David Reiling of Sunrise Banks, Awarepreneurs Interview

Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive app it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to David Riling, and our topic today is creating community wide change through banking.

David is the president and CEO of Sunrise Banks, a mission driven values based bank with locations in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. David has worked in the community development banking industry for more than twenty five years. He's a social entrepreneur and innovator who strives to forge meaningful partnerships, drive sustainable economic growth, and create financial empowerment for all. David, welcome to the Awarepreneur show.

Paul, thanks very much. Great to be with you today.

You didn't start this work yesterday, did you?

I didn't. I've been in the journey a while.

So grateful.

I think I have a graduate degree and falling forward or

breaking forward. Made made a few mistakes along the way, so we wanna hear about those. There's also some wonderful successes. David, somebody hearing your impressive bio, and they wanted to get a little bit of sense, like, what you've done and also why banking? Why using banking as a lever for change? Like, why is that so important to you?

Oh, you know, money is important and capital is important to so many different things. And when you can match money and values and purpose together, it just has tremendous impact. And so, gosh, my journey into this space, quite frankly, started quite young working construction, but ultimately it was building some homes in Tijuana, Mexico that I ultimately figured that with a skill of construction and in helping someone do something to improve their situation was really kind of that, that purpose. That was kind of the spark, but I have to tell you, I was a teller one summer, and that's really where I saw the canvas and what you could do with banking, the intersection between community and government and nonprofit and all the various people around this ecosystem that there was just a wide canvas to be able to to paint a new picture to do good.

Yeah. Turns out in the modern world, money touches a lot of things, doesn't it?

It does. Yeah. Follow the capital or follow the money. Yeah.

Follow the money. Yeah. So pretty early on, you decided to follow the money. And did that lead you right to Sunrise Bank? Like like, give us a little bit of sense of what was your journey to becoming leadership at this very cool institution that we're gonna unpack today?

Well, Paul, it it is kind of a convoluted journey, and quite frankly, bank robberies, of all things, was probably the the mainstay of of my banking career. And the fact is that one summer that I was a teller, bank that I was in got robbed twice, once to the left of me and once to the right of me. And while most people might think that's scary and so forth, I thought it was super exciting. I just thought this whole banking thing, you had money and you talked to people, you know, every minute of the day, and then you had bank robberies. I mean, just how it was just exciting, exhilarating. Fast forward, you know, through through university and college, I started a business in college and built that up and then sold it upon graduating, which was a clue that I didn't quite understand about myself at that time that I was really an entrepreneur, but I just had this imagination that I was gonna be a banker. But after I sold that business, I was a trainee at a bank called First Interstate Bank in Los Angeles. And in the first two weeks that I was on the job, the bank I was in got robbed three times.

And in the mindset of a 21, 20 two year old, I was like, well, apparently banks get robbed a lot because the money is here. And that was about the extent of my analysis of the situation. It just so happened the third time that bank got robbed, the customer service manager went out and had a smoke. And I was a trainee on the floor. And boy, by that time, I knew the FBI agents by name. And, you know, you separate the tellers and lock the doors and you do these various procedures, which were fairly rudimentary at this point in time because I had practiced them. I I handled the situation. Well, the district manager got wind of that, and I found myself the next Monday morning reporting bright and early into the branches of First Interstate Bank in South Central Los Angeles, which which at the time was the bank robbery capital of the world and which held true.

So my career spans about 14 bank robberies that I've been actually in the bank for. And that's not a claim to fame, but it is a a circumstance of of the community. But beyond that, I I think that attraction to the urban core and the people in the urban core, not only just in the culture of the bank itself and the community that gets built because of the environment, but the people who own businesses and the people who live in low income areas, quite frankly, they're great people and they deserve the opportunities that can be afforded to them if they can get access to the system. And that was really the awakening there. You know, the third time I had a gun to my head at South Central, I didn't think my luck would hold, went on to Citibank. I had a great experience there as well. Could tell many stories, but like all good, young people who wanna climb the corporate ladder, I was gonna take a promotion and move to New York City to go to the, you know, Citicorp headquarters and do my time there. My father called me, he said that there was a bank for sale in in St.

Paul, Minnesota, where I grew up. And I knew where this bank was because my, my Italian grandmother who was an immigrant lived in this community and boy being the youngest of four kids, I spent a bit of time with my grandmother. And so I knew that the neighborhoods quite well. And while they were probably the neighborhoods with the highest 911 calls in the city of Saint Paul, to me, they were I knew the neighborhood. And certainly, it wasn't as as severe as South Central Los Angeles and all the things going on there. And so, yeah, ended up buying the bank, and my father is my minority shareholder. And we began on this journey at the time, among the Laotian community were refugees to Minnesota, and they were the immigrants in this community. And quite frankly, their success was gonna be the success of the bank, what ultimately became Sunrise, and that was true.

And so, you know, when you put your kids' college money in

in

the hands of low income people and you need their success to be there in order to drive yours, you you you become close and you share obviously a a value of success for both of you. And I think it's in that space that really Sunrise began to emerge from a standpoint of not only it it's it's mission envisioned, but the the culture of respecting everybody and the growth that was necessary for both our clients and community as well as the bank.

And when was this that you bought the bank?

It's in 1995.

Nineteen '90 '5. Okay. So this is not yesterday. And one of the things when I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, I really like this language, and I'm curious why it's important. You're you're not somebody who uses language by accident. And one of the things it says is as a place based community development bank. Right? And you're starting to touch on it, but talk to us about that place based and community development. The the it's very important to the story.

I have a hunch.

Yeah. So, Paul, we we really did start very small. So the bank was 14,000,000 in ass total assets at the time, which is tiny teeny relative to the banking industry. And

What what would a big bank be just for a reference point? Trillions.

Good. Yeah. Yeah.

That's it.

So it it, you know, the the scope is and but I knew we weren't gonna be small for long because we we couldn't sustain the things that I wanted to do and be that size. So we needed to be able to focus in, but the place based component was really the immersion into the community and communities that we serve. And, for example, if I were to take the Hmong as an instance, it was really understanding the culture of the Hmong people, that there were 19 clans, and they were leaders of the clans, and they would communicate and resolve issues between one another as well as within the clans themselves. They would pool or share resources, so they would collect capital like in a savings type savings circle, and they would buy a car together, and then they

would buy a house together, and then they

would buy a together, and then they would buy a business. So this trust was really powerful, and the entrepreneurism within that really began the Hmong people began to progress quickly as a result because they could buy cars and homes and businesses and fix things up. And my job was to figure out exactly how to get money in their hands so they can continue to prosper and grow and do so responsibly in in a way that that didn't put them overextend them in terms of debt and and structure things right so they were successful. And so the place based component of this was really I would say that the beauty of it was to sit in the problem, and the problem was how do you work with a low income community that's relatively new to The United States and navigate all the banking rules and regulations and allow capital to flow well and innovate in that space to be safe and sound from a regulated financial institution and yet be innovative in in terms of products and services and customize those such that a community could grow and prosper where quite frankly, one of our biggest challenges in the very beginning was the psychology of the community. They thought it was a place that people came to fail. It was a place you wanted to leave. And so changing the mindset of this is a place you wanna buy a business and a home was probably the biggest struggle for us. But, you know, house by house, customer by customer, it was building that trust and that mindset that this is a good place to invest.

And so it it's within that, I think, ability to understand the problems in a very deep way of a particular community that is, again, located outside the backdoor of the bank, and then figure out how to create innovation in that space was really the seeds of of the scale and what I wanted to do going forward. So very much the play space led us to a more people based in a national type of projection.

Love that. And understanding who lived there and the particular cultural aspects of what it was like to work with the little Asian community was essential to we're we're gonna hear listeners. It didn't stay one bank with 14,000,000 assets. It it's grown since then. Right?

Correct.

But that wouldn't have happened if you didn't understand who was there and their unique challenges is build those relationships. Is that fair to say?

That's very fair to say. And the beauty was always you don't realize it because you get stuck in the in the need for energy and courage in the space, but it was really the beauty is in the problem. The the innovation and the opportunity lies in the problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity, but you have to dive into it pretty deeply to really understand it from an outsider. Again, not being Hmong or Laotian to to really have the understanding of what it would take to make them successful. You really have to take some time and understand it.

Yeah. So do you hear a lot about the flywheel effect in the startup world? Right? So you buy in 1995 and you start to dig in, you say, okay. This who lives here, and you start to build some relationships, you know, among these 19 clans and understand what some of the unique challenges of having a fairly recent immigrant population in the neighborhoods that you're there to serve. What were some of the things that helped you get that flywheel going? Were there specific things? Like, obviously, building relationship. But if I'm an entrepreneur, it feels a little like that's that's not that tangible. Can you be more specific about what helped get the flywheel going?

