Erica Petersen: Bank Vice President with Business Insight

 Erica Petersen Bank Vice President

SPEAKERS

Brandy Von Holten, Erica Petersen, transcribed by Rhiannon Niemeier

Brandy Von Holten  00:11

It is my pleasure to introduce Erica Petersen. She is one of the Vice Presidents at Central Bank in Sedalia, Missouri. She is also the Business Development Coordinator and the Marketing Director. I had the pleasure of meeting Erica when I was a presenter at a 1 Million Cups monthly meeting. Erica is under 40 but already has 20 years of experience in banking. Join us as she shares banking advice and services for businesses, young adults, and the average Joe. Banking is changing. Erika explains innovative ways in which a bank can help your business and steer clear of pitfalls. I hope you learn just as much as I did in her interview. Welcome back to Big Boss Mare. This is Brandy Von Holten, and today I'll be interviewing Erica Peterson. Okay, so Erica works at a bank. What bank do you work at? [Erica: I work at Central Bank.]  Central Bank, and then where all will you find central bank at?

01:17

We actually have locations all over Missouri, which is our main hub. Our main branch is located in Jefferson City, but we have banks in Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Colorado at this point.

Brandy Von Holten  01:31

How many are in Missouri?

01:36

Oh my gosh, several. We have locations in Kansas City, they just purchased some additional banks up there in Platte Valley and Liberty. So, kind of that metro area up there. We have locations in St. Louis. Jeff City, Columbia, Springfield, Branson. Craig, lots of places.

Brandy Von Holten  01:58

You guys sound like Subway, you are everywhere. So, this is Big Boss Mare and we're always talking about female leaders. You are the Vice President at your branch? [Erica: Correct. I'm one of the Vice Presidents. ] One of the Vice Presidents. You also have two other job titles besides wife and mother. Before we get into your work, you have been married for how long? [Erica: 16 years.] Okay. 16 years. And then you have not one, not two, but three babies.

02:30

Three babies.

Brandy Von Holten  02:32

 How old are your babies?

02:34

Our oldest son is 14. Our daughter is 11. And then our youngest son is seven.

Brandy Von Holten  02:39

So she is a wife. She's a mama. She's a vice president. This is a pretty cool interview for all of our ladies out there that are wanting to be professional businesswomen. You’re one of the Vice Presidents you're also the Business Development Coordinator, and you're the Marketing Director. Let's go into some of the things that you do for each of these before we get into tips and advice for our listeners out there. So, Business Development Coordinator, what is a BDC? Okay, it doesn't go by BDC. But the Business Development Coordinator, what does that do?

03:26

I was initially hired to work with our business customers at the bank, to inform them about the products and services that we offer to make them more efficient, and to help them earn additional money and/or save money by the different products that we have at the bank.

Brandy Von Holten  03:43

Okay, so this right here is where I met you. You and one of the loan officers took us out to eat lunch and were like, “How can we give you some money?” You wanted to give us a loan or see what all we have going on. Is that what you typically do, is you'll just get down and get to know the person so then you can assess their needs, build trust?

04:19

Correct. So banking is not what banking used to be. I've been in banking almost 20 years. When I first started in banking, we only had ATM cards. You came into the bank, and you opened a checking account, you still ordered checks, and you got an ATM card. You could only use it at the ATM to get money out. It wasn't what our debit card is today. It wasn't too long after that, however, that we kind of converged into this the debit card world that we're in now.

Brandy Von Holten  04:52

Okay. So back in the day with an ATM, I don't think I've even pulled cash out of an ATM, I haven't done that in a while. Tell us some of the small businesses and a large business that you have done your business development coordination for.

05:19

 I'm going to revert back just a second to when I first started, banking was very different than it is today. So, you had a loan at a bank, and you had a checking account in a bank, and that was it. That was your whole relationship. Now, it's completely different. My job as Business Development Coordinator is to say, hey, we have a lot of other products that you probably wouldn't have thought of a bank offering, because a lot of these products didn't exist 20 years ago via your bank. For instance, Merchant Services, which is one of the things that we offer at the bank, allows a business to accept credit card payments. Not every bank has the ability to offer that program. Some banks do offer it, but they don't do it internally. We're very lucky to have our own department where we can process credit card transactions through the bank, instead of going through someone else,

Brandy Von Holten  06:12

Right, because a lot of people use square, or they'll use PayPal, I think PayPal is able to take credit card, and now there's Venmo,

06:21

There are a lot of different avenues. The thing that we try to say is, I am the kind of person that if it's not something I believe in, if it's not something that I think would benefit you. I'm not going to talk to you about it, I don't want to just sell something to sell something, that's just not who I am.

Brandy Von Holten  06:36

It seems so foreign to think about your bank being able to process your credit cards. Now that's kind of cool. Right now, if we have issues with someone, whenever I get on that 1-800 number to call, I might not understand them.

06:52

That's what we try to focus on is our customer service. I'll be the first one to tell people we have people call in and say, “Hey, I have this, or I have that. What do you think?” To me, the thing that's the most important to me, is to be honest with that customer. If I think I can save the money, then by all means, I'll say, “Hey, come on over, we'll do what we can.” If not, I also am very comfortable and confident in saying what you're doing is great, and where you want to go is great. It may just not be with us. But I think that's the thing that makes our small hometown bank so different and so special, is that you're still a person. You still have a person that, just like you, said, when you have a problem, you don't call somebody you call me. That's what makes the difference.

