When I heard that two friends and highly successful businessmen—Tim Chermak and Mitchell Broderick—had launched a new venture called John Galt Mortgage Company, I immediately thought, Brilliant! But I didn’t realize then how brilliant their idea really is. They aim to simultaneously upend an industry and improve American culture by promoting rational philosophic ideas. Impossible, you say? Wait until you hear their idea. (What follows is an edited, condensed version of the conversation we had on my podcast, “Philosophy for Flourishing.” Listen to the full version here).
Hersey: One of the first things visitors to your site will see is this: “For purely selfish reasons, we want to save you as much money as possible so you tell your friends and family about us. That’s why we cap our profit on every mortgage and use the ‘leftover’ savings to help you qualify for a better interest rate.” Could you say a bit about your approach to business?
Tim Chermak: When you think back to some of the most successful entrepreneurs in American business history—Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Ford—they built products and services at price points that were major wins for consumers. Rockefeller brought the price of kerosene—the main source of light—down 80 percent for the average person. The narrative that businessmen are evil and built their riches by screwing people turns out to be totally false. If you spend even two minutes researching how these guys built their businesses, that becomes apparent. Vanderbilt, for instance, decided to go into the steamship business, which was the main method of transportation at the time. His competitors were cronies who had used political pull to get government-granted monopolies in certain areas. But he essentially said, “I don’t care if opening this company is technically illegal—I’m not going to follow these unjust laws. I’m just going to give consumers such a good deal that it becomes political suicide to oppose me.” And he became known as a people’s champion. You could almost call him a populist hero because he brought down the price of steamship travel so much. He is responsible, in the modern era at least, for the idea of a loss leader: He would sell a fare at cost or at a loss and then make money back on sales of concessions and the like. He realized that if you scale this, you can have lower profit margins but still make a ton of money by giving consumers a win-win deal that they would choose over competitors.
This is really what inspired us to launch John Galt Mortgage Company (JGMC). We saw an opportunity to apply this idea in the mortgage industry: Lower the margins and pass the savings on to customers. They win, and if we can attract enough customers, we win, too.
Hersey: One of the prominent subheads on your site is: “Finally, A Company That Doesn’t Hate American Values.” What values are those?
Mitchell Broderick: Tim and I were discussing launching this company in 2020, right before widespread government lockdowns. When those were implemented, we realized that American values such as liberty and personal responsibility were more eroded than we thought. It was kind of a punch in the gut. On top of that, there were (and still are) all these companies bragging about how many “diversity hires” they’ve made, or how much they’ve donated to climate change initiatives or “social justice” initiatives. They’re promoting all kinds of awful, corrosive ideas in attempts to curry favor. We think that changing the landscape requires creating parallel economic structures, meaning places where you can do business with people who don’t hate you or your ideas. We think it’s important that when people go to get a mortgage, they can work with a company that not only gives them a great deal but also helps perpetuate such values as entrepreneurialism, freedom, self-reliance.
Chermak: We don’t just tout these values, either; we run our company based on them. Most mortgage companies and real estate companies push whatever policies seem likely to make them the most money, even if it violates their supposed values. The name of our company comes from Ayn Rand, of course, from her novel Atlas Shrugged. But, more deeply, so does our view of values and integrity to those values. So, what does self-reliance mean with regard to a mortgage company? For instance, are we going to offer overly generous down payment assistance programs to help people buy homes—people who could not even save a couple thousand dollars on their own? No. That’s not in our best interest or theirs.
Hersey: Why did you choose to name your company after a character in Atlas Shrugged?
Broderick: Well, “John Galt” sounds like somebody who could own a mortgage company [laughs]. It really was in homage to Rand and the fundamental values at the base of this company. Tim and I connected over our shared love of Ayn Rand when we met in 2014. Of course, a small percentage of people will hear “John Galt Mortgage Company” and get the reference. Many of them are likely to say, “I have to work with them!” Another small percentage will say, “I would never work with that company.” But the vast majority will have no idea what the John Galt reference is. (In fact, as the president of the company, I get a lot of mail addressed to John Galt. That’s entertaining.) So, this is an opportunity for us to introduce those people to Rand’s ideas in a way that, hopefully, is intriguing. We want to plant a seed in people’s minds, because we think that if more people read Rand’s books, it will make the world a better place. I never discount how much reading one book could change the trajectory of someone’s life, because I’ve personally experienced it.
Hersey: Could you say more on that?
Broderick: I didn’t grow up in the most fortunate childhood situation. We were not well off. For instance, I lived in Michigan, and there was a winter when we couldn’t afford propane to heat our home. But I was always interested in ideas, and this wonderful teacher who got to know me a bit through coaching my speaking and debate team handed me Anthem. When I finished that, she handed me Atlas Shrugged. She said, “I think you’re going to really enjoy these books.” And, boy, was she right! The protagonists were so straightforward with one another, and they really modeled for me what love and respect look like. You don’t respect people if you’re not willing to be honest and upfront with them. The book also helped me to see how I could forge my own path. For instance, people told me I couldn’t make it in the world without a college degree. But I thought it through and concluded—to hell with that—and I never thought about it again.
So, I started applying the ideas immediately. My first job was at Taco Bell. If you see a teenager working the register at Taco Bell, you might expect him to be kind of shy, almost embarrassed, like he hopes you don’t see him. I was not that kid. I was proud of my job at Taco Bell. I would tell myself, as I had learned from Atlas, there’s no such thing as a lousy job, only lousy people who don’t care to do the work. I loved working at Taco Bell; I gave it my best, and I was easily among the top three or four employees at that location. Ever since, I have always applied that same thinking: I’m going to work, this is the work I have to do, and I’m going to learn whatever I can while I’m here. And I’m going to apply what I learn to whatever I do next. I internalized the view that I’m in charge of my life, and I don’t have to resign myself to the sort of conditions in which I was raised.
Hersey: When Googling your company, one of the first things people will see is a link to your site with the words, “Contradictions do not exist.” For those unfamiliar, why those words?
Chermak: In all our marketing, we want to leave these sort of Easter eggs or hints pointing back to Atlas Shrugged. If you’ve read the book, you’ll understand the references, but if you haven’t, you’ll probably think, “Contradictions don’t exist?” What does this have to do with mortgages? We want to get people asking those sorts of questions because, ultimately, we want to point people back to the book. If people Google “Who is John Galt?,” maybe they end up going to some other website that tells them about Atlas Shrugged or about Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. That’s awesome—that’s a win for us.
Broderick: The great thing about being John Galt Mortgage Company is that all our ad dollars—every ad that we create—goes toward advancing our values, whether by gaining us customers or simply by getting Rand’s ideas in front of more people. In fact, most of the people who see our ads probably won’t be in the market for a mortgage at that exact moment. But perhaps we’ll introduce them to ideas that change their lives, and if so, then when they are in the market for a mortgage, perhaps they’ll remember us.
Chermak: Our ten-year goal is to have a Superbowl commercial. We’re aiming for that level of brand awareness. This is not going to be some tiny, niche mortgage shop that no one has heard of. We want to make it a household name. Long term, we’re thinking about opening a chartered bank offering a wider array of financial services. More short term, we’d like to send copies of Atlas to everyone who fills out an application and is pre-approved for a mortgage with us. People will get this thousand-plus page book in the mail from a mortgage company and think, what on Earth? And, of course, the larger our company becomes, the more we can get these ideas out into the world. That’s an incredibly motivating mission for Mitch and me and the entire JGMC team. Going back to your earlier question, the reason we started this company and named it after John Galt is that we zoomed out and imagined fast-forwarding twenty-five years into the future. Let’s say that we become very wealthy—we’ve achieved our wildest financial dreams. What a lot of us would probably do is invest much of our money back into organizations that we care about, that we think are promoting our values. But why have this split between making money and using it to advance our values? Couldn’t we build a company that checks both boxes? That’s what we’re doing.
Hersey: Wow, a John Galt Mortgage Superbowl ad? That’s incredibly exciting. I think I speak for many of our readers when I say: I wish you massive success! Thanks for taking the time to share what you are doing. I’m sure many will be inspired by this integrated view of what a business can be.
Chermak and Broderick: Thank you, Jon.
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