Hey, hey. This is John Hope Bryant and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series on iHeart Radio and the Black Effect Network. I want to thank you all for making this book, this podcast or the book top 100 on Amazon by the way, Capitalism for All. If you haven't got a copy, get it. I want to thank you all also for making the podcast Money and Wealth top 200 on top 250 on every continent in the world. Top 40 to 50 on entrepreneurship in America and top 1% of all podcasts. And we are getting into season three with some powerhouse guests. I don't normally have guests on the podcast, you know, it's normally me just pouring into you for 45 minutes, but when I have a guest, you know, it's special. My guest today is Steve Steinhower. That name, unless you're in banking, probably is not a household name to you. If you're in banking, you know, he leads one of the biggest banks in America, Huntington Bank. And if you don't know who he is, well, consider yourself lucky, blessed, fortunate, blessed, and soon enlightened. And full disclosure, Steve is a friend of mine, and I even consider him a mentor of mine. He's done two things to me and for me that I don't know if I told him personally that showed me who he was. Number one, when I was trying to build Operation Hope and take it to the next level, he agreed to join the Hope Global Board of Advisers, our inaugural group, as a founding board member. And he stayed on for a year. He was busy, didn't have time to do it. He was on for a year, then he left. But him coming on the board set the standard. And now we have the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City president. We've got all these luminaries, the CEO of Delta Airlines. We have all these big ballers and shot callers from all walks of life. But they wouldn't have done that had they not found credibility with their peers being on the board. So, by him saying yes early on and showing up to board meetings, I remember he discouraged me from doing virtual meetings. He said, you know, he's used to showing up in person and being present. And I learned a lot from him backing me. The second time he did something that was extraordinary was a governor of Ohio who was a Republican. And I'm not a partisan player, but folks would assume maybe from the work I do that I'm not a Republican. I don't know why they'd assume that, but to be fair, I'm an independent, but I'm not political in any way. And that didn't matter to Steve. Steve thought the work that we were doing was important and Republicans and Democrats need to know about it. And I've served three presidents from both parties, Republicans and Democrats, Bush, Clinton, pre and post presidency, and President Obama. President Bush is where I got actually the most work done, oddly enough. And Steve Steinhower said, 'Come with me.' And we left his office and we went through what I call an underground tunnel. It was a connected walkway to this capitol and he took me to the governor's office and put his arm around me and said, 'This is my guy to the governor.' And we had a great relationship as a result of that, me and his then governor. And I just thought that was very special. Again, these were two things that were done when nobody was looking. Just quiet leadership. And Steve, I want to just thank you publicly for backing me and backing the work because you thought it was important to do, ladies and gentlemen.
And I still do, John. I still think the work is very important in some ways even more important today. But it was kind of you to lower the bar and let me join your board for a year and get into that founder circle. It was I think very helpful for the team, both board and your team at the time because I remember our first meeting I offered you a couple of thoughts about how to engage the directors, get the benefit of the mind share there and you did that expertly and that's when I knew I've made a contribution I can now retire and let you give that seat to someone more worthy. So happy to have had that time with you and of course over the many years subsequently in different forums and in different undertakings but you were kind to let me sort of give you that personal escort over to you're a rock star. So we walk over to Governor Kasich's office and the governor was a I think a great governor and also he's a good friend. I was just talking to him Friday and a good man, great heart, very religious, very very ethical and has done wonderful things for the country throughout his service over time. And I knew the two of you would connect just like that because you're cut out of the same cloth. You care about people, you care about outcomes, and you want to help. And it was one of these rare moments for me to be able to see an introduction come together with such a dynamic impact.
