Hello! My name is Cheri Hamm and I am a mortgage broker who focuses on helping my community of Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge. I am a huge fan of Angela and The Perfuct Club. I am, also, a single mother of two very busy and beautiful children who are currently eleven and twelve years old.
I love this idea of accepting our own Perfuct because my life has been very far from perfect!!
I was born and raised in a small farm town called Plumas, Manitoba. Population three hundred and there were literally five other children in my grade. Life dramatically changed for me at four years old when I randomly lost my dad in a drowning accident in a hotel swimming pool in Winnipeg. How could that happen to a 34 year old man?? To this day, we are unsure of what happened to him, except that we lost him. My mother solely raised me, my younger brother, and my older sister who were two and six at the time. She managed a huge farm and the three of us to the best of her ability and showed us courage and strength in the process.
At the age of eleven, my mom moved us all out to beautiful British Columbia where she felt we would have access to more opportunity for our futures. She got a job and began working full time to support our new lives in North Vancouver, again, setting an example of what one person can achieve when she sets her mind to it!
I started working at the age of twelve and have been working ever since. My quick life summary includes a lot of work at a young age in the service sector, a diploma from BCIT in Marketing Management, a career working for small business helping them to implement systems for growth, and on to building and opening the North Shore’s first wedding dress store with my sister and naming it after my mom; “Isabelle’s Bridal”. I owned two condos downtown and a home in North Vancouver, too. Life was good!
That store was the biggest lesson of my life!! It actually cost me everything except for all of the lessons I learned from it. I owned the store for 10 years and in that time, it gave me the strength to leave my husband, but cost me everything I had built in my adult life. I lost everything financially between my ex-husband and what it kept to keep the store afloat to support the women who worked there and the brides who shopped there. It was the most costly adventure of my life and yet I almost would not change a thing. Ten years later, living far away from the store in Pitt Meadows, with an ex who did not help me financially and barely helped me with managing the kids, and having kids who were getting busier and busier in their lives…..something had to give. My sister and I cut our losses and sold the store to two sisters who worked for us at the time and who excelled in the wedding dress industry.
Now what? I was broke, severely in debt, and lost….but this mama had to stay strong! I had two kids relying solely on me to make life happen! Thankfully, I had watched my mother live this life and knew to follow her strength and courage to do the same! I went back to working full time and did so for my best friend’s husband…….who turned around and fired me three years later for demanding equal pay to all of the men who worked for him. Sigh……another fight, another loss, another hit. I was literally heart broken, tired, mentally exhausted, and done with life at this point. I was mad!! Thankfully, I knew I was not meant to work for someone ever again and had already gotten my mortgage broker license the previous year knowing someday I was going to have to push forward on my own terms managing my own life.
Every life and store lesson I had was about to be put to the test! I jumped into mortgage brokering with two feet and something to prove! In my first year of business, I was voted Top 4 New Mortgage Professional in Canada, I won the 2019 A-Lister Award for Maple Ridge & Pitt Meadows, and I was a top performer and Top New Agent in my firm. All of these awards came my way while I was just working hard, helping the people in my community, and making ends meet FINALLY for my children. It was my miracle year.
I am still far from perfect or living my perfect life…….but I am getting closer and I am doing it accepting all of my Perfuct life lessons and characteristics that have gotten me here. I am still mad at times about some of the things I have been through, but I am also grateful that those lessons have brought me here and more so, that they allow me to serve a community that is so important to me and raise my kids while doing it. It is my Perfuct life right now and I am here to help anyone I can in their Perfuct life.
We are in the midst of COVID-19 right now and I am more grateful than ever that I can be a valuable resource to those around me struggling financially through this time. If you need any help with your finances or your mortgage, please reach out. I hope I can help you in some way to survive this.
cheri@theplacetomortgage.com | 604-715-7942 | www.theplacetomortgage.com/cheri