
Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel podcast, host Michelle Kesil interviews Dominic Licata, a veteran in the mortgage industry who focuses on helping fellow veterans navigate real estate and financial opportunities. Dominic shares his journey from military service to the mortgage sector, emphasizing the importance of community support, the challenges faced in the industry, and his commitment to addressing veteran homelessness. He discusses the role of AI in scaling his business and the significance of building genuine relationships in the real estate space.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Michelle Kesil (00:01.134)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kessel. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Dominic Licata, who’s been making serious moves in the real estate mortgage veteran space, areas. Glad to have you here, Dominic.
Dominic Licata (00:21.268)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I’m really excited to be here. This is something I set up a couple of weeks ago just to kind of, of course it would do that right at this time.
Michelle Kesil (00:33.304)
Hello.
Dominic Licata (00:35.28)
I have you back. I got you back.
Dominic Licata (00:40.832)
Can you hear me? I can hear you now, yes. Okay, so yeah, no, I saw this come across my Instagram feed and I was really excited because I felt like it aligned perfectly with what I was trying to do with my business. I felt like it was a great supplement for what we’re trying to do and where I’m at. So let’s do this.
Michelle Kesil (00:42.808)
Can you hear me? Okay.
Michelle Kesil (01:01.142)
Yeah, amazing. So let’s just dive in. First off, for people that may not be familiar with you and your world, just give us the short version of what your main focus is these days.
Dominic Licata (01:10.831)
Sure. Yeah. So my main focus these days, and I was kind of like Sam, I’m a United States Marine. served from 1996 to 2000. I got called back to active duty and served in the National Guard after 2000 until 2003. And then from 2003, I stumbled into the mortgage industry. Don’t know how that correlated, but it did. And I’ve been in the wholesale channel predominantly. left, worked at United Wholesale Mortgage from 2012 to 17.
Moved to Arizona for a couple years, started an inside wholesale model out there, and then went over to Rocket. Worked at Rocket for about five years, was a business development person who traveled around the country. if you guys are in the wholesale channel mortgage industry, you may have seen me walk into your office at some point in time or another, but it’s been about nine months. I work with my wife. She’s over at Secured Choice Lending. She is a DBA for Lux Lending.
that’s hers. And then I’m focusing on commercial real estate, but predominantly working with the veteran community in order to A, bring them back to a God, faith. It’s a faith based focus along with teaching them how to use their VA home loan benefit in order to create wealth for themselves, which is what I did. So there’s some things I would have done a little differently. I’d like to at least point those things out to them, teach them along the way and, you know, see what we can do for them.
Michelle Kesil (02:32.362)
Amazing. And what markets are you operating in?
Dominic Licata (02:36.308)
Whew. I mean, we can operate in just about any market right now. think my I’m licensed in eight different states. My wife is licensed, I think in another seven or eight at secure choice. They’re 42. The reason why we like the platform is they were already licensed in 42 states. So we’re trying to we’re trying to do a national footprint with our with our podcast. Right. We don’t want to just be limited. Obviously, we’re going to focus on the top 10 states for the veteran community.
California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, along the East Coast, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Those all fall into the bucket that we’re looking for. But if you’re outside of those, we can definitely cater to you or find a way to point you in the right direction or help you out in some way, shape, form.
Michelle Kesil (03:22.326)
Love that. So what caught my attention about you is the way that you’ve really been able to scale on such a large level as well as like offering your service to those that are veterans or are just starting out in their journey. And that’s not easy. What has been like the key to running that smoothly?
Dominic Licata (03:40.608)
Mm-hmm.
Dominic Licata (03:45.632)
I have a good support group of people behind me in the podcast community, right? So Adam Bird is the CEO and owner of Heroes Media Group and he’s brought me into a couple mastermind groups of veteran focused communities that I’m the only real estate person. So I get to bring my real estate knowledge into the veteran community, but they get to teach me a lot of the other things that are there.
like how to actually use AI for my benefit in order to make things scalable or bring things up so that I’m taking the time to read what people are saying to me instead of, I found myself really scattered for the first three months and using AI in order to drive things together from the help of some of other veterans that I’m working with has helped tremendously. Not even just the resources, some of the…
What are they? Like the, I can’t remember. There was a very specific word, just somebody that they’re referring to me, there are some, there are some, gosh, what is it called? You’re going to have to help me here. Relationships. Some of the relationships that these gentlemen have outside of their group of people have done a really good job of putting me in front of people that maybe I wouldn’t have thought to talk to. And that’s what’s helped me out.
