Why I Left Banking to Become a Commercial Financing Advisor

I was 22, fresh out of college, working in the marketing department at Solarity Credit Union. It was a good job — stable, respectable, the kind of place where your parents nod and say "that sounds solid."

The salary was fine. The benefits were fine. I was fine.

But I saw early that I'd hit a ceiling: an hourly position with a 2.5% annual raise, capped at 40 hours a week, with no real path to control my earning potential. That's when I realized the stability I was being sold was actually a trap.

Except I wasn't.

The Ceiling

Solarity classified my position as hourly. Not because the work required hourly classification — it didn't. But because they said my role "wasn't the right type" for salary. That's the exact phrase they used.

So I was capped on both earnings levers:

1. Per-hour earnings. My hourly rate was set. To earn more per hour, I had to get promoted. But there were maybe two promotions available in the department, and both required waiting for someone ahead of me to leave. I wasn't going to bet my earning potential on someone else's timeline.

2. Hours worked. I couldn't work more than 40 hours a week, even when I had work to do. The system wasn't designed for it. If I needed to stay late to finish a project, I had to get approval. If I wanted to work 45 hours in a week when the workload justified it, the answer was no.

After hitting every expectation in year one, I got a 2.5% raise.

Do the math: 2.5% on $35K is $875 per year, or $42 per week. If I could work 45 hours instead of 40 but wasn't allowed to, I was leaving $800–$1,000 per month on the table.

I was 23 years old and already thinking like this: This math doesn't work for what I want to build.

That thought should have been a red flag to Solarity. Instead, they managed it like a typical corporate problem — minor bump in compensation, hope I'd settle down.

I didn't settle down.

The Meeting

Matt had been my CFO and CLO at Solarity before he left to start AAI Financial in 2017. We grabbed coffee a few months after he left. I asked him what he was building. He told me about commercial lending — placing deals with lenders, advising borrowers on financing strategy, building a network of relationships.

"I want to bring you in," he said. "I'll teach you the business from the ground up."

I was young enough — and probably naive enough — to take that seriously. I didn't fully understand what I was getting into. I just knew that the question "what if?" was louder than the question "what if it fails?"

We talked through the basics. AAI was a commercial debt brokerage, not a bank or a mortgage broker. We'd place deals across a network of lenders. Different lenders, different appetites, different risk tolerances. The skill was understanding deal structure well enough to match borrowers to the right lender, then negotiating hard on their behalf.

It sounded hard. It sounded like there was no ceiling.

The Play

Before I quit Solarity, I did something smart — or strategic, depending on how you look at it.

I used my W-2 income to qualify for a mortgage and bought my first house. I was being disciplined with my salary, already thinking about the freedom that would come from owning an asset. But more importantly, I was playing the system while I still could. Once I left, I wouldn't have W-2 income to leverage for financing.

Two months after closing on that house, I quit Solarity. I've never worked a W-2 job since.

Looking back, I can see how risky that looks. No salary. No health insurance from an employer (I bought my own). No 401(k) match. Nothing but commission and the hope that the deals would close.

But I also knew something: I couldn't out-earn the ceiling at Solarity even if I worked there for 20 years. At AAI, there was no ceiling. The harder I worked, the more deals I closed, the stronger my relationships became — the more I'd earn.

What Changed

In six months at AAI, I earned more than I would have made in a year at Solarity. In two years, it was multiple times over.

But it wasn't just the money.

The qualities that made me restless at Solarity — wanting to work harder, wanting to solve bigger problems, wanting to be responsible for my own upside — suddenly became assets instead of annoyances. There was no system telling me I couldn't work 50 hours a week or that my work didn't justify a full salary. There was no promotion timeline that didn't match my ambition.

I worked when the work needed to be done. I got paid when deals closed. I earned more when I brought in more deals and built stronger relationships.

65+ commercial deals later — $507K+ in commission, across SBA, bridge, DSCR, construction, medical practice acquisitions, hard money, business acquisitions — the leap was the best decision I've made professionally.

My first house? I built on that. Then another. Then real estate partnerships. Then a commercial license. Then a dual-role advantage that most lenders and realtors don't have because they only understand one side of the market.

None of that happens if I'm still hitting a 2.5% annual raise at Solarity.

The Lesson: JMMM

This is where "Just Make More Money" comes from. It's the founding principle of everything I do now.

Most people think wealth building is a spending problem: "I need to budget better, save more, cut expenses." That works if your earning is unlimited. But if your earning is capped — like mine was at Solarity — no amount of budgeting saves you. You're stuck.

The solution isn't a budget app. The solution is removing the ceiling.

For some people, that means starting a business. For others, it means changing careers, building a side venture, or moving into a role where your compensation is tied to performance instead of hours or tenure.

The math only works when you control the upside.

At Solarity, I didn't control the upside. The system did. And the system was designed to pay me less.

At AAI, I control the upside. When I close deals, I earn. When I build relationships, I earn. When I get better at understanding deal structure and financing strategy, I earn more because I solve problems faster and more creatively.

It's not riskier. It's just honest.

To the Person Still Inside the Ceiling

If you're reading this and you're in the same position I was in — hitting expectations, getting minimal raises, watching your earning potential flatten while your ambition is still climbing — here's what I want you to know:

It's not that you're ungrateful or too ambitious. It's that the structure is designed to cap you. And no amount of hard work within that structure will change it.

The leap is scary. I get it. I had no health insurance and $200K in student loans when I quit. I didn't have a guarantee. I had a belief that I could figure it out and a network of people (especially Matt) who believed I could too.

But I also knew this: staying was the guaranteed path to staying stuck.

Three things made the leap possible for me:

1. Someone with conviction believed in me. Matt didn't just say "great idea" and wish me luck. He actively brought me into his business and trained me. Find someone or create a pathway where that exists.

2. I removed one variable before I leaped. I locked in housing before I left. You don't need to own a house, but you need to know what your floor is. What's the minimum you need to earn to cover essentials? Once you know that number, the leap gets less terrifying.

3. I accepted that the first year would be hard. No salary, no predictability, no safety net. But I also knew that if I could make it work for one year, I'd never go back. And I didn't. I can't imagine explaining to someone why I'd go back to hourly work and a 2.5% raise when I've proven I can earn multiples of that on my own.

Where I Am Now

I'm a Commercial Financing Advisor at AAI Financial Group. I've built deep client relationships — some spanning 6+ years and multiple deals. I'm a licensed WA Realtor with Lions Realty Group. I've closed 65+ commercial deals and ~60 real estate transactions. I understand financing and real estate fundamentally, which is rare in a market where most lenders don't understand real estate and most realtors don't understand financing.

I built all of that because I quit a job where I hit a ceiling in 18 months.

The irony is that I probably would have been an okay employee at Solitary for 30 years. Steady, reliable, promotable on schedule. But the person I actually am — the person who wants to solve bigger problems, earn more, control the upside, build relationships that span years and deals — that person couldn't survive in that structure.

I'm grateful to Solarity for being a good job. It gave me a paycheck, work experience, and a place to meet Matt. But I'm more grateful to myself for recognizing that gratitude and fit aren't the same thing.

If you're at a ceiling, the best time to leave is before you've spent a decade trying to break through it.

To understand what I do now, read about what a commercial financing advisor actually does. And for more on the philosophy behind all of this, visit my about page for the complete story.