172: Creating a Process to Perform with Ryan Jaseph

0:00 Scott Ingram: This episode is brought to you thanks to the generous support of The Sales Collective. They've got a little something for everybody. If you're leading an organization, The Sales Collective can help you introduce real sales process or improve your own process so that you can consistently generate revenue and help your sales team deliver more. If you're an individual contributor, they have a ton of resources, including their Sales DNA test that will help you identify your own areas of improvement, along with 250 videos to help fill those gaps. Check them out at thesalescollective.com or top1.fm/tsc.

0:46 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm.

0:57 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Ryan Jaseph. Ryan is the top commercial banking relationship manager at New Mexico Bank and Trust. Welcome to the show, Ryan.

1:11 Ryan Jaseph: Hey, thank you, Scott. Appreciate it.

1:13 Scott Ingram: So really looking forward to digging into this. I have a tendency just because of where the majority of my network is to talk to a lot of tech and software folks and really excited to… I don't think I've ever had a traditional banker on the show, so really looking forward to this. Big shout out to Bruce Bradford, longtime friend of the show. For making this connection and looking forward to digging in. And we'll start like we always do. I like to throw out some real immediate value. Let's talk about the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales as a banker.

1:46 Ryan Jaseph: Sure. Okay. I think the first one I would say is just talking about communication, how we interact with clients, how I've done that throughout the years, and just my ability to visit with them and have a lot of different types of conversations with them, both as a banker and hopefully as a trusted advisor. The second one I would say would be talking about… I have it listed as honesty, but it's really about how we kind of discuss with people in our industry what we do, how we do it, and just talk to them about how we fit into what their goals and objectives are. Because some people have a good understanding of how we do things at the bank and some people just don't, and that's okay. But either way, we want to make sure we have a discussion and visit with them on how we do that. And the third thing is just enjoying what you do. Finding ways to focus on that too, especially if you can. The last few years where there's a lot of negativity out in the world and we're trying to find positive things to hang our hat on all over the places, it can be a challenge, but it's certainly something we want to do more of.

2:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, excellent. I'm sure we'll get into more details on all of those things, but why don't we kind of contextualize first and I'll have you just talk about like what is the role of a banker? Like what all do you do day in and day out and what does it take to become the top producer?

3:01 Ryan Jaseph: So there's different forms, like a banker is a pretty general term, but in my world, so I work in the commercial world, which in Albuquerque, really New Mexico, where we cover, it would be working with larger businesses that have financing or complex treasury management needs. What I do is I'm looking for those clients all across the board in a lot of different industries that need more sophisticated levels of banking. They're not always easy to find. Of course, we try to work through those, try to find them in a lot of different ways. I have different networks that I've set up. I've got a lot of people that I work with that are good CPAs and attorneys that can help, because what we're really trying to provide around this customer is a good team that they can work with and help them be more efficient and focus more on their day-to-day jobs, because the less they have to interact with the bank, the more they can bring in revenues for whatever their day-to-day job is.

3:55 Scott Ingram: We'll do a little cleanup here. I also wanted to have you talk about just, I don't know if it's production or what it is, but kind of what it is to be a top producer.

4:03 Ryan Jaseph: Yeah. Everyone has different metrics and it seems like bank to bank, it's similar each way. It always talks about, everyone talks about what your portfolio is, how much do you have in loans? How much do you have in deposits? And then what is your new production? So the last few years I can say have actually been fairly good production, actually very good in most cases. I don't have all the numbers right in front of me, but I think over the last couple years we've put on somewhere between about close to $60 million in new outstanding loans and probably brought in a little bit over $40 million in new deposit accounts. And that's… so if you look at over $100 million between the two, that's pretty good production for a few years, especially in a market like ours. So we're proud of what we've done here. We think we have a nice setup at our bank and We really, again, enjoy working with the community and being able to help a lot of these local business owners be able to do more.

4:53 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

4:54 Ryan Jaseph: Yeah.

4:54 Scott Ingram: Well, let's talk about the origin story. How did you get into this? How did you get into sales in the first place?

4:58 Ryan Jaseph: I was a finance major in college. I worked at a car dealership doing a variety of things. And I was kind of crazy. I bought a house my senior year of college because I thought as a finance major, you know, that was… I have all these goals of what I want to do. So I bought a house. Only then to go into the finance side of financing homes right after I graduated. Because I thought as an individual, that was like the most complicated decision you're going to make is when to buy a home. How does the process work? And in doing it, I kind of learned that whenever I bought my house, I didn't get exactly the greatest deal. So I got taken advantage of a little bit. And I thought to myself, I'd like to make sure this doesn't happen to other people. And in doing homes, which I'll be honest, I didn't enjoy the way it worked in 2005, early 2006. The way the mortgage world works, it's very easy to believe that it doesn't work like that anymore because the company I worked for wasn't ideal. But you also look at it and you're like, man, there's a whole lot of other things that I'd like to be able to help people with that you see that between credit cards and auto loans and stuff like that. So I started looking into banking options, joined a bank in 2006, started out just doing new accounts and loans and stuff and just worked my way up. My goal was to not have somebody look back at what I've helped them with and have the same experience I do. I want them to be like, man, that was great. I got a good deal. Everything was done the right way. And this is the way to do it.

6:23 Scott Ingram: How did you end up moving over to the commercial side?

6:25 Ryan Jaseph: I always thought as a finance major that my long-term job would be an underwriter. At the first bank I worked for, there was a job that became available that was a commercial underwriter. So I applied for it, got the job, and that's where I started. So working with commercial relationship managers, getting to work with business owners a little bit, and it was kind of one of those things where right away you're like, whoa, this is kind of cool. This is so different than the consumer side of things, I really enjoyed it right away and just thought, all right, I'd like to kind of learn more and continue down this path. And so I've had kind of a couple, I would say from then on, pretty much my job for the last, and that was going on, I guess about 18 years ago, has always involved working with business owners one way or another. And I enjoy it. I love what they do. Love being able to be part of their story where they get to employ more people, do more work in the community, make this a better world. It's what I enjoy doing for sure.

7:18 Scott Ingram: What drove you to move to the relationship side versus kind of the underwriting side? My perception is one of those is more people and one of those is a little bit more number heavy.

7:28 Ryan Jaseph: Yeah. And actually at the time when I moved from like opening new accounts and doing loans and stuff, the regional manager for the bank I was at at the time, he didn't want me to move to the commercial side. Even after I was in the commercial side, he kept telling me, hey, your future is over here. He had wanted me to be, and he got me probably about a year later to move to a branch manager job at this bank. And that job did involve managing people, but it also involved handling a lot of business relationships. It kind of worked in phases where as a branch manager at this bank, I was in charge of our largest commercial deposit branch. And that was primarily what I was doing was working with business owners. And I had some staff that would really handle more of the operations side of things. And I got to focus on on what I enjoyed doing to the point where you realize there's a certain time when you have to stop changing. I have to stop changing my job because people call in sick. And so that kind of helped me move more to a full-time commercial relationship management position not long after that. Gotcha.

