Sarah Leonhard - Purina/Animal Nutrition/Women in Agriculture/Barrel Racer/Embryo Transfer/Cattle Rancher

 Sarah Leonhard

Wed, Aug 09, 2023 10:19AM • 46:43

SPEAKERS

Sarah Leonhard, Brandy Von Holten

 Brandy Von Holten 

Welcome back to Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten. Today I have a special guest Her name is Sarah Leonhard. And she is here with Purina. She actually has two job titles with Purina. She's an associate sales manager and a farm consultant team leader. Hey, hey, welcome to Big Boss Mare. Okay, I always start off with what model you are Okay, you're a good looking 1963 model. Okay, so Sarah, tell us about K-State.

Sarah Leonhard 

And that seems so long ago. Holy cow. It was great. I am a Wildcat. I'm from Kansas, so I got to be a K-Stater. So I feel like that was my foundation course back in that day, we were only there for four years. So we were in and out pretty quick and on the job roll right out of K State and started with Farmland Industries, which is a cooperative right out of K State, worked at some elevators. Spent a lot of time working with dairy folks right out of college doing a lot of dairy nutrition. That teaches you a lot about nutrition, all species, let me tell you.

Brandy Von Holten 

Go backwards. You said a cooperative. Okay, so let's break it down. Because I have such a wide range of people that listen, what is a cooperative? So you know, you hear about your Rural Electric Cooperative, where you have ownership in the cooperative. And then there's potential for patronage, if you will, sometimes. I'm trying to think of a cooperative that would be very familiar. So it's not owned by a company. It's more like owned by the people And then they pay back a dividend check.  So a cooperative for people that don't understand those. We have something like our mortgage here for our ranch is with FCS financial. Okay, so with FCS, we have a set interest rate. And then at the end of the year after they've paid all of their bills, and they've done swag for all their clients like the Missouri State Fair, and they've paid their employees and after everything's good, that money that's leftover, they divided it out amongst their people. So for us with FCS financial, we end up getting basically a mortgage payment free each year. Whenever you divide it out, our interest rate on our facility is a set 4% but with the amount of money we get back from our dividend check, they said it's basically 1%. So that's equal to paying 3% which is great for like especially larger farm loans. 

Sarah Leonhard 

We're actually kind of jumping ahead now, Purina that I work for is owned by Land O Lakes, and it's the largest farmer owned cooperative in North America.  Land O Lakes, like the butter people the butter we call ourselves  the butter people. And Purina is is the feed division for Land O Lakes. They also have crop production, Winfield solutions, just different farmer own facets. We have dairy foods division, and then of course the dairy production division. So if you're in the Upper Midwest, you see it in grocery stores more than you see it here in Kansas and Missouri. Okay, go back to the one that was about wind. So what was that section, Winfield solutions. Is that just the ones that are harvesting energy? Like turbines? No. It sounds like that, but no. Winfield solutions is crop production. So seed and chemical and helping farmers enhance the yield and profitability of their farm ground.

Brandy Von Holten 

Well, we're gonna most definitely feed America here. And there's a lot of people, so that takes a whole bunch of food. So we're gonna make sure that we do produce just as much as we can. Then you got to put things back into the soil. We don't want our food to be nutrient deficient.  I want it to be dense. I want a whole bunch of stuff to be in my food. I want all the vitamins in the world. So okay, you ended up graduating with what kind of degree?

Sarah Leonhard 

I'm actually Ag Econ, agriculture economics, with a minor in animal science and again, I went to work at a feed mill and and enjoyed the livestock aspect of it and the nutrition particularly. Then I became a livestock production specialist for farmland and then that's morphed into what I do now 30 Some years later.

Brandy Von Holten 

Okay, so I'll tell you this is just women in general and agriculture:  back in the day, all the vets were just older gentlemen. Okay. And now all the vets are young ladies. One of the ladies that I interviewed on here is running a huge amount of cattle on a huge amount of land. Her name is Fauna and she just loves it. Then my assistant is an Ag teacher. She was  perfect for us. But ladies in agriculture are gaining steam.

Sarah Leonhard 

I tell you, when I started in the business, I was one of, you know, back in the day, when we'd go to meetings, there'd be 200 men and me. Yeah. And it's what I was expecting you to say is, you're somebody that was laying down those original paver stones for us. I'm working on a promotion right now to incentivize some of our salespeople, and we're working on wearable items, which seems like Well, that's no big deal. But back in the day, they didn't even make women's wearable items for us, because there wasn't enough women to do it. So we just wore men's shirts around. And now we get our own sets of clothes. Wow. Who knew?

