How Community Banks Can Beat Big Banks Right Now

Christian Ruppe joins the show to break down his transition from community banking into his new role as Partner and Chief Strategy Officer at ImpactFi Advisors.

We cover where banks are actually winning, what fintech founders get wrong, and how strategy, AI, and data are reshaping the industry. Christian also shares insights from launching the Perch Fund and how he evaluates fintech investments.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro + career transition
02:00 – From founder to banker to advisor
05:00 – Most underrated growth levers in banking
07:30 – Why small business is a massive opportunity
09:00 – Inside the Perch Fund
11:00 – How to evaluate fintech investments
21:20 – Biggest mistakes fintech founders make
26:05 – What content bankers actually need
27:50 – Tactical growth: fixing Google reviews
32:00 – What’s next for Christian

If you'd like to explore coming on the show, go to propagatefintech.com and submit a contact form with your thoughts.

Want to work with Propagate Fintech? Fill out a contact form at www.propagatefintech.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Well, Christian, thanks so much for being on the show, man. You're no longer a banker. Why don't you want to tell everybody what's next for you?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Yeah, yeah. So um, you know, had a loved my career as a banker, and I still I don't I feel uncomfortable saying ex banker, even though that's I guess technically still I still feel very connected to being a banker and and bank. So, but I'm I'm moving on to be a partner and chief strategy officer at Impact Fi Advisors. So taking what I did at Colony Bank, Horacon Bank, and bringing that to hopefully as many community banks as possible and just making sure we take advantage of this huge opportunity that there is to compete with the big players. That's awesome. So, what's your role going to be at Impact Fi? Yeah. So title is partner and chief strategy officer, what I'll be doing and what that means in practice is a little bit everything. So I'll be working with Zach Forbes, so I know you know well, um, to run the business, grow it, um, bring in other advisors and consultants and things, but I'll also be working with a bunch of financial institutions on digital strategy, innovation, AI strategy, data strategy, um, really helping them fill the gap between where they want to get and where they're currently at. And then Impact Fi's major, you know, kind of capabilities really rest around the contract negotiation, vendor selection, RFPs. And so using those kind of big moments in a bank's life to say, hey, let's renegotiate these contracts, but let's make sure that the products that you're picking are correct, free up some income or free up some money to tackle uh some of the things needed to fill that gap between where you're at and where you want to go.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Got it. I think it's valuable for people who aren't familiar with you to just get a sense of the pedigree of your background, which I which I think is pretty great. You want to just give us a quick breakdown on where you came from, your time as a banker, and how that's culminates into what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Yeah. Yeah, I had a very weird path into banking. I uh I I started a company in college just trying to help my friends save money. Um, it was meant to be just a saving tool, determine what you needed to save, how, and automated it for you. Um, we met with FIS, got an investment from them, and they kind of pushed us to sell to banks. And so that kind of started my path down uh, you know, technology and banking. Um, we built that, sold that company in 2020. And uh, I just realized through building that, man, banks have a huge advantage on cost of funds, trust of the customer, uh, they're in front of the customer, they have that face-to-face contact, something that the national banks and the fintechs just don't have. If they could catch up on technology, they would be able to crush anybody. And and depending on based on the customers they're targeting, they could be a better bank for those customers than anybody else. And so I went into the banking side kind of to try and prove that. Uh, I went to a bank up in up in Wisconsin, Horicon Bank. We did a lot of work up there, had a lot of success, um, got an opportunity to come and be the chief innovation officer at Colony Bank, which they were in Georgia where I live. They uh were a publicly traded company, and you know, they were they were had a lot of big goals, um, and they made it clear that they were willing to invest in technology and and do it right. Um, and they proved that right. I mean, we in the last four years, we've just been building, we we've added over a billion dollars in assets. We've added, I mean, I took over the treasury. A billion dollars in assets in four years. Yeah, we were about 2.8 billion. What some of that's from acquisition, so it's not all all uh natural growth, but still, I mean, we we converted over a bank and bought and converted a bank in six months. Um I mean that's pretty that's pretty major. Yeah. And and they're not slowing down with me leaving. I'll tell you that. They're they're gonna keep going, they're gonna keep acquiring and keep tackling organic growth as well. Um, I got the opportunity to run the treasury department, merchant services, build a credit card program um from scratch, got our own bins, all that. And we added well over a million dollars in ARR in less than a year on on those products, just from focusing on technology, focusing on product, and operationalizing a sales process using data. So um, so I loved my time in the banks. And uh, you know, unfortunately that one of the problems of being uh intentional and good at this kind of stuff is you end up getting a little bit into the operational side, which was great for me for learning, uh, but took me away from the stuff that I think I'm best at, which is really looking thing looking at the big picture, figuring out what pieces need to go into place to really get that puzzle where it needs to be for that two to three year vision for the bank. So um now with that kind of behind me, I'm gonna be trying to do that for a lot of banks, helping them figure out what that bank needs to look like in two to three years, and then um helping them find the puzzle pieces to put it in there to get that picture.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

