The State Of The Banking Industry: Unveiling Why Banks Fail With Jay Williamson

We are seeing a number of bank failures happening recently, leaving those of us not from that sector wondering what is going on. Is our money safe? Is there a concern for our data? In this episode, Jay Williamson, the President and CEO of American Southwest Credit Union, joins John Riley and George Usi to shed light on the state of the banking industry. He talks about dealing with the challenges in regulatory requirements and narrows into the main reason why banks typically fail. Sharing what keeps him up at night as CEO, Jay highlights the importance of hiring experts to manage areas you can’t control like cybersecurity. He then discusses what excites him about what is happening currently as well as in the future of banking from both cyber and business standpoint. Plus, Jay shares leadership advice and the resources that help him become the success he is today. Don’t miss out on the wisdom from this conversation!

 

Watch the episode here

 

 

The State Of The Banking Industry: Unveiling Why Banks Fail With Jay Williamson

 

We’re happy to have our great guest here. He’s an avid outdoorsman who loves to hunt and fish. He’s working on buying his third motorcycle after his Harley and his Ninja. He has a weakness for Diet Coke. He’s the President and CEO of the American Southwest Credit Union. Welcome, Jay Williamson.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

It’s great to have you. We’re going to jump right in here. If a cyber risk was a pizza and the frameworks were a crust, what’s the riskiest topping you’ve seen? What topping would you equate that to?

It’s the broad totality of all the risks out there when you look at having ransomware, stuffing credentials, unpatched systems, social engineering, and phishing attacks. It’s such a broad topic, and there are so many out there that I would equate it to a supreme pizza. Who’s putting onions and green peppers or pineapple on a pizza?

It goes along with anything else. I’ve seen avocados and artichokes. There are certain things that shouldn’t be there, but that’s okay. In regard to your role as the President and CEO, what keeps you up at night? What problems do you see in the industry?

 

 

A lot of it is the cybersecurity side of it because that’s not necessarily my strength and where I come from. That’s what I’ll find in a lot of businesses that I deal with and a lot of other CEOs. That’s not our strength. We know what we do on a day-to-day basis, and we’re experts, but I also know that what I don’t know can take me down. The cybersecurity side of it keeps me up at night because that’s the one thing I can’t control. I know all the other risks. I know how to avert them and compensate for them, but I have to trust in people around me for the cybersecurity side of it because it’s the one area of my organization and my business that I’m not an expert in.

A lot of people would find the same thing. Technology can get very deep and broad at the same time. To anybody who has looked at the industry, trying to understand it means security, cyber risk, and everything else, it gets pretty deep down there. It’s a whole for a lot of the customers that we see or a lot of the businesses that we have been in. Being in a credit union and banking around as you have, you’ve got a lot of regulatory requirements. What are your biggest challenges when you’re dealing with those regulatory requirements?

 

 

We do have a lot of them and the ones are most in the news. Everybody is familiar with the bank failures that are going on. I get those questions a lot, especially as it relates to, “What’s the difference between a credit union and a bank? Why did they fail? Why am I different?” We’re apples and oranges from the credit union side and what those banks that particularly failed are. That comes at the risk deference side of it. They weren’t managing their assets and their liabilities on their balance sheet.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in. You have to understand where your risks are and match up especially your cashflow with what your balance sheet looks like. We have spent a lot of time on that. My board and I have spent an extraordinary amount of time talking about what our balance sheet looks like, what our liquidity looks like, and how we’re going to manage those.

For instance, I’ve done everything on our investment side very short. We don’t do that. We don’t look at our investments as a way to make money. We look at it as a way to manage our liquidity so that we’re always safe and sound. We don’t have almost all of our portfolio in our liability section. There are three years and less. Silicon Valley Bank has 30 years and more. There’s a huge difference between 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, and 30 years. They didn’t have the liquidity when they needed it.

 

We’re not that way. Almost all of ours are set so that we know exactly when our cashflow is going to come in and how it’s going to come in so that we don’t take on that risk. We take enough risks on our loan portfolio. That’s where almost all banks have typically failed as having too much risk in their loan portfolio. We know that’s where the majority of our risks are. We try to make sure that we don’t have risks in our liability and our investment side of it. That’s why we’re different.

One of the things that we do is talk about risk transference. We talk about it from a cybersecurity standpoint, but in your case, it sounds like it’s much more from a liquidity standpoint. That is more important. That’s why some of the banks are failing. There are regulatory requirements that have liquidity events required. I believe that’s why the banks were shut down.

