Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Each episode, we sit down with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers shaping growth across the lower middle market, and together, we explore how vision, capital, and collaboration drive progress—and what it takes to build lasting success.
Introduction
Dhani: Welcome to The Growth Seat, presented by Granite Creek Capital Partners. I'm your host, Dhani Jones. Each episode we sit down with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers shaping growth across the lower middle market. Today I’m speaking with Kevin Werner, co-founder and CEO of Renovo Financial, one of the country’s leading private lenders for real estate investors and a company that’s redefined what culture-driven, customer-obsessed lending can look like. Kevin co-founded Renovo in 2011 with a differentiated idea: real estate lending should be built on partnership, not transaction. What began as a local Chicago platform has grown into a national lender operating in more than 30 major markets. Renovo’s story is closely intertwined with ours here at Granite Creek. As early backers at Renovo’s inception, our partnership with Kevin and his team continues today. Kevin, great to have you here.
Kevin: Dhani, great intro. Thank you. That’s—that’s awesome.
Dhani: So, for those who may not know Renovo, how do you describe what your company does and really what truly makes it stand out?
The Renovo Model
Kevin: Well, what we do is we lend to small and medium-sized homebuilders, home flippers, you know, small apartment operators. We do the lending that community banks used to do before the financial crisis happened of ’08 and ’09. And I think what makes us stand out is, in today’s world, private credit is—is everywhere. You know, it’s becoming a really common part of the business ecosystem is private credit. What we do is bring private credit down to the kind of block-by-block community level that real estate developers need it to be. And we operate locally in over 25 major U.S. markets today, where we kind of bring together a community bank-like model where we’re local and we know our borrowers, and we bring together big kind of private credit capabilities, and we bring it right down to the block-by-block level and we fund local real estate projects.
A little different approach at Renovo is some companies don’t real—it’s going to sound funny, but I think a lot of companies that like us don’t really slow down to understand the business plan. They act more transactional and, you know, you’ve got a project, sure we’ll fund that project, and they don’t really take the time to understand—it’s going to, you know, maybe it sounds trivial, but it’s really kind of unique at Renovo where our bankers are local people, our local offices are meeting in person with our potential clients, really taking the time to understand their business plan.
The reason we take the time to develop local offices, local market expertise, is because at the residential level, housing is local. And for a project that makes perfect sense in Maryland, which is where you’re sitting today, might not make perfect sense in Chicago. And it doesn’t mean that that’s not a good project for Maryland for Developer A, right? So what we’re really—to make it simple, what we’re trying to do is meet with local developers, take the time to understand their background, their experience, their track record, and then look at the kind of projects they’re doing locally and see if they’re doing good projects and see if those things match. And if those things match, if their background matches the kind of projects they want to do and we can—we can come together and fund those projects and do more together with them, then we’re excited.
Origins and Education
Dhani: You know, take us back to 2011 and what really sparked the idea for Renovo.
Kevin: Going back to 2011, really it was the financial crisis. I was in a family business prior to Renovo. My dad was in the lending business and it was a family finance company that my brother and I took over and ran for about a decade. And then the financial crisis hit, that company shut down. It did a different type of lending for the most part. But we learned—we learned so much during that period of time. And we started to make some fix-and-flip loans and construction loans right before the financial crisis. And then when the financial crisis happened, all of a sudden you had an unbelievable amount of houses that came for sale. You know, anyone that was alive during that period, you know, anyone that was kind of old enough to know what was going on, there was just homes everywhere for sale for deep discounts. And there was no lenders around. The banks were too busy cleaning up their own business problems, they were in—they were in trouble.
But real estate deals started to emerge. And so I don’t know, I—we saw an opportunity to start a fresh company that had a long-term view. I put together a business plan. I went to Barnes & Noble and I sat there for a long time, like months, every day and I honestly got Business Plan for Dummies book and I sat there and I wrote a business plan. I was never a good student, so—so I’m not a good writer, but I would sit there and I was writing out this business plan of how to start a fresh lender that was going to be able to cater to small and medium-sized developers, rehabbers, and investors and wrote—wrote the plan, and then went and started pitching private investors, private equity groups, institutional investors in late 2010.
Dhani: I love the fact that you were sitting in Barnes & Noble as most people are now sitting at home looking at ChatGPT, you actually read a book.
Kevin: Business Plan for Dummies.
