Barn Talk - Bitcoin Mining & How To Become A Farmer In 2021 w/Grant Hilbert

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we have Grant Hilbert on the show. We discuss Grant’s dream of wanting to become a farmer early on in his life, The Squad YouTube channel, the challenges of being a content creator, bitcoin, bitcoin mining, how to become a 1st generation farmer in 2021 & much, much more.. SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr ------------------------------- ***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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays at the barn. And as hot as it's been, you couldn't keep it in there anyway. We're going to let it all out. We're going to let it all out today.

I'm your host, Tork, and this is my sidekick. Sawyer. and today is going to be a special one. We got a guest on today. I think it's going to drop a lot of value for you guys. Before we get into that, we're going to do a quick market update. Dad's going to give you a quick one.

So, Dad, take it over. We're going to make it concise and short today because we've got a lot of ground to cover. So southeast Iowa, the grains have gone up and they've come back, and now they're kind of not looking so hot. Corn is 634, and it doesn't make much difference if you haul it to the feed mill or haul it to the river.

It's about 630, 634. Beans are 1391, and I think that's river price. That's about the best there is. And hogs are about 110, right where they've been, cattle are 120. Bitcoin. Is this new? Bitcoin is not doing well. It's come off, it's low.

The last time I checked it was 333. So it got all the way down to 32, and I don't know, it just can't seem to break out. and Tesla last time I checked it was 560 or 652. It'll come around. Bitcoin will come around. It's just, it's just, it's just, it's just playing right here. Just got to wait. We're just waiting it.

Got to be for the long run. Got to be for the long run. Time in the market. Time in the market. Are we going to break the stock to flow model? It's about to be broken. That's right. That's right.

All right, guys. So now it's time to show you who's, who's on the show today. It's going to be a special one. He is the face of a well-known video game YouTube channel known as the squad. He posts footage and commentary about the game Farming Simulator for more than 1.2 million subscribers. Wow. He also has a personal YouTube channel where he documents his journey of starting farming from scratch and chasing his childhood dream of farming.

He also graduated from Iowa State University with a degree in ag business. If that isn't enough, he is also the founder and CEO. of GSL Holdings, a Bitcoin mining farm in Iowa. That's an awesome. Ladies and gentlemen, Grant Hilbert. Not CEO. Not CEO. Part owner, part owner, partner. Gotcha. I didn't know. I didn't know for sure. I did some research. Sound a lot cooler than it is. It's pretty impressive, though, dude. I will have to say that is awesome that you're even doing that. That, I don't know very many people that are even in that. So, yeah, yeah. I definitely want to touch on that a little bit later in the show. But that's, that's Very impressive. Welcome to the show, buddy. Yeah, no, thanks for having me, guys. Glad, glad that you're here.

Driving from Ankeny to Washington County. Yep, yep. And I got out here thinking Washington, kind of Southeast Iowa wasn't much, and it's, you guys got good ground out here. Yeah, oh yeah. It's pretty, don't be telling people that. Just drive them to be coming. Just drive the price up. It's already pretty expensive. But yeah, dude, where can people find you if they get value from the show? So main things, well, if you're a young kid, if you're like 12 years old, you can watch me on YouTube, The Squad. Okay. Or I try to make videos kind of more for older folks who might be into farming more, which would be just Grant Hilbert on YouTube. Just, I think I only have like 16 videos, but just kind of document the journey of getting started farming on YouTube.

Yeah. And then Instagram is just the squad underscore YouTube. Okay. It's turned from the gaming side to more farming. so I need to change the name from the plot. So you're doing a little bit of both on your Instagram of, or you were at least, but now it's turning into your personal kind of. The thing that was always weird is gaming is,

it's tough to post gaming photos on Instagram. Right, yeah. I've transitioned to farming. Yeah, that's awesome. Well, yeah, guys, if you get any value from the show and you want to follow grant on anything, check them out. Check out his YouTube. Check out his Instagram.

Give them a follow. Hit the subscribe button. And also, if you get any value from this show, all we ask for you guys to do is share out the show share it to a coworker share it to your family members share it to friends that's the that's the ticket of admission to watch the show that's all we ask so help me out i'm getting older every day so time's not on my side dad also wants some snacks so send us some more snacks if you can all right so we're going to get into the nitty gritty we're going to get into the nitty gritty grant so i want to know personally what were you what was your childhood like what made you

want to become a farmer because was it do you have somebody in your family that's that's a farmer you know or did you look out in the field one day and you were like I want a piece of that no it was uh i was connected into agriculture so i wasn't a farm boy but my grandparents so they farmed in northern iowa around the outgoing area so southern cassooth county and uh they farmed 15002 000 acres and so i lived in ankeny which is central iowa that's two and a half hours away but I was when I was a young kid I was just up there all the time kind of and so you'd go up on the weekends stuff like that heck I remember being in ankeny I would have been like 10 years old and I remember we couldn't like you would wait all fall to be able to go up for harvest and stuff like that you'd sit in class daydream all that and heck I remember not being able to go up on fall and just like bowling my eyes out just like wanted it so bad yeah yeah yeah I think that was like you know 2009 it was the fun years and stuff like that so yeah I grew up around the farm and uh it was it's kind of a situation where people are like well why don't you just jump into the family farm obviously

they'll let you in and stuff and it's kind of a thing with family where a lot of the families always they're always fighting right about who's going to own land so from my dad's side it was like it's going to be tough for you to kind of jump in there so then I was like okay well you know how do we start farming, I guess. Do you rent farms kind of around Ankeny? Do you do this? And so it would have been 2014. I started the squad YouTube channel. You know, that gave me a little money to be able to purchase some low quality farms. Yeah, start farming. So that's kind of how it was. And yeah, as a child, I just always dreamed and dreamed of farming. Yep. It was just how are you going to start? Right. That's the biggest challenge with people that want to become a first generation farmer. Yeah,

guys. If you didn't know this, Grant is kind of a first-gen-generation farmer. Like, you literally started from scratch pretty much. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's very, very hard. If you're not, if you're not somebody familiar with agriculture, that is, like, very challenging. The cost of admission is very tough. And the supply of land is like the supply of Bitcoin. It's finite. And so there's not any more being made. In fact, urban sprawl, there's less all the time. So it's a tough it's a tough point of entry. Yeah. Yeah.

Farmland's interesting. It's, I almost think it's better than Bitcoin. Oh, for sure. I agree. When you think about it. I agree. Oh, for sure.

You know, they're not making any more of it. Well, and so many people, there was a time, there was a time through the 70s and 80s, well, going long way back, where there was only a limited number of people that saw the potential of farmland.

And then it was looked at as the only reason you own farmland was if you were a farmer and you wanted to, you know, feed your family and be a farmer. Today, starting in the 90s, it's the secret is out. And now then you have, it's, it is a, it's an investment just like commercial real estate, residential real estate, where there's outside people that, given the opportunity and the numbers work, they're going to be there bidding against the guys. that's looking at, you know, expanding his farming operation, they're looking at it purely as an investment. And so that's just added fuel to the fire. And I think when you look through this the last few years when the economy hasn't been that great,

just like the stock market, the economy hasn't been that good. But man, land prices, they haven't missed a beat. They just keep at all. They just keep going up. I can't imagine what it'll be when I'm your age. It always brings up the question, like, why would you own gold when you can just own the farmway?

that's gold, gold that kicks off a yield. Exactly. That's exactly right. That's a good point. That's a good point for sure. But, yeah, we got farmland denominated in fiat debt. That poses an interesting question that, or sorry, fiat dollars. That poses an interesting question of, is farmland really going up in value,

or are we just depreciating the dollar that much too? Right. Over the past years. So, I think you're, I mean, I think we're all the same wavelength there, because if you look at, it is doing the same thing as, as stocks, you know, if you look at the money that's been printed and the money supply versus the return on, or the increase in value of farmland or the S&P 500 or whatever, the only thing, I think this is right, the only two things that if you put those lines together on the same

graph, the only assets that have outperformed, outperformed. Tech stocks and Bitcoin. Crypto. Yeah, crypto. Bitcoin especially, but I'd be surprised they might not have looked at land on that. Yeah, because not, the thing with that is like not everybody can buy land. Right. And it's so variable. You know. But I agree. I think that you're right. I think it's a case that our currency is getting devalued. And so anybody that can put their money in what we would call a hard asset, that's what they're doing. Yeah. So when you price a pomp goes on this

all the time, but when you price S&P or anything in gold, it's, it's pretty flat, even though it looks like we're going parabolic right now, it's pretty flat. Yep. So over the past decade or two decades. The other question, another question I had was, I say you're in a lot of, a lot of things. You know, you're kind of a hustler, I would definitely say. And do you consider yourself an entrepreneur in all the stuff that you're doing. And if so, like, are you doing all this stuff just to get you to the dream of being a farmer? And then once you get to that point, are you going to be like, all the other stuff I'm doing, I just kind of want to just say, screw it. I just want to farm. I'm done. I just want to be here and got my dream. Or are you a pure bread like you just love the game of everything that you do?

No, I would say definitely a huge goal is to someday become a farmer where it sounds big, but you can own a lot of land and you can farm. But I feel like once you get there, there's going to be, or if I get there, there's going to be, oh, you will. There's going to be opportunities where you see different investments that are probably going to return better than the farm. And so you chase those. But there will also, I think there will also always be like a part-time farmer. Eventually, I'd like to get it full-time and do kind of part-time like entrepreneurial stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. I feel like eventually the journey is to try and get there. Trying to get there and just the rest of the stuff, just be like, yeah,

I got here, I'm here. I just want to enjoy it. Yeah. That's awesome. Right now, just trying to do as many different projects, go out on the risk curve a little bit with time and money and kind of see where you can get in the next 10 years. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah. And I mean, the other side of the farm deal is you got to be, you always got to be growing it because if you're not growing a little bit, you're going back. backwards. And like what I like to tell people is we're full-time hog farmers and we're part-time grain farmers because the grain farming, we love it, but it really doesn't, we're not at the scale that it returns. Massively for us. The hogs are what pay the bills and hopefully a few other things that we're doing are going to pay some bills too. But I think we have the same, you know, I was just, I'm very lucky, we're very lucky that somehow we're able to, we've been able to raise another

generation off 400 acres. Well, I can guarantee you he's not going to be able to raise another generation off 400 acres unless we're doing a lot of other stuff very, very well. And so, yeah, that's, I'm right there with you. You know, that's my goal too is like I'm doing all these things. I do, I do love entrepreneurship. I love business and farming just, just about the same. I think I'll always do business and farming. But yeah, yeah, I really want to grow our grain farming operation. I mean, that's every farm kids' dreams to have the big stuff. And this poses a question, is this

where farming is going to where everybody's going to be hustling a lot more outside? Or maybe that's how it always was back in the 80s where people were hustling just to fund the grain farm. Marginers are going to get tighter, tighter, tighter. I 100% agree. You're going to have

a few guys. I think you'll still have a few. And like it is today, there are some guys that farm a massive amount of ground, and they've got it structured, and they have, they're good enough managers when it comes to the part-time help and all that, that they can make that work. And literally, their goal is they want a farm like that, be able to run new equipment. They go to the Ozarks in the summertime. They go to the Commodity Classic in the Wintertime and go to the Dominican, and they got

their wife works somewhere that has health care. and real insurance. That's all they want. That's, and that's what their dad. More power to them, yeah. Yeah, more power to them. It's like, if you're happy with where you're at and you love, you love the size of your farm and you're content with it, more power to you.

I want, I want Clay and Sawyer to do very well, and I tag along like I have these dreams too. All I really want for them to get to the point that they can say, Dad, I got you a really nice, one of those really nice swivel coosies on the mower. and you just mow, if you just mow everything, we'll take care of everything else. That's what I'm working towards. My dreams and aspirations are.

Yeah, he always jokes to me. He's like, anytime we talk about the future of hog barns and the stuff in our hog barns break in or anything, he's like, oh, well, that's not my problem. That's your problem. That'll be Sawyer's problem, so he'll just have to deal with all that. So I guess I'm going to have to just... Everything that my dad cobbled together, he would get it done.

He'd look at me and he'd go, well, that ought to last me as long as I need it. And now that I'm reaping all of the, all the problems to come. That's all part of it. But getting back to your point, I think that you're going to have a few people that are able to do that. And I think everybody else, unless you're at a pretty grand scale, you're going to have to have some other line of income to help you be able.

And the other thing, I mean, I don't want to get off too far is, I'm a little bit up in the air. Is all of our equipment going to keep getting bigger, or is it all going to get a lot smaller and a lot smarter to where instead of having, you know, 24-row planner, are you going to have three eight-row planners on a tractor that nobody drives? That you just load your maps on your iPad. Just let her eat.

I mean... That's an interesting question. Are we at max scale of equipment right now? Are we at peak? Yeah. And I mean, honestly, that might have... help, you know, first-gen farmers get in easier if it goes that way, because it's not so much money to buy a little, a little tractor and a smaller planner, you know, I mean, it's still expensive.

Every time I see that sabato, is it sabato? I see those guys go out every spring and every fall, and they've got like three cabs tractors with. I've seen that. Yeah, yeah. I think. You're open cabs, small ones. Yeah, and they, you know. It's pretty interesting. I do feel like it's going to go that way. The lazy thing harvest, though. It's like you still got to have. the combine. You still got to have the semines. You still got to have all that good stuff. The lazy part of me kind of likes the idea of sitting at the coffee shop while my corn gets planted. I kind of like that. I do like being in the field. Do you feel like there will be guys that just want to farm, they'll want to drive the track. Oh, guaranteed. Okay. Guaranteed. Yeah. And I also feel like they'll get

to the point where those people get left behind because they just want to do it the old way. It's always whoever adopts the technology and runs with it is the one that reaps the most benefit out of it. I feel like, you know, if you adopt the technology that's given that's out there fast and first, the guys that don't. It will be a generational thing. So I think you'll see, I think as the technology gets there that you can do that, and at the price point that you can scale it, there'll be people that take advantage of it, and they'll farm a lot of ground with very little labor because that's their limiting factor. It's so hard to find. And you'll see guys that look at that like guys looked at when the first Twin City tractor got dropped in Jackson Township.

And there were guys like, I wouldn't have one of them, you know, these horses, I'm going to farm with horses till a day I die. And they did. And then nobody else followed in their footsteps. I mean, I think it's the same thing. We talked. talk about it all the time. Technology, it's easy to resist anything. You look at it. We don't, we don't like change. As human beings, it's programmed into us that when we get something the way we like it, we like to keep it that way. We don't like change. But at some point, you've got to decide, you either adapt or you get shoved to the side. Get on the train or get ran over pretty much. That's what I want to say. I think that's the way that'll be.

What's crazy is in 2070, so 50 years from now, if this video is, still on YouTube. So when he's going to come back and watch this video and be like, we're going to be looking like geniuses. Tork was so right. Let's see. 70 years, if I go to Panama and get the stem cells and given my level of income and health care advancements, I might be in a bed somewhere going, I knew it. I knew it. Yeah, let's hope you make it. I don't know. You might be hoping, gosh, come on, dad. Just give it up. I don't know about that. I got to find a new co-host. Yeah, I know. I can't say that.

But one thing, another thing I wanted to ask was, what was your first business venture that made you money? That was, that would have been drop shipping. Drop shipping. I actually wasn't drop shipping too. Yeah. I mean, you would watch those videos when you're young.

We would have been seven, nine, we're on the same way. We're on the same way. Literally. Me and a buddy and, you know, you watch those scammy videos.

They're like, oh, watch how I made three hair grand from home. Yeah. You know, drop shipping and stuff. And so we try. tried it. And it was, we were buying products off of Amazon. Amazon. And then relisting them on eBay for just a little bit more. And drop shipping is always changing years from years. So right now, I think how it's working, correct me if I'm wrong, but guys are most likely buying bulk products

from China. Yeah, L. Express. Or L. Express. Yep. And then selling them on a kind of a Shopify store, acting like it's their own brand. That's the way I did. That's the way I did it. I did that exact same thing. I didn't do the Amazon eBay method. I did that method. And I actually made a little bit of money. That was honestly my first taste of entrepreneurship. That's what really got me into it. And my dad was like, I don't know about it.

My friends, I tried getting my friends into it, and they weren't about it really either. I did make a little bit of money, but it was like a dog caller at doggear store. I did a dog store. I did a pet store because I don't know. I was trying to research and everyone loves their animal. Everyone loves their dogs. So I did like a dog store.

And it's called dog gear store and I did all these things. But man, I did. I made a little bit of money. That was my first taste of sales and stuff. And I was like, I loved it. I loved it. And I was like, I got to want more of this. I got to ask, how to end?

