Transcription:
Strategic Decisions, Forward Motion and Communicating with the C-Suite – Oh MY!

Bill Klaproth (Announcer): When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go, the Speakeasy, the exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human, starring Kelly Hellickson and Hillary Reed from EmpowerFi. Strategy infused, data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide. And on this episode, Kelly Hellickson welcomes James Dawson, Director of Brand Strategy for Alta Vista Credit Union. And they'll be talking about Reputation Management, 2.0. Now here's Kelly Hellickson.

Kelly Hellickson (Host): Hello listeners. Today, we have a special treat. We have a repeat guest with us, James Dawson, JD at Alta Vista Credit Union. JD, how are you?

James Dawson (Guest): Doing Um, great Kelly. Thank you having me back.

Host: Yeah, absolutely. We told you we were having you back and you're back. I do want to let the listeners know that, we're going to have some fun today. And if we stumble a little bit, Mr. James Dawson was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this weekend. He went to the Packer-Bears game. He is a big Bears fan and he is just back yesterday. So we're going to go easy on him today.

James: Yeah, that's right. We took a trip to enemy but we're back and ready to ready to rock today.

Host: Nice. Well, JD, last time we talked, we really didn't do a quite a dive into Alta Vista Credit Union and where you guys are at in the world, your asset size. So, give us a little bit of a bio and a rundown on Alta Vista Credit Union if you would.

James: Yeah, sure. We are in Redlands, California, our headquarters is in Southern California. So about 60 miles or so east of Los Angeles, just kind of outside Palm Springs. We have two branch locations. And yeah, we've got 40, some odd employees, about 14,000 members and our assets are sitting around 220 million in assets, which up monstrously from pre pandemic of about a 180 we where sitting around and just kind of, oh, it's our March towards 200 and then pandemic hit and everybody sat on their money, like in many other places. And so our, our assets have boomed that way, but it's been kind of a balancing act to make sure, you know, the net worth is well capitalized still, doesn't fall into territory where regulators want to overstep on everything, so.

Host: Absolutely. Speaking of balance, balance sheet, where are you guys in a pretty good position? I know that we have a lot of listeners in that sweet spot, that area between 200 and say 500 million in asset size. So, you know, everybody's kind of facing some of the same struggles. Can you talk a little bit about the balance sheet?

James: Yeah, we have done a great job, I think of just adapting over the last during this whole era, the pandemic era of pivot, move, adjust, and make a call. We didn't have to lose any employees, which was great. We made a lot of hires throughout the course of the last year and just really put ourselves in a good spot to where no one had to take pay cuts.

No one had to get laid off. No one had to get furloughed. We had to close our other branch, a couple of times, just for a handful of days with COVID exposures and things like that. But we didn't have any widespread breakouts. Our members were all pretty understanding of California is pretty strict on its guidelines and how it wants businesses to respond and behave.

But I think we've done a really nice job, continuously moving and trying to make changes. And we went from a spot where we needed to grow deposits and not necessarily loans did that kind of flipped when everybody just kept taking their money and sitting on it and not taking loans because the consumer confidence wasn't there.

So, we made adjustments and now we're kind of back in the offensive, so to speak, to say, all right, now we get to start going after accounts, we can go over some deposits. We slowed down our share certificates and not offering those really. Cause you know, we'll move people into other directions where we have better investment options that aren't necessarily on our books or on our balance sheets.

So, it just kind of keeps them in here at the credit union with our financial services side. But it doesn't sit on us to where we're sitting on these assets and have to, have to move it to deposits, but you know, we're doing, I think we're doing, alright.

Host: Good. And that's, you know, something that, I'd like to key in on is the fact that you did not just sit back and kind of worry and say, oh my gosh, what should we do? For the listeners, for the audience you have to pivot, you have to be nimble even, whether you're larger, smaller, whatever your organizational asset size is and the, the challenges that you face.

It's so fantastic to hear that you were growing and that you set your sights on. I know a little bit of the inside story. I know you set your sights on getting, you know, all of your online accounts, online banking established and redid the website and help me. What else did we do in the last couple of years, just as a quick recap for the listeners?

James: Yeah, we had bad timing with, we revamped our checking suite lineup, right as everything's shut down and our checking suite's really focused on getting local businesses involved and having them a part of this, our Alta Vista Perks App to where, you know, it's helping people save money, shop local, support local businesses.

But then everything's shut down. And so we didn't really get to capitalize on that. We launched the website in April of last year, so a month into quarantining and all that kind of stuff. We revamped our website. We got all of our products to be able to be open online from whether you're looking for a credit card or whether you're looking to open up a new account.

We can do that online now. We just launched our entire digital banking platforms to do online banking, new mobile app. Those kinds of products are streamlined to get us more insight into our, our members' behaviors, and patterns and how we can better capitalize and help them be more successful financially and visualize their finances with different tools, whether it's a budgeting tool, whether it's looking at their credit score and how ways they could save money with maybe refinancing loans that they have out somewhere else at other financial institution or to saying, hey, well, let's look at your goals. You want to pay off a couple of debts here. Let's visualize it, that way you can see it, build that momentum and really push yourself to accomplish those goals. And we're here to help.

Host: I think that it's really important because of the struggles everyone has faced, but especially those in the 150 to 300 million asset size, credit unions. So see you guys, everybody that's listening. It is doable. We really just buckled down and for the past two years, just tried to work as hard as humanly possible.

And like JD said, so that, you know, they were hiring, and did eliminate, avoid any layoffs or cut backs. So it is doable. I think that there's a lot to be said for. So I want to kind of segue into leadership, but I do before we do that, I'd love to talk about your non traditional path to marketing. So talk a little bit about that and your background, JD and how that's really overall shaped who you are as a professional marketer in the credit union space.

James: Sure. I didn't have a credit union background when I started in the industry eight years ago, eight and some change. I worked in multifamily property management. I bartended, I, I did some stand up comedy. I kind of did it all. And a good friend of mine was a CEO at a small credit union in the area. And just wanted to introduce me and started me out just as part-time as a teller. And, it's customer service. Just like every industry we do customer service. And when you're in, you know, when you're working in restaurants or you're working with people on an individual basis that you're trying to give them a good experience. And even that, how a property is ran in, apartments or someone that comes up and wants to have a burger and a beer just kind of shoot the crap at the bar.

You want to give them a good experience. You want to make them feel good. You want to make them feel listened and heard. And so that's kind of, I started out at the credit union just as a teller and you learned, you know, the same members come in all the time and that's a familiar story for just about every credit union we all say, oh, we, you know, everybody's name.

And that's kind of the baseline for doing business and keeping the lights on is having that good customer service and that good member base and that focus. And but the credit, you know, I was at wasn't, you know, in the greatest area. And i would just kind of look around when I was working with these part-time hours to start and just seeing things that just depressed me, like whether it was cardboard boxes that people had in the open for the recycling or the DMV kind of teller lines. There were three people in there, why, let's get rid of these lines and just talk to the members and then call them up and where are people going to stand? And I'm like, wherever they want. It's, you know, the it's the lobby. I have a conversation. Hey, how can we help you? And then I'll move on.

You know, there's not, there's hardly ever a massive line when they do guess what people will just queue up in front of the person that was there before them, because that's just human nature. We don't need these lines. So that's just kinda how it started and then just kind of trickled into a handful of hours here or there throughout the week of, of doing some marketing and putting some ideas together with the CEO and the lending department and just trying to figure out ways to kind of grow the credit union.

And we did a name change and a rebranding that went really well. And that just kind of, I'm always going to kind of push to be a little more creative, to be a little bit more, not stuffy because it's just not fun, just fun and enjoyable. And we all kinda want to get through the day with a smile on our face and not like woo, slugging and dragging our feet.

So after I was at that credit union for five years, I just kind of felt as accomplished as I could. It was a smaller credit union and it just kind of looked around at the annual meeting and I think I've done it all here and I'm feeling pretty good. And, and just at the same time I had that thought just is the role that habit, the guy who is our CEO at Alta Vista now, he was just in charge of lending at the time. He just reached out and said hey you ever think about, you know, moving on or going somewhere else and just happened to be having that same thought. So, we had some conversations and I met the CEO at the time here and everything worked out. So I made the move over to the community based credit union. And we've had a lot of leadership changes over the last couple of years. The prior CEO retired, David, who like I said running lending, he's now the CEO, we've made changes operationally. People have come and gone for sure. But the leadership staff that David's built now is I think it's all reaching for the same goals and the same ideas and the thought processes of pushing the credit union forward and not just sitting back on this is the way we've always done it. You don't want to hold out a change, but we understand we've got to grow well. If you can't expect to change, if you keep doing stuff all the same over and over and over again.

