April 5, 2021 • 34 mins
Ever wondered how someone could start a bank from the ground up? Chairman and Co-Founder of Signature Bank, Scott Shay, joins Ryan to explain how he did it, as well as how the Coronavirus pandemic has affected banking. Scott also explains what inspired him to write his new book about spirituality, "In Good Faith" .
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
we talked to super successful and self made people to
find out exactly how they did it, how they went
from nothing to something. I'm Ryan, Sirhanton. Today I'm joined
by chairman and co founder of Signature Bank, Scott Shay.
(00:22):
We talk about what it takes to start a bank
from the ground up, how religion could possibly tie into banking,
and what influenced his decision to write a book about faith.
Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is
a very very special day because I'm not sitting down
(00:44):
with just the insanely successful and intelligent Scott Shay from
sitting down with somebody who started a bank, and I
want to I want to pick his brain a lot
on that. But if you don't know Scott, you should.
He is a leading businessman, author, speaker, co ounder and
chairman of Signature Bank, which is one of the best
and most notable banks in New York for private business owners.
(01:05):
And not to mention, he's also an author, which we're
gonna get to. Uh, You're easily one of the most
knowledgeable people in your field, and I'm honored to have
you here and for those of you who are also
watching the podcast. This is the first time we've done
this in our first floor office is our conference room.
We're all kind of back from COVID. Scott's here without
a tie. We are living it up. So Scott, thank
(01:28):
you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to
be here. And by the way, flattery will get you everywhere.
So thanks for that wonderful that's it. I'm gonna say.
You look great, You're a great shape. You know, you're
killing it. It's awesome, it's great. You know, we negotiate deals.
We uh, we do something called the positive sandwich. So
the only way you can ever give anybody, not that
there's negative information here, but the only way you ever
(01:49):
give anybody tough information is you gotta gotta have those
positive pieces of bread there and it works. The first
question I have for you, which I think will really
really kick us off, is how do you start a bank?
So I had this crazy idea in the nineties that
New York was over branched but under bank. There were
plenty of big banks. There was JP Morgan, there was Chase,
(02:12):
there was many Haney, there was Chemical, there was long
online Trust, there was Westchester Trust. By the way, those
nineteen other banks merged to create JP Morgan Chase. You know,
all these banks merging, and these big banks, these mega banks.
They were good at servicing A T and T, PepsiCo, IBM.
But I thought there was really a niche to focus
(02:35):
on middle markets, small and medium sized business. So we
started a bank, not doing retail, not focusing on the
big business. And people thought I was crazy. I mean literally,
I I had two co founders, and they just thought
I was crazy at first. And but I'm a persistent
sort of guy. Did you did you work with these
guys all together? So I knew them from a public bank.
(02:57):
And when HSBC decide they were going to buy Republic Bank,
the first thing I thought is this is an opportunity.
I'm going to find these two guys because the best
two guys at HSBC, and we're going to start a bank.
Unfortunately they didn't know that. That's what I thought. And
I we had breakfast and they thought I was, you know,
inviting the breakfast over something else, and I said, let's
(03:18):
start a bank. You can ask they'll they'll cheerfully admit
they thought I was crazy, And that's what I worked on.
It's not something that that most people. I mean, you
don't see new banks every day. You see new companies,
you know apps. Everyone's an entrepreneur right now, everybody. But
you do not see people get together over breakfast and say,
you know what we should do, we should start a bank. Ye,
(03:39):
very few. So what did you guys? You know? Because
that was what it was. Two No, this wasn't This
was when we had the breakfast. It was they thought,
you know, let's try to buy a bank. Let's try
to get some money together. Will buy a small bank,
will build it. And I said to them, Joe Depolo
and John Tamperline, who are two partners and dear friends
(04:00):
at this point, through dear friends, that was our first
real getting to know each other. I said, we gotta
started from scratch because we've got to make our own culture.
The big bank culture. It's it's just not going to
get us where we need to go. We had applied
to nineteen different institutions. We started with a white board.
We're here in your conference room. The office that we
started and was no more than a third of the size,
(04:20):
ended at five people in it, no more. And there
was a white board and We listed everything we needed
to do and we did it from from the number
of adding machines to the you know what we needed
in terms of people person people positions. We opened with
five offices. You opened what you opened with five officive offices,
(04:42):
which is where did you and started to cut you off?
It just this is really interesting to me because we
just started a brokerage. You know, I've been with the
same company for twelve years and throughout COVID and you know,
this year we did the same thing. We had a
big white board, we had this little office with sheets
of paper everywhere with the things we need to do
and all that. But starting a brokeradge is very, very different.
(05:03):
So what did you get the money together? Was a
personal money? Did you go and raise money to be
able to start a bank and to start lending. So
that's a great question. So we thought about should we
raise personal money or do we need a big backer
because if you start a bank, people are a little
bit afraid to put money in your bank. At the time,
the insured limit was a hundred dozen dollars. We wanted
(05:24):
businesses to bank with us, who generally have much more
than a hundred dozen dollars. In the bank, so we
got a big bank backer. At the time, I was
on the board of Bankapo Lim, which is the largest
bank in Israel, and we convinced them to invest forty
two and a half million dollars in our new bank.
We started out. First month we lost two and a
(05:44):
half million dollars, and twenty one months later we broke even.
We cut our lost every month. The first month we
made like two thousand dollars and we were so happy,
like we're making, you know, like this little bit of money.
But we were just deliriously thrilled. By month thirty four,
we went public. We've never done an acquisition in the
(06:07):
history of the bank as we sit here today, as
of last June, as of this past June thirty we
were sixty one billion dollar bank. And every single person
who has coming the door has opened an account with
us because they want to open an account with us.
We've done no acquisition, so we haven't. We haven't. It's
not like chemical bank got the got the clients from
(06:27):
Anny Hanny or Manufacturer's Hanover. You have to want to
join us. So at this point I think hypothesis that
I thought, which is there was a need for a smaller,
medium sized business bank in New York. I think the
tenantive conclusion is it's it's it was correct, But you're
not a retail bank. No, That's why most people haven't
heard of us, even though we're the biggest. We have them,
(06:50):
but they're on the twelfth floor, the eighteenth floor, you
won't even you you we have an office on Union Square,
you won't even know what's there because you have to
take an elevator up in. If you're a private business REPP,
you're doing it. We have an office south of you. Again,
you've probably walked by it a thousand times on Broadway,
but you're not going to get in an elevator, go
up to the twentieth flour and uh find our office.
(07:12):
We're not retail. Most of our clients who are retail
clients are owners of private businesses that they're already banked
with us, and so they're small businesses. Like, what's the
biggest type of client you have and what's the smallest type? Well,
our sweet spot is twenty five to employee firms. That's
our sweet spot. If you look, that's probably of our
(07:33):
clients we have bigger, we've smaller. We'd be happy to
bank you. You know, we're happy to bank anybody, but
that's our sweet spot, that's where we're best. How has
COVID been on the co founder of a bank. So
it was very strange that before Governor Cuomo wrote the
order of closing, essentially shutting New York, I got a
(07:55):
call from So I remember the day of a little
bit before because I got a call from the Deputy
Superintendent of Banking and in New York who said, this
is gonna come down, but don't forget your an essential service.
