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Eric Sprink – Jumping between time scales, collaborating with your board of directors, and firing yourself | Episode 7
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Welcome to episode seven of Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief! Joining me today is Eric Sprink, CEO of Coastal Community Bank.
On this show, I’m unpacking the stories, decisions, and influences that make people successful leaders. Eric belongs to the class of CEOs who start their journeys at the bottom of the corporate ladder and work their way up to the very top. And he accomplished this by thinking divergently, not by embracing the mindset of a stereotypical banker.
My name is Nathan Baumeister; I am the Co-founder and CEO of ZSuite Tech and the host of this podcast.
Often creative and unconventional thinkers are cast as loners. Isolated geniuses putting a dent in the universe by executing a futuristic vision that nobody else fully understands. Eric Sprink has demonstrated that creativity and vision can and should be a team effort. He’s currently leading one of the foremost institutions in the banking-as-a-service space, including collaborating with Greenwood, a fintech built for underserved communities.
Coastal Community Bank’s notoriety and influence is an inevitable consequence of a leadership team that skates to where the puck is going to be in 15-20 or even 30 years, not where the puck is today.
Eric is a sought-after speaker and investor, thanks to his focus on relentless improvement at the organizational level and the personal level.
If you’re curious about the future of banking, look no further than the mind of Eric Sprink.
Resources:
Eric’s book recommendations:
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
Let Us Put Our Money Together: The Founding of America's First Black Banks (Request a free copy)
Connect:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Eric Spring's Background
00:00:00
Speaker
My parents would probably say Eric was a rebel without a cause. And he was always the one pushing boundaries in life. And so maybe it was more born into my DNA than bred into my DNA. But I've always been the one to think
00:00:19
Speaker
differently, challenge things, you know, not per se thinking of the entrepreneurial spirit of the ups and downs and the financial ramifications of failing or winning, but more along the lines of problem solving and thinking about things differently than others have throughout my entire life.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hi, my name is Nathan Baumeister, and you're listening to Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief. A podcast where executives from the world of finance and technology share the story of how they got where they are and the decisions that made them who they are. I'm looking for hidden moments of truth and sacrifice, wisdom and folly, and what it's like to navigate the treacherous waters at the helm of a growing company.
Goals of the Podcast
00:01:09
Speaker
I wanna do all that so that together we can learn from their journey and use that insight personally and professionally.
00:01:17
Speaker
In episode seven, my guest is Eric Spring, CEO of Coastal Community Bank. Eric came to banking by night, working the graveyard shift in the bank call center while in college. And today, he runs one of the most innovative banks in America. His team has navigated an unbelievable path through the murky ocean that is banking and financial technology.
Eric's Career Journey and Leadership Style
00:01:38
Speaker
They even spun up a separate company dedicated solely to banking as a service partnerships, using Coastal's balance sheet as the foundation.
00:01:46
Speaker
Divergent thinking is woven into Eric's DNA. His approach to leadership relies on his own particular brand of time travel and ferocious curiosity. As CEO, he's solving problems today and 30 years from now. In banking as a service, most of the difficult, complex work happens beneath the surface. Eric Sprinkin bodies that ethos, working hard on himself so that his team can succeed far into the future.
00:02:12
Speaker
Today, I'm thrilled to present you with the delightfully different mind of Eric Spring. Get ready for another deep dive on Builder Banker Hacker Chief. Eric, what a wonderful pleasure it is to have you on Builder Banker Hacker Chief. Thanks for joining me today. Well, excited. Thanks for inviting.
00:02:37
Speaker
Absolutely. I would love just to get started for the audience just to get a really quick introduction of who Eric Sprink is. Obviously, we'll go into a bunch of details of your life in the bank and all that fun stuff, but just as a good primer to set the stage.
00:02:54
Speaker
Oh, we can park the car there for hours. I'm really not actually kidding aside, not that interesting person. Married 25 years, three kids, all in different colleges at different levels, you know, and just a pretty simple everyday banker. Been doing it a long time, but not that exciting life when all is said and done.
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, it's funny because I think oftentimes when we look at our own lives, we think, it's not that much of cool stuff going on, but other people might look at it and be like, holy crap, that's amazing. All the things that you're doing. When we talk to our guests here on Builder Maker Hacker Chief, I always like to get started on what were some of the key moments in your childhood and growing up,
00:03:49
Speaker
that help expose you to the type of leader that you wanted to be as you look back to those years is there any role model is there any particular experiences or teams that you are part of that help to inspire you in the direction of the development of you as a leader.
Sports Influence on Leadership
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, when you look back, it's easily to pick out some things that shaped you or helped create. And then, of course, we're all learning and growing and want to be better every year that we live. We want to be better in our marriage. We want to be better as people. We want to be a better leader. We want our companies to be better every year. But you mentioned the word teams. It's interesting. And I didn't really realize this as I was growing in my own personal path.
00:04:35
Speaker
When I was younger, I kind of played individual sports predominantly, so tennis and golf. I still played baseball through high school and what have you, but it was golf and tennis that I really spent most of my time, and those are historically seen as individual sports. But now, having been the president and CEO of Coastal for a long time, you realize
00:05:01
Speaker
how individual and quite frankly to be fully transparent, lonely, that a CEO position can be. I was thinking about this over life and just saying, I wonder if
00:05:16
Speaker
being on the court eight hours a day, growing up alone, and that individual sport in context of being on a tennis team, of course. How much that really parallels being the CEO of Coastal, because it is a different position in context of a great team with great teammates.
00:05:37
Speaker
Um, but you know, I don't know, it would go back to say my parents are fantastic individuals and my dad was a professor. And so he has a huge influence on my life and my mom and her, her belief system and influence on me as a person. And I think we were an augmentation of our life, right? Um, that you take different pieces of it and, and you look back and you say, I see this one trait coming from this one aspect of my life.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah. No, that's a really interesting insight because I think that most people would actually say, as you're growing up, I want to make sure my kids are in team sports because I want to make sure they know how to play well with others. And I'm pretty similar to you. I did a lot of individual sports, gymnastics, diving, pole vault. It was all about what I could do. And obviously, team members, and I'm sure you had team members on the tennis court as well. But in preparation to being a chief executive officer,
00:06:29
Speaker
And as you mentioned, and I felt this as well, the loneliness of being in that spot, what's your ability to be self-motivated? What's your ability to push yourself and figure out that even though you don't have someone right on the court with you, that when you're ready to just give up and not want to do anything anymore, how do you kind
Mentorship and Problem-Solving
00:06:45
Speaker
of push beyond? I really haven't heard that advice before. That's really, really interesting. I love that.
