Building a Life of Purpose

In this episode…

Nic Cary interviews Richard and they discuss the lessons learned during his career journey including:

• The importance of building strong relationships and a culture of service in both business and community work.
• The value of diversity and inclusion in fostering innovation and effective problem-solving.
• The necessity of financial acumen and strategic planning to support sustainable business growth and impact.

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Sky’s The Limit, one of the largest nonprofit programs for underrepresented young adult entrepreneurs in the US. Sky’s The Limit is a quick-growing digital platform that connects entrepreneurs with their peers, volunteer business mentors, training resources, and funding.

Our goal is to develop the social capital that founders need to chase their business dreams.

To learn more, please visit www.skysthelimit.org today.

Episode transcript

INTRO (00:04):

Welcome to The First Buck Podcast where we feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who support them. Now let's get started with the show,

Nic Cary (00:24):

Hello and welcome to The First Buck Podcast, brought to you by skysthelimit.org. We feature stories about entrepreneurs and the people who, who support them. Today we're joined by Richard Bynum, chief corporate responsibility officer at, the PNC Financial Services group and a member of its executive committee. In this role, he leads the PNC foundation, community affairs, responsible business strategies, community development, banking, and diversity and inclusion.

In addition, Bynum is leading the implementation of PNC's community benefits plan, which through the company, will provide at least 88 billion in loans, investments and other financial support to bolster economic opportunity for low to moderate income individuals and communities and people of color. Over a four year period prior to joining PNC, Bynum had a twelve year career as a senior manager for the American Red Cross.

(01:16):
His last role with the organization was the managing director for disaster response and emergency communications at the Chicago chapter. During his career, he was an operations director for the Kosovo refugee operation as well as the September 11 effort in New York. Bynum is widely recognized as one of Washington, DC's most influential business leaders by the Washington Business Journal and others.

He serves on the board of numerous nonprofits and civic organizations and institutions. We are very fortunate to welcome Richard Bynum with us today. So Richard, we got a little tradition around here. We gotta learn and ask you a question. How did you earn your first book?

Richard Bynum (01:52):

Well, first of all, great question. I earned my first buck in a way that I think is gonna go the way of the dodo. I was a paper boy. I had a paper boy. A route, sort of four or five blocks from my neighborhood. I hopped on my bike, folded newspapers and threw them on people's porches.

Nic Cary (02:11):

I love that. Okay, so, potentially a career from a slightly earlier era. I don't know what the modern equivalent of that might be today. Maybe it's like curating a news list on social media or something. Okay, so you're a paper boy. What happens next? What was your second or third sort of job?

Richard Bynum (01:52):

Yeah, so I went on and in high school, you know, sort of carved out a space working, for a local, but national franchise pizza shop. I started as the mascot, and I don't know, the manager saw enough in me to trust this, you know, sort of 16 year old kid to then come inside and deal with customers and pizza and all kinds of things.

And so before too long, I became a manager in training before college. And then that went on to be my summer college job for the first couple of years as well. Before I sort of got into other things.

Nic Cary (03:05):

Okay, so we go from paper boy to mascot, to coming into the pizza shop. I think pizza shops are amazing. They're like one of the most recession proof businesses in the world. And you're sort of brought into the fold, brought behind the counter, taught about how to run the actual business.

What were some of those maybe most important early lessons you learned about customer service quality, and running a small business like that?

Richard Bynum (01:52):

It was a startup pizza shop. They had just really opened, which is why I think he was so keen to take an option with me. I actually learned a ton working there. Carl Turpec, was his name. It just popped into my head, and Carl was, now I would recognize a young 25 year old guy probably getting his first chance to open a store by himself, hiring a bunch of characters, which is how I would speak about the folks I got to know, managing those characters, and carving out a market later on down the road, I can academize what was going on.

You know, pizza's pretty, you know, standard fare, so people understand what that is. But this was a time, and I don't want to give away what the franchise was, but this was a time where you know, it was sort of 30 minutes or free kind of methodology, right?

So you, so you can imagine the types of folks who were you know, hopping in their car, strapping on one of those things to their roof so that people knew who it was, you know, speeding around the neighborhood and getting you, you know, your pepperoni pizza within, you know, 27 minutes and expecting a tip for it.

