In this episode of Meet the Team, we sit down with Cody Cline, Agrarian Solutions’ International Account Manager, as he shares his journey. Cody’s passion for international business and agriculture has taken him around the globe, with experiences in China, Thailand, and Colombia, where he connects with diverse cultures in the ag industry. Listen in as Cody talks about his transition into agriculture, the value of cross-cultural teamwork, and the unique camaraderie he’s found in an industry that feeds the world.
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Scott Zehr
All right. Hey everybody. Welcome to Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. I’m your host, Scott Zehr. And today we continue our series, meet the team here at Agrarian Solutions. And, I’m kind of excited to bring in our newest team member. This is Cody Cline. Cody is our international account manager.
So, you reside in Tennessee, but you get to travel across the world. Which I’m going to talk about that in a little bit from kind of what some of my ambitions were throughout the year and say that you’re in a good spot. Cause I think that international travel is pretty cool.
But, Cody, thanks for jumping on with us. The idea for Meet the Team really kind of came out of living our core values here at Agrarian. So, you know, we’ve talked about it before, RISE is the acronym for our core values. There’s Relational, Integrity, Strategic, and Excellence.
And, Cody, I’m going to tell you, I’m on a mission from now till either it happens or I die or I retire. Hopefully the die thing comes long after everything else I just said. But this idea of business to business sales. I tell you, I can’t think of a worse term in sales than business to business. And I know if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably getting sick of me saying this, but I’m going to keep saying it.
Business happens from people to people. And as I mentioned to Mark Carpenter in a previous podcast, episode one, you show me a business that’s ever done business with another business, and I’ll show you the amazing men and women behind the scenes that actually made it happen. And so really, you know, Cody, I thank you for coming on here today.
So we can get to know you. And, and people can get to know who Cody Cline is. And try to bring that person to person feel back into the ag, the agriculture business, which is a, let’s face it, Cody, now that you’re in agriculture, you’re part of 3 percent of the population that feeds everybody else.
And, it’s a very, very small industry. And what I’ve learned in 10 years of being in this industry from the professional side is, it’s a lot smaller than you think, you know? It’s like the first year I’d go to a conference or something and you get to know everybody and nobody knows who you are and now just 10 short years into it, it’s like, yeah, I know that guy, I know that guy, oh, he knows who I know and I know a guy that knows him or her and it’s like, yeah, this is a pretty tight community.
So Cody, I think let’s start kind of in the beginning for you. One question that I like to ask the team members here is who the heck is Cody Cline?
Cody Cline
I mean, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a complicated question. but I mean, we can start somewhere, I guess, but… I am Cody Klein. I am from Milford, Indiana.
Scott Zehr
So a Midwest boy…
Cody Cline
A Midwest boy. Proud. Even though I no longer live there anymore, been transplanted to Nashville, Tennessee and I enjoy the South. I missed the Midwest, but what kind of brought me here is I majored in international business and studies in college and knew I wanted to do something international at some point in my life.
And, had various career opportunities I’ve worn a lot of various hats in my career journey so far. But, went and worked over in China for four years and taught over there. And that was a great experience. It’s where I met my wife, who is originally from Nashville and…
Scott Zehr
Had to fly all the way to China to meet your wife from Nashville.
Cody Cline
Yep. That’s the classic thing. Everyone says, Oh, we got to travel halfway around the world to find your wife. But no, it’s been a great journey. Since then, we’ve been living life in Nashville. I went to Belmont, got my MBA there. And, started work for Agrarian just over a year ago.
And so doing the international side of the business has been amazing. And like what you said, yeah, I get to be in Nashville, but I get to travel to anywhere that Agrarian Solutions takes me. So, so far that’s been Thailand and Atlanta and Des Moines, Iowa. So, but it will include, it also includes, Colombia. But it will include Egypt, Dubai, and wherever else we get new clients, which is, it’s so fun.
