Succession Planning & Attracting Young Talent to Your Bank with Brian Love and Keith Daly

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

CALEB: Well, hey everybody and welcome back to the Community Bank Podcast. Thanks for joining today’s conversation. I’m Caleb Stevens with SouthState Bank’s Capital Markets and Correspondent Banking division. And today we pose this question to you. Does your bank have a clear succession plan? Succession planning has been a major topic of discussion over the past several years and with good reason. More and more community banks are opting to sell in many cases because there is no clear succession plan. And so today, to help us think about this topic, we sit down with Brian Love and Keith Daly from the Travillian Group. Travillian specializes in executive search for banks and fintechs, and in this discussion we talked about keys to succession planning, how to find and attract younger talent to your bank, and the importance of developing talent inside of your bank so that you can thrive in the coming years.

CALEB, continued: And speaking of thriving in the coming years. We are so excited to announce the release of our brand-new e-book, the Top 12 Winning Strategies for Community Banks in 2025. We want to help you make 2025 the strongest year yet at your bank, and we’ve created this e-book to help you do just that. Not only does it unpack the 12 strategies that you’ll need to know, [but] it’s [also] filled with downloadable resources and playbooks and analyses to help you implement these strategies at your bank. So, to get it, all you’ve got to do is click the link in the show notes of this episode and fill out the form on the web page. Don’t let the uncertainty of 2025 stop you from growing your deposits, your fee income, and your loan profitability. Get our e-book today. Click the link in the show notes of this episode. And now, here’s my conversation with Brian Love and Keith Daly.

CALEB, continued: Well, Brian and Keith, welcome to the Community Bank Podcast. How are things up your way in Philadelphia?

BRIAN: Everything’s great, Caleb. Thanks for having us on. It’s winter and fall are kind of fighting with each other right now. But things are good up here.

KEITH: Yeah. Caleb, good. Things are well. It’s a sad day. I turned on the heat last night in my apartment, put the golf clubs away. So, hoping to get one more round in before the end of the year. But, no, things are going great. It’s pretty crazy. We’re only a few weeks away from Thanksgiving.

CALEB: Yeah, for no, no doubt. And I don’t know when this podcast will be released, but I’m sure we’ll be close to it by the time it comes out. So, for folks that are not familiar with the two of you, Tell us about Travillian. I know you all have a pretty well-known presence in the banking space. I see you guys at conferences a fair amount. I know you have a podcast that’s well followed. But for folks that are not familiar, give us an overview of what you guys do.

BRIAN: Yeah. Thanks, Caleb. I’ll give you a little bit of our history. On the surface, we are an executive search and talent advisory firm. But we do have a pretty unique history that is worth mentioning. If you go way back, I’m sure a lot of the listeners know SNL Financial, which is now S&P Global. We were born out of SNL Financial, actually. Travillion was the recruiting arm of SNL Financial. So, back in the day and still, as S&P global, it’s like the key aggregator of bank and other industry metrics and data. And so, out of that heritage, we spun ourselves to be a private firm back in 08. We have two divisions. One focuses on mostly capital markets and investment banking, and the other division, which Keith and I are part of, focuses on the corporates, which are mostly community banks, fintechs, but also specialty finance companies.

BRIAN, continued: Over the last 25 years, I think we’ve done 500 to maybe 600 different engagements with different clients all over the country. May not sound like a lot, but we are boutique. So, we’re not just churning searches out. We do we, you know, we take our time, and we have a ton of repeat business all across the board. And so, we focus on community banks, Keith and I, mostly community banks. Our team, I should say, it’s a team of banking and fintech focused recruiters. 20 billion and below, but really 10 billion and below, which I think is similar to where you focus as well, Caleb. You and your team. And then we work on basically everything from the board level, which is board engagements around composition, you know, more efficient board meetings, board search. And then you go down to that C-Suite succession planning within the C-Suite, recruiting for C-Suite, for retirement, or if people leave. And then for some of our best clients, we’ve gone down a peg or two down the ladder as well.

BRIAN, continued: We pushed into fintech during COVID when things were, you know, when everything kind of had a tech bent on it. I mean, we all had to go virtual, but we pushed hardcore into fintech. Keith really owns that part of our world. And then simultaneously at that point, we got into content. We’re putting out weekly content, we’ve built our mailing list to be pretty large, and we love talking on TravillianNext about the latest and greatest. Whatever’s happening in the industry, whether it’s tech, whether it’s M&A, whether it’s economics, whether it’s, you know, talent trends. We’re just very, very focused and committed to this community bank space, but for the most part we are recruiters, but we are extremely passionate recruiters. Keith, I’ll let you jump in.

KEITH: Yeah. And also, just jumped into the conference game with our first conference in Atlantic City a few months back. And I think, Brian, we’re preparing for another conference next year. So, well, yeah, it’s exciting. It’s we’re very specialized. We’re a small firm. It’s great to be able to hop on a call with a bank executive or fintech executive and talk about their challenges and opportunities in this market. Brian, before I started working at Travillian, I was in corporate finance. I didn’t really even know what a community bank was. But now, you know, every day we’re looking at the news, were talking about, you know, M&A, and talking about strategy and technology. So, we’re talking with a lot of the well-known experts in the industry. So, to be really specialized like that I think is a huge advantage because it allows us to really be able to speak to the bank executives on another level and be able to really dive into their bank and their culture. And what they’re trying to do. So yeah, it’s been very fun ride. And as Brian said, we’re expanding into different areas to help our clients. And I think 2025 is going to be a very exciting year for Travillian.

CALEB: Well, I don’t think a day goes by when I attend the conference that I don’t hear the word succession. And not a podcast goes by where I’m listening to a podcast on the latest banking trends and succession planning doesn’t come up at some point in the conversation. It’s a hot topic and it has been for a number of years as more and more banks are consolidating. Oftentimes, banks are selling simply because there is no clear succession plan. I know that touches on your world, so I’d love to just sort of open up the floor and say as you all look at the landscape out there today, what are some key questions and just trends that community banks need to be paying attention to and questions they need to be asking themselves when it comes to their bank succession plan?

BRIAN: Yeah. And Caleb, you’re right. It’s a hot topic. I gotta be honest, I think it’s been a hot topic for like 30 years.

CALEB: Yeah.

BRIAN: You know, because you know, you look at the last financial crisis, or the big one that happened in the in 07, 08, and I think at that moment a lot of younger generations just didn’t—It wasn’t cool to be a banker anymore. And as that started to come back a little bit in the 2010s, you know, COVID happens, and Silicon Valley Bank happens. And just over and over again, I have a 17- and a 12-year-old, and they’ve never expressed interest in learning anything about banking. Which Keith and I are like bank geeks, and we love this space. But therein lies your conundrum. There’s no young talent to go out and find. Not no young talent, but you need to know where to find it, how to storytell, and, you know, and how to appeal to them. Younger generations desire different things, whether it be compensation, benefits, work from home, you know, work remotely, whatever it might be. And that’s just something banks are gonna need to, you know, really consider. But for the most part, I think we talked about this when we were prepping yesterday, the average CEO age is somewhere in the vicinity of 62, 63 in the community bank landscape. And the average board age is probably almost to 70 now, because some of these numbers I have are probably about two years old. So, what does that tell you? It tells you that there needs to be a torch passed.

BRIAN, continued: And right now, we’re helping several banks think through this. Whether there’s a way to bring talent from within, which is always preferable because of the cultural component. They know the bank, they know the culture, they can fit right in. We just did an extensive search with the bank that wound up going with their internal candidate. We showed them several external candidates. That is what succession is in a nutshell. Who’s inside the bank that can ascend and who’s outside that could potentially fit? And you just basically need to track those 2 over a course of 1, 2, 3 years, whatever it might be. And then the last thing I’ll say is that there needs to be a good definition to the existing executive that’s departing. There needs to be a good definition of when they’re going to depart, how they’re going to depart, and how that transition happens. We’ve seen a few times, and it could happen going forward, where those dates wind up getting delayed. And that’s always a tough thing to deal with if you’re the one that’s trying to ascend, knowing you’ll have to stay there for a few more years. So, we help banks, you know, with their communication strategy around that. We help banks also assess that next layer of talent and help develop them with, you know, through one of the assessments we use. Keith, I’ll let you jump in. I’m a little wordy today.

