All Hat, No Cattle

I’m wrestling with imposter syndrome, and I feel stuck between two worlds. This happens to me about every six months, usually during the dead of winter when I have been months removed from any kind of ranching operation.

I didn’t grow up living on a ranch. But my grandfather owned one about sixty miles from our home. It was a small stocker cattle operation. Each spring, he’d send me with the manager, Tony Zarlingo, along with Tony’s father Pete, to the sale barn in Loma, Colorado to find good buys.

They’d purchase light stockers in early spring, process them at the ranch, graze them through the summer, put on a few pounds, and ship them back to Loma in the fall. It wasn’t complicated: buy light, add weight, sell higher. Keep inputs low. Keep it simple.

No one ever accused my grandfather of being a great cattleman. He simply loved having the ranch, and stockers were a way to stay in the business. Most years they made money – enough to help cover the interest on the note. That was success.

His friends, though, were great cattlemen. The Armstrongs, the Klebergs, the Seeligsons, the Killams, the Bass family – legacy South Texas ranching families running enormous operations. Many had oil income, but their cattle businesses stood on their own: lean, disciplined, profitable. They invested in good genetics, sound horses, and honest people.

My grandfather cherry-picked knowledge from those men and paired it with his own financial acumen. The result was a modest but respectable ranching operation perched on a beautiful mesa overlooking the Colorado River and the Roan Plateau.

Working summers on the Double B – named after my late uncle, Briggs Brown – is what ultimately pulled me into ranch work, and eventually led me to TCU Ranch Management.

Before that, I drifted. Survey jobs here. Ski guiding in the winters. A ranch job there. I never stayed long. As long as I could keep shoes on my horses and enough gas for the next rodeo, that was all I needed.

I didn’t invest much in knowledge, self-reflection, or growth until I met my wife in 2006.

That changed everything.

She challenged me – quietly, consistently – to be better. Through watching her kindness, her gratitude, and how she moved through the world, I started looking inward for the first time. I wanted to improve. Not just professionally, but as a human being. Better with money. Better in business. Better in life.

I enrolled in the Montana State Horseshoeing School under the one and only Tom Wolfe, thinking it might be a pathway into ranch management through relationships. It didn’t take long to realize my back disagreed. I needed another route.

TCU Ranch Management had always lingered in the back of my mind, but I’d failed at college more than once. I assumed my chances slim. I applied anyway.

When I was accepted, the director told me he saw grit and determination, exactly what the program looked for. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA and a hunger to keep learning.

Which brings me back to imposter syndrome.

I’ve lived and breathed ranching for the last twenty years. I study markets, basis, marketing strategies, genetics, the drop credit, grazing management, production pipelines, budgeting, HR, and how technology might improve the business. Every summer I work on neighboring ranches, handling yearlings, processing, preg-checking, gathering, sorting, shipping.

I’ve created educational content about grazing, dung beetles, grasses, forbes, timber, soil health, and carbon cycling. Some of my content has reached over 750,000 views on Instagram.

And still, I sometimes feel like I don’t belong.

Maybe it’s because I’ve never owned cattle myself and carried that full financial risk.

Maybe it’s because I think too far outside the mainstream, have unconventional ideas, and don’t align politically with much of the industry.

Maybe it’s because most of the time I wear Vans, Levis, and hoodies.

Maybe it’s because my family’s livelihood has never depended solely on my management and marketing decisions.

But none of that has stopped me from participating – and it never will.

I love ranching. I love land management, wildlife, conservation, and helping people who care about the same things. I love technology and applying it to ranching operations. And even if I live between worlds, I’m not going anywhere.