Michelle Kesil (05:00.182)
What are you trying to get?
Dominic Licata (05:13.96)
more than anything, that’s what’s made this scalable, to be able to have those conversations with people instead of the guys that have done mortgages on a day-to-day basis, but the people that have not done mortgages at all. So when I talk mortgage to them, like, dude, I have no clue what you’re saying, but here’s what I can tell you in order to make your business a little more scalable, or here’s what I can do so that you can hit a broader spectrum of people.
Michelle Kesil (05:34.796)
Yeah, amazing. Now, every operator I know also had a moment where things got real. Maybe a deal went sideways or you had to pivot fast. Would you mind sharing a moment like that for you?
Dominic Licata (05:36.638)
Yeah.
Dominic Licata (05:44.991)
Mm-hmm.
Dominic Licata (05:48.772)
you know, they, happen so often in the, in the mortgage industry and, know, being that I served in the military for as long as I did, I think that that controlled chaos has always helped me. when they talk about buying a house is one of the most, the, one of the five most stressful things that you can do along with death of a loved one and losing a job, right? I don’t know how they all correlate or they all fall into the same bucket, but they’re all stressful and they all do.
that allowed me to identify like, look, if I could survive in a chaos environment, either from training or from experience in the military, specifically in the Marine Corps, then I can at least understand like how to keep people focused on what’s important. Right. And sometimes I have to take that even for my own personal growth and personal knowledge in life. What I, what I find is that when things go sideways or when things go off the hinges, because it happens so often.
to take a deep breath, focus on what’s important, looking for a solution, whether it’s like for, for example, I’ll tell you the, the, have, we do a lot of fix and flips. And one of the guys that we were doing a fix and flip for his name is Tori. And Tori was looking to purchase the house up in the Michigan, up in the Northern part of Michigan up here. And the listing agent did a terrible job of showing us that the house or listing the house, they did it as a single family. we asked a couple of questions and it ended up being a manufactured home. Right. In fact,
Because it was a manufactured home. Everyone’s like, just get the HUD tag. How did you not know this? Well, they ripped the HUD tag off and they ripped everything out to make it look like, well, it’s a fixed. It’s real property now. And I was like, it doesn’t matter. still on. still on. Still got a chassis down the middle. It’s still a manufactured home, regardless of what you you rip the HUD tag off or not. Right. And a lot of people would have given up on that deal. A lot of people would have thrown it out halfway through it. And we talked to the buyer.
of what was exactly needed. And he actually broke into the house and because it was a just a vacant empty house, he went and broke in it. And I probably should have said that, but, and, found the necessary document that was in the inside the house in order to, don’t know if it was a hud tag or whatever my wife was handling it at that point in time to get the information that was needed for us to go back through and get the documentation provided from one of the agencies that updates it and says, yes, this is prior to it hasn’t been moved.
Dominic Licata (08:15.934)
It gives you the sale of it, that it was delivered to that location. So we were able to close. think the file it’s actually closing tomorrow, which is really exciting, right? It’s been about two months since the time he signed on the contract, maybe 45 days, we had to get an extension, but we were able to work through it and find a solution to a problem. My wife is super good at that. And I try to, I try to give different opinions or different ideas or thoughts to how we can make those things work.
We had another gentleman who was looking to purchase and when he was looking to purchase, he had not filed tax returns. And he said, well, he’s got a W-2 job now. Why hasn’t he filed tax returns? Let’s get him to file tax returns. You know, can write him down to zero, right? You don’t need to show his income. It’s not a big deal. We had a CPA go and talk to him. They looked at his income. I think he had to pay a little bit in taxes, but it wasn’t that big of a deal.
and they were able to get him set and ready so that he was now qualified to purchase. He’s under contract currently today. So trying to find those solutions and those ideas or concepts in order to get a deal closed is really what my wife and I are super good at. I’ll hand a lot, like I said, I always hand those residential mortgages off to her. I’m trying to transition my business to the commercial and I’m trying to help the veteran community more and more identify those opportunities. So the veteran community.
Right, we talk about the four units and that’s where it gets a little crazy, right? How do they qualify for a four unit if they’ve never had the experience to do property management or don’t have a property management team? And that’s where we step in and we’ve got those things built out for them.
