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Speaker 1: And now it is my pleasure to do something I've never done before.

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Speaker 1: I have four beautiful women on my show today.

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Speaker 1: I think three is the most we've ever had.

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Speaker 1: But today we have the leadership team from Five Star Bank in the house today and so I'm gonna come clean.

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Speaker 1: I'm a little intimidated, so I want to come clean on that to our audience and to our guests.

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Speaker 1: But what I want to do, maybe to start off with, we're gonna be talking about culture today and building a great culture and why is culture important, and then how do you do it and sustain it.

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Speaker 1: But before we do that, maybe I'll have each of you go around and introduce yourself and maybe give me just a little bit of how you got to Five Star Bank, and just you want to start us off.

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Speaker 2: Sure.

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Speaker 2: So my name is Lydia Ramirez and I'm the Chief Operations Officer and Chief Diversity, equity and Inclusion Officer for the company.

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Speaker 2: A little over six years ago, I made my journey to Five Star Bank and it was really looking for just a change in what I was wanting to do with my personal career and looking for some more flexibility and creativity in my career, and Five Star Bank really provided me that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: Hi everyone.

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Speaker 4: My name is Heather Luck, chief Financial Officer.

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Speaker 4: I've been with Five Star now for almost five years.

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Speaker 4: I am a CPA and former Big Four accountant and, funny enough, I was never involved in banking.

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Speaker 4: This is the first bank I've ever worked for and I love it.

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Speaker 4: I came to Five Star because of the leadership team, because of the growth possibilities, because of all the good I knew we could do in the marketplace, and so that's really what attracted me to Five Star.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm Jen Madelich, senior Vice President, business Development Officer.

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Speaker 5: I do focus on the construction industry group.

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Speaker 5: Why I joined Five Star was gosh.

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Speaker 5: It was about five years ago and, ironically, the reason I joined was truly because of the culture.

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Speaker 5: I was looking for a good culture fit for me, coming from Big Bank for over 15 years.

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Speaker 5: Five Star was the right fit for everything.

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Speaker 5: It didn't clip my wings and I was able to really flourish and grow because of them.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, can you hear me?

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Speaker 1: You're gonna have to speak into that.

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Speaker 3: My name is Nikki Five Star Bank.

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Speaker 3: I started Five Star Bank two years ago.

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Speaker 3: I have been in banking from the last 17 years and, yes, then I was looking for a bank where I can actually really help my clients.

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Speaker 3: I was struggling with that and when I talked to James Beckwith and Mike Rizzo about, like what I'm looking for, they gave me exactly what I wanted that somewhere I can help my clients, I can grow their business, help them grow, help like my portfolio grow and talk to like help my community.

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Speaker 3: Five Star Bank gave me a huge opportunity to help my community.

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Speaker 3: I mean we sponsor a lot of like community events.

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Speaker 3: We are out and about talking to small business owners.

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Speaker 3: I mean that's exactly what I was looking for.

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Speaker 3: So I mean this is the perfect culture to be here.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so we're gonna talk a little bit about a lot about culture, but maybe go into a little bit of Five Star Banks culture, because you started as I've referred to you as the entrepreneurs bank several times in my career, because I think you help entrepreneurs, for sure, but you're also entrepreneurial thinking by nature and I think that goes back to the founders originally, right, the Ramesses and the Oats, and some of those people entrepreneurs decided to start a bank to help other businesses, so you guys ended up becoming this B2B bank and so you're really in a position, with what your client base looks like, to not only understand your culture but see the culture of successful companies in the Sacramento region, and even companies that maybe aren't as successful, and how much of that has to do with culture.

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Speaker 1: Why is culture so important to us?

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Speaker 2: Well, I can answer.

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Speaker 2: We'll start and let my colleagues jump in, but I would say for us it's really about being nimble, and I think that's the one thing that I can say.

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Speaker 2: Our customers appreciate about us is our culture allows for an opportunity to be able to grow in partnership with them, from beginning through the middle, as they grow and get to a stage where they decide what they want to do next.

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Speaker 2: Driving that customer experience, being that speed to serve, is really what has allowed us to participate in that growth, not only with our customers but in the community.

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Speaker 2: So we're going grow.

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Speaker 2: We're growing hand-in-hand with them, but that culture of giving back to those that we serve is ingrained in us and that was ingrained from our founders, and I think that space in particular, is what we really do well.

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Speaker 1: Well, we talk about culture and the importance of it, and okay, so we'll go to the CFO here.

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Speaker 1: But is how much does that affect the bottom line?

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Speaker 1: Great culture?

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Speaker 1: Do you feel like it's a big effect on the financial success of a company?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely.

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Speaker 4: You know, I feel like if you have a good culture in your company and you've cultivated that, you're doing not only what's right by your shareholders, you're doing what's right for your customers and you're doing what's right for your employees right Because, let's face it, if you have someone that you're doing business with that doesn't have a good culture, you just don't enjoy doing business with them.

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Speaker 4: You're not gonna keep coming back.

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Speaker 4: You're not gonna refer other customers in Same thing.

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Speaker 4: On the employee side too, if you have people that are not engaged, they're not here, you know, because they really want to be.

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Speaker 4: They're just here for a job and a paycheck you're gonna have turnover.

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Speaker 4: You're gonna have more expenses.

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Speaker 4: It's more expensive to hire a new employee than it is to retain one, so it absolutely does come to the bottom line.

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Speaker 5: Pig back on that too, because I think just being a biz dev officer going out, meeting with business owners, the culture is what's important too.

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Speaker 5: That they mirror our culture as well.

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Speaker 5: When I go in, if they have turnover, turnover is costly, that's another explanation.

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Speaker 5: So how they treat their people to ensure that we kind of are in line with our cultures and we can grow together, I think is very important.

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Speaker 5: That's something that's important to me when I go out and visit my clients as well.

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Speaker 1: What do you see in terms of culture and how it affects the success of the organization or the lack of success?

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Speaker 3: I would like to say that Word gets out, so it's good or bad, right it's out, yeah especially today's day and age, right with the glass door or whatever these things are.

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Speaker 1: People talk about what kind of company you are to work for, work with exactly as a market president.

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Speaker 3: When I go and I talk to business owners I say five-star bank and it's like boom.

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Speaker 1: Okay.

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Speaker 3: They already know about us, they know our culture, they know all the good things, everything that we are doing out there, how we are helping small businesses and people call us all the time that, hey, how I can be like Jen was mentioning.

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Speaker 3: Yesterday we had a meeting and Jen was saying people wants to be a part of five-star bank.

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Speaker 3: You know, everybody wants to be a part of any culture.

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Speaker 3: So that's what we look for and that's what we strive for.

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Speaker 1: It was we talked about at the beginning of the show, that the show would have talked a little bit about managing Culture and growing a culture during maybe more challenging times, and I think there's probably no industry over the last six to twelve months that it have Maybe felt as much challenges as the banking industry with SVB.

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Speaker 1: Svb and some of the others that are, you know, create a lot of uncertainty, but you've managed through that.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about maybe some of the, the ways that you manage through Uncertainty during these.

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Speaker 1: You manage your culture through these uncertain times.

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Speaker 2: Well, I can say that for us specifically, the leadership team, right employee engagement Really is the foundation in terms of how we create success, and so being in tune with what that looks like and putting the tools in place to do so, hiring right Is incredibly important, and no one is perfect.

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Speaker 2: So we're not saying five-star bank is perfect, but we are saying that we collectively hire.

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Speaker 2: So most of our folks that are coming on board Experience two to three interviews to make sure there's a cultural fit on both sides of that table.

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Speaker 2: It's not just a one-way street, and so I would say that is the biggest piece of it is is figuring out if there's a fundamental culture fit, because we we are a Mean, lean, growing machine and I think that most people to Nikki's point earlier they really want to be a part of that winning culture and so.

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Speaker 2: But the foundational component is kind of keeping your ear to the ground when it comes to the employee engagement as you go through challenging times being aware, being open, being honest, having great communication strategies and hiring.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm gonna go through that.

