Kevin Adelsberger
Welcome to the Content Machine Podcast. This is episode one of two with leaders credit union’s CMO LeAnne Bentley. Leanne, thanks for taking the time to join us.
Leigh Anne Bentley
I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kevin Adelsberger
Leanne, you’re all about Jackson. You’re all over town. You’re on the United Way board.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Well, I just rotated off literally this past month. I just rotated off.
Kevin Adelsberger
After several years.
Leigh Anne Bentley
I’ve been on there since 2016.
Kevin Adelsberger
2016, and then I know you’re involved with the Leaders Education Foundation as well, and we’ll come back to that in a minute. But can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you ended up in Jackson?
Leigh Anne Bentley
Well, I was actually born and raised in Jackson. Okay, I didn’t know that. I was born and raised in Jackson. My family, my mother grew up in Jackson, so one of those long time Jacksonians. My dad’s from Crockett County, so all West Tennyas, Cillians. But I grew up here, went to J. C. M, to school, graduated there. Actually took my first marketing class at J. C. M, which has got me into marketing. Went off to Chattanooga for a couple of years, worked on there, did my marketing degree there and the NBA, worked at agency in Chattanooga for about five years, loved my time there, loved East Tennessee. But all my family is back here and my husband’s family is back here. So we came back here and the rest is history.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah. So you came back and worked.
Leigh Anne Bentley
As an agency here? We did. I worked for Young Associates. It’s a great firm. They still do great work. They do a lot of research stuff on a national level and then marketing on a regional level. And they do fantastic. Yeah.
Kevin Adelsberger
And you were there for?
Leigh Anne Bentley
I was there for all over 12 years.
Kevin Adelsberger
Twelve years. All right. And then an opportunity showed up at leaders. So what was your excited to jump into leaving the agency space and into a, well, I guess, a captive space? You’re working for one client all the time.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Well, I really never thought I would leave agency space because I did love agency work. That’s all I knew. For my first job out of college was at agency. And then when I moved back here, that’s where I gravitated to. But I got a call one day from leaders, and I wasn’t really planning on moving, but I can say that they were doing some really great stuff and some lot of stuff that really listened to my heart about financial wellness and things that we were doing. I guess one of the conversations that really spurred me into really even considering it, one of the questions they had asked me, who said, Well, if you were working here, what’s important to you? What do you want to see? And I said, Well, it’s ironic that you asked that. I said, My husband and I were just at church. We were just talking about programs. We were trying to brainstorm programs the church was having, and both of us independently put down financial wellness. And so that’s one thing that through our conversation, I said, We really believe in that. There’s something you believe into. You can put marketing dollars behind it, and they’ve put their money where their mouth is. And that’s something we’ve done and been a part of to the community. And so I feel like it’s a mission base in a sense. And so it’s hitting a different level. Although I love my agency days, I feel like on an individual basis, I’m making a big difference in the community for the people who need that step up or need financial wellness, counseling, or need to understand a credit score, or how to get out of debt. And so it’s been a passion from that aspect of seeing what I believe in and being able to put marketing dollars behind it.
Kevin Adelsberger
That’s neat to get to make that transition. And part of your work at leaders, well, not technically at leaders. I don’t even know if you explain how it’s connected to the Leaders Education Foundation.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Yes, it’s actually a separate entity. Leaders Credit Union is actually obviously a non-profit financial institution that was started in 1957. The Credit Union decided back in, I guess, several years ago, we want to be able to do more in the community. There’s one thing that I love about leaders, credit union, is we’re very community minded. As a non-profit, we look at it and go and figure out ways to give back. That’s how we’re able to help some of different companies. When we go do classes, we go do different things. How are we able to sponsor events is that our money is reinvested back into our members because we are member-owned, and so we invest back to the community, to our members, and technology. But we wanted to be able to do even more. So in 2019, we formed the Leaders Education Foundation. It’s actually a separate 501(c)(3), and it’s a terrible organization. It’s a nonprofit, not to be confused with a not-for-profit. Okay, that’s a good decision. So our leaders credit union. It is a not-for-profit. This is a nonprofit charity, 501(c)(3), so tax deductible type of things. And so with this, we’re able to expand. We have sponsors ourselves, and then we go out and sponsor different organizations. But we started as education credit union. So that’s why we created the Leaders Education Foundation. That was our heart and soul of where our mission was.
