Letter From Terry Luker: What Do You Do When the Industry Icon Goes Away?
What Do You Do When the Industry Icon Goes Away?
How does the void get filled?
Do you leave the vacuum running and wait to see what or who fills it?
Three of us - myself, Terry Luker, along with Jeff Luker and Jon Cosentino - chose to try and fill the void while also changing our industry’s direction. Our industry is the commercial loan brokering industry, a trillion-dollar transactional industry.
Over the past eleven years, I founded two businesses - Alternative Capital Solutions, a commercial loan brokering company and later a direct lender, Commercial Capital BIDCO. As I look back at my time in the industry, I realize there are two companies that were instrumental in the growth of my businesses - Commercial Capital Training Group (CCTG) and The National Alliance of Commercial Loan Brokers (NACLB). CCTG was the company that provided commercial loan broker training. I attended that training in December of 2013. The NACLB was the association and conference that we attended for many years. I was given the Commercial Loan Broker Rookie of the Year award in 2014 and in 2016 I received the Commercial Loan Broker of the Year award. These awards were presented by the NACLB at their annual conference.
Both CCTG and NACLB were owned by Kris Roglieri. Kris is now involved in multiple lawsuits resulting from business activities he had through another company he owns, Prime Venture Capital Lending. I am personally familiar with the lending tactics he used with this new company as he had promised me that he could get my lending company, Commercial Capital BIDCO, a $100,000,000 line of credit. Our firm sent in the $35,000 due diligence fee and began the process of acquiring that line of credit. Thankfully we have an awesome attorney who quickly saw through the scheme, and we did not move forward with a loan. We were going to be required to place $20,000,000 on deposit in an interest reserve account. Our attorney could not get comfortable with the agreements and advised me that Kris would have complete control over those funds to do whatever he wanted with. Our attorney told me that it appeared to be a Ponzi Scheme and in turn saved my company and my family from certain financial disaster as we could not afford to lose $20,000,000.
With CCTG and the NACLB closing, there was a massive void in our industry. I had previously tried (and as we have now discovered, many of his staff had tried) to convince Kris to take the conference to a more education-based focus as an association. As a direct lender, we work with commercial loan brokers every day and we see first-hand the struggles that many of them have. Many do not have the knowledge needed to take a deal from the beginning relationship with the borrower to the funding with a lender. They simply do not have the necessary training and experience to get it done.
Our team has decided to bring a superior level of training and education to both our new association and conference, the Commercial Loan Broker Association, as well as our new training company, The Commercial Loan Broker Academy. Our association and academy will be different. We have planned for our first conference to take place in Orlando this October 1-3, 2024. We want the conference to bring lenders, vendors and brokers together to not only meet and network, but to execute plans that will give the brokers’ clients access to the funds they need to grow and expand their businesses. We want lenders to be able to know, with confidence, that the brokers they are working with have the knowledge base needed to get the deal to them with the correct structure and documentation needed for them to make an informed decision on funding those transactions. That is a win for everyone when we accomplish this. The CLBA conference will be more educational focused to help fulfill this need in our industry.
With our new training academy, we want to increase the chances of success for every new commercial loan broker. When I started in this business 11 years ago, there were three things I had to do every day: 1) I had to find clients that needed my services, 2) find lenders that would lend to my clients, and 3) package my clients’ loan requests in the format that lenders wanted. I was burning the candle at both ends!
We want to change that. One of the best things that we ever did at our company is that we built our own credit team. At Alternative Capital Solutions, we underwrite every deal that we represent. ACS does all the underwriting for our lending company. We also underwrite participation deals that we do between banks. We have multiple bank partners that utilize us to find participating bank partners for deals they want to fund that might be too big for their bank or might just want to spread some of the risk to participant partners. Our credit underwriting sets us apart from every other commercial loan brokering company.
We are going to leverage that credit underwriting and provide access to our team for those students who attend our training academy. In addition, we are going to allow our student graduates access to our lender book in order to help fund their deals. As you can see, if we provide the deal packaging and underwriting to our graduates and we provide our lending relationships to our graduates, all they must do is go find their clients. We believe this will be a great recipe for success for our graduate students.
I am excited about where we are as an industry, but I am more excited about where we can take our industry. This is not a one-person success or fail opportunity. This is an opportunity for all of us who love what we do, to come together and grow our industry in education, morals, ethics and accountability. Come be part of a new direction. I hope to see you all in Orlando this October!
By: Terry Luker, Founder and Owner:
Alternative Capital Solutions, Commercial Capital BIDCO, The Commercial Loan Broker Academy, the Commercial Loan Broker Association, and The Commercial Broker Playbook
Terry Luker and Jeff Luker Sit Down with DealMaker Talks! Podcast
Continuing the celebration of Alternative Capital Solutions' 10 Year Anniversary, Jeff and Terry Luker recently sat down with Rita Garwood of the DealMaker Talks! podcast. In this episode of the Commercial Lending Industry podcast, Terry and Jeff highlight the path to ACS' milestone anniversary...the ups and downs through the last decade as a business as well as what they are both looking forward to with the next 10 years of business. Terry Luker's motto is to provide outside-the-box lending solutions and when a loan doesn't fit a certain box...build a new box. This interview certainly evolves around that motto and how it has provided a path for Alternative Capital Solutions' continued success.
Rookie broker? Looking to enter the Commercial Lending industry...or even wanting to learn more as a veteran broker? Catch the full podcast interview with Terry and Jeff via the link HERE!
