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.
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[Jen] (0:37 – 0:41)
Surprise! It is a Lender Lounge takeover.
[Nichole] (0:42 – 0:44)
We like to call it the she-shed this week.
[Jen] (0:46 – 0:56)
So I am Jen. I am a partner at Geraci on the corporate and securities side. And with me right now is Nichole.
I’ll let you introduce yourself, Nichole.
[Nichole] (0:56 – 1:01)
Hi, my name is Nichole Moore. I’m one of the senior attorneys on the banking and finance team at Geraci.
[Jen] (1:02 – 1:26)
And our special guest this hour is Ms. Kendra Rommel. Dun, dun, dun! We’re so excited to have you, Kendra.
We were thinking, who is going to be the most fun to interview with the best energy and just going to give us a good time? And it was a very, very easy answer. Ms. Kendra Rommel. Welcome, Kendra. Can you give us a little background on yourself?
[Kendra] (1:26 – 2:07)
Well, my name is Kendra Rommel and I am the co-founder of Futures Financial. We are a private lending company that’s primarily balance sheet based out of Orange County, California. We do specialize in nationwide bridge value-add, ground-up construction and DSCR products with an asset class focus of single-family residents and multifamily.
We do primarily stick to judicial states. We’re not so competitive in non-judicial. So I would probably refer you elsewhere that could be a competitive match, but yeah, that’s who we are.
[Jen] (2:07 – 2:19)
All right, so let’s start with some basic backgrounds. How did you get from being a regular human being to this money mogul superhero? What’s your origin story?
[Kendra] (2:20 – 3:09)
Oh my gosh, I am a normal human being. I so wish I was a money mogul. I’m on my way, but apparently my train is super slow.
But anyways, yeah, I mean, I am a normal human being. I’m just doing the best that I can with the assets that God gave me. And there’s no real magic to that other than, it’s like the way I teach people.
It’s like, sit down and watch, I don’t know. I really don’t know how to put it into words because we all have a different journey. And I don’t feel like any one person’s journey is necessarily more special.
It could be more interesting depending on the audience, but I don’t know that any one journey is more radical than another because we each have our own individual.
[Jen] (3:10 – 3:21)
Yeah, so why don’t we go on your journey and you kind of walk us through, where did you start? What were your challenges? How did you get to where you are and to be who we know you to be?
[Kendra] (3:22 – 7:20)
Entering the business, I really didn’t even know what a mortgage was. I was right out of high school. One of my friends at the time was trying to convince me to go sell mortgages, which was the tail end of the Thryptamine crisis.
So for people that don’t know that, that was the end of the 90s. And I said, well, I don’t know what a mortgage is. I don’t even know how to spell mortgage.
I don’t know the relevance to my life. And at the time I was 17 making six figures at Nordstrom’s, which I thought was like the most plush job ever. I got a discount on cool clothes and I was living my best, you know?
So anyway, jumped into the mortgage industry. I can’t have anyone complain about hard money rates ever at 10% because I was selling 12 to 15% owner occupied rates back in the day. And I didn’t know what I was doing.
So I feel like we’re at a really healthy price point right now in the hard money world at 10 to 12%, depending on the product, but that was sidebar. So jumping into that, I was one officer and then I just wanted to know more. Once I was in, I wanted to know what I was selling clearly and why I was selling it and what the need was in the marketplace that drove so many people to market.
So I went through my ops journey, you know, and when people told me no, I just went to the head of the company, which if anyone’s worked with me, they would say that’s so typical of Kendra, but I just wanted information all the time, which led me through about 10 years of operations in the subprime days. And then when the big, I’ll call it, I like to call it a pivot. I don’t, most people will say it’s a crash, but in 2007, 2008, when everything blew up, but typical for real estate in general, in some capacity, constantly pivoting, I didn’t really know what to do.
I was running operations for a large subprime company and I didn’t know if regulation was gonna fall on us as ops people. So I pulled the chute, I had small children and I started running what I call the processing center, which made me feel somewhat exempt from any possible licensure. And I had loan officers all over the United States and I would package their stuff, place it with banks that I had relationships with, ship it off in a trans box by like 10 PM that night.
We have big paper files and then pay them out as their loans would close. And so that lasted for a while until I started sourcing relationships with hedge funds who I don’t know why or how things happen, but they would ask me if I could source REOs. Meanwhile, I had friends telling me I have a fire sale on non-performing commercial paper and I would just punt it to people I knew.
And then I thought I could monetize this, like this is maybe the next move for me. And so I started sourcing product for hedge funds. Well, then I was given an opportunity to go work for some and I would tell them no at first because I was working at home with small babies.
Then I finally said yes. And that’s when I started with an asset management company backed by a large hedge fund of which I bought non-performing paper for the next six and a half years. Watching that landscape change tremendously, going from buying paper at 40 cents, 50 cents on the dollar until the market pushed and the feds got involved and HUD was trickling out paper at a much slower rate, but on a much larger scale and the price point went up.
So I thought, why would I manage 200 assets and not have any margin here? So then the natural segue was private lending. And so that’s kind of my path from a 4,000 foot level.
