The lights dimmed, "Let's Go" started playing, and I walked on stage with the kind of energy that suggested I might actually break into dance moves. "They asked me for a walk-up song, and it seemed like that was a fitting one. My wife helped me pick it," I said with a grin. "You know, we level up by letting go. Let's go!"
What followed wasn't your typical financial services keynote. This was part business strategy, part family story, and part wake-up call for an industry caught between the promise of digital transformation and the irreplaceable power of human connection.
The central paradox I presented to your room full of Desert Financial leaders was stark: "The world is moving faster than ever before. Here's the thing though: speed alone doesn't create progress, it just amplifies what is already there."
Standing before your organization that had exploded from 300,000 to 500,000 members in just five years while maintaining your 85-year commitment to community impact, I delivered a message that I know the room wasn't expecting. The challenge wasn't about sustaining your growth trajectory. It was about doubling your membership to one million without doubling your team, without losing your humanity, and without sacrificing the authentic connections that built your success.
The Hidden Weight of Rapid Growth
Walk into any thriving organization today and you'll feel it immediately: the energy, the momentum, the intoxicating rush of rapid expansion. But here's what most leaders miss in that exhilarating moment: speed creates pressure, and pressure becomes weight.
That's exactly what happens in high-growth organizations. We accumulate habits, beliefs, systems, and stories. Patterns that served us for decades suddenly become dead weight. Top-line revenue growth can bury massive amounts of waste. When things are going well, we don't turn over every stone. We don't examine every process. We just keep moving faster, assuming speed equals success.
But speed without a soul is just noise. Efficiency without authenticity is just empty.
The Mario Kart Philosophy of Business Growth
My approach to business wisdom comes from unexpected places. Take my relationship with my 11-year-old son, who happens to be on the autism spectrum with ADHD and sensory processing challenges. For years, I resisted his obsession with Fortnite. Then I asked myself a different question: "What if I actually played with him? What if I actually gave myself the chance to learn what he's doing and understand?"
The investment? A Nintendo console. The return? Immeasurable.
He was excited for me and couldn't understand why I would not be playing the game non stop. When I explained to him I only bought my Nintendo to play with him, it was a moving moment. The idea that I invested in this because it was HIS interest, changed our connection immediately.
The moment crystallized something profound about connection in an age of endless digital distraction. I didn't buy the Nintendo for myself. I bought it to understand my son's world, to create shared experiences, to bridge a gap that traditional parenting approaches couldn't reach.
This same principle applies to every member interaction at your credit union. Are you using technology to understand and connect with your members' worlds, or are you using it to automate yourself out of meaningful relationships?
The Greatest AI Investment You're Not Making
Everyone's talking about artificial intelligence these days, and I do extensive work in that space. During my presentation, I demonstrated this point by launching an AI-powered drone that followed me around the stage throughout my talk. "Because I can't have a camera person in my pocket with me everywhere I go," I explained. The drone captured unique angles, created valuable video content, and showcased how AI can amplify human capability.
But when I tell leaders that AI is the greatest investment they can make, I'm not talking about artificial intelligence.
I'm talking about awareness and intentionality.
"Without these, your tools won't matter. Your technology won't convert. Your leadership initiatives will fall flat. Your frontline interactions with customers will lack the depth needed to build lasting relationships."
In April, Stanford researchers found that ChatGPT 4.5 passed the Turing test 73% of the time. That means nearly three-quarters of humans believed they were communicating with another human when they were actually interacting with AI.
The 7% Communication Crisis
The answer lies in understanding a startling statistic that I learned from a volunteer coordinator at St. Vincent de Paul. This woman managed to effectively communicate with a 90% Spanish-speaking population despite knowing fewer than 12 words of Spanish herself.
Her secret? "The heart will communicate more clearly than any word ever will."
The science backs this up: only 7% of communication comes from words themselves. Another 38% comes from delivery, tone, and cadence. The remaining 55% is non-verbal energy and connection.
"What does that mean if you are only communicating with your family or your teammates or your members with emails, with text messages? You're giving them less than 10% of the communication you intend," I pointed out.
This revelation has massive implications for credit unions investing heavily in digital channels. While technology enables scale, the organizations that thrive will be those that use technology to enhance human connection, not replace it.
There are 40,000 cells in the heart called sensory neurites: brain-like cells that carry cellular memories. Research shows that if you go through the intellectual process of making changes or expressing gratitude using only your intellect, those 40,000 cells do nothing.
Unless you embody the associated emotions, nothing happens.
Your members need to feel that you care. They need to feel that you understand their journey so you can speak words that allow them to see hope and potential in ways that create lasting connection. After all, financial well being is about the emotional relationship your members have with money. If they don't feel it, they won't heal it.
The Waste to Wealth Methodology in Action
My business philosophy started with literal waste. At 11 years old, when my parents wouldn't increase my allowance, I painted "Brian's Poop Pail" on a bucket with puffy paint and started a door-to-door dog waste removal service. "Nobody wanted to pick up their dog crap, and I was happy, willing, and able to do so," I explained. More importantly, I learned to scale that simple service into multiple revenue streams.
That childhood hustle became the foundation for what I now call the Waste to Wealth methodology: helping organizations identify waste they don't even know exists and transforming it into wealth-generating activities.
"Anything that you do that does not add incremental value is, by definition, waste," I explained. "Wasted time, wasted energy, wasted money, wasted resources because of lack of clarity, lack of connection."
For Desert Financial who is scaling rapidly, this principle becomes critical. How do you double in size without doubling your team? How do you maintain the personal touch that differentiates credit unions from big banks while serving exponentially more members?
The Framework for Exponential Growth
After years of working with high-performing organizations, I've discovered that companies achieving exponential growth do so not by doing more, but by doing better. They master critical components that allow them to move together without losing connection with each other and, most importantly, with their members. These have been distilled into the Waste to Wealth Pillars we reviewed.
Awareness: Understanding Without Judgment
Most people think awareness means becoming more conscious of their shortcomings. They raise their awareness but then become more aware of all the ways they should be judging themselves instead of knowing what to do about it.
When awareness creates judgment instead of forward movement, growth stops immediately. The second shame and blame exist, growth goes out the window.
True awareness is about understanding what you can change, what has served you, and where you're headed with as much clarity as possible. Awareness is never about judgment; it's about understanding. Because from understanding, we can have connection and conversion.
Ownership: Acting on What You See
We can't be intentional with what we're unaware of, but we also can't own what we're unaware of.
Ownership operates on two levels. First, when we unintentionally create damage, we must find a way to facilitate repair. Second, ownership means creating congruence between your intent and what your words actually communicate.
For organizations to achieve exponential growth, each leader must embrace this principle: If you see it, act on it. If you see it, ask questions about it. If you see it, do something.
Unpacking: Finding the Source to Clear the Path
Here's a principle I've learned: you do not get to remove the trash from your path until you find the source or sources that created it. Why is this important? Because your trash and your treasure are often formed in the same moment.
If we don't feel, we don't heal. Those 40,000 sensory neurites in your heart prove this scientifically. If done intellectually alone, nothing changes. You must embody the associated emotions.
You have 85 years of patterns as an organization. What no longer serves you? What needs to be surfaced and updated?
Flip the Lid: Creating Space Between Reaction and Response
In every growth journey, there's a moment when awareness and ownership meet emotion; that's where we flip the lid. It's the conscious choice to pause before reacting, to release the pressure that's been building under the surface, and to see what's really driving the response. When we flip the lid, we stop letting old patterns lead us and start leading from truth. That space between reaction and response is where transformation lives.
This is where you can speak truth, reclaim the moment and redirect conversation to clarity. It takes practice, but this helps you rewrite the patterns and create less damage.
Moving: Real-Time Pattern Recognition
This is simplified pattern recognition and pattern interruption: the ability to reclaim a conversation in a moment by stepping into truth and clarity in real time.
When you get triggered (and everyone gets triggered), pause and ask yourself three questions:
1. Is what I'm reacting to right now due to what's right in front of me or the trash from my past? (Ninety-nine percent of the time, it's the second.)
2. What am I protecting right now? Are you protecting your numbers? Your reputation? Your sense of success?
3. Am I safe right now? Mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally safe?
If the answer is yes, then lower the armor and open yourself. Want it even more simple? This simple calibration can be used with anything in your lives and business: Are your words, actions, and behaviors taking you closer to or further away from who you are and what you want?
The Power of Moving People Through Authentic Connection
My story begins as a seven-year-old boy in an ICU bed, his left arm severed by a truck, staring at children with terminal illnesses who didn't know if they'd live another 30 days. That moment of perspective shaped not just my life, but my understanding of what truly moves people.
"I always pause when I tell this because I recognize how unique my story is," I reflect. "But what I also know is in the 33 years I've been telling my story, every single stage I get on is a reminder that each and every one of you have equally, if not more, powerful stories."
What I discovered in that hospital bed became the foundation of my core philosophy: moved people, move people. But here's what makes my message revolutionary for financial institutions: the very protection mechanisms we develop to survive often become the barriers that prevent us from truly serving others.
"I was never going to allow myself to get stuck by the things that have happened to me, but instead get moved by what I can do with them," I explain.
Clarity as Currency
The thread connecting all of my insights was clarity. "Clarity is everything. Clarity is the fastest path to wealth. It's the fastest path to success. It's the fastest path to connection."
But here's the catch: true clarity rarely comes from planning. It emerges through action, through what I call "challenge or confirmation." Every decision provides feedback. Every interaction teaches something. Every member touchpoint either confirms you're on the right track or challenges you to adjust course.
For Desert Financial, this means embracing experimentation while staying grounded in core values. It means using technology to deepen member relationships, not just digitize existing processes. It means recognizing that in a world where AI can mimic human conversation, authentic human connection becomes your most valuable differentiator.
The Path Forward: Growing Better, Not Just Bigger
As my presentation wound down, my message crystallized around a simple but powerful idea: sustainable growth happens when you align speed with awareness, technology with humanity, and efficiency with empathy.
The credit union that reaches a million members won't be the one with the most sophisticated chatbots or the slickest mobile app. It will be the one that uses every piece of technology to prove, again and again, that it understands its members' worlds and genuinely cares about their financial well-being.
For Desert Financial to move from 500,000 to one million members, remember this: you're moving faster than you ever have. You're going to cover the same ground that took 85 years to cover in way less time, probably less than a decade.
But it comes down to each of you, each individual leader.
Your organization doesn't move until each of you do. Your members don't move until each of you do.
The future isn't about more: it's about better. One choice, one moment, one action at a time.
In a financial services landscape increasingly dominated by algorithmic efficiency and digital-first strategies, that might just be the most revolutionary approach of all. And yet, the revolutionary approach only grounds you further into what already got you here.