State, National, and International ... Opportunities are Everywhere

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Growing Our Future Podcast, where Aaron Alejandro brings you subject matter experts to share their insights, experiences, and expertise in the world of agriculture and beyond. Today's guest is none other than Corey Rosenbusch, the President and CEO of the Fertilizer Institute, a trade association based in Washington, DC, representing the fertilizer industry. Corey's journey from a small town in Texas to leading a significant industry association is truly inspiring.

Aaron and Corey reminisce about their long-standing friendship, with Corey humorously recalling their first meeting back in second grade. Corey shares that he is the President and CEO of the Fertilizer Institute, a trade association representing the fertilizer industry.

Aaron and Corey reflect on the impact of FFA in shaping their career paths and the importance of staying open to diverse opportunities. Corey encourages young listeners to seek career paths in trade associations, as they can provide rewarding experiences and opportunities to make a difference.

Story Notes:

• Getting to Know Corey
• Gratitude and Family
• The Fertilizer Institute
• Transferable Skills from FFA
• Building Relationships

Learn more at MyTexasFFA.org

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the Growing Our Future podcast. In this show, the Texas FFA Foundation will take on a journey of exploration into agricultural science, education, leadership development and insights from subject matter experts and sponsors who provide the fuel to make dreams come true. Here's your host, Aaron Alejandro.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Well, good morning, good afternoon or good evening or whenever you may be tuning into the Growing Our Future podcast, you know we love bringing this podcast, and not because it's just a podcast, it's because of the people we get to bring on. We love bringing on subject matter experts, people that are willing to share their insights, their experience, their expertise and plant seeds of greatness. If you want to know what the future is, grow it. That's what this podcast is about. So today we've got that. Just that. One more incredible subject matter expert who I've had a front row seat to see this man's career and I got to tell you it's an honor to know him, it's an honor to have him today, Ladies and gentlemen Corey Rosenbush.

Speaker 3: 1:14

Hey Aaron, thanks for having me. I think I probably first met you when I was in second grade, so that just proves that we have known each other for a few years. That was just yesterday. Just yesterday, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:26

And it was a great meal. I'm now in third grade. Corey, tell us a little bit real quick just what your title is, and then we're going to. I got another question for you, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:38

I'm president and CEO of the Fertilizer Institute where the trade association based here in Washington DC that represents the fertilizer industry.

Speaker 2: 1:46

We're going to come back and we're going to talk about that in a little more detail. I like to start every podcast off with the same question, and that question is Corey today, what are you grateful for today?

Speaker 3: 2:02

That is a big question to start with. So the loaded answer is FFA. Right, that's obviously been a big part of my life, but it's just great to be blessed with terrific family. I have three daughters and I always say that they are going to be raised in the exact opposite way I was raised and that was not intentional. But they're city folks, they're born and raised here inside the Beltway. They will have none of the experiences that I've had and for some that may make you sad, but it's actually terrific. They are getting exposure.

Speaker 3: 2:37

My favorite story about raising kids in Washington DC is my daughter was a kindergartner and she came home maybe second or third week of the school and we were asking her how school went. She said, Dad, we just had a farewell party for Thomas. We're like farewell party, You've only been in school for three weeks. He said yeah, he's State Department, so we get a lot of State Department kids that will cycle through. So he would obviously start for four weeks and then he's off to their assignment overseas and we're like great, when is he going? And he said, oh, he's headed to Togo.

Speaker 3: 3:10

I went Togo, where's Togo? And he's like I'm dad, that's in West Africa. And it amazed me that a kindergartner knows where Togo is and I grew up in Glenrose, Texas. I knew where Cleaver and Stevenville were and that was about the extent of my geography. So they'll get such a rich experience and I'm thankful for that. My family and my wife that really raises the kids, and me she likes to joke, she has four kids, but yeah, that's fantastic and of course, all of my family and friends that grew up in Texas. It's been a terrific support network. So I could go on and on, Erin, but there's a lot to be thankful for.

