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Synchronizing Values and Operations for an Aligned Brand · Leaders in Lending

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You're listening to Leaders and Lending from Upstart, a podcast dedicated to helping consumer
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lenders grow their programs and improve their product offerings. Each week, here decision
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makers in the finance industry offer insights into the future of the lending industry,
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best practices around digital transformation, and more. Let's get into the show.
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Welcome to Leaders in Lending. I'm your host, Jeff Keltner. This week's
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episode features my conversation with Grace Bruins, the a VP of marketing at a
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Horricon Bank. We talk about Grace's experience with multiple brand refreshes, actually thinks
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about the process identifying the true core values that resonate with your customers. Is
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how your institution really operates, what really makes you unique, how that gets
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represented through the process of a brand refresh. I really enjoyed the part of
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our conversation where we talked about fostering collaborative relationships cross functional in the order.
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I think that's fantastic advice and experience for anyone. I talk about. Grace
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always delves into one of our passions, which is internal communications. How you
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get messages conveyed internally, where to do that and how to kind of think
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about effective internal communications with your employees. And then we talked at the end
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about the podcast you started. We share a few moments about being both unexpected
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podcast hosts, so I thought that was another fun part of the conversation for
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me. I'm sure you will learn as much from this conversation as I did.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Grace Bruns. Grace, welcome to the podcast,
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and thanks for making the time to join us today. Thanks for having
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me. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm looking forward this. I like
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to start all of my podcasts with kind of same basic question, which is
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how did you wind up here? I doubt it was what you were dreaming
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of when you were you know, my teenage Sun's age fourteen, being in
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the banking industry. What's the path that brought you here? Oh, it's
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not all that exciting, Unfortunately, it was a series of I need a
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job. It's twenty ten and we're going out of our session. Might parents
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are like, you can't live at home, so figure it out? But
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necessity, But I yeah, absolutely. I graduated college and I was actually
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out in Washington, DC for about a year and doing some different internships.
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A lot of learning and actually was offered a job out there, but it
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just didn't quite seem right, you know, something wasn't sitting well with me.
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So I moved home, and like I said, my parents were like,
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all right, you got a little time, but let's figure this out.
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And I you know, I'm rural Wisconsin, so communities are very close.
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And I remember thinking banks are a lot of times at the center of
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the community and a lot of times the center of the business community. So
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if banking isn't what I want to be in, if finance isn't when I
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want to be in, it's a great spot to start to get to know
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your community and get to know local business. So I applied at Horrorcon Bank.
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Actually interviewed with someone who married my babysitter from when I was growing up,
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so that was pretty funny. She's like, wow, you're here an
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adult like you? Sure I am. It does happen. All the kids
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eventually do become adulting difficult for some of us to accept. So so yeah,
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I ended up working on the front line for maybe about nine months before
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an opening came in the marketing department and was really enjoying Horcon Bank and the
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culture and everything I was learning, So I was like, if you know,
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marketing was my background, so off marketing at Horricon Bank wasn't quite quite
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what I wanted it to be. It was just a great learning ground and
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a great place to be while I learned, And then turns out it was
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really what I enjoyed. And I've been there for twelve years now. Twelve
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years all right. I don't think I've ever stayed any company for twelve years
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success. It's just the reality of my I'm not the one year now,
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but I've typically been three to five and then yeah, and then find the
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new spot. I wanted to start by asking when we when we chatted earlier,
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you have mentioned that you have in the twelve years been through three or
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four brand refreshes, which is I think such an interesting experience. Some banks
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have never I think some people have never been through one, and you've been
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through several. So I wanted to start with kind of diving into that a
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little bit, just like, what do you think drives the desire the timing
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is saying, hey, now's the time to refresh. Then how do you
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think about tackling that process? Because it can be everything from like a I've
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hear brand refreshes most like, oh, we hired an agency and we've got
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a logo and then we're gonna change the college team and we're but everything else
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is the same, And sometimes it's a more complete overhaul of a lot of
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things, down to business processes and employee manuals and how you think about what
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you're trying to do. And so I'm just curious, like, how you
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how you've seen it work out like winds, How do you know it's time
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and how do you think about sizing what it is you're trying to do?
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Well before my time, so previous to my twelve years, they went through
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a really big brand overhaul where they actually changed the name from Horrorcon State Bank
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to Horrorcon Bank, So there was a little bit of a change there,
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and that they really redid the logo, redid all of the branding even inside
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the branches. So since that time, we've built off of that kind of
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foundation of who Horrcon Bank is. These sort of cooler colored tones because it
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used to be orange and black and now we're blues and greens, and yeah,
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that's bold. That's a big change in right. So so then when
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I came into the department shortly after. We What really started it was we
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were looking at our website and it looked like every other bank's website. The
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functionality was awful. Making changes to it would take two to three hours minimum
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to get them to go live on the site, which is not good.
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And this was ten years ago, but still you needed to have better otionality,
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needed it to be quicker. So we started looking into different website providers
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and with that came the opportunity to completely rebrand the website. Well, once
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you start there, you start to rebrand everything. Model project right, you
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start a little bit and there's always like, wow, as long as we're
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doing that, we might as well why not, Like I like those graphics
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that would look great over here, Let's let's incorporate them everywhere. So that
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was really where that brand refresh started. And then a few years later,
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actually we were going to go through another website upgrade. So the technology that
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our website had originally been built on was starting to become outdated, so we
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needed to move. We're like, again, this is just a great time
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to refresh the look of it. So then taking a look at all of
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our current materials, anything that we had out there. We were like,
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is this still the style we want to stay with or do we want to
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kind of overhaul it, And we did overhaul it. At that time,
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we had some newer employees, a VP of Innovation that was a part of
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it, and he brought in a lot of experience from different areas of the
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country and also had started his own fintech, so just a different marketing experience
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there. And so we changed and we really made the brand. I think
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the brand look was definitely more on that like sort of tech side, very
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very savvy, very cool, which was which was great, but after a
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while it started to again it just didn't quite feel like who we wanted to
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be. We wanted to show people that we have the tech savvy of a
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bigger bank, but we still have this community bank, hometown bank feel right
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that that relationships are at the core of what we do. That doesn't mean
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we can't offer you great services that are provided by great tech, but in
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the end, it's the banker that you have a relationship with, not your
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computer. So again, I think through all of that, we partnered with
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an agency who came out visited all of our branches, really got to know
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us asked some really great, great questions about our brand and who we are
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and how our bankers feel about our brand and how they live out that brand,
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and then we completely overhauled again, which this one I'm hoping sticks around
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a little bit longer because that's a really big process. It is a big
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process I want to dive into. I think two things about that latest refresh
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that seemed really interesting to me. One of you said it was driven by
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in part by a chief innovation officer who is pushing things. That's it's an
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interesting place. I often find that brand can be down on the list for
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people like that. That like almost I think some senior executives and tend to
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think of the brand is like the paint of the code of paint you put
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on at the end. It's kind of like not that relevant. So talk
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to me about how that individual was engaged and how that changed, how they
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pushed your thinking and what you were trying to do or how you were looking
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at what you were Yeah. So he and I worked pretty cool stay together,
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even though he was on the digital banking innovation side and I was on
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marketing. But one of the things that we really came together on was the
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website, and I was like, I don't like the way it functions.
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I don't like that any time a lender can't find a link, I have
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to put it on the homepage because they don't want to search for it.
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Like there needs to be and my marketers know what I'm talking about. There
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needs to be a better purpose for this website. You know, is it
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lead driven? What is it that we're trying to do? And we have
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to clean up this navigation. So he was great about just being very collaborative
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about what does that look like and how do we make sure that we are
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truly fulfilling the purpose of leagen with our website, and how do we make
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sure that the navigation stays where it is? And we kind of told the
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line of guess what, You're not going to find that link there, but
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I'll put it somewhere else where you can get to it really easily. I'll
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often it said that you cannot you can tell an organization's priorities by what makes
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it onto the homepage, like that the homepage now is like an indication almost
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of your of your actual priorities and how the organization like who actually has influenced
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what actually matters at the end of the day. Now what we like to
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say uh in calls whatever, like, at the end of the day,
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what makes it onto the page is sometimes an indication of what we actually value.
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Yep. Yeah, So he was a big driver of it, and
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he especially with that original like just redoing that navigation of the website, and
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I think his experience in fintech and having built his own fintech and kind of
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having to build that brand too along with it. We just really connected on
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that and so I appreciated the experience that he was bringing in. I could,
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you know, take the other side of like, okay, but this
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is this is still who we are, and we can't we don't want to
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go too far outside of that. Like I understand exploring a piece of our
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brand, but once you start to make it look and not like us at
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all, that's that's not going to work either. So it was a great
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partnership between me. I think, I think let me let me ask you
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about that statement. It's a really interesting statement. There's this vision of brand
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that's like you paint what you want to be and then you become like it's
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like it's like a carte blanche to remake whatever you want the organization to look
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like when you rebrand, and then there's the kind of reality like a new
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brand doesn't change the way we operate, the way we've admits and operating rhythm.
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That's internal values and things that are built up over years. And I
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find the most successful branding exercises don't really try and change who you are.
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They try and accentuate the parts that you like and focus on what's really true
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about the organization today. And I'm curious how you approached doing that because it's
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so easy to go, oh, well, we should value our customers first,
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and what you make the three corporate statements that anybody could have, and
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you go, that's our brand principles. It's not doesn't, doesn't, it's
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not us. It's just what we what we think we should say, or
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what we want to be, but maybe not how we operate. So how
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did you think about bringing who you really are through in that? It can
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feel so inauthentic if you're not able to do that effectively. Yeah, absolutely,
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I think people can tell right away, you know, this isn't you,
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This isn't this isn't who I get when I walk through the door.
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Just because you show it on your website. For us, it was it
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was taking kind of this deeper dive into what makes us tick, what makes
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us special. And I think a lot of times as bankers in the community
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bank space, we rely on will we're a community bank. That's why people
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that's why people like us, we're community bank. But I think we had
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we had to take a more adjective look and say, okay, but customers
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don't say that. They're not like, yeah, I love my community bank
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like they don't. They don't talk like that. They talk about the people.
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They talk about, you know, the service that they're receiving and this
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challenge in their life that filled my lender over here in Waucon was able to
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help me with. And that's what we had to start exploring. So one
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of the cool things we did what this last refresh was we put people from
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all over the bank in a room. It's about twelve maybe fifteen of us
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there, and it was all different product lines, right, So we had
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retail, we had business, we had back office, we had frontline,
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and a lot of leadership and we were asking them questions about you know,
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I remember one of them distinctly was if you have an awesome day at horric
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On Bank. You go home and you turn to your significant other and you
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say, I had an awesome day, and they say, well, why,
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How do you answer that question? What makes a great day at Horrorcon
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Bank for the employee? And I think that's a lot more telling than what
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makes you special? You know what I mean? You start to describe the
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institution versus me and myself, which is really a part, an extension of
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that brand, that institution. That's a fascinating question. I'm curious to go
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to do that exercise with a bunch of employees, but that sounds it sounds
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really imagine you get some great insight. My other question, how do you
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think about is you? Is you come up with those values or those things
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from those experiences. It feels like there's also this level of the institutionalizing,
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that kind of trying to spread what we're trying to highlight through not just brand
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features and logos and text on a website and an iconography and a feel,
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but also like how we actually train employees, what our manuals say, what
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our scripts look like, like, how we feel like we're actually teaching people
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who are maybe newer to the bank, what it means to live those values
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and how it looks so they will have the same answer to what is the
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great day it looks like, maybe not exactly the same, but feel the
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same things are important to them in a great day. How do you think
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about, like where does that fit? Is that something you have to leave
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aside for HR to write the manual, or is that become a part of
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the you know, part of the process of defining the brand. It's it's
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such an interesting, you know thing that kind of sit at this intersection of
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like what the brand is trying to be from marketing point of view, and
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what the operating teams are trying to generate from a processes and procedures point of
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view. I'm curious how you think about navigating that intersection. I think it's
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a it's a really collaborative effort. You know, if HR is trying to
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do it on their own, I don't know that it's always necessarily going to
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spread across the organization. So you need to have your leadership really living it
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out and willing to talk about it. And for us on the marketing side,
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it's any time that we can include some of those brand values in especially