Kevin Adelsberger
Because teachers were the first customer.
Leigh Anne Bentley
We were. In 1957, we were started by teachers, just because back in the day, I did not realize this until I got to the credit union world. But teachers were considered part-time employees. So a lot of times they did not work 12-month contracts. So a lot of banks in different places would not give them loans without being cosigned or something else by somebody who had a full-time position. And so that’s one reason there were so many teachers credit unions created throughout the country. And then obviously we’ve grown since then. We merged with West to Seek Healthcare Credit Union. We’ve merged with Jackson-Sun, Cable, there’s a lot of different ones that we’ve merged with to become what we are today. So we’ve gone from 10 members to over 70,000 members. And now instead of just being focused on just teachers, we’re focused on educators, businesses, factories, healthcare, and communication. So healthcare, communication, and education are our three focal points, but we obviously work in much more other verticals as well, just because we’ve been able to grow so much through the mergers and different things that we’ve done. But the foundation, going back to that, how it’s really different is we are an arm of support for the community. So we have three areas of focus that we work on. One of them is educators, like right now we have our Leads Educator Grants that we’ll be giving out. We’re giving out probably, I think, $35,000 the next couple of weeks to different educators. They’re broken down into three categories. One’s our teacher classroom grants. My mom was a teacher. As I was a member of the credit union back when I was in high school, it was my first bank account. And so she taught school here at Jackson-Masson County Schools. So we give back to teachers, they can apply to how they’re going to spend a thousand dollars to their classroom. I know how much money she personally put in her pocketbook, out of her pocketbook, I should say. It was definitely a family sport. We were going in and helping get classrooms ready and putting bulletin boards together. And she spent a lot of her own money on her class throughout the year. So we said, What can we do to make a bigger impact? So right now, 25 of those grants, $1,000 grants, you can apply for say, How would you use this for your classroom? And then they have to create a video. They’re on our Facebook right now for voting. And then in October, we will give away 25,000. We also have professional development grants. So if someone wants to get additional certification or something and they need a little more funding, so if their school agrees, has to approve on that, then they can apply for grants for that. And then our last one is teacher appreciation. So just because we’re helping the classrooms out, sometimes they need a little extra loving as well. So principals and district leaders can apply for teacher appreciation grants to maybe stock a closet or throw a coffee party or whatever they want to do. So that’s our area for we support our teachers. The other is supporting students. We do that through collegiate scholarships and workforce development scholarships. Our workforce development scholarships, we have three times a year. Those are giving out people apply for TCATs or community colleges can mostly apply for those. And then our collegiate scholarships, we do every spring, and we’ve been giving away about $25,000 worth of grants or scholarships every spring for that. So that’s how we support our current students. And then our third area of focus is current programs. We know we can’t create and do all these new programs when there’s so many ones out there. They’re doing great things. So we try to find ones that are supporting education and see how we can help fund them, how we can help fund volunteers for them. So the ones we support right now, we support the Reed team. They’re one of our larger donors that we do. So we’ve got a five year commitment with them to help make sure they’re covered and then we support them in their while wagon, which supports the children, all the books going behind the rifeabust and different neighborhoods. We support West Teach, the program through Westar. So we make sure that that program has got funding to keep the teachers when they need additional fundings and how to pay for those programs. We’ve given money to the Imagination Library. Right now we’re doing programs for different scholarships for different arts. We did the art boxes past year with the Jackson Arts Council. Those were boxes that went to school system for different counselors that they can have projects when they talk to students. They gave them an activity and they could keep the art boxes. And there’s just a few of them that we’ve done. We look for different ways to increase that. And so actually, we just launched this past Friday. We’re helping the Jackson Grown program out of the co. So we just started that last week. So that’s our first year sponsoring that program. And we’re very excited. They’re doing a lot of great things too.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah. One of my Sunday school students is in this class with Jackson County and he is excited about it.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Well, it’s a great program. We’re excited to be a part of it.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah. So you guys are giving out a lot of money every year.
Leigh Anne Bentley
We do. We try to look for money for ways to really support what’s here on education basis. And so those are the three ways we do it through those lenses in a sense. But we get that it’s a membership based organization. But the great thing is it’s only a one time $10 membership fee.
Kevin Adelsberger
Who are the members?
Leigh Anne Bentley
Anybody can become a member. I encourage anyone listening today. It’s just $10 to join a member. But the only thing that really does is it allows us… You supply online, your $10 goes to our base, in a sense. But that allows us to collect your information and make sure that we can continue to inform you of what’s going on through our newsletters, through our social media. And then there’s never another ask after that for membership fee. Now, if you want to make a donation, anything over $10 can be giving you a donation. And it is a 501(c)(3), so it is a tax exempt donation. And then we’ll send anything out for any memorial or in honor of some people. And so we also have sponsorships. So other companies around West Tennessee and other places sponsor us. So their money helps to expand our efforts. And so we partner with them. And then just people join and make donations. We participate in the Give 731 Day and all of those programs. And so that’s how our funding continues to go and grow each year.
Kevin Adelsberger
The $10 membership fee, is that a marketing or a business decision?
Leigh Anne Bentley
It’s really a business decision for this aspect of showing commitment. I mean, not business decision as in we have to have $10 in order to just stay active. But it just shows a level of commitment saying, Hey, I want to be a part of this organization. I want to make sure that I’m making a difference as well. And then I just know that I’m contributing to that aspect.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah. No cheap email subscribers. They’re literally paying you to get on your email list.
Leigh Anne Bentley
And so we just keep this informed and let them know that they’re not just on an email chain, that they’re making a difference. Their $10 was used because everybody who works for the foundation, including myself, I have a service president, we have a vice president, we have a director of community engagement, we’re all volunteers. So none of the money that goes towards the foundation goes towards any staffing needs. And I think in our policy, I think 95 % of all money raised has to go back out in the form of scholarships or grants or programs. The five % just covers our hosting every website or whatever, all the different expenses that filing our tax forms.
Kevin Adelsberger
Or just the CRM to keep track of those $10 memberships.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Exactly, our CRM program. So all of those dollars are very intentional that may use for educational purposes and really helping the Westlande community. And we service the Wesley community, river to river, border to border.
Kevin Adelsberger
So it’s the leaders education foundation. And this is not like an accusatory question, right? No. You’re clearly doing really great things. How does that fit in with the larger public perspective of-.
Leigh Anne Bentley
Of who leaders is? Well, I think it just shows that we know we’re not alone in giving back, that we want to make sure that other companies can partner with us to show that difference. Leaders is very generous, and they’re obviously very good to donate to us each year. They keep funds and then within the year we get some funds from them to make sure our programs are good. But we want to expand that. And we know we can do more scholarships. We can do more leads grants. We can do more supporting as we grow with other organizations. Just having that partnership with other people, I think, gives validity to us. And so it doesn’t seem so individualized.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah. It’s not just an outlet for leaders, philanthropy, because you have other people contributing.
Leigh Anne Bentley
We do, and we try to market them. Right now, we’re trying to do some focus and some profiles and some of our sponsors that give to us and our scholarships. We have some of our scholarships in their name. So town and country realtors is one of the first ones that stepped up and said, Hey, I want to be a part of this. One of our scholarships each year is a community service scholarship sponsored by town and country. And so that money that they give goes back out to the scholarships in their name.
Kevin Adelsberger
Well, who doesn’t love Joey Hale?
Leigh Anne Bentley
Absolutely. Absolutely. Agreed.
Kevin Adelsberger
So that’s a great outlet for a lot of good work to be done. Let’s talk a little bit about marketing. Okay. So if you were to approach marketing from a philosophical, like a big picture level, what comes to your brain in that moment?
Leigh Anne Bentley
Well, I really think marketing is sometimes underestimated. They think it’s just advertising. And so so many people think marketing equals advertising, and that’s all it really is. We’re marketing is really the umbrella that encompasses everything that has to do with your product, basically the four P’s. What you’re actually your service or product that you’re selling, what’s it going to cost? How are you manufacturing and how are you selling it? What are you selling it for? How are you getting it to somewhere? And then how are you promoting it? So that fourth P, people think that’s all that marketing is. But what’s so great about marketing, it touches everything. We talk about the four P’s of marketing, but I also talk a lot about the four walls of marketing, meaning everything that you see, touch, smell, experience, are the bathrooms clean? Is the parking lot clean? We actually have a scent that we put in all of our leaders’ branches. So if you go in, every one of our branches smells the same. And so everything that we have that you experience is part of our overall marketing umbrella. And I really focus on it’s not just what’s a great campaign or, hey, we launched our website, because those are great and fun and a little more, not tangible as physical, but tangible as you can see the campaign, you can see that. But we really focus a lot on our brand and focus a lot on our culture, because one thing that we love is how our members are being treated. Our brand goes into brand phraseology. We greet people the same way. We have the same, What brings you in today, is a phrase you may often hear when you come in. Like you always say something you need something from someone instead of saying, Oh, no problem. We always say, Absolutely, happy to help. And so it’s just those little bitty nuances of being able to, first of all, connect the dots that people hear that, they start recognizing it. They get to the point where if you don’t say it, they recognize that you don’t say it.
Kevin Adelsberger
Yeah, that’s when you’re doing a good job.
Leigh Anne Bentley
I have a story I love telling. I was actually at a medical clinic just having a checkup, and I had my name tag on and I hadn’t taken it off. And they said, Oh, can I ask you a question about this so-and-so product? I’m like, Absolutely. And so I talked to them a few minutes. I got my app out, showed them how to do things and how to find something. And I said, Do you need anything else? Do you know anything else I can do for you? And she’s like, No, that was great. And I said, Well, a lot of help. Happy to help. And she goes, Thanks for choosing the Women’s Clinic, which is one of our absolutely happy to help. Thanks for choosing leaders. And so I think she’s just very… It’s just hits… When you hear it repeated back to you, it’s great. And talking about wearing my name tag, I love the fact that when I wear my name tag to Walmart or somewhere else, I’m stopped nine tenths of the time just to tell me a good story about some of our employees. And that to me, I know it’s not a campaign, but it talks about our culture, talks about our training, and talks about the overall, the full marketing scope of all that we’re doing. And it doesn’t just the marketing department. It takes our operations, takes our training department. It’s all of us working together. We’re all going together. It’s absolutely all going together. So that’s the fun part, is seeing the cohesiveness between all the departments, knowing that brand is so important to us that training is really hitting at home all the time. But our brand phraseology, how we’re doing, and everything that we wear inside the branch, everything that we do, everything else is part of that all encompassing aspect.
Kevin Adelsberger
Is that something that you were able to do in the agency world or something that you’re really able to do when you got in-house?
Leigh Anne Bentley
I will say it’s been much easier in-house. One thing that’s been so great about being an in-house person versus an agency is how much deeper you can dive. And so I had some fantastic clients and people I loved working with that I still stay in touch with today. But you put a campaign out and they go, Oh, that was great. And they were happy. But what was the bottom line numbers? You didn’t always know. You didn’t really get into the weeds. And so especially within the financial industry, there’s so much data you can really get in the weeds and work with. We have a great analytics department. So if we’re trying to find how to help someone we can find the right target audience to really go for. It’s very interesting talking about going from agency to in-house because I always thought, Gosh, I don’t know. I’m afraid I’d be bored in one sector because I had so many different variety of clients before and different marketing budgets and different target audiences and different geographic markets. But basically, we run our marketing department like an agency. We have our front line clients, we have our mortgage clients, and we have our investments clients. We have our community investments. We have our workforce partners. We have what we do for the community. So in the same sense, because my mind has been structured agency world for so long, I don’t have billable hours anymore.
Kevin Adelsberger
We avoid those as much as possible.
Leigh Anne Bentley
But outside of that, we have everything in-house. We have a phenomenal team. We do our own graphic design, our own videography, our own PR, push releases and distribution, our own community engagement team. We even have someone in our marketing department who focuses on innovation and member experience. And so they’re the voice of our member. So as we’re working out campaigns, as we’re working out with, we’re launching a new product or a new service or how that’s going to be experienced, they look at it like a member journey. Where are the roadblocks? What can make it easier? She really knows a lot of our systems because she’s been there for 20, up to teenth years. And so she says, Well, we can change this in this system or remove these questions or add these to have a more seamless approach to make that member experience, that member journey better. And so she makes constant improvements daily. They’re little, but over time, they make a huge difference. And that’s what we’re constantly striving to do, is small incremental changes that make a big difference to our members and our community. Yeah.