When talking about Thomas Standen, the CEO of Note Servicing Center, it is important to add the Roman Numeral four after his name – after all, this name has been in his family for generations. This distinction, however, carries over into his day-to-day responsibilities as the chief of the California-based loan servicing company: the company started by his grandfather.

“During the late 70s and early 80s interest rates were very high and real estate wasn’t moving,” Standen said. “My grandfather took his law enforcement background and learned the rules and regulations of loan origination. He began originating the loans for the seller carry-back transaction and noticed many clients said they didn’t know what they were doing.”

The advent of personal computing certainly behooved Standen’s grandfather, as he created a loan servicing software – or according to Standen, the “precursor” to a servicing software, contained on a Microsoft Excel-esque five-inch floppy disk. This entrepreneurial venture kickstarted what would become Note Servicing Center.

Note Servicing Center was officially established in 1984, and Standen’s grandfather served as the President and CEO until 2015. Before his death, however, Thomas said his career trajectory would change in an unlikely venue – a family party.

“In 2003 my grandparents invited everyone over for a party – and when I say everyone, I mean everyone. All four sons, their wives, and 16 grandchildren,” Standen said, laughing. “My grandfather told the family frankly, ‘look, I’m getting old and this is becoming difficult. Does anyone want to learn how to take over?’ And in 2014, I was elected CEO.”

Over a decade before stepping into the role of chief, however, Standen learned the ins and outs of real estate lending from his grandparents. Five years into this new venture, the financial crisis of 2008 nearly erased the blossoming company from existence.

“Everything that had been happening in the real estate space culminated together to create what we saw in 2007-8,” Standen said. “All of us came together and I was told ‘hey, we think of you as an owner now, so how are we going to move forward?’ The options for us were to close up shop, file for bankruptcy, or push through – we chose the latter.”

This was not the only tumultuous aspect of Note Servicing Center during this time, however. In 2009, Standen learned that his grandfather had been diagnosed with cancer. When recalling this time in his career, Thomas said it was incredibly difficult at times – but in some respects, the goals of the company were never simpler.

“When we were faced with this crash and my grandfather’s illness, the only clear thing to do was move forward,” Standen said. “So we did exactly that, and pushed forward. We went from onboarding 250 loans in 2006 to around 1,000 a year now. At one point a few years back we were processing 300 a week. It will be five years now in January since my grandfather passed away, he would been so proud to see this growth.”

Despite the loss of the company’s founder, Standen said the business has never been stronger, and added that he continuously injects his grandfather’s can-do attitude into Note Servicing Center’s mantra.

“It was very sad. You learn to push through and take care of things,” he said. “Because my grandparents came into the business from a real estate background, they were in-tune with the human interaction aspect that is so important. Although that remains important today and the majority of my staff is customer serviced-based, we automate the processes that can be automated; that has allowed us to crank our operations up to places we never thought we could be.”

This “cranking,” Standen said, included the automation of simple services like letting lenders know when borrowers made a payment, or conversely, when a payment was late. This, he said, allowed his team to free up time securing new deals – time that would otherwise be allocated towards working the phones all day. Although automating these processes may seem like a no-brainer today, he added, this sort of thinking wasn’t always the case.

“With some clients, this automation took some getting used to,” Standen said. “You never want to make people feel like you’re getting rid of the human component of the business. But when they can see payment details in real-time, that kind of becomes a game-changer.”

Although Standen said becoming acclimated to the real estate and loan servicing worlds was an arduous process, he added that he learned the value of a hard day’s work at a very young age.

“If there’s a job out there I’ve had it,” he said. “I started working when I was 11, mowing acres of fields with my uncle. I worked with my father, who was a heavy equipment operator. I’ve done wood cutting, yard maintenance – as I got older I worked as a dishwasher, waiter, and firefighter. And keep in mind this was all before I was 22. If you look at the work history I had, I was never the type of person to come into an office and sit behind a computer.”

Far-removed from Standen’s wood-splitting days of yore, he said the mental fortitude required to learn aspects of the loan servicing world rivaled the physical labor and long days he was used to.

“I had to learn how to work the phones, perform math computations on a large scale, and soak up the regulations of the business,” he said. “It is such a fast-paced environment and you have to keep up with the questions that are being fired at you. And you also have to keep in mind that if you miss something – even if it’s something that seems small – we could be out of business. But no pressure though! Many of these problems I was able to solve by working with my colleagues in my MBA program.”

When taking the helm of Note Servicing Center, Standen also said it was important to keep shifting markets – and the dissemination of emerging technology – in mind.

“A while back a lot of our marketing efforts were focused on the note purchasing space, or the secondary market,” he said. “My grandfather worked a lot in that space, purchasing seller finance notes after they had been originated and things like that. After the 2008 crash, a lot of those guys were unfortunately wiped out…when we saw an uptick in private money after that, we focused our attention in that space.”

Automation may be one of the pros of technology entering the loan servicing space, but Standen said there have been a number of headaches as well – this includes an instance in 2009, during a change in software at Note Servicing Center, where the company’s email distribution system stopped working.

“We had one of those 4’ x 8’ whiteboards and filled the entire thing up with problems we were experiencing,” Standen said. “There were issues that needed to be fixed, bugs that needed to be ironed out, practically every problem you could think of. We ironed out those bugs, did what needed to be done, and moved forward.”

Not all of the distractions throughout Standen’s pre-CEO days were negative, however. In 2002 he married his longtime girlfriend, and in 2006 they had their first child. Thomas said that due to the often chaotic nature of his work, he and his wife joked that “couples who didn’t know each other as well as we did would not have made it.”

“I joked with her, saying ‘you’re never going to shake me,’” he said laughing. “I chased her all throughout high school and we dated for five years before she said yes to marrying me.”

Looking forward, Standen said Note Servicing Company – which now has more than a dozen employees – plans on smoothing out current processes and incorporating tools to grow the business even more. Although he said it can often be difficult to “predict” where the loan servicing space is moving, some of the processes he plans on incorporating go back over a decade when he was finishing his MBA.

“I remember sitting in one class and discussing bottlenecks in not only our field, but any business,” he said. “The lecturer said that as a business owner, you are always going to have bottlenecks. Once you clear one up, there is always going to be something else slowing you down. What I try to do here is pre-answer client questions and make sure that we are trying our best to move forward.”

In addition to clearing up bottlenecks, Standen also said it is crucial to check in with customers, ensuring that stakeholders are comfortable with and knowledgeable of the services offered.

“It’s technology, it’s customer relationships, it’s compiling more hard money brokers,” he said. “I hope we can bridge that gap from the people who think they don’t need this service, that they can do this all themselves. People in my position – in the position of owning a servicing company – are there to take their lenders, take their loans, and walk them through different processes.”

Thinking back to the lessons he learned from his grandfather, Standen said he often heard about the importance of loan servicing’s “minutia,” or the minute details loan servicers are required to obsess over.

“Attention to detail is crucial,” Standen said. “I’m hoping you can hear the passion I have for this, the passion that was instilled in me. It may seem a little weird to be this passionate about loan servicing, but that’s what I live every day.”

More poignant than the business side of things, however, is Standen’s commitment to family. One day while sitting at his desk, Thomas’ grandfather told him he suffered a stroke in 1997 – although he was only gone for a few short months, the business world moved on.

“My grandfather said at the end of the day, your family is who will check in on you, who will ask if you are okay,” Standen said. “In our office, even though all of our employees aren’t blood related, it feels like a family. I believe the furthest anyone has to drive to work is 15 miles – if there is a school event, a sport event, or some sort of problem that pops up, being close to home is important.”

This importance became all too real for the company’s customer service manager a few years ago – after receiving a frantic phone call, she rushed home to discover a fire at her house. Luckily everyone was okay, but Standen said it is hard to forget the fear that was on her face.

“The bottom line is surrounding yourself with people you can trust like family,” Standen said. “The rest will fall into place.”

For more information on loan servicing and the Note Servicing Center – as well as the company’s other services – visit https://noteservicingcenter.com/