Hudson Realty Capital

What do you want to be – and how do you want to get there?

Situation:

Hudson Realty Capital LLC (“HRC”) is a private equity fund that provides debt and equity financing programs. The three founding partners were successful in launching two funds, but according to managing director and founding member Sanford Herrick, HRC realized that they had the potential to expand quickly, but the three principals wanted to do it right. They didn’t want to do it piecemeal and be forced to rebuild.

During the initial conversations with PerformXcellence president and founder Mark Monchek, Herrick was immediately impressed. “He seemed incredibly practical: here’s a problem, here’s how to solve it,” Herrick said. “What intrigued me is that even in the interview process you’d leave a conversation with him and would come away with one or two things you could use later — real nuggets of information that had practical benefit.”

Solution:

In November 2005 Monchek sat down with Hudson’s principals to help them clarify their goals, missions and objectives. “It was being clear about what we were,” said Herrick. One of PerformXcellence’s first recommendations was to form a senior management committee dubbed The Group of Seven. It looked absurd at the time because there were only 11 people in the firm, but now we’re at 30 full-time employees and pushing toward 40,” said Herrick. “The founding partners now have a forum and a process for talking with each other, which has been extremely valuable. Mark was an ‘honest broker’ who made sure that the dialogue continued, that everybody was being forthright, and that everybody was being heard.”

Results:

With the help of PerformXcellence, HRC has set up solid goals and practices. “Just doing it makes it better, and we make sure that Mark is around every couple months so that we keep practicing it,” said Herrick. “It’s been an extraordinarily helpful process that answers the question ‘what do you want to be and how do you want to get there?’”

the time Hudson hired PerformXcellence, it had $40 million under management; today that number is $600 million and growing. We couldn’t manage a business this size or the size it’s going to be the way we were managing before,” said Herrick. “The wheels would have come off, and I give a lot of that credit to Mark and PerformXcellence.

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