Otis: 0:00
in this week's episode of the Cam and Otis Show it's a friend of mine, Vice Admiral retired Mike Franken, who is currently running for the U. S Senate seat from the state of Iowa. In this conversation, we go from leadership aspects learned on the farm and in a machine shop through his career in the Navy. And what is going on with farming today, and how can we change it and make it better? Uh, a lot of fun talking up, talking with and catching up with Mike and Camden. Ah really enjoyed the agricultural aspect of it. So I hope you enjoy the show and get some great nuggets of, ah, knowledge and leadership and about about a little bit about politics in the US I think it's, uh, think you'll enjoy the way they tried the CBD as a product to help you with those aches and pains and sore muscles and arthritis in your joints. It's time to do that, and one of the products that I'm a fan of and I've been using now for just shy of a year, is mashed its military and athletic strength hemp oil. It's a high quality cannabinoid that they put in the in the product and what it? What it does is it helps mitigate pain, mitigates swelling and rejuvenate some old crusty joints like I have next surgery last year I've been using it is part of my recovery plan and ongoing maintenance plan, if you will, so that I can continue to do what I love to do. That which is get up and work out every day. And Nash has has been a big part of that ongoing path that I enjoy and enabling me to continue to work out like I like I love to do So check out mash hemp dot com If you're a veteran or first responder, you get a heck of a discount. So go to mashing up dot com. Hey, welcome to the camp in others Show today Got a good friend of mine and candidate for US Senate with Iowa. Mike Franken, Vice Admiral, retired Mike Franken. They might great to have you on the show today.
Mike Franken: 2:37
I Oh, it's my pleasure. Dear sir, thank you very kind to be here, and this is a very pleasing opportunity to take a break from what I'm normally doing.
Otis: 2:47
Good good. Yeah, that's the way. That's the way I like to look at it too. This is a break from the normal, the normal work stuff. And because, like, to have fun and learn stuff. You know, uh, as I use really good English when I talk about things. So, uh, yeah, You know, Mike, one of the things I'm curious about is is a leadership thought or trait that has kind of been like your go to know that that thing from when you were a J G or even before if you want you know what? What was? That thing just kind of cured you all the way to this
Mike Franken: 3:22
point. Well, you know, it's jg in the Army, but it's incident the navy, so yeah. Oh, yeah. So it's Ah, but actually it goes much earlier for May. I worked in my dad's machine shop growing up, but when I was 17 I didn't lie about my age. They asked me if I was born in 1957 and I said yes. So they thought that meant I was 18. I really wasn't still 17 I worked for, went to work for the hog kill plant where we we butchered 2500 hogs a day and I worked hard. I was first in the rendering plant and working solo. We're gonna, uh, working with some other elderly fellas and then matriculated up became a lug er at night because I was a jock like you were sports and stuff and it was a lot of ate well, and you worked hard and you got muscled muscly. But then ultimately, I went on the on the floor and did a few other things. And when I was in college, they asked me, Hey, you want to be a foreman? Teoh, do some specialty work we're doing And I said, Sure, What's my pay? I get a pay raise. I'll do anything for more money. Well, I got a staff of, like 40 people on 19 years old and eso that's, um some of them were in their fifties, and I'm in charge of So what? I learned in that experience. Waas never do anything they never do. Never asked someone else to do something you're not willing to do yourself. So on that second day of that leadership challenged, I had to have somebody had a hang from ah, chair against a wall that was covered with Monk against a bulkhead that was covered by Monk to clean it with a high pressure hose. It was dangerous. It was claustrophobic, all public. It was gross as grosses. Anything in the world. It was probably death defying in terms of ingesting stuff on. It was a thankless job because nobody could see it on. And I got no takers when I said, Somebody needs to go up there So I said, OK, that's my job. And after that day, nobody complained about the pardon, the expression, shittiest jobs that were involved in redoing the rendering plant of that place. So I kind of held that through. I never I've never asked anybody to work harder than me to do something that wasn't Ah, that was something that was entirely thankless if I wouldn't do it myself. And I think people recognize that over time,
Camden: 6:15
Yeah, I think, especially in, Ah, that kind of industry. I know in my experience, when you're the leader on the farm, it's very much that there's always that one nastiest job. There's always something that's terrible like that. I know my last job, Kobe Valley. It was really turning. The compost was the worst thing, and stuff like that was pretty nasty, sweeping floors, all that kind of stuff. But you can do so much as a leader when you put your hand up for those jobs. And I like that. You asked first, because I I usually don't do that. I put my hand up and wind up doing the dirty work that I probably could have got someone else to do. But it's important you have to be able to be the person to put your hand up and go in and, you know, pick up the shovel like you always say that and go in and do that dirty work because, like you said, you don't want people to be working harder than you, but you can ask them the work as hard as you are. And I think that's something that's very different. You know, I tie it back to rugby real quick. You're doing conditioning and you're the captain out there. You really can't be yelling at people to go faster than, but if you finish, you finish. You can stand there at the finish line. Yohei Hurry up, boys. And that's the big difference right there.
