This #FinanceFriday I sit down with my friend, Gavriel Maman, to discuss the pros and cons of working with business bankers versus personal bankers, and of course, we touch on the PPP disaster.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Hey, it’s working! We are on Facebook. Yes, it worked. We finally got it all working. Yay.
Gavriel Maman:
I do have to make this anecdote though because I remember applying for Chase.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
To work there?
Gavriel Maman:
Yeah, to work there. I did get the offer, but I refused it and I went with Bank of America instead, but when I first was applying to Chase, I dressed up in a suit and they were doing these video interviews, and it was a while ago. So this was still a new thing, and I felt so funny just sitting there in a suit talking to a camera. And here, you get to talk to somebody, but back then, you’re faced with questions and you have 90 seconds to answer like, why are you passionate to help your clients? And I’m like, “I love people.” It’s that little nerve-wracking, on the spot kind of questioning.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s funny how very quickly the last year, this whole doing stuff online and to a camera, became so just acceptable and the normal. It used to not be so much. It was like, “Why can’t you meet in person?” Now it’s like, “I don’t want to meet you in person.” It’s changing a little.
Gavriel Maman:
You see, I think that productivity-wise, this has been one of the most beneficial. Obviously, there’s nothing beneficial about the pandemic, it is what it is, but one of the most beneficial things that businesses have come to realize is that they can trust their employees and that they don’t necessarily lose efficiency when dealing with these kinds of platforms. Obviously, you still want to get people into the office now and again, but this works. Clearly, businesses are still operating.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Yeah, absolutely. And what I find funny is how many businesses I’ve seen that have had to embrace technology that wouldn’t have without that kick in the butt to go do it. To be cashless systems, or self-service check-ins and things like that, and they just overnight, “Now we have it. Great.” It wasn’t quite overnight, but it felt like overnight.
Gavriel Maman:
I have countless stories of times when I would sit with clients and I would introduce them to my merchant services person, and I would never, ever … their businesses would go from getting checks all the time to just using POS systems, and it’s those who embrace it, embrace it all the way, and then those who don’t, just refuse it outright. So there’s no gray in the middle. I haven’t seen that yet.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Yeah. Okay. I’m going to hit the record button, even though we were having a great conversation.
Gavriel Maman:
Oh no, I’m always in conversation mode. I’m always on camera.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
But here was the problem, so far, no one knows who you are. So for anyone who’s out there watching, this is our inaugural #FinanceFriday. We would love to do this every week and have lots of guests, I don’t know that I personally have the mental bandwidth to do it, but we’re going to try. But my very first guest is the illustrious Gavriel.
Gavriel Maman:
Thank you so much, Bette.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
I need a soundtrack in the background of applause, I guess.
Gavriel Maman:
Or we could get a couple of people clapping.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Yeah.
Gavriel Maman:
Probably get my cat to give me a little bit of fanfare.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Note for the producer, we need a round of applause like there’s an audience here. Okay. So Gavriel is … you’re a business banker, yeah?
Gavriel Maman:
Well, I’m a personal banker, but I think the only thing that-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Oh, personal banker.
Gavriel Maman:
Yes, [crosstalk 00:04:03].
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
What’s the difference? Can you tell us the differences?
Gavriel Maman:
Yes, yes. The difference between business bankers and personal bankers is business bankers really deal with businesses on a more personal level. They’re there to attune to everything that a business needs. And every bank does it differently. Every bank somehow separates it into different categories.
Gavriel Maman:
Personal bankers really are … we’re a service. We’re about taking care of every single client. All the clients that I have, considering that I work at a small bank, I would say that a big percentage of the clients that I deal with are businesses.
Gavriel Maman:
But business bankers are, like I said, specifically attuned, and that’s why usually the business banker will have the time for you as compared to a personal banker who is always running around on the clock. Not to say that both can’t, but that’s why they have those divisions in these larger banks for that.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Gotcha. So you’re a little unusual because you’re not at one of these big mega-banks, right?
Gavriel Maman:
Yeah, I’m not-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Legacy is smaller? All right. Tell us a little bit about Legacy and why smaller banks are so awesome.
Gavriel Maman:
So I will say that I do have bigger bank experience, and one of the things that I appreciate about working at a bank like legacy Bank is the fact that it is much smaller, much white-glove service, very hands-on. I know all my clients, I talk to them. Sometimes there are clients that we even know on such a personal level, we’ll deliver to them sometimes.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Wow. Really?
Gavriel Maman:
Of course, it depends on the relationship, it’s not every single client, but-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Only the special ones.