So I think I just realized, well, I was in high school. Okay. And I wasn't making a ton of money. He thought he was going to put it up there, you know, and he was going to get 20,000. orders. Right. I watched those scammy videos and they're like, oh, it's easy, it's easy. You got five orders. You know, I'd get five orders for 120 bucks and, you know, I made a little bit of profit and then. Well, and then talk, you know, talk about technology. Like, when that all started,

our local bank called like every day because, oh, I think there's a fraudulent transaction because you've got a, you know, you know, yeah, some from, this is, this is possible spam. We're going to freeze your account you had to be like no that's right it was like every day and i finally'm like you got to get this figured out because this is this is not going to work yeah so i just i just put the i think i threw the wrench in after a while i was like yeah i probably shouldn't probably not do this so we got uh when we ended ours i think it was my buddy he eventually i kind of got out of it did you make money too it was like a hundred bucks something like yeah just yeah that's kind of how i was he ended up going big ticket items like 500 bucks and he completely got his crap handed to him oh yeah and he lost like 300 bucks and he was like i'm

done i'm done i'm done so he got out so yeah it's it definitely i feel like that part of the internet one i don't even know that was like 2017 i feel like because when i 2016 2017 something around there um that was like where scammers on the internet could make videos and people would you know jump in and like think that it's real. But now I feel like you can't really get away with that as much. Because I feel like on social media now, people just can read that so easily. You can read who's a scammer. Yeah. You know, everybody, I feel like you can't really be a scammer anymore. Yeah. It's really hard to be because no one's falling for your fake least Lambo, buddy. You can't, you can't, you can't flex on me. I think Naval Ravikant says it the best. He says,

the only people, what does he say? The only people getting rich on how to get rich are the people selling you the course. Right. Yeah. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. How was your, how is your college experience? Do you think college is necessary? Was it necessary for you? And do you think, what are your overall thoughts on college? I think it was, it was pretty solid. So I went to Iowa State, ag biz, and then took a couple of other courses to get economics degree. And so, I don't know, you had some really interesting classes, especially in the ag biz at Iowa State, you know, You got into some interesting discussions, a lot of great classes. Just basic Econ 101 were awesome classes and stuff.

And you met a lot of great people. But as far as the actual return that I got out of it, probably not. Probably nothing. Just because I was every night I was working on the squad YouTube channel. Right. So like during college, I was kind of a weirdo, to be honest. Like I, you were a lone wolf. I didn't have a girlfriend.

I never went to a single party. I could count how many times they drink a beer on my hand. Right. And it was just grind mode. Yeah, grind every night. And so, yeah, I feel like. But you, that's respect, though. I'll give you respect for that.

That was all Gary V. And so you guys watched Gary Vee. That was all Gary Vee. Yeah. You were just fired up and you were like, I'm going to make this happen. And now look at you. But you'd found your why. Yeah.

So, you know, your experience probably would have been different if you hadn't found your why at that point because a lot of kids go. because they don't know and they think they're going to figure it out there. You, you'd figured out not necessarily, not necessarily the direct path, but you knew where you wanted to go. And so, yeah, it kind of, when you have that drive, when you have something, you're working for it,

it's hard to focus on anything else. And it's, and I mean, I don't know, did you start at your freshman year or did you start it in high school to squad YouTube channel? I started that sophomore year. So you started it, started it pretty early. I kind of had it locked on. And with YouTube, one of the things you realize is, you know, year two, you're making, you know, say X amount of money a day. And you realize, okay, well, if I just scale this and, you know, do really good and start

post every day, it's going to scale this much. Right. Yeah. So you got the, that's the other thing. If you see the success with it, you saw the success, success. You got those wins. You got that money coming in. You're like, that's the ultimate driver. Once you get those little wins, It's like, okay, now I, yeah, I get you. I get why you wouldn't want to go to party because you're seeing the wins. Yeah, and the reach was probably a little better. The organic reach, I mean, at that time, we talk about that.

It's like any technology. It's like TikTok is right now, or I think TikTok is probably starting to get a little bit. It's not as good. But, you know, these early adopters and these technologies, when you get on them early, it pays dividends if you figure out what you're doing. I feel like YouTube you can grow pretty good on YouTube.

Yeah. It's still relevant. I feel like it's a great place for people to go. But man, Instagram, I've been trying to grow on Instagram. That's just tough. Their whole, the platform's whole deal is they started out like Instagram in 2013. They want to get as many people on the platforms as they possibly can. So they make the reach on it crazy so you can grow fast.

And people get addicted to those dopamine hits of getting the likes, getting new followers. all that stuff. And then they start adding paid advertising on there. So then you have to pay for to get reach. And now they, so they want to get as many people on there. And then they switch it and turn it into you have to pay to get the attention. So they may start making money. And that's exactly, TikTok's doing the exact same thing now. They're getting all these users on here that love TikTok, love the reach, getting addicted, getting so many followers. And then they're going to, you're already starting to see it. They're starting to pay on advertising and stuff. so they're going to try to monetize the platform.

But YouTube, I will say, I give credit to YouTube because they've monetized the platform, but they still make it easy. Well, not easy. It's not easy to be a YouTuber, but you can still grow on there relatively good if you put out good content. Yeah, let's talk about that,

because this is near and dear to my heart. So you're creating content for two channels, plus you're doing all of your other stuff. So what do you struggle with the most with trying to be where, all those hats and to be a creator on YouTube. Yeah, it's, uh, man, when you, when you think about it, it's like, I don't know, I, I come home at night, you know, from the gym and stuff, and it's like, okay, most people are going to go watch TV and stuff. And it's like, okay, well, I have these

four projects. I need to work on and do something. You have, uh, the real life channel, the squad YouTube channel, uh, the software company, or it's even like on my list is just learning more about macroeconomics or watching real vision. Like, you got to stay up to date with that stuff. So it's time. Just choose one and go and realize not everything's going to be perfect. So do you edit your own stuff as far as what you put up? I'm not good at hiring people to do tasks, like editing or hiring out an editor.

I just do everything in my own. I'm in the same boat. I mean, I totally agree with you. I'm at the same place you are because I have those conversations to myself at night. It's like, I know I need to be, I need to edit a YouTube channel or edit a YouTube video for Barn Talk. I got to do clips. I got to break down content. I got to make a new YouTube video for this will do. And it can be kind of stressful. I mean, you really got to allocate your time because you can't waste a minute. You can't waste a minute. It's why you hired me and now

you're terribly disappointed. Your first, your first hire. Dad's done pretty good job so far. Sawyer looks at his window at night when he's editing and all my life. are off. Yeah, I want to see if the lights on. So you guys live right across. You can see each other's houses. I live over here and his house is right over here. Yeah.

He lives in my old house and I live in my parents. So I was actually going to redo the house he lives in now. That's my grandparents' house where they used to live. And I was going through there. I tore all the carpet out. You know, I was doing all this demo work. And my mom, she is a, she loves to decorate. And my dad's always wanted to live there because, you know, that was his childhood home.

So. Yeah, it just didn't make, it didn't really make sense for us. to live there because we've raised our family and we had that house just the way we wanted it. I mean, it really was. It was just the way we wanted it. But that house up there has, you know, three bedrooms easy and, you know, big, lot of room, all that. And so we made the, you know, the smart decision say, Sawyer should live there because at some point he's going to have a family. And thank you for getting it for us. I was much appreciated for doing that work because I would, we'd still be getting the carpet out of it if I was doing it.

Probably. But anyway, we got the floor laid, and we were standing in the kitchen. My wife got that look, and I was like, yep, I said, you want to live here, don't you? And she's like, and she knew that I did, but I tamped that down because it didn't make sense. And she didn't have, all I needed was her to say, yeah, I'd like to live here. So then we said, oh, Sawyer, you like her house? Of course, that wasn't very smart. It's like, you know, not very much.

Give your kid a perfectly good house the way you. you want it so you got to go and do but we love it now yeah it's turned out great you mean it looks great i mean i would love to live there now too but i literally was like you guys just pick and i'll do whatever you know it's your so that's a five generation you know my my dad was actually born in that house and his his mother was born in that house and my dad actually died in that house too because he always said, his thing was, I was born in this house, because they wouldn't move, you know, a lot of people moved to the retirement home and they would not. They just absolutely would not. And he's like, I was born in this house. I'm going to die in this house. And he made sure that

that's how it was. And Trish informed my wife informed me that I will not be doing that under any circumstance. Anyway, we got off. We got off. We feel like, yeah, time is just, your time is just the most valuable asset you have that you have. especially if you're trying to do so many things. You've got to allocate your time, and I struggle with it too. We need to hire an editor. I really need to hire an editor, but it's just finding that person that's going to do it the way you want it to be done, but it's never going to be the way that you like it.

Yeah, and it's a tough deal because on the one hand, if we hired somebody to do the hogs to chore our buildings, then we'd have more time to do that, but we'd lose the authenticity of us out there doing it. And if we hire an editor, I'm like, I don't know. I'd really like to edit more than I'd like to go load pigs at three in the morning. But it's like, what do you do? Right. It's a tough place to be. Well, if we're going to, the thing that I'm most like Jones and about is I want to talk about crypto.

Okay. I want to ask one more question. One more question. What is your favorite part about being a content creator? What do you like the most out of it? It's cool. It's really cool. Like before this, there's two kids here.

