Season 2, Episode 7: Britney Campbell

Jack Hubbard: Banking. What a great industry. It's been at the heart of our economy since day one, fueling growth and helping America thrive. The bank of North America was our first bank, established by Robert Morris Way back in 1781. Over the years, banks have dotted our landscape in money centers and small towns where community banks have been a great partner. They've helped businesses grow, become a vital part of the communities they serve, and make families feel secure. We've sure come a long way from those old school ledgers, and now we offer cutting edge technology solutions. Regardless of all these advancements, banking remains a people business. I've been in and around our industry for over 52 years, racking up over 5 million air miles and spreading the gospel of performance, culture, development, and trust based sales conversations. I've had the unique privilege to train and coach over 80,000 bankers, speak at state and national banking conferences in 49 states, and teach at 13 of the nation's preeminent banking schools. Along the way, I've made countless friends. Now, as a cancer survivor, it's time for me to give back. One way I'm paying it forward is through this program. Jack Rants with Modern Bankers.

Welcome to Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. I'm Jack Hubbard, chief experience officer of the modern banker and chairman emeritus of St. Meyer and Hubbard. Every week, I feature special guests, the goal of which is really simple, to help your sales efforts, marketing approach, your performance, culture, and certainly your bottom line. It's all brought to you by our great friends at Rel Pro and vertical IQ. You know, it's always satisfying when a former student rises to many levels of career excellence, and that's the case today with my guest, Britney Campbell. Britney earned a BBA from Austin P. And I met this ball of marketing energy more than a decade ago when she was attending the ABA marketing school. With more than 20 plus years in the industry, Britney is senior vice president at Legends Bank in Tennessee. 

Now, when the pandemic hit, Britney got an idea. Inspired by a local network of women, she began the journey of founding her bank. Launched in May of 2021, this bank within a bank is focused on advisory and customization, pairing technology and resources with a very unique approach to personal experiences. All for the women of Greater Nashville. Check out the amazing video about her bank. It's at her dash bank.com. our bank story. It's Britney Campbell on Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. Britney Campbell, has a great legacy in banking, and she's been around a long time. Did some recent speaking at the ABA marketing conference, a big kickoff for that program this year. And, so, Britney, it's just, it's great to have you with us.

Britney Campbell: Great to be here. It's really an honor to be here talking with you. We go back, way back. But it's been almost 20 years ago.

Jack Hubbard: Gosh, it has been 20 years. It's been a long, long time since ABA marketing school. And, boy, what a great program. I had a chance to be there for almost 40 years. and so many students come back, and have done so well. Ah, as you have but I want to talk about the bank, but first I want to talk about your grandfather a little bit. He had nearly a 60 year banking career, chairman of Legends Bank, which is where her bank is actually located. and you got interested in banking at a fairly early age. Talk about how you got interested in this industry.

Britney Campbell: Well, I would say that I didn't necessarily choose the path of banking. Banking sort of chose me in the sense that my granddad was a father figure for me and raised me in an environment that was really the community banker. So I went to a lot of places with him and got to experience, you know, as a child, being the go in and get the sucker from the teller and kind of going through the vaults and seeing all the things and, you know, it was really sort of a natural thing. But I did not think I was going to have a career in banking. It was really an opportunity that he was starting a Legends Bank. I was graduating from high school. 

He needed some assistance when they were organizing the bank. So it sort of just was this right place at the right time to earn a little money and help him out and also go to college and do some part time work, which for a lot of career bankers, I kind of took those same steps. He also started banking in high school and worked his way up. so it's really kind of a non, We didn't really think that this would be the path, but it was really kind of a really nice experience to look back on and see how much parallels we had between, you know, I also started this part time being a teller, working my way up, going to school, and then just sort of fell in love with it because I was a marketing major, the bank was growing. I had built relationships, really just loving my experience being in the bank. And it just started to fall into place where doing the marketing and really following a passion of mine just started to align. So that's it kind of fell into me and I fell in love with it.

Jack Hubbard: So let's talk about Legends Bank first before we get into the. Her bank situation. been around about 25 years. Talk about the bank and, a little bit about legends.

Britney Campbell:  Yeah. So we are 25, and we're a local community bank. We serve the middle Tennessee market. We're about 900 million in assets. So a good size. We're headed to that 1 billion mark. We just went through a core conversion. so I'm still here surviving. So I'm here to tell the tale of coming 30 days out of a core conversion, which has been a really exciting upgrade for us. And we have ten locations. We actually have a ribbon cutting for the 10th location in Ashland city. That's a little bit outside of Nashville. Tomorrow.

Well, it's a great market. It's a wonderful market. Before I ask you about Her Bank, I have to ask for the fellow marketers out there who are listening to this program and maybe going through a core conversion at some point. What was your role in the core conversion, and how did you communicate in this modern era of communication with your customers about what was happening?

Britney Campbell: We, since being in marketing, I took on more of the communications and worked with, we do partner with the marketing agency. And I will just say for those that operate a marketing department of one, we're in a certain kind of club of crazy, but it was really a team effort. And so I will say the blessing that we had was we had a lot of experienced bankers that took key roles in the conversion, and we worked really well together. And so I say for the last three to six months, I have probably done the least favorite parts of my job for an extended amount of time. But we've really focused on creating an internal piece with our employees that really helped them to get on board with what they were about to do and the role they were about to play. 

So we took a mission with a theme and really tried to make it somewhat fun and engaging because we were going to be putting them in an environment where it was constant communication. There was going to be a lot asked of them at the same time working on the external communication and what levels, because we do serve multi generations, of being able to take the approach of, you know, what's that strategy to make sure you're hitting all of those key timelines, to make sure you're giving the right information at the right time, putting it out on your website, making sure that, you know, you have the tools available to them when they start calling, beefing up your call center, doing all of those things. 

So I think for my role, I took a strategic approach on the key team that was working through the core, but then did all the typical marketing things, and also worked on the internal piece to make sure that our employees stayed sane, and also had a positive experience with the conversion. And I have to say, you go into this like, sort of like the Olympics, you get one shot, just kind of do it right, even though you know it's going to be somewhat of a train wreck, you're disrupting customers. There's a lot of things happening. but it was as smooth as we could have possibly expected. And I'm really, really proud of our leadership team. I'm really proud of our employees and our customers. They've been fantastic.

Jack Hubbard: Well, before I go on, I gotta pick at this employee thing. Too often what happens is, from a marketing perspective or any executive at the bank, we focus on the customers, but we don't realize the employees have to work over the weekend. They're working long hours. There's a lot of stress. What did you do for the employees to kind of help them through this process?

Britney Campbell: Well, first we were really intentional about making sure we were communicating upfront and being very transparent about what they were going to expect so that they didn't feel like they were getting curveballs. And by the time we were getting to, you know, the peak of it all, there was nothing left that they couldn't possibly be aware of. incorporating the fun element of having the theme around it that we were going to carry through. We're still kind of in that post conversion phase where we really want to celebrate our success once we get out of the heat of it all. But I do think it's having your management team step back from it and say, we do have to have this employee focus because they are customers. At the end of the day, they're also going to be impacted because we want them to use our products and services. 

We want them to have a positive experience so that their attitudes and how they feel about it are obviously going to reflect to our customers as well as give them some enthusiasm and motivation to do a lot of front end work. We ask them to start calling customers in advance to let them know we created a campaign called same but better because we really wanted our customers and our employees to know that this isn't a big change, to really, you know, change who we are at our core of our bank, even though it's a core conversion, wherever the same bank we have the same principles, the same value. It's the same service you're going to expect, but we're going to do this in a better way. 

So all of the services that you're going to get are going to be better. So I think the intentionality, I think taking the time to step back and make sure you're seeing all of the different touch points your customers are going to have, even your employees. and really putting an extra effort. We fed them for days every day. We provided snacks, we provided lunches. It was full for ten branches. It was definitely a coordinated effort that took a lot of people, boots on the ground, working a lot of hours to ensure that, you know, our employees were taken care of just as much as our customers.

Jack Hubbard: Outstanding. Well, the original focus of this, and I want to get back to it, is her bank. you launched it in 2021. Let's talk first about your inspiration for this. This is nothing an easy undertaking. Why did you decide to go this direction?

Britney Campbell:  Well, I hate to have a running theme here, but it is one of those things that sort of found me as well. But, the inspiration really came to me through. I'd made a move for myself, professionally and personally. I moved about an hour outside of our hometown, which is our headquarters for legends, into Nashville, really, just trying to get a sense of community there. And, I noticed in my neighborhood there were a lot of women owned businesses. I had lucked up on a brand new concept that I had not heard of, which was a women's co working space that happened to be in my neighborhood that was opening in March of 2020. and so just about the time that I had gotten settled and started to do all of that discovery around in my neighborhood and found this membership, that was really just this hub of female entrepreneurs that were members in this space. That really just felt like a good fit where I could be a resource to them from a banking standpoint, entering this pandemic where, you just had this interesting environment where there were women that were laid off from their jobs, really exploring, starting their own business. 

