This week on the podcast, Brent sits down with Laura Merling, Chief Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank. They start the discussion with a review of Laura's background leading transformations at companies like Ford, AT&T and Google. Laura then goes on to share the multi-year process underway to transform Arvest Bank into a technology-enabled community bank of the future. Laura outlines her 90-day framework for transformation, focusing on understanding customers, assessing technology and defining metrics. She highlights successes like the me at Arvest program and cloud migration. Gain insight into Arvest's new Centers of Excellence and how customer-centric innovation is driving momentum in the evolving financial services industry.

Because if you're gonna change how we approach our

customers and we're going to start with this customer centric

versus product we're not going to lead with do you need a

credit card? We're gonna lead with how can we help you? You

know, what do you need to grow your business or what do you

need to help you with your your personal life?

Welcome to the be epic podcast, brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today. Well,

today I have with me Laura Merling. Laura is the Chief

Transformation and Operations Officer at Arvest Bank. Laura,

thanks for joining me today.

Oh, thank you for the invitation. I was looking

forward to it.

Me too. I'm looking forward to this

conversation. You and I have gotten to know each other over

the last year or so and you've been in this role at Arvest now

for about 18 months?

Ah it'll to be two years next month. Okay.

Well, I know. It does. It went by really, really fast. That

must mean I'm enjoying it.

That's right. That's right. Well, you know, I

think when you joined Arvest really it sounded like the

charge was to lead a multi year large scale, transformation

process, digital transformation process some degree, I assume.

But maybe before we get into before we get into Arvest and

transformation, tell us a little bit about you. Your background

is pretty cool. I mean, you've got I know Ford, AT&T, Google,

now financial services. Tell us about that journey.

Oh, it's a it's a long and sorted journey. It was

definitely a windy road meeting, you know, part of is taking

advantage of opportunities that come that came along the way.

But it's leveraging knowledge and experience of what I learned

in the previous role. And so it was taking, hey, I've learned

XYZ at one company, how do I now take and apply that to that one

that was probably a little bit of a stretch was doing, you

know, AT&T autonomous vehicles, however, but when you think so

AT&T is connectivity, right? And so then when you think well,

connected cars are kind of the foundation for autonomous

vehicles. And then where's the revenue really coming from in

self driving cars? It's not really the car because it's kind

of expensive, the revenue is actually in the services that

surround it and the digital capabilities. So it's taking

what you know, and say, Well, how can I apply that to another

industry?

That makes sense.

I think I've oversimplified it, but that's

no, it's all very accidental. It was definitely not planned that.

Most of our journeys aren't, right? But it

looks like you've had a lot of fun, like in a lot of varied

experiences, which, you know, now in financial services at

Arvest Bank. I assume all of those experiences have prepared

you pretty well for this role.

Yes, I think so. There's, you know, there's

always things you the reason, you also do it is there are the

things you want to learn and can learn by going into into a new

industry. And that's what's exciting about it. I think I'm

a, I'm a continuous learner. And it's just something I like to

do. But I mean, the things along along the way that you learn,

you know, it was interesting, I looked back AT&T was 2012. And

at the time, I thought AT&T was really behind digitally, like,

hey, you're trying to do what online? And what do you mean,

your customers can't do, you know, XYZ online. And I looked

back now, and I'm like, oh, they were actually pretty advanced,

in terms of level of maturity. And the things that that I

learned there was the foundation, you know, just

before ATT was Alcatel Lucent, which was another, they provided

telecom infrastructure to AT&T. And those two were kind of my

first foray out of being in the software industry. And so going

from software to the customer side, and now being on the

customer side, saying how do you apply all these great things?

All these great technologies, how do you actually make them

useful inside of a corporation? And so for me, that was that was

kind of the exciting thing is taking what I had learned in a

software world and bringing it to an end customer, and then

taking that on my journey forward. So AT&T, my biggest

probably takeaway was, how to do metrics around one it was a

large scale transformation as well. Now their target was, you

know, 2020 being 80% digital, so everything that you do with the

company, every step every process in the company being

digital um, and so a multi year journey, how do you approach it?

What are the steps you take? And then also how do you measure

outcomes that you measure success. AT&T, I can tell you

down to the button, you clicked on a screen, how much money we

saved, to every phone call that was made and how much money it

costs. So it was really measured at a detailed level, which was

an interesting way to understand metrics and outcomes and how you

want to, you want to look at transformation, which I then

brought to the next place, which was Ford Motor Company.

