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The Jumping Point Podcast shares real stories the critical life moments that shaped the perceptions of Entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Host Phillip Naithram is both energetic, entertaining as we learn the life needed to succeed in Relationships and Business.
P N 01:52
Well, welcome back to the jumping points podcast, James,
James Schenck 01:56
Philip, it's great to be here and you look awesome. What have you been doing?
P N 01:59
You know what I've been doing? cold plunges, hot saunas, hot yoga, grounding meditations with my feet in the dirt, and a sun salutation.
James Schenck 02:10
We were talking about that before we got started, I got to add some of these things to my do. Let to do list, because I haven't seen you in a few years. You look literally 10 years younger and just energized.
P N 02:17
I am, I am. I moved recently. We've been doing some expansion with the business, you know, as an entrepreneur, and getting things going. It's about your location. I think I'll give you an example here in a second. But we moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, outstanding. So, we still have our office here. It's not like 12 degrees like it is here, not at all, not at all. My body adjusted really quick. It was 68 the other day, and I don't think I might need a sweater today.
James Schenck 02:40
Well, thanks for taking the time to come up here to Tyson's Virginia and spend time with me
P N 02:44
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I've always, always valued your leadership and your advice. You know, as a mentor, we've had breakfast a couple times.
James Schenck 02:52
it's like to say I'm just one data point, but glad to share with your audience some of the things that are on my mind and sort of how I got to where I am and was what sort of drives me?
P N 03:01
Yeah, you know. And actually, one of the things we were talking about leadership, before we got started, was just knowing the team and being present for them and managing people the way that they need to be managed, as opposed to you taking your shoes off and putting it on their feet and asking them to run the race.
James Schenck 03:18
Now its life is about the people around you and understanding their values and aligning the organizational mission values with what drives them. And when you do that successfully, the power and the energy that is created, it's like combustion.
P N 03:33
Yeah, yeah. I you know, my experience has been that we don't come by that that message, and we don't come by that ability by accident. It's usually, in my experience, it's been a lot of pain, right? Pain creates change. And when the fear, when the pain of staying the same, outweighs the fear of change, we change because the fear of uncertainty will stop us from doing anything Exactly. And I describe those moments in people's life as the jumping point, that moment in time where you can no longer continue doing what you're doing, but you may be uncertain of what to do next, but you act anyway, right?
James Schenck 04:10
Different things motivate different people at different points in their life, but it becomes their what I call their true north. It grounds them to they know what they want to do, and they know which direction they're going to go, and I was very fortunate to have that experience at a young age. Yeah. What happened? I was in eighth grade. It was literally April, I think was April 24 1980 many, many years ago, and I woke up that morning we had been exposed on the news for hundreds of days of our hostages being held in Iran, and it was the morning in which the hostage rescue mission went s or I, and we lost eight service members in a in a landing zone called Desert one in Iran. I'll never forget that morning feeling the pain, the loss, the emotion of not being able to those Airmen, the Marines, the soldiers. And everybody on that military mission that we're trying to bring all these hostages’ home to their families, unfortunately, was unsuccessful, and in the landing zone, a C stallion helicopter crashed into a c1 30 killing eight service members. And it was that time I went home from school that day, and I knew what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to serve my military. I knew I wanted to fly helicopters and be in a position on special operations to hopefully bring them home someday. And so that really changed my path. My dad was an enlisted Marine, said, study hard, go to West Point and become a helicopter pilot. And so, as a good son, that's what I did,
P N 05:33
yeah, and you even gave back to West Point afterwards, right? You taught there for a while.
James Schenck 05:36
I was very fortunate. After going to business school, I ended up back as a professor at West Point, teaching economics and finance to some just great Americans who believed in what it meant for democracy and keeping America free. It takes a strong military and was very proud to be their professor for many years.
P N 05:55
when you were there, did you see yourself doing what you're doing now? Did you think this was even a possibility, or what do you think was gonna be next after?
James Schenck 06:02
I always loved finance, so I was fortunate. I went, I flew night vision goggles when I was in the army, so I had a lot of time during the day. Didn't go to work till like 6pm got off around midnight, little after midnight. And so, during the day, I got into the stock market, saving money, because when you sort of work a lot, you don't have a lot of extracurricular activities to spend money. So, I was saving money, trying to figure out how to invest. And so, I always knew I wanted to go back to business school, and I always knew I wanted to be in finance. And so, the military, if you think about every unit, there's scarce resources, unlimited ones, and people have to make decisions, and for each decision there's an opportunity cost. So, I spent my, literally, my military career, in finance, in a sense. So, economics, understanding scarce resources, understanding could be time, it could be bullets, it could be food, and how do you best optimize that to make the organization better?
P N 06:52
How was your money mindset growing up or like? What was the conversation around money in your family growing up?
