Barn Talk - From City Streets to Iowa Farmers: The Hilbert Brothers' 1st Generation Farming Journey

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk! Today’s episode is all about fresh starts and relentless hustle, featuring Grant and Spencer Hilbert—the Hilbert brothers. These first-generation Iowa farmers have built their operations from the ground up, documenting every step on YouTube and even branching into farming simulation gaming and ag software development. Sawyer and Tork sit down with Grant and Spencer to talk about their journey: growing up in the suburbs, turning YouTube revenue into land purchases, learning through trial and error, and how they’re now selling beef direct-to-consumer through Farmer Grade. The brothers share hard-won lessons on business, investments, and staying disciplined—plus insights into diversification and innovation in today’s tough agricultural landscape. If you’re curious how two young guys are rewriting the farming playbook, proving that it’s possible to break in with the right mindset, grit, and some outside-the-box thinking, this episode delivers the goods. Pull up a chair—the barn is open and all the secrets are coming out. Shop Farmer Grade 👇🏻 https://farmergrade.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● 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     00:00 "Barn Talk Updates and Growth" 12:49 From YouTube to Farming Success 24:07 Importance of Farm Drainage 40:26 "Training Cows with Virtual Fences" 51:29 Pie, Naps, and Farmer Retirement 56:11 "Delayed Launch, Growing Team Bonds" 01:04:30 "Start Farming Small, Gain Experience" 01:17:31 "Money Printing in Crisis Insight" 01:28:10 EU Debt, Bitcoin, Fiscal Responsibility 01:34:31 "Learning Through Curated Twitter Feeds" 01:47:04 "Opportunities Amid Tough Times" 02:02:06 Building Opportunities From Nothing 02:11:06 Future of AI Content Creation 02:16:09 "Stand Out with Authenticity" ------------------------------- ⚠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

It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk.

What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a real, real special episode. We got two great guests coming to the barn this morning to have a great conversation with us. This has been a guess that a lot of people have reached out and asked, when are you going to get them on the show? When are you going to get them on the show? When are you going to get them on the show?

And we actually have had one of these people, one of these guys, on our show in the past, but it was such an early on episode that I don't know if everybody's seen it. So he's coming back on today to give us an update on everything. he's got going on. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, please share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that,

the more that the show grows. The more guests we can have on, the more episodes we can make. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. And I guarantee you you're going to get a lot of value from this one because there's a lot of good stuff. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk

is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. the more that you guys do that, the more credibility it gives our show so we can have more guests come to the barn and have great conversations with us. Last thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade, farmergrade.com. Right now we are running an exclusive farm-fresh beef drop with Hilbert Farms, Grant and Spencer Hilbert, here in Iowa that have pretty damn good-sized YouTube followings that have documented the process of raising cattle from calf all the way to finish.

And they're running their beef through farmer grade. And you can get it right now. It's limited. They raised eight head of cattle. And so once it's sold out, it's sold out. It's gone. And can't get any more farm to table than that. So you can always use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your order.

And we just appreciate if you want some of that beef. Go get it. How are you doing today? I'm doing good. I'm excited. I'm excited too. I guess I'll kind of get into who's coming on the show today. But two brothers that you guys probably know,

they have massive YouTube channels in the agricultural space, both on the video game side and on the personal farming and vlogging side. One of them is built a software company. One of them is, does YouTube and Farming. full time and they both start from scratch and been first generation farmers and they just are go-getters. I mean, at the end of the day,

these guys make no excuses. They want something. They map out how they're going to get it and they go do it. And they are somebody that I admire personally from afar. I've been working with them and I've been talking to them

for a long time. And every single time I have a conversation with them, I leave with something. If you don't learn anything today, you must be asleep. Yeah. Because these guys have got motors and they run and overtime and discipline. And yes, just like you said, they figure out what they want to do and they figure out how they're going to do it.

And they are methodical. And just, yeah, great guys. Great guys. If you're somebody that's a first generation farmer or if you're somebody that's ever wanted to become a first generation farmer, we get that question all the time. This is the episode for you. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Well, we're live, boys.

So Grant and Spencer Hilbert, welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks for having us. Yeah, man. Thanks for having us here. Appreciate you guys making the trip. We had Grant on early, early on. It's funny. We always get Spotify comments of people going.

Get the Hilberts on. Get Grant and Spencer on. I'm like, well, we had one on early on, but that was, I think you are our second guest ever. Behind your uncle, I think. Behind my uncle, Trent. That was a summer 2021. Yeah, that was early, early days of where we were still sitting at the table. So we appreciate you guys making the trip. And we figured got to catch up with what you're going, what's going on

with you, but also have Spencer on because you've got a lot of stuff going on too, man. And everybody loves what you guys are doing. So I guess kick things off. Let's talk about harvest. You guys are in the fields. We're in the fields. What are you seeing? What do you like and what are you not liking? Yeah. So we started September 8th on harvest. I had some corn on corn. hundred four day stuff that southern rust hit like crazy because june july even torque we were talking about this earlier june july you're thinking this can be a monster crop i was going to have a monster crop everybody got planned early perfect then southern russ came in that late july august and then just burn up the crop at least where we are for sure so corn yields aren't that good uh bean yields are

i'd say record for our county though but corn yields are pretty rough it seems like so we started September 8th and we finished October 1 so we were done a couple days ago nice you have set the bar high because we finished David's David Zezer that we farm with and I didn't even think about this but as we were driving back to the bins David said his his family

the Zezer family the family that settled that was his mother's side and they were the Rattas and he said I'm pretty sure no Zezer or Rada ever finished harvest the second of October. And I was thinking about that. I was like, yeah, that's right. Because the next day I stopped to get a bag of ice and this lady that was at the grocery store,

they hadn't even started harvest because her dad and her son, they decided that they were going to do something to their combine and they ordered the parts. And then they've been waiting on these parts and they got into it and then something else was screwed up. And so they were waiting. So they literally hadn't even started,

which normally you'd be like holy cow you better get after it and then i'm like well i guess it is only the it's only the third of october like there's a lot of years that we're barely rolling such a crazy year yeah september 5th looked like october 5th yeah you know a stock quality was horrible too we got a windstorm came had good corn standing and then boom all of it's down with stock quality so bad so yeah a lot of our stock qualities we've been getting into ours a lot of it's a little skimed It's a little sketch. But it's standing, but tomorrow, I don't know, tomorrow. Windstorm tomorrow, right?

Or windstorm today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I think tomorrow. Yeah. So it's probably good that we got that one hill out. That's like the most exposed place. What was moisture running for you guys?

It's dry enough now. It's what? 15. I think the field average is like 15, 9. Yep. But it varies because you'll run through, well, for one, not to dig on your aerial applicators, but you can tell this year where somebody flew a little too wide. I don't know whether the drone guys are the same way, but over at David's, he went all the way

down to the end of his field and took off. Oh, yeah. And he got all excited because that cork jumped up to like 300, 300. I know how it is. And then he was like, wait, he was talking about what a great number was. And then he goes, oh, I think this got two passes of fungicide because. the neighbor sprayed, you know, after he sprayed. Because as soon as we got out of it,

it dropped back down. So I think you could have probably made, I know you could have made two past fungicide pay this year. Yep. I don't know about three, but yeah, crazy. Yeah, and I think that's what I've heard from everybody is the guys that put on fungicide are pretty happy and the ones that didn't are feeling it pretty good.

And I think chemical guys are pretty happy. I got a friend up in, in Des Moines that, I think he's going to sell a lot of fungicide next year. Because I think there's a lot of people that are going to be like, yep. Yeah. Well, if it's, if it pencils, I don't know, it's all seems like it's going to go up. But you never, you never know.

If we're going to get 35 inches of rain in the growing season again. Yeah. I mean, we had July 1st, August 5th, 18 inches. Every five days, we're 8 inches. And it was 100% humidity for 60 days. So, yeah. I was telling you guys, you know, when we got here and we started harvest,

we're all surprised, we're all like, geez, I thought it'd be better than that. And I was that way. I mean, my corn's 20 bushel, 20 to 30 bushel off where it was last year. And on the one hand, you're like, oh, I can't believe that. But then on the other hand, the more you think about it, when you think about that number, how much rain, it's like, what the heck did we think was going to happen?

I mean, how's that fertilizer going to stay within grasp of those roots when it just rain. It's pounded. USDA has, and I think August had Iowa at like 218, which is what Iowa went last year, I think finished out for corn. I'm just like, I don't know anybody that has hit last year's yields.

A lot of people are 10 to 30% below. I'm 30% below last year. So I'm trying to figure out where is this coming from? Must be the, you said that yesterday. I mean, everybody's saying that. Yeah. Around here anyway, too. It's 30% off.

Yeah, I was talking to a guy, a big farmer out here. I mean, and he said he hasn't found anything that's not 20 to 30 bushel off where it was last year. So where do people find you guys with everything that you got going on? Where do they find you? Your socials, all that good stuff. The main is probably, we focused the most on is YouTube. We've kind of done that.

And we can get into it more all the way back since high school. So that's kind of our bread and butter, what we've done. And I really enjoy making YouTube videos. So I have a channel Spencer Hilbert, and then throughout high school I did like a farming simulator channel and called that Spencer TV. And then Grant's the squad and then Grant Hilbert. So we document kind of our real life farming and then still do a farming simulator. And then Grant's got an Instagram, Hilbert Farms. I have my own Instagram.

That's probably the main stuff. And then here and there we do still like the shorts and Instagram reels and stuff like that. for yeah that's that's mostly all that yeah it's really two two farm some channels two real life channels and then instagram stuff like that and then you want a game got a mobile mobile game mobile game for younger people that like to get play and stuff so yeah yeah yeah and that's american farming yep yep yep okay well so we got you both here now so i want to kind of like tell the whole story i know grant when you first came here years ago you you told your side of it but now that you both are here together, let's go all the way back to early days to now where you guys

are today, best that you can, of just how you guys became first generation farmers. Because, I mean, you would be amazed, and I'm sure you guys get it all the time, how do I start farming? How do I start farming? How do I become a first generation farmer? We get that question all the time. And I always go, well, it's possible. Grant and Spencer have done it. Like, it's possible, but it's really hard. And so I think you guys have a great story and just dive into it the best way you can. Yeah. I'd say there's a lot of guys that have, or not many guys, but there's some that have been

a first generation. We kind of did it just a little different way than probably most people do. But go back to 2014. Well, yeah, yeah. I was going to go back to I had family. I saw a grandparents that farm to Northern Iowa, always wanted to farm. But at a young age, you realize, okay, that's not going to happen. we're not going to be able to get into the family farm.

