In 2023, Dean Harrington knew his 34 years of running Shamrock Home Loans were over. His company had survived and even thrived through a rocky start, a split between founding partners, a new vision and loss of most employees, and four recessions—including the 2008 housing crash.
But Shamrock couldn’t make it through the sky-high interest rates and low demand of the post-COVID-19 housing market. Harrington, 65, said God told him to “sell the company.”
Everyone loves a successful business story arc. Visionary entrepreneurspour all they have into a product they believe in or a service they care about, daring it to succeed. It does. Then they happily retire, leaving the company to their children and grandchildren.
What happens when the business succeeds but the happily ever after looks a little different?
Shamrock Home Loans currently occupies a flat, 1970s-style office in a modest complex in East Providence, Rhode Island. Its emerald four-leaf-clover logo looms over the glass doors in front.
Harrington started Shamrock in 1987 with his business partner. Within their first two years, Harrington’s previous employer sued him over a noncompete clause. Harrington won that legal war and incorporated his company in 1989. Within the first decade, he realized he needed to buy out his partner as their visions diverged.
“By the time that was over, I had one employee left,” Harrington told me. He learned his first major business lesson that year: “If the change is too great, it’ll scare employees.”
By 2001, he had built the company back up to 30 employees. They moved from mortgage banking to mortgage lending and slowly increased to 80 employees.
Then 2008 hit. With no mortgages to sell, the company bled staff, plummeting to 25. Still, Harrington said he felt God’s providence in how to move forward. Shamrock bought dying mortgage companies and used their brokers. As the economy recovered, Harrington had a corner on the southern New England market. Shamrock soon stabilized, topping 100 employees.
In 2021, The Silicon Review named Shamrock one of its top 50 US workplaces of the year. “From our app to our mortgage process, we are focused on ensuring that we not only stay up-to-date in the industry, but remain ahead of the curve,” Harrington told the Review. He continued,
We became paperless in 2018 which allowed us to quickly pivot in March 2020 and close a record-breaking number of loans in 2020. Also, in 2020, we launched a growth plan to invest in staff, referral partners, homebuyers, and vendors across the country. Since then, we have expanded our national footprint to a total of 23 states.
In 2023, National Mortgage Newsnamed Shamrock the No. 1 midsize mortgage company to work for. It cited Harrington’s transparency “with staff about the lender’s financial performance, part of management’s mission to stem fear.”
And it wasn’t all about the profit. Shamrock practiced the maxim “people over profit” by offering $50 per closing to support Rhode Island–based charities, a practical step that embodied Harrington’s greatest-commandment values (Matt. 22:36–40). He was also a member of C12, a Christian business organization, and placed relevant Scriptures throughout Shamrock’s website.
“My daughter was going to take over [as] CEO in three years. We were growing. Our market share was increasing. I was healthy and vibrant,” Harrington said.
But in 2023, things started to turn.
High interest rates and low housing inventory caused mortgage volumes to plunge, making it hard for smaller companies like Shamrock to survive.
“I felt the Lord saying to sell the company,” he said. “I knew we were going to be done in 2024.”
After meeting with two companies, he decided to tell his COO and president about the plans to sell on a hot summer day in mid-July 2023.
That night, agitated from the conversations, Harrington decided to take a walk in a cemetery near his house. A woman was walking her pit bull, and the dog charged Harrington and attacked him. He pushed the dog off three times. Finally, the woman retrieved the dog and put it in her car but immediately drove off, leaving Harrington severely injured.
The week he returned from the hospital, Harrington pushed forward the sale of the company. It was arduous, but God made him four specific promises, Harrington said, including that God would save the company before it was audited by the end of the year and that God would retain the necessary staff. The sale went through in November 2023, and the acquiring company told Harrington to pack up his office immediately.
Harrington believes it’s possible to end a business venture well. Communicate well, he said, and care about people. He met with the whole company and framed the sale positively. In the midst of the transition, he also maintained company traditions to keep spirits high.
But there were more health problems. In December, Harrington followed up on a urology appointment he had delayed because of the dog attack and the sale of his company.
“By March, I knew I had prostate cancer,” he said. He had surgery the following September but felt ill again in January 2025. His physician sent him to the hospital, where the doctors found pancreatic cancer: “That was the worst pain I’ve ever had.”
When I talked to him in November, he was only three weeks out from receiving the Whipple surgery, a complicated and painful procedure to remove a pancreatic tumor, part of the pancreas, and the gallbladder.
“I never stopped asking God what you want me to know, what you want me to do,” Harrington reflected. “I was looking to Scripture for answers…and abiding in [Christ as] the vine” (John 15:3–11).
Despite the pain and suffering, he sees God’s timing and sovereignty in the situation. It would have been a lot worse, he said, if he’d had any of the health complications two years earlier, when he was hemorrhaging money or selling the company.
“Ending a business is much harder than starting one,” he told me, adding that every company is vulnerable at any moment. “You can be making a million dollars or making none. Hold every situation and the future lightly. Don’t resist what God has; just step into it.”
Kara Bettis Carvalho is a senior features editor at Christianity Today.
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