James Schenck 06:56
very frugal. We always believed in buying quality, not quantity. And I think the best advice I ever got when I went off to West Point as a young 17-year-old, my dad took me aside, and he said, in life, so no matter what you decide to do, pursue your passion, if you make $100 and you spend 90, you'll live happy. If you make $1,000 and you spend 1001, you'll be unhappy. Always live within your means. And when you're going into the military, literally, you don't have a lot of money. You don't make a lot of money. You're serving a cause, a little bit something that you believe in, but as long as you understand who's on your left, who's on your right, you're there for them, not about who has more money. So, I was able to save money. We're very frugal, but when you bought something, you buy a good leather football, you buy one good quality car that's reliable, not a showy car, but, like, you know, something that's industrial strength, not, not a, we used to call them, like on clunkers. You buy something a quality but then you keep it, you don't turn it over every year or two.
P N 07:54
Yeah, that's, that's great advice. I mean, it's, it's different, what from what some other people may get. The message of so the message that's communicated is usually not enough, right? But here's how it's packaged, like, oh, we wouldn't that's too expensive. We can get the same thing for this much here. But if you buy it nice, you know, buy it nice, or buy it twice,
James Schenck 08:16
and sometimes you wait a little longer to get what you want. So, if you want a good example. When you're starting out as a young business professional, you need a blazer. You need a suit, you know. So, when you first start out, you might buy something off of discount rack, a lot of the second hand, you know, off fifth and all. There are all these sorts of one-to-one step down, and you just make sure it looks good. White shirt. You can look very professional, but you save money over time, then you might get the blazer to suit that you want, that that's a little bit higher quality material, but you don't get it day one. You have to sort of save up for it, and it always makes something more meaningful when you work hard, save for it and you earn it versus buying it on credit. And I know a lot of times people have to use credit to get started and to fund their lifestyle, but the less credit you can use, and you can wait for that purchase, I think the happier
P N 09:09
you'll be. Yeah, and I think, you know, you Stoke, you stoke dopamine when you do that, actually, the waiting, patiently looking forward to something, being able to endure the pain of not having it, fighting that instant gratification, and when you get it, you have a healthier relationship with dopamine those
James Schenck 09:25
In life I think it goes back to the marshmallow experiment, literally, you know, 50 years ago, where you give a kid a marshmallow, but you tell them if they can wait 10 minutes and get two. And the kids that were in the classroom, these young kids that can wait for the for the second marshmallow as opposed to eating the first, they did better in life because they had that patience. And I think all of us can learn from that if we're patient for what we want, and it helps reduce a lot of stress, too. If I said, Hey, Phil, let you and I go run a marathon, you say, that sounds great, James. I said, Be next Friday. That'd be very stressful for both of us. But if I said, if we're going to do it in 20 weeks, and we're going. Have a training plan and we're gonna build up for it. It creates a whole different mindset along the way, and we can get there together and be able to accomplish it, but I wouldn't be able to do it by next Friday, just like buying something, if you're patient for it, you can get there.
P N 10:11
Do you apply that to your leadership, with your teams and with your company as well, that you have big responsibilities. This is a big company, more than 1000 something employees, and you're doing, you know, you're doing great work. I'll share a story with you here quickly, and then I want to finish this question, sure. So, I'm in town for to meet with you, and we're doing this, and I have this real, real great habit of talking to strangers everywhere I go. It's my thing. It's so much fun. And so, I'm talking to somebody, I'm like, Yeah, I'm just in town, and I'm doing an interview with James. He's the president of Pentagon Federal Credit Union, and her eyes lit up with how happy she was to be a member of federal, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, and her mom was and that's how she got into That's great to hear. I never hear that about city, about other institutions or, you know, but just that's what's happening here with this company
James Schenck 11:01
It's a great company with great professionals that literally can work anywhere, but they believe in the mission of people, helping people, and making sure we can help our members dreams come true financially, and so it's a great place to work and lead. We're a little over 35 billion now. We're up to about 3500 employees, so we've grown a little over the last few years, we've grown, and it just feels great to surround myself with individuals who care about others. And if you go through life working with folks like minded folks that believe in the mission of the organization, they really work together well as a team, and want to come up with solutions, solve problems and provide opportunity to others to do better and well, hopefully we get to talk about a little bit. You know, we take great care of our members. We try to take great care of our colleagues, all of our employees. Keep the institution safe and sound but giving back to the community is what really drives my employees. They love being part of the communities in which we live and serve.
P N 11:56
Yeah, well, so going back to timing right and managing anxiety with expectations and stress. When you have these big goals and you have quarterly earnings, you have things that need to be done, and you have to get them done through other people as a leader, you have your executive board to answer to, and then you have your executive team to work with, and you've got everyone else that helps you accomplish this mission, you know, how do you apply the concept of being patient, waiting for that second marshmallow to leadership when someone else is dictating the timing of when that marshmallow needs to be eaten?