(04:45):
But you know, so managing those characters and watching Carl sort of navigate those challenges carving out, you know, the marketplace, you know, against whatever competitors were there, you know, finding his own way in terms of, you know, meeting customers where they were, you know, I suppose any given night, some five or 7% of the customers called up and said my pizza wasn't the way I wanted it to be.

And he and others and I had to learn how to be responsive to that, to keep their business. So it was actually a pretty good trading ground for a kid who had very little in the way of a business education at that point. And it didn't hurt that I was getting more than a few bucks.

Nic Cary (05:31):

I love it. So with Carl's early mentorship,  able to sort of, build up your early business vocabulary. It's funny that you talk about the pizza shop, you know, the very first phone number I ever memorized, my mom was a single mom. And worked as a court interpreter in Colorado.

And Friday nights was, like, treat night. It was the one night my mom would sort of splurge, and we would go get one double cheese pizza and would always get delivered under 30 minutes. And it was pizza pros. And the first number I ever memorized was the phone number for that place, so.

Richard Bynum (06:03):

And on the other side of that, I will tell you, there was a room full of people scurrying around, doing a couple hundred pizzas an hour. And that was some of the most fun I had had in my life.

Nic Cary (06:16):

I like that. Okay, so we learned how you earn your first buck and then a few extras. What were some of the most important investments that you made in yourself in your early career? How did you go about thinking about where to focus your time or your energies or, um, your learning?

Tell us a little bit about that.

Richard Bynum (06:35):

Interesting, because my son is about to go off to college this fall, and I've tried to impress on him some of the things, some of the lessons, some of the bumping my head up against a wall so that he doesn't. But I think everyone has to sort of find their own way in this.

I, you know, was in school in the late eighties, early nineties, and it was in the midst of a coming depression recession. Now that I again, can look back at these things, I was a political science major at Florida State University. I knew that I was going to go into politics that was quickly dispelled when I got to join a couple political campaigns.

And although the candidate won, I wasn't one of the folks selected to head to DC and head to the hill and do that work and so very quickly had to think, well, what am I going to do? And I was fortunate that my mother actually worked for the Red Cross.

(07:27):
She was able to sort of get a job for me in their biomedical unit. And I found myself in a white coat in a lab expressing blood products, which is another side of the work that the red cross does and I remember very vividly having what I know, at other parlance, folks call a moment of clarity.

I was in the middle of a training, learning about how to do this work. And I discovered for myself in that moment, if I didn't do something, I was going to have, not the life that I intended to have. And it was literally a light switch for me.

And I turned on a sense of connecting to folks, learning their skills and what they did, adapting those skills to whatever I was doing, doing it with a fair amount of quality in mind. And those were some of the, what I now know were some of the really early building blocks.

I was able to sort of claw my way out of the lab and move on to one of the businesses within the Red Cross is first aid products and health and safety services, CPR and so forth. And I became a salesperson for them and did pretty well at that job and then was later able to parlay that into really what is one of the things that the Red Cross has been known for, for decades and decades, is disaster relief.

(08:59):
This was not too long after Hurricane Andrew, which is ancient history to probably many who listen to your podcast at the time. It was the most devastating hurricane to have hit South Florida in its memory. And both the Red Cross and the federal government after, in its aftermath, invested a ton of resource into their capabilities.

I was a part of that wave, and I learned a ton. You know, in a very fast way, sort of from the mid nineties into the later nineties and early two thousands in that world. And so my career, you know, sort of went from light bulb on post undergrad with political science degree to intent on driving for a life and a career and a focus that was purposeful and meaningful to me.

And fortunately, with some good luck and some listening and some frankly, hopefully good management practice, I was able to carve out a pretty good career with Red Cross. I thought actually my career would be with the Red Cross. I was on a path for them to lead organizations and go on to do some different things.

(10:16):
And then one morning in the fall, I was in my car on my way to work and my boss called and said a small plane hit the towers in New York. You probably need to come in here. And then a few minutes later he said, hey, get in here.

The second plane has hit those towers. This is a big deal. And that began a morning and a week and a half in Chicago that I'll never forget. And then a few months later, I headed to New York for several months to help with that effort.

Nic Cary (10:54):

Wow. Okay, so basically, you're in the back room doing these sort of blood samplings and you sort of have that moment where you can sort of envision yourself not leaving that lab and light switch happens. And the only person that can really get you motivated is yourself in that situation to invest in learning more to adapting your skills.

You said focusing on skill quality. Those were three really interesting, I think very, very poignant things for people to think about when they're maybe in a situation that they weren't sure they find themselves in and not sure they can get themselves out of. Um, but I think when you find that, that moment and have that motivation a lot can change and it can set you off on a completely different trajectory.

So from there to developing more skills, business management and heading into those bigger functions within the Red Cross and obviously finding yourself in those moments to put purpose and service to the work in these disaster scenarios must have been incredibly profound. So after 911, talk to us a little bit about the pivot into PNC.

Richard Bynum (11:56):

Yeah, yeah. Another sort of moment, I wouldn't say of clarity, but of direction. And maybe for some of your listeners who don't our work sort of connected at 911. 911 was a profound moment for the country. It was a profound moment for a lot of folks who'd been doing the work that I've been doing, either in the government or in an NGO for the Red Cross.

It was a profound moment because we were in the midst of a leadership transition from one leader to another. And in that transition, the leader at the time made some decisions that, frankly, and by the way, backdrop here, right. So, this type of medium that we're talking on right now was just beginning to sort of, you know, be discovered.

(12:49):
So that you had the 24 hours news cycle, you had content as a, as a thing. And in all of that, the decisions that I think leaders made and historically sort of were able to make and then follow through on got scrutiny at a level that they were just not familiar with.

And so that leader made a set of decisions that were highly scrutinized. It ultimately led to that leader resigning their post and it led to the red cross, I think, going on a journey of trying to reestablish itself as the preeminent NGO for disaster relief for a number of years, lots of changes afoot.

And I had to sort of decide for myself whether or not I wanted to be a part of those changes again. I was part of another set of changes from, at that stage almost more than ten years ago. And I wasn't sure. So and then, you know, when you think about skill building, which you had talked about a moment ago, I recognized in myself that one of the skills I didn't have was a lot of business acumen.

(13:55):
So I thought even if I stayed the course that I was on having that set of skills would serve me. And I was in Chicago, so I was the beneficiary of a number of great institutions of higher learning and I had sort of centered in, on the master's in business administration, or MBA, and was fortunate enough to be accepted into the Kellogg School of management at Northwestern University, and began on a part time basis getting my MBA, and really going into it, didn't know where I would go, you know, frankly, I was really leaning away from the Red Cross, but wasn't quite sure of that path and that would be uncertain for someone with my background at that stage.

So I got what I would call a very plain vanilla MBA because I did not have a business degree in undergrad. And one day in my late part of my first year, I got an email from a headhunter who said, look, we've looked in the resume book and we saw your resume and it has in it some of the qualities, my client is really looking for.

(15:04):
Would you be interested in coming and talking to a small mid Atlantic bank? And I said, I don't know anything about banking, but sure, I got a bank. Exactly. I have a checking account. So if that counts as skills, I'm your guy. So that began a series of conversations where a gentleman, Davey Huddleston, flew out to Chicago, met with me in a restaurant.

We talked for about an hour and a half. He invited me then to come to Pittsburgh, where I met probably six of the most senior executives of the small bank.

Nic Cary (15:39):

Did they position themselves at the small bank?

Richard Bynum (15:41):

Well, they were at that time.

Nic Cary (15:45):

Okay.

Richard Bynum (15:46):

Yeah, 2005 PNC was, you know, look, small is a relative term, I suppose. I believe we were something in the neighborhood of 125 billion assets, which is not big.

Nic Cary (15:56):

Huge American banks at that time. Pre-great financial crisis, yeah.

Richard Bynum (16:03):

You got it. So, right. So today we sit just south of 600 billion in assets. We're a pretty large bank now, but we're I don't know, a 6th of the size of a JP Morgan.

Nic Cary (16:14):

Right, right.

Richard Bynum (16:16):

So just to give some relative scale to all of that.

But yeah, we were. And at the time PNC had focused on what I would call sort of the Rust belt, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Kentucky. That was really where we did our work. We had just acquired a bank in DC that was called Riggs bank, which was hundreds of years old, called the bank of president.

It's very famous institution, got in a little trouble, and we were able to acquire them. And it was the first time PNC extended itself into what I would call a dynamic, growing marketplace and it would actually be a centerpiece for my career at PNC. I didn't know that at the time but later on it certainly would be.

