Speaker 1: Welcome to the Growing Our Future podcast.
In this show, the Texas FFA Foundation will take on a
journey of exploration into agricultural science, education,
leadership development and insights from subject matter
experts and sponsors who provide the fuel to make dreams come
true.
Here's your host, Aaron Alejandro.
Speaker 2: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening or
whenever you may be tuning in to the Growing Our Future podcast
Number one, we want to say thank you.
Thank you for stopping by, thank you for spending some of
your time with us.
It is a real treat for us to bring this podcast and it's a
real honor to have subject matter experts, people that have
these incredible life experiences, who are willing to
share some of their time with us and pour into us so that maybe
we can be encouraged or find a skill set or something that
makes our lives a little better.
Today is no different.
I'm really excited I'm going to go into a little bit more
detail about this man here in a second but I'm really excited to
have Dr Curtis Paulson with us.
Dr Paulson, thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 3: You're welcome, Aaron , and I'm glad to be here.
Thank you for asking me to be a part of this great program.
Thanks, we're going to have fun and again.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Dr
Paulson here in just a second.
But, dr Paulson, we start every episode with every guest asking
the same question, because I think it's just really a really
great place to start question.
Because I think it's just really a really great place to
start and that is this.
Speaker 3: Dr Paulson, what are you grateful for today?
Oh, the most important thing is I'm grateful is that we live in
a great country, I have my spiritual connection with my
higher power and that I have been given the opportunity to do
a lot of things in my life.
And just the concept of gratitude, where I can take any
meal and I can look to agriculture, where all that food
comes from, and all the people that process it, all the people
that import it or that package it, and even the people who
design the packaging equipment I had a good friend that was in
packaging design.
You know everything associated with my life that relates back
to agriculture.
I'm extremely grateful for that and for that I can thank so
many people in my life.
It's just, it's almost beyond words what there is to be
grateful for.
So, with that, thank you, Aaron .
Speaker 2: No, thank you.
And, by the way, everything that he just said I agree with.
I tell people all the time that February 6, 1966, a bouncing
baby boy came into this world and my mama loved me, she hugged
me.
But, in addition to my mom's incredible love, they wrapped me
in this blanket of freedom and liberty and it was a full of a
country of opportunity.
And then, along the way, I had great mentors and I learned
about faith and I learned about all of the things that Dr
Paulson just said.
So I appreciate you sharing all those.
That's good stuff.
The show Growing Our Future comes from the simple concept of
what you just shared, and that is this I tell people all the
time if agriculture's taught me anything, it's taught me that if
you want to know what the future is, grow it.
Well, how do you grow a future?
Well, we've got to plant the right seeds.
We have to take care of those seeds.
We have to weed the garden sometimes and then we have to
harvest and then share with others.
And I think that's what life is about.
I think life is about planting the right seeds, nurturing them,
caring for them and then sharing them with others, them
with others, and that's why I'm honored that you're joining us
today, dr Paulson, to share some seeds of greatness that we can
pour into other people.
Are you ready to get started?
Speaker 3: Sure, and I'd like to just make a comment on that,
you know, relating everything to agriculture.
I like to take that concept and go back to some biblical
examples where our good Lord would always feed the masses
before he did the education.
That concept is even carried back to the biblical scene.
So with that, thank you.
Yes, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's great.
That's good stuff right there.
All right.
So the reason these podcasts are always a little bit
challenging, interesting and fun .
For me to do this one right here is a great example of that,
and that's because I get to interview this man right here,
dr Curtis Paulson, who I want everybody to know was one of my
early mentors.
Here's the story In 1984, when I graduated from Cal Farley's
Boys Ranch, I started summer school at Texas Tech University
and because of some scores that I had made on an ACT test, I had
to take a leveling class in math and English, which I passed
with A's, no problem.
So I get ready to sign up for my fall semester, and I'm a real
rookie at this college thing.
So I'm looking at the titles of all these courses and I see one
that really got my attention.
The course was called Transfer of Ag Technology Transfer of Ag
Technology, and I thought, hey, that really sounds like my kind
of class, cutting edge on the ball.
I think I'm going to sign up for this transfer of ag
technology class and I do.
And I show up to class under this professor who everybody
told me was like this real creative guy.
His name was Dr Curtis Paulson and I show up to class and I
realized real quick I had made a mistake, because along that
path nobody taught me to look at the prerequisite of a course
and I did not look at the prerequisite of this course.
This was a senior level course.
Transfer of ag technology was a senior level course.
We were about to dive into a book by John Nesbitt called
Megatrends and I remember Dr Paulson.
I asked him.
I said, sir, I said if I need a transfer out of here, you just
let me know.
And Dr Paulson said no, I think you'll be just fine.
And this man let me stay in that senior level course and at an
early age started to stimulate my imagination, started to
stimulate my what-ifs and possibilities.
And I just want to say on a personal note that this is going
to be a real honor to have Dr Paulson here today, because he
helped me early on in my life's journey and now we get this
incredible platform where I get to let you share with him his
journey.
So, dr Paulson, let's do that, let's unpack your career,
because I don't necessarily I've done a little bit of research.
I don't necessarily want to call you the godfather of ag
communications, but there is no question, you were one of the
early leaders in ag communication across the United
States of America.
But I want to start and go a little bit further back.
