Kathryn “Kat” Ruland has been a MLO with LemonBrew Lending since February 2021. She describes herself as loyal, resourceful, and creative. While each day in her role is a little bit different, Kat focuses on working alongside the Operations team to help move loans forward, outbound efforts to bring new borrowers into the pipeline, updating borrowers on important milestones, and continuously creating new ways to market LemonBrew and herself to potential borrowers.
Kat comes from a strong background in Marketing, and taking on a new world of numbers as a MLO was a unique challenge she wanted to master. In her own words, Kat stated, “The leadership and team mentality shared by my peers has made for a much easier transition than I imagined. The culture at LemonBrew is one of a kind and makes every day enjoyable. While the job itself can be challenging, I never feel those ‘Sunday Scaries’ because I truly enjoy coming to work!”
Lemons are Fun is Kat’s favorite Lemonism. Finding reasons to laugh and make memories in all aspects of her life are high priorities for her. We spend the majority of our week with our work family, so Kat feels that it is extremely important to enjoy what she does and the team members she works with. She feels blessed to have a work family that she has fun with inside and outside of work; from joking and competing with each other on the sales floor to a team outing at Top Golf, she always has a good time! With this positive outlook, it’s no surprise that Kat is proud of the strong relationships she has built, both personal and professional. As she says, “Trophies, achievement awards, passport stamps, and expensive things are wonderful, but my greatest accomplishment is my ability to build and maintain relationships.”
One of the best career lessons Kat learned early on is, to be a great leader, you have to be an even better team player. While working in a restaurant in her teens and early twenties, Kat saw this firsthand when the two original owners split their partnership and one of them took on sole ownership and management of the business. This owner earned the respect of both patrons and employees quickly because there was not a single task he would ask of anyone that he wouldn’t do himself. He worked harder and longer than everyone on his team, and as a result, the team worked harder for him. This translated into greater success for the business and the employees, and Kat’s tip income doubled almost overnight. Her advice to new BrewCrew team members is to get to know your team and lean on them. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to your peers or leadership because everyone has an open door policy.
In her spare time, Kat jokes that she enjoys overbooking herself! She loves to travel – whether it’s a quick weekend trip to the mountains or a longer trip abroad. She enjoys going out to eat with friends and family, playing rec league kickball, board game nights, concerts, Gamecock football, and occasionally she’ll make some time for art projects. In the summer months you can find her in her backyard enjoying her super official big girl kiddie pool! If you don’t know Kat well yet, you might be surprised to catch her standing in line at McDonalds ordering a cheeseburger happy meal, watching motocross, or tearing it up on her own Honda CRF 80 dirt bike.