Michael Odupitan

Photo by EMMA HIGHFILL

Michael Odupitan CEO & President Omni Circle

To establish a collaborative community, I truly believe we must start at the root. I’ve learned in the last three years that collaborative communities need collaborative leaders who know how to work with others and align their shared purpose for the advancement of projects, organizations, communities and society. These individuals must have strong skills in connecting people, attracting diverse talent and modeling collaboration as a core value.

CONNECTORS

In Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book, The Tipping Point, he describes how Paul Revere’s influence on the community was a result of his “connection” to different social groups. The influence of Rosa Parks for the civil rights movement wasn’t solely because she refused to give up her seat, but it was her connection to the community that rallied the people. Connectors are significant not only because of the number of people they know but, more importantly, because of their ability to link people, ideas and resources that wouldn’t normally bump into one another.

CREATING A COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY

DIVERSE TEAMS

Once we identify our connectors and establish our collaborative leaders, it is important to develop diverse teams. Research has proven that diverse teams produce better results when led by the proper collaborative leader.

Teams that include individuals from diverse backgrounds, cultures and generations, offer different perspectives that extend reach into the community and allows them to build a space that is inclusive to everyone. Diversity means bringing people together who wouldn’t normally work together because of their experience or lack of. I find it difficult to develop solutions alone to issues that I have not personally experienced. To build a great collaborative community we need individuals who are either knowledgeable of the issues and/ or those who have experienced the concerns.

COLLABORATIVE LEADERS

It is not enough for collaborative leaders to build diverse teams and attract the best talent. They must embody collaboration at their core and set the tone by being a model for the team and the community to follow. A leader must assess and evaluate their values to improve their awareness emotionally because being a part of a collaborative community means you may work with other leaders you do not align with.

We must learn that the work we do is not about us, but instead, is for the communities we serve. As leaders, if we are not able to put egos aside when building community, we create tall silos with even thicker walls. A strong collaborative leader is one who has also developed their social intelligence to build the teams and communities that work together. People will follow and support you if they are confident that you are doing your best. Persuading people to contribute their time and effort to partnerships with people they do not know (or people they may not necessarily like) to solve important problems takes time. The development of common purpose for a collaborative community can be a long, complex process but when we figure it out, there are tremendous benefits.

As our connectors build teams and our teams develop a shared vision, our organizations and communities become breeding grounds for creation. People support what they help create. TK

NextGen

a Future Focused on Family

MATT BADSKY, BRAD LINDSTROM, DEREK THOMPSON, DAMON THOMPSON | NextGen

By LISA LOEWEN Photos by KEVIN JOHNSTON

A financial company founder, two VPs of marketing and a banker start a ranch. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but with four separate companies handling millions of dollars in cattle and beef each year, NextGen is nothing to laugh about.

Derek Thompson, his brother Damon, and their cousin Brad Lindstrom are no strangers to the ranching business, having grown up working on a family hobby farm. As young men, their career aspirations took them in a much different direction, where they found success in the financial sector.

Derek helped co-found Advisors Excel, and Damon and Brad worked their way into vice president positions at the organization as well. They found incredible success within that organization and the future looked bright for all of them.

Then tragedy struck. Brad’s brother passed away from cancer. He was only 40 years old.

“Sometimes you have to have something like that to make you stop and realize that life is short, and you need to make the most of the time you have on this earth,” Damon said. “That made us take a step back and really evaluate our futures. We asked ourselves where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do for the next 25 years.”

While weighing the answers to those questions, one underlying theme kept emerging: a future focused on family.

“We sat around the table and talked about how cool it would be do something together that we all loved.”

Photo by KEVIN JOHNSTON

Photo by KEVIN JOHNSTON

Photo by KEVIN JOHNSTON

Photo by KEVIN JOHNSTON

Brad said. “We thought about the cattle business and how with our financial and marketing expertise we could take ranching into the next generation. Derek had already bought a ranch out west of town, and that is what really started the vision.”

They brought long-time friend Matt Badsky, a banker in Oklahoma at the time, into the discussion, and even though all four men still had full-time jobs that demanded a significant amount of time and energy, they threw all their remaining resources into the formation of NextGen in 2015.

NextGen FEED

In addition to owning a ranch, Derek had also invested in a feedyard outside of Emporia and had been working with them for several years, so he understood the feed side of the cattle business. The trio purchased NextGen at Riverbend, a 50,000-head finishing feedyard in Hugoton, Kansas, just outside of Garden City and located strategically near meat packing facilities.

They added NextGen at Allen, a 12,000-head starter and grow feedyard near Allen, Kansas, which has also turned into a finishing yard. “Purchasing the feedyards helped us start the investment toward our cattle operation,” Brad said. }

But they quickly realized that to keep the yards full, they were purchasing cattle from across the country without really knowing much about the quality of the stock. If they wanted to produce the highest quality beef, they had to take control of the genetics.

NextGen CATTLE

Almost concurrently with the purchase of the feedyards, NextGen started the cattle company so they could develop the seed stock and control the quality of the cattle in the feedyard.

“We went out and purchased 80 2-year-olds that would calve in the fall,” Damon said. “After they calved, we planned to use embryos in those cows to start a purebred operation. Our original intent was to eventually sell a few bulls and develop high quality seed stock.”

