Nashville fintech startup enters partnership with NFL team to make positive impact in hometown

Nashville, TN – October 22, 2019 – Celero Commerce (“Celero”), a vertically-focused, integrated commerce solutions provider, is now the preferred payments partner of the National Football League’s Tennessee Titans. The Nashville startup will provide payment processing services to the Titans via its ongoing merchant processing relationship with the official bank of the Titans, Pinnacle Financial Partners, also based in Nashville, TN.

Launched in December 2018, fast-growing Celero is now the 16th largest non-bank credit card processor in the country through its acquisitions of Brentwood-based Elmhurst Financial, UMS Banking of Los Angeles, and Tandem Innovative Payment Solutions, based in Greenville, South Carolina. Pinnacle, an exclusive sponsor of the Titans, is Nashville’s largest bank and number three bank in the state of Tennessee by market share. Celero Commerce, through their acquisition of Elmhurst Financial, has provided merchant processing services for Pinnacle for over a decade.

“Like the Titans, we chose Nashville to be our home,” stated Celero Commerce founder and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Jones. “We are committed to being involved in our hometown community as a good corporate citizen. The Tennessee Titans are already a part of the fabric of Nashville and have set an example of how to do meaningful work in the city we call home. A major part of our partnership will be focused on working with the Titans on initiatives that benefit the people of Nashville. Given our existing relationship with Pinnacle, a bank that’s really driven a lot of economic development and opportunity in the area, this makes perfect sense.”

“The Tennessee Titans are honored to partner with Celero Commerce.”, stated Ralph Ockenfels, VP of Corporate Partnerships, “We look forward to working with them to make a meaningful impact in the Nashville community.”

For more information about Celero Commerce, visit www.celerocommerce.com

About Celero Commerce

Based in Nashville, Celero Commerce is a full-service, integrated electronic commerce solutions provider powered by leading edge technology, strategic partnerships, and business intelligence, all moving at the speed of modern business. Celero offers payment processing services, business management software, and data intelligence to small and medium-sized businesses, empowering them to drive growth and profitability.

150 4th Avenue North, Nashville, TN 37219 (844) 4CELERO www.celerocommerce.com

About the Tennessee Titans

The National Football League’s Tennessee Titans enter their second season under the direction of head coach Mike Vrabel in 2019. General manager Jon Robinson is in his fourth year with the club, having constructed three consecutive winning seasons from 2016 through 2018.

Controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk has committed resources to make the Titans a perennial contender on the field and to establish the Titans as a leader off the gridiron. The franchise celebrated its 20th season as the Titans and unveiled all-new uniforms in 2018. The Titans also launched “We Stand For,” an organizational initiative to support causes and charities that are important to its players, coaches and front office members. Strunk’s efforts helped bring the NFL Draft to Nashville in April 2019, and the event set records with more than 600,000 fans in attendance and more than 45 million television viewers.

Originally founded as the Houston Oilers in 1960, the club moved to Tennessee in 1997 and changed its name to the Titans in 1999, the same year its new home, Nissan Stadium, opened in downtown Nashville on the east bank of the Cumberland River. Since then, the Titans have become a fixture in the community and provided national visibility to Tennessee and the city of Nashville.

For information and tickets, visit www.TitansOnline.com.

Media Contact:

Celero Commerce

Scott Farace, Chief Marketing Officer scottf@celerocommerce.com 972-533-5655

Being proactive when it comes to protecting your small business against cyberattacks is in your best interest, especially as a retailer. Cybersecurity involves security prevention in more than just one way. Whether your business is online or a traditional brick-and-mortar store, you’re susceptible to cyberattacks and you want to make sure you stay educated on what to do to minimize your risks.

So, what exactly is cybersecurity or a cyberattack? Well, cybersecurity is the state of being protected against a criminal or unauthorized use of electronic data, or the measures taken to achieve this. Cyberattacks are an attempt by hackers to damage or destroy a computer network or system. Now that we've clarified a few things, let's dive into what you can do to protect your business.

Become Proactive

As a retailer, you’re more prone to cyberattacks because you house a wealth of customer data. This doesn't mean you aren't able to still protect your business; it just means you have to take action now for the future. Getting started with preventative security measures ahead of time already puts you in a great place for protecting your business — you want to be sure you know what you can do so you don't remain or feel helpless. Staying informed on what you can do to protect your business not only helps with that but it will ultimately improve your customer experience and make you a more credible retailer. Your customers will know that they can trust your business to keep their information safe.

