What happens when you combine Star Wars, storytelling, and credit unions?
In this episode of Banking On Credit Unions, Josh Rodriguez talks with Eric Bruin, President and CEO of Desert Valleys Federal Credit Union, about how creativity and authenticity can redefine what a credit union experience looks like.
Eric shares how his passion for movies and storytelling has shaped everything from branding to member engagement. From hosting annual meetings in a movie theater to creating community spotlight videos that reach tens of thousands of viewers, Desert Valleys has built a reputation for doing things differently.
The conversation goes beyond marketing. It dives into how small credit unions can compete and thrive by investing in their members, empowering their teams, and creating meaningful connections in their communities.
At its core, this episode is about one simple idea. If you are going to do something, commit to it fully.
Discussion Links:
Desert Valley FCU Website
DVFCU Facebook Page
DVFCU Youtube Page
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Transcript
Host Josh Rodriguez
Hey, it’s the Banking On You Podcast, and I’m your host, Josh Rodriguez. And this is the latest installment of Banking on Credit Unions. Today, Eric Bruin joins us in the Banking on You Credit Unions virtual studio to chat about credit unions and Star Wars. I know what you’re thinking. What could the epic space saga possibly have to do with credit unions? Well, no spoilers here. And don’t worry, you don’t have to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this conversation.
Eric is the president CEO of Desert Valley’s Federal Credit Union in Ridgecrest, California. And in addition to his highly successful tenure as CEO, he’s also served a term as the mayor of Ridgecrest. That’s kind of cool. He’s also one of the most passionate credit union executives I’ve ever met. And that’s seen a lot. His enthusiasm for credit unions tends to spill out whenever he discusses his favorite topics: Movies, the city of Ridgecrest, marketing, Stranger Things. Yes, of course. Star Wars.
And that’s exactly where we dive into the conversation.
I’m gonna start out with the hard-hitting questions here, okay? In the Eric Bruin Star Wars Super Fan Universe, what is the only order to to watch Star Wars? And we’re just talking about the the three trilogies. Let’s see about everything else added.
Eric Bruin
Oh boy, of the three trilogies. So if you’ve never seen them before, okay, then it’s one, two, four, five, three, six, seven, eight, nine. So you jump back in between Empire and Jedi 2, place Revenge of the Sith in the storyline properly. because you can jump between Attack of the Clones and then go to a New Hope, and you’re like, okay, well, these are like two separate stories. They’re two, they’re two individual chapters: Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. And then you use Revenge of the Sith and Return of the Jedi as the connector pieces to make the six stories work. And you still end with Jedi, but you you you fill in the Anakin Darth Vader story and how they connect in the fifth chapter. And then seven, eight, nine just stand at the end and you can decide how much time you want to spend on on them. I could go on for another hour, but we’ll go on my
Josh Rodriguez
That is a great answer. And I appreciate that was very diplomatic about seven, eight, and nine. what true stalwart said, I can see yeah, you were being very kind.
Eric Bruin
I you can’t say enough about Force Awakens. And so we had the last R S film two thousand five. So it’s been ten years and that drought begins like the hunger. So when Force Awakens comes back and they had the Falcon and they had Han and they had I mean, I mean, that was fantastic.
Josh Rodriguez
I love seven when it came out ’cause it was just so many throwbacks. And yeah, eight and then not so much.
Eric Bruin
They’re trying to make you the the the director of the blockbuster and and you didn’t need to
Josh Rodriguez
So we’re we’re not gonna move quite away from Star Wars just yet because there’s there’s a reason behind this question. So how did you or when did you fall in love with Star Wars?
Erin Bruin
it was it was as a kid, you know, it was VHS Star Wars. My brother was six years older than me. And so nineteen seventy-seven, he was seven when the when it came out. I was six months old. But he had the toys. So when I got to five or six years old, which is Jedi eighty three, I was in that I want the toys, and I was stealing my thirteen-year-old brother’s toys because he was moving out of the phase and I was in the phase. And right about the same time VHS came up, and I can still remember.
