IAM1017- CEO Leads a Remarkably Successful Enterprise

T.W. Shannon is an accomplished leader with diverse experience in business, public service, and community engagement. Today he leads one of the most unique banks in the country. As the CEO of Chickasaw Community Bank based in Oklahoma City, he leads a remarkably successful enterprise that is wholly owned by the Chickasaw Nation. Under his leadership, Chickasaw Community Bank completed the year 2020 at a record sixfold projection. Prior to his tenure at the bank, T.W. made history by becoming the youngest Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, as well as being the first Chickasaw and first African American to hold the post.

• CEO Hack: Treating people fairly
• CEO Nugget: Blessed are the flexible for they shall not break
• CEO Defined: Fulfilling the vision of the company by inspiring people to do their absolute best

Website: https://www.ccb.bank/personal/personal-loans/home-loans

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWShannon
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twshannon
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twshannon/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/twshannon/

Full Interview:

00:18 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless

Hello, Hello, Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have T.W. Shannon of Chickasaw Community Bake. T.W., it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:55 – T.W. Shannon

All right, thank you, Gresh and Leland. I'm honored to be here.

00:58 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on and for all the phenomenal things that you're doing. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about TW so you can hear about all of those awesome things. TW is an accomplished leader with diverse experience in business, public service, and community engagement. Today, he leads 1 of the most unique banks in the country. As the CEO of Chickasaw Community Bank based in Oklahoma City.

He leads a remarkably successful enterprise that is wholly owned by the Chickasaw Nation. Under his leadership, Chickasaw Community Bank completed the year 2020 at a record six-fold projection. Prior to his tenure at the bank, T.W. Made history by becoming the youngest speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, as well as being the first Chickasaw and first African-American to hold the post. T.W., great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:45 – T.W. Shannon

Man, I'm honored to be here. I appreciate what you're doing every day to highlight the great things that happen in the country, aggression. I'm honored to be a guest. Thank you for having me.

01:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on. Like I usually say, I just like to hold up the microphone and ask questions. You're doing all the great work. So to really kind of kick everything off, I wanted to hear how you guys started. Can you take us through what I like to call your CEO story? We'll let you do all the awesome work you're doing.

02:07 – T.W. Shannon

You bet. So our bank started with a 20-year history, nearly the governor of the Great Chickasaw Nation, Bill Ann Itobe had the vision to start a bank in Oklahoma City. The idea was to, he saw that there was a gap in services for Native Americans. And, but he wanted a bank that could serve not just Native Americans, but the community at large. And So he planted a bank here in Oklahoma City. The bank was a relatively conservative bank, a small bank with an initial investment of about 7000000 dollars.

When I came to the bank in 2017, the assets had grown to about $127 million or so, about $125 million. And since my time here in 2017, we've grown the bank's assets, I think today, we've set just over 300. So we've over 300 million. So we're still a small community bank, but that's pretty record growth that we've had. And I'm excited to be here because we're really a mission-oriented bank. And that's the part that excites me the most.

03:12 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I'm sure that's what you're getting to when you say mission-driven because I almost feel like, and correct me if I'm wrong, when you see the growth, especially in a bank within a community, a community-based bank, I imagine that you probably have also been able to have a huge impact upon the community as a whole and basically carry out that mission.

03:30 – T.W. Shannon

Yeah, you know, community banking is interesting, Gresham. You know, the thing that I love about it the most, you were kind enough to read my shameless biography, but the thing I love about community banking is that we're really on the ground level of helping people's dreams come true. And so here at Tickets Out Community Bank, whether we're investing in somebody's business or helping someone build their home, those all started with dreams. Somebody had a dream about that. And the thing about a community bank is we're on the ground level, Unlike the two big DeFell banks who serve, they serve a purpose and they have certainly a niche.

But it's pretty defined based upon particular standards that they have, whether it be credit underwriting standards or niche markets. The great asset of being a community bank is we look at pretty much any deal and we don't just consider our customers a number. We know our customers and this is really demonstrated during this last pandemic that we're still coming out of. But last year when the pandemic first hit, Chickasaw Community Bank, we were one of the first banks to sign up for the Payroll Protection Program, PPP, which was designed to provide forgivable loans to small businesses. We were one of the first banks to also extend it beyond just our customers.

You'll remember there was a lot of media attention because a lot of businesses were like that, especially minority businesses because they didn't necessarily bank at 1 of the big banks or some, or their bank that they were banking didn't offer PPP. So there was a huge gap. It was community banks that really stepped up first and said, this is part of our mission. This is what we do. We're gonna be involved in this program. And so I'm so proud of what we do at Chickasaw Community Bank because we really do build better lives for everyone. That's our motto, but it's more than just a slogan or motto. It's really part of our DNA.

05:27 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it definitely sounds like, and I definitely see it coming to fruition, as you said, so well. Well, a lot of times people have these dreams, these visions of what they want to do, and you provide that vehicle for that to happen. And I appreciate you highlighting that too because I think a lot of times, maybe, especially in the business community, didn't realize how important it was to have that relationship with a community bank, but during times like the pandemic where you needed that personal relationship, you wanted to be able to have a bank where they know your name and knew what you were doing. It was so important and vital to keeping them successful.

05:59 – T.W. Shannon

Gresham, I'll give you an example of how important that is. So when the pandemic first hit, and of course, you'll remember, it was just several weeks after Congress even appropriated the money and passed the bill, and it was signed into law first by President Donald Trump. It was shortly just a few weeks after that the program was made available. So SBA was scrambling to put together guidance on what would be required. And for banks whose job is to evaluate and measure risk, it was really, you don't even know what the guidance fully is or how SBA will interpret the guarantee, how do you ensure you're going to get your money back?

It was a bit of a risk that community banks frankly were willing to take because we believe in our customers but not only that and Chickasaw Community Bank and I'm sure other community banks as well. We called every 1 of our customers and said, hey, you need to know about this program. This is why we think you qualify, and this is why we think it would be good for your business. So it's just those kinds of touches of service that I think, you know, highlight the unique niche that community banks really serve.

07:07 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you for, you know, providing that leadership and being at the forefront of that, you know, for definitely the, the, the Chickasaw community. And so it kind of impacts, I think, reminding us of how important that is all across the globe, especially there as well. And so I know you touched a little bit upon how you serve your clients. I wanted to see if there was anything additional you wanted to kind of touch on, on how you work with your clients and what you feel is kind of like your secret sauce and what you feel kind of sets you apart or makes you unique.

07:33 – T.W. Shannon

I think I probably, mentioned it already, but really it starts with your values, right? Values are beliefs, but values are different from culture because culture is action, right? We can have great philosophical beliefs that never actually get put into action. But it took us off the community bank. When we talk about building better lives, the first thing that I tell all of our employees is, it starts with you. It starts by taking care of our employees first, because if we don't take care of our employees, I guarantee you, they're not going to take care of our customers.

08:09 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely appreciate that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:22 – T.W. Shannon

The greatest value that I bring probably as a leader to my organization is that man, I'm all about team, right? I believe putting together a great team is really what I'm called to do. My job here is not to do every aspect of the job. My job here is to make sure I've got the right team and that I keep that team motivated and inspired. And to do that, you have to get to know them on an individual level because, you know, it's not different than when you're a leader. You know, it's like being a leader of a family like I am. I have a 15-year-old daughter and I have a 12-year-old son.

And you know, what I try to tell to my son who's younger is, you know, he's always complaining about the older one needs to do this. It's not fair. It's not fair. It's not fair. And I said, what I try to explain to him is, no, it's not equal, but it's fair. You guys have different needs. You have different wants. Now while you can focus on the additional privileges that your 15-year-old sister has, the reality is she also has a lot of other responsibilities that you don't have. And so it's my job as the leader of our family along with my wife who also helps lead the family, it's for us to make sure that people are treated fairly. That doesn't mean necessarily that they're treated equally.

09:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

09:53 – T.W. Shannon

Blessed are the flexible for they shall not break. What I have found out is that man, you can have the, I'll give you an example, the pandemic. When the pandemic hit about March, we finally realized how things were happening and shutdowns were happening. We had a really, I told you about the growth we've had where we've grown from $120 million bank to well over 300, which is most banks don't grow more than 5% of here. So we were really, really hauling it. And we anticipated another big year in 2019. Well, this is a good year, not a really big year. We had a couple of really big years. But when 2020 hit, we had a plan. We had a good strategic plan for the year. We had a good budget for the year, but we saw some headwinds coming. We were looking at data like everybody.