Below are some tips you can use to be proactive with cybersecurity.

1. Educate yourself. Learn about what cybersecurity is and take a free workshop to really get the basics down — trust us, it will be worth it in the long run.
2. Have a plan set in place. Once you’ve learned about cybersecurity, put proper steps into action of what to do in case of a cyberattack.
3. Increase email security. Be aware of the basic email security precautions, such as avoiding suspicious links or attachments. This is the quickest and easiest way to prevent a malicious email from getting through.
4. Include extra details when setting passwords. Making a complicated password is in your best interest. Your business contains sensitive data and you want to make sure it’s not easily accessible.

Get PCI Compliant & Maintain Your Status 

There are other ways to make sure your customer data is protected, not only from cyberattacks, but protected in general. PCI is the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) requirements for merchants that store, process or transmit cardholder data. There are 12 core requirements and roughly 250 controls. Meeting the most important standard in the payments industry allows your customers’ payment details (and your business) to stay protected.

Being PCI compliant enables the allowed stored credit card information to be done so only through required security standards. Now, when you aren't compliant, it puts you more at risk and exposes you to heavy financial threat since it's a requirement for merchants who process credit/debit cards in person or online. But, this shouldn't worry you because compliance is simple. If you already accept EMV chip cards, you're most likely in good standing.

Adopt EMV Chip Card Payment Technology

Another way to protect your business is to adopt EMV chip card technology at your business. EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, is the technology behind that tiny microchip on credit and debit cards everywhere in the U.S. This chip has huge benefits when it comes to protecting against fraud for card-present transactions. It offers better data security than magnetic stripe transactions and makes counterfeiting a card next to impossible.

Not accepting EMV chip cards puts you at unnecessary risk for fraud and chargebacks. But with EMV chip card technology, it significantly reduces the chance of accepting fake cards and having any fraudulent activity. Choosing to accept EMV chip cards at your business grants you, as the merchant, the benefit of dual verification, protecting you from liability. Dual verification authenticates the person using the card is the owner, resulting in a reduced opportunity of fraud. 

Conclusion

It doesn’t matter if your business is online or in a brick-and-mortar store, you are still at risk for cyberattacks. What does matter is how you take initiative as a business and prevent those potential risks from coming in and taking over your company. It’s important to not place all of your eggs in one basket with just one cybersecurity prevention measure, there are multiple ways to stay safe!

Celero is thrilled to announce the expansion of its Nashville headquarters with the addition of an Operations Center at Harpeth on the Green IV in Brentwood, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. The space, which is set to accommodate approximately 75 people, will be home to Celero Operations starting early 2020. This represents a major expansion for Celero’s headquarters, which currently resides at WeWork in downtown Nashville.

Under the leadership of Chief Operating Officer, Jeff Brown, Project Manager Abigail Lucier has worked collectively with the CBRE Group and Celero leadership team to scout and design the company’s expanded Music City workspace.

“At the new space, we want you to walk in and feel not only a connection to the fintech industry, but to Nashville as well,” says Lucier. “This city is where our team decided to plant the Celero seed, and we can’t wait to watch it grow.”

The entire layout and design of Celero’s new HQ is geared toward collaboration. It’s open and spacious, with large wraparound windows that surround the building and make it feel even bigger, as they offer a gorgeous view of Tennessee greenery.

“Being Tennessee-born and raised, I can really appreciate how green this state is, all its different colors and seasons,” says Abigail. “It’s called Harpeth on the Green for a reason; not only are there windows wrapping around the whole office, but it’s also surrounded by large trees and beautiful foliage.”

The exposed ceiling lends an industrial, Silicon Valley-like tech atmosphere. There are multiple collaborative workstations and huddle rooms where team members can gather. Even the private offices have glass fronts, promoting better openness and cohesion. CEO Kevin Jones is known for having a strict open-door policy.

“It’s deeply important to our culture and to Kevin that we all have the mindset of working together and collaborating in a fast-paced environment,” Abigail says. “Culture is the most important thing to Kevin, and your office space is key in creating a cohesive team.” 

Abigail, Kevin, and Jeff toured several office spaces before going with “what felt right.” They searched for places with ample light, plenty of windows, and an overall feeling of openness.

