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Lee Farabaugh – Designing software for humans, playing without fear, and the essential qualities of a leader | Episode 4
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Welcome to episode four of Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief! The guest on today’s show is Lee Farabaugh, Co-founder and President at Core10, a fintech that specializes in developing products for financial institutions.
On this show, I’m unpacking the stories, decisions, and influences that make people successful leaders. Thanks to Lee’s background in fine arts, user experience, and health informatics, she brings a fresh perspective to the world of community banking and everything she touches.
My name is Nathan Baumeister; I am the Co-founder and CEO of ZSuite Tech and the host of this podcast.
Here’s what you need to know about Lee Farabaugh: she’s a leader of incredible depth and wide-ranging interests. She’s been practicing graphic design since she was a child, she studied oil painting, worked at Toyota, Delta, Northrup Grumman, and all that while knocking down two master’s degrees and eventually helping found two successful companies. Did I mention she was also a competitive road cyclist and is a wife and mother?
The point is, that Lee forged a path to executive leadership on a winding road, guided by curiosity and a desire to play with technology. Her wide-ranging skill set and passion for excellence gave her a high level of mastery in multiple fields, when most people are thrilled to master one. Along the way, Lee learned the importance of releasing control to her team, and tackling the mental, emotional, and spiritual work that is required to be a trustworthy leader.
The wisdom she shares in this episode gave me a lot to think about in my own growth as a leader – I believe it will do the same for you.
Resources:
Lee’s media recommendations:
Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life
Connect:
Recommended
Transcript
Integrating Life and Business
00:00:00
Speaker
And I think that's sort of the beauty of this life, right? Is there's so many great things to explore. And it's interesting when you said all this other stuff aside from business, but I honestly think that my professional life is just a really nice container for all of the other things that I enjoy because I can apply it all.
00:00:26
Speaker
Um, you know, I mean, it could be financial technology or it could be healthcare technology. It could be something totally different, but ultimately, you know, the lessons in business and the, like you said, building a company is a team sport. The lessons in learning how to do that. I'm still learning them. Certainly not an expert. Um, you know, they're really all kind of universal.
Introduction to 'Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief'
00:01:00
Speaker
Hi, my name is Nathan Valmeister, 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.
00:01:23
Speaker
I want to do all of that so that together we can learn from their journey and use that insight personally and professionally.
Lee Faribov's Journey to Leadership
00:01:31
Speaker
In episode four, my guest is Lee Faribov, co-founder and president of Core 10, a company that helps community banks unleash untapped potential. Lee is a jack of all trades and her journey to executive leadership and financial technology is punctuated with unexpected twists and turns.
00:01:47
Speaker
Lee's passion for people is evident in everything she does. She's constantly looking for ways to create better experiences, whether that's using a website to design your own Toyota or creating a company that hires amazing technology talent from rural communities. Buckle on your helmet and clip on your bicycle shoes. We're about to learn what a competitive cyclist and oil painter has to say about founding technology companies and doing the hard emotional work that is required of great leaders.
Role at Core 10 and Company Focus
00:02:30
Speaker
Lee, thank you so much for joining us on Built or Banker Hacker Chief. Thank you for having me. This is quite an honor. Yeah, no, absolutely. What are you talking about? It's an honor for us to have you. Just by way of introduction, just so people kind of know currently what you're doing in your professional world, just a brief introduction, I think that'd be a great way to get started. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm Lee Faribault. I'm co-founder and president of Core 10. We are a
00:02:57
Speaker
Community Financial Institutions focused company. We have products and services that we offer to the community financial institution market. They focus around lending, account opening, and infrastructure. And we also provide professional services, software development, API integration, things like that.
00:03:17
Speaker
Excellent. Thank you so much. It's a fabulous company. I've had the opportunity to watch Lee's Journey and Core 10's Journey for several years. And we're going to dive into at the end a little bit about what you're doing and what's different and all that fun stuff.
Impact of Childhood Experiences
00:03:33
Speaker
But first we want to dive into
00:03:35
Speaker
you know, who you are and what really has shaped you as the leader. And in these conversations, I've always just found it super helpful to go way back to the beginning because there's no doubt that what happens to us as kids and teenagers have a long lasting impact on who we're at or who we are.
00:03:58
Speaker
And when you look at that kind of growing up, is there any key moments that you can think of in your life that really now that you can look back have actually influenced you in a bigger way than you perhaps thought at that time? Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, just being in technology, which I've been in my whole career,
00:04:17
Speaker
I think I have to trace that all the way back to I was five years old and my dad bought a computer. Now I have to situate you here and say that that was in 1982. So, you know, not everybody had a computer in their house and this was a IBM computer. You know, you load the operating system into drive A, you load your program into drive B, the disks actually blocked. And he brought it home and he said, just play with it.
00:04:46
Speaker
You can't break it. And I don't think that was actually true, but I was five and I believed him. And
Influence of Technology in Early Life
00:04:53
Speaker
so he bought me a program called Logo and L-O-G-O. It was invented by Seymour Papert, who is a legend and professor at MIT. And it had this little turtle on the screen, and you could put commands in to move the turtle around and change wherever the turtle went, would draw a line.
00:05:14
Speaker
And you could change the color of the line and you could change the direction of the turtle and you can make all these designs, you know, it's basic programming commands. And I just thought that was the most fun thing ever and really enjoyed playing with that. And, you know, got into the just into computers and always felt very comfortable with technology, with solving problems through technology.
00:05:37
Speaker
Um, I guess I probably still deep down have that whole idea of like, you know, worst case scenario, it's always just restart. So healthy, healthy, uh, attitude towards tech. Let's just play with it and see what happens.
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah, I love that experimentation mindset, that permission that your dad gave as he handed it over. I've definitely seen that when I'm working with someone and they have a fear that they're going to break it or they're going to do something wrong, that it's hard for them to find their whole potential of what they could do.