8:31 Scott Ingram: Given all of that, right, given that experience, I mean, if you were starting over, if you were starting over at that place coming out of college, is there anything that you would do differently in terms of the way that you approach your career and kind of set things up?

8:42 Ryan Jaseph: Oh, that's a great question. And it's really an interesting one because if you see a lot of people in banking who… I've only worked at 2 banks in my 18 years, and that's almost kind of unusual. A lot of people go bank to bank because when you transfer like I did internally, there's limits as to what each bank will give you as a raise. But if you go to another bank, those limits don't apply. So that's part of why I could say I could have made more money if I would have gone bank to bank. Not really my thing, to be honest. I really hope right now I'm at the place I'm going to be for life. But there is one thing I would have done differently. And for one year after I was doing the branch manager stuff, I wanted to stay at the bank that I was at. And I did go into a… what was a wealth management position. I took my Series 7 and Series 66, got my licenses because that's what they wanted us to do. We had an amazing private banker at the bank I was at. I wanted to shadow her and learn more from her because mostly what she was doing was still working with business owners, but more the personal side versus the business side. So setting up trusts, helping with estate planning, doing investment options, just all that kind of stuff. So it was good experience to do it for a year, but the way the management setup I had wasn't ideal at all. It just changed in a way where it didn't work for me. At the same time as I had a good friend that had gone over to New Mexico Bank and Trust, and she had been telling me for that year, hey, this is a better place for you, and She got me over there after all this happened because it just made sense. And that's where I've been for 11 years now. So that's the only thing I'd say. Not that it was a huge thing. It's good to have a little bit of background in that and what I do, but it's kind of one thing I look back and go, that's one thing I wouldn't redo. It just didn't… it was a year that I did a lot very different efforts than I do now. And I don't know, it just wasn't the right fit.

10:31 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So would you advocate for staying on a very clear path or How much value is there in gaining a little bit of that other experience? And sometimes, I mean, a year isn't a horrible investment to figure out, oh, I definitely don't want to do that.

10:46 Ryan Jaseph: Agreed. It's not. No. I mean, I like the fact that, because when I look at our commercial group, there's a couple of people that have more rounded backgrounds like I do, and a couple of people that have mostly been in the commercial side in some form or fashion for 20+ years straight. I would say it depends on the individual and it also just depends on where you start. 'Cause some people like had the ability to start on the commercial side and realize that right away. And I wouldn't have had any idea that that's where I should have started. I think when I started at the bank, I was 24, looking for a good dependable job and happy with whatever opportunities I could get. But I certainly would have no problem if I would've stayed on the commercial side the whole time. But I also enjoy that. I like the way I understand where a lot of my partners, what they've done and what they go through on a day-to-day basis. So. I'm very appreciative of what they do, especially on the retail side, because there's a reason I don't do that in 12 years. I enjoy what I do and they're probably better at it than I was. So, yeah.

11:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I think that's a good, I mean, you talked about one of your top things was enjoying what you do. And I think part of that is kind of finding what is your thing? What do you enjoy doing the most? And I know that we talked about, as we started this off, that your role is evolving a little bit. You're kind of starting to be in a little bit of a player coach kind of a thing. I call myself an intentional individual contributor. I had this conversation with my CEO yesterday. He's thinking about the structure of the team and this and that. He's like, I don't usually ask you about this, but just want to make sure, like, you don't want to do that. I'm like, hell no. I do this on purpose because this is what I enjoy. Like, I really enjoy that direct customer relationship and interaction. And certainly I work and collaborate with very broadly with my team internally. But I don't want to lead them. It's not my thing, right?

12:34 Ryan Jaseph: Our current president of the bank has been… he's been talking to me about this for a couple of years because he's seen what I've done and he's really encouraged this and not in a way where he gives me the option, which I appreciate. And the more that we visited on this kind of subject and the more I go in here, the more I kind of see… I do understand why some of this makes sense and understand the vision. 2 years ago when he said this, I'm like, no, man, leave me alone. Let me do my job. Let me work with my clients and continue going on this way. I feel like, at least in my case, I've been able to see… because we started doing some of this a couple years ago… where I can kind of pass on some of the relationships I have to existing lenders and still stay involved to the point where I get to be part of the fun things and they're getting to know them on the day-to-day basis. Because I guess my fear was just losing that relationship or not hearing from them occasionally and hearing how they're doing. But that hasn't been the case, and I hope that continues. Obviously, I know at a certain point, you know, there's declining returns on that. If I'm not their day-to-day person, we're going to interact less and less. But it has worked out so far. So we'll continue down that path and see where it takes us.

13:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, say more about the enjoying what you do piece. Like, what are those elements for you? What do you enjoy the most?

13:44 Ryan Jaseph: I enjoy the most getting to know new people and businesses, and especially in some different industries, seeing how their businesses interact, because that's the cool part about the business side is we don't have to kind of treat every business the exact same way because they're not the same. It's not based on a credit score. There's a lot of factors that go into this. So getting to know these commercial contractors and how many employees they have and how often they get paid and what kind of equipment they need to finish jobs or what they're doing to get new jobs is awesome. I work with a lot of professional services, law firms and accounting firms that, I mean, they have quite a few employees and stuff, but just working with them on different clients in terms of getting people set up the right way, again, like we're talking about, making sure businesses are doing the right things when they have separate operating companies or real estate holding companies or whatever it is. Just making sure these clients are set up the right way and doing that in a way that works for their legal and tax side. I know it's not necessarily the most exciting part, but I have a couple really good COIs that are attorneys and CPAs, and we have a lot of mutual clients together because we've done this together for so long. When we get together with a client, we can handle things in a really efficient way, and it makes a difference for the customer. And we'll sit together Afterwards, we'll have a beer a couple weeks later, like, you know, that was kind of cool what we were able to do for those guys. I mean, that was just awesome that we're able to help them buy this real estate, you know, in 30 days in a way where they got a good rate, they got everything set up the right way, and they're ready to rock and roll, and they don't have to worry about us anymore because it's set up in a way where they can be efficient. Love that.

15:19 Scott Ingram: You said COI earlier. Can you define that for me?

15:21 Ryan Jaseph: Sure. So that's center of influence.

15:23 Scott Ingram: Okay.

15:24 Ryan Jaseph: Somebody that touches a lot of the same type of clients that we're looking for… a lot of CPAs, attorneys, insurance agents, groups that interact with businesses as frequently as we do.

15:34 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I have to imagine that is the source of the large majority of your business is through those relationships. I don't imagine you're doing a lot of traditional cold calling or things of that nature, are you?