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written copy. So we use Viva Engage, which is internal for us,
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and we have you can create different communities for different types of communications. So
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one of the communities we have is called Cheers for peers, and so all
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employees can post on there like kudos to this slender go went out of their
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way to help a customer and you know that sort of thing. And so
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anytime that marketing posts, a lot of times we'll try to say, hey,
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kudos to so and so because they are carrying banker and we have a
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pneumonic for care and yeah, and so we just really latch onto that sort
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of word and trying to write that throughout the copy and then explaining like here's
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what a Cairen banker is. And we also were doing we do videos,
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we do weekly meetings, virtual meetings, and again just trying to weave it
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into some of that stuff to make sure people kind of understand, like,
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well, why do we do what we do well. It's a big part
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of our mission, it's part of our vision to live this way. And
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our training team too has collaborated very closely with marketing. When they start to
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bring people in, we do like a kind of a culture day, so
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get to know Horcom banks culture, how we speak and how we relate to
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one another and take care of our customers, that sort of thing. And
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so they have built out different presentations just about Okay, here's who we are
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in the community. This is how community views us. There's certain expectations of
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Horkcom bankers out there that we do give of our time and we take time
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to help others, and so doing that right off the bat, I think
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sets an expectation. But then marketing has to kind of well everyone, but
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I think marketing has a special role to play in explaining and bringing that up.
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And again just like weaving it through the story, this is who we
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are and who we say we are, and look all these people are living
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it out. So you've mentioned twice now in your answers great collaboration with other
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groups, right, the Innovation Officer, the HR and internal teams. How
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do you do that? Like maybe not tactically, but like I feel like
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so many places I hear, well, it's hard to collaborate. We don't
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have a great you know, people don't get along, and there's kind of
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two sides of the fence and there's trains running on different tracks or pick your
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metaphor of the day for we're not well aligned and people don't listen. And
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I'm curious if you have advice or things you think make you guys effective at
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that collaboration, because I feel like so many the answers come down to,
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like, when you collaborate, well, it just kind of works. And
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yeah, so the question we go, well, how do you how do
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you build a culture or how do you as an individual kind of foster that
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collaborative spirit and engagement because I hear a lot of places where it doesn't work,
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and so I kind of want to learn the lessons like how do you
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are are there tis pro teps on how you make that actually be the way
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people work? I think I think a big part of it is up to
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the individual to go into each conversation, each interaction just very open minded.
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You know, there's a lot of times where I'll be asked something, Hey,
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marketing should do this, and you know, it's really easy to look
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at your plate and be like, well, let's I can't fit it.
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It's not going to work. And instead, if you go into that conversation
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and just start to start to ask like, well, what is it you
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need to accomplish or what's what's the pain point here and being open to that.
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Sometimes maybe it isn't a marketing function, maybe it's somewhere else. But
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if I can help you figure out what that is and I can help support
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it in some way, I'm there for it. And I think that it
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has to be an individual mindset in a lot of ways. But I think
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you have to see that model, you know, at every level, right
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like you need to see it modeled across senior leadership. If they're not collaborating,
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the rest of us really aren't either, you know, and every manager
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has got to be able to show each other respect, you know, when
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you disagree, but just really be open to listening. I think there's been
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multiple times where I go in with with the thought process of either this is
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how this is going to work, or this is not going to work,
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and kind of checking that at the door and being like, there's something going
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on here that I really don't know anything about its surface level for me,
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and I need to understand a little bit deeper so that we can all be
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better off in the end. That's a fascinating answer, and it reminds me
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of there's this saying I here. Sometimes in the tech world, usually we're
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talking about some features some product just seems like help build that, and this
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is the answer, like who the hell built that? And why? Is
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usually a very thoughtful, intelligent person considering a tradeoff you have not yet encountered,
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and you go, oh, why did you? And they go giving
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answer and you go, oh yeah, oh that yeah, okay, Now
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maybe maybe I would have like now I'm struggling with why that's the wrong answer,
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and that attitude of like coming in not what kind of idiot built this
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thing? This is so stupid, Like hey, you asked me for this
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thing, and now I'm like, I'm trying to understand why you think this
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is right, or why you did what you did, why you built the
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thing this way, why you have too many things in an alf that don't
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make any sense? Like how did we get there? Is often a better
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approach than like, no, way, that's not the way we do it.
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That doesn't work. Whatever you're got to commit that of the mind.
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I love that. I love that answer in general. I know another area
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you are really passionate about is kind of internal communications, how we communicate our
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message across employees and teams, trying of related to the collaboration, but talk
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to me about how you kind of deliver that message and make sure it's it
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gets hurt and understood throughout the organization. Yeah, we've you know, as
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a as an organization, I would see in the last like two iss years,
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we've really tried to increase communication and just be very very transparent. Not
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that we weren't before, but we have more avenues to do it now,
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so we use Viva Engage. We've put a lot of messaging out there.
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We're trying to get away a little bit from email all the time because things
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do get lost, and I think sometimes it's really tempting to be like,
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oh, Grace of Marketing sent that I'll look at it later. It's really
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easy, and I get it. I get it, I understand. But
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you know, we want we want a culture of I think a culture of
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curiosity too, that people are able to go out and find information that they're
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looking for, that it's right there at their fingertips. So we've created different
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communities and Viva Engaged to be able to do that kind of segment out the
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communication. But one thing we did, oh man, this was about a
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year or so ago, we started creating. I think we called it Porcome
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Bank News, and it was just maybe five to ten minute little videos that
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we would put out on be the Engaged. You could watch them anytime,
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and it was typically my self interviewing a senior manager a department that had a
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big project going on that they wanted to make sure everybody understood, and then
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we would follow up that communication with either more posts or different information on our
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Internet. So it was just sort of cross posting that in different channels and
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also in different media because people do learn and consume differently. So if you're
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somebody who needs to hear it, I want to make sure it's recorded or
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on a video. If you're somebody that would prefer to read it, I've
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got to make sure that that's available to you too. How do you get
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internal teams comfortable getting on video? Like I feel so many times like this
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is nervousness around a video two of us going to the whole company going O,
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don't know what I mean. I'm very used to it, so I
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sometimes go turn the camera whatever, but people will get nervous about feel like
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I'm going to say something stupid or whatever. Like how do you think about
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getting people comfortable sharing their message, not just you posting. That's easy,
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but I think there's a lot of authenticity that comes from having the people doing
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the work coming on and saying, hey, here's what we're at, or
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here's what we're doing, or here's what's happening in our world. And that
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really feels like connecting the broader organization, not just a marketing channel. But
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how do you get people comfortable doing that and putting in the time that's required
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to actually sit down and do that. I feel like that can sometimes be
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a roadblock for this. It can, it can, and I think it
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was for us for a long time. People really tried to avoid it.
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There was every reason why you shouldn't record with Grace. But one thing that
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helped was our he's now our president. He said, you know, told
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this team like you will do this, And he was starting to assign like
23:44
certain dates if there was sort of a date open and so you know,
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the head of lending is going to talk to you on this date, or
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how do retail is going to talk to you on this date. But for
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me, what I found was, you know, finding a time that worked
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for them, making it feel like it wasn't an imposition to have to do
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this was big. And then before hitting record, just taking like ten minutes
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to sort of say, Okay, what do you think employees need to know?
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And how can I make sure that I ask a good question to get
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that answer from you, and start of almost practicing the interview, which I
24:22
know a lot of people are like, oh, it feels too rehearsed.
24:26
Well, it really helps your guests to feel that much more comfortable. And
24:30
when it's internal like that. You know, some people they were writing out
24:34
scripts and I was like, it's you don't okay like the first time,
24:38
but then then we would do it a second time. Hey, why don't
24:41
we just talk like we're having a conversation. And I think, you know,
24:48
a lot of employees really enjoyed it. They enjoyed seeing their senior leadership
24:52
give this kind of feedback and explanation and it does feel very transparent and real.
