The Human Element of Banking with Brent Beardall

Coming to you from our nation’s capital, I’m Al Dominick, and this is Cornerstone Advisors’ Plugged In.

Buckle up, my friends, because we’re about to get dialed in on the business of banking with help from my partner and co-host, Steve Williams.

How’s it going, Al? Sitting here in Scottsdale HQ at Cornerstone. I miss sitting with you, my friend, but we’ve got a very special guest joining us from a regional bank headquartered up in Seattle, Washington.

That’s right. We’re talking shop with the CEO who runs Washington Federal, better known by its longtime nickname of WaFd.

Steve, could you help us welcome our guest?

You bet.

I’ve been blessed to know this gentleman for more than 20 years, back in the day when he was a CFO making sure everything balanced and booked right and earnings were there.

Then he became a great CEO at WaFd and, I would tell you, has really blossomed as a leader of the institution, the industry, and the community.

Mr. Brent Beardall.

Brent, good to have you here.

Great to be here, Steve.

I’m not going to let Al get away with that “buckle up, ladies and gentlemen.” Was that intended only for me, Al?

I appreciate that.

It’s more about my concern for Steve’s well-being. Usually, he and I hold it down, give each other a little clink with our Plugged In mugs, and we’re off to the races.

For the record, I was buckled up with a five-point harness, which saved my life, so thank you very much.

We’re going to be getting into that. Don’t you worry.

Before we do, I appreciate Steve not burying the lead with your name and introduction.

But I’ve got to say, Brent, one of the guilty pleasures I have in terms of hosting Plugged In with Steve goes to these five-song setlists that we create for our listeners.

They help us cover a lot of ground in a relatively short period of time by framing some talking points against music that many of us know and love.

In past episodes, we’ve had some fun juxtaposing 50 Cent with Frank Sinatra, U2 with Run-DMC, and Vanilla Ice with Elvis Presley.

To keep this tradition alive, we’re going to bring in some lyrics from bands like Depeche Mode and Pearl Jam to keep this business conversation creative and, I hope, entertaining.

As my man Steve will model out, we take some liberties with the lyrics to show how the business of banking really never is boring.

Steve, you want to give us a first run?

For the audience out there, we’re going to start with what needs to be talked about first.

We’re going to get into banking, Brent, but I’m going to start with a song from your hometown, from Pearl Jam up in Seattle.

One of their more reflective songs is “Just Breathe,” where Eddie Vedder says he’s a lucky man who can count on both hands the ones he loves.

Your New Year’s Day was starting out with great expectations and turned into tragedy.

Your good friend Nathan Ricks, a customer of the bank and a fabulous entrepreneur, was lost in a plane crash in Provo, Utah, on the runway.

You were there, and really by God’s grace, Brent, you survived that crash.

As I’ve talked to you this year, it’s been pretty powerful in terms of what that’s meant for you.

I’d love for you to start personal.

Share what’s going through your life today and what this means to you. I know it’s been very personal.

Thank you for this opportunity.

We were just talking before we got started about perspective, and perspective is an amazing thing.

Going through what I went through on January 2, I was on a private jet airplane leaving from Provo, Utah, going down to the Rose Bowl, of all things, with a client.

Nathan Ricks was the pilot, a very experienced pilot with a very trustworthy aircraft.

He invited me to sit in the co-pilot seat.

What good banker wouldn’t want to sit in the co-pilot seat and enjoy the ride down?

We took off, and unfortunately something went tragically wrong.

After getting a couple hundred feet in the air, we ended up going nose-first into the ground.

My friend Nathan passed on impact, and I suffered meaningful injuries.

Quite frankly, by the grace of God, I’m here.

It’s one of those things that’s hard to understand.

Why are you fortunate enough to live while your good friend, sitting right next to you, passed on impact?

I’m not smart enough to figure that out other than to say there’s a plan.

Someone above wants me to be here for whatever reason.

Most likely, I have a few more lessons to learn.

You’ve got to roll with the punches, accept what is, and control what you can control.

I’ve also learned going through this that I have two very distinct portions of my being.

There’s my analytical side, which has dominated the vast majority of my existence for 52 years.

Being a bank CFO and then CEO, I’m crunching the numbers and figuring things out.

I’m working with Cornerstone, figuring out who we want as our core provider and why.

You’ve got that part of your being, and then you also have this emotional side.

You can understand something analytically. You can rationalize what happened and why.

But then you have an emotional side where there’s a disconnect.