“While everyone has their own personalized space, you’re able to look up from your workstation or office and still feel connected to a team member that might be in a completely different department than you,” says Abigail. “You feed off the energy you see around you. So, if I can see other people creating and getting things done, it’s going to inspire me to do the same.”

One of Celero’s main goals in this project is to create a space that not only attracts, but also retains talent; somewhere that people look forward to going every day. The natural beauty of the space, as well as its contemporary warehouse vibe, are sure to help with that. So too will the ease of working together and communicating in the new space. 

“Harpeth on the Green is directly in line with the overall theme we were going for,” Abigail says. “We want it to embody everything Celero is and will be in the future.”

One thing Celero will be in the future is a whole lot bigger. The Nashville-based company has already experienced rapid growth since its inception and is expected to increase job growth by 250 percent in 2021.

“We want to both attract talent and create a place where people can grow professionally and personally,” says Abigail.

The future of Celero is looking good – almost as good as that view from the new HQ.

Kevin Jones October 1, 2019 I’ve been tasked with leadership for most of my career. People often ask me what it takes to be an effective leader, and I often answer that to become a good leader, you need to be a good follower first. Subscribing to this maxim is important for people at all levels of an organization. Even as a CEO, I must follow the leadership of my board of directors, which includes some of my most trusted advisors and investors.

Here are just a few of the important ways we can develop ourselves as followers, so that our leaders can help us reach our full potential.

Be Character-Driven

Being a leader or follower takes character, because having character is the foundation upon which we build trust with others. Being character-driven yields great credibility in friendships, marriage, and parent-child relationships, and it’s just as effective in professional life.

Anyone who reads my work knows that there are two character-defining values that I hold above all others:  respect and humility.  Those who respect others—not based on job titles or perception of power—but on personal merit, show that they are open to learning. When you place respect on others, you are, in fact, anointing them to share their views as equals. Respect shows honor, and you’ll get honor in return.

The other big character-driver for me, the yang to respect’s yin, is humility.  When you are humble, you are literally placing your own ego in submission to your desire to learn. In effect, it’s doubling down on the respect you place on those who merit that respect. You’re effectively saying to them, I can’t do this alone, and I know you have something valuable to contribute. When a true leader detects both respect and humility on your part, there is no limit to what you can achieve together.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes

I work very hard to create cultures where my team and I can take risks in the service of our clients, stakeholders, and each other. When you’re all in it together, there should be room for everyone to take the risks necessary to raise their performance standards higher day after day. I often tell team members that you will not ever “ski the blacks” unless you are willing to fall.

To be a good follower and leader, it’s imperative that you take risks. No leader can afford to manage to the status quo, which is the enemy of growth. Rather than covering your behind, you need to put yourself forward, knowing that you’re going to fail sometimes. A true leader will recognize those who fail, learn from those failures, and achieve even bigger success along the way as the greatest assets of their organization.

Be Accountable

While it’s fine to take risks and make mistakes, it’s unacceptable to lack accountability. Accountability, like respect and humility, is a character-driver and trust-builder. When your leaders know you are accountable, they are more likely to give you plum assignments that will help you grow, because they trust you. Whenever I need to delegate leadership in an area, a person’s accountability is just as important as their performance. Just like a mutual fund disclaimer—past performance is not an indication of future returns—we know that counting on someone means that you’re able to trust them when the chips inevitably are down.

It’s also critical to helping your leadership assess where real problems lie in an organization or externally. If you’re willing to step up and own your mistakes, it’s that much easier—in this business world that often feels like it moves at the speed of light—for everyone to re-chart the course necessary to achieve the goal.   Being accountable is not only right from a moral perspective, but also from a practical point-of-view. Accountability increases efficiency. The fact of the matter is that any good business is going to make mistakes, and the higher the accountability in the organization, the more time we spend fixing problems and the less time wasted on figuring them out.  

Seek Mentorship

This world is bigger than all of us, so we need to know that we’re in it together, not just as teams, but with someone who has our back. At every level of my career—performer, manager, middle manager, executive, founder, and CEO—I’ve had at least one, if not several go-to mentors. 

Mentors can do many great things for you. They can validate your great ideas, shoot down your terrible concepts, or help you work through those that deserve more attention. They can help you trust your instincts or help you identify situations where you might need to gather more data versus making a gut move.

