Latest / CattleUSA Daily / 336: The Truth About “Clean Beef” and Why Consumers Are So Misled with Kayli Clawson

Transcript

336: The Truth About “Clean Beef” and Why Consumers Are So Misled with Kayli Clawson · CattleUSA Daily

• 0:00
  Today we are welcoming Kaylee Clawson on to the podcast and
• 0:03
  Kaylee is here today to talk about her family's operation and
• 0:06
  their direct to consumer beef operation that they have started
• 0:09
  in Central Texas. And just the unique aspects that
• 0:13
  they have started to implement into their family's operation
• 0:16
  and different ways that they continue to diversify their
• 0:19
  operation there in Central Texas.
• 0:22
  Before we hop in today's podcast episode with Kaylee, if you are
• 0:25
  watching on YouTube, make sure you take a second to hit
• 0:27
  subscribe and like this episode. If you're watching on any of our
• 0:30
  other podcast platforms, you guys know the drill.
• 0:32
  At this point, make sure you take a second to go follow the
• 0:34
  show, go over and review it. And if you enjoyed today's
• 0:37
  episode, make sure you share it with a friend.
• 0:38
  Now without further ado, let's go ahead and hear from Kaylee
• 0:42
  Clausen. Welcome to the Cattle USA Daily
• 0:48
  Podcast, your go to source for the latest livestock markets,
• 0:51
  industry insights and the update shaping agriculture today.
• 0:55
  I'm your host, Lauren Moylan, a passionate advocate for
• 0:58
  agriculture, here to keep you informed and connected.
• 1:01
  Now let's dive into today's episode.
• 1:08
  Kaylee, welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to chat with you
• 1:12
  today, but I would love it if you could take it away.
• 1:14
  And for our audience members who may not know who you are, if you
• 1:17
  could take a second to give us your background and how you got
• 1:20
  started in agriculture, a little bit of background of your
• 1:23
  family's operation and kind of what led you to the life that
• 1:26
  you're living today. Hey, thanks for having me.
• 1:27
  I'm super excited to be here. Yeah.
• 1:29
  So a little background about myself and our family.
• 1:34
  I come from a long line of ranching and Rd. my family and
• 1:38
  my husband's family both were 4th generation ranchers.
• 1:41
  We were never super heavy into it whenever I was growing up and
• 1:45
  we always had cattle, but we weren't, you know, necessarily
• 1:48
  running it as a for profit operation.
• 1:50
  I was more focused on rodeoing and that's what my dad did and
• 1:54
  my husband and his dad and I college rodeo.
• 1:58
  I went to Hill College and then Sam Houston State to rodeo, and
• 2:02
  then from there I went on to get my master's in AG business from
• 2:05
  Texas A&M kind of followed that path.
• 2:09
  I always knew that I wanted to end up some, you know, somehow
• 2:12
  in agriculture. Obviously it's been such a big
• 2:14
  part of my life all my life kind of wanted to go that direction.
• 2:18
  And so my, my husband's family, they're pretty big into
• 2:22
  ranching. And so when we got married, it
• 2:25
  was just kind of kind of just felt right to kind of like take
• 2:29
  a step into their side of the business and have a large Cal
• 2:32
  Cal operation that has really grown it even since my husband
• 2:36
  and I've been together. We've been together for almost 8
• 2:39
  years now. We weren't super serious about
• 2:41
  it, I would say early on, but we've, we've gotten to be
• 2:45
  pretty, pretty serious these days.
• 2:48
  And my father-in-law myself, we kind of came together and we're
• 2:52
  like, oh, you know, we should start a beef company.
• 2:55
  My role right now is I am the general manager of our beef
• 2:59
  company. It's called Leon Hand.
• 3:01
  So I manage, I'm like the one woman kind of show for our
• 3:05
  business. We we have a storefront near our
• 3:08
  ranch in Central Texas in Gatesville.
• 3:10
  So I have some great employees that like take over the
• 3:13
  day-to-day for me. So I don't have to worry so much
• 3:15
  about that. But that allows me the
• 3:17
  opportunity to focus like I do all of our social media, all of
• 3:20
  our marketing. I plan out, you know, our kind
• 3:23
  of profit trajectories kind of, you know, any marketing
• 3:26
  campaigns that we're doing. So that that takes a lot of my
• 3:29
  time. And in addition to that, like
• 3:31
  we're running a very large Cal calf operation based in Central
• 3:36
  Texas and we also have 1000 head feed yard in Nebraska.
