This week on the podcast we kick off a new series called the Business of Outdoor Recreation series where Brent will sit down with leaders in the outdoor recreation industry in the state of Arkansas. For the first episode, Brent sits down with Austin Booth, director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The conversation explores Austin's role in conserving and preserving the diverse landscapes of Arkansas, including our state's unique fish, wildlife, and their habitats. Austin shares his philosophy of conservation, contrasting it with preservation, and emphasizes the public trust and use of these natural resources. He also shares more about his background, growing up in a small town in Arkansas, his journey through law school, and his time serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, which culminated in his return to Arkansas and his current role.

For you to succeed as a leader, you're gonna have

to be very honest with yourself about how you're doing. And that

just takes hard work for self reflection.

Welcome to the be epic podcast brought to you

by the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of

Arkansas. I'm your host, Brent Williams. Together, we'll

explore the dynamic landscape of business and uncover the

strategies, insights and stories that drive business today.

Today, I have with me, Austin Booth. Austin is director of the

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Austin, welcome to

the be epic podcast.

Well, thank you for that. It's really good to be

here. Thanks for having me.

Well, I'm excited for you to to join us

today as someone who gets to live in Northwest Arkansas, I

grew up in the Arkansas Delta, for the majority of my life,

I've been able to experience outdoors in Arkansas. And it's a

big part of the quality of life here. And I know you play a big

role in that.

We live in an incredibly diverse state in

Arkansas, you know, people are very familiar with the size of

Arkansas compared to size of Texas. And we have just as many

diverse eco regions in Arkansas, as they do in Texas. So that's

that that's one of the many reasons why we have the immense

treasures that we do in Arkansas in our natural resources. And

it's an honor to be able to lead the Arkansas Game and Fish

Commission as the state's conservation agency.

Well, then, I guess, you know, maybe kind of

jumping right into a little bit of what your agency does, and

we'll kind of we'll kind of integrate that with your

background. But from my viewpoint, you know, I see I see

your agency as probably both growing and protecting those

assets that Arkansas has, how do you think about that in your

role?

Yeah, so if you go back to our foundational

mission, it is amendment 35 to the Arkansas constitution, which

is to conserve fish, wildlife, their habitat, and that

essentially, bring that to the public. Now, I ask this, this

kind of philosophic question all the time of what's the

difference between preservation and conservation? And the

difference between those two concepts is one with

preservation. You're just trying to guard you're trying to

protect you're trying to keep things the status quo, with

conservation, the difference between preservation and

conservation is this idea of a public use, public trust in

perpetuity. So if we were a preservation agency, I would

without hesitation, say that the Arkansas Game and Fish's natural

resources and we're here to protect them from everybody

else. And that's not the case when it comes to conservation,

which is what we do. We hold all of our natural resources in

public trust for the enjoyment of the public, as our name would

suggest, that includes game species like ducks and deer,

critters that people like to chase and hunt. Same on the

aquatic side too. But when you go to amendment 35, it includes

all species, so we are just as protective, conservingly of

critters like the Ozark Hellbender. And some of the

threatened and endangered species we have in Arkansas,

just as much as we are the white tailed deer, the black bear, you

know, the eastern turkey, the mallard duck, all of those kinds

of household names as well.

Yeah, well, well, I'm interested in I guess

how you found yourself in Arkansas because I think here's

the you know, I think I think your story, but would love for

you to elaborate on it. Undergraduate in business and

went to law school and you were in the Marine Corps, US Marine

Corps for eight years. Maybe a little more than that before

coming to Arkansas. So maybe kind of tell us a little bit

about where you grew up, that journey, and what brought you to

Arkansas.

So I grew up in Lonoke County in a little town

called Scott. Dad was an outdoor motor mechanic and mom worked

full time inside the home growing up, by nature of my

parents', hard work and sacrifice. I was the first

person for my family to be able to go to college. And I I say

somewhat jokingly that one of the one of the greatest miracles

in my life was that I was immature enough to know that or

sorry, I was immature enough to need to go to military cool but

mature enough to recognize it. So I left the state in 2004

after graduating from Catholic High School for Boys and went to

the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, had a great four years

at the Citadel and then after that went to law school at the

University of South Carolina, and there was a recruiter that

came around to law school and important context for this is I

watched 9/11 happen in my in my sophomore homeroom classroom,

then got to Citadel. A lot of my buddies were in either Iraq or

Afghanistan. So when this recruiter came around our law

school in 2000 2008, I walk in late for the recruiting lunch,

auditorium packed full of folks. And as you would expect, one of

the only seats open was on the front row. So I sit down on the

front row Marine Corps major up on the stage in his dress blues.