That’s what I was trying to get to. Those banks didn’t manage that liquidity risk the way they should. There are set rules out there. For the credit union side, it’s called NEV or Net Economic Value. What is the value of our organization at any given moment? A lot of what comes into play is what you’ve heard in the news. It’s the unrealized losses in those investment portfolios. Every bank and credit union out there has some amount if they have done any investing at all, but what the regulators look at is how well you’re managing that, how short that risk is, and how well you would manage it. That’s the big regulation. That’s why they did get shot down because they did manage that well at all.

Based on your background, you manage that very well. You’ve worked for a few banks. It looks like there are a couple of acquisitions in your past there. You’re pretty much an expert at doing those things. What would you call the secret of your success in that? Is it a little bit more conservative? Is it transferring that risk? What makes you that successful?

A lot of it is that my philosophy is different than a lot of other philosophies. What I do and my organization plays a huge role in our members’ lives. We’re here for the financial success of our members and our communities. There’s nothing that I’m going to do to risk that position and opportunity to make it all. A lot of banks are driven by the bottom line, “We’re going to maximize all of our earnings.” They have shareholders and call reports every quarter of how much money they can make. They’re going to take risks that I’m not going to.

My mission and the goal of my organization is not the maximize income. It’s to maximize opportunities for our organization, our community, and our people. We don’t take a lot of risks that we don’t have to. We are a little bit more conservative. I’ll say what a lot of those big banks did that you see fail as they forgot about walking and tackling. We do the right things for the right reasons every day. We want to do the small things.

 

 

You’re seeing the consolidation in the industry and all the bank failures. People are concerned for the first time about some of their money and issues. We are in a very good position to help those. We launched a new product where we can ensure any member or business up to $250 million with guaranteed coverage insurance instead of $250,000.

My father always told me that if you take care of your pennies, your dollars will take care of themselves. It’s not just financial advice. It’s pretty much in business and every aspect of your life. If you manage the small things, the big things will usually take care of themselves. That’s my philosophy on running an organization and why we have had success. We have done little things well day in and day out.

Any CEO knows that making sure that there are measurable objectives and goals is critical to success. That is attributed to the small things. There’s a visionary component as well on where we are going and why are we going in that direction. There’s a flood of laws that are coming down for banking online and doing business that deal with the privacy of individuals rather than concerning so much about whether or not you get hacked.

Lawmakers think that everyone is probably going to get hacked at some point no matter what you invest in. Did you do your homework? Are you managing that risk properly? It’s what a lot of these Omnibus privacy laws talk about. In your situation, what do you think the right thing is to do now that we have six states that have these laws? If you have somebody that’s part of your bank, and they move to that state and you still have their data, what does that mean for the bank?

This is a discussion I’ve had with many credit unions over the years. I get the same answer quite often, which is, “What applies to us is what we will consider.” That becomes another risk to add to the pile. In your experience, what has been your biggest concern when it comes to all these regulations that are related to doing business online? Is there anything that stood out for you that caught your ear, “I better make sure I’m on top of that?”

I don’t know whether this is true or whether it’s just what I hear, but there are so many people who talk about and get so upset, “Always, regulations are changing.” They want to fight and argue. That has never been my approach. If those are the regulations, then that’s what we have to do. That’s what we’re going to do. I don’t give it a second thought, “Here’s our problem. Let me find a solution. We will get it in place.” A lot of the things that you’re talking about, we don’t do in-house. We don’t have the human capacity to do it. I go back to the blocking and tackling.

I make sure I have the absolute best people that I can to take care of our day-to-day things and the things that are going to impact most of our members on a daily basis. We rely on a lot of outside sources and try to bring in the best experts that we can outside because they are focused on those things. They are the experts. They’re more than what I’m going to able to employ in-house.

I try to make sure that our membership and our organization have the best of both worlds. We do that by finding places where we can outsource and bring in the best talent and not worry necessarily about it being ours, but that is a risk because that’s something I can’t control. I can control so much, but I can’t control that part of it. It keeps me up at night, but I don’t know if there’s a better solution.

Getting helpers is the common answer in many businesses, not just in banking but anywhere there are complex regulatory issues. Banking and finance are the two biggest. In healthcare, it was HIPAA for a number of years for health portability and electronic medical record issues. You’re on the right track. Reach out to the helpers and be surprised at what you can learn from the experts that deal with this every day, especially in legal because there are so many attorneys out there but not many that focus on what is cybersecurity tech. Generally speaking, when it comes to regulations and laws, the first place that most organizations tend to turn to is outside helpers.

They’re our partners. We’re not going to be successful if we don’t have some great partners out there. We’re lucky. In Sierra Vista, we have one of the campuses of the University of Arizona. It happens to be their cybersecurity. We also have Fort Huachuca outside of our city limits, which is very much a high-tech industry and national security. We have a lot of experts right here locally that most people don’t have. We have one of the best cybersecurity programs out there because we have some of those people local and access to them on a daily basis.

When I think about our primary question, “If a cyber risk was a pizza or if a risk, in general, was a pizza,” it almost feels like a lot of the time, we’re going to come in, “We want you to turn your pizza into a calzone. We don’t want anybody to see inside of what you’re doing.” That came to me when you said the whole pizza. It’s not a pizza anymore. It’s a calzone. Close it up. Lock it off. Perhaps I’ve answered my question, “If cyber risk were pizza, would I turn it into a calzone?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Our regulators don’t want us to take any risk at all. They want to lock down to the point where we would never be able to do business. If we did everything they wanted, we wouldn’t be in business.

I don’t know about you, but anytime we go to a pizza place, very few people order calzones.

I love those as a kid. I haven’t had one in years, but they were one of my favorites.

Maybe that will change with the regulations. We’re eating calzones instead of pizzas. What are we going to do about our show, John?

We will have to go to empanadas then, George. Since Jay and I are so close to the border here, empanadas would be the next best thing. What excites you about the future? These banks and everything else are having their issues, and regulators are coming in. We seem to go around about this every so often with the banking industry, but there has to be something that excites you about what’s happening and what you see about the future both from the cyber and banking standpoints.

From a banking standpoint and any business standpoint, I’m excited about opportunities. I knew whenever COVID came along that there were going to be organizations that failed and organizations that thrived. It was about finding that opportunity. I can tell you that the organization that I was with at that point in time found a niche that we could fill. We grew like crazy and did some of the best we had ever done. That was the first thing I did when I got here, “Are we maximizing our opportunities?” We found places to do that.

You’re seeing the consolidation in the industry and all the bank failures. People are concerned for the first time about some of their money and issues. We are in a very good position to help those. We launched a new product where we can ensure any member or business up to $250 million with guaranteed coverage insurance instead of $250,000.

 

 

We have gone out of our way to make sure that we’re giving the best products and services. I know that we put ourselves at the forefront to be successful for a very long time. We’re 100% different than the banks that failed. That’s our biggest selling point. We offer things that those huge banks that are supposed to be great and unfailable can’t offer, and they can’t do, but we can. That excites me because I know that we’re on the right track and that we’re always going to be able to take care of our members and our communities.

That’s amazing. We might have to chat about that after the show here.

We have to do that. This is what I love to do. Our mission and goal is to help our members on their financial journey and give them the best possible financial life that they can have so that our communities can be successful.

 

 

Thanks for sharing. Every individual is worried to some degree about their banking situation if their money is protected, especially those that have more than what was the traditional FDIC coverage, and that’s their retirement. A lot of people are like that. They keep that money in banks. I can understand their fear. It sounds like your team has a lot of those worries addressed. That’s fantastic to hear that you’re focusing on those details. Thank you for doing what you do. We appreciate it.

It’s our pleasure. It’s my life’s passion.

You’ve been successful at it, which is wonderful. We like seeing that too.

I hope so. The success we have is due to my team. I’m lucky to have one of the best teams that I’ve ever worked with. They have driven our success as well as our members. Our community accepts us for who we are.

I have to ask this question because I noticed that you moved from bank to bank here after each successful exit. This isn’t a normal question. Are you taking the same team with you so that you know that you’ve got a good team? Are you building more team members as you go along?

I’ve never taken a team member from place to place. One of the things that I have always wanted to strive for is to be able to get along and work with anybody. There are truly two sides of that coin. I understand why a lot of CEOs bring along other people because you do have that immediate bond. Everybody is on the same page pulling in the same direction. You know who has what strengths and what weaknesses. Way too many people don’t ever want to get out of their comfort zones. There’s an internal strike. I want to be the guy who is known for being able to work with anybody and everybody and have the personality that says, “No matter what team I’m on, I can help them be successful.”

