Barn Talk - Bales of Wealth: Jesse Bounds' Journey to a $30M Farming Empire

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Welcome to Barn Talk What happens at the barn, Stays in the barn, But not today! We’re letting it all out! In today’s episode we welcome Jesse Bounds: who is an agricultural entrepreneur with a farming, baling, buying and selling, hauling and exporting hay and straw business in Junction City, Oregon. Follow Jesse:  TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@thejessebounds  Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/jesseboundstrucking/?hl=en  YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO5RfbphIB7bo8WZynwrL9w  Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/jesse.bounds.77  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    ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠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 not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Before we dive in today's episode, I want to thank you for tuning in and supporting the brand. Over the last few years, I spent a lot of time starting Farmer Grade. We offer meat that you and your family can trust by strictly sourcing our cuts from farmers who share their story and processes online through social media. We provide high-quality beef and pork that is 100. percent born, raised, and harvested in the United States. If you want to support the content

and the message we share online, I would appreciate it if you went over to pharmagrade.com and you can use the code Barn Talk to save 10% off your next order. Thank you guys so much. We appreciate you. We love you. Now, let's get into the episode. 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, our guest today is an agricultural entrepreneur with a farming, bailing, buying, selling, hauling, and exporting hay and straw business out of Junction City, Oregon. He's a big fan of the show. He's been listening for a while.

He made the trek all the way down from Oregon to southeast Iowa for some quality barn talk. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. Pay the fee. If you get any value from the show, share it out with who you know. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. the more that you guys do that, the better show we can put out for you guys, the better guests we can get on, the more podcasts we can make. And it's just, it's kind of a win-win for everybody.

Also, feel free to leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We're up to 2,000 five-star Spotify reviews, and we're getting close to 1,000 on Apple. So just please keep reviewing, keep leaving those reviews. It's kind of the credibility around the podcasting world. It shows how credible your podcast is. So thank you to all that do that. And if you have questions that you want to have answered on the show,

you can email us your questions to Barnshok Show at gmail.com. And we'll get your questions and answer them on our Q&A episodes. And without further ado, let's get into it. Well, we're live, boys. So Jesse Bounds, welcome to Barn Talk. Thank you for having. Appreciate you coming down to Southeast Iowa all the way from Oregon. did you just make the trip just for us?

Are we that special to you? You're that special. I know you've been a listener for a while, so we appreciate all your support. And you sent me a DM, and I was like, hell, this guy's, he's in all kinds of stuff, looks like. He obviously doesn't know us very well yet.

He made the effort. I know. Let's hope we don't ruin it. Let's hope we don't ruin it. You probably just stop talking right now. Yeah, yeah. Well, I said I didn't want to learn much until I got here, right?

I didn't want to, I didn't want to ruin everything. If you're not interested in gleaming any useful, useful information, we'll be, we'll be totally fine. Pretty much everything that we're going to give you today is just stuff that you could probably strap on somebody at a bar somewhere. And that's about it. Well, I did, I did mention to a few people that worked for me. I was coming out here. And they were, they were impressed. They were happy.

They said they were listeners. That's good. Well, that's good. We're on the right track so far. There you go. That's all the people that we keep paying the fee. So sharing the show. Well, just give us a little background on kind of where you are today and how you, what's your journey?

How you got here? Well, I live in Oregon, south of Portland, Oregon, right by Eugene grew up there. I own a hay exporting company, so we export primarily straw and hay to South Korea and Japan. And we have a harvesting crew as we harvest straw. Oregon's known to be the grass seed capital of the world. Nice. There's a few people that will not always agree with that. There's some grass seed grown out in some neighboring states of yours.

And they'll be like, you guys aren't the grass seed cap of the world. Well, that's what they say. So we'll take it. Just got to claim it. It's like us to Nebraska's we raise the best, you know, we raise the best corn. We're the only people that we play better football than the people of Nebraska. So I'm not a big football. person. And that's the first thing that I told my wife when I got walked out of the hotel is I go,

I text her and said, it looks like they like football here. And she's like, duh, don't you know where you're at? When you have no pro team of your own college college football becomes pretty important. And you could just have the worst offense in the entire NCAA, but we still, we're still show up every Saturday. No other team can have the slogan that we punt our way to victory. sometimes, but a lot of times not so much. Sorry, we get off. No, that's good. You got to loosen it up, right?

We can go down that genre for a long way. That's what I was like, I told sort of like, so what topic do you want to pick on? Because we could turn this into a six hour deal. That's, you know, how do we stay focused? But yeah, so I just, so that's what we do now. I have a trucking company. So the trucking company pretty much just halls for ourselves.

I used to haul for hire. A couple different reasons why I don't anymore. but basically my main focus is the hay exporting company. Yeah. And I farm a little bit. I was farming a lot of alfalfa or starting to try to farm a lot of alfalfa, bought a farm about three hours away, and then we lost pretty much all of our water to a spotted frog.

So they've curtailed our water. We get enough to grow kind of one cutting. Oh, wow. So that's changed that plan. Yep. So, yeah, a lot of my plans have changed from, you know, the original idea. That was one of them. That was who I was talking to on the way here, Sawyer, was the guy that I bought that farm from.

Gotcha. He left before that became a problem. Yep. And then I picked up the problem. You inherited. I inherited it. He said, today, he goes, I still thank you for taking care of my problem. There was a house and some John Deere tractors that went with it.

And we're still trying, but now I'm doing the events, the 10-4 coaching event. we're doing there. Gotcha. At that house. So yeah, that's our main business. That's really my focus. I started, I worked for a farmer when I was 16 in high school. So he was a grass seed farmer.

Worked on that farm. Went there to bail hay. That's what I wanted to do, bail hay and straw. And I got put in the grass seed warehouse. Fastly realized that was a horrible place to be. Yeah. Begged to get back to the farm. So went back to the farm and then started my own business that next summer.

So I was like 17 and started by making these 50 pound bales that are behind you. Yep. John Deer Baylor. My dad did construction and did not like to bail hay. Or like we had a 10 acre hayfield and he hated it. He would just have me to go out and decmo the hayfield. I don't want to deal with it. And so I started selling that, started bailing that.

we had an old like 47 wire bailer sure yeah a bunch of shit that was in the bushes and I drug it out and yep he was like this will work yeah he's like what are you doing this you know so started with that stuff and then I didn't have any I mean really I think back because I'm like it's been so long now because I'm 40 so I was like 17 but I basically traded labor for equipment is really what I did when I started I've been trying to like play that back in my mind, people have, because I haven't really thought about it. You know, you get to the point. You just do. Yeah, you just do. And now people are, now that, because I'm doing the coaching, I'm like, people ask, like, how did you start or what did you do? And I'm like, well, I just did it.

And then so I'm having to, like, think back as like, what did I really do? And the first thing I did, is I did. I traded labor for some equipment. And then I found fields that nobody wanted. Yep. Like five, 10 acres, small fields that people are just mowing or just like my dad. He was like my perfect client. It wasn't worth messing with. It was shit. Most of it was shitty hay. It was hard to sell.

Yeah. You know, you are selling horses. It's got blackberries in it. Yeah. So that was the next challenge. So yeah, I just started by basically going door knocking. You know, we didn't have social media and all that stuff back then. So just drive to see somebody's 10 acre field in their backyard and door knock, hey, you know,

can I take this grass? And that's how it started and just kept doing more and more. But your idea was you wanted to, you wanted to, uh, you wanted to bail hay and sell hay, like grow hay and, and sell it. That was your initial. Yes. Business model. I think for me, it was like we, I grew up on a, I grew up, where I grew up, we had 10 acres and there was far, bigger farm fields around us, like 30, 40 acre fields. And I liked the idea of driving equipment. I didn't really like doing construction because I didn't want to be in town. So I liked being out. I thought about working for the forest service or being a cop and all of those things.

My grandpa wanted me. My grandpa was a builder as well. So he's like, you should be electrician because you're inside and it's always dry. Yep. And I was like, I don't really want to do that. When you're an entrepreneur or you're starting your own business, you really need to figure out what you want to do. Because if you don't have passion, I don't think you're going to be good at it. Yeah, you quit. Yeah, you're just like when it gets. gets tough, you're just going to give up. Yep. Yeah, it's interesting you say that because, so a guy that really a mentor mine, but I worked for him and we actually grow pigs for him, you know, his story is starting in the

hog business was he wanted to, he wanted to raise feeder pigs, but he didn't have, and he was pasture pharaoh, but he didn't even have any ground to do that. And he went around to guys. Educate me. So no buildings. Around here guys would get what they call an A shed, which is just basically a 10 frame shed that you can drag around. You can even throw it in the back of the truck, but it's big enough for a sow and a litter of pigs. And then you'd take a 16-foot wire panel and you'd staple it to one end and then you'd bow it to the other end.

And that was her pen and you'd put it out in a, you know, if you had a pasture, you wouldn't have to do that. But if you were someplace confined, well, he didn't even have a pasture. But what he did was he went around to guys. Back in those days, everybody's fields were fenced in because we were coming out of the time that everybody grazed or moved animals down the road or whatever. And so just about all these fields were fenced in. And when you came along with the field conditioner,

you'd turn and you'd have this corner on all four corners of the field or along the road you'd have two corners and you just grow up in grass. And he actually just went to these guys and said, hey can I rent that corner off of you for five bucks or ten bucks and the farmer's like yep have at it he'd drop a hog shade in there and put one sow and that's literally how he got started and then he'd gather up the pigs and in the fall he'd sell the sows but then he'd sell the pigs and then next spring he'd start over again that's how he started and that probably passion is the only thing that yeah because why else would you be crazy enough to be that like but it you know

turned it in and now they're one of the top, I don't know, they're in the top five hog producers of the United States today. And that's what people don't realize. Like they think that a lot of people have started with something big. Yeah. And it's unrealistic for them to even like see what it can be. The first semi-truck I bought, I think I was 17 or 18, bought it out of California. And actually recently met the guy again. He joined the program. He actually came to my house. I haven't seen him for, you know, 20 years or whatever. And I said, how old was I? when I was down there. And he's like, man, I don't know, like 2000 maybe.

I'm like, yeah, I graduated no one. I was pretty young. He's like, yeah, you were pretty young. And it's just kind of cool to be able to reconnect with these people. And, you know, and, but like, I think back to when I picked that truck up, we had no clue what we were doing. He's like, hey, do you want the tire chains? And we're like, no, we don't need them. Me and my buddy.

We get up to the top of the pass and it's snowing. Like, shit. Should have got those chains. Should have got them. I go, we don't even know how to put them on. Yeah. Well, true, right. Yeah.

But we didn't know. Like, we're just kids. Right. I was like, just buy a truck and you buy a tractor and you buy a bailer and you find a field and you find someone to market it. And then you deal with everybody bitching there's blackberries in it. You're like, hey, I'm giving you a good deal. And then you realize that's a pain in the ass because you're not really providing a good product.

And yeah, so I did that and then worked for that farmer. And I remember we were in the field and there was, I think it was some Japanese guys. They were looking at, you know, they're out there looking at the straw. And I was like, what are they doing? And I didn't even know the difference between hay and straw. I mean, I literally. It was just a job. It was a job.

And so I was like, I don't understand what you're talking about. Like, isn't this hay? They're like, no, dummy, it's straw. I'm like, I don't know. Bailing this stuff. I started with those small fields and then basically I sold for 10 years. From the time I graduated until the time I put my first press in, I sold other presses. Other hay presses.

Okay. So I started trucking. So I bought that first truck. I started trucking. the building market was pretty decent when I bought the truck. So I started, when I got my CDL, but then I couldn't go to steak because I wasn't old enough.

So there was, you know, all that stuff. And then I started delivering larger loads. So when I started, we were taking like the 50 pound bales and I would run like ads, like kind of like what you're starting to do with the, you know,

your beef, right? I mean, your pork. What do you? Yeah, pork. Yeah. Sorry, beef.

Nope, You're good. There's no much pork in my area. I didn't have enough to make an order. So I would run an ad in like a paper like over on the coast because we're like an hour from the coast. And I'd run an ad and say, hey, I'm like selling hey, you know, call me. I guess back then we didn't even, yeah, just call.

And I would have a piece of paper and I'd, I wanted to deliver like five to seven tons. Yep. And so people would like say, oh, I need a half a ton or a ton. And I'd just make a list. And then by the weekend, I would have enough. And I'd take. And you just start. I'd just go deliver.

And I'd go to people's. houses and we'd hand unload it. And I remember one time we went to a house and we unloaded all this hay. By then I was using my semi-truck so I had 24-foot bed so we could put like, you know, eight or ten time. And remember we get to this house and we unload it and the guy's like, hey, I'm not going to pay you. And he didn't think we'd load this shit back up because, you know, it's like 14 feet to the top. And I was like, fuck that. We're loading this shit. Yeah, you're not not going to pay me. Now is my first like education of getting burned. Hey, clean energy is a big topic these days. But when it comes to,

comes to how propane fits in the conversation, there's quite a few myths out there. We're going to debunk a couple of them. Myth one, propane is a dirty fossil fuel. The truth, propane is a clean alternative energy source that reduces emissions, and it won't contaminate groundwater. Myth number two, we should just electrify everything for decarbonization. The truth, propane is a clean energy source that's often more efficient and more reliable than powering your farm with electricity. Ready to set the record straight on more propane myths, visit propane.com to learn more. Now let's get back to it. Yeah. Right. So, you know, we're kids. We're like, no, we're going to, we're not going to get burned. Yeah. And so that was a challenge because people back then paid a lot with checks. So you

get a lot of bounce checks. So then I was like, ah, it's chasing my money. I was selling a horse race tracks. The feed stores were great. Most of the feed stores I sold to are out of business now. So I had to pivot. I saw that coming. The horse race,

I was delivering to Portland Meadows horse race track and they kept saying we're going to close. And I was taking a lot of material in there like two semi loads of wheat store a week. That was one of my biggest accounts. And they're like, we're closing.

Like it's going to happen. It's bulldozed now it's gone. And so I was like, this isn't going to work long term. Not sustainable. Not sustainable. And I think that's the thing that where people get frustrated is they get into an industry and they think that whatever they're doing right now is going to be the same for 20 years. And when it changes, they can't adapt and pivot. That's where they get fucked up every time. And they either fix the problem, change or adapt, or you quit. Yep. And you're doing it right now. A thousand percent. Yeah. Thousand percent. And so at that time, I didn't realize that shit. I'm just still 27-year-old kid. You were just surviving. Yeah. You're just surviving. Yeah. You're just. surviving. And when you're younger or you're starting out, you don't have as many,

um, you don't have as much debt. You don't have any responsibilities. Like, you can just do stuff. And when you get older, you're not thinking about just you. You're embedded. Yeah. Debt. You've invested all this time and all this money into all this stuff. And you're like, I can't just change. So I drove truck for a long time. I drove truck. I drove truck from the time so from i was when i was probably 17 tell oh man 2000 yeah i drove truck for probably 14 years 50 years every day wow and that was challenging because i was trying to you know we ran baleing crews in the summer we halt so in oregon how it works is it rains yes our summer's about two months long really uh we start doing grass hay in june grass seed harvest

is July and August, we have to be done by, like in September, you're not getting out of the field. The farmers are right behind you working the ground to plan it because they need to get their stuff done. And so you bail it and you got to get it out, like within a couple of days or you got problems. So the trucking has to be on point. There's no time to screw around. Other areas, it's completely different, right? Like they can leave stuff out in the field, then go get it later. But for us, we got to get stuff moved.

