Banking is the simplest business in the world.
“Before the quarter starts, you know where 90% of your income is coming from.
All you have to do is get the final 10% right.”

by Brian Pillmore | Mar 5, 2023 | Brian's Blog

I LIVED by those words from a wise mentor when I became president of a bank. Believe it or not, it was a new experience for me to have full P&L responsibility and I had to make this bank more profitable again. So the only thing I did on my first day was sit down...

“The early bird gets the worm,
But the second mouse gets the cheese.”
Which one should your business be?

by Brian Pillmore | Mar 3, 2023 | Brian's Blog

In every business and every industry, one of these will apply, you just have to know which one. Take Uber for example.They might have been the early bird in ride sharing, but it came at a cost. Millions of dollars spent on lobbying against laws that protect taxi...

It’s A Wonderful Life isn’t a Christmas movie…

by Brian Pillmore | Mar 3, 2023 | Brian's Blog

It’s a banking movie. Remember the scene where everyone comes running into the bank wanting their money?In just a few sentences, George explains the fundamentals of banking better than I’ve ever seen. “You’re thinking of this place all wrong! The...

I ran a bank.
But the most cash I’ve ever seen was $420k on 4/20/20 ????

by Brian Pillmore | Mar 1, 2023 | Brian's Blog

I was consulting on underwriting with a small community bank that just so happened to do a lot of business with marijuana companies. Suddenly, one of the owners of a marijuana customers comes in and drops STACKS of cash on the counter with a little deposit slip. I was...

Amazon has about 1,608,000 employees.

by Brian Pillmore | Feb 27, 2023 | Brian's Blog

But just 1,269 of them do HALF the work. Just ask Derek Price. Derek Price analyzed an abundance of research and found that within a company, half of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people – Price’s Law. With a small company of 25,...