The LinkedBanker is ONE YEAR OLD!

Jeremy, there you are.

Hear me?

I can. We're live. It is 5:30 Eastern time, and you are the first of what I hope may be others that will join us, uh, to talk about the celebration of achieving the one-year anniversary with the Link Banker. So, um, and we just got off our monthly mastermind call and it is great to see you again.

So. It was a great call.

Yeah, as they always are, of course. So anyway.

And happy anniversary.

Yeah, I, uh, I, uh, birthday-versary or birth-aversary or something along those lines. So, um, Somebody chimed in on LinkedIn and created a word, which is pretty funny. So yeah, it's it's pretty cool. So we're going live today across all of the various socials to just chat a little bit about the last twelve months. And those of you that have been maybe following the Link Bank or wondering what's going on, what we've been doing for the last twelve months. A little bit of the backstory. Jeremy is one of our founding members, proudly supporting our golden founders members t-shirts, and he's already chastised me for not being able to dig mine out of the dresser drawer and find it. Although I think my wife might be sporting it. I don't know. We'll give Alicia full credit for that. So, but yeah, if you're joining the stream live and you've got comments or thoughts— So thank you, Katie, for the happy anniversary. Good to hear from you. So, um, I guess maybe— well, Jeremy, you're here, so let's, uh, let's introduce you as a Founders member. And if we have others, we had our monthly mastermind call and I shared a secret link to the Restream livestream connection. So we may have some other LinkBankers hopping in to join us. But for those folks who have not had the opportunity to meet you yet, and you are Captain LinkedIn and have really amped your game up. say hello to everybody, give them a little background and what you— maybe what you love about being part of the Link Banker for the last 12 months?

Yeah, I definitely can. So, Jeremy Newhart, I'm one of the co-founders of PsiCore. We write operational software or backend software for banks. The primary reason that I was really interested in the Link Banker was first off the focus on the banking industry. So I think that there's a lot of different aspects of digital marketing, a lot of these social networks, but there's something a little bit special when it comes to the banking or the financial industry. And I wanted to work with a group and talk with a group of people that had that take on it. So that's definitely the, the first interest that I had as far as LinkBanker. Now from there, over the last 12 months, I think one of the major benefits has been having a geographic dispersed group of people that are interested in what we're talking about, but also have that banking background and their unique perspectives, our voices that they've had. And kind of how it's changed me to look at things a little bit differently than I originally had. So that's kind of a quick summary of me, initial interest in LinkBanker, and a little highlight of the last 12 months.

Cool. And we actually met during the graduate school banking up in Madison, Wisconsin, where kudos to you for— even though you're not a banker, you serve the banking industry. So taking it To the next level and kind of getting in the banker's shoes of understanding what's going on. I went through that program when I was a banker back in 2003 and had a good friend of mine who was an attorney here in Michigan actually go through the program. And everybody thought he was crazy 'cause, Frank, you're not a banker, what are you doing here? And he says, hey, if I'm an attorney and I'm serving these banks, I need to know what they're concerned about, what their world's like. And his business has just gone through the roof. and continues to be actively involved in the banking vertical. And, um, so he's— it's proven to be super successful for him. And, um, I don't think it happens a lot, but for those that join any banking school to connect with their audience, I think an extra round of credit because you can't just go to your credit department or you can't just go to your HR department and do one of the case studies. It creates a little extra layer of work for you to be able to produce all the required homework assignments that everybody else has taken for granted because they work in a bank. So, so that's pretty awesome.

It's actually been very fun because of all the graduations that are happening right now. So seeing all the messages on social media around different banking schools, graduate school banking schools, all that kind of stuff's been a lot of fun.

