Same-Day Decisions: How Local Banking is Disrupting Finance with Andy Nadeau

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there and welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i have got an amazing guest today i am looking forward to chatting with him but before we chat with him my name is bill gilliland i am the principal at action coach business growth partners and one of the founders of the asheville business summit and i just want to remind you that it's not too late We've got coming up September 23rd. You go out to wncsummit.com and you can get your tickets there. It's going to be an amazing event. And in fact, our guest today is one of the sponsors. So I've got Andy Nadeau from FB Financial. I am so pleased to have him on the podcast.

1:16So welcome, Andy. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate you being here. I actually look forward to the summit. It's going to be exciting. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about FB Financial and you and how it all came about. Sure. I appreciate it. FB Financial, we're a division of First Bank out of Nashville, Tennessee, 120-year-old financial institution, really focused in the southeast region, a big presence in Nashville, obviously, in Tennessee, Knoxville down into Birmingham, Alabama, places in Georgia, and now in Western North Carolina in Asheville. And so my background is 30 plus years, Bill, in the financial services industry.

2:03Spent many of those with the larger financial institutions and have experience in bringing banks that want to come to a market that are not here today. And so that's why I joined FB Financial. It was about this time last year, they had a vision of coming to Western North Carolina. They were looking for a leader. I have experience in it. I brought JP Morgan back in the mid-2000s to Charlotte. Now they have over a thousand people in the Carolinas. and FB Financial is focused on building out a complete franchise, meaning full service retail, commercial mortgages, wealth management, et cetera. So I'm pretty excited about the opportunity.

2:50Yeah, that is exciting. Well, when we think of banks, we don't often think of entrepreneurs, but what you're doing is very entrepreneurial, even what it sounds like your whole career has been somewhat entrepreneurial. So tell us a few things you've learned about sort of from an entrepreneur's eye on like, how do you do that? I mean, how do you, what are some things you've learned? Yeah, it's funny that you point that out, Bill. It's, you know, I've hired a team of, we have five people now, the total here in Asheville. And when I was recruiting for bankers, I said, I want you to stop thinking like a traditional banker and I want you to think like a business owner, right?

3:32Because that's who we are. We're a team of entrepreneurs who just happen to be building a bank behind an established franchise. And so some people may say, well, that's a little bit easier than a full startup. Well, it's a little bit challenging because we have branding issues. There are a number of first banks throughout the country that already exist. And so we have to separate ourselves right from the very beginning, I need, that's why we're FB financial, right? And so we're really looking at disrupting the traditional kind of banking model where a client tells us what they need with their banker and the banker tries to get it done.

4:12And, you know, we kind of refer to that as the order taking side of it. That's not who we are. We are entrepreneurs at heart. We tell business owners what they need to hear instead of what they want to hear. And I think that's why we've been so successful in just the eight months that we've been here in Asheville. Early this year, I put a challenge out to the team, and I publicly said that we call it our path to$100 million. And we want to put$100 million to work in Western North Carolina. And that's through helping companies rebuild through the tragedies that we had last year. We want to help companies grow.

4:54We want to help them expand. And we're ahead of plan and off to a tremendous start. So if we took the traditional approach to banking, I don't think we'd be even half of where we were. So we like to call ourselves disruptors in the banking industry. So I've got a couple of questions about that. That's awesome. I mean, one of the things I've always liked, and I knew immediately from the beginning that you were different because you were focused on business and you were focused on serving businesses and helping them grow. And so I think it is interesting. I do think it is a branding issue. There are a lot of F banks that start with F and first and, you know, all these things.

5:37So I love that you've attempted to do something about it. Yeah, with that. But talk about disruption. So what specifically are you doing to disrupt? Sure. You know, banks today, if you look at the banking model, they've centralized everything. So to take any bank out there, most of the decision making has become centralized. And so you may have a team out here in Western North Carolina, but the decisions are not made here. And if you think about it, trying to explain what happened last year to some of those businesses that had a terrible fourth quarter, for an example, to someone that sits in Charlotte or Atlanta or Jacksonville, Florida, they just don't understand or get it.

6:21Right. And so one of the first things that I did when I was looking at joining FB Financial was if we're going to do this, we're going to do a ride and we're going to have to make a local decision. So every decision we make with a small business is made right here in Asheville. And that's, you know, we like to say what's good for Asheville is good for us. So we're truly a bank built for Western North Carolina, truly a bank built for Asheville, where all decisions are made here. And I'll give you a couple of examples on that. We're not biased. I mean, we're generalists. We talk to every industry.

