2022 Fire Awards: Fountainhead CEO shares best ways to recruit and retain employees

Small business lender Fountainhead was chosen as one of Orlando Business Journal's 2022 Fire Awards honorees, who were featured in OBJ's April 29-May 5, 2022, weekly edition.

The Lake Mary-based firm is one of the nation’s top SBA 7(a) and 504 nonbank lenders, and played a big role in getting small businesses federal Personal Protection Program loans, helping them survive the pandemic.

Here's more from Fountainhead CEO and founder Chris Hurn:

Describe your company: Fountainhead is one of only 14 Small Business Administration-approved nationwide, nonbank, direct commercial lending firms specializing in funding owner-occupied/operated commercial real estate projects, providing growth financing, and providing business acquisition financing for small and midsize businesses using SBA 7(a), SBA 504, low LTV conventional loans – and most recently, Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. In seven short years, Fountainhead has grown into the largest SBA-approved nonbank lender in the Southeast, the third-largest SBA lender based in Florida and the fastest growing firm in Orlando. In its tenure, the company has made loans in all 50 states and six territories and financed over $5.45 billion in total projects, helping to create or retain an estimated 480,000 jobs.

What was your company’s biggest accomplishment of 2021? Becoming the nation’s sixth-most-active PPP lender

How did you get it done? The short answer? A lot of blood, sweat, and tears. The longer answer is much more complicated.

How does your company stay innovative? We’re considered “thought leaders” in our industry by virtue of our significant experience and our tight focus on what we deliver, so we keep our fingers on the pulse of legislative and regulatory matters that affect small to midsized businesses, as well as ourselves. Throughout the company, we also have the mindset of continuous improvement; to regularly innovate for better efficiencies, for better customer experiences, for wider distribution of our services and so forth.

What strategies have you implemented to recruit and/or retain talent in a competitive labor market? We have a significant internship program (we actually consider it more of an apprenticeship) with a target to hire 15% to 20% of these interns as full-time workers, and we’ve recently enhanced our already significant employee benefits to try to dash any musings anyone might have of leaving us. We have a great group we want to keep together, so we added many more reasons to never leave us. We also seek the best talent, regardless of where they may reside, geographically – we had a large number of team members working from home pre-Covid and it only has increased since.

What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? Capitalizing on the spotlight shone on SBA and its participating lenders. Post-PPP, only dinosaur bankers would consider the SBA and its lenders as “lenders of last resort.” The agency and its lenders got some “mojo” from being on the economic frontlines during Covid, but keeping it is a whole different matter.

What is your company’s top goal for 2022? We were mired in PPP for nearly half of 2021, although we still managed to provide some of our regular loans to business owners, as well. Without PPP as a major distraction to us this year, our top goal is to more than double our lending volume of our core lending programs in 2022. We’ll also add some new product lines to continue our support of entrepreneurs and their businesses.

In the past year, what progress have you seen in the growth of Central Florida’s entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems? I’ve seen a lot more focus on growing the entrepreneurial ecosystem (like with what EAO is trying to do – I’m a Leadership Council member there, full disclosure), but talk is cheap, as they say. If we desire to become another Austin, Texas, or better, then it’ll take a lot more work, a lot more actual commitments and the proper deployment of resources — primarily money, but also mentors and support. The world appears to be waking up to what we’ve known about Central Florida for a few decades — low taxes, great quality of life, welcoming community, etc. — but none of those things will scale the entrepreneurial ecosystems here if we don’t have massive community commitment to do so. Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet. Just like in successful businesses, we’ll have to execute on numerous strategies and tactics.

What is the local technology and innovation sector’s biggest obstacle to more growth? There has been lots of conceptual discussion for as long as I’ve been in town (24 years), but not really enough action taken. Everybody has ideas and can debate them, but just like in successful businesses, it takes execution on those very ideas that matters. We’re at that stage now. We need to act on the outlines/plans that have been presented. It has been too easy resting on the laurels of our wonderful hospitality sector. If we want different (really, in addition to), then we have to be different; we have do different, and we also can’t just assume tech will save us. There are innovators and innovations which need support in our community, well beyond just tech. If we want to be a leading entrepreneurial community, then it’ll take a big tent… not just tech.

Are you hiring now? We’re always hiring. Currently, we’re looking to bring on five more business development hires by the end of Q2, as well as a few other administrative positions.

Fountainhead

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