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Transcript

"They Told Me I Was Throwing Away My Career" · The Stephan Hogan Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna be an entrepreneur, it has to be more than an itch.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: An entrepreneur is somebody who's just like a glutton for punishment.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: An entrepreneurial journey is a journey of suffering.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to suffer things that other people aren't willing to suffer.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: I had my envelope declining the Vanderbilt Scholarship and declining enrollment at Vanderbilt, and I had my Marine Corps officer candidate package in the other hand.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Walked across the street to the post office at the Frist Center, went up to the blue mailbox, my two envelopes, dropped them in, closed the door.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: We filed that application with the regulators, and I get a few months later, by the way, after I've done probably at that point 20 to 30 investor presentations all around Nashville, I get a letter from one of the regulatory agencies uh saying we have concerns about your experience and your age.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have a huge advisory board with people like Dave Cobb, Rusty Gaston, Kent Earls, Martha Earls, Cece Lyons, Drew Holcombe.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Cece wonderful people.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: That speaks a lot because these people are banking with Studio Bank and invested in Studio Bank and want to see it succeed.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when we had coffee that one time, we talked about banking.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I really like learned more about the banking side.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: So today I get to ask you about the non-banking Aaron Dorn.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll talk about banking all day, yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it'd be a nice refresher to let's throw banking to the side.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's throw, I mean, it's like real all those numbers and billions and stuff.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to get back to the kid who was raised by his mom and grandfather.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for the first three years, three and a half years.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I was uh born to a single mother uh who's amazing.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And um she lived with her parents uh after I was born.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my grandfather, I guess you could say, was kind of that from birth imprint uh soul level uh impact on me.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh to this day, uh, you know, he's he's passed, he's since passed, but uh to this day I still have these words in my head that I carry around, riding around in his beat up red pickup truck.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: He's a he was an appliance repair man in Charleston, South Carolina.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but he would take me out on service calls with him and just fill my head with all these great ancient wisdom lessons about what it means to be a man and uh what life's all about.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so those are still absolutely echoes in my head to this day.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell What are the top two things that come to your mind when you think of that wisdom your grandfather gave you riding around in the truck helping him out and go into those appliance repair, whatever, yeah?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, the first one that comes to mind is uh it's it sounds so simple, but when uh when you try to live it out, it's uh it requires some sacrifice.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that that is that it it takes time uh to build up trust with people, but you can lose it in an instant.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: And your word is your bond, and when you say you're gonna be there and when you say you're gonna do something, you deliver.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And over time you can build up that trust, but you can't relax in that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at some point uh that faithfulness, if you will, uh will be tested, and you can lose that trust in an instant.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's one of them.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Another is uh you know, it's Charleston, South Carolina.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's got quite a history uh that many people are aware of, a history of absolute r uh um wealth and absolute poverty, a history of racism and the historical effects of racism and slavery, and it's got a lot of it's got a lot of uh baggage that Charleston can it's an amazing city.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's an amazing city, wonderful, uh, but it does have baggage.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he would serve the richest of the rich in Charleston when their refrigerator broke, or he would serve the poorest of the poor in Charleston when their refrigerator broke.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And he treated them the same.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he would teach me about that, about why he was uh just as courteous and caring about the rich people that he was serving as he did the the poor.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and in fact for a poor person, for their refrigerator to go out, and this is uh arguably a family that's facing food insecurity.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: For their refrigerator to go out, that's a significant family event.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And often they don't have whatever it takes$200,$400 to pay right away.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so he would uh he would essentially tell folks in that circumstance, you know, pay when you can, and was just generous.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as an appliance repair man, he was not the richest of the rich either.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and my my grandmother worked as his office manager, essentially booking appointments and ordering parts and things like that.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: But he would just essentially say, pay when you can.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And he would tell me, you know, 99% of the time, people will if you're that generous with them, they will likewise uh honor that and they'll pay you back.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it may take them two years, and they may pay you, send you a dollar a month, uh, but they will pay you back.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he he would just brag about the fact that uh the folks that he needed to provide those terms to would be faithful themselves and paying paying it back.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think he said, I can count on one hand the number of folks that I've did that done that with who didn't pay me back.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: How old are you were you when he told you that it's like your teenage years, uh absolutely formative years, yes.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: This was all when I was um let's see, I moved away from Charleston, uh moved to Florida with with my family when I was thirteen, so it would have all been before the age of thirteen.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really when you're getting impacted.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I I think most of the stuff that's impacted me was around that age, 13, okay, junior high to starting high school years.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's when you're really waking up to what's going on in the world, and I now have some level of agency to to impact what's happening in the world, even on a micro level, human to human.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: When did you start thinking about money finance?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious about the the connection, because we're not we don't have to go deep into that, but I'm just curious when did that interest start for you?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it was at some point in high school there was a a massive hurricane that came through Central America called Hurricane Mitch.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was the mid-90s, maybe late 90s.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Somewhere in that time frame, I had heard about a gentleman who was so successful in business that it gave him the ability to donate millions of dollars to the cause of alleviating the suffering that was happening in Central America.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: And um learned a little bit more about this gentleman.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm failing to remember his name right now, but uh essentially he lived off of about 10% of his income and he gave 90% of it.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, uh at that time uh as a teenager, that really inspired me.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of gave me a vision for what uh an honorable business person can do and be and the impact that they can have in times of acute suffering like that, where the people just need resources right away.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so that inspired me to consider business.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think up to that point I was thinking about law or something, uh the legal field, something like that.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've always enjoyed debating.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of knew from high school that I was probably gonna try to head in that direction.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of people when it comes to um banking or money or looking at someone in your position, people would look at you and be like, man, this guy's started a bank, you know, like he did it because like he wants money.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's interesting to look at you as a person, as a human, in a position where you are having the success you've had and knowing that the lifestyle that you live is not one of, I guess, extravagance, if that's the right word.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Opulence.