Brandy Von Holten 

Yeah. Well, and you know what? I love a good uniform. You know how most people are like, oh no a uniform. And I remember whenever I was in school, I was like, "I don't want a uniform", but I beg for a uniform now. Because then I don't have to put any effort into what I'm wearing. It's just Boom, that's what I'm wearing. So yeah, and you know what? Women now they want a V-neck shirt. You know, they don't want a regular t-shirt. And so I was always so nervous about going to a V-neck here. But like, ladies, y'all are some shoppers. You know what you want. You're tired of the circular neck. You want a V neck. And I hate a V Neck and I do not know why. I'm one of the old school people. I don't like the big swooped down neck. So we're gonna to take a moment and talk about some women's clothing for a little bit. I'm large chested,  Okay, and that's like, an underestimate. But oh boy people used to show some cleavage. Have you noticed that this kind of went away?

Sarah Leonhard 

It has except it kind of seems like it's creeping up the other side.

Brandy Von Holten 

You know what? The see through leggings have gotten better. It seems like people are improving upon those. But, in the mid 90s it just seemed like if you weren't showing a bunch of cleavage, you just weren't dressing right. But now it's just not that way. I just don't see a bunch of cleavage anymore. Not unless somebody was just going to a bar or something.  I don't know I think it seems like we're just covering up a little bit more. I used to be a school teacher, and I would tell students that modest is HOTTEST. And then I would tell them that Christmas is a lot more fun whenever the presents are wrapped. So you have two children and they both work with cattle?

Sarah Leonhard 

Yep. My daughter and her son in law, and my son, and his wife are all involved in our cattle operation. And my husband took early retirement for actually a local utility. And it's Evergy now, but was KCP&L And Weststar at the time, and you know how they've morphed over the years anyway. So we run a bunch of cows, we have cows of our own. We also like I told you prior to, well, before we got on air here, we have a Recip(Recipient) herd and we do embryo transfer. So we have a service that we provide folks that want to really get after and accelerate that genetic foot feed, if you will, and, and have some babies quicker than mother nature would allow them to do so we find that for those folks.

Brandy Von Holten 

so all of those words that you just said, is cloning. right? You have the embryo, and then you have the carrier mother for cloning? 

Sarah Leonhard 

No, we're not cloning. We're just flushing the cow. She produces the eggs, we put the eggs in the recipient cow or the surrogate mom, whatever you want to call it, and we just pray that she settles. Then once she settles, we manage her and each owner of the eggs have a different set of expectations on how long we keep the cow. But typically we keep the cow for three or four months after the egg is settled, and it's growing, and it's developing a fetus, and she's well on her way and safe to travel. Then we ship them to the owner and they calve their own calf or fetus and then we go to the next bunch of embryos.

Brandy Von Holten 

You know what, and I could just imagine that cow being like, I know I haven't been fooling around. I know I haven't. Where's this baby coming from? Or I can see her talking to her boyfriend and be like, I did not fool around on you. I could just see the cow saying something funny. You know, that's, where my weird little mind goes.

Sarah Leonhard 

You know, what we see, and I certainly appreciate what you're saying. But we see cows that we get through our programs that are, that are recips. heir surrogates, and they're gonna go on to their new owners, you know, to be a mother for them. But we get some cows that are such good Mama. Oh, yeah, we're like, gosh, dang. And I wish we could keep her around. Because she's not trying to eat anybody's lunch. She's a nice cow. And we could use more of her. Right?

Brandy Von Holten 

We love our mama cows, we have a very small herd. I mean, it's almost embarrassing whenever we talk whenever I have these podcast interviews with real cattle people, because we have 10. Okay, we sell to some individuals that want to buy a calf, and then we sell them the whole calf and we take it to the slaughter for them. So they get to have great food, and they know that it was fed well. I mean, it's just wonderful. But we love some of our cows. I mean, I named some of them. One of them had a white face and a black eye and I called her sucker punch. It's like somebody just went, pop, right in her eye. Then we had one named, Mama Line Graph, because Mama Line Graph it looked like a line graph going up her face. Then we had one named Heavy D. With Heavy D,  we couldn't tell when she was pregnant. and when she wasn't because she was so short and so fat all the time. Girl, she had two lazy eyes, each one going in different directions. But Heavy D was the best mama. We loved Heavy D. Her belly would be less than 12 inches from the ground. It was like her legs forgot to grow. And her babies never looked like her. She was a good producer, but she was pretty hideous. But I sure did love heavy D. We can pet every one of our cows.

