Cheers to 25 Years

A Culture of Growth: 25 Years and Counting

A lot can change in 25 years. For Atlantic Bay, the growth is tangible. A culture of continuous improvement is exemplified by employees, no matter the tenure.

Nov 15, 20213 minute read

Everything grows in time. When initially laying the groundwork for a new company, regardless of scale, the business make-up and culture will never be the same as the day it opened its doors for the first customer. New lessons experienced daily gradually lead to one inevitable choice: Adapt to the changes or watch the world pass by.

At Atlantic Bay Mortgage Group, we will always choose growth.

Since the beginning, Atlantic Bay has strived to inspire growth through our employees’ continuous improvement, passionate positivity, and adaptability. In 1996, the journey began toward those evolving goals, and it wouldn’t be long until the company was faced with that definitive choice: Either ease up and become just another independent mortgage company on the East Coast or become innovators who trailblaze our own path.

Meet Heather (If You Haven’t Already)

This October marked nine years since National Project and Event Specialist Heather Scheller joined the Atlantic Bay family. And it wasn’t too long into her time here that she got a first-hand look at the company’s tenacious focus on growth – not only for the company, but for every team member.

Since her hiring, Heather has taken several different roles. She went from the Marketing Department to Sales, but she finally found her home on the Business Development National Team.

“I stayed at Atlantic Bay and haven’t wanted to go anywhere else because of the growth, culture, company mission, and how Brian Holland and the whole team operate the business,” she added.

Hiring great talent is one thing, but when the talent matures alongside the company, you have something extremely special. We have a Culture of Support because so many of our team members have grown with us since the company’s inception.

What’s Evolved Since Coming Onboard?

According to Heather, spotting growth around here has never been too tall a task, even in her early days with the company. “When I first got to Atlantic Bay, there were probably 200 to 250 total employees. And shortly after I was here for a year, we opened our second operations center in Charlotte. And at the end of my first two years, we grew to almost 500 employees.”

From opening new offices to expanding remote work opportunities, Atlantic Bay’s employee base has grown tremendously. And so has the level of talent the company attracts.

Growth Doesn’t Always Mean Change

Of course, growth doesn’t always have to require a complete overhaul of what you’ve been doing. Sometimes, growth can come from using your past experiences and interactions to catapult your performance forward.

Growth can also come from repetition. After working on the same or similar projects for an extended period, you’re well on your way to being a seasoned professional. “Our company party planning is the one aspect of my job that I’ve done from the day I started to now,” said Heather. “I’m definitely better at it now than I was all those years ago.” It’s important to us to encourage and support our people to strengthen themselves in the areas they feel are most exciting. Work should be enjoyable, and that’s a way to make it a fun place.

Growth in Adaptability

There’s no getting around the fact that the past two years were uncharted territories for everyone, but once again, Atlantic Bay and our employees were presented with a choice. We could fold under the pressures of the growing pandemic, or we all could rise, 900-people strong at the time, and learn a new way to realize homeownership dreams for people across the East Coast and beyond.

Speaking on our response to COVID-19, Heather explained, “COVID-19 could’ve halted growth, for sure. None of us have ever been through a global pandemic before, as far as I know. None of us knew what to do, but the company did such a good job of keeping people at the top of their mind. And honestly, I think that’s something not a lot of companies knew how to handle and we crushed it.”

Our Commitment

As one might gather after hearing Heather’s account, we are not, and never will be, a company content with a “cornered-off spot” in the mortgage industry. Growth is too integral to our makeup, and it's been a culturally entrenched core value from the very beginning in 1996 to the digital world of 2021. However, flourishing through continuous improvement and adaptability does not sustain itself over a 25-year period alone.

It’s the employees who maintain the uninterrupted cultivation of fresh ideas and unrelenting commitment to families purchasing their new homes. Without the now more than 1,000 professionals who call Atlantic Bay home, growth could never be inspired. One thing has remained the same: development has come from a One-Team Approach, regardless of our employee count.

No matter what year it is or how much time has passed since the founding, you can expect more growth spawned by employees’ passionate positivity. And for all the families who have trusted in Atlantic Bay, whether it was through the support of purchasing your first or forever home, here’s to growing with us for another 25 years!