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 Jeff May, CEO of Cherry Creek Mortgage, has taken his company far from its humble origins in 1987, but he still sees a lot of room for growth in the industry. Currently one of the top 25 independent mortgage bankers in the US, May said it is his goal to have Cherry Creek handle one out of every 100 purchase transactions in the country.
“I’m a long way from that today, but that’s my target,” May said. “I don’t have a date to reach that target, but that is where our efforts are focused. We have to determine what we need to do to strengthen our resources and technology and what changes we need to make in how we operate so that we can move rapidly in that direction.”
Given how far the company has come in slightly more than two decades, it is hard to argue that May won’t be able to achieve this goal. Englewood, Colo.-based Cherry Creek Mortgage was founded in 1987 by a group of real estate agents who approached May and a friend of his to originate the loans the agents were creating through the sale of homes.
“The first year was a real struggle,” said May. “The company lost a lot of money and they thought about shutting it down. That wasn’t something I was interested in, so I put some capital in the company to keep it afloat.”
 May got more than a hearty thank you for putting money into the company; he was made president. “I was 27 years old and never thought I’d be the president of anything, much less the failing, miserable company that Cherry Creek Mortgage was at the time,” he said. “I didn’t know how to run a business and I had a real problem on my hands with bad cash flow, so I did the only thing I knew how to do to solve the problem, which was to increase revenue.”
May used the successful real estate agents to attract other sales people to the company in the effort to increase revenue. Over the next several years, the company slowly began to grow more profitable. With the growth came even grander plans from May.
“As we began to have some success, I started to have some grandiose ideas about what I wanted to do with the company,” he said. “I started talking about creating the Federal Express of the mortgage business; the Dominoes of the business. I wanted to reinvent the category.”
At the time, the company’s board of directors wasn’t sold on May’s big plans. “They looked at me and shook their heads and said, ‘Come back to earth, dude,’ ” he said. “One of the things I knew I needed to do was to climb up the food chain, and to do that, I needed capital.”
May said he knew he wouldn’t be able to get the capital he needed from those who owned the company at the time, so he went out looking for people who would be able to invest in Cherry Creek. In 1990, May met then-US Senator Bill Armstrong, and by the end of the year, May and Armstrong became partners and bought out the real estate agents who owned the company at the time.
Since 1990, the company has grown tremendously, operating in 20 states with more than 600 employees. “As far as independent mortgage bankers in the country are concerned, we are probably in the top 25,” May said.
Strategies for success
May credits much of the success of the company to attracting top sales people. “Our growth comes from attracting talented originators to the company,” he said. “It’s through them that the business of the company grows.”
Loans come to the company through the efforts of its salespeople. “I don’t have a brand name like Bank of America to draw business to the company,” May said. “I have to use our salespeople to go out there and beat the bushes for business.”
To have effective salespeople in place, May said he has to make sure he makes it worthwhile for the best people to work for the company. Part of the effort to hire and retain the best people involves determining what the best people in the business are thinking and doing, he said.
“We have a value platform that attracts the best people in the industry to our company,” May said. “That’s how we’ve grown as a company, by attracting and recruiting the best people to our company.”
Weathering the storm
Although Cherry Creek has faced its share of economic challenges as a result of the mortgage meltdown, May said he is beginning to see some improvement in the industry and he believes the company is in a good position for the future. “The environment is still very challenging for a number of reasons, but one of the reasons why it feels better now is that the competition isn’t nearly like what it used to be,” he said. “There may be about half the lenders that there were two years ago.”
There are still foreclosures and bad loans on the horizon, but May said the mortgage industry is starting to get back on more sure footing. “Maybe the worst is behind us,” he said. “The environment is starting to improve.”
May said he expects the industry to face heavier government regulation as a result of the mortgage meltdown. Even with greater regulation, he said he still looks forward to facing the challenges of the industry and growing the company.
As the company continues to grow, May said it will continue to abide by its core convictions, which include honesty, integrity, serving others, and a commitment to learning, adapting and improving, profitable growth, and managing the risks associated with the business.
“This is a great industry,” May said. “We help families buy homes and improve their cash flow. It is an honorable business, and I love it.”
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