Neil Dudley: Ladies and gentlemen, Straight From the Horse’s Mouth today, Take the Job. What does that mean? Well, it means take the job. Cody- This episode is going to be centered around a little snippet of episode 16 I did with my best friend since kindergarten, my business partner at Pederson’s, cowboy, guy I look up to. And we just talked about him and his career and how he ended up becoming the president of Pederson Natural Farms. It was – I say it was – that is a fun story. I love telling it. I think it’s a really cool illustration of a cowboy perspective. And when I say just take the job, well, that’s what Cody did. He got an interview to be a marketing- director of marketing or marketing person within Pederson’s, and the first day he showed up and they told him, well, we don’t need a marketing person, what we need is a QA person, and don’t worry, we’re going to pay you the same amount of money. And Cody didn’t say, wait, stop timeout, I don’t know what QA means, this is not what I’ve studied, I don’t have a degree in that. He just said okay. And then he started calling people and figuring out what a QA director or QA person in a business, a manufacturing of meat and food manufacturing company did, needed to do. Turns out they need to set up HACCP plans and SSOPs and SOPs and GMPs. So, there’s a lot of, I think those are acronyms for things that manufacturers have to have in place. They are programs, they’re plans, they’re things that you need to be doing or have at least a plan for. So, the team, the people helping you will understand how to clean something properly, how to make sure you keep the food safe, all those things. Plus, you’ve got to have a HACCP plan to be a USDA establishment, USDA inspected establishment. And that brings a lot of a notoriety- not really notoriety, but authenticity or – I can’t find the word, but it just means that you’ve gone through the process that the US government is checking you out and making sure you’re not doing something to endanger people that might be eating your food.
And I’ve just been thinking about this – take the job. What does that mean? What do I hope that somebody understands I mean, when I’m telling you straight from the horse’s mouth, we’re telling you take the job? It means be willing to learn, like be willing to say I can do it. Sure, I might not know how to do it this very second, but I promise you, I can figure it out, I can learn how to do it, and when I do, you’ll be glad you have me in this position. That’s what Cody did. And it turns out in a year’s time, he had proven that so well that he got promoted to president of the company. And that is just an illustration of what a guy with a can-do attitude, a hard-working attitude, a figure it out attitude can accomplish. And now we’re about 20 years since then, he’s still the president of the company, the company is still doing good business, honest business, straightforward business. And we look forward to another 20 years of it. I mean, just keep doing something that consumers are looking for. That’s what we’re after.
Another illustration or another reason I would say just take the job is go find that business or that career, or even if you want to be an entrepreneur and start your own thing, guess what? It probably would be a great step to start working in that field or for a similar type business or a competitor within the industry. Just take a job, any job with them. You’re going to get a lot of insight into how it works, what you’re going to want to do when you’re in that position, when you’re either owning the business or you get up to the position within the company you’re striving for. Take the first job they’ll give you then just add value, show up, do the tough things. I tell people when I was- I learned this just for myself in college, I started working in the cafeteria. I was trying to just make a little extra money so I could save up and buy a saddle. Well, I started kind of- just showed up, did what they told me to, whatever it was. And I realized everybody would try to avoid the dishwashing station. Within the cafeteria there’s, you kind of get there, you got to set up, you could cook, you could be outside cleaning tables, you could do a lot of things. Well, kind of the nastiest job was washing off the trays after everybody got done eating. And thanks to my dad, he had just taught me like even those tough nasty jobs crawling under a [inaudible 5:19] house to fix some plumbing or a sewer leak or something, you don’t want to do it. It’s terrible. If you kind of get your mind set and figure out how to find a part of this job that you can be proud of and attack and think, man, that’s my thing, I can do that. Well, it worked like that for me. I just said give me that nasty dishwashing job. And before you know it, I was there always taking that nasty job nobody wanted. I mean, a lot of times, the managers would end up having to be in there doing that because they couldn’t get a college student that would do it well. Next thing you know, he knew he could count on me to do that well. And every time I showed up, he’s like, man. So, guess what? All of a sudden, I built a lot of respect with the leadership in the cafeteria, which were other college students typically or somebody just out of college that was going into the restaurant and food service business. They were using that as a way to stair-step into the industry on up the line. Which I think there’s probably great jobs in colleges and universities running those food service departments. So, they could have just been working their way up the ladder there.
