Colt Knight: 00:25
Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I’m your host, Dr. Colt Knight, extension professor and the state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And we’ve got a pretty unique episode today because I am joined by Mr. John Brubaker. He is both an author, an inspirational speaker, and a youth leader. This is more than both.
Colt Knight: 00:48
This is triple territory here, but I’m gonna add a fourth to this, millinery artist. Does that accurately describe your vocational aptitudes, John?
John Brubaker: 01:00
Guests are gonna get a horrible first impression of me because the first thing I’m going to do is correct you. Uh-oh. So, the term milliner typically is reserved for women, and the term hatter is typically reserved for men.
Colt Knight: 01:15
I called you a millinery
John Brubaker: 01:17
artist. Okay. Then I am
Colt Knight: 01:20
So hatter is the preferred term.
John Brubaker: 01:22
Hatter is the preferred term, but if you’re gonna call me an artiste, I can roll with that because I have a flair for the written and spoken words.
Colt Knight: 01:33
I guess there’s some artiste to that. Very good. But the reason that we’ve got John on the podcast today is I first met John because he came to the Northeast Livestock Expo where we were doing a judging clinic, and he spoke to the kids about public speaking and leadership stuff. And we love working with the kids at the university, and I wanted to know exactly how you got involved in public speaking and youth leadership stuff? And then how did you end up at the Northeast Livestock Expo with the vocational kids?
Colt Knight: 02:15
So, ag vocational kids.
John Brubaker: 02:17
I’ll answer your second question first, and then we’ll roll back to the whole public speaking, professional speaking thing. And I can answer how I ended up there with two words: Adam Brown. And we know Adam really well because he’s
Colt Knight: 02:33
the son of Dana and Lucia Brown.
John Brubaker: 02:35
I feel like everyone knows Adam really well.
Colt Knight: 02:39
So Adam thought that I was a photographer for the longest time because I got to know him when he was a little kid and I used to do photographs at the livestock shows.
John Brubaker: 02:51
Adam thinks a lot of things. So, I love Adam. So, I met Adam two years ago at the Maine Agricultural Expo Conference.
Colt Knight: 03:05
Trade show? Trade show, yes. Yeah. In Augusta. At
John Brubaker: 03:07
the Augusta Civic Center. I had a booth there as a hat vendor, and he comes wandering over late morning on the first day and says, hey. I wanna get a hat. I’m like, hi. My name’s John.
John Brubaker: 03:27
It’s nice to meet you. He’s like, oh, hey. Adam Brown. So I’m looking at these prices. I’m like, yeah.
John Brubaker: 03:35
He’s like, it’s a little steep for a kid. Do you do, like, student discounts? And I typically do not discount unless you are a military veteran. I don’t wheel and deal at the end of a trade show. I’m not offering, like, a special deal to, like, fellow vendors.
John Brubaker: 03:57
Like, the price is the price. I know my value. I know what my product is worth until I met Adam Brown. And he said, you know, I’m gonna go speak at this roundtable discussion on FFA, and I’d be wearing your hat. I’d essentially be a walking, talking, good-looking billboard for you and your hat business, John.
John Brubaker: 04:23
Like, we’re peers. He’s calling me John. I’m like, this kid’s got some swagger. I never discount, and he’s about to get me. So I said, tell me what your budget is. I’ll work with you.
John Brubaker: 04:36
And I never do this, so just understand, like, what you’ve done is pretty rare. And he’s like, here’s what I can afford. Happy to pay you. I got cash. So, cash is king.
John Brubaker: 04:50
And I gave him a nice, healthy one-time student discount. And he wore that hat. We branded his family’s farm’s logo in the back of it. And he wore that hat on stage at this, you know, panel discussion, which he absolutely rocked. And, you know, we’re just chatting before and afterwards.
John Brubaker: 05:11
And I had mentioned to him that, you know, one of the things I do is, you know, I was a college professor full-time and a lacrosse coach for twelve years. And now, you know, just because I enjoy teaching, I teach a public speaking class at my local college. Wednesday nights. One class is just fun. I enjoy it. And I think it helps me sharpen my axe, so to speak, as a professional speaker.
John Brubaker: 05:36
And just working with kids keeps you young. Kids of any age, college students, anything. So he just stored that info away. And then when he introduced me to his parents, he told Dana and Lucia what I do. And Lucia hit me up, like, would you do a workshop on presentation skills for the kids here?
