A Head for Business: Gary Head’s banking empire rests on relationships
In many ways, Signature Bank of Arkansas is just like many other financial institutions, offering checking accounts and business loans with a side of wealth management thrown in for good measure.
At its core, however, the northwest Arkansas success story is unlike anything to be found in the Natural State, or any other state for that matter. The bank offers a different kind of ethos — more relaxed, more congenial, more Arkansan — than most of the other guys. In a world full of well-cut suits and corporate boilerplates, Signature is not afraid to be itself and consistently so, whether among customers blue collar or billionaire.
A few minutes in conversation with Gary Head, chairman, president and CEO, quickly reveals why. Head founded the bank in 2005 after years in the industry with the steadfast belief that banking could be done differently than it had always been. In a world where technology continues to streamline and sanitize the banking experience, Head preaches employees get their hands dirty, figuratively speaking, by embracing clients as people first and problems as opportunities.
“I don’t spend any time looking backward. That’s how you get run over,” he said. “I spend a lot of time in my job as chairman making sure this culture holds. I mean, I know every employee from Jonesboro to Brinkley to Harrison, Arkansas. They don’t have to wonder what I think; they know what I think because I tell them constantly, ‘Here’s how we do it. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s why we’ve been successful.’ I remind them of that all the time because it is critical in our success.”
It is not exactly headline material to hear a CEO, banking or otherwise, crow about the uniqueness of their company’s culture as a platform for success, but in Head’s case, it is hard to argue. Plainspoken and self-deprecating to a fault, he has built an institution on feel, the better to focus on what is most important and to meet people — employees and customers alike — right where they are.
In that effort, he has skewered several of the industry’s sacred cows, right down to the suit and tie held as mandatory in banking for generations. Signature Bank is also known for innovation, a characteristic not always revered in banking, including launching Banco Si!, the state’s first fully bilingual financial institution.
Talking about such accomplishments is a study in deflecting praise; to hear Head tell it, all he did in the 21 years of the bank’s existence was hire well and pass out hugs. While both of those are true — in the latter’s case, quite literally, as Signature employees well know — there is much more current running through the wires that Head learned the hard way.
“Young people these days will say, ‘I’m interviewing for a position at the bank,’” he said. “Well, we don’t have ‘positions.’ We have jobs, you know, and you’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to do it better than the guy next to you if you want to be promoted. That’s just the way life works.”
The fundamentals always sound easy, but Head is a living testament to the lifelong effort it takes to master them. His education began with his father, Joe, and paternal grandfather, George, two men whose career pathways converged into his personal worldview and philosophy for success.
“My father was a rural mail carrier, and he taught me a lesson when I was very young,” he said. “Once upon a time, I got a little too proud of myself, and he explained to me quickly that the worst drunk in town could drink more than me, but it didn’t make me better than them.
“My grandfather was a savings and loan president in Springfield, and he was old school. He always used to tell me, ‘You don’t put your hands in your pockets. You wear your jacket, you button the top button. You’re the first one there and the last one to leave.’ Good manners mattered, so you’d better say ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ and ‘Yes, ma’am,’ and ‘No, ma’am,’ every time someone spoke to you.”
After high school, the Eureka Springs native headed for Arkansas Tech University in Russellville with the intention of playing baseball, except when he got there, the head coach bolted for another job, and his replacement was more keen on local kids than northwest Arkansas expats. After a year, Head transferred to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.
Outside of class, he did just that, meeting and marrying his wife, Teri, creating a union that is approaching its 44th anniversary. Academically, however, little progress was made by the self-described middling student who did not like school to begin with until he landed in a banking class.
“Dr. John Dominick was the chair of banking at the U of A, and I took his banking class, and I made an ‘A,’” he said. “I wasn’t an ‘A’ student; I didn’t like school, and all I wanted was out, but I made ‘A’s in his classes and decided banking is what I wanted to do.”
Clutching a freshly awarded degree in business administration, Head started his career in 1982 at McIlroy Bank, the oldest institution in Arkansas. Since there was a recession on, he took what was offered — file clerk, a bottom-of-the-ladder job that still took Dominick’s endorsement and counsel to land. Knowing that and wanting to advance, Head made the most out of the lowly post, updating the bank’s credit file system.
“That first job was building credit files in the back room of McElroy Bank,” he said. “How lucky could I be that there were only two banks that failed, so half the people in Fayetteville had a credit file. I had to read every single one because that’s the only way you could build this new system. It was quite a deal.
“I knew until I finished that job I wasn’t going to get another one, so, man, I tell you something — I worked. I worked so much overtime. They didn’t know it, but I would go in early. I would work late. Then I’d sneak back in there at night because there wasn’t anybody going to help me do it. The blessing of that was I read all those files, so I knew everybody’s credit. I saw [Walmart founder] Sam Walton’s declination letters, for gosh sakes, because he was trying to borrow more money at that time.”
Head emerged from the file room as one of the most versed loan officers in the company, an attribute that drew customers like moths to a flame, wondering how this fresh face knew so much about them. From there, his natural charisma and salesmanship took over.
“My dad had a great gift of gab. He liked to talk, and I think I inherited that,” he said. “I became a good salesman because I wasn’t afraid to bring a conversation up to people I didn’t know, and I could quickly find something in common with them, knowing someone or having done something in common. If you can find commonality, you can build a conversation based on that.”
He was so good, Head was soon recruited to First State Bank in Springdale in 1984 thanks to satisfied-client-turned-mentor Jim Lindsey of the Walton Foundation. Three years later, McIlroy Bank was purchased by Jim Walton’s Arvest Bank Group, and, in 1988, again on Lindsey’s advice and recommendation, Head came back to his former bank, ultimately being promoted to CEO in 1999.
Having attained the top post within a banking company backed by a member of the Walton family would seem like a golden ticket to most people, especially in Arkansas, but Head found himself growing restless. Finally, wanting to stake his own claim in a corner of the state primed to boom, he raised more than $45 million in capital through an initial stock offering and another $15 million in an offering shortly thereafter.
While those numbers are proof enough of the confidence he had built in others during his time in the industry, several lesser-known elements happened behind the scenes that also spoke to his standing, from the patronage of the state’s business giants to the employees who jumped on for the ride.
“No one knew I was leaving before I did it,” he said. “I went to my chief operating officer. I went to her house to tell her, and I knocked on her door and said, ‘I’m leaving.’ She goes, ‘Well, I’m going with you.’ Her husband was sitting over there, and he goes, ‘You got a chief lending officer?’ I said, ‘No, sir.’ He goes, ‘You do now.’ He hired himself, and I wasn’t going to argue with him. He was Special Forces, Green Beret, two tours in Vietnam. You didn’t argue with him, plus he was really good at what he did.
“So I leave my job, and two hours later, I’ve got a chief operating officer and a chief lending officer that I would put up against anybody on the planet. Over the next week, 38 people called and quit and went with me. It was unbelievable that that many people thought that much of me to just say, ‘Hey, I’m going to go wherever you go. I’m going with you.’
Today, Signature Bank operates 10 locations from northwest Arkansas to northeast Arkansas to the Delta, employing 225 people. At age 66, Head is at the height of his powers, having stocked the management larder with the best and brightest. He is known professionally as an innovative, straight-shooting businessman and personally as someone with a heart the size of the Ouachitas.
Life is good, he will tell you, when you spend your days trying to make others’ lives better, a simple mission of deceptive complexity that he learned from one of his most famous clients.
“Most people think Coach [Frank] Broyles just thought about X’s and O’s, but he was one of the most intelligent guys,” Head said. “The best advice I ever got in my life, that I use every day, Coach Broyles used to beat it into my head. I bet he told me a hundred times; in that Georgia accent of his, he would say, ‘You can never have too many friends.’”
GARY HEAD ON PURPOSE
“I talk to a lot of groups about being an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know anything about it until I had to be one. I quit a CEO job at age 43 to start this bank with a starter kit that was a big fat nothing. There was a lot to learn and lot to do, and my advice to anyone is you really have to want to do what you’re doing. You can’t be doing it because you think, hey, I can make a lot of money if I do this. I think many entrepreneurs like the shiny parts, but they don’t know what the rest of the story is going to be. There’s going to be some really tough days, but what you learn is if you can handle the worst side of this deal, the best side’s gravy.”
GARY HEAD ON NETWORKING
“I spoke to a bunch of college kids recently, and I told them the best advice I could give them was the bigger your Rolodex — or for them, their contacts list — the better. Coach [Frank] Broyles had a giant Rolodex, and he was smart enough to call people and ask their opinion. I watched him hire a football coach one time, and he called Barry Switzer about the candidate. He called Jerry Jones. He called people who were successful. Most people look at someone successful and think, well, you’re the smartest guy in the world. Well, no, you’re not, but if you know enough people who are smart, you can combine all that information. That’s the way I’ve tried to travel through life — if I know a lot of really smart people, somebody can probably help me.”
GARY HEAD ON LEADERSHIP
“People have to trust you implicitly. They won’t follow someone they don’t trust. Trust is more important than admiration. Trust is more important than fear, like in the old days when you and I first started, when it was do this or else. I don’t do negative. I don’t like negative. I mean, we’ve all gone through some tough times in our lives, but I never felt you managed your way out of it by threatening people. I think whatever success I’ve had is because people really trusted me to do the right thing and that I’m willing do the very things I’m asking them to do. I picked up trash at our Fayetteville office with a bucket and a picker, and they’re like, ‘What are you doing? Picking up the trash?’ Well, did you not look out here and see all this trash? Hell, I did, and I can’t stand it. I’ve got to pick it up. You just have to be the person that you profess to be all the time. Everybody’s watching you.”
GARY HEAD ON AUTHENTICITY
“I learned a long time ago I ain’t for everybody, and that’s OK. I can live with that. I remember as a young lender, people would call, and they’re like, ‘Well, I’ve got to go home and clean up to come down the bank.’ I used to think, ‘Wait a minute, I’m selling you money. That’s what loans are. Why should you dress up to come see me?’ so when we started the bank, we focused on a culture where we want to be subservient to our clients. We want to act with a sense of urgency because nobody wants to wait two weeks for an answer. We say, ‘Yes sir,’ ‘No, sir,’ and we call people back. None of that stuff is rocket science. We just sell money like the milkman sells milk. We’re not better than him. In fact, if you’re sitting there, trying to eat Cheerios, the milkman is actually better than the banker, so get over yourself, and don’t think you’re better than you are because the truth is there’s a lot of other people selling money besides us. The client’s got to like you more.”
GARY HEAD ON PERSEVERANCE
“There’s a difference between being afraid and being a coward, you know? Cowards quit, and I never did like a quitter. I have this one client, one of my best clients today, who I called on for 17 years. He was loyal to his bank, and I never said a bad word about the person he was banking with because the guy was good. I just kept saying, ‘Look, if it ever happens, call me,’ because my personality and his were good together. One day, after 17 years of this, he calls me, and he goes, ‘You still want my business?’ I said, ‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ and I drove out there. That was 12 years ago. People hear that story and they’re like, ‘Seventeen years? Are you crazy?’ Yeah, probably I am.”
Photos by Jane Colclasure
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