15:44 Ryan Jaseph: I'm not. What I would call my version of cold calling is kind of if I learn different information about businesses or something, trying to find ways to interact with that business through people that I know maybe using LinkedIn or something like that to see who has a connection there. I mean, we're a pretty small community here in New Mexico, so there's a good chance that if I find a business or somebody that's there, that there's some sort of connection that I can ask for a warm introduction because cold calling is fine for a lot of things, but for the types of industries I'm looking for, it's not usually the most effective means.

16:18 Scott Ingram: Yep, totally makes sense. I mean, the show is called Sales Success Stories. I feel like we should tell the story about Well, it could be a successful sale or maybe it was a sale that was really impactful for you. Maybe you learned a lot from it. They're not always wins that make the best stories, right?

16:33 Ryan Jaseph: Oh, it's true. I mean, we've had, boy, yeah, there's stories all over the place at this point. I mean, one of my kind of favorite ones, and I'm going to go off with who's now my longest client in banking. I met them through our credit officer, probably going on 16 or 17 years ago. And I like this story because of just how it's evolved throughout time. And at the time he was with a large bank that wasn't giving him a lot of service. He ran into a credit officer, credit said, hey, you guys should come talk to me because there's just not much reason for me to stay there. I went and talked to him. He said, I only want to do this. You guys are an okay-sized bank, but I'm with a big bank. I like having banks on every corner. We'll do a little bit for you, but, you know, I want to leave my personal accounts there and part of my business relationship there just because I've had it there for for a while, and there's obviously been a lot of stuff throughout time, but I talked to the guy today probably on an every other week basis. I mean, when I moved to New Mexico Bank and Trust, I didn't even have to call him. He just called me and just said, hey, I'm moving all my accounts, we're going to come see you tomorrow, kind of a thing. There was a lot of meetings and time and effort between it, but I mean, he's become a good friend. I enjoy it because again, it's kind of one of those relationships where he calls me, I call him if there's anything going on. If I need to meet somebody that's in his industry, he's happy to set up meetings. Or if there's anything going on in his world where he's looking to purchase another property, personal or business or whatever, I'm always his first call. That one kind of means something to me because that got started early on in my career before I knew a heck of a lot of what I was doing. And he's still with me today. That's one of my favorite stories. I can think of another about My second longest client in banking, actually, I've worked with her for so long. It's kind of the same story, but she sold the business 2 years ago. And even when she sold the business to the new group, she just said, hey, just so you know, you got to talk to my banker because this has been a long-term relationship. If you're doing more in this industry, this is something you need to entertain. You know, I met him a little over 2 years ago now. I think it was maybe summer of 2020. And hit it off with them really quickly. And today we've got over $20 million financed with them, full accounts in multiple states, which is not something our bank does a lot of. But yeah, no, it's kind of a cool setup because we have a full relationship where they've got offices in Iowa and St. Louis and Las Vegas and, and Florida and stuff like that. So I appreciate that because again, New Mexico Bank and Trust, we don't have a ton of businesses in our state that are Really, maybe a little bit regional, but not people that comb all 4 time zones. Those would be 2 stories that I think of upfront. Those are obviously the positive stories that I remember the most. There's certainly some ones that I wish we could have done things a little bit better on too.

19:22 Scott Ingram: Well, gimme one of those. What's your favorite failure?

19:25 Ryan Jaseph: Favorite failure that ended well, or…

19:28 Scott Ingram: Any way you want to take that. I mean, sometimes it's the ones that we learn the most from. You're like, I will never do that again because I've got this indelible lesson that I had to learn a very difficult way.

19:39 Ryan Jaseph: I have one, and it was probably from about 10 years ago, but this one still… the guy was a CEO of a large… not a large, but an airplane company here in town. And I'm trying to remember all the details of it. I don't remember exactly what he needed the money for, but he needed a $250,000 personal loan. I don't remember all that, but I just remember we were able to get in there. He was referred to me by a friend of mine that I work with are just like, hey, this guy needs some help. He's good for it. We can't do it on the mortgage side because we only do first mortgages. So I just remember we put together a HELOC, Home Equity Line of Credit, for him in like 10 days with an appraisal, got everything done in the timeframe in a way that was just… it involved full days of getting everything together so we could do it. I think he needed the money because he had to pay something off, but he was getting a bonus and like 30 days or something. So it was keeping the company afloat. And we got everything done on the basis that, yeah, taking his word about, we're going to have a relationship with you guys going forward. We appreciate what you've done. Thank you. And then literally the day he got the bonus, he came in, paid us off, and just said, no, I'm done with you guys. I'm never going to interact with you guys again. That was a terrible transaction. One of his coworkers even said something to our head of our division executive at the bank, at the time who knew everything was going on and had supported me in this and just said, hey, I gotta tell you what really happened here because we kicked ass for this guy. So, and only to learn, yeah, so we wound up doing all this work and effort for him for a 2-week transaction where it was just a one-sided transaction, unfortunately. What it does is it kind of makes you understand sometimes you gotta pick and choose who you work with. And that was a lesson that I needed because I thought, especially earlier in my career, you wanna bank everyone. And then you learn through stuff like that, you know, you don't wanna bank everyone. You wanna bank the right fit for you.

21:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

21:37 Ryan Jaseph: That one was interesting cuz I actually found out later on through a separate conversation, a good friend of mine was an accountant and auditor for the company that this guy operated. And his name came up in a conversation. I'm like, oh, what's your opinion on him? And I'm not gonna use the words he used. But I'm just like, okay, I feel a little better now. Then that wasn't me. That was who this guy was. So you meet all kinds in this industry and…

21:59 Scott Ingram: Yep. Yep. And I have to imagine some of that is also just the perception and education and one of these like, well, look, that may have not been a fun experience, but you don't realize what was happening behind the scenes and what we were doing for you to make this work.

22:15 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely agree. That's kind of why when you talk about that, that my second one and that honesty and that conversations about what's being done. Sometimes you just kind of take it for granted that people know, like, talk about what happens behind the scenes. And this guy's fairly astute. He had a pretty good idea. He just… I just wish he would have been honest upfront about this. But again, we all live and learn. There's a reason that these things happen. It's not the end of the world. We all move on. And again, you learn from it. You take the positive and go from there. There you go.

22:46 Scott Ingram: There you go. Ryan, given all that you've done over the years, what are you most proud of from an accomplishment perspective?