00:06:50
Speaker
If we could talk a little bit, I'm curious, just from a perspective of your dad, you said he was a professor. Was he taught at the university, I'm guessing? Yep. Yeah, Arizona State University, yep. Arizona State, which is where you ended up going for your undergrad. I had to take advantage of the free tuition, my friend. Yeah, well, you know, smart. I'm the only school that would admit me, so there's two bits. Well, there you go. One of the things that's always fascinated me, and so I just ask you this question.
00:07:21
Speaker
The life of an entrepreneur, the life of a leader, the life of a builder of banks or software companies or whatever is an inherently risky proposition.
00:07:35
Speaker
with a lot of unknowns. And some of the guests that we've talked to grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So they knew about kind of the risks that are associated with that and the ups and downs and the instability and those types of things. Sounds like you grew up in a family, which was more work for a large institution, very stable, those different types of things. I'm curious if you reflect back on that.
00:07:59
Speaker
how you made that transition to seeing one type of lifestyle, if you will, and risk appetite to what you ended up doing in going out and being an entrepreneurial banker.
00:08:13
Speaker
Interesting question. I really haven't thought this through, but my gut reaction is to say, you know, my mom and dad would probably, you've heard that saying rebel with a cause. My parents would probably say Eric was a rebel without a cause. He was always the one pushing boundaries in life. And so maybe it was more born into my DNA than bred into my DNA. And, but I've always been the one to
00:08:43
Speaker
think differently, challenge things, not per se thinking of the entrepreneurial spirit of the ups and downs and the financial ramifications of failing or winning, but more along the lines of problem solving,
00:08:58
Speaker
and thinking about things differently than others have throughout my entire life. Maybe that's playing out more in this job I have now, is that ability to question, think, problem solve much more than manage. I tell everybody all the time, we hired a president of the bank about a year ago and
00:09:21
Speaker
Kurt K. Rose is his name and he's a much better manager of the bank than I ever was. But that compliments my ability to really without a cause to say, okay, how can we be better next year? How can we play? How can we think five, 10 years down the road? And that's really what excites me as a person. And that probably just comes from just who I am as a person.
00:09:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So the draw to building for you isn't the adrenaline junkie, I'm going to live on the edge type draw. It seems like more, the thing that excites you, that invigorates you is finding problems and trying to figure out ways how to solve them. And it's through that guys that you found yourself that, well, if I really want to do that, then I need to build stuff.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah, there's no junkie. I agree with that. We're in a heavily regulated industry, so it's more just the personality type. Maybe it's some of my own flaws presenting themselves as strengths, but I have trouble sitting still. I've openly said I couldn't run a bank that was just clipping coupons and hoping to sell the bank and get a change of control in three years.
00:10:34
Speaker
That just does not interest me as a human being and so i like the opportunity to grow and you know put push the boundaries and problem solving many creating my own problems. Often time i'll say ark just keep your mouth shut why do you keep talking because now we gotta dig out of something or build something or do something a different way.
00:10:54
Speaker
But I enjoy that aspect tremendously. I think I have the best job that I could ever have for me right now is being able to reinvent constantly.
Company Reinvention and Leadership Evolution
00:11:05
Speaker
One of my favorite books is Andy Grove, where he talks about in the book, only the paranoid survive.
00:11:13
Speaker
He says openly, I fire myself every year because the worst thing a CEO can do is become complacent in their success. He would fire himself every year and say, why does a new CEO need to come in to reevaluate the business?
00:11:29
Speaker
How can I motivate myself to continual change and have this mantra of next year we have to be better than this year and this year we're better than last year. And that's what really excites me and I enjoy a little bit of that chaos I would call it. That to me is really what gets me out of bed. It also keeps me up at night. So it's a strength and a weakness simultaneously but
00:11:55
Speaker
I really do enjoy the opportunity I have. Yeah, absolutely. So as you started working towards your professional career, got your undergrad there in Arizona, and as I understand it, went right into banking kind of as soon as you graduated as well.
00:12:19
Speaker
Is there a time that when you can think back to that early time between college and your first couple of jobs where that idea of problem solving and kind of being comfortable with chaos and those types of things really started to manifest itself?
00:12:34
Speaker
Yeah, and interestingly, just to clarify the record, I started at Security Pacific Bank, and this will lead to the answer to your question, when I was 19 in college. And then randomly, just let me digress here for a second, but I was going to dinner at Wendy's one night, and one of my fraternity brothers was in a suit and tie at Wendy's getting food, and I said, what are you doing in a suit and tie? And he's like, well, I work at Security Pacific in the call center.
00:13:02
Speaker
And it pays $9.25 an hour in 1989, 1990. That was good money and really flexible hours. It was call center 24-7. So you could work around your school schedule and flex schedules using today's terms. So I said, man, give me an interview. He's like, yeah, definitely. They're always looking for people.
00:13:21
Speaker
So I started in the call center working nights and weekends and I was given the graveyard shift probably because I was the least qualified individual that they had met but yet still hired. And it was great. I hated the hours, right? Because it was usually that 12 to 5 a.m. shift, something in that timeframe. But I was literally the only person in a 50,000 square foot office complex answering the phones.
00:13:51
Speaker
But it enabled me to see all aspects of the business because I was literally the only one there problem solving. And if you're doing a phone call between midnight and five, you can interpret the customers that are calling you. Either they're getting off their work shift themselves or they're getting up early for their work shift and they have a need so they're calling the bank.
00:14:11
Speaker
Well, no departments are open. And they've got this 19 year old kid answering the phone that's below average intelligence. And so you need to be able to scramble and problem solve. And I loved it because I learned everything I could about the bank and banking. And the bank was gracious enough to continue to feed me as much knowledge as I was willing to take. And I had a huge appetite.
00:14:42
Speaker
How many 19-year-olds do you know that have a huge appetite for banking knowledge and relish working in a call center at 2am? Not many. And this experience is core to Eric's success as a banker. He is relentless at solving real problems for real account holders.
