July 5, 2024 • 34 mins
Move to a different country to be an intern? Check. Start your own farm alone in a male dominated industry? Check. Be told you're everything wrong with society for it? Check. Pave the way for women in the testosterone crowded agriculture field? Check mate.
Our guest, Brigitte Franzen, didn't let anything stop her and she shares her resilient story with us.
Connect with Brigitte:
Like the show? Be sure to Like, Subscribe, Review and Share! Interested in being a part of WEE? Reach out to our group liaison, Kelli@WomenExcellingEverywhere.com
Our guest, Brigitte Franzen, didn't let anything stop her and she shares her resilient story with us.
Connect with Brigitte:
Like the show? Be sure to Like, Subscribe, Review and Share! Interested in being a part of WEE? Reach out to our group liaison, Kelli@WomenExcellingEverywhere.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Hello everyone, and welcome to anotherepisode of the Women Excelling Everywhere podcast.
I am right, I am hereagain with another amazing guest, and I
was telling her right before we hitrecord. I can't wait to hear her
story. We are here with BridgetFrasian and a little bit about Bridget.
Welcome Bridget, Thank you for beingon the WE podcast. Thank you for
(00:32):
having me. Absolutely so. I'mgoing to read a little bit of the
highlights of her biography and hopefully you'llbe as intrigued as I am with what
this upcoming interview will work out toshow. She was born and raised and
educated in Germany. She did aninternship in nineteen seventy eight on a family
(00:54):
owned livestock farm in Illinois, sinceshe got a job offer from that which
she accepted, so in nineteen eightyshe immigrated to the United States all by
herself and managed the hog farm ofher former host. And that's the little
think air, that's the reason forher her website that we'll talk about in
(01:15):
a minute, and then building herown breeding livestock farm from the ground up.
Dealing with the challenges of doing businessin a male dominated field. This
is a big one. She establisheda credit history and supervising employees. From
eighty seven to ninety nine, shewas the owner operator of Salt Creek Farm
that was selling livestock in five differentstates and even exported overseas. In nineteen
(01:41):
ninety nine, the collapse of thefamily livestock farm as a business model and
a number of a number of factoryfarms came in and took over a lot
of places. So she closed herbusiness and then she went into what she
calls her encore career, and thatis as a certified financial planner. So
(02:02):
there's a story there too, becauseyou go from livestock farm to financial planner.
And now she is a book authorwriting her memoirs. And this is
why I thought this was so cute. Her memoirs are titled Have Pigs,
Will Travel, So there is alot of stories here. Bridget again,
(02:23):
welcome and thank you for being aguest on the show today. Oh,
thank you for having me. Thissounds like fun. I'm looking forward,
yes, absolutely, I'm looking forwardto hearing the hearing your story. So
I have a heart connection to Germany. My grandfather was full German. His
parents on both sides are His parentsimmigrated from different parts of Germany and settled
(02:49):
in north North Dakota and and afew generations later here I am. So
there's a little bit of that heartconnection there for because of my papa,
and I was excited to know thatthat was your original place yourself. But
it begs to that first you know, that first thought livestock farming internship in
(03:15):
the States, Like what drew youto that? What was the interest there?
Were you always interested in animals?Yes, and I wanted to become
a large animal veterinarian. And whenI couldn't get into that school, I
majored in agriculture and with an emphasison animal science. So I was still
(03:38):
working with large animals. I wasstill taking care of them, making sure
they had a good life. Partof going through university in Germany, I
was required to have internships before Icould graduate. It had to add up
to a year total, but Icould break it up into, you know,
(03:59):
a few months at a time.And one of my internships was on
this family livestock farm in Illinois.That is so interesting. So how old
were you when you came and didthat internship? Twenty three, so you
were young to come into an entirelydifferent culture a whole different, different world
(04:24):
almost between the two countries. Didit feel were you apprehensive? Was it
something that you were like no,or were you excited and just ready to
embrace the opportunity. I was excited. My dad traveled a lot for his
job, even internationally, so hewas my role model. And somehow I
(04:46):
never quite got the message girls didn'tdo that sort of thing. I bet.
Since I knew that I could neverown and operate my own farm in
Germany, I always had my eyeon something international, whether that was agg
(05:10):
consulting or whatever that would be,and spending four months overseas you would not
only look at on my resume,but it would tell me whether or not
I could actually do this and ifI could be comfortable being away from you
know, everything I knew. Yeah, yeah, because at a young age
(05:32):
to do that. Did you haveyou mentioned your your father traveled a lot?
Like did the family support you orwere they like, ah, don't
leave us. No. I hadalready been living on my own by then.
I'd been living on my own sinceI was nineteen, doing an internship
anywhere in Germany or spending four monthsin America. They were fine, you
(05:57):
know, they didn't think I wouldstay, and I did, you know,
I came back to Germany, finishedmy degree and then didn't emigrate until
well over a year later. Eventhen, I didn't think it would be
permanent, right right, You thoughtyou were going back. Yeah, so
you put one foot in front ofthe other and then you see what happens
(06:18):
and you just go with it.Yeah. Now we have myself being where
I live and where we raised ourkids. We have three grown boys.
They're all in their thirties now.But they were involved in the youth and
agriculture here and their teens in youknow, in the county that we're in,
and so they did the fairs andthey did the they never they never
(06:41):
raised the swine they raised. Theydid the goats, pigmy or they raised
pigmy goats, and then they roseraised the market goats. So it was
it was a big adventure for themto be involved in that. But running
just just the local I mean,just the little amount of animals that we
had, it it took a lot. Now, did you you said,
(07:06):
at one point, what was itthree hundred what was it you were running?
Oh no, you had three hundredplus customers. But like, how
large was the farm that you ran, oh ed it's peak. I raised
about five thousand animals a year,wow, which at the time was a
lot. And now it's not evena drop in the bucket. It is
(07:27):
nothing but today really. Yeah,but you you had to so so give
us a picture of your role inthat. Were you literally like boots on
the ground or were you managing employeesand purchases and sale acquisitions and like,
were you like the person that kindof ran it all or were you out
(07:50):
there in the barns. When Idid my internship and after that, the
seven years that I worked for thisemployer, it was me in the barnes,
manure on my boots doing it all, help being the obstetrician, helping
deliver piglets, breeding sows, allof it. Yeah. And when I
(08:15):
had my own place again, itwas me with the hands on work.
But if you're the only one doingit, then you can never get sick,
you can never really leave, youcannot go on vacation. So I
thought I would need to expand andget bigger and afford an employee, you
know, you know, first parttime that full time, and very quickly
(08:41):
found out if I do that andthe employee doesn't show up the one and
only employees, or he decides todo something different, and I had to
work for two people and nobody tohelp. Gotcha, And the solution was
Habbyous you get bigger. Yeah,you can hire two people hoping that at
(09:01):
least one of them will show upat any one time. That's an important
lesson. A lot of our listenersare female entrepreneurs, and one of the
things that I tell them often is, you're you're going to hit a glass
ceiling, right, You're going tohit a point where you cannot grow if
you are not building a team thatsurround you, if you are not outsourcing,
(09:24):
you will be spending so much timeand energy taking care of all of
the bits and pieces of your businessthat you can only grow so big.
So outsourcing, whether that's bringing onan employee or hiring virtual assistance or a
social media manager or whatever that is. It's an important lesson and you just
expressed it right. You realize thatif you were ever going to take a
(09:48):
vacation, if you were ever goingto not be boots in the barn,
so to speak, you had tohave employees, and you had to have
enough employees to support a growing business. It's important for women to wrap their
head right because a lot of timeswe think, oh, we can do
it all, and quite frankly,we can, but we shouldn't, is
the thing. Well, even ifwe can, life is life. We
(10:13):
will get sick at some point.And if it's an office job, you
can shut the door and put asign out saying, you know, back
next week. But if you havelivestock, they have to be fed twice
a day. That's right, youknow, and stuff happens. Yeah,
Well, even with two employees,if the weather was bad enough and I
(10:37):
had a horrendous blizzard one year,neither one of them showed up, so
I had to work for three peopleand no help, and oh wow,
And that's enough to really put adent into things. Looking back, the
employee situation was by far the biggestchallenge. It was a bigger challenge than
(11:00):
bankers, or customers, or mechanicsor animals. None of that was anywhere
close to the difficulty I had withemployees. And that changed when I became
the host for two interns. Thereis an exchange program run through the University
(11:22):
of Minnesota, and they place internationalegg students on farms and they stay for
about a year and a half.The university had the same problem that I
had years earlier in finding a placement. It is hard finding a placement for
(11:43):
female interns. So I ended upwith two of them, and to this
day I think of them as mykids. Yes, and they would send
me emails in high mom, that'sso cute last year and it was grand
that's wonderful. The kids are nowforty eight and fifty two the own and
(12:09):
still walking an egg in a business. That's that's cool. That's very cool.
So you hit on a You hiton a point there where you said
that the schools and universities have adifficult time placing female placing females because in
especially in your field, there isa lot of male domination in terms of
(12:35):
who's out there with the boots onthe ground or the boots in the barn,
so to speak. Tell us alittle bit about what was that like
in the eighties developing your own business, where like, how many other female
farm owners were there in your area? We're pretty much was it like seventy
five percent were male, twenty fivepercent or female or was it even less
(12:58):
than that? There were very fewfemale farm owners and there weren't any that
I knew of who started a farmon their own. Some good friends of
mine were a husband and wife team, also on a hog farm, and
were still friends more than forty yearslater. There were some women farmers who
(13:22):
were widows. They inherited the farm. Occasionally they would be the rare daughter
who usually was an only child,and then went to the field with dad
and farm. So there were some, and while it was a strange situation
in the beginning, the neighbors tooknotice. One of them explained to me
(13:45):
that women like me were the sourceof all evil when it came to families,
because I didn't know my place,and I was taking a job away
from a man. Oh no,oh no, they didn't. He did.
And how did you handle that,my friend? I smiled and nodded.
(14:07):
I felt his pain, and Iannounced that my boss had hired the
most qualified person for the job.And he happened to be standing next to
me and going, yep, that'sright, that's right. I love it
so But then he caught his shareof hell too. The first animals that
(14:28):
we raised together and that he delivered, the buyer only bought them because he
didn't realize that they were my animals. You know, if I talked to
him, he would turn to themale standing next to me, answering questions
that way. And when my thenboss came back from the delivery run,
(14:48):
he handed me a fistful of revivalliterature so that my heathen soul could be
saved and I would know my place. Oh it went from that to suddenly
becoming known pretty much all through thecountry as that German woman who has good
(15:09):
hogs. And because publications even backthen were always looking for a good story,
there were a lot of interviews andfarm publications, and they were national
publications. So I would get phonecalls from Florida, from Minnesota, from
(15:30):
California, we need hogs. Canyou deliver that. I'm not taking them
to California. I'm sorry, butI did deliver, you know, into
five states as surrounding Illinois. Weonce met in the parking lot of the
Grand Old Opry for a load ofboors to go to Georgia. We unloaded
(15:52):
them tailgate to tailgate, and youknow, they went halfway. I went
halfway, turned around, went backhome. I still had to do chores
before I left them. After Igot home, so those were long days.
I bet they were. I canjust be I'm just picturing in my
mind in the you know, twobig livestock trucks back to back, you
(16:15):
know, and the sounds all rightthere in the parking lot. I'm sure
there were there were a person.There was a person or two that gave
you a funny look that afternoon.I'm sure. Yeah. I didn't write
with semi. I had a trailerthat held about twenty head oh got it.