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Opulence.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I was reading in uh Ecclesiastes.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite books of the Bible.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's like basically you have Solomon writing at the end of his life, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he's talking about he had everything, and he says it's all futile.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the word there is uh I believe it's Hebel, it's vapor.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's not futile, as in the sense of it has no it has no value or no impact to pursue achievements or to pursue pleasure in some way.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: It the word hebel is is vapor.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: It it's there and then it's gone, you know.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh another way to think about it could be uh something you can't grasp onto.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's sort of hard to hard to get your fingers around.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, um I I served in the Marine Corps and um we we lost a Marine who's in his 20s, or young early 20s in Afghanistan.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um it was kind of a wake-up call.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you go into a place like Afghanistan and you're thinking, like, oh man, we're we're here to make a difference.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do these things.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then you just get slapped in the face with somebody in their 20s just suddenly disappearing on you.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it kind of it kind of wipes away a little bit of the idealism and helps you realize, man, this uh this life, you you can't hang on to it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's we're blessed if we if we live a long life, but at the same time, we can't count on it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so when it comes to things like uh wealth, you know, I'm tempted like everybody else is, like, oh man, I'd love to drive that car or do that thing.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but coming back from Afghanistan, the the book that drew me in and I just meditated on for probably six months to a year was Ecclesiastes and how things can just disappear on you before you know it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't take all that stuff with you.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can't you can't take your your bank account, you can't take your investment portfolio or your car or anything with you.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you read about folks that are near death, it's not the stuff that they achieved or it's the people that they got to live life with and the kind of impact that they may have had on them or wish that they would have had on them.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if you go all the way through that doorway and you really have a a belief or a sense that there's something beyond it, it sort of relativizes things to an extent uh in this life, and chief among those would probably be things like wealth.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was with both of my parents when they passed.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh all they wanted was the people that they loved that they were closest to with them when they passed.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had the honor of being connected, like holding them as they took their last breath.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: It really changes your perspective on things.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: You had the opportunity to go to Vanderbilt or join the Marine Corps and go.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: What decision did you make and why?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of those uh life moments that you probab that I'll probably never forget where I've got a crossroads, if you will, or are two different paths, and I'm literally holding those paths in my hand and trying to decide what I'm about to drop in that mailbox.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I had this great plan when I graduated, undergrad.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm gonna take the GMAT, I'm gonna work for three years and go back to grad school, try to land a job in international business or consulting or something like that.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's great plan.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then along comes this invitation to join a startup bank, um, as you said, when I was 25 years old.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decided to follow the startup bank instead of uh applying at that time uh for grad school.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Two years later, that GMAT score that I'd uh I'd worked really hard for, and and and it was a it was a good score.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: What is GMAT?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: GMAT is the admissions test for MBA master's in business administration programs.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, you want to get into a top school, you want to get scholarship money to help pay for it, having a high score on the GMAT really helps.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I had a high score.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that score was about to expire five years after I graduated.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it was use it or lose it.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, I had I had this company that I had just uh helped start.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And at the same time, this thing was going on in my soul uh about serving in the military um while we needed people.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: The the troop surge in Iraq and Afghanistan had been announced by President Bush at the time.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people who had joined the military after 9-11, by this point, this is 06, were trying to get out.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: They had deployed six, seven times many of them.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they had a program called Stop Loss going on where pe they were holding people past their contract date to keep the force preservation in the in the military.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it was just weighing on my conscience for so many reasons.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh What were some of them?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, uh one was just realizing that in my lifetime, um if our country ever needed anyone to join, that was the time.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: When you have a program like Stop Loss going on, and you've got people who have served and and served after 9-11 um and have experienced the kind of things that they experienced on so many deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, uh and they can't get out because they need to be deployed more.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that that's a as strong of a signal as uh short of a draft that our country needs people.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so I thought if I'm not gonna follow this call now, and I was 20 at that time, probably 26, uh, then I probably never would.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um there was an element of it uh as well of leadership formation.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I wanted a really transformative experience to develop as a leader.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Alex Heyke, the founder of Sound Royalties and a friend of mine, gave me a piece of advice that I'm never gonna forget.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, first decide what is the right move for your career and then figure out how to fund it.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sound Royalties helped artists, they help writers, they help producers, they help YouTubers and other people that earn royalties figure out how to access capital without having to sell their catalogs, give up ownership, or their copyrights.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Their funding is completely based on your royalty income, not your credit score.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's no personal guarantees.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Go to soundroyalties.com slash Stephan Hogan Podcast, S-T-E-P-H-A-N Hogan Podcast for a complimentary royalty analysis and free income forecasting.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Fill out the form and a royalty specialist is gonna hit you up within one business day.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or you can also click the link in the description below.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: So first decide what the right move is for your career, then figure out how to fund it.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I viewed the Marine Corps as one of the best, most elite organizations in the world to try to provide that.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um and and then candidly, I I my wife and I prayed about it a lot, and we got these miraculous uh and I don't say that lightly, we got these miraculous answers to prayer.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I'll let me let me come to you the mailbox moment real quick, just to put a wrap a bow on that.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I had all these things going on.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I I trained physically to try to get ready to compete to be a marine officer.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's a competition essentially, officer candidate school.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um because you had already gone to school, got a your bachelor's.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So you can go and enlist as an officer.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Go try out.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, try out.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so essentially I had this three-way choice to make.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do I stay at this company that I helped start?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Do I try to use this GMAT score?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or do I go off to officer candidate school and try out and hope that I make it and get selected to be an officer?
