07/19/2010

Co-op Vegas?

By Tim McAlpine

I attended the 1 Credit Union Conference in Las Vegas last week. The venue struck me as an odd choice. I wondered what kind of first impression Vegas would give the visitors from 60 countries. This tweet from Shari Storm summed up my initial thoughts, "Listening to the regal women of Zimbabwe marvel at how little clothing the young women in Las Vegas wear." Was Las Vegas the best way to show off the western world?

Then it struck me: Vegas is the perfect example of the power of cooperation. Don't believe me? Let's run Vegas past the seven cooperative principles.

Principle #1: Inclusiveness
Everyone is welcome regardless of how much cash they are carrying. From the penny slots to $5,000 minimum bets, Vegas has something for everyone. It does not discriminate. Vegas will take money from anyone!

Principle #2: Voice
Vegas is a democratically run ecosystem, entirely controlled by consumers' wants and desires.

Principle #3: Benefit
Consumers directly participate in the financial success of Vegas by emptying their pockets on gambling, dining, entertainment and taxis. Surpluses are returned to consumers in the form of an occasional jackpot to make everyone believe it's possible to beat the odds!

Principle #4: Independence
As your plane descends, you are struck with how isolated (and illuminated) Las Vegas is.

Principle #5: Education
Financial literacy in Vegas? Heck yes. There are gambling hotline posters displayed in every casino. This service is free and available to all.

Principle #6: Cooperation
Cooperation among casinos is vital. If there was only one casino or one show in Vegas, it wouldn't work. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Principle #7: Community
Every visitor to Vegas shares a common bond and shares the famous motto, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!"

All joking aside, Vegas is a great example of people and organizations working together to make something much bigger than would be possible in isolation. All of the stakeholders in Vegas pool their money and market Vegas as a whole. There is real power in this co-op marketing model that credit unions could learn from.

P.S. I'm not sure what principle this falls under, but I would argue that nowhere else on earth has a group of innovators made better use of air conditioning than in Las Vegas!

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02/24/2010

Hey, it's Young & Free Day on I Wear Your Shirt today!

By Tim McAlpine

Last year I bought a couple of days on Jason Sadler's iwearyourshirt.com. Our November 17, 2009 day was crazy with all sorts of exposure on MSNBC and the CBS News. Well, today is day two and Jason is well underway promoting all things Young & Free! It will be tough to live up to our day one, but we are definitely looking forward to the fun.

Head over to iwearyourshirt.com to catch the live show and the craziness.

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01/25/2010

20 years and 20 lessons learned

By Tim McAlpine

In January 1990, mid way through my final year of art school, I started a business. I was 20 at the time, had zero qualifications to be a businessman and had only had one real job (if you don't count paperboy at 12 and the fry guy at McDonald's at 14). That one real job was a part-time sign painter in high school and college. I am really dating myself, but my time at art school didn't even include computers (yikes).

20 years later and half my life invested in this business, I've learned a few things.

1. Do what you love
2. Work with people and companies you respect
3. Tell the truth
4. Get really good at something
5. Never stop learning
6. Abandon what's not working
7. Learn to say no
8. Don't take it too personal
9. Strive to achieve a work-life balance
10. Give your people freedom to excel and to fail
11. Have a vision and stand for something
12. Differentiate your offering
13. Don't underestimate the power of luck
14. Learn from your mistakes
15. Don't be afraid to ask for help
16. Treat people well
17. Not everyone will believe in what you are trying to do
18. Don't steal ideas
19. Never screen back red, it just turns pink
20. Laugh often

Thanks to everyone who has enabled me to do what I love and here's hoping for another fun 20 years.

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12/06/2009

Chris Anderson joins the growing army of Young & Free Spokesters

By Tim McAlpine

I'm in Alabama right now. On Saturday night, I was at an event where we named the 2010 Young & Free Alabama Spokesperson. His name is Chris Anderson, he's 25 and he's really happy right about now.

We managed to plan a surprise in conjunction with Listerhill Credit Union's staff Christmas party. Check it out.

Having now done five of these surprise videos, I've noticed I get caught up in the moment and my steady hand goes out the window! Other than a few choice shots of the ceiling, I think it really came together nicely.

I spent Sunday with Chris going over his Spokester Manual and getting him up to speed on all things Young & Free. I am really impressed with Chris and I can't wait to see what he comes up with this year.

He told me something that blew me away. Chris decided to start putting his entry together 24 hours before the application deadline. After some encouragement from friends, he headed to the university campus and filmed his application video with his iPhone! Figuring that his potential employer might have an issue with his scruffy beard, he then headed to a hair salon. On his way, he stopped by a hardware store and picked up two suction-cup hooks and a zip tie to affix his iPhone to the mirror!

What really blew me away though, was Chris' challenge video. If you haven't seen it yet, please spend three minutes and do so. It ranks among the very best Young & Free videos ever created.

Again, not one to stick to convention, it was filmed with a friend's Canon 5D—a high-end still-picture camera with HD-video capability. The steady-cam effect is achieved with the new image stabilization function in iMovie '09 and it was lip synched to perfection in post production. This video gives me goose bumps.

Welcome aboard Chris! Now, I've got a plane to catch.

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10/01/2009

22 days has September?

By Tim McAlpine

I set a pretty audacious goal for myself—write 30 things in 30 days. I published 22 things. Not bad.

Truth be told, I haven't set enough time aside to blog in 2009 and the tweet above from the author of the Financial Brand, Jeffry Pilcher, gave me the kick start I needed to reinvest in the Currency blog.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but over the past month Morriss Partee has been blogging more, Matt Dean has posting some great stuff on Open Source CU after an almost two-year hiatus, and low and behold, Ron Shevlin has started a new blog!

Thanks Jeffry.

I've enjoyed spending time thinking more deeply than is possible in 140 characters! I will push the missing eight posts out over the next couple of weeks—I need to slow down a little.

I have to agree with Matt Davis, "I guess CU blogs aren't dead."

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08/12/2009

Cooperative advocate Carol Schillios is living on a roof until she raises $1 million!

By Tim McAlpine

In Edmonds, Washington, there is a really nice credit union and cooperative advocate living on a roof with a simple dream: raise $1 million to support women and their families in developing countries. And she won't come down until she makes it. Her name is Carol Schillios and here is her campaign website.

Carol is asking everyone to donate $1 each to her Fabric of Life Foundation in conjunction with a small act of kindness. Read some of the amazing things that her foundation has accomplished to date.

Since going up on the roof on July 31, Carol has raised about $7,000, so she definitely needs everyone's help if she plans to get down anytime soon! Here's what you can do:

1. Donate a dollar (or more) and perform a small act of kindness
    
2. Tweet your one small act, along with this link to Carol’s site http://bit.ly/qQaec and the hashtag #imupontheroof. For example: “Brought coffee and donuts to the office today for my coworkers. http://bit.ly/qQaec #imupontheroof”

Carol is online and will see your tweets if you use the hashtag #imupontheroof. This will remind her that there are a bunch of people with her in spirit. Also, please encourage everyone you can to do the same by e-mailing, tweeting, blogging, Facebook(ing), etc.

Let's get Carol off that roof pronto!

Thanks,

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05/22/2009

Seth Green delivers the funny and the money!

By Tim McAlpine

Un-Broke: The Seth Green Cribs Edition

Kevin just forwarded me this link. On Friday May 29 at 9/8c, ABC will air a one-hour special called UN-BROKE: What You Need to Know About Money. This special takes an unconventional look at the fundamentals of everyday finance featuring Will Smith, Samuel L. Jackson, the Jonas Brothers, Christian Slater, Cedric the Entertainer, Seth Green, Sesame Workshops Oscar the Grouch, Rosario Dawson, the E*Trade Babies and more!

Now that's financial literacy done right! Could you imagine if credit unions all banded together and sponsored this? Now that would be awesome.

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05/14/2009

Random quote on Twitter confirms it: there are some stinky credit union websites out there!

By Tim McAlpine

I saw this tweet yesterday. It pretty much sums it up. It's ironic that credit unions continue to pour money into new physical branches and sadly neglect their online presence. Attractive and inviting branches are important, but so is having an easy-to-use and feature-rich website.

For every brilliant Vancity or America First, there are a thousand stinkers.

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04/21/2009

Human, humorous and helpful!

By Tim McAlpine

I am a member of Banktastic. It's a great financial-services-industry-resource-social-network-community thingy. The last couple of times I have logged in my dashboard says I have these two friend alerts from the same person. I have tried to accept them, but I get an error. Today, I decided to report the error and this is the message that I received back within about 15 minutes:

"From: Mark McSpadden
Subject: Alerts that I can't clear

Tim,

Here at Banktastic, we believe friendship is something that has become too flippant in this age of social networks. Friends are added without a second thought and honestly we find this trend disturbing.

Therefore, within Banktastic, we make you fight for your friendships. A friendship is worth more than a few clicks. To reinforce this, we've randomized some friendships to not be accepted until after the 100th click. We hope this will help our members realize the importance and seriousness of social network friendships.

OK, not really. It's a bug we've seen a few times in some of our early member profiles and friendships. I'll clear it out this evening and let you know when you can expect an alert-free Banktastic experience.

Thanks for letting us know about it! (And for being my creative outlet for the day!)

Mark McSpadden
xxx-xxx-xxxx"

I loved this response. In this canned-message-mechanical-contact-center era, it's nice to receive a human, helpful and mighty humorous response. Is it appropriate for Banktastic? You bet. Is it appropriate for your credit union? Maybe not, but I sure hope that your frontline staff are allowed to deviate from the script. This experience once again proved to me that a brand is so much more than just a logo and a set of standards!

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04/17/2009

Josh Sutherland is the 2009 Young & Free Spokesperson!

By Tim McAlpine

Josh Sutherland joins Larissa Walkiw, DeAndre' Upshaw and Myles Peterman in the exclusive Young & Free Spokester Club!

I flew into Charleston, South Carolina on Monday evening and on Tuesday afternoon, I accompanied the blue-shirted gang from South Carolina Federal Credit Union to surprise Josh with a job offer to become the 2009 Young & Free SC Spokesperson!

I then quickly edited and uploaded the above video to YouTube in time for the live announcement on the radio on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. on the 2 Girls and a Guy morning show on 95SX.

Josh and I spent the rest of Wednesday going over how to use his new gear and website. I finally crashed at 5:00 p.m. Wednesday and woke up in time for my 10:00 a.m. flight home on Thursday. A fast and furious and super fun trip!

This was one of my favorite videos that Josh submitted during his campaign to become the Young & Free SC Spokesperson. A simple explanation of the difference between banks, credit unions and piggy banks!

An interesting fact that I learned during Josh's campaign was that although he had extensive experience in high school and in university on high-end gear and software, he no longer had access to these tools since graduation. He filmed his videos on a point-and-shoot Canon digital photo camera and edited them using Windows Movie Maker. It goes to show that content is king and equipment is secondary!

He's now equipped with an HD Canon camera, a Macbook and Final Cut Express, so watch out world.

Congratulations Josh and best of luck with your new job!

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