Episode 1: James Robert Lay

00:00

Once you fix that, then you can move up to the next stage, which is to capture those who are in the consideration stage, those that “I'm thinking about applying for this product but I'm not there yet I need to talk to someone”. Well, that's what you're getting into, like web lead generation.

Jack Hubbard  00:14

I've had the privilege of being in at around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. Welcome to Jack Rants with Modern Bankers brought to you by RelPro and VerticalIQ. Each week I feature top voices and financial services from bankers and consultants, to best selling authors and many more. The goal of this program is simple, to provide insights success practices, and to bring new ideas to the table that you can use to maximize your results.

My guest today is James Robert Lay. My friend Eric Cook introduced me to James Robert and I am forever grateful. James Robert is a digital anthropologist and he's based in Houston. If the subject is digital marketing and banking, James Robert Lay is all over it. I've been a guest on his amazing show the banking on digital growth podcast. And he's got more than 300 episodes recorded. And they're seen in more than 140 countries. His book “Banking on Digital Growth" is an international bestseller, and he's got a new book out, “Banking on Change”. And that one, well, it promises to be an instant classic as well. It's James Robert Lay, Jack Rants with Modern Bankers. Here we go! Let's start by talking about something that I'm borrowing from your podcast. And I absolutely love it every time you have a guest on, you start with something like tell me something good. And it reminds me of a banker that I used to work with in Indiana and every pipeline meeting, he would start by saying “tell me something good”. So tell me something good.

James Robert Lay 02:19

Yeah, there's a lot of good going on right now. It's for context, it's the end of May is the end of a school year. All four of my kids have been doing very well academically, and then also musically. So we've had a lot of orchestra concerts over the past couple of weeks. We're getting ready for a vacation with the family and going out of the country. So the kids are going to get to have a whole new experience. And I look at experience I look at really kind of this whole reality of life is just a big classroom. So there's always something to be learned. And my wife and I, we just had our anniversary May the big month May is a big month for the Lay household, we have three birthdays, we have Mother's Day, we have enough school, we have an anniversary. So it's a big month. And that's all personal. But then on the professional front, what a year it has been. As of recording, we're moving into our 300th episode of the podcast that goes live tomorrow. And just the amount of relationships and connections that I've been able to make. Over the past couple of years since the first book came out Banking on Digital Growth, getting prepared to launch the second book already outlining the third book. There's just it's an enormous amount of positivity. And it's not saying that it's all, you know, sunshine every day. But I think that's why I asked the question. Because there's so much chaos and confusion in the world right now. And there always has been and there always will be. We get to determine what we see.

Jack Hubbard  04:03

That's very true. And you talked about, I loved on one of the podcasts that I listened to recently you talked about the crisis of communication in banking. And we certainly have faced that over the last several weeks, several months. Talk about how you think banking has responded to what's been going on.

James Robert Lay 04:25

I say there's a communication crisis, which is resulting in a confidence crisis. Communication and confidence go hand in hand together. And when we think about all once again, all of the confusion and the chaos that people are hearing about that they're reading about that they're seeing on social media that is influencing their perspective of the banking vertical regardless of if their bank per se was it. impacted by some of the recent bank failures. And it's almost like taking a withdrawal, if you will, out of their subconscious mind have the confidence within the banking vertical, particularly here within the United States yet alone, globally, I look at the communication here, or really the lack of, I would say, if we look at the macro level, and we did a study on this, and it was, I think it was about 95% of financial brands that we looked at, utilizing social media said nothing at all, on Facebook, on Instagram, on tick tock on Twitter, on LinkedIn, about what was going on with these bank failures recently, in one can make the argument well, no news is good news. So we're just going to be quiet. And I said, Well, that's the old world perspective of this, because the town square, if you will, are the social media platforms. And if we're not a part of that narrative, we're not able to help influence the perspective of other people. And so if all of their hearing is the fear mongering and the negativity that we have, I see it obligation to at least join the conversation and provide an alternative perspective, saying that you know, what, it might not be so good for these other organizations in these institutions. But this is what we're doing. And this is why you can feel confident that your money is safe at our bank, or at our credit union. That's an obligation, I think, as a leader to step up and lead in these new platforms and communicate one thing, which is confidence, because confidence is contagious.