Yep, been very cool. So, well, I wanna give everybody just a little bit of background if you haven't heard the story yet on The Linked Banker, what kind of started it and how it actually came to fruition. It was certainly a long time coming. Back in 2018, I attended Social Media Marketing World, which is the conference that Social Media Examiner puts on in San Diego. And a gentleman by the name of Pat Flynn Smart Passive Income, and he was the author of the book Will It Fly? and a number of other initiatives, podcasting trainer extraordinaire. Um, his closing session talked about who's your tribe, who you put on this planet to serve, and the light bulb just went off with me being a banker for 15 years. And at the time, I think I was maybe 12 years into my agency business it just was really apparent, why am I trying to serve people that aren't in the banking community? That's what I know. My father was a banker for 33 years. And so the idea of creating an ecosystem for bankers and people that want to serve banks to be able to have a safe space to come into— and then we talked about this in our mastermind call just a little bit ago, knew that I was going to hopefully be the catalyst to spark some dialogue and discussion with each other, but I also wanted to bring people together that knew more than I did. And Jeremy was a guest, uh, on our, on our July mastermind and just crushed it, shared a bunch of analytics out of a platform called Shield, which really reinforced the fact that I am not the expert in that area, but we've got a community of people that are doing a lot of really great things. In video and in analytics and in content and in personal branding and being able to put this group together. But I don't know if this resonates with you and whether you're a banker or you're in some other industry, but oftentimes you go to a conference, you listen to a speaker, you get all pumped up and jazzed about what they're talking about, and you decide you're going to go back to your organization. In my case, it's the bank, and you're going to take on LinkedIn. You finally realize that it's not just a resume farm, or you now understand what the heck a hashtag is, and you're going to use those to be able to understand conversations and, and be relevant. But then you go back to your organization and you get sucked back into what you had been doing before you went to the conference or the training or the school or the program. And 6 months goes by and the material that you've learned is shoved to the back of your brain or it's up on the shelf. And so the LinkBanker over the last 12 months really has been focused on helping people who don't want that to happen bring their excitement together, create a support network, and, uh, and have this ecosystem to be able to bounce ideas off of and try to stay motivated and build some accountability. Um, we do strategic planning that led to a content strategy that led to strategic use of things like video and imagery. And I I have to think that there are people that are part of the Linq Banker program that wouldn't have done those things had it not been being part of an ongoing recurring meeting schedule and webinars and the, and the camaraderie and the support from everyone that's part of the program. So we really are excited about being in this kind of cheerleader mode to help people stay motivated and build their own brand. I think it's pretty evident most people realize in today's day and age, we do people— we do business with people, not just business with businesses. And the thing that my father says that I say almost every presentation I get a chance, people want to bank with you because they see you as their banker, not just because you work at the bank. And in Jeremy's case, he's not really a banker, but he's the person behind the company. And if you see him, you know him, you get a sense for what makes Jeremy tick and the passions that he has and the perspective that he offers and the content that he's sharing. Now all of a sudden it's a whole lot easier to do business with this company and others because that people connection and social, especially over the last year with COVID and offices, you know, the only regret that I have is I didn't do it sooner. Because had we been able to come right out at the beginning of 2020 with a program like this, I think the 7 months that we were on the sidelines trying to get this off of the ground we could have helped a lot of other bankers. And, and so you can't look back, you can only look forward. But that's, uh, that's really kind of at the heart of it, what we're trying to do here at The Linked Banker. So, um, I thought maybe I would share some of the benefits that The Linked Banker community members get access to. Before I jump into that though, Jeremy, again, my special guest, Co-host, super awesome contributor. I don't know really what title you prefer to use, but anything on all of that that I just mentioned that sparks a thought or any other—

