Mike Hardwick

Our 10-Point Plan for Business and Leadership Development

1. Build Your Personal Production with Teams and Systems

Work with Team Building Coach, Jim McQuaig, to accelerate your personal production to your desired levels. Jim is a 30-year mortgage veteran who built his personal production to $100 million plus a year while working the same hours as a $12 million dollar producer.

2. Build Your Ideal Loan Officer Team

Work with your Team Building Coach to identify, hire, and serve an ideal team of loan officers to any size you desire. Our coaches help top loan officers and branch managers build high-performance loan officer teams alongside branch leaders.

3. Become a Leader of Value and Values

Work with Churchill Mortgage’s President and Chief Operating Officer, Matt Clarke, to identify and establish a core set of values you will live by, and to determine how you will deliver value everyday, inside and outside of work, to the people you care about the most in your life.

4. Develop the Heart of a Teacher

Work with Churchill Mortgage’s founder and CEO, Mike Hardwick, on how developing the heart of a teacher will prepare you to be the best you can be in every leadership opportunity, no matter how big or how small, that comes your way. “Attitude with Action Is Everything.”

5. Servant Leadership

Work with Churchill Advisor and Servant Coach, Cecil Kemp, as he teaches you that being a servant leader is the only way to lead for the best work results and the best life results in yesterday, today, and tomorrow’s environment.

6. Creating a System of Legendary Customer Care

Work with Karim Davis, a 25-year mortgage veteran, who has had virtually every job in sales and operations. You will create a system that allows you and your sales team to focus on sales activities, while Karim and her team ensures legendary customer care for every single borrower, Realtor partner, and referral source.

7. Managing and Coaching Your Sales Team

Work with 30-year mortgage veteran, Jack Depont, and learn to create an environment for all loan officers to improve, produce more, and live a life of higher quality work/life balance.

8. Branding and Marketing Your Team

Work with Churchill Mortgage’s Chief Marketing Officer, Whitney Blessington, a 25-year marketing veteran, to help make you and your team the “mayors” of your/their markets. This will include social media, digital marketing, retention programs, referral and media strategies that make sure the team stays top-of mind for every Realtor partner, referral source, and borrower in your world.

9. Bringing Value to the Realtor and Referral Community

Work with Jim McQuaig, Whitney Blessington, the team at Ramsey Solutions, and more, to identify the best Realtors and referral sources in your market , and then begin bring innovative strategies to help them succeed with programs such as: Home Buyer Edge (an approval system for buyers that not only gets them fully approved, but locks their rate in rising and falling markets. It also pays the seller $10,000 if the loan does not close due to financing).

10. High Trust

Work with nationally-renowned mortgage coach and trainer, Todd Duncan, on how building trust inside and outside your workplace will bring you and your team decades of productive and mutually beneficial relationships and partnerships.

What does leadership development look like at Churchill Mortgage?

It starts with our commitment of Doing What’s Right For You. Whether you want to become a branch leader with a team of loan officers, an area manager with multiple branches, or a team leader taking your team production to the next level, we are here to help you achieve your goals.

Let's work together to create a plan for your success and bring those plans to life!

To help you achieve your goals, we provide ongoing training and coaching, and will partner with you to help with recruiting, sales management, running a successful business, mentorship, and everything in between.

Lawson H. (Mike) Hardwick, III founded Churchill Mortgage Corporation in 1992 in Brentwood, TN. With Mike’s wealth of experience in the banking, financing, and real estate industries, going into business for himself was an obvious progression.

The first half of Mike’s career was spent in commercial and investment banking with two nationally known firms. In the early 80’s, Mike founded a condo conversion company, which grew to be one of the largest in the nation.

Shortly after the peak of that business, Mike became one of the principal founders of Franklin National Bank in Franklin, TN. Mike served as an Executive Vice President until 1992, when he founded Churchill Mortgage. He continued serving on the Board of Directors for Franklin National Bank for several years thereafter until it was acquired by Fifth Third Bank. He is also a founder and Principal Shareholder in Studio Bank and he remains on the Board of Directors.

Hardwick graduated from Gateway College (now known as Urshan College) in St. Louis, MO. where he received a bachelor’s degree in Theology and Music. He also received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Belmont University in Nashville, TN., where he was a member of the university’s baseball team.

Hardwick has served on many boards and committees, including Friends of the Arts Board at Belmont University and the Finance & Endowment Committee for Christ Church Nashville. He is also a founder and board member of Real Estate Services of America, Escrow Services of Tennessee, Churchill Agency, and Equity Express.

Mike is the son of L.H. Hardwick Jr., formerly senior pastor of Christ Church, which he founded over 50 years ago.

Mike is a lifelong resident of the Nashville area and is a proud father of two daughters and two sons.

His book, Keep Chopping Wood, not only gives readers the inside story of Mike’s remarkable life, but also an in-depth look into the world of business.

Buy Keep Chopping Wood on Amazon

Called to Serve: The Inspiring, Untold Stories of America’s First Responders tells sixteen stories of America’s unsung heroes.

Buy Called to Serve on Amazon

Back to Leadership

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ensuring all potential borrowers have access to the same information, services, and opportunities
throughout the home loan process.

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Meet Matt Clarke