McGarvey's Words: Journalist…Podcaster..Speaker

by Robert McGarvey

This is the year to make a vow, this is the year to travel meaningfully.

That means no more stupid check the box trips (“I’m going to the Azores because I’ve never been”), no more trips driven by envy (“everybody’s been to Kenya so I gotta go”). no more trips taken just to fill time in a vacation season where it seems everybody else is traveling.

Do note: this primarily applies to leisure travel. A lot of the business travel I have taken and will take is, er, meaning deficient. Somebody thinks I should be in Chicago and, well, there’s no pressing conflicts in my calendar so, sure, I will go. Nowadays I will grumble, I will try to invoke alternatives (“will a Zoom call suffice”), but when the order is given I will pack and go.

Leisure travel on the other hand is largely within my control and so this year my travel will be meaningful.

What’s that mean?

I’m riffing on an idea put forth by Wolfgang Georg Arlt in a recent Phocuswire piece where he stated a provocative thesis: “Quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved need to become the guideposts for the tourism development in the 2020s. 

“The world developed economically at an ever-growing speed in last 30 years without a parallel growth of political institutions managing globalization – the climate catastrophe, rise of despotism and the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands have been the result.”

Too much meaningless travel has been a large contributor to the eco mess we now find ourselves in.

Let’s be honest: overtourism vanished in 2020-2022 but that was a Covid pause, it most certainly wasn’t indicative of a fundamental shift in traveler attitudes. If anything, more of us today are speeding off to Mykonos and Santorini, Vatican City, Paris, and the rest of the travel hotspots.

Locals may grumble, from Florence to Japan about too many tourists, but money is talking louder than common decency and rational planning. This summer will see tsunamis of overtourism – there just is no doubt about it. And the natterers among us will resume their grumbles about too many tourists mindlessly traveling but that won’t change a thing.

It’s time for individual, personal action. It’s time to dig heels in the ground and insist on meaningful travel and that is travel with a purpose (beyond sheer hedonism) and travel that plainly benefits multiple stakeholders. Per Arlt, “‘Meaningful Tourism’ [is] a paradigm that is based on a return to quality, satisfaction and benefits for all stakeholders involved, namely the guests, the host communities, the employees of service providers, the companies, the government and the environment, with quality and satisfaction measured by the stakeholders themselves.”

And it’s not just where we travel, but how we travel and what we do when we get there.

So much leisure travel is and always has been all about me. What do i want to do? How do I feel about that?

In my new mindset I am trying to see my travel through multiple lenses – including the locals and the businesses I will interact with along the way.

The only leisure travel I have planned for this year is a three week trip in the fall to the Iberian Peninsula, to walk a second Camino de Santiago route (the so called Portuguese Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela in Spain). This walk will include many nights in small, independent hotels, meals in small, local restaurants and countless coffees along the way bought at small shops.

Pre-trip there will a multi night stay in Lisbon, where I have never been, and post trip there will be a multi night stay in Madrid (if nothing else to again tour the Prado).

(In fall 2021 I did a similar trip, walking a different Camino route only in Spain.)

Just one trans Atlantic roundtrip is involved in this fall’s holiday, the trip is after the peak Camino season (summer) and many small businesses, primarily owned and operated by locals will benefit.

The Camino also is per se a “meaningful” trip because it blends history, architecture, culture, the outdoors, exercise and spirituality into a single package.

Do all trips have to be that heavily laden with obvious meaning? Nope. Meaning is to a large extent in the traveler’s eye. We know what we do that is harmful to the planet and its people and we know what we do that isn’t.

Just do more of the beneficial, less of the harmful, and that is a trip well taken.

 Tell me: do you have a VP of digital assets?

Didn’t think so.

What exactly would such a position do?

Good question.

That’s why you want to pay close attention to this podcast with Joe Keller whose title – drumroll please – is vice president of digital assets at Visions, a $6 billion credit union in upstate New York.

Right, Endicott, New York. Not Cambridge Mass or San Jose Ca. 

Endicott. Which is pretty near Binghamton if that helps place it.

Keller, whose background involved big banks, consulting firms, and startups, might have seemed an unlikely credit union hire.

Keller was brought in by Visions CEO Ty Muse.

You’ll hear Keller’s first reaction to the suggestion – then discover what persuaded him that in fact this was exactly the job he wanted and why getting this right at a credit union genuinely matters.