James Schenck 12:34
A leader can create an environment of excessive stress when they don't plan ahead. So, if I gave anybody, any one of my employees, a mission, and I told them I needed it by the end of the day, that's much different than asking them for something, a research paper, to take a look at some analysis, and I told them they have a week to do it. So good leaders, it's very important to have certain time horizons. So we do a sort of a three year financial plan, and we break that down into sort of one year plans, and we break it down into quarterly objectives, so the better a leader can provide certainty to their workforce of where we're going, the direction, helping them understand what they can say no to empowering them, because once they know the direction the organization, they can optimize within their individual units, the decisions to drive their respective area in that direction, within their own leadership. And if you give them the time to do it, they really surprise you with their ingenuity, their creativity and their talents. That's why I've hired them, because of their professionalism. So, any good leader, I think, lays out the time horizons, but make sure they're real. You want them to be aggressive. You don't say we got 20 years until we're going to grow to this. You know, we got these goals within three years, two years, one year, but then giving them the resources, and once you understand that mission and direction, it makes it easier for the organization to know what to say no to, because you can't be all things to all people. And that's where I think people have a lot of stress in life. They try to be all things to all people. We are very good at credit cards, car loans and mortgages. That's what we do. We don't do what they call CNI, you know, commercial lending to some small businesses, not who we are. We stay truly close to our roots of direct lending to the consumer to make their lives better. And you know, we get opportunities every year to expand the business into different lines and products and services, but we want to do what we do very well, very focused. And when you do that, it allows the workforce to unite around that and make good decisions along the way.
P N 14:33
How do you think we can apply that same sort of concept to our own lives just in general, like do what, do what you're best at, and get the help that you need for everything else. I tell people in my team that I want to find the thing, so I speak from Stage Right. I you know, and we do this podcast, obviously, when we implement our software for now, it's me and three other people that are generally in the room doing the training. You. And for me, that's not work. I play at that, right. Find the thing that you play at that other people work at graphic design would stress me out and I'd lose my mind, right? So, it and I think, but I've gone through a cycle of people pleasing, where I thought that I wasn't enough and that I needed to make if I could just think up what I think this person thinks about me and change my behavior based on what I thought they thought, then they'll like me
James Schenck 15:23
Phillip Phil. Totally wrong approach. Yeah, what you got to do is the only person in life that matters are the one staring back from the glass. So, I learned that at a very young age, there's always going to be somebody richer, it's going to be somebody poor, it's going to be somebody taller, shorter, somebody healthier, less healthy. Everybody's different. You got to be comfortable who you are and pursue what's important to you. I like finance. I like our military, the Department of Defense. I served in the Army. I love flying. I love helicopters. I like race cars. I like going to a racetrack. There's a lot of things that are like watching paint dry. I just couldn't sit there. Baseball is not my thing. And to all our baseball fans out there, I know the NATs here, where the Nationals won the World Series in 2019 that's just not my thing. I'd rather go to a Porsche Carrera cup race, or to an f1 race, or to a NASCAR race. It's just a different what's important to me. I'm not trying to please anybody else by pretending to be a baseball fan. I hope you accept me that I'm not a baseball fan. I've been a commander's fan since I came to Washington, and we're having a really good year this year, but I've been there for many years where we weren't right. Patience. Talk about patience, 30 years since making the championship game and hopefully the Super Bowl in a few weeks, but you got to pursue what's important to you. It's not your mother or dad or your wife or your girlfriend or boyfriend whose opinion matters. You want to be a great citizen, but you got to pursue your true north to be happy. And when you're happy, you'll surround yourself with other folks who are happy because like-minded people tend to gather together. And doesn't mean when I say like mind and not having diversity and diversity of thought. I have friends from all backgrounds, rich and poor. Some are healthy. Some aren't healthy, but they know what they like. They come to the racetrack to hang out and watch somebody race because they want to be there and enjoy the environment, and they won't see me sitting too often at a baseball game. And so, I just encourage people to be who they are. Look in the mirror at night and say, am I proud of what I did? And then have what I call a done list. Everybody always saw these to do lists. That's too stressful. And so, the, you know, the famous book by, you know, Stanley McChrystal about, make your bed, you know, do one thing first thing in the morning and you got that thing done. It gives you that confidence. Well, look back throughout, you know, the morning, at the end of the day, what are one or two things? I dropped off some, you know, dry cleaning today, picked up some dry cleaning. I did a podcast that's done, you know, give yourself credit for things you do along the way, and don't overburden yourself with all those to do's okay. You might have to do’s, and they just make some might get done tomorrow, some might get done Saturday, some might get done Monday, but take credit today, Wednesday for what you did today.
P N 18:09
Yeah, accumulate those small positives. It's huge.
