Stop Chasing Innovation & Start Solving Real Banking Problems, with Jeffry Pilcher.

In the latest episode of the Digital Banking Podcast, host Josh DeTar, podcast host at Tyfone, welcomed Jeffry Pilcher, President at The Financial Brand. The episode centered around how banks could stand out by making banking simpler, using data with more intent, and keeping a clear brand voice as AI reshaped content and strategy.

Jeffry argued that most institutions still sounded the same. They leaned on vague claims about service while competing on rates and fees. He said banks needed less surface-level innovation and more problem finding. In his view, the strongest institutions removed friction, respected customers’ time, and made banking easy enough to fade into the background.

He also shared a measured view of AI. Jeffry said the tools helped with analysis, framing, and stress-testing ideas, but they still struggled to produce distinct, useful writing. He warned that AI often pushed brands toward sameness unless teams set firm rules and edited with care. He closed by saying financial institutions already held rich signals in payment data, and they needed to use that insight to anticipate needs and deliver more relevant experiences.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Jeffry Pilcher: People really, at the heart of it, wanna think about banking as little as possible. And if you're the institution that can facilitate that and make banking easy, and save them time and save them headache, you will be their reflexive go-to, for all their financial needs. 

[00:01:14] Josh DeTar: Welcome to another episode of the Digital Banking Podcast. My guest today is Jeffry of The Financial Brand. Jeffry is one of my unicorn guests, one of the people I've been wanting to have on for literally years. If you're a listener of our show, you'll know that at the end of every episode, I always ask my guests the same two questions, and one of them is where do you go to get information about what's happening in our industry?

And the number one most common answer by a long shot is The Financial Brand. So what makes The Financial Brand so powerful at curating content? It all starts with this guy right here. If you've ever met Jeffry, especially at The Financial Brand forum in [00:02:00] Vegas, you will know he is absolutely the life of the party.

Just an absolutely fascinating human. From the way his brain thinks to his unique style of communication, one thing you'll quickly learn about him is he is hell bent on doing everything he does with intent. Not 90%, not 99%, not 100%, 110%, period. It's either that or 0%. You get all of Jeffry or none. You get all the fun and all the laughs, but you also get all the serious, no nonsense, get down to business.

He spent his entire life pouring himself obsessively into the things he's passionate about, whether it be playing poker, which started from not even knowing how to play poker to almost deciding to go pro, to building the industry titan that is The Financial Brand. Now, [00:03:00] Jeffry's shifting some of his focus to try the things normal people do and love, like these things they call friends and weekends and hobbies.

But he's never gonna lose that drive to do cool things in business that no one else is gonna do. So without further ado, I give you the man, the myth, the legend, the man behind the curtain, Mr. Jeffry Pilcher. Welcome to the show, sir.

[00:03:21] Jeffry Pilcher: thank you, Josh. That was, an amazingly gracious introduction. Appreciate it.

[00:03:25] Josh DeTar: Dude, you are. Somebody has to say this for you, you can't say it yourself because then it doesn't work, but you're actually very humble about it too. Every time I tell you, I'm like, "Dude, you're fascinating." You're like, "I'm not really that interesting." Clearly you're not looking at it from the lens that we are.

[00:03:38] Jeffry Pilcher: I started The Financial Brand, I was the sole writer. For the first, I don't know, it must've been three years or so. I, I don't know exactly how many articles or how many years it was, but it was about the first 1,500 articles, that were published on The Financial Brand. I published with no byline.

I just am not in it for the fame or the accolades of the applause. I, I often describe myself as the man be- behind the green [00:04:00] curtain. When sometimes people ask me what I do for a living, I say, "I cash checks. 

What else is there in business, right?" So, yeah, it's, it's not a motivation for self-aggrandizement or, I'm not playing to be on the stage.

I'm playing because the game is fun or interesting or, financially rewarding.

[00:04:19] Josh DeTar: rewarding. And I think that's what's really fascinating about it, right? Is and that's to your credit.

I mean, that's why it was so hard to get you on the podcast. It wasn't because you were too cool or your schedule was too busy, although those things are also probably true. It was literally because I had to beg and plead you to come out from behind the curtain and you're like, "No, dude, I have way cooler people that work at The Financial Brand that could come and represent us."

I was like, "I know, but I want you. " Yeah, 

[00:04:45] Jeffry Pilcher: Jim Marous loves to play that role and we've been partnered up since, gosh, I guess 2014, or so thereabouts. So, you know, about a dozen years we've been partnered up and he loves that. I often think of him as kind of our front man, lead singer, or whatever [00:05:00] you wanna call it.

he's the globe trotting, jet setting, guy that likes to be out there, Palm Pressing, making the contacts, he feeds off of that. Which is good because you need that kind of presence as well, in this day and age. But yeah, he's the social influencer and I'll just run things quietly from behind.

[00:05:19] Josh DeTar: I think every organization needs, different people to play different roles and have different strengths, right? Jim's great at that. He's, a phenomenal, public figure in our industry, right? and kind of a titan in his own right of what he's done throughout the years.

And, you don't wanna be that role, but that role doesn't work if somebody's not behind the scenes making everything happen too,

[00:05:41] Jeffry Pilcher: It takes a lot of effort too. Just doing a podcast like this plus all the other kinds of things that when you're building a brand, a personal brand, it takes, a fair amount of time. And that's, I don't know, it's just never been of interest to me. You know, it goes back to the days when I ran an ad agency when I got out of college, and the first thing you gotta do when you run a business [00:06:00] is pick a name.

a lot of lawyers and ad agencies name it after themselves. I'm not sure what that trend is about, but I think that when you're building it around your personality, any business, starting with the name, it makes it more difficult to sell or replace yourself. what if I have a change of plans or if I die?

will the business be insulated from those kinds of things? I could have started Pilcher and Partners as the ad agency, which is what most people would've done reflexively, uh, or Pilcher and Douglas Advertising at a partner at the time, but we called it Sharp Advertising. I'd rather have a name that, has its own asset, its own equity, separate of me.

Same thing with, the career I've managed since then. it's a career. There is brand equity that can be built in an asset that is separate and distinctive myself.

[00:06:46] Josh DeTar: You lived in Vegas for a while, right? And,

[00:06:48] Jeffry Pilcher: about seven, eight years, something like that.

[00:06:50] Josh DeTar: one of the things that always cracks me up when I'm in Vegas is all the billboards for all of the, injury lawyers and it's so funny.

I'm like, man, can [00:07:00] one of you come up with some sort of differentiation other than buying every bloody billboard, putting your face on it, and like Bob and Bob Law, or Tom and Tom Law. I'm like, goodness gracious. Y'all just don't think outside the box.

[00:07:14] Jeffry Pilcher: it becomes an equity problem for them as well. What are you gonna do when you've got, you know, Smith, Jones, Robertson, and then at Smith, Jones, Robertson, Johnson, and, oh, where does it end? Where does it end?

[00:07:25] Josh DeTar: speaking of Vegas, I thought it was hilarious when you were talking about when you were in Vegas and you were like, yeah, I was looking around and I was like, "Man, gambling is for idiots."

[00:07:34] Jeffry Pilcher: It is. First of all, look at the size of the hotels and the opulence that they have. These palaces are not built off the backs of winners.

[00:07:42] Josh DeTar: My sister lives in Vegas. She has for, I'm trying to do the math like 25 years now, and she, that whole time she's been in Vegas, she's worked for Southwest. And so she was in Vegas when I was a, 21, 22 year old kid, and I could fly to Vegas for free if I [00:08:00] flew standby, I could sleep on her couch, and so I could go to Vegas anytime I wanted for basically free, except for my meals and entertainment and that kind of thing.

