So, I actually prefer where I'm at in the NBA than where I'm in the mortgage business because that's where I've lived my whole life. I've always been an underdog. I've always been below. I've always had less talent but harder work ethic and I've always had to climb a mountain. Nothing comes easy. If it came easy, everyone would do it.
Hi everyone. Welcome to Leadership Next, the podcast about the people and trends that are shaping the future of business. I'm Diane Brady.
And I'm Kristen Stler. Today we are speaking with Matt Ishbia, who is the CEO and chairman of United Wholesale Mortgage and known to many of our listeners, I'm sure, as the majority owner of the Phoenix Suns as well as the Phoenix Mercury, which is the WNBA team.
Dual role. I think that's fascinating. How does he do both? How does he have time?
Well, that's an open question because I'll tell you the Phoenix Suns must be taking a lot of his time right now.
Yeah. Nothing makes fans more, you know, irate than when their team is not doing incredibly well.
Yes. With the amount of money and really aggressive, interesting moves that Matt has made and of course the housing market.
Kristen, my heart goes out to you, non-homeowner.
Diane, I have to tell you, I don't think I'm ever going to buy a home. I know that's a millennial stereotype, but I'm here to tell you—
You will. Be optimistic. But tell me, I want to hear about when you first bought a home and if you had a whole mortgage process and how that went because I know nothing.
Well, I came from Asia. So, if you come from Asia and you're Canadian, first of all, your credit rating is about as good as a 16-year-old in high school here because they didn't take much account of my credit rating from overseas. So, that made it difficult. I bought in Park Slope when I was on my third baby.
And look, it did take a while. While I thought I was paying a lot when I sold in 2021, I thought I'd made a lot. And it turns out the people upstairs made even more. But I have seen the housing market become almost cryogenically frozen. Nobody wants to leave.
No. Because interest rates are going up. Boomers are sticking where they are.
And Gen Xers like myself.
There you go. Well, I want to tell our listeners because you and I were at this amazing dinner in Toronto two weeks ago, week and a half ago, and it was all CIOs, all Gen X boomer generation, and they were just going in on millennials and what a lazy entitled generation they are. Real, not me, of course.
You know, I love millennials. You saved me over some amazing, you know, Wagyu beef. You told everyone to give me a chance to speak and I remember I said, you know, everyone's coming after me but I can't own a home. So there's—what do you all have to say to that? There's that.
Well, I think it's interesting. I'd love to hear Matt say what's going to dislodge this kind of stasis. We need more supply. It cannot be good for his business because what does he do? He basically deals directly with brokers and agents. They say they are the largest mortgage lender in the country. So that cannot be good times for them.
It can. And they say they are, but I do want to add that they have a giant rivalry with Rocket Mortgage.
They do, which he's called them out publicly. He's made Super Bowl ads in the past calling them out. I think it's a fascinating rivalry because he's so vocal about it whereas most people would just ignore the competition.
No, I love—he's a really interesting leader across many different realms. Lots to talk about with Matt Ishbia. We'll be right back after the break.
The best business leaders today know the value and importance of empowering those around them personally and professionally. By encouraging and enabling others to grow, take risks and fuel innovation, business leaders are not only driving greater engagement and performance, but also futureproofing their organization for years to come. I'm joined by Jason Gzadis, the CEO of Deote US, to talk more about this. Welcome, Jason.
Well, thank you, Diane. Great to be here.
Innovation is about empowering the people around you and that's something that a lot of CEOs struggle with. How do they embed it into their leadership style?
Well, I think there's all types of CEO leadership styles clearly and proven that there's maybe not one recipe for success, but it does require, I do believe, a commitment to inclusive leadership where all are expected and invited to contribute around innovation. I think there's also a collaboration and a collaborative culture that's a requirement. That's also not something that maybe comes as naturally and has to be cultivated and be intentional about. And then also I think giving leaders some autonomy to actually look at opportunities for innovation, look at opportunities for creative new ideas to bring forth. That requires a degree of trust and a degree of openness by CEOs in particular to allow for that within an organization.
So Jason, on a personal note, I'm talking to a CEO here. What are some of the most effective strategies you think for fostering open dialogue, collaboration? A lot of what you're talking about is the ingredients to innovation.
Well, for me, it starts with being genuine and authentic as a leader, being clear that the single leader doesn't have all the answers to every question. And certainly in my case, it's inviting a very broad organization to participate in addressing the issues and challenges that we face. So, I think that genuineness and that transparency and authentic leadership style is the key ingredient from my experience.
Good advice. Thanks for joining us, Jason.
Matt, thank you for joining us. I feel like you're our first guest to have three essentially full-time hats. You've got United Wholesale Mortgage—Google your name, the Phoenix Suns comes up. Of course, I want to say Phoenix Mercury since you have WNBA as well. Give me a sense of your identity right now. How do you think of yourself as a leader? How do you divide your time?
Yeah. Well, time management is a big thing. You know, United Wholesale Mortgage being the largest lender in the country is a big focus of my time. That's probably the major time that I spend my time. But then the Phoenix Suns and Mercury are full-time gigs as well. And then I have three wonderful children I spend a lot of my time with, too. So, balancing time as a leader of any organization, CEO, time management is the most important thing. Having great people around you so that you can focus on things that make an impact. So every minute of my day I'm trying to make sure I'm making an impact on improving UWM, United Wholesale Mortgage, in the mortgage world or technology, something to make our service better to help more consumers, or Phoenix Suns or Mercury, talking to whether it's the coach or the GM or the CEO over there trying to make sure things are going the right way, or if I get out of here on time I get to spend time with my kids, coach their sports, be involved with the details with them and, you know, do homework with them, all those things. So balancing time is important for everybody. And so as a CEO that's even more important, but I don't know if it's more important. I think it's just maybe a little more difficult when you're trying to balance a lot of different things.