Jack Hubbard  06:48

Totally agree. And when SVB went down, one of the things I did over that weekend was I looked at 20, bank sites just sort of picked at random different sizes of bank, only one a community bank had anything to do with safety and soundness, to address the problem at all. But I want to go deeper with that, because in your new book, you talk about exponential growth begins within. And I want to get to that too. But I also believe that we have an obligation as an organization, to tell our people inside the bank, what they can expect, what they might say to the customer not scripted. Because if they don't, if we don't communicate with people with from within the message from without is going to be horrible.

James Robert Lay 07:36

Whenever I wrote banking on digital growth, I was at a different place. And just my own personal journey. I looked at the world through the lens of a formula within financial services, dx plus hx equals growth, meaning a positive digital human digital experience when combined with a positive human experience will lead to growth, and then COVID happened. And it was through that experience, I looked at the internal perspective, because once again, there was a lot of confusion, there was a lot of chaos at that moment in time, everyone was going remote people weren't coming in branches were closed. And that made me really rethink the communication of, of what we need is from a formulaic approach, ex plus hx, can be multiplied by then dx equals growth, meaning a positive employee experience leads to a positive human experience that can be then multiplied even exponentially through positive digital experience. If the people that we work with our teams, our colleagues, particularly those on the front line, if they aren't confident in how they should communicate with account holders, once again, not scripted, but if they don't have context, or clarity, and as you were doing the studies looking at these websites, and we're looking at social media sites, we also did a study within the industry. And I can't tell you the percentage, but it was a significant percentage, at least 30 to 40% of people were communicating that they did not feel confident in what was going on internally. Well, that internal sense of confusion is going to then impact the external communication. And so this is where we must ensure that our team members and when I talk about the front line, I think the front line has changed because historically would have thought about the front line has been people tellers working literally on the front line of the branches, our branch manager or a loan officer. We're all on the front line now with social media. We all can join that narrative with the proper education with the proper context of how we then can communicate within these different platforms, that is a major growth opportunity, and which is I'm grateful for the work that y'all are doing now on that front.

Jack Hubbard  10:14

Well, thank you. And it's so interesting when you talk about disruption and confusion. And, all of this, your first book, Banking on Digital Growth was groundbreaking and a best seller. And now fast forward only a couple of years, Banking on Change, and the whole concept around banking, not the whole concept. But a lot of the concept has to do with AI. And I can't not ask you questions when I have the expert here. What's going on with AI, ChatGPT and all the rest of it in banking. Where are we going to come down on this?

James Robert Lay 10:52

I'm as much of a student as I am a teacher right now on this and I say that because it is happening so fast. You know, I look at inflections in time, 1994 was the year that the Internet reached the mass consciousness of humanity, and I was just watching a video last night. I think it was from NBC that had pulled together clips from 1994 where they were talking about the Internet and it was Katie Couric who pretty much said I'm gonna paraphrase back in 1994 I don't know about this Internet thing seems like lose a lot of time on it. And here we are almost literally 30 years later, 2024 will be 30 years flashforward. Now, November 30 2022 that's the point in time that I'm looking at where AI reached the mass consciousness of humanity granted, AI had been talked about before, but it was pretty academic. It wasn't that obtainable. And then November 30 2022 ChatGPT comes out. And at that point, I think that is where many people see begin to see the exponential potential of what AI is the good that it can create. But also the fact that we have really, it's a Pandora's Box. Because if we think back to 1994, who would have thought in 1994, the dawn of the Internet that we would be jumping into strangers cars, because I was a kid of the 80s. That was like the number one lesson never get into a stranger's car. And now here we are, I landed an airport, I get a stranger's car. Who would think that we'd go sleep in people's homes that we don't even know once again? You don't do that back in the 80s. Yet, here we are. There's these whole paradigm shifts at the macro level that I don't think that we're able to perceive right now. And I think that's if anything, where are we going to go with this? That's the lesson we don't know. So if we don't know, the only thing that we can do is reflect upon the past. And the transformations that have happened through multiple lenses, not just within financial services, but in education, in health care, in retail, in travel, in longevity even is going to majorly impact financial services, all that we can do is become even that much more adaptable, which is probably one of the greatest opportunities. But the biggest challenge that I see, particularly for the financial services vertical, if I look at the macro level here.

Jack Hubbard  13:28

Yeah. And I want to talk about the digital growth university, because it's just awesome. You've got over 650 clients, and you do really well. And I'm sure that in that university in those classes that you do for marketing professionals, I'm sure you get very specific and you talk about ChatGPT. Here's what I find. When I asked bankers, what they're doing, and even my own bank that I'm on the board of some don't even know about it. Some just turn their nose up at it, which is equally scary. There's got to be a point in the middle where we know how to use this thing. And we can use it well. What are you seeing specifically? What are some banks doing in terms of using ChatGPT in a marketing sense, or a sale sense or any sense at all?

James Robert Lay 14:23

It's early on here and I want to give some opportunities that I see low hanging fruit. The very first is to have a conversation. What is this to begin with in the first place? I think we need to level set. Because if I think about the digital growth University, when I work with not just a marketing team, but a marketing sales team, our marketing sales and leadership team, I asked them what is digital growth? And everyone brings a different answer and I said that's going to be your biggest challenge everyone, we need to get a uniform definition of what digital growth is. So now let's what is ChatGPT? Everyone is probably going to come to the table with a bit of a different answer, which is going to create some friction. And that answer is going to be determined based upon what their perception of ChatGPT is, what have they been hearing? What have they been seeing? I think of a lot of leaders that I've talked to. They look at ChatGPT. And their perception is “Oh, that's, like, that's what kids are gonna cheat in school with”. I go really? Are they going to cheat in school with this? Are they going to find new ways to solve new problems, and it's gonna require a different level of thinking. So let's get real practical. What can a financial brand leader do with this? Well, let's say you want to start a podcast, right? I think that is one of the greatest networking opportunities in today's world, because media has become decentralized. Media has become democratized. And well, I'm a small little community bank, who would listen to my podcast, people in your local community. They listen to the local radio, don't they? So it's about once again, it's about communication. Okay, so you, you bring people on this podcast? What is the podcast gonna give you, it's gonna give you an audio transcript. So now you have an audio transcript, take that audio transcript, loaded up into ChatGPT. Write me an article, write me 10 tweets out of that, write me three LinkedIn post out of that, write me a title, write me the show notes for that podcast. That's just one little micro example of how you can take human centric content. And now get an exponential multiplier of time. Because how much time is that podcast going to require? We're doing right now 3045 minutes an hour tops. Now you multiply time and the value that gets created out of that across multiple channels across multiple platforms. We this was that even in my field of vision, nine months ago, and it's the adaptability here of looking at potential opportunities with new tools or new technologies. You take you take, you know, 10 podcast conversations now. And let's say you're working with local businesses. Okay. So they're all entrepreneurs, why want to run all of those podcasts through ChatGPT? What are the common patterns? Because that's like, that's the best that's ethnographic research at its finest. I couldn't really pull those patterns in, let the technology, let the AI let the machine, find the patterns, bring it back to me. What are the opportunities, then go back and have another conversation with those business owners with the things that we didn't hear in our initial conversation. Getting small, little microcosm of using this as a communication multiplier.

Jack Hubbard  18:05

And if I'm a small community bank 500,000,007 50, and I'm in Iowa, I look around for my staff, and I don't have any. Now if but I need to do the same kinds of things that a bigger bank can do this year, despite what you just described, makes me so much more efficient. And I can look bigger, I can look substantial. And in a town of 10,000 people, if I get 300 people to listen to my podcast, I become a thought leader in that community. And that's really all I want.

James Robert Lay 18:40

That's exactly right. And this is the opportunity here. I think so many, and I've heard this over the last decade talking about digital growth. Well, how are we going to do that? How words were too small in the opportunity is not to worry about the how it's to think about the who, and the who historically, was another person or another team? Well, we have capability, we have capacity issues. The who now becomes artificial intelligence, not as a replacement for a team member, but as a capability in a capacity upgrade to do even more than we ever thought possible. But that is only going to be possible if we open up our hearts and minds to the potential.

Jack Hubbard  19:34

Yeah, very true. And we've been talking about Chet GPT. James, Robert, but there are there are hundreds of other resources that you likely can describe. I was listening to another podcast over the weekend. And they described a software called Opus dot Pro, and I'm sure you've heard of it. And what this will allow you to do basically I from what I understand is to take our podcast today. And it will break it up into certain segments. It will help highlight certain things help us with, with media posts, social media posts, et cetera. So the the opportunity to reach customers at an individual level has never been more powerful. What are some of the other software you're seeing your clients and financial services used to be more effective and efficient,