Dhani: Business Plan for Dummies. I need—I think that book is somewhere on my shelf and I’m sure ChatGPT has learned from Business Plan for Dummies in some way or form, but the actual tactile connectivity to this book and an opportunity to kind of sit down and educate yourself is interesting because you didn’t have a traditional educational background. No college, you know, you started working at 17 years old, where it kind of shaped your career to where you are today. So how—I mean, that background and influence must have, you know, propelled or motivated you or given you some unique tools and variables that made this equation for Renovo that much greater a success.
Kevin: Which background? The non-traditional education?
Dhani: Yeah, the non-traditional background.
Kevin: Well, look, I love—ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved business. And I think the love for business started really young, selling things to my neighbors, negotiating all types of stuff when I was younger. And I really liked it. I always—I would read Crain's when I was like in seventh and eighth grade. And that was what I always liked. I was lucky enough to get into the loan business working for my dad when I was 16, 17 years old. And that even doubled down the idea of like being downtown in an office, learning about business, sitting at my dad’s desk, listening to him talk about lending and, you know, building a team and employees and all the—all the good, the bad, and the ugly that kind of comes with business. I’ve loved it from a young age and I don’t know, I mean for me college never would have really worked. I’ve not a good student. I can't really sit in a chair for that long.
I had a loan—quite a deal pipeline because I started making—I started originating loans at my dad’s company when I was a senior in high school. So when I was a senior, I had a—I had a pipeline of loans that I was monitoring and I was like, college wasn’t even anywhere near my mind. It was just how many more deals can I do and—and build a team? I love building teams even back then. Always liked working with people, building teams and trying to grow.
Partnerships and Culture
Dhani: Speaking of teams, you and Granite Creek have had this relationship with Renovo since the very, very beginning. Take us back to the early days. How did you know that this partnership with Granite Creek was going to be the right fit?
Kevin: A couple of things. They really took the time to hear me out of what I wanted to try to do. But they always were careful not to put out like let's just say my like entrepreneurial ambition and like I always wanted to do things a little different, a little wacky in a good way. Like I'll tell you one example early on is it became pretty clear that the company as we started to grow was going to need a COO. And we hired this really fancy recruiting firm. This is a funny story. They were going—this fancy recruiting firm was going to absolutely find the perfect person. I talked to them for a while, they said, "We’re going to overnight you this binder, and in the binder there’s going to be eight finalists, every one of them is going to be perfect and you’re going to be wrestling with yourself to really choose the number one person."
So, a couple of weeks or month or whatever, the binder shows up. I look at it, I comb through, and even from the resumes I was like, "Oh god, I don't know if all these—these look like not exactly the right DNA because I’m looking to build something here unique and special and have a culture that is dynamic." So I met with all eight people, called the recruiting firm and said, "I need the next binder." They’re like, "No, no, there’s no more binders. That’s the binder." I’m like, "Wait a second, you’re kidding me? That money we spent, I got to choose one of these people? I’m not choosing any of these people." And they said, "Well, you got to meet with them all again. You have to meet with them." I said fine. I met with them all again and I said, "I’m literally not moving ahead with any of these people."
At the same time I wandered into the local PNC Bank across the street from Renovo’s office. And there was this young guy who was running the branch who definitely would not have qualified on paper to be in the binder. But there was this spark I saw in the branch. So I finally one day asked, "Who’s running this branch? Like who’s the person?" and I got to the branch manager, his name’s Ramy, and I befriended Ramy. We started having some lunch. It radiated that this was the guy. This was the person that should be at Renovo, that would be—in 10 years probably the perfect person, you know, the right leader, but—but we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it the right way. So Ramy ended up joining Renovo 10 years ago from now, and about five years in he became our COO, and he’s still our COO today. And he kind of grew a lot over the last 10 years being here. And we did it the Renovo way. You know, we did it together. We’ve built this thing together. It wasn’t some expertise that was coming in from the outside to tell us, you know, how GE did it, or how Chase did it, or Bank of America did it. We’ve been sowing this business here piece by piece. So I loved that Granite Creek really supported that entrepreneurism and, you know, look a lot of hard work had to go in along the way to prove that we were going to make that work. It wasn’t like it was, you know, we were—but they really supported it and I—I'll be forever grateful that they did.
