#31 - The CLT Payments Season: Adam Gill, Head of Digital Banking @ Stearns Bank

Speaker A: Hey everybody, and welcome to season two of the Pay CLT Payments Hub podcast sponsored by Innova. I'm your host, Scott Harkey. And this season we're going to be diving deeper into the lives of some of the local payment professionals here in Charlotte to learn about their journey into the payment space. We hope you'll join us. Hey everybody. We're excited today to have Adam Gill. Welcome. Adam.

Speaker B: Thank you, Scott.

Speaker A: Thanks for being here. Uh, excited to have the conversation, excited to learn more about you today. So why don't we start with that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background, how did you get involved in payments and, and just give us a little bit more about what you're up to.

Speaker B: Sure. Um, so I'll start with my current role. I, uh, my current role, I'm the head of digital banking and product for Stearns Bank. It's a mid sized community bank headquartered in Minnesota, branches all around serving national customers and my job there is helping build and launch digital technologies and capabilities. Um, but prior to that I started at EY doing consulting. Um, that's where I first discovered fintech and payments and uh, led a Fintech Southeast initiative where I got really plugged into the community. Um, that was great. Consulting is a great way to start a career, but then you actually want to go do something. So then I, uh, went and worked at Ally Banks, uh, for a couple years as a product manager managing transactional products and debit card. And then I had the interesting opportunity to launch a NEO bank, um, which was a very interesting experience, uh, but built an entire bank infrastructure from scratch and then that led to where I am today.

Speaker A: That's awesome. And we're going to jump into all that because that's one of the things I've known you for a while and I think I've known you in some way, shape or form at each step of that journey. So I'm excited to learn more about it today and, and dig into some of that. Um, but maybe let's, let's start there. Right? Just in the variety of different roles and different things that you've done. Like what's the, I guess what's the theme you've seen through that or what, what has kind of been a consistent thread and different types of work that you've done, regardless of the kind of organization.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So at ey, all my largest clients were the biggest banks around Charlotte. Um, working at Ally was then working for a large digital bank. Then I worked for a neobank and now I'm at a community bank and the throughput is building and modernizing financial services technology, evolutionizing the way that they are engaging with their customers, going to market and how they need, um, to modernize in general with changing consumer and business expectations. So that's the throughput. Um, everyone needs to move money and everyone wants to try and modernize how they do that. And modernization isn't a endpoint, is continuous and ongoing. So, which is great for my career because everything will always be modernizing the journey.

Speaker A: Right. And the journey never ends. Um, I, I want to dig in a little bit to some of these things. So, uh, ey, you know, early career, like did you, did you know you wanted to go into banking and payments? Did you just kind of end up in it? Did you, did you get assigned a project and it was a payments project? Like what was the initial attract into the space or how did you kind of get involved with payments more specifically?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So, uh, when I was uh, you know, first getting my first job out of college, I actually had two offers and it was between doing investment banking in New York and doing financial services consulting in Charlotte. Um, and I found financial services consulting was going to be more interesting, more dynamic, different types of projects. And that proved to be true. Uh, landed here, learned a lot. You know, you're fresh out of school, 22 years old, you pretend you know what, you know what you're doing and then you land there and you figure it out. Hm. But I was very lucky.

Speaker A: Isn't that what we do when we're also like 42 years old?

Speaker B: Like, yes, absolutely. It never changes. You just add polish. Um, and uh, I had a lucky opportunity my second year at EY to get involved in a fintech initiative they were running for business development and the community and trying to just build those networking relationships. So 23 ended up leading that initiative for the few years at the firm, which was a great way for me to realize, one, I loved it and two, this is where I wanted my career path to go.

Speaker A: I think that's the other really interesting intersection point with you is, is you. You got involved in the local scene really early, um, and helped drive some of that early stuff around Carolina fintech Hub. I imagine that that's the organization that you're talking about. Um, and I think that was really good for the city to see some of just the momentum and effort around that. Like there again is, is. Was there a natural pull into getting involved in those sorts of things? Um, do you have uh, an aspect of just your own interest that Involves the, the community side and getting engaged or is it just kind of one of those things that happen? You know, right place, right time?

