Dinosaur or Darwin: the Adapt or Die Paradox - with CEO Troy Peters
Troy Peters, CEO of 152-year-old Jonestown Bank & Trust, shares with Kirsten how a community bank maintains relevance through authentic culture and long-term thinking. In an era where big business appears to dominate and private equity tries to consolidate the ‘little guy,’ Troy and JBT offer an alternative that capitalizes on the strength of the community.
Starting as a summer teller, Troy learned banking wasn't just about "hushed tones and marble" but building relationships. JBT's "Bank on a Smile" tagline evolved into core values (SMILE: Sincere, Memorable, Integrity, Leadership, Expertise) created by employees, not executives – a proven process for success. Troy offers lessons that translate from the
Using the Four Disciplines of Execution, their wildly important goal is "inspiring confidence" across all stakeholders. Troy emphasizes community banking's vital role—making 60% of small business loans—while warning about cryptocurrency's threat to traditional lending that powers American entrepreneurship.
Troy Peters BIO:
Troy Peters, President and CEO of Jonestown Bank & Trust Co., a financial institution with a remarkable 150-year legacy in central Pennsylvania. With over 19 years at JBT and 13 years in his current leadership role, Troy has guided the bank through significant transformation while maintaining its deep community roots. Prior to JBT, Troy held leadership positions at PNC, Mellon Bank, and the Pennsylvania Association of Community Bankers. Outside of work Troy coaches’ baseball and is retired from competing in triathlons.
For more info on Troy:
Below is an AI Generated Transcript of the Interview (expect errors!)
@9:15 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Welcome to the Executive Hustle Podcast. Today, we are joined by Troy Peters, President and CEO of Jonestown Bank and Trust Company, a financial institution with a remarkable 150 year legacy in central Pennsylvania.
With over 19 years at JBT, 13 in his current leadership role, Troy has guided the bank through significant transformations and maintaining a deep commitment to his community roots.
Prior to JBT, Troy held leadership positions at PNC Bank, Mellon Bank, and the Pennsylvania Association for Community Bankers. Outside of work, Troy coaches baseball.
We'll see the field later today and is retired from competing in triathlons. Welcome to the podcast, Troy. Oh, thank you, Kirsten.
@10:01 - Troy Peters
Great to be here.
@10:02 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So happy to have you. Looking forward to this conversation. Tell me, Troy, did the seven-year-old, you, think you'd spend almost two decades in banking?
@10:14 - Troy Peters
The seven-year-old wanted to be a Major League Baseball player, so he wasn't thinking about banking at that point. So I'd say no.
Did not realize that.
@10:24 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. What kind of made the transition? How do you feel like you got here?
@10:31 - Troy Peters
Well, I often tell people I started as a summer floating teller. replaced the tellers that were on vacation, but really, it probably goes back prior to that, my grandparents owned a couple of businesses, including a couple of laundromats, and I would, as a youngster, fill their vending machines, count their coins, count their dollars, and take them to the bank.
Oh, yeah. And I just thought, going into the bank, I didn't know what those people were doing, but it looked important.
Thank you. And, you know, it always kind of intrigued me.
@11:03 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. So you had this image and you saw yourself in it.
@11:06 - Troy Peters
Yeah. You know, people spoke in hushed tones and dressed well and there was marble everywhere and, you know, kind of that bank in the downtown that many of us had growing up.
And I was just impressed by it.
@11:21 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. So your first job was a summer intern?
@11:24 - Troy Peters
Yes. So between semesters of college over the summer, I joined a community bank and worked as a floating teller.
And then they hired me upon graduation a couple of years later. So that's where it started.
@11:39 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. And you started at some big banks and now you're at JBT, which is a community bank, but one with a really long history.
@11:46 - Troy Peters
Yeah. Right. There's not many companies in the country, really, that have been around for a century and a half.
Yeah. This is our 152nd year, always as an independent community bank. And we're the only one headquartered in the
Lebanon County. It was once 15 to 20. And, you know, it's a pretty unique situation.
@12:07 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. What do you attribute to the longevity for this bank?
@12:11 - Troy Peters
Well, I mean, first and foremost, you need to remain relevant. You know, business needs to change as the community changes, as the needs change, as the products and services change.
