Less ego, more collaboration, more success

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For ACC Mortgage’s Robert Senko, confidence, not ego, breeds success

THERE'S BEING confident – and then there’s being egotistical. For Robert Senko, there is a big difference beyond the dictionary definitions. You can be confident, but a real leader knows when to ask for help. Or ask questions. Or defer when necessary. “When I talk about confidence versus ego, to me the confidence piece comes from saying, ‘I don’t know everything. There’s something I don’t know, and I should seek out expertise,’ says Senko, president of ACC (All Credit Considered) Mortgage in Rockville, Maryland. “With ego, a lot of people say, ‘I’m an expert. I know everything. Nobody can tell me anything.’ And if I don’t know, I’m going to badmouth the alternative because people don’t want to say they don’t know something.” For Senko, this type of attitude “creates a lot of problems … the desire to be right drives a lot of arguments, personal and professional.”

ACC (All Credit Considered) Mortgage is celebrating 24 years of service this year. Operating in more than 25 states across the country, they operate on simple principles – superior service, a complete financial review, and bettering the financial position of the borrower and the community. This has led them to close billions of dollars in loans over the years. They take pride in closing loans that no one else can, based on their philosophy, their experienced and service-oriented employees, and their commitment to their customers and mortgage professional partners. At ACC, commitment to the customer comes first.

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Thinkers/Writers Senko Follows/Reads

Ray Dalio

“The CEOs who think they know everything are the ones who are doomed to fail”

Robert Senko, ACC Mortgage

He sees his company as “a tool that originators can use to find that solution, to say, ‘Hey, I don’t know something.’” He adds that “the culture at ACC is a very open, collaborative type of approach. And the same boils down to how we work on loans.” He has sympathy for “originators” who can get “frustrated with the process,” because they have been used to doing business in a certain way for decades. “Well, you’ve been doing Fannie Mae lending – you’ve been letting a computer make the decisions for you,” he says. On his side of the mortgage industry, he encourages them to let “the experts guide them [to a] better solution.” He compares it to the difference between PCs and Macs. Both are computers, yes, but “they operate totally differently."

He adds that “brokers have gotten more familiar and comfortable with non-QM over the last couple of years, but we have a long way to go.” While his company will be celebrating 24 years in business this year, and he has accumulated a lot of experience in that time, he jokes that “I don’t need to be the smartest person at the company. In fact, if I am, then it’s not a very good company, because I’m not very smart!” But jokes aside, he says, “If I have smart people I surround myself with, who give me informed

answers and informed opinions, then I can discern that information and make the best decisions … the CEOs who think they know everything are the ones who are doomed to fail.” Fear of failure is real when the livelihood of employees may hang in the balance. But then again, businesses should not be afraid of failure. “In fact, it’s best when I am wrong,” Senko says with confidence. “Because that makes me question. Let’s take the data points and reflect on that. What did I miss?” In fact, some of his biggest decisions have been made when he was not 100 percent sold on an idea. “Trusting my staff, we’ve implemented strategies that maybe I wasn’t fully in agreement with, but I listened to our team,” he says.

One example of this looms large, and put his company ahead of the curve before the pandemic hit in 2020. He admits that he can be “old school,” and he liked the idea of having all of his staff on-site. His then-new director of operations was pushing for more employees to work remotely from home. “Finally, I relented. I didn’t say yes right away. But I listened,” he says. The remote working plan came online in 2019, and “that’s why we were able to survive through COVID. A lot of companies were flat-footed – they weren’t prepared. They didn’t have a strategy.” As for ACC, “that’s part of our longevity, to find solutions.” As he looks around America today, “nobody’s willing to come together,” he says of the increased polarization. But even in this time of increased political and cultural conflict, Senko does not lose sight of where his more collaborative approach began.

“I learned quickly that you have got to check your ego”

Robert Senko, ACC Mortgage

He started off about 30 years ago in the mortgage industry. “I was new, and I certainly didn’t know anything,” he says. He was working for a non-traditional lender, but he was “frustrated.” He was 25, and says, “I always knew I had an entrepreneurial spirit.” Two weeks before his twenty-sixth birthday, he was driving to a beach and had “an epiphany, a true lightbulb moment: the only real solution is for me to

become self-employed .” At his job at the time, he had a boss who was “very dogmatic. It was his way. He didn’t know how to really manage me effectively, use my skill set.” In that job, “I didn’t have that direct impact.” He struck out on his own, and “I learned quickly that you have got to check your ego.” Senko remembers his parents coming home from a hard day at work, complaining for 40 minutes about bosses and managers. “Well, [I figured] if I become self-employed, then I can only blame myself,” he says. “My success will be my own.” As he created his company culture, he also realized that “you get more from the collective than you do individually. I learned that early on. That’s where I improved myself, and the company grew. So I see those things that seem natural to me, but aren’t natural to others. Some days I feel like a preacher, like a coach – like a mortgage originator.”

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