22:51 Ryan Jaseph: I would say I'm most proud that I've had a lot of relationships for 10+ years in the 2 banks that I've worked with. I mean, when I first moved over to New Mexico Bank and Trust, I was not in a business development role, or I was kind of doing a little bit of, a little bit of an underwriter slash… I don't even know what my job title was, to be honest. It was kind of one of those things where they're like, we know you're the right person, we want to hire you, and we'll figure it out later. I was helping a little bit with some different processes, but I had so many clients that really reached out to me And a couple of them I even told up front, I go, guys, it's only been a couple of weeks or a month. Let me get my feet set here and make sure this is the right place before and get really comfortable before we need to move your relationship over. Because what if it doesn't make sense? It's entirely possible that I made a mistake, but let's do this. I mean, I even had one client who she opened an account at the bank the day before I even started and she's like, this is my new officer. They're like, he doesn't even work here yet. We know who he is, but he doesn't even have an officer code or anything. So she's just like, no, I know this is going to work. I'm not worried. This is how it's going to be. And she still tells me that she sometimes thinks she's my mother, and that's okay. But that's what I would say I'm proud of, the amount of relationships I've had for 10 years plus, or even like 8 years plus, that I've still got ongoing. That would probably be my biggest source of pride, is just those long-term people that I know I can count on. And some of them I talk to every week, some of them it's once a quarter. It just depends on what's going on. But we know we could pick up the phone and have a conversation like we've been talking every day.

24:24 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, love that. What about the flip side? What do you find to be kind of the biggest challenge or the thing that you struggle with the most?

24:31 Ryan Jaseph: The biggest challenge in banking is probably… and what I struggle with sometimes, it would be just how fast sometimes things change. And that could be both from a regulatory standpoint and from an internal system standpoint or something. I mean, there's so many things that kind of change on a year-to-year basis in banking, and sometimes we're able to get in front of those and be like, you know, it's October, this is changing January 1st. Sometimes those things don't happen until like December 31st and they're buried in a bill somewhere, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, all right, didn't realize this is how it's working now. Then that kind of leads to how we operate internally. Maybe we have some systems that need to get updated and aren't necessarily ideal. And of course, that doesn't happen overnight. Trying to just always be flexible with how our systems work to be able to process things the right way. I mean, a perfect example would be… I hate using these 3 initials still… but PPP and how that worked in 2020. That all happened so fast. And then literally, if you remember the day that the application were going to come out, they had set up upfront, they're like, this is how it's going to work. It's going to go live at noon, 9 AM that morning. They're like, nope, never mind. We changed this. This is how it's going to work. So it's going to be a little bit different than what we talked about upfront. Everyone, of course, was trying to prep for how that works, being able to complete the application, what items were needed, because they kept changing everything. And then even like on the bank side, I think we opened our portal at noon on a Friday or something. And of course everyone was doing stuff through the weekend. I think by Sunday we had 1,100 applicants or something like that. And nobody even knew what they were doing. They'd set up the application, but they haven't even set up the process for how things get approved and how funds get dispersed. And of course everything moves so fast. So you're talking through, there's information on the internet. Customers are calling me going, hey, this bank in Omaha is funding their PPP loans. Why have you guys not started doing this yet? Or why have you not taken my application? Who knows? There's so much insanity. That was not a time you could pay me to relive.

26:36 Scott Ingram: Yeah, I bet. It sounds like the bulk of it is, as I would kind of imagine, is just the joys of living in a very highly regulated industry. There's always just going to be not only hoops to jump through, but the hoops change and they move and they're different sizes. And last week we had to jump this way. This week we have to jump backwards.

26:54 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely. And some of it makes sense and some of it you just look at and go, all right, I wonder why somebody thought this was a good idea.

27:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the middle of it right now. I've got a senior in high school, so we're getting ready for college and they changed the FAFSA form and my wife wife is all over me about getting this thing done. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this thing is going to be a mess for a couple of weeks. I'll let other people fail on it and fight it, and then we'll deal with it when we need to deal with it.

27:20 Ryan Jaseph: And that's exactly it, especially going back to the PPP. I mean, just to another point of that, at the beginning of it, everything was an 8-week process. And when we got to week 7, Congress changed it and said, no, this can be a 5-week process. I meant you had to use all the funds within an 8-week timeframe. And I think it was like week 6 or week 7, they came in and they changed the rules and said, no, this can actually be a… I think it's a 60-day or 2-month idea now. And it was one of those things where it's like, guys, we're 80% of the way down the road here and you're changing the rules. Not only that, so the people, everyone of course thought you wanted to get funded upfront because there were limited amounts of money. Turned out if you were patient, which virtually nobody was, and waited till get funded later, Not only did you have a better process, but you had better guidelines and more time to use the funds.

28:06 Scott Ingram: Yep. That's my game. I'm like, I don't want to be the beta tester on a new federal form. I'm going to opt out of that. Let some other people fight with it.

28:16 Ryan Jaseph: The big part in our world too is not only are we regulated, but then we also have like SBA and government loans. And so usually, especially the ones that there's 2 different types, there's a 504 and a 7, and each one of them is subject at the beginning of the year. You're like, okay, You don't want to do these in January because sure, what, you can't do them the same way you did in December. Sometimes you can, but for the most part, there's always some kind of change that you don't want to get to the finish line only to realize you've missed this step that didn't exist 2 months ago and now you've got to deal with that.

28:47 Scott Ingram: Yep. Go back to go. Do not collect $200. Right. So, Ryan, I love to really just dissect the way that people structure their days and do their work. I mean, the habits and the routines and everything that's a part of that. So the way I like to do this is tell me what time your alarm clock usually goes off. I want a pretty detailed blow-by-blow until your head hits the pillow again.

29:12 Ryan Jaseph: Okay. On a normal day, I would say I probably… normal. What's normal? I would say the alarm probably goes off around… I'd like to talk about normal and ideal if I could.

29:26 Scott Ingram: Let's do both. Let's do ideal, but let's also make sure that there's an appropriate dose of reality.