You know, you need to keep up with that, if not stay ahead. And, of course, you need to have ownership that is dedicated to independence.
And, you know, our shareholders have been since 1873. And we work hard to perform for them so that we remain independent.
@12:43 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. Would you say that's the legacy, the independent piece?
@12:47 - Troy Peters
That's a big part. Yeah. I mean, we're we're that old, but we're working to reinvent this every single day.
So, you know, the idea of making long term decisions is something. It's important to us. We don't have to hit numbers quarter to quarter like a large institution would feel pressured to.
We can make what we think is the right choice for the long term.
@13:12 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. And how does that filter down into an everyday interaction with your workforce, that type of mentality? Because it does seem different.
@13:20 - Troy Peters
Yeah, I think many of us worked elsewhere. And those of us that worked in the large mega corporate environment really appreciate this culture.
And we live in the community where we work. So we see our clients at the grocery store, at church, at the baseball game.
So it's personal to us. And we take a lot of pride in performing well and treating our clients well.
And I think that just makes the employees appreciate the special thing we have going.
@13:56 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. I'm sure it's more of a relaxed feel.
@14:00 - Troy Peters
Definitely, yeah. That's, you know, there's still a pressure, but it's a positive one. It's not about producing widgets. It's about, you know, building relationships, and that's what we're really about.
@14:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. And those relationships are long-term in a situation like this.
@14:22 - Troy Peters
Right.
@14:23 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Focusing on that. was reading materials about JBT, and one of the things that I really found interesting was your tagline that you've come up with over the last couple years in the bank on a smile.
And then you tell your story of, oh, I'm interested in banking. They're very serious. They're in hushed tones, right?
They're behind the counter. They're dressed well. very juxtaposition, I think, in terms of, oh, we're banking on a smile.
This is a maybe counter to that serious and formal approach to the larger institutions. Excuse me. Walk me through how you guys got there.
And how that's so important to you.
@15:02 - Troy Peters
Sure. Well, when I came here, I was not as president and CEO, but I had a number of responsibilities, including marketing.
And one of the first questions I asked in one of the first marketing meetings we had was, when was the last time we looked at our logo?
Because honestly, we had various versions out there on various signs. We had clients calling us by all kinds of different versions of our full name.
And I just wanted something more consistent. So we came up with the current logo and supported it with this bank on a smile tagline that really was born out of serving our clients and what they thought we were and asking our employees what we wanted to be for our clients.
And it really came down to, you know, we wanted to make people happy and help them fulfill the mission of their financial lives.
Yes, please. We'll be I initially wanted bank happy. That was my idea, but that was being used elsewhere. And so we came up with bank on a smile, thinking that that would have a relatively short lifespan, as most taglines do, maybe seven years.
But what it has become is really representative of our culture. And the culture has just been built around that in a very honest, organic type of way.
So it's more than a tagline for us. It does represent who we are, each other.
@16:38 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And you've even created your core values around the word smile. Right.
@16:45 - Troy Peters
yeah, we had brought all of our employees together in various groups over time. Asked them, you know, what would describe us?
What's important to us? Who do we want to be? And from that, many hundreds of... Positions of feedback, we boiled that down to an acronym of SMILE, so it stands for Sincere, Memorable, Integrity, Leadership, and Expertise, and that really illustrates what our core values are here, and yeah, again, we built everything around that, and the fact that our employees came up with that, not senior management, not the board, not some consultants, is what made that lasting.
@17:30 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, absolutely. I'm always fascinated by the process that companies use to come up with their core values because I think there's some, like you just alluded to, where it's top-down, and I don't see those lasting as long as the processes when they're used that include the members of different divisions and different tiers and, you know, just all walks of life in the organization coming together to say, who are we?
@17:58 - Troy Peters
Right.
@17:58 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Make us special.
@18:00 - Troy Peters
Yeah. It's very much a living thing for us. mean, every company has a mission statement. Maybe they have values posted somewhere.
@18:06 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
But, you know, we measure ourselves on ours.
@18:09 - Troy Peters
They're in our reviews. We do reward and recognition based around them. A lot of programs that support that and keep that alive.
And every single one of the 160 people that work here will be able to tell you what those are and why they're important.
@18:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Mm hmm. That's really that's really excellent work because too often they are just on the wall. Right. I was just working with a CEO and, you know, he was looking at his values and thinking, I think we just need to change how they're defined.