So in any event, found myself graduating from Kellogg, resigning from the Red Cross, just before Katrina, literally days before Katrina, and going on to PNC in Pittsburgh.

Nic Cary (17:13):

Amazing. Okay. Well I think a lot of the experience you obviously had in disaster recovery would come into be very, very valuable to the organization as they grew so quickly over such a short period of time. Let's talk a bit about that time at PNC bank.

How do you think about developing a culture of service within a large financial services business and especially taking some of the work you did, when you had these scenarios where there were a lot of vulnerable people after a problem, but then you want to come in and rebuild and forge community.

How is that, how do you think about that across PNC?

Richard Bynum (17:53):

Great question, and it's one that I don't think people think a lot about. But I think when you look at banks, doesn't really matter. The bank, I think you look at them as these monoliths of the economic process. Perhaps you have a checking account, maybe you have a loan for your home, what have you, but it's a bit of a black box.

You put something in, you expect something out, and so forth. But if you really step back and think about it in our system and frankly any other system, you need a place to go to leverage what you have, your capital, and you'll think about it in terms of, well, I want to go to school or I want to buy a home, or I want to send my kids to college or I need a car, or more and more these days, I need to be able to manage my financial information in such a way that I can do what I want to, where and when I want to do it.

That's essentially the service of a bank. Now we try to figure out ways to maximize that so that we are taking one input, maybe the money from your checking account, and leveraging it against what a company CEO has said is an important thing that's going to help his or her business thrive and by the way, create jobs.

(19:34):
So there's a whole economic cycle to that. And so for me, and maybe it's a naive view, I find banking to be a tremendously a service-oriented business. It's a business, make no mistake about it, I'm a business guy. I now call myself a banker. It's been 20 years, so I think I learned that title.

But I certainly do so in particular from a perspective that one, everyone has, every customer has choice, every client has choice. What we have are a set of at their core, commodity products. You can go to any number of places and get a checking account.

You can go to any number of places generally, and get a loan for the things that you want to do, and you need to provide and prove your creditworthiness. But beyond that, lots of folks will give you money for the things that you want to do. So what differentiates us is a couple of things.

(20:32):
One of them is service. One of them is, am I here  when times are good and when times are bad, right. Another is, what they used to call place or distribution. Am I where you need me to be, when you need me to be there?

And more and more, that's a conversation both in the real world and what we call brick and mortar, as well as in the virtual world, what we call digital. But am I showing up in a way, and to you, that's leverageable in what you're trying to do? But what's key to all of that and key to the service that we provide is what are you trying to do?

Are you trying to. I just simply, you know, there have been those moments, right, where I'm simply trying to get this thing done so I can live my life. I really don't care about all the rules and the banking regulations and all those things that you have to put up with to provide that service to me.

I just need to make sure that my kid's tuition reaches their institution because they've called me and said, look, you know, we're putting your kid in class, and we want to. We want our check for that, right? And sometimes we don't make it easy, and sometimes the regulations that we have to deal with don't make it easy.

(21:46):
That's my job. That's part of the job, part of the service that I bring to the table for being a banker in the work that I do today in this role of corporate responsibility, it extends even further. It extends to me. Being able to serve four real constituents.

Our employees, our customers, the communities in which we operate, and our shareholders. You really can't forget our shareholders. It's their money that allows me to do any of this  stuff. So for our employees, that means helping provide a place where they can come and find gainful, meaningful employment for themselves and their lives.

They can build and thrive in a career. They can grow themselves, and develop into whatever their aspiration is. And that, by the way, means anybody. So when you think about diversity, and there's a lot in the backdrop today talking about diversity, but what it means at its core is for me anyway, it's a bit of a risk mitigate. I want different perspectives and people coming from different backgrounds at the table so that they can all stare at the problem I'm trying to solve and give me the best solutions from those perspectives.

(23:09):
If I have all the same people looking at the problem, I'm only going to get one point of view about it, and thus there's no chance I'm going to be successful. I'm going to make a mistake because I haven't encountered all of the perspectives about this thing that I'm creating.

For our customers, it's not too distinctly different. Our customers, look, we're in a time where we are making active decisions every day about where I get my cup of coffee. Well, I'm not going to go there. Why aren't you going to go there? Well, I don't like their coffee and I don't like what they're doing, whatever that is, whatever my perception of that is.