KEITH: No, that’s alright. Sometimes I just let the like to let Brian just go, and I’ll just sit back and watch. No, Brian’s right. And sometimes succession plans have to be a little bit fluid, I would say, because the market can change, the board can change, the strategy can change. So, you need to be able to identify talent, but at the same time, what is your long-term strategy for the bank? We’re seeing more younger talent come up through digital, come up through technology, that are being groomed, maybe for the CEO role. I think, Brian, maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago, a lot of the CEOs came up through lending or operations. As you see the world even change more on the digital and technology side, you’re gonna see more, I think, CEOs come up that route. The digital route, the innovation route or the technology route. So, like Brian said, having a plan but also being able to, you know, implement on that plan. We’re speaking with a well-known CEO about two months ago, and they really wanted him to stay on. It was a, I think $25 billion bank in Colorado, and they offered him money to stay on, but he said, “No, look this was the plan. I have set out this plan. I’m leaving on this date,” because the CEO-in-waiting, he did not want that person to leave. Because you extend that, like Brian said out a couple years, that person is taking calls from firms like ours, so they might actually say, “Oh, it’s gonna be another two or three years. I’m gonna go somewhere else to become CEO.” So, you really have to communicate with, you know, the future of the bank and almost have it written out. And this is not just a six-month process. This has to be years, you know, making sure that person is ready to take over the helm. So yeah, I’ll leave it there.

BRIAN: Well, Caleb, one last thought. They’re just, yeah, it needs to be fluid, but there needs to be a plan. Yeah, like there’s not even plans at some of the smaller banks. Maybe it’s an Excel document or something like that. But you know, it needs to be spoken about, you know, more regularly throughout the year at board meetings. And then the other one thing that I always recommend is understand what makes your CEO or whoever, whatever role you’re looking at for succession. What competencies does that role have currently that need that another person might need to develop? So, you need to plot out your competencies. That’s extremely important. It’s not that difficult of an exercise, but that will actually help you develop people, because I’m a huge fan of promoting from within whenever possible.

KEITH: Yeah. And Caleb, one more point. Brian and I talked about this before. It’s not just the, you know, CEO. You really need to have succession going down levels. And Brian and I are talking about long-term succession. You also need to have, you know, we call it the, you know, not hit by the bus, but “win the lottery” plan. Say somebody who’s the BSA officer who’s critical with, I don’t know, something that does something on a daily basis that nobody else does. What if they win the lottery and just fly off to Hawaii and say good luck? Do you have people in place that are ready to step up into those roles? Especially those critical roles that you know, the bank really is going to have a hard time functioning. So cross training, you know, developing young talent, having young talent kind of work in different areas is critically important. So, you have to look at succession in two ways. The long-term strategy, but also the, you know, the immediate kind of urgent need strategy. Just as important.

CALEB: Well, and you know, you promote the Chief Lending Officer to CEO. Well, now you have a vacancy with your Chief Lending Officer, and you promote somebody there. Well, now you have a vacancy with one of your market presidents. So, it’s the trend continues. Same thing like in the coaching carousel in football, you know, it just goes around and around. But going back to the average age of the CEO, I remember being at the Georgia Bankers Association Conference in 2018 and hearing the average age was 57. And here we are now, I think you said 61, 62. Do you know, is there anything that’s driving that trend? Is it simply a function of longer lifespans and longer, healthier lives and folks, you know, being able to contribute longer? Any thoughts on why that the average age is creeping up?

BRIAN: Well, I think golf is good exercise. No, I’m just joking. I actually think that, we’re taping this in November of 2024. The election just had. When you look back the past four years, so much happened. So much unknown happened. I honestly think those CEOs, just my opinion, but those CEOs that you’ve heard were polled, probably wanted to retire in the last four years. But what happened to banks? You know, their valuations have dipped, they’ve been through some unprecedented things around liquidity and investments and, you know. I think they it was not a good time for them to cash out or go elsewhere. So, everyone just hunkered down, you know? We didn’t know what was going to happen in 2025. Now we have some inkling of what could happen. Just after a few days, bank stocks have rallied. I honestly think that number winds up going up a little bit higher, because people want to reap the benefits of having to hunker down for four or five years. But I do think it will also expedite M&A, and I think it will also expedite some unique things where maybe a CEO stays on and they split out that role to like a CEO and a President. Two separate roles. So that the CEO can stay on, be strategic, and the President can really oversee the day-to-day of the bank. That’s a way to bring that next layer up and not have them stunted by a CEO who wants to stay a little longer. Anyway, that’s my best conjecture, Caleb.

