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Burt Hicks – Unknowable potential, understanding what really matters, and the thrill of winning together | Episode 5
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Welcome to episode five of Builder, Banker, Hacker, Chief! Our guest is Burt Hicks, President and Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at Encore Bank, a modern boutique bank that aims to be the best bank, not the biggest.
On this show, I’m unpacking the stories, decisions, and influences that make people successful leaders. Burt has the résumé of a dyed-in-the-wool banker, but his global perspective and understated competence make him the kind of leader who turns tiny ripples into big waves.
My name is Nathan Baumeister; I am the Co-founder and CEO of ZSuite Tech and the host of this podcast.
You could easily mistake Burt for a salt-of-the-earth banker from Arkansas who has never strayed more than a day’s drive from his hometown – content to build deep roots in one place. But that’s not Burt Hicks. He earned his law degree while studying and working in Africa and Southeast Asia, he also worked at Merrill Lynch in New York City during the height of the financial crisis. He’s a husband and father, who is also an avid solo outdoorsman.
Burt had the ambition to run a bank from a young age, lured by the wealth and influence it offered. Now that he’s helping lead one of America’s fastest growing financial institutions, it isn’t prestige that drives him – it’s helping the team win, regardless of who gets the credit.
The privilege of spending an hour with Burt to learn from his adventures in life and work is something that I’m honored to share with you.
Resources:
Burt’s book recommendation:
Connect:
Recommended
Transcript
Motorcycle Reflections
00:00:00
Speaker
as much as the ending of that trip was maybe a bummer, and certainly not how I had envisioned it. I mean, I still remember riding around on that motorcycle thinking to myself, this is the most freeing experience of my life. And I was so connected to my dad riding around this beautiful country. But it was also like, hey, you were stuck under a motorcycle with a broken car bone, and you may not have been able to get out of there. So I mean, there's this balance to it.
Podcast Introduction
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 treacherous waters at the helm of a growing company. I want to do all that so that together we can learn from their journey and use that insight personally and professionally.
Guest Introduction: Burt Hicks
00:01:03
Speaker
In episode five, my guest is Burt Hicks, president and chief strategy and growth officer at Encore Bank, a financial institution that is redefining what it means to be nimble, powerful, and put people first. He has an amazing ability to help people reach their full potential and allow plenty of room for them to make mistakes. The team he helps lead at Encore is unlike anything else in the banking world, and they've only been around for four years.
00:01:27
Speaker
When Burt Hicks tells a story, you want to listen. You never know if he's going to talk about climbing off a glacier with a dislocated shoulder or surviving a motorcycle accident in a jungle. Whatever it is, you can bet it will leave you with something to think about. Just like this episode.
Founding Encore Bank
00:01:48
Speaker
Well, Burt, thanks so much for joining us for Builder Banker Hacker Chief.
00:01:53
Speaker
Yeah, appreciate being invited. Really looking forward to this conversation. You've got a great series, and hopefully I can add to that. Yeah, well, I have no doubt. It's been such a privilege getting to know you over the last several years, both in a professional and personal capacity. Just for the audience, for their benefit, would you mind just doing a quick introduction to let them know who you are?
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, Burt Hicks. I live in Little Rock, Arkansas. I helped to start an organization called Encore Bank back in 2019. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about our model. But it was really the idea of building a different kind of bank for today and to provide a better banking experience. And so myself and two other guys started off on that endeavor. And it's been a wild ride, but a lot of fun.
00:02:47
Speaker
grew up in Arkansas, have lived elsewhere, but most of my life's been here and I've got two kiddos and a wife and live a pretty normal life here in Little Rock, so nothing too special, but excited to again be with you.
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, nothing too special other than growing one of the fastest growing banks in the United States over the last several years.
Core Values: We Win Together
00:03:11
Speaker
Some of us might think that's pretty exciting. Well, I appreciate that. But the reality is there's a phrase we have inside Encore, and it's one of our core values. It says, we win together.
00:03:24
Speaker
And that hashtag was actually coined less than a year into our journey. And it's such a huge part of who we are and our ethos as a company. Everybody wears these cheesy little wristbands that save that and Encore Bank on it. And so it's been, like I said, an absolute wild ride, a very humbling experience, but only possible because of the so many great teammates we have on this journey together.
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I love that motto, we win together. One of the ones I always say is building a company is a team sport. And we have a great one. I'm super excited to be able to get to the story of how you all have built Encore and how you've grown and how you really bring to life that motto of we win together. But I'm sure that's not just a motto for the bank, but something that you personally believe in as well.
Influence of Empathetic Father
00:04:21
Speaker
And one of the things that we love doing at Builder Banker Hacker Chief is to rewind a little bit into the early years of those that we're talking to, to dive into what are some of the things or experiences or people that have really had an outsized impact on you to help you become the leader that you are. So I'd love to just kind of take that step back, rewind with you a little bit and go back to the early days of Burt Hicks' life
00:04:49
Speaker
Well, you're right. And I think we all have folks in our lives that have impacted us in outsized ways, especially. And there's several people in my life that have contributed to
00:05:05
Speaker
to who I am, both as a person and professionally. Most of those folks would probably be either looking at me across the table or looking at me from above saying, hey, I still need you to be better. You still got a lot of room for improvement. So, you know, the folks that kind of come to mind, you know, initially, or I'm sure a lot of people feel this way about one or both of their parents, but for me, the impact that my dad had on me and my life,
00:05:33
Speaker
is pretty special. We were super close and had a very unique father-son relationship. Unfortunately, this December, I'll be remembering his death from 10 years ago. But we had a close bond, and there were some really unique characteristics about him that I think I've been able to emulate and others that I wish I could emulate. My dad was one of the most empathetic men that I've ever known.