00:15:00
Speaker
It would have been easy for him to archive this lesson as he climbed the corporate ladder. He could have buried himself in earnings reports and people management. Instead, he's leading a bank that is happily obsessed with helping individuals and small business owners move forward financially in addition to their banking as a service innovations. It didn't happen by accident, and the road to get there was bumpy, as you're about to hear.
00:15:32
Speaker
And so I really got to know everything. So this manifested itself into this problem solving ecosystem. And then shortly thereafter, Security Pacific Bank and B of A merged. And this is really getting to the heart of your question. And back in, I forget when the merger was, I wanna say 92, but don't hold me to that. B of A and Security Pacific, there was still intra state banking laws in place.
00:15:59
Speaker
And so each state had its own corporation. And so there was a CEO of B of A Arizona, the CEO of B of A California. And consequently, each state was empowered to have their own course stack of technology. And it wasn't until
00:16:20
Speaker
a little bit later that these mega mergers, when Security Pacific and B of A merged, they tried to start to integrate all of the systems of the states. It was ironic through that merger, I don't know if this is publicly known, but well past any worries, but in Arizona, B of A opted to keep Security Pacific Bank's operating systems.
00:16:42
Speaker
And B of A in all of the other states was the larger predominant merger partners. So they kept the B of A systems. So we were kind of the outlying state. And so our customers in our states experienced the most issues. Our debit cards weren't talking to the core operating systems in the other states. And if our customers were traveling, it wasn't as seamless as I know our banks had hoped the merger integration would be.
00:17:08
Speaker
If you remember, the old big bank mergers in the early 90s were generically awful. So again, it started with this problem solving mentality. And I was given a ton of opportunities while still in college, because I had access to all of the systems throughout the entire country. And I knew how to solve problems for consumers. And so this mentor, soon to be mentor of mine,
00:17:33
Speaker
named Vicky. Vicky called me and said, hey, actually, she had an opening. And I called her and said, hey, I think I can help you. And I'd really like to get out of this midnight to 5am shift. And
00:17:49
Speaker
I can help you. And she said, great, I would love to have you. And then that just kind of vaulted my career to successively get more and more leadership opportunities. By the time I was still a senior in college finishing up, I was a district coordinator for 30 plus branches.
00:18:10
Speaker
and probably given too much opportunity for a young age, but I took advantage of it and I didn't screw it up too bad. So that problem solving skills manifested itself into opportunity and probably just reinforced the ability, the strengths and the weaknesses I have.
00:18:26
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. So I have two different thoughts that I want to take down based off of those experiences that you shared with us. I think one is as I've oftentimes shared that the years of experience doesn't matter.
00:18:42
Speaker
It's how much learning you got in the years that you did, right? So here's the old adage. It's not how old the car is. It's how many miles it's done. And so I love that as a college student at a call center,
00:18:56
Speaker
Instead of just thinking, oh, I'm just going to answer the phone, do the best I can. It's in the middle of the night. These probably aren't the most important customers, and I'm just here to collect a paycheck. You're like, screw that. These guys are important, and I'm going to figure out how to answer all their questions and how to pull all these pieces together. That curiosity and that drive to understand, I think, is just such an amazing aspect of your personality and oftentimes a super important trait in a leader.
00:19:28
Speaker
The other thing I want to pull from is you introduce us to Vicky and knowing your story a little bit, I know that she was pretty instrumental in your career progression. And so I'd love to hear a little bit more about Vicky, what you learned from her, not only in just helping you grow your career, but then how you later could be a mentor to others.
00:19:51
Speaker
So speaking about Vicky in particular, as an individual and as a business professional, she was fantastic and very well respected in the financial services industry. And you're right, she had as much an influence on my career as I did.
00:20:10
Speaker
And I think that mentor-mentee relationship is very critical in society. And we, and throughout my entire career, have tried to replicate that in different forms. But yeah, so working for her, she did give me a lot of opportunities. My half of the equation was to earn those opportunities, you know, really
00:20:33
Speaker
From her, I learned a lot about professionalism, organizational design, and structure. She is a brilliant individual that could operate within these huge bureaucracies. Eventually, at Bank of America, after a post-Security Pacific Bank, she kept getting more and more opportunities. Eventually, she herself going to North Carolina
00:20:59
Speaker
to run a retail bank there and inviting me to go to North Carolina with her, where I was able to continue my education at UNC Chapel Hill for graduate school and give me that opportunity. I think you're right. It plays such an important role.
00:21:18
Speaker
And part of my personal leadership style is based on my faith and servant leadership and trying to give back as much as I can and being the one to humble myself and say, hey, my job is to take care of the team around me.
00:21:34
Speaker
and to provide for them so that they can be successful. And then by definition, over time, the right things will happen for the corporation. And it's that mentality. I think she instilled in me very young in my leadership career,
Culture of Innovation
00:21:48
Speaker
right, when I was an in-store branch manager for her, and then a very large traditional bank branch manager for her, and then a regional manager for her.
00:21:59
Speaker
Those leadership skills came from her directly and just learning from her as an individual and really I worked with her for 10 or 11 years straight to where I was reporting directly to her. And so it was that continuity, the protection, allowing someone with my mentality and creativity to make mistakes.
00:22:18
Speaker
But in a safe environment is one of the critical pieces I think I bring to an entrepreneurial corporation. I think it's what the board gives me today. It's that ability to grow and learn and pivot.
00:22:35
Speaker
So I think you're seeing a confluence of her teaching me and then me taking those next evolutionary steps through my own growth patterns and trying to give that to a corporation. And now with 500 employees,
00:22:50
Speaker
I don't have as much of the direct one-on-one as I would love to have, because I truly do having with the employees when we were 100 employees or 200 employees or 300, growing to 750 employees to 1,000 employees. But what I do still control are our core values as leadership and our philosophies. And I try my best to continue that vein and keeping the organization within bounds of those leadership's traits going forward.
00:23:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I want to go to this transition from like individual contributor to leader, and some of that evolution that you've had there, you touched on some of that where it starts with, you know, I was learning trying new things, making a lot of mistakes to I was hands on and knew all the employees to, okay, now it's a big enough organization, the way I could steer the ship is through principles and values and those types of things. But before that, you brought up something that I think is super interesting,
00:23:49
Speaker
There is, I would say I run into this quite a bit. There's this idea of needing to be perfect in the workplace, that I always need to get an A, I always need to get 100%. I always need to make sure that every time I get up to bat, I can hit the ball. We could use whatever metaphors that we want. But you and I both know that's never going to happen. Or if it is happening, you're not pushing yourself enough for growth.
00:24:12
Speaker
So share with me a little bit, especially when you're an individual contributor, how you dealt with making these mistakes and the errors, which I'm sure you were pushing the boundaries of what could be done. You were in a very difficult situation where there was multiple systems, a huge bureaucracy, different cores that were being transitioned, like all those different types of things. How did you learn how to balance this idea of trying to be perfect and doing the right thing versus
00:24:42
Speaker
knowing that every once in a while you're going to stumble, fail, and trip? I love it. And I will tell you that one of the things I talk with my team here at Coastal a lot, my intimate team, is I find that they are perfectionists. And I love that in them because they push hard. They want to be perfect. And I love the role that I have that gets to
00:25:05
Speaker
ease the pressure and let them know. I also have to clarify the record and you said Eric you make a lot of mistakes. You've obviously been talking to my staff as well. I said I've made some mistakes. You interpreted that as a lot but you also know me pretty well Nathan. So I'll let that color commentary just speak for itself. I think it's more reflective of me thinking about myself than you Eric.
00:25:28
Speaker
oh i love it i have made a lot of mistakes and you're right a lot of that's growth um you know as i mature as i as i transition from different leadership styles as as is the different um skills transform you know i have um
00:25:44
Speaker
I have a book that I absolutely love. It's the worst read on the planet, but it's a book by Elliot Jackson. It's called requisite organization and it's from the sixties and it's a really thick, dry book leadership book.
00:25:59
Speaker
But I read that and I loved a lot from it and I've leaned into that a lot throughout my career. It talks about the requisite organization and it relates to time frames. And leaders think in different time frames. And you talk about a producer going to a leader that goes to someone that is expected to eventually
00:26:22
Speaker
build for the future, right? And those are different timeframes that really someone tries to think in. And we often think about that as a service associate that's dealing with a customer in front of them. We try to empower them to think in three to five minute intervals and to solve problems within that context.
00:26:40
Speaker
And then, you know, as our producers grow and evolve, and now they have to think in time frames of quarters or annually. And then, you know, we have some executive vice presidents that we hope are thinking in one to three years, and then we have group executives that are hopefully thinking in three to five.
00:26:57
Speaker
And then I plug that gap between five and 15 years and the board plays with me a lot in that range. And then the board's real expectation is, you know, how does this industry evolve and where are the industry evolutionary points and how does Coastal survive, right? And you can go to Smith's book about, you know, how do corporations survive 100 years?
00:27:19
Speaker
So you go back to this transformation and making mistakes and giving the air cover for that. The structure I use, and it's not a structure, I don't want to get too professional there, but it's my basis in thinking stems from helping people understand as they grow, their thinking needs to change and they need to evolve as well. And I can help them with that. And I often use that
00:27:47
Speaker
backdrop to help them do that. That really gives me a framework to communicate better. Imagine the different leaders in the companies addressing problems or evolutionary things that are presenting themselves and being able to communicate that in different timeframes. The stuff that worries me right now is how am I going to transform our earnings in the years 2028 to 2035?
00:28:17
Speaker
And I get panicked a lot and I get excited about stuff that when I talk to other people, they're not excited about it and they're not panicked. And so we got to be able to translate that. And that's usually a translation of time.
00:28:35
Speaker
because if we're one degree off today, 10 years from now, we can be completely off the mark. And the person doing something today in the three to five minute interval or the person that's thinking one year and building stuff for this year, they're absolutely perfectionists and I love them and they're usually much smarter than me. And they're nailing their job and we've got to talk to them and help them and they need to help me understand, okay, now we need to shift one degree.
00:29:01
Speaker
because you are successful and the company is in the top 2 percentile for every metrics and I need you to break it. This is the voice of a builder who has watched companies fall from what looked like unshakable market dominance. Blockbuster, Nokia, Kodak, and many more. It takes incredible mental fortitude to look at the stellar performance of your company and recognize that it's a wave.
00:29:27
Speaker
Waves rise and fall and the only way to stay on top is to swim for the next wave. This is especially difficult when the market rewards short-term profits over long-term vision. Leaders like Eric choose discomfort and disruption on their own terms, building and rebuilding the company again and again. It still can hurt, but it's way better than waiting until the market knocks you down.
00:29:55
Speaker
And because here's what I'm worried about. And I love those conversations, but they're also very hard and they're confusing and people don't understand sometimes. And I get worried or scared and they're like, Eric, what are you possibly worried about? And I'm like, well, I'm paranoid. And go back to the Andy Grove book and we have to be better next year than we are this year. And we have to be a heck of a lot better in five years.
00:30:16
Speaker
So, you know, it's just, but I love that aspect of it, but it gives me some structure behind the scenes to communicate, lead, give value, protect people when we do make mistakes. And I say again, this stems really from our board. I have one of the best boards on the planet and they give me this flexibility and freedom and aligning with them to align with the staff really is what makes it work.
Breaking Barriers and Continuous Growth
00:30:43
Speaker
Top down and top's not me, top is our board.
00:30:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, I love that. Two questions that I have based off that, we'll just start with the first one. When you say that, you know, we want to break things or we need to break things, what do you mean by that? Because I love the concept and I think I know what you're talking about, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about it.
00:31:07
Speaker
Yeah, and maybe breaking is or isn't the right word, but I appreciate you highlighting it. It allows us to be okay with change and evolve. And the commitment to, I mean, something I was so proud of, I don't know, I was in some meeting with the teams and regulators and one of our employees said, hey, you know, thanks for the feedback, Mr. Regulator.
00:31:38
Speaker
We're going to be better next year. We're not declaring mission accomplished, and we're going to re-look at things constantly. That mentality of evolution, not revolution, but evolution, and having that ingrained in the system is something I'm proud of. That's maybe not breaking things constantly per se, but it's about evolving and being willing to rethink things constantly.
00:32:06
Speaker
If that means breaking something, that means breaking something. If that means tweaking something and adding that next piece to it. But I'll tell you this, whenever we hire somebody from outside of the organization, I'm really frank with them and says, hey, I absolutely love what we have, but I'm hiring you to reevaluate it.
