Sean Hart’s Tenacity And Creativity Have Helped Him Find Gold As A Prospector And A Top Mortgage Professional
“You need to know where to look, and you need to know what to look for,” says Sean Hart. “Sometimes there’s a nugget right in front of you but hiding in the shadows. Then you turn over another rock, and bam, there it is. Gold.”
Just when I thought Sean was talking about prospecting for gold, he says, “That’s why I’m successful in the mortgage business. I don’t like taking no for an answer. I’ve made a career by looking for every possible advantage for my clients and getting them the right mortgage at the right rate for the home of their dreams. It takes a lot of hard work, and creativity, but it’s worth it.”
With a quarter century of experience, Sean is no stranger to the mortgage business. Nor is he a stranger to finding gold. Real gold. Not figurative gold—we’re talking actual nuggets!
EARLY INCLINATIONS
Sean’s parents met in college, fell in love, got married, and started a family. Sean’s early days were spent in Missoula, Montana. If it wasn’t school time or the dead of winter, Sean was outside, in the hills, streams, and fields. His relatives were rugged individuals—folks that repeatedly pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
While Sean never had the good fortune of meeting his great-grandfather, he learned a lot about him from family stories. His great-grandfather was hard-working man, a stonemason in the Yellowstone area. He built fireplaces, staircases, and walkways for some of the great Yellowstone lodges and homes in the area. And he was an infamous miner.
That DNA didn’t stray far from Sean, who from an early age adopted a strong work ethic, a love of the outdoors, and curiosity about prospecting and mining.
When Sean was in the fourth or fifth grade, his family was part of the 1960’s “Boeing migration,” where many families moved to Seattle for better work. Before long, his stepfather, an insurance professional, entered the picture and the family moved to California.
LEARNING LENDING
Once Sean grew up, he followed his stepfather and ventured into insurance. Despite the example of his stepfather’s success and experience, Sean realized that the industry wasn’t for him. He began to look for a path that included his work ethic and his emerging finance sensibilities.
“I was looking at purchasing real estate at the time. There were a lot of foreclosures,” Sean remembers. “And I was looking at buying those foreclosures to fix and flip. That led me to think, ‘Why don’t I just do real estate sales or mortgage?’ Well, my wife was a real estate agent, and I thought, two of us doing the same thing, probably not good. Okay, I’ll do the financing!”
Sean wasn’t one to wait, so shortly after his gestalt, he marched into the office where his wife worked and met with the head broker. Sean told him he was interested in the lending side of real estate. “He took one look at me, and he said, ‘I’ll give you a desk and a phone. Good luck, kid.’”
Sean Hart is quite a successful gold miner. While Mine Operator does all types of mining, his truck is complete with all the gear for placer mining (the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals). He also has found success with metal detectors. “There is so much gold just within 50 miles of Los Angeles, and it’s found in places you would never dream of.” Some of his treasure is evident in his distinctive green pan used in gold panning.
FINDING MORTGAGE GOLD
Lucky for Sean, there was another mortgage agent in the office who thankfully was willing to help him learn the ropes. A blessing in disguise, the mortgage agent would hand off hard accounts which Sean gladly took. And that’s when and where the tenacity, work ethic, and gold mining DNA in his blood found its mettle.
Finding ways to get challenging deals done is what began to set Sean apart from most mortgage professionals. Rather than wait for the easy ones, Sean loved the challenge.
“I had to research and learn how to overcome client qualification challenges,” tells Sean of his early mortgage experience. “Now it has become the gold mine of my mortgage business. It’s hardwired into me that when I’m presented with an obstacle, I am six ways to Sunday about how to get around it. So my closing percentage is one of the highest in the industry. It’s because I just don’t take no for an answer.”
LOOKING FOR REAL NUGGETS
There is a sparkle in Sean’s eyes when he talks about helping someone get a great home loan. That sparkle is just as bright when he speaks of panning or prospecting for gold, the precious metal.
While the seeds of prospecting for gold were planted in Sean as a young boy hearing about his long-gone gold-prospecting relatives, the real urge came years later. One day, while flipping channels on cable television, he chanced upon a show about prospecting for gold. Sean noticed that there were gold locations in many of the same places he frequented as a lifelong outdoorsman. If he’s not fishing or camping, he’s likely riding dirt bikes or ATVs, hiking, or hunting.
“Seeing this show about searching for gold in places I knew very well, I wondered just how much gold I had walked over or fished over or hunted around that I didn’t even know was there?”
Sean’s neighbor had seen the same TV show. So, the two decided to go the next step and joined a prospecting club. They packed up a tent and a couple small gold pans and headed out. They didn’t really know how to pan or prospect, or even how to set up and use their tiny initial investment into gear.
“We were so raw, so new, and there was a gentleman there from the Salvation Army,” Sean recalls. “He actually showed us how to set the equipment up and how to use it because we had no clue what we were doing.”
When the first day in the field with the prospecting club ended, the man who had helped came by and glanced in their sluice box. The man smiled. Sean and his friend looked in the box. Low and behold there was gold in the box!
“I can tell you the hook was set! I mean, I was hooked from that moment on!”
Since that time some years ago, Sean has become a highly accomplished, highly successful miner. He now works with a team of like-minded souls under the group name of Mine Operator. Their YouTube Channel is https://www.youtube.com/@mineoperator.
His efforts are spread not only around California, but around the western United States, and even internationally. He has mining adventures have taken him to distant lands such as Cambodia and Thailand.
Mining comes in various forms, done as individuals with little more than a pan and pickaxe, or done in teams, with various forms of sophisticated equipment. More weekends than not, you will find Sean and his partners “out there.” Where is “there?” Well, that’s not so easy to say. Miners keep their best locations a secret. But Sean did let us know that there’s gold less than 20 miles from his home in the Los Angeles area. Sometimes Sean and company travel for hours, and sometimes just a short distance.
You may find the Mine Operator crew using metal detectors, which are now very sensitive and specialized. Waving the detector over the ground, they monitor the sounds. When there is a “hit,” a quick shovel can reveal a find…a bottle cap, an old rifle cartridge, or even a small nugget of gold.
There are two primary ways of finding, or “recovering” gold as miners might say. One is “hard rock.” This is when the gold is found embedded in rock, which might come from digging in a mine. The other is Placer mining, where the gold is already loose, freed from a host rock or the substrate. Placer gold is typically found in or around a river or stream. Mine Operator does it all!
Sometimes Sean just goes and looks, with detectors, picks, shovels, etc. But on another weekend, Sean and his partners could likely be found with a high-tech setup along a stream, using sluice boxes and pans to find placer gold. Because gold is heavier than anything that runs through the sluice box, it gets trapped by gravity and separated from the lighter material. The concentrate then transfers to finishing equipment, which is most likely a gold pan. Being a skilled gold panner is critical in the value of a gold claim.
It makes one wonder what gold is out there. Here in California, it’s nearly everywhere…coast, deserts, and mountains. According to Fox News’ Ashley J. DiMella’s article entitled “Top US states where you’re most likely to strike gold,” California is number one. Sean says, “There’s so much gold here. California is full of gold. I mean, we could pay the national debt off with the gold in California.”
Sean, nicknamed “Mr. Hollywood” in the gold community, has met with some pretty significant success. The hit TV show on Discovery+ Gold Rush: Mine Rescue with Freddy and Juan recently featured Sean and the Mine Operator team in an episode. It airs in October 2024.
He’s found his share of nuggets in various sizes and weights, as well as a fair amount of gold flakes. Much of his find gets reinvested into the mining operation, but some of the nuggets are arguably worth more in sentimental value to Sean than monetary value.
Finding The Real Treasure
Spending just a short amount of time with Sean, it’s easy to see that while finding gold can be quite profitable, don’t bet on that being the reason for doing it. It’s
very hard work and physically demanding. Finding the next nugget is what gives him the energy to keep going. So, too, is the case with Sean and mortgages. He talks
of real estate lending with an honesty and passion rarely found today.
During our time with Sean, someone jokingly said, “Finding gold in them thar hills.”
“That’s not far from the truth,” quipped Sean. “Sometimes it’s gold in the river, and sometimes it’s helping someone find the gold in home ownership.”
Two ways to strike it rich.
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