Barn Talk - 1.3 Million People Watch Him Pull Dead Trucks Out Of Iowa Fence Rows

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

He grew up with kiddie pools in the attic catching roof leaks and frost forming on the inside of his bedroom wall, and today 1.33 million people watch him drag dead cars out of Iowa fence rows. Kevin Brown runs Junkyard Digs out of Ames, two hours up the road from the barn, and this one is mostly about what being broke actually builds. The house sagged corner to corner and the ceiling collapsed while the family was gone for a weekend. Four of them lived in one room of an office building in town, no walls, three beds, for three years of his high school life. His dad pulled his entire 401k to put up a shell so they could finish the inside themselves. He paid for Iowa State by joining the National Guard as a Chinook mechanic, deployed to Kuwait and Iraq, and built the channel from a cot on government internet. He came home with 130,000 subscribers and two paychecks. His rule is the part worth sitting with. He would not quit engineering school until the channel paid double an engineer's starting salary. He says the first time in his life he felt safe was the day the math cleared, not the day the subscribers did. The farming is the cheapest operation in this state. Four and a half acres, a John Deere 620 with three gallons of gas in the oil pan, a $500 planter, and a 6600 combine he bought for $2,200 and drove home. He put $212 into inputs one year and sold the crop for $2,000. Also in this one: only 3 percent of channels ever crack 100,000 subscribers, a million Shorts views that paid $412, copper at a record and the wire in your grain bin, and why his dad said the 1980s sucked while his buddy's dad called them the best years of his life. His advice at the end sounds exactly like his dad: do not put your hands in your pockets. Learn to work hard and you will not fail in life. What do you want us to dig into next week? Drop it in the comments and we read them. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: ● Propane Farm Research Program ➱ propane.com/farmfunding ● AcreEdge Soil NXT ➱ acreedge.com TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Cold open and guest introduction 04:25 800 shirts in three weeks for a stranger's roof 13:22 Sponsor break, Propane Farm Research Program 14:16 Kiddie pools in the attic, frost inside the walls 16:08 Four people, one room, three years 16:35 What being broke gave him that money never could 21:27 The Guard paid for college, so he fixed Chinooks 25:12 Building a channel on Army internet in Iraq 27:00 Home with 130,000 subs and two paychecks 30:47 Sponsor break, AcreEdge Soil NXT 33:15 No quitting until it paid double an engineer 35:13 His wife's 45 minute video got a million views 41:15 Get it running and drive it home, no trailer 58:26 Make it run, make it move, make it safe 1:04:19 The Junkyard Digs farming operation, laid out 1:07:15 A $2,200 combine with no reverser 1:12:45 $212 in, $2,000 out, most profitable farmer around 1:18:06 The part of being a creator nobody sees 1:25:11 Only 3 percent of channels ever crack 100,000 1:27:59 A million Shorts views paid $412 1:34:18 Can you build a whole life in rural America now 1:35:40 Nobody should ever move to Iowa, and he means it 1:40:46 What is actually killing small towns 1:55:12 His dad said the 80s sucked, his buddy's dad loved them 2:02:55 If 1995 did not get the hog guys, 1998 did 2:05:53 Is AI actually coming for the trades 2:12:17 25 CRT TVs, 15 VCRs, and 300 VHS tapes 2:16:26 The first time in his life he felt safe 2:21:47 Do not put your hands in your pockets 2:22:10 Tip of the Hat SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS'LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 FOLLOW BEHIND THE SCENES 👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer's Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork's Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer's X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler ● Tork's X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ Barn Talk is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, with no warranty of accuracy or completeness. Nothing here is financial, investment, or trading advice, and none of it is specific to you. Do your own due diligence and consult a licensed professional before making any financial decision. Trading stocks, crypto, and NFTs carries real risk and is not suitable for everyone. You use this information at your own risk. #BarnTalk #RuralAmerica #perc #landus #EP218 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a damn good guest episode. Have a really successful YouTuber coming to the barn today to talk about his journey and what he thinks about the world and where we're going. and all the goodies and go fast stuff that there is. So before we get into it, though, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show,

all that we ask is you shared out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more it truly allows us to grow this show. We are just blown away by the amount of people we've met that whether they live in rural America or live in the city or are connected to agriculture in some way, that listen and tune into this show, it is awesome.

And we just appreciate all. all you that do it because you really, it really does help us out a lot. So thank you. Another thing you do to help us out here at Barn Talk is you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. The more reviews pile up, the more credible you make our show, which allows us to have the great guests like we're having today. Come on the show, come to the barn and have some really great conversations with us. Last thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is you can sign up for our weekly newsletter it's at join barn talk.com. We're putting that out,

talking about everything, everything going on in rural America and what dad and I's thoughts are on it. And we have a goal with that right now. If we get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers, we are going to throw a party right here on the farm, right here at the barn. We're going to have great guests

that have been on the show before. Come down. Speak to you guys. Fireworks, Barbecue truck, beer truck. maybe a concert. I'm thinking about pulling out all the stops for this thing, but we got to get to 10,000 first.

I'm learning the spoons. You're learning the spoons? Yep. And you got a washboard or a barrel or something that you're going to... A washboard. Beatbox. You're going to beatbox. You're going to get your spoons out

and you're just going to sit out there and hit your spoons against something. Well, it'll drowned out my voice. Nobody wants to listen to my voice. Oh, now we're saying. It'll be like Manaheim steam roller. for small town America. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm good.

Are you pumped up for this one? I am. I'm excited. This guy's right up my alley and we might have a good conversation about, oh, I don't know, square box Chevy's maybe. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah, well, we're going to get into the nitty gritty here in a second, but I better introduce our guest. So our guest today lives about two hours up the road from us in Ames. And there's a decent chance you've already spent a Saturday night watching him. he runs a YouTube channel called Junkyard Diggs. It's got 1.3 million subscribers and over 260 million views. And the formula is simple.

Find a truck or car that's been dead in an Iowa fence row for years to get it running with whatever's on hand and then drive it 100 miles home to prove it. His biggest video ever is an abandoned farm truck. He farmed five acres with equipment he pulled out of a fence row and a million and a half people watch the harvest. And before any of that, he was a certified Chinook helicopter mechanic

and the Army National Guard, building the channel between Iowa State classes and a deployment. Last fall, his audience bought an Iowa farmer a brand new roof for a hundred-year-old corn crib, and we're talking about that too. So really great guy doing a lot of great things. Stayed in here, stayed in Iowa,

stayed in rural America, building here as a veteran. and I mean, I don't know what else you could ask for. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Well, boys, we're live. So Kevin Brown, aka Junkyard Diggs, welcome to Barn Talk. Thank you very much. Man, it's been, yeah, we're excited to have you. I mean, you have really built something awesome on YouTube as a creator.

You too here in a barn. This is awesome. Well, thanks, man. No, we appreciate it. It's been a work in progress. Tell you what, like we were talking before we came on, you know. it was full of straw. Grandpa built it 1951, had pigs in here, and

we weren't doing anything with it, so figured, hey, let's build a studio in here. So, it's trial and error. Get you a long ways, right, Tork? It is trial and error, and this beats the hell out of Farrow and pigs and loading small squares. This is the easiest way I've found to use this barn, and let's face it, I'm always looking for the path of least resistance.

Yeah, that's right. So we're on a good track. We are on a good track. And man, yeah, I just want to say thanks for taking the time to be here. I know you're a busy guy. You make some really great videos and have a lot of stuff going on. And so it's just a pleasure to have you. Absolutely. We wanted to throw off, throw, we like to start with one, like right out the gate

that's going to get you thinking a little bit. So you sold 800 shirts in three weeks to buy an Iowa farmer, a new roof for a hundred-year-old corn crib. Who idea, whose idea was that? and did you think it was going to work and like go through that whole story? So in similar fashion on our channel we also redid

an old farm building. It was a corn curb in our case that basically had no use in life left besides park a tractor or a wagon inside. But we had this loft which isn't quite the same. We more so had the bins that are off camera over there and they were definitely, they were really cool.

We really love the building because it was a really mechanical building because they have the whole elevator system and everything's still there. They've got shoots and ladders literally. And we're like, this place, it was kind of the reason Angus bought the place was the corn crib and, of course, the big barn,

but that one's just stick hay in. So we really enjoyed that building and thought, what better way to save it than make it into like a hangout area? And we theorized we could knock the walls out of the bins where the grain sat. And then we could actually use that space as one large

chunk there and built some stairs to get into it because you could get into them but they're nasty, dirty and a huge pain in the butt that try to climb into because you've got to go up this two by or one by four ladder that's basically, it's like two one by fours and then one by four on it.

So it's this far from the wall. And you've got to go like 35 feet up and then climb down another one. So that's probably not what we should do after 12 beers if we make this into a barn. Yep. Let's build some stairs. We did that. Did some effort into all that.

And then as we're getting up there, we're getting a better look at the sills and stuff at the base of the roof. I'm like, yes, there's a lot of rot in here. And a lot of the verticals are missing. So we call up a contractor, buddy of mine, who has done a building and some work for us. And he comes out and he's like, you guys, this isn't that bad. Like, what are you talking about?

He's like, come here, walks outside, points at one end of the roof. went to the other and said, that's how you can draw a line between those, and they touch all the way across and doesn't do this anywhere? It's like, this building's just fine. It's structurally strong as hell. You just need to dry it out.

So we just need to put tin on it. Okay, what's that going to cost? And they gave us a quote, and it was like $18,000. Boy, you're an uninsured old barn. Yep. Yeah. Youch.

And we made the first video and people loved it. I think, I can't remember as the first or second. where we got into the part where like maybe there's a way that we can use our influence here to save this old barn not on Angus's budget. Yeah. Or our budget. And maybe we could make a shirt about it.

So at the last minute before we put the video out, I whipped something up, ran back to his place, I think shot something with a little promotion for the shirt and then threw it in the video. And people loved it. Which was interesting because it was a different genre. from what we normally do, which is cars, obviously. But the cornucre video did well. People that, as the series has gone on, as with anything, if you do a series, they get a little

less and less views. But the people that stood behind it really, really loved to watch us fix this and were really enthusiastic about it. So when we came out with a shirt, they went crazy and we sold enough to pay for two roofs. Nice. Wow. And don't worry, that other half is still sitting there and it's all going to Angus. to for building updates and repair and stuff on his farm to save hopefully that and the barn.

Yeah, that's cool. Which was awesome to see people come forward for that and then save this building. And now it's dried out really nice inside and they came in and replaced some of the structural stuff. And that thing is for steam. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Nice.

So where does where does your, where does your love for old stuff come from? Ooh. I grew up with. not a lot of money at all in our family. So if I wanted something, I basically had to find a junk one and fix it. And I always just, back in the early days of YouTube, like 2005, if even,

when we finally got internet enough to watch a video, YouTube comes around. And I loved watching the old cold start videos of people like going out to some truck or tractor that had been sitting there for 20 years and hand cranking it and get it going and everything. And those are always super interesting to me. So a little bit of all of the,

that combined into someday when I had the chance, I was able to do that myself. Yep. And then, yeah, it just kind of spiraled from there. I'd learn that I could make money on this, realized I had none of that. Yep. I like money. I know how to fix things. And I've been watching this stuff for years.

I know what videos I would want to watch, so it just started making those. Yeah. And apparently it's worked, so they tell me. It seems like it. It seems like a little bit. It seems like it's doing pretty damn good for you. Well, yeah, I wanted to kind of get into your story. So get the 50,000 foot view.

So, you know, 2,200 people in your town, you know, you said your folks, you grew up, you know, poor or you or didn't he had to get money. You always were hustling. So like give us the 50,000 of a view of like where you come from, what your parents did and all that. So, yeah, that it is the classic farm kid North Iowa story where, you know, it's similar to down this part in Iowa. We get around Sorri County where we are now, and I don't even recognize the farming there. Like there's been money in that area for a while, but if you're up north, back in the day, the farm crisis comes through, just wipes it out, and it takes, it's just now recovering up there, if we want to be real honest.

And just in the last five, 10 years seeing new buildings be built and stuff like that. And people aren't using 770 combines anymore. and they're finally coming around. But 30 years ago when I was born, it was definitely still reeling from the mid-80s. And there wasn't a ton of industrial jobs, but dad worked at Eaton in Belmont. And actually, both my parents did for a time there,

but then mom also ran a landscape business at the same time, which she still does all by herself. Wow. Like the only, that woman is a robot. Love you, Mom. But she is something else where that's, the work ethic came from for sure was my parents who busted ass to keep food on the table for us. Yeah.

And so I grew up learning how to work. And we were on an acreage, but we didn't farm. But there wasn't much difference. I think arguably we're worse off because we weren't farming. And that seemed to be doing better than whatever we were trying to do to make money. So that definitely influenced a lot of the, you know, core beliefs of you got to work hard. you got to get out here and bust your butt to make money if you're going to do something. And I went to school, got an engineering degree,

and immediately in school realized that Iowa State's been miss selling their mechanical engineering program. This isn't what I want. This isn't like no one else here has greasy busted knuckles from putting a transmission in their truck last night so they could go up home for Easter over the weekend or something. And so we eventually transitioned to ITAC. I'm really throwing all these stories together here. switched over to iTech, which is you walk into that industry at Iowa State, and you see everyone's got cowboy boots and baseball caps,

and there's like six pairs of pliers in the room. And that's like, okay, here's my people. So it's always been, I've been around farming in this stuff my whole life, but never until recently for our hobby stuff for videos have I farmed, but definitely grew up a farm kid without the farm. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. Diesel costs are eating margins, Propane is stable, affordable, and the equipment is cheaper to maintain.

No death for sensors throwing codes. It's just smart business. The Propane Farm Research Program will pay you up to $10,000 toward new propane equipment for sharing performance data. Get your application in at propane.com slash farm funding. Now let's get back to it. Yeah, gotcha. Well, I listened to a podcast before you came on that you have been on in the past,

and you talked about how there was this wall in your house. It had no drywall. Had no drywall. And did your house eventually, did that house eventually come down? Yes. So tell the story on that. Because that's,

I mean, that's real. That's a real story of like where you came from. Unlike Angus's barn, if you drew a line from corner and corner in that house, it did one of these. Got really bad.

I got you. And for years, I remember we, since mom was landscape work, she could only work for, you know, three quarters of the year. Yep.

