brad garland

Here are my personal goals for the year. Not resolutions. Resolutions are too short-term, flippantly set and nobody holds you accountable to them. If you read this, I request you to check up on me from time to time to see how these are going. I’ll be posting my results are the end of the year to see how it went. Wish my luck!

• Read the Bible all the way through (started the 1-year Bible today and read it!)
• Dedicate more of my time for friends and family
• Complete a half marathon or Tough Mudder
• Stay below 215 all year round (I’m barely above that now)
• Work on focus

Here’s to another blessed new year!

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!

At least once a year I like to go through a what I’m calling a ‘State of the company’ review that answers questions as if we are starting this company from anew. It should be noted that what I try to avoid is being generic. Avoiding those scenarios like meaningless, adjective-heavy mission statements and over generalized goals that don’t “walk the walk”. If we don’t take these values with us and live and breathe them, what’s the point? And beyond all that, I want a company that stands for something. It is a wonderful exercise that brings what we do back to its roots and I’d like to share with you guys what I’ve been working on.

What kind of company do you want to build?

Our company is expanding in both services and people. We are getting into software development now and want to provide the same high level of software services as consulting services do today. If we look at everything we do (technology audits, risk assessments, security testing, community platforms) all of these services common denominator is rooted in education. Our services provide more of a coaching experience than the judging people or organizations. So our vision/mantra/belief is all tied together in the phrase,

“Service through education.”

It’s short and sweet but with meaning. Everything we do ties back to this mantra.

What are our shared goals that everyone in the company exudes?

Next step is establishing through every single person in our company what we belief in. I see this as a ‘sales-side’ of the company. Not from the getting deals standpoint but from the ‘this is how we’re built’ standpoint. To say it in another way, it’s our Commandments.

• Quality service regardless of client - We treat everyone, regardless of size of organization, the same way.


• ‘Our word’ should mean something - Many people today don’t let a handshake or a verbal promise be a commitment to something, we do.


• Honest but realistic - We want to shoot people straight but also temper it with realistic expectations due to their situation.


• Give openly - We want to better this world so giving openly will always open more doors than close them.


• It’s not what ‘I’ accomplish, it what ‘we’ accomplish - We know this isn’t all about us, this is about the success of our clients and their customers.


• Success is defined by happiness, not $$$ - I’m most proud of this one. We define success based off of our clients and employees happiness, not by the size of the paychecks. This is why ROWE thinking excites me so!

I’m in the middle of this exercise and have started at the company level and I’m now working on the business levels and then down to the product level (then lastly, people level). Each level down gets easier due to the foundation the previous level left before it. I’d would LOVE to hear your feedback to this and how you are helping your company become a world class organization.

This weekend I was watching some of the Techcrunch50 video coverage and came across some interesting discussion between Peter Thiel and Mike Arrington. They batted around some different topics but one I found particularly interesting was the discussion of a startup Theil is invested in that is tracking startups metrics for VCs (follow that?) and one measurement they’ve found thus far is depending upon a CEO’s pay can sometimes show the success of the company and I could see this being the case for small business as well potentially. Here’s that segment of video:



The first point is strictly investment driven and CEO aligning with the equity investors but it’s the second and third points that I see better translated into the small or startup business.

CEO’s salary puts a cap on the level everyone else gets paid

This is pretty easy yet interesting assessment but isn’t always apparent to the small business. If we fall into the traditional business mindset of the ‘CEO should make the most money’ than everyone else’s salary is directly proportional to that. I translate that this into thinking the CEO compensation as more of a sales role by which its looked at as ‘commission’ based or more realistically ‘stock’ based instead of hierarchically based. Examples of this are Google founders Sergei Brynn and Larry Page’s $1 dollar salaries. I can appreciate this model as the focus turns more on what is best for the company rather than the person at the top of the organization.

Building something people believe in

Like Thiel mentioned, this is the more important point. I am going through a recurring process for me of questioning the vision, the shared values of the team, and goals for our company. I do this about once a year (assuming no major shifts to strategy) to ensure we are heading in the right direction. I think it’s an important process to go through as I break it down at the company level, business level, and product levels. I want, as I think many small business owners, to ensure our people have an understand of where we’re going and that the entire organization is marching to the same drum. Does your company do this? Is there something that is missing?