James Robert Lay 20:31

copied out AI is one that comes top of mind. There's a lot of different use cases from a marketing perspective and from a sales perspective. For example, you could take a LinkedIn profile, and drag that into copy AI, and they have templates already set up. So write me a LinkedIn connection, email, an email, but just a connection message, that is more likely to get some type of response or use that use their LinkedIn profile. Let's say I'm already connected with them use their LinkedIn profile, to write a cold email for a prospect. And so what it's going to do is going to take all of that information on the LinkedIn profile, and frame this in a way that probably I'm going to miss. That's going to increase the likelihood email open rates, looking at at the AI side of things. They're all they're being built into Salesforce that's being built into HubSpot. We can only guess what a good email title is going to be. Well, why don't we go and ask the AI, the highest probability to get someone to open up an email. Video editing the script and thinking about this particular podcast right here, just script has taken the video editing, challenges and complexities inherent to like Adobe Premiere, and has now simplified it down to something that even my kids are, you know, who are like 10 years old, 11 years old, 12 years old, they're able to now edit podcast, because of the simplicity of this. And that's all being driven by AI is another example to where we're gonna come back to podcasts just because it's top of mind right now with my conversation. But I could take a podcast and say, or a YouTube video and I want to get the timestamps for like key insights, I load a transcript up into otter AI. And it can do that it could take a meeting and summarize a meeting for me. So and I think with what's happening now, and like this is recent news with Chad GPT. A lot of this is we're now have plugins that we can plug into other platforms, we can plug into, you know, things like Shopify, or we can plug into zoom, or we can plug into descript. That's an exponential upgrade that and this is where even my own mind has a very hard time perceiving all of this. And the most important thing that we're going to be able to do or that we should do is big time, or build time into our schedule, to not do anything, we must have time to just simply pause and review what we've done. Learn about some of these new capabilities, think about how we can then apply them, then go deploy them and do that stuff. And then come back and reflect and review. It's gonna be very dangerous in this age of AI. Going out to 2030 If we do not develop these new habits and behaviors, and these actions, and if all we do is just do we're going to be doomed.

Jack Hubbard  24:20

Well, I'm really glad you said that because one of the things that if I was watching and listening to this program, I would want to know is how the heck with we you have a great business going. You've got a digital growth university, you you're in the final stages of writing a book. You're on social media and podcasts all the time. I think it's one of the top five in the world, your podcasts. So how do you James Robert Lay, find the time to learn what's next because what's next isn't three months from now it's over. Around the corner, how do you how do you find time to stay current with all this stuff?

James Robert Lay 25:04

At 20 I'm always investing to one at least 20% of my time into just learning. And it comes, it's a bit of a point of humility. I, you know, if we were having this conversation, just 10 years ago, I would have thought I knew at all. I've fallen on my sword since then, and take the Greek philosophy of Socrates. And I know, I know nothing. And I think with that idea, I'm always open to learning, and then really letting go of a preconceived notion or an idea, or even a belief. And be like, okay, that served me well up to this point. But I really have to let that go to grow. That's a skill that has taken time to develop. And it's one that I think anyone can develop. Because if we think about what's going on right now, in AI, and we think about our day to day routines, and our behaviors and our habits that are just repeated actions, are we really even mindful of why we do what we do? Number one, and number two, do we have the courage to say, I gotta just let this stuff go. And that's a very hard concept, it's easy to talk about, in theory, like, I gotta, like, let some of this go to create new space and time to create new growth. And that's, that's, that's not an idea that I came up with that that's just nature, you know, every winter, trees die back, we cut, we have grape vines of the house, we cut our grape vines back to create room for new growth. And it's kind of it's painful, because you're like, ah, gotta cut these things back again. And then guess what, they come back. I mean, I'm down here in Texas, and you know, we had massive freezes, like two years in a row, it took our Jasmine, which took forever to grow up over the garage look real pretty and beautiful, put it all the way to the ground and cut it back. And now it's growing back, it's growing back even stronger. And if we can let go of what we know, we're gonna be okay as we navigate the unknown in the age of AI.

Jack Hubbard  27:31

Well, that's great advice and a great philosophy. And it's, it's probably something that you talk about in the Digital Growth University, you've got 650 financial brands that are out there taking advantage of what you offer. Describe for us the Digital Growth University.

