Category: Letters from Lisa

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.

In business it is easy to get bogged down and to try to work on tons of things. But complexity is potentially the enemy in all that we do.

Now often at the start of a year, we resolve to “fix” things. Luckily a literal and figurative clear-out like that can often help us focus on fewer things more effectively rather than trying to focus on too much at once.

According to Merriam-Webster, keeping it simple means making something easy to understand or do, not going into too much detail, and sticking to the point.

Humans tend to like complexity more than simplicity, especially at work. We often find it hard to believe that simple solutions will actually work. We mistakenly think ‘simple’ is the same as ‘easy’ when they’re actually very different. As we start this new year, let’s work together to keep growing business by trying to keep things simple.

In fact, let’s commit to focus on three things all year:

Know Your Customer

Know Your Checkbook

Tell Everyone

Know Your Customer

Understanding what your customers want collectively and individually is key to growth. Having an in-depth of knowledge – or knowing more than their name, gender and herd size is paramount. As a business, knowing your customers’ kids, hobbies, tastes and interests along with what they watch, listen to and read can be a profitable advantage.

Understanding your customers’ buying behavior is also very important. As a business, you need to comprehend what type of person is most likely to need or want the product or service you provide. These are some of the key questions that you need to ask yourself daily:

• What is their reason for purchasing your product or service?
• How often are they going to need to buy that product or utilize the service? If you can be proactive with your outreach efforts around the time you know they will purchase, chances are the customer won’t look elsewhere.
• Where are they most likely to purchase? If you are a brick-and- mortar business and hear from your customers that they would prefer to order online, then it makes sense to change your business model to include an ecommerce or online ordering component.

Companies that know what their clients want and what they expect can also work on customizing the customer experience to create loyalty and repeat business. Listen to your customers’ feedback and provide sound advice if that’s what they want.

It is crucial to take every advantage to outsmart your competitor. Understanding and building upon your customer knowledge and relationship will put you ahead of the game.

Know Your Checkbook

Keeping accurate records helps keep the doors open. Knowing your records and simply using what they tell you to drive growth makes a business thrive. A business checkbook is often the primary source of record-keeping for many small businesses, according to the Internal Revenue Service. However, for a larger business know your checkbook translates into know your financials. Or in our new simple terms for all of us – know how much money you have and can/should invest in helping the business thrive.

It is ok to ask for help here. It is not ok to never look at your numbers and the money they are generating and also know what they are telling you.

Tell Everyone

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends, “As a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8% of their revenues to marketing.” This percentage is based on companies that have profits in the 10-12% range.

Whether you run a small business
or a multi-million-dollar corporation, marketing is essential to your profitability and growth. Products and services don’t sell themselves. By ignoring marketing until it’s too late, many small businesses risk hitting a brick wall and quite possibly, failing (just putting it simply).

So, what does tell everyone mean? Simple, tell everyone so everyone tells everyone (Tidbit: you must tell them 7 times before they even hear you). I like to think of the Christian song Pass it On for this concept. If you don’t know the words, it goes like this . . .

“It only takes a spark. To get a fire going. And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the glowing was your business?

The paper clip. The post-it note. The BioZyme product center. Some of the best ideas in the world are also the simplest. Take some time to give these three simple, focused tactics a try. You might find yourself discovering a fresh lease on life at work. Happy 2022!!

Outreach is an effort by individuals in an organization to connect and assist the efforts of other organizations. Outreach can help acquire new customers, re-engage past customers, encourage repeat purchases or upsell opportunities.

It is a well-known fact that companies using outreach as a strategy grow faster since they tend to believe in changing the future using recommended actions not just hoping the future turns out for the better. It is this fact that motivates me to constantly look and see the actions we take at BioZyme® to provide this connection to the amazing organizations that support us in the goal of providing “care that comes full circle” to the animals we have the honor to support.

Looking is a physical act; seeing is a mental process of perception. Seeing involves recognizing or connecting the information the eyes take in to ensure one is creating meaning. So, when I look for outreach at BioZyme what I see that has meaning is really four-fold. It includes our marketing, our dealer center, our outreach support team’s efforts and our ASMs in all that they do in the field. How do each of these try to connect and assist you?

Marketing At BioZyme, marketing’s number one goal is to push consumers to the Dealer Locator at biozymeinc.com so they can find you. Every marketing effort we do is measured on that goal. These metrics are tracked monthly and in a yearly accumulation as you see below.

Dealer Center In a survey of 4,500 consumers via Facebook, it was found that the number one expectation of the stores they visit was knowledge of the products sold in the store. Our dealer center offers many things, but its main purpose is easy access to product education. Through our product center you can get the desired knowledge directly or in a manner you can easily share via quick product videos.

Outreach Support The Outreach Support Center has one goal, touching dealers and users of the BioZyme products to ensure they know we care and are here to help them anyway we can orders, content, access, connectivity. Calculated defined contact pays dividends when the investment goal is growth.

ASMs Our area sales managers’ job description states their job is to sell and service our existing dealer/distributor network and customer base AND to identify and cultivate new partnering and growth opportunities to grow the business of the territory (you).

I think defining outreach as a way to connect and assist is a good focus as we approach Christmas. Isn’t that exactly what God did by sending His Son. He had an earthly Son so we could connect, and He used His eternal life to provide the assistance we need for all the days long if we choose to embrace it.

Merry Christmas!

Continuous improvement is defined as an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organization—processes, tools, products, services, etc. Sometimes those improvements are big, often they are small. In this case, “don’t sweat the small stuff,” doesn’t apply. But what’s most important is that all are frequent. Companies that excel at continuous improvement start with the belief that success comes from:

• Innovating “how” they do what they do (big and small).

• Engaging all employees in sharing knowledge and generating improvement ideas.

• Exploring better ways to deliver to customers and respond to changes in the external environment.

Fostering a continuous improvement culture is rooted in three practices:

1. Performance transparency starts with making goals public and cascading those goals in a way that is tailored to individuals at all levels of the organization. Progress toward goals must be transparently tracked to give all clear visibility into what is working and what needs work.
2. Knowledge sharing is critical to scale best practices across (and up and down) organizations.
3. Employee involvement is a necessity in continuous improvement. Frontline employees are closest to the work, and thus typically have the richest insights on how their work can be done better. Capturing their perspectives is critical.

Core to a continuous improvement mindset is the belief that a steady stream of improvements, diligently executed, will have transformational results. Transformational results are key to all business at BioZyme®. In 2020 we worked diligently through an initiative we called the Courage to Change. Change is always hard, and we had many things identified (both big and small) to work toward considering our emphasis on a continuous improvement mindset.

In order to keep us focused we chose to align our improvement initiative with our corporate goal of safe, accurate product. Throughout this month’s VISION, you will be able to read how we have defined this goal and all the things we have invested in to ensure we can deliver on our definition. Behind the scenes, millions of dollars are being spent to ensure statistical process controls are being used to ensure the initiative is alive and well in all that we do. Our equipment investment in proactively addressing (magnet drawers, feed cleaners, sifters, screens and quality inspections) safe and accurate product has been significant over the last few years, and we continue to increase all of our sampling and testing through high precision in-house analyzing with quick turnaround times so that we can ensure product homogeneity bag to bag and quarter to quarter.

Continuous improvement whether big or small is hard. Why? It involves that word we humans do not like – CHANGE. There are three main reasons people hate change — lack (or perceived lack) of reward, fear of the unknown and loss of status or visibility in the organization. Address these concerns head on so continuous improvement is ingrained in your organization.

Synergistic Programs/Products

The word synergy is derived from the Greek word synergos, which means “working together.”

Most leaders feel they ought to be creating synergy inside their company. However, the pursuit of synergy pervades most companies. Meetings and retreats are held to brainstorm about ways to work together more effectively. Teams are set up to develop key customer plans, coordinate product development and share best practices. Incentives for sharing knowledge, leads and customers are built into complex compensation schemes. Processes and procedures are standardized. What emerges from all this activity????

Many times, not much that matters and certainly not synergy. However, if we take synergy over into the product side of business, it has a better chance of making a difference. Synergy happens in product sales when the collaboration of two or more stock-keeping units (SKUs) creates an outcome that is greater than their combined separate efforts. I like to make this a bit simpler and say that synergy means selling a program not a product.

A program is a set of related activities or items, managed in a coordinated fashion that allows for the delivery of outcomes and benefits allowing one to reach his or her goal.

For the past several years, BioZyme® has worked to educate our team on programs and how they can help people obtain their goals or maximize the benefits to their animal (results). No matter the brand, there is a program that optimizes the connection of daily maintenance with the occasional challenges that pop up their ugly head, no matter how hard we try to keep them at bay. This combo truly supports care that comes full circle where people and animals win!

The food an average American family wastes translates into about $2,500 per year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), beef is one of the least wasted foods, with only 20% spoiled or not eaten. If beef waste were cut in half, the sustainability of the whole industry could be improved by 10%.

Not only is beef delicious and nutritious, but the beef industry continues to implement numerous proven sustainability practices throughout each step of the “pasture-to-plate” process. Though the path to sustainability is never complete, it is a continuous journey.

To the beef community, sustainability comprises much more than environmental considerations. Today, a sustainable food supply balances efficient production with environmental, social and economic impacts.

BioZyme’s Gain Smart ® line was developed for stockers to help them enhance what they do best; turn grass into the beef we all love to eat. Throughout the beef cycle, each sector makes efforts to improve sustainability. Stockers are no exception. So please help us by helping them and remember to include Gain Smart in your conversations with those raising sustainable beef.

A sustainable beef herd is like a sustainable company – one whose purpose and actions are equally grounded in financial, environmental and social concerns. I am not very experienced in beef sustainability but in a company, I feel like I can offer a few ideas. Below you will find five ways to help you shape a more sustainable future for your company.

1. Do not stand still, embrace change When you change and act fast, you can be the biggest, boldest and brightest unicorn, but if you remain still and don’t change and adapt to a situation quickly, you are closer to extinction than sustainability.

For instance, in the 80s, IBM got close to extinction. In fact, they were featured on the Forbes and Fortune magazine covers along with dinosaurs. So, the idea is there’s no standing still, or you will petrify just like the dinosaur. One may have a great idea that works, but it doesn’t matter how big the idea is, if you can’t find ways to take it to the market quickly you aren’t driving sustainability.

2. Focus on creating the customer’s value proposition, not yours Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day the business purpose is to drive value for the customer. Focus on creating high value, high capabilities that are useful for your customer base. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert at everything; it’s about creating value on the top end with existing resources.

3. Remember growth and comfort don’t co-exist We are no longer in the 50s, 60s, and 70s era. For example, if you are a banker, your new competitors are completely different. If you are in retail, now everybody is a retailer. Similarly, if you have been in the mobile business, then you can see that it’s no longer an industry; it’s a platform, it’s a capability. This is uncomfortable. But growth comes from businesses that focus on delivering value in innovative ways for their customers, even when it is uncomfortable.

4. Focus on excelling in an area It’s no longer about one company delivering value to every client at every place; it’s about being a part of an ecosystem. If you are not part of the ecosystem, then you are limiting yourself. You might have a successful start, but eventually it starts becoming difficult. Further in the bigger ecosystem, you are going to become a part of many ecosystems. In some, you might be a significant player and in others, you might be a small player. But in the end, it’s all about the contributions you are making in each of those ecosystems. So don’t try to be a big player in every ecosystem, rather look at how things work to drive incremental value in your ecosystem.
   
5. Focus on constant reinvention When you are part of a company, then it’s all about constantly reinventing what you do, it’s about reimaging how you do it and at the same time retaining your above core belief system because you want your employees, your clients, and your partners to work with you and for you.

Sustainability – believe you can make a difference and keep pushing.

Diversification is a key component of a long-lived, healthy business. Diversification is the process of a business enlarging or varying its range of products or field of operation. Personally, I don’t think of diversification as a process, I think of it as a conscious decision to prosper. Diversification is a proactive growth strategy. Adding new products and services to your business can gain you entry to an attractive new industry full of new customers and high sales potential. It can also kick-start growth again with your current customers.

At BioZyme®, sales diversification is one of our five corporate goals. As a high growth, innovative company not diversifying is not really an option for us. Of course, the tricky part is determining where and how to diversify. Adding the small ruminant brand wasn’t all that tricky, but it has been a pretty easy way to accomplish diversification.

It all started with end-users asking why their sheep and goats could not get the Concept•Aid® line like cattle people could. Being taught by Dr. Francis Fluharty that sheep and goats are not the same and that they are way different than a cow, I wanted us to create products for each of these small ruminants instead of a one-line-fits-all approach. While the population numbers make you think you would put them together, my educator taught me to realize that would not be best for the animal. As an animal lover, having both sheep and goat products in the DuraFerm line became the only way to go for me.

The population of sheep and goats in the U.S. has been stable over the last few years at around 8M head. This is just about the same number as the population of dairy cows and horses. In all cases, we should be focused on a targeted sales approach with salespeople that have time to focus on the diversification, a specific marketing strategy for the diversification effort and a thorough follow-up effort on both to keep the pipeline funnel moving correctly.