Michelle Kesil (09:51.136)
Yeah, that’s great. And the stuff that people don’t talk about enough. And yeah, it’s like
Dominic Licata (09:55.102)
Right? But you know, I feel like people don’t talk about it enough because they like hide it, right? And that’s the one. And that’s the thing that really kills me about the mortgage industry is like, especially in the commercial space, they’re like, people like have this little book and they just do this like, you know, it’s like, OK, so what investors do you work? I don’t know. What do mean you don’t know? Like, why you can’t tell me what investors you work with? And it’s and I understand because it’s not regulated the same way that the mortgage industry is right.
There’s no NMLS tracking, so you don’t know who has the deal, but people have a way to get a paycheck and then not pay it on a deal. It’s kind of crazy that it works that way. You would think that that would be more regulated because it is business and commercial focused, but it is what it is. So that’s something that I try to share as much knowledge and information as I can, maybe to a fault.
Maybe I get caught out of deals or whatever, but I feel like if I’m doing the right thing, if I’m being honest that the world will come back. It always does. Right. The karma always comes back. God always blesses me. I live in a beautiful home. I’ve got a beautiful family. And that’s because I feel like because I’ve been doing the right thing for so long.
Michelle Kesil (11:05.74)
Yeah, that’s really important. So let me ask you this. What are you most focused on solving or scaling next? Like what is that next real goal for you?
Dominic Licata (11:16.32)
So I thought I knew that a month ago, but no, it is the veteran community, right? I felt like I was going to teach veterans how to create wealth using their VA home loan benefit, and we’d get to the homelessness later, right? And I feel like God has just kind of dropped that in my lap. He’s like, nope, you’re going to deal with this now. We’re going to figure this out now because it’s such a big problem, right? We’ve got over 50, I think it’s like 48,000 or 50,000 veterans that are known.
to be homeless in the United States. That doesn’t mean that there’s only 50,000 homeless veterans. mean, as I traveled for Rocket for the last two years, it was breaking my heart. Every single time I’d go to these cities and I’d see these homeless veterans and I only have so much money I can give out. In fact, I was getting to a point where I didn’t have any more money because the mortgage industry was so slow. I just couldn’t keep, you know, I couldn’t keep up doing what I was doing. instead of saying somebody needs to do something about this, I was like, I’m going to do something about this. And it’s happened a lot faster than I anticipated.
but the scalability part of it is moving more towards like a mastermind group for myself that will include people that can help in different communities. So we would like to focus on three different communities right now. The communities are Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, Jacksonville, Florida, and Detroit, Michigan. Well, Phoenix, Arizona, because we’ve got a place out there. There’s a lot of veterans that moved there for one reason or another. It’s a great retirement community for them. I’ve got a group that is receiving,
veterans directly from the VA and looking for housing for them. And they’re currently struggling in order to find beds for these veterans. So we’re looking at teaching some of the veterans that are currently in their program, how to become qualified. If we have somebody who wants to raise their hand and say, hey, I’d love to go and buy a four unit property out there. You know, I know I can qualify or whatever the case is, we’d work with them. Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville has actually reached out to this group. We’ve identified a couple of people, realtors.
contractors, people that want to help build or rehab homes in that market right now in order to find affordable housing or just housing for veterans that are looking for a place, right? The homeless veterans, the community, so homeless veterans doesn’t mean that they’re not bringing any income in, right? A lot of these guys are on disability. They receive disability income. We’ve got guys that are getting $4,000 a month tax free disability, but they can’t, their credit’s messed up.
Dominic Licata (13:36.024)
mentally not in a position to be able to sign a contract for an extended period of time for one reason or another. We just need to help them, right? And that’s where that community piece comes in. As I left the military, I lost my direction, purpose and community. If we can create the community, then we can bring that direction and purpose back to them, along with being faith based, right? That’s where I, that’s where, that’s what it came down to for me. And then Detroit, I live in Detroit.
about a 45 minutes north of Detroit in a city called Clarkston, just down the street from United Wholesale Mortgage and Rocket. So I know a lot of people in the mortgage industry here, which then in turn creates a big family or community to help support it and lots of opportunities here. So if you are in the residential space, United Wholesale Mortgage is in Pontiac, Michigan. There’s a huge opportunity in Pontiac. I wanna start doing these right on the street. Like, hey, look.