Like having I want to say chicken pox, but I can’t remember what it was. But I sat and watched the VHS, I think, for like three days straight. And I had a living room that I just had the the ultimate rebel base on one side of the room, Imperial base on the other side of the room, and the ad was taking out the X Wings, and the X Wings were taking out the AT-ATs. And it’s funny when you listen to Dave Filone and John Favreau and some of the people that are leading Star Wars today, they talk about how the toys affected their mindset about how to make the films and they used to storyboard films, you know, watching the toys. And I know exactly what they’re talking about, is is your imagination goes wild. And that’s where the love came from, is those days of those toys. And so, you know, from 85 until like 93, 94, they weren’t producing any toys. So when they came back out, that’s when I started my in-card collection. As I said, my God, they’re coming back, never opening a toy again. And so now since 1994 all the way to today, almost you know, 30 years. I’ve been collecting them in package. So my my three or four thousand figures now that are in package all live in a storage unit. And so it became a love of just the the I love the toys, the packaging, the memories that those create and then the stories.
Josh Rodriguez
Yeah, so it’s it seems like you’ve taken not only the entertainment side of Star Wars and you know, that’s great, just great entertainment. But there’s a huge inspirational component to it as well. But I’ve never visited, but in our last call, your office almost looks like a Star Wars museum.
Eric Bruin
One of my most prized positions is a member who we had a big hand in in building her business and building a relationship with her. And she’s been a dear friend. She saw me at this auction, you know, where, you know, they have signed memorabilia. And she saw me staring at this item like over and over again because it was a George Lucas signed piece. And I’m just staring at, just staring at, but you know, I’m a new dad. I’m still this is, you know, good 12, 15 years ago, something like that.
You know, I don’t have a thousand dollars to drop on the piece like this. And she comes to my office like two days later and she just hands it to me. And she says, This is because I know you’re gonna do incredible things wow for our community. But she just said, I know you’re gonna do incredible things and I know what this was really gonna mean to you. And it hangs in my office proudly, as a an incredible memento of friendship between two people.
Josh Rodriguez
Now there’s another piece you have that I know about. I don’t have a signature from another very famous Star Wars individual. Tell us about that.
Eric Bruin
I have a picture of Mark Hamill signing may the folks be with you with stormtroopers in front of the credit union and anybody who walks by tries to figure out why they don’t know who the signature is. They just see this picture of stormtroopers with desert valleys and they’re like who signed that it’s by signed by Mark Hamill because another one of my members went to high school with him. And so they went to their high school reunion they says hey I think Mark Hamill’s gonna be there. Do you want to have anything signed? And I sent them a picture from the credit union to have signed.
Josh Rodriguez
Okay, but how did you get Stormtroopers at the credit union? That’s what I wanna know.
Eric Bruin
When we opened the branch in 07, I knew I wanted to do something that was unique. And so we invited the 501st, the charity group, we made a a sizable charitable donation to make a wish foundation and they came out and we put them up in a hotel for the night. We had 12 characters come out and we did still photos inside the new building. I have Darth Vader applying for a Death Star loan. I have Princess Leia needing a car loan and dad and and Darth Vader co-signing. I have a stormtrooper guarding the vault. That’s good. We’ve got a stormtrooper with one of our debit cards, like this. and so we had a loop lay of Vader, stormtroopers, Bubba Fett, and and we put them up for the night, took great care of them, fed them, had a blast with them, and they did any photos I wanted. And we had them walking the streets and just interacting with people. And that’s what we’ve done for branding for the last 20 years is just…
Why follow a standard box, have something fun with them and people just they’re dying for authenticity and fun and and and relationship building that isn’t just about trying to get a buck from you. And the more we’ve done that, the more we’ve seen the results from it.
Josh Rodriguez
Some exciting stuff in the credit union space. So your passion for like Star Wars, passion for movies, your passion for credit unions, you’re the CEO of of there’s it, Valley’s Federal Credit Union. So did you actually approve and fund the Death Star?
Eric Bruin
Yeah, when I’ve seen He’s got a drawn picture. I’ll say I can say the afternoon. He’s got a drawn picture of the Death Star and he’s like pointing at it like this is what I need the loan for.