00:06:03
Speaker
And I think a lot of that came from life experiences and just, he was extremely wise and I don't have that same level of empathy, but it's something that I always really admired about him. I also think that it's hard to have the level of empathy that my dad had. So, it's something that I strive to do, but I'm not sure that I'll ever quite get to that level. But, my dad was an extremely compassionate caring person. I didn't know it was a big deal until I got to college.
00:06:30
Speaker
My dad was up there one day at the fraternity house and gave me a hug and told me he loved me on his way out. And one of my fraternity parents looked at me and said, you tell your dad you love him. And I was like, yeah, tell my dad I love him. I've never not told my dad I've loved him. You don't tell your dad you love him. And so that was one of those kind of moments where you're like, man, there is something special with my dad. And so many of my friends would just talk about how unique he was.
00:06:55
Speaker
And he was somebody that I could always go to with a scenario, whether it was a career decision or a personal life kind of fork in the road. And no matter what the situation was, he just had this level of wisdom and ability to kind of help me think through that. And so I certainly missed that, not having that readily available, but he's somebody that has had that impact.
High School Coach's Impact
00:07:20
Speaker
Another person in my life that has contributed to me in a lot of ways was my high school cross country and track coach, Carl Kuntz. He really took me under his wing and maybe saw something in me or maybe he saw that I needed to have somebody invest in me, but yeah, he really, really
00:07:48
Speaker
took a lot of time and effort to make sure that I reached my potential. And, you know, he and my dad and myself were on the road a lot in high school, going to kind of national meets and what have you. And so I got to spend a lot of time with him, still stay in touch with him. Not as frequently as I would like, but he's a special man. And then there's been others along the way. So I don't know at what point you want me to stop. But that's kind of the childhood folks, I would say, is my dad and Coach Coons.
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, I love that. One of the things that you shared about your father when one of your friends saw you interacting with him and he said he loved you and you said back that you loved him, this idea of uniqueness being normal and how sometimes
00:08:37
Speaker
those of us that are in some sort of culture, it could be a family culture, it could be in a business, it could be in a team sport or whatever, that the unique things that you do oftentimes become normal to you until other people point it out. And that's just, I love that. And it's a great example of living by example as well. One question I have for you
00:08:58
Speaker
on your dad, is there any specific experiences or stories that either he shared with you, you observed, or other people shared with you that really kind of helped really open your eyes to the empathetic nature of that being one of his strengths?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I could probably do a podcast much longer than this on my dad, seriously. One of his things that he always told us was, and growing up, I wanted to be the most popular kid and the fastest kid and the strongest kid and the smartest kid, all the things that a higher achiever like I was as a kid wanted to,
00:09:51
Speaker
hit. My dad told me one day, and this was a mantra throughout his life, it's not about being popular. If you end up with true friends, I'm talking about folks that would do anything for you that you can count on more than one hand, you should consider yourself to be really, really blessed. He talked a lot about some of his friendships in life and some of the folks that
00:10:14
Speaker
would do anything for him and he would do anything for and I got to witness some of those particularly in the later stages of his life and kind of the last decade or two in various ways really but you know especially after my dad got diagnosed with cancer and got to see the folks that really invested in him and his well-being but even before that
00:10:37
Speaker
you know, some of the things that he did to reconnect with kind of some of his earlier life that we may or may not get into today, but seeing those people that you may only spend a little bit of a small part of your life together, but because of what you've experienced together or because of the, you know, maybe a year, but it feels like seven years because of, you know, the trials or the tribulations of his successes or whatever it may be. And some of those folks to kind of come back into his life in the last 10 or 15 years was really cool to see.
00:11:07
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that's awesome. And I'm sure that was very special to witness as a son throughout your life. And then as you talked about your coach, Carl Koots, and high school track and cross country coach, I know that cross country and track played a big part of your life, both in high school as well as in college. And so
00:11:30
Speaker
What were some of the things that you learned either from your coach or just from competing that had really helped to form you in your leadership principles that you follow?
Lessons from Sports
00:11:42
Speaker
Yeah, I think Coach Kent's one, he was an all-time great runner in his own ride. And so he knew what excellence looked like. And I think those types of people probably can spot talent, even when talent can't spot itself.
00:12:00
Speaker
And so early on, I'd say like eighth or ninth grade, I was doing cross country and track to get a few more letter patches on my jacket or whatever I was doing. And I didn't think anything about cross country track. It certainly wasn't the sexy sport. It wasn't the popular sport. But he saw something in me and I think taught me that, hey,
00:12:27
Speaker
All you can do is limit yourself if you set goals. Now, goals are really, really important, and they certainly can help us maybe perform better tomorrow than we did yesterday. But they can also be a limiting factor. You just don't know what you're capable of until you really go chase a dream. And I think Coach Kuntz taught me that no matter how
00:12:54
Speaker
much I thought I could do in this coming season or you know by my senior year or whatever that that that was probably too low of a bar and I had to push harder and and just the the work ethic that that coach Coons instilled in me I think has has uh
00:13:09
Speaker
manifested itself throughout my life journey, both, again, professionally and personally. I would give anything to be the runner I was back then today. I'm far from it. That was a few beers ago, as I say. Some folks say a few moons ago or years ago for me, it's been too long. But nonetheless, those life lessons can help in really any setting.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah. Well, isn't it interesting that some of those people that have the biggest impact on our lives are also the ones that push us?
00:13:44
Speaker
you know, past the limits that we only perceived. I'm curious, as now you're a leader of an organization, and I'm sure you hold that leadership position in multiple spheres in your life, you know, balancing out, and maybe even how Coach Koontz did this, this idea of pushing, asking for more, but still feeling like you actually love and care about them at the same time.
00:14:09
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that's a great tease out. You said it better than I said it. I think here at Encore, I'm surrounded by some uber-talented folks that, for whatever reason, may not have had the opportunity at their previous stop or previous stops to kind of have
00:14:32
Speaker
have the opportunity to make the impact that they've made here in encore and part of it is a function of your startup organization and you've got to pull your weight and then some to stay on the train because we don't have.
00:14:46
Speaker
as many seats on this bus, if you will. But I think also a lot of it is getting out of the way for people. When you see talent and when you see ability and capability, the best thing to me is give some guidance, give some framework, and then really scoot out of the way. Now, that doesn't mean be be hands off. That doesn't mean ignoring
00:15:10
Speaker
and just delegating so that you have to do less. It means, you know, being there as a sounding board if they've got questions or if there's follow-up or further directions needed. But it definitely means, at least for me, to allow people to kind of come into their own and learn.
00:15:30
Speaker
Giving people room to excel also means giving them room to make mistakes. You can't unlock someone's true potential unless you take calculated risks. Those risks should probably make you a little uncomfortable in the sense that it is a real risk and you're invested in the outcome. It's possible to manage catastrophic downsides and create space for amazing upside that you couldn't have predicted or asked for. That's where your team can truly shine.
00:15:57
Speaker
There's not a ton of mistakes that we can make at Encore or I could make in my life that are going to totally destroy the organization or my family or my life or whatever. Now, those that have that type of downside risk, certainly there's going to be more guardrails and there's going to be more parameters set, but there's not some catastrophic downside risk. Get out of the way and let people
00:16:24
Speaker
reach their own ceiling and it's probably higher than they ever thought it was. And it's also probably higher than I thought it was. And we've seen that over the last four plus years here at Encore. Yeah, that's awesome. Now backtracking a little bit, as you transitioned from high school, you made the decision to go to higher education.
College and Career Shift
00:16:43
Speaker
And so I'm curious, as you think about that post high school educational career, what was the path that you decided to take and why?
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I grew up in a small town in Arkansas. I always wanted to get out of this place, I thought, and really was going to use running to do that. And I had an opportunity to go and run just about anywhere I would have wanted to. And I thought I was going to go to, I actually committed and signed at Cornell University and was going there to run cross country and track. And then the latter half of my senior year,
00:17:23
Speaker
had an opportunity to go to Arkansas and run for Coach John McDonald. That's kind of the premier distance running program in the country. They had won 40 national titles, maybe not quite as premier anymore as it was 20 years ago. But when Coach McDonald gave me that opportunity, that was really hard to pass up because I really thought I had professional aspirations with running and was going to go
00:17:49
Speaker
you know, chase the Olympics or whatever as wild odd as that was when I was 18 years old. But so that took me to Arkansas. And then when I
00:18:00
Speaker
My running career got cut pretty abruptly with an injury. I really had to kind of level set. Running had become so much of who I was for a multiple year period of time and part of my life. There was a part of me that kind of felt lost. Like so many people, you throw yourself into something and then that's taken from you. There's this void.
00:18:28
Speaker
And maybe you seek out other avenues to kind of fill that void and you realize that those aren't healthy ways to fill that void. And so probably the next thing I threw myself into was my career and the academic side of getting me to my career. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time was start a bank. I'm one of those weird folks that kind of had this idea of what I want to do back even in high school.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I absolutely pursued everything I could in college and with internships and programs and what have you to kind of go on this path. But Arkansas was a great education. I was part of the Walton College of Business.
00:19:06
Speaker
The honors college program there was incredible. I was surrounded by supremely talented, very smart individuals that were doing great things in their own right. So I didn't transfer anything. I stayed there in Fayetteville and ended up graduating and moving to New York. But it was a great academic experience at Arkansas.
00:19:30
Speaker
It's interesting how often when we think that the thing that we want to do is run away from some of the things that we're closest to, but then later find out that maybe staying right here is the best thing for us to do. I also relate deeply to this idea that you've created a lot of your identity around a thing that you did running.
00:19:51
Speaker
And then when that was gone, how you had to struggle with that. And I see that a lot in the workplace as well. How many times people start to identify themselves, their well-being, their value in life based off their professional job. But we all know that sometimes professional jobs are transient.
00:20:07
Speaker
And it can be something that creates speed bumps in the road. And it's very cool that you had an opportunity. I'm sure you didn't think it was cool at the time. But it was cool that you had that opportunity to learn that lesson early on in your life.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't know that necessarily I truly, fully learned a lesson until many years further down the road. But you're right, we do find ourselves, we find our identity too often, in my view, at least in the wrong things. And it's things that are fleeting. It's things that are filling a void that, you know,
00:20:46
Speaker
we may not even realize is there or patching up a scar from childhood or whatever. And so I think what you're saying really resonates with me. And again, I'm not sure I've fully learned that lesson. I still probably find myself my identity and some things that may not be the best thing to find my identity in, but I appreciate what you're saying very much.
00:21:10
Speaker
The other thing, I also happened to be one of those weird kids that in high school I knew what I wanted to do. I did have two options though. It was either a stuntman or CEO of a startup company. At some point I decided I wanted a family and figured that doing a startup company might be a little bit safer than stuntman. Now that I've done it, I'm not sure. Hey, there's still time, Nathan. There's still time. I'm holding out hope. I'm holding out hope. As you think about your time in New York, was it working with Merrill Lynch the whole time while you were up there?
00:21:40
Speaker
Well, until Bank of America acquired Merrill through the failure of Merrill Lynch during the Great Recession. But yeah, I was with Merrill. And I was an investment banking analyst in the financial institutions group at Merrill Lynch. Yeah, which ties back to getting to kind of that dream that you had to start a bank was learning about banking from that point of view. Yeah.
00:22:08
Speaker
Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. I just felt like through different mentors and advisors during my college years that kind of having that corporate finance experience and seeing how to how to lead a financial institution or how to how to run a financial institution from the kind of corporate finance side would benefit me down the road. That was never my, you know, I didn't want to be an investment banker the rest of my life, but I wanted to learn how to
00:22:37
Speaker
how to do deals, what made a bank valuable, what was the importance of equity in debt and building a cap stack. And so that was that experience. Any standout experiences during your time there that really, as you look back, you can say, hey, I learned a lot from this or something that encapsulates some of those big learnings that you got during that time early on in your professional career.
Wall Street Experience During Recession
00:23:03
Speaker
Well, it was such a unique time. This was during the Great Recession, and banks were failing left and right during that time.
00:23:14
Speaker
was really on the front end of providing advisory services to healthy banks to go out and acquire these failed banks through FDIC assistance. So what that experience taught me was there were some common themes in many of the failed banks. Some of them were just victims of circumstance, but there were common themes that were going on with these banks that had failed. And as you studied them,
00:23:43
Speaker
in the analyst chair, kind of profiling them and performing them for the potential buyer, you realize, if everybody realizes that this was going to be the outcome, I don't think everybody would have taken this path. So that was a learning experience. What an opportunity to look behind the scenes of a crisis that has shaped the world's economy for more than a decade.
00:24:10
Speaker
During this time, many leaders in banking were faced with the toughest decisions of their careers, and that's where leaders are made. Not when the seas are smooth, the ship is tight, and the weather fair, but when everything is coming apart and people are struggling to find a clear path forward. The years before that, when I was
00:24:34
Speaker
As summer, it was before the Great Recession, and I actually was working on stuff that I probably had no business doing as a 20- or 21-year-old college sophomore or junior. But that was also enlightening. And that was kind of at the height and the peak of the cycle. And so there was a lot of great activity going on. And again, I think I learned just as much from my peers
00:24:58
Speaker
and the leaders within the financial institution group at Murrow than I did maybe working on a specific deal or specific set of deals.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I think one of the things that comes to mind as you were, since you had such a laser focus of where you wanted to be from a career perspective and you're actively looking for experiences, there's kind of two ways that I often think about that. One, dive deep into something and get as much as you can out of it. The other one is to immerse yourself in a lot of different experiences so that you can see and get pattern recognition.
00:25:32
Speaker
So it seems like from the investment banking side, you're able to put yourself in a situation where you saw a lot of different banks, a lot of action, and you're able to start to see how trends, oh, this one, did this one, and this one, did this one, and this is where it comes together from a learning perspective. And having both of those experience, I bet really has helped you become the banker that you are.
00:25:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think I probably lean towards I think you have to have some some level of expertise or competency.
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, do you have to be the global expert on a specific topic? No, but you need to have some depth to you. But to me, I like and I look forward, I'm attracted to and, you know, enjoy working with people that kind of have broad experiences. And I just think it gives a little bit different perspective. There's not a whole lot of rocket science left out there in the world. So, you know, I think it's more important to focus on
00:26:37
Speaker
keeping things in the right perspective and being able to draw upon many different experiences and likely there's something that you can glean from one of those past experiences or from somebody else's past experience that may be a novel way to address a problem. And so I do think that I've developed some depth, but I also think I've probably valued more kind of the width, if you will.
00:27:01
Speaker
Yeah. And speaking of width, so after New York, after your time there, what was next? What did you do next along your path to continue your progression on personal growth and professional growth?
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, I came back home to Arkansas, which was probably a little sooner than I had planned or anticipated for a few reasons. But I ended up working for my mentor, an individual that's absolutely had an outsized impact in my life, kind of going back to the early part of our conversation. His name is Tommy May. He was chairman and CEO of Simmons First National Corporation at the time, which
00:27:39
Speaker
Then was an eight-bank holding company. This was still when there were multi-bank holding companies. That's kind of a dinosaur of an entity now. But Mr. May gave me an opportunity to come back home to Arkansas and work for him in kind of a special projects type way. But I also was rotating around the organization and spending three, four, five, six months in various departments.
00:28:03
Speaker
and really learning how these departments, revenue generating, back office support, out of headquarters, all these different pieces of the organization and learning how they contribute to the overall success of the organization, the overall profitability of the organization.
00:28:20
Speaker
how these groups work together. So it was a fascinating experience for a young guy and I had a chance to do that for a couple years and then I left to go to pursue further education and came back to Simmons ultimately and had a number of roles from there. But that's what I did immediately after Wall Street was I came back home and worked for a mentor of mine.
Return to Arkansas and Mentorship
00:28:42
Speaker
Yeah, I love it because you went from analyzing pattern recognition, figuring out what's going on across multiple banks, and then you dove right into a bank to get your hands dirty in operations. But then it sounds like you've given an opportunity to really get a lot of exposure to all the different departments and inner workings, which is something that I've always valued as well.
00:29:09
Speaker
So as you went to pursue your higher education, so what did you decide to do for that?
00:29:16
Speaker
So I always thought I was going to go get an MBA at some point in my career. An MBA is a unique degree. When you get done, you are someone that holds an MBA. You're not a doctor. You're not a lawyer. You're not a dentist. You just happen to have this degree. And in my mind, I wanted to make sure that I was far enough away from my undergraduate business degree, and I was going to go somewhere much different than where I got my undergraduate degree to get an MBA.
00:29:45
Speaker
you know, get the value out of that degree that I felt like I could. And it wasn't at the right time. And my dad was sick. And so I also had some considerations there. But I still remember Mr. May, like I said, he's had such an impact on my life. And we met for
00:30:02
Speaker
you know lunch or coffee or whatever it was every third tuesday of the month or you know whatever day was it wasn't the third tuesday but we had a kind of a recurring meeting and it was not the third tuesday of the month and miss miss randa edwards his his long-time assistant called me and said hey mr may wants to wants to meet with you and i was like okay this this is awesome i'll run down there right now we're going to work on this you know really fun fascinating project or whatever it was and
00:30:29
Speaker
He told me, hey, I think you need to think about going to law school. I was like, Mr. May, since my freshman year of college, I've been telling you I want to start a bank one day. What do you mean you think I need to go to law school? What have I done wrong? You're kicking me out of the industry. His advice was,
00:30:47
Speaker
You've got the Wall Street experience. This was post Dodd-Frank. The industry was becoming more and more regulated. And I really needed to go to law school to learn how to think like a lawyer, not necessarily to become an attorney or a practicing lawyer. But I didn't know what that meant. And so he said, I want you to talk to a few people in my network, business people, that have gone to law school. And I want you to understand what law school really teaches you.
00:31:16
Speaker
I thought you go to law school and you learn the law. Well, you don't learn any law in law school. There's this fictitious thing called multi-state law. Each state is different, but not in law school.
00:31:32
Speaker
You really go there and you learn how to solve a problem within a framework and how to analyze an issue. I talked to those people that he asked me to talk to and I realized that, hey, law school does seem like a good opportunity, but I had a lot of friends that had gone to law school.
00:31:51
Speaker
many of whom had graduated at that point and so I also talked to them and they told me almost verbatim how miserable law school was and so that wasn't something I was looking forward to and so I started looking of what could I pair my law degree with to make it you know more enjoyable and again I wanted to preserve my MBA opportunity for down the road at this point in time and so I found this this this
00:32:15
Speaker
a graduate program called the Clinton School of Public Service, which literally happened to be in Little Rock because President Clinton's from Arkansas and he put his presidential library there. But I wasn't looking for grad schools in Little Rock. And so it was a really unique program. They had a concurrent program with the law school in Little Rock where I was able to get a scholarship and
00:32:34
Speaker
And so it just made perfect sense, and it allowed me to kind of break up the monotony of law school in a really unique way. You know, the two degrees are supposed to be done in four years instead of three for law school or two for the Clinton School. I did them in three and a half, but I spent, you know, more than half of my law school time, I spent abroad and doing various things for my graduate program.
Law School Decision
00:32:59
Speaker
It was a really unique experience. Law school was absolutely one of the best decisions I've ever made. Mr. May was 100% right in that recommendation, just like he has been in everything else he's told me. I made some fantastic friends, but I also made some great friends at the Clinton School, and I surrounded myself with people that really thought differently than me, and their career aspirations were very, very different than mine. So both of them, especially paired together, was a really unique and valuable time and period of my life.
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. One of the things I take from that story is once you got to the point where like, yeah, I can see how law school will be beneficial for me, and you've obviously valued the advice from Mr. May to go and do that, you then looked at it and you said, how can I make this experience one that I'm really going to enjoy? And I think there's lots of times, I mean, as leaders, you're going to have to do some things that have to be done that you might not enjoy the most.
00:33:58
Speaker
But instead of saying, oh, then I'm just going to go away from it, or I'm just going to just do it and get it done with asking the question, well, what can I do to change the circumstances to make it more enjoyable? And I love that. Now, as you mentioned traveling internationally, and I know in previous conversations, you had some very impactful stories as well as impactful
00:34:23
Speaker
people that you met that as you were traveling abroad and
00:34:29
Speaker
I would say generally people from the United States probably don't spend as much time abroad as a lot of other citizens of the world, if you will. So I guess what would you share with our listeners from some of those experiences to maybe even inspire them a little bit to get out of their comfort zone and get exploring the world, which doesn't necessarily mean going to a resort town and staying in an all-inclusive resort the whole time?
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually the least enjoyable possible experience for me to be going to some all-inclusive resort. So that's definitely not my style. But I got my travel bug from my dad without a doubt. He was an extremely
00:35:14
Speaker
Traveled individual, I don't know how many countries throughout childhood and even early adulthood I'd always sit down and be like, okay dad, how many countries have you been to? And we'd try to like chart them out. It was not a hundred, but it was something in the 80 to 90 range. And his ability to just connect on a genuine level with people no matter what is something that if I'm
00:35:40
Speaker
proud of something. I'm proud of plenty of things, but probably the ability to do that. I think I got that from my dad. I don't know how many countries exactly I've been to, probably 30, 35, something like that. The way I like to travel is I love going to these developing countries. I think there's a reason for that. To me, it's an invigorating kind of environment. These are
00:36:05
Speaker
the folks there are entrepreneurial and they're hustlers and they have to wake up each day and make the most of the day. And that just is so fun to see and experience. And like I said, it's very invigorating for me. It also really challenges you to step outside of your comfort zone. And I really enjoy doing that. I enjoy forcing myself to do that. That's not to say I haven't been to the normal places like,
00:36:31
Speaker
Mexico or Spain or Italy or whatever. I've done those, but probably the ones that I've enjoyed the most are these developing countries. I lived for about four or five months in West Africa and traveled a lot there, but I lived in Ghana.
00:36:49
Speaker
I spent about six months in Mongolia, which is in northern Asia. And then I lived for three or four months in Southeast Asia in a country called Myanmar or Burma, but I've spent a lot of time traveling throughout. And so I just, I love doing that. And I've got, you know, I've got my favorite places, but I don't like to go back to the same place more than once for some reason, with one exception. Every summer I do go backpacking in the same place, but
00:37:18
Speaker
I'm kind of on a quest not necessarily to see new countries, but to gain new experiences. But I certainly have favorite cities or favorite countries or favorite experiences.
00:37:30
Speaker
As you think back, are there any stories that come to mind that are just real standout experiences that you have while living in Africa and Asia or any of the other places you've been to?
Travel Experience to Laos
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, we could do a podcast on funny travel stories. Most extreme maybe that listeners would enjoy.
00:37:58
Speaker
During law school, my dad passed away. Actually, the day of my last final exam to graduate from law school was the day that my dad died. I didn't take my final exam that day for obvious reasons.
00:38:10
Speaker
So my dad died and I had to start preparing for the bar. And so I was studying for the bar, I was the executor on his estate, was going through all this stuff, was talking to friends and family about him and ultimately kind of came to the realization that this really unique man that always thought there was something else there and I didn't understand why he had all these foreign friends that lived all over the place and he spoke all these languages and had spent so much time abroad, I realized that
00:38:38
Speaker
a swath of his career was spent with the CIA and he spent a big portion of his career during that time in a country called Laos which is in Southeast Asia and there was a secret war going on in Laos during the time we were in Vietnam and
00:38:57
Speaker
I found out that my dad was at a place called Longqing, which is known, if you research it, as the most secret base in the history of the world. And it's in the highlands of Laos in a very remote area, very difficult to get to. And so I kind of started piecing this journey of his together. And I said, I want to go follow, retrace those footsteps. I want to go see
00:39:23
Speaker
you know, what he was experiencing and what he saw. And so the day after my bar exam, I literally jumped on a plane and flew to Vincen, Laos, which is the capital, and rented a motorcycle, turned in my passport, and I followed this, you know, I didn't know how long I was going to be there. I kind of told myself maybe a month or so. Followed this map and started, you know, going to the different places that he had been based to, ultimately wanting to get to Long Ching and
00:39:51
Speaker
Met so many people along the way even some you know this this one hotel that he had stayed at Rechasing his own footsteps years before he died I showed her a picture of my dad and she knew who he was and told me where his room was and talked about how You know she had never met somebody that could speak the language like he could and so that was a that was like this amazing experience but but the one that I'm trying to get to and I apologize I took too long to get here, but
00:40:18
Speaker
I ended up underneath my motorcycle after not seeing people for hours because I was in a really remote part of the country going to a place that I knew my dad had visited on his later years when he went back.
00:40:30
Speaker
And I had a broken collarbone. I didn't know it at the time, but I'm sitting there. I don't speak the language. I have not seen anybody in hours. I have no way to communicate. There's no wifi. There's no cell phones. And, you know, thankfully I made it out from underneath the motorcycle, was able to flag down a car within, you know,
00:40:48
Speaker
before nighttime and got taken to this hospital would be a very kind way to say it. It was really more of a cinder block medical clinic and got a sling and some ibuprofen and made my way back home over the course of the next several days.
00:41:03
Speaker
I think those types of things, pushing yourself to the limit, not being afraid to take a risk and knowing the joys that come from them. As much as the ending of that trip was maybe a bummer and certainly not how I had envisioned it, I still remember riding around on that motorcycle thinking to myself, this is the most freeing experience of my life. I was so connected to my dad riding around this beautiful country.
00:41:32
Speaker
But it was also like, hey, you were stuck under a motorcycle with a broken car bone and you may not have been able to get out of there. There's this balance to it. That's a story that I like to tell. People that know me may have heard that one before, but that's kind of a crazy one that probably some of your listeners are like, this guy's crazy.
00:41:58
Speaker
Well, that is a great story. Thank you so much for sharing it. And I think it's a good example of some of what you're talking about, pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Sometimes it's not going to go the way that you want it, but that's kind of the point, right? Like that's kind of the point. As you finish law school, as well as your master's degree at the Clinton School of Public Service,
00:42:25
Speaker
getting back onto this journey of starting a bank, which ultimately ended up where you're at Encore. What were the steps that you took after your higher education to where you are now? Yeah, so I ended up going back to work for Simmons.
00:42:43
Speaker
My mentor retired. He has ALS disease. He's still alive and doing great. But he retired. His successor was someone that had been on the board previously. And I had some relationship with, through my experience at Simmons. And he hired me to come be his chief of staff. They had a desire to become very inquisitive. And so ultimately had an opportunity
00:43:11
Speaker
help lead the merger and acquisitions program, take over the investor relations program which they were a publicly traded company but were still a smaller cap organization that didn't have a ton of institutional ownership and so those experiences were amazing. Had the opportunity over several years to lead or be a part of leading or
00:43:36
Speaker
you know, oversee multiple functions within Simmons, you know, the broker dealer and the insurance agency and some of the wealth management businesses. My dad was a financial advisor, but I had never been in that business and I, you know, I led a team of 20 plus financial advisors and all of them were, you know,
00:43:55
Speaker
multiples of my age and had multiples of my experience, but had that opportunity and learned so much through that. Ran the mortgage business for a brief period of time. Again, I couldn't spell mortgage when I took over the mortgage business and had 60 or 70 mortgage bankers across the footprint that reported to me, but I learned so much through that.
00:44:19
Speaker
As you can hear, Burt's experience in banking is phenomenal. And by his own admission, most of these situations required him to learn fast and lead a team of people who knew a lot more than he did. This is the conundrum of leadership, especially if you believe in a meritocracy. You don't actually have to be the one with most wrinkles in the room to build up a successful team. You need wisdom and humility, which is clearly something Burt has in spades.
00:44:46
Speaker
got to touch some other specialty lines of business like credit card and their equipment finance business. And so those were all formative. Those were all great learning experiences. But while doing the mergers and acquisitions at Simmons, I had the opportunity to get to know Chris Roberts, who was the president of Delta Trust and Bank, which was the first transaction that I got to work on after law school and grad school. And really admired Chris, thought he was
00:45:14
Speaker
A very accomplished and amazing story in itself. He had started a bank prior to Delta, had sold it and then had helped to
00:45:23
Speaker
to get Delta in a position to be sold. He had a really great personality and charisma to him. He was a fantastic business developer. And so I just admired him. We stayed in touch and ultimately he's one of the folks that, well, he's the primary inspiration behind Encore. This is his Encore as they call it. But we partnered together with his college best friend and we started this journey together in 2019.
00:45:57
Speaker
You know, I'm seeing a similar theme throughout your life that you were constantly put in situations where you're able to learn new things and get a lot of experiences. One of the things I always talk about is like a car doesn't really matter how old the car is, it's about how many miles you get on it, right? And so in a year you can put on 100,000 miles or in a year you can put on 100 miles. And it really seems like
00:46:17
Speaker
Yeah, I love that again.
00:46:24
Speaker
you have worked hard to ensure that you're getting as much mileage out of every experience that you could possibly get so that you could be well-rounded and learn to kind of fulfill that dream that you had to start a bank. So now let's get there, right? So it seems like
00:46:41
Speaker
you now have that opportunity to fulfill the stream that you've had your entire career.
Dream of Starting a Bank
00:46:45
Speaker
I mean, how does that feel? Did it end up happening much different than you thought it was like going back to high school and college and what you were envisioning versus what it actually was?
00:46:58
Speaker
Oh, yeah. In a number of ways. So, you know, I wanted to start a bank when I was 17 years old. And that was my goal and dream. But for all the wrong reasons, I thought it would make me rich and famous and powerful. I quickly realized bankers really aren't that rich, they really aren't that famous, they're really not that powerful. But it was a fantastic career and the impact you can make on a community or with a family or a business or what have you was amazing. And then the people you get to
00:47:26
Speaker
you know, work with. They tend to be really fascinating and accomplished and experienced in smart individuals. So, you know, that dream was really about me starting a bank. It was very inwardly focused. You know, my idea was I was going to be the guy
00:47:44
Speaker
And i can tell you i'm certainly not the guy in encore and i think chris and philip would tell you that you know we're not the three guys encore is this fantastic organization full of people that are all contributing in their own meaningful way that doesn't mean ultimately somebody's gotta make a decision ultimately somebody's gotta make a directive or whatever but.
00:48:06
Speaker
Certainly, I believe that I'm a better banker, a better professional because I've surrounded myself with Chris Roberts and Philip Jett. They have their own unique characteristics and their own unique strengths and their own unique weaknesses.
00:48:20
Speaker
among themselves. And I think Phillips a better banker and a better professional because he's surrounded with Chris and me. And I think Chris would say the same thing there. And then I know we would all say we're better because of this amazing team we have around us. So that certainly is different than I envisioned it. I think I've probably influenced and contributed to certain pieces of the encore story that that are
00:48:46
Speaker
are material. I think Phillips contributed to certain things within the Encore story that are very material to who we are as an organization, and Chris has done the same. I don't think we have one single fingerprint on this. I think there's so many fingerprints on this, which is different than how I saw this playing out years ago, but I think it's so much better.
00:49:09
Speaker
in a really weird way. This has been one of the most humbling experiences of my life because it's not about me. I don't know everything and I've realized that throughout this journey. There's just so much more knowledge in the room. There's just so much more experience in the room and I've enjoyed that a lot. Yeah, it is weird to make that transition to get to the point where you're comfortable and okay with not knowing everything.
00:49:33
Speaker
But there's an amount of vulnerability because that means then you have to trust someone else who might know more than just you.
00:49:45
Speaker
I think one of the things that some of our listeners would enjoy as well, from my perspective at least, is when you talk about we win together, I think that you all strung this together in a different way than any other bank I've at least seen in my life in regards to the strategies of opening up new markets and how you raised capital and all that stuff. Would you mind sharing just a little bit of that to kind of bring this idea of we win together to even more of the forefront on how you do that?
Encore Bank's Growth Strategy
00:50:14
Speaker
Yeah, so again, we started at Little Rock, Arkansas. It is the capital city of Arkansas, but it's not some thriving metropolis. Apologies, Mayor Frank Scott. This is a great city. I'm proud to call it home, but Little Rock is not necessarily, you know,
00:50:30
Speaker
the city that every city across America is trying to replicate. So our idea was we were going to be a regionally focused bank and go to markets that would make us more attractive and more valuable in time to our shareholders, but we were going to do that through our network. So Chris, Phillip, and myself
00:50:49
Speaker
had had you know this network of people that we had developed relationships with over the course of our careers and we would talk to them about helping us start in Dallas or Nashville or wherever we ended up and we were very agnostic about where we ended up we we knew the kinds of markets we wanted to go to but we didn't necessarily say we have to be here here here and here and so we just started talking people that we knew we told the story of our vision for encore which is to build a different kind of bank that was more focused on experience and and and uh
00:51:19
Speaker
and not about branch infrastructure or pricing or anything like that. So we were very successful in convincing our friends in the industry to say, yes, today we're in eight states, everything we've done has been organic. But what's been amazing to watch is
00:51:39
Speaker
These leaders that we've said, okay, we want you to help us open up Dallas or San Antonio or Tampa or whatever. Well, they have their own network and they built their local teams that way. And then the other part of Encore that I think is very unique to us was, and this was absolutely something that Chris stressed at the beginning that he wanted to see us do and we've been successful in doing it, but we surrounded those local teams with
00:52:04
Speaker
You know, an army of shareholders, local shareholders, these movers and shakers in the community, these business owners, doctors, lawyers, dentists, you know.
00:52:11
Speaker
whoever it may be, real estate developers, we asked them to invest in Encore. Now, these weren't random people. We vetted the leader, we vetted the bankers before we hired them, and we really talked about their network. And then we went in and told the story and the vision of what we were trying to create long term. And we successfully raised, over the course of three capital raises so far, we've raised $360 plus million. We've garnered the support of 1,900 shareholders across these eight states.
00:52:39
Speaker
But I think that's a huge part of our organic growth strategy because now you have these advocates in the market that, of course, you're going to have an opportunity to gain their loans and their deposits, but they're also going to send you their friends and their family and people that they want to bank with their bank. And so this concept of we went together now is there's a whole lot of we in that, right? There's the shareholders, there's the team, and they've invested too. That's a huge part of the recruitment philosophy is, hey, you're not going to become an employee, you're going to become my partner.
00:53:11
Speaker
The personal transformation that Burt has undergone is evident in his strategy at Encore. As a young man, he wanted to start a bank because of the prestige. Now his bank is a shining example of what can happen when you invite other competent leaders in and everyone puts skin in the game. Encore isn't a success because of what Burt or the other founding partners are capable of doing. It's a success because the entire organization is empowered to make it great.
00:53:42
Speaker
If you want to do this, I need you to bet on yourself and I need you to bet on the we. And so that's been a huge part of how we built the organization as well.
00:53:52
Speaker
Yeah, I just absolutely love that story and there's so much power to that. The we win together isn't a platitude. It is quite literally we, meaning your shareholders, your team members, the management team, everybody really is. It's amazing and I think a great way to get alignment at a different level than what you typically see.
00:54:15
Speaker
As we wrap up our conversation, we have two things we always like to talk about before doing it. The first one, everyone talks about business books all the time, so we want to be different. Do you have any recommendations on non-business books that you think that our listeners could get some value out of?
00:54:37
Speaker
Oh, good question. Yeah, I mean, I'm an adventurer. I'm a thrill seeker. And so a book that I've enjoyed and I actually think a lot about in various life experiences is called Into the Wild. It's by John Krakauer. It's about a young man that, after college, made his way out to Alaska and was
00:55:03
Speaker
kind of living in the wilderness for a bit and ultimately wasn't able to make it but there's so much about that experience to me that can be telling for the reader and one is,
00:55:19
Speaker
youthful vigor also needs probably to be tempered. And not that that young man that's profiled in this book shouldn't have gone and done that, but maybe a little bit more parameters around what he was trying to accomplish, a little bit more knowledge of the local area or the weather or what have you. But also this idea that, hey, go chase a dream.
00:55:44
Speaker
And yes, there are risks. And in this case, it was catastrophic. But this is something that he wanted to do. And I can't imagine, you know, clearly, he probably suffered towards the end, but I can't imagine the joy and the
00:56:02
Speaker
benefit that he got through pursuing that experience. And to me, there's value there. Talks a little bit about his relationship with his parents and kind of the post-mortem, if you will. But I love that book. I could envision myself living on the land like he was. And so maybe others wouldn't enjoy it as much as I do. But I love that book.
00:56:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. I have to ask, did you watch the movie and how does it stand up to the book? I'm really not much of a TV watcher or movie watcher. I know the movie's out there, but I didn't watch the movie. Yeah, excellent. Very cool. Thank you so much for that recommendation. Our next question that we always like to ask any of our guests, specifically because this is all about leadership, is the leader born or is the leader made?
Nature of Leadership
00:56:58
Speaker
That's a good question. I mean, I definitely lean pretty heavily on the leader is made side. I do think people are born with certain abilities or
00:57:11
Speaker
or capabilities maybe or competencies. But I think that's just the floor maybe and the floor even maybe is not the right way to say it. The floor just means that like that's where they could get to if they put those talents and abilities to bear. But to me the ceiling is established through life's experiences and your relationships and the
00:57:36
Speaker
the way that you grow as a human being and the people that touch you and challenge you and inspire you. I'm certainly not here to say that I'm a model to go by in terms of leadership, but I don't think I would be where I, oh, I know I would not be where I am today and I know I wouldn't
00:57:58
Speaker
be able to make the impact that I do make, however small or great that is, without that experience. And so to say that a leader is made, I mean, to say that a leader is born to me is a little bit short-sighted. I think a leader is much more made than born. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for that perspective. Before we sign off, is there anything else that you wanted to
00:58:26
Speaker
Any other things that you wanted to talk about that we didn't cover, Bert, that you would hope that we would cover? No. Like I said, I'm so appreciative of the opportunity to do this with you, humbled by the ask. I don't have any agenda here. I just, again, appreciate the opportunity to tell the story and hopefully your listeners get a lot out of it. I'm happy to connect with any of them on LinkedIn or elsewhere if they're interested.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yeah, no, I really appreciate it. I know, selfishly, I got a ton out of this conversation, and so appreciative of your time, and I'm sure our listeners will as well. Thank you so much. All right, Nathan, thank you. Have a great rest of the day.
Reflections on Leadership
00:59:15
Speaker
The novelist Ernest Hemingway wrote, we are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. To me, that is the crux of what it means to be a leader. You can always find somebody who has more experience, wealth or professional accolades than you. So it's easy to forget that the only thing that really matters is your willingness to wake up every day and work as a perpetual apprentice.
00:59:37
Speaker
Burt Hicks' teachability and determination to get better as a leader is a lesson that will stick with me for a long time. I'm honored to share his perspective and stories with you. Thanks for taking the time to listen. Your time is valuable and I love that you chose to share it with me.
00:59:52
Speaker
you'll find Burt's book recommendation in the show notes. You've been listening to Builder, Banker, Hacker Chief, a podcast produced and distributed by Z Sweet Technologies Incorporated, All Rights Reserved. I'm your host, Nathan Baumeister, the CEO and co-founder of Z Sweet Tech. This show was 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.