Former National FFA Officer on Institutional Fractures and Self-Terminating Cliches

Miriam Hoffman [00:00:00] I added value to my team because I didn't fit in with my team. Like I added value to other teams. I've been on to the FFA like because I thought things that other people didn't think and I was willing to say things that other people wouldn't say. And so I don't, I don't wanna change that. Now,

Vance Crowe [00:00:14] I'm Tim Bickett, a grain and cattle risk management advisor from Worthington, Minnesota. And you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we sit down with recently retired national FFA Officer Miriam Hoffman. This is a rare treat. Most of the time people get done with an organization like FFA and they become robotic. They only wanna talk about exactly what happened in the ways that a PR person might want them to, but not this conversation with Miriam. We actually have a really robust conversation about what it is to see this huge storied organization that's been around for over 150 years from the inside, from the person that was selected to stand in front of tens of thousands of her fellow FFA students and give them a talk that they would want to hear and might find value in. She also represented them and voted on committee meetings and offered advice and guidance to the adults that are leading this FFA organization. This is a wide ranging conversation, and even if you have nothing to do with agriculture, don't really care what high school students are up to. You'll find the way that Miriam thinks about and answers questions to be truly unique and a really extraordinary experience. And to give you a little bit of insight and to why this was such an extraordinary conversation between Miriam and I is when she was considering running for a second time, she actually didn't win. The first time she went out for it, she came to me and said, Hey, I'm thinking about doing this and I just wanted to get some of your input.

Vance Crowe [00:01:48] And I told her that I thought it was a waste of time to run for this election. I didn't think it was a good idea and I heavily tried to dissuade her from doing it. And yet she went ahead with running for the election anyway, and she won. And it has been extraordinary to hear about her experience, to have conversations, to see the world through her perspective. And this is a truly unique experience that you're about to go through. Before we get to that interview, many of you know, before the holidays, I was doing a bunch of Legacy Interviews. This is where I sit down with a loved one and instead of having an interview for publication on the podcast, I keep it private. And this is me talking with one of your loved ones about their family stories, about values that are important to them and about lessons they learned along the way over the Christmas holiday. I heard back from a lot of people that purchased those saying this was a pivotal moment in my life. A core memory one where when I watched this with my parents and I heard their stories, things they'd never told me, things I'd never asked, and you brought up things that I never probably could bring up, that it actually changed our relationship with each other for the better. And it was a most memorable night that I'll carry with me for many years and will likely listen and watch these again and again. So if you would like me to do a legacy interview with a loved one, so you can have this treasured memory, go to store Articulate Ventures where you can hire me either to do it over Zoom, which is what I did over the holiday season, or if you live in St. Louis, we can always do it in person. I'm looking forward to interviewing one of your loved ones.

Vance Crowe [00:03:21] This is a cherished and a deeply fulfilling experience for me as it has been for the many people that have purchased this. So sign up today at store dot Articulate Ventures to have me interview one of your loved ones with our Legacy Interviews. Now, without further ado, we're gonna go to my interview with former FFA National officer, Miriam Hoffman. Miriam Hoffman, welcome to the podcast.

Miriam Hoffman [00:03:48] It's good to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:03:49] So you just got done with your national FFA officer role, you know, what is it like to stand on the stage in front of tens of thousands of screaming kids and give a farewell address about what you've learned over the last year?

Miriam Hoffman [00:04:05] It's one of the most surreal feelings that I've ever had in my life, and especially because seven years prior to that, I, I was one of those, I wasn't a screaming kid. I was a very, very quiet kid sitting like way up in the nosebleeds at national FFA convention and I was watching the national officer on the stage give a speech, and that that was the first moment when I realized that maybe I actually belonged in the FFA. So to be able to be that person giving the speech from the stage and, and to hopefully give that same feeling to other people in the audience was, was pretty cool. But it was also crazy because when you're on the stage, like you don't, you can't conceptualize how many people are listening to you. Like I, I could see most of the people on the floor, so like maybe a couple thousand, but like there's, there was a lot more people there than I could even conceptualize being there, which was kind of good because then I didn't think about it as much. But it was, it was a privilege without a doubt.

Vance Crowe [00:05:01] Yeah. I walked in and it's at this Lucas Oil, you know, stadium, so this is where the Cols play, and I really didn't know what to expect. I had been to an FFA conference before, but I'd only been, you know, where the businesses like the corporate supporters are, where they're like handing out trinkets and things to kids and saying like, oh, what do you wanna be when you grow up? I'd never been to the actual convention. And you walk in there and it is like going to a rock concert. I mean, it is like laser light show giant jumbotron where they're like, and now welcome the national FFA officers to the stage. And it's like all this pomp and circumstance and kids are going wild. And I was like, Miriam is gonna speak here. This was like an audience probably fivefold larger than anything I'd ever spoken to. And I was like, holy Jesus, this is big. Really? Yeah, I'd never seen anything like it.

Miriam Hoffman [00:05:49] Yeah, no, it was, it was really cool. And it was particularly energetic this year because it had been two years since we had an in-person convention. And so it, it added stress to my teammates and I and to all of national FFA staff, like coming back in person again. But it was really, really cool because so many people there hadn't been to a convention before, and so there was added energy in that. And we ended up in, in May we decided to have an in-person convention and we predicted 35,000 people would attend and normally we'd have 65, 70,000 and we ended up with 60,000 by, by the end of convention. And so there was, there was a lot more people than we expected and there was just so much energy in the room. And, and one of the really cool things that I love so much about convention was, and, and about FFA in general is that like we have, we have these like shared experiences that, that we develop together. And then we have these traditions of, we always say the same opening ceremonies, like each officer has their part. And then there's this one part at the very beginning of every session that we, we all stand up together and we say like, why we're here as FFA members to practice brotherhood, honor, agricultural opportunities. And the very opening session there was about, I think 20, 25,000 people in the stadium at that point. And I was like super nervous just walking out from backstage because you could hear the roar of everyone on the other side of, of the backstage curtain. But we got out there and, and we started speaking our parts and, and a lot of those nerves faded away. But when we got to that part where everyone in the stadium stood up and said those words together, that was like the, the final thing that I, it was, it was hard to believe that we were having an in-person convention after so long of, of virtual events.

Miriam Hoffman [00:07:25] But that was when, I mean, I teared up like I couldn't even finish saying the words because I saw all of these people in, in the place where I found, I mean I found myself in the FFA and like everyone's wearing the same jacket and like to find a place with so much unity when the rest of the world feels like it can't find unity was really, really powerful.

Vance Crowe [00:07:47] So I, you know, knew the FFA kids when I was growing up, like they would be around, but it was just something they did and I didn't. But how do you describe the FFA to people that weren't around at a school that had AG involvement? Like what is the FFA?

Miriam Hoffman [00:08:01] It's, it's honestly really hard to describe because there's the, you know, the technical description that is a curricular agricultural student leadership organization. And so we, we are chartered federally through congress and you know, we get federal funding for career and technical education and you have to be involved in an agricultural class in your high school to be a part of it. But then there's, there's the pieces outside of it. But I think the more, I guess the, the ethos of the FFA is that it's a place to belong and, and to grow and to be challenged by other people. And so we, we deliver personal growth and leadership and, and career success lessons through, through the industry of agriculture. So we have like this tangible thing that we get to see like, here's, here's what it looks like to live out leadership in an agricultural company, or here's what it looks like to, you know, find success as a farmer or here's what, it's what it looks like to do research in agriculture, but we're, we're delivering transferable skills through all those things. And so many students who get involved in agriculture classes in high school just end up there on accident. Their guidance counselor just put 'em in there. 'cause it was a,

Vance Crowe [00:09:06] Yeah, I mean think for a, for like the, like the tangible thing. If you're thinking like, hey, you're a high school student, how, what is FFA? Well it's like, you know, there's chorus and there's speech team and there's football and there's these other things. And FFA is like that in the fact that like they're an afterschool group, but yet they're different because it's, it's, it's like, you know, I remember those kids would bring like their sheep in and do like a sheep shearing thing or they would bring in like their corn projects or whatever. So it was like a, it was like a tech school slash competition slash like the most bubbly ag kids were involved in it. It was like a hard thing to

Miriam Hoffman [00:09:45] Yeah, well 'cause it, I think it, and I mean obviously like I'm, I'm biased because I loved it and I spent seven years in it, but I mean, you talk to, to most FFA students and they will tell you that like, it, it brings in the best of most of those worlds. And so I think one of the best ways to, to illustrate that is that like you ask, you know, anyone who's several decades into their career now, or even people that are, that are quite, quite far away from their time in FFA and you ask them like, what, what was the most meaningful thing about high school for them? Or like, who is their most influential teacher? They will almost without fail, say their ag teacher. And many of those people say like, my ag teacher was like my dad or my ag teacher was like a mom to me. Because there's just so much. I think that's part of, it's because there's a, a relationship usually with a good ag teacher that it means a lot more than if you're just in a club. You know, people don't usually talk about their band teacher in the way that people talk

Vance Crowe [00:10:38] About their ag teacher. Oh, I don't know. Well some people

Miriam Hoffman [00:10:40] Might. Yeah. I wasn't band. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:10:41] And,

Miriam Hoffman [00:10:41] And I love my band teacher too, but I think some of it's 'cause you, if you're involved in F ffa, you spend so much time with that person. And I think one of the other things that differentiates FFA or it's not necessarily entirely different about FFA, but there's so much more of it is those like peer-to-peer connections. And we talk about, we have a peer-to-peer leadership model. Like that's why we have state officers, that's why we have national officers is so that it's not just ag teachers teaching students, but it's that, you know, we, we see ourselves in the state officers who come and do workshops.

Vance Crowe [00:11:10] Yeah. So explain that whole system, right? So like there's in, in the FFA, like just in your school chapter you have a president and all these like secretary roles and it's very like formalized

Miriam Hoffman [00:11:21] And

Vance Crowe [00:11:21] Then that extends to the, is it is the next level state? Like how does this go?

Miriam Hoffman [00:11:25] It depends on the state. Okay. So in, in the state of Illinois where I was, I was a state officer, we have sections that have section officer teams as well. So there's usually anywhere from 10 to 20 schools, FFA chapters in a section. So that's, normally you don't, you don't have to have been a section officer or section president to be a state officer. But for all practical purposes you do 'cause you, you develop so many more connections. So yeah, then there's section office and then then there's state office. And so some states do it differently. But in Illinois the state officers take a gap year from college. They're usually either just graduated from high school or they have one year of college already. And then national officers, again, you don't have to have been a state officer, but it's very, very rare that someone who wasn't a state officer will get elected.

Vance Crowe [00:12:06] And so how do you become a state officer? So

Miriam Hoffman [00:12:08] You have to earn your state degree, which is basically a set, there's a discovery degree after your first year in FFA that you know, you have to learn the FFA creed and you have to go to X number of events. And then there's a chapter degree, which is usually, you get it when you're a sophomore or junior and then your state degree you can get as early as your junior year. A lot of people don't get it till their senior year. And that again, it's, it's also based on how much work time or how much money you've earned from what we call supervised agricultural experiences. So ideally every student in FFA has one of those. That's not quite where we're at right now, but that's the target. And that's, that's one of the things that we do outside of the classroom in FFA. So students like me who grew up on a farm, like I just keep records on my cattle and that that was my SAE but for other students, if they work at a restaurant, they can keep records on that. And that's, I mean, there's different categories for 'em, but anything that, anything that you can connect to agriculture in, even in a very small way usually counts. You have to make a certain number amount of money or work a certain number of hours collectively in order to earn your state degree. And then in Illinois, again, every state has a different process for it. And it's super interesting learning about how different states do the election process. But in Illinois you go through a day long interview process and that's scored. And so there's some, some FFA members, some high school students who are scoring as well as people in industry ag teachers, past state officers. And so the the top 10 scores from

Vance Crowe [00:13:33] And wait, what are you doing in this? You're like, they give you a prepared speech, they

Miriam Hoffman [00:13:36] Give you, what is it? Yeah, there's, there's a whole set. So there's a prepared speech, there's a facilitation round. So you present like 15 minutes of a workshop, there's a general interview, there's a group activity, which is always really interesting 'cause you work with the people that do

Vance Crowe [00:13:49] This. You're jumping through these so fast. So the general interview, like this is, is it, like you and I are talking right here,

Miriam Hoffman [00:13:54] It's usually questions like why do you wanna run for state office? Like what's your favorite FFA memory? Like just you kind of generic questions like that. Yeah. So then the group activity, you're, you're put in a group of five to seven of your, your fellow candidates and you're tasked with something that state officers would have to do together. And the objective, they don't really care if you get the activity done, like if you complete the task, but they care about how you work together. And then the, at the end of it, then they ask you questions about it when like you're all still together in a group and they'll ask you how is it like to work together, which is that, that was probably my least favorite part of, of that day. 'cause it's uncomfortable to answer.

Vance Crowe [00:14:38] Yeah. And so like what is the mind, what's going on in the mind of the person being judged? Right? Are you like, I wanna belittle my the other people, but do it in a way that everybody smiles or like how, how does this work?

Miriam Hoffman [00:14:51] It depends on what kind of candidate you are, but the most successful candidates focus on on just showing who they are and not like, like my job is not to beat the person next to me. It's to illustrate why I would be a good officer and what I would do if I were to be elected. And that that was something that I didn't really realize until the second year I ran for national office. Like I didn't, I didn't really know that when I ran for state office.

Vance Crowe [00:15:18] So you won at state office, you were a state officer.

Miriam Hoffman [00:15:21] Yes.

Vance Crowe [00:15:21] Then you get done, you graduate high school, you were already, I

Miriam Hoffman [00:15:24] Was already graduated. You

Vance Crowe [00:15:25] Were already graduated,

Miriam Hoffman [00:15:26] Then

Vance Crowe [00:15:26] You go and you run for national FFA officer. And is that the same sort of process

Miriam Hoffman [00:15:33] To some degree? So the state officer selection process, like that interview, that whole day of interviews with all the different, the group activity, the speech, all those things that selects the top 10 that then go on to state convention with about 5,000 people. And there's delegates, there's two delegates from each chapter that come and they vote based on speeches that you give on stage. And it's just by popular vote, like runoff style. And they elect five officers. So then you go to the national process and it's, it's just an interview process. But instead of having 500 delegates listen to you, there's nine peers usually there. They don't have to be graduated from high school, but they have to still be FFA members within that eligibility. 'cause you can, you're eligible to be an FFA member until you're 21. So those, those nine students listen to usually about 40 candidates listen to all those interviews and they create a slate that then the delegates at national convention technically vote on it to approve it, but it's ceremonial. Like they, they never down vote this slate. So it's sim it's similar to the, the first segment of the Illinois state officer selection process, but it's way more intense. So

Vance Crowe [00:16:40] You're going through this process and for a while there you're like winning, right? You're like, Hey, I'm section, hey, now I'm state, now I'm gonna go for national where you're competing. And for people that aren't aware, there are more FFA chapters in the United States than there are Walmarts. And so like that starts to put into perspective just how many kids are involved in this program and how many, like, you know, if you've got 60,000 people in a, in a, in an Indianapolis Colt stadium and one of them is looking down there saying, I want to be an officer. So are likely many of the other tens of thousands of kids in there. So you're going up and competing against other kids that have been successful at the sectional and state and now they want the national level and you don't get it.

Miriam Hoffman [00:17:27] It was, it was really, really hard to not get elected. But the interesting thing is that I, I didn't want to be a national officer until towards the end of my state officer year because I, I knew I, I mean I always thought it would be cool when I was a younger FFA member and then I got to be a state officer and I realized that FFA isn't this magical world of unicorns. That's amazing and everyone's perfect in it. And so then I realized, okay, there's, there's a lot of things to deal with at the national level and I didn't know if I wanted to do that for another year. But when, when it came to the decision point where I needed to decide if I would run to be the candidate or not, I just, I felt this pull, like I was just supposed to do it and it was, it was like the next step. And so then not getting elected was,

Vance Crowe [00:18:12] Were you nervous at the time or did you assume you would get it?

Miriam Hoffman [00:18:15] Oh, I certainly did not assume that I would get it. I almost never assume that I will get things, which is, and I, I pretty much always assume that I'm gonna lose, but, but I, I perform to the best of my ability, but I assume that that won't be enough, which is not a super common strategy. And I'm still not sure if it's healthy or not. But I mean, it's kind of worked. So I don't know. But but yeah, I mean when I went through the interview process though, I did, a lot of people told me I was gonna get elected. A lot of people that I knew and that like knew a lot of national officers, like, like you, you, you have it like you're gonna get elected and each interview round, it was a week long process. Each, each time I left the room I was like, I, I gave everything I had to give. Like I told the nominating committee what they needed to know. And so I had this conception in my mind that if like, if, if I tell the committee everything that they need to know about me and if I score well in all the rounds, then I will get elected and then I didn't. And so yeah, af after the process, I had somewhat of that like, oh, like why, why didn't I get elected? 'cause I did everything I was supposed to do, so I didn't get elected. And it took me several months I would say to realize that more, more people can perform well in the interview process and be genuine in the interview process, then we'll get elected. Like it's not like if this, then this like it might be, but there's gonna be a lot of people.

Vance Crowe [00:19:41] So when I went, when I was at the national convention, I got to see the part when the, they marched the kids up on stage that have been competing. And some of them, they already know that they aren't going on. Right. And so

Miriam Hoffman [00:19:54] Yeah, because there's a cut halfway through and about half of the candidates continue interviewing the other half know that they're not gonna get elected,

Vance Crowe [00:19:59] Which has gotta be devastating, right? Because you're, you're, you're like going up there and you're like, I can taste what it will be like to be the at the center stage where you are one of the six people and you know, the spotlights are all on you. And then it's just pulled away. Like you, you, it's like, it's almost like a pun. I, I like, I actually asked the people around, I'm like, you sure this is like a good thing? Like they're, they're doing this. Did you ever go up on stage and have it pulled? So you had the experience of going up there and not winning?

Miriam Hoffman [00:20:31] Yes. I, I made the cut the first year that I ran. So when I, when I introduced myself in 2019 at national convention, I knew that I could be a national officer.

Vance Crowe [00:20:39] Okay.

Miriam Hoffman [00:20:41] But it is, it is very, and one of my very best friends didn't make the cut. And that was, I did not realize how hard that would be. Like, it it like that the night when you find out, like everybody gets a letter. It's like this whole dramatic process. Everybody gets a letter and you open your letter and like there's a list of all the people who made the cut. And then the other side of the piece of paper is all the people who didn't. And I remember when I opened my letter, I was like, yay, I made the cut. Sweet. This is great. And then I flipped it over and I saw my best friend's name on the other side and I, that broke me in a way that I did not expect it would 'cause you get, but that's one of the things I love so much about the process. So like I've never been bitter about the fact that I didn't get elected. Like it was really, really hard. But, but you get so close to those people 'cause it's such a unique process and, and you're all going through it together. And so the when then when I didn't get elected then like those are the people, like whether, whether they made the cut or not, like at the end of the election, like it doesn't matter if you made the cut or not, if you didn't get elected. Like we all didn't get elected together. And

Vance Crowe [00:21:41] That's where the how is, how is the election of the officers different than just like a beauty contest, right? Where you have both men and women, right? Because like in a lot of ways a beauty contest is like people standing up and they've gotta have their, what do you, what do you wanna see in the world? I want world peace, that kind of thing. How do you think of it as different?

Miriam Hoffman [00:21:59] It's really, really hard to be fake and get elected to national office.

Vance Crowe [00:22:04] Okay.

Miriam Hoffman [00:22:05] I'm not gonna say it's impossible, but it's really hard because there is so much built into the interview process that makes it difficult for shallow people or people who don't know who they are is one of the biggest things. And and I did not know who I was the first year that I ran. I thought I did, but I could not ultimately articulate to that committee why they should elect me. Like I could tell them a bunch of things about myself that I learned and that were true, but I, I couldn't, I couldn't distill that down to here is the thing that I have to offer to national FFA that no other candidate has. And I think that's what the process is meant to do, is to help candidates distill that down and to help the committee who's selecting the officers to see what those things are. And so there's you, you have to have a certain amount of depth to get elected. So

Vance Crowe [00:22:56] What was the difference between the year that you didn't get elected and then the answers you gave the year that you did get elected?

Miriam Hoffman [00:23:03] I think a lot of it was because I was forced to see who I was outside of the FFA 'cause like you said. So I, I went through all the steps and I, I just kept doing the next thing in FFA and I was involved in other things in high school and, and in college. But FFA was the main thing. And so, you know, I always felt like, like my purpose is to serve people and FFA was the way to do that. And so then when I didn't have that anymore, when I didn't get elected, I had to figure out like, who, who is Miriam really? When she's not wearing the blue Cordray jacket and when she's not surrounded by all these people.

Vance Crowe [00:23:33] Yeah. This thing that you said, Hey, I'm a part of this group now I I really know I belong. And now they told you like, yeah, you belong, but you're not, you know, really you're, you're not national FFA officer belongs.

Miriam Hoffman [00:23:43] Yeah. Yeah. And so there was, was, there was a lot of growth that happened and because that was the first really big thing that I lost, like the, the only other FFA office or position that I lost or that I didn't get elected to the team. Like when I ran for state office, I didn't, I was the fourth person to get elected out of five. But like, I still got on the team. I didn't care that I wasn't president, I just wanted be on the team. The only other officer position that I lost was when I ran for chapter office, like my sophomore year and I didn't get treasurer and I got the next one like it, that was the first big loss. And so that taught me a lot in and of itself and going back to what I was saying earlier, that, you know, like it's possible to do everything right and not get the outcome that you wanted. So I learned that and that, that taught me a lot about my own perspective on, on what it means to set goals and, and to, to set out, to achieve something. And, and I've truly, and some people will try to tell me that this isn't true, but I never set a goal to get elected to national office. Like I ran for it, I wanted it, but my goal was never to be elected. It was to bring what I had to offer. And that's what I really started to realize. Then in that period of six months or so before I, I went through the process of getting selected as the Illinois candidate again, I started to look at, you know, what, what do I have to offer to the FFA? 'cause I I, I still cared about the FFA and I loved the process that I, like, I was willing to go through it again. And I knew that like I can survive not getting elected once, like I can survive it again. But it was also harder to choose to run again because after the pandemic happened, FFA programming looked different.

Miriam Hoffman [00:25:15] Like we didn't have the big exciting conventions anymore.

Vance Crowe [00:25:18] Yeah, you'd be the national FFA officer over zoom, right? Like

Miriam Hoffman [00:25:22] So

Vance Crowe [00:25:22] You've got all these responsibilities, but you don't get the big spotlight. There's no jumbotron, there's no like, you know, all these screaming kids.

Miriam Hoffman [00:25:30] Yeah. But, but one of the things that I learned about myself in those few months, so I, I finished at community college through the COVID semester and then I worked for a startup in, in Iowa, lived alone, hung out with people I barely met. And that I, I learned a lot in that too. And that was part of the figuring out who I was like, not just outside of FFA, but outside of my family. And that that was a big piece of learning, learning what I had to offer then back to the FFA and then some things happened, you know, in the world and, and in FFA in summer of 2020, that made me realize that I had always had certain feelings about national FFA and, and how it was perceived at the local level. And, and for a while I would just complain about those things. But I had a conversation with, with a mentor where he, he told me, he's like, yeah, you can, you can choose to not run again because you're tired of all this stuff and you don't wanna deal with everything that you don't like about the national organization or you could just go do something about it. And so that's when I really knew that I had something to offer to the FFA and I did not feel entitled to getting elected because of that. But I knew I had something to give that no other candidate would have. And so if I really meant what I said when I said I love the FFA, then I had to run again.

Vance Crowe [00:26:45] I mean, we started to get to know one another right around the time that you were thinking about doing national FFA and I, I don't think I would've been very positive on, on you running, I don't think at all.

Miriam Hoffman [00:26:55] No, no. I remember it was our first Zoom call when we first talked and I, I asked you to write me a letter of recommendation and, and you wanted to talk about it first. And you said, why are you wasting your time on FFA? I distinctly remember that. But that was one of the, that was one of the, that was one of the pivotal moments for me in running for office because I knew, 'cause I still had to convince myself why I was deciding to do that again. And so, and no one else had, no one else had the courage to ask me, why, why would you do this? Like, in that sense. So that I had to come up with a really good defense.

Vance Crowe [00:27:32] Well, 'cause we had seen, at least I had seen this, there was a kid that was from New Mexico who I didn't know anything at all about him, but I know that like somebody combed through his social media feed or something while he's a national FFA officer, they decide that some of the jokes that he made were unbecoming of an officer and they rallied a group of people around to get him booted off. And the national FFA, from my perspective, did zero to protect him. And so it was like, why would you put yourself in this zone where you have all of the bullseye on your back from being in corporate America, right? This like giant stage, which I had experienced myself and yet like expose yourself to people wanting to see you fail. Like what, what is the benefit here? And, and part in particular if the group isn't going to back you up. And so my perspective on this was like, I don't know, I don't, I don't see it here. And I mean, I was definitely open, you know, I, I wrote, you know, your your letter. So like I, I'm definitely open to having my mind change, but I remember being like, are you sure this is a good idea?

Miriam Hoffman [00:28:38] Yes. And, and I decided that risk was worth it. 'cause I I didn't have that much to lose, I would say. And yeah, that, that whole situation, that was ultimately the thing that I had already submitted my intent to run again for the Illinois candidacy. And, and the day that, that that officer got removed, 'cause I, I was friends with him. That was, that was a really hard day for me. And that was the day that I almost pulled my application then. 'cause I was like, I don't, I just don't wanna deal with it. But that was also also the day where I realized that I had a really, really deep reason to run. And it's because, and there's, there's so much about that situation that it's, it's really complex and nuanced. But ultimately that's, that is why I decided to run again, is because things like that are complex, but on the surface at least they weren't being treated as such. It was like this bad person, good people will get him removed. It's like, this is not how the world works. Like the, the line between good and evil is not between groups of people. It's within each person. Right. And so to see, to see that not being recognized was really hard for me. And, and I wanted, I'd want, I just wanted to show up and tell the nominating committee that like, here's, here's what I would like to do for FFA. And if if they didn't like that cool, like whatever, they don't have to elect me, that's fine. I'm fine without the FFA, but, but I'm really, I'm really, really glad that, that I did get elected because I also realized that I had a very low resolution idea of what was happening at National FFA and I, I just grew, I just thought of like national FFA as this one entity.

Miriam Hoffman [00:30:12] And then I got there and I realized like no national FFA, other than the fact that it's made up of the over 700,000 student members, like in, in the national organization as far as the staff goes, like there's individual people and there are individual departments and they are not all the same and they're not all on the same page. And they're not, they, they did not all have the opinions that I thought that they did. And I realized that there were people who fought for the things that I wanted to fight for, but they didn't necessarily have the freedom to say that.

Vance Crowe [00:30:46] I mean, I, so o oftentimes people will reach out to me, particularly young people. Like when I was director of millennial engagement, you end up having a podcast. You're in agriculture, you have young people that'll reach out and they say, Hey, I'd really like some advice. And what they actually want is for you to knock down some barrier for them. They're like, ha I think if I do this, I'll ask for advice and then it'll get easier. But I am never easy on people that come for advice. So like, I'll usually be like, here, read these two books and let me know what you think of them. And if they take the time to read those two books, then likely they're, they're willing, they're somebody that's worthy of, of interacting with. And for you, I started being like, oh, well if you're gonna do this, you really ought to talk to, you know, these people. And every person I sent you towards was definitely not a, they weren't anti FFA, but they would hold no punches back. And you went and talked to people that I think are like avant garde, like on the edge of science and farming. And like, they would call me up and say they really enjoyed the conversations with you. So once we went through that process and you were still like, yeah, I think I want to do this. And I was like, all right, well this'll be cool. Let's see where this goes.

Miriam Hoffman [00:31:55] Yeah, no, it was, it was really cool to, to bring that perspective because the kind of training that I had the second year that I ran for national office, and I won't even say training the, the kind of preparation that I put myself through the second year was very different the first year. I focused a lot on just the mechanics of understanding the process. 'cause like there's, there's a whole scoring system that isn't, isn't super transparent. And that's good because it used to be really transparent and people would just learn how to be the fake robot to get the points. And that's part of why it's, it's even harder now to get elected if you're fake. But I, I just went through and I just learned like, okay, here's how I answer interview questions to get the most points. But the second year I just had a lot of conversations with people and, and I did the thing where I would take an idea that I had and I would just like it, it was like throwing it at the wall and like seeing what sticks. But it was seeing how that idea would land with different people. And so that's what was part of what was so valuable about you sending me to all those people is that I, I got different perspectives about my ideas. And once I got an idea to the point that everyone saw the same thing that I was trying to say, I knew like, okay, this, this is it. This is what I need to do. And I struggled for a long time. And even this year, this is something I worked on a lot. I, I really struggled to articulate my ideas concisely because like, I have a lot of thoughts, but they're really, really hard for me to explain to people in a way that makes sense. And so going through just having a lot of conversations, like I, I did some practice interviews. It was like, here's 10 minutes, four questions, whatever. But I didn't do a lot of that the second year because I, I already knew how to interview, but I needed to know who I was and what I had to offer to then fill in the framework of how to interview.

Vance Crowe [00:33:37] Yeah, I mean you were talking to some of the most disagreeable people, people that are never, you know, the Lyle Benjamins, the, the, let's think who Kate Crosby. Like these are people that super nice, but at the end of the day, if they don't see your idea, they don't agree with it, they're not going to be like, oh, okay, that's an eh. That sounds fine. They're gonna tell you. And I would imagine that as if, if the process is trying to go for uniqueness and authenticity, there is no other way to prepare for something like that other than to talk to people that don't, won't naturally agree with you. They won't just sit there and smile and nod. Yes.

Miriam Hoffman [00:34:11] And as someone who is really high in agreeableness, like that was difficult for me. But it was also really valuable. I was just talking to somebody the other day about how, like I have, I've trained myself to ask for feedback like constantly and like I implement it. But that does not come naturally to me. I'm naturally very, very defensive when people call out things about me that could be better or that don't make sense, like internally. Like I hate that. But

Vance Crowe [00:34:37] You expose yourself to a lot of negative feedback.

Miriam Hoffman [00:34:39] Well, because, because I think, I mean it's, I, I have a lot of fights in my head, like the internal voices. And one of those is between the desire to, to for, for people to, to just like me the way that I am and, and to be, I like to be good at things as soon as I do them. Like, I don't like things where there's like a really long slow learning curve. Like if it's like really steep and it like I'm really, really bad at something and then I'm like suddenly really good at it, like that's okay. But if it takes me a really, really long time to get halfway decent at something, like I don't wanna do that thing. Like playing games like sports, like did not play sports growing up. I hate it now because like everyone else is just naturally good at it. 'cause they like did it in high school. I'm like, no, like somebody throws a ball at me and I just duck. So like, it, it, there's, there's that, that element to me that just wants to be good at everything that I do and I wanna be good at it right away. But then there's the other side of me that knows that I'm never going to actually be perfect at anything. And the only way to get close to that is to seek out feedback. And that side is what has won in the last few years. And I think that's, that's so much of, of how I got elected, elected the second year. And even the first year, like I, I had one, one training interview that I did. I just sat down at a boardroom table with some relatively high level people in, in an agribusiness and they just went around the table and they just would ask me a question and I'd answer it and then they would sit there for like five minutes and they'd pick apart everything that I said that they didn't like that I said for an hour or two. And I didn't cry until I walked out of the building, but that was really, really hard.

Miriam Hoffman [00:36:12] But I found so much value in that and it's so much more fulfilling to, to recognize that I'm not as good at something as I'd like to be and then work towards it than to just pretend that I'm good enough.

Vance Crowe [00:36:24] So when you ended up running the, the second time, what was it that you said, Hey, I have this thing that I wanna share with the nominating committee that, that if I don't run, they won't hear this? What, what was that?

Miriam Hoffman [00:36:37] The biggest thing that I had was, and I, it came down to the, I described it as a concept of like embracing complexity, which like sounds kind of cliche and like I used it a lot this year and it almost got kind of cheesy. But, but ultimately what I meant by that was, was going back to and when that officer was removed that like the world is too complex to treat people. Like they're not complex. And so when we have conversations about how does our organization get better, we can't pretend that there's some simple solution and we can't go out and virtue signal that, you know, we're we're doing what the rest of society is doing. So that means that we're, we're doing the right thing. Like no, we need to like actually dive into conversations to the point that we can figure out what we actually have to do. Like the tangible things that we are going to do to make our organization better. Not just remove people for things that happened years ago. And yeah, I dunno. So there, there was a lot there.

Vance Crowe [00:37:30] And also in, I'm, let's stay on that. That's actually an interesting topic, right? Because I, I actually just heard a phrase from a guy named Zach Stein. He is, is a very interesting way to describe things. He says, you know, that somebody has an ideology or they've been propagandized to the, to like a degree that they're no longer reachable when they use self terminating cliches, right? So like, it's like, you know, we, oh well we just have to trust the science on this one, right? Or the, you know, the science is spoken or, you know, this is the consensus on things, right? And the, the purpose of a self self terminating cliche is to end the conversation where there's nowhere to go. Right? And the interesting thing about you saying, hey, people are infinitely complex or you know, we have to, is that it's like forcing the door open and saying like, even the things that would be easy for us to all agree on, like we should probably keep that door open, right? Like let's, let's not just go ahead and make a decision that this is the right answer for all time.

Miriam Hoffman [00:38:26] Oh, a hundred percent. And, and there was a lot of different ways that I saw that playing out. So some of it was in conversations that you'd have with board of directors and, and in other ways it was, it was as far as agriculture goes, like I grew up in a interest with an interesting perspective on agriculture. 'cause my family grows organic row crops and we have dairy cattle, but we don't sell milk anymore, which got dropped from the route 25 years ago almost. But the cattle are conventional, but the land is certified organic. And then, you know, I got into FFA world and it felt like a, a lot of things that I heard about organic agriculture was organic agriculture was terrible and like shaming organic farmers and like for the first several years of my time in FFA, like I would not tell people that my family grew organic crops because I was afraid that I'd be shunned. But then that, that has shifted and I've noticed that shift. But it there, there's still more, like I, I wanted to talk about the complexity of agriculture too. And that again, there isn't, there isn't an easy answer to everything. We shouldn't all do the same thing. Like we don't have to pretend that there's one right way to do agriculture. So that was another piece of it. And so all all of those things kind of came together. But ultimately what I realized this year as I, as I thought about the world and I thought about FFA through that lens, you know, I thought that a lot of that would happen in the, the big conversations on the board of directors with the sponsors board with foundation

Vance Crowe [00:39:51] That you as a national FFA officer would be in a room, it'd be the six of you with the board and they would say board, what do you think?

Miriam Hoffman [00:39:59] But

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] It didn't play out like that.

Miriam Hoffman [00:40:00] No. And, and I mean there were, there were still meaningful conversations that happened on the board, but the most, by far the most meaningful things that I did this year were the, just the times that I spent having conversations with individual students. And many of those conversations were the, with the students who felt, how I had often felt about national FFA, that just that there's a, a disconnect between what's happening at the national level and the messaging from the national level to like the actual grassroots FFA chapters.

Vance Crowe [00:40:32] And what is that disconnect?

Miriam Hoffman [00:40:34] I think it's that it's, it's hard to explain exactly what it is, but I think it's, it, a lot of it comes from, or this was my perception at least, a lot of it comes from the fact that at the national level, we, we feel this pull to go in the direction that like broader culture is going in. And so like if something is cool for corporations to do, then this is what national FFA needs to talk about. Whereas students from small town America, students from urban Chicago don't necessarily care about the messaging of corporations. Like they, they wanna go to school and they want to have a place where they belong. They wanna go to school and they wanna have friends and they wanna be able to have a future for themselves. And they wanna be able to find out the path that they're supposed to take in the world. And it doesn't.

Vance Crowe [00:41:29] What was the message that you felt like the, the national wanted you to, to push down into the broader part of FFA, that that didn't seem right.

Miriam Hoffman [00:41:38] A lot of it was, was surrounded or it was surrounding like the concept of, of inclusion, diversity and equity. And, and there's again, there, there is so much to that. And ultimately how I see it is that like there, there is room for the organization to grow. And I see that largely as being like our, our FFA chapters should reflect the communities in which they reside. And so if there is a disconnect in the local chapter, yeah, let's talk about that. Let's ask why is this demographic of student not as involved in FFA as this one? We can talk about that for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:42:14] Right? 'cause you could have, like you're in California, you may have a student body population that's 70%, you know, Hispanic and the FFA chapter is made up of only 10% Hispanic kids. Then you're saying like, Hey, whoa, what's going on here? What is it, what is it about the organization that students don't feel like they sh they belong here or that it's the right one for them? 'cause they're involved in agriculture, their families are, and yet they're not a part of the future Farmers of America program.

Miriam Hoffman [00:42:41] Yeah. And there's so much of that. And that is what I will say. Now we have a new CEO as of mayor June, I don't remember his official start date, but that's something that he's talked about. I'm on a strategic strategic planning task force for the next few years for FFA. And that's a lot of what we've talked about too. So I'm, I'm very optimistic about how FFA now is approaching that. I think some of those things have changed in the last year. But, but the, but the difficulty is when, is when we try to zoom out from, from the complexity of the individual chapters, and we try to say from the national level that we just make like these broad statements about FFA isn't diverse enough. It's like, well, but, but for some chapters like there, there's nothing we can do about it. And to say that, that diversity is only about what you look like is not helpful.

Vance Crowe [00:43:29] Yeah. It's a self terminating cliche, right? Yeah. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a, Hey, we, we believe in diversity and inclusion and that is the end of the statement. Right? That is in and of itself not complex, right? It is, it is oversimplifying something that is very complex, but yet the, the, the self termination part of that makes it so if you have something nuanced that you wanna talk about, just the very fact that you don't agree with the cliche means that you are somehow on opposition and that you should be completely rejected, pushed out and canceled.

Miriam Hoffman [00:44:01] Yeah. And, and there were times I, I would ask, there was, there was a couple meetings that we had with, with representatives from, from our corporate sponsors and there's some, and like we had some really, really meaningful conversations sometimes. And I was pleasantly surprised because I, I didn't realize that was happening, but there, there were times that I, I would, I just ask questions like I don't think that I have the answers. And that's another thing I told the committee when I ran is like this whole complexity thing. It's not because I have the answers to the complex problems. It's that let's ask the questions like don't, don't stop before you ask the questions. And so I asked, sometimes I was like, okay, but like if you say, you know, we want 50% of, you know, our, our employees or whatever, like members of this panel to be diverse. Like, what do you mean by that? Like, what's your definition of diverse? Because like, I don't know, I think it's hard to say that an individual is or isn't diverse. 'cause like it's diverse means that you're representing a spectrum,

Vance Crowe [00:44:57] Right? And and which spectrum, right? Because you're not asking

Miriam Hoffman [00:44:59] And Yeah. And there's one

Vance Crowe [00:45:00] You're not asking like, hey, you know, this person believes that consciousness is, you know, self-generated and you, you know, human beings have free will and this person doesn't, and therefore they're a diverse set of ideas. Right? And those categorically are really fundamentally come down to like, what do people think? Right? But then you're slamming diversity into this very small narrow window.

Miriam Hoffman [00:45:21] Yeah. And, and I will push back and say that like, there are certain spectrums of diversity that mean more to people. And I think that's an like, that's that's fair. 'cause at the end of the day, like so much of this comes down to perception. And I understand that. I kind of hate that things are about optics, but like, that's how people work. But, but people, people care more about racial diversity than diversity of how you think about consciousness. Because like, that's, that's more a part of our lives. Maybe

Vance Crowe [00:45:44] They do, you know, may maybe they do or maybe that it's the simplest thing to have a discussion about, right? It's, it's much more complicated to talk about the, the, the things that are, you know, what actually are the nuance of the, of the difference of our opinions than it is for us to talk about like, well, I can see it as as plain as black and white. What, what you, whether or not this is diverse. And I think that I, I I would say that most of what we think of in that vein, we think it's the most important to people because of the intransigent minority, because there are a group of people that, that, that is the most important thing to them. And so for them yelling and, and making accusations, writing articles that slander people that get tons of views, right, that generates that energy, that makes it feel like this is what most people are talking about. And then therefore, most people are thinking about it because that's what's been brought up to the, to the surface. Whereas if somebody wasn't slamming their hand on the table, maybe we would be thinking about something else.

Miriam Hoffman [00:46:50] Yeah. And that's a good point. But because we are thinking about that, I think we have to pay some homage to that. And so one of the things that I realized is coming into the role of national office coming from a farm background is actually that, like that's a minority background to come from now for, for a national officer?

Vance Crowe [00:47:09] Certainly. Yeah. Oh, for a national officer even.

Miriam Hoffman [00:47:12] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:13] I mean, most of the national officers don't grow up on farms. Yeah.

Miriam Hoffman [00:47:16] Like I would say there's, there's usually one every year. Like the fact that there was two of us this year was

Vance Crowe [00:47:21] Like, it

Miriam Hoffman [00:47:22] Never happens. And like a lot of them might have like shown livestock, but to actually be, and, and again, it's not, I, I don't think that it's better to be from one background or another, but most, most national officers were not raised on a farm where that was the income. Like, and I was, so there was two of us that were raised on a farm. I was the only one that was like, that was our a hundred percent over our income. And that's super rare. And so, and I don't, and I haven't done the math on like, if it is a proportional representation of like our, our membership 'cause it's also in Illinois at least, I think nine or 10% of FFA members actually come from a farm. So like, it's not super common anyway, but for, for farm kids, they have felt for some, i i I don't know how long, maybe since we changed our name and I'm, I'm for the name change, like we're, we're not the future farmers of America anymore. We're the national FA organization. And technically FFA still stands for Future Farmers of America. We just don't use it like that.

Vance Crowe [00:48:21] Oh, I didn't know that.

Miriam Hoffman [00:48:23] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:23] That's a hilarious hoop. That's

Miriam Hoffman [00:48:25] That's

Vance Crowe [00:48:25] Some funny,

Miriam Hoffman [00:48:26] Yeah. But, but I'm here for it. And, and I mean that's part of what, what I talked about in my farewell address about how, you know, we, we wanna remain rooted in agriculture, but agriculture is, is not as much about farming anymore as it used to be. Like that's still the root of it. But a lot less people farm and a lot more of agriculture is spread out throughout the supply chain. And so if FFA is still gonna just try to be for the farmers, then we're nothing. But if we, but we're not, we're not diverting from our values by embracing all pieces of the agricultural supply chain. It's just that like more people are in those spots than used to be. But anyway, yeah, we gotta

Vance Crowe [00:49:10] I I think that's an interesting, like, you know, like if you want an organization that can have 700,000 members and you wanna have more members, you know more offices than there are Walmarts in the United States or more chapters, you do have to open yourself up. I I actually did not realize that about the FFA in my mind it was still the future Farmers of America. 'cause they're still wearing their blue corduroy jackets. Everybody wears them. They're, they're embroidered in just such a way they Yeah. Have a gold chain that goes, I don't know, from one place to another. And I don't, it's, it seems like that's always been the same. That's like a shocking thing to me,

Miriam Hoffman [00:49:44] Huh. Well, and that's one of the interesting things that we will debate about in the FFA is like, some people think that we should change the jacket, that we shouldn't like have the jacket anymore. And some people wanna change the emblem because we're still, it's been long since 1988 and we're, we're still explaining to people that it's not actually the future Farmers of America anymore because it's really, really hard to, to walk that line of remaining who we are, but also becoming who we could be.

Vance Crowe [00:50:12] So you brought this up in your final speech. So when you're a national FFA officer, they, they have a convention. And at the convention, the officers that were there for the past year kind of run the show. They're the MCs, they hand out awards, they're, it's like a bunch of pomp and circumstance, but it goes on for days and then each officer gives a farewell address. And I actually got to come to see yours, talk about why you did the, the speech you did and kind of what you talked about.

Miriam Hoffman [00:50:44] It took me a while to figure out how to say what I wanted to say because even before I ran, I knew that I wanted to address somewhat the idea that the FFA doesn't feel united. And, and somewhat I wanted to address that, like farm kids like myself felt like we didn't belong. But I wanted to do it in a nuanced way. And it's really, really hard to, to give a message in a nuanced way in 20 minutes on a stage, like when I can't have like conversations. That's why some of the most meaningful things I did this year was conversations is because there's the back and forth and you can get feedback and you can understand how to explain your point to this particular person. So to do that from a stage to 10, 15,000 people is really hard. But I, I realized, so I ended up talking about the balance of, of tradition and change and how like, I, I firmly believe that in, and there might be exceptions to this, but in most cases, like true progress comes when, when you understand the tradition and, and maybe you don't have to honor the tradition, but you at least have to understand it in order to then make change that honors that. And so I talked about it in terms of, of the FFA and that we have a, we call it the FFA creed, but it's just five paragraphs that an ag teacher wrote in 1929 was adopted in 1930, is the official FFA creed. And it just outlines what, what it means to be an FFA member. And we have kept that creed since 1930 and some,

Vance Crowe [00:52:08] What is the creed?

Miriam Hoffman [00:52:10] Do you want me to say the whole

Vance Crowe [00:52:11] Thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Miriam Hoffman [00:52:11] I don't think I could say the whole thing. The first paragraph is that I believe in the future of agriculture with a faith born, not of words, but of deeds, achievements won by the present and past generations of agriculturists in the promise of better days through better ways, even as the better things we now enjoy have come to us during the struggles of former years.

Vance Crowe [00:52:30] That's good. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Nice job. Yeah.

Miriam Hoffman [00:52:32] So that's, that's that's the introductory paragraph. Yeah. And it goes on to talk about, you know, the, the importance of hard work and in leadership and in respect and of, you know, making enough honest wealth and, you know, giving charity when needed. But, but, but that our goal is that less will be needed and just like really honorable things. And it used to be, it used to talk about, you know, I believe in the future of farming and then the, the student delegates in, what was it, 1993, they, they decided to revise the creed, but those revisions came about because an entirely new creed was proposed. And so this was somewhat, this was kind of the fallout of the 1988 name change. It's like, oh, FFA is not farming anymore. What are we gonna do? We need a new creed. But the, the delegates did not want a new creed. And it was, that was interesting because often it's, it's young people that are inciting revolution, but in that case it was the adults

Vance Crowe [00:53:30] That more progressing. Oh,

Miriam Hoffman [00:53:31] Interesting. So the, the adult board of directors had approved the new creed and they sent it to the students and they said, you know, like this is up for debate, like approve it or not. And they, and they didn't approve it. And I think that's interesting because that's also what seems to be happening now in FFA is that often it's, it's the adults who, who want to, to push the limits of, of how progressive we can be. And it's the students that are saying, wait, like there's, there's, there's purpose in why we are the way that we are. And like there is, I like, I'm glad that there is some element of that balance. 'cause like we, we can't just stay who we are all the time. Like we, we do need to, we need to be somewhat progressive, but we need to be really, really careful about how we do that. Because if, if we try to be progressive and we don't understand how our students feel at the grassroots level, then at some point they're just gonna not ha they're not gonna take it anymore. And I think like my, my cynical future of FFA is that like if, if national FFA is so out of touch with the student members and with states, then states will find a way to just do FFA on their own and not be a part. And I don't, I don't want that to happen because like there's so much value in having the national organization. And how I see it is that the role of national FFA is to be a conduit to elevate best PR best practices and to, to have resources to create curriculum for student leadership conferences. Like there is so much value there, but we can't lose touch with who we actually are.

Vance Crowe [00:55:06] And it truly is that concept of fractal localism, right? Where like what you wanna do is each chapter should be designed for what's going on in your super local area. And then as you get wider and wider out, you want that there to be less and less control as the, you get further away from whatever that community is. And I mean, FFA has done a great job whereas so many other organizations, so many other government bureaucracies, all these things keep shifting to say, wouldn't it be better if we just have one central control? And then everything can be the same and everything can be equal. But that our system works a lot better if there's flexibility down at the base. But flexibility becomes a, a liability for a national organization because you can say, look at that one group right there doing something that we don't approve of or culture doesn't approve of. We're going to point them out and say that black stain goes on everyone.

Miriam Hoffman [00:56:02] And that's the really, really difficult thing is because we all wear the same emblem. And so yeah. When, when things happen in FFA chapters that should not happen. Often it is blamed on FFA as a whole. And that, and that's the risk that you take at having the, the freedom of, of individuality of each chapter is you take the risk of some chapters not being up to standard. But I'm confident that that risk is worth it because for the most part, FFA chapters are better when they can best serve their communities. And that's what I would tell, you know, often FFA members think that national officers are the important FFA members, whereas like the members from the chapters and like officers in in the chapter think they're like, oh no, like you do the big work. And I would always tell them, like, when, when people would try to tell me that, I'd say no. Like, you understand what's happening in your chapter. Like I would show up at a chapter for 45 minutes maybe I'd be at a state convention for two days and I, I, I can't understand all the needs of their chapter. Like I can show up and I can give an inspirational keynote, but I don't, I don't know what the 40 students in your chapter need, but if you're a chapter officer there, like you go to school with these people, you go to chapter meetings with these people like you, you hop in a van and you go to contest with these people. So like you do the important work because you're the chapter officer here and you understand them. And so I think that's some of where the disconnect is too with like national FFA and the local level is that national FFA has tried to be, has has tried to do everything and tried to tell chapters what to do when at the end of the day, like I think we need to be a resource for chapters.

Miriam Hoffman [00:57:33] And so like I would, I would give chapter officers advice about things that, you know, I had seen in other places. And that was one of my favorite things to do is, you know, Goodwood Camp in South Dakota and say, Hey, when I was in Tennessee two weeks ago, like, here's what I saw this other chapter doing. And like that was really cool. But I ultimately am not gonna ever try to tell someone what they should do in their chapter. 'cause I don't know it Well,

Vance Crowe [00:57:52] I mean, having been at the top of organizations, right? You get all the way to the world bank and there's like this, it's a weird, you know, it's a limitation of human cognition, right? Like if you're at the top and you hear about the nuance of the things down below, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I don't have time to understand each one of their issues. It would be easier if we could just, you know, have this one solution. And then there's also like, you know, a level of, of ego that goes along with it, right? You get this sensation of I'm, you know, we're at the national level, we see things, we have the power, you know, I was at the World Bank, it's like we have huge amounts of power, of course we know what's going on there. And I think it is almost irresistible to to, to keep from wanting to just be like, why don't we just, why don't you guys just let the centralized decisions happen here? But I thought your speech, it, it was genius in the way that you told stories that allowed people on every single level to be able to understand the point of what you were saying. Right? You told the, the story about like loading up the, the horse trailer in a way that was more efficient. I it was a good, do you mind telling it now?

Miriam Hoffman [00:59:05] Oh yeah. So, so growing up I showed cattle at, at county fairs and my brother Paul would usually drive the truck. And I started to, I was probably, I don't know how old, maybe 10 10 or so, I started, we'd pack the gooseneck with all our show supplies like the night before and then we'd load the cattle early in the morning, head to the show. And I remember when I started loading the, the gooseneck by myself, the, the spare tire was always like right next to the side door, but it was like at the front of the gooseneck and like, it just didn't really fit very well there. So when I was loading it myself, I was like, I'm just gonna like shove this up to the front and then just stacks things on top of it, like fits better now I can fit everything in here. 'cause there was a lot of things to fit in that gooseneck. But then the next morning load the cattle head to the show, have a flat tire, which flat tires happen a lot in, in our family. We, we, we run tires on trailers until they go flat pretty much. And then Paul's like, oh you know, this is normal. Like he, he changed a, a heck ton of spare tires in in his time. And so he, he hopped outta the truck and he goes to the side door to get a spare tire and he opens it and the spare tire is not an easy reach. So I didn't have time to tell this part of the story in my speech, but we ended up having to like climb over some of the cows in the trailer to get to the spare tire. And so it was, it was a hot mess and it was all because I thought that I knew what I was supposed to do. I thought that I was being more efficient, but I, I didn't even think about asking why is this the way that it is? 'cause when I just looked at it didn't make sense that the tire was there, but I never asked why.

Miriam Hoffman [01:00:39] And so that was, yeah, that, that was my introduction to,

Vance Crowe [01:00:43] I mean, it's the perfect metaphor to introduce people to chesterton's fence, right? That's, that's the very I in fact, a guy sitting next to me was like, man, that's giving me chills. That's chesterton's fence. And I was like, yeah, that's right. Because

Miriam Hoffman [01:00:55] That was like one of the things that I wanted to, I didn't wanna get into the here's chesterton's fence 'cause you're talking to 14 year olds, they don't care. I mean I, I wouldn't care when I was 14, but man, that's really cool.

Vance Crowe [01:01:06] It, yeah. And, and so, you know, you think about that and you think like, yes, every one of us should you, you, so for anybody that doesn't know Chesterton's fence is the idea of like, let's say you just bought a bunch of property and now you're going out and you're wandering around in your property and you discover a fence and you're like, ah, what's this fence doing here? I don't want this fence here. So you tear it out because you're like, you know, I want to be able to walk freely here with what Chesterton's fence says is you shouldn't do that. You should first go try and understand why was there a fence here? 'cause it might be that the neighbor has a bull and that this is the one fence that was keeping it from running over into your property and killing you and your children or you know, whatever thousand things you could think of. And it's just a really good example. But when you just give it to people as chesterton's fence, it's not anywhere near as relevant, but your story made it so everybody is like, oh yeah, there are a lot of things when I'm like, this is dumb. Why are we doing it this way? I'm just gonna change that without ever confronting why we did it this way.

Miriam Hoffman [01:02:03] And that speech, like, like pretty much every speech that I've ever given is something that like, I, I write it for my audience, but ultimately I'm writing it because I need to hear it. And as, as much as I have, I have often talked about the importance of tradition this year year. And I didn't realize, 'cause it took me a while to figure out that that was like the delivery method that like, that was the point that I wanted to use to convey all the other things that I wanted to say. But I, I was just looking back at some social media posts that I made six months into the year, and I talked about building innovation on tradition and then I realized like I, I gave this speech about it then six months later. And I, I didn't realize that that was something that I had really talked about all year. But part of why I've talked about tradition so much is because I, I have this tendency and it's, it's a good thing and a bad thing, but I try to balance the room. And so if a lot of people in a room are talking about or have one opinion, then I will argue for the other opinion. Even if that's not where I naturally lean most towards. 'cause I can see both sides of things. So I can argue for either side, but put me in a different room where most of the people are on the other side of it, then I'll, I'll argue for, for the one that is less represented. And so I've realized that in a lot of spaces, a lot of times in agriculture, I'm the one who's more on the progressive side. I'm like, but what if we changed this? Like what if we did this differently? What if we said get rid of the commodity system? You know, like, but then I, I get into FFA and I'm on the national level and there I no longer saw a whole lot of need to argue for change.

Miriam Hoffman [01:03:37] And I saw a lot of need to pull back and say, but wait, what, what is the tradition that we're missing here? And so I, part of why I gave that speech was to remind myself that we need both and it's okay to be the kind of person that leans more in one direction or the other as long as you don't invalidate the other side.

Vance Crowe [01:03:57] Yeah. As long as you don't terminate their side saying like, Hey, hey, no, they, the other side has no purpose and no point. And they're, they're bad for believing that because

Miriam Hoffman [01:04:06] Then like that doesn't even help you ultimately because like, that is not a sustainable way to win. Like maybe you win in the short term, but I don't think anyone has ever truly won the long game by terminating their opponent's opinion opinions. Like when it comes to like philosophical arguments like that. And when it comes to things like the FFA, like if, if at the national level they, they aren't in touch with the local level, like it will go down in flames,

Vance Crowe [01:04:35] Right? I mean, and if you decide that you wanna go to war by using force, by shouting down the other side, then the only way to victory is absolutely destroying the other side to the extent that they can never come back. And then you don't have an organization at the end of that. Yeah. And so, but which is why it's, there's like some, I don't, I don't, I I always wanna use the word ironic, but I don't wanna misuse it, but like the day after the, the convention speech that you gave this article comes out in, in the ag world or some letter which was like saying, you know, look at the how, you know, the FFA has all these systemic racism problems and all of these, like, you know, we went around and there were people supporting Donald Trump and this is making people not feel like they're invited here. And people, they had watched a, they had shown a Kamala Harris, like, in my opinion, propaganda video to a bunch of high school kids that didn't really like it, but sat respectfully. And then there's a couple of kids that scream, let's go Brandon, right? And then they were using this in the article or letter or whatever that was to show like, this is further evidence that the FFA is in need of deep reform. So it was like, I don't know, painful and coincidental and ironic that your, your point of view and your speech came out and then, I don't know if it was the next day it was that, that article or two days later, something like that.

Miriam Hoffman [01:05:58] Yeah, it was, it was a few days later. Yeah, that was, that was difficult to read. Having been at convention. I, I will say to your point about the video, vice President Harris like it every national convention, like we invite all kinds of government figures to, to come and give remarks. And if they wanna send a video like Secretary of Agriculture send a video, like if they wanna send a video, we do that. So that's like, that's, that's common protocol regardless of, of who is in the White House. Do we always love what they say? No, but, but we give them, we give them the honor of, of their title.

Vance Crowe [01:06:35] It was bad. It was, it was like, it was having,

Miriam Hoffman [01:06:36] And to be clear, I also didn't watch it because I was chairing that session. So I was backstage and me and my teammate were backstage hoping that no one would yell, let's go Brandon.

Vance Crowe [01:06:45] Well, so I was just, I just, we couldn't hear come, come from being like, we had done a little like session and so I was like, just coming off there and they're like, and now a message from Kamala Harris. And so I turned, and on this giant jumbotron, there is Kamala Harris there dressed very well, speaking very well, like very upbeat, but like completely disconnected from everything that had been going on. So you have this like tenor and tone of the room and like it's excitement and it's about mentors and you know, there was a band that had just played and now she gets up there and she gives this speech that is like, look what the Democratic party is doing for agriculture. And she's citing like, things that are completely divorced from everything that the farm kids are doing. That's not the FFAs fault, that's the video that the vice president of the United States sent. But like, it was like having propaganda from the US Post Office or something like, it was, it was just like, it was like laughably bad. And like I was thinking like, this is really similar to what it would be like if you were in a high school gymnasium and somebody stood up and they were like, I'm gonna give you a sex education class. Right? Like it was just so jarring that of course high school kids are gonna push back on this. Like, what did you expect?

Miriam Hoffman [01:07:58] Yeah, there was a lot of things in that article, but I, I think the biggest thing that frustrated me about it, well there's, I say the biggest and then, then I'm gonna list a couple things. One of the things is, is the, the claim that, you know, we're riding this because we love the FFA and and i I will be one of the first people to say that like, if you love something, you want it to be better. And so I'm not gonna say that, you know, if if you're critiquing an organization that that means you don't like it. No. Like if you really love it, you want it to be better. That's why I ran for national office. 'cause I wanted national FFA to be better. But the, the way the format in which you address those things that you want to be better should not be an article that you share on Twitter talking about how FFA is terrible like that to me the, that the, we love the FFA like that that does not land with me based on the things that you say. Another thing is claims made about how the officers on stage of which I was one of them, heard what was going on and didn't try to stop it. Now first off, when you're on the stage, you can't hear what the random kid in the nosebleeds is yelling. Secondly, are we really gonna stop a timed like to the minute a timed convention session to say, I think I heard someone say, let's go Brandon, let's stop the convention and make them like whatcha gonna do That's not gonna help. Like you keep

Vance Crowe [01:09:27] Yeah, that's like the principal standing up there and being like, yes, they just talked about sex, but everyone be quiet. You know, stop it, you know, it's, it's not gonna work. Just let it, yeah,

Miriam Hoffman [01:09:36] Yeah, keep going. So I mean that's what we did. And then, I dunno, it's just like, what, what whatcha gonna do about it? And then another thing is like, there were comments made about speci, specifically two of my teammates being tokenized all year and how they just had to like sit back and take it. And like, you don't, I mean, you don't say that about anyone, let alone without asking them if that's how they feel. And like all my teammates and I like, I'm not gonna speak for them. And we had different thoughts about it, but all of us were frustrated with the article. But that was just appalling to me to speak about my teammates in that way. And my teammates and I disagree about things, but we love each other very deeply because we recognize that like we are human before any of our opinions. And that is the thing that mattered. And I mean, that's how you have a successful team. So those things were frustrating to me. And then another thing was to say, you know, like if you say you love the FFA, then that means that you love students and then to put pictures of students' faces in this article and to put in the caption something like neo-Nazi that is not love for those students. And that did not sit right with me at all.

Vance Crowe [01:10:56] Yeah. Talk about the ultimate self terminating cliche, right? That's like if you point at someone and say you're a Nazi, right? Like that's, that's that's trying to end their career, that's trying to end everything about what they're doing. And it's saying, we wanna make this so repellent and so toxic that no one ever talks to them again. And to put their, their photograph up there and like for how far it spread on social media. Like that's like their plan with real nuclear waste there.

Miriam Hoffman [01:11:24] Yeah. And and another thing that frustrated me is, is I saw a lot of people share it who I, I don't necessarily know very well, but I know well enough that if they talked to me and we talked about what happened at, and like, there, there were things that happened at convention that should not have happened at convention. Like there were isolated incidents, like there were merchandise booths selling things that we didn't approve for them to sell. Like there were things happen and like national FFA like released a statement about it. Like we talked about it, the board talked about it. They, like, there were things that happened that shouldn't have happened, but there wasn't a whole lot that national FFA staff or officers could have done about it. And a lot of it that was actually a, a teacher in, there's a Facebook group for, for AG teachers, there's a teacher who made a, a really eloquent post about, about what happened. And ultimately he said like, I mean most, most of that is like, this is students at national convention are not under the watch of national FFA staff. They're under the watch of their teacher. So if, like, if you wanna criticize someone, like go to the teacher and talk to them. But, but then even within that, I mean a lot of teachers, this is their first big event with students in two years. There's a lot of young ag teachers, there's massive teacher turnover. So young ag teachers first big event are their students. Like they, you, you can't police your students. And also they're students. They're 15 years old,

Vance Crowe [01:12:48] Right?

Miriam Hoffman [01:12:48] And I, and I fully believe in holding people accountable, but posting a picture of someone and calling them a neo-Nazi is not holding them accountable. That's, that's terminating the conversation and that's not effective. And so there's a lot of people that share this that like, now this is their perception that like they're close enough to FFA, that they see something like this. They like kind of know what it is, but they're not so close to it to realize, to, to read between the lines and realize that there's a lot of assumptions made in that article that are simply not true and the things that are true are twisted in a way that is, is just,

Vance Crowe [01:13:21] Well I was at the actual event that they were talking about when it all happened and my experience of it was like, oh man, you know, like those three or four, I, maybe it was 10, maybe more, I don't really know how many, but it wasn't, I was in a section, you know, and it was no one around me. And so to be like all of the FFA is is now bad because of this and this kids participating in something that's like a much larger cultural movement. It was just, it was, it was one of those things where I thought like, man, I would imagine that the people that wrote that article genuinely have the thoughts that they do. I I, I don't doubt that they feel that way. And I imagine they feel like they're in the minority in the ag world. Like, but I think that the way that they chose to express this opinion said far more about them wanting to be a celebrity in that movement against the FFA than it said about trying to achieve something important and durable. Because there was no, there was not gonna be any durability in that argument. It, it was, we want to be as public, Hey, I want my name to be at the top of this, of this list that of people that are against these actions. And that said to me like, okay, adults fighting with 15 year olds, like you got your point across and you got it to spread throughout social media. Like I don't, but you know that that's your legacy. That's what you're leaving.

Miriam Hoffman [01:14:52] Yeah. 'cause you're, you're not gonna get fame for making a phone call to someone who could actually take action. You're gonna get your fame

Vance Crowe [01:15:00] Yeah. Or give you a perspective you don't want to hear. Yeah,

Miriam Hoffman [01:15:03] Yeah, no. So that, that definitely.

Vance Crowe [01:15:05] So now you're, you're, you're a retired national FFA officer, right? Yes,

Miriam Hoffman [01:15:11] Indeed.

Vance Crowe [01:15:11] So I can't even imagine what this must be like because you, you went from like running a rock concert where when I saw you at the convention, right? There were people that were like, Hey, can I take, take a photo with you? Like, hey, I'd really like you to just sit and like talk, you know, people like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. What is it like to go back to normal life where you're a college student?

Miriam Hoffman [01:15:36] It's, it's really interesting and I have to say, this is kind of ironic. I had, I had a dream last night that I had to do convention again and I forgot that I had to do convention again. It was like, I think it, it was like the day after convention and they're like, all right, like time to do it again. And I was like, well what if I don't remember my lives? So yeah, it's like a month and a half later and I'm still having mild convention nightmares. 'cause yeah, that was like a really, really big thing. And so now I was just talking with one of my teammates yesterday about how it almost feels fake that I did that. 'cause that's like such a big thing that like 20 year olds don't just do. And so to be like starting to be distanced from it, it's like, did I actually do that or was that like all a dream? 'cause yeah, life is different now. I haven't, I don't go back to school until January in the spring semester. So I've been taking road trips the last few weeks, spending time with family and I went, went out to Texas and New Mexico to see some friends, some of whom I made this year on FFA trips, some of whom I knew from a few years ago with FFA. So I've been doing a lot of traveling still. So I have still not really living a normal life. All my friends are still in, in their classes and getting ready for finals, I was like, what's school? I don't remember what that's like. And then signing up for classes again, like, I kind of forgot how to be a student, like what all I had to do to sign up for classes and some of that stuff. So I don't know, I'm, I'm looking forward to being back in school in some ways. To have a consistent friend group again to live in the same place for more than a week at a time is gonna be really, really nice. But I'm, I'm not looking forward to spending a lot of time doing things that don't feel meaningful because in the FFA role, like there was a lot of mundane tasks that I didn't love, but just about every single one of them, I could still, I could still tie it back to the value in it.

Miriam Hoffman [01:17:24] So if I was filling out an expense report, it's like, okay, this is kind of annoying. I don't like looking for all the receipts and then if I don't find a receipt, then I have to like fill out another form. Like all that wasn't fun, but I could point to the meeting in it because it was expenses from travels to where I met, you know, x, y, and Z person where I had this really meaningful conversation with him. I was like, when I go to classes and I think some of it's 'cause I, I've had a weird college career so far, I have hardly had any in-person classes. So like most of college work for me has been kind of drudgery. But it is really hard when I'm writing an essay about something that I don't care about to understand like why like, this does not make anyone's life better.

Vance Crowe [01:18:01] Yeah. There's a, there's an author named David Foster Wallace who gives this amazing commencement speech and in it as he's talking to these kids that are graduating, he says there's this huge swaths of life that no one tells young people about, but that all of the parents in the, in the audience know about. And it is that most of life is actually tedious, boring, rote activities that don't stack up to anything. And he, and he gives the example of like standing in line at the grocery store. And I think what's interesting about like what you are saying in your, I could be doing this expense report and tie it back to this thing, he basically says, all meaning in life is your ability to tie things back to something that does matter. Because you can either look at it and say, oh, look at how slow that checkout counter person is, or you know, look at the dumb purchases that this person in front of me made. If they would just go faster, I could get done. But like ultimately if you see the humanity in things, then that's, that's the life. And I think it's just harder when you're not in this like amazing role of of excitement of the national FFA officer.

Miriam Hoffman [01:19:15] Yeah. Yeah. But I think I, I've learned how to find value in a lot of things and especially before, so the first two months I got elected on a Zoom call end of October. So I didn't get elected in the rock concert environment. I got elected in in my family's garage with my laptop in front of me. But I mean, that was a cool experience too. 'cause normally when you get elected you're surrounded by your other candidates. But I got to be with my family

Vance Crowe [01:19:40] And all of the Articulate Ventures network. Like there were dozens of us watching online. We were all watching. Yeah. And I remember you won and then I went upstairs and Anne was feeding Violet and we were all excited for it. It was an exciting thing. But yeah.

Miriam Hoffman [01:19:51] Yeah. So, so we got elected, my teammates and I, and I had met some of them in person from when we were state officers together a couple years prior. But we didn't meet in person until two months later. So we moved to Indianapolis in January and then we didn't travel until beginning of April. So there was like three months, there was two months there that I didn't feel like a national officer. 'cause we had like weekly Zoom calls. We were finishing the semester, like we didn't really do anything. And then the three months when we were in Indie, we were really busy with a lot of training for the first month. And then we started to do pretty regular virtual chapter visits. So we'd hop on a Zoom call, do a workshop with students or give a keynote and just talk to them, whatever. And it was really hard to find a meaning in that sometimes because sometimes you would log onto a Zoom call and you would not see a student's face. Like everyone's camera was off and sometimes they wouldn't unmute themselves. So like you could, I ran a workshop in a chat one time because no one wanted to talk and they didn't have good enough internet to turn their cameras on. And like that's really, really hard to do because often like as a facilitator you can, you can create some energy, but you can't create all

Vance Crowe [01:21:01] Of this. Oh, you're only the spark in that situation.

Miriam Hoffman [01:21:03] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:21:03] I mean,

Miriam Hoffman [01:21:04] And so when you don't have the back and forth, it is really, really hard to keep going.

Vance Crowe [01:21:07] I, I went from giving all these live and in-person talks to doing talks where people were like, oh, well will you address this 4,000 person audience? But it's gonna be online. And they'd be like, isn't this great? Like you, even though I was like, I was able to create a paycheck and it was like a thing for me to do day in and day out. I hated it. I was like, this is a certain form of prison, right? This is like a Black Mirror episode where I am standing here and in the room there's no energy and excitement and the only thing I can do is be this actor on this thing. Whereas when you're live and in person with people, there is an electricity, like you and I sitting across the table from one another is a hundred times better than me doing an interview over Zoom. 'cause we can see and feel and the room is the same temperature. We're having the same experience.

Miriam Hoffman [01:21:54] Yeah. So that was hard. But that was one of the places where I learned to find value in things that feel like they don't have value. Because there was one, one workshop that I did and there was two students that logged on. It was like a, an optional, it was part of their virtual state convention. So it was just like, here's the zoom link, like hop on if you want to. And there was two people who showed up and their cameras were off. And if I had more people than that, usually I had like a PowerPoint and we'd go through and like do activities, like a workshop. But I don't like doing workshops with two people. So I usually just try to have a conversation. But it's harder to have a conversation when you can't see their faces. So I kinda like started like asking them questions. And one of them was a seventh grader, one was an eighth grader, like just got into FFA so didn't know even much about it. So even a lot of like my stock list of like great questions to ask FFA members, like they didn't know what their SAE was 'cause they didn't know what an SAE was. And so I kinda had to start from scratch with a conversation, but about, and I had an hour time block for this and I was like, this could be the longest hour of my life. And we were like probably 10, 15 minutes in and like they slowly started to talk more and one girl turned her camera on and I was like, this is a win. Like we're we're going places. And then a little bit later the other girl turned the camera on and by the end of the hour they were talking to each other and like, I could have left and they probably wouldn't have noticed. And that is one of my biggest successes from the year. Like yeah, I can give a speech to 20,000 people in person, whatever. No. Like I get two people on Zoom who didn't know each other to talk to each other.

Miriam Hoffman [01:23:26] And one of the difficult things to learn in, in the role and something that I think is vital if you're not gonna hate it because it's really, really hard. But you have to learn that your success as a national officer or as like as anyone in that type of role or like where you're trying to influence people. It's not if people remember your name, but it's, it's if people believe in themselves more because they met you. And so that was something that took me a while to learn. And it's one of those things I have to keep relearning. 'cause I, you know, you forget every day and you gotta remind yourself. But that was, that was really cool because normally I'd measure success by how many people were there and how many people would talk about me after I left. But, but I realized no, like it, these, these people are talking to each other and I made, you know, 45 minutes of their life more interesting. Not because of me, but because I, I created something that then sustained past me being there

Vance Crowe [01:24:23] When I was driving to come to the convention. When you were gonna be speaking. I was listening to Renee Gerard and like, even, even when we saw each other the night before, I was like, I can't even tell you I'm listening to this Renee Gerard. It was like all I could think about. And one of the big things he talks about is this concept called mimetic desire. And mimetic desire is generated by you seeing other people. They all want this thing. And I even wrote, you know, the executive producer Ben Anderson, when I'm sitting at, at the convention probably Kate Crosby, like, I think I'm in a temple for mimetic desire when I was at this FFA convention, right? 'cause the lights are going, the music is going. It's super intense. And I, I had respect for FFAI had, I knew kids that had like practical skills from it, but I never understood why people were so intense with it. And you're seeing this music or you're hearing this music and you're seeing all these lights in the jumbotron and you've got six people that are presented like superheroes or demigods or something. And you can see how all these kids would look around and say, everyone else around me wants to be one of those people, therefore I should want to be one of those people. So now that you've gone that distance from being that girl seven years ago, you know, you're 15 years old and you felt that first pull of, of mimetic desire, that first thing of like, I feel like I belong and now I'm orienting myself towards the top of that hierarchy.

Vance Crowe [01:25:55] What do you wish that that girl, that 15-year-old girl knew now that you've made it all the way to the top?

Miriam Hoffman [01:26:01] Hmm. There's a lot of things that I wish that I knew. And honestly, I don't know if there's anything that I could tell myself that that, that I would actually understand until I lived the life that I have lived. Because it's the, the things that I have learned and the things that I wish I knew or things that I learned because I lived an experience and so, you know, like running for national office the first time and not getting elected. Like I can't, you can't replicate, I can't just tell someone, oh, it's okay that you didn't get elected. Like, you're fine. It's okay, you'll get over it five months later, you won't care. But like, I mean there's been a lot of candidates that I've talked to that, that I was friends with that didn't get elected. And it's like, you know, I, I can tell you what it was like for me, but I can't, I can't make it not suck. But I don't know, I think that, yeah, at the time I, I did not like, I had no idea that I would end up there. Like I thought it would be cool. Like I thought it was cool that those people got to do that, but I did not think that it would be me. And so, you know, part of me wants to say, oh, I wish I could tell her that she would be there, but I don't because if I knew that I would be there then I don't think I would value the fact that I was there nearly as much. So I don't know, I think things kind of happen how they're supposed to happen then you know what, you know when you know it for a reason.

Vance Crowe [01:27:23] And then for all those thousands of kids that didn't get there, what do you, what do you have to say to them? Like, Hey, not that big of a deal. It wasn't that great.

Miriam Hoffman [01:27:34] It is, it is a really, really meaningful experience. But I think it is overvalued by a lot of ag teachers actually because that's, I know many people who have run for an office at any level who run and, and I'm one of those people I, I ran originally for section office 'cause my ag teacher pushed me too. And I'm so, so glad that she did. Like she saw potential in me and I don't know, I don't think I would be here if she did not push me to do the things that I did. But as much as I love the FFA and I love being an officer, like that is not the path to a meaningful fulfilling FFA career for everyone. And I think some people think that it is because like the national officers at convention, like those are the ones that you see and those are the ones that are considered at the highest tier. But I never thought of myself as like the best FFA member because I, being a, an officer in FFA is simply one, one avenue to, to find value in the organization. And those of us who become officers have a very, very like unique combination of skills and interests and of people who have believed in us and of just the right opportunities at the right times in the right places. And that's not gonna happen for everyone. And there's people who become national officers who don't enjoy the fact that they're national officers. Like it is, it looks fun at convention and that's, everybody gets like the National Officer Fever, I can't mention, they're like, oh, that'd be so fun, but like, it's really, really, really hard to be a national officer. And so as much as, as I loved what I did and I'm glad that I got to do it, like it is not the place for everyone.

Miriam Hoffman [01:29:08] And one of the most, I would say most inspiring people that I met this year was an officer at from, from a state that I traveled to and their state that has, they're state officers. They have two of the state officers were officers the previous year. So they're like a vice president one year and then they can run again to be president or secretary. And one of the vice presidents at the convention that I was at was planning on, he had submitted his application, he was gonna run for president and the night before the interview process, he pulled his application and he is, he, he probably would've been president if he had ran, but he chose not to because he realized that he wasn't running for the right reasons. Like he, he just wanted to be the president and he thought it'd be cool to have his name on the wall. But he realized that before he actually went through with the process. And I am really, really proud of him for doing that. And I think a lot of people do not have the maturity to see that they only want the thing because everyone else wants it. And so that's where like the mimetic desire thing is super fascinating to me. And I think the, the pushback to, like, some people will say, well now I'm just not gonna want anything that everyone else wants 'cause I don't wanna fall victim to it. But I think what you have to do is to see that like, just because you want something that everyone else wants doesn't mean that's why you want it. But you have to be able to separate yourself from, you know, you, you have to understand why you want something. And so all of that to say like to to those people who, who want to be an officer or, and, and maybe some of them will in essence and some of them won't.

Miriam Hoffman [01:30:39] I would say like, find the thing that you want to do independent of whether or not anyone else wants to do it. And don't worry about if it ends up being the thing that everyone else wants to do or not. Like do the thing that is fulfilling for you,

Vance Crowe [01:30:52] Fulfilling for you. Do you have a thing that you want to do that other people don't want to do now that you're done with national FFA,

Miriam Hoffman [01:31:00] I don't wanna climb the corporate ladder. And that's what a lot of past national officers do and that's great for them. Like if that was fulfilling for me, like that would, life would be super simple. But I say,

Vance Crowe [01:31:11] Oh no, climbing the corporate office is not super simple. That's not,

Miriam Hoffman [01:31:15] It appears, it appears there, there's a clear path somewhat. It appears to

Vance Crowe [01:31:19] Be clear path. I think it seems that way. Yeah, I think it seems that way.

Miriam Hoffman [01:31:21] Okay, well that makes me feel better that I don't wanna do it. No. 'cause I, I thrive in a little bit of chaos and I don't, and, and not, obviously there can be chaos anywhere, but I, I like to take a little bit more risk and I, I don't want to be like, I've spent so much of my life being the person who doesn't fit in. Like, I'm not gonna force that and try to be the person who fits in. Like I added value to my team because I didn't fit in with my team. Like, I added value to other teams. I've been on to the FFA like, because I thought things that other people didn't think and I was willing to say things that other people wouldn't say and so I don't, I don't wanna change that now.

Vance Crowe [01:31:58] Well you are very well put together. And so when I had the chance at the convention to meet your family, I was expecting that I was going to meet like some country club people. Like I, I was prepared for us to be, you know, like, okay, everyone's wearing their dockers and they're, you know, they're, they're exactly right. Tucked in thing. And I ended up being in an elevator with your mother, although I didn't know she was your mother at the time. There's thousands of people around like, how, how was I supposed to know? And all these people were saying, you know, like, oh, it was so good to see you. Oh, thank you. Everybody's very kind to her. And then we get around to the side and I discover this is your family. How would you describe your family?

Miriam Hoffman [01:32:38] That is a good question. Yeah. People often don't expect my family to be what they are after they know me. 'cause I, I would say I look very different from them. They're very

Vance Crowe [01:32:51] Not look, dress and like present yourself in a, in a

Miriam Hoffman [01:32:55] Different way. Yes, yes. I would say that no, they're, they're very humbled down to earth people. And, and I, I strive to be that as well, but I, I have found, so like in, in some areas I don't like fitting in, but I've also realized that if I wanna be effective in certain areas, like if I wanna be a national FFA officer, like I have to, I have to toe the line of fitting in just enough that people don't think I'm super weird. And like my fam and like my family will even tell you this, like they're okay with being thought of as super weird and like in, in some realm

Vance Crowe [01:33:25] That doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah,

Miriam Hoffman [01:33:26] Yeah. No, they, they will, they'll proudly claim that. Yeah. But, but they're just very like they, each of us, like, do we, we follow that idea of doing a thing that's fulfilling even if it's not what's popular or what other people wanna do. And I've, I've learned so much from them. And being the youngest of five siblings has also influenced a lot of, of, a lot of how I am. And I think some of why I've chosen to, to maybe present myself differently is just because when you're the youngest of five, like you gotta do something to stand out.

Vance Crowe [01:33:57] Oh, I know this. I was the middle child of seven, right? So I had to like, figure out, you know, I'm not gonna be faster or smarter, you know, I'm probably not even harder working than, than the other people here. So I gotta figure something else out to do. So I totally appreciate that. Your family in my perspective was, I, I down to earth is like a cliche to describe them really. It would be. Yeah. They, they were like, like some, like a family. You would write a book about where, where you would say, like, you could probably point out all the quirky things about them, but like, I mean, your mother and I had like ama like a, I don't know, the conversation went for like two and a half hours. I was with your mom and her sister and your sister's husband, which is crazy because How old is your sister?

Miriam Hoffman [01:34:42] 23. Almost 24. And

Vance Crowe [01:34:45] You're 21, almost 22. Something like that. Yeah. So like, your sister's life is on a totally different trajectory. She's married to a guy who's doing like blacksmithing and they're, you know, working on their house and talking about the cows that they run and your mom's talking, you know, yelling over to your brothers. Like, Hey, remember when you, I let you guys make that ramp? And how many times did you the, you know, fly off there? Yeah. Like all these crazy things and I just wouldn't have have picked it for you. And you say a lot of people are surprised by when they meet your family. Oh,

Miriam Hoffman [01:35:14] Very much so. And they're also surprised by the fact that I was homeschooled for a while. Like very, very surprised. Which I, I wouldn't change anything about my education experience, but I do consider it a win when people don't expect me to be homeschooled.

Vance Crowe [01:35:28] What do you think it, why, why do you think people are surprised that you're not a homeschooled kid?

Miriam Hoffman [01:35:33] Because I have social skills.

Vance Crowe [01:35:35] Yeah. 'cause a lot of homeschooled kids don't.

Miriam Hoffman [01:35:37] Yeah. And like, I'm, I'm friends with like, I was in a lot of those circles and, and I know, I know many other homeschoolers who have found, who have found, you know, opportunities to, to develop social skills. And I would say that I have, like, I, I had a different set of social skills. Like I was really, really good at interacting with adults since I was a kid. But peer-to-peer interaction was something that I had to like consciously work on. And that's, that's part of what the FFA did for me. Like if I wasn't in FFA, like people probably would look at me and say, oh, I bet she was homeschooled. So.

Vance Crowe [01:36:06] Oh, interesting. Yeah. I mean, your mom and I had a really interesting conversation about education because I'm right now looking, you know, for Violet. So should we send her to the public school? Should we find like a Shihi private school? Should we send her to Montessori? Should we go to like the, the Woodland Waldorf kind of like hippie thing. And it was a very interesting thing for your, to hear your mom's perspective on what are the important things about education. And she talked about, you know, the amount of projects that you guys did and how much you were working and how she didn't have you do busy, you know, BS work on those, my words, certainly not your mother's words, but like, it was just very much thinking about things in terms of art and it was, it was very, you had an extraordinary family. Like you, like I don't think, I think one of the reasons that you're not a weirdo homeschool kid is because your family is like, I, I wish I had a good book. Like I wish I had a good comparison. I just don't,

Miriam Hoffman [01:37:06] They're just really hard to describe. They

Vance Crowe [01:37:08] Are, yeah. Like the family that pippi long stockings would come from, but in like a wonderful, wonderful way. Like quirky and different and

Miriam Hoffman [01:37:16] Yeah. No, that was one of the things that I loved about being homeschooled was that like learning was fun. And there were, sometimes it's not like I woke up every day, I was like, yay, I can't wait to do my math homework. But for the most part, like learning was, it was like a culture and everything was just about being curious and that, that came from both my mom's side and my dad's side was just being curious about the world. And so then when I went to public school, at first I was like, why does everyone hate school? Like I love learning. But then after I spent, I don't, I don't know, I don't know if there was a moment when I had a realization, but like the more time that I was there, the more I realized like, like just a regular and like there are great things about the public school system, but there are also things about it that like you just go through the motions and you learn how to play the game to get the grades that you want. And like, it sucks the life out of learning. And it's just like, you're not learning for the joy of it. You're learning because this is what you have to do. And that, I think I had the right balance. 'cause I started going to public school. I started playing in the band at like fourth grade and then I took like a math class in seventh grade. And then by the time I was a sophomore in high school, I took full-time public school classes. And I think that was just about the right time. Like, I got gradually eased into it and wasn't just like, dumped into high school, like, okay, now figure out how to make friends. But, but I still was able to maintain a little bit of that genuine love for learning. And I, I mean, some of my classes I definitely didn't love, but because I, because I had already had this curiosity like cultivated within me before that I was able to find the, the meaningful things in my classes, even if other people couldn't.

Vance Crowe [01:38:51] So you've had this interesting opportunity with the FFA to be able to interact with all these corporations and kind of hear about the future and talk with students. Where do you think agriculture is going in the next five years? That other people don't think,

Miriam Hoffman [01:39:06] Ooh, that that adds a, a layer of fun to the question? Well, I don't know. I, well 'cause depending on, on who you ask, like people, people will say, I think there's, there's a lot of people think that it's just like consolidation, consolidation, consolidation. I don't think, I think in, in some, in some respects I think that will happen. But then there's other people who think that the whole local food movement is just gonna like blow up. And I don't think that's really true either. I think I'm as usual somewhere in the middle. And I think there's gonna be like a balance. There might be a divergence of, you know, like some people are go, gonna go big. And that's what I've seen too is like, it's either it's not go big or go home. It's go big or go niche. And I think that right now, like the balance of where we're at, I don't, I think it's gonna change. And I think more, perhaps more farmers will go niche in order to continue farming. 'cause that's sometimes the only option. And that's what my family had to do. Like we got dropped from the milk route. We couldn't just keep milking cows for fun. So we sold genetics and we sold like grass-based genetics to like homesteaders and relatively small, a lot of organic theories. Like we found a spot that other people weren't filling. So I don't know, I think, I think some of agriculture's gonna continue to consolidate, but I think some of it is, is gonna fragment more. And I think, I think we're gonna see more farmers taking on some of those tasks from farther downstream in the supply chain.

Vance Crowe [01:40:44] I was just flipping through Twitter the other day and I, I heard somebody put forward an idea that at first I didn't think was a realistic possibility, but it was about China and they were saying, you know, what happens if China figures out a way to get all of their soybean production not through the us Right. Like what, what would happen to the US system? And like that's a really interesting question because I mean, there's a lot of acreage. Let's just imagine that you no longer are selling to China. Europe's not going to have more demand. Right. Maybe Africa will, but it's, it's hard to imagine there's gonna be a, an organized enough government to, to go out and, and purchase Chinese level soybeans. What do you think, maybe not talking necessarily about that specifically, but if there were some like supply thing where all of a sudden soybeans are not in rapid demand, what do you think would happen to all that land?

Miriam Hoffman [01:41:42] Hmm. There's a lot of people right now that want to farm but can't get land because it's, the barrier to entry is too high. And so if that lowered the barrier to entry, perhaps, perhaps we would, instead of continuing the downward trend of number of farmers, maybe we'd have more, A lot of it would probably go to real estate development. 'cause that's something that, I mean, groups like American Farmland Trust are fighting against that. But I don't know. I think, I think there's a lot of people and, and this, it's, it's hard for me to say because I am admittedly in somewhat of an echo chamber in agriculture. Like I try not to be, but a lot of people I spend time with are people who like focus on soil health and who are interested in like more local food. So I'm kind of like, I tend to lean in that direction anyway. But I think there's a lot of people who are, are willing to do, to do more with less land. But, but they, they can't quite get the land yet. But I think there's a lot of people that would wanna farm. Not large scale commodity production, but that would, would wanna do something, something smaller scale. I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:42:47] Yeah, I mean that's, I mean that's an interesting way to look at it. I mean, certainly there something would happen to the price of land, right? And it, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be the demand that you knew you could grow corn and soybeans and you just sell it. So I think you're,

Miriam Hoffman [01:42:59] Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing too, that, and this isn't necessarily, it's not gonna take up a lot of market share, but there's a lot of organic fraud and a lot of it is foreign. And so there's there, there's a potential. I mean if we, if we could grow more domestically and if it was like, if, if the price is balanced out such that we could produce all of, like the US does not produce all of our organic demand for corn and soybeans, particularly soybeans. So we import a lot of it and a lot of it becomes organic

Vance Crowe [01:43:33] When it crosses the ship. When it crosses.

Miriam Hoffman [01:43:35] Yeah. We're that, some of that's getting worked on now, but I don't know, I think that could, could fill some of the void there.

Vance Crowe [01:43:42] So changing the subject, going away from agriculture, but you're a young woman in this modern age of 2021, almost 2022. What is the world of dating and friends and just being out in the world? Like

Miriam Hoffman [01:43:57] I, I feel like I, I don't know if I'm entirely qualified to answer this 'cause I've been in such a, an odd world where I spent most of my time with 14 year olds. And so I don't know, I'm like just getting back into, back into the like kind of normal college student world. Man. I think there's, there's a lot of people I would say in college who, I mean, it is probably the mimetic desire again, but like, they do the normal college things and like they go out and they party with their friends and you know, they, they have fun, but they, a lot of people don't actually think that's fun. And I've had a lot of conversations with my friends, they're like, yeah, like maybe we'd go out once a week and that would be fun, but we don't go, we don't wanna go out four times a week. But everyone else, like everyone, everyone is propping up the idea that that's the fun thing to do. And like, nobody wants to admit like, actually this isn't fun. And so it's, it's been interesting to get somewhat back into that world, I guess, and to see. And I don't know as far as the, the dating world goes, I don't know, I don't really pay that much attention to what like everyone else is doing. I kind of just do what I wanna do. And I dunno, I wasn't planning on on dating anyone anytime soon. I was in a relationship for, for some of this year. And then that ended on good terms, just didn't want to go the same direction in life. But then like a couple days after convention, I met somebody and now I'm dating someone now. And like it's really, really meaningful. And I think, I think there's a lot, a lot of things about the world that, not necessarily that I didn't value at all, but I didn't value as much as now I'm realizing perhaps I do.

Vance Crowe [01:45:33] That was vague. What do you mean?

Miriam Hoffman [01:45:35] I guess so I've, I've tended to be the kind of person that's like a career. Like I just want a successful career. And this is an interesting place where I think I've, I've wanted to be different from my family just to be different from my family now because I actually want it. And so, you know, and, and I've also been in a place where like a lot of, a lot of people who have been in the positions that I've been in with FFA like tend to go on this just like career trajectory. Like, and that's valuable and I still want that. But I think I'm realizing that there, there is something really, really meaningful about a relationship and having a family that I like, I've never really thought about it like this before until I met this person.

Vance Crowe [01:46:17] Well I, I know that in my experience, right when I finished college, I went straight on to working on a ship and then I was working on a house and then I was in Africa and so I just wasn't around children. And so, you know, like I had been, I had grown up around them, but it wa you know, all the way through my twenties into my thirties, I I, I literally had no one that I knew that was having kids except for, you know, like my sister would. Right? But your nephew's a different thing than everyone you're surrounded by. And it's just that once you are around kids, all of a sudden there's like a, a different calculation that goes on in your brain that I think for a lot of modern anywhere kids, which is what I was, you just don't even, family doesn't even register. That's like something that adults do that are far away from you. You just don't even consider it.

Miriam Hoffman [01:47:07] Yeah. I, I don't, I don't think it's as much that for me, but I think it's that I've convinced myself that because like all my family, I mean all my siblings got married relatively young and three of the four now have several children. And that was something that was valued and, and I love my nieces and nephews, but I've never really been like the yay babies. I wanna hang out with them all the time kind of person. But, but yeah, I think it was like I had this, this idea that I wanted to be different and, and, and I wanted to be, I wanted to be kind of like the rest of the world was. And the rest of the world said like,

Vance Crowe [01:47:43] You can do that. You're 35 women can Yeah,

Miriam Hoffman [01:47:45] Yeah. Be independent and, and like I, I still don't know exactly what I want with my life and, and I still, I like, I see a lot of fulfillment in a meaningful career wherever that is. Probably not the corporate world, but, but I think maybe there's, there's a better balance there that, that perhaps I have always wanted, but I didn't want to admit to myself that I wanted. And also I think some of it goes back to the idea that I really, I really don't like not being in control of things. And so like a meaningful career. Like I can't entirely control that, but I can pretty much control, like I have a lot more agency over that

Vance Crowe [01:48:22] Than, oh, say more about this. 'cause I think this is gonna be the recording that you're gonna come back to in 10 years and be like, oh, that little girl sitting up there in the, in the stadium. Right? Like, what, what do you mean? Yeah, what does it mean to have a meaningful career

Miriam Hoffman [01:48:35] Just doing work that like cre that, that makes me want to do more of it. Okay. And that's what I found with my internship last summer with an ag startup in Iowa. It was just like, it was, it was fast paced, but it wasn't toxically competitive. Like it was very collaborative and I was just like constantly learning things. Like I'm super curious, I just love learning things. And so doing work where like my job is just to learn things and to like create resources for farmers and stuff like that was just like really meaningful. And I was in a place where like part of the purpose of that company was to help farmers and like, I grew up with farmers, I love farmers, I love farming. So like that was meaningful. And I think, and, and I don't, when I say meaningful career, I don't mean like I'm gonna go change the world. Like I have no aspirations of changing the world. Like I wanna do something meaningful for a small group of people. And if I can scale that up neat, if I can't, one person is meaningful. So if I can do something meaningful for one person and that's meaningful.

Vance Crowe [01:49:32] And so when you talk about not wanting a corporate America kind of job, what does that mean to you? What, what is corporate America?

Miriam Hoffman [01:49:41] I think the, the things about what, what I understand to be most corporate careers that that frustrate me is that it feels like there's a lot of wasted time doing things that don't need

Vance Crowe [01:49:52] To be done doing homework. That's probably, yeah, there's, that's a pretty good point. I don't think you're gonna be disappointed with that in 10 years.

Miriam Hoffman [01:49:59] Well, and even so, like right now I'm, I have a couple internship offers that I'm working through and, and I, I want some corporate experience certainly, but I'm still trying to find the positions in the corporate world that aren't gonna feel like they're in the corporate world. So like my, my preferred offers right now are ones that like, they haven't had an intern in this role before in this department before, but they have an extra project and they wanna help on this. So that's my way to be like, this is gonna kind of feel like a startup. But several of them, like the, the decision maker has told me like, I want you to be my intern, but I have to work through HR and we have to do everything the way that you have to do it because it's corporation. Whereas when I worked for the startup, like the decision maker met me at a conference and he said, Hey, I want you to work for me. And then I just went and worked for him and there was no HR to deal with. So just like little things like that, just like, I just, I want things to be more efficient and, and I don't see a lot of, and it's weird 'cause it's, it's almost a paradox because like corporations are in a lot of ways more efficient, like yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:50:56] They're economies of scale. Yeah. But,

Miriam Hoffman [01:50:58] But things like that just wasted time. I just, I can't, I can't deal with that.

Vance Crowe [01:51:02] It's interesting, right? Because, so I was in corporate America for five years and then I'm on the board of directors for this community bank. You know, my, one of my best friends is the, is the president of the bank. And by being so close to that, all of a sudden I start to realize like, oh, there's a reason they do everything through hr, right? And like, it's one of those things where I am like, I, you know, I hate bureaucracy. I hate waiting in line and you know, I get bored easily. So, but like you watch what happens when you don't do things the corporate America way and you're like, oh god, the problems are 10,000 times larger, but I'm with you. Right? Like, it's like I wanna have the good things of not having all of those things, but just not the bad things.

Miriam Hoffman [01:51:46] Yeah. Well, and I think that's part of it is that I don't, I don't have anything morally against like careers in the corporate world. I just don't think they're for me. Like people need to do those jobs. And yet, like there's, there's a and going back to the tradition and change thing, like there's a reason that things aren't the way that they're like, I'm, I'm not gonna sit here and say, oh, corporation, like, 'cause like corporations wouldn't be successful if it didn't work. But I just don't think that is the place that I want be. I don't think. But I don't know, like I'm

Vance Crowe [01:52:16] So what sort of work, if somebody was listening to this and they had the, the non-HR, non-corporate world, but they, the type of work that you would be skipping to work to come in and do. Is it sales? Is it marketing? Is it, are you wanna do construction? You wanna be out there with a welding torch? What do you want?

Miriam Hoffman [01:52:33] Not quite. I I do enjoy physical labor. I'm, I miss throwing hay bills on the farm now and then. No, I don't, and this is another thing I still, that's one of my goals for the spring semester is to figure out a little bit more of what I wanna do. But I'm really fascinated by economics and just how like, I think that's like, if you wanna leverage anything, especially in agriculture, but I mean anywhere like money is like the most reliable thing to leverage, I think. Like you can't, you can't count on convincing someone emotionally that they should do something. But if there's money to back it up, usually that works. Not always, but usually. And some people will say like, oh this is terrible. Like, why are people so motivated by money? But like, I like to think about what I can do based on how the world is not how I wish it was. So I, I see econ as a, as a good way to, to positively influence the world. And I want, I wanna work in agriculture and ideally closer to the farmer and to, to the production side. And so I, I can't say exactly what exactly what work I wanna do, but I can say that like the, the problem that I would like to help solve is to help bring more economic freedom to farmers so they don't feel like they have to just grow the same crops that everyone else is growing. And, and I wanna bring, I, and I think these things are all connected. So then I, I want consumers to be closer to their food. 'cause in ag we talk so much about the producer to consumer disconnect, whatever. And I'm so tired of talking about that. Guess farmers are like, tell our story more. And it's like, well, we're telling our story to each other and that's not helpful.

Miriam Hoffman [01:54:03] And consumers, they, they don't really, they don't care about that as much as we think that they do. But I think if we could shorten the supply chain and shorten the steps, then they might care more about it. And then if we get higher quality food to people, if it could be closer to them, then they would understand it more. And we and farmers would understand the consumer more. 'cause that's the other thing that tick me off as we say, like, you know, farmers, we have to educate the consumer and it's like, have you ever thought about educating yourself as a farmer? About the consumer? Like it's not like we, the farmers, the enlightened ones and the idiot consumers, like no, like everybody has something they know a lot about and farmers happen to know a lot about farming and consumers happen to not know a lot about farming, but that doesn't mean that they don't, they just, anyway, so, so like somewhere in this and like, I think there's, there's so many rural communities that like, because agriculture has gone this really efficient direction, like rural communities are struggling. So if we could just like decentralize some of agriculture, not all of it, I'm not, I don't wanna tear down the system 'cause there's so much that we have gained from it. But I think, I think there's a way that we could find more economic for freedom, freedom for farmers and, and bring better quality food to our consumers and, and shorten the supply chain in such a way that like everyone wins more.

Vance Crowe [01:55:15] I mean, this goes right back to your idea about complexity and how, you know, the more you value it, the more you can see opportunities. Miriam Hoffman, this has been a wonderful conversation. Nothing would delight me more than to see you be successful in whatever career you want. And I'm, I'm just really glad you're a part of the network. You've invited me to come see your speech and, and you came on the podcast today.

Miriam Hoffman [01:55:38] It's been, it's been meaningful to be here. This was like, I, I never set a goal to be a national FFA officer, but I did set a goal to be on the Vance Chrome podcast. So

Vance Crowe [01:55:45] Thank you.