And they're voting with their feet. And by the way, I'm okay with that. They should vote with their feet. Uh, that's part of the economic process. It always has been. We simply can talk about it and share that information because we've got all these wonderful computers and phones and tablets in front of our faces.

(24:01):
Our communities look, our communities distinctly need the services that a bank would provide. I had a community activist tell me a couple of years ago, he said if banks didn't exist, we'd have to create them. And he's right. He's right. Absolutely right. You would have to have some mechanism to exchange goods and services in a way that you could trust that those things were happening, uh, to benefit, uh, whatever you're trying to come up with.

And also those communities have an expectation that, uh, they should be put in a position to thrive. And we happen to believe as a bank that when they thrive, we thrive. So it's in our best interest to serve that community's needs. And we try to do that in any number of ways.

And then finally, our shareholders expect a return on their investments. And when I talk about shareholders again, I think people get this sort of glazed look that the billionaire class or whatever it is. Um, Im talking about a mom whos got a 401K, whos invested in financial services or PNC.

(25:11):
I'm talking about, um, a young kid who's putting their first hard earned dollars into their investment vehicles. Im talking. About people who are putting money forward, putting a buck forward, and expecting over the course of time that if their investment was wise, that money will create other money for them to go on and do the things that they do.

Those are, those are really good things. I don't find anything bad about those at all.

Nic Cary (25:30):

I love the way you sort of mapped all those things out. The role that CSR corporate social responsibility plays, um, in a large firm like yours, where you're there for the employees to make sure that they have an environment that they can thrive in and achieve their potential. You're there for your customers in those communities, so they can, uh, continue to grow and grow deeper roots.

And, uh, you're there for your shareholders, too, um, which involves everybody who's involved in all of that. A sustainable business is necessary to continue, uh, to provide benefits to all the shareholders across those three categories. So, um, thank you for sharing that perspective. So you at PNC Bank, I mean, your business serves tens of thousands, probably, arguably millions of businesses, um, across the United States, and many new and early smaller businesses, too.

(26:18):
So young entrepreneurs and early-stage entrepreneurs, um, often think, God, if I just had some money, if I just had that free loan or, uh, uh, that income somewhere, um, then building my business would be really easy and I wouldn't have any problems. I think, as you learned, it takes a lot of different skill sets, um, from being in the trenches to developing communication capabilities to learning how to sell, you know, what lessons from your career would you sort of maybe, um, share, uh, with our audience about how early stage smaller businesses should think about how to engage with a PNC, and when should they come and talk with you?

Richard Bynum (27:00):

Great question. And so, in my background, um, one of the jobs that I've had is I was the CEO for our small business division for a period of time. So I'm a big believer in small business. Um, I think, uh, it's the heartbeat, frankly, of America. Many people don't know that small businesses generate, um, probably roughly half the jobs, uh, in the country.

Um, and by the way, I think in this, at one point, a lot of folks are calling it the gay economy. Um, I think it's evolved a little bit beyond that now. But what I love about the idea of people as entrepreneurs is there's nothing more passionate than, uh, you, uh, breathing life into an idea and having it go forward and then having that idea feed your life and lifestyle.

I mean, I met a number of owners and operators of what I would call small businesses over the years, and each of them so passionate about what they're doing. Uh, so passionate about bringing their product set to life. Many of them service, uh, some of them retail. It really doesn't matter.

(28:10):
Um, they just love what they do, particularly if it was a new to life idea. Uh, what they're not passionate about and what they don't love are. The, uh, work of operating a business, right. Uh, in many cases, um, this idea of cash flowing from customer to them coming out in the form of capital that's required for creating their operations. These are the last things on most entrepreneurs minds, and in some ways, they kind of need to be the first things. There's that old adage that, um, in small business and startups in particular, wherever, you know, as you put down on paper for the first time, your business plan, and you put down your financial projections, and you start talking about the type, uh, and the amount of money that you'll need to breathe life into your business, um, whatever that number is, triple it, right, because you've obviously missed some things that you just don't know what you don't know.

Um, and things will be way more expensive than you anticipated, because you're the, you know, your anticipation actually is getting the business off the ground. It's not creating the operating environment to make that business thrive. I would say spend some time early and often with a banker, get your team together, which is probably not advice, probably is advice that lots of folks have heard.

