Barn Talk - Agricultural Dynasty: The Rise of McBee Farms a 40,000 Acre Empire w/Steven McBee

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In this episode,  we're thrilled to have Steven McBee in the barn, sharing tales from football fields to farm fields. Steven’s not your ordinary farmer; he’s hunting big game in business and on land, saving cash and cutting through the conventional farming noise. He’s all about building empires, not just barns, and he’s ready to dish on how he’s planting the seeds for success in agribusiness and beyond. We'll get his take on wealth, work-life balance, and the tight-knit tapestry of the McBee legacy. Expect to hear raw insights on transitioning from sports to steering a farming dynasty, all without losing sight of what truly counts. Huddle up, folks—it's going to be a barn burner of a show with Steven McBee, where the wisdom is as rich as the soil. Let’s dig in For more information on how corn checkoff dollars are invested to help build a better future for farmers in Iowa, visit iowacorn.org Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    06:05 "Joe Millionaire" dating show, farmer persona maintained. 14:23 Farm invests in Iowa corn checkoff program. 16:52 Encouraging family to join reality show cast. 23:04 Raising awareness for the struggling rural farming industry. 30:02 Create own value, escape commodity market cycle. 35:00 Big producers profit more from medical supplements. 38:07 Farm operates as a self-sufficient, regenerative ecosystem. 45:40 Replace unfit workers promptly to prevent problems. 50:01 Competitive salary linked to equity for performance. 54:05 Prioritize problems, focus on three, exercise daily. 01:01:24 Coke zero does not cause cancer. Prioritize protein. 01:04:10 Rob thrives on carnivore diet, minimal exercise. 01:11:46 Realizing the importance of balance and contentment. 01:19:00 Creating a positive culture of leadership and growth. 01:22:26 Goal: Get acquired, merge, and expand brand. 01:25:13 Quarterback injured, missed summer fun with friends. 01:32:03 Access to free information empowers expert development. 01:37:43 Over-reliance on free money has repercussions. 01:41:53 New show premieres March 11 on Peacock. ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should n... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

She knows. How? Did you blouse? No. The Devil Wears Prada 2. He's the movie event 20 years in the making. Honestly, can't with the secrets anymore, so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already?

This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters. In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now? That's a nice story. The Devil Wears Prada 2 in Theaters Friday. 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 special guest episode. We've been kind of on a roll. We've got a lot of guests coming down to Southeast Iowa, and it's been nice. So we got some banked episodes, and they've probably already came out. But, man, just a lot of guests being able to come down in the spring.

summer months, which is awesome. So consistency is not that great. We either we either can't get guests or we go in spurts, I feel like. So I'd love to do a hot topics. There's so many great hot topics and a hot topics is coming soon because I'm just Jones and do one. But when the opportunity presents itself, you got to. Got a strike. You got to go. Yeah. And I mean, ideally we'd like a Q&A and a hot topics in between every single guess, but sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. So we're going to try our best to do that kind of that rhythm. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. Share the show with who you know. The more that you guys do that, the more the show grows, the better guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. You can also leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We're up to

over 2,000 five-star reviews on Spotify and close to 1,000 on Apple. So keep doing that. You can also head over to Farmergrade.com if you want to support the show and buy some meat from our direct-to-consumer meat business. We're going to have some American Wagyu on there coming soon, some beef, Black Angus Beef, Upper Choice, Dry-aged, dry-aged, dry-age Wagyu, pork. We might have some chicken on there. So a lot's kind of happening in 2024 with that. So hopefully there's something on there that you'd like. And also, if you get any value from the show, I already said this in the beginning, but I forgot to mention it. Share it out with who you know, but make sure you get value to share it. You know, that's kind of the ticket to

admission to watch or listen to the show. We want you to get something out of it. And if you do, share it. That's all that we ask. Um, so our guest today, he is a man, his family, they have a lot going on. They're farmers. They got multiple business ventures outside of the farm. They're into the reality TV show world. And, uh, it's going to be really interesting conversation. We're going to try to get as many questions we possibly can ask. He's a very busy man. he's coming all the way up from Missouri. So it's going to be a fun episode. And I think there's going to be a lot of value for you guys. So without further ado, let's get into it. Stephen McBee, welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks for having me, guys. This is a freaking awesome setup.

This is the best podcast setup I've seen by far. Oh, hey, we take that. Trial air will get you a long way. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. It started out with Hay and now we got a bar going. I like it. We're getting there. There's a bar and a barn. It's a good starting point. And no clocks. Yes. No clocks. We'll never have a clock in there.

We're going to lose track of time today. So first kind of thing, we just want to let people know where they can find you. Where can people reach out? Where can people follow you guys on? All the stuff you got going on. Yeah, Instagram is definitely where we're most prevalent. Myself, my Instagram name is at Stephen McBee, Stephen with a V. And then all of our farming operation is on at McBee farms.

So we post videos basically two or three times a day on there. So, nice. Cool. All right, so we've been following you guys for some time now. I came across you. I saw you on a reality TV show, and then that led me down to like, this dude's got a lot going on.

He's kind of an entrepreneurial guy, farming. I could relate to you in a lot of ways. And then I just started watching and listening to more of you guys' content. And so I know you guys got a lot going on. The McBs are an ambitious bunch. So kind of fill in, fill people, in on what you guys all got going on and just everything you guys are doing and how it kind of got as brief as you want to do it. Yeah. I know there's a lot. Yeah. We'll dig in to the pieces.

Yeah, we'll dig in a little bit. So just letter-e. So farming and ranching is overall where our passion is, right? I mean, we love it more than anything. I've got three younger brothers and my dad that work in the operation. So we've got a lot of mouths to feed, not only within the McBeaf family, but also everyone that works under our team as well. So we knew, all right, if we're all going to work together, we've got to grow this farm and ranch. And so we started growing the operation substantially over the last decade, especially over the last few years, and gotten it to the point where it is today where we're farming, you know, 40,000 acres. We run a couple thousand head of cattle as well. But the profit and loss on a farming operation,

you guys know this well, along with any farmer out there, it's pretty rough. So we decided that we needed to find other revenue streams to support the farming and ranching operation. We'll Always have that. We love that. That is where our hearts lie, but we need some more scalable businesses. So we looked at the express car wash chain. We have real estate down in Kansas City, a bunch of residential real estate, and then a few commercial projects as well. I've got direct-to-consumer meat company as far as ready to eat stuff, so meat sticks, beef jerky, all health-oriented. And then we're just getting ready to launch our direct-to-consumer raw beef products. So sort of like a butcher box model.

So we stay busy. I'm all over the place. I'm in my truck basically 24-7 between Kansas City, Des Moines, the farm. It's just constant cycling around. And here over the last couple of years, somehow found myself on reality TV. I don't know how that worked out and how we threw that into the schedule, but it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, so tell them the original show that you were on, and then we'll talk a little bit about what you guys got coming down the pipeline. The original show was a dating show called Joe Millionaire. So the whole premise was that there was one guy that was wealthy, one guy that was not so much, and the women were there to date these guys based on who they are as people, not what they have in their pockets, right?

And so whenever we went on the show, I told the women that I was a farmer, and it played into it perfectly because a lot of these girls were from East Coast, West Coast. They don't know much about farming. And so whenever I told them I was a farmer, I had a couple cows, and they were thinking like I was in overalls with a pitchfork in my hand every day. And so that was the whole premise of the show. Uh, kept that persona the entire time. Um, we even brought them to the farm. And it's so funny. We had four combines in the field and you guys know what a new, uh, John Deere X-9 runs. And they have no idea. And so they're sitting there looking at four combines in the field, still thinking that it's like a, a old small town little operation. Um, clueless, but it was a good time.

Uh, and so went through that actually ended up. dating a girl off the show and still with her, had some ups and downs, but still with her and we're doing really strong now, which I honestly did not expect going on to that show. I went on it to really showcase my farming operation, get exposure on the brands. Full disclaimer, you don't go on a dating show to try and find love. At least 95% of people do not. Yeah. And I was no different. I went on there to try and help the brands and showcase the farm, but ended up with a girl out of it. So, so that, I just, My only question about that is people, and I'm not a big, I don't watch any of the dating shows,

but a lot of people do. A lot of people are really interested in that. On a deal like that, how much actual time do you have to talk to, like, how many girls were on there? There was 22 to start. And so, in a nutshell, from start to finish, like, how much time do you actually interact with them one-on-one? Hardly any time. I would say two hours a day, and most of that's group dating. Like for the first three weeks of the show, and we filmed for seven weeks, I was just trying to remember their names and then try to keep their background straight, you know, their family

life, where they're from. It was so hard to do that. So by the end of it, Cala, the girl that I actually ended up with, I only had three solo dates with her. So coming off the show, and you know, they make it seem like, oh, you're in love, like you guys are on the verge of getting married, everything's hunky dory. Coming off the show, it was basically like a reintroduction. I shook her hand. I'm like, I'm Stephen. You know, this is Calla. Like, let's reintroduce ourselves

and start from basically ground zero. And we ended up building a relationship from there. But yeah, the relationship was not built on the show. So it was like, at the end of the day, it was a highly publicized speed dating class for you. Oh, without a doubt. I mean, it was, and there's cameras in your face the entire time. So it's just like a whirlwind of what is going on right now. I'm trying to remember everyone's name. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. How stressful was running all the shit behind the scenes while you still had to be on the show? Like, how'd you manage to do that? So that was one of the biggest deals that both Kurt, the other guy and myself cut with Fox was,

they wanted to take our cell phones the entire duration of the show. That can't happen. This was filmed August 28th through October 21st, so right in the thick of harvest. Yep. Yeah, oh, it was a nightmare. And so we're like, okay, the only way we can be on this show is if we got our phones for the first three hours of the day. and we were on the eastern time zone. So we would wake up at 4.30 in the morning.

And then we'd be getting all of our work done for the next three hours on our phones, as much as we could. But there was no doubt the businesses took a hit. To me, it was weighing risk versus reward. And I was like, the potential reward of going on the show is worth the risk of the businesses taking a step back for the seven weeks that I'm gone. Yeah. So tell us about the new show. I know you guys have announced it everywhere, but for people that don't know,

McBee Dynasty, where is it going to be streaming at? When's it going out? What's it about all that? Yeah. So the McBee Dynasty is basically reality Yellowstone meets succession. So it's got those two aspects of it and it's all mixed up and then you throw in a hell of a lot of drama together. And it's it's pretty entertaining. I've seen the first five episodes already. We couldn't get to the last five because the women that we were watching the show with, the women cast on the show. we had a big emotional breakdown watching the first five episodes. We had everyone walking out, storming out the building. It was a nightmare. Oh, wow. Yeah, so I don't even know what the last five episodes are like because we shut down viewing it after that. Are you happy with it so far? I loved it.