You had existing businesses that were having to figure out what, how they would have to shift or pivot in that business, couldn't get a hold of their banks. you had this very, cohesive membership there that was looking for resources, putting on educational, programming to help women through the situation, from mental health to business strategies to their finances and all of those things. And I think for me, in my gut, what I knew is that I had worked with very successful bankers that were very experienced, that in this environment of women supporting women, I had a pool of women that were lenders, who worked in treasury management, had digital business solutions, and were also getting versed in the PPP. And all the things that we were also adapting to and learning at the same time they were, were able to sort of be there, which sort of sparked this, like, you know, is this something that we can do? I've never started a division, I've never started a brand, but those pieces just started to fall into place as to, you know, Legends Bank is always going to be this great, reputable, community bank, but it kind of speaks in general. It doesn't really necessarily cater to women. I do realize the conversation is different. I am a woman. 

I grew up with a single mom. I'm surrounded by a lot of female friends who are also business owners. So I do feel like, between my environment of being a banker, there was this, it just seemed to sort of alchemize itself, in saying that we really needed something that stood for them, that spoke, to them. From how we market ourselves and the kind of programming that we want to do, to how we market all of those different things and then how we service them and the experience that they're going to have, that really was the inspiration to say, we really want to define the banking experience for women. And I don't think that our why then is any different than our why now.

Jack Hubbard: Well, the why then and the why now for executives of a bank are certainly the customer experience, but bottom line results are really important. I'm an executive at Legends Bank, and I'm sure you had to present to a team of folks, what was your business case? Take us back to 2020 when you kind of had this idea, and into 2021, what was your business case for the executives and how did they react?

Britney Campbell:  Well, we had done on the back end of this, once we had the concept, a few of us that were now the core team that co created this brand, had during 2020, had just had a lot of sad conversations about what this could look like and could we get the data and the research to, plea a case that this is a growing segment, especially in Nashville, in the middle Tennessee market where we're at, what does the Legends Bank customer base look like as far as who we're banking, as far as women business owners and things like that, and seeing this growth in like a collective 615, which was the women's co working space, I'm actually sitting in one today doing this interview, in Franklin, Tennessee, which is a community outside of Nashville that is another woman's co working space. 

So you start to see this pattern of things that you want to be a part of and you think, okay, well, our bank is wanting to differentiate ourselves. We have these strategic goals. Does this model, does this brand check boxes? Even though you're doing something different, can you strategize this niche brand in a way that says, I don't necessarily need a full investment because we've never done anything like this. But with our research, with this team of experts, with the trust that you guys have had in us over the years and working with us and having this experience with us, could we take this and pilot it in a way that says, you know, you guys will, support it, let us conceptualize it, let us launch it, and kind of think of this as a pilot, but also like a big campaign. 

You're going to put thousands of dollars towards a campaign. Hopefully you get new accounts and relationships and you get a return on that investment. and so that was really our pitch. After about four to six months worth of the research and having the conversations and putting our, you know, presentation for the board together, I think it was really just, we're in a pandemic. We don't know, we weren't prepared for anything like this. This is something very different that we don't really see happening in banks. We certainly don't see it in any of our competitors. Is this something that could stand out? Is this a vehicle to get new business, and does it for us? 

Check some strategic marks that we may not have really checked before and letheme look at this twelve months from now and reevaluate this as we go. And that's really kind of been our pattern for the last, you know, three years to kind of keep coming back to the table with the team to see what's working, what's not working, are we growing what's happening in the environment? What are we doing? you know, kind of going through that whole process which we're in now because we're in that strategic planning season. So a lot of introspection is coming out of the conversion, now with new technology and some things that I think could be added benefits, and just really coming back to the table with all of those things to see what's next for us.

Jack Hubbard: Yeah, I want to explore that with you. I want to explore what's working and what's not. But one of the things that I was really impressed by is, your website is just tremendous. obviously, you probably had some help with it, but I'm sure you spearheaded it and did a lot of the work on it as well. And one of the things I like about your website is there's a video on it of your colleagues that helped start this. You mentioned four colleagues. Who are they and what role did they take on as you developed this, as you developed her bank?

Britney Campbell:  Well, I'm really kind of the out of the box person, so they were my first phone call. I've worked with this group of ladies for at least ten to 20 years, and each of us have over 20 years of banking experience, which I think was a really huge asset for us because we already really work well together. We all have had the same path where we've had multiple roles in the bank, but we all serve in different roles of the bank today. And so having that ability to have a very well rounded perspective of not only the customer experience, but really our experience and the processes that we need, we felt were really important as we were building it, because it's like, you know, a marketing end of it can get very, in the weeds of, like, your branding, your messaging, all the things that you need to do to attract the people, but then you have to have this back end piece of it that's like, okay, where's the rubber meet the road where you don't look like you're just checking a box, that you are actually delivering on the things that you're saying. 

So, you know, we have Amelia Majette, who is a yemenite commercial lender. So she's definitely going to be somebody that's going to help us in understanding the lending and financing piece for businesses. Casey Hempel, she is treasury management, merchant services, digital experience, all of those types of things. And I'm also on our senior, leadership team. And then you have Sabrina Joyner, who is operations. And so all of our process back end stuff, technology, all of the things that we need to sort of build in and utilize our tools and resources and systems, from Legends Bank. To have that experience for her bank, that was really integral. 

So when we're sitting as a team, kind of going through these things and talking through, you get these different perspectives and also different personalities so that you kind of don't have this, one viewpoint or one style of what you're doing it. You're really just trying to see this very holistically.

Jack Hubbard: That's great. That's just awesome. Well, so, I'm asking questions that a woman might ask if she was watching this program and saying, you know what? I'd really like to think about starting this. So let's go back to the four folks, plus yourself. How is it a percentage of time that you spend at her bank? 100%. Do they have other roles? You have other roles. How do you spend your time to make sure that her bank is continuing to grow and your other potential job and theirs at legends?

Britney Campbell:  It's a great question because that was a really good, focus for us in the beginning to say, right now we need a certain level of resources to get this kicked off because, you know, this, this could be something that takes off like a rocket, and we should be prepared for that, should it happen. and if it doesn't, if it's a slow approach, really, sort of, I kind of looked at it as like, the sprint versus the marathon, and how are we going to be prepared? And so what we said in the beginning was we would do a minimal amount of advertising. We weren't going to turn the faucet on with it, because if you launch the thing and then for some reason, with all the planning that you've done, it doesn't work or you start having a breakdown. 

We didn't want to have a reputational risk, or we didn't want to have a situation where we were hurting ourselves more than we were helping it. So I think that we were very strategic in having strong partnerships in the community with different female centric groups. That helps to get our name out there. We didn't go full fledged on any kind of campaign or anything like that. We were like, okay, we're putting ourselves out there. And we did have a high volume of activity when we first launched the brand, which we expected to do. 

So we allocated our time as a team to say, even though we do have these other roles, because we were in this weird kind of COVID phase, we did have the ability to sort of give a little bit more of ourselves and energy and effort into launching this brand, in the period of time. But as legends get bigger and busier, we have found challenges. And when we have these ebbs and flows of business with her bank, which is from a researcher data standpoint, is like, you can see this effect like this. So if we do an event or I do a podcast that happens to get some attention, you might see us spike in discovery forms, inquiries and things like that, or I speak at a conference or our names out there, you can kind of see that. So we have actually mapped that. So that, hey, if we're kind of having a slow period with legends, this would be a great time to focus on her bank. If we're really busy in legends, can we also kind of tailor back and just kind of have this as they come in? It will continue to grow. 

We do have a support team on the back that is some personal, bankers, universal bankers that are very seasoned as well. So they do help to support, you know, some of the, you know, inquiries and things like that that do come in. And we've had to add that over time, but we are at that place of. We really could use a full time, dedicated person. We've identified what we want that to look like, should we start down that path? But then again, I. We're a separate brand. We don't have full autonomy because we still have to have the same executive management team that's helping to make those decisions on staffing and things like that, just like they are looking at for every other department. So we do try to figure out how to manage our time wisely, where we're not sacrificing our other roles for her bank, but also not neglecting her bank because of Legends Bank. It is a little bit of a. It is challenging at times, but we do make it  work for the most part.

Jack Hubbard: All right, let's talk about this. How, your brand is a voice for women to help women reach their potential. talk about, and, you know, and we're going to talk about my friend Leanne Cassava and Impressia Bank as well here. But everybody that has a woman owned or a woman run or a woman focused bank does things a little bit differently. How are you going about going to market? What are some things that you're doing to help women understand that this should be the bank for them?

Britney Campbell:  Well, I think having those partnerships, you know, with these other organizations, so I'd use for our. For our community, you have heels and handshakes, you have women connected. That is a multi community. So it's not just Nashville centric. They have, you know, they have communities outside the greater Nashville area, these co working spaces that have women in them. And I'm a member of two of them. So it's like, you know, having your face there where I do recognize that sometimes women aren't, like, going to be the first to make a quick decision, on where they put their money or how they invest their money. 

So, you know, building a trust and making sure that they see us out there and also have some sort of genuine connection with us instead of just the advertising and the, where they don't really get the personal connection, having that, the sponsorships, where we're partnering with conferences for women in business, those types of things, where I'm building those relationships and our team is building those relationships, relationships just helps to continue that, trust building to where they're starting to see our name consistently, they're starting to see our faces consistently, and then the experience to where we're collecting those testimonials on the backside of, customers, to where we're also sharing their experience, as an added layer, too, because I also, as a woman that has been around financial resources my whole life, my granddad was in banking. He definitely set himself up well financially. 

I am not immune to my own financial, you know, girl math type of, you know, spend over save types of things where I've had to over the years, you know, pinch pennies, maybe spend a little more than I should have, maybe not have had the, not have sought the resources, asked the right questions, felt insecure about asking the questions. so I definitely relate to the uniqueness of that. We can be very, very smart and well educated and still feel very insecure about what we know about money, how we feel about money and the decision making. 

And I still think that generationally, we're not that far removed from having the ability to be independently, financially, you know, able to make decisions on our own, or not have the husband, not have the father figure or whoever, be the person that's helping us make those decisions and navigate, you know, our finances. So I think with those things is, you know, it is a really big deal. And we have found that that is really kind of our winning strategy is it's not so much the advertising to get people to know who we are and think it's a really great concept. It's really to know who we are as women, that we do take a compassionate approach in those conversations, active listening, and really creating an experience that is definitely conversational more than transactional. 

So I don't really know if that answered your question, in fact. But, I do know that it is a multifaceted approach because you are dealing with people and their money, and it's not necessarily just a quick decision that women are making when it comes to their money and their business.

Jack Hubbard: Well, no, it's perfect and I want to go back to something you talked about around, research. I remember and this had to have been 25 years ago. I'm down in Texas at a bank, and they had a women's division, and as I walked in, the woman showed me the wall of fame of all the women. Their advisory board, this was a space where women could come and network with each other, and they had events there and things like that. I mentioned Impressia Bank, which just started last year, did a great job. They have a separate brand, as you do. you get into this and you think, okay, this is a really good idea. But I'm sure you did a lot of research of banks around the country that were doing this. What did you find when you were looking for other organizations that targeted women?

Britney Campbell:  Well, one, we didn't see a lot of it. 

So you had, I think it was like the first women community bank, or there was something along those lines that had just started, or it was in a de novo state. I did find that there were women programs, focused programs. I did see some women divisions. There were, I did see a lot of it that felt still very traditional and very banky, which is something that I was trying to shy a bit away from, because I really wanted to create more of a lifestyle feel, because we were thinking through, how do we really want to approach women and be seen as these trusted resources, but also just like your trusted friend that you go to for advice over a glass of wine, just to ask those general questions where you felt very comfortable and you didn't really feel like there was this, space between the customer, this intimidation space between that, where it felt very stiff. 

And, while we were trying to be unique and not seeing a whole lot of it, what we did see was that there were a lot of initiatives and programming that provided a lot of education, encouraged a lot of connection, and a lot of networking. And that's also what we want. We wanted to build a community and plug into other communities of women where we were looked at as a resource. So when somebody first thought about, you know, I need to talk to someone about, you know, starting my business, even though we may not be able to have every aspect of starting your business and that advice, we want to be that first phone call to help you connect to other people, your CPA, your attorney, you know, all of those other types of, service professionals, and kind of create that ecosystem. And I did see that, in the few, not necessarily brands, but those that had created programs for women, those who had started their banks and things like that. But then also, too, how can we do that a little bit differently, knowing the women, and having those conversations with them and what they're looking for in their banking experience and also programming and education.

Jack Hubbard: All right, so I got to ask you, what's working and not working? One of the things that you did well and really smart, and you even talked about it earlier, you talked about Pilot, and you wanted to make sure that this was working year over year because it's costing the bank money, and if it's not going anywhere, you got to take a look at that as well. So talk about what's working and what's, what's not working. And maybe if you started over, what would you do differently?

Britney Campbell:  I think what's working is we put together, based on what we had access to and kind of given the environment we were in and the resources that we had at our fingertips, I think we did the best that we could with what we had, in being able to conceptualize this brand, really see an experience, put together a process or processes, and design this in such a short amount of time to get it from conception to launching it, I would never trade the team that we started it with. We also are in such a competitive market. 

So I will say one of the double edged swords that we faced was, we didn't do an internal launch. We did, but we did it the day before we did a surprise launch. I was very protective with a purpose to say, we don't really see this. And if for some reason we miss this mark or it gets out and I leak out that we're starting this brand, could there be a competitor with more access and resources that may be able to jump us to market if we start having these conversations? So I had people sign NDAs. We trademarked the brand. We went through this process. But I will say we've, we do have a struggle with internal buy-in, to some degree, because you do have this. We have a lot of males that work at our bank. We also have, you know, women that, you know, are bankers. It's like, how do you become a part of it? You know, how does this function? What does this look like, and why is it different? and really trying to wrap your head around something that is very different from what you've experienced from being in a bank. and because, you know, we're pulled in a lot of different directions. I know I speak for myself where you're doing a lot of external stuff, you're working on stuff for Legends Bank. 

