Employee Spotlight: Tying mission together with the team featuring Lauren & Mackenzie
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're delighted to host two of Barn2Door's very own team members, Lauren and Mackenzie. Listen as they discuss how they came to join the team and have helped Barn2Door grow.
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Intro
Cade Midyett: [00:00:27] Hi, welcome back to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Cade from the marketing team at Barn2Door and earlier this week I had a couple of great conversations with two of Barn2Door's sales managers, Lauren and Mackenzie. They've both been at the company for around 2+ years now so their insights to the business's growth and mission to help farmers succeed were great to hear. Here are those interviews now.
Lauren Currie: [00:00:47] Yes. My name is Lauren. I'm one of the sales managers here at Barn2Door. And I've been here for just about two years.
Cade Midyett: [00:00:55] Awesome. Two years. Yeah, that's a long time. So, what originally two years ago brought you to the company?
Lauren Currie: [00:01:01] I was on, indeed, just looking around, I'd just finished school, really trying to figure out what I could do, what would stick. Ran across Barn2Door and didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I loved the mission. Knew I wanted to do something that helped the planet. So I applied and here we are.
Cade Midyett: [00:01:20] Awesome. Yeah. I know even across the wide range of skills of people across the company, everyone just is really kind of brought back together by that mission. That's great, and so then since then, you started at the company. I know it's grown a lot since then, and so now, today, what do you do on a day-to-day basis, for Barn2Door?
Lauren Currie: [00:01:38] Yeah. So as one of the sales managers, I have a team of six people. My job is really to help them be successful. It's one of my favorite parts of my job. Really helping them learn how to communicate with Farmers, to help them on their path, to finding online, ordering, or getting online. So part of that also includes helping grow the sales organization itself, right? There were four of us when I started, I'm pretty sure. Now there's 20 of us and so really just putting proper processes in place, learning how to train, training people. That's my average day to day.
Cade Midyett: [00:02:13] Yeah. That's awesome. A lot of growth in the sales department. I know , from 4 to 20, that's pretty massive. Bringing it back to the mission, you're all really working every single day on a daily basis, talking to Farmers directly, helping them make improvements in their business, right?
Lauren Currie: [00:02:28] What's amazing about working with farmers in general. I mean, technically we're business to business, right. But for a Farmer it's not just their business, it's their whole lives. It has an impact on their family. It has an impact on their community. Being compassionate in those conversations is a big part of what we do.
So the more that I can help my team understand that and have those conversations with a Farmer in a way that really engages them and really, truly helps them. That's what we're here for.
Cade Midyett: [00:02:55] It's a very human interaction for sure. Farmers' Farms Are very personal to them. Of course. That's awesome, and so tying in with that, you know, why do you like working at Barn2Door and coming into work every day?
Lauren Currie: [00:03:07] Being a part of something that's so much bigger than myself, makes it very easy to get out of bed every day. One of our core values is humble. It's not about us, it's not about me and makes it much easier to do my job, but being able to watch my team grow, being able to help them through challenges and watch them be successful. Like that's really fun, but also just getting to work with Farmers who are such wonderful, genuine, humble people makes every day so fun.
Cade Midyett: [00:03:32] Awesome. Yeah. And speaking of those core values, you mentioned humble, which is one of the six core values we have at the company. How would you describe the company's overall culture?
Lauren Currie: [00:03:40] Yeah, the core values sum it up really well. Humor is one of my favorite ones on there. We, we definitely have a lot of fun, but it's because we work so hard that we get to have fun and so I think those two things go hand in hand, but just the amount of passion that everybody has is palpable and every single meeting and every phone call. So the more of that that comes across, like just the better every day is so yeah. Passionate people for sure.
Cade Midyett: [00:04:06] Totally. Yeah. I always try to describe the magic of working on a team where everyone's so driven by the same mission. I think it's, it's definitely a very special, special thing to be a part of. And along with that too, you know, what would you say makes Barn2Door a unique company?
Lauren Currie: [00:04:20] The opportunity is so big, which is wild. Every company has a mission. Every company has passion, but farmers are so underserved, and so to be able to be as an individual, there's plenty of room for growth, right I came in without sales experience. And now I'm managing, part of managing a team of 20 people and that's going to continue to grow.
But also just to be a part of a company that has so much opportunity, and has so much potential sometimes it's a little scary , but it's also just really fun.
Cade Midyett: [00:04:51] Absolutely. I couldn't have said it better myself. I think it's really about that whole being comfortable being uncomfortable you know, there's going to be big growth, big changes, but if you can get behind that roll with it, then you're definitely going to be in a good spot.
So we talked a bit about over the past two years, since you initially started the company, all the changes that you've faced personally with, moving up from starting in sales for the first time to becoming a manager of a whole team. How else has the company evolved in those past two years?
Lauren Currie: [00:05:21] Well, when I started, we were in a garage in the back of a bakery. So, and now we have a proper beautiful office. So that's been a big change , but with that change, I mean, we have a big office cause we have a lot of people here now, the processes and hard work that goes into making all the different, moving parts happen is just a lot different than it used to be.
And so there's stuff that I'm not involved in that I used to be involved in. There's stuff that I'm involved in that I never imagined being involved in. So there's, as we continue to grow, there'll be more of those changes, but just the structure of the company has changed quite a bit.
Cade Midyett: [00:05:59] Yeah, absolutely becoming a little more structured, a little less scrappy, but still maintaining that, that passion all the way through for sure, and then finally, what's one thing that someone who might be listening to this podcast episode or watching this video is a job applicant, not realize about the company, just from looking at our page?
Lauren Currie: [00:06:17] How important it is to work with Farmers and how much of an impact we get to have on so many different Things. So when we help a Farmer, we're helping the earth because we only work with Farms with sustainable practices. We're helping feed local communities, which is pretty amazing. We're also helping that Farm be successful and grow their business. And that's a pretty big deal because that impacts their family and their community by extension.
Cade Midyett: [00:06:44] Totally. Awesome. Well, thanks Lauren. It was great having you on the podcast today.
Lauren Currie: [00:06:48] Thanks Cade.
Mackenzie: [00:06:49] Hi I am Mackenzie I am a sales manager here at Barn2Door and I've been here for about two and a half years.
Cade Midyett: [00:06:57] Awesome, yeah two and a half years is pretty long at Barn2Door a lot has grown since then which is awesome. How many people do you think were at the company two and a half years ago when you started?
Mackenzie: [00:07:07] Two and a half years ago there were 10 people at the company when I joined. And I think we've grown to over 80 people now which is crazy to think about.
Cade Midyett: [00:07:16] That's some pretty massive growth and so originally you know rewinding that two and a half years ago when you're looking for a job and and found Barn2Door what brought you to the company?
Mackenzie: [00:07:26] What brought me to Barn2Door was really the mission, I studied sustainable agriculture in college. So that was really important to me I love working with farmers and definitely have a huge passion for that but I think what's really kept me going too is just the fast paced environment that we have at the company because it is a startup so that really keeps it lively and fun.
Cade Midyett: [00:07:49] Moving ahead to today two and a half years later you know the company's grown a ton your role has changed quite a bit. What are you doing on a day-to-day basis?
Mackenzie: [00:07:58] On a day-to-day basis I am managing a team of about six salespeople And we are literally talking to farms just all day every day. Talking to them on the phone, doing video messages with them things like that, and really helping them understand how to get online and how we're going to help them be successful to do that.
Cade Midyett: [00:08:19] Yeah and it's a pretty big deal right because farms for a long time have run their business offline but being a part of that movement online and becoming into you know the 21st century selling online and being online that's a pretty big pretty big step for a lot of farms to be taking.
Mackenzie: [00:08:32] Yeah, It's huge, It's huge for them.
Cade Midyett: [00:08:34] Awesome Yeah And speaking of which you know dealing so much with farms every single day, you know that ties in very closely with Barn2Door's mission of creating a more sustainable food system in America helping local farmers. So what does that mission mean to you?
Mackenzie: [00:08:49] The Barn2Door mission for me is not only really important for Farmers. Because of course we want them to be successful and have a sustainable business but it's also really important to local communities across the country to have access to a food system and have the opportunity to buy from their local farms. So I think that's a really special part of what Barn2Door helps with.
Cade Midyett: [00:09:12] Yeah absolutely making a really tangible impact across the country which is awesome. And I think that also ties into you know how Barn2Door is a pretty unique company. You know what what are some of the things that you think make Barn2Door different than just any other company someone might be finding on indeed or glassdoor?
Mackenzie: [00:09:28] Yeah I think one of the things that makes Barn2Door so unique is that every single day we get to hear success stories of really what's working for farms and how we're assisting them in that process. So you can go through a sign up a Farm and you'll see their website come to fruition And then all the quotes that they're mentioning about our team and how we've really helped them increase their sales or just save time. And so that tangible success is really exciting.
Cade Midyett: [00:09:57] Yeah and there's always a lot of transparency throughout that whole process too seeing farms from the start just signing up, getting their first order, all the way through to even maybe becoming a part of our Farm Advisory Network which is always very cool to see but yeah it's great to see that whole cross-company journey for Farms. And along with that you know talking to Farmers every single day it's a lot of hard work. How would you describe the company's culture?
Mackenzie: [00:10:22] I would describe our culture as fairly balanced in the sense that everyone is here to get their work done and really make sure that we can help Farms get online and do it in an efficient way. But we also like to have fun when we like to connect with one another through you know whether that's trivia throughout the day or company events things like that, so everyone is really friendly and wants to get to know each other and I think that that's pretty unique.
Cade Midyett: [00:10:53] Yeah absolutely there's just a lot a very good sense of camaraderie across the company even as we've grown from the 10 people to 80 I think that that still held pretty strong and along with that you know speaking of the massive growth over that time and the company culture. How would you say the company has evolved in the past two and a half years going from 10 people to 80 plus?
Mackenzie: [00:11:13] The company has evolved so much, when I started we were tracking everything from calls in a day, to you know farms that we had signed up via excel spreadsheets, and you know marking things on a white board. And now we've really gotten cinched in in terms of processes and what works and developing those to keep us really organized and focused and then of course you know we used to do other things like facebook lives and now we've moved into podcasts and the Direct Conference So it's really exciting just to see the upward mobility.
Cade Midyett: [00:11:47] We're able to reach so many more Farmers now and do so much bigger things than we ever were before with our spreadsheets and everything. It's super awesome and finally you know what's one thing that someone who's looking at our indeed page right now or on our website right now might not realize about the company looking at it.
Mackenzie: [00:12:03] I think that when someone is looking for jobs on indeed something that you probably wouldn't be able to see about Barn2Door is actually you said it earlier Cade, but is that camaraderie that we all have working towards the same mission and everyone being really driven in that sense. Farmers are just some of the greatest people out there and it's such an awesome feeling to be able to help them every single day and you know have a very like-minded approach with all of your colleagues.
Cade Midyett: [00:12:32] Yeah wonderfully put, that is really the magic of coming into work every day. Awesome Thank you Mackenzie It was great getting to chat with you.
Mackenzie: [00:12:38] Thanks Cade.
Outro