It was a bumper hitch. Andthen I also had a hok topper
on the truck bed, so ifit was a smaller group, I would
(16:37):
just put them in the truck bedand that was much easier traveling. Yeah,
you know, that's where the titleof the book comes from, have
pixell Travel. I went all overthe place with them. I love that.
I love that. So tell usa little bit about is that what
the the book is is basically aboutof your memoirs of your well, I
(17:03):
mean that's what that's what you saidin the bio. But is that is
that what this the book entails isa lot of these these kind of fun
stories of your experience and your journeyfrom growing up in Germany and then you
know, raising the hogs. Yes, that's that's pretty much it. I
end with the Hawk farm being shutdown and me having to start over again
(17:27):
at age forty five. That's awonderful story too. So maybe there's going
to be a second because you becamea financial planner, so maybe there'll be
a you know, a second havePigs, will Travel and Manage your money
kind of a book. Yes,I haven't thought of a title yet,
but yes, there is a secondbook coming. Well, don't ask me
(17:48):
when, but definitely it will definitelycome out. So how did that like?
What? Because it was kind oflike when I was reading through this
for your introduction, I was thinkingto myself, you know, generally speaking,
people kind of stay in similar fields, right, so even though you
might not no longer have a ranch, you're still connected. You know,
(18:11):
your your next career is kind ofconnected. But you completely reinvented yourself and
went from that into the financial planningand doing that piece of work, which
is very very different on the surface. I mean, maybe it's not very
different when you talk about how youhad to manage the money to make your
(18:32):
your ranch run, but on thesurface, it feels like it's too completely
different different fields of work. Sowhat made you draw from earth decide Okay,
I'm done with walking out into thebarns, I'm gonna sit in an
office all day. That's a goodquestion. The stress of shutting down this
farm, and you know, losingthe baby that I had raised from nothing,
(18:57):
that was enough stress that it haddestroyed my health, so I was
not able to physically do hard laboranymore. And regardless even if I had
kept the farm, the long termplan was to work somebody younger into the
business and eventually sell it to them, because that is not the kind of
(19:18):
job you do. You know,as you get older, too, how
much a body can endure. Ialways knew that I was good at math,
and that I was good with numbersand with money, so much so
that many of my customers bought myanimals when they had to depopulate their own
(19:41):
farm, then clean up sit emptyand repopulate with new healthy stock. That
usually happened when they had a diseaseproblem in there, and I helped them
get ready to meet with their banker. And that was before computers, before
excels read sheets, so it wasall pencil and paper. But I would
(20:04):
do a float charge with them andfor them the equivalent of a spreadsheet.
This is how much money we need. This is how we're going to pay
it back, because the nature ofit is, while they sit empty,
they still have some expenses for repairsand whatnot. Really big expense comes when
(20:26):
all the new animals are growing up, eating a lot, tearing stuff up,
and nobody is going to market yet. Yes, not quite old enough
yet, and that's when they justhemorrhage cash and they have to explain that
to their banker, and the bankerhas to be comfortable with it, saying
that, you know, this month'sgive or take, we're ready to start
(20:49):
taking them to market, and fromthen on we expect X number of animals
to go and this is how we'repaying the loan back. Right, most
farmers would be overwhelmed with that.I can imagine the fund to just you
know, put together a float chart. And the banker was grateful because he
(21:11):
said it was too common that evensuccessful farmers would come in with some numbers
on the back of an envelope askinghim if they could afford that next piece
of machinery, and oh, theyneeded that envelope back because it was the
only copy they had, so I'mcomfortable with the business side of it,
right. Ultimately, what it camedown to is that I needed a job
(21:34):
with benefits. I needed health insurance, couldn't get it on my own.
That was long before Obamacare. Iwas uninsurable. So I needed a job
with benefits that didn't have me onmy feet all day. And just by
coincidence, an insurance company was lookingto hire financial advisors. We will pay
(21:57):
you to get trained, and wepay benefits, and if you like,
we invite you to send your resumeby word attachment to this here email.
I barely knew how to send anemail. My suites had dragged me into
the Internet age, kicking and screaming. Yes, he said, Mom,
(22:19):
you have to know email. Howelse are we going to communicate one?
Yes? All right? So Ihad never produced an attachment or sent one,
and the manager later told me thathe had never opened one. All
the programs were running on MS DOSyeah yeah, sometimes yeah, yeah yeah.
(22:42):
So I got licensed with them veryproudly told my potential customers that I
had run my own business before.I had run a hook farm before,
and you could just see the icegetting bag and people were in shocked and
a good way out of my businessand they were just a guest, you
(23:07):
want me to give you my moneyto invest in? And I thought that
was sh is you managed that forso long? Then? You know?
Is that like the proof if theytook out the hog part of the hog
farm part out of it and justfocused on you know, a bridget built
and ran her own business successfully,you know, for X number of years
(23:30):
or whatever, that's it's actually avery good financial advisor for sure, right,
except they didn't stake around long enoughto hear that whole story. It
was like nah, next, AndI thought they had a point. You
know, if I asked people totrust me with their investments and with their
money and their insurance, I kindof owed it to them to know as
(23:51):
much as I could about the business. And that's when I went back to
school. Well I was working fulltime. Well, I earned the fight
financial Planner designation and that changed everything. You know. I went from twisting
my toe in the sand saying wouldyou meet with me to say, I'm
the certified financial planner. I'm hereto provide service. Oh yeah, come
(24:14):
on in. That made all thedifference, and I no longer hold that
designation because I'm now retired and it'squite cost me to keep that dination.
