In this Ten Minute Talk, Rocket’s Dan Sogorka and Katie Sweeny discuss the impact of Rocket’s ‘Owen the Dream’ Super Bowl ad, their vision for empowering homeownership, and what drew them to Rocket’s leadership team.
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00:00The reaction's been incredible, not only with broker partners, but with our real estate agent
00:04partners as well. They feel so seen, and they just felt like this helps them explain to their
00:11families what they do every day. And the commercial, literally, people were in tears.
00:16I was getting so many messages. It was just so cool.
00:20I'm Diego Sanchez, President of HousingWire, and this is a special 10-minute talk presented
00:33by RocketPro. I'm joined today by Dan Sigorka, General Manager of RocketPro, and Katie Sweeney,
00:41EVP of Strategy and Broker Advocacy at RocketPro. You're both new to Rocket.
00:49What attracted you to the company and your role, starting with you, Dan?
00:54Yeah, sure. Good to be here, Diego. Thanks for having us.
00:58For the first time in my career, I took some time off after my last gig and was super intentional
01:04around what I wanted to do. I took eight months off. I probably started with a list of 50 companies.
01:11I looked at stuff inside mortgage. I looked at stuff outside mortgage.
01:16I was really looking for a couple of things. I wanted a scaled opportunity. I wanted to do
01:21something where technology was really in the forefront. I wanted to work with a team and a
01:26culture that really resonated with me. As I narrowed my list down, I went from 50 to three.
01:37One day, I was just like, you know what? If I don't do this Rocket thing, I'm going to be really
01:42bummed out. I suddenly got really excited about it because it hit all the elements that I was
01:47looking for. I really enjoyed even meeting the people that I didn't know. This opportunity to
01:53work with the broker community was really interesting because I felt like Rocket could
01:58really bring scale and technology into local communities in a way that had never really been
02:05done before. I really liked the small business aspect of it. It hit on so many levels that I just
02:13decided this is where I wanted to be. Five months later, I'm really happy I made the call.
02:20Take that incredible tech stack that has been built and is continuing to be built and translate
02:27that into the Rocket Pro business and give it to the brokers that you work with.
02:33That's right. That's exactly right.
02:35Amazing. How about you, Katie? What was exciting to you about the role in the company?
02:40Yeah. Manu and I actually had similar experiences. We just started on opposite ends of the spectrum
02:45where he's been working with such large enterprises throughout his career and has
02:49built an incredible track record of being able to grow and scale across the board.
02:55The last seven or eight years of my life have been largely focused around
02:59helping small businesses from the ground up. How do we grassroots effort our way through
03:05democratizing the industry and making it accessible for small businesses?
03:10That's technology. That's also more traditional advocacy work that we're doing in Washington,
03:15D.C. A lot of that has to do with creating local leaders and working with our broker partners to
03:21do that. When I took a step back, I really wasn't that interested in getting back on the lending
03:27side. I was really focused on finding a way to expand the work that we were doing through the
03:32Broker Action Coalition to keep focusing on a lot of the work that we did at Arrive and AIM that
03:38allowed us to support the community in ways that were unique to each individual small business.
03:44Dan and I have crossed paths in the past, and so he reached out in the fall.
03:48It became very apparent to me through the last 12 to 18 months that the perception of who
03:55Rocket is and how Rocket engages with broker partners is maybe not totally accurate. There's
04:00a lot of misconceptions that exist, a lot of things that I started to learn behind the scenes,
04:05particularly through government affairs and legislative work, and seeing how
04:09Rocket was not only supporting the industry but supporting the channel without even directly
04:14being asked to do so. We were on similar coalitions together with the NBA. We had
04:18an opportunity to cross paths a lot. When he approached me with the opportunity,
04:23this is actually the only lender that I got past the first phone call with. I had probably 10 or 12
04:28in the last 18 months that had approached me with great teams and great businesses and people who
04:34were doing some really unique stuff, but a combination of both Dan and the new leadership
04:38team at Rocket paired with the resources and the commitment to the channel that already exists and
04:43the opportunity to continue to grow that, I couldn't turn it down. You feel like you can
04:48continue to advocate for brokers and work with brokers, but under the Rocket umbrella?