Speaker 2: 3:51

Well, I appreciate that very much and I've known you and I've known your family and your special people, and every one of you have touched the future, and that's a pretty bold statement to say that, but it's true. Your family has absolutely touched the future and I'm grateful that I had the pleasure of meeting you and knowing you all these years and watching your contributions to our country, to agriculture, to all the things that your family has touched. So I just want you to know I'm grateful for y'all.

Speaker 3: 4:30

Well, thank you. It is great to be part of such a strong ag ed family. I feel like the black sheep. My uncle was an ag teacher, my dad was an ag teacher, my cousin's an ag teacher. My mom was kind of an ag teacher and I'm the one that ran away from home, but they're pretty well known. I like to joke that my dad was a pretty good ag teacher. I'm still on a lot of FFA quizzes, but it's my mom that everyone really knew so well.

Speaker 2: 4:59

Absolutely yeah, but we may come back to that, because I do. Obviously, I have a very special place in my heart for your mom as well, so tell us a little bit about that, okay. So, number one we're going to talk about the trade association that you work for, the fertilizer institute. We're going to talk about that. It's a big job. It's got an incredible domestic and international footprint Unbelievable. But I know you didn't just fall into that job. I know there's a pathway that led you to that job. So take us back to Glen Rose, kind of walk us through how things in your life, how those dominoes, started to align, how they tumbled to put you in the chair that you're in today.

Speaker 3: 5:47

So you know it's so funny, I'm just stream of consciousness. And you said, glen Rose, obviously you know being a state and national officer so much centered around FFA. But it was fascinating for a 3A school, about 400 kids. In high school we offered Japanese as our foreign language and everybody took Spanish. And I had one rule in life and that is not to do what everyone else did. And so instead of taking Spanish, I took Japanese. And when someone said, well, why did you take Japanese? I said, well, when I'm going to be a national officer, they go to Japan. And I got to learn how to speak Japanese. I mean, that was literally how I thought about things in my four years of Japanese in high school. But it was fascinating because what that did was it really kind of got me interested in the world of international and that bug bit me and so had a chance to go to Japan as a national officer, absolutely loved it.

Speaker 3: 6:44

And at that point FFA had just started exploring an internship program through USDA's Foreign Ag Service and I was going to be one of the first students to go and work in a US embassy overseas. Long story short, that got yanked out from underneath me because of funding reasons. I'm at Texas A&M now studying agriculture development, and someone said we should go meet Ed Price. And I went. Who is Ed Price? They said, well, he runs the International Ag Office. And that's what it was called back then. Here I am.

Speaker 3: 7:17

I thought I knew everything about agriculture and I had no idea that A&M had an international ag office, so went over, sit down, told him the story. I wasn't enrolled for summer classes, my internship got dropped. I had a plane ticket to Tokyo. What am I gonna do? And he says well, I've actually got some funding to send you to Indonesia. Would you like to go to Indonesia? And I went yeah, that'd be great. And so I remember walking out of his office and thinking, oh crap, I hope Indonesia is a real place, because I had never heard of it. I didn't know where it was. So I ran down to the library and back then, before internet, I pulled out the microfish.

Speaker 3: 7:55

Oh yeah, if you're a young person watching, go Google, what a microfish is. It was our version of Google and, sure enough, indonesia was a real place, and I quickly learned that Jakarta was in a state of chaos and riots because they had just overthrown a 35 year dictator and we're starting to burn and loot the entire city so great I'm getting sent into a war zone. Aaron, it changed my life. It turned me into on a completely different career path, working for the embassy and the foreign ag service there. It just really lit my passion on fire for agriculture development and so when I came back to campus, that was where I started focusing my time. My effort Ended up doing graduate work in international development, worked for the Borlaug Institute. After three years living in Indonesia, I ended up going back and living there with my wife. That was our first home after marriage. She said she had enough and decided to move back to DC.

Speaker 3: 8:56

When I got to DC, I immediately was recruited to work for an association and I remember my first boss here asking me do you know what an association is? I'm like I have no idea what an association is and after about three months on the job I went. I'm an expert at associations. It's written on the back of the FFA jacket. I had no idea that I really was just making a career out of what I did in FFA my whole life. And so associations have trade shows and conferences and events and leadership programs and they do advocacy work and it is truly a perfect fit for any FFA member to pursue a career in association. They will absolutely love it. And so after 15 years there called the Global Cold Chain Alliance, a recruiter called me up and said how would you like to get back to your ag roots? And I said I would love that. And so I got hired at the fertilizer Institute and been here for a little over two years.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Well, you've said a lot, by the way, and we're gonna come back to that story.