Mike Franken: 7:16
So So here's there's another story. Uh, the ambassador in South Sudan said I really need somebody to talk to the suit. These people Liberation Army, government forces and also the in opposition forces. SPL. I, uh, I owe and, uh, so nobody's nobody said we're not going to do that. But where did he speak to these people in the D m. Z and northern South Sudan. Are you kidding me? It's dangerous up there, but you have to get up there, which is all another map. So, uh, you're been poor those roads, so Yeah, well, yes. Oh, um, and I mean, there is active badness going on up there every day. So it is. Well, somebody you know, we were directed by State Department. Somebody needed to do that. And who better than a military person? And who am I gonna ask to do that? I'm here. Okay. So in that situation, I had a German Lieutenant Colonel Peacekeeper Ah, company commander of Mongol soldiers. My small PTSD. I'm sorry. Psd sigh That came later. Freudian slip by reporting and eso. I mean, it's literally in a burned out building, talking to the government forces, saying If you don't retreat five miles, three miles, I will quit paying your soldiers because the U. S. Were paying their soldiers and knowing that his soldiers were gonna turn on him if they don't get paid and then finding my way 300 yards to the to the north and talking to the opposition forces underneath a banyan tree surrounded by their, uh, barefooted or shower footed, a k 47 wielding guys of all makes and models against around these Sudanese, the shrunken skulls of cattle and and gravestones where people where there's not stones or piles of stones on top of corpses, some small, some six feet long, etcetera, where people were scraped down and rolled over with rocks on them. So the dogs would dig him up this environment and I said to the SPL a Iot. Listen, if you don't go on the other side of the river, I'm going to give our our artillery 105 rounds to him and he's gonna walk you north. Is this what I need you to dio and look in a minute, the I and saying What are you gonna do about it knowing I'm on gun on? Uh, so, you know, it's just one of those situations that who's going to do it? Well, you know, a leader is gonna do it. It's up to you.
Otis: 10:25
That's part is just what jumps in my mind Is that old adage of sometimes if you act like you know what you're doing, people believe you don't want to do it. So right that was you influenced him to go. Do you know what leaders do right? The influence people to do things sometimes that they don't want to do
Mike Franken: 10:46
great while the German guy, interestingly, he took off his combat uniform and put his military blow soft. Carrying his is M nine thinking that maybe Liam looking more officious, he would be more conspicuous in hiss in his to knit tunic on. And he probably was right.
Otis: 11:09
Oh, man, Yeah, that's that's fun. And you hope that environment up there and for people that haven't been there, man, it it is just I always refer to It is caustic, and I'm not talking about the people I'm talking about. The physical environment is just That's hard core living. I mean things going on up there. That's a great story about that, sir. I think that was fun.
Mike Franken: 11:34
Yeah, well, so the other thing you learned doing stuff like that, you know this Otis empathy it iss it worried concern about your fellow human kind of the big. That's a bird big teaching moment for leadership.
Camden: 11:46
So when I think that kind of ties into and it's something we've touched on with a few different people over the course of our now 40 shows eyes that you we tend tohave yahoo you, we tend to kind of fall into especially civilians. When we look at conflicts and thinking, you tend to fall into that good guy bad guy perspective and that really from it. The more I learned it doesn't serve you. It really doesn't because everyone has a reason why they're doing what they're doing. Everyone has their incentives. Everyone, everyone. I mean, everyone has their own motivations, and you have to be able to understand that in order to properly handle those type of situations.
Mike Franken: 12:20
And remember that when we talk about politics
Camden: 12:23
Yes, sir.
