A conversation with StrategyCorps' Dave DeFazio

As it says, meeting is now live streaming from a custom service.

I'll go to LinkedIn right now.

There it is. Eric Cook MBA is live right now.

Nice.

Look at that, Mr. DeFazio.

I love it. Streaming on the interwebs.

And I'm going to make sure to record this. So let's hit record.

Kyle, Kyle's representing.

I gotta make sure I show off the shirt.

Thanks for sending that.

Looking good, buddy.

Thank you.

Hey, Kyle.

How's it going, Dave?

Good to see you. Nice to see you as well. Did you get snow in your neck of the woods? I think it's been snowing in certain spots around the country. Yep, we got a lot.

We had about 3 inches yesterday during the day.

Yeah, one of my coworkers lives over in near Kansas City, and I saw a couple of his social posts with some snow on it. So I think it was 65 degrees in Nashville a couple days ago. It's not 65 today, though.

Well, you take 65, put a decimal point in the middle of it, and that's about how many inches of snow we got the other day. So We're, we're getting, uh, a lot of nice winter weather up here in northern Michigan, which has been awesome.

So yeah, you love the snow. You're out with your, you know, riding bikes on the lake and, um, all kinds of adventure land stuff, right?

Fat biking. Johnny, we pulled you away from the PPP.

I needed a break.

Seriously.

But Eric, I want to know, like, on that whole lake thing, man, I'm sitting there like sometimes going like, ooh, is he safe?

Yes, I am.

Is it like multiple feet thick or something, or what?

Yeah, there's, uh, there's snowmobiles, side-by-sides, um, ice shanties. Like, these are small houses with like Beer fridges and all sorts of other wonderful things. Um, yeah, so yeah, there's, uh, plenty of ice.

Okay. All right.

Yep.

Just making sure you're safe, man. Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So, um, well, want to offer a hello to all of our friends on LinkedIn. We are, uh, pushing technology to its max, and in addition to doing our Zoom session which is a mixture of Linked Banker members as well as other banker friends that have heard about this. We're streaming this live on Face— or on, uh, we might be live on Facebook, but I know for sure we're going live on LinkedIn. And, uh, we'll see if we can get some folks joining us there as well. So really exciting that we've got everybody hopping on and, uh, gonna be part of our conversation. So we're just letting some more people in the room and, uh, We'll get rolling here in a little bit.

Hey, Mark.

How you guys doing?

Hey, Dave.

Hey, Eric. Hello.

Happy New Year to you both. Likewise.

There's Diane too. Hey, Tracy. Hey, Sean. All right. Clay and Shirley from the Strategy Corps team. Sweet.

Ding ding, there's Katie, Amy. So normally these sessions, when we do masterminds with Linked Banker, we make them private so they're all just us, but we decided since DeFazio's got so much Awesome knowledge, and we're really excited about some of the cool things that we're doing. And you're just such a sharp dressed guy. I have to add that. What'd you say earlier? Twinning is winning.

Twinning is winning, man.

Get that hashtag trending. So Sean, you want to see if you can get that rolling? Twinning is winning. We'll see if we can get some pictures or something.

I'm representing today. This is good gear though.

Are you like going down because that's where your shirt is, or you forgot it, or what? It was a deal, so it's all right.

Exactly.

We will allow that. So anyway, but yeah, we, we're excited about, uh, you know, obviously what's going on at the LinkBanker, but the conversations with StrategyCorps. And to get things started, I'm gonna probably take you down a little bit of a trip down memory lane. Um, Dave and I were chatting a little bit before the session officially started about what created an affinity to StrategyCorps as a company first for me personally. But then I heard Dave talk and I mean, we were like 2 peas in a pod with all the technology and the apps, other than the fact that he uses an iPhone and has all this cool stuff and I'm still stuck on an Android device. But that's okay. Somebody's got to have something to tease me about. But just hearing Dave present a couple of years ago, knew that this was someone that I wanted to be friends with but also follow because doing some really cool stuff in the industry. So I think that's, uh, from those that I've talked to that have also had the pleasure of hearing you speak, I know that I'm not the only one that said that. So, um, and you can, uh, I'll send you my Venmo link later so you can send me the $20 for that shameless plug. Appreciate that.

Forget that. I'm gonna have to take you everywhere I go and just let you, uh, let you do that every time, man.

Too funny. So Well, let's go ahead and we'll officially get the ball rolling here and appreciate everybody again joining today's live stream. Some of you are on Zoom, some of you are joining through LinkedIn. There may be other social platforms that Restream decided to throw this stream out onto, but suffice to say, I'm really excited to spend the next 60 minutes with Dave DeFazio over at StrategyCorps, just chatting about just what's going on in the world of banking as it relates to differentiation and revenue. And we— he's been part of a program for the last couple of years with Cornerstone that's done some really interesting research and insight into trends. And I don't think it's a secret, banking and the world in general has really shifted and changed over the last year, and there's really no signs that things are going to go back to 2019. anytime soon, if ever. So consumers are shifting, and I'm just— I just know this is going to be a great chat. I don't know exactly where it's going to go because we're not afraid to chase a squirrel or a shiny object. But at the end of the day, I think we'll be talking about some stuff that would be pretty interesting. So with that, let me tell a little story here, and I'm going to flip around and do some screen sharing. And, um, back in my banker days, uh, we're gonna get in the Wayback Machine, which, if you're not familiar with this platform, it's pretty awesome. If you go to web.archive.org and put in a URL, you can go back in time and see what that website looked like back in time. So it really is a time machine. You can see what Amazon and eBay looked like, or what Facebook looked like. you know, 10 years ago or so. But I'm gonna go back to 1999, and I'm gonna go to marshallsavings.com, which is one of the very first websites that I built. We launched it in 1995 without board approval, without a strategic plan or any sort of compliance, but we just had a feeling that this web thing was gonna have legs, and I decided I was gonna learn HTML and build it. So don't judge on the look and feel of marshallsavings.com, 'cause in today's standard, it's pretty ugly. And don't even get me started about mobile responsiveness because you couldn't go mobile on a PalmPilot or a flip phone. But one of the things when I was hearing Dave talk and chatting about what StrategyCorps does, and we'll let him share a little bit more detail, of course, but it was all about value-based and providing your customers something above and beyond just a generic account. and getting them convinced that the value that you're bringing to the table beyond just the great service that you're providing as a community bank, but the extra little perks and bennies that you were including with the account warranted them paying a monthly fee. And it was really popular for us when we introduced the program that we named as Hometown Checking. Now, Dave can tell the backstory of the company that we worked with, 'cause there's some lineage that carried over into StrategyCorps, But we launched this with a company back in 1997. So even a couple of years before this website is showing, Fisai Madison. And hometown checking was a program where you could do hometown checking or hometown checking plus, and you paid a monthly fee of $5 or $7, and you got things like insurance and credit card protection. And if you lost your keys, they could be dropped in any mailbox and returned to you. And there was this cool book that we mailed you every year and it had coupons that you could rip out and you could take them with you. And in theory, it was a great idea and people loved to get the books because they flipped through them, but there was no such thing as a mobile device or an app. So it really wasn't super convenient. But when Dave was talking about what StrategyCorps does and what their app does for their customers, this totally put a nostalgia moment into my head. And I'm like, this is hometown checking, but electronified. And so, you know, that was one more thing that we had to talk about. And as I mentioned, Phi Psi Madison and all these things, Dave's talking about people that he knows. And so that's, for those of you that care or are interested, the backstory of why I'm so excited about knowing Dave and knowing what StrategyCorps does, because it feels in certain aspect like I'm back at the bank being innovative and offering something really cool. Now, when Dave and I were talking about this earlier, this was close to the tail end of the popularity of these types of accounts. And you made some really good observations as to why these kind of fell out of popularity and what came to be more of a popular strategy for banks. So, You know, you connected the dots better than I did, but if you want to maybe tell the rest of that story and complete this, and then how that evolved into StrategyCorps, I think that'll help at least set the stage for what we're talking about to a certain extent, and then we can figure out what other squirrels we want to chase.

Yeah, dude, I'm naming you the chief historian of checking accounts. That's awesome to see all that stuff.

And it was pretty fun.

Yeah, so, um, you know, for those of you that haven't met me, I'm Dave DeFazio, one of the partners and owners of StrategyCorps. Um, think of us as a big company full of checking account nerds, essentially, is what it amounts to. We, we help our clients make their checking accounts better, and, and we can, we can talk later about that. But the, the checking account that Eric is showing there is, um, that was at the, the end of what I called the club account era of, of checking accounts in our industry, if you remember that. And And so that whole business, that whole era was created by one of my business partners. His name is Bill King. Bill King is the inventor of the club account. And as legend goes, he graduated from Vanderbilt Law School back in 1968 or '67 or something like that, decided that he didn't want to practice law. And instead, he really liked marketing. So you can't make this up. So he started writing jingles for banks. And put it—

In Costco?

Yeah, put his family in an RV and they're out driving around the country making jingle history. And then one day he happened upon a bank that had an extra feature on a checking account. It was an accidental death insurance policy. And Bill was like, dang, that's a good idea. I bet you I could do something like that. And then boink, the rest is history. And at its peak, Fisai Madison worked with something like 6,000 banks, and every bank, every bank had these kinds of club accounts that had extra features on them that allowed the banks to deliver more value to their customers in exchange for a fee. And then right about that time that you showed, right at the end of the '90s, does anybody remember what the— so that was the end of the club account era, but the beginning of the what? The free checking era. I saw Katie— I didn't hear, but I saw, saw her mouth.

We're good lip readers in the is this mic on world.

So yeah, so, so that was the beginning of the free checking account era, right, right when you were leaving there. And so that changed everything in our industry again, right? So, you know, you didn't have to worry about product design in the free checking era as long as you had free checking. That brought in the overdrafts, and then everything just kind of took care of itself, right? And now it feels like we're ending— we're nearing the end of the free checking era. You know how things come around in cycles? It feels, it feels like that all over again, right?

I'm waiting for the skinny leather tie to come back.

That's right, man.

Yeah, I have a few of them in my closet. I'm getting some nos. No, no skinny leather tie.

Oh, Sean's not going for that.

Yeah.

But, but yeah, we're, you know, nearing the end of that era. Now that, that doesn't mean that we go slinging fees at our customers and members. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying that our industry has changed again. You know, we still have to deliver things and we don't have to get rid of free checking is the phrase I use. We have to evolve free checking and think about how to change our structures again because the industry is not the same. Overdrafts aren't making a comeback. You know, lots of our fee income has been legislated away. Our costs have been going up while our fee income has been going down because of mobile and online banking and all the investments that we have to make. So we have to face the music a little bit that, that our accounts just aren't as productive as they used to be, and we've got to think differently. And then to top all that off, you know, we're undergoing yet another change in administration, and regardless of your politics, you've got to think about what impact it can have on our industry, right? And so you may have been watching some of the announcements. The, the, the fellow that they've nominated to be the new head of the CFPB, Chopra, I think is how his last name is pronounced. He was with the CFPB when, during the Obama administration. He's noted as a sort of a student loan protection czar. So certainly we think that student loan reform is probably going to be part, part of their mission. But if you'll remember, the CFPB had overdrafts in their kind of in their crosshairs too. That was the feeling anyway. And so I think all that— I'm saying all that to say, when I'm talking to bankers, I think facing the music of our era, we've depended too much on penalty fees for too long, right? And we've got to diversify our income. We've got to go back to earning our fee income. And I think our society is ripe for it. Like, we're in the subscription society, right? Sam's Club, Costco, Amazon Prime, AAA, Netflix, Spotify. Yes. Anybody doing any of that?

Yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. So consumers, we're as consumers, we're changing the way that we buy things. And so It's a grand opportunity for our industry to start selling things a little bit differently too, and people are ready for it. Like, our company's been around for 20 years now, and, and, you know, it's just— it's the right moment for these kinds of things to reinvent products, think differently, and go beyond just boring old free checking accounts. And let's start bringing it again and helping people, and, and then they'll be happy to give us a few bucks if we do it that way.

Absolutely.

And I guess as bankers, being comfortable with demanding or asking or valuing the fact that, you know what, we're worth a fee, we're providing value, we're doing something that's worth it, and we're willing to pay for all those other services that you rattled off. But yet a lot of times we feel guilty as a bank that we have to serve everybody and we got to do it for free, and we can't charge for this or we can't charge for that. But at the end of the day, we need to take a look at that and say we're doing something of value that is worth payment and making sure that our customers understand that. And, and that's a mind shift change for a lot of bankers. It was back in 1997 when we introduced hometown checking and people felt guilty that we were charging customers $5 a month for what we used to give away for free as long as they maintained a $300 balance. But we're doing more for that now. So that's the exciting part. And I guess that maybe makes a good segue into this subscription economy. And if you wanna go ahead, I think you still have screen sharing capability, but if you wanna flip over and we can talk about that.

Yeah.

And how consumers are evolving and accepting fees in so many different areas and cutting the cords. And instead of one big fee to a cable company, we've got lots of little fees that might add up to the same amount, but you're getting way more service as a result of it.

Yeah, yeah.

And so research has become such an important part of, you know, I think everything that we do, particularly for our company. The choices that we make about product design are based on things that we learn from research. I just saw Ron Shevlin pop on too. And so—

I know where you're going with this because I see Ron too.

Hey, Ron.

Yeah, and so I got lucky a few years ago. I was given a speech, and if you've been to any of my speeches, one of the ones that I did back then was called The Amazon Prime Effect, and I'm talking a lot about the subscription society and how consumer behaviors are evolving. And I was looking for a stat for my speech, and I said, I wonder what percentage of American households subscribe to things and what the average number of subscriptions was. And I went looking for the research and I couldn't find it. And so I got lucky enough that I just said, well, gosh, I should, I should, you know, try to do some of this myself. And so I called up Ron, who I'd known for a long time, and I said, hey, you want to, you want to do this? And, and, and he said yes. And so now for the last few years, we've been— I've been sponsoring some of the research that Ron does. And we're— we've garnered so many insights about our industry and how people think and their perceptions of the industry and the products that we use. And we've learned a lot about how to think of our business, and it's guided some of our product design choices. And so it's cool that we've got Ron on. Maybe he can, he can bounce in and add a couple of extra insights, but I'd be happy to show you a couple things that I've been preaching about from our last round of research.

Love that.

Right now, Ron is working feverishly on, on a next set of white paper insights from the last round of research that we did. And so I just hot off the presses got to look at some of the data that's coming in. And so I've even got maybe a little game show, we can do some guessing on some of the new stats that are coming out if you guys want to do that.

Sound cool?

Have fun on a webinar? What are you talking about? Yeah.

And so here, I'll show you. First of all, this is the, this is the white paper that we did from the last season.

There we go.

My screen pops up for you. Is it on?

There it is.

Okay, so I have, I have this PDF.

All right, awesome.

Yeah.

And so I'll post a website where you can, you can go download this for free. We don't charge anything for the The research. Ron writes the white papers, and then we make it available to anybody that wants to get it. And so, you know, one of the things that, that I focus on a lot are checking accounts. That's my area of expertise, and I think it's an underappreciated product sometimes in our industry. Just think about it. It's the anchor product still, right? Just ask anybody, where do you bank? And they're going to, they're going to tell you the bank where they have their checking account. And so we've got to think about the role that this account plays in our ability to track and keep and, and sustain the relationships that we have. And so I feel like we have a growing primary product problem here in our industry. And so what do I mean by that? Well, one of the key findings from the last season of research, we went out and started asking people about who they consider their primary financial provider. And so I say this in a certain way, and then Ron always corrects how I say it, but it rolls off my tongue, and then maybe he'll add in a comment. But look at that green line, you know, as people get younger, that's the line. He said, well, people actually don't get younger, but, you know, as we— But as people get younger, look, look at, look at the green line. The megabanks are killing it, right? They're killing it. They're winning way more than their fair share of the primary accounts. And look, it's almost 50% of those 20-somethings and 30-somethings that are naming a megabank as their primary bank. And that's only the top 3 or 4 banks in the country. And so, you know, I feel like they're winning at the expense of what? Everybody else. But particularly look at the blue line. You know, as people— as you, you know, look at the results from people that are younger and younger, community banks are becoming less and less relevant, right? And so the question now is, is why? And so when we ask people, you know, what kind of things are you looking for, you know, to open a new checking account, obviously look on the left. Location is still important, fees are still important. So giant banks certainly have advantages there. They've got more locations and they've got scale where they can compete on price. But what my eye is drawn to are the yellow and the green. So These giant banks are winning with products. Products are more important than they've ever been. They've got better apps, better mobile banking tools. They're making better connections, more investments in novel new ways and P2P and all these things. Turn on your TV this weekend and you're going to see some giant bank talking about points and rewards and cash back on your groceries and cash back on, at the pump. So So they're winning with their products. And then many of you that are dialed in are still stuck at the end of that free checking era. And gosh, that's not going to work out so good for you as products evolve. Hey, Ron, since you're on, I'll take advantage of that. You can send me an invoice. What additional comment would you make about a couple of my high-level notions there about primary ownership and how the megabanks are killing it?

Thanks, Dave. And I'm sorry to like kind of Zoom bomb on you on this one.

No, I love it.

Go back to that previous slide with the primary stuff. So that was from a survey Q2 2019. Roll the clock forward to the survey we just conducted in December, literally middle of December 2020. And the percentage of— so I've kind of renamed, you know, I've gone with the normal names of Gen Z now. We didn't really call them Gen Z back then. But, you know, the Gen Zers, 21 to 25, millennials now 26 to 40. Dave, 15% of them consider a digital bank to be their primary bank. Those numbers have grown 4 to 5x. from the 3 to 5% you show there. Um, that's, that's just amazing stuff. So this is coming at the expense of the megabanks, really, more so than from the peer unions and community banks. But the challenge for the community-based financial institutions is that these numbers really haven't grown much since 2019.

Yeah, and then one of the other things that's not in this white paper, I've got We're going to jump around here a little bit, but there's— pivoting off of what you just said there, one of the things that we asked in that last round of research, we went out— you mentioned the percentage of the young people that are opening these digital-only accounts. And, you know, sometimes I think we can hear that label wrong. We're not just talking about upstart fintech apps and stuff here. We're, you know, we're talking about you know, Capital One and Goldman Sachs and Marcus and, you know, some of the biggest, you know, strongest financial companies in the world. But I think it gets interesting when you look at why people are opening these kinds of accounts. And I think it's some storytelling for our industry. So look at the red circle there. When, when we asked baby boomers, they said that, you know, they were opening these accounts to get better rates. That makes sense, right? And that our whole industry, like every person that's on this that I'm looking at on the Zoom, has grown up making rate offers to boomers, right?

That—

I mean, that's what we learned to do as marketers in our industry. We're good at that. But look again, I'll say it the same way. As people get younger and younger, they're responding to rate offers less and less. And then look on the top, they're responding more and more to what did the products do? What, what, what are the tools? How are they helping me solve tasks in my life. And so guess what? They're not getting answers and help from their, you know, typical community banks to solve these tasks. And this makes complete sense to me as well, because these, these 20-somethings and 30-somethings, they've grown up in a world where there's an app for that, right? Literally, there's an app for that. And so when they have a problem in their life, what, you know, any, any part of their life, including their financial life, What do they do? They go to the App Store to solve it. And you can see that it's— I think it's something that we're not prepared enough for generally in our— for most financial institutions to deal with the evolving problem-solving approaches of these young people.

Hey, Dave, Eric, and Ron, it's Mark here. You know, you mentioned how people are changing the way they buy things and, you know, younger do, you know, obviously digital. Companies like Afterpay, Klarna, QuickPay, Sezzle, Affirm comes to mind. They just went public on the 13th. These guys— Affirm's got a high-yield savings account today. They're gonna probably be coming out with a checking account. And when you look at Affirm, where you can buy your Peloton and put it in payment, what's your opinion on that segment of pilfering or poaching businesses from our community banks and credit unions?

Yeah, these, um, you know, I've been doing a lot of storytelling around, you know, in that family of, of the style of fintech companies that you're talking about, about Chime and, and Dave and Earning and MoneyLion, which I think are generally kind of in that, in that direction. I have a few slides that I used in a speech here recently that, you know, I talked about, you know, some, some, some of those companies, and they're getting a lot of attention. Have you all heard of these companies? companies? You know, give me your jazz hands if you've, if you've heard of them. You know, um, you know, which is, which is phenomenal, right? They're getting a lot of attention. One is, is because of the number of users that they now are reporting. And these are, I think, even some dated numbers. Ron's probably got some, some newer ones that are coming up. But look at Chime, 8 million. And then what, what was their valuation like in the 4th quarter of last year? It was reported that their valuation is now something like $14 billion. It's, it's crazy, right? Like, it's crazy. Now, there, there's some questions we could probably talk the rest of the hour just about whether that's a sane valuation or not. Ron and I've had some conversations about that. But, um, I, I think it's interesting not just to look at how many people they're accumulating. They're getting a lot of attention because they're providing alternative products to people that You know, as alternatives to payday lending and things like that. But I'm, I'm more interested in how they're communicating their services to young people, speaking to some of the things that I was just showing there. And so I've been using my daughter Olivia as an example of that. And so you can see her stat line there. When I do my speeches, she's a frequent character. And, and so she's 20, 21 years old. She just turned 21 yesterday. college student. She's, um, beginning the, that stage of her life where she's starting to make some of her own independent financial decisions. So it's fascinating to watch how her brain's turning here. I always add to that, make no mistake, she's still mooching off of me with her Moocher checking account. Um, I think somebody should launch a Moocher checking account. I think that was—

Is that an app? Is that an app that I missed?

We should start Moocher checking. Moocherchecking.com.

Download Moocher. It automatically connects to your parents' checking account and makes anonymous withdrawals without them knowing it.

But I think it's interesting how they're, you know, how they're— how these companies, like the ones that were marked, what Mark mentioned, and others are marketing to these young people. So I, I use the phrase at the bottom that they're all infecting each other with financial apps. And I know that's exactly the wrong word to use, but I'm going with it anyway. And so she has these roommates, they're moving into their, you know, off-campus apartment for the first time, and they all kind of figure out, you know, for the first time, you know, what a credit score is and none of them could, you know, get on the lease without having mom and dad be cosigners, right? So now the awareness is on. And they're all going to Credit Karma, they're learning about it, and they're on this mission to, you know, maximize their credit scores. And they're, they're so much more in tune with their own financial health than I was, you know, remembering back to when I was that age. And then that's been just like, they've been going from this app to this app to that app and Without a lot of direction from me, she's finding these things. So you can see down at the bottom that now they're downloading the Dave app and the Chime app. And, and again, these companies are doing cool things to appeal to underbanked or non-banked, but I think some of the marketing that they're using with the young people is, is, is, you know, interesting. So how many of you noticed last year when Chime got all this attention for the Credit Builder credit card. Did you all notice that? I mean, it was, it was kind of big news, right? There was a waiting list for the credit card. And then I went and looked under the COVID and I'm like, wait a second, that this is a secured credit card, right? It's got some neat features and things that are there, but at its core, it's a secured debit card. So what, why a waiting list? Well, to me, it's, it's how they're marketing it. That is the, the real lesson of it. And Look on the left. I kind of looked over my daughter's shoulder as she was signing up for the Chime app and how it was onboarding her. And man, this thing is a referring machine. They get, they get the kids on board. And then look on the left, that's my contact list. So I opened up the app. So the first time you sign, sign up, it starts saying, hey, refer us to your friends, we'll give you $50. And so it shows you your friend list. And then it shows you in your friend list which of your friends already have a Chime account. Now, does that feel creepy to any of you? Getting to look at what products your friends own? And so I asked my daughter about it and she's like, as usual, she said, Dad, you're overthinking it again. She goes, I actually think it's kind of cool to see which of my friends are using these products. And that starts to make sense to me, right?

They—

my daughter is at an age where they grow up, they don't trust, you know, advertising. What do they trust? They trust the crowd, right? How does the crowd feel? They follow the crowd. And so to me, this social sharing mechanism is one of the genius things about, about Chime and how they're able to build this, this, this list and things like that. And, and then, and then, and then beyond that, I started looking— and this will get back to kind of where Mark's going— is that I started looking at some of the other apps. And so I like to do this. Maybe I'll show you my phone. And, um, can you guys still see my phone?

Just so you know, this gives me iPhone envy right now. This is like the one thing that I'm thinking, if I had an iPhone, I could do this. I can't figure out how to do that.

I have a little device that connects my phone there. So those are the apps. And so I've talked about Chime. I think their marketing and, and their social sharing is genius with the young people. And then the other one I've been studying a lot and talking about is an app that's called Dave. Has anybody heard of that one? So, so Mark Cuban's one of the investors, so they got some attention for that. And this is an app that, again, it's appealing to people that have struggled with overdrafts or that are unbanked. And so you'll see some budgeting features. So what I'm showing you there is not my Dave checking account, even though they just announced that they now have Dave checking accounts, but this is linked to my core checking account. You'll notice the logo at the top. This is a Bank of America checking account. So it uses Plaid to link to my Bank of America checking account, and then it starts giving me budget advice and insights. And so they're known for this yours to spend balance. So of, of my available balance, it looks at my income and expense patterns and starts to make predictions to help me avoid overdrafts if I struggle with that, or make budgets. So all that's interesting. But aiming to where Mark is going, the other thing I really like is just how simple this interface is and how wired it is to start referring any number of other family of services. So look at the bottom, what they're doing. So they're building trust, they're going beyond transactions, providing advice to these young people. So look at the first slider down there, it has side hustles. Right? So everybody knows what a side hustle is like that. That's the— that's one of the— what the young people say now in the gig economy, right? So what can you do in your spare time to earn a few bucks? So for college students like my daughter, this is— this is awesome. I can tap here and maybe I need to grab something while I've got some flexible hours. And so here you can apply right from their app to get these— these side gigs. So maybe she wants to earn a few bucks for tuition or books or things like that. It has something here about saving on prescriptions. And so the percentage of young people paying more for prescriptions. It has things here about— I'll talk about insurance in a second. But look, look at this one. My daughter comes to me and she's like, Dad, do you think I should get renter's insurance? And I'm like, where, where, where have you been?

Right?

Like, I'm like, where did you start thinking of that? I was not expecting her. And again, I did not steer her. She goes, well, I have the Dave app and it's showing in there where I can get renters insurance from Lemonade. So here it is, one fintech company gaining relationships and now making referrals. You guys know Lemonade? Have heard of them? They're one of the, the, the unicorn fintech companies. They're going to change the way that Insurance is being sold. So, and then, you know, finally over here, you know, in my, in my business, you know, my app has discounts and savings. So look, they're doing that too. Card-linked offers to help young people save on their everyday purchases, apply automatically. And then finally, the other thing that the kids in my daughter's apartment are doing is that they're now, because they're, they're hyper-focused on making their credit scores better, They're reporting their rent through a company called CreditPop in association with this other app called Level Credit, and they're reporting their rent and utility payments to build their credit scores, and they're paying a little membership for it. So to me, it's, it's the problem solving. Like Mark, you know, it's not one-stop shopping at a community bank anymore, right? The way that I think we grew up thinking of our financial Our banks or credit unions being one-stop shops to help people solve all these complex things in their financial lives. Now it's like, it's, it's on there. There is an app for that. And now the apps are working in concert with each other. And it's, it's, you know, it's amazing to watch these things evolve.

Awesome.

Ron, I know you talk a lot about Chime too. I don't know if you have an extra comment there based on any of the, the Chime stats and research that you did.

Actually, Dave, I could jump in just to address Mark's question about, you know, the Afterpays and Affirms of the world. I think it's a little bit different animal. You know, they're really the buy now, pay later firms. But to your point about changing behavior, you know, here's the thing. This buy now, pay later thing has really been a global phenomenon. Huge in Australia, huge in Europe. Ironically, I did not find it to be huge in the US necessarily. But once again, more popular with the Gen Zers and the millennials. And again, it's really about fitting into your story about changing kind of the way they manage their finances. You've got people, you know, for us who are a bit older, we're not unfamiliar with layaway and point-of-sale financing stuff. When we had a, you know, when our water heater broke down and we had to spend $1,200, so we you know, paid it off over a 3-month, 4-month, 6-month kind of period, whatever it was. You've got millennials who are buying $60 pairs of jeans and putting it on buy now, pay later, um, because it's like a budgeting thing to them. You know, they figure, hey, I can do this, I'm not going to get charged any interest, I don't have to put it on my credit card if I've got one, and then if I don't have a credit card, I don't have to spend it all right now and have it come out of my debit. So It's become like this tool, you know, within their— you know, it's not just a budgeting tool, it's a way to kind of execute the budget versus, you know, plan the budget. And so to your point, Mark, you know, what happens is they start— I don't know that there's a great affinity to any of these companies because it's not like you go to— you buy a Peloton and get to choose Affirm versus Afterpay versus Futurepay versus anything else. It's who they sign up with. But what those guys are doing on the back end is saying, good, I got me a customer. I'm going to start working on them to let them know who I am. So that's why Affirm gains a lot of traction.

Well, Ron, you bring up a good point. If you've downloaded the Affirm app, I was prequalified with Peloton in literally 4 seconds. I mean, it's astounding. And that's just the beginning. You know, once I'm captivated and, you know, I'm in my mid-50s, but you talk about my son who's a banker. And, you know, those are the things that attract that younger population, I think. And now if they come out with a savings account and a checking account, that concerns me from a bank's perspective that You know, where's our growth going to continue to thrive from?

So the big question though, Mark, is are you riding a Peloton now?

I will be.

You will be?

I need to.

There you go. So hey, before we, um, shift, I, uh, some folks that are joining through the live stream on LinkedIn aren't seeing the Zoom chat that's going on here, but I want to make mention, um, so Amy Baker— wave hello— um, is one of our Linq Banker members. And so she's part of our Linq Banker community, and her bank is actually involved with the Credit Karma checking accounts and has been making a couple of little notes. And Ron wrote an article on Forbes, and I just want to give Amy an opportunity to just talk a little bit about that and how your bank actually was part of that process, and if there's any other little insights that you'd like to share. We'd love to hear.

Sure. Thanks for the opportunity. A little bit on the spot, wasn't expecting to talk about this, but it is very exciting. It's always exciting with these squirrels.

I know.

That's the way it goes on Linked Banker, right?

Yep.

So, but yeah, it's been a really exciting project to be part of. We at MVB Bank, we're based in West Virginia. And we initially started a partnership with Credit Karma to launch a savings account, which was really successful. And so from there, you know, they're always, they're a very creative company and they're always looking to up the ante and come up with, you know, what the next thing's gonna be. And they're really interested in improving the financial health of the nation. So they're looking for these products that can tie together and, you know, be part of this great brand package they have that— You know, can then really help people to improve their finances. So they were interested in doing a checking account and have the debit card with that. And so that just, you know, went through the process of, you know, kind of a soft launch, and then the public launch just happened at the beginning of January. And so the response has been really amazing. Even before the checking account debit card started, by MVB, which historically had been a regional bank, started as a smaller West Virginia-based bank and then grew to more of a regional bank, we, with the volume of Credit Karma, became one of the top 30 banks in the nation. So it's been a really amazing ride to see all the growth. And I think this product's going to just continue to grow and grow. And it's cool to work with a fintech company that is not a bank because they don't think like a bank. And they have ideas because they've not been shoved into the bank box. And it's also good for them to have a bank partner. I mean, they're not a bank, so they have to have a bank partner, but it's good for them to understand what the rules and parameters are and why they're there and, you know, to have that, you know, that compliance and that knowledge from the banking side. So it's, I feel like, something I learn every time, you know, we have calls with them. But, uh, I really think that product's going to keep growing and growing. And, um, it's pretty cool.

Wow.

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. And, and I should have probably known that, but I didn't. So I'm probably going to bring you in on a mastermind session and, uh, do a little mini for everybody. Cause I think that's a story we'd like to learn a little bit more about. So, so I'll give you some preparation for that discussion, so I won't spring it on you. So there you go.

Cool.

So Dave, all of this being said and everybody else luring people away, I guess that kind of maybe dovetails back into the whole concept. And I'm going to give you full right and access and expect you to talk about yourself and StrategyCorps and the app, because that's, I think, one of what your main goals is, is to figure out how can we capture these customers and not make them feel like they have to jump ship and go other places to get advantage and get access to all these cool shiny objects that everybody else is offering? Is there a way that a financial institution can bring those to their customers and maintain that relationship? And much like Mark said, you know, they're coming after our customers little by little. You get one relationship breeds another breeds another breeds another, and, you know, before you know it, you're boiling the frog there, and, and we don't want to be the frogs in this case. So take it away.

All right. Yeah, I'll give, I'll give the commercial here in just a moment. And I thought, just, I'll kind of finish up. Just, I had a couple of slides and we have the latest round of the research coming out soon. It's not in a polished form where we can share it yet. But I went into the, the data, the raw research data that Ron had shared with me, and I made a couple of slides out of it, and I thought it might be fun to, to show it to you in the form of, of a game show here. So I have today the Banking Research Game Show Challenge. I think my, I think my game show needs a little marketing advice, that, that, but, and I even, I even downloaded some game show music to get us started here.

So I would hope so.

All right. Okay, so—

I can't see if anybody was dancing to that because the screens got really small because you're sharing, but I'm sure there were some people, you know.

All right, the jokes don't get any better, so you gotta hang with me there. All right, so We, we surveyed a lot, a lot of people. We're trying to get under the covers and think about how to evolve some of the ideas that we just showed you about how we're defining primary relationships. And so one of the things that we're really interested in is not just about people's primary relationships, but notice how all these different kinds of accounts and services and apps and things. We're also thinking about secondary relationships. That's a new concept that we're thinking a lot about this year. So Here's my first pop quiz challenge question to you. So hit it in the comments box there. So how many— what percentage of people do you think have more than one checking account?

What do you think?

What are the guesses there?

Let me see.

I need to get the chat box opened up.

I'm sure you've got Jeopardy music, but we can't play it because we certainly don't want to get in trouble with copyright. But Although, wasn't that the match game?

I mean, that was the $25,000 pyramid. Ah, that's what it was. We may still get a cease and desist. I'm not sure.

Well, so much for having this on YouTube. Now we're going to get a DCA notice.

Yeah.

Okay. So, um, so the answer to that is 36% of people have more than one checking account, which I thought was, um, very interesting. Now—

Way to go, Kyle.

Yeah, way to go. He'd guessed 30—

35.

Awesome. And we had as high as 70.

Yeah.

Now, the interesting things about why people are doing this and what they're doing. Here's a very pointed question. What percentage of people use their secondary account to hide money from their spouse or significant other? This was the, this was the best question in the whole research deck, right, Ron? What do you think the answer is on— 100%, Clay said. Yeah, that's, that's right. Exactly how to say it. 75, 99, all of them, Mark says. That's good.

Yeah.

Well, it turns out only 7% of the people would admit that they have these secondary accounts to hide money from their spouses. But here are some of the interesting things that people are reporting about, you know, what they're doing with these secondary accounts. And I think I was surprised that they're not just secondary accounts, but people have so many payment accounts. You know, they're paying out of their primary and they're paying out of their secondary and they're paying out of their tertiary or fourthary or whatever the right word is there. So, you know, the payments war now I think is on and watching how payment trends and payment loyalty and how people are using their cards and cards on file in their apps, cards on file with Amazon, cards on file with their P2P, all these things are evolving and people are, particularly the younger people, we didn't break this out yet by age group, but Ron, I think there's some really interesting things when we're starting to think about what it means to be a primary bank or a secondary bank. Did you have any other comments there, Ron?

Sorry, I didn't realize you were directing that to me. You know, I would point people to point number 2, make payments for a specific expense. You know, you showed the charts from the old report that we did, and, you know, just to kind of go back— don't go back to it physically, but remember the title of that article was Accessorizing the Checking Account. And, you know, why accessorizing? It's like, this is what people are doing. They have a primary account, but then they get this secondary account because they want it for some very specific reason. like, you know, making payments for a specific expense or, you know, a specific reason, you know. And so that's kind of— this gets at the whole notion of what accessorizing meant.

Yeah, just to clarify, that doesn't necessarily mean they've got it at a completely different institution. It just means that they've got multiple checking accounts. Is that—

Or yeah, technically, Eric, that's true, but the percentage that have Especially among Gen Z, Gen X, and millennials, much higher, that they have an account somewhere else.

Somewhere else.

Those who are more of the baby boomers and seniors, they may more likely have a second account. And it tends to be more family-related stuff. They've got an account for their kids. They've got an account for their parents, that kind of thing. But the Gen Zers and millennials, they're opening up accounts mostly at other places versus their traditional account, the traditional FI.

Good to know.

And then the last thing I'll show you, again, this isn't, this isn't pretty, but it's ripped right from an Excel report. But somebody earlier was talking just about the concepts of financial health and how challenging it is. And, you know, in the COVID era, and I thought these were really interesting too, if you can make it out there, the, the the age segments across the top, the years 2020, '19, and '18. And then, you know, look at the percentages of people reporting that their financial health is in a, you know, a label of struggling or dire. And just look at how that's changed now over the last couple of years. You know, maybe not as much with the baby boomers and seniors, that makes sense. But look at the younger people. You know, I was, I was surprised even to look at Gen X, you know, 40 45% of them reporting that their financial health was struggling or dire versus 36%, you know, a year ago. And millennials, what is that, 46% versus 36%. So quite, quite a, quite a big jump percentage point-wise. And, you know, this is, this is having a real impact on people, even if you don't always feel it yourself, right?

Dave, Dave, Mark here again. Sorry to interrupt. When you say financial health, what constitutes— what are the aspects and attributes to defining financial health to categorize these percentages? They are staggering.

Yeah, the question at the top that we ask people is which label best characterizes the current state of your financial health over the past 3 years?

Struggling.

That can mean a lot to different people.

Mark, if you send me your email address, I got a ton of data on this that gets into a lot of specific stuff about the attributes of financial health from—

Okay, I will, Ron. Thank, thank you very much.

I will.

All right, and then in the last couple of minutes, Eric was, um, you know, um, giving me the opportunity to give the quickest commercial on StrategyCorps, so I will do that.

Um, and just before you jump in and feel like you got to rush, I know that this webinar was originally scheduled for an hour. I don't think we're going to go 2 hours or do a marathon 16 Yeah. Like I've heard about in Clubhouse, but we're totally fine as long as you are, Dave, to stay on for a little longer. This is being recorded, it's being streamed out to social media, so you can always catch the replay. If you have to drop off, you can come back, but I don't want anybody to feel like we're going to shut this down right at 5 Eastern. We're having some great conversation, and, and I want to make sure we allow for that to continue to evolve. So, um, So you, you can still talk fast, but you don't have to talk really fast.

Okay, well, great. Well, I could talk through— I'm weird enough, this is fun. So, um, I'll talk about it at dinner tonight with my family. So, um, so if, if you haven't heard of StrategyCorps, I, I mentioned I'm one of the partners and owners. We've been around since 2001, based here in Nashville, um, which is where we're headquartered. And, um, we work with financial institutions on their checking accounts. The way that I do the commercial on our company is that we have 2 toolboxes. You'll see them listed there. The one on the right is called BaZing. BaZing is an app. Think— I think of it like the Amazon Prime of checking accounts. It has a collection of non-traditional benefits that we choose through experience and careful research. And these are things that a lot of times people are already paying for, but we give them a way to pay less. I'll show you the app here in just a moment. I think when we show it to people, they like it and get it. The question is, what do you do with it? How do you mix these kinds of benefits into your product lineup? And that's where the other tool called Checking Score comes into play. It's an analytic toolbox. And I'll show you how that works. We take data extracts and it allows us to give you insights about your customers and products and relationships and your branches and age segments, all tuned to the exercise of designing better products. So I'll share my screen here again with you and show you my phone. Can y'all see my phone there again?

Making me jealous, but that's okay.

Yeah, so there's, there's my phone. You'll see the Bazing app. You also see a little folder there that we— that I've labeled as custom Bazing. So you don't have to call any of your products Bazing. Most of our clients are using white labeling services. We can name the apps and the products anything that you want. So you'll see some examples of different financial institutions and some of their program names. And then you'll also see there the linked perks version of BaZing, which I know that Eric—

What is that?

Yeah, that's— because we're friends and enjoy working with other companies around the industry, we've made these perks available to all of the Linked Banker participants and members. So Eric Cook has some exciting things to offer to his customers who are LinkedIn— or not LinkedIn, Linked Banker members. So if you're a Linked Banker—

A little bit more about that before we wrap up. But yeah, we're really excited about that and then so happy to partner up with you guys. So, but what you are about to see, if you are a Linked Banker community member, This is all yours, and you get this as part of your community membership, and it'll it'll just have a different color associated with it. But you will get this, and Madison and I will be sending you information here shortly. So this is our big announcement we're really excited about.

Yeah, and so this is the this is the Bazing app. You'll see it's got these different tiles that are there. This is delivered as a companion app to your mobile. Banking app. And then you'll see all the different tile services that we offer there. You'll see some personalization things at the top. I feel like that's important in today's age, right? What apps do we use the most? We were using Facebook and Instagram and having these personalization options create some engagement that's there. And then we have all these tile services that we deliver seamlessly to your customers and members. And remember I said we choose things based on research, and then a lot of times we're trying to find what kinds of services are people paying for in the marketplace today. And when we find those services that have high purchase demand, things like AAA, right? AAA has more than 60 million subscribers. And so we find things like that, then we go out and find the providers that offer these kinds of services. We've got lots of buying power. We've got gazillions of members, so we can drive the cost down and then we can blend and balance these kinds of things in just the right way to give customers access to them. So roadside assistance— if I'm stuck on the side of the road, I can just tap the roadside assistance tile and we'll get somebody there to rescue you, which is awesome. You can see the kinds of services that are there, and if it's less than $80, you don't even have to get your wallet out of your pocket to pay for it. And these are great family benefits. I tell a story about me in my life. I was on a plane back when we were doing that, just before the quarantine started, and my son sent me a text. I was on the plane. He said, Dad, this is an emergency. I've been in an accident. Now, he turned out to be okay, but he was getting some pressure from the police officer on the scene to get his car off the road and My son is— he's book smart, we'll say— doesn't always handle pressure in the calmest way. So I'm like, dude, relax, just open up the Bazinga app, tap the roadside assistance, someone will be there to rescue you. So great peace of mind if you're a parent. So all the family members can have access to that. And we've got things like cell phone protection. So if your phone is broken or stolen, we'll pay to have it replaced. There are various kinds of coverage amounts you can choose from. You can start claims right from the app. We've got awesome ID theft tools to help you either prevent identity theft problems with things like credit monitoring. You can check your credit score. You can do credit score modeling, restoration services if you become a victim of identity theft. We've got a deal network with local merchants all over the country, so nearly 400,000 offers. And if your financial institution signs up with us, we'll actually send a team of people into your neighborhood. We call them the Bazing Local Team, and they'll work to add your small business customers and members to the, to the service. And so I know some of my clients are on here as well today. And so like Ken from Lakeland Bank, they've added tons of local merchants. It's become a way for them to give back to their small business community. Every bank says they care about the small businesses, but, but gosh, Lakeland Bank's out there giving them free advertising. And, and Ken, I mean, you probably give me a thumbs up that the small businesses love it there. And so you just open up your phone, and if you walk into a place and you forget, there are geofences that will remind you not to miss out. So my, my most used deal is probably this one. You probably just heard my Fancy doodle dog yapping at the delivery guy. And so every time we take her there, I just show the coupon and get a 10% discount. And if I forget, my geofence reminds me. So those are great. Health savings discounts, buyer's protection programs— think of these like extended warranty programs that are popular with Amex cards and things like that. And then a couple of our newest benefits, just announcing Bazing Fuel, which is— if you're familiar with the grocery store point programs, everybody's heard of those. So think of this, instead of shopping at the grocery store, you can reward people by shopping and swiping with their debit card. So you would tell your customers, every time you swipe your debit card, you earn points, and you can redeem those points to save on your gas purchases right at the pump. And it's super easy to get it started. No, no core processor interfacing. It's pretty awesome. And then BillShark, we announced a partnership with them this year. This is a bill negotiation service. So for example, I uploaded a picture of my AT&T cell phone bill. They assigned it to one of their sharks, and the shark went out and helped me negotiate a better cell phone plan, and I'm saving over $800 a year with the plan that they helped me find. So An awesome way to save, and we've got preferred pricing because of our partnership with them. So we have all these benefits that we package together, and then we deliver them in this app. And then our other tool called Checking Score helps us figure out how to apply those benefits. What do you do with it? Which products can you mix and blend and balance? So Checking Score is an analytic toolbox where we take a data extract from your financial institution— don't worry, it's all anonymized— And then we put it into our checking score system and we do a couple things to the data. One, we household connect it, but we, we find out who's connected to whom in your customer base. And then we show you this thing called a checking score, which is a measure of every single relationship in the entire financial institution and what they contribute to your bottom line. And then we've got some neat reports that show you these different viewpoints on relationships. So everybody here knows relationship banking, right? So you already understand that there's a small percentage of your accounts that contribute a lot of the relationships. It's typically about the top 10% that drive 2/3 or more. And so here's an example of what it looks like. And it drives home some of those ideas that I was talking about where we're trying to understand primary relationships. So this is a real financial institution. You can see here they've got about 100,000 checking accounts. And using Checking Score, we help them identify the 14,000— that's about 13%— that control— look here where my mouse is moving— 2/3 of all the relationships in their entire financial institution. So if one of those walks out the door, it's like a punch in the gut, right? And then we show them here— do you see where my mouse is going? It's about 30,000 of their checking accounts that don't really have any relationships. It's less than 2% of their relationships. So the punchline of our analytics is that now with crystal clarity, you'll be able to find these accounts in blue and green that have all the relationships. Those are the primary accounts that you have, and then in yellow and red, the non-primary accounts. And we have to think about designing accounts for these people in different ways. And so in the end, the deliverable ends up being a product lineup. This is something that we call a placemat. Think of it as a marketing tool that sits at the new accounts desk to make it easy to buy and easy to sell. And here's an example product lineup that has some of our benefits mixed in with it. And this is an example of what we call a good, better, best checking account lineup. And if I say it that way, it already makes sense to you what we're doing, right? We have low-cost options. Remember I said we've got to evolve free checking? Doesn't mean that we can't have free checking, we just have to evolve it. But we have to balance our lineups. Remember I said we've relied too much on overdrafts and not enough on value, and we're not taking advantage of subscription buying behaviors? Well, a product lineup that— like this gives you that chance. So the secret to our approach is this account in the middle.

Do you see it?

It's a checking account. It has some of these added value benefits, And it has a subscription price on it— $5 a month, $6 a month, $7 a month. And so what we figured out is that there are product design techniques that you can use where we can help you identify 30 to 50% of your accounts that are willing to pay you a monthly fee for their checking account, even if there's a free option in your lineup. And so just start doing the math on that, right? 30 30% of your accounts times those few dollars a month, and it's a way to really change the form of your fee income production, make it much more customer-friendly than having to zap people with a bunch of, you know, crazy punitive-style fees. And one of my coworkers is on here today. His name is Clay, and Clay has a phrase he's been using a lot here in the COVID area— COVID era. And that's why I showed you that slide that showed people's perception of their financial health. He calls it the flight to empathy, is that we've got to understand the challenges that our customers have in their lives today. And let's expand the definition of financial advice. Let's figure out ways that we can go beyond just simple transactions to try to help them. These kinds of things that I'm mentioning to you don't always sound like they're you know, directly related to banking until you break your cell phone. That's a financial event, right? So we can help people with these important financial events. And the research that we show— I don't have time to show you it all today, but people feel like the natural place to get these kinds of services is from their bank or credit union. They view them as financial support tools. And so we've been doing this a long time. All these things are tuned up and customized and We've got, um, a lot of clients having a lot of great results all around the country. So, um, there's my 10-minute commercial. Um, I know I'm pitching a little bit here, but thank you.

I asked you to. I wanted you to because I love this.

Giving me that, that chance.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, the whole concept, you're not, you're not mailing out a coupon book and you're not doing it old school like we did back in the hometown checking days. So that's what is the, like I said, the, I think earlier was the The Amazon Prime of checking accounts. I think that is spot on because I don't know if your doggy was barking, but I'm suspecting Amazon Prime had something to do with somebody showing up to your house, and that just it ain't even funny how many packages show up on this doorstep. So oh, I bet, I bet.

Well, I'm happy to answer any questions about that, or if anybody has any other items for discussion or questions today, I'd be happy. to try to answer those. But gosh, it's been my privilege to spend some time with you again, Eric, and absolutely with your, your family and audience here of, of connections. So thanks for that privilege. It means a lot to me.

So tee up your questions if you want to unmute and you're attending. I apologize for our social media live streamers. For whatever reason, I can't get access to the questions, but type them in and then I'll jump back into all the various channels and make sure we get questions answered. But while you're thinking of them, if you— you've been hearing LinkedBanker, um, we're twinsies, so we're, we're sprouting it on our chests as well. If you are, um, in the banking space and you are interested in figuring out ways that you can put digital and social tools to work to build your personal brand and to help you connect and engage with your customers and your communities better, That's why we built The Linked Banker. It's a membership-based mentoring and mastermind community. There's a number of Linked Bankers. If y'all raise your hand, you can probably see you, but there's a number of Linked Bankers that are joining live as well as some others. And this has just been a great program. We've been going since last year and we have monthly mastermind meetings. We like to do these sessions and invite really, really smart people in like Mr. DeFazio. to share their insights and, um, just a lot of fun that we have, a lot of information sharing and knowledge between each other. So if you're interested in learning more about Linked Banker, head over to thelinkedbanker.com and check us out. We'd love to chat with you and hit up a fellow Linked Banker member and ask them what their experience has been like. And, uh, I'm sure they'll be happy to tell you what it's done for them. So any questions before we wrap up? Anyone want to type something into The chat area or unmute and offer up an observation. We'd love to hear from you. Did you download the the Ferris Bueller Bueller question where we're waiting for somebody to actually ask?

I should have.

I could play the the the the twenty-five thousand dollar pyramid thing.

There we go.

I don't want to mess with your. Mojo on YouTube.

Greg.

Dave, my name is Greg Smith. I'm a LinkedIn banker. I'm a CEO here of a community bank in the St. Louis area. I'm enthralled by this presentation. I think my initial question would be, first off, I'm hearing about apps I had no idea was out there, which is so cool, especially for an older dude who's out here still trying to keep up with all the stuff that's going on in the marketplace.

So how do you—

so what are the initial steps that you would take? Because we were talking about this at a staff meeting today to tie in your community bank to some of these fintech apps out there and to be able to market those in a way where it's going to be relevant to to your customer base? I mean, where do you even start in that process? I think that's what a lot of bankers like myself, and especially the community bank, where do you even begin to undertake, you know, this elephant a bite at a time?

Yeah, that's— it's a great question, and certainly, you know, others can pop in with some how their banks have approached that or credit unions have approached that challenge. First thing I think you have to do is You have to be curious, right? I'm always amazed when I travel around the country and I show people the things that I'm testing and the apps that I'm studying. And, you know, a lot of times I get a deer-in-the-headlights look back where we have to recognize that we're just not aware enough about how all these things are changing around us. So look, just be curious. So I just keep— anytime someone mentions an app that I haven't heard of, I just download it and see what I can learn about it. I try it out and see if it has an impact for me in my life. And, and then I keep asking the question, how do these things change what our customers or members expect from us? And I feel like people just— they aren't having any, any conversations with their leadership teams about these things. So a couple of really specific things that I stole these ideas from somebody in a working session with me. is they start— like, we had an executive that started an advisory board for their bank leadership. So first, they recruited some of the young people that work at their bank, and they created a little team of people to just start talking. Hey, what kind of apps are you using? Give us your opinion about our mobile banking app and how it fits with the things that you're doing in your life. And then they recruited some of their younger customers in, so they made a an advisory board, a millennial advisory board or a young person advisory board. I thought that was a genius idea, right? So that was awesome. And then there was another bank in Texas that they had this board and then they turned it into kind of a, you've heard of the Best Buy Geek Squad, right?

Right.

They made a Geek Squad for their bank. Isn't that killer? And so they had the people that, that had some aptitude with technology. And every once in a while, they just grabbed this group and they just had them wander around in the branches, working with their own employees, working with customers, answering questions. So it's just making this mobile engagement part of your mission. And then look, you can't solve all these problems in one step, but, and certainly you're not gonna outcompete Chase, right? But you gotta know where they're going. so that the gap doesn't get too big. So, Eric, I can send this to you, or I'll show a slide where I keep a bunch of my stuff. I've been advising a lot of people, if you're trying to get started, go study Chase in great detail. And they make it super easy. Every year they publish this thing called their Investor Day presentation. So if you Google Chase Investor Day presentation, And then just add the years '15 or '16 or '17 or '18 or '19 or '20, they practically advertise their mobile transformation. And these reports just have oodles and oodles of statistics and perspectives about how they're, you know, managing in the, in the mobile world. And so those are a few quick tips that I always— and I created a little scorecard from some of those stats that I gave to a few of my clients. We don't sell that or anything. I just thought it was interesting. Here are some things that Chase is measuring for their bank. You know, is your bank even— is that stuff even on your radar, let alone trying to optimize it like they are? I'd be happy to share some of those things.

Good, appreciate that.

Thanks. Yeah, that's great. Well, uh, within the LinkBanker in our Learning Center, we're gonna put this recording, any of the additional documents that Dave sends over, we'll put those in there as well, just like our monthly mastermind Online sessions. So you'll get access to that. And then of course, if you're not part of the Link Banker, we'd love for you to become part because you get access to all of that going all the way back to like August of last year. So there's a big inventory of things that you get. But certainly, you know, this recording is going to live out there on social media. That's why we wanted to do it so it was live streamed and you could check it out on Facebook or LinkedIn. So share this with others within your organization, and it might spark some conversation for sure. So cool. Thanks for the question, Greg. Anybody else before we wrap up? I just want to say one last thing about Greg, and he's not— don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to present like I did with Amy. But so Greg mentioned he's part of the LinkBanker community, and he serves his bank as the CEO. And the cool part about the LinkBanker is we have a good cross-section of job functions. We have commercial lenders, we have marketers, we have CEOs, CFOs. And on one of our last sessions, there was a marketer that was challenged with some strategy, tactical, I'm not sure I'm doing this right, and I wish that I kind of really wanted the guidance of a CEO. And Greg stepped up to the plate and was— fatherly is the only word that I can really think of that seems to make a lot of sense. I know that might be a little Hokey pokey touchy feely, but Greg offered some really good insight, and I know through some conversations with both of them they had some offline discussions, and that just—I mean, literally, Greg gave me goosebumps. And I know I've thanked you in a DM on Twitter, which is where we seem to do a lot of our conversations in the community. But that's the type of stuff as we look at building communities, and I've done live streams before where I talk about. How are we bringing people together to connect in a world that doesn't necessarily have those face-to-face events? And the Linked Banker is what we've done, but we've seen banks that have built Facebook groups for their PPP loan customers and they brought people in that way, or they're doing their own sessions. And I think the important part of all of this as well is once you start doing something really cool, is there a way that you can bring that into a community And make people feel like they're even more part of something beyond an app or a money-saving event. It's those relationships. And that's just what I love about banking. I'm sure what my father loved about it, which he did for 33 years. So it's just an awesome industry. And now that we get to play with shiny tools and digital stuff and apps, that just makes it even more fun. So I love it. I just had to share that. So, Dave, thank you very much, my friend. Not only are you a sharp-dressed man, but you're, uh, you're one of the best. And I love listening to your discussions and talks, and I always pick up something new, even though I think, wow, I can't possibly learn anything more. Um, that, uh, that never happens. There's always more that I can get from you. So thanks for joining us, and I would encourage everyone to reach out to Dave and The Strategy Corps team, and they're willing to just help and lead you through a lot of that process and get you thinking. So much appreciated.

Awesome. Thank you. My privilege. Yeah. All right. Thanks everybody for spending time and all of your, uh, you know, adds, uh, today. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Yep. So thanks everyone.

We're shutting it down. The recording will be available. Thanks for joining. And, um, we'll, we'll see you online on the socials and All things tech. So take care for now. Bye, everybody.