How Early Leadership Lessons Shape the Next Generation of Bankers

Chris Nichols (00:07.875)
Brennan, welcome to the podcast. We appreciate having you on. It is rare that we get a fresh graduate from the Citadel. the goal today is kind of tease out leadership lessons that you learned and to get your perspective. Something that most bankers don’t have coming from the Citadel. So maybe give a background on you know how you ended up at the Citadel, what the Citadel is, and you maybe an overview of your time there.

Brennan Perkins (00:32.963)
Yeah, awesome. Thank you guys for having me. I really start with in high school I was I was an athlete. I really wanted to go play football in college. that’s all I thought about. I had the the huddle highlights and I was always working on those, but unfortunately my senior year I tore a ligament in my foot, a less front tear, and I couldn’t play football in college at that level. so my brother was currently at the Citadel and always thought, just from hearing some of the stories and stuff, I was like I

I don’t think that’s for me. I think I’d rather go be a college athlete. but then my senior year, it was in March. I came and watched it’s called Recognition Day. So if you don’t know much about the Citadel, you come in and you’re caught a knob. I’m I’m not sure if this is the truth, but they they always told us that it dated back to earlier they shave all the guys’ heads and they said they look like a doorknob. And so they the knobs go through this

nine month process of really just learning all of the military stuff that comes with the citadel, how to make a uniform, how to clean your room, how to really lead other cadets. And then at the end of that, they go through this process called the the gauntlet and we it’s just a lot of PT, a lot of team building exercises for probably about three hours. And then after that you’re considered part of the Corps of Cadets. You’re officially

part of the Citadel. So I came and watched that and I was like, this is this is something I’d really like to be a part of. I I really enjoyed the competitive aspect of the Citadel. And I didn’t really I wasn’t as nervous as I used to be hearing the random stories about Knob year. And so yeah, I I I signed up that day. We went to the admissions department and I applied, got in. And then from there I started Knob Year.

It was wasn’t really what I thought it would be because my brother didn’t really he kinda wanted me to get my own experience out of it. so he didn’t tell me a lot of the things. So you show up and the first week is it was considered hell week. Now they call it challenge week. I’m not sure why they changed it, but and it’s just a week of getting yelled at and you don’t know what’s going on, you’re having to perfect everything, your uniform has to have a specific crisp in this area, your

Brennan Perkins (02:59.489)
your room has to be perfect, you to know the right things to say. You have to memorize a bunch stuff. And in that time I didn’t really understand the purpose of it. But as I went through knob year, I gained leadership roles my sophomore year, junior year and senior year, I was able to kind of see the the qualities I learned from that environment and just my time as being a knob. I think one of the the main takeaways from being a knob is you learned how to be a follower.

That’s something we talk about a lot at the Citadel and it’s you are able to analyze specific leadership qualities of the people who are above you. you’re able to see if that’s something that you think worse it works, if that’s something that you want to take on when you get into that leadership role. And so, yeah, I’ve made it four years out of the citadel. I’ve learned a ton and

Chris Nichols (03:53.473)
So say so s stay on that topic. You learn how to be a follower, which I think is important as you you know, your career in banking. That and what does that actually mean? That means like you’re managing up, you’re solving the deficiencies, you’re learning from your leaders while you’re helping him or her manage the troops, so to speak, the other cadets.

Brennan Perkins (04:01.741)
Mm-hmm.

Brennan Perkins (04:12.791)
Yeah, I’d really say it’s a culmination of all of those. So what what I took out of being a follower is you’re kind of diving deep into the mission of whatever whatever organization or team you’re in and you’re just there to listen and to execute. You have to fully trust your leadership, and you execute the plans that they put out for you. And one thing that’s special is although you are a follower

ev I I believe everyone’s a leader. So I was a follower at that time with all of my freshman knob classmates, but throughout that time you start to, like I said, recognize the leadership qualities above you, the ones that you like and you begin to form your own leadership aqua qualities with the people around you. and another part of being a follower is really just being a sponge. that’s something that I really hope to do coming into the associate program is

These there’s people who have gone through what you were about to go through and they’re in their position for a reason. So why not be a sponge and try to soak up everything you can to learn from their experience?