It's gotta be the most overwhelming period from a technology perspective for bank leadership today. You know, when you hear about all the efficiency hacking that's going on right now with AI, it's so hard to tell what signal from noise and what people should be focusing on. What are some of the most underrated growth levers in banking today?

SPEAKER_00 5:31

Yeah, I mean, look, that the obvious answer is treasury, I think. I don't know if it's underlooked. Like if you Huh. Interesting. Okay. FinTechs are really, really good at making the average happy path extremely easy. We're never going to compete for the people who, I just have a W-2, I have a checking account, money comes in, I spend it. It's just a very easy, simple use case. That's not the world that we're gonna play in. We're gonna play in the world where, hey, business, you've got a complicated treasury needs, you're uh you've got cash here, you've got money moving in and out here, you've got multiple accounts with people that own different parts of the account. That's where banks can really uh succeed, I think. And that's where we can kind of build technology around it. Um yeah, I think niche banking around businesses is something that we're gonna see happen a lot, where, hey, there's this industry that has unique financial needs. Uh, how can we serve that industry and be the best possible bank for that industry? So if you get to the point where, hey, this these businesses are using us because we help them run their business better, they're not just using us because we force them to use us in order to get a loan from us. When you do that, you're gonna see a lot of organic growth continue. And I'm hearing consistently banks are really recognizing that and trying to get more into it. So that's where I think you'll start saying, I mean, yeah, that we can focus a little bit on that at Colony and some other good banks are doing things like that as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

When I think of treasury, I lump that into this world of small business. It was really a languishing vertical in the bank space because there wasn't really a lot of money associated with small business and innovation follows the money, right? And I feel like once COVID happened, there was so much momentum around supporting small business. Do you think that was a flash point that made the market go, this is the opportunity where we need to dig in?

SPEAKER_00 7:30

Yeah, I mean, I think it also is just the fact that we're struggling with individuals. I mean, you know, that there's there is a world where you kind of have to go towards the opportunity. And I think small business has just been underserved. Um, and so whenever there's something that's underserved, they need advice. I mean, that's what bankers are best at. I know there's legal things around it, but they need to be there to say, hey, look, we're here to help talk things through. They've had a bank account for a while, they know how to spend using their debit card. Sure. Or they don't know how do I set up bookkeeping? How do I, what do I tie this to? Is there a way to send this automatically to you know QuickBooks or whatever it is? It's little things like that that are obvious when you've been doing it for a while. But the amount of people that are starting businesses with zero experience, they just want someone to say, yeah, we have a way to connect it to QuickBooks. You click here or whatever it is. So um I think it's just because there there was a a gap there and community banks doing what we do best. We we helped the people that needed help in our community. Um, and it started to become clear that, hey, we can compete in this if we just simply think about what products and and what uh what capabilities we need to provide for these people.