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh as my backup plan, I put in an application to Vanderbilt to um to go back to get the MBA and use that GMAT score.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, long story short, they offered a scholarship, but I needed, they had a window of time in which I needed to accept that scholarship.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it was short.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was maybe two weeks because I applied later in the cycle.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the same time, my invitation came to go to officer candidate school, and I needed to reply to that and accept my orders or not.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially, I walked to the mailbox, and not the mailbox at your street, but at the post office, the blue mailbox where you put it in that drawer, and once you close it, you're not getting it back.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Full send, as they say.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Full send.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: Full send.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had my envelope declining the Vanderbilt Scholarship and declining enrollment at Vanderbilt.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I had my Marine Corps officer candidate package on the other hand, literally walked across the street from Avenue Bank.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I walked away from the bank.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: That you were helping start.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I helped start.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were open at that time.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were we were doing business.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Walked across the street to the post office at the Frist Center, you know, the Frist Art Museum.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a post office there.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Went up to the blue mailbox, my two envelopes, dropped them in, closed the door.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, my heart was beating out of my chest when I did that.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you're right.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we my wife and I had a one-year-old at the time, Abigail, who's the one in college now.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: But as a father, you have a one-year-old.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, I know the next four years of my life, I'm not gonna see the development that I would see in my child.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, not to the same extent if I was living here.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so what but the miracles, man.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm just curious about some of the stuff because most people from the outside would look at that and be like, Aaron's kind of crazy.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: But it also points back to my if I was chasing money, I would have declined the Marine Corps and I would have stayed at the bank.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so it says a little something about you, which I think is worth just like inserting as a note that you'd uh walked away from something that you had just helped start in banking as a 25-year-old to leave and go do this with a one-year-old.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it just on paper or logically, it just does not make sense other than the mixture you're describing and the miracles.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, can you tell me a miracle that happened that was like a green light to go enlist?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, I'm trying to think of where to start because there were about three or four along the way.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um you could tell me all of those.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: The first of which I would say um was kind of a matter of timing.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the bank, I have a new bank that I'd helped start, um they paid for a gym membership to this tiny little gym at the bottom of Cummins Station here in Nashville, right across the street.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a small gym.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um I had never really worked out since high school, uh, was not much of a workout guy, um, and could not do a single pull-up to compete to be a Marine officer.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to do a physical fitness test, which includes pull-ups, which you really need to be able to do.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: I would say a minimum of 17 in a row.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Top score is 220 in a row.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, um, there's a three-mile run and and at that time doing crunches.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I needed to get in shape.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I went to this gym and talked to the the lady that was running it, and I said, Hey, don't tell any of my co-workers, because they all worked out there too.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Don't tell any of my co-workers, but I'm thinking about trying out for the Marine Corps, and I need to get in shape, and I don't know exactly where to start.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Could you help me come up with a plan and maybe train me once or twice a week?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And she like her jaw dropped.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: She said, This is the most crazy conversation.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I just right before you walked in, I just finished interviewing this guy who needs a job for just four months, five months.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: He just finished Marine Corps officer candidate school.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: But his his infantry officer school doesn't pick up for another six months, and he's got time to kill, and he just wants a job training people.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: She literally had just interviewed him before I walked in.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: He uh Clark Smith, shout out to Clark Smith.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: He he agreed to train me um for free for four or five months on everything that I would need to be able to do in Marine Corps officer candidate school.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Everything.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Including uh hadn't had me running through CrossFit.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was doing CrossFit about three or four days a week.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh by the time I tried out for the Marine Corps, I was ripping off 18 pull-ups and running three mile and twenty minutes, twenty twenty minutes and thirty seconds, I think.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um from going f from zero workout for probably at that point five to ten years to being able to do that.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't have done it without Clark Smith.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he was there during the window of time, and then he went to officer uh entry infantry officer school while I continued on and eventually tried out.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: Another one, uh, towards the end of this journey of praying about it, thinking about it, um I got to that moment where I right before I had the mailbox moment, I was uh riding in the car with a banker uh at our bank and somebody that I really trusted.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I was telling him about this decision that I had to make.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Vanderbilt joined the Marine Corps.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we're riding to go meet a client.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: We meet with that client, we're driving back.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: To the bank, um, and I was just telling him, like, I was praying this morning, man.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: I need a sign and I need it today.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: Forgive me, Lord, for questioning, but I need to I need to know that this is what I'm supposed to do.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So on the way back to the to the bank, he says, Let's swing by this bar.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a there's an owner of this bar and restaurant that I need to pick up some financial statements from.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So he swings in there, he goes inside, he's talking to this guy.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: I run out of patience after about five minutes, and I get out of the car and go walk in.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: As I'm walking up to them having a conversation, I hear him saying, Yeah, man, none of this would have been possible if I hadn't gone through the Marine Corps.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And my the my banker friend and I kind of our ears perked up and said, Say what?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Yeah, I served in the Marine Corps and during Desert Storm, it was the most formative part of my life and made me a way better businessman than I ever would have been without it.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it was just such an amazing experience.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Oh, we just started laughing at each other.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, This was the first Marine that I'd ever met in the business world in Nashville at that time.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time, I knew the type of intelligence that I wanted to go into.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of an obscure minority intelligence field called signals intelligence.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Tell me, what did you do in the Marine Corps?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think he did?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: Signals intelligence.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And he told me all about Signals Intel School and how they operated, and it was everything that I wanted to do.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he just encouraged me, he's like, Man, if you ever have the chance to serve in the military, you really need to do it.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so we just walked out, got in the car, and I had tears in my eyes, and I was just saying, Well, John, I guess, I guess I'm heading off to the Marine Corps.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I had been begging for one final just sign, and it literally happened on the drive home from that very conversation.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I there I could point you to two others.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: My wife had a we don't we're we're not um I don't say any of this very lightly.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just have to say that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm not a woo-woo kind of uh believer, but I will say um the Lord showed up really strong in this period of time and and pointed the way for my wife as well, not just for me.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because you would have to um make things clear for her.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: When I first brought it up to her, she thought she was like, what are you what are you doing?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and I had I had my um people very close to me who thought I needed to go on meds because I was losing it.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I had people at the bank who said, you know, what are you doing?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: You're throwing your career away, literally.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so but fast forward.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're mid-40s?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Today?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: How old?