James Schenck 18:13
It really does help everybody. At every level need motivation, and that's why, as leaders, is very important. We're patient with our employees. We're very observant, because not everybody's having a great day behind the scenes. I like to say life is hard and understanding when somebody's having a tough day, life is a marathon, not a sprint. Give them some room. I had an incident years ago. One of our employees in Eugene, Oregon called me up that our manager wouldn't let her go. They're putting her horse down. And I said, you just leave right now. She was a member service rep. Go take care of your business with your pet. You know, a pet is part of the family. And to this day, she supports pen fed and what we stand for because of that small leadership decision that her manager was so worried about that number that day in the abandoned rate on the phones that he couldn't let I'm like, No. And it sets in a standard, cultural standard to all the employees, that it's okay to give folks time off, look for the long term, not the short-term solution, and take care of people. Yeah,
P N 19:10
I want to go back to, you know, accumulating the small positives, and have a little bit of a conversation about energy. All right, I'm all energy.
James Schenck 19:19
I’m a big on energy. Love it. Love it. Now we're talking, yeah,
P N 19:23
so, look, I tell people, we become the average of the five people we spend the most time around. And I mean that not just because Jim Rohn said it. He said it. I don't know whether or not he had the physical knowledge behind it but just think about what I just said. Right? When I say that you and I are on the same wavelength, what am I saying? The length of the wave that's emitted by you we are just frequent
James Schenck 19:43
karma, your positive karma, I call it
P N 19:47
Yeah. But if your frequency matches my frequency, yes, right, two waves of equal length, when they meet, they move in the same direction. That's called resonation. So, when I said that, really res, I call it
James Schenck 19:55
Combustion ha-ha . So, we have combustion, positive combustion, yes. And. Density,
P N 20:00
but unequal wavelengths will average down between the two.
James Schenck 20:05
So that explains energy that on a golf course, and you play with a bad golfer, bring down the game. Yeah, play with some good golfer, brings up everybody's game. Same thing in a workforce, when you have positive energy, when people come to work and say, I love it here, and they truly mean it. They love the person they have on their left and right. They see them as individuals different, but individuals who are driving towards a Tom and good, bringing their own professionalism, their own unique skills, because everybody brings a different skill. Everybody's good at something different, but when they're aligned and they're energized, you see when people are volunteering in the community, I've never seen somebody at a volunteer event not smiling and having positive energy, because they're making a difference in the life of another
P N 20:40
And when we surround ourselves with those types of people and those environments, it we attract. Like Attracts like.
James Schenck 20:49
We will bring that into our life. Pure adrenaline combustion is what that makes the day go so fast. There's never enough hours or minutes in the day when you're around excited people that are passionate about what they're doing. You just want to tackle the problem.
P N 21:03
That brings up a big question that comes up a lot with, I mean, I don't think of myself as being that old. I'm 41
James Schenck 21:09
I thought you're 29 it must be that that positive meditation, yoga, cold plunges. I'm signing up for all those. Yeah, get those on my done list.
P N 21:18
I started doing a breathing I do some breath work too.
James Schenck 21:23
I have learned about box breathing is, yeah, how the Navy SEALs breathe when they're under stress, and how you sort of can help relax yourself. It works like a champ.
P N 21:30
Look, I'll send you a book on Heliotropic breathing. Okay? It's, it's a, it's a whole different thing. But
James Schenck 21:38
we have another podcast. Yeah, I can't even pronounce it again. Heliotropic breathing okay, I’m in.
P N 21:45
I mean, I share this with as many we do our training workshops. Let's start with that. Because if you got, they get plenty out of it. But if you got nothing out of it, at least you got that exercise. But the younger generation, Gen Z, you know, many of them are finding themselves being I don't know if they're finding themselves, they're being called apathetic. I don't even know if that's true. I think they're just not aligning themselves to the point that you were making, where they're doing things that they don't want to be doing, but they no one's ever taught them. We're not we're letting them down in a big way.
James Schenck 22:17
We're not teaching them. Every generation needs a mentor. I try never to stereotype, because within any group there's different individuals that bring different backgrounds. I call path dependency. You know, how they got to where they are? And I think everybody in life at some phase has somebody a role model or a mentor. And those who have role models or mentors that expand their horizons, that they can be anything they want to be, but they can't be everything they want to be. They have to make choices. And each choice along the way, there's opportunity cost to those choices, and so it's so important in any community to inspire youth that they can literally anything and everything is possible in America if they put their mind to it. Capitalism does work. It works big. And education is a great equalizer. So, if people, whether it's through the web or through formal education or through, you know, self-reading, going to library, a lot of some of our very successful business leaders today, they talked about on the farm, reading, going to the library, borrowing books, you know, getting insatiable appetite for knowledge. But everybody needs that mentor to say you can be bigger than yourself. Don't be comfortable with where you are. You can stretch a little bit. That's like a coach in any sport, any business. It's whether it's a personal coach, a football coach, baseball coach, a teacher coaching you. It's opening your sort of aperture to that. You can push yourself a little bit further than you think you can, and the more folks who have positive role models that encourage them that anything is possible, they become more and more successful. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
P N 23:50
Yeah, I think the greatest gift we can give someone who's younger than us is the gift of a good example, and to acknowledge that we see something in them that they may not see in themselves.
