Stine Seedcast EP 10 - Women in Ag: Susanne (Kinzenbaw) Veatch

Thanks so much for having me.

Okay. Well, I grew up in rural Iowa, near Williamsburg, Iowa, which is where our family business is. And I grew up on a row crop farm. We didn't have any livestock, just crops, and then of course we had the family business.

Uh, graduated from Iowa State University.

You know, it's interesting. College is obviously a great experience, and I think a must-have for anyone who's able to do it. You know, I think college teaches us a lot about teamwork and learning foundations, but when it comes to getting into the workplace, as for me anyway, when I joined the workforce out of college, you know, there's a lot to learn on the job that college doesn't ever prepare us for in a lot of ways. So, you know, what I liked about Iowa State is it's an agricultural campus, you know, as well as they do a lot of other great things there, very good in business. I went down the business path just because I felt it better suited me for one day likely joining our family business. But I like the fact that, you know, we rubbed shoulders with the ag and, you know, more rural farming fellow students. Just a different atmosphere, I think, than even you feel at, say, the University of Iowa, which, you know, I live in Iowa City, so I live in the other Iowa college community, but I always just enjoyed the atmosphere at Iowa State. It's a beautiful campus, it's got the ag background, and just a lot of great kids and professors that I met along the way throughout the process there.

I've had a number of different mentors along the way. You know, growing up I was always very close to my mom, and my mom is someone that I've always really respected and been able to talk to really about anything. And so, you know, growing up I had a great relationship with my mom and my dad, but, you know, from a female standpoint, my mom as a mentor on, you know, what a female is, what a mom is, what a wife is, you know, my mom was a great role model for our family. And she was always very actively involved in, you know, whatever we were doing as a family too, whether it be the business or home life. So then, you know, as I got older, I've had different mentors along the way that have been mentors for, you know, more the business side of things. And I've had a couple really great female mentors that have just been great at teaching me, you know, some of the finer tuning details of just, again, things college doesn't prepare you for, with dealing with people of different types of personalities. Like, for example, I'm a pretty direct personality, and, you know, I'm not shy about speaking my mind when needed. And for someone that's more of an introvert or a processor, that can be a more difficult communication. And I've always liked and enjoyed people and interacting with people, all kinds of different people, even ones that are very different from me. And so my one mentor really helped me with how to understand the different types of personality styles and how to adapt and adjust my style to someone who's very opposite of me. And especially in my role, when you're the owner of a company and very involved in the business, it can be intimidating for me to give my opinion or an idea to someone that's maybe a little more introverted and that's not on the management team. So that helped me a lot early on when I came back and joined the business. And then I've had different female mentors and role models along the way, people that I highly respect that have helped me through different situations when I've got business challenges where I need to just bounce something off of someone that's not within the business and on how you kind of think through and approach some of the different things that may be more people-related or whatever the challenge might be. So I've been very fortunate because not everyone has that along the way, to have those people in their lives that are very vested in me as a person and people that I can talk to and share my thoughts and ideas and opinions with and get advice from.

Yeah, you know, I think growing up we were just so immersed in agriculture through the business, through our family farm operation, that it was a part of our life and what we did. And so I guess I never really imagined doing something completely different. At the same time, I always thought I would come back and work for the business, but my dad had always said, you know, if you want to come back, then you go be successful elsewhere first, and that will give people more of a respect for you when you come back to the business. And I think that was really great advice because going and working for someone else and kind of establishing who I am and my abilities in a role that's not a family business, you know, I went to work for a very large business out of college, Caterpillar, and that was a really great experience for me in a lot of ways. I worked for a very large global business that had multiple sites and, at the time, they had seventy-five thousand plus employees and were growing. And then when I did come back to our business, it really helped reinforce in me the appreciation that I had in our business and our people. You know, I always knew we had something very unique here at Kinze, just in our people and how we do things and the products that we have, but to really grasp and understand and appreciate that, I don't think I fully 100 percent did until I went and worked for another large manufacturer. And you learn the side of really large business and the side of small business, and there's obviously pros and cons both ways, but just that added appreciation of just the really great people and company that we are and that we have here at Kinze.