And obviously in each incident, it was an eye-opening, huge learning experience. And then my final stop, obviously, or I don’t think it’s my final, but too current, it was launching futures with my business partner, David Rosenberg. So that’s how we ended up here.
[Jen] (7:21 – 7:45)
What was that like? I mean, meeting David and choosing, figuring out that this is the right partner that I wanna work with and we wanna build futures together. Because I know futures is not that old of a company, right?
I think you guys launched in 2022, was it? Right around there. Can you walk us through kind of making that decision and what that took to start building futures from the ground up?
[Kendra] (7:46 – 11:59)
We’re still building from the ground up. Going to how I chose my business partner. So David and I actually met in the asset management hedge fund days where we were acquiring distressed paper.
So actually when I first met him, I didn’t like him. I still joke with him. Like, I couldn’t stand you.
I thought you were so obnoxious. And then he left to go open the New York branch. But then ironically, when I had started Civic, which was the institutional private lender I went to work for for six years before futures, Whit McCarthy was my immediate, I reported to.
And he said, I need you to call this account. If anyone can get business out of them, it’s you. And I was like, okay, sure, I’ll try.
So I call and who is on the other line but Mr. Rosenberg who I’m talking to him and I’m like, God, is this David? Like David David from at the time, it was Condor that we worked for. And I said from Condor and he’s like, yeah.
I swear he thought he was my sister-in-law but he’ll never admit that. So I said, well, let me come into your office. Like you should be sending us business obviously.
So we went into his office and then it was kind of history from there. We became like such great friends. He was a small shop, private lending shop in Beverly Hills of which I could walk in from an institutional place and say, now I know why you’re not growing but David literally was doing everything not to discredit his partner at the time but he was doing so much for that organization.
And so just being his friend, I wanted to like give him some guidance. And that’s when he started going to conferences. And then he was giving me perspective on true private lending and what it was to go pound the pavement and raise his own capital versus our institutional relationships within Civic.
And so fast forward a little bit, we just stayed friends. I mean, friends, like we would talk every day and it was mostly just like professional banter. We really didn’t, as odd as this sounds, we really didn’t have like, we didn’t speak about our personal life.
It was just really tactical business conversations but we would talk for hours every day. And so at the time I was at Civic and I was kind of running my own brand and my brand was, it just kind of happened that way. We were the WAML team and I kind of was my own island and I created my own marketing strategies.
And it was really about just getting people involved and having it filmed. So I started this podcast but not really trying to start a podcast. I had no desire to be a podcast host but if someone could benefit off of listening to the people that I was talking to, that’s what I wanted.
So our marketing team came on board when Bill Tesler came on board to take over Civic and they convinced me to go talk to this gentleman who I wanted to talk about tokenization and NFTs. And I thought, oh God, why? Like, I know nothing about this.
I’m not really interested. Anyway, when he dumbed down the series, I agreed to go. I show up, I’m sitting in this guy’s living room I’m talking to him.
And I said, dumb it down for some of us that know nothing about tokenization and blockchains and what have you, you know? And literally I felt like I had ADD the whole episode until he dumbed it down. And I thought, oh my God, I could use this and completely change the lending industry.
Like completely. And so I had this like mind explosion in his living room and I couldn’t wait to get the heck out of the living room. You know, I was like, get me the hell out of here.
So all the way home from LA, I called David and I’m like, hear me out. You’re gonna think I’m crazy and none of it’s gonna make sense. But anyway, fast forward, he’s like, let’s do it.
And I’m like, hold on, pump the brakes. You have a partner, I’m at a company. Like I have no intention of leaving my company for a long time.
So when we finally arrived at the decision to become business partners, I just knew he was the right one because we came from such different sides but shared a universal vision.
[Jen] (12:00 – 12:06)
Yeah, being able to kind of give a different perspective is always helpful, right? Especially in a partnership.
[Nichole] (12:06 – 12:36)
So I have a question though, before we, cause we’re gonna get into the weeds and talk a lot about futures. But you made a comment about you walked into a shop and you saw why he wasn’t growing or that particular business wasn’t growing at the time without tossing any stones. Can you tell us what some of those mistakes were for those of our listeners who may be in the position that you were then?
Like what were some of the mistakes? What were some of the guidance or advice you gave David right before you guys started?
[Kendra] (12:37 – 15:10)
Well, we kind of gave each other advice, but yeah. I would just say, look, he was running a very lucrative private lending company in Beverly Hills. His focus was ground-up construction in high-end luxury markets.
And he raised all the capital that supported his company as handshakes, like legitimately relationship building handshakes. And so me coming from institutional where everything had a department or a compartment, right? And you just played by the rules and it either fit the box or it didn’t.
I mean, granted you could get exceptions, but it was a very, very different infrastructure at the very basic level. And I think there’s a place in the market, obviously for both. But when I went into their shop at the time, I just saw how powerful it could be because they had discretion over their capital, but they needed sources like more people or bigger people to sell to.
And just the simple basics, like I said, of infrastructure, like you don’t have to have a department for everything. People can wear multiple hats, but you definitely need systems, policies, procedures to really best execute and not kill yourself. Like in those environments, I feel like the head of the company or the principals or even one ops person they hire is always carrying the brunt of the organization.