00:32:26
Speaker
You have a unique opportunity, a fresh set of eyes coming in to opine on what we are doing well or not. Because the hardest thing to do and what we fight the most is becoming complacent with our success. And the society wants to keep reaffirming. You're really good. The regulators will tell you good stuff. Your auditors tell you good stuff. Your board tells you good stuff.
00:32:50
Speaker
And that complacency starts to creep into a bureaucracy. And then before you know it, three years later, you're not that good, you're average. The society has caught up with you. The evolution has ceased. So it comes back to our core values and trying to continue to be better.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I take the tie back to what you're saying of breaking things. And the key that I got from what you just said is being willing to break things, right? You're not so married to any particular thing that you're not willing to, if it makes sense and it's the right thing to break it. And then the other thing that ties back to that you shared before is every year I think about, okay, I'm fired.
00:33:35
Speaker
And now I'm hired. I'm the new guy. What am I going to do? What is the right thing to do? So that from a mindset perspective, you have that blank slate to then move forward and think differently or have a different frame of reference.
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's also the fun side of things. It's hard for any leader to continue to evolve. And I think you said it right. And maybe in my case, I'm not smart enough. I'm just worried I have three kids in college, so I don't want them to hire a new CEO. So, you know, invention or necessity is the invention, right, vehicle that we all use. I think
00:34:17
Speaker
It's just a framework that has helped me personally. It may not be right for everyone, but it allows us to not feel threatened with, hey, my idea failed, or it didn't work, or I'm not the smartest one in the room. And it gets rid of a lot of the stigmas of, you know, I mean, and outside of my pet projects, which are all perfect and nobody's allowed to change, I just want others to feel like their projects are allowed to evolve.
00:34:44
Speaker
Those other things that other people are working on. I want them to feel comfortable. Mine are always perfect. But no, and I think if you were to ask the team, you know, this is absolutely true of my ideas. It's like, hey, no pride of ownership. And I hope and expect the smarter people than me to
00:35:04
Speaker
take an idea and have fun with it or kill it and debate why. And sometimes we get boxed into certain stuff and we believe in great thinking, we believe in being flexible in a regulated environment and it's all about problem solving and it's all about evolution.
00:35:23
Speaker
Yeah, no, I love that. The other thing that I couldn't help but think, as you've shared your story and, you know, early career, how to mentor and Vicky, one of the things that you mentioned is, you know, she provided some protection or safety, if you will. And I can't help notice that when you talk about your current position where you are oftentimes about your board,
00:35:47
Speaker
One, how much you respect them and how great of a board they are, but also that there's this level of confidence and trust and safety of willing to push the envelope. I'm curious, how as a leader can you create that type of environment? How was it created for you beforehand? How do you create it now? How does that board provide that for you?
00:36:09
Speaker
because lots of times to be able to take those risks and thinking if you are scared or you're running off of fear, you're probably not going to do your best work in that type of work.
00:36:23
Speaker
I would say that it has evolved over time, but you have a core group at my board that hired a 33-year-old to be president and CEO. They were pretty entrepreneurial to begin with before I got here. By definition, they're like, let's give the keys to this kid.
00:36:46
Speaker
But I think they were looking for something that matched the ecosystem at the board level, which was very entrepreneurial, very inventive within a regulated environment. So I think over time,
00:37:01
Speaker
You know, we still have founding core board members, but you know, out of the 10 of us on the board now, you know, we've added a new board member about every other year. And then that culture has stayed true. And I think the board members we have now are very engaged.
00:37:19
Speaker
Active is another way to say that. Good, bad, or indifferent has a CEO's perspective. But entrepreneurial at its core, they realized that we're in a heavy regulated industry and to still steal a Billy Bean philosophy, it's an unfair playing field.
00:37:36
Speaker
having to compete with the national banks, the regional banks, even the super community banks. You've got these micro community banks, like I consider us the underdogs. And how did the Oakland A's manage to fight with the Boston Red Sox, Yankees, LA Dodgers, right? And you have to change the rules. And I think your board has to realize that. And so we've been very cognizant as we hire new board members over time, slowly evolving. We pick up core competencies or technical backgrounds,
00:38:05
Speaker
But the culture and the values are very akin to how this bank was founded. We're 25 years old as a bank, but that spirit has still remained. And you're right, the board protects me. I feel that way. I know if I go outside of certain bounds, I'm not protected as any good governance would have it.
00:38:26
Speaker
But really, it's also about engagement with the board. And this is true of all of our philosophies that you hear. I'm not a rogue CEO that's definitely not brilliant, that thinks of a magical idea and says, we're doing this. No, no, no. It's very engaged with the team. It's very engaged with the board. And the board is very engaged with me. And so it's a collaborative effort of evolution.
00:38:52
Speaker
A CEO's relationship with the board of directors can make or break the company. The public tends to focus on the charisma and competence of the CEO because those things are easily visible. It's much harder to know if a chief executive is communicating openly and candidly with the board and vice versa. The board should be a group of trusted counselors, otherwise it's just for show.
00:39:16
Speaker
Ideally, you're looking to fill that table with people who are deeply invested in the health and success of the organization as a whole. You want as much of their wisdom and firsthand experience as you can get.
00:39:32
Speaker
And it's about seeking input and getting engagement from the board and the bounds with them to then give the guidance and the protection for evolution. And I can give them that honest feedback, good, bad, or indifferent saying, hey, it didn't work. We failed in this. And they'll understand how and why we made those decisions because they were engaged in it. But they were also,
00:40:00
Speaker
thinking through the upside downside risk protections in a context that allowed us to continue to build towards the long-term vision that they own. I think that engagement at all different levels allows for the protection. We were recently negotiating with another CEO of another company and it was really weird.
00:40:23
Speaker
And we caught ourselves, the two CEOs talking one day and she's like, man, she said, my board, trust me to fully do this negotiation and make this decision. I'm empowered to do that. And I said, that's great.
00:40:38
Speaker
I said, my board just operates differently. I want their feedback. I want them engaged. Because if I screw this up, I want them also on the hook, right? But it's more familiar than that. It's like, I trust them. And our decision-making processes, I think, over time are better. And that also allows me the freedom to bring a lot of ideas to them. And my job is to give them ideas or strategies to then debate and talk about.