Why not have a renaissance or a rebirth of a city on the back of the veteran community? Right? Like how awesome would that be? And I think that that’s a great place to start and each, any one of those three. So that’s where it’s becoming scalable from a three city operation from there. You know, it can grow as it can grow really fast. I think, I mean, I really think we could do a thousand units, uh, within the first nine months. Once this picks up, uh,
the mastermind group with Adam Bird, who’s the one who’s helped me out from the Heroes Media Group. You know, it gets back to the database, right? Because I’ve worked for these large corporations, my database isn’t what it should be. I can go through my phone. There’s 1200 names on my phone of people that I actually talked to or have spoken with, or I can go to my LinkedIn. LinkedIn seems to be okay. I think I have like eight or 9000 people on LinkedIn. And most of those people, I’m pretty like, I don’t like to just accept people just to accept people when they send me a friend request. Like if I don’t
If I don’t see some type of value add, I don’t just accept it. And I definitely don’t go out and just add, add, add, add. Maybe I should. I know people that have found success with that, but I’d like to kind of keep it to where, you know, I know who I’m working with in that respect. It’s good for a small group, but it doesn’t allow me to expand outside of that.
Michelle Kesil (15:49.568)
Yeah, yeah, that’s big. And I know a lot of people listening to this are either earlier in their journey or just looking to level up. And I know you just touched on this a bit, but I would love to hear more about when it comes to relationship building and growing your network, what has made the biggest difference for you.
Dominic Licata (15:59.125)
Mm-hmm.
Dominic Licata (16:07.712)
Mm-hmm.
Dominic Licata (16:12.544)
So I genuinely love finance and mortgage and housing. My grandmother was a realtor when I was growing up down in Naples, Florida. So I got to see some really cool properties, whether they overlook the Gulf of Mexico or we’re on a really prestigious golf course, like Pelican Bay Vineyards down in Naples. So I’ve always been kind of drawn to it, but I never understood like the whole selling of real estate. Like I was…
She was more of like a specific community and would sell it in that community and then move to the next community, which seemed to be how it was back then in those markets. What I found was, I really enjoyed the financing aspect of it because it’s, like a game, right? The game is numbers and still guidelines, but not guidelines like, like an attorney, just enough to kind of like understand what you got to do to get the deal done. And growing up with attorneys, my dad’s an attorney, my stepmom’s an attorney. In fact, my wife’s dad is an attorney. She’s got a sister who’s a public.
a county prosecutor. So I’m surrounded by attorneys all the time. And I understand how like the legal aspect of things work, but it wasn’t for me. And the schooling behind that was not doing it. I barely got through. I didn’t even get through college fully. Right. I think I was excited that I got called back to active duty after 9 11, just so I didn’t have to finish school. But, it is what it is. But the reason why I am able to keep my network
fight and bring people in is because I’m passionate and genuine about it. And I love to help people. So when I first got out of the military, I struggled with PTSD and everything was out of resentment, anger. I’ll show you, you’re not going to prove me wrong. I’m to be able to do this better than you like competitive. And what I’ve learned is that I also found that when I was helping people, I, had this sense of like fulfillment that I really enjoyed. And I was like, you know what?
I really enjoy helping people. I enjoy watching people around me become successful. And I always thought about like the whole McDonald’s Ray Kroc, right? He made 10 millionaires before he became a millionaire himself type thing. Well, I probably made a hundred people millionaires before I ever crossed the millionaire market. Now I might’ve dipped below it, but you know, but it’s cyclical, right? Like at least I know how to make money in this industry. People have always known that they can call me for specific things, especially in the veteran community, whether it’s for a guideline, advice, encouragement.
Dominic Licata (18:36.126)
And I’m there for them. And sometimes I’m there a little too much, right? Because we talked about surrounding yourself with the right people. And what I find is that I surround myself where I’m giving too much of myself up and I’m not getting any type of support in return. And sometimes I need to be supported the right way. Sometimes I need to be encouraged or have somebody that I can turn to. So when you, you know, circle this back, this is where my network and database needs a little bit more improving.
