Category: Letters from Lisa

This month’s focus is on Sure Champ® and Vita Charge®, two product lines that have experienced growth. What has created this success? Supporting young people involved in livestock. I know you are wriggling your nose right now, and thinking this lady is nuts. Nuts since we all know that helping young people doesn’t grow sales or pay bills. While whether I am nuts or not is debatable, my response is not. Economics are not all that matters, even in business.

BioZyme®, under the leadership of Bob Norton, started supporting youth in livestock back in 2007 when it became the title sponsor of both the National Junior Hereford Expo and the National Junior Angus Show. Why did we do this? Because these events and junior programs help create and shape youth that matter. As I was writing this note to all of you, I took a moment and asked Bod why he started making this a focus. His response was pretty simple, “The people in the industry are a lifestyle worth working to sustain. Livestock families are unique and special and extremely important to the welfare of the community, the state and the country.”

Darcy from the blog, Success is Reason Enough, lists the following facts about youth people who show cattle, but in my opinion, it applies to kids who show any animal.

• They wake up early before school, to feed and care for their animals.
• They stay up late in the evenings working hair, feeding rations and making sure their steer is rinsed one more time before they head to bed.
• They know how to respect others.
• They know how to receive critique, how to ask questions and how to push just a little bit longer.
• They know how to evaluate their own cattle and others; and how to defend themselves verbally in front of a judge.
• They know that one little tweak in a showing can be the difference between a championship slap…. or nothing.
• They know that whatever you placed first or last…. you still need to shake the judge’s hand.
• They can load up a trailer and set off to a show halfway across the country by themselves, because they know how to care for their livestock and budget their money, so they still have enough for diesel on the way home.
• They know that those around them are trying to beat them in the ring…. but when they walk out the gate, if a fellow showman needed the proverbial shirt off their back, they’d hand it to them in a heartbeat.

That sounds like the perfect applicant for every position we have at BioZyme. And without this type of workforce in out future, the USA will never reach its full potential.

If you are still asking why we do this, let me reiterate that these young people are our future. More importantly, they are agriculture’s future. And for them, the experience of showing matters. And making kids feel like they matter; well…. it matters to us.

Systems and processes are the essential building blocks of our companies. Every facet of our business—on the production floor, in the warehouse or in the office—is part of a system that can be managed or improved. A system is designed to connect all of an organization’s intricate parts and interrelated steps so they can work together for the achievement of success.

There are several reasons to implement a business system.

Improving Top-Line Performance: In short, a business system takes care of your future. It ensures if you know you are meeting your customers’ expectations, which is key to growing a healthy business.

Meeting Customer’s Expectations: If you use a system like a CRM and a systematic approach, your organization will be motivated to analyze, measure, compare and test all the possibilities of what your customers want and don’t want.

Employee Development: The goal of the development system is to enable proper education and opportunities to all employees so they can complete their work more efficiently and effectively.

Reduce Costs and Increase Profits: It has been proven time and again that the implementation of a sound business system helps reduce costs. However, a good business system is intended to reduce costs without taking the shortcuts that often lead to an erosion of profitability by lowering quality expectations or service levels.

Unfortunately, you can’t just go buy a business system, you must build it, and it includes 100 parts: an information system, an IT system, a CRM system, a production system, a drive Lisa nuts system and an etc.,etc., etc. system. The choices are many, and therefore the decisions are many, which is sometimes hard. I am by no means a system expert, but this month we will focus on sharing about the three that I do feel we have done well – the CRM, Inventory and Marketing Project Management. I have always believed that most every challenge in business can be solved if you 1) get the right system in place, 2) then develop the processes to properly use that system and then finally 3) ensure the people involved are in the right seat on the bus and are personally inspired to keep themselves accountable to these system and processes. So, you can see I believe systems are first. Why?

1. Systems provide consistency: With business systems, you can more easily produce the same products and services with the same level of consistency. Once you have created your systems and developed the processes engaged with the systems, your employees can easily be consistent.
2. Change is easier to accomplish: Systems make a business predictable. So, when change impacts your business – which may often occur these days – knowing that becomes easier. You will also then better predict how the change should be handled.
3. Training new employees becomes easier: New hires can be quickly integrated into your business when there is a system and a set of procedures for them to follow, so they know exactly what is expected.
4. Staff can focus on what they do best: Once business systems are established and implemented, some activities can be performed on “autopilot.” Repetitive activities in your business become routine, so you and your team can focus on activities with higher payoffs.

Systems are what make businesses grow, flow, endure and be sustainable. Businesses that effectively use systems find themselves winning against their competition. I leave you with this thought. If you don’t have the resources or time to pick a “high tech” system don’t ignore this letter of ideas. At BioZyme, we have had to start with a paper “system” MANY times. What I have found is that what is not ok to say is, “I will get a system when I can afford it or once this or that happens.” DO IT now, even if it is using a concrete tablet.

Does passion make you work harder and smarter? I don’t think so. I think passion makes you want to work harder and smarter. But there is way more to working harder and smarter than passion. The real problem with this cliché is that it gets tossed around so casually as an answer to all business problems and yet, it has so little to do with how a business needs to operate.

Many people believe work balance is really the goal and so they changed the phrase to “work smarter, not harder.” What’s the difference?