And I assume you've sort of continued to

refine that, and I don't want to get into that process on that by

pillars. Maybe maybe first a little bit about our best bank.

So living in Northwest Arkansas, of course, I'm pretty familiar

with Arvest Bank. And, you know, I've heard you refer to Arvest

Bank as seeking to be a community bank of the future,

maybe kind of just tell us a little bit about Arvest where

Arvest is going the footprint and those kinds of things.

So started out as a community bank, it's always

been a community bank started about 60 years ago, by Sam

Walton. And I think what's interesting is, so we don't want

to it's not that we we didn't, we never went away from being a

community bank. But we want to continue to be a community bank

in a digital world, which I think is a an interesting you

know you think about community, where does community happen?

Does it happen in the neighborhood square? Or does it

happen online? And if they find who you are, and what you're

doing the answer is, yes. Right? It's both. And so, you know,

what does that transformation mean for us? So we're in we're

about a mid sized bank. So we like to be called a community

bank, because we're focused on on serving the community. But if

you talk to the regulators, we're a midsize bank, okay.

And that's usually how regulators gonna

make that determination.

Exactly, it's based on on asset size. And so

but, we're in four states. So we have Arkansas, Oklahoma,

Missouri, and Kansas as our kind of four state footprint. Within

those we aren't across the whole state, we're in a subset of

those states. But definitely serve those states. We also have

some things that we do that are nationwide. So we have a

mortgage, we do mortgage servicing, that's nationwide, we

have another service that we do, which is automotive lending,

that is beyond the four state so we have a new things that we do

that stretch beyond the four state footprint, and those are

all done digitally already today.

Well, I noticed, you know, speaking of Arvest as

seeking to serve the community, I noticed not too long ago, an

announcement about maybe different like industries or

verticals, if you will, within a community that you're really

focused on serving or serving maybe more holistically.

Yeah. So when we think about a community bank,

and what does it mean to be a community bank in the future? We

started by saying, well, what is a community bank today? Right?

It's about relationships. And so we don't want to lose the

relationship piece of being a community bank. It's really at

the core of who Arvest is, and has always been and wants to

continue to be. And so then we'd said, if we take that as the

foundation, or the or the, the individuals, the companies and

the nonprofits that serve the community, and how do we think

about that. So when you start to think you think it's everything

from skilled trade, to agriculture, to health care. And

so what we did is we started with two of those entities and

said, okay, we're gonna take healthcare and agriculture, we

have a lot of experience in serving those communities and as

companies, and what can we do to bring more value to them? How

can we help them succeed in the community, both as a business,

but their employees that can make up the community? And so it

was really starting with those two. What are the services that

we can provide to them, and make sure that we get more focused in

the areas of value that we bring to them as a as a bank. We don't

want to just be a bank, we want to be a partner. And what does

that mean to be a partner?

And I guess that means refract refining products

and services, building new products, integrating products

is it all the above?

It's all of the above. So it's understanding you

know, so in our in our footprint, where we are some of

the key areas that we serve are row crop, right beef cattle and

then our side cow calf operations, and poultry. And so

when you think about that, well wouldn't each of those customers

in our market need you know row crop is very different from

poultry in terms of what they need to operate and run their

business and how they might want a partnership and what that

means. On the healthcare side, you have small physicians

offices, you know, if I'm one or two, you know, physician office,

I might need CFO in a box right?

Yeah,

If I'm row crop, I might need a leasing platform.

Because I might lease my land out. So it's really figuring out

what it is, and then where do we add value to that partnership?

Or to that relationship?

Okay, that makes that total sense.

Does that help?

It does. And I just when I saw it and heard

about it, I thought it made so much sense, you know, to focus

on those areas that really are pillars of the communities that

we all live in I guess.

And those are, those are centers of excellence.

So what we're doing with those is they will partner with each

Well, so you've been with Arvest almost two years, and hired to

of the bank markets. So rather than having everybody have to

hire experts, Now some will we still want experts where it

makes sense. But how do they help with policies, process

products, what are all the things that they can do to help

bring, so they're gonna have industry expertise, themselves,

and we have some interesting, so the the gentleman that we just

hired to run healthcare also happens to own a farm, a fifth

generation family farm. So but then so does the person that

runs our food value chain also is on the seventh generation

family farm. So we've actually found it's been an interesting

dynamic between the two of them, and what what they can bring

together to help serve our customers.

lead transformation. So maybe kind of walk me back over the

last couple of years as you as you stepped in this industry as

you stepped into Arvest. And as soon as you stepped into this

community, like what are some of the other things in that

learning process that stand out?

Oh, there's so many. One was just Arvest itself is a unique

company. And it's, it's interesting, because everybody

Yeah. No, it's just an interesting, I guess, nuance to

will say that during the interview process, we have

amazing people here, we have normally nice people. I have to

say, no offense to all the other places that I've worked, they

have great people, but Arvest, the folks, people are just

really nice. They are very people oriented people. It's

just a really fun welcoming environment. And everybody's

there to try to help each other. And it just is a I've really

enjoyed that. So that stood out just in the company. One of the

things that that I learned is I've done a lot of different

industries that are all regulated, right? So the

difference is that I've learned with financial services is

regulatory is part of what you do day to day and ingrained and

embedded in everything that you do, whether it be deposits or

lending. So whether we're giving you a bank account, a checking

and savings account, or whether we're giving you a commercial

loan, it's in every part of what we do. And that was to me for an

interesting learning to think about, okay, how do we, when I

think about transformation, I never had people from the chief

risk officer's office sitting in every meeting, we now have that

person sitting in every meeting, we have someone from risk and

compliance, who sits in every one of our discussions about our

product roadmap, our technology roadmap, what we're thinking

about doing from a transformation, like setting up

the Centers of Excellence they're in all of those

discussions. So that's one learning. And one, one change. I

don't know if that's the type of learning you're looking for.

the industry as you're stepping in to the transformation. And I

also wonder, like, you know, alright, so day one of a job

like that, you know, how do you start thinking about the process

because it is very much about a process.

It, it is about a process. So one is just understanding and

learning the landscape of the bank.

Okay.

What does it do? You know what I've you know all

the the services that Arvest has to offer, there's a lot of them.

So how do you understand them? Not just who runs them, but but

how does, how the customers use them? How do they think about

them? What are the different levers that we use in the bank,

to run the bank? Just really kind of understanding who makes

up the bank understanding the different markets that we're in

because every market has different needs. Understanding

right what each of the markets serves and what our market looks

like. That's just foundational. And that's kind of throughout

everything that you do. But back to one of the things that I kind

of took away from my work at AT&T was setting up a framework

for how I would think about transformation. What did I learn

there? How do I think about taking that forward? And it's,

it's crazy, but it's a 90 day framework. And that framework

starts with, who do we want to be when we grow up?

Okay.

You have to figure it out. And you can't

solve that in 90 days.

And these are sort of the questions you're

asking yourself?

These are the questions.

Yeah. So you have to understand who we are, to

Okay.

know where we where you want to go. How do you leverage, there's

a great, I got an opportunity to work with someone at Ford that

that helped me refine this a little bit. And his name is

Roger Martin. And he wrote a book called, well, how to win is

what it's called, but it's where they how to win, I got a chance

to work with Roger Martin. Really amazing. Yes, it was very

cool. really pushed, how do you how do you think about framing

it? But it's, it's where do you want to go as a business is

along, though where to play? how to win kind of framework and

construct that takes time to do that. So it's where do you want

to be as a business? The second one is understanding the

customer base. So five pillars, pillar two is Do you know who

your customer is? And in that, do you really know who your

customer is? We always talk about it. But the thing that I

learned at Ford, which was really interesting was, you

know, we were building autonomous vehicles. And we were

looking at what what would they get used for? Will you use it to

move people? Or will you use it to move goods, and we would

probably use it to move both. But we were looking at using it

to move goods. One of the things that was really interesting was,

there's a big difference between the way a customer looks at

getting a package delivered to them. And the way that the

company doing the delivery looks at delivering the package. So I

think we all know that because we've gotten the box all

crumpled up at our doorstep.

Yeah,

But but it's, you know, if you're the customer,

you're thinking, Am I do I want it today? Or do I want to

tomorrow? Do I want it delivered to me? Or do I want it delivered

to my doorstep? Am I am I going to be home? Am I going to be

away? Like? Where all those things? If you are the company

delivering it, you're thinking I? Is it? Does it need to be

refrigerated? Or does it not? Is this long haul or local? Like,

am I going across country? Or am I going down the street. So very

different in terms of how we all think about it. And so what

happens is most companies tend to think of it from their view

of how they need to get the package to you, versus how you

how you want to receive the package. And if you can flip it

and think about it from the lens of how they want to receive the

package. You can redesign what it is that you're doing and make

it more customer first and customer friendly.

I assume you know, when you join an

organization, you know we've been if I've been in an

organization for 15 or 20 years, I think I know who my customer

is. But I'm sure there's always surprises for the organization,

as you really start to dig in, how do you bring a fresh look to

a company on who their customer is?

Well, the easy part is the fact that you don't

know the industry.

So a fresh set of eyes,

A fresh set of eyes is one good way. A lot of

people will do NPS net promoter score, which is do you like me?

Absolutely that customer centric perspective works no matter what

Will you recommend me? Yeah, we did a vulnerability study, which

is completely the opposite. What are the rocks of your shoes?

What are the things that are going to drive you away from us

like what do been like about what we do? So we did that? A

little bit that. But it's also going out and talking to

customers and understanding who they are so standing in the

lobby of a branch and talking to customers or in asking them

questions. And it's really figuring out who they are from

that perspective. And what are they trying to do? You know,

it's it's kind of stepping back and looking at it through just a

different lens of looking at it as who you are as a person not

what financial services do you meet? If we look at it through

the Do you need a loan? Do you need a credit card? That's not

helping you when you're who you are, how you want to live, how

you want to run your business. I think it's that taking that

perspective will really change the answers that you get for

what you might offer.

the industry is.

It does, it does.

So customer understanding the customer's

pillar two, yep, how about three?

So pillar three was probably the I started

within the first 30 days, just because it takes a while which

pillar three is really doing a technology assessment. So the

transformation that Arvest hired me to do. While some of that is

technology, it's really about transforming the bank, how do we

make sure we're set up for where, you know, the world

changed during COVID? That won't start to change before COVID and

continues to change? And it's it's technology is everywhere,

right? Think about how fast people started using Gen AI?

Yeah,

it went from zero to 100 million users in two

months, two months. That's pretty fast adoption of a

technology. And so for us, you know, it's where do we want to

be as a bank? And how do we still be a community bank,

that's technology enabled. And so pillar three is technology

assessment. So it was under skin, understanding the

landscape of everything that we have at the bank all the

underlying technology capabilities, application

systems. And that takes a while. And as you might imagine, in any

business, any institution that's been around for more than a

year, you have legacy technology, I think I talked

about it at another conference was the minute you implement the

technology, its legacy. And so it's making sure that you're

thinking about how you construct things for the future. So you

want to know what you have to know where you need to go. And

that technology assessment is also what data do we have? And

what data can we get out of that technology? You know, what, what

data can we get from the systems that we have? And how do we, how

we think about that data? Do you really is exhaust from the

systems that you use, I hate to say that, but it's an exhaust

from the applications and services that that our customers

use and our associates to use. And it's important to understand

both the technology and where it is, but also to understand the

data and what's available, because the best way to serve

the customer is to know what they're using and not using

because you don't want to continue to offer things that

are valuable. Or if like, simple things are, this can sound

really crazy. But our mobile check deposit for a while people

were having a challenge with mobile check deposit. Well, if

we don't look at what we're having a challenge with, you

don't know that it was actually we were just giving them an

error saying we couldn't deposit it, we weren't giving them an

error saying well, you didn't sign the check. It was really

just depends on the check, right? So it's making sure that

you're being very specific about what the problem is. But you

have to know what data you can and what you have access to and

not access to, to be able to improve customer service.

All right, step four.

So step four is defining looking at and metrics.

Now Step Four kind of needs to go hand in hand with customer or

technology. And then where you want to go kind of step four

really is what metrics can you use to define success? And

there's longer term metrics, but there's short term metrics. So

what we did was we took the vulnerability study that we did,

where are the pain points and rocks in the shoes? And how

could we set up some quick wins to demonstrate metrics and

outcomes? Hey, you know, by improving self service for

password reset, we can take 1000 calls a month out of the contact

center. Great, that's not just that's 1000 customers, we've

made happier. And it's also 1000 less calls to the contact

center. So there's two ways to measure that. So it's, it's it's

things like that, that we wanted to be able to say, what are the

metrics that we can take in the short term? And then long term

is we've put together our technology roadmap, as well as

our transformation roadmap, like, where do we want the

business to be? And how does that tie to technology, we now

have big projects that we're working on, that I can tell you

over a five year period, here's the investment we're going to

make. And here's the outcomes we expect each year either the

reduction in cost that we take out of the bank, or increased

potential revenue. And so we look at both sides of that coin

for the investments that we're making.