I mean, I look like an idiot. We all look like idiots at different points on the show. But going back to Joe Millionaire, whenever we had our hometown dates where we flew up to my farm and we showed the top six women, the farm, my whole goal with getting on Joe, millionaire was I thought we had a really interesting story to tell with our entrepreneurial enterprises and the farm. And Yellowstone being the number one show, I was like, there's something here. We are so similar in so many ways. I was like, I've got to get this production crew to check out the farm. And that's where this whole McBee dynasty stemmed from is that hometown visit. It's a small world in reality TV. So once you get in there, it's like, you know everyone.

So we had all the production companies talking about our farming operation in the last couple of years saying, hey, we want to do a show about you guys. You know, let's get a pilot filmed. We filmed the pilot in November of 22. They took it out to all of the different networks. So you film a pilot, the production company sends it out to the different networks to see if they want to buy it. We had offers from Netflix, Discovery, History, Amazon, Hulu, and then ABCU. So it was a...

Wow. And right now with interest rates through the roof, no one was wanting to buy reality shows. So it was a very slow time. So for us to have that much interest, it was a shell shock. We were like, what do we have on our hands here? And we ended up going with NBCU because they have an umbrella of networks underneath of them. So they have Peacock. Yep.

They have USA Network. They have Bravo and they have E. All four of which are going to be air in the show. Peacock's going to drop all 10 episodes on March 11th. So this coming Monday, so it's coming quick. Yep. And then the rest of them are airing like USA Network. works the first episodes air in Monday and then it airs every Monday after that with a new episode.

Um, so it's going to be across four different networks. I mean, it's, it's pretty wild. What's going to happen next week. I'm interested to see, you know, how America takes it. Um, whenever the production crew first flew out to our farm, they said, hey, we may have to drum up some drama if things are slow on the farm. You know, they didn't know what to expect. Within one week, you're like, tone of dines were like wide open. They're like, holy shit. Like this. Yeah. Like y'all can tone it down. Y'all can tone it down if you need to. We've got enough storyline here.

You guys are like, this is every day. It's a shit show. Yeah, that's awesome. No, so why'd you pick, I'm just curious, why'd you pick Peacock? I know that they're kind of up and coming, you know, but there's just, I feel like streaming, everybody's coming out with a damn streaming platform now. There are so many streaming platforms. So we weighed a lot of, you know, different potential benefits of each network.

Netflix is obviously this behemoth. but it seems like their business trajectory, they peaked out 2017-2018. Subscriber growth has stalled, if not declined a little bit. And then they also only keep new series out for maybe three seasons, three to five seasons at most. Yep. So even if it's a hit show, they'll only do three to five seasons because they want fresh content. Whereas NBCU was like, hey, if the viewers are still there, we're going to run this thing until the wheels fall off. 10 plus years.

Like Duck Dynasty or something. Exactly. So we're looking at this going, that's the network we want to be with. Plus, the NBCU executives, we actually talk face to face with the executives at NBCU, the actual directors of the entire global network. And so having that connection with them, it really made us feel comfortable. And since filming the show, since we're getting ready to go on air, we haven't regretted that decision one bit. I mean, they've lived up to everything they said they would and more. Hey, thanks for sticking with us.

You know that the longevity of our farm is something. that's always top of mind for us here at this will do. And because of that, we're always thinking about the future. Our investment in the Iowa corn checkoff is one of the ways that we can ensure that our farm will sustain future generations of Whistlers right here in Washington County. Our one cent per bushel investment in the Iowa corn checkoff helps fund the Iowa corn promotion board that works to defend and produce new corn markets, build awareness of the over 4,000 everyday uses of corn and research new uses for both corn and its co-products. In addition to being proud investors in the Iowa Corn Checkoff, I'm also a member of the Iowa Corn Growers Association because I

know that the return on my investment is not just helping my generation, but future generations of farmers and livestock producers, just like Sawyer. For more information on how corn checkoff dollars are invested to help build a better future for farmers in Iowa, visit Iowacom. Now let's get back to it. That's something I wanted to ask you about. So within the entertainment world, from the outside looking in, a lot of people perceive that there's very little authenticity. So the people that you dealt with, how were they? Like, are they straight, do you feel like they were straight shooters? Like going into that, did you, did you, I'm sure you learned a lot from being on reality.

but like the amount of trust it takes to open up your farm and that kind of exposure of not only you, because I feel like you're a lot like somebody else. It ain't going to bother you, but I know within our family there's people that... No way. Yeah, they'd be like, no way. So did you, I guess I'm really rambling there. So one, when you decided you were going to get your whole family involved, how hard was it to get them all on board? And two, like the people you were dealing with, did you have a good feeling that they were

telling you straight? Did they let you go be you, you know? They did. And that was huge for us. And to answer the first part, it was tough to get everyone on board. I bet it was. Like, it's not, it's not easy. You would think, and I don't know, I guess I'm different. My dad's different. Jesse and Cole are different. My other brothers, you know, we're like, yeah, let's do it. Like, we don't care if we look bad or we do something stupid on camera. Whereas some of the girlfriends and my youngest brother, Braden, not a fan at all. And so it was tough to convince them like, hey, you know, this is an opportunity for us. There are so many different things that could come out of this. We get to showcase our life, our brands, our businesses. You know, we'd love for you to be involved.

Kind of need you to be involved. So I was like very kindly encouraging them to say yes. And thankfully they did. And I don't think they've regretted it. You know, we have family meetings the past couple weeks we have about two week with everyone on cast just saying hey there's going to be times where you hate how you're perceived on the show you could be the walk on water perfect saint and you're going to get hate online you just are i mean oh it does not matter you could literally be the donate 100% of your earnings to whatever charity and someone's going to be pissed that you didn't donate to this other charity look at mr beast the guy does everything right and people still give him shit well you should donate more or it's the same it's there's always going to have that

And so we've just been continually been drilling that in their heads. And there's still some hesitation from a few of them, but they're at least okay with it. And like my mom, who my dad is divorced with, we shielded her from the show completely. Didn't want her to have to deal with any of that. So she's not even in the show. I think they show like one picture of her.

But we have a very close relationship with my mom, and that's not even on the show. That's kind of nice to have that. Yeah, I just wanted to shield her. Yeah. But everyone else on the show is accepting of, what is going to be seen. And for better or worse, it's coming out Monday, so they better get it. That is cool. That's awesome. It's awesome. It's pretty neat. I mean, it's, you know,

from just a business standpoint, you look at the Kardashians, you look at Duck Dynasty. I mean, they're doing that gives you a potential to really take things where you want. It's rocket fuel on a business. And business is tough, startups especially. Like, everyone looks at us and they see everything we have going on and they just have this completely wrong image of man they're sitting on millions and millions of dollars in the bank i'm like we're leveraged out of our minds yeah we're in a farming and ranching operation like i don't know where you think all this profits coming from but it ain't there like we struggle to make payroll every single week and so for us the opportunity was well worth uh the potential risk of looking stupid or anything like that is the monetary value of

doing a show like is it good or is it more important more like what you're saying. It's all exposure. It's all exposure. Yeah, I mean, which I don't blame you. In all fairness to them, paid us very, very well for a first season reality show, but it's peanuts compared to, you know, the possible upside for the individual business. Exactly. And as you go on, like, if it became like a duck dynasty, if they bring back for a second season, it's now it starts becoming lucrative. And you're sending your dad in to negotiate. Yeah. The shrewdest negotiator out of all of yours. He's a pretty tough negotiator.

Yeah, he actually is. That's what we bring him for is he's the best at stress management. I think it's also because he's the best at relieving stress through partying and dating. So any type of tough negotiation, we'll bring him in because he's good at that. Yeah. And then as far as the trust goes with the network, it took months of us meeting with them going over what our plans are, who we are as people, how we run our businesses, to make sure that we're going to be portrayed accurately. Yep.

You know, we're fine. We understand we're flawed people. Like, there's going to be moments where we're like, crap, our banker's going to watch this. And he's not going to like, he's not going to like seeing Cole taking shots at a bar black dad or my dad, you know, making out multiple women. Like, we're fine with that. We just don't want there to be an inaccurate depiction of who we are. Yeah. And thankfully, there's none of that. Like, they kept us in the loop nonstop. And we even had final veto power. If there was a scene that we're like, no, can't happen. We can ax it. We can act. it. Oh, that's cool. We looked at everything and the production company that filmed our show was the same one that did the first 10 seasons of keeping up with the Kardashians. Okay. And so we were constantly picking their brains over like, what makes a show go? You know, you guys are doing 40 projects at any given time. Why do some pop off? Why do some, you know, flop? And they're like, really at all is about authenticity and how much you're willing to show. And they're like, the Kardashians were willing to show 99% of their lives. And that's why their show hit. You got to see the awkward moments, the horribly tense arguments. And we're like, okay, if they did 99% let's beat it. Yeah. we just opened up the book to our lives.

Every single thing, good and bad, for better or worse. We just said, we're going to roll with it and see where it lands. So kind of going off the reality. Well, okay, one class question with that. How about farm employees or just employees across all the business ventures? How do they feel about it?

Are they... Some of them love it? Yep. Some of them hate it. And so everyone that is going to be seen on TV has to sign a release, of course. And we had, I want to say, eight or nine team members

that weren't comfortable signing a release. and so they just stayed out of the camera image. But everyone else thought it was pretty interesting. They thought they loved it. And we got to showcase some pretty cool stuff. Like a couple of our boys in the shop do dirt track racing. Well, there's an episode where we go up to the dirt track. We watch them race.

They build out their cars. It's pretty cool. Yeah. So a lot of them thought it was pretty neat. And, you know, we're catching some local criticism. Quite a bit, actually. Oh, well, that's to be expected. But that's to be expected.

And it's a little frustrating for me because on the, show, I'm not trying to say we're the cowboysest of them all. You know, we're not the best farmer out. No, there's so many, like, Chuck E Weldon, you know, this guy I respect so much for how good of a farming operation he runs. So many different guys are so much better than us at farming and ranching. We're not trying to argue or, you know, measure up and say, we're better than you at this. Yeah. We're just showcasing our life. Did you put Chuck on the show? Because if they met him, he might be off. Is he getting his own show because he needs to have his own show.