My dad never farmed. My mom never farmed. It wasn't going to happen. So always kind of had the dream of farming. So then me and my buddy, we were always interested in entrepreneurship, stuff like that too. And so started a lot of different businesses.

Some of them failed, the lawn mow and stuff like that. But then really we got into YouTube. We saw these like YouTubers. They're like, oh, these guys are buying nice houses. They're making cars. This could be an actual business.

So we started a gaming channel, just playing a bunch of different games. and then farming simulator started taking off. I started making videos of farming similar. Never played the game before, but just posted a video of it on YouTube. A lot of people started watching. And so from there,

that kind of started taking off in 2014 was when we posted that first video. And then from 2014, 2016, it took two years to get like 20, 30,000 subscribers. But then 2016, going into college, just like went full on into the channel, posting a video every day during college for those four years.

And that's really when it took off. to like a million subscribers and stuff from there. And then from there, use the YouTube money to be able to buy farmland, to be able to buy farm equipment, and to be able to fund a software company and some other investments pretty much. And then those investments got rolling into more ag

or snowball effect kind of, I'd say. The way to describe it. And that was the squad. That was the squad YouTube channel. Yep. And then 2020 was when I bought my first farm, I just started documenting the journey on a channel called Grant Hilbert.

Yeah, that's kind of when Spencer got into YouTube more and farming then, too. Yeah, what's the age? So, yeah, yeah, so I'm two years older. So I've kind of always had the older brother role. I told Spencer he got married this summer in June. My best man's speech was like, hey, I've always been this older brother role that's like two years ahead on everything. Yeah. But your marriage and, you know, your marriage with Josie is something that's like, this is where he's kind of leading that.

Yeah. In essence. Yeah. 2014 too grant just started and I so we're two years apart um I graduated high school in 2018 grant in 2016 so 2014 your sophomore junior you and your buddy uh made like 600 bucks on YouTube and we were just you know you're just getting to the age of hey this part-time job pays seven bucks an hour I detassel that 14 that was that was really cool the first I think 600 bucks to detassel for two weeks and yeah and you looked at that $600.

You looked at his $600. It's a little easier playing a video game. The opportunity cost of these are not the same. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

DeTasteland was your 14, your first job. That was pretty fun. Good stories there, good friends. This is kind of off topic, but last day, get done de Tasling.

You got mud on your boots. It's dried. It's three o'clock. We're joking around, throwing mud out the bus window. And a buddy of mine wearing the back, chucks the mud out,

and it smokes a semi-truits. windshield cracks it and his whole entire work that summer of detasselin went to pay for that windshield last day yeah it was tough that's that's a lesson to learn though it was a good lesson everybody took something away from that so oh my gosh for sure that was my first kind of experience any sort of farming or agriculture and we grew up in the suburbs of demoine so um grant always had a knack uh just for like tractors, vehicles. You're driving home at 10 o'clock at night, and Grant can point out what brand it is car

by the taillights or headlights. So, like, he was always just paying attention, even though we grew up in the suburbs between driving by fields and then our extended family and grandparents, and our parents grew up on a farm. But they moved away from that, and then we grew up in the suburbs. Yeah, so 2014, you see Grant do that,

and then when do you start to kind of, like, get bit by the bug and say, all right, I want to do something similar to that. It was really when I let him my laptop. Oh, yeah, the laptops. Let him my laptop and I charged him a fee of 50 bucks a month. It was a $600, $600.00 laptop for a thousand dollar laptop. My first big purchase, you know, 14 years old.

So, yeah, I didn't even own a laptop when I started YouTube. I just rented yours. Exactly. He rented my laptop. And there's probably some kids watching that no farm sim or even parents that the kid got on the family's desktop PC. And in three months, the thing's fried. because they downloaded a bunch of mods, which is like add-ins to the game off sketchy websites and viruses.

So within three months, four months, Grant had destroyed my computer that I lent him. I was like, screw this. I'm going to start my own channel. And I kind of helped him and kind of saw how to edit a video, watch a YouTube video, hey, click C, that means cut. You can drag things over. So just really, really basic and kind of viewed it as, hey, look, this is, we were playing sports too. We were busy with school.

Grant was a big baseball player. I played football, rugby, all that kind of stuff. And this was just a thing after school to come make a video three, four a week while in high school and make 500 bucks a month, thousand bucks a month. And it was like, holy cow, this is huge opportunity. And then that's, I guess, when the bug bit me is actually making money through the internet and working two hours a night when you'd have to go, you have to go work a subway job or something to make some. And that was 2016, 2017, probably when you got started. Yeah.

So your junior year. What did your parents think when you started? Not much. We were just in the basement. So they didn't know. They weren't like, oh, this is a waste of time.