CALEB: Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, it does seem to correlate well with the pullback in M&A that we saw during COVID. And then the AOCI challenges that put a halt to M&A for a while. We’re seeing that improving now, obviously. But that totally makes sense that you have less bank selling and then you have more CEOs staying on. And as a function of that, the average age ticks up, that makes a lot of sense. Let’s pivot and talk a little bit about younger talent. You mentioned that a few minutes ago. So, it’s funny. When I was in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. And I remember my senior year of college going to a career counselor at the Business School at the University of Georgia, and in my hand is a list, and the list is entitled “Things that Sound Terrible.” In other words, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I know what I don’t want to do. And on that list was banking, bonds, stocks and insurance. And here I am working for a bank, working for a department of a bank that sells bonds to other banks. And I’m also studying for my Series 7. I’m getting my Series 7, which gives you license to sell stocks, bonds, and some insurance products, so, funny how that happens.

CALEB, continued: Well, what happened was, I didn’t understand banking. And when you don’t understand banking, it’s easy to assume you don’t like it, and you’re not passionate about it. But the problem is, passion tends to follow proficiency. So, you gotta be proficient before you can be passionate about it. I’ll stop my ramble and my rant here in a minute, but I see that mistake being made by young people all the time. Which is find your passion, but what in the world does that mean? Versus figure out what you’re good at? Maybe give banking a try. You know, give it a try. You don’t know if you’ll like it or not, but I think a lot of young people just think, “I probably wouldn’t like that.”

KEITH: My passion was being second baseman for the New York Mets. And that passion didn’t—

CALEB: Yeah, right.

BRIAN: Well, what I do remember. Well, Keith, just a real quick thing and I’ll let you go, but back in the I don’t know, 30s, 40s, 50s, the banker was like the most important person in the town outside of maybe what the attorney or like the I don’t know who. And it’s just totally swapped, you know, almost 100 years later. Because of the financial collapse, bankers, you know, have they’re reviled to some degree, and that’s just not fair. And I got to be honest, I was a community banker. I pounded the pavement looking for loans and deposits and helping you know the businesses on Main Street. I loved it. It was the greatest thing I ever did in my career, well, outside of now being a recruiter for community banks. But it’s yeah, it’s just a shame how things have kind of switched. Anyway, Keith, what was your thought?

KEITH: No, I was the same way coming out of college. You know, it was Wall Street. It was Goldman Sachs. It was, you know, JP Morgan. You didn’t really see a lot of the community banks come to the colleges and talk about how you can be, you know, really make an impact. So, I think community banks haven’t done a great job of marketing to young talent, especially when they’re like you, back in college, deciding, “What do I want to do?” I mean, it is super appealing. You know you can go, and I talk to, you know, people who work at big banks and small banks, it’s a completely different ball game, the entrepreneurship. Banks that are looking to evolve and change. You can make an impact in your 20s, you know, early 20s right away. You know, talking to the CEO, to the board member, when are you gonna see Jamie Dimon when you’re in your 20s, You know, just starting out at JP Morgan?

KEITH, continued: Maybe when he’s getting into his limo when you’re about to catch a cab. But you could make an impact so quick, and Brian and I see CFOs, CEO, even CEOs in their 30s. I mean, I saw CFO in his late 20s at a small bank. So, you’re talking expedited career growth. Quickly. And you’re not a cog in the machine. And you’re giving back to the community. So, there’s a lot of different areas that are super appealing to this generation. The younger generation, you know, farm to table. I know, Brian, I’ve talked about bank-to-table. You know, you’re banking in your backyard. You’re helping small businesses in your community. And you’re also working on really interesting things with technology and marketing and innovation. And you can really make a difference very, very quickly. And that’s what the younger generation wants. I mean, it’s rare to see people now at jobs for 5 to 10, 15, 20 years. But if you look at banks, and we’re working with banks, people are retiring now, and they’ve been there for 40 years. And that was their job. And that was, you know, before the Internet and being able to apply for jobs and hybrid work and everything. So, yeah, it’s changing, but I think the way to market community banks, and I think there’s great people out there, including Travillian, doing that saying, “Hey, look, take a look at this bank. Story tell. This is going to be exciting. This is gonna be great for your future because you get to work with the board, you get to work with the CEO on a daily basis.” Where if you go to that Truist or, you know, JP Morgan, you’re never gonna get that.