Brandy Von Holten  07:34

I know that being able to get help. I mean, I've needed some help before. It was online. If you've ever tried to get help from Facebook help, or Google help, it’s really hard to get where you can talk to someone in anything in the virtual world and taking credit cards. It's awful. I hate it because I get pretty tapped out pretty quickly on my technology skills. I think that's like the nicest way to say that. It's nice that you can call and be like, “Okay, help me with this.” Or if you have fraud, you have to get that washed immediately. It seems like sometimes it takes longer than what it needs to. As soon as I know that we have a problem, we need it to be squashed. It’s nice to deal with a bank that you know, and then you can call on the person because you know them by name to be able to fix your stuff. So, Business Development Coordination, you're basically casting a net out there to see what these businesses are doing and what their needs are, and if you have something that can help them better their business.

08:47

Just like when we went to lunch, that's all part of the process, if you will. It's really easy to go online, and I could pull up your website and say, oh, yeah, Brandy and David, there are on a horse ranch. I bet they'll need this. But it didn't take us very long into our conversation at lunch to figure out hey, there's more to just Brandy and David's ranch than riding a horse around the ranch every day. You have your books, and you have all the different things that you do out here. That's why sitting down and actually having a conversation with someone is so vital to what we can offer in the whole process. Overall, you really develop a relationship, they're not just another person, you know a lot about them.

Brandy Von Holten  09:25

Every time we get interviewed, like we just got interviewed for The Heartbeat with FCS Financial. It’s ironic because they're also a lender. You guys were the ones that were like, hey, they have a better interest rate for our largest loan, which is our mortgage. Even your loan officer was like, hey, I think the rates have dropped so you should have them refinance. Now, we're giving you more of our smaller loans and we also have an account with you. It takes a little bit of time because I know we have trust issues, it's a little bit weird for us. We're out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a lot of trust between a businessperson and a banking agency, because they know all of your stuff. They know if you have a hot check, they know what you spend your money on, they could look that up. You really have to trust the person that you're getting your banking services from. We actually do business with three banks. We like not to have everything at one. I don't know if banks really like to do that, but we have to feel secure and that helps us. What we have with you is we have a loan for a stock trailer, and we also have the loan for my husband shop. You got a little bit bigger. Anyways, this Business Development Coordinator, it sounds like you are having to hunt down and try to get to know and learn these businesses. For us, everybody thinks, oh, they ride horses, and they run, and the mane is flowing everywhere. In all actuality, I ride horses a lot less now than what we did before we had this business. My husband and I are actually about to embark upon online classes. I have a goal setting sisterhood, it's actually called Big Boss Mare, it’s private. Starting off I have where people have to pay in full. That's because I'm not ready to go to a monthly payment because that's going to be job intense, and credit cards, and debit cards, somebody's card will expire. It's just a big headache, it's a lot easier to pay in full right now until it grows. Of our three online businesses, the goal setting sisterhood, I'm going to do 100 days of people watching me set goals, and then they're invited to do that. Then the next one is novice, adult horsemanship lessons, and also youth will be invited into that. I'm trying to get the adults that never did get to go to horse camp, then my husband's wanting to do a much larger one called Building with David. For you as a banking officer, a lot of times people would take a snapshot and be like, “Oh, they ride horses, and people come and camp.” Here we are with like, oh no, we have these elaborate three businesses that we're wanting to start online, and we're going to have a need for processing a larger quantity of cards than what we already do. You wouldn't have ever known that if we weren't here doing a podcast. We also had lunch, and you learned about the books and the planners and the wedding barn. It's really nice to have a relationship with your bank, and it's nice that they have a Business Development Coordinator because you wouldn't ever know to ask those questions.

13:51

Ithink that's one of the most important pieces that I try to tell everyone that I know, is in the world we're in, everything is more virtual. Obviously more so this year than we've ever seen before. It's so easy to go online and get for instance, a mortgage. You see all those ads all the time, go online, get a mortgage, it's easy. That's true, but there's something to be said about that relationship. If something happens, if you need something or you want to change something, who are you going to call, who you're going to ask questions to? If you have a mortgage with a bank, you have a person you can go in and talk to about it, but especially someone like you in your situation, say you had a mortgage and you had a farm. You already have and “in” so to speak, you already know a person at the bank and that person can lead you to other people and really continue to grow that relationship. Now does everybody have the same situation as you, no. But there's always an opportunity to grow that relationship and I feel like this virtual world we're in, we're missing out on so much of that relationship building. I would much rather come and talk to somebody in person than send an email. I don't like sending an email. I would much rather call and have a conversation or come talk to you face to face. Again, I think that's something that's been lost a little bit, but still very important in the banking world.

Brandy Von Holten  15:05

So much gets lost. I've had some people get 10 shades of ticked off at me, it's something that I typed, because they put the wrong emotion with it. So much is lost whenever it's written or it's typed, because a lot of times whenever you type an email, it's in bullet form, which seems choppy. Choppy seems mad. It’s not even like that. It is nice to have that one-on-one relationship, with our things that we're trying to do virtually. Our end goal is that people will also come here, so they'll have not only have the relationship with us in person, but then it's like extended and have this deeper relationship continually seeing us online. I'm a people person, I hate our downtime. I know I have to recharge and everything, but I'm just so used to being around people. Hearing your job, you sound like a banking beautician. My beautician knows so much dirt on me. If anybody ever wants to find out dirt about Brandy, go get your hair done. You'd be really nice to my beautician, but she wouldn't tell you anything. You just trust them so much. The next thing that you do, is you're a Marketing Director.

16:33

I feel like there's two parts to marketing. There's the traditional piece of marketing that we know, which is radio ads, and TV and that kind of thing. But there's another piece of marketing actually really folds into the business development side, which is telling people about who we are and what we do. It's going out to events and meeting new businesses in the area, being involved with the Chamber of Commerce, for instance, and really putting our brand out there. This is who we are, and this is what we can do. The banking world is very competitive.

Brandy Von Holten  17:05

Everything is competitive. Some people play nice, some people act like they play nice, and then some people just play dirty.

17:15

 It's hard to navigate those waters, so to speak. But again, that brings me back to that same comment of, it's important to have a good relationship. Go have a conversation with somebody and you can learn a lot about them in just a conversation as to what they can do, what they can offer, but really what kind of person they are and how they can really help you either grow or not.

Brandy Von Holten  17:33

Speaking of getting out into the community, there's a TV show called The Voice. We had 2019s third place finisher, Dexter Roberts out here, and we had so many different things going on. We had a corndog stand called Dick's Corn Dogs and he's number one in freshness. They're a nice family. Phenomenal corndogs. When we have them out again, you better come on with it because I ate two and I gave one of them to my dog, so I actually bought three. But we had them out, we had a decorate-your-campsite, we had a costume contest, we had trick or treating. I think you had three other people with you come out all dressed up and handed out candy, and that goes with you being involved in the community. One of your people, her name is Cameron, Cameron brought her a-game on her costume. If we would have had one more trophy, she would have gotten that trophy. I think she ended up fourth and we had we had trophies for the top three, but I know she's put some hours into that costume. I don't know what it really was. It was like a bustier with some like 1800 shirt and a beak thing. I don't know what it was, but it was really cool.

18:59

Yeah, it was. She's very, very talented. She has a degree in graphic design, so she's very artsy and very good at doing that kind of stuff.

Brandy Von Holten  19:08

Our job is feast or famine. We either have money, or we have no money. Nothing in the middle. Nothing is ever normal. But I can ask her a question, and she’s like, “Is that Brandy?” And I'm like, yeah, and then she can be like, okay, let me look this up for you. I have to pay ahead. If I didn't, then I would get behind, which that sounds really stupid to say, but I think a lot of people in construction and farming understand. It's like, you don’t have any money, and then you have all the money in the world, and then you blink and then you have no money again. So, she has a graphic design degree, do you have a college degree?

19:51

I do. I actually I went to State Fair originally, so I have an Associate of Arts degree from State Fair Community College. Then I transferred to what was Central Missouri State University, which is now the University of Central Missouri.

Brandy Von Holten  20:03

You're showing your age because the college changed its name. It changed its name the semester before I graduated. So I have UCM instead of CMSU, but only by one semester.

20:16

Well, Jonathan graduated in the midst of the change, [Jonathan's the husband's isn't he?] Yeah. So he actually got two degrees in the mail, one that said Central Missouri State University and one that said the University of Central Missouri, both the same degree, but they sent him two certificates, which I thought was very interesting.

Brandy Von Holten  20:31

Okay, so it must have happened this semester before me right there. Wow, that's kind of neat. [Erica: Small world.] Yeah, I get that. I went to UCM. My first two degrees came from Arkansas, and then my master's came from University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg.

20:51

So a Bachelor of Finance degree from the University of Central Missouri.

Brandy Von Holten  20:56

So you are actually using your degree.

21:02

I am!

Brandy Von Holten:

A lot of people don’t do that.

21:05

No to back squirrel on you a little bit, when I was younger, my first job was at McDonald's, which was great. I would recommend anybody getting a job where they have to deal with the public because it's a life lesson in itself every single day.

Brandy Von Holten  21:18

I worked at McDonald's too, in the drive thru,

21:22

It was great. I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I don't

Brandy Von Holten  21:25

I don't know about great. I mean, it was fun. It was fast paced. At the time in my life. I was okay with it. I was just happy to have a job. So, I guess it was great.

21:34

For a 16-year-old kid with no experience, it was a good experience. Originally, I was going to school to be an educator. After the first time I actually worked in a classroom, I cried for days because of this experience I had with a little person. I thought I can't do that. I can't bring my work home with me like this every day. I was really trying to figure out what I wanted to do. A lady from my church said, hey, I work at this bank in Sedalia, we have an opening. Why don't you come apply? And I did, and that was kind of the beginning of the end, if you will. I love to talk to people, I love working with people, and that really was just the door that opened to lead me into the finance world.

