How Lenders Can Succeed in 2025

INTRO: Helping community bankers grow themselves, their team and their profits. This is the Community Bank Podcast.

CALEB: We are coming to you from Atlanta, GA, the headquarters for the Correspondent Division here at SouthState Bank. Thanks for being a part of the conversation today. I’m Caleb Stevens, and that is a new intro song and that can only mean one thing, it’s a brand new year. Every year we try to mix it up on the show, creates a new energy change, up the intro music, and so if this is your first time joining us, welcome. This is the Community Bank Podcast, by bankers for bankers. Every episode is designed to help you grow yourself, your team, and your bank’s profits.

CALEB, continued: Kicking it off, we’re going to be speaking with Mr. Jack Hubbard. Jack is a longtime friend of the show and a veteran of the banking industry. He has coached and trained commercial lenders all over the country in the thousands over his 40-year career. And so, we talked to Jack today about the sales trends that are going to define success for lenders in 2025. We also talk about the different characteristics that make a good salesperson in banking, whether you’re a mortgage lender or you’re an SBA lender or a standard commercial lender. Maybe even a consumer lender. What are the common characteristics and differences between those types of roles? We also talk about M&A. When two companies combine, you’re bringing together two different types of selling, two different sales philosophies, and sales cultures. So, if you’re a leader, how do you navigate that transition well to create a better organization in the future? We talk about all that and more on this episode. So, let’s get to it.

CALEB, continued: Well, Jack, Happy New Year. It’s great to have you back on the show. Welcome to the podcast.

JACK: Caleb, thank you. Happy New Year to you and your team, and it’s always great to be to be with you.

CALEB: Well, I opened up my phone this morning, and I was browsing through LinkedIn, and you had a post about New Year’s resolutions and the importance of consistency. And if I had one word to describe you, I think that would be one of the words because you’ve been doing this for 40 plus years. Coaching bankers, training bankers. So, do you have any New Year’s resolutions from a professional standpoint that you want to embrace this year?

JACK: You know, I never make resolutions, because as the post said, only about 8% of Americans ever keep them. So, I would rather go for a word of the year. And you’re right, I start my 53rd year in and around banking and in 2025, and it’s been an amazing run and so many changes. But I do think, and we’ll come back to it probably a little bit later, I think consistency is one of the key elements of success going forward. You know, I hate MVP awards. I don’t like it when people say, “Tell me one thing I should be doing,” because there isn’t one thing. There’s a lot of them, but I think consistency encompasses a lot of the routines and activities that bankers should be doing, and we’ll explore more on that later.

CALEB: How many bankers would you guess you’ve coached and trained over your career?

JACK: A little over 80,000. And you know, one of the nice things about this is, people often ask me, because I’ll be 75 on January 9th, people say when do you plan to retire? The answer is I don’t. I’ve rewired. You know, I’ve been very fortunate, thanks to a lot of prayer and support and medicine, to continue to be with my cancer undetectable. They don’t say cured. They don’t say cancer-free because it always could back, but I feel really fortunate about that. So, in ‘25, I’ve already got a whole bunch of speeches and classes. I want to do about two a month, but I want to really focus my energies on the banks that I think will build performance cultures, not sales cultures. I’ve never been a big sales culture guy. I think that makes a customer a victim or certainly potentially can. So, I’m excited about 2025, Caleb. We’ve got all kinds of new things going on here. Personally and professionally, and it’ll be a great year, I think.

CALEB: Well, I’ve lost count, but this is at least your third time on the show. Could be your fourth time on the show, I’d have to go back and look, but for somebody that has just stumbled onto the podcast recently, tell us a little bit about St. Meyer & Hubbard, the Modern Banker, and everything that you do to serve our industry.

JACK: Well, thank you, Caleb. Yeah, it’s been an interesting run. We started St. Meyer & Hubbard in 2000, so our we’re in our 25th year now. And our whole focus there is to help bankers and sales leaders improve conversations. Our focus mostly is business banking, although we do a lot of retail, mortgage, et cetera. In 2023, I was able to start a different company with my partner, Brynne Tillman, who if you don’t follow her on LinkedIn, you should. She’s amazing and one of the 37 international sales influencers on LinkedIn. So, our focus there is to help bankers understand how to connect LinkedIn to the sales process. And I think we have an awful lot of bankers we can help, because based on what I see, banking is far behind in the use of what I call social collaboration, which is LinkedIn. We’re excited about it. We, you know, I continue as I mentioned, to be in the classroom and do speaking, and we’ll keep doing this and as long as we can.

