Scaling a $4B Lending Empire: Insider Strategies from Renovo Financial with James Gaskin

Mike Hambright (00:16.962)
Hey everybody, welcome to the show. I’m really excited to be back in the studio here today. I’m here with

James Gaskin from Renovo Financial, probably the second largest lender in the country for real estate investors. That’s right. You guys have grown tremendously. We’re going to be talking about, he has a wealth of knowledge of what’s going on in the industry, certainly from a financial standpoint. They work with tons of top real estate investors. So we’re going to extract as much knowledge as we can on what’s going on in the industry and where we’re going here in 2026. So James, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me. It’s an honor to be here. Yeah, glad you’re here. So thanks for coming up from Austin. Yeah.

Easy trip for me and excited to be here. I love Dallas. We have a big office here. So had an opportunity to spend some time with our team and always nice, but super appreciative of the opportunity to come on. Yeah, I love talking. I love talking about this stuff. That’s why we do the show. So before we jump in, I know you’ve got a lot of insights from where things have been, where we’re going, certainly opinions. And maybe you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you got to this point. Yeah, for sure. So I’ve been in.

in real estate finance really for my whole career. I got my undergrad and my business degree at St. Edward’s University, shout out to Hilltoppers in Austin, played in basketball. My mom was a real estate developer really my whole life, been grown up, of grew up around that business and always had a lot of interest in being a developer. But I started my career on the finance side at a

big accounting firm doing real estate consulting, really. And really enjoyed that side of it and ended up kind of joining a very small kind of startup type firm making hard money loans in Austin. We made loans really all over Texas and I ran all the capital markets, the money, built an investor relations team to work with the investors, all high net worth individuals, so no institutional money.

Mike Hambright (02:21.04)
And we scaled that business pretty successfully for a while. And actually, I got to Renovo because I felt like hit a ceiling with our ability to raise enough money to meet the demand, kind of in the late 2010s, mid 2010s. And so I reached out to Kevin, the founder of Renovo, and we started talking about those guys acquiring that firm.

transaction didn’t work out, but I got a chance to see under the hood at Renovo when it was still very small, kind of Chicago-only lending business.

felt firmly that it was the best lending company nobody had ever heard of. they were, I thought, primed to really see a tremendous amount of growth. And I was fortunate enough that Kevin liked me and asked me to come over and kind of develop the strategy for how to scale that business. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 6 and 1 years and having a ton of fun doing it. And you guys have scaled up to be the second largest lender in the country now. that’s great. Yeah, we did. Just shy of $4 billion in loans.

last year across about 40 different MSAs, markets across the country, which we cover locally with boots on the ground originators and operations staff. And so we basically built what I think could be accurately described as a collection of local lending businesses, all within the Renov-O umbrella, all controlled and managed at the corporate level in Chicago, but really run in a local way.

So yeah, it’s been a lot of fun scaling this kind of business, this high touch.

Mike Hambright (04:04.31)
very localized business has been an interesting challenge. think we’re, to my knowledge, the only ones in our space who’ve really been able to scale this type of lending. it’s worked extremely well. Our portfolio performance is, I think, probably second to none. And we’ve got a really happy team. And so we’ve got a lot of good things to build on going forward. Yeah, when I started in 2008, there were no national hard money lenders.

local mom and pops, some regional players probably. When I started 2008, looking back now, I understand things a little bit more. certainly a lot of crazy practices that never worked for anybody. They just got sloppy leading up to the 2008 crash.

The rise of the large institutional investor has been amazing. Maybe just talk about what it takes to stand out, because there’s obviously been a lot of big companies that are kind of warring for top spots. And I would say, I don’t know this for sure, but the fact that you guys grew as much as you did over the past year, it probably was at least as much stealing market share from other people than market growth, because the market was really kind of contracting in a lot of ways. Yeah, no, that’s a great observation. mean, you’re absolutely right.

When I first got into this business, was very regional at most. There were very few national lenders. And that’s, think, a function of the capital markets, like the true Wall Street capital markets that move the real dollars around, never really had any interest or visibility to the space. They could put billions and billions of dollars to work by investing in big office buildings and hotels and chunkier assets that require you only have to underwrite one thing instead of 1,000 houses to get the same amount of money out.

it was more efficient. As yield dried up in some of those areas, they started getting down into the weeds and found their way to our corner of the world. So that’s created the ability for people to scale institutionalized private lending operations on a national level. We have ridden that wave, but we’ve done it in a slightly different way with taking this high touch localized approach.