Yep. So I think that I would say 2 things about what you just said. So I think the first thing is the whole going to conferences, going to schools and all that kind of stuff, which I'm a big believer in continued education. And especially if you can focus it on something like banking, so you're narrowed down into really what you're doing. But I think that a lot of those programs are great from a strategic standpoint, or like higher-level understanding what you're doing. I think what's different about something like the LinkBanker is it gets a little bit more down into the weeds. This is how you can actually Take some of those concepts and apply them to you specifically. And I think that's a huge differentiator between, hey, we're going through this, you know, constantly versus here's a program where we're teaching you a piece. And I think that really got brought to light through COVID because there's a lot of those programs that weren't thinking about things like COVID, right? They weren't thinking about Hey, what's gonna happen if we can't physically meet each other? Whether people were talking about going to a branch before, or they were even talking about salespeople or their loan officers going out and meeting people if they weren't using such a strong branch strategy. What if you can't even go to physically things? Like, you know, we couldn't go to conferences, so for how long? And even now conferences are still minimized compared to what they normally are. So here we are going through this last year, and really a lot of us were like, well, what, what should we do now? What, how is this working? And people were experimenting with different things and saying like, well, this was working and this wasn't working. Or this is how we dealt with it as a bank, or how we could communicate and connect with our people in a different way. And that was really like month by month, week by week, things were changing. And, and that's a place that the LINC Banker really was able to come in and fill a gap that a lot of other programs weren't able to. They just couldn't react that fast. And having that mastermind group, having all of us being able to give our input was super helpful. So those would be the 2 things I would say off of some of those major benefits and kind of summarize some of my thoughts around what you were saying there.

