In this special bonus episode of Ruminate This, we kick off our “Meet the Team” series, where you’ll get to know the people behind the scenes who help drive success at Agrarian Solutions. Hosted by Scott Zehr, this episode features an insightful conversation with Nick Bradley, Agrarian’s Director of Operations.
Nick shares about his journey from marketing to agriculture, his role in ensuring smooth operations, and his passion for family and faith. Tune in as Scott and Nick dive into the company culture, teamwork, and how Agrarian prioritizes people-to-people relationships in the B2B world. This episode offers an inside look at the values and people that make Agrarian thrive. Tune in for some great stories and insights!
🎧 Listen now to set your herd up for lifelong success!
Scott.
Hey, welcome back to ruminate this with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And I’m excited because, we are going to do kind of a new little series that these are going to be some episodes that, we’re going to make available to you.
And, it’s called Meet the Team here at Agrarian. One of the things that I think we find important here, is our core values, and I’ve talked about them on this platform, that acronym RISE: Relational, Integrity, Strategic, and Excellence. And, I’d like to say that, me personally and us at Agrarian, I believe we’re on a mission if you would, to make B2B sales more, you know, P2P person to person.
Because, as I mentioned to Mark Carpenter in our very first episode, empowering livestock professionals, you show me a successful business and I will show you the amazing men and women behind the scenes that actually make it happen. This idea of B2B sales is kind of crazy to me because at the end of the day, B2B can’t happen without people.
And so that’s why I’m excited to bring you the people of Agrarian. Today we have our director of operations. Nic Bradley joining us on Ruminate This. Nic, welcome, man.
Nic
Thank you. Glad to be here.
Scott
So, I joke, Nic, that, Director of Operations, right, that, do I have the title right?
Director? Yes. Nic, in one of my first former, employments, man, a long time ago, long before I worked professionally in agriculture, I was an operation. I was an assistant operations manager. That was my job title.
Nic
Okay.
Scott
So Nic, I know a little bit of how you feel when you have to wear 17 different hats throughout the day. Um, but, Nic, I wanted to dive in with you. And, number one, Nic does a one heck of a job for us at agrarian. If you’re placing an order with Agrarian, Nic is probably having some, part of that, whether it’s, making sure we have product available and scheduled. And I’m going to let Nic dive into some of that stuff and how that kind of works in the background.
But first Nic, I want to just throw this one out to you. Who is Nic Bradley and, how long have you been with Agrarian?
Nic
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, Nic Bradley, I’ve lived in Northern Indiana my entire life. So, been married for 19 years to my wife, Cassie, and we have two daughters, 14 and 12 years old, Emerson and Bailyn.
And I can’t say who I am without mentioning them first. It’s a big part of my, of my life and who I am. And then, love family, love friends and enjoy a lot of sports. So that’s a lot of who I am. And I came to Agrarian in 2016. So, and I think in October, I’m coming up on eight years. Yeah.
Scott
Wow.
Nic
Yeah. I mean, it flies, but came from a marketing background, ran my own small company, a family company and marketing. And came to the agriculture world with no background at all. So very interesting. It’s been a fun ride so far learning all the different terminology for sure.
Scott
Oh, you know, I have to mention this, Nic. Nic mentions he didn’t come from an ag background and then he comes to Agrarian and, one of our distributors in the U S right.
One of our, I guess our main distributor in the US, if you would, Select Sires. So we’ve had a long relationship with Select Sires for a lot of years. You can find our point of sale products like the CA3 BioFresh bolus, calcium boluses, the Convert gel. You can find that, typically through your Select Cellular’s rep.
Nick, can you just describe for the audience a little bit what went through your head the first time you saw a video of somebody artificially inseminating a cow?
Nic
Well, I don’t know. I don’t really even know what to say. All I just remember, I think, so eight years ago, I would have been 35 ish. And, I remember blushing, the first time I saw that and was surprised because I had zero background and how that worked and what was going on.
But our, vice president of operations at the time, brought me over to show me that video to show me what our distributor does. I was like, wow, what did I sign myself up for? It’s actually a really cool thing that, they do. And it’s, it’s been fun getting to learn some of that lingo for sure.
Scott
Yeah, for sure. Feel free to take a shot at me if you want. Folks, this might happen off camera too, but we’ll see. You mentioned your wife, Cassie and your two girls and, you know, Nic, it was impressed on me when I first, kind of came to the company and got to know you a little bit.
The dedication you have to Agrarian, I think is remarkable. But, the more I’ve gotten to know you, you’re a man of, family and a man of faith. So I’d, like to ask you to talk about that a little bit too.
Nic
Yeah, it’s just such a big thread throughout my life.
Thankfully had family that’s kind of raised me that way to know what it means to be a part of a family and to have faith in a bigger purpose, you know, something bigger than myself. And that’s, a big part of my life right now. And I’m thankful that agrarian is a place made up of a bunch of people with the same value system.
By no means do they have to, but it seems like that’s the kind of people that have come to work here. They have a faith background and have, a belief in a purpose bigger than themselves. And they hold their family in high regard.
And, I’m thankful that Agrarian places an emphasis on giving us the opportunity to realize that there’s things outside of our work. They’re very important to us. And that we have the time to spend time with the ones that we love and have good friends and get a relationships not only within the company, but outside of it as well.
Scott
I would second that, Nic, and, what I’ll say to that, so Rob Hamacher, who would be my direct supervisor, he’d be our, vice president of sales in the U.S. When I came on board, I have some extracurricular activities, as I would call them, with a couple of small businesses up here, and, I mentioned that to Rob, and I said, “how do you feel about that?”
He said, if you’re, I am probably paraphrasing a bit, but we’ve all heard the saying, happy wife, happy life. Kind of that same mentality. He said, “Scott, if you’re happy at home, you’re going to work good for me.” So he said, “if you’re totally consumed day in and day out with everything agrarian all the time, you go nuts.”
And I appreciated that. And a little bit was like, okay, is he just saying that to get me here? But it’s true. It is very true. I mean, I can remember, our old colleague, Greg, much more politic and, to have a company meeting up here so I could cook chicken for you guys. You know, it’s just, um, so there’s, you know, there’s always been that part of it. I think we’re both pretty blessed to work for a company that believes in the people.
Nic
Yeah.
Scott
So Nic, I wanted to ask you, you know, as somebody, you obviously don’t have an ag background other than the last eight years with Agrarian, but I guess, why do you find it rewarding or fulfilling, if you would, to now be working in agriculture and what do you think is special about it?
Nic
Yeah, it’s really interesting. I mean, spending the first 35 years of my life not having much of that at all, even though it’s always been around me. I’ve lived in, northern Indiana kind of farmland, but I just, for whatever reason, didn’t have a whole lot of connections in that area. But the people, I mean, it’s always the people, right?
It always comes down to that. You mentioned it earlier in our talk here about, you know, from business to business, to P2P. Person to person, people to people. And a lot of shared values across the agriculture world of what’s important to people. And for the most part, what I’ve seen is it’s a bunch of people that care about other people and wanting to help other people succeed.
You know, whoever that is in their sphere of influence, I would say the lion’s share of people genuinely want to help others. And that’s been pretty cool to experience over the last eight years.
Scott
So, you mentioned Mark Lance, is who brought you to Agrarian. I guess I would let you maybe tell the story of you and Mark, how that all came together if you’d like.
But then also a step further, who are some, I guess, mentors that you’ve had throughout your career, whether it’s since coming to Agrarian or just in general. And, the second part of that question is what kind of things did you learn from your mentors that, you feel was so impactful?
Nic
Yeah, I’ll start with the Mark question. And, I’ve known Mark and the Lance family for 20 years, probably. Got to be pretty close with one of his sons through basketball. We went to the same college. And part of a ministry that his son runs. And through that, I remember, you know, I said earlier, I ran my own company for 11 years and I thought I’d be there forever.
But I remember telling my wife, told Cassie at one point, if I were ever to leave to go do something else, just to learn and grow somewhere else, it would be for Mark Lance. You know, I didn’t even know what he really did at the time, but I just had so much respect for him as a man of faith. It seemed like, you know, good husband, a good father, and a good businessman from what I could see.
And it was crazy. Cause within like, I think three to six months of saying that to my wife, I got this call from Mark or an email actually got an email from Mark saying that they were looking to fulfill a position on director of operations and it was a tough, tough choice in my life at the time, but I thought it was the right one and pretty cool to see how that all worked out and he’s been a mentor ever since.
So I directly reported to him for the last seven years. And learned a lot of his role, over that time. But the integrity that he has always walked with and what you see is what you get. And that’s a really, a respected person. He does business the right way. He treats people the right way. And he’s taught me a lot of those lessons, so.
It just leads into, you know, my mentors or my life. I’ve had either, whether it’s close friends, Or a couple other people that I can think of that have mentored me. And it’s just people with those same values of, you know, faith and family are a big deal. Making sure you keep the right things, the right things. And you keep, you know, your relationship with God and your relationship with your spouse and others first and other things will kind of fall into place.
And we can all get off path a little bit here and there, but just those guardrails to kind of always kind of keep us… mentally in that area. So, my dad was certainly and my mom. They both ran a small business for they still are running it and they’re 70 years old. They’ve been doing it for probably about 45 – 50 years now.
And I always saw that with my dad worked in mom. They worked so hard. But they were every single event we had, you know, my dad coached me and baseball and basketball and soccer and they were just, always available. And so I’ve tried to live that same thing out in my life as I’m raising my own daughters now and trying to coach them when I can.
And although they’re getting past my levels and abilities now to coach, I think. But, yeah, so a lot of mentors that have instilled that in me for sure.
Scott
Yeah, that’s awesome. You get a chance to, I mean this really with, a slight level of, it’s not jealousy, but you work in our corporate office, right?
So when you get to go to work, you actually go work with people that also work for Agrarian, right? So many of us are remote. We’re spread out through all parts of the country, uh, Ohio, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, so on and so on. What’s the camaraderie like within the office?
Nic
It’s really good. So we’ve got a small office.
There’s only a few of us here. But it’s tight knit. We work hard, but we also laugh and joke and, have good relationships in here. And we honestly, we’ve got a RISE sign. You mentioned our core values. Relational, integrity, Strategic, Excellence. And we’ve got this big sign on the wall and you walk in and we do bring it up.
We talk about it amongst our team here in the office and how we handle customer complaints when they come along.
Scott
And, we never have any of those though.
Nic
I mean, there’s so few and far between, but we honestly don’t. We’ve got really great customers we work with. But when those things do pop up, how we handle them and, you know, we’ve just got a really good camaraderie here in the office and we have a lot of fun.
Scott
How close are Kelby and Mary sitting to you right now? I’m just kidding.
Nic
About 10 feet away.
Scott
If you’ve ever called the, agrarian office, Kelby or Mary or Nick has probably answered the phone. And, my experience, as it really, it makes it easy for somebody in my position out in the field to, if I have a question I can call and I don’t have to be like, well, hey, I need to ask somebody this question.
I can just ask the question. And if Mary doesn’t know, or Kelby doesn’t know, they just figure it out. It’s easy to see from the outside, looking towards the office, it’s a pretty well oiled machine. And then I think that speaks a lot about, I’m going to say the level of efficiency with which we operate at Agrarian, which I, think, for the size of our company and the size of the personnel that we have, which in my opinion is relatively small for our footprint, it doesn’t happen unless things are well at the office.
Nic
Yeah.
Scott
And, I think you’ve been a big part of building that culture. I also, Nic, I want to have you talk a little bit about, an author that you and I both admire, Simon Sinek, in a book, Start With Why. How has that helped the evolution of teamwork within Agrarian?
Nic
Yeah, it’s a really good question. You know, I, not too long ago, I told somebody it’s pretty special to, you know, I’m working in an agriculture company. But we’ve had both you and I have had the opportunity to lead these why workshops, which when you mentioned Simon Sinek, that’s what he’s known for is the why behind what you do. And not so much the what and how those things are important, obviously, but it starts with why, right? And I think it has, it’s built our culture within at Agrarian and then also serving our distributors. And being able to do some of those white workshops with, with our distributors and the people that are, working with us closely.
But, I think to a person on our team, everybody knows their why, you know? Whether most of them would probably even have it off the top of their head, they could cite their, their purpose, you know? Which is really cool. You don’t see that in a lot of companies. But I think it’s just a common thread that’s run throughout the entire company.
It makes us close. It makes us understand that even when we’re having a really tough day, we can kind of fall back on that purpose. You know, mine is to, I exist to listen, encourage, serve, develop, and bring people together for a common purpose so that they feel loved by God and valued by others. And when you, or when I want to reply in a, in such a way, that’s not so, uh, befitting of a good company culture.
I actually do think about that sometimes. I take a second, breathe here before you respond with it to phone call, or it’s an email back. How am I going to talk? I don’t always get it right, but I do try to think of that. And I think our people do that. You know, all the Agrarian folks do that.
Scott
I tell you when you were in the workshop with us as a team, I think if, somebody hasn’t done a why workshop, you know and, and kind of figure that part out. I’ll say in my own experience, prior to doing it, you kind of had, it was like, you do these things or you interact with a customer in a certain way, right?
And you realize that you have some guiding principles, what you believe and, you know. I always say, wake up and, go about it the right way every day. More often than not, it’s going to be okay. Take the high road, that kind of stuff. But, doing the why workshop and actually understanding why you’re here transcends my role at Agrarian or my former employer when I worked there.
Any, any of that you can… Now that I understand that it makes a lot more sense. And, to quote Simon as the, clarity of why increases, the overwhelm decreases. Yeah. And it makes total sense. Yes. Makes total sense.
You mentioned basketball, and we were talking before we started recording here, you’re doing some home remodeling, that kind of stuff. But, you know, what, what other things are you into? And, I know, North Carolina, I know. But.
Nic
Yes. I mean, I guess I consider myself a pretty simple man.
I, don’t have a ton of extracurricular hobbies and stuff. I honestly love spending time with my family, church, relationships. Sports. I do watch my fair share of sports and it’s, you know, a lot of basketball, a lot of football, those two sports, some golf here and there.
That’s kind of what I spend my time doing. So it’s work and family and friends and, some sports sprinkled in there. And that’s kind of what I’m about. So, yeah.
Scott
Awesome. I guess to wrap this up, Nic, I think the folks that are probably listening to this, I’m imagining there’s, going to be some, entrepreneurs like dairymen, cattle ranchers across the globe.
There’s going to be, you know, maybe nutrition or veterinary professionals that either run their own business or work within an organization. I think of you as somebody that has a lot of interesting insights to, not just Agrarian but agriculture because of the benefit of not growing up in being, I’m going to say, growing up with biases, with an agriculture, but we’ve talked a little, bit about the culture and the, the team there at the office.
And you mentioned the team in general here at Agrarian. If you were to give advice to somebody that’s, building a team, or trying to cultivate a better culture of teamwork in their organization. What would be some, I’m going to say guiding principles that they should be thinking about?
Nic
Sure. Well, I think you said it a minute ago, and I think that’s when we can get clear on our why, you know, it kind of starts there. So individually just look inwardly. Spend some time, get down your personal why, write down your own personal core values. You know, I’ve got a couple of different sticky notes by my computer.
One’s my personal why, another one’s my own personal core values too, of being a servant, humbly helping people. Kindness, which means to radically listen with empathy, being mission. So faithfully committed to purpose and then, steadiness. So it’s just staying level, you know, no matter how the company goes, how the people around me are responding to stay level.
And so I think, any opportunity, we all work with people, right? Some more so than others, like you and our Agrarian team, a lot of you guys are out serving nutritionists, you’re serving our distributors. I see myself as opportunities to serve our team. So I’m always looking for opportunities to help Scott’s there be successful.
Chad Christensen be successful. Rob Hammacher, all the people on our team, Kelby and Mary. What are things I can do? And I think that’s where it starts as you’re growing a culture of teamwork is really trying to put other people first and think, how can I serve these people? How can I make things easier for the people that I’m working with?
Don’t always get it right, but I think it starts with listening. I heard someone say one time, there’s a reason God gave us two ears and one mouth. We should be listening twice as much as we talk. And, try to take that challenge every once in a while and, and really be present and listen to the people that are talking.
Scott
Yeah, and that’s that’s something I’m going to say, Nic, that you do a tremendous job of. I’ve noticed that over the years and that’s something that I’d say if, when I look at myself and, I think there’s times where I know I can be a really good listener and I am. I need to practice that a little more often myself.
So, it’s nice that I have somebody like yourself to kind of set the example, if you would internally, cause you do a great job of that.
Nic.
No, I appreciate it. And not all of us have the gift that God has given you to, uh, sit there in front of that microphone and lead us down the right path. So appreciate that as well.
Scott
Well, I thank you, Nic. So you mentioned, what you can do for Scott Zehr to be successful. You know, if there’s money in the budget that I could hire a secretary, that’d be great. I just throwing it out there. All right. Well, Nic Bradley, I want to thank you for, taking some time today to do this and, let the world know a little bit more about, Nic Bradley.
If people need to reach out to you, Nic, how can they best get ahold of you?
Nic
Yeah, certainly can email me if you’d like nbradley@agrsol. com or you can always call our office 574 825 1224. Love to connect with you and anything I can do to help serve. I’d love to do that.
Scott
All right. Well, if you are in the space of agriculture and you have some questions about Agrarian Solutions, there’s probably not a better guy to start with than the man of many hats.
Nic gets to handle customer complaints. He gets to listen to a bunch of crazy salespeople out in the field that maybe have, issues with their Excel spreadsheet or their password login on email, and he does IT, he does really a little bit of everything, which is what a director of operations does.
But Nic, you do your job at an extremely high level. And, I think we are very fortunate to have Nic Bradley here at a Agrarian Solutions. So thank you.
Nic
Yeah. Thanks, scott. This was fun.
Scott
All right. Hey everybody. We will see you all again on the next episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Have a great day.