And it was very strange getting that call because I
knew we were an essential service. Money is important and
(08:17):
the transfer money is important. We're not a hospital, We're
not a thought. You know, we're not doctors. We're not
We're not We didn't I didn't conceptualize us in that way.
But then when the shutdown happened, I realized how essential
we were and they had we We're getting calls immediately.
We banked some hospitals in New York who immediately needed money.
(08:39):
The people were coming in who were who were serious,
having serious issues, and they needed to immediately have their
lines expanded. I mean, ultimately, the government, the federal government
gave the money and all worked out fine, but not
day one. We had all sorts of clients who had
their supply chains from China disrupted. So one a day
(09:01):
they had paid for materials or final product in most
places from China and that was gone. It was shut
off that those products weren't getting in. So immediately they
had to go and try to get alternative products by
it in the United States, by it somewhere where they
could get at it, where they could supply all of
those things. It erupted. I mean literally, I was working
twenty four by six. We had calls. We had a
(09:24):
daily call at nine at three and then a nine
pm at night among senior management because of just it
was like incoming from all directions. And then p p
P happened. Well at the time in between people you know,
non essential workers don't get to go to work. Essential
work stept to stay and then the city gets shut down,
the country gets shut down, and then P p P
(09:46):
was kind of like a month ish give or take.
Were you ever nervous about a like a run on
the bank where you nervous that everyone with the credit
line was going to come and just call for cash
because they were going to freak out. What do you
what do you do in that scenario when COVID was
just starting to be an emerging issue before the shutdown,
(10:07):
It's like February, you know, early February, we decided we
just want to have a ton of cash, so we
had we just had. We just kept in the federal
reserve essentially, which sounds like a lot of money. Three
billion dollars of cash at all times something like to
three kept our lines clean because we know it's possible
(10:30):
that people who are gonna gonna want to draw it
on cash. So we just wanted to be out there
so there was no issues, and we have stayed so liquid,
which is earning us nothing. I mean literally cash it
the feed is earning us nothing. Just sitting there. We
just felt we needed to be there, and thank thank
Heaven's thank God, we never needed it. P p P
was a totally different story that was there. There's gonna
(10:51):
be a movie made about it at some point, I think.
And how is signature involved in p PP are you
guys people came to you for it and you're handling
those PPP so as you as you learned just about
the majority of our clients are small and medium sized
businesses who all qualified. So essentially every single client of
the bank applied for p p P. What happens was
(11:13):
is we said it was overwhelming. I mean it was
truly everybody that it was discussed I think on like
March and by April three again it was like a
mushroom cloud. So we did is we we decided to
redeploy about twenty of all the employees of my colleagues,
(11:34):
all of our colleagues, into working on p p P.
So you might have been and you know, working as
a and why your transfers or client services or cash management.
We said, we're moving into p p P and we
had people working literally all night creating systems, taking the
(11:55):
applications so that we could get and I'm really I'm
so proud say this. We got every applicant, every compliant
application through. That was our motto, is that we wanted
to get everyone through and we did. And that's the
way you actually build quient loyalty is because people realized
I mean people were filling out applications and talking to
(12:19):
senior vice presidence in the bank at three am, I
mean I was up behind. People were nervous. How do you?
And this ties into your book which I have right here, um,
which is which is a lot to it? First of all,
(12:42):
it is five hundred pages easy reading. Though yeah, no
it looks good, but it is. I mean, this is
this is a good amount of book. And it seems
like you touched on a lot of different things. What
what pushed you to to you run a bank like
you run like a really like a big bank, have
a couple billion dollars at the fete so you can
have good liquidity, like that's sixty one billion in assets.
(13:04):
But then you sat around and you wrote a five
hundred page book for the betterment of mankind? Why would you?
Why did you do that? I think for most people
there's two important days. One when they're born, because then
they have a shot, and the second is when they
figure out why they're supposed to be here. For some
of us, there's multiple reasons why we're supposed to be
what we're supposed to do. And this book was actually
(13:24):
in me and I needed to get it out of
me because people would come to me. So I'm I'll
freely admit in New York I'm a believer. I believe
in God, and people know that in the bank, and
know that among clients, you know that among my friends,
and they would ask me things questions like, well, you
seem like a reasonable sort of guy, you actually built
(13:45):
this bank, And isn't God just like sort of Santa
Claus and the tooth Theory and the Easter Bunny. So
I started reading the new atheist books that all these
folks had read, Richard Hawkins, The God That Nations, Christop Richards,
Why God Poison Seven, Why God Isn't Great? Daniel Dennett
Letter to a Christian Nation, etcetera. And I looked for
a book that would respond to them, and I didn't
(14:06):
really find a good answer. So when nobody is doing something,
that's the time when I tried to act and I
started writing this book, and I'm so glad nobody told
me it would take five years from me to write
this pose. I would never done it, but I started,
and I'm a persistent sort of you know, dogged fellow.
So once I started and I had the bone, you know,
(14:27):
I wasn't gonna let go. And so it took five years.
When did you We're getting a little off topic, but
it's curious to me, when did you know that you
believed in God. I gotta give you a little bit
of backstory. My father is a holocustomer. It was a
holocoustomer be passed away. My father was thirteen years old
and specs on Lithuania when the Nazis marched in and
(14:50):
they murdered his father, his brothers, his aunts, his uncle's,
his cousins. His mother had already died in childbirth giving
birth to my his brother, and he was taken for
slave labor and he was liberated from Doco. He was
less than seventy pounds. He was prior days weeks, certainly
(15:11):
not months away from death. And he made it to Chicago.
It's a long story, we don't He made it to Chicago.
He got married at his son, and my father had
this very interesting belief that that in a way, that's
the back story to this book, is that he knew
there was God because had this cup with an S
been not here but six inches over there, my father
(15:35):
would have been dead. Had my father been standing one
position forward, one position behind, one position back, or one
position for it, he would have been murdered. There was
so many little things that were so amazing that they
were so different, he'd be dead, that he knew in
his heart of hearts that there was a God who
got him to Chicago. On the other hand, he was
(15:56):
angry at God because he survived. But what about his
father who he who has murdered, you know, a few
feet away from him, and his and again all of
his family. So he had this relationship with God that
clearly I you know, inherited some of the try I
don't want to call it trauma, but some of this
questioning is how can we believe in a God when
(16:18):
things like the Holocaust happen? What a good God allowed
at it? But on the other hand, that's evil for people.
So I've been struggling with this all my life and
that's why it's spilled out into this book, trying to
understand that problem because to my mind, to be a nonbeliever,
there's a lot of questions to be answered. But to
be a believer, the hardest question is how can a
(16:38):
good God let things like the Holocaust, the rumand and genocide.
I mean, I can go on and on happen, and
that's a hard question. It is I think free will exists.
