Shownotes
When you’re suddenly in a leadership role at a young age, do you pretend to know it all so people won’t look down on you, or do you show your vulnerability and seek help? In this segment, we talk to Robin Roberts, the President and CEO of Pikes Peak National Bank. Robin opens up about being in counterintelligence in the army and her path to becoming the CEO of a bank. She also touches on being realistic as an entrepreneur and the value of vulnerability in making meaningful connections. Discover the steep learning curve every entrepreneur has to go through to succeed in business and how continuous learning is a critical piece of it.
—
Robin Roberts CEO Pikes Peak National Bank With Co-Host Catherine Wicklund CEO And Vistage Chair Southern Colorado
We’re extremely fortunate because we have Robin Roberts. She’s the President and CEO of Pikes Peak National Bank. I also have my cohost, Catherine Wicklund. She is the CEO and Vistage Chair of Southern Colorado. Robin, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.
It’s great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.
Pikes Peak National Bank is a community bank in Colorado Springs, Colorado. We serve primarily small businesses with revenues under $2 million. We also are a consumer-focus bank, but our niche is in that small business market. That market tends to be underserved by financial institutions and those business owners tend to need more one-on-one with their bankers and expertise because they are starting or growing their businesses. We do work with startups which is unusual for our bank. We are primarily focused in El Paso County, but we are expanding and hope to be moving into other areas of Colorado starting 2020.
I was doing a little research and I found out that you’ve been doing this for several years and you started extremely young, apparently. That’s a good thing. I think about the bank relationship and the ideal customer for your bank, what does the ideal customer look like for you over the years?
Our ideal customer is a younger business owner who is growing their business and needs to be able to speak with a banker that has expertise in the business. That’s why we focus on annual revenues under $2 million. We have businesses that their revenues are higher than that, but we see the magic in the relationship when they’re under $2 million in revenue. Those are business owners who aren’t going to take a picture of their check and deposit it. They’re not the ones that are going to check online for their balances and download it into QuickBooks. They’re the business owners that need help like, “I have this challenge and I need someone to bounce it off of.” Bankers don’t charge by the hour. I bet we have a lot of expertise because we see businesses in a lot of industries. That’s where we do our best work is with those types of business owners.
For the business owner, there’s the relationship that you typically see in the media between a banker and the client. Your founders started to serve the business market.
The bank was started on the Westside of Colorado Springs, which we call Old Colorado City. It was started by businessmen that didn’t feel that the Westside of Colorado Springs had financial services supporting. The community bought stock in the bank and these businessmen ran the bank. One of the businessmen was the mayor of Colorado Springs at the time. A family in 1977 bought out all those shareholders and they owned it until January of 2018 when it was sold to another businessman. We were born on the Westside of Colorado Springs, that’s our heart, but we serve all of El Paso County.
I am always fascinated by the story. I don’t know if you ran across a lot of women CEOs in the banking community many years ago. Tell me about your path to becoming the CEO of the bank.
There are things that you can read and learn in a class, but with business, you just got to have the experience.
I have to start that path in the military. I was in college and then joined the military. I was in the army for two enlistments and was counterintelligence. When I got out of the army, I was married to someone in the military as well. We moved to Fort Bragg, North Carolina while he went to Special Forces school. I started in banking there. I started in the in-store branch, which are the branches that you find in grocery stores. They didn’t have those in North Carolina at the time. They wanted someone with sales experience, because of my military experience, they made me the branch manager. I didn’t know what I was doing. They sent me to what I call the basic training of banking, “Here’s a debit, here’s the credit, here’s how to read a credit report.”
It was the leadership that I learned in the military and transferred it over to being in banking. When I got to Colorado Springs, the owner of the bank at that time, that family that bought out all of the stock, he was a World War II vet. There are not many vets in commercial banking. There are veterans a lot in investments, investment banking, financial advising, but in commercial banking, that is not a normal transition. He and I spoke the same language. People who were in the military speak the same language and he liked that I was a vet. Shortly after I came to the bank, four months after, all of the senior leadership left on the same day. I thought, “I probably made the wrong decision of coming to this bank.” He came to me because he was the owner and said, “I need your help. I need you to move over to our main location and take over our lending area.”
What you learned in the military is, “Yes, sir. I’m doing it.” You’re going to figure it out later, but you’re going to do it. I headed over to our main location in Old Colorado City and took over the lending area and learned. I spent my nights reading regulations and understanding. There are things that you can read and there are things you can learn in a class, but with business, you’ve got to have the experience. I needed the experience of working with business owners and understanding how they think, what their challenges are. Ultimately, I moved up in the bank and it is because of my military experience. He felt that he could rely on me. That door opens for me because I was a veteran. At that time, no one was coming up to me saying, “Thank you for your service.” That didn’t happen until much later. No one cared that I was a veteran. Thank goodness we’re seeing that support to our veterans now, but we weren’t seeing that. It was a skill and experience that I had that helped those doors open for me, but other people didn’t recognize it or think that it was important. He did, though. It made all the difference for me.
I always love this story because people in many times have a perception of you always had it gathered up and altogether all the time from the beginning and knew it intuitively. The answer is not so much.
I remember I had been promoted to senior vice president of lending. The Federal Reserve had an event here in Colorado Springs and this old banker with cigar voice comes up to me and he’s like, “You don’t know what you’re doing.” Inside, I was like, “You’re right, but I don’t appreciate you calling me out on it.”
How did you respond?
I remember what I was thinking. I think I was staring at him. I thought it was rude but at that time, women in banking in those levels were not a common occurrence and I was used to being underestimated.
That was the climate that wasn’t that unusual in the military either at the time. For you, when you have a new business client coming, what’s the typical range of questions you get initially from those business clients?
Usually, when they’re coming to the bank, they’re talking to me because they need funding. There’s a big misconception with business owners who have never borrowed commercially about how that is done. There’s a big difference between getting a mortgage for your house and getting a loan for your business. They are regulated differently. They’re looked at differently. They’re kept on the bank’s books in a different way. They often ask me, “How do I get funding?” It becomes a conversation about education and how banks make commercial loans and what they’re looking for. It often is also a connection to other resources because if they are too new in business, often banks can’t help them. They are too new for big bank funding. It’s a connection to other resources of people who can help them and an explanation of what an SBA, Small Business Administration guarantee is. There are a lot of misconceptions around that and I help them to understand it. That’s often the question and the conversation that happens with new business owners because they come to me about funding.
Be A Good Leader: There’s a big difference between getting a mortgage for your house and getting a loan for your business.
I’m an almost ideal client and I’ve arrived at the juncture where I need to take in and get funding and borrow for my business, what advice would you offer to that prototypical client to be prepared to increase their success in being granted funding when they come to see you?
I often ask them, “What’s your plan?” You shouldn’t be even considering funding until you have a plan and I think business planning is misunderstood and underrated. I’m a big proponent of business planning, not just for new businesses, but existing businesses as well. The first thing I’m going to start asking you is, “What’s your plan?” Even if it’s not written, “What is the research you’ve done for your business? Why do you think this business is going to be successful in this market? What problem are you solving?” They usually know it up here and they can make a good case. If you want funding, we’re going to have a plan. There’s always an education process about the funding. New business owners do not understand commercial funding.
It’s such a common question that I get that I created a class on commercial funding that I teach every other month at the Pikes Peak Small Business Development Center. It’s well attended. They also have a webinar so people can take it online. I cover all of the things that a new business needs to know about funding and give them the resources, options, and connections to companies to use their 401(k) as funding and microlenders when they can’t get a bank loan. I teach them about small business administration loans. I teach them about banks too, because every business has to have a business bank account. I teach them about that fundamental as well.
I would think the learning curve for them would be much like when you came into the business. It is pretty steep. Do you find after the education that there is some quantity of people that just say, “I don’t really have a business.” Do they step away from that idea?
I haven’t done it lately but it’s on Peterson Air Force Base in Fort Carson in their service members transitioning out called Boots to Business. It’s an SBA program and I teach them funding modules from time to time. I’ve had people come up to me afterward and say, “I now know that I should not have a business.” I say, “That’s perfect because I saved you a lot of money and a lot of time.” Some people are not business owners, some people are going to be great at being a W-2 employee and that is where they are going to be happiest. They’re risk-averse. They’re not willing to take the risk. They’re not willing to work the hours. That’s okay. It’s better to know that before you put your house on the line and you’ve got employees, your retirement and everything. Entrepreneurs will do that. Their risk tolerance levels are much higher.
You’ve been very successful with what you’ve been doing. The piece of advice that you might share with the readers that have most impacted your success trajectory, what do you think it might be?