Mike Hambright (06:24.688)
It’s been a really interesting experience.

I don’t know, there’s certainly a lot of pieces to it, but I think at the end of the day, the way to scale, if you want to do it the right way, you’ve got to really be good at execution. How you find the customer, how you interact with the customer, everybody does that a little bit differently. We certainly feel like we do it differently than many others, but that’s really more of a preference thing for the customer. At the end of the day, what the borrower cares about is, are you going to close the loan under the terms you

said you were going to close it on time. And that consistency and quality of execution is how you scale as an operator, as a flipper or a builder or whatever. You need that predictability.

on the capital side of your business in order to really scale confidently. And I think that’s what we’ve tried to provide. And then on top of that, we tried to provide a really great relationship and local expertise that can help our customers avoid mistakes, all of that kind of stuff. And I think that additional value on top of high quality execution and consistency, that to me is what makes us unique. That’s one of the things that was missing for a long time from the big lenders is,

You had the local mom and pop the local lender that you have a relationship with they live in your market They know they know that streets right they may might even meet you at the house And then when the national lenders were kind of coming up it was like well their rates are better But the relationships aren’t the same or they’re very transactional right and I think that that’s how things have evolved and that’s probably just gonna continue to do so especially with you guys right yeah, I think so I mean and especially with technology right as AI and technology kind of comes in and helps us You know create more efficiencies. It’s gonna be a lot easier

Mike Hambright (08:16.688)
to continue to build those more transactional shops. And sometimes those are a perfect fit, depending on what the customer’s doing. If you buy every house at 200 to 275,000, you put in 50 grand and you sell it for whatever your profit margin is, 325, whatever.

If you do that consistently and that same type of over and over, sometimes those transactional interests can be just fine. But I do think that as our world gets more, as people become more isolated from technology, I think people really love the interaction and all of those aspects. And I think that’s something that we’ve been able to do really well. So what can you share with us on the current state of the market? It feels like there’s so much noise.

in the marketplace politically and otherwise, right? I think it feels like people that had their head down, that worked really hard for the last few years are really gonna see that pay off this year. That’s how it feels to me. Just with some things changing, the market’s shaking loose, rates coming down a little bit, maybe a little more confidence in where things are going, or I don’t know, or just not caring.

what’s going on, but they got to move forward one way or another. It feels like the wind is moving to our back a little bit. I think that very well could be true. I mean, you pointed it out, right? There’s a lot of volatility, geopolitically, locally with our politics. There’s a lot of things happening. So who really knows, right? But I do think that there is a good chance that you could see some tailwinds this year for sure. We’ve seen a lot of changes in the space.

in the last handful of years. And I think last year in particular, just the amount of capital that is available to lenders like ourselves, it’s absolutely never been greater. No question about it. I don’t recall the stats off the top of my head, but I want to say something like 3X the amount of institutional capital was in the business of either originating or acquiring loans to real estate investors.

Mike Hambright (10:30.8)
So there’s a tremendous amount of money and that’s been great for the customer because it’s also, that competition’s creating rate compression. So rates are coming down, people are having to be more competitive to win. And to your point, the industry, think there’s been…

at the very best, like a kind of a stagnant market in terms of like the number of deal, really good deals that you actually want to put capital into, if not a shrinking pie. And so you have maybe fewer great opportunities and a lot of money in the lending space that is looking for a home. So that’s creating intense competition for the borrower. And we’ve seen that result in.

in rate compression and some other things with the product that I think for the borrower, there’s today, there’s a lot of 100 % loan to cost financing available.