• 3:39
  So I manage all the financials for that.
• 3:42
  I do all of our accounting, I pay all the bills.
• 3:46
  I'm also a ranch hand and I do all of our profit forecasting
• 3:50
  and so basically I have my hands pretty full all the time and I
• 3:56
  wear a lot of different hats, but it's fun and I love it.
• 4:00
  I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
• 4:01
  Yes, a woman of many hats, that is for sure.
• 4:04
  And I think that so many people in AG and especially in a
• 4:08
  diversified operation understand that that you really do kind of
• 4:11
  have to be a professional of many different things in order
• 4:15
  to keep a family operation running and continuously doing.
• 4:18
  So before we hop into kind of like the meat of our
• 4:22
  conversation, I want to go into like consumerism and beef demand
• 4:26
  and all the things that we're seeing there.
• 4:28
  I would love to hear a little bit more background on why you
• 4:30
  guys decided to go the direct to consumer beef operation route
• 4:35
  with a storefront and everything that you guys are kind of doing
• 4:38
  there and why that was a decision that you guys
• 4:40
  strategically made in the family operation?
• 4:42
  So we obviously have been, you know, processing our own beef
• 4:45
  for our family for, you know, forever.
• 4:48
  And we signed, we really started paying attention to, you know,
• 4:51
  how we were feeding our cattle out and we just, we truly felt
• 4:54
  like we had created something that was really great.
• 4:57
  I mean, the, the, the pure taste of our beef that we were
• 5:01
  slaughtering for ourselves was just like so far set apart from,
• 5:06
  I mean, any of the folks around us, you know, if we bought from
• 5:10
  somebody else or you know, anything like that, like ours
• 5:13
  was just, we truly felt like a level up.
• 5:15
  And so that was the driving factor that made us decide to
• 5:19
  start our beef company because we were like, well, if we have
• 5:22
  something special, like we definitely want to share that
• 5:24
  with the world and especially with our local community and
• 5:28
  just kind of see how it goes. And it was perceived very well,
• 5:33
  which drove us to getting our storefront up and running.
• 5:36
  And I don't know, we just, we have a huge passion for it.
• 5:40
  I obviously have a huge passion for it.
• 5:42
  And I was just super excited for, you know, kind of the world
• 5:45
  to see what we had built and what we've been working on.
• 5:48
  I mean, it's like years and years of genetics and just
• 5:51
  blood, sweat and tears that we had poured into it.
• 5:53
  And so whenever we were like, OK, we're going to do this, I
• 5:56
  don't know. We didn't really, we didn't
• 5:58
  really know what we were doing. I didn't know what I was doing.
• 6:00
  We were like figuring out as we went, but I would say, I don't
• 6:05
  know. We just, like I said, we just
• 6:06
  wanted to share with our mostly with our community was like our,
• 6:09
  our biggest goal And see, because I mean, where we are,
• 6:12
  it's a small town and we're, we've kind of like made a name
• 6:16
  for ourselves now and everyone, you know, already kind of knew
• 6:18
  our families. So it just made a little, it
• 6:20
  just made a little sense. And we really like our small
• 6:22
  town. We didn't have anything like
• 6:24
  that, like a meat market or anything of the sorts, like we
• 6:27
  have a Walmart and a very small HEB and that was it.
• 6:30
  And so we really felt like we could provide something
• 6:33
  different for the community that that they really had been
• 6:35
  missing. Absolutely.
• 6:36
  And so a big part of your role is you're focused a lot on
• 6:40
  consumer trends and having conversations with consumers and
• 6:44
  telling your ranch's story and everything that you're doing
• 6:47
  there. So to open up that conversation
• 6:49
  a little bit of the consumer side of the beef industry, can
• 6:53
  you just kind of give us an overview of the past few years
• 6:56
  that you've been in your position, just some different
• 6:58
  trends that you're seeing or some different shifts that we've
• 7:01
  maybe seen within the beef buying industry?
