Ep. 119 - COWGIRL 30 Under 30 Key Note Kiah Twisselman Burchett
Producer: Emilee Cole
Hosts: Katie Schrock & Rachel Owens-Sarno
An exciting young woman passionate about life and positivity. You might recognize her maiden name as matching another That Western Life podcast guest’s maiden name, in Karly Twisselman Rudd. The Twisselman’s are a generational ranching family from California and we are excited to introduce all of you to Kiah Twisselman Burchett to all of you!
California has gotten a lot of hate on random social media things from the western industry, yet it’s the number one state in agriculture in the United States. "As you both know, people in the midwest and south in agriculture have a lot of opinions about California and it’s not positive,” says Kiah about how so much of the country misses out on rural parts of California are. In fact, Kiah was one hour one-way to get to a gas station, grocery store and her high school.
“When I say I’m from ‘a ranch’ people don’t think California, they think of Texas,” says Kiah. “You don’t realize growing up on a ranch in California, it is one of those things that you don’t realize how precious and rare that childhood was until you go away.”
Not even applying for her local college, San Luis Obispo’s CalPoly, Kiah went further away to UC Davis. Seeing California through the lens of people who were from Los Angeles, San Diego and other large cities showcased how rare and precious that childhood was when she brought them back to the ranch.
Leaving California
“I actually did a year in Germany when I graduated college, so it made the culture shock of Kentucky easier because they at least spoke a variation of english,” says Kiah with a laugh. Utilizing a cultural ambassadorship program by the US Congress, it was a great opportunity for her to travel since she didn’t study abroad in college, and it was a great way to postponing the real world.
While abroad in Germany, she saw a job posted from the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association regarding the Kentucky Beef Council with a focus on consumer-facing pieces. “I did my first interview for the job from a hostel room in Berlin,” says Kiah with a laugh because her soon-to-be-boss called her “too much of a wild card” as the Californian with the nose-ring in a hostel in Germany. Kiah was happy to pass the test in ordering her steak at a steakhouse.
After making a pit stop at home for her local county fair, Kiah was settled into Kentucky. “The biggest culture shock in Kentucky was the beef industry,” said Kiah. “I had no idea how vastly different the beef industry was across the country.” Gone were the brandings, the cowboy hats, and cowboys.
In Kentucky, they have luscious grasses and can raise a cow-calf pair to two acres, meanwhile Kiah in the desert growing up had a cow-calf pair on a hundred acres. They need less land to raise cattle so there was no need for horses to round up cattle. “Most people in Kentucky don’t cattle horseback and most of the state isn’t as rough of terrain, they don't brand cattle - some people do, but most don’t - they use ear tags for the most part. They also aren’t called ranches… they’re cattle farmers.”
Lifestyle Change in Kentucky
“I would like to think that maybe? I would have had the lifestyle change,” says Kiah about what happened while she was in Kentucky. Working for the beef council, Kiah was the Director of Consumer Affairs and did all of the marketing, advertising campaigns, was the “girl on the news” for the local news channels, and did all of the media stuff. She was also in charge of the nutrition program and, as not a registered dietician, she didn’t feel as if she looked the part of someone who should be sharing nutrition advice.
“I felt like such an imposter being the mouthpiece for the beef industry when it came to a heart-healthy diet. It made me feel really conflicted in that role professionally and personally,” says Kiah. “I was someone who had dealt with a lot of shame growing up when it came to my body and health in general and that really brought it to the surface for me.”
Getting ready to head to the Ag Media Summit, a pivotal moment happened when Kiah was in the airport. There was a book everyone was raving about on Social Media, so she wanted to buy it. Was she going to read it? Typically, that would have been a no.
“I squeezed my butt into the middle seat and I went to buckle my seatbelt and it wouldn’t fit,” says Kiah. In shame and embarrassment over having to add a seatbelt extender on, she threw herself into the book - Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis.
“There wasn’t anything in that book that I hadn’t heard before, but I was finally reading it at a time when I was ready to receive it… it was one of those moments when I was open to receiving that message,” says Kiah. “The one message that became the catalyst for my health transformation was this conversation of ownership.”
It was the realization that she had played victim to her genetics, her financial status, her time, that the people around her weren’t. Full of excuses, she had that moment that if it was her choices that got her there, then it was her choices to get her somewhere else. “I was able to picture myself in the driver seat of my own health.”
It also got her started thinking about her decisions for herself professionally. While she loved her job, she was desperately homesick and she desperately wanted more freedom in her life to be able to travel. Joining her entrepreneur skills in marketing for ranches and her health journey, she worked on them together and thinks of them as mutually beneficial and helping her with that transformation.