Yeah, I mean, I would say yes and no. You know, growing up my dad just always included me in whatever he was doing. I love being outside with him, and it didn't really matter what he was doing, whether it was in a bulldozer moving dirt or out in business meetings. In the summer I spent a lot of summers where I'd come to work with him and sit in meetings with him or spend part of the day with him as I grew up. So I think I was so immersed in it that I really didn't think about it as male or female in terms of occupation. I mean, obviously farming back when I was growing up was more male-involved probably as far as career-wise, but there are a lot of women I met along the way that were very involved in their family farm operation too. So I think, you know, for me, there's probably less pressure on a daughter following her footsteps than maybe a son. You know, for someone like my dad that is very gifted with ideas and creativity and very gifted with his hands and ability to build something from nothing and see in things possibility and potential that others can't, just because he's gifted at looking at things and coming up with new ideas and better ideas and better ways to make things work, so I think there was probably less pressure on me as a daughter of outside expectations on what they thought I should be or be doing. So I didn't really feel that pressure or that sense of, wow, I've got to follow my dad's footsteps and be exactly like him and do exactly what he's doing in the business. So I've never really felt that way. I mean, I'm mechanically minded and I understand how things work and I know how to operate equipment and use our products. And, you know, I started driving tractors when I was barely walking. My dad's an avid antique tractor collector, and one of the first tractors he had was a little Farmall that has the wide rear axle. And so he put a seat on the wide side of the axle beside the driver's seat, and he'd put me up on there, and he even rigged it so I had my own brake and clutch pedal and taught me how to shift the gears and let the clutch out slowly and drive that tractor. And then by about age seven I was moving his pickup truck around the farm, not out on the roads, but just around the farm if he needed it moved from point A to point B because he was moving a tractor or a piece of equipment. And then of course I was driving the big tractor and grain cart, you know, probably eight, nine, and ten years old, by age ten by myself. So I grew up just in that environment of not being afraid to learn how things work and how to operate them. And so I guess it was just a part of what we did as a family, and I never really thought about it as something I am doing because I'm female or something I wouldn't do because I'm female. I never really thought of it that way. It was just a part of our lives and our family.

Yeah, so if I were telling someone that didn't know anything about Kinze who we are and what we do, I would tell them that we're a manufacturer of row crop planters, grain carts, and high-speed tillage in the agricultural industry. We've got about 650 employees worldwide. Our headquarters are in Williamsburg, Iowa, and then we've got factory offices in Vilnius, Lithuania, that serves our Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia customers. We're a family-owned business, and I'm the second generation involved in the family business. And as far as what defines who we are, our culture, those are defined by our core values. Back in the 90s, one of the guys that came to work for my dad in management and had worked for him a number of years said, you know, John and Marsha, there's some really unique things about Kinze and the culture and the company and the people and the way you founded the business, and it'd be really great if you guys were able to write down on paper and define what you would call our core values. So my parents went on a family vacation that year to, I believe, Florida, and they drove their motorhome. And so they talked a lot about that, and my dad drove and my mom wrote, and they came up with five core values that they felt really were how they started the business and what continues to define us and what should continue to define us as we move forth so long as we own it as a family. And those are integrity, customer focus, excellence, innovation, and mutual respect. And, you know, I think something that's interesting about those values is a lot of companies will create values and put them on the website and post them for all to see when they come and visit, but you might go visit a company and say, well, I don't really see this modeled anywhere here, but those are nice words on paper. And I think one thing that's always very rewarding for me and for us as a family is when we have people come to Kinze, we have many interview candidates that will come here and interview, and before they leave they will say, hey, these core values that I learned about today, this was modeled in all the people that I interacted with, and I think it's really cool that you guys live these values and they're not just nice words on paper. So it's really rewarding to hear that when someone comes to Kinze and says, I have seen this in how people operate. And it's something that we instill in all of our people that this is how we want them to do business so long as they're working for Kinze. And obviously if you don't have integrity then nothing else matters, right? Because you're not trusted, and there's all kinds of things that happen once integrity is lost. So that's been something that's always been very important to us as a family from a values standpoint. I was raised where our faith in God was the foundation of our values, and that values like honesty and hard work ethic, treating others with respect, having a positive attitude, and having urgency to get things done and bring things to completion, you know, things like that were just part of the values of who my parents were as a family and how we were taught to be. So again, that feeds right into the business. We've got to have integrity in all that we do. And then as you look at what got my dad in the business, it was really understanding what challenges does a farmer have in the field, what problem needs solved or fixed, and how can we do things better. And that emphasis on customer focus, the customer coming in saying I have this problem or this frustration, I wish I could do X, Y, Z, but there's nothing out there that will do X, Y, Z, and that resulted in the grain cart with large flotation tires that Kinze is known for having first in the industry, and today all the grain carts in the market have essentially copied that design. You look at excellence, when if you were to come and visit us here at Kinze and tour our innovation center, our offices, our factory, I think you would see and people often comment just the excellence they see, not only in the construction of the buildings, like our innovation center, we constructed that ourselves, we made the large open-span beams and columns and rolled the siding for it, and then when we added on to it we added some stone and nicer-looking fascia on the outside, but the core of that building we constructed ourselves and we made the great big steel beams. And if you were to come and walk through our office, while we didn't fabricate our office, we repeated that type of steel beam column structure, that open structure you can see throughout the building. And again, it's part of who we are as manufacturers of heavy equipment made out of metal. And as you walk through the factory, seeing that things have a place and order and organization, we don't always do that well, but for the most part we try to keep it neat and orderly so things go back where they belong, things can be found. That's just that excellence that kind of permeates not only who we are organizationally but in the product we build. We build products that are known for their durability and for their excellence. And then of course innovation, the creativity and ideas and patents that we've had in our products, I think that's been very evident over the years. And then that last one, mutual respect, just really respecting other people, and I think that's one thing that makes our company so great is we don't get really hung up on titles here at Kinze. I mean, we have to have them structurally, but my dad, if you were to meet him in public on the street, you'd just think he was a normal farmer, like other farmers you meet that are just really great friendly people. And he's a man that's obviously a business owner and created this great business that we have, but you wouldn't necessarily know that when you first meet him because he's just a common down-to-earth person, drives a Chevy pickup truck, just like any farmer you'd see. So I think that too with our organization, as owners we're not afraid to roll up our sleeves and work alongside our people, and every position is important, from the janitor to the executive level, and so we really try to reinforce throughout that no one person is more important than another. It takes all of us working together to make a great product and to do what we do. So I think as we look back to the original question you asked, who is Kinze and what defines us, I think that's a really important part, those five core values of our culture and who we are and how we do business. And then there's the obvious part of yes we make product, but I think that's what uniquely differentiates us, are those values, because you see that even in the product and how we interact with farmers in the marketplace. We're not afraid to talk to farmers, and we love to have farmers come here and visit us and get their ideas and understand what isn't working too. It's important to know what frustrates them about our product, what doesn't work like they think it should, because we want to take that feedback and make it better as a result. And it's that ongoing feedback that we need to have as we design and build product.