John Brubaker: 05:56
And I said, sure. And it ended up not being at the Ag Expo and ended up being at NELE. Mhmm. Earlier this summer. And that is how I ended up there: simply Adam Brown being the first and only person to successfully get me to discount and wheel and deal. And if anyone who knows Adam is listening, they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s on brand.
John Brubaker: 06:24
And he’s absolutely lived up to that. But so, yeah, I really am very grateful that Adam introduced me to those folks. I consider them all friends now. It’s wonderful what they do for the kids in the ag community here in Maine. Just great people.
John Brubaker: 06:43
Yeah. Then
Colt Knight: 06:44
you got to meet Sierra. Sierra Hammond. Where did you meet Sierra?
John Brubaker: 06:50
So Sierra was a participant in the workshop I did. Yep. And the parents kinda sat on the perimeter of the building in the room there. They wanted to just sit there and be flies on the wall, but I said, like, if you’re gonna be in here, you’re gonna be involved. I’m gonna ask you guys questions. I’ll ask you to participate.
John Brubaker: 07:10
I’m gonna give you the handouts too. And you can tell where Sierra gets her manners and her attention to detail. Her mom was probably the most engaged, involved parent there. And when I said that, like, I was kinda joking around with the parents. It was right after lunch.
John Brubaker: 07:30
They were just like they wanted a little downtime, I imagine. But she took it seriously, and she was involved. Sierra was one of the most engaged kids, sat in the front row, dead center, raised her hand, participated, eye contact. Like, so I’m like, this is exactly what you want at a workshop for kids between eighth grade and twelfth grade
Colt Knight: 07:57
Yep.
John Brubaker: 07:57
On a weekend after lunch. Mhmm. So they got full bellies. They just got done eating. They’re naturally hands-on learners, and you’re trying to get them to sit still and pay attention and talk about something and practice something that people hate, or tend to hate, and that’s public speaking.
John Brubaker: 08:19
It’s a number like, there are a number of very serious fears that humans have. Fear of death, fear of heights, fear of snakes. They all rank behind fear of public speaking. Yep. Which is wild when you consider there are people in this world who would rather be standing on top of a tall building, be bitten by a poisonous snake up there, and then plummet to their death rather than give a five-minute presentation at school or work?
John Brubaker: 08:48
Since you
Colt Knight: 08:48
corrected me earlier, I get to correct you as an animal scientist: venomous
John Brubaker: 08:52
snake. Venomous. Not poisonous. I’m sorry. I’m not a herpetologist.
John Brubaker: 08:59
Are you impressed I knew that word after not knowing the difference between poisonous and venomous.
Colt Knight: 09:05
Well, you are a wordsmith, so you should know that.
John Brubaker: 09:07
I’m something. So that’s how I met Adam and his family and then the Hammond family. Just amazing people. I’ve always said, like, when I do these ag events or I meet people in your industry, I meet the most interesting down-to-earth people. Yeah.
John Brubaker: 09:26
Absolutely. We end up becoming friends, like fast friends. And that’s, I think, the funnest part of what I do is the people I meet. Yep.
Colt Knight: 09:36
I really enjoy working with farmers and producers. And that’s one of the reasons I started this podcast. Well, it’s the reason I started this podcast. I personally get to meet so many interesting folks in my job, and I get to have so many great conversations, and I learn so much from these folks.
John Brubaker: 09:57
So, this one’s a real downtick then, if you’re talking to me.
Colt Knight: 10:00
Why don’t… Is there any way to harness this where I can share these stories and experiences with the public, you know, the producers and farmers that I work with as well? And the podcast thing. And it took a while to build up what I thought was the skill set and knowledge base to start a podcast, and it turned out I did a whole lot of thinking for nothing. I could have just set a microphone between two people and just started talking. That’s really all it took. You get better as time goes on, and I’m pretty much a technical person. I concentrated on the technical aspect of things first.
Colt Knight: 10:41
I didn’t want to get started without the best equipment and this and that. I had all the best equipment and I didn’t know how to
John Brubaker: 10:48
use it. I think what’s fascinating about all that is that podcasting, by its very nature, is authentic. People, well, I’d say people by their very nature are attracted to authenticity. And in a world where, like, video editing, Auto-Tune, like, Photoshop, everything is getting polished and scrubbed within an inch of its life to the point where, like, you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. Just doing a podcast where there are ums and uhs or maybe a bump of the mic, like, things like that. It’s just a normal, authentic conversation between two people.
