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John Sorrell – Building for future generations, finding your niche, and letting family help you recalibrate | Episode 12
174 Plays5 months ago
Welcome to episode twelve of Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief! Joining me today is John Sorrell, President and CEO of Core Bank.
On this show, I’m unpacking the stories, decisions, and influences that make people successful leaders. John dreamed of becoming a professional water-skier, but discovered his true niche in banking.
My name is Nathan Baumeister; I am the Co-founder and CEO of ZSuite Tech and the host of this podcast.
John Sorrell is all about legacy. Whether it’s continuing the model of hard work and generosity that his father set, or the expanding commitment to build wealth and giving away set by the Omaha business community – John has a passion for serving others.
Core Bank is a bright example of a financial institution centered on clear values and the collaboration of every employees unique gifts and talents. They may specialize in banking services for medical practitioners, but they’re not exclusive about serving the community.
In this episode John offers encouragement to anyone struggling to find their purpose and passion in work. Step out in courage, lean into your network, and always be teachable when opportunity knocks on your door.
John’s example of humility and persistence is a leadership lesson that never gets old, and his wisdom is a gift to every one of our listeners.
Resources:
John’s recommendation:
Book: From Strength to Strength
Connect:
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Company Culture and Identity
00:00:00
Speaker
and the importance of a culture in any company, be it Z-suites or, you know, Wells Fargo, your culture is who you are, right?
00:00:13
Speaker
It was the most difficult thing to put those together and keep the wheels, so to speak, on the wagon and work through the final consent order. There was a lot of mistrust. There was us versus them. And so that was a huge, huge challenge.
00:00:35
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.
00:00:58
Speaker
I want to do all that so that together we can learn from their journey and use that insight personally and professionally.
Legacy and Upbringing's Impact on Life
00:01:07
Speaker
In episode 12, my guest is John Sorrell, president and CEO of CoreBank. Sometimes when you hear someone talk about leaving a legacy, it's easy to dismiss it as self-importance. Maybe the speaker is a little afraid of being forgotten and they're trying to build a reputational fortress that can withstand the forces of time. That's not John Sorrell.
00:01:25
Speaker
It's clear when John talks about leaving a legacy, he understands the original meaning of the word, a gift that you bestow on future generations. No strings attached. Growing up with three brothers in Omaha, Nebraska, John learned about hard work, competition, and the value of family closeness from a young age. His father, a prominent doctor in Omaha, instilled these values into his boys and supported his sons with all the resources at his disposal.
00:01:54
Speaker
a gift that John is paying forward to his family, his team, and his community many times over. Today, he's the president and CEO of CoreBank, but that's a far cry from the professional water skier that he imagined in his teenage years. The initial path to banking and leadership included some hopscotch, but John never wavered in his work ethic or willingness to try new things. Eventually, he discovered an affinity and passion for the discipline of community banking, and he's a master of the craft.
00:02:22
Speaker
The perspective that John brings to this episode of builder-banker-hacker-chief is a legacy in itself. A gift that he shares freely, but not because he's afraid of being forgotten, but because he's such a generous and service-oriented leader that he can't help himself. Hop on your skis and hang on to the rope. John Sorrell is driving the boat on Episode 12.
00:02:50
Speaker
All right, well, John, thank you so much for joining us today on Builder Banker Hacker Chief.
From Water Skiing Dreams to Banking Leadership
00:02:55
Speaker
Thank you for having me. It's an honor. Absolutely. I'll never forget the first time that I met you. I think it was at bank directors acquired or be acquired. And I just had so much fun talking to you and the members of your team and learning about everything that you were doing at CoreBank. And I was drawn just to want to learn more about who you are and what your bank is. So thank you so much for joining us so that I can enjoy that. But then all of our listeners can as well.
00:03:24
Speaker
Great. Like I said, I'm honored and as a lifelong learner, I'd love to talk to a lot of folks by habit if there's a hundred people in the room and I don't know the one.
00:03:39
Speaker
I'm going to go sit by that person because that's just the nature of how I approach life, I guess. I was trying to look for new people to not only absorb energy from, but also hopefully give them some things that they can take away and apply in their life as well. So it's great.
00:04:00
Speaker
I love that uh just the the the level of curiosity but also the pro-activeness and kind of that methodology i'm curious if you think back to who you were kind of growing up can you point to anything that that that habit or that drive to to to be curious and to learn and to you know go and talk to that one person you have any idea where that might have come from oh i uh i tell you i uh
00:04:27
Speaker
I have been blessed in terms of my life. I had
00:04:33
Speaker
My parents are both still alive, but I've had wonderful parents. My father was in academic medicine his entire career here at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. And he was a lifelong learner and he instilled that in us four boys. I'm the third of four boys. We have two doctors, a banker and a funeral director. So we've got a lot of things covered in life. Yeah, from beginning to end.
