Jodi Reed has been an assistant for over 30 years and enjoys drag racing as one of her favorite hobbies.
In this episode of The Leader Assistant Podcast with Jeremy Burrows, Jodi talks about her experience as a drag racer and how it has helped her step outside of her comfort zone as an executive assistant.
LEADERSHIP QUOTE
If service is beneath you, leadership is beyond you.
CONNECT WITH JODI
- Jodi on LinkedIn
- Jodi on Facebook
- Book recommendation ->Living Loving and Learning by Leo F. Buscaglia
ABOUT JODI
Jodi Reed has been an admin for over 30 years and an executive assistant for 5 years. She has been with AGPROfessionals since 2015 and supports the CEO/Owner, and two other executives, as well as manages the office and a small team of admin. Jodi earned her CAP designation in 2019.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Jodi Reed 0:00
Hi, I’m Jodi Reed and one of my favorite quotes is if service is beneath you leadership is beyond you.
Podcast Intro 0:12
The Leader Assistant Podcast exists to encourage and challenge assistants to become confident game changing leader assistants
Jeremy Burrows 0:27
are you tasked with ordering food for your office? Let me tell you about ezCater with over 100,000 restaurants to choose from nationwide and a 24/7 customer support. EzCater helps assistants like you and me succeed at work and makes our lives easier. Visit ezcater.com/leaderassistant to find out more. Hey friends, welcome to The Leader Assistant Podcast. It’s episode 235 You can check out the show notes at leaderassistant.com/235 Leaderassistant.com/235 and today I’m excited to be speaking with Jodi Reed. Jodi has been an assistant for over 30 years, specifically and executive assistant for five years and she’s been with ag professionals. I hope I said that right. We’ll let her correct me since 2015. And she supports the CEO slash owner and two other executives and and manages the office and a small team of assistants. So Jodi, welcome to the show. First of all, it sounds like you have your hands full at this company.
Jodi Reed 1:39
I do. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I do have a handful.
Jeremy Burrows 1:43
Did I say right ag pro professionals? Ag professionals. Yes, professionals. Alright, cool. And then what part of the world are you in?
Jodi Reed 1:51
I’m in Greeley, Colorado. We’re just north of Denver.
Jeremy Burrows 1:55
Love it. Love the Denver area and my brother lives there. So I get to make it out there once or twice a year. And just love the weather and the mountains. So I’m a little jealous. I’m not gonna lie. I’m a little jealous.
Jodi Reed 2:07
It is pretty here.
Jeremy Burrows 2:09
So tell us a little bit about your you personally. Do you have dogs, cats? Ferrets, you know a garden? Do you like a certain Netflix show? Right now? Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jodi Reed 2:25
I have a dog. I have a basset hound named Fred. And I have two grandchildren. I don’t really have a favorite Netflix show. I don’t watch a lot of TV. I read a lot. So
Jeremy Burrows 2:38
what’s the what’s your favorite book?
Jodi Reed 2:41
This one the nonfiction but my favorite book is living loving and learning by Leo Buscaglia. I read it every year.
Jeremy Burrows 2:48
And interesting every year. Hmm. Wow. Yeah, I’ve worn out a copy. So living, loving and what learning
Jodi Reed 2:56
learning by Leo Buscaglia.
Jeremy Burrows 3:00
I’m gonna have to put that in the show notes as well. Because if you read that every year, then it must be worth putting in the show notes. Right?
Jodi Reed 3:07
He was phenomenal. I wish I could have heard him speak he taught a class called Love at University of La I think they’re so
Jeremy Burrows 3:17
nice. Awesome. Yeah. Check that out. And then, you know, you’ve been assistant for a while. And we’re going to talk about your hobby here in a minute. But tell us about how you got into the profession. And maybe why and what you liked about it.
Jodi Reed 3:36
My mom was an admin for 50 years with the same company for 35. And I always joke that I learned it through osmosis. And it just kind of and so I started young. Right out of high school as an admin i This is horrible to admit, I typed 10 words per minute, back in the day. And I just stuck with it. I enjoyed it. I enjoy being supportive. I like that helping people. The pleasing people was a long time ago part of it, but I just I enjoy helping and I feel like I help. And it’s different every day. It’s not the same thing day in and day out.
Jeremy Burrows 4:18
Yeah, that’s one of my favorite parts. So how did you end up in the AGRICO culture industry then?
Jodi Reed 4:28
Luck. I worked for a water district here in Greeley and I knew the owner. And one of the other execs that I support now. And I dealt with them for probably 10 years. They would we develop dairies feedlots, those sorts of things. And so they were bringing in some dairies into the local area and during the development and they needed water. So I dealt with them quite a bit and I always loved working for them. They vie for the client, and I loved that they always were pushing for the cloud. Ain’t and never took no for an answer without being bratty about it, and then loved that I loved how much they put the client first. And I always used to tease them, if you ever have an opening, I want to come work there while they had an opening. And this is I didn’t start as an assistant, there I was their projects admin coordinator. So it was pure luck coming to work for them, I just adored them and knew I wanted to work for them.
Jeremy Burrows 5:25
Nice. And what’s maybe, you know, talked a lot of assistance in different industries, finance, retail, you know, family offices, venture capital, software, etc. I don’t know that I’ve actually interviewed if anybody who’s maybe one from the agricultural industry is have you noticed anything about this? Or do people, you know, as you’re networking with other assistants and other industries, is there is there like a major difference to your role that, you know, would be interesting to share?
Jodi Reed 6:08
More a lot more casual, we’re very small. But we do have two offices in two states. So I support people in other states too. So maybe being small and being AG, I feel like it’s a little more casual. It’s a little more laid back. It’s well, it’s fast paced. It’s not like a super intense, fast pace. And I don’t have a board to deal with with being here or anything like that. So
Jeremy Burrows 6:35
nice. Cool. Well, you know, I’ve talked about this a lot in my trainings with assistants, where I talked about how, if we as assistants care more about being comfortable, then versus taking risks, then we’re not going to really be able to lead Well, we’re not really going to be able to reach our full potential. And we’re also not going to encourage others to step outside of their comfort zone. And one thing that I think I posted on LinkedIn, and I said, Hey, you know, what’s your hobby, and you commented, saying, drag racing. And first, I was like, okay, you know, drag racing, like, you like to watch it on TV and go to the races and, you know, the whole community by whatever. And then you, you know, you clarify, I actually I, I drag race, like, I drive the cars myself. And I was like, what we got to talk about this. So I want to hear, like, from the beginning, like, what happened, why did you decide to do this, what kind of pulled you into the drag racing world, and then we’ll kind of get into the nitty gritty.
Jodi Reed 7:53
So in high school, we street raced. But this was a very long time ago, when there wasn’t a whole lot of population here in Greeley. And it was a little taboo and horrible as it is now. But so I’ve always liked it gone to them. My ex husband actually has a hotrod shop and builds cars and had built his car and at Bandimere. And I don’t know, for those that don’t follow drag racing Bandimere this is their last year, they’re on a mountain, it’s you know, they’re a mile high. So it’s hard to tune cars. It’s a unique situation. So we were at Bandimere. And they have a class called nitro knockouts for just women. And you can get in your daily driver and go down the track, I had a friend, she raises a very, very fast car, got in the car with me, because go slow enough that you could have someone ride with you. So we had to do the tree. And because I was very intimidated by the tree, that Christmas tree, the lights. And it was 22 seconds down the track. It’s probably the slowest I’ve ever gotten in my life. And I was hooked. And I came running back up to the pits and said I want to race car. And a year later. Not quite a year later, I had my own car. Wow. So that was how that started. I instantly fell in love with it. It’s not as easy as it looks, looks like you just get in there and punch the gas and you go right. It’s called bracket racing is the class I race. And so you have to guess your time you have to know your time. So you get to time trials. And then you have to say what you’re gonna run like how long my car usually runs in 1140. So 11.4 seconds that a quarter. So I have to guess how it’s going to be and then your light your time to shine your light. So your reaction time from when it turns green and you go even if I’m slower or faster than the car one of us leaves before the other and then at the at the finish line you have to judge who’s gonna cross that line first closest to their time without going faster than your time. Yeah, so it’s not just go and whoever hits the line first. There’s a lot of like play at the big end, and you have to let off and judge and interesting. Yeah, that was that’s the hardest part. I really do think that’s the hardest part of all of it. The tree is easy now compared to that.
Jeremy Burrows 10:14
So the tree is the lights and then you just go right and then to everyone’s.
Jodi Reed 10:18
Well, I’ll leave. Yeah, one of us leaves before the other unless our times are the same. Okay. Okay. So for the first year that I raced, I had the slowest car in our class. So there’s a time range, I think it was the cutoff was 1299 is the slowest, you could go to 999, I think on the other end, so 9.9 seconds and quarter mile. And so I was the slowest in our class. So I always got to leave first. So I always got chased. And so it was actually very helpful to learn how to run that began. So I would leave. If they were running in a 10. Second, I got almost full three seconds before they could catch, you know, before they can leave the light. Interesting.
Jeremy Burrows 11:04
So have you had any scary moments where your car messed up or crash or anything like that,
Jodi Reed 11:11
no crashes, I had, what we called the death wobble. So I had my tie rods, and they were breaking, but we didn’t know that. And so I had my friend and wobbled pretty violently. So that was a little scary. But other than that, no, I was always lucky. And I don’t go fast enough really, to compared to some of those big cars. So yeah.
Jeremy Burrows 11:37
So what what have you learned from your experience, drag racing, that’s helped you in your job as executive assistant to SEO.
Jodi Reed 11:51
So my whole life, I wouldn’t try things because I wanted to be perfect at it, to do it in front of people a job apply for those sorts of things. And so you don’t get to be perfect at drag racing, everybody starts at the bottom. And even the really good ones aren’t don’t have perfect days. So when you’re up there at that light, and you’re afraid you’re gonna read light, or you’re gonna we call it sleeping at the light. So your reaction time takes forever. You make mistakes every day on the track. And everybody does. So it wasn’t it taught me how to just step outside my box, do it. It doesn’t matter what everybody else is thinking or wondering because they’re really not thinking or wondering about if I’m messing up or not. And so it just taught me to go ahead and try. And I speak my mind with my boss now and ask questions and asked to learn and he’s supportive of those things anyway. It’s really helped me just to step outside and try. Yeah.
Jeremy Burrows 12:52
Awesome. So have there been times in your? Well, first of all, when your drag racing? Do you get nervous?
Jodi Reed 13:00
Oh, terribly.
Jeremy Burrows 13:05
So are there times in your EA career when you’re nervous? And is there been times? Like, I guess my question is, are you more nervous? You know, during those seasons, during those certain moments, have you been more nervous drag racing, or being an ea,
Jodi Reed 13:22
ea drag racing, I’m only on the track for just over 11 seconds. So it’s not that long. And so everything else is a little bit longer in comparison.
Jeremy Burrows 13:37
That’s true. So like, you walk in and you have a nervous situation at work. Usually it doesn’t last that short. Yeah, that makes sense. Is there anything that any else anything else, you know, personally or professionally that you would like to share with the assistance of the world?
Jodi Reed 13:57
I say step outside your box, I know that there’s a quote or a cliche quote that everybody says you know, life begins outside your comfort zone. It really does. And had I not tried I would still be stuck and not be in the position I am as an E AE and further along have the trust with my boss, if I hadn’t have stepped outside my comfort zone to try.
Jeremy Burrows 14:19
Well said. So another another note is you know, you mentioned in your bio, that you manage the office, so little bit office management, I assume. And then also a small team of assistants. Tell us a little bit about how you manage that, you know, you support the CEO plus two other executives plus the office and and, you know, do you lead the team of assistants? Are you kind of like the team lead or
Jodi Reed 14:46
Yes, and I never wanted to be a superfan supervisor or a leader and he my boss finds it amusing that I am now and I have a great team so I don’t really have a whole lot of managing to do per se, I have a really great team, we work well together. So but I do encourage them to do you know, personal developments, webinars, trainings, those sorts of things. But as far as like the work product I don’t have. They’re just amazing. So there’s not a lot of that managing the CEO is more difficult than them.
Jeremy Burrows 15:25
Naturally, naturally. Awesome. Well, Jody, thank you so much for being on the show. And it’s, it’s really fun to chat with an assistant who has been in the same company for a while. And, you know, what, what would you say? How long have you been at this company? I was trying to find your LinkedIn real quick,
Jodi Reed 15:50
almost eight years,
Jeremy Burrows 15:51
eight years, what? What’s been maybe the stay staying factor, if you will, that’s kind of kept you excited about being at the same place for that long,
Jodi Reed 16:05
our culture, for sure, we have an amazing team. And I also like what we do, you know, food is necessary. Gotta have it. So the fact that we are in the basically the food industry, just the beginning stages of it. I love that part, too. And I love that we vie for farmers and their rights and their right to farm. And so that makes it encouraging as well. But mostly, it’s our culture, we have an amazing team and an amazing CEO, who cares about us. So it shows
Jeremy Burrows 16:39
price, what’s maybe one tip on cultivating and creating a good culture.
Jodi Reed 16:48
I laugh a lot, I smile a lot. And I encourage everybody else to as well. And I tried to, you know, as an executive assistant, or even as an admin, your seem to be the go to for everybody in the office, when they’re having a good moment, a bad moment, a personal moment, whatever. And they always try to make sure that they know they can come to me for that, and then we just encourage working together. Well, we have meetings and an open form of communication at all times.
Jeremy Burrows 17:19
Nice, well, is there a place Jodi that people can reach out and say hi, or, or connect with you? And would you be up for them doing that if they would like to?
Jodi Reed 17:29
Yes, my LinkedIn is fine. I that’s that works best.
Jeremy Burrows 17:33
Okay, cool. Well, I’ll put the link in the show notes for sure. Leaderassistant.com/235, LEADERassistant.com/235. And also link to that living, loving learning book that you recommended, again, cited to check that out. And yeah, best of luck to you and your drag racing and your career and thanks for being on the show. And I really, really appreciate your time.
Jodi Reed 18:02
Thank you. I appreciate your time too. Thank you very much.
Podcast Outro 18:15
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