One of my lessons going through this is to make more room for that emotional side.

It’s okay not to be okay.

Sometimes I’m just not okay.

Sometimes I can’t reconcile the survivor’s guilt of why I was fortunate enough to live and my good friend Nathan was not.

That being said, it’s an incredible blessing to be alive.

The other thing I want to tell the listeners is, I’m sure there are a number of people out there that I know pretty well, thank you sincerely.

It’s deeply personal to me.

So many people exercised their faith, whatever it is they believe in, on my behalf.

They were pulling for me, loving me.

It’s unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

That wave of faith and prayers trying to lift me up mattered.

There were some pretty dark times going through that, and it lifted me up.

I cannot overstate how important that is.

So many people called me and said, “Brent, what can we do?”

I said, “Please just keep doing what you’re doing. I don’t need you to do anything. I don’t need flowers. I don’t need a contribution. I just need your love and prayers.”

In today’s day and age, we are so hyper-focused on our differences.

Our differences exist. Our differences are real, and we shouldn’t brush them aside at all.

But let’s not focus only on our differences.

Let’s focus on the humanity we have in common, the love and caring for each other.

It’s one of my great lessons going through this.

I used to be very hesitant to tell people what I really thought about them.

If somebody was important or dear to me, I wouldn’t tell them I loved them because you just don’t do that, right?

This is a business setting.

You know what? The heck with that.

I tell people who mean something to me that I love them, appreciate them, and care for them.

It’s really been healing to my soul.

That’s great.

I appreciate seeing you out there with your WaFd team.

I remember one day you were in Texas, Brent, and you and I had been texting each other and checking in.

I love how your story, and most importantly the message you just shared, is resonating with people.

Heck yeah, let’s put that on top of the analytics of banking and everything else.

I think it really goes with the mission of regional and community banks, being out there in the trenches with folks and having an impact.

I just want to say, on behalf of everyone, it’s great to see that you’re walking the talk and people are responding.

That energy is awesome.

As I said, it puts things in perspective.

The term “relationship banking” is thrown around too much, but it is about relationships.

When everything else is said and done, what really matters is those relationships.

I appreciate my relationships with both you and Al, and I look forward to this conversation.

It’s a good framework to think about what’s really important and what’s not.

It turns out bank technology is important. It’s just not as important as everything else.

You grew up in finance, but what I love about talking with you about the industry these days is what’s going on with the transformation of WaFd and how excited and geeked out you get on that.

So Al is going to take us to the next song.

Again, I just want to double down on what Steve said.

What I’ve found in my life is there are days where you need a hand, and there are days when you can give a hand.

When you wake up, you don’t know which one it’s going to be.

What you’re saying is incredibly important for all people, not just business leaders, to understand.

We have differences, but we have a lot more in common. Let’s help each other out.

I’ll go with you on that one.

I’ll also state that the old perceptions of what makes you strong, either a strong man or a strong woman, hiding those feelings and those times when you need help, I think that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Right.

When you need a hand, don’t be afraid to reach out to someone you love to ask for that hand.

It turns out there are a lot more people willing to give you that hand than you give yourself credit for.

I could not agree more.

Wake up and ask yourself, “Can I give somebody else a hand?”

When you have those tough days, don’t be afraid to ask for that hand up.

Brent, I’ve long admired your leadership from the outside, whether that was when I was a CEO at Bank Director or now as a partner of Steve at Cornerstone.

When I think about what distinguishes your business leadership from others who have been in the financial sector over the years, one big example is when you launched Pike Street Labs to really bridge that divide between regional banks and modern technology.

As we pick up on what Steve said around tech and where things are heading, I’m curious if we could use Asia, the band Asia, singing in “Heat of the Moment,” “Do you remember when we used to dance, and incidents arose from circumstance?”

You know your business much better than me.

Could you take us back to the circumstance that led you and your board member, I’m blanking on his name, but I know he was the co-founder, to think about creating this venture, let alone doing such incredible work?

Thanks for that lead.

I love the way you guys approached this with retro music. It gives you flashbacks just thinking about it.

Let me tell you how this came about for us and the journey we’re on.

I came to WaFd Bank in January of 2001.

When I came to the bank, we were literally world-renowned for our efficiency ratio.

We had a 17% efficiency ratio.

Think about that.

A 17% efficiency ratio.

Our total shareholder return was one of the top 10 of all banks in the United States since going public.

It had been a remarkable run.