04:54Absolutely. I think we're doing a lot to extend that reach. It's been Rocket first in a lot of
05:00the initiatives that have taken place, and that will continue, but we're also starting to bring
05:04our broker partners to the forefront even more and making sure that we're pairing the industry
05:09perspective with that of the broker space. Rocket's done an incredible job with government
05:14affairs in the past. Like I said, they've always been a champion of the industry. They've quietly
05:18been a champion of the broker channel, and they've just never really gotten credit for it.
05:24I think we'll be able to continue expanding a lot of the work that we were doing through the
05:27back. Dan has made that commitment. Varun has made that commitment. Every leader within the
05:31company, Bill Emerson's made that commitment. Before I even joined, said, we want you to keep
05:36doing what you're doing. We just have more resources and more firepower over here for
05:40you to be able to do it at scale and help even more people. I've belabored this point over and
05:46over again in interviews in the past. My singular mission has always been help people help more
05:50people. I think we can expand our reach to consumers through empowering small businesses
05:56and local leaders, and Rocket's given me the platform and the opportunity to do that at a
06:01scale that I didn't know was possible. That's amazing. I love it. I was really,
06:07really inspired by the Super Bowl ad on Sunday. I just loved it, and I loved cutting back to the
06:15stadium and having that song continued. It was just really an amazing experience,
06:20a really amazing marketing experience. Katie, I know you're new to Rocket Pro,
06:28but how are your broker partners responding to that inspiring Own the Dream ad?
06:35I think people are really loving it. The conversation on social media has been really
06:39exciting. You never know when you put new creative out. You have hopes that people will
06:43resonate with it and they'll understand the intent behind it, but you don't know until it
06:48happens. To see how conversations have gone viral over the last few days and where we know it's
06:54going to continue to go in the future, it's a really exciting time. It is truly about representing
07:00every consumer out there the same way that we want to represent every broker out there.
07:04This whole concept of Owning the Dream is, yes, it's home ownership, but it's also owning your
07:09own small business. There are so many ways for this to not just be a singular flash in the pan
07:14or a campaign that exists today. It's a movement. It's where we're going to continue to go
07:20moving forward. I think our partners see that. I think they're excited about it.
07:23I think we're doing everything we can from the Rocket side of things to make sure that
07:28every American understands home ownership is still a part of their future. It is still
07:33something they can look forward to. It's still something that they can plan for and count on.
07:38We want to be able to highlight as many of our partners as possible to help make that dream a
07:42reality. Dan, let's dive in a little bit more there. How do you see Rocket Pro translating
07:49this consumer message of Own the Dream from the Super Bowl and subsequent campaigns into the
07:57wholesale channel? When I first saw this start of this and the words Own the Dream probably 60 days
08:07ago, I was just so excited because it immediately resonated for me with our broker partners. I knew
08:15they were going to be blown away. The reaction has been incredible, not only with broker partners,
08:22but with our real estate agent partners as well. They feel so seen and they just felt like this
08:29helps them explain to their families what they do every day. The commercial, literally people
08:34were in tears. I was getting so many messages. It was just so cool. When you work on something
08:41and you actually bring it in, like Katie says, you hope and you believe it's going to really
08:45resonate. When it does, it's such a satisfying feeling. Katie touched on it a bit. We see this
08:52as such American dream stuff. It's like Own the Dream, help everyone home. These are small
08:59businesses, scrappy entrepreneurs in their own communities. Something like 50% of our purchase
09:07volume is first time homeowners. This is the real nitty gritty stuff that brings America together.
09:17We talked about it internally, but it's like 92% of people believe that homeownership is
09:23foundational to the American dream. 92% of people today don't agree on anything.
09:30We really felt like we could rally around that and bring America together. It's just super cool.
09:39Yeah, absolutely. You probably can't get 90% of the people to agree that the sky is blue,
09:45right? They agree that homeownership is the American dream. Staying with you, Dan,
09:52how are you approaching 2025 in terms of winning market share and wholesale? Because at the end of
10:00the day, I imagine that's what you were brought into Rocket to do. Yeah. We see a lot of areas
10:06to really expand the business and we want to continue to give our partners, again, the tools
10:12and opportunities to grow their business where we both win. Together, we talk about us being
10:19America's most trusted homeownership team. That's, again, giving them tools to make their
10:24job more efficient, delivering them AI at scale, again, delivering the branding at scale where they
10:33can now go out and be proud to be partnered with Rocket and consumers can talk to them and say,
10:39wow, I saw that Rocket commercial. That really resonated with me. Do you work with Rocket?
10:44They can say, of course we do. It's like, how can Rocket, with our size and scale,
10:52push our chips forward with them so they can live a lot bigger than what their small company might
10:58be able to do? Again, technology, service, changing the narrative. A lot of what we're
11:03doing with Katie, again, is getting our message out there, not only in terms of advocacy,
11:08but really in the broker community of like, hey, these are all the things we're doing to help you.
11:13I'm really excited to deliver some game-changing technology that we haven't even talked about
11:18yet out in the market, but that we have coming that's super exciting
11:22and partnering with our brokers in a lot of creative ways that we haven't done before.
11:28I think you're going to continue to hear a lot from us in 2025.
11:33Yeah, we're really excited to help everyone home. Katie, following up on that question,
11:38where do you see your role in broker advocacy fitting into Dan's vision for Rocket Pro's growth
11:46in 2025? Yeah, well, I think one of the things that I loved about this opportunity is that
11:52Dan and I were very aligned in understanding advocacy means a lot of different things.
11:56There's advocacy in DC and in state houses, and that's a little bit more straightforward in
12:01what we want to do to improve the regulatory environment and what sort of legislative
12:05initiatives are going to make sense, not just for the industry, but for small businesses and
12:09the consumers that they serve. But there's also an advocacy component internally. And I think
12:14Rocket has been moving so fast and so furious, and they built this incredible business that part of
12:20my role is making sure that the broker perspective is always included in those conversations going
12:24forward. I think they always have been. I just don't think people have known about it. And so
12:29we really want to be able to shine a light and highlight all of the work that the teams internally
12:33are doing, how we're going to take these big enterprise style decisions and make them accessible
12:39and available to small businesses from coast to coast and really encourage every broker owner to
12:45run their business the way that they want to run it. Every consumer wants to be served in an
12:49individualistic way. We want to make sure that we're providing every consumer with the opportunity
12:53to work with a loan officer who makes the most sense for their needs. We want to do the same
12:58thing for our broker partners. One of the things that's super unique and really fun about the
13:02Wholesale Channel is that every person runs their business specific to their market, their team,
13:07the way that their brain works, how they see the opportunity for growth, how they want to serve
13:11the people in their space. And we want to provide as many tools as possible to help them do that in
13:17whatever way best fits their business model. So I think there's advocacy across the board to be
13:22done. And I think we've only seen the beginning from the wholesale space. There's been so much
13:26growth the last seven or eight years, but we're still at the tip of the spear. There are so many
13:32consumers that can be served by people who understand their experiences, have similar
13:37backgrounds, have shared perspective on their view of the world and homeownership and their families
13:42and how they've gotten to this point in their life and where they want to go. We just want to
13:46do everything that we can to empower them as much as possible and utilize the tools that Dan has
13:51helped leading to develop and make sure that everybody gets access to them. So scale technology
13:57and service partnered with the local expertise that the brokers provide. It sounds like a really
14:03interesting and winning formula to me. Dan and Katie, really appreciate you joining me on this
14:09special 10 minute talk today. Thanks so much for having us.