Were you religious when you were growing up? Or is
this something you came into later, something like my father
had this belief of God. He was so we went
to synagogue. But during services, he and I noticed this
(16:59):
among other or Holocaust survivors. During services, they would chat
when the rabbi gave his sermon, they would doze off.
Afterward they would go and have a look high and
you know, have a little afterward. But he made sure
they all made sure their sons and daughters were barned
by Mittzved. So he felt it was important have a connection.
But he was so angry at God. He couldn't actually
pray so easily because he was giving God the silent treatment.
(17:22):
And I think God got it, you know, I think
God gets that. Yeah, my father had some things to
be angry about. And but I will say this the
one thing I've also learned and and one thing I
tried to do. In particularly section five of my book
is explained how to read the Bible, because just being
given the King James version is really tough. But if
(17:44):
you read stories where Judah is willing to become a
slave so that his brother can be freed, where Esther
has to convince the king to save the Jews and
takes on basically the risk of her life to do so,
all sorts of stories of heroism of what what is
really going on in the Bible? What is really being
(18:04):
tried to convey? It such an ancient book that we
need a little bit of background to to to really
engage with it. So I find sort of the less
people know about the Bible, the less they like it,
and when you give them some introduction to it, they
really recognize what a rich book. No wonder this has
been around for three thousand years, because before the Bible
(18:25):
things were pretty bad. You know, is the god king
Pharaoh who could chop off anybody's head, and he was
the decider of whether you were good you were bad,
and he was the conduit for the real God raw
or whoever it was at the time. And the thing
people have forgotten, And this is one of the one
of the things I try to explain, is it the
whole twentieth century was a catalog of God King pharaohs
(18:50):
style and Mao Pulpat. The Assad family, the Kim family,
Hitler used the same tropes as Pharaoh doesn't change, parades, myths, theater,
all of course backed up by secret informers and powerful armies,
and because they were, they established themselves as king. That's
why as God king. That's why Stalin had his his
image put by the Soviet Space Agency into space. And
(19:13):
it's not just at a macro level, it's at the
level of our intimate encounters. So how did Kevin Spacey
and Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and
unfortunately that there's a very long list. How do they
get away with what they got away with? Well, they
set themselves up in their industries as idols, unquestioned and unquestionable,
just like Pharaoh. What Charlie Rose said was the truth,
(19:36):
that CBS, what Harvey Weinstein said was the truth. And
in the same way that the god king Pharaoh could
decide if you live or die, Harvey Weinstein, based on
his whim, could decide if your career was gonna work
and if it wasn't gonna work. And it's hard to
stand up tight doltry, but thankfully people did. Thankfully they
have in the past and they and that's what the
Bible tries to explain. And that's why in the middle
(19:57):
of banking, I thought, I gotta try to take my
shot to explain this How does religion then play back
into into the bank. You've just written a five hundred
page book called in Good Faith, Questioning Religion and Atheism?
Do you bring religion and faith into signature bank? So
here's how I do do that, and we do it.
(20:17):
Two things. First, I believe that the golden rule comes
from the Bible. Don't do one to others what you
wouldn't want on them too yourself. So when p p
P happened, we immediately knew some of the mega banks
were prioritizing clients. If you were bigger, if you were
in the private bank, if you were this, if you
were there, we'll take care of you. We had this
sing and I sort of hinted it this before. No
(20:39):
compliant client left behind, So we moved everybody from the bank.
We stayed up all night. I was up, even myself.
You know, I couldn't. I wasn't even that productive in
the middle of night. But we were up in the
middle of night. If you looked at my emails from
two to five am, you wouldn't know was two to
five pm. We said everybody, if they needed twenty five
(21:00):
thousand dollar loan, they're gonna get the same attention as
the company that needs a nine million dollar loan. So
it's the golden rule. And in our we have, like
every bank. Well, you're you're familiar from your father and
your brother a standards of conduct, so it's gate you
can't see it. But I'm I'm holding up man. It's
like a half an inch thick, right. I looked at
this and I said, you know what, let's change it
(21:23):
so that people get this. So the first paragraph says,
this is a very long standards of conduct. You're gonna
have to read it because you're required to do so
by bank regulation. But if you do one thing, you're
gonna keep yourself out of trouble and and the bank
out of trouble. Don't treat any colleague, client, vendor, counter party,
(21:44):
or anybody you come into contact with within your role
in the bank other than the way you would want
to be treated. The rest is the commentary of the
next fifty year, seventy five pages. You got to read
it and sign it. But if you just do that,
you're gonna be okay. And we're gonna be okay. It's
not that we don't turn down loans. We turned on
plenty of loans but we do it in a way
which is humane. We tried very hard not to treat anybody,
(22:08):
not to mislead anybody, not to do anything that other
people wouldn't expect. The answer to their the answer to
every question isn't gonna be yes. But they want to
be treated like a human being. They don't want to
be treated like a dust rag. And that's the way
that I try to bring my faith into the bank.
And that's not to say that people who don't, who
(22:28):
aren't believers, can't do the same thing, because anybody who
believes in the Golden Rule I can make common cause with.
I think they can be moral. But I think the
essence of idolatry is essentially and self deification is saying
I'm a little more important than the other person. That's
clearly what Charlie Rose and may allow and Harvey wants.
(22:49):
And I can do stuff to other people that I
wouldn't want done into myself. And of course Stalin and
all those other people, the world leaders who killed millions,
wouldn't have wanted what they it done to them. And
so I think there's a real essence there, and hopefully
that comes through. Hopefully that comes through I mean, I
(23:09):
will say this too, when when we had we unfortunately
had a number of people stricken with COVID in the bank,
and I called everyone personally because you you just that's
the time you need to do things like that, you
need to call It was if they were senior vice
president or teller. I tried to reach them at home,
(23:30):
and I don't know that it helped them, but they
at least knew that they were as important as anybody else.
How did you keep your level of confidence in you know,
(23:51):
your ability to get all of this done and take
care of your staff and take care of your people
and manage your assets when going through a complete market
res at like at the end of March right and
the daw was selling off ten thousand points. Everyone's freaking out.
There is no PPP yet, there's talks of it, it's
not getting approved. Was there a moment of being scared
at that time? And would you compare it at all
(24:13):
to when you started, like in two thousand one, because
two thousand one was also very tumultuous here, I mean
you started this bank, I meanine eleven, if you had
told me that the world Trade centers will be felt,
that interest rates would go from six and a half
or six and a quarter percent when we open to
one percent, which is what happened, and we would go
through the worst recession we had gone through ever in
(24:35):
New York. It's was much much worse than two thousand
one than in two eight here in New York. I
don't know. I might have had second thoughts personally, but
I will say this, it was a continuing emergency when
we opened the bank, and I really felt like it
was a continuing emergency, and I was so focused and
in the flow of what needed to be done. Think,
(24:56):
you know, frankly, to try to put one spot in
front of the odd there as was the whole management
team that it helped us get through it. Had we
sat back and taken into you know, a lot of
deep breasts and panicked, that would have been bad. So
we didn't. We thankfully didn't do that. But there were
plenty of opportunities to panic just because of the state
of the world. Do you think for your level of
focus is what helped you, uh, stay confidence? You know,
(25:20):
A big part of you know, what we do as
brokers and salespeople and entrepreneurs and part of this podcast,
right and it's called big money energy because I in
my head when I was young in New York with
no money and I was trying to figure out what
to do, and it was figure it out or move home.