• 7:04
  So I think there's been a lot of shifts, especially, I would say
• 7:07
  in the last four years. This, I mean, it's I feel like
• 7:10
  it has to do with what's going on in the society as a whole.
• 7:12
  And they're we're in such a different place than we were
• 7:14
  even like whenever I was in college 10 years ago, you know,
• 7:17
  it's like the things that were not cool way back when are
• 7:20
  actually are being cool now. So I think everything that's
• 7:24
  going on with society, coupled with the fact that we have like
• 7:28
  a real food movement now, I think the perception has
• 7:31
  definitely check in a more positive manner.
• 7:34
  I think beef is always in some some ways, it's always had a
• 7:36
  stigma against it. It's like, you know, red meat
• 7:38
  bad. And it's like, no, it's not, you
• 7:41
  know, and I feel like more, more and more people are starting to
• 7:44
  realize that, especially now that we've, you know,
• 7:46
  flip-flopped the food pyramid and now it's, you know, you
• 7:50
  know, proteins are great and everybody, you know, is kind of
• 7:53
  hopping on the protein trend, so to speak.
• 7:56
  I think it's been completely positive.
• 7:59
  And I think it's been a real driving factor, especially for
• 8:02
  direct to consumer businesses like ourselves.
• 8:04
  People are now starting to ask a lot of different questions than
• 8:07
  they were 5-10 years ago and care about things that they
• 8:10
  didn't necessarily care about back then or even know to care
• 8:13
  about back. Then absolutely.
• 8:15
  What questions are you seeing consumers ask right now when
• 8:18
  you're having these conversations?
• 8:20
  What do they care about? What questions are you getting?
• 8:23
  So it's kind of funny that you say that.
• 8:26
  I don't know. So social media is like, it's
• 8:29
  the best and the worst thing that has happened to the ag
• 8:31
  industry, right, In my opinion, because they're getting
• 8:35
  ourselves out there. You know, AG is, you know,
• 8:38
  becoming something that you can actually a person that's not
• 8:41
  involved in agriculture, they can learn, you know, your life
• 8:44
  story. They can learn so many different
• 8:45
  things about AG that they never would have had the opportunity
• 8:49
  to learn about previous to that. The downside of that is there's
• 8:52
  so much this information out there and everyone is like just
• 8:56
  kind of willing to hop on, you know, whatever trend or whatever
• 9:00
  they see on Instagram or Facebook or whatever and they
• 9:04
  never take a second look at it or think, oh, maybe I should,
• 9:07
  you know, look into that a little further.
• 9:09
  So I would say like the biggest questions that I get are the one
• 9:14
  lately is do I have mRNA in my cattle?
• 9:19
  And I'm, I'm just like, do you know, do you know what mRNA is
• 9:22
  like? I think you mean am I using mRNA
• 9:25
  vaccines, which I don't even think they have out yet for
• 9:29
  cattle as far as I know, But I'm, they, they pose it as like,
• 9:33
  do your cattle have mRNA? And I'm like, OK, everything has
• 9:36
  mRNA. You know, it's like naturally
• 9:38
  occurring in the bodies. Those kind of questions, they
• 9:40
  make me giggle a little bit because I'm like, OK, no, you,
• 9:43
  you just saw something on Instagram and you know, now
• 9:46
  you've made this scenario up in your head that, you know, all
• 9:49
  ranchers are using this crazy genetically modified stuff for
• 9:52
  our beef. And it's like, no, no, calm
• 9:54
  down. Where we are not.
• 9:56
  I don't know, you know, about the major Packers and processors
• 9:59
  and, you know, people that are contracting that way what
• 10:01
  they're doing, but we are definitely not.
• 10:03
  I guess the other questions I get are like, do you use
• 10:05
  antibiotics? Are you vaccinating?
• 10:08
  You know, how are you feeding your cattle out?
• 10:10
  Which shows are all, you know, very valid questions.
• 10:12
  But I mean, I don't think five years ago we would have been
• 10:15
  getting those and they weren't. I mean, I would say I didn't
• 10:18
  start getting those questions until probably two years ago.
• 10:20
  So with that whole, you know, the information movement and
• 10:24
  just like people realizing there are a lot of, you know, things
• 10:27
  that actually go into your beef coming to that realization, they
• 10:30
  really do want to know. And there's kind of, I always
• 10:32
  feel like there's there's been a little bit of a disconnect
• 10:35
  between the consumer and beef, you know, the consumer and going
• 10:40
  to the, you know, grocery store wherever they purchase their
• 10:42
  beef, you know, it's just like the idea that, well, I'm just
• 10:45
  going to go get beef off of the shelf.
• 10:47
  They have no idea the back story, anything about it.
• 10:50
  And there's always been that gap and like kind of disconnect
• 10:52
  between the consumer and that product.
• 10:55
  And I think now that they are actually asking questions and
• 10:58
  starting to care, they want to know.
• 11:00
  That's the thing. Consumers want to know what
• 11:03
  they're buying, and they just never knew that they had the
• 11:06
  opportunity to ask. Absolutely.
• 11:09
  Do you think that as producers we are doing a better job at
• 11:12
  sharing our story or that we could still be better or
• 11:16
  different things like that as far as sharing our story and
• 11:20
  really sharing the story of beef production goes within our
• 11:23
  consumer populations? I mean, I think that local
• 11:29
  direct to consumer or even like some of the nationwide direct to
• 11:32
  consumer, you know, companies that are larger than us, I think
• 11:35
  that they do a great job of, you know, really telling their story
• 11:41
  and putting it out there because that's what people want to hear.
• 11:43
  You know, people had somebody tell me one time, you know, I
• 11:46
  don't want to see pictures of your raw meet.
• 11:47
  I want to know you. I want to know the face behind
• 11:50
  it. I want to know everything that
• 11:52
  went on up until, you know, this steak hit my plate, right?
• 11:56
  So I think that all of us, we kind of uniquely position
• 12:00
  ourselves to tell that story. I don't think that like mass
• 12:06
  production beef tells the story at all.
• 12:08
  There there is no story behind, you know, the ground beef that's
• 12:11
  on a shelf at the grocery store, Like people have no idea where
• 12:14
  it came from. So I definitely think there's
• 12:16
  there's still a gap there and there's still a whole lot of
• 12:19
  room for improvement in that sector.
• 12:22
  But it's also hard to tell a story with it because, you know,
• 12:25
  I mean, we don't have M cool requirements or anything like
• 12:29
  that. You know, it's like, what's what
• 12:30
  story do you tell about that beef?
• 12:32
  Unless it's a specialty beef line that you know, you know, an
• 12:36
  HEB or Walmart carries like now with the whole 44 farms and
• 12:40
  Walmart partnership. That's great.
• 12:44
  That's a story to tell. But for the others, I'm not
• 12:46
  really sure what kind of story you would tell with it because 9
• 12:50
  times out of 10 you have no idea where it actually came from.
• 12:53
  So I don't know, I think there is a big disconnect there, but
• 12:56
  I'm not even really sure how to how to bridge that gap other
• 13:00
  than just educating about, you know, AG in general and you
• 13:06
  know, how beef came from wherever it originated to your
• 13:10
  plate. Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:12
  And I think it's one of those situations that when you are in
• 13:15
  a direct to consumer beef operation, you are uniquely
• 13:18
  positioned where part of your marketing is sharing your story,
• 13:23
  right, That is part of your business's success.
• 13:26
  And there's so many ranches out there that don't have that
• 13:30
  business model and that is completely fine.
• 13:33
  But sharing their story inherently hasn't been been
• 13:36
  directly tied to their success in a way that you can see it.
• 13:40
  But from what I'm understanding, your viewpoint on it is that
• 13:43
  like it may not be directly tied to your success right now, but
• 13:48
  the long term success of the beef industry and of your
• 13:52
  product as a whole is tied to it.
• 13:55
  And so I think that there is a story to tell no matter what
• 13:58
  story you're telling, because there's such a balance you have
• 14:02
  to play with in agriculture and as a producer.
• 14:04
  And I think so many people let that be a barrier to entry of
• 14:09
  they're afraid of the Petas of the world or the animal activist
• 14:13
  groups or all of those things of like, I don't even want to play
• 14:16
  that song and dance, right? Like I would rather talk to the
• 14:19
  echo Chamber of a bunch of other ranchers, then I would talk to
• 14:22
  our consumer population because so can you talk a little bit on
• 14:25
  that? And then also how you guys
• 14:28
  balance transparency with also making sure that like you're not
• 14:33
  getting attacked on social media for something you're.
