Based in Palm Beach, Florida, Ferne Kornfeld is a Principal and Commercial Finance Consultant at Value Capital Funding. Throughout her extensive career, Ferne has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Even more, Ferne possesses thorough and comprehensive knowledge of corporate finance. Ferne, as well as her business partner and husband, Barry Kornfeld, believe in always doing what is best for the client. This philosophy is very hard to find in the world of finance, but they make it their mission.
After working within the finance industry for years, Ferne and Barry began to realize there was a gap in the market’s offerings. Companies and businesses, most of them being small businesses, were incredibly over-leveraged but seeking solutions that often led to even more loans & debt that they were trying to alleviate in the 1st place. These small businesses’ applications were often declined due to the amount of money such companies already borrowed. Ferne and Barry soon realized that what these businesses were truly seeking was a way to restructure their debt, not accrue more.
Ferne Kornfeld and her husband have decades worth of combined experience, which gave them the thorough background they needed to begin speaking to investors and lenders, creating a niche and revolutionary approach to financing and funding for businesses. With such an incredible niche specialty, and when attending association meetings, they found that no one else offers what they do. Unlike their competitors, Ferne and Barry don’t aim to only lend money. They have gravitated away from pure lending and work almost exclusively to restructure loans so that their clients can manage their debt without taking on more debt.
More than anything, Ferne Kornfeld truly appreciates and loves that Value Capital Funding is able to help small business owners who are in dire need of assistance. More often than not, their contribution is what stands between these business owners and bankruptcy. Ferne understands better than most, from being a small business owner herself, the importance mom and pop businesses have within their communities and to their families. Through rehabilitating the company’s balance sheet through debt restructuring, she is able to help them hire more people, continue their dream, and give more back to their communities.
Our Interview With Ferne Kornfeld
Question: What’s the most important thing we should know about you?
Ferne Kornfeld: I love what I do because it helps business owners keep their businesses open and operating to serve their clientele. By restructuring their business debt, I am able to take them from a stressful and uncertain situation to being able to breathe easier with sustainable debt payments and a more favorable outlook for the longer term.
Question: Name the most impactful lesson you learned from failure.
Ferne Kornfeld: That you have to get back up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. You have to be a chameleon, and you have to be flexible to succeed.
Question: What accomplishment are you most proud of?
Ferne Kornfeld: That I have been an integral part of the success of 3 separate businesses, all of which were started to help our clients achieve their dreams.
Question: What did you waste the most time on when you were first starting your career?
Ferne Kornfeld: Coming up the learning curve to understand that it is less productive trying to be all things to all people. That it is to my clients’ benefit to specialize, to be excellent at just one thing rather than just being good at many.
Question: Name a tool you use for work that you can’t live without.
Ferne Kornfeld: The internet. I use it daily for information, ideas, and tools to help both my business and the clients I serve.
Question: What is your favorite hobby and why?
Ferne Kornfeld: Travel. I like to see the world as well as the places in my own back yard.
Question: What excited you the most about your industry right now?
Ferne Kornfeld: My firm’s specialty is Business Debt Restructuring. We were doing this prior to the pandemic but now our services are needed more than ever before, and I am so excited to be able to help those business owners hit by the pandemic and give them a solution to their cash flow problems.
Question: What concerns you most about your industry right now?
Ferne Kornfeld: Our industry is mostly transactional with people moving from one client to another with only profiting in mind. There is a lack of consultation and good advice being given for the most part in the field of commercial lending and debt restructuring.
Question: What’s the greatest risk you’ve ever taken?
Ferne Kornfeld: Starting our own family business.
Question: Name one small habit that positively impacts your productivity.
Ferne Kornfeld: Lists. I am a list person. Anything I need to do goes on a list and that’s what keeps me organized and focused throughout my day.
Question: What tips do you have for getting a seat at the table?
Ferne Kornfeld: Stay focused on the prize. What it is you want to accomplish and how you plan to get there. Be flexible and open to change because everything changes, and you need to be a step ahead to see the changes before they occur and adapt immediately in the best way possible.
Question: What book has made the biggest impact on your life?
Ferne Kornfeld: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. It has greatly influenced the way I communicate with my clients and prospects.