I mean, especially going to world dairy Expo or international poultry and processing Expo. I get to spend about three hours meeting, I mean, I meet over 10 people from various places in the world. And so, there’s not really a place anywhere else that you get to kind of do that, that I’ve found professionally, have I spent three hours and I get to know a person from China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, Colombia, Mexico, Hong Kong, all these different places.
And so it’s so fun getting to know all these different people that are in this same industry, and just doing it in different places of the world. So, besides that, I mean, yeah, I don’t know what else you want to know about me in terms of who is Cody Cline
Scott Zehr
You mentioned you’re married.
Cody Cline
Yes. Yeah, my wife…
Scott Zehr
Any kids?
Cody Cline
Nope. No kids. It’s just Sarah and I. We have a house here in Nashville. And that’s kind of our baby at the moment, trying to flip a house. We bought one that’s, it’s a bit of a fixer upper. So our weekends are spent cutting holes in concrete, throwing up two by four is drywalling, painting, and watching YouTube videos to figure out how to do it along the way.
So, that’s, that’s kind of our baby at the moment. But other than that, we enjoy, I mean, just being outside, I think both of us grew up around water and being out on some of the local lakes and just getting some time in the sun. I always say that my hobbies like to center around any form of H2O. So, I love being out on the boat, but I also love the mountains and going snowboarding and all those sorts of things. So, just love being outside and hiking and adventure, and anything that I can be doing to just be outside. So…
Scott Zehr
I think that adventure bug probably plays in well for the international travel. So back in your, your four years you spent in China, what region in China and what were you guys teaching?
Cody Cline
Yeah. So, I was teaching fourth and fifth grade. And once Sarah came, she was teaching fifth grade and I was teaching fourth grade, but we were teaching at a school in Shanghai. In the United States we like to say Shanghai, but we call it Shanghai over there. But it was great. I mean, it’s a city of 26 million people. I think it’s about 28 now, but it had, that’s, at the time, that’s three, that’s a population of three Indianas in one city. Or three New York cities, which is, it’s hard to imagine a city that kind of looks like that.
It’s pretty spread out, but there’s high rise apartment complexes everywhere, which is kind of the crazy thing of just like a 40 foot building, just like four of them right there that are all apartments, but we enjoyed it. The culture is so unique and the food was so good. A little different than Panda Express.
Scott Zehr
I was just going to say a little bit different than the Panda palace that we have up here. You know, when I worked for Premier, one of my mentors throughout my career, a guy by the name of Joel Mergler. He worked for Select Sellers Inc out of Ohio and he did international travel.
And he left a big impression on me one year, he came up to do a team meeting, that I was involved with and like touchdown in Syracuse, having been gone for two and a half weeks, three weeks, something like had been to, I think the trip was Israel, Turkey and China. And like the first thing he does when he gets back to the States is comes to Syracuse and comes and talks to us.
And I’m like, that’s pretty cool. And, and, you know, he told us back then he was like, yeah, that the food, like what, what Americans who grew up here and spent their life here and live in rural America, you know it’s not really the same. It’s not really Chinese food. Yeah, I think there’s probably some authenticity in, in some places, but, yeah, not all lo mein and kung pao chicken, right?
Cody Cline
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, there, there is such a uniqueness to just, I mean, you find it in the States if you have a regional food that, I mean, no one else has, but, it’s that way in every, every place in the United or every place in the world. Even Shanghai had its own unique food compared to Beijing or Hong Kong.
Scott Zehr
So what’s unique in Nashville?
Cody Cline
Hot chicken. That’s probably what we’re known for in Nashville. I mean, it’s good. I like it, but I think Nashville is, it’s known now more for just being a foodie town. I mean, we have so much good food and there’s a huge international population here, which is so, it’s so fun.
You, there’s this one road called, called Nolensville Pike.
And you can find, I mean, 50 different types of restaurants from Turkish food, Pakistani food to, Somalian food to, I mean, tons of, you know, Mexican, Guatemala, and Honduras, Thai. I mean, you can find anything on this road. And so, a fun thing for Sarah and I to do is just like, okay, we’re just moving on to the next, next restaurant on this road, just to experience it all. And it’s, it’s so good. So
Scott Zehr
That’s cool. I up here I mean, you know, I’m not that far from Buffalo, New York, about four hour drive. So some people call that far. And obviously that’s like the birthplace of Buffalo wings, right? Yup. But more lesser, I guess, lesser known regional food to the rest of the country are Syracuse salt potatoes.
