Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Welcome back, guys and gals. Thanks so much for joining and listening to the podcast, the Cowboy Perspective podcast. I’ve spent quite a bit of time interviewing and talking to cowboy mentors and cowgirl mentors. I wanted to add another wrinkle to the podcast and that is kind of get a little more in depth with some business leaders that I know and have relationships with and respect and look up to. So that’s going to be kind of what we’re talking about on this episode. And for anybody in the meat industry, really any entrepreneur or somebody that’s trying to build a business or works within a business, I hope to bring value to you, give you some perspectives to think about and maybe implement in your own life. And in truth there’s parallels, even in today’s episode, we talk a little bit about the parallel between the meat industry and the candy industry. So, there’ll be some interesting nuggets there. And I’d like to introduce you to the lady we have on the show today. She’s a founder of her own company. She’s been doing research and analytics throughout her career. She’s from Holland. Well, I don’t know, I could keep talking for a while. Matter of fact, I think it’d be better, let’s just get right to it. I want to introduce you to, everybody, welcome to the show Miss Anne-Marie Roerink. And I hope I got that name right. I think I might have. We’ll see.
Anne-Marie, welcome to the Cowboy Perspective. And I’m so excited about having this conversation with you. And I think the listeners are going to find out a lot about some pieces of the market or just what you do, and it’s going to be valuable to them in whatever endeavor they may be chasing.
Anne-Marie: Well, first of all, thanks for having me. And it seems like the last time we were in the same spot was in Nashville, where not too far from the hotel, we had the tornado hit and we thought that was going to be the weird event of 2020. But certainly, the world went upside-down not even a week later. So good to be back.
Neil Dudley: Well, it is good. I enjoy talking to you every time. And thank you for carving some time out of your busy schedule to get on here and tell people a little bit about who you are. So why don’t we start with that? Who are you? Where’d you come from? What was your family like? What were your early years like? What’s your current family like?
Anne-Marie: Alright, so here it goes. So originally from the Netherlands, in case you picked up on the accent, and I’m from the Eastern part of Holland. So that’s where all the farmland is at – a lot of dairy industries where I’m from as well as some livestock for consumption as well, a lot of chicken farmers, dairy farmers, etc. So, I grew up in the country, met a military man, and moved to the US, been here for almost 20 years now. And by nature, I am a researcher; apparently, according to my mom, I’m always the one to ask a million questions so I guess I landed in the right profession now asking people of consumers. And for the most part, I work in grocery retails. So, I really try to understand how people shop for groceries, and a big part of that is looking at the meat – where do people buy meat? Why do they look for certain cuts? What’s their comfort level with others? How important is price? How important are those different claims-based things? Do people buy meat online? So really everything relative to grocery shopping and to meat purchase. I’ve been doing that for quite a few years. So, it’s been really fun to see how really the meat purchase developed over time. We went through a big recession. We came back, the economy was doing really well. Now during the pandemic, the world of meat has turned upside down yet again. So, it’s been a wild ride for everybody in this industry.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, it most certainly has. And I’m not sure the ride is over. There’s still some, I don’t know things, to come, and who really has the crystal ball to understand those? So, 210 Analytics is your company. You might have to tell me a little more, I’m assuming you founded it, and that’s kind of where you run most of your analysis and data capture through. Tell the listeners a little bit about that company.
Anne-Marie: Absolutely. So, the early years in the food industry, I worked for FMI, which is the Food Marketing Institute that really understands grocery shopping and represents retailers to the rest of the world. I headed up all their research. And after doing that for a number of years, I decided to give entrepreneurial life a shot. At the time- I’m a military spouse, so at the time, we lived in San Antonio and the area code for San Antonio, Texas, is 210, and I thought that had a really fun ring to it. So, I named my company 210 Analytics. And like I said before, what we really focus on is doing research to understand grocery shopping, produce, and everything else. And that’s where that comes from.
Neil Dudley: How different is it now that you run and own a business from how it might’ve been in your early career?
Anne-Marie: Oh, it’s very, very different. Ultimately, it’s all about figuring out the puzzle. That’s what this is for me is trying to really understand for everybody who is in the meat supply chain or works in retailing, like what really makes the consumer tick, how important really is price. So, whether I work for FMI or anybody else during my career, or for myself, it’s kind of, I absolutely love what I do as a researcher. There’s many long days. So, for that regard, it didn’t really matter whether I worked for a boss or for myself, but the value of having my own company is that you can truly focus on the projects that you love, and for me, that’s really understanding the consumer. And so, there’s other products that come my way and projects, but the beauty of doing your own work is I’m able to work from where I want to be. For instance, my family’s still in the Netherlands, so there’s not a whole lot that stops me from grabbing my laptop and jumping on a flight and spending some time over there while still working regular days. So, anybody, any of the listeners contemplating this, I think there’s some really great advantages to following your passion and really doing what you love. I think there’s nothing better than doing what you love, and that really expresses itself in people seeing that enthusiasm. And I think oftentimes when you do what you love, you’re really good at it too, and that really is picked up by the people you work with.
