While Brian Jessen says he did not originally plan to go into the mortgage business, it ended up being the perfect career for him. “I was going to become an investment banker, and when the stock market crashed in 1987, those career opportunities evaporated,” says Jessen, who is today a Senior Vice President of Mortgage Lending and a Branch manager for Guaranteed Rate, Inc. in Deerfield. “I ended up in a training program at a midwestern bank, selecting Private Banking and Mortgage Lending to help people, rather than large corporations.” Jessen was tenacious in his pursuits, recalling the time when he was advised by peers not to call on a certain North Shore real estate company because the agents would consider him too young. “Maybe I was naive, but I thought how could they not want to do business with me, without even getting to know me? That seemed silly,” he says. “So, I would frequently call on their various offices and I was always friendly, positive, professional, and helpful to the agents and to their clients. Despite those warnings, that company became my No. 1 referral source for many years.” Today, he prides himself on always doing whatever is in the client’s best interest. “Sometimes that advice is that the mortgage client should perhaps not even get a mortgage loan at all. They could either pay cash, or borrow off their assets,” says Jessen, whose specialties include jumbo mortgage loans, first-time homebuyers, move-up buyers, second homes, and investment properties, anywhere in the United States. “You must always have the best interest of your clients, first and foremost, to become one of their trusted advisors.”

For more information, visit rate.com/brianjessen.