Meet Robert Rodriguez | Managing Partner of Vantage Realty and Home Loans

We had the good fortune of connecting with Robert Rodriguez and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Robert, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking
Growing up in a lower middle class household I believe it gave me a superpower. Yes I did not go without meals, or without a roof over my head but we had alot of other struggles that most families that I knew had. We would have to avoid the bill collectors over the phone, listen to my single mother argue with my father about money. Going out to dinner meant Mcdonalds, having clothes on lay away, hand me downs, wearing payless shoes that were remincenent of addidas having 4 stripes not 3 and being made fun of them. Growing up like this , and having to learn to sell candy to make extra money, or learn how to clean Mcdonalds cups to get free drinks in the summer totally gave me now what I call is a lack of fear. I started my career by telemarketing for a mortgage company in need of money for prom, and someone finding out I had a gift of gab gave me the confidence to skip college and go straight into becoming a loan officer regarding mortgages. Being a huge risk in my parents eyes, I was able to make a career out of it and eventually go through a mortgage crisis, becoming a managing partner in a mortgage lending company, and eventually work my way up to becoming a director of lending for an institution that had been around for over 40 years and I became the youngest director in company history. That being said there were many times I had to go withtout and second guess times where I didnt save enough money in the good times, or even suffer through the hard times of one of Americas largest economic crises. During those times I had to sit back and evaluate me going back to college, or even taking a regular banking job I always chose to believe in myself and take the risk of believing in myself. I once had started a mortgage company with a former co worker, we took it from a 5 man team in his mothers garage into a 3o employee dual office sales force who were doing over 100 transactions a month. After that we parted ways due to my father becoming Ill and disagreements on how the companies direction I chose to work for the bank until my father got better. Once my father was better he knew that my dream was to start another company, even then I had multiple offers for Directiorships, VP positions at other large lenders, but I knew I wouldnt be happy so I chose to risk it all again and start another company with one former co worker on Sunset BLVD in West Hollywood. We had a small team of 3 with know knowledge of mortgages what so ever. I chose once again to bet on myself. 5 years later we are now producing 64 Million dollars in loan volume a year. Risk is everything as long as you believe in yourself and surround yourself by the right people.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
Vantage Realty and Home Loans prides itself on setting ourself from the competition. We believe in being a true value to our clients and easily accessable. The way we do this, is a couple of different ways. One got rid of our business phones, we only have personal cell phones that we use. Our clients can call or text us at any time and we feel like they love that! Also we give our clients access to our personal instagrams, facebooks or any social media platforms. We dont believe in just having a business or personal profile we believe in truly letting our clients know who we are as people. We tried the whole marketing approach with purchasing leads, sending out flyers using call centers. What we found is that approach doesnt work. We are a gurilla style marketing approach, in which we speak with local business owners, local realtors pretty much anyone and anyone that we can speak about what we do. Weve learned that clients are tired of big faceless corporations, they want to know who we are as people and professionals. We harp on our reviews and we are proud of each review we get on Zillow, or Google or even Yelp.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If and when I am in Phoneix the best thing to do for me is hit the local bars, resturaunts, maybe take in a Suns game or even a Diamondbacks game! Love the Macintosh, or steak 44 and always end at Highball

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My shoutout goes to god because without him there is nothing, In times of not believing in yourself, or when your friends and family dont, god is always there and if you stick with him you will be well taken care of.

Website: www.vantagehomeloans.com

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkfi3xPaO9CCifVAVTglxnA