00:05:02
Speaker
There you go. Yeah, exactly. And I'll finance it along the way. But my father challenged us boys to always be learning. We didn't live in a sod house in Nebraska, like most people think. But we didn't entertain ourselves with TV. We entertained ourselves by surviving each older brother in the pecking order.
00:05:30
Speaker
We really spent most of our time learning things. My father was all about academics, and my father was about work ethic. And we worked every summer to pay our tuition. He wanted us to go to a Jesuit high school, and we had to help pay for that. But it was about the discipline and the college preparatory for why he picked that.
00:05:58
Speaker
We really spent our summers working. There was no country club in our life, but we enjoyed a lake house that we learned to water ski. That was what I really wanted to do was be a professional water skier.
Mentorship and Finding a Niche in Healthcare Banking
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As you can tell, that didn't work out quite how I had planned it, but I got pretty good at it.
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spent a lot of time on the lake doing that. So I give a lot of credit to not only my father, but my mother. She really raised us as my father built his career. But it was a house of hard knocks.
00:06:39
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He was also, and I just had this conversation with him over the weekend, he was also someone that let us learn the lesson. He didn't wrap you in bubble wrap. He figured, you've got to make those decisions and then you've got to live with the outcome. So those were the two biggest influences in my life. And my father was,
00:07:07
Speaker
a family that for the first 12 years of his life, he didn't live with his mother. So it was very important for his family to be very close together. And that was probably the only reason we had a lake house is because that's where we went as a family and us boys did things as a family. And he still does that to this day. That's what's important.
00:07:30
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Uh family, so that's that was that's my driver big driver Yeah, no, I I love that for so many reasons Um, so you had your father who's a medical professional. Yeah and Presumably you might not have needed to
00:07:50
Speaker
do all the work and paint the house and rake and mow and work to pay for school and do all of those things. But he believed in that practical application of building out work ethic so that you can learn how to work hard and learn how to work with others and learn how to ask questions and create this tangible
00:08:13
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understanding of the value of work and money, like as you said, work in the summer so you can pay tuition for school so you can get a good education. I just love that he created that as part of who you are and who you've become. Now, you know I have to ask the question, John.
00:08:31
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You said it was four of you brothers, is that right? Yeah, there's four of us. You're number three. Your dad believed in y'all learning your lessons and not being wrapped in bubble wrap. I got to hear at least one of these stories of you four brothers growing up and having to learn your own lessons.
00:08:53
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There was a few bloody noses and knocked down dragouts between four boys. Not that my father encouraged that, but there was always two of us driving, the way we were two years apart.
00:09:10
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So you always had, we had, my father would not let, he didn't want, you know, four vehicles in the driveway. So he had a car, usually is a Explorer, Ford Explorer. And the, basically there was a bull in the downstairs entry door where the key was always at. If you both reached for the key at the same time, then it was a duel. And basically we came up with a,
00:09:40
Speaker
We had two left-handers and we had two right-handers in the family. And so I was a right-hander. My other brother that was two years older than me was a left-hander.
00:09:49
Speaker
And he's also my best friend to this day. He and I are very close. But he put on the left glove, I put on the right, and we said, whoever survives gets the keys in the car for the date. So there was some healthy competition around that. But at the end of the day,
00:10:12
Speaker
He created bonds between us boys that to this day, we could all not see each other for five years and come back and act like we never were apart for five years. It's what's so cool about that. And while I had many friends outside, I have many work friends,
00:10:31
Speaker
my closest friends are my three other brothers to live outstate and to live in Omaha. Yeah. Well, I look forward as we continue talking through your journey of kind of becoming who you are and shaping the leader.
00:10:47
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of who you are, how much of that tightness, relationships, traditions, norms, and living by example kind of have influenced you all throughout your life because I hear it loud and clear that that's how you grew up and really has had an impact on you to this day. Yeah, I feel everyone, you know, we all have pressures and we all have our to-do list and we
00:11:16
Speaker
And we don't just have it at
Merging Company Cultures and Overcoming Challenges
00:11:18
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the job. We have it raised in our families. We have it in friendships. We have it in our marriages, those that are married. But I always look at family as kind of home plate. It was safe. You had to have that where you could be yourself. You weren't being the president and CEO or chairman.
00:11:42
Speaker
doing the things that others are going to lean up on you to do. It's where you could be who you are. And that's how I've kind of got through stressful areas of growing a company, going through a pandemic, going through a 500 plus rate model. I mean, winning on some things, losing on others.
00:12:12
Speaker
It just kind of recalibrates when I go home and open the door and I'm with the family. For me, it's my secret sauce in terms of how I can recalibrate and then have the same energy to get up the next day and do it all over again with the same enthusiasm. So it just works for me. That's how I roll, I guess. This is such a powerful principle.
00:12:41
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The ability to turn off, recalibrate, and find your value and safety in something other than your work is something that many, many leaders struggle to learn. We all know that if you show up to your job and don't deliver, you get fired. That's accountability, which you'll hear John talk about later on. But I see so many people trying to find their identity and security in professional performance that they lose track of what makes them special or worthy of love.