And the biggest, I think, reason for failure, if it’s not capital, it’s because there’s such massive burnout on that one individual that they can’t sustain it. It’s not sustainable, you know? It’s like subscribing to a diet that you know you can’t do long-term.
I’m not saying can’t, like totally, like you can’t just eat like figs and berries for the rest of your life, right? Like energy levels will suck and you eventually feel like you’re gonna die. Like it’s just not a reality.
So in those things, like he also exposed me, like I said, to these things where it doesn’t have to be so rigid and this is how I do things and this is how I run the books and this is how, you know, there was so much I learned about becoming a true private lender outside of the confines or the handcuffs, I call them, to some institutional guidelines and infrastructure that, like I said, it was just a logical partnership, you know?
[Nichole] (15:11 – 15:25)
Yeah. Do you think that’s what that understanding that you have with regard to infrastructure and how to work with a team, is that what sets futures apart, futures financials apart from other private lenders? What is future secret?
[Kendra] (15:26 – 16:59)
Well, how do I say this humbly? Like, I really don’t wanna dance on any- Don’t be humble, don’t be humble. Well, I say that because I always wanna learn and I’m always looking to collaborate with mentors, right?
Like, I don’t know that we have like the Willy Wonka golden ticket. I just think the blend of our knowledge and the expertise in each of our lanes has, yes, created a level of success that catapulted us to, let’s just say like a broker who launches as a broker, who signs up as a correspondent, who then maybe the natural progression is selling notes outside of like table funding and these slow progressions to maybe by year five, six, 10, I don’t know what that timeline is, then starts launching a fund. Whereas futures day one created policies, procedures, had systems, had guides, had pricing matrices.
And we launched funds before we launched to the public. Like we had two funds before we went to the street with product. I think, yes, that was a dual effort and combination of strengths that we took on and charged.
I think that helped us. You remember Super Nintendo, you guys could hit the work zone and you go down the tunnel. I feel like that was our little work zone.
It just helped us, but I would like to think we’re better for those things, yes, for the experience we’ve had.
[Jen] (17:00 – 17:29)
Well, I mean, I remember when you guys started out, it was just you and David, pretty much a two person shop, right? And now every time I see you guys, I mean, throughout the years, every time I see you guys, you guys have a new hire, have somebody else added to the team and they now have a carved out role and a specific responsibility. How did you guys go about kind of growing the team?
And what are some challenges there? Because scaling is definitely something that everybody’s thinking about and needs to plan for.
[Kendra] (17:29 – 19:43)
Well, we don’t believe, our philosophy is not more bodies in chairs leads to success. That is not the method we subscribe to. I’m actually the opposite mindset.
So most of the team that we have came from the Rommel team, right? Prior to, so I’ve worked with these people a long time and been friends with them. I mean, they’re family.
And then the other half came with David from his organization. I mean, we try to cultivate an environment where we give people job responsibilities and expectations, but we don’t want them to feel stuck in those. So we encourage them, for instance, operations director, Leslie.
I don’t know what I’d do without her at this point because we’ve worked together so long, but I tasked each of them to write the training manual for the next person, down to templates, down to every step of what they do in a day, they needed to craft folders for, and an actual manual that someone could step in if they were gone or God forbid died, and could literally use their templates and their exact workflow. And I do that to empower them, to test the resilience of, do you really wanna be a leader? Or do you wanna stay kind of where you’re at and oversee a team?
That’s important for me to know. And more importantly, I think that’s important for the people who follow or kind of work together to understand who they really are as a professional. We give annual and biannual reviews, not always does that lead to a pay increase, but it may lead to a responsibility increase or a complete responsibility change depending on how they’re feeling, if they’re feeling like this really isn’t speaking to what they wanna do with their life.
So we’ve had a hard time with the thought of hiring. We did hire and that quickly ended. They say be quick to fire, that we didn’t have to fire thankfully, but I think we all realized very quickly that it wasn’t a good fit and they just redirected themselves, which was a blessing in California, to be honest.
[Jen] (19:44 – 19:54)
So, I mean, I’m sure you guys made a few mistakes along the way. I mean, are there any that you can laugh about now or probably it wasn’t as funny back then?
[Kendra] (19:55 – 19:57)
Mistakes as far as personnel or in general?
[Jen] (19:58 – 20:02)
In general, just building futures, working with David, anything you wanna divulge.
[Kendra] (20:03 – 21:33)
Oh my God. I mean, yes, we make mistakes every day. We just hope they don’t cost us a truckload of money.
I mean, we made marketing mistakes in the beginning, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars before we found the right fit to do kind of what we wanted them to do. If I’m speaking candidly, we’ve made mistakes where we’ve attended events that we really shouldn’t attend. And we did it probably more for ego, if I was really honest, like trying to brand ourselves, which I also think brand awareness is real.
So I don’t wanna totally discount that. I do believe you have to attend one or two conferences a year just for that, understanding that the ROI is just brand awareness. But when you’re a starting company, I just think you have to be very selective in everything you do and test the resilience of the return.
And so we were eager, we’re excited. We’re still very excited. I think we’re just slower to pull the trigger on certain things, really trying to test, does this return make sense for us?
And is it going to help us move the needle forward? And let’s be honest, in this industry, what moves the needle forward is production first, right? So yeah, I mean, we make mistakes every day.
I probably make more mistakes than anybody else, but I mean, I try to recover quick.
[Jen] (21:34 – 21:40)
Yeah, I mean, I think that everybody makes mistakes, but it’s kind of how you deal with them, the aftermath and learning from them.
[Nichole] (21:40 – 22:00)
Yeah, how you bounce back. So how is the futures adapting, just to switch the subject just a little bit, we’re talking about mistakes, we’re talking about fixing them. We’re seeing a lot of trends and changes in the industry right now.
How is futures adapting to those changes and what are some of the changes that you’re seeing?
[Kendra] (22:02 – 24:11)
You know, this is a funny question, Nichole. And I say that because we’re in real estate, like it’s always gonna change and it’s always going to be something. There’s always going to be a challenge.
And I really think if you launch a vision, it doesn’t mean that you can’t pivot, but if you stay true to that and conservative in your growth trajectory with that vision, even if you yourself are bullish, I think you can’t really go wrong. So to answer your question, we make minor tweaks along the way, as it pertains to market polls, but we really don’t change our identity and who we are. And at the end of the day, we’re in a relationship business, not just customer business.
So our relationships are our investors because we are primarily a balance sheet lender. We maintain relationships with aggregators or takeout partners, large institutional takeout partners to balance our balance sheet, but those are all relationships. And so we just try to stay true to our commitments and our deliverables for each of those people.
And I feel like as long as that product is consistent, you really, I don’t wanna say insulate, but you kind of do insulate from the small speed bumps in this industry. You know what I mean? I don’t know if that makes sense, but I really feel like when you stay authentic to who you are and you have good guidance, like truly we rely so much on our legal partner guidance.
We rely so much on other people in the space that are professionals in their own right. When we’re unsure about something or we’re trying to mitigate something that’s potentially coming down the pike, at least rumor has it, we really try to explore what that is, what that looks like, and kind of the runway we have against that. And if we need to make an immediate change, we do, but we try not to be knee jerk, right?
It’s all just weeded risk.
[Jen] (24:12 – 24:29)
Yeah, and I think it’s important to be flexible, right? And not be so adamant and so stubborn in how you’re operating and what you do and just very narrowly focused because things change and they’re always changing. And so you have to be flexible and show some sort of flexibility to be successful.
[Nichole] (24:29 – 24:45)
But that’s also a testament to the success of futures, right? Because you are able to identify those changes and then make the small adjustments to pivot so that you will remain a mainstay in the private lending industry. So, I mean, I think it kind of speaks for itself, right?
[Jen] (24:46 – 25:00)
So Kendra, you’re a hustler and I love it. It’s inspiring. I mean, you’re building a business from the ground up.
You know, that’s not easy. Was there ever a moment that you felt like giving up or, you know, you kind of questioned where am I going? What am I doing?
[Kendra] (25:01 – 27:22)
Well, it is tough, not for the faint of heart. I have launched a business in the past, but very different. Yeah, there’s been a lot of…
I don’t think I’ve ever cried this much in my life. I think every podcast I’ve done, I would say I’ve cried more now. And there has been like mixed emotion around the joy, the uptick.
And there’s been… But with the uptick, there’s always been sacrifice. So look, launching this business, I thought I had 100% everything that I needed to do.
What I learned and what I’m still learning is to trust another human being. I’ve always been raised an extremely independent person and been told by my parents from a very young age, do not rely on anyone to do anything for you, do it yourself. And you don’t think those statements as a child really resonate, but when they’re stated to you guys over and over and over and over as a staple in your upbringing, how that plays out, no one knows when you’re a child, right?
But what it did for me is I really do not intentionally, but I charge things as if I have no allies. And I don’t do it from a place of like being jaded or angry or it’s just, I have things to do and I have a mission. And so when I joined forces with David, I still, without saying it, okay, yes, he’s my partner, but I really thought he’s just another body next to me.
We’re still charging it independent. And I remember going through some of the approval process with some of our strategic partners. I’m like, they don’t need that.
They don’t need to know that about me. My own spouse doesn’t know that about me. They don’t need to know that.
And I had to learn how to let my guard down to the degree of being able to execute as an entrepreneur and as a business partner. And it feels so scary. It is a whole other level of vulnerability that I felt like I’m just leaving myself open to fall apart.
[Nichole] (27:22 – 27:38)
And I still struggle with that literally every day. What is a lesson that you had to learn the hard way? Because maybe because of your background or maybe I’m gonna go it alone, I’ll figure it out myself.
Is there a lesson that you’ve learned?
[Kendra] (27:38 – 29:55)
There are lessons because when they really sting, you don’t just learn it overnight. It’s learned behavior over time and repetition. And so you just pray that whoever you’re learning this lesson alongside that they are patient and that they’re consistent with you and that they’re always honest and they have your best intention.
So like David knows my vulnerability obviously or my vulnerabilities and I know his and it’s important that we never weaponize that even in a moment of frustration and that we remain compassionate to the fact that we are human beings first and that sometimes there’s really bad deeds in those lessons like we’re not behaving nicely or, and that has to like cause pause and for us to address that as business partners in our business to make our business remain healthy or to keep it healthy.
So yeah, that’s hard and it’s embarrassing and probably a massive pitfall but he’s known more about me than my spouse. And so that should tell you the level of intimacy you have with your business partner and vulnerability is insane. I mean, we’re responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars, okay?
And that pressure never bothers me as much as the pressure of feeling exposed. If that sounds crazy, but it’s definitely a responsibility that I don’t take lightly. But yeah, listen, I have moments of guilt.
I have two teenage kids and not being, you know available to them, even still people are like, well, at least your kids are older. I don’t know what that means. My kids, I feel like need me more now as they transition into their next chapter of life than they did when they were toddlers.
I mean, toddlers, it’s like, here’s your lunch, you know, the quality time we have together. I need to make sure that they’re impactful and I lead by example, you know, so they’re not yelling the F word across the playground. But other than that, they’re in school, you know?
And now just juggling a multitude of things, it’s just intense.
[Jen] (29:55 – 30:08)
And what does that look like? I mean, you’re a mom, you have kids. I mean, you’ve watched them grow up.
They’re older now, sure. But I mean, balancing, needing to be there, being present for them, along with balancing your client, the business, future’s growing.
[Kendra] (30:09 – 31:39)
I mean, if you ask some of my clients, I’m probably not balancing it too well. I mean, my kids have to come first. I mean, I have one shot at raising two human beings that are gonna go out and have to have their own counseling sessions because of what I did or didn’t do for them, you know?
So, I mean, God gave me these two. One’s more challenging than the other, but they’re both amazing human beings that contribute and have assets that I hope to foster and help them create success. But it’s hard.
I mean, there’s no easy button. It’s work every day. And I think your family, the people closest to you are who struggled most.
That’s an age-old statement, you know? But what it looks like now is I time block. I time block the hell out of my calendar.
And that includes personal things. That includes time for me at the gym, time for me at a second workout, depending on my stress level. You do have to create mental space for yourself to be able to reflect and refocus energy on your vision and who’s in your life, who can you exclude from your life going forward, what you can say no to, what you can say yes to, you know?
That’s pretty much how I do it. It’s the only way I know how to do it. Sounds so rigid, but it’s true.
[Jen] (31:39 – 31:42)
No, I mean, prioritizing. Family should always come first, right?
[Nichole] (31:43 – 31:44)
I mean, that’s so hard.
[Kendra] (31:45 – 33:07)
I mean, it’s very hard. And listen, there are times where, no, work has to come first, right? Like, so I think I just wrote a paper, an editorial about this.
I don’t know why. I feel like God’s like got his thumb on me about balance or something. But it’s like time blocking is huge and more important than that is communication, right?
So if I have something that is demanding of my heart in my space at home, I will communicate that to David. Like, I really need to be present. And likewise, I encourage him, because men don’t do this as well as women, I don’t think.
No offense, but there’s very few that I know that have done this well. But if he needs to be somewhere for his family or his children, then I want him to be there because it’s a short window of time we get to execute. And vice versa, when we have a heavy project or deadline, I mean, we just finished our financial audit.
That thing is like a life sack, you know, but it’s mandatory. So we need to communicate that with our family and our support system outside of work and say, look, we have some long hours, so let’s put some things in place that are gonna help protect the safety, the sanity of our home, right? Like, I call my mom still to this day, mom, you wanna run over and hang out with the kids?
I mean, like I said, they’re teenagers, but they still want attention. They still want time. They still like warm bodies in the house, you know?
[Jen] (33:07 – 33:23)
What about coming home from a stressful day and your kids are older now too, so they probably can be a little bit more sensitive to your mood. Are there, you know, any examples of kind of bringing work home when maybe you shouldn’t have or how do you prevent something like that? I don’t know.
[Kendra] (33:25 – 35:06)
My kids only know me to have work at home and out on, you know, at a sporting events on the phone, but so they only know that life, to be honest. I don’t know how that is in everybody else’s home. The only time I really try to put my phone down is when we are at a dinner table together, or our dinner table.
Like, I really feel like that’s good talk time or right before bed. They love to come in still to this day, lay on my bed and just wrap out for an hour or two. I’m like, TikTok buddy, it’s time.
Like, I gotta go to bed. But no, yeah, I mean, I think you do the best you can do, you know? You just do the best you can do.
And for me, the best is, I do feel like even though I’m working my tail off and I do bring that home, my kids see me hustle. They’ve seen me hustle since they were babies. So I don’t think it always needs to be looked at as a negative.
Like, my kids respect how hard I work and the things that they have because of how hard I work, right? So, and they know that if I sat around, we wouldn’t have the things that they have. So they see me work hard in my professional life.
They see me work hard on my body. And now what the cool part is with them being teenagers and answering to, you know, like, how do your kids react to your mood kind of. I mean, my kids, the wonderful thing about children, if you don’t have any, is they’re going to tell you whether you like what they’re saying or not.
If you have a good relationship with your children, they’re like, whoa, why are you so edgy? You’re like, oh, pump the brakes. Cause I’m just pissed.
And they’re like, geez, I guess, what happened, you know?
[Nichole] (35:06 – 35:41)
And then they’re like truth serum, seriously. So I have a question, it’s a two-parter. One for your clients and one for your children.
What is one piece of advice that you wish that your clients would actually listen to and that your children would actually listen to? They don’t have to be the same thing. One piece of advice?
Ugh, don’t get advice from me. There’s other resources. I don’t know.
Well, for your clients, probably like financial advice. Like something that your clients are doing. And you’re like, okay guys, let’s not do that.
[Kendra] (35:42 – 39:39)
For clients, always have more than one option. You know, always have more than one resource. I’m not the seat for everybody.
I mean, that’s a multitude, right? Like, oh God, I could like talk to Limbaugh in the face about a balanced debt stack, you know? Just because you’re offered a hundred percent doesn’t mean you should take it.
You should maintain a level of equity at all times. And I’m a debt provider telling you that. But always have more than one debt provider even if it looks like we do the same thing because everyone can sit here and say that their capital is the most solid.
I said that when I worked at Civic and this is not a bash on Civic. That’s just part of my resume. But, cause I literally stood in front of that booth at many events and said, when people would proposition me to go work for them I would say, why would I leave?
I have the best capital in the business, right? And I confidently said that. And I still say that, we did.
But things change. And so what you learn in those moments is you need to have more than one outlet. And so probably my best statement to clients would be yes to have more than me in your back pocket.
I appreciate that you love me and you want to be loyal to me, but always play to resource. And then for my children and my children’s friends and anyone outside, I would say torch the thought that putting money in a bank and saving it or in a safe and saving it is the best mechanism to grow wealth. If your money’s not moving, you’re not growing.
It’s really similar to how you’re gonna approach any job too. If you’re not moving, you’re not growing. If you’re not pushing the envelope, you’re not growing.
So you can work your minimum wage job, but put aside $2. And even though it feels too small, put it in something that’s gonna pay you 5% to 8%. There’s vehicles out there, they’re popular right now.
Like go do it. So that’s kind of a passion of mine to be honest because I don’t feel like everyone has the bandwidth to understand that when most of society is a consumer-based society and they’re broke and they’re just making enough on whatever level that is to pay their bills and sustain their lifestyle. I think when I hit certain levels of income and I wasn’t worried about surviving, thankfully, I started learning really what money is.
And money is a tool like anything else in your garage toolbox. And if you’re not utilizing it, then it’s wasted. So when I say utilizing, and I’m not talking about going out and buying every red bottoms that hits the market.
Trust me, I love them. And I feel like that’s a moon blue shot. Is that a moon blue shot?
No, well, cause I might go with, you were showing me the picture. I mean, like, yes, I love handbags and shoes. I love them and I love looking good.
But there are times where you really need to go, am I gonna work until I’m a hundred because I want red bottoms or can I buy stock in that company? Start thinking bigger is what I tell my children. Think bigger.
Even with a dollar, you can think bigger. It’s a dollar more than you had yesterday. Then it’s a dollar 13.
Then it’s, so I really just want my kids to understand what it is to truly invest and make their money work. Aside from all the obvious, right? Like I want them to be good people.
God first, faith first. Don’t listen to anyone else’s philosophies on life. Explore your own, you know, and arrive at your own place spiritually, mentally, physically.
What I do doesn’t mean that my workouts are for you. Go figure out your own workouts, you know? I love that.
I have no real cool advice, okay? I just… No, that was all amazing advice.
I really like that for your kids.
[Nichole] (39:40 – 39:42)
That’s for your clients. I like that advice.
[Jen] (39:43 – 40:07)
Yeah, that’s very generous advice too. And I think it’s very smart advice to give, right? Your clients and just showing them that you are confident in the products that you provide, but you’re also looking out for them and their bottom line.
And it just shows the kind of, you know, company that you guys are and the kind of lender that you guys are striving to be. And it’s a generous one, and it’s one that looks out for their clients, for their borrowers. Yeah.
I like that.
[Kendra] (40:08 – 42:06)
Well, we hope, although I was just told in an email yesterday, you know, I thought we had this relationship and I had to break it down. Like, look, yes, we do, but we also have a cost of running business. We do take these relationships serious, but we can’t sacrifice ours.
Like really, we all experience tragedy in our lives in general, but then in this business, when we’re lending to another business, you are going to see successes and failures. That is a part of what we do every single day. And oftentimes the people who are experiencing those failures come back to the big lender that has an endless bucket of cash, apparently with no costs associated, comes back looking to us for the answer to solve their shortcoming, whatever that is, even if it’s like the fires, okay?
Like in this last incident, we want to help you. We will help create solutions around what the circumstance is, but we can’t solve all problems in the way that you would like them solved because we have our own cost of doing business. And so people sometimes just need to be reminded of the obvious, you know?
I mean, it’s not because we don’t like you. It’s not because we wanted your house to burn down. We don’t want those things.
We want you to see the upside. I had to tell this person, look, when you take your houses to market and you sell it for exponentially more than the debt we provided, we don’t get a phone call going, hey, we’re giving you a bonus. Like, no, never, you know?
Like, uh-uh. So similarly, just because your business is taking a loss, we can’t drop our business model to help pull you out of your shortcomings in a business, no matter what the circumstance. So that sounds harsh to a lot of people.
And like, we’re not willing to work with people. That’s not the case. We work with people every single day in the best way that we can without compromising who we are.
[Jen] (42:08 – 42:52)
And how do you guys keep your kind of borrowers or your clients sticky? Like, sometimes you might have to be real with them, which I have no doubt you always are, right? You’re true.
You let them know what the situation is and you don’t wanna compromise your principles. You guys operate the way that you do for a reason. And sometimes it doesn’t always work out.
But it appears to me that, you know, you have the same kind of clients coming back, right? They like you guys. You guys have proven yourself.
You have shown what you can do. And I think that really drives them coming back to you guys. Are there any other things that you guys really do or think about or put at the forefront in keeping, you know, your borrowers coming back and clients coming back to you guys?
[Kendra] (42:52 – 45:53)
When people can talk to real people at the start, the middle, the end, I think it actually, like, is the retention mechanism. That so much of the time, people are really, really service-oriented at the origination of the business relationship. And then it slowly falls off.
And then by the time the loan is being serviced, it’s just the servicer. And we don’t take that approach because David and I came from an asset management background. We know the importance of managing that asset while it’s servicing.
It has protected us so much in default or extension situations where people aren’t moving at the speed that they should be. David does a phenomenal job managing that part of it. I think he actually really likes it still, where he’s like, hello, this is a reminder.
You haven’t made your payment. I mean, really. I think he just needs to be…
He keeps himself busy. So he does a good job with that. I mean, I joke, but seriously, we hedge problems before they arise.
We start talking to people three months before maturity and going, how’s the project? We noticed you haven’t pulled the draws. There’s something we could assist you with.
And we do have vendors that are managing this for us. We use the fund control company. We use a servicer, but we don’t leave it upon them to run with our clients.
We run with our clients. And so at each of these steps, and people will say, well, that’s not scalable. You can’t do that for every…
And I would say, yes, you can. If you let it get out of control, no, you can’t because you’re not gonna plug 50 holes with one pinky. It’s not gonna happen.
But if you are consistent and that’s a part of your business model and you hire as you need that assistance and train them, like you run it, then yes, you can. And seriously, asset management is one of the most underestimated. I think it’s grown in popularity a little bit because some people actually believe that there’s a lucrative note acquisition channel or funnel coming down the pike, but that’s a whole different conversation for a whole different day.
But anyway, asset management has grown back in popularity. And I think maybe you’ll start seeing some of that, but look, it’s cheaper to keep them on every scale. On every level, yeah, exactly.
Every relationship is cheaper to keep them. So same is true with clients. Like why go out and hunt new business?
I mean, you still have to, but why would you put all your eggs in that versus servicing the clients that you have? It’s crazy.
[Nichole] (45:54 – 46:16)
We know that you’re super resilient. You’re always growing, but has there been, when was, what was that, oh my God, I actually did it. I finally did it.
What was your reaction? Like what was that moment like when you finally realized that you’ve made it to where you were intending to make it at that moment?
[Kendra] (46:17 – 49:53)
I don’t really feel like that. I haven’t really felt like that yet. I’ve had small moments of joy where I feel like overwhelming gratitude.
I really did when our team joined us, that was like, that was so heartwarming for me and that they bought into our vision and they literally see it like their own and they take charge like their own. Like that still brings like tears to my eyes and I don’t cry very often, but I have cried a lot the last three years. And when we got our office space and David and I designed it and did it all ourselves, like there was a huge amount of pride in that.
We just expanded. There was massive pride in that. You know, what I find joy in, this sounds, this is only for me really, but what I find the most joy in at the end of the day when it’s all super frustrating or I am lacking my perceived potential in growth that day or that month or that time period is I turn around and I try to look at, we are helping facilitate growth in six families’ lives.
And so as long as I see our internal family and our borrowers succeeding to whatever degree that is, it brings me a lot of fulfillment. That brings me fulfillment. Outside of work, I competed in this, I don’t tell people this, but I didn’t really think I could do it.
It was so freaking hard. It was so hard. I thought I was gonna die and I did it.
And I just thought to myself the other day when I was like in a moment of meditation, I thought, God, I can’t believe I did that crap. I can’t believe- What did you do? We’re gonna rate a 5K or?
No, no, it was a CrossFit competition where I was doing basically like two workouts a day in the sand and then in the hard, I mean, it was hard, hard. I mean, we were up against global athletes in CrossFit. I trained only the two weeks prior with my team.
And I was like, what the hell are we doing? I am older. Like, I don’t wanna be a CrossFit athlete.
I’m just trying to fit in my pants. And so, you know, like summer body. I don’t know.
I don’t need, I don’t want traps like a dude. I don’t want all that. No offense to the CrossFitters.
I’m just saying, I don’t want all that. But it was a huge amount of, my kids saw me, my family saw me, my teammates were awesome. And so, I just thought how lucky I was to have a working body and we made it through and we actually took podium.