Go get your real job. Like how you would think normal parents are. Because I remember I first got like, first check from YouTube or whatever. And they were like, oh, that's really awesome. Like they were pretty supportive,

pretty neutral on it, I'll call it. But they weren't like, hey, you're wasting your time playing a video game or something like that because it was making money. So yeah.

that's cool that's that's good that's good that they yeah supported it so like when did the so you bought your first farm in 2020 grant yep uh 20 20 20 20 I was still in college when I put my first offer in but then took a couple months to get that bought and then uh bought a couple more late 2020 and then last one was early 2021 yeah is when I bought those first couple and I haven't bought I've exchanged ground I've 1031 ground to a completely new area but I haven't really added acres since then i'd say yeah yeah it's Spencer wins are your first like farming purchase or kind of your first dabble into farming yeah and to go back even a little further uh yeah both grant and i went to i iowa state and so we were doing that while doing the the farming similar to the video game videos

and he bought some land and at that time 2018 i was freshman in college and i bought like a fixer upper house our uh our parents are into just a couple of rental properties so like another kind of job we had for chores growing up was like helping them pull a toilet out of a rental put a new one in and so we're always pretty interested in just business investments saving money because we saw our parents do it and they taught us kind of different ways to do it um the 2018 i bought a fixer up a fixer up the summer of freshman year going into sophomore year and then uh fix it up lived in it fast you know kind of house hack if you hear that you know i was always listened to all the real state.

Bigger pockets. Yeah, bigger pockets. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. And then in 2022, sold it and then bought farmland with that in April of 2023 at a, just like an auction, a little rougher ground. And that was actually, Grant was farming down kind of southern Iowa, Powsheek, Mahaska County.

And then I bought this field, 50 acres. And it was kind of in the area where much closer to home and where we'd probably want a farm like forever or into the future yeah because your first buys were just kind of like what are we doing this your first field was 40 tillable 20 CRPs some creek bottom woods yeah you were kind of figuring it out i didn't really know what i was doing so i bought ground hour and a half away kind of mtaskapalbyshe county iowa and then later on i realized okay i want to be kind of closer to home to where we grew up so it would been 2023 i 1031 exchanged all three of those farms into Story County Farmland.

And Spencer knew we were going to kind of farm there. So he was actually the first one when he bought his first farm. He went and bought in Story County ahead before I even bought anything. And then we pretty much moved everything up to Story County, kind of where we grew up. And that's where we're farming now. So, yeah. Nice. Yeah.

That's, you guys make it sound simple. But man. Yeah. It sounds easy. We went pretty fast through it too. Just the whole grand scheme of it. But every, not every day or month.

but Grant tried to document it, starting out on his channel, showing like, hey, this is, you know, you had a YouTube channel built it up over six, seven years. His first, you know, what is it, one or two million dollars with a farmland, you bought, you were still living in our parents' basement. So like, that was the, that was the idea. Keep your costs low.

It was working. Maximize. Yeah, just maximize and stay lean. Yeah, stay lean and, yeah. See, now you sound, you talk a good game, pretty smart until I saw that video that you like you bought a bailer and you're like bailing hey and I'm like okay this kid's not as bright as I thought he was make an idiot bail or idiot cubes or something people call it no I shouldn't say that no you're good yeah it is not

the smartest business we call we call him hey boy now oh yeah yeah yeah so that that that field that I bought yeah then so I kind of started my YouTube channel then when I bought the land kind of showed how much I paid for it. And on my channel, Spencer Hilbert, I really try and like dive into the numbers. So I showed exactly what I paid for it, my down payment, how I financed it, and all that. And then after the first year, I showed what it made, what were all our costs, how much we paid an interest on the land, and then our input costs for the crop. And so people have really enjoyed that. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's awesome. And especially, I mean, you can't even imagine the number. number of younger people. Well, I wouldn't even say younger people. There's a lot of people out there my age that, heck, there's a lot of people my age that are farming, that inherited the farm that don't know the numbers as well as what you show because they've just always been in it, you know.

And a lot of people that ask that question, how do I get started? How do I get started? How does it work? So it's great information. I think it's awesome that both of you guys started the Farm Sim channels, then started your own channels. And on those own channels,

you guys are documented every step of the process. I mean, that's so, so cool. And it's kind of like your guys is, I wouldn't say niche, because there's a lot of farming videos being posted on YouTube. But your guys is,

you guys, I feel like you, you know, you separate yourself because it's like, hey, we're first generation farmers just trying to figure this shit out. Come along. We'll just show you the process. And that's, that's what we need because it's like you,

we've talked before, Spencer, you know, everybody sees the cars, everybody sees the stuff, but nobody tells you how much does it cost? Did you finance it? Did you pay cash for it? Or am I just renting this? Yeah, you know. So you guys showing the reality of it,

I think it's awesome. It's freaking awesome. So kudos to you guys for that, for sure. So what, now that you are a farmer, what's something that you wish you would have known going into it? or two, coming from outside the world of ag, is there anything that you've run into in farming that you're like, yeah,

this absolutely makes no sense that we all as farmers do, not to put you on the spot, but I was just thinking about that. Something, well, something that I realized since farming is how important drainage is in farms. Just like, I never realized it. When I saw guys put in tile,

I was like, didn't realize it, but how important it is to either have a farm that has slope to it or a farm that has artificial drainage if it's flat. That's probably been the number one biggest realization for growing a good crop is literally you got to have drainage on these farms. And when I go buy a piece of farm, number one question is what's a drainage situation look like, I'd say. Otherwise, everything else has been, I mean, not easy,

but somewhat straightforward. Yeah, what you expect it. It's just one of the things that I never thought about it all when I first purchased some farmland. Yeah. where was I at? Where were we at? Were we together? Gosh, I wish I got to remember who said this because he was spot on. But he said, you know, more, today there's a million things that are being marketed to farmers

that are going to pay you X number of dollars an acre. And he said, the only two things that I know of that are guaranteed that will make you money is tile and on farm grain storage. Well, that was Farm for Profits podcast. Oh, yeah, that's right. We asked them, what insights have you learned from all the podcasts you've done? Yeah, that was Whittaker. What makes farmers the most money or what's the best thing that they can do for their operation

