How to Shift from a “Debt Mindset” to “Equity Mindset” with Samer Saab

Chris Nichols (00:02.246)
Samer, welcome to the podcast. Appreciate you being on. We’re gonna turn the tables. This time I’m gonna interview you and we’re gonna go back and forth on the topic of the debt versus equity mindset. Now I gotta give Alloy Labs and yourself credit for this. That while it’s been a constant theme in banking for a while, I think you were one of the ones that brought it to the forefront. We just attended the Alloy Labs annual meeting in Nashville, always a good time. Alloy Labs, one of my favorite banked get togethers just because of the one, the quality of banking.

that it attracts and b the level of conversation that you and Jason and your team put forward. You do a great job at A hosting and B creating interesting topics to talk about this being one of them with this the debt versus equity mindset. What exactly are we talking about as it pertains to banking?

Samer Saab (00:51.138)
Thanks, Chris. So happy to be here and all always enjoy our time there. We get together in not just Nashville, but in the L Ally Labs Alliance community. So you know, the the short of it is that there’s there’s two sort of ends of the spectrum of of this mindset. You know, debt versus equity, credit brain versus equity brain. And, you know, it’s it’s not too hard to imagine why most bankers are trained to think like debt investors, which means

Their instinct is to protect the principal, minimize loss, underwrite the downside. And that instinct is what makes banking work. It’s why institutions still exist because they’ve avoided blowing up. And that approach is what I think really gets ingrained in the bank DNA, not just in terms of how they operate, but in terms of how they evaluate every opportunity, how they think about customers, how they think about investment opportunities, and that permeates everything.

But the the problem is that banks continue to exist in an increasingly equity driven world. The the sort of pace of change that we’re we’re sitting here and living through as technology continues to evolve and accelerate. I mean, just look at how AI is driving. We’re flying we’re living in an exponential world. And that means that we need to have a slightly different framework for evaluating opportunities, not just in terms of thinking about how do we avoid

blowing up? How do we avoid loss? But how do we think about maximizing the gains that we can capture from the things that we choose to execute?

Chris Nichols (02:29.022)
Now, we come by this honestly in banking. I mean, I think you alluded to that, that you know, a lot of us were lenders, we’re coming up, we’re, you know, we’re trained in the cr in the five C’s of credit, we do want to protect our loss, but how what do you see the problem actually being in situations like, I don’t know, take product development or partnerships with a fintech, etc.? What what is the actual issue there?

Samer Saab (02:52.546)
Yeah, it’s the the the s the simplest thing that I can think about is that when we when we evaluate opportunities for investment or partnership, we immediately only look at the downside and the risk. How much is it gonna cost? Or worse, if we partner with them, what are the actual forms of like the really bad risk that could come? The reputational risk, regulatory risk, you know, sought to InfoSec related issues that that could cause not just harm but damage from

or at at a slightly larger scale. And those are critical and important. And we’re not meant to to downplay or minimize those. But what we don’t often provide enough attention to is what about if things go right? And not what about if just the solution actually works. But if the solution works, what are we actually capable of doing with that? And so we’re not just talking about a new product that gets introduced, a new value proposition.

But what we really care about is what capability have we now taken into the bank that now you, Chris Nichols, can go and apply to other products, other customer segments, other business models that are now within reach for you. And that’s part of that equity mindset where we try and go and take this and think about no, what could we actually do to truly maximize the upside here? It’s not just taking the solution that exists, it’s taking that solution and making it a

power center that you now have to then go in all the directions that your customers need.

Chris Nichols (04:24.776)
I I will point out that it works both ways. I think one of the things we talked about is, and I brought up the ex example of the construction loan, in that we have a debt mindset on a construction loan. But you think about the many construction loans, we take as a bank leaseup risk, which is really an equity type risk, yet we have our debt mindset on, and so we can capture maybe a six percent or a six and a half, maybe a seven percent return on that. But that’s not crazy compared to the risk that we’re actually taking and that we should have is our equity hat on, saying not only do we need

To mitigate this risk, we need to either do it through structuring or take some warrants and get some equity upside in that a la, you know, what Silicon Valley Bank used to do with their customer base using you know banking startups and early stage companies where banks wouldn’t normally take them until Silicon Valley came along and they found out that hey, these guys have a lot of deposits, and B that we can get warrants for extending credit and taking the upside. So even though we’re taking higher than usual credit risk on that, they have the equity upside. And so we talked about that as well.

