Founder leads Tampa mortgage firm to hit five-year mark, now in four states

There may be no better way to learn perseverance than selling door to door on Long Island.

Just ask Ryan Kearns.

Photo by Mark Wemple

He is the founder and broker-owner of the Kearns Mortgage Team in Tampa. He got his start in finance after spending a summer back home on Long Island, New York selling alarm systems door-to-door.

Kearns was 26 then. He took the job because there wasn’t much opportunity at the time and he needed the work.

If you have ever been to Long Island, you probably get a sense of how it went. If you haven’t, let’s just say, it’s a tough crowd.

Kearns says he and others on the sales team were dropped off in neighborhoods in the morning then spent long days with doors being slammed in their faces, getting cursed at. (There were plenty of kind people too, he says, but they didn’t make quite the impression.)

“It was a wild experience,” he says. “But I credit that with showing what I truly can do. What I was capable of doing. I was like, if I can do that, I can do a lot of things.”

And “a lot of things” is just what he’s done.

After returning to Florida, he went to work as a commercial finance broker, dealing with working capital loans, business loans and working on SBA loans.

Kearns eventually went out on his own and one day was asked if he could “do a mortgage.”

“I'm like, ‘Sure, that sounds great,’” he says.

“I didn’t know what a mortgage was, aside from you need that money to buy a house. I didn’t know what details went into that or anything. I think back to some of those conversations I had and just laugh at some of the emails that I sent. I didn’t know what debt to income was.”

He figured out those basics and in 2021 founded his company. In the five years since starting the independent mortgage brokerage, it has grown from a solo operation into business operating in four states: Florida, Georgia, Texas and Alabama. He declines to disclose specific revenue figures. 

While hard work had much to do with the success he’s found, Kearns also credits mentor Christine Beckwith with helping get the company to where it is.

Beckwith taught him “the business side” and how to use struggles he’s faced in life for good. “She helped me replace hustle with strategy and build my business around clear priorities and a long-term vision,” he writes in a questionnaire.

And, to be fair, the lessons learned knocking on hundreds of a strangers’ doors on hot summer days in Long Island haven’t hurt.