Caleb Stevens (05:27.202)
Well, Brennan, it’s cool to have you on the podcast. I think you’re the youngest guest we’ve ever had on the show. So speaks volumes to you and your your character. So we’re excited to have you on the South State team. For the listeners who are maybe vaguely familiar with the Citadel but not super familiar, give us kind of a level set. Is it is it associated with a particular branch of the military? How many graduates end up going on to serve full time? Kind of talk about what the the purpose of the Citadel is for.

And where folks tend to go from there.

Brennan Perkins (05:58.916)
Yeah. That’s a that’s a big misconception when people hear about the Citadel. So it’s a military school, however, only about thirty three percent of the school actually contracts with the military and goes and serves after they graduate. we’re set up like you would think of a military environment. We have five battalions and so the way I always explain it is it’s a four walls and

it’s like a motel facing inwards and then there’s a big checkered we call it the quad in the middle. And so we do all the military things. We wake up early every day. We PT in the mornings. We wear uniforms we go to extra leadership classes. So we do the military things that you would originally think of when you think of a school like West Point. However, you’re you are not required to go to the military after school. So like I said, only about thirty three percent of

the graduates end up contracting and going to serve in the military. and then the rest just go to their respective majors, their areas and they work in the private sector.

Caleb Stevens (07:08.844)
And and maybe expand a little bit on what you said earlier, which is as you gr as you progressed through the citadel, it sounds like early on it was learning what it means to be a follower, but you had leadership opportunities that you took on as you got a little bit older. Talk about some of those unique experiences you had to learn leadership at a pretty young, you know, age and and maybe some of the unique things that you think a military environment teaches you about leadership that maybe a traditional state school you might not have.

Brennan Perkins (07:38.308)
Yeah, of course. So the Citadel is set up in a a very hierarchy structure. We call it the fourth class system. So that’s the knobs. That’s the freshmen that I talked about earlier. And then as you go forward in your college career, you kind of gain more responsibilities. so the seniors are like the the uppermost in the hierarchy. But there’s specific responsibilities in each

year. So for example, my sophomore year, I was a company clerk. And when I say company, the Citadel is broken up into roughly twenty companies and each company has about a hundred cadets. One thing I forgot to talk talk about is we’re really self-ran. So the cadets from the most part run the college on the military side. We create the schedules, we create the leadership exercises. So each company kind of runs itself.

And so my sophomore year I held the rank of company clerk. And so that was really an ad administrative role where you’re doing all the paperwork for everything that needs to happen. junior year I was a company supply sergeant in that role. I was really just in charge of making sure everyone had every supplies they needed. So from the time the knob showed up and they needed to get all their uniform items and everything like that to distributing room keys and really just

a broad supply accountability area. And then my senior year I was company XO so that was I was second in command of a hundred cadets. And I don’t know if you guys had the same experience, but looking back to your college days, it was it was a big thing. It was very hard to try to manage a hundred different cadets just being on the same level as them. And so I think that’s one thing that I had to learn was how do I manage

these people who I’m not very I’m not on a higher level than them. These are my classmates. these are my friends. How do I manage that? And I would say going a little bit into the lessons, the the biggest lesson with leadership that I learned is the power of a servant leader. We hear that word all the time, but for me what that looked like is when when the leader is stressed out, the lead the leader doesn’t have a lot of time.

Brennan Perkins (10:05.577)
Is he going to take the time to help his subordinates? And time after time, as I witnessed leaders and as I became got to that leadership point, I found that if you are willing to sacrifice your own time, sacrifice your own stress to help your subordinates whenever you can, they’re they’re going to buy into your mission and they’re gonna be willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish the goal.

Chris Nichols (10:37.235)
Talk a little bit about the detail orientation they teach you at the Citadel and how important that is to leadership.

Brennan Perkins (10:45.111)
Yeah. So I’ll just give you an example of how detailed we as cadets are. So roughly four or five times a semester we have this thing called a Saturday morning inspection. And so like I say, we’re run like a military school. During this time we you would have to clean your rooms to a T where your your underwear and your drawer had to be a certain inch away from your your sh shorts in your drawer.

everything had a place. the the room had to be spotless. and then on top of that, you also had to make your uniform perfect. You had to we have if you ever seen a citizen uniform, we have a bunch of different pieces of brass that we have to hand shine, we have uniforms that we have to iron super perfectly. And so although we it’s hard to see how that kind of transfers into the real world while you’re

kinda going through you’re just thinking like dang I gotta stay up till 3AM to perfect my room. I think now and especially soon when I when I’m with you guys in Tampa, it’s it’s gonna play a huge role in the small things matter. That’s one thing we learned that if you’re going to cut corners on the small things, you’re you’re most likely going to cut corners on the big things. So everything we do at the Citadel is very detail oriented. That’s one of the main lessons

that we try to teach the knobs coming in on day one. I think that’s something that you’ll see if you look at any citadel graduates, you’ll see that that level of knowledge and understanding of detail.

Chris Nichols (12:28.1)
How you do the small things matters on how you do everything, so good building block, I think, is your takeaway there. you talked about your senior year as exo executive officer and motivating your fellow cadets. any tips on how you found best effective to do that or tips that you observed in others that were more effective than others, other leaders?

Brennan Perkins (12:51.181)
Yeah. Yeah, of course. So I think like I said, my leadership philosophy is servanthood, finding a way to serve your subordinates even when you’re when you’re stressed out, when you are on a time crunch. But I would think the the second most important thing would be knowing your subordinates, knowing the people that work for you because every person is different. Every person has a different reason for why they do things, they have different motivations.

And so if you know your people on an individual level, you’re able to kind of talk to them and motivate them in specific ways that you know will get them to get them to accomplish the goal and their best abilities. So I think that that is a really big thing for leaders and something that I’m excited to do when I get to South State is just getting to know everybody, getting to see what makes people tick.

Caleb Stevens (13:45.757)
Yeah. And that carries over, Brennan, I think, long term into your career because you’re talking about how do I build influence with my peers? I’m not older than them or not that much older than them. We’re all in college together. But you know, as you get out into your career, it’s very likely that there’s a a 45-year-old leading a 60-year-old because the 45-year-old has positional authority that the 60-year-old you know, doesn’t have. And so

How do you build influence with somebody who’s 15 years your senior, 20 years your senior? There’s a lot of good lessons there. Any any other thoughts there on just how to, you know, there’s there’s the positional authority, but then there’s the actual influence, you know, kind of going back to what you said earlier. Like you want to be a leader. Okay, well, who’s following you now? You know, if who who would be excited that you got promoted to leadership because they’re already following you in a sense, because you’ve already built influence. Any other thoughts on that?

Brennan Perkins (14:30.733)
Yeah.

Brennan Perkins (14:39.743)
I think really everything I said and I think it’s very important to not come at it in a I’m the I’m the leader over you. you you you need to listen to to what I say. I mean I think that’s pretty straightforward, but we’re all in this together. That’s one thing that I saw working the internship with you guys last summer. so from my first interview with Lisa Bladder to when I worked under Mike Coggan in Greenville.

You guys specifically took time, s especially Mike, to to ask how we were doing every single day. Like he’s he’s running he’s running a whole market over there in Greenville. He’s got he’s really busy, he’s got a lot of stuff to do, but he took the time to go down to the people below him to just really ask if he could do anything for them and how they were doing. And so I think that that made a really big impact.

Caleb Stevens (15:36.443)
So why banking? you know, you probably had a lot of opportunities as you were thinking about your future. Obviously, you could have gone to serve full time in the military. You probably had a lot of other opportunities in the business world. just kind of curious what attracted you not not just to South State, but just to to banking in general. And I’ll just kind of context this again by saying I I think a lot of young people today come out of college and just sort of assume that they

Chris Nichols (15:39.524)
Yeah.

Caleb Stevens (16:03.236)
don’t like banking or that they just you know, sounds kinda boring, kinda stodgy, but oftentimes it’s because they don’t understand how it works. so what kind of piqued your interest in banking?

Brennan Perkins (16:13.923)
Yeah, so it really started my when I was in high school, I became super interested in investing in money. I believe I read The Intelligent Investor and I just wanted to start investing my money and so opened up a brokerage account and really my goal was to try to convince my parents to start investing a ton of money so they’d they’d be ready to retire. That’s how I got introduced to kind of the finance sector.

So I chose to major in finance when I got to the Citadel. In that I I learned a lot. We the Citadel talks a ton about financial markets. We talk a ton about economics. But then I got this internship with you guys as a commercial banking intern. And like we were talking about a little earlier, it’s really cool to see these businesses.

if you think about it, every one of these businesses, it was kind of like a dream in someone’s head at some point. but then at the commercial level you’re you’re here to fund their growth and be of a service to them so that they’re able to kind of carry out that dream even further. And so I think it’s something really cool getting to see a bunch of different businesses, getting to meet a lot of different people who have specific businesses to help the public, help the people.

Chris Nichols (17:38.395)
So I think your background in servant leadership is fantastic in that it fits very well with our culture. but you’re coming from a culture that is steeped in discipline and hierarchy, and now while that’s part of banking, so is entrepreneurialship and creativity. How do you think you have that in terms of your bridging to to a banking career? Concerns or you know, you think you’ll fit right in?

Brennan Perkins (18:03.265)
Yeah, I I don’t think I I have many concerns regarding that because we don’t learn you you think from an outside perspective the citadel is all disciplined and sure it’s that way while you’re at the citadel. but once you get out you you realize a lot of the small things that you were doing, it wasn’t about rigid discipline. It was about having the ability to think for yourself. I mean what what truly is a leader

you want you want someone who can think for themselves. You don’t want just someone who’s gonna say yes to someone above them. If everyone’s thinking for themselves we we can really grow as an organization. So I don’t really have a lot of concerns when it comes to that.

Chris Nichols (18:45.06)
‘Cause you’re a problem solver, so hopefully we’re gonna throw problems at you and you’ll use the same creativity as you did at the Citadel. I like it.

Brennan Perkins (18:51.928)
Yes, sir.

Chris Nichols (18:55.0)
Two pieces of advice. So one piece of advice as you come into our associate program, you’re gonna be trained in credit, kind of the basics of banking. what advice would you have to your fellow associates on how to e excel in that? That’s something that you’ve learned from the Citadel that you know you you hope your fellow co-workers have.

Brennan Perkins (19:15.485)
I would I would tell them there’s gonna be times where you really don’t understand why you’re learning something. there’s gonna be times where you you you don’t really feel like kind of diving deep and putting the extra effort into it, but that’s what separates you from someone who’s just kinda going through the motions. I think the the biggest part of this is going the extra mile to learn and really like I said, be a sponge.

We’re gonna from what I know so far, we’re we’re gonna have so many opportunities to meet different people from the bank that have either gone the same path that we’re going right now or are doing different things. But if we can be a sponge and learn from them while we’re also really just grinding to understand and gain that fundamental knowledge, then we’ll be okay.

Chris Nichols (20:12.32)
And second piece of advice, what advice would you give maybe your fellow your your future classmates or your your classmates that are coming up to the Citadel now about banking, or anybody looking to maybe any young person that just graduated from college looking to join a bank now that you’ve you’ve sent spent some time with inside our walls, you’ve spent some time at the Citadel, what advice would you do to to give to potential candidates for for the banking industry?

Brennan Perkins (20:40.929)
Yeah, I would say really dive into the bank that you’re you’re really wanting to work for. I think a lot of people just try to just get a job anywhere. they they’re the job market’s crazy right now and so people are just getting any job they can, but it’s going to make a difference if you know the know the people you’re working for, know the organization you’re working for, and if you can get behind their mission.

So while you’re on your job search or you’re interviewing with different banks, really get to know who you’re working for and who you’re interviewing with and see if that’s something that fits with the mission that you want to get behind.

Caleb Stevens (21:24.625)
Well, Brennan, those are really two solid pieces of advice. And your first one I I especially echo, I tell young people all the time, early in your career, you’re gonna be doing things that you’re like, I’m not sure I’m good at this. And what I always say is don’t confuse talents you don’t have with skills you just need to learn, irrespective of whether you’re they’re talents of yours or not. You know, with a lot of times we tell young people, follow your talents, which is true, that’s good advice, but there’s also things you just need to learn how to do.

Whether you’re gifted at them or not, because they’re important things you need to know. And in banking you’re gonna obviously bump into that from time to time. So that’s great pieces of advice. Chris, I think that’s all from me. Any final words or thoughts you wanna ask Brennan about?

Chris Nichols (22:07.488)
No, Brennan, we appreciate you being on the show. We appreciate you choosing South State and we’re excited for your new banking career as it takes off. And you know hopefully we’ll get you back on maybe in a year’s time to see your thoughts and how they evolve from then.

Brennan Perkins (22:22.776)
Yeah, thank you guys so much for having me. Never been on a podcast, so this was super exciting and I’m super super excited to be with you guys. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Chris Nichols (22:29.796)
There you go. Best of luck to you.