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: 45.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you're a 45-year-old that is the founder of a bank that is 1.36 billion in assets.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you walked away at at 26.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so a nine a 19-year period from going into the Marines coming out at around what, 30?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh see, I was probably 31.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and Studio Bank is eight years old, so you would have been 37 when you started studio.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: See, I think that's right.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, 37.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: So in a six-year or five-year period, six-year period, whatever that math is.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Seven minus one, six.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Are you thinking post post-Marine Corps prior to the two?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you said within within a six-year period, you start a bank, and now you're at where you're at in less than a decade.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Which is very interesting when you have people that tell you you shouldn't do this, you're crazy, whatever.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: You should get on meds, and then you look at the and you're very young for being a person.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like most people that run banks are like in their 70s.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, most of them are probably a decade older than me.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of them are in their sixties.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting to see how God used your life, your situation, and just steered you in the correct directions for you to come out the man that you were supposed to be in order to do the thing that was planned to be.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and there's no doubt literally Studio Bank would not exist if I had not served in the Marine Corps.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a direct line of uh unlocking levels, if you will, um that allowed Studio Bank to exist.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: If I hadn't served in the Marine Corps, uh, I would not have been able to go to Vanderbilt for grad school on the scholarship that I did that allowed me to feed my family for two years while I went to grad school full-time in order to start a company while I was there.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: The Marine Corps, serving in the Marine Corps financially made that possible, but also just the experience and my application uh made that possible.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then if I weren't at Vanderbilt, I actually left Avenue Bank before they sold.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if I weren't at Vanderbilt, I wouldn't have been a free agent, so to speak, to be able to work on the business plan of Studio Bank while I was there.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Ross Powell What I've heard is starting a bank is one of the hardest things in the world in terms of if I'm gonna start a company or I'm gonna start a business, just the idea of like I'm gonna start a bank.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: These days that's true.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it you know, in the in the past, uh it was a bit easier uh prior to the financial crisis, it became a lot harder after that.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it is but for context, if my research is correct, between 2011 and 2018, there was only five de novo banks started in the the entire United States.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: De novo is a Latin term that means from scratch.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what I often call it is a startup on steroids.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: To do a de novo bank is a startup, like any other startup, um, in the sense that nothing exists but an idea, and you have to convince enough people, customers, investors, whatever, to employees to help make it exist.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it it's a startup like any other.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's also highly regulated.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you have That's what I was thinking about.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: We wrote risk management and compliance policies that literally would fill up an entire boardroom table full of three-ring binders if and we did print them all out.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had to print them all out and send them to three different regulatory agencies.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: So to start a bank, especially in a place like Nashville, you need, I think, a minimum of$35 million in capital.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we started with$50 between our seed capital and our main round.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an enormous amount of capital that you have to raise.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you're stopping you there because you have rounds of funding.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to tie this back into the person that's listening that could be anyone from a employee to an entrepreneur to they're a musician, and that means they're their own business, or a songwriter, or someone that's in the industry, or a builder, or a creator.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So what you're doing to get 50 million bucks is this is a relationship town, a relationship business that you're in.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about knowing how to do it, but more importantly, you're selling yourself and your vision to people.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to how you learn to sell?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like uh you go back to grandpa, and grandpa says, Your word is your word.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly it.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: I that was my first, you could call it sales lesson.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm trying to think if I've ever actually been through sales training.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I I don't know that I have.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um to me, you know, selling myself was all it was also selling a vision.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was also selling a team.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Not just me, but a team.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: It it's not as simple as, you know, pick these one one through five things because every circumstance is different when it comes to selling yourself or selling a vision.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Every circumstance is different.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: You have to assess the circumstance you're in, identify what are the weaknesses in your pitch, and address those weaknesses before you ever start pitching it widely.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked about this on my podcast a little bit, but can you just break down a SWAT for people?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because basically I think that's probably like when you speak weaknesses, I immediately think SWAT.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, SWAT.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: So strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, SWAT analysis.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a basic uh rubric for you can call it strategic planning and business and whatnot.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's I do think there um are weaknesses to the SWAT framework, I'll uh which we probably don't have time to get all into, but but it is a it is a basic way to start framing your thoughts, is what I would say.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: To start framing your thoughts.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that is it's just assessing uh in whatever it is that you're trying to do, what are those strengths and weaknesses?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, for example, if I'm trying to raise$50 million worth of capital to start a bank, I'm gonna assess strengths.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: What why would somebody want to invest in this?
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Can I take it and and go to a linear, different parallel business structure?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: We hang on, let me just finish and say weaknesses would be why would somebody not want to invest in this?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what you're addressing before you ever start going to pitch somebody on anything.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a certain amount of when you run a SWAT, did you do it by yourself or with other people?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: I actually didn't run a SWAT.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It was more intuitive than the let's say you're trying to make it in the music business.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the parallels like are kind of similar, like from even though you're uh starting a bank, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: So what was your strength starting?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one strength would be that I I had had an experience with starting a bank previously.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: So strengths are often leveraging resources that you may have, and those resources may simply be experiences.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh could be could be relationships.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Relationships.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I guess it could be capital, but I will tell you, starting the bank, I did not have capital.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: I had just finished two years of grad school feeding my family basically on beans and rice for, you know, uh as a as a grad student.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I didn't have a ton of capital to put into the bank.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was but it for some people, if they've had an exit, they've had some success, they've got a rich uncle or something like that.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they might have capital.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: But but since you weren't at the bank, by the way, you didn't ha have shares in the exit?
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I did.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: I still had I did I did still have shares.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you got a little something out of that first bank exit, even though you're in school.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that meant Oh, I spent it feeding my family in grad school.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that got you through grad school.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It helped.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: It helped, yeah.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't make you rich.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it but it helped.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that would be a misconception.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, it people might have.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um but strengths for me were the experiences that I had, which included the Marine Corps experience, but also the fact that I had relevant, direct relevant experience in starting something before.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I was 25 years old.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was not the founder, I was not the co-founder.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was one of the young lads that was brought in to write a bunch of uh policies, write the application, work on a financial forecast, things like that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I worked on marketing during the startup as well, but uh but relationships as well.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I had relationships in banking.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I knew that there were a certain group of people that I knew very well that I would want to start a company with, and they had relevant experience and I believed in them.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I invited them to uh be a part of this.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started getting some yeses from people, then I could start pitching this to other people outside of that circle saying, Hey, look at this team uh that we're assembling, and that this team has a lot of credibility, not just me.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's strengths, that's weaknesses.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: 36 years old.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: 36 year old.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to get the kids.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've got to get the FDIC who j who had dealt with the financial crisis uh what at that point, just eight years prior.