Okay. And that's sort of your final piece to your

framework.

And then the last piece of the framework is

actually in governance. So metrics is kind of four. And

that's it piece is really governance and governance is

really, governance is really about how do we make sure that

we're holding each other accountable for all the things

that we're trying to do,

Okay. And that's governance of the process.

That's governance of the process. That's also it's

a little bit of governance of things happen, market dynamics

change, market dynamics changed earlier this year in banking.

Right? We had some changes happen in the banking sector.

And so you have to be prepared to adjust for those dynamics for

what you do as part of your strategy, right. So while we

created a multi year roadmap, you have to make sure that

you've put enough you're putting governance that you're not

spending dollars on something that right now doesn't make

sense. Maybe you do come back to it again next year. Yes, it's on

your long term journey. But you need to step out of that journey

to do something else right now. And so that's, that's what that

governance is, it's, it's to look holistically at your

roadmap, and say, what are you doing? And are you still

prioritizing what you should be?

I think the thing that sort of the reason

why I wanted to go through that framework is, you know, I think

it's just a simple way to think about it, that's right to think

about it, I assume it's allowed you to galvanize your team

around it, and you can communicate it easily. And it's

not. It doesn't only work in financial services, it works in

in any industry.

It works in any industry. And the one thing that

people always go, but you forgot people, like well, I didn't

really forget the associates what what we've what we've done

is we kind of see people as kind of overarching

Okay

across those, that process, we're methodically

thinking about in the Arvest program and what that means to

our associates on the people side. And along with that comes

process changes. So we found out a whole organizational change

management team. And that organizational change management

team is right there alone with us through every step of the

way, with our associates, and like the technology team to say

here's what we do. It's complicated.

Yeah, it is complicated,

but it's not yet.

As you explained it. It. I think, I don't know if

I use the word simple, simple to understand. Complicated to

probably execute on and, you know, and one thing I just

wanted to mention is, you know, we laid it out as a framework of

five steps. But those aren't five linear steps, right?

Their definitely not linear.

That's one thing that probably adds some of the

complexity.

It does, well, I know they're not linear, and

they're not one time, right, you have to continually be looking

at all of those. Now, you don't want to continually change your

goalposts of what you're what you want your business to be in

five to 10 years when you grow up, because you don't wanna keep

changing the goalposts. But it's not a direct line. It's going to

be zigs and zags, again, based upon things that happened in the

market. Who would have known COVID, who would have known

Silicon Valley bank , who would have known, right, just so so

things have market dynamics happen that you have to pay

attention to.

Well, as you I guess I'll kind of ask you a two

pronged question here. As you look back over the last couple

of years, what's maybe the thing that you're most proud of thus

far, and then anything as you're looking forward, that really,

really excites you?

The probably one of the main things was the me at

Arvest program, because we didn't have have that right and

we partnered with our people team, our HR team too and a

third party helped us because without that, no, people would

join the company, and they've had different experiences at

other companies. So people have been at Arvest for a long time,

but but they also have come at different stages of their

career. And those experiences might lead them to believe like

we had a few of our associates who were terrified of moving to

the cloud. And because they were at another company that when

they moved to the cloud, they outsourced all of it. And so

they lost their job. So when we said we were moving to the

cloud, they're like, oh, I'm losing my job right now. No, no,

no, no. We, we need you here, we want to, we want to teach you

how to do this. And so me setting up me at Arvest

framework and foundation and getting that in place. And it it

wasn't easy. It took us almost a full year for people to believe

that we were really not going to let we were focused on their

growth on their success alongside of what we were doing.

So that's probably one because now it's spreading across the

rest of the bank. Right. It takes time to roll it out. But

that for me is probably one thing that I'm most excited

about what we've been able to put in place. In terms of the

transformation on the technology side. We are on track. It's been

pretty fast. We've we've made four pivots if you ask my head

of infrastructure, he'll tell you we've made four pivots on

our migration to cloud over the last year, we are not the only

one, you'd have to. I think I just if I could tell everybody

just, if you think you're the only one, you're not go ask five

other companies, they've made four pivots as well. So if

you're trying to move to cloud, but over the course of that

year, not only have people learned it, and done side by

side with partners, but we will be wealthy out of wonderful data

center, with almost from a year beginning to end to be in Google

Cloud, with one of our data centers. That's pretty good.

