Success Stories: You don’t have to be blood to be family

The Matthews Steer team was delighted to welcome a packed house for the first Success Stories Breakfast of 2022. Special guest speaker on the day was Laney Quinn, General Manager of Procal, one of the largest dairy companies in Australia.

A 100 per cent family owned and operated business, Procal was established in 2003 by the Thyssen family, who turned their talents to dairy manufacturing and distribution after selling the market-leading Original Juice Co to Golden Circle in 2002. One of the country’s largest independent operators, Procal supplies white milk for the café industry and also produces a range of creams, yoghurts and cheeses.

The business was founded and run by her brother, CEO Adam Thyssen, and their father Nick. In March 2020, Adam passed away suddenly in Thailand and Laney found herself thrust into a leadership role she’d never previously contemplated within the business. Within a matter of days of his death, the Pandemic began to wreak havoc on Australian businesses. In emotional turmoil and with COVID-19 lockdowns imminent, the family environment the Thyssens had nurtured within their business proved a “godsend”.

You don’t have to be blood to be family

Laney told breakfast attendees she’d learned a formative lesson about business when she was primary school-aged and working on the production line at her family’s juice business during school holidays. Her father caught her reacting rudely to one of their loyal staff and quickly set her straight, telling her: “never ever disrespect these people, without them we are nothing”. That incident set a management style that Laney maintains to this day. “You can create a family environment at work and we try really hard to make all the people in our business feel like family,” she says. “It’s really rewarding when you know your staff on a personal level. When stuff hits the fan these people step up and you feel like you have family alongside you.”

Embracing professional growth

Laney originally joined Procal on a temporary business to assist Adam with management of the business and its people for a couple of weeks. She’s now been with the company for more than a decade. None of the family had formal business qualifications so Laney, recognising that they needed to diversify their capability.

“Dad’s stuck in the ‘60s and Adam was stuck in the ‘90s: we do what we do because we’ve always done it that way. When you are working inside your own little shell you feel very confident about what you’re doing and saying. We were getting stale and we needed to grow (so) I led the way by going to local business networking events, meeting new people and getting different perspectives and ideas on business,” she said.

Not only did these events diversify Procal’s capability, Laney also credits them with bringing about a major turning point in her own professional development.

Tackling imposter syndrome 

Laney said she had “absolute imposter syndrome” the first time she attended a business breakfast. “They were talking business and acronyms and I thought: ‘oh my god I shouldn’t be here’.  I was totally fazed by stepping into the general manager role.”

It wasn’t until she began to value the knowledge and experience gleaned in her personal business journey that she found her feet and truly began to reap the benefits of business networking.

A fellow breakfast attendee was struggling with the ‘revolving door’ on his office; constant staff interruptions preventing him from getting any work done. Laney advised him to wear a phone headset, whether or not he was on the phone, her tried and tested method of carving out time for productivity. Her advice worked for him, and it broke the ice with her contemporaries and gave her confidence that she had a valid contribution to make at networking events.

“I decided: ‘I don’t care, you don’t like me, you don’t respect my work, my qualification, whatever!’ It was a short dabble with imposter syndrome, but it was definitely imposter syndrome.”

If she had her time again Laney said she’d  be less self-conscious and embarrassed about  what she perceived as her lack of business acumen. “Everybody in business, and particularly small businesses, doesn’t feel confident when they face new challenges. If you say you do, you’re lying. I wasted a lot of years thinking I need to be educated, thinking experience didn’t count as much as education, not going off my gut, not asking questions about ideas in my head, not having the confidence to just do it.”

‘Breaking’ the business

While Laney and her family weathered the storm in the immediate aftermath of Adam’s death, she handed the running of the business over to their CFO. “They always say never let your accountant run your business, but we didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I’ve always empowered my team to step up, telling them: ‘give it a go, you can’t individually break the business.’”

When she returned to work following Adam’s funeral, that turned out not to be the case. “The business was broken! I had managers fighting with each other, no milk in the fridge, no milk being ordered, drivers calling saying they had no stock,” she said.

Laney rallied the team, resolved the immediate challenges and, a few months down the track she was grateful for the shake-up. “What our CFO did is take out every non-essential expense, and every overspend. On face value he completely decimated the business, but when we looked back we realised it was the perfect opportunity to clear everything out and start with a fresh slate.

“It’s been an extraordinary lesson for us to take the time to look inward and really dissect what we’ve done and identify how we can do it better.”

Guests at our March Success Stories Breakfast also heard from Partner Charith Mandadige, who shared highlights from the recent Federal Budget. You can learn more about Charith’s presentation here.

Gary Twomey shared details of increased funding to some key government grant initiatives. You can learn more here.

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