Len 00:02
Welcome. My name is Len Lane, and I am the founder and president of Brokers for Life Inc., and we are Dominion Lending Centres in Western Canada. The topic of our podcast will be about what we consider to be Real Life Mortgage Solutions. There are people that rise to the levels where they are known by just their first name. Basketball. Shaq. Who doesn’t know the Shaq? Beyonce. Garth. The list is very long. So today my guest is Hali. Hali Strandlund Noble, has been in the industry since she was 18 years old. Her family are monumental in the Mortgage Investment Corporation side of the industry, and I look forward to talking to her about her life and time in the industry as she slowly works her way out of it. This is episode 47. I never thought we would get this far. The average podcast only lasts about three times I guess. So we’re actually in the end of our fourth season coming up. So I have a very special guest today. There’s not many people in the world that I have met, and that I remember meeting them for the first time. And I met this young lady in the Palliser Hotel in the lounge many, almost 20 years ago, believe that?

Hali: [00:01:25] Yeah, yeah. Long time.

Len: [00:01:26] So my special guest today is Hayley Strandlund Noble. I’m going to use both names because we’re going to kind of talk about both sides of that. Right. So welcome.

Hali: [00:01:36] Thanks, Len. I’m really honored to be here. Thanks for asking me.

Len: [00:01:38] It’s exciting to have you here. So obviously long time in the industry. Kind of born into it, really. So I’ve had a few guests like that, but not many. So maybe let’s talk about the start. I think you were probably licensed in real estate like before you were 20. I got a feeling.

Hali: [00:01:53] Yeah, I actually had to wait. I did my course and wrote my exam and had to wait until I turned 19 in BC to actually be legally licensed. But my father started in 1968. I was born in ‘69, so I kind of grew up in the business, and my mom was licensed in the early 70s, so it was all about real estate. It’s all about the dirt in our family.

Len: [00:02:13] Yeah. Exactly, right. I’ve heard you say that before. So started on the real estate side. So at what point did you, obviously not till you were 19 or 20, become involved in what your dad was doing in the mortgage industry?

Hali: [00:02:26] Well, 1989, when I got licensed and in BC, you were licensed as a real estate salesperson and a sub-mortgage broker. You got licensed as both at that particular time. My dad was, obviously we had a real estate office called United Homes. I’d kind of worked on and off in there as a teenager and of course, finally get licensed and kind of acted as his assistant for a little while, just searching properties. And I must have, when I think back and look at the 19 year olds today, I think, how could they possibly have ever trusted me to do anything in their home? But things were definitely different. And it was exciting. And some of the things that we see now in some of the sales gurus out there teaching were very much the same things that my dad was doing. Buyer and seller sheets. Who are you calling? Who are you following up with? Right from day one, but really jumped into it. As some uncles that were building. I actually lived in show suites. That’s what you do when you’re younger. You don’t have to pay rent. I live in a show suite. Do open houses from 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 every day and quickly learn the business. But I just jumped right into it and a lot of construction and land development. That was early days.

Len: [00:03:28] Yeah. In my new home sales days, it was 3 to 8 every day.

Hali: [00:03:32] Oh yes. Whenever. Someone shows up, you put an open house sign up. But we, my dad was always very, a brilliant guy, a mathematician, one of those guys that was really intuitive and detailed. And from day one, when he was young, people were doing small private loans. Now, of course, in those days it could have been 5000. This was mortgages too, 5000, 10,000. And of course now you would never imagine that. But over the years, in 1994, he turned that private lending, the individual private lending, into something more sophisticated into mortgage investment corporations. There are some tax benefits to that, etc. and typical of my dad, I think he just probably read through the Income Tax Act and found a good hole and made it work for the investors. And that’s really how it started. Just a lot of private lending and turning it into at that time, four MICs.

Len: [00:04:18] Four MICs, well. And today well maybe not today but so and the four MICs go into investment companies obviously as well as you have a syndicated license as well.

Hali: [00:04:31] Yeah, we don’t really do syndicated loans. We have partners that are syndicators that we do a lot of co-lending with. But generally we’re the MIC side. And then our lenders are generally syndicators. It’s not something we kind of stick to our knitting, as we call it. Like, stick to what you’re good at. You’re either running a pool of mortgage fund or you’re a syndicator. So you start kind of co-mingling those things. There are different regulations there, different reporting. So we stick to what we knew really well and grew that company again. It started as four MICs, but they were going to do one was going to do seconds, one was going to do construction, one was going to do first. And that really just turned into a lot of extra money for audits, etc. every year. So it became one MIC as opposed to numerous MICs, all doing the same things, but focusing on generally our first mortgages. But not syndicates. We wanted to just do what we did really well, and I think we’ve talked about this many times and we just stick to what, you know, do it really well.

