Sam L. Susser

Entrepreneurship runs in your family. Your grandparents owned and operated two service stations in Corpus Christi. In 1988, you took the company’s helm and helped spur more rapid growth in both the convenience retail and wholesale fuel businesses. During the 1990s, the company expanded its retail presence by licensing dozens of convenience stores in Texas and Oklahoma under the 7-Eleven and Circle K banners. In 2006, the company rebranded under the name Stripes® Convenience Stores. Did you always want to be an entrepreneur and work for the family business? 

My goal from about age 7-20 was to potentially earn a spot on the PGA Tour as a professional golfer.  I was a highly ranked junior and played golf at the University of Texas for three years and had the privilege of caddying for a few holes for Jack Nicklaus when he opened Austin’s Hills of Lakeway Golf Club in the early to mid ‘80s.  After I watched him play, I knew I didn’t have the talent to ever compete at that level so I decided not to play golf my senior year to focus on attending my classes, making good grades, and securing a decent job.

I ended up starting my career at Salomon Brothers Inc in the Corporate Finance/Mergers and Acquisitions Group in New York and worked there for three years.  When I joined Salomon Brothers, the thought was I would gain some experience and go to business school or law school and then ultimately return to family business which was thriving when I graduated from college.  Unfortunately, the Texas economy and the Texas banks all collapsed in the late 80s and the combination almost destroyed our family business.  

My Dad and Uncle Jerry asked me to leave Salomon Brothers to move back and work with my Uncle towards a reorganization of the business.  We had lost millions of dollars in accounts receivables from companies and families that didn’t pay for fuel and or had other challenges, such as declines in their real estate values. It was a long arduous climb out of the hole.  I’m so grateful that we were Texas-based and have participated in the economic boom we’ve seen these past 30 years.

You led the growth of Susser Holdings Corporation from a five-store operation to a $6.7 billion enterprise and oversaw two IPOs (one in 2006 for Susser Holdings and one in 2012 for Susser Petroleum Partners). What was the biggest lesson you learned from taking a company public? 

I think of the most important things I learned from being public is that you have to continue to run your business for the long-term and not allow yourself to change your strategy to meet short-term expectations.  On our first IPO in 2006, an analyst at Morgan Stanley taught me that in the long-run you get the investors you deserve and if you act short-term, you’ll end up with a bunch of “activist” hedge funds that will demand short-term results.  If you manage for the long-term and do the right thing, you’ll end up with ”long only” quality mutual funds.   We decided to never issue quarterly earnings guidance and ran the business for the long-term and it worked out extremely well.

Over the course of your career, how do you think your leadership style has evolved? What motivates you as a leader and how do you motivate your team? 

When I joined the business in 1988, my leadership style was simply to run the numbers and to figure out which decision would save us the most money or produce the most cash flow. That’s what we had to do because we simply didn’t have any other choice.  After we got past the extreme financial stress, we had more choices to make, and I had the opportunity to start thinking about long-term strategy.  When the business finally achieved scale, my management style changed so that I delegated more and focused primarily on culture and strategy.  When you’re running a 12,000-person organization, it’s interesting how few decisions you actually make, the day-to-day responsibility lies with the team.  I learned to try to do everything in my power to make sure that people were doing the right thing even when I wasn’t looking or when I would never know what particular decision they made.

In 2014, you made the decision to sell the convenience store business. That sale ultimately fueled the expansion of Susser Bank, by using proceeds to acquire Affiliated Bank in 2018. Susser Bank has since grown from $650 million in assets to more than $2.2 billion in 2023. What is your vision and goal for Susser Bank in Texas and beyond? 

We believe the banks in Texas will continue to meaningfully consolidate in the years ahead and there is going to be a great opportunity to serve sophisticated entrepreneurs and small and mid-sized businesses who will want to work with a bank that can bring state-of-the-art technology, sound advice and “white glove” concierge level service.  The growth in Texas has been fantastic, but it has produced a number of really large banks that are far more bureaucratic and impersonal than they were five or ten years ago.  We will aspire to fill that void by bringing capital, technology and advice to clients who value a highly responsive, consistent banking partner. 

Susser Bank’s goal is to be a leader in the banking industry for the next 100 years.  We constantly ask our team to judge us not by what we say but by what we do.  We ask, “Are the decisions you see us making today what you would do if you were going to own the business for the next 100 years?”

One of TBHF’s core values is excellence. How do you define “excellence” in business? 

One way we define excellence is in the duration of our relationships with clients and high-performing team members.  We want to build long-term relationships and do not want to waste our time and capital by supporting “transactions”. 

We also have a “North Star” goal for our Company to become the last bank that any of our talented bankers ever want to work for in their careers.  We understand if one of our bankers chooses to go in-house to a client or perhaps switch careers altogether.  However, if one of our highly-regarded professionals decided to go to a competing bank, I would want to learn what we could do better to provide our team members the kind of long-term home that we aspire to provide.