Speaker B: You know, I think it's all of those factors play into it. Um, I'll, I'll give a shout out to Brad Wallace, who was championing it at EY at the time, who was a partner that I had met and engaged with. And you know, like I say to anyone I work with, a lot of it is just luck and timing. And the other part is also what your interest in kind of pushing and learning and just being curious. If you have the natural curiosity, you'll continue to find new opportunities. Um, and you know, when I jumped into this I was like, it was exciting. There was a lot of different financial technology, momentum, new conferences coming into town. And by bringing people I recognized the power of what Charlotte was becoming as a hub in its own right. Uh, not just in financial services and banking that everyone knows because of the large banks, but this kind of special element of the community that was coming together down here in Charlotte, um, which was resonant but different than the communities you'll find in New York and in San Francisco. And uh, was exciting to be a part of. And I was attracted to that.

Speaker A: What do you think is. I totally agree with you. And my favorite kind of memory from that time was the fintech mosh pit. And this, the uh, early, early podcast attempt at, ah, trying to get on, you know, get, create one of these and, and talk about a bunch of fintech topics. And um, I still think something like that could maybe resurface one day. That was a lot of fun. But what do you think it is about Charlotte that is different or that is unique or that has kind of played out as it's continued to evolve, whether it's in things like that or just more generally in the ecosystem, as this attracted more and more organizations and talent. Like what? What about Charlotte is appealing to people or to companies?

Speaker B: I think the obvious choice, uh, the obvious answer rather is the foundation of the large banks that are here. Not only are corporation headquarters and plants and kind of putting the flag in the ground, but it also attracts not only their talent, but then the next generation of talent and people. Right? You might start at a bank, you can start in these different roles and then people recognize where there are hubs of talent, especially specialized talent, financial services. And that's why we see this influx of new organization companies, banks, mainly large banks, mid sized regional banks coming in and recognizing, oh, we can start to benefit, uh, from this concentration And I think that's just the next evolution is it starts with the big guys, it starts with some passionate people and then it starts to roll out into smaller groups and entrepreneurs and smaller organizations that is going to make this a more diversified and interesting community. But it's also very different in how it's set up than kind of the typical New York. I would say we're not as transient as probably a lot of those other you know, VCs flow in. Entrepreneur comes in, they make their money, they push their Series A, they sell off their fintech, they move on. Um, I'd say Charlotte, you know, I've been talking to the same people here for a decade, uh, since I started my career and a lot of us are still around which is exciting because you're now building a long term ecosystem and connectivity and where people want to plant roots as opposed to just try and make that first launch and make their money and disappear.

Speaker A: So yeah, I think that's great perspective and I totally agree as someone who's been here my whole career. Um, and also just the, the people I interact with, um, you know it comes in waves of like it's the same people that I was interacting with at some earlier point in my career at a different organization. But to your point, um, is kind of the same community and I think that's, that's really attractive to me right as an individual of just being able to continue to work with people that I know and like and have learned from but in a completely different context. Um, and maybe, maybe we talk about that a little bit because I think one, one really interesting chapter for me of your journey is, is the neobank experience. Um, I think everybody knows what EY does and knows ey, right. Ally, I'm here now. Like I, I think people get the big digital bank. Um, but let's talk about the Neobank experience. Like tell, tell us more about that. How, how did that come to, how did you end up in that role? And, and what was that journey like?