7:00We have no buy box. If a deal makes sense, we're going to find a creative way to do it. And we've closed everything, Bill, from a$500 ,000 line of credit to recently we closed a fully funded$25 million rehab of a commercial property. So there's nothing too small. There's nothing too big. And there's nothing that is discouraged to us. If it exists in Asheville, it exists for a reason. And we want to understand the story. Now, the fundamentals to that, Bill, have to be there, right? It has to have good ownership. It has to have good fundamentals. It has to have a competent team. But if there was a hiccup last year, we look at that.

7:47How did the previous year look? How did the year look before that? And I think we're seeing companies respond to our way of trying to find a way to do business versus finding a way not to do business. Yeah, it sounds refreshing to me. I remember the first deal I ever did in business. You know, the local guy that I was doing business with had he had full authority. I mean, he's like, hey, Bill, you know, I can't loan you but this amount of money. But, you know, and it was way over what I needed. So it was, you know, it was it was. Yeah, it was cool. How much do you want? And I'm like, because, you know, the deal was good.

8:30And then, you know, over the years, I've seen how it's gotten, I call it bureaucrated up. You know, it's just got a lot of, there's a lot of red tape. So I love that, that you can make the decisions locally. Because, I mean, if you can say yes or no, that's what people need. And they can get an answer fast. So that is, to me, entrepreneurial. And I hope that, you know, when you're listening to this, you hear that because this is an amazing opportunity there. I mean, there's almost no there's none of that anymore. Even even a lot of the community banks have some sort of committees and things that they've got to go to and credit this and credit that.

9:15And so, yeah, this is this is exciting. I'm I'm I'm super excited about that. That is a disruption. I'll be interested to see. I think more banks will go back to that. eventually. I hope, you know, maybe, maybe hopefully they're not going to catch up with you, but, uh, but you know, they're, I don't think they're going to get there fast enough because there's such a chain of things that have to happen. So yeah, I'm guessing it doesn't mean you still don't have to dot the I's and cross the T, but, but that, but that's, that's, that's easy once the deal's decided. So that's right. And, and, you know, we, we, we have, um, we have 120 plus years of total experience just here in the Asheville office, right?

9:59I've been in the business 30 plus years. I've seen your bankers have been in it 30 years, another banker 15 years. There's not a deal that we haven't seen. And so I think when we're out telling the story and we tell people, take us up on our offer, right? Well, we'll give you same day decisions on most deals. Think about that. Same day decisions. Now we need basic information. A lot of times we'll be on the phone like we're talking with now, Bill, and company owner has their financials in front of us and we'll ask them five or six key questions and then we'll start laying out a deal. And does it make sense?

10:32And they're like, well, wait a minute, it's been sitting with my current bank for three or four weeks. They haven't even gotten me a decision yet. You're telling me you could do this deal? I said, yeah, we'll issue a term sheet this afternoon if you're ready to go. And so those are the types of examples of type of things that we're doing. And right now, we're a little laser focused on helping rebuild Asheville one business at a time. Asheville's needed a strong business bank, and that's what the opportunity that I saw, and that's why we're here. Yeah, I agree. I agree with everything you said.

11:04I mean, I think it's wonderful to have a bank that is aggressive and that is entrepreneurial and will make decisions. Because, I mean, I don't know about you, but a no is actually better than a maybe. I mean, a yes is better. I like yes is better than no's, but I'd rather have a no than a maybe. A quick no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't drag me. Right. Yeah, no, I love it. So you said think like a business owner. So what does that mean to you? Well, it means how we think about when we look at partnering with a business, we put ourselves in their shoes. We want to become part of their team. So I tell my team, we want to be on the same side of the table as their key advisors.

11:58And a lot of time bankers today or not, right? And so most business owners have a CPA they trust. They have an attorney they trust. But, you know, they go to the bank maybe once a year asking for the best rate and at renewal time, they'll give them some financials. That's not who we are. We're consultants first. We're advisors first. And so any major decision, we want to be their first call because every decision they make affects their balance sheet, affects the financial health of the business. And then we'll walk them through as a key advisor would and say, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?

12:38What's the impact if you do this on that? And so we have those conversations every day. I mean, we were talking to a company last week that owns a number of car washes. And they were asking the difference between should we roll these up in our portfolio or keep them independently financed. And so we walked them through it. We walked them through both sides of the argument. And they were at the end of the call. It's like, you guys are bankers? Our bankers don't talk to us like this. you guys are more of an advisor. And once we get that from a client, we know we've got a client for life. And so that's really, when we say, think like a business owner, we want to put ourselves in their shoes.