We thought the sky was falling and For many industries it was. And so we reevaluated, we made some adjustments and we wound up having the biggest year the banks ever had in 2020. And I think it's because of the flexibility we were willing to have in going back to our values. You know, we didn't hesitate to allow employees to work from home. I got my HR team and my IT team together and I said, listen, this disease apparently is highly contagious. That's the piece of it that is different from any other thing we've seen is the contagious component of it. It's high. And so what do we do? What employees can work from home? And what investment do we need to make to make that happen?

And we did it. So we wound up with maybe 80% of our employees working remotely. Took a big investment upfront, getting computers and not just, our banks. So you can't just plug into any internet and start surfing. We've got client confidential information that we have to protect. So it's not just go by laptop. I mean, it's a whole movement for a small bank or a small IT department, but we did it because it's the right thing to do. We said, listen, we've got to put, it's not just about the disease, employees have kids at home, There's no daycare open. What can we do to support those employees? And then, so at the end of the year, when we had that record year, after we turned employees' lives upside down, I made a commitment in March after the pandemic.

I said, listen, my commitment to you is to make whatever adjustments I have to make sure that nobody here loses their job as a result of this. And I will tell you, we sent people home, and There's always some uncertainty about that. Employee product, I can get emotional about it. Employee products with productivity went through the roof because I made a commitment to them as the CEO I'm going to do everything I can to ensure that you have a job for the next year. So whatever adjustments we have to make, even if it means we have to reduce salaries overall, we have to stop bonuses, we have to liquidate, you know, some physical assets. Your job is our first priority, along with taking care of our customers and sustaining, and making sure there's a continuity of business.

And man, our employees, they responded to that. And so at the end of the year, we had this record year, every single employee, I surprised them Christmas time, a couple of weeks from Christmas, and every single employee of the Chickasaw Community Bank, whether you had been here 1 day and we had an employee, it was their first week, we had another employee, she was retiring. Every single employee got a $3, 000 bonus from the bank. And for a teller who's in college and you know that $3, 000 is a substantial difference that you weren't expecting at Christmas. And that, again, we did it because it was the right thing to do, but the return we get on that from employee satisfaction, the way that they take care of their customers. It's just, it's invaluable, it really is.

13:53 – Gresham Harkless
Awesome, Awesome, Awesome. Well, T.W., I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So T.W., what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:03 – T.W. Shannon

You know, being a CEO means that you are the chief executive whose sole purpose is to fulfill the mission of the bank, but to set the vision and to hold people accountable to that vision by inspiring them every day to do their absolute best.

14:22 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely appreciate that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do was just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get a hold of you and find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

14:36 – T.W. Shannon

Well, you're kind. First of all, let me say this. I've really enjoyed this opportunity to visit with you. I appreciate what you're doing by highlighting the important work that's happening in our civic involvement that's happening around the country. You know, America is still a place of opportunity. I like to talk about America really being a place of systemic opportunity. There is still an opportunity for people to thrive, to find and understand their purpose, and to live out that purpose, and by doing so, contribute to their community at large. And as I've said before, you know, at Chickasaw Community Bank, we're about helping people's dreams come true. We're on the front lines of it. We do it every single day.

And when that happens, you know, you receive, we receive the greatest reward by helping people fulfill their dreams. That's why we recreate it. That's what we do best. And we do it every single day and people who are interested in learning more about us can go to CCB. Bank for our website or they can follow us on any social media outlet, Chickasaw Community Bank or CCB. So thank you for having me. It's a privilege to be in this role and also to share the great things that are happening here in Oklahoma at Chickasaw Community Bank.

15:54 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I definitely appreciate you, T.W. And we will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can get a hold of you and see all the awesome work that you all are doing. But I truly appreciate that. I think that's 1 of the biggest things is I get a vision of kind of having a seat and everybody has those different seats, those, those missions, their goals, their visions that they want to have those dreams and you get to help them to come to fruition. So appreciate you for all the work you did and, of course, the time you took today. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:20 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.