Speaker B: No, that's a, that's probably the one of the more interesting aspects of, of my journey, um, based on the relationship and the network I built in the Charlotte fintech scene, the conferences, the discussions, the after work, happy hours of us debating different financial technology, um, topics. Uh, I actually got connected by someone in the ecosystem. I'll shout him out because it was a guy named Dan Ward who uh, had work, was working at a new Neo bank where they were trying to launch a Neobank and acquire a bank all at the same time. And he said, you know what, Adam might just be crazy enough to jump in and try and do something like this. And he was right. Um, pulled in and I was count number three on the bank side. They hired me as a banking product and operations officer to basically jump in and build the entire infrastructure. Um, it was a great experience. You only get those opportunities a few times in your career to build an entire bank infrastructure de novo from scratch. So I ended up jumping into it and was a great learning experience of both what to do and what not to do. Um, it is not around anymore. It did fail, but, uh, I was the only lie to business to go into production, go live, have a few thousand customers flow in. Unfortunately, I also learned the other element of this is if you are, uh, funded by a large billionaire who has crazy ideas and mindsets, um, uh, unrealistic timelines and doesn't really understand the industry, um, that you're going to hit those friction points. Um, and it was, uh, despite that, um, I thought what we did was really interesting and powerful and the, the people that were part of that project I'm still connected with, they have very successful careers going on from that. Um, and now they're taking those lessons learned and I'm seeing a lot of success out in the market because of that unfortunate failure.

Speaker A: So, yeah, there's no, I mean, you know, failure always sucks. Right. But there's nothing like going through something like that, seeing that happen and then being able to use those learnings into, okay, let's just do it, do it different or do it again or do a different version of it or you know, figure out how to take that and plug it into something? Um, were there any kind of really standout like, like lessons or like things that you took away from that experience that again, whether it's just kind of patterns of work or specific things or anything you kind of walked away from it with.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I'll say that they had a large series fundraising. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars of money that they raised. And despite that, um, they tried to boil the ocean. Right. So I was part of the banking work stream, but they were also trying to launch insurance, credit card, mortgage, very different and all of a sudden very expensive. Especially when, uh, the people behind it just didn't know what it took to do these things. Right. So they're getting a lot of different experience and information and then the checks are just flying out the door when you have very expensive lawyers sitting on multiple hour calls every single day. So the biggest lessons Learned is don't boil the ocean or any financial technology solution providers out there for any new neobanks. Focus in on what your initial minimal viable product is and what you want to launch with and get to that finish line, launch it and then start to see the adoption and grow from there. Right? It's basic agile work life work product lifecycle principles that we've all heard about. You know, start with an initial product where we can get people on and engaged and then grow from there. But I also think um, it was a good lesson learned in how the technology series fundraising business case does not always deploy to fintech. You can't just build, get users assume a valuation increase and then move on to that next series fundraising to hide the fact that you're hemorrhaging money and not profitable. Technology companies have been doing this for decades. Fintech and in banking you need to have the bottom line make sense. And that's exactly what did not happen there.

Speaker A: It's interesting. Um, I definitely agree with the first point. I think that's just get good business or even just product advice in general, right. Of like focus is very powerful. Uh, and without it you can, you can go astray pretty quick. I think the, the deadly combo of like too much cash and lack of focus is a recipe for disaster, right? Because it feels like you can do a lot of things because you've got this money in the bank. Um, but then it means it, it leaves just as quickly uh, with perhaps not any, anything meaningful or enough meaningful on the other side of that that it actually kind of produced. Right. So I think that's a, that's a great one. Um, and, and I think, you know, trying to understand what, what struck me was just in you think of Chime and some of these other neo banks that have been built, right. That spent loads and loads and loads of money for a long time. They, they stayed in front of that funding cycle somehow, right? Like they, they kept raising money and raising money and raising money uh, before profitability but, but managed to kind of eventually get to that spot where, where supposedly or theoretically, right. Like they're operating profitably. Do you think there's a, is there a secret or a trick to that? Like is that just um, you know, again, is it is about. They hit the right roadmap items in the right order that led to profitability and they had all that mapped out. Do you think? And I know. No, you don't know that specific business. But like what do you think about how do you think about that and how do you think about, you know, maybe a different way to, to approach building a Neo Banker or thinking about what it takes to do that successfully?