29:32 Ryan Jaseph: I was going to say the problem with ideal is it rarely happens, but that doesn't mean we don't have goals to get there. So normal day would be probably, and it's probably evolved a little bit through COVID because I've tried to stop working from home as much as I used to. In our bank, we did work from home for probably about 6 or 8 months, but now talking about 2024, I probably wake up about 6:30. If all goes well, I like to get on the treadmill, do a little bit of an early workout for 15, 20 minutes, nothing crazy. Little shower, breakfast, head to the office first thing. I'm probably usually one of the earlier ones to get there. So we've got these processes we kind of go through. I'm checking on transaction changes from the day before, overdrafts, and having conversations around those. Luckily, those are usually very minimal in my world. And then I try to plan out as much as I can. I use my Outlook calendar for a little bit of everything. I've got stuff that's reminders to talk to clients. I've got meetings that are on there both internally and externally. I try to book my day on my Outlook. So if somebody looks at it, the unfortunate part is it looks like if they're trying to schedule time for me, it's hard to figure out. But a lot of that stuff is movable. So I would say between 8 and noon, that's probably on a normal day, more analysis, more… if I've got deals that are in process, I'm trying to do some upfront due diligence. Work with our internal partners to talk about where we're at or strategies for how we're going to handle certain items, either for new deals or renewals. That covers me up till noon. 12 to 1 is lunch, roughly. And then afternoons, I probably spend a little bit more time. That's more my client interaction time. I probably schedule more out-of-the-office meetings in the afternoons, more COI meetings. I try to set up… obviously, before we renew anything, we're getting together 60 to 90 days ahead of time. So I try to calendar those out as far as I can. If I don't have a lot of that, I'm doing planning for the future. I'm seeing what do we have upcoming? What do I have that… who have I not talked to in a little while? Who do I have that I know that things are going on that we need to stay in touch with and putting those on my calendar for future appointments so I don't forget about it. I tell people if it's not on my Outlook calendar, I'm not sure if it happened or not. That goes, so probably between 1 and 5. And again, this is it. We might have… I have breakfast meetings that start at 7. We have dinner meetings that happen some days. That's not a consistent thing, but it's really not a hard thing to stay busy and feel like every day you're behind. I think in talking to all the business owners that I work with, it seems like everyone's kind of in the same boat these days. We all are working hard. We've all got a lot of work to do. At the end of the day, we go home and think, man, I wish I had another 2 hours to get stuff done because there's just a lot more to do. And I appreciate it when I hear other people telling me the same things because it makes me feel like I'm not doing something very wrong.

32:27 Scott Ingram: There's always more to do.

32:29 Ryan Jaseph: Always more. And that's what I try to explain to people, especially some of these newer groups that I work with. I'm like, guys, don't wish yourself to get to be too busy because you will get to the point where there's so much to do you're not really sure how to handle this, what to do first. And that's kind of some of the hard things. But that's why we have to try to plan things as much as we can because In my world, I can plan all I want. That doesn't mean a customer is not going to call me at 9 a.m. here and be like, hey, we've got this emergency going on and I've got to change my day because something drastically happens that we really need to get on top of. Does that happen every day? No. But does it happen once a week? Probably.

33:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yep.

33:08 Ryan Jaseph: And that you can't predict. That's what makes some of this stuff… you can try to schedule as much as you can, but when emergencies happen and there's certain emergencies that have to happen right away or certain people I can get involved with other groups, but there's some things that I just have to handle. That's the toughest part of my day, but it's also the most valuable because that's where you really, especially if it's somebody you don't know maybe as well, you're going to get to know them as part of this process and you're going to be in touch with them a lot. I always kind of say it's like when I do business development, one of the things I've learned in the last 10 years is I've learned to play golf. And that's partially because it's very much a banking thing. A lot of clients I work with do that. And I've learned you go play a round of golf. With somebody for 4 hours, you have a pretty good idea of whether or not you want to bank them or be a long-term partner of theirs or not. I mean, it's certainly happened where I've had people that I played golf with where I'm like, you know what, we might not be a fit. I need to get them to a coworker, or maybe it's our bank. It's not a usual thing, but it does give you a chance to get to know them, the character side of them a little bit more.

34:09 Scott Ingram: So it's interesting that you call that out, right? Because I think that traditionally in sales, we're always doing qualifying. We're trying to determine, is this a good fit? Does it make sense to put in the sales effort to do this? But I think this connects to a lot of the things. It connects to kind of your failure story that you're told, and it connects to the enjoyment piece. Sometimes you need to do some qualifying on the people you're going to do business with because sometimes the dollars might be shiny, but it might just not be worth it.

34:37 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I know a couple groups in town who they've worked with every bank in town. They switch banks every… somebody gives them, you know, 5 basis points less on a loan or 2 basis points more on a deposit rate and they're gone. And you're like, guys, We're not going to spend all this time. We prefer to spend time and effort on something that's going to be long-term. We want you to see the value of what we also bring to us as individuals, not just a deposit or a loan rate. Obviously, those are huge components, but there's more to it than that, that I'd like to think. And if that's what somebody wants, I'm more hands-on. I like to be more involved and not in a negative way, but just in terms of what's going on, learn more about your company and what makes you successful. So if that's not the right fit for you on the business side of things, that's okay. These are things that we've learned throughout time. Don't spend time on the things that aren't going to be long-term beneficial for you.

35:29 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Walk me through kind of the end of your day. How do things wrap up? What time are you headed home? What happens then?

35:35 Ryan Jaseph: There's a couple things because I try at the end of the day, on an average day, it's probably I'm heading home sometime between 4:30 and 5:30, depending on what's going on. If I'm heading home at 4:30, It could be because, and this is gonna sound crazy, but somebody's told me that there's a couple wrecks on the freeway or something, and I'm just trying to get outta traffic. That happens now. That didn't happen 5 years ago. I try to beat traffic if I can, cuz we didn't have the ability to work from home. Once in a while I'll finish up from home, just kind of like where I'm at now. I've got monitors and a station at home that I can finish up. It's peaceful and simple up until my dog comes up behind me and starts wooing at everybody on the phone. That happens once in a while. In a lot of cases, again, I like to go see clients at the end of the day, stop by their office or set up maybe a happy hour or kind of something where we kind of brainstorm. And I have a couple clients who we like to get together and just talk about non-works-related stuff. Like I have a couple clients, we do a lot of nonprofit type of work and we're like, hey, I'm on this board. I see why you have interest in that. Or we're part of this organization. Who do you know that might be a good fit to work with us? That kind of stuff. That's kind of fun that I've enjoyed doing a little bit more of lately, because there's a lot of nonprofits here in the area that have a lot of needs that There's a few of us that really like to support and we try to be supportive of each other. And that's, that's started to happen more at the end of days where we get together and just talk about our community and what we can do to help try to benefit it, whether it's a volunteer day, get a team in a golf tournament. What can we do to support kind of the areas that need help?

37:09 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Brilliant. And then how do things close out?

37:14 Ryan Jaseph: In theory, I close out my day. What I try to do is I go through my phone. Try to make sure there's no missed text messages or voicemails that I haven't returned. I'm very big on that, trying to make sure if somebody calls me, getting back with them that same day. I'm not perfect, but I really, really try. Even if somebody leaves me a voicemail at 4, I still try to get back to them that same day or let them know, hey, I'm in a meeting. I'll call you earlier in the morning. And if I do that, I put something on my calendar because I don't want to forget it. And then go through my emails, go through my emails for the day, make sure I didn't miss something there. If it's later in the week, go through the emails from earlier in the week that are still active and just make sure that we're staying in touch with whatever's ongoing. Because I found that to be a big thing, because too often you see something real quick, you're like, oh, I'll get back to that later, and sometimes you just forget about it. And I'm trying to minimize how often that happens. So that's how I finish up, is trying to make sure there's nothing pertinent from that day. Yeah, check my Outlook calendar, make sure if there's a phone call or something that I didn't get to, that I either call them at that point or move it out to the future. So trying to keep everything in front of me so I'm not laying awake at night thinking, boy, I can't believe I forgot to do this. Yeah.

38:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So sounds like your Outlook calendar is in many ways the center of your universe. Are there any other kind of tools or apps or things that you're using to manage your life?

38:36 Ryan Jaseph: So we use Salesforce here at the bank. Luckily, it interacts with Outlook. So if I do something on Salesforce, it flows straight to my calendar and back and forth. It has some nice tools that talk about Not talk about, but just give me information as to how long it's been since I reached out to certain groups. And also for both customers and prospects, that's something I do. I've got it on my calendar on Fridays. I go through that extensively and just be like, all right, where am I here? When's the last time I reached out to this client or this prospect or this COI and make sure either we're doing it then or we're scheduling a time to do that. That's an important part of my week to make sure we're staying in touch with everything we're supposed to.

39:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Any other components like that? Any other kind of core habits or routines? Like, so it sounds like Friday is your, let me look at the big picture and really think about what do I need to prioritize and emphasize in the coming week kind of thing.

39:30 Ryan Jaseph: We have some internal stuff that we do, like Mondays are kind of where we go through that on the bank side of things as to what the pipeline looks like. But Fridays are really my day to sit down and go through, that's my planning day. Where I'm planning anything I can think of, whether it's follow up with a client on a new loan request, whether it's just because I put a lot of reminders in there for, hey, you know, follow up with customer XYZ. Maybe I need to introduce them. They're growing. They need to do an audit going forward or something like that. That's kind of my morning to try to catch up and plan.

40:04 Scott Ingram: Nice. Ryan, switching gears a little bit, like, do you subscribe to a particular sales philosophy?

40:10 Ryan Jaseph: I guess my boss from 15 years ago, who I think I haven't talked to him in a little while because he moved out of town, but he used to say his big thing was see the people, see the people, see the people. And I do believe in that. I guess in a post-COVID world, it's been tough in some cases because some of these have moved to Zoom meetings or phone calls, but I still believe any chance I can get to have face time with a client is a good thing. I want to make sure that they understand, again, going back to the honesty part of ours, what we're trying to do for them, how the bank can help them in terms of what their goals are, and just talk through our processes of what we do that. So that's my big thing is not just trying to make sure we've followed up with them, but make sure we've had a chance to have like an in-person meeting with them that's relevant.

41:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what motivates you? How do you think about kind of motivation in general? Just keep all this going.

41:05 Ryan Jaseph: What motivates me is just… it's both what motivates me and I think demotivates my wife. I love when I'm out talking to people and they meet her for the first time. They're like, oh my gosh, I love working with Ryan. He was so helpful on this. So just me hearing their stories that they're telling my wife about how we were able to make an impact on them and seeing her roll her eyes because she's like, why doesn't he work this hard at home?

41:27 Scott Ingram: I'm not even sure if I've heard this answer before, but it's the idea of just regularly seeing and hearing about the impact that you're making because of the work that you do?

41:40 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely. I really do enjoy hearing people tell stories about, hey, we were able to do this, we were able to do this job, these guys, whatever it was, if they helped us with the line of credit or being able to purchase the right equipment or whatever it was we did to help them structure a loan in a way where, again, I don't work at a big bank like I used to because we have more flexibility with this. If there's something where there's maybe a gray area and we have some opportunity, my boss is always in a, yeah, you prove it to me, you justify this, and I've got your back. So if I can help get things set up in a way where it makes sense to him, and that's one of the other things that too, that why I left the previous bank as I moved to this one was there were so many things in transactions I got involved with that I thought were really good deals that the bank just said, you know, this isn't what we do, or this isn't a fit because it was kind of a little bit more of a big bank mentality and it didn't fit our market in New Mexico. I just thought, man, There's just too much I'm passing up on that we could help people with here that I know are transactions a bank would do. And New Mexico Bank and Trust has been a big part of that. So yes, being able to sit down and go to a… like, we've got a Lobo basketball game we're going to on Saturday, especially up, we'll run into clients and people who will be very appreciative and say nice things and tell other people about our story. And that's why we have the book of business we do. That's enjoyable for me.

43:01 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. I wonder, is there something you believe that the average or typical banker would think is crazy?

43:09 Ryan Jaseph: I don't think banking is the most difficult job in the world, but I think it's the phone call part. It's the communications part to them. I find a lot of people when I talk to them, especially prospects, they're like, you know, the thing that drives me nuts the most is I never hear from my banker, or if I call them, it takes them days or weeks to call me back. And like I said a little bit earlier, I try to return phone calls the same day. I don't think that's the most complicated process to do, even if it's just a quick conversation with them saying, hey, we need to schedule a follow-up later. At least if they're hearing from you and know that, that you can… hey, if I call Ryan, he'll answer if he's available, but if not, I'll hear back from him within 24 hours. I know that. And I don't think that most people subscribe to that thought. They kind of think, I'll call him back when I get a chance. And if that's 3 days down the road or a week down the road, so be it. And I guess I just don't quite understand that, but I'm trying to work with people like on my team and stuff to understand. I think that's a big part of what we do and what we can do better than a lot of other groups on.

44:13 Scott Ingram: Yeah, it's so interesting to me. I think a lot of, I mean, it sounds like both your industry and I think sales in general, unfortunately the bar in most cases is awfully low. To be in the top 10 or 20%, it's little things like, I don't know, call them back.

44:30 Ryan Jaseph: 100%. It's not usually the big things. The big things you've got to work on. And people always say it's the little things that make a big difference. And it's so true. And I think that's one of the little things that happened. I was reminded of a customer who she called me and was telling me her story in 2020. She was part of an industry group. Where they were all on the phone complaining about how their banks hadn't responded and hadn't taken care of their PPP loans and stuff. And she's just like, huh, my banker called me, we submitted an application, and it was… it wasn't overnight because that's not the way the process worked, but there was communication the whole time and it was really simple. She told me, she goes, I actually felt guilty because most of these guys hadn't… she had been funded for 4 weeks and most of these guys hadn't even started the process with their bank. So she's like, yeah, I felt guilty that it was so easy on my end.

45:21 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. I love that. So Ryan, what advice would you have for somebody that is just getting started in their sales career today?

45:28 Ryan Jaseph: I mean, there's no substitute for hard work. Put in the time and effort. Talk to people who've been doing this for a long time. And sometimes I think one of the things that helped me when I first started was I had a couple of people who I knew. I had a boss that was supportive. I had Like my grandfather, love him. He was not in sales, but he was very business savvy. I would just go and talk to him once in a while about things going on, and he would kind of help me understand why. I mean, just kind of how the business world worked in general. So I would tell you, find a mentor, work hard, and do your best to make sure that you can understand what's going on. And you know what? It's okay. Like I did in the wealth management side, if you find something that you're not enjoying, That's fine. Specialization of labor is a thing. Just try some different areas and see what you enjoy. And maybe you realize later, you're like, you know what? I'm going to go back to something I did previously because I'm glad I had these opportunities, but I find that this is where I want to be. But now I know. Hard work is… I think Ashton Kutcher had a speech a couple of years ago about it that I remember listening to, and I was like, man, that's right. And I think he said exactly that. There's no substitute for hard work and trying to find ways to do the right thing. And if you can do that, you'll be successful.