Well Samur, what what do you see the solution other than pointing out the problem like you’re doing now, what can a banker do or how you know if a bank management says, Yes, you’re right here, we want to get more trained in having an equity mindset, how do they go about doing that?

Samer Saab (05:42.228)
it’s a really good question. And, you know, this is a mindset, first and foremost, right? And so the solution is intrinsic. And when we talk about trying to create this change, it’s not as simple as like, okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna look at this partner now and we’re only gonna focus on what goes right. No, we have to provide some credence to the fact that banks are approaching this with some some bit of, you know, z some level-headedness that I think is warranted. But what we do need to become

more open to is this the the things that get better at at driving operational cadence and that’s being faster at making decisions so decreasing the cost of of making these bets right so not not committing too much decreasing the the risk of failure internally so not punishing ourselves if things don’t go right giving ourselves an opportunity to be wrong and be right more frequently that’s how we give ourselves a chance to

have more success on the upside is by giving ourselves more bites at the apple. That’s number one. Number two is treating these as the capabilities. It’s recognizing that like if if we do have a partnership, if we do have a product that we introduce and it works, don’t immediately jump to the next thing. Provide care, provide some additional resources to taking that and seeing what else could we do? What else could we do to iterate on that existing solution that is working with that existing customer base and

and try and amplify that, maybe applying it to something adjacent. Or it it could be about expanding it into adjacent services or adjacent customer segments as well. So don’t just treat it as, you know, here’s our our project plan, our our project backlog, and we’re gonna jump from this to that one and keep going. It’s providing continued support to provide that attention and ideation creativity to to take these

to the ultimate goal of of wherever that ceiling is.

Chris Nichols (07:40.545)
So let’s d d delve down a little bit, d dig down a little bit. one, I think you said you try that your first point was translated for me into more POCs, more experimentation, more trying to figure out what’s both efficient and effective, and you know, basically going hands-on at a easier and faster rate. Right, catching that right. and then two, it was really letting

yourself run once you not just have the project mindset and so I always I always talk about you know when you do a startup you’re always thinking what’s my go-to market strategy and then how do I build and do I have a revenue growth officer? And I think we we can both agree that banks need to do more of that. That it’s not about, as you to your point, not bringing just the project to market, but how do you now bring a project to market? Instant payments is our current beast to bear right now that we brought it to market and now fantastic job.

Executing on that, but now we really gotta push it and get get a return out of it. And it would be it’s so easy to leave in half the team, half the project team to your point, has moved on at South State, and there’s a core of us that now are responsible for you know showing that we get called on the table. It’s us that get called on the table every year, and I say, you know, great that my the bank does that, but we don’t have enough involvement as we do. So I think to your point, is it’s everyone’s job to drive forward and actually get the return that they said they’re going to out of it.

Any other teammates on this?

Samer Saab (09:12.174)
Chris, you talk you’re Chris, you’re you’re hitting also one of the biggest challenges that I think banks have. And we talked about this at the annual member meeting. Like we talk all the time about the value of focusing, right? Like find the customers that you want to be great at, great at serving that you deliver a an outsized value and you are gonna be the best for and serve them exceptionally well. And this is not that you wanna service everyone else in a really crappy

At a gr a crappy level, but you want to have some group that you’re providing exceptional service for. The challenge with that is that not only is that difficult, but you as a bank that are serving lots of different customer segments in a world that is c that has constant change, driven by very, very well-funded, very big, very fast competitors from the national banks to the national fintechs and beyond.

that creates a pace that’s very difficult for any bank to keep up with. And so it’s natural that you’re going to have to jump to other things just to keep executing. Not even the stuff that makes you great and drives, but even just the stuff that is the table stakes. So we have to have empathy for the fact that it’s really hard to run these businesses and do this exceptionally well in in the banking environment.