Speaker B: No, that's a really good point and a fair counter. Um, I would say they had the success of being early where they were able to follow that tech series fundraising and they were able to build, they got the users, um, when you're looking at valuation, they see how many users are in the app and then able to get to that next fundraising to kind of move in front of that. To your point, I think that model we're seeing a little bit today, again with broader partnerships, especially in AI, which we'll get to. But it's, it's um, I think when it comes to Neo banking, De novo launches, your differentiator and your value proposition is almost becoming increasingly more important just because of how mature and diluted the field is. Now, um, if I go look at Chime Avaro, a Sofi or something like that, you're very similar products. They might be competing in race, they might launch of benefit a little bit ahead of time, but at the end of the day it's kind of. Those are the mature players in the field. Um, I bet they're all very scared with the news around Revoluts and some of these other players are now coming into the space as well and they'll compete. But to build it from scratch, like you need to have your differentiating, um, differentiators locked down now. You need to make sure you're in especially the more success that I'm seeing in today's day and age, in this next phase of fintech. Ah, are the ones that are going after specific target markets, specific problems that have been ignored by the general solutions and providers out there.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good call and totally agree. All right, let's pivot away from digital banking to payments more specifically. Right. You, you've done a lot of work in payments, worked across a number of different products. What's your uh, what's your single biggest like misconception or unknown fact about payments? What do you think? People miss that? You know, that's a key part of how you think about money movement and payments.

Speaker B: You know, I think it's everyone and I think it's, it's bankers especially everyone views money movement through their own personal experience and lens. You could be talking to people who are analysts to managers to executives. And when you're talking about money movement, Rails or transfers, you know they're going to raise their hand and give them the Very specific experience that they just had or they did at uh, the terminal, or they did when trying to move funds, or they did when they sent a wire to close on their house. Because it's so personal and because moving money is, can be scary and intentional. Um, personally I think that is the biggest misconception when you're looking at the ecosystem as a whole and the players within it. Um, one example I always love to give is I ran uh, a debit cards and debit card migration at Ally. And uh, and I've consistently launched FinTech debit card programs and have it here. While a lot of my stakeholders are like, I don't even use debit card. I don't understand the value of these. I don't get it. And they don't recognize that it's still about a third of payments volumes at point of sale and you're not the target market. You have to understand the broader ecosystem and who's using these different payment channels and why. And I think that understanding is very clear within financial services. Um, executives and employees and people who work in this space who are maximizing their credit card rewards because it's the smart thing to do and they aren't thinking about these other use cases. Um, but it's also prevalent when it comes to people. And that's why we now have people who are just banking with cash out. They think it's the same thing as we're banking at Ally or banking, uh, at an FDIC insured organization because they think money is money. So I think it's across the ecosystem the confusion around who is using what, why, where, when.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great insight. I find myself falling into that trap sometimes unintentionally too.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: When we're talking about a product, we're talking about a feature, and we're thinking about, you know, how we prioritize or add something. And my default is like, oh, like that, that, you know, that thing's not that important or I don't use that thing that way or. And it's like, well, wait a minute, like, am I, am I even the target customer for what? We're like, no. And you know, in the particular instances. So that's not, let's go grab voice of customer. Let's actually like understand the target and you know, what they think and what they want. And, and I think that uh, it is kind of human nature, I think, to use our own biases of what we feel, believe, see. Right. And project that on others and on the world and That's a dangerous thing to do when you're in product. Right. Um, and it's a good point. In payments in particular because we all interact with payments. Everybody thinks they know, thinks they get it right. Uh, because they do use it, they do have reasons. But that doesn't necessarily translate to, you know, what a product may need to look like depending on the target customer and segment.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And that can even be amplified when you're talking to people who are thinking about their personal experiences. But then they're applying it to like let's say business payments or business transfers and which is operating completely differently. And unless you're working uh, in a finance department or a controller at an organization like that, then you really don't know how they're making money flow. Um, and you need to better understand who your customers are and how they're using it, um, to be able to service their needs.

