Teaching from Experience

78 MORTGAGE BANKING | JULY 201 1
Profile
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB WHELESS
Teaching from Exp
XINNIX President Casey Cunningham

H
BY FRANK REDDY
79MORTGAGE BANKING | JULY 201 1
eat from the tarmac seeps through the soles of the
young man’s boots. I The 22-year-old walks with a
confident gait, his gaze steady and focused as he
approaches the sleek, silver war machine. I Stepping
onto the aircraft, he pauses. The moment feels surreal. The palms of his
hands sweat, but his body moves with precision as he eases into the seat
and seals the cockpit. I He looks up. The soft blue is scored by the
white streaks of high-flying aircraft making their mark, like signatures
in the sky. I The fighter jet’s twin engines erupt with fire. I It’s
been a long time, yet even today—some 27 years later—Rob Cunning-
ham says he’ll never forget what got him into the pilot’s seat of such a
masterful machine. Underneath it all was the training. I Cunning-
ham’s wife, Casey, still smiles when she hears her husband recall his days
as a military aviator. The tales come with ease, the stories filled with
insight into the kind of rigorous training required of a disciplined aviator.
I His training to become a jet pilot taught him many lessons. I Some
of those lessons he and Casey have used to underscore a business plan
that relies on a foundation of knowledge—the type of knowledge that
aims for high-performance and success in the mortgage industry. I “In
aviation, you can’t have a Cessna 150 pilot trying to train F-15 pilots,” says
Rob Cunningham, who is executive vice president and co-founder of
XINNIX, The Mortgage Academy of Excellence, Alpharetta, Georgia.
erience
A husband-and-wife team
took an idea about building
a training company and built
a business whose annual
revenues more than tripled
from 2009 to 2011.

“They’re never going to listen to a word you have to
say. You need those with experience to teach—those who
have proven they know how to operate at the edge, the
ones who have pushed the envelope.”
With Casey Cunningham at the helm of XINNIX, the
national business aims to give
mortgage loan officers and
sales managers the tools its
founders have garnered
through two lifetimes of sepa-
rate but surprisingly similar
experience.
Casey’s career alone spans
nearly three decades. The mort-
gage industry, however, was not
her first choice.
Starting out
“I wanted to teach from the time
I was a little girl,” says Casey,
XINNIX’s president and co-
founder. “My mother was a
school teacher. You know how you want to follow in your
mom or dad’s footsteps?”
An energetic and charismatic woman, Casey found
she could capture and hold the attention of a large group
in most any situation—a trait that would stick.
“I was really good in front of an audience and had no
stage fright whatsoever, and I really wanted to teach and
help people learn,” she says.
Casey’s mother told her that teaching might limit her,
and she should consider testing other waters. For the
time being, she heeded her
mother’s advice.
In 1984, Casey landed her
first job with Atlanta-based
Decatur Federal Savings and
Loan.
Initially hired as a junior
administrator, the job descrip-
tion of a loan officer enticed
her. “At the time, somebody
told me that [loan officers]
helped people buy a home or
finance it, and I said, ‘That’s
what I want to do,’” she says.
“Even though I wasn’t teach-
ing, I wanted to do something
that was impacting people’s
lives and making a difference,” she says. “Around the
time I stumbled into the mortgage area, I found that peo-
ple have three things they want in their lifetime in gen-
eral: They want to buy a home, get married and have
children.
XINNIX aims to give
mortgage loan officers and
sales managers the tools its
founders have garnered
through two lifetimes of
separate but surprisingly
similar experience.
Rob and Casey Cunningham
founded XINNIX in 2002