13:25We want to understand their challenges. And at the same time, we want to be able to add value at every interaction. If we can't add value at every interaction, then we become just another, what I call another suit chasing that business, right? And that's not who we want to be. We have to be different, and we have to disrupt that. I think you are different. I think there's no question about it. I mean, I think you could go to 20 banks, and I don't think you'd find anybody doing that here in local markets. So at least that'd be my experience. Let me ask you a couple of sort of business and management questions, just general, maybe not about the bank.

14:03So what do you look for when you're hiring employees? You've hired a lot of people. Yeah, over the years, I've hired a lot of people. You know, culture, everybody talks about culture. And, you know, and it seems to be a buzzword. But you've got to find people that fit within the organization. So, for example, if I'm building a basketball team, Bill, I'm not going to build that team with five point guards, right? I need a variety of folks on this team. I need a center. I need a point guard. I need a power forward. And then I need someone that just loves to pass the ball, right? Because I like to shoot.

14:41And so what I mean by that, I use that analogy is that you need to surround yourself with like-minded people that have a different skill set. So if I'm hiring, I've had people over the years say, boy, I wish I had 10 more Andes because we would dominate. And I'd say, you do not want 10 more Andes. Trust me. You absolutely do not want 10 90s. What you need is you need complementary players around an Andy type, a driver, an entrepreneur type to fill in the gaps and fill in the holes, right? And so sometimes you need the calm to the chaos or the chaos to the calm. And so when you're looking to hire people, obviously you're looking for competent people.

15:27Like one of the first questions I ask everyone I hire, are you good at what you do? And I look at their reaction. Right? Just think about that. The first question you sit down, say, listen, are you good at what you do? And if they come with an answer of confidence and say, hey, actually, I think I'm one of the best at what I do. And let me tell you why. I'm going to probably hire that person on the spot. Well, if they come and they answer the question, well, I don't know. I think I'm good. People tell me I'm kind of good. I think I'm nice. that person automatically, right, in the first 30 seconds probably is not going to be a good fit.

16:09So you kind of look for a couple of different things. You look for people that are confident. You look for people that are really good at what they do, but at the same time, love to win as a team. And those are the types of things that you got to get very early on in the conversations. Because I'll tell you, financing a company is really easy, Bill. Hiring people is really hard. Yeah, and what you're doing, and frankly, what you're doing here is you're building the team to help companies. I mean, that's really your role as the market president. So, yeah, I get it. I've never heard that question.

16:51I love it. I thought I'd heard them all. I mean, I've heard all kind of crazy stuff like, I mean, you know, how many cows are in Canada and a bunch of dumb stuff. But I actually love that question. I remember, you know, it's similar to a question I remember a guy asked me one time. We were in talking about, you know, a coaching agreement. And the guy just looked at me and he said, is this going to work? And I was like, yeah, it's going to work. And so he signed. But, you know, if you don't have the confidence, you're not going to, you know, it's kind of reminded me of that thing. Well, let me get your thoughts on a few things.

17:27Be Epic, which is my or one of our taglines, is an acronym. So I want to get your thoughts on the acronym. Just a couple of words or sentences about each one. So just kind of a quick fire round here. So the B stands for bring the energy. Yeah, I mean, without energy, you got nothing, right? You got to have, you know, I look at energy as having a sense of urgency. and I love people with a sense of urgency, not a reckless sense of urgency, but someone that operates with a sense of urgency at the speed of your opportunity. That's what we tell companies. Like, how fast can we get that? Look, it's at the speed of your opportunity.

18:11You know, how we move, you're going to dictate. So when I hear that, I think of sense of urgency. I love the speed of opportunity. That's a great sign. That's a good title for the, That's a good title for a book or something or for this podcast. We'll get you some. Okay. How about E? E is education. You got to continuously learn. I mean, like I said, I've been in this business 30 plus years and I'm learning something new every day. And I want the people that are surrounding me, I want them to be able to bring value at every interaction with me so I can learn something. And so if you don't, then you're just, you know, you're going to fall behind.

18:49Yeah, I know. I love that. I love that. Okay, the P is planning.

18:56You've got to have a plan. If you don't, you know this, right? If you don't, you're going to fail the plan, right? You've got to have a strategic mindset. So planning needs to be strategic. It needs to be with purpose. You know, Bill, I was a school teacher many, many, many years ago, and I was coaching basketball, and I said, every move on the basketball court is with purpose. If you don't have purpose, you're wasting time. And that's part of the planning process, right? You got to be strategic and you got to have purpose. I love that. I love, love, love that. The I is inspiration. Inspiration is passion.