Len: [00:05:21] Yeah, that’s why I don’t have an insurance company anymore. I stick to what I know. Right? Exactly the way it works. So obviously lots of accolades over the years in the industry. Mortgage Hall of Fame.

Hali: [00:05:34] Crazy stuff. No, I think it’s crazy. You get you do the work that you’re supposed to do, you do it well and you get rewarded and recognized for it. I think it’s kind of, it’s kind of funny sometimes, but I’m honoured, obviously.

Len: [00:05:46] Yeah. So was there one of those that meant the most to you?

Hali: [00:05:51] I guess they all mean a lot. But the one that was probably the most surprising, and I guess, I don’t want to say meant the most because they all were really, really awesome was WXN. It was in the top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada, the Trailblazers and Trendsetters Award. And that was pretty special because it didn’t put me in an executive category. It didn’t put me in one industry. It was just as a woman executive leader and being a trendsetter. And I was trying to figure out, well, what am I, what am I trendsetting, what am I doing? And I think it really boiled down to just going hard and not having any glass ceilings or any boundaries and just going and trying to do whatever I could do and do it really well. But that was probably the most special one, and mainly because it really wasn’t in the industry. Being recognized by people outside of your normal group of peers, that’s pretty awesome.

Len: [00:06:40] Like I said, the list is long. Hall of Fame and BC Hall of Fame nationally, but that’s.

Hali: [00:06:45] Always felt way too young for that.

Len: [00:06:46] Yeah.

Hali: [00:06:47] No, I’m still, I’m only 55. You think you should get those things now? And, like, what’s next?

Len: [00:06:52] Yeah.

Hali: [00:06:52] Exciting part. What am I going to do now? And I’m always going to do it 1,000%. So it’s going to be something exciting I’m sure.

Len: [00:06:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you think about the people that we know that have been into the Hall of Fame, a lot of them were on their way out of the industry or out of the industry already, and life was not maybe health and stuff was was part of the reason they got it as well to be recognized. Right.

Hali: [00:07:14] But generally, remember back in the day when I started, there wasn’t a lot of young people. It was a… I don’t even want to call it middle age. You kind of worked at the bank or worked somewhere else and started to get into the industry in your 30s or 40s. So I may have been in the business the same amount, length of time as these folks. I just started a lot earlier. Yeah, I think that was what the difference was.

Len: [00:07:32] And maybe longer than some of them actually, because.

Hali: [00:07:35] Yeah. 36 years now. That seems like a really long time.

Len: [00:07:38] Yeah, it yeah… I don’t find that to be a long time at all anymore. So obviously a lot of influence, like you said, not only in the industry, but around it as well. So one of the organizations that you helped found was is called WIMI. So the Women in the Mortgage Industry. So how did that all come about?

Hali: [00:07:59] That’s it’s kind of interesting in two ways. So when I was the chair of at the time, it was Camp. Now it’s MPC Mortgage Professionals Canada. I was speaking at a conference in Melbourne, Australia, at the Mortgage Finance Association of Australia, the MFA, which is really the same as MPC in Canada. And down there, they’d asked me to speak at a women’s luncheon for the Women in the Mortgage Business Network, and they used to run this on LinkedIn. I thought, well, what’s this purely women’s group? And I’m not a bra burning feminist by any means. And I was like, what is this? What is this all about? And in Australia, it’s a very male-dominated financial industry that gets significantly more male-dominated than ours at the time. And they were just talking about the business and trying to climb the ladder in different things. And things that I really never considered. Coming from a family business, you just do your job and you do it really well and you hope to get paid. Usually the last one to get paid. So I got very curious about why they were doing it. Came back home. A couple of years later, a lady, Suzanne Aguilar. She was working as an assistant at Invis for a mortgage broker.

Hali: [00:09:04] She came up to me at an event and asked if I would be her mentor. This would be 11, 12 years ago. That’s not even a term that crossed my mind. I didn’t think about mentors or seeking mentors. I think that they were just around me anyway, but never formalized the term. So now you have coaches, you have mentors, you have all sorts of different things. But when I started out, or even not that long ago, it just wasn’t something you did. You looked up to people, you tried to emulate them. You looked at how they speak and the things they do, and you try and bring that into your world. So when she asked me if I would be her mentor, I thought I’d say no, because that’s kind of like having a child. I like, it sounded like an awful lot of responsibility that I wasn’t willing to take on at the time. So we got together and said, there’s probably a lot more people like Suzanne out there, ladies in the industry that needed mentorship, as they called it. And I was like, well, I’d just like to get in a group of people and talk and see what information we can share. So Facebook was really going crazy, and they had these new Facebook groups, and we created a closed Facebook group called Women of the Mortgage Business Network, thinking that we would… or sorry, Women in the Mortgage Industry.