“I said to myself, being in this field will allow me to
impact them in one of the most significant areas of
life—helping them to buy a home.”
She continued her career in the industry, taking a
position with HomeBanc, then working her way up to
executive vice president of the $4 billion super-regional
mortgage company, where she earned recognition as one
of the top-producing loan officers in the nation.
As a loan officer from day one, she began chronicling
the ideas and tools she—and others—could use to succeed
in the fast-paced, rapidly evolving mortgage industry.
Adaptation
Since its founding in 2002, XINNIX began offering train-
ing classes exclusively in the traditional, face-to-face class-
room setting.
In 2008, however, the Cun-
ninghams decided to make
some changes out of a growing
need to respond to the industry,
which at the time was undergo-
ing an epic downturn.
The costs associated with
travel—including hotel rooms,
booking flights and rental
cars—were increasingly hard to
justify for course participants
as the mortgage market entered
a tailspin.
“Really, 2008 was a difficult
year,” Casey says. “In October
of 2008, when the crickets were
chirping in the industry and everybody was in dire
straits, we came together as a team and decided to go
online. It was a radically different model.”
It turned out to be a successful model that has grown.
The company also offers one-on-one training and coach-
ing, but online classes currently account for 90 percent
of XINNIX course material.
“We put [online courses] through a rigorous testing
program, with resounding success. Today, what you see
with our online courses comes from years of practicing
and getting better and refining . . . that includes the way
the materials flow and what goes on the screen,” Casey
says.
XINNIX’s online courses currently include sales man-
agement training, advanced loan officer training and
wholesale account executive workshops.
When working with XINNIX, Sandy, Utah–based
Academy Mortgage Corporation chose an interactive,
integrated suite of training programs and services.
Throughout the eight-week courses, Senior Vice Presi-
dent Bill Bent says the value becomes apparent.
“We didn’t even consider other training programs,”
says Bent, who has been a XINNIX customer for more
than eight years. “My belief and faith in the program was
strong enough to recommend it to Academy Mortgage.”
Bent is also a member of XINNIX’s nine-person advi-
sory board, a forum for established industry experts to
address and respond to sales and leadership challenges
specific to the financial industry.
“We were eager to join [the advisory board] and be as
instrumental in their growth as they have been in ours,”
Bent says.
Financial growth
The privately held business has done well, with annual
revenues from 2009 through 2011 more than tripling.
XINNIX—which owns all of the company—has aver-
aged 68 percent year-over-year growth during the past 24
months. According to Casey, it’s a financial trend that
she sees continuing into the future.
“We anticipate our best year to be 2011 in terms of
demand we are seeing for XINNIX services,” she says.
The services XINNIX offers, she adds, are the reason
for continued success. It wouldn’t be possible, she adds,
without a regimen that chal-
lenges its participants in ways
others programs don’t.
Terry Mott, vice president of
production at Murray,
Utah–based Republic Mort-
gage Home Loans, says that
over the past seven years, XIN-
NIX has challenged his com-
pany’s employees in training
that is “second to none in the
industry.”
He adds, “Casey and her staff
share an enthusiasm, commit-
ment and personal integrity
that set them apart from their
peers.” Mott says he has an
“appreciation for XINNIX and the impact [its] training
has had on our organization.”
Keeping trainees on their toes
There are certain aspects that give XINNIX its uniqueness,
says Casey Cunningham. Most notably, XINNIX strives to
keep the classroom setting one of “pure learning.”
She adds, “In most training online, you can see the
other attendees’ names. You can be recruited . . . starting
a dialog with another attendee. . . . From what I’ve seen
in the mortgage world, that kind of online setup quickly
becomes a recruiting channel.
“It is possible to still create the dialog and the sharing
of information without disclosing everyone’s names,”
she says.
During online classes, Casey and other XINNIX train-
ers use tools like voting polls and drawing boards. Stu-
dents can also chat directly with the instructor at any
time.
Creating an environment of pure learning also means
keeping trainees on their toes. The software XINNIX
uses for its online classrooms allows the instructor to see
if participants minimize their Internet browser window.
It’s the virtual equivalent of falling asleep in class, Casey
says, and she’ll be the first to call participants out when
they’re not keeping up with the program.
“If you’re in a class and you’re not paying attention,
how much do you think you are going to learn? I want
you to look at me when we’re talking. It’s the same
XINNIX—which owns
all of the company—
has averaged 68 percent
year-over-year growth
during the past 24 months.

