Latest / Leaders In Payments / OB Rawls, Partner at Wellesley Hills Financial | Episode 250

Transcript

OB Rawls, Partner at Wellesley Hills Financial | Episode 250 · Leaders In Payments

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast, where we talk to C-level leaders from across the payments landscape.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: We'll be discussing the products and services that impact the payment space today, as well as trends and predictions for the future of payments.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: We will also hear stories from our guests about their journeys to the top.
• 0:18
  O.B. Rawls: We don't live in the world like I grew up.
• 0:20
  O.B. Rawls: I actually have a pension plan for my days at Bank of America.
• 0:24
  O.B. Rawls: We don't have those anymore, and the concept of loyalty to companies has changed a great deal, so we need to focus on ourselves and what's good for our career, and so my advice to younger people is to learn what's out here in the world, travel, go to different countries and do different things in the field of their choice, and if it's payments, there's an explosion of activity right now, and so it's a great time to enter our industry.
• 1:01
  Greg Myers: That was Industry Icon OB Rawls, and he is my special guest on this episode episode 250 of the Leaders in Payments podcast and I'm your host, greg Myers.
• 1:10
  Greg Myers: When I launched this podcast three and a half years ago, I never thought I'd do 250 episodes and as I approached this milestone, I wanted to have on a special guest someone that was an industry great and a great storyteller.
• 1:22
  Greg Myers: So I'm honored to have OB on the show with me for this milestone episode.
• 1:26
  Greg Myers: Of course, we talk payments, but we also talk about wine, bourbon and gardening and at the end, ob provides some simple but sage advice Be nice, be helpful and be a good person.
• 1:39
  Greg Myers: We've got a fascinating episode ahead and it's one of my favorite people and payments.
• 1:43
  Greg Myers: So let's get started.
• 1:44
  Greg Myers: Hi, ob, thank you for being here and welcome to the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 1:54
  O.B. Rawls: Hey, greg, it's nice to be here.
• 1:55
  O.B. Rawls: Thanks for having me on the show.
• 1:57
  O.B. Rawls: I really appreciate it.
• 1:58
  Greg Myers: Absolutely so.
• 2:00
  Greg Myers: You were on the show back in April of 2020, so a little over three years ago and at that time you were the CEO of Global Payments Processing for Paysafe and now, per our recent announcement, you're a partner at Wellesley Hills Financial.
• 2:15
  Greg Myers: So we're going to talk about that a little bit during the show, but first I want you to tell our audience a little about yourself, but I did want to mention a direct quote, so from our last show, these were your direct words.
• 2:27
  Greg Myers: We always used to joke that we had possums for yard dogs growing up.
• 2:32
  Greg Myers: We were so poor, so why don't we start there?
• 2:36
  Greg Myers: Let's talk about you growing up on the farm in North Carolina.
• 2:39
  Greg Myers: Maybe tell us about yourself, Tell us why you left the farm and let's start the interview there.
• 2:44
  O.B. Rawls: Okay, that is a real quote.
• 2:46
  O.B. Rawls: I've been accused of saying that a few times, but yes, I did grow up on the farm in eastern North Carolina, in a town called Washington, just 90 miles east of Raleigh, on the coast of North Carolina.
• 2:58
  O.B. Rawls: We were poor.
• 2:59
  O.B. Rawls: We owned land as farmers, but all of our livelihood came from the land.
• 3:04
  O.B. Rawls: So if we had good years, we lived well.
• 3:06
  O.B. Rawls: If we had bad years, we survived, and my parents did a really good job for my sister and I, greg, in not letting us feel poor along the way.
• 3:16
  O.B. Rawls: I only realized that as I had time to look back on life and reflect.
• 3:21
  O.B. Rawls: But the farm was not where I was destined to be.
• 3:27
  O.B. Rawls: I liked living in a small town, but I wanted to do something different.
• 3:32
  O.B. Rawls: So I had an opportunity to go to work with Bank of America and I did that and I did a lot of different things in 18 years at the bank that were fun and I've got the travel I got to grow.
