TH:: What were you like as a kid?
TH:: (Laughs) Well, my brother referred to me as "Fat Boy," if that helps you out any. I was kind of a chunky little kid. I think by-and-large, I was probably an affable kid.

TH:: Were you involved in...
TH:: The first organized sports I got involved in was football when I was seventh grade. I played that through my senior year in high school. I had a brief involvement with Cub Scouts and decided that wasn't for me. Paper routes. When I was 5 years old, I had the opportunity to do my brother's paper route.

TH:: When you were 5?
TH:: That's my story. People have different recollections as to what age I actually was, but I think I was 5. Then I carried The Des Moines Register when I was in high school.

TH:: Early mornings, then.
TH:: Early mornings. I used to ride my bike in the middle of winter, taking that route. A great story: I was delivering papers to Clarke College one day. It was pitch dark, in the middle of winter. Up by what was then Margaret Mann Hall, I opened the door and the lights were off in there, and I thought, "What? It looked like sheep in there." I opened the door again. I couldn't really see because it was dark, so I threw the newspaper in there and got out. I was a freshman in high school at that time. I went on to tell my friends I thought I saw some sheep in there. They said, "Yeah, yeah, sure." The next thing you know, in the TH that night there's a story that some frat boys had dumped sheep into Margaret Mann. It scared the hell out of you at about 5 in the morning.

TH:: Any other jobs in high school?
TH:: I had kind of a, actually I painted boxes for awhile for Trenkle's (sausage shop).

TH:: Wooden boxes?
TH:: No. Cardboard boxes. They bought them cheap. I got $2 an hour to paint boxes. The worst job I ever had, quite honestly. I worked at the Dairy Sweet, pumping out ice cream.

TH:: Where was that located?
TH:: On University. Then the following year, I ran the B&L Ice Cream Truck. Remember the B&L Ice Cream Truck? Buddy Zuckerman ran it. I'd just drive around town and ring the bell and wait for the kids to come. Great experience. The only problem with Buddy: He was a good businessman, but he didn't put any money into his trucks. So you always had to be a little suspect - it was an old postal truck - whether you'd get that truck actually stopped or not. In fact, I remember going up Dodge when it was a four-lane road, two lanes going each way, not divided at all. I'm cruising up Dodge probably a month after I started. I'm in the left lane, finally got this old beater up to speed and realized there's a car in the left lane taking a left. And the brakes in this thing would never allow me to stop it. There's a car right next to me, so I swerved into the oncoming lane, darted around this car, went back in the lane. There was no way I was going to stop that truck because there were no brakes to speak of. Incredible.

TH:: Does your wife, Donna, work outside the home?
TH:: She does not work outside the home. She actually worked here at DB&T, that's where we met. She worked in the insurance department here.

TH:: How did you come to join DB&T?
TH:: Primarily, I was a staff auditor for Peat Marwick - which is now KPMG - in Des Moines. By coincidence, I was up here doing what was Dubuque Savings & Loan at the time, which became Harvest Savings Bank. KPMG was the auditor for Harvest. My brother-in-law Tom Hanley, then an accountant in Cedar Rapids, said, "Hey, there's a position open at Dubuque Bank & Trust. You might want to go talk to Lynn Fuller." I had a long discussion Butch.

TH:: So, in a weak moment, Butch gave you a job?
TH:: Well, that was kind of how it rolled in. Butch talked about what he envisioned for this company. How it can grow. So about a week later, I called and said, "Yeah, I'll take the job." Actually, I'm coming up on my 20th anniversary here. By and large, I don't think Butch anticipated some of the nuances, but he did have a vision of growing this bank.

TH:: I don't want to put you in an uncomfortable spot, but when you look back, to what do you attribute being able to make such a substantial rise in the organization?
TH:: I guess several things. I think certainly timing was one. My background certainly has aided me in the progress I had. Some Big Eight (accounting firm) experience. I think there's an opportunity for us to learn together. When I came here, we probably had maybe 120 employees. We were $200 million. Now we have almost 800 employees and $2.5 billion with Rocky Mountain in the group. So there was an opportunity to really grow within the position at the same time. Again, I'd suggest Butch has afforded me a nice opportunity in that regard, and the directors as a whole. Jim Schmid encouraged me and Lynn Fuller, Sr. - Bill - encouraged me. My parents were wonderful mentors. So I received a lot of support along the way, including that from my family and the people I work. Also, a sense of humor helps. Maybe another thing that's helped me is that I recall the mistakes I made. When somebody else has made a mistake, that's something that I always harken back to. "I was there once. Don't make it numerous times, but certainly I made that mistake before and I appreciate the circumstances and unless you're totally denying the fact that it occurred, I'm very supportive of the position you're in." I think the ability to get along with people certainly helped. I've been told I have some vision. How far that goes, I'd hate to speculate. I think timing, patience, background, knowledge, those things certainly have helped me. But, again, I think tremendous support from the people I work with as a whole.

