The Small Business Safari

What Happens When Local Capital Meets Local Know-How | Steve Beecham & Bob Koncerak

• Chris Lalomia, Alan Wyatt, Steve Beecham, Bob Koncerak • Season 4 • Episode 234

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What does it take to launch a brand-new community bank in today’s world of mega-banks and endless bureaucracy?

Summary

In this episode of The Small Business Safari, we sit down with Steve Beecham and Bob Koncerak, the founders behind First City Bank of Georgia, to unpack what it really takes to launch a new community bank in Alpharetta.

With the number of banks in the U.S. shrinking from more than 10,000 to roughly 4,300, many small businesses have lost access to local decision-makers who understand their needs. Steve and Bob explain why that service gap creates an opportunity for relationship-driven community banks to step back in.

We explore how Alpharetta’s evolution from bedroom community to thriving tech and business hub made it the perfect location, and how modern technology allows smaller banks to match the digital features of the big institutions while delivering faster decisions and real relationships.

They also share the unique de novo-plus-merger strategy they’re using to launch the bank faster and with less cost—opening the doors with live deposits, loans, and experienced lenders already in place.

For entrepreneurs, the conversation highlights the difference between chasing the lowest rate and building a banking relationship that actually helps you grow.

If you’re a founder, investor, or business owner frustrated with big-bank bureaucracy, this episode explains why community banking may be making a comeback.

🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube:
 https://www.youtube.com/@TheSmallBusinessSafari

💡 GOLD NUGGETS

• Why the U.S. banking system shrank from 10,000 to 4,300 banks and the service gap it created
• How Alpharetta became one of the Southeast’s fastest-growing tech hubs
• Why small banks can now match big-bank technology and digital tools
• The de novo + merger strategy that saves time and millions in startup costs
• How local lending decisions help entrepreneurs move faster
• Why value and advice matter more than just interest rates for growing companies
• Raising capital from accredited investors and aligning incentives with founder capital
• Recruiting veteran lenders and building an operator-led advisory board
• Financial education plans aimed at younger customers and families
• Hard lessons about projections, conviction, and risk when starting a bank

🔗 Guest Links

• Website: https://firstcitybankga.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-beecham-1958733

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdkoncerak

🌍 Follow The Small Business Safari

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 LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrislalomia
 Website | https://chrislalomia.com

Website |  thetrustedtoolbox.com





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Cold Open And Global Shoutouts

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Alan, we got a real special edition today. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. We gotta get ready to rock and roll, make this thing happen. Guys, if you're in the truck, make sure you turn this thing up because this one's gonna be a good one. Girls too. Oh, yeah, those ladies too. Sorry. Girls. Ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_03

All right, let's keep going. Not all of our listeners are in trucks. I mean, some of them are probably in a in a Bugatti. A Bugatti's Maserati. Blowing down south of France, uh listening to the small business safari.

Why Start A Bank Now

SPEAKER_02

So just got I just got pinged from a guy from Australia. Uh it was a guy, not a lady, sorry. Um, so we are listening all over the globe, maybe. That's right. All over the globe. And I let him know what I thought about the USA hockey team. And he said, I didn't even know they had Winter Olympics. I'm like, hey, you guys were there, brother. I was like, hey, we still loved it. Man, this episode is gonna be fire. And I'm gonna I'm gonna set this thing up. Um I started my business in 2008 and 2006 at the end. I said, I'm done, I'm I'm out of here, I gotta go. Um, and Alan, you and I have talked about this a lot, and that I used the business plan process to figure out jobs or figure out which way I wanted to go with my career. And one of the first out-of-the-bank things, and I just dropped a pun, uh, that I was told was, hey man, let's go start a community bank. You work at Sun Trust, you know how to stitch banks together.

SPEAKER_03

Because back then, de novo banks were all the rage, right?

SPEAKER_02

They were all the rage. You saw them in the uh here in Atlanta, we had the Atlanta Business Chronicle. They were opening. Uh two of the guys I worked with the Sun Trust had gone to Atlanta Capital. Um, you know, so I knew a lot about the what was happening. But I my job always at the back at the bank was stitching them back together, right? Putting them in the back end of the process. I wasn't the banker, I wasn't the guy who would go out there and make the money and bring the people in. And we started looking at it, and my buddy says, I am totally healed. We got this thing. And so we started talking to his family, which is pretty well healed here, uh, big names. And I won't use them on the line uh on the pod. And we started looking at it, looking at it, look at it, and then I started really uh getting into the banking business in 2007.

SPEAKER_03

Does well healed mean buttloads of cash?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that means buttloads of cash. All right, just and so the beginning of 2007, and Bob, our guest, along with Beach, just gave me that look, and you're like, that's probably the wrong time to get in the banking business. I'm like, that's a hundred percent right. So we put that one away and said, I'm off to something else, and well shit, I'll just start a handyman business.

SPEAKER_03

So that was a good decision.

SPEAKER_02

I don't know if it was, but here we are 18 years later doing it.

SPEAKER_03

We've we've recorded how many bad decisions you've made over the years.

SPEAKER_02

I've made a shit ton of bad decisions, and we can all do that. But today we've got some great guests on. And uh, we have Bob Conserve and we've got our buddy Steve Beach and back from Hometown Mortgage. He is the mayor of Alpharetta. I don't give a shit who says what about anything. This guy owns that city. What do you think about that, Bob?

SPEAKER_04

Uh, tell me when it's my turn to talk.

SPEAKER_02

So cheers, fellas. These guys are gonna start the first community bank in Alpharetta, Georgia, since 2008. And this is 2026. Let's talk about that. This is gonna be nuts. Bob, Steve, welcome, let's go. Bob, what the hell are you guys doing?

SPEAKER_04

Well, there are good ideas and good ideas at the time, so we're hoping this is a good idea. Back in 2008, when we opened Touchmark National Bank, Alpha Reddow was pretty much a bedroom community for Atlanta. If you look at it now, it's its own center of commerce. And so um, it's a tremendous opportunity. Not many of these are opened anymore. Twenty years ago, there were 10,000 banks in the country. Now there's about 4,300.

SPEAKER_03

So what happened? I mean, like I said, it was all the rage. It was almost like a fear of missing out. Like if you didn't get in on the ground floor of a de novo bank, you know, you were a loser, and then all of a sudden it just wasn't happening anymore. What happened?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it crash and oh nine.

