Daniel Sa knows the power of mentoring. The president of the Great Lakes Division of NFM Lending and one of this year’s top originators, Sa was born and raised in Brazil where his parents worked as professors at a university.

Like many kids, Sa grew up dreaming of being a rock musician or a professional athlete; in his case, he was an avid tennis player. In 2000, those dreams began to change when the 17-year-old high school junior left warm southern Brazil behind for Columbus, Ohio, when his parents began teaching at Ohio State University.

Despite the very different weather, Sa found that he liked Ohio and has been there ever since, attending Ohio State University, where he studied finance and, eventually, finding himself joining the mortgage business in 2005.

“Like most people, I stumbled into it,” Sa said of becoming a loan originator. “I was a senior at Ohio State and my best friend’s older brother was a sales manager for a mortgage company. He just recruited me. He said I’d be a great fit for the mortgage industry. He thought my personality would be a good match.”

The friend’s brother, who was a mentor to Sa, got him an interview with the mortgage company and Sa joined the brokerage’s trainee program. The company was a call-center mortgage business that only handled refinances. 

Sa flourished in the business. He was one of about 300 loan originators at the company, but for six or seven years, Sa was consistently one of the top three producers among all the originators. 

Then, in 2012, he attended the Mastermind Summit, a conference designed to inspire real estate professionals to improve their performance. The experience changed the trajectory of his career. 

He was impressed by The Core Training program for real estate professionals. But what really inspired him was when the speakers talked about a different way of doing business: the purchase side of the mortgage industry. 

“They talked about how rewarding that type of career was when it was based upon building friendships with your clients,” Sa said. “And it just seemed so completely different, but it made a lot of sense to me.”

Sa went back to the office and told the owner of the mortgage company that he wanted to start his own branch and become a referral-based purchase-driven loan originator. The owner was ready to help. One year later, Sa opened his own branch.

While his business was growing, the parent mortgage business had been sold twice and Sa decided he needed to find his own place. He transitioned his team to NFM Lending, growing what is now called the Great Lakes Division of the company.

Today, Sa oversees 120 employees, including 52 loan officers. Last year, his team was responsible for about $800 million in origination volume. On a personal level, Sa was responsible for $83.4 million in originations in 2023, which earned him No. 563 on the Scotsman Guide’s list based on Total Dollar Volume. A year later, he originated $138.2 million worth of loans, which placed him at No. 136 on this year’s list.

Sa also closed 437 loans in 2024, which placed him 51st in the nation for Total Closed Loans. He chalks up his success in an increasingly difficult market to his well-trained team and their ability to execute. 

“With rates being higher and home values going up, people are just not as excited about buying,” Sa said. “So, I created a strategy to really help educate customers on what it means to own a home and how it relates to the potential to build wealth.”

The second part of that strategy was to address the fact that his region has only about one and a half months of housing inventory on the market.

“So, there are going to be multiple offers on every single house,” Sa said. “We focus on how we can position our clients to be the one family that wins the race for the house a high percentage of the time.”

Sa said he maintains his passion for developing others and helping his team improve. He said he enjoys watching his teammates succeed. 

“I have come from very humble beginnings, and I have had the opportunity to develop myself and my skills and grow to the level that I have, which has been very exciting,” Sa said. “And what is next for me is to afford these same types of opportunities for the people that are on my team and that have helped me get to the place that I am right now.”