And he said, raise your hand, if you think practicing law in

Helmand Province, Afghanistan sounds exciting. And I just

thought, man, that sounds incredible. So I raised my hand.

And I turned around thinking surely that there will be like

50 to 100, like minded law students and I was the only one.

And so the recruiter said, alright I need to talk to you up

here, for everybody else that just came here for free lunch,

we got Chick fil A in the back. But that was 2008, in 2010 I

went to Officer Candidate School, accepted my commission,

and then hit the fleet in 2011, had an incredible first four

years in the Marine Corps where I mostly served as a criminal

prosecutor and went to Afghanistan for a combat tour in

2015. And because of the work we were doing over there, at the

time, have a lot of interaction with Congress. And then from

there went to work in Washington DC as a congressional

appropriations liaison where I was responsible for advocating

for a $14 billion slice of the Marine Corps budget. During that

time period, it was just incredible. I was a small town

kid with blue collar roots from Lonoke County and got to see

about 20, 21 countries and about 24 months. So that was a

incredible experience for me getting to see how government

works overseas. And then came home in 2019, with my wife and

three kids, and in tow, where I became the chief of staff and

the CFO for Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs. And then

people asked me how I got this job, thinking there was some

kind of convoluted, mysterious way that that happened. And they

look at me in disbelief when I say that I'm an old soul and I

read the newspaper every day, and I read in the newspaper

where the game and fish director was retiring. And they're gonna

hire a headhunter. So I googled the headhunter, he had a link to

the job on his website, and I, I sent in a one page cover letter

and a one page resume and we were off to the races. And I

took over, what's the today's the seventh a year and six days,

I'm sorry, two years and six days ago.

Well, congrats on on being in the role for a

couple of years. And, you know, a lesson to our students out

there, always be on the watch out for the opportunity. You

never know what's coming.

That's exactly right.

Well, and I think, you know, the I know,

clearly you have, you know, a team underneath you and a team

out in the field throughout Arkansas. And then I think, if I

understand the structure, right, you have a set of commissioners

that represent our state. And so maybe kind of explain to us how

the how the whole structure and agency works.

Yeah, so we're, we manage roughly 3.8 million acres

throughout the state. We manage those for wildlife and for fish.

And then in addition to the acreage we also have not 96,000

miles of rivers and streams. So it comes as no surprise then

with that, with that understanding that we have

roughly 650 employees that are present in all 75 counties. The

way we administer conservation, both on the natural resources

side and the people side is we have a wildlife management

division that is responsible for the majority of that three 3.8

million acres that manage public lands. We also have a Fisheries

Division that manages the public waters and our fish hatchery

system which produces anywhere from from 12 to 14 million fish

every year. We also have our enforcement division, which has

180 Game Wardens throughout Arkansas and all 75 counties. We

have a private lands division, which is responsible for working

with private landowners to help them meet their conservation

goals. And, in a couple of weeks we'll have a recreational

shooting division, which is really aimed at at increasing

public access to public shooting, and really driving

that nexus between conservation and recreational shooting to

more communities throughout Arkansas. And then the last

major division that we have is our education division.

Northwest Arkansas is home to our Johnelle Hunt Ozark

Highlands Nature Center, which is a tremendous place that we

have nature centers throughout the state and educators in every

single county that help educate all Arkansans, but especially

that next generation of outdoorsman, just what's under

our feet here in Arkansas.

You know, one thing you the one way that you

and I got connected was was around leadership development.

And you know, not not too long ago, you were connecting with

the Walton College on developing leadership programming for for

your team through through Walton College executive education. But

I know in kind of getting to know you a little bit leadership

and leadership development is something you're passionate

about. And so kind of where does that come from? How's that maybe

connect in I assume probably to your time in the Marine Corps?

Sure. Well, I would say it comes from two

motivations. I probably should have said this at the beginning.

But I don't want any of our listeners to think that I'm a

Gamecock fan. I am I am forever a Razorback even though I don't

have a diploma from from from there. And so from that

perspective, Sam Pittman is not the only one focused on his

depth chart. And Arkansas Game and Fish is an outstanding place

to work. And oftentimes what that means is that we have bands

of employees that have been here for a really long time, that

from a succession or an attrition perspective is a

challenge for us as an agency. So from day one, I've I have

really tried to get the agency to focus on how do we build a

bench? Alright, not bench by necessity, but that how do we

build a bench of actual leaders that we want? And that will be

what Arkansas deserves? So that's the first motivation is

where does the future of this agency look look like for what

we can deliver back to the people of Arkansas. The second

motivation is, leadership is just branded all over me. For my

time in the Marine Corps, I wanted to enlist out of high

school, given 9/11, and the tremendous impact that had on

me, mom and dad said, no, no, no, you'll always be able to

enlist, why don't we give this college thing a try? So I ended

up taking a commission in the Marine Corps. And one of the

things that really set the Marine Corps apart from my mind

when I when I was trying to decide what service I wanted to

join was that in the Marine Corps, it doesn't matter whether

you're a pilot, an infantry officer, a lawyer, an artillery

officer, fill in the blank, whatever job you have in the

Marine Corps, your fundamental responsibility is you're an

officer of the Marines. And, and, and that really resonated

with me even as a you know, 21 year old. And the Marine Corps

really prides itself on building quality leaders, now, and I'm

not tooting my own horn, I can assure anyone listening that I

have learned much more from my failures than I have my

suc-successes. But it didn't matter whether I was in the

courtroom, advising commanders on Capitol Hill or even in

combat, one of the things that I learned very quickly, is at an

institution is only as good and healthy and productive as its

leadership, not as supervisors, right. We supervise processes,

but we lead people. And I'm always thinking about

leadership, and whether we're delivering as much as we need

to, not just to outcomes, not just to processes, but are we

really delivering the best possible thing that we can people.

Well, and maybe you know, you mentioned you're

both successes and failures. And often we learn for both, there's

no doubt and sharing those actually can be some of the

greatest ways to help develop leaders in our organizations.

You know, one of the questions that always comes to mind when I

get to talk to leaders is, you know, what's what's one of the

biggest lessons learned for you thus far, and one that you

really tried to share? Not only with your organization, but with

others?

Yeah. I think that I will have to go back to a

quote by General James Mattis. I had, I had the opportunity to

spend a little bit of time with then Secretary Mattis when he

was Secretary of Defense. And he always said that the number one

challenge facing young leaders is the the lack of time that

they make for self reflection. I have a, a leadership flaw that

I'm working on right now, where I don't like books on

leadership. I'm trying to grow beyond that. But for for, for

years, my preferred source of reading is biographies, where I

can learn from other people's mistakes and from other people's

successes, and then really reflect on on what it is that

went wrong or went right within their lives and the things that

I can try to emulate. But you can read all the books that you

want to, you can fail, you can try out, but that time for self

reflection, is especially important for young people. And

it's incredibly hard for young people too because they feel all

these external demand signals of how they should be spending

their their time. So that was one way that I did not do well,

when I was a young leader is just making that time for self

reflection. And I try, every way that I possibly can to beat that

into people's head here is for you to succeed as a leader,

you're gonna have to be very honest with yourself about how

you're doing. And that just takes hard work for self reflection.

Well, what what great advice not only for, for

our students, but people developing their careers and and

beyond, well, maybe maybe switching gears just a little

bit. I wanted to talk about outdoor recreation in our state

and how it maybe connects to economic development, and even

how employers can be thinking about how they leverage the

wonderful assets that we have in Arkansas, as you, you know, are

quite aware of I'm sure, Governor Sanders in our state

has made outdoor recreation a high priority in her

administration. And you know, so just as you is you've been in

the role for a couple of years, how are you able to see the Game

and Fish Commission and the use of these assets throughout our

state really starting to continue to lead toward economic

development?

Yeah. So if you look at the Arkansas game, and

fish budget, and Marines are known for many things, and math

is not one of them. But this is math that's simple enough that a

marine can do if you just look at how much what our budget is,

compared to how much land we we manage 3.8 million acres for $25

an acre. All right, that is an incredible value. All right,

that excluding education cost, if you just made the assumption

that 100% of our budget was for land and and water conservation,

$25 dollars an acre, right. So for decades, Arkansas Game and

Fish has been a what what I would describe as a value

company. Alright. That's something that we're proud of,

and that Arkansans should be very proud of. All right, what

have we gotten for that value? We estimate that the outdoor

recreation economy in Arkansas is roughly $9.6 billion. All

right. Tourism is our second industry behind ag. And if you

look at the outdoor rec numbers compared to tourism, we can say

with a high level of confidence that the large majority of that

tourism is flowing from that outdoor recreation economy. All

right, let's take that one step further. If you break down the

outdoor recreation economic impact into segments, the number

one outdoor recreation segment that we have in Arkansas is

fishing, that the number three is hunting. Number two is RVing.

And what we don't know, but what I would love to know is how many

of that of those people in the RV category are pulling their RV

behind him so that they can hunt or fish, do one of those number

one or number three activities. So in terms of economic return,

on the $25 per acre cost, it is just tremendous what the

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission is able to support

from a value perspective, now coming more towards the

governor's incredible vision for outdoor recreation in Arkansas

and how we elevate that. For over two years now, the Arkansas

Game and Fish Commission has 100% been in a growth phase

where we're trying to pivot from becoming a value company that

we've always been proud of more to something analogous to a

growth company where we are massively trying to reinvest in

the infrastructure and in the conservation practices that we

have now that have secured Arkansas as one of the best

fastest growing deer herds, world renowned trout fishing,

world renowned duck hunting. How do we how do we keep that,

reinvest for the next generation but also diversify outdoor

recreation as Arkansas Game and Fish knows it into a more

diverse set of pursuits, and basically what that looks like,

from our perspective is more emphasis on recreational

shooting, which is one of the fastest outdoor recreation

pursuits in the country. More emphasis around river trails,

paddle sports, and then opening up our wildlife management areas

to more 21st century pursuits such as, you know, gravel bike

riding wildlife watching, hut to hut concepts. And we're we're

trying to do those things in tandem with reinvestment, which

is a lot of work and very tricky to pull off. But I'm really

proud of the progress that we've made in two years.

Well, thank you for for moving our state forward

in that way and continue to invest in in those in those

assets that we all know about, you know, like you said the

world class fishing and duck hunting and deer hunting, but

also diversifying it so that everyone can can enjoy the

outdoors. And I'm sure that's an important focus for you.

Yes, it is. You know, we have a wildlife

management area in south Arkansas called Barrel Anthony

Wildlife Management Area. It's an incredible place, we were

happy to add roughly 500 acres to it in fiscal year 22. And we

had a gentleman from the state of Alaska, who drove from Alaska

to Arkansas to Barrel Anthony Wildlife Management Area, to see

a rare bird that we're proud to have down in south Arkansas. He

spent a couple of days out on the wildlife management area, he

saw the bird, he turned and drove back. And so Arkansas'

natural resources are just incredible. As someone that

lived here, until I was 18, and then moved away for 15 years. I

don't think I'm going to hurt anybody's feelings when I say we

take them for granted that we have national national treasure

here. And in the longest term, we're trying to answer that

question of how do we open this up to more people in a way that

that best serves Arkansas but also doesn't disenfranchise the

people that we have now.

Yeah, totally makes sense. Well, I was really

glad to hear that you're Razorback at heart. And and so I

think maybe the way we'll close is you know, when you think

about this, our students at the Walton College in the University

of Arkansas, that point at that you're at in your career,

clearly doing something you're passionate about and love, what

advice would you would you share with students about how they

pursue, you know, their own passions and make a real impact

in in the fields that they want to make an impact in?

Yeah. Well, I would just point to my own

resume and say that if someone that didn't know me looked at my

resume, they would, they would probably rightfully think this

guy has no idea what he wants to do when he grows up. I mean,

everywhere from a criminal courtroom to combat to

Washington DC to veterans to now to now Game and Fish. And I can

I would just offer this encouragement to any students

out there. That do despite what might be the perception of

aimlessness or lack of continuity in in any one area, I

have had a remarkable, remarkable professional career,

just over 12 years, and is deeply, deeply rewarding. And so

my advice to them would be to find something that they're

passionate about, and do the best possible job they can at

it. And if a door opens, that seems to be outside of what

someone may say about well this is what your background says, or

you have a experience doing this, just walk through that

door and fight like crazy. And if the Lord closes the door,

then keep your nose down and keep doing the best possible job

that you possibly can. In addition to that, and probably

no surprise to anybody, I, I would say be the best subject

matter expert that you can but never, ever neglect how you are

as a leader, read as much as you read as much as you possibly

can. And then thirdly, get a mentor. I'm a huge advocate,

that, that it doesn't matter how old you are, having a mentor to

tell you what you're doing, right, what you're not doing

wrong, learn from their failures, that mentor role is

just critical. And I think it's something that that's heavily

undervalued in 2023.

Well, Austin, I agree with with those points,

you know, from, you know, the basics of working hard. And

doing your absolute best in whatever position, role you're

in to, you know, saying yes, sometimes, you know, to, to a

potential role that may not seem like it fits or, you know, may

seem like it has some risk in your career. I mean, there's

value in being able to move across different parts of an

organization or different organizations is hard to

understate. And then I hear mentor over and over, you know,

as I talk to leaders throughout our state and beyond, as

something that's been really important in their lives. So

thank you for sharing those three points with our students.

I couldn't agree more. And thank you for what you're doing as

director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. And I

really appreciate you sharing your insights and your thoughts

and your wisdom with us today.

Well, thank you for having me. And I've really

Thank you. On behalf of the Walton College,

enjoyed this.

thank you for joining us for this captivating conversation,

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