How to Speak Up When You're Afraid: A Former Monsanto Spokesman's Hard-Won Lessons

Jerry Hayes [00:00:00] How many other hominids does the geographic or geological records show that there were on the earth? And how many of them exist now? We killed them all. You know, we killed all the men. We took the women and the kids, and we killed all the men. And that's why some of us now have Neanderthal jeans in us and everything else because we're super competitive and we want to dominate and have dominance as the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:33] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we are interviewing one of my closest friends, Jerry Hayes, editor of B Culture Magazine. Jerry is one of those people that I've known for a very long time. And when we used to work together at Monsanto, every couple days, if I was struggling with something, if I needed to work some idea out with somebody that was not going to just agree with me, they were gonna push on my ideas, they were gonna challenge me, they were gonna bring new ideas, I would go sit in on Jerry Hayes's office and just chat with him. He is a beekeeper and used to work in Florida. He's actually a part of the team that coined the phrase colony collapse, which if you go to my original episode with him, the first time I ever interviewed him, you can hear him talk all about that. You can hear him talk about killer bees, all kinds of fun stuff. But today we talk about society and expressing your ideas and figuring out where your message best fits, even when you're scared to stand up and say something, and you don't really know the right way. So I'm gonna let you jump right into it. For those that have keep sending me messages about wanting to be beta test users, I am full. I'm getting tons of feedback. I'm trying to create a new class as we speak. So if instead you would like to find out what is going on with this network, I'm interested in maybe becoming a part of it, this is where people can go to support the podcast. And in exchange, I'm gonna put up classes as I get them. I'm gonna put up special content work I'm doing with my intern. I'm even creating kind of a virtual intern program. So these are all things that I'm doing to try and make it more valuable to you to support the podcast and actually help me build my skills while helping you guys learn from one another and get connected.

Vance Crowe [00:02:05] So if you're interested, go to Vance Crowe dot com. That will be a popup for you to put your email in, click in there, check out the write your email, and then that way when we come up with the new next set of people, we're gonna invite in so we can build this culture slowly. You will be at the top of that list. Thank you so much for joining. I am so glad you're here. Gary Hayes, welcome back to the podcast.

Jerry Hayes [00:02:35] Thank you Vance, for the opportunity.

Vance Crowe [00:02:38] So since we last spoke, you have become the editor of the B magazine in the United States B culture. I know there's a heavy competition between a couple of magazines, but you are now an editor of a magazine that focuses on bees. How's that been?

Jerry Hayes [00:02:56] First, you know, I was gonna make a joke that, you know, this is the epicenter of the beekeeping world now, but no, it, it's, it's true. What, what an opportunity. There's only a few beekeeping magazines in, not only in the US but in the world. And at, you know, I get, I fell into this and I get to be the entrepreneurial editor of a beekeeping magazine and select authors and articles and all that kinda stuff. It's, it's, it's very cool. I certainly a, a huge steep learning curve. 'cause I've never done this before, but I have wonderful people that help me out and, and work with me and say, Jerry, you can do that. And Jerry don't do that. But it's, it's been fun.

Vance Crowe [00:03:40] Who reads beekeeping Magazine?

Jerry Hayes [00:03:43] Beekeepers?

Vance Crowe [00:03:45] Very clever.

Jerry Hayes [00:03:49] Yeah. So basically the beekeeping world. So the beekeeping world, according to the National Honey Board, there's approximately 115,000, 120,000 beekeepers in the United States. And so they primarily read the B Culture magazine, the magazine I have, and then American B Journal, which actually I wrote for, for 30 some years to get information about how they can be better beekeepers and just keep in touch with the industry just like anybody else. You know, a stamp collector or a dog raiser or everything. And everybody has a, a magazine.

Vance Crowe [00:04:28] And so you were writing for a totally different magazine. You did this in the classroom, which is what really brought a lot of what brought you to prominence, right? Beekeepers all over the country would write in with questions and you'd answer them about what you knew about bees or you'd go find expertise that, and, but then you made the switch to being an editor. Did this cause shock waves through the beekeeping world, the beekeeping media world,

Jerry Hayes [00:04:51] You know, and everything I've done has caused shockwaves. You know, I, you know, because I was the chief of the a area section, the honeybee section for the Florida Department of Agriculture, and because of things I had done in research and writing the classroom and everything else, Monsanto offered me a job as honeybee lead for a new technology they were working on. And, you know, at the time, everybody hated Monsanto and probably still hates Monsanto. But when you have a technology and you have the smart people and the money to finance something that could help the beekeeping industry, you know, I stuck my neck way outside of my shell and gave it a try. And, you know, now I have this opportunity. So truthfully, you know, this, this ride, this journey in the beekeeping world that I've been doing for golly, almost 40 years has been phenomenal.

Vance Crowe [00:05:49] Yeah, I mean it's, it's striking to me that you are this, I think if you were gonna be an archetype, you'd be a librarian, right? You're very, very quiet. You're very like solitude, you know, get into work at 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM and be done by two. And it, it's interesting to me that somebody with that kind of internal personality is willing to walk into the chaos in the way that you are. Is that always been who you are? Have you always been like out looking for the next wild jump? Or is it just what's happened?

Jerry Hayes [00:06:19] No, I think it's just what's happened. You know, I consider myself and other people consider myself, you know, kind of an introvert. I'm kind of quiet. I, you know, do my job. I work hard. But by the same token that I, those aren't my limits. I, I do a lot of things. I ask a lot of questions. I like to be entrepreneurial because that's exciting for me. So I'm just a, a quiet extrovert, I guess is, that's a possibility.

Vance Crowe [00:06:47] A quiet extrovert that finds their way into chaos. I mean, like, it's just an interesting thing because we met at Monsano and I, it was one of the first times I'd ever seen somebody walk into an environment where they knew they were going to be hated. Right? They knew you had no doubt that people were gonna be like, you're from Monsano, and yet you did it anyway. And most people, particularly, even right now, it's a perfect time to talk about it where there's a lot of hot topics and people are like, I don't want to go in there. Who wants to go in there? I don't want to, but you seem to want to go into the fire.

Jerry Hayes [00:07:20] Yeah, because you, you, you can't be successful unless you test yourself, unless you stress yourself, unless you go to the limits of your knowledge, skills and ability, it's be a lot safer. You know, I could have stayed 40 years ago where I was and kept my head down and worked hard and been quiet and, you know, gone once a week to Walmart and bought groceries and, you know, and, and look at all the millions of people that do that. But would I have brought any value to the industry and myself by doing that? And, and I'd like to, I'd like to be, ugh, this sounds arrogant enough, arrogant enough to say that I think that myself and others who are not afraid to extend themselves can bring value. And I love the industry. I have a passion for the industry. And the only way you can bring value is to test yourself. And you fall on your butt lots of times. You pick yourself up, you dust yourself off and keep moving. But I think I, I think my, my goal has always to been, to be honest, open, transparent, listen to the industry, and then do my best. And people will understand. And for the most part, they have.

