Jim Whitt, Contributing Editor

Riding for the Brand
After a year and a couple of months of pounding keys on my computer, my new book is finally finished. The following is an excerpt from Riding for the Brand: The Power of Purposeful Leadership.

  

The year was 2030 and agriculture had evolved into a highly technical and sophisticated food chain. And that’s what brought Bob back to Osage County. The onetime cowboy was now a freelance writer. When he was punching cows as a youngster he would have laughed out loud if someone had told him he’d be making a living as a wordsmith. It didn’t seem real. Here he was back in his old stomping grounds to write a story. He felt like a character in a science fiction movie caught in some kind of time warp. One day he’s horseback, turning a cow and, poof, he reappears with a word processor, turning a phrase.

A large, overarching gate marked the entrance to the subject of his assignment. It was constructed from massive limestone pillars. A wooden sign spanned the top of the pillars. A diamond-shaped brand had been burned into the center of the sign sandwiched between the words Diamond Enterprises. Bob drove across the welded pipe cattle guard that bridged the pillars onto an asphalt road that wound through a pasture where cattle grazed. On the other side of a low-water bridge spanning a small creek, a large ranch style building came into view. It, too, was constructed of limestone rock and cedar. Bob smiled. You didn’t have to look far to find limestone in the Osage. It pushed up through the earth’s surface and spilled out like broken strings of craggy gray pearls tucked between the purple-hued clumps of native bluestem grass.

Not far under the rich topsoil, the limestone formed solid sheets of bedrock, like those where Robert Galbreath unleashed the flow of oil that became the Glenn Pool. Bob knew all about limestone. He had built plenty of fence growing up, and digging postholes in the rocky soil was a challenge. Instead of setting conventional corner posts, his dad had taught him how to make rock corners. Making a four-foot cylinder from hog wire, Bob filled the cylinder with pieces of limestone, stacking them to a height of about five feet. He could always find enough rock within a short distance to fill the cylinder. Once a common sight in the area, the rock corners looked like miniature monuments scattered across the prairie, connecting the barbed wire fences.

Bob cooled his heels in the waiting area of the office while the receptionist announced his arrival. The building’s interior was simple and rustic. You might say it was decorated in West by Southwest. Navajo rugs were scattered about the hardwood floors and Western art adorned the walls. The receptionist returned shortly with a tall, rugged looking man in tow. His hair was white, his faced was tanned and weathered and his manner was easy. He was up in years but one of those people you couldn’t quite peg on the age chart. He smiled, stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Burns Marcus.”

“Bob Fooshee.”

Burns Marcus looked Bob up and down – he didn’t look like a writer. In fact, he looked like a younger version of Burns Marcus. And like Marcus, he was wearing a pair of starched Wranglers and cowboy boots. “I used to know some Fooshees. Are you from around here?”

“Used to be. I grew up on the Arkansas River over by Ponca.”

“I didn’t know what a writer was supposed to look like but I wasn’t expecting someone who looked like one of our ranch hands. We might put you to work around here if you don’t watch out.”

Bob laughed. “Well, I guess you can take a cowboy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the cowboy.”

“Have a cup of coffee, Bob?”

“That sounds good.”

After they stopped off at the break room for coffee the two men headed back to Burns’ office and parked in a couple of leather-bound wing chairs.

“I’ve been looking forward to this assignment, Mr. Marcus.”

“Call me Burns. Do you have any family left over by Ponca, Bob?”

“No. Mom and Dad are both gone. And after they passed away we sold the place.”

“So now you’re a writer. And for the life of me, I can’t understand why you want to write about some broken-down old cowboy like me.”

“Well, Burns, you can only fly under the radar for so long. Diamond Enterprises isn’t exactly a secret anymore.”

“I was kind of hoping if we kept our headquarters out here in the middle of nowhere, we might go unnoticed. But I have to admit, even though I’m not always fond of the attention it brings, I am proud of what we’ve accomplished. It’s been fun.”

Fun. Bob had interviewed a lot of CEOs in his day, but not many talked about their businesses being fun.

“It’s been fun?”

“More than I could have ever imagined. But it wasn’t always that way. In fact, there was a time when I was just flat out miserable. Grab your coffee and let’s go jump in my pickup. I’ll show you around and tell you how miserable I used to be.”

It’s hard to keep a cowboy cooped up in an office. They’ll look for most any excuse to escape and Bob was the older man’s excuse. They drove and talked.

“I grew up here too, Bob. In fact, this was the home place. Went off to college, got a degree in animal science and decided to seek fame and fortune in corporate America. I took a job in sales with a pharmaceutical company. I started out on the animal-health side but animal health was falling out of favor with the company because of shrinking profits. So, I switched to the human-health side and spent my days calling on hospitals, clinics and medical practices, pushing pills to doctors.

“I was good at sales, and before long was given the opportunity to go into marketing. That meant moving to the company’s headquarters in New Jersey. I liked marketing but sometimes I was just a little too plain spoken to successfully navigate the maze of corporate politics. Life in the ‘head shed’ was a real eye opener for me. I soon found myself disillusioned with life on the corporate treadmill and started looking for a hole in the fence to jump through. I found a hole but the circumstances that created it were not exactly what I expected – or wanted.

“I got a call from home one day. Dad had suffered a heart attack. To make a long story short, I loaded up the wife and kids and moved back here to take over the family ranch. I got off the corporate treadmill and traded my suit and tie for boots and jeans. That was about 30 years ago.”

“Thirty years,” Bob mused aloud. “Things were really changing in the cattle business back then, weren’t they?”

“I was about to find out just how much they were changing. It was all good in the first few years. I felt like a bird that had been let out of a cage. Being back in the country was like a tonic. My wife was happy, the kids were happy and I was happy. Then Dad’s heart finally gave out for good. It was my show then and I got a lesson on why the profits were shrinking in animal health when I was in the pharmaceutical business. Profits were shrinking in the livestock business. Agriculture, like all other industries, was consolidating rapidly. If you were a small operator, it was a tough row to hoe.

“It looked like the best option was to get bigger to take advantage of economies of scale. So I borrowed more money and expanded the operation. I thought things would get better, but they just kept getting worse. I was like the hay hauler who was losing $1 a bale and decided the solution was to buy a bigger truck. He just went broke faster, and I did too. Before long, owning this ranch wasn’t fun anymore. My wife started teaching school to help make ends meet and I was looking for answers. I was so miserable that my days on the corporate treadmill were starting to look good again.

“Misery loves company and I found plenty of it. There were lots of other farmers and ranchers I knew who were singing the blues too. We were all just trying to figure out how to hang on. But I was losing my grip. I couldn’t hang on much longer.

“This was my state of mind when I headed to the annual cattle industry convention. I n eeded help so I went to the convention in search of answers.”

Please e-mail comments to Jim Whitt jim@whittenterprises.com

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