Chris Nichols (10:27.357)
And one of my one of my tests is I always ask a bank like

Who are not your customers? Who do you not want to bank? Right? And it’s it’s a question that trips everyone up, like, no, no, we’ll bank everyone. I’m like, Well hold on, if you’re banking everyone, you know, you’re trying to be all things to all people and maybe it’s better to focus. Like I know at South State, we’re not great at hospitality lending. Like we can do it. We’re pro probably pretty good at it, but we don’t trust you. If you have a hotel, we just don’t trust ya, and that’s the basic of the problem that you already have one strike against you walking in our door. Same with, you know, and this is pertains to LA Labs. Like I I I’m

Jealous of all the Bass banks and how well they’re doing right now. And I have to remind myself like we just take a very thin slice of the banking as a service layer here at South State, but many other banks are just killing it out there, doing it well. It’s just not in our DNA. I know that we’re not gonna be a you know customers bank or coastal or you know, any any of those banks that that do it well, Path Pathword etc. and I’ve just got to realize that, and I think that’s you know, to our credit, but I also think like we could even do a better job.

I think there’s many banks out there that can define who their customers are, to your point, and who the customers aren’t, and then build from there. So with with that, is there a discipline where you see banks making this mistake more often? Like is it in strategy? Is it in in product management? where is it? Is it product design? Is it customer service?

Samer Saab (11:53.686)
Yeah, I think it all starts with strategy, number one. And I think that’s sort of the biggest efficiency. I think strategy then drives culture and you know everything is i is interconnected. But the failure to even establish a real strategy is probably the biggest biggest sort of failing. And the the first sort of core element of strategy is who who are you trying to to service and then how are you going to win them? And part of that question is the opposite, which is like you said, who who do you not care to service and who are you just gonna

Right. And if if that’s the case, if if you’re able to at least write that down and put that in paper, who are you going to win with and just continue to focus on that, then that at least gives you the the starting point. But we don’t even see that. And when you when you’re not willing to make that first decision of who you’re going to focus on and ultimately who you’re not going to focus on, then you sort of set yourself up for failure to not be in position to then take the steps to double down.

Chris Nichols (12:51.485)
So let’s let’s make that more concrete. So you all, like I want an example of maybe a a a strategy that a bank may have that you maybe help them with. I mean, you all through JP Nichols, Madeline, you guys help banks with their strategy. So I know you guys have hands-on experience, but maybe give us an example of how a bank may have a strategy in the before and after of how they now have a wider strategy or a more profitable strategy to capture more of that equity upside. Any anything coming to mind?

Samer Saab (13:18.732)
Yeah, I think Yeah, absolutely. So without naming names, and this is not gonna be a a a sort of shocking example, but you know, as community banks we see a lot of r focused on on enterprise and then the the medium sized businesses, right? So it’s been the the trend and and that’s where banks still today, community banks still today have that that disproportionate advantage of having to or that they’re capable of building those relationships and then providing

not just bespoke service to, but higher quality service to and then and and winning those customers. So it’s a place that they’re best positioned currently to add that value that is doesn’t that isn’t so grounded in trying to be the the best rate or the requiring the the best technology. So that’s a customer base that they have have understood really well. But what I think is strategically interesting is the trend that we’re seeing amongst some of these banks is that they’re recognizing that

A loan-based relationship is not really much of a relationship. It’s not really focusing on deliver value. It’s about just providing a loan. And a loan can obviously solve problems, meet needs, but in the end, it is still about the economics of the loan first. and so what banks are are really digging into and realizing is that the the value to to win these customers with and truly set relationships on is by leading with treasury management. And so acquisition of customers is not so much focused on

Loans, which has historically been the calling card of these community banks. It’s instead focusing on trying to solve the the problems of the the treasury group, the payments first, own the deposits, and then build that relationship and expand from there. And that requires deeper focus on treasury, deeper focus on payments. Instant payments is is one of those elements. Stable coins continues to be a big question here. Connections into ERPs, or as you bring it down to

some of the smaller enterprises than figuring out how to you know create a more robust merchant services solution or even if you’re trying to get down into small business solutions then provide a you know all-inclusive small business operating product as well. So the nature of that is that we’ve seen sort of strategically is going deeper into the operating stack or the the CFO stack led by by banks and not

Samer Saab (15:41.792)
And and not focusing on on the

Chris Nichols (15:45.133)
So you you mentioned some good examples there. Let’s take one that’s near and dear to our hearts, AI. what is your advice for any bank? How do you apply that equity mindset to instituting AI? Like give me some examples of what you may watch out for or how to let your winnings run a little bit more on on A s AI the AI front.

Samer Saab (16:07.958)
Yeah, this is so here’s the sort of simplest example. And I’m gonna caveat this is that I am not one of the foremost experts on AI in the world. So and and because of the pace of AI, everything I say is probably gonna be stupid based on whatever Anthropic announces in the next five minutes. here’s here’s sort of how the debt and equity mindset I think play out when with respect to AI. over the last several years, we have seen a lot come across with generative AI and now agentic AI.

Chris Nichols (16:22.463)
Yeah.

Samer Saab (16:36.394)
And when those solutions have come about into the community bank world and they’re pointed at the the problems that are experienced here, the first things that that are normally targeted as use cases are always automation focused, right? They’re the it’s it’s the next iteration of automation, drafting off of where RPA was going before, and just just br basic process improvement, error removal, headcount reductions, yada yada yada, right?

So the problem with those types of investments, regardless of if it’s AI or if it’s any digital solution that’s replacing, is that you’re sort of dealing with a bit of a fixed cost that you’re trying to remove from that system, right? And so you’re capping the return that that exists there. Like if you’re just gonna come in and you’re gonna sign up for this this software or this agent and the the total spend that is there, whether it’s whether it’s a hard spend or a theoretical spend, is $100,000. That’s that’s all you have to capture.

And you have to have a solution that’s gonna cost less than that per year and then you have to do it in implement it really quickly. And so you’re trying to minimize that up front to to capture that that fixed return. Now that’s the debt that’s the debt side of mindset of the mindset when you approach these things and and AI has that application there. I don’t think that’s really investable. I don’t think it’s investable as a as a as a venture capitalist to invest and back those types of companies. I don’t think it’s investable as an operating executive to to think that we’re just gonna sign up for those solutions and then and then

underwrite the our our success based on that. Where I’m looking for AI to create those those gains for for banks is when we apply it not just to those opportunities because those are there is value, but to doing that automation for the sake of enabling growth. And that can be building capacity, right, in in those processes.

Or it can be for the purpose of applying it across the organization to do things that we just don’t have the capabilities to do today, where there are data gaps, where there are skill gaps that allow us to go deeper and either access more customers, access the existing customers better and serve more of their financial life, or even push P or even push past their financial lives and really not just double down, but triple down.

Samer Saab (18:55.468)
When with an example that I give there, Chris, and I I I’m sure you’ve seen some in in your spaces, you you know the company ramp, the spend management. they bought a travel company some time ago, and they’re just a card company and bought a travel company. Why? Because that makes a lot of sense, because that’s w one of the largest categories of business expenses. So where in banking do we have examples of of a financial institution going and buying some company like

Chris Nichols (19:02.282)
Sure. Yeah.

Samer Saab (19:25.44)
a travel company because that is an adjacent service for our customer that we care about.

Chris Nichols (19:30.922)
Great example. Great example. I like it. and we we talked about having this portfolio of mindsets. Like you’re not saying that the debt mindset’s bad, but just that now you need to strengthen the equity mindset on any given problem. We can apply both. So I think that’s what you’re saying as it comes to

Samer Saab (19:46.698)
100%. Yeah. I’m not I’m not trying to tell banks to go out and act like venture capitalists. That is that would be terrible. That is not the type of risk profile that you should be taking on. It’s that we we don’t want to be so far on the end of the spectrum on the debt side that all we’re doing is just focusing on eliminating risk altogether. The goal is not to eliminate risk, the goal is to balance risk with return.