Luckily someone took the challenge of finding a clear answer… UC Berkeley professor Morten Hansen looked at 200 academic papers, interviewed 120 experts, ran a pilot study on 300 subjects and built a framework which he then tested on 5,000 participants from various industries and backgrounds.

He found seven behaviors that made up 66% of the difference in how people performed. (By comparison, standard metrics like education, age and hours worked were only responsible for 10% combined.) His new book, “Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More” outlines these seven.

We’re going to look at three of my favorites so that we can get hard, smart work done — and maybe even achieve that mythical “work-life balance” unicorn everyone is always talking about.

Do Less — then Obsess
Everyone agrees we need to quit trying to accomplish 9,000 things at once. But when Hansen looked at the data, he found that this was only half the solution. Top performers focus on fewer goals — but they also obsess like crazy over them. This is a really hard one for me. I am very good at obsessing but if I am honest, I obsess over all of the hundreds of opportunities I think BioZyme has. I am going to take this advice to heart and pick three for 2022.

Use “The Learning Loop”
Deliberate practice seems straightforward in sports, music or chess. But how do you do it in the workplace? Hansen offers some clear steps:

• Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.

• Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.

• Just like a baseball player might try to improve a specific element of their game (batting, fielding or running), you want to break down what goes into good social media and set a goal. “I’m going to learn Promoboxx to help with my social media
  marketing.”

• Get feedback. After the Facebook post is made, ask people how you did and what you can do to improve it

Follow Passion & Purpose
Top performers didn’t merely “follow their passion.” They also had a sense of purpose in what they did. This combo produced huge results. It boosted energy levels and increased the amount of effort they were able to exert. Hansen found that at least 10% of people in every arena and role examined had passion and purpose.

Purpose is about creating value for others in a way that is personally meaningful to you. Like passion, this is less about the actual tasks you perform and more about how you frame them. Shoveling elephant poop does not seem terribly meaningful. And when looked at in that limited frame, it isn’t. But when you love animals, it can be deeply meaningful — as a study of zookeepers revealed. In a 2009 study of zookeepers, researchers found that some saw cleaning cages and feeding animals as a filthy, meritless job, while others saw it as a moral duty to protect and provide proper care for the animals. Same job, different feelings of purpose.

Summing It Up
If we choose to implement these three behaviors, I think we will all be able to work smarter which will naturally convert to working harder and we will do it all with passion and purpose without even knowing it. Isn’t doing something so naturally you don’t even know you are doing it the real secret to work and life? One last thought. If doing all three of these behaviors is too much for you right now; 23% of the difference Hansen found in how people performed came from one behavior – Do Less then Obsess. Here’s permission to passionately obsess!

When You Fuel Your Passion, Care Comes Naturally

Passion sneaks up on you and whispers in your ear. It moves you to speak, act, move, create.

Passion is what you’re naturally drawn to, what manifests in your life over and over again, what keeps you up at night and spurs you out of bed in the morning.

Passion is simply the work you love to do. You’re deeply committed to doing this work and doing it well. You get a lot of joy out of it, but it will also come with a lot of struggle and effort—and you know the whole time that it’s worth it.

Passion is high emotion AND high devotion.

Passion is what fuels the best work, not money.

Passion is what motivates us to do the things we love. It is that strong desire that allows you to create something extraordinary—the fuel that keeps the fire burning.

The most certain way to fuel your passion is to connect with and bring value, meaning and joy to the lives of others. So, the more you give, the more you get back. At BioZyme®, we like to call this “Care that Comes Full Circle.”

“Care that Comes Full Circle” is a philosophy that believes that if you truly care for someone or something, that care will eventually come full circle back to you. Or in other words, there will be a natural boomerang effect. However, remember that most boomerang manufacturers guarantee that their boomerangs will return if thrown according to the instructions provided.

Perhaps we need instructions as well to ensure our care comes full circle. I believe these instructions would start with telling us to find our passion, fuel it and then watch this special type of care come naturally.

Naturally meaning if we take care of the animals, they will take care of us by ensuring we get to eat or feel unconditional love. Naturally meaning if we take care of our customers, they will remain loyal, which allows us to continue to have the resources to research new technologies for them. Naturally meaning if we take care of our vendors by communicating and staying loyal to them, they will help us during these horrible supply chain shortages and challenges. And last but certainly not least, naturally meaning if we take care of our employees by being understanding, good communicators and supportive they will passionately fuel the care we are after naturally throughout the company.

BioZyme has always been focused on caring about the producer by helping add value so he/she can see and measure improvements in the herd. “We always promoted healthier animals, but it was never really written it down,” said 40-year retired employee Dennis Delaney. “Although we all (employees) have a livestock background and care about animals, the true passion, compassion and love for animals came into BioZyme’s philosophy when Lisa Norton came to work here.”

I greatly appreciate these words from Dennis, but I hope my leadership drives this same type of care not just to the animals, but also to all of you.

I recently watched a movie (yes it was Hallmark) where a boss told a writer that the weakness in her work was that she had a “wall between your head and your heart.” I thought that was a perfect question to end this article. Do you have that wall? That wall makes it very hard to fuel your passion enough that care comes naturally.