Otis: 12:24
You know, my clients, when I'm coaching my clients and their dealing with the conflict in their team. That's one of the things I talked about. So what? So what's their perspective? What's a different way? You can look at this problem and you start to see all kinds of different solutions start to come out.
Mike Franken: 12:40
Yep. Kailua perspective is everything.
Otis: 12:44
It is. It is. You know, I'm I'm curious. You Army guy. Why the Navy? Why'd you go in the Navy, Mike? What was a boy? A farm boy from Iowa. They goes out into the big Blue Ocean.
Mike Franken: 12:59
What happened? Well, uh, everybody's got this thing, this saga of nothing's planned, right? So my mom was this one room schoolhouse teacher on the youngest of nine. She made us to reasonably well in school, so I was gonna go to medical school and my brother got drafted. Was was on the cusp of getting drafted for Vietnam. 1963 much older. He became a pilot, went from E one toe, 06 as a pilot and was Ah, there's a hot rock pilot, you know, driving a BMW car and a motor gutsy motorcycle and had a have a nice wife and had a happy life. And he said, you know, go to medical school at the age of 28 see the world, have a good time. And so it was a slap on the table saying, Great, you tell Mom and eso so I didn't want to be in the Navy. My dad was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Army. My brother, I had a brother in law is in the Air Force. He lived a pretty good life. Another brother in law at his leg, foot shot off in the Marine Corps in Vietnam. That didn't look too appealing. And another brother in law was a doctor in the Army. Um, and living in Pearl Harbor. He was just distant and and so I think, you know, Air Force. So I called the Air Force people they didn't answer. So I roll index to Navy, they answered. That's why I ended up in the air. It's as simple as that. I
Otis: 14:36
love. I love those stories. It's it's, you know, the guy who goes through the, you know, the short storefront where the recruiters offices and is like you, not they don't answer. You go that excellent. OK, that's what I'll do it
Camden: 14:50
so Mike, I was going to say, Ah. So what was the big driving factor that led you to serve your country? Was there some big ideal or anything like that? And then how is how is that held out over the course? Your life now going into the political sphere?
Mike Franken: 15:03
Well, I mean, I think everybody has a particular personality trait that they become servers servers to their fellow human kind. They like to be helpful. Uh, they do like to go it alone, but as long as what they're doing alone is helpful to others, So I think there's a strong element to that that, um you feel like you're doing something of purpose and it may not be financially most rewarding. It may be a a lot of sacrifice associated with it gone from home for I think I was gone from home for well over a decade for my career. Um, you know, it's just what you do it. I don't think about it being overly dangerous as much as, um has a lot of things. I mean, I I'm a risk taker in that regard that that kind of pro pebbles me. Um, so I think It's just mostly I wanted to do something of substance, and and, uh, I had I was younger. I was the youngest of nine, and I saw the most interesting time of other My elder siblings life were when they were giving back. So So once I got in the Navy on and figure it out, you know how to salute. Do all that business Never did learn out of real out of March, wouldn't important in the Navy. And, ah, once I got in. I mean, I thought about getting out a couple of times to go to medical school. I thought about getting out a couple of times and doing some more comfortable existence. But I never got out until it became a ah more of a morality issue to go decide to do something else. A struggle of conscience.
Otis: 16:55
I jumped dumb lit and that one's soak in for a second because, you know, everybody has their own little things that drive him towards him. But that that the fate of conscious, I think, is that what you said? Fate of conscious right? Is that how you put it?
Mike Franken: 17:11
Well, it's it's yeah, it's so I mean you don't have to be 100% for anything. Uh, but you have to be obliged to do it. But when? But when you've got a, um, fault of logic of conscience, then it takes it to a different realm. So I planned I planned the Navy's participation in for the invasion of Iraq. I had no issues with that. But in fact, I enjoyed enjoyed that very much. That was I was I was a planner and it was good, but But then when it was time to vote, should we invade Iraq? I said, You know, this is a bad idea, but I was overruled. But I'm OK with that. Okay, well, I'm all end and let's go, Let's go with it. And I'll never say I told you so, Um, no matter how it works out, But But ultimately when, Um, when I needed to follow somebody and be smitten with that person through thick or thin, knowing that some of the decisions are going to be right, some of them were going to be less than right. Uh, I came to the conclusion of life that the the largest proportion of of that person's decisions were going to be less than right, and I decided that I had a had an air of consciousness and it was time to move on.
Otis: 18:33
That makes me It's OK. Everybody has. Well, that makes me think of something you kind of mentioned. It was a question I had in my mind. Is is who do you model yourself out of? Or, you know, when you look in study history or even just somebody you know, you say, man, I want to be a leader like that person. So do you have somebody that you or a group? You know, your top three? Me even.
Mike Franken: 19:00
Well, sure. I think I think we all would like to emulate aspects of leadership in people like, you know, Lincolnesque. I really think it's great that, you know, he had to sneak his way into Washington D. C, and come via the long way around Maryland because he was and he was always reasonably concerned about getting off. Um, and so I think I think that's significant. How he worked things behind the scene and never looked, never looked to be in front of the camera. I mean, I think that's highly laudable there are others. My father was was Ah was a rough hewn Vela blue collar worker. Big, big like you, and, uh, and he and he always was very forthright and And he reached a priest a point with him, and he snapped, and that was the end of it. You better know where that point is. A sort of Israel's his kid working in the machine shop with them, and I never want to get close to that. But I saw him in, uh, in other situations where, you know, Big Big Joe stood up and it was no mistake about it. Everybody knew that he was honest is a days long, and he stood up and he was he had no issues and saying, Okay, you, you, you let's go and that it was that type of leadership. There's a remarkable number of others here. Here's the big thing about leadership. Some of our best leaders and the stories behind them never get told and because they either shrug it off or they don't survive or, you know, others don't survive, and they do. But they will never say a word about it. So I think every day is Ah, has ah challenge of leadership and, uh, just gonna be be be first. Be there, Be complete And be honest.
Camden: 21:08
I think it's something as a leader, you know, to take a quote. If you do something right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all And that if you take that mindset as a leader and you kind of like you said, be behind the camera and be OK like that and have that kind of sort of quiet confidence, I think that can take people so much further than being the person who's always allowed now trying to get everyone up and going. You can just sit there, be quiet, let people go about their business. And then you know when it's time to say so.
Otis: 21:33
No, I think that's ah, great point in how to develop that. And what as you we've talked a lot about leadership. So what? I'm really curious out? Well, really, I'm asked this one first. I must say the next one, but they were job no, from machinists to know running for senate.
Mike Franken: 21:57
Um, you never You never know what's going to be the good job until you get into it. So I had an opportunity after a long siege job where it was argue assist. Could be multiple deployments, etcetera, and the Navy dangled in front of May 2nd time to go get another master's degree, and this was going to be not a degree in physics. This was gonna be something a lot easier. This is gonna be, you know, national security affairs or something like that. And I was I was really down on it. I said, Yeah, absolutely. Can't wait. And I got a phone call, and it was Sun Yang going at school. One of those conversations you're gonna you're gonna hightail over here, and I got a job for you on the waterfront, and I was like, I can't believe in my My wife was like, Great. There you go again. You know, 20 hour days. But I worked for a fellow who, and I and I had a small team of huge professionals that when the combat systems on the destroyers and frigates on the Norfolk waterfront, and it turned out to be a fabulous job of, uh, management experience, uh, long range thinking, um, cost benefit analysis, a decision making going to buy. And never once did I go to my boss. And he's any, uh, he said, Well, at one time, he said, Well, is this something you want to do, Mike? Because you're gonna develop some enemies. I said, this is what this is the right thing to do. In the end, this will turn out well, he says, OK. And so my small con GRE of of senior enlisted people and myself, it would turn out to be the best job of all of all, my of all my jobs that I thought were going to be, absolutely that the worst. So you never know. Um, you make the job and there were people around. You help you make that job into something you want, And, uh, being the leader above, then below makes all the difference in the world
Otis: 24:19
that that's great, cause you know, I went toe when I was at soccer. I had that same feelings, like another NUG staff job. Just gonna ride my time out to retirement sort of thing. Then Adam McRaven came in and we started building the NATO headquarters Little soft headquarters, and man that job. It was just it was unbelievable is those little things that you just make. If you make the best of what you got, then it becomes the best of what you got, right. I mean, it's just you can you can complain about it or you could make the best of it and that that's that. That's a great
Mike Franken: 24:58
if your if your job is confined, but it's not building your empire. It is building your responsibilities and the necessities of what you're doing to interpret where you can go with this, taking it to the next level that makes it reward because everybody wants to be value at it. I mean, you truly want to be value added and eso when afforded into that by expansive leadership. It's It's a fabulous eventuality.
Otis: 25:29
Yeah, well, that value added, You know, I do a lot of the team building stuff, and that is such a critical piece that, you know, whatever it is that I do. And you know their stories about a draw, a blank on the name. But you know the guy, the janitor in the hospital that knows if he keeps the floor clean by keeping the floor clean, it keeps it keeps the rate of infection down, and it helps people get better faster sooner so even. I mean, the entire team has to understand that that value added to the purpose of the teeth.
Camden: 26:03
And I think that when you have a team that understands the greater purpose that you're looking at, you know, like you said, the people make the job. That's what really comes down to, and everyone's kind of working towards that common goal. You get so much more out of each person and they add so much more value to what the teams doing. You know, I could think of so many different things inside rugby as far as it goes, but just especially as a forward inside rugby. There's a big, sweaty guys. They're doing all the nasty jobs and do all the heavy lifting and all that kind of stuff. But you know, you're doing something that's helping the team, and that's kind. That's that's the attitude you have tohave one of my favorite stories. I like to tell his O coach a good friend of ours, John Paterson. I got my first varsity game in high school and he told me he never wanted to see my face during the game because my job was to hit every single ruck and go do all the dirty work. And if I was, if he never saw my face, I was doing my job, right? And that just completely flipped my perspective because I was realizing I'm not going to score. I was just I was even skinnier than I am now. I was playing with a lot of guys. There are a lot bigger than me. I was never gonna score. I was never gonna break a tackle. I wasn't gonna be the big all star player. But I could go find my job, do that job as well as I could. And that provided the impact for the other 14 guys on the field for us to be suggest, evaluated.
Otis: 27:18
What I'm curious about when you get to the Senate and I'm being I'm on that optimistic side for you cause we're gonna know when you get to the Senate that's a whole nother world of leadership. Ah, I'm I'm curious as you as you envision that. What? How do you How do you do that? How do you How do you I guess really sustained upon your values in this realm of 99 other people, you're going to be
Mike Franken: 27:49
working. Well, I it's the the sport. Maybe the same, but the games a little different. So for this game, like with every other, no, get the big strategy right? There's some truisms of life. The strategies don't get better with time, and events don't usually work in your advantage if you haven't done the necessary preparation. Eso uh, I would I would make sure the strategy of my office and and how people thought about the problem set before us. What do we want to do? What are the big pearls of accomplishment? Um, our citizenry in the state of Iowa, the nation as a whole, internal from border to border and then the United States in the larger globe for the betterment of humankind. And so so gonna working out. It's not about my family. It's not about the circle of my family, but let's just work on our little core and then expanded from there. So knowing what the what the goal posts are in each of those areas and starting locally and expanding that and and letting the natural course of things take their place and and always holding true to a couple of the couple of truisms. You gotta be there, you got it. And you don't need to be. You don't need to be there first, but you need to be there towards the front of the line. Often you needed me to be a complete person being prepared and you need to be honest, honest with yourself, honest with those who elected you and ah, transparent with with where you had it and ultimately and don't surround people who think like you. You want dissension on the team. And when you reach an accommodation for a decision, you want to say, Okay, lets decide to do this and intuitively, Lett's be introspective. Let's look at ourselves and then look from outside in and let's carry forth and and Terry Fourth. And ultimately I found that to be hugely effective. This is what we did on a ship. You've got sweater called special evolutions, getting getting refueling and see pulling into port, getting underway from court, doing a missile shoot, doing a large gun exercise, doing ah, Tomahawk shoot, etcetera. The thing to do after that is to twitch to compel people to be part of the team and where you're using a Demi a dad. Dr. Demming ism off continuous improvement not only in the product but also in your leadership. So you bring the whole team together. There may be 30 of you from the 18 year old. Just got on board who had a key phone talk and roll to the captain who's making the decision. Go. Don't go. What's this? Don't do that, etcetera to the weapons officer who's actually running all the systems. And OK, so okay, everybody, grade yourself. How did we do? Where did we fail? What did we do? Well, for the failures and the less convinced completes. Who's responsible for fixing each one when, How with what assets? And does everybody generally agree with that? OK, so we're going to revisit this when with whether what results? Leaving nothing to chance and then you go to the next person and then you go to the next person. Everybody has value added, and ultimately the mundane you don't even talk about the difficult becomes mundane. The impossible becomes intimately, infinitely doable, and you become a good shift
Camden: 32:07
largely a lot of that as you're talking about. You know what? You want to include the entire team in the reason why that has to be so important and you know, so many different situations is it kind of goes back to. We were talking earlier of perspective that each one of those individuals has different perspective on what was going on about what the output was, what their job was leading up to it and how they can improve on that situation. And without tapping into every individual like that, you're gonna have issues, you know, if you have, if you have someone, I'm going back to rugby against our. But if you have somebody in a scrum and rugby, got eight guys pushing together, and if one of them knows what's wrong, because if it doesn't feel right, it's not right. That's how it goes. So you know, it's it's a hard thing to do. But you know, it feels right when you're doing it right, and one of the biggest things you have to do is a coaches teach the players to turn and talk to each other. It's going over to me and say, Hey, coach camp. It didn't work. Can you watch? Can you see if my position was right? It's like we'll go turn to the guy next to you and say, Hey, we need to get our buying tighter. We need to get our shoulders lower whatever this situation is, because you can feel if it's wrong because you're the person in the scrum, not me. And they have the perspective to do that properly. And I think that applies to any sort of team situation because everyone has their own incentives. Everyone has their own perspective and you have to be able to do as a leader utilize that in order to get the best product possible. It add as much value as I
Otis: 33:27
want to throw something that you, uh, that I was just thinking about. So we had a pastor Bob on a few shows ago, and I liked it. I like to bring things back to the business since two, and you think about the church and how the church is a business since he's like that, what you're doing right now, running a campaign is a really interesting business, and I'm just curious how you define things you know you have your team. That's pretty. You know, everybody understands that. But we talk about profit and loss, and we talk about clients and things like that. How do you define that at this point in your in your campaign, if you will.
Mike Franken: 34:08
What's funny that you used Otis is funny that you use religion as the as the preemptive the conversation to this Because there again, you have real property. You have Ah, you have a loss organization. Meaning you've got salaries, you've got a real estate, you've got rents, you've got programs. There's all sorts of associated costs of running this, um and the big issue is you need to pay salary and, uh, but what's your product? Your product is a future that's, uh, reasonably incomprehensible. Often times if you're a first time politician, you don't have any track history of doing this. I'm a little different. I had worked on the hill before. Many times I got a I got a long as I'm getting. I'm getting my by the call from my boss here on, But the interesting thing is, so you have a promise and you've got to perform. So you've developed the most crucial thing for any business. And that's trust. They have to trust in you. And they have to believe that they want to believe in you. They just have to believe in their trust of you that ultimately, when asked to, you'll provide the necessary guidance. You'll stay true to yourself. You'll stay. Stay true to that which brought you here. There's another clears a story. I get a phone call. I've been off outside of Clinton, Iowa, and a very thick German accent says I'd really would you get into the hill? Will you hold to your military precepts? And I said, I think I will. That's all I know. I'm a 60 plus year old guy. I've never really fallen off that before. I don't need this job. I'm doing this out of service. Um, I anticipate I will. Then I will help you. And it was like I don't know what that means. And Ah, well, he was a chief technology officer of a really big U S corporations who was upset that people such as you and I, who we we use the fact that we've got military leadership to get to where we are in the world, and yet once we get there, we act like we don't know what we're talking about. You know, we kind of fall off that that gilded path. And he was upset about it. He was looking for someone who would hold to, I guess I convinced him I would,
Camden: 36:57
Yeah, eso Mike when we were doing Ah, reading up on your behalf beforehand. One of the things that stood out for me with my agricultural background was you wanted to modernize Iowa's agriculture to fight climate change. And so I was just curious, because I always love to talk about the future of agriculture and where the industry's going and all this kind of stuff. What are some key pieces or factors you see in that path forward for Iowa's agricultural industry?
Mike Franken: 37:19
Well, you know, it's it's Ah, it's just like this South Sudan struggle that you've got a lot of, uh, entities that are working against you. And, uh, you best not try and go it alone. So if if we use agriculture as it exists today, which is a manifestation of where we've come for the last 80 years now controlled by some large agricultural consortium's almost near oligarchs of sorts, uh, and how the owner operator Farm has mutated into sometimes, um, an owner really using his or her farm as a steward of some larger entity. It's different, but what we've what we've also done with the production of ethanol and other things where I were used to create all sorts of props. It was the breadbasket of America, apples and wheat and flax, and all sorts of stuff were growing here. Now, today, it's generally corn and beans. That's it, Um, because that's what Big AG kind of wants us to do. Well, when we done that, we've taken a lot of the localised production out of that of that operation, where a local, um ah local storage facility and drying facility may employ 15 people but encompasses land ah, 100,000 acres around them. And so you're not employing a lot of people. And they're mostly blue collar workers, and you don't have the wage scale. We've kind of fell in off the wealth of farming. Today. The wealth of farming is downtown. New York are many apples of Boston or Beijing, and it's not in the farmer anymore. And sometimes if you talked to a farmer today, Ah, you say, Where's your profit? Where's your profit and loss? How much say, so do you have in your profit and loss? Some of them say I have very little. I could be the best farmer in the world. It doesn't make any difference because the markets control my life. They don't want that. So ultimately, you can't have an agricultural situation where you've got a farmer whose growing corn for ethanol versus big oil because they'll always lose don't always lose. So my sense is, farming needs to be simpatico with the climate hawks simpatico with regional food production. Mawr Farm to table operations, more efficiencies associated with farming so that it doesn't become big ag versus ethanol slash farming, but rather human consumption. Food animals. Uh, ecological considerations. Climate change, preservation of ah, of the family farm, carbon sequestration versus carbon emitting. So you change the game. Let's not play rugby. Let's play multiple sports against one team and see who draws the biggest crowds,
Camden: 40:47
right. And, you know, I think you touch on something that I got put in the back of my mind a while back when I first got in the farming was the idea that people really want to know their farmer, and that's it's a little bit of a trend and, you know, not everyone's there. But it's something I found as I go through studying agricultural business, economics and things and what really led me to creating ah business plan that I put in for a non profit a couple years ago was that you? You can solve a lot of this in the D traditional farming sense. There's a lot of good that we have in the family farm in those type of things that just kind of need to be kick started up into the 21st century is the way I always put it a little, you know, absolutely. If you look at eso did kind of out do a quick overview of what I was talking with that business model, it was basically that you have a town, you know, you have X number of people inside this town. We know we need to feed those people. We know that each of those people let's call it eat a head of lettuce a week and three bell peppers well If you can plan out your production to cover that, then you have a market right there and you're covering there. And then because you're the local farmer, then you have you have your stewardship of your land and you have all of the incentives lined up to do everything right like you're talking about. You know, if you if you have a big corporate farm, you don't have the incentives to take care of the land as much. You don't have the incentives. Take care of the environment. But if it's your land and your covering and your feet in your town, you have every incentive to do that right. And so I think it's kind of going back to my favorite word is incentives. It's all about in lining those incentives in the proper way. And you know, when you look at its combining the new technologies and all these great things that we're figuring out, and that the corporate farms figured us out, figured it out for us. That's great. But how do you apply that in a model that actually makes sense and helps everybody out? And I think you're completely right. The family farms are a big way forward on.
Mike Franken: 42:37
Yeah. So you know, Stalin showed that doing something for a larger entity where you were just a stooge and execution didn't work so well. So yeah, so you can't even boil this down. I'm a science guy, so you can boil this down to the heat equation associated with ethanol and other productions. And how could we better preserve the heat so we could start growing things on localized levels and grow houses? And we could start doing this farm to table operations in an entirely different matter.
Camden: 43:09
Exactly. And there's so many compounding effects and, ah, when you come to that, like, just the easy one that I always use in my sales pitch with that nonprofit was just like, Hey, if I'm growing it down the street, it's me. Even if I'm delivering it to you, that's me and my truck driving half a mile or mile. That's not it. Getting shipped across the country. You're getting better food to consumers happy. We're not colluding as much environments happy. And I'm still making money. Farmers happy. You can check all those boxes Not back. Complicated, right?
Mike Franken: 43:37
Sure. Shorter logistics chains will are advantageous everywhere.
Camden: 43:43
So one other question on that before we get out of the bag too much. So something I've noticed here in Arizona. And it's something I've seen in classes and things is that there's a little bit of this, Ah, legislative inertia around urban agriculture. Is that something that you see inside Iowa or that, or because it's more of a farming background in general? Is that something that you're not combating as much in that type
Mike Franken: 44:04
area? Yeah, that's not That's not a big issue here. Really. Um, farming is where most people moved away from in this state. And, uh, which encouraging is you're seeing people coming back to the family farm oftentimes after they've had, ah, life as an engineer. Life is a schoolteacher or a medical professional, etcetera. And Mom and Dad are our family farm is now up for grabs because people have retired out of it, coming back to the farm. But you don't see a lot of urban agriculture here, but we certainly can we get the land for
Otis: 44:42
a mike. I really appreciate your time. So, you know, our tradition are wrapping up our show. We always talk about what we learn. And, uh, it's my turn to go first. Camden, uh, and and your little snippet about the business of politics and the product that you provide is the future to May. I never thought about that way, And that's and that that's such a great synopsis, putting it into an understanding. I think that it is not over. Simplified is just a great way of thinking about because that's that's why I vote for that guy or that gal because they said they're going to set these things up and going to do these things. So I am. That's the product they're selling. And that's what I'm buying as the consumer of voter as the consumer, I heard that great
Mike Franken: 45:35
with the pollution in politics has to do with money. And so what would often times gets interpreted as the best politician who for and politician means a leader is the person who accumulates the most money. But that's just the best fundraiser. And and although that person may be exceedingly skin deep and ultimately just be upon to larger party politics or to be bought by the financial entities that bought into that person, so why we consider money behind a politician. To be this demonstrably positive thing is always a curious curiosity for May. It's like, Why don't we talk to a person? 2nd 39 When I worked for Donald Rumsfeld, he always asked if he had a question on a topic. It went four layers deep. Always and you can bet on it. And you better do you better know, because if you didn't know one of those layers next, he's not going to
Otis: 46:43
know what you learn, Mike.
Mike Franken: 46:45
Well, I learned that. Ah, there's a role for leadership and people value it. And I'm glad that people use their their life's experiences to provide that to others. Because you can short circuit the path of mighty potholes by talking and listening to people such as yourself that have lived it. Heard it and think about it. Mawr.
Otis: 47:15
Thank Camden about you.
Camden: 47:17
I'm kind of building off of yours, dad, because, uh what I took it from the same statement. He said, but I took it a different way, actually. So I'm going and keep it eyes that really, in the business of politics, one of the things you're showing along with the future is the trust, and I really like that because it kind of it kind of like it has been a little light bulb off in my head of That's how you that's how you get these really big personal connections. You have people that are so I mean, really fanatical with a lot of different politicians, whether it's local or national level, because it's all about trusting that individual to make the right choice in that situation. And I love the way you talked about that, Mike, because that's that's really what it comes down to. Like you're talking about that phone call you got. It's You can't say yes or no to those type of things. Will you hold true to this? Well, it depends. Everything depends, right? I love to use my economists dancer and cop out on a lot of things. It depends because I don't know what the situation is going to be. A It'll depend because I'm gonna look at all of these different variables. We always talk about its multi variant problem solving right that, and you have to trust the person is going to make the right choice in that situation. Whether, however, they're alive politically, or whatever is going on with that or what their background is. Do you trust that they will make the right choice with all of the information? I think that's what The pig.
Mike Franken: 48:29
Thanks, Shell. Thank you very much. This was a very kind, and I'm glad I could be some value added to it all.
Otis: 48:35
Yeah, thanks for Thanks for taking the time out, Mike. What's what's the website again? I don't want to mess it up. Please.
Mike Franken: 48:42
Uh, it's Franken for Iowa dot org's God So Franken for Iowa. Just like Frankenstein without the Stein.
Otis: 48:52
Awesome. Thanks again, Sir. Camden.
Mike Franken: 48:56
Thank you.
Camden: 48:56
Thank you all again for listening to today's show special thanks to our guest, Mike Franken and our sponsors mash military and athletic stream temp oil. You can check out recent episodes of the campaign OTA Show on Spotify and Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and check out a full archive at the campaign. OTA show dot bus sprout dot com The camera notice shows on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Thanks again. See, all next week