SPEAKER_04

Well, there was that. Crash happened, evaporated a lot of talent, and then so many competitors for the net, yeah, the traditional net and margin banks. If all you're doing is lending and bringing in deposits, there's so many other platforms outside of the FDIC that you can do that now. So you can open a bank as long as you've got opportunities to bring in trust companies and mortgage companies and insurance companies or generate fees with SBA lending. But if you want a fantastic place to start, you may as well be in downtown Alpharetta.

SPEAKER_02

All right. You want to go?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, go ahead. But you know, Alpharetta is uh, you know, for for our listeners in Tasmania and everywhere else around the world. I mean, you're right. It was a bedroom community. I mean, there wasn't much going on, and then it just exploded with an amazing town center, and then it's uh, you know, it's kind of a high-tech hub right now, isn't that? One of the coolest places in the country. Yeah, yeah. And of course, you live walking distance, you dog to that. I'm just so jealous every time I go to your house. But yeah, no, it's uh uh you know, it's in the Golden Triangle north of Atlanta, and a lot is happening.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, that's great. But here's the deal.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you you got to do that.

Tech Parity For Community Banks

SPEAKER_01

Here's the deal. So my wife and all you do is um QuickBooks, you know, you just you're fine as you're not doing any banking, you're just doing processing, right? And so in the old days, the community banks really didn't have all of that high-tech stuff from an IT standpoint. So a lot of people, as that started transitioning, would leave their community bank and go to a bigger bank. Well, now the community bank, because where we are with IT, they can do anything a big bank can. So we can do mobile banking and take a picture of your check and do all that stuff. So now community banks can compete on IT type stuff with big banks. And then what's happened is all these regional banks have bought up all these community banks after the crash in 09. And some of them went out and some of them barely made it through. But they're the the the regular guy that's in business like we are, and he needs to go borrow borrow money for his pickup truck or his bulldozer, or he wants to remodel his restaurant, or he wants to add a new location or expand his office, he goes into one of these regional banks and they're like, here, dial the 1-800 number, you know. So he doesn't know the guy anymore that he used to know at his local bank. And so being in the mortgage business, these people that are calling me and they're like, hey man, I need I need to go get a loan for X. Who do I call? And so they're really not sitting in the bank anymore like they used to. Most of these banks are like empty shells. And so I I was I've been feeling this for a while. And so Bob and I are in the rotary together and we've been buddies for a while, and he's been in the banking business for a while. And I said, I told him about, I don't know, I guess a year ago. I said, Bob, I think there's an opportunity for a community bank again. I think we're far enough along down the road that people have kind of forgotten the crash and maybe they understand it and they're willing to jump back in. And he goes, I do too. And then a couple months later he walks in and he goes, I got an idea. This is how we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02

And and let's talk about this idea because um starting a bank is hard. Uh and you've done it a couple times, right?

SPEAKER_04

Um yes, I have.

SPEAKER_02

So you you've been in it and you went, Wow, I've done this, I'm gonna do it again.

SPEAKER_04

Go type in the most fun I never want to have again. That's the book I published after my last. And the very last sentence in that book says, If I if I'm wrong, I'll title the book I thought it was done the last time. So I'm already collecting notes.

SPEAKER_02

Nice. So you put this together, you guys start talking about this. Uh, but again, start the landscape. There was no appetite for a new community bank. There is no reason, although you guys saw a gap. So, what did you see? What was the reason? Well, let's let's start with this.

The Case For Local Service

SPEAKER_04

I'll just pick up where Beach left off. Is is I I love the adage product and price bring somebody in the door, but service and advice keeps them there. And so, yeah, he's right. We have all sorts of nifty technology that works just like anywhere else on the planet. But when you've got folks who are trying to do things, when you've got entrepreneurs who are trying to build a business, hey, I gotta buy that, I gotta lease that, I gotta restructure that. How do I how do I do that? When you've got lenders, when you've got folks with 20, 25 years of experience of helping people get stuff done, that turns out to be a gold mine for the community because that's what a bank does. Uh a bank brings in local deposits and and lends that money back into its community to support the community. And so when you can take the time and advice to help somebody get stuff done to support their business, it just benefits the whole community. That's why they call it a community bank.

SPEAKER_02

All right, so you guys had this idea a year ago. Yeah. Uh, here we are now. You guys just launched, got everything.

SPEAKER_04

We're in the middle of our capital raise right now.

SPEAKER_02

Right now. So let's go back. You said I got an idea. Yeah, I got an idea to start a bank a little bit different. Or I got a better way to do it.

SPEAKER_04

Because we're both, we are both a what's called a de novo, a new institution, and we're also merging. Okay, so this couldn't be more complicated and more clever, but it saves us a bunch of time and a bunch of money. We are acquiring by merger the smallest bank in the state of Georgia, little tiny bank of Lumber City in Telfair County. Lumber City, Telfair County.

SPEAKER_02

Hello, shout out.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna say, I don't know where Telfair County is.

SPEAKER_02

Well, you're not a Georgian, are you then?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, how about you? Cool, this guy.

The De Novo Plus Merger Strategy

SPEAKER_04

So we're doing what we're doing is we're gonna acquire that bank, and then we're going to move the software and some of the customers and the technology into Alpharetta and drop it into an existing bank building. And so the business model is we're taking time off both ends of how long it takes to do this, and probably about 600,000 bucks of expense. But when we open, we'll have a balance sheet of active loans and deposits with about$700,000 of tailwind. So we'll get the bank profitable a whole lot faster. The investors will do well because I'm 64 and I tell folks I'm only gonna get old once. And so if I'm doing this, everybody has to win. The shareholders have to win, the community has to win, the customers have to win, and this has come together in a combination, it's gonna be a lot of fun for a lot of folks.

SPEAKER_02

So you've done a couple years ago, I want to go back to this because what you're doing, when I heard that uh the night I went to the investor raise, I was like, wow, that is I don't want to do this because they're gonna get big heads, but this is genius. I mean, because what people don't understand is that if we were to start de novo, here here we are, the four of us just sitting here shooting the shit, saying, Man, we're gonna start a bank. How many months or a years would it take for us to get this thing up, ratified, ready to go, and start?

SPEAKER_04

12 to 18.

SPEAKER_02

And you guys have done it in.

SPEAKER_04

Well, we filed our application in October, and if the angels come down from heaven, we'll open in the middle of April.

SPEAKER_02

So that is uh you just took 12 to 18 down to six. I mean, that's I mean, you don't have to do the math.