I looked at this and couldn’t figure it out.

Here’s a bank with this incredible efficiency ratio, but the technology was awful.

When I say that, people did business with us in spite of our technology.

Literally, the ledger for the whole company, which at the time I think was about a $600 million market cap, was on a columnar pad in 2001.

We had no voicemail.

We had no email.

The computer system we had, we had purchased literally for pennies a pound from WaMu.

They were getting rid of their computer system, and we bought it by the container full for pennies per pound.

That’s where we came from.

There are all kinds of different ways to be successful.

To me, it was fascinating.

Here in the shadows of Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle, Washington, you had this bank staying as far away from technology as it could, yet thriving.

I came in, and you know what they say when you join a new company.

Bite your tongue. Learn. Try to figure out what it’s about.

But always in the back of my mind, I had this burning question: Why can’t we utilize technology to accelerate the value proposition we can deliver for our clients?

I learned and understood what we’d done at WaFd.

Over time, we made big changes to technology under my predecessor’s leadership, Roy Whitehead, when I was CFO.

We converted to one of the big three.

I’ll never forget November 15, 2015.

I think we converted 18 systems over the weekend.

We drank the Kool-Aid.

Everything was going to be fantastic.

That conversion was terrible.

Awful.

It took us literally two years to get back to a stabilized system.

Then what we found after converting to those 18 systems was the lack of integration was pathetic.

I talked to other bank CEOs and found out, “Hey, this is just what you come to expect.”

You don’t have the integration.

You have manual processes.

You ask for things and you’re told they’re on the roadmap.

I’ve told our team I never want to hear that again because “the roadmap” is just a nice way of saying, “We understand what you want. We’re never going to get to it, so just set it aside and let us move forward doing what we were going to do anyhow.”

That’s where we were in 2017 when I had the opportunity to ascend into the CEO role.

We were going through our business planning process, and as everybody does, we did a base projection, then a positive scenario and negative scenario, and did that out for three years.

We were through the entire process when our newest board member, Steve Singh, looked up at the 11th hour and 32nd minute and said, “You know, Brent, I would challenge management to aim higher.”

My initial reaction was, “How dare you? You have no idea how hard it is to do what we do.”

Look at all the banks that have failed and how we’ve been successful.

Aim higher?

Thankfully, I swallowed my pride, bit my tongue, and said, “Okay, let me think about this.”

I went back and did a whole bunch of introspection.

I said, “You know what?”

This was Steve Singh, the co-founder of Concur.

Yeah, he’s right.

A tech entrepreneur.

He knew what he was talking about.

He did.

The beauty of Concur and what he was talking about is he took something everybody did, expense reports, and automated it.

It’s just doing the simple things and making them easy.

The beauty of Steve is he can call BS when it comes to technology.

When we say, “Hey, Steve, that’s not possible,” he says, “Oh yes, it is. You just don’t have the right counterparty.”

With that encouragement from Steve to aim higher, we came back with what we call Vision 2025.

That was to take this bank that was so backwards from a technology standpoint and become a digital-first bank.

That’s not something where you just snap your fingers and it happens.

That’s a journey.

We also say it’s our journey to freedom from being reliant on one of the big three.

I think it’s a terrible position to be in as a bank executive where your future, what you want to do, is tied to what one of the big three can deliver.

You should never be tied because, “Hey, I’ve got this contract. It is what it is.”

No.

You should be bound by what’s the best technology in the marketplace, then let’s implement it.

If you don’t have the best technology, then you’re not in a position to make the choices you need to make.

If your provider doesn’t have that best technology, shame on them.

I wanted you to talk about Pike Street because you really created a product group in Pike Street.

Not another IT department.

This is not your whole IT department.

You kept your IT department to run the bank.

This is a tech group thinking about product development and product releases, correct?

That’s exactly right.

We established this group called Pike Street Labs that has now morphed into Archway Software, which I’m really excited about.

We followed what Jeff Bezos said, that if you can’t feed your team with two pizzas, the team is too big.

Very, very small team of about 12 to 15 engineers.

We said, “Here’s our problem.”

Historically, what we did as a management team was say, “Here’s our problem, and here’s how we want you to solve it.”

No.

Don’t do that.

Hire the right people.

Go to them with a problem and let them tell you how they’re going to solve it with modern technology.

That’s what we did at Pike Street Labs.

We built a massive data lake using AWS.

We brought in a middleware layer to connect all the different pieces.