Speaker 3: 10:02

You've said a lot because there's a long version.

Speaker 2: 10:05

There are things there, though, that I'm hoping listeners were listening, especially students, because we're gonna come back and unpack some of those. Tell us about your organization. Tell us about this because, again, I've been on your website and I shared with you before we started. I knew it was big, but I didn't realize just how large the footprint is of the trade association that you represent.

Speaker 3: 10:27

Yeah, so we are the trade association for the fertilizer industry.

Speaker 3: 10:31

We have a little over 200 member companies, so in our case, instead of individual members, we are companies with pay dues and expect us to represent them in Washington DC.

Speaker 3: 10:43

We're about $130 billion industry in the United States alone about half a million jobs that we create here in the US and so we have everyone from fertilizer manufacturers, of all of the major nutrients nitrogen, phosphate, potassium, mpnk, micronutrients, biostimulants, new microbial technologies that are coming out Anything that feeds the plant, that feeds the world. About half of all food in this world is available to people because of fertilizer. So without fertilizer, about half the population would be wiped off the face of the planet, and it is great to be able to tell that story every day and represent our member companies on Capitol Hill, within the agencies, the White House, the administration, and we also facilitate a lot of best practices, thought leadership for the industry. We develop standards, we create, we have an economics department that does a lot of market intelligence and data collection and reporting, we do public affairs and communications and we have events and meetings Everything that an association would deliver for its members.

Speaker 2: 12:00

That is incredible, I tell you. We've got a program here in Texas that we started with the adults, called the legislative lead program, where we try to equip teachers with the tools to become trusted advisors to their elected officials. That way they can communicate about what goes on in education and what's going on in their community and how they might be able to help students and FFA and agriculture. Everything that we touch. It's not political, we don't talk about politics, we just talk about best practices. But we thought you know, if this program is so good for the teachers, why don't we expand it to the students? And so we created a student legislative lead program. Now here was one of the first. Let's say three years ago we did this for the first time. It blew us away.

Speaker 2: 12:51

The number one takeaway for the participants is exactly what you just described. They said we didn't know this existed, we didn't know that we could go into a trade association, we didn't know that we could keep advocating for agriculture. We didn't realize that these pathways, these career opportunities were out there. So when you tell your story, and just the scope of your story, the fact that you looked into it and all of a sudden you found it, and it's not just domestic, it's international, that those trade associations like that exist in all 50 states and that there in DC there's no telling how many trade associations you interact with. Yeah, there's about 60,000 plus.

Speaker 3: 13:38

It's an incredible industry within itself.

Speaker 2: 13:41

So for students that are listening, hear that if you're, if you've got this leadership, passion to advocate, to be involved, know that there are organizations out there that are looking for talent, just like you.

Speaker 3: 13:55

Yeah, and you know I have three FFA members that I've hired here on staff former state president in California, former national officer from Minnesota. One is our economist. One runs all of our conference events, member programs and services. So you know there's. You don't even have to be a lobbyist to be at an association. I guarantee you there is a career path at an association somewhere. You can go to ASAA, the American Association, american Society of Association Executives, and you know all those associations and jobs that are available are listed there, not just in DC but all over the country. We joke that's the association. There's an association for everything, and even associations need an association.

Speaker 2: 14:45

It's funny that you said that because I'm a member. There you go, yeah, and that's exactly why because I need that professional network to understand, as associations, the challenges that we deal with and what are best practices that we can learn from our peers.

Speaker 3: 15:01

And you know one of the things that I think you know. When you boil it down to it well, what's the what's the transferable skill there For me? I think back to my FFA experience and I remember, back in the day I was I think I was the last state FFA president traveled by myself. The next year is when they started traveling in Paris, as you remember, aaron, because you said but well, actually you didn't stay the night at my house. Maybe we can come back to that story. You stay in people's homes every night, you're not staying in hotels and what I learned was how to build relationships with people, how to connect with people from all different walks of life, and at the end of the day, that's really what we do in association work we build relationships, we develop relationships, we find common ground among very diverse thoughts, companies and really objectives, and it's an important skill set.

Speaker 2: 15:57

Okay, we're going to talk about that now. You've opened the door.

Speaker 3: 16:01

So how many hours do you have?

Speaker 2: 16:02

I'm talking about this now because this is exactly where I was hoping he was going to go. Okay, Number one building relationships. That takes work. They don't just happen. So just because you carry a title and you walk in, that doesn't necessarily mean anything to anybody. It may open a door, but once that door closes, now it's about business and it's about relationships. How big is the word trust? How big is the word trust when it comes to quality relationships?

Speaker 3: 16:34

Yeah, I think it's important. I don't think, you know, it's not something you think about, but when you spend time with people it does build that trust and you get to know them on a personal level and I think that's really what it is. It's not as if you're following a trust formula, but you know, I love golf. It's one of my passions. I'm an adamant golfer, try to golf as much as possible. And the reason I love golf is because you have four captive hours with someone and you just get to know them on a level with no distractions, better than just about anything. I mean, I'm sure there are other activities like that. You can do a meal, a long road trip, but that's how you really build trust with someone and usually when you finish that, they're willing to just do about anything and you've invested that time. But it's just, it's a time investment.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Zig Ziglar always said that if they know you, they'll listen to you and if they trust you, they'll do business with you. Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's what you're talking about. I didn't realize you were an avid golfer. Now see, I had the opposite experience. I just want you to know this. Before I took the foundation job 22 years ago, I was a single digit handicap golfer. I actually competed in North Texas and Southern Oklahoma in tournaments and everybody said, well, you're gonna be a fundraiser, You're gonna be working as a development officer, you'll be playing golf all the time. They were wrong. I had a board of directors that wanted me working and so my golf game went.

Speaker 3: 18:07

So anyway, I'm glad you're an avid golfer and the nice part about associations is just about every association meeting and conference as a golf tournament.

Speaker 2: 18:17

As a tournament, yeah.

Speaker 3: 18:18

So it's work, it's work, aaron.

Speaker 2: 18:21

My first tournament, or the first tournament I played as the executive director of the Texas FFA Foundation. I played with the top 64 dealers in the United States and I was playing with the president of Ford Motor Company and the largest Lincoln Mercury dealer and the largest Ford truck dealer in the state of Texas and I called my guy on the way over and I said who's the low handicap? And he goes, you are.

Speaker 3: 18:45

Better show up.

Speaker 2: 18:46

No pressure on that match Anyway, all right. So trade associations, you said there were transferable skill sets, so talk about that a little bit. What are some of those things that you learned early on in Ag, science and an FFA that you have found have been transferable? And I believe that success begets success. So I do believe that once you understand how to apply that skill, you can apply it again. It may look a little bit different, but it's applicable. So take us through some of those leadership skills that you learn and how they've been applicable through the years to make you successful.

Speaker 3: 19:26

Well, there's so many. I mean this is probably an hour podcast within itself, but I mean it's everything that you know and you will use at some point. Some of my strongest network and relationships are friends from FFA. I still work with them today, 30 years after being in the program. So, networking, how to network and go out and meet people and build those connections, Simple things like how to run a meeting you would be surprised how horrific meetings are sometime and it's just not a skill that some people know or have.

Speaker 3: 20:04

Obviously, I was really big in public speaking and did extent and prepared and chapter conducting and all of those things, and that's something I use just about every day. I realize that's probably unique. I'm not sure everyone's doing media interviews every day or standing on stage doing presentations, but it's for me, that is something I use every day. It's funny because I will often be at a group and it's been pretty frequently lately because, if you haven't heard, thanks to geopolitics, with the war in Russia's dominance and the fertilizer industry, prices have skyrocketed and so everybody wants to know what's going on with fertilizer and so I've been doing a lot of those presentations to some obscure groups that may not know ag even, and we're tightly connected to energy and energy markets.

Speaker 3: 20:55

And after I was speaking one day someone came up and said you were an FFA, weren't you? And this was without me saying anything. I said I was, he goes, I can tell. And how can you tell I goes? Because you speak just like an FFA member would. And so those are skill sets that you just know and learn and it's even so stylistic apparently that people can pin that you were an FFA speaker. But I think one of the ones that recency bias here that's been on my mind. A lot is really simple how to work as a team, and I don't even think about that but just turning or just starting and working in a new job and coming in. And my primary role and focus here when I started was building a culture and building a team. And you see where there's some gaps there and there's some lack of teamwork and really basic things that we were picking up at FFA camp in eighth grade. People just didn't have that experience, that exposure.

Speaker 3: 21:53

So sometimes we take the little things for granted that are definitely transferable to whatever you're doing.

Speaker 2: 22:03

I was visiting with Nealey Nelson I know you know, nealey, and she's the same kind of work in for ExxonMobil and we were talking about that very thing and she said it's amazing, and she too was the child of an ag teacher. But she said all of those years that she went and she watched and then she began to assimilate those skill sets. She said I didn't really realize how one day I would actually be applying those and the difference that they made. So one of the things that we share with the students is this in the state of Texas there's over 3000 high schools. Every one of them have graduating classes, so that means they're all gonna have seniors that are gonna be out there looking for a job and opportunity, college degree, scholarship, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2: 22:53

My question to everybody is what's your competitive edge? What separates you from somebody else? And they don't just fall into your lap. You got to be willing to go get them.

Speaker 2: 23:04

And that's the reason why I love doing these interviews, by the way, corey, because you just in your testimony alone I was taking notes just in your testimony alone. You're talking about things like paying attention to what's going on around you, being aware that there's something bigger than my city, something bigger than my state or my country, that my opportunity may not be in a traditional manner of what I thought it might be in. It might be something else, but the skill set is transportable. So that's the reason I love to have guests on to share their testimony, because if people will just listen to their testimonies and their stories and their career pathways, there's a lot of wisdom there of wow, I never thought about that. Oh, I need to really work a little bit more on my parliamentary procedure. It's kind of hard, but I probably ought to do a little bit more. P Polly pro. Yeah, you should. I interviewed a professional parliamentarian the other day. You should have heard that interview. It was phenomenal and it's everything that you just said.

Speaker 3: 24:05

And what's interesting about chapter conducting or parliamentary procedure is that I will say I probably don't use a lot of what I learned there in the actual running of a meeting because most meetings aren't that formal and structured as that. What I think back on is the problem solving and analytical skills, and I remember when I was a little kid and dad was running his chapter conducting practices, I had to be there anyway, so I might as well sit in and play a part, but you're given that problem and you have to work through that problem and it's actually that analytical kind of process, thinking that you really are learning there more than motions and seconds and the actual rules, so to speak.

Speaker 2: 24:51

Well, again, I couldn't agree with you more. I think back in how fortunate I was back in my day of all of the noise that we hear in society nowadays social issues, distraction here, anger here, just the craziness of our world. And I think back to those simple days in Ag Science where they said, okay, we're gonna talk about teamwork, we're gonna talk about professional networking, we're gonna talk about critical skills thinking. And it was never about anything in any silo or bucket, it was just about doing it. And it become part of your culture is the right thing to do, is always the right thing to do.

Speaker 1: 25:30

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:31

And I feel very fortunate that I grew up in that environment.

Speaker 3: 25:36

Well, and so much of it's the Ag teacher as well, and I was I'm a little biased, aaron, but I was fortunate to have a really good Ag teacher. He was my father, that's why. But it all comes down to the Ag teacher, and occasionally I'll get to have an audience with Ag teachers and I always tell them you owe it to your students to expand your horizons as widely and broadly as you can, because they're being guided about their future based upon your experiences. And if you, as an Ag teacher, have a very siloed experience that you're sharing, that's only livestock or only public speaking and leadership, that's all those students are gonna ever know.