Sarah Leonhard 

Disposition is key is key. I tell you, we we have EPDs and now disposition is getting you can't be expected progency differences. Okay.

Brandy Von Holten 

That was not in my that was not in my vocabulary bank. Say again. EPD. What is it stands for?

Sarah Leonhard 

expected progency differences. I'm getting my tongue tied. Okay, so what is that? Basically, they're each breed has different sets of standards. And they, we encourage it's kind of benchmarks, if you will, within each breed. And so and you pick the wrong person to ask about genetics, but here but I'm telling you that that there's calving yeas birth weight, weaning weight, you know, all of the things that we select genetics, right, and now we're saying you know what? disposition is important. Oh, yeah, we think it is. So now we're saying okay, what's, what's the EPD for her disposition? If you will, because Oh, okay. So it's like a measurement it is. And so like, if, as an example, you're breeding for a show, steer, you know, you're looking for big top, big bone wide set structure, that kind of thing. If you're breeding for a long horned cow, you're probably looking for hoof integrity and, and hoof quality and horn growth and that kind of thing. You know, I'm making that point is, they're they're traits that you select on and you can measure them by it's like registration papers with a horse, they follow along and they're like, Oh, here's her EPDs

Brandy Von Holten 

Oh, so I used to be a science teacher and in minerals, we have different hardnesses Okay, so that's like the thing it's the Mohs Hardness Scale right with a diamond being a 10 Okay, so this just sounds like the Karen scale. We got a nice Karen like a Karen one. Okay, that's she's a good girl. And then we got to Kieran 10. Now Karen 10 would be not like something you would not want to pass those characteristics down

Sarah Leonhard 

but you might breed Kieran 10 to the bull that's a one and get a 5

Brandy Von Holten 

oh see and then that would be wonderful. Yeah. My Mare my mayor Glamour lead short for glamour with the hammer that's my you know, I used to do full contact fighting and my fight name was glamour with the hammer. Glamour would be a Karen 11 But I love her Karen-ness. Okay. Yeah.

Sarah Leonhard 

So do you have horses? I do. I, I get to work with them professionally with Purina but I also get to enjoy them on the weekends and my daughter and I barrel race and traveled to do that we enjoy it and enjoy the company that we get to meet along the way and just the fun we have.

Brandy Von Holten 

So I will tell you with your stature and how you've got big fancy words and stuff, I expect that you've got some good horsemanship, I expect that you're going so fast that you got tears running down the side, because I bet you know what you're doing well.

Sarah Leonhard 

So there's other people that know a lot more than I do. But I try you try. I try.

Brandy Von Holten 

So what are some things that you've won? What's What's some stuff you like? Tell me pre COVID

Sarah Leonhard 

Oh, my, well, I recently just got a three year old and I'm really focusing on her. So I didn't have her pre COVID I got her during COVID.

Brandy Von Holten 

Was that a wonderful thing to get to spend that extra time with her?

Sarah Leonhard 

Oh my gosh, it sure was, we get the opportunity to spend with home time was all of our horses and the cows too. But during COVID... COVID had its ups and downs, But that definitely was one of the ups for sure. But now we're breeding some horses, and we hope to have some good genetics that it's going to run fast here in two or three years. And I had recently became a grandma. And so I passed up the opportunity to go to BBR, which was in Oklahoma City in two weeks. And that's always kind of like, you know, the goal each year is to go to BBR and be successful down there. But there's so many horses. I mean, heck, last year when I was there, there's over 2500 horses that were running in the same race. So I mean, like, you know, so it's personal accomplishments. You know what I mean? Like you asked what I've won and I, I say well, you know I can I can be in the 2d I can be in the 1d, I can be in the 3d and on any given day. You know, I don't love you know, but sometimes your bad run is when you're writing weird away. It is like a lot of good things happened. You know what I mean?