Wait, before I pass it to Kristen, you coach your kids' teams. I want you to walk me through your day a bit because what time do you get up? Give us a little bit of a tick-tock here.
Yeah. So well, for right now it's slightly different than it used to be. For my first 15 to 17 years working here at UWM, I'd be in the office, suit and tie, at 4:00 a.m. So 4:00 a.m. in the morning here in the office grinding till about 6:30 or 7. That's really my routine. Then I'd spend two, three hours with my kids, put them to bed, go to bed, sleep six hours, and come back and do it again. With the Phoenix Suns and Mercury being a West Coast team and I'm here in Michigan, you know, now I don't get to bed till 11:30, 12:30 now watching them, and so I still sleep my six hours but my day starts a little bit later. But being with the kids, when I'm with them I'm completely all in with them, you know, no phone, I put my phone down, I do homework, I watch movies with them, we play on a trampoline, we do whatever we want to do, play together, spend time, or I'm coaching their baseball or basketball or football teams. But then separately when I'm here at UWM, like I'm completely engaged every minute of the day, you know, once again, put my phone away and I'm extremely focused on how I can make an impact on—we have 9,000 plus people here at UWM every day. How do I impact one person, two people, 10 people in a positive way, whether it's running a meeting, whether it's following up on an email, wishing someone a happy birthday, every detail matters. And so that's kind of my schedule. My schedule's very consistent with it. Saturdays and Sundays I come in maybe for a couple hours, but most of the time I'm with my kids, if I can be.
Wow. And I think your background, Matt, is so interesting because this is, you know, your family's company. But you started in basketball and I know you said you've had a lot of—your basketball experience at Michigan State really shaped your leadership style. Tell us about that and what kind of lessons did you learn from the sports world that you were able to apply?
Yeah, so many lessons, you know, so many lessons. I played basketball growing up and got a chance to play on Michigan State's basketball team for coach Tom Mizo, who's still a great coach to this day, still coaching at Michigan State. Had a great experience. I always say I had to be the hardest working player to be the worst player on the team. You know, I barely made the team, barely on, you know, but I contributed and I learned so much about— you know, in high school you're the best player and you're scoring all the points, all the accolades, and in college all of a sudden you're the worst player and you got to perform differently. What it taught me though was everybody plays a role. You know, the star player has a role. They got to score 20 points a game, but then the 15th player on the team's got to be positive, encouraging, make sure that they share, be the best practice player to compete with the best starting players and do all the details. And so it really was a great lesson of learning that everyone plays a role and how you contribute might be different, but you still have to contribute. And now, as a CEO at UWM, when I got to UWM, I was the 12th person here. So, there's 12 people. We're a small little company. Now, we've got 9,000 people. I bought the company maybe 10, 15 years ago now, and building it up and doing it the right way. And now as a CEO I have a different role but it doesn't mean my role is more important. My job is to be the best CEO at the company. Well, my underwriter has to be the best underwriter. My marketing person has to be the best marketing person. No one has to be the best CEO but me. But I don't have to be the best marketing person. And so everyone's got to play a role. And so I learned in basketball that team always wins. And you want to be part of a team. And no one wins alone. I'm not winning alone as a CEO. I'm never going to win alone in anything I do. It's always a team effort and you got to figure out what your role is and dominate that role.
You know, I love basketball. To me, it's sort of like jazz. I was shaped a little bit—I'm mid-90s Chicago Bulls, Scottie Pippen, you know, that guy Jordan. What was your team growing up? And I have to say, you're the same height—I think you're 5'10"—as my son. That in itself is—you're not the kind of guy people look at and say, let's get him on our basketball team. So the fact that you played college ball itself to me is very impressive. But tell me a little bit about what team really shaped you.
Yeah. Well, growing up, you know, yeah, I was always not the tallest guy as you pointed out and I always just had to—my identity was I will outwork anyone. And I do that in the mortgage business today as well. I will come in earlier, stay later. I'm willing to put more effort in. On the basketball court, you know, watching my team was the Pistons, the Bad Boys, Isiah Thomas, Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman, Bill Laimbeer, those guys. They used to beat your Bulls there, Diane, back before Jordan and Pippen won the championships. But that was my team that I identified with and that was just like the gritty, tough, Bad Boy version. But then going to Michigan State, learning from Tom Mizo, it was all about toughness, defense, grind it out, outwork everybody. It's not always talent that wins. It's the effort and the attitude. And so I apply that to my business career. I apply it to my personal life. You know, great attitude, great work ethic will always win. It always travels wherever you're at. And so that's kind of where I've been. And that's kind of where my background from basketball has come from.
Now, Matt, when I was in college—and Diane and I were just talking about this—my dream was Broadway. I wanted to be an actress. I realized very quickly that I didn't have the skills to get there, but it was always a dream. So I turned to journalism, which is obviously much more—
This is your second choice. You're doing pretty well. Well done.
But I'm wondering, you know, why did you switch from basketball to business? And then, two-part question: was buying the Suns for you then a way to kind of get back to that passion without actually having to be doing it?