Yeah, very cool. Well, and I've got the schedule up over on my other monitor because when we did our mastermind call, I actually had to go to a PowerPoint deck and write it all down because we had 12 months just chock-full of stuff. And as you're talking, you know, one of the sessions that we did was focused almost entirely on leveraging video to be able to communicate and get comfortable. And the ability for us to go on video certainly increased exponentially, but that didn't necessarily mean that everybody was comfortable flipping on their webcam and standing in front of a camera and talking real time. Because what if I trip on my tongue and I say the wrong thing, or I stumble my words, or the kids run around, or the dog barks? And we experimented with that. And these mastermind calls are live on Zoom. They happen every month. We all go live. We all go on our cameras. And just by being part of those, I think it was said a number of times in the mastermind session that we just got off of that it creates a safe space for us to play around and to try things and to share stuff and to express some fears and some questions, and I don't know if this works. And it's cool for us to be a little bit vulnerable with each other because we're all trying to do the same thing. There's no judgment that goes on. And that's not one of the expected outcomes, I'll be honest with you. But that's one of the really cool things that when I hear people saying that this is just a really safe space, I know that I can be vulnerable here. I know I can ask a question that I maybe wouldn't want to ask. If I'm in a senior management meeting or sitting with my boss. But because we've been able to create a group of people like Jeremy, who's not even a banker, but he serves banks around the country. We've got myself, was a banker, but now on the digital side. But we've got CEOs, we've got commercial lenders, we've got branch managers, we've got a retired bank CFO. So we've got that observation compliance. So there's a number of different perspectives that are part of this community as well, which I think also lends itself to giving us that well-rounded perspective of things so that when you do go back and you're talking to your CEO, we've got 3 other CEOs that you've got access to that can give you the perspective of a CEO to be able to help you understand, well, what likely is the CEO going to be really interested in? If you bring this to their attention as the director of marketing so that you're better prepared. And that's, that's been really cool to see that happen. So, um, for folks that are interested in all of the stuff that's part of it. So first off, this is a paid program. This is not a free thing that you can just join up, but it's also not so expensive that it is cost prohibitive. It's less than $50 a month. And it's a 60-day money-back guarantee. And I even feel a little bit weird saying that because that's what you say in an infomercial. But really, at the end of the day, if you get into the program and you try it for a couple of months and you watch some of the masterminds that are recorded and you interact and you participate and it's not for you, the last thing I want to do and the last thing anybody in the group wants are people that are part of the group that just don't feel like they belong. They don't want to be there. They don't have time. So it is a little bit of a monetary commitment on your part, not a tremendous amount. We priced it so that it doesn't present a prohibitive cost so that you can't do it because you can't afford it. But it does put a little skin in the game, and it makes sure that if you're there, you're there because you want to get something out of it, and you know that you're giving something, but you're going to get way more than that back in return. When you join the program, You get access to all of the mastermind sessions that we've ever created. And at the point of this recording, that's now— we've got a year's worth of sessions that are all at least an hour. And Jeremy can attest, I have a really hard time if I say it's going to be 60 minutes, it's going to be more than that. You're just going to know it. And if you need to drop off, that's fine. But they all go longer than 60 minutes. We've got a handful of bonus sessions that we've done where we've had separate conversations with other industry professionals. I know one of the programs that we did was with a good friend of mine from StrategyCorps, Dave DeFazio, and we talked about the evolution of the checking and the free versus the premium and told my story back in the day when I was a banker and we introduced hometown checking and then free checking came along. So that evolutionary cycle, which aligns real closely with what Dave does over at StrategyCorps, And then we made the announcement that StrategyCorps actually is sponsoring an app for us called LinkedPerks that LinkBanker members get access to for money-saving discounts. So even if the bank's not using that within their own organization, you can kick the tires and see what a program like that does or can do as an actual perk of being a LinkBanker. So that was, that was pretty awesome. We were excited to be able to introduce that, but We've got a media section on our website. It's just thelinkedbanker.com. The media section's got access to digests quarterly, and then Madison from our team is actually building a 30-plus page annual digest to recount all of the things that we've done over the last year. So those are available to give you some perspective to anybody, but members also get access to a private community. We've actually built it on a platform called circle.so. Now that may change down the road, we might shift, but right now it's circle.so is the platform. But it's like our own Facebook, if you will, where we've got our own social networking community. We can post questions, we can share information, people can create profiles, and it's our safe space to communicate with each other. We've also got a learning center, which is where all of our recordings, all of our bonus sessions, all of the Take 5 Banker on the Brain little mini courses are. We've built that platform on the backbone of a system called Thinkific. And so everybody gets access to that. So for example, if you join the Linked Banker today, you get everything that we've ever done. And then moving forward, you can contribute and participate in everything that we're ever going to do moving forward. And all of that is within the learning management system of Thinkific. So that's easily accessible. There's other perks that we've also made available to members. You get sweet, sweet swag like t-shirts. Everybody gets a Blue Link Banker t-shirt. Jeremy's sporting one of our founders members t-shirts because we did have a handful of banking folks that came on board right out of the gate. And so they've got an extra perk, um, in their golden t-shirt as well as a few other little perks that they get for being with us on the ground floor. We've got a Telegram app chat channel that we use, so private Telegram instance to be able to communicate real time during the day with one another. That's been really cool to keep everybody connected. So always looking for ideas and ways that we can do more things to help bring our LinkBanker community together and make it easy for us to exchange ideas and thoughts and, hey, what about this? Or I've got a question. Um, just facilitating that connectivity with each other. So, um, let me see here. So Katie— so I've been pulling up some— I'm doing double duty here, so I've been pulling up some comments. Uh, so Katie is one of our LinkBankers and she can confirm that the resources are awesome. Joyce, I also pulled yours up. Thank you very much for the congratulations. And then you saw earlier a comment from Francisco as, uh, as well. So Here's Austin posting a little comment. Congrats, looking forward to many more anniversaries in the future. So thank you very much, Austin. We appreciate that as well. So yeah, moving forward, I guess, where's the LinkBanker headed? Because if you're watching this and maybe we can convince you to come on board and be part of the community and join us, yeah, you get access to a ton of really great information that goes back in time, but where are we headed? We talked a lot about that in our mastermind call. I think one of the things that's evident is while the high-level material that we've been providing has been great, I think there's a real urge from the community members to go deep and dive in to some of the specifics, bringing in some additional resources, maybe even outside of the banking vertical, but folks that are social media experts and pundits to be able to come in. There was some dialogue about Maybe we need to figure out really what the business play from a banker's perspective is on this little platform called TikTok. It's not going away. And I know I watch a lot of TikTok because I get a lot of great ideas because the algorithm is creepy good. I don't know those of you that are on TikTok if you want to comment in there as well. But yeah, the algorithm. But is that an opportunity that we should be paying attention to? And it's probably right for a certain demographic. So we need to figure out a way that we can share some information and bring some experience. So, Jeremy, I'm gonna throw it back over into your lap again. You shared, I think it was 5 really good ideas of things that you thought would be beneficial to the community. I don't know if you still have your notes handy or if you remember them off the top of your head, but maybe you could recite those for us if you don't mind.

