Corey Shelley was already thinking about mortgages at just 5 years old.
“My parents, Scott and Jamie Shelley, along with John Aldrich, started First Colony Mortgage when I was young,” he says. “I’ve never not been here. Even dinner table talk was about mortgages.”
Without knowing it, the Shelley kids were learning entrepreneurship from day one. Although Jamie Shelley initially knew nothing about mortgages, she worked hard and leaned on mentors so she could help build a company she would be proud of.
“They had to figure out how to make a living and raise us kids, and they also wanted to be really good at the business,” Corey recalls.
Over the years, in full-circle fashion, First Colony Mortgage’s foundation became so strong that some of Jamie’s mentors and teachers joined the Colony crew.
“When the company started in Orem, it was small,” Corey says. “We’ve grown to be a big company, but the principles that John, Scott and Jamie gave us are still what we build on.”
Based in Pleasant Grove, First Colony Mortgage is Utah’s No. 1 mortgage company with a mighty team — from dinner-table-mortgage-talk to now as Corey is First Colony’s chairman. Thanks to CEO Carine Strom Clark and Emily Rowley (president of First Colony Mortgage’s retail division) along with a stalwart team of 333 employees, the company is celebrating big wins thanks to a Colony-minded culture.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
First Colony Mortgage celebrated a banner year in 2024. It was the company’s 40th year in business, and it funded over 7,400 loans at a value of nearly $3 billion.
But the team isn’t as concerned about the numbers as they are about the families and individuals they’re getting into homes.
“When I joined First Colony Mortgage in 2024, I read an article that said 52 percent of Americans believe they’ll never get into a home — and that was crushing for me,” Carine says. “We believe if you want to get into a home, we can help make that happen. It may not be a $7 million estate, but it will be a great home. We’re enabling the American Dream.”
In an industry that can be incredibly complex and stressful, the First Colony family prioritizes culture — internally and externally — so homebuyers, loan officers and all employees have a collective breath-of-fresh-air experience.
“This is what Emily’s team does, and they’re the best at it,” Carine says. “They make it easy for people to navigate this complicated, complex process, and they do so by taking the friction out of it.”
From her knee doctor to her dentist, Carine hears only positive feedback about how First Colony Mortgage empowers families to make homes out of houses.
CULTURE OVER STRATEGY
First Colony Mortgage was founded in 1984. Over 40 years in business says something about the company’s health, but the secret sauce is simpler than you may think.
“Someone asked me once about our business model, and I told them, ‘Well, we do mortgages,’” says Corey. “They responded ‘No, no … culture or strategy?’ I looked at him funny and I said, ‘It’s always culture.’”
What does that look like in practice?
“I always joke with the team that we are like an aquarium with all these different fish — me, Corey, Emily, the loan officers, etc. The culture is the water in the aquarium,” Carine says. “If the pH level is corrosive or toxic, all the fish die. If the culture is healthy and thriving — I fondly call this our ‘colony’ — the fish can grow, thrive and achieve what they want.”
During the 2008 real estate crash, Corey witnessed a meaningful culture moment through a game of rock paper scissors.
“There was no business at all. We were so young and naive. We were just having fun, and we were still hustling,” Corey says.
Everyone was trying to figure out how to get paychecks. To be fair to the team, FCM would assign out lots evenly: If there were four lots, four team members would each get one.
“Somehow we missed a builder’s lot, and in that type of scarcity, you’d think that people would want to claim it as theirs, but I watched a group of loan officers say, ‘No, you take it.’ No one wanted to be the taker,” Corey says. “I finally stepped in and said, ‘Rock paper scissors for it.’”
“We were so generous with each other,” Emily says. “This one ‘rock, paper, scissors’ was potentially thousands of dollars for any of these people. Moments like this still happen today.”
On top of the generosity, First Colony Mortgage also ensures that all departments — and specifically sales and operations — support and respect each other. In the system Jamie built from the beginning, “sales cannot come down on operations,” Corey says. “I don’t know how she did it, but she created a balance.”
“You don’t attack the people who are helping you get your deals across the finish line,” Emily says. “When people do come here with that mentality, they either change and adapt and treat people with respect, or they don’t last long. You have to work as a team.”
Strategy, step aside. It’s culture’s time to shine.
UNDER THE SAME ROOF
For the company’s celebration of 40 years in business, the founders were asked, “What is your favorite memory of the last 40 years?”
“They brought up the hardest time in business — the recession of 2008,” Emily says. “It’s because they had to pivot and grow, and had to find ways to take care of their people and maintain their culture. I feel like the last few years have been very similar to that time. So we will probably look back one day and say, ‘That was insane … but it was fun.’”
Corey shares that 2025 is the 37th-year low in the industry of mortgages, so they’ve had to hold tighter to culture and values as they pivot with their services. For example, they recently began a wholesale offering on top of the retail business.
“To grow, you have to add more routes to market so you can weather the storms when there are economic challenges,” Carine says.
Emily agrees.
“I think the best time to change your company and grow is during a time like this,” she says. “We’re going to learn from our past just like our founders did. Everybody united, worked and survived together during tough times.”
Not only does First Colony Mortgage transform houses into homes while fueling the American Dream — but it first makes sure to take care of the family under its own roof. And that’s the colony.