A big difference that I saw was the people who
were successful and who were making it. They were very focused,
(25:42):
almost like they had blinders on one foot in front
of the other, like you just said. And they had
they had a level of confidence to them even if
they were completely if they had no confidence. And so
I'm thinking about you starting a bank nine eleven happens, right,
and then you've got interest, rateths tank and then New
York slowly comes back, and then Lehman falls, and then
(26:03):
you go through the Great Recession and then everything's kind
of okay, and then a few years later then COVID happens.
You seem to me like you have some you have
an unshakable confidence, uh as well as a strong energy
to you. And I could help in your book, which
is also why I wanted you to come here, and
you know, we meet and and you know, tell your
story for all the listeners. Um, but how did do
(26:24):
were you born that way? How did you get there?
How did you how did you convince yourself to do
these things that you've done and get through these three
very difficult times in New York and in banking well,
first of all, and I and my father may his
memories a blessing to me. He modeled resilience. I mean,
there's nobody he was. He was next to death and
(26:47):
came back and built a life. So he had he
did something which was I was growing up. If ever
I would complain, and I would occasionally I'd complained, complain
about this, that or the other thing. He looked at
me and he'd say, it's not the concentration camps. So
that that sort of set the standard where okay, you
(27:07):
know I can I will have to get on from
this because this is clearly not this is clearly overcomable.
I will say this. I do look at these strain
at downturns as an opportunity. So when we opened the bank,
we had a little party for everybody who started the
bank with us, and I got up and spoke and
I gave a raw run. This just came out of
(27:29):
my extemporaneously. I said, when my goal is that in
five years we're gonna be a five billion dollar bank,
and in ten years, we're gonna be a ten billion
dollar bank. And of course that that meant we would
be even growing slower in the second parts. But it didn't.
That's what I said. Fast forward five years where three
point eight billion dollar banks. So we hadn't hit our goal.
But then during the Great Financial Crisis, we had been
(27:53):
doing the right things. We had stayed conservative, and we
grew from three point it we grew to be a
fourteen pint eight billion dollar bank by two thousand eleven.
May first, two thousand eleven, in the worst time, we
had grown eleven billion dollars in that second. In that
second from three point eight to fourteen pointing. Because you
made yourself the choice. We made ourselves a choice. So
(28:15):
fast forward to what happened. Now. December thirty one of
two thousand nineteen, we were forty nine billion dollar bank
and we were really proud of that. June we were
sixty one billion dollar bank. And the reason is it
because because we had done p P P. Because people
I have to tell you, I've been never to go
(28:36):
to business come in so fast is after p P.
Because A the people we got loans for said I
got to move the rest of my accounts here be
they heard about it and so people would start coming
to us. We have never opened as many accounts as
we did when we started. The pacers. Just ridiculous because
(28:57):
during these sorts of times got to be and people
were calling me at all hours. And in customer service, yes,
client service, we we actually have a term. We don't
actually call anybody a customer. We we say everybody's a client.
We want to promote the phrase when I when we
reached out to you, that this is called big money energy.
What did you think? What does that phrase mean to you?
That big green phrase right behind my head. Look, I
(29:19):
personally don't idol size money. I think that what's important
about money is what it can accomplish. And I think
having money so that you can do good that's what
gives me energy. That's what Otherwise I could just hang
out and have pina coladas. I mean, you know, thank God,
but I don't want to do that. I want to
do more. And that gives you the energy and the
(29:41):
power to do more, and to do more philanthropically, to
do more in all sorts of different ways. That it's
it's do good energy. What would you tell your your
twenty year old self. If you go back in time
and talk to you at twenty, always make sure to
treat people right. I mean, there were a few times
when I wish I had taken a deep breath and said,
(30:02):
let me look at it from the other person's perspective
and not reacted in the same way I would have.
I definitely wish I would have done that a few times.
And that's my big regret. I did it a few
times where I just I did put myself first in
terms of relationships or others with folks, and I regret
(30:23):
that deeply, and I would tell everybody do It's that
golden rule. I had it in mind, but I didn't
really abide by it every every time I should have.
Do you mind if I hit you with some random
personal questions, go for it. What's your favorite movie? Oh?
The Castle? It's an Australian movie. Every single one just
so great. I mean, there's not one line in it
(30:46):
I don't I don't remember. Actually, nobody's your favorite movie.
It's my favorite movie, but nobody big and nobody that
you would know. But it's what you can get it
on Netflix or wherever. It's a great movie. What's your
favorite quote clearly, um, don't treat anyone else the way
you wouldn't bother to be treated yourself. That till eldest
age said that, who's the worst boss you've ever had? Boy?
(31:08):
You know, thankfully I haven't had really bad bosses. I
had one boss who I don't want to mention his name.
He's passed away. Who I think I didn't treat folks
the right way, But I've actually been blessed to have
good bosses. That maybe that's something that that certainly helped
(31:29):
my career in my life a lot. What's your favorite word? Good? Good? God?
If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?
You know? I read an article I've read a book about,
and I'm blinking on the author's name, about trying to
imagine being something other than human, trying to be a
bad but the hard cont the problem of hard consciousness.
(31:50):
And so I actually I kept to tell you, I
don't know. It's impossible for you to me imagine to
be you, and much less imagined to be me. And
and the one thing I have learned in life is
that people think they understand other people, they don't even
actually understand themselves really that well. And so to imagine
(32:11):
me being any other being, I can't really do that.
My last question for you for the man who started
a bank a handful of months before nine eleven, uh
and has grown it into something that has been pretty monumental.
What's your guilty pleasure? Oh, it's something I call a special.
(32:32):
It's hot brownie charcolate chip ice cream or vanilla ice cream,
but really good ice cream topped with some great dark
chocolate chips and chocolate liqueur. I like haven chocolate dark
chocolate where there's others. That's my guilty pleasure. Is this
(32:52):
like a once a week thing? Oh? It depends on
the week, you know. In the beginning, I think I
was having it during March April May. I was in
Nightly Yeah, and I remember those times. I remember those times. Listen,
thank you so much for coming. This has been great
getting to know you. Uh. And for for all our listeners,
please check out Scott Says book in Good Faith, Questioning
(33:13):
Religion and Atheism. And if you are a small or
medium sized business, make sure you check out the bank. Scott.
It's an honor. Thank you so much for coming through.
If you're ready to take action today based on Scotch
shays entire blueprint for how he got to where he is.
Go to Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast to
(33:36):
download an action plan I put together for you, as
well as the show notes. That's Big Money Energy dot
com slash podcast. Find more podcasts like Big Money Energy
on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get
your podcasts. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhand.