Yeah, I think that would be a true statement to some degree. I mean, we've in the office always had female employees, and obviously we've grown a lot over the years, but even out in manufacturing we have more and more female employees, which is interesting too because years ago, and I don't know as far as just comparing our company with others we toured, there were a lot of manufacturing companies where they weren't friendly work environments for women and you had a lot of crazy things go on, maybe with employees that shouldn't have, just maybe some not respecting women like they should. And I know one thing about Kinze that has been true ever since we've had the business is my dad's always made it very clear, especially out in the factory, that it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, or what race or nationality background you have, we all need to be treated with respect, and that we weren't going to have any tolerance for any negativity of one person negatively treating or calling another person, name calling, that sort of thing. And he years ago used to tour places, you'd see girly-type calendars that were demeaning to women, and my dad always said we aren't going to have any of that in our factory. It's going to be a place where people are comfortable to come through no matter who they are, what their background is. So I think for us, and as a manufacturing environment maybe has become more female-friendly over the years too, we're seeing more and more women apply even to work out in the factory for some of the various jobs we have. And then as we look at different interns, we have a lot of interns especially in our engineering group, and over the years we've had some female engineers come through the rotation too, which is neat to see. So I think it's becoming more prevalent that agriculture is a friendly place for women, when it was maybe thought as more of a man's environment or world years ago. So it's great to see more women going into college careers that are agricultural-related, because they want to work in agriculture or they want to come back to the family farm. I recently met a gal that has her own farming operation, and that's more rare and unique, but again it's great to see a young gal that says, hey, I want to carry on the family farm operation, I'm going to run it as a daughter of my dad that had the farming operation before, and the next generation. So that's cool to see when you see the female-run farms as well, which we're occasionally seeing now too.

I think for a female going into the ag industry, one of the things that I've seen over the years that maybe hasn't, maybe has caused some friction as you look at men versus women in ag, is if a female comes in insecure, know-it-all, not respecting others, then that's obviously going to create tension with anybody you work with. But I would say what I've seen in the past when there's been tensions because someone is a female, it is more because there's maybe an attitude of insecurity or whatever. So my advice is, and what's always worked for me, is I don't really think of myself as, okay, I'm a female in ag. I just think of myself as a fellow human being working with other fellow human beings. It's not about necessarily, I mean yes I'm female, but am I in this role because I'm female? Well, no, I'm in this role because I love what I do and it's what I grew up with. So I think for a woman entering ag, my advice would be what's served me well is listening and learning from others and being respectful and just having a good can-do attitude. I think those things really serve well. And of course having integrity, and no matter what we do, like I said before, that's part of our core values. It's to have an individual mindset of integrity and how we operate and treat people, because that creates trust in others in how they work and relate with us. So I think those things, along with just a good hard work ethic, because all of us in ag, ag is hard work, but it's fun and rewarding at the same time. And so I think if you have a good attitude and a good work ethic and respect others and have integrity, I think those are the things that will serve young females well entering the world of ag.