Perhaps most of all, mentors can help us by simply being good humans. Those of us who care about being the best we can be at home and at work can be our own worst critics. I can tell you genuinely that one of my favorite aspects of mentoring is helping someone I love to pick themselves up after a failure.  Giving that energy back to someone who works hard, is trustworthy, and is full of that humility and respect I covet is a real blessing to me.  

See a Bigger Picture than Your Own

When you decide to become a great follower, it’s also imperative that you’re able to see a bigger picture than the one that’s your routine perspective. We have to empathize with our leaders to know how they contextualize their decisions, so that we can have greater understanding and meet the needs of their organization.

There’s always a bigger picture. If you’re a sales performer, your manager may have full profit-and-loss responsibility that forces certain frameworks on their decisions, contrary to your own context that’s centered on revenue.  Even as wide and complicated of a perspective as I have in my CEO role, does my leadership at LLR, our major investor, have a bigger picture than Celero? Of course they do, and what we achieve needs to fit in the context of their entire investment portfolio.

It’s easier to see how to be a good follower when you don’t have any management or leadership responsibilities. Many of you reading these thoughts of mine, however, have those kinds of responsibilities. You must be extra diligent to not only build your leadership, but also strive to become a better follower every day. Here’s the best part—doing both adds up to being a successful professional, and more importantly, a better person.

Celero employees, including CEO Kevin Jones, COO Jeff Brown, and Project Manager Abigail Lucier enjoyed a whirlwind visit to Washington last as they accompanied the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) on its annual Payments Fly-In on Capitol Hill.

“There was so much to take in and so much enthusiasm,” Lucier said. “There’s really nothing quite like being not only in D.C., but on the Hill, at the heart of all the hustle and bustle.” 

More than 35 executives from ETA member companies like Celero participated in the Fly-In, which gives payments industry leaders the opportunity to meet with policymakers in Congress and across the government. ETA members advocated for payments technology growth and innovation, as well as a uniform national privacy standard.

“They were genuinely engaged and open to what we had to say,” said Brown, an industry veteran with more than two decades as a payments and fintech executive. “It’s great to see how hard folks on both sides of the aisle work to understand our industry’s challenges and want to work with us to create an optimal regulatory environment for the payments and fintech industries.”

The lack of a uniform privacy standard at the federal level makes it hard for businesses to operate across multiple states. Having to comply with multiple, differing standards places a heavy burden on small and mid-sized companies in particular.

“It creates a lot of confusion, having to study these laws and then comply with each and every one of them,” explained Jones, the current President and Chairman of the ETA’s Board of Directors. “It unintentionally sets these businesses up to fail in compliance. But if there’s one nationwide standard, it will not only protect businesses and consumers, but also allow for innovation – for people to go out and do business as it should be done, rather than spending all their time and money on figuring out how to be compliant.”

On the first day of the Fly-In, ETA members met with Congress members such as Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), and Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-WVA). They also met with federal regulators from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Administration.

“As someone who’s fairly new to the industry, it was very heartening to meet public servants who were eager to engage with us and understand our needs,” said Lucier.

On day two, participants got to sit down and listen as several legislators and Celero’s very own Kevin Jones gave speeches. In addition to payments innovation and uniform privacy standards, they also touched on the importance of personally identifiable information, often called “PII data.” The permissible use of such data can be used as a powerful tool to fight fraud.

“People have this assumption that the less data you have out there, the less likely you are to fall victim to identity fraud,” Brown explained, “but it’s actually the opposite. PII data is crucial to preventing fraud, because it makes it a lot harder for another person to steal your identity or process a payment on your behalf.”

Abigail reported that she was impressed with the ETA as a whole, both its representation and leaders. Her “sherpa” for the visit, Jeff Patchen, Manager of Government Affairs at the ETA, was extremely helpful in facilitating introductions and productive conversations. She also praised Scott Talbott, Senior VP of Government Relations, for his enthusiasm and expert handling of the event.

“Scott is in there every single day advocating for this industry on behalf of businesses and consumers alike,” she said. “You can just tell by his enthusiasm and the way he orchestrated this event, he’s in the right place. It’s good to know he’s there every day, representing us, as we go about our day-to-day building Celero for our partners and customers.”

Thank you to the ETA for letting Celero be a part of this opportunity. Please visit https://www.electran.org/ to learn more about the ETA and its advocacy work in the electronic payments sector.

Kevin Jones, ETA President and Chairman, and CEO, Celero Commerce September 16, 2019 It was a pleasure to spend two days in Washington, D.C. advocating on behalf of Electronic Transaction Association (ETA) members during our annual Fly-In and ETA FinTech Policy Forum.  Across the events, ETA members exchanged ideas and provided essential input on our industry to Members of Congress and policymakers across the government.

It’s exciting to serve as the President of ETA at this time of tremendous growth – in both size and importance – of the payments technology industry. ETA members, from startups to public companies, drive the future of commerce. Through innovative distribution and payment acceptance models for credit, debit, and prepaid cards, electronic payments are more important to American businesses and consumers than ever before. As we head into the final quarter of 2019, we have many reasons to be excited about the state of payments and financial technology, as well as the future of our association.

Since I joined the payments industry at the start of the new millennium, the total number of credit card transactions in the U.S. has doubled to over 33 billion per year. The payments industry now fuels annually $7 trillion in payments across North America and a staggering $21 trillion globally.

I witnessed  firsthand the enthusiasm for the products and services our industry is delivering during my two days in D.C. Our work truly speaks for itself – you can tell our government leaders are just as excited as we are about our industry’s achievements and where we are headed.

A key example is how payments technology is helping the underserved and democratizing access to financial services.  More people today own a cell phone than have a bank account. FinTech enables a simple app on your phone to make a payment, take a payment, transfer money to a friend, or even allow a small business to submit a loan application. With advances like these, fintech has the power to help Americans of all incomes and businesses of all sizes.

With the power of the internet, merchants of virtually any size can instantly operate in all 50 states and around the globe.  Part of our advocacy efforts was to encourage policymakers to provide clarity with a uniform national privacy law. Complying with a patchwork of unique state privacy laws would be confusing to customers and daunting, logistically difficult, and costly for payments businesses of all sizes to ensure compliance.

ETA’s advocacy on this issue is critical since data plays an important role in supporting our industry’s continuous effort to fight fraud.   Our long-standing commitment to fighting fraud is essential to the profitability of our businesses. One of our industry’s greatest achievements was the rollout of EMV cards.  With tokenization brought by EMV cards, counterfeit fraud was reduced by 87% in the U.S. and made that fraud less profitable.  But our industry’s fight against fraud online is far from finished.

Now, real-time monitoring allows for malicious actors to be identified even before a fraudulent transaction is executed. Tools like biometrics, geo-location, and tokenization—all recent innovations—are key to efforts in fighting fraud. These technologies are powered by the responsible use of data to create smart and sophisticated tools that prevent and detect fraud. It’s essential that we as payments advocates speak up for a policy environment that supports them.

From my seat on the ETA Board of Directors, I see how vital ETA is, both in Washington and around the country, to help our industry grow.  Under the new leadership of Jodie Kelley, we are bringing fresh energy to our work with policymakers on pro-payments legislation that helps all consumers and business move forward and strengthen the American economy.

Innovation, collaboration, and a motivation that’s built on positioning American businesses and consumers for financial success—these are the defining qualities of our industry and of ETA.

This article originally ran on TransactionTrends.com, the official news site of ETA. Click here to subscribe to Transaction Trends Weekly to receive weekly payments industry news and analysis from ETA.

Integrated payments and customer insights help more companies stay in business, earn more revenue and repeat business more efficiently.

Nashville, TN – September 5, 2019 –  Celero Commerce (“Celero”), a vertically-focused, integrated commerce solutions provider, today announced it has partnered with Womply, the leader in front office software for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), to offer Celero merchants a web-based software suite that helps them attract more customers and keep them loyal.

The all-in-one software solution brings together reputation and customer relationship management, marketing automation, business intelligence, and payments processing for the SMB space.

“Historically, small businesses have been underserved by technology, tipping the balance of power in favor of larger companies,” says Cory Capoccia, President of Womply. “We’re excited to partner with Celero in an effort to bring powerful digital tools to brick-and-mortar businesses that sorely need them to get an edge and stay competitive.”

By integrating sales data from the company’s payments processing activity and Womply’s business intelligence and marketing automation, Celero’s merchants can now:

●      Attract new customers by taking control of their online reputation. Merchants can see all their reviews in one place, automate responses, and encourage happy customers to share their feedback privately and publicly on sites like Yelp, Google, Facebook, and TripAdvisor.