Alternative Capital Solutions Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary!
By: Leah Waldrop, Director of Marketing for Alternative Capital Solutions
Terry Luker looks back on how creative lending solutions and outside-the-box strategies helped to solidify a decade of success.
It’s a monumental milestone for Terry Luker as he is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of his commercial lending brokerage, Alternative Capital Solutions (ACS), this fall. After founding ACS in 2013, Luker knew that the commercial real estate market was one that would take consistent adaptation, patience and hard work when building his customer-base. After spending more 25 years in the automotive and finance worlds, Luker was determined to become a networking expert in this new adventure and solidify relationships with banks and lending partners across the country – a goal that has generated a highly-successful 10 years for ACS and has further enabled Luker to mentor to others in the industry. With this strategy, he also quickly became one of the most well-connected and authentic professionals in the industry.
Putting an emphasis on networking and mentorship allowed Luker to help lead the industry away from cookie-cutter lending methods, but instead to a customer-focused approach based on their needs and goals. An approach that is centered on outside-the-box thinking. One of Luker’s mottos that aligns with this belief is, “When a deal doesn’t fit in a certain box, simply build a new box.” The team at ACS continues to stand by this motto when it comes to building lending solutions for their clients.
Luker additionally explains his stance on unique deal structure by describing how his, “Favorite thing about ACS is the fact that every client is different, and the lending needs of each client is different.” He continues this thought with noting that, “It is fun and exciting to get to work with clients and figure out the best way to meet those clients’ funding needs. Every situation is unique, and every opportunity creates a moment of learning for us – even after ten years in business.” This signature outlook that Luker holds is what has allowed him to standout within the industry early on and has led him to being awarded by the National Alliance of Commercial Loan Brokers (NACLB) in both 2014 and 2016 with accolades as both the NACLB Rookie of the Year and NACLB Broker of the year, respectively.
An additional point that has allowed ACS to grow and adapt since 2013 has been Luker’s acute sense of delegation. Luker realized quickly in the initial years that several tasks were getting in his way of building authentic client relationships – which meant the need to build a team that could take on those extracurriculars outside of his main areas of focus. Luker is a proud team leader and firmly believes that creating departments and making top-talent hires in key roles has enabled ACS to plug experts into the fields of credit and underwriting, business development, finance, and marketing throughout the years – allowing deals to be worked quickly and seamlessly while Luker is able to do what he does best — network and nurture industry relationships while also staying active in mentoring to the commercial lending community of brokers such as with his proprietary e-learning tool, The Commercial Broker Playbook.
Employment and office culture is a hot topic in today’s environment. When Luker was asked to describe the culture of ACS and what he finds important when it comes to the ACS employees, he excitedly replied that, “This is an easy one for me, family. We work together as a team, and no one is afraid of the work we have, and each person is eager to jump in and help on any project that we are working on – no matter how time-consuming it might be.” Jeff Luker, Luker’s son and the vice president and chief operations officer of ACS, echoed this belief and included that stability and trust are two of the values that are held at ACS. “The core group of the company has been together for eight years. Most of our employees have children so we truly strive to put family first.”
Looking optimistically to the future of ACS, Luker is thrilled to see the next generation put their spin on the company saying, “I am the oldest person on staff in our company. I look forward to stepping aside and watching these young people take the reins and continue to grow ACS in the next few years. We have a core of people that are passionate about what we do and to be able to watch them all grow and develop is truly a fulfilling experience for me personally.”
Thanks to Luker’s keen sense of strategy and industry knowledge, ACS has become one of the nation’s leading commercial loan brokerages and is showing no signs of slowing the momentum. Furthermore, Jeff has been passionate about learning the “ACS way” structured by his father, Luker, and works to instill the core values that have been established since 2013. Jeff recently discussed the future direction of ACS and stated, “I thoroughly believe that with the quality of our staff and their drive to succeed, there’s no limit to the number of business owners we can continue to help. Our team has a great ability to be flexible and without a ‘standard deal type’ to hold to, we are always able to quickly pivot in a way that best assists our clients.”
“Exciting. Adventurous. Creative.” These are the keywords Luker uses to describe the spirit of ACS – saying further that, “Our team over these last ten years has certainly evolved. If you would have told me ten years ago that this is where we would be today, I’m not sure I would have believed you. We are blessed with people that look for ways to help our clients and not for ways to say “no” to get a deal off their desk. We have truly been blessed.”
Join ACS in celebrating 10 years of creative lending solutions, authentic networking, and exemplary leadership – 10 years of Alternative Capital Solutions and a decade of Luker building a business that continues to exceed the expectations of all who experience the “ACS way.”
Our In-House Credit Team Has Two New Faces!
We are thrilled to have added Harrison Fuller and Gideon Goodmanson to our team of Credit Analysts earlier this year.
Harrison joined ACS as a member of our Credit Team in September of 2022 after spending two years in the hospitality industry. During a college study abroad program, he discovered how much he enjoyed working with and creating connections with a multitude of individuals. Harrison’s favorite aspect of his role as a Credit Analyst is building lasting relationships with clients and supporting them to accomplish their goals.
Gideon Goodmanson also joined our Credit Team as an Analyst in September of 2022. He previously worked in the automotive industry as a salesman. Outside of his time at ACS he enjoys outdoor activities such as off-roading and skeet shooting.
Harrison and Gideon are both already off to a roll serving our clients and are looking forward to a busy 2023!