I love his TikTok. I love his TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. He's good. He's a good character. He could just call it brutal honesty by Chuck Weldon. Yeah.

No, no. It would be funny. And that's, uh, you know, there was a bunch of shares on Facebook from local people and we're, we're catching it every single day. And I'm like, look, if we're bringing awareness to rural America, what we love to do farming and ranching, like it's a hard industry to, make it in. There's 150,000 farms and ranches that have been lost since 2017.

Average age of the American farmer is 58 years old. Suicide rate is 3.5 times higher in farming than any of the other occupations. It is a hard industry. And so the first thing we can do to help improve it is to bring awareness to the industry itself. So even though we're doing it by ways of reality TV show where some things you may disagree with or you don't like the drama that we showcase in farming, we don't uphold the brand reputation of farming, we're still getting eyeballs on it. And so it's the first step in hoping to make a positive change for the industry as a whole. Yeah. I mean, that's, we even got caught shit for doing this, you know, and I mean, anything you do stepping outside the box, especially living in a small

town, you're going to get shit for it. People are going to say, what the hell are you doing? Why are you doing it? You know, you look like a dumbass, but you just got to keep grinding and go away. And now we get people that they end up loving it and they think what we're doing is good. but it's just how it is, I guess. It is. Yeah, when you, when you were, when you were building your farming operation and, and you were getting everything else going, did you ever find yourself whenever you had to go to, say, you know, like a local graduation or this wedding or whatever, and you get people that you grew up with, people, or locals that you know, and they come up to you, or you're standing there,

and they're like, hey, how's it going? and for a minute you think, all right, I'm going to tell them about X, Y, and Z, and then you just stop because you know that they're not going to understand any of it. You just go, ah, pretty good. Yeah. It's too long a story. I don't have the time to explain everything to me, so I'm just going to say it's going good.

Even though I almost like just had five different fires I had to put out back there, it's great. Could be better. And people don't understand. They just don't have, they don't have the bandwidth to understand. most of the time they don't want that much information anyway so no no they don't and hell i even tell uh my brothers here lately cole is especially one that i have to keep out of the local watering hole because he loves the little bar up there in galatin but now just because of first of all being a a bigger fish in a small pond um you know we already had a little bit of hate now this show

is sent it through the roof and there's just no need to put ourselves in situations where it's a no-win situation. So Cole goes up to the bar and some guy wants to fight him. No matter what Cole does in that situation, like he loses. Right. And the boys had this a couple years ago before any of this TV show came about. They got invited to a local party up in McFall, which is like 10 minutes northwest of us. And I actually went to bed this night. I don't know why, but I was tired. So I was like, yeah, you guys go ahead. They walk into that party and it was a complete setup. They got jumped by 30 dudes that they didn't even know just because they had the last name McBee. and it's just like, that's kind of,

I love small towns, but there's some bad about small town living too, and that gossip and that just pure jealousy over some stupid stuff, just blows my mind. I always say the one thing, the best thing about social media is, it's completely,

it lets you step outside of where you just grew up. It lets you get into people's mindsets of, you can see what's possible. Yes. Your world does not begin and end, with the county lines. Yes, right. And it used to be that way. Yes. So, you know, that's, that's the one thing that I love about it. And so, you know, just listening to all the people that you can get information from. It just really, you don't have that small town mindset if you can dive deep into that stuff.

You realize the world is so much bigger than some stupid petty argument of who grows the best corn. Yeah. Right. Whoever gets the rain. Okay. That, okay, that might be a good. Well, I want to ask him one thing. Okay. So you talked about all the, businesses, right? What are your long-term goals for each one of those? Because you know, you're doing all of those different ones. I just want people to get kind of shine a light on what each one does and kind of what your goal with each one is. Yeah. Initially, and up until really the last couple of years, my goal was to blow everything through the roof. So car washes, let's build 100 locations, meat facility, let's get this thing going to where we're pumping $50 million in revenue plus a year.

like there was no ceiling for what these businesses could be. Now I've taken a little bit of a step back and I'm like, okay, businesses don't run themselves. So like scaling doesn't just like, you don't just open the business and it scales because you have to create the systems to make it scale. So we're almost in a little bit of a reset mode where we have eight car washes open now. We are going to open another five this year. And I would say I want to cap those out about 35 locations over. the next five years. My initial business plan was 100 in five years. Yeah. So, you know, I quickly, whenever you open up business, you realize it's never just you open it up, it shoots through the

roof, and it runs itself. Until you create the systems and get the people in place, it's a living nightmare for the most case. So for me, the car wash still has great scalability, and we're getting those really dialed in. So 35 locations is where I'd like to cap that out. My heart and passion is with the farm and ranch side, not necessarily row crop, but what we could do with our direct to consumer companies. So the directed consumer meat company, I think, has potential out of this world. And I think it's a really, really great story to tell nationwide. I have a vendetta against big food and centralized food. So I'm going around the country telling my story of farm to table and how much better it is to buy directly from a farmer.

that helps local communities rather than, you know, helping the big four, basically. You two must drink from the same punch bowl. Yeah, same mindset. I mean, we all know. We all know it. Farmers know it. You know, it's get big. You got two options, essentially.

Get big or create your own market. And I have no desire to farm the world. I don't want to grain farm the world. And I'm more passionate about what you're talking about. Creating a value-added product that we can control, that we control our own destiny. I mean, I would like to expand the operation a little bit here, but like I said, I don't want to farm the world, but can we create our own market and grow the operation a little bit too and kind of get the best of both worlds? And that's, we need more of that

across the board. We do. We've got to figure a way to get out of the commodity markets and creating our own value to where we name our own price. I mean, if you look at, we're in the worst commodity markets that could possibly be in. Because if you look at like, uh, Timber in 2020, it doubled or tripled in price. All these other commodities can double and triple in price. When was the last time corner soybeans doubled or tripled? They might go up 20 percent. They don't double or triple. Yep. Mm-hmm. And every time they go up 20 or 25 percent, our inputs go up 75 percent. So it almost is just an offset. Yep. And so it's like, okay, we've got to figure out a way to get into industries or little niches of what we're already doing to have this value add, create the marketing,

compelling story behind it to where we can actually make a good living based on products on real valuable products like, you know, farm to table beef, pork, chicken, whatever it may be. I get so frustrated whenever I get on Instagram and I see people selling a product that is subsidized by the government like friggin solar panels and they're driving in a Lamborghini, you know, acting like a big shot. I'm like, what true value do you actually provide? Your product is paid for by the government. Like you're just the broker transaction in between. I want to produce a product that's real tangible that people actually enjoy and that I know like I've got my hands in that. I created that product. That's what makes me proud.

Yeah. And rural America, middle America, the value that can be transferred to a community when you do the to the last step, the last step can create so much value for a town. because we have told the story for a long time, you know, where we live here, we live and die on pork production because we have three large integrators here and we grow the crop. We have one of the best bases in the state of Iowa because we're actually a corn negative county. In other words, we grind more corn than what we grow, which is excellent. However, we do all those steps and then we take those, we take those pigs and we ship them somewhere to be processed, which is the last step where they're making the most margin. And they're making the most margin. You guys make pennies. Exactly. If you can control that part of it in direct-to-consumer, the return to middle America,

when we talk about rural development and what can be done to help these states, to help these towns, that is where that last piece is the biggest chunk of economic. development that you could put in a correct spot. Unless you're sending that product out in a package, you are not making the margins you should be. You're not getting it's so insane to me how farmers do 95%

of the work. All for the 5% left of that work to be the most margin by far. I just read an article the other day that said pork demand has gone down 30 to 40% over the last two decades even though production 's increased and so it's caused these hog farmers

I mean, just barely making anything, barely screaming by or even losing production. We've been in a blood bath for 18 months, and we're just now coming out of it. But the problem is the Chinese are in the same boat. And people just thought that that China deal was just never going to end. And now then you're seeing their population has leveled off and actually started dropping. And so that rise in demand, I don't think you're going to see it. So we've got to really think about how we're going to, how we're going to, I think we're beyond think about how we're going to grow this industry. Like, we need to be thinking about how we can

maximize the value for what we have. Correct. I don't think you can just, and that's a, that's another fault of agriculture is we've all grown up with this mentality that we, because our only, our only way to increase the return to our farm was produce more. Because the price side of it, You're right. You can't control. You can't control. So grow more, grow more, grow more. And now we're in a spot where growing more doesn't help you because you're only going to depress

that price. You've got to find a way to add value. Correct. That's the only way. It does nothing to just produce more whenever you don't control the end price game. And we're at a point where our efficiencies of production have gone up so much that they haven't, demand hasn't kept up. And so at that point, you get this inverse price correlation to where you're losing money

on the more you produce. it's insane the more work you do the more you lose and I sometimes what bothers me is like the American consumer they want it both ways they want a cheap product but then they want quality and then like when you try to sell them meat direct to consumer

they're like they ask you this question well you're cheaper than the grocery store right like no no way how the hell can I be cheaper than the big four they're the most efficient to have all the trucking they have all the infrastructure you expect me to be able to bring it to you cheaper than they can and here's the thing

that I'm trying to explain, especially over the last year, I've been on a campaign to explain this, those big producers are not necessarily making their margin on the meat side of things. They're selling those internal organs. They have markets overseas where those internal reproductive organs are made into medical supplements. That's where a lot of their margins coming from. A normal farmer can't send containers of reproductive organs overseas and have that market set up. So we can't be cheaper. We're not going to sell our beef at breakfast. We're break even because we're making money on medical supplements from reproductive organs. That's a good point. That's a good point. Because, so in, for this hog business,

everything that we get processed from our pigs at Milo, all of, all of the, the intestines, the head, they call that tankage. And we actually have to pay to get rid of that because there's no market for it. When you go to the big pork producers, they're taking all of, there's a, actually more profit in the head of the pig than there is the rest of the animal because they're selling that to Asia and other parts of the world. Selling eyeballs for delicacies on. Yeah. Yes. And so we're already at a disadvantage. Yeah, because they could just break even on the meat and still make the margin overseas. It's crazy. And the volume's insane. It is. No local farmer could compete with that. And that's what we've actually changed our meat facility to where we're in tandem launching our direct-to-consumer

meat side, but also our dog treat business. Yep. So we're turning from, I'm paying, we call it off-fall. Yeah, off. Well, that's what they call. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're paying to get that hauled off, and we've transitioned to a zero-waste facility to where all the edible, human edible product goes out the door as human-grade product. We have all of the, you know, hooves, ears, snouts, raw hides, snouts, everything else is made up into dog products, femur bones, and then anything that's left, we're actually building a giant compost pie. and going to use that to obviously fertilize our ag fields.