Speaker A: So, so if we think about one of those products in particular that I know gets a lot of conversation in payment circles, maybe not so much outside payment circles, but certainly we like to talk about it in payments, it'd be real time. Right. So the, initially with RTP and then FedNow and, and the continued initiative and effort which I, I advocate for 100% percent of finding uh, ways to leverage that technology not just for the speed but also the enhanced capabilities that, that it brings. Like what, what does that look like practically though, right? Like especially at a bank, the size that you're at now, does real time payments, something your customers are asking about. Like do you see it being a, uh, real relevant thing or is it still just a, a forward looking thing we need to talk about, but not necessarily impacting customers as much today?

Speaker B: That's a great question. Uh, the short answer is no, it's not very relevant. None of our customers are asking for it. That is the reality. Are we in the middle of implementing rtp? Yes, we are at the same time. So it is a future looking infrastructural investment. Um, but there's a reason why all these banks who moved forward with RTP and FedNow soon, uh, opted to be receive only. Yeah, we'll receive the money, that's fine. But we don't want to take any of the risk on sending it. Well, all of a sudden if you have a big infrastructure of uh, organizations that can only receive and no one's sending, you kind of have dead rails. And we're starting to see that change. There's some adoption, there's some use cases, but it's Exactly. Those use cases that are going to push and promote banks to utilizing these real time rails in a way where the risk will then be offset by the benefit and the value. I don't think that inflection point's there yet. I also don't think the cost is there yet. When I'm looking at an RTP payment versus just an ACH payment, uh, or even wires if you have a direct connection to the Fed, um, they're expensive, uh, why am I going to pivot to new Rails that are more expensive for me even to, let's just say disperse loans, which is one of the first use cases we're looking at is disbursement of loans through real time, um, payment pushes. It could be very powerful. Instead of us having to manually work through fedwire or set up all these ACH transfers that might not be same day and have next day posting, but until those problems are solved or until customers are kicking down our doors and asking for these types of solutions, um, you know, we're investing for the future because the technology is out there. But it's been proven that every time they enable, we enable a new channel of payments, nothing goes away. We just have some portion of adoption move to that next rail. And I think uh, RTP and Fed now it's still pretty early.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. Well, interesting that I don't have the stat in front of me but an interesting thing I read the other day in a, in an early warning press release was talking about payment volumes and it was, it was, it was in that one quote it highlighted both the uh, whatever million dollars worth of Zelle transactions that they processed last year. But then it also highlighted the number, um, the dollar value of checks that they scanned. So not the number of checks with the dollar value and the dollar value of the checks was like 4x like the Zelle volume. And it was just funny, right, because that obviously wasn't the point of the article but it just kind of re. Highlighted the, you know, we all know that checks still have volume but to seeing it in terms of like dollar amount and it being bigger than the P2P Zelle network, dollar amount that they were highlighting was, was just kind of interesting and you know, reinforces the point of like some, some of these products never die or certainly take a while to, to go away. Um, I guess if we, if we think about what's uh, maybe if RTP is a little, little ahead of its time, uh, in terms of actual adoption, use cases, etc, what's something that's um, you feel like is really high value that's not talked about enough. Like what's something that people are overlooking or like an underrated trend that you see in payments or in digital.