Speaker 3: 26:20

I remember I took my dad. We had a big grant with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and so it was to study post harvest practices of farmers in Africa and it was one of those trips I could take my dad on and so I took him with me With me and he got a chance to kind of see how a subsistence farmer in sub-Saharan Africa on less than an acre of land farms, and that is experienced then that he can take back into the classroom. And I talked to friends that said, yeah, we had an Ag program, but all they really did was welding, or we had an Ag program, but you fill in the blank. And so it is so important that those teachers offer that widest variety of experience, because something's gonna trigger a path, a direction or an idea in those students mind.

Speaker 2: 27:12

One of my favorite quotes is from Dr Temple Grandin, and Temple Grandin talks about how she found her career. Because she visited a farm it wasn't in her wheelhouse, but because she had that experience she found a career pathway. When we started the lead program for our teachers, by the way, here in Texas, that's how that idea started we said why don't we create a leadership camp for Ag teachers? And so we did. We started the concept, but then we said you know, we're asking the sponsors to come here and the stakeholders and the subject matter experts to come to us. Why don't we go to them? So that's when we started the first year with a caravan of trucks and Ag trucks and cars and we traveled across Texas. Then somebody said why don't y'all get on a bus? So then we hopped on a bus and now we go for a week. We'll go a thousand miles, we'll visit 15 locations. They'll hear from 70 speakers when they get off the bus at the end of the week. They don't look at their role the same way. Why? Because it's exactly what you just said Because now they've seen a broader scope of application of technologies, application of information, of how data is sorted through, how communication takes place how teams work, all the things that we know that happen outside of our classrooms. They get to experience and then go back and tell their classroom. Let me tell you what I saw at Prefer. Let me tell you what I saw in the Rio Grande Valley or up at, you know, in the Texas Panhandle, at a feedlot or Kubota, wherever it may be.

Speaker 2: 28:52

I agree with you. I like to say it this way in life you'll do the only thing you know how to do, unless you learn something different. If you don't learn anything different, you're gonna default to the only thing you know. And if all I know is what my ag teacher taught me, guess how I'm gonna teach? Yep, just like my ag teacher taught me. I'm a big believer in the words of Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society Stand on your desk and see the world from a different perspective. Very true, that's awesome. All right, so you talk a little bit about your FFA career and where you're at now. Let me ask you this question If I'm a student right now and I'm watching this podcast or I'm listening in, or I'm an ag teacher, are there any opportunities out there? I mean, is there anything around the corner? I mean, should I be hopeful?

Speaker 3: 29:45

I mean, there are endless opportunities. I don't know if you're specifically talking about the job market, but it is unbelievable how hard it is to find people right now. And we had a young lady that we was fresh out of college and we were ready to make an offer. And we called her on Friday and said, hey, we're going to be getting you to offer on Monday. And she said, well, I need my offers in by five today. I said this isn't house buying, you're not buying house. But she said, well, I've got two other offers and I'd like to think about it over the weekend. I mean, that's how competitive the workforce is right now in terms of getting people on the door. So, yeah, there are endless opportunities out there. And you know, pursue whatever your passion is and what you want, and you'll find something.

Speaker 2: 30:34

Again, I'm going to hone in on this for the listeners. I hope everybody heard what Corey just shared. I will tell you that in my career and now with the companies that I work with, the number one issue there's not even a close second the number one issue right now is workforce, workforce, work. So if I'm a young person and I'm thinking about I'm honing my competitive edge, I'm going to be ready to get out there. I want to be looking for an opportunity. I'm going to tell you, if you'll show up, be a good worker, you know, be involved, be positive, be engaging, communicate effectively. I tell you, it's not just Corey's shop, it'll be organizations across this country that would love to have that type of individual working for them right now.

Speaker 3: 31:22

Yeah, and I think the interesting part about opportunities is I was this way as a kid. I thought that when I graduated I only knew the big brands you know in no offense to those big brands and many of them are probably big donors and supporters of you. I am so glad I didn't go work for a big brand. I feel like my personality would have been a big disservice working for a big company, where I would have had a very singular, focused job in a big company and would have lost my way. I am a big advocate for small business.