Yeah, it's definitely a challenge, and I guess I'm thankful that I was gifted with the ability to stay relatively organized and multitask. My husband and I, we waited until we were married about 13 years before we had our first child, because we were both involved with our businesses, so we waited a little bit later in life to start having kids. And in those early years of marriage when we were both growing our businesses, it was more conducive to being able to work more hours that were needed at the time for where the businesses were at. But yet we still made time for each other and to do things and get away from work. When I first came back to the company, it wasn't unusual for me to put in 50, 60-hour weeks, both at the office and with things that I would be doing at home after hours and on weekends. And there were times I would be back in here on the weekends, and that was needed and very much something I had to do those early years. But part of that work we did over the years, really bringing in the right leaders that can help carry on the vision and the mindset, we just got a great team of leaders in our company. And so now that we have two young children at home, a seven and five-year-old, it's really allowed for, while I'm still involved in the business and we still have a farming operation and he still has his business, I don't have to work the horrendous hours consistently like I used to. So it's a much better balance. And one of the things that was great when I was growing up is my parents always included my brother and me in whatever they were doing, and we do the same with our girls. So when we do need to be out and about and doing things, if I need to come out here on a Saturday because we're working some overtime in the factory, I'll oftentimes bring them with me, and they love to come. They love to come to the office and be out here when I'm out here. So we've really immersed our girls too in just doing whatever we're doing, and the important part is that we're being together as a family and that I do have time that we just focus on them and put the work and the stuff aside. But I think as a whole we do that pretty well. There's always a lot of balls in the air in our household, but my husband and I always joke to each other that life wouldn't be fun and exciting if we didn't have a lot of balls in the air, and that's just something we've been used to since day one of our marriage. It was something different for my husband because he didn't grow up in a family business, but we dated five years before we married and he got used to being around my family and just the randomness, you know, you might think you're doing X, Y, Z on a weekend and then all of a sudden plans might shift and you do something completely different. But he found that fun and exciting to just be doing different things and having a lot of variety, and he loves that today. Otherwise it probably would have driven him crazy. But at the same time, you do have to be careful to balance things because it's easy as a business owner to just be constantly thinking about the business, and that's not healthy either. It's important to focus on the business, but it's also important to focus on the family time together, and we do try to balance that.

Well, it's kind of interesting. I do like to travel, and we travel as a family and we go different places. Our girls like to go different places. Probably one of the most relaxing things we do as a family is where my husband and I live, we've got 600 acres of timber and farmland connected to our property, and we've got ATVs. And so in the warm weather months we spend a lot of time outside, and our girls love to ride the ATVs with us, and we've got a whole bunch of trails that go through our timber. And honestly, what I find the most relaxing, I used to find it more relaxing to just get away and go somewhere, and maybe more so when it was just my husband and I because it's easier to travel with two than four, even though our girls do travel well. But I find it most relaxing to just be outdoors and go out in the timber. It's like you're out in the country and you're out in nature, and we've got farmland that surrounds that, and then of course in the spring and fall we're planting and harvesting, and our girls like to ride along with that as well. But I find it most relaxing when the weather's nice to be outdoors and in the fresh air. We do a little gardening and it seems like we've always got some different type of outdoor projects that we're doing. But I find that most relaxing. And then in the winter months when the weather isn't as conducive to being outside, I'm an avid reader. I read a lot of different books, whether fiction or non-fiction, I have a variety of things that I like to read. So I spend more time with what little free time I have doing some reading in the winter months. And then we just enjoy being with people and friends, so we'll incorporate friends in whatever we're doing too. A wide variety of things we like to do, some boating and outdoor recreation that way. So I guess I would say if it involves nice weather and being outside, there's just a variety of things that we enjoy doing.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah, that's a tough one because I enjoy using all the equipment, whether we're planting or harvesting or doing tillage. Tillage is kind of somewhat mindless where there's not a lot to it. Of course, planting has become pretty efficient as well, there's just more to watch and pay attention to when you're planting, unlike tillage. So they each have their different unique aspects. Probably one of my favorite seasons is fall. I've always enjoyed fall and harvest, and just the weather and the colors of the changing leaves and being out in a combine or a tractor and grain cart in the fall. So that's a tough one because I enjoy using all the equipment. Planting is probably the most rewarding because you get to see once you've planted the crop, seeing it emerge and the beautiful crop as it's growing is really rewarding. But at the same time it's also rewarding to see it come out of the field in the fall and know that you've got a good harvest and getting ready for the next year.

Thanks so much for having me. It's been great talking with you both.