CALEB: Right. No, that’s great point. Yeah, go ahead. Brian.

BRIAN: I was just gonna say, Caleb, that again, every generation desires different things. But if you are a bank trying to attract young talent, I think we talked about it again in a recent conversation. Young people have—what are they? They stay at places 2 years, 3 years, and they move to the next one.

CALEB: The corporate ladder is now the corporate lily pad, as the new saying goes.

BRIAN: Yes, the lily pad. So, how do you how do you combat that? You know what you have to do is? You have to develop people. You have to give them opportunities to move up and learn new things. And how do you do that? Mentorship. Development programs. And again, it all starts with well outlined competencies that you need for your people and well outlined job descriptions that aren’t just like, you know, concrete. You know, there needs to be—some of the best places we hear, we hear people that, you know, kind of move in different, you know, in six months—what do you call it?

CALEB: Rotation?

BRIAN: Intervals between divisions. Edit that part out, where I don’t know the word, or just edit it into my mouth. Anyway, but yeah, sorry. There’s you know, I forget the term, but the intervals in different divisions is just a great thing. I think of a CEO that’s actually down in the Southeast at a bank you would know, and he came up through finance, which is not your stereotypical rise to a CEO. But the CEO at the time saw something in him and took him from controllership to head of retail. Which that makes no sense whatsoever. But in that like 3, 4 year period as the head of retail, he learned so much about the other side of the bank. And it made him a perfect fit to move up to that CEO level. I talk about that guy more than he he’ll ever know, but he’s terrific. And by the way, it’s Chuck Schaffer at Seacoast Bank. If you know who they are. Maybe they’re a competitor of yours.

CALEB: Oh, yeah. We’re very familiar with Seacoast for sure. Well, that reminds me of a story I heard not too long ago where a guy who’s now the Senior Lender at his bank. He said that he had no idea what he wanted to do coming out of college, and the local CEO of the bank in town said, “Well, why don’t you be a banker until you decide what you want to do, till you figure it out?” And lo and behold, here he is, the top executive at a bank. I hear countless stories like that, but it comes down to storytelling and selling the opportunities that present themselves at a community bank, no doubt. And speaking of that, I want to get your thoughts, talking about being nimble and making an impact. I’m seeing these new C-Suite titles now like Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at fairly small banks. Are there any new like C-Suite positions that you see emerging as the industry and technology continues to change?

KEITH: Yeah. Really, Chief Innovation officer is one I see often now. You know, we work with a lot of tech forward banks, but even more traditional banks are saying, “Oh, we really need somebody who’s not in the day-to-day operations, but looking at how can we improve efficiencies, how can we partner with different firms that will help us expand our customer retention or data analytics.” You really need somebody who is looking at the future of the bank and the future technologies. There’s so many great firms out there. I work with fintechs, I speak with a lot of fintechs. And I’m not talking about the really, you know, glitzy type of fintechs that are AI or whatever. I’m just talking about compliance and regulatory. Reg tech. Somebody who could help with that. Somebody who can help with, you know, data analytics or, you know, fraud. Risk and fraud, you know, some great companies out there. But you need somebody who’s speaking with these firms. And how does it work with our technology?

KEITH, continued: And It has to be a full-time job, and that person has to be, you know, in the C-Suite talking with the CEO about this is, you know, looking at other banks out there and what they’re doing too, like competitors. You know, what is our competitor doing? Why are we losing customers? Why are we not retaining customers? Those type of things. So, somebody who’s not in the day-to-day operations, making sure the bank is just running smoothly. That’s critically important too. But where are we moving as a bank? How are we going to get more efficient? How are we gonna get more profitable? How are we going to return? Because these are questions that are, especially if you’re a public bank, are going to come from, you know, Wall Street and analysts. What are you doing? You know, are you keeping up with that bank? What are your numbers here? And if you don’t have an answer for that, it’s going to be very tough to increase your share price and earnings per share. So, I think that’s a very, very critical role to have. And that can encompass a lot of different areas. New technologies, you know, fintech partnerships. So, that is kind of, it just fits a lot of different things, but it’s somebody who is really focused on the future of the bank and where it’s going and not on the day-to-day.