James Robert Lay 27:51

I appreciate that I just got, so we just did a 90 day just check in assessment temperature check of you know, and we're doing this to see where people are at a macro level, like, if we look at the world, are they feeling hopeful and optimistic and energized? Are they feeling kind of like just downtrodden and stuck in the gap, griping about problems a little bit. And then we're going from that perspective, down to the organizational level from that to the team kind of similar. And what we're finding is at a macro level, people are feeling not, they're kind of unsure. Number one, but then you move into the team to the organization improves, and then the team's. It's okay. But we got this message. I got this note today from someone who's been in the program for about three months. Now, after 10 years of being a leader, they're learning things that they had never thought about or never considered before. And sometimes, you know, when you're so close to a subject, you begin to question like, is this still viable? Are we still making a difference? Do we need to change the curriculum, whatever I mean, so it's like, and I'm always looking for small little minor optimizations and tweaks here and there. The way that we have this program set up, is the first year is all about just simply gaining a whole new perspective. It's about seeing things a little bit differently than how we saw them before. And it's based upon what we call the 90 day growth method. And within the 90 day growth method, there are four environments are there are four seasons that we cycle through, and I've mentioned them already, but learn, Think, Do and review. And we take that methodology and we take it down to a monthly basis. And so in week one, you'll learn and it's, you know, 60 to 90 minutes, maybe two hours, tops of On Demand Learning around 12 core subject areas, and they vary from you know, breaking free from the past, and just past constructs to create room for future growth to defining a purpose bigger than the present moment to getting into technologies and artificial intelligence to, you know, producing and promoting content to building a website that sells. But all of it comes back to you learn in week one, as an individual, on demand is people learn in different styles people learn in different ways. And one of do it all at one time someone or do 15 minute block here doesn't matter. That sets you up for week two. And Week two is all about thinking. And thinking is 15 to 20 minutes of self reflective questions based upon what you learned in week one. Because what good is learning if you're not actually critically thinking through it, that prepares you for success in week three, which we call do, you come together as a cohort. And we have public facing cohorts, or sometimes we have, we're working with a particular organization, and we're bringing together a cohort of 20 or 30 people within the organization. And the whole point of the cohort, in week three, in doing is to discuss how you apply what you learned, as an individual in week one, what you thought about week two, and then bring this to the team or to the organization level. Okay, what do we need to do next with this. And then in week four, you review it all, you review what you learned, you review what you thought about you review what you discussed to do, and you build your own action plan. And it's your action plan. That is what, where you apply this knowledge going forward, because there's a big difference between knowing something, and then applying that to grow, knowing and growing. And it comes down to one thing, and its commitment. And what I have found over the years is if you provide a forum and the tools to guide someone's thinking, and they self actualize what needs to be done, through asking them questions, versus telling them what to do the potential for them to apply that knowledge and actually do something. It exponentially

Jack Hubbard  32:16

increases. Well, you can see why. So many people have signed up and continue to use your program. But I got to ask you a question. You mentioned, you mentioned two things that are very near and dear to me. Number one is behavior. It's all we control is people's behavior. And we want to get them to change their behavior through whatever learning methodology that we provide. Second thing is that action plan. And for a lot of baker's, it's measurement. So let me ask you, you you, you want to change my behavior over these four tranches. And I've got an action plan. How are your clients measuring success it with with the university? 

James Robert Lay 33:03

Well, there's a couple of different ways, the gold standard is measuring it all the way down to loan and deposit growth. That takes some time, because what we find is they don't even have the proper benchmarks in place to measure against that. So then you move into another type of measurement, which is what I would call more activity based measurement, being able to measure progress. If we're able to look back and say, We were here, and we lacked these different elements, or components, or strategies, or even mental models, and now we have those, we can measure progress by looking from where we've come from, instead of getting hung up and stuck about what all the things that we need to do, and that right there, I think is such a transformative moment for many leaders. And it's been shared with me in multiple times in conversations. Because the subject of digital growth is very broad. It's very big, it's very overwhelming. And it means different things to different people at a leadership level at a marketing level at a sales level. And if we can say okay, on January 1, you were here. And then if we look at August 1, you've done these two or three activities. Would you feel good about that? Well, absolutely, I would. Okay, so that's progress. And then you come back December 31 to August first, can we measure progress with these activities? And over time, by building in those activities, you positively influence loan and deposit growth. Well, that's the The ultimate end goal. And so we go with the end goal in mind, there's loan and deposit growth. But look, we know loan and deposit growth will not happen instantaneously. But if we're we have that agreement that by applying these methodologies in developing these actions which become habits, then the results, the future becomes somewhat predictable.