Vance Crowe [00:08:39] So as the head of a media outlet, you have this unusual responsibility that you didn't have before, which is something to do with giving the readers a broad enough spectrum that they can understand what's going on, but narrow enough that it's relevant to them. What are you finding out about how the world works by being an editor, a gatekeeper, a a a news decider?

Jerry Hayes [00:09:03] Yeah, and so my, my predecessor Kim Flom did an amazing job for 33 years here. And b culture is basically a, a magazine of hobby and backyard beekeepers who have an environmental perspective, who probably are, you know, they're 55 years old, they read the Mother Earth News in 1975. The kids have grown, they sold the SUV and now they want to extend saving the world. And in this particular case, it's, it's honeybees. And so what I want to do there is to, you know, everybody has, has, you know, blinders on in that particular case, I want to maybe take 'em off or at least open 'em up a little bit and share other things about the beekeeping world and other things that impact the beekeeping world in a, in a good way. I don't want, I don't want the 6, 7, 8 pages of text that, you know, just makes your eyes glaze over. I want those two pages with some white space and some pictures and, and hit, hit the mark with an idea concept. This is what I'm doing. This is what can be done to give readers opportunity and potential to think in different ways.

Vance Crowe [00:10:29] So what is the hot issue right now in the beekeeping world that, that the rest of the, of us might not be aware of?

Jerry Hayes [00:10:36] Well, I don't know that it's changed that much. You know, we have this external parasite, the varroa mite that, and I think I've done this to you before, you know, make a fist and put it someplace on you. This is the ve of mite that's sucking the blood and eating the fat of honeybees, kinda like a big tick. So it's like a, you know, it's a bug on a bug. And there are a lot of, strangely enough, after many, many years, there are a lot of people out there that are using this parasitic mite to market and sell products and systems and what have you that have no value. They're just making, making a buck. And so

Vance Crowe [00:11:19] Snake oil.

Jerry Hayes [00:11:20] Yeah. And, and, and, and because we are all tribal, we all have confirmation bias. There are a lot of people that join these groups and believe that, you know, green jello will cure varroa mites. And then when their mights, when their colonies die every year, then they blame, you know, the, the corn grower down the road or the, you know, lawn care guy for spraying stuff. I mean, so just trying to get everybody to open their eyes a little bit and, and think a little bit differently.

Vance Crowe [00:11:54] I am a little nervous about saying this because I know how it sounds, but I feel like it's important because one of the things I learned in Coronavirus was the audience that listens to this podcast, one of the things they value is like, how do things change in my perspective every day? Because it reflects how much changes in their perspective every day. And so I've tried to be as candid and as honest as I can. And the reason you're on the podcast today is because I had a dream two nights ago, call Jerry and I woke up in the morning and I was like, I don't have time to write that down. I've got too much to do. So from 4:30 AM until 1:00 PM it probably popped into my head three times. Hey, you're supposed to call Jerry, you have it written down here on your notes. Call Jerry. And then I looked down at my phone and Jerry Hayes is calling me. We hadn't spoken in like two months. And so I felt this sort of like, mystic connection and I was like, all right, I think the connection here is that I should call, you know, I should have Jerry on the podcast if he's calling me, let's talk about it. And a large part of that is because if you and I were sitting together in, in work like we used to, I would be stopping by your office sitting down in the chair and saying, I don't know what to think here. I don't know what to do. I like all people, wanna do the right thing, but I don't know what that is. And I am even afraid to talk about what the right thing might be because I know what it is to be pointed at, called out of the crowd and told the, what you're, what you decided to do was wrong. And we are going to shame you to oblivion. What do you think, man?

Jerry Hayes [00:13:29] Yeah, I think we both have been shamed to oblivion a couple times, but yeah, no, this is when, when you have a passion, when you have a goal and direction, everything else above that is, is politics. You know, how do you, how do you influence listeners? How do you influence people? You're going to interview, how do you influence, you know, corporations and, and, and universities and, and what have you. And so, you know, there isn't, there isn't a black and white answer to this. This is all about relationships, building trust, and how quickly can you do that? Because if people don't have trust and confidence with you at all levels, then you might as well just go in your basement and watch Netflix.

Vance Crowe [00:14:18] Yeah. And like it, it's interesting because the things that seem like to one person, there is no possible way that someone will disagree with this statement that I'm putting forward. And so they put something forward that seems obvious to them because in their gravity, well, in everywhere that they see information, every single other person they see sharing these ideas thinks the exact same thing that they do. So then when they put something out there that agrees with what this gravity well says, as long as it stays there, everybody says, thumbs up. Good job. You did a great job. But if for some reason your idea goes outside of your gravity well and out into the rest of the world, now you find out, wait, that idea that I thought was so purely simplistically true, that everyone would agree with it. Now has people attacking me for that idea?

Jerry Hayes [00:15:08] Yeah. No, and it, and it's true. And we have our social groups, you know, what is it Dunbar's? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:16] Dunbar's number. The 300 is So connections,

Jerry Hayes [00:15:19] Yeah. Dunbar's, number of, of how many social interactions we can have because our brain is only so big enough to, to take care of that. And we use those social groups to, to feed our egos, to, to feed our internal desire, to be accepted. And you know, as a result, sometimes we back down when we should be speaking up and then other times we speak up when we should be backing down. And so this is part of, I think, mortality is to learn how to engage, to talk, to share, and not be afraid of picking yourself up and dusting yourself off. But 99% of the people I know, and perhaps you as well, you know, once they get knocked on their butt a couple times, boy, that's all over with. I want to keep my head down, not make eye contact and things will be a lot easier. But then there's weird people, weird people like perhaps you and I, who this is kind of a challenge. It's kind of forming a new business, if you will, of how to convince people or understand others so that you can get a better understanding and, and, and bring some new ideas to others.

Vance Crowe [00:16:40] Yeah. The idea of the difference between shame and embarrassment strikes me as important to understand here, you know, like embarrassment being that thing that if you're walking in the cafeteria and you trip, you, your tray flies everywhere. Glasses and food goes everywhere. You fall down in the ground and you kind of smile and your face gets red and some jerk starts clapping or cheering and you think that person is doing you a disservice 'cause you think, oh, they're making fun of me. But really what they're doing is they're giving the crowd the social signal, Hey, we all know this happens. Let's give them a hard time. Let's have that cathartic moment and let's move on.

Jerry Hayes [00:17:14] Yeah. But

Vance Crowe [00:17:14] Shame doesn't work that way at all. Shame is one of those things that it, you go out and you make a mistake and it feels as though the world can see your inner core, some deep part of you. And so when they can, when they can peer into it, all you wanna do is climb into a hole and hide yourself over from it. And society has this natural reaction to be like, shame, shame, shame. Make sure everybody agrees that this person should be shamed. And this is such a weird tumultuous time that it feels like things that people could be embarrassed about. They're feeling forced to feel shame over and people are hiding 'cause they're afraid of that shame. It seems like a wild time.

Jerry Hayes [00:17:55] And there are different kinds of mistakes. And I think shame, we internalize and we allow, we allow that shame to grow and to people to recognize it. And then, you know, because we're a competitive species, those people pick on us and it kind of reinforces the idea that, yeah, we, we made a, a big mistake falling down with your tray in the lunchroom is a mistake, but it's different than, I don't know. Yeah. Adultery, you know, something like that. And so lot of, lot of our impact and inputs are, are internalized and we send out a message to others or we can, and, and I think part of it is that we, I don't care a lot about what other people think. If I'm trying to do the right thing, if I've done the wrong thing, I am more than willing to say, Ooh, I screwed up. I apologize. I understand what I did wrong. Right? Now that I think the goal is to have a goal and desire to do the right thing and then to be open and transparent.

Vance Crowe [00:19:12] I think that that's one of the transformations that it takes to become like a fully actualized adult is to, is to know that people are going to have opinions about you. That given what your perspective is on you, you're not going to agree with, but you, you really only have, did I believe I did the right thing? And, and at the end of the day, you wanna allow enough feedback in that can reach you that can say like, Hey, wait, your arrogant position that you were right there was not correct. You have to be porous enough that people can reach you. But at the same token, you have to have a straight enough something in you a a rod that is your integrity, or whatever that is, that's straight that says, even if everyone disagrees with me deep down inside, I know that was the right thing and so I'm gonna keep moving forward. But those two things have to be in balance because if one becomes stronger than the other, it it falls outta whack.

Jerry Hayes [00:20:07] Yeah, no, you really have to be able to have enough confidence in yourself that you did the right thing or trying to do the right thing and stand up straight and look people in the eye. It's when you collapse and you look down and there again, people can tell that you're vulnerable. And you know, as, as a, as a species, we've been very good at picking on people who appear to us to be vulnerable. Well, you know, ho many other hominids does the geographic or geological records show that there were on the earth and how many of them exist now? We killed them all. You know, we killed all the men, we took the women and the kids and we killed all the men. And that's why some of us now have neanderthal genes in us and everything else because we're super competitive and we want to dominate and have dominance.

Vance Crowe [00:21:05] Yeah. And that's always in us, right? And the, and it's that duality that, that thank God our ancestors are, you know, had that level of dominance. And that's for literally every single human being that's alive today. Yeah. Everybody, at some point in your ancestry, you had somebody that they were being pushed on by others and they pushed back. Yeah. And, and it's such a wild thing to imagine because you have this, this inner drive and, and I know, like I can feel that inner drive come out of me in this like when I feel backed against a corner. So, you know, the other day I was online and somebody came out and demanded that I look at these tweets that somebody else had put out there, evaluate their jokes for what they were and then denounce them. As soon as somebody tells me this is the opinion that I demand you have, there's something almost animalistic. I'm not proud of it at all. It's, it, it was like a flip of my, my mental capacity into I am angry. I need to show this person never to do that. I need to show everyone in a way that I just don't express myself in another way. It's, it, it made me into a person. I don't want to be

Jerry Hayes [00:22:16] No, that that's true. But there again, I think that a lot of this is genetics. 'cause we come from, we're, we're tribal, you know, we come from tribes, we come from clans, we come from groups. And we all had a level, we had a leader. Certain people did certain things and, and what have you. And then look at our ancestors. I think this is fantastic that our ancestors got on a boat 200 years ago and left their home. They left their families, they left everything they knew. You talk about being entrepreneurial and oh my gosh, to come here and start all over. And we have inherited those genes that a, allow us to probably stick our necks out a little bit more than others.

Vance Crowe [00:23:06] Yeah. And there, and there's something to that, right? The selection pressure for either people that are willing to stick their heads out or when they were for, if you were forced to get on a boat and forced to be over here, you, your clan survive. You figured out how to live and move and, and even in the worst imaginable conditions to keep going. And I think there's something lost right now in our conversation about humanity in that all of us got here because someone before us learned how to fight probably many, many generations before us learned how to fight, but also learned when it was time to put down the swords and work together.

Jerry Hayes [00:23:44] Yeah. And, and I think, you know, to expand this a little bit more, and you, and you know this, you know, we have our cells in our cells. We have DNA that is everything about us that we've inherited from mothers and fathers for golly, you know, tens of thousands, millions of years. This combination of, of genes that make us us. But we have these little power packets, power cells called mitochondria in our cells. And when a cell divides, of course it divides. And then the male generic mo moods of that, that doesn't happen with mitochondria. When a cell divides mitochondria will go to one side and the other side, they don't split, they don't divide. So their genes are the same as they were 12 million years ago when we became what we call human beings. And those genes are all the same, whether you are, you and I have the same genes in our mitochondrial, Martin Luther King and I had the same genes in our mitochondrial, Adolf Hitler and I had the same genes in our mitochondrial. So we're all brothers and sisters. And I, and I find it fascinating that we don't recognize that, that we wanna beat up our family.

Vance Crowe [00:25:13] What do you think is going on with the comments that corporations are making? And both of you and I have worked in a corporation in a limited way. I only did it for five years, and the rest of the time I've worked for either international organizations or governments or whatever. But in this case, I am surprised by how quickly they have taken up a political message. But maybe it's not a political message to them. I have to, I have to wonder why there are so many people quick to say, I'm gonna take a position and this position is going to be stark.

Jerry Hayes [00:25:47] Well, and you know, corporations are exist for their shareholders and the goal is to make more money to market more stuff, to sell more stuff. And I think 99.9% of corporate decisions are designed so that they do not negatively hurt or impact their direct market or their indirect market. It's all about money. We, we aren't citizens, we're customers. Oh, and and what

Vance Crowe [00:26:22] Do you mean? Tell me more about that.

Jerry Hayes [00:26:24] Well, we are pandered to by every advertiser on TV and the roadside and, and Google and, and everything else in order to get our financial attention. And the decisions that government makes and what have you are all based on that as well. Our votes are basically our money. So that's why politicians, you know, pander to us. And now there's so many politicians changing their course now as elections come up so that they get our voice. If we were citizens of the United Boy, I'm getting in deep here. If we were citizens of this country that we love and respect, we would take a more active role in amplifying the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But we don't, because we get returns for these financial favors that make our lives pretty easy for the, for the most part.

Vance Crowe [00:27:40] Do you, were you worried when the PPP and the these different loan programs started coming out that, that this was gonna fundamentally change where people stood on political issues since they were now getting money from the government for free?

Jerry Hayes [00:27:54] Yeah, no, I, I, I think so we're all influenced. This is, this is, we're here for survival, family survival, personal survival. And yes, if you can get those kind of inputs that allow you to survive more easily, then you will continue to do whatever it takes in order to continue getting those inputs.

Vance Crowe [00:28:19] Oh man. So what are you doing with your time and your energy and your attention right now?

Jerry Hayes [00:28:27] No, I'm having a good time putting together b Culture Magazine of course. And, and, and getting new writers and getting new articles and that kind of stuff. That's fun. And so, you know, I had to move from Missouri to northeast Ohio. This is where B culture's located. And so bought a, bought a house on a hillside and have some land and have my bees again and yeah, plant, we planted 20 trees last week and have about three acres. That was just grass. And so I had somebody come in and, and till up all the grass and I planted clover on it because grass, ooh, this is my, here, I need to take this opportunity. Grass is a waste of time. We have 50 million, 50 million acres of suburban lawns in the United States taking approximately 18 million pounds of chemicals and 10,000 gallons of water each above and beyond rainfall to keep 'em looking like the 18th hole at Augusta. And it's a resource black hole. They don't bloom, they don't help pollinators or butterflies or bees. It's just a magic carpet that sucks up resources. Thank you very much.

Vance Crowe [00:29:52] I mean, I hear you saying this and I, I think guilty man, I am guilty. I, I have a yard, I have green grass and I would say most of the reason that I cherish and love it is because I imagine how I could use it, but not really how I do use it. And that's one of those things that inside of my house, if I have an object that I have not used for a year, it goes up on the block of like, things I'm going to get rid of. And you go another six months and it's gone. My wife has a famous saying of like, things disappear around this house and it's her accusation that I throw things out that I don't use. And the lawn is that way for me. Like, I occasionally throw my Frisbee to my dog out of my lawn, but

Jerry Hayes [00:30:34] I don't

Vance Crowe [00:30:34] Go out there and play on it. I keep it because I imagine playing with it with children or sledding or something like that.

Jerry Hayes [00:30:41] Yeah. And, but you know, and like I said, I, I had this like, I don't know, two and a half acres dug up and planted in clover because

Vance Crowe [00:30:49] It was two and a half acres. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:30:51] Because Clover, you know, generally is pretty low growing, you know, maybe four, six inches. I don't have to mow it. It's a legume, it puts down roots, like 20 feet stays alive, it blooms, it adds nitrogen to the soil, improves the environment, helps honeybees and butterflies and all these other kind of things. But just thinking, you know, and don't beat yourself up about your lawn, but just think if we could convert 1, 2, 3, 5% of 50 million acres into something else, and it doesn't have to be dig up your whole lawn. It could be, you know, that those areas up and down your driveway or around your house or that spot in the backyard that, you know, nobody looks at if that you could convert them into some type of pollinator friendly plantings.

Vance Crowe [00:31:38] You know, I wanna introduce you to a guest I had on a guy named Lance Corbett who is doing his own landscaping thing. I think that this is an option, your clover thing that most people don't even realize is an option. I have an area in my yard where, because I put in a geothermal unit, I tore up all the grass, everything was messed up and it still hasn't grown back. So I was thinking maybe I'll sod it, but now that I'm hearing this idea, I think, well, it'd be fun to try Clover. I don't know how it'll look. I don't know if I'll really do it, but I didn't even know it was an option. The thing you're describing here, this is not being talked about in other places.

Jerry Hayes [00:32:12] Well, no, there again, it's, it's marketing. And so those, I hate to say this, Scott's is a huge company that if you look at their advertisements, clovers of weed, dandelions are a weed. All these things are weed. And you need this perfectly mowed green grass that was brought over from, you know, Ireland someplace because everything else is, is a waste of time and a mess. And it needs to be manicured and flat and it all needs to be even and all this other kind of stuff, which is marketing. It's a bunch of bologna.

Vance Crowe [00:32:51] So what is it like to have a yard of clover? Can you go out there and, and run around with your bare feet on or is what like how is it, how is it?

Jerry Hayes [00:32:58] Yeah, no, it's very nice. It's, it's, yeah, you've seen clover and Clover grow? No,

Vance Crowe [00:33:05] I have it not like this. I've only heard about like horses eat clovers. I don't even Is are you talking about like the things that are like three leaves and occasionally you find a four leaf one Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:33:13] And your

Vance Crowe [00:33:14] Whole yard is going to be covered in this.

Jerry Hayes [00:33:16] Yeah. And so I bought three different kinds. There's a seed company called merit Seeds close by and they sell clover seed. So I had three different, I had, I've had them mix up 40 pounds of this clover seed of three different kinds. Some of it, yeah. Just to, you know, 'cause I didn't want it all the same different kinds, different blooms, what have you. And mix it up. And then yeah, when the guy who dug it up also had, you know, a spreader and he's just spread these seeds and golly, it rained and they came up two days later.

Vance Crowe [00:33:52] Jerry, I tell you what, I, I definitely can't commit to doing the whole yard, but I have a section I'm gonna try this on. I think this is an interesting experiment. I, it'll be, it'll be interesting to see how resilient clover is. 'cause one of the challenges I have in my yard is the, the man that built this house before me, he's an artist. And not just with the way he built the house, but how he planted the trees he thought 40 years ahead. So we are now living in his 40 year forestry where he's created trees that have, that have created a lot of privacy. But one of the things he did was use pine trees.

Jerry Hayes [00:34:26] And pine

Vance Crowe [00:34:27] Trees have all those needles and those needles decay into being acidic in the soil. So it'd be interesting to see if that clover can survive in that kind of harsher environment. I know grass can't.

Jerry Hayes [00:34:37] Yeah, no. And, and you know, the clovers will probably be better. They'll need some sunlight, but there again, you know, they have roots that go down forever so you don't have to worry about watering them. They improved the soil. So yeah, I'd give it a try.

Vance Crowe [00:34:53] So what is, I remember this summer I was way, way too busy to pay attention to it, but people were talking all about murder hornets. Right. Do you know anything at all about murder hornets, where they came from, what that was all about?

Jerry Hayes [00:35:05] Yeah, so Asian hornets, there again, media got a hold of it and talked about murder hornets because Asian hornets will feed on honeybee colonies. You know, if you're going to feed your babies and you gotta catch another bug to feed your babies beehive is a wonderful place because it's, it's a concentrated area of probably 30,000 bees that all you have to do is, is sit by the entrance and grab bees as they fly in and you tear their heads off and you take the rest of them back to your babies. So these Asian hornets have existed in Japan and Southeast Asia for, for years and they can be a problem. They were introduced to Europe. You know, we have global trade and so, you know, a hornet can build a nest on a, you know, a container and put on a ship and it goes to France or England or what have you. And they show up and then they have caused problems with, with our bees. 'cause our bees are not used to having anything like this. But anyway, they found a couple in British Columbia and Washington state and there is some concern. And so they're out trying to put out traps so that they could catch any of these queen hornets so that they can't, you know, raise nests and babies and, and spread even more.

Vance Crowe [00:36:35] Do should, should the US public be frightened of murder hornets? Or is this already passed or?

Jerry Hayes [00:36:42] I think we should be frightened of everything actually. But even if these guys were ignored, it would take years and years and years for them to, you know, spread enough to be a, a major concern. And there's traps you can put on a beehive that, you know, allow the, the murder hornets not to have an impact. But yeah, no, we got enough to worry about.

Vance Crowe [00:37:06] You know, one of the things that I realized by spending a lot of time with you is that honeybee keepers or beekeepers in general, they have a special place in, in American society. There's like a, a special role that they play. People look to them and say, are the bees dying? Because we're putting up cell phone towers? Are the bees dying because we're using, you know, ag chemicals or bees? And I feel like, I don't know if this was always the case, but right now, if you are a beekeeper, people will hear that and they'll say, tell me about nature. What, because it seems like beekeepers are kind of at that edge between nature and domestication. And so beekeepers seem to be in a place where they are responsible for explaining to the broader public what's going on out there.

Jerry Hayes [00:37:50] Yeah, no, they, they are. And, and you know, before this whole COVID thing, you know, I traveled a lot and flew a lot and, and I, you know, when I was on a plane and you always got that person who wants to chat and they say, oh, what do you do? You know, and I got to the point where I wouldn't say I was a beekeeper because then the next 90 minutes I would be making a fist. And this is roa and this is,

Vance Crowe [00:38:15] He's like a priest that doesn't wear his collar 'cause he doesn't want to hear confession.

Jerry Hayes [00:38:18] Yeah. Put clover in your yard and all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah. So beekeepers, beekeepers are unique. We're a unique subset of the population. We, we love an insect. Everybody else is an phobe. That means people who are afraid of insects. You know, you don't want cockroaches in your house and you probably don't wanna mess with an insect that if you don't treat it right will hurt you. They will sting you. They will try to protect their home and their babies and and what have you. And, and so we are a unique subset of the industry and of agriculture as commercial beekeepers get very large. But there is a huge story to tell about honeybees. You know, honeybees forage looking for flowers in about a two, two and a half mile radius of their hive, which means that they impact the environment tremendously. Those plants, that flour, that need pollen taken from point A to point B so they can reproduce. So the environment is healthy. It's not just pollinating almonds and strawberries and apples. Certainly those are important for our food, but honeybees have an impact overall. It's kinda like the umbrella for so many different things. And beekeepers are, yeah, we all do this. Beekeepers sometimes are very chatty and will talk to their neighbors and their community and everything else. And then other times they're very, very quiet because their neighbors might be phobes and might call somebody and say, this guy's got bees in our backyard and I'm highly allergic and I'm gonna die and my dog phyto and you know, the whole different thing.

Jerry Hayes [00:40:01] So it, there is a balance.

Vance Crowe [00:40:04] So what do you, what have you seen over time? I mean, I know you and I have talked many, many times about writing an article for B Culture magazine. And I have to say I'm a little intimidated by this. And I have written for industry magazines, baking meat, all kinds of things. But when it comes to the beekeepers, I had a chance to go to the eastern Missouri beekeepers, you know, annual Christmas party or holiday party and give a talk. And I remember sitting there thinking like, you all are so powerful. Because if you decide to go out and tell everyone that the, that the world is in danger, they'll listen to you. If you go out and decide you're gonna tell everybody, look at how much better things are getting, or let me show you another path to your lawn. If you could do this convincingly, you have more power to change the world than almost anybody else I talk to. It feels like because the public has so much trust. So I'm intimidated by beekeepers in, in a weird way.

Jerry Hayes [00:40:58] Well, you know, it's something new and you know, I'm intimidated by you and you sit behind a microphone all the time and interviewing people, I mean, we're all intimidated by different, different things. But you know, when you, when you know a topic, when you know a subject and you have a passion for it, I wish more beekeepers would get out there and talk to their communities and, and talk to the Knights of Columbus and the master gardeners and, and everything else. But there again, as you know, you know, there's a small percentage of the population that are like you or or me who are okay with getting in front of an audience and standing behind the microphone and, and what have you and, and talking about that. And so how we could convince beekeepers to communally do a better job. It would be fantastic.

Vance Crowe [00:41:51] Well, I mean, I, I'm, I hesitate to talk about this 'cause it's not ready yet, but this is a good conversation is that I, from the podcast, I had so many people that were writing me during Coronavirus saying, Hey, I'd like to support it, I'd like to support it. And I didn't feel great about just setting out a donation can and saying like, oh, if you wanna support the podcast, put this here. So what I decided to do was, I love teaching people about communications and I love trying to show them not just like how to get rid of uhs and ums, but if you decided I wanna get on the path to being a better public speaker, where would you go to get better? Where would you go to get practice? Where would you go to get your first speeches? How would you write emails to get other people to allow you? And I feel like I, I'm, I wanna bring it up now because if, if beekeepers are like that, they should, they should join the, the network that I'm building right now. It's in this beta test user phase where I've got about 25, I was gonna put 15 in, but I got so many people that volunteered. So they're just getting in there and trying out the classes and trying out the network. But I want this to build because I want people that are trying to get better to help each other and use the internet to make it so we can learn from one another in a way that we haven't really leveraged in communications before. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [00:43:02] And you know, this is probably all a little bit easier or maybe a little bit salient, you know, when you can do this face-to-face or, or you know, on a podcast or something, but you need to write an article for B Culture magazine about this. And I think that we can promote this to the national organizations because I think something like this could be a workshop or a couple workshops at these national meetings for beekeepers in order to push this forward because we all need that confidence and we all don't know everything and we need to have that ability to say, oh, I need to do it this way, or this is the way to do it. And then, and then you can modify it from there, but you need a place to start.

Vance Crowe [00:43:55] Yeah. One of the great joys that I ever learned was when I was working at Monsanto, you had finally these scientists who had spent 5, 10, 20, 30 years working on something and all they wanted was like somebody to give them that little bit of a push, that few pieces of like, Hey, just change the way you're doing your introduction and people won't fall asleep and then you'll have 'em for the rest of the time. And when you watch somebody go from being locked in, they have all these great things to talk about to being somebody that can release a little bit of it. It's like letting rainbows into the world or something. It's really, really powerful.

Jerry Hayes [00:44:30] Well, it's super powerful. And you know, and being in a, a large corporation like that, I've always found it interesting that our leaders there didn't promote that kind of stuff. They wanted to be the spokesperson. They didn't want to share that time with somebody who probably knew 400 times more than they did on a particular topic. And so in order to yeah, make this a more equitable for everybody, you gotta you gotta tell 'em how to do it.

Vance Crowe [00:45:01] Yeah. And really, if you want the meritocracy to succeed, to be the people that are out there that are talking are the ones that know things that are interesting, have studied how to communicate it and then have practiced. The way you create that meritocracy is you give people the tools that they need to go out and out compete. You know, I used to always say, if, if somebody calls and says, Hey, we want this person to come in and speak, and a corporation says, yeah, but the real official spokesperson is right here. You, you're, you're missing the point of like, how is it that people decide who they wanna listen to and why they wanna trust a person. And it really has to be this relationship where people say, we've seen this person say something we wanna hear again over here. And I think corporations are reluctant to, to follow suit with that because they're in the business of making money and and controlling what the message is. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. That that's why they're designed.

Jerry Hayes [00:45:56] But we

Vance Crowe [00:45:57] Should understand that's why they do what they do.

Jerry Hayes [00:45:59] They do, yeah. That's why they do what they do. But, and you've seen, and I've seen the same thing with people say at, at Monsanto, those researchers who finally were taught, trained, what have you to get in front, it was real to the audience. It was not an infomercial. It was real about a topic or what have you. And this is what we've done and this is what we can do and this is what you need to do because it came from a real person who wasn't trained to do infomercials. And I think that actually builds value.

Vance Crowe [00:46:33] Oh, a hundred percent. You know, the, the greatest compliment that I ever received coming off of a stage after giving a talk one time was this woman came up and she was with a group of people that had walked in right before the talk had began. And then they came up and they were like, Hey, we just wanted to let you know that we are grateful that you did not give a Kool-Aid talk. And I was like, a Kool-Aid talk. What's the Kool-Aid talk? And she was like, the reason that the rest of the group didn't wanna come with us, the reason we were late is 'cause we were sitting there debating whether or not we would come here, the Monsanto guy tell us why we should buy Monsanto products. And when you talked about just what you thought was important about communications and agriculture, we realized you weren't here to sell Monsanto, which meant it wasn't a Kool-Aid talk. And if you think about the value of that for the company, if you can get your people to not give Kool-Aid talks, but instead express the thing that they know deeply, that they understand that they, that they want to get out to the world, that's how everyone in the audience will feel.

Jerry Hayes [00:47:28] Yeah, no, it was interesting when I first went to Monsanto and was first invited to, to give talks, there were, even though I had been in the industry for 30 years and had some reliability and, and resilience, I guess, and told the truth, there were people who before even started, got up and walked out of the room. And so it took probably four years, three or four or five years before people had built that trust and confidence back up that Jerry wasn't gonna give the Kool-Aid talk, that he was gonna tell us a straight, straight story about Monsanto and what's going on in honeybee health and what have you. But it, it takes time. And, and that's where we, if you can start earlier, it's better than starting later.

Vance Crowe [00:48:19] Well, I think that that's actually like the, the core of one of the reasons why I think you were successful. And so for people that don't know, if you would go see a Jerry Hayes talk during the years when we were at Monsanto, it would be standing room only, it would be the Aspen Ideas Festival having filled an entire room all the way out into the lobby to watch this guy from Monsanto. And, and it was because I think in large part, because you didn't say, I think most people when they get confronted with a communications problem, they say either I'm gonna take it head on or I'm going to avoid it completely. And what I watched you do, which I think was really very insightful, was to say, I'm not going to try and play the game that other people want me to play. I'm going to stand up and talk about the things that I think are important. I'm going to address the issue as I see people need to hear about it. And ultimately this will answer the questions and the problems that you have. But that's not my goal. My goal is I have other information I want to get to you. And that made it, it made it possible for you to find a new path that nobody even was talking about before you were there.

Jerry Hayes [00:49:27] Yeah. And it wasn't like I was not afraid to get up and do these things, but I wasn't terrified. And so being afraid means that you're concerned, you wanna do a good job and you don't know what's gonna happen. But if you're, if you're so afraid that it immobilizes you, then you've lost everything.

Vance Crowe [00:49:48] Yeah. And on some level, if you really are terrified, you probably haven't worked out the thing that you need to, to be ready to go out into prime time. Right there. I think you're right about that fear versus terror because fear, if you don't have fear, then you're probably not saying anything that matters. Right. You're saying things that you assume everybody's always going to agree with. I talk about this question all the time, the the Peter Teal paradox. Whenever I'm running a panel with other, with other guests on there, I know that they all wanna be liked by the, by the audience. They wanna say things that people are gonna go, Ooh, ah, yes, I already agree with that. So I try and force people into this Peter Teel paradox, which is, what is one thing you think is true that nobody agrees with you on? And if they, if the person tries to actually say something that people already agree on, then you failed. Right. And if you say something that they don't agree with, now you've put yourself in a box and you gotta climb out of it in some way. And that always yields more interesting answers than tell me things you think everybody in this room already wants to hear.

Jerry Hayes [00:50:52] Well, yeah, no, and that's confronting confirmation bias, not only for your audience, but for yourself in order to open up the doors to these to challenge yourself and others thinking and, and paradigms so that you can make advance. If you're gonna say the same stuff in an infomercial all the time, you got nothing and nobody's gonna remember you. But if you say, Ooh, Jerry said this, and golly, that almost sounds, let me think about this some more. You've won, you've totally won.

Vance Crowe [00:51:23] And that is like, I don't, I don't know if it is for you, but for me, that is the spirit of being alive, right? That is the very thing of like, I'm gonna push on this thing and now let's see what happens, right? I'm gonna touch this and I'm gonna see if I can do it. And I think that there is a balance between touching things you should and touching a hot stove, and maybe there's a good time to touch a hot stove, but it's a, it's a weird balance, but you've gotta be looking for what do I have to share that I know that if I put it out there, I'm not gonna be embarrassed of it. That's my, my steel rod of integrity.

Jerry Hayes [00:51:56] Yeah. No, and, and there again, the whole goal is to bring value in some way, form or fashion. And to be able to do that by stepping out of your comfort zone is the only way to do it. Or you're, you're just stuck all the time.

Vance Crowe [00:52:10] Have you said anything that you look back on your career now and regret saying,

Jerry Hayes [00:52:17] Nobody's ever asked me that? I'm sure there is, but I can't remember. I mean, there's nothing that sticks in my mind like say, oh gee whiz, I'll never do that again, because

Vance Crowe [00:52:28] I can think of one, you, you think about it. My mine is, when I was at Monsanto, I studied what I thought was the inefficient organic agriculture. And I came to all of the worst possible conclusions about why they do what they do. And the more that I went looking for the confirmation that their, their ineffective ways were really just ways to steal from people or they were really just ways that I, I found exactly what I thought I was preaching about. So the more I would say it, the more I would see it. And that meant like, the more I was right, and I, it compounded to the effect that I ultimately was, you know, I I would kind of make fun of a guy named Joelson who has this country accent, and he's got this way, he does things because I wasn't actually listening to what he was saying. I was creating this weird caricature. And I look back and I am certain that if I found a recording of me talking about that time, I would be very, very embarrassed of the perspective I have. I'm glad I said it, but I, I know that there are times when you say things, you, you, you just didn't have a wide enough view of the world to be saying it.

Jerry Hayes [00:53:34] Yeah. I, and you know, and as you said that it's not something I said, but it's something I did when I first started at Monsanto for some reason, they spent $10,000 to make a PowerPoint for me about, about mon one of those Yeah. Monsanto and, and what they do and honeybees and what have you. And then I was invited to a, a local meeting and I did it, and I, you could just see I crashed and burned the audience hated it and what have you. And I thought, well, maybe it's me. Maybe I didn't, I didn't do it right or something. I mean, it wasn't a terrible PowerPoint, but obviously the audience thought it was. And so I did it again. And man, you could see the flames out in the parking lot where I crashed again. And so I never, I never did it again. And I always did my own PowerPoints and I never asked permission after that. That time

Vance Crowe [00:54:36] You and I had remarkably similar experiences. What do you think it is about that super shiny? I mean, the, the PowerPoints that a PR firm can put together for you are so much more beautiful than anything I could ever put together. They're, they've got more information. The colors all make sense. Why is it that when people see that it, it hits them the wrong way?

Jerry Hayes [00:55:00] Because I, I think it's, I, I think people recognize that when something is too good, there's something that matter with it. It's like commercials, you know, for, you need to buy this. And people are always saying, there's gotta be something else to that. Or, you know, going out and buying a used car, you know, and had that used car salesman tell you, this is the greatest car in the world and it's never been in an accident and we just changed the oil. And then if you take some time, you find out it was a flood in South Carolina and, you know, and, and they wa dried it out and cleaned the seats and, and everything else. So it's one of those kind of things. It's, it's how you present and portray. And I think when you do it yourself, you have those rough edges, you have those pictures that probably aren't the greatest, but I think it it, it makes people more comfortable because you're more like them.

Vance Crowe [00:55:59] I think that's right. I, i, it's one of the reasons I advocate that it's really good to be able to throw your slides down or put 'em away. Any presentation you give, you should be able to expect that the presentation is not going to go live. They're not gonna put it up on the projector. And now you've gotta draw your ideas. And because if you're drawing your ideas, then your scribbles and your bad handwriting and your misspellings allow people to see like, Hey, this is just a, another hominid that has these, you know, crazy ideas in their head and they're trying to put it out to me. Let me see if I can decipher what they're doing. And you have the kind of joined learning together, but that shiny perfectly done PowerPoint, it's like, it's too shiny for anybody to grab onto. It's like they, they hit it and then they slide down the window like,

Jerry Hayes [00:56:48] Yeah, no, it's, and people realize it's fake and it's meant to manipulate them. And, and people know that. And interesting thing when you do your own PowerPoint and you do your own talks and what have you, it's that idea that you've printed or those ideas that you shared with the audience. People will not remember those misspelled words or how your word went over the slide edge or anything else. They remember the ideas and how you presented the ideas and, and that reality and did that reality build trust and confidence.

Vance Crowe [00:57:29] Yeah. I, and, and you know, one of the challenges is if you write your own slide, if you make your own presentation, you have to have a conclusion, right? You have to have a, I am telling you this so that you can x And I think a lot of times when you do a presentation that somebody else has handed you the thing that the so that you can do X is something that doesn't actually resonate with the person standing up there, right? It's, it's, it's not to say that there's anything wrong with selling. So, so that you can, you know, buy this thing so that you can handle varroa mite is, is just fine if it's a real thing. But I think that when you're forced to come up with, why am I grabbing people's attention for 30 minutes or an hour so that they can do what, and if you truly value their attention as the most valuable thing that they own, that they're giving you, your conclusion has to be more than, here's a thank you note with the logo of our sponsors.

Jerry Hayes [00:58:24] Yeah, no, and, and most of my slides then and now are probably 90% just pictures because I found it better if I explain the picture and why that picture is up there. And then also, you know, when I had the overseers, if you don't put any text on there, they can't whack you because they can't, there's nothing.

Vance Crowe [00:58:50] Yeah. Legal departments are really happy to see slides with very few words on them. And so that way, and then it's like, well, I'm just gonna say what I'm gonna say. And

Jerry Hayes [00:58:58] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:58:59] It's much better.

Jerry Hayes [00:59:00] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:01] So Jerry, this summer is rolling on, people have had more time to themselves or in their homes than they've probably had in generations. What are you seeing about the beekeeping world? Are more people becoming beekeepers because of coronavirus and social instability? Or is it just about the same or too early to tell what's going on there?

Jerry Hayes [00:59:22] Yeah, and so during this, obviously people were home sequestered at home. Actually, our subscriptions have gone up 3000 individual subscriptions. Wow. We have a daily email blast called Catch the Buzz that goes out to about 30,000 people. And so,

Vance Crowe [00:59:43] Man, you hit the big time, Jerry.

Jerry Hayes [00:59:45] That has increased and yeah. And so, yeah, the audience is still there. The audience is more interested. They're reading more articles because they have time, they're thinking more. I get more questions. And so I guess, I guess my biggest concern in this position is that how do I, how do I transfer the magazine and other stuff to a digital platform? Because all of us are gonna die someday, and you're gonna be taken over and you're gonna be more used to a digital magazine than a, than a hard copy one. And how do you do that in an inviting way, you know, on, on how do you make a magazine come out on that screen? And so that's, that's my concern right now because it's not just information, it's the experience, it's visuals, it's tied to the text, it's the advertising. And so that's my goal is to try to figure that out so we get more, you know, millennials interested in beekeeping.

Vance Crowe [01:00:56] Yeah. I, you and I have talked about the format of magazines and things and, and I really struggle because on the one hand I'm like, oh man, Jerry, your life will be so much easier if you just have it on a MailChimp subscription. You just hit this thing and it automatically goes out and populates is great. But you're right, reading a magazine is something to do with the whole experience. The only it's in

Jerry Hayes [01:01:18] Magazine's.

Vance Crowe [01:01:18] Yeah, it is. Yeah.

Jerry Hayes [01:01:19] There's

Vance Crowe [01:01:19] A, there's a magazine. I, I actually, it's, I think it's expired. I need to get a new one. I go back and read all the old ones is America's Test Kitchen. And I love it 'cause it's got all these articles and it's got things about equipment and the thing that it does is it directs my attention, right? I think one of the biggest challenges that we have in this modern age is not that you need more information, it's that you need information curated and you want it in a situation where it's in a place where you can get to it, you can find it, access it, and then somebody's telling you, you don't have to run down these rabbit holes. These are the few to put your mind to. So it's hard for me. I don't think you should go all digital. I definitely don't think that,

Jerry Hayes [01:01:58] Well, no, not all digital, but I need to, I need to figure this out because we're all visual creatures. And so having that article, when you open up a magazine, you have that article, the first thing you see is not the words, it's the picture. And does that picture invite you to take three seconds to take a closer look at that article and its title and then the other picture, and then start reading, and then that first paragraph, does that hook you so that you'll read the other 800 words in there? And so this is the goal because this, this is a, this is a product that one article is a product with the visuals and the text that go with it. And how do you engage somebody in order to spend some time with it?

Vance Crowe [01:02:44] I love this question. And you know what, Jerry, good for you, man. This is not your background. You are learning a totally different skill, the inverted pyramid and,

Jerry Hayes [01:02:53] And

Vance Crowe [01:02:54] How to do visuals like Bravo. Man, this is what'll keep you young, young, young, is just keep learning new skills. I I, I really love this question and this thinking about how do you bridge this divide between digital and print? And I think what I'll do is put people from the network to try and toss this around as an idea. So as this network grows, I hope people come and they wanna have conversations with people like Jerry on there. If you're interested in joining the network, all you have to do is go to vance crow.com and put in your email. And then when we're done with the beta testing and we're ready for the network, we'll have people sign up. But this is the type of thing that I don't have the answer for. But the other people in the network might have really, really good ideas for you, Jerry.

Jerry Hayes [01:03:33] No, and I'm totally ignorant about this. So I, I can't say anything is wrong. So I would love to hear everything, how, how crazy it is, because that's the goal. The goal is to get information that's credible to people.

Vance Crowe [01:03:47] I love that, man. I, I love that. And I think that one of the things that, that has been one of the great gifts of starting the network is that people started sending me emails because I asked, you know, how did you hear about this? What was, and people talked about, what I loved about Coronavirus was that you didn't have the answers, but you were checking with as many people as you could to see what they thought. And I can't find that anywhere else. And you think about like, that's actually the easiest kind of journalism to do. That's the easiest kind of program to have, is just be curious about what other people think and then let 'em say what they think.

Jerry Hayes [01:04:20] Yeah, no, I, no, I think that's perfect because we all have to, I think we all have to be humble, not quite so arrogant and realize we don't know everything. And you can see that every night when you watch the six o'clock news and governors are talking and their medical directors, and a week later you find out they were wrong. You know, everybody's wrong, but we have to admit that we were wrong and this is a better idea.

Vance Crowe [01:04:44] So that leads me to a great concluding question. One that I've been asking all through Coronavirus, what do you think the world will look like in two weeks

Jerry Hayes [01:04:55] As a, as an official old guy? I don't know what it's gonna look like in two weeks. Certainly we're gonna be wearing masks more and, and maybe social distancing and everything else. But one of the interesting things about human society, human culture is we have a tendency to forget things. Really, really easy. If we didn't forget things would be, well, who was it? Santana said, those who failed to study history are doomed to repeat it. Are we repeating history now? Yes. We are repeating history now in so many different ways because people fail to remember, look at for history and then remember it and then apply it. And so my guess is that an x period of time, this will go away just like everything else has go away until we get the next pandemic.

Vance Crowe [01:05:50] Well, that's, I mean, I, I, I tend to agree with you. It's, it's a difficult thing to know what part of history we're we should focus on to learn from. Should it be the recent history? Should it be the distant history? And that's a, it's a, it's a game for, for everybody to play together and try and play with as much humility as possible. Because we don't know the answer. No,

Jerry Hayes [01:06:09] We don't.

Vance Crowe [01:06:11] Well, Jerry Hayes, editor of B Culture Magazine, this has been a great pleasure. If people wanted to put their hand up and sign up for B Culture and, and get, get the buzz, how would they go about that?

Jerry Hayes [01:06:23] Well, I think probably the easiest thing is, you know, certainly you can get on ww dot b culture.com and all the subscription information, and we've got catch the buzzes on there and you can look at past issues. But if you wanna get ahold of me, it's Jerry, J-E-R-R-Y, at be culture one word.com. And we're here, we're all in this together, so we all need to, to help each other. So I'm here to help.

Vance Crowe [01:06:46] Jerry, you are literally nothing short of an answer to my dreams. And I, I am always so glad when you come on, and now that I've changed from just doing it in person to doing it online, I hope you can come on and give us regular B updates, even though you're all the way out there in Ohio.

Jerry Hayes [01:07:02] Sure. I, well, the next thing I want to do is review your article for B Culture Magazine. That's fine.

Vance Crowe [01:07:07] Okay, I commit. I will do it. I will get it done and I will have the network help me figure out what is the right message for us to share with beekeepers. That'd be great.

Jerry Hayes [01:07:15] That would be wonderful. That'd be another voice is wonderful.

Vance Crowe [01:07:19] Amen. All right, Jerry, thank you so much.

Jerry Hayes [01:07:21] Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Vance Crowe [01:07:24] Okay, that's gonna do it for Jerry Hayes. Thank you so much for stopping by. For those of you that are interested in joining the network, even if you don't know if it's right for you, at least right now, head to my website, vance crow.com, enter your email into that site so that way you can be alerted to be in the next wave of people that'll get invited into the Articulate Ventures network, which is a way to support the podcast and in exchange, meet a whole bunch of people that are trying to work on their communication skills, have special sessions and even some courses that you can buy to help you get better at everything from getting rid of uhs and ums, to thinking about things like gorilla marketing and strategy for how to engage with the broader public in ways that you might not think of when you're using traditional communications classes. Clearly, I'm excited about it. I don't want to get ahead of my skis because there's so much work to be done, but I hope that you'll join it. So head to vance crow.com and throw in your email if you wanna be alerted. Thanks so much for joining me and we'll be back again soon.