Nicholas J. Schrup

TH: You grew up in a family of bankers. Did you feel like banking was something you wanted to pursue or you were expected to pursue?
NS: Actually, growing up in Dubuque, it seemed as though I had a little more of an interest in other things, particularly the communication area.

TH: Journalism or broadcasting?
NS: Broadcasting. I got interested in television and radio, in that order. I kind of pursued that through a very interesting hobby as a young kid - building little mock radio stations, ultimately kind of evolved into video and television. I worked at KDUB-TV. I was one of the first guys that worked out there as a part-time, summertime-help guy before it even went on the air. Building sets and stringing lights and stuff of that nature. I ended up working there for the summer for about five years, doing everything from swabbing the floors to running cameras and painting sets and whatever you had to do that you did in a small-market TV station. I was active in the radio business in high school and in college - disc jockey and all that kind of stuff. So, all that really was my motivation in life was kind of leaning toward that kind of career. That didn't shift really until college - even though my first technical job was here at the bank at the ripe old age of 12 or 13. My first job was wrapping coins. Now, this is a big deal. It was a big job, wrapping coins. Still is. It was really a big job for a 12-year-old to haul bags of coins around from one area of this building to another. Taking these bags of coins and wrap them. It was quite a challenge. Of course, you have to remember, you were not only just given the bags of coin, you had to give back exactly the same amount of coin that was in those bags when you returned them back to the vault.

TH: You couldn't just leave a dime out.
NS: No, you couldn't. So you learned quickly that there was a balancing act in everything - money in and money out. It all had to come out in the end. Over the years, I had the opportunity to do that. I worked here at the bank at different summertime positions, as well as enjoy this hobby-possible career in communication.

TH: To what degree did you have pressure, real or perceived, to come into this family banking business?
NS: I don't think there was any real overt pressure ever offered by anybody. The only pressure would have been from my father. I looked around the country to see what Jesuit schools actually offered communication programs. There weren't many. There still aren't many in the Jesuit area. Loyola was one of them. It was small too, which was one other preference I tended to have. So I went down there. I got down there in the first semester and I realized there was a lot of stuff they were teaching me that I already knew. So I thought to myself, "Gosh, this is a lot of money for So I started taking business classes.

TH: What words would you use to describe your management style?
NS: I am a guy that believes in the management-by-objective style. I think everybody needs to set a plan, a plan that everybody understands, I hope, and one that can be hopefully achieved and allow people to go execute those plans. I believe in understanding what we're trying to get, in anything you're trying to do. Don't make things up as you go, if you can avoid it. Planning is a very key thing to me. I think my style is that I develop plans, I understand what everybody is going to do and let them do it. I become a resource. If I can help, if I can in any way, I do. My job is to make sure things are on track. I don't look at myself as less of a manager, more of a director of things. Maybe that's from the communication days. Not necessarily calling the camera shots, but at least setting up the set and letting somebody else run it. More of a producer.

TH: Interesting analogy.
NS: Anyway, that's it. I think that's a good way to run things here in our environment here at American. And I have learned that over the years. It's not something I just conjured up. It's a style I picked up probably from, maybe a little bit from my dad, maybe a little from other people that I've worked with over the years. I've had the real luxury of working at other operations that had really, really good people and varying degrees of talents and tenures.

TH: With the movement toward all these acquisitions and mergers and consolidations of banks over the years, how does American Trust stay where it is as a privately-held bank?
NS: Well, there's probably a lot of answers to that question. I think the main answer is that we're uniquely different from the standpoint that, yeah, we're locally owned, but we're family-owned. We're one family and we understand the business. We enjoy the business. We enjoy the reason we're here, I think to a family member. Being an integral part of the community is important to us and so sometimes you do things not only for business reasons or investment reasons - which are good reasons, incidentally - but you do for other reasons as well. I think, again, as a family business, we can kind of view things just slightly differently than maybe others might. Again, to a family member, there's a tremendous amount of pride, not only in American Trust but in everything that's happened in the community over our nearly 100 years and what we've contributed to it in our small way and what we might be able to contribute to it in the future. Dubuque's been good to us. We think we've been fairly good to Dubuque, too.

TH: Does the family, though, feel some pressure to sell? Do you get inquiries?
NS: Oh, I hope not. If anything gets printed on this, I would hope not to get many. We really don't. I honest to God don't. We have never sought and are not seeking. We ask ourselves the question periodically - which any fair business would do - and the answer always is we have no interest whatsoever in not continuing what we're doing. Things can always change. But there are no plans.

TH: In terms of a family operation, and I'll refer to my reading of newspaper ownership families across the country, there seems to be something that happens between about the third and fourth generations, where the family tree gets spread so wide that it's really hard to keep it a family business.
NS: That's true.