The people that I used to look to are now getting out of the industry, right? I’ve been in for 22 years now. I got it in 2003. So the people that were my mentors are now, are now getting out of the industry. And I don’t really have like somebody that I can really lean into for that support or that growth or encouragement or insight. I mean, it becomes harder and harder as we get older where people, you got a bigger group of people looking to you and you’re the group that you look to has become smaller and smaller.
Michelle Kesil (19:34.774)
Yeah, that’s really important. Relationships are everything in this space.
Dominic Licata (19:39.424)
Truly. Otherwise AI will just stay there. If relationships weren’t important, AI wouldn’t be a thing, right? Like we wouldn’t have people like worried about what AI is going to do to us and how it’s going to eliminate jobs and where it’s going to affect our industry and you know, this, that, and the other. And having worked for some of the bigger, you know, bigger companies like Rocket, I can see where there, there will be an elimination of positions. Now I’m not saying there’s an elimination of jobs because computers are going to do what computers do and humans are going to do what humans do. But that relationship piece is the most important thing.
You’ve got to be able to understand, communicate and identify those relationships because that’s going to be the thing that keeps us and bonded in time together.
Michelle Kesil (20:17.634)
Yeah, absolutely. All right, before we wrap up, if someone wants to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate, or just learn more, what’s the best way for them to reach you?
Dominic Licata (20:24.254)
Yeah. Yep. The best way is always faithvalorgrowth.com. F-A-I-T-H-V-A-L-O-R-G-R-O-W-T-H.com. And that’s the handle for everything. So we have an Instagram handle, TikTok handle. We also do YouTube, right? We’re just starting to, I think we just started launching the YouTube about four or five months ago. So doesn’t have a lot of subscribers, but it’s starting to pick up on views. I’ve noticed that it was going from like,
30 to 40 views up to like 120 to 140 views over the past month. So that’s exciting, right? We’re starting to see a little bit of growth in that respect, but always faithvalorgrowth.com is gonna be that main piece. If you wanna apply for an application, you can actually apply for an application there, right? Everything falls onto that page. That’s like that hub. And I’ll say this too. if you’re working, if you’re talking, so,
Michelle Kesil (21:14.296)
Perfect. Listen, I appreciate it. Yeah.
Dominic Licata (21:22.11)
What I don’t want faith value growth to come across as is just something that we teach veterans. I think I use it in this to say, look, this is because it’s the real estate and we’re working in the real estate industry. This is what it’s here for because this is what I know. But we’re creating a platform that allows people to apply for disability or reach out for help for counseling or
posthumous family support, right? Like these are all things that are going to be part of faith valid growth. Some of those things are on there now. We do have those resources. We do have an attorney that we work alongside with the disability law group over here in Troy, Michigan, that allows us to at least get them in front of somebody that’s going to give them the right advice, whether they’ve applied for disability or not. There’s, you got to find a starting point, right?
And we, and the VA is so bureaucratic and so difficult to work with sometimes. Now they do the best they can, right? And the best they can is probably a 70 to 80 % success rate. But when we’re talking about people’s lives and livelihoods, that’s a horrible success rate. Like that’s like a C, B minus, right? We’ll talk C minus B minus. Like that’s a fail. I don’t know how anybody ever thought that you could give grades at a C average and think that that was okay. C’s get degrees, so do D’s. I understand that, but.
What it really comes down to is when you’re talking about life, you need to be at 99%, right? You really should be at 100%, but let’s face it, like you can’t do it every single time, but you gotta be close to that 100 % as close as you can be.
Michelle Kesil (22:56.076)
Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. We really need more people in this space who are doing things in this innovative way. So thank you for being here.
Dominic Licata (22:57.214)
Yeah.
Thank you, Michelle. Yeah.
Dominic Licata (23:09.4)
Yes. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Like I said, if anybody wants to reach out or a veteran wants to reach out, faithvellergrowth.com, at any respect, any walk of life, we’d love to at least point you in the right direction. If you’re in the mortgage industry and you’re looking for an opportunity to work in this space or you have some knowledge or you want to tie in or partner up and you bring something to the table, I would love to have a conversation with you as well. I’m looking for the right people to surround myself with.
I promise you we would bring a lot of knowledge and lot of experience and a lot of opportunity with us as well.
Michelle Kesil (23:44.224)
Awesome. So for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got plenty of more conversations coming up with operators just like Dominic who are out there building real businesses and we’ll see you all on the next episode.
Dominic Licata (24:01.792)
Awesome.