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Earning trust
Now, to commemorate Ranieri & Kerns’ 30th anniversary, we sit down with Andrew Kerns to dive deeper into the business’ journey thus far.“ In the beginning, neither of us left our other jobs; we ran the earliest projects around them, in whatever hours were left before and after the work that was actually paying the bills,” Andrew begins, detailing his and Greg’ s early experiences building the business.“ What often gets left out of that account is that there were three of us from the start. Greg’ s wife, Gina, was a founding partner as well, working behind the scenes on logistics and the finances. She remains a founding partner today and, while she’ s since built ventures of her own, she still gives the firm a set portion of her week to make sure the closeness between everyone here never slips.
“ What grew the business beyond the three of us wasn’ t capital or marketing; it was relationships built with people in the trades who eventually came on as our first full-time employees,” he says.“ This business has always run on referrals, so earning that trust with every client, proving we could actually deliver the home they were picturing, was never a secondary concern. It was the whole strategy.”
These early relationships shaped how the business chose to grow. As the firm gained a reputation through referrals and expanded beyond its three founders, it deliberately
All photography by Rachel McGinn
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