Anthony Geraci, the CEO of the company that bears his name, certainly has his hands full. When he is not running his law firm, Geraci LLP, or his newly-launched media company, he focuses on the Non-Conventional Lending Exchange, which allows lenders and investors from across the financial sector to exchange information and build connections in the financial sphere.

Despite the many tasks he faces on a daily basis, Geraci (both the man and the company) continues to look forward. By the year 2025, he wishes to grow his firm to 3,000 clients. In addition to receiving a Super Lawyers Rising Stars ranking (which is only given to 2.5 percent of attorneys nationwide,) Anthony also coaches his son’s baseball team.

The Non-Conventional Lending Exchange, Geraci’s brainchild, breaks down investing into three different categories: learn, connect, and invest/sell. Rather than using sanctimonious language geared towards experienced investors only, Anthony’s marketplace allows investment novices to break into the space and offers articles on how to get started. Geraci discussed his career, company, and the role of technology with Originate Report.

Originate Report (OR:) How did you get involved in the non-conventional lending space, and what led you to start Geraci?

Anthony Geraci (AG:) Like all great things, I just kind of fell into it. I wish I could tell you that I had this master plan, but I didn’t. It was my first job out of law school, and I cut my teeth doing non-conventional lending from 2005-2007 and then started Geraci. There are a lot of factors that led to the formation of Geraci – I always knew I wanted to go out on my own. I had been an entrepreneur on and off for a number of years, and had some success; funny enough, I started off doing book signings, and I used to be a career book dealer. One of the rarest books I owned at the time was a first edition Mark Twain, one of his earlier works.

I fell into the non-conventional lending space, but I always wanted to start my own firm and my own company. That’s just who I am as a person. At the time, I’ll admit I didn’t know if it was a good decision or not. I was leaving a firm where I had been successful to start my own, which was a new adventure with no guarantees of success. And then, in 2007, I started Geraci with a focus on non-conventional lending, because that’s what I knew. I had enough confidence in myself, which I think is really important, and I knew my logic and reasoning was sound, so I figured I could add value to my clients by being cheaper than my competition. Many lawyers have the mindset of “it depends,” but today especially, clients want definite answers. Of course “it depends” is still an answer I give, especially when the law isn’t clear, but what I try to do is add business sense into my legal advice as well. For example, I’ll say “it’s not clear, but you have an 80 percent chance you’ll be fine.” I try to give my clients all the information, but at the end of the day, it’s the client’s decision. My job and the job of attorneys is to advise.

OR: I can imagine it was difficult to set out on your own – did you face a sense of apprehension when you started your own firm?

AG: I told my then wife at the time, “I don’t know if I’m making the best decision or the worst decision, but we’ll find out.” At some point, you prepare as much as you can and then you have to either jump or not.

OR: Is there any particular reason you think clients, especially now, are searching for more concrete answers to their questions?

AG: I think people want direct answers period. The whole answer of “it depends,” to me, doesn’t give clients peace of mind, which is our brand promise. If you call me and I answer “it depends,” are you any closer to finding an answer to your question? If I was a client and I didn’t receive any further guidance, that would frustrate me. I think attorneys owe their clients more directness. I think clients now are being more demanding, and they have the ability to do so – as technology keeps progressing and processes become automated, I think people have the right to be more demanding of their attorneys.

OR: So you mentioned how technology plays a major role in your industry – and practically every industry now. How does technology tie into the ever-changing nature of the non-conventional lending space?

AG: Technology is really the centerpiece of it. But at the same time, I hope the central goal minimizes technology – our goal is to create a community of likeminded individuals who get together and exchange ideas, but also do business together. To me, that’s the epitome of everything; you have to know the people you like and the people you identify with. I view non-conventional lending like any other industry – ultimately, the technology is there to aid in the conversation and aid in conventions, rather than be only about the technology itself.

There are a lot of companies right now that are really trying to automate the space with varying degrees of success. To me, I don’t think this space can be easily automated as far as evaluating properties, for example, because at the end of the day that evaluation is just an opinion. I don’t care how much technology you surround an evaluation with, at the end of the day it’s all about what people are willing to pay for it. If that’s true, then how can technology work? Like I said, what we’re trying to do differently is put people together and create a community of like-minded people. Other technology platforms are just there to do business, whether they’re buying loans or selling loans. The human component is so crucial to the buying side of things, and a lot of people say buying something is all about logic, but I don’t think so. To me, buying something is emotional, and there’s an emotional attachment to everything. When you’re buying a house, for example, there are so many intangibles there, and I don’t even think an appraisal can be subject to automation because of the emotional context in which people buy a house. I could probably give you 50 different factors that impact those decisions. How do you automate that, or judge how one property is better than another? I don’t think you can. And that’s why I think there has to be a human element because otherwise, you’re going to miss the bar. Time will tell if I’m right or wrong, and we’ll see what happens to these crowdfunded platforms in the next few years.

Automation is here to stay – the question is what can be automated. I think that’s what we’re going to find out in the next few years. Can you automate a back-end process like automating loans? Absolutely you can. In that case, you’re asking the same information of the borrower because the law demands it. Processes like that are becoming fully automated, and no one is really focusing on that, because that’s where the efficiency of the lender is going to come into play and could be a value-add to a lender who is less efficient. That being said, I think the main point is focusing on what can and cannot be automated. We’re harnessing it ourselves, and to be quite honest it’s a “join-or-die” type of movement. Automation is going to happen, and if you put your head in the sand, the competition is going to blow right past you. What I’m not a fan of, I would say, is some of the consolidations that we see at the top. I think we’re going to start to see what we experienced in 2007, with some operations starting to go out of business because of consolidation, but what’s different – at least from our perspective – is we’re helping grow the bottom, and we’re trying to encourage new people to enter the space, and that’s part of why Originate Report was started in the first place. It is generally circulated to brokers so they can learn more about the space and what we do, and get them excited about it. I think if we continue to grow the bottom we’ll be able to bring more clients onboard.

OR: So how is Geraci using technology to improve the non-conventional lending space, and what sets Geraci apart from its competition?

AG: What we’re really trying to do is connect with people. We do that physically with our conference line, but we also realize how time is valuable to so many people – even if someone can’t make it to one of our conferences, we want to mirror the impact of getting together and exchanging ideas everywhere. That’s really what the Non-Conventional Lending Exchange is all about. Yes, it’s there to do business, but what differentiates it from everybody else is that we really want to educate people. That has always been our strong suit and our core at the firm. There’s a learning component, but there’s also a community component – if people talk about what concerns them, I think that makes the non-conventional lending community even better.

We want to make connections, and that’s really the idea at the core of our conference series. Our learning is put together by our Vice President of Media and her team, and she listens to what our clients want to learn. We ask our clients “what do you want to learn, and what topics do you want to add to your business?” And we take that information and go out and find those people. Our goal is to get our conference attendance up to 500 attendees, and I think the market will demand and welcome it. People want to connect, of course, but people also want to raise money. We’re there to help our clients in any way we can.

OR: It seems like Geraci is involved in a number of different industries: obviously the financial sector, law, and human relations to a certain extent with your conference series. Do you find your work diverse, and do you look forward to the challenges you will face on any given day?

AG: My job now is to really educate our people on what’s going on. Even though I don’t practice much law anymore, I oversee our management team and think of new ideas and focus on our strategic vision. I also have to hold people accountable to that vision. Even though my day-to-day responsibilities at the firm vary, that frees me up to dream of what’s next, and I also get to help our people answer different questions, and that’s really where I spend most of my time.

OR: The work you do sounds varied. Geraci is varied too – recently, you launched the Geraci Media Group. Can you tell me how that came to fruition?

AG: Geraci Media is going to have a similar, yet different vision. We realized the media aspect of what we do was going to need a separate company, and we created that two or three years ago, and I think it’s being borne out now. Geraci Media is going to provide a number of different services for our clients. At some point I realized that Geraci Law Firm wouldn’t necessarily align completely with the media component; of course, their visions are similar, but the way those visions are implemented is different. So that’s why a different entity was created, along with the demand for different products. With a law firm, it’s almost like you can only sell to lawyers, but a true media professional can service our clients to the greatest extent, so that’s why it’s a different entity.

All of that being said, we still service our clients from the firm. What I’ve found is many people do one project with us and then fall in love with what we do, because frankly, we deliver every time. In the next few years, I see Geraci continuing to execute and continuing to grow and really be a market leader, not only in the services we provide but really in the non-conventional lending space itself. In order to do so, we’re going to continue to innovate and execute on whatever our clients’ needs are. The question is, “what’s going to happen if we experience a recession in the next few years?” If that happens, we can’t turn to anyone else but ourselves and our clients and ask what they would like to do. We have to decide, with the help of our clients, what services we are going to offer in a downturn – we’re looking at different services we can continue to offer our clients based on where the market is going.