MN Perspectives Banking and Finance, Commercial Real Estate, COVID-19 leadership, Economy, Family Business, Leadership

Refinance if Your Rates Are Still High, and Keep Thinking Outside the Box

During this One Take CEO Interview presented by Platinum Group, Aleesha Webb, vice chair and president of Blaine, MN-based Village Bank, advises business owners to take advantage of low interest rates if they haven’t done so already, and to be strategic while thinking outside the box. Her second-generation family owned community bank has 69 employees, about $390 million in assets under management and offices in Blaine, East Bethel, Ramsey and St. Francis, MN.

Among her clients, “there’s this 70-plus year-old man that’s been in investment real estate forever and this budding entrepreneur a woman that decided to be an entrepreneur in her 50s, and… [with Covid-19’s impact on the economy], “they flipped the situation and said, ‘how am I going to take on this opportunity.’ These two are really nice examples of what people are doing and to what I mean when I say there’s a silver lining to everything.” [She explains what each is doing during the interview.]

Webb also discusses other topics including the importance of allowing oneself to feel stressed when something adversely affects employees and there’s no readily apparent solution. “The things that stress me out are never the things that most people think would stress me out. I actually have appreciated the time where I can’t go anywhere because I get to be with my children and my husband,” she says. “When I see our retail team struggling with having to be at the bank after one of our employees had Covid, and how worried they are about their families, that was the part that was hard for me. It’s the soft side of business, the soft side of culture, that if you lose, if it doesn’t shake you a little, you’re not a good president. You need to be shaken, and sometimes you need to not be able to fix things and really care.”

Tune into this brief interview by watching via YouTube or listening either through Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
All One Take Interviews can be found on You Tube, and also on Spotify as well as Apple Podcasts and are listed below in chronological order from the most recent:

About One Take CEO Interviews: CEOs share how they’re leading during 2020’s pandemic and other challenges in unscripted ‘one take’ interviews with Dale Kurschner, who for 30 years served as one of the Upper Midwest’s leading business journalists including as Editor in Chief of Twin Cities Business magazine 2010-2018. Today he helps business owners and leaders with strategy, strategic marketing and communication, and reputation/crisis management. (Note: No funding or other financial consideration is provided by companies interviewed in this series. Interviews are by invitation only and chosen based upon the relevance of what may be discussed during an interview.)

For sponsorship information and rates, or to suggest a CEO to be interviewed, write to Info@MNperspectives.com.