46:46 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I think we overlook this enjoyment piece, this right fit piece, and too often we're just sort of defaulting down a path that is, well, on paper it's more money, or I'm supposed to get these promotions and I'm supposed to do these things. And there's multiple people in this community that have been inspired by this idea of being an intentional individual contributor. It's like, wait a minute, you mean I don't have to go do that? Because I can make great money being a great seller and I enjoy that the most. So the enjoyment piece has a lot of value that we don't, because it's not economic. I think we overlook too easily.

47:30 Ryan Jaseph: Agreed. Oh yes. Because that's always the first thing, whether you're coming out of high school, you're coming out of college, you're like, all right, where do I go to make money? That might work to a certain point, but there's going to be a time where you're like, you know what, I just don't enjoy this. I need peace of mind. And I think that's been something for me, especially the last… that's been a COVID thing as well. Peace of mind and mental health were not always something that was ever really kind of discussed about that should be part of your process. My wife and I talk when we spend money on something. We've gotten to the point where we kind of prefer to do experiences. We want to do fun things. One of the things, and that's what we always talk about, it's crazy. We had a group trip that we planned because there were 8 of us that actually got planned to go to Jamaica, and it got set up for March 1st through March 7th of 2020. And it was a crazy time because when we left for that trip on March 1st, COVID was a thing, but it wasn't something that was going to drastically change the world. And it was interesting because by the time we came back on those flights on March 8th, the world had changed so much. Our flights were fine, but we flew through the Chicago airport and we're looking around like, there's no one here. This is creepy. And because of everything that changed afterwards, we're so grateful for that trip because not only did it get us out, but it just reminded us that an experience with friends like that is worth so much because you can't take it for granted. We really weren't able to do much else the rest of 2020 because Everything was shut down. So our group of friends still talks about that trip. We talk about the world pre-Jamaica and post-Jamaica because after the world we came back to weren't the same place, but that was an experience. We realized later in that year, we're like, man, that's where we want to put our time and money because that's something that we enjoy. It gives us motivation to work hard so we could do something like that. Yeah.

49:22 Scott Ingram: Going back to the advice piece one more time, we talked about kind of starting a career. What about kind of mid-career? What advice do you have for somebody that is like, okay, maybe I'm doing okay, I'm doing good, but I haven't gotten to great yet. I want to be Ryan level. What advice do you have for them?

49:38 Ryan Jaseph: So that's what they want me to start doing at the bank is helping bring people kind of to that level. I guess I'm kind of learning and I'm going to figure more of that out over the next year. But my plans are to help them set up processes like what you and I have been talking about, where their consistency consistency in how often they are doing all their projects, whether it's the internal stuff on Salesforce, whether it's external stuff dealing with clients, but making sure there's a plan set up so that way they know what they need to do to succeed. And I'm going to tell them, look guys, this isn't a foolproof plan. It's not going to be successful every year. There's going to be ups and downs. That's an industry and an economy thing. We can't affect a lot of that. But the more that you can put these processes and plans in place, I think the more successful you will be, the more consistently you can be in your approach, the better off I think we're going to be. And it helps because we're not trying to be proactive versus reactive. It's very powerful and it helps because being reactive all day long is rough, but being able to be proactive and getting out in front of things can help these processes come along in a way where they're a lot easier to understand and be a part of and make them simpler.

50:50 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Let me give you some new Ps. So we talked about PPP, and I am a stupefying fan of alliteration. That's why we have the Sales Success Stories and Sales Success Summit. What I heard just now is you're helping them create a process to perform.

51:05 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely.

51:06 Scott Ingram: And just to throw some more P words in there, it sounds like a big part of it is, especially as you talked about the overwhelm piece, is it's also like, how do you prioritize?

51:16 Ryan Jaseph: Right?

51:16 Scott Ingram: Like having that process, but then being intentional and deciding what do I need to work on? What is the important stuff? What's going to move the needle so that I can be consistent? I can be reliable. It's interesting. I mean, we're early in the year here, kind of collectively within the Sales Success Society. Thanks to Abel Lomas. He brought up this idea of kind of having a word of the year or a phrase of the year. This is my theme. Team and my own, I came to sort of crazy consistency because when you do the right things consistently, they don't have to be huge. I'm not talking about… I did a sales tip on this recently. A year is a long time. You can't sprint for a year, but it's really about what is a pace that you can maintain and just be super consistent. I mean, in your world, it sounds like the result of that is I'm in touch with my clients regularly. I'm in touch with my clients on time. They know they can rely on me. And then I have to imagine a lot of your other business comes because of that, because they're referring, because you've got a client who's in a group like, my banker's useless. Well, you have the wrong banker.

52:25 Ryan Jaseph: I love your points there. I absolutely agree. One of the things that we were talking about recently was, it wasn't bank-related, but it was, they were talking about, they're like, hey, I'm trying to lose weight and I feel like I can't do that fast enough. Think of it just like in banking things. It takes time. Like you're not going to lose 30 pounds in a month, probably not safely in most cases. And again, just being general, but I'm like, think of it this way. If you lose 1 pound every other week, that's 2 pounds a month. That's 24 pounds a year. That's a goal for you to get to. And that's more obtainable. It doesn't feel like it has to all happen at once because if you do that and at the end of month 1, You're like, I didn't lose 30 pounds on something that was not an obtainable goal. You're going to be frustrated. You're going to be disappointed. And then you're almost wondering, why am I doing this? To your point, I think, yeah, take these goals and these processes and make them realistic. And sometimes I like to look at it in terms of, and I think that's one thing else that I've helped customers with is just like, all right, I don't explain it to them in banking terms, but I explain it to them in what they're doing. You know, guys on the bank side of this, we look at it this way. In your world, it would mean X. It would mean getting your accounts receivable from getting the cash received faster. It would be for a CPA firm being able to be more efficient at how fast you're able to produce audits for clients, meaning you can do more through the year. So trying to relate to them in those kinds of aspects, I think helps as well.

53:54 Scott Ingram: Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, you're embarking on this journey to start to impart your knowledge and help other people be successful. What would you want to know about the top sellers in other organizations?

