We all remember the initial panic that overwhelmed the business community. In the middle of learning more about COVID-19 and a nationwide shutdown, news of PPP loans drew everyone to banks in hopes of getting some extra help for their business. Bank of Idaho stepped up during a time where many were panicked and overwhelmed. IFM staff sat down with CEO Jeff Newgard to learn more about how his love for small businesses led to success during unprecedented times.
IFM: What kind of help have you been able to provide over the past year to local businesses through PPP loans?
JN: Back when the news of COVID-19 started to hit in March, information was coming out very sparingly. Nobody really knew what the PPP program was going to look like. A lot of my colleagues were concerned that the program might backfire and hurt banks.
My team was concerned when PPP first came out. I had some of my top executives really worried about how we were going to fund it and what the implications were for our balance sheet.
However, I’ve experienced life as a small business firsthand. I know that the gap between the dinner table and the small businesses is very thin. And I just told my team, we're leaning into this thing and we don't have time to talk about it right now, but we're going, and this is what we're going to do, and we're not going to shut it off.
I'm very proud of our team. We did over a thousand of those, and that was not an automated process. That was very manual. And this was during COVID obviously. It took the entire team working nights and weekends and going outside of their job descriptions. And they did it for the customer. They did it for the small businesses.
IFM: What was your experience growing up in a small business?
JN: My grandfather started this little service station/oil distributorship business. My dad bought it from my grandfather and for the first five years of my life, we lived behind the station in apartments. My earliest memories are the air compressor going off. That was my lullaby.
When I was in my late teens, my dad took me with him to Polson, Mont., which is on a Native American reservation. It's integrated, which is very unique. So, we've got this car up and it’s winter and the vehicle is just dripping. There is ice under the car and it’s melting. And so all this dirty water is coming down on my dad who’s underneath the car and I'm helping him and he's checking the rear end and he's moving forward to the car. And he clips his head. A scrape the size of a golf ball begins to bleed.
I looked at my dad and I said, “This is horrible. Do you like this?”
And it was probably the wrong time to ask him a philosophical question because he's bleeding and he's got all this water on him.
He said, “What this? Oh, I hate this, but that's not why I do it. I like my customers and they're my friends. And this is just a way to take care of them.”
And that made all the impact for me. And that to me is what banking is.
Bank of Idaho is just a vehicle to take care of people. Take care of the team, take care of the customers, take care of the community and ultimately our shareholders. So it's just the vehicle to make life just a little better. Not everybody loves small businesses. They're kind of high maintenance because they don’t have big CFOs and fancy accounting systems. But, I liked that because I feel like we're adding value. We're doing something special for those people and their families.
IFM: What are some of the things that Bank of Idaho does to really try and truly help people?
JN: Our culture is not something that's accidental.
I believe in leading that way on that, it has to be a buy-in from everyone from really the very top. I would say, shareholders board all the way down. It can't just be one person. I'm the keeper of it, but I don't do it by myself. It takes the entire team. It starts with the employees. You have to take care of them and that's not just a lip service thing. It's not a pat on the head, it's truly caring. So that means things like if somebody is in the hospital, you truly care. You're checking on them. I had just had an executive out with COVID-19.
I checked on him every day. Not because it was some manual thing I had to do, but because I really do care. I think the other thing is there's no spin to it. There's no ulterior motive. We just really do care for each other.
And the other thing is I also never want somebody to worry about what they're getting paid. That's another fundamental thing, because that's my job to make sure they're fairly compensated. Some people want to get the most out of somebody for the cheapest amount. And that's just going to haunt you. That person's just going to get bitter and leave you. Then you're going to have to pay all the costs of retraining. It's better just to be fair, just be there and make sure people are taken care of. And then the cool thing is if you do that really well, then they spread that kind of care to the customers.
IFM: What advice do you have for locals dealing with the continued effects of COVID?
JN: The biggest thing is you're not alone. You don't have to shoulder this alone. There's help there. We have all these resources, just reach out to us for help.
Small businesses frequently think they have to go and research all this stuff on their own, like PPP, for example, this next round coming up, they feel like they have to go research and see if they qualify. Just call and get on our waitlist. We will do all the work for you. We'll see if you qualify. Don't waste a bunch of energy doing that. We're here to help.
Click here to read more of our March issue.