Lynn Paulson will be the first person to tell you that he couldn’t have picked a more difficult time to enter banking.

In the early 1980s, after graduating from North Dakota State University and working for several years on his family’s small grain, cattle and dairy farm, Lynn joined the Farm Credit System as an ag loan officer. In the middle of the biggest credit crisis since the Great Depression, he quickly learned about risk and how to work through difficult situations with financially stressed farmers and ranchers, some of whom would not make it through the crisis.

“It was a tough time in the ag banking world,” Lynn said. “It was sink or swim.”

Those challenging years set the stage for more than four decades to come in the banking industry. Now SVP/director of agribusiness development at Bell Bank, Lynn has cultivated a unique perspective on agriculture and banking that helps him support Bell’s ag customers and correspondent banking partners.

Growing a Community Bank – and Farming on the Side

Several years after joining the Farm Credit System, Lynn was approached by a group of investors who wanted to start a new bank in Grafton, N.D. Despite his relative lack of broad banking experience, he agreed to join the bank – called Citizens State Bank – as president, CEO and board chair.

“I knew about credit and credit risk, but didn’t know much about running a bank – but I learned quickly,” Lynn said. “I had a great team around me, and I’ve never been afraid to work and learn. I made mistakes along the way, but I learned a lot more from those mistakes than from my successes.”

In his new role, Lynn helped to grow Citizens State Bank to nearly $50 million in assets. He recruited new holding company shareholders, took on holding company debt, hired staff, and wrote policy and procedures, all the while managing the day-to-day operations of the community bank.

In the early 2000s, the bank’s board of directors felt greater scale was needed, and decided to merge Citizens with three other area banks that shared common ownership. Lynn led the merger, and then served as CEO of the new bank – Choice Financial – until he eventually left in 2011 to join Bell.

Around the same time, Lynn made an unexpected return to his family’s farm following an unforeseen tragedy: his brother, who had been operating the farm, died without warning.

“A bachelor all his life, he was planning on finally getting married on July 18,” Lynn said. “He died on July 15, and his funeral was on his planned wedding day.”

Lynn was suddenly left in charge of the farm. He completed the fall harvest later that year, and then rented the land out – but not for long. His connection to the family farm was deeper than he realized, and he eventually went back to farming himself, wearing two hats as a farmer and banker until the late 2010s.

“It was a challenging time wearing two hats as a full-time farmer and full-time community banker – with all the demands of both roles,” Lynn said. “My family made a lot of sacrifices for me to do both of the jobs I had a passion for.”

The Importance of Relationships

In his role with Bell, Lynn travels across the upper Midwest visiting farmers, ranchers and producers as well as community banks in Bell’s correspondent bank network. His dual farming and banking background helps him connect with bankers and customers and empathize with what they’re going through.

“It facilitates our relationship because I speak their language really well, and understand just about every facet in the ag world,” Lynn said.

Additionally, from his experience growing Citizens State Bank, Lynn learned the importance of having a strong correspondent banking partner who can “help you punch above your weight,” as he describes it.

“When we first started our bank, we had a really good correspondent bank partner that was willing to step up and help us with credit needs we weren’t able to fill,” Lynn said. “It was a key cornerstone to helping us grow.”

Now, he’s on the other side of the desk, providing that assistance to community banks in an industry where it’s becoming increasingly difficult for smaller institutions to stand out.

“In this era of a rapidly changing and challenging banking landscape, a lot of banks are wondering what their future holds,” Lynn said. “As a locally owned community bank, how do you compete with bigger banks? How do you deal with changing regulatory challenges and compliance issues while still staying competitive?”

That evolving regulatory and IT environment is just one of the many changes Lynn has seen in the industry over the last 40 years. And while much has changed since he started with the Farm Credit System in the middle of a banking crisis (“still with hay in my hair,” he joked), some things have stayed the same – such as the importance of people and relationships in banking.

“Without question, what I’ve enjoyed most is seeing the success of our customers,” Lynn said. “Having someone you started with and took a chance on, and seeing them do really well, there’s something special about that.”