From the Desk of Chip Kemp - Vol. 5

No one likes change.  

Until they do. 

Would you really prefer cold showers every day? How about waking up, stirring the fire, then putting the coffee on? Would you give up that modern, nimble, tough aluminum trailer for that old heavy fiberglass job from the late 80’s? 

I get it. I’m as averse to change as anyone. Those who know me well know I’m eager to park the modern dually or my bride’s fancy SUV in lieu of the old ’90s Jeep. The noise and the clutch take me back for a bit. It allows me to pretend for a moment that time stood still. 

But that is all it is – pretend. Then I grab my iPhone to see pictures of my grandkids, check the weather, or check cows in the 701x app. And immediately I realize that some changes are good. Very good. Though, admittedly, not always as smooth or as immediate as we might like.   

One of the core principles of 701x is that the beef business deserves better tools and services than it has received in the past. That means you. We are 100% confident we are positioned to build those tools with and for you. That happens as a collaboration between your team and ours.  

Some of our registry clients are experiencing immense opportunities at this very moment. We respect both a) the power and utility of the established registry platforms and b) that it is necessary to incorporate modern approaches that prepare our registry clients for 2030 and 2040 and beyond. As such, in the moment these opportunities might look merely like “change”. Ultimately, they become the foundation to unparalleled genetic potential and insight for those next generations of breeders. Others did the heavy lifting for us. Now it is our turn to pay it forward and do the heavy lifting for our successors in the seedstock business.  

As a parallel, several customer-focused seedstock folks have taken on big financial obligations to provide a serious agent of change to their commercial bull buyers. That agent is the xTpro tag. If you don’t know it, you should. What looks in the moment of tag application as peculiar, becomes a remote health and bull monitoring tool that can revolutionize how we manage, measure, and monetize bulls. Opportunity is again knocking masked merely as a very simple change.  

To be frank, to most of us, change sucks. However, I know I would not be the person I am if not for the ability and willingness to grow and sometimes change. How about you?