The Poultry Leadership Podcast
"Welcome to 'The Poultry Leadership Podcast,' where we dive deep into the world of poultry leadership to help you soar to new heights in your career. Join us as we sit down with some of the industry's most accomplished leaders, farm owners, and allied professionals. Gain valuable insights, strategies, and personal stories that reveal the secrets behind their success. Discover what makes these poultry visionaries the outstanding leaders they are. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out, our show is your go-to resource for unlocking your full leadership potential. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the journey to becoming the poultry leader you aspire to be."
This podcast is brought to you by Prism Controls, the leader in Environmental Controls for the past 45 years! Check them out at http://www.prismcontrols.com
The Poultry Leadership Podcast
Chickens and Transitions: Big Dutchman USA's New President Budd Bentley
When a headhunter asked Budd Bentley, "How do you feel about chickens and eggs?" in late 2019, it marked the beginning of a transformative journey. After decades in automotive engineering and technology development, Bentley was about to step into the unfamiliar world of poultry technology as President of PMSI (now Prism Controls).
In this revealing conversation with Brandon Mulnix, Bentley shares his unlikely path from solving Rubik's Cubes as a child to leading innovation in agricultural technology. His early career at Prince Corporation taught him a foundational principle: everyone starts on the manufacturing line because "what makes money is when we send product out the door." This grounding in practical operations would shape his leadership philosophy throughout his career.
Bentley's entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found a mobile app development company in 2005—two years before the iPhone existed—where he learned valuable lessons about innovation timing and market readiness. When he eventually joined the poultry technology sector in January 2020 (just before COVID-19 changed everything), he brought fresh eyes to an established company. "I didn't even know what end of the chicken the egg comes out," he jokes, but he recognized the passionate team's potential for growth through process implementation.
Under Bentley's leadership, Prism Controls grew from 28 to 44 people while developing crucial new technologies like Reach, Eggsite, and Therm. His secret? "Embrace the process, and the process will set you free." By documenting workflows, separating operational activities from innovation, and implementing the Entrepreneurial Operating System framework, the company created a structure that could scale without losing quality or customer focus.
As Bentley prepares for his next challenge as President of Big Dutchman USA, he reflects on what makes the agricultural technology sector special: the directness of farmers as customers. "You don't have to spend mental energy thinking about what they really mean or what they're really thinking, because they just tell you," he explains. This refreshing honesty allows technology providers to focus entirely on problem-solving rather than decoding communications.
Whether you're new to agricultural technology or a seasoned professional, Bentley's journey offers valuable insights into leadership, process development, and industry transition. Listen now to discover how documenting the invisible can transform organizations and set innovation free.
Hosted by Brandon Mulnix - Director of Commercial Accounts - Prism Controls
The Poultry Leadership Podcast is only possible because of its sponsor, Prism Controls
Find out more about them at www.prismcontrols.com
Welcome to the Poultry Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Brandon Mulnix. On today's episode we get to hear from Budd Bentley, the president of Prism Controls. It's not very often that I try to bring on our guests from Prism Controls, but Budd's a pretty special guy and he's ready to take on a new big role within a much larger company and we're going to get into that here in a few minutes. But I want to introduce Budd to the show. So, Budd, welcome to the podcast.
Budd Bentley:Thank you, Brandon, I appreciate you having me. I know you've been asking for a while and I've been holding you off because, frankly, it terrifies me.
Brandon Mulnix:I understand completely. It's something that I had to get over myself and I remember you having a conversation way back when I first started this thing about somebody else inviting you on and you kind of fidgeting away from that. So I'm glad that you were willing to jump on the show here with me. Now, bud, can you introduce yourself to the audience, tell them a little bit about who you are, your family kind of? Where you got started? Sure, yeah.
Budd Bentley:I always like to say or start out with I was a simple man, born into troubled times, but I don't even know why I say that. But yeah, so I'm 53 years old as of last Tuesday. So kind of an interesting time in my life, getting older and starting to feel that age is. Yeah, it's a, like I said, an interesting time. My lovely wife Robin and I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary this November and we're going to spend some time together traveling abroad, taking a little vacation before I make the change over to Big Dutchman, which I think you said we'll talk about a little bit later. But I have two lovely daughters Lillian is 25 years old. Jaylee is 22 years old. Jaylee just graduated from Northern Michigan University as a nurse and just started her first big girl job. Still lives with us cramps our no kids style a little bit, but we'd love to have her around for the time that she'll be here. And Lillian, my oldest, just celebrated her first wedding anniversary a couple weeks ago, or last week actually, and she lives in Holland, Michigan. She's a computer engineer and works at Gentex and her husband, mason, is an HR generalist at Sherwin-Williams. So I'm super proud of both of them and their accomplishments and probably the thing I'm most proud of in my life, I would say, from a career perspective.