We've got to put it in a barn or get it in a tarp stack, get it wrapped up. How many cuttings do you get? So on the grass, on the grass seed, like, primarily what we do, it's one. It's just, that stuff grows. We get enough rainfall. There's not a lot of irrigated ground in Oregon. There is by the rivers and stuff,

but most of that's been converted to, like, you know, high value crops. Yeah. Yeah, so the grass seed harvest is really pretty easy because it grows. So they go out in, you know, the spring, fertilize, March, and then spray. A lot of grass seed farmers are going to listen to this.

Like, whatever, it's not that easy. Well, it's relatively easy because we don't deal with irrigation. Yeah. Right. And so, yeah, it grows. And then they go out there and windrow it, swath it in the spring, like end of June. Typically by 4th of July, everything's going to be cut. If you go to Atlanta Valley, it's all going to be laid down.

And then by the 4th of July, combines are rolling. And now with these new combines, our season, like when I started, when I worked on the grass seed farm, man, our season was like two months, a combine. And I bet. Yeah. two weeks. Dude, it's two weeks. We're the same. It's crazy. We're the same way. And we can't keep up. And the equipment costs, like that's where we're challenged is like this equipment cost to really, we use it two weeks a year. Yeah. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy in that you have to get more acres. So you, you want this combine, whether you're doing what they're doing or you're doing what we're doing.

And there is no entry-level size combine today. I mean, you, you, you know, you. There's nobody buying a four row. I'd be very surprised if there's hardly anybody out there buying a six row maybe. But, you know, you buy it and then you're like, holy cow, how am I going to pay for this? Well, I need to run more acres. So you either custom work, you rent more ground. And then it's just a wheel because the equipment just keeps getting more expensive. So rent more ground, far more ground.

You're just in a... And that's when I started, we were farming. So there's Lamut Valley and then there's the high. desert. It's about three hours away. Centaurian like Bend area. I don't if you ever heard of bend Oregon, but it's like three hours away. That's where the alfalfa and the hay is grown. We don't grow really alfalfa in the wet valley because it's too humid. So you got to get the high desert. And so what I would do is that I would take my equipment over there. So the season's a little bit different. So we would we were three tie bailing. Before I put my hay press in, we'd switch from

two tie to three tie because you could press three tie. So I could sell it domestically to the horse, the horse track, I could sell to dairies, I could sell to the feed stores, and then you could export three-tie. We were still exporting a fair amount of three-tie through the hay presses, because when everyone started exporting, three-tie bales is what they really used. Okay. The first, they just direct-loaded bales into containers when they started, and then they realized they needed to compress the bales to get the weight in the containers. And so what we were doing is I was haying probably a thousand acres, a grass hay, which in our area is a lot of small bales.

And we do that. We only had like two or three, two to three weeks to get that done. So our process is cut it, ted it, rake it, bail it. You want to try to get done five to seven days and off the field,

into a barn. That's the way it works. And then we got to be done by Fourth of July because, and that was challenging because we'd get rain in May or June. We wouldn't get our grass hay done. And guys are thrashing like hell they're going. And we're like, fucker,

we're getting left behind now. Yeah. So it got pretty, challenging to try to do that much grass hay, do the straw. And then I started farming in Central Oregon. So I was hauling this equipment back and forth. So I'd, man, like trying to time the weather. So we'd load all the equipment on my flatbeds on my semi-trucks. We'd haul that shit over there. We'd do hay because I was trying to hit those cuttings in between. So we never stopped. We basically went grass hay, went to Central Oregon, did hay, came back, did straw. Then we had to

get our straw done to get back to Central Oregon to get hay done, like alfalf or grass hay. And if it rained anywhere, you're screwed. Screwed. Screwed. Screwed the whole thing. And so, and I did that. I finally gave that farm up a couple years ago when I bought a farm over there. And that's why I went over there to get more vertically integrated because I was buying.

And there was one year, I think I bought like 30,000 tons of alfalfa. And it's, you know, it's like a lot of money. Yeah. Right. Cost of product. Was storage a hard thing to come by? I mean, like, because you make it sound like, you know, you got to go, go, go. And then when you get it all done, you got to put it somewhere.

That's how my yard got started. So where the hay pressing facility, that was, I was renting. When I started, when I started, I didn't have a barn. I could only sell as much hay as I could sell for the summer because I'd know where to put it. The guy I worked for was renting an old barn. He stopped renting it. It was probably a barn the size of this, maybe a little bit bigger. And I rented that barn and I stored hay in there.

And that was the first time I could sell throughout the winter. Yeah. That place was a shithole. I tarp stack in there. I mean, I tried to make it work, but it was tight. Like, you could only get two semi-trucks in there. And we'd, like, have to move a truck to get another one around. And I got pictures of it.

It's, it was, we made it work, right? And we were retailing there on the weekends. But then I outgrew it. So I was looking for a piece of property. And that was when, before the crash, so everything was expensive, like real estate. And I knew I needed, like, I knew I needed, like, 25 acres to expand. Because this straw is so bulky. So I bought a piece of property for like a hundred grand.

In 08 when it crashed or before? 07 is when I bought that. Okay. And I started, I had no money when I bought it. I got an FSA loan. They were going to give me the, they were going to provide the, they were going to loan me the money to build the barn. So I bought it.

Then we got down to it and they said, oh, we can't, we can't loan you the money because it's in a floodplain. And I'm like, did you not look at, like, that would have been good to know. Like, what the fuck, you know? Like, I just bought this property. Now I can't get funding. So there's a rock quarry down the road a mile. I knew the guy that owned it.

And I was like, hey, I need to stack in this thing. I don't have any money. And so he was like, don't worry, I got you. He had a bunch of shale. They were blasting down there. And they needed to get rid of the shale, which is the face of the rock. Yep. You know, they had nowhere to put it.

My place is a mile. We've fucking hauled half that quarry to my place now. And build it up. And build it up, yeah. And so he fronted the money. And so I was cash broke for my whole life into him. Like I always owed him $100,000 to $200,000 nonstop. Like accounts payable, like always like 200 grand to the Rock Corey.

And then every year we doubled that pit, that, that, so that yard doubled every year. We'd just, I'd fill it up and we'd rock another section. We'd rock another section. We'd rock another section. And then in 2016, it burned. Oh, geez. Holy shit. So then, so I built, so I never had, I was tarp stacking.

I don't know if you, we build these big tarp stacks in Oregon. There's three, three stacks high. We fully wrap them, tarp them. It's, you've got to elevate it. So we got to have like two feet of rock, good drainage or you're not getting into them. We actually did a section one time where he brought a bunch of dirt down. It was more dirt than rock. We tried to get the road runner.

We had to, we had to, every time we'd go into the stack, the roadrunner would sink and we're three high. And we had to have it, we had a 48, I think we had a 4650 sitting there with a chain. to pull it out. Every time we'd put a block out, that thing would sink. We have a steel, so we brought a steel plate down, and it's like,

I still have it. It's like 15 feet long and like 10 feet wide. We got a chain welded to it, and we'd set that plate down in front of the tarp stack, and we'd pull that straw out, and that squeeze would sink.

I don't know how we didn't tip that thing over. You'd pull it out, and the whole block would just go like this, and we'd hook it onto it and yard it out. Well, then we had to have a dump truck there with the roller, and we'd have to fill those ruts. We'd roll it again. Fucking do it again.

the whole entire year. We're not talking a small area. This area is like 300 by 300 full of straw. Holy mother, and I had just put my own press in. And the problem is we needed that straw to fill the orders. Yes, you didn't have any choice. We had no choice to make that shit work.

Before we go any further, explain to people what a press is. Yeah. Okay. So basically the hay press is we're taking a bail. Back then we were taking a three-tie bail and we're literally pressing it and almost 50% down. Yeah. So the bail goes in, we cut the strings, we removed them by hand,

and then it would go on to a scale. And if the bail was 100 pounds, we would add a part of another bail. So our target weight was like 120 to 140, depending on what country we were going to. They have road restrictions. Korea and Japan have different weight restrictions in their country. So we can... So you plan accordingly.

We have to plan according to what country we're going to. So basically, we're taking that bail, we're taking the strings off, it's coming down to a conveyor, it's going on to a scale, and then we set the target weight. Let's say it's 120. If the bail is 100, we're going to grab 20 pounds for the next bail. Once it goes to weight, it shoves it in, just like a bullet going on a revolver. It goes into a chamber, and then there's a cylinder.

Yep. And it just pushes as hard as it can. Yep. And the first press I bought, it has about four or five hundred horsepower, I think, running it. And the new one's like 750. So it's got all that power, it's pressing as hard as it can. and then once it presses,

there's another cylinder that we call it the eject, it pushes it out into a set of paddles. Then once it's out in the paddles, there's band or there's plastic like nylon strap, and it straps it, bam, bam, bam. And then the next bail just shoves it out of the paddle. So it's just,

they're sitting there one after another. And then once it comes out, we have, depending on the order, so if it's Japan, for those type of bales, they basically just get loaded. They buy the bigger bail.

For Korea, we cut it again. It's called Half Cut. wrap. It goes in another box and we have a blade and we're taking that bail and cutting it in half so that they can hand feed it. And then it goes in and we basically, we don't put it on pallets, but we make it like the size of a pallet and then we saran wrap it. So you're bailing, you're baling hay and you're broken hay. You're selling hay around to people that got horses and horse tracks and dairies. How in the hell did you meet up with anybody that was like the, to me, until he told me, I actually,

till I started watching some of your stuff, I had no idea that that was a business because I think I said to him when he said he exports hay, I said, he must have some rich soddies that have horses and he's sending it on a deal to the Middle East. So how did you get hooked up export and hay? I was driving truck. I was hauling alfalfa from Christmas Valley up into Washington.

And I was actually untarping, rolling my tarps. and where I was the facility I was at, they were taking an old hay press out. And they were literally thrown at an apple totes. They were scrapping it. And I wanted to buy one because I'd been selling my straw at other presses. But they were like $2 million,

a million and a half dollars. I'm like, shit, there's no way I can afford this thing. So I walked over there and I said, hey, Luke, I was like, what are you going to do with that thing? He's like, oh, I'm throwing away. I'm going to scrap and I'm like, can I buy it from you? He's like, well, yeah, I guess so. I'm like, well, how many money, though?

So we're going to have to work something out one of these deals again. yet. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, let me talk to dad. And so then I think it was a couple weeks. They sent me like a one-page purchase agreement. He's like, and they called me up and said, you think this will work? And they sold it to me for 70,000 bucks, 10,000 for the rapper, an old rapper. And I said, well, I don't have any money to pay for it. And they said, that's fine. You haul up here. I think back then those loads from Christmas Valley to Topinish where $1,000 a load is about what we're getting paid. He goes, I'll pay you, I'll write you a check for

500 bucks that'll cover your driver's wages and your fuel the other 500 will put towards trading off the press i said works perfect for me i had a driver that lived halfway between the hall i put one truck on it for basically a year and it was paid off i wanted to ask you because two times in your story here you've talked about kind of some creative financing with guys not going to a bank and so like i think people really underestimate the power of that and i think people really don't know how to go about doing that and you kind of went over and briefly, but you got any tips for that, like how people can do some seller financing kind of deals,

creative financing deals with private lenders? Yeah, I think that if you're farming, FSA is going to be your cheapest money, right? Like, I was just talking to someone about that this last couple of days. But then working with other people, right? Like people that are in that industry or like even I've had, I let a guy that's hauling into our place borrow a set of tarps. I knew he didn't have the money to buy them.

I had like six sets sitting there. And I was like, take them, use them, we'll figure something out. I did the same thing with equipment. I just traded labor for the equipment. And then that money, I didn't go buy a bunch of stupid shit. That's the deal right there is take the money you're making, save it. So then you can go buy something on your own. I've always pretty much used conventional financing, honestly.

Like typically private money is pretty expensive. If you're going to go get like hard money loans, like from someone that has money, they're going to want 15 to 18% interest. I think that's going to become more common though, private money loans because it's harder and harder for people that have money. Yeah. To get a consistent return. Yep. And I feel like these banks, the consolidation just keeps rolling with these banks to

where there's fewer and fewer banks that know their kind of. customers and are willing to, I just don't feel like the banking industry is getting, I feel like they're getting less adaptive. They're getting harder to work with instead easier. I hammer in the 10-4 coaching. I hammer the financial stuff. Like we're building out bookkeeping courses right now and all these stuff because nobody teaches you that.

And that's until I got a CFO a couple years ago. We haven't got to that part of the story yet. but I just every year I doubled that like I raw I doubled and doubled and I didn't I was I was I was completely destroying my working capital. Yep. And nobody understands that when you're taking all your profits and just investing it straight back into the business, it's that's great that you're doing that. But that's why you're cash broke. Mm-hmm. Right.

You're and so understanding how to use debt, how to use it the right way. You know, one of the first things I did was, you know, I got a credit line. bought a use Peter built truck off of it. It was like, that's the worst thing to do. Credit lines for buying product, you know, paying fertilizer bills, things like that, not for buying equipment. Still today, I feel like there is,

if you find the right banks and you have good financials and you're disciplined, there's people out there, but that takes a lot of work to be disciplined with your money. I mean, that's, but if you're starting out, going to people that, like even someone like myself,

I've financed equipment for people that bail for me. Yeah. So we have, we bought, we bail straw, we have people that bail straw. We buy that or we pay them to custom bail for us. So we're selling,

we sell them equipment and I'll, I'll carry a term for them. Yep. It's whatever my interest rate is and I'm paying on my credit line, I'll just carry it for them. And it'll help helps them. And we set up the payment terms that works for them. And,

yeah. It's so even, even like that situation right there is, you know, But they didn't come to me and ask, really. I proposed that to them, where people should ask more often. I think a lot of times we're scared to ask. Yes.

Well, yeah, that's what I'm kind of, what I was observing from your story, it's like the guy at the quarry. You knew him. You knew he had money. You knew he was close. And you were like, so was that more of like a trade-off? He could get rid of his rock. I didn't even think about it.

