There’s a good chance you’ve heard of the North American Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge.
Perhaps you bumped into one of the 47 nutritionists and management consultants on the Progressive Dairy Solutions team.
Or maybe you are a California dairy farm family who is confident in their livelihood because of Valley Milk, a Turlock-based milk powder processing facility.
But what you may not know is there is a common denominator among the success of these three ventures: Matt Budine.
As a dairy nutritionist, entrepreneur and coach, Matt is clear on his purpose:
To find better solutions and to motivate positive change.
And through his ventures, he has done that for thousands of young dairy professionals that have gone through the Dairy Challenge, and more than 1.1 million cows touched by Progressive Dairy Solutions around the world.
As I sat down with Matt for Episode #42 of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast, what came as a surprise was the most inspiring part of his story was not what he has accomplished, but rather, his “why.”
Matt reflected on the most challenging time of his life:
When his father passed away from a massive heartache, at only 37 years old.
That left his mother with two dairy farms and five children in Upstate New York. Fifteen-year-old Matt became a man quickly, taking full responsibility for managing, milking, mating and feeding the cows.
Hope for the future could have been lost. But with no time spared, friends and neighbors from the local Farm Bureau, county fair and the Holstein breeders answered the call to serve and help a fellow neighbor.
They swooped in, assembled a plan, a system and achieved an incredible feat at that time: Putting up all of the farm’s forages in just a day.
And it didn’t end there. These same neighbors pooled together for a hired man so that Matt could go back to high school.
Matt paid the favor back working on the neighbor’s farms, which opened his eyes to new ways of doing things. They became his mentors, and along with Dr. David Galton at Cornell University, encouraged him to go to college.
And he’s spent the rest of life paying it back … by moving others forward.
When all hope could have been lost for a young man - God’s hand reached out, gathered up the right people and opened up a path for hope, a brighter future and a plan that would lead to prosperity for not just Matt, but thousands of people and millions of cows.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - Jeremiah 29:11
Listen to the Episode #42 of the Uplevel Dairy Podcast: The Million-Cow Multiplier: Unself Leadership and Exponential Impact featuring Matt Budine: https://www.upleveldairy.com/listen/watch