I remember the first time I went out there when I was 21, and my sister took me out on the strip and everything, and she was like, "You want to do some gambling?" And I would like to think that I was pretty stupid back then, but I was smart enough back then to look around, and I said the exact same thing you did.

I looked around and I was like, "This place was not built on winner's money."

[00:08:27] Jeffry Pilcher: I don't recommend it, but my first visit to Las Vegas was in a U-Haul. I think anybody moving to Vegas should probably go, examine the town once or twice before they decide to pack up all their stuff and move there.

but I've had the great fortune of having a lot of statistics classes in college before I moved to Las Vegas, where every example they used was cards, dice, roulette wheel. And by the end of two years of statistics and four years of calculus, it was very clear that gambling [00:09:00] was a sucker's bet. so when I moved to Vegas, I mean, I had just already ingrained thanks to the mathematics of it.

this isn't something I need to do. but, the town is completely different these days than it was when I lived there. When I lived there, it was all gambling. they had no food venues. It was 99 cent margaritas and Buck 99 steak and eggs. And, it was all about gambling.

these days, the town is a lot different. There's a lot more nightlife and better restaurants. people ask all the time, do you have this banking conference in this mecca of financial irresponsibility?" and I understand the nature of the question.

In fact, when I moved away from Las Vegas, I thought I was gonna be leaving that town in my rear view mirror forever, had no desire to go back. but when it came time to plan the conference, it's like, well, where can you find a better venue that checks all the boxes? it's not the fact that it's Las Vegas and there's gambling, it's the fact that these hotels are very [00:10:00] large.

They can accommodate all your attendees on one property. They all have, 10 plus restaurants. So, your attendees can all eat. and basically, I think of it as almost like a vertical cruise ship. you don't have to leave the property unless you want to go find entertainment, but there's a lot to do.

there's the hotel where we've had the conference for the last few years It's an executive level experience. If you don't wanna gamble, you don't need to gamble, you don't go to the ground floor. Otherwise, it's just like staying at any other resort. That is not the experience I had when I was growing up in my 20s in Las Vegas.

It was smokey and a bunch of leather skinned people from Florida, you know, banging away on the slot machines. But, yeah, I mean, it's, it's a different town now. But the, the, whether they're building it on the backs of losers gambling, now they, they can get the money out of you one way or the other.

They're gonna get it nightlife, entertainment, food, sometimes just the pool experience. I mean, who it's talking to a guy at out at the, one of the servers out of the pool and he said, "Some guy here the other day racked up 150 grand at the pool, just champagne [00:11:00] and started early and went late and okay that's a pretty big pool bill."

[00:11:04] Josh DeTar: That's a heck of a ... I think that's a different tax bracket than I play in, but yeah.

So ... my wife and I, when we got together, she had never, ever been to Vegas. my sister lived there, 

So I would go to Vegas even just to visit my sister, not for the whole Vegas thing.

And so for, 15 years of going to Vegas, I've watched it change over the years and some of the cool stuff that had come and I was like, "Babe, I actually think you would love Vegas." And she's like, "Absolutely not. " She's not a huge drinker. She doesn't want to go to the shows, not the debauchery, not the gambling, none of that stuff, right?

So she was like, "It has zero appeal to me. " And back to what we were talking about earlier, running. So my wife, up until recently we had about our second kid, was at Nike corporate for almost 20 years. So you have to be a runner, right?

[00:11:53] Jeffry Pilcher: It's required.

[00:11:54] Josh DeTar: work at Nike and not run, but she was not a hardcore runner, but she decided she wanted to [00:12:00] do a half marathon.

Long story short, she looked around at where she wanted to do this half marathon and she found that outside of Vegas, starting up at Mount Charleston is one of the most, perfectly gradual downhill half marathons in the country. You never go uphill, and she was

[00:12:15] Jeffry Pilcher: marathon, I take a downhill marathon.

[00:12:17] Josh DeTar: She's "Let's do it.

So she was like, "All right, we'll check mark Vegas off my bucket list, and we'll go do this half marathon." We're coming home from Vegas, and she looks at me and she goes, "How have I never been to Vegas?" She's "That was so much fun." And now, we're, I have a five year old and a two and a half year old, and we're literally doing a three day vacation in May of going to Vegas with the kids.

It's gonna be a blast. The kids love Vegas. There's so much stuff to do now that's, go ride the link, go do the Gondola boats, go out and see the Red Rocks. There's so much to do that's not just what you

think. 

[00:12:54] Jeffry Pilcher: when I lived there, it was interesting. I got engaged, to somebody who lived in town while, [00:13:00] we're both living in town, we get engaged, and then literally 30 seconds later, we look at each other and we're like, "Oh God, we have to move. We can't live here." we have just bad habits, old haunts, those kinds of things, but you just can't pack up and move the next day.

So we were in Vegas for probably another nine months or so after we got engaged, and that whole time on, on weekends and, and evenings when we got the chance to go out, we'd go out to Red Rocks from Mount Charleston, or the weekends, we would just get in the car and go camping. And I'll tell you that they built Las Vegas in one of the greatest valleys in the entire state.

N- Nevada is o- only known for basically two towns, Reno and Las Vegas. And when you can get out and about and explore Nevada, I suppose while I'm doing my tourism plug for the United States, I need to throw in the two unUnited States, Alaska and Hawaii, two of my most favorites, favorite states.

if you ever get the chance to, get out and about around the Las Vegas area, going over to the Bryce Canyon area in Utah, it's [00:14:00] just amazing. 

[00:14:01] Josh DeTar: Oh, stunning. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, beauty finds itself in so many different manifestations. Like the desert can be absolutely stunning. The mountains of Alaska can be awe inspiring. The beaches of Hawaii and, the gardens of Kauai are just there's so much beauty everywhere, okay, but I gotta go back. So going back to the whole gambling thing, the thing that I thought was hilarious was you were like, yeah, gambling's for idiots, but poker. You went from not even knowing how to play poker and you watch a movie and you're like, oh, this is actually a game of skill mixed with some luck and just your OCD personality immediately latched onto that and you were like, "I got to have a library of 60 books on this.

I have to learn the entire thing and I've got to figure out how to like ... How does that happen?".

[00:14:47] Jeffry Pilcher: I love games that involve skill and chance, some games that, I find particularly interesting backgammon. it's a very, very, interesting game. Gin, [00:15:00] cribbage, these are all games that involve, elements of skill and random, it depends on the dice or the cards you draw, but the skillful player tends to prevail.

and when you're faced with that constantly changing set of variables, how do you sharpen the skills that it takes to become successful? Anyways, I had, I, I already, I, I had already gone to college, studied, got a, basically a, a minors, in not gambling with all the math that I took. I'd already lived in Las Vegas and had that experience.

By the time I watched the movie Rounders and I just did not understand how poker could be played with two cards, it was fascinating to me. The only thing that I ever saw in the movies was the Westerns where it's always five card stud. They're just five cards or five card draw. I did not understand.

I had a curious mind. I had to look it up on the internet. How do you play poker with only two cards and how do they determine the champion of poker at the World Series with this, two card variant of poker? I read about [00:16:00] it, studied it. I was intrigued, read some more. by the time I was done just familiarizing myself with the game, I'm like, "Oh, wait, this is a mathematical game, similar to the other games that I like, cribbage and backgammon and gin, hearts, or spades, those kinds of games."

and so I bought a book or two and I started reading it and then I started playing for play money at like, I think it was yahoo.com. And after I got a fuel for the game, I thought, wait a second, this is a game that involves a lot of math and I'm gonna say, a lot of people suck at math, they resist math, they don't like math, they play off of instinct, how they feel, more than logic.

I think this is a game that you can actually beat. So I made myself a promise. I'm only gonna put $500 towards an online, poker account, and that's gonna be the one transaction. If I lose that, I'm never gonna play again, never gonna make another transfer. That's the kind of discipline that I had and made that transfer.

And [00:17:00] by the time I was done, it was a seven-year run. so from watching this movie Rounders to the career that I had, I played probably 10 or 12, World Series bracelet winners in cash games, some in person, some online. but yeah, over the course of my, seven-year semi-professional career playing poker, there was maybe, about $400,000 in winnings.

To turn $500 into that over that time, I think it proved the, you know, the principle that it's a mathematical game. And if you play with discipline, you apply the principles of math and resist those emotional urges or tendencies. but it also becomes a little bit monotonous.

You know, you see two cards and you're playing ... The, it, the, there's not a lot of dynamic range. A- and starting with the way you need to present yourself, you need to be kind of stoic. you know, the most flamboyant presentation of style is not one that usually benefits the, the poker player at the table, 

[00:17:54] Josh DeTar: my wife absolutely loves board games, and it drives her nuts that I hate board games, [00:18:00] because I hate the ones that are, like, Dude, there's no skill in this whatsoever. I hate the fact that my five year old can beat me.

No, I wanna crush him and show him he's gotta learn and work hard and he can't just beat me by luck. I don't like this. And my wife's "Just play the game and have fun."

While I'm hearing you, talk about, your seven years of two card poker, this is gonna sound really cheesy, but man, what a metaphor for business though, too, right?

I mean, this is a game of skill, it's a game of taking risk, but there's also elements of luck and right place and right time and, all of those things that play into it. And so, has business always just been kind of that same thing for you, like it's almost a game?

[00:18:44] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah, certainly. as I mentioned four years of calculus, I like complex problems. Multi-variate calculus is very interesting. I found it a lot more interesting than algebra or anything where there's a finite answer, just understanding the variables and how a problem can be simplified and what [00:19:00] variables go into an equation.

it's very much finding that riddle that your mind engages around, and then I don't even know if it's trying to find the answer so much as simplify the problem or find a more elegant solution to the problem. and then relevant to that topic of luck, there's a documentary, called The Great Ones about, some of the greatest sports figures, including Jerry Rice and Wayne Gretzky, some others like that.

And they're, you know, what makes them great, the habits of greatness. And I believe that when you're invested, you know, relative to the gameplaying background and, the business career that I've had, that there are elements of luck, but putting yourself in that position to get lucky, is it luck when you're the guy that, you know, when there's three seconds to go at the end of the NBA, game seven, and you're the guy that's open, who gets the ball and takes the shot, were you lucky [00:20:00] or do you know what, where to be?

that was one of the things that fascinated me about Wayne Gretzky back before the age of computers and AI and all the things that we have today, he would sit down with, a blank sheet of paper, and watch every hockey game that he could watch on television. from a young man, I think it was around the age of 10 when he started doing this, he would take this eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper, he'd draw a hockey rink on it, and then he would sit there while he watched the game with his pencil and trace where the puck went for the entire 60 minutes.

And he would do this match after match after match. And at some point, you end up with this, basically a flip book of where the puck is going and how often it becomes kind of a heat map for puck travel. And he realized that the way the game was coached at that time, one of the places that the puck often found itself behind the net and no offensive player ever went back there because how the hell do you score from behind the net?

You can't shoot it straight into the net. And that was one of ... it [00:21:00] developed into one of his signature, play styles, which was to, ... the defenseman had no idea how to handle him when he's behind the net, chop, chop, wh- which way am I gonna go? And he would often dish it off to, you know, another player.

These guys were trying to figure out, how do I respond to this guy who is in a position no one knows about, no one knows how to respond to. No one seen play. It created all kinds of interesting dynamics on the ice that he either, led to the assist or it would open up the ice in different ways where

But he knew, you know, as he would often say, I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where it's gonna be. " And I don't know if he said it in as many words, but the only way to score a lot of goals is to take a lot of shots. you know, Michael Jordan says the same thing, there's a great commercial about how many game-winning shots he's been trusted to take and missed.

It is about putting yourself in that position to get lucky where you're going to a function or a place or a space where you're likely to meet that person, you may not have the guarantee of [00:22:00] meeting them. who is it, where is it that you need to be that, gives you your, better chance, better odds of professionally, metaphorically speaking, winning the championship.

[00:22:10] Josh DeTar: Yeah. that's a great analogy. Michael Jordan's quote is the, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right? So yeah, if you're not taking the shot, you have zero chance of hitting the game winner,

And yeah, you look at statistically how many of those he missed, those aren't what you remember.

You remember that he took the risk to take the ones that did win the game, that did win the championship. And so, yeah, It's a cool way of thinking about it. So then, I wanna come back to that a little bit, but I wanna add another element to this story again, like, you're telling me this stuff just over conversations over the years, and it's just so fascinating to me.

you were saying that how you became a branded marketing guy was not that you loved branded marketing, it started with you were an Apple junkie and you were like, "All right, I see how these two, computing [00:23:00] devices are coming to the market, and creative people are on Macs, and spreadsheet people are on PCs, I'm neither of those two, but I'm a Mac person.

So I'm going the path the Mac is going, and that's how you got into branding and marketing?"

[00:23:15] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah. you know, I love computers. my dad, when I was a young man, he got a, if anyone knows this model of computer, I'd be surprised. It's a TRS 80. The RS means Radio Shack. so yes, my first computer came from Radio Shack, and it was more like an interesting toy.

I also had a Vic 20 that you got from ToysR Us. I like computers, but they were really more like interesting toys at the time. There wasn't a lot you could do with them. Some of the earliest computers like the TRS-80 were really nothing more than typewriters that allowed you to save your files.

So when the Macintosh computer came out in 1984, I wanted one immediately. I went to the mall and I checked it out and I thought, "This is genius. I gotta get my hands on one of these." got my first one in 1985, and then I just [00:24:00] poured myself into it. Everything I could learn about everything that you could do with a Macintosh computer, I spent, the next seven years immersing myself in that OS.

at one point, I could've become a Mac IT guy, administrator, network, but the way the Mac had evolved over time, there was a page layout program called QuarkXPress, some of the other tools, Adobe Illustrator 1.0 came out, but as these tools started to kind of gravitate more towards the Mac environment than the PC environment, I of course was learning everything I could about those applications as well.

And it was more like the platform evolved into this creative tool that I think we know and love and, for today, I mean, whether you're a musician or you know, in music or film or advertising, it, if you're in a creative endeavor, you're more likely to have a Mac than a PC. And that's how it steered my career.

I fell in love with the Mac and just a lot more design and advertising tools that I was familiar with. And when it came time to get a job, I was, [00:25:00] expert level in these applications and, advertising agencies were hiring folks at that time, we're talking early '90s, so the first job I had out of college was internship at, an ad agency.

[00:25:12] Josh DeTar: You know, you'll probably appreciate and find this funny. I was literally just having a conversation with a guy on our team this morning right before jumping on to record with you. and he spent his career in marketing ad agencies as a designer and we were talking about, man, do you remember when you would make edits in Photoshop and like literally all you were trying to do was move a text box like eight pixels and you had to wait 20 seconds for it to update and do that.

And now, and we were laughing about, now, like some of the tools in Photoshop are so incredibly advanced that the amount of time it takes me to edit an image in Photoshop now versus back then is mind boggling. But even then, [00:26:00] I was giving him a real example from literally the other day and long story short, my wife is a homemade sourdough bread baker and I was trying to get a picture of just her bread but with no background around it and I had a picture on my phone that we just had a really messy background in it that was kind of one of those difficult backgrounds to cut out.

And I went into Photoshop and started to cut it out and I was like, "This is stupid. Why am I doing this? " I literally just loaded it in And the ChatGPT said remove the background and in four seconds I had the image without the background. 

[00:26:29] Jeffry Pilcher: Modern Photoshop will do that automatically too.

[00:26:31] Josh DeTar: it's just crazy like

[00:26:33] Jeffry Pilcher: in some cases, just when you're in, your Photos app on your iPhone, you could

[00:26:37] Josh DeTar: can just say

[00:26:37] Jeffry Pilcher: on the person and it says turn it into a sticker. But that was actually one of the things I did, early on in my career, whether you call it masking or creating a clipping path around a person or a thing.

That was a skill that, a lot of people made good money in. And it was called the pre-press, pre-printing, environment. and these days, yeah, it's ridiculous. what I would've, just looking at your image with the headphones [00:27:00] and, to outline all these things and mask out your background is something that to do at a quality level professionally would take, maybe an hour, hour and 30 minutes, and now it's a matter of 15 seconds.

And I think that's a really good metaphor for the, you know, the, threat and opportunity that AI represents today with all the, the advancement in computers. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, I wanna say maybe three or four years ago when I could buy a two or whatever it was, four terabyte drive for a couple hundred bucks when

and that would store everything that I had ever created digitally in my entire life up to that point. Now, of course, the files are larger, but the drives are less expensive. you know, computers have accelerated the memory and, the kinds of acceleration of hardware we have. But, yeah, going back to the hard drive, I would buy SyQuest drives, that maybe had I think it was 128 megabytes of storage, and these drives would cost [00:28:00] $500.

that was in 19 ... I don't know what it was, 1995, 1990. and just the way we've accelerated, the one, I would say, interesting outcome from COVID was trends ... Things were already accelerating. Trends were, just whatever you could do today is gonna take half as much time somewhere down the road.

COVID accelerated a lot of the work from home concept, the hybrid. it changed completely for, and forever changed the commercial real estate market. And in the banking industry that we're in, think about all the folks that were like, "Yeah, I know online banking, but the mobile banking thing, well, what's gonna happen when people can't go to your branches for six months?"

How quickly accelerated that, the branch density, the branch role, those were already changing, but boy did those trends get accelerated during COVID. So all I can tell you is whatever trends we're experiencing today, to think about the pace of change is constantly accelerating, and that can be a [00:29:00] frightening, prospect as well as an exciting opportunity.

[00:29:03] Josh DeTar: Yeah. Just think about the hockey stick from, our professional lives. And it was like the advent of technology, yeah, like it started to have some pretty big impacts, but man, not nearly the pace that we're having today.

I mean, thinking about, your example of buying store, now I don't even think about that stuff, Jeffry. I literally just, it auto saves to my Google Drive.

[00:29:25] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah, 

[00:29:25] Josh DeTar: Yeah. And I have unlimited storage and if I need more, I just up my monthly subscription a little bit and I didn't even think about this till just now when you said it.

You know what has changed for me? I don't live in fear anymore of like, oh my gosh, what happens if I forget to save or if my battery dies? I don't even think about that anymore. It's in draft and Google Drive. I'll get back later. I'll get it from a totally different device. I don't care. I can't even think about that anymore.

I don't have that stress anymore. I mean, it's just crazy to think of how much has changed just in the last couple of years. But, this kind of brings us back full circle to, The Financial Brand, right? you said a [00:30:00] lot of people have heard the story, but I think there's probably just as many who haven't.

maybe give us just a little bit of the cliff notes of the genesis of The Financial Brand before I ask you this next.

[00:30:10] Jeffry Pilcher: So, the number one question I seem to, hear is, The Financial Brand, how'd you start it? What was your vision? it's interesting because I actually think of myself as the accidental entrepreneur twice over. building off the computer, Macintosh, advertising background.

When I moved to Las Vegas, I started an ad agency, and had to move away, as we talked about, can't be starting my family in Las Vegas, that needed a change of environment. so I moved to Washington. I liked working in the advertising industry, didn't really wanna start another business and have that burden, while trying to get my family started and situated.

So I went to work at a place that it sounded interesting, challenging, which was marketing branding, to some extent advertising and design, but more high [00:31:00] level, marketing and branding projects, name changes, and, branch design projects in the banking space. it was all banking, working with retail banks and credit unions, and helping them navigate these growth challenges, it was interesting, call it mental intellectual work with also some creative and design and some, expression of the concept that I enjoyed, and I did that for the better part of a decade. while I was in the middle of this, I was also flipping a house.

And the house, as it turned out, was ready to go on the market. We put it on the market, I think it was December 2007 or so, 

which if, as we all recall, the housing market started to collapse pretty aggressively in 2008. our house sold in like, Q1 of 2008. And in this process, 

I was a creative director at this ad agency design firm, and I went into the owner and I said, "Look, you know, we've been working on this house. You know, it's, it's as soon as it sells." I plan on moving far away and I [00:32:00] don't know where we're gonna live yet as all I know is that I,

The way it sounded to him is, "Wait, you're not quitting, you're just telling me you're not coming to the office anymore.

Is that what is going on here?" yeah, basically, even today with all the advancements that we've had in work from home, I don't think trying to be a remote creative director is going to be the most effective, way to manage a creative team. we gave it a whirl for a few months, but ultimately, it was obvious.

I just couldn't do that job. I wasn't gonna be a creative director at that branding and marketing firm anymore. But with the experience that I developed and with my boss's blessing, I decided that, what I could do is capitalize on the experience I had in the banking industry, and provide my services a marketing and branding consultant solo.

I didn't have any vision of growing it into a big consulting operation. but yeah, my vision was to start this consulting business, consulting.com, if you will. And what everyone was doing back in 2008, if you recall, [00:33:00] was, blogs were big. So what everybody else was doing or would've done is consulting.com.

That wasn't the name of the URL, but placeholder, consulting.com/blog, and that's not something that really interested me. I believe in zigging as a branding guy zigging when everyone else is zagging, I thought I could start up, a blog, if you will, where I would offer my insights and use that as the marketing tool to draw attention to myself, as a consultant, and I would give it a moniker that sounded sort of serious like the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Some people often ask, you come up with the name?" Well, that was the idea to have something that was, dignified and sounded, respectable like the Financial Times of the Wall Street Journal, so it's The Financial Brand. It's gonna be a branding, advertising, marketing publication, purely online for retail banks and credit unions.

and I spun that up. And in the original concept, this is why I described myself as the accidental entrepreneur, I thought I would be making, a really nice six-figure salary [00:34:00] as a consultant and augment that with, I'm gonna run some ads for consulting.com on The Financial Brand.com, and I think I can get some other people.

I thought I was really clever. I'm gonna get some other people in the industry, whether it's Tyfone or whoever to advertise alongside me. I was like, "Hey, makes sense. let's run some ads here." And I was like, outside chance, maybe 20, 30, 40 grand was my high limit my crazy dream of the revenue that The Financial Brand would generate.

Keep in mind, this is in 2008. The site launched in May 2008, and this is in the throes of the financial crisis, the great recession. things were not looking good for the banking industry globally, but the site took off, and by the end of the year, I had, almost six figures in advertising income, and I just thought, "Hey, if this thing's gonna take off, this is the direction the wind's blowing, I think I can make a go of this.

I got a degree in mass communications. Let's do that mass communicating thing." so I did two consulting gigs total, in [00:35:00] 2008, couldn't unwind those fast enough and then shifted all my attention to The Financial Brand. And I knew at some point there'd be the opportunity to have a conference.

at that time, no bankers were going, everybody canceled their conferences no, there were no banking. A banker would've been crucified if they got caught anywhere with an umbrella in their drink, in Orlando or God forbid Las Vegas. But by 2012, the industry had healed enough that conferences were back in play.

I was speaking at, the director's conference for credit unions, ran into, the organizer of the event, Amanda McCoy, who I think you know now as our chief operations officer. I asked her, "Hey, you know, I like the way you guys run this conference.

What do you do? I didn't know anything about the company she worked with or what she was doing." she said, "This is what we do. " And I said, "What do you mean? This is what you do. " Well, this conference and 24 others. I said, "Well, let me work with your company." And I think, at that time we had about a million unique visitors to The Financial Brand annually.

I figured I could get 500 [00:36:00] or so to go to a conference, which is exactly the number that showed up for our first conference when we did that in 2014. I worked with Amanda to put, the first conference together, which was in 2014, worked with her through the company that she was working for, decided that she was very good at what she did and made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

I said, "Wait, you do 26 conferences with mine a year? I'll tell you what, I will pay you whatever you're making today, give me the figure, whatever it is, I will pay you that if you come and work for The Financial Brand and just do this one

[00:36:31] Josh DeTar: Just do one.

[00:36:33] Jeffry Pilcher: that

[00:36:33] Josh DeTar: sounds like a pretty darn good deal. Yeah.

[00:36:35] Jeffry Pilcher: This was back in 2014, before COVID, and you don't have to go to the office anymore. So that's how Amanda and I got hooked up around the same time. it, it's a horse race, you know, photo finish there to see who was on board first, whether I started working with Jim Marous or Amanda, but those were essentially employees 1A and 1B.

[00:36:54] Josh DeTar: I mean, she's a total rockstar and it shows in the events that you guys put on. it's top [00:37:00] tier. So now that you've got, 

[00:37:01] Jeffry Pilcher: the backstory, origin story.

[00:37:04] Josh DeTar: I wanna get your perspective on ... Because you do. It's very clear, you think and operate differently, you do everything with intent.

I think that's really visible in how The Financial Brand operates, right? I think that's why when I ask guests, where do you go for information, that's why the number one answer is The Financial Brand, is because you guys have done a really, really good job of curating different content that's actually value adding for people.

and you couple that with then doing an event, I think, differently than a lot of folks do it. it comes from that marketing and branding lens, so you get the creative types, you get the thinkers, the dreamers, the innovators that show up. now you've got what we talked about earlier with this whole advent of just how the world of work and technology is changing so much, but I'll give you my argument, but I wanna hear your thoughts.

[00:38:00] I think AI does a lot of things for us. I think technology does a lot of things for us, but what I don't think it can ever replace for us is authenticity and true, genuine human thought leadership. So how do you think that this changes things for The Financial Brand? Like, how do you guys think about this new world that we're in?

[00:38:21] Jeffry Pilcher: I have spent a lot of time working with both ChatGPT and Claude, comparing the two platforms and trying to figure out ... And this has gone on now for, a couple years, trying to figure out what they're good at, 

and where they can make the biggest difference. And, for all the promise of quote unquote generative AI, which is really what an LLM is, is supposedly good at and based off of, responses and output based on what it's learned staring at other applications of language, English or otherwise.

you'd think that, you know, coming from the background that I have as a writer, [00:39:00] creator, designer, a person who comes up with ideas that it should be good at writing, and then it could replace or supplant that. I will tell you, I am deeply disappointed with its ability to create, what I would call on brand or valuable content.

just sitting at my desk every day, I get pitched press releases and I can smell it and spot it a mile off. the number one thing that I'll see that's just a huge signal that you used AI to generate your press release is the bullet points that have a two-word bolded thought followed by a colon, usually three bullet points.

and I've had these debates with these platforms, how do I deprogram you? You've learned all these things that are called consensus bias. By looking at and studying what humans do with their language, you've learned that three-part lists are very, you know, people seem to love those and the bullet lists and the, well, apparently two words, it gets feedback from the users themselves, you know, "Thank you for giving me this press release.

You saved me a lot of time." The problem is sitting at a desk like mine, [00:40:00] every press release starts to look and smell the same. They just sound the same, they're written the same way. Where's that unique voice? And, over the course of the last couple years, trying to train a GPT to adopt the voice that we want the style, of communication, be direct, be focused on the benefits, talk about, what the audience needs to do, not do or do differently.

trying to get it to a place where it can actually replace, supplant the human writer or editor, has been very, very difficult. I will say that for all the frustrations, I think for a lot of marketing people and just people in general is, "I can use this to write everything now."

okay, go ahead and do that, but you're gonna sound like everybody else too. If you don't really work with your platform to deprogram it from all its tendencies, I saw a big announcement the other day, one of the things that you see all the time, because an AI platform doesn't necessarily know what you do, whether it's take Typhoon or [00:41:00] Acme Corp, it doesn't know what your tool or solution is really good at, it will do this, it's called negative framing and it will write, isn't about X, Y, or Z."

Well, I've saw a press release the other day where two thirds of the press release were what it isn't and very limited about what it is. and that's the way generative AI, whether you're working on Claude or ChatGPT works, if you aren't giving it a, build it into your, your Claude or ChatGPT environment, with the instructions, the parameters, the guidelines, the things that you need it to remember and apply to all your writing assignments.

What is your brand voice? What are your peculiarities? But where I find these platforms particularly useful is in some, what I would call ideation or, is help me sort things out strategically. It does help with the framing of a problem, help me interpret it, distill it, present some options and range, especially if you're willing [00:42:00] to have a dialogue and push back.

I think a lot of people, because these platforms are, 

They're programmed to ... I, I, they're just sycophantic. It's just ridiculous how much they'll pander to you. Every idea you as the human user has is amazing and, yeah, right? but that constant, pushback, sometimes it's, it's good to start with instead of saying, "I have an idea, tell me how I can expand on this d- idea, you know, let's stre- let's start right off the bat with, help me stress test this idea."

I have a friend who has an idea and I wanna pro- I wanna tell him why he shouldn't do it. and then to hear the downside and work through the, you know, well, how would you overcome these challenges? You, you, you know, you're working with a platform, to yield a more clear and more strategically sound foundation.

I used it the other day to say, "Hey, let's come up with some ... " It knows a lot about me in the conference and the audience that we're talking to. So when I ask it a question like, "Help me come up with, some ideas for some new session [00:43:00] formats for The Financial Brand Forum conference.

The concern, as I expressed to it, very open, candid with the challenge, given the fluidity of the world that we're in, which I'll boil down to two concepts, Trump and AI, I don't know what the world will be like six months from now. I would like to have an agenda that I can roll out in November of 2026 for our Spring 27 event.

My concern is that we could roll out an agenda in November 26 that by the time the conference comes around is now between the macroeconomic, conditions that may change with the Trump administration to the world that we have with AI and how quickly things change there.

How do I create an agenda that has got some new life that's very dynamic, but also, can be agile and responsive to this fluid environment, this uncertainty that we face today. And it was extremely creative with the i- not all the [00:44:00] ideas were ones that I liked, but I thought that was much more productive use of time, for the AI platform than, asking it to write my next email campaign.

I would be more likely as a marketer to use an AI platform to do analytics, which I've also used extremely powerful analytics platforms, strategy, ideas, innovations, things like that, and then let me come up with some of the expression, I'm still a little dubious on those platforms' ability to adopt a unique brand voice, even provided the set of parameters and guidelines that I've spent two years trying to, train it on, here's how The Financial Brand content should sound.

[00:44:42] Josh DeTar: With ruthless consistency over time 

[00:44:45] Jeffry Pilcher: And that's one of those philosophical conversations that I've gone into great depth with the AI platform. Why when I tell you that this is the way I want something, why do you constantly show me new options? It calls it drift. I said, "I've [00:45:00] now prohibited my AI platform from using that word drift."

I said, "Whenever you use drift, that's your euphemism for fail." But it is, they are programmed to show these range of options. we had a session at the conference this year that I think people need to get their heads around the difference between a probabilistic or predictive model, which all these platforms are, they're trying to guess what you might want, and they have this huge array of information that they can use to present these options to you, and that's what they're programmed to do, when what a lot of users, including me, want is a deterministic model where it's like, no, they're

And I think the ideal platform is going to be a hybrid of both where I can give you a set of deterministic always, never deviate from this set of rules. These are the rules that I need you to always apply, never drift from, and then also, incorporate this wide range of knowledge that you have to show me [00:46:00] the options within that deterministic framework.

[00:46:03] Josh DeTar: Yeah. and you're, I think you're starting to see a lot more of that, right? And I think for me, hearing you talk, this comes down to, it's interesting, you know, I mean, AI has obviously been one of the hot topics that has been on every episode of the podcast lately, it feels like. And everybody's got, different unique ways of looking about it, talking about it, et cetera, but I think it really does come down to use cases, right?

And it's gonna be really, really good in certain use cases, really valuable in certain use cases, and not in others. And this concept that it's gonna work the same in the same way with the same value add in every single use case is not gonna get you a good definition of success, I don't think. and I would agree with you, I think, you know you'll one of my favorite things to insert into my prompts is don't kiss my ass.

[00:46:49] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah. 

[00:46:50] Josh DeTar: Seriously, point blank

[00:46:51] Jeffry Pilcher: Literally.

[00:46:51] Josh DeTar: Don't make me feel better than I need to about this, 

Right? And, anyway, so our CEO, Civa, likes to talk about one of the [00:47:00] value adds that it can add is this is true studied behavior in humans, right? If I think about an idea by myself,

I'll only ever get so far, but if you and I talk about my idea, I'm gonna get a lot further.

And so one of the things that AI can do really well for us is it can take something that you have an idea or a concept or a good knowledge and understanding about, and it can just be the other person. And oh, by the way, that person happens to be about a graduate level student on every single subject known to man.

So it just gives you a good sounding board, but that's why I was really curious to get your take on it. I mean, I don't wanna be like the AI and kiss your ass, but, you know, I think that's one of the things that, I don't think AI is ever really, truly gonna be able to replicate what you guys do, right?

[00:47:45] Jeffry Pilcher: I, in the publishing ... 

[00:47:46] Josh DeTar: thoughts.

[00:47:47] Jeffry Pilcher: I agree as a former creative director, living within your mind on an idea is a dangerous place to be. and when you work with an AI platform, you find that your ability to articulate an idea, you describe the idea to the AI and [00:48:00] it might have a different interpretation. it will have a different interpretation the same way other people, might when you describe the idea to them. So you become better at articulating your idea, discussing your idea, being more comfortable with having your ideas, stress tested.

but yeah, in the publishing world, I think that, it's not going to replace this idea of the writer. for us, I see the greatest opportunity. you still have to be able to go out and have those conversations, collect the information, the ideas. It's just, do you have to be the world's greatest writer?

No. We will get to a place where we can take that raw, like a conversation like this, a messy dialogue where there's incomplete thoughts, and maybe we jump around and talk about, a topic at three or four different points in a conversation. the AI platform's ability to be able to collate that and then present it into a consistent, more deterministic framework, is something that is right around the corner, [00:49:00] but, you're not gonna be able to replace, the reporter or that, you know, where, what's the source of the insight, the material that you're working from?

yeah, the AI has got a lot of potential, to be very disruptive in any area where knowledge, words, digits are at the center, even I was talking about this the other day, somebody said, "What about engineering or, like, architectural work?" Maybe for the next five or so years, those jobs are insulated, but I do think that there is a point in time where it's like, "Hey, I wanna, I want to have a 30-story mixed use building in Manhattan.

It needs to be compliant with all the laws and, the permitting requirements and you can describe it and it's probably gonna be able to spit out blueprints." So, anything where there's creative output, whether it's music or, words, PowerPoints, design, it is got tremendous potential to be disrupted.

does that mean it's going to disinterme- mediate humans [00:50:00] completely? I don't think so. But take the legal profession. How many lawyers are we gonna need down the road? You know, there's a million lawyers, one out of every 300 people in the country today are lawyers. will we need as many down the road?

Probably not. What will those lawyers do? probably work, hand in hand with their AI platforms quite a bit, 

[00:50:18] Josh DeTar: so what does that mean for the Vegas billboard, business? there's less

lawyers, 

[00:50:24] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah, that, just means you're gonna see more Donnie and Marie, you know, who, who's playing at the sphere, And who knows? maybe those lawyers will be advertising, ha- have a dispute with your AI platform and AI-related injury, it's gonna be an interesting place of law. On that subject, I need to caution you. I am not a lawyer and I am not offering legal advice. I have had a lot of conversations with, our corporate attorney just as a casual kind of in- area of interest. He sends me a thing the other day, that said, I think this is fascinating, the [00:51:00] conversations you have with an AI platform about legal matters are discoverable.

Two pieces of case law just came out. So if you're running your contract through your AI it's like, "Hey, if, you're guilty of whatever crime, you know, how should you plead if the prosecutors offer you? " Any, whether it's civil, criminal, doesn't matter, it is discoverable.

So just keep that in mind when you're using your AI as you call it, quasi-surrogate legal advisor.

[00:51:26] Josh DeTar: Yeah, you know, this kind of brings full circle to, a conversation somebody brought out And actually it was about Google and this was a, a conversation we had on the podcast before like ChatGPT hit the mainstream for people. And apparently there's a, a book called Nobody Lies to Google. And you'll, you'll like this, it was talking about like when you go into your doctor and your doctor is like, Jeffry, how much coffee do you have a day?"

You're like two cups." And he's "Okay, great. That's within reason." And then you go home and you Google, "Okay, but what if my cups were this big?"

[00:51:59] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah, 

[00:51:59] Josh DeTar: and [00:52:00] what was interesting is that now that's gotten even more intensified and people really talk to AI and they'll then have a longstanding conversation about their medical history with AI that started with I lied to my doctor and I didn't really tell them how much coffee because I didn't want to have that uncomfortable conversation with a human, but I'm totally comfortable having that uncomfortable conversation with an AI."

[00:52:24] Jeffry Pilcher: And back to banking for just a beat here, my dad once said that if I was asking him what a check register was, how checks work and the check register. And he explained it, but he made this very interesting observation about how basically your payments history, today, check register then was an autobiography.

you could go back in time and look at all your payments and you'd figure out where you were, what you were doing. you know, in a manner of speaking, it doesn't matter what you say or think it, or even do. I mean, really, largely what you spend your money on determines a lot of what [00:53:00] you're about and where you're at in life.

that was an interesting observation that stuck with me from whenever that was, I wanna say eight or nine years old. and then, as time goes by and now there are social platforms, whether it's Facebook or Instagram, and then Google, of course, your search history. And now with these AI platforms, take Amazon, what you're looking for and purchasing at Amazon.

you think if you were a detective and needed to solve a crime or figure out what somebody was about, the digital footprint that somebody leaves is pretty significant. And I think that you'd be able to, as the detective, learn or know more about them than maybe they even knew about themselves, right?

You know, like you said, no one lies to Google. The things that, you know, you really get a peek inside somebody's mind. And to me, this ... I don't even think it's possible necessarily, perhaps down the road somehow. There, there's some privacy matters, but the ultimate bank to me would be one that had access to this information.[00:54:00] 

It would know exactly what I needed, how I lived. If it had access to my Google search, my AI, you know, obviously there's a Big Brother creepy mentality there, but I mean, you think about that, start at the very beginning. I don't know how many financial institutions are even exploiting the data they have available to them with the payments history, the autobiography that is being told to them by their customers or members, you know, you, you got a lot of signals there that if you were, in any other vertical, what Amazon would give to have access to your entire payment history or your entire financial life, what they could do if they were to, I would say, monetize, perhaps more accurate to say weaponize, that to get you to what is the next purchase.

But they'd be able to predict with tremendous accuracy, the things that are most likely to interest you and things that you might really appreciate like how on earth would I have ever known that I'd be interested in this thing, you know, just looking at my purchase behaviors, A, B, and C that I need X, [00:55:00] Y, or Z.

But I think for a lot of institutions, there are some pretty bright lines that connect A to Z, that they could be doing a better job of anticipating needs, this predictive personalization, customization of, of the product suite.

they still, to a large degree, treat everyone equally. if you're over the age of 18 and you have a pulse, you need these products and services, they still draw off a lot of demographic data, based on your age, it's presumed that you might, be interested in these things versus, really getting into the data signals that they have, extremely powerful, signals that they can use to improve the experience, improve their cross-selling, improve the stickiness of the products and the services they offer.

I would think that, whether it's Tyfone or others people with these opportunities are going to be helping institutions get to where they need to be with this kind of information.

[00:55:58] Josh DeTar: Yeah, I [00:56:00] argue nobody knows you better than your financial institution, and it's because where and how you spend your money says so incredibly much about But, I'd love to get your take on ... I think one of the challenges that the financial services industry faces too, is let's say that, let's just solve the d- the data problem first, right?

Let's say I've got all of this data and I actually am accessing it well across all these different systems, and I absolutely know more about Jeffry than Jeffry knows about Jeffry, and I know exactly what he needs, but I have the same old boring products mix that I've always had. And so I come to you and I say, "Okay, Jeffry, I know everything about you.

I know everything you need. Here's the same CD that I'm offering everybody else." I think that's gonna be the next big challenge personally that f- community financial institutions need to solve is figuring out what niche products do we offer [00:57:00] so that when I say I know you, I say I've got a specialized product for you, not just the same product, we've got a fee-free checking account.

[00:57:08] Jeffry Pilcher: I have two points of view on that. One is my experience as a branding and marketing, consultant in the financial space. I'd asked banks, credit unions, what makes you different? it's same question from two sides, two perspectives. What makes you different and why do your customers or members choose you?

And invariably, without fail, every institution would tell me with utmost sincerity, what made them special was the fact that they were caring, responsive, and personal, which created an acronym which I said, y- you're saying the exact same crap, caring, responsive, and personal, as every other institution that I've ever asked this question of.

it's undifferentiated. I will offer to you that, one, the institution down the street is no less caring, responsive and personal than you are. They're not ogres. And also, these are table stakes in any service industry. So you're not doing yourselves any favors [00:58:00] by assuming that you're caring, responsible, or responsive and personal service is what differentiates you.

This is what the bare minimum, table stakes are. It's the anti you have to throw in the pot just to play in any service industry. Okay, so why do your customers or members choose you? It's not because you're carrying responsive and personal. By your own admission, they choose you based on rates and fees. And that goes back to my point as the branding consultant. You have done nothing to differentiate yourself. In fact, when you're all selling the same thing, the same way, describing it in using the same language, the only point of differentiation that you've given the user, the consumer is the rate or fee associated with it, and therefore that's how they will choose you.

That is not necessarily the case, and certainly not the case in any other category. I mean, why do people pick Nike? There are cheaper shoes out there, or luxury brands, or people are spending money that on a functional, tactical, practical level, doesn't make any sense for the, the emotional decisions that they make for the brands that they trust or [00:59:00] admire.

you know, you take some brands that are well-liked in the financial industry, USAA comes to mind. They have a niche and they are differentiated. They have one branch. There's a, it's just a different model. But so that's my observation as the brand and consulting person. The other has to do with this, what I would call kind of

It's a weird call to arms. You need a chief innovation officer. Sure. But how are you gonna differentiate? And to me, that's a dangerous role to have. do you really want to have somebody whose job it is to come up with something that's new and different? Because that doesn't necessarily mean good or relevant.

I would just shape or frame that problem. if you do need to differentiate yourself so that you're not trying to differentiate around the same crap as everybody else, where you're only leaving the rates and fees, the guidance or the directive I would issue to my chief innovation officer would be

I might reframe the role this way. I need you to be chief problem finder. the innovation isn't about coming up with new or chasing [01:00:00] the shiny object. It's about solving your audience's pain points, making things easier for them, and that requires knowing them. To your point about whether it's a niche, you may find a niche, you may find a product, you may find a way that you need to present your products, solutions, your online banking experience, your website differently, but this requires engaging with and understanding your audience at a level that I don't think a lot of institutions are familiar with.

you know, how are you going to identify these problems and pain points? I mean, really what I think people want, it's a misunderstanding or a misconception in the financial industry. How do we get our audience to engage with us more? can we get them to like us and engage with us on our social media channels, for instance?

And I think really, if you really understood and respected the audience's perspective, your objective should be, how do I make myself as invisible as possible? The financial institution that will prevail isn't the one that's going to get win on the engagement metric. It's the one that will [01:01:00] remove all the hiccups, save time, get rid of those problems, the speed bumps, the pain points, as much as possible.

people really, at the heart of it, wanna think about banking as little as possible. And if you're the institution that can facilitate that and make banking easy, and save them time and save them headache, you will be their reflexive go-to for all their financial needs. it's kind of a de facto cross-selling strategy.

Very difficult, to ... Simple in, in theory, difficult in application and practice.

[01:01:33] Josh DeTar: my first job in the service industry, Jeffry, was, I worked for Romano's Macaroni Grill, if you remember them. And, I think there's still a few of them around the country, but, I ran their catering, sales and service side, I remember when it was, I want to say it was one of the big New York Times or something, came out with an article that was the unhealthiest restaurants in the country, and the macaroni grill was number one.

[01:01:59] Jeffry Pilcher: Sure.[01:02:00] 

[01:02:00] Josh DeTar: Sure.

[01:02:00] Jeffry Pilcher: the one that made you feel the best.

[01:02:02] Josh DeTar: and so what did corporate decide to do? They wanted to change that image, and the macaroni grill went all healthy,

[01:02:11] Jeffry Pilcher: Ah.

[01:02:11] Josh DeTar: and I quit the next day. 

[01:02:12] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah.

[01:02:14] Josh DeTar: And I said, "This thing's going down in flames." And sure enough, six months later, our restaurant closed. Why? When I was there, I wanna say it was like the pork chop and pasta I think was 3,200 calories

for one entree.

You throw on, some of that, focaccia bread that they brought to the table, a soda or an alcoholic beverage, an appetizer and some of that chocolate cake. Dude, you're walking out of there like 6,000, 7,000 calories deep. I am not going to the macaroni grill to feel good about my healthy life choices.

I'm going there to smash some chocolate cake.

[01:02:52] Jeffry Pilcher: exactly.

[01:02:53] Josh DeTar: they completely gave up on their niche. They didn't talk to their consumers. And they didn't say, "Hey, do you guys give a crap about being healthy or do you want to [01:03:00] come here and go full ham on a pork chop and a slice of cake?"

And people would have told them, "Hey, I may eat healthy six days a week, 28 days a month, whatever it is, but when I come here, that ain't why I'm coming." 

[01:03:13] Jeffry Pilcher: Yeah, absolutely. I can offer your listeners this closing piece of advice, from a marketing and advertising standpoint, and it's that every human being basically makes every decision, whether it's, a personal, professional, or purchase choice, for two reasons.

One is emotional and the other is rational or logical. it is important to understand though for as much as we like to think of ourselves as these spock-like logical, rational beings, we do not make decisions with that criteria basically ever. What we do is make emotional decisions first, and then back up those decisions with the logic or rationale.

We wanna make a decision that [01:04:00] feels good first, and then the logical rationale is used to substantiate or provide support for a decision that we've already made. there was a Porsche, ad for Porsche that I think illustrates this so beautifully. It was, leaning into the, hyper educated, world that Porsche buyers are, it was playing off of Freud's model of id and ego, and on one side of the ad, it said

I think it was, Ed that said, I want it. " It just said that 12 times. And then the ego says, " After careful consideration, I concur." And that's exactly the decision making process. So yes, people aren't going there, you know, aren't to the Macaroni Grill or to The Financial Brand forum for that matter, with this set of logical criteria.

sure, there is that supporting their decision to go, but, ultimately it's about, how does the experience, how does it make me feel? what are the emotional benefits? To me, I'm not saying that, I've got this, it's not an emotional support conference, but really it's questions [01:05:00] that resonate more on an emotional level, which are, how am I going to accelerate my career so that I can, get a promotion, be acknowledged and be respected and the, remunerated compensation that comes with that, so I can take better care of my family.

I think those are the kinds of, you know, ostensibly, it comes across as, I'm here looking for solutions and ideas that will accelerate, accelerate the growth trajectory of the institution I work But, I think that's where a lot of marketers misplay. They talk about the features, the attributes of the item itself, you know, Volvo.

I mean, sure, it's got anti-lock brakes and all this ... People buy Volvos because it's gonna keep their family safe. And then, you know, sure, they can list all the features that come with it, but, I think that, for banks what they have is access anywhere checking with, 24,000 fee-free ATMs, but to be able to decipher this back to the emotional level, what is it that people are really trying to [01:06:00] accomplish?

What are their deep concerns? And then back to the time and simplicity, respect the consumers, you know how do I honor your emotional drivers while respecting your disinterest in what I have to offer you?

[01:06:12] Josh DeTar: Yeah.

[01:06:13] Jeffry Pilcher: it's an interesting space to be in.

[01:06:15] Josh DeTar: Yeah. But I think that's what, for folks like us, that's what makes it fun is it's a creative game to solve and

[01:06:23] Jeffry Pilcher: The multi-variate calculus.

[01:06:24] Josh DeTar: but I tell you what, man, I'm so thankful to have had you finally as a guest on the podcast. I just can't tell you how much I appreciate the incredible wealth of content that you guys put out.

but, before I let you go, I gotta ask you the same two questions and, the first is, so where do you go to get information about what's happening in an industry, sir?

[01:06:44] Jeffry Pilcher: I actually don't have to go much further than my inbox. People like to pitch us a lot of stuff, and we're often on that, embargoed leading edge of what's happening. it's also really interesting. I think one of the problems in the industry is that banks and credit unions don't like to listen to the solutions providers because they assume [01:07:00] that everything that comes out of their mouth is a bitch.

My experience has been that rather than talking to one bank, if you're a bank, you talk to another financial institution, that's a focus group of one. When you're talking to the suppliers and solutions providers out there, they're interacting with at least dozens, if not hundreds and sometimes thousands, and their ability to recognize patterns, spot trends, it's much more

I mean, sure, there's that qualitative element to it, but it's, it's, you know, there's quantitative, support to the observations that they have. you know, if you're a $10 billion bank, you could talk to a $1 billion credit union, and there may or may not be some ideas that transfer based on scale and audience, geographical or whatever.

But when you're somebody like Tyfone dealing with hundreds of institutions and listening to their problems and challenges, there are things that can apply universally, to the entire audience. So I do think that, you know, if I was in a financial institution's shoes, I would [01:08:00] be testing all my suppliers, solutions, providers, partners, whatever you wanna, depending on the nature of the relationship, I'd be challenging them every time, "Hey, tell me what's new.

What are you seeing out there?" because, you know, you guys are on the front lines and are interacting with, you don't have to name names, but, you know, tell me what you're seeing or what the problems are, what the solutions have been, or, you know, what, what are the trends with

So that, I fortunately get a lot of this sitting on the front lines here at The Financial Brand, but, yeah. And what

[01:08:29] Josh DeTar: we just have to go to The Financial Brand and read it there.

[01:08:32] Jeffry Pilcher: we do a good job obsessing through what's new and interesting versus what is actually going to have a practical translate to have some impact on your strategic plan.

Our litmus is always, the question, what are we asking the audience to do, not do or do differently? And if there aren't any answers to that question, then it's just information and we're just sharing. I'm not sure what the value of that for the audience is. banks and credit unions are looking for strategic clarity, things that are gonna accelerate their growth trajectory.

So we do a, I think a pretty good job of [01:09:00] trying to, do more than just, report the news, be a journal of record. We try to provide that analysis and insight that, you know, tell me what I'm supposed to do with what you're sharing. Yeah, sussing through the things that were submitted, yes, you're right.

It's new and interesting. How about you call me in nine months with some results and then we'll be in a better position to tell the audience what this might actually mean to them versus, "Hey, here's a new idea. you wanna try it. We don't know if it

[01:09:27] Josh DeTar: it important.

... 

[01:09:28] Josh DeTar: I appreciate the great work you guys do with that. If people want to connect with you, or if they want to get information from The Financial Brand or learn more about your conference, where and how can they do that 

[01:09:39] Jeffry Pilcher: I, I enjoy the kinesthetic experience of ... There's so much of what we do is digital. and there's so few opportunities, I think, these days in this constructed artificial digital world to interact in person. I would prefer to chop it up with somebody live in person, either on the phone, but also at the conference, that's, you know, there's no substitute for face- face-to-face [01:10:00] time.

it's really one of the most enjoyable things in my career to be able to meet the people that, support The Financial Brand, our fans, avid readers, of The Financial Brand and interact with them, o- on this, call it emotional level. it's not that transactional kind of a way to publish and interview.

when you get to see people's body language and respond to them in person, it's a different feeling. obviously LinkedIn as well. I've been on LinkedIn since the dawn of LinkedIn, but I am active in there and, anybody who wants to connect with me, I'm very f-

you up with my email address and mobile number right from LinkedIn. that's, Jeffry Pilcher, the username, Jeffry Pilcher, J-E-F-F-R-Y P-I-L-C-H-E-R.

[01:10:42] Josh DeTar: Awesome. we'll make sure we have links to that and everything Jeffry, thank you so much, man. I know you wanna just go back behind the curtain now and I'll let you do that, but I appreciate you coming out and joining us mere mortals and gracing us with your insights.

Seriously, man, you're an absolute, blessing to this industry. I don't know another [01:11:00] way to say it. I mean, you guys do a phenomenal job of curating information 

[01:11:04] Jeffry Pilcher: I appreciate it. 

[01:11:05] Josh DeTar: making it in a way that's relevant and actually adds value. I won't be shy about, you're one of the first things that I read in the morning, 

[01:11:12] Jeffry Pilcher: I appreciate 

that. Our relationship and conversations go way back, Josh, and the Feelings Mutual. I very much respect and appreciate the perspective and, the generosity that you have to offer your audience and your people.

[01:11:26] Josh DeTar: I appreciate it. trying to do what we can, right? but thank you again for coming to being a guest on the Digital Banking Podcast.

[01:11:32] Jeffry Pilcher: been my pleasure.

[01:11:33] Josh DeTar: All 

[01:11:33] Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to the Digital Banking Podcast, powered by Tyfone. Find more episodes on digital banking podcast.com or subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.