So, and we need more leaders like... My pleasure, Steve. Thank you. We need more leaders like Steve Steinhower in the world today. What do I mean by that? He takes me to a Republican governor's office when he didn't have to do it. And then he sponsors the Urban League in Ohio for a speech. Where when I showed up, he didn't just sponsor the speech. He's at the dinner with the Urban League leadership. He's home. These people know him. He's their friend. So he can go from black to white or rich to poor or conservative to liberal or the other way around and get respect in both rooms. Now, you may say, 'Okay, there's a lot of people I know who can do that.' Really? Do they run a bank with $280 billion plus in assets? And my guess is the assets have grown beyond that number. The last number I had of their asset size for Huntington Bank is $280 billion. And Steve Steinhower and his group have partnered with Operation Hope on a program that we call Lyft Local Business, Huntington's Lift Local Business program that's directed $246 million in book loans to folks from underserved communities for small business, 60 million of which that we have tagged, we have identified to black-owned businesses alone as 3,186 small businesses served, 2,420 active operational business entrepreneurial training courses used. So we are active partners with Huntington Bank. Let me give you a bit of background from Steve and then let him cut loose here with wisdom because you're going to get a chance to hear from a chairman CEO of a top bank in the biggest economy in the world and learn something about how this system actually works. So he's chairman, president and chief executive officer of Huntington Bancshares and president CEO of Huntington National Bank. Now he will hopefully unpack what this means but essentially one is a holding company and one is an operating bank, is where the operating bank, you would know Huntington National Bank, that's where if you're a client that's where you do business and where you interact. He's led the bank since 2009. The bank was born the year after the Freedmen's Bank by the way in 1866. Before Huntington he was managing partner at Cross Harbor Capital Partners. Early in his career he was president CEO of Citizens Financial Group. I actually might have met him I think at Citizens Financial Group I think in Boston if I'm not mistaken. It was a division anyway and he was executive vice president at Bank of New England. He started out in public service as an analyst at the US Treasury Department and later worked for the FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He also serves on the board of directors of Bath & Body Works. I want to get my product from my wife by the way from there. And he has a reputation that is rooted in compassionate, ethical, results-oriented leadership. And I can personally certify that that's absolutely the case. I'm going to talk more and more about the credentials as we go in the conversation, but let's get into this. Steve Steinhower, first of all, let's get a bit of the backstory. The bank and then you personally, did I get it right about the holding company and the operating entity?
You did, John. The Huntington family goes back many, many decades, in fact, a couple of centuries. The governor of Connecticut who signed the Declaration of Independence was a Huntington, Samuel Huntington. And the family was quite large and very extensive in terms of their activities throughout the US. And so Huntington Ingalls in Mississippi, the largest shipyard in Mississippi, employs about 20,000 people. That was a Huntington family member. Huntington West Virginia, Huntington Beach, California. The Huntington in West Virginia were very very large into the transcontinental rail. In California too. Huntington, California. And so the art museum out there. And one of the family members ended up in 1866. A very physically large gentleman who wanted to... the national road went from Washington DC to Columbus, Ohio, and it stopped in Columbus at that time. And so this is where goods and merchants and services flowed through. It was either the Erie Canal or the National Road. And he felt there was an opportunity to do good business and help people. And Huntington at that time was born and Columbus was, you know, it was the end of the road. It just wasn't that much. It was probably a small town when he started but it quickly became a city and a city of some importance to the country. The National Highway ultimately extended to Indianapolis, but the effort here by P.W. Huntington and then his sons extended the impact of the family for many decades and the family always was very good to the community. So the library was started with some funding by the Huntington Bank and Family and others. Of course, one of the larger nonprofits here, it's been in existence well over a century, does Meals on Wheels, does a variety of public service providers, was founded in the living room of one of the Huntington family members, and we've had a board member on that board for over a century. So there's this deep legacy of trying to be good to the community, give back, and that DNA that's been formed is frankly part of what attracted me to the company. It's important to the community that we serve the community. When I mean the community, I mean the full community, the entire community, black, brown, white, etc. and people of high income and people of very low income or even no income. Think about those that are homeless or suffering other debilitating issues. So this legacy I think is imbued in many of our colleagues. We have very long service colleagues, 30, 40, 50. We've had 60-year colleagues who've worked here. And so this set of values transcended me. I inherited it. I've tried to enable it, tried to further build upon it, but it's not something I created. These Midwest values, you know, religion, family, respect, service to country, these are values that I didn't create. They're present throughout this region. And yet our company as a consequence of how we've operated over now 160 years has built a bit of a brand, a reputation, a halo if you will about trying to be good to people, trying to help businesses and certainly trying to help the communities we serve.
And when I think about the folks who you lead, I think about Brandt Stan who's a good man and Stacy Glenn and others, they have that same spirit. And that with all due respect comes from the top. It comes from you, Steve. And I'm not going to let you get away from the fact that you are leaders. I want other people to model your leadership. And also their sense of showing up, being PhDs as well as PhDs in their mindset is reflected in how you show up in community. When I showed up here in Atlanta to give a speech for the Columbus Partnership, you were there in the room. I mean, here's a chairman CEO, one of the biggest banks in the world, who took time to come to Atlanta, just look at Atlanta as a model. And then I went to Columbus again to speak for the Columbus Partnership, which is in and of itself a great partnership for how a city should build itself with private public partnerships. I walk in the room there. Once again, there's Steve Steiner. It's not like you're not busy. Why do you put a premium on showing up? How does that relate to the image that you have of this being the people's bank? How does this cross-pollinate with how you run the bank? And finally, in this set of questions, what's the purpose of a bank and how do people, what's a cheat sheet people can, no cheat sheet is probably wrong word to say a banker. What is an easy lesson that people can grasp of how to get the attention of their banker? Take those.