Neil Dudley: Well, isn’t there a famous saying that goes something like, if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life. And you mentioned the Netherlands and going back. So, you mentioned family. So, your mom and dad, is that who you’re talking about? Do you have siblings?
Anne-Marie: Yeah. So, I’m born and raised in the Netherlands. I’m the youngest of three. I have two older brothers. And they’re both agricultural mechanics actually. So, the Netherlands education is a little bit different in that once you are out of the high school level, you start to focus in on a certain profession. And so, both my brothers became mechanics and specialized in agricultural mechanics. One of them has his own company. So, I guess entrepreneurship does run a little bit in the family. And then, yeah, my parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody is over there but me. So, I’m definitely the one that struck out, and it’s been I think really fascinating to see, not just during a pandemic, but just really seeing the differences in culture and how people shop and how people cook. Like for instance, Holland is the size of a postage stamp, of course, certainly compared to where you’re at in Texas. So, people have very small houses, small refrigerators, and if I think about how my family or anybody in the Netherlands shops, they to go virtually every day or certainly every other day. And when you buy milk, you don’t buy a gallon, you buy a liter, so that’s a quarter of a gallon. So, everything is very different. It’s not just the meals people cook, but how they shop, where they shop. In Holland, you go everywhere on your bike. Hard to imagine just hopping on your bike and going to the grocery store, especially in Texas. So yeah, things were just very different and that’s just really fun to watch.
Neil Dudley: Which makes me ask, or doesn’t make me ask, it makes me want to ask, how did Holland respond to COVID?
Anne-Marie: So, in a way, similar, where there was a lockdown, a shelter in place period. People followed that very closely. Schools did shut down. To an extent, the stores did not. There was just a very strict six-foot guideline. But certainly, they protected the elderly, like many of the states did here with a little bit more flexibility for the younger consumers, and the younger folks out there. So, the schools were shut down for a few weeks. But fairly early on, it was clear that the main population to protect were the older people. And so, schools did go back in session already during last school year. And they just had different systems where students had a hybrid model initially and started going back full time. And it didn’t really have any impact on the case count. So, that at least was a positive thing to learn from over here. And life is pretty much back to normal over there, all the pictures I get from my family, they have gone to the beach. I see them going out to dinner. So yeah, it’s good to see some normalcy.
Neil Dudley: It’s nice to see it. It’s nice to be a part of it. I mean, our kids just went back to the school buildings here in Texas. So, we did three weeks, or at least in our town, the towns around, everybody kind of made their own decision, but we did three weeks of virtual learning and then just started Monday of this week or Tuesday of this week in classes. So back to school. So, I think every teacher there was crying, a lot of the parents were. It felt like a really, wow, thank you. Just, this feels like the way we want it to feel.
Anne-Marie: Yeah. So, I’m in the Florida market now; I’m in Lakeland, Florida, and we started, initially the schools got pushed back a little bit, but the kids started back up. This was their third week. And so far, so good. They do wear masks in class. Instead of sitting as a little group, they kind of sit in a zig-zag pattern. So, there’s a lot of safety protocols in place, but like you, I will tell you that first day that they came running back into the house, they were so excited. And I think we forget that the little ones need a sense of normalcy, too, and that this is just a big part of their social life. And it certainly felt great.
Neil Dudley: My wife almost slapped me I think – we were talking about COVID and the reality of the impact it’s having on kids and young kids, our kids are all under the age of 10. So, I kind of had this position that it wasn’t going to be very big. I don’t remember much stuff that happened to me before I was 10, they probably won’t remember this. And she just looked at me with surprise, like how could you not understand this is going to be one of the biggest things ever in their life. And now the further we come, I kind of start leaning more towards her side of the fence. I think they’ll be, they will probably definitely – probably definitely, that doesn’t make any sense – but they’re going to remember this time of life.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, no, I agree. My youngest is seven now. So, when this all started, she was six, and certainly, there were a lot of statements like why is coronavirus here? Coronavirus is not fun. And they just see things like soccer coming to a halt and gymnastics and seeing their little friends in the classroom. And there’s not a zoom call in the world that can really replace hanging out with their friends at that age. So, I think the duration of it, and again, I go back to my research background, the longer something lasts, the more it has the likelihood of sticking around. Like if we only had to change our ways, whether that was being in the house or not going to school or shopping some different place or what have you, if that was only for a couple of weeks then yeah, more than likely we’d all be back to our old routines in no time. But the fact that we’re entering month six at this point just means that all those things are much more likely to stick around for a lot longer.