00:41:06
Speaker
And so it's just about different styles and it doesn't make her style bad or they're bored, bad or indifferent, but that's just our culture and how we have evolved. And for me, that works perfectly. So it's got that full alignment, which I believe allows for better decision making, which is allowing us over time to continue to out produce the industry.
Diverse Paths to Leadership
00:41:25
Speaker
I have to stop and make sure that our listeners understand the master class that Eric just gave you on how to create safety in almost any environment you can find yourself. And it's all about collaboration and cooperation. Eric, I share with my team. I say, you never want a ta-da moment.
00:41:45
Speaker
because half the time, maybe even 75% of the time, you get in front of your board or you get in front of your leadership team or whatever it is and you say, hey, I just had this new idea, it's fully baked and we're gonna do it. Ta-da!
00:42:00
Speaker
Most of the time, it just goes into silence. Like, wait, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? And then you lose trust. You lose respect. However, if you include all the people that you need to work with and the process, the evolutionary process, the thought process is getting their feedback. One, your output's going to be better, but secondarily, that trust and respect.
00:42:24
Speaker
and that safety is going to be so much stronger. So thank you so much for sharing that. That was beautifully said and beautifully taught. So thank you for doing that for us.
00:42:34
Speaker
Well, it's a truism. And as a leader, it's hard. It takes more time. It takes extra effort to communicate. And I'm very fortunate. My chairman in particular is very tolerant of me and reminds me all of the time to make sure everybody's up to speed and everybody's included. And he bears a lot of that load as well, which sure helps having leadership on the board that is willing to put in the extra engagement
00:43:03
Speaker
for this philosophy to be pulled off. To follow along. Yeah, absolutely.
00:43:10
Speaker
There's one piece that we talked about a little bit ago and I just wanna circle back to it because I think this is oftentimes a question for people who are trying to end up as a builder, as a chief executive or some other C-level title, which is experience versus education and how much education should I get? And our guests, we've had a wide variety of what they've done, whether they've done grad school or not, graduate school of banking or not, undergrad, all that fun stuff. You ended up deciding to,
00:43:39
Speaker
You got your undergrad, got some work experience while getting your undergrad and then post undergrad, and you still did make the decision to go ahead and get your master's. I'm just curious, at least for you, what were the deciding factors? What did you think? Worth it? Not worth it? Any frameworks that you thought of for that? Because I know this is something a lot of people struggle with.
00:43:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think you use the word individually for you, Eric, and I would agree with that mentality to begin with is everybody has a different path. One of the things I love about being a banker is dealing with all of our entrepreneurs.
00:44:16
Speaker
And we get to see the successful people and the failures in society, right? Because we're either giving them money or taking their money, whichever way you want to look at it. And then as we've evolved into CCBX and our bass banking division, we get to see even more
00:44:34
Speaker
finite leaders or entrepreneurs in the venture capital world. We too get to play this game of why did you get where you got and why did you choose that. Each story is 100% different, whether they're new to this country and they're driven by something in their past.
00:44:53
Speaker
or they're driven by their family for higher education, which gave them the opportunities, or whether they're just different challenging individuals that want to build something and they hate the office job. For me personally, I love school.
00:45:09
Speaker
If the board were to ever fire me and get me out of here, I'd probably go back and get my PhD because I love it. I love that philosophy and I love that structure for me personally. I was excited when the bank said, yeah, we'll support you going back for your MBA. I was like, that's fantastic.
00:45:27
Speaker
And I'll eat that up all day because for me personally, that's stimulating. Working on business cases, that's what business school really is about, is you get the business case every week and you get to read about a company and then you get to think about how they're going to solve their problems and then you get to hear how they did solve their problems.
00:45:46
Speaker
And so that's something I enjoy personally. And for me, that was applicable to my life and my job and what I wanted to do and where I was in life. So it was an easy fit. For others, I can't say that. You know, each road is different. I will tell you some of our best performers have graduate degrees and some of our best performers never went to school.
00:46:08
Speaker
never went to college and they sit in the same room with me and their opinions are equally weighted and equally dynamic and equally strong. So as CEO of our company, I could care less, it means nothing to me. In society, maybe there's stigmas attached to stuff, I don't know, but we sure enjoy people for their thought process, their individuality, their creativity, their problem solving.
00:46:38
Speaker
is given to them or whether they had to learn that thought process and that problem-solving capacity, that's what we're looking for. Yeah, I love that. We share that philosophy at Zsuite Tech as well. I don't care how you got where you are, it's what is the skill sets that I need right now and do you have those? However you got those, it's all good. I just need to know that you have them. Exactly.
00:47:02
Speaker
It might be through experience. It might be you're just naturally gifted at something. It's funny that you said that if you were fired tomorrow as CEO, you'd go get your PhD. I actually share that. I've looked a couple of times like, I wonder if I could get my PhD while I'm running this company, which the answer is I can't. But I do have, I'm curious, do you know what you would study?
00:47:25
Speaker
Have you thought about that? Whatever university would accept me. Whatever program would accept me. I think that there are a lot of things that I get excited about. Organizational design and theory comes top to mind, but I love the theories behind finance.
00:47:47
Speaker
and math, obviously the banking traits and the money theories, right, play into who I am as a person. But honestly, I would spend some time thinking about that and then try to find the best one for me and then hope somebody would take me.
00:48:07
Speaker
Yeah, no, I love it. Now, you've been super generous with sharing so many different experiences that you've had throughout your career.
Adapting Leadership for Growth
00:48:17
Speaker
The last thing that I wanted to touch just from your career and if any lessons learned or fun stories that you could share with us is, so you were 33 when you became the CEO of Coastal, right?
00:48:29
Speaker
Well, president first, but yep. And then I had a two-year overlap with the CEO and then two years later I became the CEO. Yep. CEO. You've been there for a long time and you've overseen some great amounts of growth. You're doing some of the most innovative things that I've personally encountered that I can't even say bank of your size because it's a bank of any size that you're doing.
00:48:56
Speaker
As you've had these types of success, this type of growth, how is it that you personally have been able to continue to evolve as a leader to manage that growth? Or what have you seen as the big changes that you've had to make within yourself to stay relevant with that growth and continue to push the organization forward?
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this is my 18th year here running the company. That's a long time. This company probably deserves new, fresh CEO leadership in due time because it is hard to continue to evolve and grow as a person to continue to lead the corporation into different seasons.
00:49:38
Speaker
And I think like a rings of a tree, you can see how good the rainfall was one year by how fast the tree grew that year, that analogy. In banking, it's probably the reverse. The harder it is in banking during a given year, the more my leadership grew.
00:49:57
Speaker
You know, the dryer it was caused more growth. And there are distinct different phases over those 18 years, right? I became the president and CEO, right, going into the great financial recession.
00:50:13
Speaker
I learned a lot. That was a great training ground for me as an individual. Post that, we were able to take advantage of the dislocation in the market because within five miles of us, there was a tremendous amount of dislocation or chaos or bank closures or consolidation, if you want to call it that, and then became a stable happy time.
00:50:37
Speaker
to where we had to redefine ourselves and I had to redefine myself because just keeping your doors open no longer was winning the business. Other CEOs were regrouping and they had raised capital and now they were in this happy period that they wanted to take advantage of the market. And then you can see each of these seasons that we go through as leaders
00:50:58
Speaker
And you can correlate that also to size, growth, number of employees to a certain degree. And I talk about this a lot with our companies that we bank. In your company, we can see the entrepreneur starts a company, grows the company, and then it needs some managers to come in because the entrepreneur, the visionary,
00:51:23
Speaker
really may not be the best manager of the company going forward, but their strengths and their weaknesses don't always align. So recognizing humbly my own strengths and weaknesses has allowed me to grow and hire the right teammates around me as I have evolved.
00:51:39
Speaker
I specifically remember a huge inflection point that during 08, 09 and 10, and we're fighting for our life, I've got a wife, I've got three young kids, man, I wanted to make every single decision. And I was the epitome of a micromanager, good, bad or indifferent.
00:51:59
Speaker
but the board empowered me to get engaged in that way, shape or form. I'd love to glamorize it and say, hey, coach, give me the ball because we need me to have the ball right now. But really it was me being scared. And I wanted to make sure I understood every single thing about every single customer and about every single line item in this company. And then to be able to evolve out of that mindset
00:52:26
Speaker
to where our next phase was rapid growth and taking advantage of the dislocation. I needed to hire people that could make those decisions so I could position the company differently, i.e. moving to the capital markets to raise capital to feed that growth, continue to have the vision of the company evolving, continue to look at new products and services, continue that next evolution of my role in the company. But that also meant giving up
00:52:56
Speaker
things to people. And then now that transformation that happened in me, I've been able to help some of my teammates give up those day-to-day decision jobs so that they could evolve and they could start looking at the evolution and the vision and get out of the day-to-day. And just that translated through the whole company as each of us reaches those different timeframe inflections.
00:53:21
Speaker
It started with me learning that and really embracing it and then saying, God, I really want to give others this. Really, that's where some leaders get capped out because they liked making the day-to-day decisions. I'm like, well, this company needs you to be thinking three years from now and you're thinking one year at a time or monthly or quarterly. Do you not want to do that? Can I help you do that?
00:53:44
Speaker
bring someone in for that.
Financial Technology and Future Trends
00:53:48
Speaker
That was a great inflection point. And then as we started looking, you were kind of kidding me offline about Microsoft in Bellevue and Microsoft Teams is having issues. And that was probably caused by Coastal. And we were laughing about some stuff. I will say, I loved it when Bill Gates came out, because this is our neighborhood and said, hey, you need banking, you don't need banks. And this really caused another
00:54:14
Speaker
you know, quantum shift in myself to say banking, you know, and that was, if you date yourselves, that was back in 14 and 15 and you have some banking laws changing because of the great recession, you had Dodd-Frank rolling out 5 million pages of new rules and regs and can and can'ts and shall and shall nots.
00:54:32
Speaker
and to really apply that to opportunities that were being created or opportunities that were being shut down. And listening to, again, we're very fortunate that in our market, we have Amazon, right, headquartered here. We have Microsoft headquartered here. We have Expedia, Redfin, and all the biotech and all of the innovation that we are so blessed to be around. Our neighbors speak this language. Our neighbors live this language.
00:55:00
Speaker
It really enabled us as a board of local board members to hear this and say, okay, things are changing in financial services. Eric, you really now need to sit back and get out of even what you were doing and keep going up
00:55:15
Speaker
in the timeframe that you're thinking about and hire the right people that can get you out. And so right there, it really took me from a three to five year mentality to a 15 to 30 year mentality. And the board was pushing me to do that to say, hey, you need to bring us opportunities, which now fast forward eight years later from 2015,
00:55:40
Speaker
That next learning leadership development of myself, now fast forward to 2023, 2024, we're a leader in an innovative division of financial services, banking many Fortune 500 companies and doing cool stuff. But right now, that stuff happened in 2015. What I'm working on now is 2035 stuff.
00:56:07
Speaker
You haven't heard Eric talking about parsing lines of code or squashing software bugs. But that's because those tend to be a problem on a short time scale. And he's hired specialists to tackle that stuff. He's thinking about what banking or financial technology will look like in 15 to 20 years and assembling components that nobody else has considered putting together.
00:56:32
Speaker
Having creativity in vision is one thing. Marrying creativity in vision with reality is a whole different ballgame. And that's the game that Eric Sprink is playing and winning.
00:56:45
Speaker
People want to talk to me about bass because I have to translate numbers today. I have to translate performance today, which is fine. But I love it when my investors and our staff really say, where are you at, Eric, in 2029? What are the problems you see? What is exciting you?
00:57:03
Speaker
And for me, that's super fun, which is why it was so much fun for me personally, again, in my leadership evolution was to become a general partner in bank tech ventures in our fund we created, looking for the new venture capital based SaaS companies that are gonna evolve financial services 10 years from now. And that's how you and I got to meet each other. And through your very entrepreneur, innovative company,
00:57:28
Speaker
And I love talking to these individuals that are gonna change financial services 10 years from now. And today they're saying, hey, I need some money to do it. And we get that and I don't know. So again, I could talk about this all day and I have a ton of fun doing this, but I've had to change at many different inflections of the rings of the tree. And that's why it goes back to that core philosophy. It's okay to change, it's okay to grow, it's okay to fire yourself and start new.