I was the president of the bank at 33. I was young and I thought I knew everything at 33. I think we all do when we’re young. I wasn’t a compassionate and empathetic person. I was trying to prove myself because I had a lot to prove. I find that in young people who have achieved success early on. They have a lot to prove and it can come across as arrogance, not caring about your workers, people that work with you and your connections in the community. My advice would be instead of putting that hard-shell around you so that the world thinks that you’ve got it all under control, try being vulnerable, try being authentic and saying, “I don’t have this figured out yet, but I’m going to.” When people see that humanity in you, there is so much more connection and motivation to help you from the people who work for you and the people in the community who wants you to be successful as well.
When you think you have to have that hard-shell around you, I ask you to take a moment and think the total opposite. What if I take this hard-shell off and say, “I need help. I don’t have it all figured out,” and be vulnerable and see what happens? It is amazing the human connection you can make with people when you are vulnerable. Young people who are successful are afraid to do that because they think someone will say to them, “I knew you weren’t good enough to be where you are right now.” Actually, when you are vulnerable, they say, “How do I help you?” because you’re asking for help. That’s my advice is to take a step back and allow yourself to be vulnerable. Ask for help because you will be amazed at the people that are willing to help you. It creates these bonds that last for years.
When you say, “I need some help.” Most people go like, they will be flattered that you ask. Two, it’s a rare person who says, “I’m not going to help you.”
Young people who have achieved success early on have a lot to prove, and it can come across as arrogance.
The opposite of not asking for help and acting like you know everything, that can have problems down the road as well. People don’t forget how you made them feel when you thought you were covering up all your insecurities and you came across as empathetic or with a lack of compassion, understanding or connection. Years down the road, you may hear back from that person and it won’t be positive. I’ve had that. When I was young, I might’ve been promoted as president of the bank. I was 33 or 34 and I was asked to a networking event. Somebody came up to me and he said that he was a commercial real estate broker. I probably did not understand what he was talking about, what he did and what his challenges were every day. I came across as, “I don’t care.”
Many years later, one of our lenders went into his business and tried to get a connection. Maybe we could get some referrals. He told them, “I will never work with Pikes Peak National Bank. Get out of here.” He called me and said, “I want you to know that one of your lenders came in and I told him to leave and the reason is because of you. Many years ago, I saw you at a networking event and you treated me poorly because I was a commercial real estate broker.” “I treated you poorly because I felt less than you and I didn’t know what you do. I felt stupid because I didn’t.” I don’t even remember the conversation with this gentleman, but it had an impact on him, obviously for years.
I think about that and there’s a fair discussion about being vulnerable, being authentic. We talked about that you should have good financials. I think about the wellspring of confidence you have to have in order to be vulnerable because if you’re vulnerable and you have no confidence, then I don’t know what that does.
At the time, there weren’t a lot of women in the position that I was in. Not only I was feeling insecure in my ability to do my job because I was still learning it, but I’m talking to these men in every networking event. There are maybe two women and all the rest are men. I’m improving myself in that as well. I’m glad that guy called me because it helped me understand the impact that you make on people when you aren’t feeling confident, but you try to show that you are. You’re not being authentic. It affected him for a long time and I feel horrible about that.
If you could go back to Robin Roberts who started at Pikes Peak National Bank at the very beginning and offer her some advice, knowing everything that you know and the discovery that you’ve made along the way about how things could be done differently, what would you say to her?
I would tell her to ask for help. I did not even ask for help. I felt that it was a sign of weakness and that people would not have confidence in me as the president of the bank. I wish that I had asked for help from the key people that I was meeting in the community who I think would have been very happy to help me. I would’ve had some mentor relationships that would’ve helped. Instead, I hunkered down and stayed in a bank. I go to those networking events and didn’t feel confident, so then I stay in the bank. I didn’t make connections that could have helped me during what I think was the roughest time in my career, which is during the recession. It was a rough time for a lot of different reasons, but those connections could have helped me during that time. I wish I would’ve asked for help.
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that we’re back at that point and you’re going like, “I need to go ask some help.” If there’s somebody else out of a similar situation, what are the inventory of people in the community or positions they might have where you might start asking for help?
One thing we have now that we didn’t have then is LinkedIn. There’s a wealth of information on LinkedIn and ways to connect to people that you could have never gotten through their gatekeeper before. I would use LinkedIn as a way to be introduced to maybe someone in the industry that is older and has been successful. I’ll ask for an hour of their time over coffee. Now that I’m older, I’m happy to meet with a young banker. I will take an hour out of my time and have...