John Brubaker: 11:29
Yeah. Like, I don’t even put, like, intro music in my podcast. I just keep it as, like, as normal as if the person listening were sitting at the table with us.
Colt Knight: 11:39
Yeah. I get to talk to other extension folks around the country because I’m heavily involved in the National Extension Association. And this year, we actually did a super seminar on podcasting to get more and more folks. That’s one of the points that I hammer home because as academics, we’re kind of trained. It’s like, give me the questions ahead of time, and I’m gonna research, and I’m gonna write all this stuff down.
John Brubaker: 12:06
You’re gonna do a research paper on this that’s gonna be edited.
Colt Knight: 12:10
Let me tell you, those conversations suck to listen to. We’ve had a few on our podcast. Some people come in overly prepared or you try to overly prepare people. They stumble over what they’re trying to say because they don’t want to sound stupid. But you always have to remind people, it’s like, you’re having this conversation with me because you’re an expert, and we’re just gonna talk about
John Brubaker: 12:32
what you want. And academics are used to giving lectures. And this is like the furthest thing from giving a lecture, but that’s their default setting a lot of the time.
Colt Knight: 12:41
Can be. Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m always amazed at how many folks who speak for a living are hesitant to come on a podcast because they’re afraid of looking stupid or sounding stupid. Luckily, we don’t have any video on there, so
John Brubaker: 12:56
that doesn’t chase anyone off. I have two teenage daughters who remind me of just how stupid I look and sound every day, so they’ve kind of inoculated me against feeling that way in other settings.
Colt Knight: 13:09
I do a lot of educational videos too, and that was when I was teaching other people how to make educational videos and stuff. And I was like, the biggest hurdle that I had to get over is just I’m an ugly, fat dude with a weird accent, and that’s just me. And that’s how you sound and look. And then once you get over that, you’re pretty free in front of the camera at that point. You can speak and do things, and then it frees you up.
Colt Knight: 13:34
Same thing with this podcast. If you’re trying to sound like you’re a radio guy or you’re trying to put on the fake NPR
John Brubaker: 13:45
Oh, yeah.
Colt Knight: 13:46
accent where we talk real low and slow like this, and you’re just yourself. And you have a conversation with people that isn’t scripted. And John can attest to this. I did not tell him anything about my podcast. No?
Colt Knight: 14:00
We just sit down and talk, and whatever comes of it, comes of it.
John Brubaker: 14:05
Because that’s what normal conversations look like. Yeah. You don’t sit down and meet your friend for coffee and email them a list of questions in advance of just sitting down, catching up with them.
Colt Knight: 14:16
So this is something that you’re learning with these FFA and 4-H kids, is sometimes they can be overly prepared, and it comes out robotic. Scripted. Scripted. And how do you coach those kids to go into the next level? So being prepared is definitely a level above, right? Absolutely.
Colt Knight: 14:41
We’re not saying that’s a bad thing. Being prepared. How do you get those kids to the next step to where they are naturally conversing without the scripty nature of it all?
John Brubaker: 14:53
So an example I’ll give you is some work I’m doing right now with one of your national officer candidates. I won’t name names because I don’t have permission to name a name. But, you know, you have to essentially interview with a panel or a committee. Mhmm. To see if you get elected. And there’ll be individual meetings and there’ll be a panel, you know, stand-and-deliver talk.
John Brubaker: 15:22
So it’s not a speech you’re giving for four minutes or whatever, however long. It’s that you’re having a conversation with each of these different people. You know, for different moments, you are having a one-to-one conversation with one young lady. And then a moment later, you’re having a conversation with another young man because these are your peers. So we’re just printing out pictures of each of these people and practicing looking them in the eye.
John Brubaker: 15:52
Just like you’re gonna need to do when you walk into that room at the National Convention. And it’s just like, first of all, the power of first impressions, and second of all, the power of eye contact and how much that builds trust. You know? Like, if you… this is great for salespeople.
John Brubaker: 16:11
If you’re meeting someone for the first time, you wanna look into their left eye a little more when you’re talking to them because the left eye is controlled by the right side of your brain, and the right side of your brain kinda has that filter where you’re determining how much you trust an individual. And some people might say that’s manipulation. I would say it’s facilitation if you’re doing it with the best of intentions. So it’s really all about the intention, you know. And I think when your intention is to educate or help people, it’s very hard to go wrong, you know, when you’re leading with the right intention.
John Brubaker: 16:47
It’s not to impress or to sound perfect. Like, I’m gonna actually encourage you to just be a little imperfect. You know? There’s that old saying, you know, when it comes to just about anything that you’re putting out there in the world. Perfect’s the enemy of great.
John Brubaker: 17:04
And when you’re trying to do something perfectly, like, that’s when… And, you know, I was a college coach for twelve years. I coached lacrosse. And I think when you’re trying too hard, you start to press, and that’s when mistakes are made. That’s when you have all the self-imposed pressure as opposed to just focusing on the process, being present in the moment, and simply just, like, letting the game come to you, so to speak. You know?
John Brubaker: 17:36
And there’s a version of letting the game come to you in everything that we do every day, you know, and it’s not pressing.
Colt Knight: 17:43
I had the exact same experience, and I think I’ve told this on the podcast before. Like, I was a teenager. My mouth was banded shut with braces with rubber bands. And so if I wanted to speak to someone, I’d have to reach into my mouth and pull those rubber bands out. And so as you can imagine, I did not grow up speaking to people.
Colt Knight: 18:02
I communicated physically or by staring or what have you. And then when I got to college, on the ag side of things, I was surprised how much public speaking was involved in our early classes in animal science and agriculture, and they’d flat out tell you. They’re like, your peers in science are gonna look down on you because you’re working with animals or crops, so we’re gonna have to outshine them by polishing you more and teaching you how to speak and communicate better. And I can’t believe how unbelievably true that is. So if you go to an animal science
John Brubaker: 18:43
Mhmm.
Colt Knight: 18:43
Or a plant pathology conference, you can see how good the speakers are at communicating their research and stuff. And then you go and listen to, like, a biology or chemistry professor talk somewhere, and they’re just awful most of the time. There’s some good ones, but I was surprised at how much better at communication our folks were. And then when I was a master’s student, whenever we’d go to events, your adviser would force you to go to rodeos, fundraisers, whatever, conferences, whatever, and you were not allowed to talk to your friends or people you knew, he forced you to go introduce yourself to the stakeholders, to the public, and talk to those people. If he caught you not talking to other people, he’d go stab you in the ribs or something.
Colt Knight: 19:32
But I learned more from that than just about anything. And then I had another professor that was like, Colt, you’re preparing too much. You’re the expert in this subject. That’s why you’re there. Just talk to the people.
Colt Knight: 19:50
Yeah. And that changed my whole trajectory on teaching and everything.
John Brubaker: 19:54
A lot can be said for not overthinking things.
Colt Knight: 19:57
That’s right. Yeah. That’s right. If you know what you’re talking about, you can converse in it pretty easy, I think.
John Brubaker: 20:03
There is a great book that I reread every year to start the year called The Inner Game of Tennis by a guy named Dr. Timothy Galway, a sports psychologist. And it is not a book about tennis. It’s a book about being present in the moment, not overthinking things, and just acting and really being yourself. Not acting like an actor, but taking action and being your authentic self. And it has little to nothing to do with the actual game of tennis and a lot to do with life.
John Brubaker: 20:38
What I find so fascinating about the ag industry and kids in the ag industry is that, and I think this serves them well later in life or as they mature, more than probably kids in sports, theater, other, you know, extracurriculars, there is a completely different skill set when it comes to we’ll call it interpersonal communication, but it’s not interpersonal. It’s, you know, interspecies communication. You are learning how to read an animal, their body language, how they communicate, and every animal is different. A pig communicates differently than cattle and, like, you are developing, like, and you’re flexing these different intellectual muscles in how you process nonverbal behaviors. And then you get to kinda take that skill set and extrapolate it with humans.
John Brubaker: 21:44
And a lot of communication is not what’s said by someone when they’re talking to you. It’s what’s not said. Mhmm. Or their body language, their posture, their eye contact, all the nonverbal. And they just have, in my mind, and I might be wrong, but they just have a lot more life experience, a lot more repetition with that from working with animals. And your attention to detail, because an animal doesn’t speak English, has to be much more acute. Mhmm.
John Brubaker: 22:21
When you’re working with those animals than when you’re just communicating with another person.
Colt Knight: 22:26
And I think the gravity of the circumstances growing up raising livestock is different in a responsibility sense because if you forget to take out the trash as your chore, no one is going to die. Mhmm. If you forget to feed or water the livestock, there are dire, you know, circumstances to that. And I think those kids, they grow up with a greater sense of responsibility. Yep.
Colt Knight: 22:57
They have a better work ethic. Not to say that other kids don’t, but in general, I just see a better work ethic in those kids. They understand circumstances.
John Brubaker: 23:08
The immediate, dire consequence to not doing the right thing. Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Colt Knight: 23:13
And I think there’s something to be said about these kids. And we’re always promoting 4-H, FFA, and youth programs like that because those kids go on to be leaders. Statistics bear that out. And then when I have them in class, I can tell that they’re better students generally.
John Brubaker: 23:30
And there’s a level of emotional intelligence, what they call EQ, not IQ, that comes from your ability to communicate.
Colt Knight: 23:36
And I see that from military vets too when they come to college. I see a lot of that responsibility put into them. Uh-uh. So that’s great to hear how you got to work with our ag kids, but how did you get into the position to give those inspirational talks, leadership talks, public speaking? Sure.
Colt Knight: 23:59
Where did you learn that skill set? So I’m taking it that it wasn’t from FFA or 4-H?
John Brubaker: 24:05
No. I was a horse kid growing up, but I wasn’t involved in FFA or 4-H. I just rode competitively from fourth grade until high school. And then I discovered girls and varsity sports and just sort of got away from riding.
Colt Knight: 24:24
What kind of riding did you do?
John Brubaker: 24:26
I was bilingual. I could ride English and Western, but primarily English. I grew up in Central Pennsylvania.
Colt Knight: 24:33
So, you doing Saddlebreds?
John Brubaker: 24:35
It’s just what was available to me. So, that’s the extent to which I have experience in the ag industry. Mhmm. I also had a worm farm as a kid. I guess you could say I was a farmer.
John Brubaker: 24:55
Growing up in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, there’s a creek called the Falling Spring. Falling Spring had great trout fishing. Jimmy Carter, when he was president, used to come to Chambersburg to go trout fishing in the Falling Spring. So I’d grow my own worms and sell bags of night crawlers to the farmers in town, the fishermen in town by the farms. Nice.
John Brubaker: 25:23
Yeah. And so that is my vast agricultural experience, Colt. But as for how I got into the world of professional speaking, there are some transferable skills when you’re a college professor. So I did that for twelve years.
John Brubaker: 25:38
I was also a college lacrosse coach. So you’re giving lectures in the classroom, and then you’re giving, like, you know, pep talks, pregame, halftime, locker room talks. You’re motivating a group of… I mean, being a college coach is a very unique thing. You’re motivating a group of young men who are basically at the equivalent of a coed all-inclusive resort known as college, and they’re on scholarship and you’re trying to get them to do work and go to class when they wanna party and meet girls. Mhmm.
John Brubaker: 26:21
So there’s some inherent challenges with that. And then you add to the fact that your job security depends on your ability to do that and motivate and teach and coach. So I got invited to speak at one of my friend’s Rotary Club events my last year coaching down in North Carolina. And I’m like, what do you want me to talk about? He was like, let’s talk about the parallels between leadership of a team, as a college coach, and leadership, like, of a company.
John Brubaker: 26:53
You’re gonna be talking in a room full of small business owners and CEOs. I’m like, okay. So I just talked about those parallels. And afterwards, I was talking to some of the members, and my friend Daryl just said, like, you’re pretty good at this. You ever consider doing that for a living?
John Brubaker: 27:11
Like, if you get out of coaching? I’m like, doing what? He’s like, you know, like, I mean, I didn’t pay you to come here and do this. You did this as a favor to me. But, like, being a professional speaker is a thing.
John Brubaker: 27:24
You can get paid well to do that. I never knew that was a thing. I never even thought about pursuing that. But, you know, fast forward a year, and I got fired for not winning a national championship. Kind of a victim of my own success.
John Brubaker: 27:38
In 2002, we’d gone to the NCAA final four, four goals away from making a national championship game. A year later, you know, I’m out because we didn’t take that next step. And that’s when I just started journaling and writing about the parallels between leadership and team building and sports and corporate America and started giving some talks. That journal turned into a book. That book turned into another book and another book.
John Brubaker: 28:06
And it just sort of took on a life of its own. But, yeah, when I got fired, that’s basically when I had a career change and became an entrepreneur. Does that answer your question?
Colt Knight: 28:20
Yeah, it does.
John Brubaker: 28:21
I always have a long answer to a short question. I apologize.
Colt Knight: 28:24
Oh, that’s fine. But here recently, I’ve been asked to start giving, like, keynote talks at conferences and things, and it was really weird the first time someone asked me. It was like, well, why are you asking me? One of the first ones I got asked to do was at the Massachusetts Maple Syrup Annual Meeting. And I’m like, why do you want me?
Colt Knight: 28:48
Yeah. They’re like, we heard you talk about alternative marketing at one of the conferences in Maine, and we would love to hear that perspective down here. It’s kind of
John Brubaker: 28:56
a weird thing wrapping your mind around the fact that you’re a subject matter expert on something.
Colt Knight: 29:01
Oh, on anything, right? Yeah. And then I got invited to go to Hawaii to talk about educational video making stuff.
John Brubaker: 29:11
Please tell me it was during the dead of winter up here.
Colt Knight: 29:14
It was not. It was, to be honest with
John Brubaker: 29:17
you. It’s just a business model. When it’s cold up here, go somewhere
Colt Knight: 29:19
warm. All in all, it wasn’t a fun experience because I got stuck in airports most of the time, and all my loafing time in Hawaii got eaten up by rescheduled flights. Basically, I had to go there, give my talk, fly back. Ouch.
Colt Knight: 29:35
So, it wasn’t as exciting as it sounds, but the same thing happened. I got invited to talk in Tennessee. I got stuck in the airport. They ended up canceling the conference because of a storm and then rescheduled it. Got stuck in the airport again.
John Brubaker: 29:50
It’s a lot like being a musician. Yeah. And what I mean by that is, like, you’re basically paid to suffer through all the travel. Yeah. And then you go do the show or give the keynote.
John Brubaker: 30:04
Like, that’s kind of the fun part. But you’re gonna sit in airports, you’re gonna be stuck, you’re gonna have layovers, your flight’s gonna get canceled. It’s just
Colt Knight: 30:13
Meeting the people is the best part of it all. Exactly. You rarely have time to sightsee. Folks, it’s amazing how many folks think it’s vacation-like when you travel for work, and it’s anything but vacation-like. You’re lucky if you get, like, a spare evening or something, you can go
John Brubaker: 30:32
plug something in, but, yeah, my nickname’s Coach Brew because I never fly first class. So, like, if you think it’s a vacation, you haven’t sat in the middle seat, not an aisle or a window, on a Southwest flight
Colt Knight: 30:47
I had to do that for hours. Going to Hawaii. Yeah. Because I upgraded with points to the Comfort Plus aisle seat the whole way. They rescheduled the flight. I was in a middle seat on a three-wide going to LAX, and then I was in a middle seat in a five-wide going to Honolulu.
John Brubaker: 31:08
And when you’re big boned like us, like, that’s not
Colt Knight: 31:11
comfortable. And that was back when I was still really fat.
John Brubaker: 31:15
Big boned.
Colt Knight: 31:16
And it was, you know, your back would be so sore and uncomfortable. And I’m really glad that I have lost enough weight to where I fit into an airplane seat now. Yep. I’m still big, but big boned. But, man, it’s a lot better now than it was.
Colt Knight: 31:33
But it’s weird when you get into teaching folks how to talk in front of other folks. Mhmm. Because I’m not qualified to do that at all. I mean, here I am a hillbilly from West Virginia with an accent.
John Brubaker: 31:49
That’s part of your
Colt Knight: 31:50
charm. I get paid to speak for a living most of the time, and it’s something else. But it kind of brings us back full circle because we came here to talk about, you know, teaching those kids those valuable skills. Do you have any words of wisdom? Or, you know, we probably got more parents listening than kids. How would you convey to the parents of these kids to really hammer home how important some of these skills are?
John Brubaker: 32:20
So I’m gonna name-drop here. Not that I know him, but in an interview, it was either with Forbes, like Inc. Magazine or somebody, they asked Warren Buffett, with all your success, and you’re a billionaire, what was the most valuable learning experience you had? Like, was it college? Was it getting an MBA? What was it?
John Brubaker: 32:53
You know who Warren Buffett is. He made billions of dollars singing that song Margaritaville, right? Or was it his brother? It was his brother Jimmy.
Colt Knight: 33:03
I think he had more to do with
John Brubaker: 33:04
Coca
Colt Knight: 33:05
Cola
John Brubaker: 33:05
than… Yeah. Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, you know, business tycoon. He said it wasn’t anything I learned in college or a graduate program or even a work experience. He said, I took a course on public speaking. I think it was a Dale Carnegie course he mentioned.
John Brubaker: 33:26
And he said, I attribute my ability to, you know, make a positive first impression, sell an idea, command a room to that course. Not anything I learned in school. So I think, like, it’s simply, like, the ten-thousand-hour rule. Spend a lot of time getting in front of audiences and speaking and getting better at it. Like, you can’t get better at it without practicing.
Colt Knight: 33:54
And it doesn’t have to be in front of an audience. Just speaking to other folks, right? Yeah. So sometimes teenagers are shy and they don’t, you know, it’s like
John Brubaker: 34:02
They’re not shy about doing those little dance videos on TikTok. So why don’t you practice talking into the camera too? You know? But, you know, I think that’s just it’s a function of getting better at interpersonal communication in different settings. And I have a friend who’s a college coach, and one of his policies with his team, and I love this, and it’s something anyone can do, you don’t have to be a coach of a team, is for his players to communicate with him.
John Brubaker: 34:31
They can’t text him or email him. They have to call him on the phone or knock on his door. And people will be like, oh, it takes so much time, you know, like, that’s not efficient. Well, you’re in the business of, like, preparing young adults for the real world. And part of that is the ability to look someone in the eye, deliver bad news, sell an idea, convince somebody of something, or just simply have a mature conversation.
John Brubaker: 35:05
So I think the more we can have kids connect, like, real connections in whatever setting, the better off they’ll be. That’s what prepares them for life, you know?
Colt Knight: 35:17
Almost every advancement I’ve had in my career, I’ve been prepared, but being able to meet folks and make those connections, that’s where you get that job interview or that’s where you get that offer to come speak at our conference, where somebody else sees you and they offer to pay you at the next conference, whatever it may be. But if you were sitting in the corner and not speaking to anybody, you wouldn’t make any of those relationships to move on or do things or collaborate on one project or the next. Yeah, reading 10 books on self-defense won’t help
John Brubaker: 35:55
you in a street fight. No. Like, that’s the analogy I like to give. Like, you read all the books you want, but without repetition and practice in anything interpersonal, you won’t be successful. Yep.
John Brubaker: 36:07
So it’s just not being afraid to make mistakes. And one of the things that scares me with AI, and I’m gonna sound like the old man yelling at the clouds and kids today, but it’s like they’re afraid of making mistakes. Mhmm. They wanna be able to, like, Photoshop an image. They wanna be able to, like, video edit things before they post it because they’re afraid of what people think and what people say.
John Brubaker: 36:34
And if we can do something to kinda unwind some of that, it’ll be for the greater good. I wholeheartedly agree with you. But, again, when we
Colt Knight: 36:46
were growing up, things weren’t permanent either. No. You know, these kids are living where everything is posted online and it’s permanent. So making a mistake is probably a bigger deal for them than it was for us.
John Brubaker: 36:58
How lucky are we that we didn’t have digital footprints of everything? Goodness. Yeah. So I feel for them, but at the same time, like, I really wanna encourage them to make little mistakes. Yep. Take some chances.
Colt Knight: 37:15
You can make mistakes and be a good person. Yep. And grow from it. Yeah. Absolutely.
Colt Knight: 37:23
John, it was great to have you on the podcast.
John Brubaker: 37:24
This is fun. Thank you. Thanks for coming on, and
Colt Knight: 37:27
I think we’re gonna go find a sandwich, maybe talk about some hats. Oh, good. Yeah. Have fun. If you have questions, comments, concerns, suggestions for episodes, or you would like to have a custom hat made by John, feel free to email us at extension.farmcast@maine.edu.
Colt Knight: 37:49
And John, if they need to contact you, where can they go?
John Brubaker: 37:52
Hatsbybrew.com. And we’ll have it in the show notes. And one little last tidbit. Buy the misspellings of things that are hard to spell in your website or your name. Like, because if you went to hatsbybru.com, that’s the correct website.
John Brubaker: 38:10
But if you went to hatsbybrew.com, which is how most people probably spell brew, brew is short for Brubaker in my case, it’ll redirect to my website. So, like, you gotta make it easy for people to find you, Colt. Yeah.
Colt Knight: 38:24
That sounds like back in the tech days when everybody bought up all the available domain names just in case somebody wanted one in the future. That’s a good cottage industry domain squatting. Right. Well, we are gonna get out of here.