00:13:10
Speaker
You don't earn love in the marketplace. It's a gift that you receive from others without expectation or requirement. Not everyone receives this love from their family of origin, but from my perspective, when you find this level of peace and acceptance, you found your true family.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think to me, the main takeaway from that is that everybody, whether it's family or friends or some sort of community that you're a part of, you need to have a why.
00:13:48
Speaker
and you need to have a place that there's no results that are expected from you other than to be who you are, to be safe. So that when anything else goes crazy, you have a place where you can rest, you can recuperate, you can center yourself and understand kind of why am I doing all this anyways? So I just love that. Yeah. All right. So grew up working hard.
00:14:16
Speaker
Yep. A lot of manual labor, going to having lots of fun, going to a very demanding school as well, playing sports. Yeah. Three brothers you grew up with.
00:14:30
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What did John wanna be when he grew up? I know your dad was a medical professional. I know water skier was the first on your list, but I'm guessing that by the time you were graduating high school and stuff, you thought maybe I could, maybe I can use something else. Yeah, that wasn't gonna, but it's funny. I knew what I didn't wanna do, Nathan, and that was I did not wanna be a physician. I knew I wanted to get out of Omaha. It was too small, right?
00:15:00
Speaker
when I got done with high school. And I actually went away a year to the College of St. Thomas and up in St. Paul, Minnesota. And it's now St. Thomas University, but it was a college back then. But I also didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I actually took some time off.
00:15:22
Speaker
took time off to kind of, I guess, find myself. And then to the encouragement, the continued encouragement of my father to give each of us children a gift of an education, no matter what time we took it, accepted it, or did it. He kept showing me in the way he always did options. My beautiful wife also encouraged me to go back and finish my degree.
00:15:49
Speaker
um and she had a nice job and uh and so you know we made that decision and I thought well I'll get a general finance uh you know economic marketing I don't know I'll do a business degree or something but so made the decision to uh go back um UNO University of Nebraska at Omaha campus had a great business college so I
00:16:15
Speaker
enrolled there, loved it. It really triggered my desire eventually to go into banking, even though
00:16:27
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It wasn't something I was thinking about, but through this interaction at my college, and it was really a lot of my professors, I was a non-traditional student, so by this time my wife and I had been married, we had a child. I was working and then going to school. These professors were my law professor.
00:16:48
Speaker
an active practicing attorney in Omaha under case law, business law. My economics teacher, my marketing teacher owned a company. I mean, these were phenomenal people to strike that curiosity of how they became successful. Their way of paying back was to actually be part-time professors at the college. And so it just was a very
00:17:16
Speaker
I guess defining moment for me to say, I don't know what my skill is, but I can talk. I work hard. I think I'm halfway intelligent from the standpoint I can reason and know that I'm not the smartest person on the, around the table. But just noticing that is sometimes half the genius, right? Cause that's, that's what it takes. But went to my dad's office and we sat down and I said, you know,
00:17:43
Speaker
Dad, where do you think I should take this thing? And I need a job. And he goes, well, a lot of my patients are very successful business people and entrepreneurs here in Omaha. Let me connect you with the half a dozen of them or so. So I met all these amazing people and it was actually a family that expanded into Omaha and bought a bank that was not doing well.
00:18:08
Speaker
And I went and interviewed with the gentleman cause his father knew my dad from the town they grew up in together. And I didn't know anything about banking. Halfway smart. He said, I don't have a credit analyst. Maybe I need a credit analyst. So he hired me as that. So I kind of got my break in that. And I thought at first I thought, ah, it's a job until I find something I like, right? But I, again,
00:18:37
Speaker
met an amazing guy that kind of took me under his wing, met a couple other amazing folks. This bank was a bank that was very progressive. They were acquiring other banks. It was, I kind of got into the banking at the tail end of, you know, 88, 89-ish. So the farm crisis, we weren't, I've never done an ag loan in my life,
Leadership Philosophy and Company Success
00:19:01
Speaker
but the farm crisis kind of took out a lot of banks in western Nebraska.
00:19:07
Speaker
then you've got, you know, kind of the RTC, the savings alone crisis that came up. So there's a lot of activity going on. And I just kind of never said no to anything. And they threw me in all these, you know, acquisitions, file reviews, charge off reviews, collection. So I,
00:19:27
Speaker
you know, maybe not being the smartest guy was beneficial in this regard, because I didn't say no to anything, you know. Yeah, you're like, sure. Yeah, sounds good. You know, I can try it. Yeah, right. And so I just, I don't know, I, I, I'd like to, I'd liked all aspects of that. I liked, you know, building out financial spreadsheets. I like collections. I, I, I,
00:19:54
Speaker
I don't know. It just, it fit and I found some amazing mentors along the way.
00:20:01
Speaker
And the advice I got from my mentor who's out passed was, and he passed right after I became president of a bank. So he would have been really proud of me as an analyst in a junior lender type role to where I ended up the year he passed becoming president. He knew that, but it was just kind of bittersweet.