Those are five questions. Let me start with the fourth one if I may. Right. I believe that the company, the bank has a purpose. I fundamentally believe that and we express that in our purpose statement. But we talk about it all the time. I'll talk about it to a group of senior leaders in two days. We're here to help people lead better lives, help businesses thrive, and to make the communities better, stronger. And our business model is at the intersection of, you know, commerce, flows of money. And so that puts us in a position where we can extend ourselves, try to do the right thing and help people and businesses. You referenced Lyft Local early, a program we've done in partnership with you and your team, which has been fantastic, by the way. And you know, these are efforts to get into the neighborhoods and make microloans. And so when you're making 250 plus million dollars in microloans, that's a lot of microloans but we've done this in partnership with you because it would be like giving away money if people didn't understand. And this is what they get through the training program that you offer, that creating a business needs to have certain elements. You show them the essential elements. We give them loans. Now, these are SBA loans. These are loans to businesses that are in most cases just starting. So, the credit access generally wouldn't otherwise be there. And yet the performance over time because these people have been trained, they've been educated, and that's a big word, education, literacy, right? That has spawned jobs in neighborhoods that otherwise wouldn't be there. It's created business owners who wouldn't otherwise be business owners. It's capitalism as you describe it in your various books, but particularly I think in your new book, which I had the privilege of reading an advanced copy of, John. So, I think... well, I'm trying to, but you know, I'm a banker, so I'm slow at everything, but I think those elements are essential then. Now that's two of your five questions. But for people, you know, the fifth one was it's really important to get educated. It's really important whether it's financial education or anything else to keep learning to challenge yourself. And there's more and more capacity to do that now with these AI tools and other digital means which didn't exist when you and I were growing up. We had to do it the hard way, right? I remember the first time somebody said to me, 'You should make a budget.' I had no idea what a budget was. My family were blue collars. They didn't have a budget. My father was an alcoholic. You know, he wasn't functional to be able to put a budget together. So, you learn these things over time, but you have a persistency about it. And you've used this word before in various forums where you don't fail if you don't quit. And so that persistency is really important. And...
By the way, that's a Tony Ressler quote. I want to give credit where credit is due. One of our dear friends, Tony Ressler, he said, 'If you don't quit, you can't fail.' One of my partners and friends. Continue on, Steve.
But that's that attitude of willingness to learn, take some risk, do the right thing. Work hard as we were talking before you started taping. You know, you're working 18 hours a day and you've been doing it for so long. It's like part of your life rhythm, right? To a certain extent, not quite the same hours, but to a certain extent, that's the way I've embraced the opportunity of being a banker and I know others do in their different career pursuits. It's a privilege to be able to do the things we do. Think of the millions of people you're helping. In our case, hundreds of thousands of businesses and maybe a couple million people. But, you know, we make a mortgage loan that's helping somebody. We make a home improvement loan, give them an auto loan, start a small business. We're the largest SBA lender in the country by volume. These things matter.
Slow that down. Say that again. You're the largest what?
We're the largest SBA lender in the country by the number of loans we make. And so these things...
So we're in the position where we can help a lot of people and a lot of businesses. And so there's a great sense of self satisfaction, a great sense of pride in my colleagues who do all the work anyway. I'm just a show horse and letting these results flow through. So there's a shareholder return as well in the equation, but you know, do you and you've said this before, doing well by doing good. It's this balance. It doesn't have to be one or the other. And I believe that. I've always believed that.