• 3:46
  O.B. Rawls: We were a very acquisitive bank and during that time I moved a lot and I lived in 18 years at the bank.
• 3:53
  O.B. Rawls: I lived in seven different cities and when someone said we've got this job offer for you in this city doing this.
• 4:00
  O.B. Rawls: I said okay, and my last job there was in payments.
• 4:05
  O.B. Rawls: The bank had acquired a lot of different other banks and the payment companies and I was asked to kind of run the consolidation of the different acquiring businesses.
• 4:17
  O.B. Rawls: And I did that.
• 4:18
  O.B. Rawls: And then later on we have a real estate crisis in the southeast and the bank was looking to raise funds to support the capital levels of the bank and so we created an idea to sell off the merchant services team, or to sell 50% of it, and then we created a joint venture with FISERF called United Merchant Services and we were the third largest acquired in the US at that time.
• 4:44
  O.B. Rawls: So from there I went to the UK and built the Lord's Bank joint venture for FIthServe, first general manager.
• 4:52
  O.B. Rawls: I came back to the US, left FIthServe, went to Hypercom where I worked for seven years and ran global sales and operations for Hypercom.
• 5:05
  O.B. Rawls: We sold a company to Verifone and I returned to FIthServe.
• 5:09
  O.B. Rawls: I ran the hardware business at FIthServe and then a lot of different services.
• 5:15
  O.B. Rawls: That's where you and I met.
• 5:17
  O.B. Rawls: When Frank Bisikano came in to be the CEO of the bank, my last job there was running the third-party distribution business.
• 5:26
  Greg Myers: Yeah, that's where we met.
• 5:27
  Greg Myers: I was running the partnership marketing team and obviously the ISO channel that was under you was part of my responsibility.
• 5:35
  Greg Myers: That's where we met.
• 5:37
  Greg Myers: I want to fill in some gaps there.
• 5:39
  Greg Myers: Before Bank of America, when you left the farm, and before Bank of America was there a few stops, other career things that you did there.
• 5:47
  O.B. Rawls: Yeah, there was one stop before that and I should have told that part of the story.
• 5:52
  O.B. Rawls: But I worked for the state of North Carolina as a parole officer when I got out of college and that was a lot of fun.
• 6:00
  O.B. Rawls: I used to tell people I'd been handcuffed to felons in every country, but at least on every continent in the world.
• 6:08
  O.B. Rawls: I did extradition while I worked for the state, so I would travel to different states and different countries and testify in court and get handcuffed to a felon and bring them back to Raleigh, North Carolina.
• 6:21
  O.B. Rawls: It was a fun job.
• 6:23
  O.B. Rawls: Yeah, it sounds like it how I got into banking has always amazed me how I made that transition.
• 6:29
  Greg Myers: You want to tell us how you did it.
• 6:31
  O.B. Rawls: Yes, I was looking for something different.
• 6:33
  O.B. Rawls: I enjoyed working for the state, but initiative wasn't particularly rewarded during that time and I always thought that there were things in the world that I could learn how to do better and to see.
• 6:47
  O.B. Rawls: And a friend of mine was working at the bank and he said we've got an opening over here.
• 6:52
  O.B. Rawls: You ought to come over here and help us.
• 6:55
  O.B. Rawls: And so my first job at the bank was collections.
• 6:59
  O.B. Rawls: I was actually repossessing cars and mobile homes and boats if I couldn't collect the money.
• 7:06
  O.B. Rawls: So that was my first experience at the bank and from there I got into branch management, city management, broader and deeper lending functions at the bank and eventually into the credit card world.
• 7:20
  Greg Myers: Okay, and, as they say, the rest is history right.
• 7:23
  O.B. Rawls: Yes, sir, I'm 72 years old today and there's a lot of history in the rearview mirror.
• 7:29
  Greg Myers: All right.
• 7:30
  Greg Myers: Well, I'm glad you kind of brought us through that journey and I think that'll resonate with a lot of people.
• 7:34
  Greg Myers: I mean, obviously you're a well-known icon in our industry and you're doing some new and different things these days.