SPEAKER_04

We ain't open yet. Okay, but we're close.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So you have a location then already. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I was uh after a rotary club meeting one day, Beach nudges me and says, Come on, come on, get in the car, get in the car. I'm gonna take you to your new bank building. You new bank building.

SPEAKER_03

That doesn't sound like Beach at all. Not at all.

Securing The Downtown Location

SPEAKER_04

So we get in the car, we drive to uh if anybody on the planet who's familiar with downtown Alpharetta, at the corner of Academy in Maine, the four corners of downtown Alpharetta, where it goes from North Maine to South Maine, there's a big old two-story building that used to be a Georgia Federal, and then it was a closed Wells Fargo. And he took me in there with our uh our commercial uh fella, and and I said, This is over the moon. This is absolutely over the moon. But every bank that ever has ever put itself on the market, it can't be another bank for a certain period of time. Oh no, didn't check on that. Give me 30 minutes. Came back. Oh that contingency expired in May. We locked it down about three days later. We were right there. So right there. It was it the timing was exquisite. So we are we are acquiring a bank, moving the software, and dropping it into an existing bank with safety deposit boxes and vaults and drive-thru lanes. And so we're gonna probably spend 200,000 bucks to get the bank ready, where so many teams have to go find an architect, find a building, build it out, get it right.

SPEAKER_02

And spend you said 200,000. So give us the number that you would have spent otherwise. Just ballpoint.

SPEAKER_01

If you bought a building, you might spend two, three, four million dollars.

SPEAKER_02

Million. So you guys are all out 200 grand and with a with a lease.

SPEAKER_04

We are leasing, we're net leasing a building for 10 grand a month, which is a whole lot more preferably than me than taking four and a half million bucks and buying something from the 1980s. Yeah. So we'll open the bank, run it on the cheap, make some money, and our organizers will eventually design and build the headquarters we want to move into, and then we will lease it so we don't have a big old fat fixed asset on the balance sheet. For those of you who understand banking.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Uh Alan. Why are you looking at me? I don't know. I just have a full of you. All right. But here we you know, we talk a lot a lot of things. So handyman, low barrier of entry, commercial real estate. Even lower. Lower barrier of entry. Being a mortgage broker, pretty low. Starting to bank. That's pretty flipping high, right? That's up the that's uh uh by the way. We have an audience today, Melissa. That's up. Crazy up.

SPEAKER_04

I'll tell you how that works. There aren't many people that do what I do, there are even fewer people that like to do what I do.

SPEAKER_02

I bet there is. So amen to that. I'll I'll drink to that one. Oh my god.

Speed, Cost, And Go-To-Market Plan

SPEAKER_03

All right, so you guys so I gotta ask you this. Since the last time you opened a bank in today, the regulatory environment has just gotten extreme, from what I understand. So I remember when Beach told me we're opening a bank because people in business need to be able to get money and they can't get money. But a lot of that doesn't that have to do with the regulatory environment that's out there, or am I wrong about that?

SPEAKER_01

No, I don't think so. As much as it I don't think that's changed a lot, really. I mean, like I said, if you're a small entrepreneur and you you know, you're a restaurant guy. Let me put my ice out.

SPEAKER_03

You're a restaurant guy. You know, we need to open that. What did we got there? Jimmy Reddit? Jimmy Redd from Charleston.

SPEAKER_02

Jimmy Redd from Charleston. You know what? We're gonna we're gonna come back to Beach. Uh no, no. And then you want that Jimmy Redd. I want that Jimmy Red, but I want to hear what he's got to say here. All right, then we're gonna talk about Jimmy Redd after that.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, I I don't really I don't know. Bob maybe can speak to that, but I mean you still basically it's still the same concept with mortgages or equity lines or any financing, you've got to show that you can cash flow the deal, right? And there might have been it might have been in earlier days where you you might would have made a loan with somebody because there was a real heavy asset, or you knew his mama could pay if he didn't pay and he didn't co-sign. But today's market, you know, since the crash, you've got to still you still gotta qualify. So if you qualify, we're gonna make you the loan. That's the cool part.

Regulations, Qualifications, And Reality

SPEAKER_02

So back to banking and the way it worked, you know. Um, so I I went to Sun Trust uh to basically consolidate and to get to be a big bank that they become now truist. But I get to learn a lot about community banking and uh what small banking is. And Bob, it sounds like you've had that experience. A lot of us, the younger people, don't realize what community banks could have brought to us as a small business owner. I think today we just think big banks, you know. Back when I was thinking about starting my bank, uh starting my business rather, and looking at banks, I had Sun Trust here, but then it was Bank of America, which I was on the merger wagon for, knew them. Uh Wells Fargo. Um, you start looking, they're all just in city, they're just these big banks. What makes a community bank so much better? You guys have mentioned a couple times, but I don't think people get today what they could be. Let me give you a street level example.

SPEAKER_04

You call the bank's number during business hours, and a real person answers the phone. Okay. That's the simplest, easiest way to distinguish a community bank from a big bank. You don't have to make an appointment to come in and see me. I I'm astonished. I've got accounts at Chase. I wanted to open a joint checking account with my wife. I had to make an appointment three different times because when I showed up unannounced, they were surprised to see me. I walked into a bank branch and they were surprised to see, how can I help you? Why are you here? Do you have an appointment? I'm like, Well, I need an appointment to give you money. Yeah, for me to open an account here and do business with you. You know, and so big banks do a lot of wonderful things. The electronic banking, the capacity to move money around, all the bells and whistles, that's fine. Until you need to talk to somebody. Something went wrong. Something, somebody debited my account that shouldn't have debited my account. You know, can you help me figure out how to do this? As soon as you need to talk to a real live person, you're challenged because that's not how those banks are designed to work anymore.

SPEAKER_02

So the community bank, you guys would say your charter, what you guys are going for, uh, is going after the small business, the businessman who wants to have somebody who knows and understands their business and says, Man, I believe in you, not only personally, taking the five C's of credit, figuring that thing out, and doing that. And that's where you're gonna be your differential.

SPEAKER_04

And how about this? If you walk into the bank a couple of times a week, eventually somebody actually recognizes you and knows who you are.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, Chris, hey, I need money, Alan. They will like give you after a while. I told you no the last time, and you keep showing up. I keep showing up. How about that?

SPEAKER_02

So you and Beach had this idea, right? We we started floating this thing out. But again, um, we talked about the regulatory environment. Alan brought that up. Talk about the timeline to make it happen. But you guys, two two of you had an idea, and then you can put it together.