I’ve always taken that. Whenever you walk into a new organization, there’s always, “What’s this person going to be like?” I want to build those relationships and bonds and be able to work with anybody that’s there so that they feel what they put their life into. I’ve got a lot of people here that have been here for 20 to 25 years. If I walked in and brought my team, what does that mean for the lifetime that they have invested in their organization? I’m not going to take that away from anybody. That’s the last thing I want to do. I’ve never taken anybody. There might be a time that I wouldn’t bring somebody on, but my goal is to work with the people that have built the organization. I’m just one piece of it. I’m not even the big piece of it. I’m the small piece.

A lot of CEOs who do bring team members with them sometimes create culture shock within the footprint of the organization. You come in with a vision, and then in come these leaders that might be altering the culture. In many cases, it’s best to make sure that the cultural footprint matches what exists within the organization. It’s a stronger team if you can improve on that.

You need to make the shift in the mindset of the organization, the goals, and what you’re doing in the trenches as far as footprint. If that’s your superpower, you’re one of the rare ones that are out there in banking. It’s a fantastic approach. What do you think is the biggest struggle when you land in a new place in the first 30 days that you’re watching or learning? What’s the hardest thing to figure out?

I’ve been very blessed. Every time that I came into a new organization, I sat down and had a conversation with every single person within the organization. I have a list of twenty different questions so that I get to know them and what they think the problems are. Most of the time, once you start listening, they will tell you what the problems are, what they’re doing best, and what needs to be fixed.

If I listen to people, it makes my job as a leader very easy. They have already told me what we do well, so I don’t change those things. They will tell me what they hate and what’s wrong. I fix what they have already said was wrong and what they wanted to fix anyway and couldn’t. Nothing changed that they didn’t want to see changed. We’re doing what we have always done well. We fix the things that were broken and that they wanted to change and couldn’t. They’re excited.

It’s the old adage. You can lead a horse, but you can’t make it drink. If you take a thirsty horse to water, you don’t have to make it do anything and drink on its own. Lead people where they want to go and don’t fix the problems that are not problems. Fix the things that everybody already recognizes and is maybe the unspoken rule or the worst kept secret. Fix that, and you will do very well. That has been my approach. It has been fairly easy because I listened to what they already told me.

How did you get all this experience? Did you read books? Did you go to events? How did you become so successful at this?

All of the above. I always knew I wanted to be a CEO from a very young age. My dad was a serial entrepreneur. He gave me a lot of experience. He turned the family farm over to me when I was sixteen. I screwed that up every which way possible. I should have been fired from our family business 10 or 15 times, but I remember all the things that he told me.

For instance, there was one time when he told me to get all the 600-pound calves and ship them off to the market. I was there by myself doing all of it. It was hot. I let one 315-pound calf get in the trailer. I didn’t think it was worth my time to unload all that trailer to get the calf back out. I left it in there, got the rest of the steers, and took off.

I picked up the sales sheet. Dad’s calves brought $0.85 a pound. Mine brought about $1.15. I came walking into his office so proud of myself for getting $1.15 a pound when he got $0.85. He pulled out the calculator and multiplied 600 times $0.85 and $1.15 times 335. He said, “Who got more for their calves? Who made more money? What are we going to have to put into that calf for the rest of that summer? Zero. You lost $215. It was worth unloading the trailer. I pay you $4 an hour.”

I remember lots of mistakes that I made like that of taking care of the details, but him giving me that opportunity at sixteen and letting me screw up royally has helped. Along the process, I knew I wasn’t ever going to have the CEO experience until you have a CEO experience. I’ve done everything I can to learn about leadership.

I go to the Global Leadership Summit. I’m their biggest proponent, and I don’t get a thing for that, but it’s by far the best leadership education you can get for $200. I take my whole team every year because there’s so much value. Craig Groeschel says, “When leaders get better, everybody gets better.” That’s the truest statement I’ve ever heard. If your leadership can grow, and you can grow as a leader, your organization has unlimited potential. I believe that from the bottom of my heart.

Are there any books that you would recommend for our audiences?

One of my favorite ones is not even about leadership. It’s called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. If you haven’t read that, he was an FBI negotiator. I use the negotiating skills all the time that he taught in that book almost on a daily basis.

Both George and I have read that one as well already, but that’s a good reminder. Moving more to you personally, you talked about living on the farm. Where did you get your education? How does somebody become Jay? You’re reading books, going to these events, and growing, but tell us a little about your history.

I did grow up on a farm. I grew up a rodeo cowboy. I started rodeoing when I was six years old. I did it throughout high school and college professionally. Please don’t grow up. We don’t need any other Jays out in this world. One is too many. Do whatever is authentic to you. I’m the same person day in and day out, at least I try to be. I don’t pretend to be anything special. All I can pretend to be is somebody who cares about the community and people and is willing to learn on a daily basis.

Where did you go to school? What did you study?

I went to several schools. I moved colleges like I’ve moved jobs. I graduated from Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. I got my Master’s degree from Western Governors University online. I’ve also graduated from the Southwestern Graduate School of Banking. Education is very important to me as it has been to my family. Every chance I get to further education has brought a lot of value, especially even now. I finished my Master’s degree after almost 30 years in business. I see a lot of the education that I got and how they matched up. I didn’t think I needed it at that point. It surely took my career to another level.

I understand you have one granddaughter. I’m assuming you’ve got some kids along the way there and a family. Tell us a little bit about that.

I have two wonderful kids. I have a 32-year-old daughter, a 2-year-old granddaughter, and a 16-year-old son. Both of my kids are adopted. We adopted my son. My daughter adopted us. I came to live with both of us together about the same time. I couldn’t be prouder of either one, especially my daughter. She’s my hero. She was on the streets when she came to us, and now she’s a mom and a successful businesswoman. She could have been any of those statistics that you see on a daily basis of kids gone wrong. She never allowed that to happen to herself. She is my hero for sure.

I can understand that. I have a nephew that became more like a son to me. He’s an electrical engineer. He’s got a good job and everything else, but it could have gone the other way based on his history. I love hearing those success stories of family and how one person or a family unit can change somebody’s life and turn it the right way. That’s great.

She was supposed to live with us for two months. I told her the day she came in, “I have no idea how to raise a teenager other than to treat you like you’re my daughter.” She decided we were Mom and Dad. It has been that way for years now. She couldn’t be any more my daughter than I had raised her for her entire life.

What else drives you? What are your passions? What do you like to do outside of work?

I love to hunt fish. I love to do anything outside. My dad used to say I was a professional hunter and only worked part-time to get by, but now, I love what I do. People talk about work-life balance. I love to work. This is what I do. This is my passion. I’m not going to cure cancer or do anything like that. I’m a CEO because I can change the 75 lives of the people who count on me to make the right decisions on a daily basis. I can put them in a position to succeed and have the best work-life balance that they can have.

They can be successful. If they’re successful at work, they’re successful at home. If they’re successful at home, they’re successful at work. They’re better moms, dads, husbands, and wives. If you can change that part of the community, then you can change the entire community. That’s how we can change the country. It’s by doing our parts right. I’m very passionate about what I do, but it’s not necessarily the banking side or anything else. It’s putting people in a position to succeed and have their best lives.

 

 

It takes a village to do what you need to do, whether it’s the village of your entity or your community. One of my grandfathers used to say, “Let’s pick up a shovel. Get it done.” We’re all good workers. We’re all hard workers. You don’t forget things like that. That was in Spanish when he said it to me. I want to make a special note of that. It didn’t quite sound like that exactly, but I remembered it.

I also noticed that you had quite a few awards for best places to work or best workplaces on your profile. That’s great to see. We got one of the Inc.’s best places to work for Omnistruct. We’re very similar when it comes to our employees and trying to make those changes in our employees’ lives as well. We appreciate that.

That’s probably one of my proudest awards because that’s given out by the employees. The survey measures their engagement and how much they enjoy coming to work. I’m very proud of that side of it because I know that we’re putting people a chance to succeed. I like that. I do think that’s how we’re going to change communities and change the world. It’s by doing that.

I had one of my employees go out to one of our members’ homes because she couldn’t figure out how to get signed online. She went to her house to do that. We don’t do that all the time, but I didn’t ask my employee to do that. She took it upon herself because she wanted our members to have the best experience possible. It thrills me when I hear stories like that.

We have a self-funded program called Random Acts of Kindness. People donate to our organization so that anybody within our organization, whether they donated or not, can do something kind. They see somebody in need, whether that’s a coat or buying a copy for the person behind them. I’m thrilled to be a part of an organization that does things like that, puts other people first, and brings light into a dark community. That’s what we lack. More and more all the time, people are being kind. I hope our organization is known for being kind.

 

 

I’m familiar with another organization that gives their employees one day a month off to volunteer or help other organizations with their missions to succeed. It’s a paid day for doing that to get back to the community and try and help move that forward.