Budd Bentley:So I was born and raised in Hudsonville, michigan, which is a very small, I would say very agricultural focused community between Grand Rapids, Michigan and Holland. Yeah, my father was a teacher. My mother didn't work. I'm the youngest of five children, so I would say my mother would probably argue that she did work, worked a lot, I guess, to raise us all. But in, yeah, I mean growing up, I always had a passion for just nerdy stuff, right, I mean I think I solved my first Rubik's Cube when I was 10 years old and just that sort of thing just always really got me going, got me thinking, I got my juices flowing, if you will.
Budd Bentley:So I went to Hudsonville High School. I graduated in 1990. And I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to do something technical. A friend of the family actually my father was a swim coach and so a lot of the families involved with swimming were friends of ours. We hosted team parties and things like that. But one of those family friends had gone to what was at the time General Motors Institute and he worked for GM. He was an engineer and he said, hey, bud's kind of a technical guy, maybe he should think about something like that. So I applied to GMI, which is now Kettering University. It was the only school I applied to. I didn't really have a plan, I didn't really have a clue, I'll be honest. I didn't really know what I was doing or what my options were, but got accepted into there, started there and yeah, I think my mind was blown on day one of my very first physics class when they basically covered everything I had learned in high school physics in the first half hour and I was like, oh, wow, this might be some work.
Budd Bentley:Graduated with my bachelor's in mechanical engineering and kind of started on the hunt for my first job, started off my career at a company called Prince Corporation. Prince was founded by Ed Prince in Holland, Michigan and they had the. I guess their claim to fame or what caused their success in the automotive industry was they invented the lit vanity visor, so when you flip down the visor in your car and you open up the mirror and the light comes on. That was invented in Holland, michigan, by Ed Prince and that's what started a company. By the time I started, prince was, I think, a thousand people, so fairly big. By the time it was purchased by Johnson Controls, I think it was like 3000 people. So it was a. It was a very successful company and I think one of the things that Prince did really, really well was develop their people and really believe in their people, and they just did a fantastic job of developing people into leaders and they really, really cared about me and I'll touch on that a little bit later when I talk about the latter years of my career, which I guess I'm in now.
Budd Bentley:One of the things that Prince did is everyone started out on the manufacturing line. It didn't matter what role you were hiring in, as whether you were going to be the CFO or a project manager or whatever you were going to be, you started out working on the assembly line. So everyone had a really well-grounded view of what makes money in the company right, what makes money is when we send product out the door. In the company, right, what makes money is when we send product out the door. So there was no ivory tower or cushy day job type of a mentality. Everyone knew what the goal was and I think that was really super important in my what I'll call my formative years of my career. So I held a lot of different positions at Prince, starting out in engineering, moving through finance and manufacturing and continuous improvement and quality, and just a lot of different roles Eventually had the opportunity to move to Germany.
Budd Bentley:Prince had operations in Germany. Actually, at that time Prince was purchased in 1997, 98 timeframe by Johnson Controls, which is obviously a huge multinational conglomerate type of a company, but they had a strong presence in the automotive industry. Purchased, prince and I had the opportunity in 1999 to go live in Germany and work under the Johnson Controls flag in their headquarters which was just outside of Cologne, germany. So lived there for three years. In fact, my oldest daughter, lillian, was born and was eight weeks old when we moved to Germany officially. So that was a great experience. I look back very fondly on that. I would absolutely do that again.