Speaker B: Ah, that's my favorite question because my answer's uh, the exact opposite of digital. It's, it's cash. Um, here's the, here's the reality where we're at right now. JP Morgan just announced they're going to have 160 new branches this year. Right. Uh, people are trying to be pushed back into the branch and uh, and people are trying to enable that cash access because that's what small and medium size businesses want. Um, and I'm focusing mainly on the business problem. So banks always are trying to ah, track down and retain small medium sized business deposits, operating accounts, uh, their market savings accounts. Like those are the meat and potatoes of a lot of especially community banks. But the larger organizations that offer business banking and um, the cash problem is continually being ignored for the digital organizations or even the community banks with digital aspirations that might have customers in other states, um, on how they can service beyond what's legacy out there, which is you know, you're thinking armored car services, you're thinking cash deposit ATMs which are great. But you know what, you know what sucks is when you walk up to a cash deposit atm, you work at a mom and pop shop, you put your money in there, next thing you know it eats it. Who's your customer service call? I just deposited at Credit ah, Union X. That's not even who I bank with. It's just where my ATM locator told me there's a cash deposit. I can't, I'm not a customer of that organization. Now I need to call my bank, but that bank doesn't own that terminal. And that's the ongoing friction of the blend between physical and digital that is going to continue to be a gap. And until more solutions are solved, which I've been talking to some very interesting providers out on the market, um, that's going to continue to be the biggest friction point because cash is still out there, it is still um, in some cases preferred as more merchants push uh, processing fees to the customers. Um, and until the organizations that don't can't have that type of capital expenditure in physical locations solve that problem, then that's always going to be a friction point.

Speaker A: That's interesting. I would have not guessed that is what you would say. So that's fantastic. And uh, so the bank that I'm at, uh, we don't we don't service small businesses. But we just rolled out ad cash for digital bank.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: We just rolled out an ad cash feature and I, because we don't do small business. I hadn't thought about it in the context of the small business, but I totally agree with you that, that I can see that friction being a real problem or a real barrier, um, for banks that do small business banking and being able to support those customers because um, while the average consumer may have limited use cases around cash these days, the small business absolutely has them. Right. Um, so that, that really resonates.

Speaker B: What's interesting about consumers though is it's ah, we did, I did a study when I was at uh, your current employer. We found it was over 90% of consumers wanted cash access but less than 5% of them regularly used it. And that's, that's a knowledge gap, that's a um, educational gap because they, but the need to have access to it is still so important to even people on the consumer level. Even though they only get cash once a year when grandma sends them the envelope. Right. You know, it's like. But those are the real use cases they're thinking through. Um, which is just.

Speaker A: Yeah, I totally agree. I think a parallel is when you think about things like customer service, right. Like everybody wants to be able to get to a person to help them when they have a problem. But then like they, they want the idea of it. But then most people actually want self service most of the time. Right. Like they don't want to have to actually call someone. They just want to know that if they want to uh, that, that they can get to a person that can help them. So there, there's lots of, or a couple of these kind of dynamics like that where there's the um, you know, the kind of just innate human desire of a certain thing and perception of need. Uh, but then the reality of usage, right. And trying to balance those two things of like all right, well we need to meet the need if it's a perceived need. But then we need to make sure we scale it in the right way so that if the actual usage is we know is going to be much lower than that. Let's make sure we build it the right way so that we aren't over building for something that people like the idea of but never actually use. Right. Or rarely use. Um, it's a tricky place from a product standpoint. Um, all right, last, last section we'll hit on here. Charlotte, uh, and your engagement in the community. What, what's one thing you wish people. We talked a little bit about some of the great things about Charlotte in the community and why we think it evolved the way it did. But what's something that people are missing? Like what's something about Charlotte or the community or things happening here that you wish people knew more about or that was, we were a little bit louder about as a, as a community?

Speaker B: No, that's a great, um, it's a good question. I, I think we're, we're making progress. We have a lot of big bank talent, and a lot of big bank talent is typically specialized. And when you're so specialized, um, it's tough to then start seeing the broader ecosystem and the broader diversification of types of organizations that can make an impact in our community. Right. So I'm excited about, you know, when people are saying, oh, what companies are you excited about that are moving down here? Like, I'm excited about Trulion opening up corporate offices down here. I'm excited about talking to some folks over at a Legacy that are trying to push some different, uh, local hires to kind of build their branch network here. You know, these credit unions and these community banks and these like 10 billion under or around that asset size are really going to well, like be well rounded for Charlotte when it comes to both a talent perspective, but also the types of fintechs and partnerships that service those organizations as well as the larger, as well as the large established financial institutions we all know. So I would say what we're missing is we're on our path, it's getting better, but just diversification of types of entities and types of resources and specialists and um, generalists that work in financial technology and fintech that will kind of round out our experience, uh, in our, in our community.

Speaker A: Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, I know I'm as guilty as anyone having worked at both bank of America and Wells, but I feel like we've got, we got lots of people from bank of American Wells. Right. But like where's, where's the other banks talent? Right. Where are people that have worked in different sized institutions with different types of problems they had to solve and different perspectives they bring to it? And then like you said, kind of the organizations that service banks like that interact with those types of people as well. Right. Those types of organizations. Because it is different. It's a different way you have to think about things. It's a different way you have so to pro, have to solve problems because you have different resources available. So I, I, I think that's a great show. Um, all right, two, uh, fun questions. One, if you could sit down to dinner with anyone from payments or banking or just that ecosystem, uh, and have a conversation, who would it be?

Speaker B: I, uh, would choose, uh, Scott Harkey. Uh, so thanks for letting my dream come true. Uh, uh, in all seriousness, um, I haven't met him yet.

Speaker A: Serious answer.

Speaker B: Oh, sorry, you can't take it back.

Speaker A: Just say, in addition to Scott, I would also.

Speaker B: In addition. That's fair. And in addition to Scott, I. I'd love to finally meet Hugh McCall. Um, uh, just because. And you know, that's more of the history perspective. I mean, he's just such a cornerstone to where Charlotte is today, uh, and where it's been. And uh, he's the reason why we're on the map. And financial services is the second largest here in the whole country. Um, so he. And what he did not only just for his organization, but also for the community as a whole. And the investments he made back into the community to make it a great place to live, to work, to raise a family. I mean, like the uh, amenities, the differentiators, like everything that makes Charlotte what it is. Like, you made a big stamp on that. So it's one thing to go get your paycheck and to go grow your business. It's another thing to give back in an impactful way. And, uh, sitting down with Hugh would be great. Hopefully he sees this.

Speaker A: We will send it to him. We'll send it to him. Um, that's fantastic. And the last one, uh, what's something coming up or going on in Charlotte? It, uh, doesn't have to be fintech related, but like, that you're excited about or that you think is really cool. Like, what's something we can tell people to. To keep a heads up.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so I guess I got to give a shout out to like where I live in Charlotte. So, uh, a couple years ago I, I moved down to uh, to uh, Matthews, um, which absolutely, uh, love. And uh, what's exciting is seeing kind of the develop and prosperity kind of push out into the Charlotte suburbs. So where I'm excited about right now is very silly. But, uh, I'll give a shout out to the rooftop bar that's coming to Matthews, the first one in Matthews, the fact. And it's going to have, um, a, ah, workspace. Uh, so people will be able to go out there and join. I forget what it's called, but they're going to have, um, workspace there that people work a coffee bar like, this kind of revitalization of these downtowns that, like, a few decades ago, we're kind of like on the fringes of Charlotte and kind of seeing where the community is inherently growing and then bringing these in and showing investment and growth I'm personally excited about. So I love seeing these different pockets of Matthews and Pineville and Huntersville and all these different downtowns kind of pop up, even University of being new kind of epicenters that allow connectivity to the community. Because we are growing, we're big. You know, we can't always be going to South End or uptown. I love them. Um, but these pockets of even smaller communities is. Is what's exciting me. So if anyone wants to come hang out with me the second the rooftop bar launches in Matthews, I'll be there. So.

Speaker A: That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I'm a Union county kid. I, you know, grew up around here, so I can't hate on. On Matthews and, uh, and the growth there. So that's awesome. All right, Adam, well, thanks so much for your time today. It's been an awesome conversation. Happy to have you in our community. Happy to have you here and have the chance to work with you some. Um, really appreciate it. Thanks.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate the invitation.

Speaker A: All right, that's it for today. Thank you, everybody, and we'll talk to you next time.