
When asked how he got into the mortgage business, Anthony Shay replies, "Like the rest of us, by mistake." In his youth, he installed stereo systems in the California city of Garden Grove. The kid wanted to find another job, and on the advice of one of his baseball teammates, he went to an interview with a small mortgage company. He was immediately hired as a credit specialist. The employer forced him to use his own money to order business cards and pay up front for the use of a photocopier. “I left in a happy mood because someone hired me for a job, but I had some kind of strange feeling because I had to pay for it right away,” the entrepreneur recalls. He was then 21 years old.