That intention grew into two bull sales a year, with NextGen selling more than 600 bulls in 2021 and expecting to sell close to 750 in 2022. It also maintains a herd of 1,000 purebred animals.

“By following a scientific approach through cross-breeding and genetic selection, NextGen is now well-known and proven in the feedyard,” Derek said.

The traditional rancher would be content with that type of success. But the founders of NextGen are anything but traditional.

“All of us are wired kind of the same. We can’t seem to stop with what is right in front of us because another opportunity is always on the horizon,” Derek said.

NextGen BEEF

They met with Stacy Davies, ranch manager at the Roaring Springs Ranch, who had been buying bulls from NextGen for several years. Davies had been in the meat industry for quite some time and loved the fact that NextGen had developed direct relationships with ranchers across the country.

“Ranchers were buying our genetics, and we were buying the calves back and putting them into the feedyard,” Damon said. “Davies suggested that we tell that story and sell our beef at the retail level.”

Demand for local beef was already high before the COVID pandemic hit. But once those meat packing plants started suffering from quarantines and staffing issues, it became nearly impossible for beef companies that

“We thought about the cattle business and how with our financial and marketing expertise we could take ranching into the next generation.”

—Brad Lindstrom Owner NextGen

didn’t own their own processing facilities to get their weekly number of animals processed.

“They pretty much just shut out the independent contractors and processed all of their own business instead,” Derek said.

NextGen knew that if they wanted to be in the meat processing business long term, they had to get more control over the packing side of the industry. That led to the opportunity to buy a meat packing plant in Pleasant Hope, Missouri. "It was actually a brand-new pork facility that had gone out of business,” Brad said. “We bought it and converted it to a beef plant.”

In March 2021, NextGen Beef Co. harvested its first beef animal.

Today, they run about 2,500 head a week through the meat processing plant, all of which have been procured by the NextGen team. A good portion of the animals, about 500 head a week, are going into the food supply chain, whether it is with retailers throughout the }

state of Missouri with the Show Me Beef program or to companies such as Whole Foods, Chipotle, McDonald's or Taco Bell.

NextGen TRADING

Looking to bring next generation ranching to all levels of the cattle business, NextGen seized on another opportunity four years ago: commodities.

Because they knew firsthand from their experience in the feedyards how essential good quality feed is to producing good quality beef, when certain food ingredients were hard to come by, NextGen took it upon themselves to find a solution. They worked with suppliers, nutritionists and customers to find alternatives to alleviate the strain of shortages in the market and develop a diverse portfolio of supply.

“It just made sense to help out all of those other ranchers that were struggling with the same feed issues we were,” Matt said.

NextGen Trading takes positions on commodities mixed into food rations and then sells them directly to feedyards or large cattle operations for use in their feed. They truck the inventory from the factory to locations nationwide.

THE NEXT GENERATION

What began as a way for a group of family members and friends to slow down a little and enjoy their work has accelerated into a massive endeavor.

“When we originally started, we had a lot of freedom. It was like being quasi retired,” Derek said. “We were able to do what we wanted and enjoy the time on the ranch. Now, it is like more than full time jobs. We have roughly 450 employees. We went from not a lot of responsibility to having millions of dollars’ worth of cattle on the lot every day and supporting a lot of people.”

But the work is worth it when you are doing something you love.

“It is fun and exciting,” Matt said. “We all have the belief that if you aren’t growing, you are dying. We are all still relatively young. No one wants to just sit around.”

They also hope to grow a legacy that their children will want to be involved with. "The traditional model is for the rancher to run his business until he gets tired and then the kids step in to take it over, then their grandkids step in, on so on,” Brad said. “We don’t do it that way. We are creating an organization that provides a wide range of opportunities besides just going out and handling livestock.”

Derek agrees.

“It is so much more than just ranching. If our kids want to get into marketing, finance, risk management, analytics, software and so much more, they can do that here. We have a lot of talented people working for us who didn’t grow up around cattle.”

BEYOND THE VISION

For the owners of NextGen, the vision of being in the cattle business has evolved into four businesses that incorporate vertical integration from seed stock through feeding and

“It is so much more than just ranching. If our kids want to get into marketing, finance, risk management, analytics, software and so much more, they can do that here.”

—Derek Thompson Owner NextGen

Making Sure you take your best shot at financial goals.

processing, to give the consumer the highest quality beef.

That evolution took place in such a short amount of time that the owners admit they weren’t always able to put best practices into place. Now that things have stabilized, they plan to go back through each operation and look at ways to streamline and improve efficiencies. "We have a lot of room for improvement and growth,” Matt said. “Complacency is the beginning of the end.”

Externally, they want to interact more with the public and take their message out to the retail market offering NextGen beef online direct to the consumer.

“We are going to do this by telling the stories of our ranchers, the blood sweat and tears, the effort it takes to run a ranch and operate a business, the pride they take in providing the best quality meat,” Derek said. “There’s salt of the earth people in the cattle business—hard working, honest, tons of integrity.”

NextGen will have a little help telling those stories. Former Kansas City Royals baseball legend George Brett has joined the team as a strategic partner to help spread the word about NextGen Beef. TK

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Joseph Prokop, CFP® CRPC® CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Client CFO & Fiduciary