The Best Advice I Was Given Wasn't Advice at All

Some of the best lessons in business don't come from anyone actually telling you something. They come from watching someone extraordinary operate up close and figuring out what they're actually doing differently. That's exactly how my friend Khash Saghafi, president of Liberty Home Mortgage, describes the biggest influence on his career, and it didn't come from the mortgage business at all. It came from a wrestling mat at Oklahoma State. I sat down with him for an episode of our Best Advice Ever series, and you can listen to the full conversation on our podcast, Free Beer and Real Estate.

Choosing Your Arena on Purpose

Khash grew up in Parma, wrestled through high school, and had a decision to make when it came to college. He got into three of the top wrestling programs in the country, Oklahoma State, Iowa, and Arizona State, and he picked Oklahoma State for one specific reason: John Smith was there. At the time, Smith was already a four-time World and Olympic champion training for his second Olympic gold medal, on his way to becoming the most decorated wrestler in U.S. history.

Khash's reasoning wasn't complicated. He wanted to be surrounded by people operating at the level he wanted to reach. That decision ended up putting him in a position most people never get: he became John Smith's personal training partner for months leading into the 1992 Olympics, a level of access he compares to being able to live alongside someone like Bill Gates or Elon Musk for years and watch exactly how they operate.

Three Moves

Here's what surprised him most. Everyone back home assumed Smith, one of the greatest wrestlers who ever lived, must have an enormous, complicated arsenal of moves. He had three. That was it. Total mastery of a small number of fundamentals, executed better than anyone else in the world.

Khash carried that directly into business. Twenty-seven years into the mortgage industry, his approach with clients is deliberately simple. Don't overcomplicate it. Don't get flashy. Keep the basics tight and repeat them well. It's the same principle we talk about constantly on our own team: you don't need fifty systems, you need a few that you actually execute at a high level, consistently.

Get Up

Wrestling has a built-in structure most people outside the sport don't think about. Lose once in a tournament and you're not out, you drop into the consolation bracket and you're wrestling again in about 40 minutes. Lose twice and you're done. That structure forces a specific mental skill: a short memory. You don't get to sit with a loss. You get back up almost immediately and go again.

Khash described Smith taking him down in practice over and over, sometimes a dozen times in a row, always with the same instruction afterward: get up. That single phrase became the throughline of how Khash has handled every setback in his career since, and he's had real ones.

If You're On Time, You're Late

One of the more specific habits Khash picked up from Smith was about preparation. Smith would call and simply say, "Give me two times," meaning two possible workout windows. Whatever time Khash gave him, he had to be fully ready, warmed up, geared up, thirty minutes before that time actually started, because Smith might walk in and go straight into a full workout with zero warning.

Khash uses that exact framework with clients today. When someone's waiting on an update, he'll tell them he'll have an answer by noon, even when he already knows he'll have it well before then. He's not padding for the sake of padding. He's building in the same buffer Smith trained into him, so he's mentally and practically ready before the moment actually arrives, and the client experiences him consistently beating his own word. He calls it having the conversation before the conversation: doing the mental preparation before a call even starts, not scrambling to catch up once it does.

Two Trips to the Edge of Bankruptcy

It would be easy to look at Liberty Home Mortgage today, a company operating in 45 states, and assume the path there was smooth. It wasn't. When Khash opened his first office in 2002, he charged $54,000 onto his credit cards just to get the doors open, including a five thousand dollar phone system he had no idea he even needed. He worked his way out of that debt by 2004 by doing something simple: refocusing entirely on his sphere, his network, the people who already knew and trusted him, rather than chasing anything flashy.

Then came 2007. The mortgage industry cracked, and instead of doubling down on what worked, Khash tried to expand aggressively into new markets, Florida, California, chasing growth the same way agents today get pulled toward buying leads instead of working who they already know. It backfired. By 2009 he was $600,000 in credit card debt with $20,000 monthly minimum payments he couldn't keep up with. His credit score bottomed out at 492. He was handed bankruptcy intake paperwork and never filed it. Instead, he did the same thing that worked the first time: he cut off the markets that weren't working and refocused on his sphere and the fundamentals of being a loan officer. He dug out again.

Go Slow

A friend of Khash's, Steve Thomas, gave him a piece of advice back in 1999 that he ignored at the time: go slow. Khash was day trading stocks trying to get rich fast. He didn't listen, and it took years and two brushes with real financial disaster before the lesson actually landed. Today, even though Liberty Home Mortgage is licensed in 45 states, he deliberately keeps active, full-scale operations in only three of them, handling occasional one-off loans elsewhere for people who ask. It's the same discipline Smith trained into him on the mat: stay focused, don't overextend, master what's in front of you before reaching for more.

What Actually Defines You

The line from Khash that's stuck with me most: when he was dead broke with a 492 credit score, he wasn't a loser, and being debt free today doesn't make him a winner either. Neither number ever defined him. What mattered was whether he got back up. He pointed out something worth sitting with: quitting once makes it easier to quit the next time. The habit of giving up is the real risk, far more than any single setback.

Whatever business you're in, real estate, lending, or anything else, the lesson underneath all of this is the same one we keep coming back to on our own team. Keep your approach simple and repeatable. Recover fast when things go wrong instead of dwelling on it. Prepare before you're actually required to. And when it's time to grow, grow toward the people who already know you rather than chasing markets you haven't earned yet.

If you want to talk to Khash directly about a mortgage, or just want to talk shop, reach him at Liberty Home Mortgage, 216-780-1103. And if you want to be a guest on a future Best Advice Ever episode or just connect with our team, reach out to me at mike@21mike.com.

Mike Ferrante
The Mike Team at LPT Realty
www.21mike.com
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