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got to I've got I need them to approve a 36-year-old CEO.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to that collapse, I believe there was I forget the years, but it was like 2,000 uh de Nova banks started in that period.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: About a decade before that, yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: A decade before that.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: 300 per year across the country up to leading up to that point.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then after that, they just tightened everything to the point where there's only at the time, what, four?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think there were uh before we started, there were only four that had been started, and they were very niche small towns, like one was an Amish, like a bank for Amish people, and I believe it's like Burden Hand, Pennsylvania or something like that.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, like really niche businesses.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you're in Nashville and you had been in Nashville for some time.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh aside from that stint in the Marine Board.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're 36 and you want to go up against the FDIC to be a CEO of a bank.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a weakness.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like this huge mountain to climb that I think everybody, if you're watching you see me looking at you, uh experiences if they're chasing something that's a dream.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of nine to five people that are like really happy with you know working their nine to five job, and that brings them joy and they love it, and it's security, and it's certainty, and it's what and they have their, you know, they can leave work at work and go home and be with their families.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a great luxury.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Great, it's a luxury.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then there's the people that have the entrepreneurial itch where they have to be a builder and do the thing for themselves.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: I see that in musicians and the creatives and the entrepreneurs and people that are in this town, yeah, frankly.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you just said a couple things I gotta jump in on.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: One, you you said a dream.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: I do think it's important to have a dream for sure.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: I would reframe that to say if you're going into entrepreneurship, it needs to be more like a mission.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Expound upon that.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not just a dream.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and there was something else that you just said as well.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know what I said.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember what it was.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially it had something something to do with uh, oh, you said the entrepreneurial itch.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, it has to be more than an itch.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: An entrepreneur is somebody who's just like a glutton for punishment.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: But why are they willing to take the punishment?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: What is it?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sense of purpose or or calling or drive or uh a definition of success that they maybe even haven't articulated to themselves that they're trying to fulfill whatever vague notion of that they may have.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh an entrepreneurial journey is a journey of suffering.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be able to suffer things that other people aren't willing to suffer.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how much pain are you willing to endure?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that's who wins.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it will be tested over and over again.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and this is uh this is again uh one of those factors that had me interested in the Marine Corps is the the development of not just leadership, that was a big part of it, but also fortitude and you know uh the ability to suffer through, as we would call it, the suck.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Embrace the suck.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which we would joke about, but it's actually a there's a truth to every joke, you know.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so anyway, sorry, you just triggered a couple things when you said things like a story dream turns into mission, which is interesting.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: It has to, or it won't come it won't come to pass.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you look at the you know, you you talk about music and entertainment, you look at the ones who have made it, who have fulfilled the dream.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: If you actually listen to an interview or something like this where you can really dive into the depths, not just you know a fake e-weekly type, you know, type interview.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: You dive into the depths, you start to appreciate like they sacrificed a lot to get to where they are.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and they have to be good at far more than artistry to get there.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: So a dream is important.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a dream, but it is just the the basic raw ingredient.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have everything else to make that dream come true, and that is uh much more of a sense of purpose and mission true willing to sacrifice for.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: The word country politicin comes from a real era in country music.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: When Nashville took country music and made it elegant, strings, background vocals, orchestra.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was country music with polish.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: Think Patsy Klein, Glenn Campbell, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charlie Pride, songs that still had the ache and honesty of country, but dressed up with style.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that is exactly what this hotel feels like.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_00: The kind of place where every detail's been thought through.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: The scent when you walk in, the music, the clothes they carry, the textures, the rooms, the coffee cups, the way everything feels curated without feeling fake.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you feel the history immediately, but unlike staying right in the middle of Broadway, it feels tucked away, it feels calm, it feels like you found something.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's honestly why I love it.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's where I go when I want to get away, think, slow down, have a restful time without technology.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're ready, the Ryman and Broadway are about a four-minute walk.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: The CountryPolitan Hotel, stay in the story.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about um how much pain you've endured to get to where you're at, would you go back and do it again had you known it was going to be as hard as it was?
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: No doubt.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now it was harder than I thought it would be.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it does that's it's not enough to make me regret doing it or and I would do it, I would still do it.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: I probably would have a little bit more of a calmer head about it.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I think though that that's that's part of what to interrupt, let's go into a little bit of that.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what I was saying, I think, before we started.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like people see the success, but they don't see what got you to the success.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Can you take us to some of the embracing the suck moments where it was really hard, difficult, where you hit a wall and you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna get through this wall because I can't get over it.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I never I never had that moment where I said I can't get over it.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: That would have meant quitting.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and so the the mentality needs to be more of like, okay, here's a wall.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to get over it, but I'm gonna go, I'm gonna figure it out.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go talk to as many people as I can, I'm gonna uh pull as many resources as I can or in my mind I I have a pickaxe and I'm breaking through the wall instead of going to the city.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it depends on the circumstance.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like I can think of multiple examples.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the first is, you know, when you're trying to raise that much capital, and we were, for a variety of reasons, trying to raise it fast.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the investment bank that was gonna help us raise that capital that had flown us up to New York and, you know, spent a whole day with us and leading us down the primrose path that they were gonna represent us and raising some institutional capital.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: I bet that felt good.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it did until they said we're not gonna do it.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: We're right on the cusp of filing our application, and that investment bank says, Oh, we have some conflicts.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're raising capital for another bank that you're competitive with right now, and we're not gonna we can't represent you in that.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: So then I had to scramble and and find someone else really quickly uh to help us raise that capital.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it turns out that they didn't end up needing to raise as much as I thought because we raised it on our own locally a lot more than we thought we would.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but nonetheless, that was one of those moments where it's like, oh my gosh, this is I'm literally about to file this application.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you're you're one of the biggest pieces I've been counting on is now not happening.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so that drops out from under you, just yeah.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you're like, you get a big no.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: How many other investment bankers can I get in front of in the next two weeks?
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, because like everybody in every industry that does anything entrepreneurial has to love being told no, because I feel like that's just what we're told all the time is no.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get offended by it, I'm so used to being told no that it doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't hurt my feelings.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: You get like invisible, it's like impervious to the word no.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um another moment I I should probably share.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mentioned earlier uh you know, the SWOT analysis, the strengths and weaknesses, and one of the weaknesses being my age, I mitigated that as much as I could by having.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Having as many experienced people, meaning 20 to 30 years in banking around me, on the board, on our executive team, things like that.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: We file that application with the regulators, and I get a few months later, by the way, after I've done probably at that point 20 to 30 investor presentations all around Nashville, I get a letter from the F well from one of the regulatory agencies saying we have concerns about your experience and your age and uh would like, you know, like we think that's gonna be an obstacle.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: I got that letter.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm sitting there.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Did you feel like you were gonna get that letter?
