- 6 months ago
Few leaders have the abilityto shape how an industry learns, but Zeb Lowe is one of them. In this episode of Ten Minute Talks, Allison LaForgia sits down with the Senior Director of HousingWire’s Content Studio to explore how Zeb’s relentless focus on serving industry professionals has fueled audience growth, new content innovation and deeper engagement across HousingWire’s platforms.
As editor of LendingLife, leader of contributor content, sponsored content and all multimedia at HousingWire, and host of Power House, Zeb shares how his team delivered massive audience growth in 2025 by launching new content formats, expanding educational resources and staying ruthlessly committed to audience value. Through servant-minded leadership and strong team dynamics, Zeb has built a content engine designed to inform, educate and empower the mortgage and housing industries.
As editor of LendingLife, leader of contributor content, sponsored content and all multimedia at HousingWire, and host of Power House, Zeb shares how his team delivered massive audience growth in 2025 by launching new content formats, expanding educational resources and staying ruthlessly committed to audience value. Through servant-minded leadership and strong team dynamics, Zeb has built a content engine designed to inform, educate and empower the mortgage and housing industries.
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00:00All of these different responsibilities from webinars, powerhouse, your taglines and lending
00:06life or contributor content. That's really a lot of different things.
00:10You don't really think it's that much until then you have somebody listed out for it.
00:13I'll just listen to you talk, like listing the things like, oh, yeah, that is.
00:16It does sound like a lot.
00:21I'm Alison LaForgia, managing editor of HousingWire's Content Studio.
00:25And today on 10 Minute Talks, I am sitting with the senior director of the content studio, Zeb Lowe.
00:31Zeb, thank you for joining me today.
00:33Alison, thank you for having me.
00:34I feel like we talk a lot about this question in the broader mortgage and housing industry.
00:40But how did you get into mortgage?
00:42How did you wind up in this industry?
00:45Yeah. So I like anybody, like everyone else or almost everyone that I've met, you know,
00:50you kind of you either stumble or you fall into the industry and it's kind of sink or swim from there.
00:57I've got my story, I think, is I know that my story is a unique one, but it's not unique in that
01:02almost everyone has this kind of strange series of events that lead to them stumbling into the industry.
01:08So my my background was English literature and philosophy.
01:15And I put myself through school, did construction, worked on a ranch and nothing at all tied.
01:22I mean, the closest thing you would say to the housing industry is that I built homes, remodeled homes and built cabinets and things like that.
01:28But nothing in the finance side or capital markets or, you know, what I'm doing now, the conversations that I'm having now with the people that I'm having them with.
01:37After I finished my my master's in English, I moved overseas to continue pursuing martial arts and kickboxing.
01:47And I did that for several years.
01:50And once the I guess injuries kind of accumulated, I hadn't been home in a long time.
01:55I had a teaching position as an English professor waiting for me at the university where I'd got my master's.
02:01So I came home.
02:02It was really just going to be a pit stop for for a year or two till I could kind of figure out my next my next my next move.
02:10And during that time, I became friends with a loan officer and I loved teaching.
02:17And I thought originally I thought that that's what I was going to do from I was just going to be an English professor.
02:23And I quickly realized that the at some point in the future, I knew I wanted to have a family.
02:30I wanted to have a wife.
02:31I wanted to have kids.
02:32And I quickly realized that the pay was not going to provide the lifestyle that I wanted for for my family.
02:39And I built out all these online classes for the college.
02:42And I had all of this time during the day and I was done by 850, 845 in the morning.
02:49I'd become friends with a loan officer during this time, a local LO who was doing well.
02:54And he was looking to recruit.
02:56He wanted someone that could go talk to realtors.
02:59They could go talk to potential first time homebuyers and do lunch and learns who could just teach, teach to large groups of people, which is kind of kind of my gig.
03:07So he recruited me into his branch and I originated out of there for several years.
03:17And eventually the corporate office or the corporate side had found out about me.
03:21I was submitting marketing copy in and training stuff for the local branch.
03:27They wanted to know who was creating it, but they contacted me and asked if I would come do that at large.
03:35It was a mid-size lender, but we were in, I don't know, like 46, 47 states.
03:40And one thing led to the other, and I ended up creating for this mortgage company.
03:47I would call it sales marketing content.
03:48I didn't do much for brand awareness, but all of the content that got in front of the eyes of the potential homebuyer or referral partner came through me and my department.
04:03And then you came over to house and wire.
04:05You know, about two years ago.
04:06And yeah, then I came into house and wire.
04:08And it's interesting because your position here is, as the head of the content studio, is you're sort of leading a company within a company.
04:16I don't feel like most people know that.
04:20Like, there's so much stuff that the content studio does.
04:22What was it like when you came over and took over this team?
04:26It's a weird department.
04:32Well, it's not a weird team, but it's a weird department for sure.
04:35Because like you said, we straddle these three or four really different worlds in our content offerings.
04:42So whenever I first came here, I saw, I mean, immediately I saw the talent, the ambition, and the potential in the team.
04:51And that's not to imply that, like when you say, you see the potential in a team or in a department, like that it was going unused or anything.
04:58Y'all were like a well-oiled machine and rock and rolling and doing great things already before I got here.
05:02But they did hire me to build out our department and grow in a particular direction, you know, with this vision in mind.
05:12And I mean, after my first week or two here, it was immediately I knew that, yeah, we can – it's not that it won't be without its struggles and its challenges.
05:25But these goals that I was brought on to hit are not going to be an issue.
05:31We'll be able to get there.
05:32And I think you've hit a lot of those goals.
05:35I mean, we just wrapped up 2025.
05:38We're filming this fresh into 2026.
05:41And in 2025, the content studio saw absolutely incredible growth.
05:46We saw over well into the past the million downloads on podcasts.
05:53We saw incredible growth on video consumption.
05:56We published hundreds of pieces of content this year.
06:01And I think that's all got a lot to do with you.
06:05So I have to ask, from a leadership perspective, what's one leadership strategy that you think contributed to that growth?
06:12Yeah, so it's – to talk about him and it now is a bit of a cliché, but I was turned on to the Jocko Willink Echelon Consulting Company long time ago, right, whenever his first – when his first book came out.
06:32In one of his subsequent books, it's a leadership – it's a tactical handbook basically over leadership.
06:39And for those who don't know him, I mean I'm sure almost everyone listening to this knows Jocko Willink is a former Navy SEAL who's now – he started off basically as a business consultant.
06:48He's kind of morphed into – now he's his own industry and a motivational speaker and all of this stuff.
06:53But back in the day, he was like a business consultant that would come in and he would work with leaders within a company or department to get them to achieve their goals.
07:04That's whenever I was turned on to him and his leadership strategies and advice.
07:11And in one of his books, he talks about – which resonated with me because I put myself through school.
07:15I still do.
07:16Like I have a shop in my garage where I work with my hands and do woodwork primarily, which is one of my favorite things to do.
07:23He talks about a good leader being like a woodworker.
07:28And what that means is like if you're – you need to know the material in which you're working with and understand the material for it to yield the most effective results, right?
07:39So if you're – there's a difference between if you're going to make a table with a hardwood versus a porous softwood, right?
07:46That does – it requires different techniques for molding and refining and for finishing.
07:52And a lot of people actually, they take that the wrong way and they think that it's – well, you have to know your team so that you can then kind of like impose what you want on them.
08:03And that's not what that means at all actually because there's – it's a combination of like the woodworking metaphor with servant-minded leadership, which again is a cliche.
08:13And the people that I found – a lot of the time the people that talk about it the most are the ones that do it the least.
08:19So I try not to talk about it too much.
08:20But I think that creating an environment, knowing your team, right, knowing the material that you have and then being able to create and foster an environment for both the individual and the team at large that allows them to maximally express what they're already good at in an environment where they know it's okay to stretch their wings a bit.
08:43And continue to develop and to grow and to be creative at a professional and in a personal level, not just as an individual but also as it ties into the team at large.
08:56That's very, very important to me, and I've found that that works best given the team that you have.
09:04And the team that we have, like I said previously in your last question, everybody here is incredibly competent.
09:10They're incredibly motivated.
09:11They're very hard on themselves in a way that I don't need to be, right?
09:16And so when you have that type of person or those type of people all working together, the best that you can do is provide them maximum – this is a Jocko thing – again, just maximum ownership.
09:28Provide them or allow them an environment where they have maximum ownership and responsibility because they want it anyway.
09:34And try to remove all the other obstacles that don't matter.
09:39Remove those for them and then let them run.
09:42It's interesting for me, obviously, because if you don't know, Zeb is my boss.
09:50But it's also interesting because you've taken on so much since you came here.
09:54You just sort of quietly aggregated all of these different responsibilities.
10:00People might recognize you from webinars, from Powerhouse.
10:05They might recognize you from your taglines and lending life or contributor content.
10:10And there's – it's really a lot of different things.
10:14So why don't you talk to us a little bit about how you approach building content specifically for the housing industry?
10:22What's your approach?
10:24Yeah, you don't really think it's that much until then you have somebody list it out for you.
10:27I'll just listen to you talk about – like listing the things.
10:29It's like, oh, yeah, that is – that does sound like a lot.
10:31But so, yeah, that can definitely be challenging because what we want to do at HousingWire is that we want to –
10:40which is what actually makes our department fairly unique and our offering really unique even within HousingWire,
10:46is we need to have our – we need to be able to have our finger on the pulse of the industry, right?
10:50And not just for the content that we create, but we have clients that we work with that are relying on us to help them focus their message,
10:58to help them, you know, focus their angle or their perspective on any number of topics in the industry.
11:05And we said at the intersection of all of these things, not only are we creating content that's being, you know,
11:10engaged with by a huge number of people across the industry, but we know what is being engaged with the most, right?
11:18We know what the most relevant issues are.
11:22And, you know, you know this better than anyone because you're involved in as many things as I am.
11:25There is just a sea of constantly changing information in front of you every single day that can be overwhelming
11:33and can lead to this, like, static, like, white noise that you're trying to wade through to get, you know,
11:40to get some sort of, like, coherent message or coherent voice that you can kind of filter down to your audience.
11:49And, you know, there's a lot of times there's a ton of different voices kind of chirping in your ear
11:54that can just – over what's relevant, what's not relevant, the headlines that you see, you know.
12:00And I think that the thing that I've – that's worked best for me is just – it's boiled down.
12:10It's like a first principles derivative is, you know, if it's an article, like, why am I reading this?
12:15If it's a podcast, why am I listening to this?
12:17And, Ben, I know that you and I – actually, I know this about myself.
12:21I don't have a – when I'm in public, you've joked with me about my do not pet vibes.
12:25Like, I know that I have a resting, grumpy face, and I'm not the most, like, approachable-looking person in public settings.
12:33But I am – but I'm actually quite empathetic, and I'm very good at – if I could say one thing about myself that is positive,
12:40I am very good at putting my – I'm a genuinely curious person.
12:44I'm genuinely curious about almost everything and about almost every person and every type of person.
12:49And so I found that I'm quite good at putting myself in – putting myself in the shoes of different people and really understanding their wants, their needs, their motivations.
12:59And I've – over the years, and I've had to do it even more so here since I've been at Housing Wire, is I've created – in my mind, I've created these audience profile types, basically, right?
13:12That are a compilation and amalgamation of – like, for realtors, for example.
13:16Like, I've known realtors – I've worked with realtors for the last 15 years, all right?
13:20And I've – just the way that my mind works, and a lot of it's my literary background and writing background.
13:25Like, I've got these character types.
13:27There's, like, different types of realtors that I know that I could probably – most realtors that I meet would fall into one of five categories, let's say.
13:35It's the same thing with LOs.
13:36It's the same thing with appraisers.
13:38Like, I joke about appraisers being, like, the Unabomber.
13:41Or that's because there's a little truth in it.
13:42Like, there's a personality type there that's very much like the appraiser that's, like, the curmudgeon out in the woods, you know?
13:50That's just one type.
13:51But – and so, like, I kind of will just slip into – according to whatever the topic is or whatever the article – what the piece is, like, I'll just put myself in the shoes of who our audience is supposed to be.
14:02Like, why – like, what does this matter?
14:04Why would I read this?
14:05Is this worth my time?
14:06I think that people's time is incredibly valuable now more so than ever because our attention is – our attention spans are just – have been throttled.
14:16And people are busier than ever.
14:18You know, in our industry, we talk so much about AI and efficiency, getting time back and all that stuff.
14:23But the reality is the more advanced that we have – the more advances that we have with our technology and the more things are supposed to make us more efficient and give us this time back, it hasn't happened yet, right?
14:32People are busier than they ever have been, and that makes their time and their attention more valuable than it ever has been before.
14:38And so, I try to be cognizant of that.
14:40I don't want anybody to engage with our content and then feel like they've been duped, you know, two paragraphs in or two minutes into a show.
14:48So, having that as your – like, your North Star, your guiding principle, why am I engaging with this if I am this person?
14:57That has – that helps me – personally, that's helped me kind of filter through, like I said, the haze and the clutter of just an ever-changing sea of information on a day-to-day basis.
15:08What's on the horizon for 2026?
15:10A lot.
15:15We're going to – well, one, we're going to continue in the direction that we have been building out for the past year or two.
15:23We're going to continue to invest heavily in more of our video content.
15:29This year, we're going to try to build out educational content, education and training content.
15:34Any time that this has been brought up in conversation since I've been here, talking to both people in the real estate side, the mortgage side, even in the secondary market side, over the past decade, there's been a kind of a continual devolution, I guess you could say, of professionalism overall in the industry.
15:56And I don't think that that's anybody's fault in particular, but one of the reasons for that is because there's not a place like HousingWire where you can go and you can learn how to be a better professional.
16:07And HousingWire creates, and we interview, we receive perspectives on industry topics for the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
16:18We're publishing that on a daily and weekly basis.
16:22And what we're going to do moving forward is we're going to try to – we're going to make an effort to distill so much of that information that we've already gotten and more information as we move forward into educational modules, into learning paths where you can come and not just get the information, but you can get the actionable insights.
16:45You can move forward with your business, your branch, whatever your model is, with confidence based on the information that we have, not only that we generate ourselves, but from our contributors and the people and our partners and our clients.
17:05We'll see you next time.
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