Chris Nichols (20:09.49)
And man, we’ve we’ve seen this so many times play out as we’ll take a great strategic idea, tokenized the tokenization effort right now is you know my my current case study in that as we go along it’s i interesting to see all the changes that bankers want to make to it to take it from this great potential product, you know, that you can trade you know a token permissionless to any wallet to now say, well, no, we gotta control the wallet to know we gotta approve, you know, we gotta do our

AML BSA on every part of the transaction, the sender and the receiver, and we gotta make sure, you know, it’s all on our core, and you know, and as I we go along, we take this great product and we just made it use our debt mindset to make this a product that is only can could only capture so much upside versus really letting it run. So I see that AI. Yeah.

Samer Saab (20:59.64)
So Chris, can can I can I can I say that back to you? Have you seen it typically work out where you bring this grand vision, this you have full clarity on what the upside is. But because it then goes through the process, the debt mind cassette gets up notched out. Notched out. It just it every time it swipes through, another layer of value is removed until down where you’ve eliminated the potential success. Yeah.

Chris Nichols (21:15.04)
That’s right.

Chris Nichols (21:22.794)
That’s right. Yeah, and then everyone says, Hey, you didn’t get your upside to it. You know, well what happened? I’m like, Well, you know, you kinda eliminated the upside along the way when you now put all these constraints in it. And we see it in AI, and every you know, every time I turn around I go to employee I w you know, I got

Samer Saab (21:28.248)
Ha ha ha ha.

Chris Nichols (21:41.845)
I got our compliance sec group involved. I have our IT, I have the InfoSec, I have risk model management. I have all these different sections, and everyone wants a piece of the action, everyone wants some level of control. And I end up, you know, one, a higher cost of the project, and two, you know, a shadow of its former self once once actually gets to market. So it’s always interesting to see that process play out. That I think we all have to guard against in banking to have that appropriate.

risk and I always kind of say like what is the risk? Like I get it, you know, this could be bad, but what is the actual risk? And usually it comes out that the actual risk that we’re trying to solve for is not as good as the risk that you know we have right now that we’re able to live with, but yet we’re able to get more revenue or more profit out of that, which compensates for all our risks. So I see that repeatedly in in my daily work.

Samer Saab (22:38.242)
Right. We we we put we account for all these risks that we can’t quant quantify and then we do it in such a way in which we ensure that we can’t quantify any reward on the other side.

Chris Nichols (22:49.758)
Yeah, and you know, it it it also stems from credit lending. Like no one likes to take a loss, but we all say, Hey, we’re gonna take a certain amount of loss, but we never take that certain amount of we always wanna be under that and then we all get conservative and start restricting things to not really, you know, take the risk we want. And I I think one healthy mindset is, you know, articulate the risk and what could go wrong and how much risk you’re gonna take and then judge yourself from that and you know, is there a risk that comes up along the way that you didn’t plan for, that’s bad. But if you plan for it and you got it covered, that’s really

not risk. You know you throw on a raincoat to mitigate the weather and you’re okay, that’s not really risk. It’s not really affecting you. But you know, we tend to always just say it’s raining out, we can’t go out and have that problem.

Samer Saab (23:31.65)
I like I like that analogy a lot. That’s a really good one. Chris, you know, you you’ve been in our in our concept lab program that we run with early stage startups and we take a similar tact, right? We we focus on the upside because we we f we work with these companies that aren’t yet in market, haven’t proven proven themselves, don’t have the referenceable clients, but there’s a lot of potential and we we get really excited about that potential. But we take that same sort of step where we try and figure out how to shrink the risk down into something that is worthy to

Just to get going with. But the key piece is that we all understand that we’re handcuffing this and we’re handcuffing it intentionally. It’s a POC or it’s a pilot and we’re only going to expose it to some extent. But we’re also doing so with the firm understanding that if this goes well, we’re going to commit more resources to doing what’s next. And so we have to provide that’s one way that we can fight through this, is that we have those resources pre-committed to then scale up.

We we can we’re ready to double down. We understand that there are things that we don’t we don’t know, we we can’t quantify. But the best way like you and I sitting here on a call, we’re not gonna ever debate ourselves to the right answer if we sit here for a hundred hours. So let’s just get in production, let’s get it going, let’s let’s let’s test those risks live and then grow it and continue to double down. That’s the equity mindset that’s a

Chris Nichols (24:54.644)
Crawl, walk, run and

Judge risk along the way. And if you have the risk, sure, mitigate it. But yeah, have a nice controlled environment. I love that. And you also mentioned some of these companies that have been through the incubator there don’t have bank references. And that’s always like step one of me. Is that whenever we talk to a vendor, like, which banks do you have? Which large banks do you have? you don’t have any? No thanks. I’m like, hold on, that’s the best technology going. Like that that solves a lot of our risk problems if we just employ this technology, so don’t throw them out for a conventional one that’s been around for 10 years.

using ten year old technology to manage fraud, let’s look at something new. And if they don’t have a bank, that’s okay. Like let’s see if their solution actually works and let’s see if their solution works in real time in in a pilot program or in a POC. So absolutely.

Samer Saab (25:40.738)
One of the other things that I I do there, Chris, is that the banks are are all intimately involved in that process, right? It’s it it works because we have a group of banks that are able to engage and drive feedback. I instruct all the banks that come to be as selfish as possible in those discussions. You’re not here to buy a solution, you’re here to build a solution. You’re shaping this to your needs. Again, equity mindset. Build it for yourself. And along the way, in doing so, you’re shaping this in the

the in the way that is best going to fit your organization and give you a chance for it to work, whether it’s your risk profile, whether it’s your customers, whether it’s your technology, get those on. Give yourself a chance to then have this run. Don’t just think about in terms of buying this and there’s risks that they won’t be able to integrate. Like, no, prove it. Make it make it work.

Chris Nichols (26:27.744)
That’s right. I also love that, you know, you get the the opinions and insight of many different bankers in that. And so you have to judge for yourself, like, is is what he or she’s bringing up a risk to us? If it is, great, valid. I wouldn’t have thought of that. And that’s part of the value of I think that process that you run. So hats off to you. as we now what’s that?

Samer Saab (26:45.718)
And Chris, I think sorry. I think another area that’s really interesting to talk about with this is is the stablecoin and tokenized deposits base. I think it’s I think it’s especially interesting from where I’m sitting. I’d be really curious about what you’re seeing. It’s everyone I think really believes stable coins and tokenized deposits are going to disrupt the the sort of flow of commerce, especially with banking. And yet everyone is stuck with how to get off the sidelines and and do it.

And I think this requires that same sort of like a bit of bit a a bit of debt mindset, a bit of equity mindset. Like, how do we get going? Where we don’t expose and risk ourselves too much, but we put ourselves in position because yeah, things could go crazy and they could go really well for us.

Chris Nichols (27:13.375)
Yeah.

Chris Nichols (27:28.798)
So let’s stay with that for a second. whenever I hear, well let me let me roleplay with you. Hey, Samura, the customer’s not asking for it. So that’s a typical debt mindset question. What do you say to that?

Samer Saab (27:42.284)
I mean, thank God that they’re even saying that because banks banks historically wouldn’t even listen to or have have their ear to ground for that. So that’s great. But one of the the the my response to that is that are they not asking it or are they just not asking you for it because they’re getting it somewhere else? Or are they or are they asking a different question? Right. Or are do they just not even have the imagination to come up with the fact that that is a potential solution to their problem?

Chris Nichols (28:00.019)
Or are they asking a different question? Like, are they asking to solve a problem? Right.