• 7:40
  Greg Myers: So let's talk about one of them, and there was a recent announcement I'm sure most people saw that you're now a partner at the Wellesley Hills Financial Group.
• 7:50
  Greg Myers: So tell us what the company does.
• 7:52
  O.B. Rawls: Wellesley is a boutique investment bank.
• 7:55
  O.B. Rawls: It was founded by a gentleman named Adam Hark a few years ago as he split away from his partner and they each developed their separate companies.
• 8:05
  O.B. Rawls: It's based just outside of Boston and it's a small firm focusing in the fintech world.
• 8:13
  O.B. Rawls: I met Adam through some business deals and some relationships that we shared and we started talking and we both share a vision about how we can help our industry, help companies in the payment space.
• 8:29
  O.B. Rawls: It was.
• 8:30
  O.B. Rawls: The Hills is a fully Eistons broker dealer investment bank.
• 8:34
  O.B. Rawls: We have a full range of services we help financial entities buy companies, we help financial entities sell companies, we provide valuations of firms, we do quality of earnings statements and we also have the capabilities to raise debt in the capital markets, help issue bonds for the funding of companies.
• 8:57
  O.B. Rawls: We're a fully licensed company.
• 8:59
  O.B. Rawls: In fact, we own Wellesley Hills Securities as a subsidiary of Wellesley Hills Financial.
• 9:07
  O.B. Rawls: Our investment focus, greg, was really simple we want to help businesses in the 30 to 80 million dollar deal size, so the smaller businesses in our industry that can't be served by Wall Street because of their size, and so we really believe this is a neglected market in the payments space and we're going after three segments We'll address first, helping the adjustments in the industry, banks, isos and financial organizations with the buying and selling of their firms.
• 9:43
  O.B. Rawls: Our second focus will be on the technology-enabled fintech space, which is a lot of fun right now as we're watching the verticalization of our industry and companies being built on really highly singly focused service software and other sales to industries like dry cleaners or automobile dealers, and it's in.
• 10:09
  O.B. Rawls: Our third focus will be in the SAS enabled software space as it relates to Financial technology and fintech firms.
• 10:18
  Greg Myers: Okay, and what would you say?
• 10:20
  Greg Myers: Differentiate you guys from your competitors out there people that know me will understand this.
• 10:25
  O.B. Rawls: We're not Wall Street bankers.
• 10:26
  O.B. Rawls: I really think we're main street bankers and we identify well with the space and the targets that we've identified For our client base and for our growth.
• 10:38
  O.B. Rawls: This is a fun time in the industry we're in today and a lot of people are business owners, are growing their businesses rapidly Right now and they're creating firms that have value and they're creating wealth.
• 10:51
  O.B. Rawls: But in the segment we're focusing is very underserved and we think we can add value and help the owners of these businesses in the range that we're talking about of 30 to 80 million dollars for Financing and sales and purchases.
• 11:10
  Greg Myers: Okay, and I'm sure I mean obviously you're very well connected and have a lot of Irons in the fire, so to speak, and I'm sure had a lot of options of of kind of what was next.
• 11:19
  Greg Myers: So why did you choose Wellesley Hills financial?
• 11:22
  O.B. Rawls: You know, I never thought I would own part of an investment bank growing up, but I really like the space and I like the idea of helping friends and businesses in the fintech and its payment space creating wealth.
• 11:38
  O.B. Rawls: It's possible now and Helping guide these entities to successful transactions feels really good to me and I believe that it's something the firm is very good at this level.
• 11:51
  O.B. Rawls: We aren't well known in the industry, but we provide good service and we've done some significant Transactions.
• 11:59
  O.B. Rawls: We're building a valuable pipeline right now and hopefully for ourselves.
• 12:04
  O.B. Rawls: We're creating value and creating possible Generational wealth okay.
• 12:11
  Greg Myers: Well, let's turn and talk about Payments.
• 12:14
  Greg Myers: Where do you think the industry's headed, say, in the next three to five years?
