Laszlo Tallai: [00:00:00] I think most of us at credit unions believe that we are selling, , we’re providing a better product or service than our competitors, but we have to get that message out there. And we have to be cognizant that consumers often take the path of least resistance. So if they’re going to have to wait a day or two or go to a branch to open an account with you.

And they need an account or they’re tired of their overdraft fees or whatever else they’re dealing with at , their other institution will go to whoever can give them that instant decision. yeah, obviously, you don’t want to sell people products that are misleading or don’t, , don’t suit their needs.

Josh DeTar: [00:02:00] Welcome to another episode of the digital banking podcast. My guest today is Laslo Talley, the VP of digital strategy for communication FCU. I have been looking forward to this episode for the last 70 days. You see 70 days ago, the most curious contact form submission on our website came through for a gentleman with flat earth credit union.

We’re going to get into that in this episode, but if that doesn’t pique your interest to stick around, well, I don’t know what’s going to, from that day on, I was committed to finding the person behind this and thank them for making my day today. I am so pumped to say the person behind this incredible [00:03:00] bucket of laughs.

Mr. Laszlo is here on the podcast with me. Laszlo said that even dating back to junior high, he’s always been a practical joker. Maybe sometimes taking it a little too far, but where’s the fun if you’re not flirting with the line, right? As a teenager, Laszlo had the typical jobs of a teenage boy, but in college got a really exciting opportunity to be one of the first employees for an aftermarket automotive hardware and software company.

And as a self prescribed car guy, this coupled with a boss that really set him up for success and let him expand what he worked on and allowed him to shoot for the moon and make mistakes made this his dream job growing that organization and ultimately leading everything from digital to marketing to customer acquisition and conversion and being involved in working with software and technologists gave Laszlo a really deep set of e commerce skills in a rapidly evolving digital world.

[00:04:00] Now, after the high pace of the automotive tech and e com world, Laszlo said, you know what? I’m ready to just have a nine to five or maybe even like a nine to three 30 chill job where I don’t get so emotionally attached to the work and can just check out when I go home. So he thought, well, what a better industry than banking.

Let’s get me some bankers hours. Little did he know his highly driven personality was not going to let him do that. He started with the credit union six years ago and is now more passionate than ever about the work he’s doing and the impact He’s having so I guess the joke’s on him on this one. I tell you what I love to see Incredibly successful and intelligent people who take what they do really seriously But try not to take themselves too seriously And honestly, Laszlo is an absolute shining example of that.

So Laszlo, 70 days in the making, man. I’m super excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me.

Laszlo: [00:05:00] Hey, Josh, I’m super excited to be here. Um, I, uh, I didn’t know Flat Earth Credit Union would, uh, would get so much attention, especially so, so long after I launched it.

Josh: I know. So we’ve got to start with this whole thing and. And I think it’s important to give people a little bit of the genesis of like what brought us together. Um, you know, for anybody who listens to this podcast or that knows me personally, or maybe just through, you know, some of my social media profile or whatever, like, I would like to think that, uh, hopefully people see myself as a pretty lighthearted, happy, go lucky, fun, loving guy too.

And, and I love a good joke as much as the next person. And I really love an opportunity to not take things too serious. And, um, and so it was, it was really funny. Uh, you know, I’m, I’m wake up in the morning and kind of the first thing that I usually do is like I grabbed my cup of coffee. I’m scrolling through slack on my phone to see what’s going on.

And one of the guys from my team, Caleb is just blowing me up on slack. I mean, I don’t remember what it was, Laszlo, but it was hilarious. It was like [00:06:00] 30 or 40 messages on slack. I was like, what is going on? Yeah. And he’s based East Coast and I’m Pacific. So he’s been up a few hours before I am. And he’s like, dude, you’re never going to believe what came through on the website.

He’s like, you’ve got to check this out. And he did a pretty good job of just being excited about it and getting me all pumped up about it, but like not really leading me on to the, he had already discovered it was a joke. And so what it was was this flat earth credit union had requested a demo of our platform on our website.

And so I go to the website of this flat earth CU and I start looking around like, wow, this sounds like a joke. Like flat earth CU, like this can’t be real, right? But I’m looking at the website and I was like, it’s really good. Like it’s really high quality. It’s like somebody put a lot of thought into this.

And I’m like scrolling around and there’s like product lines and sets that make sense [00:07:00] that line up with the value prop of why I might be a member of a frigging credit union called flattered credit union. There’s debit card artwork and I was like, No way. Somebody puts this much work into something for a joke and if they did, like this is the most epic joke of all time and then you start to dig deeper and I’m like, okay, no, no, no.

I see where this is a joke. Like they’re letting me know that they’re just having some fun with this, but then it just became like wildfire within our organization, right? We start spamming this all over the slack channels and everybody’s like, this is the funniest thing we’ve seen in forever. And we’re like, we love that somebody has taken like a practical joke to this level.

And so then I got on LinkedIn and I was like, I have to know who did this because I want to shake their hand. I want to take them out to dinner, which I still owe you by the way, Laszlo, and I’m going to hold true to that man. Um, and I’m going to take them out to dinner and I’m going to say thank you for making my day because this is the funniest thing I’m going to see all year.

And so I post this on LinkedIn and I, I think what’s, what’s really interesting about that and we’re going to kind of [00:08:00] take this in two parts, um, is one, just how many people’s day it made. Like I thought that was really cool. I got so many messages from people that were like, dude, seriously, I needed this in my day.

Thank you for putting this in front of me. Like this is hilarious. And then seeing how much time people spent like going through and looking at all the granularity of the jokes you put in there and like how much work you put into it. But then there was a second side that was like, um, I think even Ron Shevlin was one of the people that commented something to the effect of.

Like, yeah, I, the, I knew right away that this was a joke because no real credit union would have a website this good, you know? And so it just, it sparked some really interesting conversation and I know that’s a lot of me talking to set this up. Um, but I wanted to give people some of the context of what got me so excited about this was, again, I think this was a really cool exemplification of somebody who takes what they do really serious and like you truly understood what you were doing when you built this and were able to build it at a really [00:09:00] sophisticated manner.

We also were just like being yourself and having some fun. So like walk us through the whole genesis of like how did this start and become what it became to where I ended up stumbling across this when you reached out through our website using it,

Laszlo: Um, yeah, I, uh, and my last job at 034 Motorsport, we had a habit of launching April Fool’s Day products. We’ve been doing it probably, you know, since. 2011 or so. And I always had a good, you know, good reaction from that community, which is a little different. You know, there’s enthusiasts for automotive, uh, not so much for credit unions, but we do have some very, very loyal members that are credit union diehards.

Um, and so I had just started at the credit union at the very end of 2018. And, uh, so 2019 was rolling around and I was like, man, I wish we could do an April fools rebrand of the credit union. Um, yeah, I was new, so I didn’t know all the, the nuances of the credit union world. You know, people need to trust you with their money.

People have been members [00:10:00] since the, you know, 1939 in some cases. So, um, I just went ahead one weekend. I had seen the documentary behind the curve on Netflix. It’s about the flat earth community. It’s fascinating and worth a watch. And I was like, man, we got to do flat earth credit union. Like this is, The ethos of accrediting, right?

A passionate group of people, they share a common bond, right? The belief in the shape of the earth. And, uh, yeah, I think it was, it was just a weekend. I went and grabbed a, you know, WordPress theme hosted on AWS with Bitnami or something and kind of picked one that, that felt like the right theme to start with and just started.

You know, adding content, figuring out who would found fighter with credit union. What would the employees look like? What would the, what would the products be? And I kind of really laid into some of the kind of high notes of that documentary to, you know, do the curve free checking and the, the find the edge exploration loans and some of those things that are in there.

Um, and [00:11:00] just, you know, put the credit union spin on it. Did some. Low quality Photoshop work and, you know, came in, it was probably mid March at this point or late March. And I was like, our CMO, I was like, Stephen, what if we just sent an email to our members on April 1st and said, Hey, we’re excited to say we’re rebranding the flat earth credit union.

And, uh, Stephen’s. Great. He, he laughed and, you know, he, he’s like, that’s great, but there’s absolutely no way the board will go for this. And Stephen’s awesome. He’s, you know, he, he, he also is 1 of those people that takes things to an extreme, you know, uh, and, you know, there’s, there’s a good amount of joking light heartedness in our, our department at the credit union, because we, um, you know, we all think alike in that, that sense.

And so, um, Yeah, that’s, that’s how it was born. Uh, we got some traction on, on Reddit and a few places on, on April 1st, we did a little soft launch through my, my viral marketing channels. Um, and, uh, you know, every, every so [00:12:00] often since, uh, since April of 2019, there’s been spikes in traffic and people have seen it, but I just kept the side of lives to kind of, uh, Uses some, uh, it’s like a staging site for some of the things we were doing at the credit union, whether it was testing deep links or, you know, filling out forms for product demos from, from typhoon.

And, uh, you know, you just get all those, you get all those emails going and, um, anyway, so that’s, that’s what it hung around doing. And then, you know, a few months ago, uh, I think, uh, Sanjay from digital credence. One of them messaged me saying, you flattered credit. You was blowing up on LinkedIn. And I was like, wait, what?

And, and I came across your post. Um, and so I I’ve kept it anonymous. Um, you know, I didn’t really see much of a need to take credit for, uh, kind of waste of time website, but. Uh, I was like, man, you know, this guy is saying he’s going to buy me dinner. So I’m, I’m signing up. I’m going to get some ROI. I haven’t, I’m going to add up the hosting costs before our dinner, but I’m going to expect you to cover about

Josh: It needs to be a nice, nice steak and a good glass of wine. Yeah. [00:13:00] I mean, that’s what I mean. Like, I don’t know. I just, that’s why I got so latched onto this personally. Laszlo was, I just, I love seeing people take it to the nth degree. Right. And like you’re personally out of pocket paying hosting fees to keep this silly thing alive.

And that was why a part of me really wanted to find you was because I knew that that was probably the case, right? That it was probably somebody that created this as a joke, but actually put a lot of thought and care into it. And, and then he’s kept it up. And I was like, I genuinely want this person to know how much they made my day and then how many other people’s day they made.

And I think a part of it too was especially when you talk about like our industry, right? And the fact that you were like, we could never, We can never actually get this, you know, board approved to rebrand the credit union for a day on April 1st, a flat earth credit union, because yeah, like people need to trust the credit union with, with their money and their financial [00:14:00] security and all of those things.

Right. And it’s really easy to erode it. But at the same time, I argue that you can find the most stodgy person in banking that wears their suit every single day. The same way they still like to laugh. Like at the end of the day, we’re all still human. Like, and we still want to have fun and I don’t know about you, but life’s a lot better when you’re smiling and having fun and laughing than when you’re not.

Right. So just the fact that this thing that you built back in 2019 brought so many people in my circle, like so much laughter and joy. I mean, I’m telling you, it was like weeks. post. I was still getting texts from friends and they’re like, dude, I went back to this site cause I just needed a laugh. I found this other little nugget.

Have you found this nugget? You know, I mean it’s just, it’s pretty cool man.

Laszlo: Thank you, hon. It gave me a lot of pleasure making it. So, um, I’m glad it gave some people, you know, laughs.

Josh: I’m, I’m genuinely curious [00:15:00] how much time do you think you have vested in it?

Laszlo: I mean, to get it launched probably like 20, 30 hours, not a ton. It’s once you spin up websites, especially if you’re running with the theme, you know, I mean, you know, I’m not counting the time thinking about. What it would be like, but my mind just does that on its own. It’s probably a little bit of undiagnosed ADHD, but it’s a, it’s a bit of a superpower.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, so this is my, Shameless plug. Like if you haven’t seen it already, you’ve absolutely got to go to the flat earth credit union website and check it out and see what we’re talking about. We’ll obviously have links to it and all of the promotional stuff for this podcast. But that, that one is what I thought was really funny.

Like, so Caleb on my team who, uh, who initially, uh, you know, fielded that response that you sent in and found it, He’s a total data junkie and he’s just a brilliant dude. And so, I mean, he went off the deep end [00:16:00] real fast on this Lazlo and like, he was doing a ton of research on it and that was what like got him so excited and why he was just so amped up over it was he was like, man, whoever did this, like really put some work into it.

And he’s like, I went through and tried to reverse look up like where, where this person was or where this website was created. And he’s like, they went to the detail of actually putting, what is it? It’s um, this is like Houston space center, right? Or what was it? Yeah.

Laszlo: the address.

Josh: As the address. And it’s like, you know, at any point in time you could have very easily just put like some generic, you know, one, two, three, four, any street in America address.

But like you went and looked up the address for the Houston space center, put that like, this is clever stuff. Um, But so, um, so have you had other people like reach out to you through it? And I’m just curious, like what kinds of stuff, have you ever had somebody reach out and be like, Hey, I, I’m with you. I believe the earth is [00:17:00] flat and I would like to be a member of this credit union.

Like

Laszlo: We’ve had form submissions over the years. I, I sometimes respond to them. Sometimes they, they just go to a. Um, but I try and respond to him when I, when I get to him after your LinkedIn post, I got like job offers through it. It was, it was wild. And I was like,

Josh: really?

Laszlo: it was, it’s, you know, I mean, I guess I can, we can touch on the 2nd point there about it’s obviously not a credit union website and, uh, you know, it was community banks and a couple of credit unions are like, did you really build this?

And can you build 1? And it was, uh, you It’s kind of eyeopening, you know, there’s a lot of, um, I guess there are a lot of antiquated websites out there, um, you know, that are maybe a little bit less user friendly and, uh, and there’s a lot of reasons for that. And I’d be, uh, you know, love to, to dive into that, that aspect.

Josh: Yeah. So, so let’s talk about that. Right. Um, This is not a topic that we’ve been a stranger to on this podcast. I’ve probably had quite a few guests that have brought this up from folks that have been in, uh, in the industry, out of the industry, you know, [00:18:00] at marketing agencies, in marketing roles at credit unions, you name it.

But, um, you know, like I said, I’m not shy about being one of the ones to say that as a whole, our industry does a really poor job of marketing. It’s just the fact of the matter, right? And I’d love to get your perspective as somebody who has done. Um, you know, real true e comm talking about customer acquisition, customer acquisition costs, what it actually looks like to do, how we’re seeing, you know, the chimes, the revolutes doing that versus the credit union industry.

But when we talk about, um, you know, the, the credit union industry as a whole just doesn’t do a great job of marketing themselves. I think that did really shine through. In just when I posted that link to the website that you built. And I think, um, I’ll have to look it up maybe while you’re talking, if I can multitask.

But, um, if I can find quickly his exact comments, but I want to say it was Ron Chevlin. who made some kind of comment to the effect of, he was like, yeah, did this really fool you that [00:19:00] it was a real credit union? Like did you really have to do research? Because I knew it wasn’t a real credit union. The second I saw that it was a really nicely developed, pretty website, you know, and I was like, man, that kind of stings, but he’s also not wrong.

Like if you look across the industry, Has somebody who came from outside the industry and into credit unions, like what’s your perspective on that?

Laszlo: Yeah, I mean, there’s, uh, a couple of reasons for websites being the way they are in the credit union and community banks space. I think, you know, um, there used to be this focus on the marketing website, right? I’m not talking about digital banking right now. I’m talking about the marketing website, whether it’s hosted with WordPress or, you know, or run through WordPress or Drupal or whatever it’s on, but that’s for your members.

And that’s for, um, you know, for engaging with your members and maybe educating them on how to do things. And for the most part, that’s not true. If you look at traffic coming into your marketing website, they go to your website and then they go to log into digital banking, or they go to call your [00:20:00] phone number or they go to your branch locator.

And that’s junk traffic, right? I mean, it’s, it obviously serves a purpose, but it’s not where you’re going to see ROI. It’s not your, your goal to grow the credit union by getting people to go to a page and log in somewhere else. And so, um, you know, the credit unions and community banks added all this content to websites.

And, you know, we’re guilty of this here as well, not just other banks and credit unions, but you just have all this content and you, you, okay, I want to update my website. I’m going to move all this content over and not really change the hierarchy or change the structure of how everything is set up. Um, whereas you look at the e commerce space and websites focus on one thing and that’s selling.

So, so, you know, There’s a homepage, it features the key products, you know, and they know what are, what the key products are, you know, they’re for us and the credit union space is probably going to be checking. It’s probably a certain type of loan, maybe some other, you know, ancillary services and they, they emphasize those.

And then each of those [00:21:00] products has a very purpose built landing page that’s built to convert, right? You add the cart, you open an account and, and that’s the, that’s the flow that people are used to when purchasing things. And. People purchase things from Amazon every day, multiple times a day. They go to Best Buy, they go to Target, they use the apps.

They’re used to that flow of, I see a thing, I add a card, I check out, or I see a thing and I buy now. And credit union and bank websites are often, I see a thing, I read all about it. I click like open. Now I go to another thing. I have to type in all my information. I have to find the thing again in the selection of products.

It’s, it’s counterintuitive and, you know, in today’s, um, you know, FinTech driven and mega bank driven, uh, landscape that e commerce experience has been duplicated. If you, if you want to open a Revolut account or a great example of a FinTech that makes account opening easy, you don’t even spend time on the [00:22:00] Revolut website.

You go to their website, you download their app, and then you’re filling in your information in the Revolut app. And typically in less than three minutes, you’ve. Got a, an application has been prefilled, you know, using maybe your phone number and some other third party data source and that’s been decision.

Um, and you have an account, you have a, an instantly issued virtual debit card number and you’re good to go. And if you compare that to what the experience is like. At a bank or credit union of our size, very often, you know, you have an insanely high cost for acquisition. Um, I mean, the numbers, I think for a checking account or three to 500 to acquire a checking account, right?

So that’s what you’re spending in, in ads and application fees and whatever else, just to get an account opened. So you’re spending all this ad money, taking people to a landing page where the action that you want them to take, which is ultimately opening an account. It’s 10, 12 steps away. So you’re putting them through this, you know, essentially a meat [00:23:00] grinder to get to the thing that they want, which is, you know, arguably you have a good checking account or a good loan offer, but people lose, lose their, you know, their attention span is limited, especially, you know, with.

Instagram and everything being so, um, you know, force fed, you know, force fed content and short extension spans are just kind of taking over. You want to make the application process as simple as possible. So that’s, that’s kind of been my focus here at the credit union since I started is, you know, taking the customer journey.

And meeting them, you know, meeting their expectations that they’ve developed through interacting with e commerce sites or, uh, social media apps, things that have very clean user, user interfaces and user experiences, clear calls to action, no redundant page views or clicks. Everything is meant to get the customer through the journey as seamlessly as possible,

Josh: Um, you know, this is something else we’ve kind of talked about a few times, but I’d love to get your [00:24:00] thoughts on it is, um, I personally also believe there’s an interesting Um, thing at play for especially credit unions. I think community banks, not as much, but especially in the credit union space where we’re very much about the not for profit cooperative movement, right?

Sales is totally a four letter word to us. And so a lot of times I feel like we’re, we’re reticent to sell our products and we’re like, well, you know, we’ll just, we’ll talk about it. And we’ll, we’ll do things kind of the way we’ve always done them. And then just when, when people need them, they’ll, they’ll just come for them.

They’ll just know that we offer them. Right. As opposed to like what you’re talking about, that is, you know, kind of clearly pulling somebody from our marketing all the way through a lead funnel to qualify them as a good lead and put them into a product to sell them. [00:25:00] And When we think about it that way, yeah, it sounds kind of dirty.

Like right where this not for profit and we’re trying to, you know, get leads and sell them things. But ultimately what you’re selling them is probably a better financial future and picture than they would have somewhere else. So yes, you’re selling them something, but they’re going to buy it from someone.

So they’re going to buy it from chase or they’re going to buy it from you. I will argue your credit union is going to take far better care of that individual and their community than Chase is. So I’d rather see you sell them the product, but you got to sell it to them. Like don’t unsell it.

Laszlo: right? But, you know, I think most of us at credit unions believe that we are selling, you know, we’re providing a better product or service than our competitors, but we have to get that message out there. And we have to be cognizant that consumers often take the path of least resistance. So if they’re going to have to wait a day or two or go to a branch to open an account with you.

And they need an account or they’re tired of their overdraft fees or whatever [00:26:00] else they’re dealing with at their, their other institution will go to whoever can give them that instant decision. And, yeah, obviously, you don’t want to sell people products that are misleading or don’t, you know, don’t suit their needs.

But if you, if you have members that are coming in, you want to know that that member won’t be turned away. Because of this convoluted application process, um, which, you know, again, we have very limited insight into because of the oftentimes third party providers that are used for account opening.

Josh: Yeah. Um, no, that brings up a really good point, right? Cause so there’s a, there’s kind of two parts to this and one is just, so let’s, let’s take the example of somebody that’s complete unknown to the credit Um, and we’re trying to grab them as a brand new member. So you have one just getting messaging to them that resonates with them, that makes them want to convert on a product, i.

1. become a member, open a checking account, open a loan, et cetera. Right. But then at the same [00:27:00] time, then there’s the actual, um, process of converting and really that should be technology. So you’ve got kind of the marketing element, the technology element, et cetera. And, you know, as you were talking, it’s funny, I was thinking about, you know, even in my own personal life, right?

I’m kind of a car guy too, and I think about, you know, the places that I want to buy car parts from, and if somebody gives me an ad on Instagram for a car part that I want, and then I click, you know, shop now, I’m interested, it takes me right to a page, takes me right to the product, tells me exactly what’s going to fit my car, etc.,

and all I have to do is check out with Apple Pay. I’m going to be significantly more likely to convert on that product than if you take me to a website, I have to go re hunt for my product again, then I have to confirm that it’s going to fit my vehicle and then it’s going to put me through a painful old school shopping cart process where it’s like, tell me all your information manually and put your credit card information, all of that, [00:28:00] right?

Like I’m going to convert a lot higher probability on, uh, the first example. Okay. And you’re kind of talking about that in the same sense of, you know, converting members to products, right?

Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I worked in e commerce, you know, we were one of the first Magento sites using the firm and they’ve blown up. Um, when we added, uh, you know, if you’re not familiar, a firm is a by now pay later provider that’s hosted on e commerce sites. Yeah. And then, you know, when we added a mobile wallet support, it’s just every step of that purchasing process is an opportunity for them to get distracted or change their minds.

And the easier you make it, the more likely you are to make the sale. And so we’re taking that same approach with, you know, the products that you open at the credit union. So, um, you know, we, we recently converted to a, a new digital account opening platform. Um, it’s a relatively new startup called glide and, uh, they were the only one, the only provider in this space that was able to surface, um, data layer variables and Google tag manager.

So what [00:29:00] that is, is. You know, um, their application not only supports Google analytics, so we can watch the conversion funnel and see members interacting with the, um, onboarding flow, but it can tell Google analytics what type of account was opened and what, you know, we assigned some lifetime value numbers to the account type, you know, it’s based on averages as well as, uh, you know, a funding amount for things like certificates.

And so where that, you know, kind of bridges the gap to e commerce is, We’re all spending a ton of money on ads to acquire new members, right? It’s, it’s a goal to grow the credit union. And it’s, it’s really oftentimes a mystery what the ROI is on. On that ad spend. So if I approach an e commerce company saying, Hey, you know, spend 10, 000 on this ad campaign with me, and all I can tell you is this many people visited your website and maybe added a product to the cart, right?

That’s all I can tell you. There’s no, they actually purchased [00:30:00] or what the ROI was there. We don’t, what the revenue was that was generated. I’m going to get left out of the room. And that’s been the situation in e commerce for 20 years at this point. Right. And so on the flip side here is there’s, there are even more.

Kind of nuances to becoming a member of credit union, because you need more than just funding, right? There’s, you might look at credit reports or check systems. There’s a decisioning process that takes place. And so when you’re serving ads through an ad partner, a DSP, there’s some level of optimization that needs to be done, right?

And you can either optimize on people, clicking your ad people, starting an application, maybe people finishing 1. But what you really want to optimize for is the people that are actually opening accounts. So even if the intent is there, the qualifications might not be. So if you’re, if you’re going for serving ads to members that can open a checking account, right, and you get a ton of clicks or a ton of submitted applications, what if 90 percent of those applicants, [00:31:00] you know, don’t pass check systems or don’t meet whatever membership criteria is required.

You don’t know. And your, your numbers from your ad provider or your, your ROI calculations might look great. But in reality, you could be spending a ton of money driving exactly the wrong type of potential number to the credit union. And now you’re just paying to give somebody a decline or a bad experience.

Josh: Yeah. No. Yeah. I mean, that brings up a really good point, right? When we talk about just being able to track conversion metrics and drop off points for people, that is something that is severely missing in a lot of credit union experiences. And you even look at it, right? Like you were talking about in the digital account opening experience, right?

If you go to say a rocket mortgage, right? Um, which I also find really interesting because I always ask how many people have gone through that. Like, I’m assuming you have, right? Um, how many people have at least tried that? And a lot of people have, but then they [00:32:00] don’t correlate that one of the very first steps in that whole process is they just want to get an attribute to you.

They want to know who you are and be able to attach to that so that one, they have a warm lead to follow up on. And two, you can come back at any point in time and start where you left off from any other channel. But for whatever reason, in digital account opening, we don’t do it that way, right? We’re like, Hey, we’re going to do all of this stuff up front.

And then, Oh, by the way, you can’t actually become a member and they drop off. And then we have no idea where, but you know, somebody entered the flow.

Laszlo: Yeah. And that’s, you know, it’s called abandonment messaging is the most basic one, right? We, we grab email up front. So if at any point you get distracted, we’ve got your email and we send you an email saying, Hey, you know, you’re almost finished, or this is your next step. Because we know distractions happen.

We know that, you know. Pickups can, can come up in the application or something else. And you want to reach out and be proactive and ensure that they don’t go somewhere else because [00:33:00] maybe they didn’t have their, their funding account ready, or they couldn’t choose between one checking account or another.

Josh: What, uh, what kind of surprised you maybe both positively and negatively the most when you came into the credit union industry in terms of, um, just kind of digital services and what it was like to acquire and convert customers?

Laszlo: Um, I was very surprised by the, uh, the number of different vendors that everything has to plug into it is, I mean, it’s. Incredibly complex compared to e commerce in that regard. Um, you know, you’re looking at consumer reporting agencies, you’re looking at funding providers, you’re connecting to a core, you might be reaching out to a, uh, card servicing company to generate card numbers.

So there’s, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that obviously needs to be surfaced to potential members and existing members in a way that’s easy to. Easy for them to navigate. So that was a big surprise for me is, you know, I mean, obviously on the surface, I’m like, why is it so bad? [00:34:00] It should be so easy to do this, this, and this, which, you know, again, with Flat Earth Credit Union, doing the marketing side of it, super easy doing it on the digital banking side or account opening side, there are so many other layers of the onion, so to speak.

Josh: Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. Cause I do think that it’s an important point, right? Like it’s, It’s really easy for us to sit here and talk about how easy it should be. But in reality, there’s oftentimes a lot of factors that go into that, that are just beneath the surface, right? And yeah, to your point, like spinning up flat earth credit union, you kind of had no boundaries, right?

You had no legacy tech debt. You had nothing other than your imagination and a WordPress site. So it’s pretty easy to spin up, make it look really good. Um, I’m assuming, I don’t know, maybe you did. Maybe you did take it to this level. But like, did you think about ADA compliance and accessibility and did you do all of those things?

Because in a real website you do, right? And then in a real website, for a [00:35:00] real credit union and for a real, You know, new member account opening process. Yeah, you’re right, right? Like I wish it was as easy as just I put products on a web page through a Shopify account and that’s it. And I have WordPress and Shopify, and those are my two vendors and I have a fulfillment center that fulfills the Shopify orders.

But at a credit union, you’ve got to talk to core, you’ve got to talk to maybe, Uh, you know, to your point, uh, credit scoring system. You’ve got to talk to a new account opening platform. You’ve got to talk to digital banking. You’ve got to like that list starts to unravel pretty quick when you start to really dig into it.

Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. But on the positive side, I think, you know, there are a lot of great vendors in the space. There’s, I think, more and more focus from, um, you know, fintechs that want to partner with smaller financial institutions to, um, VC companies that are investing in them, where we have a breadth of options that I [00:36:00] think even 6 years ago, we, we didn’t have quite as many.

Good choices. Um, so that’s a big 1 and, you know, this isn’t specific to digital, but there are long 10 years at credit unions. Um, I think people just join the industry and stay. And so, um, there’s a wealth of knowledge. And I’ve been lucky. And luckily, been lucky enough in, in my role here at communication, federal credit union to, um.

You know, be able to ask all the stupid questions, all the questions that people should roll their eyes at, you know, and they, they walk me through step by step, you know, this is why we do this. This is the order things get done. And here’s the reason because there’s. There’s this concept of what should happen, there’s, and there’s all the nuts and bolts of what needs to happen.

And then on top of that, you know, a whole layer of of regulation and other best practices. And so, um, yeah, the, the. Both the institution I work at, and the community in general, you know, people are very open to sharing information and ideas and and talking about the projects that they’re working on, or have worked on.

And that’s [00:37:00] allowed me to, um, you know, gain a lot of institutional knowledge in a fairly short period of time.

Josh: Yeah. I mean, that’s, uh, that’s one of the things I think is super special about this industry is how many people just kind of. Never fall out of it. Right. And I think, uh, we kind of touched on it and just even the little I’ve gotten to know you over the last little bit, um, you know, kind of in your introduction, it seems you’re very similar.

And it’s like, I want to just mail it in. I just, I do kind of want to just come to work and like do my nine to five and punch out. And then you’re like, gosh, dang it. Like the stupid industry kind of sucks you in because you realize all the good that you’re doing. And the people that you’re surrounded by and how passionate they are about the good that they’re doing.

You’re like, well, yeah, I kind of want to be a part of that. I’m like, yeah, well now I’m working until 10 PM. All right, fine.

Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. It’s, uh, it’s one of those things where I do believe that we are making a difference and I do believe that, you know, our, our members [00:38:00] benefit and we have data to show that they benefit from being our members and using our accounts versus the mega banks and, and alternatives that are out there.

But if anything, that should inspire us to make these experiences better, help make it easy for members to join. And, uh, and you know, Ensure that that we keep growing the credit union community as best we can.

Josh: I have no idea where your head is out with this, but I’d love to get your, uh, like on the spot thoughts of, um, one of the other things I thought was like really piqued my interest with your whole flat earth credit union concept, right? Is the idea of extremely niche banking. Um, and obviously there’s going to be a really specific type of individual that’s going to want to become a member at Flat Earth Credit Union.

Although I’m dead serious, uh, like maybe we’ll take this offline, but one of the, um, uh, folks at one of my customers credit unions, he and I are like, we want to work with you to charter this thing. Just cause I want to be a member of [00:39:00] Flat Earth Credit Union. Like I want to be a card carrying member of that one.

But. Right. Like there’s a certain personality that if that was a real credit union that would want to be a member of that credit union. And we’re starting to see some other financial services that are really focused on very specific niches and then aligning products, services, you know, core functionalities, cultures to that and saying, Hey, we’re really good at this.

Come to us for this. And you know, if I can kind of use the example of your automotive experience, right? I think you were saying it was like Uh, German automobiles, BMW, Mercedes, that kind of thing. Right?

Laszlo: Yeah, primarily Audi and Volkswagen. And yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s, if, if you kind of hone in on what those, uh, sorry, home in on what those. Those consumers want, then they’re going to gravitate towards you. If they’re passionate about a certain thing, you know, which I think if somebody is a flat earther, they’re pretty passionate about that.

Um, if they’re maintaining that belief and you offer a [00:40:00] product or service that, you know, maybe hundreds of other places might offer, but your branding and your messaging and your, your core values resonate with them. I think absolutely. You’ll build a very strong following.

Josh: So do you think that there’s a good opportunity for, um, community financial services to try to be more niche and say like, this is what we do and this is who we cater to. I feel like at the same time I’m seeing a little bit of both ends of the spectrum happening, right?

We’re seeing a lot of credit unions that maybe used to be seg based that are now becoming community chartered at our state chartered and are starting to open up and just say, Hey, if you live, work, worship, you know, within this area, you can be a member. And at the same time you’re starting to also see, um, gosh, I wish I could remember the name off the top of my head.

Maybe you’ll know, um. There was a FinTech financial institution, Jenovo that started up that’s focused specifically on we are the bank for people who just graduated from [00:41:00] medical school. Like that is their thing. And so they have very specific products and services. They understand what stage of your life you’re in and what that means to you when you’ve just graduated medical school, right?

So kind of trying to be all things to everyone versus, Hey, uh, if you, you know, just graduated from forestry service, like, sorry, we’re not at graduated med school. Come talk to us.

Laszlo: Yeah, I think there’s, uh, it’s, it’s a balancing act between, you know, trying to grow and then losing focus completely. Right. And so at some point, let’s say you’re, you’re, you’re just a very small local institution with a community charter. At some point, you’re going to reach a level of saturation where you have to expand it.

Um, but, uh, you know, to your point, I think there are institutions that are kind of just taking the easy way out by. Not really focusing on their, their core customers or members. And instead, you know, trying to expand their field of membership just because it’s a numbers game, right? I mean, at some point, if you’re an option that’s out there, that’s available, [00:42:00] people are going to get you, you know, it’s why people bought PT cruisers and the, uh, you know, the Chevy Aztec, you know, it’s like nobody was really thinking about making that decision.

It was just one of the options. And somehow they just. They fell into it.

Josh: That’s awesome.

My, my grandpa. So we’re going to take a total detour. So my grandpa, uh, on my mom’s side is the reason that I’ve been a car guy. He was a hot rod guy from like the, you know, the way back when and I grew up like in the shop in the summers, wrenching on hot rods with him and my uncles. And, um, and I remember the day.

clear as day that I was talking to my grandpa and he was like, yeah, no, I think the PT cruiser is actually really cool. I think, I think I would get one. I was like, oh, you finally lost it. Like you finally got senile. He’s like, Hey, no, it’s very practical. It’s like, nope, you’re done, man. Like the day [00:43:00] you trade in the 32 coupe for a PT cruiser, like no, it’s all over.

Um, but no, yeah, I mean, I think, um, Have you seen some examples that stand out to you of people that are doing a really good job on either end of that spectrum of kind of being all things to everyone or being a very specific niche market?

Laszlo: um, you know, I think some, some institutions have really good ends with, uh, with certain groups and communities, you know, like, um, right here, locally tells the teachers credit union. They have, um. Yeah, they’re pretty involved in local schools. Uh, you know, not just in the Tulsa area of Oklahoma. They do a pretty good job of of growing their membership through that.

You look at, you know, um, local bank mid 1st. I mean, local ish, but first has a bunch of sports teams that, you know, they kind of have debit card deals with them and people. Gravitate towards them that are fans, um, you know, Tinker, uh, Tinker credit union. They’re the largest in our state, but they are very strongly associated with Tinker air force [00:44:00] base and have a lot of, um, you know, members in the air force.

And so, um. They’re local, they’re all doing, doing a great job. There have been fintechs, you know, apps where you get credit for, you know, taking a certain number of steps a day. And that might, you know, influence your rewards that you get on your, on your debit card purchases and things like that. Um, but, um, you know, and then, and then as far as being broad and open field of membership, you know, the digital credit union seems to do a great job there.

They’re pretty massive. Um, they, I think they maybe have one branch location. I’ll have to fact check me, but,

Josh: Uh, about to get a lot bigger with the, uh, first tech merger.

Laszlo: Yeah. And so that’s, um, that just kind of shows that both strategies are valid. It’s just. Make sure you know which one you’re picking and commit to it and know whether you’re getting results or not.

Josh: That’s a good point, right? It’s, it’s pick a strategy, go with it, and then come to what you were talking about earlier. Like, how do you define success and how do you measure it? And then do you actually have the [00:45:00] tools in place to be able to measure it? Um, and that’s one of the other things I was curious to see what, um, kind of like your early, you know, coming into the credit union industry.

You were talking a little bit about just like how many systems it took to actually make one thing happen. How much of that have you had to kind of figure out like what needs to be unpacked and unraveled? What is legacy tech debt? What’s, this is how we’ve always done it versus like, we actually, we have to keep doing it that way because all these systems are required.

Like, what did, what did you find there?

Laszlo: Yeah, I think, um, you know, there is a fair amount of legacy tech that, um, we’re on an older Fiserv core. That’s not, you know, it’s being sunset. So we’re shopping for a new one. And so sometimes, you know, in our case, our core does everything we need it to, but Other vendors that we want to partner with, they’re potentially best in class.

They don’t they don’t support it and have no intention to. So that’s 1 thing that, you know, moving forward to [00:46:00] push certain initiatives ahead. We will have to make that change. But on the flip side, there is a lot of, you know, well, I’m We process these payments this way because that’s how we’ve always done it.

I think, you know, that even touches on things as simple to change as UI UX, which is, there’s in the credit union space and banking space, there’s a lot of terminology that is makes sense to people in the credit union space, but not the actual people that you’re trying to serve. And I think one of the first things is a little bit of a tangent.

One of the first things that I got involved with when I started here was our CIO, Scott Mendenhall. He was on the FISER of Carilion. Advisory council. That was our digital platform that we used to have. And, uh, in that platform to make a payment, you would have to go to transfers, make your auto loan payment.

And we do a ton of indirect lending. You know, these people have, uh, you know, the only experience with us is really trying to make their car payment, right? The relationship was, you know, Acquired through a car dealer and [00:47:00] they, they’re like, I had your app. I’m trying to make a payment. Bill pay says I can’t use bill pay because you have to have a checking account because it’s not to pay your loan.

Right. And the only other option is transfer. And then it was even worse because there was transfers and external transfers, right? And so Scott got me on this advisory council call and they had, they was, they were doing this like year end wishlist, you know, where you submit your ideas and get votes. And so I was like, Hey, um, you think we could add a pay now button?

And it wasn’t even the Pfizer people or their credit. It was like the other credit unions on the call just started laughing at me. Like it says transfers, just make a transfer. And I was like, um, okay, I get that makes sense to you. But most of the people making payments to you don’t work at the credit union.

And so I didn’t think much of it. And I think, A few months later, we went to Alpharetta, Georgia to the, an in person meeting there and Pfizer being Pfizer, you know, they had a, some third party do like a focus group, you know, [00:48:00] about all these features and they put it on the scale. And there was like, the, you know, it was like effort versus like, um, you know, desirability for the end user.

And so at the very top of like lowest effort. You know, Mason makes most sense to end users. It was like the pay now button. And then when they did the curly and refresh, that was one of the first things I was so happy. And once that pay now button showed up, we stopped getting questions and it seems so trivial and so, um, you know, so simple if you’re an outsider, but once you’ve been working here for, you know, five, 10 years, it’s like, yeah, that’s a transfer, just tell them to make a transfer while bill pays, obviously not that bill pays for making.

Payments to utilities from your checking account. And so that’s, that’s kind of some of the stuff that you come up against is it’s not even resistance to change. It’s just a difficulty of, you know, removing yourself from having this institutional knowledge or this, this habit and thinking of it as like, Hey, you know, we’re, we’re trying to attract younger members. [00:49:00] They, you know, the call to action needs to match the thing that they’re thinking. And now I don’t even know what Gen Alpha’s call to action for PayNow is. I’m not going to, I’ll ask chat GPT at some point in a little bit, but we might go from PayNow to, I don’t know. I don’t want to use the wrong term, but we’ll, we’ll just have to look and see what they call it.

Josh: I’m so glad you used that example. I mean, I use that all the time too. Of just, there’s so many things that we do a certain way because we have that institutional knowledge. And I’m like, people don’t think that way. And it’s funny that you use that example cause that’s the exact example I’ve used for years to Laszlo is like the, the whole transfers to make a payment.

I’m like, nobody, but people that work at a credit union think that way. Like go ask your neighbor, Hey, do you transfer money to a loan? They’d be like, no, I pay my loan. Like, what are you talking about, dude? Um, but we just, we get so stuck in our vernacular. And it is [00:50:00] things like share and member and all of these terms, um, and then all of these different features and functions and things that we can do and ways that we can do them.

I literally, uh, last night, I have a buddy who’s trying to, uh, to buy, uh, a new project car out of California, lives here in Portland. And we were talking through how he was trying to, uh, Transfer the payment to this guy, right? And how he doesn’t want to give the dude the money until he’s a hundred percent sure in what he’s buying.

And the dude doesn’t want to give up the car until he’s got money in his account. And he’s like, no, no, no. A check in hand is not money in account. Right? And so they were going back and forth. And I’m just talking to my buddy about all these different things. And my buddy is absolutely, he’s a very intelligent person, right?

He works on really, really sophisticated, like. Electrical HVAC systems and stuff that’s just like my poor little brain can’t comprehend, right? But I’m talking to him about, [00:51:00] well, would you do ACH or same day ACH or would we do a wire or hey, is his institution set up to receive FedNow? Can we do a FedNow payment?

Right. And he’s looking at me like I’m a moron. He’s like, I have no idea what you’re talking about, dude. I just need to pay this dude for this car. He needs to know he got it and I don’t want him to have it and it not be in my hands until I’ve got the car. So I don’t really give a crap. Like you to figure that out.

You, the banks figure that out. Right. But it is so funny how a lot of times, and you do see that manifest itself in things like you eyes where it’s like. Transfer. I’m trying to pay my auto loan.

Laszlo: Yeah.

Josh: your point is, is you gotta think about it from how the person on the other side of that is going to be thinking, not somebody who’s worked with the credit union for 20 years.

Laszlo: Yeah. And, and we got rid of share, um, we renamed them primary savings. I think that was last year. That was a, a little bit of an internal battle, and [00:52:00] we had to announce it to members saying, Hey, the name is changing, you know, and, uh, I mean, membership membership is a touchy 1 because. That’s what differentiates credit unions, right?

But if you, if you tell an average consumer, what, what do you think of when it’s a membership? You think of a recurring monthly charge, like, when you set your New Year’s resolution to go to the gym and you get charged every month. It’s, it’s February. You’ve completely given up and you’re still being billed, you know, 75 bucks a month and trying to cancel this thing.

Right? As opposed to, you know, you remember it’s potentially free. It might be a one time fee if there’s a, you know, some sort of affiliation you have to join, but it’s just some of these things that we have to be cognizant of where, you know, and in our little worlds, they have positive connotations or simple explanations, but to the, the people that we’re trying to reach, right?

They can mean completely different things

Josh: Yeah. Well, and I think you kind of touched on it a second ago too, right? Of, Even if we talk to our current membership [00:53:00] base, right. And, um, I don’t know. I feel like, uh, I’m at that stage in life where, you know, people I think are old, call me old and people that I think are young, call me old or whatever. I think I got that backwards, but I’m like, um, like old enough now at this point that I’ve been around, been in credit unions, you 20 years.

I’d like to think I’m kind of an, an old credit union member in that sense, but I’d also like to think I’m still pretty young, right? So I’d like to think I still, you know, identify with the, the younger tech savvy group. But, uh, even in my own world and members like me, we still have to kind of educate on what is this terminology mean.

But could you imagine to somebody who, yeah, is a 17 year old today, And just walking up to them on the street and starting to use some of this vernacular to them about why they should do their banking with you versus just using their Venmo account like [00:54:00] they are now.

Laszlo: and we’re just a checking account versus a debit card. I mean, there’s like a whole disconnect there. If you get young enough, you know, they just think of having a debit card or yeah, cash app or Venmo that we, we advertise checking accounts and that’s kind of a, you know, a disconnect there. If you get, I think, you know, in the, in the mid twenties and younger, they just want a debit card.

They don’t want a checking account. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I wrote a check. So, um, it’s, it’s stuff like that. And there’s, um, you know, there’s a lot of other. Areas of the industry that can be, um, kind of improved, I think, as a whole, if we push our vendors to do better and ourselves to, to kind of, um, catch up with consumer expectations and, uh, we don’t need to turn into fintechs ourselves, but we can absolutely see what.

What parts in texts are doing right and given those same benefits to our members.

Josh: You know, that’s an interesting thought. I was, uh, as you were talking about, I was thinking, um, you know, at scale, it’s really easy to change [00:55:00] public perspective, right? Um, So, I don’t know, I’m trying to think, um, are you a Gmail user by chance?

Laszlo: I am, I was an invite only Gmail user.

Josh: Ooh, um, Gmail did a huge, a UI refresh this morning. Um, at least for our corporate account, it looks really, really nice.

They changed a bunch of different things, but if Google all of a sudden stopped calling it email, right. And started calling it something new. I would probably be like, what? Huh? For a hot minute. And then I’d probably be over it. Right. I’m like, all right, well Google just calls it something else. Like it’s moved on.

Like that’s the new terminology for email. Right. But, uh, I think if, you know, uh, I don’t know, like the local community, uh, email provider tried to change emails name on me, I’d be like, what are you guys trying to pull? Like, no, knock it off. Right. And so where I’m going with that is. You made me start thinking about, so can one credit [00:56:00] union start to change the public perception of, do we even need to call it a checking account?

Or does the whole industry need to decide like, Hey, we need to start changing some terminology because, um, you know, the younger demographics that we’re going after, they just don’t communicate that way anymore. And I’m a huge fan of probably also why I loved your flat earth credit union, right? Like a really obnoxious examples to make my point.

And I always use this point where we’re even doing, um, like discussions about UI and terminology on buttons and things. And I always make the comment, like if your credit union doesn’t call it transfers or moving money, if they call it like shifting your cheddar. Right. If that’s like the vernacular of your membership base, right?

And then they log into digital banking and it says transfers, there’s going to be a disconnect. So it needs to say, you know, shifting your cheddar. So do we need to start having those types of conversations as an industry or even as a individual credit union, [00:57:00] that maybe we need to start trying to push changes to the terminology that’s more aligned to the next generation of members or whatever we call them.

Um, of our credit unions versus the people that are doing it now.

Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, you can AB test it. If you want to, you can offer both. You can make a landing page for a debit card and one for a checking account, right? They. Open the same product inevitably at the end and see how they perform. But I think with debit cards, that’s just happened over time, right?

It’s, it’s not one entity pushing it. It’s checks are becoming obsolete. Debit cards are the new thing. Mobile wallets are the new thing. And so we just need to accept that that’s happening. You know, you can look at the data and Google trends and elsewhere and look at what the FinTechs are advertising and, you know, follow that, especially if you’re having an issue attracting younger members, because that’s probably part of the disconnect.

On the flip side, if you’re doing something new and original as a credit union, which I think absolutely every. And every credit union and [00:58:00] community bank can come up with a cool new product and new spin on things. Then you might corner what it’s called. It’s like, you know, nobody calls action cameras, action cameras.

Everybody calls it a GoPro. You know, you can, you can spend all the money in advertising in the world. And they’re still going to call your product, that’s not a GoPro, a GoPro. Uh, and that’s, that’s just, you know, an example of how, you know, coming up with a new product or a great idea, you know, gives you the flexibility to do that.

Josh: Yeah, that is fascinating. How, uh, how those vernaculars to become a part of our everyday lives. Like I don’t even, if I say I’m going to not drive myself, I just say I’m an Uber. Even though I haven’t taken an Uber in years, Laslo, I use Lyft. I still call Lyft Uber. I’m like, yeah, I’m going to get an Uber.

And then I get a Lyft.

Laszlo: Yeah. GoPros, Kleenex. I mean, there’s, there’s a bunch of examples. And what’s fascinating about Uber is it’s, I mean, taxis, cabs were a thing and Uber just came in and took over. I mean, nobody says I’m going to call a cab. You know, if [00:59:00] anybody’s driving you somewhere, they’re Ubering you.

Josh: Yeah. I know, but yeah, but that’s, that’s kind of what I was thinking is, um, you think about using that like Uber example, right? And they come in with a massive amount of Silicon Valley VC money. It’s a direct consumer product. They’re kind of completely redefining a space with something new versus how does a credit union kind of reinvent themselves the same way as reinvented, you know, getting transportation.

Um, and this is kind of one of the other topics that I feel like comes up a lot on this podcast is the idea that you kind of have to disintermediate yourself or someone else will. Right. You always have to be evolving. You can’t just keep doing things the way you’ve always done them. So how do you see, you know, credit unions, community banks needing to think about, like, how do you, how do you become your own Uber example, uh, in the taxi [01:00:00] world to yourself?

Laszlo: I mean, that’s, that’s a really difficult question. I think if I could, uh,

Josh: You don’t have the answer like spelled out to give to everybody.

Laszlo: if I had the answer, I would not be telling you Josh would be running into our CMO’s office right now. But, uh, you know, it’s, it’s 1 of those things where I think the credit union philosophy and. You know, kind of, uh, the stuff that we preach about being not for profit and member owned and not paying, you know, paying out, you know, executives, 10s of millions of dollars and making risky loans.

Um, I think there’s a lot of appeal to that and I think what we need to do is understand what barriers there are to potential members from. Joining us, um, and becoming part of this movement. And a lot of it boils down to, you know, am I eligible? What’s a membership, right? Yeah. How we present our products.

Is it a checking account or a debit card? How difficult is it to open? Is that you can, I open an account at 2 AM. Will it be decision? Will I have to wait until the next [01:01:00] day? And I think until we get all those other pieces to the same level as our competitors, and you know, some people will say our competitors or other banks and credit unions are size, but reality, we’re.

You know, we have all the data and I’d love to speak about that all the data that we have, you know, um, about the products and services. Our members use elsewhere, right? Whether it’s payday lending or by now pay later services until we have that same level of experience and onboarding. I don’t think we, we need to give up on the things that may credit you.

And this is a whole difference. I think we’re just saying, oh, well, we just need to keep pushing the credit union message harder and ignore, you know, all the skeletons in the closet with this antiquated technology and manual processes and, you know, 9 to 5 hours

Josh: Yeah, I appreciate that. Cause I think, um, I think you’re right. Like in my opinion, right, is, um, one, you can’t lose sight of what makes a credit union special. And I guess this is one of those we have to check ourselves and see if we’re just totally indoctrinated or if the [01:02:00] real world thinks this. But I’d like to feel that the more I talk to people, um, you know, in my personal life that, you know, we care about who we do business with.

Um, There’s a lot of, even though I still shop on Amazon, I want to shop local. I like something that was handmade. I like the story behind the product and in financial services, like there’s no better example of that than a credit union or even, you know, some really good community banks. And so I think the story is there that, like you say, the, the touchy feely, the heartfelt stuff, that is what people will actually prescribe to.

But then you have to look at how do you make changes to what does need to change to make it easier for people to get that message, it resonate with them and then convert. And if you, you know, change the wrong things, it could spell disaster. If you change the right things, it could do a lot of [01:03:00] good. Um, But if you’re just changing who you are to try and be different because maybe you’re feeling that’s why we’re not getting new membership, but it’s actually just the conversion funnel that’s broken.

The messaging was great all along. Then we went down a fool’s errand.

Laszlo: exactly. And, you know, a lot of these improvements that are being made by us and our peers are automations and efficiencies, and we’re not on the. You know, we don’t have shareholders that are, you know, bleeding us for, um, you know, crazy earnings reports, and we’re not paying 1, 000, 000 dollar bonuses to people.

So, ultimately, those efficiencies allow our, our employees who, you know, live and breathe the credit union philosophy in most cases to have those meaningful interactions with with our members in the community, which is. You know, a big differentiator, because we’re not going to automate some process and then, you know, get rid of 10 percent of our staff.

We’re going to find ways for that. Those employees [01:04:00] to elevate the credit union, um, when you’re going into a branch, if you’re waiting around, because somebody has to decision your application, because we don’t have automations in place. So they’re trying to manually correct some data entry piece that was missed, right?

That’s a conversation they can’t have about, you know, saving you money. You’re helping you set a budget or, you know. Uh, whatever other questions you might have. So, ultimately, it’s it is, you know, being cognizant of making improvements that actually. Our improvements, not just modern technology. And there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of the FOMO or fear of missing out marketing.

When I started here, it was, you know, AI and machine learning and APIs and SDKs are all the buzzwords and those are all great things. I’m not going to say they aren’t, but if you’re on an antiquated digital banking platform, if you’re the rest of your technology, isn’t where it needs to be, none of those things can become actionable in any way, right?

And so, you know, what you, [01:05:00] what you want to do is when you’re, when you’re making these improvements and you’re, you’re gaining these insights or reports, you want to make sure that they’re actionable, because if they’re not actionable, they’re meaningless. I mean, if you have a report saying our delinquencies and charge officer becoming sky high, but you don’t have any way to fix the underlying issue, right?

It’s, it’s essentially meaningless. You’re just bracing for impact or merger or whatever is going to come your way. And so that’s really the importance of. Of kind of having a digital 1st mindset, because unless you’re going to hire a massive call center 24 7 to call and give personalized advice to members, you need to have near real time. Analytics and insights and surface those 2 members, whether it’s a next best action, the next best product, or just a simple, like, you know, hey. This is where you got gassed the other day. You know, it’s actually cheaper down the street, for example. It’s, it’s, it’s making it actionable, [01:06:00] but also I guess one caveat with data is you want to personalize it, but not be too creepy. And, uh, you know, part of the, my little need to take things to the extreme. Um, this was another April fool’s pitch. I didn’t learn my lesson the first year, but. You are banks and credit unions. Nobody has the level of first party data that we do. I mean, it’s insane. We know your age, we know your address. We know what kind of food you like to eat when you get lunch.

I mean, if we really wanted to, right. I mean, and we have a hard time getting youth members. So this is my million dollar idea. So somebody steals it from your podcast and you’re really disappointed, but, and we’re combating romance scams, right? Okay. One of the most common types of scams. There’s a loneliness epidemic.

We’ve got AI, we’ve got complex data warehouses and all these models built. We could match a member with another member. We know they’re both single. They might get [01:07:00] tacos on Tuesdays, maybe two, two streets apart at different food trucks. You know, what if they just. Their face just showed up and we know that they’re, you know, financial compatibility is important.

We know there may be both frugal and have good credit scores. So there won’t be some, you know, spats over finances. What if we just say, Hey, you know, Hey, John, Sarah is single. She likes getting tacos. Like, right. And you can agree on a taco truck next week. And then bam, you know, 9 months later, we get a youth member.

We’re getting youth member goals met, but it’s it is that, you know, um, that that kind of unconstrained, almost irrational level of iterating products and ideas is where Silicon Valley is that it’s where the fintechs are at. And, you know, obviously we’re not going to launch member to member dating. Um, you know, we’re not going to launch mobile cash deposit where a drone comes out and grabs your cash because we got geolocation on your app.

Right. But there are people getting, you know, ideas that are almost as, as crazy as that and running with [01:08:00] it and, and making viable businesses out of it. So we just need to make sure that. The, the insights that we get that we make them actionable and we make them deliver value to the members and also help the credit union improve.

Um, so that means, you know, adding a digital banking platform, which is the, the main touch point that you have, right. With your members, the one that’s there 24 seven, the one that they check multiple times a day and surfacing that information there and making them able to do that action that you want them to take.

Josh: You know, I asked you, what do you think Credit unions need to do to disintermediate themselves before someone else does. And you said, you know, I don’t think I’d have the answer on the spot. I think you have the answer. I think you just gave it right there. I mean, it is that you almost have to have that Silicon Valley level, almost think tank innovation lab within the credit union, right?

And you got to talk about these crazy [01:09:00] ideas, like a member to member dating app, because sometimes you might actually come up with something. But I think a lot of times even more so than you come up with the, we’re going to do this whole member to member dating app to your point, right? Then you start talking about things that are like, Oh wow, actually we were joking about just seeing if like, I forget your example now, like John and Susan both realize that, you know, they get tacos on Tuesday.

All of a sudden you’re like, wow, actually we have a lot of members that are getting tacos on Tuesday. Wow. We have a lot of members that go to this one taco stand. Right? Hey, we could do actually, uh, you know, member appreciation drive at that taco stand. And that might be a great way to get new members as people who aren’t members come to the taco stand.

Cause you know, people who buy this product on Amazon are likely to buy this product. So if you’re likely to buy tacos at this taco stand as a member, maybe you will as a non member and you’ll join us as a member, right? I mean you start to just [01:10:00] have those crazy ideas and they snowball out of control sometimes and just become.

flat earth credit union jokes, but sometimes they actually become something really real. And I think you do have to have that level of being willing to have crazy conversations because somebody else is.

Laszlo: Absolutely. Yeah. And as long as the, you know. So the idea doesn’t push members away and you have a way to go back at the end of a campaign or a trial run and say, Hey, you know, this meet the objective we had in mind and it’s silly not to try it. Right. I mean, depending on the level of effort it takes to get running.

Josh: Yeah. Well, I think that’s a big part of the equation there, right? Is I think it’s so important for, this is not just talking about, you know, credit unions trying to get new members. I mean, this is a conversation we have in our business and I’m sure you have in different areas. It’s how do you define success?

Right? So how are we going to define success out of that? And then does this project campaign thing that we are going to do, does that have a potential to impact [01:11:00] what we define as success? And then how will we measure it? And then of course in your space, right, you do have to add that layer of like you talked about earlier, the, the regulation, the compliance, the trust element, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And you. Especially, you know, one did not be too creepy. I think if I just logged into digital banking for the first time and they were like, Hey, we see that you’re, you know, single and you might want to get tacos with Sarah. I’m like, ah, I read my data wrong. I’m actually married to kids. Happy.

Really good. Thank you. I hope my picture didn’t show up in her profile. That’s awkward. Uh, what are you guys doing over there? I think maybe I’m going to go ahead and close my account and go somewhere else. Right? Like we got to balance all of those things. But if you’re looking at, well, how do we define success?

What is going to differentiate, you know, our offerings and why would someone want to be a member with us? Does this align to that? And then if it’s crazy enough, it just might work.

Laszlo: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s, there are examples of [01:12:00] companies that have done that. I mean, it’s the Venmo’s and the cash apps in the world where you’re just moving money. Like people could do that all the time. They could just write a check or hand you cash. What do you mean? I’m going to use my phone to do it.

And now, you know, Apple and Google and everybody else supports it.

Josh: Isn’t it funny how some of those things like you trace back to, um, it wasn’t even that long ago where if you had told somebody this idea, you’d be like, that’s absolutely bonkers. You’re crazy. But now today it’s, Um, it’s a part of everything we do, right? Like, I mean, you think about,

Laszlo: somebody money you can’t get back that you don’t even know? Like, why would you do that? And now everybody’s got it.

Josh: I even, I love the idea of, um, like the whole Uber example, right?

Like I, in my lifetime, I remember my parents being like, don’t ever get in a car with a stranger. And now we’re like, Hey, we’ve made it so easy for you to get in a car with a stranger. We want you to do it all the time. Right? And you’re like, if I had told my mom back then, Hey, I’m going to use my phone to just [01:13:00] call up a stranger to drive me to the grocery store.

She’d be like, absolutely not. You are not. And now I do it all the time. You know what I mean? So something that seems crazy and radical today, a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now may not be so crazy. And it may be just the thing that sets you apart and differentiates. Maybe it’s flat earth credit.

I don’t know.

Laszlo: maybe got a lot of the bells and whistles. You know, we’ve got Flat Earth Credit Union has clear call to actions. It has functioning deep links that open up your app, you know, and that’s low hanging fruit, right? And that’s another thing that we didn’t touch on is there are a lot of institutions that are not making the most of the platforms that they’re on.

And we were guilty of that with our prior platform. We’re on Alchemy now. We might not be using Alchemy, Alchemy to its fullest either. So that’s a really important thing is to sit down when you’re doing these conversions and implementing new products and services that don’t do things the way [01:14:00] that you’ve always been done in this new thing, right?

Because there’s oftentimes a better way to do it or a new feature that you can use, and sometimes even the vendors that you work with might not, you know, the people. Implementing for you, or the support people after the fact, they might not have the full breadth of knowledge of your platform because there’s so many vendors that they support or whatever else.

And so there’s a lot of value in networking and also holding your vendors accountable saying, hey, you know. This other credit union that I know was able to do this campaign this way, and this is how it showed up to its members. Can we have that same thing? And, you know, sometimes you have to be a little pushy and abrasive.

Um, but it is important to not just jump to the next best thing for the sake of. Having a digital transformation, but making sure that the platform that you’re on, you’re making the most of, which can be very easy to miss. And there’s sometimes release notes that might be, you know, glanced over and, and other issues with, you know, maybe communication on [01:15:00] their part.

But there’s a good chance if you’re on one of the modern digital banking platforms or account opening platforms, there are steps that you can take to improve your results. And that’s like. The first thing you should be doing before you look at some other products or demos,

Josh: That’s so well stated. Um, and I think we’re all guilty of that, right? I mean, but I, I, did you really just tell me you don’t read every line of every release note? Uh, but it’s true, right? And, and even, you know, I’m sure we’re all guilty of this in, in varying degrees of one, you know, if you’re the credit union, not looking at everything that your vendor has.

And then sometimes on the vendor side too, right? We get complacent and we’re like, Oh yeah, no, of course my credit union knows everything that I offer and all that. And they don’t, we didn’t tell them. All right. Um, and

Laszlo: and this is not, this is not to make you, you look bad, Josh, but once I’m a Typhoon customer, and this might not be the case with Typhoon because I’m not a Typhoon customer, but once I’m a Typhoon customer, my success is [01:16:00] not necessarily as important to Typhoon as maybe signing up a new customer. So, you know, a lot of vendors don’t have somebody in place and maybe Typhoon does, but they might have a person in place to help you optimize your results on their platform. which a lot of times, you know, alchemy, I’ll give them a lot of credit for what they do. They have a community forum website where we can all grab our pitchforks if we need to, if something’s really not, not happening. And they give us an opportunity to collaborate and discuss issues. And a lot of times there are. Clients having issues just because they’re not aware of how they can leverage a feature to their advantage. And sometimes people are trying to do something that they think is new, but if they just look at the campaign a little differently, they could see that it’s actually this, this other thing that we could do through this, this method that already exists.

I don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. And so I think that’s, that’s really important is, you know, especially with this technology, like the digital member facing platforms that change so quickly. [01:17:00] Is having those calls, whether it’s it’s here, calls or calls with the vendor or clients to make sure that they’re making the most of it because eventually, you know, if they’re on your great platform and they’re not using it in the best way, and that leads to them being merged to another digital banking platform, you’re going to lose a bunch of users and clients.

And it is really in the vendors best interest to iterate the products and also educate the clients on on how to make the most of it.

Josh: I’m glad, I’m really glad you said something because it is really true that, you know, um, I think the superpower of this industry is collaboration. It’s collaboration amongst the credit unions. It’s collaboration amongst the vendors. Um, and then it’s kind of that co mingling of all of that. And there’s no way we’re going to service every single credit in this country.

Uh, same with all of the digital banking providers, right? And just like. No one credit union is going to be perfect for every single consumer in the US. It’s finding what’s the right fit for [01:18:00] you. How do you define success? Right. And collectively as an ecosystem, like we need to build up and support our credit unions.

Like that’s the whole point of this whole thing. And there’s a lot of really good people out there that got into this business to do good. And I think if a lot of times we just take a step back and, um, Kind of re sit at the table and have conversations and collaborate. Like there’s a lot that can be done, right?

It’s not always, uh, Oh, we’re on this legacy tech stack. Therefore it’s garbage. We need a digital revolution. A lot of this, you’d be like, actually, you know what, there’s a lot we can do with this. There’s a lot of tweaks that can be made. And like you were saying earlier, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit that can be done.

We want to get to this, you know, AI mega bot that, you know, can do member to member dating, uh, apps and all of this. But you know what, actually today, let’s just see if we can help with, I don’t know, subscription management costs. That’d be a simple [01:19:00] thing, right? You know, so there’s a lot that can be done.

Laszlo: Yeah, and you have all the data, right? If we have all the data, we know what services members are going elsewhere for. We know what our staff are spending time doing. That’s manual. That could be automated and it is a lot of work to automate stuff. It’s. It’s a ton of work, but it ensures more consistent results for the members, the credit union.

Um, ultimately, there’s, there’s really no turning back. Your, your competitors are doing it. If you are,

Josh: Yeah. I think it’s funny that, uh, you got into this industry. You were saying actually at one point that, um, like you’ve always been kind of interested in financial services, right? And you kind of played around with, um, you know, opening different accounts at different financial institutions just to see what their, um, their kind of, their customer acquisition experience was like you were taking some of those learnings into what you were doing and everything.

But I think it’s pretty hilarious that you were like, all right, I’m going to get out of the fast paced world and something that I’m both personally and professionally passionate about so that I can just, you know, go to [01:20:00] work and then be done. And now here you are. And I think it’s pretty obvious. You’re pretty passionate about what you’re doing and you’re right back into it.

Laszlo: I am passionate about it. But the 1 nice thing is in the past, people would ask me what I did. I told automotive industry, they just want to talk to me about cars. I tell people I work at a credit union and most of them are like. Anyway, do you catch the game last night or man, this wind today has been crazy, you know?

So, um, I’m the annoying one being like, do you know what the difference is between a bank and a credit union? You know, but, uh, no, it’s a, it’s a good change of pace, but yeah, I think, you know, anybody that, that enjoys working and making a difference, you know, if you, if you join. Community bank, you’re absolutely going to get sucked in and try to make the most of your role.

Josh: Yeah. Well, I mean, Just going back to the whole getting us connected and having you on the podcast in the first place, right? Like it’s just, it really excites me to see people like you, um, in this industry that are having fun with what you’re doing and you take what you do really, really serious, [01:21:00] right?

Like it’s really obvious that you take very serious the member journey that they go through and trying to better your credit union and you know, then bring all the benefits that your credit union brings to the community that they serve. But you’re also just trying to have fun and just enjoy life and look for ways to have a laugh.

And it just makes me really excited to meet people like you, uh, through this industry and, and see that there’s people that are having fun, you know, while doing some really serious stuff. So I’m glad we got connected and, um, I’m really glad you, you put in some, you know, 20, 30 hours over some weekends to build a flat earth credit union.

Cause, uh, seriously, I really hope you do hear this, that You made a lot of people’s day with something that, you know, you thought was kind of a silly joke. And I think that’s pretty cool.

Laszlo: Well, thank you. I, like I said, I had fun making it and, uh, yeah, making people laugh never hurt anyone. So,

Josh: Yeah, exactly. Well, uh, hey, before I, uh, turn you loose on your day, I got two final questions for you, sir. So, where do you go to get information about what’s happening in [01:22:00] the industry? And, um, maybe some good resources that helped you spin up on the credit union industry when you joined.

Laszlo: so I’m, I’m, I’m, uh, I’m not the best example for this. Um, as far as, um, Blogs go like the financial brand future of FinTech. Those are two that I keep an eye on. I think at some point I got subscribed to credit union times. Not super digital focused. I think really what, what I try and do is I do have accounts at a lot of institutions.

Uh, try and understand what, what they’re doing, um, especially fintechs because fintechs are kind of, you know, on the, the bleeding edge of digital and, and member experiences and journeys, um, that’s 1. And then, you know, our, our department has our, our business intelligence team, and they, you know, on their own.

They’re very, um, they’re very driven and curious people. They oftentimes look at what members are doing, what, what third party services they’re using, whether it’s buy now pay later usage or, um, you know, these FinTech payday lenders. And they, you [01:23:00] know, they’re like, Hey, there’s, there’s all these transactions going through to this, this vendor.

What is it? They might Google it themselves. I might take a look. And that gives us a really good idea of, you know, what product gaps we might have, because. I’m not saying it’s the right approach for credit unions to try and be all things for all people, but I think that’s very much the mantra, but if you’ve got members that, you know, you’re their primary financial institution and the next thing you know, they’re using earn in or Dave or, you know, they’re, um, there may be, instead of using their credit card, you see a bunch of the firm or Klarna, you know, payments, that’s an eyeopener for like, okay, well, how can we.

How can we regain some of this, this market share or share a wallet with these customers? Um, so that’s really what we’re, what we’re looking at. Um, again, I, you know, I think I’m also plugged into newsletters. Um, So I’m going to go through the Flourish, Criat Union, email address that you have as well. And I do keep an eye on, you know, what is, what is Q2’s SDK up to?

You know, what are, what are people actually [01:24:00] doing in there? Because you do want to see, you know, you do what an RFP every 3 to 5 years for digital banking. And you do want to know a year or two ahead, Hey, is my vendor behind, or what are other clients doing with this platform that I haven’t yet done? And then of course the conferences are great.

You know, um, our, our digital banking provider has one Glia, which we use for customer support has one. And sometimes you get more information from your peers about a product than you do from the vendor itself. And not, not necessarily in a negative way. I mean, there’s been lots of alchemy in the spotlight, but there’s At the most recent Alchemy Conference, we’ve been a client for two years.

Um, there was a feature in Alchemy that Alchemy, I asked about, they said we don’t have it. And then Conexus Credit Union, they’re like, Oh yeah, we’ve been using that. Here’s how you do it. And I was like, cool. Like, I’m glad I came to this conference. This breakfast that I randomly had with y’all is the most valuable thing I’ve gotten out of it.

And, um, you know, it’s, it’s really cool that again, the community’s [01:25:00] just willing to be this open and share information and not just at each other’s throats, viewing each other as competitors.

Josh: I know, isn’t that really cool? I mean, you don’t see that in a lot of industries where you can go and have breakfast with another credit union. That in theory, yes, could look like competition on paper. Um, but like you were saying earlier, right? I mean, the real competition is in totally different places.

But you guys could be seeing this competition and you’re sitting at the table and they’re being like, Oh yeah, no, here’s how you turn this on. Hey, you want me to, you know, You want me to send you the code for that? We built it. No big deal. What’s your email address? What industry does that happen in? It’s really neat.

Yeah.

Laszlo: experience, but yeah, thanks again for having me on. I mean, it’s been, it’s been a fun talk. I don’t know what the next, uh, flat earth credit union will be. But I’ve got, I’ve got some ideas.

Josh: I know now that the cat’s out of the bag and like people know this is your GM, I feel like [01:26:00] now you’ve got to one up it. I don’t know.

Laszlo: There’s been some, I’ll keep it under wraps. You know, if I were only as good as make at making Money making ideas as I am making sarcastic things come to life.

Josh: You’d be cruising the world on your yacht.

Laszlo: Yeah. Then I’d be getting the VC money. Um, but no, uh,

Josh: Well, now as it stands, anytime I see some hilarious shenanigans, it’s just going to turn into a straight message to you. I’m like, is this you?

Laszlo: well, I I’m glad we got to talk. Hopefully we’ll get to meet in person. Maybe we’ll, uh, we’ll be able to catch up on the latest and greatest in the digital space. Again,

Josh: Absolutely. Well, uh, if other people want to connect with you, uh, or if they want to learn more about communication, FCU, how can they do that?

Laszlo: um, you can Google communication, federal credit union, or visit confedCU. org if you want to get in touch with me, um, you can just submit a form right on flat earth credit union. Uh, flatearthcu. org and, uh, in my downtime, I do log into that inbox and occasionally respond to messages. [01:27:00] So, um, always good seeing people discover the site and, and drop a line.

Josh: That’s awesome. I, uh, I totally want to, when this episode airs, I want like a periodic check in with you to see the Google analytics of the site. I’m super curious.

Laszlo: I’ll, uh, I’ll just share the dashboard with you. So I’ll, I’ll do that after this call.

Josh: Um, Laszlo, seriously, I can’t say it enough. You’re probably sick of hearing it, but I’m really excited. I got a chance to meet you and to have you on as a guest on the podcast.

And I’m really just genuinely happy to see. Um, people having fun with what they do and uh, congratulations again for making a lot of people’s day and making a lot of people laugh with a simple website. So thanks for coming and joining me as a guest on the digital banking podcast.

Laszlo: Thanks for having me, Josh. Take care.