Black-owned Phoenix Mortgage Specialist, Inc. is thriving in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the Washington Post, the economic downturn has permanently shut down more than 100,000 small businesses.
Lucius Mack owns the Atlanta-area business that offers premier mortgage broker services, which makes him a member of a rare professional group. Of the nearly one million privately owned businesses within the finance industry, less than 5% are owned by African-Americans, according to a 2012 Census Report.
Mack attributes his success to two factors – family and failure.
“I’m a Black man from Savannah, Georgia. My parents were not college-educated but were hardworking and that’s what they instilled in me,” says Mack. It hasn’t been an easy road for Mack. It was the devastating market crash of 2007 that hobbled – then battle-hardened – his firm for the pandemic’s financial challenges. Mack’s company, previously known as Diverse Financial Services, lost everything in the crash 13 years ago.
“It was heartbreaking,” reflects Mack. “We invested our entire livelihood into our business, we knew everything there was to know about the mortgage industry, and then it was destroyed.” That same tenacity to survive in 2007 is the same strength Mack now relies on. “It would have been easy for us to walk away and feel sorry for ourselves but we re-built. We re-named our company, Phoenix Mortgage Specialists, Inc. as a nod to the mythological bird, ‘The Phoenix,’ rising again from the ashes of the economic crisis.”
Phoenix specializes in helping the under-served and often rejected buyers. “I was unable to close with several other lenders, but Phoenix got it done,” says new homeowner Shanae Bowles. From his company’s inception, Mack has helped thousands of families, with credit scores as low as 620, secure the American Dream. “While major lenders are tightening their strings during Covid-19, we deal with smaller lenders who are willing to be more flexible,” he says.
For the second year in a row, Expertise.com has listed Phoenix Mortgage Specialists, Inc. as one of the Top 19 Mortgage Brokerage firms, out of 149, in the Atlanta area. Phoenix outpaced its competitors in all of the five major scoring categories.
Phoenix Mortgage Specialists is available to encourage small businesses to stay the course. “I am deeply proud to be among the 5% of Black owners in this industry,” says Mack, a husband, and father of four. “If little kids, particularly those who look like me, are inspired to work in this financial industry because of my work, then I am doing my part in society.”
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What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- What makes Phoenix Mortgage Specialists different from other brokers
- How Phoenix Mortgage is surviving during COVID-19
- Lessons Lu learned during the ’07 market crash
- Why it’s hard for African-Americans to break into the mortgage industry
- Lu’s mantra for good business practices
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