TH: And you represent the fourth generation?
NS: Well, actually, let's see. It was my great-grandfather, Nick, who started the bank. Then my grandfather Charles, and my father and my uncle Charlie and my uncle Robert Holscher so that was the group. So Chuck and I now represent what would be the fourth generation. You know, in our case, we've gone through that whole process from third to fourth generation a number of years ago. That was quite an experience. Again, as a family business, many do it and many will do it and you go through those whole soul-searching processes as to how you run a business, how do you transfer the baton and all those types of things. We made it through that in a very effective way. Not without discussion and challenge, I might say. Not all businesses in those situations have that. The next generation, they always get more interesting as things go. There is a gap in our case because fortunately at least a couple of us are still relatively young. Then there's a gap between us and the up-coming. And there is some up-coming. T here are kids out there; what they intend to do I haven't a clue. So that remains to be seen. Our family's relatively small by every measure. We're not as wide in numbers as some are in those instances as you're referring to. It has semblances of that, but it's not anywhere near the numbers. That usually tends to drive a lot of these issues that tend to happen in those cases. I think the end answer, at least as I can best define it today is as long as you're running a good business with good direction and good purpose and reasonable return that's sufficient to those who expect whatever return it is, you should be able to manage around those things.

TH: Does the family have a set of criteria if say someone in the fifth generation - your son or your nephews, nieces - wanted to have a position here in the bank, are there certain things they've got to do to measure up to earn a spot here?
NS: We have a family policy that says that anybody wants to join the company needs to at least have five years of experience in the field that they would be applying for and that they would apply equally within the open position that would be there with anyone else. That's it. We would encourage any family members that want to join the business to join it. But to bring something to the company of some value when arriving. That's been our policy for a number of years. We'll see how that takes us. It's good to have family involved in a family business. We love to have that, but we also want family members that can help contribute to the success of the company.

TH: Earlier, you were talking about management by objective. What is American Trust trying to achieve?
NS: It's funny: We were just having a meeting this morning. We were going back and reflecting on planning a process that's concluding at the end of this year (2005). It was a plan that was started back in '99; we were transitioning some of the management and leadership of the company. It's fresh in my head because we just went through this for an hour this morning with everybody. We had some lofty goals because back in 1999-2000, our company - and I refer to it as our company AmTrust, which is now ATBankcorp, our holding company - we were a relatively small banking company and still are, always probably will be, being what we are, family-owned, but we are roughly a $580 million operation. We are making a certain level of earnings. Totally focused in Dubuque and Dyersville, to a lesser extent through our bank in Wisconsin - American Bank, then the Cuba City State Bank - which we had just bought in 1998. We were just taking that under our wing. Today, we've increased our earnings substantially since that t ime frame. We're going to be probably slightly at or over an $800 million operation combined. We're now in different communities throughout Wisconsin, and Farley and Des Moines now. We also have our affiliate bank out in California, which has been up and running now for a couple of years, as well as the new trust department out in California associated with that bank. So we have a lot of things that weren't there five or six years ago. It's been quietly being laid out there. The look of our company, albeit still small and that's our intention to maintain that type of company, it is a little bit different and it's changing. Well, all businesses do, but ours is changing. The performance levels, I think, are getting a little better as we go. As you look at the future, we have some great expectations to continue that type of approach. We're not a growth-oriented company. We have not been nor will we ever be, but we want growth, but we want performance first and we'll grow second. That's our marching orders.

TH: You'll take growth when it comes, but...
NS: Sometimes you have to have growth to get something else, but our standard is we want to make sure we stay focused on our clients and our primary markets. We do not want to dilute that because that can be kind of dangerous. There's only so much talent that you can spread around, so you've got to be smart about that, I think, in our case. We want to be selective in what we do and we just maintain a kind of good pattern of performance. I mean performance earnings. We want to make sure we're earning a certain level of earning for not only the shareholders, but to fund the growth we will need for the company. Those are challenges when you're privately held. More unique than others.

TH: I want to change gears now and talk about your perspectives on the community. You're on several boards, and have been on others in years past. What would you say Dubuque's greatest need is right now?
NS: Greatest need?

TH: Yeah.
NS: You know, I'm not too sure it has a dire need for anything specific. I really don't. I mean, one of the best things I have observed in Dubuque over the past let's say 15 years, I've been here about 20, is the incredible amount of leadership that has come from City Hall to business and how it's going together and they work fairly well together. That is really important. They'll always need that. If we ever lose that, we're going to have some trouble. I don't see that happening. That is probably our best thing going for us right now, in my opinion. I would really personally like to see a little more activity on the recruitment of new business to Dubuque. I think that would be good for us. I know we try and it's extremely difficult. I understand that, but I would like to see some successes. We all would. We do need more business and industry coming into Dubuque in some levels, not only from an economic perspective, but from a cultural perspective. And from a pure growth perspective. We've certainly got a lot of need for selling and occupying industrial sites and just creating a more economic punch from new people coming to town and new businesses. We've been a little slow on that front in recent years. On the other hand, it's been incredible what's happened with our local businesses, reinvesting in themselves and in the community. It's been remarkable. So we've been very, very fortunate in that case. You can't just do it all from within, but I think it'd be nice to see some successes come from without.