And then we just, she'd try to make as much money she could in the fall Truman just survives we buy hot dogs and eat whatever we grew down in the garden through the winter and dad would he worked at eating second shift for most of my life and that house we didn't have the money to fix it at all it was also old and falling apart and for years he saved up and finally i mean for years we had kitty pools in the attic for all the holes in the roof to just collect and we have to go empty them once in a while just to keep it from you know, dripping on the bed you're sleeping on.

I remember on windy, and if you've been to North Iowa, it's always windy all the time. And the most brutal winters, I think you could ask for, are North Highway 20 and like, Fairbilt in that area right there. So that jet stream.

It's also where all the windmills are. Coincidence, no. But I remember the wind would come up and it'd snow back when it used to snow, good times. And we would get frost around the, outlets that would like freeze onto the paint on the inside of the wall in my room. And finally, eventually that house that we were gone for the weekend and the ceiling collapsed. And so we had to like my brother, I like live in the living room for a little bit until we were finally ready to we all.

Thankfully at the time we had bought an office space in town and we all lived in this like all three of us through quite developmental years of my life lived in this little room. or all four of us in this little room for three years. So I was about, it was like 14 to 17, I think. That was 17 when we moved back there. Or maybe 16. You lived in a room in that office? Yep. Yeah.

All four of us in one room without a walls or anything with just three beds shoved in there. And throughout my high school years. And then through that, dad pulled out all of his 401K and we built the house. Like we had a contractor put up the shell so that, It wouldn't, you know, we couldn't do it fast enough. It would have been ruined from rain and stuff. So the shell was built and then we took three years to build the interior and everything.

And that was, yeah, those were some long days back then. Yeah. I remember that. Well, it sounds like, it sounds like it. I mean, growing up that way, what did it, what did it take from you? But also, what did it give you that the kids with money never got? It gave me more than I could ever even put into words. Like the, I still.

Like I'm not hurting for cash now. We've been doing this for 10 years. I've been made smart decisions on things. But still, if I drive past something on the side of the road, like I took an extra route on the way here. Because I was like, maybe I'll find an old TV on the curve. I can pick something to sell for 30 bucks. Yeah.

Ooh. And that it's a very valuable thing, I think, to grow up and learn that you need to become good at preparing things or to become self-sufficient in ways to build your own, wealth that I think we've seen it time and time again when it's handed to people. Yeah. Piss old away. Yep. And those people suck sometimes too.

Yeah. We all know one. Yeah. For sure. Absolutely right. For sure. You said that your dad worked in a plant at Eaton. Or it was the plant called Eaton or the company.

Eaton manufacturing. Really big company. They made engine valves up there. So did your dad work in the town? that you guys lived in was it you said isn't there 2,200 people where it lived there? So when that closed, how big of a deal was it for that town and for you guys? It was, it was sizable for the town, but at the same time it wasn't like detrimental. Okay.

I think it closed like five years ago or so. Okay. They closed because their workforce had left, which ties in perfectly to one thing dad always told me when, you know, mom was off landscaping and busting her ass and dad was working on whatever he could around home. and getting breakfast for me so he could drop me off at the pool on the way to second shift. He told me this multiple times throughout my life, and I never knew what it meant really until I got older. He's like, you just need to learn how to work, kid.

Like, given the way we were raised, we're going to want you to get a four-year education because we see those people exceed over us, despite being dumber most of the time or whatever, in whatever positions they were, but they got paid better than mom and dad with their bachelor degrees. so they made sure I got that. But dad told me my whole life, he's like, you just need to know how to work hard. He's like, it's going to come a day when that degree is probably not going to matter as much

because there's not going to be anyone left to work because all the baby boomers are going to quit at the same time. And I didn't know what that meant when I was eight. We're there now. We're really 12 or 15, but we're living it. I'd say he was right on the money on that. He was spot on. Yeah.

And I learned how to work hard, thankfully, and much like a lot of our friends and people we know that are running blue collar jobs now, they're doing really well. Yep. Because they can bust ass. Yeah, for sure, man. So you graduate high school.

Was the reason, was Iowa State the choice because of your interest in mechanical and you thought the engineering made sense to go there? Is that the path that you followed? I actually started Iowa State as electrical engineering because I really liked working on electronics and like 12 old systems and stuff. Back home, if someone needed wiring done on their car,

they'd usually ask me, and I'd be like, oh, easy in my sleep, I could do that, no problem. And then when I got there, I realized I was neither genius nor Asian, so it probably wasn't going to work out. And there was also nothing to do with electronics. It was all just computer programming. I'm like, this is not what I signed up

for yeah but switched to mechanical engineering thing that'd be closer to some of the stuff I'd done in high school with CAD and people had job shadowed at eating and stuff and that still wasn't what I was looking for because we're calculating escape velocities and bullshit and then eventually I had do it a good friend of mine same guy that got me into YouTube suggested ITEC which I'd mentioned earlier and that was I remember for the whole deployment I got myself real pumped up because I would rather focus really hard and pass Calc 2, or I'll do anything to get through that degree so that I never have to come back here

and do this shit in the Army. Oh, yeah. Talk about a motivator. Yep. And then about 20 minutes in my first math class, I went, nope, and I walked out. After a year of prep myself up, 20 minutes in, said, nope, walked over to the other building, Sukup their names at the campus and switch majors. and that was immediately the program they sell. Yep. Do there are people that don't sign up for it. And then immediately where I was supposed to be. And that's what I eventually ended up graduating with.

Yeah. And then my YouTube videos instead. Yeah. Yeah. Where did the guard play into that? When did you start down that road? Actually ties in well to what we were talking about earlier. Mom and Dad always said they'd pay for my college

so that I could get a four-year degree. And I always knew mom and dad wouldn't be able to do that. Yeah. So, and I also had cousins and stuff that were National Guard. So I'd been around it plenty. And we took that entrance exam. Yep. I can't remember what's called right now.

But I missed one question on the mechanical section. And the answer was thrust washer, which I now know. But damn it, I was so close to 100%. But I went and talked to the recruiter that showed up in town at an event there at the gym at Belmont High School. And which they hadn't been there in years to some conflict with the, principal or something. I don't remember what it was, but they showed up suddenly. I'm like, oh, hey, talk to them. They said, yeah, we haven't recruited anyone here for like six years, but you look really good on paper. I was like, I want to be a light wheel mechanic. They're like,

okay. And then I was sitting at the table with the recruiter when my cousin called, who was in the Army, National Guard, it was a helicopter pilot. But before that, he was a mechanic. he called me and said, what are you doing? He's like, I heard you're signing up for the army. I'm like, he's like, what are you going to do? He said, oh, I'm wheel mechanic. You know, that's what I'm used to doing.

He goes, do you want to be, you know, crawling in mud under trucks all the time, greases hell like you are like you are right now, or do you want to work in a dentist office on a helicopter? Yeah, that one. I think I want to do that. That sounds way better. Yeah.

And that's what I ended up doing. And that paid for all of my college. It allowed me to go to Iowa State for four years. took a big financial burden off the parents, helped them a lot. And then, yeah, they only had to pay for one of the two kids. So that, yeah, it was a big, it sucked. But, yeah, I didn't do much with my military career.

But I did learn a lot in from the Army with, especially the aviation stuff. Like, that's why all of our tools are, we run foam in lays in our trays and we're like really anal about tool retention. And that's why we can. put a car together and then make it seem like a fake TV show where we build it all at once and then immediately derive across the country and have no issues at all. Yeah. Because of our attention to detail is heightened. Yeah. Well, yeah, thanks for your service, by the way. I mean, and yeah, it's, is there any other lessons that you learned outside of just like

keeping things organized, like your biggest takeaways from being in the guard? If you want to look busy, hold something. and kind of walk fast everywhere. No one will bother you. Walk with purpose. I have a good friend of mine that was in the engineer battalion that was out of Fairfield, Iowa. And he told me that one of the older guys that was there taught him

that when you're going to get inspected, you always want to leave one thing out of place easily found. So they have something to find. because you're never going to get 100%. So you want to leave them one thing to find that's minor, and that way they'll let you off easy. You don't want them to have to look hard because then they'll make it painful.

Ours was quite the opposite. Oh, really? If there's one thing out, 43 people die. Oh, yeah. So absolute perfection is the only acceptable answer. Yeah. Because you're driving a school bus, 10,000 foot in the air, and unlike a plane, you can't really, you know, all the engines.

There's no glide. Yeah. We can auto rotate, but not at full load. Yeah. It's bad. That's crazy. Well, so did you get deployed when you were in the guard? Yes.

I went to Kuwait and Iraq in 17 and 18, which that summer prior I had spent, I had met Luke, my buddy Thunderhead 289, on, at through college. And he'd been like, he was the guy who's like, hey, you can make money off these YouTube videos. And that's where all that started. So we spent that summer filming. and then I deployed overseas and while stuck in Texas for two and a half months instead of the two weeks it was supposed to be I sat there with a laptop on my cot

with and edited there or would walk down to the MWR and plug into the internet and upload videos and stuff so I started my whole YouTube career on government internet forever believe it or not but that's

so I had just enough for one video a month for the 13 months that I was gone. Wow. If you look back at the original channels, or the original videos, this is like the original F-250 series, the blue truck, the Fiat,

and the Dotson, I think, were the three series that I released during that. If you pay like real close attention, on like the Dotson voiceover stuff, you can hear a Blackhawk in the background once in a while or like, I'll be like really quiet and kind of ashamed of voiceover

in the F-250. stuff because I have blankets hanging next to me. Yeah. And there's like someone right here. Yeah. Like I am, and there's also a dude above me on the bunk. So I'm like, I don't want to be there like, hey guys, today we're going to. And also, you know, starting out doing, it's people are like, what are you doing, man? Yeah. Yeah. You weirdo making videos about cars over there. Okay.

Yeah. About halfway through the deployment, they're kind of looking at it starting to succeed. They're like, yeah, whatever is. Yeah. And by the end of the deployment, I came home with 130,000 subscribers and basically two paychecks from the deployment. Yeah. It was a good year for YouTube and the Army doesn't pay a shit. And those kind of match. Yeah. Yeah.

And, yeah. So what did you think when you saw that it was getting traction like that? It was a great distraction for a deployment where we did nothing. Yeah. We got there on our jobs contracted out. We just swept hangers. It was terrible. Oh, my wow.

To watch, to have something to look at that would regularly update, like I wore a phone out looking at YouTube studio. Yeah. You know, scrolling through the analytics and like finding all the sources and stuff to like, I dug through that stuff so much. And it was an excellent distraction. Yeah. The weird part was when you deploy, usually you take all your stuff, put in a box, set aside, park all your cars. And then you leave. And then about one year later, same time a year, you come right back.

And it's like, oh, this is exactly the season and everything's right where I left it. nothing's changed. Makes getting into life pretty easy again sometimes, especially as a young single guy. Yeah, yeah. I came back, everything was right where I left it, but I had a different job, and I needed to buy a camera.

Yeah. Well, I guess I'm back. I guess I'll go work on that truck. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What do you think it was? So first of all, when you started,

I mean, obviously, your friend had said, you know, you can make money, doing this and you loved war you loved wrenching on stuff so it was kind of a natural fit but did you did you grasp like when you came back and you had a check sitting there were you like okay so i guess what i'm asking is the turning point of this is what we do now did you think when you got back okay i'm going to have to figure out what i'm going to do and then when you got back went wait a minute i think i know what to do well kind of but i'd had a year to do nothing but sit there to twitle my

thumbs and think so I had it all planned out by the time I'd finally hit the got home hit the ground running yep but I definitely did have a turning point like that where we it kind of forced us into a point of like had I been home making videos I would there's videos I never put out from that era there's like me and Luke screw around without pushmower we filled it with corn oil to see how long would run the answer was infinitely it's never died I think it made it better but there's definitely views like that where and some early stuff I've taken down as well we were trying to find our voice and figure out like what worked

and what unique thing I was going to be to change stuff and seeing there was a couple of videos even I re-edited after like the first ones the Jolopnik wrote an article and the truck started taking off and reading through the comments people were really appreciated how like informative the videos were as well as entertainment

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

So I like went through and changed a couple and re-edit them to be more, like less flash forward through stuff and comedy and like more educational. And yeah, that seemed to work well. That seemed to be our knack as though we were the education entertainment, like non-destructive channel. Yeah. And that seemed to do really well. And that got kind of set in stone because I could make more content over there.

I was stuck with this is the hard drive I have. This has to be the next year's content. I can change what's on here in an edit. An edit can make anything look good, but I have to edit it in that direction. That's what I did. So by the time I got home, I was like, okay, yeah, we... You got it all planned out.

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now let's get back to it yeah that's awesome it's i mean it sounds like what's cool just observing is like man you are doing the fundamentals of being a good creator from the from the get-go because there's so many people and businesses in the same way it seems like how many of them don't even listen to their audience you know how many creators out there make stuff see the never read the comments never do anything about the comments that come in it's important it's really important that's the hand that feeds you you can't bite it yeah and the fact that you You were there and were listening and then made changes to make content specifically for what they liked about it. That says a lot.

A lot of that was I had 30 days to do nothing but sit there and read through each comment if we had Internet that week. Because sometimes they just shut it off over there. Fun fact. Yeah. So this, when did this, when you got back, did it go from this is a hobby to this is a job? Or did you come back and say, okay, we're going to. stair step this thing until I can make it my full-time gig. When was like, we're going all in on this? Mostly the stair step one,

because I knew I still had to go back to college in the next semester, and I knew I'd still promised the guy, the farmer I worked for, I said I'd come help him with Christmas trees again that year. I was basically running the tree farm up there by Belmont. And I knew I needed, I was always scared of YouTube because it was this weird thing that I didn't know anyone else

that was in the space. And there's no school for this to tell you how to do it. or anything, and at any moment, they could go, you don't make a dime anymore. Yeah. The EPA goes, ah, old car bad. Buy. Yeah.

That's non-monetizable anymore on YouTube, and we're just done, which still is something that exists. Right. Fun. Yeah. Yeah. Employees and everything in a family too. Yeah.

Try not to think about that. Yeah. But so I still went back to work for him, and then in my free time, I would work on cars at night and make videos here and there, which is, you'll see the videos back. back then it'll be shot over a weekend or the jump all over the place and time of day. It's when I have a chance.