We extract all the data from our different systems, put it in our data lake, and then we’ve built customer-facing software, now built by Archway, that delivers a wow to people that is phenomenal.

It is so much fun when you can demonstrate technology to a customer and get them to say, “Wow.”

You’re doing this to a customer of JPMorgan or Wells Fargo.

That’s a game changer for a regional bank.

Al, it sounds like Brent’s describing what we call building the smarter bank.

You’ve got a third song that ties in with this theme about reinvention.

I do.

But I was going to say, I was hoping Brent didn’t pull an Aaron Rodgers at one point in his career and go into a darkness retreat after Steve said, at the 11th hour, “We’ve got to change.”

I think Aaron went down to Oregon for four days in total isolation.

I could just see Brent walking out of the bank saying, “I’ll be back in four or five days, fellas.”

Listening to some real Seattle grunge to get really dark.

No kidding.

But if we do want to play off some music, “strange fascination, fascinating me. Changes are taking the pace I’m going through.”

That was “Changes” by David Bowie.

Nice job.

See, Brent? This is what happens with Steve and myself. We start geeking out on the music side of things.

But that song really does tie into the smarter bank concept that we’ve been kicking around within Cornerstone.

We think a smarter bank has to be fast, differentiated, and trusted.

To Steve’s point about your 2025 Vision, maybe it’s not so much what you want to change.

Maybe we start with that old Jeff Bezos idea of what we don’t want to change as we think about a smarter bank being developed.

You want to take a crack at this?

We’ll do our best.

I have to tell you, I’m impressed at your music trivia, both of you.

Well done.

More coming too, so don’t worry.

I failed to give you credit where credit is due, Steve.

A smarter bank, and what’s not going to change, I describe that as being nimble.

It’s hard to think we’re a 106-year-old organization.

How in the world do you get a 106-year-old organization to be nimble?

The answer for me is not asking people who already have full-time jobs to do something else.

You need the people who have full-time jobs to do their jobs.

In our case, this was our IT department continuing to make sure the trains run on time and get everything done.

Then establish someone else to build the software.

Once they’ve built it, they can pass it off.

It’s such a fascinating thing.

We’re so hyper-focused on, “Okay, what do we want to change? What do we want to change?”

I’m a fan of Bezos and what he’s been able to do, obviously.

But what’s not going to change?

Banks are essentially financial intermediaries.

I don’t see that changing.

There are always going to be people in our society who have excess funds and people in our society looking for reasonable leverage.

If a bank can play that role of financial intermediary, and by the way, this could be a whole other podcast about how so much of that is now leaving the banking segment and going into nonbanks, whether that be private equity funds, family offices, and so forth, I believe there will always be that need.

Banks will need to be able to take in deposits.

Certainly, we’re being challenged by the likes of Apple today.

But banks will need to be able to take in deposits, serve their clients, and make it completely transparent.

Then banks will need to be able to make loans and actually utilize technology.

So much of our underwriting is still manually driven.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could utilize technology to have a real-time finger on the pulse of companies?

Instead of saying, “Oh my goodness, would you fill out this form so I can see what kind of line of credit you need?”

If I could be plugged into their CRM and see their cash flow and what’s happening, I could come to them and say, “Hey, here’s a line of credit for you.”

That trust is what we’re hoping to get to.

If we could have that real-time understanding, that’s what I think of in terms of a smarter bank.

Let’s not just do things the way we’ve always done them.

Let’s say, “How can we reinvent this to actually be of more value to our clients?”

I think that concept of trust is so critical for business leaders to think about because it’s a constantly shifting expectation that people have.

What trust was in the past was sitting down, explaining things, having some authenticity.

What it is in the future might be a little more privacy, maybe responsiveness.

You use the word nimble.

I think of being responsive.

I love how you’re approaching this.

Maybe, Steve, we talked about one of the courses that WaFd has to model trust in their communities.

You want to pick this up?

Yeah.

We’re going to go a little ’80s, kind of MTV wave.

Howard Jones.

He says, “It may take a little time, a lonely path, an uphill climb. Success or failure will not alter it. Things can only get better.”

Here’s what’s kind of cool.

Again, you’re a finance guy.

You used to run circles around me with analytics when I’d try to talk to you, Brent.

But then you’ve become this very spiritual leader.

You’re into tech.

You’re also really taking WaFd deep into community.

I see things like your work with schools, your work with more than a million dollars every year in community giving, and even the financial literacy part.

The Banzai classes you’re doing to promote financial literacy, your work with EVERFI, and some other tools out there.

Another dimension of you and your team.

Why is that important for the smarter bank to be so embedded in community, Brent?

It goes down to purpose.

In today’s day and age, people don’t just come to work for a paycheck.

I don’t just come to work for a paycheck.

I want to be part of something that’s bigger than myself.

I want to make a difference.

It’s something I’ve asked every employee at WaFd to do.

Two things.

Number one, love what you do.

It’s obvious you two love what you do.

You’re making a game out of this podcast. It’s wonderful.

It’s actually liberating when you tell your employees, “I want you to love what you do.”

I know we’ve got some jobs that aren’t too glamorous, whether that be a computer operations job, a collections job, regulatory relations.

They’re jobs that need to get done.

Either figure out a way to love what you’re doing or go somewhere else.

You’ll be better off.

We’ll be better off.

Our clients will be better off.

Number one, that’s an empowering message.

Love what you do.

Then number two, after you love what you do, I challenge everyone to make a difference.

Don’t just be a wallflower along for the ride.

I said, never go to a meeting if your day is so full of meetings that you can’t get your job done.

Don’t go to the meetings.

Even if that’s a meeting I call.

If you’re going to meetings and you’re not getting anything out of it, that’s a waste.

You’re employed by this company to make a difference.

Make a difference in the lives of your customers.

Make a difference in your communities.

The beautiful thing about it from my perspective is I didn’t dictate what that means.

“Okay, Steve, to make a difference, here are the five things you’re going to do.”

No.

I’m saying, “Steve, I challenge you to make a difference, and I look forward to you coming back to me and telling me how you made a difference.”

That goes beyond what we’re doing to make a profit for our shareholders.

That goes to making a difference in the communities.

What we’re doing with financial education and Banzai is at the heart of it.

This goes back to what Al was saying about trust.

We’re the fiduciary of roughly $16 billion of deposits at WaFd.

Our communities have trusted us.

What are we going to do with that?

We’re going to work our tails off to protect it.

But what are we going to do to help others make smart decisions about their finances?

To me, that’s twofold.

Number one, you need to educate people.

Banzai is a great way to educate people.

There are all kinds of financial literacy courses.

There are TED Talks.

More today than ever, financial literacy is available to people.

But most importantly, and this is what I love, we have the tools today in our online banking to allow people to put it into action.

It’s one thing to have a course to learn about it.

It’s another thing to do it.

People talk about gamification.

Stop the gamification.

Let them do it.

Play a game with your own money.

In our app today, you can have a real-time balance sheet.

So much of today is about, “Where do you spend your money?”

That’s good.

But most important is your balance sheet.

I don’t care if you have a net worth of $10 or $10 million.

Having a real-time understanding of your balance sheet is the most important thing from a financial literacy standpoint.

In order to make a plan for where you’re going, you need to know where you’re at.

Having that connectivity to say, “Here’s my real-time balance sheet,” and then, “Let’s set some goals. Where do you want to go?”

Bill Gates said a computer on every desktop, and Brent Beardall is saying a balance sheet in every house.

That’s the mission here.

There you go.

Steve’s bringing the heat every time.

I don’t know how I keep up with him.

For our final song, this is a man on a mission.

A lot of people right now are kind of turning their nose down at regional banking.

Brent, we’re looking at these P/E ratios this morning at six to seven.

We’ve got a great dividend.

But I want to hold up one little cheesy picture, and this is the footprint of WaFd.

It goes all the way from Pearl Jam and Soundgarden in Seattle down to country music in Dallas.

But I’m going to point to this logo right here, Luther Burbank Savings in California.

Brent, you guys added your ninth state, coming up now with the acquisition of Luther Burbank.

I can only guess Al and I can go and guess you’re bullish on regional banking.

You’re bullish on the franchise.

This is your own “Personal Jesus.”

Who did that one, Al?

“Personal Jesus.”

Depeche Mode.

You beat me to it.

Okay, you guys are good.

Hey, look, we’re cool too.

It turns out we all grew up at the same time.

I guess so.

But you’re on a mission.

Tell us why you’re excited about California.

I know you’ve got Mark Borrecco going to run it down there.

Tell us why you’re excited.

It’s a great footprint. You keep expanding it.

Before I get into California, let me tell you what I think is irrational about the regional banks right now.

From time to time, the market can be irrational.

The market is the market.

I tend to ascribe to some of the Warren Buffett philosophies.

If you’re buying a stock because you’re going to pay attention to the swings in value from day in and day out, you shouldn’t buy a stock.

You should buy a stock for the fundamental performance of that company.

Right now, regional banks are out of favor.

But this too will pass.

People will realize, “Oh my goodness, look at these dividend yields I can get. Look at the underlying fundamentals.”

Right now, there is no question that the biggest banks are the beneficiary of these deposit flows because people are going toward safety, the implicit guarantee.

But I think this too will settle down.

People will come back to that relationship word we talked about.

It is really hard for the largest banks in America to empower their employees to have meaningful relationships.

Back to Al’s word, trust.

I’m incredibly bullish on regional banking in general.

I think there’s room in our country for both the biggest banks and regional banks.

I think they all play a very, very important part.

I won’t go over the statistics in terms of the lending and the difference it can make.

But I think midsize and regional banks are here to stay for a good reason.

I think it’s probably a generational opportunity.

Remember back in March of 2020, when we were staring into the pandemic and bank values went down?

Everybody was saying the same thing.

It was just fear-based selling.

Then two years later, we were all saying, “We should have mortgaged our house and bought these stocks.”

I think likewise we’ll look back on this time as an opportunity.

That’s just my perspective.

In terms of our footprint, I could not be more excited about the opportunity to enter into California.

It gives us an entire West Coast franchise, as you pointed out so nicely.

The really cool thing, and no one would have ever thought this of WaFd, is this transaction came about because of what WaFd has been able to do from a technology standpoint.

We have differentiated ourselves from so many of our peers from a technology standpoint.

The management team and board at Luther Burbank looked at what we’ve been able to do in terms of transforming a legacy thrift to a commercial bank and the benefits that’s having on our balance sheet in this rising-rate environment and our P&L.

They said, “Wow, we want to be part of that.”

We negotiated a 100% stock transaction.

They want what we’re doing together.

They cannot wait to embrace our technology.

Their staff is so excited about what we have to offer in terms of the online banking that Pike Street Labs built for us.

We have voice authentication.

We now have wire transfers where you go into the online banking, put in the wire, then the system calls you back and you authorize that wire transfer with your voice.

That I know of, there’s not another bank in the country that has that.

It turns out, you know who really wants wire transfers that are easy and secure?

Really rich people.

A lot of those really rich people used to bank at First Republic.

They used to bank at Silicon Valley.

They’ve now been inherited by others.

I think there’s going to be a market to go after those.

Especially nice, we entered this transaction in a November timeframe before all this banking chaos.

Now all this banking chaos is happening in California.

Hopefully soon, after we get FDIC approval, we’ll be able to be in California and go after those clients.

Nothing says long term like a 100% stock deal.

Vic is a very smart guy.

It’s really cool that you guys, kind of as soulmates, got together to say this is a long-term business.

We look at the fundamentals, the Buffett-type value approach.

That’s really cool.

I know the institution and all of those executives and board members are very committed to the community.

They’ve been part of Santa Rosa and around that forever.

It’s a great entry point.

Can I tell you a fun Vic story?

I think the world of Vic.

After we announced the deal, we went on a road show to each of their branches and met everyone in person.

How cool is that?

Vic, the founder and chairman, came with Simone Lagomarsino and myself to visit all the teams.

At one point, we were driving just over the Golden Gate Bridge, and Vic kind of gives me a little punch in the leg.

I’m like, “What was that for?”

He says, “You see that over there? Do you know what that is?”

Over to the right.

I’m like, “Yeah, that’s San Quentin Prison.”

He says, “It sure is. Let me tell you, Brent, if you screw this up, that’s where you’re going, and I’ll come visit you.”

There you go.

So the pressure’s on, buddy.

You may have been life-changed, but now you’ve still got that lump in the throat.

You know what? I took that challenge.

We’re not going to screw it up.

I admire Vic a great deal.

We admire you a great deal too, Brent.

We really appreciate you taking some time to join both Steve and myself.

You tied together a lot of really important leadership traits around relationships and trust, but also just being honest and upfront about what’s happened in your personal life to start this off.

Super impressive.

Again, we couldn’t be more appreciative.

This is Al Dominick. I’m looking at Steve Williams.

I’m sending my thanks to Brent Beardall.

Cornerstone’s Plugged In is wrapping up this episode, but we’ve got more fun in the days and weeks to come.

We hope you’ll join us then.

Thanks.

Thank you, gentlemen.