Capital Raise And Who Can Invest

SPEAKER_01

I called a meeting. I told Bob, I said, Let me call a meeting with with 20 people around town that are small business people and say, Hey, what do y'all think? And so I called this meeting and 15 people showed up, and we were in my little office, and I said, Hey, this is a crazy idea Bob and I have. We think the time's right. What do y'all think? And every one of them said, We're in. And we went, Oh, okay, I guess we're going now. So, what were you hearing from them? This the same thing that the frustrations that everybody else is, I hate my bank, I don't, I don't know my banker. Um just people are disappointed with the big banking piece. And and and it's mostly small business people because those people are having to go in. You know, you got a dentist and he wants to go buy a new piece of equipment and it's$75,000, you know, and he doesn't want to walk into to one of the big banks and do a Wayne 800 number and nobody knows him. Once he develops a relationship with us, he walks in and we just give him the next machine. We may already have his tax returns on file. You know, you're gonna go see Johnny down there because Johnny's the made you the last loan. So the average the average business person is gonna love what we're doing. And what we think will happen is they'll send all of their friends. You know, I got a buddy of mine, he's got like, I don't know, eight bulldozers and six dump trucks. You know, he goes by a dump truck, go goes and buys a bulldozer, that's a hundred thousand dollars, two hundred thousand dollars. We want him to give us a call and say, hey, I want to buy another one. We've banked him before, we got his tax returns. We go fine, we know the cash flow is there, bam. And how about this?

SPEAKER_04

Local decision making.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's the big one. That's why we're gonna decision making. Yeah, so a lot of the big banks have gone to uh, and as I was leaving banking, this is but this is literally, I'm dating myself, Alan. I'm not as old as you, but I'm really close. Thanks for pointing up. Um, but when I was leaving the bank, we were actually moving credit decisioning overseas, um, where you wouldn't talk to anybody back to the five C's of credit. Why do people because people go, man, I got the money, why ain't you give me the money? Why aren't you giving me the money? Well, there's there's a lot of layers to it, right? But when you're looking at somebody eye to eye like we are right now, and you go, Well, Chris, I mean this is why I'm not giving you the money. You're like, okay, I realize I started a handy man business. That was a little stupid.

SPEAKER_01

Well, we want to have them do a workaround, right? If you come in there and we say, you know what, we can't do it now, it just doesn't work within the bucket or the the forms that we you know, it's not it's just not adding up, but here's what you need to do to go make this work. I like that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, here's how, rather than just no, or call this rather rather than just saying no, under these conditions, I can do this. You might not like these conditions, okay, but here's how I can get this done for you. If that's attractive to you, you know, because if you're a community bank, what is the community that you want to champion? And so if you have a defined area where you're trying to make stuff work, you know, and look where we are. We are where this northern knob. If you if you look, if you look at a map of Fulton County, there's a northern knob that used to be Milton County. That's our primary and secondary service. You need to use a different word than knob. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02

Apologies for those of you who are gutters in the mind. Thank you. It's fine. Um, we do swear a lot on this podcast. I've actually kept it fucking clean this time, Beats, because Bob's here. I didn't want to make sure I didn't offend too much.

SPEAKER_04

Okay. All right. How about this? It's all my fault, but I'm perfectly willing to be forgiven. All right. Okay. All right. So if we attract there, Chris. Okay. Okay. If we attract that one, if we attract 1.37% of the deposits in our primary service area in the next three years, we'll be gloriously successful. All right, if we if we if we accomplish being a drop in the ocean.

SPEAKER_02

All right. So you just used a very, you know, kind of he just pulled that number out of his ass, I think. You know, 1.37.

SPEAKER_00

You come up with that one. He's a banker.

SPEAKER_04

Oh my god, dude. But a whole lot of demographics go into defining can a community really absorb another bank? What are you going to go do? How are you going to support? Why do we need another bank? You justify that to the FDIC before they talk about giving you a charter.

unknown

All right.

SPEAKER_02

So you guys got your charter. You're doing all this now.

SPEAKER_04

No, no, no, no, no. We we are we are raising capital. Okay. 20 million bucks from now, you can congratulate me. All right. Our offering circular is approved. We're raising capital to capitalize the bank. All right. When we accomplish that, sometime in mid April.

SPEAKER_02

We're we're early in on this. So uh, how can everybody get in on this? Um, tell us the link that they can go look at.

SPEAKER_01

What we would like to do is is invite them to come to the bank so we can talk to them. They meet the people at the bank, make sure it's something that that they would love to invest in. And so we we need them. Investors. We got to raise 20 million bucks.

SPEAKER_02

So there's no link.

SPEAKER_01

I got links. If they email me, I'll send them a link so they can go online and get our circuit.

SPEAKER_02

Give us give us that email real quick. Go ahead and go.

Bob’s Path From Steel To Banking

SPEAKER_04

Oh, I don't have it onfo at first citybankga.com.

SPEAKER_02

Do it. Info at firstcitybankga.com.

SPEAKER_04

Now, how much time did you spend coming up with your bank name? Well, in somebody's version of Greek, Alpharetta is First City. Ah, Alpha. How about that?

SPEAKER_01

I wanted to name it Alpharetta Community Bank. And then some of the guys on the board said, you know, that's a little too localized. We might want to be bigger at one time, you know. So we Oh, I hear you.

SPEAKER_00

They're big timing you beats. Big time me. You know who they're talking to? No, you are not little John Mike from big times you on that. You know what? I'm going to go talk about it. David Chatham big time me on that. I think that was his idea.

SPEAKER_04

I love that. So if you're going to go grow it, you know, I mean, what I tell the proposed board is three years from now, we'll be a whole lot smarter than we are today. That's right. And so, you know, will you want to go buy something? Will you want to go have a liquidity event, give people a chance to get some money back if they want to, double down? And so you have something here that you want to grow from a position of strength, help the community, you know, bring in customers, have a real life, good, uh, good activity that you're championing your community. And then after three years, what do you want to go do with it?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, this is uh I I love that what they're doing. I mean, I think yeah, I hate it when people say this because when I put my business plan together, I put it in front of people, I had nine out of ten people tell me, home run, can't miss. Handyman gonna kill it. I had one guy go, you might want to look at this a little bit harder. He was a dumbass, though, wasn't he? And I that's what I told him. But you know what? He was the best advice I ever flipping got. Everybody goes. Did you listen to it? Uh of course not. Yeah. I mean, I tried to correct myself. Ah, who am I kidding? No, I was the best, I was the smartest guy in the room. Um, but no, these kids make such a good team, though. They do. And so that's what I wanted to go back to is that you guys have a great idea. You're doing this. Everybody's told you can't miss. Gonna happen. You got Bob three times started a business, or four times started a five times.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, Bob looks at you with those that that stare, and you're like, okay, yes, sir.