Anyways, I’m off on a tangent a bit. What I really wanted to say was me being willing to take that nasty job, and they could always count on me, then they didn’t have to do it because I knew they didn’t like it, I was able to pretty much get anything I wanted. If I wanted a day off, sure, no problem. If I wanted- if I needed to then work on a different spot because that night I just didn’t want to- I needed to- I had a date or something, I didn’t need to get all dirty in there washing dishes, well, sure, he’d let me do something else. There’s so much value in just taking the job, whatever it is. Take that job. Do it great. You’re going to get an opportunity to go to another one. You’re going to learn something there that’s going to be valuable to you in the future. I can’t tell you how much I learned washing dishes in the cafeteria. I’ll bet if Cody was here right now, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t tell you how much, how valuable- I know this, those things he learned being the QA director for Pederson’s early on, he still uses it. It still gives him insight and edge in any conversation. He knows the basic things that had to be done to even get the plant inspected by the US government, just to be able to get your grant of inspection.
So Johnny’ll put the clip in. You can listen to that. If you like it, go listen to the rest of the episode, hear this whole story of Cody’s beginning of his career that we talk about on that episode. And I hope if you can hear anything, it is me saying if you’re starting out, if you want to own a business, if you want to run a business, if you want to get higher up in a business, take the job, do it well. Okay, folks that is this episode of Straight From the Horse’s Mouth. Check out this clip. Hope you enjoy it.
Cody Lane: I started day working. And I thought I was living the dream. I thought it was good, but it was good times in the spring and fall and not so much in the summer and winter. So anyway, there was an ad in the paper, and Chrissy actually sent in my resume without even telling me and applied for this marketing position open at Pederson Natural Farms in Hamilton, and they called back. And of course, they left – this was before everybody had cell phones – so, they called back and left a message with Chrissy at the house, “Hey, would we want to schedule an interview with Cody,” and she said she just went ahead and scheduled it for me. So, I got home that night and she said, “Hey, you got an interview in two days over here in Hamilton.” And so, I showed up for the interview, and I got hired, and I was going to start a week or so later. I showed up and they said, “Okay, there’s a small change. You’re not going to be the marketing manager anymore. You’re going to be the quality manager instead, but don’t worry the pay’s exactly the same.” And so, I thought, well, I didn’t know much of what I was doing on the marketing side anyway, so what’s the difference? I got to learn it either way.
Neil Dudley: Was this kind of the first time you ever went out maybe aside from college type jobs or really going and looking for a – I don’t know what to call it – like a nine to five type job?
Cody Lane: This was my second interview only.
Neil Dudley: In your life?
Cody Lane: In my life, yeah. Well, job interview. The only other job that I interviewed for was the appraisal district in Stephenville, and they didn’t hire me, and I was crushed. How in the world-? I mean, I’m sure the guy’s a good guy and all, but he was a Longhorn. So, he was a diehard UT, and I was like I’m an Ag-y, and I don’t know if this is going to work. And I said it in a joking manner, but I don’t think he took it that way. So anyway.
Neil Dudley: Well that probably worked out for the best anyway. Just for anybody who doesn’t know, he said day working a minute ago. Well, day working is where a guy just kind of goes and takes day jobs – gather these cattle, I don’t know what all it could include, almost anything, build this little piece of fence. And so that was his career prior to taking the interview. Okay. So, you did the interview, they hired you, now you’re the QA director or running the QA for Peterson’s.
Cody Lane: Yeah. And I didn’t know a thing that was going on. So, I called some of my buddies at A&M, and one professor led me to another professor, and next thing you know, there’s a guy that shows up, a grad student shows up the next day and comes in here and writes a whole HACCP plan for us. And one of our good sales guys, George Hyde, he was selling chemicals at the time, he came in here and he wrote, he spent all day with me and wrote all of our sanitation SOPs. So, I didn’t know any of this, but I just was fortunate to know people that were willing to help me and get it all lined out and get it going at first until I did learn what was going on.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I think the piece of that that really stands out to me is you thought you were coming in for one job, they gave you a different job, you took it. It’s like a lot of people may go out there thinking, well, I want to be the next electrical engineer for Boeing or whoever, I don’t know, and then they don’t get that job and they don’t take the one that they’re trying to give them, which could have been- So just keep that open mind when you’re out there, folks, you might be actually walking into something that’s going to be great for you and you don’t know it.
Now, we’ve got all that done. I hope you’ve learned take the job, folks. And if you haven’t, come listen to this again in a month or two because it’ll always be valuable. And if you liked it or if you didn’t like it, or if you thought it was just funny, send it to a friend, tell them about the Cowboy Perspective. I’d sure appreciate it. Thanks for listening.
I hope you guys found some value in this quick conversation. I’m going to be doing these Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, trying to nail down some specific things on topics for everyone so you get a little quicker listen. And if you want to get deeper, you can listen to these full episodes. Thanks everybody for listening.
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Now for your listening pleasure, a little Traversing the Trail from Mr. Byron Hill.