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Speaker 1: At your, one of your teammates provided a framework for today's conversation, kind of kind of the framework that maybe the organization sort of thinks about as they build culture.

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Speaker 1: So Shelley hooked us up with this and so talking about pipeline hiring and Onboarding, engagement and communication, so I'll kind of go through that in that sort of order.

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Speaker 1: But you know, we you and I were talking Heather, before the show a little bit about, you know, managing through Growth, right.

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Speaker 1: So we, we went through what this many, many banking crisis, if you will and Five-star came out at the other end of this Looking great with expansion plans.

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Speaker 1: So you're growing, expanding your asset base through this, what most people would say would be a challenging time.

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Speaker 1: Let's go defense.

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Speaker 1: Let's go play defense.

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Speaker 1: You've decided to play offense.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, tell me about that you know we're all living in the banking industry in about a once every 15 year opportunity.

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Speaker 4: Right, there's very few times where we've had this many bank failures and acquisitions and we thrive well in a disruptive environment.

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Speaker 4: Right, we are very good.

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Speaker 4: Whenever you know there's chaos in the market or or there's murders and acquisitions or there's failures, you know we can come in and be there for new customers and be a source of strength and Solidity to make sure that they know that they have an institution that they can trust.

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Speaker 4: And so you know, we recognize that opportunity when it happened.

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Speaker 4: You know, march was a crazy time for every banker and what happened was unfortunate and we really, you know you never want to see a bank fail whatsoever but that was an opportunity for us to kind of look and say, okay, this is a market.

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Speaker 4: You know, we've always wanted to be the preeminent market, a business bank in Northern California.

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Speaker 4: Well, you kind of can't say that without being in the Bay Area, and so we'd always looked at that and never really knew, kind of how we would do that and this was our opportunity.

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Speaker 1: To where we could say let's go in, let's go in.

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Speaker 1: Well, that's I mean you.

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Speaker 1: We've talked about everything's a leadership issue and you, the leadership at five-star, has the courage and the maybe the foresight to be ready to, to be opportunistic.

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Speaker 5: And there was one thing I want to add to that too is just whether it's PPP, whether it's the banking crisis, one thing that we do very well is we're kind of the og banker, where you get a pick up the phone.

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Speaker 5: You don't have an 800 number.

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Speaker 5: We literally called every one of our clients for the most part, as many as we could right, you're just calling, you're talking if they call us, we're picking up, we're having a conversation, we're not sending out some blanket email again.

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Speaker 5: They're not in some portal and like you're a name, not a number.

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Speaker 5: And I think in tough times Whether it's the PPP, whether it's what do I do with my bank?

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Speaker 5: What options do I have?

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Speaker 5: They know they've got somebody to call and they have a resource and someone that's got their back.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I would don't like Expand on that a little bit too.

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Speaker 1: During the PPP time another really stressful time for all of us I'm a small business guy of the number of small businesses and everybody seemed to be coming to me with how to do PPP, because we, you know, we've got all these companies.

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Speaker 1: And so what did I do?

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Speaker 1: I went to five star bank Well, how do we do this?

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Speaker 1: We applied for a number of PPP loans ourselves and then ended up getting on a zoom call with Mike Rizzo and Really explaining to many, many entrepreneurs around the region how this, how this works because it was, you know, we've never been there before, and so when I think back to To that time, how, how afraid everybody was I've said this to James a few times, james Beck with is you know, I always say that entrepreneurs are the heroes of the American economy, but during the financial Uncertainty associated with all the PPP loans and all that, james and Mike and you all were the heroes of the American economy.

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Speaker 1: You were the ones that really guided us through these challenging times, so you were ready at that moment as well.

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Speaker 1: So you're ready when the opportunity to help somebody occurs.

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Speaker 1: So really appreciate that personally, but I think all of Sacramento can understand why that's important.

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Speaker 1: But thinking about this, okay, let's go to pipeline Now, in building a pipeline, where does that begin in terms of because that's important for building the culture?

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Speaker 1: You wanna have the talent pipeline that aligns with your values.

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Speaker 1: Well, where do you find those people?

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Speaker 3: I would say you go, you talk to the community.

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Speaker 3: It's on the road.

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Speaker 3: We are always out and about.

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Speaker 3: We are talking to business owners and for me personally, it's a lot of referral base.

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Speaker 3: So you help one client, like you just mentioned, right During PPP.

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Speaker 3: You help those customers, you help those prospects, and they're not only coming to you, they're also bringing their family, their friends, everybody over to us, right?

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Speaker 3: Because one business owner, you will see at least 100 people behind them.

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Speaker 3: So this is how we generate the business when it comes to pipeline.

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Speaker 3: We talk to those people, we look at their financials, we work with them.

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Speaker 3: Not everything turn into like a opportunity right away, right.

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Speaker 3: So we help them, we look at their financials, we set up a plan for them Two years, three years from now.

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Speaker 3: Let's look at this.

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Speaker 3: This is how we're gonna do it, this is how we are going to help you.

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Speaker 3: So there are people that have been working for years and they're still not ready yet, right.

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Speaker 1: So you help them, you support them and people appreciate that and that's how you turn that opportunity into pipeline, and I think that's true when we're hiring employees as well, because Shelly mentioned in her notes that and I knew this because, like Crystal Ray High School, you're beginning to infiltrate the community with high school children that are becoming employees.

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Speaker 1: I know you have employees of Crystal.

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Speaker 1: These high school students are coming to work and getting an internship type of thing at five star.

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Speaker 1: We've done that as well here, but you're also involved in the universities and I mean are these partnerships, do they pay off now or are these long-term ways of approaching it?

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Speaker 2: Definitely long-term place, Okay, and it's meaningful work, right.

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Speaker 2: So it's about, again, mirroring the communities in which we serve.

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Speaker 2: And so, when you think about that and you think about just the four of us, right, we absolutely mirror the communities in which we serve.

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Speaker 2: And by doing that, we all have a background that is shared.

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Speaker 2: And much of that starts with some form of a goal to attain some sort of higher education.

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Speaker 2: And we want to be able to infiltrate our community at that space, the high school space, right, so that they understand what it takes to be successful an entrepreneur, a banker, a hairstylist, whatever you want to do but to know that you need to strive for something.

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Speaker 2: And so Crystal Ray's near and dear to my heart, for sure.

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Speaker 2: We bring on at least three students every single year and they go through learning how to be a teller.

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Speaker 2: So, whether they're a sophomore, junior, senior in high school, they'll have some tangible skills that they can go and do part-time work as they're working through getting through college.

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Speaker 2: Hopefully, we partner very closely with most of the major universities around the area Sac State, UOP, UC Davis, just to name a few and we even go beyond those ones.

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Speaker 2: And then, right now, we're starting to really pick up some of our partnerships with the Los Rios community colleges as well and diving into some of that.

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Speaker 2: But I would say you know, it's really Heather's team who helps to lead our human resources group.

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Speaker 2: That really kind of helps to bring that all to come to fruition.

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Speaker 4: Yeah it really is.

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Speaker 4: You know, I think one thing that makes Five Star Bank unique is we do have a younger employee base.

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Speaker 4: We love having that young energy so we can train and develop and build into good bankers or accountants or compliance.

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Speaker 4: You know we have all different sources that we recruit for and the pipeline it runs long.

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Speaker 4: You know we have a workforce plan.

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Speaker 4: We know that as we grow we also need to add in the support.

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Speaker 4: We need to add in more business development officers, people to support them, people to support back office, and you know we're very much lifelong learners.

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Speaker 4: Every single person here, I think, has done some educational course at least once through Five Star Bank.

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Speaker 4: Right, so we're never done, and so I think that kind of culture of being continuously learning, continuously improving, is really what makes us special, and I think it helps our younger people learn that this isn't where I end, this is where I begin and this is where I build all my skills.

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Speaker 1: Are there any techniques that you use that maybe I don't know if they're proprietary or maybe unique to Five Star in some way in terms of recruitment that allows you to get the best and the brightest?

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Speaker 4: I think, well, yes, I think there's a few things that we do, one of which is we do participate in instructor-led courses at the colleges, and so they actually get to interact with certain members of the C-suite and senior management team, and it puts a face to a name.

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Speaker 4: It's not just, oh, heather Luck, cfo, is going into an interview, it's oh, we've seen each other on campus multiple times, right, and so campus recruiting is effective.

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Speaker 4: Another program that we have that I love and I've never seen anywhere that I've worked before, is our accelerated leadership track.

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Speaker 4: So we hire people.

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Speaker 4: They have a full-time job when they start with us fresh out of college and they actually get to do three or four rotations in different departments to kind of see where their best fit is.

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Speaker 4: So we'll have people do rotations in operations and accounting and compliance or data IT, and get to do rotations and then see where they fit, and then that's where they're landed.

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Speaker 4: It's not a temp to hire, it's a you already have a job.

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Speaker 1: So who's a good culture fit for five-star, and who's not?

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Speaker 1: Who's like oh, when you see this happen, stay away.

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Speaker 5: Wait, I have to say because I do have.

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Speaker 1: No, I've got a signal.

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Speaker 1: I was like you're in the goop interview.

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Speaker 1: It's got the signal of no Hard cat, A couple of things.

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Speaker 5: I just laughed.

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Speaker 5: I used to be a manager back in the day, so now I just manage my clients and whatnot and got an awesome team.

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Speaker 5: But I always say it's like a wave it sucks in or it spits you out.

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Speaker 5: You've got the right work ethic, you're self-motivated, you're dedicated, you're ambitious.

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Speaker 5: If you have that culture, you walk with a sense of purpose, you want to get things done, you want to be a part of the team, then you're for five-star.

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Speaker 5: If you're looking for an easy job and you want to sit around and you know I don't know what people do these days sometimes work in remote, but it's like if you want to work and you want to be a part of something bigger, you want to have an impact in the community.

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Speaker 5: Five-stars are jammed and I can tell you I've seen folks I've been around five years now I know from day one up they're going to be there or up they're not, and you can just tell In the ones that are a fit, it is the best team out there and you know that it literally anyone will roll up their sleeves any day.

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Speaker 5: Any time you ask anyone to help you, whether it's in their department or it's not, they'll be there, and I think that to me just from day to day, what we see, it's pretty apparent when they're the five-star fit, and also you see their boots on the ground too, yeah and some of that is sort of they come in with that and then sometimes people come in and they that strengthens that commitment to just doing the right thing strengthens because of the rest of the people.

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Speaker 1: So what, how do you incentivize or make it so that people want to, you know, be a part of that innovative, go-forward type of culture?

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Speaker 3: I feel like our management does a great job of encouragement and recognizing the people to see, okay, it encourage everybody.

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Speaker 3: So there's so many different things.

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Speaker 3: I mean there's Complan, which is very strong.

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Speaker 3: So then there is like it depends upon what are you looking for, right, so management can talk to you about that.

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Speaker 3: Like when I came on board, right For me, it was huge to okay, this is I had my bullet points, right, and they were interviewing me.

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Speaker 3: I was interviewing them, right.

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Speaker 3: So if it's like Lydia was mentioning two-way street, right.

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Speaker 3: So when you're self-motivator, when you already know, okay, you can make it happen.

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Speaker 3: Right, this is the right bank for you, this is the right job for you, and then the management, they will do anything for you.

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Speaker 3: Sky's the limit.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a very happy employee, I love working for five-star bank and I tell everybody, like, okay, if, like Jen was just mentioning right, you get up and you wanna make it happen, this is the right place for you.

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Speaker 3: If you want to sit around and just waiting for it to happen, no, it's not so.

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Speaker 1: Shelly mentioned that you look for people that are humble, hungry and smart.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so how do you recognize humility?

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Speaker 1: Because when you're a job interview, you're selling yourself to a certain extent and you don't wanna cross that line and not sound humble.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 2: I think it's really in the behavioral questions that you can identify humility.

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Speaker 2: When you're asking what does customer experience mean to you?

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Speaker 2: Tell me a time that you went above and beyond.