Barriers To Entry And Market Timing

SPEAKER_02

I know, I seriously. I was like, Yeah, I was actually grabbing for my wallet. Everybody looked at me.

SPEAKER_03

I'm like, he just like, you know, he's getting the people together and he's got the idea, and then Bob gives you that.

SPEAKER_02

Bob gives you that. Why haven't you invested yet? I'm like, well, uh, we can talk about that.

SPEAKER_05

You're gonna you're gonna regret this.

SPEAKER_02

So, all right, so you guys do this, but it's fraught with risks, right? I mean, there's a reason that people haven't started uh community banks. It's a high barrier of entry. That's we were joking earlier, but it truly is because you've got to have a lot going for you. So talk about how you've mitigated the risks to be able to get yourself to where you want to go.

SPEAKER_04

I'll tell you what, I could not be more humbled by the caliber of the people that want to join us. We've got folks with 15, 20, 25 years experience calling us, you got room for me, you got room for me. Because they've been commercial bankers up and down, you know, 400 for the past 20 years. They've got tremendous books of business, they've got tremendous relationships, but they've been pulled up into larger and larger institutions where they've got less and less access to actually take care of their customers. And so we've got a good team of folks together that have tremendous experience in the market that have done this before two or three different times, and they have the capacity to get it done. And banking is all about the people. It's all about the people.

SPEAKER_02

So, did you grow up in the banking business? I mean, let's go back a little bit. Um how'd you start?

Value Over Rate For Entrepreneurs

SPEAKER_04

I'll do this as quickly as I can. Real quick I'm from Pittsburgh. I'm of a certain age. You're a Yenzer. And so I'm a Yenzer. And so I had I had to spend some time in the steel business. And so I was I did a bunch of stuff for a stainless steel company that uh the old Jones and Lachlan Steel Corporation. Well, Mellon Bank was my lead bank. Good old Mellon Bank. I do know Mellon Bank. Marty McGuinn, one of the chairs of Mellon, taught one of the capstone courses that I had at Duquesne going for my MBA. Several of us would go out for beer after a class. It was pretty cool to go out for a beer with a vice chairman of Mellon Bank. He knew who I was, he knew I used products at Mellon. So one night after drinking, what was probably way too much, Marty looked at me and said, I need a controller for my capital markets group. You could do that. And I said, Marty, that doesn't sound like it's something you hire somebody off the street to go do. And he said, But you understand the products. So I tell people that for my evolution from steel into banking, alcohol was involved. I love that. So I spent a couple years at Mainland and then got recruited to be the first.

SPEAKER_02

And I want to say I applaud you for your interview technique. Um, I've never done that because that's exactly how I got hired at Sun Trust. It's a uh Sandra Jask looked at me and said, Chris, I want you to run commercial on ops. I said, You know, I've never done that. She goes, I know.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I'm like, I literally didn't know she was interviewing me, but she uh I was her consultant at the time. And he just said the same thing. It's amazing when you say something like that to somebody and they go, I see potential in you. So obviously he saw a lot in the potential.

SPEAKER_04

Well, what he said was what he said was nobody inside the bank who wants the job is really qualified for the job. All the people that want the job weren't afraid of them. But you understand the products because I use the products, and they just wanted somebody to come upstairs to explain to them what the heck they were doing down there in capital markets.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So you start in Pittsburgh, Yinsur, you do that thing, you go into you went to the Mellon Bank.

SPEAKER_04

Remember Wachovia before the first genie Wacovia merger? I do. I was the capital markets, I was recruited to Atlanta to be the capital markets CFO in 1999. That's how my family got to Atlanta. Girls were 11, 9, and 4.

SPEAKER_02

All right, so you you you you turned into big bank in 1999, and then you said I've got a big thing.

Fast Decisions And Relationship Lending

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and then back in the early 2000s, there was like uh it was like people opening banks Atlanta all over the place in the cottage industry of new banks opening. And uh a buddy of mine, Bill Short, had been tugged to go form a uh a bank called Touchmark National Bank. I was being pulled to go join a team over in Cobb County, and Bill and I got together and he said, look, he said, if I want to be the CEO, the first thing I need to do is find a CFO. Why don't we go figure this out? We're at least as smart as those guys. And and that's how we ended up on the team with Touchmark.

SPEAKER_02

So do you feel like it's a high margin of entry? Because uh Beach, Al and I kind of joked about ourselves. Um, but do you feel like it is a high barrier to entry?

SPEAKER_04

20 years ago, there were 10,000 banks in the country. Okay. Today there's about 4,300. If ever the skies have parted for regulators looking to establish and grow the number of banks in the country, it's right now. So there's a tremendous regulatory accommodation to go to do this. So the bar has been lowered a little bit, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to do, because again, you've got to attract the right people to know how to do it the right way.

SPEAKER_02

Guys, I'm looking at you. We're gonna do a little panel discussion, Beach Alan. I I'd say bullshit, man. This guy's just too smart for us because it it is, he thinks it's low. I think it's high, but I'm dumb.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think I I mean, I think he's right. The high part is right now is convincing people that it's a that's a good idea, right? And so we're finding people are are interested, which which is kind of blowing me away. I mean, of all the crazy things I come up with, you know, this one I came up with, and people were like, Yeah, I like that. I think that's a good idea. And even the people that say, you know what, I financially can't do it right now, but I love the idea, and I'll come bank with you. So I feel like we're the momentum in town and the willingness and desire of people to be a part of this process is pretty strong. Alan, what did you say? You still got to get a lot of people to write a lot of checks.

SPEAKER_02

Alan, high barrier or low barrier? Because I think Bob makes it sound like it's low, like a Haiti Band business. And I'm like, dude, it's me.

SPEAKER_03

Bob could tell me to jump off a cliff and it'd be a good idea. And I would I think I would do it. I mean, so are do you are you do you guys still need investors at this point? Yeah.