●      Engage customers through email marketing to increase highly valuable return visits. The platform automatically creates and updates a complete customer directory, appends contact information, and sends timely, targeted marketing campaigns to prompt repeat business.

●      Monitor their business to know where they stand in relation to market trends and competitors. Merchants can see daily and historical sales trends for their business, compare against similar businesses nearby, and easily see consumer spending patterns locally.

Merchants who use Womply average 20 percent more revenue and 22 percent more repeat customer visits, all while saving an average of 10 hours of work per week.

“This partnership means more revenue in the merchant’s hands, enhanced customer retention and growth, as well as operational efficiency—all key metrics that will determine the ultimate ability of any business to survive and thrive,” said Celero Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Jones. “While minimizing processing rates is helpful and marginally lowers expenses, almost every business owner prefers a partner that has a solution designed to help them increase their revenue and thrive in a competitive environment.” 

About Womply

Womply’s mission is to help small businesses thrive in a digital world. Our AI-powered data platform enhances our comprehensive small business management software, which includes the world’s only pre-populated CRM plus small business intelligence, reputation management, marketing automation, and integrated payments. We serve more than 150,000 small businesses across 400+ verticals, in every corner of America, every day. To learn more, visit www.womply.com or email info@womply.com. 

About Celero Commerce

Based in Nashville, Celero Commerce is a full-service, integrated electronic commerce solutions provider powered by leading edge technology, strategic partnerships, and business intelligence, all moving at the speed of modern business. Celero offers payment processing services, business management software, and data intelligence to small and medium-sized businesses, empowering them to drive growth and profitability.

Media Contact:

Celero Commerce

Scott Farace, Chief Marketing Officer

scottf@celerocommerce.com

972-533-5655

In a time when reaching customers and standing out from the crowd is growing increasingly difficult, the breakout session will fulfill a vital need. It will serve as a key resource for brand-builders who are seeing their reach decline, ad costs rise, and engagement falter. Panelists at this session will discuss how to build stronger credibility, increase customer reach, and develop more creative, engaging content that drives better business results.

Lane Conner, founder and CEO of Fuzse, will moderate the discussion. Following a 15-minute presentation, the 30-minute panel will feature insights from Anis Makaren, partner at DYAD Ventures; Peggy Olson, President and CEO of Strategic Marketing; and Scott Farace, Chief Marketing Officer at Celero Commerce.

Farace brings over 30 years of expertise in brand-building, advertising, and customer experience across numerous industry sectors. He has worked with brands at every stage of the business lifecycle. Prior to Celero, he served as head of strategy and partner at various marketing and advertising agencies, including S-Squared Creative, a Dallas-based branding and creative solutions firm.

Farace has developed branding and communications strategies for myriad Fortune 1000 household names in retail (e.g. Albertson’s), technology (AT&T), auto manufacturers (General Motors), and shipping (UPS). But most noteworthy is his experience in the financial services industry: He has worked with a wide array of financial technology brands including Chase Paymentech, Bank of America, Capital One, MasterCard, Allstate, and Northwestern Mutual.

According to Farace, his extensive financial services and marketing experience will inform his insights at the WSAA panel.  "It’s always rewarding to share my perspective on the ever-changing world of marketing and advertising, especially with regard to the booming fintech sector,” Farace said. “I'm really excited to share some examples of how we’re building one of the best brands in fintech here at Celero. As we continue to craft the ultimate platform that helps small and mid-sized businesses compete and win, telling our story in the marketplace will help us reach more people who need our services, as well as the strategic partners who will help us continue to build value in the future.

The panel event is one of many hosted by the WSAA, a not-for-profit organization that produces various educational seminars and breakout sessions on the evolving needs of the financial services industry. All WSAA events are tailored for professional bankcard sales representatives, including acquirers, ISOs, and MLSs in the retail and e-commerce sectors. The WSAA funds its events through exhibitor sponsorships and attendee registration fees. For more information, visit the WSAA website at https://westernstatesacquirers.net/agenda/.

Much has been written and discussed on the notion of the performance-based culture. This is a concept that I bought into as a very young manager, and I’ve expanded on it through my years leading larger and larger groups of people as they accomplish great things together.

Focusing on people doesn’t just mean hiring right, nor does it stop at training. It means a commitment to their development, helping them align their own built-in purpose to the needs of your organization, so you can grow together and succeed together.

Values Alignment

I’ve always had the thrill of managing very diverse teams, people coming from all walks of life. Maybe it’s just my upbringing in the North Carolina mountains, where we all scrapped to make a living and take care of each other, but I never ascribed any kind of merit or status based on somebody’s wealth, skin color, or whose son or daughter they were.

To the contrary, it was ingrained in me, as I was raised by my single mom, to be humble and respectful, and to honor those who showed humility and respect for others.  I took this to heart in a big way—I’ve collected many friends along my journey through life, and these are the two common denominators in those I value most. To a person, the men and women in my life work hard at whatever they do, and they do so humbly, going out of their way to show respect to others. And the values they have transcend all walks of life, so you naturally find yourself surrounded by men and women, people of different races and ethnicities, rich, poor and middle class, and any of the other ways in which society is happy to differentiate us.

Challenging Mediocrity

I think with any large group of people, you’re going to have some application of the 80/20 rule, where your top 20 percent pulls the team goalward, or a bell curve, where you have some at the high-performance end, some pretty weak performers, and a fat middle who range from those who just need a little boost before they become top performers to those just another cycle away from joining the bottom-feeders. 

Whatever diagram applies to your group, it’s important for all to challenge mediocrity. When you consistently challenge your team to do more, to do better, to do things more simply, and to do those things faster, you find out where the leaders are. I’ve always prided myself on doing the work necessary at leadership level to take this ethos a step further.  If you want to know my opinion on the secret sauce to success—and more specifically, what I feel has helped to drive the success of my teams—it’s that I consistently challenge mediocrity in all its shapes and forms at individual level.

Anybody can—and should—reward top performers with raises, bonuses, and promotions. But the real reward for leaders comes from startups, and better yet from turnaround projects, and we need to think of those possibilities not just in the organizations we lead, but in the individual sense.

From Worst to First 

I’ll give you an example of employing this strategy with individuals. At 27, I found myself leading 10 branch offices of a regional bank. Each office had a manager, assistant manager, and about five entry level sales executive employees. The leader of our division, one of my earliest and best mentors, was committed to building a high-performance culture, and it was great for me to gain early exposure to this concept in a bank environment.

My own path showed just how exciting of a culture my early mentor was building. Within just over a year, I had earned three promotions after leading my division as an individual, as a branch manager, and as a regional manager in new loans generated. Our entire team was known as a group of champions.

I learned one of my bigger lessons in leadership, when I was handed a new opportunity to double the size of my region. Instinctively, since I was raised to treat people with respect as individuals, I began studying my new employees and surveying their managers and peers. This process armed me with the information I’d need to tailor a management style to each individual’s needs.  

One of the first things I did was to confront our team’s weakest links. My theory was that the team would win if these folks did better, or if they left. What I discovered, by focusing on each individual’s needs, is that sometimes when you meet people where they are, without sacrificing your standards, you’ll see people that can actually go from worst to first.

One of the more important people in my life is just such an example. He’s one of those I confronted after taking over additional branches. The word on this guy was that he was very bright, but his poor attitude reflected not only in his own performance (or lack thereof), but also in the flagging performances of those he’d befriended most.

Tough Love Works When People Need It

I chose an approach of tough love. When I confronted him, I let him know how much potential I thought he had—in fact, I let him know that he could become our best performers in the entire region (and one of the bank’s stars) based on his grasp of the business and his people skills. I also let him know that should he rise to my expectations, raises, promotions, and the thrill of every success awaited, and in short order.

But I also told him that there was another path. He could do us all a favor—especially himself—and find another job where he might be more self-motivated and ultimately happier. Needless to say, and the reason I’m obviously sharing this example with you, our bottom performer chose the harder path and stayed. And he didn’t just stay. He excelled in every aspect of his job, becoming one of the best examples and motivators to others. I ended up putting this guy—who himself came within an inch of being fired—in charge of all of my region’s hiring and training! 

It’s About Them, Not You

That level of success that we achieved together was eye-opening for me. People have different needs, and managers and leaders should uncover those needs and respond to them in kind. Our bottom performer, it turns out, needed to be challenged more creatively. In any profession, there are lots of problems that require creative minds to find solutions. I found him to be an incredible strategic partner, and my role in his success was simply to help him find ways to unleash his creativity. Now, nearly a quarter-century later, he holds a very important role here at Celero.