CALEB: One of the things I admire about you is your hunger to learn and to grow. There’s not many folks that get into their mid 70s, at least not many that I know, that are on the forefront of AI and how to apply it to their world and into their industry. So just, you know, kudos to you for your continuing to get better, learn, grow, because it does make an impact for our industry. Yeah. Thanks again for what you do.

JACK: Well, thank you. And you know, you mentioned AI, and you know if banks, if community banks—I’m on the board of a community bank. Now, were part of a much bigger holding company, but if community bankers don’t embrace AI, it’s a huge mistake. AI is going to continue to expand and grow, and banks can use it for efficiency and effectiveness. But one of the things that we’re doing at St. Meyer & Hubbard is to create this new tool called AI Navigator, which helps bankers reduce their call planning time by about 90% and to be able to use voice recognition on your cell phone to be able to upload your call report just by talking it. One of the problems that bankers have with a CRM system is well, do you want me to make sales calls, or do you want me to put stuff in the CRM? The answer is yes. But that CRM time takes type time. But if you can put it in in-voice, it’s much more effective. And your organization with Tate has been in the forefront of that through Chris Nichols. And whether it’s ChatGPT or CoPilot, sales bankers, commercial sales bankers, regardless of age, need to be thinking about how do I know that tool? How do I get to know that tool?

CALEB: That’s music to many lenders ears, to know that I could just speak the notes from the call into my phone, and it’s already in my CRM. I’ve talked to many bank CEOs, community bank CEOs, and they say one of the reasons that lenders come to work for us is that we don’t ask them to put stuff in a CRM. So, it’s like one of the reasons they’re running from a larger institution. So, it’s great to see that there’s new features becoming available to get the best of the CRM for sure.
JACK: And Caleb, isn’t that a foolish comment? Because, and obviously, they’ve been tainted by a large bank and micromanagement, and tick marks, but if you stop and think about it, whatever CRM you use, whether it’s Salesforce or 360View, or Quest Analytics, or Marquee, whatever you use as a banker, that’s a partner. That’s a strategic partner. And if you can put good data into the CRM system, it’s going to help you down the road from a strategic and a presentation standpoint. It’s not a big brother or big sister tool.

CALEB: Yeah, no doubt. And it’s probably, many banks use it that way, and that’s what’s off-putting to the lenders. But if you really saw the value and how you could use it effectively, people would probably change their opinions. That’s great. We did an episode with Ron Buck talking a little in more in depth about AI and its implication for banks. So, I encourage folks to go back and listen to that. Today, Jack, I’d love to get your thoughts on a few things. One thing I’ve been chewing on a lot lately is there’s a variety of sales roles within a bank. You’ve got commercial lenders, you’ve got consumer lenders, FSRs, mortgage bankers, SBA lenders.

CALEB, continued: I was talking with my father just recently about the difference between an SBA lender and a traditional commercial lender and why those two roles are distinct and different and why the way you hire and who you look for is different. When it comes to your world, you’re coaching a variety of sales roles within a bank. Do you see distinctive traits that would make somebody a better fit for, say, a mortgage banker who’s straight commission, you know, versus a commercial lender, that’s a more traditional salary and plus an annual bonus? And it’s just a different setup. Or do you feel like the principles that you preach sort of equally apply to all those different roles?

JACK: Well, that’s a great question. And I’ll use kind of an analogy. If you’re a football coach at the University of Georgia, you have a scheme, you have a mindset or you have a philosophy around coaching. And in that philosophy, you’re trying to recruit the best talent that will fit your philosophy. One of the challenges you have and, with athletes going into the portal, if I’m a coach, I may not know who I’m going to have next year. And that’s a lot like banking because bankers are going to move banks from time to time, et cetera, et cetera. So, sometimes the culture has to be a little bit flexible. However, if you have a culture where you have more of a relationship culture versus a transaction culture, you have to look for people that you’re hiring that fit that philosophy. Because if you’ve got, if you’re a bank president, or a bank leader in a division like a mortgage, for example, or commercial real estate, and your mindset is transaction, and you’ve got a relationship banker—I call them resource managers—but if you’ve got a relationship banker who’s taking a little more time trying to add value and extending the sales cycle, that’s not going to work for your philosophy. So, I think, one of the things we talked about before we started recording was de Novos. If you have a de Novo bank or a small bank, you have a tremendous opportunity to hire within your philosophy.

