Drake pointed out both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been counted out multiple times, only to come back with a vengeance and a completely different way of looking at the market.

"The best advice I could give someone is no matter what the odds are, don't give up, just keep trying. If you don't quit, you will get there eventually," he said.

Drake didn't quit and CU Wallet came together. He said the project allowed him to create something different and unique – CU Wallet delivers credit union-branded mobile wallets that enable credit unions to create and maintain a data-driven, mobile-driven relationship with their members.

Credit unions can tailor the technology to fit their specific membership by adding or removing functionality from a library of options.

"They might offer loyalty points or something like special deals on Starbucks. [One credit union] might want to have a different set of functionalities than a credit union that's targeting millennials," he said.

So far three credit unions have deployed CU Wallet, but 120 have signed up to be a part of it, Drake said.

"I think mobile technology has the potential to completely change the relationship between a credit union and its members," he emphasized.

He also said he believes technology in general is a huge enabler for credit unions.

"Technology is the only thing that enables credit unions to survive," Drake said. "Without it, they couldn't deal with regularity complexities, transaction complexities and efficiencies. It's such an important driver for them to be able to offer the breadth of services, but it's also a driver for them to be able to offer a member experience that rivals or differentiates them from a big commercial bank."

He said while he never set out to be a credit union innovator, what he is good at and repetitively does is look for ways credit unions can collaborate and problem solve around technology and innovation.

Drake's innate ability to problem solve was highlighted when he got seven credit unions to collaborate and pool their resources to develop a disaster recovery system. Individually, the system was very expensive, but collectively the credit unions could afford to purchase the system, which enables them to recover critical business functions in the event of a disaster such as a fire or earthquake.

Drake said on average, credit unions spend 11% on IT and his company is trying to get that down to 9%.

The Trailblazers 40 Below honoree's long-term goal is to be known as the go-to guy when someone wants to launch a credit union technology product. He wants to help people figure out what the product needs to look like, which credit unions can best use it, how to price it and how to get it in the marketplace.

Drake believes the key to a credit union's success is the ability to figure out what it isn't good at, and to stop doing it.

"If they're not the best at offering or running credit cards, find someone who can be the best at it and outsource it," he said. "Find things you can do to differentiate your membership and spend all your time innovating those things and just not worry about the things that don't differentiate you."

He said focus is more about what you're not going to do – not what you're going to do.

"Any time you get better at something it's usually because you made a trade off to stop working on something else," Drake said.