24:59
And for some of those senior leaders they talk a little bit above what
25:03
are most of our employees can understand. So having a second person on to
25:08
say, okay, so what you're saying is and then sort of rephrasing it,
25:12
I think helped understanding a lot. Yeah, there's a there's a lot
25:18
more that goes into that interviewing and making sure you break down what's being said
25:22
into the proper level for your audience of like context understanding, or often I
25:26
find backing up to like give me, give me the big picture, because
25:29
you're you know, you're you're talking in the weeds, and I want to
25:30
know, like, you know, how that ties to the mission or the
25:34
goals for the quarter, or the goals for the year, or what we're
25:37
trying to do in ways that you can when you're talking about a project and
25:41
get lost. So there's some art and making those connections, and I love
25:45
the natural style. It's great. I think it's great that you get people
25:48
there because I do feel like it's so different when it feels like you're reading
25:51
a script into a teleprompter and then you have videos, you know, a
25:53
little intro and outro, and it feels like a TV ad, which is
25:56
very different than feeling like, Hey, I sat in and listen to people
25:59
having a conversation and they're just talking the way they would in a meeting or
26:03
stopped them at the lunch and have lunch with them and they go I think
26:06
that it's got a much more natural feel to it that people connect with.
26:11
So as we talked about recording with Grace, I understand you also started a
26:14
podcast. Talk to me about why why why? Why does one I get
26:18
asked that question, like why why does it like a career transit. I
26:21
actually got asked ones, yes, it's your next career transition now especially,
26:25
But talk to me about the thought process behind getting into the podcast business.
26:29
Yeah, so the podcast that has been something that we have toyed with for
26:33
a while. You know, it's been a few years of talking about it.
26:36
And again, our president, our current president was head of marketing at
26:40
one point, so this was sort of an idea that he had had for
26:42
a while and he enjoys podcasts, and years like this would be really cool.
26:47
And I remember being super resistant because I was like, yes, it
26:51
would be cool, but we have no plan and I don't know how to
26:55
do it. Another feeling I know that feeling very well. So we eventually
27:00
we kind of sort of stumbled upon actually a partner called podcast Town that's in
27:04
Milwaukee area, and they do all the recording, the editing, the publishing,
27:11
all of the stuff that we didn't know how to do. And they
27:15
were even better than that. They helped us just sort of think through all
27:18
the thoughts that we had understand and really define like who is the audience that
27:22
we want to make sure is understanding this information, getting this information from us?
27:27
What kind of guests do we want to have on here? And talking
27:30
through like that run of show and having a partner to be able to do
27:34
that made me feel a lot more comfortable. Like my type. It was
27:37
like, Okay, I have a plan, I can I can do this.
27:41
I can make this work, you know, And from early on I
27:45
was like, please please let me host because this is fun to me.
27:48
You were interesting, yes, I was, Yeah, I love the storytelling
27:55
side of it. You know. We bring in a lot of guests,
27:56
a lot of them who haven't done podcasts before, and they're just on to
28:02
tell the story of their business. So our podcast is banking on business and
28:06
it tells the story of different entrepreneurs or partners of entrepreneurs who offer a lot
28:11
of advice, usually from their own experience, and so being able to just
28:15
talk to people about what they've experienced, talk to them about their story of
28:22
their business, which a lot of times is like your child, right,
28:25
like this is something I raised up and grew and into. Yeah. Yeah,
28:30
so much pride in that, and so very early on I was like,
28:34
you can put any co hosts you want, but if I could please
28:37
be a part of the storytelling, I would love that. And luckily they
28:41
said that was okay, So that's very cool. It is interesting. I
28:48
find that with the right agency and support, it really doesn't take much more
28:51
than a little confident as a host. It took me six or seven episodes
28:53
before I felt like I had a rhythm where I went okay, I kind
28:56
of like I kind of I was trying to over prepair and then go,
29:00
I don't even know what And now I'm you know, you feel much more
29:03
comfortable and like, you know, kind of know how the rhythm goes and
29:06
how to how to how to get to where you would you want to be.
29:07
But that's a that's an interesting that you were younger. I think you
29:11
should also. I went, really, okay, I'm not I'm not looking
29:15
for it. Yeah, do you ever go back and listen to your early
29:17
episodes and go, what please? Don't anybody you know? And if I
29:21
were really dedicated to being good at it, I know that I was.
29:22
It's like watching game tape, but I can't stand to hear my voice.
29:26
So this is the only time I hear the podcast is my kids know this,
29:30
and so sometimes in the car they put it on just to a name.
