Sam Plester is on a Mission

Hello, and welcome, fellow Awsomologists to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re sitting down with Sam Pluster, CEO of Mission Brands Consulting. Welcome, Sam.

Welcome. Thank you, Sue and Ben, for having me. I’m really excited to be on the podcast.

Well, we are very excited to have you here. Thank you for being with us.

We have some mutual friends in the industry is what I learned when you first reached out. But this is our first time actually meeting.

So let’s take time for you to tell us about yourself, and to be totally transparent now. And, also, I think the accent gives it away. But I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you started your career in the UK. I think your accent probably has something to do with that.

Yep.

So I am curious, though, what got you from there to Madison, Wisconsin, which is where you are now. Right?

I am in Madison, Wisconsin. Yep. This is about, so, I mean, I can cut right to the end. This is about as close to my in laws as I can be without being Amish. So, my wife and I, we met, okay. Before the call, you gave me some certain parameters about words I could use, but we’re I’m just you know, I’m gonna share TMI.

Okay. So we are a one night stand that’s been going on for about fifteen years now, and we’ve got two kids to show for it. So, she and I met in a reggae bar in Vietnam in Hanoi, Vietnam.

And she said, you seem pretty cool. You should move to America with me. And I said, joke’s on you. My mom’s from Red Bank, New Jersey, so I will move to America to be with you.

So, yeah, I went home. I quit my job. I sold all my belongings.

I flew to Chicago, and my now wife and I, who I’ve known for one night, we moved to Vermont.

And that was twenty ten. So but she’s a Wisconsinite originally.

So Okay.

Okay.

Yes. And Wisconsin has been, Wisconsin has been a very good home to me. I didn’t know about the credit union system in the UK, I’m ashamed to say.

And, you know, my wife and I were living in London for a while after Vermont, and we decided we’re not I know you’ll find this hard to believe. We’re not multimillionaires, so we couldn’t afford a four bedroom house in London.

So we decided to relocate to Wisconsin.

Milwaukee was the plan.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a four one four number, because we were supposed to move to Milwaukee, and I, I was messaging everyone on LinkedIn. If you had Milwaukee and marketing in your job title, I was just hounding you saying, I’m a real boy. I swear to god I’m a real boy. I would love it if you’d you know, can I buy you a coffee when I move to America?

And a man who is no longer at, True Stage, Cuti Media Group at the time, he hoodwinked me. He had Milwaukee in his profile because he lived in Milwaukee, but he actually drove to Madison every day.

Okay.

And when I asked if I could buy him a coffee, he said, I can do one better. I have three vacancies. Would you like to come interview for a job? And that so Wisconsin and my credit union career and my credit union passion, they go absolutely hand in hand. One wouldn’t exist without the other.

And and all, to credit to a one night stand?

And all because of a one night stand. This is the thing. Your listeners, when someone says you seem cute, you should go somewhere with me.

I mean, check the van for, you know Yeah.

Text a friend, but I say I say take a chance.

That is awesome. So tell me, what were you doing in Vietnam?

I had some shares come good, Ben. I was how old was I? Twenty I I was twenty six, and I had two thousand pounds, which is about twenty three hundred dollars.

Two thousand pounds in my pocket is the most money I’d ever had ever in the world. And I had a buddy who was living in Vietnam and another buddy who was living in, Abu Dhabi, and the three of us were gonna meet up in a town. So a guy called Adam was gonna fly over from Abu Dhabi. And I met my wife on the second night there, and he flew over from Abu Dhabi.

And I’d I met my wife, and so I I never met up with those guys. And to be honest, I haven’t spoken to one of them since, the one who flew from Abu Dhabi.

But yeah. So she she’d been teaching English out there as, you know, people in their mid twenties do. She had three months left on her contract, and, I had two thousand pounds burning a hole in my pocket.

And, yeah, it was just do you know what? I know this probably isn’t what we’re here to talk about, but I am not a religious person. I don’t necessarily believe in fate, etcetera, etcetera. But at the time, I was living in Angel in London. If you walked out my house and and turned left, you would get to Angel Tube Station in ten minutes. Turned right, you would get to Islington in about fifteen minutes.

Molly, my wife, had been accepted into a college in London and a college in Vermont, and she wasn’t sure which one she was gonna go to. The one in London, I walked past every single day. So one way or another, she and I, we would have met. I firmly believe that.

Wow. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. It is true. This is this is not what we were here to talk about, but now this is suddenly all I want to talk about, Sam.

Yeah.

What a story.

And she, so she has a master’s in drawing comics. That was the other thing. So I moved from Central London to White River Junction, Vermont.

Population two thousand five hundred. It was quite the culture shock. And, I hung out at an MFA program for a couple years.

Yeah.

You never know where life is gonna take you. Right? You know where it’s gonna go.

So That is really cool. Well, my next question Yeah.

Where’d you wanna take your bets? Let’s go. Yeah.

My next question fast forwards us way to twenty twenty three, but I would love for you to pause us and back us up to anything else that you wanna share along the way between twenty ten and now.

But what I’m especially curious about is your starting of Mission Brands, and that happened in twenty twenty three. So definitely wanna know the inspiration behind that and what you have going on, but, feel free to share anything about the journey along the way. We’d love to hear all that too.

Yeah. So, I mean, as I alluded to, yeah, so, honestly, we were not supposed to move to Madison.

I was however old I was in twenty ten, twenty six, twenty seven, something like that. See, now I was cocksure. I was like, this this is fine. Like, I was ten years into my career at the time and, a little more, I suppose.

And so I decided this CUNA Mutual Group interview, I was just gonna go and dust the cobwebs off. Like, we’re not moving to Madison. We’re here to move to Milwaukee. Like, I’m just gonna go and dust the cobwebs off.

And, so my wife drove us up to the mothership. She sat and waited in the parking lot, and I met with two people, neither of whom are there any longer, actually.

And I came out, and I sat back into the car, and I was like, okay.

We’re moving to Madison. Like, those people, I just no comprehension of the credit union system. I had no understanding of it.

And in whatever it was, two and a half hours, that was all it took for me to say, I want to work with those people in that organization doing the things they do for the credit unions they serve.

And I was very fortunate that at the time, Community Mutual Group felt the same way. And so I I was very fortunate to join the team then.

And I was at Cutiometri Group, True Stage for, what, six and a half years or so. And I was always lucky in that, not to say that the other colleagues there aren’t lucky, but I was lucky in that I never had a specific product portfolio. I wasn’t in charge of overseeing how we talk to credit unions about, loan protection or how we talk to credit unions about TrueStage as it was then just as a direct consumer insurance product.

My remit was always how we talk about, the entity as an enterprise, as an institution underneath which multiple different business lines serve credit unions and their members through multiple different ways, as a national philanthropist, as an employer of three and a half thousand people. So I always I felt very privileged that that was my playground while I was there.

And after six and a half years, you know, COVID had happened. I had, I had my first child and, you know, things changed. And someone reached out from the National Credit Union Foundation and asked if I would be interested in moving over there. And, a lot of my a lot of my early career was in, local government in England, nonprofit.

The public sector is a huge employer in England. I’ve never found that to be the case in the states, But you can walk down any street in any town in England, throw a stick, and you’ll hit someone who works for a charity, who works for local government, who works for some kind of nonprofit or public sector entity.

So that certainly kind of called to me just the charitable arm of the credit union system. I want to be involved in that. And, also, I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to test myself. Like, okay. You can do these things at an institution the size and scale with three and a half billion, four billion dollars in assets and, you know, three and a half thousand people.

What do you do when you’ve got some belly button lint and some baked beans to rub together as your marketing budget? You know what I mean? Like, what do you do?

How do you aggregate and curate the impact of credit union system at scale and then use that to to, celebrate the system, but also evangelize it and advocate for it?

So I really I wanted to test myself. I was very fortunate, that at the time, one of my true credit union heroes in Chad Helminac, who’s now at Hughes, he was there at the time as well. And, yeah, we just you know, it was this wonderful opportunity to to see the true scale of the credit union system.

Okay. You, I’m a diligent notes taker, and I understand this is a this is an audio format, so no one’s gonna be able to do this anyway. But, Sue, you and Ben can at least see. I opened up a notepad that’s on my desk.

The first page is the Look at that.

Yeah.

That was the credit union onion right there.

I I am always I am always advocating, always evangelizing. Someone some poor sap somewhere asked me something, and I sat down and drew the onion for him.

So I I wanted to be able the the foundation gave me exposure to the onion. The full breadth of the system.

And it was thrilling, but it was also, it was also disheartening is not the right word, but the credit union system is hurting.

You know, I’ve just got back from GAC.

That’s why I’m actually talking a little horse. I’ve just got back from GAC.

And there’s a there was a lot of real talk this time. I felt I felt the temperature in the room was higher or perhaps cooler than I than I’d felt before. There’s there’s a genuine nervousness about, tax exemption and what that can mean. There’s genuine nervousness about CDFI status.

And credit unions, on mass, I I think are hurting. They are overwhelmingly struggling for deposits, struggle struggling for membership growth, struggling for relevance in an increasingly fintech driven, frictionless world.

And what I what I have seen over my career in the in the credit union system is an overreliance on widgets and gizmos and commodities.

And credit unions, I firmly believe, cannot and will not win on a commodities play.

You can be the largest credit union in your community, in your state, in the nation. You go to market saying you we’ve got credit cards and we’ve got, checking accounts.

Good for you. So does Chase. So does BNY Mellon. So does Wells Fargo. In fact, everyone’s probably already got a Wells Fargo one. They just don’t know about it. You know, that is not that is not a play that you can win.

Mhmm.

So you have to find what is truly going to differentiate yourself. And I think credit unions for a long time have if they’ve recognized that and acknowledged that, they’ve said, well, we’ve got service.

When Sue walks in, we say, hey, Sue. How you doing?

How how is the kids? How’s the cat? How’s the did you see whatever it was like? They know you by the your first name.