• 12:18
  O.B. Rawls: I mentioned it in the last statement, but we're seeing extremely highly focused vertical entities developing in the market space and the industry is turning and is being driven around software services.
• 12:35
  O.B. Rawls: Let me think about ERPs, or Operating systems that help the dry cleaners run their businesses better.
• 12:43
  O.B. Rawls: Golf course management is a vertical that's being created right now.
• 12:48
  O.B. Rawls: Automobile repair shop softwares that help the owners run their businesses, pay their bills, schedule their clients and In all of these verticals, payment is becoming invisible.
• 13:02
  O.B. Rawls: Greg, it sets inside these verticals is just another module in here and it's changing the way that the industry is selling.
• 13:12
  O.B. Rawls: I think the way we used to be and the way I learned merchant services by knocking on doors and offering services to people is is Endangered right now.
• 13:23
  O.B. Rawls: I don't think, you know, go away anytime soon, but I believe if the Businesses that are selling today in a general environment to shopping centers and retail stores and knocking on doors are going to be challenged, because as Business owners change, as younger people come into the marketplace that are more comfortable with Automation and management systems to run their businesses, the way we currently sell in Isos and even through large entities and banks is going to go away.
• 14:01
  Greg Myers: So what do you think is the next kind of logical step?
• 14:03
  Greg Myers: So like, obviously this whole industry was built on selling payments, but from what you're saying and where the trends are headed, there's other products, like there's lending and issuing and all those.
• 14:13
  Greg Myers: Is there anything that jumps out at you as, like, hey, insurance is the next big thing, or lending, or or do you feel like it's whatever services that specific vertical needs?
• 14:22
  O.B. Rawls: You see, I think there's a lot of value in helping small businesses stay in business longer.
• 14:27
  O.B. Rawls: We both know small businesses really well.
• 14:30
  O.B. Rawls: There's situational buyers.
• 14:32
  O.B. Rawls: You can't walk into a small business and offer them a package of products that offer insurance, banking services, payroll acquiring, cart acceptance all of that in one package.
• 14:46
  O.B. Rawls: Small businesses don't buy that way.
• 14:47
  O.B. Rawls: But you can offer these services in situations by creating awareness and helping merchants understand that you have a payroll offering or you have a banking as a service offerings, and we're seeing these services being created in the marketplace today.
• 15:07
  O.B. Rawls: I give you the classic example of Square.
• 15:10
  O.B. Rawls: They're a financial services company, they're not a merchant acquire and they're offering a range of services to small businesses, from acquiring hardware lending depository services.
• 15:24
  O.B. Rawls: They're helping the smaller businesses with the tools they need to run their businesses better.
• 15:29
  O.B. Rawls: There's a gentleman in Miami, vlad Sadoski, that is adding banking as a service solutions to his payments.
• 15:39
  O.B. Rawls: He's offering bank accounts, payouts, card issuance and other banking services to small businesses, which is really refreshing to me.
• 15:50
  O.B. Rawls: I think that the real change we have to make in our industry is learning how to sell differently and to sell better services and protect the grounds that we have by morphing into different types of sales organizations.
• 16:06
  Greg Myers: Yeah, and you sort of mentioned this, but you and I have heard everyone in the industry has heard the death of the ISO.
• 16:12
  Greg Myers: That phrase has been around for a while, so I mean any thoughts on the ISO specific and what is the death of the ISO coming and, if so, when is it coming?
• 16:22
  O.B. Rawls: You know it won't be tomorrow, but I believe that if the organizations don't change some practices, if they don't change their product offerings to include different business services, that there are a lot of ISOs that are dead men walking, and I hate to say that in this space, but directed selling, digital selling, is beginning to take hold and you can buy about anything you want to offer your phone today in the payment space, and the new generation of merchants will do things differently and our industry has to understand that and change the way we sell and change the products that we offer.
• 17:05
  O.B. Rawls: Pricing is a commodity now.
• 17:07
  O.B. Rawls: The service is the differentiator and the offerings that, the solutions that we put in front of merchants have to change in order for us to survive, and I believe that a lot of our ISO friends and partners are very capable of changing their business models, but it's going to require work and a different mindset to get there.