I believe strongly that an effective CEO should focus on facilitating great decisions, as opposed to always making decisions ourselves. That requires a lot of work and focusing on culture, so that people can perform in ways that fulfill their purpose and hit your goals, too.

A performance-based culture is a fair culture that rewards team members who create value. It challenges the top performers and keeps them engaged. I have found that in the day-to-day, some team members prefer comfort, but over time, they will leave if you aren’t cultivating them to reach their potential.

I think intentionally about those who report to me and work in my organizations. A driving thought is ensuring that if they chose me as a mentor or my organization as home, that I have high expectations for myself, as we them to reach their full potential. Through my career, my greatest joy and success is playing that role with others:  recognizing and cultivating excellence in the individuals on my team and witnessing their growth, in their careers and in life.

Kevin Jones - August 22, 2019 As I look across the banking industry, I often see trends that I find disturbing. Over the last few years, I’ve observed a widening gulf in the amount of deposits that community banks attract versus the loan dollars they generate, mostly to small businesses.

A specific statistic that illustrates this point comes from a market study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) a nonprofit dedicated to helping communities grow sustainably from several angles, including banking, broadband, energy, and waste. According to the ILSR, community banks issue a whopping 52 percent of all small business loans, while they hold only 16 percent of the nation’s assets.  

There are many contributing factors to this dynamic, which isn’t in itself sustainable, as banking is predicated on a balance of maintaining appropriate levels of deposits, both demand and time, with the issuance of loans and lines of credit to individuals and businesses.  The community banking conundrum is driven by multiple converging factors, among them competition from big banks for deposits—especially those of a commercial nature—as well as geographic limitations (many community banks have operated more consistently in less wealthy communities, going to places the big banks have avoided). The localized lending that community banks do is a cornerstone of enabling financial inclusion and energizing the American dream.

As a fintech leader, I find it disturbing that one of the larger perceived pressures of community banking comes from our sector. Technology companies in areas such as lending are threatening areas of profitability for community banks. It’s one thing to have your deposit base eroded, but it becomes difficult for community banks to survive this phenomenon in tandem with the erosion of their loan base, especially in small business lending.

I see this differently.

One person’s threat is another’s opportunity.  While I’ll let other fintechs speak to their own models and motivations, I can tell you with complete authenticity that Celero and its brands are developing leading-edge technology, in payments, software-as-a-service, analytics, business intelligence, social monitoring, and sales tools, and we are doing so to fulfill our commitment to help our community bank partners and their small business customers compete and win.

And we don’t limit ourselves to simply selling our own products and services. In our role as strategic partners and advisors, we not only help our community bankers realize a more expansive relationship with their clients, but we also help them connect the dots with regard to all of the tools at their disposal. My colleague and co-founder, Jeff Brown, exemplified this ethos recently, as he explained how our bank partners can increase fee income and deposit balances through payments and funding accounts earmarked for asset-based lending. Deposits are the launchpad for lending capability, and community bank loans provide a significantly healthier injection of capital than alternative lending options. As I stated before, these loans fuel innovative small businesses in towns all across America.

We are convinced that in order for community banks to fulfill their mission and continue to better serve rural Americans, as well as those in small towns and underserved urban neighborhoods, they need the right strategic partners, the right products, and the right tools to succeed.

Last year, when I began acquiring the strategic pieces of Celero and combining that with my dream team of executives, managers, and performers, I was grateful to find that our stakeholders completely embraced our vision to bring enterprise-level technology in terms of best-in-class payments capabilities and consumable technology tools, to small and mid-sized companies across the country. It’s obvious to me that when you give community bankers—some of the smartest people who are driven to help their business clients as much as they can—the tools to help their customers succeed, you can achieve your own bottom line goals, while helping your partners and their customers achieve theirs, too. Accelerating the growth of our partners and business customers is the core focus. Combining community bank products and services with our fintech offerings creates a formula that positions these small to mid-size businesses to not only survive and compete, but to lead and thrive in a sustainable way.

Aligning your own success to that of your partners and their customers isn’t original, nor should it be particularly noteworthy. But at this point in our history, our community banks need all of us operating on this principle, doing everything we can to work together to serve American business. According to the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, firms with fewer than 20 employees account for more than 89 percent of American businesses. That statistic alone tells you the magnitude of what we’re facing here, but I’m glad to know we are partnering with some of the most capable people in business, and commit that Celero will strive to hold up its end of the deal, passionately cultivating the success of our bank partners.