And so we're turning that into a zero-waste facility, which is a neat, compelling story, in my opinion, and something that a normal everyday customer would value and understand, hey, this is why I'm paying 15 to 25% more on a locally source-produced product. Here, I'm not a right that. That pisses V.O. That's a good idea. I mean, every, we've thought about it, you know, do you think you're going to do that all under your own brand,

the dog treats and all that or somebody going to come pick it up and put it in there? I'm doing everything under our own brand right now. I'm open to private labeling, so for other brands, but I'm really hoping that I'll have the advantage of being able to sell everything under our brands. Right. Okay. I think we've found a common theme. What was the aha moment?

So for you guys on your farm, have you always had cattle or was getting cattle then was that the catalyst of you thinking like how did you start down the road that you wanted to go direct to consumer so 10 years ago and i still have this diagram drawn up it's actually a big lit up poster board in our office of a vertically uh integrated ecosystem um of our farm and that was like the grand vision of what i wanted the farm to be so we already had step one of growing the crops Step two was starting our cattle herds, which we did 12 to 15 years ago, and then have scaled up on that side. So we grow our crops. We feed some of our crops to our animals.

And then our animals are then slaughtered and packaged up into end products, which then feed us, obviously. So we're at the center of this ecosystem, and it's just a revolving door of zero-waste, regenerative, you know, humanely raised animals that's locally produced and sourced. And so that was the end goal that I had for the farm. I thought it was going to take 10 to 15 years to execute on. We started getting closer and closer three years ago. I built out my ready-to-eat processing facility, so the snack sticks summer sausage beef jerky. So we weren't actually slaughtering any animals.

It was just bringing in box beef. So it was just kind of like a phase into that model. And then last year, last June, I had the opportunity to come up to buy that limoni facility. And I was not ready for it at all. I mean, timeline-wise, I was just starting to get architectural plans to build out my own processing and slaughter facility in Gallatin. And then that facility came up.

I actually went up there to get some more ideas on how I was going to build mine out. And as I'm walking around this facility, it was less than a year old. And they built it. It looks pretty nice. They built a five-star facility. I was looking at it. And I'm a construction guy. I was like, I don't know if I could do this good of a job.

Like they had traveled around for two and a half years to different plants to learn more about how they could set theirs up correctly. And so they had thought of basically everything. And so what I thought was going to be like a 2026 in goal, we ended up starting it last June. And operations, I didn't know how to run a slaughter facility. I had a really, really good lead guy that I brought up from my snack stick facility that had ran and worked in slaughter operations before.

And for the first four months, man, we were just tripping all over the place, like just trying to figure it all out. And since the turn of the new year, really getting into November, that thing has been rocking and rolling. And now we're getting ready to launch our actual direct-to-consumer side. And I think it's just going to send it through the roof.

Yeah. I'm excited about it. Yeah, I went down that road of doing it. And it's definitely worth it. but there's just, it's just like anything, man. It's like you say, there's problems. Every door you walk through, there's three more problems ready to hit you in the face. I've learned every single new business.

It's not even new business. It's every single new aspect of a business you try to implement. You pay the bleeding edge. So it's not just, you know, there's no way around it. For two years, you're going to be in production hell trying to figure it out. And that's if you're lucky. And a lot of people end up stretching that timeline out or maybe never even hit profitability, But yeah, there is no such thing.

There is no fairy tale like an overnight success or the grass is always greener on the other side. Every business has its own, you know, issues, troubles, learning curves. It's just tough. Yeah, in entrepreneurship, it's just glorified nowadays. It's just glorified. It looks like it's the easiest thing in the world. Everybody's doing it.

Most of the people are bullshitting and they're flexing and they're renting the Lambo, whatever. But you start, you actually go down that road, you realize pretty quick that it's, you got to really fucking want it to get it. You get your ass handed to you over and over and over. It is a race of perseverance. And there's no such thing as winning in entrepreneurship.

There's just lasting. Like, can you last longer than the other person? That's the game. Yeah. So. Yeah, one of the, I, this is, and I can't remember who said this. I think it's Hormozi said this. Probably.

And it's such a great mindset because he said, when you are doing something and you're about ready to quit, but you don't give up, you just have to think that the worst part of what you're trying to do, that's just a moat to everybody else. That's eliminating, that's keeping your competition out. Because the more really, really hard things that you can do in whatever you're trying to achieve, that just means that when you get it figured out, you're going to be that competitive advantage. Yes. The cost of entry, how many people are going to pay that price? Yes. So to be able to flip that in your mind, that's a very powerful.

It is. It's a powerful thing. And you fight with it every single day trying to flip it, because it is tough to reframe that in your mind. And that's what we have meetings at the car wash every single day. We're like, let's look at what we have that separates us from the competition. Can anyone else start a car wash? Yes. Okay. So we don't have a technical, you know, advantage. We're not a tech company that has some cutting edge software. We're not smart enough to do that. I wish I was to where that's our competitive advantage. There's nothing we're doing in any single one of our businesses that any other person couldn't go out and start. So the one competitive advantage we have is being able to outlast and get through those moments where everyone else would quit. And then we also

say it's our people component. So how we treat people. That's the only competitive advantages we have. So we better make sure we are at our peak in those two areas. Well, I was going to ask, people. How do you hire? How do you find the people? And who do you start with? So for us, that has been one of the toughest components that we found is hiring the right person, where to find them.

We've tried hiring cheap and hiring a lot. We've tried hiring top-in talent. It is all just throwing darts at a wall, to be honest. and what we found is that we don't have, we say that we're building the ship as we sail it because we're constantly doing things we've never done before, which means those systems, we're not a corporation where you walk in

and there's like this perfect book of training on how to do every single thing. Like we need people that are problem solvers. And what we've found is that hire fast and fire faster, and I know it sounds rough. Gary. Gary Vee. It's so true though. Yeah, it is.

Because we've had people, I mean, at the car washes, quite candidly, we thought those were pretty much build the nicest car wash in town and they will come. Yep. Not the case at all. We opened them up and for a year spinning our wheels, we're like, why our membership's not growing? We have the nicest, newest wash in town. We have the marketing. I mean, we're paying so much money on ads. We have the best content by far in the car wash game. Trucks can go through there. Trucks can go through it. Like we have everything set up and we're not growing. We had a VP of operations who was just killing our culture because he was so inconsistent and he was very emotional based in how he operated the company, got him out, promoted from within someone that was just a general manager of a one-site operation, but he had years of experience.

And in three months, we've hit a record sales week every single week. Same thing at the meat facility. We had one person that was destroying everything. And I knew it was bad. It was right at the start of deer season in August in September when I realized, hey, this person's not the right fit for the job. But I was like, I'm too busy. I'll worry about it later. The minute you feel like someone is not the right fit, they need to be gone. I'm just telling you because if you have that gut feeling about that, get them out of there because you're better off cutting the cord now and trying to replace them with someone. Yes, it's a little bit of a headache, but it's going to do way less damage in the long run than having someone there that's

horrible at customer interaction, horrible at organization, and you find yourself dealing with drama and just shit. Bullshit. Yeah. Like, at that meat facility, I had someone that every single day, I'd go to bed at night and I'd wake up the next morning at, like, for an 11 p.m. text that was a book long about so-and-so did this and so-so said this about me. I'm like, how old are you have this much drama at a freaking meat facility with 10 people working?

Yeah. Yeah. And so we replaced that person in December, ever since then, it's been a record sales week. Every single week. We haven't changed anything. It's just making sure you have a person that cares and that is consistent in the way they go about their work. And the only way you do that is, and it could be, it's not even hiring like, I want someone with car wash experience. I want someone with meat facility experience.

I've found that experience helps, but it doesn't necessarily correlate to like a high performer. it's just getting enough people through there until you find the right one and the minute you find the right one you will know instantly because they take the reins and they they take control and they can learn car washes i used to get calls legitimately six times a day with like different stupid drama episodes or breakdowns or like you know i'm not on sight of all the different car washes and i'm sitting there feeling like a full-time psychiatrist yeah since we've replaced that operations management side with that GM we promoted, I haven't heard anything. And our culture is so much better.

I mean, everything is so much better. So if you're banging your head against a wall, feeling like, I feel like we're doing everything right. And I just having this gut feeling, I don't know if this person is the right person for the job. Get them out of it. When the weather cools down, Golden Nugget Online Casino turns up the heat. This winter, make any moment golden and play thousands of games like our new

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Please play responsibly. Yeah. I'm trying to get fired. I'm trying to be that guy to get replaced. He always bullshits. It's like, oh, I just. just want to mower with the swivel coozy and be a grandpa, but I'm always like, you're full of shit. Well, I ain't got either one of those items. You can't even get me a damn swivel cozy.

Well, we just got to sell more meat. I guess so more meat, maybe. That'll do it. I say, hey, I know I've done my job as a business owner and a leader of my company if the person below me is way better at me, or way better than me at my job, and, you know, I can, I can move on. That's the sign of a true leader. Like, you know, and you hear some people that are like, well, I don't want to work my way out of the job. If you're a good leader and you're raising up leaders below you that are actually better than you are at your job, there's always going to be a place for that. Yep. Yep. You know, someone that can train leaders and mentor leaders to come in and operate a business better than they could do it. Like there is always a place for that person. Yeah. So if you were starting a business out

today, you've started many. What are the first three key hires that you would make to get, you're that thing started in your experience because that's for me personally that's where i'm trying you know i know i need to hire i know i need to delegate i know it can take me to new heights but what's that position what's that salary do you give them equity do you not give them you know all those questions is the hardest thing about figuring it out i've experimented with so many different ways of paying people from a salary, hourly, top end, like hourly wages to equity bonuses, to profit bonuses. I've still been exploring with it. What I've found to be the best is a salary position with profit potential bonus.