Hali: [00:10:10] And it was a created a network on Facebook thinking that maybe 30, 40 ladies from across the country would start sharing information, you know, talking about what’s going on in Halifax, what’s going on in Toronto. Practicing public speaking, like doing presentations to each other online so they’re not feeling, maybe I’ve never done a PowerPoint presentation or a Zoom call. And this is back in the day when you really weren’t doing that stuff or speaking in front of a crowd. We just practiced it and talked about the issues that we may be having in brokerages or lenders, etc. Well, that very quickly grew from 30 to 40 to a couple hundred. I was like, holy crap, what have we started? To thousands and now over 6200. And we’ve had lots of live events, awards, gatherings, tons of sharing of information, helping in deals. One of the ones that really stood out was a gal in Halifax trying to reach an underwriter. And I’m not going to say the lender. It was a national lender. They had already closed in Halifax, but in BC it was four hours difference. She was trying to contact someone in BC to get her deal done, and they all helped each other and got it done. And it was all a matter of time change.

Hali: [00:11:11] I thought that was interesting how they were able to take advantage of the group and connect with each other and get their business done. It’s really grown. It’s really helped kind of create a community of women in the mortgage industry right across Canada. I think what’s important to note about women, though, is the Facebook group may be closed, but the events, etc. that we held or hold outside of that are open to anyone. Anyone in the industry because we all can learn from each other and some of the most important mentors in my life and in my business have been men. We have a cap. We have an award called The Mentors that matter, and it’s capital M, capital E, capital N, mentor that matters. So it’s not just women mentors, it’s industry mentors. So that’s what’s kind of evolved and changed in that group. But I tell you, I read it every day, scan through it and they’re sharing information and honing their craft 24/7. Man. They can really get going. But very proud of the group. And I think it’ll just continue on.

Len: [00:12:08] And it’s funny because when I was on the last board that was called Camp, we were doing SWOT analysis, of course, and some of the threats that are out there are other groups, and MIMI was one of them. Not that they are, but most of them are probably members of both, I’m sure. So it’s the size of it and the quality, I think, of the people in it as well was very prominent in what they were doing, for sure.

Hali: [00:12:32] So that’s, some of the really important stuff that happens is what happens offline with the people that meet there. Whether they become friends and they travel together, or whether it’s conversations and mentorship outside of the group. That’s where I think it’s very, very powerful.

Len: [00:12:46] Yeah. That’s excellent. So well done. Big job and probably didn’t start out feeling that way, but I’m sure.

Hali: [00:12:53] No it didn’t. Who knew? Yeah. You know, the other great part of it too is there’s ladies who have stepped up from all across the country that are now running their own, like mini events, lunch and learns, just getting together. They have one in the Okanagan. That’s great. A couple in different parts of Ontario that happen regularly where they bring in speakers. So it’s not a brokerage run event. It’s kind of like that non-denominational, just get together as an industry, talk about what’s going on, share information, and carry on. I think that’s pretty awesome.

Len: [00:13:20] Yeah. No. Yeah. And it’s, it doesn’t happen on the boy’s side.

Hali: [00:13:25] It could.

Len: [00:13:26] It could.

Hali: [00:13:26] Happens on the golf course, maybe.

Len: [00:13:28] Maybe. Yeah. Maybe more. More than anything else. Right? So an ever changing industry. I laugh at 20 years ago what it looked like compared to today, the number of lenders who have come and gone, and some are still going and still some are emerging. And part of that conversation that we had, and by accident that I was following what was going on within the credit unions in Western Canada, especially were in Alberta, two big ones together in Saskatchewan now, I hear there’s a group of four, including Conexus being being the core to it, who we dealt with, who we miss in the industry because they were great to deal with for anything Saskatchewan. We were talking about mergers and acquisitions, and lo and behold, you sent me a little teaser overnight one night and I’m going like, you’re right, that’s happening.

Hali: [00:14:20] That’s happening.