Incidentally this show is about way more than Bitcoin.  Lots more.  We are deep into an embrace of digital assets and the institutions that get that now will have a head start.

Keller tells how he plans to help Visions get its head start.

And he also tells what he thinks a credit union’s first steps into digital assets should look like.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

Many want, but few are chosen. Talk with investors who fund early-stage companies, and the mathematical reality is brutal. Most say they look at hundreds of companies for every one they fund.

“We have a large top of funnel, multiple hundreds of companies that we consider,” said Joe Raczka, managing partner at investment firm York IE, which focuses on early-stage companies, particularly B2B SaaS companies. “We take that number to maybe 50 that we talk with with some regularity. We invest in around one.”

Do the odds sound daunting? This is reality. However, there are winners: companies that emerge from the funnel with money in their hands.

Read the rest of the story at Startup Savant

by Robert McGarvey

In the past month, one of my Amazon orders vanished, the company admitted. In another order the wrong product was shipped, an oximeter instead of the herbal medicine I had bought and I have no idea how a gadget was confused with a bottle of pills. In a third shipment the delivery person claimed there was no access to the building but where I live is a highrise condo with a 24-7 desk attendant.

What I saw was a company spiraling into ineptitude.

Yes, I know there are widespread labor shortages and also that there are global supply chain issues. But in all my cases Amazon failed on its own. It did not meet delivery dates of its own choosing and did not ship the products it said it had in stock.

I found myself pondering my future shopping habits.

I have been an Amazon customer for 20+years, I have a Chase Amazon card that gives me 5% back on Amazon purchases, and it was just six weeks ago that I wrote in this space that I had no interest in the Amex Plat reward that would give me a free WalMart+ membership (kind of Amazon Prime without the videos).

I should have remembered, times do change, very fast and unpredictably.

A headline in Sunday’s London Telegraph caught my eye: It won’t be long before Jeff Bezos returns to rescue Amazon.  The subhead: Founder must retake control to get struggling retail juggernaut back on track.

On Friday, April 29 Amazon reported its first quarter numbers: a loss of $3.84 billion. Its forecast for Q2 also disappointed the street.

And then I remembered I’d sniffed at and ignored WalMart related perks offered to Amex Plat cardholders, what were they again?

I immediately found one: Spend $40 at WalMart, get $10 back. Good for two uses.

I placed two trial orders, just to see how WalMart worked, to explore the product selection, and to get a sense of the efficiency of the operation.

Besides $20 back, in the bargain I got 50+ Rakuten points that credit as Amex Membership Miles. For doing essentially nothing. Shopping at WalMart.com and clicking the activate Rakuten popup when logging in.

As for overall efficiency, WalMart passed which should be no surprise. From the start the company has been built around efficiency (and the resulting cost savings).

Then my mind began to wonder, is that WalMart+ freebie still on for Plat cardholders? It is. I signed up, and within a couple days the monthly fee ($12.95) was covered with a credit.

There’s a dedicated landing page for the WalMart+ deal. The only tricky bit is that only a monthly membership is reimbursed (don’t sign up for an annual membership).

What comes with WalMart+?  Early access to Black Friday deals (four hours before the hoi polloi). Free shipping – no minimum.  Free delivery from stores (including groceries).  Prescription drug discounts.  Member prices on gasoline.  A Scan and Go feature that lets you shop in store and pay with your phone.

Have I abandoned Amazon forever? No.  In fact A few days ago I bought a carbon steel wok from Amazon – I did not see a wok of the same quality at WalMart.  Delivery was as promised.

But I will be putting in more orders with WalMart and, so far, find the product selection generally acceptable (high end woks aside), the pricing very competitive with Amazon, and the delivery – so far – much more consistent and reliable than Amazon.

The bigger point is that Amex Plat indeed does save, even with decidedly not upscale retailers such as WalMart.

Again, I know I preach spending a minimal amount of time studying Amex Plat’s rewards and benefits but, hark, I did not violate my rule.  I fortunately remembered the WalMart+ deal and found it in a few seconds. As for the $10 back on $40 at WalMart, that I did fid in looking at new benefits and, again, seconds were involved.

Incidentally I just now got notification from Amazon that a bag of Earl Grey tea I had ordered on April 24 is scheduled for delivery May 2 and I assume it must have swum here from India.  I had tried to cancel that order at Amazon but the online process was balky and I do not wish calls to Amazon customer service on anyone.

I will probably keep the tea.  We drink a lot of the stuff and and keeping it will save me aggravation with Amazon.

Calling Jeff Bezos, where are you when your company — and its customers! — need you?

 How good a manager are you?

Be honest now.  Do you have a systematic way of measuring how effectively you are leading? Or is it all seat of the pants guesswork and, well, we have to be doing okay because the lights are still on?

Let’s be honest. A lot of credit unions are going out of business in the next decade. A lot.

Right now there is a flood of fintechs into the credit union orbit and many come with promises and promise – but a lot of them won’t be open in five years.

Ineffective management and leadership will figure into many of these demises.

Enter Julie Markee. She is a professional implementer – you haven’t heard that title before, have you – with EOS, a company that teaches what it calls an entrepreneurial operating system (this EOS).

In this podcast Markee – who has worked with a number of companies in the credit union orbit – offers up a fast view of EOS’ thinking and processes,

Case in point: are your executive meetings a productive use of time – or do you leave the room thinking why the heck am I spending so much time on this? EOS has a fast approach to meetings that will up effectiveness. You want to hear that.

Do you have the right people in the right seats? That’s a core EOS principle and when it’s not in place that organization will struggle to succeed. Find out how to get the right people in the right seats in this show.

Here’s a promised link to a lot of EOS tools: https://www.eosworldwide.com/eos-tools 

Here’s a link to how to run a Level 10 meeting.

This is a content rich show. Think about what she says. Think and learn.

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

By Robert McGarvey

Business travelers have been sidelined for two years, thanks to the pandemic, but you know who has not been sidelined: hackers, cyber criminals, and a huge cast of malefactors in Russia, China, Iran, and, yes, of course the United States who want to take advantage of road weary travelers who too often let down their guards and thus are easy marks.

So I was not surprised when I saw that the World Travel & Tourism Council had worked with Microsoft to generate a report on cyber risks and travel, a business that is exceptionally vulnerable because, per WTTC data, 80% of the players in travel are small and medium sized businesses and that group generally has been laggard in arming up to thwart cyber attackers.

Phocuswire reported: “Julia Simpson, WTTC president and CEO, says: ‘Technology and digitalization play a key role in making the whole travel experience more seamless, from booking a holiday, to checking in for a flight or embarking on a cruise.

‘But the impact of cyberattacks carries enormous financial, reputational and regulatory risk.’”

Reprising Capt. Willard

That quote put me in mind of Martin Sheen’s Captain Willard as he passed time in a Saigon hotel room waiting for his mission in Apocalypse Now.  Muttered Willard, “Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker and every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.”

YouTube video clip (two minutes) here.

As we have grown soft sipping Scotch nursing our memories of hotel rooms past the cyber bad actors have grown tougher, smarter, hardened and hungrier.

And as we go out on the road again we will be prime targets.

The Leaky Sieve Travel Industry

The WTTC/Microsoft report gloomily set this stage: “Cyber criminals tend to be opportunistic and will exploit any possible area of vulnerability, from a payment process to a loyalty programme. While loyalty programmes enhance the travel experience by creating reward opportunities based on travel, they are also a target of cyber criminals. These programmes contain sensitive data which makes them susceptible to attack, underlining the need to treat these programmes as part of the larger eco-system of the business.”

The report also noted: “According to Kelly White at Mastercard, ‘most people assume and expect security and privacy,’ both in how the data is being used and stored. This highlights the trust consumers have had in their providers, even in the absence of overt safety measures.”

Face this fact: your security on the road is on you. That includes taking personal responsibility for safeguarding your personal data and credit card info when dealing with travel providers.

You cannot trust travel providers. They have been cyber leaky sieves for decades and there is no question that in the past two years of economic oblivion most have grievously neglected their cyber security.

Hotels, airlines, cruise ships have lost literally billions of dollars in the past two years.  What budget item haven’t they cut?

Depend on them to protect you and, honestly, make sure you pack a rosary and dutifully say your prayers on the road because you will definitely need God’s help.  

6 Steps to Better Road Safety

What steps should you take to stay cyber safe in 2022:

• Do not use public WiFi.  Use your phone to create a personal hotspot — cellular data is vastly safer than public WiFi.
• If you must use public WiFi, always have a VPN as a filter.  And never use a free VPN
• This all is definitely true for hotel WiFi – don’t use it and if you must use a VPN.
• Regularly check loyalty points totals – the sooner you blow the whistle about a theft the more likely matters will quickly resolve in your favor.  Even smarter: drive your totals down as near as you can to  zero. Loyalty points spent cannot be stolen. 
• Never, ever use a debit card at a hotel, airline, saloon, or restaurant. Your federal protections are much stronger with credit cards.  
• When traveling – especially abroad – use a credit card that has built in chip and PIN protection.  That means you need to enter a four digit code to complete the transaction. This is vastly safer than the US standard of chip and signature.  Personally I use Diners Club card. Here are others noted by WalletHub. 

Look, I too want travel businesses to read and act on the Microsoft report which is stuffed with suggestions for toughening defenses.

But I am not optimistic.

Trust no one in the travel industry.

 Seth Brickman’s career includes the US Navy (remember Top Gun? That was his motivator). Then he landed at Microsoft, he co-founded a startup Nicolette which builds tools to help parents make informed decisions about their baby’s health, then he was at Amazon where he earned a patent  involving Alexa and the content delivered to its screen.

Now he is at QCash, a CUSO created by Washington State Employees Credit Union (hear CU 2.0 Podcast #56 with past QCash CEO Ben Morales).

Why QCash? In the podcast Brickman tells why but the short version is that he had reached a point in his life where he wanted to do a lot of good and he joined QCash because it seemed to him to be the vehicle that could make that happen.

Listen to this section of the podcast multiple times. Take notes. You want to get highly talented techies into your organization. Brickman tells how.

At QCash, his dreams are big. The CUSO presently serves 50 credit unions. His goal is to double that number by year end.

Partly it’s that Brickman has tweaked QCash’s product messaging.  It no longer refers to itself as an alternative to payday lending. Now it’s about helping members through what QCash calls life events.

Don’t think QCash is abandoning the people it was created to help. It isn’t. The QCash focus remains making loans – oftentimes to individuals who might not qualify for traditional lending products – to help members deal with life events, from a blown car transmission to false teeth.

What’s exciting about QCash is that its loans do not involve a traditional application. It connects to the core and that gives it ample insight into this member who wants a loan.  

Brickman also is expanding the QCash toolbox – for instance there now is an emergency response loan that will let a participating credit initiate lending to community members after a natural disaster – an earthquake, fire, even Covid-19 – literally within minutes of the event. How cool is that? The credit union can legitimately call itself a financial first responder.

What could be more in the credit union spirit than that?

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

by Robert McGarvey

My name is Bob and I am a points addict.

Actually I am not and in this blog I will explore the Siren call of points and how I managed to escape the trap. Just barely. It has become terribly easy to be seduced by the allure of points as a free passport to, well, anything you desire. But it is not that easy or even that honest.

Understand, for starters, I mean no disrespect to real 12 step programs. AA has been of enormous benefit to close friends of mine, also family.

I also do not know if there is some kind of program that aims to help points addicts. But there should be because, honestly, it has become very, very easy to slip into a mindset where it becomes crucially important to score this 500 point bonus here, that triple point bonanza there and, along the way, why the hell not get a new Alaska Air card because it comes with 60,000 miles and who cares if I don’t recall flying Alaska in a quarter century.

I see the headline and indeed my heart beats – Get a new Jag, get 50,000 United miles. Yes, I know Jags are unreliable pieces of rolling junk and have been for a decade or longer. Classic Jags – pre the Ford purchase of the marque in 1999 – have undeniable beauty, swagger even, that may cancel out the reliability question and, besides, by the time a car is 25 it really does not matter what its reliability was when it rolled off the assembly line. Would I love an old Jag? Very possibly and I still regret letting an old Jag that was in the family slip away. But a new one?

Even so…50k United miles.

And then there is the “mystery” bonus – free miles on United and American – limited time only and what miles you get varies depending upon…well, who knows? Free miles are free miles. Do you click the links? Warning: probably those promotions have expired. The real question is, did you click the links when they were live? Did you get the bonuses?

Personally I did and I didn’t. I clicked the link, saw my bonus (500 miles after spending $125 on my United Explorer card) but…I caught myself. I have no rational plan for accumulating enough United miles to matter and presently I have but a handful and an extra 500, or 625 after the needed purchase, won’t make an iota of difference. I’ll still have a useless handful.

But I caught myself.

I also did not get the pre approved Alaska Air offer, although I will admit it is tempting. But I already have a couple cards I never use (United Explorer I am looking at you) and they may be lonely for companionship but I am not going to stuff my wallet with cards I know I won’t use.

So how do I cope with my almost addiction?

I have my own 2 step program.

Step one: I monitor and severely limit how much time I spend on sites devoted to points addictions. How to identify them? A clue is that the word point or mile is in the site name. Those are the ones to be wary of because, suddenly, you will find yourself clicking around an IHG card application because you just read about a super new offer even though you cannot recall the last time you stayed at an IHG hotel. They toss catnip in our paths and who can resist when you have the addiction propensity?

At one such site the business model hinges on affiliate marketing, a fancy way to describe getting paid finders fees for steering new business. There’s nothing wrong per se with affiliate marketing – I am a fan of the NYTimes WireCutter site which uses affiliate links – but always remember the underlying business model when visiting such sites.

Step two: I limit my real points hunt to offers and rewards on Amex Plat and, yes, the need to search annoys me (why not just be nice and give it to me) but if Amex insists on gamifying the experience I’ll play. But only a very little. Maybe five minutes every few weeks looking at my 100 Amex offers.

That’s enough to find hidden little gems. For instance: an Amex offer that gifts me 2000 Amex miles for Spending $3500 – enrollment required. It can gift the points multiple times but the offer is timed (I believe it expires for me at month end). I do nothing to get the bonus. Just use the card as usual.

So now maybe I should re-introduce myself: My name is Bob and I am not a points addict but came close to being one. But not enough to be one.

 Buckle up, this will be a bumpy ride.

That’s because today’s guest, Barb Lowman, president of CUNA Strategic Services has a huge portfolio of responsibilities – and she need to succeed to keep the credit union sector thriving.

We are in existential times.  Break out your Kierkegaard because, honestly, the future of thousands of small and even mid sized credit unions does not look bright as pressures grow in technology, in regulation, in compliance and you know the lengthening list of issues that credit union CEOs wrestle with.

Lowman’s job as CUNA Strategic Services is to find ways to give credit unions competitive edges and she is looking hard at technology. For instance: how can small credit unions have good, contemporary core systems? We talk about exactly that issue.

We talk a lot more tech too – but know we also talk executive compensation and board recruitment and those are issues that smaller credit unions in particular fight with.

Can you guess the typical CEO retirement package at a small credit union? Listen: Lowman tells us.

And when you hear it you will know why many credit unions struggle to survive when a long serving CEO retires.

Lowman is a lifelong optimist. This is a cheery podcast.

So smile.

And listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto

Tags: Gliadigitalmember experiencemergers

 You know the numbers.  In just the first three quarters of 2021 the NCUA approved 117 mergers and there will be more this year. In the mix is an ever growing number of credit union acquisitions of banks.

Here’s the million dollar question: post merger how many members (or bank customers) will flee to a new institution. If you are going to have to learn how to deal with a new institution, why not make it a completely new institution?

Hmm.

Then I saw an article by Glia CEO Dan Michaeli in Credit Union Times  that put out an entrancing thesis: “Credit unions undergoing a merger can benefit from modernizing member service with a digital-first approach..”

What if?

What if you not only can lose fewer members but get more wallet share?

Just maybe, says Michaeli, you can do exactly that.

In this podcast he talks about the 2022 credit union imperative to master digital member experience.

It no longer is nice to have. It’s an authentic must have and do.

Incidentally, Michaeli also believes that a good member digital experience can help boost employee satisfaction. That’s news you want to know in the era of the great resignation.

You say you think you heard Michaeli on this podcast before? Bonus points are yours.  Episode 115 was his first appearance.  

Listen up.

Like what you are hearing? Find out how you can help sponsor this podcast here. Very affordable sponsorship packages are available. Email rjmcgarvey@gmail.com

And like this podcast on whatever service you use to stream it. That matters.

Find out more about CU2.0 and the digital transformation of credit unions here. It’s a journey every credit union needs to take. Pronto