and make it more profitable? And grain bin storage and tile, that was their two things that they said. So I don't know. Yeah. Well, point to that with tile, once you have the drainage correctly, at least I'm kind of seen all the synergies of. fungicide of proper nitrogen of proper fertility out there like work a ton better once you have that tile fix right so it's kind of a some of those products do work better once you have the

ground yeah being able to the crop being able to breathe so yeah none of that does anything if your corn crop drowns yes yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly and so we bought a tile plow uh well yeah last fall and your first time doing it was like 2022 with um with a Iowa and farmer yeah yeah Ben and so he came out with his quadrack

and we did in his tile plow and that was the best way for us to learn on all this is probably just doing it so we had him come out hey you're gonna make sure this done right and we're just gonna get dirty and figure things out and watch what you do

so we did that tiled I don't know 50 60 acres went through the full process and then got a three point tile plow on your on your radar front wheel assist tractor and that worked out good sometimes we got to hook

up and pull but um yeah last fall would have been the first time putting something in the ground so we kind of documented that and doing it and uh and then that field we we just finished harvesting earlier this week and stuff and it looked like no drown out spots there were we got so much rain this year there were spots you could have walked out there knee high there would have been sitting water and in four or five days it slowly drained down and something grew and actually put an ear on where you would have i'm sure we would have had probably four to five acres just zero oh yeah easily on that um let alone the perimeter would have been 50 bushelper or what it was doing so yeah

I'm just curious so like on your you guys do you guys just have like do you guys have rolls like harvest just happened is one of you guys the dedicated grain cart guy is one of you guys the dedicated combine guy or do you guys just go you get in there because I'm busy with this just get in there every year has been

different because this is the first full year where we actually did something like last year we just I don't know we harvested 160 acres this year was the first time we were actually farming a lot last year previous years yeah No year has been the same. So we still...

This year where you had all the farms in one county where it's like you got all your equipment up there. You can do everything else. And we had a semi this year as well. So you sold your wagons, bought a semi. And in hindsight, the semi had some issues and you sold the wagons. And then we were sitting there. Oh, wait, we have nothing to move grain here for like a week or two.

But even 2023, we drove the tractor 80 miles ago plant, one 50 acre farm because this is first farm. So I guess when it's his farmland, I always try and let him run. the combine when it's mine i always run the combine like part of this farm and thing is just enjoy it like literally enjoy it so if it's your farm that you just purchased last year go run the combine i'll go run truck or grain cart so yeah we aren't in a big rush yeah yeah so we switch out rolls a lot yeah did you get your cdl or did you just because you don't have to have your cdl right if you it's so much it's on your own ground if you're just hauling your own grain not for hire uh and doing your own thing

No, we just jumped in it. So did you, anyway teach you or do you just... No, I was just jumping the truck and go. No, that sounds kind of bad. But, no, we had experience. It wasn't just like somebody who would... We had driven manual vehicles, and these were automatics. And we'd driven, you know, pulled wagons down the road.

I would argue jumping in a semi, so far from my experience is safer than wagons. Yeah, what's like a story? Like, there's got to be some shit moments. Well, in 2023, or 22 or 23, Spencer bought a... military truck. If I ain't listeners watch the YouTube channels, they'll know what truck I'm talking about, but it's got a, what is it? Six by six. It's a five-ton

military truck, 1979. Spencer spent probably a week building a custom hitch for it because the hitch is super high because this is an off-road one. So he built a custom hitch. We put a 650 bushel Brant wagon on the back of it. And we were hauling, I mean, we harvesteded a lot

acres with it. We pulled it into town across the elevator scale. And work good. But the thing is, you could never get a strong enough, what was it, hitch pinned to hold that 600. At the end of Harvest 2022, last wagon came in and I go back to the back of the truck and the hitchpin cheered.

So the actual hitch was there. It was just hanging on by, you know, the bullet halfway out. So that was a little sketch. And after that, I was just like, no, we're not. This is stupid. It was fun, but we're not going to...

This is stupid. They don't want to risk that. The hitch I welded up and everything. I went all out, an inch thick plates and just everything. And it was kind of bought a welder that winter or whatever and just was messing around. And the inspiration came from Ag Talk. There were some pictures of old guys running five-ton military trucks, pulling two wagons. It was more just for fun and stuff and good for videos, too.

So part of the stuff we're doing too, we aren't farming enough acres. Half the fun and half of the reason we're out there is to film cool and fun YouTube videos too. So we're focusing. Yeah. Mainly focusing on that. At least I am. Like right now, yeah, we just got done with harvest. I guess my role is kind of Grant sometimes forgets to grab the camera or anything.

And I kind of keep us on track for making videos. Otherwise we wouldn't have any videos out. And I'm sure you guys have similar issues. You ever have to force like torque to say, hey, hey, yeah. I just did last night. I said, hey, guys, I got on the radio. I said, and I gave David a GoPro too. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, guys, how's the vlogging going today? And they're like, oh, I got five clips. Oh, I got this. And I'm like, okay, just making sure. Because, you know, the last thing you want is to waste a day. Yep. I mean, there are days where I'm just like, I'm not bringing the cameras.