Josh Rodriguez
We haven’t even talked about your credit union passion. It’s kinda leaking out here and there. I can’t you can’t help it, right? It just keeps you’ve got the you’ve got the Star Wars passion, movies, all these different things. You’ve got credit unions. You’ve been we talked about you being a mayor. Maybe we’ll get more into that a little bit later on. But you guys have done some incredible things when it comes to branding, when it comes to the experience there with members, when it comes to your annual meeting, which yeah, I want to talk about this. What have you done with the boring stale old annual meeting?
Erin Bruin
So like I said, the relationship with the movie theater, you know, was growing just because I had a passion with it. So I got to know the guy and know the owner. And about 2017, we just dawned on this idea and said, you know, we can just ditch at the annual meeting and we’ll just have it at the movie theater. And then, you know, we built off of that. And it was the idea that, you know, what when you go to a movie, you know, you’re there for the 10 minutes before and there’s a movie trailer always on.
So what if I buy the movie ticket for the members, or I subsidize it in some way. And I put a trailer that essentially is everything a member needs to know about the credit union from an annual perspective in three minutes. And they’re still more than welcome to participate in the democratic process. But more importantly, I’m putting my message in front of all of my members in a way that they’re interconnecting with the credit union in a fun, humorous, engaging way. And it’s been remarkable how.
It’s growing. I mean, annual meetings were 30 people. We had we had over 1400 at one of our member movie nights with people fighting over tickets for Barbie or Oppenheimer. And then and then seeing and then they walk out and there’s a trailer that’s fun and humorous and playful, and they get to see the same people there handing swag away, sh shaking hands, talking to them. It makes such a personal connection that we’re we’re the same people you’re gonna walk by and shake hands and talk to and
And it makes us relatable. I’ve said it before. I use the word, I’ll probably use it a couple of times that that authenticity word. I think the world is is is craving authenticity from people because the world is such that you you’re just sometimes feeling very alone. So we kind of use member movie night as a way to just revolutionize the annual meeting into something that’s fun. And it’s been great. we figured out a way to subsidize it, figured out a way to kind of balance the cost. You know, people spend a bunch of money on a dinner, a bunch of money on a hall, bunch of money on prizes, bunch of money on this. Money’s gonna get spent one way or the other. It’s just how you’re gonna choose to spend it. We just opted to say, well, screw it, why don’t we just spend it in subsidizing movie tickets? And the members are the direct beneficiaries, and it goes out to a larger portion of membership. So we offer members up to six tickets at two dollars and fifty cents, and they can go to any movie that day. We subsidize the whole theater for the day. We have the trailer on every screening on that day at that movie theater. So if you’re going to see Star Wars and you’re expecting to see the Avatar trailer before you’re gonna get your Desert Valley’s annual meeting trailer. and if you’re a Desert Valley member, you love it. If you’re not, you know, you get it, I get three minutes of free advertising. And it’s worked fantastically. It’s just built this this brand, you know, and and people know it’s happening.
One of the biggest strengths that credit unions don’t don’t recognize is our word of mouth is still our most powerful weapon. We can send out marketing dollars dollar after dollar after dollar, but it will never match what our members talking to other people equals in terms of our reputation build, our how how they see us. And you know, we use net promoter score and stuff like that to kind of get metrics on it. But truly that word of mouth power is the most powerful thing you have. And when you put
When you add fun to word of mouth, it multiplies. I was how much you’re familiar with the Save to Win program that which is a prize-based savings account. prize-based meaning that more deposits you make, the the you get a chance to win national prizes and and drawing prizes. And I was telling my staff a staffing this morning, they’re you know, like, you know, how do I talk about this? How do I sell it? And I said, I said, you won’t have to. I said the first time a k a kid wins fifty bucks and I put a big old check in front of them and they take a picture and they’re smiling.
Josh Rodriguez
Tell us about it.
Eric Bruin
And I put that on social media and I send that kid to school. That kid’s going to be the greatest self promoter for this credit union you’ve ever seen. And they said, What do you mean? I said, He doesn’t walk around telling everybody he knows that he won fifty bucks at the credit union. Right.
Josh Rodriguez
Right. Turn him into an evangelist just instantly, right?
