Blue Dots Partners

Glacier (NASDQ: GBCI) is one of the top ranked banks in the country by Bank Director Magazine and is the largest publicly traded company in Montana. The family of banks includes 14 distinct and independent banks with over 170 branches operating in 7 states in the Western United States.

The primary business is lending to businesses, as well as offering banking services to consumers. Since Randy joined in 2015, the company increased its assets from $9.5 billion to over $12 billion. Revenue grew from $387 million from in 2014 to $542 million in 2018 with record net income of $182 million and an impressive annual growth rate of 21% this past year. Part of the growth was fueled by organic expansion, part of it though carefully planned M&As transactions based on rigorous criteria and by leveraging the company’s high currency valuation. Randy also was the CEO of one of my early technology investments and successfully exited with a sale to First Data Corporation in 2005.

Can you describe the fastest revenue growth situation you have ever been involved with?

The biggest revenue growth I have experienced was when I was managing the card services business for Associates First Capital, the No. 1 U.S. consumer company that was subsequently acquired by Citigroup for $31 billion in a stock deal back in 2000. During my tenure there, we experienced rapid growth and went from being ranked in the mid 20’s to the top 10 by market rank. The business I ran during my tenure grew from $500 million to over $1 billion in revenues in 3 years.

What about the most daunting growth challenge you faced and the actions you took?

It was when I was at the Associates. The growth was fueled by expanding our offering to adjacent markets in which we were not present. What I mean by that, is that we were focused on sub- and near- prime customers and although it was a very profitable business, there was no growth. We decided to develop new products for prime and super-prime customers and offered new card services to banks targeting the full range of customers. It became their engine behind their card offerings and enabled them to offer a range of new services. It took a lot of work to align the processes with the products but this initiative ended up fueling much of the growth.

What advice would you give to a CEO to accelerate the growth of his/her business?

A “one size fits all” approach does not work to grow a business. You have to start by understanding at a deep and honest level what the company is really, really good at and confirmed by listening carefully to what customers are telling you about what you are good at. Then, get rid of everything that is not core. After that, you can start to define what other products or services you can offer to the same core customers and what data you need to collect, how you will support the extended offering and keep doing things better and better.