“They wouldn’t give me the money when I was 50.”
When someone asks Ron Samuels why he waited until he was 60 years old to start a bank, that’s his answer. Dry, honest, and completely without self-pity.
It’s also the key to understanding everything about Avenue Bank—and why it worked when it probably shouldn’t have.
In the latest Circle Back episode, host Sam Davidson sits down with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center Hall of Famer to trace a career that started with a paper route (lasted three weeks—”bike broke down, got tired of it”) and ran through 13 or 14 bank mergers before landing at a condemned building at Cummins Station in 2007.
He Witnessed the FedEx Pitch and Almost Didn’t Notice
Ron’s first week at First National Bank of Memphis in 1968: he met Kimmons Wilson, founder of Holiday Inns. Two weeks later, Fred Smith came in pitching a concept called FedEx—”a strange company that’s now known as FedEx.” Smith was still trying to raise money and figure out the model.
Ron was a gopher. He didn’t sit in on much.
“I really didn’t get a chance to really spend a lot of time with him.”
He mentions this not as a name-drop but almost as a lesson in proximity versus participation. Being in the room isn’t the same as doing the work.
The Brick That Doubled Market Share
In the early 1980s, Ron landed at WG Bush & Company, a brick manufacturer. Not a banker. Not what he planned.
He came up with a campaign called “Eight New Faces for the Future.” The idea: mail an actual brick to every home builder in Nashville.
His colleagues: “Ron, you’re really nuts. You can’t do that.”
Ron: “We did it. It’s done.”
He shipped them via FedEx. The result? Nashville market share went from 28-30% to 66% in two years.
The brick campaign has a footnote worth noting: Ron later tried to buy the brick business outright. The bank wouldn’t lend him the money. As a result, the bank offered him a job in marketing instead. He was back in banking.
That’s how most of Ron’s pivots worked—not by grand design, but by following what opened up.
The Education He Almost Didn’t Get
Ron doesn’t hold back about his academic start: “I barely made it through the first year. If my roommate hadn’t been that smart, I probably wouldn’t have made it.”
He also failed his draft physical—a football injury gave him a slight limp, and the Army didn’t want it. “I was fortunate in a way,” he says.
In 1984, Jimmy Webb invited him to an intensive six-week executive MBA program at Vanderbilt’s Owen School. The faculty included a founding member of Boston Consulting Group and Terry Deal, co-author of Corporate Cultures.
“Ending up with an MBA from the Owen School at Vanderbilt was just not even in my dream. There was no way they were letting me in the school.”
He cites that program as the moment he developed a real vocabulary for something he’d been doing by instinct: building culture.
Thirteen Mergers. Then One More.
By the time the Regions/AmSouth merger was announced in 2006, Ron had navigated 13 or 14 acquisitions. He’d watched Commerce Union get absorbed, First American get absorbed, and a string of others.
“I knew it was going to be a disaster. I knew all the players. I knew the board.”
The morning of the announcement, a stranger named Steve Johnson called. He’d been watching Ron’s career from Atlanta and had one question: “I think you’re the guy that ought to start a bank.”
Ron’s initial response: “I know how to survive mergers.”
Steve: “Well, you’re not going to like this one.”
He convinced his longtime colleague Kent Cleaver. Both resigned. They raised $92 million (only needed $75 million, took the $75). Avenue Bank opened February 15, 2007—right before the financial crisis hit.
The Bank That Didn’t Look Like a Bank
Before launching, Ron consulted an unlikely advisory board: his wife Lynn. She made a list.
“Ron does not play well with big banks.” “Ron has to be in charge.” “Capitalize everything.”
Then she told him to do it anyway: “You don’t have an ego of sorts. You do this for the right reasons. You like serving people.”
The first office at Cummins Station had low lighting, wood floors from the building’s original construction, and no teller row. Person one through the door: “I thought this was a restaurant.” Person two: same question.
“We knew we were on to something because it didn’t look like a bank.”
Competitors noticed. “One bank—I won’t mention them—went back and said, ‘We know what they’re doing. They’re asking your name and they’re smiling.'”
That was as close as anyone got to replicating it. Culture isn’t a script.
His instruction to new employees: “I said, well, just do what you think is right. We hired you because of you. Be you.”
He refused to write a mission statement. “Let’s just talk from our heart about what we’re trying to do here.”
An investor came to town a few years in, visited all four offices without telling anyone. His report back: “I got the similar story, but it wasn’t a script.” That was the confirmation Ron needed.
During the 2008-2009 financial crisis—the worst banking environment in decades—Avenue was growing $25 million a month. The big banks had to shrink to fit their capital. Avenue had room to move.
The Hardest Thing He’d Done
Ron met annually with Terry Turner of Pinnacle Financial. Every December, an acquisition conversation. Every December, not quite.
Then the numbers got serious.
“It was very cold that night. Dark, wind blowing. I called Marty and said, here’s what Terry wanted and here’s what they offered.”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. Because we had taken a startup and created a different experience for people for a bank. Something I’d wanted to do and had recommended to other CEOs I worked for, and they didn’t see what I saw was missing.”
He pauses on that. The thing about Avenue wasn’t the balance sheet. It was that he’d spent his whole career watching institutions with great talent squander it through bad culture and consolidation—and he’d built something that didn’t do that.
Selling it meant trusting someone else not to ruin it.
The Advice He Actually Means
Near the end of the episode, Sam asks Ron what he’d tell entrepreneurs. He doesn’t reach for a framework. He talks about character—the kind his parents modeled by giving before expecting anything back. About authenticity. About surrounding yourself with people smarter than you and then getting out of their way.
“Leadership is about influence. Influence is about putting other people’s interests first.”
And on creating culture: “You’ve got to find a way to be different. It’s hard when your money’s as green as everybody else’s. You’ve got to figure out that way to stand out.”
Ron Samuels figured it out. It just took him 60 years to do it on his own terms.
Watch the full Circle Back episode with Ron Samuels on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Circle Back is brought to you by the Beth and Randy Chase family.
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