So, dr Paulson, take us all the way back to where you grew up
and kind of walk us through what your career pathway looked like
, and then we'll start extracting things out of that
career path.
Speaker 3: I'd be happy to, and I remember that day very well
when you walked into class, and one of the concepts that I'd
like to talk about throughout the day is the concept of taking
risks.
You know, I thought to myself Aaron's a risk.
You know, does he have the background needed to understand
some of the concepts of diffusion of innovation and what
an innovation is and how that goes through society and through
organizations, and that's, I guess it's a concept that I'm
pretty lucky that I've taken a few risks and just by everything
that Aaron has accomplished in his life, it paid off.
It paid off big for not only for Aaron but for society as a
whole.
But now you asked me what my life was like.
I'd like to start by going back to the beginning.
I grew up, I was born in 1946, and I'm a farm boy and I have
been involved in agriculture my entire life, with the exception
of two years in the military, but even today as I volunteer at
state and national parks, that's agricultural, natural
resource based.
So that goes back to the beginning and, like I said, I
grew up in a farm.
I'm from western Minnesota.
Some of the things that I grew and I'm going to call not grew.
But some of these things that I learned and I'm going to call
them the aha moments in retrospect in life these are the
things that are important to me .
From my dad I learned take responsibilities.
Let's say I'm out on the tractor doing something and I
break a chisel off a chisel plow .
I won't try to hide it, I won't say it broke.
I'll say I broke it.
It was my responsibility because I was in charge of that
machine.
And that has kind of stuck with me my entire life.
When I'm associated with it, I take ownership of it and I
either broke it or I try to find a way to fix it or to go around
it.
You know the other it.
One of the other things I learned from him is to utilize
all your senses.
When you're out alone, utilize the sense of smell, the tactile,
what it feels like If you're running a machine you can sense
it.
The hearing you can hear if something changes, be aware of
your surroundings, and that helps you make decisions.
That was real important and related to that, let's say, I
had a breakdown out in the field .
I had usually a little toolbox with me and then I'd trace the
power source from the engine or the power takeoff to where I
thought the problem of the implement was, and then I had to
make the decision okay, can I fix that with what I have or do
I need to stop and go back and spend that extra hour and get
help?
So utilizing your senses to make some current decisions.
And I think, like everybody else involved in agriculture, I
learned in the early days the work ethic.
I think that's so important.
Is that work ethic?
And I've also stressed that a lot eventually, when I got to
teaching agriculture at the high school level and in watching.
So anyway, aaron, at this point do you have any interest in my
background?
I guess I want to share one other story.
Later on, when I was teaching, one of the students in Texas
asked me.
He said where are you from, dr Paulson, you talk funny.
And I said, well, sir, and he was sitting in the front row, he
was a corpsman.
And I said, well, sir, and he was sitting in the front row, he
was a corpsman.
And I said, well, sir, I'm from the furthest state in the
continental United States.
Where is that?
He looked without skipping a beat and said we don't care, you
know.
And that taught me hey, it's good to have that image.
You know, growing up in Minnesota I didn't like it when
the people from Iowa came up there and fished our fish.
I was proud of that.
I challenged this young man.
I said no, seriously, where am I from?
And he said well, north Carolina, north Dakota, any of
the states with north in it.
But in actuality I got my first real experience of teaching
agriculture in that school district, which was War Road,
minnesota, that part of Minnesota that sticks up into
Canada.
That's the furthest north school district and it's also
the second coldest school district in the United States.
So with that I'll turn this back to Aaron a little bit.
Speaker 2: No, this is good stuff.
It's interesting, Dr Paulson, you know I did through my job.
Sometimes I get to work with my colleagues across the country,
and Val Arsvold is my colleague from Minnesota and she's a very
dear friend and I did some consulting work with Minnesota
and so as part of my time up there they knew that I'm an
outdoorsman and so I asked them if they would take me ice
fishing.
And so I will never forget my experience of the teacher
picking me up and we were driving along and we went down a
hill and at that moment it just kind of dawned on me that we
were on the ice and so I asked the guy, the ag teacher.
I said are we on the ice right now?
And he said yes, and that's a little unsettling from a boy
from West Texas.
And we were driving and we passed a Domino's pizza delivery
sign and I said what in the world is that?
And he said oh yeah, they'll deliver pizza at our fish house
if we want to.
Anyway, we parked, we drilled our holes, had a great time
fishing.
Anyway, we parked, we drilled our holes, had a great time
fishing.
I remember stepping out of the fish house and it was minus 14
degrees with the wind chill.
I also remember we were in Minneapolis and they closed
schools that day.
Now there was no precipitation, dr Paulson, they just closed
schools.
But they did because of the temperature.
And I said why do y'all close the school because of
temperatures?
And they said because they can't risk a kid getting
frostbite at a bus stop or a bus breaking down.
And it was an awareness.
I love it when you said awareness, my senses.
I got to see what cold really was.
I got to feel what cold really was and I got to hear that the
way we process cold and days off in Texas is a lot different
than the way y'all process days off in Minnesota.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and related to the cold.
The little community I am from did not have an ag program and I
had industrial arts.
But my neighboring friends that had, from the farm that
adjoined me, three young men my age.
They had agriculture and they told me all these great stories
about vocational agriculture, ffa, that we didn't have.
What did I do?
I went to my industrial arts teacher and I tried to convince
him that, hey, why don't you teach agriculture like they do
in Evansville, the neighboring town?
And he said well, we teach a lot of the skills, the same type
of skills, that are taught in vocational agriculture, and that
made sense.
Related to that, he also provided some of the real aha
moments in my life about the importance of the work ethic.
And I'll remember my first year as a sophomore.
We were doing woodworking and we were going to create an image
on just a board.
So my image was a young man hunting and his hunting dog
alongside and a little brush patch and I got a pattern.
I traced that on the wood, I stippled the background, I
painted the image black.
It was a silhouette image and I was so proud of that.
I still have that hanging.
So I turned it in.
I knew I was going to get an A plus.
I was that proud of it and I was devastated when I got an A
minus.
So I went up and I asked them why did I get an A minus?
I needed to know why it wasn't perfect.
And guess what?
He taught me the importance of it's always a chance to improve
and he's pointed out all these little things.
You did a great job.
However, this could have been a little better.
You missed a tiny drop of paint over here that fell into the
stipple part.
This stippling around the bush is not the same as the stippling
out throughout and it was better.
You can always be better in everything you do, but overall
you did a great job and be proud of it, and I've tried to carry
that out throughout my life In high school.
That's.
One of the aha moments is things can be better.
And another aha moment that I had to change a subject is for
some reason I ended up in a typing class and I couldn't type
very fast, but that was a big influence in my life.
Later on, in both the military and Aaron, you referenced the ag
communications.
So with that I'm going to turn it back to you and I'll go back
to the typing concept later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to talk about that.
I think I know where you're going with that.
I'm going to turn it back to you and I'll go back to the
typing concept later.
Yeah, we're going to talk about that.
I think I know where you're going with that.
So you grew up in Minnesota?
Were you a Golden Gopher?
Did you go to college there in Minnesota?
I?
Speaker 3: did and I'll say a little bit more about my entire
career.
I'm very proud of the fact that I have three different degrees
from three different land-grant universities.
So Minnesota I graduated.
It took me two different tries.
Then I went to the University of Florida later on and that's a
land-grant institution, and from there I went to Texas A&M,
which is another land-grant university, and also while in
the military I took some classes through the University of
Maryland, so that's the fourth land-grant university.
And then I kind of ended up my career teaching at Ohio State
University, which is another land-grant university, and we
could spend days just talking about the importance of the
land-grant system to everybody in the United States.
With that I'm going to turn it back to you, aaron.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is good stuff.
And yes, not only.
I'm very aware of Minnesota, obviously, Maryland, Florida.
And then I knew that there was a giveaway earlier because you
mentioned Corman.
So I knew the young man was in the Corps, so I knew you were
talking about A&M.
So I knew the young man was in the Corps, so I knew you were
talking about A&M.
So while you were at A&M, I believe and this is where we're
going to start the ag communication story I believe
it's when you were at Texas A&M that you started teaching ag
communications.
Speaker 3: Is that correct?
That's correct.
And that story came about.
One day I walked into class not class, but I walked into the
department I'd usually get up and play racquetball or two
years before that identified the competencies that ag educators
had that industry wanted, such as public speaking, writing for
newspapers, doing oral interviews for radio and
television.
So this dissertation was done prior to my arriving at Texas
A&M and they asked me.
Well, I guess they told me that the next semester I'd be
teaching the first class and it wasn't an official class, they
had a catch-all phrase that was a what did they call it?
An independent study in agricultural communication
concepts.
It was an offshoot of the ag ed program.
So that, I think, was the first program or the first class in
agricultural communication.
That has since, and somebody told me, and I think it's
correct, that that program has since evolved.
That is larger than most colleges of agriculture in the
United States with the number of faculty and the number of
students.
This is at A&M.
Speaker 2: That's correct.
Do you remember what year that was?
By chance.
Speaker 3: That would have been probably in 81 or 82, 82 or 83,
something like that.
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did a little research.
I was drilling out, trying to find out a little bit about
programs and I know that tech started.
They actually started an ag-com class in 73, class in 73, but
it did not become a degree until 92, I believe.
I think it was ag-com degree in 92, 93, somewhere right in
there.
But anyway, that's why I was curious what your reference
point was when you were at Texas A&M when did you move from A&M
to Texas Tech?
Speaker 3: That would have been in 84.
So I think I started at Texas Tech 84 and 85, because I
graduated from Texas A&M in 85.
And I was on staff at Texas Tech for the last year I was
working on my dissertation.
Okay, that's what.
Speaker 2: I remember too.
I was working on my dissertation.
Okay, that's what I remember too, so I remember, you know.
Here now we're getting into the real exciting part here for me
is watching Dr Paulson's career just really take off when he was
at Tech.
So Dr Paulson is at Tech and he starts the Ag Communicators,
the ACT program.
Were you involved also with the starting of NAMA, National
Agri-Marketing Association?
Speaker 3: No, I was not.
I was not involved with NAMA, but I did go to some of the NAMA
meetings at different times, both as a professional and at
the university level.
Speaker 2: Well, I remember ACT.
I remember you were very involved with ACT.
I also remember you were our advisor for the Alpha Gamma Rho
fraternity because we just started the Beta Xi chapter.
I went back to a meeting one time, dr Paulson, and everybody
was talking about their pin numbers and I was pin number 21,
and I knew I was the old guy then because I was one of the
original pin numbers when AGR started at Texas Tech.
But you are our advisor.
Speaker 3: I'd like to share a little bit about that.
I was asked to be the advisor when the advisor left the
university and I said sure, and I was very proud of the fact
that I took the it was still a colony at that time that the
colony at Texas Tech would usually come in first or second
in academic rank throughout the entire university and I was very
proud of that, where they could combine the elements of
fraternity life with the academic life.
Let's see.
I want to go back a little bit and go back to another aha
moment I had while at Texas A&M.
That will relate to the Texas growing.
It was one cold night my colleague, another graduate
student, asked me to go to a computer users group where they
introduced the Macintosh technology, the Macintosh
technology, and I was just blown away.
I'd been used to using mainframes and IBMs and the
programming concept and I remember to this day the group
showing the bottom of a tennis shoe the graphic capabilities of
Macintosh, and I thought to myself, wow, and I got the
contact with the person putting on the program that night and
somehow or another, when I went to Texas Tech he contacted me
and he said I think you can use some computers and I said I
think so also, but I don't know what to do with them.
But he said here, here's some computers, you figure it out.
So at that time I was kind of focusing in the ag education,
the mechanized ag component, ag mech, teaching a class in farm
building construction.
So I said, okay, we're going to draw this building first.
So I had to teach the students how to use the Macintosh, how to
picture in their minds all the components of a small farm
building, and then we actually were going to build that.
And what a challenge to stay one step ahead of the students
and learning the technology and then actually building a
building.
But then at that same time I realized the ag communication
component.
And you mentioned that one class.
At that time there was only one class and I had found a program
called PageMaker for the Macintosh and I said, hey, can I
take these few students?
And at that time there were seven students and I volunteered
to introduce them to the Macintosh.
And in my mind the rest is history, because we put out that
first newsletter and it was a far cry from what it is today
but it was the beginning of what I call the real advancement of
AgCom, way back then.
Speaker 2: That's an important point.
I want everybody to hear this, because you just said something
that I don't think people really realize the significance of
what you just shared.
One of the things I like to tell people is we all stand on
the shoulders of the people that went before us.
All of us stand on the shoulders of the people that
went before us.
That influenced me too, and I know that.
But what I'm saying is, when you did what you did at Texas
Tech with those Macintosh computers, I still remember that
.
I remember we were so nervous you know we were used to DOS and
we were so nervous using these computers and everything was
WYSIWYG what you see is what you get, and you could click and
hold and move things around, and the imagery was incredible.
And it would be very easy for us as students to be intimidated
, to think, well, we can mess this up, that we could break
this computer.
And I remember Dr Paulson would walk around and he'd say use
your imagination.
He said there's nothing that you're going to do that we can't
fix, there's nothing that you're going to do that we can't
undo.
And so he challenges us to stretch our imaginations.
He challenges us to stretch our boundaries, to know that it was
okay to take that risk, as you mentioned earlier, and then fix
it, but because you encouraged us to do that and I left AgComm
and went back into AgEd.
But look at all of the success the AgComm department had as a
result of you unleashing people's imagination and saying
go for it, Use this technology and go for it.
Speaker 3: You know that relates back to you mentioned earlier
is taking risks.
You know I didn't know what was going to happen, but as I look
back on all the graduates of ag communications from Texas Tech,
from Texas A&M and from other universities, I can see little
bits here and there that all these other graduate students
have taken throughout the world.
I was I'm kind of bragging.
I was recruited to go to Korea, south Korea, to one of the
universities, but at the time you may remember that there was
a bunch of demonstrations back then and they were all related
to agriculture.
I don't know all the facts behind it, but all of a sudden
this position dissolved and somebody stepped on somebody's
toes, didn't come about.
Speaker 2: But that all goes back to the concepts you're
talking about taking the risks of agriculture and education
well, I got to tell you, it was really, you know it as me, for
me as a freshman, in 1984.
And then I left my 85, 86 year, because that's the year I was
state FFA president and to leave and come back and in just one
year see the incredible growth of the ag communications
department, see the growth of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity,
and both of those programs had your thumb, your fingerprint on
them, just so, so you know.
So it was interesting to walk away from it for a year and come
back and see them both just thriving and and continue to
thrive, and they continue to thrive to this day.
Again, go back to what we're talking about growing the future
.
Speaker 3: You know, aaron, you gave me credit for that a lot of
times but as as I think back, I did not have the training in
communications.
So one of my reasons for success is I had gone to the
national ACT Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow
national meeting and I realized at that meeting that there were
eight or nine professional associations throughout the
United States where our students could go.
So with that little fact I went back to Texas Tech and I formed
an advisory committee and I said, hey, I'm the new kid on
the block, I need to know what our students need in their
curriculum.
So we went through a nominal group technique, a brainstorming
technique, and we identified the major concept of that ag
communication program.
Now you give me credit for that .
But I'm going to turn that right back to.
Yes, I had the wherewithal to form that committee, but the
success of that committee came because the professionals told
me slash the university, what should be in the program.
I took it to my boss, dr Stockton, and we got that
approved at the college level and the university level and
then the rest is history.
So I turned this success back to that committee and I'm still
friends with quite a few of those people, in fact, as one of
the advisors on that committee, received one of the highest
honors that Texas Tech gave to any alumni.
He was one of the first ag communication people, so it's a
group effort Well.
Speaker 2: I don't disagree with that.
But every you know, every successful venture has to start
as a creative idea and then there has to be something that
becomes the catalyst, and I don't think there's any question
that you became the catalyst for a lot of the good things
that we experienced.
It's so funny here.
I knew when we started into this there were going to be
things I was going to get to share with you.
One you talked about PageMaker.
I'm going to make sure that my former executive assistant,
joanne, gets to see this interview, because she worked
with me for 12 years at the Texas FFA Foundation.
She did not come from an ag background, she came from a
technology background, but she was so frustrated at me because
I would not quit using PageMaker , because I was so accustomed to
PageMaker that I wouldn't move over to the other you know,
adobe or Microsoft programs and anyway, she just always got a
kick that I would refuse to leave PageMaker.
Speaker 3: You know, related to that concept.
I got started with Pagemaker and then another program came
out called Quark Express and it was a lot of frustrations
amongst all the students because I switched.
I destroyed Pagemaker because I thought Quark Express was a
little bit better, and nowadays there's all kinds of publishing
programs.
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember when y'all made that
transition and I, like I said, I stuck with PageMaker.
The other thing that I wanted to share that you mentioned, you
referenced, which I'm glad you did, and we're not going to talk
about it in detail, but it's one of those things that I think
people don't really.
I always tell kids I want you to listen, and when I mean
listen, I mean listen with your eyes and listen with your ears.
So important, Absolutely.
Because, there's things that you can pick up and one of the
things I picked up on early in my career again because of your
tutelage was the nominal group technique and I remember you
walked us through that exercise in class one time where we were
kind of dissecting a topic and an idea and trying to vet it out
and think through it and I remember we went through the
nominal group technique strategy to get to a final conclusion.
And interesting, later in my life I've been in numerous
non-profit roles and organization roles where I've
leaned into that nominal group technique to drill down to find
that common solution.
So that's just another fun example of seeds that you
planted that are still being harvested today.
Speaker 3: And related to that.
I've always thought that a group decision is more valuable
than an individual decision.
If I had gone to my boss with all these ideas and say we're
going to do this, this and this just based on my recollection or
my knowledge, he'd have probably scoffed at the idea.
But when I took those ideas, and with the stamp of approval
of the professionals, that added a lot more weight to that
decision.
And I have used that nominal group technique as a consultant
in various points.
In fact, as you mentioned, nonprofits, within the next
month I'll be using that technique to establish the
agenda for the upcoming new nonprofit that deals with Civil
War history, you know.
So that technique and making decisions, I'm still using it
and that's something I learned in graduate school.
I love it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit here Now.
This is really good stuff.
So we've talked about kind of your career and you left Texas
Tech and you went on to Ohio State University where
ultimately you retired from Ohio State.
Yes, you were a Buckeye.
Speaker 3: You know what a Buckeye is?
It's a hairless nut of absolutely no economic value.
Speaker 2: Well, obviously you know you and I know that I've
got a connection to the Buckeyes as well.
And what do they say?
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
You know?
I believe that I've said that all along.
I said people don't change.
I think individuals can change, but people don't change.
You can read the Bible and find pessimists and optimists and
status quo and innovators there In 1920, you can find the same
1950, and, lo and behold, here we are in 2024, and there's
probably somebody in a coffee shop that believe America's
going to hell in a handbasket and there's probably some kid in
a classroom thinking our best days are ahead.
Let's capitalize on your history, but bring it to today.
So one of the things that I like to talk about here is this
I like to ask kids how many high schools are in Texas, and
they'll usually hem-haul around and say a lot, and I said, yeah,
there's a lot.
There's over 3,000 high schools in Texas.
Every one of those high schools are going to have a graduating
class.
That means the kids are going to get out, they're going to be
looking for a job, scholarship or an opportunity, and so I
always ask the kids what's your competitive edge?
What is it that separates you from your peers?
And so you've already shared some things that I think can be
a competitive edge Paying attention, taking risk, looking
for trends.
I think all of those things that you mentioned are elements
of a competitive edge.
But in your life, in the season that you're in, and in your
career history, what are some things that you would tell a
young person would be skill sets to put in place in their lives
that'll give them a competitive edge.
Speaker 3: First of all, I think it's taking a risk and
utilizing your senses to say hey , this is a good idea.
It's not a good idea.
And I'm going to share an example.
I had a student at Ohio State University who was a better than
average student.
He was really good and he loved agriculture, just like I did,
and I helped him get an internship in Denmark on a
500-year-old hog operation that still had some of the original
moat around the castle, but it was a state-of-the-art hog swine
production.
And that was about the time I was leaving Ohio State
University.
So I asked him to join me when he got back from Denmark and he
said, yes, I will.
Now he was a guy willing to take risks.
He went over to Europe and he interned and he published some
articles related to that in some national magazines.
So, anyway, his first day on the job, he said okay, boss,
what am I going to do?
And I asked do you remember, don, when you told me about this
little reading project?
You were interning at Reading Recovery back in Ohio and that's
a program designed to help students in the lower quartile
if they have trouble learning to read in kindergarten and grade
one, and you described how they wanted to publish some little
books to help that program.
And you described how they wanted to publish some little
books to help that program.
So I said let's make that happen.
So we wrote a proposal, they presented it to Reading Recovery
, they accepted it and pretty soon we coordinated the writers
and the illustrator and all the pre-press work for four little
books that are still in use today and they were very
successful.
They wanted more, and I think that first press run was 20,000
books.
So then we immediately ran another press run for another 20
or 40,000 or something like that, and they were just wildly
successful.
So within a few months we had eight books in the set and we
did a press run of one million.
After that date we never ran a press run less than a million.
One time we had four million books on press at one time.
We bought paper by the railroad cars.
We bought ink by the barrels.
We bought paper by the railroad cars, we bought ink by the
barrels.
And that's a result of taking a chance and using your gut level
feeling, you know.
Is that the competitive edge?
Was it luck?
Was it intuition?
Was it utilizing the census?
Did I pick up on the trend?
Did my friend who was interning in Denmark?
Did he pick up on the trend because he had interned with
Reading Recovery.
So I look at being able to pick a lot of different pieces a lot
of different strings and this might relate to string theory,
which I think you're familiar with, aaron.
We talked about that a little bit in Diffusion, but you know,
picking up on something and then taking the risk to follow it
through.
The bad part of this story is this young man who did this.
He came down with leukemia and he passed away about six months
into this whole program and they ended up dedicating the program
to him for a while and that's kind of gone by the wayside now.
So I don't know if that's what you're talking about the
competitive edge.
But as I look back in my career , I think about the risks I took
.
But I didn't really realize there were risks at the time.
It just felt natural.
Speaker 2: What I like that you've shared already and this
is one reason I like these interviews, by the way is
because there's a lot of seeds of greatness.
If we'll just listen to somebody's story, if we'll
listen to somebody's testimony, we find elements in there that
we can all learn from.
And there's several things that you've talked about.
Like I said, you've talked about paying attention, you
talked about work ethic, you talked about taking risks, being
creative, being innovative.
We've talked a lot about innovation.
You've said it several times.
You know, I think there's a lot of wisdom in being an innovator
, because everything that we experience, every successful
venture, started as a creative idea.
So I think there's a lot of brilliance and innovation, but
you've got to be willing to take that risk, to try it and then
use critical thinking to figure out why it worked.
And you know, I like what John Maxwell says.
He says every success, you need to do an autopsy on it.
You know you need to evaluate it.
You need to do the same thing to a failure you need to unpack
it.
But I guess you know, dr Paulson, one of the things I
tell people is all the people that I've been blessed to work
with incredible corporate leaders, policy leaders,
athletes.
There's one word that they all have in their vocabulary that I
find very unique, and that word is next.
It does not matter if they have a success, what's next?
It does not matter if they have a success, what's next.
It does not matter if they have a failure, what's next?
It does not matter if they move to a new job, what's next,
doesn't matter if they retire, it's what's next.
Next, I believe, creates a target and a goal that beckons,
and I believe that next provides fuel to give us purpose, and I
think that looking for what's next is also something that can
create a competitive edge.
Speaker 3: I like that concept and you know you talked about.
You mentioned failure a little bit.
You know, so far we've talked mostly about the successes.
I've had AgCom and AgEd and that.
But you know, as I think back I've had plenty of failures too.
But as I look back on those now , you know my first time I went
to college I was a poor student.
I was a tremendously poor student.
I was a poor student.
I was a tremendously poor student Back in the 60s.
I drank way too much.
I knew I was going to farm, so I went home every weekend.
I didn't spend any time at the university studying and
basically I probably would have failed out of college had I not
dropped out of college when my dad had a heart attack and I
went back to the family farm and at that point what was next?
We had created a livestock feedlot when I was in high
school because I was going back to the farm.
But you know, I've had plenty of different ideas that weren't
successful, but I learned from them and I just asked, like you
said, aaron, what's next?
You know you need to take all those in stride.
You can't let anything get you down and just go for the next.
You know I mentioned South Korea .
I thought I really kind of wanted to go to South Korea
because I was stationed in South Korea and in my military.
Related to the next concept, I mentioned high school typing
class that led me to a radio teletype communication job and
that required an extremely high security clearance because I was
responsible for all classes, from non-classified to top
secret, and they called it a crypto clearance because I
operated the equipment and all those things were related to
agricultural community or to communications and I in turn
brought those into the ag communications.
Without turning back to you, I kind of changed the rabbits
there no, that's good stuff I was thinking through.
Speaker 2: When you talked about your resiliency, I got to
thinking about tenacity, and there's a great movie about an
astronaut who was a migrant farm worker, called A Million Miles
Away.
It's a true story and there was a moment there that he was
about willing to give up and one of his instructors told him
that tenacity is your superpower and that's what kept him going.
And sadly, she was one of the crew members in the not the
Challenger.
It was the other space shuttle that went down under with
Captain Rick Husband.
But I'll never forget that that tenacity is a superpower.
I met a person one time that told me they were just tired of
the storms of life and they said they really wish they'd just
quit raining.
And I said, well, you want a place that never rains.
I said I can take you there and they said, really.
I said yeah it exists, so it's called a desert and nothing
grows.
But you show me somebody that's had a little pain, a little
challenge, a little heartache, and I'll show you somebody
that's probably poised for some incredible growth.
A little heartache, and I'll show you somebody that's
probably poised for some incredible growth, and I think
that through those failures, which I've had as well, if we're
smart about them, we learn from them.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2: And they just make us better.
All right, let's close this up.
I want to talk about one last topic, and that's leadership.
Our country, you know, I tell people all the time this
country's got three vital and renewable resources.
Think about that.
We've got three vital and renewable resources.
That's young people, agriculture and leadership.
And I want to talk about leadership for a minute.
If you were to share some tips on leadership, what would you
tell young people?
What are some tips that they should employ to be really good
leaders?
Speaker 3: I think the first one is something you mentioned
earlier is the ability to listen , listen to understand, not
listen to reply.
Everything, everything.
You should try to relate it to something else and understand
what you're hearing.
There are so many people and I think it's my pet peeve of every
of anybody is somebody who just listens enough to reply without
understanding the meaning.
That may go deep, and I think that's a skill that can be
learned.
Speaker 2: Does that answer your question?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you got any more, you got anything else.
Speaker 3: Listen what else would a good leader do?
I am finding within the last year I have gravitated a lot to
stoicism, the stoic principles that have been around since the
Greeks and the Romans, with the number one thing is evaluating
everything and say is this within my control?
Can I do something about it?
It might be just to acknowledge it, it might be nothing, or it
might be to dive headfirst in and use that intuition and do
something, but everything you deal with ask yourself is this
within my control and what should I do with it?
You can pass that on to the people you're working with if
you can give them the attitude of that and I'm really firmly,
I'm impressed with the Stoicism and I have just learned that
recently, within the last few years.
So if I were to go back to the academic world again, I would
try to introduce a section on philosophy, history and
philosophy related to the Stoic principles.
And just this morning, for the grins and giggles, I listened to
a podcast of 70 Stoic principles that are influenced
for 93% of your decisions in that decision process and it
made sense to me.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate that.
By the way, just so you know, I've been on a kick for last
year and this year.
I'm on a real kick on the word discernment and we need to start
raising young people to be discerning.
You've got to start being discerning.
You can't just scroll through social media and believe that
it's factual.
You can't just turn on a news station and believe everything
you hear.
You're going to have to be discerning and you're going to
have to do a little research to be discerning and you're going
to have to ask questions.
And you know, we put teachers on a bus every summer and take
them on a week-long leadership development program and they get
their notebooks and when they open up their notebooks, the
first thing they see when they open up the notebooks is the
word question.
And I asked the teachers.
I said what's the root word of the word question?
Quest, to go on an adventure.
I said I want y'all on an adventure all week long this
week.
I want you always asking questions and trying to learn,
because I believe that helps us become discerning and I think
that also adds to your stoicism, if you will.
I think that we've got to be discerning, we've got to start
asking questions about things, otherwise we're you know we're
liable to be led down a path that we're going to regret that
we were being led down.
Speaker 3: We're liable to be led down a path that we're going
to regret that we were being led down.
You know you brought up discernment and I want to bring
up back.
When we talked about AGR, the fraternity, and you had pin
number 20-something.
I was advisor to the colony but one of the guidelines of the
Alpha Gamma Rho National is that the advisor has to have been in
Alpha Gamma Rho as an undergraduate.
So they kind of made an exception and gave me pin number
one before, or they inducted me as a colony as an undergraduate
, but yet I was advised this.
So it's a way to get around that rule.
When I went back and talked about leadership back then I
talked about discernment and that was one of the topics that
I mentioned.
You may remember it a little bit, but be able to discern what
is important and that relates back Well, young people, if
y'all are listening.
Speaker 2: Right now we need it more than ever.
There is a tax on agriculture, there's a tax on animal
agriculture, there's a tax on ways of life.
There's so many things out there that if we are not
discerning, we could fall victim to an ability to pay attention,
an ability to have that aha moment, as Dr.
An ability to pay attention, an ability to have that aha moment
, as Dr Paulson said.
And I don't want the aha moment to be because we lost
everything.
I don't want it to be well, where'd everything go?
What happened to my freedom?
What happened to my liberty?
What happened to my country?
What happened to my way of life ?
I don't want that to be the aha moment.
Speaker 3: And now with the artificial intelligence, that's
one of the hottest topics and what's going on?
You know, back when the Macintosh technology was first
coming out, I took a camera, a digital camera, to one of the
professional meetings and everybody was just clamoring the
technology wasn't there yet but it was coming.
But they had professional meetings about how that
technology was utilized in the wrong way in advertising of the
high-end livestock and the bulls and the cows and how they were
manipulating the picture in their advertising and what were
the ethics related to that.
So we've had that concept for a long time and it continues.
It just really continues and it's getting worse.
It's getting more and more.
Speaker 2: Well, that could be a whole other podcast, just so
you know.
But I'm glad you brought it up Because I recently had I was at
an FFA board meeting and a foundation board meeting less
than a year ago, by the way where I shared with them my
concerns.
You know, back when we had websites, we had SEO, search
engine optimization Brands would work hard to push their brand
to the top.
Well, now that you got chat, gpt and AI, you've got the same
thing going on is it's capturing information, and if we're not
careful and we're not populating the right information and we're
not discerning, it doesn't take you long to see where this
could be a real problem.
So the reason I'm saying thank you is because you're bringing
up a topic that I think you're going to find on this podcast
more and more in the coming year , because it's very important
that we have that discussion.
Speaker 3: And we both have been involved in agriculture and
communications and for the future of both that's so
important to just continue teaching, continued striving,
continued working towards what is correct.
There's just so much information in the whole
communication and agricultural fields.
I'm happy and proud to have been a part of it over these
years.
Speaker 2: Dr Paulson.
We got to bring this to a close , but I want to tell you thank
you.
You're welcome Personally and professionally.
On a personal note, you sure didn't have to let that freshman
kid in your class, but I'm glad you did.
You taught me to use my imagination, to take risks, to
use a nominal group technique.
There are a lot of takeaways at 18 years of age that I've been
able to carry with me through a career, and you've also done the
same thing at the universities that you've been at.
You've done that not just for me but for a lot of kids, and
you've helped create some pretty strong programs that you know
one of the things that we say around our shop a lot, and
you've probably heard me say it, but we always say that the
essence of leadership is to plant trees under whose shade
you may never sit.
That's so true.
That's so true, and I just want to say that you've planted some
incredible oaks.
Thank you.
Those oaks are also springing and planting oaks.
Speaker 3: You know I think about it.
I opened the doors to opportunities and gave you and
other people a little nudge and kind of sent you on your way.
That's how I looked at my career.
I could open quite a few doors, but it's up to the individual
to make something happen.
Speaker 2: So just to piggyback on that, because, again, I just
spoke to a leadership group the other day and this is exactly
what I told them.
I said the adult's job, our job as adults, is to make more and
bigger doors of opportunities for those that follow us.
And then I look at the young people and I said your
responsibility is to determine the outcome.
Yep, yep, exactly, our job is to get you to the door.
We're going to try to nudge you , get you through it, but you've
got to determine the outcome.
And that's why podcasts like this, experts like Dr Paulson,
that's why these things are so important, because they're seeds
of greatness and if you'll listen to what they say and
plant those and nurture them, you might just grow a better
future.
Speaker 3: And take that initiative.
The initiative fits in there too, yep.
Speaker 2: All right, you know you get one fun question, so you
know I'm going to ask you what's the best concert you ever
been to?
Speaker 3: Well, without a doubt it's probably the first one I
went to and I would guess in the early 80s, probably 83 or 80.
No, no, no, back in the 60s, 62 or 63.
Peter Paul and Mary in Moorhead , minnesota.
Wow, yeah, wow, some of the beautiful early music.
Yes, Another kind of fun concert I went to is I took a
year off, a summer off, and I hitchhiked in Europe and I
happened to hear that Jimmy Soul was playing.
Do you know what his famous, his one famous song was?
Speaker 1: If you want to be happy for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: Make an ugly woman, your wife, look at you, go
Tongue in cheek, type of thing but it was a popular one, and it
was a small concert at a local establishment.
But the one I really liked, and I still like, is Peter Paul,
mary, that's awesome.
I've been to some great Jimmy Buffett concerts but I'm not a
big fan.
I know you are.
I'm a diehard Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Buffett fan.
You know Dr Paulson too real quick and we're going to wrap
this up.
But one of the things I admire about him too is this man
retires but he's not done serving.
That's why I said you know, when you look at successful
people, they've always got that word next in their vocabulary.
And this man right here now travels around the United States
volunteering his time at national parks, volunteering his
time at national parks, and so if y'all are traveling about
this summer or in the fall, or even in the winter or spring,
and you happen onto a national park, you never know, you might
just find this guy in there helping be a greeter, maybe a
trash picker, I don't know what all you do, Dr Paulson, but I
just want to say thank you for continuing your service.
Speaker 3: You know I consider I'm very versatile.
I've done everything from cleaning, greeting high school
kids to kindergarten kids and I even helped one school in Texas
where they based most of their curriculum on outdoor activities
at a state park and that was just great, like with the
camping, the hunting, the fishing, the management of park.
That was a great experience and that relates agriculture, to
communications, to natural resources, to education.
So it's great.
It's a great life.
I'm living the dream now.
Speaker 2: Dr Paulson, thank you for coming on today.
Thank you, aaron.
Thank you for being a mentor, and not just to me, but to so
many Folks.
That's what the Growing Our Future podcast is all about.
If you want to know what the future is, grow it.
You got to have people like this that plant seeds in the
minds of young people.
Find a mentor, aaron, and we need young people that are
willing to do exactly what you just said to listen, to be
mentored, to find somebody that can pour into you.
But if you'll do all these things, you'll grow a better
life, you'll grow a better career, we'll grow better homes,
we'll grow better homes, we'll grow better communities, we'll
grow better states and we'll grow a better country Exactly.
Maybe when it's all said and done, we'll grow a better world.
Dr Paulson, thank you for joining us.
To all of our guests, thank you for stopping by Again.
You can only spend time and you spent some of it with us, and
we just want to say thank you.
Until we meet again, everybody, go out, do something great for
somebody else.
You'll feel good about it and you never know, you just might
change the world doing it.
Until we meet again, everybody, be safe.
Thank you for joining us.
You bet.
Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the
Growing Our Future podcast.
This show is sponsored by the Texas FFA Foundation, whose
mission is to strengthen agricultural science education
so students can develop their potential for personal growth,
career success and leadership in a global marketplace.
Learn more at mytexasffaorg.