And then I still did that. Tried to get one or two a month, I think, throughout all of college until we got to the point that we did those tow truck videos. And they did really well. I think we put three out in quick succession. And then I saw a number. I always said the whole time, I was like, I'm not going to quit YouTube. or I'm not going to do YouTube unless I see twice my income that I would see

as an engineer starting income. Because that gives you a safety net. Yeah. Okay, there's, I'm done now. It's shut off, but I got four months of savings built up that I can find a job and like sell some shit. If shit hits the fan, you got runway. Exactly.

And we did that tow truck stuff, and I saw those numbers for the first time later that year because that's when we really started pushing hard and did four videos a month, really religiously. but I was up till 3 a.m. all the time because I was also trying to do, finish my last two years of engineering school. I remember the last year of engineering school,

I went into the advisor. I'm like, can I just quit? Like, I just, like, I'd make more on YouTube. Can I just go do that? He's like, you need to finish this, dumb ass. You're like, really, you're a semester away from finishing. Just do it. And I did and graduated.

And that, as soon as that I had that, That was the, all right, we're full on. That's it. Yep. We're going for it now. Yeah, that's awesome. So the early days of you doing it, it was just, when did you make the decision to make longer videos?

Was that? Because I noticed in your early ones, you kind of had parts. Back then, the episodal content episodes of one vehicle worked really well. It helped draw subscribers because YouTube cared or YouTube cared about subscribers. back then. They pushed it really hard. Now they don't give a shit, which is why it's so hard

to grow a channel. I don't even know how to do that. Yeah. Feel bad for the guys starting out these days. Yeah. But back then, that worked great

because the subscribe button was a way for people to come back and see what happened next. YouTube's changed their algorithms and for a couple years there, we didn't know what it worked. And like nothing, like through one with the satellite series,

when that all came out, it wasn't getting crap for views. Yeah. We didn't know. And so I was cutting them down to be shorter so that it'd be more appetizing for people. Like maybe they don't have 30 minutes. Maybe they have 22.

Maybe their attention spans are all like squirrels. Something like that. And never really figuring it out. And then my wife, she made videos for a while too. She made a video on her green truck and it was like 45 minutes or an hour long. I was like, you can't do that.

That's not going to work. She's like, I don't care what you think. Watch this. Yeah. Hold my beer. Good point, honey. You're right. And she was.

and she put the video out and it blew up and got a million views. Wow. That makes no sense. Who has an hour? Yeah. Not me. Okay. So we tried that and they started doing really well.

And there's a direct correlation, I believe, with the fact was that YouTube could shove a lot more ads in it. Yep. And YouTube got paid more. You got paid. You pushed it more. Also, if your retention is only 35%, 35% of 10 minutes is three and a half minutes. 35% of an hour is like 20 minutes. So that's 20 minutes more ads that get watched and stuff like that.

So then since then, I don't know how to make a short video. We'll go out. The one we just shot yesterday or this week was surprisingly should not have happened. It was so simple. Like it was put battery in car, put gas in car, put tires on car drive home. It's still probably 48 minutes somehow. Yeah. We can't.

You learn how to fill and then I can't figure out how to cut back down. Yeah. But that's fine because YouTube still prefers that runtime. It seems like it's moved that way and continues to keep moving that way. Do you think, I mean, I know this for a fact on podcast, and we hear this a lot on our, on the YouTube side of what we're doing, is a lot of people, do you, and do you hear this on your channel, they pop, yeah, stop, I'll go do something else, I'll come back to it.

have to. Or I think a lot of ours also is, I'm assuming, played in the background in a garage. Yeah. Background noise. Yep. Which is I specifically, I edit a little different from other people in the space where I do what I call a radio edit, where if you're listening to it, it sounds like we're listening to the radio, as if for our audio listeners right now, there hasn't been a big gap like this for a little while. And someone probably just went, what? Because someone in the background quit talking just there. Yeah. So I like to keep. things moving and keep our audio consistent and focused. And I think that helps with it becoming something played in the background often too.

But I do know that I can see unique viewers versus returning on a video, I think. And it does look like a lot of people pause, fall asleep, pause, finish it the next day. Yeah. I know I can't. I turn 29 and started falling sleeping chairs. Yeah. When did, what's going on? Yeah.

No, I, and I still, I feel like a trend that I'm seeing too is a lot of people are watching YouTube on TV, like more than ever before. I think higher than mobile. Yeah. It's, is your guys as demographic for age, does it follow you or him? It's kind of both. It's split. It's split. Mine has always been my age.

It's followed me for 10 years. Like the most of our viewers are my age, I think, which I think, which I think that's just because we all are. are interested in the same era of vehicles. We all grew up watching YouTube together. I wasn't the only one doing this, clearly. Yeah. It was entertained by that content, which is interesting to see demographics

and stuff based off that and like our performance of see who fell asleep in the chair. Yeah, yeah. Who can make it through? My numbers would be better than his, except my generation can't even figure out how to get to YouTube or if they started there asleep in three, minutes in the chair. I wonder if that's why we're seeing the change from phone to TV now.

Yeah. Could be. I definitely know. I have now, like, as I've gotten older, I've cleaned up a couple spaces where there's a TV out in the shed and the first time I have a little screen on the wall and I'll play YouTube videos on in the background. Or I will sit down and prefer to watch it on the TV so that people aren't blowing up my phone and I can just set that over there. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't see anything on my phone anyway. Yeah. I'm getting bad. We're getting old. I get it. I'm right there with you. I think, I think, you know, something that I just feel like citizen media is an all-time high. I think people are just not, we say it on the show all the time.

The amount of trust that's out there with, you know, name your, name your source, legacy media, big pharma, big food, whatever, politicians. Like, we don't trust as easy as we used to. and when you go on YouTube, it's full of, I mean, there are some, you know, scammy people out there. But for the most part, it's real people doing real shit. Yeah, I mean, your channel is a perfect example of that. They want to support that. You pretty much have to know what you're doing. You can't fake what you do.

That's what on that deployment I was forced into, this is where real people doing real car shit. Yeah. And it's all real. Like, we're not, I'm not going to have a character. We're just going to try to teach people how to do this. I guess. So the drive, the get it running and drive it. Was that your, like, did you come up with that from the beginning?

Because that's kind of the, that's kind of the hook of the whole thing is like, it's one thing to get something running enough to get it onto a trailer. But getting into a car with no reverse and expected to drive it home, that's a deal. That was definitely something that. that we've, I mean, we've done that from the beginning. There's, like the F-250, I shot that video four days before I deployed. Like, I left from that video, grabbed my bags, and got on a plane. So that one was like, let's just make it drive up and down the road.

And then I got back, and after that year's deployment, I was like, oh, now I make videos. Let's immediately, one is the first things we did is I went and bought a car and drove it home. It wasn't far, but then we drove it to Tennessee. like this is what I'd always wanted to do but I was gone for a chunk of time but there are other people in the space that came up during that time specifically a year and a half after us who took claim to that but that's not how that works yeah we're all making we've all been doing this for years yeah but it uh it definitely is the larger challenge and goal to complete there yeah which early on I

couldn't do because I was gone. But yeah, that, I think, with that definitely started up when I had more ability to step away from school and stuff. And that's what I wanted to do all along. Yeah. Yeah. And it just took the logistics to be able to do it. Like the, the one with the white or what became my dad's cutlist that we drove all the way back from Texas. I was once again starting school in seven days. It's like let's, I just heard about this car in Kansas at like 2 a.m. someone sent me an email. And I was waking the wife up the next morning like get the shit packed we're going yeah we went down there and drove that thing back and

those are into dericho actually oh my I was gone wow we were we were trying to also working with cold the corner star at the time on a midget that he had with the car on an m g midget that he had that we were swapping a motor into and it was sitting between videos when the duratio came

through and we were like down in kansas like what the hell's a dericho yeah guys are Why is it, is that a new Dorito flavor? Yeah. We have a lot of Mexican restaurants around here, but I haven't had one of those yet.

Yeah. Sounds like a new margarita. Yeah. Yeah. That's hilarious. Well, I got something to ask about that that, that I guess I'm curious. And so when you go and you,

you get a truck that's been parked for 15 years, obviously the registration is, is done, hasn't been, like, do you work all that out ahead of time? Or do you just wing it and go? Legally speaking. Don't ask, don't tell. Yes, yes, we do. Yeah.

We're always insured. I always put insurance on everything. Yeah. I will not drive anything on the road that is questionable as far as the brakes go. Yeah. We can break down all day long. That's fine. But if it comes to the point that I'm going to run into someone else's car and hurt someone

else, I do not. we don't do stuff unless we have at least two fully functional breaks, usually in a case where we can't get to the rears at the time or something like that. But yeah, so safety is a big thing with us. And then the registration in Iowa of 31 days. Okay. Here's the title. I just bought it.

Oh, so if you buy it, even though it hasn't been registered an hour long, you're fine. You got a month to get it. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids. And I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting.

An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. Wisconsin, you do not have a month in Wisconsin. It turns out you have like four hours. Oh, seriously. So make sure you have a plate if you try to drive everything in Wisconsin,

especially if it's old in the cold season, because they all register everything as lifetime vintage tags, and they're not allowed to drive them for those four months. So you stick out like a sore thumb and get pulled over a lot. Ask how I know. Yeah. You can take your kid with you to the bar, but you can't buy a vehicle.

Yeah, your kid can drink, what, at 16 or something at the bar, but do not drive a high boy through Eagle River in December. Yeah. Without a plate. Without plates. Yeah. Damn. You get pulled over by every single form of police they make.

Yeah. Is that what happened to you? Is that the story? We got pulled over about 12 miles outside town, went to town for the event, and then leaving town got, that was local. And then on the way out got sheriff and state hit us within a mile. Like you can damn near see the last guy still filling out of paperwork. When the next guy decided he takes a run.

The next guy pulls us over too. We went right under a bridge and he came down off the off ramp. And it was like, oh, look at that. a 74 forward in the middle winter but no plates yeah click oh my gosh that's they were all really cool about it though

oh that's good yeah and none of them I'm like I'm out of state how what am I don't still know the correct answer because this has happened in Texas twice too like I'm not from here I can't register this because I'd have to go home to do that reiterate not from here

yeah my state that I will be registering this gives me 31 days but you give me 12 hours Texas you can print off a temp you can sign up online a temp tag you'll still get pulled over he's doing plates yeah you just got something to show or a printer

yeah yeah in Wisconsin something like that but none of the cops were too sure about it except for the last guy I think he's the one that said the third one I finally asked like something has to be wrong because we can't go 100 foot without getting pulled over what am I supposed to do is like you're supposed to print off a temp tag and put it in the window like right me and my printer yeah where yeah he's like yeah i don't know yeah it's it off the interstate yeah just get off

we did that it was fine yeah yeah what i want to go back a little bit on the video side like what is the what does it look like today uh as far as are you still editing do you have editors now uh like what's everybody's role and how do you make it all go so Angus is our wrench, our main wrench for sure. I am as well. We share that one. The big difference is if I'm in there editing or doing business side stuff, Angus will keep wrenching. So he is our, you know, our 60, 40 on wrench stuff. My brother I've actually hired on as an editor because I tried a bunch of professional level editors and wasted a couple thousand dollars on giving people a shot like five times. And it was not good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. In, they didn't, like, I'm like, here's a story on this SD card. I made it.

I put it there. I directed this as we went through. It's all in my, like, as we go, I'm editing this in my head. So I have an idea of what the final video is by the time we are done filming. I already know what the whole thing looks like. I just have to go, you know, cut out all the pieces for two days. And then we're good to go. You can't hand that off to a lot.

of people and them find that story. That's apparently a pretty special talent that a very good editor, a assembly, a very good assembly editor will have. Tried a bunch of professional ones got nothing. About that time, my brother graduated from college with a business degree because he went for architecture. Same deal. That's not what they sold me. I guess I better get a degree. And then he, I hired him out of college to edit for us because he's been alongside the whole journey from the beginning. He knows how the workflow is like, there's really not one better for this. Yeah. And he's been doing very good at our assembly edit stuff now to where I am down to a day, a half a day to go through and cut out all the fluff, trim up all the audio stuff here and

there, and then run a final pass to all our color and layovers and stuff and then release it all. So it's, that's probably also a 60, 40 as well. Yeah. So that's, that's the, whole team. Yep. Me and Agus. And then the wife that, you know, make sure I have at least rip pants to wear and some food and takes care of the kid. So that's, it's more like we do 4%.

And she does 96% of everything else. Yeah. She watches the kid and all of the business or all of our like taxes and stuff too. Yeah. How new is the kiddo? She just turned one. Nice. Well, congrats on that, man.

Thank you. It's crazy how she's only one year old after six years. Oh boy, that was a fun time. Yeah. The wife was very sick throughout the pregnancy. And then our Morgan, our daughter was very colloquy for, she didn't sleep to the night until five and a half months. Wow. First time.

Yep. And then still on and off after that until about about seven and a half things started getting easier. Nine and a half the personality came around. And then since then it's been fun. She just started walking last week. So that's cool. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I saw that you keep your personal life pretty private, it seems,

like, which I respect, but that's kind of hard. It's one of those things when you get on YouTube and put yourself out there. How are you a personality? Yeah. Without showing the personal side of stuff. Yeah, it's, what's your, like, philosophy on that? And do you feel like that's going to change over time, or do you feel like you're going to keep the same vibe?

We'll show stuff, like, we don't play characters. We are who we are. bump into me a gas station. I'm going to be exactly what you've seen on YouTube, but probably busy and trying to leave because I'm late for something. Yeah, you're out of gas. I almost forgot about. Yeah. Yeah. But so it's just that now we're on camera, we can relax with the camera, talk back and forth, and we'll throw some stuff in that'll get cut out some times and stuff. But we'll throw a bit of personal life into that, but it's very easy to draw a line then of like, let's not show the house address.

Yeah. Or let's not talk about, you know, any real personal stuff. And like, like, Mook, my wife used, like, that's not her name, believe it or not. Yeah. Because we're like, we don't need people looking her up. Right.

And just, well, there's just one more little layer of friction that people have to go through to figure out all that. Yeah. But smart. Same with like how we try very hard for people not to know where we live, but they keep finding a way. Stop there. Yeah.

Don't do that. Yeah. That's bad. I've seen... Don't follow me home. I've heard that from so many different YouTubers that that is a fear and that has happened many times. I mean, I get it.

I watch people on YouTube all the time. I'm like, oh, I, that... I've loved to meet this guy. I feel like we're friends. They don't know I exist. I'm a viewer. So I understand both sides of the... You guys watch us every week, see what we do.

