How Credit Unions Can Help Members Thrive in a Brave New World

If credit unions ever “go down,” it won’t be on Denise Wymore’s watch. As a speaker, consultant, and current marketing manager of QCash Financial, Denise is a fierce advocate for the credit union movement. But like many advocates, she thinks credit unions could be doing more.

Denise joins us to address this month’s BIG question: What does a “just recovery” look like, and how can credit unions help the communities most impacted by COVID to not only get back on track, but to thrive?

Denise shares her stories about how cooperatives can win together, why FICO might be the enemy of relationships with our members, and what EMTs can teach us about member service.

 

Key Takeaways:

1. A lot of people don’t think that it matters to credit union members that credit unions are co-ops, but as VP of Member Experience at Del Norte Credit Union, Denise discovered that almost 20% of Del Norte’s members were NPS promoters because of the cooperative structure. This begs the question: What can credit unions do to better leverage the sixth cooperative principle, cooperation among cooperatives?
2. As marketing manager of QCash, Denise has come to understand the power and potential of relational lending. That means loans not based on FICO scores, but the 3 Cs—character, capacity, collateral.
3. Instead of asking, “Can we…” ask, “How might we…?” The first question lends itself to a yes or no answer; the second question opens up possibilities.
4. The most important job of an EMT is to help people get through their worst day with dignity and compassion. Credit unions can take a page from their book when serving struggling members.
5. With the current rate of credit union mergers and the scarcity of credit union start-ups, credit unions are on track to essentially disappear. We need a growth engine for new credit unions!

Read the full transcript:

Cameron:
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Credit Union podcast. We created our podcast to help credit union leaders think outside of the box about marketing, technology, and community impact. Each episode we bring on expert guests from inside and outside of the industry for conversations about innovation. Our goal is to challenge your preconceptions about business as usual, and provide you with actionable takeaways that you can use to grow your membership, improve the financial health of your cooperative, and magnify the positive impact you have in your community.

Cameron:
Today’s big question: what does a just recovery look like and how can credit unions help the communities most impacted by COVID to not only get back on track, but to thrive?

Cameron:
Today, I’m very excited to welcome Denise. I think Denise qualifies as an expert, both inside and outside of the credit union space. She’s one of the most impressive and diverse people I’ve met in my time working with credit unions. She’s currently the marketing manager for QCash Financial, which is a CUSO of WSECU in Washington state, and they offer small dollar loans to members for credit unions across the country. One of my favorite facts: Denise is also an advanced EMT for the Cochiti Volunteer Fire Department in New Mexico.

Cameron:
Denise began her credit union career back in the day as a teller at Pacific Northwest Federal Credit Union, has worked for a number of credit unions since then. Most recently, as the VP of member loyalty at one of PixelSpoke’s clients, Del Norte Credit Union. Denise is a passionate, very passionate credit union advocate, one of my favorite things about her. She has done consulting work for credit unions in every single state in the US and has worked for numerous credit union associations and leagues as well.

Cameron:
Denise, thanks for joining us today.

Denise:
Thanks for having me, excited to be here.

Cameron:
My first question, last month was a special month in the credit union movement; International Co-op Day and the theme I loved was rebuild better together. I’m curious what you think that entails in the context of credit unions? How do you think credit unions can ensure that their members and communities don’t just survive the current financial uncertainty that we’re all dealing with, but come out stronger on the other side?

Denise:
Well, that’s a great question because I am super passionate about cooperatives. I don’t know if you remember, but the consulting business that Matt Davis and I co-founded was called Sixth Story. We wanted Principle Six, but it was already taken. It was about the sixth cooperative principle, which is cooperation among cooperatives. I think that now more than ever, that’s what credit unions need to do, is work together. And I’m really excited to announce this year, a culmination of a project that I started in Northern New Mexico gosh, in 2012, when I was with Del Norte Credit Union, as we started the Keep It Co-op movement of Northern New Mexico.