54:06 Ryan Jaseph: I'm always curious as to see… I kind of want to go to some bigger markets. I'd love to hear from their top performers and be like, what items do you guys have that are successful? Is it the same things we're doing? Are there different things you're doing? And it's of course tough because each market is unique to itself in terms of what businesses are there. But I'm kind of like you. I'd love to hear what kind of behaviors they have, what kind of networking groups they're part of, or just what the needs are of the clients, because sometimes industries do a good job of helping establish products that customers didn't know they needed yet. I think the networking part is always fun to me because I enjoy getting to know new people, especially business owners. I would be curious as to how other areas, whether it's in a different state or a different industry, how they kind of get to their book of business, how they build it up the way they do. That's one of the things I always ask when I meet other people who interact with businesses is what kind of activities do you do, or whether it's trade groups or chambers of commerce or nonprofits or whatever, what kind of things do you do and what has been most successful for you helping build a book of business? Those are good ways to start, but I think it always comes back to that customer service part and the word-of-mouth referrals as to how you become more successful.

55:22 Scott Ingram: Yeah, let's touch on that just a little bit, just kind of the networking side and maybe a little bit more of kind of the COI. Like, what specifically have you you found, whether it's your approach or the groups you're associating with? Like, what in that has been the most successful for you? What works for you in your market?

55:39 Ryan Jaseph: I probably have 2 COIs. One's a business law attorney and the other's a managing principal of a CPA firm who I've worked with for going on about 12 years now. The first one is the attorney. We helped him start his law firm. He was a partner at a different firm before, and when he was branching on his own, We helped him get that started. And for him, he tells the story all the time. He goes, when I started my law firm, I met with 5 banks because I knew people all over the place. And when I met with Ryan, he was the only one that listened to me and said, yeah, what you're looking for, we can do that. Everyone else was, I guess, very just kind of iffy on, well, maybe we can do this, but we want to try some different options. And what he was talking about wasn't crazy at all. I didn't think… I was very confident. I was like, all right, what you're talking about, we've got this. We can handle this. You know, as long as these things line up, up, we're gonna do this. And he appreciated that. And then just the fact that we've stayed in touch and we have a lot of clients in common, that's been a great referral source for me. He's been with me for a long time and understands how we work. The CPA, he's actually turned into one of my best friends who's actually best man at my wedding. We're similar age. We started out kind of along the same paths. He was a CPA looking for clients. I was a banker looking for clients. We realized very quickly We got along really well, so we kind of started attending network events and doing some not-for-profit work together and kind of mutually talking to clients about, hey, I can do your banking, Tim can do your accounting work, and we can make this work in a way where it's evolved over time now where I think it's awesome because literally he'll have people that he talks to all the time who just like, man, this doesn't make sense or that, or I'm not sure what's going on. And all he does is just say, call Ryan. He's definitely one of my biggest source of referrals and vice versa. We have a lot, a lot of mutual clients because their firm fits a lot of the bank clients in terms of what we do. But I love the fact that, again, somebody will say something to him or he called me the other day, customer of his called me the other day because literally the guy was like, he called Tim or Tim's working on some stuff, information for him. He goes, man, what do you mean you didn't earn any interest? You had $2 million in the bank. Your bank's not doing the right thing for you. Call Ryan. He'll get you set up because your money's not working for you as efficiently as it can. I mean, he had a contractor that he worked with that he's like, man, these guys are just crazy. The steps they're making me go through doesn't make sense. I'm not asking for a whole lot. I don't understand it. And Tim knows what we do. He's just like, yeah, no, you're right. This shouldn't be crazy. Call Ryan.

58:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And the great thing about those types of relationships Obviously, your business is growing, Tim's business is growing, and all of your mutual clients are getting a better deal. Like, you guys work together well behind the scenes. It's going to be more seamless for them. Everybody's winning in those situations, right? When you have those types of relationships.

58:29 Ryan Jaseph: Absolutely. We just had a meeting actually in December with a client that works with both the attorney and the CPA and myself. We've taken care of this client for forever, and we're talking about succession planning because the owner's working on retiring. Her grandson's going to take over. And it's just one of those things where I think she can tell because we've done this enough times where we're just like, we just need to know, all right, is it this type of transaction or is it that type of transaction? And then what that means. And then it's like, all right, that's what this means on the bank. We talk through, we're like, all right, the legal side's going to set it up this way. I'm like, all right, on the accounting side, are you going to do this or that? He answers me and I'm like, all right, we've got this. We can move forward. In an hour, we handled deals that usually would take in a normal transaction that's not this take days or weeks and it's emails back and forth and phone calls back and forth and trying to get all 3 sides of the triangle together is not easy. So when we get together and do this, it's exactly what you're saying. It works out really well for everybody involved. And I think once people see it, they get it. And it's a beautiful thing.

59:32 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Love it.

59:33 Ryan Jaseph: Love it. Love it.

59:34 Scott Ingram: Well, we have covered a lot of ground and I always like to try and kind of summarize and boil this down into something actionable. So what would you challenge our listener to do over the course of the next 1 to 2 weeks to improve themselves and improve their results?

59:48 Ryan Jaseph: Plan. Plan for 2024. Ask yourself, what are your goals for the year and how do you get there? I mean, just like what we're talking about with the losing weight, let's have some short-term goals and let's have some long-term goals. Usually, and those short-term goals should blend into what those long-term goals are. What kind of processes can they put in place? What kind of activities can they do? To make themselves more successful. Talk to somebody who is. Get advice from somebody you value and trust and ask them what they do. I mean, there's no one answer for everybody. What I do for me isn't necessarily going to work for somebody else because there's a little bit different approaches to it. But there's lots of good bankers around. I always tell people, especially if it's a business customer, when I prospect them, I tell them, hey, if you're happy with your bank and everything works out great, that's fine. You're not who I'm looking for. I'm looking for somebody who doesn't know who their banker is or hasn't talked to them in a while and wants a relationship. Ask yourself, how do you find those people? Who's your target audience? What do you have to do to put something in place to be able to reach your goals? Whether it's in banking, whether it's in whatever industry you're in, just put some things in place and look at it 3 months down the road. Say, have I done enough effort to try to be… again, try to be more proactive than reactive. Have I done enough To be able to achieve my goals, and have I put processes in place that can make me more consistent in my approach?

1:01:13 Scott Ingram: Brilliant. Well said, Ryan. Thanks so much. This has been a blast.

1:01:17 Ryan Jaseph: No, appreciate it, Scott. Thank you for what you guys do. It's great to be a part of something where you're able to kind of tell your story, and hopefully it makes a difference because hopefully it doesn't sound too generic. But at the end of the day, we want this world to be a better place, and I'd like to think there's a lot of us out here trying. To help that happen. You know, sales kind of has a negative connotation to it sometimes, but I really more look at it as needs-based sales versus trying to put somebody and just sell something for the sake of selling it. That doesn't work. But if you can help somebody in a way where it means something to them and benefits them, that's a difference maker for everybody. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.