Feel like you're part of the family. We don't know. You got to remember. we have no idea who the viewers are. So it's, be very careful. Yeah, it can come off,

quite aggressive. Yeah, it can sketch. It's a weird. Yeah. It's a weird deal. It is a very strange deal. Yeah.

Yeah. What, what project are you the most proud of that you've done? Video project, maybe go hand in hand, but, ooh. I think I would split those honestly.

The Lamans we built, our flagship years ago, that one will always hold a special place in my heart, and same as like the F-250 that started the channel. Like those are sentimental. The Lamonts is definitely our worst vehicle that became the coolest thing. But then since then we've been able to get more picky

and like avoid super rusty, terrible cars and like, hey, we don't have to find whatever's next to me that week to get something as fast as possible. We can be a little more picky and be like, there's a 68 Bonneville in a barn that's rust-free that's been there for 40 years. yeah, let's go get that, make that into something cool. So project-wise, I'd probably still say to Lamontz,

that car is just a ton of fun. There's definitely been some other good ones in there as well. Video-wise, I've made a playlist of Kevin's favorite videos that I'm either most proud of what we pulled off or most proud of the edit, because I think the video is really high quality, because I put probably an abnormally high amount of effort into our edits to make them very good in my opinion.

Like you'll not hear any audio pops or anything. I'll go through all of it two or three times to make sure it's as fine of a production as I will list uneducated person in that regard can produce. But there's a whole playlist of them and on there, the C1O, like our, some of our top view videos do make sense because we put a ton of videos or a ton of effort into them. The C10 from Minnesota is definitely one of those. I think we did a, I was really amped up for that one and excited, and we did a really good job shooting it.

And there's like confessionals in it and stuff where I'm like talking to the cameras, people are working in the background. Like that one was our probably highest production level for, you know, three dudes and one camera and a tripod. But the story it told was also fantastic and we pulled off something crazy. And the truck turned out to be really good. And I like it and still drive it to this day. Yeah.

but that one's hard to beat. That's got to be the craziest one. Yeah. As you have progressed, is it easier today to find your next project or harder? And is it more expensive now that people know who you are when they have something? Hilariously, probably the other way, I don't leverage it at all, the expensive part.

I don't leverage it at all. I don't like to do that because it's, I mean, I'm here to help the economy where it's fair to, like put money back into the community that watches us and whatnot. But I definitely have noticed I can offer someone something.

I'm like, man, I think, would you take like 500 less than you're asking? They'll be like, oh, if I get to see a video about it, hell yeah.

It's like I get, which that's not a tradeoff because we're YouTubers. That's the fact that they get to see their dreams that they didn't get to finish become. Yeah. Realties, how I face, I view that.

as far as finding projects yeah there's we can i mean you guys know you probably know 15 cars around here as you drive around in the winter you see them all through the trees and stuff yeah they're out there and people are always asking how i can't find them anywhere open your eyes yeah driver get off the interstate there's cars everywhere yeah yeah so finding them's never been a huge problem we can get more picky like i'd mentioned before and find better cars which i'm a lot of that becomes word of mouth. And when people know what we do and what we're looking for, they do seem to come to us a little easier.

Yeah. Yet there's still a pile of garbage out back that I haven't got to. Yeah. Do you have a problem? Do you have a problem with actually flipping said vehicles? Like, do you have a problem with accumulating vehicles that you're like, yeah, I should sell that. But that was a nice.

Oh, yeah. The county thinks so for sure. Yeah. We had to sell about 30 last year because we got, the whole deal happened. We were getting too many. I needed to clean house, so we did. And now it seems like they're back.

I don't know what's going on. We came across a couple piles of decent cars that were like buy one, but like buy, well, here's a money offer for all three, if that's easier than overpaying for one. And then now we have garbage cars sitting all over.

But there is a whole row of vehicles lined up for future videos and restorations. Like all those GTOs we bought off the farm were still only halfway through the bodywork on the one, you know, two left or three left or whatever. So they do seem to accumulate. And I got rid of a bunch that were,

from when I was younger, they were to be videos. And again, we've become more picky with our car. Like, I don't want rust in my eyes. If I can't avoid it, we'll still do it for sure. But would you rather work on a 69 GTO? or a catalyte or a cutless body on a blazer frame that someone welded together with batteries and a stick.

Mm-hmm. I'm gonna go with the GTO each time. Yeah, exactly. And parts are more available and stuff like that. So we had a bunch of that stuff that we got rid of and now all the stuff back, that now back is stuff that takes time to get to. Like full restorations or bigger videos.

It's like, yeah, we're gonna do that. Sometime. That's gonna take like three weeks. And I need a three week chunk somewhere to be able to do that. Yeah. Well, I wanted, when you kind of asked a couple questions already, but I have this section in here that's like a hypothetical scenario of like, you found somebody reached out or you found a car, you're going to go get it, you're going to make it a project, you're going to make a video. I kind of want to go through like, how do you step by step go through this thing? So you get there.

So you found the truck or you found the car, you go, you get there. What are you checking? You know, What do you check first? What are the things that you're like, all right, we're not taking this thing anywhere unless this is good. It's pretty much laid out the same. It's kind of the same thing in every video. It's,

we get there. We, you know, let's see if it spins. Let's see if the motor's any good. All right, there we go. That works. It runs.

Let's figure out brakes and tires. And we get a fuel system going. Maybe some headlights, blinkers if we get that far. But it basically always starts as make it run, make it move. Make it safe. Yep.

Which is, it's, if you really break it down, every single video is the same. Yeah. That doesn't get boring after 10 years, not at all. What's, uh, what's the, what's the worst animal infestation that you've ever run into? Coons. Mice. Yeah. Yet to find a raccoon in a car.

Mice are always. Have you found a cougar in the car yet? No. Ricky Bobby. Cougar in the car. Yeah. Um, mice are definitely the biggest problem is they'll eat stuff and then, you know, shit and piss everywhere and rust. Like the laguna we just picked up is beautiful, but they got down in one fender well and had a nest in there and it popped a rust hole about that big and just that part of the car.

The rest is perfect. And on the way there, they went over the fenders and rusted that part out too as they run and piss, I swear. Mm-hmm. But obviously the possum from way back in the day was a pretty good one. and then just last week at this point in time last week the last video we put out was that Cadillac that we was seized solid

it took an hour to get this thing up onto the rollback it was so seized up and stuck in the ground and about 10 minutes in a moving it a skunk ran out from underneath of it oh boy and it was an offense and we were about this won't make any sense for the viewers but for you guys eventually about exactly this room

that was a fence in that corner and the car was about where Sawyer is and he ran to the fence and just kind of sat there and never left for the whole thing. We're like this is, he's like, we've got like 45 more minutes of work. This is not going to end well. He's just staring you down. It's like this weird.

The only thing that would make this worse is if we were sprayed by a skunk. Oh, shit, a skunk. Yeah. You're at a standoff with a skunk, basically. Yeah. That's a lame. He kind of mind his own business and everything was fine. What about the tools?

What about the tools? What five tools or what a stack of tools are you taking to every job? You're like, you've got to have these. Well, you have to have a pliers, first of all. Yep. So that's a necessity. Do they make another one? That's it, right?

That'll get you a long ways. We've had the same portable toolbox, and I need to replace it because it's getting pretty beat up after eight years a weekly use. But we just basic hand tools, if we're really getting into the shit, We'll take a floor jack and an impact and some kind of a jug and some gas line and a battery. But they're just about like go down to Harbor Freight and get a little,

get a pack of wrenches and sockets and do that's screwdrivers. That's it. Yeah. There's no real special tools on the 60s, 70s stuff. Yeah. Now that we're talking about tools and I just had this off the cusp, but like what's your go-to brand? Or do you think that, do you think a brand's overrated, underrated? We have honestly a little bit of everything.

I took my Eagle Scout money from back in the day when I was in high school and went and bought on Black Friday, went to Sears back when all of those existed and bought a bunch of craftsmen stuff. And that's like our main black toolbox right there that we used next to the lift every day. That's the same set of tools I had in high school. I've only added random stuff we found in cars since then,

but I really haven't changed too much it's all still alive the rats is definitely need to replace by now but I got 15 years out of them hard to complain yeah for our portable stuff we run a company out of Taiwan

because their foam inlays are better than anyone else's and I can if you pull a tool out it goes from black to bright red and be like hey that wrench is missing before we leave we're never going to see it again

or hey that's soft might be on top of a valve inside the engine. This could be bad. And that all comes from my aviation background. Nice. Besides that, we've got some random Milwaukee stuff. Like, I've got all this shop tool, power tools, all like, you know, four of them are Milwaukee. Then at the house, I've got some DeWalt stuff I bought from a pawn shop.

So I am all over the board. Yeah. Except for the pliers. Yeah. As long as it's a pliers. Yeah. Six and a half inch, preferably. You know, the CDCOs.

Which you can't get anymore, but the corrections are pretty good. Yeah. It's like vice grips to you. Yep. Dad always says a pair of vice grips in the hog barn. A pair of ice grips will get you a long ways. Yeah. And the other nice thing about only buy a full-sized pair of vice grips

because it's rare that they'll fall through the slats. True. I mean thought of that. Yeah. That's good for. The number of 916s wrenches swallowed every year by hog pits is staggering. Yeah, I bet. Staggering.

Yeah. We always are, the rule is always bring a bucket with you to put your tools in in the hog barn because you never want to drop. You will drop something. I never thought of that. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's change gears a little bit. So you do a little bit of farming.

You do a little bit of farming. So let's talk about that. Everyone who's been listening the whole time just now perked up. Yeah. Everybody just got the ears. Yeah. No, man. No, I think you got a damn good story.

You run a full line of late model equipment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Late 50s. 10,000 acres. Yeah, brand new. BTO right here. Late model.

Yeah. Yeah. So what is the junkyard digs farming operation actually look like? How, you know. Not good. No. So lay it out there right now. Yeah, lay it out for us.

What do you got cooking up? Well, sum it all up right now. We've got a John Deere 620 that once again has filled its oil pan with all the gas we put in the tank. tank so it's got about three gallons of shit in the bottom and it doesn't run so i got to fix that again and the next to it where it's been parked all summer is uh this four acre four and a half acre field where two rows are still green and like 14 foot tall two rows are fully brown 12 foot tall the fifth row is missing and the sixth row is green again all the way down and back nice so which is all left over plot corn that people gave us

for free. So the basis of all this is we take abandoned equipment and then you like bring a tractor back to life every year and use that with a formerly abandoned planter, which we've done enough work to that's, well, I'm not going to call it reliable because we only have five rows in the field right now. But we use 80% reliable. Yeah, it's true. We only have 80% of our field planted though. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to hurt. Yeah. But we, you're, we, we, take this abandoned equipment and we hook it up to an old disc that really needs scrapped really bad and we'll take this tractor that's been sitting for years put it back on the drive at home hook it up to this and till all the dirt hook it up to the to the

planter and put corn in all with abandoned equipment for as little money as possible yeah like the first year we had to buy the planter and it was 500 bucks someone gave us the cultivator we borrowed the neighbor's age that had been abandoned next to the road for like 35 five years. They got the motor unstuck, got the trans unstuck, drove it home, just ran this thing

as hard as it could to pull this disc that someone gave us for free because if we're going to scrap it, should have. Yep. And then tilled that.

And then so the first year we put corn in for 500 bucks and one of the neighbors like, yeah, watch you guys' stuff. I like that. You're doing what?

Oh, yeah, I've got some leftover plot corn for like two years ago. Do you want that? Hell yeah. So, That's the basis of it is to do it as cheap as possible with as old as equipment as possible.

And we have a fun. Do you have a neighbor that harvest it for you? No. See, last year or two, three years ago now, I think. Yeah, we're doing corn. Three years ago, we bought a combine. Nice. With our winnings.

Okay. Which was none. Winnings? Yeah. The YouTube channel bought a combine out of pocket. Yeah. But we bought a 6,600 for 2,200. bucks.

Yep. The fuel shut off was seized up on the injection pump, got that working. Did some rewiring, got that all going, and then drove it home, fixed the brakes and the clutch and some other stuff and got the head to spin again. It had been sitting in weeds for years. Yep. And we took the corn out with it. And last year we got the bean head all fixed up and got the auto float and everything

working. Yeah. And then clogged it about a hundred times because. because we, I don't think it got sprayed last year, and it was like beans, ragweed. I got you. And then we learned that combine has no reverser. Yeah.

We were out there with a big bar. Yep. Like 1 a.m. for two days trying to get this damn bean field out. Ended up, ended up just leaving the worst part of it and had someone just come mow it. There's no beans there anyway. Yeah. But then this year we'll be back to corn.

So hopefully the combo. the combine's good to go at this point. It's probably not, though, because I had concrete put in the shed, and that meant I parked it outside for like two months. Oh, sure. Through all the huge heavy rains we had. So there'll be something to fix.

Yeah, so what was that just, you had this acreage, so you've had this acreage for a while, and you just decided. We actually just bought it. Okay. We moved to the Ames area, and moved to a new house in the Ames area

and it had four acres of ground on the back there and we're like, hell yeah, I'm going to use that. We're going to make farming videos out of this. This would be a great new thing to change things up from our normal car content, hopefully draw the car people into this reactor and farm content because we're doing revivals. It's the same stuff.

I just don't have to fix brakes very often. And then at the same time, build this other base of people, this other community that hasn't seen anything like this, but obviously we're in Iowa. There's a lot of farmers around here. Yeah. These people are going to eat this up.

And it was funny. I knew it worked not only because each year we did it, we got more views on the farm stuff. Now we obviously see all the comments. People say they love it. Car people say they would have never thought it was interesting. Farm people say they love watching all this car stuff. More importantly and directly,

never before would we walk into like a small town bar and anyone recognizes, not even locally in our own town, until we started doing on the farm show, the ban on equipment. They're like, you're those YouTube assholes, right? With the tractor? Yeah. I was like, we've done it, we've made it.

You've made it. We're big. All six people at this bar, one of them knows who we are. Yeah. Just tell them, I've made so much money redoing these cars that I had to get a tax right off, so I became a farmer.

Yeah, there you go. That'll get them lit up. I don't even know if we have our title F. I don't, I don't, it's like, it's not. I can't be bothered to go down there and figure all that out because it's not far. Well, you don't need a schedule left unless you have something to depreciate. And it sounds like you're only buying assets that are already depreciated. Well, depreciated.

