Filing checks in the backroom at Citizens National Bank in Cheboygan, Mich., was the first job Susan Eno ever had. And soon, after 46 years, she will retire as bank president and CEO from Citizens National having only ever received a paycheck from that single employer.
Eno was hired during her senior year in high school where she attended only mornings so she could work at the bank in the afternoon.
Her job then sounds quite dry, but “anything you do, you can make fun. I found it interesting the checks people wrote, who they wrote them to, what they put in the memo. There were some interesting things people put in the memo,” Eno said. “And when you work with really awesome people, it makes the job go fast.”
After graduation, she stayed at the bank. “What’s kept me here is I like the people who are here. I’ve never had two days that were the same,” Eno said. “We had lots of opportunity if you want to seize them. They’ve been an awesome employer.”
Eno was hired by bank CEO Lyle McKinley, who already had a lot of women working at the bank who held the status of officer. The next CEO, Bob Churchill (a distant relative of Winston’s), “was also about who could do the job — if you could do the job, then you received the compensation and the recognition to go with it,” Eno said.
During this time, Eno was taking courses that applied to the jobs she held. When the executive secretary was retiring, Eno’s CEO asked her to step into the role, so Eno took shorthand classes. Then she got into the training function and felt it prudent to take speech classes. When she moved into accounting, she took two or three accounting classes. “I actually, at the end of the day, thought it was better because everything I was learning I was using,” she said. She “never said no to anything because that’s not the way I was brought up. If you don’t like the job, keep doing a really good job and find a new one.” She also graduated from the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
That attitude got her to the job of executive vice president. “I honestly had the best job in the whole county. It paid really well, and I could make any decision I wanted to,” she said. And if she didn’t want to make the decision, CEO Jim Conboy let her pass the buck.
When Conboy got ready to retire, “he asked me if I was interested.” Before that moment, “I never gave it a thought. I never thought I had a chance,” Eno said because she had never received a college degree. He told her, “Absolutely, you could do this job.”
Eno took over in 2008. “You know what that means. We had some challenges at the bank. I was actually glad it was me at the helm, because we had a really good team,” Eno said. “I’m just too stupid to lay down and die. We got to the other side of it, and we’re better for it.”
In looking back over her tenure, Eno said the banking industry’s delivery system has been one of the most exciting developments. “What technology has allowed us to do is amazing,” she said. When she began at the bank, it had 60 employees in five offices with $30 million in assets. Now, in eight offices, “we’re $275 million with the same amount of employees. I think the technology has just allowed us to deliver services more conveniently, effectively, faster, cheaper to our customers.”
One of the challenges Eno sees remaining is the mortgage regulations that cropped up after the Great Recession. “It really has hampered us in our ability to provide services to all customers,” she said. While some of the regulations she agrees were necessary, some perhaps have gone too far and have now negatively impacted consumers, especially those in the lower to middle income brackets, particularly as it relates to debt-to-income ratio.
“Some of our customers, they would pay us regardless. They may not make a lot of money and debt-to-income ratio is high, but they’re going to make us whole. But those are the ones we can no longer stretch to help. And I don’t think that’s right because we know our customers better than anyone else.”
The playing field with credit unions remains another challenge. “We are basically in the same businesses,” Eno said. “For every dollar we make, we pay 34 cents in taxes, but they pay none.”
Eno has had a great ride and feels badly for others who won’t have “the great, great experience that I had.” And while she can point to several things she considers successes in her career, including leading the bank through the recent recession, it’s really the people she has worked with who she holds up as a pinnacle.
“I can point to a number of people in this organization who, hopefully, I’ve had a positive impact on. Hopefully I’ve given them the opportunities after I’ve retired. I think [my best success] is really more the personal satisfaction of the staff members.”
Keene named successor to Eno
Citizens National Bank in Cheboygan, Mich., has promoted Matthew Keene to executive vice president and named him as successor to Susan Eno, current bank president and CEO. Eno, who will retire after a transition period, said of Keene, “He is energetic, he is technology savvy, he is well-connected, he is in our market and well-respected.”
Keene came on board in 2015 after seven years at First Community Bank in Petoskey, Mich., and had just been promoted to senior vice president this summer. Keene, in his short tenure at Citizens, has been instrumental in opening two branches and a drive-thru for the bank. He has a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, an MBA from Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and is a graduate of the Graduate School of Banking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Eno had initially planned to retire at year-end but has potentially extended that as Keene gets up to speed. “I’ve started to delegate some of my responsibility to him,” Eno said. “At some point in time, we’ll look at each other, and I’ll say, ‘I’m out.’”
After her retirement, Eno plans to continue on as a board member of the bank and its holding company.