So we take a little potatoes like that big around, like half the size of a baseball and boil them in a saltwater brine. And when I say saltwater brine, I mean, like, if you’re boiling a pot of potatoes on your stovetop, you know, let’s call it three quarts of water, right? You’re going to put like three to four cups of salt in that water.
Cody Cline
Holy cow.
Scott Zehr
And I’m telling you what though, it’s like a summertime staple up here. Barbecued chicken, like Cornell. If you guys want to look it up at, you go to the Cornell website or type in, just type in Cornell chicken barbecue. But like Cornell chicken and Syracuse salt potatoes. You can find that in any parking lot throughout the, throughout the North country, you know, they do it for fundraisers and that kind of stuff.
And that’s kind of the local thing. I think going back to the international stuff, I think something that I’ve been wanting to ask you, because when I say I’ve left the country, I’ve been to Canada. Which technically doesn’t count if you grew up 30 miles from the border, which I did.
And, I been to Cancun, which doesn’t count as going to Mexico because you fly in and never really, never really leave the resort. And I’ve been on a cruise for our honeymoon, a Western Caribbean cruise to where we’ve been to Cozumel, Jamaica, the Virgin islands, but…
So, you know, I haven’t really experienced what it’s like to really be in another country per se. Right. If you take the experiences that you’ve had in China and Thailand and Colombia, you know, meeting people from different backgrounds, different cultures, I mentioned that agriculture is a pretty small segment of the population in the U.S., right?
But the one thing that I think is cool about agriculture is I joke that it’s the ultimate team sport. You know, usually we talk about maybe football being the ultimate team sport. 11, 11 people on each side of the ball or whatever, but…
There’s so many things happening on a farm and so many things outside of the farm that maybe the farmer has no control over. genetics of cattle, nutrition related, veterinary, so on, that it really is kind of the ultimate team sport.
And so I’m curious, as we see a lot more integration,of different cultural backgrounds in the U.S., in our production food systems, whether it’s ranching or whether it’s dairy, how are you able to use your traveling experiences and offer up a piece of advice on team building?
How do you build successful teams when you have the diverseness of culture and, cause I, I believe it can be a strength, but I think you have to understand how to make it a strength. And how far off base am I with that?
Cody Cline
No, that’s, I agree with that. And that was even part of some of my cross cultural education is, I mean, there’s some research behind diverse teams are more profitable and you, just because you have different ideas, you have different ways of approaching things.
And there may be some, I mean, if you’ve heard storming, forming, norming, and performing for team building, like you’ll have probably more challenging storming in terms of trying to figure out how the team is going to fit together. But then once everyone’s performing, man, it’s, it’s off to the races.
But I think in terms of like a cross cultural team, it honestly just comes back, and you mentioned this earlier, but it comes back to values of, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, but if you share a same sort of, just value for excellence, a value for efficiency, whatever is the DNA of the company, or the farm, or whatever. That’s what you want to fall back on.
I think of Jim Collins has a book called good to great, and he has a, the bus theory in it. And who’s on the bus, who’s off the bus, where do you see people on the bus? But it goes back to who’s on the bus it’s the people who share your values. And so you want to start there when building any team, whether it’s cross cultural or not.
And I think we’ve done that well at Agrarian Solutions. And I mean, even at my past working over in China, like we, we had an amazing team while we were there and we all shared the same sort of values of why we wanted to be there and trying to invest in students and things. And I think that’s also been with the distributors that we work with as well internationally,
We share a lot of the same values for excellence and integrity and things like that. And so if you have those cultural differences are just become an aspect of kind of flavor and fun that you get to work within and, share different foods or, I mean, there are some difficulties with cross cultural adaptation for marketing and operations and things like that, but, for a person trying to build a cross cultural team in the States, I mean, it just starts with finding good people.And there’s a lot of good people that are from a cross cultural, different background than what we are.
So, starts there and then just figuring out what their strengths are and putting them in those places where they can perform and just live into their potential. So I think that’s the foundation of it.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. And you know, it comes back to relational. You talk about, get good people. And one thing, one thing that I learned from, it was probably 2005, I think it was, I started my first company called Zehrs Auction Service. And it was like, Hey, I get to start a business.
I’m going to have people working for me. It’s going to be great. I get to boss people around and whatever, you know, I had all these preconceived notion about what it’s like to be a business owner. And there was a guy that I talked to and, he was just like, hey, you know, you’re, doing this, you’re stepping out.
If you’re going to hire people to work for you, there’s probably a couple of things you need to keep in mind. And the first thing is you’re never going to hire good people if you’re not a good person. And he wasn’t like trying to cast judgment on me, but like good people tend to gravitate towards situations or people that they can align themselves with, like you said, their values.
And, he used the biblical parable of don’t worry about the log in your brother’s eye or the pebble in your brother’s eye. If, you know, without addressing the log and yours kind of thing, like if you set out with the attitude of stay holier than thou attitude, or I’m better than you attitude, you’re probably going to attract people that aren’t going to work for you for very long.
Cody Cline
Yeah. I think it does come back to, I mean, I think of just plenty of positions where there’s, I mean, we often hire people for the what of what they can do. But we really need to be hiring for the who of like who they are. And I mean, the, what can come later, you can, that’s where training comes. And I think the potential starts at the who of who they are. And then, I mean, the what can be acquired.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I give Rob Hammacher, who is, is my boss here at Agrarian, he’s a Vice President of Sales and Marketing in the U.S., I give him a lot of credit for taking a chance on me. So like, yes, I spent, I’ve spent my entire life in agriculture. But when I came to Agrarian, I never had any experience, in the nutrition space.
I did from the sense that growing up on a dairy, I used to work with our nutritionist to help feed the cows, that kind of stuff. But, when you talk about the culture within Agrarian, I think one of the things that’s cool about the company is, Hey, we don’t really care that Nic Bradley, our director of operations, didn’t grow up in agriculture. And so similar to you, this is your first foray into the ag sector as well. Correct?
Cody Cline
Correct. Yeah, I think Mark Lance did the same thing.
Scott Zehr
Yes.
Cody Cline
He saw the foundation in me, I guess, with international travel. And I mean, I’ve known Mark as a mentor before he was a boss for 15 years. So, he took that chance on me and I mean, I met with Mark Carpenter and Rob and they just knew that I fit the who for Agrarian Solutions and I can learn the what. And so it’s been a large learning curve. The whole ag industry and dairy industry. I mean, man, my notebook is it’s full of what, what does this mean? Who, like, who are these people, but it’s been good. I mean.
Scott Zehr
Once you get the lingo down though, it’s all downhill from there. I mean, you know, and it, again, it’s just being a good person. You know, the previous company I worked for, I mean, it would have been not to say that it never happened. But it would have been really weird to have somebody working for us that had no experience in agriculture.
And so I think this time kind of ties in with the question you, you answered earlier, you know, about having a cultural diverse team, right? You bring a different perspective, not having the biases that maybe I have having spent my whole life in agriculture. And, you know, I mean, inherently you develop some sort of bias. I think that that actually brings a lot of value to the team.
So, talk about teamwork and a little bit about the ag industry. I, I’d like to ask you this. It’s really fun to ask, I think somebody in your position this question, cause I think about the team that I’ve been talking to right at Agrarian and the series meet the team with Agrarian Solutions. And I, I just interviewed, Dan Hoying, our director of farm operations, for this, the same series.
And here’s a guy that spent 50 plus years in agriculture from being a dairy farmer to an AI technician and salesman now with Agrarian. And so I, I’m curious from your young career in agriculture so far, just over a year so far, what do you find special about the ag industry?
Cody Cline
It’s a good question. I have been thinking about this cause it is something that is so, I mean, I’ve only been in it in a year. I mean, I’ve, I’ve been around it, mind. Most of my life growing up in Milford, Indiana, I mean.
Scott Zehr
Right.
Cody Cline
You could smell the manure from the dairy operation that was just around the corner from my house, so.
Scott Zehr
And I assume you eat food, so that’s.
Cody Cline
Yeah, and I eat food.
Scott Zehr
You’ve been a partaker in agriculture.
Cody Cline
Exactly. And it kind of comes back to that of, I think it’s, it’s the people, it’s what you said earlier, the people that are in the industry, it is such. It is such a unique industry with what you said, 3 percent of people that are feeding the rest. And I think have now being in the industry and having some friends, growing up that are current farmers in Indiana as well. The ag industry, the people in it, they do some really hard work to support the entire rest of the world.
And it’s really technical work. I, that’s another part that surprised me of just the preciseness in terms of how technical we’re getting with genetics and with how farms are operated, whether just, it’s coming down to the decimal points of just feed rations and things like that. And that, that blew me away.
Scott Zehr
Well, and it gave me in, in, in language that people outside of the industry would understand, but for cows,
Cody Cline
Exactly.
Scott Zehr
Yeah. You know, cow manager, SCR, these monitoring systems. And it’s literally Fitbit for cows. I mean, be realistic.
Cody Cline
It truly. And I mean, I even think of just even for, I rode in a combine with my friend and watching like his monitors of what all he’s paying attention to. And then he has his iPad on the side that gives him the historical data for what, how this field has performed and all sorts of things, the rainfall. And it’s just, it blows my mind the amount of technical knowledge farmers need these days to operate efficiently and have a profit on their farms too. And, so it’s crazy how hidden this is from the rest of the world.
I think, it’s kind of an, it’s a noble work that people in the ag industry do it because they don’t get thanked enough. And, no one really understands the hard work that they do. And so it was, I was driving up home from Nashville a couple of weekends ago, and, it just became a lot more personal going by all these fields and all these operations on the seven hour drive north.
And it’s just every one of those fields, and every one of those operations is run by an individual that has some form of this technical knowledge and puts all the hard work in to make their farm a success. And it’s, it’s amazing the people that are in this industry, and I think that’s what makes it special they, they work in the shadows in a way. But it’s, they’re out in the open. I mean, at the same time. So.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, yeah. And I, I think what you said, like, thank a farmer. And I was reminded of two things. One being, you know, I remember somebody in my hometown, there used to be a pickup truck drove around and you see this bumper sticker on it said, if you ate food today, thank a farmer. If you ate in peace today, thank a soldier.
And so I live in Watertown, New York, we have the Fort Drum Army Base, within a stone’s throw of where I live, and, I’ve been very fortunate with one of my private businesses that we operate up here where I’ve,been able to do some, fundraising efforts for different, organizations like, Operation Second Chance, helping veterans, get outfitted with prosthetics from being wounded in action.
And, whenever I have the chance to talk to these individuals, you know, it’s like you thank them for their service and the sacrifice and what they’ve done. And, I get to make food and feed them and that kind of thing. Right?
What’s amazing to me is, you know, they’ll say, well, what do you do? And so we’ll, we’ll talk about maple syrup and we’ll talk about barbecuing chicken and, and then I talked to him about, you know, kind of my day job, right? I work here at Agrarian and I can’t think of a single person that I’ve talked to in the military that has said, man, that’s so cool. You get to work for farmers.
I said, yeah, it is. And you know, it led me to realizing something a number of years ago, and it’s kind of one of my, I want to say my pet passions that I want to bring kind of more awareness to is, I hate the term groups of people because at the end of the day, Cody, we’re all human beings, right?
So if we looked at it by like, profession. When you boil it down to it, there’s two professions that if we didn’t have those two professions in the USA, we wouldn’t have the USA as we know it today. And the argument is 1 and 1A in my opinion of who is more important. So the question I like to throw at, you know, the soldiers that I get to talk to is, and I ask farmers this too, and it’s interesting how they answer when you talk about how good people are.
They say, you know, it’s a 1 and 1A kind of conversation, but it’s chicken and the egg. Who’s more important, the soldiers that protect the country to allow the farmers to make the food to feed the soldiers, or the farmers to feed the soldiers to protect the borders so the farmers can make the food to feed the soldiers? And everybody else.
And I have not met a single man or woman in uniform in our military that has said, well obviously it’s the soldiers. I haven’t met a single farmer that has said, obviously it’s the farmers. No, we can’t be out there defending the line and fighting for our country without good nutrition, without farmers growing food for us.
And farmers will say, Hey, look at other parts of the country where farmers have been decimated and governments have taken over and wiped out farmers and tried doing it themselves. We need the soldiers out there working for us and we’re proud to feed them.
And I just think that’s so cool how that speaks to, like you say, the people within agriculture, the passion that they have and their willingness to sacrifice. I think that it is a noble cause. I’m glad you worded it that way. Cause it’s something that I think probably goes really unnoticed, as you said.
Cody Cline
Yeah, I feel like there’s a, I mean, I kind of felt this when I went to my first expo where you’re just seeing all these farmers together and there’s a unique camaraderie that comes with being in the industry that you just don’t find anywhere.
And I think the closest thing I can think of in my own experience is when you live overseas for a time, it, it, inevitably changes you, culturally and everything else. And I think when you repatriate, you have kind of this reverse culture shock where you just feel like you don’t necessarily belong with like the greater population of where you’re from.
Scott Zehr
That’s interesting.
Cody Cline
And so Sarah and I still kind of feel that way. But I can imagine that even within the ag industry too of you have this unique culture that exists within the United States and it’s not, like it’s 3%. And so when you’re trying to relate to the majority, it can be really hard.
And so you do develop this camaraderie with people that that get your life experience that understand it. And so that’s how Sarah and I are with with other people that have lived overseas of, oh, you lived overseas, like, oh, you get what it is to load up a suitcase with everything you need for the year and take it with you.
Oh, we’re coming back to the United States. Well, I better get my peanut butter, my brownie mix, all the different things I can only get in the U.S., and take it over. So, but I imagine, I feel like I perceive that it’s happening kind of in the United States as well of, because of that unique situation, so many farmers are in together.
There’s just a unique, like what you said, it’s a largest team sport. They have to collaborate. They have to understand what each other goes through. And because of that they stick together, they work together, they understand each other.
And that creates a really, really amazing industry to work in because it’s kind of based out of, has its own selflessness in a way. And I think that’s what’s kind of truly unique about kind of full circle. What’s unique about the ag industry in the United States.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, man, that’s a lot of good stuff. Talking about it now with you, it honestly, it kind of like reinvigorates me a little bit to the point where it’s like, there’s such great stories to tell about agriculture that aren’t being told. And, yeah, I think you’ve just given me a whole bunch of new ideas, of things that we can, kind of bring, bring to the forefront, through a medium like this.
Cody Cline
I’m just thinking it is its own coming in as a new person, like it is its own unique culture. And that’s, what’s been kind of fun being an international person. Like, oh, it’s like I’m encountering this unique culture that’s in my backyard and kind of learning the facets of that like, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t need to go to, to, I don’t know, Thailand or wherever to encounter a new culture. It’s right here.
It’s, I think that’s one, one really cool thing about the United States is we have so many, it’s so big and we have so many cultures within it. I mean, we, we do get labeled the melting pot, but still. I mean, if you just go to your neighbor’s house and there’s going to be something different that they do.
And it’s being able to find the beauty in the difference. And I think that’s even like what you said of like, how do we, how do we tell the story of the ag industry to the rest of the United States.
And considering it kind of its own like cross cultural communication to kind of break through the noise of, I mean, they know how they’re getting fed, whether they’re going and buying food at Kroger, but that’s kind of as far as it goes, like how do you bridge that connection and make the ag industry more personal for the average consumer. So.
Scott Zehr
I think if I were to take a crack at that today off on a whim, as you were telling me that, the first thing that popped into my head was Simon Sinek, Start with why. It’s the golden circle. People don’t buy what you do. They don’t buy how you do it. They buy why you do it.
Cody Cline
Exactly.
Scott Zehr
So that’s, that’s kind of the story, if you would. So Cody, try to bring this back to, the conversation, but try to bring some fun back into it. Right. Hobbies. I don’t want to sound like a, like a crack talk show host here. But, what are some, you mentioned snowboarding and being outdoors and boating and that kind of stuff, but like, what are some of those hobbies that you can sink your teeth into and, and just help you kind of shut it down mentally on the work side once in a while?
Cody Cline
Yeah, I think it is a lot of the, like what I said, just kind of the active, extreme sports or activities.
Scott Zehr
Are you going skydiving out there? What are you doing?
Cody Cline
I mean, I did, I have skydive. I think if I had to summarize kind of like my, my hobbies, it’s kind of a feeling, finding something that has a sense of adventure.
So I think even travel is its own hobby. Sarah and I love being able to travel overseas and just experience different cultures, see the beauty that is in the world. And that’s, that’s one thing once you’ve gone overseas. And even if it is just for a week or two. And it just kind of blows your mind in terms of what’s out there.
And I think I was very fortunate growing up to be able to go on some missions trips that truly I went to, went to Kenya, went to Dominican Republic, went to Mexico, all in high school. And that kind of just kind of expanded my worldview. And now it’s, I want to see, I want to see as much of the world as I can.
There’s so much to see. So that’s, that’s one hobby. I mean, I love reading and kind of just sitting down with a fiction book. And what just, some fantasy novel that has some crazy world and stuff. I love, love that sort of stuff.
Scott Zehr
Sci, sci-fi guy.
Cody Cline
Yeah, I do love sci-fi.
Scott Zehr
Yeah, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t get that. I don’t get into it. My wife is, she’s into that stuff. I can’t, I don’t know. I just, I can’t do it.
Cody Cline
I think it’s probably my, I mean, I love like Marvel stuff too. I think it’s the hero’s journey. I think that’s ultimately what it comes down to. Anything that has the hero’s journey in it, it’s just, I love it. So, but I mean, around here going and trying out new foods, I love just doing new things. So, new restaurants, new hobbies. I think, and I thank my parents for this. I, I had so many hobbies growing up and their willingness to let me try new things, whether it was snowboarding, mountain biking, disc golfing, normal golfing.
I mean, it’s just, it’s always fun to learn something new. And I think that’s kind of what brought me to Agrarian too, is just, Oh, this is a new thing to learn. A new, new culture, a new, just aspect of growth and career that I can go off and do, but yeah. And then a forced hobby currently is just working on our house.
Scott Zehr
I think, you know, what you said there, learning something new is fun. And you know, if I was to kind of share some parting words with our audience, there’s a lot of truth to that. I’ve had the chance to give some, you know, like PowerPoint type presentations, in front of clients before.
And I used to use this diagram. And it was just a, you know, it was a circle on the page, right? And inside the circle said, your comfort zone. And then there was a black dot outside of the circle with an arrow pointing to it. And it said, where the fun begins. It’s very simple. Yeah, I mean, had to be simple. I didn’t create it. I saw it in another presentation and redrew it.
But, going back, we’ll kind of tie back into something you said earlier about the egg industry and coming in from the outside, if you would, and seeing the adaptation of technology and how today’s American dairy farmer and rancher utilize so much stuff.
There are a lot of people willing to work and play outside of their comfort zone. But honestly, Cody, I really believe that’s a conversation that you can’t have enough with people, not just in agriculture, but in all walks of life and in all industries and just my own personal experience anytime in my life that I have felt complacent, whether it’s personally or professionally, I have regressed, to the point where on a personal level, it was like, Oh man, we’re really headed down a bad road here. We need to get out of this little comfort zone and go do something else. Right? And, I think that’s a great thing you mentioned there of that is where the fun happens. It’s outside.
Cody Cline
Yeah. I think it’s kind of coming back to like a growth mindset in a way of just what’s a new opportunity for me to learn something. Or do something that’s a little uncomfortable because especially in the modern world, we get a new comfort thrown at us every day of like, Oh, this’ll make your life easier. This’ll make your life easier. And then, I mean…
Scott Zehr
I mean, heck, we have the easy button.
Cody Cline
Exactly. And we, I think just even whether it’s the device in our pocket or whatever, it’s we’re, we’re living in a world that’s making it really hard to get outside of our comfort zone. And so you have to be truly intentional about trying to find some way to grow.
And it, like what you said, if you don’t, you’re going to regress. And I mean, just kind of end up in your own little silo, which I think is just really hard. It’s hard to get out of once you’re in it.
Scott Zehr
It is. You mentioned the device, right? So obviously cell phones and I, they’re not even really phones anymore, right? There are mini computers. But there’s a comedian and I can’t think of his name, but he does this hilarious bit about, you know, now that we have all the information in the entire universe at our fingertips, it has really diminished, the story behind a relationship.
And he said, like, when I grew up, and how, like, how I met my wife was I don’t remember the band he used, but let’s, let’s say, Hey, where, where was, Eddie Vedder from? And he’s like, you know, I, I, I don’t know, but I didn’t have a cell phone.
So, you know, for years I went wandering around asking different people I knew. And all of a sudden I was at a I had a concert and I struck up a conversation with a girl because she had a t-shirt on with my favorite band on and Eddie Vedder’s the lead singer.
And I said, well, do you know where he’s from originally? And she said, yeah, he’s from here. And then, then we talked more and we ended up getting married and we’ve been married for 30 years. And he said, now kids, if they had that same question that, Oh, okay. And it’s like diminish the curiousness of our culture, of our people kind of thing.
Right. And I think it’s interesting, it’s, it’s almost becoming a buzzword in organizations now. One of our suppliers at Agrarian, we sat into a presentation, and it was interesting. It was good. I think for one of our suppliers to have this mentality, but it said like the number one thing we try to instill in our people is number one, be curious. And yeah, so yeah, you reminded me of that story.
Cody Cline
I keep going about this all day. Cause I even just think of kind of how community works between, in the United States and because of technology, we kind of, we take care of ourselves very easily. We’re very individualistic in the United States. And I think one of the greatest things about living overseas was that what you said, you had to rely on other people to, for yourself to succeed.
So we lived in a community. There was probably about 10 of us that all were from the United States. And because we’re in this cross cultural context, it’s like, I don’t know how to go find a grocery store that has cereal or I don’t know how to order a taxi and you, you become really reliant on the people that are around you.
And I think, that’s what we’ve kind of comforted, comforted ourselves out of in the United States in a lot of ways. It’s like, Scott, I don’t need you to survive anymore. I can go on my way to, I don’t know, just go to the grocery store or whatever else. I don’t need you for information.
Scott Zehr
Yeah.
Cody Cline
I have my computer or anything. And I feel like that was kind of the living cross culture was the last frontier of truly having to rely on people because even with technology, it’s not going to help you with understanding a new culture completely.
But anyway, that we should get back to that of even, even if you decide to get rid of your cell phone, so you know that you can get back to that to rely on somebody. I think that would go a long way for us as humans. And that’s a completely different conversation.
Scott Zehr
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Cody, I want to thank you for taking time out of your day today to talk with us here on Ruminate This. I look forward to some future conversations with you outside of this kind of mini series that we’re doing, as we delve into some of the international work that we’re doing at Agrarian.
And with that, last comment I have on what you just said with the community. If you folks want to have a book, I’ve already mentioned Simon once in this episode, but Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last. Talks a lot about the psychology of the human brain and building community and what a great reference for you all to look up.
So, you know, with that, Cody, I appreciate you jumping on. And, those listeners out there, we will be coming at you again soon with another episode of Ruminate This with Agrarian Solutions. Thank you.
Cody Cline
Thanks for having me on.