I just want to enjoy this right now. I don't want to film because you guys know, it's a job to just, you're already thinking a lot. and then adding that on top of it of thinking about your next shot and everything. It just it just makes it even more like you can't enjoy it as much. But yeah, last night I was like, hey guys, you got the footage going because I know that if you start, if you start shooting in a day, you got to get enough footage to make that a video. So you don't want to like, hey, we're going to this field and then nobody shoots anything the rest of the time and then you can't make a video out of it. And we're very lucky in the fact that I don't know how.

Because wouldn't you say that when, like, when we started down this road, the first time that we asked David, like, so for the first, for the first couple years that we were doing this, we didn't even ask David. Yeah, I was too, I was too chicken shit because I was like, I don't know if I want to even be on camera. We really didn't even think about it. But to know him, to know him the way that I did. And so his dad, we actually, his dad, custom farmed for us. And then David kind of took over the operation. And David is like halfway between Sawyer's age and my age. So we're all like right in there. But yeah,

we didn't even think about like giving him a camera. We just shot everything ourselves. And then we asked him. And now I'm like kicking myself because some of the commentary that he does, it's better than anything that Sawyer. I mean, he has some of the best. Yeah, he's got. You couldn't ask.

for a better partner. Yeah. Like we couldn't have coach somebody to put out as good of content as day. Yeah. Yeah. Having that combine views huge. And yeah,

just like, and then like last night thrown the drone up while you're running the grain cart, like you just got to be so on on with it and just like, yeah. Yeah.

So, but no, it's the biggest problem. Yeah, I just wish I had somebody dedicated to be like, yeah, just throw the drone up.

Yeah. Because it just adds more to the, and part of it too, it seems like a hassle. But then, it's like the mindset of like, man, this is the easiest stuff ever. All we do is carry around a camera and just talk. Like it's, at the end of the day, it's extremely like, oh yeah, easy and stuff.

And you always get that thought where it's like, why am I complaining about this? We should just go out and do it kind of. Yeah, I think in the real, when we first time ever getting a paycheck from Google AdSense and making YouTube video, I'm like, holy cow, my grandparents wouldn't be able to believe this. And then my grandparents would never be able to believe that you can hold a camera and farm and people would then watch it. And then you can get paid for that. So it's like put that in perspective.

It's absolutely crazy opportunity. And yeah, they wouldn't even believe it. And then they would probably say, why is not everybody having a camera right now and just filming what you're doing anyway? Yeah. Not everybody can have a YouTube channel. And if everybody did it, you know,

it's like anything becomes a commodity. But yeah, that's... Yeah, I think it's really cool. legacy part of it too like i mean especially for you guys like documenting your start like from the very beginning i mean your kids someday that are your grandkids i mean that's so cool that they're going to have that that's what i think about too you know i started i think when i was 19 started making youtube videos on the farm just showing what i did and i don't even watch those because it's just cringy i sucked i didn't know what i was doing but it'll be cool to look back on that

someday and that's i think that's kind of a second-hand benefit of doing it yeah kind of like a daily journal everybody says and even back in the old days your grandkids are reading the grandpa's uh journal that he wrote every month in and there's value to writing that down and so uh now there's value just going back one or two years and watching one of our videos and you're like holy cow i can get inside of my mind of a 22 year old and now i'm 25 and be like look at how much we've grown or different ideas we have and then and then i mean the only way to appreciate the future is to study the past. So when you watch your old videos and the way you thought,

you're like, it just speeds up the learning curve for yourself, personal, and then just anything else. I'm just looking forward to it so that when my grandkids come to me and are like, grandpa, dad is such a dick, I can go, oh, come here, show him the video and say, see, he really was a nice guy. You know, back in the day, he wasn't, always terrible.

Well, I just will tell them that you made me that way. All the stress, all the stress and stuff you put on me. That's why I'm the way I am today. What was that? What was that, what was that meme that I sent you yesterday? And I'll probably actually say the same to them. This is the prophet like, why is grandpa such a dick? And I'll be like, well, he wasn't always that way.

Maturing is realizing that dad didn't mean to be an asshole. He just wanted you to succeed in a world full of losers with no work ethic. There you go. There you go. Yeah, dad sent that to me. Sent that to my brother and I last night randomly. I was like, okay. I saw that. I'm like, yeah, that's it. That's it. That's your real intention. That's it. That's good. I was really just trying to help. Yeah. Well, I think you did some good. A little bit. Yeah. We'll see. So where is the operation today? You guys talked about your farming, grain farming, but

Spencer, you've gotten a little bit into livestock or both you have a little bit. Talk about that. And then I guess talk a little bit about where you want to take the farm. You know, what's the future look like? Yeah, I can hit the livestock part and grant, I'll let you take over the future part. But just in, it would be January of this year, bought some feeder calves and we fed them out over the last, you know, we just brought them to a locker a couple weeks ago and then just got harvested in process. So it's, in this morning, I just posted a video showing the whole process. It's like a 50-minute-long video going from April 2024 of the calf being born, bring it all the way to the day in everything that we did from putting them on feed

and all the little in-between. So that is, we got into livestock by actually meeting a neighbor. So, I mean, we don't, right now we're like renting a shed. We don't have any infrastructure. We just moved up here. And before renting the shed that some of our equipment's in, we were just going to park it on a tree line. the field I bought has a nice off the road free line we're just going to kind of park it there

and so anyway I met a neighbor Adam and he he just had kind of a part time after work kind of thing and he just feeds out a few head of cattle and so we're like oh this is cool a mile away from my field and stuff and I sold him some hay bales in

24 some round bales not square bales so he's smart enough not to mess with the square bales and so and so just kind of we've been really working with neighbors a lot too that's been fun i'd say that's the one thing well you do a lot well we both do but there's a lot of big farmers around our area like 10 15,000 acre 5,000 acre farmers but then there's like a lot of smaller guys too and it seems like we work a lot with a lot of guys training equipment getting to know our neighbors a lot yeah kind of like maybe like the 90s or 80s or 70s when people work together a lot it feels like at least.