• 14:35
  Doing my gosh well, I can assure you that the attacking on social
• 14:39
  media for me, I have not found a way to manage that.
• 14:42
  So if you have any anybody has any tips or pointers, I am all
• 14:45
  ears. I don't know you know, here's
• 14:48
  the thing I had to learn a lesson, a very hard lesson, and
• 14:52
  that is that you're not going to make everybody happy and I'm
• 14:56
  still learning that lesson. It's, it's very hard because
• 14:58
  like I'm the type of person I'm obviously like, I'm so
• 15:01
  passionate about what we do and our company and our beef.
• 15:05
  It really, it hurts my feelings a little bit whenever somebody
• 15:09
  has like a bad experience or they bash this on social media.
• 15:12
  And I, I, I'm still learning to like do not internalize that.
• 15:17
  But the good news is, is the bashing is basically only our
• 15:20
  price point. It's nothing to do with like the
• 15:23
  quality or our products or anything.
• 15:25
  It's just like, you're too expensive.
• 15:27
  Why are you that expensive? Why, Why would you expect me to
• 15:29
  pay that? And I'm like, OK, I understand.
• 15:31
  Like, you know, you, it's, it's not for you.
• 15:33
  Like I, it's no skin off my back.
• 15:35
  But I don't know, social media is it's very tough.
• 15:38
  It's a tough world out there. Yes, it absolutely is and it's
• 15:41
  an ever evolving world. And as far as balancing it
• 15:44
  between business and operations and all of those things go, it's
• 15:48
  really difficult. And I feel like it's always
• 15:49
  easier to have a conversation with a consumer in person than
• 15:52
  it is on social media. Because.
• 15:54
  You can take on social cues and everything like that and you're
• 15:57
  like, hey, like, let me show you, right.
• 16:00
  I think that you guys are uniquely positioned in having a
• 16:02
  storefront where you get to have those conversations with
• 16:05
  consumers. And So what are some like
• 16:08
  different or just conversations in general?
• 16:10
  We went over like some questions people are asking about the beef
• 16:12
  industry, but what else are you seeing as far as just a
• 16:15
  misconceptions of the beef industry side of things go that
• 16:19
  maybe we can start correcting as an industry as a whole?
• 16:22
  You know, I think some of the biggest misconceptions are the,
• 16:27
  and I hate to say this, the marketing tactics that people
• 16:29
  are using these days. I mean, we've got everything
• 16:33
  under the sun like gluten free on GMO, no antibiotics.
• 16:38
  You know, the average consumer really doesn't realize that none
• 16:41
  of those things are present and their beef whenever they buy it
• 16:45
  off the shelf at the grocery store, like it's just not there.
• 16:47
  However, they think, oh, I'm getting some, you know,
• 16:50
  superior, great product. I'm willing to pay more money
• 16:52
  for this because it says this. Well, it's like, well, you
• 16:55
  actually don't have to do that to not have it.
• 16:59
  It's just it's not there to begin with.
• 17:00
  So I think those are some of the biggest misconceptions even, I
• 17:04
  mean, truthfully, people come into our store, even though like
• 17:07
  it's plastered everywhere. You know, our story, how, you
• 17:10
  know, like our, our motto is like every piece of meat that is
• 17:13
  in our store was born and raised on our ranch.
• 17:16
  Like we're not going out to the sale bar and to buy, you know,
• 17:19
  stairs to feed out or anything like that.
• 17:21
  Like we, we have the entire life cycle and our ranch.
• 17:26
  So that is, you know, the, the, the story that we promote to our
• 17:30
  consumers and there's no one around us that really has that,
• 17:33
  especially in Central Texas. So it's surprising the amount of
• 17:37
  consumers that come into our store and they're like, where
• 17:39
  did you get this beef from? Like, I don't know, a couple
• 17:42
  miles down the road at our ranch and they're like, no, no, surely
• 17:45
  you're you're getting it from a company, right.