Brandy Von Holten  22:20

I actually used to work in banking. Whenever I was getting my second college degree, I was a bank teller. Transitioning from Arkansas to Missouri, I had gotten a job as a personal banker. So, I did small loans. I did second mortgages, I had to deal with non-sufficient funds. Oh, they made me tell everybody, “I'm sorry, your money got deposited the next day, and you've got $400 worth of overdraft fees.” Yeah, I hate that. I hate that. I'll tell you a couple of my experiences was the person that was my branch manager, whenever I first moved to Missouri and got a job in banking, I’m pretty sure she got her GED. I know that she didn't finish high school in the normal sense. I think she got her GED, then she did not go to college, but she had so much work experience, which you can't replace that. But, she would not hire someone unless they had at least a four year degree. So it didn't matter what it was in, you had to have a four year degree. I was like, okay, that's like the pot calling the kettle black. I'm like, okay, I get you. And then with the southern draw, I had to tell people I'm so sorry, and try to help them not have that happen again. I made a mistake one time. There’s a difference between a money order and a certified check on the amount of money that they can send. Well, I think one of them taps out at like $500 or something, I don't know. Well, I didn't mean to and had this person had to go out of state to get a vehicle and it was several $1,000. Well, I put it on the wrong piece of paper. So, the bank had to pay for the person to stay the night and then we had to overnight them a check that was printed on the right paper. Oh, I got into so much trouble. I got wrote up for that. There were two pieces of paper and I grabbed the wrong one and printed it on it. I made some mistakes in banking. I was really good at customer service, getting all of the pieces of paper for the loans and helping loans go through, and I'm okay with not sugarcoating anything and trying to help them. I don't know how many loans that your bank goes through, but I know that I was kind of tapped out around 12 that I could handle. All the little pieces of paper that were coming in that I was needing from each person, and every couple of minutes, somebody walks in, and they need to ask you a question, and you have to have it right there for them. You can't be like, “Hold on, let me look.” There's just a lot more going on than what people realize. So, you have three jobs: Vice President, Business Development Coordinator, and Marketing Director. Both the Business Development Coordinator and the Marketing Director, I could see how they had to give that to the same person. One of them, you're going out and meeting people and seeing what their needs are. Then the Marketing Director gives you the opportunity to do some stuff in the community. For example, you came and passed out candy for us for Halloween. Well, then you got to see our business, what it is, and find out what our needs were. So, the Marketing Director job is going to help you with the Business Development Coordinator jobs. I can see how like those needed to go to the same person. Now, is there anything another job descriptor, or what you need to do that's just in the Vice President?

26:31

No, that's just a title if you will. So, a lot of different people have a lot of different titles. So that was just a title that I was given, which is really cool.

Brandy Von Holten  26:41

 So you're 30 years old, and you are Vice President, well you always say a vice president, one of the Vice Presidents. I always just thought there's one President, one Vice President, but then I could see that they have them because you're assisting the President. I understand that there's a whole bunch of different webs, and there's things that one person is going to be good at, that another person's going to be horrible at. I could understand why there's multiple Vice Presidents going on there. Let's get into business talk. What is something that you have seen more than once of a pitfall of someone wanting to do business? We're needing insight, rip the band ai off, and tell the people something that you would advise a business to do.

27:41

From the very beginning, I think it's very important, and you learn about all this stuff in school, and you don't think it's important, but make a business plan. Have somebody that you can sit down with you. At State Fair Community College, they have a person that specializes in helping first time business owners.

Brandy Von Holten  28:01

You almost said homeowner.

28:02

I almost did say homeowner. First time business owners, they have a whole division of people to help you come in and make a business plan together. What's it going to take? How much working capital are you going to need? Who are you going to sell or service with your plan? Is it really viable? I think it's important to have that kind of discussion in anything that you're doing to make sure your plan is going to come together. There are so many pieces of that. There's the marketing, there's the funding, there's actually putting it into motion. I think it's important, even if you don't do it to that level, I think it's still important to sit down and make a plan, just like you do with your books. You didn't just say, “Oh, I'm going to just write a book and publish it. You had a plan, where do you want it to go? How do you want to market it? What's your end goal? I think all those steps are important to think about, no matter what your business is doing.

Brandy Von Holten  28:51

We have different parts of our business. One of the main things that we had issues with was not having clarity, and I'm still trying. It's easier to give birth and raise the dead, and nothing that we had was dead, but I had muddled it up. What I'm talking about is we have three businesses: Von Holten Ranch, the wedding and event venue, and then Brandy Von Holten. Each one of those needed a Facebook page. Each one of those needed an Instagram page. One of those needed a Twitter page, two of those three things needed a Pinterest page. We needed a couple of different websites to be able to get people to specific spots of our website, because people that are coming to us for our wedding venue don't need to know about mounted archery. People that are coming to me to get motivated and to stay motivated. don't need to know that chairs are included for a wedding. The marketing side, we most definitely needed help with. I wish that we would have had a little bit more clear business plan. We knew what our goals were, and then we worked backwards from there. Now that I see all of the opportunities there are to help small businesses, it's nice now with going into our future businesses because it just gets so much clearer. You don't have those moments where you feel like you just work, work, work. If you had to write down three things that you did, you really couldn't, but you worked. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about where you work for like 810 hours straight, and it feels like you didn't really get anything done. That's that same feeling that I have without having a business plan for something. I feel like I'm working myself in the ground, but not really moving or going forward. That's one big pitfall. Something that I see in that in my horse world and our agriculture world, is people want to call themselves something like blah, blah, blah horseshoeing, or some horsemanship, and they didn't even do a fictitious name filing. People were trying to write them checks, and then they're like, hold on, write the check to my name, you know what I mean? They get that all muddled up, instead of doing a fictitious name filing. I have a lot of friends that aren’t an LLC. Take a moment, can you explain an LLC in a very, you're not getting legal advice from us kind of definition?