Yeah. That like we had a track skid loader. We trade them that. We used this manure spreader. Yeah. It's fun. It is very fun. Yeah.

So yeah, that's cool. So we bought those feeder calves to then have her neighbor Adam kind of custom feed. And Grant and I have never, I didn't have a cat or dog growing up or just fish. And so I'd never even, I have no clue of how to raise anything. And so, and so Adam kind of was kind of had the reins on that. And I kind of helped him over the. this past winter, spring and summer, and kind of showing, he was showing me how it all works.

And then I videoed every, every couple of weeks, gave an update how many pounds they're gaining and how we're doing everything and made hay this summer. And it's going to his little cowherd for the, for this upcoming winter. So that was kind of fun, learned a bunch. And then we're actually going to bring them out on corn stocks here in like a week or two. and we're going to be, we have virtual callers on them. Yeah.

So I made a video a couple of months ago. I need to do an update on like how the whole summer worked, but bought some virtual callers. Just like think of dog colors. It goes around their neck. I don't know. They might weigh like two and a half pounds,

solar panel on the side. And then you have an app on your phone. You can also get on your computer and you set a virtual perimeter. So we trained them in a five acre pasture with a good perimeter. You don't just let them go. Then they're out in the neighbor's field during the summer.

That would be bad. So had a perimeter fence and then instead of running polywire and, you know, sectioning half an acre off, we just use the callers. And they learn pretty quick. Within like three or four days, there was a stat. The callers deem the cows are trained by if they come up to the virtual fence and they back away 80% of the time and don't get, they get a little pulse if they run through the virtual fence. And within three days, they would hear a little audible noise and they would turn around. in like day two. So that was cool.

But in a couple weeks here, finish the cornfield. And some of that grain will go. Yeah, we fixed up a bin this summer. We'll throw a 3,000 bushel in there. He'll use that for the next year. And then bring the herd out with the collars.

And there's a railroad. There's a creek. Neighbors on both north and south end, 60 acre field. We'll see if they'll stay in the field with the virtual collars. So that'll be cool to see. Yeah, that'll hopefully they, they stay in the field and if they don't, it'll be a shit show, but it also make really good

content. What brand of callers are using? It's E. Shepherd. So Gallagher, I know there's a bunch of other brands. And I'm pretty sure all this stuff is kind of out of like Australia is my understanding where it kind of passed like three or four years. And so, yeah, we, I think we paid, gosh, I'm forgetting the numbers now. It's in the video I made.

I think like 300 bucks a collar. Then you paid two bucks a month for subscription. just so you have the sad light. Yeah, they've worked pretty good. I've got a neighbor, a guy that I'm on corn growers with that they grain farm. And, I mean, that was like all I ever knew that they did. And then he told me that he has like a cow herd,

not very big. I can't remember if it's like maybe they got 15 cows or something like that. And I was like, where in the hell do you have these cows? And he goes, oh, we just have them on all our waterways. and I said, well, how do you keep them? And he told me, I think this is the third year that they've done it, third or fourth. And they just move them. In the middle of summer, a crop room, they'll have them on a waterway.

They move them. Yeah, they have them in waterways. And they keep them in there. And I was like, that's pretty impressive. That's crazy. They don't have the mindset of my old German Shepherd because he had a caller. But if he just decided that he really wanted, if he really wanted to go, he knew he just took off and ran full sprint, the pain wasn't going to last very long, and he would just

book it through. Beryl through. Once they discover, these colors are the same. You get 20 feet beyond the virtual perimeter. They're free unless they come back in. So if they learn that, then you got to somehow train them. You got to do something. Or they go to the sailboard.

Or they go to the sale bill. Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. I kind of led to this a little bit in the intro, but where are you taking the cattle, you know, to get processed? and what's the end result going to be like? Yes.

For the beef you race. So we just brought them to the locker here two weeks ago and then just got processed. And then now we're listening to them on Farmer Grade. So working with Sawyer here. What's cool about it, and you mentioned the square bales earlier. You know, we're farming here mainly kind of for fun and enjoyment.

And in the first time I ever made some square bales sold it to a horse lady. It's like, oh, that's kind of cool. She's going to use this. I see where it goes to the end consumer. And so that was kind of the livestock thing, too, a little more, you know, I'm raising something here on our farm, and it's somebody who watches our videos can consume it. And so, and then saw that you were doing Farmer Grade, Sawyer, and it was like, okay, let's raise these five head here and get them on Farmer Grade.