• 17:47
  I was like, no, just it's just right down the road and they're
• 17:50
  like seriously. So it's it's surprising the
• 17:53
  amount of people that just I would say don't know that
• 17:56
  direction consumer is a possibility for them until they
• 17:59
  come in. Another misconception I would
• 18:02
  say is that I don't know if it's necessarily a misconception more
• 18:06
  than just again, like misinformation, but just not
• 18:09
  knowing anything about where their beef comes from, not
• 18:12
  knowing any of the additives that are put into it to make it
• 18:16
  shelf stable. Having an expiration date on
• 18:18
  frozen beef, especially like flash frozen, like ours is
• 18:21
  direct from the processor. That's been a, that's been a
• 18:23
  big, big question. I had somebody asked me
• 18:26
  yesterday, Well, I have this, you know, I bought this package
• 18:30
  of hamburger meat from you guys and it was, you know, dated, I
• 18:33
  don't know, like August of 2025. I'm going to have to throw it
• 18:37
  out now. And I was like, wait, why, why,
• 18:39
  why, why are you throwing it out?
• 18:41
  And they're like, well, I've been told my whole life that if
• 18:44
  you put beef in the freezer for longer than six months, like you
• 18:47
  got to throw it out. And I'm like, hold the phone.
• 18:49
  That's not necessarily the case. Like calm down.
• 18:52
  So I think those are some of the misconceptions and
• 18:55
  misinformations that we see on a daily basis.
• 18:58
  And, you know, it's really unfortunate that, you know, the,
• 19:02
  the beef industry is in such a great position right now.
• 19:05
  I feel like we're in one of the best positions that we've been
• 19:07
  in a long time. It's just really unfortunate
• 19:10
  that the prices are where they are right now because, you know,
• 19:15
  not everybody can afford it at this moment in time.
• 19:18
  And I feel like the, you know, there are so many more people
• 19:21
  out there that are ready and willing to buy, but the price
• 19:25
  point just leave some of them now is, I mean, especially for
• 19:29
  businesses like ourselves, yeah. It definitely does.
• 19:32
  And it sounds like you're having a lot of conversations with
• 19:35
  consumers and really hearing their side of the story and
• 19:39
  correcting a lot of things. But with that naturally comes
• 19:43
  relationship building as well. And I think that that's a really
• 19:46
  big part of the business and building relationships with our
• 19:50
  consumers. So they know that if they see
• 19:53
  something on TikTok, they can text you or call the store and
• 19:57
  be like, hey, I was talking to Kaylee last week and she told me
• 19:59
  this, but I just saw this. I know a rancher.
• 20:01
  I'm going to go ask a rancher, right?
• 20:04
  That type of relationship that you're having with your consumer
• 20:07
  basis, can you talk a little bit more about the importance of
• 20:11
  that within our consumer and producer relationship patterns?
• 20:15
  I mean, I, I think it's extremely, if not the most
• 20:18
  important, I like to be on, you know, a first name basis,
• 20:22
  especially with like the customers that buy bulk, be from
• 20:26
  us like quarters, halves and holes.
• 20:28
  I handle all of all of that and all the logistics of that.
• 20:31
  And I truly like to get to know the customers.
• 20:34
  And I definitely like you were saying, I am still with them.
• 20:36
  Like, hey, here's my personal cell phone number.
• 20:38
  If you have a question, a problem like I'm a phone
• 20:41
  Callaway, just give me a call and I'm here to help.
• 20:44
  It is, I mean, I can't tell you how important it is or also how
• 20:49
  much it means, means to consumers to be able to have
• 20:52
  that connection, especially with their food, because they want, I
• 20:56
  mean, they crave that sort of connection.
• 20:58
  And once they have it, it's like, wow, you know, I got this
• 21:01
  from Kaylee and she grows it right down the road.
• 21:04
  You know, they, they think it's the coolest thing and I don't
• 21:08
  know, I love talking to people in general.
• 21:12
  So getting to educate our customers and teach them about
• 21:17
  different things that they didn't necessarily know before.
• 21:20
  I don't know. I think, I think it's one of the
• 21:22
  most important, important pieces of our business.
• 21:25
  Yeah, it definitely is. And I think it's something that
• 21:28
  is so easily overlooked. And.