And if they're really, really important, a possible equity buildup over a five-year period to where it's not vested until after five years ago. They got to earn it. earn it. They got to be there for five years. You don't get to leave after one year and get equity in the company. Right. Yeah, that's the worst. That's the worst scenario. Nightmare. Yeah. So that's what I've found is like a salary that makes them feel comfortable in living. And it's not a top end salary, because if you're giving them profit percentage or a vested equity interest, they shouldn't be making top in salary right off the bat. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Like if you're wanting to

get part of the ownership of the business, then you need to be, you know, in the foxhole with us, earning it. We don't make no money from day one, so you can't be getting salary plus bonus from day one and then still want your equity bonus too. So that's what I've found. And as far as the best three hires to initially start with, number one, before you even go on about hiring someone, pick a lane and stay in it when it comes to a business. So you become the master of that business. And I am the biggest hypocrite in the world. I'm telling you learn from my mistakes because it is put me in a hell that I can't even begin to explain to people. Like not sleeping at night. Like I'm 28 years old going on 60. Like I felt like an old man for about three year period. And I'm

just on the other side of that from just trying to start up everything. Because my old mentality was throw mud at a wall and see what sticks. If I start up enough businesses, one of them's going to shoot through the moon. No. It does not work like that. Focus on what you know you can master, stay in that one lane and become the absolute best in the industry of that one thing. You will skyrocket that one business more so than you could ever have like these different avenues of industries you'd be in. Great. Looks like I'm going to be chorn all the damn pigs. I better just go all in on the meat, dad. No more podcasts, no more YouTube videos, no more pigs, just meat. And I say that as I'm operating different businesses. Yeah, it's so hard. I'm like,

guys, I'm telling you, if I could do it all again, I'd do that. But I'm too. I'm too. far down the rabbit hole of everything now i've got dead attached to every single business so i i got to make them all work right yeah what's your strength in in the businesses that you've started or for you as as an entrepreneur what's your strength and then what's what's your what's your what's your first thing you're looking to offload that is your weakness i am a visionary uh marketer promoter like that is where i fit i don't know if you guys have ever read the book traction um so i'm the visionary So the problem is I need an integrator. I need someone that's good at operations.

And whenever you're looking at operational side of things, you need someone that's super consistent, super organized, and super even keeled emotionally. That is not me. I'm a roller coaster and I know that. Like when I'm good, I can lead anyone like into battle. We can take on anything. But I have my bad days to where I stay away from everyone

because I don't want to kill the culture. You can't have an integrator or an operator that's like that. You need someone that doesn't get too high but doesn't get too low. So that's the first thing I look for, and that's on our car wash side, I mentioned that GM that moved up into that role, just even keeled. He doesn't get super hyped up like I do. He doesn't, you know, he's not a raw, raw guy. You can hardly tell he's excited, but he's the exact same every single day.

And that's what you need from an integrator or an operator. Yeah, 100%. And I think the sooner you can learn that, it's just so hard because when you when you start something it literally is like a child it is and you are so every thought you have so when you first started the first venture you had it's really hard to give up any peace or take any criticism from somebody that says oh i don't know if you should do it that way because it's your baby it sucks it's a slap in the face yeah it hurts yeah so has that gotten

has that gotten easier for you? And then I guess, well, I'm sure it has gotten easier because you've progressed through it. But time management, how do you compartmentalize all the different ventures that you're doing? So from a time management perspective, if I was to look at every single problem I'm facing on any given day, I would stay in bed and never get up. So you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time. So from a time management perspective, every single day, I'm like, my three most pressing problems, if I can solve those today, I'd consider that a good day. I don't need to try and solve all of the world's problems across my businesses because that would just stress me out to the point that I'm paralyzed. But I'm just going to focus on three, and I'm going to

solve them. And if I win those, and then I get my, I'm a little different in that fitness is a big part of my life. And if my, if I don't get a workout in, I'm not right for the day. Like my whole entire head is thrown off. So I always prioritize having one workout a day. That's just how I am. I'm like I'd, I'd rather not own a business, but be able to have my one workout a day because I know that'll lead to more success than than not having that time to myself. So if I can work out and solve three problems a day, that's a good day. If you two lived across the street from each other, you two would be fucking annoying. My dad hated me for years because I would just, I'm like, I got a workout today.

Like, hey, I'm sorry, I haven't got my workout in. I need an hour and a half. You're kind of like that sometimes. You're all about work. I got my dad into it now. You're all about work. I am. And you've grew up that way.

Yep. And so it's just generation difference. I feel like the whole fitness industry, you grew up in the 80s, all the fucking fluff, all the bullshit, all the fad diets, all the supplements that were supposed to solve this problem. you had to go through all that. And you guys, you grew up on a farm, just work. Get your ass out there, bail some hay, and you'll be fit and trim, you know.

And now, because I always said, you know, whenever. Now it's different. I'd be like, well, if I just loaded pigs every day, I could eat, I could eat as much and drink as much as I wanted because that was like a workout all day. That was like the weight and cardio. Not stop. But you guys are, you are one thing that I, that I'm, you know, I like to brag on my kids, but there has never been a time that knowledge is as cheap as it is today in whatever you want to do.

And I'm a little bit unique in that there's almost a generation missing between my father and I, so my dad was 52 when I was born. He grew up, he was the 100% of the generation that all you had to do was work hard. If you just worked harder than everybody else, you're going to be successful. It didn't even, it didn't matter if what you were working at, there was no freaking margin in it. You just worked harder. And your time wasn't worth anything. And that's probably where you and I have the biggest this is because I, and I fully know it. I fully know it doesn't make it any easier that when I have something that I want to do that is work,

because usually what I want to do is work. And I call you and you're like, I'm on a call with so-and-so, or even worse, I'm at the Y, or I'm at the gym. Yeah. Then I'm like, mother progress. Well, it's just, I think it's what you said. I function better when I have that time to go work on myself and feel like I've done my due diligence.

Mentally, I'm in a better place. Physically, I'm in a better place. I can go about my day and my week. When I'm feeling good, my work feels better. I do way better. Well, I mean, it's just one of those things. Not everybody can be born with all this. Oh, right, all that.

You're gifted. With supreme genetics here. And someday you'll get it. Yeah, someday. I mean, I do got some of your blood in here. So we'll figure something out. But no doubt. I was going to ask you something, but I lost my train of thought.

Okay, I'll make beef farms. This is a little bit of a fun one. All the equipment we see is green. Is that ever going to change? Are you guys happy with deer? We were a crown box for years. We were just picking up whatever the best deal we could find on equipment was.

As we scaled up the operation and as the government required more and more specific reporting and as our target on our backs got bigger and bigger and we had more people trying to hit us saying, y'all sprayed my field with dicamba. I don't even use Dicam, but because of that, because our target's so big on our back. But as all of this came about, we quickly realized our technology needed to be brought up to speed. And all this different crown box of colors, you know, we had yellow, blue, red, green.

They wouldn't talk to each other. I couldn't find a technology that would get them to talk to each other. I tried everything. I mean, we wouldn't know wind fields were planted. We wouldn't know anything. Yep. And so finally, over the last couple of years, and it was a stiff, to eat. Obviously, you guys know the price tag on green equipment, but it was because John Deere

invested in their technology so early that the John Deere Op Center became how we run our company. Like that was the one missing piece. And just because of the target on our backs, we realize we have to be able to factually provide data to whether it be the government or to different lawsuits we're getting hit with, whatever it may be, we have to have the data to back it up. And so that's why we transition to green. Is do you feel like there's any difference? Do you have any, like besides the technology, like, you know, guys will go back and forth. People love when we talk equipment on here because they, you know, everybody's got their brand. They're going to ride or die no matter what. In your experience with the guys that work for you, if your experience of getting in, what do you think's the best?

We loved red horse power and green planners. Yep. Yep. That was our combination. Yep. Okay. Or Kinsey planners were good too. Some of the older Kenzie. But that was the ideal combination. But we tried that for a few years, and yes, we loved it, but the tracking of the data wasn't up to par. So that's why we had to transition to all green. So going back to fitness, found my train of thought.

Fitness, I know you're passionate about it. I know you're about it every day. What are some things, some tips you can give to people, or maybe some hot takes that you want to address? because there's just a bunch of bullshit out there. So much. So much bullshit. And if people don't know, they don't know,

and you've done the research, obviously, you're fucking yoked. So give them, give them some tips. Give them some of your hot takes about fitness. Yeah. There is so much money spent in fitness that does not need to be spent. And it's so bad because there's so many different marketing ploys over what diet works best. And it all comes down to calories in versus calories out. If you burn more calories than what you eat, you're going to lose weight and lose body fat.

as far as the easiest things to do or the easiest tips that I have, number one, don't drink your calories. People drink regular sodas that have so much sugar. I want to, like, I want to stay full on food. I want to save every calorie I can for food. So I'm drinking zeros of every type of soda, and everyone's like, they don't taste the same. No, but within a week, you won't know the difference. You'll adjust your taste buds, I promise you. What about the people that say it's going to cause you to lose? That's good. Okay, go ahead. Coke Zero does not cause cancer.

You could drink, in the studies that they found that it was a carcinogen, they were testing it on rats, and they were providing them with what would be the equivalent of 200 cans of Coke Zero a day. Who's going to drink that? You could have 15 cans and have zero detrimental health effects. So, yeah, in a lab study with rats that were given Espartumay to the extent of 200 cans of Coke Zero, it may be a carcinogen at that point.

But again, anything would be at that point. Yep, yep. So it is not cause cancer. Number two, prioritize protein. Because every single calorie that you eat worth of protein, whenever your body goes through the digestive process, it burns 30% of those calories from protein because it's a tough amino acid to digest.

So just through the workout of trying to digest it, you're burning 30% of those calories you eat. So you could eat, let's say, I try to focus on 250 grams of protein. protein a day and most people tell you you only need one gram per pound of body weight so that mine would be like 205. I do 250 to 300 because I know 30% of them are just being burned up and I can eat so much more and then not get the effects of additional calories. So prioritize protein and then I turn everything into a salad just because lettuce expands in your stomach and it fills you up more and it's lighten calories. Like one whole bag of 16 ounces of shredded lettuce is like 60 calories.

and so anything I do if I have a steak, steak salad. If I have chicken breast, chicken salad. What about the dressing? What do you use for dressing? Because I know that's people's like, well, I would do that, but the fucking dressing's too much garrings. So that's the one time, you know, you have to either go with like a vinaigarette, which I hate. So I usually just do Frank's hot sauce on everything.

It's zero down. Or I turn everything into a taco salad to salsa's light calories. Yeah. The other thing about protein, it keeps you full, right? It keeps you full. It keeps you so full. Yeah. Like, if you eat.