JACK, continued: But if you have a larger bank, a more established bank like Oconee State Bank, your dad has to look at who’s the best talent out there and can they be flexible to fit within my culture? The other thing you have to understand, as a banker is, what about the buyer? Is the buyer a relationship buyer or a transactional buyer? Two types of buyers, that’s who they are. And so, if I’m in mortgage for example, residential mortgage, my buyer might be a quick turnover buyer. They may be more transactional, but they could be relational as well. So, I have to look at the kind of buyer that I’m up against in. In my perfect world—it’ll never happen—but in my perfect world, Caleb, what I’d love to do is to see relational bankers paired with people who want a value-based relationship, and transactional bankers who want to work with transactional buyers. Now, in commercial real estate, that’s more likely to happen. But in community banking, for example, you’re a generalist. You could be calling on an architect this morning and a pediatrician in the afternoon. It’s not just their industry, but what they’re looking for from a bank, and I think we really fail around that when we hire wrong or when we teach bankers how to interact with different kinds of buyers.

CALEB: Yeah, I’ve also seen a mismatch happen sometimes with the personality of the sales team member and their comm structure. So, this is just my opinion, but I think a straight commission salesman or woman, that’s a special kind of personality that enjoys the thrill of the ups and the downs, the highs and the lows. You could do extremely well one year, and your income could drop by 80% if the bank falls on hard times. A commercial lender is maybe a little more steady, maybe a little more relational. Do you see sometimes salesmen or women fail? Not so much because they don’t have the ability to solve problems and add value, but perhaps, like you said, they’re in a transactional kind of role where there’s a lot of volume, and quick turnaround, and things like that. Expected to do a lot of volume, maybe it’s a mortgage lender, you know, making 300,000 home loans versus a commercial lender that might do 5 loans a year but they’re, you know, $5, $6 million credits, and those sales cycles are longer and takes nurturing and developing. Do you ever see that play out at banks?

JACK: You said a great word, and that’s mismatch. Too often what happens is we mismatch. We have a cultural mismatch. We have a culture, that out to the public, says one thing, and internally it does another. And when you have that incongruence, you have tremendously high turnover. You know, I’ve seen so many different kinds of incentive programs fail. It’s easier, if you’re in mortgage, and mortgage is a pretty, standard, commission only situation. Some banks have a blended approach, but there are commission involved. And you’re going to hire risk taking salespeople, and you have the risk of high levels of turnover. But if when you start looking at what’s happened in our history, the legislation has really started to hurt—not hurt. The legislation has really started to hamper how we can pay people. The way I like to have bakers look at this is at the end of the year, “What’s my return on investment to the bank?”

JACK, continued: And I would love it if we could get to a point where bankers could pay on that kind of a situation because that’s how businesses pay. Businesses pay bonuses based on their level of profitability and what you brought to the table. But what happens is, because a lot of times banks don’t understand their total profitability. We have to play the widget game. We have to count this and don’t count this. “Well, I brought that in.” “No, I referred it.” And so, you end up with a real challenge around incentives. And you know, Caleb, you’ve been in this business a while. You know, that when you put money in front of somebody, it really does change the game. If I’m focused on commission, when I wake up in the morning, it’s, “Who can I sell something to?” If I’m focused on a good bonus and a decent salary and lots of benefits, I can focus on, “How can I help the buyer today?” And that, Caleb, really is the essence of a resource manager in my mind versus a relationship manager that’s on straight commission.

CALEB: Yeah, that’s an important distinction. My father’s bank, I think that a number years ago, they made the transition from comping their lenders on pretty much just production, to more of a profitability model, and they use funds to transfer pricing, and that’s been a game changer for them. To make sure that there’s alignment between the profitability of the bank and the success of the lenders. That’s great. And speaking of lenders, I’d love to hear from you. What are some trends that you’re paying attention to? What are some factors that you think will dictate the success of lenders in 2025? There’s a lot of uncertainty around the economy, around cost of funding, around loan demand And so, you know, we can’t control the weather, as Jamie Dimon likes to say, but we can focus on serving our clients regardless of the weather. So, what are those things that you think lenders need to be focused on this year?

JACK: You know, I’ve always taught to my 80,000 plus bankers that I’ve trained and coached, what I believe are the “5 Cs” of trust-based selling. Conversations, curiosity, collaboration, connectivity, and customization. If we do those five things, then I think we’re going to be fine. Your point’s well taken. I don’t control what’s going to happen with the new Administration. I think it’s probably going to be better for banking in a lot of ways. It’ll be more challenging in other ways. We don’t control rates. We don’t control the customer’s behavior. But what we do control is our own behavior. So, you asked about traits. I really believe that if somebody held my feet to the fire and said, “I need you to tell me one trait that a banker needs to do to be successful,” it’s really simple. The buyer has the answers. The banker has the questions. And when I teach a sales class, pretty much my whole focus is on planning questions and follow up.

JACK, continued: And so, one behavior that I think a lender needs to do that they control is to ask better questions. Ask questions that nobody else will ask. Don’t ask product-focused questions on the first call. Another thing they need to be thinking about is, another trait is, “How do I tell great stories?” Every single one of us has amazing stories, but we many times don’t know how to tell them. And part of the reason we don’t is because we don’t prepare. We don’t sit in our office and say, “Okay, if the buyer said, ‘What experience do you have with veterinarians?’ Would I say back? What could I do to research that within my bank or my own portfolio?” So, I think telling stories is another one. And I think the third one, Caleb, is fanatical follow-up. I’d love to write a book, I’m too old, but I’d love to write a book called, Fanatical Follow-Up, because I really believe that the number one thing that bankers can do after the call is to stay with that potential buyer. I call them “tweeners.” Within 48 hours of the call, I’m going to send a conversation recap. If they say, “Call me back in 30 days.” 15 days later, I’m going to send them something of value. Within 20 days, I’m going to connect with them on LinkedIn.

JACK, continued: So, I’m going to try to socially surround that buyer so that they look at me and say, “Here is a resource to me. This is a value-added provider.” I would add 1 caveat to that, and that is, and this goes back to our discussion of “Can all bankers sell in every situation?” You’ve got a lot of people who are great hunters, and a lot of people who are great farmers. We’ve got to help our bankers understand that once they get it in the barn, they gotta continue to nurture that relationship. And so, I think if you look at some of the traits and behaviors for success in 2025 for lenders, I would say that, and I would just end this question with this answer. One of my good friends in the industry is Charles Green. Charlie is going to be on my program on Wednesday, January 8th. He’s going to talk about trust, and he wrote The Trusted Advisor, and he came up with what he calls a “trust equation.” And if a banker can follow the trust equation, I think they’re going to be in fabulous shape. And, you know, the trust equation involves a variety of different kinds of things. Consistency, credibility, reliability, intimacy, and low self-orientation.

JACK, continued: And when a banker does that, when they really focus on the buyer, things will take care of themselves. I would add one thing too. And you didn’t ask this, but I got to get my licks in for coaching. I think one of the biggest downfalls of banking, and one of the reasons that banks aren’t as successful, is because the manager doesn’t coach. Your dad wrote a phenomenal book called Leading Life on Life, and you and he, I know, have done a lot of speaking on this. And coaching is not a recriminative activity. It’s not a horrible event; it’s a way for me to help you or you to help me, or maybe we help each other. And I’d love to have, as part of 2025, more coaching go on in banking, because it’s a real miss.

CALEB: And speaking of coaching along those lines, one of the best pieces of advice I ever received when I was an intern at Chick-fil-A Corporate many years ago now. My manager, he was talking about performance reviews, whether they’re annual or biannual, and he said, “A subtle tip when you’re doing a performance review for somebody. Never, never, never sit across from the person. Always sit beside them because it sends a nonverbal cue that this is not me pronouncing a judgment upon you, not giving you a letter grade. This is a coaching opportunity. And if I’ve set clear expectations about what’s expected in this role, and it shouldn’t feel confrontational or adversarial at all, it should be about evaluating together how you can get better and grow. And it just sends a subtle cue that this person, your manager’s in your corner and wants to help you succeed.” I always thought that was brilliant. I’ve shared that before on the podcast, but not sure if I ever share that with you before.

JACK: That’s brilliant. That’s a smart manager. And I would also say for coaches. If you want to be a really good coach, remember these 3 words. “Ask, then tell.” One of the best coaches I’ve ever had was he would sit down with me, and he would say, “How am I doing for you? What could I do to improve?” And when that happens, the tension in the room tends to go away. Now I, the receiver of the coaching, am more open to receiving your coaching if I’ve given you coaching.