• 17:33
  Greg Myers: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:34
  Greg Myers: Well, we kind of skipped over this.
• 17:36
  Greg Myers: We talked about maybe these type of short term changes.
• 17:39
  Greg Myers: Are there any bigger macro things that are like in your mind 10 years from now how things might be?
• 17:45
  Greg Myers: I mean any bigger picture macro things happening that you think might affect our industry?
• 17:51
  O.B. Rawls: Some of this may be a little controversial, but I believe there will be small processors created.
• 17:59
  O.B. Rawls: I think we'll see companies that look, act and feel like global payments and FISA and FIS that will be developed to acquire in niches.
• 18:09
  O.B. Rawls: I know a company out of Scottsdale that has and is building a direct processing relationship with Visa and they also will use Visa to process payments and on the back end and then they will settle through a banking relationship.
• 18:29
  O.B. Rawls: So that type of new age processor will focus on particular niches.
• 18:35
  O.B. Rawls: This one's going to go after the telecom market in Mexico, as an example, and there are other of these smaller entities being developed right now and actively supported by the card brands.
• 18:48
  O.B. Rawls: So I think that if we don't focus on change and we aren't able to see around corners, that we're hurting ourselves.
• 18:59
  O.B. Rawls: Square came in and took food off of our tables right, we owned this industry and we had a right to win, and we didn't see them coming and we didn't see what they were putting together as a business solutions and the financial services companies to solve the needs and provide offerings to small businesses.
• 19:19
  Greg Myers: Okay, well, let's switch gears a little bit and end our conversation talking a little bit more about you.
• 19:25
  Greg Myers: So the last time we talked, one of your major hobbies was collecting wine.
• 19:31
  Greg Myers: So are you still passionate about collecting wine?
• 19:34
  O.B. Rawls: I am, and it's making me smile as we talk about it, but I've got too much wine.
• 19:38
  O.B. Rawls: My wife told me it's not buying wine, and I did so.
• 19:43
  O.B. Rawls: Now I'm collecting bourbon and learning all about the bourbon world is my new hobby, and it's really fun discovering the collectability of brown water?
• 19:56
  Greg Myers: Huh, interesting.
• 19:56
  Greg Myers: And also I learned recently that you've taken up gardening, so that's another new passion.
• 20:02
  O.B. Rawls: Yeah, and it's been a lot of fun.
• 20:04
  O.B. Rawls: It's so rewarding, greg, when you can.
• 20:07
  O.B. Rawls: Last night I'd been traveling and I came home and so it was once for dinner.
• 20:13
  O.B. Rawls: So I went out into the garden, I got some fresh tomatoes, I got some fresh okra, I cut some broccoli and brought that in the house and cooked it for part of my dinner.
• 20:25
  O.B. Rawls: And it's just fun for me watching things grow and it's also better for me the crops, the food's better, fresher, and it's a fun passion.
• 20:35
  Greg Myers: So wine, bourbon and gardening are those the top three?
• 20:39
  O.B. Rawls: Yeah sounds kind of odd, doesn't it?
• 20:43
  Greg Myers: Well, healthy food from the garden.
• 20:45
  Greg Myers: Just don't drink too much of the bourbon right.
• 20:47
  O.B. Rawls: Yeah, you have to sip the bourbon.
• 20:49
  O.B. Rawls: Most of the bottles are unopened.
• 20:51
  O.B. Rawls: It's just building a collection.
• 20:54
  O.B. Rawls: It's fun.
• 20:55
  O.B. Rawls: It's just something different to learn.
• 20:58
  Greg Myers: Great, yeah, and you're in an area there where there's a lot.
• 21:01
  Greg Myers: You're close to Tennessee and Kentucky.
• 21:03
  Greg Myers: I think there's a lot of history there with bourbon, isn't there?
• 21:07
  Greg Myers: Well, there really is.
• 21:09
  O.B. Rawls: And I'm just a novice now I've just got so much more to learn about it.
• 21:13
  O.B. Rawls: I'm planning to take a trip with my son Bonner.