They know you. They’ve been with you. And therefore, you’re a loyal member. And I think the the liquidity fluctuation, the liquidity crisis of the last two, two and a half years, demonstrated that knowing Sue by her first name does not a member retention play make.

Right? You love them. They’re great. Dave is such a wonderful teller, and he always makes you laugh.

But the place down the road was offering five bits better on their CD, so you took your money out and you went there.

Right.

And the credit union system, I think that was that was a shake to the core of, well, jeez. We’ve always thought that, like, if we say hi to Ben because we know his name, he’ll stay with us. It’s not the case. So you have to find that true core differentiator.

It’s not gonna be products. It’s not gonna be knowing Ben’s name. So what is it? And I I thought that was a real opportunity to to be a system partner.

And I I truly, hammer this home to my team every single week. Like, we are not a vendor suckling at the teeth of the credit union system. That ain’t happening. We are not here to sell shit to credit unions.

We are here to add value to the system. We’re here to work individually with every institution to identify the challenges that are present to them, to help them find the communities that they are overlooking, that they are underserving, and bridge that gap. What’s the mission that is really gonna help you address and meet the needs of those people?

And that that, my friends, is where Mission Brands Consulting began, and it’s what we still do.

That’s a lot to think about, Sam.

I was waiting for you to say you were on mute that whole time.

That’s yeah. Could you just start over? No.

Yeah. From the top, Sam.

No.

Then Go ahead, Sue.

I think, there there are so many so many things that I want to I just wanna underline something I think we we fully agree with this idea that, credit unions and not just credit unions. We also work with nonprofits.

We work with small businesses, and I think service Mhmm.

Is what everyone wants to hang their hat on. Mhmm. And, it’s it is disheartening to have to continually have to have this conversation to say, service is the bare minimum. That is you need to do that and do it well Yeah. All of the time.

And that also can’t be your brand.

Yes. You have to decide who you are at the core of, your business, and that is your brand.

Yes.

Not because you are nice and you know everyone’s name and, you know, you get their latte order right.

That’s Yeah.

What you what you need to do.

So And I I think credit unions, as well you know, the analogy that I typically use is that everyone working at a credit union and, like you, we we also you know, I’m very proud that we we work with the African American Credit Union Coalition and with CUA and with CUNA strategic services and with number of values aligned fintech too, emphasis on values aligned.

If you’ve tried something in the health care space or the telecom space and it didn’t work and you think you can sneak into credit unions, you can go talk to someone else. But if you’ve developed something that’s gonna help the credit union system thrive and you wanna help, great. Come and talk to Mission Brands.

But you can certainly, at credit unions, you can walk in, and you got those words on the ceiling right over the doorway as you walk in. It’s like, we believe in x, y, and z. And you’re like, yeah, man. That’s us. That’s me. And you tap it, and then you go, and you sit at your desk, and you do the same thing that you do every day. Because life happens, because work happens, because challenges happen.

And sometimes it it it is prevalent upon us to take the opportunity and make the investment in time and people and money to double check and to stress check, stress test. Are those the right words?

Is that our mission? Mhmm. And if it is, and that is validated, not by the community that you started serving eighty years ago, you certainly don’t lose sight of that. Honor that. Celebrate that. But, like, that community is changing every day.

So is that the mission that is still most relevant and resonant for the people we exist to serve? And if it is, then there’s something else going on somewhere. So let’s look at the operations. Let’s double check how we are, you you know, literally functioning.

Mhmm. And let’s tweak the mechanics so that we are delivering that mission. And if that mission isn’t right because the communities have changed to such an extent or because the needs of the people, the the products and services that you have at your disposal have evolved to such an extent. What well, words matter.

So find the way that you can now articulate what your organization stands for, and the operations are just gonna just gonna pump that out and you’re cooking with gas.

Yeah. It really is important because those words are they can be the thing that you tap and then quickly forget about and go back to your day to day, or they can be, North Star for decision making. They can be a filter for difficult conversations. They can serve, you know, so many different purposes.

And I think that the businesses, the credit unions, certainly, but as Sue said, I think any business that’s operating under those kind of principles, you You know, the big benefit that you can get from that is as you’re establishing your differentiator, as you’re, you know, kind of finding yourself and positioning yourself as the kind of organization you want to be for your community, for the world, whatever it might be, Those things make all of that happen quicker, more genuinely. Mhmm. They keep you agile along the way so you’re changing. You know?

Because like you said, like, what was set up eighty years ago, like, it might have been perfect for eighty years ago. It might have been exactly what you needed eighty years ago, but you’re not that company anymore. You know? So there’s a and I I do think that, like, plus one ditto underline everything that’s been said so far about, you know, service not being enough, product never being enough.

I shouldn’t say never. Almost always being, not enough.

It’s not what you’re gonna win on.

It’s not what you’re Right. You can have amazing product, and you can have products that that Chase don’t have. You know? I I firmly believe I’m trying to trying to, trademark the term the new tech stack.

Right? We talk about legacy tech stack. We talk about legacy, technical issues certainly in the core world for credit unions. I think that there’s I mean, right now, there’s three, four fintech for every credit union.