We do that. I require every one of my senior team members to volunteer to be on the board of a local charity. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take our best people and put them in positions in the community to help the community succeed.

I love to hear that.

How can you expect people to own the jobs when the job owns them if you’re not taking care of them first? That’s a group federation as well as an individual pursuit. It’s nice to hear like-minded ideas because we’re seeing fewer of those kinds of CEOs and organizations. You focus on what you can do for the people who work for you and how to make them better because the company gets better. If you take care of those folks that are working for you and help them grow and learn, there is bound to be a positive outcome.

 

 

We’re a community financial organization. If our community succeeds, we will succeed. I put everything I do into making sure that our community succeeds because I know the end result is that we will follow as well.

Speaking of community, what do you consider your footprint? You will get into Tucson. You go beyond that. Where are you in terms of the footprint of your baseline of locations and who you serve?

We have a field of membership. That’s one thing different about credit unions in general. We have a very defined area or field of membership. Ours is the five Southeast counties in Arizona, but we have a little clause. Any member can sponsor a new member. Technically, we can go anywhere that we want to go as long as there’s at least one degree of connection there. The five Southeastern counties, which include Tucson, are our main footprint, but we’re trying to serve rural Arizona or the places that the bigger banks have left and don’t care about anymore and just draining funds out of.

We’re going in there, supporting, giving back to those communities, and trying to be the biggest fish in smaller ponds because we know that we can make the biggest impact in those areas and take care of more people who have been neglected and have not been given all the opportunities that they can because they’re not in a large area. We will take care of them and do it because that’s our passion. We want to see smaller towns, individuals succeed, and rural Arizona succeed.

 

 

 

 

I can understand that. Some of the work that I’ve done in the past is rural broadband being able to bring high-speed internet connections in rural parts of every state in the nation. We do a lot of it. Believe it or not, Northeastern California is very rural. As you start to get up into the Idaho and Oregon borders, they still only had DSL for a long period through national initiatives. You need to get these people connected. How are they going to do their online banking if they can’t even get a dial-up connection? That was a challenge.

I’ve been lobbying many congressmen for the same thing. That connection is so vital, especially in this day and age. Thank you for doing that because it’s huge, but it’s also so much fun. It’s so rewarding when you can take something to somebody that they haven’t had before. It changes their lives, whether it’s broadband or financial services. I’m glad to hear that because that’s how we make a difference in the world.

Are you still having that issue?

It’s getting better all the time. There are still pockets that don’t have the high-speed connection they need and/or reliable. We’re moving into a market where there is only one provider, and that provider is not the world’s greatest by any stretch of the imagination. We had another rural market that now got Cox Internet. What we had was almost as bad as dial-up. It is still very much an issue.

How about I give you a follow-up on that?

That would be great.

I know some people who might be able to help there in unimaginable ways. I’ll see what I can do. John, you probably had another question to ask.

We’re coming to the end here. If you could go back in time and give your younger self some advice, what would that advice be?

Swing for the fences early and often. I knew what I wanted to do and be a long time ago, and I waited until my mid-40s thinking that I needed to have a certain progress and a certain path. I realized now looking back that I was never going to be ready, but I should have done what I did in my 40s and my 30s. What would I have lost if I had tried and failed? Nothing. To everybody out there, my advice is to do what you want to do and swing for the fences because you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Where can people find you?

LinkedIn is probably the best place. I also don’t mind. I’m happy to help anybody in any way I can. That’s my motto in life. My email address is [email protected]. I’ll answer every email that I get.

What is your company website?

ASCU.org.

To our audience, we would like to thank you for reading. If you’ve learned something or laughed, tell someone about this show and share it. Jay, we appreciate you being here. It has been wonderful. We have learned some things from you. It sounds like we’re going to continue the conversation here. This has been another great episode. We will see you next time. Thank you, everybody.

 

 Important Links 

• American Southwest Credit Union
• Never Split the Difference
• LinkedIn – Jay Williamson
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

 

About Jay Williamson

A servant leader who understands how to cultivate an award-winning corporate culture that drives long-term growth in assets.

• • • • • President/CEO of American Southwest Credit Union
        • Recently launched a new online banking platform
        • Loves to hunt, fish, and ride motorcycles
        • Owns two motorcycles, soon to be 3
        • Diet Cokeaholic
        • Has one beautiful granddaughter