TH: Let's talk about the personal side of Nick Schrup.
NS: There is no personal time.

TH: Apparently, your only spare time is approximately 4:30 in the morning.
NS: Only this morning.

TH: But I've been out and other people have been out early in the morning and they see you along University, or wherever, out doing your morning run. Is that daily?
NS: That's a daily routine. It's something I started a long time ago. I used to play tennis when I was a kid. Then I started working and going to school at the same time out in California and I never had time. I didn't have time to go find a tennis court. I didn't know anybody. I lived right down near the bay, so I saw people ... you'd see people on a Sunday afternoon jogging along. I thought, "That's not so bad." So I started walking just to explore the city. I figured this was a waste of time; let's see if we can find something to get some exercise out of it, so I started this jogging thing, just on the weekends. Then I just started in the morning. It was nice to get up in the morning and run along the wharf. It was neat. I'd get up at 5:30 and go run. It just kind of started that way. It wasn't an everyday event. It would be periodic. I don't know exactly where I turned it into this daily thing, only because you can control the time. If you only want to run a mile or two just to get a little exercise, that's fine. You can control your own time. Actually, the one thing I really enjoy about it is quiet; I listen to radio, I get all the news; and kind of clear your head in the mornings.

TH: ALL the news?
NS: I get the news. Some of the news. I come back and read the Telegraph Herald. That's always the first thing I do, is grab the paper when I get back. But I go back and forth. I get a little humor from Bob and Tom; and they are funny sometimes. They really are funny. And if anybody really looks closely, if you see a guy tripping of a crack in the sidewalk and laughing at the same time, it's probably because of Bob and Tom. But that's a great way to start a day and sometimes a good way to end a day, just to kind of get your head cleared on stuff. I think those days are probably going to come to an end here pretty quick because I'm getting some issues relative to backs and hips and other stuff.

TH: Well, just for the record, it was 12 below zero this morning and you were out running at 4:30 in the morning.
NS: 4:30, quarter to 5, correct. Just for the record.

TH: Were you doing that just because you had an early start to your day?
NS: I had an early meeting this morning and I hadn't run for a couple of days. I knew it was going to be cold, but I made one point of not looking or listening or doing anything else. I didn't even turn the radio on until I was about a mile out, although I didn't need to. Oh, the nose got awfully cold, so it was a quick run, let's put it that way. It was a fast run back. It was a jog out and a sprint back.

TH: What other leisure time activities do you like to do, Nick?
NS: I love to golf when I can. I'm not a very good golfer, like all of us. Not like you. I really enjoy golfing, I really do. I really enjoy spending a lot of time, and I play a lot of golf with my son, which I really enjoy. A little less more so as he likes to do other things now. We travel a bit. I enjoy that. We spent a lot of time the three of us - my wife, son and I - spend a lot of time together doing things, all the time. Between the family and all his activities and you know how it goes, family, son things - he's always got something going on - the free time, there's just not a lot of free time. It's just like everyone else. You get in what you can.

TH: As we wrap up, I'm going back to where we started when we talked about the family legacy and so on. If your son, Nick IV, chose to pursue the banking industry, what advice might you share with him about the good points and the bad points of this particular line of work?
NS: That's a good question, Brian. I've never pondered that, honestly, as I have no idea what he's going to do. If ever asked that question, I think the same question might actually come out from what my dad shared with my brother and me, and I think it's still true, which effectively became policy in a sort of different way. Whatever he decides to do, whether it's this or something else, encourage him to go get the best education he can and get the best experiences he can so that whatever he does, whether it's here or somewhere else, that he's bringing something of value to the table, at whatever level that may be in his life. I think that's extremely important because you need to understand why you're doing something and have that passion within it before you can really engage something in a serious sort of way. And to do something just because you're told to do something or you think it's a good idea isn't necessarily the right idea. It's best for him to see out what's best for him. If it's here and t hat's what he wishes to do, I hope he will have developed that passion and really believe in it. This is something that he really wants to do and can help him contribute effectively toward some success. That would be important, because my dad told my brother John and me the same thing. And that you would have to go out and make your own mark on the world and if there was ever a time or place, you come back and we'll see you later. It wasn't kind of a conversation.

TH: I think I can hear your dad saying that.
NS: Yeah, and he was serious about it. Although I have to say that there was period after about 10 or some years that we were having dinner one evening out in San Francisco and he did mention that those various times that he mentioned that or stated that to us over the years, he did make the comment ultimately one evening, he said, "I didn't mean that forever."