TH:: Now, in Dubuque with the long tradition of DB&T and people are familiar with DB&T, this Heartland thing is new territory for a lot of the people reading this interview. Can you describe what the relationship now is between DB&T and Heartland Financial?
TH:: That's a great question, because I think that is confusing. In fact, when I received this most recent promotion and shifted from the presidency of DB&T, I've had some people ask me, "Now, is that a demotion? Here you are, you were president of DB&T, but now you're a chief operating officer. Is that actually below the presidency?" Never understanding the structure, that Heartland that sits up above and then DB&T sits below. The confusion is inherent in this, I guess, because we like DB&T really to sit out front. DB&T is really the one that's doing a lot of things in this community and I think doing it right. Heartland was formed effective in 1982. At that time, the only asset underneath Heartland was Dubuque Bank & Trust. We were a one-bank holding company. (An extended description of Heartland's growth through acquisitions and start-ups appears in the additional Newsmaker conversation, on www.THonline.com.)

TH:: You've gone from the Dubuque base, where everybody works under the same roof pretty much, to all these distant locations, a huge number of employees. How do you and others in your management team manage that?
TH:: One, Lynn Fuller goes around to each location, every bank, every month. Now with my movement to the holding company, he'll take the Western banks primarily and I'll take the Midwest banks. Every month, we're out there having meetings with the bank presidents and staff, trying to see what's going on within the organization. The second way is that we have empowered people out there. We want presidents that are very focused on their business. We see them an entrepreneurs and that's why we've been able to draw a lot of our bank presidents away from the big organizations like US Bank or Wells Fargo. They see an opportunity with our organization to really become entrepreneurs. They have a chance to do probably what they used to do before the mass consolidation came through. The board of directors - local players, local key people within any community - also provides tremendous guidance. Beyond that, as we refer to it, anything that the customer doesn't see, we centralize back to Dubuque. It doesn't impact the customer as far as a perception that this is not a local community bank. If it intrudes on that, we won't centralize it. If it does not intrude on that, we'll bring that back to Dubuque and centralize it, really across the street, which is why we purchased the old Walsh Store building and renovated it.

TH:: What would be some examples of certain functions that are brought to Dubuque?
TH:: There's a host of them. Data processing, audit, compliance, finance. We produce all the board reports, for instance, here in Dubuque. Electronic payments are done here, customer service is done here. We'll start to do loan processing back in Dubuque. So if the customer again doesn't see it, they'll input it in say Monroe, Wis., it will come here, we'll process all the paperwork and move it back up to them. The credit write-up. If people come in for a commercial loan and you have an ongoing business that we need to understand before we make the loan, both for your benefit and our benefit, all that analysis is done across the street.

TH:: What has that done for employment in Dubuque?
TH:: Heartland overall, we're approaching 800 people. In Dubuque, we're about 300, of which I'd suggest about 100 will be spending most of their time on Heartland.

TH:: You mentioned the mass consolidation in banking. How unusual is it in this day and age for Dubuque to have so many Dubuque-based financial institutions?
TH:: It's very unusual. In a city the size of Dubuque, you may have one that will still be holding out, I guess, if you will. Most of them have in fact been acquired. In many respects, I think that it's probably a tribute to the management. I would probably point to Dubuque Bank & Trust and American Trust as being two of the older banks in town. Certainly we have other banks that do well, but that's probably true in any market. You see the big banks acquired and then a lot of the start-up banks come in behind it, which makes sense. These people that are displaced from their previous employment start a bank because that's what they know. But by and large, what you don't see are two banks like Dubuque Bank & Trust and American Trust that have survived to this point. It's two different models, but it serves each of the entities very well and ultimately, I think it serves Dubuque very well. You look at American. It's been family-owned for a number of years. Their model is privately owned and I think, again, it works very well for them. I think they've been very charitable to the community. And I think they continue to grow as well. Dubuque Bank & Trust, and now Heartland's model, is different in that we've grown very rapidly and we've now listed our stock on NASDAQ. And I think it's American's intent as well is to remain independent. So it's been a nice upturn for both of us and I think ultimately the community because both organizations have been extremely charitable.