Yeah. Because I, like, I want to be able to pay my bills. I feel like if I have to ask you to carry me, that's, you know, it's bad, right? It's not right. Okay. Hay squeeze. I bought a, I bought a, I bought a, the first hay squeeze I bought, a roadrunner, so the ones that drive down the road, it's a West Coast thing. Yeah. Okay. You know what those are? Yeah. Yep. So the first one I bought, I didn't know how to finance it. I went to my local dealership. It was actually a New Holland dealership. And I was like, hey, I want to buy this hay squeeze. It's a private party deal.

I don't know how to get a loan. He's like, well, run it through New Hall on Credit. I'm like, sweet, okay. The first John Deere tractor I bought, I bought that way. I bought it. It was a private deal. I bought a 4430. That was the first tractor.

I had purchased. I didn't know how to finance it. My local John Deere dealership, finance it through John Deere credit. I didn't have insurance either. John Deere offered insurance. I'm sure they still probably do today. I bought my insurance through John Deer.

The first equipment I bought, I bought the insurance because I didn't have a farm policy. Shit, I didn't even know you had to have one. Yeah. It's like, you know, we're bailing. Hey, we've got a tractor and a bailer and ready to go. So you can do those type of things until you get going. So yeah, ask your dealers, like ask salespeople, people all the time. Like, I'm looking for a semi truck.

I'm like, call your Peterbilt salesman. If you're looking for a used one, he knows every guy in your area that's selling a Peterbilt truck. And he wants that guy to sell you that so he can sell him a new one. He's going to sell him a new one. Yeah. And if I said, find someone that has the, and I always bought used trucks for another operators. From my first truck, I didn't buy, like, we have.

23 trucks from truck one to yeah up until so 11 I bought one new truck truck three was new so truck so truck one was used truck two was used um the first one I borrowed money from my mom actually so I borrowed that money from her to buy that first truck and then when I got bought when I bought my first tractor I sold a four-wheeler we used to go to the coast sand dunes yeah she sold that thing came up with down payment. So I had to, that's when I started understanding financing, you know, and realize that I really needed to, you know, to scale and grow, I was going to have to use debt. It's the only way I grew that business was on debt. Where I got really in trouble was in 2019. And we lost, I bought a new hay press, got it financed. Actually told, I'd asked my banker several

times if I could. They told me, no, I told them I was going to go out of business if they didn't, because I could feel that we were sinking because we weren't efficient. We were running 150 loads a month, like clockwork on that old press, running six days a week, 24 hours a day. We were shipping,

but like, you and so we were talking about with exporting, you have to have, you have to max your container weight. You've got to be efficient. My packages were shitty. Like that old press made poor packages.

Like, when you press the bail and they come out, if they're not configured, well, they'll fall over. And they stack that stuff in Korea and Japan, like two stories tall because storage is tight. So the quality of the package has to be good or it'll fall over.

And they won't buy from you. We had actually a bunch fall over in a warehouse and they think someone might have got like hurt even like not like hurt bad but they were like or could have got hurt. Like they were like, hey, this is you really got to get your shit together. Yeah. Because we can't afford it. We can't. Well, yeah.

It's just like it wasn't the quality was so poor. And so we really struggled to sell. We could only sell to certain customers. And I had a hunterwood press. the old press was a Hunterwood, which Hunterwood's the Cadillac of Hay presses. So when I remember the first time went to Japan, they were like,

oh, what kind of press do you have? And I go, Hunterwood. And they're like, their eyes get all big. And I'm like, but mine's a pile of shit. Your packages aren't really going to be that great. Yeah. And so I'd have to tell them that. There's nothing worse than going into a trading house,

a big Japanese trading company sitting down. You tell me you have a Hunterwood press and you have to fall up and tell them, well, it's going to be shitty packages. Yeah. That was the worst experience was having to tell them that your product, the product's good, the packaging is bad. We were known for that in the industry.

We had good product, bad packaging. A hay squeeze. Bought the first one financed it through New Holland. Wanted to buy a second one. I was hauling hay to a, it was an old dairy. They retailed out of it. They stopped milking cows and they just sold hay out of it. And I was hauling hay into there,

and the guy that would come with the road, in our area, someone would come with a roadrunner, they unload you. Yep. It was like a custom hire deal. So this guy's unloading me and I'm talking to them. I'd see him like every week. old guy. He had like four or five roadrunners. He was slowing down and retired. I'm like,

hey, Dave, I really want to buy another hay squeeze. He's like, oh, I got one for sale. Well, I don't really have any money. Oh, that's fine. Just come get it. Just make me payments. I remember I bought that thing and then there was times where we couldn't make payments on time. And so I'd have to call him up and be like, Dave, like, I can't make the payments for a couple months. He's like, oh, that's fine. Just get caught up. And I was behind the whole time. But I always would communicate with them. I think that was key. I've still good friends with them. Like I sold when I sold all my three tie balers, they bought all my three tie balers from me. So I've tried to always keep those relationships open.

Communication is that's the key. It's just huge on everything. It's like I told you yesterday, he had a guy, he had a customer service deal, and you were kind of angsting about it because you're like, this guy, this. I already knew he was just one of those guys that has all the time in the world. And as soon as he opened his package, he was on my ass, calling. email, chat, everything, just getting at me right away. And I was like, oh boy, I haven't had many people be that aggressive right away. Like, usually they send you an email and it's like, hey, there might

have been a problem here. What are we going to do about it? And they'll, they're not up your ass about it. But then there's some people that are like, they want an answer in 10 minutes. Was there really a problem with the product or was he just trying to get a discount? Well, did you, do you think? It was a problem with the packaging, really. It was a problem with the packaging. but this is actually something that I just thought about that I've kind of starting to see with people. I don't know how predominant this is, but I feel like there are some people that are trying to scam

that try to scam me out of meat. Because you can't insure meat packages. UPS doesn't insure them if it's a perishable item. And I think there's... It's your word against theirs. Yeah. And I think, like, there's been some repeat offenders that I just don't feel like are telling me the whole story

and they might be snip-snippin some of those packages and saying that they got broke open or something like that. You know it's going to happen. And it's like, oh, how do you go about doing that? I mean, we've had some problems, but if it's a repeat offender over and over and over again and the pictures that they send you are shitty, it's like, okay, I don't know, I don't know. In our industry, it's the same way, right?

Similar problems. where it's, we call it market claims. This is different because it's consumer, right? Yeah. But we struggle with that where when our market gets tough, all of a sudden, there's a problem with all the product. Short fiber claims on straw. All of our straw is this long, okay, for the most part.

Yep. Market gets a little tough. All of a sudden, here comes all the claims. You can, the minute the price starts dropping, you can see the claims coming. Buyers are more, so let's see if we can get some adjustment. Price discount, right? Yep. So you're going to, you know, that's stuff that now you're like, oh, man, I'm seeing these

trends. That's a tough one, man. I give you, I give you credit for wanting to deal with that consumer. It's tough. Yeah. It is tough. Very tough. Yeah.

Because you're passionate about the product, right? You're growing the product. You want, you want everyone to open that box and be like, wow. This is, this is bad out. Most people are good. I mean, at the end of the day, 95% of people are great. But that happens to us as you get that one bad email or that one bad phone call and you go right in the basement.

Yeah. And then you're sitting there and you're, and you're like, why the fuck am I doing this? Like, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sure that's ran through your mind, right? Yeah. Like, what kind of can of worms are we just open? Yeah, and so I just said,

you better just call him. Just quit stewing about it and call him and get it figured out because it ain't going to get any better. You might, and it might be nothing. It might be somebody that just really wants to know this one little thing about whatever. How did it go? Did you call him? Yeah.

Did it go good? I mean, he wasn't great. He wasn't super friendly. Well, some people at camp. It didn't go south where he, you know, we're going to do the right thing. We're going to do the right thing. And that's the biggest thing, right? All you can do is do what's right.

Hope they don't give you a bad review because you're going to get that. Like, people, oh, look at TikTok, right? Yeah. Oh, 100%. Yeah. 100%. So, no, it's, and you're going to, that's the deal right there is you're going into a new market, right? You're pivoting.

You're in that moment. Right now. you started that what you said seven months ago you told me and a year or two or three years you'll have it all figured out right that's the thing you'll have it you'll have it so how old are you 23 shit i know right okay well i got a question for you just on your whole story so you were starting out and you just right out of high school you went into the hay business doing that full-time trucking all that stuff so like were you were you solely making your income just doing the hay business or were you Just the whole time that was what you were doing.

I worked for my dad growing up. My friend had a pipe bending shop. They built, made light poles and bike racks. Okay. So I worked in the fab shop. And I didn't like that. I couldn't weld and fabricate and do all that. We did all that stuff in the shop.

But I just didn't like working inside a shop. I like to be outside. So that's when I went to work on the farm. Did that when I was 16. and then I think I came back that next summer, worked the summer, but then didn't come back. So I did my own thing the summer when I was 17, but then I worked that winter. So that was my transition period, 16, 17 years old. But then by 18, I was like full time on my own.

You're full time just like, I'm doing this thing. I'm going to go for it. Yeah. It's pretty crazy that it's just, I mean, you said you're 40 now and you've just grown it exponentially every year after year, you're staying the same thing, staying in your lane, and it's grown, you know? It's pretty awesome. Thank you. I mean, that's, it's been tough. There's been so many fucking times I've wanted to quit. I don't know how I still say it. I'm like, why the fuck am I doing this? This is horrible. You think of like the big moments that you failed and then

you start like focusing. You're like, shit, then it was like that week and then that week. And you're like, fuck, I don't want to think about all this. And I see people like, they just change gears so fast. I have friends of mine that are in the trucking industry and one fucking day they're hauling logs and the next day they're hauling this next day they're hauling that and I'm like just go buy 50 log trucks to be really good run in 50. Mm-hmm. And I'm not saying don't like don't. I don't diversify.

I don't diversify and that's one thing I wish I would have done. Like I'm starting to dabble in real estate and we opened a coffee shop and got some other stuff. I've tried the house that I bought. We tried weddings there. Yep. That was a complete disaster. I can imagine. I told Michelle, I'm like, that's your game now.

And she's like, I don't think, I'm like, I'll forward you all the emails. Is Michelle your wife? Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. So I got married this summer. Cool. Awesome.

Congrats. Yeah. So when you told, when you said, you got 23 trucks around. Yeah. I don't run 23. I own, I think we have, I own 23. I'm only running, yeah, about half, maybe. They make more money parked half the time.

Well, that's what I was going to ask you, because I've heard this from, from other people that produce something or build something or do whatever, handle something where they had people haul their stuff and then they had trouble with it and they're like, fuck this, I'm going to buy a truck. So they bought a truck. And then it wasn't, that wasn't perfect. That's a learning curve. But then they're like, okay, at least I have control of it. So I bought another truck. And then they wake up one day and they realize they're not really in the business that they're starting in, they're in the freight business because they got all these drivers. And when you have a truck, when you have truck drivers, and we've had a few truck drivers on this company, on this show that

own trucks and deal, I'd say that the amount of problems, good and bad with your average truck driver is exponential over a normal employee, a normal employee because they're a special kind of people. So is there ever a point where you woke up and you're like, holy shit, why, why did I get all these trucks? Well, for me, there's two things that happened. One, when I was, when I switched my accounting from cash to accrual, so we were doing about 30 million in revenue. Yep. And I hired a CFO and he called him up and said, you're losing 120,000 a month in the trucking company. I fucking woke up real quick. The fastest thing I did was park trucks. and I hired owner-operators start pulling containers for us until I could figure out where we were bleeding.

We were hauling for some other people, containers as well, just taking the rate, right? Whatever the rate was, I called them up and I said, we cannot haul anymore. Like, what do you mean? I said, I parked the trucks. Like, I'm losing so much money. Because if I would have went to them, I needed to up the rate, 250 a load. We were getting paid 500. My cost, I needed to be getting paid $750. Just to break even.

Yeah. And they knew, like, if I went to them and said, hey, I'm going to increase it from 5 to 750, immediately they're going to say no. So I just called them up and said I'm not home anymore. Because I knew that, like, I can't. And they're not going to pay. Right.

So we started parking trucks. And I was able to, and owner operators were looking for work. I think we were paying like maybe 600 to load donor operators. And what people need to realize is each trucking company's cost is going to be completely different. So guys like, my cost is two and my cost is three. and my cost is four. The problem that we had is in 2019,

I bought a new hay press to double my capacity. So we were doing 150 loads a month. We went to 300 in like a month. I bought twice as many trucks, all new. We were going to Tacoma and Seattle, and we had to have new trucks for the emissions. Well, the issue was when we got into COVID, it got all fucked up.

And we weren't running efficient. And so when we got, what happened is when you go from cash to accrual accounting, you see everything. Mm-hmm. It's wide open, good or bad. Because you're lining up each month, right? All the revenue, all the expenses.

And so because we had so much cash flow, you can cover it up, especially when you're a growing company. When you go from a million a month of gross sales to two million, you can bleed for quite a while. Yeah, before it catches you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And luckily, when I hired my CFO,

I was going to go buy a whole bunch of ground, alfalfa ground. Like, that's why I hired it was to help me, borrow more money. And he's like, oh, yeah, this is a great plan. And we do a Zoom call and shit. Like he's like, this is a great. And then he dives in the financials. And he calls me up like three months later. He's like, dude, we got like a major problem here. He's like, your cash rate burns like $250,000 a month. You'll be out of business in six months. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, what are you talking about? Like everything's great. We just doubled. And he's like, this is not. He's like,

I don't even know. He didn't know anything about the business. He was, he's not from agriculture. He's like, I don't even know why you do this. That's he told me. He's like, I go, well, I couldn't it got this far by losing this kind of money. So I don't know what's going on, but we grew, we'll figure it out, but we got, like, we grew rapidly fast. And one of the issues was our cost of product was really high at the time. The way we were booking our inventory, so it actually looked worse at that time than it really would have because of the cash and accrual. But the issue was, we weren't efficient trucking either. So we had a, because the port was so screwed up, we were coming home empty a lot without containers, and that was killing us. Yep. So,

it was the efficiency in which the trucks were running because of the ports, and we weren't charging enough. Yeah, and you probably, that was probably, I mean, I don't know how it is today, but there was a time in there where those ports were totally screwed up. It's still a disaster. How many days a month are they actually letting you in there? I try to say 18. So when you have trucks, they got to be on the road.

Right. And that's our issue today is I bought, so we doubled our fleet to go to Tacoma, Seattle. So we used to, what happened was Portland, Oregon is a small port. Hanjin was servicing that port only because you can only bring a small vessel in because they got to come down river. They can't get the big vessels in. Yeah. During COVID, well, before Hanjin went out of business, SM lines bought Hanjin.