At the risk of being long winded, I can’t pass up the opportunity to expand on how diversification brings up the importance of knowing your customers’ demands. To deliver value to your customers, you must have a clear understanding of their needs. This doesn’t change if they are a sheep, goat, dog or horse customer. However, it is probably more important to acknowledge it as a business owner when one is trying to diversify.

A customer need is a problem that a person is trying to solve, which motivates them to seek a product or service to do so. Another way to understand customer needs is to think of them as jobs to be done. The jobs to be done (JTBD) theory was first introduced by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. In the online course Disruptive Strategy, Christensen asserts that customers don’t really buy products; they “hire” them to get a “job” done. In Disruptive Strategy, a JTBD is defined as “a circumstances-based description of understanding your customers’ desires, competitive set, anxieties, habits and timeline of purchase.”

Based on this definition, customers hire a product or service based on how well it fits their job description. If you understand the jobs your customers are hiring your product or service for, you can create a winning value proposition and drive innovation within your organization.

By aligning your company with JTBD, you can tailor your offerings to deliver value to your customers, achieve differentiation in the market, and avoid disruption. There are a number of ways to learn about your customers’ jobs to be done. Here are three ways to develop an understanding of your customers’ needs to better serve them with your products and services.

1. Reflect on Your Experiences
   The first method for identifying jobs to be done is to reflect on your own behaviors and experiences, identifying patterns in your decision-making process. You yourself are a customer and, in the absence of other data sources, self-reflection can be a helpful starting point.
   • What motivated me to make the purchase?
   • What other options were available to me?
   • Why did I choose this product over the other options available?
   • What goal did the product help me achieve?
2. Observe Behaviors Around You
   In addition to reflecting on your own experiences, you should observe the behaviors of those around you. If possible, look for opportunities to observe people at each stage of the buying process—from the time the job to be done arises to the final decision. Observe how people use the product or service to understand what goals it helps them achieve or challenges it helps them avoid. Look out for compensating behaviors or actions people take when a product or service doesn’t exist to fulfill their needs. Understanding the JTBD at the core of inconvenient alternatives can help you identify an underserved need in the market and inspire ideas to satisfy it.
3. Order some DuraFerm
   Force yourself to diversify and figure out how to get the job done!

I believe that a profitable, fun business needs to be kept simple and can be easily described with a triangle. How?

At the very top of the triangle and business must be its goals. Goals should not be plentiful, nor too complex. These goals must be supported with strategies that are so important that without their completion, the goals won’t be met. And then finally, these strategies must have amazing, defined tactics behind them, to ensure they are accomplished.

The triangle must be supported with investment and structure, as a well thought out set of business goals, strategies and tactics can only be completely successful if they have these behind them. Without all these features, a business will not be able to maximize its growth potential, since we need to make plans for the future to create opportunities, rather than simply wait for new business. Without an organizational structure that puts key employees together on a regular basis, it will be difficult to create effective strategies and impossible to hit the related goals.

Strategic management includes creating growth through introducing new products, using new distribution channels, expanding geographically or going after a new target market. These strategies give the path needed, while the tactics are much more concrete and are often oriented toward smaller steps and a shorter time frame. In other pages of this month’s VISION we talk about a variety of strategies and tactics to position products and hopefully help sell the BioZyme products.

Business is not simple, but it does not have to be complex either. Remember a triangle is the simplest form of a polygon and “It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.” – Amelia Barr

“Upon the subject of education. . . I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people may be engaged in.” – Abraham Lincoln

Too many companies seem to believe that ignorance makes for the best customers. Actually, the more informed and empowered customers are, the more satisfied and confident they are with their choice of you. And that kind of confidence almost always leads to loyalty. In the end, isn’t that what all of this is really about?

By only reaching people to convert them into customers, you are limiting your potential to generate new customers. So, if you want to change how people perceive you, you need to distinguish yourself as a leading educational voice.

Customer education doesn’t just boil down to one or two small benefits. Its positive effects are numerous. They’re also intertwined, and when done well, it feeds a much bigger machine, helping to fuel your business’s growth.

To begin assessing the needs of your customer education initiative you must know your customers’ pain points, then you can develop a plan to help overcome these. For this, you’ll need the right tools and resources to help.

There are a wide variety of first-class tools available through BioZyme in our Online Dealer Center. These will help you deliver efficient and effective training. The below graphic is a good visual to keep your education track on course.