From growing up in rural Kansas with no electricity and no formal education beyond high school to eventually earning an honorary doctorate. From humble farm-life beginnings to owning numerous manufacturing patents and one of the largest, privately held companies in Kansas.
Don Landoll, of the Landoll Corporation in Marysville, weaves lessons learned growing up into his business philosophy and the successes he’s earned.
Lessons from growing up on a farm
He shared growing up on a farm outside of Hanover provided many life lessons.
“We didn’t have electricity until I was 7 and, because I was small enough to fit through the hole in the ceiling, I got the job of running the wires in the attic,” Landoll says. “Someone asked my dad why they sent me in to do it and he said it’s because I was the only one small enough to fit.”
This was just the start of Landoll’s experiences of on-the-farm learning. With 22 cousins living and farming near each other, the Landoll home was where equipment went to be repaired.
“Back in those days, you didn’t run to town whenever you needed something, so you learned to make do with what you had,” he says.
It was there, learning how to fix and build a variety of things, he learned one of his most valuable life lessons: Take what you know to figure out what you don’t know.
“My dad had taken a gas engine off an old Maytag washing machine and told me, ’Let’s make a tractor for your little brothers.’ We scrounged up the parts and made a little tractor that worked like a top. I took what I knew to figure out what I didn’t know.”
It has been that common-sense principle that has guided Landoll through the numerous challenges and opportunities of life. That self-reliant, can-fix-anything attitude has served him well as he went from building his first metal stock rack with a Landoll brand in his first welding shop to owning patents that revolutionized an industry.
A unique quality of Landoll is his genuine humility as he quickly defers praise toward others. He articulates this through an old farm proverb warning people about being too greedy and arrogant: “I learned on the farm that pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered,” Landoll jokes.
Lessons from cheerleaders up and down the street
In 1963, the opportunity came for Landoll to own a business in partnership with another man, whom he later bought out.
“I had cheerleaders up and down the street who encouraged me,” he says. “At one point I had three employees and a businessman down the street congratulated me and told me one day I would have 10. I don’t think either one of us dreamed that someday I’d have more than 800 employees, but his belief in me was a source of inspiration.”
Those lessons influenced Landoll’s attitude about diversification, now evidenced by the various divisions of Landoll Manufacturing such as farming equipment, Landoll trailers, TravaLong Trailers, ICON Construction Equipment, material handling with Bendi and Drexel Forklifts, and OEM/government contracts with military equipment.
“If I have four product lines and one suffers, I still have 75 percent,” he says. “If I have one component and it suffers, I’m 100 percent at risk.”
Lessons from a community of faith
The community around Hanover – named after Hanover, Germany –is historically 98 percent German Catholic/German Lutherans and those influences on Landoll’s life come through by his commitment to excellence and his community philanthropy.
“Father Henry went through the Dirty Thirties and had a black and white photo of where he lived when a dust storm looked like a snowstorm. He and the nuns set high levels of expectation for us from our grades to even our personal appearance,” he says. “Father Henry would make us comb our hair before we could serve as altar boys.”
The commitment to excellence expresses itself in another of Landoll’s principles: Quality is always a bargain.
Lessons from successful people
If you compliment Landoll on his successes, he quickly gives credit to others who taught him.
“I learned early on that if you approach a successful person and they see you want to learn, they will help you,” he says.
After all the years of business – Landoll is now 80 – he is still driven by his overarching belief that you must generate, recognize and take advantage of your opportunities.
“I’m a stair-step kind of guy,” he says. “Obtainable goals are important because if they are too lofty, you will fail; if they are too low, there is no sense of accomplishment.”
In Jim Collins’ book, “From Good to Great,” he attributes the ability of a company to go from good to great upon a Level 5 leader.
I mentioned to Landoll that I was reading Collin’s book and I believed he fit the description of a Level 5 Leader: personal humility and indomitable will.
With a twinkle in his eye and a smile turning up the corners of his mouth, he replied, “Pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.”
Rick McNary is a leader in bringing people together to build community and reduce hunger in sustainable ways. This article first appeared in the Kansas Living Magazine.