But it was one of the hardestthings I ever did, and it was
one of the best things I everdid, because it's very hard to get
(24:34):
yea. And the two people thatI let my money sit with right now
are the people who manage my moneyright now or certified financial planners. Yeah,
very nice. You know, it'sit's such a it's it's such a
great story everything that you've had inyour life, but the reinventing yourself,
(24:56):
because there are there are a lotof women out there that I meet when
I'm out networking, when I aminteracting with other people where it's they are
kind of in your same shoes.They were at a corporate maybe they were
dissatisfied with that, or maybe theywent first, or they had some some
type of a challenge or a changein their life that now they've had to
(25:19):
completely shift into something that is foreignto what they what they knew. So
your story is definitely definitely a greatpiece of advice. You know, again,
get your you were the dive in, do what you got to do
kind of a gal from the verybeginning and you just did it again when
(25:41):
you had when you got your yourfinancial advisor's license or planner. And if
there was one message that I wouldlike to share for and why it is,
don't wait for someone to give youpermission. Would they say it's a
lot easier to apologize and get permission. That is absolutely true. Just do
(26:02):
what you think you need to door what you want to do, and
go for it and people will willeither support you or not. And I
found enough helpers along the way thatI was always able to put one foot
in front of the other and takeone more step, whether that was in
farming or in my second career oreven in the third career as a book
(26:26):
author. You know, yes,someone who would who had gone that route
before and was able to give adviceand give feedback and support. That is
huge. Yeah, I love it. Mentors are and mentors are amazing,
But I love the dive in andjust put one foot in front of the
(26:47):
other. Sometimes we have these bigvisions of what we want as female entrepreneurs,
and we're like, get impatient whenit's not happening right now. But
that one foot in front of anotherand doing it piece by piece is a
wonderful lesson just just go for it. And as the theme or the topic
(27:07):
of this particular podcast is thinking bigand reaching for the stars. It's something
that that you absolutely did big timeand are still doing. Thank you.
Uh and and we never know,you know, what opportunities come our way,
but we have to be ready toanswer that one phone call or to
(27:30):
do that one thing. People getlots of opportunities, and they sometimes take
advantage of them and sometimes not.It was one single phone call. Had
I not answered that phone or notanswered it with an open mind, I
would have never met my Swedes.It was a that was a big deal,
you know, and it just hoo'syour Swedes? That the Swedes were
(27:56):
my my Swedish interns. Oh gotit? Got it? Okay? Yeah.
So the first one happened to callon a day when I had to
let my one and only employee gothat I had at the time because I
was not aware of his criminal recordand of the things that he had done.
(28:18):
Somebody else called me and tipped meoff. There was plenty of drama,
and I was sitting there in mykitchen looking out the window, licking
my wounds, and the phone ringsand someone with a the thick Swedish accent
asked if maybe I needed some helpon the farm. And I thought somebody
was pulling a prank out and Iwas ready to tell them off, and
(28:44):
for some reason I didn't said,all right, tell me more. That's
a good lesson. That's a verygood lesson. The answer to whatever you're
struggling with may just be a phonecall away, so be open to those
opportunities. Yes, that's beautiful.Okay, So your book. Tell us
a little bit more about your book, and then I'm going to tell the
(29:06):
audience where they can find it.Book is not out yet, oh okay.
I will let you know when itcomes out. I'm looking forward to
that, but it's going to bea little while yet. Okay, And
I'm sorry, what was the otherquestion? So, so it is it's
your stories, it's your it's thesethings that we've been talking about, just
(29:27):
just more of them from how yougot started until until you're shutting down the
farm. So that's is that thenutshell of what it is? Yes?
Yes, perfect. All the peopleI met along the way, the helpers
have found I found out that misterRogers was right, you know, look
(29:48):
for the helpers, and surprisingly almostall the helpers were men. I never
expected that. Yeah, well itis a male dominated business. Some of
my biggest problems I had with women. Hate to say it, no,
that isn't that sad, but thathappens. That happens. We women don't
(30:10):
always support each other the way weshould. Yes, and the motivation of
the helpers ran the gamut from beingintrigued to just wanting to be helpful to
having daughters roughly my age. Oneof my helpers was about the age of
(30:33):
my boss. His father had diedyoung and his widowed mother had to continue
the farm and people were giving hera miserable time. And my guy was
just a child at the time andhe saw what his mother went through,
but he was too young to doanything about it. And by gully,
if he could help me, youknow, he was going to do it
(30:56):
this time. Very cool motivation andyeah, we're all got you. That's
awesome, that's awesome. Sometimes ourbiggest advocates are right right next door to
us, and the ones that wedon't think would be there the most.
Well, bridget this has been awonderful conversation. I look forward to seeing
(31:18):
your book when it comes out andfor everyone listening. Bridget has a website
and it's Bridget phrasing friends in amI pronouncing that last name right, yes,
Friendsen Okay, so just her namespelled out Bridgetfriendsen dot com. And
she has some really really cute littlesnippets there already with her pictures and her
(31:40):
biography and her upcoming book, sobe sure to check that out. That
all that information will be in theshow notes for this program. And I
would encourage everyone to take her adviceand really look for the thinking or think
big and reach for the star becauseyou never know what exciting journey is going
(32:02):
to be in front of you.So, Bridget, thank you so much
for being on the Women Excelling Everywhereshow today. Well, thank you so
much for having me. It's beenfun, absolutely absolutely love the stories.
And for all of our listeners,be sure to go to the website Women
Excelling Everywhere dot com and check itout. If there are lots of ways
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(32:24):
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(32:49):
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Incredible Success Collective and that is ourwomen Excelling Everywhere Success Collective and it is
a private community, again very lowfee, where we go through and we
(33:10):
support women to help them excel everywherein their life. Whether you're an entrepreneur,
you are a mom, you area corporate woman, and you just
want an extra special community there tosupport you and learn a lot of brain
based skills and ways to cope withthe stresses and anxieties we feel today as
(33:30):
well as lots of business goes onin there. So be sure to check
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information out on the Women Excelling Everywheredot com website. So thank you everyone
for listening and as I like toclose up all my shows, take a
nice deg breath, go out thereand simply enjoy every moment until next time.
