand a year or 75 grand a year. Like you don't need that much money to start like like I got I got debt mad I got debt from student loans. Like you'll figure it out. Like too many people make decisions based on money and they always will regret it the rest of their
life. You got to make decisions on what you enjoy doing, what your goals and dreams and aspirations are. And I know it sounds like I know if you okay, I can eat ramen noodles to, like I go to McDonald's still to this day and I have enough money not to go to McDonald's. Like, like, stop worrying about money so much people focus on money so much more even in my business. I run this company all day, every day. We don't talk about money. My CFO, great guy, I look at the
financials, right? 10 minutes a month. I know my public company people don't want I don't give a shit. Like, we're out here trying to win. I'm trying to be great every single day. Money Follows success. Go win, go be successful. Money will follow you around everywhere you go. Don't go chase money. Money is just the wrong thing. I understand you need money to pay bills. I do too. And I did back then when I was making 18 and 30. And then eventually 60,000 I got married in 2007. I'm
divorced. Now. I got married 2007 I was making $60,000 a year as a 27 year old man getting married. And that was fantastic. That was enough money to pay for everything. Like I didn't I didn't have like I didn't want for money. I want him for success and money follows.
Thanks for listening to part one of my amazing conversation with Matt Istria, the owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball team. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my amazing conversation with Matt