Speaker 3: 32:03

Small businesses are fantastic. You know we have a staff of about 25 here and right down to the latest new hire. You just get to put your hands on so many different things. And if you're like me and you have ADHD and you forget every day looking different, if you want every hour to look different, small business is the place to be, because there's always something. You're always going to have to wear a different hat. You're always going to have to try something new. I think a lot of people think that career advancement is about ladder climbing.

Speaker 3: 32:34

And it's actually not about going up a ladder, it's about expanding your responsibilities. It's about expanding what you get to impact. And at a small company there's a lot more opportunities. And so when someone comes in and says, well, I really wanted to go work for X, you fill in the blank. I said, yeah, but there's so many more opportunities here at a small company. And they think, oh, that's one way to look at it, because they're thinking about all of that upward mobility up a ladder, and you know it's just a different perspective. And the hard part for a student is where do you find them? Right, because you can see the big brands you know on a television, in a commercial and a lot of those smaller organizations that you can go work for. You just don't even know about them. I mean, if I was in high school when I was in high school, I didn't even know, I wouldn't have told us that I want to go work for the fertilizer Institute one day. Doesn't happen that way.

Speaker 2: 33:31

Well, one of the one of the things that happened for me probably 15 years ago, 18 years ago, these young ladies showed up at our office and they were job shadowing, and I thought this was a really clever idea. By the way, that's where he's wanting to share it their school. Every February 2nd, every groundhog day, they do job shadowing, which I thought was genius, and so they send their seniors out to prospect careers that they might be interested in and job shadow people for a day.

Speaker 3: 33:58

Well, I tell interns this all the time job shadowing, internships, I mean, even if you have just a week to go, job shadow someone, I have I've had some high school students have come up and done, have done that with me for a week during spring break. Internships and job shadowing are less about finding out what you want to do and more about learning what you don't want to do, and so a lot of those experiences will help you eliminate. Well, I don't want a desk job. I don't want to be behind the computer every day. I don't want a job where I have to talk to people all the time. I mean, everybody's different and that's what helps you discover what that path looks like for you.

Speaker 2: 34:34

I've had interns that have worked for me, by the way that went out in their college career and they started looking for those next level opportunities. And, exactly to your point, they chased some big brands and they found out after doing so that that's really not where they wanted to work, because it wasn't a fit. And, to your point, it's like colleges. I mean, I know, as president of Texas A&M University, that you would love for everybody to go to A&M. As a recruiter for Texas Tech, I might argue I wish everybody go to Tech. I want them to be successful, period. And if that means you go to Hill College first, or it means if you go to Blaine or you go to Midwest, I don't care where you go. We want you to be successful because success begets success. And, to your point, just looking for those small opportunities, ones that you might not associate with a big brand, that could be the very door that opens up the bigger opportunity.

Speaker 3: 35:37

Fair, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 35:42

Okay, well, I tell you what. You've got all my questions covered here. Is there anything else that you'd like to share, just in terms of encouragement to teachers or students?

Speaker 3: 35:53

Oh man, live it up while you can. You know you really miss those days and those experiences. There's not a day that goes by that I still don't think about how wonderful that phase of life is and would love to have some of those moments back. And it's always great to go back and be part of FFA programs and conventions and conferences and it just brings such warm memories. But it doesn't go away. Like I said, I literally work with people today that I met 30 years ago because of FFA, so it is a lifelong connection that you're making value.

Speaker 2: 36:35

So within the ambassador program, for the folks that know about the Foundation Ambassador Program, we give awards every summer and one of the awards that we give is called the three-foot rule, and we teach those ambassadors how to get to know everybody within three feet of them, because we tell them you better get to know them because one day they're going to be your customer, your client, your colleague, your constituent, your teammate. So practice the three-foot rule, because you never know when it's going to come in handy. Well, corey, thank you for joining us today and, as with all of our podcasts, we like to wrap up with a fun question. So you get one fun question today, and the question is this what is the best concert you've ever been to?

Speaker 3: 37:21

Oh, my goodness. So I'm going to change the question because I am not a concert goer.

Speaker 2: 37:31

Okay.