00:57:56
Speaker
and answer the hard questions that you're afraid to ask as the existing incumbent.
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing those different stages that not only your company had to go through, that you had to go through all throughout that journey. I also love the tie. I had never put this together that one of the reasons that you're so excited to be a general partner of Big Tech Ventures is partially because it actually helps you do your job to think about and be exposed to things that is going to be influencing the industry in 10 years from now. And the learning that I would take from that is
00:58:32
Speaker
when you're a leader, whatever horizon you're looking at, because like for me, we're a startup company, my horizons are days, weeks, quarters, and maybe a year, right? But as the company grows, then it'll be start becoming three to five years, and then five to 10 years, and you know, 20 to 30 years, etc. But wherever you're at, put yourself in a place to be with the thinkers
00:58:57
Speaker
to be with the visionaries, to put yourself in a place where you can have that information coming through you so that you can be better informed.
Influences and Recommendations
00:59:04
Speaker
to be able to make those strategic decisions. So I love that. All right, so we have two questions that we want to end with. So these are ones that we always ask our guests. The first one is, well, first, you've already shared a couple of business book recommendations. We'll make sure to put it in the notes. We'll definitely note that one of them is super dry, but the principles are great. So maybe read the Cliff Notes version. But we appreciate that. But we always love to share our audience maybe with some non-business books.
00:59:32
Speaker
that have influenced your life or that have helped you to be a better leader or just maybe just to entertain you.
00:59:39
Speaker
Yeah, and gosh, it's a great question. I will tell you that the go-to genre, because I have three teenage daughters and they're graduating from the teenage years, but I always enjoy reading the books my kids enjoy reading, which tends to be sci-fi fantasy, young adult fantasy. But I'll tell you, it's true.
01:00:05
Speaker
It's hard for me not to read any book and relate it back to business in some way, shape or form. It's a disease I have. It's just how the brain is trained. You know, I'm watching football and I'm constantly thinking, you know, our money ball, I'm thinking, watching baseball, thinking money ball behind the scenes constantly.
01:00:20
Speaker
It's hard for me to enjoy stuff, but I'll give you a book. Let us put our money together, the founding of America's first black banks. We're the financial institution behind Greenwood. That is what is self-described as a black and brown neo-bank or challenger bank. Ryan Glover is the founder, CEO, brilliant person.
01:00:39
Speaker
But it was founded, needs-based, much like all companies. Your company is solving a need. And I read this book because, one, I wanted to learn more about why they started their challenger bank, what are the needs not being met. But I also wanted to understand this book, what happened in Greenwood, in Tulsa, and what
01:01:04
Speaker
What transpired? It's a hard read. I'll say that because you can't help but be empathetic and understand how our country has evolved and grown and learned and is hopefully better next year than this year. I think everybody would agree we want our country to continue to strive to be better. We're not perfect by any means. I think people agree with that as well.
01:01:27
Speaker
But it's a fascinating story dating back to individual communities would collectively get together to empower their community. And that's my brain talking business, but it's also fun hearing the stories upon the entrepreneurs that started that bank and how they got together. And you can apply that to today back to their story back then. So it's a book I'm in right now, and I enjoy it a lot. But for me, that's why.
01:01:57
Speaker
I'm reading it because it meant something to me to read it. Yeah, I love that. Like I said, we'll definitely put that in the show notes. You're in good company here. The sci-fi fantasy genre is one that I enjoy as well. Part of the reason I enjoy it so much is because it's something I could do with my kids as well. I just finished one at home that
01:02:17
Speaker
My kids put me on to the inheritance games. It's a bestseller. It's a trilogy. It's a super easy read. So don't think I'm a total geek. Everything's business. So that's a fun one you can just read if you want blind entertainment. It's a good easy read of the inheritance games. There
Nature vs. Nurture in Leadership
01:02:34
Speaker
you go. Awesome. Thank you. All right. And now our last question. Is the leader born or is the leader made?
01:02:42
Speaker
Yes, you know, right. I'll stick with this theory that in each person's path is different. Sometimes I believe, you know, we are born with certain traits that are good, bad or indifferent.
01:02:58
Speaker
And then I think society will mold those traits for good, bad, or indifferent. People have different environments that they come from, which helps them or hurts them. And each story is born beautifully by the individual. And I'm smack dab in the...
01:03:15
Speaker
camp of, you know, sometimes you're given undue advantage in society, take advantage of it. Sometimes you are giving undue disadvantages in society.
Final Thoughts on Leadership
01:03:27
Speaker
And that also gives you the motivation to excel and be better. And, you know, so, so sorry to dodge the question, but I'm a both guy.
01:03:37
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's not dodging the question. It's absolutely an answer. Eric, I can't thank you enough for spending time with us. I personally have learned quite a bit that I'll be taking to help me in my leadership journey, and I'm sure our audience will as well. Thank you so much for joining us.
01:03:53
Speaker
Well, I'm humbled you'd invite me and we appreciate working with your company and me getting to know you and our investment in your company. It really is fun talking with you. So I've enjoyed this as well. So thank you very much. And hey, talk soon, my friend.
Conclusion and Credits
01:04:09
Speaker
Absolutely. This quote from bestselling author and podcaster Shane Parrish hits the nail on the head.
01:04:19
Speaker
You get paid linearly for doing what everyone else is doing. You get paid non-linearly for correct divergence from the crowd. Eric Spring has made it his mission to think differently and diverge from what the crowd of banks is doing. And Coastal Community Bank's growth is to prove.
01:04:37
Speaker
What strikes me more than Eric's creativity or his passion for innovation is his humility and focus on building a team that builds and rebuilds collaboratively. I can't predict where Coastal Community Bank is going to be in 20 years, but I'm going to be watching closely and learning everything I can from their example.
01:04:59
Speaker
Thanks for taking the time to listen. Learning from Eric is such a privilege and I'm honored that he was willing to share his insights with you and me. You'll find Eric's book recommendation in his show notes. Now watch out. He said the book requisite organization is valuable but a challenging read.
01:05:15
Speaker
You've been listening to Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief, a podcast produced and distributed by Z Sweet Technologies Incorporated, All Rights Reserved. I'm your host Nathan Baumeister, the CEO and co-founder of Z Sweet Tech. This show is written and edited by Zach Garver. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to leave us a review or share the episode. This helps other people to find our show. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify.