Good evening, welcome to BB&T's An Evening at the Leadership Institute. My name's Rich Baytosh with Industry Relations, and thank you for all of you who've made the trip to Greensboro and all of you on the Webex today for joining us. We really appreciate the fact that you braved the weather today and made it. That's very important to us. After Kelly speaks, we're going to have dinner on the third floor, and we have our team here to direct you, to answer any questions, if you need any help finding your way around. This evening's event is webcast, and replays will be available on bbt.com. Note that we will not have a Q&A session this evening, but rather, we're going to have a Q&A session at the end of the day tomorrow. With that, I'll introduce Kelly King, our Chairman and CEO, after a short video.
Being around sports and being around things that you're passionate about, whether you're playing it or you're watching it or experiencing it, and our product's right there in the middle of that.
Not all sod is the same. We grow the highest levels that there is in the industry.
We're trying to grow the best varieties that are available and deliver them with world-class service on demand.
We have banked with BB&T. They've been such a great banking partner. They've shown us how to operate efficiently, and BB&T offers a lot of services that we've taken advantage of.
We've been to a couple one-day seminars and from that is where we did the change challenge for our entire management group. Having our whole team in that group and going through that exercise, I think, really opened the eyes of a lot of our people, and they're becoming a lot more self-aware about how they approach change.
We're passionate about the people that are a part of this company. I serve them better because of what I've learned at BB&T Leadership. It is, without a doubt, one of the most powerful tools everybody can gain something.
What you learn through this process absolutely applies to your entire life, not just your work life. I would wholeheartedly recommend it to any company, small, medium, large. What you learn from BB&T Leadership Institute, I think it applies across all industries.
I'm a better person because of it. We're a better company because of it.
Thanks to everybody for coming out, those of you that are here, and thanks to all of you that are on the webcast. Thanks for tuning in and spending the evening with us. Before the conference ends tomorrow, my hope is that you will have a deeper understanding of why BB&T is a different bank, and indeed, BB&T is a different company. We're going to show you a lot of strategies and tactics, and more importantly, I hope we're going to show you the essence of why BB&T is different. Before I get into that, though, I just want to ask you personally a question, and that question is: why are you here? Why are you here?
By that, I mean this point in your life, doing what you're doing, having the friends you have, at a meeting like this, having the interactions you have, do you believe that life is just circumstantial, that it just happens with random nature or with a purpose? I came face to face with that question about 15 years ago. I went on my first mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I had not been anywhere within thousands of miles of the Dominican Republic on a trip there, and we worked out in the community building little houses. We stayed in Santo Domingo, which if you've been there, is a city of about 1.5 million people. We did our work, and one night after dinner, it was a group of 10 or 12 people, we stopped by a little ice cream shop.
We're sitting there eating ice cream, and I noticed this Dominican lady across the side of the room kept staring over in our direction. Finally, she got up, and she walked right over to our table, came right up to me and said, "Aren't you Kelly King?" After I about dropped my teeth, I said, "Well, yeah, but how in the world do you know me?" Remember, I haven't been remotely close to that, and it was 1.5 million people. "How in the world do you know me?" She said, "Well, several years ago, I was a banker, and I went to New Orleans to a banking conference, and you were the keynote speaker, and I just wanted to tell you you did a good job." I said, "Well, gosh, thank you so much.
I really appreciate that." About this time, her husband came over and said, "Hey, my name is José. Where are you all from?" We said, "Well, we're from Winston-Salem, North Carolina." He said, "No kidding. Do you know Joe Budd?" Well, you wouldn't know this, but Joe Budd is a local businessperson in Winston-Salem that we all knew because Joe and his first wife, Mary, who had just recently passed away, had been down there to the Dominican Republic working on building houses and a little children's clinic. We said, "Well, yeah, we know Joe, but how in the world do you know Joe?" He said, "I went to High Point College, and Joe was my roommate." High Point College is 15 minutes from Winston-Salem. We said, "No kidding. You went there.
He was your roommate?" About this time, the Dominican lady who recognized me said, "Well, what are you all really doing here?" We said, "One of the main things we're going to do is we're going to dedicate this little children's clinic to the memory of Joe Budd's first wife, Mary. It'll be the Mary Budd Children's Clinic." She said, "Well, guess what? My dad is the leading pediatrician in Santo Domingo. I bet he would like to know what work you all are doing out there with those kids." 24 hours later, the kids in the Mary Budd clinic are getting help from the leading pediatrician in Santo Domingo. Think about this. Several years before, I go thousands of miles away to give a speech. I still remember the speech because I was supposed to go that afternoon because it's an 8:00 A.M. speech the next morning.
Weather was so bad, we couldn't go. We thought we had to cancel, but finally I told the pilots, I said, "Can we get up really early and make it?" He called me. We get up at 3:00 A.M. We hustle on over. We make it. Several hundred people in the room, give the speech. Several years later, Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, 1.5 million people. She recognizes me, and the children get the help they need. I believe I was there to connect those far-reaching dots for a purpose, and I believe all of us have experiences like that all of the time. One of the questions I want you to reflect on as I finish my talk is, why are you here? Before we get to that, though, let's talk a little bit about BB&T and this great Leadership Institute.
I want to tell you a little bit about this place we're in because it's awesome. I kind of affectionately think of this as my little baby and Will Sutton over here, our CEO, and the guy that's made it happen. I really am really, really super proud of this because this is the primary way that BB&T differentiates itself. I'm going to talk more about that, and you'll hear much more about differentiation tomorrow. Quick little history. About 50 years ago, a gentleman named Dr. Jim Farr was one of the two co-founders of the Center for Creative Leadership, which is actually a leadership program about 20 miles from here. They started the program together, and then they pretty quickly had a different philosophical view about what they were trying to accomplish. The Center for Creative Leadership, we are good friends.
The CEO and I know each other well. They do a good job, but we're very different. Their view. They split apart. Their view is if you have leadership problems, behavioral issues, we attack the leadership problem, try to get you to change your behavior to make you a better leader. What Farr believed was, you got these behavioral problems. They're getting in the way of you being as successful as you could be, but we want to try to help you understand the root cause of what is causing you to have these bad behaviors. What are the root psychological issues? He came over and created what was then called Farr & Associates and started and grew a very successful business.
About 40 years ago, some of us went to his program. We were so impressed with it, and it helped us individually and collectively so much, we, about 35 years ago, bought his little company. We left it alone for about 25 or so years. Then about 10 years ago, we started morphing it into what you now see today, which is the BB&T Leadership Institute. Dr. Farr has since passed away, but a lot of his legacy is still here, in terms of the deep psychological training that we have. The Leadership Institute is a full-blown behavioral, psychological, clinical, psychological organization. Lots of psychological PhDs here, just like you expect at any type of executive leadership-type program. Here's what we do now at the Leadership Institute.
What we first focus on BB&T, because we've got to make sure BB&T is as successful as it can be towards accomplishing our why in life, which is to make the world a better place to live. We expect, we can't totally require, but we expect all of our mid managers up to come to our core five-day executive leadership program, which is a phenomenal program. Program I went to about 35 years ago. I promise you, if I had not gone to that program, I would not be talking to you tonight because it really changed me, made me a better human being, a better father, a better husband, a better associate, better community leader. It just helped me be a better human being. Virtually everybody that I have talked to that have been through this program come away with the same kind of story.
It's a phenomenal program. We bring our associates through first. We offer the same core program, and programs to others outside, our clients, prospects. Some banks come. Anybody that wants to come, just like if you went to any of the other national leadership programs, anybody that wants to come to our program can come. We, in the last several years, have started marketing it nationally. Before that, it was more word of mouth. Today, we have the core program for BB&T associates. We have core programs for our clients and prospects to come in and take the course. The primary focus with regard to our clients and prospects is this: We want to change the relationship between bankers and our clients. Historically, bankers have always gone out and talked to their clients about, "We want to make you loans. We want to get your deposits.
We want to sell you fee services." I tell our associates now, please don't ever do that again. Don't ever do that again. You go out and you talk to our clients and our prospects about what their dreams and goals and hopes in life are. What are their strategies? What are they trying to accomplish? Just understand their business. Then help them see that in order to accomplish that, if they become better leaders, then guess what? Their organization will do better. Because ultimately, any organization of any type that I've ever been familiar with will do better with better leadership. Leadership ultimately drives success, and ultimately the happiness of the people involved. We asked him to go out and talk to the CEO and his team or her team about becoming better leaders. Guess what? We have the tools to do that.
As far as I know, we're the only bank in the country, maybe in the world, that is doing this, that has even thought about it. Well, fortunately, we've got a 50-year heritage. You can't just pick this up in a couple of weeks. You got to have a lot of embedded experience in this. We go out and ask them to come in and when it works the best, and it doesn't always work this way, but when it works the best, the CEO comes for our core five-day program, goes back a changed person, becomes a better father, et cetera, et cetera, and becomes a better leader, almost immediately will send his core leadership team here. They go back, and they start transforming their company.
We have consultants that go out and work with them in terms of programs that we have to help them do associate engagement and how to make their company a better company. Company testimonials like you just saw, we get hundreds of those because it's really spreading now. I told our associates, I believe five years from now, you will hear fairly regularly a conversation amongst several companies, and someone will say, "Well, BB&T's a different kind of company." Well, why is that? Because they're the only company in the world that's out there talking to me about how to help me be a better leader, my team be better leaders, and thereby grow our business. That is a differentiator. In today's world, you want to be a differentiated organization.
Now, to complete the picture with regard to the Institute, we don't try to make money with this. When we bring in these folks from the outside, we do charge, and it's fairly expensive, typical market pricing, but it's about $7,000 or $8,000 for a week program. It's very, very high level. I've been to most of the big ones all around the country, and ours is better, I promise you. What we do is we then take the core programs, we take the money that we make from selling these to clients and prospects, we plow it right back into the community.
Will is the only person in the bank that I say, "Will, your job is to lose at least $1 million a year." We take all the profits we make by selling these leadership programs, plus at least $1 million, and we're going to plow it right back into the community. What do we do? Because remember, part of BB&T's mission is to make the world a better place to be by helping our communities grow and prosper because of our involvement in those communities. Well, what do we do? One of our core programs through the Institute is dealing with financial literacy. About 10 years ago, we teamed up with a little company called EVERFI, which had built a game that you could use in high schools to teach financial literacy.
We now have that game in all 15 states that we do business. It really works. It's like 20 modules. These kids play these games. They're just having fun, but in the course of it, they learn financial literacy. I promise you it works. We give them a test before they play the game. They score on average 50. After they play the game, they score on average 85. Isn't this wonderful? These kids that don't know anything about financial literacy are graduating from high school with a basic understanding of financial literacy. That's a whopping big deal.
About five years ago, when we found that, or I saw that someone was smart enough to build a game that could teach financial literacy, I said, "Hmm, I wonder if somebody's smart enough to build a game to teach leadership." I said, "Leadership is the fundamental principle way to change the world, change companies, and organizations." We couldn't find one, we went out, we literally hired a game company, took about a year, we hired them to build a game that would teach leadership. It is built. It is available. We're using it in 50 colleges today, with college students. You can pull it down as a free download from Apple or Google. It's called Legacy. You pull down that game, you play that game.
It's a fun game, and you will learn the fundamental leadership principles that we teach here at the Leadership Institute, called Legacy. We do that. Most recently, the program I'm most excited about is we are trying to help improve our public school system. We got many challenges with our public school system today. I say that with no criticism of our teachers, and most of the local administrators. It's a problem above their pay grade. I'll talk about it in just a moment. One thing we're doing is we're taking principals that in the schools, which if you think about it's kind of like they're running a small business, right? They got 30, 40 direct reports to teachers. We bring these principals in to get this same basic executive leadership program training for free.
They come right here to the Institute. They stay in one of these nice rooms, and they get really good exec. We know when they go back, they will be better leaders, they'll be better principals, the teachers will become better leaders, and the kids will learn more. That's a powerful thing. We're working on that. We've got one new initiative that we're focusing on. I just want to highlight to you all because you all are very smart and you're very involved, people listening are very smart and they're very involved, I'm trying to do all we can to raise the awareness of this issue. Here's the issue. It is a mega issue that is ultimately going to be extraordinarily destructive to our country.
Two-thirds of the kids today in the public school system cannot read in the third grade. Two-thirds cannot read. This is a big deal. Nobody in Washington is acknowledging it or doing anything about it. Here's the problem. Educators will tell you the obvious. Up to the third grade, you're learning how to read. After the third grade, you're reading to learn. Well, guess what? These kids by the millions are going through the system. They don't know how to read. They don't know how to do simple math. They fall out of the system, and they're completely dysfunctional. The reason this is exacerbating at an extraordinary rate is because while that's going on, we have this other thing called AI, machine learning, robotics, et cetera.
50 years ago, if you dropped out of the system because you couldn't read, you could at least go work on a farm like I did when I was growing up. You could work in a factory and do manual labor. Well, all those jobs are gone. There's a few farm jobs left, but they're mechanized. Virtually all of those jobs are gone. There are a few jobs still, jobs like laying brick and so forth, which are great, really important jobs. My point is the number of jobs that are available is shrinking. The availability of people who can do the jobs that are available is shrinking.
We're creating this giant divide, this giant gap, that if we don't do something, we're going to wake up in this country we love, we call the United States of America, is not going to be the same place for our kids and our grandkids that we've experienced. I think it's an incumbent responsibility on all of our parts to try to do something about it. I think the business community has to do this. I don't think government's capable of doing it. We don't have all the answers. We're not trying to say we're smarter than anybody else. We're mostly trying to raise awareness, but we are working on a solution. We believe, I believe, that the solution is an out-of-the-box solution. It would be a technologically based game, again.
I'm saying if you can have a game that'll teach financial literacy and a game that'll teach leadership, why can't you have a game that'll teach someone how to read? We've been looking for the last year and a half to see if someone has already got it. We haven't found it. I won't take all the time tonight to go through the mechanics, but we've seen two situations that are promising. One is, if you ever heard of this process called the XPRIZE. The XPRIZE is a worldwide contest that was created years ago, where people or individual companies can put up dollars to have the world try to help them solve a problem.
In this case, Elon Musk, I'm told, put up $15 million about three years ago to go through the XPRIZE process, and he identified this very same issue, teaching these kids how to read and the challenge. What they do is they put out the call to the world, and they say, "All right, for the next three years, all of you can take on trying to create the best game to teach kids how to read. If you have the best, we give you $10 million." You get some people's attention. People all over the world work on this stuff. They have a process of narrowing it down. We're told that it is now narrowed down to five best games. They're actually in practice today in Tanzania. Supposed to pick the final winner, I think, in the spring.
We're tracking that really closely because we hope that's going to be the answer. This will be a game. Our notion is if you can find the game, if you can get the software, then we can engage the business community to try to put it into effect in the school system. The idea would be to go through the American Bankers Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both of which I've talked to, are very interested in this, other organizations, and reach out to the business community all around this country and try to get them to adopt a school. If they adopt a school, then they would do two things. They would buy the hardware, little tablets for the software to run on, and then they would provide some mentors that go into school system to help with reading.
If we have businesses adopt these schools and we have the tool to provide technologically based efficient. The reason you got to do it with a game, by the way, is because you know what the issue is. Most of these kids are living in dysfunctional families. Most cases, it's the single parent. That parent may not know how to read, may be on drugs. If it's a really good person trying really hard, they're probably working three jobs. They can't come home at night and sit down for an hour and read to the kids. We have to provide support that is independent of the family. Remember the way you all learned, and your kids and your grandkids learned how to read, is by the time you're two days old, you're sitting on mom and dad's lap being read to.
By the time you go to kindergarten, you've already been read 3,000 books. You already know how to read. These kids go to school, they don't even know how to hold a book. We actually did a test of that here in Winston-Salem. We did a little program called a boot camp, and as sad as this is, these kids got to the boot camp, they did not even know how to hold a book. They just had never been around a book. Of course, they had no clue about anything about how to read. This is a mega issue. I'm just trying to raise your awareness. This is the kind of thing that BB&T gets energized about. That's why I said we're a different company. We're a different bank. We really care about this.
We really care about making the world a better place to live because that's why we're here. We do that because we want to differentiate ourselves from our competition, of course. Mostly we want to do it because that's how we accomplish our why. This institute is a really big deal in terms of our outreach into the community, in terms of our outreach to make the business community better, and in terms of making sure our associates are the best they can be as we carry out our vision, mission, and values. That's a big part, and I hope you enjoy being here tonight and tomorrow. Pull aside Will and his people as we finish up tonight and you're walking around. The more you know about this, the more excited you'll be about it. It really is changing people's lives.
If you've never been to one of these kind of programs for yourself, you ought to come. It will change your life. Where does all this go in terms of the whole big picture that we're dealing with? Well, the big picture that we're dealing with today is that the world has changed. You're going to hear this say this again tomorrow. The world has changed, and if you don't get that, then you're probably not going to end up very successful and happy. This really started. I've been in this a long time, and there's always change, of course. Since the history of time, there's been change. The pace of change in our industry over the last three or four years is incredible. Two things have been driving that.
One is the consumers' change in their paradigm in terms of their demand, their consumption demand has accelerated at a dramatic pace. They now demand what I call real-time satisfaction. They want it, they want it right now on their cell phone. Right now, right here, real-time satisfaction. Anything short of that is insufficient. What companies are having to try to figure out is how to respond to that. Amazon did a wonderful thing for the consumer. They introduced a pretty simple idea, and they've been pretty doggone successful. They said, "We'll make it really easy and pretty inexpensive for you to get anything you want. We'll bring right to your door." The world has had a hard time dealing with that. Some people get mad about it. Some people blame Amazon. I congratulate Amazon. I think it's great.
If we're not doing our job, you should put the pressure on. People have got to understand that retail banking, and to a little less degree, but the same idea, commercial banking has changed, and it is not going back. Couple of points in case you don't have this refreshing in your mind. I looked at retail. In 1999, I saw a list of the top 10 retailers, and you would expect the ones at the top, Sears, Penney's, et cetera. I saw a list in 2017. Not a single one of the top 10 in '99 was on the list in '17, and most didn't exist. I saw in banking, I actually had our people pull together a list of the top 25 market cap banks in 1995. BB&T wasn't in the top 25 in '95. We were number 36.
Since then, 15 of the top 25 don't exist as an independent company anymore. 15 out of 25. BB&T has moved from number 36 to number 9. I say that not in a braggadocious way. I say that just to reflect that if you're not willing to change, you're probably not going to be around. If you're willing to change, you got a shot. We have been willing to change, and companies that survive and thrive will be willing to change. The world has changed, and the question is, what do you do about that? Do you just kind of look at it and say, "Boy, I hope that goes away." That's not a good way to think about it. The way we think about it is the world has changed, and we must change.
We can either wait for someone to disrupt us, and we go away, or we can choose to disrupt ourselves. You've heard us talk over the last year or so about disrupt or die. You've heard us talk about, for two years or more, reconceptualization. When we've been to these conferences, you've heard me espouse the idea we have to reconceptualize. We have to figure out a new model because of all these changes. We're now right in the middle, and you'll get a lot of detail tomorrow about this disrupt or die strategy. It's now in action. It's moved from concept to action. We have substantial changes going on in our company, all of which are conceptually about building the new bank. We have to build a new bank by pruning the old bank.
I like to use analogies, for our associates, I say, "You had this nice house you've been living in for a long time, and you really love it, and you're emotionally attached to it." That's fine. It's just that it's not going to work going forward. The heating system doesn't work anymore. Your grass is growing up around it. It's old. It's just not going to work anymore. You choose to build this new house right beside it, but you don't have the money to build a whole new house because you got a lot of money tied up in the old house. What's the answer? You got to start pruning away the old house, room by room by room, to build a new house. Prune away the old bank by investing in building the new bank. Close a bunch of branches to invest in digital.
Make back room changes so you can create a whole new technological system that Barbara will talk to you about tomorrow, where it's huge investments, but you can be more efficient and effective. You have to be willing to disrupt yourself or die. You're going to hear a lot about that tomorrow, but that is where BB&T is laser focused on. We believe we have huge opportunities to position our company to be a survivor and a thriver for decades to come, just like we have for 146 years, because we are absolutely willing to change anything that needs to be changed, except three things. I tell our associates, I probably said this 1,000 times even just in the last 10 years. The only three things about our company that are non-negotiable, that is our vision, our mission, and our values.
Everything else, if you think about it, is strategies and tactics, that stuff changes all the time. One day you have ATMs, one day you have home banking, one day you just go back over 30 years and just kind of to look at all the changes in automation and different ways we do business with our clients. All that's just strategies and tactics. It is not about the essence of relationships with clients. What has not changed over that period of time is still the fundamental trusting relationship with our clients. Although, I will tell you that we are seeing a change in the definition of quality. Quality is a function of value relative I mean, value is a function of quality relative to price. V equals Q over P.
I get our associates to think about, if you're going to have good value, you have to have really good value relative to the price that you charge. The world understands that. If you go to a really, really expensive restaurant for dinner one night with your spouse, say, for your anniversary, and you spend $200 or $300. In New York, maybe it's probably $600. You're fine with that if you get great, exquisite service and food, right? If you go in and pay $500 for dinner and you get $25 food and service, you're not a happy camper. Value is a function of quality relative to price. Historically, in banking, there was a break between the front room and the back room. It was perceived that quality was all about the relationship with the client up front, and it was all about trust.
Technology was a big factor in terms of making the back room efficient. Part of the sea change in banking over the last three or four years is that now quality is defined as technology and the relationship with the banker. The relationship with the banker has not gone away. If you don't have the requisite technology that gives you real-time demand satisfaction, you're not going to be in the game. Now we have to say V equals Q over P, and Q is a function of the people in the branches, in the care center, in virtual call center, et cetera. More of which you'll hear about tomorrow, and the technology. You have to have both. That's why you had to prune away this old bank to build the new bank. The new bank looks substantially different than the old bank.
You could be a banker for most of my career, if you had good people on the front line that would have good personal relationships with those clients, you could compete with some of the bigger guys because they had better technology, trust was defined as quality, and if you had it, you had it. That's not okay anymore. That's why I've coined the phrase real-time demand satisfaction because we have to understand that we have to have trust. Even millennials will tell you they still want to know where the bank is in case they have a problem. Boy, the technology is a big deal. We're working at BB&T to make sure we deliver on this long-term trusting relationship between the individual and the client.
That's not going away, in our view, it is morphing and changing, it is a partnership, if you will, between technology and the banker. That's what quality is in the world today, we're focused on trying to deliver that. That's kind of the essence of the day-to-day strategies and tactical changes that are going on. You will hear a lot about all that tomorrow. I want to talk to you about what's much more important than any of that. The most important reason you should consider investing in BB&T, in my opinion, is because what makes BB&T really different is our culture. It is our vision, our mission, and our values.
Our vision at BB&T is to create the best financial institution possible by making the world a better place to be by focusing on helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, creating a place where our associates can learn and grow and be fulfilled in their work, make the communities we serve better places to be, thereby optimizing long-term return to our shareholders. That's our vision, that's our mission. That's what we do every day. Really, the most important part of the differentiation of BB&T, even if I prioritize these three non-negotiables, is the third one, which is our values. We have 10 core values at BB&T that are really core beliefs that tie into the fundamental leadership model that we teach here at the Leadership Institute.
Every program that we have at the Leadership Institute is built around a core leadership model that we developed 40 years ago, it is a simple but powerful concept, it is that if you want to change results, you have to change behaviors. The genius is, if you're going to change behaviors on a sustained basis, you have to change beliefs. People behave in a manner that's consistent with their beliefs. This is a truism, at a personal level and a collective level. We teach that through all these programs, we live that every day at BB&T. The most important beliefs that we teach to our people are our core values, we break our core values down in terms of character, judgment, success, and happiness. Character is about honesty and integrity.
We believe the most important core value for anybody is honesty. The reason is this: without honesty, there can be no trust. Without trust, there can be no meaningful relationships. Without meaningful relationships, you can't really get anything done in life, certainly working with other people. It's about honesty. Honesty is an absolute. That is to say, you have to be dedicated to complete honesty. If you're going to be a person of integrity, you have to be consistent. For example, you can't say, "Okay, I get how important honesty is. I'll be honest Monday through Friday. I'll take off on the weekends." That doesn't work out so well. You have to be an honest person consistently to be a person of integrity. If you are, then you are a person of good character. That's the foundation.
If you're a person of good character, that naturally leads you to exercising good judgment. Because if you're honest about the facts that you're dealing with and trying to make decisions, whether it's investment decisions or credit decisions. If you're honest about the facts, then you tend to exercise good judgment. You deal with reality, you make good decisions. As we explained this to our associates, if you have good character and you exercise good judgment, you're more likely than not guaranteed, but more likely than not, to be successful. The real question is, are you happy? What we really focus on is trying to create an environment, a community where our teammates can be happy. Ultimately, we believe, I believe that's what we're all trying to accomplish for ourselves and for our families. We're trying to create happiness.
We want to have a sense of self-esteem, a sense of pride, a sense of enrichment, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of my life matters. When my life draws close to an end, I can look back and say, "I was successful, but more importantly, I was happy because I made a difference. My life matters." The problem that we find in the world we live in is that people get confused. The reason they get confused is because the world says, "If you're successful, you will be happy." It turns out that's just not true. It's just not true. Now, there's nothing wrong with being very successful. In fact, it's good for the economy. The more money you make and the more things you own, that's good because it helps stimulate the economy.
That's great for the economy, but it's only good for you if that success is accomplished in a way that leaves you happy. We try to get our associates to focus on that reality. A big part of that happiness is aligning their why in life with the why of BB&T, making the world a better place to live. As you move in life through success on the way towards happiness, along comes an issue, and that is obstacles occur. Most people get derailed between success and happiness because they have success, it doesn't immediately make them happy, and then they have obstacles, and then they give up. Another myth in the world today is that some people don't have obstacles.
You've heard it said like I have, where you say, "Well, boy, if I had Joe's life or if I had Mary's life, everything would be great because boy, he or she has got it made. They got this great job, they got this great family, they got all these houses and all these cars. Boy, if I had their life." That's just not true. Everybody has problems. If we took the time right now and every one of you would be totally honest and stand up and talk about the challenges you're having in your life, you would be shocked. Somebody just got a bad medical report. Somebody's having challenges with their kids. Somebody's family member's going through a divorce. Somebody filed bankruptcy. Look, life just happens, and it happens to everybody. Nobody's exempt. The question is, what do you do when you encounter the obstacles in life?
The answer is deal with them, but you have to have context. That's why knowing your why in life is so important. If you don't know what your why in life is, if you don't know what your purpose in life is, then you get focused on strategies and tactics. When the world knocks down your strategies and tactics, and that doesn't work anymore, then you, wow, man, you really got problems now because you were so totally focused on the strategies and the tactics, and you didn't have any other why to drive you forward to give you a reason to get up in the morning. That's where most people find themselves. Viktor Frankl wrote a great book. If you haven't read it or if you read it a long time ago, I'd encourage you to read it again.
It's called "Man's Search for Meaning." Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust, spent three years in Auschwitz, and reading that book just gives you a completely new appreciation for what those folks suffered through. In that book, he coins a phrase that is powerful. He says, "If you know your why, you can endure any how." If you know your why, you can endure any how. Paraphrase, if you're clear about your purpose in life, you can overcome obstacles.
If you don't know what your purpose in life is, when you get up in the morning and you just focus on the strategies of this is what I do in my day job, I make some loans and I get some deposits, and you don't have a good day getting loans and deposits, and you got no other purpose in life and no other context for why you're here on this earth, that's a bad day. You don't want to live your life just focusing on success. You don't want to live your life just focusing on what you do. You want to live your life focusing on why you are here. What is your purpose in life?
When you have clarity about your purpose in life, when you know why you're here, then even though your problems happen, your obstacles happen, you can pick yourself right back up because you say, "Okay, this is a problem. I have to deal with it, but it didn't change my why. I'm still here to" whatever your purpose in life is, and it gives you the strength, enduring courage to deal with those problems and those obstacles. Being clear about your why in life is a really, really whopping big deal. That's why at BB&T now, we're heavily focused, as you'll hear tomorrow, on how to deal and adapt with these strategies and tactics around all this crazy rapid changes in retail and commercial and all that's going on in banking. We're not scared about it. It doesn't change our why. It doesn't change our vision.
It doesn't change our mission. It doesn't change our values. It just changes how we do some things. It's not that big a deal. It's actually pretty exciting if you put it in the context of why you're here. Why should I care about the day-to-day strategies of what we do as long as it accomplishes why I'm here? That's true at a collective level, that's true at an individual level, and that's why the highest call to order is to know why you are here. As you go through dealing with that question, and you're dealing with these obstacles, I want to give you a couple of hints and some things that I've learned in terms of how to deal with these obstacles in the context of your life. I want to share with you five traits of outstanding achievers that will help you deal with obstacles.
These are traits that I've observed over a long period of time. I promise you, if you will write these five traits down, and you will practice them, you will dramatically improve your success and ultimately, your happiness. The first characteristic of outstanding achievers is that they believe absolutely and completely to their toes that they can accomplish what they're trying to do. They believe in their purpose. They are passionate about what they're trying to do. You won't find Olympians, for example, who will practice eight to 10 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year for years and years and years.
You won't find them running around saying, "Well, maybe I can be number 13 in the world." They believe to their toes that they can be and will be number one, and that drives them to train, and ultimately the training is what gives you the skills, and the skills is what gives you the victory. You're never going to get the training and the skills unless you believe passionately you're going to accomplish. Believing in what you're trying to do, that's why I love what I'm doing today after all these 46 years. I love it more today than I've ever loved it. This is fun. This is exciting. I get to work with 37,000 outstanding people, a great board of directors, great shareholders, and we're trying to make the world a better place to live. That's cool. That's pretty cool.
If you're excited about all that and you believe in it deeply, that drives you into the second characteristic of outstanding achievers, and that is that they commit. They commit the time, energy, and resources to make it happen. If you believe passionately in something, you will commit your resources to it. You hear, like I've heard, sometimes people will say, "Well, I believe in this," or, "I believe in that." Then you watch what they do, and they don't commit their time and energy and resources. You know what that tells you? They don't really believe in it. Because what people really believe in, they will commit themselves to. That commitment gets translated into the third characteristic of outstanding achievers, and that is that they train themselves so they in fact have the best skills of anybody in the business.
On the playing field, whatever you're doing, it's the skills that you have, basketball, golf, banking, analyst. If you have the best skills, you're going to be the most successful. You're not going to get the skills unless you train relentlessly. You're never going to train relentlessly unless you put resources into it. You're never going to do that unless you passionately believe in what you're trying to accomplish. If you just have a job and you're not passionately clear about why you're there and why that's an important thing as part of your life, and it syncs up with what you're trying to do for your goals, your family, and your relationships, it's not a pretty picture.
You might put on a nice facade, but I'll bet you it is not a pretty picture because you can't have the source of energy that you need to push forward and train and have the best skills to accomplish what you're trying to accomplish. The fourth characteristic of outstanding achievers is very important, and that is that you enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey. This is really, really important because if you don't enjoy the journey, then you don't get replenished, you don't get rekindled. You don't have the energy to get up tomorrow and do what you did today. People that love their job, they're passionate about what they're trying to do will work 12 to 14 hour days. They'll go home. They'll fall into bed so tired they can hardly even shut their eyes, and they'll take a deep breath and they'll say, "This is great.
I can't wait till tomorrow morning to get up and do it again." I hope that's what you all experience in your jobs today. That's what I experience. You get a chance to do it again tomorrow, this is pretty awesome, right? Because it's not work. It's what I'm passionate about. It's what we care about. You have to enjoy the journey, enjoy what you're doing to have that replenishment. The other thing that's even more important is because life is, at the end of the day, very precious. Unfortunately and sadly, most people don't realize the essence of life, and that is we should live in the present. We have to live today because this is all that we have. Sadly, too many people live in the past.
They wait for tomorrow to live, they are waiting to be happy, waiting to enjoy life, it does not work out very well. You have to learn how to live today. You have to learn how to enjoy today. If you can not figure that out, then you are not going to be very successful and happy. The 5th characteristic of outstanding achievers is they have an enthusiastic positive attitude. We call it EPA at BB&T. An enthusiastic positive attitude that helps you overcome obstacles. You have to be positive in life. I mean, we are all going to have these problems as I described, but you got to kind of have the view that yeah, the glass is kind of half full.
If you wake up in the morning and you are a fundamental pessimist, you believe the glass is half empty, it is not going to be a real great day because you are going to face a lot of issues. If you fundamentally are a positive optimist, the glass is half full, that gives you the perspective. It gives you the courage, gives you the energy to push through the problems. Look, we should be positive. We should be excited. We still live in the best country in the world. I am happy because I believe I live in the best part of the great United States of America. We could all debate that, right? Wherever you live, I hope you really enjoy where you are living. There is not a place in this country that is not fantastic.
With all of the foibles and issues we have, it is still the best place in the world, in my humble opinion. Boy, just coming off of Veterans Day, do not we have a lot to be proud of? Do not we have a lot to protect for the legacies for our kids and grandkids going forward? This is a great place. Yeah, we got all these problems, but you ought to wake up in the morning, you ought to thank the good Lord for giving us this place we have called the United States of America. We are excited to be positive, be enthusiastic about it, and work like crazy to preserve it for our kids and our grandkids. Five traits of outstanding achievers that will cause you to be more successful and happy. There is this concept that I call the power of one. This is important.
The power of one is similar to the five traits, but it is a little more succinct. The power of one is about recognizing that we really do only live one day at a time. Sadly, most people are really living in the past a lot. These are the people that you have heard say, "Well, I am still mad with Joe." "Why are you mad with Joe?" "Well, 10 years ago, he did such and such and such," they will pound the table and get red in the face, blood pressure goes up. Now, Joe had not thought about it in 10 years. He is enjoying his life. You are still mad about it. You are ruining your life. He is going on enjoying his life. Hanging on to things that you can not change and just making yourself mad and miserable about it is really foolish. That might be in Webster.
That might be one of the definitions of foolish. Even worse is waiting for tomorrow to be happy. I'll be happy when I get that promotion. I'll be happy when the kids go to college. I'll be happy when we get that retirement home. I'll be happy when. Here's the problem. Not a one of us can change yesterday, and not a one of us has tomorrow promised. This is it. This is the life that we have been given to live, and living every single day as the precious day that it is an important part of the essence of life. The genius of life is about how to live in the present, in the moment. There's a great book, one of our four great books, called "Chasing Daylight," written by Eugene O'Kelly. Eugene O'Kelly was the CEO of KPMG.
He started with the firm when he was 17 years old in the mail room, worked his way up. By the time he was 43 years old, he was global CEO. Started having headaches. Some of you may have known him. Tom, you did. Started having headaches, went in, diagnosed inoperable, incurable brain cancer. You will be dead in 90 days. He was. He chose with that brief amount of time that he wanted to write this book because he wanted to help people see that even though that was the way people would view a bleak future, he believed that 90 days would allow him to accomplish a lot. He believed by writing this book, to put time and that kind of prognosis into perspective, he could help people see that they could still make the world a better place to live.
He wrote about his challenges, he and his wife. He was able to write the whole book except the last chapter. His wife had to write that. It's a powerful book you ought to read to help you see how with a short amount of time, if you're focused on what's important, you can still do some pretty great things. Living each day is a big deal. Then recognizing that every single individual relationship that you have is important. Every person deserves your dignity and respect. Everybody deserves to be treated as a good human being. If you will approach life philosophically by treating everybody as if they matter, they really matter, then you can have a big impact on hundreds of thousands, in some cases more people over the course of your life. By simply saying, this person is a big deal. This person is important.
I have the opportunity to try to make their life a little more successful and more importantly, happy, by treating them with dignity and respect, by focusing on them and seeing what you can do to make their life better. The real power of it is the third power of one, which is that life really happens one interaction at a time. See what happens to us in life, it just kind of goes by in a blur. How many times have you looked back and said, "Wow, my kid's 12 years old. Like yesterday, he was five. Tomorrow he'll be driving a car, then he's going to be married. She's going to be having children." Life changes really, really fast and becomes a blur because we don't slow down and focus on the individual interactions.
Look, you don't ever know, and many times you don't have any evidence of the power that you have on individuals. I had no clue when I was giving that speech in New Orleans that I was impacting someone who years later, thousands of miles away, would end up helping these kids get the medical treatment they so desperately needed. If I hadn't gone to that speech, and I almost didn't, it was bad weather. I had every reason in the world just cancel, but something said, "You need to go." Every one of us has those opportunities where we touch people, and when we touch people, we have the opportunity to change their lives, in many cases, far more than you will ever know. Your impact on the world is far greater than you would ever imagine. Remember the butterfly effect, a true scientific fact.
A single butterfly can flap its wings on one side of the Earth and create a hurricane on the other side of the world. Now you know for sure if a little butterfly can create that kind of global impact, your life matters. You can change the world. You are changing the world, one person at a time, one interaction at a time. Don't ever forget the power of the little things. About two years ago, there was a young man in California who left his apartment, walked, I think a couple of miles as I read the story, to the Golden Gate Bridge. Must have passed hundreds if not thousands of people. You know how busy it is out there. Walked all the way, climbed to the top, jumped off to his immediate death.
They found a note in his apartment that afternoon that said, "I'm going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me, I won't jump." One person, one smile, one life. Your life matters. I've been thinking a lot about that little boy lately. I don't think that young man wanted to hurt himself. I don't think he wanted to die. I think he wanted hope. I think he wanted one person to smile at him that would say to him, "Your life does matter. If there's one, maybe there's two, and maybe tomorrow will be a little better. Maybe my life can get better. Maybe somebody cares about me. Maybe there's hope." You see what we really have is the opportunity to plant seeds of hope.
I'll leave you with a challenge, and that challenge is when you get up every morning, just try this for a couple of weeks. When you get up in the morning, before you even go out and greet your family, imagine somebody gave you a handful of imaginary seeds. Every time you see somebody and you do a little extra touch, a special goodbye to your spouse, "I hope you really have a great day," with meaning to your kids. "I'm really excited about seeing your ballgame this afternoon. I'm really pumped about it. I really want to do that." To that person on the street that's begging for money, you do a little something different. Your coworker, you ask them, "Hey, how are you?" You really mean it.
Every time you have one of those interactions, every time you make it a special touch, then you take, in your imaginary way, one of those seeds out and you throw it on the ground. Next time you do it, you throw another seed on the ground. If you can get to the end of most of your days, nobody will get it perfect, and you can look at your hand and you've exhausted all those seeds, you've planted all around in all these different ways, then you can rest at peace at night knowing that you changed the world. What I believe is this. As your life draws close to an end, I believe you'll get a glimpse of all those seeds. I believe you'll look back and you'll see that person that you helped mentor and teach how to read.
They went on to become a college professor. You'll see that young banker that you extended a helping hand when they were struggling a little bit, and you helped them get promoted, and they became a CEO and moved on to do great things in life. On and on and on, when you look back over your life, you'll see those seeds sprouting into great things in life, and you will realize that you have changed the world. My hope and prayer for all of you, for all of us is this. That you get up every morning clear about your purpose. Know why you are here. Commit yourself to the concept of the power of one. Live every single day as if it is a God-given day you have to live because that is what it is. Don't worry about yesterday. You can't change it.
Don't wait for tomorrow. It's not promised. Live today, and focus on every individual and give them the dignity and respect that they deserve, regardless of age, gender, race, creed, nationality. Treat everybody with dignity and respect, and treat every interaction as the opportunity that it is to make a difference in their lives. One final thought. We have a little lake house, and we're right off the main river. We have a little beach. Every time we have one of these hurricanes or all these storms, a lot of driftwood just rolls right up on my little beach. I go out there with my little trusty wheelbarrow, and I pick up that driftwood, and I throw it in my little truck, and I haul it off to the dumpster. Every time I throw that driftwood into the dumpster, I think about something. You know what?
This driftwood has no purpose. It has no hope in life. It has no meaning. It's just driftwood. You are not driftwood. You have a purpose, and your life matters. You individually and all of us working together can change the world. You wake up in the morning, and you do your best to get clear about your purpose and your why in life, and you give it your best. When your life draws close to an end, you'll be one of the lucky few who can look back and say, "You know what? I didn't get it perfect. No one does. I did my best to make a positive, meaningful difference in the lives of as many people as I could." That, ladies and gentlemen, will make you one of the few that can say, "You know what? I was successful.
Much more importantly, I was happy. Thank you very much. God bless you. I hope you enjoy your stay here.
Thank you very much, Kelly. That was great. We'll now head upstairs for dinner, and Tina here and Alan in the back will help direct you. Let us know if you need any help or have any questions, and please feel free to tour the facility. The hospitality team here is here to help you and give you as much information about the facility as you want. Thank you, and see you upstairs.