James Schenck 24:01
That's the hardest thing, and that every one of us has weaknesses to realize it's okay to have weaknesses. We used to use the term at West Point, cooperate and graduate. So, if I was really good in math and I was terrible in English, I hated creative writing. It wasn't it wasn't objective. So that I think it's an A plus paper, there's a C, you know, it's terribly written. And so, I would work with very good writers, folks who've read their whole life read 1000s of books, and it would help me think about how to be more creative in my writing. And then when they were having trouble with calculus or geometry, they would sit down with me, and we work together. And so, I think everybody if they realize they're gonna have shortcomings, but you shore up their shortcomings with others around you that are strong in those areas. It creates that synergy, that positive effect.
P N 24:38
How do you balance? So, there's a lot of people that talk about work life balance. I What do you think that that means? If I can get your definition of that and then look, we want to have families. We want to get married, have kids. We want to live a full, rich life in every sense of the word. We want to be able to experience different vacations and food and all of that. But how do we balance? How do we get through it's interesting.
James Schenck 25:02
So, in my life, for the last 11 years, when you're a CEO, you sort of can never literally get away from it completely. You're always still responsible for your servers and your systems, right? Your cyber footprint. You're always responsible for the net income that month or the volume the credit card loans that are made. But you got to be able to compartmentalize that stress, for lack of a better word. And so, when you're away from the office doing something you're like on say, on the weekend, if it's a Saturday, no matter race to not look at your phone every two or three minutes to see if there's a text from the office that you know, snowstorm or power failure in Omaha, we got to move systems or services or people. And so, it's trying to find the time when you're what I call extreme presence, where you're at. So, when I'm at the track or when I'm flying, flying, for me, is extreme presence, because I'm talking to air traffic controllers making sure my landing safe. I'm focused on the navigation, the communication, you know, flying the aircraft. And so, you don't want to be thinking about other things. So, you got to find yourself sort of those activities that you enjoy, that recharge you, and while you're doing those, to try to not keep your foot in the door every minute of checking back in at the office. So, it really is breaking away from the office for those hours. And so many employees, they feel like they can never get away today, and many organizations goes their bosses or leadership, or colleagues are texting them or emailing them at night or weekends. You have to be very judicial when you send something to somebody. If I do decide to send somebody on a Friday night or Saturday, I make sure I say I'm just sending this now, so I don't forget I don't need an answer until Tuesday, when you get in the office Monday, take a look at this. For me, I try to be very specific that I don't need it immediately, because a lot of times you can generate when I worked at the Pentagon years ago, it seemed like every night, around eight o'clock, they had some question from Congress that needed to be answered by the next morning. I was like, they couldn't tell me that. You know, six hours ago, they needed this question answered so many nights were for gone where I didn't have a work life balance, because what I call just bad planning and bad time management. As far as managing expectations, I'll get you that answer by 10am and when I get in at eight, I'll look it up. No, doesn't work that way. You know, when leader says I need an answer by 6am so I can send a note back up and then goes through a million lines of bureaucracy before it actually gets there anyway. But as a leader, I try to have learned from those lessons to give employees time and when they're away, that they can literally take time and they have coworkers, we'll cover them, that coworkers come in. That's why it's very good to plan time off and make sure leaders take time off themselves, to encourage the workforce that it's okay to take a week or two weeks once a quarter, whatever it is throughout the year so you can really recharge and explore. You know, some people like horseback riding, you know, some people like, you know, running. My son's up in New York, and he likes doing races with a girlfriend. You know, they like to train, so it takes time. And so, I just encourage everybody as a leader to make sure you're managing expectation with your employees and you're not wasting the most valuable resource, which is their time. Yeah,
P N 28:00
And you're also talking about managing your own energy. And because I heard you, I heard you use that word. We were talking about that earlier, because we have such big responsibilities, you know, small business owner, executive, very different,
James Schenck 28:15
but still, every level of an organization. If you're a brand-new employee to somebody's been an organization for 30 plus years, they have responsibilities. They wouldn't be there. And so, people bring their technical skills. It's so important that we surround ourselves with people with right human skills that you want them in a fox hall with you. They look out for their colleagues. They're really there because they want to help others and that have conceptual skills, get help, lead the organization forward. And when you align that energy between the human skills, the technical skills, and the conceptual skills. You really have a high performing team.
P N 28:42
And I think it suits you because you’re a runner. we talked about the races you've done.
James Schenck 28:46
I was a runner, I'm a jogger, so I'm a really good hiker, Walker
James Schenck 28:53
I have done four marathons, yeah, one triathlon. But let's just say I'm not as energized as I used to be, to do two training sessions a day, but I can go for a nice, long walk. I solve a lot of world's problems when I walk with a cup of coffee in my hand.
P N 29:13
but I just mean, you don't you know when you're training for something, right? The end, the end goal is to be able to run 26.2 in time that you're proud of. Yep, and you don't just get out and start running for as long as you possibly can. There might be a day that you only run one mile.