• 21:17
  O.B. Rawls: We want to tour the bourbon trail and just explore that, yeah, sounds like fun.
• 21:23
  Greg Myers: Well, I think that I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about mentorship.
• 21:27
  Greg Myers: Obviously, you have mentored many people throughout your career and payments and obviously well-known throughout the industry for relationships and building relationships.
• 21:38
  Greg Myers: So the question is really if you are asked to mentor someone that's just starting in payments so maybe they're coming out of college just starting very early on and they come to you and they say, oh, I want to build my career in payments and FinTech, that's what I'm passionate about what would you tell them they need to do to be successful?
• 21:56
  O.B. Rawls: That's a good question, I think.
• 21:58
  O.B. Rawls: First of all, I would tell them to be inquisitive, to learn as much as they can about our industry, not to fall into the trap of learning only one skill.
• 22:11
  O.B. Rawls: They should put a lot of tools in their toolbox.
• 22:14
  O.B. Rawls: Experiment If you're working for a big company, try different jobs in different organizations, take some risk in your career, change organizations Grow with the tide in the marketplace and to be experimental and to be bold in their choices.
• 22:35
  O.B. Rawls: We don't live in the world like I grew up.
• 22:37
  O.B. Rawls: Greg.
• 22:38
  O.B. Rawls: I actually have a pension plan for my days at Bank of America.
• 22:42
  O.B. Rawls: We don't have those anymore.
• 22:44
  O.B. Rawls: The concept of loyalty to companies has changed a great deal, so we need to focus on ourselves and what's good for our career.
• 22:55
  O.B. Rawls: My advice to younger people is to learn what's out here in the world, travel, go to different countries and do different things in the field of their choice.
• 23:05
  O.B. Rawls: If it's payments, there's an explosion of activity right now.
• 23:10
  O.B. Rawls: It's a great time to enter our industry.
• 23:13
  Greg Myers: I agree with you there.
• 23:14
  Greg Myers: I think it is a great time to be in payments.
• 23:17
  Greg Myers: So, obi, we've covered a lot of ground so far.
• 23:19
  Greg Myers: Is there anything else you'd like to cover before we wrap up?
• 23:22
  O.B. Rawls: Well, yes, I think that the other bit of advice that I would give young people entering the workforce or the payments workforce today is good general advice about being credible.
• 23:36
  O.B. Rawls: Do what you say you're going to do.
• 23:38
  O.B. Rawls: Earn respect to your clients and your coworkers and your peers.
• 23:42
  O.B. Rawls: Educate yourself.
• 23:44
  O.B. Rawls: Don't wait for your company to do it.
• 23:46
  O.B. Rawls: Learn how to project the future, how to look around corners and stay very focused on your career, but at the same time, greg, be nice, be helpful in your relationships with others, and there's a lot of room out here to help people.
• 24:03
  O.B. Rawls: So being helpful in a skillful way is one of the best traits someone can develop, and it applies across any job.
• 24:12
  O.B. Rawls: It also reminds me of a saying one time that I heard a manager say about one of their employees, which is they're really good at what they do, but in addition to that, she's a really good person, and so that stuck with me all the years.
• 24:30
  O.B. Rawls: So be a good person as you grow up in the business world.
• 24:34
  Greg Myers: Yeah, I think that's some great advice.
• 24:36
  Greg Myers: Well, ob, I know your time is very valuable, so I want to respect that.
• 24:40
  Greg Myers: Thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 24:42
  Greg Myers: It was great to have you back on after all these years, interesting to hear about the new stuff that you're working on and doing.
• 24:48
  Greg Myers: So, again, thank you so much for being on the show today.
• 24:50
  Greg Myers: Thanks for having me, greg.
• 24:52
  O.B. Rawls: I really appreciate it.
• 24:52
  O.B. Rawls: Have a nice weekend.
• 24:54
  Greg Myers: You too, and to all you listeners out there.
• 24:55
  Greg Myers: I thank you for your time as well, and until the next story.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us this week on the Leaders in Payments podcast.
• 25:02
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• 25:09
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