Denise:
Here’s how it all happened. A lot of people don’t think that it matters to credit union members that we’re a co-op. But at Del Norte we were doing the net promoter score survey and it would ask people, “How likely are you to recommend and then why?” What we found out, was almost 20% of the members were recommending us because of our structure. The fact that we weren’t a bank, we were local, we were a cooperative. I thought, “That’s a significant number.” It was number two, number one was always service, but number two was that.

Denise:
So I get my marketing team in the room and of course we did the opposite of what you should do. I have this data, I said, “We can’t ignore it. What do we want to do with it?” We immediately came up with, Keep It Co-op. My graphic designer was already penciling out a logo. We had this tagline, we had this really cute logo. Then we decided, what should we do with this? We put in the Google machine, cooperatives, New Mexico and all roads led to Los Alamos, New Mexico. Which ironically was where Del Norte started as Los Alamos National Labs Employees Credit Union. Up in Los Alamos there was a little preschool co-op called Little Forest that was founded in 1954. There was also a co-op market that had just been started. Third was just, again in the startup phase, was the Bathtub Row Brewery. Here we had kids, groceries, beer, and credit unions.

Denise:
We thought, “This is it.” It only took one phone call. I called all these co-ops and I said, “Hey, we want to start this Keep It Co-op movement here in Los Alamos and not sure what that means, but let’s just all get together for coffee and talk about how we can help each other. Not a single person said no, everybody showed up. After one meeting, everyone was all in. You fast forward to today and on September 25th, we will have the grand opening of the co-op park in Los Alamos. All of these co-ops have been working together all these years to promote the cooperative difference. The park is going to have a community garden. It’s going to have a concert venue. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Denise:
Our fundraising was we did a national fundraiser and asked people to donate money to the co-op park. And depending on their donation level, their name is going to be engraved in a bronze leaf. The back of the stage is going to be this beautiful, leaves blowing of all of these cooperatives all over America that helped pay for this park. Needless to say, rebuild better together, we are better together and I’m super excited about this symbol for that community of just exactly what that means.

Cameron:
That’s an amazing story. Speaking of stories, I love reading the stuff that you write for CU Insight. I know recently you wrote a great story about your own personal experience, living paycheck to paycheck. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about that experience and how it’s informed your current role at QCash?

Denise:
Yeah, I’ve been community blogger with CU Insight for a number of years. I love those guys. One of the first things I did when I got onto QCash is convinced our CEO that we needed to be a CU Insight partner. Better together, right? After I started at QCash, then I thought, “Hmm, okay.” I was really exposed to all these credit unions that have implemented our small dollar lending solution, we don’t use FICO. Just the access we’ve been able to give people that have either poor credit scores, no credit scores, thin files, the folks that a lot of credit unions weren’t loaning to.

Denise:
I started thinking about I started as a teller and it’s no secret tellers don’t get paid a lot of money. I was living on my own. My parents had divorced. There was no option, let’s just say, to live with my parents or anything like that. So at a very early age, I was literally on my own as a teller, trying to build a career and it was tough. I made $650 a month, which now you know how old I am. But living paycheck to paycheck was humbling. There were times when there was more month than money and I call it my ramen days. But it’s funny too. I celebrated if I did have a little extra money, there were certain ways that I would reward myself and celebrate it.

Denise:
But my heart goes out to the one in four Americans that can’t handle a $400 emergency expense. I mean, that’s a lot of what is going on, especially after COVID, I think it’s even worse. A credit union’s job is to really help people live within their means first and foremost. At QCash, with the small dollar lending platform, that’s our goal too. We hope our members only have to use it once. We don’t want to get them in a cycle. We want to get them out of a cycle and help them. That inspired that blog post and thank you for reading it.

Cameron:
It was very powerful. I feel like QCash has a really amazing story of origin. I also know that you guys have a new team. Can you tell us a little bit more about where QCash came from and maybe some of the opportunities that are new for folks who might be familiar with QCash from the past?

Denise:
Yeah, I love, love, love the QCash story and I didn’t know it until after I started. But Kevin Foster-Keddie, who was the CEO of WSECU for years and years, very respected, man. I guess he was famous for managing by walking around. One day he was in a branch and a teller, this is what I love, a teller asked him a question. Why were so many non-members coming in and cashing member’s checks on paydays, and he didn’t know. In the story, they say he pulled on that thread of curiosity, which I think is quite [inaudible 00:08:04] and discovered that many WSECU members were using payday lenders and he wasn’t going to have it.

Denise:
So the idea for QCash was actually born. WSECU created a small dollar loan program. Again, it did not use FICO score because a lot of these people that needed it wouldn’t have qualified. Over the years, they really perfected this relational underwriting algorithm, if you will, that’s patented now. Then in 2015, they thought, “Okay, we’re going to form a CUSO,” they’re a wholly owned CUSO, “and we’re going to give this to other credit unions.” Better together, let’s have more and more credit unions use this.

Denise:
One of the reasons I went to work for QCash was their mission and their philosophy, and the fact that they don’t use FICO, knowing that they’re really fulfilling that mission. They’ve got a new CEO, Seth Brickman. He comes from Microsoft and Amazon where he led innovation teams. He started a month before I did and we’re just a great pair because I’ve got this credit union mission philosophy. He drank the credit union Kool-Aid on the first day, he is all in, it totally aligns with his values. Then the best gift of all, right after I started, the big CDFI grants were announced. Two hundred and forty-four credit unions received grant money and the grant money will pay for the cost of implementation and loan losses for the QCash platform. That was really a nice endorsement of it. I love CUSOs, that is the sixth operative principle; credit unions helping credit unions. So it was just a perfect fit for me.

Cameron:
It’s a great story and I know we spoke before the podcast about how we do a small dollar loan program at PixelSpoke, which was inspired from a couple different sources. One was the B Corp community, and one was the DE program through the National Credit Union Foundation. I found out that we had an employee who was making a really robust salary, but we were unaware of some of their personal circumstances that really had them living in a very tenuous situation. It just left me realizing that we can’t make assumptions about the financial stability or health of anyone. And offering these sorts of resources is a critical lifeline, as you said, Denise, helping people live within their means, but also get back on their feet from all the unfortunate, unexpected things that life can send our way.

Cameron:
Maybe building on this idea of innovation, I’d love to hear, I’m sure you have some new ideas for what you’re going to do at QCash. I know that you’re a Filene I3 alumnus. I know we’ve had a lots of great guests on the podcast over the years, and lots of amazing people go through that program. I’m curious, what did you work on while you were there and how did it expand or inform your perspective on the credit union movement with regards to innovation?

Denise:
Well, when I was at Filene as an I3-er, that was probably personally and professionally, one of the most important things in my life. Matt Davis was running the program at the time. Matt and I are good friends and I know every I3 team says this, but we had the dream team, we really did. We had an amazing group of people. It was so great because the Filene I3, the way it works, you just get a team of people and you’ve just met them. You spend a couple of days with them. They give you very little direction, but just you need to work together. You’ve got a six month timeframe, work together as a team to identify problems in existing credit unions and then how might we solve it? They don’t give you much beyond that.

Denise:
One of the problems that I’ve already talked about is the fact that FICO scores have begun to rule our world. We wanted to figure out how you can get a good FICO score; from zero to maybe a 760. If you put in the Google machine, FICO scores, it’s so secretive, the formula. There’s no website out there that will show you how to create a good score. There’s all kinds of tools like Credit Karma that will say how you can make your existing score better, and a lot of it makes no sense to me, it’s so not logical.

Denise:
This is what we did. We thought, “How might we literally game FICO to crack the code on what makes a good score?” Tim McAlpine was part of our team, he’s a genius. We created what we called The Great Credit Race. The Great Credit Race, Del Norte was one of the credit unions that piloted. We had to recruit people who had no credit files at all, so we’re naturally defaulting to younger people, which is also the purpose. We desperately need new, younger people in there. They had to also qualify for a $500 Visa card limit, which meant they had to have a job. It could even be part-time, but they had to qualify. Then on the same day they all got their cards and they were just told, “Use the card however you want to, just don’t go over limit.” We didn’t want to get anybody in trouble with their first credit card, but that was it.

Denise:
Then we’re going to see, every month we pulled soft pools of their scores. We were trying to figure out what behavior built the best score quickest. It was interesting because we didn’t know if the game was the product, the information we were going to get was the product. But here’s what happened. The person who ended up with the highest FICO at the end of it was actually someone during that time that also got a car loan. So they got more debt and they got a better score. I mean, it’s just so weird. Then the winner got $500 cash, so of course they could pay it off.

Denise:
But we figured, okay, we’ve given these kids all their first credit cards that were helping them build their credit. We coached them throughout the whole thing. It was online, it was really fun. The other credit union that piloted it was Dupocco and as I understand, they’re still doing it. Which is really cool because it also helps to onboard younger people. But that was probably my favorite project because I hate FICO. Imagine that. I just think-

Cameron:
That’s a brilliant story.

Denise:
Well, and you know what’s so crazy, I look at Credit Karma and my credit score now is 830. I guess the best one you can get is 850. The irony is, I’m at that stage of my life I’ll probably never borrow again and I have the best credit score of my life. It makes no sense, I don’t know what to do to get it to 850 because it doesn’t tell me. Now I’m obsessed with the number [inaudible 00:14:16], but I have a real love/hate relationship with Credit Karma.

Cameron:
Well, I think that’s such a great story, Denise, because you’re right that credit scores… I mean, I’ve heard the quip that the stuff that China has this extensive social monitoring program, which a lot of us have heard about where they’re aggregating all this data. It’s basically what’s your social score? There’s a quip from, I forget her name, but she’s the author of the book Automating Inequality, and she says that we actually have these kinds of programs here in the US. It’s just that they’re especially for lower class people and they come in the form of credit scores and scores that are created by government agencies for people to use government services. I think it’s a pretty intense thought to realize that we have these numbers which are making huge impacts on people’s lives and what they can or cannot do and how their futures will turn out. And they’re pretty opaque and we don’t really understand them.

Cameron:
I did not know you were behind that. That’s such a fabulous project. I’m wondering if you could say then, connecting that to QCash, which I think on some levels is solving a bit of this problem of the lack of transparency around why we can or cannot access key financial instruments and what we pay for them. Can you maybe tell us a little more about why something like QCash would matter for a credit union? And a little more if a credit union does have a CDFI grant. It sounds like that’s a huge opportunity to put a program like this into place.

Denise:
You know what’s really interesting? When I came to work there… Well, when I first heard about QCash and it also was a Filene project and Ben Miralis at WSECU was the genius behind all the technology. But when I first heard about QCash, I thought, “I was a loan officer in the ’80s and we had members come in all the time that needed a small dollar loan.” We didn’t call it that, we call it a signature loan. It was an unsecured loan. We didn’t have credit scores, we had credit reports. But we loaned to the three C’s: character capacity, collateral. We were a small credit union and we knew all our members and we knew the company and it was all based on their relationship, was really what made the decision.

Denise:
I’ll never forget a single mom coming in one day and she needed $300 because her refrigerator broke. She had three kids and she was just telling me, I mean, can you imagine three kids and a refrigerator broke and she’s a single parent? Her debt to income ratio was a little high. She had loans with us before, we knew her, she paid us back. I fought for that loan. We had a credit committee, I went to the credit committee and fought for it. I’ll never forget her just bursting into tears, and hugging me, and thanking me, and paying it off early.

Denise:
When I look at QCash, it’s like credit unions stopped doing signature loans, small dollar loans, because they were as expensive to process as say a bigger loan. I mean, that’s the rationale that I’ve heard, but it’s a shame because really that’s what we should be doing. So QCash comes in and we do relational underwriting. We talk to the [inaudible 00:17:06], we look at how long they’ve been a member and we don’t ask for a paycheck. We look at their ACH, it’s a proxy for income. Are they a member in good standing? Have they had loans before? I mean, it’s loans from the ’80s, only it’s a beautiful app and they can do it 24/7 in six clicks. In 60 seconds they get the money in their account.

Denise:
We’ve just made it as simple as possible to get a good priced, fair loan to members who really need it when they get in trouble. That’s why philosophically, I just couldn’t be more aligned. It made me chuckle because I feel like I’m flashing back. Oh, in the ’80s, let me tell you, it was hard in the ’80s. We had to type on a typewriter, IBM Selectric in triplicate carbon paper, okay? Now I push a couple buttons on the computer, but oh, that’s hard. No, it was hard in the ’80s when we had to type on a typewriter.

Cameron:
That’s fabulous. It sounds like it’s basically automating and lowering the cost and making it easier to access that deeply personal relational lending that really is at the heart of all credit unions. Is that correct?

Denise:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. To your point earlier, paycheck to paycheck does not always equate with low income, as you pointed out. We have a lot of people who have not managed their money well and an emergency can cripple them and they can be what we would consider middle class or affluent and yet they’re still living there. I mean, really, it is the credit union’s mission to counsel people. Financial inclusion, financial wellness, all these things I think during COVID have really come back to the front of our messaging and our mission and what credit unions are supposed to do. It’s really been great to show the world our real difference in that we are a financial cooperative.

Cameron:
I love it. I’d like to pivot to a different area of your professional experience. I know that you’ve done a lot of work as a culture consultant for credit unions. As part of that, it looks like you’ve flown over a million miles in the last decade with United. Clearly, it’s part of how I’m sure you got to every state. Can you tell us a little about what does it mean to be a culture consultant for credit unions and why does that matter?

Denise:
It’s funny, I started out as a marketing speaker and then I changed it to brand and even wrote a book about brand. A lot of people didn’t understand brand is your reputation. Period, that’s it. I wanted people to understand when they hired me that I wasn’t going to come in and fix their marketing program. I was going to come in and work with their culture because the culture is everything. The culture will ultimately determine your reputation. I talked earlier about net promoter score, I love that tool because it asks the ultimate question. How likely are you to recommend the credit union to a friend, family or coworker? And then why did you answer the way you did?

Denise:
Well, to get a nine or a 10, to get a promoter, it really begins with the culture. It begins with I mean, the onboarding of a new employee, how you’re trained. What you reward, what you measure and manage, what the review cycle looks like, all those things. In all my years at credit unions, I realized that if you don’t have a leader that leads with a strong mission, corporations don’t have values, people do. If you don’t get people that align with the same values, then it’s no wonder you don’t have a good reputation and that’s the ultimate goal.

Denise:
Once we would identify our brand and our target audience, and I created a brand filter, then I would say, “That it needs to ooze from every core of the organization.” Which meant it couldn’t not be every department being aligned with our mission. That’s why I called it culture consulting, so that people that wanted to do the hard work would hire me, and the people that didn’t wouldn’t hire me.

Cameron:
Well, I love that connection. I’ve always thought of it as the iceberg model. That the brand is the tip of the iceberg and then the culture is the bottom of the iceberg. I hope it’s not a Titanic analogy. We don’t want to hit that iceberg and sink, but there’s so much more under the water. We often react to the beautiful story or the really clear and powerful brand messaging, but it’s supported by something much larger that we often can’t see.

Cameron:
I know you’ve actually worked with probably many, but at least one of our clients, Peninsula Credit Union. I saw some of the great work you did for them back when we first worked with them. I’m curious if you have any stories about Peninsula or anyone else, of change or transformation that came on the cultural front that led to that delightful member service?

Denise:
I wish everybody could see me right now because I’m holding these poker chips. It is from one of my favorite consulting experiences, culture consulting. It was with Rogue Credit Union. Gene Pelham, the CEO, amazing person. He hired me to come in because he’d heard about my brand, that I was very passionate about net promoter score. It was a very long consulting gig, which I was fortunate, I got to spend a lot of time with them. But when we finally nailed down exactly what we wanted to be and our commitment to it, he could tell that there were a couple of senior members that were really important to the process, that he felt weren’t really onboard with it.

Denise:
So he called me in his office before we met that day and he handed me one of those little turnstile things full of poker chips. He said, “I want you to put the same amount of poker chips in front of each seat. Then when they come in, tell them that they have so many poker chips and we’re going to go around the room and they can communicate their connection with this brand that we’re going for, this reputation and how committed they are to it by representing it with poker chips, all right?” It was just what he thought. He went around the room and the people that we knew were all on board, they’re like, “I’m all in and this is why.” Then we had a couple of people who weren’t and it was interesting to see how many of their chips would they give to be all in?

Denise:
Then the most powerful moment, Gene then had a pile of chips in front of him and he slid his, how you would in the dramatic poker moment where they put them all in. He goes, “Well, I’m all in and you need to be all in too for this to work.” He just let it hang there. It’s [inaudible 00:23:03] the bus analogy. When you got to get the right people, are you on the bus, or are you off the bus? He did this with these poker chips. It was interesting because the one person who really couldn’t commit did end up leaving on their own, which is great. I mean, go find your people, go find your bliss, go find what you connect with.

Denise:
But you fast forward to today and it has become an annual tradition at Rogue with their all staff day, where they have these poker chips that have their brand. I’ve got them in my hand. Expect and reward participation, we will have the most loyal members in the nation. We will drive good profits and create and keep promoters. Every year at their all staff, they would all have this moment where they would drop their chip into this big bowl and they would recommit to being all in on this.

Denise:
It’s amazing and they have a loyalty university. Their NPS score is one of the highest in the nation’s. Then Gene will share with anyone, the growth that came with that. You focus on the right thing and the growth comes. Too much we just focus on growth and that’s why you see all these mergers, we’ve got to get bigger, bigger, bigger. He did it the old fashioned way, he earned it one member at a time with a good reputation.

Cameron:
I love that, all right. Well, pivoting to a slightly different direction. I would love to know because I remember this was one of the most… I guess I should stop being surprised by the stories of things you’ve done or you do in your career. But you’re an advanced emergency medical technician. Sometimes I even hear people talk about credit unions as being the financial first responders or financial EMTs. I’d love to hear, are there any skills you’ve learned as an EMT that you’ve found to be helpful in your credit union career or vice versa?

Denise:
Yeah, you know what’s crazy? My husband heard that the local volunteer fire department needed some drivers and he said, “We should go down,” they had an open house, “we should go down there.” I’m thinking, “No, we’re too old.” I didn’t want to do it. He likes to tell the story that I went down there, kicking and screaming. Then we met the fire chief and the fire chief said this, “We help people get through their worst day with dignity and compassion.” I thought, “Oh, dang! How can I not sign up for that?” So we started as drivers and then we went on a really bad accident, the worst one in our station’s history. It was five motorcycles versus a car. There were 10 patients, four critical. We had to land four helicopters. It was nuts.

Denise:
Then we just decided we got to do more. So we got our EMT basic license and then decided we got to do more. We went and got our advanced EMT license after that. It was really, really interesting. But yes, I believe that’s the thing with QCash. I believe that we help people get through their worst day with dignity and compassion because it’s very humbling to ask for a loan. It’s very humbling to not have the income to pay for your kids’ school supplies or whatever it is.

Denise:
I’ve actually put together a keynote presentation that I did at Rogue Credit Union on their all staff day that actually showed all the parallels to a financial first responder and a first responder in the field, because there are many. Really, there are a lot. I did put that together and that was really fun to be able to go back to Rogue on their poker chip day and then share my experience as a first responder. It’s been very, very rewarding.

Cameron:
That’s really awesome to hear. Let’s look out into the future and I’d love to know where do you hope to see the credit union movement five years from now?

Denise:
Cameron, I don’t know if you know this, but my hobby, my passion for the last few years now has been to help new credit unions start. Yes. Because did you know how many credit unions we started last year? One. We are merging at one a day and if you do the math on it, credit unions are going to disappear. If credit unions disappear, CUSOs disappear, state trade associations disappear, it all goes away. The fact that we’re not paying more attention to this is surprising to me. But for the last two years, I’ve interviewed people who tried and failed, people who tried and bailed and the few that actually made it. I’ve been working with folks at the NCUA, talking about the charter process. I know they’re very committed to making it easier.

Denise:
I’m part of what we’ve just jokingly call a de novo support group. There’s three, de novos trying to start right now. One is for LGBTQ, one is historically black colleges, and one is for previously incarcerated people and their families. In this age of commitment of diversity, equity and inclusion, I cannot think of anything better than starting new financial cooperatives for these groups that are going to be better helping each other. Not as a SEG, they get all kinds of offers to become a SEG. They want their own financial cooperative. So anybody listening to this, if you’re interested in helping to start new credit unions, look me up and share my contact information, because you can join the group, We’re better together. It’s the only way that we’re going to do it. But in five years we will have a growth engine for new credit unions. That is my goal. Credit unions are not going down on my watch.

Cameron:
I love that, Denise. I was distantly connected and then a little bit more with Clean Energy Credit Union. One of the few startups that has succeeded in the last decade. I just got their email update today. But yeah, it’s sobering how few are getting started.

Cameron:
Let’s pivot to some rapid fire questions so we can just learn a little more about you. I would love to know if you could only eat one flavor of ice cream for the rest of your life, what would that flavor of ice cream be?

Denise:
Neapolitan.

Cameron:
All right, very specific. What’s your life slogan?

Denise:
Question everything. When I had my own consulting business, for years my logo was a flying pig. It was a flying pig not for the reason that we usually say, but rather, why can’t a pig fly? We’re only limited by our imagination. That became my tagline; question everything. When people say, “Oh, we tried that,” or, “That can’t be done,” or those kinds of things, oh, I love it. It’s like, “Hold my beer, get out of my way. Let me do it, I love a challenge.”

Denise:
Over the years, I don’t need any more flying pigs. I’ve had many people indulge me with gifts of flying pigs and they’re all around in my house, but a constant reminder and I love them, of doing the impossible. The thing I loved about Filene I3 is we had to reframe our language and I use this all the time now. When we’re presented with a problem, instead of saying, “Can we,” oftentimes we feel like our core processes are holding us hostage so we can’t do something. Instead of at Filene we’re taught to say, “How might we?” How might we? Because that is a possibility statement. That’s not a yes or no. It is okay, how might we do it? We might have to go around things. We might have to break some rules. How might we?

Denise:
Attacking the de novo problem, that’s exactly how I’ve done it from the Filene I3 standpoint. How might we start new credit unions? Because most people told me it was impossible and if it’s impossible, it can’t be. So I’m questioning literally everything right now in that process.

Cameron:
So great to hear. What’s a song you’re embarrassed to admit that you like?

Denise:
I work out almost every morning and I have an elliptical trainer that most people can see on Zoom now. They always ask me, “Do you get on that?” And I do. I have a really eclectic music selection, but Katy Perry, I Kissed a Girl. Actually a fabulous song to exercise to. I love Chapstick and I like cherry Chapstick and that’s in the song and I actually use cherry Chapstick.

Cameron:
I love it. The last question I’ve got is, if you could have dinner with one historical person, who would that be?

Denise:
You know what’s so funny? I just recently got to have dinner with Rodney Hood from NCUA. Truly, I would love to have dinner with him again because he is probably one of the kindest human beings on the planet. Passionate, incredible story of his life. There’s so many layers to him and I was just honored to be able to have that time with him, first of all. And then when I got to know him, and I consider him a friend now, but I would totally go to dinner with him again. He would be my pick.

Cameron:
All right, we’ll let Rodney know. Let’s do our final take. Denise, is there anything you’d like to leave our audience with? Anything either you want to reiterate or that you didn’t get to, that you wanted to share?

Denise:
Well, just that I know credit unions have really been my life, they’re my family. I’m really sincere when I say they’re not going to go down on my watch. I just hope that people will look around and see how they might be able to help. Mentoring is really huge and for small credit unions that are struggling, the last resort should be merger, the absolute last resort. As a credit union movement, how might we get more creative, work together to mitigate these mergers, and then ultimately help more members? I mean, that’s why we’re here. So if you want to get involved in the de novo project and that’s the other part. We’re also with identified now two really small credit unions that are struggling and for all intents and purposes are a startup. We’re doing that as well as that, but we need financial mentors, we need professional mentors. We need good people who really love to cooperate to help make this happen.

Cameron:
Wonderful. Well, since you’ve put it out there, Denise, what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you? Email, Twitter, LinkedIn?

Denise:
I am on LinkedIn. LinkedIn would probably be the best and message me on LinkedIn, we’ll connect. I’m on LinkedIn every day. I think that’s been really good for my network. I mean, I’ve met so many amazing people on LinkedIn. So yeah, please connect with me on LinkedIn and then we’ll connect you with the group that way, because they’re all on there.

Cameron:
All right, awesome. Denise, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been a real pleasure to have you.

Denise:
Thank you.

Cameron:
All right, folks, another great episode. I really enjoyed chatting with Denise. Like to go to some of my key takeaways. First thing that really stood out to me was her comment how at Del Norte Credit Union, almost 20% of their members were promoters when it came to net promoter score because of the cooperative structure. That that was the number two reason why people were promoting the credit union after service, and how she connected that to the sixth cooperative principle of cooperation among cooperatives and used that to actually put together a co-op park in Los Alamos.

Cameron:
The next set of things I really enjoyed was learning more about QCash and where they’re at today. I appreciated Denise’s story and her phrase about the previous CEO of WSECU, who was the credit union that founded Qcash. That he was just managing by walking around and he pulled on the thread of curiosity when he heard the comment that a lot of non-members were cashing member’s checks. How QCash at its core is really focused around relational lending. That’s really at the heart of what credit unions used to be. No FICO scores, just as Denise said. The three C’s: character, capacity and collateral. I thought that was exciting to hear that they built their product around this. An algorithm that does that kind of relationship analysis, six clicks, 60 seconds, doesn’t use FICO scores and that it can be paid for both implementation and the loan loss reserve using CDFI grants.

Cameron:
I’ve told this story in the past, but I just when I’ve seen this happen on my team, this assumption that just because someone makes a good salary or really any assumption to assume that people are financially well off, is a really dangerous thing to do. As Denise said, paycheck to paycheck does not necessarily mean someone who’s low income. It can actually be people with really good salaries.

Cameron:
I loved Denise’s framing from Filene’s I3 program. When we’re facing a wicked problem, not saying, “Can we do X?” But instead just saying, “How might we?” And fill in the blank. How that’s just such a great way for us to think about those problems that seem intractable inside of our organizations.

Cameron:
I loved next just the whole EMT background and that framing of what an EMT does is help people get through their worst day with dignity and compassion. I think, well, that’s not what credit unions do necessarily every day. Those moments happen a lot inside of credit unions and those are real moments of truth, real moments of magic that build those stories that people never forget. They build that kind of connection that people will never forget.

Cameron:
Then lastly, I love Denise’s focus on what she calls the de novo project of how do we help get new credit unions founded? I believe it was two that were founded in the previous decade. It’s just an area that is so important because in any business, typically a lot of the innovation and thinking differently happens from new entrants. I just love that focus and her phrase that credit unions aren’t going down on her watch. I would not bet against Denise.

Cameron:
All right, thank you again for joining us today for another great episode. Until the next time, I wish you all the best of luck in making your credit union remarkable.