Business Owner
309-275-2510
John is a 2001 graduate of Illinois State University. He has spent a majority of his career in the field of agriculture. He also has extensive experience in real estate management, procurement, and development. Additionally, he has spent time as a County Board Member and nearly 20 years as a Township Trustee. John has a very entrepreneurial mindset, which has frequently led to “wearing more than one hat at a time.”
Upon graduation, John quickly got familiar with small business as the Operations Manager for a Soil Sampling and Crop Scouting business. This role also exposed John to the seed sales world, with the Pioneer Seed Brand. Intrigued by the Seeds and Traits business, John took a role in seed sales for Monsanto as a District Sales Manager. After a decorated sales career, he was ultimately promoted to Area Business Manager. In that role, he had responsibility for managing the sales team of the Stone Seed brand in Northern Illinois. As the Area Business Manager, he sat on the Regional Leadership Team, which gave him great insight to the inner workings of corporate America. John was responsible for managing all sales activities, budgeting, marketing, and forecasting for the Stone Seed Brand. This brand was part of a multi-brand strategy implemented by corporate Monsanto. John had a front row seat to watch the merger activities when Bayer Corporation completed a buy-out of Monsanto in 2018. Ultimately, John realized that there wasn’t a lot of further opportunity in the corporate world if he wasn’t willing to move his family and focus solely on that part of his career. After 14 years, knowing that much had already been learned from the corporate experience, John, along with his brother Allen, decided to start Integrated Seed Solutions and focus on finding ways to deliver world class products to farmers in a very customer-centric manner.
In addition to Integrated Seed Solutions, John and his brother also have built and run a successful row-crop farming operation. This experience has allowed John to look at the world not only from the perspective of a sales person but also from the viewpoint of the grower.
In simplest terms, John feels strongly that the products developed by the world class R+D pipelines housed in large corporations are great for farmers and their families (and ultimately farm-gate profitability), however, the corporate way of marketing, selling, and delivering those products to farm gate is incredibly flawed and inefficient. John’s vision for Integrated Seed Solutions has focused heavily on creating a best-in-class sales team and pairing that team with the world-class products developed by our large corporate partners. Ultimately, John’s vision is to deliver these products to our customers in a very simple and straightforward way that utilizes a common sense approach to pricing and experience.
John is a huge believer in always looking for synergies that can benefit everyone in a given situation. He calls it the 1 + 1 = 3 method. With Integrated Seed Solutions, John believes strongly that there is a perfect opportunity to create a business model that is beneficial first and foremost to our customers and dealers, while at the same time creating benefit for our business and, also, our corporate partners.
