Experts share their passion for the sport and the industry
They may not, on the face of it, seem closely aligned, yet football and mortgages have more in common than you might think. Both attract highly competitive people, who like to succeed, overcome challenges, and scale the heights of their profession. Those who become involved in football and in property finance, often enjoy the thrill of a win, value teamwork and are drawn to leadership roles.
In the many conversations Mortgage Introducer has with mortgage professionals, it is striking how many of them say they were originally ambitious for a career in the beautiful game (interestingly, rock star often comes up too…) – yet life took them in a different direction, towards what many consider a beautiful career. There certainly seems to be a correlation between the two worlds.
Today, Kelsey Phillips (pictured left) is founder of Arose Finance, advising on development and specialist finance, but, for nearly nine years, she was a semi-professional footballer. Phillips was a finalist at several international trials for the Republic of Ireland U17 women’s team and for their 2014 FIFA World Cup squad. She regularly competed against WSL reserve teams such as Arsenal FC, Chelsea FC and West Ham United, and trained with Chelsea FC and Stanford University.
“My background is not in commercial finance at all,” Phillips said. “In fact, most of my life, I was pursuing a career in football, until about the age of 21, training multiple times a week. I am a strong believer that everything in life happens for you, not to you, and right when my career was kicking off I had a massive growth spurt. As a consequence of growing quickly, I had loads of hamstring injuries.”
Those injuries influenced her decision to pursue finance instead, and after university Philips worked for five years for Goldman Sachs as an equity index derivatives trader, before setting up her own mortgage business. Women’s football has become much more popular in recent years, so does she regret not pursuing her sporting dream? “It wasn’t quite a career when I was coming up,” she said. “It wasn’t meant to be, I don’t live with regrets.”
Certainly, Phillips’ experience in football has helped her take a pragmatic approach to business. “I believe there are things that you can control,” she said. “Coming back to finance, you can’t control valuation results, but you can have conversations beforehand, which make the outcomes more predictable. So, there are many things, even in the conveyancing process, just by being on the ball that you can pre-empt.”
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How football can shape an approach to business
A die-hard Newcastle United fan from the age of seven, Saam Lowni (pictured second left), the founder of Merryoaks Finance, believes football has shaped how he sees life, business, and people. “I loved playing the game, watching it, obsessing over it,” Lowni said of his childhood fascination. “I was a proper Championship manager nerd. No graphics, just spreadsheets, stats, and strategy. Some mates would join in, others would mock it. I didn’t care, I was hooked. I think I’ve had the last laugh as spreadsheets are now an everyday part of my life and in a much more useful way.”
Lowni’s interest in football dipped for around 10 years, between 2010 and 2020. “I didn’t watch a match, not even the World Cup,” he recalled. “Watching 18- to 30-year-old millionaires, who I had previously idolised, while the world was in an economic crisis just didn’t sit right.” His passion was renewed, though, after he found a local group playing five-a-side. “It’s funny, because when you step back, it’s ridiculous, adults chasing a ball around,” Lowni acknowledged. “But it’s also everything - the camaraderie, the competition, the commitment, the thrill of influencing a win or owning a loss. It’s trivial and important at the same time. It teaches you what it means to be part of something bigger. You learn how to turn up, how to dig deep, how to take knocks and still play the next game.”
He added: “Football taught me something that stuck - talent alone isn’t enough. You need to graft. You need to think ahead. You need to read the room, trust your team, and know when to strike. It’s all about being able to think five steps ahead, being in the right place at the right time, awareness, and getting the basics right. That applies in business, in property, in finance and in life.”
Mark Harrington (pictured second from left) CEO of L&C Mortgages, was an apprentice with Bristol Rovers in his teenage years and, though he was dropped after two years, suggests that what he learned from managers there and during his non-league career with Bath City, helped shape the leader he is today. “I always just loved the psychology of giving someone a cuddle to make them better, versus giving someone a kick up the bottom to make them better,” Harrington said. “I played non-league football for 10 years, and what I did find is that when I retired from playing football, and went into management at L&C, it replaced the competitive nature that I'd always had from playing football.”
Darrell Walker (pictured right), director of sales and distribution at Chetwood Bank, chose a career in financial services over an apprenticeship with a professional football club, aware that his parents wanted him to have a good, solid career. Still, he played semi-professionally for Derby County until he was 30. “My football journey gave me a confidence, it made me very resilient, it made me competitive,” Walker said. “It forces you to be a team player and if I go back to my Derby days, there was a phrase on the wall where we trained, that I regularly use for my two boys, and I regularly use at work. The phrase is ‘hard work beats talent, if talent doesn't work hard’. A lot of the tenacity that's in me definitely comes from my football days, without a shadow of a doubt. If you're one of those 11 players on the pitch, you've got to show up, you cross that white line and you give it everything. I always say if something's worth doing it, it's worth giving it absolutely everything.”
There are others in the profession, such as Gaurav Shukla (pictured above, inset), who didn’t explore football as a career on the pitch, but who have brought their passion for the sport together with their passion for finance. Shukla is CEO of Home Me Mortgages, that sponsors football and advises sports professionals on their borrowing. “Football's everything, basically,” he said. “I'm a massive Liverpool fan, ever since I was a kid. With my passion for football, that's what drove our first sponsorship with football clubs. I'll watch any sports and go to sports games and matches, but football definitely - that’s the only sport I would sponsor.”