Samer Saab (28:12.254)
And that’s really hard to articulate. That that’s entrepreneurship, that’s entrepreneurship, that’s product development, customer development, that’s all that stuff. That’s on us for to to be able to articulate and identify that there is something that could be solved here. And sometimes we just don’t know if it’s gonna be viable at all bef without even just putting it in front of a customer. And so that may be what’s required here. Figure out how to get something from a customer’s.

see if it’s actually gonna take off, give yourself a chance to win, rather than just staying on the sidelines.

Chris Nichols (28:47.604)
Yeah, and we’re not we’re not saying like just throw stuff at the refrigerator and see if it sticks. We’re saying have a use case and then go out and prove that you can solve that use case for it and then and I say, well the customers aren’t asking for it true, but you know, as you know, we like to say about the the the old adage of the car, everyone wanted a faster horse, not a not a car.

Same thing here, like what’s the problem? There’s many problems out there that it takes, you know, five to fifteen days to send an international payment sometimes. that’s that’s a problem that stablecoin can solve. and when we talk about tokenized deposits, we all know there are problems with our core. The tokenized deposit side can solve a lot of problems that you have with your core. You can now open that up and have in essence a modern core. you can also, if you don’t have the instant payment rails, probably the cheapest way to move money, intrabank. all these problems

Maybe the customer doesn’t can’t articulate, but you can articulate, or the customer’s articulating some derivation of that. So that’s one that always gets me that mic, you got a debt mindset going on there. and the other one is hey, we just w we’re gonna be a fast follower. We’re gonna be, you know, third in line. We don’t wanna be leading the pack. What do you what do you say to that, Summer? You must hear that all the time.

Samer Saab (29:57.678)
This is one of our favorite phrases at L Labs. The problem with being a fast follower is number one, you’re not fast. And number two, you’re probably following the wrong groups. You gotta you have to be you have to be fast and you have to be following the the leaders here. And if you’re fat if you’re following those that are just at the median, then sorry, you’re you’re not in a position to win here. The time that you’re gonna sign up will be the time where you have to, after the market has already moved. And this is a this is a strategic risk to you, not a strategic advantage.

Chris Nichols (30:25.972)
That’s right. That’s right. all right. Well as we wrap up, you go into a bank, you know, you’re con you’re a consultant that that that’s hired to solve this problem and get more people on the equity mindset. What are some of the things you do or what are some of the things you look for right away or like you know, what’s the biggest bang for the buck that a CEO li a bank CEO listening to this can affect their organization?

Samer Saab (30:50.604)
Yeah, we we’re we’re there’s a a lot, right? ultimately first what matters is growth. Are you focused on growth first and foremost? And profitable growth, profitable growth, just growth in general, right? But if if you believe in growth and if you understand that there is uncertainty that exists around us, then the way that you get better is continue to focus on how your organization operates.

Chris Nichols (31:01.344)
Profitable growth. Profitable growth, right?

Samer Saab (31:19.488)
executes and generates strategies. And so that for us is about the pursuit of excellence. And that is getting better at the day-to-day of running the organization. And that is focused on how you make decisions, how you how you utilize data, the the speed at which you execute, how you decide on where you want to to focus. And so it’s a it’s a long windy way of saying it’s in it’s internally focused.

And it’s about just ensuring that we can decrease the cost of the decisions we make, focusing on agility, focusing on experimentation and getting things to to pilots or to production as fast as possible, and not sitting there debating, focusing on all the things that can go wrong. We’re already good at assessing risks. But you’re bankers, you’re that’s the debt mindset is there. Try and focus on.

How to how to see if, you know, we don’t we don’t know the answer here. Let’s let’s let let’s go see out there. Let’s see what what can go right. And then when that’s the case, let’s not just sprint on to the next thing. Let’s let’s give ourselves a chance to be really right and keep going.

Chris Nichols (32:33.116)
So to encapsulate that, or sum that one up, be curious, create a better process for innovation, and you know, see see the whole product through, not just deliver a product, but actually see it through go to market and fruition with revenue. Samer, thank you so much for being on. You’ve made us think you know more than most, so I appreciate that and appreciate all that you do for the industry. We’ll see you out there in the field.

Samer Saab (32:59.448)
Thank you so much, Chris. Great seeing you.