CALEB: Yeah, it’s disarming for sure. That’s great. Let’s switch gears real quick and talk about M&A. It was dead for a while with COVID, and then AOCI and bond portfolio issues. But we’re seeing it pick up, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this topic before. But when you’re merging two banks together, there’s all kinds of cultural challenges that come with that. But one thing I’ve never really considered is one level deeper, which is the culture amongst the lenders as it pertains to their philosophy. You talked earlier about managers having a philosophy for their sales department. Well, if you’re bringing two banks together, you’re going to have different sales philosophies. Several years ago, a friend was telling me about a merger that he was experiencing, and he really did harp on the fact that on one side you had a group that was probably more transactional in their approach, and it worked well for them over the years, and the other group was a little more relational. And so, when to really bring those two teams together, it’s kind of like oil and water at times. It was hard to sort of figure each other out and build that trust because the philosophies were so different. How would you counsel leaders as they’re bringing two cultures together, from a sales standpoint, to make sure that they’re doing it in a way that makes a better organization long term?

JACK: And you mentioned leader, and that’s a real key. I’ve experienced a number of mergers. I was fired by four banks due to mergers, and I was younger, and of course I was angry, and those stages of grief all come in. But I’ve seen where a bank was merged into another bank, and the leader, the president of this bank, did everything he could to undermine the merger with his people. And that cost him his job, and it really set the merger back a while. There’s a great book out. Kirk Knutson is a former banker, and he wrote a book called The Art of Selling Your Bank.

CALEB: Yeah.

JACK: And there’s a lot of great culture stuff in there. I don’t know, have you had Kurt on your program?

CALEB: We have, yeah.

JACK: And he talks a lot about that whole cultural aspect. And I think the number one thing is leaders have to not only talk a good game, but they have to act. They have to do what they say and say what they do. From a lender perspective, you know, we’re always going to be fighting to get airtime, so that we can be in front of people so that we can keep our jobs. Because there’s going to be, from a lending perspective, if you’re a good lender, you’re going to be a good lender in a lot of different kinds of cultures. But if you’re a leader of lenders, you’re nervous because there’s two heads of retail, 2 heads of business, 2 heads of whatever, 2 CMOs—Chief Marketing Officers. So, one of the things that I always say a lender can do is back what we talked about before. Control what you control. And what I mean by that is two things you need to be doing as a lender. The first thing is getting to know the people who are your partners in the new bank as quickly as you possibly can. You’ve got underwriters and analysts who really, really control your life in some ways.

JACK, continued: So, getting to know them and them getting to know you and your philosophy is really important. So, as early as you can, go meet them. Get to know them as much as you possibly can. But the most important thing in a merger is the customer. And so, from a lender perspective, if you go out and you have good customer relationships, if you provide resource management concepts, if you do value-based selling, you’re going to be fine because your customers are going to demand that you stay. Now they may not say that overtly, but they’re going to demand that you stay by actually doing more business with you. Your portfolio is growing, et cetera. I think the other thing I need to understand as a lender is to just sit back with my partner at home and just talk through this. Because this is a very emotional thing. Change is great as long as doesn’t affect me.

JACK, continued: There are no merger of equals, and everything won’t be the same after the merger, and we need to understand all of those things. And the other thing is, if you can’t operate within that, know it quickly and let people know. And the more overt you are with people where you say, “Look, I can’t operate within this culture, I respect it, et cetera, et cetera, but I am going to move on after the merger is closed,” they’ll respect you more around that. I do think, Caleb, it’s a really good question that you asked, because I think there’s going to be so much merger activity in 2025. I think it’ll be probably a record year for merger. $750 million banks merging with billion and a half dollar banks because without it, you don’t get scale, and you can’t survive.

CALEB: Yeah, and it seems like one of the tensions that is difficult but necessary to manage is on the one hand, if you sell your bank—Kurt Knutson in his book talks about this—you’ve got to let go. You’ve got to respect the new authority and the new ownership. They’ve bought your bank, and they’re in charge now. And if that’s not how you wanted things to turn out, then you and the board should not have decided to sell the bank. On the other hand, they bought you because they saw value in you, and that means done a lot of things well over the years that they see value in, and that they want to be part of. So, it also takes, I think, the buyer saying how can we learn from these folks? What are things about their lenders and their sales culture that we ought to pick up on to improve the way that we do things? So, it feels like respect for authority, but also the buyer approaching in such a way that they have a curiosity to learn and to grow and learn from you, because maybe there’s things that they could pick up from you over time, but it does seem like it goes back to that trust in communication.