19:37You got to be passionate, right? Inspiration is when someone sees your passion, sees what you do and wants to follow you. It's like followership. It's not even a word, I believe, but I used followership over the years is you got to have people that want to follow you. So I'm building this bank. I took people away from other banks that had a long time career, but I say, you got to follow me in this venture because it's going to be a hell of a time. We're going to have fun. It's going to be hard, but we're going to build something special. And that's what I think of when you say that. Yeah, I got the vision.

20:18No, I love it. Yeah, what you just said, I remember interviewing a friend of mine, and I said, what gives you inspiration? He said, that's the wrong question, Bill. And I said, what do you mean? He said, the question is, how can you be an inspiration? And that's what you're talking about with fellowship, being an inspiration. Yeah, so I love that. I love that. C, commitment. You got to be all in. So, you know, in anything that you do, you can't get a little bit pregnant. So you're all in, right? And by being all in is you got to bring the energy every single day along with the commitment. So it kind of ties in a lot with what we're talking about today.

21:03You've got to be all in. If you're not, you're not going to be successful. Right, right, right. I love it. But those are great. That's great advice, I think, for anyone in business.

21:18So from your standpoint of view, what advice would you give to business owners who are looking to grow?

21:27A lot with what we talked about around your epic. But at the same time, you know, you talk about acronyms. And there was an acronym 30-plus years ago that I built. every business I've been in around, it's called CAP, C-A-P-P. And CAP stands for clients that cooperate, appreciate, prosper, and pay. So when you think about that, that's who you want to surround yourself with. Clients that cooperate, appreciate the relationship that they have in your customers, appreciate the value proposition that you bring to the table, Prosper. That's the growth aspect of it, Bill, right? You have to have that vision and commitment to grow and prosper.

22:14And then finally is pay. And people think, well, do you shy away from that? I said, no, I don't shy away from pay. We want our clients to pay. We want them to pay fairly. They're not going to overpay. But if you're building a business, it's the same thing. Think about your business. When you work with clients and consulting, you know, you probably don't use that acronym. But when you think about what makes a good client, well, they cooperate, they appreciate what I bring to the table, they prosper and they pay, right? You can actually take that and put that in any business. You can put that in the manufacturing business.

22:48You can put that in the consulting business. You can put that in the restaurant business. And so when you think about growth, you got to think about who am I going to grow with and what is my ideal customer? And then how am I going to get that customer to trust me and give me their full share of wallet, right? That's how we think about this every day. And that's how our entrepreneurs should be thinking about this. This is how business owners should be thinking about this every day. I like it. I just thought of it. You could say, like, put on your cap and be epic. So, yeah. I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

23:25I love that. Yeah, no. Yeah, we put our two together and we've got something amazing. No, we got something going here. Yeah, yeah. No, I love it. I love that. Yeah, put on your cap. I love that. That's awesome. So, well, how does somebody get a hold of you or some of your bankers? Sure. Or entrepreneurs, I should call them. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our business owners. Yeah. So our offices are in Biltmore Park. Our website is fbfinancialonline.com. My email address is andy.netto at fbfinancialonline.com. They can get a hold of us any of those ways. They can reach out to me directly, and I'll put them in touch with my team, who I think is the best fit for them.

24:16My team is out and about in the community telling our story. A nice way to meet folks is that we are the presenting sponsor for the Chamber's after hours, business after hours. So we've had two or three of those now. We've been meeting 50, 60 new people telling our story. And it's amazing. You know, the feedback that we've been getting from that and the follow-up has been overwhelming, quite frankly, Bill. is once the community hears our story and say, well, you are different. And I say, well, we are, but let us prove it to you. Let us prove it to you. Because as you know, it's hard to disrupt a long-time relationship.

25:00And I'll tell you, at the same time, too, if a business owner comes to us and we can't help them out any more than what their current bank is doing, we'll tell them that, right? We're not here to – we're here to add value to the right company. We think we can do that with a lot of companies. But if we can't, we're going to tell them very quickly and we'll give them some insights on how to go back to their existing bank and get what they need. And actually one of the follow-up conversations we had with one of our prospects is they came here, sat in our conference room. And we spent an hour and we told them – we said, listen, the path of least resistance to you is go back to your bank and tell them you want to do this, this, and this.

25:40This is how you're going to do it. Well, two weeks later, I ran into this person at the business after hours and said, Andy, your advice was spot on. We went back and did that and they ended up doing the deal. I said, perfect. I said, think, you know, on your next deal, think of us. And they will. And they will. Yeah. And our intention is that we want to help companies any way that we can in Western North Carolina. That's either directly through our balance sheet. If it's advice, we'll help them in any way that we can. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. So we appreciate you coming in and sponsoring the summit.