And, you know, a couple of them I pointed out, like these really are only external. Right. They're only facing the clients.
How do you use this term if it was reputation or integrity or something like that? How do you use that internally with your employees?
And so there's a real light bulb moment in terms of, oh, these have to work. Inside, not just how we treat our customers and our clients.
@19:04 - Troy Peters
Right.
@19:05 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And it sounds like yours is very internally focused.
@19:09 - Troy Peters
Yeah, in fact, we really don't talk to our clients about that, about SMILE standards or any of this. That's really all internal.
@19:18 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, and you have a SMILE award, right?
@19:20 - Troy Peters
Yeah, we have an event every year. The biggest award there is the SMILE of the year.
@19:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
We do other awards.
@19:27 - Troy Peters
The SMODI is what that's abbreviated as.
@19:29 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@19:30 - Troy Peters
We do other awards where employees can recognize other employees for demonstrating those standards.
@19:37 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@19:38 - Troy Peters
And then there's some internal recognition that goes with that. So, yeah, it's very much something that is who we are.
It's part of our culture and DNA, for sure.
@19:49 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, I love the peer-to-peer recognition based on the values. That must really reinforce them for new people coming in.
I mean, they have to just walk into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's entirely new environment and just like they're walking onto Mars or something.
@20:05 - Troy Peters
Right.
@20:05 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
It's just so embedded.
@20:07 - Troy Peters
And when you know what you're looking for, you know, you'll find it and you'll see it more readily. So when you see somebody being sincere or dedicated to their expertise by taking on additional training and learning and, you all these things, you know, it's nice.
People like to be recognized and it's nice to have others doing that.
@20:29 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Absolutely. A culture built on the positive reinforcement is going to take you much further than one based on fear.
We see that too often. So you also use something familiar with and used in a former life as well, which is the four disciplines of execution.
So, you know, really setting your goal, measuring your goal, visualizing the goal, you know, on some type of scoreboard and those kinds of things.
So you have a, what they call a wildly important goal, a wig. And I do. I do. Is it still currently inspiring confidence, or is it updated?
@21:04 - Troy Peters
Yes, Yeah, so a number of years ago, a board member gave me the book, The Four Disciplines of Execution, and after I read it, I thought, you I've read a lot of business books, and I thought, you know, this is one of the best ones I've ever read.
@21:19 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, that's pretty good.
@21:20 - Troy Peters
It's very simple, but it's very effective. So we would have wildly important goals, you know, one or two very important goals, because especially in our business, there's innumerable measurements that you Yes, you don't lack for data.
No, you do not lack for data, and we came up with a couple of good goals for the first couple of years, but I could never really get my mind around what I really wanted it to be.
@21:50 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I knew what I wanted it to be, but I didn't know how to communicate it. Hmm.
@21:53 - Troy Peters
And it probably took me two years or so until I came up with the idea of what... I really want us to inspire confidence.
I want our customers to trust us. I want them to believe in us. I want them to come to us.
I want our shareholders to be confident about this is a place to invest their money. I want our employees to be confident about what we're doing and what the bank and the company will support them in doing.
I want our communities to look for us in a way that's important. And frankly, want our regulators to be confident about what we're doing because that's very important in our business.
So this idea of inspiring confidence was born. I finally got it out in a way that it said what I wanted it to.
And now that's been our number one goal for the past several years.
@22:50 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And I think it still conveys exactly the direction we want to go. Yeah. I love the process. I love how you asked.
What do I really want? And then you actually took time to figure that out. And it was about multiple stakeholders involved in that.
So again, I'm a process person, and I really like thinking about the end in mind and then coming back to that.
It's a little different than some ways, certainly that I had or that I've seen in other places in its opaqueness, right?
It's not, we want, you know, $2 billion under management, or we want this or that, you know, that's very, let's say, measurable, right?
So how do you turn that into your scoreboard? You've got to have some leading or some lagging measures around confidence.
What is the translation process there? How do you make that real?
@23:40 - Troy Peters
Yeah, there again, you could probably pick a number of points to measure on that. What we measure is what we call household growth.
@23:48 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@23:48 - Troy Peters
So that would be new business, you know, businesses and consumer relationships. So if we're doing the right things, we will be growing our business by adding more customers.
@24:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
right that.
@24:00 - Troy Peters
Yeah, that is what we measure and determine how well we need to retain the clientele we have and build on that in a positive and profitable way.
So household growth is our measurement.
@24:13 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. Okay, great. I love that. But I like how you start with kind of the impact that you want to make.
@24:21 - Troy Peters
Right.
@24:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, I don't think many people start there.
@24:23 - Troy Peters
Yeah, we started by having goals like you mentioned, you know, let's get a certain number here, you know, in terms of whatever metric you want to pick.
But it never really was what I wanted and Inspiring Confidence is.
@24:40 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And it's, I don't know if you found this, but I did like, if it's, you know, very numbers based at the, at the, at the wig level, in terms of the rallying cry that we want to have people, you know, work towards and get excited about, you know, just to build.
Yeah. Yeah. Dollars under management or something like to get people excited, right? Or just something like you have, we're inspiring confidence.
Oh, what does that mean for me? That means I did X, Y, and Z right today, right? It feels a lot more relatable, which is something you mentioned earlier, being relevant.
It seemed more relevant to your everyday bank employee.
@25:20 - Troy Peters
Right. And you can ask yourself after every interaction, know, was I, did I inspire confidence in that, you know, that, that letter, that email, that text, that chat, that phone call, video meeting, or, you know, conversely, with how our facilities look, you know, our facilities manager can, you know, does the way this is landscaped inspire, does this company care?
@25:44 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Right. Is this my best work?
@25:45 - Troy Peters
Yeah. So it's, you're either building up or tearing down confidence in every interaction. And so it's something that, yes, we have the household goal, but you can really ask yourself, all day long, you know, are you,
Working towards being in Inspiring Confidence.
@26:03 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. How did you contribute to it with your individual actions? I love that. So you didn't spend your entire career here at JBT.
You've been other places, bigger places. Are there some leadership lessons that you both brought with you from those bigger institutions and some that you left behind?
Yes, definitely.
@26:25 - Troy Peters
I started at a community bank right out of school, but then left for larger banks over the next decade and a half.
And I worked with a lot of smart people.
@26:37 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I learned a lot.
@26:39 - Troy Peters
I learned a lot about process. I learned a lot about leadership. I learned about things I did not want to be, as well as things that I did.
And I think that was, looking back, maybe it didn't need to be as long of a time as it was, but at the time I didn't know that.
But I wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. It's part of the story.
@27:01 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
It's part of how I'm here now.
@27:04 - Troy Peters
You know, the past is perfect, as they say, so we're not going to change it. But yes, it was a good experience.
And I think it makes me appreciate what we have even more.
@27:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Mm hmm. What's one particular practice you left behind that you didn't bring with you deliberately?
@27:24 - Troy Peters
Well, I'm all for accountability. But when you have multiple calls a day to tell your boss how your team's doing, you know, it's it's it's not productive.
@27:35 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@27:36 - Troy Peters
So we we certainly have goals that we measure and things we want to produce, but I don't think we take it to an unhealthy level.
Yeah, I've certainly lived in that. And I don't want to do that.
@27:52 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, I think some of the best lessons in my past are the ones that I don't repeat. Yeah, right.
The things I learned to not do it.
@28:00 - Troy Peters
Sure.
@28:01 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
They're some of the most impactful ones that I have. So we talked a little bit about the history of the company, how old it is, how many generations it's been through, different crises that it's been through, and what are the lessons and how do you continue to be a resilient bank in terms of honoring the past, dealing with where you stand right now in terms of the climate, the condition, the regulations, all the things that are happening now, and then looking towards the future.
@28:40 - Troy Peters
Right. Yeah, it's a balance. Having that past behind you is great, but what really matters is what you're doing today and tomorrow.
@28:49 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@28:50 - Troy Peters
In my case, I need to get outside of the four walls of my office. I'm very involved in our industry and in our trade groups.
be today. I'm I'm At the state level, the national level, and doing that allows me to, you know, educate myself on things that are happening around the country, around the state, and ask myself, how does that apply to us?
So that's what I see really at this point in my career is the real value I bring is probably when I'm not here.
@29:20 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@29:20 - Troy Peters
And it's when I'm networking and learning outside of here, because if we were all to stay within our own box, you know, it's going to be very difficult to grow.
@29:34 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. So that's quite a challenge. So because you, the bank also prides itself on the community aspect and the being present.
And, you know, we're always on premise and available, right? These are some things that I read how certainly for you, your, your role's a little different in terms of the bank management and the bank staffing, you know, the stats right now, 30.
50% of people are remote work or want some level of remote work. How does that jive in terms of how you want to run the bank, finding the right talent?
What struggles do you face? What solutions have you found?
@30:13 - Troy Peters
Well, finding the right people is, you know, that's the most difficult part of the job, for sure. And in our case, in our industry, you if you look in Pennsylvania, the past 36 quarters, we've lost a bank in 29 of them.
So it is a bit of an endangered species being a community bank. There's a number of reasons why that happens.
But what happens is the talent pool that it's experienced, you know, is shrinking over time. So we do allow for some remote work.
have some fully remote employees.
@30:48 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
We have some hybrid employees.
@30:50 - Troy Peters
The policy, though, is we are a work-from-work company. So our first preference is that we're better off if you are here.
Right. We understand we need to be flexible. But it is difficult finding the talent. Most of our employees have worked at a bank elsewhere.
I do have one person on my senior team who's been here over 30 years that has only ever worked for JBT.
But most of us have been elsewhere, and that's brought other experiences. And in terms of being in the community, we encourage all of our employees to volunteer.
In fact, we give them time off to do that. And last year, we contributed over 400 days of community service for our employees.
And there are some other things we do to incent that. And we have a committee that actually brings forward opportunities to employees if they don't know how to get involved.
And so that's built into our culture and DNA as well. And we do. I highly encourage that because, again, we can only do as well as our community does, and it's really hard.
@32:09 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
We can only do as good as our community does. What would it be like if every business had that mentality?
@32:18 - Troy Peters
Yeah, I think our industries, especially the community banking industry, that's very, very important and very much who we are as an industry.
Now, maybe a bank headquartered in North Carolina is not viewing that the same or unable to, but for us, again, we see our clients when we're not at work, and we want to be proud of who we are and what we're doing.
@32:47 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That sort of gives you the always-on mindset.
@32:52 - Troy Peters
Absolutely, yeah. A number of stories about that. And, yeah, to be honest with you, I've worked for other banks.
To I wore their logo wear outside of work, and I was hoping nobody would come up and tell me about the problem, whereas wearing JVT apparel, overwhelmingly, all I get is positive comments, and usually, it's about who they work with at the bank.
It's not the bank, it's I work with Susan at XYZ branch, and she helped me do this, and so it's very personal.
@33:29 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That must feel so good.
@33:31 - Troy Peters
It does, yeah. It's something that you and all of our employees can be proud of.
@33:39 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I drove by your first building probably a week and a half ago, headed out to a baseball game in Jonestown.
Nice-looking old building for the first location.
@33:51 - Troy Peters
Yeah, well, we've been in three different spots in downtown Jonestown since 1873, but all within about a block.
@33:58 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. Yeah, I think you can see them all at the same time.
@34:01 - Troy Peters
The current building was built in the 30s and added on to over time.
@34:06 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, that's pretty cool. So what does the next chapter look like? mean, there are the rate of change in our society in terms of technology and, you know, people's interface with each other, with their institutions is just changing so fast.
Where does, where's JBT going? Where's the banking industry going? What's your crystal ball sign?
@34:30 - Troy Peters
Hey, there's, there's how much time do you have, you know? I mean, certainly we, we operate in a couple of niches that we will continue to expand.
That being commercial lending, low cost deposit gathering, indirect auto business. So when you go to a car dealership, we do the financing of those vehicles.
We do that throughout the state. And then we're the only bank in Pennsylvania that actively banks cannabis related businesses.
So growers, processors, dispensaries. Clinical registrants, testing facilities, and we do that not only in Pennsylvania, but surrounding states, and actually we're taking that nationwide.
@35:09 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@35:09 - Troy Peters
So that is a...
@35:10 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That's a niche.
@35:12 - Troy Peters
Yeah, definitely a growing niche for us, for sure. Where is the industry going? I mean, one thing that's a bit concerning right now is the current administration's view on cryptocurrency and stablecoins, and to some degree central bank digital currency.
So the way money is going to be transmitted and monetary policy implemented and through blockchain technology and so forth is a concern, for sure, for us, for many reasons.
One, we see a lot of fraud in that industry already.
@35:51 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay.
@35:51 - Troy Peters
Two, if those deposits don't reside at the bank and on the balance sheet of the bank, then the bank can't lend that money.
@36:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So...
@36:04 - Troy Peters
So if you want to have your communities be able to grow and people to buy homes and finance cars and children's education, there needs to be a mechanism to do that.
That's what we do very well for 150 years. And so to some degree, crypto space is a bit of a threat.
@36:24 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So it's not even just a threat to the banking industry, but the way you describe it, it's a threat to how we live our lives, how we communicate these transactions and the ability for people to do some of the normal, everyday American life activities.
@36:39 - Troy Peters
Right. And it's not far-fetched to say it's a national security concern as well, because a lot of the money that they use the vehicle of cryptocurrency goes to places that aren't necessarily friends of the United States.
@36:56 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Right.
@36:58 - Troy Peters
Organized crime. time. We'll hope So it's difficult to police that when there's not many regulations around it. And that's a lot of what's being discussed right now.
So definitely a good topic.
@37:10 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So is it possible that if too much money goes into cryptocurrencies, there's not enough money in the regular banking system, and then people can't, if I'm following what you're saying, people will have less ability to borrow money to buy a house, to buy a car?
@37:27 - Troy Peters
Yeah, that's a very real concern.
@37:30 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yes.
@37:31 - Troy Peters
Absolutely. And banks, most likely aren't going to be able to hold cryptocurrency as collateral because the value is, well, it's frankly, it's made up, wildly volatile, so you don't know what one Bitcoin is worth today, what it will be worth two days from now.
@37:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Mm-hmm.
@37:53 - Troy Peters
And it's not very, not very stable.
@37:57 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
It seems fragile, and there seems to be ways to get into it.
@38:02 - Troy Peters
I just think if we're going down this road, we need to be careful from a regulatory standpoint. How's the Federal Reserve going to affect monetary policy if they can't control money supply?
Frankly, we have the greatest financial system in the world, and we have that because of the way it's set up and the way it's protected.
I'm glad to be a part of that. Some of the regulations go a little bit too far, but we have consumer protections that others don't.
We have insurance on our depositors' money that others don't. And, you know, it's something that works very well. So if we're going to expand this, we just need to do it carefully and at a measured pace.
@38:56 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. But the message is continue to support the local. Yeah. Right, they're going to be here when you need them.
@39:04 - Troy Peters
That's my view.
@39:06 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, for sure. Well, you certainly have me convinced because those are some scary outcomes. You talk about too much money in one system and then it's not there.
You know, people already can't buy houses because they're too expensive.
@39:17 - Troy Peters
And then if they can't borrow any money, we've got, where are we then? Right.
@39:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Wow.
@39:24 - Troy Peters
Yeah. Community banks make 60% of the small business loans in the country. So, although we're smaller in terms of market share than the megabanks, we are vitally important to Main Street.
@39:37 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Right. You're propping up, you know, and small businesses are what keeps America going in terms of percentage of businesses, employees, employers.
@39:45 - Troy Peters
Right.
@39:46 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So, if you're 60% of keeping them going, that is not a small, insignificant piece.
@39:52 - Troy Peters
Yeah, exactly.
@39:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Wow. Wow. Okay. So, how about some rapid fire personal questions here?
@39:59 - Troy Peters
Okay.
@40:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Okay. First, in your intro, you are a retired triathlete. Yes, did I say that right?
@40:08 - Troy Peters
Yeah.
@40:08 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Because I'm definitely not one.
@40:10 - Troy Peters
So tell me, how did you get into that?
@40:13 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
What did you learn from it?
@40:14 - Troy Peters
And when's the next one?
@40:17 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Well, how did I get into it?
@40:20 - Troy Peters
I'm definitely not a natural. Running was punishment for me in other sports growing up. I didn't necessarily enjoy that.
I wouldn't drown if he threw me in a lake, but I wouldn't say I was a great swimmer. And of course, I rode bicycle, but I wasn't the strongest biker.
But I coincidentally was laid off from my big bank job, corporate downsizing. Thousands of us, through our own, found ourselves without a job.
And as I had eight months to figure that out, I signed up for my first half marathon.
@40:57 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Wow.
@40:58 - Troy Peters
And, and I did that. And. You know, I could walk afterwards, so I was happy about that.
@41:03 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And I had a bike.
@41:04 - Troy Peters
I had a hybrid bike, like a trail bike. And I thought, what if I got a road bike? I wonder how fast I could ride my road bike.
And then I thought, well, what if I raced against somebody? I wonder if I could be competitive. So it kind of started there.
And triathlon is swim, bike, run.
@41:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
So there's different distances of that.
@41:26 - Troy Peters
And the basic one is a sprint tri. And I did that at Mount Gretna. I did it as part of the team.
So one of us swam, one of us did the bike, and one of us ran. And we came in third place in our category.
So I had some early success. So that encouraged me. And then it pretty much went from there. And I did 50 races over the next 13 years, up to and including Ironman distance, which is 2.4 mile swim.
112-mile bike and 26.2 or marathon run. So 140.6 miles.
@42:07 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
You have to do that under 17 hours.
@42:09 - Troy Peters
That's the hard cutoff. And I certainly wasn't winning any medals doing that, but I was able to do it.
And then over time, it became very difficult on the body, and it got to the point where I had to go out and run 10 miles today instead of, I get to go out and run 10 miles today, so that was a phase of life that was very important.
I learned a lot. learned a lot of leadership lessons by doing that. The first one was, you have to see yourself where you want to be, even though you're not there yet.
@42:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yes, amen.
@42:54 - Troy Peters
So I began thinking of myself as a triathlete.
@42:57 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I thought of myself that.
@43:00 - Troy Peters
24-7, and including how I trained and what I ate and that sort of thing, and I also learned it was helpful to hang around people that had the same interests as me and people that could support me and kind of sharpen my skills and give me advice, and my wife was a big part of that, being supportive of the things I did and the time I spent doing it, and then, of course, you need to have a plan, and you had to, and I would plan out my entire year, so I could tell you the day after Christmas what my workout was going to be on Labor Day the following year, because I took it to that level.
@43:42 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Wow.
@43:44 - Troy Peters
And then you need to execute the plan. mean, having the plan is one thing, but you got to execute, and then you need to trust that training is going to get you where you want to go, right?
@43:53 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah, yeah.
@43:54 - Troy Peters
I also learned patience, because the 25-year-old Troy wouldn't have been able to I would have tried to run through a wall.
The 45-year-old Troy knew that he needed to have some patience. He needed to sometimes focus on just small goals that were right in front of you.
There were times on a run where I couldn't think 10 miles ahead. I could only think to run into that next telephone pole.
And then I would pick the next one. And I always figured as long as I'm not going backwards, I'm getting closer to my goal.
Even though this hurts and I don't feel good, I might feel differently in three feet, three minutes, three hours, but things will change.
It won't, the situation won't be like this forever and it will end, you know, it'll end one way or another.
So all things I learned, I also learned that when I would be, I would pick out somebody ahead of me and target them as my goal to catch them.
And I used to think, you know, that should be your motivation. Tracking down your prey like that should be what motivates you.
And it did. But honestly, what motivated me more was putting time on them once I got by them.
@45:15 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
And as punishing them.
@45:19 - Troy Peters
So it was prey and punish. And I got more enjoyment out of seeing how far ahead of I could get.
@45:26 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Now, of course, I'd pick another person and I'd just keep doing it. keep going.
@45:29 - Troy Peters
Yeah. So I don't know what that says about me or if that's good or bad, but I like putting time on other people.
@45:38 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I think it says, regardless of the situation, I will figure out what motivates me so that I get the job done.
That's what I heard. Yeah, love it. I love it.
@45:48 - Troy Peters
Plus, you have a lot of time to yourself to think, you know, eight hours on a Saturday riding your bike.
You know, you can figure out a lot of things during that time.
@45:59 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Boy, quiet time is just so. Oh, underrated.
@46:01 - Troy Peters
Yeah.
@46:02 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
The best leaders I know, one, have had some level of physical or sport-related activity like you're suggesting, and two, they value quiet time.
They understand what that window time means to them and what they get out of it, and they don't sacrifice it.
@46:21 - Troy Peters
And those of us that are introverts, as I am, that's how we recharge.
@46:25 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
We recharge our batteries when we're alone and quiet.
@46:31 - Troy Peters
And, you know, I know that about myself, and I make sure I can put myself in those situations. You know, you need to be around people and do things that you do, but, you know, that can wear you out.
@46:48 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. All right. Two more. Success is a lousy teacher. What is one failure in your past that taught you something of great value?
@46:59 - Troy Peters
Well, . I'm sure I could have been kinder to some people on the way through. You know, when I teach some classes, I would talk about or use Bobby Knight as a basketball coach as an example.
You know, I'd show videos of him and how he'd be talking to his players. And you can't do, Bobby Knight can't coach kindergartners that way.
@47:23 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Mm hmm.
@47:23 - Troy Peters
So when the when the dedication and the skill level and maturity is not there, you need to meet people where they are and not necessarily where you are.
@47:34 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah.
@47:35 - Troy Peters
So you wouldn't scream at a kindergartner on the basketball court by the motivated Division one scholarship athlete. Yeah. And he's effective.
So, you know, understanding that, one, it may not be as important to others as it is to you. And you have no idea what they might be dealing with outside of the workplace, because that's that can be hidden very well.
And just being. Yeah. Cognizant of that, I was probably taking things too seriously along the way, and I probably should have chilled out a bit.
@48:09 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
All right. Fair. What's something that people can't Google about you?
@48:14 - Troy Peters
Cannot Google about me. Wow. I never tried to do that.
@48:22 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I don't know. Oh, don't do it real quick while we're not recording.
@48:26 - Troy Peters
Hey, I'm an avid motorcyclist.
@48:28 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
I travel nationally and internationally.
@48:33 - Troy Peters
kind of have loose goal of getting to every state and a number of countries. I don't know that that's going to show up anywhere, but that's how I like to spend my time.
have a European trip this year.
@48:44 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Nice.
@48:45 - Troy Peters
Going to the peninsula next month.
@48:48 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
That's some quiet time, too. So you've just replaced bicycling with biking.
@48:53 - Troy Peters
Well, and I do it with friends, but yes, when you're on the bike, you're alone for long periods of time.
And yet you still have that camaraderie when you when you stop and at night.
@49:04 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Yeah. Love it. That's that's great. This has been really, really great. I have enjoyed this conversation so much. A couple of takeaways.
Really right here at the end is one of the biggest ones I'm getting is see yourself at the finish line when you're starting.
And something that I really have taken to heart over the last couple of years is this as if thinking.
You said I had to think of myself as if I was a triathlete right before you were that. And I think that really can go a long way for people as if thinking is so valuable.
A lot of good culture stuff from, you know, figuring out the tagline, how, you know, how that means, what that means internally for people and that the culture, the process of figuring out your core values for your culture.
So strong in terms of, you know, asking the employees, which is the same process I used maybe a decade ago, which is like, who are we?
if we put our best employee on the table, how would we describe that employee? How would we clone that person, right?
How would we describe them? Who are we? And I just love that process. And I think it's one that people will take away.
Being eyes open to the landscape and what is coming around the corner. You know, you really opened my eyes to the challenges with the cryptocurrency and the banking and the real importance that we need to place on our community businesses, our community banks.
And I love what you said, we can only do as good as our community does. And that's, you know, really part of why I do this podcast, right?
Like leadership is best done in community with others. And we're sharing your stories, your challenges for the sake of the other leaders, right?
That they will pick up something here and do good in their community. So just to highlight that, I love that.
Thank you so much for joining me today and putting up with all my questions.
@50:58 - Troy Peters
Yeah, my pleasure.
@50:58 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
was fun.
@50:59 - Troy Peters
Thank you very much.
@51:00 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
If people want to know more about you personally or JBT, how can they find you?
@51:04 - Troy Peters
Well, you certainly can go to our website, jbt.bank. I can be contacted through that website. Of course, we're on social media as well, LinkedIn, Facebook, and others.
@51:16 - Kirsten Yurich (kirstenklyurich@gmail.com)
Awesome. And I'll have all that in the show notes.
@51:19 - Troy Peters
All right, Troy, thank you so much. Have a great day. All right. Take care. Thank you. Thank