Right? And and, of course, that is the full gamut. That is as much Jack Henry as it is Vowify.

But I I truly believe that credit unions can be they were the original disruptor. They were the ones who said, holy cow. There’s a bunch of, interned Japanese Americans who, you know, were interned by their own government, and no one in their right mind is ever going to lend them money. They’re gonna band we’re gonna band together. We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna set up JCOM and, you know, eighty years later, JCOM is still there and thriving.

They disrupted financial services. Every credit union was founded by a superhero.

So I think you can celebrate that legacy. You can celebrate that heritage, but you can you can amplify it with the new tech stack. There’s so many fintech out there that you can stack on top of one another. If you do the due diligence and find the ones that really complement one another, You can offer products and services that no other bank is. Absolutely.

It’s still not gonna be how you win, but it can be how you differentiate yourself. Yeah.

So can you share an example of, like, a a credit union you’ve worked with or even just one that, is a good example that comes to mind that is differentiating themselves in a way that feels different, that truly is different than product service and some of those more traditional or cliche.

Yeah. Do you wanna go soup I’ll give you I’ll go super meta to get you started. How’s that? Because, the reason I’m on this podcast is because my friend and mentor Brent Rempe was on this podcast, and, we got talking and then he introduced us, and now here we are. Yeah.

You know, Brent I’ve known Brent. He was my table mentor when I went through DE in twenty sixteen.

So I’ve known him for almost ten years.

And, he is the CEO of First Alliance out in Rochester, Minnesota.

And I guess he’s been there for a year now, eighteen months, something like that. About that. Yeah. So his challenge to Mission Brands was, I know how our credit union works.

Our people know how we work, but we can’t it there’s something we can’t quite put our finger on. So I’ve asked, I’ve asked my organization to self select a group of twelve people, and we called it the Mars group. This is, who would you who would you take to Mars to start all over again? Right?

And Mission Brands remit, excuse me, was we’re gonna lock fifteen people in a basement, and we’re not allowed to reemerge until we have articulated what First Alliance stands for. Again, they already do it, so we had to just work the room to pull together. Like, how is this different? Why does that significantly change the way that your organization operates compared to any other credit union down the way? You know, they’re sitting on top of Mayo Clinic. So they got, what, thirty, forty thousand white collar employees. Everyone wants those deposits.

How are you truly differentiating?

And then let’s try. And, again, words matter. Let’s try and stick a pin in that so that you can now start building the marketing and the brand that evangelizes your difference.

And, I should be prepared. I’ve got their I’ve got their, I’ve got one of the statements right behind me, but I think their mission was, we show up, we listen to your story, we’ve, we find the opportunities or something like that. But that was, like, they operate something that they refer to internally as storybook lending.

And that was that was that was the essence of that. Like, there’s a difference between turning up and showing up. Right?

Ben and Sue, you can turn up to work. It’s really easy to do that, especially if you work from home.

Showing up entirely different thing. That means you are mentally present. You are emotionally present. You are invested.

Then you are asking Sue what she needs because you know that you can help and you are invested enough to say, Sue, I got you. What do you need? I’m here for you today. That is showing up.

That is what First Alliance do for their members. They don’t turn up. They show up. And they do this thing called storybook lending, where BICO is ostensibly out the out the door.

Sue, tell us what’s happening.

We want to hear. Like, actually, we have the license to spend as much time as we need with Sue individually.

And I’m you know, it was really thrilling to be in a room with fifteen odd people and just watch this come together. My colleague, Quang and I, I mean, we were truly there as facilitators, occasionally head bashers. But mostly, it was just like, you all know this. We’ve just gotta pull it out of you. And just listening to how they operated, it was it was wonderful.

And there’s sorry. There’s another one I I do want to call out very quickly. It’s an organization called Cotton Belt, Cotton Belt Federal Credit Union down in, Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

And so we, we started working with them about a year ago, and, it is a staggeringly impoverished neighborhood. I mean, this time last year, they had the holy trifecta. They were the most, violent small city in the United States.

They had the highest level of population decline in the United States, and they had recently been voted the worst place to live in the United States. So, you know, three strikes.

And there is an institution there looking for a way to help, looking for a way to support their members. And we went down there. We partnered with, Copero Consulting.

We ran a focus group.

And what we found was that I’m a shit like, I’m the youngest of eight. I will straight up walk up and ask for favors because, you know, if I didn’t ask for favors, I didn’t eat or get clothes. So we we spent a few days in Pine Bluff, and if I ordered coffee from you, I’m gonna stop you and do some gorilla interviewing. You know?

If we had a sandwich, the waitress, the server, like, I’m gonna do this. And then we ran a focus group. And overwhelmingly, what we heard over and over and over and over again was this crab crabs in a bucket mentality.

You know? The second Ben says, hey, Sue. I’ve got an opportunity.

I’m moving on and I’m moving up. Sue says, uh-uh. No. You’re not. And you grab him and you pull him right back down.

They all everyone said this.