Two, three years ago, there was maybe one, at a big national level, there was only a few people doing that. Today, that’s not the case. There’s a lot of people doing it because everybody is really fighting over that kind of stagnant or shrinking pie of good deals and really high quality sponsors. So it’s good for the borrower. I think that trend continues. I think there’s still a tremendous amount of money coming in from institutional allocators, let’s say, the big Wall Street

know, investment firms or asset managers, know, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, et cetera. A lot of money, I don’t think that’s changing. So I think the borrowers can expect to continue to be in a very competitive lending environment, which should be good for the terms that they’re able to secure. You know, I think that’s definitely a trend that we’re gonna see kind of continue. You know, a lot of new lenders are popping up, which is just good. You know, I do think though,

Mike Hambright (12:29.84)
So it muddies the water a little bit on when you have so many people with capital. It muddies the water a little on who’s really good. And so as an investor or a sponsor, you need to pick your partners wisely. And I think that’s going to be more important going forward. And then I also think the market will continue. We have a lot of challenges with addressing affordability, things like that. There’s a lot of policy discussion.

about that, I don’t know that any of that stuff’s really going to move the needle. I think it’s lot of headline stuff, which makes sense. But I think that the market will continue to be, I think there will be friction. And I think as investors who are actually operating and acquiring these properties, really have be sharp on your numbers. think you really need to stress test your assumptions. This is a time to be very technically thorough.

Because you know you do one bad deal and it can put you in a really really bad spot sure And so I think making sure that investors are really paying close attention to their numbers You know you used to be able to underwrite kind of standard assumptions on like for example if you own a multifamily property You could kind of assume that one to three percent a year you you could raise rents right you’re gonna see continually escalating rents I’m not sure if that’s the case right now Yeah, right, so you I think going back and making sure to stress test all those assumptions

going to be really important for investors this year. That said, a lot of things that could move rates lower, that could unlock more of the resale market, which I think would be good thing.

as long as it doesn’t happen all at once. But I think we could see some good tailwinds there. And honestly, the further we get from the point when rates spiked, everybody talks about the lock-in effect. You have all these people with 2 % mortgages that are never gonna leave. That isn’t true, because life continues to happen. People get married, people get divorced, people have kids, people die. You’re always gonna have that, but I think

Mike Hambright (14:43.24)
that’s a mental lock.

And the longer people go and the further in, like, the more of their recent past is a high rate environment, the more they get used to living in a future high rate environment versus right after rates spiked, everybody’s like, when are they going back down? Well, they’re probably not going back down to that level unless something really bad happens. We shouldn’t be rooting for that. We should not be rooting for 2 % mortgage rates because that means something really bad happened. So I think as people get used to that environment, that lock-in feeling

starts to be less and less powerful, I think. And so I think we’re getting to a point now where people are maybe more accepting of the current environment being forecast in the future. And I think that’s going to be helpful, too. Yeah. What do you see from an investor standpoint? Who was winning in 2025? And what’s a trend you’re seeing on the like?

outside of finance, guys obviously talk to, you have probably tens of thousands of borrowers, if not more. Who is winning and who is gonna continue to win in 2026? That’s a good question. I think the guys, or the people, the guys and girls that really have been very successful over the last few years, have won a very good, solid acquisition strategy. They have a box, they have a plan. I think going out and being hyper-opportunistic

and I’m just gonna look at any deal, I think that’s tough to do. I think if you really wanna build a great business, predictability and scalability is important. The people I think that have done the best have a formula, and they stick to it. And when you have that focus, it allows you to sift through and find the good opportunities within those bounds, as opposed to just looking at anything. I think you can get a little distracted. So I think people that have a real game plan and stick to that script, I think have done

Mike Hambright (16:38.328)
well. And I think they’re the people that are the most on top of it. Like I think there’s a lot of investors who do this kind of one of many things that they do. I think it’s very difficult to consistently win in an environment like this if you’re not really paying attention to it. And so the professionals that are like really all in on the business and the ones who have seen a market cycle or two I think are doing better. The ones that haven’t seen a market cycle are going to be the ones that are getting overextended over

taking on too many projects. They haven’t learned those difficult lessons. The folks that have and are still alive, there’s a reason they’re still alive. And I think those people are the ones we want to bet on. Of course, there’s a lot of new entrants and some of those people are really, really good and we want to work with them also. But the trend with the, or the commonality with a lot of people who have really done well in what has been a pretty tough environment, I think those are people that have been around the block.

and are really taking some of those hard lessons into account with the way they’re running the business today. Yeah, yeah. I talk about this quote a lot, this Jim Rohn quote that I seem to bring this up on a daily basis now. It’s like, don’t wish it was easier. Wish you were better. Yeah.