It's a Korean shipping line. They started servicing Portland, Oregon again. So then we went back to using Portland because during COVID, Portland is actually operating pretty well. when the rest of the country's falling apart, or the West Coast. The issue is now a lot of the freight has moved to East Coast. A lot of containers that we used to get were repositioned from like Chicago. So they would rail those containers from, you know, Midwest or wherever they'd rail them out to the

West Coast, then we would load hay in them. We'd get a decent rate. A lot of that cargo is now because of COVID and all the issues do, it's going, yeah, it's coming all the way around because during COVID, those ports were operating. They were favorable, right? The shipping lines, the shipping lines need to get in and out. And the West Coast is a mess, and it's still a mess. We're still going to Portland, and Tacoma and Seattle are worse than Portland. And that's like, I never would have thought that would have ever happened,

that Portland would be operating better. It's still a challenge for us. The port is only open four days a week. And then you've got to figure all the holidays. Oh, wow. Every single holiday that's a holiday that's on, holidays that aren't even on maps or holidays there. I was just going to say Portland I was going to say Portland's probably got

holidays every day of the week. It's like there's shit that's not even on calendar and said Matt. Things aren't even on a calendar, right? Yeah. What holiday is this? It's like shit, we got it. You got to keep track of all those things.

Oh, do we do? Like we forked like a lot of Because otherwise you're going to sleep in your truck till the next day. Oh, our drivers do not sleep in their truck. Don't worry. They come home no matter what. We've had it when we were going like

So when they did their whole strike thing, I'll never forget drivers call me from Tacoma. Hey, they're going to watch a football game. They're not going to be back. No bullshit. Longshoremen. Fucking take the container off the truck. Go home and watch football game.

And no one comes back to work and all trucks are sitting there. I'd get guys hotel rooms. That's not efficient. No. You can't do that. Not at all. Like you can't make money truck and doing that stuff. So the port workers went on.

strike. Oh yeah, just watch football. And you just were, that was like 2000. I think that was like, I'll say it was like 14, 15, 16 somewhere in there. Like it, they got, there was a whole deal. They got and then like in Portland they got in a big piss to match over plug and refrigerated reefers in. And so that's when Hanjin basically went, they pulled out, Hanjin pulled out. And then there was no one servicing the port.

Right. Um, no shipping lines. So shipping lines, you know, they need to get in and out. And what they do now is the way it works for Portland. is there are some private terminals, rail terminals, so we can take containers there, and then they rail them up to Tacoma. Seattle, they're put on a vessel. Okay. There is one SM line services, Portland. They bring a ship in. Basically each week they call, um, sometimes we call them ghost vessels where they don't show up. We don't know where they're at. During COVID,

they didn't even know where they're at. I'm like, you have to have GPS on these things. I hired a guy just to find ships. He used to work for Hanjin. That was his job. Hired Brad. He said, He came to me part time. He was looking for some extra work. And you're like, just fine. I go, all I want you to do is find ships. And tell me if they're going to show up.

Because they're telling me they're going to be there. And he'd call them up. He worked for them. And he'd call the guys that he worked with. And we're like, dude, like, there's, it just left China. And you've got it on the schedule. It's wrong.

He's like, you know, Brad, we don't really know. Just, you know, like, just update it. Their systems were so antiquated. They don't, they couldn't even during, COVID, they couldn't even like update shit fast enough to where it was at. Like they that's what a lot of people don't realize with like systems and these like when you're like when companies get big, their software is so far behind and then you get into something like COVID. It can't update. And for them to like fix that system, it's massive. The massive software change. Like you can't shut

down. Yeah. Like the conversion, right? New program. Yep. It's going to be challenging. Yep. So we saw that during it was a mess. We, we actually there was one time. So I thought, okay, I got to outsmart somebody on this deal. We couldn't get, getting containers was really hard. They have to, in, in Oregon, there's more export than there is import, right? It's all ag, hey is like the number one product that goes out, the grass straw. There's really hardly any other export. They have to bring containers reposition from somewhere else. So typically it used to be inland, like Chicago or somewhere they they'd bring them in on rail. That wasn't happening. What SM line does is they were, they'd have a ship go from Korea to BC, unload imports. There's no export out of BC. They'd load

empties. Then they'd either come down to Tacoma, Seattle, and then hit Portland. They'd bring empties with them to Portland. Offload empties. We'd come get them all. And then that's how, and that's basically how we would keep enough empties in Portland. They still have to do that. They have to reposition empties. But there's a cost. Yep. To do that. Every time a pick grabs a container, right, it's going to add up. So our shipping costs out of Portland is very expensive. It's very challenging for us to compete with other regions. Like right now it's like $50 in container. What I've heard guys can get containers out of like L.A. Long Beach for some shipping lines. We're 1,400 out of Portland. Holy shit.

350 to 400 out of the Toma, Seattle. So Portland is the most expensive. And then you still got to haul them back down to fill them. Yep, we got to fill them. So we're another like, I'm on. I have to pay my trucks like $750 a turn. So did you get those problems all fixed? Were you able to stop the bleeding? Yeah. So we, so basically when we, when I was, I parked, started parking trucks and went back to my customers and said, hey, this is the, these were the people that I was pressing and hauling for. Tried to find people to haul.

They found a few. Wasn't consistent. You know, that's the problem. We started hiring sub haulers like we were talking about. The issue was we went, we went hired sub haulers. then all of a sudden they got to go on a two-week vacation. Their trucks broke down. Their dog's sick.

Like, all their problems are now your problems. Yep. That's why you got your own trucks to start with. And we still hire, like in the summertime I'll hire. We call them JIPOs, right? Yep. Come in, work our straw season for a couple weeks. Because, you know, I've got extra like trailers.

I let guys come pull trailers, flatbed trailers. We pull maxies back there, the doubles, like a 40-24. it's not really that common except for the Pacific Northwest. Yep. The guys out here call them like wiggle wagons or something. So they pretty much figured out they couldn't find anybody that could keep up with what you guys were doing and they caved. The issue is those people also couldn't afford to buy and sell the hay either. So I'm not working with any of those people because they had to get out of that.

The only way they could make the trade because they were basically brokers was by getting a deal somewhere. Yeah. And the easiest way to get a deal was on the freight. It was on the freight. Yep. That was the easiest way. And so a lot of guys don't know their cost to operate. Yep. Per mile. Like their own cost. They go off of industry standards. Like we used to do the same thing. When fuel was going up, when fuel was going up during COVID, we'd never fuel surcharged ourselves. Because my, you got to remember, my product sold delivered Asia. Yeah. So my trucking company and Hey company were always just kind of together. Yep. And we never really like, we just,

We'd buy the product at market price. We sold it at market price. And then at the end of the year, it's like we made money and we lost money. That's how most businesses are ran. But when we separated those companies, we really separate them after my fire, which is a whole other, we can talk about the fire and that. But I really needed, after that, I had to separate them because I got into an accounting deal with the insurance company.

We had to separate. They basically switched. I had a loss of income policy. They basically switched me to a cruel account. to value the claim. I gotcha. So I didn't even know what they were doing. But looking back now, that's what they were doing.

They were trying to figure out my costs in each entity because I had them co-mingled together. So for the truckers, people will go, what's industry standards of fuel surcharge? That's what I would do. Well, what I buy fuel for and what you buy fuel for and what the guy down the road is completely different. And when it's going up every week.

All the time, up and down. Every day. You got to know. Like, you need to know your own cost to operate. You can't go off of like what the other guy's charge. charging. Yep. Now, yes, you are, we're price takers, but that's why you have to know your cost operate because we're like, you need to know can you actually take that haul. And yeah, for the guys that are over the road, they're going to listen to this, they're going to tear it apart.

They're like, well, I can't take it. I got to off the loadboard. Yeah, but how long can you continue to do that? Yeah. That's the thing. You can't, you can't operate at a loss indefinitely. Not forever. You just can't. You can get by like six months. Because you slow pay your bills. Yeah. You start doing things like fat guys will factor, right? Or in the trucking world. Like they're factoring, they're doing whatever they are to get cash flow through that

time or they're refinancing something or they're buying a new truck or they're trading this off or they're doing whatever to come up with cash. They actually don't know if it's benefiting them. Were you, do you feel like you were kind of that way before you hired your CFO? Yeah, CFO. That's really why I started the coaching program. And we spend a lot of time in, we talk a lot of. about finance, I would say 80% of the time.

And nobody wants to teach accrual accounting and CPAs don't want to even bring it up because it's a whole other like level. But they have to start at least thinking that way. And like understanding how that concept works because the traditional way of agriculture and trucking and small business, this does this goes for every small business. Yeah. The way that we were taught, well, we weren't taught number one most of the time. But if we were taught, it was taught the wrong way.

We went through this in the hog business, the 90s. Okay. The 90s taught people that you had to go accrual because when you were dealing with, when you were dealing with banking people that didn't know, didn't know the industry, so much of your money is tied up in this animal that you're growing and you don't get paid for it. and you've got all these inputs that are just sitting there. So when you look at your books,

if you're not on an accrual basis, well, basically it looks like the, it's kind of like you said. It looks like the dumbest thing you could ever do. Yeah, it shows that you're dying. You're dead. Right. Because you're an idiot. You just keep pouring money into this thing. And it's like, where, where's the profit? Well, the profit is when I sell this. It is. And so that was a hard lesson in that time period. But anyway, we got there. Yeah, and it's not, it's just not taught. You know, just like the life insurance, you know, is it Mary, what?

Mary Joerman. I came across her on a Facebook sponsored at her book. Yeah. Right. And then I saw her stuff and I read the book and I had a life insurance policy. One of my competitors, I was friends with them. Yeah. Older guys, like mid-60s.

we were just talking in general conversation. Oh, you have a life insurance policy. I'm like, yeah. Well, what do you have? Whole life? Who's it with, New York? Well, you know, you can borrow against that. I was like, I didn't know that.

And I was like, there's quite a bit of cash value in that thing. Because I got it when I was younger. My bank made me get it to cover some, when I took my first loans out to put my first press in, they made me get life insurance because I didn't have anybody to take the thing over. They wanted to make sure they were covered for their loans. So I bought a piece of property. property with that I'm going to build an apartment on.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. And I wouldn't have known that at all. Yep. If I wouldn't have talked, just had this conversation with this guy, who talks about that? And then I came across her ad and I'm like, wow, someone's actually talking about whole and life and turn, all these different terminologies when it comes to life insurance that nobody.

Yeah. Even knows. That's a whole, what she talks about is a whole other concept. Yeah. Insurance insurance is one of those things that like every generation has. she isn't here to defend herself. So the scourge of the insurance salesman, because so like when Clay graduated college,

so his older brother, when he graduated, there were a couple guys that he graduated from you and I, they ended up working for Northwestern Mutual Life. And when you think about that, every generation of people coming out of college or coming out of high school, what are they going to do? They're going to get married or they're going to buy something or whatever, And they're going to wake up one day and they're going to be like, damn, I should probably get some life insurance.

And so you go through this period of time. There's about 10 years in there, probably from when you're 20 to 30, that somebody, some insurance guys on your ass because that's the prime. That's the prime time. So they have a really bad, like they have a really bad image because people are like, ah, fucking insurance guys calling me. Oh yeah. But then on the other side is they don't really do a great job of educating you because, the generation of people that you're selling policies to, they got their whole life ahead of them, and they're not thinking about this, how can I use this as an asset. So I don't feel like they even explain it to them.

They're just, it's a stopgap. You get hit by a bus. It's going to take care of your kids. Absolutely, that's it. So there's a disconnect, which I'll give her credit. God, she takes a lot of fricking flack. If you look at some of, oh, man. Oh, really? Is it bad?

Oh, well, it's just, it's, I think it's that. It's the image of it in church. and they just they just go on her and they're like you're a scammer whatever this doesn't work yada yada and they none of them read the book or none of them have listened to her stuff they just see a clip it's you know you put a little clip of your podcast out you know and it's one say it's one snippet and people don't have the full context and then they just roll you over the coals for it yeah we cut up we're cutting up the clips from the weekly call that's what those come from so it's like it's not those clips that are like more of like because you're business to business owner.

Yep. And when you take them out, they look pretty rough. Yeah. Because it's like you're going to, it's more, because it's, it's direct. I have to talk. You're talking to them. Like I have to educate. Like this is why you have to do it this way.

Because it's hard for me because it's like, like, I never thought I would ever be doing that. Yeah. And you, like the first couple of months, I kind of let them slide. And then I actually watched a clip I shared to him my Instagram of coach Bert. I don't if you've followed him, but he's like, there's a real, if you go to my Instagram and look at it. It's like, he's like, if you're a coach, you have to hold people accountable.

Yeah. Right. And so it's like, you'll join, but then if you guys aren't doing anything to change. Right. Like if I'm telling you put all your shit into QuickBooks every month, like figure out how to put it all into fucking QuickBooks every month. Like don't keep telling me you don't have time. Like, yeah, it might take you three months. But like in a year, if you haven't figured it out or six months, like no one's going to fix

that for you. You have, that's what people have to do is you have to fix their problem. Yep. Like talking to people and listening to podcasts and educating and going to events and being around the right people, but you still have to go do it. You have to implement the information. Absolutely. Take action.

You have to take ownership of your own inability to do it and hire somebody to do it. Exactly. That's the deal right there. Because that's, that's what I had to do. It took me, you know, I'm 52 years old. It took me a long time. Yeah. And that was the best thing I did was I didn't try to be a book.

Keeper. Every, I'm to the point, every person that has, whether it's my lawyer, whether it's my accountant, whether it's anybody, when they say, do you want to send me this or do you want to set me up as a viewer that I can go get what it? Yep, yep, set it up. Here's the access. So that you could just get it. Yep. Here's the access.

Because I want to make sure that I'm not even, it's not that I'm the weakest link because I already know that I'm going to be the weakest link. I don't want to be the link. I want you to just be able to go get it because I just know that about myself. I want the information and I need it, but I know that I'm not, that's not my strength. Well, and here's a good one.

Family, you know, any times I've heard my wife, my mom, my aunt, my cousin is the CFO or the bookkeeper, which not that that's horrible, but it can be. But it can be in the wrong situation. And having someone else look at it, not with no with no vested interest in anything 100% whether it's your CPA your account like somebody needs to be looking at that for one there's going to be errors yep a good bookkeeper we we make errors we make errors on payroll like things happen or or or someone puts time in like wrong

or the way they're asking for vacation like Michelle finds so much stuff it's just it's filled out wrong when it comes to payroll or even when your dad entering something like you're going to transpose numbers right and so that's why you need to have to have have another said eyes when people get all like oh i'm going to control it or you know it's our families it's a family a whole family deal and we're not going to let anybody into it it's like red flag yeah why do you not want anybody to look at it i'm like i'll i'll show anybody my i mean not yeah i have no problem like my financials are very clean because i want to be able to be bankable yes right i want to be able to maybe sell the business someday if no you know if that's what i need to do but i have to

have clean data. I got to have the numbers if I want to do those things. And I'll have people come in and like, I don't want to put the cash in the bank account. Okay, well, you're not going to get a loan. What decision do you want? Yep. Can't have it both ways. You can't. I don't want to pay taxes. Well, I want to grow my business. I want to grow my business, but I want to hire people to look at my financials that I know I should hire them. Absolutely. It's like, well, you can't grow your business. You're not going to be able to. You have to be around those right people. You've got to have to have a good bookkeeper, whether it is your, maybe it is your relative of your spouse. That's great. But have somebody else help them. Yeah, talk about 10-4 coaching, how that all come about

and how, what made you get into that? So when I went through all that, we're on the financial stuff, when I went through all of that, like losing all that money. And so I basically, we switched from cash to accrual because I was wanting to grow again. So we wanted to go from, my goal was go from 30 million to like 60 million, 60 to 100. That was, you know, the plan. Just keep doubling. So we switched from cash to accrual like around the first year, January. Explain what that means to somebody that doesn't know. So cash recall. What you're doing is, and I might butcher this.

Nope. You're good. You're basically lining up everything in a month. Mm-hmm. And you're looking at you're putting, so you're changing the dates on your invoices. So it's the date that you actually sold the product, even if you didn't get paid. Yep. It's the date that you received money for that, not a prepayment.

So if you sold something and got, or if you took prepayment on a product, but you actually didn't deliver the product, you don't book that as actual true cash in the bank account. Like it still goes in the bank account, but you make a journal entry basically in your QuickBooks, you're holding that money. You're not recording it as revenue as income. And you're lining up all your expenses for that same month.

So if you think of a, like January, if you were going to switch right now from cash to accrual, it's everything that you actually sold in that month. So we look at our yard as like the driveway of our processing facility. Every hay that comes, all the hay that comes in, all the hay that goes out, we got to line all that up, all of the employees' time that took to produce that product for that time. So everything's a time deal. And then you know your true cost.

That's the only way. Because what happens is let's take, I would use my coffee shop as an example. So the small drive-thru coffee shop. we buy our cups, maybe $5,000 a cups might last us six months. Well, if say the gross revenue is $20,000 a month, and I'm only using $1,000 a month in cups, but I'm buying it on cash basis, I'm going to expense, I'm going to write the check for the $5,000.

It's going to show a loss. A couple thousand dollar loss for the month. And as a business owner, we look at it, we're like, shit, I just lost $4,000. Yep. Well, it's because you expensed all those cups. Yep. in one month.

Even though you only used a fifth of them. I only use 1,000. So basically what you do is you go into your, you go into your QuickBooks and you would say, okay, you have to do inventory. That's one thing. You adjust that kind of stuff. You adjust that.

So you put into expense $1,000 a thousand dollars of cups instead of $5,000, and you take the $4,000, you hold it over here like in an Excel spreadsheet. There's, you know, $4,000. And then at the end of the next month, you count the cups. Whatever's gone, the great thing about this is you know what's ever is gone. So you have the cup, you have the drinks that were sold. What do you have? the loss. Now you can start tracking your loss each month. That's the important part. So it's just way

more organized. Way more organized. It's the only way. When you were going, it was just cash, go, go, go, go. I had no idea. I grew that thing to where it was at with no idea. And I like, I could literally remember like going to my bookkeeper and I'm like, I don't know how much money I'm making. And I have a good bookkeeper. Like everything is. Yeah. But there's a to go to that level with that type of that size of a business, you have to have someone that understands this. This is where I hired a fractional CFO or a part-time CFO. And that's exactly. They log in remotely from QuickBooks.

We get him all the data. He spreads all the reports. And he's only, I think, spent like an hour or two there ever at the facility in like three, three, four years. Fully remote, which is the best part. Yep. No emotion in it. Yeah. Like when we're going to buy something, we built a big barn this last summer. It was like 300 by 300 big steel building. And I didn't want to buy. I didn't want to build it because steel's high and interest was high. And he comes to me and says, we can't not? I go, why is that? He goes, your tarping bill and then your loss, a product was 400,000. You can pay for it just in? Yeah. He goes, how much is a bar? And I go, I'm in a guess at 1.5. And he goes, can you get me a quote? So I went out, got him the quote, place in Missouri, they come out, put them up, got the

quote erected, went back to him, said, this is it. He said, okay, great. I've net, first time I never talked to my banker on a deal. He shopped it. It was like, we're going to build this barn is what he told the lenders. And this is the performer on why we're going to build it. Yeah. He had all the numbers from all the loss, right? He had everything. It wasn't. He just was like, it was a no brain. It's a no brainer. He's like the return on investments like three, three or four years on this deal. Yeah. I bet that's peace of mind for you, you know, just like. Gosh. It was like it's just a whole different world. And that's that so when I went through that process, I actually spent about a quarter million on business training. So I went through

an organization that does just general business training. So employees, scaling, financials. And when I got done with that, it was actually about a year ago, I started shooting content like this style. Yep. And we cut it up into reels, but we were shooting content for training videos for for my company. Yeah. And I started dropping them on social media. And then people started DMing me saying, hey, like, what are you doing? Do you have a podcast? And I was like, no. Training videos for your employees. Yeah. You're putting them out. That's my challenge. And then you were just putting them on social media. I was just putting them on social media short form reals like you guys do. So I started getting DMs and my tip I had my TikTok had like I didn't even have one like a couple years ago. My wife calls at the news and

She's like, you got to get TikTok. You got to get TikTok. I'm like, screw that shit. I don't want TikTok. So I started dropping that stuff. And my TikTok went to like 20,000 followers in like three months. And my Facebook went from like 3 to 15,000 in like a couple months. And I was like, whoa, you know, like this is interesting.

This is something. So I was working with a guy, Andy Elliott. Yep. I know him. So our salesman guy. So I went down. I went through the Cardone program. He's blown up.

Yeah, so I went through Cardo Inventures, which was a spinoff of grants. Went through their business training, learned a lot. I basically got an MBA. But I spent a couple hundred thousand dollars there. And got done with that, started working with going down to Andes. Michelle, my wife had me follow Bradley. I had never listened to a podcast like two years ago, ever. So you remember, I was never exposed to any of this stuff.

Gosh, your head almost exploded, didn't it? No, we were going to Hawaii. And I listened to one of Bradley's podcast. for six hours straight. Dropping bombs. Dropping bombs. That was the first podcast. And she's like,

I think you'd really like Brad's content. And so I started listening to Brad, and then when I was listening to Brad, Andy came on. And it was when Brad and Andy first hooked up. And Brad invited Andy to actually go to an event in Miami. Andy wasn't even supposed to speak.

So we go, so, ma'am, I asked Michelle, do you want to go? And she's like, no. And I was like, we're going to go see Brad. She loves Brad. She's like, we're going to go. And she's like, I don't want to go. And so I little.

in bed, I text one of my friends. You want to go? He's like, yeah. And then she's like got FOMO. Yeah. So me and him went out there. There was like 30 speakers in Miami. It was a couple hundred bucks with this event. It was the first event I'd ever went to. And the different speakers every half an hour. Dude, it was like two days straight. I was, it was a, I had a really good time. Met Brad, met Andy. And so I came back. I told Michelle, I was like, I don't like sales, like car sales shit, like drives me nuts. Like, I hate going to dealerships. I don't like sales. I said, I really think we should, you know, I met Andy and the guys, I think we should maybe go down to the Lions Den, you know. And she's like, I hate car sales. He does battle mic, you know, and objection and all that. She's like, I don't want to go down there. So we flew down there. And what a great experience. I've seen his clips. And he, he's good. Andy's a good. The thing with Andy is Andy's a good person. Yeah. And that's what I really like about like Brad and Andy is you can just,

tell like they're good people yeah they're all everybody's out to make money and sell stuff and all that but they they you actually learn like when i go to like i'm not in sales is what i say we're all in sales we all are he helped me flip that mindset right um i let during the time that i when i start was losing all that money i actually ended up in the hospital for a week called a bankruptcy attorney was like i'm done with this fucking shit off this thing i tried off the hay press nobody wanted it like I did. I actively called several people sent pictures like, buy this thing.

I'm going to do something different. I was going to try to just get what I could out of it and go into multifamily real estate. Yep. But what I didn't realize is how much money you need to do that. Mm-hmm. Which is, we talk about creative financing. It's all over with that.

Real estate. You got to have money or capital to get into multifamily or do creative financing, right? It's like buying farm ground. Mm-hmm. Same way. It's almost impossible to scale farm ground. Yeah.

It's the same thing as multifamily. But basically, I got myself in a really bad spot. And financially, emotionally, I let my body physically just, I've never been like, I never worked out, I never really played sports. Yep. Drove truck, you know, ate shit, truck stops, you know. And I would go to the gym and try to, like, work out. But, like, I didn't understand how to eat.

Mm-hmm. Like, I didn't know about protein and fat, grams. Go to the gym and it made you tired and sore. Oh, fucking cross-fit. I was, like, the most, I told, I was, like, the most. I was the longest paying non-attending member at our gym. Yeah. Like, so I go down there, go to Andy's.

Brad's there. Six-pack. Fat out of shape, I am, right? And Andy's like, he's like, and they instantly, I'm out, I'll never for it when I called, like, because I, Andy's thing was on the, uh, text. He used to always do, like, text that his phone number. So I text and it'd go to like, obviously, it'd go to a sales person. Yeah.

And I remember Chris calls. And he's like, dude, like, what's up? His sale, that's my salesman. He's like, dude, what's up? Like, where are you at? You know, like, they're all salesy, you know? I'm like, what do you do? And I'm like, oh, I do hay.

And he's like, hey, he's like, hey, what? You know, it's like, they're all goofy, you know, sales guys. And so then he's like, we got a fucking hay farmer now. He's like, who would ever thought we're doing car sales now we have a fucking hay farmer in here. So instantly they were kind of, I was kind of the joke of the group, right? They were interested. They were interested, right?

Like, you know, so it was cool because I got, I met those guys when Andy was blowing up. So I know the main sale, you know, I, I know those guys pretty well, I feel like. And I ended up paying Andy like for a private coaching session. So I was actually going to my last event at Cardone Ventures finishing up my program. And then I went from, I went a day early, went and saw Trevor from Bales Hay. So Trevor had reached out to me before that just on social media wanting to know about trucks. Yep. That was when he was going to buy trucks.

So me and Trevor connected. So I went, I drove down, met Trevor. We didn't even get any content. We were just bullshit. And we're like, and we get ready to leave. And we're like, dude, we didn't even do a YouTube video or nothing. I'm like, fuck it, we'll do something later. But we were just having conversation.

And went to Andy's, paid him for a private session, went to his house, and sat down. And he's like, all right. So like, kind of give me like three minutes of your story. And what do you want to do? And he told me before I came that I needed to bring a list of questions. And so I still have the notebook. And shit, I wish I would have brought the notebook. But it's funny because it's like, it says agricultural mastermind, general admission,

1997, VIP, like, four grand, fucking blow this thing up or something like that. And then he wrote my meal plan next to it. It's like 40 grams of protein, shredded workout. this. It was literally like, like one page was like this and one page is that. And he goes, you know, he goes, you just need to hire someone around the hay company and then just go help people. And I was like, what? I was like, I did not come down there thinking like that was not in the plan. Yeah. I just, when I went down there, I was like, I like what they're doing. I like being around these guys. And there's got to be like more to what's going on. I bought light speed,

which was what Brad's training company. Training company. So I bought how this all kind of starts. I bought light speed from Brad for the Hay Company. Because that was where I was hung up at the Hay Company is the training. I was always the one to train all the truck drivers, all the forklift drivers, all the squeeze drivers, because I want it done my way. Yeah, light speed for anybody that doesn't know, Brad Lee's company is light speed. And it's a train.

He essentially created a software that's a training platform that he owns and companies, business owners, buy it and they train their employees. Yep. So we're shooting. So that's how it all started. was I started shooting videos, training videos for the hay company. And then we just started cutting up reels of that, dropping it on the internet. People start DME.

And so it kind of just all transpired over that. And then you went down to Andy's and he was like, you need to start coaching people. And even like, I'll never forget when I Brad. So Brad goes, so what courses are you going to sell? And I go, I looked at him and I was like, I didn't even know people sold courses. I did not know. That was a thing. I was like looked at him like all stupid and he's like I go I'm not going to sell courses and he's

like cool and he like takes a puff off his cigar he like turns and walks away and I'm like what's even talking about yeah I had no idea so why do you think why do you think people started DM in you why what about you do you think made their in made him interested I think because um people know that I've you know started from scratch. And I'll put out there the challenges and most people won't. I think that's the biggest thing. Everybody's like a lot of people are too proud to say they failed.

Right. I'll just tell you what came to me and I'm sitting. And I've watched a few of them. And it's what we talk about all the time. Because a lot of people that are peddling. Selling shit. Selling courses. Aren't authentic.

And your authenticity, shines through, you know, because you came from a place with no intention to do that. And you're just sharing what you learned in a way that's like, I'm just telling you, this is the deal and this is why. And this is what you need to do. And there's value there. I mean, you are selling value. That's the thing. There's guys out there that make their living selling courses when they've never built anything. You've built something. So it's completely different. But there's a lot of people out there, you know, that are pedaling shit that they made all this money drop shipping or they made all this money doing a 4X trading. And they're pedaling that shit to you and they have a screenshot of what they made or what they trade.

Did they? Did they? Is that a real business? Is that a real institution? You know, like you, it's like you build a hay business and a trucking business. And the other thing is, in the world of business, it's all the same. Because it's all people. At the end of the day, it's all people, it's all relationships, and it's all taking care of your customer, whatever you're selling.

That's the thing is none of this stuff that we're talking about is it's for every business. You're going to have them, that's why you're going to, it doesn't matter if it's a landscaping company, a logging company, have more loggers coming. I never would have thought. My first hashtags were like, hey. Like my demographic was, hey guys. And next thing I know, I did the first mastermind. 35 people come.

And it's logging construction. Blue collar. Yeah, like I thought, I was like, holy shit. Like I got all these different industries. Yeah. And I started thinking, I'm like, duh. Like when I went to, when I worked with Cardone, it was like, I go in the room.

And it's, there was the first one I went. too was me and the potato guys they make the baby potatoes they're from back here oh really in the mid well they're i call back here yeah they're not from the west somewhere this yeah they're packaging facilities in bakersfield but they they're it's i forget the natures or something okay is the brand name yep and they were in the room and it's a big company like very large size company and i'm like shit and i'm thinking like why are these guys here and they're like it wasn't it wasn't They were there because they had a lot of, I think it was mostly like kind of like,

they want to work on their people side of things. Right? So they had their sales figured out. They had their marketing figured out. They knew like they're like once again, what they have? They needed to work on the people side of things. They were looking for an outside perspective.

They were willing to invest that money to get somebody else, to give them an idea that they could go back and implement. They had a well-running business. It wasn't that they were failing, right? They just, that's what people have to realize is you've got to get around other people. I got ideas all the time. That's why I love coming, like, even out here.

Yeah. I was, I did a post today on my Facebook where I was at the airport in line. And one of my, actually one of my really good friends was in front of me at TSA. He's a, actually is like the head of lending at the bank that I'm with, but in the private sect homes. Okay. And so instantly I'm like, hey, Travis, like, what's rates doing? He's like, well, they're going to talk today about it. But he's like, the short of it's basically you're going to see five and a half percent interest rates.

And I was like, how do you know? And he's like, it's all about the federal and like, if you look at industry, like the whole thing, right? And he explained it to me in three minutes. And I was like, oh, it makes sense. But I don't. Yep. Like we all wait till someone's like, we see the rate go down. Yeah.

Well, I got excited because I'm trying to build some more apartments. And I got shit that's at 7.25% that I bought during the high because I just wanted to buy the inventory up. And now I've been waiting to refinement. And now you know, it's coming down. Fucking airport. I was at TSA and I was like, I learned something, you know? Mm-hmm. And I learned more.

more. And I was like, hey, can you, I want you to come on one of my weekly calls and explain to everyone, like how this works. Because this is, you know, so right now I do, I bring guest speakers on to my calls. So I've had about three, two to three a week. I do a call every week. Yep. But I started bringing more speakers on because people really like having that. It's basically a live podcast. Yeah. But you get asked questions. So basically went to Andy's, he's like, you should, you know, build a team to help run the hay company. because I didn't have a team, really. Yep.

It was me. And so we were getting better at that. I hired someone that worked at Les Schwab for 14 years. I was an assistant manager there. He was my John Deere salesman for four years. So he's going out to see my farmer because I never went and saw farmers. I didn't have time. Yeah.

So our industry is very tight on margin. So I was always scared to get overhead because we'll go through months where we'll make money and we'll lose money and I don't want to let people go. Yeah. I'm not going to sell someone on a pipe dream that where I can pay you all this money. And then our industry gets in commodities, you know, we get into where we're losing money. And what do you do? You got to do, shred people.

Yeah. You got to cut costs. Where's the easiest way to cut costs, people? Yeah. And you've got, basically you've got your product is a seasonal business. You're a seasonal business. You have to make a revenue stream. Make hay why the sun shines.

Well, but you got to pay people every day. Every day. And we export. year around, but the issue is we're buying product a lot of times one time a year. Yeah. So we're buying based on whatever kind of everybody wants to pay for it. And we have, we're like, we have no clue we're going to sell it for. Yeah. So we're locked in. So market goes sideways. Shipping costs go up, exchange rate.

That's destroying our Japan business. Yep. Mm-hmm. You know, it's 1.4 has been. Yeah. That's hard. Our customers can't afford to buy our product. They want to buy our product.

They can't afford to buy it. gosh, we're kind of like squirrels because I shot you off on that. Well, but this is, but I mean, that's the, I was telling us, I'm like, we could go all over the place. There's so many, this, this, this, this industry and all this stuff ends up. So the coaching, basically when, what happened is I went through all that stuff, Andy planted the seed, Brad planted it. I didn't get it. Andy plants it again. I still didn't have a plan. And you had the social media, people were asking you. I had social media. People were DMing me like, hey, can I pick your brain?

Hey, can I pick your brain? And then I... Start building the team out on the hay business? Yep. So I'm starting to build the team out on the hay business. And I want to scale that still. But I have to... I'm to the level where I have to get an executive team.

And the hay company can't afford an executive team. Right. So I need more locations. And I need another level. Like, I need a... Like, my CFO needs to come on full time or I have to find a full time run, right? Like, you'll get to that.

point where that's what I learned was once you scale and you you hit they call it break points but you know one to three million five to ten you know ten to thirty or however you know each one's a little different for industries but it you got to understand that when you grow the level of talent's going to have to grow with you or you're going to bring a new talent john maxwell hits it on the head law the lid basically people will have lids and it's either they don't if they don't have the education, you need to educate them and they can, you know, take that and apply it and grow with you. Or certain people just won't grow past that. Some people might always be a bookkeeper. They might always be a manager. They might always just be a loob tech. They might always

just be a tractor driver, right? But you have to sort through those people, but you can't force people to do something if they, one, don't want to do it or two aren't willing. Yeah, I'm just letting you off the hook right now that is all of your entities grow. I'm only a mower guy. I can run that. See, that's real. But he's telling you up front. He's full of shit though. He just says that. He always says that, but he's always wanting to get into the thick of it of it living every year. Yeah. But other than that, no more responsibility. Swivel coozy on the mower. Yep, that's it. But that's the thing is you know your line, right? Right. And where people get, that's where people get all screwed up is they'll start or even with family it's even like family's really like I'm lucky in the

fact that I kind of done this on my own I don't have that you know really an issue there but and I forget that in the coaching program yeah because all say do this do that do that and then one of them will come to me and they're like well I got Susie over here and I'm like oh fuck now we got deal with this mess yeah so like that's a real deal and I and so that's what I'm like I don't know everything yeah I can tell you that from an outside perspective that's going to be a fucking problem. Because you're going to have to deal with it if you want to fix the problem, because I'm pretty sure that could maybe be, I'm just thinking that's the problem. They paid you for that realism. That's the deal. That's the thing. They know that. They know that. They need you to

tell them. Yeah. So what I wanted to ask was your first, your first group, you said you had 35 people. Yeah. Okay. Was that intimidating you leading up to that? I had no fucking idea what I was going to do. Yeah. So like I'm not a guest. I'm not a speaker. Yeah. Like I will go down rabbit holes forever. I can, I'm, I, the complaint that I get at my events is that we go down rabbit holes. Yeah. And that's something that I'm going to have to get better at. We don't have slides yet.

We don't have any script. We're making workbooks. Yeah, you're just doing it as you get. We're doing it. Like we have there. We're trying to put structure into it. But here's what I did. The first event, so I hired another coach, his name, Sean Crane.

he is speaking he has uh fitness primarily fitness type programs for guys and i hired him to help me get the coaching program the coaching program boot like going like kick started boots off the ground when i first met him um he was at andy's the second time i went so i've been to andy's a couple times he was there i didn't talk to him but i saw him he's been on brad's podcast and then he he cold dm'd me looking for obviously looking for leads right? I was following him. He probably saw me in his stories and he messaged me and I had I had been um now contemplating the coaching program. Yep. And so when I, when I talked to him, he said I have two programs. One, I help guys get fit. The second is I help people become

coaches. Oh, good. And I said, why I need both? Because Andy called me fat. Yeah. Sure he did. And he's like in fucking Jesse out of like, they're like 400 people in the room. And he's like, like, 400 people in the room. me and Michelle are there. And he's like in fucking Jesse over here. I keep fucking telling him he's got to get in shape. And I don't even know how he got a hot girlfriend because we weren't married at the time. And Michelle's like, holy shit,

I can't leave you said that. I go, but that's what I needed. Like that's what he's not, he's not being mean. No. He's just saying it how it is. He's being brutally honest.

He is. Like I would let myself always go because you would get into a place where like you're losing money and the business is challenging. Yeah. And then what do you do? You stop eating right. You stop working out. You stop, and your head gets all screwed up.

When you're running a business and it's on your shoulders, whatever it is, you give, you take everything out of yourself to do what has to be done. And at the end of the day, what's left to take care of yourself? Usually there isn't any. And so you just fall in a heap and go to sleep because you're dead ass tired and then you get up and do it all over again. Eat one time a day, a steak at 9 o'clock at night with, you know, it's like, I had the worst eating habits. Like driving truck we talked about.

Yeah. Go to the truck stop. There's some really good stuff in there for you. Yeah, right. Right? Best, you know, it's like, that's just you get into that lifestyle. Because quick. Because that's what, you know, not to get off on another tangent, but one of the biggest

problems we have in this country is at most all food that's quick is bad for you. It's horrible. And when you're driven and you're trying to get everything done, you've got to get done. So the options you have are terrible. And that's why I brought in when we did the mastermind. I brought in Sean. So I had Sean there. We started,

we had no plan. We literally, we set the room up. I had Jeff who worked for Cardone. I went through his finance courses. So he came. I asked him, hey,

will you come be a speaker? He lives not too far from me, so worked out perfect. He's a CFO, works for like an $8 billion dollar company. And so he loves helping people. And so he's like, I said, hey, I'm going to start this deal. Will you, you know, come to a presentation? He's like, be glad to. He loves helping people understand finance. So I had Sean come, who is a fitness coach I hired, Sean Crane. I don't

if you know, Sean. I think I've seen some of this stuff. Yeah. So I hired him to come, so he's, he, like I said, we didn't have a plan. We kept saying like, we're going to come up with a plan. So before my event, I went to Victor's, which is Profit Rocket. So Victor is in the HVAC space. So Sean and Victor were friends. And so I said, hey, I need to kind of get a group together for this mastermind. So Sean goes, you're in my program, I'll come speak. You go to Victor's event. You'll get Victor to come speak. So I went to Victor's event. We flew down to California, flew on a private jet to Austin, went to profit rocket,

spent a couple days in Austin at his event. I think he had about a thousand people there. And really good speakers. He had Tim Grover, Marcus Latrell, is that right? Yeah. He was there. And then a whole bunch of other people.

I think he had probably 15, 25 people speak. People from the industry as well. So they'll do panel. They'll do breakout sessions with panels. And so it was a really good event. HVAC owners, you didn't know, like, I'm, people are like, what do you do? I'm like, I'm like, oh, I sell hay. And they're like, what the fuck are you doing an HVAC event?

Yeah. I'm like, I want to, for one, I'm networking with Victor. Yeah. But I'm wanting to understand, like, more industries. Yep. HVAC is just like farming. Seasonal. Yeah.

They don't make any money in the winter. Yep. And they lost their ass last year because it wasn't hot. Yeah. said like in Texas it wasn't hot California it wasn't hot they don't make shit off in the wintertime so they have to do creative things yeah and so I was I was you know talking about all these different things with with these HVAC owners and I was like you start once again we're back to business yeah we get caught up to we're farming or we're trucking or whatever and people don't

understand it's like the more that you talk to other business owners we all have the same problems all the same yeah we all have seasonalities we all have weather issues we all have labor problems labor problems. Like, they're like, so, so I asked Sean to come to the event. He opens it up. It's a mindset. I thought that people would, I really didn't know if people would connect with Sean because he's very disciplined and very to the point.

And when we were at Victor's event, Sean spoke. And I was like, he's like, well, we'll figure out we're going to do at your event there. Do you think we did? No. Yes. So we literally, I pick him up from the airport and I'm like, okay, so what are we going to do for the mastermind? And he's like, oh, we'll figure it out. I had four people.

Or I had Sean, Victor, myself, and Jeff. Oh, and my friend Casey, Liddell, I'm going to say that wrong, probably. I don't know. He's got a pretty big YouTube channel. Okay. He's got about 200,000 subscribers, but he makes like 30 or 40 grand a month because of his watch time. Really? And so he explained how it's not about subscribers.

Yeah. Really. Yeah, it's about engagement. an engagement and his demographic and all that. So I wanted Casey to come talk about YouTube specifically with YouTube. And he's got a whole entire, he'd actually be a really cool guest for you guys. Totally normal dude. Move to Oregon.

He DM me, cold DM me off Instagram. He did a couple of YouTube videos with me, just drove over and did him. And I didn't understand anything about YouTube. This was like three years ago. He's sitting in the fucking hay squeeze in a barn. I don't know this guy and he's taking videos. And then I'm like, what are you going to do with this stuff? And he's like, I go, I don't even know what you do.

do. And he's like, oh, I, I tow. And I'm like, okay. He's like, well, I don't really charge for towing all the time. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, well, I make my mind on YouTube now. And I'm like, that's a thing. He pulls up his, like, his app on his phone and shows me the deposit. And I'm like, bullshit. And he's like, next month, next month. I was like, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, isn't that crazy? I had no clue. And so he's like, and so as see, all these things start, I'm like, fuck, I could have a YouTube channel. I could have this. I can have that. So a whole new world was open to me in like two, like in two years. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you.

So you just feel like when you made that, when you made that decision that you were going to go down the road of getting educated. When I went to Cardone, when I signed up to go to Cardone Ventures, okay, I lost $1.2 million when I was when we're, when our crash rate, when we, yeah, I think it was 20. I think it was in the spring of 20. I had burnt through, I think it was $1.2 million. My bank said, you got fucking six months to make $1.2 million or we got some problems. They said, you got to get to break even. We sat right in my office and I said, there's no fucking way that's happening. There is no way.

I don't even know how to make that. That's net income. Yeah. And we got, I'm almost pretty sure that that $30,000, which was my first initial of ticket price to go to Cardon, it was $32,500 to go to the first event I went to. Did you? And I wasn't to break even yet. Yeah.

And I went in like, $7. self on that? It was like I already had a CFO, but like I still felt like I needed outside information. Like I was like there's more, this is before I met Andy, before I met Brad. Like I still had many of those guys. But I was like, I got to get information from someone. Before that, I have a friend of mine where his dad has a very large cabinet business where they built. They're like one of the largest manufacturers for cabinets for multifamily. They got a challenger jet and like, they got shit. He's got shit going on. He's, yeah. He, he, And so that was my only real mentor I could call, and I hated calling him because he would always answer.

He would always answer my question, but I didn't want to be taking his time for free. Yeah. And money doesn't like, you know what I mean? Like that's a weird conversation. Like, his time's worth more than the money. Yeah. But every time I'd call, it was like something was totally fucked up when I'd call him. Yeah.

Like after I had my fire, they can't, they told I could, they told me I couldn't rebuild. They said my whole property is in wetlands. They put stop work order. Oh shit. So I went through a whole entire deal there. Fucking insurance was a disaster. They had me underinsured. My insurance agent was my banker's dad.

Oh, yeah. So my insurance agent, his dad was my banker. Yeah. And guess where all their collateral was? Oh, boy. In smoke. So shit. And that was in 16.

So I got through that mess. So I built, so I know we've got way off. I bought that property. We rocked that thing. Yeah, to be able to be expanding. 2000. I bought it in like, oh, what do we think? say 06, I think.

Yeah, 06. In 14, I built new barns. In 16, they fucking burned. Oh, wow. So then they came in, said, wetlands, can't rebuild, dealt with that shit show, gotten a fucking lawsuit with my neighbor,

realized real quick how fucked up lawsuits are. Do you anyone but lose money. Yep. Complete fucking waste of time for anybody. The only people who loves a lawsuit is the two lawyers. Yep. Just, the best attorney you can get will talk you out of a lawsuit.

Like, really look at it, be like, if the person's like, yeah, we got this, like they don't have it. No. It's a pipe dream, the best. So went through all that shit, and then it was like, got the barns rebuilt,

and then I was like back, I put as much money as I could back into redoing that, Hey, Press, my original one. There was a pile of shit. I spent $100,000 redoing it. We weren't running. We couldn't run material

while we were rebuilding. So I was paying other people to try to press for me, what product I had left, because my whole facility burned up with my product. And it burned up the mill harvest. So I still had, the best thing that happened was I still had product that I

hadn't harvested. The problem was all my good shit burned up. What I had left was shit they'd been rained on for the year. So I had other people press for me, which your competitors don't really like to press for you, for compress and help you. So they were fucking all over me, like trying to get my customers and trying to get my farmers and, you know, you're fighting off all that. We got back running in the spring. Market got really good. I made a shitload of money in a few months. And that's what I learned was in our industry, typically six months.

If it's bad, you've got to try to get through six months. And I didn't, like, nobody talks about how important six months of cash reserves is or having an available line of credit to get you through those times. Now, each industry is different, but farmers generally are pretty good because they're used to getting paid once or twice a year. Where I get challenged is my, the exporters, aren't. They need cash flow and they'll dump price to generate cash flow. And so that's where it's

been challenging for me because now that I have a decent line of credit and we have working capital, I'm okay with weathering the storm because you'll understand that the reason why you can't sell is either a, like there's an issue in their country, disease right now. There's a disease supposing Korea. And what exporters do is they'll just drop the price to try to force the product into that market. It's like they can't fucking buy because they have a disease. Right. They have no use for it. Like just you're going to have to wait it out. Yeah. And that drives me crazy in our industry. That is like that it and then it just totally fucks up the hay market. And it's like just these guys, these exporters like my competitors,

they need to understand. They need to go to business like school because most of them haven't figured it out. They're simply running on cash flow. And so that's why I'm, passionate about it is because nobody really, you know, talks about accrual. And, and really that was the turning point for me was going through all of that, you know, working with Cardone and then, you know, meeting Andy and those guys and then dropping that stuff on the internet. And then it was like, I started getting all this feedback. And then Sean was like, just started coaching program. And so I was like, fuck. I was like, okay, I need to build content. Well, no podcast studio. You know where to do it. Right. So then, um,

I started trying to build it in an office. Then there was like train tracks. And that didn't, it was did not work. So then that's when I said, okay, I'm gonna just get a container made. Container stop us who built it there in California. They did a great job for me. They built the container, shipped it up, delivered it. I had my guy come out, put the shit in it.

And I'm like, now I'm set up. I can do that. That'll get me by to get content built. And honestly, the first course I'm working on is a bookkeeping course. How to set up chart of accounts. Yep. How to set up your QuickBooks right. How did dad enter write?

Like that's the first course that my, and I'm building, like I have this whole entire list of courses I'm going to build for them and we're going to build, we're building out my company ones, like how to run a bailor and how to stack and how to put twine in a bailor and how to tie it so that when we onboard people,

they can see all this stuff before they even get there. But for the coaching group, I'm building out courses that are their questions. Oh, nice. Yep. Really like, that's what I finally realized. And that light really came on the last couple weeks. because like I have the list of all the courses I want to have, but it's like right now I'm like,

I told Kelly my bookkeeper, we sat down actually and started building courses. This week was the first time we like, because I've shot stuff, but then I'm like, like I shot a whole entire finance course. And then Jeff came back and said, bookkeeping's number one.

Because you can tell them what to do, but you've got to show them. That's the disconnect. with programs. You can watch a course, watch a YouTube video, and it's like, go do this. Like, I'm setting this podcast up.

You could, you could show someone better than anything online, because you did it. You can go buy all the courses online you want about how to set up a podcast or any of them actually going to show you all the stuff that you had to learn.

I don't think so. That's the difference. So it's hard for us to, it's hard for us to build because you feel like you're like dumbing it down almost. So, like, everybody should know this, but I'm learning so much by doing it.

So when you, to bring it back, when you went down to Cardone and the bank said, we need $1.2 million, it was that the biggest reason you went down there? So I need to learn some shit so I can make this money so I can pay the bank. No, I already made the money. Oh, you made the money, but you were like, you still were just like, I need to learn more. And my CFO, we could see where the holes were. It's cost of product and the inefficiencies of trucking and things like that. So basically, I was. solely focused on sales and volume until we switch to accrual. So the first thing I did, and this is in my finance course, so I tell them to slow down. The first thing you do is you got

to slow down and look at the month over month and figure out where you're making money and where you're losing money. That's the number one. And then once you figure that out, then you start making those little adjustments. And when you make, you do like a couple at a time or one, upon how bad the problem is. Quantify. You can see, right? You can see, right? Yep. I have a fourplex, okay? I get a report from the property management company. And it has all the shit, but I'm like,

I'd have to fucking dive through it and spread it to see what's going on in it. It doesn't give me a true, because it doesn't have, it doesn't have my mortgage payment, right? It's my revenue. It's just their part of it. It's their part of it,

their fees, all this shit. And it looks horrible on paper when I see it. Like, I thought I was feeding that thing like 500 bucks a month. I asked Kelly there a day. I said, back and spread that thing for me the way we do month over month. And I want to see cash basis and I want to see in accrual style. Just do one, like put one on the top and one of the bottom. And all I have to do, because it's not holding its own, a couple hundred dollars a month,

which I thought it was worse than it was. It's not as bad as I thought. There's one meter on that. And I knew that when I bought it. I haven't wanted to take the time to fix it. Okay. I'm not charging them back utilities. All that I need to do to actually start making a couple hundred dollars a month is fix that problem. That's the one little thing like that, right? We get caught up and like we can't see it. But when you look at it month over month like that, now I can see like,

this is where I'm short and then you're like, boom, there's the problem. They asked me, the property management company said, hey, we can raise rents. And it's an old fourplex needs to remodeled. And I said, is everybody paying? And I said, yes. And I said, don't fuck with them. Yeah.

And the reason why is when I drove out there one day I was talking to one of the tenants, single mom, my foreplexes out of town. Be like being out here. Yeah. And the reason, my rent's a little bit cheaper than being in town. And the reason why people rented it was during COVID, it was cheaper. Yeah.

And gas wasn't that much money. Well, she had mentioned to be not complaining just in conversation that it's a little bit tougher now because gas is higher. Gas is higher. So immediately I'm like, if I push the rent on these, I'm going to have vacancies and now I'm going to be losing thousands of more stuff, right? That'll fuck you up faster than anything. I'm like, I don't, and turning tenants over and all. I'm like, they're not trashing them. They're paying.

You know, let's just make a few changes. If anything, we need to invest a little bit of money into it and fix them up. And then, you know, try to raise rents or do things like that. So it's just that's why I tell people you need to slow down. Look at the numbers month over month. You figure out. what your cost is, figure out where that profit is, and then 10 times on that. If you want to, if you want a grant card own that shit, right? Like, then you 10x where you're making money. Like, that's what you have to understand. So like in the hey company, we talked about trucking, right? People go, well, if I hire an outside CFO or somebody, first thing they do is they come in my yard and see half the trucks parked, they're like, let's go fire all those trucks up. I'm like,

no, we're not firing those trucks up. Yeah. We're on agricultural land. The county won't let me park anything on my property. It's not lumber. I've already, or I used to haul lumber, back haul lumber and roofing. That was something I did a lot. They said you can't do it. I filed for conditional use per now. Why can't you do that? Because it's not agricultural. They don't, the county doesn't, lumber is not an agricultural product. Really? Once you goes through a sawmill, it's not, it's not, it's not lumber anymore, right? So you could park logs technically? No, I think they've kind of, oh, they'd find, they've fucked that up to you. A minute it gets cut down. So it's just, just shit like that. It's shit like that. So I fought it, filed a conditional

spent a bunch of money and they were like, nope, we're still not going to do it. And I'm like, fuck it then. I'm not going to like waste. Like I was spending so much energy like between the fire. Trying to slim against the current. Yeah, my fucking neighbor. My, and in the county. And when you have events like that, like I was telling someone to their day, one of my friends sells trailers.

I always fuck it up. It's Minnesota. Great Lakes somewhere. I was by Great Lakes. Met him at the first event I went to. A friend of mine now came out to the mastermind. and he's having some problems with the county right now. So I'm checking in with him a couple times a week,

making sure he's, because his mind's, he's diverting, right? And I'm like, dude, I got to, I got to, I'm trying to keep him on track here. Yep. And he went through wetland issues like I'm through. He's going through it right now. They shut him down. Yeah. Now they're saying he's fucked up the groundwater and all this shit.

He hasn't. It's just all bullshit. And I'm like, John, I'm like, just stay coarse. It'll all work out. He's wanting, he's going through all the same shit. I go, dude, that's, why I tell you guys this stuff. Yep.

Right? Like, just stay coarse and, you know, you're going to spend some money. This fucking attorney's charged me. Yes, and he's not going to do what you want him to do all the way. But just stay on track and it'll come out. And he's getting better. Like last week he had a better week. You know, but like if he didn't have that support.

So today, time, time management. What is a, what's a typical day for you and how much is there a typical day? the, I have the worst time management. Like, that's my... Damn it. I was going to have you fix me. My, Michelle gets, she's like, you gotta get your shit together on this.

I, we're very fortunate, we have very good employees at the hay press. Say that. We have, we have very, we've, the guys in the plant, they work 24 hours a day, they really don't give us too many problems. Every once in a while.

It's like, we'll say that and I'll get home and it'll get all, fucked up for some reason, okay? And then I'll have the best group of truck drivers and I'll say I got the best group of truck drivers and all of a sudden I got three bad apples. Like I just had to like fire a couple the other day. And it's like you don't want to say it because then you know it's coming. Yep. But that's what's really, I was the hardest person to work for. Like yell or screamer throw shit. Short temper. Fucking, my dad is so short tempered. And I got it right from him. And I'm like,

for me probably the turning point was I was like my grandpa is a complete opposite so if I could have worked with my grandpa I would have been a builder oh yeah you know super easy work with like just

and I was just like I would my dad would come out we've like had times we don't talk for like five years he he'll come out and run all my whole crew off and it's like you watch that

and you're like I know what he wants he's not doing it deliberately. But like that's the hardest part is like, yeah, because, okay, what I learned at Car,

we did disc analysis. Have you ever done those? Personality traits. So I didn't do that. I'd never known what that was. So we got an email one day from Carver. I was like, here's your login for your,

everybody had to do this. Everybody was like management at my place had to do disc assessments. And Michelle, because she worked for corporate, she's like, oh, I can't wait to see what yours are.

I'm like, I don't even know what the fuck you're talking about. Pretty much all driver. And so when I, then I was like, when we did everybody's in the company, like the main people, I'm like, holy shit, this does, now you see why there's problems between people. Mm-hmm.

Yep. Like oil and water. Mm-hmm. And like, you have to remind yourself that it's not that they don't maybe like you or you're clashing. It's you literally have a completely different personality traits. Mm-hmm. That's right.

Like, when, because I'm direct and then people will take it, take it the wrong way. It's like, I'm not being, like, mean. I'm just like, let's get the shit done and move on. I don't need, like, words of affirmation. Yes. Mm-hmm. Right. Yes. Like it some people that's they money doesn't drive on that. Right. And they need to know that they're doing a good job. And so that's something that that's that leadership role that I didn't even understand about until I went through that program. And so it's just people that are, I would say the majority of the people in my group are under three million revenue probably or smaller or yeah, like pretty. small owner operators and stuff they don't they can't spend that kind of money yeah right so i've tried

to really make the events where they can it's like our i got our think our mastermind was night we've kept the ticket price at nine 95 yep um you're not going to go anywhere and get that for nine 95 out there and have those type of people come so i had victor come he blew their mind he's got gold chain leather pants and shit he fucking rolls in about noon half cocked late missed his flight and i thought these farmers and shit, they're going to run this guy out of here. They loved him. Because he was like, you guys are being a bunch of pussies. And they're like, you don't understand. You live in L.A. You can get people. He's like, you know, me fucking HVAC companies there are. We're on top of each other. We've got to steal them from each other. Like, so we get back into that mindset. And so that's what's

good about those events is you're getting that, that discipline, like Sean with the fitness and all that. You guys were latching on him, like, they're like, they just want to be around that, like with Andy and those guys. Well, what's great about those events is for people that run a company, you get so, like, you build, your worldview just gets pushed. You're so tall because you're so focused that you don't see and you don't get any, you don't get any perspective and you don't get any other point of view. So that's where those things can really help people because it's like it opens that all back up and they can actually think about a bigger picture.

Like me coming out here, Michelle goes, you're going to see, I've never been out in, yeah, I've never drove east of like really Boise area. I've flown, you know, you drop into an airport, but you don't drive around. And she goes, the overpasses. I'm like, can we, can I bring some of the West Coast people

that design shit and just drop them over here? Because you guys have infrastructure. Yeah, we don't. Michelle's like, you're going to see infrastructure. And that first, like, like when I came from Cedar Rapids and there's this fucking 10 lanes going, there really wasn't that much traffic. Do they use all those lanes? Once in a great.

And there's a Hawkeye game. That's what I mean. I'm like, the infrastructure they put in. When you go to an event, it's the whole process. It's the traveling. You're going to a new city. You're meeting new people at the event. You have a guest speakers that are opening this and then it's all the people you meet.

Yes. Like my buddy John I was talking about. I met him in an event. Yep. He's in my coaching program. and he doesn't get on the calls half the time because he's busy doing whatever and I call him and give him shit. But like that, like that connection, if we wouldn't have met, like we would have never, we would have never known each other. Ever. The connections I made with Andy and, you know, with,

you know, meeting Brad and just, then I met Sean and then I met Victor and like I've met so many people in a year. We live in a truly amazing time. We get caught up on all the problems and all the stuff we don't like, but there's never been, I don't think there's ever been a time in history that you can literally get as much information and network with as many people from anywhere as what we have right now. I mean, you can learn anything. In a DM, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, like, all that stuff. Facebook.

We were talking about Facebook blowing up. Like, like, people are, people that are not taking. advantage of it are going to wake up in 10 years. Yeah. And go, holy shit. And like, Gary V's still yelling about it. You know what I mean? He's like, wake up, guys. Like, it's TV for free. You have free advertisement at your fingertips. Yeah. And then at the same time, the people that are still, like, I just, if you are a, if you are an ad agency, well, I tell this story, but we had a guy, we had a company that we worked with and we did some stuff for them.

