A strategic investment and boutique consulting firm "Connecting People, Business & Opportunity"Investor - Eon Heath "Defying Disease"https://eonhealth.com/Investor - Recoup Fitnesshttps://recoupfitness.com/Investor – QT Ultrasound https://www.qtultrasound.com/ Investor – Teakoe https://www.teakoe.com/ Investor – Suavecito Tequilahttps://www.suavecitotequila.com/ Investor – Lodos Bar & Grillhttp://www.lodosbarandgrill.com/ Investor – Aqua Terra Culinary https://aquaterraculinary.com/ Investor – TopYahttps://topya.com/ Co-Founder – Breakup Freedom http://www.breakupfreedom.com/ https://breakupfreedom.mn.co/ Investor – Twyst Inc. https://www.twystinc.com/

Work experience from a family business transcends traditional categorization through an incredibly important need to be multi-disciplined. While the challenges and opportunities encountered thus far have been numerous, I’ll stick with a few things I’m most proud of to date:• Working directly with former Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, I helped negotiate the first sale of Nebraska grown dry beans to the Cuban Government (Alimport) since the late 1950’s. • I hadn’t a lick of food safety education but I knew our program was inadequate for tomorrow’s challenges. Teaching myself food safety theory at night, I developed and implemented a new integrated food safety & quality system based on GFSI standards. The system covers over 220 employees operating 20 facilities in eight states and has received BRC certification for 5 straight years.• I took it upon myself to launch, grow, and maintain the company’s first direct export program to Mexico. Nearly a year was spent conducting face to face interviews in Mexico to complete an ABC risk analysis based on customer credit worthiness and company fit. Building on this new cultural knowledge base, I also developed and launched a U.S. Hispanic retail brand that quickly gained national distribution.• Leading two separate company rebranding efforts taught me the importance of truly knowing who you are as a company, what you’re good at, and how to communicate your story of “why”.I’ve been incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work with both my father and brother at a company my grandfather helped start over 90 years ago.

An internship in Barcelona, Spain would seem like the cush job of the century, but unfortunately, and fortunately, it was anything but that. My Spanish background was Mexican based and consisted of literally one semester at the time. Armed with only these pathetic language skills and my wits, I was tasked with driving around the country in a rental car to interview some 20 Spanish legume companies about issues such as E-commerce, retail packaging trends, ISO-9000, GMOs, and the Euro. The final deliverable was a set of four comprehensive trade reports for over 100 U.S. agricultural companies. Not being able to accurately communicate is an adventure on vacation but an incredibly humbling professional experience. I’m unsure if I’ve ever learned so much so quickly. I had no choice.

My first real job. I could have easily returned to the family business with neither effort nor question but I wanted to see what I could do on my own. I could not have scripted a better scenario or asked for a better mentor with Mr. Stan Mason. During my time there, I learned the valuable arts of relationship management, of supply chain creation and development, of strong and ethical negotiation, and of cross functional teamwork. I supervised my first team. I learned that if you’re going to present something to the Boss, always bring your best work and effort right out of the gate. Fresh out of college and I was managing $75 million of annual spend, working with the famed Bell Labs design community, and analyzing semiconductor facilities from Mexico to Japan.

An incredibly cool work experience where I learned about the research side of agriculture. My love for diagnosing, asking why, and solving challenging problems took a big leap in this position.

I didn't get to hang out at the swimming pool and such during high school summers. I had to work in our warehouses. From loading rail cars full of 100lbs bags of beans, to digging rotten beans out of warehouse corners, to sweeping for hours on end, to picking corn kernels out of beans by hand, I spent my summers learning the bean business from the bottom up and understanding why I should go to college.