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Speaker 2: It's those moments where you can kind of listen to their humility come into play without asking tell me how awesome you are.

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Speaker 2: And they're not necessarily doing that, but to your point, it is an interview.

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Speaker 2: Right, you wanna put your best foot forward.

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Speaker 2: But I think, to Jen's point, we're pretty good at recognizing what's a good fit right off the bat and it's not always an extrovert.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes you've had some very intelligent introverts that are just gonna be extremely great team players.

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Speaker 2: And kind of going back to that incentive component, like for those that work in the back shop, is in other stuff.

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Speaker 2: We have Marcom recaps that really highlights specific departments that are doing really well.

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Speaker 2: We do monthly get-togethers with our departments, we do quarterly luncheons, we do a lot of stuff to make sure that they know that we are appreciative of their work.

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Speaker 2: James, as our leader, has been just instrumental at making sure that no good deed goes unnoticed when we get on those quarterly calls.

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Speaker 2: Specifically with the communication he's highlighting our back office person who didn't even recognize that James knows my name, like he knows what I did.

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Speaker 2: How does?

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Speaker 4: James know my name.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, right, so and then they kind of get really red and humbled that something that they did had such an impact or profound impact, especially if it's like a big save for a customer or a big win, highlighting everyone that is involved, Because a lot of the times our salespeople they are always in the limelight and when we can really bring out the efforts that's being done by the entire team and recognizing the teamwork that it takes to bring on a client, to retain a client, to push forward a very productive and profitable business, it's every single one of us.

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Speaker 2: We're all part of that pie.

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Speaker 2: There's not one person that stands out above the best.

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Speaker 1: You guys went public a couple of years ago so successful private company, highly successful decided to be opportunistic and now you're on NASDAQ, which is awesome.

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Speaker 1: Gives you more capital to continue to grow the business.

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Speaker 1: But that means you're hiring a lot of people, I assume, over the course of this time, and so you've got to onboard this, and I know when you're onboarding people in quantity, you've got to be process-driven.

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Speaker 1: Can you speak to that?

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Speaker 4: Yeah, so we really.

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Speaker 4: I think, as a result of going public, the biggest area where we actually had to hire was in my department, the finance group, to support all the SEC reporting.

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Speaker 4: So fortunately, for most everyone else.

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Speaker 4: It kind of gave them a little notch of yes, we're public, yes, that's another stronghold in the community, right, but as we do have a very robust onboarding process, right, so we have what does your day one look like?

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Speaker 4: Who are you gonna meet with on your day one?

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Speaker 4: Making sure that those people are already coordinated on their calendar.

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Speaker 4: So then that way they have their touch point, their culture champion, to say, okay, I know that if I have a question, I can go to Jen and ask her anything, and she's been here five years.

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Speaker 4: She can help me get on board.

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Speaker 4: We also have new hire luncheons with the entire C-suite, so we do that on at least a quarterly basis and that's such a unique opportunity where brand new people and it doesn't matter what level is hired in, every new hire goes to this lunch and they hear from James, they hear from the C-suite, they.

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Speaker 4: It really is just like a nice open dialogue where we all just kind of sit around a table and get to know each other and then from there we have kind of the more routine like 30, 60, 90 day touch points just to make sure that they're getting what they need.

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Speaker 4: Because, it's been said here before it's a two-way street.

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Speaker 4: Right, they're working for us, but we're also bringing them into the team, and so we do them a disservice if we just do their day one and don't follow up yeah, Well, I think what I've heard too is that you make it fun.

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Speaker 1: Part of this is part of going to work is loving what you do, and so I know you guys have different ways that you drive fun in the workplace.

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Speaker 1: I know one of them is like a running club and other things that you do.

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Speaker 5: Oh, I just want to say I love fun, so that's a big part of the culture.

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Speaker 5: I think fun should be my middle name, especially those that know me.

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Speaker 5: I actually joined the running club because that was a way to get involved in Shelley Wetton and Mike Rizzo they're captains for the team and that was such a cool experience.

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Speaker 1: I wanted runners.

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Speaker 1: Mike's a runner, I know.

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Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, he's a runner.

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Speaker 5: Shelley's ran one for, but there was 17 of us that finished a half marathon, the shamrock and run.

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Speaker 5: I can tell you personally, I've never ran before more than three miles and I love the accountability.

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Speaker 5: I love I get FOMO, so I like to be a part of the team.

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Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, I guess I'm doing this, but it was so great to see.

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Speaker 5: Speaking of culture, we had people from different departments, people I had never met that were in back office, and now here we've got a group text, we're calling, we're cheerleaders for each other, we wake up, we run, we cheer each other's on and it's just a whole nother way to bring the team together and that has just been such a cool experience and that's just one of the things, on top of book clubs and all kinds of other stuff, I can Hiking clubs.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you think about these strong cultures and there is.

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Speaker 1: You need that opportunity to engage outside of work a little bit and let your hair down and make it human, make it that kind of place.

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Speaker 1: Thinking about that, it's been mentioned and one of my mantras is that, as a CEO, our biggest obsession should be, you know, communication.

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Speaker 1: Clarity of vision, clarity within the organization is enormous, especially when you have a growing company.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about your communication strategies beyond the running club.

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Speaker 1: How do we at Five Star best communicate with each other and how does that communication facilitate strengthening of the culture and strengthening of the organization?

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Speaker 1: Wanna start?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I would like to say we get like a weekly email from James Backwood every Friday, which is very like always good news it's, it's most of the time.

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Speaker 1: It's like announcements.

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Speaker 1: Keep it real, no.

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Speaker 3: I, to be honest, I have never seen James Backwood in such a mood.

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Speaker 3: We're like, okay, keep it real, he's always fun, yeah, and of course he's the CEO.

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Speaker 3: We have a job to do.

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Speaker 1: I thought maybe when you guys went public he wouldn't be as fun anymore because, like, hey, you got the SEC or whoever you know, sarbanes Oxley all this extra.

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Speaker 1: You know rigging Morrell he's still showing up at events and having a good time.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and not only that.

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Speaker 3: He, like Lydia was just mentioning, he knows everybody's names and it's very impressive.

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Speaker 3: I want to learn how he does it, because he know everybody's name.

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Speaker 3: He even know my son's name.

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Speaker 3: So when he talked to employees, he's talking to them about how's their day going, anything new, something happening in their life, and he remembers it.

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Speaker 3: It's.

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Speaker 3: It's amazing to me that how does he do it?

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Speaker 3: Right, part of the fun when he's talking to you, when he's like coming with everybody, he knows everybody's story and which is like I mean you feel really appreciated.

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Speaker 3: You know that, okay, he's paying attention, right For fun, like we have this our like quarterly party kind of for all the employees and it's coming up this week on Sunday, so where everybody gets together, all banked people are there and we can like bring like other half right.

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Speaker 3: And then everybody's there having a good time, having like a drink, sharing, having fun.

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Speaker 3: You like hear people's voice all the time, but you really don't like see them that often, right?

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Speaker 3: So it's really good to connect with everybody.

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Speaker 3: And, okay, who are we talking or who are we working with on day to day basis?

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Speaker 2: So it's a lot of fun.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead.

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Speaker 2: I can chime in there too.

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Speaker 2: I would say it's very strategic, right, mark?

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Speaker 2: You're running a company, you want to make sure everybody's on the same page, and I can say we operate off of a human resources committee, so it's a whole group of us that gets together.

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Speaker 2: Well, I should say four of us that get together.

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Speaker 2: And so, yeah, right, who's?

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Speaker 3: the tiebreaker.

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Speaker 3: Are you the tiebreaker?

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Speaker 2: But you know it's it's run strategically.

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Speaker 2: So there's an annual employee gets together.

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Speaker 2: That's what we're going to be doing this weekend.

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Speaker 2: There is a quarterly connect that is led by James.

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Speaker 2: There is fires to fireside chats, ones that happens at the beginning of the year, one that happens in the middle of the year.

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Speaker 2: There is a component for fun, right.

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Speaker 2: So we add department meals that you should go out and hang out with your people to understand who they are.

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Speaker 2: So it's very intentional.

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Speaker 2: But I think the one thing that we can say is the message isn't only said one time, it's constantly communicated at every opportunity, and so each one of these is a touch point for us to get further ingrained into our culture and our why and what we do for not only ourselves, our customers, our shareholders, but the community as well.

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Speaker 1: Well, I love that you've created a strategy around that, because it's critical, because it all can't run up through James Beckwith.

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Speaker 1: I mean, he might be able to be the fireside chat guy, but you have to be able to make decisions without James and your teammates need to be able to make decisions without you.

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Speaker 1: And that comes through understanding where we're going and then empowering people and hopefully allowing them to work independently and ultimately, work within this human system.

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to circle back around this way.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to give each of you, just because of time, give everybody a chance to do like one last comment and we'll start over here, and maybe just one last comment of what did I not ask you that you want to make sure that we include?

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Speaker 3: regarding five star culture, I would like to say like Lydia was grab that mic a little closer, like Lydia was mentioning the monthly madcom.

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Speaker 3: Right, that includes our whole department and our marketing team does a great job.

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Speaker 3: A huge shout out to them that they want to make sure that everybody's recognized and I think that's huge.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I was a.

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Speaker 3: I started with it as a teller.

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Speaker 3: From teller to banker, senior banker, I was a business banking manager, so I have done it all that's culture promoter within right.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, so great to hear.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think it's very humble, hungry and smart that we are recognizing from bottom to top.

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Speaker 3: So everybody feel their value.

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Speaker 1: All right, jim.

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Speaker 1: What did I not ask that you want to make sure we cover?

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Speaker 5: Well, one thing I just want to say is that it starts from the top and it's really leading by example and they're the best role models for the culture that they want.

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Speaker 5: You know, james Beckwith and Lydia and Heather and Shelly and everyone on our team, mike Rizzo, I mean we've got Scott such an amazing leadership team and what they do is they truly believe in the community.

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Speaker 5: Their boots on the ground you see them out there they give us the opportunity to be involved in our communities from a philanthropical standpoint.

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Speaker 5: So all the employees are really.

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Speaker 5: They serve on different boards, they're doing volunteerism.

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Speaker 5: So it's beyond just what happens on the day to day operations on the front lines.

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Speaker 5: It goes back to your communities, to your homes, to what you love and believe in.

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Speaker 5: And that's why I think you see five star everywhere, because we're so deeply embedded in our communities and it truly does start from the top.

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Speaker 4: I think to add on to that is truly, as an organization, we know our why right.

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Speaker 4: We know that we are here to serve our employees, our customers and our shareholders.

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Speaker 4: If you know, if we just keep focusing on that, everything else will fall into place.

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Speaker 4: And as long as we're doing right by our employees, I think that's the biggest part of our culture is just, you know, we've we've all been in everyone's else's shoes, and so if we keep our eye on that, then everything else will fall into place.

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Speaker 1: Right, I'll let our COO sort of wrap us up, Take us to the end.

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Speaker 1: Mike drop moment.

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Speaker 2: I know, so you know I got to speak from my diversity, equity and inclusion heart here, and I think it's it's a lot about marrying the communities in which we serve, and that starts at the top.

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Speaker 2: And for me, when I say the top, that's our board of directors.

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Speaker 2: All the way down, everyone's involved, everyone's engaged and we truly do mirror the communities in which we serve, and we strive to do that with intentionality.

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Speaker 1: Wow, Love it.

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Speaker 1: Well, if you don't like five star, I don't you don't respect local banking, because what you do is you really bring the human touch to, to what could feel like just a bunch of suits, right?

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Speaker 1: Even Jen, Jen and Brink, wearing the pink shirt with the rest of you, are in Baker Black.

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Speaker 2: When Jen came through, it's like no, we're gonna we're gonna lie that it's not making a little fun.

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Speaker 2: She's five stars.

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Speaker 2: She's fun, Jen.

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Speaker 2: That's why she's got the color, love it.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show.

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Speaker 1: Appreciate you.

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Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.