His message to brokers: you don't have to wait for tragedy to change
Sometimes it’s not soaring interest rates or a slowing housing market that becomes the greatest hurdle for a mortgage broker to overcome.
For eight years, one mortgage broker measured his worth in a very conventional way, through loans closed, production numbers, money in the account, and how many people needed him.
That way of living worked until it didn't.
In 2024, a single week of tragedy made it impossible to keep operating the way he always had.
He is sharing that story publicly for the first time in a breakout session at AIME Fuse this weekend in Austin, Texas, hoping other brokers won't need a tragedy of their own before they make a needed change.
Ryan Kearns (pictured top), founder of Kearns Mortgage Team, said the version of success he had built for himself was never built to last.
"I became successful. I'm doing well. My business has been open for five years. I've been in the industry for eight years," Kearns told Mortgage Professional America. "But it was a life that was not sustainable."
A week that changed everything
What followed was an unfathomable tragedy that turned his world upside down in the span of a few days.
"My grandmother first passed away at the age of 95, and a few days later, in a very awful simultaneous event, I lost five additional family members in the same day," he said. "My mother, my aunt, my cousin, my two uncles. It was a total of five people on that day that passed away. My life changed immediately because it was six people in that one week, and everybody on my mother's side."
Kearns said the period that followed was defined by a decline in his own mental health, even though the rest of his life continued to turn without slowing down.
"I went through a time period of deterioration, mental health, all of that," he said. "I still had responsibilities. I'm still a father, still a husband, a business owner, all of that. Eventually, life did not allow that previous way of operating, that previous way of living, to continue. I quite literally had to make survival decisions in order to proceed forward."
While the pressures of the mortgage industry did not create the underlying issues in his life, they gave him a way to avoid facing them.
"The industry did not in particular create what was broken inside of me, but it gave me parts of a scoreboard that I could measure myself against," he said. "The production and the money shined a light on the cracks that were already there in my life. And then tragedy struck, and it made the cracks impossible to ignore. My message to people is you don't have to let tragedy strike before you make those adjustments in your life."
The decisions that followed
Confronted by tragedy, Kearns knew changes in his life were needed, even if those changes wouldn’t be easy. The first one involved finding sobriety.
"I removed every bottle of alcohol from my house. I haven't drank in two years," he said. "I put myself on an imperfect path, because this is not a journey of perfection. Put myself on a path for quite literal survival, and then trying to become congruent with the person I knew I wanted to become."
By making those changes and getting help from those around him, he started to see improvement.
"I've lost 65 pounds in the last two years. I'm a calmer father, more present husband," he said. "I didn't do it alone. We're so accustomed to not asking for help, and I'm still guilty of it at times. It is so important to get the help that is needed, whether that was therapy, marriage counseling, trauma work, coaches, mentors. Whatever I could put myself through or have people walk beside me, I did it."
How to ask the tough questions
In his breakout session, he said he will walk attendees through the same questions he had to confront himself.
"What has my attention? What identity currently has too much influence over who you're becoming? Who am I becoming?" he said. "What's the next move that can be made within the next 24 hours? One specific decision to move you in that direction. And who knows about it? Who are you going to allow to support you?"
He said the goal of that exercise is progress, not perfection. There can still be bumps in the road to overcome, and brokers need to know that those bumps aren’t always signs of a derailed path to recovery.
"It's important to know that I am not healed. The grief is still there. The pain is still there. It didn't just magically go away," he said. "But it's not forgetting that a bad day, a bad decision, could just be a bad day and a bad decision. Don't forget the actual path that you're on. It's more about direction than perfection.
"I am hoping that one person in that room feels different and feels better. Not that they're saved, not that they are all of a sudden transformed. But that they might have one decision over the next 24 hours that they can make that's holding them back. That's my goal."
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