You're also trying to give your attention to her. Bank and I kind of, on the herbank side, serve on marketing and business development. Development, in those realms, too, that I do wish that we would have really taken a time, just like we did with this conversion, to work a lot closer and really kind of understand how you integrate more of your people when we weren't going to have a physical presence in a branch, those types of things. And I think that that question is so interesting. Like, what would you do differently is so challenging for me because, number one, the executive team didn't come to us and say, we want you to start a female brand. like, Impressia CEO had  this vision and Impressia impressed on that team to go out and create this thing and do their research. 

This was deconstructed and we didn't approach it that way. so I don't know what I would do differently because we were in the middle of a pandemic that we never prepared for. Opportunities kind of came available to us. what's, you know, that part of the internal piece does bring it home about how important it is to have your employees fully brought into the things that you do. because that can, you know, hurt you in some ways, but it can also, if it's done right. And you have those people, because we have some people that, you know, aren't part of the core team, male and female, who are very great advocates for us. They. They see a woman owned business or whoever, and they are talking about her bank and sharing our content and all those things, and we love that. but I think that part could have been done better. I think that's part of our strategic plan is how do we better integrate that. And we are onboarding. 

We are working on some training and some things that we're building now that we've kind of gotten out of that period and have a little bit of time to breathe and think, think through that. But, you know, there is also this environment and this economy coming out of COVID that is training all of the business community. So a lot of small businesses are closing. There's a lot of things kind of happening in this environment that affect us also. So it's like, you know, where do we, you know, what role do we play as bankers, in general, to not only be prepared for those things, for closing. How do you help businesses who may be struggling or questioning whether or not they should close, and, you know, being a support in a time where they're not, as, you know, in their sexy season of, you know, thriving in business. And how is that going to impact us if women start to become more afraid to enter into starting a business or they start scaling back rather than scaling, you know, up, which then will impact their deposit balances. one of the things that we've learned, too, is that they're more risk averse to wanting to borrow money. 

So you don't have them really. They seek capital, but they don't really have their own capital to inject. There's just a lot of things that we still need to fill those gaps with education on the business side about whether or not to have investors. How do you get access to capital? you know, and who are those players that are going to support you? And it's sometimes a disconnect between what people are seeing online with your influencers and all of those things that make it seem like it's just so easy to access that money, and scale your business when you know it's a lot of your own skin in the game. it's not an easy thing to get access to all the time if you don't have your own financial house in order to, so, you know, those things present challenges that we are also having to meet. Because when you start trying to really invest in your customers beyond just being in this transactional space, you run into all of these ways that you have to really come in and understand what kind of environment you're in with them.

Jack Hubbard: That's so true. Let me be a, let me be a woman banker now. Ah, and I'm thinking about starting a bank like you did. So let me get real practical with you. So you have nine branches, soon to be ten. Woman business owner walks into a branch. This isn't a joke. It's true. There isn't a woman and a frog and a bear. and so woman business owner walks into a branch, sits down, says, I'd like to open an account. Will that personal banker, universal banker, open the account under Legends Bank or her bank?

Britney Campbell:  That really depends. our process is that we hope that you would open it under her bank, if they fit that criteria. and because of what we set up as we said, we don't really set this up as cannibalism. This isn't a Herbank versus Legends Bank. We coded it on the back end so that it's really nothing other than you're just coding it to show that it's a qualifier. So that when we send communications or we have special events or our bank really wants to know who sits in that segment, there's a couple of different ways we can strip that back. Whether they come into the branch for an in branch experience, through legends. but they're also business owners. Some have heard of Herbank, some haven't. but there's also, do they come in through the discovery form? Have they come in through our team? so we did really kind of look at that to see, you know, we know we're not going to completely abandon people that want the in branch experience. But the majority of people we talked to, especially during COVID were like, we don't even go to the branch. We have all of these digital services. If I don't have to go to a branch, I don't want to have to go to a branch. But on that other small percentage,

Britney Campbell:  Yes, we have had that, and we have opened accounts. We will be happy to go on that journey with a customer if they want to hand them off to us, but we also want them to, as the employee, to go through it with us, just to kind of see, you know, how do we have those conversations? What questions do we ask? What does active listening look like versus being the order taker for the customer? So, you know, those are all things that we're still also trying to refine. Like, where do we, you know, I don't oversee the branches and I don't necessarily, I'm not necessarily the experienced officer, but as you know, maybe through all of your experience working with bankers of all different sizes and different types of leadership and structures in their department. I wear a lot of hats, so it's like you kind of get into that by collaborating with other people to help build on what they're doing for customer service, customer experience, I don't necessarily oversee it. 

So some of those things can be challenging, too, when you're trying to work with other team members to figure out how you integrate another brand into the mix for a small percentage of customers that, you know, may come in some kind of time? Tying that back into a previous question, but, we do have ways on the back end. There's no special products or services, so you don't see, like, her bank checking or anything like that. So it does give them the ability to just open the account and code it, through an in branch experience. But the majority of our customers have to go through the website, do the discovery form, or just email us, or give us a business card and contact us that way. So that's kind of the larger percentage of the business that we build on that end.

Jack Hubbard: All right, you talk about business development as part of your responsibility. You've got a commercial banker and you've got a treasury professional. a very smart move. How likely is it that they go out and do business development proactively for her bank?

Britney Campbell:  Well, so Casey, that's the head of our treasury, is now also, because of the conversion, has stepped into an operations role. The great thing, if you are our CEO of the bank, you love Casey because she has that ability to flex really well from closing. I mean, she will close a deal like that. That's why you love her. From a production standpoint, there's not a customer in the, on this planet I would not put Casey in front of. But she is also very knowledgeable. She knows processes, she knows a lot of things. 

So she benefits us in a lot of ways on the back end. And she has a team of all women, which is great for us at her bank because, dee and Christy and the team that work with her, do, when they do get out with customers, or they are chamber ambassadors or they're doing their thing out in the community, they definitely, help get the word out about her bank. They do look for opportunities. Casey is not necessarily more of the business development, but she is the person that once you have got your foot in the door and you've gotten them interested in your brand or bank, she's, the one that you want sitting there talking to them and get them drinking all of the kool aid and integrating them into the bank. Amelia, on the other hand, being the lender, she's definitely got the business development arm. So she's looking for opportunities all the time. 

She is a rock star lender, and she has a very large portfolio. So she spends a lot of time loving the customers that she already has. but, you know, we definitely look for opportunities in each of the communities to try to figure out how do we plug in, her from a commercial lending, piece, but also trying to empower other, communities, like in our Cheatham county market, Nashville market, and things like that, as she can't just do it all. So you do have to empower your people to also be out there when they're involved in all of these different nonprofits or chamber type organizations to look for those opportunities and pass referrals our way.

Jack Hubbard: That's, that's just so fascinating.  So, again, I'm going to be real practical with you. You talked about a discovery form, so I assume that's something on the website. Where does it come into? That's it. And, then what happens to that discovery?

Britney Campbell:  You're just trying to get all our secret sauce.

Jack Hubbard: Well, I'm m. You know, you don't have to tell me, but, but here's, here's what I'm trying to figure out. And by the way, from my experience, if you don't reach back out to somebody who's filled out a form in about 32 minutes or less, that's going to go away. And too often what happens is marketing professionals are the ones that get the form. And because you wear a lot of hats, because you're so busy, a lot of times, that form doesn't get moved on and the form gets moved on. But Amelia's really busy that day, so the lead sits there. I'm just curious about the process. How do you, if you're willing to talk about it?

Britney Campbell:  Yeah, so we really, we pride ourselves on responsiveness. It is also really difficult when you're experiencing the conversion, and a situation like that where response time is a challenge to, you know, to meet what you feel like is your standard for response. So what we did build in as an autoresponder, first off. So you submit that form, you're going to get an auto response, just so that you don't feel like you're just kind of out there in the, in limbo without somebody getting back to you. That discovery form actually goes to a full team of us. So we built that in so that it wasn't just coming to one person. Because what happens if you're sick, if you're on vacation, you don't have anybody else to pick that up and move it forward. 

So the discovery form is built so at least we can see what they're interested in, to know who might be the best person to be the first response back. We do set expectations about response time, good, bad, or indifferent. I do think it's important that you set those expectations with your customers so they're aware of how you're going to operate and function. So if there's somebody that needs a really quick response all the time, we may not be the people for you. And it just is what it is. and those are challenges that we have to meet, and you can only do what you can do, but I would never want to over promise somebody and build an expectation that we can't meet consistently. But if you're trying to get into a doctor's appointment, unless you have a 911, you're not getting your appointment tomorrow. and most of the time you're not hearing back from your doctor immediately. It's not the standard that we want, obviously. 

But, you know, when you're trying to run a little bit leaner than you would like, you do have to figure out how you're going to meet challenges and make sure you don't lose any integrity with your customers that you're already serving versus the new people you're trying to onboard. So I know for me in those conversations is I do try to be very upfront of, like, I will want to be very quick to respond to you to set up a call with our team or with one of our, you know, depending on what they're wanting to set up that call, because it's not going to be me. I'm not the person that's really going to talk to you through the checking accounts and the treasury management services. but I definitely want to make an introduction. but I do set that up where if we can't get with them, let's find a time that's convenient with them just setting up an appointment instead of it. 

Just like I said, we really want to get away from the transactional feel. We do have customers that love us a lot and they contact us a lot. We love that. but, you know, it does get really challenging when you have a lot of people that need your time and expect a really quick response time and you just don't have, you don't have the ability to do that for all of your customer base, should they need that. But I do think we have built a really good process that works for us also because our call center is all women. So should they ever call an 800 number, just to get through to Legends Bank, because we're very transparent parents about that. They're part of our, you know, that Legends Bank brand. they're going to get a, most likely going to call in and get a female, regardless of it's our core team or not.

Jack Hubbard: Interesting. Well, I'm sure that a lot of female, or male bankers looking at this are saying, you know, like Nashville, my market has a lot of women owned businesses in it. I'd like to start something like this. Now, you've gone through this for several years. What advice would you give to a banker who says, I think this is a good idea. I'd like to start a women owned bank.

Britney Campbell:  Well, definitely do your research, not just pulling data from your chamber, wherever you're pulling, to try to understand maybe what segment of your community is business, women business owners, or just women in general. Maybe your focus isn't going to be on the business and Legends Bank. You know, we're a commercial bank, so business banking is a love language for us. So it just really translated well, in that regard for the Herbank brand, you know, but I do think it is having a lot of conversations. I mean, I got really curious, and that's just me and my nature. I want to know. So, I'm a relationship driven person, just me. 

And so when Covid happened, and I was really concerned for some of my friends' mental health through the process, how they were navigating their business, those that were banking with us were like, what can we do to help you? those that weren't banking with us because we're newer to sort of the Nashville market, maybe not familiar with us, but was like, how is your bank helping you? What experience are you having versus what experience would you like to have? I think that's really kind of important, because we did discover that women hadn't had the best experience going to a bank, for a lot of different reasons. Whether it was because, the business plan that they had, no, one really listened to them, didn't really understand,  the vision that they had for this business, very dismissive of them, you know, really didn't pay them a lot of attention or didn't feel like they were, you know, had any sort of value, or just very quick to turn them over, just didn't really spend a lot of time with them. 

So, you know, that coupled with the fact that they don't really want to have an in branch experience means that you have to really understand, your own capacity for the talent that you have in your bank and the kind of experience you want them to have if they're going to work more closely with your team. And so I think it's really just trying to be curious about that segment and whether or not you're going to really be able to invest from different fronts. Do you have the budget? Do you have the buy in? Do you have the capacity and the time to stand, to sit back and take this on as a project? Because it really is. It took us several months, and we just had the benefit of going, doing this during a pandemic where, you know, some things had slowed down on one end where people weren't coming into the bank, events had shut down. There were things I wasn't planning, like on a marketing end, that had kind of slowed my world down a bit. 

So, you know, really kind of gave us an opportunity that we wouldn't have today. So, I don't know that, you know, had it not been for that pandemic, I don't know that we really would have conceptualized this, the way that it looks today. But I think if we are an example and an inspiration for somebody to want to start, you definitely have to have, you need to really pull in a team that can see your experience from multiple angles and somebody to do the research to back, you know, this experience you're wanting them to have, or it just is not going to align.

Jack Hubbard: Right on. Well, it's always great to have students, excel, and you have exceeded your excellence. congratulations to you all, all of you've accomplished in your career. Britney, talk about your website, what it. What it is, and if somebody did want to get a hold of you, you, how would they do that?

Britney Campbell:  Well, our website is her dash bank.com, and you'll know that you've reached it because it's nice and pink and very feminine. we're also on social media through Instagram, LinkedIn, which I know is your favorite, facebook and, x twitter. but if you want to reach me, my email is bcampbellagensbank.com, and, definitely love to connect over email, but if you are more of a socially driven person, you can find me on LinkedIn. Jack, you've tagged me in a couple of things. They can definitely find me through your post. but yes, we definitely love to connect with some other modern banking friends.

Jack Hubbard: Britney, congratulations, on all of your great success, and thanks so much for being with us.

Britney Campbell:  I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me.

Jack Hubbard: Thanks for listening to this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers featuring Britney Campbell. Next week, a good friend and colleague joins me. I talk AI CRM, unique scorecards and much more with Ron Buff, chairman and CEO of Performance Insights. Need some practice, ideas, and resources around blending LinkedIn into the sales process? Well, you got them at themodernbanker.com. And subscribe to this podcast. It's been downloaded more than 50,000 times. Follow us on YouTube and join our free public library, too. That library has replays of all my shows, all the Jack Rants with Brynne , more than 50 ebooks and much more. More. A big thanks as always to our great sponsors, Vertical IQ and RelPro for coming along with us on this journey. It's Q four 2024. Yep, it's here. And it's always a good practice, always a good time to make today and every day a great client day.