Bourbon Break: The Jimmy Red Story

SPEAKER_04

We are a we what we are is a what's called a reg D offering. So our target market is accredited investors, people who know what they're doing, or at least at least they think what is it self-identified. They're self-identified that they know what they're doing, they meet a couple of IRS thresholds. That's the whole idea. Self-identified as a few things, but not that. The whole idea is that you understand why you'd want to take some money and go do this. And and and that is the target market. We we can take a few non-accredited investors. Our minimum investment is$50,000. We've got folks investing up to half a million.

SPEAKER_02

So let's talk about this for a minute because I love telling young people, I don't care what you're thinking, start a business, do it. You know what? Absolutely. We talk about this all the time. Small business safari.

SPEAKER_04

Once you become entrepreneurial, you never feel comfortable working for somebody else again.

SPEAKER_02

But you know what? Every once in a while, uh, and I'm looking around the room here, um, got a bunch of old people sitting here talking. And we love talking to young people. But you know what? Having somebody who's done this like you have, Bob, and having Beach, who knows everybody in Alpharetta. I mean, seriously, every fucking buddy. Um, you know what? It's kind of cool to uh let young people, and when young people understand, they're like, hey, these guys kind of bend around, been there doing it. Look, you latched onto this thing. I mean, it might be a great opportunity. And I think that's what I think a lot of people miss as the small business uh grows, right? Is that you just gotta find your niche.

SPEAKER_04

You know, let me step in here. It's a business, it's an investment. If you're putting money in, you expect to get more money out. And so I'm satisfied we'll do that in the fullness of time. But I'm 64, I've got three kids. There's a whole lot more of the next two generations than there are of me. And what I'm finding is more and more folks in their late 20s, in their 30s, they're coming into financial institutions looking for financial advice. So one of the things that will distinguish us is come on here, sit down. It's not just financial literacy, it's financial education. Let me help you understand, you know, what your credit score is for. Did you know your credit score can determine whether or not you can get an apartment, how much you're gonna pay for medical insurance, whether or not you can get a job. You know, when you help people understand, hey, this is how the world works, and you light them up, you're teaching them to be good banking customers.

SPEAKER_01

Well, we're gonna set up a group of advisors, our advisory board, and one of the main ideas I want to do with that is bring in the people that, you know, because I'll get a call like, hey man, I'm thinking about opening another location, or I'm thinking about expanding or hiring somebody. And I want to use our advisory board of really rock star guys that have been there, done that, guys like us, for these people to come in. They may be our age, they may be younger, but sit down and throw that out, kind of like help them figure it out. I love that.

Advice For New Founders

SPEAKER_02

That's missing. I love that too. I mean, that's giving back. That's why um when I talked to Alan four and a half years ago, I was like, hey, hey, look, you know, I joked about it. I said, man, we're really smart after a couple beers at the bar. It was like six.

SPEAKER_04

Um we barely drove home. It might take six, but there ain't nothing that a beer can't fit.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. Ha ha. He's from Pittsburgh. If I don't hear that Yingling, oldest brewery in the US. But no, meet you here. I mean, that's where we're giving back. That's why we do this podcast to trying to help people get them up there. I mean, you guys have already done this. I mean, we talked about this. You listen to this podcast, you go to this stuff, you guys have uh escalated how quickly you can get to a uh a community bank. You talked about giving back to younger people because again, Bob, we're gonna start this bank. Beach, you're gonna start this bank, but you've got to move it on to somebody else. It's gonna happen.

Skin In The Game And Market Demand

SPEAKER_01

I mean, if it works right. We want to create win-win situations. So it's kind of like, hey, I can go invest in this bank and I can be a customer of the bank. And in addition to that, I can refer my friends and family to the bank to help make my stock worth more money. Because what I learned about this that I didn't realize is that really if somebody came along and wanted to buy the bank, really what they're buying is your depositors, your customer base. They're not really buying your loans. They look at the loans and go, I just hope those don't go bad. Right. But if if another bank is trying to come into our community and they're looking around the community and say, how do we get market share real quick? Well, let's what about that bank? There's a they got a lot of people there. They got a lot of great customers, they got a lot of small business in that town. We would love to have that. And that drives the value. So to me, that's the cool thing about this, is that is that it's a win-win-win-win. And then we can take this community bank and say, hey, we are part of the community. We want to be involved in the nonprofit stuff. We want to be in pro, we want to be involved with financial education. We want to be um, you know, we want to get out there and help these students get their accounts set and get them ready to go so they can go from high school to college to getting a job. We want to help you with your your mom and and your elderly father and help you with all that situation. And because now that you got to put them in a assisted living or something, you got to start putting your name on some of their accounts and stuff. So until you've been down that process, right, you don't really know what you need to do. So we see that as a holistic approach of trying to just really do all that stuff for our community. And at the same time, what that does is that drives value for your stock.

SPEAKER_03

So the question I have, and I don't know anything about banking, but I know business and you're David going against Goliath. And how does that work? Because the service is great, but when a lot of people are shopping for a loan shopping, you know, they're looking for the the best rate. And you can with your service, you can I like it, I sense it, I can feel it. You know where I'm going. I know where you're going to go. Jump on it. I got the answer. Okay, I got the answer. Okay.

SPEAKER_04

Go. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

And I want to go.

SPEAKER_04

In many cases, I will not be the cheapest. Okay? But if you are an entrepreneur and you've got your own business, and you don't show a whole lot of income on your tax return just because you're trying to build a house. And I bank you. You can go to Truist, you can go to B of A, you can go anywhere you want to get a mortgage. However, if you want to get it done fast, come on in here, sit down. I'll give you your draws. I won't be the cheapest, but I'll help you get that. Your your home will be built when you want to. We'll evaluate the draws, get you done, and we'll do all the construction financing. Then if you want to take it to hometown mortgage and and and blow it out to get permanent financing in place, I have helped you to do something that otherwise might have taken you twice the time to go do. So I'm banking you, I know you, I can get you done, and then go do something else. I've added value.

SPEAKER_01

I think I think the mint, you know, you take the basic entrepreneur, he just wants to know that he can do it. He's not totally rate sensitive. You get a guy that's a seasoned guy that's borrowing a lot of money, then he becomes a little bit more rate sensitive. He's he's just in that market.

Lightning Round And Close

SPEAKER_03

Well, there's there's a there's as long as you're in the ballpark and if you're demonstrating all that value add, then I think a lot of and the kinds of people that you probably want to attract will be willing to pay a little bit of a premium, I would assume, to get all that service and that advice and that guidance that you guys are gonna provide.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, you bank with me. Hey, I'm driving to the auto dealership. I I need to get a car for my daughter. She's leaving for school. Am I good? Yeah, you're good. The next question should not be, and what's my rate? The next question is when can I get my check? If you want to get stuff done, I can help you.

SPEAKER_02

So you're talking about ease, convenience. Actually, and the other part is with community banks, local decision making. I mean, that's the hard part. I mean, I think that's right. A lot of times we shop rate, especially that's where we're gonna do that.

SPEAKER_04

My office is on the first floor. I should hide upstairs.

SPEAKER_02

You should have. No, and you know I saw your office, by the way, and I'm I know where I'm drum, I'm drumming in.

SPEAKER_03

So, you know, chad Chad and I in commercial real estate, uh, we talk to a lot of bankers, and you know, we just say, look, we just we want an answer quick. I don't care if it's no. If it's no, tell us why. But just just tell, don't, don't drag out the pain. Don't put us through the funnel of pain and then find out it's no later. You know, so to get a quick answer one way or another is super valuable.

SPEAKER_01

If you got a guy and he's building apartment complexes and he's on his 20th apartment complex, he's not dealing with us, right? But if you got a guy that's that's that's making some money and he sees a 12-unit apartment complex and it's his first one and he's trying to figure out that's the guy with that.

SPEAKER_03

No, no, and that's that's who we normally deal with. It's somebody, you know, they want to they want to buy a small strip center or something like that.

SPEAKER_04

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I got a couple of commercial lenders, they're borrowers and developers have been following them for 15, 20 years. Well, and and so, and so one of the reasons why it becomes easy is because you've helped me eight different times before. Here's my next project. Can you help me now? And they and and two of them, Eric Boccat and Doug Fountain, they work with us.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I'm just thinking more of a big bigger plant. Yeah, we're we're more for the all right, the smaller middle guy.

SPEAKER_02

Let's pull out of the weeds for a minute. So you guys talk about the the bourbon now? No.

SPEAKER_03

I just never had anything that tasted quite like that. Oh, then talk about your bourbon. The jimmy red of the beach. Jimmy Red. What is the word you would use to describe Jimmy Redd? I don't, I don't, I, I can't put a finger on it. It's completely different than any other bourbon I've ever had. All right, speech.

SPEAKER_02

You brought in the uh all right. So, first of all, Beach, you have your own bourbon. We've we've had you back. If you haven't heard it, go back on the podcast. He beachum, he is the first ever third-time person coming on the podcast. Yeah, baby. You are the ultimate.

SPEAKER_04

So trying that back there?

SPEAKER_02

He was the best. So uh we've had him on talking about his own bourbon. Let's talk about this Jimmy Red uh bourbon that we're talking about and tasting.

SPEAKER_01

So this guy in Charleston, high wire distillery wants to start doing some old-fashioned, you know, uh throwback type of whiskeys. Here's about this moonshiner. This is a story that I've heard. Here's about this moonshiner in the low country. He goes out to the guy's house, knocks on the door, the the the the a lady comes to the door and he goes, I hear that Jimmy makes the best moonshine around or whatever. And she goes, Well, he did, but he passed. And he goes, and he goes, Well, what made his moonshine so special? And she said, Well, he used Jimmy Redcorn. And he said, he said, tell me about Jimmy Redcorn. He said, Well, he said, it back in the plantation days, what happened was is that the slaves couldn't steal the yellow and the white corn because the the everybody knew that's what they were eating, but they had the Indian corn, the blue and the red corn. That's what they fed to the animals. So the slaves would steal the blue and red corn, except it didn't taste very good. It was very tart. And so this one slave named Jimmy started trying to figure out how to sweeten up this particular corn. And so this guy's like great-grandfather was that guy. And so she said, So he said, Well, where did you grow it? And she said, We had acres of it out here in the backyard. And um, and that's what he made his moonshine out of. It's got a unique taste because it's red. And so he said, Well, how can I get an ear of it? She said, Well, I saved two ears and we don't have it anymore. And he said, he said, Can I have an ear? He took an ear, took it to the University of South Carolina to the ag department, said, Can we regrow this heirloom corn? So they started regrowing this heirloom corn, and people he made this whiskey and people started loving it. And then now to go to Charleston, they got Jimmy Redcorn grits, Jimmy Redcorn cornbread. It's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02

It is everywhere.

SPEAKER_01

So what's right about this is the only bourbon, one of the few bourbons that I know. I only know of one other bourbon that is a hundred percent corn. Because typically, what you do on a bourbon, you have about 70 to 80 percent corn, and then you put in malted barley, because it's gotta be 51, right? It's gotta be 51% corn to be bourbon, but this is all corn.

SPEAKER_03

So to answer your question, it tastes like corn. Do you have any questions remaining as to why I want to start a bank with this guy? Yeah, anybody have any questions? No, no, and that's why you guys are the perfect combination. We're just getting started.

SPEAKER_02

No, we're just starting to wrap up. So, guys, you guys, we're talking about community banking and coming back to it, bringing it local, and but you're starting a business, right?

SPEAKER_04

Starting a business, yeah. Absolutely.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_02

Bob, you've been at it for a ton. Beach, we've had you on forever. Let's give some advice to some people. I'm thinking about starting my own business. What are the things that you would say the best advice I got?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Carter Barrett, who opened the bank in coming at the same time we opened TouchMark back in 2008. I called him and I said, Look, I'm putting this together. If I never talk to you again, give me your advice. And Carter said, Here's what you need to do. You work on those financials, you work on those projections, you study your market. Don't you ask anybody, don't you ask anybody to invest with you until you are satisfied that you, Bob Conserac, are gonna make a boatload of money by investing in this stock. And I'm thinking, that's unsettling to me. That sounds too personally I he said, get over it because he said, When you are satisfied that you will make a boatload of money and sell it, you're gonna put a whole lot of your money in it. Gold nugget. Nothing will satisfy. Another investor than knowing that you're in and you've got a big investment of your personal net worth. 100%. I didn't like it. It's uncomfortable for me, but dug on. I said, Carter, you're right. And so, you know, I'm putting 400 grand into this thing. And I've had several people come up to me and say, I'm doing what I'm doing because I see what you're doing. Everybody has to win.

SPEAKER_02

I saw that too.

SPEAKER_04

Everybody has to win.

SPEAKER_02

You did that that night. I was like, man, it's a bank, please.

SPEAKER_04

It's a bank. You know, there's a whole lot of reasons why you start a bank, but at the end of the day, everybody wants to make money. You don't have to like it to accept it, but you wouldn't put money into it unless you thought you were going to be a whole lot better off afterwards. All right, Beach.

SPEAKER_01

I think people get into hobby businesses because they like it or whatever. You know, I like I like remodeling, so I'm gonna get in a remodeling business. A lot of times people get into a business and they never do the research to see if that business can actually be profitable. You know, they got a little card shop, they got a little ladies' clothing store, they got a little shoe store, and they just end up being a manager for themselves and they never really make any money. I feel like the demand for what we're doing is super, super strong because everybody I'm talking to is telling me I hate my bank. I don't like my bank. And they're telling me that I don't even know where to go to borrow money, I don't even know who to call, and they're frustrated. And so I feel like we're filling a gap in the marketplace for the average, small to medium business person. And then I think we start picking up the other pieces too. And so, you know, banking's not where people come in the bank all the time, but there's a lot of people that like to go in the bank. There's a lot of people that like to have those relationships, and that's kind of who we're gonna be after. Is that you, Alan? Do you like going to the bank?

SPEAKER_02

I love going to the bank. I fucking hate it. Uh because I don't like people, Alan. You know that we're talking about that. All right, man. We're that's true. I love people. All right, Beach, we already had you on, Bob. I'm gonna hit you with the final four. Uh, we're gonna rapid fire. You ready? I know you can rapid fry. All right, good. All right, ready? Give me a book that you would recommend to the small business adventure team.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, Ken Langones, I love capitalism.

SPEAKER_03

Oh my god. That's a that's a first.

SPEAKER_00

You've got to start a lot of Alan. Oh my god, are you shitting me right now? We're gonna have teaching learns, we're gonna have lunch and learns.

SPEAKER_04

I got I got my list over there writing it down. Say it again. Ken Langones, I love capitalism. Oh my god. Okay, if if there wouldn't have been a Ken Langone, there wouldn't be a Home Depot. Yep, that's right. Okay, and and so what one of our organizers, one of our organizers, Angie Bendix, she told me she came over at four years old in her father's arm from one of the Cuban boat lifts. Okay, if you see the beautiful Berkshire Hathaway building in downtown Alpharetta, next to Smoke Jack. Next to Smoke Jack. That's your building. She and her husband owned nine different orthopedic surgery centers, okay, across across the southeast. Okay, and she was four years old when she came over in her father's arms. One day she will stand in front of that group and tell tell her story. Couple of lenders came in the other day that that that Eric Bikat, our our our chief lending officer, his bank for 20 years, they came from Morocco. They started with nothing. Folks who've come to this country and have built things over and over and over. Just come on and tell me your story. Yep. Caitlin Goan wrapped that up in I love capitalism more than anybody I've ever known.

SPEAKER_03

There we go. I don't even want the answers to the other three questions. I do. You're getting it. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_04

Bob, I want to know what's the favorite feature of your own home. My favorite feature of my own home is my easy chair because I could put my feet up and read my Wall Street Journal and my Financial Times and fall asleep. You still read the paper? You got the literal paper. I'm 64 years old. I like my paper. Leave me alone.

SPEAKER_00

Crash paper full. Get off my get off my lawn, you kids. This is a lazy boy. No, it's a Thomason. Oh, dice Thomason.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. No, it's Carolina. All right, let's go. So Al and I have not talked much about customer service, but you guys clearly in the customer service business. We're kind of customer service freaks. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're the customer?

SPEAKER_04

When I call your business during opening hours, I want to talk to a real person. Very simple. Please pay attention. I want to talk to somebody. So I should probably go back to the case. You know what my name is? You know what my name is? My name is Representative. If you want to yell represent, representative. I do. That's me.

SPEAKER_02

I'm Mr. Representative. Melissa's over there high five in that one. She's up there going, I mean, I can't hit that pound. Okay, one more. You said there's one more.

SPEAKER_04

What's the last question?

SPEAKER_02

Are you ready? Yes. I want a DIY nightmare story. I want blood. I want fire. I want flooding. Only but you did. Because I've done a lot of work in my houses, and you're staring at an opening right there that I put a nail through my own foot to put in.

SPEAKER_04

So my DIY nightmare. Um my DIY nightmare would be that I decided to put my own fiberglass insulation in my own home. And um I didn't have a great big SUV. I didn't have them deliver it on a pallet. I just went out there to Home Depot and bought it like six quells at a time and put it in the back of my avenue. And so my nightmare story is, you know, I I spent about six hours vacuuming out all the fiberglass. However, my electric bills were cut in half. But that's I can tell you.

SPEAKER_02

So that's your great weekend story.

SPEAKER_04

That's I I mean that that's as bad as it gets.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, itching did you itch? Oh, hell yeah, you did. And I sniffed, I mean, as a guy who was in I actually had to go beach, I'll tell you the story. Is that as bad as it gets? Is that as bad as it gets? No, dude, we have one. Look at these hands. Emergency response. Yeah, I've had I mean, I've I put my hand, I mean, that hand has seen so many nails go through it, you can't even count it. Because that's my hand clamp.

unknown

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, but I was up in insulation, it was so bad that I actually thought I was going down, and they put me on a stress test. I had to go, they had to check my heart first. Wow. We figured out that Chris going in uh attics is not gonna happen anymore. So I had to get out of it.

SPEAKER_03

What you were sucking in the glass, or what was the deal?

SPEAKER_02

Well, I wouldn't go up there with a I wouldn't put a mask on. I'm at some wussy, man. I'm a big man. I'm a tough guy. You're a dumbass. I was a dumbass. I'm done with that. So we're out of here. Guys, if you didn't learn something, this is about starting a community bank. Go bank with a community banker. Let's find out where these guys are from. Hey, you might want to bank from these guys.

SPEAKER_03

Info info at first citybankga.com. You're gonna get some money out of Australia. I promise.

SPEAKER_00

I promise you. Lend it on. We need it. We like their money. We like their money. Their money transfer. We need the money. Because the banks got the money.

SPEAKER_02

Beach, Bob. This has been amazing. Thanks again, guys. Hey guys, if you can learn something today, that's on you. Because we uh we learned a lot today. Yes, did we not? It's been a great. We learned that Jimmy Red's at all corn. It tastes like this. It is good. So good. All right, guys. We gotta get out of here. We're gonna make it happen. Keep driving, keep mowing up that mountaintop. We gotta get home, home, home. We gotta go. Cheers, everybody. Bye.

SPEAKER_05

Yay.

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Chris Lalomia

Host
Head Shot

Alan Wyatt

Co-host