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Yeah, I think big institutions like the super regionals kind of don't really know what to do with small business. Uh as a small business owner, it it just feels like the big guys have a real identity crisis. Like they don't really want to be there. And that's evident in the experiences. Like if they wanted to be there in the space, the experience would be great because they have the 300 engineers on staff to make whatever they want, you know, work really well. Um, so no, I think that I think that makes sense. I want to talk with you a little bit about some of the things that you guys are spinning up. The perch fund. Do you want to just give us a quick breakdown on what that is and and what's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm very excited about the perch fund. We so I I love banking technology, obviously. I, you know, I've built one, sold it. I've I advise unofficially a lot of different bank technology companies. And I advise a lot of banks on, you know, how to work with bank technology companies, things like that. Um, and over the years, we've just uh, you know, I've built up, I guess you can say, kind of a spider, you know, sense of okay, this company is poised to do really well.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

And so you can spot winners, you feel like, now from your time in the trenches.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Yeah, and I mean, even from being on the other side, like I knew when we weren't doing well. And I knew when I knew when I would have invested and wouldn't have invested in my own company based now looking back at it, uh, just because there's a there's a sense of kind of getting over certain humps. Now that I've gotten over this hump, it's gonna be a lot easier for me to do X, Y, Z. Um, and so for us, really, it's uh I found myself a lot of times being like, oh, this company is going to kill it. So let me go and introduce them to some of my investor friends, help them raise some money, get them to the next step. And most of the time I was right, you know, that they they raised their money, they they succeeded, they grew. Sometimes they sold, um, sometimes they merged, sometimes they're still just doing really well and you know making money. So we started raising money on special purpose vehicles. We've we've invested in three companies now, um, all of which I think are are gonna be explosive and and have crazy growth. And by the end of this year, we'll actually, you know, raise a fuller a full round and start going into doing actual rounds rather than SPVs just because it's easier. Um, but we're excited about it. We'll be I'll be announcing that very soon. And then um What's your investment thesis look like?

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Are you going after certain types of companies? Are you like female uh founders? Are you going like what's the strategy?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, the main strategy is just who is poised to succeed. Who do we think we can provide value to? Um the way I kind of explain it is there's a feeling that that happens around a company that is as a banker, I'm now comfortable working with this company. You know, am I gonna be, is a bank gonna be the first customer of a of a fintech? Most banks don't want to do that. Once they have that product market fit, they have multiple customers signed, they have the ability to scale. You know, there's a lot of different kinds of triggers that start kind of checking the boxes, and and once they hit enough of them, you get that feeling of, okay, I can introduce this company to almost any bank and feel comfortable that there's a chance they close that bank. Maybe it's not the right product for them at the time, or maybe banks fine, whatever. But if it's a right fit, it's gonna happen. That's not something you can say about a lot of bank technology companies because they've got to they've got to check enough boxes to where you can get them in front of the the mass majority of company or banks. Um so the companies that we've invested in, most of them have uh former founders who have built and sold fintech companies. They, you know, they've got multiple customers, they're filling a gap where banks, uh, banks have fires that they need to put out. Um and so that's kind of how we do it. We're we're not leading rounds. We're we're we're not looking for unicorns. We're looking for, hey, this company is newer. They've got they've got what they need to start selling to any bank. Um, so now let me go introduce them. I you know, I can make introductions, I can bring them in front of investors, bring them in front of banks. Um I know I personally can help grow this company um and increase the value of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Who do you who are you guys looking to bring into the fund? Anybody with 10 grand? Do you have you guys outlined kind of what the requirements look like, or is that still coming together?

SPEAKER_00 13:19

It's coming together. We have an idea of what we want to do. Well, you know, we'll we'll collect the the uh investments quarterly so it won't be like a hey, I'm gonna invest in or$100,000 and it's all gonna happen on day one. You know, we'll we'll we'll announce it probably sometime in the fall or summer. We'll raise money small around, you know, we're talking four million dollars or something over four years. Uh with the main goal, we're here to support the big funds. I I love EJF, Bank Tech, FinTop, Minden, Launchpad, Castle Creek, like I uh BTEC, all of them we've worked with at Colony, I work with personally. Our goal basically is for me to say, hey, I've got this company, they're great. Let me bring them to you. You all look at them, consider it. If you lead that round, give us a little bit of, give us a piece of it. Let us invest$250,000 in that.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Okay. Um so this is pretty accessible for people who have got some scratch that they're trying to do something with in the fintech space. The purge fund could be a good place to start.

