Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of Big Money Energy, where
Speaker 1: we talked to super successful and self made people to
Speaker 1: find out exactly how they did it, how they went
Speaker 1: from nothing to something. I'm Ryan, Sirhanton. Today I'm joined
Speaker 1: by chairman and co founder of Signature Bank, Scott Shay.
Speaker 1: We talk about what it takes to start a bank
Speaker 1: from the ground up, how religion could possibly tie into banking,
Speaker 1: and what influenced his decision to write a book about faith.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. Welcome to another episode. Today is
Speaker 1: a very very special day because I'm not sitting down
Speaker 1: with just the insanely successful and intelligent Scott Shay from
Speaker 1: sitting down with somebody who started a bank, and I
Speaker 1: want to I want to pick his brain a lot
Speaker 1: on that. But if you don't know Scott, you should.
Speaker 1: He is a leading businessman, author, speaker, co ounder and
Speaker 1: chairman of Signature Bank, which is one of the best
Speaker 1: and most notable banks in New York for private business owners.
Speaker 1: And not to mention, he's also an author, which we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to. Uh, You're easily one of the most
Speaker 1: knowledgeable people in your field, and I'm honored to have
Speaker 1: you here and for those of you who are also
Speaker 1: watching the podcast. This is the first time we've done
Speaker 1: this in our first floor office is our conference room.
Speaker 1: We're all kind of back from COVID. Scott's here without
Speaker 1: a tie. We are living it up. So Scott, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here. And by the way, flattery will get you everywhere.
Speaker 1: So thanks for that wonderful that's it. I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: You look great, You're a great shape. You know, you're
Speaker 1: killing it. It's awesome, it's great. You know, we negotiate deals.
Speaker 1: We uh, we do something called the positive sandwich. So
Speaker 1: the only way you can ever give anybody, not that
Speaker 1: there's negative information here, but the only way you ever
Speaker 1: give anybody tough information is you gotta gotta have those
Speaker 1: positive pieces of bread there and it works. The first
Speaker 1: question I have for you, which I think will really
Speaker 1: really kick us off, is how do you start a bank?
Speaker 1: So I had this crazy idea in the nineties that
Speaker 1: New York was over branched but under bank. There were
Speaker 1: plenty of big banks. There was JP Morgan, there was Chase,
Speaker 1: there was many Haney, there was Chemical, there was long
Speaker 1: online Trust, there was Westchester Trust. By the way, those
Speaker 1: nineteen other banks merged to create JP Morgan Chase. You know,
Speaker 1: all these banks merging, and these big banks, these mega banks.
Speaker 1: They were good at servicing A T and T, PepsiCo, IBM.
Speaker 1: But I thought there was really a niche to focus
Speaker 1: on middle markets, small and medium sized business. So we
Speaker 1: started a bank, not doing retail, not focusing on the
Speaker 1: big business. And people thought I was crazy. I mean literally,
Speaker 1: I I had two co founders, and they just thought
Speaker 1: I was crazy at first. And but I'm a persistent
Speaker 1: sort of guy. Did you did you work with these
Speaker 1: guys all together? So I knew them from a public bank.
Speaker 1: And when HSBC decide they were going to buy Republic Bank,
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought is this is an opportunity.
Speaker 1: I'm going to find these two guys because the best
Speaker 1: two guys at HSBC, and we're going to start a bank.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they didn't know that. That's what I thought. And
Speaker 1: I we had breakfast and they thought I was, you know,
Speaker 1: inviting the breakfast over something else, and I said, let's
Speaker 1: start a bank. You can ask they'll they'll cheerfully admit
Speaker 1: they thought I was crazy, And that's what I worked on.
Speaker 1: It's not something that that most people. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't see new banks every day. You see new companies,
Speaker 1: you know apps. Everyone's an entrepreneur right now, everybody. But
Speaker 1: you do not see people get together over breakfast and say,
Speaker 1: you know what we should do, we should start a bank. Ye,
Speaker 1: very few. So what did you guys? You know? Because
Speaker 1: that was what it was. Two No, this wasn't This
Speaker 1: was when we had the breakfast. It was they thought,
Speaker 1: you know, let's try to buy a bank. Let's try
Speaker 1: to get some money together. Will buy a small bank,
Speaker 1: will build it. And I said to them, Joe Depolo
Speaker 1: and John Tamperline, who are two partners and dear friends
Speaker 1: at this point, through dear friends, that was our first
Speaker 1: real getting to know each other. I said, we gotta
Speaker 1: started from scratch because we've got to make our own culture.
Speaker 1: The big bank culture. It's it's just not going to
Speaker 1: get us where we need to go. We had applied
Speaker 1: to nineteen different institutions. We started with a white board.
Speaker 1: We're here in your conference room. The office that we
Speaker 1: started and was no more than a third of the size,
Speaker 1: ended at five people in it, no more. And there
Speaker 1: was a white board and We listed everything we needed
Speaker 1: to do and we did it from from the number
Speaker 1: of adding machines to the you know what we needed
Speaker 1: in terms of people person people positions. We opened with
Speaker 1: five offices. You opened what you opened with five officive offices,
Speaker 1: which is where did you and started to cut you off?
Speaker 1: It just this is really interesting to me because we
Speaker 1: just started a brokerage. You know, I've been with the
Speaker 1: same company for twelve years and throughout COVID and you know,
Speaker 1: this year we did the same thing. We had a
Speaker 1: big white board, we had this little office with sheets
Speaker 1: of paper everywhere with the things we need to do
Speaker 1: and all that. But starting a brokeradge is very, very different.
Speaker 1: So what did you get the money together? Was a
Speaker 1: personal money? Did you go and raise money to be
Speaker 1: able to start a bank and to start lending. So
Speaker 1: that's a great question. So we thought about should we
Speaker 1: raise personal money or do we need a big backer
Speaker 1: because if you start a bank, people are a little
Speaker 1: bit afraid to put money in your bank. At the time,
Speaker 1: the insured limit was a hundred dozen dollars. We wanted
Speaker 1: businesses to bank with us, who generally have much more
Speaker 1: than a hundred dozen dollars. In the bank, so we
Speaker 1: got a big bank backer. At the time, I was
Speaker 1: on the board of Bankapo Lim, which is the largest
Speaker 1: bank in Israel, and we convinced them to invest forty
Speaker 1: two and a half million dollars in our new bank.
Speaker 1: We started out. First month we lost two and a
Speaker 1: half million dollars, and twenty one months later we broke even.
Speaker 1: We cut our lost every month. The first month we
Speaker 1: made like two thousand dollars and we were so happy,
Speaker 1: like we're making, you know, like this little bit of money.
Speaker 1: But we were just deliriously thrilled. By month thirty four,
Speaker 1: we went public. We've never done an acquisition in the
Speaker 1: history of the bank as we sit here today, as
Speaker 1: of last June, as of this past June thirty we
Speaker 1: were sixty one billion dollar bank. And every single person
Speaker 1: who has coming the door has opened an account with
Speaker 1: us because they want to open an account with us.
Speaker 1: We've done no acquisition, so we haven't. We haven't. It's
Speaker 1: not like chemical bank got the got the clients from
Speaker 1: Anny Hanny or Manufacturer's Hanover. You have to want to
Speaker 1: join us. So at this point I think hypothesis that
Speaker 1: I thought, which is there was a need for a smaller,
Speaker 1: medium sized business bank in New York. I think the
Speaker 1: tenantive conclusion is it's it's it was correct, But you're
Speaker 1: not a retail bank. No, That's why most people haven't
Speaker 1: heard of us, even though we're the biggest. We have them,
Speaker 1: but they're on the twelfth floor, the eighteenth floor, you
Speaker 1: won't even you you we have an office on Union Square,
Speaker 1: you won't even know what's there because you have to
Speaker 1: take an elevator up in. If you're a private business REPP,
Speaker 1: you're doing it. We have an office south of you. Again,
Speaker 1: you've probably walked by it a thousand times on Broadway,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to get in an elevator, go
Speaker 1: up to the twentieth flour and uh find our office.
Speaker 1: We're not retail. Most of our clients who are retail
Speaker 1: clients are owners of private businesses that they're already banked
Speaker 1: with us, and so they're small businesses. Like, what's the
Speaker 1: biggest type of client you have and what's the smallest type? Well,
Speaker 1: our sweet spot is twenty five to employee firms. That's
Speaker 1: our sweet spot. If you look, that's probably of our
Speaker 1: clients we have bigger, we've smaller. We'd be happy to
Speaker 1: bank you. You know, we're happy to bank anybody, but
Speaker 1: that's our sweet spot, that's where we're best. How has
Speaker 1: COVID been on the co founder of a bank. So
Speaker 1: it was very strange that before Governor Cuomo wrote the
Speaker 1: order of closing, essentially shutting New York, I got a
Speaker 1: call from So I remember the day of a little
Speaker 1: bit before because I got a call from the Deputy
Speaker 1: Superintendent of Banking and in New York who said, this
Speaker 1: is gonna come down, but don't forget your an essential service.
Speaker 1: And it was very strange getting that call because I
Speaker 1: knew we were an essential service. Money is important and
Speaker 1: the transfer money is important. We're not a hospital, We're
Speaker 1: not a thought. You know, we're not doctors. We're not
Speaker 1: We're not We didn't I didn't conceptualize us in that way.
Speaker 1: But then when the shutdown happened, I realized how essential
Speaker 1: we were and they had we We're getting calls immediately.
Speaker 1: We banked some hospitals in New York who immediately needed money.
Speaker 1: The people were coming in who were who were serious,
Speaker 1: having serious issues, and they needed to immediately have their
Speaker 1: lines expanded. I mean, ultimately, the government, the federal government
Speaker 1: gave the money and all worked out fine, but not
Speaker 1: day one. We had all sorts of clients who had
Speaker 1: their supply chains from China disrupted. So one a day
Speaker 1: they had paid for materials or final product in most
Speaker 1: places from China and that was gone. It was shut
Speaker 1: off that those products weren't getting in. So immediately they
Speaker 1: had to go and try to get alternative products by
Speaker 1: it in the United States, by it somewhere where they
Speaker 1: could get at it, where they could supply all of
Speaker 1: those things. It erupted. I mean literally, I was working
Speaker 1: twenty four by six. We had calls. We had a
Speaker 1: daily call at nine at three and then a nine
Speaker 1: pm at night among senior management because of just it
Speaker 1: was like incoming from all directions. And then p p
Speaker 1: P happened. Well at the time in between people you know,
Speaker 1: non essential workers don't get to go to work. Essential
Speaker 1: work stept to stay and then the city gets shut down,
Speaker 1: the country gets shut down, and then P p P
Speaker 1: was kind of like a month ish give or take.
Speaker 1: Were you ever nervous about a like a run on
Speaker 1: the bank where you nervous that everyone with the credit
Speaker 1: line was going to come and just call for cash
Speaker 1: because they were going to freak out. What do you
Speaker 1: what do you do in that scenario when COVID was
Speaker 1: just starting to be an emerging issue before the shutdown,
Speaker 1: It's like February, you know, early February, we decided we
Speaker 1: just want to have a ton of cash, so we
Speaker 1: had we just had. We just kept in the federal
Speaker 1: reserve essentially, which sounds like a lot of money. Three
Speaker 1: billion dollars of cash at all times something like to
Speaker 1: three kept our lines clean because we know it's possible
Speaker 1: that people who are gonna gonna want to draw it
Speaker 1: on cash. So we just wanted to be out there
Speaker 1: so there was no issues, and we have stayed so liquid,
Speaker 1: which is earning us nothing. I mean literally cash it
Speaker 1: the feed is earning us nothing. Just sitting there. We
Speaker 1: just felt we needed to be there, and thank thank
Speaker 1: Heaven's thank God, we never needed it. P p P
Speaker 1: was a totally different story that was there. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be a movie made about it at some point, I think.
Speaker 1: And how is signature involved in p PP are you
Speaker 1: guys people came to you for it and you're handling
Speaker 1: those PPP so as you as you learned just about
Speaker 1: the majority of our clients are small and medium sized
Speaker 1: businesses who all qualified. So essentially every single client of
Speaker 1: the bank applied for p p P. What happens was
Speaker 1: is we said it was overwhelming. I mean it was
Speaker 1: truly everybody that it was discussed I think on like
Speaker 1: March and by April three again it was like a
Speaker 1: mushroom cloud. So we did is we we decided to
Speaker 1: redeploy about twenty of all the employees of my colleagues,
Speaker 1: all of our colleagues, into working on p p P.
Speaker 1: So you might have been and you know, working as
Speaker 1: a and why your transfers or client services or cash management.
Speaker 1: We said, we're moving into p p P and we
Speaker 1: had people working literally all night creating systems, taking the
Speaker 1: applications so that we could get and I'm really I'm
Speaker 1: so proud say this. We got every applicant, every compliant
Speaker 1: application through. That was our motto, is that we wanted
Speaker 1: to get everyone through and we did. And that's the
Speaker 1: way you actually build quient loyalty is because people realized
Speaker 1: I mean people were filling out applications and talking to
Speaker 1: senior vice presidence in the bank at three am, I
Speaker 1: mean I was up behind. People were nervous. How do you?
Speaker 1: And this ties into your book which I have right here, um,
Speaker 1: which is which is a lot to it? First of all,
Speaker 1: it is five hundred pages easy reading. Though yeah, no
Speaker 1: it looks good, but it is. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: this is a good amount of book. And it seems
Speaker 1: like you touched on a lot of different things. What
Speaker 1: what pushed you to to you run a bank like
Speaker 1: you run like a really like a big bank, have
Speaker 1: a couple billion dollars at the fete so you can
Speaker 1: have good liquidity, like that's sixty one billion in assets.
Speaker 1: But then you sat around and you wrote a five
Speaker 1: hundred page book for the betterment of mankind? Why would you?
Speaker 1: Why did you do that? I think for most people
Speaker 1: there's two important days. One when they're born, because then
Speaker 1: they have a shot, and the second is when they
Speaker 1: figure out why they're supposed to be here. For some
Speaker 1: of us, there's multiple reasons why we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: what we're supposed to do. And this book was actually
Speaker 1: in me and I needed to get it out of
Speaker 1: me because people would come to me. So I'm I'll
Speaker 1: freely admit in New York I'm a believer. I believe
Speaker 1: in God, and people know that in the bank, and
Speaker 1: know that among clients, you know that among my friends,
Speaker 1: and they would ask me things questions like, well, you
Speaker 1: seem like a reasonable sort of guy, you actually built
Speaker 1: this bank, And isn't God just like sort of Santa
Speaker 1: Claus and the tooth Theory and the Easter Bunny. So
Speaker 1: I started reading the new atheist books that all these
Speaker 1: folks had read, Richard Hawkins, The God That Nations, Christop Richards,
Speaker 1: Why God Poison Seven, Why God Isn't Great? Daniel Dennett
Speaker 1: Letter to a Christian Nation, etcetera. And I looked for
Speaker 1: a book that would respond to them, and I didn't
Speaker 1: really find a good answer. So when nobody is doing something,
Speaker 1: that's the time when I tried to act and I
Speaker 1: started writing this book, and I'm so glad nobody told
Speaker 1: me it would take five years from me to write
Speaker 1: this pose. I would never done it, but I started,
Speaker 1: and I'm a persistent sort of you know, dogged fellow.
Speaker 1: So once I started and I had the bone, you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna let go. And so it took five years.
Speaker 1: When did you We're getting a little off topic, but
Speaker 1: it's curious to me, when did you know that you
Speaker 1: believed in God. I gotta give you a little bit
Speaker 1: of backstory. My father is a holocustomer. It was a
Speaker 1: holocoustomer be passed away. My father was thirteen years old
Speaker 1: and specs on Lithuania when the Nazis marched in and
Speaker 1: they murdered his father, his brothers, his aunts, his uncle's,
Speaker 1: his cousins. His mother had already died in childbirth giving
Speaker 1: birth to my his brother, and he was taken for
Speaker 1: slave labor and he was liberated from Doco. He was
Speaker 1: less than seventy pounds. He was prior days weeks, certainly
Speaker 1: not months away from death. And he made it to Chicago.
Speaker 1: It's a long story, we don't He made it to Chicago.
Speaker 1: He got married at his son, and my father had
Speaker 1: this very interesting belief that that in a way, that's
Speaker 1: the back story to this book, is that he knew
Speaker 1: there was God because had this cup with an S
Speaker 1: been not here but six inches over there, my father
Speaker 1: would have been dead. Had my father been standing one
Speaker 1: position forward, one position behind, one position back, or one
Speaker 1: position for it, he would have been murdered. There was
Speaker 1: so many little things that were so amazing that they
Speaker 1: were so different, he'd be dead, that he knew in
Speaker 1: his heart of hearts that there was a God who
Speaker 1: got him to Chicago. On the other hand, he was
Speaker 1: angry at God because he survived. But what about his
Speaker 1: father who he who has murdered, you know, a few
Speaker 1: feet away from him, and his and again all of
Speaker 1: his family. So he had this relationship with God that
Speaker 1: clearly I you know, inherited some of the try I
Speaker 1: don't want to call it trauma, but some of this
Speaker 1: questioning is how can we believe in a God when
Speaker 1: things like the Holocaust happen? What a good God allowed
Speaker 1: at it? But on the other hand, that's evil for people.
Speaker 1: So I've been struggling with this all my life and
Speaker 1: that's why it's spilled out into this book, trying to
Speaker 1: understand that problem because to my mind, to be a nonbeliever,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions to be answered. But to
Speaker 1: be a believer, the hardest question is how can a
Speaker 1: good God let things like the Holocaust, the rumand and genocide.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can go on and on happen, and
Speaker 1: that's a hard question. It is I think free will exists.
Speaker 1: Were you religious when you were growing up? Or is
Speaker 1: this something you came into later, something like my father
Speaker 1: had this belief of God. He was so we went
Speaker 1: to synagogue. But during services, he and I noticed this
Speaker 1: among other or Holocaust survivors. During services, they would chat
Speaker 1: when the rabbi gave his sermon, they would doze off.
Speaker 1: Afterward they would go and have a look high and
Speaker 1: you know, have a little afterward. But he made sure
Speaker 1: they all made sure their sons and daughters were barned
Speaker 1: by Mittzved. So he felt it was important have a connection.
Speaker 1: But he was so angry at God. He couldn't actually
Speaker 1: pray so easily because he was giving God the silent treatment.
Speaker 1: And I think God got it, you know, I think
Speaker 1: God gets that. Yeah, my father had some things to
Speaker 1: be angry about. And but I will say this the
Speaker 1: one thing I've also learned and and one thing I
Speaker 1: tried to do. In particularly section five of my book
Speaker 1: is explained how to read the Bible, because just being
Speaker 1: given the King James version is really tough. But if
Speaker 1: you read stories where Judah is willing to become a
Speaker 1: slave so that his brother can be freed, where Esther
Speaker 1: has to convince the king to save the Jews and
Speaker 1: takes on basically the risk of her life to do so,
Speaker 1: all sorts of stories of heroism of what what is
Speaker 1: really going on in the Bible? What is really being
Speaker 1: tried to convey? It such an ancient book that we
Speaker 1: need a little bit of background to to to really
Speaker 1: engage with it. So I find sort of the less
Speaker 1: people know about the Bible, the less they like it,
Speaker 1: and when you give them some introduction to it, they
Speaker 1: really recognize what a rich book. No wonder this has
Speaker 1: been around for three thousand years, because before the Bible
Speaker 1: things were pretty bad. You know, is the god king
Speaker 1: Pharaoh who could chop off anybody's head, and he was
Speaker 1: the decider of whether you were good you were bad,
Speaker 1: and he was the conduit for the real God raw
Speaker 1: or whoever it was at the time. And the thing
Speaker 1: people have forgotten, And this is one of the one
Speaker 1: of the things I try to explain, is it the
Speaker 1: whole twentieth century was a catalog of God King pharaohs
Speaker 1: style and Mao Pulpat. The Assad family, the Kim family,
Speaker 1: Hitler used the same tropes as Pharaoh doesn't change, parades, myths, theater,
Speaker 1: all of course backed up by secret informers and powerful armies,
Speaker 1: and because they were, they established themselves as king. That's
Speaker 1: why as God king. That's why Stalin had his his
Speaker 1: image put by the Soviet Space Agency into space. And
Speaker 1: it's not just at a macro level, it's at the
Speaker 1: level of our intimate encounters. So how did Kevin Spacey
Speaker 1: and Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose and
Speaker 1: unfortunately that there's a very long list. How do they
Speaker 1: get away with what they got away with? Well, they
Speaker 1: set themselves up in their industries as idols, unquestioned and unquestionable,
Speaker 1: just like Pharaoh. What Charlie Rose said was the truth,
Speaker 1: that CBS, what Harvey Weinstein said was the truth. And
Speaker 1: in the same way that the god king Pharaoh could
Speaker 1: decide if you live or die, Harvey Weinstein, based on
Speaker 1: his whim, could decide if your career was gonna work
Speaker 1: and if it wasn't gonna work. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: stand up tight doltry, but thankfully people did. Thankfully they
Speaker 1: have in the past and they and that's what the
Speaker 1: Bible tries to explain. And that's why in the middle
Speaker 1: of banking, I thought, I gotta try to take my
Speaker 1: shot to explain this How does religion then play back
Speaker 1: into into the bank. You've just written a five hundred
Speaker 1: page book called in Good Faith, Questioning Religion and Atheism?
Speaker 1: Do you bring religion and faith into signature bank? So
Speaker 1: here's how I do do that, and we do it.
Speaker 1: Two things. First, I believe that the golden rule comes
Speaker 1: from the Bible. Don't do one to others what you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want on them too yourself. So when p p
Speaker 1: P happened, we immediately knew some of the mega banks
Speaker 1: were prioritizing clients. If you were bigger, if you were
Speaker 1: in the private bank, if you were this, if you
Speaker 1: were there, we'll take care of you. We had this
Speaker 1: sing and I sort of hinted it this before. No
Speaker 1: compliant client left behind, So we moved everybody from the bank.
Speaker 1: We stayed up all night. I was up, even myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I couldn't. I wasn't even that productive in
Speaker 1: the middle of night. But we were up in the
Speaker 1: middle of night. If you looked at my emails from
Speaker 1: two to five am, you wouldn't know was two to
Speaker 1: five pm. We said everybody, if they needed twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollar loan, they're gonna get the same attention as
Speaker 1: the company that needs a nine million dollar loan. So
Speaker 1: it's the golden rule. And in our we have, like
Speaker 1: every bank. Well, you're you're familiar from your father and
Speaker 1: your brother a standards of conduct, so it's gate you
Speaker 1: can't see it. But I'm I'm holding up man. It's
Speaker 1: like a half an inch thick, right. I looked at
Speaker 1: this and I said, you know what, let's change it
Speaker 1: so that people get this. So the first paragraph says,
Speaker 1: this is a very long standards of conduct. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to read it because you're required to do so
Speaker 1: by bank regulation. But if you do one thing, you're
Speaker 1: gonna keep yourself out of trouble and and the bank
Speaker 1: out of trouble. Don't treat any colleague, client, vendor, counter party,
Speaker 1: or anybody you come into contact with within your role
Speaker 1: in the bank other than the way you would want
Speaker 1: to be treated. The rest is the commentary of the
Speaker 1: next fifty year, seventy five pages. You got to read
Speaker 1: it and sign it. But if you just do that,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be okay. And we're gonna be okay. It's
Speaker 1: not that we don't turn down loans. We turned on
Speaker 1: plenty of loans but we do it in a way
Speaker 1: which is humane. We tried very hard not to treat anybody,
Speaker 1: not to mislead anybody, not to do anything that other
Speaker 1: people wouldn't expect. The answer to their the answer to
Speaker 1: every question isn't gonna be yes. But they want to
Speaker 1: be treated like a human being. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be treated like a dust rag. And that's the way
Speaker 1: that I try to bring my faith into the bank.
Speaker 1: And that's not to say that people who don't, who
Speaker 1: aren't believers, can't do the same thing, because anybody who
Speaker 1: believes in the Golden Rule I can make common cause with.
Speaker 1: I think they can be moral. But I think the
Speaker 1: essence of idolatry is essentially and self deification is saying
Speaker 1: I'm a little more important than the other person. That's
Speaker 1: clearly what Charlie Rose and may allow and Harvey wants.
Speaker 1: And I can do stuff to other people that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want done into myself. And of course Stalin and
Speaker 1: all those other people, the world leaders who killed millions,
Speaker 1: wouldn't have wanted what they it done to them. And
Speaker 1: so I think there's a real essence there, and hopefully
Speaker 1: that comes through. Hopefully that comes through I mean, I
Speaker 1: will say this too, when when we had we unfortunately
Speaker 1: had a number of people stricken with COVID in the bank,
Speaker 1: and I called everyone personally because you you just that's
Speaker 1: the time you need to do things like that, you
Speaker 1: need to call It was if they were senior vice
Speaker 1: president or teller. I tried to reach them at home,
Speaker 1: and I don't know that it helped them, but they
Speaker 1: at least knew that they were as important as anybody else.
Speaker 1: How did you keep your level of confidence in you know,
Speaker 1: your ability to get all of this done and take
Speaker 1: care of your staff and take care of your people
Speaker 1: and manage your assets when going through a complete market
Speaker 1: res at like at the end of March right and
Speaker 1: the daw was selling off ten thousand points. Everyone's freaking out.
Speaker 1: There is no PPP yet, there's talks of it, it's
Speaker 1: not getting approved. Was there a moment of being scared
Speaker 1: at that time? And would you compare it at all
Speaker 1: to when you started, like in two thousand one, because
Speaker 1: two thousand one was also very tumultuous here, I mean
Speaker 1: you started this bank, I meanine eleven, if you had
Speaker 1: told me that the world Trade centers will be felt,
Speaker 1: that interest rates would go from six and a half
Speaker 1: or six and a quarter percent when we open to
Speaker 1: one percent, which is what happened, and we would go
Speaker 1: through the worst recession we had gone through ever in
Speaker 1: New York. It's was much much worse than two thousand
Speaker 1: one than in two eight here in New York. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I might have had second thoughts personally, but
Speaker 1: I will say this, it was a continuing emergency when
Speaker 1: we opened the bank, and I really felt like it
Speaker 1: was a continuing emergency, and I was so focused and
Speaker 1: in the flow of what needed to be done. Think,
Speaker 1: you know, frankly, to try to put one spot in
Speaker 1: front of the odd there as was the whole management
Speaker 1: team that it helped us get through it. Had we
Speaker 1: sat back and taken into you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: deep breasts and panicked, that would have been bad. So
Speaker 1: we didn't. We thankfully didn't do that. But there were
Speaker 1: plenty of opportunities to panic just because of the state
Speaker 1: of the world. Do you think for your level of
Speaker 1: focus is what helped you, uh, stay confidence? You know,
Speaker 1: A big part of you know, what we do as
Speaker 1: brokers and salespeople and entrepreneurs and part of this podcast,
Speaker 1: right and it's called big money energy because I in
Speaker 1: my head when I was young in New York with
Speaker 1: no money and I was trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do, and it was figure it out or move home.
Speaker 1: A big difference that I saw was the people who
Speaker 1: were successful and who were making it. They were very focused,
Speaker 1: almost like they had blinders on one foot in front
Speaker 1: of the other, like you just said. And they had
Speaker 1: they had a level of confidence to them even if
Speaker 1: they were completely if they had no confidence. And so
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about you starting a bank nine eleven happens, right,
Speaker 1: and then you've got interest, rateths tank and then New
Speaker 1: York slowly comes back, and then Lehman falls, and then
Speaker 1: you go through the Great Recession and then everything's kind
Speaker 1: of okay, and then a few years later then COVID happens.
Speaker 1: You seem to me like you have some you have
Speaker 1: an unshakable confidence, uh as well as a strong energy
Speaker 1: to you. And I could help in your book, which
Speaker 1: is also why I wanted you to come here, and
Speaker 1: you know, we meet and and you know, tell your
Speaker 1: story for all the listeners. Um, but how did do
Speaker 1: were you born that way? How did you get there?
Speaker 1: How did you how did you convince yourself to do
Speaker 1: these things that you've done and get through these three
Speaker 1: very difficult times in New York and in banking well,
Speaker 1: first of all, and I and my father may his
Speaker 1: memories a blessing to me. He modeled resilience. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's nobody he was. He was next to death and
Speaker 1: came back and built a life. So he had he
Speaker 1: did something which was I was growing up. If ever
Speaker 1: I would complain, and I would occasionally I'd complained, complain
Speaker 1: about this, that or the other thing. He looked at
Speaker 1: me and he'd say, it's not the concentration camps. So
Speaker 1: that that sort of set the standard where okay, you
Speaker 1: know I can I will have to get on from
Speaker 1: this because this is clearly not this is clearly overcomable.
Speaker 1: I will say this. I do look at these strain
Speaker 1: at downturns as an opportunity. So when we opened the bank,
Speaker 1: we had a little party for everybody who started the
Speaker 1: bank with us, and I got up and spoke and
Speaker 1: I gave a raw run. This just came out of
Speaker 1: my extemporaneously. I said, when my goal is that in
Speaker 1: five years we're gonna be a five billion dollar bank,
Speaker 1: and in ten years, we're gonna be a ten billion
Speaker 1: dollar bank. And of course that that meant we would
Speaker 1: be even growing slower in the second parts. But it didn't.
Speaker 1: That's what I said. Fast forward five years where three
Speaker 1: point eight billion dollar banks. So we hadn't hit our goal.
Speaker 1: But then during the Great Financial Crisis, we had been
Speaker 1: doing the right things. We had stayed conservative, and we
Speaker 1: grew from three point it we grew to be a
Speaker 1: fourteen pint eight billion dollar bank by two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: May first, two thousand eleven, in the worst time, we
Speaker 1: had grown eleven billion dollars in that second. In that
Speaker 1: second from three point eight to fourteen pointing. Because you
Speaker 1: made yourself the choice. We made ourselves a choice. So
Speaker 1: fast forward to what happened. Now. December thirty one of
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, we were forty nine billion dollar bank
Speaker 1: and we were really proud of that. June we were
Speaker 1: sixty one billion dollar bank. And the reason is it
Speaker 1: because because we had done p P P. Because people
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, I've been never to go
Speaker 1: to business come in so fast is after p P.
Speaker 1: Because A the people we got loans for said I
Speaker 1: got to move the rest of my accounts here be
Speaker 1: they heard about it and so people would start coming
Speaker 1: to us. We have never opened as many accounts as
Speaker 1: we did when we started. The pacers. Just ridiculous because
Speaker 1: during these sorts of times got to be and people
Speaker 1: were calling me at all hours. And in customer service, yes,
Speaker 1: client service, we we actually have a term. We don't
Speaker 1: actually call anybody a customer. We we say everybody's a client.
Speaker 1: We want to promote the phrase when I when we
Speaker 1: reached out to you, that this is called big money energy.
Speaker 1: What did you think? What does that phrase mean to you?
Speaker 1: That big green phrase right behind my head. Look, I
Speaker 1: personally don't idol size money. I think that what's important
Speaker 1: about money is what it can accomplish. And I think
Speaker 1: having money so that you can do good that's what
Speaker 1: gives me energy. That's what Otherwise I could just hang
Speaker 1: out and have pina coladas. I mean, you know, thank God,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to do that. I want to
Speaker 1: do more. And that gives you the energy and the
Speaker 1: power to do more, and to do more philanthropically, to
Speaker 1: do more in all sorts of different ways. That it's
Speaker 1: it's do good energy. What would you tell your your
Speaker 1: twenty year old self. If you go back in time
Speaker 1: and talk to you at twenty, always make sure to
Speaker 1: treat people right. I mean, there were a few times
Speaker 1: when I wish I had taken a deep breath and said,
Speaker 1: let me look at it from the other person's perspective
Speaker 1: and not reacted in the same way I would have.
Speaker 1: I definitely wish I would have done that a few times.
Speaker 1: And that's my big regret. I did it a few
Speaker 1: times where I just I did put myself first in
Speaker 1: terms of relationships or others with folks, and I regret
Speaker 1: that deeply, and I would tell everybody do It's that
Speaker 1: golden rule. I had it in mind, but I didn't
Speaker 1: really abide by it every every time I should have.
Speaker 1: Do you mind if I hit you with some random
Speaker 1: personal questions, go for it. What's your favorite movie? Oh?
Speaker 1: The Castle? It's an Australian movie. Every single one just
Speaker 1: so great. I mean, there's not one line in it
Speaker 1: I don't I don't remember. Actually, nobody's your favorite movie.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite movie, but nobody big and nobody that
Speaker 1: you would know. But it's what you can get it
Speaker 1: on Netflix or wherever. It's a great movie. What's your
Speaker 1: favorite quote clearly, um, don't treat anyone else the way
Speaker 1: you wouldn't bother to be treated yourself. That till eldest
Speaker 1: age said that, who's the worst boss you've ever had? Boy?
Speaker 1: You know, thankfully I haven't had really bad bosses. I
Speaker 1: had one boss who I don't want to mention his name.
Speaker 1: He's passed away. Who I think I didn't treat folks
Speaker 1: the right way, But I've actually been blessed to have
Speaker 1: good bosses. That maybe that's something that that certainly helped
Speaker 1: my career in my life a lot. What's your favorite word? Good? Good? God?
Speaker 1: If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?
Speaker 1: You know? I read an article I've read a book about,
Speaker 1: and I'm blinking on the author's name, about trying to
Speaker 1: imagine being something other than human, trying to be a
Speaker 1: bad but the hard cont the problem of hard consciousness.
Speaker 1: And so I actually I kept to tell you, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's impossible for you to me imagine to
Speaker 1: be you, and much less imagined to be me. And
Speaker 1: and the one thing I have learned in life is
Speaker 1: that people think they understand other people, they don't even
Speaker 1: actually understand themselves really that well. And so to imagine
Speaker 1: me being any other being, I can't really do that.
Speaker 1: My last question for you for the man who started
Speaker 1: a bank a handful of months before nine eleven, uh
Speaker 1: and has grown it into something that has been pretty monumental.
Speaker 1: What's your guilty pleasure? Oh, it's something I call a special.
Speaker 1: It's hot brownie charcolate chip ice cream or vanilla ice cream,
Speaker 1: but really good ice cream topped with some great dark
Speaker 1: chocolate chips and chocolate liqueur. I like haven chocolate dark
Speaker 1: chocolate where there's others. That's my guilty pleasure. Is this
Speaker 1: like a once a week thing? Oh? It depends on
Speaker 1: the week, you know. In the beginning, I think I
Speaker 1: was having it during March April May. I was in
Speaker 1: Nightly Yeah, and I remember those times. I remember those times. Listen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming. This has been great
Speaker 1: getting to know you. Uh. And for for all our listeners,
Speaker 1: please check out Scott Says book in Good Faith, Questioning
Speaker 1: Religion and Atheism. And if you are a small or
Speaker 1: medium sized business, make sure you check out the bank. Scott.
Speaker 1: It's an honor. Thank you so much for coming through.
Speaker 1: If you're ready to take action today based on Scotch
Speaker 1: shays entire blueprint for how he got to where he is.
Speaker 1: Go to Big Money Energy dot com slash podcast to
Speaker 1: download an action plan I put together for you, as
Speaker 1: well as the show notes. That's Big Money Energy dot
Speaker 1: com slash podcast. Find more podcasts like Big Money Energy
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Big Money Energy is hosted by me Ryan Sirhand.
Speaker 1: It's produced by Mike Coscarelli and Joe Loresca and executive
Speaker 1: produce by Lindsay Hoffman.