32 minute read
ACADEMIC VIEWPOINT
2012 National Retail Security Survey—First Glance at the Results
Iam back in the saddle again after undergoing hip replacement surgery this past summer. That is why you did not see me at the National Retail Federation LP conference in San Diego in June, when I usually report preliminary shrinkage statistics. It is also the primary reason that the 2012 National Retail Security Survey (NRSS) Final Report is not yet published.
As those of you who have gone through orthopedic surgery know, it is not an immediate recovery process. It set me back in my work schedule, and as a result, delayed both the data collection and analysis phases of the NRSS. Nevertheless, I am now walking, riding my bike, climbing stairs, fishing in my boat—all without pain for the first time in many years. My new titanium left hip is performing better than I ever expected. I know that this column is about loss prevention research, not orthopedic health issues, but I wanted to explain why you haven’t yet seen the 2012 NRSS results before now.
The most important number that is annually produced by the NRSS is the industry-wide average shrinkage percentage. The overall average during the 2012 fiscal year was 1.47 percent.
Preliminary Numbers
As of this writing, the Final Report is not quite ready to print, but I have some preliminary numbers to share. However, I must inform you that my hip surgery is not the only reason that the Final Report is late. The other reason is due to a less than robust response level among senior LP executives who were asked to complete the questionnaire. I wanted to wait until we received at least 100 responses from major U.S. retail firms to make sure that this year’s shrinkage statistics were as stable and reliable as possible. One could argue that I waited too long, but without enough respondents, shrinkage numbers become unreliable and could lead to questionable results and invalid conclusions. Unfortunately, after receiving 94 questionnaires, I decided that waiting any longer would not yield more responding retail firms.
The most important number that is annually produced by the NRSS is the industry-wide average shrinkage percentage. Based on the 91 valid shrinkage percentages reported, the overall average during the 2012 fiscal year was 1.47 percent. This number is slightly higher than the all-time lowest shrinkage percentage of 1.42 percent reported last year. It is hard to tell at this time if this will become a long-term trend, but it would appear that retail shrinkage is beginning to increase slightly. More specifics by vertical markets will be presented in the Final Report.
We have also calculated the sources of shrinkage loss. As has been the case for two decades, senior LP executives believe that the largest proportion of retail shrinkage is attributable to employee theft—this year 40.9 percent. The second largest loss source was believed due to shoplifting and organized retail crime (ORC) at 33.1 percent. Administrative and paperwork errors accounted for 15.3 percent. Vendor frauds were estimated at 5.96 percent. Lastly, 7.48 percent of shrinkage is attributed to “unknown” sources of loss.
The unknown category is now included in the survey to allow some respondents to indicate that they really do not know exactly where their losses are coming from given a weak audit trail. Incidentally, we recognize that the percentages of loss source figures exceed 102 percent. This is due to the way in which the question is asked, which does not force each respondent to make their responses total 100 percent.
by Richard C. Hollinger, Ph.D.
Dr. Hollinger is professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is also director of the Security Research Project, which annually conducts the National Retail Security Survey. Dr. Hollinger can be reached at rhollin@ufl.edu or 352-294-7175. © 2013 Richard C. Hollinger
Final Report Release
I know that this is just a quick and very incomplete overview of the 2012 NRSS findings, but given the lateness of the Final Report, I felt that I owe the readers of this column whatever statistics that we now can release. Moreover, it is appropriate that these preliminary results are first published in LP Magazine, since this publication and fellow bionic hipster and magazine executive editor, Jim Lee, have long been a supporter of this important research project for the retail loss prevention community.
The 2012 Final Report will be available online very shortly and will be announced via the magazine’s weekly e-newsletter, LP Insider. Finally, I want to thank all of you who sent cards, gifts, and best wishes during my surgical recovery. Your expression of concern was very much appreciated by me and my family.
Connect and Collaborate Conference
Connect and Collaborate is more than just the name of a conference. It is the way eBay Global Asset Protection works with our retail and law enforcement partners. In 2009 when Paul Jones began his tenure with eBay, retailers were seeking more effective ways to investigate online criminal activity. Jones and his Global Asset Protection Team were challenged to create a safer shopping experience for users by reducing criminal activity on the platform. This task required combing through a $70 billion global marketplace to identify stolen property. The natural move was to connect with retailers and law enforcement to collaborate on criminal investigations.