unknown 14:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Our our goal would be hey, if you if you know banking, if you know fintechs, if you think you can provide value to fintechs or you know, things like that, well, there will be you have connections, you know people. Yeah, there will be things in place, like you know, if a fintech founder wants to invest in it, cool. We're not gonna share information with you about how the investments, you know, deep about the investments in the company, just because if if someone's competitive or something, you know, we'll have some privacy around it. But um, we want people that are involved in banks, banking technology to be able to access investments and and some of these companies that are are doing a lot of work in the bank technology space.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Can you share who some of these uh early successful investments have been?

SPEAKER_00 15:07

Yeah. Yeah, we've invested in Sway Stack, we've invested in Onsetto, um, and we've invested in Llama AI. So those are those are our three initial investments. All of them, I think, are filling a gap that that's needed.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Um that's awesome. And Harai is just a like that is a good guy to bet on. He knows everybody, everybody loves him. He's done this before. And Swaysac, for those who aren't familiar, is a is a pretty interesting product whose kind of, I guess, thesis in the market is very unique. I guess the one sentence on them is they're solving account abandonment. Yeah, and I'm which is a huge, I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

It's a huge problem. It's a yeah, it's a huge problem. I think there's even more value in in just engagement. You know, we have these digital platforms we're paying for, but no one's using them correctly. If you look at the chimes and all these fintechs, they are engaging with their customers daily. They're trying to get you in that selling. Um, I think SwayStack is positioned to really solve that. And that's a great example where Horai and Simron, both the founders, have built and sold companies. They have an interesting problem that they're solving, they've got real customers, and they're flexible. They're gonna they're gonna run into walls that they realize we're not doing well over here. Let's build onto the product here. There's something to be said about people that can pivot. So it's just one of those where are we gonna make a crazy amount of money on it? Probably not. Maybe yes, I don't know. We'll see.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Um, you know, you can you can really build a great career as an investor with lots of singles and doubles. Yeah. You know, this idea that like you're just a unicorn hunter is I don't think it's frankly like very sustainable.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yeah. And the way I look at all three of these companies is worst case scenario. I see them all as uh we'll say maybe singles, but I think they're all at least double. Worst case scenario. Yeah. All of them have a chance to be home runs, and and you know, I'm betting on people that I think can do it all. So umsetto's exciting, llama's exciting.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

I think there's Tell me, tell me about Onsetto. What's what are these guys about? I'm not super familiar with them.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah, so one of the biggest issues that I ran into when running treasury was you talk to a customer, we love you, we'd love to move over to your bank, but you know, Susan's been managing our banking for years, and she would kill us if we tried to move banks. Um, this basically says, hey, we're we're gonna take that out of out of out of the conversation. Here, we'll show you how you're gonna onboard. You plug in your old bank account information. We're gonna tell you how much money you can move right now, how much money you should leave in over the next three months as you transition. We're gonna move over your payroll automatically. We're gonna give you a list of all your ARAP, help you move them over one by one. It really is just onboarding for treasury and business customers, makes it to where you know nothing's gonna fall through the cracks. Um, and you can get them to move quickly. The easy story there is just I asked banks, have you ever signed a customer that had a big, you know, a big chunk of funds that they said they were gonna move over and it took one month, two months, three months, four months. You just keep waiting and they're still not moving money over. Every bank's experience that because it happens with almost every customer. Uh, if you could just speed that up, you know, three months, you'd be making millions more just by moving that money over quicker. Um, and that's what we've experienced with with Onsetto is hey, we sign you. Next week we're gonna set up an hour-long onboarding call, we're gonna sit down in the onsetto platform, we're gonna move over your initial money, we're gonna move over your payroll and start moving over APAR. Um, and it changes it from hey, sign in and move your stuff over when you can, to we're setting a date, we're gonna do this together, and we'll help you move it over. Um, and so that's three, four, five, six months of of uh Fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