Eric Brion
So who’s your best evangelists? They’re your members, they’re the people that you’re involved with, and and what better way than you’re giving back to them? And that’s where investing it back into members in these fun events is a great way to show investment and it actually tangibly hits members. We had a member that won 2,500 bucks in one of the drawings. Wow. And I mean, literally she she was crying. She says, you know, this is gonna help you know, pay for XYZQ. And I was like, great. And she was saving money while she was still struggling through because you weren’t going to win the prize if you weren’t saving money. She was saving $25 off of her paycheck, not making anything huge. Like at a one in you know, $0000 chance or whatever. When’s $2,500 makes a huge impact on her? And that that woman is the biggest evangelist I could hope for because she’s going to go around town telling everybody and their grandmother.
We offer a ten thousand dollar accidental death and dismemberment on all of our checking accounts. Okay. And people would say, Well, why would you do that? Well, so it’s super cheap. But more importantly, if somebody dies and they’re in a accident and the credit union pays for the funeral, that is that is powerful. Because when you’re in a small community, somebody dies in an accident, everyone knows. Right. they were in that motorcycle accident. they were in a car accident they had this type of accident. Everybody knows. When the next sentence after that from the family is thanks to Desert Valleys for protecting us. And we provided all the funeral expenses through this policy. That is
Josh RodriguezIt’s a creative way to provide stability to give back to your community and it’s really not very expensive, you know, for for the credit union.
Eric Bruin
We offer a large group policy ten thousand dollars across AD&D, you’re talking micro cost to the credit union and we make it a benefit to the member. And it’s amazing. Those moments when they happen, you are making a connection in a story and and something that you can’t even put a tangible value on. And that’s storytelling is part of what small credit unions have to do. You want to talk about the the lifeblood of small credit unions. It’s in our member stories. It’s in our what we’re doing on the day to day that tha
Josh Rodriguez
Right. And you’re creating these ex incredible experiences, both as the annual meeting, both with fun, and then these very deep experiences as well, when you’re really affecting people’s lives right where they live, right where they are existing. How have you inspired your staff to come along on the on this ride with all these different, you know, creative creative ideas?
Eric Brion
I think I think again, I’m using the word a lot, but I think authenticity matters and I think being real. As a CEO, I’m wildly flawed. I freely state that, you know, I I will tell people all the time. I think that authenticity translates into your team. Because I was taught this this a long time ago, and it’s something that always resonates in my head when I think about my team. Nobody ever took a job to fail. They sought that job to succeed, never to fail.
So if they are going into a job to succeed, it’s your duty as a leader, as a manager, as a responsible party to see how you can enable that success to the best of their abilities while teaching them how to enjoy, recognize, reinforce that success. Because once somebody feels success in their job, they become loyal to it. They become passionate about it. They become engaged in it. they engage in their members, they engage in their lives. And I’ll give you an example that we had a gentleman who I swear the guy must have applied 12 times. And he works for us for four years. The guy had a DUI and didn’t have the ability to have a license. In the four years, he got married, got his life turned around, bought a home, improved his credit score, got a job on base, got security clearance, did everything to turn a 25 year old’s life into a 29-year-old’s, you know, future life, married, had their first kid.
To this day, that guy will walk up to me and shake my hand and tell me, You changed my life. Now, 10 years later, and and and as a friend to this credit union, anytime I need something, hey, Greg, can you come over and give us a hand with something? Great. I’ll be over in two seconds. Doesn’t work for us, hasn’t worked for us for a decade. But he knows that we actually just we wanted to see him succeed as opposed to just being an employer. Yeah. And that translated. And I’ve got a lot of team members like that.
And that’s helped us grow immensely is is just engage with your team members, engage in their dreams, be open, be receptive. Don’t don’t be defensive. Drop your defensive shielding. You’re not always right.
Josh Rodriguez
It’s incredible how far you can go with people just by being human, right? Just be human, be real, realize you’re human, realize they’re human. That I love that story about the four year turnaround for that for that young man.
Eric Bruin
And I’ve got several of those that we still communicate.
Josh Rodriguez
So we’ve talked about some really cool things you’re doing. There’s also, and we don’t have to get deeply into this, but you use some really cool business account spotlight ads with
Eric Bruin
Yeah s so so you know back end story this is and I like to tell the story because I think it really explains why credit unions are so different. So PPP happens or COVID happens. The whole world goes into freaking chaos mode. And you know, they introduced the PPP program. We were inputting ninety-three PPP applications in till two o’clock in the morning. And the money runs out like four hours later at like six AM. But the difference in that was that our competitors, our local some of our local competitors chose not to do PPP. So we were the only institution in our little rural community that was willing to put that time and effort in. And we got paid by the government for doing that. And I didn’t feel good about that. And I said, I don’t want to just take money for it. I wanted to see the money reinvested. And so what we did is we said, if you’ve had a PPP loan with us and you’d like for us to highlight your business, we will come out and do a video of your business at no cost to you to help get your repromotion going to get.
I wanted to see that money going back to the people that had gone through the hardest things. And so we just started doing these business spotlight videos. and then it’s it’s it’s kind of it it’s evolved into these different things, and the current evolution has now turned into 54 episodes of what we call Desert Valleys Explorers, and we’ve done businesses, we’ve done locations, we’ve done events, but they’re you know, one and a half minute reels that we send people out to just tell stories.
And we’ve gotten, you know, I think our last one doing Kern River, we got like fifty-three thousand views for a little minute and a half reel. And you go, what’s the value in that? And I always tell people it’s the same value I just said said throughout this conversation. It’s the presence. You know, they see our they see us at the front, they see us at the back, they know we’re trying to share stories about the community or businesses, and it ingrains us in that narrative of people like, this is cool, you know. Yeah.
Josh Rodriguez
Well these these business highlights, they’re not a guy with an iPhone chasing a few people around. These look great. I mean these are well produced.
Eric Bruin
I think that I could go on a whole nother tangent here. is queens forget that their first goal is to is to invest in their members. That means spending money. It doesn’t mean retaining capital till thy kingdom come. Right. Okay. It’s investing money. And so we said, you know, we want to do these videos. I don’t have somebody on staff. We contracted a videographer. We’ve had an incredible relationship with him for now seven years. He’s done every video for us, and he’s a member of our supervisory committee. He’s doing a time lapse of our construction right now. I come up with any any batty idea I come up with and he can turn into a video, which is incredible.
This is great this is great story. so the Stranger Things crazy happened with the last season. Everyone’s in Stranger Things, Stranger Things, Stranger Things, this, you know, it’s in the pop culture, Nexus, right in that moment. And they released that final episode, the final Stranger Things season five series ender, January 1st, 2026, 1201 a.m. Happy New Year. I’m on a cruise.
I’m in the middle of the ocean and I’m one of those idiots watching this thing at twelve o’clock in the morning. Okay. Me and my son. But I wake up the next morning, I pull up Facebook, and what do I see? I see a digital image of my credit union go from being the normal credit union to flipping upside down with the Stranger Things effect. And it says, Happy New Year.
And my marketing team was wise enough to be so hot on the pop culture, you know, environment that they did a happy new year from the credit union as a video gif of the credit union going into the upside down and and with the Stranger Things text. And I I think I texted five people immediately. You know, from a crew should go, OMG, what a team. Because I didn’t even know they were doing it.
And I was like, this is the power of when you let people have some freedom, some fun, they understand, you know, engaging and they come up with stuff that I don’t even see. And and I think that credit unions don’t understand is you build things and you build things, you get you get this creative well spring when you let people be the best that they can be.
Tax our credit union was really going on in 2025. We had one of our board members do a two-minute video explaining that the tax exemption and why it was so important. And I ran it out there and I had seven credit unions come to me and say, Hey, can I use your video? And I didn’t just give it to them. I had them send me their logo. My videographer took our video, swapped the logos out, branded it for them. These are all friends. I sent it back to all of them, said, Here, use it as a branded.
Josh Rodriguez
Credit union any way, right? Cooperative model.
Eric Bruin
Why not? Right. We’ve already built it. I have the wheels are on the wagon here. You know I and and and they said, Well, why do you give it to us? I said, Well, because you saying that we need to protect the tax exemption is just as important to you as it is to be. So let’s all get on board together.
Josh Rodriguez
Something we haven’t mentioned, Eric, is you don’t run a $10 billion credit union. You don’t run a five billion. You don’t want to run a $1 billion credit union. What do you write about $100 million and ask?
Eric Bruin
Ninety million right now.
Josh Rodriguez
Million in assets and you’re having these huge, wildly successful annual meetings. You’re doing video production that will rival any five billion dollar credit union video production. You’re connecting with people, you’re you’re doing some incredible stuff. And you would be considered, in the eyes of most in the credit union industry, a small or even a micro credit union at this site. Right. How do you do it, man? How do you how do you do all of these incredible things that
Eric Bruin
In some ways, yeah. Right.
Josh Rodriguez
Credit unions many, many times larger larger than you, are just not able to to you know successfully do.
Eric Bruin
This should be the outro, but I’ll give it to you now. Do or do not. There is no try.
Do or do not. There is no try. If you’re gonna do something, commit to doing it. Don’t just say you’re gonna give it half effort. Don’t don’t commit to doing one thing. If you’re gonna do it, do it. For member movie night, we make movie tickets. We sell movie tickets, branded to whatever movie we’re gonna do. This year we’re doing Apollo 13. Okay. We’re gonna have our annual report is gonna have a space theme. Our youth month is gonna have space themes. Our event is going to have a space theme. Our movie tickets have a space theme.
Why? Because we’re gonna lean into the fun. Once you’ve decided you’re gonna do something, lean into it. Be engaged in it. Don’t let your size be a limiter because it’s not your size that’s limiting, it’s your effort. It’s not that I did anything different, that I had any secret sauce, that I had some magical recipe that anybody else doesn’t have, but I made the choice that we want to do this. We want to be bold. We want to be an organization that is different.
And it became a competitive advantage for us because being different is what will separate you in the world where people can choose from a thousand different financial decisions. If you are not doing something to stand out, to be slightly different, to be more engaged with your members, more engaged with your community, more engaged, then you are just going to simply do what unfortunately so many other smaller credit unions are doing, which is that they will live until their their their useful life is over.
When their members are are so disengaged from their organization. So investing in video, investing in the technology, investing in just doing it. I think the biggest secret sauce is we just decided that our members are worth the investment and we’re going to invest.
My friends, my friends tell me I walk around with a passion bubble. And the anybody who’s in your bubble, they know passion is coming out of you because you’re just happy about what you’re doing. You’re happy about your stories. You’re excited about your members. It comes naturally. If you believe in what you’re doing and you love what you’re doing, it it’s natural.
Josh Rodriguez
It just comes right out. You can’t even hold it in or don’t even try it because you can’t do it.
Eric Bruin
Why have it in? Why why not be your authentic self?
Josh Rodriguez
So where can people find out more about you, about your credit union, et cetera?
Eric Bruin
Is we’re on the web, we’re on Facebook with over 6,200 followers. Our Instagram is out there. At the end of the day, I would say, you know, support the creature movement. be involved, get involved in your networks and in your chapters and in your leagues and in your community groups. be engaged. If you’re a member, get involved on supervisory committees, get involved in the board of directors, attend the events, show your passion. You may not realize that we’re looking for you. You know, we’re we want you, we want passionate members.
They they they are a lifeblood.
Josh Rodriguez
Right. Let’s make it fun at the same time. All right, Eric. Thank you so much. Appreciate your time.
Eric Bruin
Thank you for the opportunity. this is how we’re gonna get the credit union message out and this is how we’re gonna tell people that we are not banks, people, we are credit unions, we are not for profit financial cooperatives built for members and for you, not for Wall Street.
Josh Rodriguez
Wow, that was a ton of fun. Eric is a fantastic guy. Make sure you check out the show notes for links to all the different videos that Eric mentioned and a lot more. You know, it’s pretty amazing what a ninety million dollar credit union in the middle of a California desert can accomplish when they decide to do or do not. There is no try.
Thank you for listening to Banking on Credit Unions. I’m Josh Rodriguez. Catch you next time. This podcast is powered by West Community and Tigers Community Credit Union. Remember, we’re banking on you.
