I Spent 15+ Years Banking Business Owners. Then I Became One.

Here’s What I Didn’t Understand Until I Sat on the Other

Side of the Desk. Entrepreneurship.

By: Daphne Balcazar

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Article 1 of 8: I Spent More Than $50,000 Buying Leads. Here's What It Taught a Former Business Banker About Risk.To connect to other articles click here

For more than 15 years,18 to be exact. I worked in banking.

I built relationships with business owners, analyzed financials, structured loans, grew deposits,

developed portfolios, and eventually became a Vice President, Business Banking.

I thought I understood business owners.

Then, I became one.

I learned something I couldn't fully appreciate from the banker’s side of the desk: The numbers tell you how a business is performing. They don't always tell you what it takes to make that business perform. As a banker, I believed business owners needed help making more money and understanding how to make their money work harder for them. I still believe that.

However, after more than a decade of entrepreneurship, I know that's only part of the story. Sometimes, the problem isn't money, it's efficiency, it's time, it's a business owner spending 20 hours doing something that someone else could do in five. Sometimes, it's continuing to invest in a marketing strategy that worked last year but isn't

working today. Sometimes, it's failing to recognize that the market has changed and sometimes, the business is financially successful while the person running it is exhausted, overwhelmed, and wondering why the success they worked so hard to achieve doesn't feel the way they expected it to.

Daphne Balcazar

I understand those things differently today because I've lived them.

In 2015, I became an entrepreneur. I built a coaching and consulting business. Later, I started an RV rental business to diversify my income and create an additional revenue stream during slower periods in my primary business. I started with one RV and grew from there. In June 2026, I sold that business.

Along the way, I learned lessons about business ownership that no financial-analysis course could have taught me. When it's your money, the numbers become personal.

Over the years, I invested more than $50,000 of my own money in leads alone. That meant I needed to understand my numbers, not theoretically, precisely.

Which leads should I buy?

What should I pay for them?

How many prospects did I need to contact?

What percentage would convert?

What was my closing ratio?

How much could I invest and still produce the return I needed?

And, what happens when the strategy that worked six months ago suddenly stops working?

You adjust.

You research.

You learn.

You make a decision.

Daphne Balcazar

And, sometimes you get it wrong. Then, you make another decision.

When you own the business, there isn't always another department to send the

problem to. I lived that repeatedly with my RV business. An RV that's being repaired isn't producing income. I discovered that getting an RV serviced could take weeks. Repairs could take considerably longer. Every day an asset wasn't available to rent had an economic consequence.

So, I started learning. I learned maintenance. I learned repairs. I researched problems I knew nothing about. I watched videos. I asked questions. Once, an RV began shaking violently while driving. I took it to a shop and was told I was facing

thousands of dollars in repairs, thousands. I kept investigating. The problem was a damaged front tire.

Another time, I paid a technician hundreds of dollars to diagnose an air-conditioning problem without fixing it. Eventually, I investigated it myself. The problem was wiring.

I fixed it. I even learned how to repair fiberglass after a renter hit a fire hydrant. I'd never used a sander before. You should look at that baby now!

Business ownership has a remarkable way of expanding your job description.

You learn because you have to. You become resourceful because the alternative costs you money. You quickly discover that every decision has a consequence somewhere on the P&L. The biggest lesson wasn't about money. It was about people.

Ironically, that's a lesson I started learning long before I ever entered banking.

When I was young, I used to go door-to-door selling things with my father.

I remember watching him talk to people.

People would invite him inside. They'd offer him something to eat. Conversations would

continue. Often, by the time we left, they had bought nearly everything we had to sell.

As a child, I thought my dad was just very good at selling.

Looking back, I understand what I was actually watching.

He wasn't building the sale first. He was building the relationship first.

I carried that lesson into banking.

One of my longest-standing client relationships began in 2002.

A woman walked into a Bank of America branch I managed, to open a business account for her dental practice. She also wanted an opportunity to introduce her business to my employees. We started talking. We connected. More than two decades later, we're still connected.

Over the years, she has referred people to me. I've connected people to her. Her relationships became part of my network, and mine became part of hers.

Twenty-four years later, there isn't a banking product keeping that relationship together.

There's trust. And, that may be the most important lesson of my career. People know when you actually care. They know when you're trying to understand them and they know when you're simply trying to sell them something.

I've experienced the other side of that as a business owner, too.

I've had bankers try to sell me products I didn't need. I've even had lines of credit opened that I never requested. Yet, when I actually needed something, there were times when the help wasn't there.

That's a very different experience when you're sitting on the customer side of the desk.

It reinforced something I had learned years earlier: The product should follow the conversation. The conversation shouldn't follow the product.

A business owner doesn't need a banker who begins with, “What can I sell this client?”

They need someone who begins with:

“What is this person actually trying to accomplish?”

There's a difference.

And, sometimes that difference can change a life. I saw that happen firsthand.

Years ago, while working at a credit union, a man came in looking for a credit card.

He was a technician at a smog shop.

As we talked, I learned that the owner was selling the business and this man was about to lose his job. He was an immigrant to the United States. He didn't have an extensive educational background and he wasn't sure what he was going to do next. The longer we talked, the more I learned. He had an 800+ credit score. The business where he worked was being sold for approximately $18,000 at the time.

So, I asked him:

“Why don't you buy it?” He thought I was crazy. He didn't believe he could qualify. I saw something different. He was ultimately approved and bought the shop.

Then, he grew. Within approximately three years, he purchased two more shops.

Later, came and purchased his second home and then another. He continued coming back to me for advice. I will never forget the smile on his face.

That story has stayed with me because, to me, that's the American Dream and it reminds me of what banking can be at its best. That man walked into a financial institution looking for a credit card. What he really needed was someone willing to listen long enough to see a bigger possibility. That's why I look at business banking differently today. After years of working with business owners and then becoming one myself, I don't believe great business banking begins with a product. It begins with curiosity.

Understanding the financials, absolutely. Understand cash flow, credit, risk, leverage, deposits, and profitability, those fundamentals matter. One must also understand the human being responsible for producing those numbers.

What is the owner trying to build?

Where is the business inefficient?

What is consuming the owner's time?

What's changing in the market?

What's keeping that person awake at night?

And, perhaps the question we don't ask often enough:

What does success actually mean to them?

I've met many business owners who achieved tremendous financial success. On paper, they had everything. The business, the home, the money, the family but after enough conversation, sometimes you discover the business has consumed so much of

the person that other parts of life have suffered.

That experience eventually influenced my work as a coach. It also changed how I define success. Money matters. Financial security matters. Growth matters. But eventually, many of us begin asking a larger question:

What am I building all of this for? For me, the answer is PURPOSE. PURPOSE is also why my career is bringing me back to financial services. I'm not looking backward and trying to recreate the banking career I had. I'm looking forward at what I can contribute now that I've experienced both sides of the desk. I understand banking. I understand lending.

I understand relationship development. Today, I also understand what it feels like to put your own capital at risk. To buy the leads. To finance the asset. To watch expenses when revenue slows. To acquire the customer. To make the sale. To provide the service. To repair what breaks. To learn what you don't know. To change the strategy. And to know that ultimately, the responsibility rests with you.

I also understand leadership differently after spending more than a decade coaching people through business, career, leadership, and life challenges. My goal for the next chapter isn't simply to hold another VP title. I want to help build something that matters.

I want to help grow a financial institution. I want to develop people who eventually become better leaders than they thought they could be. I want business owners to feel that their bank or credit union understands the business they're trying to build not simply the products they may qualify for. And, I want the institution I help lead to make a meaningful difference beyond its own four walls because after all these years, I believe something I first learned going door-to-door with my

father: Business is built through relationships.

Banking is no different. Products change. Technology changes. AI will change how all of us work. But, there will always be a human being on the other side of the desk trying to build something.

The best bankers will understand the numbers. The exceptional ones will understand the person behind them. I spent more than 15 years sitting on the banker’s side of the desk.

Then, I became the business owner sitting across from it.

I wouldn't trade either experience. Because now I understand the value of seeing both.

By Daphne Balcazar