Hello everyone, and welcome to anotherepisode of the Women Excelling Everywhere podcast.
I am right, I am hereagain with another amazing guest, and I
was telling her right before we hitrecord. I can't wait to hear her
story. We are here with BridgetFrasian and a little bit about Bridget.
Welcome Bridget, Thank you for beingon the WE podcast. Thank you for
(00:32):
having me. Absolutely so. I'mgoing to read a little bit of the
highlights of her biography and hopefully you'llbe as intrigued as I am with what
this upcoming interview will work out toshow. She was born and raised and
educated in Germany. She did aninternship in nineteen seventy eight on a family
(00:54):
owned livestock farm in Illinois, sinceshe got a job offer from that which
she accepted, so in nineteen eightyshe immigrated to the United States all by
herself and managed the hog farm ofher former host. And that's the little
think air, that's the reason forher her website that we'll talk about in
(01:15):
a minute, and then building herown breeding livestock farm from the ground up.
Dealing with the challenges of doing businessin a male dominated field. This
is a big one. She establisheda credit history and supervising employees. From
eighty seven to ninety nine, shewas the owner operator of Salt Creek Farm
that was selling livestock in five differentstates and even exported overseas. In nineteen
(01:41):
ninety nine, the collapse of thefamily livestock farm as a business model and
a number of a number of factoryfarms came in and took over a lot
of places. So she closed herbusiness and then she went into what she
calls her encore career, and thatis as a certified financial planner. So
(02:02):
there's a story there too, becauseyou go from livestock farm to financial planner.
And now she is a book authorwriting her memoirs. And this is
why I thought this was so cute. Her memoirs are titled Have Pigs,
Will Travel, So there is alot of stories here. Bridget again,
(02:23):
welcome and thank you for being aguest on the show today. Oh,
thank you for having me. Thissounds like fun. I'm looking forward,
yes, absolutely, I'm looking forwardto hearing the hearing your story. So
I have a heart connection to Germany. My grandfather was full German. His
parents on both sides are His parentsimmigrated from different parts of Germany and settled
(02:49):
in north North Dakota and and afew generations later here I am. So
there's a little bit of that heartconnection there for because of my papa,
and I was excited to know thatthat was your original place yourself. But
it begs to that first you know, that first thought livestock farming internship in
(03:15):
the States, Like what drew youto that? What was the interest there?
Were you always interested in animals?Yes, and I wanted to become
a large animal veterinarian. And whenI couldn't get into that school, I
majored in agriculture and with an emphasison animal science. So I was still
(03:38):
working with large animals. I wasstill taking care of them, making sure
they had a good life. Partof going through university in Germany, I
was required to have internships before Icould graduate. It had to add up
to a year total, but Icould break it up into, you know,
(03:59):
a few months at a time.And one of my internships was on
this family livestock farm in Illinois.That is so interesting. So how old
were you when you came and didthat internship? Twenty three, so you
were young to come into an entirelydifferent culture a whole different, different world
(04:24):
almost between the two countries. Didit feel were you apprehensive? Was it
something that you were like no,or were you excited and just ready to
embrace the opportunity. I was excited. My dad traveled a lot for his
job, even internationally, so hewas my role model. And somehow I
(04:46):
never quite got the message girls didn'tdo that sort of thing. I bet.
Since I knew that I could neverown and operate my own farm in
Germany, I always had my eyeon something international, whether that was agg
(05:10):
consulting or whatever that would be,and spending four months overseas you would not
only look at on my resume,but it would tell me whether or not
I could actually do this and ifI could be comfortable being away from you
know, everything I knew. Yeah, yeah, because at a young age
(05:32):
to do that. Did you haveyou mentioned your your father traveled a lot?
Like did the family support you orwere they like, ah, don't
leave us. No. I hadalready been living on my own by then.
I'd been living on my own sinceI was nineteen, doing an internship
anywhere in Germany or spending four monthsin America. They were fine, you
(05:57):
know, they didn't think I wouldstay, and I did, you know,
I came back to Germany, finishedmy degree and then didn't emigrate until
well over a year later. Eventhen, I didn't think it would be
permanent, right right, You thoughtyou were going back. Yeah, so
you put one foot in front ofthe other and then you see what happens
(06:18):
and you just go with it.Yeah. Now we have myself being where
I live and where we raised ourkids. We have three grown boys.
They're all in their thirties now.But they were involved in the youth and
agriculture here and their teens in youknow, in the county that we're in,
and so they did the fairs andthey did the they never they never
(06:41):
raised the swine they raised. Theydid the goats, pigmy or they raised
pigmy goats, and then they roseraised the market goats. So it was
it was a big adventure for themto be involved in that. But running
just just the local I mean,just the little amount of animals that we
had, it it took a lot. Now, did you you said,
(07:06):
at one point, what was itthree hundred what was it you were running?
Oh no, you had three hundredplus customers. But like, how
large was the farm that you ran, oh ed it's peak. I raised
about five thousand animals a year,wow, which at the time was a
lot. And now it's not evena drop in the bucket. It is
(07:27):
nothing but today really. Yeah,but you you had to so so give
us a picture of your role inthat. Were you literally like boots on
the ground or were you managing employeesand purchases and sale acquisitions and like,
were you like the person that kindof ran it all or were you out
(07:50):
there in the barns. When Idid my internship and after that, the
seven years that I worked for thisemployer, it was me in the barnes,
manure on my boots doing it all, help being the obstetrician, helping
deliver piglets, breeding sows, allof it. Yeah. And when I
(08:15):
had my own place again, itwas me with the hands on work.
But if you're the only one doingit, then you can never get sick,
you can never really leave, youcannot go on vacation. So I
thought I would need to expand andget bigger and afford an employee, you
know, you know, first parttime that full time, and very quickly
(08:41):
found out if I do that andthe employee doesn't show up the one and
only employees, or he decides todo something different, and I had to
work for two people and nobody tohelp. Gotcha, And the solution was
Habbyous you get bigger. Yeah,you can hire two people hoping that at
(09:01):
least one of them will show upat any one time. That's an important
lesson. A lot of our listenersare female entrepreneurs, and one of the
things that I tell them often is, you're you're going to hit a glass
ceiling, right, You're going tohit a point where you cannot grow if
you are not building a team thatsurround you, if you are not outsourcing,
(09:24):
you will be spending so much timeand energy taking care of all of
the bits and pieces of your businessthat you can only grow so big.
So outsourcing, whether that's bringing onan employee or hiring virtual assistance or a
social media manager or whatever that is. It's an important lesson and you just
expressed it right. You realize thatif you were ever going to take a
(09:48):
vacation, if you were ever goingto not be boots in the barn,
so to speak, you had tohave employees, and you had to have
enough employees to support a growing business. It's important for women to wrap their
head right because a lot of timeswe think, oh, we can do
it all, and quite frankly,we can, but we shouldn't, is
the thing. Well, even ifwe can, life is life. We
(10:13):
will get sick at some point.And if it's an office job, you
can shut the door and put asign out saying, you know, back
next week. But if you havelivestock, they have to be fed twice
a day. That's right, youknow, and stuff happens. Yeah,
Well, even with two employees,if the weather was bad enough and I
(10:37):
had a horrendous blizzard one year,neither one of them showed up, so
I had to work for three peopleand no help, and oh wow,
And that's enough to really put adent into things. Looking back, the
employee situation was by far the biggestchallenge. It was a bigger challenge than
(11:00):
bankers, or customers, or mechanicsor animals. None of that was anywhere
close to the difficulty I had withemployees. And that changed when I became
the host for two interns. Thereis an exchange program run through the University
(11:22):
of Minnesota, and they place internationalegg students on farms and they stay for
about a year and a half.The university had the same problem that I
had years earlier in finding a placement. It is hard finding a placement for
(11:43):
female interns. So I ended upwith two of them, and to this
day I think of them as mykids. Yes, and they would send
me emails in high mom, that'sso cute last year and it was grand
that's wonderful. The kids are nowforty eight and fifty two the own and
(12:09):
still walking an egg in a business. That's that's cool. That's very cool.
So you hit on a You hiton a point there where you said
that the schools and universities have adifficult time placing female placing females because in
especially in your field, there isa lot of male domination in terms of
(12:35):
who's out there with the boots onthe ground or the boots in the barn,
so to speak. Tell us alittle bit about what was that like
in the eighties developing your own business, where like, how many other female
farm owners were there in your area? We're pretty much was it like seventy
five percent were male, twenty fivepercent or female or was it even less
(12:58):
than that? There were very fewfemale farm owners and there weren't any that
I knew of who started a farmon their own. Some good friends of
mine were a husband and wife team, also on a hog farm, and
were still friends more than forty yearslater. There were some women farmers who
(13:22):
were widows. They inherited the farm. Occasionally they would be the rare daughter
who usually was an only child,and then went to the field with dad
and farm. So there were some, and while it was a strange situation
in the beginning, the neighbors tooknotice. One of them explained to me
(13:45):
that women like me were the sourceof all evil when it came to families,
because I didn't know my place,and I was taking a job away
from a man. Oh no,oh no, they didn't. He did.
And how did you handle that,my friend? I smiled and nodded.
(14:07):
I felt his pain, and Iannounced that my boss had hired the
most qualified person for the job.And he happened to be standing next to
me and going, yep, that'sright, that's right. I love it
so But then he caught his shareof hell too. The first animals that
(14:28):
we raised together and that he delivered, the buyer only bought them because he
didn't realize that they were my animals. You know, if I talked to
him, he would turn to themale standing next to me, answering questions
that way. And when my thenboss came back from the delivery run,
(14:48):
he handed me a fistful of revivalliterature so that my heathen soul could be
saved and I would know my place. Oh it went from that to suddenly
becoming known pretty much all through thecountry as that German woman who has good
(15:09):
hogs. And because publications even backthen were always looking for a good story,
there were a lot of interviews andfarm publications, and they were national
publications. So I would get phonecalls from Florida, from Minnesota, from
(15:30):
California, we need hogs. Canyou deliver that. I'm not taking them
to California. I'm sorry, butI did deliver, you know, into
five states as surrounding Illinois. Weonce met in the parking lot of the
Grand Old Opry for a load ofboors to go to Georgia. We unloaded
(15:52):
them tailgate to tailgate, and youknow, they went halfway. I went
halfway, turned around, went backhome. I still had to do chores
before I left them. After Igot home, so those were long days.
I bet they were. I canjust be I'm just picturing in my
mind in the you know, twobig livestock trucks back to back, you
(16:15):
know, and the sounds all rightthere in the parking lot. I'm sure
there were there were a person.There was a person or two that gave
you a funny look that afternoon.I'm sure. Yeah. I didn't write
with semi. I had a trailerthat held about twenty head oh got it.
It was a bumper hitch. Andthen I also had a hok topper
on the truck bed, so ifit was a smaller group, I would
(16:37):
just put them in the truck bedand that was much easier traveling. Yeah,
you know, that's where the titleof the book comes from, have
pixell Travel. I went all overthe place with them. I love that.
I love that. So tell usa little bit about is that what
the the book is is basically aboutof your memoirs of your well, I
(17:03):
mean that's what that's what you saidin the bio. But is that is
that what this the book entails isa lot of these these kind of fun
stories of your experience and your journeyfrom growing up in Germany and then you
know, raising the hogs. Yes, that's that's pretty much it. I
end with the Hawk farm being shutdown and me having to start over again
(17:27):
at age forty five. That's awonderful story too. So maybe there's going
to be a second because you becamea financial planner, so maybe there'll be
a you know, a second havePigs, will Travel and Manage your money
kind of a book. Yes,I haven't thought of a title yet,
but yes, there is a secondbook coming. Well, don't ask me
(17:48):
when, but definitely it will definitelycome out. So how did that like?
What? Because it was kind oflike when I was reading through this
for your introduction, I was thinkingto myself, you know, generally speaking,
people kind of stay in similar fields, right, so even though you
might not no longer have a ranch, you're still connected. You know,
(18:11):
your your next career is kind ofconnected. But you completely reinvented yourself and
went from that into the financial planningand doing that piece of work, which
is very very different on the surface. I mean, maybe it's not very
different when you talk about how youhad to manage the money to make your
(18:32):
your ranch run, but on thesurface, it feels like it's too completely
different different fields of work. Sowhat made you draw from earth decide Okay,
I'm done with walking out into thebarns, I'm gonna sit in an
office all day. That's a goodquestion. The stress of shutting down this
farm, and you know, losingthe baby that I had raised from nothing,
(18:57):
that was enough stress that it haddestroyed my health, so I was
not able to physically do hard laboranymore. And regardless even if I had
kept the farm, the long termplan was to work somebody younger into the
business and eventually sell it to them, because that is not the kind of
(19:18):
job you do. You know,as you get older, too, how
much a body can endure. Ialways knew that I was good at math,
and that I was good with numbersand with money, so much so
that many of my customers bought myanimals when they had to depopulate their own
(19:41):
farm, then clean up sit emptyand repopulate with new healthy stock. That
usually happened when they had a diseaseproblem in there, and I helped them
get ready to meet with their banker. And that was before computers, before
excels read sheets, so it wasall pencil and paper. But I would
(20:04):
do a float charge with them andfor them the equivalent of a spreadsheet.
This is how much money we need. This is how we're going to pay
it back, because the nature ofit is, while they sit empty,
they still have some expenses for repairsand whatnot. Really big expense comes when
(20:26):
all the new animals are growing up, eating a lot, tearing stuff up,
and nobody is going to market yet. Yes, not quite old enough
yet, and that's when they justhemorrhage cash and they have to explain that
to their banker, and the bankerhas to be comfortable with it, saying
that, you know, this month'sgive or take, we're ready to start
(20:49):
taking them to market, and fromthen on we expect X number of animals
to go and this is how we'repaying the loan back. Right, most
farmers would be overwhelmed with that.I can imagine the fund to just you
know, put together a float chart. And the banker was grateful because he
(21:11):
said it was too common that evensuccessful farmers would come in with some numbers
on the back of an envelope askinghim if they could afford that next piece
of machinery, and oh, theyneeded that envelope back because it was the
only copy they had, so I'mcomfortable with the business side of it,
right. Ultimately, what it camedown to is that I needed a job
(21:34):
with benefits. I needed health insurance, couldn't get it on my own.
That was long before Obamacare. Iwas uninsurable. So I needed a job
with benefits that didn't have me onmy feet all day. And just by
coincidence, an insurance company was lookingto hire financial advisors. We will pay
(21:57):
you to get trained, and wepay benefits, and if you like,
we invite you to send your resumeby word attachment to this here email.
I barely knew how to send anemail. My suites had dragged me into
the Internet age, kicking and screaming. Yes, he said, Mom,
(22:19):
you have to know email. Howelse are we going to communicate one?
Yes? All right? So Ihad never produced an attachment or sent one,
and the manager later told me thathe had never opened one. All
the programs were running on MS DOSyeah yeah, sometimes yeah, yeah yeah.
(22:42):
So I got licensed with them veryproudly told my potential customers that I
had run my own business before.I had run a hook farm before,
and you could just see the icegetting bag and people were in shocked and
a good way out of my businessand they were just a guest, you
(23:07):
want me to give you my moneyto invest in? And I thought that
was sh is you managed that forso long? Then? You know?
Is that like the proof if theytook out the hog part of the hog
farm part out of it and justfocused on you know, a bridget built
and ran her own business successfully,you know, for X number of years
(23:30):
or whatever, that's it's actually avery good financial advisor for sure, right,
except they didn't stake around long enoughto hear that whole story. It
was like nah, next, AndI thought they had a point. You
know, if I asked people totrust me with their investments and with their
money and their insurance, I kindof owed it to them to know as
(23:51):
much as I could about the business. And that's when I went back to
school. Well I was working fulltime. Well, I earned the fight
financial Planner designation and that changed everything. You know. I went from twisting
my toe in the sand saying wouldyou meet with me to say, I'm
the certified financial planner. I'm hereto provide service. Oh yeah, come
(24:14):
on in. That made all thedifference, and I no longer hold that
designation because I'm now retired and it'squite cost me to keep that dination.
But it was one of the hardestthings I ever did, and it was
one of the best things I everdid, because it's very hard to get
(24:34):
yea. And the two people thatI let my money sit with right now
are the people who manage my moneyright now or certified financial planners. Yeah,
very nice. You know, it'sit's such a it's it's such a
great story everything that you've had inyour life, but the reinventing yourself,
(24:56):
because there are there are a lotof women out there that I meet when
I'm out networking, when I aminteracting with other people where it's they are
kind of in your same shoes.They were at a corporate maybe they were
dissatisfied with that, or maybe theywent first, or they had some some
type of a challenge or a changein their life that now they've had to
(25:19):
completely shift into something that is foreignto what they what they knew. So
your story is definitely definitely a greatpiece of advice. You know, again,
get your you were the dive in, do what you got to do
kind of a gal from the verybeginning and you just did it again when
(25:41):
you had when you got your yourfinancial advisor's license or planner. And if
there was one message that I wouldlike to share for and why it is,
don't wait for someone to give youpermission. Would they say it's a
lot easier to apologize and get permission. That is absolutely true. Just do
(26:02):
what you think you need to door what you want to do, and
go for it and people will willeither support you or not. And I
found enough helpers along the way thatI was always able to put one foot
in front of the other and takeone more step, whether that was in
farming or in my second career oreven in the third career as a book
(26:26):
author. You know, yes,someone who would who had gone that route
before and was able to give adviceand give feedback and support. That is
huge. Yeah, I love it. Mentors are and mentors are amazing,
But I love the dive in andjust put one foot in front of the
(26:47):
other. Sometimes we have these bigvisions of what we want as female entrepreneurs,
and we're like, get impatient whenit's not happening right now. But
that one foot in front of anotherand doing it piece by piece is a
wonderful lesson just just go for it. And as the theme or the topic
(27:07):
of this particular podcast is thinking bigand reaching for the stars. It's something
that that you absolutely did big timeand are still doing. Thank you.
Uh and and we never know,you know, what opportunities come our way,
but we have to be ready toanswer that one phone call or to
(27:30):
do that one thing. People getlots of opportunities, and they sometimes take
advantage of them and sometimes not.It was one single phone call. Had
I not answered that phone or notanswered it with an open mind, I
would have never met my Swedes.It was a that was a big deal,
you know, and it just hoo'syour Swedes? That the Swedes were
(27:56):
my my Swedish interns. Oh gotit? Got it? Okay? Yeah.
So the first one happened to callon a day when I had to
let my one and only employee gothat I had at the time because I
was not aware of his criminal recordand of the things that he had done.
(28:18):
Somebody else called me and tipped meoff. There was plenty of drama,
and I was sitting there in mykitchen looking out the window, licking
my wounds, and the phone ringsand someone with a the thick Swedish accent
asked if maybe I needed some helpon the farm. And I thought somebody
was pulling a prank out and Iwas ready to tell them off, and
(28:44):
for some reason I didn't said,all right, tell me more. That's
a good lesson. That's a verygood lesson. The answer to whatever you're
struggling with may just be a phonecall away, so be open to those
opportunities. Yes, that's beautiful.Okay, So your book. Tell us
a little bit more about your book, and then I'm going to tell the
(29:06):
audience where they can find it.Book is not out yet, oh okay.
I will let you know when itcomes out. I'm looking forward to
that, but it's going to bea little while yet. Okay, And
I'm sorry, what was the otherquestion? So, so it is it's
your stories, it's your it's thesethings that we've been talking about, just
(29:27):
just more of them from how yougot started until until you're shutting down the
farm. So that's is that thenutshell of what it is? Yes?
Yes, perfect. All the peopleI met along the way, the helpers
have found I found out that misterRogers was right, you know, look
(29:48):
for the helpers, and surprisingly almostall the helpers were men. I never
expected that. Yeah, well itis a male dominated business. Some of
my biggest problems I had with women. Hate to say it, no,
that isn't that sad, but thathappens. That happens. We women don't
(30:10):
always support each other the way weshould. Yes, and the motivation of
the helpers ran the gamut from beingintrigued to just wanting to be helpful to
having daughters roughly my age. Oneof my helpers was about the age of
(30:33):
my boss. His father had diedyoung and his widowed mother had to continue
the farm and people were giving hera miserable time. And my guy was
just a child at the time andhe saw what his mother went through,
but he was too young to doanything about it. And by gully,
if he could help me, youknow, he was going to do it
(30:56):
this time. Very cool motivation andyeah, we're all got you. That's
awesome, that's awesome. Sometimes ourbiggest advocates are right right next door to
us, and the ones that wedon't think would be there the most.
Well, bridget this has been awonderful conversation. I look forward to seeing
(31:18):
your book when it comes out andfor everyone listening. Bridget has a website
and it's Bridget phrasing friends in amI pronouncing that last name right, yes,
Friendsen Okay, so just her namespelled out Bridgetfriendsen dot com. And
she has some really really cute littlesnippets there already with her pictures and her
(31:40):
biography and her upcoming book, sobe sure to check that out. That
all that information will be in theshow notes for this program. And I
would encourage everyone to take her adviceand really look for the thinking or think
big and reach for the star becauseyou never know what exciting journey is going
(32:02):
to be in front of you.So, Bridget, thank you so much
for being on the Women Excelling Everywhereshow today. Well, thank you so
much for having me. It's beenfun, absolutely absolutely love the stories.
And for all of our listeners,be sure to go to the website Women
Excelling Everywhere dot com and check itout. If there are lots of ways
that you can interact with us viathis podcast. If you think there was
(32:24):
a cute interview, go ahead andgive us the thumbs up, give us
a positive review, because you knowthe algorithms that always helps and share it
out, share it out to yourcommunity. A nice lighthearted conversation with a
really good point that we talked abouttoday on the show. If you're interested
in becoming a member to if youwould like your business highlighted on our website
(32:49):
to give you extra traction, extraextra connections and extra exposure, be sure
to check that out. It's asmall fee to have your business listed on
our site. Your full business liston our site. We also have our
Incredible Success Collective and that is ourwomen Excelling Everywhere Success Collective and it is
a private community, again very lowfee, where we go through and we
(33:10):
support women to help them excel everywherein their life. Whether you're an entrepreneur,
you are a mom, you area corporate woman, and you just
want an extra special community there tosupport you and learn a lot of brain
based skills and ways to cope withthe stresses and anxieties we feel today as
(33:30):
well as lots of business goes onin there. So be sure to check
that out and enjoy and join usthere. All you can find all that
information out on the Women Excelling Everywheredot com website. So thank you everyone
for listening and as I like toclose up all my shows, take a
nice deg breath, go out thereand simply enjoy every moment until next time.
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