Welcome to the Top 5 Percenter™ Blog

Loyalty to underperformers is draining your bank’s profitability—and you’re footing the bill.

If your net interest margin is 150 basis points too low, you’re losing $15 million a year—likely because of long-time employees delivering mediocre results.

This week’s video exposes how loyalty over performance, underdeveloped young talent, and ignored trusted advisor systems are keeping your bank from outperforming peers.

Watch now to discover how elite bank CEOs are building next-gen trusted advisors, fixing profit leaks, and reclaiming millions in lost performance.

Imagine this:

You’re paying someone millions of dollars every year to cost your bank millions more.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But it’s exactly what’s happening in banks across America.

Here’s the cold, hard math…

Let’s say your bank’s Net Interest Margin (NIM) is 150 basis points lower than it should be. If you’re a billion-dollar bank, that’s $15 million lost—each year.

Break that down monthly, and you’re throwing away over $1.2 million every single month.

The question your board needs to ask itself right now is, “How many more months are we willing to tolerate losing over $1.2 million because we’re loyal to underperformers who ‘have been here a long time’?”

Look—I get it.

Those long-time employees might be great people. They might even feel like family. But banking isn’t about sentiment—it’s about results.

Far too many CEOs find themselves held hostage by loyalty to tenure, not performance. They justify mediocrity, afraid of losing familiarity—even as it drains profitability.

Meanwhile, the brightest young talent sits quietly, sidelined, overlooked, and underdeveloped.

Let me share a powerful secret the best banks already know.

The most profitable banks intentionally develop their youngest, sharpest employees into trusted advisors—not in decades, but in just a few short years. They give them the tools, training, and culture to outperform even the most seasoned veterans.

These banks don’t just say “trusted advisor”—they live it. They teach their rising stars how to:

  1. Ask strategic questions that uncover customer needs rather than pushing products.
  2. Build meaningful relationships so customers choose value and trust over rate.
  3. Consistently deliver measurable results that drive profitability month after month.

I’ve watched one bank CEO, Nevin Grigsby—a Top Gun CEO and Banky Award winner—do exactly this.

He committed to rapidly developing young talent, quickly promoting those who delivered undeniable results. Today, many of his senior executives climbed from junior positions in just a few years because their results dramatically outperformed long-term employees.

So here’s your decision: Keep tolerating millions in unnecessary losses, held captive by “tenured mediocrity,” or start developing young talent who can genuinely transform your bank’s profitability.

This isn’t just a smart choice—it’s the only choice if you’re serious about outperforming your peers.

Do the math. Take action. Demand results.

Because in banking, loyalty to underperformance is a luxury no CEO can afford.

I’ll see you at the top.

You’ve done culture initiatives before. You’ve sent your executives to retreats. You’ve rolled out new values posters. You’ve probably tried those bag be better pep talks in your team meetings, and yet you’re still not seeing the needle move significantly.

You’re still not getting reliable, predictable performance. You’re still hiring more people hoping that you will fix the productivity issue only to end up with higher expenses and not much else. So let’s be clear. You can’t out hire, outspend, or outwork a broken culture.

Now imagine this scenario. Doubling your bank’s size, not in decades but in a few short years, operating efficiently with a third fewer employees while you doubled in size, creating a culture so aligned and disciplined that every single team member pays for themselves many times over. Impossible?

Not at all. Meet Nevan Grigsby, a Top Gun CEO who did exactly that. Nevan took his bank from just okay to extraordinary, earning the coveted extraordinary bank of the year award, the highest honor in the banking awards from the Institute for Extraordinary Banking. How did Evan do it? He didn’t do it by simply asking people to work harder. He didn’t do it by throwing more hires at the problem. He did it by engineering a performance culture.

A culture where clarity is king. Every team member knows exactly what succss looks like on a daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Accountability is automatic. No more excuses. No more waiting. Just consistent, measurable performance.

Productivity is predictable. His team delivers predictable results, consistently outperforming industry benchmarks.

The result? He doubled the size of the bank while offering with a third fewer people.

Not because he cut corners, but because he raised standards, making sure each person on his team was not just busy, that four letter word, but massively productive and profitable. Incidentally, Nevin’s revealing exactly how he did this during our upcoming Top Gun CEO interview. He’ll break down step by step how we built a sustainable, profitable, high performance culture. You’re gonna discover how he eliminated the busy work to focus only on profit driving activties, how you build accountability so strong excuses vanish overnight, how your culture itself can become your greatest competitive advantage and most productive asset. But whether or not you attend Nevan’s session, today’s message is crystal clear. Your bank’s culture isn’t a side issue. It’s your core strategy.

If it’s not paying for itself many times over, it’s costing you dearly. So make the choice right now to shift from tolerating mediocrity to building extraordinary. Because the banks that get culture right, they don’t just survive, they dominate. I’ll see you at the top.

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