Reduces friction with change management, you know, the classic person with their arms folded in the boardroom who's not who's not buying in, and then gets accounts under management quicker.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Yeah. Yeah, on setups. They've been growing like crazy.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

That's awesome. So you guys have made two two good bets so far.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

That's great. Three, yeah. And Llama AI is coming too. They're the latest investment, and they're just they're an AI-powered LOS. So it just uh, you know, lending and and all that is just such a painful thing when it comes to small loans, because you do more small loans than big loans, but you're probably doing the same process for the small loans as the big loans, but you're making way like rarely are they profitable. You're just doing it because you don't want to lose that customer, you want to keep them happy. Um Llama can make it to where it's it's extremely easy to do these small loans, and and they can just make it much cheaper and efficient on the operation side to do all this. So they're a great, extremely smart team as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah, so forget the idea of spending the same 24 hours of of business operating time processing a loan for a million dollars, spending the same amount of time on a$25,000 loan.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah. I mean, when we did the math at Colony and found out that like we were doing way more small loans, but the vast majority of our loans that were, you know, still out were in these big loans. So we're making way less money on these small loans, they're way more expensive, but we have to do them. So what's the solution? Make them way cheaper and easier to do. That way you're keeping everybody happy. You make those loans profitable, so you're happy to do them, and then you can go and spend most of your time on these big loans that bring the real money. So um yeah, they're a great company. They're they're uh they've been getting a lot of uh attention as well, and a lot of bigger banks are using them, and now the smaller banks are starting to realize wait a minute, this is affordable and and we can actually do this. So um great team over there.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Awesome. So, Christian, your time as a as a founder, a banker, as somebody looking at the big picture of what is going on in banking. I'd love to pick your brain on, you know, when you're meeting with founders and you're trying to tap into that spidey sense you mentioned. What are some of these early mistakes you see founders making that maybe give you the heebie jeebies from an investment perspective?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

I I'd say the number one thing is just is not understanding how banks make purchase decisions. That's that's the number one thing that can show success, is just banks don't buy cool things. They don't buy them because they're cool. Just because your product makes sense and could be profitable for the bank or could cut the cost, that's not how banks are making decisions because they can handle one, maybe two, you know, projects in a year that aren't connected. To their main business of core stuff. And so you really need to prove we are the most important thing for you to implement this year, and here's why. And the only way you can convince them of that is knowing exactly what fires they're trying to put out, because that's how they make decisions. The board is freaking out about something. The CEO is saying something, something in the industry is being talked about every single day. Pressure is what determines what the bank is going to invest in. And so unless you fully know what things they're active, what fires they're actively trying to put out, there's no way you can sell to them. I mean, we we were doing like six to ten at colony max, and we were like one of the most prolific that you could be.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

How many, how, how many different vendors live from a fintech perspective within the four walls of the average bank, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 23:10

The average bank, like if you're just talking about median, you pluck right from the middle, is a couple. I mean, and they're mostly around IT and and uh, you know, you've got your core, you've got your IT vendor, your uh Microsoft, Google, whatever it is. Um, and then they might have, you know, five to ten that are your Varathins, you know, your kind of your your blue bloods, you could say. Um, I consider fintechs really the ones that are outside of that inner circle. The vast majority of banks have none of those. And so you're trying to convince them to understand how to do due diligence. You're trying to convince them how to understand vendor management in general, and that's just a tough battle. So you can't convince, you can't go at a bank saying, hey, look, you're gonna, this is gonna be profitable. We're gonna, it's free or it's super cheap, it's really easy to implement. This for itself. Exactly. It's they do they could not care less. They care. I am getting told every single day by my CEO and by the board that whatever, our our treasury isn't moving over, our we need real-time payments, we need Zell, whatever it is that is type of mind. We have to have an AI strategy, we have to have a data strategy. That's the fire that they know they'll be able to get through. And so if they're hearing every day that we need an AI strategy, and someone comes to them and says, Hey, you're hearing this, let me explain to you that like that's how you get their attention initially. And then your goal really is what do you actually want out of there? What what what is the CEO gonna look at and say, this is exactly what I need in place? Once you figure that out and you can articulate how you fill that gap, then the conversation comes, is it gonna pay for itself? Is there ROI, that kind of stuff? Um, and then you close the deal.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Banks are a tough sell. Banks are a tough sell. And for for fintech founders, I guess, who aren't laser focused on being able to understand kind of how to make their product a priority or one that aligns with the priorities at these institutions, that is something that drives you away as an investor.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Yeah. I mean, it's it is it's hard. I mean, that's the thing is I know from being inside a bank the amount of times I talk to the fintech and I could say to them, I get it. My your product is awesome, it works, it's innovative, it's new, it solves a problem. I'll never get it through. It's just not this is not something that is a fire for us. Now, now to know about it, can I start laying some groundwork so that in a year or two it becomes a top priority and there's a fire because we've had these conversations. We've sure. But today we've never heard of this, we've never talked about it. The odds of it going through are zero.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Right. Meanwhile, that fintech company's entire sales team has turned over uh in that one to two years. It's tough. I mean, it's it is a hard, hard world to sell in. Yeah. So I want to I want to talk with you about uh content and media that bankers are are consuming today. I feel like LinkedIn is predominantly where people are spending time today. You know, personally, I feel like there's an excess of theory and a dearth of actual tactical do this and then do that, and then this is the outcome. Strategy on how to do things. That's my take on the current landscape. What do you think is missing from the content media landscape for bankers today?

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah, I I completely agree. I mean, I I post a lot on LinkedIn. I try to create things whenever I get random ideas. Um, and one thing that I the two kind of rules or things that excite me about specific posts and stuff is one, is it me? Like I I just I'm tired of LinkedIn being industry jargon and you know, just trying to get you excited about things. I just I like to be silly. I'm a I I you know, I'm my my dad's a stand-up comedian where I I grew up with your dad is a stand-up comedian? Oh my gosh. Okay, well, we're gonna have to get some more info on him. So so for me, it's just you know, I I'm not gonna make it sound pretty. I'm just gonna post it out there and sound dumb sometimes. Um, and then the second is just actionable. Like I don't uh the amount of times that I've been convinced that I need to have AI is a hundred times a day. I no one is disputing it. We get it. There's powerful AI, data's important. How do I do it? What what do I need to do? You know, what things that I can actually take action on to do it. So that's kind of the things that I try to focus on. I just now I did I released the Google review uh kind of uh what I don't even know what it's called, uh a resource on how to run a Google review contest. That's something that brought immediate return to both of the banks that I was at, was just we had low Google reviews.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Yeah, let's okay, let's talk, let's talk about that. So you I saw that post and I I loved it because it's action, it's meaningful guidance on making the bank better, which you know, the way you improve the bank is with a lot of little tweaks, right? And I thought that was high value content in a three-paragraph post on on LinkedIn. Tell us about that.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, I mean, one thing that always amazes me is just how bad community banks are reviewed on on Google. And that's because you're not gonna get people that like you that are gonna post about it unless they just love you or you know, whatever. They're that kind of person. Most people only review if they're annoyed at you. Um, and so uh anytime I meet like a new bank, I'll look them up on Google just out of interest. And most of the time they are 3.1 stars, 2.6 stars, one stars. There there are some banks that have clear strategies and they've got the 4.8, 4.9, and some of them they have one review and it's a five star. So awesome. Um, but as soon as you get a one star, then you're down to two and a half stars. So uh for me, it was just every single time I look for anything, I'm Googling it. And every single time I'm not gonna work with anybody that's three stars ever. Um and I've I've picked local banks based off of Google reviews personally. So uh it's just so easy to say, hey, let's make a plan, let's get 50 to 100 reviews on this, get our rating up to 4.8, 4.9, and then moving forward, we'll have pins, we'll have things in the lobby. So we'll get a couple of reviews a month, and we'll never have to worry about it again. Now we are the good bank, we're happy, we've got 4.9 stars. Um, and it's so easy to do it. Just run a little contest, it takes one quarter. Um, you spend a couple thousand dollars just to make it fun with your branches, give them some kind of incentive, um, give them something that they're excited to come into work for to compete. Um and both of the banks that we did it at, we we had people come into the branch afterwards and say, Well, you know, I looked you guys up and saw y'all had y'all were the highest rated bank in the city, and so I figured I'd come up with y'all. Um, and both banks, I was easily able to tie ROI with one customer. I mean, you spend a couple thousand dollars and someone moves over a hundred thousand dollar account. Well, there you go, you've paid for it. So um it's just I love I love that. The resource has rules, prize suggestions, email templates to send out to your team. Like it's uh if one bank does it, I'll be happy.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