We did some social media stuff. And the guy that was running it says to me, he says, hey, when you do that, I'm going to send a photographer out there to get some print. And I got off the phone and I looked at Sawyer and I said, what the fuck is he going to do with that? Like, does he not know you can't get a still?

off the video, you know, for whatever. And, oh, he said, yeah, I'm going to send a photographer to get some, get some stuff for print, for print. And I was like, one, who the fuck is using print? And two, what do you need a photographer for? It was, and he was running their social media. Now, he's not running it anymore. But old, like old media and old, the people that are still running print ads and still

running commercials, I just, that world is, that world is ending. it an alarming ring. It's dead. They don't even fucking know. Yeah. You're just wasting money. Yeah. And that's, to your point, there are people that have not embraced what's going on. And at some point, they're going to wake up and they're going to be completely cut off. Because their sources of everything they get today are just going to be gone one day. It's crazy. And like I was, you know, we rely on like, like, a C, like, I didn't know what a CRM was.

and I was talking to Sawyer about it. And, you know, I was going to go to lunch, whatever. I'll show more about it. But, like, you have to get your contacts into there because what happens if they, what happens if number one, you're cut off from social media? Yeah. They, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they're gone. You need those.

Brad talks about this one's podcasts. That's why I bring it up. It's like overnight, your leads are gone. Yes. You have to be able to skit to your customers or your leads. Yep. And mark keep control of that. That's why CRM so important.

I didn't know about that. I went to the first event at Cardone. We're sitting at dinner. Buckwise, so he was Cardone's marketing CMO when they started that. And then he worked for Starbucks on the Pumpkin Spice. And if you look him up, he's doing influencer stuff. He runs a marketing agency as well. And we're sitting at dinner and he pulls up his phone.

He's got like, he puts my name in. And I think there was a recording from when they called and left a message on my phone. Wow. Right. and me and Michelle, we were like sitting there, we're like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, and I just was like a whole new world. Yeah. You know, because I was like, you have all this data, like on your cell phone.

You know everything I've bought, everything I've done, everything. And I was like, now I can, now I know how these guys can scale. Because they got the information. Yeah. And they know how to use it. Yeah, the technology. Data is same. Data is important.

Data is so, and people like you talked about, you know, you talk about Elon a couple of times and people don't even realize like with his plan, his plans are just like a whole different. People can't even, it's not, it's so far out there that people would never even understand. People that talk about, you know, a company or people that are two steps ahead. I mean, he's thinking like 12 steps ahead. He's thinking like three lifetimes ahead of his. What? He's thinking about going to a different planet. Yeah, and it's like, and I think that's when I go back to this whole, like, I never had a, I never had a plan for the company when I went to the first event.

And Jeff was sitting there writing out, like, you would write down who you potentially would like sell your company to. I didn't even understand like EBIT evaluations. Yep. That, how companies sold, roll-ups publicly traded, like, all that shit. Like, I didn't understand any of that. And so it was just, I got a whole new perspective. And then it gave me like a path.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Your world got a lot bigger. Fast. Pretty fast. That's amazing. Like overnight. Because like for my whole life, I just literally drove truck, bailed hay, and I just doubled it.

Yeah. That's literally all I did. Get more hay and move more trucks. That's all you do. Yep. And then you got, and then you think, you know, you felt like whenever you would, you know, it's like, okay, I got the new press and it's like success, you know, and I was able to buy that big house and that property.

where we do the events now and it's like success, right? And then you get a downfall, no water, shit, that sucks, okay, we'll pivot, we'll try to do weddings, we'll try to do this, it doesn't fucking work

and you do all this. And then it's like, you know, my bank, when I went through all that, the first thing the bank does, they say, well, you need to sell that property. And I looked at the guy and I'm like, do you know the tax liability?

Like, you're not going to get any cash out of that sale. Nope. I'm like, I won 79 the fuck out of everything that was there. Yeah. Like, I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to recapture all of that.

I'm going to pay off a bunch of other random stuff probably. Like the loan. It's not even in your name. Like there's not going to be any cash left. And that's what people don't even like bankers. No, because they have their little, they have their little fucking world. And they don't care.

They don't think shit through. And that's, you know, that's a really good point in that. We've talked about on here how it's important to have a group of people you know, it's important to have a banker, and it's important to have somebody that's doing your books or have a lawyer if you need one,

have somebody you can talk to. But the other thing is, you've got to understand that everybody that's in that circle, your banker's not telling you what's best for you, to a point he is, but he's also doing what's best for him. They have to. It's his job, right? Yeah, he has to.

So when he comes to you and says, you need to sell that, he doesn't give a shit about your tax life, They're covering themselves. Exactly. And that's because he's a good employee in the interest for the bank, right? Yeah.

And at the end of the day, the guy that you're working with, the banker, he's not the decision maker. Right. He's moving paper. And that's why I'm like, you guys got to get your stuff together. You got to get to where you can build a financial,

like a presentation. Because when you send that shit to your banker, he's just forwarding it to credit. 100%. Like, he might help you do some shit. But at the end of the day, he's not the one stamping that thing. And remember, when the shit goes downhill, you get the letter, it says don't fucking talk to him anymore.

Yeah. Because now you're at credit. Yeah. And you don't get to call him anymore and beg. Yeah. There's no more extension, extension. It's certified letters. Now is the time, unless you have your numbers dialed in, you really should not expand.

Now, the cool thing is there's going to be a ton of opportunity coming. There's a lot of people retiring. Interest rates are headed back down. So we can, all the negativity that's going on. but it is tough. Yep. What do we have one or two bad? We haven't had two bad years yet.

What do we have? One, I don't know about your guys' industry. Is your industry, has it been? Hog markets and bloods. Yeah. And how bad has it been like that? It will be, it'll be a year. Right.

It'll be a year. So we haven't seen a couple bad years. No. Has it been good? Up until that it was good. Or like how long? Oh, long's pretty good. Pretty good, right?

And so a lot of these guys have gotten into this. You've seen bad. Is this your first time of dad? Oh yeah, we talked about this. Right? And so that is, but that's how, that's the deal is, and most spreads are different. You're pretty, you're only, you're, I'm 52 and he's 23. Yeah, so most, there's a lot of people that are in their 60s, so their son, and their sons

might be older, but they haven't even experienced it. And dad's in the 60s saying, I fucking told you. Yep. Hold on. It's not going to be bad forever. And that's the deal, right? And as I tell these guys, like, you haven't been through fucked up yet. Yeah.

like construction in our area I had a guy D.R. Horton It's like what the largest home builder? They basically are like we're never going back to fucking Oregon because Bend Oregon got slaughtered like the worst in 08.

And building's been great since 08 and I remember how bad it was as I was hauling lumber over there and lumber loads disappeared fucking place where ghost town everybody got destroyed and I've been telling these guys you know

hopefully it's not as bad as 08 but these builders have been their back living it's been really good building, especially like in Oregon. Like all the California's been coming up still. And the other day I was talking to someone, a contractor that does some work for me. And he said like three landscapers showed up on a job looking for work.

And he looked at the contractor and said, when did that happen? He goes, that didn't even happen in 08. Yeah. And it's like, we've been, but we've been telling these guys, you've had it good for so long that at some point it's going to be a hiccup, right?

Yeah, I think one of the, the hardest adjustments for a lot of businesses, we've run on cheap interest for two decades. Like farming, ag especially, like the number of people out there that literally had equipment that they never made a payment on because they traded it every year.

You just set it up so you put it on annual payments, you get to the end of the year, just trade the sunbitch, finance it for another year. And that's all, that's what's really, that's kind of the that's catching guys hard. It's catching them hard and it has caught them hard and that's not over yet.

What in the hog and your eyes is market what is it that is it the feed like what is it? Really a perfect storm in the fact that high inputs high corn, soybeans stuff to go into the feed is high inputs in the market to sell what you can sell your pigs at as shit.

Because you've got world markets, shipping cost went up and then you got uh you know china's not buying as much as they were uh european markets crap the canadian market i mean is there a lot i mean this is there a lot of meat that goes out of the country oh yeah uh what you're like us you're gonna beat me up on overseas it's like 40% of our 40% of our port goes overseas mexico's our biggest biggest market carnitas china after that chorizo, garnitas, and ham. Mexicans love ham.

But demand's just not that good. I mean, it's not that we have a glut of meat. It's just that production and demand are just about right where they should be, and there's not enough demand to pull that price up, and your input costs are so high. But the other part of it is, too, since COVID, we lost a lot of labor, and it's hard to get labor.

Is it labor intensive? on the productions on the farrowing getting the baby pig so we we take our pigs so we contract feed for an integrator and they bring us what we call weiner pig which is a 15 20 pound pig and then we take it all the way from there to where it goes full ground meat but getting that baby pig that's pretty labor intensive you there's a lot of labor involved in that and every time you move that animal it's trucked so there's a lot of trucking And every one of these buildings that we have, a group of pigs is 16 loads of, 16 loads of pigs to go out.

Because you put 160 pigs on a load. So it takes 16 semis to get a barn empty. Takes about four or five to get it full. Twice here. Then all of that feed, how many loads? I used to know how many loads, how my semi loads of feed it took to feed out a group, but it's a big number. So you got a lot of freight.

It's just, it's tough. They buy some trucks. Yeah, buy some trucks. They do. With those guys, they can do a whole deal about, you know, and all the joys have owned a bunch of trucks. You can make money with trucks if you don't have a lot of debt and you just decently keep them on the road.

Yep. Don't end up in the ditch all the time. Yeah. Don't spend too much money fixing them up. Yep. That's where, that's where guys get in trouble. They either run in junk and they're not busy. They're working on it all the time.

Or they're, if they're an owner operator, they're buying chrome stacks, lights. They're buying shit all the time. So they're just dumping money into their truck, jacking the motor up, blowing it up. You just described 90% of the pig haulers. And that's why they're not making money. Yep.

When I did, at the first event, I brought a sample, my financial statement. And I showed them on my trucking company. And me and one of the guys were like, he's like, there's no way that you're, I think it was repairs and maintenance.

Mine was like 10% for that year. He's like, there's no way mine's like 20. And I said, your trucks are a lot nicer than mine. I said, I don't polish them every year. I don't,

I mean, we have nice trucks, but they're not to this shape of, his are. And I said, you're probably running all that other stuff through repairs and maintenance.

Yeah. You're spending another 10% percent yeah you need another line item exactly yeah you need another line item because you don't see because you don't see how much you're spending i said they're really nice but can you afford to do it yeah and that's that's the deal with the financials is you see it and you can and you see how it's affecting your bottom line yeah so uh what's next for you what what's next for we want to get to i'd like to get to where we're doing events every month so that's for the for the 10-4 coach you know to build out the courses so it's really simple for them i'd like to have an event every month

if possible summer will be tough for us that's that i want to get it where it's really is a program you know right now we're just working through it really trying to understand what will benefit people the most and then um podcast so uh i'd like to try to bank episodes so that we can release we're going to let us know on how you get that what's that how i'm going to bank them how you get them banked. I'm trying. Yeah, time management.

We've tried to try. I'm not, I'm not going to try to start it until for months. Yeah. I want to try to start it when I have like, I want to get like 12 episodes banked. Yeah. Ready to go out before I actually release the first one.

I know all to get behind. Yeah. So it might be six more months or four more months. Like I'm not, like I'll start dropping it when I really have the system figured out. Mm-hmm. I'd like to, I'd like to grow the,

the hay company if I can get more people to come help me grow it. That's where I'm at. I'm maxed out for what I can do. And so now I need a team. Yep. And so the only way to do that really is more locations. So we'd have to go to other states. There's a lot of people that are retiring in that industry. So I'm hoping that I can retire maybe some of them. But once again, I can't do it without a team. So I need to be able to build a team. So continue to grow 10-4. coaching and then continue to build the hay company. But once again, the trucking company, it's there to support the hay companies. Yeah. It'll grow while that grows. Or we might have we might, if I end up with a location out of state, I might decide that I don't want to have

my own trucks there. Yeah. That's not, my main focus is the hay company. But we're, we are like you where it's challenging. The hay export business is probably the worst anybody's ever seen it, ever. And so I'm really looking at that. It's very heavily dependent on China. China's not buying much. Same with your industry. So it's, I'm really waiting to see how this plays out. I'm, you know, I have the numbers. I'm, you know, making those, looking at those decisions. But it's, we're in a time right now where things are going to go one way or the other. Yeah. Right. So things are either going to come back or they're not after COVID. Like are those markets going to come back, right?

Yep, yep. So where can people find you if they want to get in contact or follow you or anything? So Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. Just my name, Jesse Bounds. And I don't have even a landing page up yet for the 10-4 coaching. We're building it right now. But yeah, DM me, Instagram, Facebook. I have a Facebook group.

It's just under my name. It just says, hey, Jesse Bound, so there's about 4,000 people in there. Nice. Cool. So if you're on Facebook, it's an open group, you just have to, I have like three questions just to make sure. I try to keep the...

Weed out everybody. You have to. You have to. That's the problem with Facebook groups is trying to keep them clean. But honestly, we haven't had any bullshit in there. Good. We haven't had, it's pretty much... The members have taken other members out.

Like, they'll be like, this person's got to leave. and I'm like, all right, you're out of here. So it's been self-policing, which has been kind of nice. I was like, I'm going to have to have all these moderators. And I'm like, I got 3,000 moderators. They're the people in the group. Yeah. Well, we all know the only serious people deal with hay.

Yep. There you go. That weeds them out right there. So, yeah, no, I think it's, uh, there's a lot, a lot opportunity. Uh, one thing that we didn't talk about is, is I wish, I do want people to know that they should invest outside of ag if they are making money. Yeah. I think I am you I, when I started to grow my business, it was around 2008 and the housing market was pretty rough. So all my friends like, don't do it, don't do it. And I wish that I would have dabbled

in real estate more. Yep. Just because when you have all of your eggs in one basket, it gets challenging as you get older. And real estate's never to go down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Always going to be a demand for that. It's always. And so I think whether it's, and it doesn't matter if it's single family homes or apartments or, you know, storage units or farm, just farm ground. Yeah.

Like, whatever that is, but anybody young, don't let people, you know, the old guys, they're just telling you that because they don't want, they don't want to compete with you in it.

Yep. That's right. Right. Right. But do it smart. Yeah. Get around the right people, get educated about what you're doing.

So you don't sink yourself. Yeah. I feel like every time I want to do something, someone's like, don't do it, don't do it. And it's like, are they doing it for the right reason? They're just doing it to benefit themselves. And I think that's where. Vetting people.

You got it when you're younger especially, because you don't know. Yeah. You know, you got to sort through all the bullshit. Yeah, it's a thousand percent. Right. Well, Jesse, we appreciate you, man. We appreciate you coming, making the trek down to southeast Iowa.

And if you didn't get any value from this show, you must be. drunk high or asleep, but I got a lot of value. Dad probably got, you got a lot of value. And if you did, share the show. Pay the fee. Leave review on Spotify or Apple. We'll see you guys back here next week for another episode.