So I was just like, that was super fun. Congrats. It was small victories, but I don’t know that, the minute you feel you’ve arrived, I feel like you fail.
So like, I feel like for people that are driven, it’s not by a perceived success. It’s their own personal journey of exercising their assets. And so, I think when we all feel plateaued, it’s because we’re not utilizing our strengths.
And sometimes we’re not surrounded by the people to help accentuate those strengths. And then you have to, at a certain level, you’re the one that’s constantly having to go out and seek those people or those spaces.
[Nichole] (49:53 – 50:13)
It’s like, if you’re always the smartest person in the room, it’s time to move rooms, right? Like, that’s something I’ve kind of lived by. If I feel like I’m the smartest person in the room or I have the most talent than everyone in the room, then I need to move rooms because now my growth is starting to be stagnated.
And that sounds very similar to your approach to life.
[Kendra] (50:14 – 50:44)
Yeah, I think that that’s wildly true, but I also think that it’s not always the case. Like, sometimes you are the value add and that’s a blessing. And so, it’s not always about us, right?
Sometimes we are put in rooms to be that light or to be that optimism to the other person who feels stagnant. And so, you kind of have to approach both, but yes, in terms of like overall growth for ourselves, 100%.
[Nichole] (50:45 – 50:54)
Yeah. Okay, so Kendra, how has working in the private lending industry changed your relationship with money or even how you see success?
[Kendra] (50:55 – 52:13)
Well, from a money perspective, I mean, it’s just more evident to me than when I was younger that money is a tool like we’ve talked about prior and it’s got to stay in motion in order to be valuable. And then from a success standpoint, success to me is an emotion. It’s not really a destination.
And so, I come from more of a mindset of abundance versus scarcity. And what I mean by that is there’s always opportunity, there’s always market share, there’s always resource above and beyond myself. You don’t have to have a fearful sense of self or a sense of being because there’s always enough.
And so, yeah, I feel like success is a word we hyper-focus on seen with abundance and yet we don’t really dig into what that is. For me, it’s nothing more than saying I’m frustrated or I’m grateful or I achieved something. I prefer saying that I’ve achieved a milestone or a goal and I’m continuing to move forward towards my other goals.
[Nichole] (52:14 – 52:28)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. So what’s next for futures? Do you have any big plans?
What’s your vision? You and David have a vision for futures and growth and where you see yourself in the next five, 10 years?
[Kendra] (52:29 – 54:16)
I mean, yes, we wanna keep growing, period. We wanna keep raising discretional capital and opening more funds. We have a pet project that correlates with integrating technology on a whole nother level.
Like I kind of started, that’s been a pet project since the beginning. It’s a massive undertaking because we are a tiny shop but we haven’t lost sight of that, creating efficiencies in the marketplace as we grow. And so our growth is a lot slower and we have settled into this trajectory because the type of capital we want to maintain and the balance sheet we wanna maintain just takes more time.
So as long as we are increasingly getting better and our people are satisfied and they feel balanced and our clients feel served and our investors feel served, I feel like we’re on the right path consistently. We’re staying on the right path. Yeah.
There’s no dollar amount tied. Everyone likes to go, I’m gonna do a billion. Well, I’m not, I probably won’t for a minute, but that’s okay because 100 million to a firm like us feels like a billion to someone who has 175 people.
It’s all different business models and I think we do a very poor job in this industry of associating success by number. Production is production, units are units and your bottom line should be the determining factor of how successful you are by way of monetary gain or scalability and who you are as a human being when people get to interact with you. We have some great human beings in this industry and we have some not great human beings.
[Jen] (54:16 – 54:19)
Do you wanna let people know where they can find you?
[Kendra] (54:20 – 54:55)
So the name of our company again is Futures Financial. You can always go to our website which is futuresfinancial.com. You can email us at, if you’re interested in investing in futures, you could invest at futuresfinancial.com or just for information about an opportunity or you can email info at futuresfinancial.com.
And of course, I’m here in Orange County. If anyone is ever in Orange County and wants to grab a drink or lunch or coffee or whatever, please feel free to reach out.
[Nichole] (54:57 – 54:57)
Love it.
[Kendra] (54:57 – 54:58)
Thank you.
[Nichole] (54:58 – 55:05)
Thank you so much, Kendra. Thank you, Kendra. This is great shit.
I knew we picked the right guests for this episode.
[Jen] (55:05 – 55:09)
100%, that was hilarious. I’m Jen. I’m Nichole.
[Nichole] (55:09 – 55:09)
Thank you.
[Jen] (55:10 – 55:15)
And this has been a Lender Lounge Takeover. I hope you guys enjoyed it and laughed as much as we did.
[Nichole] (55:15 – 55:17)
Bye. Bye. Bye.
[V/O] (55:23 – 56:16)
You’ve been listening to Lender Lounge with Kevin Kim brought to you by Tarassi LLP, the nation’s largest private lending law firm. Tarassi is the leading legal resource for specialty lenders, asset-based lenders, private lenders, and non-bank institutions. Learn more about the firm at tarassilawfirm.com.
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