Dhani: Oh, I always—I always say, or it’s been said many times, you know, just as it relates to growing your business and mimicking organizations like Rocket, formerly known as Quicken, and Dan is incredibly successful at what he’s done and I think in the same way he’s mimicked others before him and built people from within. You have to find those people that are willing to walk with you along that—along that path and sometimes it’s not people that show up in a binder because they don’t understand the culture of your company. You understand the culture of your company. And to be able to have that type of exchange with an organization like Granite Creek that gives you that flexibility really speaks to the partnership and as you evolve through the—through your own phases, I’m sure there were probably other steps or examples of things which sort of showed the evolution of that relationship. What was maybe another way where you—you knew that it wasn’t just Ramy becoming the, you know, the Chief Operating Officer, but something else that Granite Creek contributed to helping you create the culture of Renovo?
Kevin: Oh, so much, so much. Early on, you know, the company started at Brian’s desk. So literally, I would sit at Brian’s desk for about a year. I would sit at his desk, we’d build out the financial model, we—we—we did—so the fact that they rolled up their sleeves tremendously, they rolled up their sleeves tremendously side-by-side is kind of how it has always felt.
Scalability and Goals
Dhani: And it seems like the culture and the customer service is the same type of way that, you know, your reputation looks like inside of your organization, right? Rolling up your sleeves and getting into the weeds, spending time with your customers, understanding your partners. Are there other ways that your strong reputation sort of showcases itself?
Kevin: Yeah, I mean there’s—I always think that there’s thousands of details that it takes to—to perform well, especially in a high-touch business. You know, this is a high-touch operating business. Today we have 20,000 projects going on. We have 20,000 loans open today, just to put perspective. Like we’re funding 700 new projects a month right now. So there’s thousands of details that have to happen everywhere, every time. And I think hopefully what we’ve been able to build here is a real servant leadership mentality where we lead from the back—if that makes—you know, if that—depending on which way you want to say that, but we roll up our sleeves—sorry, from the front. No one—no one here is above anything and we’re all working extremely hard to deliver for the borrower, deliver for the borrower every day. I’m of the belief that we don’t—like we don’t matter. Like no—the borrowers care about getting their projects done. Our job is to bring the money to the projects and—and get out of the way, right? They don’t care how many vice presidents we have and all the, you know, they don’t care about the org chart, they don’t care about all the bureaucratic stuff that happens at organizations, they care that the money gets delivered on time for a good price. So, honestly, we try so hard every day to be servant leaders here and roll up our sleeves and do a great job for our—our borrowers every day.
Dhani: Yeah, and—and even as your company has scaled as quickly as it is—has it...
Kevin: It hasn't been that quick. It’s been 15 years.
Dhani: I mean, look, in 15 years and being successful is just as important as being around for three years and being successful or 25 years. The fact is that the company is growing and the 20,000 open loans that you have at the current—at the current time and the people and the partners that you’ve been able to build, it’s phenomenal. I think we have to think about scale in terms of—relative—relative to different markets. And in, you know, even as your company scales, there’s also pivotal moments that, you know, things happen, right? Major turning points that shift the trajectory. You know, how would you think about some of those pivotal moments within the business that have changed the trajectory of the company?
Kevin: You know, the way I would answer that, I think—I think we adopted early on, you know, the BHAG mentality. Meaning from Good to Great, if anyone’s read Good to Great, they have this BHAG mentality: Big Hairy Audacious Goal. So when we started Renovo, we said, "Hey, we’re going to do $100 million in loans." And at the time everyone was like, "What? $100 million in loans? That’s so many—that’s so much, there’s no way, there’s no way." But we had one goal: $100 million in loans. And it took us six years to get there. Okay? Took six years to get to $100 million in loans. Everything we did every day was pointed in that direction, it was to get to $100 million in loans. Took six years.
Well, about year five, we set another goal because we knew we were going to get to that goal, so we set another goal: a billion dollars in loans. Everyone said a billion? Are you crazy? How can you even say that number with a straight face? was what people would say. How can you say that with a straight face? We’re going to do a billion. So we—we—we worked, it took us five years to get to a billion. Everything we did was focused on that billion. Everything. Took multiple markets, it took a lot of employees, it took a thousand details, it took a lot of stuff to get to a billion. As we got closer, had to set another goal: $5 billion. Oh, now he’s lost his mind. $5 billion? What are you talking about? That’s crazy. The people actually—many people laughed in the room when I said we’re going to do $5 billion in a year, by the way. $5 billion per year. It’s going to end up taking us about five years to get to $5 billion. This year we’re going to do about $3.8 billion in 2025. It feels like ’26 is probably going to be the year we hit $5 billion. And—and now we’re setting another—we’re setting the fourth version of the BHAG now. I don’t know what it is yet, but we’re talking about it now. That fourth version.