Speaker 3: 37:33

I can't say that I've been a big concert person, so instead I'll talk about my favorite musical experience. Okay, I had an opportunity to spend New Year's Eve in Ho Chi Minh City, vietnam, and there was nothing more interesting than listening to a Vietnamese New Year's Eve pop song with about a million people. It felt like, surrounded me and it was probably one of the wildest concerts I've ever been to, even though it wasn't really a concert. So think about, like the big apple dropping yeah.

Speaker 3: 38:10

And so that was one that I always will always take with me, and there's a lot of great memories like that out there, but that was probably one of my more favorite memories.

Speaker 2: 38:22

That is a very unique experience and I can tell you, I can tell it meant a lot to you because just the category that you just put that in, that was really good. I took my wife on one of our very first dates. I took her to a musical, to go see Phantom of the Opera, and I always thought that was fun, because I'm the ag guy, right, I'm supposed to take her to rodeos and tractor pools, and so it's like no sweetie, we're going to go do something different. I do think those are valuable experiences. I've taken our interns to operas so I want them to experience things that are not in the norms of what we would experience, because they create such lasting memories like the one you just shared.

Speaker 3: 39:05

Absolutely, absolutely Get outside your comfort zone. You know, travel, see the world that's probably one of my biggest passions. I had a chance to hit all 50 states because of my FFA experience early on and I remembered asking so what am I going to do now that I've hit all 50 states? I said, well, go hit all the countries. So I am on a quest to hit 100 countries. I'm up to about 75 right now, and so I've got a whole rule sheet. I mean, it's a game I can introduce you to it sometime, but anyways, put yourself out there in these extreme situations. They leave great memories.

Speaker 2: 39:48

I'm going to close here with this one personal story and it's the respect that I have for Corey and his family. And I had the pleasure of knowing Corey's mom and I have the pleasure to this day to work with Corey's dad and unfortunately we lost Vicki Rosenbush. She's a tough woman but she also had a big old heart and they endowed a scholarship. They created Vicki Rosenbush Memorial Scholarship and of all the things I've done in my career, the Rosenbush family may never understand how special it was when y'all asked me to give that scholarship the first year on stage, because there was a hiccup in scheduling. Y'all couldn't be there because that's how much Vicki meant to me.

Speaker 2: 40:42

And so for the world to know, there are people that cross our passing life that make an incredible difference, and you don't always know it, but sometimes you get an opportunity to let other people know just how much you appreciated it. And I want y'all know how much I appreciated Vicki and how much I appreciate that opportunity. And one of the things that we say around the Foundation Ambassador Program is the essence of leadership is to plant trees under whose shade you may never sit. The essence of leadership is to plant trees under whose shade you may never sit and Cory. You and your family, y'all have done some incredible tree planting and there are a lot of mighty oaks out there that are providing a lot of shade and you may never sit under all of them, but you need to know that what y'all have done has made an incredible difference.

Speaker 3: 41:33

Well, thanks, Aaron. Mom was a big personality, a fun lady, and I appreciate everything you've allowed us to do in her name to continue to pass it on.

Speaker 2: 41:44

Well, that's what. That's what legacy is about Tom Ziegler on the Foundation Board. Tom always says he says everybody's going to leave a legacy. You're either going to leave it by design or you're going to leave it by default. So leave it by design, all right.

Speaker 2: 42:00

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the Growing Our Future podcast. Again, abraham Lincoln said that the philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. I tell people all the time, if agriculture's taught me anything, it's taught me this If you want to know what the future is, grow it. That means you've got to plant the seeds, you got to take care of them, you got to harvest them and you got to share them. That's what this podcast is about. It's about letting people come in and pour into us, and today was no different. Cory Rosenbush gave us some seeds of greatness. Our responsibility is to plant them, nurture them, harvest them and then share them Until our pass cross again. Thank you for joining us. Go out and do something positive, make a positive difference and just make this world a better place to live, work and raise our children. Thank you all for joining us.

Speaker 1: 42:53

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Growing Our Future podcast. This show is sponsored by the Texas FFA Foundation, whose mission is to strengthen agricultural science education so students can develop their potential for personal growth, career success and leadership in a global marketplace. Learn more at mytexasffaorg.