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Inside the go-go world of Quicken Loans
In a corporate town, the mortgage lender bucks the prevailing mentality and develops a culture of growth.
I 'm sitting in the Fox Theatre, so I know I'm in Detroit.
But the four-hour spectacle unfolding before me and however many of Quicken Loans Inc.'s 3,600 employees who made the trip from the suburbs is the most anti-corporate event you could imagine in one of the most corporate towns in America.
And that's exactly the way Chairman Dan Gilbert -- founder, spiritual leader, investor and owner of the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers -- wants to keep it.
Consider these scenes from Wednesday's "All-Company Meeting," closed to the general public:
The losing boss in a bet between the Troy and Farmington Hills branches of Rock Financial, Quicken's residential mortgage unit in Michigan, is getting his head shaved by the winner. It's John Jurkovich, vice president in Farmington Hills, whose locks fall to the floor at the hand of the one and only David Hall, the media omnipresence who heads the Troy office.
Patrick McInnis, president of Quicken Loans, is handing $100 bills to employees in the audience, a five-fold increase on the $20 bills he bestows in the office to acknowledge jobs well done. Behind him blares a banner -- "The Best Year Ever" -- which isn't hard to believe when you hear the performance metrics these guys spew with an enthusiasm this town doesn't see often:
In August, the mortgage operations originated $1.6 billion in loans. Each month, the parent company and its subsidiaries make as many as 200 new hires. A new Web banking center should be up and running in Phoenix by Jan. 1.
There's Mark Cuban, the maverick owner of the Dallas Mavericks, prowling the stage and talking about his definition of success. He may be called a nut, especially by the suits at NBA headquarters in New York, but this one-time bartender and former garbage-bag salesman has several fortunes to his credit, parlayed at least one of them into an NBA contender and now is getting into the TV and movie business.
And there's Gilbert, clearly the megastar in a senior management team of corporate rock stars. His vision of how to sell and process mortgages in an online world where customers have choices is penetrating because it's a) so simple and b) so successful, even as interest rates rise from historic lows.
"We're the anti-corporate corporation," he says during a break backstage. "We're one that developes a culture where human beings can truly make a difference. We're about the what, not the who -- it's about what is right, not who is right."
It's also about doing well, very well, thank you.
"The infrastructure is there to see some real growth," he continues. "I'm hoping we can continue to grow 25 to 35 percent a year for the next five years."
Am I in Detroit, home to bleeding corporations, the entitlement mentality, slow growth and staid bureaucracies desperately trying to change? Yes, which suggests that a little of Quicken's anti-corporatism could be good for what ails Motown's business behemoths.
It also suggests that Detroit's sickness, so prevalent in these days of bankruptcy, restructuring and downsizing, isn't in the air or the water. It's in management and the cultures that generations of those managers created.
"Protecting the culture here is the most important thing as we grow in size," Gilbert tells the employees, who work in teams, not departments, and who whoop it up like they're at a high school pep rally.
This is the company, bursting at the seams in Livonia, that Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Ilitch family are trying to woo to the old Statler Hotel site on Grand Circus Park. This is the company that's been encouraged to move as many as 500 people into Detroit as a trial run because getting Quicken downtown would signal that the "Next Detroit" hype may have some reality to it.
But Gilbert isn't ready to sign, mostly because he's got another three years on his leases. "I would hope by Jan. 1," he says, "that we have a clear choice of where we're going. There's no reason other businesses besides the auto business can succeed in Detroit."
Let's hope so.
A self-described Detroiter, Gilbert is on the cusp of becoming the next big corporate leader of his generation. Even as Quicken is mulling a move downtown because it's growing at astonishing rates, he's investing in the city's human capital.
On Wednesday, Gilbert announced two new business ventures. There's Fathead, which makes and markets vinyl decals of big-league stars in the NFL, NBA and college football. And there's Bizdom, a two-year program for urban entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 21 who would learn how to start and run a business with capital provided by Gilbert's investment group.
"We're big believers in Detroit," he says. Good thing, because Detroit needs more leaders like Gilbert and more companies like Quicken.