James Schenck 29:28
It's a science you build. It's a very set science at how to build up for a race, just like in business, is a very how you get from point A to point B. You got to know where you're going, and then you got a backwards plan, and you do little things mentally and physically each day. Even running is a lot more physical than it is, I'm sorry, a lot more mental than it is physical. People have to really understand that balance between being physically ready and mentally ready to accomplish a hard task. I Yeah, and
P N 29:53
I think things like taking that walk outside in the cold or going to hot yoga, that's actually part of the work that.
James Schenck 30:00
I have never been to hot yoga. No, I don't even know it seems hot. Yeah, and I guess it's yoga. Hence the term. It's but I have never done a but every time I drive here in Tysons, there's a hot yoga place on the corner. I'm gonna just for you and for my guests here, we're talking to I'm gonna try it because I know a lot of people are into it. Yeah, I'm told it's very good.
P N 30:16
It is. It's the same, 26 and two. So, 26 postures and two breathing exercises, and you do the same thing every time you go. Can't just sit down like I do. You can six postures. No, you can savasana, the entire thing that is yoga too. And breathe, yeah, that's part of it. That could just be your practice for the day.
James Schenck 30:44
And that's actually what, you know, what I was kind of getting at is that it's all part of managing our energy so that we can perform even those breaks and those rest, like the days that you only run or
notice when you're healthy, like so if you have a cold or a flu, you don't want to take on a challenge at work. In other words, there's always challenges, driving a new project, coming up with a new idea, creating a new event, bringing the resources together. You know, we're bringing teams together for AI and where we implement in the right divisions. And when you're not feeling good, it's hard to take on the battles, because everything's a battle. It takes energy to push anything forward, because you're overcoming inertia. Status quo. Change is very difficult, and so when you're healthy, you're willing to take on more challenges. Does that make sense? Another lesson, you're physically healthy, when you're feeling good, you're like, Okay, I'm willing to pitch this to the board. I'm willing to have the plan, spend the hours to put the plan together, go in and sell the plan. Here's what we're trying to do. Need Board approval. Here's the motion. Because you're feeling good, you're not feeling good, you don't have a lot of energy. Like, yeah, we don't need to do that this year.
P N 31:32
And it shows in our body when we're hunched over. You know, you can always tell someone who's who doesn't have like, something's going on, right when we're hunched over and you're making yourself small versus when you're back and you're open and you're ready to receive same thing in the eyes, right eyes, side to side.
James Schenck 31:47
It's obvious with employees who love what they're doing that come into a meeting prepared, excited, energized, well, prepped, but they're feeling good about themselves. They're personally accomplishing their goals and are professionally meeting their goals. You can see it in their demeanor
P N 32:01
How you just mentioned AI? I'd like to talk about how you guys are implementing AI and if and how you're helping your teams and employees learn how to use it, understand it, and not fear it. There's a lot of fear mongering around AI.
James Schenck 32:17
That is the biggest thing is employees, if they feel their jobs are at risk again, change is going to lead to a negative outcome for them. They can embrace it. They actually sabotage it. I was at a Wall Street Journal CEO council meeting recently, and some firms are given examples of how employees literally were setting back their AI initiatives because they're afraid of the employees getting fired as a result of it. So, at Penfield, we don't see it as replacing employees at all we see as providing a higher level of extreme micro personalization to the member. So recently, we're able to look through 30,000 phone calls that were transcribed to text or search through with AI to identify the common themes that were impacting our members and are able to go back with 30,000 emails and say you're on this call for not alone, but you're concerned with the on-hold music. We heard you made a comment, so we've looked at it, and we've changed the genre to give more choices on our whole me, oh my gosh, but it was all done in automated fashion. 30,000 phone calls monitor and responses were generated, looked at with the human before it went out to make sure was the right tone at the top, but it was incredible, because the human would not have been able to go through what it took us forever to search through 30,000 message and then be a follow up with those members on something that was a little bit extra. It was like trying to find that personalization where they said something on the call outside why they normally called in their life, or somebody said, Ed, I'm really excited. I'm heading to my son's graduation, and they get an email back, congratulations. We understand your new auto was financed, and we hope you had a great time at your son. They're blown away that phone call that was remembered and followed up with an email, and most of us done an automated fashion with somebody in the loop to check to make sure it looks good before it goes out and it's going to the right person. Isn't that incredible? Yeah, but it's about scaling, but not replacing people growing twice my size of the business in the next five years or 10 years, and not having to add as many employees,
P N 34:10
right? And that extra, that's extra hospitality that other credit unions and banking institutions probably aren't doing, or just that one little bit, because that was a throwaway comment that had nothing to do with getting an auto loan.
James Schenck 34:22
You got it that was showing that you care, you listen, and it's just but you still need that human touch. What you hear a lot about in business is ever something on the news today where certain people were let go and they're sending email certain organizations that can never happen. You have to look at your teammates every day, look them in the eye, give them certainty, let them know where you're going. And if a firm is downsizing, they need to let their employees have plenty of time, plenty of dignity. We call it exit with grace, so they can make the decisions that's right for them and their family. Surprises is what causes a break of trust. Don't create surprises at your workforce just like you want your personal life. Communicate, communicate, communicate. So important.
P N 34:59
Sure, yeah, we just, you know, at executive Comm, we just had an engagement with a company they were merging, they took on some VC, and they were just, you know, merging a couple companies together. And in that process, we were able to use, we have our AI modeling tool, and we looked at which teams are organized the best way. And some people were going to be downsized, and some people were going to be reorganized to use their natural capability to do something that they can do better they don't have to go anywhere. And we, you know, we help them put together an entire package of how they can communicate with these people, and step by step, get them to another job and another place that they need to be that and now they have the ability to actually articulate what they're looking for, going back to what we what they play at, versus what they work at, and what they have energy to show up and do, versus what they've always done.
James Schenck 35:47
If you've got an email, I got one this morning, it always makes me laugh. As you know, as you can tell, it's Al generated, and it's basically, it's like, dear, and it's gotten the parentheses name, and then it's got the blurb, yeah, it didn't merge Right, right? But there's no human in the loop to make sure it was done right. The quality wasn't there, right, right? And so, everything we do there's that human element life. We're very social society. We need social bonding. It's so important. So, leaders who remove fear and social anxiety from the workforce and create true social bonding, aligning missions and values do very well.
P N 36:20
Yeah, that. You know, it's funny, those automated emails. People are burnt out when they're looking for a job. They're burnt out with getting these auto emails and going through this extensive process, and they can tell that there's no there's no human connection here. This is just something that they're spitting out at me, and no one's really checking this. No one cares. I don't know if this is gonna work. They're almost resentful when they get the job, because they're like, you put me through all of this, and now we're finally having the one conversation.
James Schenck 36:45
There’s a certain ability of writing communication that is so important. I still have an example here at pen fed, where I had an employee once was sending a note to a board member on a trip, we're inviting them to and it had just really impressed me how it laid out, you know, dear to the board member, but here's who I am. Here's why I'm reaching out to you. Here's why this initiative fits into the mission of the organization. Here's why we'd like you to be part of it. And it was one of those things that was just so well crafted. It was that when I call cut above, it was just done right. And then how do you leverage that to 3000 plus people, so they have that same ambience I have another sort of executive that manages a lot of our external relationships, and I forget he followed up with one of the business partners just summarizing the year of all the things we've done together, and which was done good and really went well. And I never get a message from this business partner sharing the moat that one of my lower-level executives sent. And it was just brilliantly written, but it created such trust and binding. So, I've been in business for like, publishing in 30 years, I've never gotten a note that was written like this. And so, it's those like that that that human element can never be lost as we grow a firm, or we employ technology into order provide automated solutions, because the end recipient, they still want that social bonding with the organizations they're doing business with Yeah, they don't. They always don't want to talk to an AI, like when I call for my airline reservation and I'm changing something, I just want to talk to somebody, and it costs the airline more money, but I'm willing to pay more in that ticket price, but I want that personal service. But if I can do something self-service, and it's very easy, I'll try to do that route, but you have to give me that ability to talk to somebody. I think that's so important for all firms to remember, is there always would be that escape loop, or that human interaction makes sense. And what we try to do is, I try to do, like the routine stuff, what's my balance? Move money from point A to point B transfers. We do 100 million transactions a month remotely. But when somebody has, like, a death in the family or an estate account, or they need to create a trip when it's sort of outside the normal, routine business. They want to talk to somebody. They want that that trust to make sure it's done right, that the i's are DoD Ts are crossed, they never they need a little bit of advice. So that's where we use the human element on sort of what I call more the exceptions, or the more complex work. What's my balance that can be delivered in a million ways. You can look at it on your mobile phone. You can look at on the web. You can hear it on the voice phone answer. But if I got to do something that's a little bit outside of that, they want to talk to somebody, we make that available. And I'm very proud our average answer time is less than 30 seconds. Very proud of that. Call any firm nowadays, and try to get somebody to pick up a phone in 30 seconds,
P N 39:16
Yeah, try to get a real human on the phone. I dare you, right? And then someone who actually knows anything about the business, because a lot of times, people are using call centers, and the call center employees reading from a script that they've been prepared with. So, they're not actually, they're not emotionally attached. That's neither here nor there, but they actually don't have any product knowledge.
James Schenck 39:35
It is here near and there, because it creates that, that that that connection with the customer, in our case, the member, yeah, you can never lose sight of this, that connection, that's why the business comes together. We're fulfilling a need they have, and they're fulfilling a need for us. We remember this financial firm. We borrow from millions of members for their deposits, and we pay them to deposit money with us. We loan it out the other half of our members. We're just. The middleman, yeah. And so, you got to take perfect care of each side of that equation, day in and day out. And technology is powerful. It's helpful, but it can never replace the human touch. Yeah?