Jack Hubbard  35:21

It does and, and when I always say to folks around trading, because a lot of CEOs will say, Okay, well, I'm going to spend X, when am I going to get x back and I always talk about two things directionally correct. And urgent, patience. And directionally correct is are we moving in the way that we want to go? Are we making progress? But the more important thing is urgent patients, and they kind of look at me and they go, what does that mean? Well, I have to have a sense of, if I'm an associate, you have to let a fire under me, help me understand how to urgently work with the client, work with my internal clients, whatever it is. But as a leadership team, I have to have the patience to be able to make it work long term. So we've got a couple of minutes. And I want to explore a couple of ideas with you. And I want to tell the audience, I was just a couple of weeks ago, I was blown away, I got a call from a banker, who asked me a couple of questions. Number one, what kind of marketing budgets are we looking at? And how are we calculated and these days? And number two, what percentage of that budget should be in digital marketing? So I reach out to the guy who knows the answer. And that's James, Robert Leigh, and I figured, well, okay, he'll come back with a couple of notes, and I'll forward them out. And that's fine. About a couple of days later, I get a 28 minute video that you put together for this banker, who you don't even know who it is, who was so grateful. And it's just unbelievable. So I want to first give you a compliment on that, that you always go the extra mile. But I want to come back to budgeting and I want to come back to digital advertising because I always get it and we're not a marketing agency. And people look at me and say how what where should I put my did Heck, I don't know, talk to James Robert Lay What do you see in terms of marketing budgets, and what percent are going into digital, and what percent should

James Robert Lay 37:32

Unpopular opinion, right now, for the vast majority, I wouldn't be putting a lot of dollars in digital marketing at this moment in time. And what I did not download in that conversation, because it was out of context. But it comes back to working, say within the university, and I'm doing a workshop on this in a couple of days, you get out you have to establish a strong foundation period. And after 21 years of doing this, the number one place that I see financial brands losing literally millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and deposits, is at the conversion stage of the buying journey. When someone clicks the Apply button, or the open an account button, we're losing 60 to 80% on the depository side to abandoned applications, that can increase up to 90, 92 to 95% on the loan side, depending upon the complexity of the application itself, which we know depository and loan applications are most likely third party. And so we're beholden to their UI user interface or UX user experience. And so why would we want to go and spin more money to drive more traffic to lose more opportunity, when we really should get that part of the process optimized. And the way that we do this is with a methodology that we call the abandoned application process that uses some AI. It uses some automation, and it mixes in the human connection as well. That's where the sales team comes back into play. Because let's just say hypothetically, you've got, you know, you're driving 1000 people to a page, product page, deposit page. Let's say it's just for checking, and we know that on that page 20% of people are going to click the Apply button. So that's 200 people out of those 200 people, let's just say to make my math super easy 80% Abandon it's 160 people that we just lost. And when we look at the lifetime value, for an account like that, let's just call it $1,500. Over the course of the life of that depository consumer account 160 times 1500. At this point, I can't do the math. But you scale that month over month over the course of a year, two years, three years. And then the more traffic you drive, the larger you are, you see how this becomes really, it's an exponential problem. But it's also an exponential opportunity on the other side, to fix that, once you fix that, then you can move up to the next stage, which is to capture those who are in the consideration stage, those that I'm thinking about applying for this product, but I'm not there yet, I need to talk to someone. Well, that's what you're getting into, like web lead generation. And then once you have that, now you go and you invest more dollars at the top of the funnel to drive more traffic. Because now you've got a lead gen system in play, you've gotten marketing and sales aligned and working together, you have an attribution model in place. Now let's go spend some money because now we can prove what's working, what's not working, what's not working? Well, let's ask why. What is working, let's do more of then, when all together.

Jack Hubbard  41:24

Yeah, and so we suffer this like you do down in Houston, with our two football teams, the inability to block and tackle is creating lots of challenges and lots of opportunities for very early round draft choices. And what you’re saying is, let's get the blocking and tackling, right, and then let's worry about doing the other steps as we go forward.

James Robert Lay 41:50

Get in everyone wants to do the ads and the content and the fun stuff cause it's fun. It really is like once you get to that level, it's a blast, because it's the creative side, what I'm talking about here, it's the boring stuff. And I think about my kids, you know, they play in the orchestra, they play the cello, they come home, I don't want to practice. Well, why? Because it's boring. Okay, go do your skills, or they they both run to, I don't want to go run today. Why? Because it's boring. So you just don't want to go run the race, you're gonna get beat because you don't have, you know, the cardiac conditioning to go run, you know, two points in their cross country. So you don't have the cardiac condition or a 2.1, 2.2 miles. Let's do the boring, hard work, quote, unquote, that no one wants to do, so that we can then do the things that others only dream about doing.

Jack Hubbard  42:55

It's right on target. Well, you’ve been kind, more than kind with your time. And when I decided that I was going to get back in this game and do these programs, I could have had anybody on, you know, or invited anybody that I wanted, and I wanted you on first. Because you really set the table for what's going on in banking, you're a visionary, you're very kind with your time, and you know what the heck you're doing. So I appreciate that. But I want to ask you of 1000s of people that follow you, when you put a post out on LinkedIn, you'll immediately get 1000 viewers and comments and things like that. You have got to follow people as well. You're always sharpening your saw. Who are you learning from? Who are you following out there that can help you in your business?

James Robert Lay 43:53

One person just jumps top of mind based upon what we're talking about today with exponential reality and that is Peter Diamandis With Abundance 360 Singularity University, he brings together such a tremendous amount of thinking on the exponential potential of technology of AI of health of longevity, which is a whole another level of interest for me because I you know, working within financial services, as a digital anthropologist studying the intersection of marketing sells technology and human behavior, have grown very interested in what I'm now developing, thinking around, but I'm calling them the five dimensions of well being. You know, money and financial pain and stress afflict so many people and that really does take a toll on their physical health, their emotional and their mental well being During the relational well being. And so as I'm thinking about the these five dimensions of well being, you have the spiritual, you have the physical, you have the mental or the emotional, you have the relational, and you have the financial, that is such an opportunity for financial brands to start thinking about today, as we continue forward because the idea of money and banking and finances, it's going to continue to transform. And then I think about what Peter Diamandis is doing and the thinking that, you know, he is sharing in trying to connect these different dots. To me, it's a really, it’s the baseline of where I see the intersection of a couple of different worlds: healthcare, banking. I don't know what that looks like just yet, but Peter Diamandis is particularly are on the subject of longevity.  The fact that we, as a human species, has the ability to live longer, to live healthier, I think about the journey that you've been on, you know, yourself, it's an amazing story of, of just technology. And all of this comes down to just one thing. It's the mind, the mind has to continuously look towards the future with hope, and with optimism. And, you know, Peter wrote a book, he called the, it's the future is faster than you think. And he, it's really mind boggling at how the speed and if we don't have context of that, we're gonna, we're gonna feel like we're drowning from time to time. But there are other people that people like you that people can turn to who be a beacon of light, you know, to others. I think that's the most important thing that we all can do. Because we're all we all are bringing some level of knowledge and expertise to the table that each and every single one of us has, particularly within financial services. But are we amplifying that are we multiplying that, are we being that, that light on the rock for other people in the communities that we're serving that they know that there's someone to turn to when they need some help, and they need some hope?

Jack Hubbard  47:42

Wow. And there's a lot of hope when I reach out to you, when a banker reaches out to you and a credit union professional or a FinTech says I need some help from a marketing perspective. You're there. Give us a way to reach you, James Robert.

James Robert Lay 47:59

The best way just because I have two first names James, Robert, last name is Lay, Google me, or just connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always very active there, send me an email to [email protected] or send me a text 832-549-5792 and I do respond, I do reply and it is me on all of these different platforms because I care

Jack Hubbard  48:32

What a privilege to have you on as my first guest, James Robert, thank you very much for your time and your hope that you bring to the industry. Thanks again.

James Robert Lay 48:42

Jack. Thank you. Be well, be good, be the light buddy!

Jack Hubbard  48:45

Thanks for listening to this episode of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers with my great guest James Robert Lay. This, and every program is brought to you by our friends at RelPro and VerticalIQ. Join us next time for more special guests bringing you marketing sales and leadership insights as well as ideas that will provide your bank or credit union with that competitive edge you need to succeed. The LinkedIn live show is also a podcast. Subscribe to get the latest episodes of Jack Rants with Modern Bankers and leave us a review. We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and others. Visit our website themodernbaker.com for more information. And don't forget to sign up for our free public library at the modernbanker.com/publiclibrary. Make today and every day a great client day!