It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive
(33:59):
produce by Lindsay Hoffman.
Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
we talked to super successful and self made people to
find out exactly how they did it, how they went
from nothing to something. I'm Ryan, Sirhanton. Today I'm joined
by chairman and co founder of Signature Bank, Scott Shay.
(00:22):
We talk about what it takes to start a bank
from the ground up, how religion could possibly tie into banking,
and what influenced his decision to write a book about faith.
Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is
a very very special day because I'm not sitting down
(00:44):
with just the insanely successful and intelligent Scott Shay from
sitting down with somebody who started a bank, and I
want to I want to pick his brain a lot
on that. But if you don't know Scott, you should.
He is a leading businessman, author, speaker, co ounder and
chairman of Signature Bank, which is one of the best
and most notable banks in New York for private business owners.
(01:05):
And not to mention, he's also an author, which we're
gonna get to. Uh, You're easily one of the most
knowledgeable people in your field, and I'm honored to have
you here and for those of you who are also
watching the podcast. This is the first time we've done
this in our first floor office is our conference room.
We're all kind of back from COVID. Scott's here without
a tie. We are living it up. So Scott, thank
(01:28):
you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to
be here. And by the way, flattery will get you everywhere.
So thanks for that wonderful that's it. I'm gonna say.
You look great, You're a great shape. You know, you're
killing it. It's awesome, it's great. You know, we negotiate deals.
We uh, we do something called the positive sandwich. So
the only way you can ever give anybody, not that
there's negative information here, but the only way you ever
(01:49):
give anybody tough information is you gotta gotta have those
positive pieces of bread there and it works. The first
question I have for you, which I think will really
really kick us off, is how do you start a bank?
So I had this crazy idea in the nineties that
New York was over branched but under bank. There were
plenty of big banks. There was JP Morgan, there was Chase,
(02:12):
there was many Haney, there was Chemical, there was long
online Trust, there was Westchester Trust. By the way, those
nineteen other banks merged to create JP Morgan Chase. You know,
all these banks merging, and these big banks, these mega banks.
They were good at servicing A T and T, PepsiCo, IBM.
But I thought there was really a niche to focus
(02:35):
on middle markets, small and medium sized business. So we
started a bank, not doing retail, not focusing on the
big business. And people thought I was crazy. I mean literally,
I I had two co founders, and they just thought
I was crazy at first. And but I'm a persistent
sort of guy. Did you did you work with these
guys all together? So I knew them from a public bank.
(02:57):
And when HSBC decide they were going to buy Republic Bank,
the first thing I thought is this is an opportunity.
I'm going to find these two guys because the best
two guys at HSBC, and we're going to start a bank.
Unfortunately they didn't know that. That's what I thought. And
I we had breakfast and they thought I was, you know,
inviting the breakfast over something else, and I said, let's
(03:18):
start a bank. You can ask they'll they'll cheerfully admit
they thought I was crazy, And that's what I worked on.
It's not something that that most people. I mean, you
don't see new banks every day. You see new companies,
you know apps. Everyone's an entrepreneur right now, everybody. But
you do not see people get together over breakfast and say,
you know what we should do, we should start a bank. Ye,
(03:39):
very few. So what did you guys? You know? Because
that was what it was. Two No, this wasn't This
was when we had the breakfast. It was they thought,
you know, let's try to buy a bank. Let's try
to get some money together. Will buy a small bank,
will build it. And I said to them, Joe Depolo
and John Tamperline, who are two partners and dear friends
(04:00):
at this point, through dear friends, that was our first
real getting to know each other. I said, we gotta
started from scratch because we've got to make our own culture.
The big bank culture. It's it's just not going to
get us where we need to go. We had applied
to nineteen different institutions. We started with a white board.
We're here in your conference room. The office that we
started and was no more than a third of the size,
(04:20):
ended at five people in it, no more. And there
was a white board and We listed everything we needed
to do and we did it from from the number
of adding machines to the you know what we needed
in terms of people person people positions. We opened with
five offices. You opened what you opened with five officive offices,
(04:42):
which is where did you and started to cut you off?
It just this is really interesting to me because we
just started a brokerage. You know, I've been with the
same company for twelve years and throughout COVID and you know,
this year we did the same thing. We had a
big white board, we had this little office with sheets
of paper everywhere with the things we need to do
and all that. But starting a brokeradge is very, very different.
(05:03):
So what did you get the money together? Was a
personal money? Did you go and raise money to be
able to start a bank and to start lending. So
that's a great question. So we thought about should we
raise personal money or do we need a big backer
because if you start a bank, people are a little
bit afraid to put money in your bank. At the time,
the insured limit was a hundred dozen dollars. We wanted
(05:24):
businesses to bank with us, who generally have much more
than a hundred dozen dollars. In the bank, so we
got a big bank backer. At the time, I was
on the board of Bankapo Lim, which is the largest
bank in Israel, and we convinced them to invest forty
two and a half million dollars in our new bank.
We started out. First month we lost two and a
(05:44):
half million dollars, and twenty one months later we broke even.
We cut our lost every month. The first month we
made like two thousand dollars and we were so happy,
like we're making, you know, like this little bit of money.
But we were just deliriously thrilled. By month thirty four,
we went public. We've never done an acquisition in the
(06:07):
history of the bank as we sit here today, as
of last June, as of this past June thirty we
were sixty one billion dollar bank. And every single person
who has coming the door has opened an account with
us because they want to open an account with us.
We've done no acquisition, so we haven't. We haven't. It's
not like chemical bank got the got the clients from
(06:27):
Anny Hanny or Manufacturer's Hanover. You have to want to
join us. So at this point I think hypothesis that
I thought, which is there was a need for a smaller,
medium sized business bank in New York. I think the
tenantive conclusion is it's it's it was correct, But you're
not a retail bank. No, That's why most people haven't
heard of us, even though we're the biggest. We have them,
(06:50):
but they're on the twelfth floor, the eighteenth floor, you
won't even you you we have an office on Union Square,
you won't even know what's there because you have to
take an elevator up in. If you're a private business REPP,
you're doing it. We have an office south of you. Again,
you've probably walked by it a thousand times on Broadway,
but you're not going to get in an elevator, go
up to the twentieth flour and uh find our office.
(07:12):
We're not retail. Most of our clients who are retail
clients are owners of private businesses that they're already banked
with us, and so they're small businesses. Like, what's the
biggest type of client you have and what's the smallest type? Well,
our sweet spot is twenty five to employee firms. That's
our sweet spot. If you look, that's probably of our
(07:33):
clients we have bigger, we've smaller. We'd be happy to
bank you. You know, we're happy to bank anybody, but
that's our sweet spot, that's where we're best. How has
COVID been on the co founder of a bank. So
it was very strange that before Governor Cuomo wrote the
order of closing, essentially shutting New York, I got a
(07:55):
call from So I remember the day of a little
bit before because I got a call from the Deputy
Superintendent of Banking and in New York who said, this
is gonna come down, but don't forget your an essential service.
And it was very strange getting that call because I
knew we were an essential service. Money is important and
(08:17):
the transfer money is important. We're not a hospital, We're
not a thought. You know, we're not doctors. We're not
We're not We didn't I didn't conceptualize us in that way.
But then when the shutdown happened, I realized how essential
we were and they had we We're getting calls immediately.
We banked some hospitals in New York who immediately needed money.
(08:39):
The people were coming in who were who were serious,
having serious issues, and they needed to immediately have their
lines expanded. I mean, ultimately, the government, the federal government
gave the money and all worked out fine, but not
day one. We had all sorts of clients who had
their supply chains from China disrupted. So one a day
(09:01):
they had paid for materials or final product in most
places from China and that was gone. It was shut
off that those products weren't getting in. So immediately they
had to go and try to get alternative products by
it in the United States, by it somewhere where they
could get at it, where they could supply all of
those things. It erupted. I mean literally, I was working
twenty four by six. We had calls. We had a
(09:24):
daily call at nine at three and then a nine
pm at night among senior management because of just it
was like incoming from all directions. And then p p
P happened. Well at the time in between people you know,
non essential workers don't get to go to work. Essential
work stept to stay and then the city gets shut down,
the country gets shut down, and then P p P
(09:46):
was kind of like a month ish give or take.
Were you ever nervous about a like a run on
the bank where you nervous that everyone with the credit
line was going to come and just call for cash
because they were going to freak out. What do you
what do you do in that scenario when COVID was
just starting to be an emerging issue before the shutdown,
(10:07):
It's like February, you know, early February, we decided we
just want to have a ton of cash, so we
had we just had. We just kept in the federal
reserve essentially, which sounds like a lot of money. Three
billion dollars of cash at all times something like to
three kept our lines clean because we know it's possible
(10:30):
that people who are gonna gonna want to draw it
on cash. So we just wanted to be out there
so there was no issues, and we have stayed so liquid,
which is earning us nothing. I mean literally cash it
the feed is earning us nothing. Just sitting there. We
just felt we needed to be there, and thank thank
Heaven's thank God, we never needed it. P p P
was a totally different story that was there. There's gonna
(10:51):
be a movie made about it at some point, I think.
And how is signature involved in p PP are you
guys people came to you for it and you're handling
those PPP so as you as you learned just about
the majority of our clients are small and medium sized
businesses who all qualified. So essentially every single client of
the bank applied for p p P. What happens was
(11:13):
is we said it was overwhelming. I mean it was
truly everybody that it was discussed I think on like
March and by April three again it was like a
mushroom cloud. So we did is we we decided to
redeploy about twenty of all the employees of my colleagues,
(11:34):
all of our colleagues, into working on p p P.
So you might have been and you know, working as
a and why your transfers or client services or cash management.
We said, we're moving into p p P and we
had people working literally all night creating systems, taking the
(11:55):
applications so that we could get and I'm really I'm
so proud say this. We got every applicant, every compliant
application through. That was our motto, is that we wanted
to get everyone through and we did. And that's the
way you actually build quient loyalty is because people realized
I mean people were filling out applications and talking to
(12:19):
senior vice presidence in the bank at three am, I
mean I was up behind. People were nervous. How do you?
And this ties into your book which I have right here, um,
which is which is a lot to it? First of all,
(12:42):
it is five hundred pages easy reading. Though yeah, no
it looks good, but it is. I mean, this is
this is a good amount of book. And it seems
like you touched on a lot of different things. What
what pushed you to to you run a bank like
you run like a really like a big bank, have
a couple billion dollars at the fete so you can
have good liquidity, like that's sixty one billion in assets.
(13:04):
But then you sat around and you wrote a five
hundred page book for the betterment of mankind? Why would you?
Why did you do that? I think for most people
there's two important days. One when they're born, because then
they have a shot, and the second is when they
figure out why they're supposed to be here. For some
of us, there's multiple reasons why we're supposed to be
what we're supposed to do. And this book was actually
(13:24):
in me and I needed to get it out of
me because people would come to me. So I'm I'll
freely admit in New York I'm a believer. I believe
in God, and people know that in the bank, and
know that among clients, you know that among my friends,
and they would ask me things questions like, well, you
seem like a reasonable sort of guy, you actually built
(13:45):
this bank, And isn't God just like sort of Santa
Claus and the tooth Theory and the Easter Bunny. So
I started reading the new atheist books that all these
folks had read, Richard Hawkins, The God That Nations, Christop Richards,
Why God Poison Seven, Why God Isn't Great? Daniel Dennett
Letter to a Christian Nation, etcetera. And I looked for
a book that would respond to them, and I didn't
(14:06):
really find a good answer. So when nobody is doing something,
that's the time when I tried to act and I
started writing this book, and I'm so glad nobody told
me it would take five years from me to write
this pose. I would never done it, but I started,
and I'm a persistent sort of you know, dogged fellow.
So once I started and I had the bone, you know,
(14:27):
I wasn't gonna let go. And so it took five years.
When did you We're getting a little off topic, but
it's curious to me, when did you know that you
believed in God. I gotta give you a little bit
of backstory. My father is a holocustomer. It was a
holocoustomer be passed away. My father was thirteen years old
and specs on Lithuania when the Nazis marched in and
(14:50):
they murdered his father, his brothers, his aunts, his uncle's,
his cousins. His mother had already died in childbirth giving
birth to my his brother, and he was taken for
slave labor and he was liberated from Doco. He was
less than seventy pounds. He was prior days weeks, certainly
(15:11):
not months away from death. And he made it to Chicago.
It's a long story, we don't He made it to Chicago.
He got married at his son, and my father had
this very interesting belief that that in a way, that's
the back story to this book, is that he knew
there was God because had this cup with an S
been not here but six inches over there, my father
(15:35):
would have been dead. Had my father been standing one
position forward, one position behind, one position back, or one
position for it, he would have been murdered. There was
so many little things that were so amazing that they
were so different, he'd be dead, that he knew in
his heart of hearts that there was a God who
got him to Chicago. On the other hand, he was
(15:56):
angry at God because he survived. But what about his
father who he who has murdered, you know, a few
feet away from him, and his and again all of
his family. So he had this relationship with God that
clearly I you know, inherited some of the try I
don't want to call it trauma, but some of this
questioning is how can we believe in a God when
(16:18):
things like the Holocaust happen? What a good God allowed
at it? But on the other hand, that's evil for people.
So I've been struggling with this all my life and
that's why it's spilled out into this book, trying to
understand that problem because to my mind, to be a nonbeliever,
there's a lot of questions to be answered. But to
be a believer, the hardest question is how can a
(16:38):
good God let things like the Holocaust, the rumand and genocide.
I mean, I can go on and on happen, and
that's a hard question. It is I think free will exists.
Were you religious when you were growing up? Or is
this something you came into later, something like my father
had this belief of God. He was so we went
to synagogue. But during services, he and I noticed this
(16:59):
among other or Holocaust survivors. During services, they would chat
when the rabbi gave his sermon, they would doze off.
Afterward they would go and have a look high and
you know, have a little afterward. But he made sure
they all made sure their sons and daughters were barned
by Mittzved. So he felt it was important have a connection.
But he was so angry at God. He couldn't actually
pray so easily because he was giving God the silent treatment.
(17:22):
And I think God got it, you know, I think
God gets that. Yeah, my father had some things to
be angry about. And but I will say this the
one thing I've also learned and and one thing I
tried to do. In particularly section five of my book
is explained how to read the Bible, because just being
given the King James version is really tough. But if
(17:44):
you read stories where Judah is willing to become a
slave so that his brother can be freed, where Esther
has to convince the king to save the Jews and
takes on basically the risk of her life to do so,
all sorts of stories of heroism of what what is
really going on in the Bible? What is really being
(18:04):
tried to convey? It such an ancient book that we
need a little bit of background to to to really
engage with it. So I find sort of the less
people know about the Bible, the less they like it,
and when you give them some introduction to it, they
really recognize what a rich book. No wonder this has
been around for three thousand years, because before the Bible
(18:25):
things were pretty bad. You know, is the god king
Pharaoh who could chop off anybody's head, and he was
the decider of whether you were good you were bad,
and he was the conduit for the real God raw
or whoever it was at the time. And the thing
people have forgotten, And this is one of the one
of the things I try to explain, is it the
whole twentieth century was a catalog of God King pharaohs
(18:50):
style and Mao Pulpat. The Assad family, the Kim family,
Hitler used the same tropes as Pharaoh doesn't change, parades, myths, theater,
all of course backed up by secret informers and powerful armies,
and because they were, they established themselves as king. That's
why as God king. That's why Stalin had his his
image put by the Soviet Space Agency into space. And
(19:13):
it's not just at a macro level, it's at the
level of our intimate encounters. So how did Kevin Spacey
and Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and
unfortunately that there's a very long list. How do they
get away with what they got away with? Well, they
set themselves up in their industries as idols, unquestioned and unquestionable,
just like Pharaoh. What Charlie Rose said was the truth,
(19:36):
that CBS, what Harvey Weinstein said was the truth. And
in the same way that the god king Pharaoh could
decide if you live or die, Harvey Weinstein, based on
his whim, could decide if your career was gonna work
and if it wasn't gonna work. And it's hard to
stand up tight doltry, but thankfully people did. Thankfully they
have in the past and they and that's what the
Bible tries to explain. And that's why in the middle
(19:57):
of banking, I thought, I gotta try to take my
shot to explain this How does religion then play back
into into the bank. You've just written a five hundred
page book called in Good Faith, Questioning Religion and Atheism?
Do you bring religion and faith into signature bank? So
here's how I do do that, and we do it.
(20:17):
Two things. First, I believe that the golden rule comes
from the Bible. Don't do one to others what you
wouldn't want on them too yourself. So when p p
P happened, we immediately knew some of the mega banks
were prioritizing clients. If you were bigger, if you were
in the private bank, if you were this, if you
were there, we'll take care of you. We had this
sing and I sort of hinted it this before. No
(20:39):
compliant client left behind, So we moved everybody from the bank.
We stayed up all night. I was up, even myself.
You know, I couldn't. I wasn't even that productive in
the middle of night. But we were up in the
middle of night. If you looked at my emails from
two to five am, you wouldn't know was two to
five pm. We said everybody, if they needed twenty five
(21:00):
thousand dollar loan, they're gonna get the same attention as
the company that needs a nine million dollar loan. So
it's the golden rule. And in our we have, like
every bank. Well, you're you're familiar from your father and
your brother a standards of conduct, so it's gate you
can't see it. But I'm I'm holding up man. It's
like a half an inch thick, right. I looked at
this and I said, you know what, let's change it
(21:23):
so that people get this. So the first paragraph says,
this is a very long standards of conduct. You're gonna
have to read it because you're required to do so
by bank regulation. But if you do one thing, you're
gonna keep yourself out of trouble and and the bank
out of trouble. Don't treat any colleague, client, vendor, counter party,
(21:44):
or anybody you come into contact with within your role
in the bank other than the way you would want
to be treated. The rest is the commentary of the
next fifty year, seventy five pages. You got to read
it and sign it. But if you just do that,
you're gonna be okay. And we're gonna be okay. It's
not that we don't turn down loans. We turned on
plenty of loans but we do it in a way
which is humane. We tried very hard not to treat anybody,
(22:08):
not to mislead anybody, not to do anything that other
people wouldn't expect. The answer to their the answer to
every question isn't gonna be yes. But they want to
be treated like a human being. They don't want to
be treated like a dust rag. And that's the way
that I try to bring my faith into the bank.
And that's not to say that people who don't, who
(22:28):
aren't believers, can't do the same thing, because anybody who
believes in the Golden Rule I can make common cause with.
I think they can be moral. But I think the
essence of idolatry is essentially and self deification is saying
I'm a little more important than the other person. That's
clearly what Charlie Rose and may allow and Harvey wants.
(22:49):
And I can do stuff to other people that I
wouldn't want done into myself. And of course Stalin and
all those other people, the world leaders who killed millions,
wouldn't have wanted what they it done to them. And
so I think there's a real essence there, and hopefully
that comes through. Hopefully that comes through I mean, I
(23:09):
will say this too, when when we had we unfortunately
had a number of people stricken with COVID in the bank,
and I called everyone personally because you you just that's
the time you need to do things like that, you
need to call It was if they were senior vice
president or teller. I tried to reach them at home,
(23:30):
and I don't know that it helped them, but they
at least knew that they were as important as anybody else.
How did you keep your level of confidence in you know,
(23:51):
your ability to get all of this done and take
care of your staff and take care of your people
and manage your assets when going through a complete market
res at like at the end of March right and
the daw was selling off ten thousand points. Everyone's freaking out.
There is no PPP yet, there's talks of it, it's
not getting approved. Was there a moment of being scared
at that time? And would you compare it at all
(24:13):
to when you started, like in two thousand one, because
two thousand one was also very tumultuous here, I mean
you started this bank, I meanine eleven, if you had
told me that the world Trade centers will be felt,
that interest rates would go from six and a half
or six and a quarter percent when we open to
one percent, which is what happened, and we would go
through the worst recession we had gone through ever in
(24:35):
New York. It's was much much worse than two thousand
one than in two eight here in New York. I
don't know. I might have had second thoughts personally, but
I will say this, it was a continuing emergency when
we opened the bank, and I really felt like it
was a continuing emergency, and I was so focused and
in the flow of what needed to be done. Think,
(24:56):
you know, frankly, to try to put one spot in
front of the odd there as was the whole management
team that it helped us get through it. Had we
sat back and taken into you know, a lot of
deep breasts and panicked, that would have been bad. So
we didn't. We thankfully didn't do that. But there were
plenty of opportunities to panic just because of the state
of the world. Do you think for your level of
focus is what helped you, uh, stay confidence? You know,
(25:20):
A big part of you know, what we do as
brokers and salespeople and entrepreneurs and part of this podcast,
right and it's called big money energy because I in
my head when I was young in New York with
no money and I was trying to figure out what
to do, and it was figure it out or move home.
A big difference that I saw was the people who
were successful and who were making it. They were very focused,
(25:42):
almost like they had blinders on one foot in front
of the other, like you just said. And they had
they had a level of confidence to them even if
they were completely if they had no confidence. And so
I'm thinking about you starting a bank nine eleven happens, right,
and then you've got interest, rateths tank and then New
York slowly comes back, and then Lehman falls, and then
(26:03):
you go through the Great Recession and then everything's kind
of okay, and then a few years later then COVID happens.
You seem to me like you have some you have
an unshakable confidence, uh as well as a strong energy
to you. And I could help in your book, which
is also why I wanted you to come here, and
you know, we meet and and you know, tell your
story for all the listeners. Um, but how did do
(26:24):
were you born that way? How did you get there?
How did you how did you convince yourself to do
these things that you've done and get through these three
very difficult times in New York and in banking well,
first of all, and I and my father may his
memories a blessing to me. He modeled resilience. I mean,
there's nobody he was. He was next to death and
(26:47):
came back and built a life. So he had he
did something which was I was growing up. If ever
I would complain, and I would occasionally I'd complained, complain
about this, that or the other thing. He looked at
me and he'd say, it's not the concentration camps. So
that that sort of set the standard where okay, you
(27:07):
know I can I will have to get on from
this because this is clearly not this is clearly overcomable.
I will say this. I do look at these strain
at downturns as an opportunity. So when we opened the bank,
we had a little party for everybody who started the
bank with us, and I got up and spoke and
I gave a raw run. This just came out of
(27:29):
my extemporaneously. I said, when my goal is that in
five years we're gonna be a five billion dollar bank,
and in ten years, we're gonna be a ten billion
dollar bank. And of course that that meant we would
be even growing slower in the second parts. But it didn't.
That's what I said. Fast forward five years where three
point eight billion dollar banks. So we hadn't hit our goal.
But then during the Great Financial Crisis, we had been
(27:53):
doing the right things. We had stayed conservative, and we
grew from three point it we grew to be a
fourteen pint eight billion dollar bank by two thousand eleven.
May first, two thousand eleven, in the worst time, we
had grown eleven billion dollars in that second. In that
second from three point eight to fourteen pointing. Because you
made yourself the choice. We made ourselves a choice. So
(28:15):
fast forward to what happened. Now. December thirty one of
two thousand nineteen, we were forty nine billion dollar bank
and we were really proud of that. June we were
sixty one billion dollar bank. And the reason is it
because because we had done p P P. Because people
I have to tell you, I've been never to go
(28:36):
to business come in so fast is after p P.
Because A the people we got loans for said I
got to move the rest of my accounts here be
they heard about it and so people would start coming
to us. We have never opened as many accounts as
we did when we started. The pacers. Just ridiculous because
(28:57):
during these sorts of times got to be and people
were calling me at all hours. And in customer service, yes,
client service, we we actually have a term. We don't
actually call anybody a customer. We we say everybody's a client.
We want to promote the phrase when I when we
reached out to you, that this is called big money energy.
What did you think? What does that phrase mean to you?
That big green phrase right behind my head. Look, I
(29:19):
personally don't idol size money. I think that what's important
about money is what it can accomplish. And I think
having money so that you can do good that's what
gives me energy. That's what Otherwise I could just hang
out and have pina coladas. I mean, you know, thank God,
but I don't want to do that. I want to
do more. And that gives you the energy and the
(29:41):
power to do more, and to do more philanthropically, to
do more in all sorts of different ways. That it's
it's do good energy. What would you tell your your
twenty year old self. If you go back in time
and talk to you at twenty, always make sure to
treat people right. I mean, there were a few times
when I wish I had taken a deep breath and said,
(30:02):
let me look at it from the other person's perspective
and not reacted in the same way I would have.
I definitely wish I would have done that a few times.
And that's my big regret. I did it a few
times where I just I did put myself first in
terms of relationships or others with folks, and I regret
(30:23):
that deeply, and I would tell everybody do It's that
golden rule. I had it in mind, but I didn't
really abide by it every every time I should have.
Do you mind if I hit you with some random
personal questions, go for it. What's your favorite movie? Oh?
The Castle? It's an Australian movie. Every single one just
so great. I mean, there's not one line in it
(30:46):
I don't I don't remember. Actually, nobody's your favorite movie.
It's my favorite movie, but nobody big and nobody that
you would know. But it's what you can get it
on Netflix or wherever. It's a great movie. What's your
favorite quote clearly, um, don't treat anyone else the way
you wouldn't bother to be treated yourself. That till eldest
age said that, who's the worst boss you've ever had? Boy?
(31:08):
You know, thankfully I haven't had really bad bosses. I
had one boss who I don't want to mention his name.
He's passed away. Who I think I didn't treat folks
the right way, But I've actually been blessed to have
good bosses. That maybe that's something that that certainly helped
(31:29):
my career in my life a lot. What's your favorite word? Good? Good? God?
If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?
You know? I read an article I've read a book about,
and I'm blinking on the author's name, about trying to
imagine being something other than human, trying to be a
bad but the hard cont the problem of hard consciousness.
(31:50):
And so I actually I kept to tell you, I
don't know. It's impossible for you to me imagine to
be you, and much less imagined to be me. And
and the one thing I have learned in life is
that people think they understand other people, they don't even
actually understand themselves really that well. And so to imagine
(32:11):
me being any other being, I can't really do that.
My last question for you for the man who started
a bank a handful of months before nine eleven, uh
and has grown it into something that has been pretty monumental.
What's your guilty pleasure? Oh, it's something I call a special.
(32:32):
It's hot brownie charcolate chip ice cream or vanilla ice cream,
but really good ice cream topped with some great dark
chocolate chips and chocolate liqueur. I like haven chocolate dark
chocolate where there's others. That's my guilty pleasure. Is this
(32:52):
like a once a week thing? Oh? It depends on
the week, you know. In the beginning, I think I
was having it during March April May. I was in
Nightly Yeah, and I remember those times. I remember those times. Listen,
thank you so much for coming. This has been great
getting to know you. Uh. And for for all our listeners,
please check out Scott Says book in Good Faith, Questioning
(33:13):
Religion and Atheism. And if you are a small or
medium sized business, make sure you check out the bank. Scott.
It's an honor. Thank you so much for coming through.
If you're ready to take action today based on Scotch
shays entire blueprint for how he got to where he is.
Go to Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast to
(33:36):
download an action plan I put together for you, as
well as the show notes. That's Big Money Energy dot
com slash podcast. Find more podcasts like Big Money Energy
on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get
your podcasts. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhand.
It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive
(33:59):
produce by Lindsay Hoffman.
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