(29:38):
Right. When I talk about your team, I'm talking about an attorney. Uh, I'm talking about perhaps an accountant or someone who understands how accounting systems work, ah, financial statements and so forth, pro formas and the rest, and get a banker to go. And you would be surprised, I think, at, ah, finding that, um, there are a number of bankers, I can't speak for attorneys and I can't speak for cpas, although I would guess you find the right people.

This is true as well, who would just love to just talk to you about your idea and about the backbone of your idea that needs to be your operating environment, your financial plan, like what types of, you know, when you talk to, um, I'm guessing any of our small business bankers, and you describe what your business is, they're gonna immediately go into, well, you need to be able to take credit cards as an example, by the way.

I don't know who doesn't these days? You need to be able to, um, uh, uh, you know, set aside money for travel. You need to be able to, how are you going to segregate your personal finances from your business's finances? How are you going to prepare for the tax burden that you're going to create for yourself?

(30:53):
What is your performer over the next three to five years? All of these questions that, again, do not swing to the passions of most entrepreneurs. They are the things that I would, someone else is going to do that for me. Um, and the answer is no. The answer is, at least in the early stages, that needs to be as important as that new product, that new thing that youre bringing to the market.

It needs to be as important because without it, that product doesnt stay in the market for very long. And your small business doesnt stay, as they say, a going concern for. Very long, um, which isn't the outcome anybody sort of wants. Um, the good news is there are tons of products and services that banks, um, have leaned into to create for small businesses these days.

That really becomes a lot easier than it has been historically to put together a system. Um, the other bit of good news is there are a number of what they call fintechs out there that have also cobbled together tools, uh, that can be very useful. Now, my word of caution about fintechs is one of the first things that they tell you in business school is, um, one of the major decisions you'll make in your life is who you do business with.

(32:13):
That doesn't just mean who you sell to, it also means who you depend on. And so if there's a great tool sort of fits on your phone, fits to your way of moving around, and really seems to solve a lot of problems for you, really get into who's behind that tool.

How is, uh, the security of that data happening? What happens to the information that flows? What, um, happens if that fintech doesn't survive, et cetera, et cetera. Those are things that you're going to want to know upfront versus after the fact, if things don't go perfectly. Cause they're probably never gonna go perfectly.

Nic Cary (32:54):

I think, ufortunately, a painful lesson in business is at some point, almost everyone learns that lesson, uh, in a way that hurts. So, um, definitely a reason why it's frequently, uh, pulls a lesson, which is to be careful who you do business with. Um, it's not prescriptive. They're not telling you not to do it.

They're just saying, be careful.

Richard Bynum (33:15):

Yeah, be careful. And ask, you know, if there's some, you know, I mean, look, we all have intuition, some of them sharper than others, but if something's buzzing in your head and if it's too good to be true, that it probably is, and ask another question.

Nic Cary (33:32):

Great advice. So, um, we're going to wrap up here. Not too far, but you got into something I wanted to spend a little more time on, which is building a team and who you surround yourself with, um, early on, and I think I, um, I want to talk a little bit about the role that sky's limit plays, um, in helping early, uh, stage entrepreneurs.

We surveyed our community over the last couple of years, and there were two reasons why a lot of young entrepreneurs didn't feel like maybe starting a business was a good idea or, um, there were some barriers, and the two main barriers were a lack of know how and a lack of role models.

And so I want to talk a little bit about how at PNC bank, you're focused on getting more volunteers into the communities, supporting, um, early stage entrepreneurs, and what role transferring social capital from business professionals that have it to those that don't. Why that's such an important aspect of helping our communities foster and grow, um, and especially supporting that next generation of young entrepreneurs.

Like you said, over 50% of all the jobs in the american economy start in small businesses. It is foundational.

To our company's economic success. Um, so how is PNC helping, uh, in that area?

Richard Bynum (33:45):

Yeah, well, I mean, so beyond just deploying capital, right. Which is financial capital, which is, um, obviously what I think most people think about when they talk about PNC or any financial services, um, institution.

Um, we are big believers, uh, in community and rolling up our sleeves. So for 20 years, we have, uh, been strong, um, advocates for early childhood education. As an example, we call it PNC grow up. Great. Um, and we not only deploy our dollars, uh, with that, uh, uh, activity and in partnership with organizations like Sesame street and Fred Rogers company, but we also invite our employees on an annual basis to deploy their sweat equity for up to 40 paid hours, uh, of volunteerism every single year.

Nic Cary (35:37):

Wow. Uh, nice.

Richard Bynum:

And for many years, that was focused almost solely on early childhood education activities. Um, over the course of the last four or five years, we've recognized that although we still believe, and actually through Covid, uh, we doubled down on early childhood education because it not only became an issue of preparing the future workforce, frankly, it became an issue of allowing the current workforce to actually go to work. Um, if you didn't have access to quality, affordable, uh, uh, early childhood education, you really didn't have a lot of choice, uh, in the matter. Um, but we extended that to what I call economic areas of economic opportunity. One of them is small business entrepreneurship.

And so we got connected to Sky's the limit back in 2021, um, uh, through a referral from a good friend of mine. And we were really, uh, interested, because, again, 2021, where were we? Many of us were, uh, at home. Many of us were looking into this computer screen.

Um, we had had to dial way back on our, uh, want to have our employees volunteer, which they had communicated to us, again, back to that platform. For employees, that connecting their work to their volunteerism was an important relationship for many of them in their lives. We couldn't really do, uh, and advocate for a lot of that in a world where you couldn't go to places and do the things that they had historically done in early childhood.

(37:09):
So we were looking for opportunities where we could, in this environment, still have, uh, a volunteer, uh, experience for them. And so sky's the limit. Fit that bill, because a lot of the volunteering, um, that's done, was done through the digital space, and it was leveraging the skills and the talents of PNC employees against kind of interesting problems.

Right. Um, we're a, quote, unquote, big bank. 56,000 employees today. Uh, we're in 54 markets coast to coast, all over the country. We deal in tens of millions of customers. Uh, we deal in systems that are quite complex and robust and there's nothing that I ever do by myself.

Right, thankfully. Um, so we're all sort of partnered together in the ways that you would imagine companies and corporations are. Um, if I'm presented with, uh, and I get this sometimes through my board service, the problem of a small business, um, who doesn't have the resources that I have and doesn't have 55,999 other people to help them, uh, work through something, but they're trying to work through.

(38:25):
How do I launch a website? How do I launch an e commerce platform? What are the things that I need to think about from a legal perspective, um, as I pursue a patent or whatever the case might be? These are one to one problems and uh, for PNC, those are the kinds of things where we go off and maybe we'll spend a few hundred thousand dollars on a consultant to help us think through those issues.

But a small business owner in particular, someone who's got a day job but has this amazing idea, wants to bring it to life, uh, doesn't have the wherewithal to do that. So where do they go? And what we've learned is where they go is a place like Sky's the limit that allows a matching, uh, the Internet.

Uh, one of the wonderful innovations of the Internet is this matching of supply and demand, um, a matching of the supply of sort of credentialed and technically proficient corporate people, uh, employees, to the demand of. I just need somebody to help me figure out how to do this one little thing that I think is the next puzzle piece to me.

(39:36):
Starting a whole new life as an entrepreneur. Um, and so since 20, uh, 21, uh, we've had uh, over five, uh, hundred volunteers, uh, at PNC contribute about 2300 hours of volunteer service, um, in relationships just like that. Um, and they're done discreetly, they're done privately, um, they're done leveraging the full expertise of our employees against the, the business problems of the entrepreneurs in question.

But um, not in a way that's going, um, to um, provide um, challenges to those employees down the road. So I can be in and out, I can stay in for a little while longer and help with maybe another problem that comes up. And so it's been a really nice uh, uh, platform, uh, for us, uh, to be involved with, particularly when uh, again we were mostly sitting at home, um, uh, and mostly confined to these screens.

Now, thankfully we are uh, uh, no longer in that space. We uh, have been able to fully activate our sort of brick-and-mortar volunteer program again. We have lots of employees out leveraging themselves against those opportunities, too. Um, but it's nice to have, uh, an opportunity and a choice.

Nic Cary (40:57):

I think that hybrid model is just going to be the way of the future. It's in person.

Richard Bynum (41:02):

Yeah, that's what we're seeing, right?

Nic Cary (41:04):

Yeah. Improved with hopefully technology that helps, um, people keep in touch and share experiences. So we'd be remiss not to recognize, uh, PNC's extraordinary leadership, um, in this way. Unlocking the talents of the staff at PNC to use their skills, um, in a flexible way, by connecting with young entrepreneurs and being coaches, advocates, an ear and a support system for them is invaluable.

Um, I think all business leaders, uh, tend to recognize that they've never been able to achieve everything all on their own and that support network across their careers, um, was vital and pivotal to, um, their business success. So we'll part on one last question, Richard. Um, I, uh, think that taking the steps to pursue starting a first business or, um, becoming an entrepreneur, even if you identify that way about being a small business owner, can be really intimidating and are kind of scary.

Um, so what maybe parting words of advice would you give to, uh, listeners out there, uh, for how to manage some of the stress that comes with running one's own business?

Richard Bynum (42:09):

Well, you know, that's, oh boy, that's a great question. Um, and it probably coincides with, uh, whether you're running your own business or you're working for a company, but you've got kind of a big job. I think, um, you have to take, uh, perspective. Um, I think as unhealthy sometimes as this can be, I think you have to find ways to compartmentalize, um, figure out your why and invest in that, but also invest in what energies you need to have in order to continue going.

So if that means that, and I know entrepreneurs who, you know, have baked into their sort of personal, uh, operations, you know, every ten weeks I need to take a week and a half away. You know, that's tough, right. Um, um, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, things are twenty four seven and uh, sometimes difficult to get away.

But this particular person that I know of, and she's in a service, uh, oriented industry, she tells her clients up front, she says, you know, look, I'm going to travel, um, and I'll be accessible, but I'm gonna carve out some space for myself to do this so that when I come back and we talk about me helping with the things that you're hiring me to do, I am fully present to those things.

I have to have that time away. And they found her valuable enough a resource to sort of understand that you have to figure out what that is for you, um, and invest in it as deeply as you would, um, a, uh, truck, if a truck was necessary for you to do the job that you're doing.

Or a, ah, great computer or whatever it is, because you're this input, um, that if you burn out, um, the rest of the machine doesn't work. Um, and so it's a tough lesson, um, because I equally know a lot of people. Burn the candles at both ends and, you know, at some point down the road, um, um, you know, just, it.

It's just too much. And then all of a sudden, you know, you. You know, you get into this place of. Of trying to self soothe in other ways that are maybe a little more destructive. Um, and all of a sudden now the wheels are off the rail and you're just.

You're just out of luck. So recognize, um, and know yourself early enough in the process that you invest in, um, that aspect, uh, of things as much as you would anything else. That probably would be the best advice I give.

Nic Cary (44:41):

All right, well, thank you so much. Got a lot to summarize here. So, Richard started off as a paper boy, worked in a pizza shop, became a mascot, became, uh, a master of business, served communities in times of extraordinary, uh, challenges and difficulties, invested, um, himself deeply with a master's degree, uh, and then has worked in one of the most preeminent financial institutions in America.

Uh, there's one quote you said today that really stood out to me, and it was about, uh, early stage businesses, where if you breathe life into an idea, that idea can feed you, um, for the rest of your life. And, uh, I think in closing, um, when you talked a little bit about how small business owners and entrepreneurs out there should think about, um, managing the.

The, uh, challenges, um, of running a small business, you know, figure out your why. That's your deep well of personal motivation for getting up every day and working on a problem set. Uh, I think you spoke a little bit about, you know, how important it is to manage one's energy through that whole duration.

There are going to be days where you got to get up, and you're going to have to run really hard, and then there are going to be days where you can walk, and then there are days where you have to rest. And, um, if you're in it for the long haul, um, you need to do those things.

And if you do those things and take care of your clients and, um, do no harm, then you can prosper. And so, thanks, uh, again so much, Richard, for all of your extraordinary contributions, um, and also for your wisdom today. And, uh, we are so grateful for the partnership we have with PNC bank, the thousands of hours that are donated by your staff for changing people's lives and helping them achieve their potential.

So, thank you so much. And, um, in conclusion, so it's skysthelimit.org. We connect underserved and underrepresented entrepreneurs with volunteer business professionals for free. On one mentoring, we also provide business guides to all of our members and monthly funding opportunities for you to kick start your own business. So please feel free to sign up today.

And if you, uh, like what you heard, you can subscribe and share this podcast. And once again, thank you to Richard for today.

OUTRO (46:41):

Thanks for listening to the First Buck podcast. Don't forget to join the community of underrepresented entrepreneurs and their supporters by signing up at skysthelimit.org. Click subscribe and we'll see you next time.