CALF_News_August_September_2019

6 CALF News • August | September 2019 • www.calfnews.net Editor & Publisher Betty Jo Gigot | (620) 272-6862 National Account Manager Jessica Ebert | (785) 477-1941 Art Direction & Administration Kathie Bedolli, Lisa Bard Leslie McKibben | BluePrint Media Copy Editor Larisa Willrett | BluePrint Media Contributing Editor James Coope Contributing Editor David Crosby Contributing Editor Blaine Davis Contributing Editor Chris McClure Contributing Editor Kelsey Pagel Contributing Editor Katie Prewitt Contributing Editor Larry Stalcup Contributing Editor Will Verboven Contributing Editor Jim Whitt Contributing Editor Patti Wilson CALF News (ISSN 00077798) is published bimonthly for $40 per year by B.J. Publishing, 4303 East Cactus Road, #309 Phoenix, AZ 85032; (620) 272-6862 e-mail: bjgigot@calfnews.net Postmaster: Send address changes to BluePrint Media P.O. Box 292 Lodi, WI 53555 (608) 573-2530 Change of Address: Please notify us of your change of address at least six weeks before the change. Include the address label from your latest issue. Give both your old and new full addresses. See box at left. Please print legibly. Copyright 2019. B.J. Publishing CALF NEWS The Face of the Cattle Industry August | September 2019 Vol. 58 Issue 4 Published bimonthly by B.J. Publishing Gypsy Wagon From the Publisher ON THE COVER: Let’s start a new fad: Meatful Mondays … and every other day of the week, too. Continued on page 44  M y summer “walkabout” started the first of June when Phoenix temperatures headed for triple digits, and Kansas and Colorado beckoned. Ironically, temps have been high everywhere across the country and, boy, is it wet out there. The borrow ditches in north- west Oklahoma were full, and southeast Kansas is as lush as I have ever seen. From there to Casper, Wyo., where a grandson was married; grass is green, green and a cattleman’s dream. As I write this, the streets of Grand Island, Neb., are flooding and the calamity in Nebraska continues. The bad with the good in agriculture as usual. As you can see from the photo, I did get a chance to stop in at the Hy-Plains Education and Research Center to visit with Tom Jones. The working title for this issue is “The Art of the Deal” and, as usual, we have covered the waterfront – from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to China to a new brewery in Oklahoma. When you think about marketing in depth, you realize your entire life revolves around either buying or selling. Morning to night, someone is trying to match you to their product, just as we are trying to be sure the world understands the value of our product – beef. We all realize it is a brave new world out there as we watch the trade renegotiations going on right now, but don’t often think about just how wide the net has been cast. My youngest son reminded me of that in discussing his venture into the world of YouTube. A history buff, he started making videos for fun a year and a half ago. As viewers started responding, he made more. What was a hobby became a vocation and, within a year, The History Guy had a subscriber list of just under 400,000 viewers. It’s a very nice way to make a living and a chance to do something he loves. As he explained it to me, YouTube works just like owning CALF News . I have a subscription list of 12,000 readers. Our staff sells ads to advertisers who have targeted what you folks need for your business. The advertisers pay us for opening that door. The same works for the high-powered search engines on the internet. The History Guy viewers watch videos on YouTube, and Google keeps track of their interests. They then match their advertising base to those interests and show those ads to specific viewers all over the world, from India to Australia to who knows where. Along the same lines, I have a niece who runs an eBay store featuring more than 1,600 items. She just began shipping overseas, selling Denver Bronco shirts to custom- ers in France or wherever. Over in eBayland there are thousands of people who sell stuff in thousands of ways. My niece sells branded clothing, while the next guy sells bundles of leftovers from stores that are closing. Another might sell last year’s ballpoint pens by the thousands. There’s something for everybody. The point is, whether you are selling cattle at the livestock auction, services at the feedyard or beef over the counter, we are all in the business of finding the target and providing a quality, needed product.