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: We uh let's just say we did as much as we could prior to ever filing the application to mitigate that risk with the very people who were gonna be considering the application.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because you knew that that was they gave us confidence until they didn't.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I stayed up until I stayed up until probably 12, 12:30 at night, one night, what the the night that I got that.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is after doing two investor presentations that same day, hour and a half presentations.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm up till past midnight, writing a response letter, equating my experience as an intelligence officer, intelligence field, which is also highly regulated, uh equating my experience as an intelligence officer in the military and the transferable skills that exist there and how that relates to my ability to be the CEO of a bank, combined with my experience.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I even responded in some forceful language saying um it's uh offensive to be told that my ro my experience in the military is not relevant and to not factor that into this consideration.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um and anyway, uh that's the kind of thing where you just respond, you respond forcefully, you are too.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you responded the day you got the letter.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: So letter Well, it took a couple days to um to edit that midnight.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I was gonna say is you had to be a little pissed off in that first letter.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely so you probably had to come back and like be a little softer in your time.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: My attorney helped shape the language a little bit more, but um but nonetheless it was still forceful.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um we were uh by that point, I think we'd probably raise 25, 20, 25 million locally.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and part of the response was, hey, you know, you if you see it this way, just so you know, there's a board of directors full of people with banking experience.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: There's executives, there's 20 to 25 million dollars worth of investors who believe that I'm capable of doing this.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And they see the relevance of my prior experience, even if it wasn't in banking for four years.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even still with that response, uh, that kept us in the game, that kept us in the with your letters that you sent as a rebuttal to them saying we're concerned.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: But you send that in.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Then why even then uh when it came down to approve or not approve, there were still some conditions that they wanted us to put in place to further mitigate that, which were turned out to not be a problem, uh, but nonetheless required us to uh jump through a couple of hoops.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: So not not big hoops, but uh it was still a thing towards the end, but I apparently had done enough to overcome it.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: How many investor pitches do you think you've done?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: I probably did 50 or more originally.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've probably done 10 to 15 in each round we've done since then.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: We've done two rounds and then we did a debt raise, so uh it's probably uh upwards of ninety.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: And going back to Avenue Bank, I didn't really do any of those pitches, but um from pitch one to pitch ninety, how much have you improved?
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think I've probably improved at being more efficient in my like choosing what details to dive into or not dive into.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was effective from the beginning.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think public speaking has been a strength of mine since I was in high school, I think.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh part of getting better at some point becomes saying less, but more powerfully.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think I've probably improved in that respect.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but say that again.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Part of improving as a public speaker or as somebody who's pitching something is to an extent, it's saying less, but saying it more powerfully.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Can you give me an example?
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I could walk you through the history of bank multiples as a multiple of book value or a multiple of earnings per share, and I could walk you through the history of how that moves cyclically over time, or I could just say to you, look, the valuations of bank changes with the economy.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: And there will be times where we might be worth a lot and times that we might be worth less, but in the end, your your investment is going to be worth a lot more.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: You see, yeah.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: See what I'm saying?
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: I can geek out on the history of bank multiples and how they move cyclically and all that stuff, but to the to an investor, what probably means more is me looking them in the eye and saying, like, hey, I can't control how much banks are worth at any point in time, but I can control the performance that we generate and that that will be more valuable than what you invest over time.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: You see what it see what I mean?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I would say probably in my first few pitches uh for Studio Bank, I I probably got in the weeds on some things that I probably wouldn't get in the weeds in now.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: But obviously it was effective enough to raise a lot of capital.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, question like fast forwarding.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, this is some of the stuff, those are the the building uh years of just getting to the point where you can start the bank.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: What was the secret sauce of being able to be one of five de novo banks that opened and you're now at$1.36 billion in assets in eight years?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: The team.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just it it sounds so cliche, but I'm only one person.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's not me.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's the team that we were able to assemble.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and by team, it's not just me and the executive officers.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just, you know, from the very beginning, it was me and a gentleman named Harry Allen.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: We were kind of working in the dark behind the scenes, nobody knew what we were working on.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Harry and I were secretly recruiting people, and you know, one by one, people started saying yes, joining.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: And every time somebody joined and said yes, it lent it lent a little bit more belief and credibility and spoke something to others about hey, this is this is coalescing and coming together.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, especially a bank, I mentioned it being a startup on steroids.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many aspects, so there's multiple business models.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have a diverse, a diverse team.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's got to wear five to ten hats at a time.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you need uh what I call corporate athletes, you know, people who can play multi-sports, if you will.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we never would have been able to pull it off if we didn't have people with that drive, sense of purpose, sense of excellence.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: What developed your uh eye for talent?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's general, there's general traits.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and these are actually reflected in our the values that we espouse as a company.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the first word is that comes to mind is honor, like a sense of like good, solid character, somebody holds themselves accountable to high standards, you know what I'm saying?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: Honor.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a second word is somebody that gets along with other people.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's camaraderie.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the word we use for it.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: People who are gonna be good teammates, uh good communicators, build uh have somebody who's fun to work with, you know, that you want to be around, because you know, it's it's back to what we were talking about with Ecclesiastes.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna spend 40 to, in some cases, 80 hours a week working with people, that's a big part of your life that you're dedicating to something, you want to spend it with people you love spending it with.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was one of the biggest drivers of selecting who I wanted to be a part of the founding team of Studio was who do I want to just be in the trenches with for a long time?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so camaraderies is another one.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then um excellence.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's we're trying to do something really hard.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: We won't have the luxury of clocking in at eight, clocking out at five all the time.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm looking for people who uh are inspired by, driven by a higher than average standard of excellence in the work that they do.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's all kinds of implications that come with that.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's knowing what that high standard looks like, it's continuous commitment to continuous improvement, continuous learning.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you have to sacrifice your ego to some extent because you got to be willing to find out you're wrong at a certain thing and and still pursue excellence.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot behind that.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: So um what I'm looking for, and and we try to make sure that we're living this out in the day-to-day reality of Studio Bank is honor and camaraderie and excellence in what we're doing.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you take those things and you can apply them to anything.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um honor, excellence, camaraderie.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's there's more, uh, of course.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can break those down into 25 subcategories and all these all these things.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and when you're interviewing someone or when you're considering whether you should hire hire someone, you you're probably looking at all those subtleties, but those that's how I would boil it down to those three big things.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like you can tell when you sit down with someone?
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can you sniff it out?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: Often, yes.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think um what I know, it's not what I think, it's what I know after running a business for eight years and um constantly hiring people and making mistakes at some point because nobody's perfect in hiring as well.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times you don't know until you hire them.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can never really know what you're getting until they're actually working there day to day.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: And after about a month, you probably have a pretty good idea.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you go by the higher slow, fire fast model?
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would I probably wouldn't state it that way.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yes to the higher slow in most cases, unless there's somebody that you already know from prior experience.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: Fire fast.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know that I go, I uh take a little more subtle approach to that.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hold the mirror up to us to say, did we give this person the resources that they need to succeed?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Is it on us?
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is it on them?
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and I do believe in working through a process of trying to coach, but not too long of a process, right?
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because someone's gonna respond.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: If someone's gonna respond positively to to strong coaching, they're gonna respond right away.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: It won't be a delayed response.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think Fire Fast is a little too um, it's a little too simplified for my taste.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I would say deliberately and efficiently and expediently, yes.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the internal voice in your head.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: The internal voice is uh it's more of an antenna for and being self-aware of that antenna.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: And am I neglecting one or the other work, family, faith.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I mean?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's more of a sense of an antenna and being self-aware of am I where am I where might I be being neglectful?
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a voice that is prioritizing, you know, it's the classic, hey, I never missed a baseball game, or uh, I never I never missed a ballet performance for for my kids, you know.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I also when it comes to work-life balance, especially for an entrepreneur, we have to recognize that there are seasons of life, you know, if you're start just starting a business and that business either exists or doesn't exist, depending on whether you spend 12 to 16 hours a day working for a period of two months, three months, whatever the case may be, that's just the season you're in.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and you do the best you can with balancing that out, not missing a ballet performance or whatnot.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there are other seasons where you might be able to not do that.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to have the self-awareness to realize, okay, this is a season of time where I need to just delegate a bunch of stuff to other people so that I can have my own balance.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then maybe you're you know working 11 hours a day instead of 15 or what.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: You see what I mean?
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's seasons uh to that.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing, um during the startup process of Studio Bank, I was working generally, I would say 18 to 20 hours a day for a period of time.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um capital raising, regulatory application stuff, recruiting, all of that was just at peak at three to four month period of time where I was just truly burning the midnight oil and waking up super early.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um anyway, during that time, I was very intentional about um either Saturday or Sunday being a Sabbath and just being totally present to my family for the daylight hours of one day of the weekend.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that was massive for me to to just reset, not burn out, have the quality time with my family.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um did you ever burn out?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't burn out as in a flame out, but I did definitely had periods of time where I could tell I was not as sharp, I was um I was at risk of um lethargy, you know, like just like uh this sucks.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't uh you know, you gotta drag yourself out of bed.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was again having that antenna of self-awareness and realizing, okay, I need to take this weekend off.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: We we need to go, I need to go hiking at Radner Lake or something like that.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Look at some birds.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm a bird nerd.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, something like that to kind of get yourself out of your own head and stop licking your wounds and remember that life goes on and put things in perspective and rest, sleep.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Back to kind of my original question and the ecclesiastes thing.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that you don't want to like Studio Bank for you and we can all think about this.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think about the podcast for me as uh something that will uh hopefully I don't know what it'll do.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's IP, you know, but like in the future, I don't know where it'll go, what it'll be.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting God with it, and that's just all I can do.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you and studio, it's kind of something that you want to do long term.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like you don't want to build a bank and sell it to somebody, you want to keep it and keep keep it going and have it be a legacy, correct?
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's the dream.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we have to earn that.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is what I always try to point out to people.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_01: We've got 550, 600 investors.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a there's real math behind, you know, there's always somebody looking to buy a bank in Nashville, right?
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we've gotta uh we've got to earn that independence through our performance.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we're not just wishy wash or uh I don't know, I don't throw that around loosey-goosey saying, like, oh yeah, we want to be independent forever.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: We do want to be independent forever, but that comes with uh an expectation.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's your vision, right?
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's independent forever.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which is cool.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's cool at least, because I think there's a lot of people that would just be attracted again by the idea of an exit.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you could just retire and go.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: But you you know what I'm saying?
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're in it for uh trying to get a payday, if you're if you're in it for some money, then yeah, that's that's and that was actually a model for de novo banks in the past, uh, was just grow it for five years and sell it.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, people people did that there were some this is prior to the financial crisis mostly, but there were CEOs that did it three times, four times in Nashville.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: But like long term, man, like just thinking long term for the bank and for you and for what you see in the future, um what is your goal in all of it?
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh back to me saying you're not money motivated just because of the conversations I've had and our conversation today.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean you're in the money business, but you're really in the people business.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think everybody has to have a vision.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it it's so important to have a vision.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so for you, what is your vision?
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I also want to dovetail back to the mission because I think the mission and the vision are that.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: So what is that?
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for me personally, uh it it does go back to that moment in high school watching suffering happening in Honduras and Guatemala and Belize and um and seeing an example of someone who had been really successful at uh creating value for other people.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what a business is, right?
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's gonna pay you to do what you do unless you're creating some value for them, right?
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so he had done something really valuable, he'd been rewarded for that value creation and was pouring it back into helping others, alleviating suffering, um, or creating a a better reality than would otherwise exist.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: And um that stuck with me.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's been reinforced over the years, um, in college a few times with pastors and friends that that they see that kind of calling in me and and and that resonates with with me.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so whatever I'm kind of open-minded what that looks like and how that plays out.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have a number in mind or something like that, but um I do I do believe that I'm called to make a big impact and to do that with generosity.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um whether that's with two dollars or two hundred million dollars, I I don't know.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's that's sort of up to the Lord and what what he might have in store for me.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: But in the meantime, I'm just gonna steward the gifts I've been given, steward the um the hard work that a lot of people, including myself, have put into um making that a reality.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh yeah, the the the that and you know, I want to be uh the kind of grandfather, Lord willing, for my grandkids one day that my grandfather was for me.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want to be the kind of dad for my kids that my dad was for me.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, so that's just as much of a calling as, you know, some big grand vision of being super generous with wealth, you know?
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I do think wealth, you know, we talk about it often in terms of finance, and of course, as a bank, you would think that that I I think wealth is so much more than just money, too.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's health and and relationships and the you know, the meaning of life and and finding joy in the midst of what is uh obviously a a broken and tough world to live in, and not just finding the joy, but actually making joy happen.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_01: That that's the the mission, you know.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's part of what makes me a believer in in Christ is I mean he entered into a very broken world and lived that broken life.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_01: But the sense of and the humility of that but the sense of joy and meaning and purpose and uh I I was telling my kids recently, it's like it's like you're every day you're on a mission trip somewhere, but you just happen to be where you are.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so whether that's money or love, relationships, or going out and watching birds and admiring you know the beauty and complexity of creation or whatever the case may be, that's all wealth.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: I all women see things on Instagram these days that like the new wealthy is like those things you just listed.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh a lot of people associate wealth with some conception of freedom.
• 1:05:51
  unknown: You know?
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we all want.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: When we think wealth, I think everybody thinks like financial freedom.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that it's uh that's legitimate.
• 1:05:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's an aspect.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of freedom.
• 1:06:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have resources, you are restricted, for sure.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: At the same time, pursuing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and then you'll have the kind of freedom you dream of.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: There's so much more going on in you besides that.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think uh without getting too philosophical, there's there's these transcendent transcendental aims that we all aim for.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_01: Everything that we want in life in some way touches these transcendentals, and it's the good, the true, and the beautiful.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I I do believe that.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that goes all the way back to, I don't know if it's Aristotle or Plato, or it's like ancient Greek, but I do think those transcendentals are real.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: Any any good, anything that we chase after is it's in some way it's touching the good, the true, and the beautiful.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_01: And now it may be perverted in some way, and you know, our ego may sort of take it to the nth degree, which is unhealthy.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: But we talked, we talked about Ecclesiastes, we talked about how life can be really short.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_01: The author of Ecclesiastes essentially says that it's the gift of God for man to be able to enjoy his work and to be able to eat, drink, and be merry.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people use that eat, drink, and be merry as an excuse to go, like you know, go out, go be a bohemian.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not that's not what Ecclesiastes is.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you read it in context, that's not what it's saying.
• 1:07:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's saying that it that every man or woman toils, every man or woman is gonna face suffering, every man or woman is gonna seek after some pleasures that don't ultimately fulfill.
• 1:07:32
  SPEAKER_01: But when you find satisfaction in your work and your family, in your just your daily bread, that's the gift of God.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's a gift of God in your life to be able to appreciate those things, enjoy them, and to be able to seek those, what I would call the good, the true, and the beautiful, right?
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's that's a gift of God to be able to have that.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so often that gift is sitting there waiting for us if we would just let go of some other things that the ego drives us towards and perverts, I think, those really good gifts that are there, you know?
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and that that's the shame in certain types of poverty, whether it's financial poverty or otherwise, is um is it that's where uh people are less free, you know?
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think even wealth, massive wealth, can also make people less free.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_01: And in the my in my my definition of freedom that I'm talking about.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um man, Aaron, I could talk to you for a long time.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I've really I've really appreciated your candid nature today and your willingness to be open and honest and thank you share some of the stuff that the being told knows and the God things.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think it resonates with me.
• 1:09:01
  SPEAKER_00: I speak for myself because so often we try to control the outcome or want to control the outcome, and God's got a plan that we don't see, and I think it's one way, and it may very well not be one way.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: I never knew I'd have a podcast.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_01: I never knew I'd face a pandemic and a rate shock and an inverted yield curve, all the things that throw off a bank's progress.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought we'd face any of that.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you started during that.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right before it, two years or a year and a half before.
• 1:09:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was all during your building.
• 1:09:34
  unknown: Yes.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: That was all during all that stuff.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, yeah.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you didn't see it, we don't know, but also it's gonna make you better at what you do because of it.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because we grow in the hard times, man.
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: So my my last question for you is what do you feel like God's teaching you right now in terms of something that you could give as a piece of advice to me and to people listening?
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Realizing that every day is an opportunity to be on a mission trip.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I say that because I went to, I mentioned I went to Honduras a few times on those missions, alleviating physical suffering or alleviating physical challenges, things like that.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when you go on a mission trip like that, you get this kind of uh, it's this sense of purpose, a sense of generosity.
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_01: You you recognize that you're gonna give something of yourself, but you're you view it as a little bit of an adventure as well.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're a little nicer to a stranger when you're on a mission trip, you know, even if they're annoying you, or uh it's just realizing that, you know, in your day-to-day life, driving around in Nashville traffic or something, or in the business world, somebody's doing something wrong, or there's all these opportunities where you know how you how you respond, it's it's just recognizing, flexing that muscle of treating that as an opportunity to take something broken and try to make it either fixed or beautiful in its broken state.
• 1:11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we have that ability.
• 1:11:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is an emulation of Christ and what he did in his time in this world.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh why wouldn't I live every day with that same spirit that I have or had when I was on a mission trip somewhere else?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Just living a little lighter, sharing an encouraging word.
• 1:11:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably the most uh practical way that uh God's working on that muscle in me is um I'm naturally, I think, or I was I don't know if it's nature or nurture, but I'm I'm slow to speak praise, even if I feel it and think it.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm shy for some reason about saying really positive things sometimes.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I'm trying to get a little bit So your love language is not words of affirmation.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, probably not.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when I say it, I mean it really deeply.
• 1:12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to get a little bit more loose and just offering praise of what I'm actually thinking and feeling, but just not being shy about speaking it out loud, and that's one way, because it's one way to feel like I'm on a mission trip somewhere else, you know, and in which case I would be super friendly and super, you know, yeah, loose, much more loose um in that.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that that's probably that's probably the area that's that's fresh right now, um, and I'm trying to get better at.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're a light.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Aaron Dorn.
• 1:12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the being here.
• 1:12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um really appreciate it.
• 1:12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the support that you guys have given our podcast to ever since uh Haley and I sat down with Ron and Mary and Ethan, and we had lunch.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was just like we hit it off from the game.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's a blessing, it's a blessing for us.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh yeah, your team is amazing, man.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like truly.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think so too.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and so you've the the people you've picked and what what Ethan, and back to Ethan, because I talked to him weekly, has said about you and the conversations he gets to have with you.
• 1:13:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know you're having a huge impact on him.
• 1:13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really cool.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I appreciate you, man.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: And likewise, guys, I hope this episode brought you value.
• 1:13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Please hit that little subscribe button wherever it is, where whatever platform you're on, leave a review if you made it this far in the podcast.
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And over half of you aren't subscribed, so it really helps to show it's your free gift to us.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: This week be the light for somebody.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: As Aaron just said, and you don't have to believe what we believe necessarily, you don't have to be a Christian to do something nice for somebody, but I think this world is in a place where we all, no matter what we believe, can love each other.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the challenge this week and every week.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_00: But buy someone that coffee, be a little playful, and we'll see you guys back here next Wednesday.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Peace.