Kevin Kim: You are listening to Lender Lounge with Kevin Kim, a podcast dedicated to helping those in the private lending industry grow, improve, and streamline their business. I’m Kevin Kim, Partner at Geraci LLP, the nation’s largest private lending law firm. Join me as we chat with the best and brightest in private lending, who are eager to share their years of wisdom and best practices with lenders, borrowers, brokers, investors, and more. Subscribe to Lender Lounge on your favourite podcast platform and learn more about Geraci and how we can work with you at geracilawfirm.com. Check out the episode summary for other valuable resources.
[INTERVIEW]
Kevin Kim: Hey, guys. Kevin Kim coming to you with another episode of Lender Lounge. We are on location. We are in the beautiful Bellevue office of Guimont Capital. We very rarely do this, and I’m very happy we get to do this, because let’s get out of the office, and we’re no longer in the computer. Today, we are interviewing the team at Guimont Capital. We’re going to be doing a special episode, interviewing the principals and also doing a walkthrough of their office. I hope you guys enjoy that. Let’s get started, guys. Please, introduce yourself and the company to our audience and we’ll get started.
Kirsten Koester: Hi, I’m Kirsten Koester and I am the Chief Legal Officer of Guimont Capital.
Kevin Kim: All right.
Daniel Guimont: My name is Dan Guimont and I’m the CEO of Guimont Capital.
Kevin Kim: All right. Now, for our listeners who were at Captivate this past year, they saw you guys call on the scene as title sponsor at Captivate, and we were very appreciative of you guys coming in as title sponsor. Everyone was like, “All right, who are these guys? Who are these guys? We want to know more about these guys.” I’m glad we’re doing this interview today. Get to know more about you guys, doing this podcast, a talk and learn more about who you guys are. Give us the intro elevator pitch of Guimont Capital and we’ll go from there. Yeah.
Daniel Guimont: Guimont Capital, it was actually a name that actually came because of you guys. We started out at lasvegasloans.com and wasn’t quite what we were representing and didn’t quite know where we were going. We decided to step it up a bit and form a new corporation under Guimont Capital, which sits under the family office, which is AG. The title sponsorship this year was a lot of fun. We’re very new and we got to meet a lot of great people and see some good vendors, see other people, how they’re doing things and got a lot of listening in. A lot of good information.
Kevin Kim: The cases you’ve exercised as well.
Daniel Guimont: Absolutely. The round table was great. We look forward next year, both of them and very beneficial.
Kirsten Koester: Yeah. Just to piggyback on what Dan was saying, I think for all of us here at Guimont Capital who were new to the space, many of us new to this industry and the Captivate experience was captivating, was great. We got to learn a lot. We got to meet a lot of people. I think it was amusing. We did hear some feedback that people wondered if we were a part of the mob, because we’d come out of nowhere and it’s like, who are these guys? I could just say, we’re not. We’re excited to have the partnership with Geraci, and it’s been a great running start for us.
Kevin Kim: The business is originally founded off a family office. Let’s concentrated on the lending side real quick. On the lending business, you guys are not your average RT, with a fix and flip lender. You guys have a much more diversified perspective on finance. Give us an idea of current landscape of the business, what kind of loans you guys are concentrating on, what business you guys are concentrating on as it pertains to, I guess, you can call it real estate finance, because we had dinner last night and I love diversified stories and I love the reason behind why you guys do your deals. I’d really like you guys to tell that story, because that’s a really cool perspective.
Daniel Guimont: Portfolio sits right now, we have everything from, well, a few fix and flips, a lot of raw land and development projects, both vertical and horizontal office, tennis clubs to resorts, and from the West Coast to the East Coast right now. Primarily, what we’re looking for is – the first question we ask ourselves is, would we own that piece of property? If the answer is yes, we take to the next step. There’s a few deals that we’ve closed within 48 hours that we know the property as well, we know locations, we believe in the product and we lend very quickly on it.
Our borrowers have been absolutely great. We’re learning as much from the borrowers as we are from people in this industry. We have a history of lending money in the past and obviously, a lot of collections, and coming into this world, it’s definitely been an easy transition, as well a lot of fun. It’s hard not to have fun. We have a powerhouse team. We get to fly out, touch all our assets every month and see what –
Kevin Kim: All over.
Daniel Guimont: All over.
Kevin Kim: All over. Okay.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. We love to fly into Nashville. Obviously, we love Nevada. We’re big in Utah, Oregon, Washington, Arizona. We’re working on getting permitted in other areas and currently, we service all our own loans in-house and you’ll have a really good software and baseline. They’ve done great for us. We’ve really come on and our CFO really likes that program.
Kevin Kim: This is a very diversified portfolio. As Chief Legal Officer, I’m guessing, you’re keeping an eye on all the underwriting, all the asset management.
Kirsten Koester: Yes, yes. Obviously, the underwriting process is a collective effort. I would say, the legal review and underwriting process is with me and the financial review is with Tom Walker, our CFO. But we really work collaboratively. I think, our underwriting process is not cookie cutter. There is definitely leeway for some unusual buyers, unusual projects, things that may not fit inside a box as neatly as some other lenders might need it to be. I think that’s what makes my day and my life and my job here interesting is just having the ability to look at these loans and figure out – what we want to do is figure out how we can do them, obviously, with a mind to, we want to get repaid, we want these to be solid loans with qualified borrowers. But sometimes the story just is unique enough that they haven’t been able to find a partner. We’re excited to seek out those sponsors who maybe have a little bit more of a unique story to tell and try to find a way to partner with them.
Kevin Kim: That was the one of the things that I really took away last night at dinner, right? The idea was, okay, we’re going to look at the asset, we know what we can do with this asset if we have to take it back and here’s the value in the asset. But there was this really big human component. How do you guys assess that? It’s very hard to really get that feeling out of the borrower, because you can’t trust your borrowers, right? That’s the underlying sentiment in underwriting, right? You have to assume that he’s lying to you, right? How do you guys approach that human component and extract that story, but also verify and protect your assets?
Daniel Guimont: Well, the one thing that we learned very quick is that we really trust that when the brokers say that they have a great client, that they know this client very well and we really trust those brokers. We find that they bring us only solid deals and everything is 100% from the brokers.
Kirsten Koester: Oh, yes. Of course.
Daniel Guimont: Outside of that, we go direct to the borrowers. We like to talk to them. We like to figure out why they need the money, what it’s actually going to be used for, what their backup strategy is. People want to pay their loans back. People are intentionally out there trying to build a house, or do a fix and flip, or do a passion project, or upgrade a resort in hopes that they fail. They want to pay their loans back.
I think with us, we definitely at times, maybe over-communicate with our borrowers. We haven’t had any complaints about over-communicating. But if there’s any issues, we like to know about it right away. We like to get beside them and help them. We definitely come from an operating world where we’re hands-on. We like to operate. We like to build things. We like to fix things. Watching dozens of borrowers now do that, it’s exciting, and feeling like we’re able to help them and they’re helping us.
We want them to be successful. We want them to come back and use us again. We do everything in our power to make sure that they hit their goals. Borrowing, mainly, is hard. All the paperwork that requires with banks and everything. It took 15 years for us in our last industry for a bank to look at us. During those times, we paid all our bills. We would have been a good borrower, but we just didn’t find the right lender. Right now, we definitely want the word out to, we’re looking for good borrowers. The projects that we look at are very diverse.
Kevin Kim: Are there certain things that you look for? Because I hear you. I think that that is relatively true, up to a certain point. There are some sketchy builders out there and they do some fast and loose things. The sentiment at Captivate and at the conference before that are in Newport Beach, we’re talking about fraud in the market. You go to the commercial shows, everyone’s worried about fraud in the market. Borrower fraud, borrower fraud. Are there particular things that you’re looking for to, “Okay. I hear your story. I like your story. You seem like you’re an honest guy, but you’re also going in there like, this tells me that you’re an honest guy, from a paperwork standpoint.”
Kirsten Koester: Right. Yeah. I mean, certainly, there’s a trust but verify, right? The story has to be good, but also, then we need to go figure out, is this a true story? A lot of our borrowers have come to us, I think, through trusted channels. There is a somewhat of a basis of not all these people are brand-new to us in the sense that we trust the people who are bringing us some of these deals and these borrowers. Obviously, that’s not always the case. We do kick our tires. I mean, obviously, you do the basic –
Kevin Kim: You want to fly into every single property.
Kirsten Koester: Yeah. I mean, we will inspect every single property. One, I mean, you’ve got to make sure it’s there. You’ve got to make sure they’re doing what they say they’re going to do. We can talk to their contractors if they’re already in that process. We can actually look at the property. We can look at their other properties and suss out where they are. We do ask for personal financial information, obviously, with most of these borrowers to just verify that they have what they have. Also, it’s best-case scenario if they’ve got some skin in the game. I mean, that is my favourite, when you’ve got somebody who’s like, “I am building this fantastic spec house in Park City and I’m already 2 million into this, and I just need to finish it. It’s gorgeous. Help me out.” When you’ve got a story like that, where somebody’s really aligned with you and you feel like, “Yeah. That’s something I can trust. That’s something I can believe in.”
Kevin Kim: I mean, I think the financials, how much liquidity they have is a huge component.
Kirsten Koester: Absolutely.
Kevin Kim: I just interviewed Ben Fertig of Constructive and he was like, people can forge this stuff nowadays so easily.
Kirsten Koester: We have had that come up.
Daniel Guimont: Right. The whole skin in the game thing.
Kevin Kim: You can’t forge that.
Kirsten Koester: Right.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. You can verify that pretty easily.
Daniel Guimont: I would much rather look at a PFS that shows a 1988 Honda Accord as their main driver, than a personal financial sheet that shows that they have a 109 million dollars. If that comes over, unfortunately, that borrower that has a personal financial sheet of a 109 million dollars, we’re not going to do those loans. We’re not doing that. We want the personal financial sheets to show exactly what their situation is.
Kevin Kim: No high ball from us.
Daniel Guimont: So many borrowers, they over-inflate everything. Even in your own markets, they’ll put down their real estate’s worth more, their cars are worth more, their stock account and especially what they – private stock is worth. We’re not looking at that. We’re looking at the asset first, obviously, then the borrower and we just want the borrower to be honest. Yeah. At the end of the day, we do what we say we’re going to do every time and we want the borrower to do the same.
Kevin Kim: All right. I want to say, when you mentioned a previous business that you were 15 years, we always want to make sure we get background of our sponsors and our guests, because what you did before all this is, is to me, a big component of your current story and it influences everything that you’re doing. After spending time with you last night, clearly does, from your borrower mentality, your customer service mentality, but also your team. It sounds like, you’ve been with these people as colleagues and co-workers for several years now. Give me some background into Dan and what you were doing before the Guimont Capital startup, and how we got into this. I like to hear more about the story.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Early on, well, I started working at a young age, and had a lot of jobs up until I was about 21, and didn’t quite know where I was going in life. I had a, we called it old Gray. It was a beat-up F-250. Went on a job site in 1999 and asked a contractor if he needed a pile of debris picked up and I’d take to the dump. He said, absolutely. I threw it in the back of the truck. I remember, he gave me a couple hundred bucks and I went to the dump and realized that I had made some money. Had a roommate/buddy at the time and asked if you wanted to hop in the truck with me and started doing some runs.
It was fun. Yeah. We went from an F-250 to having an F-250 with a, even a worse trailer behind it, but then started landing some accounts very quickly. After a few years, we had about 20 trucks on the road. Over the course of time, we grew the company substantially. We got into a lot of transfer stations and MRFs landfill, mining operation, very large trucking operation.
Kevin Kim: Still the similar core business, still the idea of –
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. All recycling and –
Kirsten Koester: Material recovery.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Lawn material recovery. A lot of trucking. I got into sanitation, porta potties and street sweeping. Went through and got a private equity firm behind us in 2020, and worked real hard, did a lot acquisitions from 2020 to 2022, and then we had a successful exit in late 2022. Yeah, took some time off. Thought about diving back in and starting up another garbage company over in Nashville, or down in Denver. It just wasn’t for us. I had spent my 25 years of my life at the previous company. I put everything I had into that company. I loved it. Had the most loyal employees in the world. Had the best customers I could have ever asked for. My vendors were incredible, and it was an incredible chapter one to what we did.
This is now going to be the future and this is chapter two. Reinventing yourself is very uncomfortable. It’s not easy. It’s been challenging, because going from garbage to loans is a little bit different. I do look at it as back in the day, at any given time, our old company was a 30, 40, 50 million every month and that’s wild loans out there.
Kevin Kim: You said you were lending for 15, 20 years. When you had the way spent in business, it was a child. I mean, you made a comment last night, looked for the initials on it and I actually was driving and I saw them, right?
Kirsten Koester: Yeah, you’ll see them.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. The lending component though, there was business lending that was started back during –
Daniel Guimont: Years ago.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. So, tell me more about that then.
Daniel Guimont: Lending started, I mean, the original lending that we did was actually, and some may not consider lending, we did is ATMs.
Kevin Kim: As part of the business.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. This was outside of the garbage business, but we had a successful ATM business. We’re in lock casinos and bars and 7-Elevens.
Kevin Kim: Then you were somewhat pretty diversified, because you’re in waste management, ATM business is a very different business.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Very different. It was fun. But you learn the power of money, obviously, through the ATM world, and transactions add up, and how to grow that business. Then we started doing a lot of owner financing. We’d buy properties, and then anytime we sell, we’d always want to hold notes and do the owner financing on the backside. Even during that time though, us trying to get a loan on property, we purchased in the company a piece of property just local here for – it was about 4 million dollars. No bank would finance us.
Kevin Kim: Was then facility for your company?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. It was a facility for the company. Couldn’t find a bank to finance it.
Kevin Kim: Really?
Daniel Guimont: We really couldn’t find a hard money guy to finance it. Everybody wanted a substantial amount down. It was a little bit frustrating, because we were getting a good deal on it. The landowner actually carried the note for us, which was nice of him. About three years later, we sold it for 16 million, the property.
Kevin Kim: I thought you were going to sell it for a real estate finance.
Daniel Guimont: Mm-hmm.
Kevin Kim: Okay.
Daniel Guimont: The frustrating thing is we were getting such a good deal on that piece of property and nobody would touch it. Nobody saw it –
Kevin Kim: What was it, if you don’t mind me asking?
Daniel Guimont: It was just a industrial piece property. 5 acres industrial piece that is in a good location. But nobody saw the potential of the property. I think, now being on the lender side, I think a lot of what we’re loaning on is we see the potential that that is in the product. We know what the value is.
Kevin Kim: Because you operated businesses on those house property before.
Daniel Guimont: From our standpoint, and we’re not scared to lend on that.
Kevin Kim: Was that when you started doing the real estate deals need, and the foundation of the family office, or was it founded after the exit?
Daniel Guimont: The formation of the family office was more in 2019. It was time to start thinking about the kids, and the family, and start putting everything, all the puzzle pieces together. Obviously, after the exit of the past company, there was a sizable uptick in the value of the family office. Now, it’s being very prudent with our investments and watching over them very closely. When we entered the lending space, we started off with a certain amount of cash that we wanted to put into lending and that has now increased a few times.
Kevin Kim: It increased six-month, seven-month window. What’s the current volume?
Daniel Guimont: We’re at 72 million out right now.
Kevin Kim: That’s impressive, I got to say. Most folks don’t hit those numbers in years. That’s impressive.
Daniel Guimont: Our average loans are – it started out a little bit higher, but we’re getting them back down there now. We have a few sizable loans out, and learning as fast as we can. Watching your podcast and learning from you guys and learning from other people in the industry. There’s a lot of hard money lenders in the space and just right around your Bellevue area. A few of them are very friendly with us that have thrown us deals. Even, we are on joint ventures with one of them, which has been super successful so far. We had a good reputation, our last industry of doing what we say and treating people right. We definitely want to carry that forward with Guimont Capital.
Kevin Kim: You’re a operations heavy business. I mean, it’s a B2B business, but still it’s an operations business. Going from that into a financial services business.
Daniel Guimont: It’s still B2B, but it’s a completely different shift in –
Kirsten Koester: Completely different Bs.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that a human skill is still going to be remarkably similar, but the outlay of the business, the landscape, the margins, everything is just completely different. Is there a particular reason why you were attracted to it?
Daniel Guimont: Lending’s fun. You can go back and even doing pay check loans, and everything that we’ve done, it’s enjoyable.
Kevin Kim: It’s the financial engineering part of it that gets it going.
Daniel Guimont: It’s the one thing that I enjoy watching other people succeed, also. I like it when other people win, and we can be in the background and know that we helped. There’s people in my life that were in the background, that helped me win. Without them, I wouldn’t be who I am. Knowing that even in the lending space, there’s going to be some times where we may have to switch our loan to equity, or really help out a borrower, but to get them to the finish line, to get them to succeed, and to help them succeed, that’s a massive success for us, too.
Kevin Kim: That’s great.
Daniel Guimont: I think through reputation, we’re going to pick off a lot of good borrowers that will come to us, because they know who they are, too.
Kevin Kim: Are there some parallels from your former life that you’re executing on right now?
Kirsten Koester: I mean, for both Dan and myself, we both love doing deals. I was an M&A attorney in my former life.
Kevin Kim: So, you are. You’ll jump and do that.
Kirsten Koester: Having deals to begin with. Dan’s also one, when he talked about the rapid growth of the former company in the M&A program from 2020 to 2024, that was me, with alongside –
Daniel Guimont: Lots of acquisition.
Kirsten Koester: Yes. I think in that span of time, there were upward of 15 acquisitions that were done. A big volume of my business when I was in private practice at that time was working on deals for Dan and his team. It was a lot of fun. We got to the point where when Dan wanted to start this venture, it just seemed like a natural for me, because it’s, again, it brings the deal-making aspect to our everyday work and it’s a lot of fun. Loans are a little different than M&A, but it’s a flip side of what I was already doing. A lot of my M&A had huge real estate components. And so, very familiar with putting debt on something, and just usually from the other side. Now, I’m on the lender side, which is fun.
Kevin Kim: Which is actually a useful skill set. Because a lot of general counsel out there, they’re either former mortgage, or they’re former regulatory, right? Or they’re more on the underwriting side of the business. They’re not really on the deal side. They value it a deal. They can close loans, but they can’t evaluate a deal. They can’t underwrite, say, their life. It’s a very special attorney that can underwrite. I understand what underwriting is, because you understand the natural component of it. But the counterparty risk, the asset valuation risk, not just like, okay –
Kirsten Koester: It’s not just technical.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. Just the terms of the contract.
Kirsten Koester: There’s definitely, I think, with all of our loans and with all of our decisions to move forward with borrowers, there is a gut feeling component. If we all don’t share a good gut feeling, then we don’t do it. That’s a really important part of, I think, how we operate and what probably makes us a little unique is that if one person has a queasy feeling about something, we all listen to it. Yeah, you got to listen to the little voice in your head. We’ve got such varied experience among the team that really makes a very cohesive wrap around underwriting process.
I think each one of us brings a different skill set and a different background. I think, because we’ve all worked together before, we have a really natural rapport. That’s why we’re here. And we all want to do what we want to do.
Kevin Kim: I want to ask about that. Assembling the team, right? Because, okay, I’m starting new. I’m reinventing myself. Assembling the team is, I’m sure quite challenging, because you were at your firm before and everyone else probably at where they were. How was that like? When was it, “All right. Guys, I’m coming back to the market. We’re going to do this now”?
Daniel Guimont: It was interesting, because like I said, we originally – how we got into what we’re doing actually today is actually a very funny story, because I have a good real estate buddy down in Las Vegas. His name’s Jim Dahl. Jim Dahl sells real estate.
Kevin Kim: Hey.
Daniel Guimont: Got to plug him in.
Kevin Kim: Love shout outs. We’d love Jim on the show.
Daniel Guimont: Jim sells a very specific piece of real estate. It’s is his majority, he can sell anything and everything, from house to condos, everything. He’s the main broker at this very luxury RV association that’s real close to the strip in Vegas. He called me randomly one night and just said, “Hey, look. We got a guy that wants to buy a lot in here. I know a little bit about your history. Would you loan on it?” I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do that.”
I had another gentleman that I’m real close with, that him and I were just brainstorming and like, oh, man. It’s in Las Vegas, so we started up lasvegasloans.com and that’s what we were off to the races.
Kevin Kim: The RV park was the first.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah, the very first commitment to a loan that we did. Then, very quickly, we found out that Nevada is not the state that we want to loan money in, because we didn’t have any of the permits. We actually had to buy the lot from the individual and then –
Kevin Kim: It’s tough on there.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah, and then did our seller financing on it. Me and, yeah, okay, the original call it partner in lasvegasloans.com had this vision for doing a lot of these fun loans and start up the business. It was LVL. For about 60 days, really started to form what we felt the route we wanted to go. Him and I had a lot of fun, a lot of great ideas.
Kirsten Koester: Handkerchiefs for business cards.
Daniel Guimont: Who can’t beat the lion? We did it on you. I mean, you can’t beat that.
Kevin Kim: It’s the same thing. They’re a legitimate golf company. That person’s owns it. All his reps came out. Pick whatever his business cards. It’s okay. It works.
Kirsten Koester: It’s genius.
Kevin Kim: You can’t beat it. Can’t beat it. Everyone likes playing with them. It’s a nice little thing.
Kirsten Koester: Yeah. Still got mine.
Daniel Guimont: Then one day, I’m sitting in my office, and knock on the door and employee from the past is y’all comes in and started talking. It wasn’t reaching out and trying to bring the team back together. Well, I was on an island and doing it. I think some people made the decision to maybe move on from the past company and came to me had asked maybe if they could be a part of why I going on. Everybody kind of guy looked into what was happening and it was a pretty natural move for some people, I think.
We have a lot of fun. Getting into lending, like you said, from our old world, it was seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Our phones were going a million miles an hour. A lot of life events happened during those 25 years that made us who we are today. Now, looking back, it’s interesting how life is, because when I started that past company, I had three kids back-to-back-to-back. It was tough. You start a brand-new company, you don’t know what you’re doing. You have a brand-new family, you don’t know what you’re doing. I definitely paid way more attention to the business than the children, because it was important to me to try to figure out how to be to support and how to grow. I think I led with a very heavy hand and that company, and learned a lot. At the ripe, young age of 47, I figured now, it’s like, hey, let’s start the new business this year, and had three new kids, more kids. Repopulating the plant and figured out –
Kevin Kim: I love it.
Daniel Guimont: – if this doesn’t work out, we can do a new spin on the Brady Bunch. It’s fun watching, because this time around, my concentration is definitely more on six kids than on this. I like it a lot better. There’s not nearly as much stress, which a lot of people definitely say, it’s easier to not have stress when you’re a little bit more financially secure.
Kevin Kim: Sure.
Daniel Guimont: But still a new company. It’s still exciting. You still have to learn. But holding my little three-month-old is teaching me a lot, too. Being able to spend a lot more time with my older kids is a lot of fun.
Kevin Kim: Not by yourself anymore. You got really solid people with you.
Daniel Guimont: I got a good group. It’s fun. Hence, what the family office is.
Kevin Kim: They came to you. That tells them, because they’re – I miss that.
Kirsten Koester: Yeah. Oh, 100%. I mean, I will say that I was one of the people who knocked on the door when it was Las Vegas Loans. I kept looking at my LinkedIn. I’m like, “What the hell is Dan doing?” I’m like, “This sounds crazy. I got to go talk to him about it. I’m interested.” For all of us that are here, the reason we’re here is there’s a natural affinity with working with Dan. I mean, it’s exciting. It’s fun. All of us got here in our own way. It feels pretty natural now that we’re all here and cool to get the band back together. I don’t think it was planned. It just worked out that way. It was serendipitous.
Kevin Kim: Right. What’s interesting, I was thinking about this last night, because if someone looked at you guys from very far away and they first meet you guys, it looks very all over the place, right? Because the loans you guys do are a little bit, they’re diversified.
Kirsten Koester: Sure.
Daniel Guimont: That’s my brain. It’s all over the place.
Kevin Kim: But upon working with you guys, Jen and I, both – Jen works with you guys on the western scene and had console at. Paul working with you guys, I noticed, it’s actually, there is actually a very clear method to the madness. You guys have easily could have come in and just done all the things that everyone does. I see this a lot, a lot of new entries to the market that have the budget for it. They’ll literally, everything together at once. That becomes a very daunting task for the legal officers, especially.
Kirsten Koester: Yes.
Kevin Kim: Our experience, you guys, it’s been relatively methodical. You’re not going to get over our skis. You guys could easily go out and raise a bunch more capital, but you’re not doing it on purpose. You guys can easily go out and get a huge line of credit. You do have one, but you don’t use it. From your perspective, what’s the philosophy when you guys started? Where are there some key, I guess, business tactics, or goal metrics that you’re using to have this mentality? Because I don’t usually see this.
Kirsten Koester: I think one of the things that actually attracted me to this new venture, and to Guimont Capital as a concept was Dan was like, “I want to do everything exactly right.” We’re starting a new thing. We need to do it better, cleaner, more organized than everybody else. I think that that – I mean, as a lawyer, that’s music to my ears. I love it. It’s something that you don’t just jump into something and hope you’ve can figure it out. I don’t think that we did that. I mean, it might look like that from the outside, as you say, but there was a method to the madness. There was an organized principle.
Kevin Kim: You guys were like, “All right, we’re going to a license and own the states.” You didn’t do that.
Kirsten Koester: No. No. I mean, we’re trying to be methodical about where we want to be licensed. We’re trying to be methodical about where we want to lend, obviously, what we want to lend on. We’re surrounded by one of the best markets in the country for private lending. We want to stay in this region heavily. That’s important to us. A lot of our focus has been on getting licensed where we need to be in Oregon, Idaho, doing what we need to do in Washington to be able to do single-family occupancy homes, Utah, Arizona, places we understand, places where we know the market, places where Dan really has a very good sense of the real estate and what it can be and what the value is there. I think that’s crucially important, because there are just some markets where we don’t know the market, and we don’t want to be there. We have restraint. We still want to grow, but it doesn’t – It’s not haphazard.
Kevin Kim: Right. Because I contrast it all to how you build the other company. It was a lot more kind of, “Let’s go.”
Daniel Guimont: The old company was pre methodical on the old company. The word madness is a good word. We work very well under stress back in the day. Like I said, we have an amazing team. Now, what’s here is, is there’s a lot of love – a lot of lending companies that we looked into over the years to possibly even invest in. They’re offering a nice return, or how it worked. Now being in the space, we get hit up a lot. If we want to take an investor, or get into more private capital. As of right now, we want to just remain as for right now. Because if we don’t know everything, I don’t want to take anyone’s money. We want to make sure that we’re on the right path. We want to make sure that we’re very laser-focused in doing what we’re going to do and create a name for ourselves and the market that we’re going to choose.
Kevin Kim: One of the questions I have, well, you mentioned investing. Because one other thing that’s relatively common in both commercial and in residential private lending is for family offices, especially to come in and not play the role of a lender. They don’t want to be an operator. They come in and say, “All right, we’re going to need an investor. We’re either going to buy loans, we’re either going to invest in other funds, or we’re going to provide lender finance as an asset manager, not a direct originator.” Did that ever cross your mind when you’re entering the space?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. One of our first deals that we turned down was an equity deal, and they had lending involved also. Where there’s a nice investment, good equity, good return. Our angle is definitely on the lending side. If a builder can make what they need to make on a project, we want them to make their money. I don’t want their equity. I gave up equity too fast to my old company and I gave it up too much and I regret that. I don’t want to take equity from other people. I want to give them a good, solid loan and I want to back their loan. In the future, if that bridge has to be crossed because of a default, or something happens, then we can cross the equity bridge when necessary. Upfront, they’ve earned the right to have that equity. That’s theirs. I want them to know exactly what we get, and I want them to make as much as they can possibly make on their end.
Kevin Kim: Beyond the equity on the real estate side, there are also opportunities for you to be not borrower-facing per se, right? You could’ve easily present yourself like, “Hey, we’ll be an admin meter. We can buy up your loans, or we’ll just be a family office investor, as an LP.” Any reason why that wasn’t in the cards for you guys?
Kirsten Koester: I feel like, that’s too passive for this team. We like interfacing with the borrowers. I think, just putting money into somebody else, or buying notes, or something that feels relatively transactional, and it’s almost no different in a way than buying stock. I’m not saying it can’t be a very successful strategy. I know lots of people employ it. I think the reason we enjoy being the lender is because we like working with the borrowers. Actually, we like the interaction. Gives us something to do. Yeah.
Daniel Guimont: And interfacing with the people.
Kirsten Koester: We’re actually interfacing with people and their projects. It’s exciting to see something get built.
Daniel Guimont: We can help them on their projects.
Kirsten Koester: Yeah, exactly.
Daniel Guimont: We have developers that we lend to right now, and the call comes in and they need help financing a piece of yellow iron, a D6.
Kevin Kim: I’m uneducated. What is yellow iron? What is D6?
Daniel Guimont: Yellow iron is excavators, loaders, dozers, mining trucks, you name it.
Kirsten Koester: Big, heavy equipment.
Daniel Guimont: It’s called yellow iron.
Kevin Kim: That’s painted yellow.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah, exactly. Most of it is painted yellow. Back in the day, a lot of ours is paid blue. But, obviously, Brian, who’s on our team, that’s his world. A developer calls up and needs help finding something, Brian goes out and gets probably a better deal than what the developer can from our history. We can loan on that piece, because we’re very comfortable with it.
Kevin Kim: You know that’s where you’re going.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. And we’re hands on. If we can help our builders, if we can help our developers make more money, be more successful, we have a long history of construction, demolition, developing, and we can offer some sound advice to a lot of the borrowers, advice that nobody gave us in the first 20 years. It would have been helpful, but now we have a team that were very open and like to share. We don’t want to create a borrower and have them stay with us forever. We would love them to be independent and get better rates with a bank and be able to do it a different way, or use their own cash entirely. Seeing their success, like I said, makes us happy.
Kirsten Koester: I think, with our some of our loans too, to businesses is exciting particularly for me, because often, they’re looking for capital because they are going into purchase another company, or expand, and that’s something I’m very familiar with. I can actually lend them some advice as they go. Oh, obviously not representing them as counsel, but –
Kevin Kim: There’s so many flaws when people go out and, which is –
Kirsten Koester: I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen how everything can go wrong. Particularly when people are growing a business and borrowing money. Those are two very risky things to do. And trying to integrate a new company or a team.
Kevin Kim: Which tell you, they don’t look at the financials. You’re not even looking at the principal. What are you doing?
Kirsten Koester: Right. Yeah. That’s actually another piece of it is we’ve all been through that and we counsel people who are looking, perhaps to borrow money from us. They may never do it, but we can talk to them about, here are the things to think about as you consider this next step in your business, this investment by your company, this borrowing you’re thinking about taking. I think we have a unique perspective that we can actually give them a lot of help in navigating that process as well, beyond just, perhaps, lending them the money.
Kevin Kim: I want to touch on that real quick, the diversification and portfolio. You guys have multiple, I call them verticals in the lending business. You have different asset classes. I see families who was a lot, I mean, obviously, especially they’re a little bit more asset class agnostic and they’re more deal focused. But as they evolve in their business cycle, they tend to find a niche that is a treatise to them in the long term. The last family we interviewed, and we also interviewed, they started in the whole ABS lending, and they ended up in the resi multifamily lending, and they dabbled in commercial and they didn’t really like it. They ended up doubling down in resi.
We’ve seen other shops out there that are family offices go the other direction and go double down in commercial. There’s a very big one in LA that’s only does ground up construction, in the 10-plus million, CRE only. Is there any rhyme, or reason as to on your guys’ side as to why it’s so diversified, other plans to narrow in?
Daniel Guimont: Currently, there’s no plans to narrow our scope. I mean we have lines of credit out for businesses right now. We have acquisition loans that we’re doing for some businesses to acquire other businesses. Then obviously, heavy in the commercial and residential spaces, and industrial and office. I like being diversified. In our past life, we were very diversified. We’d always in every mean, it’s how many legs under our table do we have? As everybody knows, the office space hasn’t been the greatest thing in the last four years. But heavy industrial has been amazing.
Who’s to say in six, seven, eight years, two years, it doesn’t swap? If you’re heavy only in one I like being diversified. It keeps us a little bit busier. We have to know, have knowledge in all of it. I think our team is definitely bright enough to be able to go out and get the temperature of every market that we’re in. Washington is absolutely an amazing state, to London. Utah, like I said, has been really good. There’s a lot of pockets across the country that we want to get involved with. Even for us, finding in the future, we’re going to find the right bank eventually and look at what a relationship like that looks like for this business. I mean, it’s amazing how relationships start. I got to give another shout out to Scott Henderson. It’s HenderXCapital at Utah, because he was the first broker that we ever had. Amazing individual. Honest as the day is long. I mean that. Has brought some, just very, very, very clean, well underwritten deals.
Kevin Kim: It’s very defined in a broker.
Daniel Guimont: And the most amazing thing that they brought us, was day one, you guys. They had us –
Kevin Kim: I almost can’t drink.
Daniel Guimont: They had us use you on our very first loan ever. Because of them that we were able to even do the conference and everything, and he was there. He’s a broker, and slowly even turned into more of a friendship. I really respect the guy. He’s got good, solid business and he’s taught us some.
Kirsten Koester: It’s great when you find people who you can form a partnership with, and a business relationship that is mutually beneficial and is built on trust. That’s a difficult thing to find.
Kevin Kim: Those are so hard, especially in finance services in mortgage. I mean, the broker market, there’s a lot of brokers.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Everyone’s a broker.
Kirsten Koester: Oh, I know. They email us every day. I know they’re all out there hustling. I get it. I mean, it’s a competitive space. There’s just a lot of people out there and we hear from a lot of them. When you find a good one that is a good, like I said, partner, that’s invaluable to all participants in the cycle.
Daniel Guimont: Right. Even brokers. Every day, everybody can pull up their LinkedIn. If you’re following in the space, anything, the first 40 posts are going to be just funded. You see it from small to big, to everything. Everybody’s very, very forward with what was just funded.
Kevin Kim: What deal they just closed.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve done a lot of them. A few weeks back, we’re all sitting around a table laughing, because the just funded on our side isn’t – That’s not really an exciting day for us. The broker made money, which is good. The borrower received the money that they needed for their project. We’re sitting either with an interest reserve, or a promissory note. That’s when we are on the hot seat now. That’s the beginning of our business.
Kevin Kim: That’s the liability kicks in. Yeah.
Daniel Guimont: We have less money that day. It’s not a celebration, or high fives. Our first loan got paid off a few weeks back. That’s where just paid started to happen. That’s what we’re going to start praising. It’s like, on the just paid, that means the deal came together. The borrower did what they said. We did what we told them we’d do, and the loan is now closed. Everyone won. That’s amazing.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. Celebrating the exit, right?
Daniel Guimont: Oh, absolutely.
Kevin Kim: That’s an M&A thing, too.
Kirsten Koester: It is.
Kevin Kim: You’re celebrating the final iteration of the transaction. You’re out.
Daniel Guimont: Yup.
Kirsten Koester: Yes.
Daniel Guimont: That’s the day we make our money. When we get to exit, that’s when we make our money. The just funded is when we have less money.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. I saw you guys started posting that, I was like, that’s a very – that’s going to shake it up a little bit, especially in commercial. That’s never done in commercial. No one celebrates a payoff ever.
Daniel Guimont: We’ll list every borrower that pays us off. If somebody can give them a better deal, if somebody can work with them and do better than us, we welcome that. We came from a space with a little bit of competition. Competition is great. We also do things for our borrowers that I think a lot of people in the lending and finance world might not do. We stay in touch with our people. They’re our customer. We’re in business, because of the borrowers. We absolutely respect them for that. People are going to have hard times. We’re going to have defaults. We’re going to go down those roads. But we’re prepared and we know our borrowers. When that happens, I think it’s going to be – things could be a smooth transition, too. LinkedIn’s going to be getting hit with a lot of just paids from us. That’s when we open up the bar.
Kevin Kim: I like it. I mean, it’s a different way of thinking. It’s the right way of thinking. If you think about it, lending is, to your point. But it’s also, that means that you are a good lender, because, yeah, I mean, ultimately, the deal went through exactly as planned. That means that credit to your underwriting, credit to your servicing, credit to your risk management. Because there are probably going to be bumps in the road during the term of a loan. Risk management is where you solve those problems, and you’ve gotten out of it completely unscathed. Especially in commercial right now, it’s not common. It’s not common at all.
Kirsten Koester: I think the communication piece is key. When I’ve been on the side, on the other side, on the borrower side and I always tell, like would tell my clients, if something’s going sideways, the best thing you can do is communicate early and often, to your stakeholders. I take that on the flip side too, is we need to open lines of communication, so that our borrowers have that same feeling and don’t hide things from us, if things are going wrong, which things do. I mean, that’s just life. We’d rather be there to figure it out and help them through it, than find out about it when it’s too late, or the only answer is foreclosure. It’s a path, but it’s not a win-win, obviously. We try to build things in a way that both sides are actually getting what they want.
Kevin Kim: I have a question about that, because as this grows and as this starts to scale and volumes start to increase, law of large numbers will dictate commoditization to some degree and you lose that, I would say, wait, I see all the time, right? Companies that go from 10 million a month to a 100 million a month, their volumes are great, their team is growing, but also, the borrower experience changes significantly.
Kirsten Koester: Sure.
Kevin Kim: Well, first of all, what are the long-term goals for Guimont Capital and the lending business? You said, you’re going to stay diversified for the time being. Is there a long-term, “Here’s where we like to be from a volume standpoint, capital deployed standpoint”?
Daniel Guimont: There is. When we started, we all said, I made a 10-year plan. Is a long plan. Yeah, I actually have to say, the lending world is simple compared to our pathway comes to customer satisfaction, borrower satisfaction from our standpoint. At any given time, we had 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 customers. Going from our first customer in 1999 to our 6,000th customer, we strive to make everybody’s experience the exact same from day one to the last.
We were always forward with our customers and always trying to push, making sure they knew that we respected them. Brian, who’s on our team has an amazing ability. We touch our assets every month. It doesn’t matter what state they’re in. It doesn’t matter where they’re at. He gets to go out and surprise a lot of the borrowers at first and take them out to lunch, go buy a cup of coffee, get to know them. When the loan gets paid, let’s have dinner. Let’s celebrate that win and let’s get you on to the next one.
When we can build our base and our reputation and as we grow, we’re only going to grow as fast as we can grow and still be committed to that. Although, a lot of businesses say that. Everybody says that. “Oh, we’re going to be customer this, customer that.” We have owned that for the majority of our lives. We definitely listen. Bad things happen. We want to know. We don’t want to hear about from a [inaudible 0:53:22] lawyer. We don’t want to hear about it. Borrowers go through divorce, they go through deaths, they go through life changes. By all means, not going to be the company that is going to be forcing them down a path of losing everything. Bad things happen. I do feel that banks have an obligation and lenders have an obligation to have their borrower’s back during those times. If you do, you’re going to build yourself a lifetime borrower, too.
Kevin Kim: There are many, many firms out there. COVID was an example, right? They took it upon themselves to really take care of the borrowers and they doubled their business in 21 and 22, thanks to that. To achieve that, right, to achieve that level of customer service, borrower-centric approach, where you’re going out and touching the asset and celebrating those wins, I mean, the staffing requirements for that got to become – I mean, we interviewed a gentleman named Kevin Warner out of Chicago and they have a mask. They’re very customer-centric. They’re a resi shop, but they have so many people on the team that take care of their borrowers. I mean, yeah, this is his team for a startup at 70 million, it’s a small team. I mean, you’re going to have to hire a lot of people to get there.
Kirsten Koester: Eventually, I think we’ll grow as needed. If we have got the commitment that Dan talks about to the experience and how we want to conduct the business, definitely. Now we’re 72 million out, we’re 172 million out, we probably could still say the same. If we’re a billion out, then we’re going to have to have more people on the team. I think that that process and growth is just something we’re excited to do, but also, to make sure that we’re doing it right.
Kevin Kim: Doing it right, though, is there going to be a thing that gut checks you on that one?
Daniel Guimont: The one thing and you see it and hear it all the time, hire quality, not quantity. One quality individual can go out and touch a lot of borrowers.
Kevin Kim: Agreed.
Daniel Guimont: Another thing that I will say, we are in – it is a different space that we are in. I mean, our average loan size right now is knocking on the door about 6 million. Once we scale up, and in a year or two, 200, 300 million, our average loan size is 6 million, 7 million, and you do have the more one-offs of 25, 35, 45, we’re not deep into the 100,000 200,000, 300,000 fixable terms, and we’re going to have a massive amount. The larger loans seem to have come to us naturally right now.
Kevin Kim: A huge demand for it. I mean, the banks are out. All the legacy shops are out of business. CMBS is dead. I mean, there’s nothing funding out there. You have optimal time right now from a CRE standpoint. We love it.
Daniel Guimont: That dollar amount is very comfortable. We get hit up a lot for some, what I would call massive loans, 100 million plus. We have not gotten comfortable with AMM yet. We could definitely deploy. But at this point, nothing has made sense. Anything at that dollar amount, I mean, every TSB cross every, every OSB dot, and we really have to get behind a project and currently –
Kevin Kim: Those heels take almost a year to finish it to pencil correctly. It’s very complex.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah.
Kirsten Koester: It’s different.
Daniel Guimont: Pretty awesome. 10-year goal though, in our reality, we want to grow by 100 million a year. 10 years, we’ll have a billion under management. We have a lot of micing on the sidelines that has expressed interest in coming in. If we do open the doors to outside capital, we know that our first go around will be pretty successful. There’s a lot of people that watched our first go around that I think have a lot of faith in what we do. There’s some people that are excited to write some checks. This first year is just, it’s been so much fun already. And we’re not the only –
Kevin Kim: That’s the interesting part. Ordinarily, even at this stage, you’re getting your sea legs, but you guys are already 172 million dollars out in the street. That’s still sea legs.
Kirsten Koester: Got to get pretty quick.
Daniel Guimont: But our last round, I mean, it is – adding a zero was very interesting in our previous year. You go from invoicing out a 100,000 a month to a million a month, to 10 million a month. You just keep growing that. It actually surprised me at what most have under management that we’ve met. I thought a lot of the lenders were a lot larger than they were.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. The year that you guys had in our space, though, it was at our conference. The interesting about – at least in the resi side of things. Then the SFR, fix and flip construction industry, I would say, 20% of the market is held by the top 10 guys. Then you have 80% of the market that’s held by everybody else. You go to the top 10 lenders in the country, these guys all on average do about a billion dollars a year plus in volume. Roughly about a billion under management, or more, depending on the sponsors’ type. These guys are, I select 10 companies in the space, not all of them show up. Not a lot of them need to show up. Some of them are owned by big Wall Street bank, right? There’s no need to show up to anything. They’re just doing things on their own. When you meet the local guys, yeah, they’re all just trying to hustle, get up there.
In the CRE side though, as a whole other ball of wax, because these guys, you would never know what their back office looks like, because there’s some giant life insurance companies seeing to cut all the checks. Their balanced sheet is made to look miniscule, but their actual capital sources, several billion dollars behind the scenes, just buying up everything. It’s a veil. You’ll be surprised as to – even you look in competition, some of these guys have the ability to fund a lot more than they actually hold. That raises an interesting question. When you guys were in the waste management business, you grew it through acquisition as well. Any thoughts on – any vision on of growing through acquisition in our space?
Daniel Guimont: Not currently. We definitely want to be knee deep in it. Right now, we’re about ankle deep into this. Before we started even looking down that path –
Kevin Kim: Right. It’s a possibility, but not right now.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Correct.
Kevin Kim: You have to know how to operate first, right?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. One big thing that we know for a fact, as we grow, the first PE firm that backed us in, call it 2019, the reason we went with that firm was that the ownership of that PE, the actual private ownership, we put 33% of their money in every deal, no matter what. It was the family office that put 33% on every deal. The capital that we have inside of Guimont Capital right now will obviously grow over time. Once we get to our goal, we see that we are going to be easily 33% of every deal also.
In these first couple of years, if we go to market, we’re going to be 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% in every deal that we touch. There’s a lot of confidence in everything that we lend on. We want to make sure that anybody that trusts or remain with us knows that we’re putting our money first, and we take theirs very seriously. I’m excited to get to that point. But to rush it would be the worst thing we could do. For one of the first times in my career and stuff is being patient is good. Getting a good loan tape and getting some history behind us.
Kevin Kim: All right. I think we’re running out of time. But I want to ask some final questions to you guys, both, both more I would say, business entrepreneurship stuff. Next five years. What excites you the most?
Kirsten Koester: I think what excites me is really, firing up some development projects. We’ve got some opportunities to do some interesting development projects. I mean, on our own and with partners. I think that’s going to be a really engaging and fun process.
Kevin Kim: It feels like being here, right?
Kirsten Koester: Yeah. It’s just building something new. I guess, I didn’t really realize I had any entrepreneurial bone in my body for a long time, because that’s not really what you feel when you’re working in a law firm, but turns out I do, and it’s fun. I think that’s something that all of us can participate in and that will really, really give us some fun stuff to do every day.
Kevin Kim: I love you guys show me really that. It’s really cool.
Kirsten Koester: We’ve got some really cool ideas. I think that’s going to make the next five years a lot of fun.
Daniel Guimont: I think for me, next five years is building a business the way I always – how I want to build a business. Our first business, like you said, grew fast everything and there were changes that I would have liked to make. But when you get to a certain size, it’s very hard to go backwards. The next five years is a brand-new education and making sure that we do it perfect this time. Perfect is a very scary work. Does it exist? Go do our best to be there. It’s exciting having my older kids work for the company and being close to us is great. The next five years, it’s going to bring a lot of joy, I think, for me. Because a lot of loans are going to get paid back, and we get to deploy the money again. Then we get to do it again and again. I’m excited for all the people that we get to meet and all the shows that we get to go to. Like I said, it’s like, I’m the 47-year-old virgin in this industry. I’m loving every minute of it.
Kevin Kim: I love it. I love it.
Daniel Guimont: The next five years just going to be, gets to the next level.
Kevin Kim: I like it. All right. I think it’s all the time we have in this episode. Stay tuned for another special little snippet we’re going to do later. Thank you for doing this today, on this on location podcast. I love doing this on location. You have an amazing office. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Our listeners, you can find Guimont team where?
Daniel Guimont: They’ll be watching it at guimontcapital.com.
Kevin Kim: All right.
Kirsten Koester: Yes.
Kevin Kim: Not lasvegasloans.com.
Kirsten Koester: They’re still on it.
Daniel Guimont: One day. One day.
Kirsten Koester: One day, we’ll fire that up.
Kevin Kim: All right. Guimontcapital.com. You’ll also be at the upcoming trade shows in our industries, if you want to get, come and chat with them, please find them there. This is Kevin Kim for Lender Lounge signing off.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
Kevin Kim: Hey, guys. Kevin Kim here from Lender Lounge. We’re doing a little special snippet. This is a new thing we’re doing on the show. We’re going to do an office tour with our recent guest, Dan Guimont from Guimont Capital. We are on location, so what better than to show off their new office. Dan, first, walk us through even the foyer right here. This is really different. I have never seen that any shop do this before. Give us some more call about this.
Daniel Guimont: Very talented artist. All charcoal. Everybody’s got their pictures up. We figured, hey. Led a very talented 18-year-old draw us all up and see how they turned out. Yeah. Something a little bit different. It looks good. Yeah, really, really happy with –
Kevin Kim: It came out wonderfully. Every team member’s going to get one?
Daniel Guimont: Everybody. Everybody.
Kevin Kim: I love it.
Daniel Guimont: Hopefully, be a bigger wall one day.
Kevin Kim: Be a bigger wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lay out the office for me. It’s beautiful. I mean, is there a theme to the layout, or the design of this?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Pretty much what we want, we want wide open. Everybody shares everything and went for a hotel lobby thing.
Kevin Kim: All right. All right. Definitely a hotel lobby. Yup.
Daniel Guimont: A lot of workspaces. A lot of sitting area for conversations and yeah, just feels like home.
Kevin Kim: For sure. It looks like out of the restoration hardware catalogue.
Daniel Guimont: Yes. Yes.
Kevin Kim: One interesting part about your office when we were doing the walkthrough earlier is your conference room is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I mean, this is very Washington. We are in the tech bubble. What do we have here? What is this?
Daniel Guimont: No. Conference room, if you want it wide open, obviously you can have it wide open. If you need everything closed, you can have everything closed. It’s just a fun little design. Washington, we get a lot of gloomy days. The more open the spaces, the nicer it is. They work as great whiteboards for us.
Kevin Kim: Did you guys put these in, or would they come like this?
Daniel Guimont: No. This space had these in, which thank goodness, because I don’t think we could have ever thought of it. It’s a fantastic idea. It’s wonderful. A lot of fun and usually, they’re open. Opens up the space. We’ve a good amount of square footage, so it’s nice to be able to have events and everything else here.
Kevin Kim: Right. Lots of windows. You can see the bay, or is it the Sound?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Lake Washington’s over there in Seattle. We’ve got Downtown Bellevue. We’re on the 10th floor here. We were up on the 17th, and this space came available, so decided to bump down here and –
Kevin Kim: A little bigger, or was a little smaller?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. A little bit bigger. We’ve got a 180-degree view. We got West and East, going all the way down south there.
Kevin Kim: Fantastic.
Daniel Guimont: That’s a good spot to be. A lot of banking happens in this building, so give me a lot of good people. This space is just more of our lounge and kitchen area, bar, which usually happens about 3.00 every day.
Kevin Kim: I like it.
Daniel Guimont: Got to have those happy hours and just the amazing views of Bellevue and then on a clear day, Seattle’s right there. Yeah.
Kevin Kim: When your borrowers come in, they must – I mean, this open. Where do you meet your borrowers? Over here? Over there?
Daniel Guimont: We’re usually couching it up. We’re usually on these couches, or we’re on the other couch. Conference rooms aren’t really my thing, but you got to have them. Every once in a while, bankers have to come in and you got to make them feel comfortable. Put them in the conference room.
Kevin Kim: All right. We’re entering the pit. Is there an actual, where all the work gets done?
Daniel Guimont: Yeah.
Kevin Kim: Before we go to your office, I got to ask, let’s pan around here real quick. What’s with the A&W sign?
Daniel Guimont: A&W sign. Yeah, I got a call years ago at one of our transfer stations that got dumped by somebody, came off of a A&W restaurant. I just absolutely love it. Yeah, it’s followed us around for years and –
Kevin Kim: It’s been with you up for 15 –
Daniel Guimont: Oh, yeah. For 15 years now. Just cool sign that came in.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. It’s a great piece of Americana, too. I mean, A&W is a historic restaurant train. We don’t see them anymore, but I used to go there a lot in the West, where I have my family there. Let’s go into your office. Check it out.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. A little office, like I call home. Yeah, it’s nice and get some business done. Definitely, a lot of family photos and a little bit of history. It was a fun little build.
Kevin Kim: You’re obviously a Seahawks fan.
Daniel Guimont: Definitely a Seahawks fan. When you’re born in 1976, you got to be a Seahawks fan. Fan in 1976.
Kevin Kim: You guys support the team?
Daniel Guimont: Definitely support the team. Got some seats there and it’s been fun.
Kevin Kim: It’s a great sport city.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Good organization. Got, obviously, Mr. Walker here, AKA Tom. He’s always plugging away. Got Jake Goldfarb, one of our newest associates, also just plugging away. Got Riley, one of my oldest boys here who’s off to Japan January 1 to do a little studying abroad, which is we’re all excited for.
Kevin Kim: Fantastic.
Daniel Guimont: Get to come back and be able to speak some language that I can’t. Junior, which if you’ve met him, you know him. My junior and I have been together now for 27 years.
Kevin Kim: 27.
Daniel Guimont: 27 years.
Kevin Kim: You know all where all the skeletons are buried.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Yeah. Deep, deep holes. Melanie came to us, she has a lot of our events and puts on a mean, mean lunch and security board. I’ll definitely appreciate. Got the kid area back here.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. This is different, because this is not – we don’t see this in most offices. Is this a lounge, or what is this?
Daniel Guimont: It’s just, if we bring our kids to work and borrowers, or anyone else bringing their kids, it’s a comfortable place for them.
Kevin Kim: Oh, I love that.
Daniel Guimont: They can watch TV and play their video games. Always got some candy, some crayons. For teenage kids, we got all the video games and some other stuff.
Kevin Kim: You have classic video games.
Daniel Guimont: All the classic video games. Got to have them.
Kevin Kim: Yeah. Got to think of getting my child this over here. We got pinball machines.
Daniel Guimont: If you can’t beat Frogger.
Kevin Kim: You got the old school arcade, that’s something else. This is when your borrowers, or your team members have to bring in their kids in to work. Again, and they love it, I’m sure.
Daniel Guimont: Oh, absolutely. Super comfortable, and it’s their spot. We’re not allowed back here when they’re here.
Kevin Kim: I love it.
Daniel Guimont: we got Kari’s office, obviously with Mrs. Burns. She runs everybody’s life. Literally, everybody’s life, which –
Kevin Kim: The gloom team.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Thank goodness. Kirsten, who keeps us out of trouble. She’s representing the Las Vegas thing, obviously.
Kevin Kim: Oh, yeah.
Daniel Guimont: Which we got to love. I think they fought for the private offices at – I see a theme happening.
Kevin Kim: I like it. I like it. I like the open workspace. I mean, this is much better than everyone’s confined to an office, or a cubicle array.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Another thing for other people, if you ever have a server room, you can also make it your wine room, which –
Kevin Kim: Got to keep them cold.
Daniel Guimont: Cold enough. It’s always a good idea. Spirits and cocktails that – No. Thank you for coming out.
Kevin Kim: Absolutely. I appreciate it.
Daniel Guimont: Making the trek and, yeah.
Kevin Kim: We had a great time.
Daniel Guimont: Yeah. Keep doing some business and both companies keep growing.
Kevin Kim: Absolutely. Well, thank you for your time.
[OUTRO]
Kevin Kim: You’ve been listening to Lender Lounge with Kevin Kim, brought to you by Geraci LLP, the nation’s largest private lending law firm. Geraci is the leading legal resource for specialty lenders, asset-based lenders, private lenders, and non-bank institutions. Learn more about the firm at geracilawfirm.com. That’s G-E-R-A-C-ILawFirm.com. Check out our episode summary to subscribe to our Lender Lounge newsletter and our law firm newsletter, where you can get notified about new episodes and recent content directly from our expert attorneys.
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