Budd Bentley:It's a unique thing to get out of bed and learn every single day because you don't have a choice, because everything is so different, and that's a really unique experience. I always liken being an expat to sort of like you're on a train, your career is a train, right, and you're on the train and all your colleagues and your friends are on the train with you and you take an expat assignment and you basically get off the train. Train keeps going, keeps moving on. So three years later down the road when they're trying to repatriate you, you get back on the train, sort of further back than you were before, because I don't really think companies do a great job of going hey, we've invested a lot of time and a lot of experience in this person, how are we going to utilize that? It's generally an afterthought. So that was kind of what it was for me, and the only really opportunity they had, or the idea that they had, was they put me in a leadership development program which was rotational. So I started to rotate around a different departments within the organization Like every six months. It was a very rapid sort of a rotation and with that came a lot of there was a peer group and we did a lot of leadership training and different types of development activities. It was a really great experience and coming out of that I landed in a department that was called BBP or Better Business Practices. It was basically very focused on continuous improvement and that was across the organization, not just from the standpoint of manufacturing but across everything. It was a really unique experience and a guy by the name of Jeff Weiss was the guy who led it and he was an absolute genius with numbers and he could really look at what was a cost driver within an organization and baseline that and compare it to other parts of the organization and then dig deep on okay, well, why is that? And that was kind of the foundation of what BBP was. It sounds like a made up corporate term, because it was, but it was very effective.
Budd Bentley:And then in 2005, I made the very difficult decision to leave Johns Controls. I had an opportunity or I guess I don't say helped to create an opportunity with two colleagues of mine, corbin Collet and Garrett Pohl, and we had the idea that people were going to use their cell phones for more than just talking and texting. So we started a small company called Crayon Interface and the concept behind that name was we wanted our applications to be as simple to use as a crayon as to a child. Basically, there's no instruction manual with a box of crayons. You give it to a kid and they know exactly what to do with it. That was kind of what directed our mentality and we started developing apps for phones. So if you think about this, this is 2005. This is two years before the iPhone existed. The term app didn't even exist. So I mean we were crazy for thinking we could do it, but we saw it. We always joke now when we get together around Christmas for beers and we say you can tell the pioneers, they're the ones that have the arrows in their back, which is a lot what that felt like when we were trying to develop our business. But we did that for five years and we had a lot of success. We had some commercial success with companies like Ingersoll, rand and AutoPage we're just a couple of names of companies that we developed apps for but our model was what we were trying to achieve was a recurring revenue model based on a software license, which at the time, was somewhat novel.
Budd Bentley:And eventually we got to a point, in sort of the 2009, 2010 timeframe, where we were looking for our second round of funding. What would have been our second round of funding was not a great time to be looking for money, as everybody who lived through it can recall. So we ended up having to break the company up into a couple different pieces and sell it off, so I had to go find a day job after kind of living my dream for five years. So that was a tough spot. But, honestly, I had a lot of relationships, obviously, at Johnson Controls. I went back and I did some contract engineering work for them and I hadn't done engineering work in a really long time. That was a challenge, I'm not gonna lie, did that for about a year and then I landed a job at a company called Primera Plastics in Zealand and I kind of led their engineering, quality and project management departments. Only spent a year there and then ended up going back to Johnson Controls and landed in what was at the time the Daimler business unit. So Mercedes-Benz was the customer, what was at the time the Daimler business unit, so Mercedes-Benz was the customer. And then from there I just sort of developed increasingly more responsibility within the business unit until ultimately, around the 2018 timeframe, I was promoted to the managing director of all of the international businesses. So all of the customers like BMW, volkswagen, volvo, daimler those were all my customers and my team was responsible for not just selling but also launching the product and putting it at our various I think we had 20 or so manufacturing plants in North America to support that business.
Budd Bentley:So in 2019, at this time back in the 2015 timeframe, Johns Control sort of merged with Yunfeng Automotive, which was a Chinese company, very big company, and it was sort of like a I don't remember the exact split, but 51-49 type of a deal. And by the time 2018-2019 rolled around, the honeymoon was kind of over with that merger in terms of really adopting more of Yanfeng's culture versus Johnson Control's culture and controls culture, and they had made some decisions that they wanted to really move the focus of the business units to the other side of the state. And that was kind of a non-starter for me as born and raised in West Michigan. I love it here. There's a reason people live in West Michigan, because it's awesome.
Budd Bentley:So I had put my name in the hat with a recruiter and I must have painted the most ridiculous needle in a haystack picture for him in the world. I met with him summer of 2019 and I basically kind of said, well, I want to. Technology is my thing. I really want to be in a company that's technology. I really want to get back to the feel of a family, privately held company like Prince was that cares about people Got to be in West Michigan. Obviously I wanted to be a significant portion of the leadership team if not lead the team and be able to contribute on that level and, if I can utilize my German language and cultural skills, that would be just sort of icing on the cake.
Budd Bentley:So I did not hear from him for months and I thought, okay, well, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and we'll see. He called me on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2019. And he said he literally started the conversation by saying, hey, how do you feel about chickens and eggs? Which was an interesting lead in, I guess. But looking back at it now, it certainly was appropriate. So I was taken aback a little bit and I'm like, well, yeah, I like chicken, I like eggs, what do you got for me? And he started to explain the position, which was, of course, at the time, pmsi and kind of what that looked like. And they were on a pretty quick timeframe because Craig England, who's my predecessor, he was sort of on a ticking clock for when he needed to be on the other side of the state to support his family. So interviews happened very quickly. I interviewed with Clovis, I interviewed with a handful of folks in Germany, um, interviewed with Craig and Doug um, and basically by the second week in December, got an offer.
Budd Bentley:At that same time, to complicate matters, my supervisor, my boss at Yon Fung, had announced that he was leaving the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I was at least intended to be, based on his thoughts, his successor. So that was another sort of factor in the decision. But, honestly, I didn't want to move to the other side of the state and I was willing to take the risk to stay here, so I did. On January 15th, craig, england walked out the door at PMSI and on January 16th of 2020, I walked in the door at PMSI, and on January 16th of 2020, I walked in the door at PMSI. So not a lot of overlap there, which there's some lessons learned that we can certainly talk about later. But yeah, fast forward five and a half years and here I am, in a brand new industry, in a brand new world, and it was the best career decision I ever made. I love it.
Brandon Mulnix:Well, it's interesting because your timeline and my timeline match up pretty darn well, because on November I started the application process in October and by middle of November they brought me on here at that time PMSI as well and saying, hey, we're going to give you a chance as project manager, new to the company, new to the industry, and didn't even know that there was a leadership transition ready to happen as well here in just a few months. But it was interesting because we got to kind of start together. I always say I have more seniority than you, but yeah, three whole months, Three whole months. So, bud, the cat's out of the bag, you're getting ready to head off to Big Dutchman. But let's look back at your last five years. I mean there's been quite a bit of change at at PMSI, now Prism Controls, over that time. What was one of your biggest accomplishments in that time?
Budd Bentley:Yeah, that's. That's kind of a tough one, I guess, to put my finger on, cause I don't, I don't know, I don't view it as a me accomplishment. I know that probably sounds trite, everybody would say that but honestly, when I walked in the door here, I mean this wasn't a sinking ship right. Pmsi was a very successful company, a great legacy to Stephen Herbruck and just a great solid team. I guess if I had to say what was the greatest accomplishment that we had over the last five years, it would be just in putting a little bit of a box around what we do. And I'll say, growing up a little bit as a company when we were a 10 person organization, that's a different behavior, a different mindset than when you get to a 20-person organization, and now, as a 44-person organization, there's even more that's just required to make that really run well. And that transition is hard. A lot of companies, most companies, don't succeed in making that transition. Now the fact that we sort of made that transition as an almost 40-year-old company is very unique. I would say Most companies probably figure that out in the first two to five years, but that probably helped us in the long run. But I mean just coming in the door, I mean, the first thing I saw was a very passionate and talented team that came in every day and worked their asses off to make our customers successful, because we were, as I always like to say, we were born into the industry. Right, I mean, we were born at Herbrooks. We didn't start as a supplier to the industry. Right, I mean, we were born at Herbrooks, we didn't start as a supplier to the industry. We were on the farm solving real world farm problems every day, and that's what made us successful.
Budd Bentley:But when you have the market share that we have and the industry relies on you to that level, you can't sustain that unless you put a little bit of a box around it. And when I say put a little bit of a box around it, I really mean process, and I think we're going to talk a little bit about that and probably in more detail but just making it so that when you come in every day, you know what your day is going to look like and you know how you're going to solve things and you know what the team around you, what your internal customers and what your internal suppliers are going to do, because it's defined. Somebody wrote it down right. I mean, in the first 40 years of this company, nobody ever wrote it down. Everybody knew what to do. But when every day comes at you like it's a surprise, it's hard to scale that and it's hard to continuously improve that, it's hard to train that.
Budd Bentley:So that's, I would say, in the last five years. I mean, when I started, when I walked in the door, pmsi was 28 people and now it's 44 people, five years later. And a lot of people might say, well, why, what caused that? And a lot's going on, obviously from a macro perspective in the industry, but a lot of it was just based on a need we couldn't sustain what we were doing with the resources we had and sort of the methodology that we had, and so we changed a lot of the methodology that we had and so we changed a lot of it. It was painful, but I think, looking back, I think pretty much maybe not everybody, but most people would say, yeah, we went in the right direction and we're heading in the right direction.
Brandon Mulnix:Yeah, I remember that time that was coming in from outside and basically my job at that point with Doug Powell was hey, we got to put a process together. You're the first project manager. I stepped in for someone who was in that role at the beginning and was like, hey, this is too much. And so I jumped in and had to start drawing the line from start to finish and realizing that, as you mentioned, surprise, our customers knew it was coming. Well, how did we know that the project was coming? How did we start to fill that information out?
Brandon Mulnix:And just gathering that all the way through, that was fun because I think I had it about drafted and done on your first day and it was nice to be able to hand off this project of here's kind of the flow. So that way you at least you know could say oh okay, we got. You know this helps, helps train, you know, and we're still using it today, which is the fun part. So, when it comes to process, I've gotten to witness your passion, your, your focus around process. Why is that passion and why is it so important to you?
Budd Bentley:Yeah, great question. I was walking with my wife having this conversation this morning and we were actually talking about we play trivia with our friends on Wednesday night and we're just we're walking as we do in the morning and I said to her hey, I really want to propose to the trivia team that we, you know, take a little bit of a different approach, you know, in how we collaborate. And she laughed out loud and she said to me you just really can't help it, can you? You just have to think about things from the perspective of you know, how do we, how do we define it and and, uh, improve it. And I was like, yeah, I, I guess, I guess, start to finish. That's how my brain works. Uh, from the time I wake up in the morning to the time I go to bed.
Budd Bentley:I very much believe in embrace the process, and the process will set you free. I don't think we well, I, I for sure didn't define the process that we use here. We simply documented it. Right, like I said, everybody knows what they do. But unless you write it down, how do you share it, how do you point out where there might be an inefficiency and change it? And so my passion really comes from.
Budd Bentley:When you get a cross-functional team in a room and talk about how you interact and where the exchanges happen and where there might be inefficiencies, that's gold. And most people don't necessarily mind that gold because just don't see it from that perspective. They see what they do and they maybe see a little bit of the fringe of where the exchanges happen between the groups. They see a little bit of that, but they don't see the whole thing. And I just always want to see the whole thing and I think that's what drives me. I want to see that whole picture and then I want to share it.
Budd Bentley:And once you show that to people, it's powerful because then the working level team that's actually doing it you can actually make their lives better. When you show them the whole picture and they can see the interaction, they not only understand how their lives can be better, but they understand how they can make the people downstream from them make their lives better. And it's just. I think it's really powerful to look at things that way and and yeah, it's uh, there's not a lot of magic to it, because you get the right people in the room that do the work and you just write down what they say, and and then you, you know, you turn it into something that that's easy for everybody to read and see, something visual, and and you go from there. So, yeah, I, I, I very much love sitting down and really getting to know how things work Always have.
Brandon Mulnix:It's always interesting being on the other side of it when you're challenged with either a new product or new, new piece of things, where you'd be like it doesn't follow the process and you'd be across the room from me and going, no, it's going to follow the process and, sure enough, after enough thinking, slowing down and realizing, yeah, it does meet the process. You have quoting, you have production and design, and then you have getting it out in the field. You keep it simple and it is interesting because that is a challenge with a lot of new products and a lot of new things is, hey, this is a unicorn and it's off over here, and how do we make it part of our everyday process? So over the last five years, there's been a lot of new technology that we've developed as a company and we've been part of. When it comes to new technology, when it comes to new products, how is that influential to your helping us as a company, grow over the last five years?
Budd Bentley:Yeah, so PMSI or Prism Controls has always been, I mean, really two things right. We are a technology company, right, and technology companies have to develop new technologies or someone else will. Combined with that, though, we're a service company, right. I mean, we serve the industry. We served essentially as the IT team or the technology team for Herbruck's, and we expanded that to the entire layer industry really in our country and even abroad in a lot of cases. So combining those two things technology and service is hard to do. I mean, if you think about what do most companies do with their IT team, they stash it under finance or under human resources because nobody knows what to do with it. And we're basically that We've built a company. Being that, and not just from the standpoint of IT, is just a lot of service, but developing the technologies that we then service. So it's a really unique model, and I think when I walked in the door here I was a little surprised at just how little time we had for the new product development side, because we were so engrossed in the service, which obviously our customers appreciate us servicing them to that level. But at the end of the day, there's also an expectation of what's the new thing? What's next? What will make my farm more efficient in the future? Not just what did know, what did you do you know last year.
Budd Bentley:So part of part of what we did is is really make a conscious effort to separate what I now call sort of the operational side of the business right Servicing customers, building panels, serving our current product line, our current solutions, and then the new product development part of it. So we really had to make an effort to separate those two out, because they were so blended together that obviously servicing customers is always going to come first. If you're focused on doing that and your bandwidth is so limited for developing new products, you can't put things on a timeline, you can't put things on a cadence, you can't deliver anything. So the importance of putting a little bit of a process around that as well and really sort of carving out the resources was kind of job one. And then that's when you started to see things like Reach as a mobile app and you started to see things like Eggsite and you started to see things like Therm sort of come out of just spending more resources, more time, more energy on developing those things.
Budd Bentley:I mean the problem statements were pretty clear, right. Everybody was frustrated with egg count accuracy. The risk of fire is high and jeopardizes the business, so the problem space was super clear, but you're never going to put anything out there if you don't spend the time and energy and resources on it. So we did that and we're starting to see the fruits of that labor in those new products, and we've got some even more exciting things coming, as you of course know, and I know that that's what Eric's passion is as well. Obviously that's where he comes from and I know that that will continue. So I'm very, very excited about what we have coming down the road, and more so even than the specific solutions, but the things we put in place to make sure we can sustain that, the resources we have, the processes we have and the vision that we have for what that future looks like in terms of technology is super exciting to a nerd like me.
Brandon Mulnix:You are a nerd, for sure. You can quote any type of movie. It's one of those fun things about you. So, over the past five years, what is something that you have overcome or a struggle that you've really had to get over the top of?
Budd Bentley:You want the whole list or just the top 10? Oh man, I don't know. That's the easy answer, Probably one that anyone would say was you know, starting a brand new career, basically a new job in a new industry with a new team. You know, days before COVID happened was certainly presented its challenges, but I don't even think about that in terms of being at the top because, I don't know, it almost gave me sort of a I don't know if excuse is the right word, but being the new guy and having all the interactions limited, and it almost gave me sort of a soft start versus being slammed into it, Right. So I, I don't know, I almost view that a little bit as a blessing and a curse. I would honestly say just acceptance from the team was, was huge for me.
Budd Bentley:I mean, if you think about the, the challenges that the company and the team was going through at that me, I mean if you think about the challenges that the company, the team, was going through at that time. I mean Doug had led for so long and Steven for so long before him and those two did an amazing job with just so in tuned with our customers. I mean, essentially, we're our customers, right, I mean literally born into the industry. And then Craig, obviously, with his vast experience and coming in and, by the way, I have to give Craig the credit for even starting project the concept of bringing project managers aboard at PMSI. Well, that was not my idea.
Budd Bentley:That was Craig and that was, in my mind, one of the most key developments in again maturing us as an organization. So following that was hard. Especially new guy don't even know what end of the chicken, the egg, comes out, essentially coming into a brand new industry. So no street cred whatsoever thrown into the mix. And I think starting to gain the team's trust in becoming a credible leader was the biggest challenge that I had to overcome. And I'd love to tell you that I have a secret recipe for that and I know exactly what contributed to that and how that happened, but I have no idea. But I'm thankful that it did.
Brandon Mulnix:Well, you overcame. I mean, you're leaving quite an incredible legacy here, with the processes in place, a management system that has set us up to lead the company as leaders, leadership, development, expansion. There's a lot of things that you're a little humble to not say, but there's so many things that you've been able to help lead us through Avian influenza from a manufacturing side, covid. These are all things that people take for granted because it was a blip in their radar. But this was at the start of your career in this industry. So I get the idea, cause I also, as the same time, came in new, new career, new job, new everything, new industry and and if it wasn't for this great industry, great people it probably would have been a much more difficult. So a lot, a lot of hats off to people that have reached out to you over the years, too, to help guide you and coach you from the industry as well. So, all right, what's next for Budd Bentley?
Budd Bentley:Yeah, so obviously very public information already that I'm making the transition, the jump over to Big Dutchman, succeeding Clovis as he retires and, of course, eric Hansen is taking over here at Prism. You mentioned the leadership framework or the business operating framework, eos, and I don't know that there's a lot of people that know that we utilize it, but I know some others in the industry utilize that framework as well and I always liked it right Because, again, process guy, it's a process and it's dead simple. Liked it right Because, again, process guy, it's a process and it's dead simple. Now, transitioning into big Dutchman, the value of it is immeasurable as we hand things off, because I'm not handing off something that's in my head which is super hard to do. Nobody wants to get in there anyway, trust me. But I'm handing off a plan that we have developed as a leadership team and as the whole team because of that framework and to be able to contrast that with going into Big Dutchman, where that framework doesn't exist, it's just a lot harder. Now, mind you, big Dutchman is also 10X the size and scale and scope, so there's a lot involved in that as well. But I think that the handoff to Eric is way easier than I ever imagined it would be because of that framework being in place.
Budd Bentley:But yeah, so stepping in the door at Big Dutchman, honestly I've been saying that and this week's been a daunting week, but I've been saying that I get more and more excited about it every day, and that excitement probably stems from the fact that I kind of see the same thing that I saw when I walked in the door here at Prism. Controls is a super passionate, intelligent team that works their asses off every day to make our customers successful, and just the challenges of not having that process in place. Now there are more processes at Big Dutchman than there were here, quite honestly, because the scale of the company just sort of dictates that. But there's so much that's not yet defined, so there's a lot of low hanging fruit. That again, I just think when I look at the team.
Budd Bentley:We can make people's lives better just by kind of writing it down and wrapping our minds around it, and so I get super excited when I think about doing that, and at the same time it's pretty daunting, right? I mean, Clovis is a hard act to follow. He has built an amazing team, he has tremendous respect within the industry, been around forever, and that's a tough act to follow. So I feel like I'm kind of thrown in that same boat again. At least now I have a little bit of street cred within the industry. But there's a lot to learn. It's daunting, for sure, but I'm excited about the challenge.
Brandon Mulnix:Well, they have a great team. They're growing. If you bring even 1% of the changes that you brought here at a scale of that company, it's going to make some huge improvements and the EOS system has from being on the leadership team. I love structure in that way to have a meeting that I know I'm going to go into and I know that it's going to follow an agenda and we're not just going to be talking about just anything, because what a waste of time. I've been in those meetings throughout my career in different places. Where you go in the meeting there's no agenda, there's nothing, and you're just absolutely like what did we accomplish here? No one leaves the room with a to-do list. Everybody is like yeah, yeah, this is what we talked about. And they leave the room and they don't even know what they agreed and the power of that through developing it here at this scale and being able to take that same philosophy.
Brandon Mulnix:That applies to a farm, because I've talked with a number of farmers that implement that EOS system and how they have the L10s and then they have it down to the different departments and divisions and how that just aligns the company. You know the simple things of values. So we're all saying the same thing. You know we come to work every day and we know these are the core values. And then measuring people by those core values is so huge and I love our core values. You know we always give Doug the credit for Shiva getter, you know, and and people like what the heck is that? But we know here what it means when you're walking through a room and you see a piece of trash on the floor and you pick it up and you put it away because you give a shit about this industry and about the company and it matters. That's the people that I want to work with, that's the people that we've hired, and and there's people that you know, probably over the time, don't feel they live up to the values and they go away from the company. And so those key factors that EOS has kind of helped us mature in, you didn't have experience in it, I didn't have experience in it, our team didn't.
Brandon Mulnix:I think we went from like eight, nine people in a meeting down to four, which was huge, just because it was able to really focus on what the company needed to do, because there's so many distractions and you're going to have even way more distractions over there than you had here, but let somebody else do that task so you can focus on something bigger, you know, such as maybe, taking out the trash. You know doing the simple things, because no job has been above you at all, like you're not above any job. You literally will do anything. Do the dishes, you know, take care of the, take care of the trash.
Brandon Mulnix:Like I said, you've been out on the shop floor, you've been in farms, I mean. So that's one of the things that's nice that you get to continue to take up, but you've got that many more people to do some of those things that you need to focus on the big stuff, which is what you're really, really good at. So, as we get ready to wrap up here, bud, you came into the industry you were new. You're fresh and new in the industry. You're getting ready to go into the next level of the industry. What advice do you have for somebody that's just getting started in this industry?
Budd Bentley:Oh, I don't know that I'm great at giving advice. I'm maybe great at just talking. So I'll just talk and we'll see whether that turns into anything useful. I always like to say and I don't say it because I think it has any benefit other than I really think it's true, farmers are the best customers they really are. I mean coming from the automotive industry where everything is so I'll use the word adversarial. I'll use the word adversarial not just the supplier-customer relationship, but even within the different OEMs.
Budd Bentley:They all have their own sort of culture and there's just such a different feel when you walk into a farm and you're sitting across the table from someone or you're out in the barn talking about real problems. It's just so refreshing not to have to spend mental energy thinking about gosh, what do they really mean? Or what are they really thinking, because they just tell you Whether it's good or bad. It's all great, because not having to spend mental energy on that means you can actually spend mental energy on solving a problem or making something better, making people's lives better. I think that maybe the advice there is just be present in those moments when you're talking not just to your customers but to anybody in the industry or on the farm, because you're hearing the real thing. You don't have to think about what does it mean or what are they trying to communicate, because generally, I think they're just communicating it. So don't miss it. Listen to it and then act on it right.
Budd Bentley:Farmers are based on action. Farmers are the original innovators, so we got to do things and being able to focus your mental energy on okay, I heard what they said. Let's go solve it. It's unique. I will say it's unique in this industry. So pay attention to those things and then get out there and do something. Maybe that's my advice.
Brandon Mulnix:No, that's great advice. That's great advice because, living that out over the last five years as myself, it's true, I mean we talk about how great our customers are, but the fact that they're all out there to feed the world Very simple, very simple product it's an egg Chicken does most of the work. The farmer manages to make sure the chicken is doing that work and giving them the best environments and all that. But it's interesting because, again, when you're talking with them, they're not worried about the farm down the street, they're worried about the bird, they're worried about their people. They're worried about the same things that we talk about here, as the important pieces is how do we help the farmers feed the world? It's not about us, it's about them feeding the world and it's ultimately about the chicken feeding the world. And how can we have more of those chickens feeding the world? Because that's what makes the world a better place the food, the nutrition.
Brandon Mulnix:And when you were talking about automotive, I'm thinking well, how did you change the world with the vanity mirror and the car? I'm sure there's some women out there that would really appreciate that, where, yeah, that vanity mirror has saved them with a lot of things. But in the case of the industry that we're in, the industry that you're going to continue in, and a new role with a great company that we get to continue to interact with. We're excited because here is our leader that's helped us grow, go up to the next level and then pull a lot of ideas and pull a lot of the things that we've been working really hard on into that next level for us where we can continue to grow.
Brandon Mulnix:It's one thing to have the farmers as our market here in the US, but there's people outside the US that really want what we have to offer and yet over the years it's hard to start that business down that road. But to have the experience of big Dutchman who does it every day, it's really nice to have that. And so for you to be able to say, hey, I know a company that does that, hey, I know a company that does that, and how can we better serve the industry and help us scale up in that way? So but I want to thank you for being a guest on the podcast. It really means a lot. I had to get you in before you get too busy over in Holland and I don't get a chance to see you much. We've had a great five years. It's been fun.
Budd Bentley:I've enjoyed it as well, Brandon, and you're too late. I'm already very busy.
Brandon Mulnix:Well, as I mean, I have to say you know, you've been more than a boss. You've been a friend, a colleague. We've grown together, we've fought the fight together and it's been just absolute pleasure looking forward to next chapters, to see you be successful, see how we continue to grow as well. And so, listeners, it's not every day that we get a leader that's in transition on the show. It's always the scary time We've learned, because now the transition's not one day from the 15th to the 16th. It's been over a period of months. It's been a plan that's been coming for over a year and then that's helped the transition all the way down through the company. So nobody's surprised on October 1st when we have officially a new president here. But he's been doing the work for the last six months and everybody's just kind of flowing. So thank you, listeners.
Brandon Mulnix:I don't have to really share anything much about Prism Controls, because this whole episode is about Prism Controls. But again, this episode wouldn't be possible without Prism Controls and the fact that they believe in bringing you the industry knowledge that is more than just about technology, but about leadership, about some of the things that we've been learning and sharing it. Knowledge is not about keeping it for yourself. Knowledge is about sharing it with the industry, so thank you, prism Controls, for doing that. Please like share? Share this podcast with others. It's how it grows, continues to find more people, new people in the industry that are learning, so I couldn't do it without you listeners. So listeners, have a great day.