And I got to tell you, for us that simple mindset—now again, there’s a thousand details around that. But making sure there’s no one at Renovo who works here that doesn’t know what our BHAG is every day. Dhani, it took me a long time to realize, it took me years, it took me seven, eight years maybe in, you know, building Renovo, the limit of the whole company is literally my mentality. Like the way I’m thinking of our limit. Like if I think our limit is X, that’s exactly our limit. There’s no way we’re going to get above that. Does that make sense? Like you put a ceiling on it. So by stretching that ceiling—because I remember when I met with the executive team here in 2018 roughly and I said, "Hey, I think the next BHAG’s a billion." I’ll tell you, they laughed me out of the room. It actually was almost a fight, like an argument, and I literally—I remember this and I’m not really a forceful person, I said, "Guys, I’m not asking you guys this actually, I’m telling you this is what we’re going to do. This is not an ask. This is me telling you this is the new number." And then everyone kind of calmed down and then we just started working on the number. It wasn’t a debate anymore. Then we just started working on the number. Again, it took five years, but that was—that was it. So setting those goals so important.
Authenticity in Leadership
Dhani: Setting those goals, pushing forward on the target—that’s that growth mindset. It seems like to me there are these tips and tricks and these tools that you’ve leveraged in order to get to where you are and sometimes it’s just sticking to what you know that will grow your business and I think that type of framework or the book shapes and shifts the idea as, you know, as a leader.
Kevin: Well, for the kind of leader that you are naturally. You know, I mean I think, you know, if you can find what kind of leader you want to be and then find the tools that work for you because I think being authentic is also really powerful. You know what I mean? Like so there’s leadership—there’s all types of leadership. There could have been someone with the exact different leadership style that started the exact same kind of company. Like there is. In our space, there’s another company with exactly the opposite approach. Like here’s what’s interesting. Our—the other—we’re the number—we’re in the top three, I’ll just say players in the space in our industry. There’s another person—there’s another company in the top three that is wired exactly different than us. Their approach to customers is different and they’re very successful.
But I think they’re true to them. The way they operate is very true to them. And people say to me sometimes, "Are you going to try to be more like so-and-so?" I’m like, "No, like it’s great that they’re successful by the way, they’re being true to them." They’re—they’re very online. Everything the borrower does there is—is all, you know, a lot of online. It’s not a lot of human interaction. We are heavy on the human interaction, heavy on the culture, heavy on the customer service. By no means am I saying one is better than the other. I actually don’t think one’s better than the other. I think one’s more true to us and we appeal to certain clientele that appreciate that—that like that way of doing business. And there’s a lot of clients that really like the way that other company does business. A ton. They don’t want to get on the phone with someone and have a conversation. They just want to go on—on the line and get their deal done.
Dhani: So, in closing, you know, I’m thinking about all these different ideas that you’re really bringing to the table. And I was going to ask you the question of what book or framework or idea really kind of, you know, changed your perspective as a leader. But I really think that you’re selling me on Kevin writing a book.
Kevin: No.
Dhani: About the Renovo way. So if and when you write this book, Kevin, tell me what’s going to be the prelude to the first chapter.
Kevin: Oh wow, you’re—you’re a good interviewer. I don’t know. I—my instinct is "Do it your way." You know, try to be authentic and try to do, you know, even though it’s—it’s hard, you know, create the company you’d want to work at. I think that’s one thing we’ve really embraced here since day one is to create a place that we want to be every day ourselves and that’s been very important.
Dhani: Kevin Werner, thank you so much for joining us today.
Kevin: Well, you’re wonderful. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Dhani: Thanks for joining us on The Growth Seat. If you’ve enjoyed today’s conversation, be sure to subscribe and share the show. A special thanks to our guest, Kevin Werner, co-founder and CEO of Renovo Financial and a long-standing partner to Granite Creek. Kevin’s path from spotting an underserved niche in private lending to scaling a high-performance, culture-led organization offers a blueprint for leaders navigating growth in today’s market. To learn more about Granite Creek Capital Partners and our work supporting growth across the lower middle market, please visit granitecreek.com. Until next time, keep growing.