Gavriel Maman:
As I said, it’s fantastic the level of service that we cater to and provide for people. It’s such a different experience because as a personal banker, I’ve always wanted to be that person that when I pick up the phone, I want to help that person. And they give me the tools and the capability to do that. Whereas with … God forbid, no badmouthing other banks because everything has their benefits, but with bigger banks, I feel like I was very much tied down as compared to where I am today.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Okay. That’s very interesting. I will badmouth a big bank real quick. And I will say, I use one of the biggest, and I’ve been with them forever because they have purchased every single bank I have ever had an account at. All up and down the East Coast, they bought every single bank from the time I was a small child until now. And I will say, in the last year you would expect a bank that big to be more functional, and it was so frustrating how dysfunctional it was.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
And all right, we weren’t going to talk about PPP, but I’m just going to make a complaint about it. The process was really terrible for a small business. I felt like nobody cared at my bank, nobody could help me. They would send emails and it would say, “Don’t call us about this, we’re not going to answer your questions.” I was like, “Wow, that’s really kind of crappy customer service.”
Gavriel Maman:
So you know me, I’m a very positive person. I always like to see the good, and I understand what happened with the big banks. PPP was an absolute nightmare.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Was? It still is.
Gavriel Maman:
It probably is. It’s probably going to be crazy again, but you know what? We’ve prepared so much for it.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Awesome.
Gavriel Maman:
Do you know the Black Friday preparations? We’re giving speeches like, “Listen, they’re going to be calling. We’re going to make sure we take care of every single one of them.” That kind of style.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
That’s awesome.
Gavriel Maman:
But yeah, no, the big banks had such an immense volume of people, it was insane. People didn’t get help from their banks a lot. We did have a certain amount of clients that necessarily they’re saying, “Hey, I can’t talk to my banker. I can’t deal with this,” and it hurt to hear it because I know that personal bankers are wanting to help and they want to get out there, but a lot of people didn’t have answers. Even this time around, after a year-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
We still don’t have answers.
Gavriel Maman:
… we still don’t have answers.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
And I have clients asking me questions I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe if Congress decides to make some decisions about it we’ll hear, but until then,” or the SBA or whoever. Because you know what happens, they all point fingers at each other, right? I had one client I’m trying to help, their lender said, “Oh, you have to call the SBA.” I called the SBA for them, and the SBA is like, “Oh, we don’t answer those questions, you have to talk to your lender.” I’m like, “Forget it.”
Gavriel Maman:
Yeah.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
It’s a nightmare.
Gavriel Maman:
It’s a ping-pong of an event, unfortunately.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
It’s a hot potato is what that is.
Gavriel Maman:
Yes. Yes.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Nobody wants to hold it.
Gavriel Maman:
I’m very lucky because we’ve sort of streamlined it, and now we have like, “Okay, here’s the papers, here’s what you need. Take this. You make sure we have all of that,” and then we have a hotline for it. So I’m really, really happy that we-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Wow.
Gavriel Maman:
… that we did it that way. Because again, we want to make sure that we help as many people as possible.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
That’s super cool. Okay. So I think we understand why working with a local bank can be such a better experience, yeah?
Gavriel Maman:
Oh, I can talk to you all day about the experiences, again. It’s dealing with one banker that’s a huge bonus, and listen, there are two people in my office. Well, two personal bankers in my office, and then I’ve got my manager and my assistant manager. It’s very concise. We know all the clients. When people pick up the phone, I recognize their voices.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Wow.
Gavriel Maman:
I know who I’m talking to. I still have to identify them, but I know who this person that I’m talking to on the phone is. So that’s a huge, huge bonus that I have to say, a lot of the people that I’m very close to and I know locally, are super interested in doing business with me because I’m a phone call away. I’m the person who’s in their backyard.
Gavriel Maman:
And that’s sort of the way the Legacy Bank operates. It’s, “Hey, look. I need to reach someone. I need to talk to someone. There they are.” And you mentioned something about your bank buying up multiple locations, but here’s my question to you. How often do you step into a bank daily? Every week? Every month?
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Really hardly ever, except recently, I had to set up a bank account for Brock, my son, my 14-year-old son, for anyone who doesn’t know, we needed to set up a student account. I had to go to the bank three times to get one account set up. I was like, “Really?” The wrong person was there, I didn’t have an appointment, blah, blah, blah. It was a nightmare. I was like, “You’re lucky you’re literally across the street, or I would just be like, ‘Forget it.’ I’d close everything and get me the hell out of here.” It was a little bit of a nightmare.
Gavriel Maman:
I completely understand exactly where you’re coming from because it’s an unfortunate truth. But one of the things that I disliked about working at big banks was the fact that we deal with about 50 clients a day. And so there’s no sort of prioritization for like, “Hey, I need to get this person, I need to get this person.” It’s you come in, you sit down, and then the next person available is going to be there.
Gavriel Maman:
I’m really, really, really happy that one of the bigger banks adopted this whole appointment culture, and I haven’t worked there for years, so I really hope that they sort of stuck to it, because I really think that the connection between you and your personal banker is a very important one.