Absolutely. There there are men I have many stories, Paul, but let's touch on this one because I think this is a great example of where we were and then where we are today. So I was I was sitting in the bank parking lot, and I was watching three Hmong grandmothers at our ATM, and they were trying to get cash out of the ATM. And they were putting a card in and pushing buttons, and they they were not successful. So I I approached them and found out quickly they did not speak English nor do I speak Hmong. And so within a bunch of smiles and some gestures, I showed them how to use the card, and the card happened to be their their their food stamps or EBT card, their electronic benefits. And so this is the money that they really needed to purchase groceries and rent and so forth. And not familiar with the banking system as well as a particular card, they did not trust the card.

They knew how cash worked. So, again, converting what was on this card and getting the cash out to them was necessary in order to navigate the systems so they could understand them. So help them get the money off the ATM. About a week or so later, they come into the bank. They ask for me, and and they're with what I would call their granddaughter. She might have been 11, 12 years old. She was the translator. So she's they basically were asking, could you teach the community how to use this card? Because our problem is the community's problem at large.

And I said, sure. So we taught the whole community how to use the electronic benefits card and and what were the kind of the parameters around it against some of the more finer details that they had to be aware of. But it dawned on me with a little bit of technology and a little education, we can now scale. We could impact people in a much broader way. And so we went from three grandmothers at an ATM to thousands of people in a community. And then this led us into what was at the time the stored value card. Now what we know is the prepaid card business. And today, Sunrise is probably somewhere around the fifth or sixth largest prepaid card issuer in the country and approximately 35,000,000 cards outstanding and growing.

And so we we can use technology and and simple financial products designed well and specifically to really impact a lot of people at scale. Yeah. So we went from three to

3,000,000 to 35,000,000 cards, some of those affecting multiple people in a family. Right?

Exactly.

Yeah. That's impressive. And thanks for helping us kinda get our granular brains around that. So fast forward, like, '9 '19 '90 '5, you buy the bank, and it's, you know, being fairly underutilized to the point might not even have been viable if it stayed at that point. Fast forward, like, I don't know, early two thousand or mid two thousand. Right? You you've had the bank for ten or maybe even two thousand ten, fifteen years. Like, give us a sense what was on the ground that.

Yeah. It was interesting because there was both, I'll say, a a shift in the bank itself. At this point in time, we had purchased a couple of banks. And so we had three bank charters at this time and probably, gosh, we might have been $250,000,000 in total assets at this point in time. So some pretty good growth in a decade, fifteen years.

Twenty x did almost. Yeah. You know, it was 15 to 20 x.

And so we're we're feeling good, and we're feeling good from the standpoint of we're developing a reputation, not only within the community of of being the good bank, but also within the regulatory agency of being able to do responsible innovation. And so that became a very valuable tool. So we were rolling out a small business administration guarantee program in the early two thousands. We had different programs with the city of Saint Paul in Minneapolis that were helping us share risk and getting more capital out to a broader community. And so we kinda had our groove on. Quite frankly, we probably grew too fast. And couple of bumps along the way is particularly in the regulated financial institution space, the regulators, they're gonna they're gonna put you in check every once in a while to make sure that your systems, policies, procedures, and everything else are up to snuff. So there were a few bumps along the road in terms of they would come in and really make sure that our systems were safe and sound to the level of our growth and that we were prepared for the next level of growth.

So very much in the banking world, you'll grow for a while, but you really need the infrastructure investment even more so than what would be necessary in the present moment moment to prepare for the future. And so there are a lot of those kind of stepping stair stepping moments in terms of capital and investment and maybe holding back on growth for a little while in order to prepare for the next round. Again gosh. And then going into the great recession of a 02/1011, that was very challenging. In the communities that we serve, which generally are are low income communities and primarily low income communities, were really the hardest hit. We saw housing values just, you know, divisible by a third. They were worth a third of what they were before. And so it it just was a time of, gosh, all the progress we made seemed to be erased.

And so mentally, it was very challenging from that standpoint to be able to now how do we make sure we have enough capital in the bank to absorb any of the the loan losses as a result of this economic depression. But then how do we get capital flowing again in which to begin to restart the communities and the people and jobs and businesses? So, yeah, it's never a smooth ride the way that the, you know, the chart looks in terms of asset growth as it goes up into the right. Yeah. The the bumps along the road is where you really learn what you're made of. So

I launched my business in 02/2008, so I know I remember those times well. It was an interesting time to launch a business.

Yeah. Absolutely.

One of the things living in New Mexico, historically, anemic economy, we're also the first what people categorized the first majority minority state, in other words, because of our very large Latinx and Native American and other communities of color. We're the first state that is majority people of color living in in The United States. Kind of we get to see what the future looks like. Right?

Right.

The whole country is headed that way. One of the things I know living here is that underrepresented communities tend to not only struggle with access to capital, but the capital they can get tends to be very expensive. Is that fair to say?

That's very fair to say.

Talk talk to us about both that problem and my hunch is you've thought about you're an innovator and you care about these communities. My my hunch is you've thought about that and have some things you've tried to help with that problem.

Yes. Let's see where to start. To to start on that problem, I'll have to rewind a little bit towards the beginning of the bank. And maybe in those, I'll call it the 2,000, early 2 thousands. And so once I had the bank stabilized after purchasing it, it was, I couldn't quite figure out why people in our community were using check cashers and payday lenders.

And And if somebody's not familiar with, though, give a sense of, like, what does that look like in terms of interest paid?

Okay. So, Paul, there's two things there to unpack. So one is if you if you get a paper check opposed to a direct deposit, at some point in time, you're gonna have to take that check and convert it to cash. And so you could have a bank account, you could deposit into a bank account, which a lot of people do. But if you didn't grow up with that, and a lot of low income communities and and communities of color did not, they were used to going to a check cashier paying a fee in which to convert the check to cash. But relatively speaking, the the paychecks are smaller and the fee is relatively high, and that money is precious. So a extra $20 in which to convert every two weeks of getting a paycheck adds, you know, takes bite out of that budget where every dollar is precious. So that's the check cashing world.

The payday lending world is one that is there is a need for short term credit, particularly people in low income communities because it they have a tendency that their income or their expenses are are could be volatile, and they have to bridge some of that gap for a short period of time. So the way the payday lending industry works is that someone would say, I'm gonna write you, payday lender, a check two weeks from now when I get my paycheck. And at that time, you can pay off the amount that I owe you, usually around $300 Well, while the interest rate on it might sound not too bad relatively speaking because it's at 18%, the fee associated with it is usually about 20 ish dollars. So when you add the interest rate and the fee together and you kind of come up with an effective annual percentage rate, the thing is is that can't just pay it off in two weeks because you don't have enough money then for groceries. So you end up rolling it over and paying another fee. And the average is usually six to nine times depending on the the individual. What happens is that that interest rate effectively becomes anywhere from 200 to 400%.

Two hundred to 400% being charged to the people who can afford at least.

Correct. And so these are the types of things that, again, from a banker's perspective particularly, I'm like, why would people do this? Right? This doesn't make economic sense. But, again, I didn't understand the problem. So, Paul, in my entrepreneurial way, I got in my car, and I I went to check cashers. They happen to be five check cashers within a six block radius of the bank at the time, and I cashed some checks to figure out why what was the deal with this. Right? How does this work? Why do people do this? So I began to learn that check cashers are very customer friendly. They if you go a few times, they know who you are. It converts your cash very quickly, same with the payday lenders.

The person will get a yes. I can give you cash. Yes. I can cash your check, and the transaction is quick. They're convenient where banks a lot of times are not because they're open twenty four seven, seven days a week. Right? Banks aren't that convenient. And so they find their way into this. This is the system of how they do their their general transactional banking.

So my solution to this, again, I gotta figure out how how does check cashing really work from the other side. I ended up buying the smallest check cash or within the five and the six block area, cut the fees in half, and I brought it into the lobby of the bank. And I made one of the teller windows the check cashing window, and then began to I just really pulled up a chair in the middle of the lobby, and I talked to everyone who came to cash a check. Like, why did you do this? Have you thought about a savings account? This and that. Well, I have to tell you a story because it was so kind of instrumental in terms of me understanding the on and underbanked community. And that is there was a woman who came in on a Friday afternoon kinda right before the bank was closing. And so she kinda walked in very quickly, went to the check cashing window. And, of course, I'm there chatting her up on telling her the virtues of a checking and a savings account.

And after a while, she's like, you don't understand. Because it is Friday. I just got paid. I have no food at home. By the way, I have two young children. One's in a crib, and the other's a toddler watching TV. There's no childcare. So you see the cab outside.

The meter is running. You know, I could almost see in her face the the anxiety of two kids home alone. Right? They're playing with knives and matches in her mind. Right? But as a mother would, like, I gotta get home, but I gotta convert this money to cash, and I gotta get some food. Otherwise, my kids aren't gonna eat until Monday when they're back in school or day care. And I began to understand the the urgency and the need to get cash right away, and I began to understand that banks were the problem. I was the problem as the banker. Right? I was slow, inefficient.

I'm giving her a product. If she was to deposit her check, she couldn't get the full amount out because we have hold policies and things that prevent it. So I began to really realize that we needed to innovate in which to provide services to people who needed money quickly, efficiently, and at a less cost. Again, I'll fast forward you to today. One is we were terrible check cashers at the end of the day. We got out of the business because we just weren't that good at it. But I ended up actually two years ago buying a business, and we had partnered with this company for many years. I I really don't appreciate the structure of payday lenders.

It's just an irresponsible structure that puts people into a cycle of debt. And, again, for those who are the least of can afford it. So what we what our our company is today, it's a financial technology company that we partner with employers such that we can make a small dollar loan that gets deducted from their payroll or their paycheck, and it doesn't require any credit check. So it can help somebody enter the system and to build credit history, or it can help somebody repair credit history if they have poor credit history. And it's structured in a way that it's over the course of one year, and they can pay off that loan and get out of debt. But again, their payments aren't so much that they don't have enough money for rent and groceries. And so it's really finding that right sweet spot in which to meet the customer and structure in a way that's also safe and sound and regulators buy off on it. And we've really kind of run into something good here from a standpoint of helping people access credit, build their credit history, and now we have a platform in which to build other services around it such that it could be more of a transaction, a checking or savings account, or a debit card that can also help them transact online, etcetera.

So, again, we now have a hundred thousand people on this or employees on the system, and we have more and more employers signing up every day. So it's really at a great trajectory in terms of scale, but also building a financial wellness platform such that it's not just access to cash and small credit. How can we really wrap around budgeting, financial counseling, access to savings of products, and so forth, and really get people on a on a journey of building their credit history, but also building wealth and hopefully out of poverty.

What a great story, and I really appreciate your commitment, David, to doing really deep market research in a community where how many of those folks might have ever been asked with any care what their experience is in in a system that has had them be either unbanked or underbanked for their entire lives and their parents and their grandparents and their grandparents. Right?

Exactly.

So I just wanna highlight listeners, Notice the depth of the inquiry. And if we wanna use the term market research, I could just imagine what it was like to be sitting in your you know, like, coming into your waiting area and people are there and that story of the mom with the cab ticking, just so pointed. But listeners, I really wanna highlight, just draw out a big, like, yellow neon marker, like, the care and the depth of the market research here to create something innovative. So just highlight that. So in a minute, I wanna come back and ask you. You're already starting to tease towards this, David, what the Sunrise Bank's kind of portfolio looks like now, and you're hinting at some scale I think our listeners will find very exciting. Before we do that, I just wanna take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you passionate about making a difference but feeling stuck on how to take your mission driven business to the next level? You don't need a lengthy coaching program.

You need targeted advice from someone who understands the unique challenges that social entrepreneurs face. With my strategy session package, we'll focus on your most pressing decisions, whether it's clarifying your value proposition, optimizing your marketing strategy, launching a new product or service, or adjusting your pricing to align with your mission. These sessions are perfect when you know the direction you wanna go, but you need someone with the experience to help you get there. If you're ready to unlock your potential and amplify your impact, book your strategy session now. The link is in the show notes. Welcome back, everybody. I am here with David Riehling, and we are talking about creating community wide change through banking. And, David, right before the break, you were talking about some pretty exciting scale.

So give us a sense. Just give us a top level, and then we're gonna get into some of the specific programs. But if you look at you're not just in Minneapolis, Saint Paul anymore, so you've grown in a number of ways. Like, just give us, like, a sketch of what does one see when you look at the Sunrise Bank's offerings now 2025, literally thirty years after you bought the bank? What's on the ground now?

Well, what's on the ground now is really a twofold strategy. And so, again, for the listeners, it's, it's, it's probably easier to get your head around the traditional kind of community bank that's located in an urban core setting. We have branches there, people on the ground.

How many branches do you have? Yeah.

So we have again, we're not a Wells Fargo or something. We for a lot of reasons, but we don't have branches on every court. We have four branches in Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Okay. And

again, all kind of concentrated in the areas and communities that we serve, and then a branch in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And so I'll come to Sioux Falls in just a second because that is really the newer and more developing business model, if you will. So on the ground in in Saint Paul and in Minneapolis, we make a lot of commercial real estate loans, really in the community and or economic development. So you see something that's blighted. Our goal is to find good responsible owner that wants to buy it and fix it and begin to transform kinda one property at a time block by block, and eventually, you begin to really see some investment flow in, and that community begins to thrive both from the commercial side as well as the housing. And so we do a lot of commercial real estate. We do a lot of affordable housing lending. Again, that workforce housing is just critical to the ecosystem and the of the economy of of cities in general, but particularly, Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

And so and we do some mortgage lending. And so that is very much as we talked about before, place to based lending. If I was to go back to that Hmong conversation where our prepaid card business was emerging, let's go to the FinTech or the financial technology side of Sunrise, and that's really what's based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It it it happens to be where the vast majority of both credit cards, prepaid cards, debit cards are originated from, not only because the laws of South Dakota are very clear in regards to electronic payments and and digital payments that debit cards rely on, but it's also where the the talent is. So the people who understand credit cards and prepaid cards, the attorneys, the accounts, and so forth, the ecosystem is there. And as a result, it is a place where if you have an operation in in these card businesses, that's where you wanna be. And so we do. We have a very about 20 employees there and growing in terms of our presence, and and we have a full retail branch there as well.

And so it's in that space now where digital payments and financial technology, whether it's card based or through an app of some kind, is obviously growing, and that is really where a good portion of financial transactions of the future are today and will be in the future. And maybe to give you a sense of scale, we started out in 14,000,000 in total assets. We're now 2,500,000,000.0 in total assets. That means both in deposits and loans. And then maybe the next chapter of this, Paul, is where we're going to be in programs that are next particularly being driven by the financial technology side.

Yeah. I'd love to hear about that. Before we do that, a quick question. Along the way as I was doing my homework, you know, I think of these three grandmas with a card, right, or that woman who's coming into your waiting or area and, like, working to cash or paycheck. It was very much an individual banking model at the start. And along the way, you really have dug in to become a real commercial part of the engine of economic development and working with businesses and working at commercial real estate and all sorts of aspect on the business side. Talk to us a little bit about that part of the development and what's the balance now between I'm an individual, you know, I'm a parent and I have my job and I, like, cash my check, and I do my banking with you all versus I'm, like, looking to buy a building for my construction company, or I wanna, like, do some workforce housing, and I wanna get a loan for a larger scale product that goes project that goes beyond my own family. What's the balance there now?

Yeah. The the the balance I have to tell you the the balance is different. But if I had to kinda maybe take you back to the to why it evolved from, I'll call it that place based in that hand to hand, face to face type of transaction, is really probably more of a a reflection of of me as an entrepreneur. I did not realize I was an entrepreneur until I was in my early thirties. I thought I was a banker. And I kept going to banker things, and I kept going like that. This is just not

my people.

These are not my people. Like, this negativity and scarcity mindset is is like, what is going on? I just can't. I just want to not

As somebody who's in the financial set, is it fair to say that bankers tend to be fairly conservative and not always at the faster end of the innovation ecosystem fair to say?

Excruciatingly so. I mean, to me, I was just a fish out of water in that space and particularly, like, buying a check cashing. I got criticism from the industry and all this. I'm like, oh, these people, I they I don't understand them. They don't understand me. And so maybe one quick story in that, and that is, so I I'm, I'm learning that I'm an entrepreneur and we're innovating different products and services. And I that's to me is just joy and fun. Right? It's it's understanding the problems and finding the solutions and then really doing something and seeing progress.

I happen to in the early days, I didn't know what this I I didn't know what economic community development. I I I was just doing stuff that I thought was right and successful and good for the community and good for the business. Right? It was very much a shared value win win proposition. So but I was not finding my tribe. So I I saw this article for this group called the Social Venture Network, and they were having a gathering on in California on the West Coast. I knew nothing about it other than I was like, I have got to try and just see what this group is about based on this little paragraph description. So I I buy a ticket and I get out there. And I I'm meeting some of the, like, seventh generation, you know, eco household products and so forth.

Anyways, I saw Jerry from Ben and Jerry's was on the list of attendees, and I'm like, okay. That is a company that I they've got, you know, this organic thing going, which is about all I knew, but I I have to try to have a conversation with Jerry. And so I have to be honest, I I did not have really the courage just just like go up and introduce myself and so forth. So I waited till after the cocktail hour, and quite frankly, I I needed an extra cocktail or two for the courage to go up and and and approach Jerry. And but but I did, and I had a conversation. I said, you know what? I'm doing this banking thing, and I'm working with immigrants, and I'm doing this. And, it's really seems to be working, but I don't know what I'm doing. And he goes he he basically went into the Ben and Jerry's story and basically said, you know, Ben and I don't want people coming into our stores who don't believe in the family farmer and organic farming and so forth.

And he goes, you know, we were on a bus selling our ice cream out of the back for the longest time, and no one knew what we're doing until it really, you know, it took. He goes, listen. If you really stay true to what you're good at and where your values are, there's a there's a big enough market here, and you'll be more than successful. You try to please everybody. That's just no way that's gonna work. But, again, he goes from his own kind of passion. You could see I'm doing what I love to do. And so it's the reason we're successful.

It's a reason I'm having fun. You know, work is work, but it's really pleasurable from the standpoint that brings me joy and purpose and meaning. And so he basically said, get some courage, go back there, kid, and and do what you what you're designed to be doing. And so I begin to find the niche in the world where there are bankers that wanna do things that impact blowing communities, as well as, you know, clean up communities from an environmental standpoint. And so that was really a moment in time where, okay, the smaller the niche, maybe, the the bigger the market for us and the more passion and focus, we know who we should hire from a talent standpoint. We know the products we should it just narrow things down, and we began to get some clarity and find community from there. And so, Paul, I have to ask you, I think I lost track of where the question was going.

No. It's great. I I love this story, and I'll I'll put a link listeners to Social Venture Network. But I was talking about the the business and commercial side of Sunrise Bank and how that

Oh, yes.

Is seen. Like, you just look at what's there, and it's a very robust part of what is on your website and your presence now and feeling back into '19. If we if we took the, Internet way back machine, I don't think it would have been such a big part of what somebody could see in terms of how you're marketing yourself.

Yeah. So I I apologize for my digression there.

No. No. No. That was a great story idea. Yeah. So anybody is The

fact is I need to understand that about myself before I could really go. And then I became like a lot of entrepreneur. I became impatient. I'm like, the impact we're making, we're doing, you know, onesie, twosie, tens, mid twenties, a hundreds, a hundred of people. I wanna do millions. Like, I look at there's 30 to 60 on and underbanked people in The United States. I'm like, we're not making a dent. How do we scale good? How do we find products and services that we can actually make a dent in the problems that are being imposed in a lot of ways on low and moderate income people? And so that's when it really began.

What are we really good at as a community development bank, quite frankly? And then who can we partner and collaborate with? Again, understanding these are the skills and what we can bring to the table and who has access to markets that are are larger and how do we really scale good and impact. And as and, again, a lot of times as the bank, I, you know, I measure things in total assets. The fact is is we measure things in impact as well in terms of people served. And so as the bank grew, our impact grew. And so I kept installing a mindset of I want the bank to grow 10 times of what it is. We're I want us to take a 10 times mindset because it put people into a framework of erasing the incrementalism that we're so used to, and bankers are, well, we're gonna grow at three to 5% a year. And when you think in terms of 10 times, you really have to erase the process and things that you're doing and think way differently. And that's really what I I I still we're on our third ten times growth is the way that I think about Sunrise today.

And so and, again, it's our third ten times impact as well. And so that's the the flavor in which but it is different. I'm not on the ground in direct communication with people anymore. I'm looking we're looking at data. We're looking at niches in the marketplace that people or other companies have insight into, and then we can help and leverage their capabilities in which to serve. And, again, we can do that at at a scale, and we can do that nationwide, which is fantastic.

Talk to us about what does that look like? Some of that is the fintech part of what you're launching and or leaning more into. So give us, like, what's what where are you investing now for that next 10 x, and what are some of the products that are sort of the mechanisms for that bigger impact?

Yeah. Let's just go maybe into the helping people build credit history. So today at Sunrise, you can walk into a branch, and you can if you do not have any credit history or if you have poor credit history, we will we have a a product that's designed. It's a cash secured loan that helps you establish credit history or start to rebuild. And we probably do, 500 of those loans a year out of the branch system. And quite frankly, it's a it's a big feeder of ours into our first time mortgage program. So somebody who wants to buy a home for the first time helps them build credit as well as savings to get that down payment. Well, we also we partner with a financial technology company called Self based out of Austin, Texas.

And Self is an online credit builder program, and they are really good at data, market research, product innovation. And so as well as the data that shows that they really are helping people establish and and and help build their credit history, which is really important because the values alignment between Sunrise and Self is spot on. Well, instead of the 500 loans we make out of the branch, we do nearly 300,000 loans now in partnership with Self. And so this is just the the scale of which technology and and kinda national distribution can do. And, again, now we're really starting to impact a number of people that I feel is meaningful. And it's not that what we do locally isn't because, you know, every person is meaningful, but we wanna do that to more and more people to help.

And and you learned how to do it with those three grandmothers and one card that so you I see many social entrepreneurs who wanna help 300,000, but they don't stop and talk to the grandmother. So I wanna I wanna make that connection. So you've you've built trust, and you've learned the market, and you understand the complexities of the communities you wanna help who are dealing with these really intracted multigenerational problems, now you can scale. Sitting over here, this is my story. You can tell me if I'm not on to the story very well. But listeners, I want you to make sure you don't lose sight of the fact that the 300,000 impacts just in this one program alone, I don't think would work. And I see many folks crash and burn when they try to race to the 300,000 without talking to the grandmothers. Is that fair to say?

It it's very fair to say. And I would say one of the biggest learnings maybe that highlights that point, Paul, is the I learned for example, people come in, well, how do you bank the unbanked? And I'm like, well, first of all, the unbanked aren't just like one group of people with the same characteristics. The they're not at all. As a matter of fact, you have to go out to them and find where they are and meet them where they are. They're not going to come into the bank for sure. And, again, their needs are different. They're different people. And so sometimes you you find, I'll say, a bucket of similarities, those that have credit issues.

But it may be those who have credit issues that are located in the Southeast in a particular county, and you're working within social service agencies to be able to get to them because they trust the social service agency. Again, you're finding the ways to to the people. So it's in that space where you begin to really at the very beginning, you get the knowledge, and that allows you to then get to the 300,000.

Awesome. Listeners, I'll put a link to the self online credit builder program so you can go check that out for more info. So dream with us, David. Five years from now, what is what is Sunrise doing? What kind of impact are you having? What kind of innovations are starting to really come online five years from now?

Love that question. Just such a I'm such a futurist that I I feel like I'd live there now. So I I could definitely see the bank in five years being probably twice the size, if not three times the size it is today. So you're you're going from 2 and a half to 5 plus billion in assets. And, again, you're you're doubling, tripling the the impact component along the way. And, again, Sunrise, like, I'll say all businesses to a certain extent, the use of technology and data and AI and and all of that is going to come into play. And, again, understanding that universe in the context of the biases that are in systems and code today, developing it, testing it, and and really developing it to solve problems for real people is the quest of where we're going. Digital will be more and more a component of financial services, but also people's lives and how they transact.

And, again, I see us as a bank being able to provide people intuitive as well as almost preemptive information about their financial well-being such that they can make decisions as however they choose. And again, I'm not here to tell people to buy a Starbucks coffee or not in order to save money. I'm just saying here's the the landscape and here's how you could get into trouble and here's how you can avoid it. So but I also see from that, again, great collaborations. And again, going back to maybe some of our core roots, it's both with other businesses in the fintech space, private businesses, both with government of all levels and nonprofit. So it it's those three legs of the stool that I really think are part of the magic in which delivering products, services at the right price point in the right channels is really the collaborative and partnerships that are necessary in order to really impact and affect change at scale.

Yeah. David, I could hang out with you all day. You're doing such great work, and I know you're busy and so are our listeners. So we'll make sure to have links, and we'll figure out how to get people connected with you in a second. But before we do that, if there was something you were hoping we were gonna talk to talk about today and we haven't gotten to it yet, or there's something you wanna leave our incredibly impact oriented listeners with about their journeys and how they can scale up their impact, lessons learned in thirty plus years of scaling your own, what would that be?

You know, Paul, today, I I am sitting in a coworking space, and I I had the opportunity to walk around kind of this morning and kinda see who's here. And I see a lot of young budding entrepreneurs. And and, I I can feel the energy from them quite frankly, which I love. But I I think the one thing that I seem to be surrounded with lately is, you know, if to be successful as a as an entrepreneur of of any kind, begin with yourself. Know thyself. Really don't I if I would have known I was an entrepreneur ten years earlier, I think the impact I could have made would have been another ten x. Again, that understanding and, again, knowing what your values and what your passion and purpose are is the the sooner you can discover elements of that, and I really do think it's a journey throughout life. But that in that component, finding that space that you really feel good about, there's just a a bound of energy and creativity that comes from that.

You will have more energy at the end of the day at the be than at the beginning because you will be in that zone, if you will, or your unique ability. It's called so many things. But that that self assessment, that self actualization is the place where I I think entrepreneurs, if they could get there faster, challenge themselves, I really think their impact can be amazing.

Yeah. David, thank you so much for being on the show today. If people wanted to get a hold of you, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Hey. Best way to get a hold of me is through my email, david.riley@sunrisebanks,banksisplural,.com.

Great. David, thanks for being on the show today.

Paul, thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity.

Yeah. So, listeners, let's do what we do. Please go tell your friend, particularly those folks who wanna have impact through the conscious lever of money. What a great story. Let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's learn from what Sunrise is doing, so share it with your friends. And I wanna remind everybody that we love listeners, suggested topics, and guests. So if you have an idea for a show, please go to the Awarepreneurs website.

And on our contact page, we have three simple guidelines. We try to be really transparent about who we invite on and why, and you can send in your suggestions there. Lastly, I wanna just say thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Please take really good care in these intense times, and thank you for all the impact that you're working for in our world.