Len: [00:14:21] So your new title is well, this, your name, and the three different areas Stradlund Investment Limited, Fisgard Capital Corporation, and Neighbourhood Holdings. So obviously this didn’t happen overnight. Obviously the owners of Neighbourhood, the family also BC-based. So I’m sure you were familiar with each other.

Hali: [00:14:42] Oddly not that familiar. We are familiar, but we’re not as much as you would think. And I recently found out that they, their family only lives like five miles from where I live right now. So. Small world. Yeah.

Len: [00:14:54] Good. Funny. Yeah. So how did that conversation.

Hali: [00:14:58] Let’s just back up a little bit and just talk about this mergers and acquisitions for a bit, because this was part of and ended up being part of our decision making process as we were approached. Because the company wasn’t for sale. If you asked me a year ago if today I would be, I guess, kind of unemployed in a way, I would say not a chance. Not a chance. There’s no way. I mean, why would I do that? So if we kind of back up to mergers and acquisitions, if you look, let’s just talk specifically about the alternative world. Credit union is a little different. But some of this carries over to credit unions as well. If you look at the regulatory environment, the costs for just not just making sure that we’re on side, whether it’s AML, suitability, whatever it’s going to be. It’s so complicated and so expensive. You really have to be quite a large lender to make that work. Large alternative lender. So if you were $50 or $100 million, sorry, $50 or even $10 million, $20 million MIC, I mean, that’s peanuts. You really can’t afford to do it properly, even from a tech side. $50 million, $100 million, even then you’d be scraping by. And when you’re scraping by, does that cause you to take shortcuts? Does that cause you to maybe do loans that you wouldn’t necessarily do just to get your money out, to have a higher yield to cover those costs? I think some of that certainly has happened over the last few years, when we had a market that was, interest rates were low and values were appreciating like crazy.

Hali: [00:16:27] All those new MICs came out or new MIEs, mortgage investment entities, they all came out, they all went crazy. Market changed. Now regulatory environment has changed significantly. And it’s not just right across Canada. Every province has its different regulation. The number of regulators we deal with, I think we have ten now in the five provinces that we deal with. Ten sets of audits, ten sets of education, and sets of generally different requirements. Unless it’s federal, like AML. It’s very expensive and very complicated. So size matters. Size matters, growth matters, succession planning matters. How are you going to make sure that your investors are okay over the one, three, five year, whatever investment terms that you have for them? It all matters. It’s not just the transaction and then this mortgage and then the funding the next mortgage and the next mortgage. You have to really think it through to not only to be onside but to make it profitable. Super important, I would say, with credit unions as well.

Len: [00:17:29] Yeah, I would think that. I’ve done a few different MIC owners. Brian Mengies, even talking years ago, talking about audits right with him, and when Gay was still with a partner with him. And it’s like just for their one set of books, it was $100,000 even then, just to do just to do the audits. Right? So.

Hali: [00:17:48] It’s crazy. It’s super expensive. And of course you have them. Regulation says you should have them. You should have them anyway. It’s good for your investors. You want to be as transparent as absolutely possible, but there’s a cost associated to that, and those costs add up. So as I mentioned earlier, you generally, a private lender, an alternative and say private because I hate saying that because that’s an individual. We are a mortgage lender or a mortgage investment entity. So what’s going to focus on those? We have to do that no matter what province we’re in, no matter what regulator we’re dealing with. You really want to be as open and honest, of course, with your investors as you possibly can. And that takes up a lot of time and a lot of money and not even just paying the accountants. It’s having your staff on site. And now with technology and AML, now we have a tech team. Are we a mortgage company or are we a tech company? Now we’re kind of a bit of both. You know, just to keep up with everything and all of that comes with costs. And how most mortgage investment entities make money is either you’re paid a percentage based on the capital in the fund, say like one and a half to 2% of the total capital or the assets under management, or you’re paid and sometimes in combination, a fee or a lender fee on the deal. Right? That’s bits here, it’s bits there, etc. But the cost is enormous. So how do you make money? How do you make it worthwhile? Size.

Len: [00:19:07] Yeah. And that’s.

Hali: [00:19:08] Efficiency.

Len: [00:19:09] Yeah. Same on the broker side. We talked about that as well. Like pretty much sitting in that $250 to $300 million a year. And even that if it wasn’t just Margie and I doing what we do. Right? And if we have minimal employees on purpose because I, in business before this, that every time there was a problem, it was because the overhead was too high. Right? And I see offices still doing that today. I’m like, oh, we’ve got now 5000ft² of office. And we’re like, oh.

Hali: [00:19:38] That’s, you know, scares you when you walk into an office that’s big and fancy and think, okay, how long have you been in business for? I mean, as long as it’s reasonable, I think it’s okay. But can you imagine? We have our compliance officers, our CFOs, our… There’s a million different people that seem to be running the organization. And as an entrepreneur, we used to be able to do it all ourselves, Len. Right. Me. Dad. Rayford. Mom. We used to be able to do it ourselves. We started at 600ft² in Chinatown. Just everybody doing everything that they had to do to make this thing work? You just can’t do that anymore.

Len: [00:20:10] Yeah, and I often look at DLC head office. Still in the same place in the same building. Right? I’m sure same people.

Hali: [00:20:16] Love walking in there, though, because it makes you feel good. You think you’re not wasting money on that?

Len: [00:20:19] That’s right.

Hali: [00:20:21] That’s for sure. A couple of paint jobs. I think that’s pretty cool that they can still run so lean.

Len: [00:20:25] We had been in a few other offices over the years. Nice view of Coal Harbour. What is this cost is all I’m thinking, right?

Hali: [00:20:34] What does that cost? That is one of the… As we kind of go back to the question you asked. Like what? How did this happen? When we were doing, my brothers and I took our executive team. It’s not a transition cruise trip. We’ve never done anything like that before. We’re kind of getting them out of the office. It was really fun and sitting down doing two, five, ten years, like, what are we going to do? We knew that we needed to grow the business. We have to grow the business. You need to have more capital. You need to have more assets under management, really to make it roll. If you want to continue as we’re continuing. If you wanted to stay as is. Being able to retain employees is hard when you know you’re not growing, because they’re like, what’s going to happen in a couple of years from now? They’re not growing. Everybody else is growing. So we really had to keep going. But we’re in Victoria. Victoria, British Columbia is not a great place or an easy place to find employees that do what we do, and it’s very expensive to live there. So we had the struggles with, we have to grow. You either sell or you grow. So we were kind of, do we sell? Do we stay as is? Do we grow ourselves and acquire? Like, how do we do this? And we didn’t have a plan, but we had ideas for kind of all those roads.

Hali: [00:21:35] And that was about two and a half years ago. And it was not long after my father had passed. He had the benefit of a succession plan, which was us. We were second generation. We’d been in the business a very long time. We understood it. He kind of, he was in the business, but he hadn’t been running it for a number of years. It’s probably ten years. But he was the forward thinker and the kind of the stargazer, the guy that was really light years ahead of all of us. And we were the soldiers. We were just making stuff happen and running the business. He passes, we decide, what are we going to do? We’re 50, early 50s at the time. Are we in this for another ten years? 15 years? Okay, so I’m 65. Am I ever retiring? I didn’t really think about that word. But what about our employees? What about our investors? What about our broker partners? Kind of, people get on edge when you’re at this age, right? So who’s your succession plan? So we had a great executive team.

Hali: [00:22:27] We thought, well, maybe we’ll sell to them if they wanted to. Or we start buying, they can help us acquire other MICs because there’s many out there that are struggling. They’re never going to be $300 or $400 million. They’re kind of that first generation was a mortgage broker, maybe a realtor created a MIC. Now it’s just too much money and they’re really looking to get out. And there was a bunch of those floating around. There still is. What do you do? So we sat on it. And last year it was really strange because about six months after this trip, all of a sudden we started getting calls. And not just from Neighbourhood, but others. Brokerages looking to buy a MIC and have internal, more formalized lenders. Other lenders in Ontario, in British Columbia looking to buy, partner. Basically looking for anything. We’re all talking about the same thing—size. And none of them were fit. None of them were just really the fit for how we thought about our business, how we wanted to continue on. Some of it was age. Like if they’re all the same age as us, they’re going to be going against the same things as us for ten, 15 years from now. Are they retiring? What about our investors? We have five-year investments.

Hali: [00:23:36] These are also generational. So it just happened that when Alex and Tony called me, we had a really quick conversation. He had breakfast with my brother Rafer, really quick Rafer was like, yeah, they’re energetic. They’re into the business. They’ve been in business ten years. They understand. Alex’s father, Bob, was a private lender. So they kind of, very kind of similar to us in a way, but 15 years younger. Kind of where we were when I think back, we actually met a couple of days ago in Palm Springs and had this celebration dinner. We actually got this deal done, and I looked and I said, how old are you, Alex? And he told me he was in his late 30s. And I thought back when I was in my late 30s, remember Len, I was at ABC as a president, there was, becoming the chair of Camp, not even 40 years old, just killing it like so much energy. And so much excitement about the business and so much ideas, so many ideas. That’s the kind of people you want taking your business forward. And it just felt really good. And then we got into the deal and that took a long time. It was complicated.

Len: [00:24:38] I’m sure. Yeah.

Hali: [00:24:40] That’s what happened. It started out with, what are we going to do? We have to grow. How are we going to grow? Who are we going to grow with? How do we take care of our people and our investors?

Len: [00:24:48] Yeah, and it’s funny because it’s like I can hire, and kind of the same boat at the moment. I’ve talked to several smaller brokerages than us, and I’m going like, if you’re only $100,000 or sorry $100 million or so, right, you just don’t have enough to keep going these days. Really? So I’ve been trying to. But everybody loves their baby, right? They like, not unlike myself, who started it from scratch. Right? So.

Hali: [00:25:19] But that’s interesting though. Like, that was part of, I don’t want to call it part of the problem, but part of the they call it the speed bump. In Mexico call it the tope, but the speed bump of getting over ourselves. Yes, there are people that can do it better than us, or will do it better than us. It kind of… It’s mine. Well, it’s not. It’s a business. It’s a business. And when I, when we went to MPC a few weeks ago in Ottawa, the deal closed on Friday. I got there Friday night and I was kind of like, just a whirlwind of people, congratulations. All these different things. And I thought, I wasn’t in the congratulations part yet. I was like, what the hell just happened? What did we do?

Len: [00:25:56] But the ink is just drying.

Hali: [00:25:58] Yeah. After having some wonderful conversations with some, some really great people in the industry, that one of the biggest mistakes or a big mistake that people make in the business is it is a business. It’s not your child. You don’t have to keep it forever. If it’s the right time to sell or to move or to join forces, it’s the right time. And I gotta tell you, in the last month after the sale, when I see what they’re doing, the technology, and they do it in conjunction with us, we’re still large investors. We stayed in. We’re not ready to leave completely. We couldn’t do what they’re doing. It’s hard to say out loud. Their technology is way better, their processes are way better. And we thought we were pretty kick ass. We thought we were pretty good at what we were doing. Like we really did. We thought, this is pretty… this is great. And now I look at it and go, they’re just so much better. They’re younger, they’re more nimble. They’re… the way that they run their systems and the software, there’s all the little apps that I have on my phone now that make my life so much easier.

Len: [00:26:57] Yeah.

Hali: [00:26:58] It’s… they’re really, really good. So I’m kind of blown away and humbled and in some ways a little pissed off at myself that we could have thought that we were so good. And we were pretty good at what we did. I’m very proud of that.

Len: [00:27:10] Don’t last that long if you aren’t, right?

Hali: [00:27:11] But they’re better. And I think that our investors and our teams, I’m so thankful that we have this group taking them forward because it’s, they’re… and we just doubled in size. We talk about growth. You know, we go from, they were the same size, around the same size as us. So right now we’re going to be getting close to $800 million as a combined entity. Very coming up very quickly on $1 billion now. Now we can do some really interesting products and do some really interesting things, where you can’t do it at $350. Which is a lot of money, $350 million.

Len: [00:27:46] Yeah. Trying to think about it, think about it and going like, yeah, it sounds like a lot of money, but.

Hali: [00:27:51] It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of someone else’s money. And that’s. You also got to remember that when you get into business with someone or you sell or do whatever, it is someone else’s money. And as long as they’re thinking in the same ways that you think—transparency, honesty, all of the things that were so important to us are just as important to them.

Len: [00:28:07] Yeah, exactly. And they kind of had that tech background already, right? Because they were involved with Finmo and with Lendesk and Rocket. Right? So a few other things there. So that that, that probably put them that much farther in advance of. And they’re 30. Right? So people at 30.

Hali: [00:28:25] One thing they said to us is pretty interesting to make you feel a little old school, like they were saying that their sales team is very like online oriented emails, doing all the marketing online, where what they were missing was what we had. On the street, at events, in your face, doing what we’ve always done, like we go for lunch, that kind of stuff. They didn’t have that, so they’ve taken that kind of, I would call it old school, on the street, pounding the pavement stuff that Fisgard has always done and now taken also with their online marketing and all the great things that they do, now they have the best of both worlds.

Len: [00:28:59] It is going to be a lost art. I think at some point, I think pandemic probably advanced that, where they need the technology because everybody’s used to it. Everybody’s used to doing this. We’ll do a Zoom call. It’s easier for me with the team other than.

Hali: [00:29:11] We weren’t five years ago.

Len: [00:29:13] Right? Drive. Yeah I know. Yeah, yeah. Go hold the meeting. I’m going like. Oh, okay. Let’s hold the meetings. Drive across the city. I don’t have time to drive across the city.

Hali: [00:29:21] But they have both now. They’ve got the, kind of the foundation that we set. Known in the industry. Not that they weren’t, but we certainly were more known than they were. So now they’ve got it both. They’ve got it all.

Len: [00:29:33] Yeah. Interesting for your in-house team because I know a lot of them are family. And I’m sure there’s, there is a stat though, that maybe this is one obviously says that this is the right thing because the third generation of a family business usually falls apart. It falls apart, right? So maybe it’s good timing, good for them, good for the longevity of their careers as well, although I’m sure a few of them are pretty close to 25 years, if not more. Dawn…

Hali: [00:30:03] Dawn has been with us over 30 years. Sonny, close to 25. Been with us a long time. Change is interesting, especially when you have staff that have been with you a very long time and loyalty is huge. Sometimes a change like this is very freeing. Maybe they’re staying with you just because the loyalty. Maybe it’s not the job that they want. Maybe this can be something that, so far everybody stayed and they took on everyone, like they, nothing changed other than technology in our team’s world. They leased our building. Nobody even… basically the computers changed. Some of the tech changed, email addresses changed. That’s what changed. And that was also important to us. But at the same time, I thought, well, what if Sonny, who’s my cousin and has been running our tech department, really didn’t want to work with us forever and really wanted to move on and try something else?

Len: [00:30:51] It was Vancouver Island and there wasn’t anywhere else to work, right?

Hali: [00:30:55] Well, he’s very smart. He could go anywhere. But he doesn’t have to feel like I’m leaving my family business.

Len: [00:31:00] Yeah.

Hali: [00:31:01] Sometimes. But sometimes it can be very freeing.

Len: [00:31:03] And yeah.

Hali: [00:31:04] I want everybody to do what they want to do in their world.

Len: [00:31:06] Yeah. And it’s kind of funny because we now have three agents who have been with us for 15 years. So it’s you start to think like, thanks for hanging around, but.

Hali: [00:31:16] You know, you’re obviously doing something right, just like us.

Len: [00:31:18] You’re pretty good.

Hali: [00:31:20] They’re staying with us for more than just the loyalty, but it’s interesting to try and see it from all sides.

Len: [00:31:25] But I do know some of them and change not know, they don’t want to change anything. Just going from logic to velocity has been a chore for some of them, right?

Hali: [00:31:35] But there’s also people in our office, Jordan, for example, some of the younger folks, there’s only so much room for them to grow in our business.

Len: [00:31:43] True. Right?

Hali: [00:31:44] Right? It really is now, with this massive team, they have their head office in Vancouver. They do all sorts of different things other than just our mortgage business. The opportunity for our staff is exponentially more than it was. And isn’t that kind of cool, too? You know, maybe they didn’t want to be an underwriter forever, but it was a good job in Victoria. But now they have the opportunity to do all sorts of other things. I love that, I love that for them, the opportunity for them.

Len: [00:32:11] Yeah, exactly. That’s good. So the big question, what’s next for Hali Noble?

Hali: [00:32:18] Oh, lordy. This is, it’s kind of funny because this is the first week. It’s been a month since the deal closed. But been in conference, we were traveling, all sorts of things going on. I checked my phone Monday morning. What day is it today? It’s Thursday. Monday morning I’m like, okay, so what’s happening this week? I got Len on Thursday and I even screwed that time up. You go from a thousand miles an hour to being very busy to your phone being very quiet, and you kind of like, it’s a little hard on the ego sometimes, but I don’t know. Honestly Len, I’m not sure. I’m definitely not disappearing into the Mexican sunset, that’s for sure. I think I have way too much energy and knowledge of the industry. You can’t just do this for so long and not share it. I’ll continue working with our women group. Do have a certain amount of time that we’ll be staying as advisors with Neighbourhood for a very long time. That’s great. I’m not sure. I’m not… I don’t know where my, I don’t want to say where my value is. I mean, I wish I could just, like, mind meld with some of the information I have with my head with certain people. I think you just need to do this or know that. So maybe there’s going to be some sharing of that information somehow with brokerages that want it.

Len: [00:33:26] Maybe, maybe it’s time to write a book.

Hali: [00:33:29] Oh, God.

Len: [00:33:31] But you know how easy, you know how easy it is now. Just talk to ChatGPT, and it’ll take all the notes and it’ll turn it into a book for you.

Hali: [00:33:40] Maybe. Or maybe you could just have calls like this that are easier just to share the information. The conversation is what drags things out.

Len: [00:33:47] It is. Yeah.

Hali: [00:33:47] I mean, books are great. I’m an avid reader, but when you’re able to actually use an example and have a conversation about something, I think it sticks. And I’d rather, I’m better, I think I’m better that way. I like to talk to people. I like to share the information in the stories, and I’m hoping that maybe I’ll find a way to do that. I don’t know. Honestly, I’m not sure yet, but I’m not… I just can’t do nothing. It’ll be some kind something in the industry, hopefully in more of a charitable way. I don’t want to create some course that I have to get $500 for or whatever. I’d rather just go to a brokerage and talk about it.

Len: [00:34:28] Yeah.

Hali: [00:34:28] Learn people who learn by osmosis. And they learn by asking questions and telling stories.

Len: [00:34:33] Yeah. And I was thinking, as you were saying, how.

Hali: [00:34:35] That’s how it’s going to come out. It’s going to be something to do with that.

Len: [00:34:39] Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking about people charging for mentoring and all of that. It’s like that.

Hali: [00:34:44] That’s fine.

Len: [00:34:45] That has been monetized over, over the last 2 or 3 years especially. Right? Our good friend Dustin has been doing it for quite some time now, but it’s like.

Hali: [00:34:52] He’s very good at it. And that’s a business that. But I’d rather say like, okay, Dustin, I’ll just come and talk to your people for half an hour and have a cup of coffee. I don’t necessarily. I’ve been really fortunate. People have shared information with me over the last my entire life, my whole entire career for nothing.

Len: [00:35:10] Yeah.

Hali: [00:35:11] That’s okay too. Sometimes it’s just okay to share it. So I’m fortunate that I don’t have… It’s not about the money right now. That’s, thankfully. But, I don’t know. I think that’s where I could see myself just showing up and having conversations and talking to people like you. Have some of the best conversations I’ve had with you.

Len: [00:35:31] Yeah, we’ll solve all the problems every time, never mind every time.

Hali: [00:35:35] And we’re always right.

Len: [00:35:35] Until we have to talk to…

Hali: [00:35:38] Somebody who knows it’s going to be great. I see some very. No matter what it is, it’s going to be positive. Because I think I’ve had enough tough years. Everybody always sees what’s on the outside like, oh, everything’s well. Well, we busted our asses for a really, really long time.

Len: [00:35:53] Really long time. Right?

Hali: [00:35:54] Really long time.

Len: [00:35:56] Yeah. And it’s that overnight success everybody sees. That’s about it, right? They don’t see the rest of the iceberg that, not only starting with your father in ‘68 and raising little kids and trying to be an entrepreneur. I know how that feels.

Hali: [00:36:09] It’s pretty daunting.

Len: [00:36:10] Pretty daunting, right? You don’t even know if there’s a paycheck coming or not. And you just kind of keep going and hopefully things work out in the long run. And they did for the family in general. So that’s a very proud history to be associated with for sure.

Hali: [00:36:23] Thank you. Well you’re one of the best there and I always appreciate talking to you that’s for sure. Hopefully some of the information were good for your listeners to. 47 podcasts. That’s a win right there.

Len: [00:36:34] My stepson in Sweden goes like, oh, I finally listened to one of yours. Oh I’m good. It’s been listened to in 25 countries. I guess you’re one of the 25, so that’s great. An interview with, I see the broker of the year for Australia was a woman, so I may have to track her down and say hi in a male-dominated country and world. Yeah.

Hali: [00:36:55] I should. I’m going to Australia next year for my niece’s wedding. I’d love to have lunch with her.

Len: [00:36:59] Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. So you want to thank you for your time. Your tan looks great. Your hair looks great. I’m sure your golf score is improving rapidly.

Hali: [00:37:09] It is. It is. I’m keeping myself busy that way because you can’t sit around, right, so.

Len: [00:37:13] Exactly right. So I really thank you for your time today, and I thank you for sharing your time with me on my birthday. So… it’s the 20th. Yeah.

Hali: [00:37:22] My gosh. Birthday.

Len: [00:37:23] Thanks. Another one? Yes. Yeah.

Hali: [00:37:26] Happy birthday, my friend. And thanks again for everything. Say hi to Margie and all the best to all of your broker’s. They’re a great, great group.

Len: [00:37:32] Thanks for listening today. I hope you found the information that we provided to be useful in your mortgage journey. And remember, you can always find our associates at www.brokersforlife.ca/associates. Have a great day.