So Steve, I got to correct him a couple times. Steve said, 'Oh, I'm slow and I'm trying to get around.' Look, here's the endorsement in my book from Steve Steinhower. This is my newest book. Talking about being fast on the draw. This is my newest book and Steve's already he made sure that his support for what we do was front and center. So when you get the book, turn right to the front and you'll see Steve Steinhower's endorsement of the book. 'John is focused on exactly the issues we face today as a society and the challenges of aligning our goals and institutions and partnership to build the next stage of growth and opportunity for all Americans. Inclusive economics can be our future roadmap for the dreams of prosperity must be attainable and aspirational for hard work, education, and shared values. He shows a compelling path forward at a time when we need to come together.' What did I describe him as? The guy who was at the Urban League meeting and he was at the Republican governor's meeting and I see him at the White House. I see him at your house trying to finance your house. I see him in community. I see him at the Columbus Partnership. I see him showing up at his own family. And so why is the People's Bank? Because, you know, he's a top 20 bank in America, the largest SBA lender by volume. I didn't know that. They've done $250 million give or take with Operation Hope in this Huntington's local business program that we're partnering on to do micro lending for the least of these God's children because every big business was once a small one. So, but at the core of this, as you've heard, he acknowledged without any prompting his own personal background, his decency, his accessibility. He can't lend money. He can't be a good lender unless he has his hand on the pulse of the community. Let me say something that Steve won't and then I want to go to your background, Steve. Background in banking. Personal background in professional banking or banking. How's it work? Just to tee that up. An entrepreneur needs a banker and the banker needs the entrepreneur. The banker's going to say, an attorney's going to say, 'Ah, slow down. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.' That's their nature. They're conservative by nature. They're supposed to be the banker keeps the entrepreneur from running off the road and into a ditch or into a wall. The entrepreneur and the attorney only prosper if the banker, sorry, the banker and the attorney only prosper if the entrepreneur is successful. Conversely, the entrepreneur needs the fuel and the protection from the banker, the entrepreneur and the accountant. But without capital, without banking, and banking is to Wall Street what Wall Street is to the biggest businesses in the world, which is a source of capital. And so this is a mutually beneficial relationship, but the entrepreneur is going to be frustrated a little bit by the banker tapping on the brakes and the banker is going to be frustrated and abused a little bit by the entrepreneur who's got his foot on the gas. But this constructive friction, this dynamic tension is precisely what makes the engine go. Everybody sort of respects each other's role. My job is to make that banker, Steve's bankers in this example, comfortable with me, that I'm a good credit risk. That I'm not going to embarrass them. That if there's a problem, I'm going to tell them first and they're not going to find out by themselves. That if there's a challenge, they won't have to chase me. I'm going to call them and work out a restructuring or payment relationship. I have to have credibility. Credit comes from the Latin word credo, which is credibility. And capital comes from the Latin word capitas, knowledge in the head. I've got to have enough knowledge and enough credibility. So the banker says this is a good credit risk. Now did I have that right or do you need to correct me on any of that Steve? Number two, how does what I say expand into the broader context of banking? And number three, and you can do this any way you want, your personal story, how does it inform everything else that you do?
Well, you got number one right. That is the nature of the business model. We're looking to lend, if you will, rent money, right? Extend a loan, a lot of capital. It's used to create income, hopefully wealth over time, for individuals and businesses, but that base level of the loan plus some interest gets repaid. So, capitalism at its essence and I think this is really important for us as a society to make sure that capitalism becomes accessible to all and it flows. It just flows. That's number one. Now, I think John the nature of our work and sort of the way I was brought up have parallels. My grandparents had a lot of influence on me growing up. My grandfather worked until he was in his late 70s. He was a blue collar worker and never made much money but he found pride in doing work and his compliment to you would be if you're a worker, not if you're out having fun or, you know, it's did you do a good job. That always resonated with me and that became part of what motivated me early in my career and because I didn't know better I didn't know that the probabilities of me being a CEO of the 10th largest commercial bank in the country were almost infinite. You know, one in a couple hundred plus million. So I didn't think about it in the terms of playing the odds here. I just wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to learn. I wanted to get better. And I still have that yearning. And just like you do, which is why you do what you do, you're going to help people, I think, throughout your life, right? When your life's over, if you are in that last moment, I suspect you will be helping someone, you know, your family, of course, but beyond your family, you'll be helping people because you have that imbued in your body, in your spirit. You have that insatiable desire to make an impact and you've done it throughout all your life. You've done it since you were 19. And for me it took a little bit longer to start because I was unclear what I wanted although I knew I wanted some of these elements and I wanted to move out of a small town. I didn't grow up in LA like you did. And so I didn't know what a big city, a big city to me is, you know, 5,000 people, it was at the time. But you know, so things progress and you learn and you figure out how to navigate, you know, you create relationships, you hopefully can find people like you and hundreds of thousands of people who watch your videos, who watch you on YouTube, who listen to you now. You know, you're impacting and some of what you say and do they'll follow. And so, you know, you have this incredible opportunity now with your podcast to impact lives around the world. And I know that for you is very motivational.
Yes, and it is very motivational and every time I talk to you privately or publicly, I'm inspired by you. I want people to understand two things before they get off this podcast with us today. One, your backstory, which we're going to get to no matter how many times I have to ask you. But we can get to that in a moment. I really want to drill down to how did you become such a nice, decent human being that I actually like and respect. But before we get to that, please unpack as best you can the mystery of banking for the general audience. What are some just misnomers or presumptions or mistakes of understanding, misperceptions about banking that we can clear up right here right now to hopefully help to set people free?
Sure. Well, John, you touched on this a little bit earlier in terms of how you act, right? We view it as a relationship and a factor of trust. And if there's an issue, you'll communicate it. If there's a problem, you'll work to solve it. Those elements of a relationship are so very important. And it's harder as these banks get bigger and the pace of life accelerates around us. But I think that's still the essence of good banking and good business, people and relationships. Technology enables, but it's people and relationships. And so connecting and your word is your bond and it is for me. I can't legally do business on a handshake, but if I could, there would be people like you I would do it with. Can't do that anymore. But we can connect with each other and look at each other, get a general understanding of what you're hoping to achieve. Look at it maybe a little more in depth depending on what the aspiration and need is. And then we got to document it with a legal document. But when we say we're going to do something, looking at each other, making a handshake, whatever it is, and we do it. We do it. The rest of it's a formality. So I think that approach of building credibility and trust is really important. I was sitting, I'll do one...
I was sitting at an event we had a couple years ago and one of the retired Supreme Court state justices here said she loved banking with us. And I said, 'Thank you.' I thought it was one of these obligatory things. She's at our event, she's saying it. And they said, 'No, I really do.' And I said, 'Well, tell me why you do.' Because I couldn't go to college unless I borrowed money. And my mother went to every bank and you were the last stop. You were the last stop. If you didn't make that loan, I wasn't going to college, right? And I don't hear that a lot, but I hear it with some regularity where what we've done has made a difference.
We have a program that we talk about in our mortgage lending where we try to make it real for our colleagues. It's called 'a home, not a file,' right? Because we process hundreds of thousands of mortgage loans. But when you connect it with the video of why that home was important to that individual, oftentimes it's a first home. You can't help but be drawn in. You're obviously making a loan and you're doing your work, but you're impacting lives and it could be a family, could be somebody elderly, could be a veteran, could be somebody disabled, you're impacting lives. So, we are blessed with the nature of the business we do and that's what I find so inspirational.
And for me coming from a very rural background, blue-collar, you know, if you said CEO, it could have been a donut for all I knew. I had no idea what that was growing up. And so it's this steady learning and willingness to engage with others and against a value set of trying to help people. And I think our industry is replete with... I know here at Huntington my colleagues feel that way. They want to help. They want to do the right thing. They want to help people and that's why we talk about our purpose statement so often.
So, something's odd about the way to the audience, they will hear it. Not odd for me. They will hear what you're saying and they just... they're going to... a lot of the audience members going to scratch their heads because they're like, 'Now, wait a minute. This guy's basically saying he wants to make loans. He wants to provide access to capital that if somebody's reasonable and trustworthy and all that stuff, he's going to make them a loan. But aren't banks, you know, discriminatory?' That's what they've heard. 'Aren't banks racist?' Is what they've heard. And what I would say is if you're dealing with a bank 150 years ago or 200 years ago in America and that bank was family-owned in a small town in the South or wherever or maybe even the Midwest. If that was a small family-owned bank, they might have had some interesting views on the world and they were basically only lending to their friends and family members and business owners that they knew and they were of the size they could do that and they could make money just on recycling that capital amongst their crew of boutique businesses and whatever.
But banking, I'm saying this by making a statement. This is the statement is leading to a question, Steve. But banking has changed in my view. Banks now are mostly publicly traded. They're highly regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, by the Federal Reserve, in some cases. I'm going to meet the Fed chairman actually later this week. I think it's a good man. Maybe in some cases by the OCC, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in some cases by a state regulator. And the Consumer Protection Agency also in some cases and the SEC also possibly, Securities and Exchange Commission, because they're publicly traded. And I've got the banks... I mean everybody essentially if you have a diversified portfolio you've got bank shares in your 401k plan. The bank has to make loans if they're going to be profitable and successful. They can't afford to do what they were if they were backwards at the leadership level. They were not a Steve Steinour. They were the opposite of Steve. They couldn't afford to do racist policies to be blunt with it in 2026 because there's too much competition and you'll go out of business because racism is a bad business model.
And before you answer that, I'm going to answer a question that you didn't... that is below your pay grade. Let me just say this. Banking is basically administrative costs. Well, cost of savings, cost of the money, let's say it's a savings account. Administrative cost, let's say 2% on top of that. And then profit, let's say that's 3%, whatever, pick a number. And that combined is the cost of capital. And they want to rent that out. As Steve said, he want to rent it out. Rent it out. And he wants to make some assurance. His bankers want to have some insurance. They got to get it back because they're just renting the money. And they have to get it back so they can rent it out to somebody else. And they need that profit that's embedded there. Did I do a decent job of going over 200 years of banking and why banking has changed such that they should listen to what you're saying now about being the people's banker?
Well, I think there are a lot of people like me in the industry. So, I'm not special by any stretch. So, begin with that. But the nature of what we do, you describe very accurately. You know, these bank branches, there's a certain amount of cost in running the operation. So when we're renting money, it's the cost of the deposit. What's the interest paid on it? It's the overhead. And then there's a profit margin. But the nature of what we're doing is very competitive. Thousands and thousands of banks and even more credit unions. And so the impetus to make more loans is in the business model. It's in the business. It's inherent in the business model. Good loans. So loans that will ultimately get repaid. And so whether it's a bank or credit union or some other financial institution that does this type of business, I think there's a capacity inherent to extend credit and we certainly view that as an opportunity.
We build relationships. We don't just make loans. We have checking accounts. We have credit cards or debit cards. We maybe have a mortgage or a home improvement loan. Maybe it's a small business loan or an SBA loan. Maybe we take care of some of the financial planning and investments that the family or the business wants to. Those sorts of things all add up to a relationship. And that's the nature of our business as opposed to, well, we only make loans or we only take deposits. And so that comes back to people and relationships. And if you're trying to help people, if you're trying to look out for what's in their interests as well, because the better they do, the better we do. The better the communities we serve do and the people in those communities, the better we do. We have some amount of market share. Every place we're doing business, the better that market does, that geography, that town, that city, that region, the better we do. So there's a lot of parallel interest in this equation and I'm a big believer in capitalism and that capitalism will continue to evolve. It will continue to, I hope, have a conscience. It'll continue to make opportunities available for people of all races, of all income walks, of immigrants and people that have been here multi-generations.
The Lift Local program in the context of what you just said could be viewed, and this is... I'm thinking about my new book 'Capitalism for All' and its theory, its philosophy of inclusive economics, growth of market share could be viewed not only as it's moral and the right thing to do, not only help you comply with Community Investment Act or what acts might be appropriate, but primarily, sorry I'm thinking this... this is a business development activity. You're growing... you're like you're doing research and development and business development for an emerging market. You're hoping... I hadn't put this together into this interview actually Steve as you were talking, you're hoping, my guess is you're hoping that these microloans build a relationship with you and grow their business and join your portfolio as a mainstream small business loan and then go parallel park on individual family checking accounts and savings accounts and parallel park in a home mortgage as they become a homeowner and multiple homeowners in that family as they build wealth and parallel park in the investment banking group at Huntington and parallel park in the private banking group as you build wealth and parallel park with the investment management section of the... I mean am I getting this right? I mean it's enlightened self-interest.
It is, it is. And it's in this umbrella though of doing good, helping people, helping businesses. And so that's what your book on capitalism and what you've shared about enlightened capitalism over the years is all about. This isn't a handout. This isn't a giveaway, right? This is intended to make good decisions that benefit people and businesses but also benefit banks or other firms as they go forward. We don't have to be limited by historic thinking. You used, you know, a century and a half, two centuries ago, you know, lending just to people you really knew. There's a lot more information available now.
The benefit of Lift Local and the training program you provide, your team does, is that there is a credible third-party national business resource available to help people understand what they need to do, what the expectations are if they're going to create a business. And it's not for everyone. It's really hard. Really hard. You were talking again about 18 hours a day. You've been doing it since you're 19. A lot of people, our children look at me and say, 'I don't want to work that hard.' Which is their decision. You may have something similar or cousins or family members.
Right. But for me, it's a privilege. I don't see it as work. I see it as something I'm fortunate to be able to do and I think you feel the same way, John.