Media Attention
“I started my health journey in October of 2018,” says Kiah who lost 120 pounds in one exact year. She also took her side hustle full time and then convinced her Kentucky (now-husband) to move out with her to California. “In the summer of 2020, I had just started sharing on my personal social media what I was learning.”
“I tell people that my journey was not as much of a physical transformation as a mental one,” says Kiah, who took to sharing the mental mindset shifts that she wanted to scream from the rooftops for everyone to use. That summer 2020, the people she worked with at the Kentucky Beef Council, asked that because she still ate beef and was media trained, if they could pitch the story.
PEOPLE Magazine had picked it up that summer, then there was Good Morning America and her story had reached 1.5 billion people worldwide. “Yes, I am proud of the messages I was abel to share in a full circle moment, and was able to be an advocate for beef and nutrition that I wasn’t able to do in the past. But the real reason that that story had traction is because before-and-after pictures are sexy clickbait,” says Kiah dryly. Kiah now has to deal with scam accounts stealing her before-and-after photos to share scam weight loss supplements.
All of a sudden, the morning after Good Morning America, Kiah had 4,000 instagram followers and then the next day she had 17,000 followers. “I felt like I was standing on this platform and wasn’t sure what to say!”
Making the decision to step away from her side hustle, Kiah had already been coaching on the side before ever announcing it, so she decided to shift and start marketing for herself and finding a new role in agriculture. A role that wasn’t in production agriculture or even marketing, but in a role to help agriculture people find more joy in this crazy thing called life.
Co-host Katie Schrock and Kiah officially met in the Digital Course Academy by Amy Porterfield. On May 28, 2020, is when everything goes wild and we “lose our minds” over Amy Porterfield. Morphing all of this together with healthy lifestyle coaching and stepping into the role as a motivational speaker.
“It’s so interesting to think of when we started talking to now, because there has been so much of an evolution of who I am professionally and personally,” says Kiah. “I really wanted to help people break free from diet culture.”
If you take it back further, Kiah credits 4-H and FFA that gave her the foundation of being a public speaker. What launched Kiah into her motivational career was in 2021, after the big media launch, the Beef! It’s What For Dinner wanted to pitch her to the Kelly Clarkson show. Because it was still COVID times she didn’t get to bring anyone with her, but she told her that she had someone there that wanted to meet her - it was Rachel Hollis, the author of the book.
“I now know that the Beef! It’s What For Dinner team had had planned the whole time,” says Kiah. On the show, Rachel invites her to come to the Rise! Conference that she was running. Backstage chatting, Rachel surprises Kiah and asks her if she wants to be a keynote speaker at Rise!
“I remember getting in my car afterwards being like, ‘No, she’s not going to remember asking me,’” says Kiah, but then she got an email from her team and realized it was real. Talking to her team and planning to speak at the conference, the week after her wedding. So the honeymoon plans had to change, which Brent, her then-finance, was supportive of.
Rachel shares on social media about Kiah coming, Kiah was on top of the world, and then Rachel posts a rant video that was not received well on social media. Rachel loses 100K followers on Instagram and Kiah is the post before it and is cancellation adjacent to the whole thing. “I start getting messages from people saying, ‘don't associate yourself with this toxic woman,’ and … all I could think was ‘what not?’”
The fear of cancel culture is real when it comes to any public figure and here Kiah is, a positive person, and is adjacent to this cancellation - what do you do? At first, Kiah felt it out to see how things were going to shake out. It really brought to the surface a fear of success that Kiah had as she watched the woman she really respected, saw how quickly one public mistake turned into a whole ordeal. When you fail when you have a smaller community, yes it still hurts but it’s not as tragic. “I do think that there is so much for anyone building a personal brand, for years of building that you wish you were bigger… but savor building the beginner blocks of a brand…. any mistake is just all that more public.”
A fear from the western industry, is that when are you going to say something that is a cultural norm for the western industry that isn’t for mainstream media - something we thought a lot about our Rebranding the American Cow Boy episode. We can learn a lot from falling ourselves, but we can also learn from watching other fail as well.
“What ended up happening, the Rachel Hollis team decided to postpone the conference…because a lot of their speakers were pulling out,” says Kiah. They moved it to September from May, so Kiah and her husband went on their honeymoon after all and they went down to Austin, Texas, for the event. “It was a hybrid so they only had af ew people in person, the rest were online. It was a really cool experience.”
A huge production with the “Brittney Spear microphone” and wrap around lights and screens and her sizzle reel playing. “I freaking killed it - it was the best 20 minute speech of my life!” Says Kiah, just astounded at herself. “That really gave me this confidence to be like, ‘I love this, first of all, and to bring a crowd to tear, laughing and dancing, and I happen to be decent at it!’”
From that moment on, that changed the trajectory of her speaking career and lean into a motivational speaker and this emcee hype woman on the stage. “When I was a little girl, I remember being that girl with my hairbrush, standing int he hallway, thinking I was going to be Christina Aguilera,” laughs Kiah. “Maybe the singing path wasn’t my journey, but look who made a career with a microphone.”
COWGIRL 30 Under 30 Girl Talk Convention Breakout
A beautiful brunch with champagne, mimosa’s, glassware, at the Drover Hotel in Fort Worth, and following a great panelist of women in the western industry. It’s going to be an amazing event and Kiah is not only a 2023 30 Under 30 COWGIRL honoree, she is also the Girl Talk keynote speaker.
“It is such an honor that COWGIRL Magazine asked me to be their speaker for this first time event, and I’m really looking forward to it,” says Kiah. “I want everyone to know that I am sitting in the audience with them right before I take the stage… each and every single woman in the crowd has an incredible story… I want people to see themselves in my story and I want them to leave on fire for life!”
The first step is to allow the audience members to be vulnerable. We don’t need to make assumptions that those doing it aren’t facing struggles and that the playing field is equal. We all have our insecurities and struggles. We are all going to lean into our purpose and we are going to do it not in spite of them but because of them.
“As a speaker, I will typically build out a keynote that I will use for a season or a year,” says Kiah. “However, I take that overarching theme and cater it to the audience that I am speaking too.”
Backroad Cowgirls
Courtenay DeHoff from our podcast before, joined forces with Kiah on an idea to make their own YouTube series sharing the people behind agriculture. It started with a seven hour layover in Dallas where Courtenay lives and so she picked her up for pasta and wine for lunch. “Commiserating a bit about entrepreneurship,” says Kiah with a laugh, “we were talking about what was next in our business and how we were un-inspried… we both love travel, love agriculture… our day job isn’t as involved in the ranching life…and we were just talking about what the heck is next.”
Kiah had tried to convince her husband to do van life, but Courtenay said she would totally do it. They both had mentioned how they had wanted to have their own TV shows and so, over pasta and wine, they decided not to wait for anyone to discover and give them a show - they decided to “Just do it!” They decided to make their own digital series for YouTube and, in this one little lunch, they decided to make their own stories of agriculture on a road trip.
Courtenay knew how to do the video side of things and Kiah built the pitch deck, a website, and the branding. On GoFundMe they raised enough money to make it happen! Switching the angle from having it be about the production of agriculture, they wanted it to be more about the people that grow food. Sourcing a van from a friend of Kiah’s from college, they do a two-week road trip through Kiah’s connections in California.
In those fourteen days, they gained 17 different stories all around the state of California including Kiah’s grandpa, urban agriculture, LBGTQ+ culture, a deaf farmer, and more. “We did it ourselves! … Courtenay edited it and I did all the website work,” says Kiah. They have shared the first six episodes already and were approached at the end of last year by Simplot Grower Solutions and they came on board as a sponsor to fund the full production of a pilot episode for Backroad Cowgirls.
“We are filming our first official pilot episode at the end of April,” says Kiah. “Our goal for the second half of this year is to start pushing it to mainstream networks.”
Keeping in mind their ground rules that the project has to remain fun and that’s something they are committed too. They also didn’t want to make a show for agriculture people. Yes they know their agriculture people are going to watch and love it, but they want the mom from downtown and the guy from Wall Street to watch. “Imagine Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and Queer Eye mixed together!”
“I am just so excite with how it is coming together,” say Kiah. You can watch the first nine episodes but, keep in mind, the actual pilot will look and feel different because it’s hard to insert yourself into a show when you are the person behind the camera.
Relationship Advice
With a husband that is so supportive, we had to ask Kiah for her advice. “My husband is my secret weapon because he is someone that likes to be behind the camera rather than in front of it,” says Kiah, who says that her husband takes 97% of the photos. “Brent has been the best supporter - I mean he moves from Kentucky to California!”
“I think what’s so important in a relationship, no matter what you are doing…. communication is so, so important. Making sure you are on the same page. Brent know who he married, he knows he married a hard core ambitious dreamer,… he’s a realist living for tomorrow,,. I am grateful we balance each other out in that way,” says Kiah. “but as much as he supports me, it’s so important that I support him in his pursuits and passions.”
The support you have, it has to be equal. You have to be there to support them and you need to believe in their dreams as much as you believe in your dreams Some days the sacrifice and compromise is hard, but remember that you are here to support each others dreams.
DEEP THOUGHTS ON THE RODEO TRAIL WITH KIAH TWISSELMAN BURCHETT…
Follow your joy. Your joy will very rarely lead you astray and life is way too short. We spend so much of our time and energy focusing on things that don’t matter or allowing our doubt to squash our dreams before they come to fruition. If you follow your joy in your career, personal life, in your home and in your free time - it will bring you the most freedom and content in your life.