The launch of PROACT created a collaborative symbiosis. Retailers needed an active partner to work to address suspected criminal issues, and eBay needed to locate stolen merchandise listings across the globe. In the years since, eBay’s AP team and retailers have connected and collaborated on many investigations resulting in successful prosecutions of criminal sellers and the removal of stolen merchandise from the platform. The collaboration builds trust and ensures a fair and competitive marketplace for our users. Our business partner’s benefit with effective investigations with less time spent on non-issues.
Our relationships with retailers continue to mature, as does the approach toward online crime. The shared experience of investigating together has improved our knowledge base of online criminals. One takeaway demonstrated by online criminals is that they are not brand loyal and may operate on multiple marketplaces to sell stolen goods. We actively
research tools and techniques that may help our business partners identify criminal sellers on any platform. The end result is these criminals are put out of business, and ultimately are kept off our market place.
The Connect and Collaborate meeting in October was attended by more than eighty retailers and law enforcement professionals in our new facility in Utah. The event provided a forum for retailers and law enforcement to share success stories, techniques, and contact information. The attendees watched presentations from retail executives, eBay leadership, and key law enforcement officials dedicated to combating organized retail crime. Following is a sample of the agenda.
How We Proactively Protect Our Community
Denise LeLux, VP, and Mark Roberts, Director, Trust and Safety, North American Customer Experience, eBay, Inc.
PROACT Update—What’s New and a Look to the Future
Dave DiSilva, Manager, and Hawken Averett, Senior Investigator, Global Asset Protection, eBay, Inc.
Macy’s ORC Overview
John Matas, VP, Investigations, Fraud, and Technology, Macy’s
ORC Discussion—National Retail Federation
Richard Mellor, VP, Loss Prevention, and Jonathan Gold, VP, Supply Chain and Customs Policy, National Retail Federation
Kohl’s Approach to ORC Investigations
Wallace Crosno, Manager, Investigations, Kohl’s
Law Enforcement and Retail Partnerships
Sergeant Richard Rossman, Broward County Sheriff’s Office, Federal ORC Task Force
eBay Brand Protection 101
Raquel Smith, Manager, Brand Protection, eBay, Inc.
Online Investigations Using Third-Party Tools
The event is an example of our retail outreach and partnership. In the coming months we will conduct webinars, corporate training, upgrade our exception reporting, and improve our systemic capabilities.
Thank you to all of our speakers and attendees for your participation in Connect and Collaborate. To learn more about eBay Global Asset Protection and PROACT, contact us at proact@ebay.com.
TAKING RETAIL LP STRATEGIES TO A WHOLE NEW INDUSTRY
A CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS MCDONALD OF COMPASS GROUP
EDITOR’S NOTE: Chris McDonald is the senior vice president of loss prevention for Compass Group North America. He came to Compass Group in April 2012 after nearly four years as senior director of LP for Dollar General. McDonald is a seasoned LP executive having held multiple positions with Toys“R”Us, Babies“R”Us, Office Depot, and the Hartmarx Retail Group. He is also a member of the LP Magazine editorial board, and a board member of the International Associations of Interviewers. Over the years he has served on various industry committees making contributions to the NRF, RILA, ASIS, and the industry as a whole.
EDITOR: Yours is not a traditional retail company. Tell us about Compass Group.
McDONALD: In simple terms Compass Group is the world’s leading contract food and support services company. We do over $26 billion in worldwide sales in fifty countries. We serve more than six million meals a day in North America alone where we have over 20,000 different client locations and employ a little over 200,000 associates. It’s an impressive organization to say the least.
EDITOR: Did you say 20,000 client locations?
McDONALD: Yes, 20,000. That’s the fun part for us, and where it gets complex. For example, if we’re looking at one of our clients who is a university or a corporate campus, they might have a dozen or more different locations that we service. Additionally, there is the catering business, perhaps vending services, facility services, and more. It varies enormously from location to location. Our operations range in size from a cashierless convenience store or one-person kiosk to a full-scale restaurant operation, a concert venue, or even a sports stadium.
EDITOR: What different types of businesses do you operate in?
McDONALD: We’re engaged in a variety of vertical markets. One is
healthcare where we provide patient food service, patient transport, and facility services within a hospital, as well as, retail café food service. That means whether you are a patient in a hospital eating the food brought to your room, or you are visiting someone there and you eat dinner at the retail café, we are your host. We also service the education markets—everything from private to public K-12 clients to higher education universities, like Louisiana State University, Texas A&M University, the District of Columbia public schools, and many other great schools.
EDITOR: Are these cafeteria-type facilities?
McDONALD: It’s much more than the traditional cafeteria concept. It’s all kinds of dining and catering services. If you’ve been on any college campuses recently you find that like so many other areas, the food service is about an experience and environment. If there is a Starbucks or coffee shop on the premises, we would operate the coffee kiosk for you. We can also provide the catering for any events or meetings. Our objective is to provide you with great food and quality service wherever you might find the need for hospitality offerings.
EDITOR: What are other markets?
McDONALD: Another of our vertical markets is the business and industry sector, which handles the café, catering, and food service needs for a number of Fortune 500 companies, such as Microsoft, Caterpillar, IBM, United Technologies, and SAP.
We also provide hospitality at sporting events, entertainment venues, concerts, and operate many stand-alone restaurants as well. Spiaggia, Bar Toma, and Fulton’s on the River are a few in Chicago. The Fulton Crab House and Wolf Gang Puck’s Grand Café in Orlando are two locations in Florida.
We operate in specialty venues, too, including various Smithsonian Museums, the Georgia Aquarium, and the Seattle Art Museum to name just a few.
EDITOR: With all the services you provide, is there any standard situation or do you mold your services to the situation?
McDONALD: Our services are entirely customizable, and what we do depends on the client. That’s both the fun part and the challenging part from a loss prevention perspective. If someone is building a new hospital or new corporate headquarters and wants us there from day one, that’s great, we would love to be your partner. We can design the kitchen, the retail front, and present you with a solution that fits your needs. It’s your choice. In today’s environment, we’re often taking over existing properties that have existing kitchen and dining facilities. In those cases we can take what you currently have and customize it to help you maximize your facility. The ultimate goal is to help you provide an end result of great service and delicious, healthy food for your customers, employees, patients, or students.
EDITOR: Why does the Compass Group need a senior VP like you?
McDONALD: Just like any other corporation in America, we have leakage. We have shrinkage opportunities. My task from a strategic standpoint is to employ strategies and disciplines that ensure our operators’ efforts make it to the bottom line, just like any other LP organization. The processes we employ may be different from the traditional retail perspective, but the goal is ultimately the same.
EDITOR: How do you employ LP strategies at Compass based on your custom model? How is it different from your past roles?
McDONALD: The strategies and ideals that led me to a senior-level position is what continues to drive me today, and that is the simple realization that the loss prevention industry is fundamentally a support function. My accountability is driven through my customers—the operators and frontline people who run our day-to-day business. Those are the people who I have to support and make successful in order to make the company successful and ultimately my department successful. If it wasn’t for all these other people working so hard, there would be no reason for us to be here to support them. I remind myself and my team of that regularly. We exist to service them.
As far as what’s different, retail enjoys a great deal of standardization. You have a prototype of store types, you have consistent operating standards as the box is the same from store to store, and generally you have a single system or process structure across your portfolio. In our world such standardization is non-existent because we customize ourselves to provide for our clients for whatever the need. What works in operation A may not work in operation B or C. I may have a hundred different versions of some process, but it’s necessary to serve our clients. So, the challenging part for me is being able to
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If I have issues with inventory and product going out the back door through theft or waste, then I have food cost issues, which impact my margin. If I have front-of-house issues, such as cashier integrity or fraudulent POS transactions, then I have reduced sales and margin. If I find a solution on either one of those ends, my food costs go down, which makes my sales and profitability go up.
We see virtually an immediate impact.
deliver some degree of consistency and develop LP programs and philosophies that can be applied across the matrix of the businesses, whether it’s a two-person operation or an operation with hundreds of people.
EDITOR: With all the different business models, are there measurements back to a specific location?
McDONALD: Yes, and that entails another interesting part of my job. As I’ve said, one of Compass Group’s strong points is our ability to provide customization. When you look at a restaurant chain, which produces standard menu offerings, they have consistent average food costs. They are able to determine production, output, and waste in consistent manners. But for Compass, determining those factors in our various business lines is much more difficult because one café produces a totally different menu than another café. Therefore, the comparisons are much more complex. We have measurements, algorithms, and many great people helping to manage the business, but clearly it’s not as clear-cut as most chain organizations or retailers.
EDITOR: How does your role differ from a typical LP executive’s?
McDONALD: There are many differences, but one that I think is very interesting is the fact that I sit on both sides of the table now—not only as a loss prevention practitioner, but also as a representative or a salesperson of our industry. For example, if we are working with a new client who may not be familiar with the world of loss prevention and risk, we will spend time to help educate them about loss prevention and market our function as a benefit they receive in working with Compass. The message is not only that we are going to cook you a great meal and make sure we’re providing you with the service levels you expect, but we are also doing internal due-diligence using training and technology to monitor our employees, making certain everything is accounted for, and otherwise limiting risk and loss.
EDITOR: How is your team organized?
McDONALD: Our team is organized in a regional or zone structure based on geography with regional LP managers supporting the field operations and reporting into a senior director. Additionally, we have a corporate staff of systems managers who help lead our focus through data mining and business intelligence. I then report to the CFO. It gives us a different perspective as we’re closely tied to both finance and operations. The dynamic is great and allows us a very balanced perspective of our business.
EDITOR: What are the typical duties of the regional managers, and what are they spending their time doing?
McDONALD: There are three main strategies of the regional job function. Number one is training and awareness. Because we are still a maturing LP organization, we spend a large amount of our time teaching and training our operations and finance teams as to what loss prevention is about and its impact on them. We teach the pitfalls of not following policies, of not holding people accountable, and our mantra is to “inspect what you expect.” I’d say the regional managers spend almost 50 percent of their time training. The second piece of their job is a little more traditional in the form of investigating and problem solving, and then thirdly, audits and compliance measurements complete the circle.
EDITOR: Does your staff also come from a traditional retail LP background like you?
McDONALD: We have a good mix on the team. Some of the staff came from retail LP backgrounds, with others who have food service and hospitality loss prevention experience on their resume. From my perspective, this has been a
great complement as we are able to leverage off one another. Additionally, one of my strategies is to employ or customize many of the successful tactics we have used in “retail” loss prevention for many years and make them successful in our environment. We’re constantly striving to learn and leverage the team’s experience base truly using the “best of the best” ideas.
EDITOR: How do you measure performance in terms of the objectives and the goals that you’ve set for them?
McDONALD: The big piece of the pie in the retail world revolves around that quarterly or annual shrink number. Unfortunately, we don’t have that litmus test in our world. On one hand, we do rely on investigation and case production output. It’s a traditional measurement that’s black and white and shows an immediate ROI. On the other hand we monitor sales. We are starting to look more closely at how resolving an issue can impact sales, customer satisfaction, and other efficiencies.
EDITOR: Explain that.
McDONALD: If I have issues with inventory and product going out the back door through theft or waste, then I have food cost issues, which impact my margin. If I have front-of-house issues, such as cashier integrity or fraudulent POS transactions, then I have reduced sales and margin. If I find a solution on either one of those ends, my food costs go down, which makes my sales and profitability go up. We see virtually an immediate impact. That’s a measurement that’s really interesting in this environment. When we address an issue in any given location, often within a matter of weeks we’ll see an impact on sales. I don’t have to wait for a year-end inventory.
EDITOR: As you look a few years down the road, what types of things are you contemplating that will enhance the LP function within the company?
McDONALD: One of our strategic plans is to continue to take advantage of technology, especially our growing access to big data. This will obviously help direct us. One of the questions becomes how can we leverage data across the business to help drive our loss prevention focus over the coming three to five years? Frankly, I don’t know what it should look like yet. The data will tell us where we need to go and where we should focus. Do I need to be driven more toward the cash and retail finance operations? Is there an opportunity in inventory controls? The viewpoint right now is to get the information and let it help build the business plan.
A second major emphasis is technology implementation. Before I came on board, the company had already identified that as an opportunity and started down that road. We’re continuing to develop technologies such as POS exception reporting and the implementation
of CCTV in both traditional and non-traditional manners.
EDITOR: If one of your LP managers wanted to look at exception-type information to identify a problem in a particular facility or with a particular person, do you have that capability?
McDONALD: Yes, in many cases that type of detail is available. Additionally, we also partner with our finance folks to identify anomalies in food cost, overall sales, or production statistics that will help guide us. We’re also able to not only compare an individual cashier against his/ her peers within their operation, we’re comparing them at large against similar operations, so we get a broad spectrum to work from and identify potential issues.
EDITOR: Is there any one particular business model that is more challenging than another?
McDONALD: They all have their own benefits and challenges. In healthcare cafés you have a more retail-like exposure as they are open to the public and open for longer hours. In contrast, in the school environment you have less risk because most meals are transacted via student meal plans to “repeat” customers; the students. The same is true in our business and industrial environments.
However, one unique opportunity we have noticed is that serving our “regular” customer can produce risk. For example, if we have a corporate office employee who visits for lunch regularly during the week, they establish a familiarity with the Compass employee. Because people are fairly habitual, it’s easy for a dishonest employee to take advantage of that situation because they don’t have to predict what the customer is going to purchase. They know that every day, “Joe” orders a chicken wrap with a fruit salad and drink that costs $6. He also always pays with cash. If Joe is in a hurry, he just gives us the money and heads to the dining area or back to his office. He has no need for a receipt. I think the concern speaks for itself. It makes for an interesting “people-watching” study—are we as diligent with our receipts when we buy a meal as when we buy a product from a retailer? It’s taught me to pay more attention when I’m buying my lunch.
EDITOR: Is there a background screening program for your employees?
McDONALD: We have a very complex background screening program. The complexity is that we’re doing business under the client’s roof or on the client’s campus, so my employees have to meet their standards. In the healthcare industry we have to follow one set of rules and regulations. If we’re servicing a government contractor, there may be another. In the education environment, still another. Everyone has their custom set, so we’re actually very dynamic in that our background screening processes are dependent upon the needs of the client. Again, it’s our job to meet the client’s needs.
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The employee did not appear to be dressed according to company standards. During the duration of the audit, the employee appeared to be using a cell phone several times while on duty.
according to company standards. The employee did not appear to be dressed several times while on duty. employee appeared to be using a cell phone During the duration of the audit, the
EDITOR: How was it that you decided early in your life to get into loss prevention as a profession?
McDONALD: Candidly, like many of my peers, I fell into it. When I graduated from college I was working for a local bank in Atlanta. It was right around the time of the savings-and-loan scandals of the late 1980s. Obviously, as I looked toward banking as a career, it just did not seem to be a place I wanted to be. So, I answered a blind ad in the newspaper that turned out to be Kuppenheimer Men’s Clothiers, a division of the Hartmarx organization. They had a one-person LP department and wanted to add an auditor—what today would be an analyst. It turned out to be one of the greatest jobs I could ask for. I reported to the director of LP who reported to the CFO. So, literally, I was one step away from the CFO and had regular access to him. Here I was, straight out of college, direct access to a CFO, in a small retail company doing a couple hundred million dollars in sales and learning all about loss prevention, auditing, and finance. I learned more in my first year than I probably ever learned in college.
I then moved to Office Depot’s LP team at a time of great growth for the company where I was able to learn about big-box retail. The next move was to a recently IPO’d company called Baby Superstore. They didn’t have an LP department and were looking to start one. We were just beginning to solidify a program when we were bought out by Toys“R”Us and became Babies“R”Us. I spent twelve years at Babies“R”Us, moving up the LP ladder to eventually become the director.
I then moved to Dollar General as the senior director of LP. After about four years, I received a call from Compass Group and made not only a company move, but an industry transition. Looking back I can truly say I’ve had a blessed career working with many great industry leaders, great LP teams, and some truly interesting organizations.
EDITOR: When you got the call from Compass and recognized that it was far different than you’d been exposed to before, what was the attraction that caused you to make the change?
McDONALD: What interested me most was the idea of taking what I’d learned over the past twenty years and putting it into a different environment. Not that LP programs are ever easy, but taking strategies from one retailer to another retailer is much different than taking that same knowledge into a completely different environment and deciding what will work and what won’t. Here at Compass, our operations vary in things ranging from the POS systems to the awareness level of our employees, to even include the cultural differences of the hospitality industry. Add to that the idea of getting into a different industry at a senior level, pardon the pun, but it was a recipe for an exciting move. I’m never one to shy away from a challenge, so to me it was “game on, let’s play.”
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EDITOR: Looking back over your career, who are those people who have been special supporters and mentors for you?
McDONALD: Let me reach outside of the LP world for a moment. The first person is a gentleman by the name of Dave Schoenbeck. Dave was the senior vice president of operations for Babies“R”Us virtually the entire time I was there. He and I had an initial meeting when Baby Superstore was purchased by Babies“R”Us that resulted in me wanting to ensure I was on his team. He is one of those leaders that you just naturally gravitate toward. I think our bonding originated in the fact that he had come from an LP family as his father had been in loss prevention. Even though he was in operations, he had a very clear understanding of what LP could bring to an organization, and he let us contribute as partners in the business. We were never separate from operations, but truly part of the operations team. His management style in leading people and growing an organization was great to work under. He excelled in giving people opportunities to succeed, or fail in some cases, and in recognizing the team that he had under him.
Under the loss prevention umbrella, I would have to say both Walter Palmer and Bob Serenson, who I came to know through my time with Babies“R”Us as well. Bob was overseeing the LP efforts at Babies“R”Us when we met. The program was being managed through the Kids“R”Us organization, where Walter was the director. One of the great things I learned from Walter was to look at things in different ways. Walter always had a great way of opening a problem or opportunity and making you dissect it so you could understand it better. With Bob I think I learned much more about the value of true partnerships. For many years we worked together in a supervisor-subordinate relationship that felt much more like a partnership. We leveraged our strengths and weaknesses over many years to develop a great relationship, team, and friendship. I still employ that same management style today.
EDITOR: Is there anybody else?
McDONALD: Being such a tight knit industry I could name quite a few more people who I’ve watched and learned from over the years, but I’m afraid I would leave someone out. I would say that’s another key benefit an up-and-coming leader can leverage in our world. I’ve made quite a few partners and mentors over the years that I can leverage with just a phone call, and, without exception, the industry leaders always reciprocate with each other. There are quite a few senior leaders on the vendor side of our world who have also been key partners in my career successes as well. If I may offer a piece of advice to an up-and-coming young person in the industry, it’s this—find a mentor that
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continued from page 36 you can rely on, someone you can watch, partner with, and build a relationship with. It’s not about an “assigned” mentor relationship, but the development over time with people you trust and are willing to listen to. Despite our tendencies to be very type A personalities, we don’t know everything and all of us have lots to learn. A mentor who has “been there, done that” is a great asset to have around.
EDITOR: Finally, you know of course that you are a rare breed in LP, at least in one respect—you’ve never relocated from Atlanta despite your career path. That’s pretty rare in the LP world.
McDONALD: That’s true, I’ve been fortunate to stay in Atlanta through all of my transitions. It certainly has helped to be near a major airport where I can get virtually anywhere in the country. While I haven’t formally relocated, I have spent a lot of time away from the family. I will candidly admit that I owe more than 50 percent of my success to my wife, Rebekah, who kept everything at home going so I could go out and advance my career. She put her career on the backburner and made a lot of sacrifices to make sure we had a stable home environment for the family while I was commuting and doing the things needed on the career and business side.
EDITOR: How long have you been married?
McDONALD: We’ve been married for 22 years. We married out of college. She was a retailer at the time working for Helzberg Diamonds and had a successful career. We decided to start a family, which is a story that would make its own article, and she put her career on hold so I could focus on mine. We were fortunate enough to make some sacrifices early on and she was able to stay at home and raise our boys—John Morgan who is now fourteen and Brock who is eight. That was another key decision that has helped us succeed. I’ve never worried about the home front, and she is really my best friend and “partner in crime.” I have a small gentleman’s hobby farm that keeps me busy. At any given time, you’ll find me sitting on top of a John Deere tractor where I do my best thinking. We have a rule that my cell phone stays on the kitchen counter when I’m out on the tractor. Rebekah will pick it up if there is an emergency.
EDITOR: You obviously have a rewarding personal and professional life.
McDONALD: It’s been fun and I certainly haven’t followed any script I could have imagined. We’ve been very
EDITOR: Loss prevention and the business world are very intense. How do you get away from it?
McDONALD: We live on about 13 acres outside of Athens, Georgia, which puts us a bit out in the country. Unlike a lot of people in business, I’m not a golfer. In fact, I look at a golf course and think, “What a waste of land. I wonder how many cattle I could raise on 18 holes?” I have a small gentleman’s hobby farm that keeps me busy. At any given time, you’ll find me sitting on top of a John Deere tractor where I do my best thinking. We have a rule that my cell phone stays on the kitchen counter when I’m out on the tractor. Rebekah will pick it up if there is an emergency. But most of my friends know that “If Chris is on the tractor, he is thinking. Don’t bother him.”
My second hobby is a love of anything with an engine. So aside from my working tractor, I have a 1937 John Deere A that we take out and play with. I also have several classic cars that we work on and show. So, when we finish the farm work, we’re out showing classic cars or going to hunt down another one. It’s not too uncommon to see me on a Monday with a little grease still under my fingernails.
blessed not only professionally, but as a family. I owe a lot of my success to learning from others. I have learned through my career that success is about the people that you bring together around you. It’s about building great teams and relationships. I’ve been fortunate to both work on and build some great teams. I owe my success to many other great people. Whether it’s personal or professional, I’m looking forward to what the next twenty years has to offer just as much as I enjoy looking back over the last twenty.