online as it is in person,” she says.
“I’ve never had students complain: ‘Gosh, they’re call-
ing me out.’ I hope it tells them we care,” she says.
Greg Clements, branch manager in Atlanta for Des
Moines, Iowa–based Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, says
that in general XINNIX’s online training approach goes
above and beyond the industry norm.
“With today’s technology, it is cheaper and easier to
train from a central location via online computer and
telephone than to have people travel,” Clements says.
As it continues to pursue the online route, XINNIX also
is taking on social media. An upcoming course entitled
“LinkedIn for Loan Officers” helps participants maximize
social media channels using the online networking site.
Going online was one of the company’s major adapta-
tions in the midst of a changing
industry. Another big innova-
tion was the decision to allow
lenders to buy corporate part-
nerships with XINNIX.
Corporate partnerships
“That was a radical change for
us,” Casey says. “Prior to that, a
company would buy 10 seats in
our courses . . . now, [we ask]
‘How big is your company, how
many people do you have and
here’s the price to have access
to everything we offer for a
year.’”
Academy Mortgage pur-
chased a corporate partnership from XINNIX in 2010,
enabling the company to extend access to its 75 branches
nationwide and hundreds of satellite offices.
“We had utilized XINNIX training programs previ-
ously on an a la carte basis,” Bent says. “However, with
their online training, we were able to more broadly
invest in XINNIX’s corporate partnership, providing our
entire workforce access to all the training programs
available.”
Prior to the corporate partnership option, lenders
were buying course slots for “a select group of loan offi-
cers instead of offering it for the whole company,” says
Casey. “We felt like we couldn’t change a culture, we
couldn’t get the unified sales culture, we couldn’t get the
accountability and the leaders if we didn’t have every
single person involved . . . from the top down.”
The advantages to that, Rob Cunningham adds, are
immeasurable.
“It becomes a prioritization issue as opposed to a cost-
rationalization issue,” he says. “We can deliver a full
year’s worth of training enterprisewide for what is well
less than the revenue that could be generated by one
additional closed loan per year, per person.
“We’ve completely collapsed any competitive advan-
tage that the biggest banks might have as far as training
and development is concerned. It’s hard to match what
we’re offering,” he says.
XINNIX has sold 15 enterprisewide annual corporate
partnerships to date, according to the company.
The next era of loan officers
The company opened in 2002 “with one product,” Casey
says. “It was about creating the next era of loan officers by
training them the right way on the front end . . . finding
sales professionals, financial planners, CPAs [certified pub-
lic accountants], stockbrokers and insurance agents, and
teaching them the mortgage industry.”
To address the needs of today’s mortgage loan offi-
cers, new-career seekers and sales management teams,
XINNIX aimed to inject knowledge, skills, discipline and
ethics “into the very DNA” of the corporate sales struc-
ture, Casey says.
“We tend to help corporations,” Casey says. “We’re not
going after individual loan officers, [although] we have
individual loan officers come to us on a regular basis.”
The business offers cus-
tomized solutions for lenders
all around the nation, whether
it’s a small shop of three loan
officers or a giant company
with 5,000 employees.
“It’s talking them through
their vision—where they’re
headed, what their current sta-
tus is, what their needs are and
what their budget is,” says
Casey.
The first series of courses
that XINNIX ever offered was
its sales and leadership pro-
gram, which it still offers. The
course assists sales manage-
ment in strategic business planning, recruiting and
retention of loan officers. It also offers coaching skills
and sales-force management tactics.
“We launched our sales and leadership program to
make sure that any salesperson, whether new in the
industry or already in the industry, would have a way to
accelerate their production and their success,” says
Casey.
“I’ve always believed, and still do, that leadership in
an organization will set the culture and determine the
direction and help in reinforcing the company’s mes-
sage,” she says.
When XINNIX was first founded, its owners hoped to
draw its customers from the small to medium-sized busi-
nesses, “because they usually didn’t have a training
department,” Casey says.
Instead, the business was surprised to be “consumed
on the front end by the giants that already had training
departments, but their training departments didn’t have
[courses for] ‘How do you create a business plan? How
do you self-source business? How do you sell? And what
are the core sales skills necessary to be successful?’ They
lacked in those areas,” Casey says.
What many in the industry also lack, Rob says, is an
“entrepreneur’s mindset.
“It’s the idea that every employee, every CEO [chief
executive officer], every loan officer should feel responsi-
ble for their business and for their own destiny,” he says.
And that is a “universal language” that transcends all
As it continues to pursue
the online route,
XINNIX also is taking
on social media.

