Ep. 48 - Brandi Buzzard; 2019 NCBA Advocate of the Year
On the Beat with Brandi Buzzard
Brandi Buzzard is one cool cowgirl, rancher, runner, and mother who is doing so much good for advocating the western lifestyle. We are excited to have her on the show to chat about her work, advocacy, and being outdoors on the podcast today.
Growing Up a Kansas Cowgirl
“The county that I live in doesn’t have a maternity ward… but I have lived in this county my entire life outside of college and grad school… in southeast Kansas,” says Brandi who chose to come back by choice.
Growing up like most rural kids, she was in 4-H, FFA and lived in the country. Her dad and grandfather always worked on production ranches but their family focus was in the world of rodeo with a hobby farm of 4-H animals. Working her way through the peewee, junior and high school rings, she received a full ride rodeo scholarship to take her education to the next level.
Getting a Rodeo Scholarship
“When I was in high school, looking at different options for school, I made a tape,” says Brandi with a laugh, admitting that it was actually a VHS tape that she manually mailed to all the colleges that she was interested in. “Make a highlight tape of your runs,” says Brandi and then include a letter introducing yourself, your morales, your passions and requesting financially funding to continue that dream.
A combination of academic and rodeo funding was how she paid for her undergrad and says that you have to be willing to ask. The worst thing that can happen is that they can tell you no so apply for everything and wait and see how it shakes out. This is a similar statement that Katie Lynn Armstrong said at the start of the year when she joined the podcast team to talk about how she got her first few pieces of work published.
Freelance Blogging and Writing
The same tactic with over 25 different article story line pitches when Brandi was living overseas as a new bride, was how she got into freelance writing. “All it takes is one yes to get your foot in the door for scholarships, a job opportunity… you shouldn’t be worried about one ‘No.’”
Brandi’s blog, Buzzard Beat, is a popular beef advocacy blog that stems from the fact that Brandi has always had an interest in writing growing up, it “came more easily than math,” says Brandi with a laugh. She hadn’t considered anything about communications until she was in her post graduate school and she found herself irritated by the sharing of anti-animal agricultural letters that were being posted into her Kansas State paper.
Taking pen to paper, she wrote a reply that didn’t fit any of the guidelines for the paper and wasn’t able to be published. Talking to her mentor, he ended up getting the article published into Drovers, one of the premier cattle news mediums.
A month later she had her blog running and she has been going strong with it for almost eleven years!
“I really like blogging, telling other people’s stories, telling my stories, and sharing more information about where your food comes from from people who don’t know who to trust,” says Brandi.
Speaking Your Mind
Sometimes people won’t see eye-to-eye with you and this is something Brandi has a lot of experience in her over one decade of blogging about ranching and where your food comes from. Being authentic is one of the key things; don’t beat around the bush. Who you are talking in a media interview and who you are when someone runs into you at the grocery store, be the same and be authentic.
Being transparent about how we raise food and cattle in rural America is the best way. Some people won’t approve of raising beef cattle and that’s fine, that’s their opinion.
The biggest issue lately is communities saying that meat-less lifestyle’s are needed to protect the environment. And, when we were recording this episode, it was the start of the COVID-19 lockdowns, their is recorded evidence of pollution dropping with the lack of cars, planes and human movement with the same number of cows - it’s not the cattle.
Social Media Strategy Tips
“My social properties aren’t focused on rodeo, my target audience on my blog and Facebook business page is food-informed consumers,” disclaims Brandi. “I just paint it the same way as I raise cattle.
“I am so passionate about rodeo, as much as I am about raising my cattle. I think that you have to share with people how passionate you are about it - if you are so passionate that it consumes you all day every day, it’ll come out in your life.”
“A bad night roping is better than a good night watching television,” says Brandi. “A broken barrier is a lot better than staying home and folding laundry.”
Director of Communications for the Red Angus Association
Outside of all that she is doing as a red angus seedstock grower and advocacy blogger, Brandi is also the director of communications for the red angus association. Every day, that job does something different every day - a draw that Brandi loves about her role. With that, she has her hands on everything that comes out of the association from state affiliates, the website, press releases, social media, national advertising budget, writing for the magazine and more. Planning programs and events with the state affiliates and policy work, proofing articles, e-newsletters, video work, and the list goes on and on. Brandi’s job also allows her to speak at marketing conferences for seedstock producers and more.
With the current situation of COVID-19, Brandi hasn’t seen a huge impact yet as she normally works remotely. A lot of the members, however, are feeling the impacts as their members are in the middle of bull sale season. Working with them closely, they are helping to notify potential buyers, assist in any date postponements or sales that are moving to an online opportunity. Working with those breeders and the staff to make sure that everything is appropriately communicated because, for the most part, those bull sales had to be all online to even be able to happen.
Being able to help those breeders and market their cattle effectively is important. Communications haven't changed as much, but the marketing team has had to go into overdrive to do all their work remote rather than driving or flying to sales. Being aware of the situation, monitoring it and communicating with their members.
Being a Rancher
Brandi and Hyatt met at a bar in Kansas State, in fact, they even have a fun calligraphy sign in their house that says, “We met in a bar.” Hyatt came from a cow-calf ranching operation and only took a break for his time away in college. In 2016, they started their own herd with commercial cattle and just two seedstock cows. Over the years they’ve slowly build their seedstock herd by retaining the purebred calves and then replacing older cows with purebred animals to continue that seedstock quality.
Long before they started their own seedstock ranch, the two got engaged on New Year’s Day, married on January 22nd, left on their honeymoon in February, and were then located in Australia for the amazing scholarship opportunity that Hyatt had received to study abroad. They had known the notification on the scholarship would be coming but, a highly competitive opportunity, Hyatt wasn’t sure if he would be staying in Kansas or heading to Australia.
The time in Australia for their first whole year of marriage was an amazing opportunity for them to start their marriage really strong. They didn’t know anybody, didn’t have smartphones, and had to lean on each other through that first year.
“We are so close because of that,” says Brandi, “I really think that that helped us get to where we are today, we didn’t have a choice - we had to be each other’s everything because we didn’t have anyone else.”
Working with NCBA
In 2010, Brandi was selected to be an intern at the NCBA Annual Convention Trade Show in San Antonio. One of the people that she had met and talked with was Darren Williams who was the Senior Executive Director of Issues Management and was also the director of the Masters of Beef Advocacy Program.
In 2013, a position opened for a manager of communication with advocacy and MBA program. By this time, she had become more of an acquaintance with Darren through meet-ups at college and other events; he encouraged her to apply and she was flown out for an interview. Receiving the job, she worked there for three and a half years, moving her way up the ladder to the associate director of issues management, working with the state partners, MBA, and more.
“It was a great opportunity for me,” says Brandi, “but it wouldn’t have happened for me if I hadn’t of networked and gotten out of my comfort zone to meet people…. Meet people and be outgoing - you never know who is going to be in that interview room when you walk in.”
Many of the skills that she learned at NCBA have been tremendously helpful to her at her job now with the red angus association. Even though she doesn’t do crisis management for them, it’s great tools for her to have in her inbox.
Food Waste
“We as Americans need to stop wasting food,” says Brandi and applied this motto to the MBA porgram when she was at NCBA for the advocacy opportunities. Recipe tips, leftover guides, nutrition guides, and came up with a Food Waste Challenge for the MBA grads and to encourage them to compete in it and blog about it.
“Honestly, it’s one of the things I’m most proud of from my time at NCBA,” says Brandi. “It got media attention outside of beef trade publications.”
While excited when she gets published in prestigious publications in the cattle industry, but to get information into retail stores, grocery stores and food blogs and magazines - that is what food advocacy is about. Reaching outside of agriculture and reaching people who may not know so much about.
“It’s still something that I am passionate about today, with all the coronavirus and shelter in place we are really cutting down on food waste… I am still using the things that I learned five years ago today.”
Handling Viral Advocacy Opportunities
Viral, as defined by Brandi, is when it crashes her blog - and it’s happened one time!
“When I wrote the letter to Congresswomen Cortez,” says Brandi about the letter that was when the New Green Deal was released. It had statements about cow flatulations that Brandi felt strongly about. She wrote the letter, slept on it, and then sent it the next day.
“Maybe I’ll put it on my blog,” says Brandi who thought that it was pretty slim that the Congresswoman would read it and thought someone online may like it. It crashed her website and while Brandi thought that it was going to die off after a few days, she enjoyed that time in meeting new people who were thankful for what she was sharing.
“What came afterwards I couldn’t have predicted or even hoped for,” says Brandi.
Sitting on her couch relaxing and she had a message from Bond Hillard in her Instagram messages that wanted to do a feature for MSN. Thinking that it would be the Kansas City affiliate and nightly news but it was the MSNBC from Washington, D.C., that wanted to come to their house.
Late at night, Brandi had to call her husband who was traveling on the road to tell him what was happening. The very next day they came with their video crew to the ranch - it was Valentine’s Day. A blizzard was en route but they braved the pastures to talk about the cattle. The next morning they all came out to the ranch for a true farm breakfast and the live lead-in was supposed to start but President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency pushed the segment.
It eventually aired and Brandi figured that that was the end of it. A month later, in March, a very large Facebook page shared it again and it got a huge resurgence in attention and Fox News called her. They wanted to do a segment for 5:30 am eastern time and so Brandi chatted with them at 3:30 am her time.
Then she got a call from the White House special interests chapter where he keeps an eye on agriculture and rural economies. He was looking for individuals to chat about what they see and the next month she found herself across from the Oval Office in the Roosevelt Room where she spoke with several White House Senior Staff.
“Write that blog post, you never know what’ll go viral,” says Brandi.
2019 NCBA Advocate of the Year
A huge award, the honor goes to the advocate of the year which is given annually to a Masters of Beef Advocacy program graduate to recognize his or her success in reaching or educating consumers that are interested in learning more about beef and/or raising cattle. Brandi was very honored to receive the award, who knew about the nomination process from the year before so she knew she was up for the award.
“There are numerous MBA grads that did enormous work and were on television,” says Brandi who got the call in early January that she had received the award. “I hadn’t known for six months, but I was very honored to get it. Everyone was really kind about it and generated a lot more attention than I anticipated.”
Rodeo & Breakaway Roping
“Breakaway is going to be at the NFR,” says Brandi. “If you had told me this when I was younger that this would happen in my lifetime, I would have laughed at you.”
Breakaway ropers are in the situation where they have to CHOOSE where they want to go because there are so many opportunities. “I am going to rope at Cheyenne Frontier Days,” says Brandi, “and my daughter is going to see it.”
“My daughter, who is three right now, she will never know a time in her life when breakaway was not equal,” says Brandi with a lot of emotion. The world that our daughters are going to grow up in when it comes to rodeo and opportunity is hard to even put into words how amazing and proud it makes these cowgirls.