31:53

So LLC is limited liability company. It is just what it says it is. If you have any issue arise and somebody sue’s you, they're suing the limited liability company, your assets are left normally unharmed in that process. I would encourage anybody to consult with an attorney and really dig into what that means. We have a lot of companies that have multiple LLCs, so they'll have the Peterson Properties, LLC, which will own their building, and then the business that they run is Peterson Enterprises LLC. So even those two entities are different. They do that for a reason. One for the tax advantages that can come with having those two things separate, From a liability standpoint, it's important to have those things segregated. Some people do a DBA, and there's nothing wrong with that, having that extra layer.

Brandy Von Holten  32:47

DBA, doing business. That's the people that spend less than $10 to have a fictitious name filing and then you can accept a check written into a different name other than yours. [Erica: Correct.] You can be Brandy Horseshoeing, or Beautiful Horseshoeing, or whatever. I'm not ever going to shoe a horse by the way, it'd be something I do not go into. That's hard work. So, recap for me, you said that people need to have a business plan, maybe talk to an attorney about being LLC, my advice is get your name, right. Don't be skirting around that. If you're going to say that you're a professional and you're a business, then be a professional. I think it costs like $8 to do a fictitious name filing.

33:36

It's not that much more do an LLC, though either.

Brandy Von Holten  33:40

The lawyers will hand you a stack a piece of paper, and they'll show you where to sign, and they have lawyered it up. If something happened, then I don't lose my house, and I don't lose my car. It’s a business.

33:56

The other thing I would suggest is to find an accountant. Interview some people, go meet with some people, we have a lot of amazing accountants just in our area. Find one that you're comfortable. A person that I know started a business and that's exactly what they did. They went around and just met with different accountants until they felt comfortable with the advice that they were given. Again, I think that's important. These people are going to be filing your taxes and helping you do things. You want to make sure that they're going to do things right.

Brandy Von Holten  34:25

We have a professional accountant, and the expense that they cost us is not very much, and then it's done. I'm able to write that expense as a business expense because it is a business expense. So I don't know why you would go through the headache. Also, you could mess yourself up. A little bit too much oversharing a long time ago, well not that long ago. I mean, David and I've only been married for like 15 years right now. The IRS said that we were hobby farmers because we both had full time jobs, so how can we also be a full-time cattle farmer. We're like, we don't we don't have kids, this is what we do, we just work. What do you do for fun? Oh, we work. Anyways, so they didn't let us use our expenses from the cattle farm because we were hobby farmers. It wasn't that much money, but then they charged us fines for not having paid that, then it turned into five digits. We had to get a loan to pay that off. We learned our lesson really quick that you need to have an accountant. We have two lawyers; we have one that is through Legal Shield. Legal Shield cost me $29.90 a month and then I can just call and ask questions. That's just nice to be able to find out something quick. Then we have our main lawyer, that's whenever big stuff has to happen, like the LLC, or if we have to send a cease and desist or if something major comes up, we have that lawyer. My small lawyer needs, that’s when I use Legal Shield. They look over documents, they helped me with trademarking because I messed up both of them and had to get them fixed. It's just nice to be able to consult with a lawyer. We're not over here doing that stuff ourselves. Like with our accounting, we add everything up, and we categorize everything, but then they do the final stuff. Is there any advice, just for women? Is there anything in banking, are there any kind of loans or anything that you can think of that? Because being a female is a minority.

36:58

I was just going to say we have a lot of businesses that are female owned business, because there are a lot of advantages to females who own companies, what all those advantages are, I don't know. But I do know that there are a lot of different opportunities for women who own their own business, simply because they’re women who own their own business. But again, have somebody that can help you with that information, really dig into that and make the most out of what you're doing. All these programs are available, you just have to figure out which one fits you the best.

Brandy Von Holten  37:28

Let's talk about young people and checking, or their banking needs. What is something, if you could talk to your 10 year old self or your 12 or 14 year old self, what is something that you could advise for children? A lot of times kids get money is presents. What the heck should they do with that money.

37:54

So something that we've really seen a big shift in, in banking, especially in the time that I've been in here, are a lot of people don't save like they used to. We don't see nearly as many savings accounts. When people come to the bank, they used to open a checking account and a savings account, that was a standard. I need to open two accounts, you know, and now we open a checking account, we don't do very many savings accounts, well we don't do as many as we used to do. When you think of CDs, certificates of deposit, that used to be the huge thing, people would come in and get a CD. They'd have their savings account, and they'd have a CD. We have different instruments now, but it's just not the same.