That's pretty good clip.

Yes it is.

By anybody's standards,

Yeah.

That's a fast pace. So I think, I think the

Yeah.

team and what they were able to do there, there's, I mean,

Other than hopefully they use the platform,

there's so many, I mean, we've had so many between the quick

wins that we did with the contact center and making some

adjustments there. To last year we went, we have two things.

Last year and nine months, we went from building our own new

core banking platform to delivering the ability to do

equipment finance, as a loan product on a new core banking

platform that we built from the ground up. Yesterday, we

launched our loan origination system for all commercial

lending. So the other one was loan servicing, this is loan

origination. For me, some portion of our commercial loans,

and the team built that from the ground up and we did it in

partnership with it, we changed the operating model. So the I

mean, there's so many wins, we we changed the operating model

of how we built software and for, for Arvest, for us, the

lenders, the loan assistance, customers, all gave input to

what we built and how we built it. And every two weeks, we had

a group of associates that got to see what we call a sprint,

right. So we follow an Agile process. And every two weeks we

right? That's the goal is it gets used, because many products

demonstrate what we built, we built this, look at it, built

this, look at it, we even had our loan assistance, and the

lenders got to design what they needed. On the screens, like

this is what it needs to look like for us. And oh, by the way,

we need a pizza trackers that everybody that's working on the

loan knows where it is when the customer calls, and oh, by the

way, the customer needs access to the pizza tracker, so they

know where the loan is. So I think all of those things add

up, there's just so many of them. So many you can't measure

like measuring that partnership with our internal associates and

customers to define what that product looks like we had never

done that. On that regular basis. You don't have a way to

measure that.

get implemented, and kind of forced usage, meaning this might

not be the best tool ever, but you're gonna go use it. Well, if

you get to design it, that really helps in terms of

adoption, use and value that it brings.

But what about as your anything just on the

horizon, which is really exciting?

Oh, so many things. We have a lot of big

projects and programs on the docket for next year, we have a

continuation of this loan origination and loan servicing

platform for customers revamping our consumer platform. But what

I'm really more excited about right now is where are these

centers of excellence? Right, they're new. And so I'm really

excited about what these centers of excellence can help bring to

our customers. What is the value? We've started in the, in

the healthcare space, we've already started and a customer

advisory board. That is really, you know, we have one customer,

she is a she runs a unit inside a hospital and she's a

practicing physician, but she also is doing the hospital's

transformation. And so the interesting part there is she

wants to learn from us what we're doing on our

transformation. We want to learn from her what we can help with

the hospital or even hospital ways like what's what's the

value add? Where do we add benefit? So I think there's so

much to be gained from those centers of excellence. That I

just I'm looking forward to what the outcomes are from from they

just started right and I'm looking forward to the outcomes

from from those centers of excellence.

I think it will be exciting to see how those are

additional value to customer's lives, no doubt, well, maybe as

we, as we conclude, I always ask it sort of similar question. You

know, at the Walton College, we've got somewhere between

probably 8,500 and 9,000 students, so you know, that are

a part of the business school. And so you know as you just kind

of think about what you've learned throughout all of your

career journey. And you think about, if you could just give

one piece of advice to to a student, what is it?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal a quote for

somebody. So I, there was a quote from a former president

that said, just do stuff. I'm gonna say, just try stuff. If

people ask you just try it. You know, I, when they asked me when

Ford asked me to do autonomous vehicles, I was like, you're

kidding me? Right? I know nothing about them. And I'm

like, that's okay. You get connectivity, you can figure

that. So So you just have to put yourself out there. Don't be

afraid to try thing I guess is really what I would say like if

if opportunities come your way. You don't know if you can do it

unless you try it. So I mean, I still stay involved in the

autonomous vehicle community. Because I still love that,

right? It's, it's based on passion. And I still talk to all

Love it. Well, Laura, thank you for joining me

my friends at AT&T. And actually, we're thinking about

how we use some of that technology to do could you go

stand up a pop up branch with you know, an independent network

that didn't need hardwired connectivity? Like you can take

things with you as a nugget. Just don't be afraid. Just try

whatever comes your way.

today. It's been pleasure to get to know you. And it was a

pleasure today get to learn about the transformation journey

at Arvest and the way you approach it, thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for the invitation.

On behalf of the Walton College thank you for

joining us for this captivating conversation. To stay connected

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