Stay ahead of your industry
If Schmid wants to stay ahead of the competitive dairy industry, he has to constantly be on the lookout for emerging trends or innovative solutions.
By staying involved in industry organizations and events and staying in touch with friends and colleagues in the industry, you can keep yourself informed of industry changes.
When attending events and conventions in your industry, you can talk to people and hear challenges other companies are facing and pick up a few ideas on how to beat those challenges. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be a success in business.
“(It’s) just hearing people talking about successes or frustrations or challenges one way or another,” he says. “Just listen. … What are the challenges and frustrations and certain areas for success? You can learn a lot by that and realize that success might not apply here, but we can do something different along those lines.”
While the information given during the convention can be helpful, the best opportunities come via networking, which is why you need to be proactive and engage people in conversation.
“The meetings themselves aren’t as good as the time in the hallways when you run in to people and can meet people and talk over some harebrained ideas,” he says.
Once you’ve made those connections, you can form a group to meet and discuss ideas. Obviously, you most likely won’t be able to exchange ideas with competitors, but if you have noncompetitors you can meet with, take advantage of it.
For example, Schmid meets once a year with a group of noncompeting dairies, and they use that opportunity to kick around ideas and talk about successes and failures over the past year.
“That’s been a good learning process, a sharing idea process and just picking up ideas,” he says.
Diving into trade magazines will also give you an idea of what is going on in your industry.
“They give you a glimpse into what is going on, and you need to do that mon
th
after month after month,” he says. “You have to gather all the information you want, but it still comes down to, ‘OK, how can we compete better? How can we serve these customers better?’ You have to be driven by that.”