It's really cool. seeing people and stuff that watch your videos. And sometimes you see a eight-year-old kid and you're like, no way, you watch my videos. And I'm like, and then sometimes I'll see like a 30-year-old guy that watches the forums in their videos. And I'm like, you actually watch my videos. So it's cool seeing people that watch your videos. And enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, that's. Yeah, we haven't had very many people come up to us yet. But we've had a few. We're big in the Hooterite community. At the World Pork Expo, we, we had tables and tables. of Hootorites sitting around and they're all talking and they're looking and they're talking

and they're looking and finally one of them would get up and come over and go, we really like your videos. It's like, yeah, it's a good feeling. I would agree definitely. I love, I do love that feeling. It's pretty nice. We're big in the Dakotas. I'm glad that. Yeah, we are actually, randomly, I guess. So the World Pork Expo, you guys went to that. And did you have a this old do stand? No. No. No, we just went. So I've gone forever. because when I was selling buildings, Precision had a booth there and I had to work the booth

and smooth people and all that. And then when I worked for Eichelberger, they of course went, we went up there every year and meet with vendors and all that kind of stuff. So this was the first year for me that I felt like I could just go

and just talk to whoever I wanted to talk to. And we're doing a, one of the sponsors of the YouTube channel is a company called Barn Tools. and they've got a product that we use. And they actually had their launch there. And so we spent a lot of time with them, and that was awesome. Yeah, it was really nice.

Sawyer had never been. Well, I went there when I was little, but, you know, walking around all day as a little kid talking about pigs. I mean, I was like, la, la, land. So this time, it was like, I had a lot of fun. It was a good time. It was a good experience. Go ahead on your, ask them all you want to ask them about crypto.

Well, this is, so I don't know. I'm not going to ease into this because I don't have a good grasp on this and maybe you do, especially that you have some knowledge about the mining side of Bitcoin. So my other son asked the question, what happens as far as maintaining the Bitcoin network when you get, because the miners basically maintain the network. Is that correct in saying that? So miners maintain the network and then you also have people running full notes that are that are kind of the voting protocol the way I see it. Now, as far as being expert technical, I'm not, I'm not there. Yeah, I'm still learning too. So. Well, the question he asked is, you know, obviously as there's less Bitcoin to mine, it gets much more difficult to mine.

But at some point, you're going to get down that there's going to be such a finite amount of coin to be mined. that miners aren't going to want to mine it. Well, some will, I'm assuming, but how does that affect? Like, will the network, will the network fail when there's so few people mine it? Or will there be enough nodes that the nodes will maintain the network? Yeah, so it's, so essentially the way it is. So like you're saying in 2,100 or something. Yeah.

We're mining. So right now we're mining 900 Bitcoin a d. day, I think, 6.25 Bitcoin a block. But in 2100, effectively, the Bitcoin price should be at $2.3 million to where, even if you're mine, 0.001 of a Bitcoin, that's a lot of U.S. dollar to keep the mining incentive going. Yeah. So if, say, we're at 2100 and price of Bitcoin's at 30K, the network's probably failed by that or something. But that's not more than likely that's not going to happen. So the nodes keep it going to. Because that was the biggest saying Clay was just like, so if the miners keep the network going and the incentive to mine isn't as great as is now, does the network just fail? And yeah, the nodes keep it going, I guess.

So one thing that's happening, if you guys heard about is the China ban on mining. Right. Okay. Yeah. I heard about that and stuff. So we had a 28% negative difficulty adjustment, which is, do you guys know what that is like the Bitcoin? Okay. Okay. Yeah. So we had 28%. And then now, right. Right now, we're showing in two weeks, we're going to have like another 28% adjustment. Oh, really? Yeah, which is crazy. Right now, I checked like before this. So technically, like me, we're mining Bitcoin. So we've become 50% more profitable. Yeah, right.

The Bitcoin adjustment makes it easier to mine those Bitcoin. You're mining it faster. Yep. That's good for you. Yeah. So, yeah. And what's interesting going into a bull run, and I just realized that this bull run is essentially what happens with Bitcoin is so we usually hold most of our Bitcoin, we mine. But then to pay the

electricity expenses in US dollar term, we sell those Bitcoin. But as, let's see how this would work, as Bitcoin goes up in value in a bull run, 20, 30K, we're actually spending, we're actually selling less and less Bitcoin because those electricity expenses in Bitcoin terms look a lot cheaper. That's one thing that adds to a bull run. It's a small thing, but those Bitcoin actually getting produced are not as many are getting sold actually from the mining perspective. But there's a lot of speculation on what actually starts the Bitcoin bull run. And I haven't figured it out. I've heard a lot of speculation cases because right now Bitcoin goes on a bull run predictably like every four years. Like in August 2020, when we started Bitcoin

mining, we knew there was a good chance Bitcoin in the next 12 months was going to go on a bull run and it starting in November it did yep and we might still be in one too so yeah okay so we we really jumped way ahead yeah how how did you just decide you know what i mean because you know i i i went down the whole of i think this bitcoin's real i need to i need to i need to like by we need to be buying bitcoin but it honestly never like i the idea of mining it just seemed crazy crazy so what snap that you're like, oh, yeah, I think we're going to mind this. And when did you, when did you make the realization that that's something that you might want to do? Okay. So in 2017, that's kind of, no, no, that's not right. Okay. 2017 is when I kind of got interested in Bitcoin. Actually, the guy that

told me about it was Mr. Beast. Oh, sure. Oh, yep. I was on a phone call with him, me and my childhood friend about some like gambling, I shouldn't say this, but some gambling site that Mr. Beast was going to, like, start because it was insane money maker and stuff. And so I asked about Bitcoin. He knew all about it. You were on a call with Mr. Beast. Yeah. It was just us three. And we were, wow. How did you swing that? He was at like a two million subs. But we were actually on that call that night. We were up to like 3 a.m. I remember I couldn't sleep that night. And he was actually, we were actually just gambling Bitcoin. I forgot what the site was called. We were just gambling away Bitcoin. We were, me and my buddy were gambling like 50 bucks. He was gambling like 6K at

pop. And he lost. at all. Just with you on the call. Just you three, just gambled. That's awesome. Crazy. He was a lot smaller then. Right. But anyways, to get back into it. So in 2020, I was on TikTok and we saw this Bitcoin mining farm in the summer of 2020. So here you go, we saw this Bitcoin mine farm. And for some reason, we got the feeling that was in Iowa. We contacted the guy and we're like, hey, we're big Bitcoiners. We wouldn't just come and see the site, essentially. So the site's in Grundy Center, Iowa. And so we saw the site. We're like, okay, well, how do we invest? We're obviously bullish on Bitcoin. And the biggest

thing about them is they can't get much capital into them because they can't go to a bank and be like, we want a Bitcoin. Right, right. It is so sketchy. And so very few investors even want to invest in them. And so that's kind of how we jumped on. We saw the site. We were like, yeah, let's do it. Let's diversify our Bitcoin position a little bit. Let's start mining some Bitcoin in August 2020. and then put an order in for some miners from Bitmain S19 miners out of China. And those came in in October and we were mining Bitcoin right in October, right when Bitcoin went on a bowl. That's awesome. That is awesome.

So did you put the miners on his farm to start? So how it is is it's what I don't know what the technical terms are, but they're a hosting company. So they host the mining for us and then we mine there. So they have two or three technicians that are there daily, and those guys are checking the machines. Making sure everything's running right. And once the month is up, we pay them about 20% of our total profits to just handle all that.

To run it, handle it, buy those miners, because those guys, you can't just go on the internet and buy like 100 miners or something. Yeah, right. You can go on eBay and buy like one minor, but those guys had to handle all that, get it all shipped in. So far it's been just awesome.

Just passive income. So do you guys sell the Bitcoin that you mine or do you try to keep it? Yeah. So that's interesting. In November, December, when Bitcoin was getting up there, I started selling a little bit because my thought was I wanted to kind of have this passive income, take it and put it and have it fund my software company where I was paying developers and stuff like that. I was like, that's cool. I don't touch anything.

I don't take any personal income and do that. but once Bitcoin's price started coming down, I started not selling it. Yeah. So did you buy into Bitcoin in 2017 when you discovered it? Like when was the first time that you bought into Bitcoin? Yeah, you buy in, but very few people go crazy bullish and go 30% of the portfolio into it. Yeah, right. It was small amounts. So yeah. But you started buying in 2017. Yeah. Yeah. That's still great, though. But the greatest opportunity to buy Bitcoin is when it's cheap. down 2018 when everybody's saying it's going to crash and same thing's going to happen again. I don't know if Bitcoin's going to go from 30K to 200K, crash to 40K, but people are going to say

Bitcoin's dead, Bitcoin's failing. It's going to happen over and over again and those are the times to buy. So when did it crash? Because it was on the run, it was on the run. What did it get to? Like 17,000 or what was it, 18,000? A little bit below 20,000. So like 19,000. Okay. And then it would have been like January 10th. It started its decline down. 2017 in 2018. 2018. So you bought it when it was right at the top of... I was going in when it was going into a bull run. Yeah. So I was starting to buy Bitcoin at like 5,000. But it was still up in that in that bull run. It was still up like 700%

after after. Right. And you held it the whole time. Even after that. No, I sold I sold a lot. Like in 2017 and then I bought back when Bitcoin was only down like 40% in 2018 thinking that's the bottom. So I started dollar cost averaging back in at Bitcoin when it was at like 10,000, it was still falling. And then it went all the way to 3,000. So I started buying in a little early. So I started buying a little late. But I started buying. You know what? That's the thing. It's like at some point, well, we had a great conversation. Well, we had a great conversation. at the world pork with a guy that, um, little older than us. I'd say he's a little older, or he's a little older than you guys, but he's a lot younger than me. But, you know, 2017,

2016, he was like, oh, you know, this is cool. And it went up and he doubled his money. He sold it. You know, and it was like, oh, he's so happy. And then it, but it was like going from, I don't even, he told us what, I mean, he bought it for like, he bought hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars. and it went over a thousand, he doubled his money. He's like, awesome. Sold it. Sold it. And then never, just kind of was like, oh, yeah, never touched it.

And now he realizes. And now he's buying. And he's like, I don't own anywhere near what I owned before. But I'm like, he goes, I just know that at some point I'm going to look back and be thankful that I even bought it now because of where it's going. Yeah. Well, and it also is a mind. It's a change of mind because if you truly believe that the system that we're in and the fiat currency is fiat currency, then it's a no-brainer. And I think it's hard for, this was hard for me because when you look at the value of Bitcoin, that doesn't mean anything because it's based in dollars.

And when you're on the premise, the dollar is really not worth anything anyway. One Bitcoin is always one Bitcoin. Exactly. And that's a hard thing, I think, for people to grasp. And the thing is, we talk about buying and selling and doubling money and stuff. But essentially, the whole goal is to accumulate more Bitcoin over time. And so usually you see four-year cycles run with Bitcoin where there's a chance to accumulate some more Bitcoin. Yeah. Wow. That's impressive, man. I will just have to say that's, that is so cool. So right now, though, we're at a $600 billion market cap.

And when you think about it, Bitcoin's absolutely tiny compared to what it could potentially become as a global reserve currency. So what do you think the ripple effect is when September 1st comes and El Salvador goes on the Bitcoin standard? How long do you think... Where do you see Bitcoin going in the future? You don't really... Well, essentially up. I think it's going to be, obviously, I think it beats gold, which is a $10 trillion asset.

The question is, does it become some type of global reserve asset where you get into the $50 trillion, $100 trillion, you know? Well, when we talked about it, we didn't think it would be a global. We thought it was just going to be kind of the gold standard of crypto. Yeah. But now with L.S. Salvador going the route they're going. Well, I think, and it also has become a lot more risky to Bitcoin because El Salvador doing that.

So essentially they were using dollars. But all these small countries and all these third world countries that trade in dollars, they're really screwed in an inflationary environment because they're using dollars, but they can't print. dollars. Only United States can print them. And so when we print a bunch of money, it hurts their economy because they've got inflation and they can do nothing about it. And that's why El Sal, I mean, there's many reasons, but that's one of the reasons why El Salvador is going on that. But I feel like if they, if that goes and that rollout goes well, you're going to see some country in Africa do it. And then if that happens, you're going to see another country. And then

you're going to see countries in the Caribbean. You're going to see poor countries around the world. And if you start that, then the dollars are a house of cards. Okay, then the United States doesn't play well with people that, you know, it's like when OPEC thought that they were going to, they were going to quote oil, not in U.S. dollars. And that didn't work very well for them. I mean, it didn't work very well for us in the 70s,

but we kind of put her thumb on them and said, no, I think you are going to do that, or it's not going to, so I don't know how that all plays out. Well, yeah, but if you're a third world country and you want to try to get, not be a third world country anymore. No, the reason for doing it is to get, it makes me get ahead and it's smart. Absolutely. I just don't know how it's going to play out, play out with the world powers as far as I don't.

The World Bank is not going to like it. Well, you don't need. The World Bank's screwed, but all the World Bank's screwed. I think it's, in my sense, simple mind, I feel like, just like China, there's not really anything they can do about it because it's a world. It's so decentralized and that's the beauty of it that it's just going to go where it's going to go and you can't control it. So I don't know. Game theory says that these countries, everybody but the U.S. should technically try to adopt it as a standard to get off the U.S.

dollar standard. So it'll be interesting to see where that goes. I think if there's talk of Nigeria, even getting into it, this El Salvador thing, this is big and it'll be interesting to see how does it actually work. Sometimes you see promotional videos of it's working great in El Salvador. Is that actually true? Is that true? That's what I want to see. So I do feel like there are going to be a lot of people, though, that are just going to sit back and just watch how it plays out. Oh no, I guarantee. And if it works good, I think then you're really going to see it get adopted just like how they did it. But if it fails miserably, and it's just a total disaster. And there's a lot of money on each side.

Right. Because there's a lot of money. There's a lot of money hoping that it fails. I think there'll be some dirty stuff going down in that country just to make it fail. So my understanding is they're going to run it on the Lightning Network. Is that how they're going to do the transactions? Yes, Lightning Network. Now, I tried looking at Lightning Network exactly how it is.

is seems like it's another layer on top of Bitcoin. I still can't figure out how exactly that lightning network transaction works. Good, because I looked into it and I couldn't figure it out. So I was hoping that you had the answer, but I feel a little smarter knowing that you didn't figure it out. Yeah. If we can build on layers, so if we can have Bitcoin as the global reserve currency

on this slow decentralized layer and you can build on, you can have lightning and then you can add other things. Right. That's huge. that's the ultimate. That was the biggest issue with Bitcoin and why we created Bitcoin cash is because it was so slow. Right. Yeah, that'd be ideal if they can, I'd love to learn how it all works, but that'd be the best scenario. Okay, one more thing to add. So you have China, that's literally kicking out everything Bitcoin. But you got this El Salvador, this small country.

It's almost be interesting in 50 years to look back if Bitcoin was the thing to see El Salvador first China. Right. As China just made this, what I think is a terrible move to kick everybody out. China's got... And you should really talk about what Raul said about how people are going to go... It's demographics. People are going to go where Bitcoin is. If it all works the way that we think it might work with the Lightning Network and it's

all easy and it's all the things we hope it is, people are going to go to the countries that incentivize the use of Bitcoin and make it easy. They're going to... They're going to move. in those countries. Because we're on a digital world. We're going to a digital world where you can freelance

and you can do all these things. You don't need to be at a set place. Well, you can see it. You can see it with the mining because the mining's leaving China and a big chunk of it's coming in the United States. Some place in the Middle East, like around Turkey,

some of it's going to Kazakhstan or something like that. Yeah. Which I don't know what the connection is, but it's going where it's the most, it makes the most economic sense and it's the freest to run is what I'm assuming. But that's the problem with a world economy. China, history is not going to be very good at China. Everybody thinks that they're on their way up and they certainly want to try to

dominate the world stage on trade, but demographics is against them and they failed miserably and their population is aging so rapidly and they're not going to be able to pull it off. There's not enough young people to take over the boomer jobs. They're not going to be able to pull it off. And their labor rates are, you already see the labor's moving. I mean, India is the up and coming. India is going to be where the cheap goods are made, where the cheap labor is. And then beyond that, the next one's Africa. Africa is going to be where the investment is, longer term. But eventually, the whole world is going to be developed. And eventually there will be no cheap labor. That's where technology comes in, and that's where, you know, the stuff we were talking about before we got on here with, you know, what Elon's trying to do and what a lot of people are trying to do.

But I think that, yeah, to your point, El Salvador in two decades versus China, I think people will be amazed at the contrast there. So, Grant, another question I had for you is, how does the mining process work when you're mining Bitcoin? if you can explain that in simple terms. And like how much Bitcoin do you get, you know, or like how long of a period of time does it take to get one Bitcoin mine roughly? If you could. Okay. So right now we have what I own is S19, Bitmain S19 amp miners.

And those things are kicking out about 015 Bitcoin per month on one of those machines. So I don't know what that is in US dollar or whatever, but it's really not that much. So it takes a while to get them paid back. Obviously, your payback period's going to adjust based on price and all that and stuff. And so there's an algorithm. Shaw 256 algorithm. And as more coin is mined, it gets more difficult to mine it. well to find the the answers because or i guess how what's that what's the minor actually trying to do

it's trying to run the shaw 256 algorithm and guess a hash so there's this hash function where it's like you the only way to answer to solve the problem is to guess it's that's what like hash is so just randomly you have to randomly guess and you have to sort you basically have to sort through a bunch of possibilities of checking guess. And then once that, once that minor actually gets it, that minor can then prove it and then validate that block to everybody else. And so that's the proof of work. That's the proof of work. Well, that's why it's so difficult to do. So the blockchain confirms if it's right. So they find the answer to check it with the blockchain. Or is that how that works? I'm assuming it's getting pretty technical. I'm not sure. I think it's the

minors that will then verify that that block is real. Okay. I think. Wow. I'm not too technical into it. Well, you're more technical than most. I am. Well, you know, we need to get on to other questions. I love this subject. We could, we could probably, if you ever, if you ever get bored, which I know you won't, I would have you back to just do an entire podcast on nothing but crypto because I love so with it. I love it. I love it. But, you know, this is an example. What you're doing, it's one of those things where at some point you set and you thought about it and you looked into the future what you thought the future was going to be. And I'm sure you had to deliberate before you made the investment to do it.

Or maybe sometimes it's easier because we've made some good decisions. where we're like, ah, let's just try. But usually there's a lot of thought that goes into it. But so much of making a good investment in hindsight is time spent just absorbing information. If you can find the information, and that's the beautiful thing about the time that we live in, is all that information is out there. if you just spend the time and get the different points of you and just think about it. And at the point when you were investing, when you first bought Bitcoin, you said in 2017,

at that time, I mean, the amount of people that were high on Bitcoin, so low. And yet you took the time to find the information and you took the bet and you said, I believe in Bitcoin and I'm doing it. And that, you know, that takes some, that takes, that's, That's what it's all about right now. That takes some balls to do. To be fair, it was a learning curve. It wasn't like Bitcoin's going to be amazing.

So you did your research. It was, in my opinion, everybody goes down through the exact same rabbit hole of maybe buying a little bit, learning, learning, learning, buying some more. And then maybe they see a really big opportunity. And for me, that was in 2018, kind of a big opportunity. So it wasn't like crazy. I'm crazy, crazy bullish. It was just like, okay, let's allocate a little bit.

Right. And that's what you're seeing with even billionaires. You're seeing Ray Dalio, Howard Marks. Everybody go through it. At first, they doubted it. And then they buy a little bit. And who's the bonking? What's his name?

Stanley Drunken Miller's. Yeah. Starting to get bullish on Bitcoin. And that's kind of crazy. But back to your point, I mean, when you really think about investing, I'm 23. I don't know anything. I really don't know much. But all it is is essentially listening to as many point of views.

as possible on a certain subject, like you said, and hearing them debate and then kind of making up your own opinion about how it's going to turn out, I guess, and then betting on yourself on that decision and whatever it is, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and we talk about this, and I wish I would have learned this a lot younger, and you're going to, you're going to benefit from this, but here we go. Well, there came a point, there just came a point where, and I was guilty of this. I went through life and people that were supposed to know about whatever it was, you asked them what they thought and they told you what you should do and you said, oh yeah, okay, I did it. And you never questioned it. And I'm not going to beat on anybody's

okay, I'm going to beat on financial. I'm going to beat on the financial people because so many people think that their financial future is so complicated that they need to hire an expert, an air quote expert to do it. And I'm not saying that you don't, and this is not financial advice. We need to get that big disclaimer. This whole podcast is not financial advice. But I, is this financial advice. And I feel like, and this is just for me, but at some point, I asked a question that the answer I got, I didn't, I just, I didn't feel like that was the right answer. And I started, that was what sent me down the whole of absorbing information that, that I could find. which is readily available if you go digging for it.

And I made my own conclusion. And once you realize that anybody that you ask for advice on anything, their advice is only as good as the information that they got or the person that told them what they know. And we're all kind of in the same boat. And when you take responsibility that, okay, I need to do my own research, I don't care if you're talking about, I don't care if you're talking about your financial future or,

your nutrition, your fitness. Yeah, exactly. Any of those things. When you take responsibility for that, that's a powerful thing because you realize that there's a lot of things that you might have thought were really, and there's things are still complicated. There's so many things I don't understand.

But when you take responsibility for that and that you take the responsibility to learn for yourself, that's a powerful. That's a powerful tool. It's risky. That's the biggest thing I think people look at it is it's risky. I'm taking all the responsibility of doing it. And then I have no one else to blame if this messes up.

But also, if you do invest in something, you did all the research yourself and it pays off, then it feels damn good. It does feel damn good. That's the part. That's the hardest part with it. But I totally agree. you got to do your research. And nowadays, clearly we're saying with this whole, you know,

this whole table, you did your research, you've done your research on Tesla. I've done my research on numerous things. And you can find it easier than ever before to find your own research. So research people, if you're looking. rant over. This is not financial advice, by the way. To get a little more specific. So like Torque, you watch Real Vision a lot, which I think is absolutely great. It's the best. It's just macroeconomics, which maybe isn't for. for everybody, but you can learn so much. So much. I think some of it's free even. Yeah.

Stuff. So I'm watching just podcast, YouTube videos, and then Twitter even is awesome to learn on if you're falling the right people. We talk about that. Yeah. When you think about in the past, traditionally, think about the amount of the value of the education that you have gotten watching Real Vision.

It is a bargain. I mean, it is a bargain. You couldn't, there is no college, there is no college in, that I know of that you could go, that you could get anywhere near the amount of knowledge that you're getting for that Real Vision. And this is, I'm not being, I wish, I wish, if Real Vision would like to support the podcast and sponsor the market update, call me, Raoul, give us a call. But I'm saying it is, and that's just one example. There's a lot of great places to get info, but that's the age we live in.

information, it is, it's millions of dollars. You're stealing it. Yeah, you're stealing it. It's a steal. There's millionaires and billionaires with personal brands giving out free value of how they became wealthy. And they're just giving it away to people to watch. But they know in doing that, that not very many people are going to actually do the steps necessary to do it. They understand that. They're doing it, but they understand not everybody's going to do it. But it's all out there. You've literally just got to go find it. You literally just got to go find it. One specific thing.

I want to give a plug is Naval Ravkamp. Yeah, loved his podcast. He was one of the first, one of the first podcasts we listened to. You listened to his long podcast on how to get rich.

How to get rich without getting lucky. Yes. Amazing. Like May of 2018, a thread. And then he went in depth and it's just a three hour podcast. So good.

And I try to listen to it three times a year and just while I'm mowing and just listen over and over again. I was mowing too. And it is. So good. Good. It's just three hours and you think you could go by 40 years without thinking about this. And now that you have listened to that, it's like, okay, now I can kind of focus on what I need to focus on. That honestly is one of the greatest podcasts. It changed. It really does. Highly recommend it. Yes. Just trying to get into the. That is a great podcast for anybody that wants to change their mindset on how to be wealthy and like, I mean, it really will change your life. It applies to so much in life. Yeah. Great source. Grant. That was a lot. Awesome. Okay. That is the topic on Bitcoin and investing. We got our fair share in there. For today. For today. We may have to have Grant back on and just strictly talk about crypto.

But my biggest question, I think everybody is, you know, wanting to know is how did you become a first generation farmer? You know, like, it's just absolutely, it's so impressive, all the stuff you're doing. But that, to me, is one of the biggest and greatest accolades you have so far, just because it's so hard to be a first-generation farmer, so hard to get in and do it. And I mean, that's kind of a hard question to answer because there's so many parts that went into doing it. But if you could sum it up. Yeah, it was so it was either, well, obviously wanted to start farming. So it was either you could start farming by running ground or something like that or my whole goal was to eventually get enough capital to kind of make it easier because you could make it super hard on

yourself and start. It's doable and there's a lot of guys that do it or you can make it a little easier on yourself and put a lot of the hard work up front of getting the capital and then going into farming. That was kind of my thing. And so all of- You didn't, you just didn't, you did not want to be that highly leveraged? Yeah. Yeah. And I think another thing that people want to, like, people fear that they're not, like, did you know how to farm? Like, yeah, I, it's, it's like when you're addicted to something you've, you've done the reason to learn. He played farming simulator. Oh, he's a pro at it. Come on. I have like 2,000 hours on there. Yeah, right. Okay. Because I feel like that might be somebody's, a lot of people say they go to an older farmer and then they learn how to farm and then they, you know,

hopefully he rents it to you for being the hired hand. But yeah, to your point, if you love it, you'll, you'll learn how to do it without actually, you know. So people are here to listen to you, but I'll give you a good farming analogy. So a friend of my brothers, from Texas asked me, well, how do you know, how do you know, like when to do any of that? How do you know what you're doing, you know, farming? And I'm sure he was wanting like a good answer. And I told him, I said, well, it's really pretty easy. In the spring, we just go out in the afternoon and we get our chores done and we drive around.

And when we see somebody out in their field, you know, like with a field cul-vator, we come home and go, well, heck, it must be about time to go to, So we get the tractor out and hopefully the battery's not dead. And then we do that. And then, you know, it might rain. It might get cold. Might get hot. And then we go out and drive around and go to town and get a pop.

And lo and behold, there's somebody out there with a planter. And we're like, well, gosh, dang, Sawyer, it must be time to plant. What do he say? He just looked at me like, well, I think he realized I was. I think he realized that I was kind of messing with him. Yeah, kind of messing with him. I wish it was that easy. Well, that's all we really do.

do. Yeah, just go to town. You just got to drive around and see what's going on. That's all it is too. Well, everybody does have that one neighbor that does all the hard work for you. Like, they're the dedicated guy. They got the thermometer in the ground. They're checking the soil temperature. You know, they got her all figured out. And you just watch that guy because, you know, you figure when he's ready to go, that's the optimal time to go. There you go. All right, I'm sorry. I got got in the way. So what advice would you give to someone that wants to become a first-generation farmer. If you give any piece of advice, what's the biggest one? Yeah, I'm no expert on this, but I would say when you're thinking about it, there's obviously a lot of thinking that has to go

on years ahead of how you're going to get into it and consider, well, there's a lot of good information out there like, I know, Gavin Spore. Have you seen that guy? Yep, popcorn. He needs to start a YouTube channel. He does. He does. Or Clark Farms, or there's a lot of guys that have good information about it, but it seems like the easiest. There's two different ways you could do it. I did a way of kind of putting the hard work up, getting capital and stuff and going into it, or you could start by renting farms and kind of going out there.

That's, I don't know the best way to do that. It would be, if you really love it, you're going to find a way to go and rent some farms and start knocking on. That's where it gets tough of running ground and finding a way in. Because maybe you can piss off some people too, by stealing some ground, a kid just coming in. Right.

I don't know. So when you were... I have a good idea of how to get started better. So did you grow, are you a conventional, do you grow conventional crop? You don't do any specialty stuff, non-GMO stuff, anything like that? Yep, just regular corn and beans. Yeah. So did you consider going down the road of niche?

No. Like Gavin, you know, doing something like that? No, not at all. Not at all. I wanted it to be as easy and simple as possible. and I wanted to be kind of like my family where I grew up and just corn and being simple. I know. There's definitely opportunity in niche stuff and stuff.

Yeah, right. I agree. It's the most fun to do conventional. I mean, who doesn't love it? If you do it, you love it. So I don't like me. Farm Simulator, I'm sure that's what you do a lot of that. On Farm Simulator, can you put a hog building on your farm?

Yes. You can, really? Is that a mod or is that like an actual? Because I heard there's mods. You got to, like, mod it. Mods are what make farming similar great. You can, I think, in-game without a mod, you can do a hog-building. But I know there's hog-building mods in there.

That's how you win at Farm Simulator. You start building hog-billings. That's the secret. That's the way I do it. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So what are the biggest struggles you found so far as a first-gen farmer? I would say the, it's, it's pretty easy for me, but.

one of the weirdest things kind of going into it is so I'm not from the actual local community I'm farming in. Sure. You go into an area and you just start buying ground. Keep in mind the first farm I bought was up for sale for a year. Nobody wanted it. Ugliest farm in the county. Nobody wanted it.

So people, it probably won't make any neighbors mad. But then I started buying two other farms kind of around the area. And it's just like you don't, not that neighbors are mad or anything, but you just don't know any of the neighbors. Right. It makes it tough. and there's a new guy stopping in every day to talk to you about. He's from the local neighborhood and everybody's nice, but it's just like...

Until you leave. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. They come up to you and talk so nice to you. So you started out and you were harmless and they're like, boy, that crazy kid, you see that crazy kid bought that farm? Boy, I feel sorry for him. And then when you buy something that's decent, like, that's son of a bitch.

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Yeah, right. I feel bad for him. It turns on a dime. Who does he think, Ian? Well, but you're, so you're an example because there's a saying a lot. I've heard this said many times that. you know, you can go buy a chunk of farm ground three counties away, easy, but you can't buy one across the road. And that's so true because there's so, I mean, it's like everything.

There's so much, there is politics like you wouldn't believe in every community. And it is, well, it's hard to buy a farm, but it's hard to find a farm for sale to buy. and I've heard that said many times guys, you know, that farm from one, farm quite a ways away from their home. And when you ask them about it, it's like it's the only place that we could expand because we couldn't buy any ground around here. And I mean, that's just the, that's just the nature of the beast. Where do you keep your equipment at?

It's outside in the organic shed. Just sitting outside, grab a lot. Yeah. Now, it would have been my newest video I posted. actually working on getting a shed built here so back. That's good. So is that why you're mowing down the corn? Okay, I was wondering what you were doing. Yeah, and mowing down the corn

I posted like an Instagram story. Yeah. It pissed off. Oh, I bet. I was, I bet it did. This guy's got so much Bitcoin. He's just out mowing his corn down because he doesn't want to have to harvest this fall. He's like, ah, it's too much work. I'm just going to mow it down. Mine and Bitcoin. Yeah, need this. Yeah, and it was mainly just kids and stuff,

but I just had to explain to him. It's like seven or eight here, a box of corn mown down. We want to get this building up. Chill, guys. And you guys mowed down corn, the hog boom. Yeah,

for the hog building. Yeah, we did. We did do that. I forgot about that. That's right. It was in the way, though. Now, how many acres do you take out?

It was less than an acre. It wasn't even close because we, we had anticipated that we were going to get started in that, like in July, probably. And so we rough figured out, we didn't plant the corner of that field. Okay.

Because we didn't figure that, we thought we were going to get started earlier, but then when the dirt guy showed up, we hadn't figured how far out we were going to have to pile the dirt, and so we had to go mow down a little bit more, but it really wasn't that much. But, you know, it's funny because I had a guy, when I was selling hog buildings,

I had a guy up by, uh, oh, Brandon, Iowa, I think is the closest little town. South, northeast, northwest Iowa? No,

um, right off of right off, right off of i380 had like walker okay okay up by walker brandon my camera what else the other little towns are there but anyway um he we sold him to 1,200 head sheds and we were looking for someplace for our concrete guy to go because there was a deal there was a building that didn't go anyway i called him and i said hey you know we can be there you know in a week to start your pit and he's like because we weren't going to start it till fall

and beans were turning but they weren't anywhere near ready to cut and he's like oh boy these beans really looked good and beans were high that year and he's like I really hate to mow these beans down I'm like well if you want to get this thing started you're going to have to mow these beans down

he's like you better show up that guy that we saw the pork expo and then it rained up there and it didn't rain down in northern Missouri so we sent our concrete guy down there And then it dried, you know, it dried up quick and he calls me.

And I'm like, well, it's probably going to be two or three weeks. Sawyer knows, I see this guy every year at the World Pork Expo. That's been like 10, 12 years ago. And every time I see him, all he knows me of is, you're that son of it. You know, you still owe me for those beans. I mean, it's like every year. It's, that is a thorn in his eye. He said it to you this year, too.

Is it aggressive or is he? No, he just wants to bust my balls about it. He's just poking at you. But, yeah. It made an impression on him. So, yeah. So what's your, what's your favorite, now that you, now that you're, you're doing it, what do you enjoy the most?

Yeah. So are you a guy that you, are you going to be one of those guys that when, when I can get a, when you can get an auto steer six row planner to plant it for you? Are you going to be like, no, I really like being out there doing it? That's going to be tough. Yeah. You enjoy doing it, definitely. Yeah, planting was fun.

So I only planted 250 acres, Tillbull. Right. That was a lot. It felt like my first 85 acres. It took me end of one day, all of the other day, and then into the next day. And I'm like, like, that's a lot. So, like, planting even was a grind. Yeah.

It was fun. You enjoy it and stuff. It's great. the first day, you know, like, field work's always great the first. It really does. It's like, it serves that period where it's like, yeah, we're in the fields, let's go. Yeah, so it's, you love, you know.

And then you get like two days, three days, you're like, all right, this is dragon, let's get it going. Yeah, and, you know, the guys that we don't farm. Right, we don't farm that much ground, but, you know, the guys that farm a lot, it truly is a grind because, you know,

the longer you're at it, the maintenance, the maintenance starts and all the stuff that goes wrong and all the stuff that you didn't then the weather it gets strung out we we're all very blessed the technology is unbelievable because i grew up when i was a kid we had a four row 495 pole type john deer planner with the with the disc you know when you went and got seed corn you got a set of disc that went in the planner for the seed size because depending on what how big the seed was that's how big the notch disc was that went and the and um you know to go from that to today it took us i mean i think we i think it took us like a month i can remember starting because you plowed you harrogated and then if it rained and it got

crested you harrowed it again and then you might roll it if it got clotty and then we went out and we planted it and i mean it took forever it took a month and then as soon as it came up well you better start collivating. And we talked about this in the last podcast. My brother, my oldest brother was the only one that could collivate because my dad, we had a front mount, a four-row collivator on a John Deere 60, and he set those sweeps out so far because he wanted to make sure that you got every inch you know, collivated that I couldn't drive straight enough to not take out corn. And plus, I about fall asleep. And my oldest brother was the only one that could do it. When I came along, my dad was like, I can't afford to have you call of eight.

So, but anyway, it's changed so much now we get done. We basically, we plant all the corn in one day and we plant all the beans in one day, pretty much. It's all no-till, no-cultzbootent. Yeah, and my dad would just be, and he was amazed. Like, when we first started no-telling, the yield that we got, he never raised corn that good, you know? Well, yeah, it's just, but he didn't have. It would never cost their mind to even do it that way either. I mean.

But he didn't have hog manure and he didn't have the genetics and he didn't have 1197 and, you know. 1197. I planned some of that against some of great number. Fills this year. Did you? That'll be good. It'll be interesting. So they're trying to, you know, Pioneer, they're always on to the next thing.

And so this year we don't have near as much 1197 as we have in the past. But it's been, that's a crush. That always crushes. It just is a great. Heck, you know, we didn't rain. We didn't have rain for, I don't know how long last year. and it still went over 200. It was the best number.

It still. Yeah. I mean, it was just crushed it. Now, do you have problems with ears dropping? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. But not enough to, not enough to.

It's still out yields. It still yields better. All the other numbers. But yeah, you definitely want to use fungicide on it. You definitely want to use fungus side on it. I didn't do that this year. Well, it's not tasseled yet, is it? No.

Yeah, have them come in and spread. Okay. Oh, God, you shouldn't take advice for me. This is not farming advice. I've pretty much got the point I use fungicide every year. Okay. Because for me it pays every year. How's your corn look?

It's good. Yeah, on the newest video I did kind of a tour of it and stuff. But we got dry. Like it was pineapple. Was it pineapple here? Yes, it was. Okay. And then we got super lucky with like five, six inches of rain in mid June.

We were worried it was going to just burn up. Really? Completely. Yeah, we got super dry. We were praying and praying. We were like, And then we prayed a little too hard. It started raining.

Then we didn't think it was going to stop. Yeah. But the last, this month of June was great. I mean, it would rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine, rain, sunshine. There was a period when it was just rain, strictly rain. But then the sun started to come out finally. So do you, have you tissue sampled any?

Have you done that before? No, no. I was wanting to. I never did. So this is the first year I've done it. And I'll tell you, I'll tell this story. This is like a unicorn. This will never happen again.

And I don't know who you used to get your fertilizer through and all that, but this is a true story. I got tissue tests on my corn and sent him in through my fertilizer guy. And he calls me, and he says to me, I got your samples back and everything looks good. I don't think I would put anything on. Because we were talking about putting like a micropack. Boron's big on corn on corn. They think that really helps. And we were thinking about adding that when we'd.

spray fungicide on when we fly it on and he said i don't think you need anything i said what he's like no i think you're okay i said everything that are you feeling all right and he's like well yeah why i said i hope you're by yourself because if anybody else hears you telling somebody they don't need more fertilizer they're going to fire you right on the spot and escort you out of the building he just laughed i'm like that will never happen i've never heard a fertilizer guy go you know it's always like oh yeah well you could add this or that or whatever, but I think we're just going to let a roll. It'll be a great year for farmers. So you guys didn't side dress at all or anything?

No, we side. No, we side dress, yeah. Okay. So we put on, we did put a micropack on when we did. We did. We did. We put on boron zinc. And then we always use sulfur.

So our, our fertility plan is basically, we put on, depending on what our analysis is on hog manure, we put on roughly about 4,000 gallons of manure. Because you'll get about, you'll get between 45, 55 pounds of nitrogen per thousand gallons. Okay. And so we're putting on close to 200 pounds. But that's a little bit misleading because manure, not 100% of that is available the first year.

Okay. So we do that and then we'll put on maybe 30 pounds with the spray after we plant. And then depending on how it looks, we'll come back and side dress. And this year we decided to side dress. And when we did, I think we put 40 pounds on. Well, I think we put 40 on the corn on bean ground. And I think we put 50 on the corn on corn. And we did.

We put in, this is the first year I've done more on zinc or whatever. It's a micropack. But man, it looks good. It's the hot. You said it's the hot item this year. Well, yeah. So this is another wit off. I'll like me telling you this.

But so we went to a pioneer deal, and the agronus was talking about corn on corn because we plant half our acres or corn on corn. And he was talking about the challenges of trying to get yield out of it. And he said one thing that they found and all the tests that they've done is usually the best doing corn on corn is not deficient in boron. And most corn is. And so I call my fertilizer guy. And I literally said, hey, I said, what do you know about boron? and I didn't even get boron out. And he's like, oh, you need it.

You need it. You're short. I guarantee you're short. And I'm like, well, why haven't you told me about it before? Well, nobody ever wants to spend any money, but you're short. I guarantee you need it. Well, you need a micropack, because if you're going to do that, you need zinc too. I got just what you need.

Don't worry about it. We'll mix it in when you side dress. Yeah, we'll put it on there. I was like, oh, okay. Those guys, I mean, there's no scenario that you don't need more fertilizer. Besides. Well, except for this. I'm wrong. Is that the first time ever? Because it's like if corn's cheap,

oh, man, you need every bushel you can get. Now's not the time to skimp on your fertility program. And if corn's high, oh, man, you only need like a bushel, like a bushel will pay for this micropos. I mean, you'd be crazy not to put more on. I'm like, you guys have got it made. They got post sales pitches. They got it. They got it ready. So there you go. Anyway. Well, is the heat rising in this barn? It's getting hot for sure. That's why we're trying to shoot him the morning. But I got that's the last question I wanted to ask was just what's next for Grant Hilbert? What do you got coming up? What's, what's on the rise for you? Anything exciting? Yeah. We're, so working on a software company right now. I got to keep it private. Otherwise,

I just got to keep it private. Just a software company in next couple months, probably be announcing it and stuff. It's all he can say. It's all he can say. Stay tuned. That guy that does that. and stuff. But I've been put a lot of time into it over the past year and stuff. And in the middle of summer when I stay on the computer all day and work on it. So you're excited. That's, you're very excited. A couple months, your viewers are going to know? Oh, yeah. All right, all right. It'll be fun. Do you have any question for us? Is there anything you want to know? Don't feel obligated. I just, I just pulled the pomp. I pulled the pomp card. I could ask him if he believes in aliens. I was going to say. So this will do farm.

eventually do you want to do hogs forever? Or do you, if the opportunity was there, would you just go strictly grain? I think we'd always keep the hog barns. I don't know if we would do all the work that's required to do all the pigs. No, we wouldn't. No, we would hire it done and then strictly, strictly grain farm. We loaded pigs last night, and I tell you, I do like loading pigs, which is kind of weird. But I was feeling it.

He really likes putting them on the truck. He really likes putting them on. I want every one of those pigs to know that I won. That's what I want to know. Because most people don't realize pigs are like convicts. They got nothing but time to lay around and dream them up a ways to screw you over. So every time that we sell them, I want them to know. I won, boys. I won.

But anyway, yeah, I love, I think we both, they've been a great, well, it's how we've managed to keep. this thing going. In this day and age, we farm 400 acres. And the only reason that there's another generation here is because of the hog buildings. And I think we'll do that as long. Now, I think that's going to look a lot different in 20 years than it does today. I don't know, but nothing stays the same. But I think we'll always, we've all, there's a benefit to animal agriculture. I mean, the fertilizer part of it. But we would, I mean, I'm just like everybody else. I'd like to grow the farm. And we have to grow the farm for him to be able to raise his kids.

So that's the number one goal. That's the biggest goal. We want to go out and get acres, you know, like everybody does. But like he said, hog barns is what's giving us the opportunity to do that. And I enjoy the work, but do I want to keep doing it forever? No, I'd like to ideally hire somebody to help us out with that side of it. So I could grain farm because to be honest, I love green farming more than I do love hog farming. And I do love it probably because it's seasonal.

You don't get to do it all the time. It's special. And, you know, hog farming, I'm been there every single day, doing the same thing every day, you know. So it's different, but, you know, I've done so many turns of pigs that I know what I got to do. But I would say I equally love today doing the other things we do. Yeah, I love this. Right here.

This is great. The people that social media has allowed us to meet, just like you. Yeah. Yeah. Heck, we didn't know who you were. Right. And it's, and it's just, it's, it's, it's deals like that and, um, so much opportunity. I think the thing, the biggest thing that I've gotten out of the last two years is just the,

the opportunity that's out there. The hardest part really is it all comes down to deciding what are you going to spend your time at because there's a million things that we'd like to do. It's just what is the one thing to focus on today. Right. Yeah. That's sure. So I think we're going to wrap it up.

Everybody, again, follow Grant on social media, follow his squad YouTube channel, follow his personal Grant Hilbert YouTube channel, follow him on Instagram, the squad, or is it, what is it? The squad, underscore, YouTube. The squad underscore YouTube, you know, give him a follow because I think this is a very valuable episode. I think we dropped a lot of knowledge bombs, especially about Bitcoin. And I hope he gave you some insight on, you know, how you could become a first-gen farmer in 2021.

So that being said, hope you guys have a great rest of your week. and we'll see you back next Friday.