brad garland

I’m really excited to now talk about a new engagement that I’m beginning for the Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA). They are the national association for community banks and I am working with them to help define their online (and potentially offline) strategies. So I wanted to start off the conversation here and allow my audience to help guide them (and me) with what perceptions do you have of banks, more specifically local community banks today and what could they do better for you? What should they offer you or what could ICBA do to educate/support them for you? Please remember we’re doing this in the spirit of transparency and for the sake of education, so no politics here pls. :)

I really think there is a lot of potential good that this organization can do for community banks and ultimately, the customer, and I’m really excited to get started. Please provide some insight as these comments will be take straight to their mgmt team. Thanks so much!

Anytime I need a place for some inspiration, motivation, or creative thought I find myself over on TED.com. The TED conference is one of those conferences that I would LOVE to attend some day and aspire to be a presenter there (crossing fingers). I came across this presentation by Tim Berners-Lee (father of the Web) talking about what’s next. This presentation came just this past March in 2009. A really wonderful talk and I couldn’t agree with him more on putting your data (or I like to think of it as information) on the Web to be able to unlock other potentials that some of us haven’t even dreamed of before.

As many of you know, we run a banking community site called Banktastic.com and have for a little over a year now. It has been a fun experience. Very difficult to predict, at times, but very fun nevertheless and our community is great. Over the past few months I felt like, despite our community growing steadily, that it was beginning to feel a bit like a 13 year old boy as the community was trying to figure out what it was all about and what it wanted to be. I debated whether to step back and let the community define itself but the less we got out of the way the more the community was not sure how to proceed. So I decided that we needed to, like Madonna, redefine (or perhaps just define) ourselves a bit. I didn’t know how or what it should be at first but figured it would present itself.

And sure enough, it did…

I was watching a documentary on Ralph Nader (via Netflix through my Xbox 360 which is awesome btw) and although I don’t agree with all his views I was impressed by the man and his ability to push things through just as a private citizen. That’s right, he never held any political office and did things like help establish rules for seat belts in all vehicles, the freedom of information act, and clean air act. He inspired me to think big and find themes that could get resolved in what we’re doing. After a bit of brainstorming I came up with three major themes that even though they could work independently would be even more powerful as a whole. Transparency, Innovation, and Education. TIE.

These three principles will be at the crux of everything we do moving forward (as a community and as a company). We want to find those that are being TIE and tell everyone their stories. We hope by sharing their stories it will inspires other to do the same. It feels so good to have something so clear to look for and work towards to me. It’s just refreshing. We just released the news (video below) about the TIE principles at the beginning of the week and will be subtly making changes to Banktastic to accommodate this vision. I would love to learn about how you found your purpose too so please comment below. Thanks everyone!

I have never had the desire to write my congressman or representative because I knew what the end result would be. It has a greater than 50% chance of being thrown straight away and if by some miraculous occurrence it got opened, it would’ve been by a staffer that would skim over it real quick, and then they would proceed to wad it up and work on their twenty foot jumper towards the trashcan. What’s the point.

But today, I changed all that. I actually wrote my congressman and a state representative…but by using Twitter. I came across TweetCongress.org today and realized that I could have access (even direct access) to those making decisions for me. So I rattled off a 140-character tweet (which would more likely get a read than a long letter) and sent it to both John Cornyn and John Culberson of Texas. Here it is:



It’s only been twenty minutes since I posted it and no response yet but both have ‘followed’ me on twitter (could be an auto-follow script) but the fact that I can get direct access to these type of people instead of working channels makes me a bit more intrigued about potentially making a difference in our government and for our country. A bit naive perhaps but a tweet is better than nothing, right?

Side note: To date, there are currently more Republicans(41) than Democrats(24) on Twitter. And who said social media is only for the Liberals? :)

Our Kate’s friend, Kate Jessup, had her 3rd birthday party today and it was a princess party. I had decided to play some with our new camcorder and ended up going all out and produced this fun little video for the Jessups. Still working out the kinks with the video encoding process through iMovie 08 (no clue what I’m doing there).

Girls are fun. Video below.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2873738[/vimeo]

I was watching a documentary the other night about Ralph Nader called ‘An Unreasonable Man’. Despite the fact that Nader was never elected a politician, he has been incredibly effective in implementing policy. Some of his efforts include:

- Mandatory seat belts in all vehicles

- Airbags

- Warning labels on cigarettes

- The Clean Air Act

- The Freedom of Information Act

Regardless of your political stance, we can all recognize that Nader has done a lot for our country. The movie got me thinking about how our community needs a well defined purpose and direction. We need to believe in principles and work together to achieve them. I thought about it for a while and in what could only be described as an epiphany, it hit me. I was suddenly exhilarated! I leaned over to my wife, Jenny and asked her if she would indulge me for a second to see if my idea sounded remotely sane. Here’s my challenge for us:

The financial industry is in a sad state after the massive bailouts, layoffs, and bankruptcies across the country. What can we do to pull ourselves out this hole? I believe we need a retooling of our belief system.

This industry, very simply, needs three things:

1) Transparency - At the heart of this crisis is the fact that we haven’t held an open and honest discussion with ourselves or our customers. Transparency is an absolute requirement to ensure we never have a situation like this again. You should be credited for the willingness of your institution to share and contribute. This sharing can be done from the bottom to the top of the organization. Anyone has the right to help carry this movement forward and your voice is needed to do it.

