I’ll be honest: for a long time, I didn't think Woodsboro Bank could handle us.
We are a large business. We’re dealing with multiple millions of dollars, and I had this idea in my head–a misnomer that a lot of people have–that a community bank is just for small "savings and loan" type stuff. I figured I needed a national bank because of our scale.
I was sitting on a paid-off farm, a paid-off house, and a healthy company. I went to my big bank to buy an industrial property for $1.5 million. I was putting half the money down myself. It should have been the easiest deal in the world.
Instead, it had to go to Chicago. It had to be evaluated by ten different teams. They spent three weeks digging through five years of financials, and then they had the nerve to call me and say the loan wasn’t approved yet because they wanted to "dig deeper" into my collection reports. I told them, "You’ve got to be kidding me."
The 7:00 PM Phone Call
That’s when I got a call from a lender at Woodsboro Bank at seven o'clock on a weeknight.
He didn't ask me for a mountain of new paperwork. He said, "Jeff, I hear you want that property in Thurmont. I know how you operate (he had talked to his leadership team who knows me well). Send me exactly what you sent the other guys–nothing more–and I’ll make the doggone loan."
I told him right then, "If you make this loan, I’ll move my accounts over to you." And you know what he said? He said he’d make the loan regardless of whether I moved my accounts or not. He just wanted to help me get the deal done and stop me from having to deal with the "Chicago" headache.
Seeing is Believing
Since then, I’ve moved everything over. What I figured out is that Woodsboro Bank has every single capability, every online platform, and every financial tool that the big banks have, but they deliver it in a way that is actually personable.
I tell my colleagues all the time, "Why the hell aren't you using Woodsboro?" They usually give me the same excuse I used to have: that they’ve "got a lot of stuff going on" and need a big bank. I tell them they’re wrong. Woodsboro Bank has everything you’re looking for, plus the ability to deal with people who exist locally.
In this business, you need people who are willing to visit your office, hear you out, and offer advice based on your actual life–not a collection report being read by someone a thousand miles away.