I feel like on the review side of things, like we could do an entire podcast episode like just on how to do this because you're really in an unfair position as somebody who's available to be reviewed. Because, like you said, generally people only do reviews when they feel like they've been wronged or burned by a company. And so the timing of when you expose those review requests is critical. Like I learned that when I was at FireServe because we wanted to drive up the ratings in the App Store. And we learned that when we expose the request for review when positive things happened within the online banking experience, the reviews tended to be better. But if somebody brings up a statement with uh with a late fee on it, then you expose them to a make a review, it's not gonna be good.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

Yeah, I I think that's the cool thing with Google is you just you ask whenever they're in the branch and right in front of you, and you do it.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

So I want to just kind of wrap up here with you as we talk about your personal transition here, moving from a banker to uh fund leader to co-founder at a company, somebody who's who's doing a lot of new things here. What I guess what are you most excited about and what is what's keeping you up at night?

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Yeah, I mean, I'm excited about being able to just kind of go with the flow. I think that's the exciting thing about it is I I always I've had so many random ideas, dumb ideas, some I think are genius and no one else will ever look at. And I just I have the time and and the the really the not Zach isn't just okay with it. He wants it. You know, he said, go do whatever, create stuff, post it out. And like you said, I my goal is to just create things that people use and and help them grow their businesses. I love community banking, and I think we're in such a it's huge, important area where for years we've been getting left behind in technology. AI is the great equalizer. We've got data now, all these companies are using AI to make it easier for us. Um, how can we reposition our technology stack and just do these little things that help us be the best bank for our customers? And that looks different for every bank because our customers look different at every bank. And so um I think just having the freedom to create content, advise directly, just answer calls, invest in companies, like the flexibility is where I thrive because today one thing that's super important to me might be unimportant tomorrow, and that's okay. I'll just drop it and keep moving on. Whereas, you know, in a bank, you you gotta operate, you gotta keep things going. Everything needs a plan. There can be every it's pretty serious. Right. For me, I can, you know, the the engagements that I'm on, we we've I'll I'll be focused on in that way. And I've got the teams, but those are much smaller in scope and you know, that's smaller in terms of my total time focus. The, the, the meat of my time can be focused on what is the most important thing that I can do to move the industry forward today. Um, and that's a fun question to get get up every morning and ask myself.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

That's awesome. Well, you're very optimistic, which is like a just critical ingredient to what you are moving into, which it's new, and things that are new are uh full of uncertainty. And so I think that positive attitude will suit you very well, and I'm sure that you guys will go really far. Christian, where can people follow what you guys are doing?

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Yeah, LinkedIn is is where I spend most of my time. So connect with me on LinkedIn, follow Impact Fi Advisors on LinkedIn, um, follow the Perch Fund on LinkedIn. Um, and then anything that I'm doing, I'll post about. So that's pretty much that that is the number one way to just connect with me and um see this crazy stuff that I'm working on each day. Awesome. Thanks for coming on the show, Christian. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Hey, did you know that Propagate FinTech is also an end-to-end marketing and PR firm? If you'd like to explore working with us or coming on a podcast, reach out to us at propagatefintech.com and we can explore whatever you're working on.