29:34
I hear the intro welcome to Leaders, I'm like, what did you
29:37
guys? Turn that off? So I can't stand to It's just I'm not
29:41
ready for the criticisms I will have for myself. So I'm like, you
29:45
hear about the actors who want watching themselves on the screen. I can't listen
29:48
to the podcast, but I'm gonna get your take on this. I had
29:49
an idea for a podcast it's not too dissimilar from yours in some ways that
29:53
I'm not not up doing. I'm like, I could do that podcast.
29:56
Yeah, in mine. I didn't have a name for you yet. I
29:57
had some inappropriate names my mind, but I wanted to bring on entrepreneurs or
30:02
executives and ask them only about the biggest mistakes they've ever made. The like,
30:07
oops, I just killed the bit, you know, because I feel
30:08
so much for entrepreneurs in particular, there's kind of like this fear and there
30:14
can be the impression that everybody else is doing it great, and you're just
30:17
messing up because you know, what's it gonna say. You only read other
30:19
people's press releases, but you know, you see, you get the picture
30:22
from other businesses of what they tell the reporter, but then you go into
30:26
ligature internals and go their internals look like yours. It's just that they don't
30:29
go tell the report of that, and so it's a very distorted view of
30:33
what other entrepreneurs or business owners are experiencing. And I kind of want to
30:37
like give me just like the moment where you thought, oh my god,
30:38
I'm gonna get fired. I just killed the business. I'm like, I
30:41
blew it all up. Let's just talk about just those, none of the
30:45
because somebody the podcasts that you could bring on this successful entrepreneur, they tell
30:48
about how they killed it, and you go, well, tell me about
30:49
the time you almost killed it, like almost destroyed the business, not not
30:52
really had a great time, Like, tell me about that, and let's
30:55
talk about those. I feel like it would just demystify this sense. So
30:57
that was my like my brainstorm during COVID. I was like, yeah,
31:00
this would be a fun thing to do, just like that. I've got
31:03
a few of my career that I could go into. So I thought I'd
31:06
just love to hear other people's like, oh my god, what did I
31:08
just do. I once interviewed a popcorn business, so they do like small
31:14
batch popcorn, super delicious, and one of the questions I just needed to
31:18
know, and I was like, whether or not we keep this in the
31:21
podcast? What was the worst flavor you've ever made? It's like, I
31:26
just find it interesting. It was what was it? It was like a
31:30
boison berry or some kind of berry that like just all the popcorn got super
31:36
soggy. She was like, I had like twelve gallons of popcorn that it
31:40
was like mush, so it was not good. I was like, cool,
31:44
Well, what did you learn? Because I think that's the next step,
31:47
right, And she could tell me that. She could say, well,
31:48
you know, here's what I learned and here's what I didn't do next
31:52
time, And so I think it's really bad. Best learning it's usually come
31:56
from from failures, not successes, right, I did you learn more from
31:59
when things don't fly work out right? And sometimes we overlearned the lessons of
32:02
success because you think like it was all the things you did that made a
32:05
success something. It's just caught a caught lightning in a bottle kind of a
32:07
particular moment in time got lucky. And then you go, oh, it's
32:10
because of X, Y and Z. I mean, is it Maybe it's
32:13
not, you know, and we can we can overlearn those lessons where success
32:15
failure is a little more like clear, like this didn't work and this didn't
32:19
work. All right, Gris. I got three questions I love to ask
32:21
everybody at the end of this podcast, so here we go. Number one
32:25
is what's the best career advice you've ever gotten? Oh? I think the
32:30
best career advice I've ever gotten was actually probably shortly before I started my career.
32:37
I had an advisor in college who you know, we're very end of
32:42
senior year and I was excited about wherever I was going next, and he
32:46
was like, here's the deal. You are smart, and I think people
32:52
are going to assume you're smarter than you are. Said, you're you're a
32:59
very still talk right there. Yeah, And he said the thing is with
33:04
that is that you you might be afraid to ask for help, you might
33:08
be afraid to show them you don't know something, And don't fall into that.
33:13
Don't be somebody who is so scared to ask a question that you know
33:20
you make those mistakes simply because you didn't ask, simply because you didn't listen.
33:24
And I've thought about that a lot, because I think I think a
33:29
lot of times when you're in a position of leadership, if you are maybe
33:31
a high performer in your job, even if you're not leading a team,
33:35
you start to get this mentality of like, well, I can't I can't
33:37
act like I don't know that I better. Luckily I have Google at my
33:42
disposal, so that helps a lot. But you know, there are people
33:45
I need to listen to, people who know this industry a lot better,
33:49
and so I need to be willing to hear that. So that's stuck with
33:52
me for a long time. I love that one. I actually want to
33:54
post that is one of my superpowers is the willingness to ask any question that
33:58
makes me feel stupid. Like I think it's a total superpowers point. You
34:01
said you've seen them, like everybody this industry must know that acronym, and
34:05
I have no idea what it means. Maybe I'm the idiot, but can
34:07
you just like walk me through that one? And the number of times I
34:10
do that, and then three people text me right for me, I thank
34:14
you for asking that I didn't know that I know it. Well, how
34:16
come nobody asking? If nobody knows? Like I don't write, but like
34:20
that's a real power to be able to do that. So I love that
34:22
answer cause I think it's it's so true and so under such a simple skill
34:25
and so underappreciator, and it's value that it's absolutely kind of unbelievable to me.
34:30
All right. Second question, what's the best advice you've gotten about the
34:34
consumer banking industry of the banking industry in general twelve years had I think?
34:40
I think forming a relationship with your lending team, especially on the marketing side,
34:45
is huge, you know, having their trust in you and what you're
34:49
doing, and again opening up lines of communication. Our head of mortgage lending
34:54
is someone I've worked with for many years, and just stopping in his office
35:00
and again asking questions when I didn't understand something, or allowing him to just
35:05
over explain things to me because that's something he enjoys. Which is fine.
35:08
I learn a lot, but just giving that time and space to those relationships
35:14
is huge and it's going to it's going to help you continue with that trust
35:19
down the road so that when you say, Okay, here's here's where we're
35:22
going to spend our marketing budget. It may not be the billboard that you
35:24
like because it's your picture up there, but it's here's the reasons why,
35:30
and then they can trust that in you because you've built up that relationship with
35:32
them. I love that. I'm imagining that this is part of why you're
35:37
able to talk about collaborations so much because investing in those relationships early before it's
35:42
transactional nature, before you're come and saying here's what I'm going to do for
35:44
you or not do for you, It really leads to that I think ability
35:46
to have a collaborative environment and relationship. Great. Last question is what is
35:52
one bold prediction for the future. We always like to put these into groups
35:55
of bold Yeah, something we can like, you know, come chat if
36:00
you got right or got it wrong, hold your feet to the fire when
36:01
you're going to be a repeat guest, that kind of thing. Super Bowl,
36:06
super Bowl winners to uh, you know, federal reserve rate heights,
36:08
so you can take your pick on where you want to do with this recession.
36:12
Never we get it, we'll get all sorts of stuff. Man,
36:15
my bold prediction, I would say, well, I've got to I'm from
36:19
Wisconsin, so not that bold packers season, don't don't expect a lot about
36:27
maybe bold prediction underestimate. I love it's good. Yeah, But on the
36:32
banking side, I would say, you know, especially again, I'm coming
36:37
from a community bank perspective, but I think that community banks that aren't going
36:43
to that don't embrace FinTechs and and fin technology that's that's coming, I think
36:49
that they are destined to fail. And I think that they need to start
36:52
viewing that relationship not as competitive but as collaborative because a lot of times these
37:00
text can help us and they can help us serve our customers, and we
37:04
need to be willing to hear that and start to think a little bit outside
37:07
of what we've always done as an industry. We don't move quickly, but
37:12
we're going to need to start because change is happening changes here, and so
37:16
who are those partners that are going to help you change and adapt in a
37:20
way that your customers are expecting from you know, I think that's a perfect
37:24
place to leave it. Grace, thanks so much for joining me today.
37:28
I really appreciated the conversation. Yeah, this was a lot of fun,
37:30
Thanks for having me. Upstart partners with banks and credit unions to help grow
37:35
their consumer loan portfolios and deliver a modern, all digital lending experience. As
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about finding new borrowers, enhancing your credit decisioning process, and growing your business
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by visiting upstart dot com Slash four dash Banks that's upstart dot Com slash four
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