So, what can we do differently? I laughed is I was going a lot of walks like a year ago in the mornings. That had to really irritate David because I'd go on these walks in the morning and then I'd come in crazy like, this is everything that's irritating me. And he was like, all right. All right. Let's make some changes that let's see what we can do. Let's find ways to push and after about a few of those he was alright let's hold on to it. And that's all, let's get a game plan together. So, yeah, I've been, I've been the marketing as marketing manager here for the first two years, and we kind of had discussions about making me the director of marketing and it just didn't feel like enough of a move for me to be marketing manager, director of marketing, to me, it's just a flipping of, language. And I felt like my place at the credit union at Alta Vista was more than just putting together some posters and flyers and working with you and trying to make us, social media posts and things like that.

I felt like I was more involved with the culture here, trying to make the break room a little bit more exciting to hang out in and have your lunch and enjoy with your coworkers and, product building, like I said, the checking account revamping, how ways we, the ways the website looked.

Host: Yeah, that was, that was brilliant. Yep. That and the website are probably my two most favorite initiatives of yours.

James: Yeah. Everything that we wanted to do, I just felt like there was more to it. And so I put together, I built this role of Director of Brand Strategy, because it, you know, while, while it has marketing underneath the umbrella, it's more about the staff, I believe it's a more of a leadership role.

It's working with the CEO and the COO and our directors of IT, and working with more departments than just, you know, here's marketing, here's the email that's going out to members. Everybody look alive, but I think it's more, I'm more involved with the call center, I'm more involved with the staff down in the branches.

They kind of see what they're, what they got going on. Working with our project manager on ways we can better train the staff and information that they need to make sure that they have all the, the critical pieces to help our members understand our products, understand our services, how it works, how easy it is to use, whether it's someone complaining about the ATM or, you know, like I said when we had the, our digital banking conversion, or even though we had overflow traffic for the call center. It just, it was too much. You send out every piece of every letter, every postcard, every email, every social media post, every notification, the branch, you always have people. I never saw it. You never told me. And that's just the nature of doing it and making a big change in a credit union world.

The members never hear it, even though you put it out there, every single which way. We could have gone door to door, I guess, but we didn't have the manpower. So I sat here, you set us up with reputation management earlier, I think earlier in this year.

And I sat here in my office and members that were just online blasting us because they couldn't get through. I just reached out to them directly. And once they knew you were more than just a anonymous entity on, in social media or on Google and you're actually another person there. And you care about what they're saying and care about trying to help them out, they were so nice. They were so happy to be helped. And then I was giving people my cell phone to call my cell phone. I'll help walk you through it.

Host: That's so dangerous, man. You're edge. You do have four kids though. So you've been living on the edge for a while.

James: Yeah, it was. But people, the lady was getting married and, you know, coming up in days she was stressed out and couldn't access her accounts. I want to make sure the photographer was going to get paid. And the lady that did the centerpiece is going to get paid and I totally got it and was like, I call my, I gotta run to my kid's school for a meeting, call me if you can't figure this out and we'll sort it out. And she reached out a couple of times. I contacted her, walked her through it. She was so gracious, so happy. I sent her a gas card and a nice Alta Vista Yeti tumbler and just said hey, congratulations on your wedding. Thanks for your patience and your understanding through all this. And that's more than marketing. That that's about member relationships.

Host: That's way more than marketing.

James: And trying to just understand that, that we're all human here. We're trying to get it. We're looking to make your life better. It's going to be a little growing pain here. But we are here to listen. We are here to help you. And then there were other members online that were frustrated, and then I walked them through how to access their account. And then they were becoming advocates for us in these little chats saying, hey, this is how I did it. So the other members that were, trying to deal with the same frustrations and that's kind of, to me, those were wins. You know, it was, it was a long few days, a lot of hours just staring at the switchboard of social media, trying to punch in all the right details and get people's accounts up and pull up Excel sheets. So I had access to their information and it took a lot of time. It took some hours, but I think every single one of it was worth it. As, as I said, it's just you, listen to the member and then you move on. And that doesn't come in a marketing plan very often.

Host: No, it doesn't. And so I would like everyone to understand that it's James Dawson, Director of Brand Strategy at Alta Vista Credit Union. And I think everything that you just got done mapping out for us and explaining, I think they definitely are all wins. And I think what, in essence, you're doing there is creating brand ambassadors from the ground up, top down, bottom up, internally speaking, as well as you said it yourself, creating advocates out in the community for Alta Vista Credit Union.

And that's what it's about today. I know that our tagline, some people kind of chuckle at it. People helping people and the credit union is a movement, but it's, it's tried and true and it's tested and we're here to help people. And at the end of the day, those people are going to in turn, consider us, you know, their premier financial institution.

They're going to turn to us in times of need and struggle and you know, in good times. So, I think that's fantastic. I'd love to hear cause I know it's a happy story. I'd love to hear a little bit about leadership and David Justice being the CEO there at Alta Vista Credit Union. Talk to us about the importance of his support through all of this.

James: It's so crucial. It allows me to do my job and do what I do best. It gets frustrating when, executive members or whatnot start kind of nitpicking what's going on to breaking up the ruler to make sure the spacing is right on a postcard with some dots and things like that. It just gets in the way of what the big focus is.

I don't need the, the measurement of dots. I need you to understand what we're trying to accomplish, what the goal is. It's not about micro-managing every finite moment. David's been so supportive of just, I bring him ideas and we talk him through it. And, some of it, you know, we're just not ready yet, we've got to wait and that's okay.

And that, that allows us to kind of put ourselves in a better position, even though I get kind of gung ho and ready to rock and let's make these changes. We need to add this. We need to add that. And it's not always a no, but it's just a not right now. I think that's important to understand.

Host: That's his role, and that's super fantastic. So, I think you guys have a really good yin yang and I do want to just take a time out and give a shout out woot woot to David Justice CEO at Alta Vista Credit Union. David, we couldn't do this without you. And we absolutely love you. So thank you for your support. What else do you think he maybe unbeknownst to marketing or other departments, what else do you think are some of his major decisions that he's had to kind of face aside from brands and marketing in the past two years JD?

James: One of the big things he really understands people's time. We're all busy. We're all, in a small credit union, everybody's got to wear multiple hats. Everybody's got to kind of help in other departments and maybe do something that isn't directly related to their job title. And David really understands that. And when it's time to have our managers meetings and whatnot, it's like, all right, we're keeping this to an hour. We're not just going to sit here and just BS. We all have stuff to do. Let's get down to figuring out, do we have some real challenges and problems that we need to hammer out? Or can we just do some nice updates on in everybody's department, understand what we're all working towards, what some of the goals are when it comes to some of the upcoming projects, you know, from small things, you know, whether it's reconciling GLs and accounting or I'm going to be on a podcast, you know, let's just have a quick conversation if they need to come up. So he really just, he doesn't want us to be in a meeting for three and a half hours to where everybody just waxes on poetically about God knows what so, and that's really nice because it just kind of gets, it goes back to you getting can go back and do your work. You get to kind of, focus on your task at hand and achieving the right goal for the credit union and the direction we want to go.

Host: It sets the tone for the entire organization. So I love leaders like David. We at EmpowerFi have just so many fantastic clients and I think every single one of our clients at EmpowerFi, have a common denominator in that their leadership is supportive of marketing, of business development. And not only that, they understand the absolute importance of brand and the fact that there is a need today now, more so than ever for that brand to be en pointe of course, but more so internally speaking, everyone be a brand ambassador at the credit union, starting at the top all the way down because the frontline really is the do or die. Right? They're the ones that are day-to-day apps and they're the ones that are eyes and ears. And I think that you guys have done a really good job with that too. I know that with reputation risk, we've done some things that, you know, we kind of implement some things in the call center that help with our Google My Business star rating. So I think that truly in the last two years it's been, it's been one heck of a ride and you've been really, really busy.

James: Yeah. Transformative is one of those key words that come up a lot in this space, in this industry. And we've done a lot of that and there's still a ton of work to do. You know, we still got to worry about our, what differentiates us from the place across the street. And, and how do we deepen our relationship with our community and how do we make our employees excited to come to work or excited to know what's going on at Alta Vista? And to share that excitement with the members. Like you said, that the frontline staff is so important, so vital. And, sometimes I got to listen to their complaints about the music I'm playing, and we've got to figure out new music because they want to, you know, they're born.

Host: Cause they're at your door right now saying, turn that music back on JD.

James: I got one that wants to play Christmas music. I got one that doesn't want Christmas music. I'm like, oh my God, come on. We'll just get an hour here. We get a couple of minutes.

Host: A little bit like parenting. So you must be very diplomatic and judicial. So you maybe just have to split it down the middle, right?

James: Yes, right? Yeah. With four kids, it's a lot of everybody needs their time. Everybody needs their needs, something to be heard and wants their attention. And I kind of get that when it comes to, working with, with many, many other departments and many, many staff members that, that all have their kind of their own needs to be met.

Host: Yup. So, family, right family outside of work and work family. You know, what are you guys at Alta Vista? What are you guys doing this year for holiday celebration? I know that a lot of our listeners have sent some questions and comments in just kind of want, you know, we always say, hey, what would you like us to talk about? So I think with the struggles that we face, what's going on from a traditional Christmas type gathering at Alta Vista, anything, this year?

James: We are doing a staff breakfast tomorrow morning, actually. So good timing on that. It'll be at the credit union here at the main office and just the night with an ugly sweaters and jeans day and just giving everybody a nice breakfast and just kind of enjoying the year. We kind of made a decision early on this year to forego a more traditional holiday party that we've had, two years ago, I guess it would be now because I've, so last year we didn't do anything either, but 2019, we had we had a banger in 2019. That was for sure it was very prohibition era, a great Gatsby kind of theme and a lot of fun.

Host: I remember the pictures. They were awesome.

James: Yeah, we had, we had to slow it down last year, this year, you know, we're kind of an early call. Like, you know, that's again, back to kind of, what's the money saving strategy we could do to where it doesn't really affect an employee longterm. I think everybody's okay for go foregoing to a Christmas party this year in lieu of, you know, some other benefits they'll have throughout the year instead. So everybody's kinda like, oh yeah, that's a bummer, but everybody understands. Everybody gets it. And a breakfast tomorrow will be nice. Just another way to kind of celebrate the end of the year. I'll be on vacation next week, actually. And so that'll be kind of a nice way to wrap up, another busy 2021 as it was in 2020 and the year before.

Host: I know. And in 2020, it was like the first part of the year. It was so slow. It crawled. And since, I don't know, May 1st, 2020 I just, I can't believe it's middle of December 2021. Like I just look back and it's like, some of it was a blur, you know what I mean? So again, I just think that pivoting and negotiating, taking, setting a plan, but then taking a look back through that plan and kind of maybe juggling some things around, you know, and making those decisions early on in the year and sticking with them. Right? Like I think the biggest thing that I would love everyone in the credit union space to focus on in 2022 is to just, stick to your guns.

Don't second guess yourself. Do the research. You did the time you put it, you know, in the effort to research your options. And then once you make that decision, once you have buy-in from leadership, make the decision, execute the decision and move on so that you can just keep rolling. I mean, would you say that that's pretty good advice or a pretty good goal for 22?

James: Yeah, absolutely. Reminds me of a, I got a quote I put up in the wall of the hall here and it says if the plan doesn't work, change the plan, but not the goal. So when you have your goals and you set your goals and your strategic planning session for the next year, three years, the plan, first plan might not work, but that doesn't mean the goal has to change.

So just find a new plan. Figure out a way to execute and talk, communicate with your staff, communicate with your employees, communicate with the executive team. Make sure you're all on the same page and you understand what's going on and why something didn't work and why this next option might be the one. So I think that's kind of the key there. For sure.

Host: Well, dang. I don't think we could. And we did not listeners. We did not plan that. So I don't think we could end that any more eloquently than we just did. So, JD, I just want to thank you for your time and glad you made it back safe from the frozen tundra.

James: Yeah. Thank you, Kelly. Always, always a pleasure and, and yeah. Thank you for the, for the time here and the opportunity to speak with, with you and the listeners and,

Host: Oh yeah, absolutely. We'll have you back on, but we got to have your wife back on first, she some killer points. So I'm going to have Ms. Courtney Dawson on in January so she can give all of us listeners, primarily the female base, some mom and professional and life hacks. So definitely stay tuned. And we'll talk to you soon.

James: Perfect. Thank you, Kelly.

Bill Klaproth (Announcer): And thank you for listening and to connect with Hillary or Kelly to simplify your credit union marketing needs with EmpowerFi's full service marketing and design support, please visit empowerfi.org. You can also email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for more in formation. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels and check out the full podcast library for topics of interest to you. This is the Speakeasy financial marketing podcast.

Thanks for listening.