Neil Dudley: You talked about your analytics and research kind of experience and brain. In my mind, you’re a real high performing person in a certain regard in which it seems to me that you’re able to put data and research and kind of monotonous, boring stuff, at least in my perspective, in a very relatable way to people in the industry. So, where do you think that skill comes from? Is that just a thing you’ve built over time? Is it a piece of it that kind of came naturally to you? What’s your perspective on that?
Anne-Marie: Well, first of all, thanks; that a big compliment. That is one that I hear quite a bit, so it must be true, right?
Neil Dudley: It’s definitely true.
Anne-Marie: Well, so first of all, both my parents were teachers, they’re retired. But my dad taught sciences. My mom was an elementary school teacher. And so, I think just the ability to connect in the classroom or with my audience or whatever, I always feel like talking, nobody likes to be talked to. So, first of all, I much more believe, like hey, let’s just make this a conversation. Let’s learn from each other. We have two ears, one mouth for a reason. But then yes, sometimes when I read research studies, researchers have this need to put in exactly how they came to certain conclusions. So, they want to share their research methodology. They want to share exactly the calculations that they did to get to a certain number. And I’m more of the opinion that people want to see the baby, but don’t want to hear about the labor. And so, I’m all about I tell the story, tell what’s important. And what are, what [inaudible], what it means to you. And so, somebody once told me this whole notion of the what, the so what, and the now what, and that kind of resonated with me. So, the what would be the numbers. The so what would be what are the implication? And the now what would be what am I going to do with this stuff, me, myself personally, as a producer, as a retailer, or even as a consumer? And so that’s kind of always the formula I keep in mind, regardless of whether I’m looking at meat data, or produce data, or any data. I kind of work in a lot of different grocery areas. And so yeah, I think that’s the gist of that one.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Well, I am appreciative of your skillset every time I get to hear or even see, like I’ve not been recently able to see you in presenting your findings in any way, but I get to see them through information that’s shared out through the industry, articles that you contribute, posts on LinkedIn. I would probably take this, I think it would be a good idea for you to tell the listeners right now, if they want to kind of see or learn more about your work, where are some good places for them to go find that?
Anne-Marie: Yeah, absolutely. So, I work together with a lot of the trade associations. So, I assume a lot of your listeners might be in the animal agricultural space. So, I’ve worked a lot with the North American Meat Institute, with FFI, with a lot of different- the Beef Council, the Pork Council, etc. So, we do a lot of annual studies. The beauty of that is that you can kind of see how the trends develop. As I always say, when you just do a random survey or you do a focus group, whatever it is, that’s just people’s opinion at one point in time, but what’s really interesting is seeing those trends develop. And the more years you have, the more you can really see and understand where the market might be moving based on where it moved the last five years. So, absolutely, if folks are on LinkedIn, find me on LinkedIn. Neil, I assume you’ll share out my name and spelling and everything else.
Neil Dudley: Yes. Maybe give us all the correct pronunciation of the last name, just for the fun of it.
Anne-Marie: Well, let’s give you a Dutch lesson. How’s that? So, an O-E in Dutch is an oo sound. It is almost like a double O in English. But then the R’s you roll. So, the way to say my last name in Dutch would be Roerink.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, see, that’s awesome.
Anne-Marie: But that’s not happening. Come on, give it a shot.
Neil Dudley: Roerink.
Anne-Marie: Not bad, not bad!
Neil Dudley: See, I feel like there’s a little bit of my practice trying to speak Spanish helped there – a little bit of a tongue roll, and so that helped me.
Anne-Marie: Well, there you go. So yeah, funny story. My last, my brother’s name is [Dutch name], and so when we answer the phone in Holland, you actually answer the phone with your name. So, you say with, which is the [Dutch]. And then you state your name. So, my brother answers the phone and goes [in Dutch], and that’s all you hear.
Neil Dudley: Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s right. Where does Anne-Marie- why is it the two first names?