BRIAN: Yeah. And I’ll just jump in . I think on the fringes, most of the time, I think the corporate organizational structure is pretty generic, but on the fringes, there are what I consider maybe fast growth banks or unique banks that that do have, they do sprout, you know, new positions. Like Keith mentioning Chief Innovation Officer. Some banks that are even creating, you know, Chief Data Officer. Now again, if you go lower on the totem pole and asset size, you may not see a C-Suite with that position. But we are seeing the advent of that. At one point we thought Chief Blockchain Officer was an inevitability, but that didn’t quite happen. We did help a bank that was under 5 billion in assets hire a Chief Strategy Officer, which basically internalized corporate development within the bank. So, they actually had someone who, if opportunities came in to acquire a company, a bank, a division, a team of lenders, this person would analyze that and then bring it to the rest of the C-suite and say, you know, kind of a yay or nay.

BRIAN, continued: I love that idea. I think that role does exist within the confines of a good CFO or a good CEO anyway, but this bank had the foresight to make that into a carved-out role. Then you do see Chief Revenue Officer. I recommended that title to a bank that wasn’t quite sure what to do with a person who would be a future president, and they landed on that title as one for that for that person as kind of a promotion. But yeah, I don’t know. I think that’s about the extent of unique positions I hear.

KEITH: Yeah. And you will see more, Caleb. We talked about this before, but you will see more Chief Data and AI Officers. Now, there’s not a ton of them now. There’s a lot, there’s more Chief Data Officers. Data Analytic Officers, head of data, and we placed quite a few data analytics. I mean, I think that’s the low hanging fruit. There’s great fintechs you can partner with that are implemented right with your core, and you can look at the data. Because community banks can’t hire MIT data analysts. It’s just not gonna happen, or data science analysts. But I am starting to see more job titles and roles that are Chief Data and AI Officer, not just with JP Morgan but also, some really tech forward community banks. Because that is, we don’t have to go down that rabbit hole, but that is going to be a critical function in the next 5 years, I think. 3 to 5 years.

CALEB: And in 10 years, who knows what kind of roles will exist that don’t exist today, so it’s exciting.

KEITH: Oh, Brian and I are gonna start recruiting robots.

CALEB: Yeah, right. Yeah.

KEITH: That’s right. Place robots.

BRIAN: Yeah, by the way, I prognosticated at the beginning of 2024 that Bitcoin might be at 100, and it’s almost there. But I said, “What happens first? That, or Travillian hires our first robot as CEO?” But I yeah, I was joking on that one, but some of my other prognostications are coming true.

CALEB: Well, one last topic before we wrap up here. I’d love to get your thoughts, and you mentioned this earlier. It feels like there’s a healthy balance of developing your team internally, making sure you have leadership on your bench. Strong beach strength. But at the same time being open to outside talent, outside voices, outside ideas. I mean, I’ve heard of a bank just recently that hired somebody as their head of HR from a totally different industry because they wanted to bring in a fresh perspective. I’d love to get your thoughts on any advice for executives on, certainly you want to develop your team, certainly you want to make sure that you’re helping your younger talent develop and have opportunity. At the same time, you don’t want to be so closed off to new ideas that you never want to look outside as well. But if you’re always looking outside, that’s probably an indictment on your leadership development. What are your thoughts on that?

KEITH: Want me to lead off, Brian?

BRIAN: Sure.