• 21:31
  Something that is once you start to really build relationships
• 21:35
  with a population within the consumer population, it is so
• 21:40
  fun to get those text messages and phone calls like getting
• 21:44
  sent a TikTok and being like, yeah, no, everything that person
• 21:47
  said is wrong. Please don't listen to them.
• 21:50
  Here's the actual story. And here's what that actually
• 21:53
  means. And really just being able to
• 21:56
  share the story of beef in a very authentic and natural way
• 22:01
  is so fun. And it starts with each of us
• 22:05
  and it starts in our communities.
• 22:06
  And it starts, you don't have to have a storefront like what you
• 22:09
  guys do, but you are uniquely positioned where you get to have
• 22:12
  so many of these wonderful conversations in your community.
• 22:17
  And therefore you naturally just have a more well informed
• 22:20
  community surrounding you guys. And therefore it makes it more
• 22:24
  enjoyable, I'm sure, to raise beef in that community because
• 22:28
  you have people around you that just they know and they love you
• 22:31
  and they trust you and are there to help lift you up rather than
• 22:36
  be removed from the beef industry.
• 22:38
  Yeah, no, it's, it's so rewarding.
• 22:40
  I I can't say like how much of AA dream it is for me.
• 22:44
  It's the greatest thing ever. Yes.
• 22:47
  So as we look at the future of the beef industry and everything
• 22:51
  that you guys are doing, what gives you the most optimism
• 22:55
  right now as we kind of look into the future?
• 22:57
  I don't know. I am, I mean, I'm optimistic.
• 23:01
  I think just in general, I'm excited about the movement
• 23:05
  that's going on. I think it's going to keep
• 23:07
  building momentum. I, you know, for the sake of the
• 23:10
  consumer, I do hope that we're able to make it a little more
• 23:13
  affordable at some point because beef prices have just been on
• 23:17
  the rise for so long. And it's, you know, it's, it's
• 23:20
  gotten a little out of hand right now, especially on a mass
• 23:23
  scale. I'm just, I'm excited to, you
• 23:26
  know, have more customers in our store, which we're currently
• 23:30
  seeing like we've been on an uptick the last 2-3 months.
• 23:33
  And so that's exciting. I just think the in the industry
• 23:36
  as a whole is headed in a great direction.
• 23:39
  It absolutely is and there's so much to look forward to and so
• 23:43
  much to look forward to no matter what sector of the
• 23:45
  industry you're involved in, whether you're in direct to
• 23:48
  consumer beef or and maybe more of a traditional profile, there
• 23:51
  are so many different avenues and things to look forward to.
• 23:54
  So really, as we start to round out this podcast, is there
• 23:56
  anything else that you would like to say or leave with our
• 24:00
  audience members today? So we didn't really talk much
• 24:02
  about, you know, women and AG, but if I was to leave anybody
• 24:06
  with anything, I would say, you know, there's a lot, a lot of
• 24:11
  jumping into the ag industry and I am here for that movement as
• 24:15
  well. I think it's great.
• 24:17
  I think that there are so many different positions nowadays,
• 24:22
  like the industry as a whole is, you know, welcoming you with
• 24:25
  open arms. So please, if you ever, if you
• 24:28
  ever wanted to get into it, please do.
• 24:30
  And you can always reach out to me with any questions you have.
• 24:34
  Wonderful, Kaylee, thank you so much for your time today and for
• 24:37
  coming on and sharing your guys's ranching story and your
• 24:41
  unique business profile that you and your family have started to
• 24:45
  build and build for your community, for your family and
• 24:48
  everything that you guys are doing to continue to be
• 24:50
  innovative within the beef industry.
• 24:52
  I really appreciate your time today.
• 24:54
  To all of you listeners out there, I will have all of
• 24:56
  Kaylee's information linked down below where you can go and check
• 24:59
  out their family's business, check out Kaylee's LinkedIn,
• 25:01
  anything like that, or you can get a hold of any of them if you
• 25:04
  have any questions or just simply want to follow along.
• 25:07
  Kaylee, thank you so much again for joining us and all of you
• 25:09
  listeners. We will see you all next time on
• 25:11
  another episode of the Cattle USA Daily Podcast.
• 25:14
  Have a good one y'all.