And that better is usually tolerance. Like your tolerance, you just get stronger over time because you know how to tolerate issues. It doesn’t really get easier. You just learn how to deal with it more. And so I have a mentor here that is one of the largest property owners in DFW. Nobody knows who he is. He’s just kind of a millionaire next door type guy, owns thousands of houses. he’s been doing this since the 70s. he’s been through a lot of cycles. what happens is you just

pull out different tools in different cycles. like, hey, it’s a hard time to buy right now, so this is what I’m going to do with my rental portfolio. It could be I’m going to sell some off. It could be I’m going to focus on improving when getting rents up. You just start to get other vehicles. And I think the veteran real estate investor

Mike Hambright (18:39.138)
has a playbook for every market. You start to figure out how to not just survive, but thrive. And I think there’s a lot of people that come into every cycle, and things get hard, and they just go become a crypto trader or something. They get into something else, which, quite frankly, will also get hard. And so I always appreciate the people that stuck with the thing long enough to ride those cycles, because your tolerance goes up a lot, and your learning curve goes up tremendously. Yeah, and things start to look a lot more familiar when you’ve

them before, right? So it’s like, okay, I’m seeing a few signs. Maybe there’s a little bit of headwinds. I should probably start reserving some more capital just like on the side to handle some problems if that happens, right? Like increasing reserves at the right time, right? Not being overly aggressive in a market that doesn’t call for aggressiveness, right? I think those are the kinds of things that people who have been through it are more likely to adjust to as opposed to somebody who’s like,

my god, this is going to be great forever. And all of a sudden, they’re taking a ton of risk where they probably shouldn’t be. If you get unlucky when you’re overextended, you’re going to have a hard time. So I think those are the kinds of things that you see from the folks that are consistently winning.

And our job is to find those people and add bring value to their business and make sure that they are continuing to grow and build the thing that they want to build whatever that happens to be. It’s to be a partner to them and facilitate right. They’re doing the hard work. If we can partner and give them great terms and consistent execution then you know they’re going to have an easier time you know executing their business plan. And you know I think that’s what we try to focus on. We’re not a big lender to

brand new investors who’ve never done this before. We want to work with people who’ve got some reps, and then help them scale.

Mike Hambright (20:33.632)
So that’s kind how we look at it. I think there’s a lot of those people out there. There’s a lot of great operators. And I do think we could see some softening. Well, I shouldn’t say softening. I think we could see some tailwinds. And that’s going to be gravy for those guys. They’re going to crush it. But they’re going to protect themselves against the downside. And at the end of the day, as a lender, I can tell you it’s incredibly easy to give money out. But getting it back is really the thing that matters. And so we want to work with people that have a track record of paying you back.

to do that and we can be a good partner then I think there’s a lot of good things for everybody. Yeah what advice would you give to people on how to find the right lender and let me kind of caveat that by saying in the last downturn I started in 2008 so I started when the market was going down we were running into the fire we just didn’t know where we were just quite frankly we were naive but it ended up being a great time to get started but I know a downfall for a lot of people was they had all their eggs in one basket like they really had like one lender and then those people pulled the plug and they’re like I’m out of

especially if they have rental portfolios, like I’m calling all your loans due, or things like that. Yeah, so I think when you’re looking for a good lender, there’s a lot of it that’s preference and your style. We work really well with clients that really enjoy and appreciate a face-to-face relationship and a high touch process.

some people don’t want to talk to anyone. We’re not your lender. you just want to submit deals online, never talk to a person, probably not the right fit for you. So there’s some of that. But I think beyond that, if you’re scaling a business, you are putting a lot of, there’s a lot of importance on who’s providing the capital. It is the lifeblood, it’s the oxygen for any of these businesses. You want to make sure they’re going to be around. So I think one thing is like really,

looking at track record and history, right? If it’s a brand new lender, you’re not going to have any of that. And I think there’s risk there. It doesn’t mean that they can’t be great. It doesn’t mean they can’t be an awesome partner or all that. But there’s potential risk I think you have to be aware of. I think the other thing is understanding how they’re capitalized. That’s very important because to your point, we’ve gone through times in recent history where we have liquidity crunches, Liquidity pull back. And when I say liquidity, I mean the capital.

Mike Hambright (22:57.872)
that’s coming from Wall Street that is going through us to fund these loans. If there are broader problems in the economy, those allocators that are putting capital into these businesses are doing a lot of other things too. if you don’t have the right relationship with those partners, if you’re not an important counterparty.

And when I say you, if the lender is not a significant counterparty and there is a pullback in liquidity or capital is needed in other parts of their business, whatever the reason might be, that can leave you high and dry. And all those promises that were made can go away very fast. So I think just understanding how people are capitalized and that there is some security there. And I think that’s important. It’s not always super easy to tell from the outside. But if you ask the right questions, think

you can kind of get there. I think that’s a really big one. I mean, Kevin Werner is our founder and CEO. He has a great story from 2008. He was running a family business of theirs that was lending. wasn’t exactly like what we do, but very, very similar. Utilizing bank lines of credit and some institutional capital that in 2008 went away. The bank has called.

saying, we’re going bankrupt. Your bank is going bankrupt. It’s not something that is on the playbook, probably. But when you are fully committed to that one bank, you have a very big problem. I think that’s, we talked about this a little before the camera’s roll, but I think it’s really important for investors, especially ones that are operating at some level of scale, that you have three or more really solid lending relationships. Because something could happen.

that you would never be able to predict that could disrupt the flow of capital into your deals from one, you need to be able to pivot to others and.

Mike Hambright (24:57.984)
the time when you really need it is not the time to start building that relationship. You need it in place so that you can quickly pivot. If you don’t do that, you’re going to be in pretty big trouble. And so I think it’s important for people to have redundancy on that side of their business. Find several that can support what you’re doing. Build a good relationship. Be a good partner. And if you need them, they’re going to be a lot more likely to be there.

And I think the other thing, this is maybe not on your question, but I think it’s important to think about that kind of scenario where you do have a pullback of some kind.

You want your lender to view you as a very creative partner. If you over-negotiate every single deal and you just hammer that lender because you happen to have leverage today, you’re not a partner that they, if they have to all of a sudden fire 30 % of their customers, you’re probably going to be in that 30%. And Kevin had, he dealt with this where he negotiated hard. And he was a young guy, he was in his early 20s when he did this.

But he negotiated this bank line of credit and put the screws to the bank. And they gave him everything he wanted. When things got difficult, he was a deal that they no longer were interested in having. And so he got pushed out. If he had been a little more reasonable and let them eat a little bit too, then I think he might have had a different outcome.

And it’s not, I’m not saying that as a lender, self-servingly, please let us, let us, you know, don’t take everything you can get. I’m just saying like, think about that because when you need it.

Mike Hambright (26:41.546)
You know if you over negotiate yourself, you can’t put yourself in a spot That’s that’s not good and I think having that in mind with the way you build your relationship with your lender is something that a lot of people don’t think of because They don’t need to think about it right now, but the day where it’s important You know they’ll think about it and that’s again why folks who have been through this a few times tend to be really good partners because They’ve learned that lesson already right now, and it’s not just lenders right like this is one of my realizations if I look back from when I started I thought everybody

Everything was an expense and everybody was against me. So you could carry this forward into contractors. I want to beat them up. I want to get everything the cheapest. And the reality is, if they don’t win, then they’re going to go work with somebody else. So you have to create these scenarios where everybody wins. think that was certainly a maturity thing on my side, is everybody’s out to get me. I have to maximize my profit. There’s a lot of things that could go wrong. All true. But I thought lenders were like,

I have to get the best deal always. I’m always focused on price. And I think a lot of real estate investors are trying to buy cheap houses. We’re always trying to find cheap labor. We’re trying to find cheap materials. Everything is cheap. But I think when you look back, a lot of times, if you’ve been in the business for a while, you realize it’s like, a lot of the people, you see some carnage of good relationships you had that could have been great, and they just never got there. Because you were, I don’t want to say greedy, but it was just this feast or famine mentality of I must feast.

because the famine is in front of me. And for some people, it never really worked out that way. Yeah, it’s not a zero sum game. And I completely agree. You need to create win-win outcomes as much as possible because when things get difficult, you need that counterparty to lean in. And if you don’t treat them fairly and make sure that that’s a good two-way relationship everyone’s benefiting, then they are going to lean away. When you need them the most is when that will happen.

when things are good. It’s when you need them the most. And you’ve been in real estate for a long time. Sometimes real estate game is how do we grow, grow more? It’s a risk on environment. And then sometimes the game changes to just don’t die. And that don’t die moment is like, that’s the difference between people who’ve done this for 25 years and people who flame out because they didn’t

Mike Hambright (29:08.92)
understand some of these things, you need people in your corner when that don’t die moment comes. And I think it’s important, especially your lender. But I agree, it extends to really every relationship that’s core to you running your business. You should always seek those win-wins out. It’s also a lot more fun to do it that way, think. what do I know? Yeah. I mean, hey, I think we both experienced that.

of those things we talked about are just like how you treat people, the relationships. know, like when you joined Renovo, how many employees were there versus how many there are now? Oh, that’s a great question. So I joined the firm in 2019, middle of 2019. We were only lending in Chicagoland, so not even really the rest of Illinois, just Chicagoland. And company was founded in 2011, so it was not brand new, it’s been around. And we probably had, I would say, 30 employees, tops, 25.

We were probably doing…

I don’t know, call it 100, 150 million a year. So call it 10 million a month-ish. 10 to 12 million a month. And today we’re 350, about to be 400 people. And we’re doing 400 million a month. So pretty 10x people growth. so you don’t really get there, and you don’t have the results that you guys have without having a good culture inside. I think back to what we were just talking about with dealing with contractors and relationships

stuff, a lot of real estate investors are smaller shops. It’s kind of hard to build culture inside of really small businesses because there might just be a couple people. People are more virtual these days. You have all those kind of headwinds. But maybe share some lessons on kind of how to build culture for somebody that’s looking to grow their company. Yeah, I love this topic. My role is very cool because I get to touch a lot of parts of the business. Culture is probably the thing I enjoy the most because it’s people.

Mike Hambright (31:13.424)
But to answer your question, number one, think building culture starts with hiring the right people. If you are, and I’ve seen this a ton, right? We’re in your mastermind, we’re in some others. I get to know some of these operators really well. When you’re in growth mode and you are really kind of the guy that’s running the whole thing and you’ve got some support, but all right, I have a need and that need has to be met like yesterday. Like I don’t have time to spend.

six months on a recruiting spree to find the perfect person. So they hire somebody that is in their network, and they don’t probably do enough diligence on, number one, defining who are we as a company, and what kind of people do we want on this team, and what do we really want to build. If you’re not hiring with the end in mind, with that end in mind, I think you will end up with really weird outcomes. You will have people that are just not a good fit, but if you’re been with this

so low, you might have to deal with it. And then that stuff starts to become your culture on accident. So part of it is just putting the right inputs in.

And that means being very aware of what kind of person you think is not only a good fit for the role, but is a good fit for the culture you want to have. And I think you’ve got to be very disciplined about that. We’ve been very disciplined. And we’re OK growing slower. The numbers we just talked about are not slow growth. But we’re OK if it is slower. We’re not in a hurry. We’re trying to build the right business.

And so there are times where like I’ve met with a lone originator in a certain market somebody I felt very strongly had the right qualifications, but also the right personality and culture fit. And I’ve just nurtured those relationships for two, three years sometimes before the timing is right to actually for them to make a move or for us to bring them on or whatever. We’ve have been we’ve sacrificed some growth because we really wanted to make sure we had the right people. So that’s number one is like knowing who you are and being very

Mike Hambright (33:22.0)
disciplined about only bringing people in that fit that culture. On top of that, you have to really reinforce the culture consistently. I think our culture is incredible. If we stop paying attention to it, it will go upside down very fast. And so it takes a tremendous amount of attention to maintain it. And we are a largely remote organization. And I say that like our headquarters is downtown Chicago. We have probably 150 people there.

and then the rest of the team is spread out in all these markets that I discovered that I referenced.

You have to manufacture ways for those people to plug into the culture because if you don’t then wherever they are they will develop their own culture. So maintaining a lot of contact with them and we’re a very high touch organization with our customers. It’s the same thing with the team. So as part of what I do you know I travel all around the country talking to people telling the story whatever. I always make it a point like last night I had dinner with our our Dallas team. If I’m in a city and I’m going to a conference I’m bringing in four or five people

from the home office or from that region and just spending time with them, taking them to dinner, having them be a part of conversations, but just making sure that they feel seen, heard, and that they’re a part of it. That, to me, has been really, really helpful. And then we do a lot of things internally to promote the type of culture we want. So really good example.

You’re familiar with net promoter score in PS, right? So you buy something, you get an email or text on a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to refer us to your friends and family? And the way that works is a nine or a 10 is a promoter. A seven or an eight is kind of a passive score, sort of counts for nothing. If somebody gives you a six or below, they’re a detractor and they’re likely to maybe go say negative things about you. And you take those responses, everybody that’s in the promoter category, subtract out all the detractors and that number on a scale of

Mike Hambright (35:24.132)
hundred is your NPS. We religiously use that. It goes out on every deal probably a couple times. Here’s the thing that I think has really been great for our culture is instead of that result going to the management team to figure out how we’re doing,

Those results get automatically emailed to every employee at the company. It does not matter what your role is. You see every piece of feedback in real time unfiltered every day. now we do them in batches because people’s inboxes are just getting crushed by these things. But every single employee down to Kevin’s assistant sees every piece of feedback. And that’s

constant reminder that the most important thing we do is customer service is so impactful to the culture. And it definitely impacts behavior. You have a closer who’s on the line with a customer and something’s going a little haywire and the customer’s kind of angry. It would be very easy to respond with frustration. But if you know that the entire company might see the result if you piss this guy off and he writes a bad review, your name

could be on it, it’s going to change the way you behave. You’re a lot more likely to swallow that frustration and respond kindly, even though maybe that’s not your instinct. And those are the little things, but those constant reminders of what we are, who we are, what’s important is super, super important. But building the right team of people that can understand all that stuff to begin with is absolutely where to start, especially if you’re at an earlier stage. Yeah. It’s hard as an investor.

any small entrepreneur to like, you can’t afford redundancy. Like you might need a marketing person, but you can’t afford a full time one. I there are lots of, you know, there lots of services, lots of fractional options for things these days, more so than ever before. But I think a lot of times people end up, I kind of use the analogy of like going to the grocery store when you’re hungry. Like they wait to hire somebody until they need them, and they’re like, they needed them yesterday, or last month even, right? And so they start to make decisions.

Mike Hambright (37:35.233)
They’re like, yeah, I’ll overlook some things. They don’t say that, but they overlook some things, some red flags, and just say, I just need somebody right now. Yeah, I got to put a body in the seat. And I totally get that. But I think that the more you can kind of get on the mindset of, I am going to protect this culture, and I’m going to end. It all starts with intention. If you don’t have any intention around the culture you want to build, the culture will be whatever those people you hired, make it. If you have a real

strong idea of your identity and what that culture should be, then you can screen for that up front and then you’re putting people in place who are more likely to resonate with it and propel it forward. But I think that’s one big mistake that a lot of people make and I totally understand the reasonings, right? I think making sure that you are putting the right people in the seat and being intentional about the culture you want to build I think is critical.

And sometimes that doesn’t happen until you learn, all right, that one didn’t work. We’re to look for that next time. And you iterate on it. And that’s a natural way of learning. But what we found is being very disciplined about putting the right people in the seats and almost valuing the culture fit more. You can teach a lot of stuff. It’s very difficult to teach somebody to be a different type of person. You know what I mean? And so we just try to be really, really focused on

that and it’s

It’s been tremendous. And to my point, or to my comment from earlier, we could have probably grown faster. But we were very willing to wait for the right people because we knew that that was going to build the long-term sustainable success that we were after. We’re not trying to just do this for a few years and sell it. We all want to build something that’s really meaningful for the long term. And when you take that longer term approach, then I think it makes some of these things a little bit easier to swallow as well.

Mike Hambright (39:35.972)
Well, James, thanks for joining me today. Thank you. It’s been a lot of fun. As you can tell, I’m pretty passionate about what we do. And I’m happy to come on and share. really thank you. If folks want to learn more about Renovo, connect with you in any way or your team, where can they go? Where should they go? Yeah. mean, our website is RenovoFinancial.com. So a lot of great information there. People can find me. I’m very active on LinkedIn. Probably the best place to find me, James Gaskin.

You know, we have offices all over. you’re looking for a loan, I can always connect you with the right team that understands those markets. But always happy to connect with people. you know, LinkedIn is probably the best spot for me on that one. Yeah, awesome. Thanks again for joining us today. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. I hope you got some great insights from today of where we’re going in the marketplace. think at the end of the day, the people that are going to do well this year are those that are disciplined, those that are very intentional about how they build their team, how they build their culture, where they want their business to go.

waiting for things to just happen to them they’re out making it happen so appreciate you for joining us we’ll see on the next show