KEITH: Yeah, I think it comes back to kind of your strategy too. I think it’s good to have, when you’re looking at C-Suite executives, you have internal candidates, you have external candidates. The external candidates might look at it with fresh eyes. Completely fresh eyes on the current market, where you’re located, what your strategy is. And that could be the direction you want to go in with the CEO role or you know Chief Innovation Officer role. So yeah, it is an indictment in a little bit if you don’t have talent on your bench. But also, I think it’s a really good idea to kind of bring in people who might be that, not a bull in a China shop, but just, you know, come in saying, “Look, this is what I would do. I’ve looked at your numbers, I’ve looked at your branches, I’ve looked at your digital strategy. You’re not profitable here, you’re not profitable here. I think you can move in this direction.” I think that’s a good thing. I think to have those new ideas out on the table. Maybe the board doesn’t decide to go in that direction, but just to have internal candidates. You’re kind of they’re all seeing it through the same culture and view. Which maybe the direction you want to go in, but Brian and I place CEOs and executives that were internal, were in the process, and they hired the internal. But we’ve presented top candidates with new ideas for them to hear. And sometimes they had in mind, “Yeah, we think we’re going to go with this internal candidate,” and then they hear from an external candidate we presented, like, wow, didn’t even think about that. They ended up hiring that person, and the bank, you know, very profitable or even more profitable. So, I think it’s always a great idea, especially in this market, to bring in somebody with fresh ideas that hasn’t been in, you know, looking at the same kind of strategy for the last 5 to 10, 15 years.

BRIAN: No, I agree with all that Keith, and when we do our searches, Caleb, when we have a grouping of say 10 candidates, I usually have buckets. Like here’s the tried-and-true person who already has that designation, like a CFO or whatever. Here’s that next generation that’s coming up, like a controller or an FBNA person or treasurer. And then we always have this like last bucket of like, here’s the miscellaneous. But sometimes it opens your eyes to seeing someone like that. Wow. Like, maybe it’s someone from investment banking or capital markets. Or maybe it’s someone from outside of banking that worked at a fintech or a specialty finance company. And I think, well-run organizations need to look at candidates a little bit on the fringes. Because, you know, we’ve done 9 CFO searches in the last, I think 2 years, and several of those, it was like, “We want a CPA and that’s it.” Right? And that’s fine. You know, maybe there’s board members who are CPAs, maybe there’s, you know, previous leadership that CPAs, and that’s what they need. That’s what they think they need.

CALEB: That’s the safe route, for sure.

BRIAN: Yeah, so being safe, it’s perfectly acceptable. I’m not, you know, it’s up to each bank’s strategy. But I do think, especially you mentioned that HR person who came from outside the industry. There are some positions. Maybe finance isn’t one of them because of some of the regulatory obligations. Some positions in your bank, like a technology role, perhaps, as long as you know how to deal with vendors. And HR, you know. Maybe marketing. We do see people come from outside of banking.

KEITH: Product data analytics. Marketing, for sure, yeah.

BRIAN: So, you know, I think it all depends on the positions. But yeah, it kind of comes back to, you know, if you’re looking at within and you’re trying to help them move up, you know, again developing them is something you just you can never do enough of.

CALEB: Well, if folks want to get in touch with you all, if they want to listen to your podcast, if they want to, if they’re looking to fill positions at their bank, how can they find you?

BRIAN: Yes, the best way to do it is to go to travilliangroup.com. Well, this is audio only, so you can’t see it, but it’s T-R-A-V-I-L-L-I-A-N group.com. You can also look Brian Love or Keith Daly up on LinkedIn. We’re both very, very active on that site. And then our content channel is TravillianNext.com. It’s basically what’s next in banking. It all originated 5 years ago when we were talking about, you know, a lot of fintech initiatives and innovation in the industry. And since then, it’s kind of caught fire. So, I think those are the best ways to reach out to us. And now also blove@travilliangroup.com. Kdaly@travilliangroup.com. And also, give out Keith’s home address.

KEITH: Oh, you beat me to it, man. I was all teed up to say that. Ah, you beat me to it. That joke. I was gonna say it. Brian is usually at, you know, this grocery store between 6 and 8PM.

CALEB: Yeah, we’ll put that in the show notes if folks happen to live in Philadelphia area. Well, Keith, Brian, it’s been a pleasure. We appreciate you giving us some thoughts on the next generation of bankers, and we hope that the folks listening will reach out to you guys if they have any needs related to their own talent plans and strategy going forward. So, thanks again for your time.

BRIAN: Yep, Caleb. Thank you. By the way, big fans of SouthState. John Corbett was on our TravillianNext podcast. So, you can check that out from last year. But thank you so, so much for having us on here.

KEITH: Chris Nichols. Yeah, Chris Nichols is a great resource in the industry. Great advocate for community banking.

CALEB: Yes, Chris, we love Chris. He writes a great blog for us, and if there’s such a thing as a banking influencer, he would be one, no doubt.

BRIAN: Well, thanks, Caleb.