Industry Leaders Share Tips for Private Lenders
Dear Readers,
We have received a lot of inquiries in the last few weeks regarding how we set up a remote office. Rather than just responding to people individually with our own experiences, we thought this topic warranted a deeper dive and a more thorough examination. Not only will we elaborate on the steps Geraci LLP has taken to maintain efficiency and continuity during these trying times, but we will also be sharing insights from other industry leaders who are working through the same challenges. Regardless of where you live and work, the mandatory quarantine looks to be the new normal for at least a while longer; so in the meantime, let us help you make the most of it.
Anthony Geraci – CEO, Geraci LLP
Four years ago, Geraci set out to really adopt technology and infrastructure to allow our people to work wherever they are in the world. We rapidly grasped that the world was moving from PC’s and desktops to cell phones and mobility.
After hours of research and adjustments, we came down to use the following:
Technology
We adopted the following technology that forms the basis of our firm:
- Ringcentral – We use RingCentral as the backbone of our communications hub. Wherever we are, we have access to our office phones as a result. As long as we have our cell phones or Wi-Fi coverage, the RingCentral app will ring as if we were in the office. As a business that relies heavily on our phone system, this is absolutely mission critical for us.
- Zoom.us – We have over 50 people that work at Geraci. In order for us to meet and move our priorities forward without being able to meet physically like we used to, we have adopted and harnessed zoom.us as our virtual meeting room as well as our platform for team meetings. The connectivity and interaction it is almost as good as being physically present with each other. Each month we have our All Hands meeting, and last week was the first time we did it completely virtually. It went very well.
- File Server – Our files are all on a remote server that can be accessed from anywhere, by anyone on our team. For those of you who have not already invested that infrastructure, you could use Dropbox or box.com as a great alternative to be instantly remote.
- Slack – We message each other through an app called Slack. It is free and accessible for desktop or on cell phones.
Putting it all together
Our meetings are calendared and hosted just as they would be in real life. The only difference is we get together over Zoom. For any interactions between people, we could either directly call them, video chat or send instant messages via Slack. Our banking, transactions, closings, etc. are all completed via the internet.
if you have any questions on how we did it or any other needs at all, feel free to reach out to us and we will help you any way we can. Stay healthy, stay safe, but most of all stay sane. This too shall pass and new opportunities will be created as a result. How you respond to them will pave the way for your future.
Carrie Cook – President, Ignite Funding
There is one word to describe my team and that is RESILIENCE.
We are headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada and as our management staff monitored the situation closely as it became apparent to us on Monday, March 16th that we needed to start implementing our Contingency Plan. This planning could not have started a minute too soon because within 48 hours the entire city of Las Vegas was a ghost town. Our Governor addressed the residents of Nevada at 6pm on Tuesday, March 17th, and at 8am on Wednesday morning I rallied my management staff and then the employees at 9am with a social distancing meeting in our training room to inform the staff that it was time to fully test our Contingency Plan, so let’s put it into action. A communication was sent to all investors and posted on our website that Ignite Funding will maintain “business as usual” in a virtual environment from our homes. By noon the office was cleared out with the exception of two members of management and we were enacting our virtual office environment. By 8pm we confirmed that all employees were virtually ready for the next day.
The first day was rough with the technology, but we quickly fixed every issue promptly as to not allow our employees, investors, or borrowers to build up frustration as the country was acclimating to their new temporary environment. As the leader of the company, I knew that it was my job to maintain the strong company culture that I have cultivated for a decade. My employees expect change and even embrace improvements in technology and adjustments to our portfolio to meet market demands while mitigating the risk to our investors through diversification. We are now fully embracing the technology that allows us to work securely from our homes without clients experiencing any change in the level of customer service or the availability of investments.
Every day I mass communicate with all employees in a fun interactive way. Our culture is ‘work hard, play harder.’ Here are some examples of the activities that have transpired in the first nine days of our virtual office experience; Day One started with a Magnolia Manifesto quote that ended with #itslonelywithoutemployees. Day Two was ‘guess whose virtual office this is,’ and we also had a baby join our family on that day. Day Three we hit an all-time record funding week of over $22 million. Day Four was ‘selfie count’ on your phone to guess who had the most. Day Five was from the fairygodboss.com Hump Day challenge questions (Ignite Funding style) and boy, did we learn a lot of hidden secrets about employees! Day Six was a virtual COVID-19 themed dance-off with a $100 prize. Day Seven it was time to discover the creature comforts of the office we missed most (come to find out the employees missed the employees most). Day Eight Carrie gathered the list of creature comforts to prepare for dissemination to employees’ homes to make the next 30 days a little easier (they do not know this is coming yet). Day Nine we implemented Zoom to try and meet the creature comforts request through video conferencing, which was hilarious, and thank goodness for our millennial staff who teach us new things every day.
I know you were probably expecting something very serious, but during these times we need to remember that the comradery of employees is what matters most. As the President, I’m proud to tell everyone that I have become the virtual assistant to all my employees while they stay safely planted at home during this time.
Brian Mingham – Founder & CEO, CFSI Loan Management
A few tips for those of you who are new to working from home
This can be a tough transition while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, having your kids home from school, and still trying to manage a household… But here is how we are helping our team.
- Keep your routine the same – Wake up at the same time, eat, shower, get dressed, brush your teeth, and get ready to walk out the door.
- Log on to your system, grab your coffee, and check in with your manager – Keeping in contact with your manager and your team members will keep you focused on the tasks at hand and help you feel like you are still part of your team.
- Get up and move around – Take breaks, stretch, walk around a bit, and get your blood flowing. In the office you are routinely getting up for coffee, talking to another person in a group down the hall – you are moving, at least semi-regularly. At home we have a tendency to sit in one place and just keep working. Next thing you know, it’s 4:30 PM and you forgot to eat, shower, or brush your teeth. That is why you must keep your routine.
- Setting up your workspace away from everyone allows you to feel like you have your “own” space – A lot of people don’t have home offices, so dining room tables and corners of bedrooms become your makeshift workspace. It adds stress to the rest of your family because they feel you are still there to support them, but you have to balance staying focused for uninterrupted periods of time so you can still get your work done. A lot of mistakes can happen with frequent interruptions, and this can cause frustrations for you, your manager, and your employer. Take a deep breath, take a little extra time to get acclimated to your new environment, and communicate with your manager on any issues so they can offer advice/suggestions for a successful “work at home” experience for the next several weeks as we get through this challenging time.
Pavel Tchourliaev – Co-Founder, Mortgage Automator
Staying Efficient during COVID-19
Mortgage Automator is a complete end-to-end loan origination and servicing software for private lenders. Our product development pipeline is scheduled months in advance and adhering to the schedule is a top priority, regardless of where we work.
Our entire team is working remotely these days. While at the office you can simply ask someone a quick question, now that question has to be a call, a video meeting, or multiple messages sent back and forth. You can be an absolute efficiency ninja and it would still take you more time. We call this ‘communication overhead.’
Keeping the team organized is the key to minimizing this overhead. We have already been using Slack for internal communications, but we switched to Zoom for video team meetings to keep things more personal, crack a few jokes, and maintain sanity during the quarantine.
Some people are better communicators than others, so we increased the number of internal meetings in order to keep everybody aligned. We have even created lunch socials and started using phone apps like HouseParty to play team games and keep up the morale.
Keeping clients going
More importantly, Mortgage Automator keeps the clients’ businesses going during this difficult time. We enable our users to have a highly process-oriented approach, including actionable tasks that can be assigned to any team member and tracked to completion.
Automated document generation allows for LOIs, Term Sheets and Funding Documents to be generated error-free in under 1 minute; and a user-friendly web-interface can be accessed from any remote location, on any device, including a phone. You can get all the work done and still have plenty of time for those walks to the fridge or to walk your dog if you have one.
Since monthly payments are processed via ACH, you can collect your payments within minutes without having to see anyone for their paper checks, thus adhering to the social distancing protocols.
Similarly, your investors won’t even have to hit pause on that Netflix show they’ve been binging. They will receive beautiful monthly statements automatically with a complete update of their portfolio and outstanding loans.
This level of automation reduces the need for constant supervision and empowers team members to do more work, independently, error-free and in less time. For all those lenders that are struggling to keep up during these times without proper software, tell us about your challenges and we’ll help get them sorted for you from the comfort of your living room.
Gary Bechtel – President, Money360
As we become acclimated to working remote based on State or Federal guidance during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become necessary for companies to quickly and seamlessly transition from an office environment with everyone in the same location to one where no one is physically together. This has disrupted business continuity as people work through making necessary changes and adapting to the “new normal” during the shelter in place policies adopted by the federal government as well as many states, counties and cities.
Businesses, especially those with a large brick and mortar presence and back-office staffs, were probably the most impacted. Putting in place the infrastructure and policies to allow their employees the ability to work remote takes time to implement, and can lead to a loss of productivity and a potential a loss of revenue. Time will tell how long we will all be operating under these policies, but I hope it’s not for too much longer!
At Money360, from very early in our history, we began building an end-to-end, secure, proprietary technology platform for the origination, processing and closing of our loans. Having this in place allows our employees the ability to work remote yet still have all the functionality as if they were in the office. So, whether they are traveling for business, on vacation, or sick, etc. they have the same functionality as any other team member no matter where they are physically located. This includes accessing the Company’s loan pipeline, closed transaction folders, and all supporting documentation. We already had most of our Regional Directors (who originate our loans) working remote, as well as a handful of back office personnel occasionally working remote because of family needs or for other reasons.
We also heavily utilize Microsoft Teams, which allows us to hold one-on-one meetings or collaborate as a team. Teams allows us to share our screens, documents, or other pertinent information utilized in the business. So, for us, the transition to a remote only workplace was relatively painless. As is to be expected, it does take some getting used to; not being in the same location and the normal physical interaction that goes with it does change the way business is conducted, but from a productivity standpoint, we didn’t miss a beat.
My advice to other companies still working through this transition would be to utilize commercially available products like Zoom, WebEx, Slack etc. to get their employees sharing information and working together. Again, Microsoft Teams has worked great for us and I’d recommend that depending on what platforms companies are currently operating on. At this point, it’s probably too late to build the kind of technology platform that we have at Money360, but it might be something to consider in the future as companies revisit their office/staffing/business strategies.
I wish you and your families all the best in these unprecedented and trying times in our Country’s history, but we are Americans and will get through this! Unfortunately, it will come at a steep cost; with the loss of many lives, businesses and people’s livelihoods. My hope is that we and our government will all learn from this and take steps to reduce threats like COVID-19 in the future.