business titles, he adds.
“Whether you’re a manager going through the leader-
ship class and looking at business planning tools . . . or if
you’re an experienced loan officer that’s a veteran . . . all
the business management tools and all the terminology
are exactly the same,” he says.
In order to put trainees into the correct mindset, Rob
adds, the trainers must first have “street credibility.”
The staff of instructors at XINNIX has grown over the
years, now teaching hundreds of courses per year. Of the
more than 10,000 mortgage loan officers trained to date,
the business has assisted with training and placement of
more than 1,000 new loan officers throughout the
United States, with more than 200 lenders and brokerage
firms.
Some of the largest compa-
nies XINNIX has assisted over
the years include SunTrust
Mortgage, Fifth Third Bank,
Academy Mortgage, MetLife
Home Loans, Envoy Mortgage
and Republic Mortgage Home
Loans.
Dodd-Frank Act
Despite XINNIX’s attempts to
instill high performance stan-
dards in its program partici-
pants, Casey says she has always
felt “challenged by some of the
unethical loan officers that have
represented our industry.
“There’s so many wonderful people in the mortgage
industry, but there are those that have abused the sys-
tem, and that has now impacted all of us,” she says.
In the wake of the financial crisis, Congress sought to
reform many aspects of the financial markets to both
address the problem of institutions being too big to fail,
and to better protect consumers. The Dodd-Frank Wall
Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was created
on July 21, 2010, representing a paradigm shift in the
way American financial markets could operate in the
future. One component of the new law changed origina-
tor compensation methods and prohibited originators
from getting paid extra-high commissions for directing
borrowers to loans with higher-than-market rates.
The change in originator compensation requires a
more skilled work force in the future, Casey says.
“They must be able to self-source and generate busi-
ness, so lenders are reaching out to us to help teach the
strategies and tactics to help them be more successful
and incrementally increase their units.”
From a professional ethics standpoint, as far as origi-
nation practices go, Casey says, XINNIX has always
stood firm, pre-dating the Dodd-Frank Act.
“We train participants to approach the customer with
the right solution—not based on their compensation or
fees, but based on what’s the right advice for the cus-
tomer,” she says.
Republic Mortgage’s Mott, whose company worked
with XINNIX in the past, says the standards set by the
business were exceptional.
“By systematically training our existing and new
employees [with XINNIX], we were setting the stage for
highly ethical practices and future lending success,”
Mott says.
The industry as a whole has forced loan officers to
become more accountable, “but XINNIX has always been
very passionate about taking care of the customer . . .
from the start,” he says.
‘True and blue’
Casey was sitting in her office in 1995, when there was a
knock at the door. A loan officer at the time, she was con-
sidered one of her company’s top producers with Home-
Banc in Atlanta.
When she answered the
door, she met Rob, who was
then a financial consultant with
Merrill Lynch.
“I had a loan I needed to
place and nobody would buy
it,” Casey recalls. “Our depart-
ment told me there was a guy
from Merrill Lynch who needed
three packages on the loan.”
Rob still smiles when he
hears Casey tell the story.
“At the time, he had just
recently come from flight
school in the Air Force,” she
says. “He asked me, ‘What kind
of training did you have in
order to get where you are?’
“You sort of have to figure it out,” Casey told Rob.
Rob’s experience with military training, Casey says,
laid the foundation for many of the ideas later realized
through XINNIX.
“We took the regimen training philosophy of his back-
ground and my expertise in the mortgage field and
blended it,” she says. “It gave us a very unique vantage
point that a lot of people do not have.”
The husband-and-wife team established XINNIX just
four months after the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “I knew
we started out at a time when there was tremendous
risk, but I knew we had something extremely unique,”
Casey says.
Rob and Casey created XINNIX literally from scraps
of notebook paper. “Within three months, we went
national,” she says. “It was, in a sense, a new strategy,
saying, ‘Let’s go after something that nobody’s done.’”
Nearly a decade after its creation, Casey and Rob say
they continue to pursue the highest and best training for
program participants.
Says Casey: “[The] mortgage [business] is true and
blue. I live it, and I breathe it and love every single
minute of it. Most of all, I love the fact that I’m able to
teach and influence people all over the nation to reach
their fullest potential in this industry.” MIB
Frank Reddy is a freelance author based in Atlanta. He can be reached at
fwredd@hotmail.com.
In order to put trainees
into the correct mindset,
Rob adds, the trainers
must first have “street
credibility.”

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