Brandy Von Holten 

I know some of my biggest accomplishments are there's no, there's nothing for it. I mean, the fact that we have five animals in our herd, and they're so different, I mean, they are so different, but each one of them is successful. I mean, I have a Tennessee Walker mule, that she's a giant, but then her self esteem is a cricket. Oh, okay. She's so cute. And then I have a Missouri Fox Trotter mule that, if he was a cartoon character, he would be Pepe LePew trying to talk to all the ladies. Okay, I even have lattigo. I had a custom lattigo made for him that I bought from this chick on Facebook. But it's got like 1950s pinups on the lattigo because he's such a ladies, man. And people. I forget about it, because it's just a joke. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I got. That's my boy right there. Oh, Jo Jo, he's pretty cool. He would probably have like one of those. Al Capone hats on and wear a suit and be trying to talk to some girl if he was a human. And he's Pepe LePew if he was a cartoon character, and then Coco, that big meal I was telling you about. She would be just a little mouse in the corner. She would be somebody's lap dog that just shakes and pees. Because it's just so timid. But she said she, I mean, but she gets bravery from me. But if I put a rider on her that's not confident she won't do anything for them. Because she has to pull that confidence from her human.  And then we have an Appaloosa and I, I make fun of my husband. I call her our crapaloosa. But everybody's like, you should breed her and I was like, oh, so we can get some more crooked hips. Another back. That's a little bit suede. I mean, why would we ever breed that? And they're like, for the spots? And I was like, oh, no, those spots. Oh, no if she was just brown, they would be like, they would realize how hideous she is. With them spots. They're like, Man, she's beautiful. And I'm like, You know what, every pots got a lid, you know, and there's your lid. But her name is Peppercorn. Peppercorn is 19. And my goodness, she has had so many children and adults fall in love with horses because of being around her. And you know what's so funny about peppercorn is, she makes milk. We've had her checked out by the vet and she got one Big 'ol boobie and then one regular booby, like one's about a D cup and the other ones like a plus. Okay? But we've, I mean, like, we've put orphan foals on her. And she's just like, that's my baby. That's my baby. We're like, that's not your baby. But you know, that's excellent. Oh, yeah, it's been really helpful. And then plus they're in our kids camps, like I have eighteen kids camps this year. We keep them from 9am to four Pm, and we do five different things. One of those things is ride horses. But we also groom them. And then I show them everything like so there's peppercorn, and they're like, Whoa, are different sizes. And I'm like, they share our Oh, and then I teach them how to milk her. I mean, just because she's like, thank goodness, get that out of there.

Sarah Leonhard 

So how often do you have the camps?

Brandy Von Holten 

Girl Last year, we had 12. And they were busting at the seams. But there's just a whole day. I keep them from nine to four. I'm not keeping kids overnight, no matter? Well, no part of that. Sure. But I have them 18 I have 18 kids camps this year. Wow. That's amazing. Well, in this year, we, with my husband's business with like, the woodshop. With the five things, we're also incorporating woodshop into it, and they get to build with him. So I have all sorts of different kids camps. We got one that's called exploratory, that should be called glorified babysitting. Okay, so that's just the fun one. You know, that's like, anybody can come to it. They don't really care. It's just a flavor of the day. Okay, so then we have an exploratory, but it's a two day course. Because the project that my husband does with him and with them, is, it's gonna take two days to do it. So they have to sign up for both, you know, like one day, they might say, and and then the next day, they'll probably put it together, right? Or they might put it together, and it has to dry. And then the next day, they might pull your fingers. And so it's a two day project. So we have that. So just the regular one, the two day one, then I have this online horsemanship course that I've been teaching, or for students that have come back and they're ready for like actual horsemanship, I have a level one. So that one they've got to, they've got to be approved. They've got to either take an online course or they have got to be one of the students that graduated out of the other ones. I see. Yeah. So that's a level one. And then I have another one that's, it's kind of in between the exploratory and the level one, but they just have an intermediate woodshop project is not a two day one, but it's not little baby stuff, right? So I'm just trying to like, give people what they want. And they love. I mean, like, they love it. I have four adults for each one of those. And we take 20 students, and just the exploratory ones $50 And they have to bring lunch. The other ones are 60 a day. Oh, wow. So it's like ridiculously affordable for Yeah, they wouldn't be able to do that, you know, for a lesson or anything like that. And then they get to ride at least two to three different animals. And then we like roll the dice for which one they're going to ride. So might be Coco or peppercorn. Yeah, we've got two palominos named KTM. And the other ones glamour. So they're just like, oh my gosh, and then they get so excited about understanding a mule and petting their ears and yeah, but everybody loves pepper corn, the worst conformation in the world. That's her award. She gets the award for making milk having spots. Bad confirmation. Okay, so she's like farmer broke. You know what I'm talking about whenever something ain't really laying really fancy broke, but she is since she just she didn't do nothing, right. She don't do nothing wrong.

Sarah Leonhard 

Yep. So how do you fit the kids camps in with you were telling me about some of your women activities that come out.

Brandy Von Holten 

The Women's things are just, that's just who I am. Yeah, they're on weekends. Yeah. Well, we have one that I just scheduled it. I mean, I'm girl I've got three paper planners and then one digital planner and but the women's things are, what the 50 Plus is a Sunday through Wednesday, they get an extra day and it's no additional costs because they have that time off typically. And then the other ones are a Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But the chicks in the sticks. We have we have oh my gosh, it's kind of hard to explain all the different things but we have the terms. Country tough. That is trademark but also trademark Big Boss, mayor will Big Boss mayor is like all of I make personal planners and I do goal setting courses and people pay to be in those and I've started doing business coaching and some graphic design. Just it's kind of weird how I let myself kind of go down these paths that I enjoy. But one of my Big Boss Mare Productions is that all inclusive women's events, okay, so, and those women love those. A lot of times I'll have like a kid's camp the day before chicks in the sticks, you know, and they just love seeing those kids just have so much fun because we play in the creek and then I spray them off with a water hose. I mean it is a lot of these kids don't have that opportunity to experience right farm life you know it's always sit still. Be quiet. Don't get dirty. And I'm all like, oh, you can get dirty. I'll just hose you off. So absolutely.

Sarah Leonhard 

What was your childhood like? Always horses and cows, actually my dad was farmer and cows and horses, but row crops so called river bottom row crop and just driving the combine and growing trucks and that kind of thing. What kind of grain did he grow up mainly corn, soybeans, corn, corn and soybeans, a little bit of wheat, but mainly corn and soybeans.

Brandy Von Holten 

My I remember, corn, we had three my dad used to be he used to farm also. But corn three years in a row, we had bad weather, and then it bankrupted him. And that was what ended the farming like because it was three years in a row like bam, bam, bam. But before that, I know I mean, like there's some it's feast or famine in you know, whenever you're growing crops, and then, boy, Mother Nature was relentless. But we were in Texas also. I mean, you know, but um, do you know before that this is something weird because you would think you would be Asian to farm rice. But no, that's like a big stereotype. Oh, no, we were massive rice farmers. And I mean, rice has to be in standing water. And so I remember the bulk of my childhood working in a rice field. Yeah. I mean, like what people would think they wouldn't think Oh, Brandi worked in rice field, like you wouldn't put those things together, right. But I was always having to hold a levee bags, because they would have they had to have higher dirt to keep that water in there. And you wanted to have smaller pools instead of like this big huge pool. So they would create fake pools with mounds of dirt, and then could fill it up. Well, you'd have to break a hole into it to allow water to fill up the next section and break a hole and let the water fill up the next section. will then sometimes you'd want to close them up. Well, you'd have to do that with levee bags. I gotcha. Yeah. So I had to hold levee bags, man talk about watermoxicans. And yeah. That was not probably like a little girl job. Probably not. But but it was free labor.

Sarah Leonhard 

I was gonna say and things have changed. Oh, yeah. Things have changed have changed. I might, you know, I drove track. Or I shouldn't have been driving a truck when I was 14 years old. Oh, yeah. You did too. I'm sure I'm Oh, yeah. You know, it's just what you did.

Brandy Von Holten 

Oh, yeah. You just, well, you know, stuff like that still happens on farms just on the road. But yeah,

Sarah Leonhard 

yeah. Yeah. So

Brandy Von Holten 

okay, Purina, you've How long have you worked for Purina?

Sarah Leonhard 

Well. You know, kind of like I said, when I started with farmland, farmland and Land O Lakes, formed an LLC, and then Land O Lakes purchased Purina in 2001. So technically, since the beginning of time, but yeah, I've been involved with them ever since they've been owned by Land O Lakes. So prior to then they were owned by other companies, but but I've been on board with them since Land O Lakes.

Brandy Von Holten 

So the evolution of Purina is confusing. Oh, it's extremely confusing, I would actually probably just have to, you'd have to take like some paper towels and just start and then and then for all the little branches that are in it, but one of the main things for people to understand is that Purina used to be a company, and now it's a brand of Land O Lakes,

Sarah Leonhard 

that's correct. It's our feed division. A Purina is our brand. It's our feed division. We're very proud of it.

Brandy Von Holten 

And so originally, or a long time ago, in the 70s it used to not be a co op, but it was actually owned by Nestle. Okay, so But now, Purina does not own Nestle, or is not owned by Nestle. Now it's owned by Land O Lakes.

Sarah Leonhard 

So actually, it was Ralston Purina back in the 70s. And okay, and then and then now, Nestle owns, the print has the right to the Purina brand, and you see that on their dog foods in the grocery stores and, and around and about. And then we also use the premium brand, the checkerboard on our livestock feeds like the premium horse feeds who might be familiar with or cattle feeds, Accu ration products, that kind of thing. So we both both companies, Nestle and then Land O Lakes get the opportunity to use the checkerboard which is very confusing to is very used using the same logo.

Brandy Von Holten 

Yeah, you had actually said that Y'alls dog food that is now with Purina with Landa legs is not allowed to use the checkerboard logo. That's correct. But Nestle who does not own the current Purina, right,

Sarah Leonhard 

well, Nestle owns the Purina division they

Brandy Von Holten 

own that food okay, they are the Purina division as pet food. I Okay, so I'm not really following that.

Sarah Leonhard 

Okay. Nestle has other interests, you know, you see their products in the grocery store and

Brandy Von Holten 

We got chocolatemilk powder. Yep. Okay. I'm sorry. I know. I know. I know Nestle makes all sorts of stuff.

Sarah Leonhard 

 Yeah. So and dog food is is one of the items and things that they make. And so they they have the right to use that checkerboard and then we have the right to use a checkerboard but just not on our pet food.

Brandy Von Holten 

Okay, that's so confusing, but you all user check your checkerboard on livestock, correct? Yeah, yeah. Okay,

Sarah Leonhard 

 it is confusing, but we have a great relationship with them and we're very respectful and and make sure that we don't put the brand anywhere we shouldn't put the brand.

Brandy Von Holten 

Oh, most definitely. Well, you know what with like having, you know, I tried to trademark Boss Mare. Okay, but I couldn't, because it was too general. But I had was able to trademark Big Boss Mare, really. And then I was able to do a fictitious name filing the other day for Big Boss. So there's, I mean, like, boy, there are some particular Oh, wow, very particular. And, you know, just, you don't want to ever step on anybody's toes and like, you know, and you don't want to ever I mean, like, people don't understand that you can get yourself in trouble real fast over trademarking and copyright laws. And what is it called intellectual property, something is intellectual property, so and logos. But, you know, a lot of people just don't understand a lot of that stuff. But it's easy to, you know, get educated on it, we, you need to do a fix it, you know, how many people say, Here's my company name, but then they can't accept a check in that name. So what that says to me is they have not done a fictitious name filing with the Secretary of State, you know, how much it cost to do a fictitious name filing with the Secretary of State,

Sarah Leonhard 

probably not much

Brandy Von Holten 

$7.  To do an LLC, you can actually do the LLC as yourself. But, and those are also those forms are on the Secretary of State's website, or you can hire a lawyer. I mean, we, we have one LLC right now. And then we have trademarks. And then we also have things with fictitious name filings, but we're about to do three additional LLCs just three different business because we want to keep all of you know, this is part about being a Big Boss, Mare, we want to keep everything just clean. You know, it's just nice to have an account for each thing. It's just an, you know, insurance wise. Yeah. So, yeah, do you have any business things to add for ladies that are wanting to get into agriculture,

Sarah Leonhard 

I would tell you that I get, like I said, opportunity to to lead our farm consultant group, in our in the region that I'm assigned to here in Purina and I have quite a few young ladies working for me now. And again, you can have 20 years ago, they probably wouldn't be but now they are. And they, there's some obstacles that we we deal with, but for the most part, farmers and ranchers are very receptive to the female consultant. And I would say, if it's something that you're interested in doing, don't be afraid to pursue it, for sure. I think it's more about your knowledge and gaining experience. And particularly work experience that's so important, because it's all about integrity. And making sure that you know, when you're advising a horse owner, cattle ranch or whatever, that that you're doing that with, with knowledge, you know, obviously, we're proud of our nutrition, we have research, we have all kinds of things to back it up. And but, but it's also about the integrity of the person. That's, that's providing the the the recommendation so you know, we I have employees that that run diets, run rations for people are very comfortable doing that. And I feel confident that they're, they're giving good advice. So I would say it's truly about you and your knowledge and your experience.

Brandy Von Holten 

So right now I'm reading this book called seller be sold. And it talks about, you know, so many people don't trust salespeople. And the way to combat that is to if you say something, is be able to back it up with a third party verification, yeah, third party verification. Another way to get people to gain trust in you is to write it down. So like, hey, you know, I've done that right there. If if somebody paid me cash for something, and I wasn't around, like our register or something, I might send them like a Facebook message that said, hey, paid $400 for this right here on this date. Thank you very much. Or you know, if we agreed upon, hey, if you buy five of these things are discount it down for this right here. And here's how we did it. Here's the percentage breakdown. I just texted it to him, boom, give it to him, because people will gain trust in you. If you are up and up. And if you go to sell something or try to negotiate something, you don't bring paper and pen to write it down. And then it's just going to turn into well, you said this? No, I didn't. I said that. But boy, if you've got a written copy, and then everybody be like, Hey, take a picture of this. This is what we agreed upon. Yeah. So you know, sometimes there's hurdles that we have to overcome. You know, and this is not just for women, this is for everybody. But boy, the more that you can be just crystal clear and give them people love to have proof of what you said, you know, and people believe things that are written? I do. Yeah, sometimes that's bad. Sometimes it can be bad, you just have to make sure that you look at the source.

Sarah Leonhard 

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of times when I'm working with my sales team, to we look at social styles, and really coach our team to how to adapt to different people and their social styles and, and understand it's, it's more than just empathy. It's understanding what motivates somebody else. So you obviously trust is huge, and we have to earn the trust, but we have to also, you know, discover, ask questions and you know, build trust, build the relationship, and then and then services. And you know, that's all about professionalism and integrity and everything you've talked about there. But, but they're to your point, you know, there's some people that insist on having a written proposal. And there's other people that that are more expressive and just aren't as detail oriented are good, but but that text that says, hey, you know, I took 10% off when you bought five, right? Okay, that's cool, I got it here, I'm holding on to it, I feel good about it. So it works. For both. Now the analytical might go, I want to know what each item cost and I want to know exactly what came off of each, whatever. But you know, what I mean? It's, I really emphasize that with my team a lot, and, and to really understand when they walk away from somebody to understand them as a person,

Brandy Von Holten 

right? So you know, what, just having different clients with y'all having to understand each, what did you say I'm thinking like social class, but it's not really social class, social style, social style, is what you'd say, You know what, like my husband's business, he has this thing where he's basically a it's a woodshop. But your he sends them all the pieces and we've written a curriculum based on national school standards, okay. And then breaking it broken it down for even like middle school and high school level. But and then we also sell things that are just like a wooden puzzle that they can do. So we have like the just single purchase and then we have part of like the educational series. Okay. Well, talking about we have went and, and printed presentations about these things at different things called like, 1 Million Cups is a is a group for entrepreneurs. And then we've done presentations at different chambers of commerce. And then we've done different, we've been vendors at different things. But one thing that was recommended to us, like we actually print the instructions and have photos with just the main things, if there's something like hey, make sure you don't break the tail right here, you need to hang it off of the table, right? Because if you push too hard, you might break the the tail of this puzzle. But we've we have the written comp instructions, well then we had somebody else that said, Hey, can you do a YouTube video of of the just the single purchase things like the the educational things have videos, and we send them links to the videos to build with my husband, but the other one just wanted, like a visual also, that's in video. So we're like, okay, we did not plan on doing that. But it was just a different. It was a different age group. I say, and, and then we had the older people in the room were like, Oh, we prefer a paper copy. And then I even said that Legos don't even give you paper instructions anymore. It gives you a QR code to scan. Well then the parents are like, that's great, because you never lose it. But then they say it's awful, because they lose their phone to their kids because their kids are trying to build this stuff. So they love so some of the parents were like I love that it's paid for instruction, so I don't lose my phone. And then some of the children that were like, I don't know, 15 ish, whatever. We're happy to have just a video like a shortened version. We had to just on a puzzle, have different levels for people, you know, and like, so I understand expectations. Yeah, well, and they've got different learning styles, but now we include all of them and then People are like, wow, you've done all of this. And we're like, well, we're trying to listen. Yeah. You know, we're trying to listen to what people need what they need, because if they need it, somebody else does. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So what is, what do you feed your horses?

Sarah Leonhard 

Actually, I feed a product called Impact professional performance, which is a relatively newer product of ours. I believe it's been out five or six years. But you know what it takes a while for people to catch on. I swear, every week I mentioned that to somebody and they say, I've never heard of that. So impact professional is a line of ours impact professional performance is similar to our ultium product. It's a little bit different in the formula, less calories per pound, but it feeds very similar, no corn, no corn byproducts, but I love it. And I recommend it a lot. People are like, how does that work for your performance horse and work for my my mare, my trail horse and everything, but it's just good sound nutrition. And it's a really, it's a fantastic product that's offered through our dealer line. So here's another thing to confuse you so Okay. All right, I'm ready. Well, you know, we talked about this this Purina Foursquare logo that can only that can you know, the pet food debacle? Well, the impact professional line is a line that's only offered at our local independent Purina dealer, so are like a Tractor Supply, that's a great, great customer of ours, they don't sell impact professional performance. So if I have a client that's looking at that product, I've got to find out where their local dealer is and and steer them that way. And it's just a, I hate to use the name and the terminology house brand, because sometimes that has a negative connotation, which it shouldn't. But it's our house brand and a brand that we're really proud of, because we formulate it right alongside of, of our national brands that people are familiar with. But no, that's what I feed, and I love it.  You're thinking I've never heard of it.

Brandy Von Holten 

I know, what I'm thinking is that I love that you can only get it from the small guys, and not the big guys. That's what I think because I mean, we're a small guy. I mean, we have 40 RV sites, you know, we have 25 miles of trail. I mean, but compared to other facilities, we are, some people won't even come here because they're like 25 miles, and then but the clients that we service are like 25 miles? 25 miles? and you got a covered arena? and then but other people were like, it's covered. It's not enclosed? And I'm all like, you know, make one payment on it, and then you can complain about it. Okay, make one payment, you have made half a payment. Okay, then I'll listen to you. Yep. All right. So if they wanted to get in touch with you, or if they had quit just questions in general about Purina, or if somebody wanted to get in, I mean, who would talk to you? Who would you like to talk to you?

Sarah Leonhard 

Well, first off, I mean, depends on where you are located. You know, if you're in Hawaii, you know, I would, I would really suggest you go to our website Purinamills.com, and put your zip code in, and that's going to get you in touch with somebody, you'll see a local printer dealer come up and you know, sources that way on all of our bags, we have an 800 number, which should shoot you to our our lovely ladies in St. Louis. And then they can, they can run it right back out to us. They can see where you're calling from, and we'll call you. I mean, it's, it seems so simple, but like we put that number on that bag of feed, and they call, you know, Beverly and St. Louis, and she's like, Oh, you're in Sara's area, I'll just have her call you. And it's that simple. How new, right?

Brandy Von Holten 

Oh, man, do you know, I can put some simple instructions out there for people? And I'm all like, I mean, I've had people ask me things, and I've literally screenshot what was in like the social media post and sent it to them. They're like, Oh, thank you. And I was like, oh, Lord, drive me nuts a little bit. But that's so cool that they'll just like, figure out who's in the area and give them a call. Like, that's really humble and like, personal.

Sarah Leonhard 

Yeah, we try to be I mean, again, we haven't always done that. And it's probably been, I think that whole process has probably been in place five or six years. And it's been it's been a blessing for sure. So

Brandy Von Holten 

well, I know whenever I call to speak with someone or if I if I take the time to call a company. I want to talk to someone and I don't want to have issues understanding. I just want to talk I mean, like Yeah, and I have got a vast experience level with different accents. You know what I mean? But I just want to be able to talk to a person instead of Yeah, push one, push 713

Sarah Leonhard 

Your screaming operator, customer service rep. Please.

Brandy Von Holten 

So Purinamills.com. Okay, so this Purina training that y'all do. When is that do you know? And then like some don't y'all  train people also do some educational things for people or selective?

Sarah Leonhard 

Well, we train our employees, we have certain curriculum on that we have training for our dealers. We have we used to have a horse owner workshops. Remember that back in the day? Yeah, it was training. That was more, you know, try outreach horse owners education that way. So I feel like I educate every day because I get to ride with my sales folks and I get to get on farms and just learn a lot from farmers and ranchers and horse owners.

Brandy Von Holten 

So if somebody wanted to know which kind of feed they should be feeding, they can just contact Purina mills.

Sarah Leonhard 

Yep. Okay. They can and then again, they would put them in contact with somebody within Purina or local dealer that's in their area. And and hopefully we get you steered in the right direction. Our website's pretty powerful but but I'm like you I'd like to talk to people. Right?

Brandy Von Holten 

Yeah, I drive people nuts with that because a lot of people want to text and I would rather talk in person you know, I would rather meet someone in person you know, you know like our wedding venue and stuff like that. We've got photos but seen it in person we always hear Wow, it's so much bigger in person. Like every I'm, I'm an in person, kind of lady, you know. Alright, so this was Sarah Leonhard and thank you for tuning into Big Boss Mare with Brandy Von Holten.