SG October 2023

FROM THE FRONT OFFICE • HC Neel • (361) 592-9357 • hcneel@santagertrudis.com

What Door Will You Choose?

G uess what? I’m back with an other motivational quote. But, before we get to that, let me give you some background as to why I’ve come up with this one in particular. Most of you probably saw, but in mid-August, Santa Gertrudis Breed ers International (SGBI) held a fo cus group. First, I’d like to extend a gigantic thank you to Rafael, James, Marilyn and the entire crew at Chero kee Ranch & Castle Foundation who made incredible hosts! There will be more information on the focus group, but the premise was this: The top 20 breeders, the SGBI Long Range Plan ning Committee, board of directors and at-large delegates from each district got together to think about a strategic direction for the future. Throughout the course of the focus group, there were four main top ics that kept coming up – education, marketing, collaboration and innova tion. While all of these are high-pri ority areas of importance, innovation sticks out the most to me personally. Why? Well, because I think we have to be innovative to tackle all of the other high-priority areas I just men tioned. I gave a presentation to the fo cus group attendees and, to sum it up very quickly, registrations have been down the past few years. Why is that? Well, some of it has to do with things we can’t control such as COVID-19 and widespread drought across the country. But the rest of the point I tried to make, and many of you have heard me say something similar, is what do we do to combat this? How

the focus group very well: “I’ve always seen life like a series of doors. Some times you get to choose the door you go through; sometimes you don’t get that choice. But you still gotta walk through. So, you can either go kicking and screaming or walk through with your head held high.” We’ve gone through the doors we want to, and now I think it’s time we go through the doors we have to. In order to make the things we want to do re ality, we’re going to have to be inno vative and maybe even go down some paths that make us uncomfortable but are necessary. As you’re reading this, we’re probably in a board room discussing some of the ways we can invest in this innovation and plotting the path we need to take to improve, not the one we want to that is just comfortable. But that doesn’t happen with just the board or a committee. It happens with ALL of you. We all have to be innovative, we all have to agree to step out of our comfort zone a bit, and we all have to continue to keep the end goal in mind, no matter what set of doors that takes us through. There’s my regularly scheduled monthly TED Talk. If you want to chat more about it and ideas for a con tinued strategic direction, catch me around this fall! Sale season is start ing to ramp up and I hope to see you all around and continue to meet new people! Support your friends, cus tomers and sellers and continue to work together and work for progress! And as always, remember it’s about BREED improvement, not only herd improvement.

can we be innovative not only in the way we approach the basic issue, but also in how we resolve it? The first way is through chang ing the mindset. I’m not 100 percent sure where this quote came from, but someone told me once that in to day’s rapidly changing cattle indus try, standing still is as good as mov ing backward. We’re all guilty of being comfortable. Why would I change if I’m comfortable? Well, being com fortable is the quickest way to fall be hind. That’s not just in cattle produc tion; that applies to anything in life. That’s where I get to what Jay Pritchett said in the tv series Modern Family . If you haven’t seen Modern Family , check it out on Hulu because it is a hilarious sitcom that Kelsey and I watch to get a good laugh. But just like with Ted Lasso , some real inspi ration can come out of the show as well. Jay is the patriarch of the fam ily and, while he tries to be funny, he also provides a lot of the wisdom from the show. I thought this quote of his summed up my main takeaways from We all have to be innovative, we all have to agree to step out of our comfort zone a bit, and we all have to continue to keep the end goal in mind, no matter what set of doors that takes us through.

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SANTA GERTRUDIS SOURCE

OCTOBER 2023