00:20:28
Speaker
It was, he told me, you know, if it was me, commercial banking is where you want to kind of hang your hat. I'm like, okay. And then the genius moment I had, I was like, you know, he told me, you know, find a niche. And I found a niche because I knew doctors. I knew
00:20:49
Speaker
people that, you know, had private practices and things like that. So I kind of built an expertise around healthcare banking and on the practice side. And it just kind of morphed into something that got me noticed. That was my genesis of where I'm at today. And it wasn't planned by any stretch of the imagination. Like I said earlier, I knew what I wasn't going to be, and that was going to be a physician.
00:21:17
Speaker
but yet my two brothers who are love it. And that's great, but that's just not me, you know? Yeah, it's driven by what is it that interests you? What is it that you can put passion behind? And it's funny because I do think a lot of people spend so much time thinking about what do I want to do or who do I want to be or what type of leader do I want to be? And instead, sometimes the more powerful question is, well, first off,
00:21:46
Speaker
Who do I not want to be? What are the qualities of a leader that don't inspire me? And oftentimes by looking at that negative or looking at that opposite of what you don't want, it helps to guide you in the end what you actually do want without being able to put your finger on it.
00:22:05
Speaker
I am. I'm curious. I want to go back to some of the things that you shared because I thought they were they're super powerful and I love just to dig a little bit deeper. You know, we've been doing builder banker hacker chief for a while now. And I have just been so impressed at the variety of educational backgrounds that we've had. We've had some very traditional, you know,
00:22:31
Speaker
full-time undergrad right out of high school, rent to grad school, follow the traditional track. We've had a few that didn't get their degrees or like you kind of had kind of this gap in between. You started for a little bit, but maybe it wasn't for you yet, but then went back and just had this amazing experience. I'm just curious as you think about
00:22:57
Speaker
those people that are listening that want to end up in leadership roles and the role that formal education can, shouldn't have with, I'm just curious what type of advice you would give those people based off of not only your experience, but also others that you work with.
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, my father's philosophy around education was not to create any ceilings for his boys. That he felt that that was very important to him. He saw his way out of small town farm community that
00:23:35
Speaker
education. I don't know too many geniuses in this world, but he truly is a genius. I think he was done with college at 16 and done with med school at 19. He was a very talented, brilliant physician.
00:23:53
Speaker
I feel like I don't want to have an excuse or I always tell folks, I tell my boys this because my wife and I did the same kind of pay it forward type mentality with our children. I'm an owner of our bank, I don't own the bank. And so I can't give my children a business if you will.
00:24:15
Speaker
Nor would I probably, but at the same time, I wanted them to have the same opportunity as us. And two of my three boys did the traditional route and took advantage of it. And my third did kind of what I did, went a year, didn't know what he wanted to do. And now he's an executive chef in Denver.
00:24:39
Speaker
uh in a golfing community and and uh but that's his his role you know he always talks about it you know gosh how old is my son i'm trying to think 34 35 about you know maybe i should finish my degree you know the philosophy of of never putting a ceiling in place and and so
00:24:59
Speaker
My mentor never went to college, but he was very successful and enjoyed the fruits of his hard work. I don't know. I just kind of feel that, Nathan, that if you can create those opportunities where you don't have any excuse or give someone an excuse to say, well, you didn't, you know, you don't have a degree, you know, when you're the most qualified, I guess, if that makes sense.
00:25:22
Speaker
That's answering what you were thinking. Another common theme that you've touched on so many times is I'm awestruck by the amount of good people that you've been able to be introduced to in your life.
00:25:41
Speaker
to be able to provide advice or perspective, you know, the story of your dad saying, you know, you saying, I don't know what to do, but OK. Well, and he didn't answer you, nor did he say, well, let's just talk it through. He said, no, go talk to as many people as you can across multiple different industries so that you can really find out what it is that that you'd be good at. And you just mentioned again, right, with the accounting.
00:26:08
Speaker
Yeah, an accounting professor said maybe you should do accounting instead of saying no. You said, well, tell me about it. Tell me about your life. Tell me about what it would look like so that you could make your own decision. And so it strikes me as as what what a wonderful leadership principle. Don't answer the question. For the people that are asking you the question, rather than give them the resources
00:26:37
Speaker
to make their own way to it. It's, it's huge, you know, it's how I raised my boys, you know, I have three boys, and it's how I raised them, you know, you can you can't fix their problems, you know, as a parent, you know, you certainly want to, it's not that you don't.
00:26:56
Speaker
But they also have to learn from that. And one of our core values here at the bank, we're a purpose-driven, a Y-built company. And our purpose is building better. And we have six core values. And one of the core values is curious. And we want people curious. We want people to say, wow, why do I do that every day?
00:27:25
Speaker
the best learning experiences I have had were me being curious and finding the right people that for whatever reason, maybe they felt sorry for me. I don't know. That's what I think my brothers would say. But for some reason, they took me under their wing or they gave me this advice that resonated with me. It's just amazing. And we've talked in the past about
00:27:55
Speaker
patriarch of the family that I worked for. He passed a couple of years ago, but amazing man that is a titan of industry, you know, built Peter Kiewit and Sons into a global engineering construction
Team Investment and Vision Alignment
00:28:10
Speaker
firm bigger than Peter Kiewit could himself. And then has this amazing philanthropic way of life to say, you know, sign me up, I'm giving it all away. And what he has done
00:28:24
Speaker
as an example, in Omaha, in what he leads by action. You get to have 10 minutes of his time, and that's an education of a PhD, if you ask me. That's what I want. That's how I learn best, is from folks like that. You know, we always, they call them in their family, Walterisms.
00:28:47
Speaker
And we've got a big walterism up in our cafeteria slash kind of lounge for our employees here at the bank. Bill says, don't tell me why we can't do it, but how we can do it. And that's not an original, but that's how he thought, right? And you always tell me, John, the thing is,
00:29:10
Speaker
You bet on the jockey, not the horse, because you've got to have that guidance. And things like that, you get to be able to sit down with a gentleman that has built, and it's not measured by wealth. He's an extremely wealthy family, but that's not how they measure their success. It's how they measure their success is, one, building it, and two, how do you,
00:29:38
Speaker
be givers and not takers, as they always said. Walter always wanted more givers than takers. And he is determined to have his generation to follow him do that. And that's what they're doing. And I get the privilege of running alongside them, running their financial institution and wealth company. And I get to learn these little nuggets of things that
00:30:08
Speaker
let them become successful and now they're more about sharing it for others. It's so rewarding. Here's my opinion. Industry experts may not agree with me here, but that's okay. When you get right down to it, I think this is what banking is all about.
00:30:30
Speaker
A bank is a store of resources that gets repurposed for the benefit of others. Sure, it's a business model and very little is given away for free, but it's also an unbelievably effective method of creating growth and prosperity for entire communities and our entire nation. John clearly believes in this model of banking, and he's found a professional niche where he gets to bring the vision into reality every day.
00:31:00
Speaker
My father always taught us too, and it's a very important lesson because I think in today's society, we get enamored with wealth and things, right? And the values that my father instilled us, don't be enamored with wealth. You know, that's not why you do something. You don't do it to say, because I want to be rich. You do it because you have passion for it.
00:31:28
Speaker
And my father was that living example. Academic medicine would not pay as much as private practice medicine ever. Being an internist is different than being an orthopedic surgeon. And that's all within. It's where your passion is, you know? So we were taught never to be enamored with wealth. And trust me, you know,
00:31:53
Speaker
I like a nice car. I appreciate nicer things in life. I feel privileged. I can stay and do things that I enjoy doing. My passion is hunting because that's what my father taught us and what we did with him. And the Scott family is so much like that. I mean, they're builders. They love to shape their environment. And they do it in such a positive way.
00:32:22
Speaker
We put on an annual conference for our bank employees called Bank Forward, and we just had Bank Forward 3.0. But the original one, I had our friends at Bank Director come and kind of help us kind of moderate it. So we kind of got this interaction. We had different folks come in, be it fintechs or bankers that we admire and what have you. And so we kind of built this
00:32:51
Speaker
this methodology of teaching and allowing others to learn about where our industry is going, no matter what role you are in the bank. If you are a part-time teller or you only work Saturday mornings, you still got to come to the conference and be exposed to what we're trying to do and to build that excitement of where our company or our industry is going and things like that, because everybody can contribute differently.
00:33:16
Speaker
John says it so well. Everybody can contribute differently. That is the heart of what it means to build a company, to build a culture, to point a team in a mission and equip them to accomplish it. We've all heard executives say similar things, and it's clearly lip service. Oh, everybody's equal, but some people are more equal than others. John is not that kind of leader.
00:33:40
Speaker
He's fully committed to growing CoreBank not as the star of the show, but as the person drawing people in and recruiting their unique abilities to make the institution stronger. In a few minutes, John will highlight the ROI of a strong company culture and its practices like this conference that power the growth of CoreBank.
00:34:02
Speaker
There's a couple things that I'd love to dig into with some of what you just shared, John. First and foremost, you just spent the last several moments of time pointing to other people
00:34:18
Speaker
what they taught you, how great they were, the learnings you have from them. And over and over again, you kind of downplay kind of who you are and the contribution you can have for the community. And I'm gonna stop you before you even stop me giving you a compliment here for a moment. But what I wanted to call out is I think that's part of what makes you a special leader is the humility that you bring that you never take yourself too seriously.
00:34:48
Speaker
You know, look at and say, look at all the things that I've done, but you are so generous as you look at others to look at their contribution and be able to praise them. And I just think that's a wonderful example of a way, maybe not the way, but a way to be a leader is driving that humility, that curiosity, looking at others and being willing to learn from them. But you did drop just this nugget that I'm just going to have to pull on a little bit.
00:35:16
Speaker
So you're telling me that at your bank, I've worked with bank director. They're wonderful, wonderful people. Um, extremely smart. Know the industry inside and out. You took your whole team from teller all the way to, to you.
00:35:36
Speaker
and said, all of us are gonna sit in a room and gonna learn from these experts that I paid to bring here. I'm gonna put you all in a room together. And we are gonna dive into the deepest matters of the industry so that all of us
00:35:49
Speaker
have a deep understanding. So even if you're just sitting in front of the teller line, talking to customers every once in a while, to making the largest strategic decisions at the bank, I want us all to be able to build from that same base and that same foundation. I think that's just an absolutely beautiful story of saying the type of leader that you are and how much you believe in people and how much you invest in them. So
00:36:12
Speaker
I just wanted to take a moment to be able to share that one little nugget that you talked about, and I just love it. I think that's a super powerful example of really investing and believing in people across all positions and giving them context to be able to do their jobs better.
00:36:32
Speaker
It is, you know, like I said, we just completed 3.0 and now we moved it to President's Day because we're closed that day. So now everybody, the first year actually, a clarification, I can only get 85 of our 120 because we had to keep running the company, right? So then the next year I said, well, that's not fair because the first year everybody's like, really, I thank you so much for allowing us to come to that. I'm like,
00:36:55
Speaker
wow see I told you I mean I was probably shooting you know throwing the dart in the in the dark but I thought I come away from various conferences and people I've met things I've learned you know it's like man how could I bring that to all of our team and so that's kind of the genesis of it is I was like if we get
00:37:23
Speaker
Now, all of us rowing in the same direction, how much more powerful will that be for us to potentially, God knows over the last several years, overcome some adversity, some headwinds that aren't controllable by us? But if we have everybody rowing in the same direction, how much more powerful will that be?
00:37:47
Speaker
You know, we've had some people self-select out. That's not for them. They don't, whatever. But I don't know. I felt privileged that I'm learning a lot from people like you, Nathan, when I've, you know, I get introduced to Z-suite because I was at a conference that you were presenting at or a panel on. And then someone told me, oh, this bank uses them. So I talked to that bank and they're willing to share whatever. And, you know, we,
00:38:12
Speaker
That's how it works. It's all of those connections you make,
Banking Challenges and Leadership Lessons
00:38:18
Speaker
right? Those connections you make throughout your life, if you will, that are more valuable than anything. I think you have to be approachable. I don't think, you know, we want to empower, but we also have to hold people accountable. And you can't have one without the other. That's our belief.
00:38:38
Speaker
And you're afraid to be accountable, then you shouldn't be empowered. And I want folks in our company to feel they can approach me. And I take every meeting. I always say I pull my pants on the same way as everyone else. So it's only right. It's just kind of giving back too.
00:39:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So, as you, you know, this this transition from not knowing about banking at all, getting your first job as a credit analyst, having some great mentors to the point where you were ready to kind of get an itch to start your own bank, but then found this opportunity to then partner with the Scott family, where you're now with with CoreBank and
00:39:29
Speaker
What a really cool success story that you've had with CoreBank. I know it hasn't been easy, had to work through some fairly difficult times, but now on the other end of that in many ways. I'm curious as you look back and I want to pull this all the way back as we were starting.
00:39:54
Speaker
as you were a child growing up, kind of being able to learn the lessons that you were able to learn because you're, no bubble wrap I think is what you said, right? You got to experience life as it came. As you look across that, maybe focusing on the core bank story and being empowered and having accountability,
00:40:20
Speaker
I'd love to hear a story too about maybe some of the hard times, right? Some of the times when perhaps things didn't work out as you wanted it to, but then what you learned from that. Yeah, I mean, again, the journey to what has become CoreBank was two separate family-owned banks by the same family, right?
00:40:44
Speaker
when I was looking to maybe I had pie in the sky type reaches, but when I was thinking, God, I could really deliver banking better than anybody, or I can deliver this experience and build this company into an amazing experience.
00:41:03
Speaker
You know, I got introduced to David Scott. So we created this little, rebranded the bank, put a little capital into it and started growing it. Then their other bank got into some serious issues, got on a consent order.
00:41:20
Speaker
They asked me to step in to analyze it, see what I thought. I had cleaned up an MOU at the other bank when I joined. I'll tell you, I never talked to a regulator in my first 20 years of my life of banking. I just never did. I wasn't in that position. Then all of a sudden, I'm in the middle of these examiners and
00:41:47
Speaker
these horrendous orders of deadlines and all of this.
00:41:53
Speaker
We approached it from the standpoint that, you know, let's see what we can do, and then we have to decide which direction we're going to take the banks. And this came up with the name Core Bank in our hashtag line, you at the core. It's built around strength. Your core is your center of your body physically and your stabilizer. So we kind of came up with that. And then we probably the most difficult
00:42:20
Speaker
leadership challenges I had with that is I had the privilege of running a kind of a small but growing bank that I pretty much handpicked everyone to the point of merging it with a much bigger bank where I picked no one. And I had run it for about nine months independently. My team stayed back at Centennial Bank was the name of the other bank.
00:42:50
Speaker
And then we ended up putting them together. But I can tell you my biggest life lesson, where I earned my PhD in banking was
00:43:03
Speaker
under the understanding where I didn't have a huge focus, but I had a huge core value of it, was what the value of a culture and the importance of a culture in any company, be it Zsuites or, you know, Wells Fargo, your culture is who you are, right? And
00:43:27
Speaker
It was the most difficult thing to put those together and keep the wheels, so to speak, on the wagon and work through the final consent order. There was a lot of mistrust. There was us versus them. And so that was a huge, huge challenge for what we were trying to do.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, you probably had. Was it us versus them versus the other ones? Because you had centennial. Yeah, and you had the bank under the MOU, which is no consent order. Yeah, memorandum understanding was Centennial Bank when I got it was the consent order was with the new one.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yep, the other bank. So you had two different cultures at two different banks. And then you also had the regulators, right? So you have three parties that you had that I'm sure you were. Yeah. All right. So, John, tell us one thing not to do when trying to merge these cultures. Don't do it with the consent order. There you go. Run away. Yeah, run, run fast. That's where my I can do anything mentality.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah, you know what actually I was I was very fortunate I had a good board that is still with me today They came with me on and when we merged we added took off one and added another But I have no regrets it truly was a PhD in that and it it you know to fix a consent order and then to
00:45:08
Speaker
spend and there wasn't a day I wasn't with the regulator for nine months. So it was just that.
00:45:16
Speaker
a very trying time, but I had amazing people that believed in what we were trying to do. I had a director that was running, one of my directors who also worked for the family in another capacity was instrumental in rolling up his sleeves and being with me every day. A lot of it was moral support, I'm not gonna lie, but we kind of divide and conquer it. I said, you work on the merger, I'll get the consent and we'll kind of meet in the middle.
00:45:44
Speaker
But I'll never forget when we were kind of sitting at the end of the day one day and the typical, the tie-in done, and just going, my goodness, what a day. And this director, a gentleman by the name of Vance Carter, I have tremendous respect for him. He said, John, we just did the easy part. And I didn't quite get what he meant.
00:46:08
Speaker
until we went through just the maturity of the company, the personalities, like I said, the culture machine, the, you know, the unease, the angst, the stories, or the meetings after the meetings, you know, oh, they're lying to us, you know, just the constant things that you would think. Man, that sounds messy.
00:46:32
Speaker
Mergers are always complicated. In business and in life, there are messes you cannot detour around or shortcut. The only way through is through. And sometimes, once you pass through the fire, you realize that you're still facing a long uphill battle before things feel good again. I'm pointing this out as encouragement, because you might be in the middle of a mess right now and think something's wrong with you.
00:46:54
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with you. Keep moving forward and don't forget to reach out to your support network, family, friends, team members. Look for peace and security in the middle of the mess. You're doing the work of a leader and the work of a human being.
00:47:14
Speaker
people could be losing their jobs. We tried to say, if we do it right, we'll have minimal impact on that. If you want to be here, we want you here. We knew there were some that we couldn't have with us, and we made those decisions and moved on. But yeah, he was right when he said, John, we just did the easy part.
00:47:41
Speaker
There's a truth to it, but when people talk about culture and the value of a culture, they say, well, can you quantify it? What kind of return is that? It's like BS. Culture is culture. You have a toxic culture, you're going to have a toxic company. You have a positive culture, you'll have a positive company.
00:48:00
Speaker
Simply put, that's the way we had to get to that. And being a purpose-driven company, which we accomplished through our bank forward 2.0, taking everybody through that journey over a year with us to build that purpose-driven and culture or a value-based culture has paid off long-term. I mean, is it ever perfect? I don't, you know,
00:48:27
Speaker
I tried to explain to my wife how perfect I am and she instantly can fire off a few lists of things that I'm not perfect, but you know, so there's no such perfect, but that's the quest, you know, that's, that's the fun part, uh, is, is the quest and what you do along the way.
Recommended Reading and Leadership Growth
00:48:46
Speaker
Yeah. I love that. All right. So as we're, as, as we're wrapping up our time together, we always like to ask our guests.
00:48:54
Speaker
what non-business book you might recommend. And the reason we'd like to ask this question is because there's plenty of places where people are sharing all their cool business books that they're reading and stuff like that. But we want to build a recommendation library of non-business books. Oh, it's great. So hopefully we have enough time. I won't make this hopefully too long, but I talk. So
00:49:18
Speaker
Last October, I reached that beautiful milestone of the age of 60. And I feel better at 60 than I did probably at 40. And maybe that's because of some life choices. I don't know. But at 60, I turned 60. But prior to that, I was actually at a dinner with my wife's best friend in high school and her husband.
00:49:41
Speaker
And the three of us have or the four of us have gotten close. But anyway, we're having dinner. He's a very successful CFO and he's kind of transitioning. He's a couple. I married an older woman, so she's a couple of years ahead of me in school. And but I was talking to this gentleman and we're having dinner and he was talking about retirement. And I said, gosh, I said,
00:50:07
Speaker
And I was approaching 60 and I said, you know, I haven't thought about it. I said, one, what would you do? You know, I have so much fun doing I do. So, you know, and I feel like I still have a lot to give and, you know, and all of this. And he goes, well, he goes, I'm going to send you a book. And it's called, it's by Arthur Brooks. And you probably have heard of it. It's From Strength to Strength. It's all about
00:50:32
Speaker
kind of your second curve. When your career has gone kind of full circle and you're now kind of on the backside of that thing, because I thought, what would I do?
00:50:46
Speaker
in life if I wasn't working, you know? I don't want to get to the point where someone tells me I should be retired. No one wants that, right? But I want it to be my choice. But at the same time, what would I do? Well, you know, what this book is all about is giving, you know, that crystallized knowledge and information you know now from your career spent
00:51:07
Speaker
giving it back to the next generation, if you will, and finding this happiness and knowing that you can transition from this high energy, strive to be the best up to the top. But it was a great book. I recommend to anybody, especially someone that has been in their career,
00:51:25
Speaker
It's hard to listen, to know that you're past your prime. They go through these various statistical things. This guy understands all of that. He's a Harvard teacher. But anyway, you go through these kind of careers like finance. You really hit your peak at 44. I'm like, dear God, seriously?
00:51:48
Speaker
I've been past that for so long, but it's a great book. I highly recommend it from strength to strength. Awesome. Well, thank you for that. I'd like to bring him in actually and talk at my bank forward. I don't know if I can afford it, but I might figure out a way to make him feel like it's a charity event. There you go. Yeah. I believe in you, and maybe he'll listen to this and he'll be like, I'm in. Yeah, exactly. I just sold 20 more books probably, right?
00:52:14
Speaker
I love it. All right. And then to close out our conversation, we always love to end with the question. From your perspective, is a leader born or is a leader made? I'm going to go with made. And I'll couch it around. I think you
00:52:41
Speaker
You have a certain DNA, but I truly believe a leader, at least in my world, has been all of these people that were part of this journey gave me a little bit of each one of them where it built me into what I think
00:53:01
Speaker
I wouldn't have been had I not met them, you know? You always, you know, you meet somebody and you realize that that moment that, you know, I'm better off for admitting that person on this journey. So I think you have a half, I think there's a little luck with it too, Nathan, but I honestly truly believe that, you know, I was very blessed to have the parents that believed in bringing these four children in and making sure they're responsible.
00:53:29
Speaker
I don't have any sadness in there. I thought my dad was unfair a few times. He never grounded us, but boy, he'd sit and talk to us for three, four hours about life's lesson and about painful as you can get. Just ground me already. Yeah, exactly. Beat me. I don't know. But put the gloves on.
00:53:53
Speaker
So, but no, I'm, I think you're made. I really do. Cause I think there's so much that goes into it. You know, um, you get,
00:54:03
Speaker
You got to have that, at least for me. That's the way I roll. Yeah, well,
Reflection on Legacy and Leadership Philosophy
00:54:08
Speaker
with you more than anyone else that I've spoken to in Builder Banker Hacker Chief, I think you very beautifully shared the fingerprints that the people you've interacted with have made on your life and your leadership style. And so it doesn't surprise me that that's the way that you answered that question. Yeah. John, it's been a gift. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. It was beautiful. Oh, my privilege. Thank you. It was fun.
00:54:36
Speaker
In his 2005 commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College, the author David Foster Wallace tells an anecdote about an older fish asking two younger fish, how's the water? And the two younger fish are totally confused. They don't even know what the water is. It seems absurd, but Foster Wallace's point is that as human beings, we're swimming in water without realizing it. It's the imperfect beauty of life.
00:55:03
Speaker
If we remain oblivious, this messiness of humanity could seem like an obstacle that is preventing us from experiencing true happiness. For John Sorrell, it's clear that he's made peace with the water he's swimming in. It's allowed him to give generously to others to continue the legacy of leaders who preceded him. In this sense, it's almost like a relay. A legacy isn't a gift we accept for ourselves. We just hold onto it until we can pass it along to the next generation.
00:55:33
Speaker
John Sorrell isn't done building his legacy, nor is he done giving it away. As a listener of Builder Banker Hacker Chief, you are now a recipient of it. Pass it on. You'll find the link to John's book recommendation in the show notes. You've been listening to Builder Banker Hacker Chief, 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 was co-produced, written and edited by Zach Garber,
00:56:03
Speaker
Sound engineering was done by Nathan Butler at Nibble Whip Productions. If you enjoyed the episode, please take a moment to leave us a review or share this episode. This helps other people to find our show. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Play and Spotify.