Brandy Von Holten  38:38

Are you saying maybe young people need to set up a savings account?

38:43

Yes, I think that's a really good first step. What we've done with our kids, and I'm not saying what we've done is the only way to do it, or the best way to do it. But we did a little bit of the Dave Ramsey philosophy at the Peterson house, which is our kids have envelopes. They have a save, spend, and a donate. Anytime they get money, they make the decision of what they need to put in each envelope, but we encourage them to put a large portion into the safe pile, because again, you never know what's going to happen. I always joke every time we put money in savings, I'm like, “Yes, we finally have some!’’ Then something happens and you feel like you're going backwards. Really, you're not. The point of having a savings account is in case something happens, you have the money to keep yourself afloat, so to speak.

Brandy Von Holten  39:26

 Dave Ramsey has helped my husband and I. Dave Ramsey is a book author, and he also has, I think, a podcast. It is some of the most simplistic stuff at the beginning, such as don't buy anything new, work a lot, don't spend money at all.

39:49

It's very simple stuff, and I have to credit my husband because he's the one that really got involved in all that because I'm a spender. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t have a dime to our name and I would spend, spend, spend. That's just who I am, I don't know why, it's crazy.

Brandy Von Holten  40:02

But a lot of my friends are spenders. I'm like the anti-spender. I'm all like, “I spent $14 on something weeks ago on something. I will wear something until it's dead and then keep wearing it.

40:16

Right. I think that's something that's very important. Our son adopted a child in Africa that we send money to each month, that was something that was very near and dear to him. With that, each year, they send us a brochure at Christmas time it's Christmas asking if you want to give them anything extra. Each year that magazine comes, and it's up to our kids. They go through the magazine, and they decide what they want to send and what they want to do. This year, they bought a family a goat and two ducks. They spent $100 of their own money to send a goat and two ducks. In the grand scheme of things is that much, no, but it's a great lesson that it's teaching, which is giving to others and saving your money. They still have some money to spend on themselves. Absolutely, but there's still a lesson in saving and giving.

Brandy Von Holten  41:09

I'm very involved with interns around here, and we have high school students that work for us. I show them how I pay bills. I actually have everything in Excel and whenever it gets paid, it's highlighted. I really like the highlight, because some things, I have two months out, some things I have four months out, meaning that it's paid in advance because of our whole feast/famine thing going on. They will tell me they don't know anybody that pays bills like that. If they work for me during the winter, I'll have them write checks, and a lot of them don't know how to write checks. They don't know how to fill out an envelope. A lot of people need to get a little bit busier with having their kids deal with money. I've been around other kids before where they wanted something. And they were like, just put it on that card, and they thought then you don't have to pay for it. I'm like, no, no, no, that pulls out of money that you have so you're not having to carry all that money around. Or it's like a loan and they charge you interest. I've been around kids that didn't understand interest at all. They are credit cards; they think of it as  free money.

42:26

The bank I worked at before, we actually had the opportunity to go into the school there and we did a class for the younger kids. It was a fourth-grade class, but then we also were able to go into the high school and talk to the personal finance class. For any of you listening, if you have opportunity to call your local bank and have them come and talk to your personal finance class, do that, because they are doing a great job. I'm so glad that they changed the requirements to require children to have a personal finance class in high school. I think it is 100% necessary, but I also think it's good to have somebody from a bank come in. Some of the kids don't have the best example at home, or they don't know. That's okay. We're a community, we're supposed to be doing this together, we're supposed to be helping each other together. So, use the resources you have. Let people come in as a guest speaker, and just let them ask silly questions. Maybe they don't know what a credit report is. I didn't know what interest on a loan was when I was 16 years old. I had no idea because I never had to have a loan before.

Brandy Von Holten  43:29

Oh, a lot of people don't understand credit scores. I don't know what the lowest score is probably a zero,

43:36

I think it's 350 to 850.

Brandy Von Holten  43:39

We have a soft credit report done every month. We have one credit card, it's a discover credit card. We don't want to have to tie up money on a on a banking card. A lot of times they'll hold more than what the thing was, and it's on there for 10 days. It can mess you up. So, we use a credit card for that. But they do like a soft score. It has like a kind of like a fuel tank, and at the top of it is 850. Kids aren't going to know that 850 is the highest credit score that you can have. Do you know what the lowest number is to still be able to get a good loan?

44:26

Right now, I think 640 is the lowest to get a mortgage. What I think is important to understand is that's going to come with some other hooks, if you will. The rate that you get when you have a 640 credit score is a lot different than the rate you're going to get as an 840 credit score. You're going to pay for that lower rate, you're going to pay an extra percentage, you're going to pay extra fees, you're going to be considered more high risk. You can still get a loan, but it's not going to be as easy as a person who's got a better credit score. What I think is important to remember too is, when I was doing loans, I'd pull somebody's credit report and they'd have a $70 charge from Verizon. Well, have you paid that? No, because I didn't agree with the bill. Well, it doesn't really matter at that point, fight it, or pay it. Those things affect you tremendously, so be responsible in what you're doing. Maybe something I shouldn't say, but some of those payday places can get you in trouble in a hurry. Again, that goes back to have a relationship with a banker if you really do find yourself in trouble. It's going to happen, that’s life.