JACK: No doubt about it. I know of a bank where the bank bought a $3 billion and suddenly realized that the new bank’s retail approach was so far superior to the bigger bank that the bigger bank adopted it. And when you have that level of flexibility and trust, you’re going to have a lot of success in the marketplace.

CALEB: Well, last topic before we wrap. I’ve beat this drum for years because I’m a marketing guy. I actually gave a talk on this about a year and a half ago. But when it comes to sales and marketing, it feels like with technology, with AI, with tools, those lanes are getting blurred a little bit at times. And yet, I often see marketing departments at banks off working on things that the lenders don’t really have any say in or involvement with, and there’s not really a lot of alignment towards common goals to help the bank overall. From a sales standpoint, whether it’s retail or commercial, particularly though commercial, I see a lot of marketing departments working on retail projects, and a lot of lenders don’t know the marketing team or don’t see a lot of value in their marketing teams, and I think that’s a missed opportunity. Any advice out there to bank marketers to how they can better collaborate with lenders?

JACK: Oh wow. You know, I was a bank marketing officer at a community bank, and I’ve taught at bank marketing schools for about 40 years. And one of the questions people often have is as a CMO: “How do I get to the C-Suite?” Here are a few things that I think bank marketers need to do. Number one, they need to understand how the bank works and how the bank makes money. We’re doing a better job in marketing now with ROI. We’re understanding that a little bit better. But we also need to understand ROA and ROE. And so, if a banker can come to the table and talk about margins and the importance of that, I think that’s critical. So, I would suggest to bank marketing people go to banking school, whether it’s LSU or GSP, there’s a bunch of them out there. It teaches you to be a banker, and I think we need to make that happen. We need to understand the customer as marketing. And one of the banks I work with, their marketing department regularly, with the permission of the banker, goes out and interviews customers.

JACK, continued: Why did you come to this bank? What are we done to make it work for you? If somebody called you as a reference on us, what would you say? And they’re using that in collateral and messaging, things like that. It really comes from the customer. A third thing I would say is attend sales training. Go to sales training with your bankers. Understand what they’re going through. Make joint calls with your bankers. Attend pipeline meetings. All of this leads to a better solution in terms of how the bank works and how the bank makes money, and that relationship is established with your banker. Messaging. Help your bankers with LinkedIn messages and webinars and lunch and learns. We have one bank that I know that does what’s called a best seller series, where every quarter they bring a bestselling author.

JACK, continued: It costs them about $40 to $50,000, but they invite prospects, and that really kind of helps solidify some of those relationships and brings prospects in. I would say the number one thing, Caleb, is, and this is in every survey that I’ve ever seen in non-bank situations, and that is the number one role of marketing is to bring me quality leads. And when I did a poll recently on LinkedIn, and I asked CMOS that question, it was third out of three. In what the banker thought they needed to be doing. Leads is the most important thing. How can I generate leads for my bankers? And then they need to read. And they need to use AI and ChatGPT. And they need to be looking at the financial brand, and how to use LinkedIn, and read sales books, and things like that. It’s not an easy role. A lot of people get the idea, “Oh, you’re in marketing. You take the day off and you go play golf all the time.” It is far from true, but that responsibility is marketing’s to say, “Here’s a few things I want to do,” and then it’s the responsibility of the culture to say, “You know what? You’re right. Let me let you into my pipeline meetings. Let me have you sit in on sales training.” All those things can create a marketing approach where sales and marketing are connected at the wallet and the customer experience.

CALEB: Love it. Well, you’ve just given a lot of bank marketers a lot of homework out there. So, thanks for that. If folks want to find you on LinkedIn or on your website, how can they reach you?

JACK: Yeah, it’s jack@themodernbanker.com. I’m on LinkedIn. Please follow me. And thank you, Caleb. This has been really great. What a terrific way to start off the year, and I’m so thrilled to be your first guest of the season.

CALEB: Couldn’t think of a better way to have it, so thank you for getting us a jolt of energy as we head into 2025. We really appreciate it.