A woman said my mother started a nursery, and her sister was just like, just desperately trying to tear her back down.

So we worked with the credit union. The the website is coming as as soon as their core provider pushes it live. I shall not name them.

We worked with them on an entirely new brand structure, an entirely new brand strategy, and I and I’m proud to say we’ve developed a new website, which will go live.

But the positioning was one of the the champion. If everyone is gonna pull you down, we will be the one who unabashedly and unapologetically pushes you right back up. We will cheerlead this community.

It is ugly. It has warts. We know it. We will celebrate it. We will be the cheerleader in this community, and no one else is around here is doing this.

Like, that can differentiate them. That gives them a platform to attract and engage their communities with much more so than we have credit cards, fully for you. Yeah.

I’m gonna celebrate you. That’s totally different.

Yeah. That that’s an awesome experience and one that I think happens more often than we hear about one because a lot of credit unions kinda stink at telling that story. You know? But we all talk about community support and all of those things.

Right? But it’s the ones that go beyond writing the check and, you know, supplying a couple volunteers to the event or whatever. It’s the ones that are, like, you know, they’re woven into the fabric of that change in their community. You know?

Like, they’re they’re the people lifting others up. And I I think that when a credit union is making that kind of difference in their community, it’s almost like an exponential difference, if that’s the right word to use with it because Yeah. Not only are they making a difference that nobody else in their community is gonna make for them, and the it sounds like the community that you gave an example of is perfect for this. But the other one the other the reason why it’s kind of exponential is because not only are they making the difference that no one else will, they’re a credit union doing that.

And oftentimes or there are and maybe I should step back a little bit because to folks like us, that doesn’t surprise us, like, that a credit union is doing it. But for the general community, the fact that a financial institution is doing it is surprising for so many. Mhmm. You know?

So it’s almost like the wow factor of, wow, you’re really here for our community. You’re there for us. It’s magnified because it’s not coming from the United Way. It’s not coming from the local community foundation, whatever.

The the folks that usually do that kind of work, it’s coming from a financial institution, the same people that are giving me a debit card.

What? Yeah. I have my auto loan with those people, and now they did did oh, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I want to as well just, just because we’re on it.

I I wanna call out.

I’m gonna take you for a complete pivot now.

I went into that program fully expecting to be pitching the board on a name change.

Because, I am white.

I am English.

They are in the deep I don’t know. Is Arkansas class as deep south? I’d consider it deep south. I don’t know.

But Relative to Madison. Yeah.

Yeah. The the communities that they serve, I think, is something like ninety, ninety five percent black.

I assumed that cotton was not going to be a particularly inviting accessible term, and, I was proven wrong. Everyone we spoke to, I’m like, nope. That it just that doesn’t that doesn’t resonate. It doesn’t bring up negative implications for me. Actually, what this is is our heritage. We’re in the cotton belt, etcetera, etcetera. And so, complete sidebar, but it was a really important reminder of bringing your own kind of biases and expectations.

Yeah.

I mean, they slap me around the face. Like, okay. This credit union retains the word cotton in their name. Okay.

That’s it means something. It and people are proud of it and celebrate it down there.

Yeah. That’s that’s interesting. That’s such, I I think I would have had the exact same idea going in.

Right?

And it it is it I think it’s a good lesson for marketers that it it’s very easy to, to look at a to look at a prospective client or really any I don’t know. We’re marketers.

Every I think everything I look at, I think, I think I we can do that.

I can do better than this. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But, when you to, spend the time with the people in the organization and hear what it means to them.

And, especially, you know, we’ve Well, this was the community.

This wasn’t internal. This was out and about. Like, hey. You are a young black man.

Would you go to an organization that has cotton written above it? Yeah. Wouldn’t it? It’s like it it it really surprised me.

Yeah.

That’s, that that is really interesting and maybe has something to say about how our worldview and maybe what we, perceive to be good, bad, truth, false can really be changed by the people that live in it and are in it every day and all of those things.

Just one small example of it, maybe. Yeah.

Sorry. Took you down a rabbit hole you weren’t expecting there, didn’t No.

I love it. We’ll we’ll take it. We love rabbit holes. Yeah. Yeah.

Now you can see you can see what Ben is doing right now on the screen, Sam, as he is looking at her notes and trying to make sure and probably realizing that the things that we were going to ask you, you have already answered.

And so we have to make this crucial decision of what do we do next.

Right, Ben?

Yeah. Yeah. Some version of that for sure.

Yeah.

I can see he’s he’s just playing, he’s playing Sudoku. I can see it in the reflection in the device.

I’m I’m almost done with this board. Just getting a couple Well, let’s, let’s dive in a little bit to this big question of purpose because it’s something that we’ve been asking people, all year. And if you listen to Brent’s episode, you probably know what’s coming. But, we’re writing a book about purpose, and so we’re asking folks to try and get some feedback, try and eliminate our biases and our worldview on the topic. So you’ve said so much about, mission’s purpose, I think, already without maybe directly addressing it. But let’s talk about you, Sam, and maybe through mission. What What would you say is your purpose?

I would say it changed six years ago when my daughter was born, my first daughter was born. I think, you know, prior to prior to that, I remember I remember my mom always saying, do something where people will be better off because you’ve done it. Like, that was I don’t remember much career advice from my mother, but I remember that. Do something where people are better off. I remember my dad saying, the job that you end up having doesn’t exist yet, which probably isn’t exactly true because that was probably in the late eighties.

But, certainly, digital marketing, etcetera, wouldn’t have existed then. And so I’ve always I’ve always strived to be, in a position where I’m adding societal value.

Again, easy to do in the UK because the public sector, the third sector as we refer to it over there, is such a large part of the employment base. And so I always gravitated towards roles and opportunities that you know, I worked for a social housing organization where it was actually run by a cooperative. The people who lived in these houses ran the housing association.

That was where I wanted to be. I wanted to be in in an environment where the community was sustaining itself and giving back to itself. And that’s why I think I really found, blindly stumbled into credit union system, and and it just immediately resonated with my own personal values.

And then six years ago, Frankie came along, and now I just want I just wanna strive for better.

She and her sister deserve better. And it’s not better than your opinions, and it’s not better than your experience.

It’s not better than your politics.

It’s just better than yesterday.

Yeah.

And that’s that’s what I wanna do.

And I think the credit union system is committed to that as well.

Well, that was a mic drop. Love that. Love all that. Thank you.

I think it does speak so much to what credit unions do and what I think organizations like ours are trying to do and actively doing every day, which is really just, you know, iterative improvement every single day. Right? Like, day by day, just something a little bit better. And, and when there’s a whole bunch of us working towards that same thing, change can happen pretty quickly, which is pretty cool.

And we gotta remember that too because sometimes it sure feels like it’s slow or maybe even going backwards and all of that.

Say more. Go on, Ben. Say more.

I, my attorneys have advised me not to say more.

Is it jumping up and down in the background? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

They’re in the room with him.

Yeah. That’s who I’m really looking at off screen. I’m like, can I can I see that shit?

You think I’m looking at notes?

I, you know, I will say I I have been very privileged to hold roles in two very large, well, prominent organizations. I think the foundation’s got twelve, thirteen members of staff. Very prominent organizations.

And I think sometimes it is easy to see the system. I I said this was part of the privilege of the foundation is you get to see the system at scale. Yeah.

But there’s there’s, you know, there’s a con to that as well in that you can see the machine lumbering along. And my god, it’s a machine. And I think one of the benefits of Mission Brands is you get to work.

You you scratch an inch beneath the surface, and you meet the Susan Bens of the world, and you meet the Brent Rempeys of the world, and you meet the Chris Parker at Lighthouse out in, Dover, Maine of the world. And you realize that, yes, at scale, the machine might be moving more slowly than you’d like, but the sum of its parts are doing truly just remarkable work every single day. Right. And that’s why you just can’t lose faith in the system. It just it’s a big old boat. It takes a long time to turn around, but it is being captained by some brilliant, brilliant people.

I don’t I don’t know if you’re allowed to drop the mic a second time, Sam. I think I feel like that was a second mic drop, and I I don’t know. I think you’ve you’ve you’ve really you’ve gone off in a way.

Gone off.

I that was a terrible that was a terrible incident. No. You’re so you’re so right. I think, I think it would be a shame if we let a day go by without realizing how many amazing people Yeah. We had to interact with.

And Yeah. You know, we I think Ben and I are particularly fortunate because we make this podcast.

Mhmm.

And one of the things we get to do is just invite awesome people on and say, tell us about you. Fill us up with all of the fire you have in your belly.

Mhmm.

And we get to share that with people.

Mhmm.

So we’re really fortunate that way. So thank you for that. Yeah.

Thanks.

Even though I ham handedly joked because that is it’s one of my talents.

Yeah. I’m I’m sure that what we’re getting from you today, Sam, is the real you, the genuine you, and, you know, you’re a marketer, so you’re equipped with the tools to, articulate what your your passion and your purpose into words that make it all connect and connect to our industry.

I also can sense some fresh GAC energy in here and, to GAC one time.

I can save myself. It’s if you want, like, both, like, rejuvenation and exhaustion at the same time, it’s just another one of those, cool credit union experiences like DE that it’s, like, the shortest, longest few days of your life. But you I mean, after you get a chance to catch your breath, you can’t help but feel good about what we’re doing and what’s going on here and the change that we’re making in the world because that’s really what it’s all about.

Yeah.

Yeah. GIC was, I you know, last year, Mission Brands, we were pretty young. This year, I was able to take three members of the team along with me, and, I don’t don’t think they quite realized just how much it will be. You know? And it’s like, oh, no. We we had a we had an NBCGAC Airbnb. It was brilliant.

So the four of us all together, and they’re gonna they’re coming home at two o’clock, and it’s like, right.

I’ll see you in four hours. I don’t know about you. My first meeting’s at six thirty. So Yeah.

Let’s go. But Yeah. It’s a good system, people. It’s a good system. Like, life is hard.

Life is hard.

Work is hard. If it wasn’t, they’d call it fun. But we are doing it for the right reasons. Right. And and the system is doing it for the right reasons. And there are just there are brilliant people in it like yourselves. And so thank you for just shining a spotlight on those who are out there doing the do.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate you, Sam. So how how can people get in touch with you? How can they connect with you, or what do you want them to know?

That we’re here. We’re here. We are, you know, I said it earlier, but I don’t know how much of this you’re gonna cut out. Also, Ben, I appreciate you saying that, this is my authentic self. There would be significantly more f bombs if this was my way.

But The one thing the one thing you need to be you. The one thing And I took it away from you, Sam.

Yep.

Yeah. I said it earlier. We are I strive to be a system partner. I am proud you know, when I I was about I was about to say effort.

I, I am you know, when I when I am in a room and I look around and it is filled with credit unions and filled with, you know, like values aligned fintech, for example, and my people, my organization is the and it’s an invite only event, and my organization is in there, I think we’re on the right track. I think we are being seen and growing into what what I hope we will be as a system partner. And so I suppose the the takeaway from that is, like, this is not a this is not a marketing agency where we exist to, you know, just dust off the old thing that we just gave to someone else and slap your name on it.

No. We are here to meet with your credit union to serve your members, and we will get under the hood.

We’ll pull the engine apart. We’ll figure out where the mice have borrowed in, and then we’ll put it all back together again, but we will do it for you and with you. And if that means Carly on my team is gonna scream as I say this. But if that means that a twenty five thousand dollar program is done for a thousand bucks, then then we will do it for a thousand bucks because the people who can afford it pay for it.

Sure. You know what I mean? Like, that’s that’s what peeping people helping people is supposed to be. When we are capitalized, we will support and provide the support to those who cannot afford to to engage in that.

And that’s how we operate. It’s how we’ve operated from day one.

It’s how we’ll continue to do it.

Love it.

Thank you. Dot com, I suppose, is the key takeaway.

We’ll share a link.

Alright, Sam. So let’s wrap up, where we roll into our something awesome segment where we get to share something fun, cool recommendation, maybe something we’ve done recently, and, I’m gonna kick it off with a quick one, and it is so relevant for me today. I’m very proud that, I have a pretty tight sleep regimen. I go to sleep around the same time most nights, and I wake up, regardless of when I went to sleep at pretty much the same time.

It was daylight savings time this last weekend, and for some reason, my alarm didn’t go off this morning, but my biological clock woke me up. So I thought that’s something that would be really helpful to share. And now luckily, this article was served to me this morning, so it was just really timely.

This article from The Guardian about ten sleep mistakes that people make, from sleep experts. So lots of, good tidbits in there about, making sure that your sleep hygiene is nice and tight and good for you and, in turn, good for everyone around you. Now I will say the last one, it is like a top ten and or I don’t know if it’s a top ten, but just ten, in no particular order. But the last one is don’t worry about sleep, which I think is really, interesting and important one because we’ve all, I’m sure, had the sleepless night or we’re, you know, laying up wondering, oh, man.

I gotta sleep. I know I gotta sleep. And by doing so, you do not sleep. So, as much as I love to give this nice advice via this article, also, like, don’t worry about it.

Don’t take any of it too seriously because at the end of the day, you’re you, and you’ll sleep when you need to sleep. But some good tips in there for sure, especially maybe around daylight savings time.

Do you have any tips for how to convince a two year old that four forty five None of that.

No. For a different website meeting. Yeah. Alright, Sam. You’re up. What you got?

So, I okay. Do you want Sam’s useless fact of the day, or do you want, something that’s truly awesome?

Oh, man. Maybe even a little bit of both.

Okay. Alright. So, my recommendation funny you should talk about sleep then is, I am a big advocate of of a podcast called Mindscape. It’s by a theoretical physicist called Sean Carroll.

And, I discovered it when I was in a bad way, just mentally. I was rough. I was extremely stressed. I was, I was having panic attacks. I was not in a good spot.

And I I am I’m a creative. I think in, like, colors and music. I’m not a scientist. And I went down this deep, dark theoretical physics rabbit hole, and I listened to this podcast, religiously every night because it zens me.

I find that I don’t understand particle physics, so I have to sit there and and listen to it. And so all the nonsense that’s going on that my head typically spiral after is just gone. I can sit there. But what I love about Sean Carroll’s show is he will do something about, you know, quantum theory.

And then the last one was, the theory of cocktails.

You know, he just he seeks out just these brilliant people, and he unapologetically celebrates people for just being really smart and really bright and having wonderful things to say. And, and I get I get all sorts of things from it. And so my useless fact of the day actually came from an episode where so you know when you’re sitting at the pub and, you know, you there’s a wonky table and you find the beer mats and you wedge them under the thing. So, actually, mathematically, all you have to do is rotate that table, and at some point, it will level out because that’s just how math works. That’s how the world works. It is wonky because it hasn’t found its equilibrium. You just have to rotate it until it does.

And it’s little things like that where I’ll sit and listen to it, and I would assume that most people would think that’s an interesting fact about tables. That’s an interesting fact about math. And I think that’s a really interesting fact about credit union marketing. Like, if you have the right message and you have the right brand and you’ve got these multiple audiences and segments and communities that you’re trying to reach and engage, well, the table’s wobbly as hell if you’re just, like, sitting there.

But the second you start rotating it so that the right people are sitting at the table, all of a sudden, like, this jives. They can enjoy their beer. Isn’t this wonderful? So I will sit there and I will listen to this podcast about history and physics and science, and I’ll be like, here’s why that’s relevant to credit union marketing.

So that’s my awesome thing.

Love it.

That was spent that was fantastic. And I would like to say that, I am I’m deeply sad that our time is almost over today.

And if you are ever looking for anyone to test that theory with you Okay.

I can easily be in Madison in two hours.

So Dude, we covered this.

I met my wife in a bar, and she said move to America. So I I say yes to these things. I’ll I’ll where are you, Marshfield? I’ll be in Marshfield in a hot minute. Let’s do it.

There probably are a lot of wonky tables we have to deal with, Sam. That’s all I’m saying.

Damn. Damn and blast. We’re gonna have to test them all.

Oh, so my my recommendation I just finished a book.

It is called from under the truck, a memoir by Josh Brolin.

Josh Brolin, who is James Brolin’s son, who played Thanos among other people. I’m sure he doesn’t want to constantly be known as the guy who played Thanos.

But it is fantastic.

It he does not write his memoir sequentially, so he goes in chunks from year to from different periods of his life to different period, and it goes back and forth.

And, some of the things are written like essays, and some of the parts are literal stories, and some of them are poems. It’s just so beautifully written and really interesting.

The he his mother struggled with some addiction. He struggled with addiction.

And without being the kind of memoir where you would expect, oh, well, he’s successful now. And so I’m going to get this sequential story of how he broke through his addiction and, you know, the trauma from his childhood, and I’m just going to get this nice, neat little package.

It just sort of floats back and forth just so well done. So highly recommend.

From Under the Truck by Josh Brolin.

Cool. I love that. And he’s one of my favorites. So I’m I just wanna learn more about him.

But, also, just as you’re talking, it makes me think, like, why isn’t more especially, like, memoirs and even biographies and stuff. Like, why why isn’t more written like that? Because if you’re telling your story, like, who the heck starts from age two and goes in order the whole time. Right?

Like, you’re totally like, oh, yeah. This thing that happened when I was eight influenced how I did this thing when I was seventeen, and then, oh, that reminds me of this time that my brother kicked the crap out of me when I was ten. You know, like, you’re of course, that’s how you’re gonna tell a story. Right?

It it’s almost obvious. Yeah. It’s really interesting.

Yeah. That’s such a good I was thinking the same thing, Ben, when I was reading it. Like, of course, you would if you were telling your life story, this is how you would tell it.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, so do you think that’s an author’s decision, or do you think it’s typically there’s an editor that says, no.

No. No. No. No. No. No. This isn’t how people read books. And what we’ve got here is an editor with the with the backbone to take a punt.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, call up Josh. People will find us.

Yes. Well, I it probably helps that his his stepmom is Barbra Streisand.

You probably you just don’t fight. If if Babs is on the guy’s side, you just you let him know.

Brolin as in, like, no country for old men?

Yes.

His stepmom is Barbara Streisand?

Yes. James Brolin is married to Barbara Streisand.

I had no idea.

This it is am I is this breaking news to you, Sam?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I only I think I only knew that because it was mentioned when he was a guest on Smartlist, that podcast, which a lot of the listeners call.

Barbara Strawson sings one of my favorite songs of all time, and she’s and she she duets with, god. Who did she do it with? I wanna say Elizabeth Taylor, but that’s not right. It’s, happy days are here again. It’s just an amazing, amazing, wonderful old song.

For those of you out there who have who have suffered with anxiety and stress and who do worry about sleep and haven’t yet discovered physics podcasts, go and listen to that song and remind yourself that every week It’s a good start.

It’s just a good start. A lot of her catalog, a good start. Yeah.

Well, Sam, thank you. This was absolutely delightful.

Thank you. We I cannot wait to do this again. So anytime you want to stop back, please let me know. You know how to reach me.

Thank you, Bryce, so much. I do appreciate it. Thank you.

And, it’ll happen in person if it doesn’t happen in this format, for sure.

There you go.

Yeah. Spring is springing. Let’s go get a beer. Alright.

So thank you listeners for joining us again. Thanks so much for spending time with us and Sam. You can always catch up on our podcast on your favorite podcast app. You could go back, listen to the episode with Brent that, inspired Sam to reach out, or you could just listen to all of them, and that would be good too.

So you can find those on your favorite podcast app or on our website exclamation QSO dot com slash blog.

Thanks again, Sam, for being here. Thank you, friends, for tuning in. Be awesome, and see you next time.

The Osmology podcast is a production of exclamation services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kyla Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Seager for booking our guests, and Alex Westerhausen for Social Media support.