Brandy Von Holten  45:34

We had to go to the bank and be like, “Hey, we owe the IRS some money.” We had to have a relationship with our bank. Then the payday loan things, those will get you upside down, because they'll give you money before your paychecks in, but then they charge you interest. Then, whenever you do get your paycheck, it's actually going to be less money that you had. I know people that get into these vicious cycles, a lot of people get into vicious cycles about all sorts of bad stuff in their life. It's just easier to do without for a little bit, and then push through if you're able to. If you're not, then try to be one and done. One and done. Read Dave Ramsey, I think he even makes you put like $100 bills into something, you have to break the picture frame to get the $100 bill out. So, it really has to be worth it for you to try to get those. He has $400 or $500 that he tries to get you to put into that. We had our refrigerator break either last winter or winter before that. I don't think it was $2,000. It was less than that. But we needed money right then, so it is nice to have a relationship with your bank. I've never had a banker before come pass out candy at a Dexter Roberts concert. It is nice to sit down and say, okay, here's what we have, is there anything that I can do to make it better? I've had a couple of financial advisors talk to me, and I don't really like sharing my financial stuff too much. I like to keep that separate because it's just healthier. But I've had two of them look at it, and they were like, we wouldn't change anything that you're doing. It is nice that your bank had actually said, “oh, you should do that you should do that.” It's nice to have someone that's not always just trying to get your business. That's kind of like us with our horse trail riding facility. We have 25 miles of trail, and we're not extremely difficult. If somebody comes here that wants to ride 50 miles in a day, and they really like ledges and stuff, they're going to be bored to death at our place. But, if we have somebody that has a grandkid, that's trying to get used to riding, or if you have somebody that wants to ride for a couple of hours, or if somebody is traveling by themselves, we're perfect. We live here, we have a perimeter fence. It's all about knowing we're perfect for some people, and other people don't need to waste their time. It's nice to be able to find exactly what you want. Okay, so kids need to save more, businesses need to have a business plan. What's something cool that can help people? Do you have anything about checking accounts? Are checks going to be leaving us?

48:52

You know, we actually have looked into that each year. We have a meeting with our retail team, our commercial team, and our marketing team. We all come together with the holding company and really dig into what we are seeing. We are seeing that 13% of people that open a checking account right now, order checks, that's it, 13%. Everybody else gets a debit card, credit card, or both. That paper mentality really is going away, which is good and bad. To your point, as you were saying, kids don't understand, you just swipe that card. Our kids did the same thing. “Mommy, I want whatever,” because can't afford that. “Well, why don't you just swipe that card?” It’s interesting in that aspect. I think the other advice that I would give people is to still balance your checkbook, even though you're not writing checks. We make it so easy on our app, you can look up every single day what's coming in and what's going out, we look at it every single day. We didn't use to have that advantage. I think it's so important to know where you're at and what you're doing.

Brandy Von Holten  49:58

About people ordering checks, you know, I don't order checks through the bank, I wonder if that percentage is actually higher, because I order my own checks through Vistaprint because they have a lot more designs, and it's cheaper a lot of times. I wonder if it's actually higher because there are people like me that are like, “I ordered my checks myself/”

50:21

A lot of businesses do that, and some of that is because they want special computer checks. Depending on the system that they're using, they need a certain [Brandy: Like QuickBooks?] Correct.  They need a certain whatever, and we can do some of that. But also, it just depends on what you need, but along those same lines, one of the things that I'm really trying to push some of our businesses to look into, is embrace some of the technology that is available. We have a lot of different programs that you can use, that don't require you to write checks anymore. You can actually make money on your money. Instead of writing a check, you can pay through a lot of different processes, and it actually will earn you money instead of costing you money.

Brandy Von Holten  51:03

They just need to go and talk to their bank and be say, okay, tell me everything.

51:08

It's not very often that your banker can come and say, hey, I have a great program for you, and guess what, I'm going to pay you to use this program, I'm going to give you money if you do this. That doesn't happen very often at a bank. Again, that's what having a relationship with your banker is all about. It’s being able to go in and say, “Hey, what's new? What do you see coming?” Right now, we're working on getting ready to launch a program in the next quarter that will allow you to invoice your customers. You can send them an invoice, and they can pay you electronically through this invoicing process. So, you're not mailing an invoice to them. They can mail a check back. It's just going to be a completely different way to manage your small business through this process. It’s going to be wonderful, and it also is getting people to embrace that technology and really understand how it can make you more efficient and more effective in what you're doing.