Gavriel Maman:
As a matter of fact, one of the things that we were talking about, I’ll compliment business bankers, because one of the things that I’ve seen in the relationship between business bankers and businesses and having that specific person is whenever they needed to talk to someone, he was always there for them. And I think that’s sort of the way I envision myself being in the future, and hopefully, that’s where I get to is that I have specific people that I deal with and I’m always there for.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
And I love that because that’s how I feel about my own firm. Sometimes it’s a little challenging to get ahold of me like right before we went on, somebody called me and I’m like, “I got to call you back in 20 minutes.” So when you’re only one person it’s a little bit harder. And people ask me this. They’re like, “Okay. So if we come to you, who are we ever going to talk to? Is it actually you?”
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Because when you work at bigger CPA firms, you get brought in by a partner or a manager or someone, and then they push you off to this recent college grad who doesn’t know anything and can’t answer any of your questions. So it’s kind of the same thing, the big versus the small. You can definitely get much more concierge hand-holding personalized service versus if you’re not a super enormous company and you’re not rich or whatever, nobody wants to talk to you. My phone’s ringing again, actually. ‘Tis the season.
Gavriel Maman:
You know what? I have to say that for consumers, for people who don’t have a balanced checkbook, for people who know their businesses in and out and just have a sort of streamlined business that don’t need any sort of contact, hey, listen. Big banks work. Their mobile apps are fantastic. Their self-service is great. They’ve really built a system where you can sort of thrive and be very capable with, but look, if you’re looking to talk to someone, that’s not the best route you can take.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Do you want to speak to an actual human?
Gavriel Maman:
That’s the route that they’re trying to veer away from. And we have great systems too, it’s not saying, “Okay, small banks don’t have good systems,” but the big banks-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
It’s just different. It’s different. It’s a different scale.
Gavriel Maman:
Exactly. Big banks are sort of self-sufficient like, “We give you the platform, here you go. And we have people who can help you.”
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So I don’t want to keep you here for too long. I do want to say, can we talk about how we know each other?
Gavriel Maman:
Oh, absolutely. I think it’s absolutely-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
I think it’s probably one of the funnier ways. Normally a CPA and a banker, you might meet at, I don’t know, a networking event or something like that. No, Gavriel and I met because we sword fight. Of all the crazy things, we dress up in funny outfits and we swing weapons at each other because we were both members of the Royal Chessmen, we perform locally at TY Park, Florida Renaissance Festival. Hopefully, all of these fantastic events and things come back after coronavirus is managed, or whatever we’re going to call it. I don’t think it’s ever going away, but it’s going to be managed. So it’s funny how you can meet just amazing people sometimes in the strangest places.
Gavriel Maman:
You see, I was actually thinking about that and I’m sort of going to [inaudible 00:15:46] into something very interesting that I was thinking about is, when we met, we didn’t know each other sort of being in finance, we were just like you said, we were in sword fighting and turns out you’re an accountant. I worked in banking. As a matter of fact, someone else in the group works in insurance. It’s amazing how many financial people you’re surrounded by all of these fantastic hobbies that they have. It’s funny because-
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
We’re not all boring, right? How crazy is that, we’re not all boring. Some of us are boring, but not all of us. Nobody here on this show is boring.
Gavriel Maman:
I’ve always thought when talking to a client, I’m like, “As I’m giving this beautiful financial advice, I really wonder how this person would think of me if he knew I dress up as a pirate on the weekends.”
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
I think they would actually prefer you to give the advice talking like a pirate. I think it might go over better. They’d pay attention. They’d pay attention better, I don’t know.
Gavriel Maman:
So the benefit of owning a saving account and investing in equity.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
You can put your gold doubloons in there.
Gavriel Maman:
Listen, pirates are fantastic bankers.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Yes.
Gavriel Maman:
Their money has been kept safe until this day, I’m just saying.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
That is true. They don’t know where it is, but that’s details.
Gavriel Maman:
It’s generating interest, let’s say that.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
All right. Gavriel, thank you so very much for being brave enough to be the first guinea pig on my Finance Friday show. I think it went very well. I think you set the bar really high, so anybody else who comes on is going to have to outperform you, so they might have to take some acting lessons or something before they get on. We’ll teach them how to sword fight just in case a fight breaks out. But I thank you so much. Can we share out your business contact information?
Gavriel Maman:
Absolutely. Absolutely. I don’t have my business card on me right now.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Well, you can’t hand it to me anyway because you’re on a camera, but I will post it in the comments and the description on the video, and it will be there until the end of Facebook.
Gavriel Maman:
Fantastic. At the end of Facebook, I really wonder.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Who knows? The way the world is going, it could be sooner rather than later. We have no idea.
Gavriel Maman:
Listen, it’ll be Judgment Day and you’ll see T-100s using Facebook. I swear.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
There’ll be people fighting about whatever’s going on. You’re on the wrong side. No, you’re on the wrong side. Whatever. Whatever.
Gavriel Maman:
I appreciate you having me on.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Gavriel Maman:
And it was such a pleasure. Thank you.
Bette Hochberger, CPA:
All right. Thank you to everyone who was watching.
