What do you do when your life, finances, and career all seem to be falling apart at the same time? In this episode of Leading Visionaries, host Anjel B. Hartwell sits down with Mandi Feely-Swain, EVP at Premier Mortgage Resources, a Top 1% mortgage originator, and author of Origination Boost.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, executive, sales professional, or someone navigating a difficult season, this conversation offers practical wisdom and inspiring reminders that your greatest challenges can become the foundation for your greatest successes.

What You Will Learn

Why leadership begins with a decision rather than a title.

How adversity can become the catalyst for long-term success.

The importance of choosing growth over comfort.

Why surrounding yourself with people who believe in your vision matters.

How systems and consistency create sustainable business growth.

Lessons learned from rebuilding after financial hardship.

The role gratitude plays in resilient leadership.

Why self-awareness is essential for making bold career pivots.

How leading from the front creates stronger teams and cultures.

Practical mindset shifts that help overcome setbacks and uncertainty.

FAQ:

How can someone rebuild after experiencing major financial setbacks?

Recovering from financial hardship starts with focusing on what you can control, creating consistent systems, making intentional decisions, and taking action every day. Long-term success often comes from resilience, adaptability, and a willingness to start over when necessary.

What is the difference between being a leader and having a leadership title?

Leadership is defined by actions rather than a job title. Effective leaders take ownership, make difficult decisions, serve others, and inspire confidence regardless of their position within an organization.

Why is stepping outside your comfort zone important for success?

Growth happens when people embrace challenges instead of avoiding them. Staying comfortable may feel safe, but pursuing bigger goals often requires learning new skills, taking calculated risks, and remaining committed through difficult seasons.

Connect with Mandi Feely-Swain

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Now, here's your host, Anjel B. Hartwell

Anjel: Welcome to another episode of the Leading Visionaries podcast, where we celebrate the ingenious, insightful, innovative, and inspired leading visionaries of our time, and provide our listeners with world-class examples of the kind of courage, clarity, and confidence it takes to bring visions into reality.

Years ago, she built, rebuilt from six figures in the red, and the systems she created to claw her way back became the foundation of everything she teaches today. She's the author of Origination Boost, host of the Origination Boost podcast, and creator of an accountability app that helps loan officers trade chaos for consistency.

She's a high-energy speaker on production, leadership, and building a business that doesn't run you. I'm very excited to have you here. Welcome to the show, Mandy.

Mandi: Thank you so much. I'm super excited to be here today.

Were you the little girl that was leading other people by the nose and telling them how to get stuff done? Were you visionary? Tell us a little bit about little Mandy.

Mandi: I think that a good way to preface this is I'm a Virgo, and Virgos are typically known for that per- perfection temperament.

And I am the oldest of, uh, my, all the grandkids, and I'm oldest of my, the kids in my family. And so that, I think, automatically put me in a leadership role at a l- young age, right? Selling Girl Scout cookies and getting my, uh, like, number one Girl Scout selling cookie award, I think, came, but it didn't come...

And I- that leadership really, when I was nine and my dad passed away from cancer within three months, I learned at a very young age that being a leader of a household, which my mom quickly became from a support role to the main role in my life I learned at a very young age and that leadership for your family, leadership in your life is a de- ch- decision and a choice.

So-

Anjel: Mm ...

Mandi: that is about my childhood, uh- Mm ... as far as leading from my, when I was a kiddo.

Anjel: Well, Mandy, you're gonna love this because I also sold Girl Scout cookies. And I don't know whether we're gonna have a little competition here or not, but when I was nine, I sold 763 boxes of cookies before you could stand outside at the grocery store, before the internet.

Like, literally door-to-door and telephone calls, and the nearest girl to me sold 28 boxes, and I sold 763. Yes. Well, you, you slayed it. You crushed it. Yes. Awesome. Right. I can't, I cannot say I can remember, but I knew that, you know, I look back on that part of my life and think- Mm-hmm ... I did something special, and I had no idea I was doing it because I did exactly what you said, right?

We, we, we want you to do this, but our family cannot afford for you to do this extracurricular activity that's kind of expensive without you helping facilitate that." And I did that by gaining sponsors, right? I, before the day and age of internet, you- Mm-hmm ... you didn't have a cellphone. You had the one with the cord that went down the- Mm

down the wall and back up to it, you know? It wasn't, it wasn't a, whatever, rotary or dial or whatever, but it was, you know-

Anjel: Touch-tone ... it was the old touchphone ... the little touch-tone.

And, and that in itself was really critical to my childhood lessons I learned that have, uh, you know, propelled me in my life. But it also allowed me, at the end of the day, I was, had great success in that, and I was able to pay for my college education and graduate debt-free. So my parents not only... My parents, you know, you could look at it lack and say my parents didn't, couldn't afford this, blah, blah, blah, but I didn't let that ever stop me.

And I, and that, it, for those that just wanna be leaders in their lives, that's one of my best pieces of advice. Don't ever let- what the world tells you stop you from your greatness. You, there i- if you have the will, there is a way to get there, and those were instrumental lesson, life lessons for me.

Anjel: Mm, beautiful.

You know, we also choose to say yes to visions. So I'm curious about your whole experience, uh, with vision and being a visionary. Yeah. I think that I had to work at that, if I'm very, very transparent and honest. I think that- You know, I'm very, again, I go back to being a Virgo, and I like to do things A, B, C, D.

And just telling my story and sharing my life with others and the way that they can choose to win in their life, and it ha- talks about the mortgage space, and it talks about sales in general and a mindset of that. But I think that for me, I needed to surround myself with people that could help me be a visionary.

Mm-hmm. Because I had goals for my life, but I think that getting people that believe in you more maybe than you believe in yourself at that very moment is what has propelled me to maybe my, my greatness in my career, my highest levels in my career, is because they believed it and manifested it almost for me, and then showed me the way.

Mm. You know?

Anjel: Yeah. Well, I love that. I really love that you have that perspective, because a lot of folks who do come on this show, they are visionary, and I would call myself a visionary too. I like, I receive a vision, and then it's like, "Okay, we're doing it," you know? But you bring a very different perspective here where other people have provided that vision for you, and then you said yes to it.

Yes. So in any case, it's still about saying yes, because, you know, people could have said, "Hey, Mandy, I can see you being a billion dollar earner," and, um, and you could've been like, "Oh, yeah, I don't think so." Right? So-

Mandi: Yes ...

Anjel: talk to me about the yes. Like, the, how do you recognize within yourself when it's a yes?

Mandi: Yeah. Uh, yeses in my life, some of my yeses became happy accidents to greatness. Mm. And but what I learned- And I, this especially came true after the mor- the housing recession in, you know, '08, '09, '10.

It, it financially, you know, near bankruptcy, not quite there. You know, I, I had enough savings that I managed through it, but it was a rough time. I mean, the average loan size in Boise, Idaho was $105,000. And so I had two little kids, and I had a misalignment in my marriage, and that I thought I was gonna be married forever, and I had a misalignment and was getting divorced.

And for me- Mm-hmm ... that, the crash and, uh, my personal life kind of, you know, falling apart and my having two little nuggets that Happy Meals on Wednesday nights that were half off, Those became really critical to me, but I could see past that. And so for me, it came out of a dark, dark time in my life, and someone told me once the- the l- the cracks in the glass of your life are where the light shines through.

So I think, you know, if we look back on our lives, some of the best lessons are learned in the darkness.

Anjel: Mm-hmm. Don't disagree with that. We're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, we're gonna let our listeners know where they can find out more about your book. But right now, listeners, are you a leading visionary or in the role of leading other visionaries?

If you're interested in finding out more about how you can receive support for getting your vision out of the air and onto the ground in a way that's both impact and income producing, the best support is found in collaboration with other leading visionaries, which is why we've created the Creative Age Leader Lab.

I wanna say a huge thank you to all of our listeners who are downloading, rating, and reviewing. We're welcoming thousands and thousands of downloads from all over the world. And I wanna shout out this week to our listeners in Argentina, Belarus, which is a new country that just recently came on, and Indonesia.

And we will be right back with Mandy Feely Swayne

Your word is your wand, and as the leader, your ability to articulate and communicate your vision is essential to its materialization and monetization. Please enjoy, with our compliments, a free copy of the book Be Heard by Millions and Live Your Destiny, which was a number one new release in three categories to get you started.

The book is yours by visiting gift.leadingvisionariespodcast.com.

And if you're listening after that time window, I am quite sure that the book is totally worth it at full price. So Mandy, what was the inspiration for you, the vision for you to write this book?

Mandi: I'm blessed that I get to work with amazing humans every day at our company, Premier Mortgage Resources, and I was asked a- I get asked a lot about kind of what my playbook is and how I've been a top producing loan officer year after year after year.

And I'm like, "I really cannot fill a book with all of the information," right? I'm like, "I'm not that interesting, guys." I just am a girl that showed up and was really good at math and loved human beings and loved, loved helping Americans get homes and, and financing those. And I tripped into this career. I, you know, I was going to college at Boise State and became, went to a started working at a mortgage company at the front desk and could not even spell FHA.

And Veronica and Brittany and Susan and Selena and Jackie and, and Jaelyn, they all come to the work with the same philosophy that if, if we take care of each other, and we can rise together, and our wins are our wins together and our losses are our losses together. And so I, I was asked to put that all in a book and share what I had done in my career to win, and it was really fun to write.

Aloha Publishing, they interviewed me, and they wanted, uh, they, they wanted to see if the w- you know, book space could handle a book about this. And, and, uh, so that was an interesting process to go through. I never... Again, it wasn't on my bingo card of life to write a book. But here I am, and I hope that, you know- Even people that aren't in the mortgage space will learn from this book that you can overcome s- trials or tribulations in your life.

So here we are, and we have a book, and we're launching, and we're really excited.

Anjel: Mm, congratulations. So I do wanna talk a little bit about your money journey because- Yeah ... I think for many people who are listening to this, whether they're listening because of the topic or whether they're just, are general listeners around the world, uh, for a founder or a visionary or a leader, often the money piece can be a big challenge.

Mandi: Yeah, so I'm the kid that liked to have money in my savings account.

I wasn't one to go spend it. You know, I'm kind of a keep my hands in my pocket. And not that... Now I'm very blessed, and I was just sharing with you that I just got back from a vacation that my husband and I had been planning for years, um, to spend 20 days together and just, um, really as a couple in, in Europe, and we were able to do that.

And I attribute that to working really, really hard. I mean, most people that are leaders are gonna tell you that it, it's not sexy. It's just hard work. There's no get rich quick schemes. I mean, maybe there are, but not in my business. And, uh, most of the leaders and winners in the real estate mortgage business just work really, really hard and put systems and processes around them that help them not lose their mind in the process, right?

I, I was either gonna be a manager or I was gonna be a producing branch manager. And, uh, they did not want me to be a producing branch manager. They just felt like that might be a conflict. But I told my husband, I said, "Then they need a new manager. I need to get back to the front line and, and do what I do best," because I'll...

And so I said, "I need to go back and do what I did in the beginning of my career," which was be a loan officer and do home loans. I had a, you know, at that time, a two and a five-year-old, and they were depending on me to do that. So to me, it was either choose to manage or choose to go back to the front line and reset, and that's what I did.

It's all a decision. And, uh, you're gonna need a great tribe around you that loves you and, and, and, and believes in you. But ultimately, it has to be in your heart and soul to want it really bad and, uh, be willing to do the work nobody else wants to do.

Anjel: Well, and you know what I'm hearing here too, Mandy, is the self-awareness.

You know, the self-awareness that it wasn't a fit for you at that time to continue managing a bleeding organization. It, it wasn't a fit. And the fit and being willing to do whatever it took to get to the right fit, the place where you best serve, um, really served. It really served you, it really served your organization.

Mandi: in mortgage-

Anjel: So you're, like- ... they have a- ... running your own franchise, but there's a bigger company

Mandi: behind it ... essentially. You know? Yeah. Essentially we s- that's, it's not really an option.

You're a W-2 employee if you work for an independent mortgage bank. But, you know, your bonuses are r- in relation to that, could be r- in relation to that P&L for that cost center. And so that's kind of how it's managed. You don't own anything, honestly. If you work for a company, you don't own anything. Y- today my husband and I own Premier Mortgage Resources, but at the time we were working for a company and, and I didn't own anything, but I was accountable to that profit and loss, and my income would not be paid, uh, at any high level until that was basically paid back.

And so-

Anjel: So you, you ended up starting your own organization, though. So tell us a

We were doing really well, we were making money again, you know, we'd come out of those dark days of, of the housing recession, and I was like, "I don't wanna do this. Are you kidding me? This seems like a step back." But sometimes, again, you have to step back to move forward, and that's what we did. And we, um- Put the blood, sweat, and tears back into another opportunity.

And, uh, you know, you just, you just surround yourself with really, really good people, and I feel very blessed in this journey. We went from, I think, funding $180 million a year in home loans, right, to now funding over two, $2 billion in home loans as a company a year. And, and, uh, I just share... I get to... I always say I'm happy to work with amazing humans that happen to be really good at home loans.

I just don't wanna work with brilliant jerks that do home loans. I think that's a, that, that... a lot of companies can die by brilliant jerks. And, uh, so I'm blessed to be surrounded by amazing humans here at Premier that all have the same alignment and like-mindedness, and so that's where we are today.

it, it's highly regulated and you don't always con- you know, that is a non-controllable. But we can control what we leave in our company. We can control the balance sheet and asset sheet. So I think that that was a very good lesson that we learned then. Mm-hmm. And so yeah, that would be, um, that would be what I'd share with people is that you can, you can do anything you wanna do.

You just have to be willing to put the hours and the hard work in.

Anjel: All right. Well, Mandy, it's been my pleasure hosting you today, and I wish you all the best with your book launch. I'm sure it's gonna go incredibly well based on your background and your intentions and your vision for it, and the vision of all the people around you for it.

Look for the handle @leadingvisionariespodcast across all the major platforms. Thanks for tuning in. Keep your eyes, ears, and hearts open. And remember, you are here to create conscious change.

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