TH:: Has this mass consolidation of banking been good or bad for the consumer?
TH:: You know, I think, by and large, the consumer has more choices and more accessibility to credit than they've ever had. Even though there has been a lot of consolidation out there. Look at Dubuque, Iowa. We have two very large organizations, and a total of eight different banks here in town. Beyond that, we have two very large credit unions and several other credit unions. The consumer has, in many respects, never been better served. Which is also the danger on the other side, I think. Something that the consumer needs to be aware of. The accessibility of credit may be too easy. As a result, I think we need to continue, everyone needs to be made aware that there's obviously a cost to credit and don't start spending it frivolously.

TH:: I'd like to jump back to what's going on across the street in the Walsh Store building. What's your timetable for completion on that project?
TH:: Well, by the time this interview hits, we'll have 80 people in that building. Total capacity is about 150 people. There will still be some work to be done. Whether that's absolutely done by mid-June is probably in question. With a tin ceiling, the restoration is taking a little longer on that. But by in large, it's going to be done by mid-June. We actually have a Chamber of Commerce Business PM on June 15. We have a citywide open house on July 18.

TH:: Did the Walsh Store building wind being a Money Pit?
TH:: The building has exceeded our initial cost estimate. There's no secret to that. What we're indicating right now is that the cost will be about $100 per square foot. The includes furniture, including the generator, including all the equipment necessary to run the computer. But as I told our shareholders, I indicated the costs, but I said there are several things that ensued. One is it's an adjacent facility that can house 150 people. It's helped stabilize and certainly improved the neighborhood that we live in, that we intend to live in for the foreseeable future. And it's really something that we feel as corporate citizens that it's important to do, that we need to do and we continue to do in this community.

TH:: So, $100 a square foot. Can you do the math for me?
TH:: Well, there's 60,000 square feel over there, total.

TH:: $6 million.
TH:: That's total cost less credits, remember.

TH:: Right. Review those credits for me, if you would.
TH:: We have the state credits, which are 25 percent. We have the federal credits, which are 20 percent of eligible expenditures. We have the Enterprise Zone credit, which is 10 percent. We have some job credit in there. We have some TIF money in there. There's a lot of things that have come with the city's help. The city has been wonderful in this entire process. They really aided our overall investment across the street.

TH:: I want to make sure I am clear on this. Net less credits means what?
TH:: Total cost less credits that we received. The final net figure - total cost less credits - will be just over $6 million.

TH:: What are the biggest obstacles in attaining Heartland's growth goals of doubling earnings and doubling assets every five years?
TH:: Competition. There's no shortage of competition out there. Certainly the market will have impact on that. I think we have the people. One of Butch's phrases we use in here is "The Big Bank Punch With The Little Bank Touch." And that's what we're selling and that's what draws people and will continue to draw people. Customers and new employees.

TH:: Are you ready for the Lightning Round? Fill in the blank?
TH:: Give it to me.

TH:: Complete the sentence. "If there was just one thing about my job I could change..."
TH:: Oh, Lightning Round. Probably just a little less time involvement. I say that somewhat hesitantly because I thoroughly enjoy what I do, but I also realize that I still have young children and I think sometimes they have been shorted in the process a little bit. That is something I need to continue to work on balancing.

TH:: "Few people around here know that I..."
TH:: These questions were all good up to these two.

TH:: Wait 'til the next one.
TH:: "Few people around here know that I..." I don't think I want to say that.

TH:: I think I have it written down here. That your brother... JS: Oh, yeah, that my brother called me Fat Boy. Also, he called me Sally, so that would probably be the other one.

TH:: This should be easier. "If I were not a banker, I probably would be..." JS: ... in sales. I'd still be in sales. I think banking, even though it has some nuances to it, it certainly has an aspect of sales in it. And that's really what attracts me. I like working with people. I like interacting with people. I like the thrill of the sale.

TH:: You say you like your job and all of that, but there have to be bad days around here. If something's going to get you down, what do you think it's most likely to be?
TH:: I guess if it's anything, if we don't do something right - and that includes myself, by the way. I think that the last two years with the dual roles (Heartland and DB&T), that I wasn't always getting as much done as I wanted to get done. Wasn't getting back to people on time, etc. So that bothered me about myself. Then when we, as an organization, drop by the ball, that we haven't done what we say we do, if we've committed to it, I really like to make sure that we've satisfied that commitment. My concern the last two years, I haven't done it on a timely basis, I still tried to satisfy the commitment, but I haven't done it on a timely enough basis so that's why I'm enjoying this transition. TH: On the flip side, and to wind up on a positive note, what really makes it a good day for you? What gets you really excited about what you do?
TH:: I think the people. It's trite, but it is the people. People have been this organization. They're energized. They're committed. They like being part of the organization. I generally think, genuinely think that they like coming to work on a day-to-day basis. I don't see a lot of down-in-the-mouth people. You go into some organizations, you can feel that people don't want to be there. But here, I think that people are positive and I feed on that. That to me works very well.