2) Innovation - Innovation is something that gets a lot of talk but not a lot of action. Part of this is due to constraints put on the institutions by regulators but also by the organization itself. Innovation is only passively talked about and not made a priority within the organization. I suggest a mandate encouraging innovative practices for banks and credit unions. One way to do this is to have something similar to the R&D tax credit allotted to small businesses. Allow financial institutions, large and small, to get credit for taking a chance. If banks aren’t allow to think and play creatively, a stagnant environment will continue to exist. Innovation can root from an individual or an organization. The question is what are you going to do to improve things?

3) Education - Ultimately, consumers are getting the short end of the stick. Consumers assume they can’t get sound financial advice from financial organizations and in current times are timid to leave their money in the bank. It’s a travesty. We need educational reform that allows, no requires, bankers to provide a certain level of financial advise to their customers.

Individually, each step is crucial., But only when the three ideas are ‘tied’ together, do we attain transformational change.

This is how the TIE principles were born. This idea isn’t about me, The Garland Group, or Banktastic.com. It’s about making a difference and taking a stance against complacency. What changes can you and your institution make to encourage these principles? How about becoming a little more open to sharing ideas with others? Or testing a new marketing initiative toward a particular demographic? Are you willing to host financial literacy classes at your local schools? The power is in your hands.

Brad Garland is the CEO of The Garland Group and founder of the banker community Banktastic.com. He speaks across the country about opportunities in this Web-enabled world and how to succeed by understanding them.

Kate and I were driving home the other day and as we approached the stoplight with a 7-Eleven on her side of the truck she asks, “What’s that Daddy? What’s that?” So I went on to explain, in 2-year old terms, what a gas station was and how it works. But I began to think, “Will Kate ever drive a gasoline powered car?” I’m not suggesting ‘Back to the Future 2’ is her future but could she only ever drive a battery powered or some other clean energy car?

Fifteen years seems like a reasonable amount of time to have vehicles not only with that technology in mass prodution but in extremely affordable forms (Note: she will be driving the Pinto version of those cars you can be sure). There is no doubt the traditional gas station will still be around but will she ever have to deal with them?

The above picture is what the vast majority of Boards (especially FI boards) look like today. White, male, over-50. That’s a problem. How do you expect some perspective with a board like that? How can you expect to cater to upcoming generations?

With that being said, I have recently been looking around for a board to be on for either a bank or a credit union. I didn’t care which as long as it was a place I could make a difference and the institution wanted my feedback (for better or worse).

To my surprise, I was offered that opportunity a month ago by a credit union that was small but growing and wanting to take a chance on me. I’m humbled by that. Needless to say, I was excited and to ensure proper consideration was done my last hurdle was my clients. I didn’t want to do anything that hurt our relationship so I sent out this email to my top 10 clients asking them for their opinions:

Hi XXXXX,

I wanted to take a couple minutes of your time to ask an important question for you as a client of The Garland Group. I have been positioning lately to get on a Board of Directors (for either a bank or credit union) to help an institution grow its member base by helping them understanding the strategies of Web usage and the affinity the Gen X/Y’s of the world have for it and expect from the bank or CU. Boards are inherently older and out of touch with a lot of these issues and I want to be that ‘fresh blood’ for them.

With that said, I’m curious if you would have any problems with me being on a bank or credit union board at all? I would put a line in the sand and not offer our compliance services to them but I wanted to see if you, as a client of ours, had any issue with it? I wanted to approach you open and honestly and would hope for the same candor in return. Thanks for your opinion in regards to this, let me know when you can!

Some responded by saying things like “That’s your business, go for it!” but the majority had an issue with it. And I can understand their viewpoint. Their concern was that I would no longer have an unbiased, objective opinion and that it could hindered what services we currently offer them and they could no longer be a client of ours. Again, I understand their viewpoint so I, unfortunately, had to turn the position down.

I hope to find some other boards, in other areas, that I could be of use as I believe we still have the same problem no matter the industry. So as I continue my search if you are looking to put your mark on a Board, holler at me, I’d love to be able to help you.

As a burgeoning speaker, the evaluation process, is probably the best way I know to grade yourself on how you’ve done (other than someone telling you personally or even better, referrals). I appreciate the organizers that do them because I’m always looking to get better but you definitely have to take them with a grain of salt. Here’s what I mean.

These are the comments from a recent presentation I did on Generation Y in August:

Nice slide handout format! They’re readable!

Excellent speaker - bring back next year!

Brad is real good at explaining this issue/concept to board directors (older). He can talk to all generations.

The information is completely outside the reality of our work environment. If Gen Y as presented in this session comes to pass, the world is in real trouble. No Gen Y’er as represented in this presentation would ever survive in our work environment much less have a practical chance to be hired. Example: Look at the speaker info sheet - ther are at least 7 basic grammatical errors on the sheet. Unsatisfactory!

Did not involve the audience.

Wonderful!

Now I understand that I’m the type to diminish the good and amplify the bad but, that’s a me thing. My point here is that there is no grey in these comments. Some love what you do, some don’t. Some don’t mind you but hate the topic or content. So all you can do is take their comments in stride, learn from them, and move on. I really appreciate anyone that is willing to comment, both good and bad on my talks, it can make me and you better as speakers.

I’m going to go check my speaker info sheet now. :)

I’m lucky enough to get to talk to people around the country about topics like emerging technologies like the Web, communication techniques, and how those two mix and mingle with each other in today’s business. So I’m always trying to find new and better ways to get people to understand just what it means to do and try certain things like social networking, Twitter, or even blogging. So this time, I’m going to have people smarter than me do it.

I think these two (Seth Godin & Tom Peters) discuss the reasons for blogging better and more succinctly than I could and please note, these are Boomers!!!