Operate Podcast

It was an absolute pleasure to have Kraig Lounsberry and Mike Kelley from Community Bankers Association of Illinois on the podcast. As the leaders of the association and service corporation, respectively, they advocate for and support community banks at one of the largest bank state associations in the country. 2024 is also their golden anniversary (50 years), and demonstrates how relevant and effective they have been for decades.

I was excited to record my conversation with Tara Schultz, as we've had several good discussions since meeting and she always has so many ideas and perspectives to share. She has been a key part of CSI for several years, and discussed her career path in and around banking, how CSI is evolving  and adjusting to life as a private equity-owned company, and what's ahead for them and her.

From the #4 core banking vendor to a much more d...

My latest guest is Amber Illig, General Partner at The Council.  What started, as she told me, as her desire to do angel investing eventually expanded to a community and then a fund a couple of years ago.

The Council Fund typically invests about $50-100K into pre-seed startups, and then she also has a group called the Council Angels, which has become a consortium of over a hundred angels.  Prior to that, she has a really interesti...

I've really enjoyed working with Sean Willett over the last couple of years, and it was a special treat to have him on the podcast. I'm grateful for the friendship we've developed and how generous he is with his perspective and feedback. We always have productive and future-focused conversations as we both work closely in the area of making community banks more capable, competitive and digitally transformed. He's made a big impact...

Kristin Marcuccilli joined me to share the STAR Financial journey, which is in its 80th year and has had at least one member of her family involved since inception. She's a great example of a next generation business leader, fully aware of the opportunities and challenges that technology and change present, and embracing them for how they can strengthen their bank and the communities they serve. She's clearly comfortable with techn...

John Mizzi from Vero Technologies joined me to talk about his founder journey and the dual value proposition his company offers to banks and some of the larger commercial customers who hold and sell physical inventory.

We discussed how challenging it's been for many banks to manage their wholesale finance business, and how Vero built the modern platform to make it better, faster and more scalable. They've already brought banks bac...

This conversation has been a long time coming, as Zac Lyons and I have been talking about Jobs-To-Be-Done and its applicability to how startups identify and build the most important products.  It was so fun to record our discussion, and you'll find me in the zone during many parts of it, as it's a topic that has become near and dear to me.

Zac has developed very cool tools at his firm, Agile Innovation Advisors, to help companies ...

The heart of a community banker is a real thing. I remember it from my childhood, growing up in a community where my family was involved in the local community bank. My grandfather's and father's friends were bankers and they were passionate about the community and what the bank could do to help it thrive. Not everyone has had that experience, but Brad Bolton has, and he lives it by example every day in his community in Alabama ...

I really enjoyed my conversation with Samantha Berg, the Chief HR Officer at Choice Bank. She's spent most of her career there and has grown and advanced inside of the bank, and embodies its culture. She also has a fresh and relevant perspective as an HR leader, and shared a lot of those thoughts and ideas in this episode.

Choice is a progressive bank with one of the most active banking-as-a-service businesses in the industry, a...

In this episode, Heath Fountain, CEO of Colony Bank, delves into the world of community banking and how Colony Bank has navigated growth and innovation amidst the current economic uncertainty. He discusses the importance of incorporating technology to create efficiency for the bank and better experiences for customers, the need to redefine community beyond geographical boundaries, and the role of community banks in revitalizing ...

Greg Ohlendorf is the President and CEO of First Community Bank & Trust in Beecher, Illinois. He has over 35 years of experience in community banking and is known for his active leadership and advocacy for community banks. Greg has served as both a board director for the ICBA and his state banking association, and he is a vocal advocate for digital transformation in banking and collaboration with fintechs.

He has been an early and...

Zach Duke is the founder and CEO of Finosec, a company that provides a governance automation platform for financial institutions. They offer automated solutions, relentless protection, continuous monitoring, and actionable insights to help financial institutions save time and enhance exam preparedness. Their platform is designed to simplify cybersecurity management and reduce cybersecurity liability. They are passionate about co...

Ian White and I have known each other for nearly 20 years, and intertwined through several parallel entrepreneurial adventures. I was excited to finally record one of our conversations and let him talk about Koffie Financial, the company he co-founded a few years ago, that is disrupting the $100B+ commercial truck insurance market.

We also talked about some of his prior entrepreneurial endeavors, our shared love of data and its ...

It's been an absolute pleasure to be alongside Jacob Ruytenbeek for his founder's journey since the very early days of SailPlan. His passion for the maritime industry was evident from the moment we met, and then combining that with a curiosity and openness to the customers and their biggest challenges, it was easy to be convinced that he'd find his way.

I'm so glad to be able to record this conversation, which details his journe...

Nicky Senyard takes me on the journey of her career as a successful entrepreneur and how that passion led her to do it again for a new customer segment in the financial services industry. Her company, Fintel Connect, is at the intersection of 2 major trends in the digitization of marketing and banking.  Since we both work a lot with community banks, we also discuss the state of digital products and marketing there, as they have h...

Nathan Baumeister is a co-founder and the CEO of ZSuite, and it was a pleasure to have him on the podcast. We talked about the founding of ZSuite within a community bank, and how it's now working with dozens of banks to help them with commercial escrow accounts, and also expanding bank deposits as a result of it.

It's been a pleasure to get to work with him and his team, and become an investor in the company in the past year.

Na...