Anne-Marie: Well, Anne-Marie is actually a very common name in Holland. So here in the US, a lot of people try to make me Anne or believe Marie is my middle name. Believe it or not, I have two more middle names on top of my double first name. So, a third kid, I guess we threw in all the names that we probably liked. I’m not sure.
Neil Dudley: Well, and that’s part of the cultural maybe misinformation or just misunderstanding is, to me, being born and raised in America, that feels like two first names. For you, that’s just a normal name. That’s just what everybody’s kind of- or at least people are called in Holland.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in Dutch, you would say my name, Anne-Marie, and so that’s why I usually in English, say Anne-Marie just because it is a little closer. And so, people will go, “Hey, Anne! Anne!” and I don’t even-
Neil Dudley: Turn around. You bet. Well, and my Southern accent doesn’t help much with the pronunciation of people’s names correctly either. But I’ll tell you what, I get along okay. People forgive me. And I honestly don’t mean to make any offense by it. It’s just how I talk.
Anne-Marie: Oh, absolutely. Gives it a little extra flare, right?
Neil Dudley: Right. Somebody once said, I spend a lot of time thinking about marketing and sales and that kind of stuff, I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts that talk about those things, and I think by pure accident, Cody and I, as we got into the meat industry and kind of started going to food shows and that kind of thing, it turned out we were a couple of the only guys that wore hats. There were a few other guys, but we kind of had this recognizable persona. Nobody knew Neil and Cody, but they knew the guys in the hats. So, it turned out to be a real kind of marketable thing for us. And over time, I realized, wow, that was just a little gift that I was given in my career out of no intention other than just being who I am.
Anne-Marie: No, but I think there is a really big lesson in that, where you found by accident and not meaning to, but you found something that really stood you out from the crowd. And it became part of the brand and part of your podcast and everything else that you do. And for the folks on the podcast here, when you go to these shows, there’s sometimes 2000, 3000 or more people there, and to your point, most people you kind of know by face or maybe you who they work with or for, but certainly having something that makes you stand out gives you a leg up when you’re trying to find buyers and everything else. So, I guess it goes back to what we talked about in the beginning is you got to figure out who you are and how you’re different and really follow your passions that way, and in a way, that really paid off for you in that regard.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. There’s the flip side to that too. If you make a bad impression, they never forget it. So, it’s kind of you just get real memorable and you have to understand what that means on both sides of the coin. And if you kind of operate on the up and up and do good business, then generally you’re going to be able to take advantage of that more so than worry about it.
Anne-Marie: I agree. Absolutely.
Neil Dudley: For the listeners, I think they’d find a lot of value in hearing what a routine for a gal like you is – I say gal, I hope that’s not offensive – a lady that is working, owning a business, building a business, doing research, traveling and presenting. So, what did your routine, or do you have any specific things that you kind of do to stay capable?
Anne-Marie: Yeah, we just talked briefly about how Coronavirus has affected our children, to your point, or your young, but it certainly has affected us as well. And if I think back, normally, I would say I’m on the road to conferences, I wouldn’t say weekly, but certainly every other week, and there’s weeks where I travel from one to the other. We talked about the meat conference earlier, and the meat conference was actually the middle of three where I went straight from a produce conference to the meat conference to a chocolate conference in San Francisco. So, there are weeks like that. And then having young children at home in addition to when you’re building a business, when you’re on the road, you’re still trying to keep up with other clients and with other work that is happening. And so, it can get pretty busy, but I think that’s where it comes back to loving what you do. So, if I do sit behind a computer at 10 o’clock at night, it’s no big deal. I pour me a beer and I’m still doing what I love, even though it’s 10 o’clock at night. But to your point, not traveling so much has definitely allowed me to spend a lot more time with the kids, which has been wonderful. My youngest will actually say, “Well, the only thing I like about Coronavirus is that your home more, Mom.” So that’s been great. And I’ve been able to cook a little bit more and kind of establish a little bit more home life, I guess, just being home more. And then the other thing that really happened was, not being able to travel to the Netherlands right now because of COVID and all the restrictions, we established a routine where we actually play board games with grandpa, Opa as we call him in the Netherlands. And so, I actually will put a board game on the table and my two kids, my dad over there will have a die and he’ll roll it, and the kids move his piece around. And it’s like, we all sit around the table, just playing board games. So, there’s definitely been some big silver linings here recently as well.
Neil Dudley: Wow, that made me smile, just picturing that in my head. And those grandparents, I am what I think is one of the luckiest men in the world, because we live in a small town in Texas where my parents happen to live just across town, and my wife’s parents live just across the pasture. So, and they’re both all still alive, all still married, all still very accessible to my kids. And that relationship they get to have with their grandparents – aside from the babysitting piece, which is awesome, it was kind of pretty affordable babysitters there that are excited about it – but the relationship and getting to see how they view the world and what they think, there’s perspective in those years that I have- They lived prior to me even being here. And what’s going to happen with the economy, what’s happening with faith and a lot of different things that I’m so glad my kids get to absorb a little of that. And it sounds like you guys are spending some time doing that as well.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, I agree. It’s a beautiful thing. And when- so my mom passed away two years ago, and that’s why we figured we should really spend a lot of time during the shelter in place weeks to give my dad some company. And it’s like you’re 5,000 miles away, so how can we do that? And so that’s where the whole board game idea came from. And so, he just sits over there and rolls his dice, and we move his piece around. We play cards, we find all sorts of ways. And it’s beautiful, to your point, to see the relationship between the grandparents and the kids, and it’s a completely different dynamic than you can offer as a parent. Yeah, we’re lucky that way.
Neil Dudley: I used to play a game called Wahoo with my grandparents. My mom’s mom and dad were, I guess, second generation Americans born of German immigrants. And they were just great people, I just enjoyed them so much. But I can remember staying up hours and hours playing this little game where you just roll the dice, and you move the marble around this kind of exterior thing and who can get are all their marbles around. That time, I remember it like yesterday. What board game you guys play? Is it something anybody would recognize?
Anne-Marie: Well, we do Chutes and Ladders, so I think folks would recognize that one. And then we do actually play a Dutch one, and it’s called Geese and because your little player is a little shape of a goose. And so, the goose goes around the board and comes into several different situations. So sometimes he’ll hit a bridge and you can actually jump ahead, but then other times there’s like a little thorny bush and you get caught in it and you have to skip a couple of turns. And then other times he falls into the well, and you have to wait for another player to come by for them to- Yeah. And so that, of course, for a seven- and eight-year-old, there is no better delight than seeing grandpa land in the well.
Neil Dudley: Oh, yes, that’s right. I could just picture that – yes, we’re going to catch him, especially if he’s ahead, right?
Anne-Marie: Exactly. Yeah, it’s wonderful to see.
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I hope you know who Peterson Natural Farms is. If you don’t, go check them out, www.petersonsfarms.com. If you have any questions, hit me up. I’ve been working with Peterson’s and my best friend since kindergarten and his wife and my wife and a whole bunch of other really great people for about 20 years now, building a brand and a bunch of products that we think really add value to people’s healthy lifestyles. And I like to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is a labor of love that I kind of do in my spare time, and I hope to just bring value, tell stories about people that affect me and give me the perspective I have. And I don’t want to steal that labor of love line from Mr. Douglas Burdett, the host of the Marketing Book Podcast, without giving him some credit. There’s another something I’d tell you. If you are into building a brand or an entrepreneur of any sort, salesperson of any sort, go listen to the Marketing Book Podcast. He reviews great authors’ books about sales and marketing. So, Peterson Natural Farms, go check them out. Thank you for listening to the Cowboy Perspective. Here’s some more.
Well, talk a little bit about what you might tell your young self or someone that sees themselves in you, which maybe we could even paint that picture a little more vividly is, I’m not even sure I understand, like where did your analytical brain, where did that come from? I mean, so you had the teachers, I understand how you’re good at teaching the analytics. Oh, and the other thing. So here, I’m just bad about this. Everybody that listens to the podcast knows I chase different topics kind of at random. I thought a second ago, I would ask when you’re traveling and you’re going to a produce conference then a meat conference then a chocolate conference, that’s all different data, am I right?
Anne-Marie: Absolutely.
Neil Dudley: So how do you keep up with all of that?
Anne-Marie: To an extent, I will say there is actually an advantage to working in all these different categories. You’re a meat guy and you’re absolutely stunned at how much overlap there is between the candy industry and the meat industry. And the way I see it is there’s a lot of media negative focus on eating meat, especially beef. They say it’s bad for you, they say it causes health issues. Now, if you ask an actual nutritionist, they will actually fight a lot of that thing, but it’s public perception. And of course, the same kind of pressure is on candy and so is actually a lot of similarities. So, it sometimes helps working in different industries, but you’re absolutely right – it gets a little hairy to go from produce to meat. And I’m always worried that I’m going to say the completely wrong thing. So, in the end, not really sure. But if there’s young listeners on the podcast, I’m going to make a little plea for you here – there are very few researchers out there. And when I say researchers, what I mean is people who can run numbers and do analytics but can also figure out a way to translate it. And Neil, that’s exactly what you were talking about. So, there are analysts, there are statisticians, they can run numbers backwards and forwards, but those are the people that prefer to sit in their mother’s basement and never talk to anybody. And then there’s researchers who really try to understand the behavior and why behind it. So, it’s not about the data points, it’s really about the route to the data points. And for any folks here on the podcast with us today, I would love to say, if you like writing, if you like digging and understanding a story, you don’t have to be an enormous math wizard to be a researcher. Sure, we have to work with numbers, and we have to know our way around numbers, but if you like a puzzle and you like to really understand something, really look into the area of research because we need a lot more people in this area. It’s a great job. And it’s just a fantastic career.
Neil Dudley: Sure. And you said the hated word job – which I say hated word, it may not be a hated word – but I think it sometimes comes across as a thing that you’re not enjoying or I have to go do my job. Well, for the listeners, Anne-Marie does a job that she loves, and she owns a company, and she’s built a company, and she’s a researcher. I think it’s valid to consider whatever it is you love, you could probably own a business doing that. So, take some note from what she’s done with her career and apply it to yours. And if you like research – I think she said it really well when she said if you like puzzles, if you like figuring out puzzles and why is this world acting this way, you might be a researcher in the making.
Anne-Marie: There you go. And Neil, you’ll appreciate this example, like for instance, you can look at sales numbers, and we’ll stick with meat here for a minute, and you can say we see that organic meat sales are rising. Well, that’s wonderful, but if you want to be a marketer or you’re selling that, understanding why organic meat is growing as a part of total meat, that’s really the important part. So, then you go to talk to consumers, you start doing research, quantitative research. You go into stores, you talk to people that just bought organic meat. And that’s really when you start to understand that, oh wow, these people believe this is better for them, it’s better for their health because they think certain things aren’t in there, or they are really thinking about the health of the animal, or they are thinking about the environment. And once you really start to understand the drivers, why somebody does it, and whether that’s buying meat or that is what possesses somebody to buy a Ford pickup truck versus a Dodge pickup truck, once you start to understand how people are different and why people are different as it relates to their purchases, then you’re starting to really figure out the puzzle, and doing that is a lot of fun.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I mean, that is the challenge in almost any business. I was listening to another podcast – I listen to so many of them, I get them all jumbled up in my head. I’d love to give credit where credit’s due, but I get, I can’t remember who it was that said it. But basically, they just said sales is a part of everything. So, understanding what value you bring to the market is about the only way you can grow a business, sell a product, start a business, all of those things. You just have to understand-
Anne-Marie: I love that. It’s absolutely true. I mean, what you just said about my ability to take 10,000 pages of data and turn that into an hour-long speech where you can just kick back, relax, and enjoy the ride, that was my strength. My strength was the ability to translate a lot of numbers into a story. And that really became the backbone of 210 Analytics. That’s what launched it from let’s give this a shot, let’s see if it works, to I got more work than I know what to do with.
Neil Dudley: So, are you, have you just always been kind of a person that likes to speak in front of others? Or is that something you had to develop?
Anne-Marie: I don’t think it ever bothered me, let’s put it that way. I certainly never planned to become a big public speaker in the retailing industry, but I think it’s my enthusiasm for having solved the puzzle, and I just have to share that with others. And some of my best days are when I have worked on something and I get an email from a small producer, like there’s a lot of small meat producers in the Texas market, and they don’t have a big research department, or they don’t have money to buy all the data in the world-
Neil Dudley: Hey, I’m one of those guys. I’m raising my hand right now. I’m one of those guys. I don’t have the money to spend on all that data. So, your insights are huge for us.
Anne-Marie: And I will tell you, you put a smile on my face. It puts a huge grin on my face when I get emails from some of the smaller producers that say, “Hey, thanks so much for this data. I took it and I put it in my sales deck, and I just had a call with Albertsons,” which is one of the largest grocery chains in the nation, “And we got in, thanks to your data.” There’s just not an amount of money in the world that can replace a feeling like that where it’s like awesome, I solved some kind of puzzle and [inaudible] and gave somebody that wouldn’t have had that information an opportunity to make a massive sale. So, that’s just the great part of it.
Neil Dudley: Well, I’ve been on that side of the equation. And I do have to say I appreciate it. And I imagine a lot of the listeners, just de-facto by who I have as friends on my social media that get access to this podcast are going to be industry people that I think are going to recognize you and the work you’ve done and very much agree with me that we appreciate you. Now, as a speaker, I think of other entrepreneurs, other people, that are thinking about doing something, I like to paint the picture, at least I see you on stage, so I think, wow, Anne-Marie’s great at that. Now, is there any- aside from it just never bothering you historically, do you practice? Do you do this thing called, I don’t know, is it Taster’s Club or something where you kind of learn how to be a speaker?
Anne-Marie: No. It’s funny. So, for some clients, I’ll build the deck and they’ll ask me to write speaker notes. And so, I literally go in, I take the slides, and then I type exactly what I would say if I were presenting it. And then oftentimes, those clients just kind of read my notes. But if it’s just me building a presentation for me, no, I don’t write any notes. And I think it’s an extension of having done all the research. So, if you figured out that puzzle and you put all that data, like I said, sometimes it’s literally 10,000 pages worth of cross tabs and data, and you’ve boiled it down into this beautiful one-hour story, I think it’s just stuck in my head. And so, I may not have every single number on speed dial for a direct recall. But certainly, the whole story is kind of laid out in my head. So, I think that just helps when I’m up there just to be able to be pretty relaxed and have a lot of fun. And frankly, my most popular events are the small ones where we can just actually talk back and forth with the audience rather than me up on stage in front of 3000 people where I don’t have that ability to interact. But yeah, it’s a lot of fun.
Neil Dudley: I think, I mean, it just, I can’t hardly believe how you fit in time to do everything. I tell people I could talk about Peterson’s all day because I’ve been there. I’ve been there through every piece of it. So, it’s not like I’m having to wonder what happened there. I was there. I remember it easy. It’s not hard for me to talk about it in any scenario with any audience. So, it makes me believe that you actually do the research and the analysis and that kind of thing. I think somebody could, maybe even I’ve thought this, like, wow, Anne-Marie’s a great speaker, I wonder who’s doing all the work behind the scenes and feeding her the information. Well, what you’re saying is you.
Anne-Marie: I think that is another key learning of today’s podcast, and that is if I were to ask you, hey, what happened with your brand, with your farm during the last recession and what are your lessons for that maybe in the current economic hardship? Boom, you can answer that because you’ve been there, done that. And so that’s why certainly from a time perspective, probably even from a cost perspective, I probably could find an analytics company in India or whatever else, but it’s not how I operate. I think just solving that puzzle on my own and really going from writing the questionnaire to programming the questionnaire and getting the data back, moving it, go through it, and really understanding what the story is, what is important, what’s just noise, that is what allows me to do what I do. And it goes back to the passion, I think. If you do what you like, then you don’t have to rise above a certain level and you just enjoy it all.
Neil Dudley: All the aspiring entrepreneurs listening, I think Anne-Marie is talking about something that’s really valuable is just the amount of time, and you can almost talk to any successful entrepreneur or business owner, they spend- this idea of a 40-hour work week is just, that never is a reality. If you’re going to own a business, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you’re going to need to basically have your mind on your business every free moment. Now, Anne-Marie and I both have families, and we value those families. So, I have a hard time unplugging and just being present with the family, and that’s important to me and it needs to be done well. So, I think that’s just another piece of it. For anybody listening, it’s a dynamic thing. You have to find the thing that works for you.
Anne-Marie: And one thought on that, and I learned this from a friend of mine who works a lot hours as well; she works for IRI. But she said her rule in life is quality over quantity. She goes, “Because of the career I have, I’m not always able to be home and cook dinner every night, I travel a lot,” whatever, and a lot of parallels with my life, but she goes, “When I’m there, I’m there. And I make sure that I have a certain block of hours that I really spend with my kids and the cell phone goes and sits on the desk so I’m not constantly checking the phones on their birthdays. I will never travel on their birthdays.” And so, I think it’s really, you’re absolutely right. When you have multiple clients, like we both do, you never want to make them feel like, oh, well I’m working on client A, so client B just has to wait. So, you’re always juggling balls in the air to make sure that everybody feels loved and everything moves forward, and sometimes even though you’re working on one project, you have to kind of get started on another one to get the survey in the field or whatever it might be. I think the whole notion of quality time and making sure that even if it’s just an hour, even if it’s just two hours, but really being there in that moment, that was a big lesson for me.
Neil Dudley: It’s not easy. So, hunker down and be ready for that as part of the thing you sign up for when you become an entrepreneur, even if you work really any job. I kind of said this 40-hour work week, but anybody working for somebody, and we all work for somebody – there’s a great John Wayne quote that’s in one of the movies of his, he said, “Hey guy, you work for me. Well, I work for everybody in this country that eats a steak.” We all work for somebody. And one thing I’d like to highlight that I really appreciate about what you said was you don’t like to have one customer think that they’re getting less attention from you because you’re working on some other customer. I mean, and the truth is they don’t care. They’re spending their hard-earned money with you for a service, for a product, they don’t want to think you’re distracted by somebody else. And that is a trick to make sure and work that and understand it and make it a reality.
Anne-Marie: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the really interesting things that happened in the meat industry during a pandemic, very early on in the pandemic and anybody who’s a shopper will recognize this, when the whole shelter-in-place thing became a reality, we all started to race from store to store to store to buy enough food to last us, because nobody knew what was going to happen. We didn’t know those shelves were going to be empty, or if there was going to be any meat or produce. And so, people raced around. And then of course, after that, we were staying in our homes. But what was interesting is that, of course, the retailers, supermarkets started very rapidly running out of product, and it was really the relationships with smaller suppliers like yourself that saved that and understanding what are your pain points? Do you have inventory, but you need people to actually slaughter and get retail ready? Cause if so, maybe we just do more ground beef because that’s a lot faster or whatever it is. So really understanding, when it came to those crazy couple of weeks where supply was so tight and demand was so high, I think one of the biggest lessons this industry had was communicating and understanding each other’s pain points. And I think that was another huge lesson for the listeners as well.
Neil Dudley: If you get into business with somebody and you have customers, you have vendors, all of those people, and it’s just a big old chain reaction that goes down the line when the consumer is actually the person driving every bit of it. The day the consumer wants a lot of product real quick, then that just sets off a chain reaction that goes down to the smallest person supplying the whatever chemical you might be using to mop the floor. I mean, cause now the plants are open more so the floor needs to be mopped more. It just sends this shockwave through everybody. Alright, real quick, I want to touch on one other thing that I think you have that other people should aspire to, and that is a crazy work ethic. How did you build that? Where did that come from? Was that something your mom and dad instilled in you? Is that some other mentor gave you that? Is that just a naturally occurring thing that just poofed out of the sky? How do you do that?
Anne-Marie: It’s actually, I noticed, something that I’m really trying to instill in my kids as well. And every day I tell them we play hard, we work hard. And especially the youngest, she’s seven, she pushes back on that sometimes. But I say, look, when you guys come out of school, you play for a little bit, you drink some lemonade, eat a cookie, and then after an hour, we do all our homework, and we do it early and we do a little bit more – first impressions, right? So, to an extent, yeah, that’s exactly the way the Dutch are raised, you just always deliver. So, in part, it’s I think my culture, part of it is how I was raised. But a third part of it, I would say, is just really loving what I do. So, it’s certainly never a punishment to just sit here, work hard. And the only regret sometimes is when those weekends roll around and I find myself on Saturday mornings or Sunday night back at that computer, like you know what, I need to figure out a way to protect my time a little bit better. And it sounds like you struggle with that sometimes as well. But it’s been a wonderful ride, to your point. It’s not over yet in terms of Coronavirus, but we found some wonderful silver linings as well, both personally and professionally.
Neil Dudley: That’s very true. Well, I’ve kept you here on the podcast for a good long while, and I’ve loved the conversation. I appreciate you kind of opening yourself up for us to learn from you. And for all the listeners, TCP Nation, I hope you enjoyed this podcast, this time we’ve spent with Anne-Marie. Did I say that right?
Anne-Marie: Absolutely.
Neil Dudley: Alright. Thanks for listening. And until next time, everybody go out there and do the best you can and keep your head up. Be proud of who you are because you’re doing a heck of a job, just maybe nobody else is telling you. Anne-Marie, thanks so much for your time.
Anne-Marie: Thank you. It was a lot of fun. Anytime.
Neil Dudley: There you have it, folks. We are done with another episode, which I think had lots of value. I surely enjoyed it. I’ll give you access to everything that I know about Anne-Marie, so she can help you on any project you might have. But ultimately, I hope you find value, I mean, it’s kind of my standard ending to every podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell a friend, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the show, get the word out. If you didn’t, tell me those things too. I love the criticism. I’d like to hear something that might help me get better. The Lord knows I need to get better. So, thanks for listening. Check out the show notes if you want to link out to any of stuff we talked about, and until next time, take care, God bless you, and we’ll see you later.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root & Roam Creative Studio. And the music is by Byron Hill Music.