00:06:12
Speaker
I could only imagine that as you grew up having that
Art and Technology: A Career Path
00:06:16
Speaker
idea of, let's take away fear and let's just go into, let's start doing things had a long lasting impact on you. Yeah. And I think that's sort of a characteristic of a child. The older you get, you do mess something up or you say something stupid or you
00:06:34
Speaker
you know, put forth an idea, people laugh. You start learning, you know, how to be afraid. And so that's, you know, I think the older I've gotten sort of that battle with perfectionism is a real thing. But I think being grounded in let's experiment and play is really where I came from.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah. And I think this example will be near and dear to your heart, but I've done this before. I sat in a group of like 300 adults and I said, hey, everybody here, if you can draw, raise your hand. And there were probably about, I don't know, five to 10 people who raised their hand. I said, okay, if I asked this exact same question to a group of five-year-olds, how many will raise their hand?
00:07:17
Speaker
Like everybody will raise their hand because of course you can draw. I didn't ask if you could draw well. I could just ask if you could draw. And I know that art and drawing and painting and those types of things both when you were growing up as well as you were going in college played a pretty big impact in your life as well. Could you just share a little bit of that part of your experience?
00:07:38
Speaker
Yes. Well, so I have an undergraduate degree in fine arts and specifically my concentration was in oil painting, which when I tell that to people, they typically laugh and they're like, what did you ever think you were going to do with oil painting? And it's not that I ever thought I was going to be Rembrandt.
00:07:56
Speaker
In fact, I knew pretty, you know, at my senior year, this is not a career opportunity for me. At least it wouldn't provide me with the sort of life that I wanted. But I was always interested in design. And I, I felt like my next step after undergrad was to pursue a career in graphic design. And that's what I did. Um, and I actually started working right out of college at a marketing agency. And this was in 1999.
00:08:23
Speaker
And I actually had two job opportunities when I graduated and it was really easy to make the decision because one was an ad agency and the creative director said, I think the internet is a fad. And the other was this marketing agency that I went to where they said the internet is the future.
00:08:40
Speaker
And of course, you know, I, I really felt like the internet was very exciting and building applications. Actually, we didn't even have the applications back then building web pages was really fun and exciting. And I enjoyed that. I had actually done that as a, as a job in undergrad. I worked on the alumni website for my college. And, um, so that was my first job was, was taking, uh,
00:09:06
Speaker
taking designs that print designers had made and realizing them in HTML, which was challenging, fun, and thankless because they never thought I did it quite right. But that was just a really
00:09:24
Speaker
A really great way, I think, for me to take what I loved about art and design and what I loved about computers, because I taught myself HTML.
The Hacker Mindset in Leadership
00:09:33
Speaker
And again, this is a long time ago, you know, where you use spacer gifts to make sure everything would line up. But solving the visual problem through the code was very satisfying to me. That was always really fun and satisfying.
00:09:53
Speaker
This is the quintessential hacker ethos. Play with the tech until you make something cool that didn't exist before. Lee wasn't afraid of breaking stuff thanks to the encouragement of her father with that first IBM computer.
00:10:07
Speaker
But hacking technology isn't about giving it right every time. It's always breaking. The point is that you maintain a growth mindset to create new solutions that didn't exist before, so it's never really broken. To paraphrase the PBS painter Bob Ross, there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.
00:10:30
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, five years old, playing around with the computer, falling in love with this, this, this tool that could be done while going to school to forget about anything that has to do with digitalization at all. I'm going to get oil paints, put it on the canvas to then diving in professionally to taking artwork that other people created.
00:10:55
Speaker
and figuring out how to put it on web pages. I mean, what an interesting juxtaposition of skills and interests that you pulled together. I mean, as you look back at that and you figure out some of this piecemeal work that you put together to kind of create this career path for you, is there anything that you look back and say, man, this really taught me this that really informs who I am now?
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, so it's interesting because I've thought about this a lot and I think of myself more as a designer than an artist. I'm not really great at coming up with something out of nothing, but if you give me parts and pieces, I can fit them together.
00:11:34
Speaker
And I think that that is sort of how all this art that, you know, some people might say, what on earth does that have to do with anything that you do today? That's where it all fits in. It's just sort of the way that my brain works or the way that I like to think about things. And so ultimately really what I do now is I'm a problem solver and that's what I really love. I just, I love to,
00:11:58
Speaker
solve a problem, whether it's how does a certain kind of technology solve a banker's issue in this specific type of market, you know, just putting the pieces together. I think that's what all of that art and design background taught me.
00:12:17
Speaker
And then my team always jokes that I'm the one who does the PowerPoints because the principles of design and how do you make something look good? And how do you make a small startup company look way bigger than it really is? It's good PowerPoints.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm guilty of that as well.
Role of Visual Presentation in Business
00:12:36
Speaker
We actually just did a quick five minute training today with our leadership team on PowerPoint because I just get so excited about that anyways to kind of bring all those ideas together. Yeah, well, presentation is everything. And how you present your company to the outside world, so much of it has to do with how you present it visually.
00:12:56
Speaker
I mean, I've definitely gone on a website before and thought these people don't know what they're doing because their website is terrible and they may very well know exactly what they're doing, but you know, you have to get past that perception barrier.
00:13:07
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with is they as they move from like individual contributors to start to be leaders of people and leaders of companies is Not everyone knows what's going on up in your head And so you could be having the best strategic thoughts in the entire world You could be having the best tactical plans,
Leadership Lessons and Mentorship
00:13:26
Speaker
etc. But if you can't figure out how to bring that to life for other people then you're never gonna get people to follow and
00:13:34
Speaker
Absolutely, yes, the value of whiteboarding. And like you said, you don't have to be able to draw well. I mean, really, you just need to be able to draw circles and squares, and then you can get your ideas and lines, and get your ideas across, you know, at that point. Yeah, there's a cartoon I love, and it's three people sitting there, and they all have thought bubbles over their head, and one's thinking of a circle, one's thinking of a triangle, one's thinking of a square, and then there's a person over to the other side and says, I'm so glad we all agree.
00:14:02
Speaker
Because I know this is different than everybody said. Yeah. Noit, we need to pull this out a little bit more. So you talked a little bit about your job, I think it was your first job out of college, working at a marketing agency. But then you actually ended up working at some fairly large companies, working on some big projects, while at the same time deciding to go back to school. So can you share a little bit of that path that you took and why you ended up doing it in that way?
00:14:31
Speaker
Yes, thank you, great question. So one of the big companies I worked with was Toyota. And I was part of a team where we were building the configurator. And that's the part of the website where you pick your model and your trim level and the color that you want and all the options. And it's a pretty complex piece of software as it was at the time. And the consumer facing piece has to be dead simple and easy for people to use. But we had this back end administrative
00:15:00
Speaker
engine we had built and had all the business logic about what could go with what. And we didn't spend much time making it easy. It was just we threw it together. And what I learned when the model year turned over was that the only person who knew how to enter in all these rules and all the images that go with everything was me because I'd sat with the developers while they put it together.
00:15:26
Speaker
And I realized I was in a really bad spot because there's a lot of Toyota models. And, you know, I was working till, you know, wee hours in the morning every day trying to get this done.
00:15:36
Speaker
And I really started getting interested in user experience and usability and how do you build software so that it's easy for people to use. Um, because I, but at one point one of the developers said, well, you just need to teach the admins Boolean logic. And I thought, um, that's not, that's not the solution to this problem. The solution to this problem is a system that you don't have to explain anything to them for. So.
00:16:03
Speaker
I don't think I really actually knew all the answers at that point, but I knew something was wrong. I knew this wasn't right. And so I actually went back to graduate school at Georgia Tech and I studied human computer interaction, which, if I could sum it up in a nutshell, is basically that. How do you make a computer system
00:16:22
Speaker
that does what a human being wants it to do, and it's simple, and it's easy, and it doesn't require a bunch of explanation. Because there's certain things that humans are good at, and there's certain things that computers are good at, and there's not a ton of overlap. So you need to put the right tasks on the right actors. And if you can do that in the system design, then you build something where the interface is almost invisible. People don't even realize that they're interacting with it because it's so intuitive.
00:16:50
Speaker
And so in between my two years of grad school, I worked at Delta Airlines in the technology department in Atlanta, where the world's busiest airport was our lab. That was super fun. And did a lot of things with the website. We did
00:17:09
Speaker
Spanish gate audio, we did things with the kiosk in the airport. I think it was just amazing to have the ability to design something and then go test it with, you know, however many people you wanted, you know, the next day. It was really cool.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah. So I love those stories for two reasons. One, just what fabulous things you got to work on such early days of the internet with complicated processes and everything. But I want you to ladder up a little bit. Now you're the president co-founder of Core 10, started multiple companies and let them now
00:17:45
Speaker
I can only imagine there are some really important leadership principles that you learned about both your lessons of the configurator and being the single point of failure for an entire system, as well as how to build systems and processes of having the right actors take on the right roles.
00:18:06
Speaker
So yeah, that's a great question. I think there's probably two really big lessons I've learned. One is around as a founder, oftentimes you do the thing that you know the best.
00:18:23
Speaker
but you end up hamstringing the company because you become a bottleneck. So one of the things that, not that I'm really great at, but I realized I was decent at was sales. And I was the only salesperson for a lot of the time selling our services at Core 10. And I just realized there's only so much one person can do and that I was thwarting the growth of the company by not having more people to do this.
00:18:54
Speaker
you know, honestly, it's sort of a control thing. I knew I had a responsibility to our board for certain numbers. And I thought when push comes to shove, I know I can do it. But it scared the heck out of me to trust anybody else to do it. And that's just a really hard lesson. And I think one of the biggest lessons of my adult life is to realize just how little I actually have control over.
00:19:21
Speaker
That is not the lesson you want to hear if you're building a company. Your level of control is smaller than you think it is. And the only way to be truly successful and deliver results to your board and shareholders is to trust other people to jump in and own their objectives. Of course, you can build something good by yourself. But the only way to make it great is to build a team. And surprisingly, there's some freedom in that.
00:19:52
Speaker
But, you know, to stop holding on so tightly because oftentimes you bring somebody else in to help you, they're better at it than you are. And then all of a sudden you see, Oh, okay. I kind of miss that, you know, and it becomes a whole lot better.
00:20:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny, when I was a young professional, I don't think I'm unique in this, but I was thinking, oh, I can't wait till I'm in charge because I won't make these mistakes. Or I'll just be able to tell people what to do, and we'll do it right. And the fallacy that I found is, well, first off, the higher you get up in the company, the less control you have on anything. And if you actually want to have good people leading, you have to let them lead.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yes, exactly. Which is giving up that control. Exactly. And to go back to your question, Nathan, I think one of the other key lessons that I've learned, and you just sort of alluded to it, is the importance of building a culture where other people really feel heard, valued, that they're an important part of the equation, that they're invested in it.
Culture of Listening and Valuing Team
00:21:03
Speaker
And you mentioned when you were a young professional, you thought, oh, if I'm in charge, we'll do everything right. And I think that's such a classic young professional mindset. And I think it's really only the gift of years and falling down and getting back up again that can teach you that surrounding yourself with a group of people that are smarter than you, better than you at certain things or maybe all the things,
00:21:33
Speaker
And where they really feel like they're an important and valued part of making the thing happen, making the business grow, making the customers happy. That's the key. No one person can do it all alone. And I've learned that one the hard way, because I certainly thought that. Like, if they would just let me dictate everything we did, it's so much better. Everything will just work great. If it doesn't.
00:21:58
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, one of my favorite sayings is building a company as a team sport. And it all comes down to that team. And I want to jump into this next phase of your career, moving from an employee to a co-founder and starting companies. But before we move to that, I just want to ask the question as you look through
00:22:24
Speaker
schooling, early professional days, working at some of these large companies. Are there some mentors that you can go back to and that you can think about that really had an impact in your life in different ways? Yeah. One of them was a woman her name is Helen Gasson and she was my piano teacher. And I had an older sister, have an older sister who played the piano and I really wanted to do everything she did. So I wanted to play the piano too.
00:22:52
Speaker
And I started playing on my own a little bit, and my mom decided I needed some lessons, and I was young. I was, I think I was six. And the teacher, she didn't really want to take me. She said, she's too young. But we ended up just really having an amazing bond. And I took lessons from her until I graduated from high school. But one of my favorite things about her, she was Juilliard trained, amazing vocalist, an amazing pianist.
00:23:22
Speaker
She was a Renaissance woman and she was interested in all these other things. And so maybe when I was about 12, she said, let's go from a 30 minute lesson to a 60 minute lesson, but we did the piano for the first 30 minutes and then we would do something completely different for the second half. And at one point she was really into desktop publishing, which is the precursor to graphic design. And so she taught me what windows were. She taught me about, you know,
00:23:49
Speaker
how to lay elements out on a page. And it was just, you know, really fascinating to me. And she was really playing into this love I already had of computers. And I think that was what made me think that graphic design was maybe the cohesion of all those things together. And it was just, I mean, I think why she was so important was she just fostered this really,
00:24:15
Speaker
great thirst for knowledge. I mean, she showed me how to be curious about lots of different things. It's sort of how to play at lots of different things. And I still play the piano and I still make stuff on the computer. You still do it all. Yeah. I love that. And I love how it ties back to that same thing that you talked about with your dad when he handed over the computer. Just play with it. You can't break it. Right.
00:24:39
Speaker
It fosters that creativity and that exploration. And you had this other woman who was an amazingly trained vocalist, pianist, that also taught desktop publishing and saw enough in you to be like, I can see that Lee wants to explore a little bit more and this will be a fun partner to explore the world with. I mean, how cool is that?
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, she really was that partnership.
Entrepreneurial Journey and Growth
00:25:03
Speaker
I mean, I hadn't thought of it since you said it that way, but she really treated me like, you know, we were two partners in crime, you know, setting out to see what kind of fun stuff we could learn.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah. I had another mentor, I think that's worth mentioning, actually two women that I worked with at Toyota. One named Roseanne and one named Cynthia. And, you know, I was very young. I was in my early twenties and I was really in over my head in this project. I was the project manager of this project and it was, it was a lot. And both of them, I think could see where I was struggling and they both,
00:25:40
Speaker
did things for me that they really didn't have to do, but they made my life a lot better. Roseanne was in charge of contracts and she worked on the customer side and I was the vendor, but she said to me one day, know your contract inside and out. It will save you. And there were times when me knowing my contract inside and out meant that my company as a vendor, you know, got something on Toyota.
00:26:10
Speaker
Um, because they didn't meet their obligation, but she was just very clear to me. You always need to read every word and know your contracts. And I still to this day read every contract and detail because you never know what's in there, you know, some kind of gotcha. So that was really great.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's always interesting, especially in the chair that you sit at your company, and I sit at my company, that going back and forth between this super high-level view of an entire marketplace and industry,
00:26:45
Speaker
But then there's these other things where it's like, and you need to know like the super minute detail, figuring out when to do what. And it sounds like, you know, through some of that mentorship helped to train you on what are some of those most important things to where it is that you need to dive super deep.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's really those things where the buck stops with you. Like, you know, I could, I can have somebody else read the contract, but if we got ourselves in a pickle, I mean, it's comes back to me. So I'd rather just, I'd rather just know what we're signing up for. Yeah, absolutely. So let's jump into this transition that you made of now you're starting to like co-found your own businesses.
00:27:27
Speaker
What, what drove you to do that? And maybe, uh, you know, some, some stories that you have from the trenches with your first business. And then now of course your second one with core 10. Yeah. So the first one was really quite by accident. I wasn't sending out to start a business. I didn't have some great idea and I built the prototype. I actually, um, was moving to a new city. Um, and I needed a job.
00:27:53
Speaker
And I called up a friend in that city. It was Birmingham, Alabama. And I said, what's going on? And he said, oh, I've got a couple of guys who are starting this company. He was a friend, a developer, and he said, we could really use your skills. We had stayed in touch when I went to graduate school. And he said, three of us were doing the development work, and we could really use a designer. You want to do it with us? And I was like, OK. I mean, you know.
00:28:22
Speaker
Looking back, I'm amazed at how cavalier I was about that. But I just said, sure. And so when we first started, we had one customer. That customer kept us busy. There were the four of us. And every time a check came in, we just split it four ways. We didn't make salaries. We didn't have any. We were just a merry band of folks building software.
00:28:46
Speaker
And fortunately that business was very successful and the original team was very tight and worked well together and started expanding our team. And eventually we started acting like a real business and had a 401k and all that good stuff. But that was really, I think that was a good way to start because I was in the trenches. I was the...
00:29:13
Speaker
a person responsible for deliverables. And then as we went, I started being able to hire some people to do the same work I was doing and then start managing that team. And I actually hired some friends that I'd gone to graduate school with. And so I knew very well what they had been taught and how they worked. And it made for a great first team.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Now, if I remember correctly, this is in the medical field, the medical industry, is that right? Yeah, healthcare. Healthcare in general. Yeah. And we have to jump down the segue. Okay. Because I think it's awesome. Hey, I'm going into a new industry. I need to learn about it. What do I do?
00:30:03
Speaker
Well, if you're Lee, what do you do? So you decided to get another master's degree. So I'm curious, you know, so
00:30:13
Speaker
oil painting, undergrad, computer and human interactions to learn UI, UX, and then you get a master's degree in healthcare. Health informatics. Health informatics. So I'm just curious, you know, what have you learned about yourself and what advice would you give as people are thinking about on the job training versus educational pursuits and kind of balancing those two as you're trying to grow your career?
00:30:40
Speaker
Yes, okay, I have two completely conflicting thoughts on that. But one is- I love conflicting thoughts, by the way. I think it's great. That's where all the magic happens, right? That's the true beauty of life. So when I first was going back to Georgia Tech, I asked someone I trusted, should I do this? And he was a financial planner. And he said, no, you should not do this. You're giving up two years of earnings. How much more are you going to make when you graduate? Can you quantify this? It was all about dollars and cents.
00:31:10
Speaker
Thank goodness I didn't listen to him because I really wanted to go learn this field. And so getting the master's degree, the first one was absolutely the right choice. And honestly getting the second one was a great choice too. I was married, but we didn't have children yet.
00:31:27
Speaker
You know, spending my Saturday reading scholarly articles was perfectly fine. Nobody needed me. But as I've gotten older, I can say that you do not need to go get a master's degree, you know, in something to know it well. There's so many other ways. I've used Coursera to learn things that I didn't know well. I do a ton of reading.
00:31:47
Speaker
In our house, we say, leaders are readers. So if there's something I want to learn about, figure like this, buy a book. Let's listen to a podcast. Let's watch a documentary, whatever it is. There's much quicker ways than getting a master's degree. But I would not not get those two degrees. They were both incredibly informative. I made great friends. They were great experiences for me.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah. And to fast forward a little bit, now that you're in the banking industry, you have not gone to banking school or gotten a master's in banking. No, I actually got cut off after the second master's. My husband said, that's it. No more advanced degrees. So everything I've learned about the financial industry, I've learned from the school of hard knocks, but it's also been fascinating to learn and there's so much to learn.
Practical Learning in Banking
00:32:36
Speaker
I'm still learning every day.
00:32:41
Speaker
In an industry as complex as banking, there are lots of theories about how things should be done, but when theory meets reality, you need the fortitude to wade through the messy problems. Lee brings that fortitude to her work at Core 10, a company that transitioned from selling services to building products, including an API tool that makes everyone's life easier. As much as she loves learning in school, it is clear that Lee knows how to marry theory and practical application.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love the quote, leaders are readers. I think that needs to go on a mug somewhere and everyone needs to buy it. It's a great quote. It's something that I've recognized as well. The best leaders that I interact with are voracious consumers of knowledge, whether it be reading, listening, watching, you know, whatever it might be.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah. And applying it, throwing it against the wall and seeing if it works. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah. Well, and you've learned the most from when it doesn't, right? Yeah. Because lots of times that's what pushes you in the retrospection. Because when you're successful, it's hard to be like, oh, let me see what I did right and what I did wrong. Right. It's like, well, the assumption is I did everything right because I succeeded, right? Right. Even if it was an accident.
00:34:05
Speaker
Exactly. But when it's like right in your face, well, I totally messed up on that. I completely failed. You know, it forces you to look at that and be like, Oh, what am I going to do? So talk to me a little bit about this transition from this first company to where you are now. Yeah. So, um, I just, I was ready for change. Um, I want to do something different and, um, I was ready for,
00:34:32
Speaker
a different type of leadership role. And I was honestly ready for a new industry. So we started Core 10. I had an original co-founder of Core 10. And we started out as a services business, 100% services. And by services, I mean software development services in the financial sector. I did know enough from my previous company
00:34:55
Speaker
that in technology, especially in software, it's really important to focus. Because if you're all things, then you become a commodity and you have to compete with offshore and it's, you know, it's just not a great place to be. So the financial technology industry was an important focal point for us. And really the key to Core 10 is what we call the hereshore model. And so as opposed to offshore or nearshore, it's basically onshore, but we call it hereshore.
00:35:25
Speaker
And that is our registered trademark. We're so proud of it. And what we, the way we realized that in real life is that we invest in smaller communities here in the United States and we bring job opportunities to those areas. And what we do is we're not just bringing jobs, we're actually bringing career opportunities so that someone can start as an entry level developer and go all the way up to a senior developer or architect and really drastically change
00:35:55
Speaker
their earning power, their level of knowledge, make an impact on their family for generations to come. Because we believe that smarts and aptitude are given out across the country in an equal fashion, but opportunity is not always the same. There's smart people everywhere, and sometimes they just need an opportunity to shine.
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah. Could you share with the group what are some of those communities that you've invested in? Yep. So the first place that we started and still our largest nexus of development talent is in West Virginia and specifically in Huntington, the Huntington area.
00:36:38
Speaker
Huntington's sort of in this little pocket where Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio all come together. So we have folks that cross those lines, but the whole state of West Virginia honestly has been an amazing place for us to bring, you know, core 10
00:36:55
Speaker
And because the state has invested in us in so many ways too, that was a really beautiful, unexpected piece of it. The state has really embraced us. Leaders all the way up to our United States senators have come to our office
00:37:12
Speaker
met with our team, talked to them. We've just been embraced by capital in the state. We have investors from the state of West Virginia. And so that's been a really amazing place for us. We've also invested in a town in Western Tennessee called Martin. So University of Tennessee Martin is there. And that's another amazing place. The graduates from Martin, UT Martin, very much like the graduates from Marshall University in Huntington.
00:37:42
Speaker
are amazingly well prepared for a career in technology. And we've also invested in Eastern Tennessee in the Johnson City area where ETSU is. You can kind of see there's a theme. There's always a strong university and or community college partnership in the areas where we have a lot of development talent. So there's this ongoing discussion in corporate America
00:38:10
Speaker
about the purpose of a corporation? Is it about shareholder value and profit? Should there be some aspect of social good that should be measured? And how do you blend the two?
Aligning Mission with Business Goals
00:38:25
Speaker
obviously, based off of what you're sharing is here shoring is being such an important core tenant of core 10, you have a component of social impact that you're trying to invest in, while also trying to balance kind of shareholder return and all that fun stuff. So I'm just curious, as you're right smack in the middle of this conversation and trying to do something differently, curious, what what have you learned from that experience, whether it comes from raising capital, attracting talent, attracting customers, etc.
00:38:56
Speaker
Well, you know, I think that the mission and the shareholder return have to be symbiotic or it doesn't really make sense. So I would say that our shareholder returns are positively impacted by our mission. And being in Huntington, when I talk to customers, so many customers say to me, I'm from a small town like that.
00:39:23
Speaker
It really resonates, it has an emotional component. Yes, do I think that people are buying based on dollars and cents and whether or not we can meet their needs and solve their requirements and do we have the requisite knowledge? Absolutely. But at the very last mile, sometimes that emotional connection is what actually ends up making the sale. Because they say, this looks like where I'm from.
00:39:50
Speaker
Gosh, I wish I had that kind of opportunity. I grew up thinking I had to move away to have a career. So that's been a big impact. And I also think that, like I said before about how important it is that people feel heard and valued and that they have an active investment in their career. Being in these hereshore locations has really given us the ability to provide that and
00:40:20
Speaker
Our retention rates are better than industry average. I think because we take care of those things, and I think if you take care of people, your mission is aligned with your business goals, then you're going to positively impact shareholder value.
00:40:42
Speaker
This is such an excellent point, especially in the current economic climate where people are rightfully questioning the metrics of corporate success. Profit at any cost is no longer an acceptable position to take, but it was never the best way to run a company. That'd be like putting a supercharged engine into a rusted-out sedan with bald tires. It's gonna break down.
00:41:03
Speaker
When you align the business goals with the mission and demonstrate genuine concern for people's needs, not just your customer's needs, you have the making of a high performing company. I think it just sort of, you know, it just happens that way.
00:41:21
Speaker
intrinsically tied together. Yes, you said it way better. I don't know if I said it way better, but it sounds like as you've been out in the marketplace, that's really the main focus is how can you pull it all together where
00:41:37
Speaker
It's a win-win-win situation, right? There's no one is making sacrifices one way or the other to move forward with it. Yes. In fact, that is one of my favorite phrases. I love a deal where everybody wins. I think if that was all the kinds of deals I ever got to make, that would make me happy. Yeah, absolutely.
00:42:00
Speaker
The journey with Core 10, as most startups do, have pivoting going on as you're going through the journey.
Artful Design in Product Development
00:42:12
Speaker
I'd love to hear a little bit, two different parts. One, what are some of those pivot points and how did you come to them?
00:42:20
Speaker
and what were the circumstances that allowed you to see those in the new, hey, that was the direction that we needed to go. But then the other question that I have is, as you've been going through that process, are there anything about your experiences or things that you've learned before you actually moved into Core 10 that allowed you to be open to those opportunities as they came?
00:42:48
Speaker
Yeah, I would say probably the most important pivot that we've made was fairly recent. So I told you, we started as a services company. And a services company, you work an hour, you bill an hour. If you want to bill another hour, you got to work another hour. And there's a ceiling to how much those companies can be valued in terms of a multiple. And so investors, they look at that. And we've always thought
00:43:18
Speaker
How do we incorporate product into our offering? That is a great way to maximize our growth. But that's difficult. You have to have capital to do it. And so I had really learned that in my previous company. We always kept trying to come up with some way to productize what we were doing.
00:43:43
Speaker
It just never really panned out. And so one of the intermediate steps we made at Core 10 was we started productizing services. How do we sell a services engagement as a fixed fee deliverable with a set amount of deliverables that you were going to get? And so we kind of were halfway there. And then we had an opportunity to start a product division
00:44:10
Speaker
And we had that opportunity related to Salesforce and related to commercial lending. And it was just the timing was right. The players with capital were right. Um, it was just, you know, uh, what's the saying when you're on the right path, the universe conspires to support you. That's really what happened. We had a great idea. We had a partner who came to us with a great idea.
00:44:37
Speaker
and a proof of concept. We were uniquely suited to build out all the integrations and back end to the Salesforce front end. We had an investor who believed in what we were doing and thus our crew product was born. And that's our Salesforce based commercial lending and digital account opening product. And we've been in the market now about 18 months
00:45:05
Speaker
We've got 10 customers on the platform, and it's opened up a whole new world to us. And adjacent to that, as we're building out this integration for the Salesforce front end, we realized that the integration layer we were building had a life of its own.
00:45:23
Speaker
and that it actually could be another product. And so thus was Born Mesh, which is our I-PASS and BAS layer that banks can use to connect various systems together to provide a cohesive, whether it's a BAS-embedded platform strategy, or they have another strategy that they want to use these integrations for.
00:45:47
Speaker
And we provide increased security and decrease the amount of connections you have to have to the core. So, you know, it's just been a really amazing pivot and a wonderful gift. Yeah. Well, I love that.
00:46:05
Speaker
There's been a lot of companies out there that have tried to go from a service-based business to a product-based business. What a hard transition that is. So super excited for you and your team for managing that process. And I'm sure all of us are super excited to continue to watch how that journey progresses. Yeah. I think one of the reasons that this time it worked is because the services
00:46:35
Speaker
portion of our business was actually accretive to the product effort. So we have strong knowledge about product implementation. We have strong knowledge around product development. We build other people's products. And so we were able to apply all of that to the product side. And I think that's one of the key reasons why it's worked so well.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can't help but think too early in our conversation.
00:47:05
Speaker
when you were talking about growing up and some of the things that you really enjoyed as you like to see. I'm not a creator. I like to see different pieces and how they might be able to come together. And how cool is that to be able to kind of take that same thought process that allowed you to do computer design early on and UX design early on before UX design was even talked about to now doing that exact same thing at a company.
00:47:34
Speaker
I have these people who are good at these things that to do their work, they need to do these things. And hold on a second. If I see how all those go together, I've also been hearing that community financial institutions need that as well.
00:47:52
Speaker
Hey, it looks like we could bring it together. I just love how those skill sets and those things that for some might seem like, oh yeah, just playing on a computer and taking piano lessons and doing desktop publishing and oil painting, how does that have to do with starting a business? And it just ties together. It's beautiful.
Learning from Failures
00:48:12
Speaker
Yes, in fact, I used to be apologetic about my fine arts degree. Sometimes I still am. But I've been working on not being, because there's something wrong with that. I've always said, oh, I should have gotten a business degree. That would have been so much more practical. But I've had several people say to me, I don't worry about it. I don't know that much in business school anyway.
00:48:39
Speaker
So it's been really fun to take some of those really high level concepts and see how they apply across a lot of different genres, business included. All right, so now it's time to get introspectively. I would love for
00:48:59
Speaker
the listeners to learn from you on some of the failures or some of the things that didn't really go the way that you expected it to, and then kind of what you learned from them from anywhere in your path. Yeah. Oh my gosh, too many to count. So many failures. I think one of my strengths is that I'm stubborn and I have staying power, but I've also realized
00:49:28
Speaker
that there's been situations in my life where I stayed too long. And I think I did that at my first company. I was there for 10 years, and I probably should have left after five. There were some inflection points there where I think, that was a sign. That was a sign from the universe. And so I probably wasted some time.
00:49:54
Speaker
doing things that maybe I wasn't that passionate about. And I've also done that sometimes where there were some challenges that I probably could have avoided had I read the signs a little bit better. But I also think that a lot of that stuff is, like you said before, I mean, that's where the real learning comes in.
00:50:22
Speaker
And all those things are things that have shaped me. So, you know, I think the failures are essential. And I want to come back to the failure piece because you asked me to tell you about a book later on. So remind me to come back to that. But I think those failures are definitely essential to learning. There's really nothing good that you get that's really worth getting.
00:50:51
Speaker
that you don't get kind of the hard way. And, you know, I mean, I have to think of lots of specific failures where I said something stupid or I tried to insert myself into something where I really wasn't welcome or I, you know, made a decision that didn't turn out so well. I mean, I have so many, but
00:51:16
Speaker
I think they are all part of the fabric of the story.
Influence of Non-Business Books
00:51:21
Speaker
It's definitely a winding, messy road to get from there to here. Well, let's jump into the question just since it sounds like it's on topic.
00:51:34
Speaker
Look, so many people always ask, what business books do you recommend? And honestly, I'm a little bit bored by that question by now. I mean, there are wonderful business books, but there's also tons of awesome non-business books that I think people don't spend as much time talking about. So that's one of our favorite questions to ask is what are some of your favorite non-business books that you would recommend? And yeah, since you brought it up, let's go ahead and jump into it so you can tie it together.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah, so like I said before, I love reading. I have a towering stack of books by the bed. I got to stop buying them. That's also like an addiction. So I have two actually. I'm going to get a little spiritual on you. So the first one is Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, and he's a Franciscan priest. And I am not Catholic, but I really
00:52:30
Speaker
enjoyed reading his work. And the premise of Falling Upward is that there's sort of two halves of life. The first half is the half where we are building, because it's building a container, we're setting up, we're getting educated, we're finding a spouse, we're building a family, we're creating a career, building all these things. And then the second half of life is where we stop being so additive
00:52:58
Speaker
and start being more subtractive to get down to the essence of what is really important to us and what really has meaning for us or for the people that we work with or the people that we love. And I read it and I sort of feel like I'm at that place where I'm kind of coming up on that second half because I feel this natural desire to eliminate things that don't serve me
00:53:28
Speaker
And that was just a really, really great book to read because he kind of helps you see how the second half can be a very beautiful, wise, calming, freeing time of life. So it made me look forward, you know, to the second half. And the other one is, I'm going to totally switch the religions on you.
00:53:54
Speaker
is from Rabbi Harold Kushner called The Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life. And when I first read that book, I was at a resort and I was in the library. And I just picked it up off the shelf and started reading it. And as I was reading it, I thought, I mean, if anybody was ever going to write down my belief system, this guy did it. Like, whoa, this is so much in that book really resonated with me.
00:54:21
Speaker
just about spirituality and our relationship with each other.
00:54:27
Speaker
and being good people on this planet for as long as we're here. And so I joked with my husband the other day, I said, if I could go to a place of worship where Richard Rohr was there and Harold Kushner was there, and there's a couple of other folks that I like. I said, I would go there. I'd be there every weekend. I'd be there every Sunday. Because there's just so many beautiful lessons, I think, in both of those books. I know Rabbi Kushner has passed away, but I love both of those.
00:54:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's great. And I think just that I love the two authors that you chose because
00:55:06
Speaker
What it shows is a level of curiosity that breaks through barriers that oftentimes people put put up I mean all of us know that if you want to put up barriers talk about religion or talk about politics Right, right and oh that person's not on my team. I don't even care what they have to say In either of these places in religion and politics but you know principles of life and
00:55:32
Speaker
ideas and philosophy kind of go beyond these boundaries that we put up. And I think just goes to demonstrate that curiosity that you have that if there's goodness to be had, I want to go pursue it. And I'm not going to just put up these boundaries that are going to stop me to doing so. Right. Absolutely. I mean, I got born into a certain faith tradition. I was raised in it.
00:56:00
Speaker
But I was also very fortunate as a child to have friends who were members of lots of different faiths and got to experience those with them. And I consider that to be a tremendous gift. What do we have to all learn from each other rather than the very small things that we have that are different? Right. Yeah. It's so minuscule actually what's different.
00:56:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That's beautiful. I love this arc of your story that actually has nothing to do with your professional pursuits at all.
Enriching Leadership with Personal Interests
00:56:40
Speaker
But I think it has so much to do with your professional pursuits. You're a deep reader. I asked you for two non-business books and you gave me two
00:56:49
Speaker
religious philosophers of two different faith traditions. You played with computers. You oil painted. You learned to play the piano. I also happen to know that you're a very competitive cyclist. You enjoy racing. You have this very rich life that goes beyond just your professional pursuits. And I would love to hear any thoughts that you have.
00:57:16
Speaker
How do you find time? How does that influence you? Why do you make time for all these things? Because you also have a family, right? There's all these things. So what about all of these things as they come together? What drives you? Oh, gosh. Well,
00:57:38
Speaker
I mean, I, I just find so many things interesting and actually, I mean, you said, how do you find time? I started laughing because, um, you know, I, I, a wise man recently said to me, you know, you would be smart to reduce about 25% of things from your life. Um, so I'm working on doing that, but there's just so many things that I think are interesting.
00:58:01
Speaker
And I probably, quite frankly, just have a terrible case of FOMO. I mean, I just don't want to miss anything. And I think that's sort of the beauty of this life, right? Is there's so many great things to explore.
00:58:15
Speaker
And it's interesting when you said all this other stuff aside from business, but I honestly think that my professional life is just a really nice container for all of the other things that I enjoy because I can apply it all.
00:58:35
Speaker
I mean, it could be financial technology or it could be healthcare technology. It could be something totally different. But ultimately, the lessons in business and like you said, building a company is a team sport. The lessons in learning how to do that, I'm still learning them. I'm certainly not an expert. They're really all kind of universal, regardless of the industry or whether you're building widgets or whatever.
00:59:02
Speaker
The short answer to how do I find time for all of it is I don't. Also, I get up early. I'm sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. I used to be a very competitive cyclist. I don't really have time to do that anymore, but I'm pretty decent at a few things and I like doing them. I just like kind of going back full circle. I just like playing around, experimenting.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, well, I would maybe challenge a little bit of Jack of many trades, but master of none as you continue to grow such a wonderful business and have great organizational culture that you work with. I've had the opportunity to interact with many of your team members and they all have glowing things to say about you. But I think that might be part of the reason why is because of that curiosity and that wide breadth of knowledge and experiences that you seek out in the world.
00:59:58
Speaker
Well, I mean, we have just an incredible team. I'm really very lucky. I think my star is every day. Our CEO, Jeff Hanson, has to be hands down one of the most amazing humans I've ever worked with. It's taught me so much, continues to do that. Our whole team, you know, everybody's good at so many different things and we've been together for long enough that I think, you know, everybody's really matured together.
01:00:26
Speaker
and learn how to make space for each other together, learn how to communicate in a way that the others are receptive to together. That hasn't always been easy, but that's been really important work that we've done as a team. Yeah. All right, so let's end with the last question. OK. All right, so is a leader born, or can a leader be made? OK, I'm going squarely in the made camp. And I'm going to tell you why.
01:00:56
Speaker
I love it. I love the confidence that you're going into it. I'm going one way. Yes, I'm team made. I think you can certainly be born with lots of natural talents, abilities, gifts, things like that. But I think it's really about what you do with them. And that so much of what a leader is, is
01:01:20
Speaker
sort of that hard wrestling work that you do with yourself and that you're willing to do with yourself. So there's a gentleman that I spoke with recently named Zach Montroy and he told me three quarters of leadership is about two things. It's being inwardly sound and others focused. And I thought, whoa, that's like a life tile of work.
01:01:47
Speaker
You know, to be good at those two things. I mean, I just think that requires deep self-work and being willing to change your habits, deal with your issues, identify areas of your personality that are maybe holding you back and figure out how to work on them. So I think in harnessing your ego, you know, that's been a big one for me. That's hard, you know? So I think if you are willing to do that hard work,
01:02:15
Speaker
and wrestle with yourself, that that's how leaders are made. Yeah, I love it. Well, Lee, thank you so much for your time. Yeah, what a fun conversation to have and really just walked away with so many awesome, awesome nuggets that I could think about to help me become a better leader.
Conclusion: Pursuing Curiosity and Growth
01:02:41
Speaker
Maybe you work in banking, but have a passion for art. Maybe you love designing things and playing with technology, but aren't sure if there's a place for you in the corporate world. Maybe you're questioning whether you have the education and skills to be a great leader. Wherever you are in your journey, I hope that Lee's story encourages you to keep going, keep your head high, and your curiosity on fire. It was such a privilege to have this conversation with Lee. And thank you for taking the time to listen.
01:03:10
Speaker
you'll find Lee's book recommendation in the show notes. You've been listening to Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief, a podcast produced and distributed by Z Suite Technologies Incorporated, All Rights Reserved. I'm your host, Nathan Baumeister, the CEO and co-founder of Z Suite Tech. The 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.