Yeah, I think we could. Yeah, so I think that the group had a ton of great stuff. I did like— I didn't bring it up, but somebody brought up how to find, you know, people to come work at the bank. So HR problems, hiring problems, recruiting problems, if you will. So I think there was some— there was a ton of great ideas. Things that I was thinking I would love to dive into this next year, and I don't know how we're going to get to it all. Um, to be honest with you, because there was a ton of great ideas that got tossed out. Uh, but, uh, um, I think I got—

yeah, mini courses. I got my work cut out for me.

Eric's got a lot of work coming up, Madison and Eric. Uh, so, uh, no shortage of work. But, uh, I, uh, talked about data management. So how are we managing like some of our lead data versus actual customers and Maybe even within like our CRM. So how are we doing that like a little bit more practically? Talking about like what is digital in banking. I think there's a lot of that's social media or that's, you know, only mobile banking, but it's a lot bigger than that. It can be very specific. So what is digital banking? Talk about Some technology strategy and how that maybe aligns with your current bank strategy was another thing that I'd mention. One that I think would be very helpful, no matter how you are communicating, is how you can connect with your audience more, be more influential with your audience. And then the last one that I was thinking is How can we maybe bridge or connect like some of our traditional marketing methods with some of the more newer digital methods? So as things are opening up, for example, so, you know, upcoming conferences, or if you are doing direct mail and that kind of thing, how can we connect those together so that they can both be more impactful? So those were a few ideas that I had for this upcoming year. But like I said, there was a ton of great ideas, so we're either gonna have to pick through them, or like I said, Eric's gonna be very busy with Madison.

A little prioritization. We're gonna have to do some triage. So, and a lot of those triggered thoughts, not just from things that I have got ideas on, but there was also some commentary that bringing in some expert guests, you know, I mentioned Dave DeFazio. We had the expert session with him. My good friend Jack Hubbard, and if we're connected on LinkedIn, you've seen Jack on my live shows. I've been on Jack's live shows. He started a Jack Rant private group on LinkedIn, and he's now doing Jack Rants Live. So he's really embraced video, and that's been really cool. Who is a financial advisor, joined us and shared a tremendous amount of helpful knowledge. And being a financial advisor, we think the banking industry has got a lot of regulatory scrutiny and restrictions on what we can and can't do. She's even under more scrutiny, yet completely crushing it and building a brand and engaging and interacting. And, and if you find Ariel out on LinkedIn, um, and just take a look at one or two of her posts, I mean, well over 100 comments and engagements, and she is just a conversational powerhouse. And I think a lot of people really took away some great ideas from what she shared because there's often that, well, we can't say that because we're bankers, or we can't do that because of compliance. And it's all about your personality. And so, Joe Sullivan was another one of our guests that talked about the power of empathy and being able to connect with each other from an emotional perspective. And that really resonated. So, We've had some really awesome guests over the last year, but I've got other people in the back of my brain for the things that are talking about as it relates to digital and social and strategy and all these other elements that I am already jotting notes on and trying to figure out when I can reach out to them and sliding out the various months for the remainder of the year and into 2022, for sure. So lots of really cool stuff. I, uh, we've got a text notification program that we're going to try to do a better job of and thinking about maybe even opening up that notification service to anybody that's interested. So of course, if we're going to be announcing a reminder to a monthly mastermind, if you're not part of the LinkBanker community, you're not going to be able to join. But if there's other news or updates or announcements, you can maybe still benefit from that. So giving a little sliver of some of the knowledge to more people, but obviously we hope that that entices you to join the community and to be able to meet everybody else and be part of the ongoing dialogue, something that we certainly hope to be able to do as well. So yeah, I just want to also kind of to wrap things up, just say a big heartfelt thank you to the people that Either help me get this off of the ground. So our team at WSI Digital, certainly Madison on our team who's been kind of side by side with me to get this off of the ground and to be part of these on an ongoing basis. But Ellie and Mark and Alicia and Anna on our team being there to just keep it going and behind the scenes because you know the bigger part of my world is the WSI agency, which needs to keep running just as much as this needs to get off of the ground. A number of bankers that allowed me to bounce this idea off of them over the last couple of years, and the gentle nudges. Hey, what about that linkeder banker thing that you talked about? You know, last month or last quarter or last year. You ever going to do anything with that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to get to it. And so, making sure that I don't forget this, and I didn't think that I would, but getting me to that point. And I think we ran the list. There's over 60 bankers that were part of the initial kind of, hey, we're interested. If you're part of that list, you're going to be getting an email from me very shortly because we'd love to bring you back now that we've gone and survived a year and have got a lot of really cool stuff under our belt. But many of you asked questions, gave us thoughts, and even though you didn't pull the trigger and become a Founders member like Jeremy did, and join us for the year, you still helped us kind of make that happen. And then of course, to the Founders members, we've got an isolated few that are proud owners of the golden shirts, and, uh, you'll see them with the little badges on their LinkedIn profiles occasionally, and, uh, being there to help us actually get this off the ground. So Jeremy, to you and to your fellow Founders members, um, Really, thanks. Couldn't have done it without you. And then to everyone else that's come along after that to, to be part of it. We've had a couple of banks that have subscribed multiple people within their organization. We've had people that have pulled the trigger on annual plans and said, I'm all in for 12 months, let's do this. Um, it's just been really, really cool to see that happen, and I'm really excited about what the next phase in all of this LinkBanker is gonna, gonna do. So That's really the purpose. I just wanted to come on and share an update and give you a little bit of insight into the cool stuff that we've got going on and what's available to you inside the community. Um, if you are interested in learning more or getting a kind of a one-on-one walkthrough, hit me up in a direct message on whichever social platform you're finding this on. eric@thelinkedbanker.com, you can reach me. Any of those are easy ways to track me down. I'd love to give you a tour and show you what's possible and, and allow for you to just take a peek behind the scenes and see if it's right for you. So that's really all that I've got, Jeremy. Anything else that you can think of that I probably should have said but didn't say to wrap this up?

I think that the more of us that join, the better it Amen. So definitely hats off to, uh, all the staff that actually make it happen, um, and all of the— my fellow, uh, LinkBanker members, um, they make the, the whole entire platform, uh, awesome. But I would just say, uh, my, my parting thoughts would be thank you very much for letting me be part of the group, number one, and number two To everybody out there, join us.

Join us.

Yeah, join us. Done. Perfect.

Maybe we can get that hashtag trending. Join us. Although, I don't know, maybe that's associated with something else. I probably should check and see if that hashtag is anything, any other meaning. So don't do that quite yet. Let's take a look at it. But in all seriousness, we would love to have you join us, and there is power in numbers, and the more perspective and the more ideas and the more conversation and thoughts that can be brought together, just the more valuable this community gets. So I hope that you do and reach out, get in touch. But thanks for hanging out for the last half an hour and then some. See, even when I said half an hour, I still can't keep it at half an hour, 3 or 4 minutes over, but I always like to overdeliver. So there you go. Enjoy the rest of your evening or your morning if you watch this, or the afternoon, whenever you catch it. But thanks to those of you that joined live and chimed in with some thoughts and some, uh, some comments. And, uh, we'll, we'll see you online. Until then, bye for now.

Bye.