So you probably don't need that yet anyway. Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah, good. That would have been a waste of my time. Yeah. What? So doing this, kind of getting into farming and giving this a go, has it made you,

have you learned a lot? like do you have a new found respect for farmers and ranchers that do it? Has have you like what have been the biggest takeaway of getting into it? I've been around it my whole life. Yeah. So it was nothing new to me. It was just that now I had to go do it. Yeah.

And there was a bit of like, boy, I've seen this done a thousand times. But I don't like, where do we start here actually? And I've got a lot of uncles that are farmers. So I'd call them up all the time. They were like, well, Kevin, here's what you got to do. I'd go get a, like Bill's got a cultivator, get a hold of him. Uncle Bill, he'll hook you up with one of them. And I'd disc first, then I'd cultivate,

then we'd find some seed, and Ron come down, help me set up the planter and stuff like that. So there was a learning curve to it, for sure. Yeah. And those guys all love it because they're like, boy, I haven't worked on anything this old. This takes me back to 82. This is great.

Yeah. Well, all farmers love, all old farmers love old equipment. I mean, you just see it in action. Yeah. We're just sitting out of show. Yeah, for sure. That's neat. We're definitely going to see some stuff on action next year because the CRP that when we bought the place,

they said only had like a year left, but he had just signed the paper. Lying sack of. Anyway. So eight of our 13 acres we can farm have been in CRP until this year. Finally, now that we've got it all figured out, thankfully, we get to break some new ground. Yeah. If anyone's got a 100-horts tractor sitting around, you don't use this abandoned in a barn?

Let me know. Yeah, well, you can go to the coffee shop and tell the rest of the farmers that you doubled your acreage for next year. Say, yeah, we're growing like mad. We doubled our acreage. They already rolled her eyes at us pretty good because we're like, yeah, we spent $212.12 on gas oil

and graphite and shit for the planter and whatnot to put beans in this year and sold it for two grand. Yeah. Our ROI is great, especially if you count the YouTube video. Yeah, there you go. We're the most profitable farmers around. Yeah.

So here's a question for you. Do you ever foresee yourself like taking farming like really serious and like if you could keep growing your business, would you buy more land? Would you try to make a go at farming? Or do you kind of see it as let's just have it be good content? It's definitely a content and a hobby. and the hardest week of vacation we have. Yep. Because Ezra will come down,

we buy three cases of beer, and we put the corn in, and it's a blast. But we are out there to like two in the morning for like five days. We can get it done over a weekend, not use up much PTO on his end. But it's a ton of work.

We're always exhausted each time, but it is a lot of fun. Do you figure the cost of the beer in your cost of production? No, it's real broke. The YouTube side have to absorb that cost. Yeah, that has to be absorbed, else we'd absolutely, we'd lose the farm.

We would definitely lose the farm. Gotcha. It'd be the farm crisis all over again. Yeah. I mean, we're farming like it is. Yeah. Is it tough in the fall when you got, you know, kid at home, wife, those five days, are you just, I mean, I don't know what your regular schedule is like.

I'm sure it's balls to all the time, but I'm sure even adding that on top of it, it's got to be tough. We'll set that week aside for farming, but it does usually become a hassle, especially if we need parts. It's like, oh, boy. we better start driving around the countryside to we see a 6,600 sitting around and ask if they want to sell parts off of it,

which they usually do. Works out. Yep. But we always get it done, but it is usually a hassle. This year, hopefully it will be, hopefully the combine will just work. Maybe things will be easier. Yep.

But we'll see. We should also probably be breaking that ground this year since it's all CRP. Yeah. I don't know. You guys tell me, what would you do? Yeah.

I don't know. What do you think? I would definitely break it this fall. This is how I, That's how I learned, see, this is what I do. And because you're going to want to work it again in the spring because it'll look pretty rough. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.

I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com.

When you get it turned under this fall, a good winter of freezing and thawing will help mellow it out. Yeah. Yeah. I did have, I did go drink beer the other day with some friends and told one of them to cut it all for hay bales. So that's called that progress. Yeah.

Write that beer off for a farm meeting. And then I did have someone also tell me that they knew of an Alice 7, 4.50? Sitting around. Yeah. So that might be what we need. Looking for something, a hundred horse area, but everyone's still using those.

So they're really hard to find abandoned. Okay. Oh, spoiler alerts. Yeah. What did you get for watching this podcast? Yeah. Does your wife like animals? Do you like animals?

I do you like animals? I do not like you'll get like. Absolutely no cows in your future. I hate livestock. Okay. We've got a couple cats and that's plenty. Yeah. Yep.

Yep. Yeah, I've never been a fan of stinky screaming animals that are really hard to film around and just make everything stink. Yeah, I didn't know if there was Highland cattle and you're, you know, what are those? Are the Highland cattle? The fuzzy short cows and all that. The biggest problem with when we needed to, especially before the kid, we had, we tried to have a dog for a while and it didn't work out for a few reasons. One of the worst ones was like we, at the drop of a hat, we hear of a car and, we hear of a car. Kansas for sale such as the cut list it's get up it gets stuff packed leave tomorrow

morning at 7 a.m. and decide that at 2 a.m. when you're laying in bed on your phone it's we can't do that very much anymore because we have a kid although I do have Angus so it's it helps now but back then when it was the wife and I it was all right leave everything you leave a cat at home for three days it'll eat that pile of food just fine but you could never do that with a pet like a dog or any livestock at all. So we had to be like an emergency deployment team in any moment. Yeah. You get those kids a little further. You just take, dump a whole box of fruit loops out on the kitchen table and say, we'll be back. Yeah. And then tell the kids, don't eat the cat food.

Eat the fruit rings, not the cat food. Food, fruit rings is that you said. Well, that's generic. Yeah. You know, yeah. You don't want to spoil them. Yeah. You got to start them out. Keep a home. Yeah, the great value brand. Yeah, absolutely. I like it. I like it. You don't want these kids getting boozy. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. How do you live a nice comfortable life, but have your kids grow up up to be good people. That's exactly right. I got, that's what I'm going to face here soon. I don't know what to do. Yeah. That's a tough one. We've asked people about that so many times of, but I busted my ass to be the where I'm not like that. Yeah. But I know how valuable that was. Yeah. And I don't want to live like that again. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. You don't want to build,

You want to build them up and give them opportunity, but how do you not make them spoiled? Spoiled assholes. That's the tough part. I don't know. It didn't work for me. Oh, wait. No, you're fine.

I was talking about your brother. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah, you're a peach. Yeah, sure. You're a real peach. Right. Yeah.

Something like that. Okay, well, I want to switch gears a little bit and go into the business of being a creator. So what are the misconceptions you think people have? when it comes to creators as a whole. Or what, like, seeing you do your job, what is the slack you think people say about being a creator or being a YouTuber

that you hear all the time? I think the biggest ones, they think it's easy. Yeah. I don't want to sound like a creator being like, oh, it's so hard. Yeah. What we do is, like, we are not, I'm not only running a business with employees,

not only running a mechanics shop where we have to do all this stuff, but we're also doing it ourselves. Like we're out there digging in the mud with hand tools, making stuff as hard as possible. Usually we can't just roll in with a rollback and haul it somewhere every time

because where's the entertainment and that. That's not relatable. That's not what everyone can do and all of our thing is being relatable and within the realm of what people can afford to do and do at home with regular amounts of hand tools that you can accumulate in a couple years.

It's a ton of work. Because we have to go out there, find a car, get it running, drag it home. Like, while we're here, Angus is pressure washing the bottom side of a car and painting it while I'm sitting here drinking beer. Yeah. So real hard.

Yeah. But it does, people are like, why don't you put out more content? I'm like, we're putting out as much as we physically can. Yeah. And the reason we've put out less is because I've had to put a monetary value on time I take off. Or I've had to, like, think of how much it is worth to spend some time at home with the family or to mow the yard or to keep things nice, not have everything look like a dump.

Like it takes as much time as it does for anyone to mow their yard and stuff like that. And to be home with, you know, your one-year-old kid now that there's something. starting to get to the point they're going to start remembering things and stuff like it's becomes very important so yeah we're putting out as much time as or as much content as we physically can while still balancing that in the days off it's like it takes a lot yeah a lot to make videos I'm this what we're watching will probably take two days to edit yeah I mean it takes to double the amount of hours. As long as the podcast is, it takes double the amount of hours to edit it at least.

Through the rough cut. Yeah. Because you have to watch it. Yeah. And you have to pause it. Yep. Make that cut where I just didn't talk. Yeah.

And that one. Yeah. And then switch cameras twice. Yeah. It takes forever. Yeah. It's a ton. Editing was two to three days a week.

Yeah. And the other four were, well, work as much as we can. And some of those are weekends. And it's like nice to see family and stuff. Yeah. No, man, I agree with you. I think being a creator, it's the trendy thing. It's the thing that all the kids want to be as a YouTuber, but it's...

You better be ready to work hard. Because you have most, like where we're at, you know, we're farming. We're farmers. We got a pig chores every single day, but then you have to make content and you have to be consistent. And I think the other thing that's really hard is this world. And it's like with any business, every business is like this. especially content business, it changes all the time. Algorithms changed.

Your strategy has to change. Your content might have to change. You have to see what's coming down the pipe or else you're going to get left behind. I watched it go from like when I started, it was make videos about stuff and make them 15 minutes long and make another one about the next part of that thing to now it all has to be in one video. Now it has to be long. Now are cameras sideways?

Yeah. And now they're really short. Yeah. And now, like, it's, I feel like I should have retired from a normal career in as fast as this has moved in eight or the 10 years. I've been doing this. Felt like what you would see in advancement of 40 or 60 years of normal career stuff. Yeah. Like most people are like, oh yeah, back when we started, we used paper. Yeah.

Now we have a computer and it's the same thing. Yeah. Wait, wait a minute. We edit this? Well, now we have an editor, but I used to edit it. Oh, I thought that I just did such a good job. Oh, yeah. Oh, you didn't tell me that.

You're always perfect. Yeah, his shots. Well, you see, I think it's like anything. You just got to get the right position within the company. Well, I just, well, you know, when you just handed him that beer, what you didn't realize is you stepped right in front of that camera while you handed the beer while I was talking. So now. People understand because, you know, you're an elder.

Yeah. So it's, I had a Biden moment. Yeah. Yeah, he could just blame it on his old brain or something. Yeah, there you go. There you go. What do you think separates the best creators today? Like what in your mind is the one thing that's like,

if you're going to be a creator in today's world, what has to be at your core if you're going to ever build an audience? I don't know anymore. This goes back to the last thing. It's changed so much. Yeah. The build an audience, especially, that part. I think to me if you...

Well, I think it's... Are we talking to... I just... I think in general, to me, it's authenticity. Yeah. I think being real and not... Not being a sellout, being real. I think you're...

To make... Because we all know people who put on a fake character and do better... Yeah. I think if you're talking about a career out of it instead of a stint, and characters last for a bit of time. Yeah.

Yeah. Making a career out of it is where the authenticity comes in. And it's like, okay, you don't, you're not going to get tired of being a character here because you're not. You're just being you every day holding your camera this time. Yeah. Like I think that definitely for the long run is important. Mm-hmm. How do you grow stuff today?

I could tell you back in the day. I can't anymore. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's the hardest part is deep cut shirts. That helps? Yes. Yeah. I wish, buddy. I wish. So you started before we started, and, you know, it felt hard.

But the thought like people ask us about starting today, you've got to be prepared to grind. Because it's going to take you a lot longer to establish an audience just from the sheer volume. I saw a statistic and I totally don't have those numbers. hand of how many YouTube accounts get started a month. I just saw this too. Yeah. And it's like 3% ever get above 100,000 or something? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Insane. And 100,000 is a really hard number to hit right now. Like, and since YouTube, like, YouTube literally just got rid of subscribers once upon a time, a year or two ago, they're like, yeah, it just proves they don't, the algorithm doesn't care about that anymore. Yeah.

But I'm watching, like, Polvarian Garage and Atomic Area, good friends of my Pullman garage gets as many views as we do. He's, I think he's a, maybe has cracked, is about to crack quarter million with subs. Atomic Air just put a video out that killed it and made a million views about his house and he put a second one out where him and I worked together on a Buick and it killed it and it's keeping pace

with my video that we put out while we worked together on the Cadillac. He got like 4,000 subscribers from that. Like when we did the tow truck stuff years ago, we would put on two or three hundred thousand subs a year from just doing consistent content making long videos at the time was what worked.

Around the point we had a million subs, YouTube changed something to where they don't do subscribers anymore. They don't push it. When was the last time? That's subscribe button's tiny. You can't see the numbers anymore. Like if you're below this video,

you scroll down, you just see a bell next to a circle. No words. Yeah, you have to seek it out if you want to subscribe to it. You have to really work for it. Yeah. And then I think there's even a drop down. I don't know. If you haven't subscribed, go down there and then you'll see if we're right or not.

Look at that. I love that. And then while you're there, hit that subscribe button. Yeah, I love, look at that. It's not natural born salesman right there. You're 10 years in the business. Your check's on the table over there, picking up on your way out. Yeah, I got it right here. Yeah. Oh, man, I agree with you. I always say, I think the TikTokification has happened to every platform. It's all about views. It's all about watch time now. if you keep people on the platform and it's all it's shifted from follower-based media to interest-based media everybody every platform it's about for you it's everything's for you taylor for you now the platform doesn't care about keeping anybody on your channel they just want to keep them on the

platform yeah so they're catering to your interest interest but they're not they don't have any they don't care at all about you as a yeah remember back in the day where you saw a video on something really interesting that you hadn't seen before like here's a damn breaking away. Yeah. You're like, that was cool. Let me see another suggested videos. And there was six more. Then you could go down a rabbit hole.

Those rabbit holes don't exist anymore. Like, whoa, I found an original, in the weird case, you found an original video that you like. Justed videos, everything that was on your homepage. Yep. Yeah. And garbage. Yeah.

And shorts. Yeah. Oh, God, I hate shorts. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a question. Have you thought about it? You don't clip anything. I will not touch.

Yep. I've watched it destroy long content. There's a lot of channels out there that have a ton of subscribers and say, that's weird. They don't get more than 7,000 views on their long form media. Mm-hmm. It's because all their million subscribers are on their shorts stuff. Yep. But it's all one number.

So if you look at their shorts, they get a ton of views. But YouTube gave a breakout. They gave the full out, bleh, gave the full out breakdown one day. and it was, I think, a million views on shorts, equated to like $412. Yep. Which is horrible. Yeah, it's not good.

That's, I, and it everyone, it's leached in, the TikTok stuff has leached into every app now. Yeah. And Facebook is pushing it. It's just, it's ruined it. Yeah. I don't, yeah. There's just,

they're just throwing so many colors and shit at your face any time when you look at your phone now. I was trying to find something to just play on, the side and just listen to on the way here. And I was scrolling through my suggested feed. And there was nothing I wanted to watch. And suddenly it was full of, I'm going to sound like everyone else in there.

It was full of all this AI garbage. Yeah. Which I've done really good at avoiding. But now I had all these like AI stories pop it up. I'm like, what did I watch the screw this up? Yeah. It seems like,

I don't know, for me even this week, it seems like it's all over the place. I feel like it just recently cranked it. Yeah, they cranked it up. Which they said they were going to be cutting down on it. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know what they're trying to get us to see, but we'll get into that a little later here. I want to get your two cents on that. But I want to go deeper, a little deeper, and then we'll jump from this one. You obviously make money from AdSense from YouTube. Brand deals. Yes.

Merch. Yep. Tool links. They're like links to Amazon stuff. Yeah. The Amazon ones that's like 3%. Am I missing any? That's it.

Okay. If you had to rank those, Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth Advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams.

Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. on best to worst. Probably literally that order. Okay. I could be, which I've learned, the cool thing is you're going to meet other people in the creator space

when you do this for a while. We went down to Texas months and talked to a bunch of guys down there. One of the gun days, gun range days that they put on. And we automotive, thank God, is the highest paying platform or genre on the platform. Yeah. Not by much, but there's a difference.

but if you look at some of them, like gaming channels, thankfully, when they have a billion views, we can know they made like not much off that because they are one of the lowest ones along with some like animation stuff and things like that.

But we were almost viewed as strange by those guys of some of those varieties because they're like, wait, you make money on AdSense? Like, that's our main income. Yeah. They're like, oh, we don't make anything. We were comparing like CPMs and RPMs or whatever.

we usually float I can't remember if it's CPM I think it's RPM which is YouTube has taken their cut already because one's like 52% of the other I think that was floating around in the 28 to $33 range for our channel most of the time and these guys wrote like a book

whoa that's crazy animation channel like they're putting a lot of effort into that and their brand deals they're farming the bottom I don't think farming is the bottom It's got to be right around Automotive, I would think.

I don't think it's great But I think it's better than It's better than that I don't know what it is off top of my head I'd have to go look at it But I don't know where podcasts are I heard expect those to be lower I probably

I heard financial Like financial educational Videos do pretty good to They're high paying Like maybe that's changed But it used to be That was really really Well, just, you know, we just change that disclaimer.

This is financial advice. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, no. No, listen to torque. Do not listen to torque. This is not at all.

I think I got an idea for a channel. Yeah, there you go. I'd love to see that. You spend that off. Give that a whirl. I'd love to see. That'll probably be the fastest growing thing we do. His new financial advice automotive channel about farming.

Yeah. Yeah. So are you glad? Are you glad that you took the jump being a YouTuber? And what would you not, what would you be doing if you didn't ever go down this YouTube journey, you think? I am glad that I did. And I've seen this more recently and been aware, been made aware of what I would be doing and why I would rather do this. I have friends my age older than me that have been in the industry I would have went into for years.

And they are so anxious to get out of the daily, not. nine to five, same shit, deal with people, business meetings, engineering stuff. They're so anxious to get out of that that when they see half their income of what they make with a regular job with health care, they're like, that's it, I'm out. And I'm like, are you guys crazy? They're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I would rather be wrenching under this car hanging out with my buddies and on my own self-employed schedule especially.

So that's, I've had a glimpse into the other reality that would have been. And I definitely made the right move here. Yeah, yeah. But financially, and I think there would have been some, you know, burnout of stuck to the same thing forever and ever each day. Yeah, generally, most of these jobs, I know this from experience from past life. For some reason, ownership in those places, they frown when the employees just like wonder off. You know, like they come out and they're like, where'd Kevin go? I don't know. He just left. They don't like that.

And once you've been self-employed, it gets to be a problem of, you know, just wait, I've got to be here all day. Well, that isn't going to work. Yeah. Yeah. That didn't work for you very well. It could be the reason that my former employer told me that I could keep coming in every day, but they were only going to pay me until Friday. So that was when I came home. Yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk about rural America a little bit. You know, you, I'm pretty, we're pretty passionate about this subject on Barn Talk because I feel like the playing field has kind of been leveled where I feel like for a long time, everybody told people that grew up in rural America that they had to leave rural America to get the opportunities to go to the city, to meet the people. But I feel like now you can still. and build and put your roots down in rural America and make a good living and actually make an impact into a community that it matters that you stay in. You know, like we we meet so many people that have that small town business or have that farm or that ranch or doing something in rural America. And the positive impact that actually has on a community is way greater than if they just moved, you know, to a city, you know.

And so I just respect so much that you are from Iowa, stayed here, went to Iowa State, and I've continued to put your roots down and build, you know. And I just didn't know what your perspective is on rural America, but do you like living in rural America? Would you want it any other way? I think Iowa is the worst place to live and no one should ever move to this state. The population should never get any bigger. In fact, they should get rid of Des Moines.

it's terrible don't come here I definitely don't have everything else better than wherever you are yeah wink wink wink yeah yeah I absolutely love it here I did when I was younger I wanted to move down to Tennessee and then we did like more trips through Tennessee I like got off the main route once and met some real locals and went no yeah we did a whole power tour trip that went like Tennessee Alabama South Carolina North Carolina

whatever the hell else and then wound up in Ohio. And I didn't see a full set of teeth till Ohio. Yep. Which is in the northern half again. Yep. Like, you know what? I think I'm going to stay where I grew up.

I like it here. And everybody talks about like politicians are running, you know, for governor and they talk about all these kids leaving the state. You stayed. I stayed. Why did you decide to stay? Is it just because you loved it?

Did you feel like there was opportunity here? Had family here. Yeah. grew older, became to, or around that time, decided, you know,

I, I didn't realize what, you don't know what you have until it's gone, right? Yeah. Suddenly you leave and everyone talks funny. And there's, the cold drives out that stupid,

okay? Yeah. Look up a map, look up a heat map of, uh, test scores in the United States for like, like,

ACT and stuff like that. There's something about the folks in this area. being nicer to you, obviously. It's more affordable up here. The people are smarter. You don't run into idiots all the time. Yeah.

It's just a... Say we're living the slow life. We're not. We only have four months until it's cold. We're living the fast life, but you do once in a while get to drive to town

and sit, you know, kind of turn the old radio station on, sit in the Chevy on the way to town, because you're only doing 55 anyway. not going to get him very quick. And then that, it's a fast-paced life with moments to slow down and take it all in. And I think that's what really adds up a lot to. Like, I like this area and stuff because you know, you're sunsets going down.

Porns all green. You're driving through sweating all day. But you go into town to get a burger and a steak with your buddies or hang out with grandpa or something. And it's like, yeah, this would be hard to leave. This is some pure stuff up here. Yeah. I, uh, and then no meth head pulls out in front of him.

Yeah. The skipping that part's pretty cool. Yeah. That's, that's why I'm here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell them about the, you're, you're, uh, what's with the copper price being so high.

Yeah, you better, uh, we just, we were just talking about that. Uh, copper prices hit an all time high. So it's time to, it's time to lock up your electrical panels because the meth heads are going to be coming. Right. That copper is going to get back to that value where you better, You go to your grain bin this fall and nothing happens, then you realize there's no wire there. It's all gone.

Had that happened to you before? Did you ever hear that? No, it didn't. That didn't happen. But when I was selling hog buildings, we built a finisher over by Alexis, Illinois for a guy. And it was on a blacktop road in the middle of nowhere. And we finished the building.

It was all done. I went over there. I fired the building up, went through everything with the guy, and that was on a Friday. He was getting pigs Tuesday of the next week. He went there on Monday. Someone had cut the padlock off the end of the building, and they had stolen every stainless steel dry feeder out of the building. There were no feeders in the building, and he was getting pigs Tuesday. We had to go, we had to send a couple of guys to literally take them off a site where we were building somewhere else.

and haul them to Alexis Illinois. Or, yeah, Alexis, I think it was Alexis Illinois is where it was, because some not-so-savory types had taken them to scrap them because stainless was high at the time. And then we did, somewhere around here,

there was a guy that had a grain, a drying bin and a transfer bin that were off on a gravel road where there was nothing. And they literally came and they stripped the wire out of that thing. Jesus. And copper was a lot cheaper than what it is now.

So. Your hard work's worth something. Yeah. Yeah. That probably wasn't easy. You put a little bit of drug addiction and a good work ethic together. And man, you can accomplish a lot. And then when you consider, you don't have to sleep, you know, sleep.

Imagine the productivity. Yeah. I mean, you can double your productivity for a while. Tell you run out. Yeah. Well, yeah. It's all in moderation. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, around here we leave the keys in the truck because in case someone is in a desperate situation enough to need it, they'll at least be nice enough to fill it up for you before they put it back. Yeah, there you go. That's the kind of threat we live in in Iowa. Yeah. What, I mean, I was going to go one more. Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, what do you think are the biggest problems facing small towns or rural America? I mean, you've been here your whole life. You've seen, I mean, we've seen small towns kind of die or fade out. What do you think is the thing that's going to solve that? And what are some of the issues you think small town America face?

I think that goes back to what I'm watching happen in Belmont. The population's been declining since the 90s because people are just, there's less people, they're dying. The boomers are falling out. The largest generation is dwindling and we're just going to have to readjust to there's less

people. Along with that, a lot of those properties and stuff, we're getting old and getting, you know, turned into bean fields, cornfields, leveled, sold off, whatever. So there's not like we're going to have an excess of housing seemingly. There's like we have plenty of that that goes for a lot of money, but I don't know. It's industry in small towns is going to take a hit as it already has because there's

just less workforce. It also seems like there's less people with a work ethic because there's plenty of young people that just don't want to work. They all have their four-year liberal arts degree and stuff like that that maybe mom and dad made them go get. It's a cycle there. Yeah. Do you think remote work?

Because I've seen a trend of that where it seems like a lot of people are, moving to towns that are cheaper to live, and then they just commute to work or work from home. And that, I don't know. I could help. Maybe that helps. That'll definitely depend on internet speeds and stuff. True.

I know growing up, it was like if I'd still, today, we don't have shit for signal in Belmont for cell phones. I think they even pulled U.S. cell or out of the area maybe, but it's always been a struggle there, and mom and dad don't have great internet. Story County, obviously higher economy there. We actually, they're putting into fiber right now. So I might have fiber at home soon,

which means I can finally move the shop home, which will be nice. Yeah. That is very important for YouTubers to be able to upload a 35 gigabyte video from 4K that's an hour and a half long. In less than two days. Yeah. And then you realize something's wrong. And like you got a deadline coming up.

You're like, I got to redo it. Yeah. Yeah. I know what that's like. When we lived in Ames, we had, we bought the house, moved in, called the company that it was on internet

a week ago. I'd like to get this back on the internet. And they go, oh, all the ports are full. What? Yeah, there's no extra ports on the box there. I'm sorry, let me step outside. Yeah, no one built a house this week. What do you mean? Yeah. There's five houses here. That's on this old gravel road.

What are you talking about? Like, nope, can't get internet. So we had to get Hughesnet. These satellite stuff before satellite or for Starlight? Yep. Garbage. Oh, yeah. You're better off walking to town and getting a newspaper if you want to know something. In fact, when we went to upload videos,

I would export them, put them on an SD card, put it in my laptop, but the laptop in the truck, drive to South Ames, 12 minutes, 15 minutes, all the way across Ames, honked twice at this apartment. My buddy would walk out of the second floor, throw down a 30-foot Ethernet cable.

I would plug the laptop into the truck upload and in four minutes it'd be uploaded. I'd talk to him for a minute. Drive back. Tell you folks who says hi, you know, throw it all back to the truck and drive home. And it was three days faster. Then you do it.

If I tried to upload it. Oh, my. Holy Mother Mary. Yeah. That's crazy. That's so crazy. That was horrible. Oh, I bet.

Thanks HughesNet. Yeah. Don't ever get that. Shout out to you, Elon. I think they're about done. I think they're about that. Starlink was a good thing. That was a good thing for rural American.

Yeah, it really was. Well, let me ask, this is something I was thinking about. You know, your bread and butter is taking vehicles that are, you know, 20 years old, 30 years old, whatever, and getting them running. But the skills, in 20 years, is anybody going to be able to do that? and a vehicle made today, parked for 20 years, would it even be possible to get it running

because of the vast amount of wiring and... It's going to be harder. I think there will still be barn finds of old cars around. I mean, we're still finding them all over the place. They're still out there. And there's, not only that, there's people are parking, people are driving 70 suits cars right now that are getting parked.

I have a 70 cut list that's been off the road for eight years myself. Like, they're still around. and I think those will still be around but newer cars are going to be different. I don't know if I want to say they'll be more difficult because the few we've done

or mess with it's like yeah we put a fuel pump in and it runs. Yep. But when they don't, boy do they not. Yeah, I can only imagine. And then it's a huge pain in the butt like all the 90s Fords I grew up with. Love those trucks. I've been through four now

that I've just tried to get one that runs and the electronics on them are junk each time. Corrosion is your culpr. Composting going out and the corrosion from caps and stuff like that. And sensors going bad. They just don't love sitting. Yeah. It's sad because I thought about that same thing.

After you, we talked before you came. He brought that up. You were talking at that breakfast this morning. And somebody asked you that, like, is what you're doing going to still be around in 20 years? I think so. Okay. I mean.

Because all these new cars, it's all the electrical. electrical shit. I'm sure this is the exact same conversation someone had in 1991. Yeah. And they were talking about someone who just pulled a 30 packard out of a building. Yeah. And here we are fixing 1991 cars. Like,

it's still possible. Today's stuff especially is all solid state electronics. So it will hold up to time better. Like you look at a 91 Chevy TBI when they run. If they run, they run. But if they don't, they're like,

good luck. Put a carburetor on it. That's easier. Yeah. You look at a 2001 Chevy, they all still run. Oh, sure.

And that's that's that, computers changed enough that that did get more reliable. You don't see ECMs and stuff fail quite as much. They still have their problems and they'll still be difficult, I'm sure,

but it's just going to be a different thing then. Yeah. Hopefully I'm not doing it. Yeah, yeah, there you go. That's my kid's problem. Good luck, Morgan.

Wow, you sound like torque. That's his go-to thing is. I'm going to fall asleep in this chair any minute. He always says, yep, that'll last me as long as I need it to. I got that from my dad because that's what he would say is he got older in life. You know, when I was a kid and we made fence, you know, you set a post. To be there for 40 years. Wood post, steel post.

Yep. When he was 85, it was PVC. Corner post, steel, steel, steel, steal, and you might get it along. and then he would be like, it'll last me as long as I need it. Here you go, kid. Yeah. So I'm just returning the favor.

I don't have to help. Yeah. We're tearing down our old hog buildings that were built in the 70s. Well, we're tearing the concrete out, which is a major pain to get rid of. But we're piling all of it down by the creek because we're not really sure where we would bury it.

Like we don't have a good place to bury it. And Sawyer asked me, he's like, well, what are we going to do with that long term? And I just looked at him. I said, term, it's not going to be a we problem. It's going to be a you problem. I don't know, kid, you tell me.

Whatever you want to do with it is fine with me. Well, I would like to just get it out of here, but that also costs a shit load to haul it somewhere. It's only going to cost more later. Except for diesel right now, maybe wait a little bit. Oh, man. Any kidding. So do you, what's your favorite vintage of vehicles?

Probably, God, I mean, my favorite vehicle ever sitting outside right now. You can't beat a four-door 1976, Old Ville, 98, especially a Regency. My family had three of those. Did they really? We had it. I barely remember the first was a blue Delta 88, and then we had a cream-colored 88, and then we had a white 98. Ooh, maybe if you stick around the end of video, you'll see a little B-roll of torque driving the 98.

There you go. There you go. That'll be, we did it. We got to take that for drive. 455 rocket in the 88. I don't know what was in the 98. Same motor. Was it?

Yeah. This is their only option in that one. Okay. Yeah, that's hard to beat. I love the early 70s stuff. I love the late 60s stuff. If I had to say they only made two cars. 68 to 72 GMA body

5-100 75 to 79 F-100 like if we only were allowed to have two I think those two would have done everything we ever needed to do and everyone would have been pretty happy how far is the do you keep up at all on the classic car market as far as the

remodel the redone stuff none of it makes any sense anymore yeah like there's the normal people prices of and then you get some rich assholes. It'll be like, oh, I want $48,000 for this rusty Chevy and some other richer asshole will give him that. Yeah. And then what's real anymore?

And then he'll try to sell that as a patinaed. Yeah. It's now patinaid. It's not rusty. It's patina. We're going to clear-coat it. Well, it's interesting to me that the, like, all the stuff, 50s and prior, those values are really collapsing because.

We recently talked about that. Atomic Air, a good friend of ours, is into that 50s stuff, and that whole demographic, you should see that guy's demographic, literal demographics on YouTube, it's crazy. They're all like, like, it tops out at 65. Yep.

And it's like all right there. Like 65 plus is what watches his videos, so that's the people that are interested in the 50s cars. Yep. That whole fan base is going away. Yes. So those cars are becoming worth nothing,

even in, like, good shape. except for the people that are way too into them, at which point, like, you can buy one for $1,500, do a bunch of work to it, and it's worth $1,500 bucks. Yeah. And you've seen that, you know, in the last, in the last 10 years, definitely in the last five years,

you've seen that you're $620 that you did? I mean, there was a time in there where people would redo those, and you get pretty good money out of them. And the sale, the sale prices on the two, cylinder stuff has just plummeted. Really? And it's because that generation is going away. Interesting. I already know that. And at the same time, I graduated in 1989,

and I can tell you that a 1989 Chevrolet IROC is a massive piece of steaming garbage. However, there is a whole generation now that they really want one. Those piece of shit cards. And they're driving the price of them up like crazy. And I just look at it like, well, did not. Still joke. It's still junk. You can walk up to the hood on any of those and go, bong, b'bblon, and it will invert. Oh, yeah.

If you ever see a nice, shiny one at a car show, don't do that, but just know that you could. Yeah. You can press the fenders down and they'll move a half inch. Well, didn't we were watching, we were watching Smokey and the Bandit the other night, and didn't you look up what a, what year was that? That's a 77 Trans-A.

And those are still selling. Oh, they're outrageous. Oh, those, yeah. But that's kind of a different, yeah, that's a different level. That's an icon. Yeah. One of those cars that will, like the stuff we see today that is popular cars, I think,

I don't think we're going to see a 69 Camaro get cheap. Yeah, it would be a long time. 51 Chevy. Like, yeah. And those were blown out of proportion when I was a kid. Everyone had a 69 Camaro or one in a 70 Chappelle. Yeah. S.

There's more of those. There's more Chavell Ss is from 1970 now than when they actually made them. There was a guy when, So I had a friend that had a 67 Chevelle Malibu. And we went to a guy's place in, I want to say it was Malcolm Iowa. And all he specialized in was Chevelle's. And at that time, this would have been like an 80, 85, 86, somewhere in there, probably 86. But his, basically his full-time gig is he was buying up Chevelles.

and it didn't matter what they were when he was done with them, they were all S-SS. He just ran, he had a shop, and you ran them through, you dropped a 396 or a 454 in it, and you put the stripes on it, the SS, and I mean, he just,

he had like 20 of them for sale. And I think he was flipping and making good money because people wanted them. That was probably before the time that you could hop on the internet and verify what they were. Oh, yeah. Or no, like, we know so much more about cars

now and in tractors and anything. There's so much more since it's a collaborative and form of effort instead of you know old Uncle Gary. Yeah. He said the guy is good for it. Yeah. Take his word for it. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's good.

Yeah. Just thinking about smoking the band after watching that the other night it's like gosh, America was such a good. That was such a good time in America. Like just the nostalgia of that movie, the cars, people, the music. All of it.

It just, oh, I wish that American movie come out. 70 something, right? Well, if that was a, it's probably 78,

79, maybe, I don't know. It was based in current times when it came out. Yeah. Yeah. It holds up well,

too. I mean, it's still funny as shit. Yeah. The, that brings up an interesting point that I lived up with that I saw,

and I was going to ask you about this, and this is a good segue. Good long segue. Having grown up in North Iowa with the evidence, of the 80s being everywhere, like abandoned farms all over the place.

On every square mile, there's one or two that are still there, falling corn cribs, collapsing the house was long gone. Like it's, you can't even go to work without, I would drive past two on the way to work, and I live two miles from work. So, with the economy and everything, still being quite obvious that the 80s had come through and just demolished everything for the economy for grain farming, especially. I remember seeing Dad listen to a lot of hair bands and stuff like that

and you see people reminisce and reference reminiscing about the 80s all the time and every time that would be like the 80s sucked he's like we had no jobs and no money and it sucked my buddy Ezra who does all the farm and stuff with us grew up in Minnesota and we were drinking beer one night out by a camper I think I think it was the same night I was holding a possum on camera

different story we were and he was like man I wish I could go back to the 80s and I was like the 80s sucked though says dad he's like what do you mean my dad talks about the 80s being like the best he had a brand new three wheeler they were going to concerts like he had a

cool car he said it was awesome like something's wrong here what do we not know that's keeping us from meeting and we we spent like three hours on the phone called up called my uncle and my mom and like other people and his mom and his dad and asked everyone questions.

And it came to be that essentially there hadn't something had happened in the family. There was a lawsuit from someone had passed and their family had that as well as they had some dairy farm. Yep. Which government cheese exists because the government subsidized all of the dairy industries. Wisconsin and Minnesota where they had more dairy didn't get hit as hard as the grain lands down in Iowa. got smoked by the farm crisis. And that's the day we realized that. And since then,

Ezra's become very fascinated with the farm crisis. And you'll see him make references to that in our, this is about, it was ever since that camper video we did together, ever since then you noticed the farming stuff, actually it'd be ever since Ezra's joined on, the farming tone for him has been like,

we're going to lose the farm. Yeah, yeah. Because he's found a really good document. His rant on the 620 about losing the farm was hilarious. And that was like two years ago before that. He was like, I think the 80s would have been great to live in. And he found a really good documentary. I can't remember what it's called, but it's about the farm crisis.

It's an hour long. He's like, I watched that like four times. He's just enamored with that and driving around looking old farms and, you know, walk out on the driveway of what's left and kind of look around and imagine what it would have been like and what kind of hardships they would been going through at the time and placed John Cougar Melanchamps, you know, right on a scarecrow. I was going to ask in this area of Iowa

because you lived on this farm through all of that. What was that like here? So I think the big difference, much like today, is this county and this part of the state, grain farming was never the ticket item. It was for a few guys. Yeah. But for most people, when you drove down,

this road coming here, every farm had 100 sows or 200 sows or they had cattle or they had dairy or they had whatever. And if you went south of us, there was a huge number of guys that raised turkeys. And so there was a lot of livestock. And so for us, I was an 80s kid and I was the youngest of three. And we only farmed 160 acres. But we had 200 sows, fair to finish. and all of my, me and my two brothers, you know, we all had cars to drive and,

like, we were, I am sure, my friends and I have talked about this. We take a men's trip every year and we were sitting in a house down by a Table Rock Lake, and we were talking about it. And like one of my friends, his family, his dad and his uncle farmed together, and they mostly grain farm.

They raised some hogs, but they mostly grain farmed. And his dad, well, his uncle basically lost, I want to say, a third of the land that they were farming.

So was at the bank. Because he was playing the board of trade. Yep. And he got margin called. And so my friend's dad, he basically had to pay for all the equipment twice. But my buddy,

we were over there all the time. Yeah. And his mom went back to work. She had been a nurse. And she came home when they started having those kids. Well, she had gone back to work. Well, we thought it was great because nobody was ever home at their house. And they had a deep freeze full of tombstone pizzas. And so young, innocent kid. Harder to the economic. And we thought, we thought the 80s was great. We had an Atari. We had a VCR, you know. You had a three wheel. Yeah. We all had three wheelers and dirt bikes. Damn dairy farmers.

but it was the livestock that paid for all of that. But you've, it's probably especially thinking back and rethinking what you saw back then and with grain farmer. It was prevalent. Oh yeah, and it was, so it was a lot harder.

So I think if you were a young kid, I think if you were a kid to a teenager in the 80s, you just didn't know. You thought it was great. Yeah. Because that was when video games was coming. and it was that time where you kind of had the, Sor and I've talked about this.

So you had technology, but you still had all of the relationships. Like everybody still hung out. There wasn't any of this screen time. Yep. So you had the technology to stay connected and to know what was going on. Everyone had phone at home.

You still actually did do stuff together. And I think the belief in country was a lot stronger because as technology, came out. Even TV dinner meals came out. Everything, you know, advertising started. And you guys are like, man, we're figuring out how to come out with freaking TV dinners to make this thing more convenient. This is awesome. We were talking about, you know, how shitty the food is. Yeah. And like my mom and all of my friends' moms, we thought TV dinners were great. And the parents did because they had been cooking three meals a day

for 20 years of their 25 years of their adult life. So all these housewives... I only had to do two. Well, yeah, they thought all this ready-made food was great. Nobody was worried about what was in it. Because it was just a convenient. And we did. We trusted the government.

We trusted it's like, well, this is all inspected. Yeah. You know, you just... There was this innocence of the 80s, but I think if you were a parent, I think it was very stressful. You knew politically what was... going on and tariffs and stuff like that

and watching, you've seen the bank account too. I bet if you were definitely 10, 10, 15 years older would have been a different story. Well, yeah, you were thriving in the hog business in the 80s, but then the 90s came and in the 90s for hog guys was basically the 80s for the graham farms.

I mean, that's... Is that? 95. You know what I do see a lot of abandoned, like the farms are still there, but on farms there's a lot of abandoned buildings that look like they've been, the hog buildings.

that looked like they went down about 30 years ago. Yep. If 95 didn't get you, 98 did. Yeah, because what were hogs in 98? What was cost of production? Seven bucks. Seven bucks per 100 weight. 100 weight.

So a 250 pound hog would be you 20 bucks. Yeah. And what was your cost of production on like a hog? Oh, probably $32, $33. What is it today? Today your cost of production is probably, I would have to think that it was somewhere around. on 50 $50 100 to 8 probably.

What's a hog go for now? So I think 81, we didn't do the market update, but about $88 a hundred. So, you know, they're making some money right now. It depends on the corn price. Corn's your single biggest cost involved in that. I was corn right now. I haven't looked.

Five bucks. depending on what your basis is. So it's moved up quite a bit. Yeah. I think it was like seven the first year we did it. It was three years ago. Yeah. It was great.

Yeah. Yeah, you can make good money. And then we hit beans well too. Yeah. Okay. And then last year, wait, am I doing my math wrong? Oh, no, we're still waiting to see if, I thought we got screwed.

Maybe beans dropped last year. I don't remember. So being the youngest, you can appreciate this because you're a car guy, being the youngest of three boys, my oldest brother, when he turned 16, my parents bought him a Pinto. Ily yes. My middle brother, when he turned 16, he got an AMC Matador. Hell yes.

I saw that. I saw that. And I was like, I don't want anything to do with this. I'll buy my own car. I had my own money. So I bought a 73 Camaro for $800. And I overpaid on it because as soon as we started stripping it, we found out that all, it was everything in it was Bondo,

except for like the door, the trunk lid, and one fender. But by the time that all happened, we were too far into it. And my parents thought that I was being frugal. And then by the time it had a 12-bolt rear and a 383 and all the things done to it, it was, I was way upside down. I could have had four pentos. Yeah, yeah. But I tried to tell my mom, you know, when the, when the Pinto deal came that they caught on fire, you know,

I told her, I'm like, see, Camaro's way better, way safer. Could it kill them. Yeah. Let's get this V8, Tudor. Yeah. Made out of beer cans. Okay. Let's shift to, I have one last little segment here section.

I want to hit on. And it's just kind of like your perspective of what's where the world's going, you know. We're told robots and automation and all this stuff's coming down the pipe. And, you know, you're somebody that works with their hands. How much of that do you think is real? Like, do you buy all this AI's coming for our jobs and it's going to be the death of humanity? Or do you think that's overstated?

I think AI will hurt like graphic designers. Yeah. And that's maybe about the biggest impact. As far as a direct job replacement, it will, I think, if I had a guess, it's going to make people's jobs simpler, which may eliminate positions, or eliminate positions, but at the same time,

we have a ton of businesses that can't hire because no one's willing to work. Maybe that'll be the rest of our workforce that was baby boomers will just be a computer. Yeah. For every five trade job, people that retire, two people are taking place. And unfortunately, for physical trade jobs,

that's not something AI can ever step in and build. Do you think robots will ever be able to do training? I'm not in my lifetime I'm sure yeah yeah I remember how old are you 26 okay we're close I'm 30 now I distinctly remember the times before cell phones yeah like the very first big Motorola flip phones you had to pull the antenna out still I remember that since then we have made big leaps and bounds, but if you compare like 2010 to now, doesn't feel like we've done it, even 2000 to now, it doesn't feel like

we've done a ton versus like 2000 to 1970. That was, I feel like we definitely went a lot further there, so I think we're slowing in advancement and stuff. So I don't think we're going to see robots doing stuff in our lifetimes, maybe someday, I don't know. There's just a lot of tech that just has never gotten there. And all that stuff's going to need fixed by

someone. It is going to make more jobs. Like, no one worked at a data center 10 years ago. Right. Yeah. What do you think about data centers? Do you think it's a bad thing,

good thing, are you indifferent about it? I mean, it's a huge hot topic in rural America. Yeah. I don't like that they're putting them. I don't like that even Huxley and Ames and Ankeny are getting so close.

I saw an old man. I used to remember when Ankeny stopped at the windmill when you go north out of town. And now it's just pushing north where it's all marked development there. I don't like seeing, cornfields get turned into houses and development. We don't need more people.

Iowa sucks. Don't move here. Go away. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't, there's got to be a compromise somewhere. Yeah. I don't think we need to lean as heavy

into all the AI stuff as we are. Yeah. I do use it a little. Like, it's nice for thumbnails and stuff sometime for, I'm not making AI thumbnails. But it's like, there's a barn in the back, or there's a dude standing in this picture. and it's going to take me like two hours to get rid of him.

Done, gone. Oh, boy, is it nice for that? Yeah. Or there's been some stuff around for when we have screwed up audio. Like, it'll sound a little different, but I can salvage junk audio in videos and stuff like that where it's very, like, it's a, I use it as a necessary tool. Yeah.

Versus people are just like, hey, Google, how much it is that it does when an am? And it's like, you could just fucking use your brain a little. bit and learn how to search things. Yeah. Like I think no one taught me how to work on cars. I just got good at being able to research stuff and look it up and learn it myself. Yeah. And that's, I think that's something we're probably going to lose and that's going to hurt.

Yeah. Yeah. You're getting too dependent on being lazy on asking questions. Yeah. Well, and do you feel like that generation today has such an aversion to failure? Like that, because I've learned way more from everyone. everything I've screwed up than what went right. I learned a lot from denial and error.

Yeah, exactly. And it's like, I don't feel like we, I feel like we don't allow kids to fail. I do feel like, I mean, we've watched playgrounds and everything get safer and softer and squishier and shorter. Like, yeah, you need to go get hurt. Yep.

You need, being a parent too, it's like, yeah, I don't want our kid to get hurt. But then once in a while I'm like, no, I'm going to let her fall. Yeah. And I bet you won't do this 12 times. times. Yeah. You do this six or seven more times and we get real upset. Yeah. Well, I feel like there's probably also just a lot of pressure. Like, it's not even just like parent pressure. It's societal pressure. Yeah. Like everybody probably feels like it's why nobody wants to dance at weddings anymore.

Everybody's got a smartphone. They don't want to look like a dumbass on camera. They don't want to look like an idiot. Kids are the same way. We're also way older now. Yeah. Yeah. True. It's easier just to sit. Yeah. Back of the day, everyone was getting married. married 18, 20 years old. True. Now everyone else is there. I'm also 27. I'm not going over there.

Yeah. It hurts bad enough from walking on these stupid shoes all day. Yeah. That's a good point, actually. But I just feel like kids don't even want to fail because they don't want to step out. They feel like they don't want to be judged.

They don't want to stand out. And everybody's watching all that. But do you, I was curious what you think about with amongst your friends and the people you talk to, and like you were talking about earlier, it seems like your page, your for you page, or if you get on YouTube, it's full of this AI push.

Do you feel like amongst the people you hang out with, how many of them seem like they're wanting to go back to the traditional way of life rather than just keep adopting all the shit that shoved down our throat? Because I feel like when I talk to my friends, it seems like there's almost a shift happening where it's like, we're going to go back this way. We don't want to adopt all this new stuff that you're trying to shove down our friends.

You're saying non- YouTube, just like living life type stuff. Yeah, just like living life, regular people, what do you think their pulses on? I have recently, this is, I have a funny way to tie into this perfectly to really analogize. Is that a word? I don't know. It is now. It is now. You coined it.

You're ready to be analogized. Kevinism. Kevinism. I've recently gotten into, I've wanted to get better at working on complex electrical circuits. and like digital signal and stuff like that. And I figured what better way to start collecting all these CRT TVs people have been thrown out? The old tube TVs. And I've collected, boy, you find one, you find 20.

So I've got all these I've been fixing. And of course, when you find one of them, what do you do with the old VCR over there? Oh, nothing. You want this box of tapes too. Next thing you know, you get a VCR and some old Toy Story 2 on VHS or DVD player or something like that. you throw them on a marketplace, people eat it up for a hundred bucks or so. We,

you know what I'm sick of? Netflix. I've been trying to watch Georgia the jungle for two years and can't find it in anywhere, but I found it at mom's basement. I set up an old CRT TV and threw it in the VHS player and it was funnier than I even remembered.

Yeah. And that has been, so I've then gone, you know, overcorrected on that for sure. And now there's like 25 TVs and like 15 VCRs and like 300 VHSs so that I can get a couple work in so that as our daughter grows up, she will stick the pencil in, learn to turn it,

learn your left and right, learn loosen and tighten by rewining the old VHS tapes. And same shit I did. Yeah. So my other son has a employee that that's like he and his wife, that's like a hobby, that's like a weekend hobby. They go garage sale and they go to thrift stores looking for VHS tapes. I got a buddy from Florida who is, like when we called you yesterday, we had just spent six hours in this guy's abandoned, or like old antique store, if you can call it that. Yep.

But he's got just TVs and stuff scrolled the way everywhere. We just walked out and filled a van with old tech and stuff. And you guys text me, I was like, oh shit, yeah. No, I haven't made it to the Airbnb. I'll drive down in the morning. Yeah, it's awesome. It's taken off. It's becoming, the retro stuff is coming back around.

I think people are kind of wanting for that 90s, early, I'd say early 2000s is definitely when I grew up and what I remember. But it was a simpler time, like simple cell phones and stuff. Don't get me wrong, the connectivity of the phones and stuff we have now is great. None of us would be here because of it or without it. But there is something special about sitting down in a room with no commercials and no, damn, Nothing making noise with throwing ads at you.

And you'd just shove in a tape and watch it start to finish. And that was the movie and you're done. Yeah. Yeah. This has just been a podcast of we're old and let us tell you about it. Yeah. It's all right. We like old things.

Watch me get old in this episode. Yeah. Well, no, I think I just see. I think there's just seems to be this trend of people wanting to almost have that garden, have a freezer full of beef. Do VHS, VHS tapes, you know. Oh, yeah. Do get an old car, you know, like they want that.

It seems like the younger generation almost wants that again, you know. It could be the generation of you and the age of you and your friends, too, are coming around the point that like life is starting to settle down. Yeah. I look back and I was hauling ass at your age. And then in the last years, it's like, you know what I want? I want to stay home this weekend. Yeah.

I don't want to go to a Wisconsin for a, no, I'm going to stay home and have a beer and watch some movies. and God damn it, someone needs to mow. My actual daily is a lawnmower. Yeah, I understand that. I love that. I understand that. This year. Yeah.

So when you look ahead, what, what's next? I have no idea. Okay. Never have. Yep. That's the... Yeah, I was going to ask you, like, what do you do it all for? Like, in your mind, do you want to leave a legacy?

Do you want to... It's... I don't want to say it's always been a money thing for me, but I'll chase you in a comfortable life, which once we achieve that, I was like, there I have some plan now in cars and friends and all this, and that's when I really throttled back.

I was like, I need to spend time with the wife and at home, and we'll have a kid here in the next year or two, which is now. And that was like, I'm safe. The first time I life, I feel safe.

Yeah. Where the economy could dip a little bit and I could make it through it fine and keep doing what I'm doing. and we're not gonna have to, you know, eat hot dogs for a week. Yeah. Because they were on sale last month throughout the winter. Like I safe where I am, so I quit pushing to grow as hard.

Yeah. Which happened to co-aligned with, good luck crawling anyway. Yeah. But you can. You definitely can grow YouTube channel these days. It takes just I don't want to say more work. I don't, I don't know. Because I've watched Pull Byrne Grow up. I've watched Pull Barn Garage do it with the same amount of work I had put in at that time,

and he has reached the, like, it's, they were similar lines, the parallel lines of growth there. Yeah. The subs aren't there, but his views are, and that's what really counts. Yeah. Oh, to tie into that earlier, if I have any advice for someone that wants to start a YouTube channel, use your phone. Do not ever buy a GoPro, period, but don't go drop $1,000 on a camera

when you can do everything with your phone if it's like our style content. Podcast is a little different. Yeah. I... Well, you shoot everything on the farm channel with Gopros, which we understand why you're saying that because...

God, they're horrible. When it comes to the advancement of like a camera, you would think they have the total market, but it's like, guys... GoPro's marketing has to be the most amazing thing. They sell you the world's best pile of shit. Yeah.

And they've sold 13 versions of that pile of shit. 13 failures. and we'll still buy one. I can't say that any of them are any better than the original. They put so much crap into them. You don't need that they just shut down half the time. Delete the audio or the other half or total fail. Yeah.

And I think every single person that you talk to that creates content that uses them, we'll say the same thing. Yeah, we got to use them because, like, in the hog barn, we tried using a good camera. We tried our phone, but like, they make, the nice thing about GoPro's is they make so many different mounts. So, like, there's so much metal in there. There's so much, you know, we put it on the head, we put it on a gate.

And they are, you can drop them. And they're wider than the slats. They don't phone the slats. They don't phone the slats. Okay, there. I can market better than they can. Like, I'm there. I have something that I can.

I'll do you one better. I'm pretty sure the DGIs will fit all the GoPro mounts and they're a way better camera if you have to use an action camera. Yeah. Okay. Next time you buy them, look at that brand. Okay. I recently finally had to buy one for a video and I was,

it worked. I turned it on. It made a video. Everything was there. It looked good. And it was like, this is the on button. Yeah.

Also, also you could, I guess, select if you want less quality. But that's it. No stupid, no stupid crap. Yeah.

So much easier to run. Yeah. Do you, do you, like, what do you think, you might have even touched on it, but deeper question,

like, what do you think makes life? Like, what, what do you do, do it for is it family what makes life worth living to you is it having a purpose is it fixing things is it family is it hanging out with loved ones like is it that security what what do you what do you a little bit of all that for sure i've definitely always loved fixing things yeah like something that's

old shouldn't be able to should be done for to be dead i've always also loved like you know building some car that's a piece of shit and doing it cheaper than someone and outperforming them That's a whole different thing, though. Yeah. But I do really appreciate it. Like all these old TVs, no one really cares about. And they're worth 50 bucks if I fix them. But I can say I fixed it.

I can say I've created a product. I've prepared something, extended its life, made things better. I think that's what's always driven me to fix things. Yep. You just described the reason that your mother stays with me. Yeah. She's like, I think I can take this piece of shit and limp it along a little longer and add some value to it.

If you didn't know, that's Tork's sarcasm. If you're a first time listener or watcher, my parents have been married for 20 plus years. 30 plus years. They're doing well for themselves, but TORC's always got to throw that, turn that knife a little bit in there. Well, that's a compliment.

It is. It is. She's a great woman. She is. You are a project. I admit that. You are. Last question for you. And then we'll wrap this thing up.

for somebody that let's say there's a young kid out there that grew up in a similar situation as you and they want to replicate some of the success you've had, whether that's in a different field or they're just trying to go after something and make something themselves and get themselves

to where you're at where it's, they want that security, they want that safety. What advice can you give a guy like that? I'm about to sound exactly like my dad. Don't put your hand your pockets. And if someone is working on something and struggling with something, offer to help them. Learn to work hard and you will not fail in life. You don't have to get a four-year degree, especially these days. The blue collar guys are killing it out there. Trade industries are doing

great. Learn to work hard and the rest will come. Yeah, I love that. Good answer. I love that. Okay. Last thing we like to end our guest episodes with is we have a section on here called Tip of the Hat. So who's somebody in your life? that you want to give your flowers to and say, hey, I'm going to tip my hat to you and you're doing a good job or you've been a huge part of my success and I just want to give you my flowers and say thanks. It's definitely got to be the wife for me,

as well as the guys that work for me. It's my direct crew right there around. They do, I wouldn't, I literally wouldn't be able to be here right now if she wasn't willing to watch the kid today, run her to daycare and do laundry and cook while also at the same time, Angus, Jesse is actively editing. my brother and Angus is painting the bottom of a car so that I could get away for four hours and come do this.

So those guys definitely keep things moving and as a unit we've all succeeded this far. It's no one-man show. It never has been back when it was. But not anymore. Yeah. I don't ever let any YouTuber tell you that they work alone. They don't.

They're full of shit. They are full of shit. It takes a team. And man, you are a hell of a good guy. I love what you're doing. I love that you are staying in rural America. showing people you can build here. You're a stand-up guy.

I appreciate you making the trip. Where can people reach out to you or find you to support you on your journey? Not my house. Yeah. Don't go there. Yeah, we are on YouTube, junkyard digs, as well as Instagram and Facebook,

mostly the YouTube one. I don't do too much with the rest. That's about it. Awesome. I'm sure to that. Cool. Kevin, appreciate you, man. Thanks for making the trip.

Of course, man. You're awesome. Guys, if you got any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know leave a review on spotify or apple we love you guys we appreciate you and we'll see you back here next week for another episode