P N 40:10
Well, we started this conversation to say how big someone's eyes got, a stranger to me, and you know, to you, when they were talking about PenFed.
James Schenck 40:17
Yeah, they got to come through the Dulles PenFed tunnel and learn all about us. Yeah. I mean, we're pretty proud of that, and we got some big announcements here in the Tysons area coming up real soon. Off we more and more people. We're gonna unlock the best kept secret, which is the pen fed brand. You do business with us. We're gonna take perfect care of you. We've taken care of your grandparents, your parents, your kids, your grandkids, and hopefully for kids for generations to come.
P N 40:41
Well, look, before I let you go, I can talk to you for hours. Get some hot load yoga. Yeah, that on my calendar. Let's do that. Just you know, for all of the up-and-coming executives, the people that are one day want to be a president or CEO of an organization like Penn fed, or even someone like in my position, where we are leading a small team, and we want to grow. We want to have an exit. One of the hardest things is delegation and establishing the trust the delegation, but also for the individual to let go of the fear of the outcome not being the way that we need it to be. How do we what's a practice? Or how have you learned how to do that over time?
James Schenck 41:24
It comes with trust. A leader needs to be able to delegate, and it's not delegate for the sake of delegation. When you have different divisions, doing different thing, credit cards, mortgages, communications, marketing, if you have to micromanage everyone, you're going to fail miserably. You have to surround yourself with professionals, and I always like to say professionals that can work at 10 other places that are that good, but we give them the right pay, the right benefits, the right environment, but we let them do their job. So, the leader needs to literally lay out the vision, make sure the resources are provided, and then sort of stay out of the way, monitor and govern, but let them run, give them the time and the space in order to execute, whether it's writing software code or whether it's writing the next marketing campaign I want to have. We're more physical presence in the, what we call the DMV area, in Puerto Rico and across the military community. So, by giving those three directions, right? DMV, Puerto Rico and within the military community, it helps them say no to all the areas that don't cover one of those things. So, it helps them focus their marketing dollars, focus where we put a physical branch. And so, leaders need to provide direction, provide the resources, but then let them execute. And it just comes with trust and being willing to step back and really believing in your people and watching them excel and then rewarding them and sharing and letting them share the credit with their colleagues.
P N 42:46
Yeah, what do you think about a toe don't list? You mentioned a to do list, but a toe doesn’t list, make a list of all the things that you know that that's not what I do.
James Schenck 42:55
I never needed to do that with a list. I call it knowing your true north. Everything comes back to the basic definition of economics, scarce resources coupled with unlimited ones, force us to make a choice, and for each choice there's an opportunity cost. So, once I understand where I want to go, it helps me manage those scarce resources to say, mass it where it matters, and use what we call in the military, economy of force where it doesn't. So, it allows me to focus resources on moving the train forward and not fund something else that's not to train. So, if I know I'm going to go from point A to point B on an airplane, I'm not going to spend extra dollars for a train ticket and a bus ticket. I'm going on a plane. So, once I know how I'm going, in the direction I'm going, it allows me to say no to everything else, in this case, forms of transportation. I got to get there in a certain time. I got to take a plane, I immediately made the choice not to go by bus, car, rail, horse, anything else, and it's suing any decision and organization a leader provides a direction and allows the employees they have certainty on what they can say no to. I don't need a list, but it allows them to help shape that direction of what to say yes to, what to say no to, in a decentralized environment. Hope that helps a little bit. It does. It does. I'm energized, and I want to go yell down a hallway how much I love it here, and make sure our employees know where we're going, because we're already what, 6% done the year. So, we got 94% or less left in 2025 Everyday Counts, and to win, you got to be hungry for each day.
P N 44:17
Yeah. All right. One last question, what do you want your legacy to be like? If there was a billboard that was designed for James at the end of his life? What's that one thing you want your legacy to be?
James Schenck 44:28
It's funny. I've always liked the term, you know, it's enough for the world to know that he was a soldier. But for me, it's like that he helped others. I think it meant it came from my formative years as my dad, he always taught me to sort of, whenever you get paid, save a third, live on the third, and give a third away. And if times got tough, you just don't have the third to give away. If they get really tough, you just can't save that third, but you're still living on the third. And it's been good advice. So, I'd like to help others. And. And if I have a legacy of, he was a gentleman and helped others, I think I'll feel pretty good I've done
P N 45:04
Well, thanks for being here, James. Thank you.
James Schenck 45:08
Got me energized. Now I got some new two things on me to do list, which I'll make it to a done list, and I'll look forward to in parking on the cold plunge. Will be a new challenge this week. Maybe I'll start with the cold shower, but my son actually swears by cold plunges. He says, energized for the whole day after a good workout hitting that could plunge. So, you gave me some things to think about on the personal development side, and hopefully you and the readers are the listeners. Today, we'll think about some of the things that we talked about, from focusing on what's important and being who they are and looking in the mirror and seeing themselves and being proud that they're who they are, they'll need to be anybody else just proud of who they are.