Since John Boyer IV joined the Kingman-based bank that previously was operated by his father, John Boyer, Kanza Bank has grown from one location with $29 million in assets to a bank with four offices in three cities and $200 million in assets.

For the 49-year-old father of two and licensed private pilot, a banking career was not originally in his career plans.

All that Boyer wanted to do in 1983, upon graduating from Kansas State with an accounting and finance degree, was find a job.

"The spring of 1983, that was the tail end of a deep recession," Boyer said. "It was a deep recession, and as I recall, you had to literally camp out for days just to get an interview."

Boyer, chairman and CEO of Kanza Bank, did find a job, two of them in fact. But they weren't in banking.

Why did you spend the first few years out of college at Sprint and not the bank?

"I really didn't have my eyes set at going back to what was then the State Bank of Kingman. I didn't really have any plans to do that. And if it was in the back of my mind, it was way back in the back of my mind. Long story short, I had two opportunities coming out of college. I could go to work for United Telecommunications (now Sprint) or Standard Oil. And for some reason United Telecommunications appealed more to me. Part of it was the travel aspect. I went to work for United Telecommunications in 1983. I worked for them for five years and my first job with them was internal auditing and it was in their regulated telephone company. And I traveled with a department of 20, 25-year-old kids and it was fun. We went to neat places like Hood River, Ore., San Diego and New York.

So what brought you back to Kingman and the bank?

"Somewhere about 1987 my dad's health was failing, and I was approached. I was the oldest son. We had the State Bank of Kingman, one location, $29 million in assets we had three senior officers... all had been in the bank since the 1950s and with my dad's failing health, they just said they wanted to inquire if I would be interested in coming back as a management trainee with the idea of maybe stepping into a leadership role when my dad ended up retiring. We didn't really know how long that would be. And I was moving up. I was having fun. I liked Sprint. I liked Kansas City. My wife was gainfully employed. But we also didn't have kids, and Kingman would be a good place to raise kids. After a six-, seven-month interview and discussion process, I made the decision to go back and my wife had landed a job in the (Kingman) hospital business office. It was kind of painful. it was hard to leave Sprint. but I have to tell you it's been a wonderful experience (at the bank)."

What of your experiences at Sprint did you bring to your job at Kanza Bank?

"I kind of pegged a career path in budget (at Sprint). I liked budgeting because it was really close to what I thought was the next most important part of the company, which is the strategic planning part. We do a really good job in our organization, partly because I like that and my brother (Clark Boyer) complements that. But we're pretty darn specific about putting a lot of focus into an outside-facilitated strategic plan that really mirrors what we want to do and then breaking it down into the budgeting process that accomplishes that.

"I'll tell you another thing that I learned in that process. It's notorious, when you are in that budgeting process, everybody has a tendency to underestimate their revenues and overestimate their expenses so that they can kind of hit the ball out of the park and look good. That is such a ridiculous... waste of time. I don't know how many times (at Sprint) we would have to scrap budgets and go back to the drawing board just because people have a tendency to do that. One thing that we do in our organization is we develop plans that are challenging but achievable. My budgets are realistic. They're not softballs."

What is the business environment like in Kanza's markets: Anthony, Kingman and Wichita?

"They're the same but different for various reasons. It's a challenging economic environment. I think 2010 is going to be tough. It doesn't feel to me that the economy is going to continue to slide. In 2009 it was not uncommon to have seen your business customers have 25 to 35 percent less sales. Well, that's deflating, even when you can withstand something like that. You see these pockets of optimism but... they're small, just small. I think from our perspective... the challenging credits have sort of identified themselves. Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic, but I think the industry has identified its problems."

What is Kanza doing to manage through these tough times?

"I think we've been, like a lot of people in the industry, we've re-evaluated our policies. That's not a word customers like, but you're getting back to the basics of underwriting credit, which I think is a good thing for banks and for borrowers. And we're spending more time dissecting and evaluating our portfolios, our overall portfolio and diversifying risks, as our customers do."

This story was originally published May 23, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "."