Elizabeth Beeler is not your typical engineer. In fact, her husband jokes that she’s probably the most talkative engineer he’s ever met. With a passion for math, science and solving problems, she’s found the perfect role as vice president of sales for Double L Group based in Dyersville, Iowa.
“When you’re a young kid and people ask you what you want to do someday, it’s a little overwhelming,” Beeler says. “I was really good at science and math, so I chose the engineering route because it was easy. I knew I wanted to stay tied to agriculture because this is an industry that’s really about the people. In my mind, that connection makes our industry unique.”
Growing up on a 200-head farrowing-to-finish operation in eastern Iowa, Beeler obtained her agricultural engineering degree at Iowa State University. She then found a great opportunity to tie her passion for animal agriculture and engineering into a rewarding career at Double L Group, a company that provides ventilation equipment into agricultural facilities across the U.S.
For the past 10 years, she’s served in both engineering and sales roles for the company. She says the best part of her job is working with great people.
“People make the difference,” Beeler says. “I enjoy interacting with farmers and people connected to agriculture in some way. There’s just a level of integrity and passion in our industry that makes it stand out from the rest.”
Read on to learn more about her career with Double L Group – from her business philosophy to her views on the future of the U.S. pork industry.
What is your why?
At Double L, we want to make the product work in the customer’s environment. When you think of ventilation, it’s very directly tied to animal health and the facility’s operating expense. When you manage ventilation well, you can get good results. But when it’s managed or designed poorly, that isn’t the case. We do our best to help farmers, growers and integrators design and have the right product so they can raise animals more efficiently. This allows them to focus on other important things like genetics and feed – they don’t have to worry about respiratory issues or utilizing too much LP.
Describe a typical day on the job for you.
My days are very relationship driven. I am constantly interacting with our sales team, integrators, growers, Extension specialists and anyone who’s moving air through a facility. I am either on the phone or at job sites. Although every day looks very different, it comes down to a lot of problem solving.
How does your company help and work with its customers?
We start by understanding our customers’ needs and challenges. That often begins through an email, a phone call or a meeting, and eventually results in designing and building the ventilation package that will address their need. Double L is uniquely nimble through our manufacturing in Iowa and the ability to provide custom designs as needed. That is very important in ag facilities because they’re not cookie-cutter layouts. A facility in Iowa might be very different than a facility layout in a different state, and the equipment to service it looks different, too. We believe custom solutions are also important. We need to understand what customers need, and then how we fit into that from an equipment and product standpoint.
How has the business changed since you started?
Our company was formed 53 years ago. When I started, we were pretty much an inlet company, focused solely on swine equipment. As a business, we could see our customers getting more vertically integrated. Compound that with a knowledge vacuum as people with decades of experience retire from our industry, Double L knew customers wanted fewer vendors to provide more products. Instead of calling 10 vendors to get equipment to build a farm, they wanted to call half that many. Knowing that need from our customers, we’ve really built out our product line. We’ve had a very strategic focus to develop and launch quality products that include exhaust fans and the full ventilation package. In the past 10 years, we’ve launched and commercialized over 20 products. We’ve gone from selling products to selling systems, which is a better model that provides more value for our customers.
What concerns do you have about the swine industry?
One thing I think about a lot, especially as an equipment company and interacting with builders as frequently as I do, is the cost to replace the existing asset base. It’s a concern. If you talk to integrators or growers, building facilities today is different than building facilities 10 years ago. Every industry is like that over the expanse of time, but it’s increasingly challenging for pig farmers now. So, what’s our industry doing? We are continually taking what we have and remodeling to make it work. There are limitations to that at some point. When I interact with farmers and integrators, they know they need to replace or upgrade existing assets. Servicing that debt load or making that cash flow isn’t as easy as 10 years ago.
What are the greatest opportunities in the swine industry today?
Pork has a very good opportunity to play a bigger role in protein consumption. We have a good product, and there are a lot of opportunities that come with that. If I look at some of the other proteins on the market like beef, it takes a long time to increase the supply. People only desire to eat so much chicken. Pork has a real role to play in future protein demand
Who inspires you?
My parents have modeled what hard work looks like early on and often when I was a kid. I still take inspiration from that daily. I also have professional mentors who are further along in life than I am that I admire, too. From their careers to their marriages to their families, they model what it looks like to operate with integrity. How they approach work and life inspires me.
What is your business philosophy?
Double L’s business philosophy is to make the product work in the customer’s environment. I know that sounds simple to describe, but it can be tough to execute because ventilation is both a science and an art. Approaches on how to design facilities have changed over the years. Our philosophy is we need to put in the work to provide products that fit each environment. We also focus on treating people the way we want to be treated and that you reap what you sow. If you do those three things, good business comes as a byproduct naturally.
What will the business look like 20 years from now?
The swine industry is going to evolve both in terms of technology and adoption of AI to become more efficient. We have some big problems to solve today like labor, production challenges and the high cost of assets. Becoming more efficient will help us in that area. Over the next 20 years, we will be focusing on technologies coming to market that will be smarter in ways that provide the industry with more data and allow us to use that data more to make decisions. We’re still going to be raising pigs and bringing them to market, but the facilities to achieve that result, the labor associated with it, and the production to do it will look different than it does now.
If you could go back and do something different in your career, what would it be and why?
I would take more measured risks earlier on. Sometimes you get paralysis by analysis. You focus on all the information instead of taking action. The rate of growth on learning through doing is exponential. I tell my team all the time to fight fear with facts. If you don’t know why you’re anxious or not making a decision, find the facts, review, decide and move on. If you discover that was the wrong decision five minutes later because you now have different information, guess what? You can pivot and make a better decision. I wish I had told myself that 10 years ago.
What advice do you have for someone who might like to do what you do someday?
Opportunities will present themselves – lean into them. If you’re a little uncomfortable or you get that nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach, that’s when you should lean in, not out. Our industry needs young people to enter it. One of the biggest concerns I have is making sure we’re bringing in good, competent people to help us achieve our goals. Our industry needs more great young people.
