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Growing Our Future
Growing Our Future
Utilize All Your Senses ... Things Can Be Better
In this episode of the Growing Our Future podcast, host Aaron Alejandro engages with Dr. Curtis Paulson, a pioneer in agricultural communication. They discuss the importance of gratitude, the influence of early life experiences, and the significance of taking risks in education and agriculture. Dr. Paulson shares his journey from a farm boy in Minnesota to a leader in ag communication, emphasizing the value of work ethic, innovation, and the role of technology in shaping the future of agriculture. The conversation highlights the impact of land-grant universities and the collaborative efforts that have led to the growth of agricultural communication programs.
Story Notes:
- Dr. Curtis Paulson's Early Influences
- Aha Moments in Agriculture
- Career Path and Education
- The Importance of Work Ethic
- Innovations in Agricultural Communication
- Establishing Agricultural Communication Programs
- The Role of Technology in Agriculture
- Reflections on Growth and Success
- Catalysts of Change: The Role of Creativity
- Navigating Career Transitions: Lessons from Academia
Learn more at MyTexasFFA.org
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.
Speaker 2: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 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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3:So within a few months we had eight books in the set and we did a press run of one million.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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?
Speaker 3: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
Speaker 2: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.