Brandy Von Holten  51:58

Well, I know right now, I'm trying to embrace TikTok. I just embraced Instagram reels the other day, and all of that stuff. It feels so uncomfortable at first. I know, it's not the same thing that you're talking about. But I'm 41 right now while we're doing this podcast interview, and technology is rough. I know a lot of people finally got into Facebook, and now it's changing up a little bit. If you want to talk to younger people, you have to be on Instagram. If you want to talk to even younger people, not kids, I don't want to talk to kids, is Snapchat. You have to evolve as a business owner, but you also have to embrace everybody at what level they are. I have some people that I have to physically print off and mail them one of our newsletters, then I have other people that want it emailed. I have some people that want me to email them differently than the way that it is and I have to send them PDFs, you know? It's okay because I'm still reaching my market now. Now I have this podcast, we have the e-newsletter, I write in a couple of magazines, we have all sorts of social media. Embracing technology has to happen, and it needs to happen with your bank. You need to go and sit down and say, hey, I want to sit down and go through and see if there's anything that I'm missing, because they'll talk to you for free. That's their job is to try to figure out how to help you, or to make you a happy customer so you don't leave.

53:45

Right. I know a lot of the times with our larger customers, our lenders try and sit down with them once a year and go through their tax return and go through everything. How's your business doing? What about this? What can we do here? I know there's a lot of people that think that's silly, but it's extremely valuable. Again, then that gives you an opportunity to say, hey, what else can you do for me? There's nothing wrong with asking your banker, “What can you do for me?” I think that opens the door to that discussion. That's how, like you said, we came and had lunch with you. That's how that happened. Let's sit down, here's what we can do for you, what do you need from us? I think that's our job as a bank, is to give back in a lot of different ways.

Brandy Von Holten  54:25

You were talking about they need to balance their checkbook more. I'll tell you; Brandy Von Holten balances her checkbook every other day. I don't try to log on every day, but I balance. We have multiple checking accounts. My husband will go buy some metal and I'm like, where's the receipt? I need to know how much that was. I have been the other person that didn't do it for three or four months. And then I've been that person that had to get out the red ink pen. We're human. How I've gotten good at business is bad decisions. Bad decisions make you smart. You learn. Education is never free, and we're not talking about colleges, nothing like that. But now I balance them every other day. I have a five-year plan. I have a five five-year financial plan. Each year, I'm like, “Okay, I'm going to try to pay something off, what is it going to be?” I usually go with the highest interest rate, or if there's something that's going to be paid off that year, I try to go ahead and nip that, and then I can create a snowball and eat up debt. I hate debt. I want to be debt free. You know, before we did Von Holten Ranch, we were going to be debt free by 42. Well, I'm 41 and we're not free. We're so far away from it right now. But we're making progress. I don't know if any of you ever took like high school physics where they have the car you have to build and you have to be able to make it go with a rubber band, like the lever. I don't know if anybody knows what I'm talking about right now, I might have been an Arkansas thing. But those things always take so much time, they're really slow at the beginning as the car going down the ramp. But then as momentum increases, that car gets to going faster. So, paying off debt is like that. Sometimes it's slow, and if you're going through it, you just have to keep making those payments, you have to keep looking for little ways to get ahead. Then, you will gain momentum, and whenever you get some momentum, then you have to keep the hustle up because a lot of times when people finally get some money, they stop the hustle. Never stop hustling.

56:51

Make a budget, try and stick to it. Know where you're at and make good decisions to live within where you're at.

Brandy Von Holten  56:59

If you're a spender like Erica and you like to spend some money, that's okay. Just make sure you budget for it. She’s dressed a lot cuter than I am right now. She has like a white sweater on with gold polka dots, but not gaudy, they’re little bitty, like it's snowed honor, but it snowed gold. Then her necklace matches. It has little gold circles on it, too. Okay, and I'm over here wearing some Walmart stretchy pants and a free t-shirt. She's kicking my butt and looking pretty cute right now. Okay, so there's some tradeoff for being a spender. You look cuter than I do.

57:42

But it's just like a diet. You can't go on a diet and say I'm never going to eat chocolate again. Oh, that's ridiculous. So just like budgeting you can't say, oh, I'm never going to spend on it. You go crazy.

Brandy Von Holten  57:52

Our whole society is a spending society. Amazon tells you the number of items that you purchased [Erica: scary.] I know, they itemized it. I thought it was going to be a lot higher, but I bought 36 items from Amazon last year.

58:12

That's it?

Brandy Von Holten  58:16

Brandy: Yeah, I thought it would have been at least 100, so I went and got two more things that I needed yesterday. So anyways, alright, this right here was Big Boss Mare, this is Erica Petersen, if they are around this area and they would like to talk to you, tell them how to get in touch with you or your bank.

58:36

I would recommend looking up Central Bank, whatever community you're in, we have an amazing group of people that we are working with. We are, I think, a really great company. Anywhere you see a Central Bank dogwood logo, go in, find out what you can do. Even if it's not Central Bank, go in and have a discussion. Find a relationship that you can create that's really going to help you not only grow personally but also grow your business into something that will be sustainable.

Brandy Von Holten  59:06

So okay, why dogwood.

59:09

The dogwood is the Missouri State flower. The gentleman that founded our bank was in Jefferson City and he was a guy that was really big on Missouri and being proud of where you come from, and so he made that our logo,

Brandy Von Holten  59:23

I was born and raised in Texas and then eighth grade through second college degree in Arkansas. So, I guess everybody else that's listening to this from Missouri, you better know that because I know the Blue Bonnet is the state flower for Texas. Okay, so you better know your state flower. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for tuning in to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten.