Interview with Incumbent AAA Board Candidate Roger Wann

This podcast begins with casual discussions about food and family dynamics, then transitions into an in-depth conversation with Roger Wann, an incumbent candidate for the American Angus Association Board of Directors. Roger shares his background, the dynamics of his family-operated ranch, and his commitment to the association. He outlines his goals for improving communication, focusing on commercial programs, and addressing competing genetic databases. The conversation also touches on topics such as data accuracy, member engagement, and the importance of retaining control over genetic information. 

Transcript

0:01

I did eat before we started though. You know, bistro, we welcome to around the shoot, but I, I, so we start this, um, podcast by talking about food, which it's gonna irk me. It's gonna piss me off right from the start because, um, are you up diet or something? No, I literally spend all day smoking ribs. Oh. And I just didn't really have time to eat'em before we came on here. Oh, you could have brought'em and ate'em while you could have snack. It's like, it's not really that type of a, it's not really that type of food where you're like, you're like sucking on a bone while you're, while you're trying to talk. So it's not really the type of food that I wanted to, uh, I wanted to start, start eating with sound. I mean, I guess I could mute myself, but imagine, there you go. Imagine the sound of me. Like, so, so is this pleasant noises? Is this around the Traeger with Corbin around the green, around the Traeger? Um, I do, we do have a smoker, but it's, that's not for Thursday evening though. Sure. I need to know. Are those all the, is that all the stuff? Bennett one behind you? Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I'm in Bennett's room. Yes. That is awesome. Uh, I'm going the wrong way though. Wrong way. All that is, that is all. He won all that crap. Yeah, he won all that stuff at that contest in North Carolina? No, not yet because this came, and then there's just more shipments of stuff just keeps coming. I'd be like, minute. I'm sorry, this is all that came. Well, I don't know how to use those tools anyways. Vincent was like, oh, oh, Bennett, good job. Let's put all these tools inside the house in your room. Yeah. No, Abby, what are we doing? Abby stored it all here for when he comes back or whatever, but No, he did, I guess we didn't talk about that. Huh? He he had a good run. Yeah. We're really, really proud. It's, I don't know. We talked to Corbin about, oh, your life's gonna change with these little kids and all this stuff. But it's like, man, every phase, it just always is changing, right? Yeah. Like you move into a new phase and now we're parents of adult children and they've got their walk and, and I don't know, it's just super interesting. And then I'm not a parent of them, but my younger sisters have little kids, and so they're so little. It's like, I'm not like a grandpa, but I'm also too old to kind of be their uncle if it makes sense. And so just watching that, it's, it's uh, this whole being a parent thing. Isn't it funny too? Fascinating. First of all, isn't it funny how 40-year-old Joe, actually, he's too old to be an uncle. Like, what the, did you realize that, okay, our neighbor, I don't think you're too old. You can never be too old. Oh, you need to, you need to hear about my generation interval. We turn it over now. Our neighbor, our neighbor had a child at 66. Holy old. Crap. It's, I mean, oh, bless his heart. Uh, Reba McIntyre's brother. Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he had one, um, at 60. Who was he named? Pegu, Pete. And then they had another one. I was like 60. He was, he was much, he was older. Um, so yeah. Joe, you're not old. You need to quit acting like it. No, I do think it's, I'm older. I'm older than my dad was. I'm, I'm quite certain I'd have to do the math and I'm not that quick yet. But no, I'm quite certain I am either the same age or older than my dad was when I graduated a four year university. Yeah, that is, that is, that is something that's interesting. My dad was, obviously, he was 25 when I was born and I'm his youngest. And then I just had one at 30, well, 35 technically, but it's right before my birthday. So there's definitely, there's definitely something where in life, I think it was originally the goal was like, well, I don't want to, I wanna have kids at before 30 and then. Not be a grandpa whenever they're graduating high school. But I didn't, for whatever reason, my life didn't work out that way. It was hard, which is fine. I don't care. I don't care. The timing can be hard. I'll be 54, but I'll get some just from in jail and nobody will ever even know. So Vince, did you know any of your great-grandparents? No. Me neither. I did know one. I did know one. I only had one grandparent. Oh man. That was around. I'm trying to think of what we called my great-grandma, though. I only had one. She died in 1994. Whenever I was four, we called. I can remember four great-grandparents. Great-grandparents died. That's crazy. Well, that And my children, children, you would've eight. You would've eight. My children knew. Knew two of them. Two of your great grandparents. Mm-hmm. Oh, wow. Mine's on, uh, milah would know too, would know. Milah would know too. So yeah. And then when you get to like, great-great aunts and uncles and great-great greats, oh, I had a mess of them. That's, I think it's funny that we we're, we're kind of talking about family dynamic, and it's something that's been really, I've been thinking about it a lot lately. It's like, um, I kind of get in the summertime, I do this anyways, but I get to this point where I'm like, the cows are doing it for themselves. I don't really see'em every day. So I'm not, uh, I'm not as plugged in with everything that's going on. I'm like, my brain is, is on other things. So, um, as the fall has gotten here, I will say that I have gotten to be so excited too. Like, you start going through calves and you're, you're about to wean. Um, I, I, I'm seeing them more often. Or their calves are getting bigger, they have more character. You can kind of tell more of what you've got. And so I've kind of been re what is it? What is it like reinvigorated, like, I'm so much more exci. It's, and I know I, I bring that up because I know you guys go through the same cycle where it's like, oh, you know, cows, whatever. I don't care right now. But then you hit this certain points in life where you're like, you get excited again. And I'm at one of those points right now. I, I think one of the reasons is I got a calf that, which whenever you have 150 of'em, you have one that stands out. You're like, oh man, you just, I'm just excited. So like, I'm excited to be excited. I hope that everyone else out there listening as excited as I am to be in the business at this time, they're not. I'm kidding. They're not. I don't know. I. So I, I'd let you know something about me. The highs are high, the lows are low whenever it comes to having cows. Like, I mean, whenever I'm high, whenever I'm like I am right now, it's like I can't be stopped. That's what I like about row cropping too, because it gives me the summer we make hay, we deal with the crops. I don't have to deal with cows too much, and it gives me a minute for my brain to shut down and quit thinking about it. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And then now I think that's healthy. Yeah. Now we're, and then when you, you get to calving them. Yep. We're Calvin and we're, we're about to wrap up harvest and we're, we're Calvin. And then I can start focusing on, you know, I'm starting to think about bulls debris used this fall and things like that. So my, my brain has had a time to check out. I need to use the, because I have been, been reinvigorated, I have been enlightened and I do have. More excitement for the business than I've had over the past three or four months. I've just gone through a little lull in the summertime, but I need to use this time just to start thinking about umm decisions and what, what I want to see outta certain cow families and how I can make that happen. So I, I need to use my, use my happiness to my advantage rather than just going out there and being goof mc goober and looking at the Cal and being excited, you know, need to use it to use my, my rare time of clarity and make some decisions. So, um, Joe, what have you been up to? Well, it was, it's funny because. What Vince just said is exactly what he said to me about every three days for the past 45, where he is like, see, that's what I like about row cropping, because I call Vince and I'm like, yeah, I'm not looking for a tall building yet. But things are pretty stressful. And I'm said on this podcast before and another podcast fall is absolutely since I, it has a very emotional deep trigger for me. I love the fall. I've always loved the fall. I love the fall. It's going to the mountains. It's the changing of the leaves, it's the calves coming, it's the replacement heifers. It's all those things. It's, it's, uh, it's, how about fall baseball? Like fall baseball is fall baseball. We got football. We got, oh, Vince is freaking out. Oh, he's talking about baseball. He's like, you know, you know what, Vince, just go for it. I'm gonna kick back. When we get to this time of year. Go ahead Joe. Just tell'em how great it is. Fall is the best. I, I love fall and honestly, oh man, my most stressful time of year is this ball sale, the fall, which is in the fall. And it's kind of just put a damper on that. But I, I do wanna tell you, I'm not watching the clicker. I don't think I have one. I think Vince has the clicker, like of time. We just had a conversation about family. We just had a conversation about seasons, bull sales, stuff like that. And I actually feel a little guilty because we have a, a special guest today. Um, we've had a popular segment we've been doing for, or a series of board member candidates. And Corbin. I think some of this maybe introduce our guest because some of it's a little bit applicable where I'd like to hear him chime in about family life and stuff like that too. So, um, let's just go ahead and move on and, and maybe when we're done with that interview at the end, let's go back and revisit and we'll talk about some more of our activities. Is that, is that okay with you Vince Corbin? Yeah. Or, or there's another day to talk about this because my excitement's not going away, I can tell you. Yeah, no. And I want to hear how other people are excited. I'm excited'cause I think that's our listeners, our listeners go, I, I guess the one prescription I'd have for you is easier for me to prescribe than to do it myself in practice, but smooth out those highs and lows if you figure out how to you it, to where the highs aren't so high and the lows aren't so well, you know what? The highs can be high, but the, the lows of when I just, which I mean, I'm gonna give myself a little bit of credit here. Um, we've been having a baby and that, that's the type of thing that I'm just, I, I, I, this time going around, I'm older, I'm more mature. And so the goal is to be more present in that. So that's a lot of the reason why I just kinda was like, eh, whatever cows are, cows are cows. But, but let's get to the real reason why we're here. Um, so I wanna, I wanna leave you with one more before we get to Okay. Go ahead to our guest. I heard a great, great sermon. Um, actually. In the Catholic church, they call'em homilies, but it's preaching where, uh, they said successful people do not think of problems as problems. Problems are items that need your attention. And that kind of helped me through this fall on this bowl sail thing. Like, let's not think about these problems we have. They're just an item that needs my attention. Correct. And so with that, go for it, Corbin. Let's kick this off and, and bring this nice gentleman in. Well, like all of our, our candidates for the board. I, I think, I think that we share a lot of the same values and a lot of the same views and a lot of what we've been bantering about here to start this podcast off. Um, our guest, Roger Juan, is going to really resonate with, I, I mean, I know Roger's a family man. I know, um, living in Southeast Oklahoma, there's gonna be so many similarities between the way they do things and just, just looking at Robert's face and just knowing his background. I know, um. I know we've got similar backgrounds and we've got similar ideals as the way things go. Um, there's something a little different about Robert. Robert is an incumbent. Um, Roger, not Robert. Oh, did I say Robert? I meant Roger. Roger is an incumbent in the American Angus Association Board of Directors, which is something that's really exciting for me because, uh, we get a chance to talk to somebody that's been there, somebody that's been through it, somebody that knows kind of what to expect. Hopefully we can pick his brain a little bit about what goes on in there. And, um, you know, um, I'm excited for the future of American Angus Association and I'm excited. For, uh, our conversation with Roger. So without further ado, I just wanna kick it off to you, Roger. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from. Uh, we've got Juan Ranch in Juan Ranches in Podo, Oklahoma. They've got a bull sail every March. Um, but, but aside from that, uh, I think Roger's got a lot more to tell you, so, so I'll give it to you, Roger. Hey, thanks guys. And it's, uh, thanks for inviting me on. It's a pleasure to, to be here and it takes a little while to kind of get the scheduling and organizational, uh, pre-work done to, to get, get to this point, but I'm sure happy to be here. And, uh, you know, Corbin, when, when you get to be as old as I am today, you can ramble along a long time from about family and kids'cause I've had a pretty long history with that. But I grew up, I'm a native of Eastern Oak, Eastern Oklahoma, born in la Flora County. Um, so life kind of took me to Stillwater for a undergraduate degree in animal science at Oklahoma State, and I worked for about a year after that in the Stillwater area. Had a couple different jobs there while I was kind of sorting out my next direction, I applied to, uh, I really enjoyed the repro class at, uh, as a senior at, uh, at OSU and, and I ended up using, uh, Dr. Rod Geiser was the physiologist there at the time that taught that senior repro class. And he helped me organize some, um, applications to various colleges, uh, to attend grad school. And I ended up at Texas a and m and, and got a master's in repro there. And kind of had the, uh, it's kind of, I've said this a few times, but I, I kind of had the original intent of maybe staying for a PhD and having a career in academia. And about halfway through my master's degree, I realized, ah. I don't know about that. I could, I could see that academia is just gonna get me further from a cow than what I really wanted to be. And, uh, and I had, uh, three or four different PhD programs in front of me to kind of look at and consider. And I looked around at what else was in the industry and, and, uh, and I, whether you guys know all this history or not, but some of our readers may, or listeners may, but I ended up, uh, leaving grad school at that point in academics and taking a, a sales management job with, with a BS. So I worked in the AI industry and actually just retired from that job a few months ago, after 36 years. And, and, and very similar to, um, that decision of staying in academia would get me too far from Macau. Uh, every time I kind of had a little bit of an opportunity to maybe move up at a BSI, I was asked recently, why'd you stay in the same position for 36 years?'cause any other position would've got me too far from Macau. And, uh, so I, I stayed close to the field. I loved working with sales reps. I, I loved, uh, working with customers. My, my family background on the family ranch, there was all commercial. We had no registered cows at that time. And so my interest today is still very commercial. Um, even though I, you know, we're seed stock breeders and how the bulls sound, all that, I'm very commercial in my approach to the breed. Um, so if I, if I back up on the family history a little bit there, my, my great grandparents moved from northeast Texas up to La Flora County. I'm not, I don't think we're real sure what year, um, my granddad was born in 1914. We're sure of that. My mom has a copy of a US census, a handwritten census from 1918 that has my granddad's name on it as being four years old. So somewhere between 1914 and 1918, uh, they moved to the Florida County and bought the first 80 acres. And, uh, so over time might, that's an incredible timeline. That's an incredible timeline when you get to think about it. It's so, 1918, it's 2025. So 107 years your family has been where you're at. Right? Right. It's incredible. And, and some of that, Hey, we have some photos of, uh, not very many, of course, but there's a photo of my granddad as a young man and his mother, who as, as a great grandmother, I do remember her. Um, I was probably in fourth or fifth or sixth grade when she passed away. Um, but they were farming corn with a team of horses in one of the fields, which is one of our favorite hay fields today. So we don't do any farming today, Vince. But, um, so kind of a good history there. All commercial cattle and got interested in, in registered cattle when I was a student at Oklahoma State. I worked at both OBI, central Bull Test Facility and worked at the OSU Purebred Beef Center and, uh, actually started taking the Angus Journal in March of 1986. And I moved to College Station in the fall of that year to start my master's program. And, and I can tell you that day, the, uh, when the, when the Angus Journal showed up, I put the biochem and the physiology and whatever other books I had, they got stuck to the side and I shut the office door and read the Angus Journal. So we bought our, my brother and I bought our first cow in 1989 and a cow or two along after that thinking, oh my gosh, it's gonna take us forever to get big enough to matter. And it kind of did. Uh, but it seems like once you get to a certain level and the, the, you have more replacement heifers coming on, then growth happens pretty fast after that with you wake up one day and like, I'm not real sure where all these cows have come from, but that's kind of the, uh, kinda the history that sort of has got us up to that point. Had our first bull sail and. 2003 and I've had one every year since. So you mentioned your, you mentioned your, sorry, Vince, go ahead. You mentioned your brother. What does your family dynamic look like as far as the ranch goes? Um, as far as the bull sale goes, is it just you two kind of do everything together or does he bring his bull as you bring everybody? My, my parents are, um, my, uh, our, our mom and dad are both, I'd say pretty well retired. Uh, folks that know us will laugh at the next thing. I've got to say that dad's 86, he'll sure. Show up on the John Deere Gator totally unannounced and give you orders or, or quickly point out to you what you're not doing right. So, uh, just he, I explained to him, tried to explain to him one time, daddy Danny, and I know what we're doing here. And, but I think he just can't help himself. He's gotta be sure we're doing things right. But, so today it's my brother and I, um, we have have partnership cows. We have. Some property we own together in A LLC. And then I have cows I own personally, and he has cows he owns personally, and it can seem a little complicated, I think, but it works for us. And they're all registered under the same member code and, and uh, we know who, what belongs to who, and it just kind of works. You know, you, you brought up a minute ago about the, about growing and, and it seemed like it takes forever and then all of a sudden it doesn't. Have you ever had you brought up your bull sail as well? Have you ever had a female sale? Well, we have a female sale with our bull sail. Oh, you do? Okay. Yeah. So we in for, for the first oh, 10 years, we sold our females first. And the bulls last and in the sale. Um, but we made the change, I think in 2015 or 2016 that really our bread and butter here is, um, is selling bulls. Uh, as we grew and the number of bulls we had to sell to sell grew, we attracted more and more commercial bull guys, and we put them to the front of the sale. And, and today it's almost embarrassing to admit that I, I never make one phone call with the intent to sell a female that's in the sale. And, and I can tell you when the bull sale's over and those guys get up out of the bleachers and walk away, I'm always have a little bit of a nervous moment be, I hope, bet have people left here to, to buy these 50 or 60 female lots that we have teed up to go. And they, and they always do. Maybe at not just astounding prices, but prices that we're always proud of. Right. Roger, I have a follow up because I think it's so unique, the structure you have. Mm-hmm. And, and, and I'll tell you, the interview won't sound funny because if, if you'd rather not answer this, we'll just cut her off, cut her out, and nobody will know it existed. Um, because it, it would be sort of proprietary information. Do those bulls get purchased by like Juan Ranch and sold in a cooperative fashion and then dis disperse funds? Do you guys make cattle together and say we're using these sis? Because I think we have a lot of young listeners that would want to do stuff with family and they say, well, what happens if I raise all the$18,000 bulls and my brother's raising all the$3,000 bulls and you know, that's, how do we do this? That's absolutely part of it. Um, so, uh, my brother and I pretty well agree on, on our AI sis. Okay. So we'll pick, I think we have seven on our list for the fall. And that doesn't mean he might decide at the last moment to buy 10 units on a bull he wants to kind of use, or I may do the same thing, but we have this core group of bulls that. That fits our selection criteria with the sole purpose of these guys can leave us. Great. I'm, I'm an optimist. I believe we can, you can have it all. If we use all the tools available to us. We want great females and we want great bulls for our commercial customers. And uh, and we have a lot of longtime repeat customers that I think say that what we're doing is, at least in some part, right? So we, we, we agree on this group of bulls and then, um, and then my brother kind of makes his cows. We work together on the partnership cows, I'll make my cows. We kind of come up to about the same, the same spot on those matings. And you know, I think one thing we do, maybe it's a little unique, we've become so much better at selling bulls than we are females. We want more bulls than females. So for the last half a dozen years, we've been using a fair amount of sex male semen and. So our sex ratio is pretty consistent at 60 40 bulls versus females. And we do use cleanup bulls. So those are supposed to all be si 50 50, although some years you wonder. And, um, but we can keep that 60 40 ratio and that seems to fit us pretty well. So that's another thing I'd throw in there. Some science. We're, we're both science guys. Uh, we both have master's degrees in different disciplines, but um, uh, the sex semen thing has been really cool for us. One piece of advice you'd offer, a quick, one piece of advice you'd offer mm-hmm. For anybody that wanted to go in business with a sibling in the bull selling world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You just, you just have to be on the same page and you have to be able to play to other, your, your, your sibling strengths and he has to be able to play to your strengths. And, uh, we know what each other does well and we stay out of each other's way. Uh, and let them let that person take the lead when it's things that he does well. And you, you can't be competitive against each other. And well said, our customers will tell us which bull deserves to bring the most money. I think it's, I think that's beautiful. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And to be honest with you, it's, I, one of the things about having a partnership bull sale, which I know it's something that Joe has to deal with and it's something that Vince has to deal with, and it's something that I've thought about, um, and inviting some people to come sell some bulls. It's like you have to get along well with the people you're selling bulls with, and there cannot be any sort of animosity because. Um, the free market determines what bulls worth the same amount. I think it's important to have those bulls be raised in a similar capacity, but at, but at the end of the day, we've got a free market and whatever two people decide, a bulls worth is what two people decide a bull is worth, right? So, um, and, you know, and over the years a lot of our customers have, uh, come to trust us a lot. And so we, we'll get a fair number of bull orders at the last minute. I can go to bed on a Thursday night thinking I've got everything lined out, all the boxes are checked, and then a, a weather event somewhere, uh, a family emergency somewhere. Friday mornings, phone starts ringing. I can't make the sale. I need two Kevin's bulls, or I need this, or I need that. A lot of these guys, I know'em well enough, I know what they want. If I don't, I I ask'em a handful of questions to, to be sure I understand as well as I can what they need. And then at that point, you buy the right bull for them and it doesn't matter who owns it. So back to the partnership thing, uh, if these two bulls are the right fit for that guy, that's the two bulls I'm gonna do my best to get for him. And it doesn't matter whether I own them or not.'cause it all works out in the end, especially too, I think it's really important. Uh, uh, and I, I don't mean to go off on a diatribe on this, but I think it's really important if you're gonna have a partnership bull sail with someone, or you're, you're gonna have, you have to have similar ideas of where you want your breed, you want your program to go, right? So I mean, it's like you can't have somebody that's raising, um, ramala big muscular things and then somebody that's raising jerseys. I mean, you gotta have some, some, some like-minded, um, ideas. Mm-hmm. So, so obviously you guys have that, um, right. Uh, I'd like to know more about like, the family dynamic. I mean, do you, have you have kids that are involved in the program? I mean, yeah. And, you know, um, generation interval of humans is about 25 years, so every 25 years somebody's gotta figure out what's gonna happen next. Right, exactly. And that's just, that's, that's just biology. And you can't get around, can't get around that. And we're, uh, Danny and I are a little bit in the middle of that now. Um, certainly he and I are at the helm, if you will, at this point. I have, uh, I have three adult kids and, you know, they one day grew up and kind of found their own way in life and doing a lot of different things. And Vince and I have talked about this a little bit. Uh, my brother's kids are all closer to home and likely the, the next generation of. Who is gonna make things. Gin is gonna be his two sons at this point, is my best guess. He is a senior in high school and, and his oldest son is a, has a local, uh, he's CPA has a local accounting business, but, uh, he's very involved at the ranch. A very smart young man as you might expect. And so there's, there's some good hands there. And we're, we're at the point, uh, I'm, I'm three years older than my brother. I'm nowhere's near ready to quit, of course. But, um, we we're having some elementary discussions of what the next round needs to look like. And I think you just can't wake up one day and say, okay, we've got a month to figure this out, voice. Uh, it's, yeah, you think about it, you have, they have to evolve over time. And, uh, so we're, we're kind of at that point today, but we're, I think we're all very comfortable where we are today. There's no emergencies in place. So, um, so that, so, so all your, your range stuff is really exciting. Um, I. I love how you're, you guys are so family oriented. I love how it's two brothers and then you've got, you know, the next generation. It's not like you have it figured out, but you guys have a path to, to keep it in the family and it's Right. 107 years, it's so, it's so impressive to keep something, uh, that close to home in that amount of time. But yeah, if we can, if we can, I'd like to shift gears. Shift gears. Okay. You bet. A little bit. Bet. You bet. Um, oh, I will, I will make one more family point. So my daughter who lives in Columbia, South Carolina, she and her husband both have great careers there. And that's where my two grandkids live too far from home. But it is what it is at this point. And, uh, she turns in all of our performance data. So. So you do have some involvement from there? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So we take weights and, uh, you know, once we do the electronic having book, turn in the birth weight, get the parentage correct. Get the, the, the, the registrations in place, which also set your contemporary groups. Right. So she doesn't have to worry about that. We've already de designated contemporary groups at birth after that. Man, you talk about the yellow notepads with weights written down on'em. Take a picture, text'em to Brittany. It just happens. She's got it done. And she's good at calling into the office if she has some questions. And you can bet if she can't read the handwriting on the, on the photo, she's gonna hustle. She's gonna be asking me or her uncle Danny real quick. Like, what is this? And uh, so we have a, we have a system that works pretty well. It, it keeps Danny and I from doing something. All Angus breeders love this, right? You're tired from doing whatever it is you've done all day. And you come in like, man, I need to spend an hour and get some, get some Oh yeah. Gets plugged in here. Yeah. She's does all that for us and a hundred times faster than I could do it anyway. Well, that might be, uh, I had, I had to kind of, I had to throw that in there. Well, and that might be, that might have, so I, I mentioned as we, as we came on here about my excitement and like how I'm reinvigorated. Part of the reason I might be, uh, sound a little bit like I have a little more pep in my step today is, is that Lucy has actually decided, well, Lucy's my wife, uh, she's actually decided that, um, she might want to start inputting all our data and, and kind of taking the helm on some of that stuff. And that's honestly, you know, kids are so technically proficient today and I went to you to see a kid Right. But Right. And she's younger than I kids. So your kids will be, uh, um, you guys are just good at doing stuff like that and can, can. Find work. I, I finally find a way to make it work, and I'm gonna plink in the same fashion forever. But Brittany will discover different things behind the Angus logging. They're short cut stuff. Oh, I can turn dating in faster with this spreadsheet. I would've never even thought of that. Right. So, so it's nice to have that younger generation. It's nice to, you know what, to be honest with you, from your perspective, it's nice to have that involvement from your daughter. Perfect. You bet. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel good. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, so if we may, now we'll shift gears. Mm-hmm. Um, so, so you've been in that boardroom, you've been a, a part of all of that, uh, process. Um, so I guess, I guess we start off with. You've been there for the last term. Mm-hmm. What are your goals for the next term? Mm-hmm. And what goal, I'll start off with that. I'll start off, what, what goals do you have for the next term? And, and I might be get out, get out, kind of order outta order here. But I'd like to say, I'd also like to know what you kind of think you brought to the board, uh, in the last term you had. Yeah. A, a couple things there and I, I, that, that's a good, good broad question to let me kind of find my own path, uh, to answer that. Um, I knew when my youngest son played that last baseball game, then I wanted to devote more time back to the industry. Off not just the ranch, but more, I didn't know exactly what that was. I became involved with the Oklahoma Cattleman Association and in a couple of different, I served a term as a district director. Um, I, I served some time on their, uh, six years, in fact on the production policy committee. So helped, uh, lead, uh, policy discussions that ultimately would, would develop policy for the OCA to tell that staff Michael Kelsey, the CEO there, um, what we wanted him to go to the capitol and lobby for us. And so I hadn't thought about working any outside the state of Oklahoma that hadn't crossed my mind much. Um, but, um, a couple of Anish breeders here in the state did ask me to consider running. It took me two months to decide to do it. I talked to quite a few people, wanted to be sure that I had the right skillset that would help Angus, uh,'cause this, this wasn't gonna be about me. And I think a couple of things that, that I, I, as I've already mentioned, I'm so angu, so commercial oriented, uh, that I, I also was also on the, the, uh, board of the Oklahoma Angus Association. And we had developed a Oklahoma Angus sponsored feeder kef sale at Oklahoma City National Stockyards. And I just knew there was so much more that could be done to differentiate value of Angus feeder Kevs sore by registered Angus Bulls. And so what really caught my attention is the, is the early beginnings of growth with the Angus Link Program, the genetic merit scorecard. I am a science guy and I thought I could really play a part. Making our industry better at marketing Angus feeder calves. And that was, that ultimately became my, uh, my primary reason, like, yeah, I think I want to do this. Then once you've got on the board, and we can come back to other questions you may have. Uh, you know, the American Angus Association is, uh, is fairly complex. It's got four entities. Uh, those entities serve various purposes. Uh, there's budgets and expenses for each of those, and I just spent, you know, 30 plus years. Uh, as much as I love being dirty and being right at the field level of this industry, I've got a lot of training by fire on, on corporate budgets, expense budgets, income budgets, how things have to line up. And I found that to be a really useful part of my background as I started sitting in board meetings to be sure that we were keeping the fiscal part of the, uh, of the breed association in place. So a couple of things there that I think address your questions and if, if you wanna, you know, work on that a little bit more, I'd be happy to, uh, continue further if I missed something that you wanted. I have one, Roger. Sure. How do, how does one balance the, um, financial responsibilities of the entity with what the members need in the organization? That is incredibly great question. And, and I'll just, I'll start that by talking about Angus media. So, so I've served two years on the Board of Angus Media. So the first year. Almost all of that first year, we, we were at an interim place. We did not have a president of Angus Media. We didn't have a leader. Um, so for two leaders in a row there, you know, you could, you could make a case that Angus Media didn't have a great direction. It was just sort of sitting there. And so, you know, we get to get to looking at some of this. It was not necessarily operating in the black, it was close, but it wasn't, and it's a for-profit entity. I, I can't speak to why it was set up that way, but that is the way it is. But when we got the opportunity to hire a new president, and I'm very proud to have been on that interviewing squad and I was very proud to, to bring him on board. I just thought he had the right skillset. Uh, but here's a guy that had come from a for-profit business that was supposed to thank Sure. Make money into a, I'm doing some air quotes here for-profit business that, yeah, but we don't wanna raise all the cost of our members. You know, I told him, I said, you've got the funnest job in the world. You need to increase revenue here, but I don't wanna pay more for my cell catalog. So how are we gonna get that done? So some, some, there were a lot of duplication of efforts and we could go into a lot, a lot of things here and, and, and kind of streamlining services to, to conserve some of that duplication of efforts being, which allowed us to be more responsive to the members as well as reduce cost in-house. And then what can we do as a, as a large breed association with a large number of members who all buy ag products. Uh, so we started attracting some sponsorships from, uh. From outside the Angus family, if you will, to help offset the cost of, of running Angus media. And, and today we've got Angus Media in the black. We feel good about that, but other than our postage costs, which we all love, when we mail out, uh, a pile of cell books, uh, we have an increased cost to our members. And I think that is our goal there. That is a balance. That's hard, that's hard to follow. Um, it is just a hard thing to do. So of course, CAB is a nonprofit that generates a lot of revenue from, um, uh, from licensing fees and, and sales commissions on CAB product. And all of that is to be turned back into promoting our product, uh, keeping more, whether it's a restaurant in Oklahoma City or Tulsa, or whether it's a. Uh, a chain in Peru, or, uh, I just got to attend the CAB annual conference, uh, in Austin, set a record, 800 attendees, uh, all from the food service restaurant business, representing 16 countries. And these people are excited to serve our product and very willing to spend a premium price. And, and for me, that trickles down to make my bulls worth more money. So the CAB revenue is all sent in, turned back around into promoting our product. Uh, so e each entity there has a little different thing to do. So I think this segues nicely and I, sorry to step on you Corbin, but, um, it's interesting to have someone who has been there and experienced it. Mm-hmm. And, and I know that there's policies and procedures and plans and et cetera. One of the questions we've had from our listeners is, is what is AAA's job? What are things that a, a a are involved in and things they shouldn't be involved in? Because I think that that's probably a spectrum if you ask any of these previous It is, it is. And some people say Angus should do everything, and some people say, just do this or that. So what guides that? And then how do you sift through those decisions as a board member? Yeah. I was trying to quickly scan and see if I knew who submitted that question. I knew I knew a few people, few questions. I dunno what question number we've got. Was that got, who, who's there were a couple on that one? I, a couple down. Alec tmi. Alec Meyer, yeah. Is the, is the one we have on our page here. So I, I think you, you look at historically and at its core, um, AAA has to be a breed registry. We have to, uh, provide services to our members. Uh, I, I can't calculate, I don't even want to calculate ratios. Right. I mean, I could, I could build some simple spreadsheets. I can actually do that. And, uh, but I would rather have AAA do that for me and, and me be able to access all of that performance data from my herd through member login. A lot of it I just access on my phone at any moment, any time. And like probably half our membership that may be listening, uh, the Angus app on my phone is way the most used thing on the phone. I could get rid of almost everything else on the phone, but not that a absolutely so member service, member service breed registry, and we can't, we can't lose sight of that. I, if I'm going to point to a point for me, and I'm not speaking for staff or other board members or previous board members, but if I point to a point for me, it would've been at the formation of certified Angus Beef in 1978. That board at that time felt strongly that the association could do more downstream to promote our product. To promote the value of what we do as Angus members, Angus breeders at home in the field. And so, of course, we all know the stories of rock CAB being a little rocky road getting started. And, uh, but when it finally took off, I think CAB has set that path and a standard for the industry that value and quality go hand in hand. We, we got ourselves out of the doldrums of the nineties with quality improvements. Uh, there were, there were studies from, uh, Texas a and m from, I think they, some of those studies were repeated at the University of Georgia about just supermarket studies, about what, what do our customers want, what is creating problems with our meat demand? And we were competing with pork and poultry on price in those days. And. Doing a very poor job of that as well. So we've moved forward 30 years and here we are today. And I think some of the foresight ness of that board and boards of that area, that our association needs to do more for us. So my viewpoint today is that we can't lose sight of providing those basic services that our members need, but we also need to look to the industry. Where can we touch consumers? We already touch'em through CAB, are there other places to touch consumers? Um, and eventually, I talked the other day as a percentage of, uh, of the overall US population, those of us involved in production. Agriculture is certainly getting narrower, narrower. And we can't just talk to ourselves. We've got to reach people that is willing to spend a premium price for our premium product. So I think in that regard, uh, AAA needs to provide leadership. And some direction and some foresight. Uh, we've got some very talented people on the CAB squad that market beef around the world. Uh, we need to take advantage of their expertise there. The other thing I'll mention is, uh, if, if anyone listen to the, the 10 interviews that Angus Media put out from the board candidates this year, I said three years ago that I thought the biggest threat to AA today and to its members or in that day was competing databases. Uh, that was my very first answer to that similar question that was asked of all 10 candidates, this year's competing databases we cannot afford today to have a segment of our commercial industry go somewhere else for their genetic information. They need to come to us. And then that genetic information needs to be equally accessible to all of our members. And my, my still, my biggest fear today is that some other entity, a corporate entity, uh, however you wanna look at that starts doing a better job than us describing the beef cattle population. And we lose that pull first off, as oust members, we won't have access to that data. Uh, that data will be out of our hands and we'll have to pay to use it. I don't wanna do that. Uh, but we also start them to lose control over our influence on the cattle feeding industry and all the downstream people that buy our feeder calves that pay more for'em, that make our bulls worth more money. So there's a, there's an answer to your question, my viewpoint on what I think aaa, what their role is today. Pretty multifaceted role. You know, you just, you just brought up, um, the data and, and all that. What about the, what do, do you think the data is highly accurate as it is, or do you think there's room for improvement and how do you think we get there when we use the word data, that can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, correct? Correct. So let me take a couple of shots at that, maybe from a couple of different directions. Let's talk about the EPDs versus the, and the, and the genomics. Okay, good. And first off, you guys, I, I have not served on breed improvement committee and I've not served on a GI board. Um, I think those years in the AI industry, I was exposed to, uh, quite a few pretty sharp dairy geneticists and beef cattle geneticists, and. And even had some exposure 10, 12 years ago, and I'll, I'll come back to that in a minute. To support geneticists. And there's something to be learned, particularly from species, that we can gather information from more rapidly than we can. The bovine, multi, multi, you know, litter bearing species, multi data points, and, and have'em fast, get pregnant fast, turn'em over fast. Uh, our, our model from a physiology standpoint is pretty slow, but it is, it is what it is what we have to work with. So, um, so from my point of view, uh, when we, when we, uh, introduce a new EPD if we wanted to start there, uh, the, the range of those numbers typically is very large. Uh, our heritability estimates typically will be fairly low, and until we gain more data. That's what drives accuracy is more data in the database. Then we start seeing the range of numbers come together. We can reevaluate heritability as we get more data in the system. And so all of this hinges around, um, producers like you guys and myself turning in accurate data. Now, field data is different than science data. So in my, my short career in academia, when I was in grad school at a and m, some of the true scientists really poo-pooed field data. You know, those guys out in the field taking birth waves, turning'em in. Who knows if they're looking at the scale, right? And you know, did they pick the whole calf up off the ground? Did they look down there and be sure both back feet were off the ground? And pure data really is difficult to achieve from a field standpoint. So we have to make that up with volume of data. We all have to turn in as much data as we can, and then the filters that are in place to throw stuff out that looks funny, like, yeah, the sy the system says those data points from that herd don't look right. We're just gonna disregard'em because they're, they're gonna be noise in the system. So as we gain more data and we have better animal breeding technologies, it's all math to evaluate that data. I believe our EPDs are getting more and more accurate all the time. So the highly heritable traits. Um, here's a question for you guys. What is the, the trait that that is? I, I, I think I'm right here, is the most heritable in our database is scrotal circumference. And I guarantee you, if you use a bull with the low scrotal EPD, you're gonna move the bell curve of your population in that direction. And you're gonna end up with some yearling bulls that won't pass a BSC'cause their scur circumference is too small. So what could have been a$7,000 keese bull gets banded thrown in the feeder, and he'll be a$3,500 fed steer in another a hundred days. And so my brother and I, that's, that's a kickout trait. We try not to use any bulls that's in the bottom third of the breed for scrotal EPD'cause that's just, that's just one failure we can avoid by using EPDs to keep us out of that, of that trap. So those, those accurate EPDs carcass traits are very accurate. They're easy to measure, they're very accurate. And, um, we've made incredible strides in the last three days through the last three decades over carcass traits, uh, birth weight's, highly heritable. Is a, is a, with some effort, uh, a trait that can be measured. So the more data we turn in, the more accurate our valuations will be, and we're in a great position compared to the other breeds. We just turn in a lot more data, have the ability to harvest a lot more data. And you hear on the topic of genomics, and we all know people like this, that turn in almost no data. Use genomics to fill in the blank. And here's my animal with EPDs and, and I know it's there. I wish those folks would, would reevaluate their thoughts and turn in more data. And that's a call I would give to everybody in a challenge I would give to everybody. For, for Danny and I who are, are, we've turned in data since day one. Uh. First gift that was born, temporary group of one turned a weight in. Now did it mean anything? No, but that was the process that was going to drive us for the rest of our career in this industry is, is to keep turning those weights in our, my belief is today when we have any kind of an update on the evaluation, whether that be the addition of a big pile of genomic information, now we, we add that in a lot quicker now at, at, at smaller pieces. So it doesn't have this big effect, but we've had some of those larger effects in the past. Um, when we, we go to a single step evaluation like we did in 2017 and, and it changed things around a little bit, it didn't change our herd much. And my belief is I've talked to a number of geneticists both inside. Angus and outside Angus. Our herd is just tied very well to Angus's database by the volume of data we've turned in. So our herd doesn't bounce around much. It's pretty predictable. Well, we don't bounce around a lot when we send genomics in, you know, we'll get that calf that, well, I thought he was gonna be a CESE bull, but boy, genomics says he's not. So maybe I should reevaluate how I market that kef. So today, I believe the science and my first big belief in genomics happened in 2016. I was a bit skeptical at that point. I even called a, uh, a person who worked with Angus in the breed improvement and fussed at'em.'cause I'd gotten a bunch of genomics back and had gotten enrolled into the EPDs. And I, I told'em, I said, man, I feel like I'm in the middle of a Forest Gump movie here. When I take that blood card and send it in, it's like biting into a box of chocolates. I never know what I'm gonna get back on the other end, and this is frustrating as I'll get out. Then I set in a, a pork genetics meeting that I got a chance to attend and they presented a pile of data that said, here's the level of performance. This will sound very familiar. Conversion days on feed, things that we measure our industry by. When we were selecting based off the data we had at the time when we enhanced our selection processes with genomics, that curve turned straight up at a much deeper rate. They were able to, uh, to improve efficiency of the traits they were measuring. So when we look at, and I think we've greatly improved those kind of performance feed efficiency carcass traits. Uh, and we all want to improve maternal ability, and that's a lot harder to get a grip on lower heritable. We don't have as much data, uh, but I still believe in data and managing by data. And so I, I still look at that very closely. If given a choice, I'd use a bull with a higher heifer, heifer, pregnancy, EPD than one that's lower. So maybe, maybe a long answer to your question, but there was a couple different points there I wanted to hit. Right, right, absolutely. So you mentioned, um. You mentioned as far as you hadn't been on a committee for, um, certain things. Right. And that kind of got me the wheels turning for me. Mm-hmm. It's like, so, so I think it's really good for, we might be able to gain some insight into what the, what the board of directors is actually tasked to do. Right. So, so what exactly were you tasked to do when you were on the board of directors? Were there some committees you were on? And how did those committees go and what decisions did you end up, uh, making and what progress did you guys make? Right. So, so the process, um, uh, we, we have committee meetings about two weeks prior to each scheduled board meeting. And they're all done on Zoom. So at least you can run in and try to get on a clean shirt and, and, and pop up your, uh, laptop. So we have, we have six committees. Um. I don't think, I don't think anybody serves on more than three. I think I've never served on more than two at a time. I've always been on the commercial programs committee. I've been on the communications committee. Um, you know, I think I've bounced back and forth between those two. Then we have junior Activities committee, uh, breed improvement, uh, foundation committee, uh, I'm kind of missing one there, but you guys get the idea. So after each convention, the incoming, the incoming executive staff, the new, the new president, vice president and treasurer as the nominating committee. But it's basically at the new chairman of the board's discretion, they make those committee assignments and board assignments. So you'll be, you'll be expected to serve on one or more of the entity boards as well. So you really, then you focus your attention. On those boards. So this last year I've been on both the CAB board as well as Angus Media Board. And, uh, have very different, very different things to do on those two boards. But I've really enjoyed both of'em. Angus Media hits close to home'cause it's, they're a, they're part of my management team, my marketing team. I, I can't imagine doing what we do to promote our sale without being able to pick up the phone and, and, and, and get, uh, whatever Angus Media staff members been assigned to me to help me get that sale book pulled together and keep me on task. Keep me on time. And they're very, I've had a couple of those, those girls and there's some guys that work there too, but those girls that they'll call me up and fuss at me like you are getting behind. Yeah. Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright. Let me refocus. Let me refocus here. So. The Quad Angus Media does for me is direct, right? I mean, I, I need direct things there to get ready for my bull sale. What CAB does for me is create value for our product. And I guarantee if you get a bull buyer that feeds cattle, maintains ownership and is really wanting to gain CAB premiums at the other end of the deal, they will spend more money for bulls. They'll become your very best bull buyers. So, CAB affects me indirectly, but it gets there. I see the path. Uh, Angus media affects me directly'cause I need the help. I think Corbin cracked a really, really good little nut here of, of exposure to the, the board governance and how that works. I want to take a, a further step back. We probably should have started with this, I apologize. How long or how many terms have you served Roger? Oh, okay. Yes. When were you elected? Start with that and then Corbin will have probably a follow up from there. But, but start how long you been on? So the, the timing of all of this, I, I don't think it's ever really changed, at least not to my knowledge. Any, anything in any recent years. And I've been a, uh, started being a, I was a delegate a few years before. I had kids in the early nineties, late eighties, uh, not for a few years, maybe one or two years. And those conventions were always in Louisville during the stock show. And then I got busy with kids and I, I let some of these other activities get away from me. And then I started being a delegate again in 2014. And I think I have been a delegate every year since, except for one year. I went on a deer hunt with my oldest son and didn't go to the convention. And when he drew that tag hard to get New Mexico tag, um, I quickly called up and I was able to get my name off of the delegate list. I didn't need, didn't need anybody voting for me if I knew I wasn't gonna be at the convention. So during this timeframe, the system has remained the same. You can serve two, three year terms. So I got elected in the fall of 2022. The convention was in Salt Lake City. Uh, then the next convention would've been in, um, Florida Convention last year in Fort Worth. Now it's been three years. So my term is up and I'm due for reelection convention in Kansas City. Um. I think next year it's back in Louisville for a bit of nostalgia during the show. And I think the year after that it's gonna be in Oklahoma City, and the year after that is gonna be CA's 50th anniversary. And I think the convention's gonna be in Ohio. So it just gives you a little something to look for there too. So you can get reelected, serve a second three year term, and then unless, uh, you throw your hat in the ring for an office and the officers are elected by the board, um, then you can, you can go on and, and be a treasurer, vice president and president. So if it lines up, right, you can serve a total of nine years, but this two, three year, two three year elected terms and then you're done. To be, to be clear, once you, um, you can be a delegate as many as many years. Oh yes, absolutely. And then, and then, and then once you've served as a board member, you can then be a delegate for as many years after. Oh, absolutely. As, absolutely. So, so I will say, I will say as a, uh, person who is very. Involved in very, and, and like, it, it matters to me. I would like to see the, like if you're on the board again, I mean, I would like to see some changes to that structure. I think it's kind of unfair that in order to be a delegate you've gotta be in person. And I mean, I, I know of neighbors that I have that have a bull sale that falls on that same weekend. And then I also know that, that it, that this weekend, uh, this year it's on Halloween, so there's gonna be a lot of people that that's gonna conflict with. Um, right. I I, and, and I guess, I guess if we had more conversations about it, I'd like to hear some, some reasons why we couldn't push some of the delegate voting to Zoom and some of that stuff online and, and do a lot more correspondence that way. Um, right. Would, would you be opposed to any of that sort of, uh, adjustment that if, if it was brought forth? Because I, I just think it's impossible for, for a lot of us, 28-year-old man men who have 4-year-old kids to, to make it. Yeah. Well that's the timeframe when I kind of ducked out of these kind. I'm just kids. Yeah. Just like you had to do. I mean, you had to do it too thing, and that's unfortunate. So let, let me, uh, let me be sure I'm clear on your question. You mentioned delegate voting, but I think you were talking about board voting. So that's two different votes. The de the delegate votes can be done on a paper ballot. Right. So, so as far as accepting your role as a delegate, having to be in person, right. I think that's kind of archaic. Correct. I mean, if I'm being honest, right. Um, my viewpoint has been, and that question was asked me during, uh, caucuses, it was a fairly popular caucus question when I was elected three years ago. And my viewpoint on that has been, help me be sure that the person that owns that member code is the person sitting behind that laptop. I don't think there's any way we can do that. And so folks that are, I don't wanna pick on any particular group of people, but folks that touch large numbers of Angus breeders from an advertising, marketing promotion standpoint, it to me, it would be not out of the realm of possibility that they could gather up passwords from a lot of different people and, and cast a fairly large number of votes. And I feel good. And we did have, we did have, uh, zoom voting during the convention of 2020. So we did not ask everybody to come to Kansas City. I did. I drove to Kansas City and it was a shortened convention, just about a day and a half because of COVID. Uh, but I did drive up there to cast my vote in person and oh, my belief is, it's, it's a, it's a great place to interact with other people. There's so many things to learn, so many connections to make things that you can follow up from after that, that someone that feels like it's just not worth their time, if that's the reason, that's a different reason than you're talking about. If it's not worth their time to go to a convention. Then are they really dialed in enough to, to do a serious job of evaluating candidates? That's my belief. It may not be everybody's belief. It does make it hard on, on folks with young families. And I do get that one. What, what would your thought be? So with that said, I guess you probably wouldn't be in favor on just doing away with delegates and doing a, a log in login and doing member voting for, for a lot of the same reason. I would not. And, and also I think there's a lot of, lot of folks that aren't as dialed in as we are to the breed, as interested in the breed. And if it, we, I was asked the other day, well, what about one member one vote? Well, I mean, we do have one member, one vote during the delegate election process. Everybody, no matter if you've got one cow or a thousand, you get to vote for the delegate slate from your state. So, and we do in fact have a one member, one vote system. But I think our system today gives us greater assurance that the people voting on board candidates, or if we were to have a, a bylaw, uh, change needed, which I don't think we have anything coming up this year, but there's, there's been years we've had, and those things have to be voted on by the representatives of the membership. The delegate process gives the best assurance that we will have people that's really dialed into the breed there, or you probably won't get elected as a delegate. So I've had some, uh, correspondence with people and I, I won't name names, but, um mm-hmm. It's kind of floating around there that attendance and engagement has been incredibly low comparative to other years, or there's a trend towards less participation. Um, how do we encourage more people to be interested in participating? Yeah. Encourage to grow that portion that you mentioned of people that are knowing what's going on, how do we grow that pie? Right. It, it is disappointing to see the, the low percentage of people that participate in the delegate election, the low percentage of our membership that respond to member surveys. So it, it's, it's all across the board, you know, people are busy and I, I, I get all of that. I would love to see those percentages at least double what they are today. Um. Being, being on the communications committee this last year, I'm not saying I accomplished a whole lot. I learned a whole lot and, and I will ask if I get reelected to, to get to serve on that committee some more. Uh, how do we reach out to people to get people engaged? Uh, our member survey just come back. I think that information's been released, so I don't think I've been talking outta turn. But the, um, of all the communication things we do with, with podcasts and Facebook posts and things on the website still yet, the Angus Journal is, is regarded by the members that respond to the member survey as the number one method of communication. But not all people take the Angus Journal. So it's a, it's a, it's a head scratcher as to how to reach people and, and frankly, on some. S it's, it's on, it's on our membership to want to be engaged. There's information out there to help them get engaged if they want to access the information and to be engaged. Uh, I think the delegate process, if, if your name's on the delegate list, uh, to, for that election, you know, those folks can, can set back and hope they get elected as a delegate. And maybe some of'em are putting their name on the delegate list just out of habit. I always have. And they don't hear a whole lot one way or the other. But I think there's, there's room to, uh, for those delegates to talk to the other breeders in their state and say, Hey, I, I, I, I saw a letter last year, maybe two years ago, uh, in Texas where somebody really wanted to be a delegate and they sent a campaign letter out to all the members in Texas. Now that cost some money. Some POEs postage. It was a nice letter. It had been printed professionally. Uh, that cost a little bit of money, but that guy was serious. He wanted to be a delegate. And those are some of the kind of things I think we need to have happen to get more members to participate in that process. We're we, where are the, you mentioned some surveys. Where are those surveys? Like where could we find them? Because I, I rarely ever see a survey. Yeah. The, uh, the survey, the member survey was emailed to all members. It was posted on our website. I know those two things from late April to about early June, may, June, close to 60 days there, 45 to 60 days. And, um, and I think there was a, a blurb in the April Journal that the survey was about to come out. I don't remember exactly where that was printed. Um, so again, people are busy and they miss these things and Right. You don't, and I think there's a lot of people, I'm not a big fan of surveys, you know, but, uh, there's a lot of people that say, ah, I don't wanna take the time to deal with that. And I would love to see more engagement from the membership on those things. It would help us. Roger, do you think, uh, do you think some might not be engaged because they feel disenfranchised? Yeah. You know, that disenfranchised word's been thrown around a lot since the George Bush, Al Gore election, and I'm not getting into politics here and I'm not always real sure what that, what that word really means, but, um. I think all members can call their regional manager. I think all members, we field 300 phone calls a day into the office for a variety of things. Um, there's ways to reach out and get answers and be a part of what's going on. And I think some people choose not to, um, for, for a variety of reasons. I don't know that I can get in to what those reasons might be. I've always been a person that I, I try to meet things head on. Uh, the only mistake is to never do anything and, you know, like told my kids. And Corby, you'll get to this point too, like, you know, the, if you wanna show me somebody that's never made a mistake, I'll show you somebody that never gets off the couch. Yeah. And it just goes hand in hand. It goes hand in hand. We don't sit. So I think some of our, we don't allow couch. Some of our members just, just don't. Don't really try. Yeah. To get engaged for whatever reason, for whatever reason. Do you know, think that's a, hang on one more second. Corbin, do you know, sorry If, um, te like receiving text messages is an option instead of just emails because like I told you earlier, and I think Corbin's about the same way, if you could, Angus could send me a email saying I want a million bucks and I would never know it for, for six months, you know? Um, but we all received text messages and unless we opt out of them. Right. So do you know if that is an option or, and what, what would you like to have, uh, communicated on those text messages? Well, that's what I, you one thing. We'd have to have some work done to get our phone numbers updated a little bit. I kind of went through my account the other day and. Oh, for, for our membership code, for my brother. And I like, oh, my dad's phone number's still on there. Boy, nobody needs to be calling him. He'd just tell him to, what are you doing? You need to get busy. Right. And my brother's home phone number was still on that account. Well, he don't even, he hadn't had that phone in a few years, so we'd have to clean up and be sure we specifically knew the right phone number to get to the right people. But that's doable or I think that's important. I think that's inevitable. Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Or they could sign up for it. Like if I wanted to sign up for opt in, opt in sort of thing. Yes. Instead of them just maybe doing it, uh, on their own. And it might be a thing that they could opt in. And I'm sure you're right. I'm sure there's a whole lot of phone numbers that are not right, but. There's probably a whole lot of them that are, and it may, it may already be set up. That's why I'm asking if it is. I'm aware.'cause there could be, I'm not aware of it. There could be a lot of people that would be interested in doing it if it's there and they don't even know if, if it is, I'm not aware of it. I will, I will do some checking on that. So I wanna, um, I know you're making some notes there, but I'll, I'll take a second to ask the question. Um, the big T word, I'm gonna just ask it because everybody has it, is been thrown around for six months now. Transparency, this or that. Right? Right. It's obviously a concern of the membership. Mm-hmm. Do you have any idea or, or ways to change transparency of the association? Yeah, or I, I'm, I'm reluctant to say improve because I sort of feel like maybe some folks think we don't need to improve. Uh, the member needs to improve, but, but is there a way to change how transparency works? Yeah. So, you know, I think transparency can be the word in and of itself. Uh, transparent transparency and communication can mean very close to the same thing. So I'm gonna talk broadly here. Um. Up until about, and I actually checked up on this one a month ago,'cause I wasn't certain when this started, up until about 2018 or 2019, uh, all the board information that was communicated out to the membership was written up in the journal. So depending upon how the timing of a board meeting versus the production of the next upcoming journal, that could be as long as six months and I'm, I'm sorry, six weeks. So as long as, um, unless you knew somebody on the staff or knew somebody on the board that you could call and say, Hey, what'd you guys talk about last week? That was really the level of communication that existed up until 18 or 19. Then as, as technology began improving and more options, were out there available. You know, today we have a podcast we didn't have. Then after the board, we have a board agenda that's out prior to the board meeting than a president's letter that's out after the board meeting. So that communication is a lot better than it was, and I still think there are some members that just choose not to access any of that. And if you don't, and we still print it in a journal, of course, then I don't know what more somebody wants us to do. But I was, and I've had a few, few nights here in the last, let's say three months, where I've fared at the ceiling half the night trying to like, well, what have we missed? What can we improve for this, for that? And, uh, I want to do a good job where I wouldn't, I would never run for this board to begin with. And it, it occurred to me, and I brought this up in our last board meeting that. We have all these activities throughout the year that the association does that board members attend. And if I start with June board meeting, and then, you know, some board members may go to NCBA summer policy meetings, a lot of board members go to Junior Nationals. Some board members go to uh, CAB annual conference, some, then we have a September board meeting. And, and then pretty quickly there we have an annual convention that we're all at. And then, uh, there's a CAB, uh, annual board meeting that occurs in December. That's a little tough for those of us with fall Calvin cows that breed all of our cows in December to get to. But with the beauty of synchronization, I can pair this out. And the fact that my brother sees value in me being at these places and he's home and we'll get the work done when I'm gone. Uh, okay. And then in January we've got, uh, the Congress in Oklahoma City. We've got the National Western in Denver. Then we have a February board meeting, and then we have our Zoom committee meetings. And then it dawned on me at that spot from February board meeting to June board meeting, we don't get together. And I think it was set up that way, uh, because most folks are busier in the spring. We're Kevin heifers, we're breeding cows. So we've got bull sails and that four month gap, I think we have done a poor job of communicating, uh, and that that'll be one thing. And you'll, you'll hear this in my, my speech at the convention, uh, on the candidate forum. That if I get reelected, that will be, I've got three things that I'm gonna commit to working on pretty hard. One of those things is communicating, particularly during that four month gap, how do we reach members?'cause we are not doing much in that four month gap. It's kind of self, a little bit self-inflict, inflicted by the way our meetings are scheduled. I understand why they're scheduled, but we can do better. In that four month gap you had, you had brought up the, the newsletter and the podcast. Mm-hmm. Uh, for the transparency. So how much is shared, how much of a board meeting is shared in those? Uh, you think it's 80%? 50%. 20%. I know there are certain things that can't be right. Just talked about and, and shared, but like. How much of it do you think is shared? Because the, the reason why I ask is because a lot of people probably think it's very little, and if, if it is a lot, then they need to know, you know? And, and if they know, then maybe they can understand it. So if we, if we take a three and a half day type board meeting situation, we don't always, I'm, I'm sure every one of'em is a little different as far as they are. They are. So, and, and we try to condense that down into a one hour podcast. Certainly you're not gonna get everything jammed in there. But no, some of these topics, you know, the CAB portion of the board meeting, if there's some. A lot of activity going on there with, with new products to drive more consumer demand. Uh, uh, the, you know, their CAB has is had an amazing, uh, increase in their brand recognition in the deli cases. Well, I never would've thought I'd look for Boar's Head or something. I wouldn't think to look for the CAB logo there. So some of those discussions take quite a while, and you can cover that in maybe 45 seconds on the podcast, right? But we may spend two hours in the board meeting talking about how do we get from where we are to where we want to be. So obviously everything is boiled down a little bit, but I'm gonna say two thirds to three fourths of the topics we cover in the board meeting are at least mentioned substantively in the podcast. Okay? And some of the other topics that may not make the podcast. And, and Miranda, she's out on maternity leave right now, but she, she typically runs our podcast and she sits there and take her handwriting is impeccable. Takes page after page after page of written notes throughout the board meeting. And then she pulls together the bullet point list of what needs to be covered in the podcast. And then she goes to Mark McCauley and says, what have I missed? Here's, here's what I think are big bullet points, and they'll discuss it to try to get the podcast as. Keep it succinct so we're not asking people to sit there forever, but also keep it as informative as possible. So there is a process there to make that good. And I will assume that there'll be some things. I really haven't thought about this as much, but there's probably things on the president's letter that's typically posted on the day after the board meetings. There's probably something on that that may not be covered in the podcast that may give a another broader effort at covering everything. Roger, have you Go ahead. Corbin. Corbin. I'm gonna steal Corbin's question. And he, go ahead. Mad. No, no, you ask it. You ask it. You ask it. I'm the host. You're the question asker. Go ahead. Okay. Have you guys ever considered using Zoom technology? What's the downside of that? Because, um, I'll also tell you I'm part of other boards. Mm-hmm. And you can take a whole meeting, run it through AI, and it'll come up with those bullet points for you. Yeah. You could even, you could even have like video tidbits of like the points that you want to get across. Like, it, it would just, and you could still say, you could still say, Hey, did we miss this? Or whatever. But, um, I, I would just, just a minor little, maybe it's a nugget that'll help you guys. And maybe it's something, you know, maybe you don't know. I just figured I'd share. But what is the downside of offering Zoom through member login? Um, that obviously you could have spots where a banner would come up and say, board and close session, and then mm-hmm. We all understand how board governance works and you're obligated to come out of executive session with the motions that you made, but you don't have to Right. Share the sausage making. I mean, we know how board governance works. What's the downside of that? I'm, I'm making a note'cause I just had a thought cross my mind that I actually had nott. Don't worry. This thought before that pause, that pause isn't gonna hurt anything to, to me, this is a, this is a maybe a, a bit of a different discussion today that I'd have with you four guys than what I would've had in, in February, let's say. Uh, I do have a Facebook account. I did look back, uh, you know, some of my family members will make a post and tag me in it. I couldn't remember when the last time I actually posted anything. So I did look back recently and it was for Kathy's birthday in February. It was a happy birthday post. You can go back and look at that if you want to. Uh, we ended our birthday date night out that, uh, uh, we ate a, had a good meal. We went to a Mark Chestnut concert and at midnight we were back home checking heifers that were Kevin typical date night out. Right. That's, you guys would recognize something like that. So I don't post a lot. I don't interact with Facebook a lot. Um, uh, but having said all of that, the downside, the quick downside I see and having direct Zoom into board meetings would be, there would be a group of people and we could come up with some names. There's no purpose to do that, uh, here. That would be sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for a part of a sentence, a phrase, something that they could take outta context. And by noon on the first day of the board meeting, Facebook would just be alive and as would all other social media. And it would just make it difficult to have a productive, focused board meeting. And today I'm just kind of a no on that, but. You said segmented and I had not, I had always thought of, I had always thought of what if we're gonna zoom the board meeting, we zoom the whole thing. Right? And I've got a couple of friends that are Charla breeders, and I think their board meetings are open for members to attend. And I think sometimes that turns into some di pretty serious distractions for the board. But, you know, maybe there's something we, I don't think a lot of our members don't even know when board meetings are happening. Maybe that could be a way we could engage, uh, if I get reelected, if I'm get back on communications committee, there may be some sections where we could devote what we're discussing and talking to directly to the members instead of maybe to the staff that's present or, and, and do you guys have a time and agenda? Do you have a time excuse agenda? Do you have a timed agenda or no? Uh, we have an agenda. We don't always stay with it. Uh, we, we typically schedule Thursday as fairly light, and we like to try to get out of there 10 or 11 o'clock on Thursday morning so people make, people can make their flights. I drive five and a half hour drive from, for me, uh, but sometimes we run through lunch on Thursday and people are scrambling to get to their flights. So we have an agenda. We try to stay pretty close on time, but sometimes discussions get longer. So, um, I, again, just another one of my little bullet points for you is a lot of the boards I'm involved with have timed agendas. It helps with the efficiency of the flow of the meeting. Mm-hmm. And then other members will say, well, I know that at 9 45 they're gonna talk about rate increases. Um, in our irrigation district, for example, I don't need to be there for the first hour of the litigation stuff that we have going on. That isn't pertinent to me. But, um Right. And it's also, I, I do know that the board offers, if members don't know this with X amount of notice, you can go talk in St. Joe. Right. You absolutely can. You can, you can. What an opportunity. So we, what an opportunity though. Um, if, if I could ask this, sorry. Um, no, go ahead. To submit the same process and be given two minutes to ask via Zoom, um mm-hmm. That might be an opportunity to increase the engagement of the membership. I just a thought and sorry I cut you off there. You were kind of bouncing into that reception too. We were, we were both on the same typical thought process. So in my three years on the board, we've had two members take advantage of that 30 minute time slot and come address the board. Uh, and I think both, both addresses went very well. I think both sides were very happy with it. So, um. Roger, there's one more question I wanna ask, or maybe not one more May, maybe a few more, but, and I wanna circle back to that time agenda thing for a moment. But go ahead, Gordon. No, no, you go ahead. You go ahead. Okay. We'll cut all this out and we'll roll back. So there'll be segments on our agenda where we will have hard stops. Like if we have a, a scheduled conference call with an, with an out of town speaker, or if we have a scheduled slot for a member to come address the board. If the discussion previous to that is running over, then the, the chair of whatever's going on at that point, whether that's chairman of the board or an entity chairman, we'll say, okay guys, we're, we're coming up on a hard stop. Hold those thoughts. We've got something else we have to do there, and we'll come back to that later. So, the really serious things that involve outside people's schedules, we will put hard stops in there for those. So a pseudo timed agenda maybe, if you will. Sure. Okay. Go ahead, Corman. So I, uh, you know, going on the, uh, the transparency mm-hmm. And the, just the, the, just basically, um, I think it's a downright question on, uh, transparency. I think this, I think this falls right into it, even though it's not directly correlated. Do you believe the membership should retain ownership on their DNA once it's sent into a GI, which is, it's a very good question. I think it's nuanced, but I'm, I'm, I'm, um, excited to hear your opinion on it. Yeah. Yeah, and I'd be very happy to address that one. And I, I have some background in history with that sort of thing that I think gives me a good, a good perspective. So I, I'm going to bring up probably, probably three points here. I have a friend turns in blood cards. He takes duplicate blood cards, so he has those other samples at home if he ever needs them for whatever reason. And it's, for him, it's turned into a bit of a nightmare for storage and how to keep this organized. Me personally, I don't know what I'd do with them. If, if the samples and, and the, and the, um, actual genotypes belong to me, I'm not sure what I'd do with them. I have no way of using those genotypes personally in an evaluation, and I think many of our members would not. Uh, so that, that'd be my first question, my first thing I would go to. Then secondly. With the association owning control of those genotypes. And it's this, the association, not a GI, it's, it's housed right there with the association and owned by our members. Then if a, if a new genetic defect were to arise, then they could quickly start matching up genotypes on file and getting to the source of this defect and coll and likely could clear thousands of animals from being caught up in that defect. All to the benefit of our members, largely across the breed. And I, I think that's a, a very good point to consider. The, the third point, I'm actually gonna have two more. The third point is, is that you guys are gonna get to enjoy. I don't know exactly what this is gonna look like. Uh, we're in the kind of the programming and developing stage, but I would hope by all, let me just pick a date and you can't hold me to this'cause this is just Roger talking by our February board meeting. Um, and you're gonna be able to do parent matches on your own calves online with the genotypes that we have on file. And so today, I mentioned earlier, we, we field 300 phone calls a day in the office. A a very large percentage of those phone calls is going straight to the girls and the a GI staff because to help get parent verification straightened out. And, and as close as my brother and I feel like we watch stuff, we still have mysteries happen. Cows switch calves in the middle of the night. Uh, we have a 70 pound kef born right on due date. We call it an ai. And, and, and, uh, dang. It was, it was, uh, cleanup started kef that was born way early and we missed that one. So you'll be able to go in when you sit down at your convenience a Saturday afternoon or a Tuesday evening and clear up a large part of that yourself without having to make notes. Oh gosh, what's up here? I gotta call in. I need to ask this question, this question, this question. I think it'll cut the phone calls we field in the a GI by half and improve customer efficiency on getting these things cleared up very rapidly, and we couldn't do that if the association didn't have all those genotypes on file and control level. And then lastly, this one's historic and it is the largest one for me. Working for an AI company, all AI companies are dominated by the dairy side. That's the largest portion of that market share of that business in the AI industry is dairy. So even though 90% of my career at a BS was in beef, I did do some dairy work in the nineties and, and, and got tuned in a little bit. So along in 2005, 2006, genomics started arriving. The Holstein Association did not maintain control of those samples of those genotypes. That control fell into the hands of the AI industry at that time. At that time, there were a lot of, I would say, medium sized family owned dairies. I'm, I'm gonna speak to. The vertical integration word, words, or phrase here for a moment that made a fair portion of their income. They was, they were all registered cows. They may have exhibited them, show they may have been more performance cows. Does this sound familiar? We have those factions in arb breed. Right. Um, they sold bull contracts to the AI studs off of their top end cows. I had a chance in those years to, uh, I became, uh, fairly close to a couple of dairy families. I had a chance to invest in a couple of young hosting cows that we thought had quite a bit of promise and. And was fortunate enough to get to participate in, in selling a couple of bull contracts, and they, they worked well. Uh, that part of the industry is really gone today because the AI companies really own all of those genetics. Very few bull contracts are purchased from family dairies for the usage in ai. And I, I think it's 100% because the breed association lost control of genomics. And I want the genomics and genetic evaluation housed right in my breed association that I'm a member owner of for the benefit of me not worried about going to some outside company for that data. And I fear that's where that would end up if we did not own that. As a breed did not own those samples and own those genotypes so they could still do all the stuff that you just talked about without owning them. If we owned them ourselves, we could still go on there and do parentage. We could still go on there and, and do any defects because we have to go on there and do any defects anyway. Mm-hmm. And I don't, so I don't see where that is a huge issue. They could still store all the stuff, everything, exactly how it is, except we own it and they do not. You do. You see? And then how would that change what you would expect from the association today? Because I think a lot of things, if you, if they're using my DNA for something that I didn't, okay. I don't think that that's right. And on top of that, I had to pay'em. To take my DNA. Right. Um, so I, I don't know that that's really right. The other thing too is why are we forced to only use a GI? Why, why can't we use outside? Uh, if we wanted to use Neogen or whoever, like, I just, I don't understand why a GI couldn't work or, or whoever couldn't work with, say, Nigen says, okay, we just ran this data, here it is. And then you could incorporate it in the EPDs or whatever. Yeah. You know, I mean, today either Neogen or Zoetis runs all of those genomics. We, American Ag Association, nor its members, do we own a lab. So if I wanted to send mine to Neogen mm-hmm. And pay Neogen and not pay a GI. They, I could do that and it would still go into my APDs. No, no. It comes through a GI. Yeah. We code all of those samples. We barcode all of those samples, maybe I shouldn't say barcode. We code all of those samples. So when they're sent to either Zoetis or Neogen, they come back to us, identify the genotypes, are identified to the code we sent. Those two outside corporate entities do not know the actual pedigree of that animal who don't know anything about it. So there's that shield in place for to to, to keep those two outside labs. And there's other labs out there too, from learning any more than absolutely necessary about what our members have. So again, I would rather that be held in. Angus's hands than in an outside for-profit corporation's hands. And, and we have members today that are having genetic evaluations run at Zoetis. Uh, and I'm fearful of that. I don't want that to be the, the mainstream of our industry. I want the genetic evaluation that we all own to be the mainstream of the industry. So, is everything perfect? No, but I think we have to identify where the, the biggest wolf to keep it away from the door is and not lose, not lose sight of that. How accurate do you think parentage is? You. And, and the only reason I asked you that is'cause you brought up a minute ago about us being able to go online, which I do think would be very helpful, by the way. Yeah. I, I think that's gonna be being online and, I mean, there's a, there's another it thing I'm gonna have to learn how to do right. And Right. I don't strictly care for that, but it's gonna be incredibly useful. And once I learn how to do it, uh, we're certainly gonna keep Right. Uh, take advantage of that. Uh, I, I think parent verification, uh, has, has always been pretty accurate. So I, I'd go back to the mid nineties. There were some unscrupulous folks said they imported some, some full blood cemental semen or embryos or something. Uh, and were pro promoting them as such, selling them as such. And some of the members here in the US became suspicious that this was not as it was represented. This was really before us doing a lot of parent verification in cattle and the CEO of Semial at that time, I remember very well a, uh, a discussion I had with him and it was at a Beef Improvement Federation meeting in the nineties, um, about, Hey, how's that going? And he had contracted with a, a human genomics lab in California to help sort all of that out. But he says we are getting to the bottom of it. So I think the parent verification thing is, is pretty bulletproof today. I think it's one of the most important things that can be done, for sure. Yeah, I agree too. It, it, it still gives me a fair amount of heartburn today to, to think of the fact that six 7% of the bulls my brother and I were selling in the early days of our career, we didn't have the pedigree right on'em. We thought we did, but we didn't. Right. So I wanna follow up, um, give you a few, we've, you've been so gracious with your time and we're approaching an hour and a half right now, but you mentioned you had three things. You basically said you had three things on. Yes, sir. If I were to call it your platform, right. And you mentioned one was, um, committing to communication in that four month gap period. Right? Right. Would you, would you care to use some of this, um, wrap up time here to share number two and number three? Yeah. And, and we've already talked about it, so it's not gonna be any surprise. And I, I, I've hesitated to use the word platform'cause I, I don't wanna be a politician. I'm not a politician. Sure. But I You didn't use it. I did. I'm sorry. Having, having said that, and I didn't mean that as a correction either. Uh, I want to continue to work with the commercial programs committee. I want to continue to find ways to refine our genetic merit scorecards. Uh, to refine how we reach the commercial bull buying customers out there with that value, encourage them to use that, uh, to help them differentiate value in the marketplace. On our Angus feeder cave, we've got a fair amount of data and we're in the database is growing rapidly about the calves that score high on the genetic merit scorecard. They end up performing better in the feed yard days on feed, uh, cost of gain, uh, conversion, however you want to look at that, as well as carcass value at the end. So, I wanna keep hammered down on commercial programs. I, I love it. It's what I've always done and I wanna stay, stay with that. That's what I did through my whole career at a BS, was to find ways for my customers to be more profitable through good repro management. Um, and that was just my focus then. And finding ways for commercial customers to be more profitable will continue to be that focus communication as we've just discussed. And then that, that, that threat that I see to our members and our association of competing databases, we have to be the best genetically described breed of cattle in the world. And that description has to be done by us. I don't want anyone going anywhere else, but when we do it, I want it to be right. We don't have to be the first to the, to the party, but when we get there, we have to be right. I, I'll give you an example. There's, there's, there's some heart health test out there today. We don't have one. We have a database, it's a growing database, and we will get a handle on. My original thought was, well, this is simple. We already have a Pap, EPD. I live in Oklahoma. I don't sell bulls at altitude. Joe, you might sell some bulls at altitude. Um, but if Pap EPD is the same as the, the late term heart mortality in the feed yards, then maybe I should watch Pap ED at Pap EPD in my breeding programs. Well, they're not the same trait, and they may be related. We'll get that figured out. Uh, but I want accurate genetic descriptions for our members to use and for the commercial industry, whether that's feed yards, whether that's ranches, farms, everywhere to look to AAA as the source for the accurate data. Here's my three things. Well, thank you for being gracious with your time. I think, uh, yes, sir. I think you've done a good job of letting our membership know, um, who you are about your program and, and the things that make you comfortable in representing the membership and the vision of the, the, the association and the future. And, you know, I, I really, really hope, um, Mr. Juan, I, I really hope that Oh, please call me Roger. Roger. There is a Mr. Juan, I call him dad and he'll show up at your house on his gator and tell you 86 what you're doing wrong. But please call six. You need a gator old. Yeah, I heard about at the beginning, 86 years old. So, so Roger, I, I, I hope, um. I hope that you're a good example, uh, for, for other folks who may be interested in running for another term that, um, we'll ask the questions as the conversation goes. And, and please come share who you are, come share about your program, come share about your involvement with the association. Let our listeners meet you as, as a director. It's a great first step in a lot of these communication gaps. It's an, it's an opportunity. It's, it's, so, I, I really applaud you for, for being the first incumbent to come on and thank you for the time you've devoted to us and given thoughtful answers. Um, really, really appreciate that. I hope to meet you and shake your hand someday. Hope Meet. Do you have any questions for us? Uh, you know, I hope to, to meet as many people as I can at the convention. I try to do that at every convention. It's, uh. I, it's a bit of a challenge to get to meet people when there's that many people there together, but that the, the people aspect of this business is as important to me as the cow aspect of this business. And, and, uh, so, uh, my, my, my contact info, uh, has printed in the Angus Journal every month. Vince didn't know that'cause he doesn't read the journal and I get that. But, uh, uh, feel free to call me, uh, if I'm, I don't, I'm not one of those guys that have my phone glued to my ear twenty four seven. I'll leave it in the pickup or I'll leave it in the house if I'm outside doing something. But, uh, I do try. It may take me a day or two, but I do try to get all calls returned. What, uh, what's the best way for people to reach you? I mean, I mean, short of leaving your phone number on here, your phone's obvi. Is, is there a way for people to access your program, um, for them to get ahold of you? Yeah, we, we have a, a website housed at Angus Media and it's just one ranch.com. Uh, we add a lot of info to that website from, from January February through our bull cell in March. Uh, but our contact info is there, both myself and my brother. Um, so the website will probably look a little out date now. It'll have last year's bull spreadsheet on it. And, uh, it's just, that's just, just what that is. Uh, uh, my phone number is nine four zero. I still have my Texas phone number seven two seven eight four nine two. And I'm not gonna change that number. Uh, I, Kathy and I just moved back to the ranch. Uh, we bought, we bought a house in 80 acres. How often you get a chance to do this Right across the road from our sale barn facility from property. Oh, wow. Original property in our family. It's been there a hundred years. You don't get a chance to do that very often. And so we bought that eight years ago, but I still have my Texas phone number. Well, that's exciting. I'm glad you, I'm glad you're able to live there and, and, and be kind of where you're meant to be. I think that's, yeah. That's where you're meant to be. Yeah. It was a pretty long circle. A lot of things happen in those 40 years and I loved every minute of it, but it's funny that you end up right back where you started sometimes. I'm assuming. I'm assuming I'm, I'm, I don't have to assume. I don't even really need to ask a question. I just can tell everybody Roger's information is available in the, the journal. Um, so, uh, he did do a bio, uh, that's out'cause that's out right. It is out. It is out. Yeah. Because I've mm-hmm. I've listened to your mm-hmm. Your, um, interview on Angus, and so Yeah. We don't, we no longer have to ask if, if the, uh, interviewer, interviewee is, is in the journal.'cause they are, they are. And everybody should know that Roger's in a candidate and an incumbent candidate. But what can I, I I, this is an interesting question and this will be the last question. I, you're, so how has it been for your wife? So you, you've accepted this role, you've been doing it for three years, and you're going for another three. Has she just, uh, it's been the best experience of your life? Or is she's kinda like, oh my gosh, I'm, you know, it's kind of a big commitment. Well, as you, my thought, what should not come as a surprise to, as an answer to that question. I, I needed a pretty strong firm. Yes. From two people. That would be my wife and my brother and I got that quickly. Um, so while my brother and I are almost always on the same page, and when we aren't, it doesn't take us long to do some negotiation and get on the same page. We we're not the same person. I, I like travel, I like going places, seeing people, meeting people. So as you might expect, I'm kind of the marketing person. I put all the sale book together. We manage our own sale. Uh, and, and he likes being at home. He's exceptional at, at forage management, at Hay production. Uh, he's an expert at getting heifer's, keve out and keeping babies alive and bad weather and all of those things. So I had to have a strong yes, from Kathy, uh, and from Danny and, uh, uh, quickly got that. And, um, I think both of them would say in different ways that it's, it's brought things to our operation. Uh, having me a little more exposed.'cause you know, I didn't come from a multi-generation Angus family. I don't have a, a name like some of them have we, Danny and I have built that name ourselves. Uh, I think we have a very good name here in our state, and we sold Wills into Arkansas and some in into Texas. But other than that, we don't, we don't, we're not national in scope. Uh, so we've worked hard to build that and I had to have his support, uh, to run for the board and to run for a second term. I, I don't like leaving things unfinished. I think there's more I can do commercial programs, more I can do on communication and, and I look forward to, uh, if the delegates so choose to the opportunity to, to work at that another three years. Roger, I would like to say, or we're wrapping up, aren't we? Corvin? Yeah. I, I wanted to say thank you for coming on here. Yes sir. Thank, thank you for donating your time to be on the board. And, and I appreciate you running again to, to keep everything going where before we get off those 10 interviews of all the people running, were very good interviews. Of all everybody, where could they, Miranda is exceptional. Where could she did Great job. Way better than we do. Where could people find those that have maybe haven't listened to'em? Do you know where Yeah, they're the, I found the links on, um, Angus, it be angus journal.com, so it'd be the journals website. And so I would listen to a couple, then I need to do something and I'd go back to that and scroll down and, okay, this is where I was, so I'd listened to a couple more. Oh, I, I know where I went. I went to Angus Journal. They have a podcast too on, they do Spotify and they just played all. They played over. Ah, I could've used that because I was on the, um, Facebook and you kept get out and you gotta get back. And then, and then if I had a phone call come in or Yeah, same. Had bad service, I found you would have to start all over. Found that. You're exactly right. I had that same issue, uh, uh, getting into it through Facebook, but I knew where it was and I knew where I could find it there. Right. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Well, uh, Roger, I, I can't thank you enough for coming on. Yes, sir. Um, I, I hope you can go tell the other four that, Hey, we're not that intimidating. Uh, it's gonna be, it's be fair. You know what, we're just here, Vince, I, this morning, I, I do things my own way. Always have, I wanted to do this regardless of what anybody's decisions may or may not have been. I can tell you there was a time or two in my corporate career that caused me a little bit of grief. I was told more than once I needed to be a better corporate citizen and like, nah. I think I'm right where I want to be. I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak my mind. And so, and I hope I came across that way. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming on and spending, spending so much time with us. Uh mm-hmm. I, I think everyone's gonna come to find that you're, you're a friendly guy and they'll be, they'll be, uh, they'll feel compelled to walk up to you if they're at the convention with you, and I hope they do. And I look forward to, I look forward to meeting you and shaking your hand at the convention and getting to know you and, and you're close enough where, uh, I'll probably, I'll probably attend that sale this spring, so it was, let's, let's try to get each other's bull sail on our books. Absolutely. So we can make both of them. Absolutely. It was nice to have met you and I really mm-hmm. Enjoyed this process and, um, I look forward to many more years of Angus Prosper. So there you go. Thank you. I do as well. So, Joe, what do we say when we're done? Take it away. Tumor. That's it. That's it. That's it. That's it. I'll see you guys next time. Thank you guys. Thank. We will see you next time around the shoot.