I don't even track calories because I know if I'm prioritizing protein. I would literally feel sick to my stomach if I ate more than I should if I eat this much protein. Like just by what I usually eat day to day, I've tracked it a couple times and I fall right where I need to as far as right around that 2,900 to 3,100 calories a day. Yeah, the hottest probably diet that you see right now is carnivore. Everybody's like, carnivore, carnivore, carnivore, I'm losing all this weight with carnivore. And that's awesome. But it's, all these diets, I try telling you this too. It comes down to calories in versus calories out.

It's so frustrating. Eat less calories than what you burn. Well, if you find something that works for you. Right. Yeah. Because so you take like, and some people, some people have the mindset to do that. So, Rob, neighbor of ours, been on the show. He is a carnivore guy.

And he doesn't like to exercise because his knees are, crap. So he walks, but he is die-hard carnivore. And it works for him. He is in the best shape of his life, and he stays that way without having to do a lot of exercise because it's hard on his body. I probably don't have the strong enough willpower to only eat. I mean, yeah, I could eat a pound of bacon every day, pretty easy, but I don't know if I could do that long term. But whatever you do, that's the simple part is calories in calories out. And if you're going to have, you know, if you can do, if you can do 90% that day that you don't follow it, you're going to be okay.

You're going to be okay. It's consistency over perfection with fitness. Like I don't work out the hardest. I don't eat the best, but I'm consistently 85 to 90% of the time on track with what I need to be doing so the 10% doesn't negatively affect me too much. And I can't be straight carnivore. I have tried it a few times and I push a lot of, I eat a lot of meat. I mean, don't get me wrong. But at the end of the day, I eat ice cream every single night, Halo Top. Yep, perfect. You know, 20090 calories per pint. It's fine. It's a lot of protein. I mean, yeah,

it's some sugars and some carbs, but 290 calories is nothing whenever I'm prioritizing protein the rest of the day. Yep, 100%. So it's everyone's like, man, I just hate a diet. I'm so hungry all the time and I don't get to eat good food. I'm like, have you tried Halo Top ice cream? Yeah, there are torments. I like it over regular ice cream. Have you tried some of these different things? Like, there are so many different, uh, food products and snacks out today that are low calories, high protein that in my opinion taste as good as the real thing. Mm-hmm. I agree. Uh, I've, do you, have you gone on a bulk in for, like, do you bulk much lean bulk throughout the year? Are you just like, did you go through a phase of just like, I'm going to get,

huge and then I'm going to shred down and just stay where I'm at. I bulked. Because that's where I'm at. I would like to get a little bit, I'd like to do a lean bulk preferably, you know? Mentally, I can't do a conventional bulk because it would bother me too bad. I'm a freak. Like I'd see myself looking puffy and I'd be all sorts of ate up over it. So I haven't done, which would be the most efficient way to do things is just calorie

surplus and you'd pack on muscle, but you'd also add fat. It's the most efficient way to do it in a quick time span. I don't like that, so I lean bulk. Yep. Yep. And so I'm trying to stay, before I was trying to stay under 12% body fat, now I'm trying to stay under 10.5. And then this year, my goal is to have some point in the year where I get right under

9%. So I see the 8s on the scale. So are you in a surplus through the winter months? Like, are you in a 200-cala caloric surplus? or what are you like what are your counters? Honestly, I hover around maintenance, break even to 150 plus.

Yeah. I think if I was to average it out, I'd be at around 100 plus. So it is just very, very gradual. With everything you got going, so you used to hunt a lot. I love hunting and fishing. You still find time to do

to do other things. I hunted four times last year. And that is like the big point of emphasis going into 2024. I talked about starting all these businesses and it's been halacious for me, hunting was basically non-existent. And that was my life. And I still, it's my favorite thing to do.

We had our own hunting show for a couple of years in 2017, 2018. I'd go on trips. Like, that was my passion. And I lost that because of all the different businesses. And I understood sacrifice a little bit. But I also have started to value peace of mind more so than just straight capitalism. You know, there's a fine balance there because you hear some people on the internet they're just like grind your life away. I'm like, but at the end of the day, like, you can't take it

with you. So there's a fine line to balance there. And so this year, 2024, prioritizing, I want to take at least two trips to go on big game hunts. Last year, I hunted four times from a deer stand. I was hunting a big eight point and I was an idiot and I was trying to look cool and do it with a recurve. And I missed him twice at 18 yards. So yeah, and then I'm like, I don't have this much time to hunt. Why I'm out here with a woodbow? So it was dumb. But yeah, I love. I love hunting and fishing. Yeah. Your brother Jesse, though, is he, like, is he the top hunter or is it Cole?

Like, who's, because I know you guys got, you feed out deer or stuff? Well, you got it in Missouri. The only way you're going to get a decent size deer in Missouri is to feed them. Otherwise, you got to come to Iowa. We actually don't do any feeding. Oh, really? Because Mississippi State did a study. I would spend $15,000 a year on high protein feed.

And Mississippi State did a study on supplementing a wild deer herd. And it did not change the genetic makeup or the total. average inches of antler. Really? Wow. If they're raised in a high protein environment, so anywhere in the Midwest. Down in Texas, it works because they don't have

high protein forage. Up here, zero effect. So that saved me 15 grain a year. Damn, and I was gonna be, I was gonna try to bag on you about that. No, yep, so we don't use it at all because of that. No, well, your point on what you said about focusing on capitalism too much

and living your life, I feel that right now. We actually had a question in our last Q&A about somebody asking that question. I feel like all I do is work. All I think about is work. I'm not in the moment most of the time. And I can relate to that. You know, sometimes I let it get, it controls my life.

I feel like a little bit too much. And, you know, I feel like in early on in businesses, you kind of have to, it's a season of life. But, man, sometimes I look around. I'm like, I want to create value in the world. I want to do a positive thing. It's a society. I love this game of entrepreneur. but I want to have a family. I want to, I want to be there for my kids, you know, all these

things. I want to have passions outside of just business, you know. And that's, that's so tough, because you do, you have the Andes and you have the Joccos and you have the Goggins and you have all these guys that are telling you, well, don't be a bitch. It's the grind. Embrace it. It's a season of life. You got to, if you want to be at the top of your game, you got to do what's required. Need a vehicle that isn't afraid to make a splash? That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways.

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guys don't get me wrong they're on another level they've put me they have shaped my mindset to be better than I was five years ago but I don't quite know if I want it to that level right yeah you know you're so you go out and you uh you know you get on your riding lawnmower and then Dave is just standing on his patio looking at you because he's he's got like two plates on top of his push mower he's push mowing his whole yard while you're on your little rider he's just looking at you and you know you're out there grilling and you're grilling some hot dogs and you know he's grilling like a whole prime rib on there yeah it'd be a tomahawk he'd eat the damn thing with his bareheads two a m lay in bed and you hear someone out on the street hard What are you doing? What are you doing?

Phones out like this. Yeah. Yeah. Those guys are another level. And I think I came to the realization. Here recently, I'd say within the last year and a half is really when I switched from just grinding my life away, the only thing that mattered was making sure that I was being productive every minute of every day to actually having some peace of mind.

And it really came down to what is my standard for my quality life going to require from an income standpoint. And anything beyond that, like, it really doesn't change that much. Right. And I was looking at it and I was like, if I could bring in, like in a dream scenario on consistent average, $400,000 a year. Yep. I could do everything I'd ever dream of.

Right. So why do I need to push for $10 million? And I'm not saying to limit yourself, but there's no reason to, like, kill yourself over trying to get to $10 million for what? Right. I'm not going to leave any different. I'm going to want a deer hunt. I'm going to want to farm. I want to enjoy my family time. I can do that. I can do it at $100,000. But anything you want it. Let's say 400,000 is my dream income. And from there, my life doesn't substantially change. What's a sports car matter?

You take it out one time a year. Like, what do these material things matter that you don't even use? Right. If I hit 400K a year, I'd be able to do all of that. In 400K, yes, it's a lot of money. But in the grand scheme of things, if you build your businesses the right way, it's not going to require 24-7 effort. Right. Right. And you might actually be able to start a family and find a woman. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Joe Rogan, I was listening to Rogan about that.

And he was like, you know, when you buy your, when you go, your house is your house. So you have a million dollar house to a $5 million house to a $50 million house. Yeah, you first buy it, it's a little different. But after a while, it feels like your fucking house. You sleep in it. It's the house. And it's like levels of wealth, once you get to a certain level, it's like not a lot. change like your perception on what you get what car you drive what house you live in it really

doesn't change that much your feeling towards it doesn't really change and i was lucky enough to live in a family of entrepreneurs um both of my mom and my dad's side that are extremely successful and then i actually had quite a bit of success uh coming out of of high school in my college years um in the real estate side of things to where I wanted to be that guy posting on Instagram. So I bought a nice ski boat. I bought, uh, I had a couple cars along with my, my farm truck. And, you know, I'd post him. I'd flex on Instagram with them. Thought I was a badass because I have a super leveraged, a couple, you know, cars and boat that I was paying loans on. I've gotten rid of all of them. Yep. Because I'm like, at the end of the day, I drive it one time. And I think about all the money spent insurance,

it's like all of the headaches that come with it. You know, every single year you're having to renew different permits on it or whatnot. And then also the fact that every single person that's seen that post, that's somewhat of a friend, sometimes not even friends, hey man, can I use your boat this weekend?

And then if you say no, you're automatically the biggest dick on earth. Yeah. Like, it's like, no, man, it's my boat. I don't want it to get wrecked. Because most times you lend it out and those people wreck it or they run it till it's empty and then they bring it back.

and the next time you're going to the lake, you're like, oh, I got to stop my gas station. They didn't even fill it up. Yeah. I think that's, I think that's a lot broader movement than what we realize. I think your generation and I think people younger than you, the idea of what success is has been projected by us older people

because we were stuff oriented. And like you're the same way, your brother's the same way. you guys I feel like have really started to wake up to having time for what I want to use it for and experiences are more valuable

than stuff. Well, I think it's because, like again, social media, you hear people say this shit. Like, they're super wealthy. And then they say, I don't give a shit about all the cars I have. They all feel the same. The house that I bought that's $50 million,

it feels like a house. and if I could go back, you hear billionaires regret, their biggest regret in life is I wish I would have spent more time with my family. And you're like, so one party is like, I want to go and I want to achieve these amazing things. I listen to this and I want to grow, grow, grow. And then you hear those kinds of things and you're like, oh, shit, maybe I should like take a step back. So what's this balance? I'm trying to find the balance.

You're trying to found the balance. There absolutely is a balance. And the key is to finding what you love to do to where it doesn't feel like work when you're working. And then you have it set up, like right now, the car washes and the meat facility, over the last six months, they've made more progress than they've ever made, and I've been involved less than I've ever been involved. Like, I normally would never have time to drive up here and do this podcast, ever. If you asked me two years ago to do that, I was like 24-7, couldn't even go out because I was so busy just grinding away. I thought

that was like what I was supposed to do. And it's just, there's more to life. than that. Yeah. It really is. And I'll, I'll dispute that with anyone because at the end of the day, you end up making it to that, that mountaintop or that pinnacle of everything you worked all those hours for and you realize it's not, not that great and not that worthwhile. And like, what did I just spend 10 years of my life working towards? Yeah. So the ventures that you're in, do you see yourself holding those, are those, are those legacy businesses for you and your family? family, or is that something at some point you think you might flip it? Farming Ranch, absolutely.

Legacy business. Meat facility, absolutely legacy business. Like, those are my passions. Car wash. I'd like to say, you know, whenever we're looking at whether we want to exit our business or not, we know 50% of it's going to be taxed on sale. And so you're already looking at cutting that sales price number in half. And you're like, if I'm able to sell it, that means the business is cash flowing. It's got a system to it because otherwise no buyers would look at it. It's like, why would I get rid of that business? Exactly. I bet they're reoccurring is pretty good on that. It's built up really solid. Unless there was a complete market disruptor like self-washing cars that were to come out, there'd be no reason to sell. Elon comes out with something. Yeah,

exactly. That's my biggest fear is like Elon's a self-washing car. Yeah. Or you just get, if the if the self-driving ever gets the point that car ownership, everybody, just is gets a get an Uber that's a Tesla yeah yeah no one owns cars yeah any type of market disruptor then yes we'd sell but other than that I've never been able to make it make sense yeah on why we'd sell and so your goal with those is just autonomy get it scale it scale it nice and efficient but try to have some systems some systems so you can step away and enjoy your life a bit. Exactly. And the overarching goal for me, if I had like a grand vision of what my life could become, it would be to build a culture of leaders to where we have a system like what first

form does at their facility. Yep. Pick ass. Good friends with Andy. That to me would not be like work. Because every single day you're going around people that are inspiring, you know, they're uplifting, positive. I know they have their bad days in that business, but you can't tell me there's that many bad days down there at that facility. You're working out with your work associates. Like, that's a damn good day. If I could live every single day like that with people on the Kansas city side, like my end goal is to build the meat facility, the apex side of things, and build out a fulfillment center down towards Kansas City to where I can attract those high performers that want to improve their lives and have 60 to 80 people working in that facility where we have a gym

together, we spend time together. Like, that's the dream. So being around. So being around, people that are uplifting and motivated and want to make the world a better place by way of their positive mindset and their work ethic. That's, that would be cool. If you can, if you can, if you can build a business where your job every day is just maximizing, that's a great place to be. Yeah. Every time you listen to somebody on Andy's podcast, a new guess, they get on there, And they're like, blown away. Blown away. They take them around.

I cannot believe your facility, the people here. Yep. And I, in knowing, you know, we have between all of the different companies, we're at 370 employees right now. Wow. That's awesome. So we've got quite a few. But seeing what First Form has been able to do,

you will not find a person that works for First Form that is not a high performer. I promise you. That culture is so strong. They may have some that are not to, the same level, but they're having people move in from across the country to work there because of the culture. That is something like crazy amount of respect for them. It is. Yeah. Because I know how it is to build a culture. Yeah. It's insane. We, so we had a, we had a guy from first form, send us a care package because he listened to the show. And just that, the detail wrote a personal

note through in the shit that he thought we'd like, through it, like, listen to the show. And Like just, I was thinking about the system. Like, they must have a system built in there for their employees to be like, hey, send out this many care packages a month, probably, to who you love or who you think is really killing it and try to, you know, just the little shit, they do little shit so right. And yeah, I, I, that is so funny that you said that your dream outcome, like, how many times I fucking tell you that. Yeah.

It's, and I think that's a credit to Andy, obviously, you know, he is, at all those guys, you know, you have Alex and he's like trying to build a billion dollar company. You have Andy that, you know, he's building some serious shit. Don't get, don't get me wrong. But the quality of what he's built trumps the people component trumps any of the product. Right. Because he's living a life that's like, wow, dude, it feels like you're actually like doing something that is bettering society in a really positive way. And you're not optimizing for the next fucking dollar, right?

Exactly. That's what I love everything about that business. My end goal is that, you know, Apex, we end up making enough noise that First Form wants to buy us out and we become their outdoor line. That's my end goal. Hey, that is not bad. Because I'm like, man, I want to have my own businesses, my own brand, but what they've got over there is so special. It is hard to duplicate that and get it to that scale. So let me just get to be like a little bit more annoying because we're competitors in the meat stick space. Right. I want to be just competitive enough to where they're like, all right, we've got to buy them out. And then we get to kind of merge the two. Yeah. That's my end goal. That's not a bad. That's not a bad goal because the outdoor division, they're just starting that out, I feel like, right? You know, they're just getting that up. Yeah. And I'll say they're meat sticks, dude. I've never had Apex. You might have to send me something. But first form, them fucking things are good. They're good. They're quality shit. Yeah, I don't, I can't knock their product.

Yeah. I'm trying to get Andy to move their production in-house with me. It's like a private label for them. Business moves. I like, I like it. I don't view, like, I don't view someone like first form. And obviously I am like, yeah, I blow the floor and they're above the ceiling as far as levels go. But I don't view them as competitors. I view them as like, they're really good people in a brand that I respect the hell out of. Right. There's a way for us to find some synergy together and work together in some capacity. Let's do that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So.

Going back, I was just sitting here listening to you two. And, um, because I know your answer to this, but I, I'll just get your take. So at what age did you start consuming? Because I know you're a fan. I know you're a fan of what Andy does. And Ed Milet and, uh, Hermosey. For Hermosey. At what age did you start consuming that kind of media and how, what, what, what,

role do you think that had in your mindset that you have today? Quite honestly, it saved my life because I grew up playing sports, right? So football was my identity. I had no idea what I was going to do. I just thought, like, Division I won football and then really wild dream of thinking that I was potentially NFL worthy. I wasn't that. I was the same way. I was a solid player. Like, you know, I was probably would have ended up playing Division one and getting some playing time, but never would have been NFL quality. But like football was my identity. If I went around town or met with any of my dad's bankers or anything,

they were like, oh, how's your football season going? Well, I was going to play at Missou, and I got asked to play in an All-Star game in June, so a month after I graduated high school, all the coaches down there at Missouri said, don't play in it. Like, this is not okay. My head coach was selected as the coach of the All-Star game.

Oh, sure. And a couple of my buddies, a couple of the linebackers got selected for it. And I was the quarterback, and they were like, come on man just do it and i was like oh yeah one last ride with my buddies first play blow out my knee like i'd never been hurt so then that was june 10th or 11th that i blew out my knee had surgery june 20th and i'm sitting in a straight leg brace on my mom and dad's bed the entire summer yeah the summer of fun of like yeah you're going to college so it's like the one last big bang out with all your friends they're all going to different lake trips and i'm sitting in bed i wake up at 6 a m go to physical

therapy come back home at 8 a.m and i'm sitting there in bed the rest of the day like that was my life that summer. And I was in a deep, dark place. Like, I was like, who am I? Like, I lost this identity as an athlete. I never want to be this compromised again, like, in a straight leg break. So I quit football. I was like, I'm done.

Like, never again while I had feel that powerless. And, like, completely lost. And that's how I ended up stumbling upon some of these guys as far as self-improvement goes. And really started getting my first taste of, like, there's life beyond football or sports. You know, you can change your identity and become someone new and make something of yourself still. Life isn't over. Yeah. And that's where it all started.

That would have been summer of 2013. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the Orange One. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, genocid, generally. tea and milk. Habaniero, more like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, that was for me, I graduated in 18, and that was something for me, like I went right in the operation right out of high school because like you were saying, I grew up that whole identity of football, like I love sports. It's all I cared about. Girl sports, having fun,

you know, whatever. Then you get out of that and you get in the real world, and I was like, all right, I'm going to farm and chore these buildings. But you do that after a while and you're like, okay, is this it? This is what I'm going to do? Yeah, I had all these grand visions for my life. Yeah, this is what I'm doing. And I was like, I loved it, but I was like, I want to do more. And I had to find, like, the new game.

Like football, sports was like the game, going to the weight room, doing all the shit, agility drills, all that stuff. That was the game that I was playing. And I just was like, there's got to be some game that I, I can play here and I just gravitated towards business. I started listening to these guys and it was like just clicked in my mind like, okay, this can be the new game that I can play. Like I don't need all the fancy shit, but just building, building something and working towards something, business gives you that. The good and the bad of that deal was when you made the decision that you weren't going to go to

college, because I knew I was so happy that you decided, well, I was fine with whatever you did. You were good. You guys were supportive. Obviously, I was happy that you were going to farm with me. But I knew that as soon as fall came and all your friends were at college, that was my most worrisome time. Oh, God. That's part of what made you gravitate towards those people. Yeah. Because you didn't have, if you would have been in college, you wouldn't have had the, you would not have had the time to consume that and figure out where you wanted to go, I feel like. Yeah. No, it was definitely pivotal. Those people definitely changed my life because where I was at that time to where I am now, the mindset, everything, completely different person. Like, it's just night and day. And so,

yeah, it's... I could not agree more. And I think it's innately built in, especially men, is that if you have hope and a purpose, you would walk. across broken glass barefoot. Yep. Like that's all you need. You don't even, you know, you don't need like a, you could sleep on a freaking wood floor up here in this barn, but if you have hope and a purpose,

you're fine doing it day in and day out, and it gives you a reason to wake up every morning. And so that's what it was, was like, once my purpose was football and that went away, like where is that next mountain top that I got to look towards to start climbing? Yep, exactly. I found it in business.

Yeah, and cool thing also that you could relate it to, and I know you guys are, kind of your first gen farmers right you are but the let for something for me too that drove me is the legacy of this farm we're sixth generation grandpa was in world war two you know that shit leaving a legacy you know i know Alex's take on legacy he is which i i sometimes want to say dude you're leaving a legacy you don't even realize it all the videos and shit you do like that's going to be on the internet forever and you're it's going to be a legacy but i can't tell you how many times my dad, my grandpa, my great-grandfather, that drives me too, you know, to keep moving and

like, dude, their life compared to what I have now, there's no fucking excuse. Like, I have every tool in my basket. Like, I have no excuse to make something of my life and be the greatest generation, you know, right? That's exactly how I feel. It's like, that's, it's cool. Like, not a lot of people get that if you're not in arming. I guess small business you can relate to, but But I think that, I think you, what you're saying there is true for anybody of your generation and younger. Like, the amount of knowledge, the amount of opportunity, and I don't think there's ever been a time in history where when you think about classes and you think about people being put in a box and saying, your dad was this, or you didn't have a dad, so you're going to be this. or your mom was this, whatever, I don't care. That is, there's never been a time that there is more opportunity for somebody to break the chains.

To break out, but it's hard. There's no doubt that it's hard. And I feel like it's also a much lonelier journey. Just living as young people, the way I see it is, it's much lonelier, it's much lonelier, because we're so isolated. It's so funny because we're so connected, but we're so much more isolated. But if you can, if you can find your mountain, man, there's never been a, there's never been a better time to be getting started.

No, you're exactly right. And there's really, there's two points I want to make off that. First and foremost being when you talk about feeling lonely and isolated, we're in an industry that is more lonely and isolated than anything out there. And I can't, I don't know how to put into words or describe or make people understand what it's like to be in a farming operation. It's like being on an island and you're out there in a tractor cab or you're out there in the fields working and you feel like you are the only person on planet earth. So it's, it's very, very tough from that aspect. And you do feel, I feel like it's even lonelier than someone trying to start a business in the city.

Trying to do something out here in the sticks, it's tough. It is. Because you do feel isolated and lonely a lot of. of the time. And number two, when you talk about things being, you know, we have more access to free information than we've ever had before. You could become a skilled expert with zero money down in basically every single field. Any field that you want to go into, you could become a master level expert in just from the internet. And we've never had that advantage before. And so you see a lot of people and I know it's tough to say this from the perspective of a spoiled, entitled family

of entrepreneurs that grew up with this mindset and success that we've had. But whenever someone's like, I can't become successful, I can't become a business owner because of XYZ excuse or XYZ reason. It's not that your excuse or your feeling isn't valid. And Hermosi says the same nonstop. It's so true. It's not that they're not valid. You may have every valid excuse in the book. but what does that serve you moving forward? Right. Are you going to live 40 years of your life based on the excuse that you can't be anything

because of the rough childhood you had growing up? And what story can you make of yourself because of all those shortcomings? The worse you have it, the more crap that you go through, if you make it out to the other side, it becomes that much more of a better story to tell and much more respect from people. Yep.

I mean, it really does. Like you and I said, there are no excuses for us, to be successful or be the greatest generation because of the foundation that's been laid before us. Like so if we flop, that is, it's even worse than like a normal person flopping. That's how I feel. Same. It's an obligation. It is. It's an obligation to carry the torch to greater links than what our previous generations did. But for someone that never had anything, grew up in a single parent household, extremely poor, or whatever that may be, they have the opportunity to tell that story on the other side of it that so many more people are going to relate to because, let's face it, if you or I

end up being the greater success. Yeah, we have a good story. I mean, yeah, we have some hard times that people won't really understand because they're going to say you grew up rich and entitled. So, yeah, it's not that great of story. You were supposed to be successful. Yeah. Right. So, you know, it's, but it's true, though. I mean, you and I should be the torchbearers to carry it into the next generation to make it more successful than it's ever been. Yep. A thousand percent. Well, damn, I like this. This has been good so far. I got one last question, because I know we're We're getting close to wrapping it up here. But I guess let's go back to farming. How do you feel about this next year's crop, just your operation this upcoming year? Because we ask every farmer this

when they come on. Just not to end on a doom and gloom one, but yeah, I know. It's like, lately, modern prices look rough. We're very, very dry going into dry soils right now. I feel good. The last three years, we've come leaps and bounds as an operation. And I told you guys before the podcast. We grew too fast before we were ready. We finally have the managers in place and we've dialed in on what works in our area because we kept changing up our systems every single year, changing up our nitrogen carrier, what we were using went from urea. We started with anhydrous, went to urea, now we're using liquid in, start our fertilizers. We went in furrow through our planners. Like, we would just change systems every single year because we were trying to find what works.

And what we found is if you have multiple different variables every single year, you don't know what's working or what isn't. can only change one thing every single year. In the last three years, we finally started doing that, we started dialing in, got our chemical program in place, feel really, really solid about things, and finally, we have the data behind how much cover crops have improved our crops. We had a field that was literally the entire field was a clay knob. You couldn't grow 28 bushel soybeans on it if you tried. It's had five years straight of quality cover crops that went in in early September on it. And last year we pushed 56 bushel. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. It is nuts what cover

crops can do in opening up the nutrients and then also water holding capacity. We talked about how dry things are. You're able to hold 20,000 gallons of water per acre with every 1% improvement in organic matter. Yeah. Marginal soils, that's so key if you can open that up. And because truly, they don't hold water. In your area, that's one of your biggest challenges. So we feel, I feel good, cautiously optimistic about things. You know, I'm hoping for us, and I know this is going to sound pretty rough to a lot of farmers out there,

but for us, if I can average across every single acre, 165 bushel corn, and then if I can average 45 bushel soybeans across 100% of our acres, we're going to be sitting good. Like, we'll be profitable. You know, that's about 50 to 75 bucks an acre profit.

Do you store everything back? Do you store on, farm? We have some payments that are due in December. So we haul 35% of it down to the city at the time of harvest and the rest we have on farm storage. How, so where is your, where is your, how far a travel to a market do you on average go? So we're in Gallatin and our markets are all Kansas City. So I think it's 90 miles. Yeah. Every person we've talked to cash flows on this year. It's just been break even. It just depends on the price.

I mean, honestly, where it goes. It does. These next couple years, it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. And I think a lot of guys with a lot of large operating loans, maybe, and if they can't. Well, the killer, the killer is we have been spoiled in the fact that we have run for over a decade on free money. I know. Free money. I mean, and we've talked about it on here before.

I mean, there have been times in there where guys literally, some of these guys were literally trading equipment every year and really never making a payment on it. And it didn't matter because it was no interest anyway. And in that environment, you can make that work and you can grow. And now then we have really gotten throttled. Interest is just, when you go from nothing to the rates we're at now, And then getting the margin squeezed because our costs have gone up.

And then we go into a year where corn got a little bit of a bounce. But, I mean, we were in the, we got that $3.99 bid. That doesn't work. That doesn't work at all. I mean, you know, I don't know, most, I was talking to farm credit. And, you know, they're using, most guys, they're using a $900 an acre cost of production, you know, around here. Yep. And a lot of people's costs are well above 700 anyway.

I'm letting farms go from lease rates that are coming up for renewal. The landowners are asking for numbers in the threes, which around us, I can't make that pencil. I'm not going to bank everything on hoping we're going to hit the best we've ever had. I've got to bank it. Preferably, if I could do it the way I'd want, I'd want to bank our profit and loss on county average. Because that's the average for a reason. there's a reason why those county averages and it's 119 to 122 on corn for us. So when I'm saying 165, that would be growing way above average.

But it's a tough operation to make profitable anywhere. Even in Illinois, and I used to say, well, guys with paid off ground and paid off equipment, that's the only way you can make money farming. Now guys in Illinois are having to borrow against their paid off farm ground and equipment because their property taxes eat up all their profit. Yep. Like they literally can't make a profit on paid off ground and equipment because their property taxes are now increasing so much.

It's insane. Yeah, it's everything. Insurance, property taxes, seed, chemicals, fertilize. I mean, it's... That's what, like... It's horrible. Where's the hope? Where's the hope you feel like?

It's tough to find light at the end of the tunnel, and that's why I'm diversified, quite candidly. Like I said, our heart and past, passion is with the farm, but I can't imagine having my only revenue stream being from farm income. Yep. That's what we say all the time. It would be hopeless. Yeah, I would be safe.

And you see why mental health has become such an issue in the ag industry. These guys are isolated, working their butts off day in and day out. They don't get to take vacations during planning or harvest season. They don't get to, if they're having a poor mental health day or feeling physically sick, if it's dry you better be out in the fields running. And these guys are dealing with all of this. And then they have to do the same work two or three times if they have to replant.

And then at the end of the day, they're like, I just worked my ass off to lose money. Like, how does this make sense? And that's why farming has become top five suicide rate, 3.5 times higher in farming than other occupations. And I feel for those guys and that's, it's like, man, if we could do any good with this reality show,

and I don't want to sound selfish, righteous or like I'm in this for some virtuous reason. I'm in it to make money with my own companies. But if a side component of that is to bring awareness to an industry that needs it, because America was literally built on farming and ranching. So to see that industry go away would be horrible. And that's the trajectory we're on right now. Yep. Yep. I think you're spot on. I was going to ask you. You got anything to leave people with. But fuck, that's, that's good enough, I think. You go ahead. You got to go ahead. Well, so when, when, when, when, when's the show drop and where can people find it?

Yep. So, March 11th, all 10 episodes are dropping on Peacock. So if you're a streamer, get Peacock, and you can view all 10 starting March 11th. It's going to air on USA Network at 1110 Central right after Monday Night Rawl. Episode one comes out March 11th. And then every Monday subsequently, uh, the following episode will play. And then Bravo. and E as well. They haven't given me times

that those are going to play, but I should be having those here within the next week, and I'll post it on my social media. And what's the name of the show? The McBee Dynasty Real American Cowboys. Nice. Don't judge us on that.

I like it. I have gotten so much hate for people saying that we are not real cowboys because we're in different businesses, and I'm like, guys, we run 2,000 head of cattle. Yes, I'm not in a horse saddle for eight hours a day.

Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad as long as they're talking about. There you go. There you go. How do people find you and find what you're doing? Yep. So I'm on Instagram pretty actively at Stephen McBee, Stephen with a V.

And then our farming operation is at McBee Farms. So you can find us on there. If you go to my profile, you'll see McBee Farms. You'll see all my family. Be able to check out the show. We'll post links to the show and all sorts of YouTube stuff we have going on too. Well, Stephen, this has been a great episode. This has been one of the best that we've done in a long time.

So I really appreciate you making the trip, man. and go follow Stephen, go watch McBee Dynasty Monday. Check it out, guys. Thank you for tuning in. Share the show, leave a review, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode.