Robbins' family reunion: John Robbins was a leader in the mortgage business long before he took the chairman's post for the Mortgage Bankers Association. His successful career has been noted for many things, but the loyalty of his senior management team is perhaps the most telling

Mortgage Banking, Oct, 2006 by Janet Reilley Hewitt

Robbins is constantly absorbing incoming information about the market. His antennae are always up.

But his intellectual curiosity goes way beyond financial services. He is an avid reader and a collector of first editions. He owns early works of those who have charted various frontiers in American history, such as the journals of Lewis and Clark, and writings by Theodore Roosevelt.

But he also is wired into today's news on his "My Yahoo" space. And as for his reliance on newspapers: well, not so much. He says, "I scan The Wall Street Journal, and obviously The San Diego Union Tribune. I used to read the Los Angeles Times, but they got so liberal that they pissed me off. I would say that I get an awful lot of news online."

He describes his online setup this way: "I have a My Yahoo that I custom-made, so it has all of the business news and then the late-breaking international news. I really look at that every single day. And then I have various company stocks that I follow and those companies' major headlines, and then at the bottom is sports." He also, of course, reads MBA's publications, he says.

Most likely it is this sense of deep curiosity about his industry and where it's going that keeps this man so happily at work at whatever new company he is running. "Having created and nurtured so many successful companies, John is like the veteran quarterback that keeps taking his team to the Super Bowl," says Jonathan Kempner, MBA president and chief executive officer.

But when you mention the word "retirement," he reacts as though you are speaking in tongues. That is the last thing he is thinking about right now. Right now, he is ready to tackle the MBA bully pulpit.

But after a moment, he offers a few thoughts. He says, "I would like to travel more with my wife, spend more time in the outdoors with my cameras and spend more time with my grandkids. Spending more time with my grandkids was really the first thing that I was feeling." (He probably will have some explaining to do to his wife, Laura.)

He has three lucky grandchildren: Krystian, Michael and Olivia. And not surprisingly, his own two children are both in the mortgage business and they call him "Dad" too.

That "Dad" thing keeps coming back when people talk about the close-knit natural leadership style that has made Robbins so successful. Many have seen the Robbins style at work, including MBA top officials.

MBA's CEO Kempner says, "How someone treats his family and friends is perhaps the best indicator of how he deals in the business world. By that measure, John is at the top of his field, since I have, without fail, observed John shower people close to him with affection, respect and generosity."

But going back for a minute to the topic of retirement, Robbins takes another stab at describing what his might look like: "My ideal retirement is to sit on a few business boards and be an industry strategic adviser to one of the large mortgage banks, where I would work probably about 25 percent to 33 percent of the time."