And then people who watch the videos can actually consume something that we produce on the farm rather than just corner and soybean. So that's where kind of the inspiration came from and trying different things like the collars and working with my neighbor Adam got lucky. Sue could never absolutely never do this without without Adam. I mean, he grew up on a farm, super good, super good to work with. He's in the videos, kind of similar to your, yeah. You hand somebody a camera and he enjoys it. So yeah. And the meets, the meat's live as of now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I talked about it in the intro but yeah i mean when i started farmer grade you know i always say on here like it's all about

transparency we're trying to work with the most well-known livestock farmers in america and we worked with sunny farms in the past and you know i always watched your guys as videos and i was just like man guys are in iowa your document what you do like i always would put it in your ear like just raise just raise five head just whenever you're ready just let me know and like we'll get it going so yeah it's live right now you guys can buy hilbert's farm beef on farmergrade.com right now that's literally got processed two weeks ago three weeks ago so like it's going to go in it's going in our freezer this week and then next week and then we're going to start sending orders out so um pretty damn cool and like they Spencer literally documented the entire

process like like you said today dropped a video 50 minute video just showing the whole process of them raising uh these beef on their farm and that yeah that's the best that's the best that's the best part. That's what this, that's what farm grade's all about at the end of the day is that true transparency of like actually knowing where your food comes from. So it's freaking awesome. I'm excited and you guys have been awesome to work with like the entire way. And Adam, I went out to you know, you guys' place, Adam's place, met him. Great guy. Like absolutely great guy. He's a meat scientist. Right. Yeah. Yeah. He goes all over. Mileware from the farm. Yeah. Like he, I told, I told dad like you need to meet Adam.

We need to have them on the podcast because, like, he, man, the stuff he knows about me is just, like, absolutely crazy. Soar is, he's very proud of this deal because I'll just tell you, he told me that I can't help pack out any of your guys' beef because he knows that I'll try to throw it on the ground and break the seal. And he told me you can't have any of these stakes. Yeah, because the rule is if you drop, you know, if a broken seal happens, we're not going to send that, obviously. So we'll take that home and grill it up. And, you know, I try to pay the help sometimes with some meat. And I just, he's become a liability because sometimes you'll catch him and tapping it on here, tapping it on here. Well, I already put my order in August first.

Yeah, I saw it come through. Yeah, you saw it come through. We'll have it ready. We'll be sending it out here quick. I had to make sure the process worked good and everything went through and free shipping on that. Yeah, I'll just have to watch the video because I won't be able to have any. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, we taste us that. We brought some in, taste it. That's it is it. Yeah, it's been a fun journey and then super excited. I think my parents are already put in order and a few things like that. So it'll be cool when the box gets there, see our picture. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's, I think that's a niche in our world today that people really, people are kind of craving that. Like, they like the idea. Because the biggest problem we have, I feel like kind of in our society like most things that people are pissed about

if you boil it all down it comes down to trust whether it's you don't trust the government or you don't trust this or you don't trust that well on the food side I mean that's the beautiful thing about the people that are doing and you're not the only one doing it but just getting that connection back to hey this is

these are the people that they obviously care about what they're doing and you know this is where it came from and it's a great opportunity thing is the big packers aren't going to do that like they can't do that they're all about efficiency and so like that's where and i have offered i have offered i'm like come on triumph you know you can put my picture on the back of a pack of daly's bacon with my pitchfork standing from my red barn i just want a penny a slice that's all i want penny a slice you know like just think of what i could be because if if if i actually was the torque after the toilet

paper at the truck stop you know if i got a penny a wipe and if i got a penny a slice life would be doing you'd be you'd be i don't know on my tie yeah you probably wouldn't even be fit in that chair yeah so you just have to wheel me around yeah that's funny no but yeah sorry i digress no you're good i was daydreaming there a what about uh what about the future what about the future so you guys kind of laid out what the farm looks like today where do you want it to go what do you want it to look like. So I'd say on the farming, the row crop side, want to grow that, but I'm not in a crazy hurry. I'm like, okay, there's going to be a lot of available for rent. You just keep doing the right things. Like, you're going to slowly progress and grow. So I'm not trying to grow crazy

on that. But my goal was always to farm full time. That's kind of still my goal. But I feel like, or I've always wanted to also have some side businesses going or some kind of entrepreneurial thing. So run the software company right now. We're building that. So we built American farming and we're working on a bunch of projects and scaling that. I've got project manager now that runs that day to day. So it's kind of eased everything on that front where I can focus more on farming or YouTube or anything like that. So yeah, that's kind of where we want to go.

It's just you don't have to grow crazy big. I'm more of enjoy the farming, enjoy the process. Don't grow so big to where like you just hate life. Just enjoy it. And that's kind of where I'm trying to go along with. And the only way you were able to start farming is because of these other things we're doing. So it's like you want to. And we enjoy doing these things too.

I mean, we don't have regular hours. Sure, at times we got to stay up a little later and we're our own boss. But I think at 14 years old, 15 years old, we knew we wanted to have an at typical job, career, do our own thing. And so we kind of found that and understand that we're extremely fortunate to be able to honor. random Tuesday or come up here or do anything at any time so super uh don't want to go too far away from that also but enjoy farming too yeah do you so you feel like the like do you for both of you do you feel like like the long term plan and goal is just to like you said full-time farm like if you could retire someday and just be a farmer is that what you're going for if i was if i was a billionaire i would

I would be farming 2,000 acres. Like I want to be down in Florida on a beach somewhere. Maybe a little bit, but more, it's like, that disgust me down in Florida. I want to be in Iowa farm, 1,000, 2,000 acres, and I want to enjoy life. Yeah. Like that's just farmer at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pure enjoyment.

Yeah. Go ahead. I always remember when I was selling hog sheds, we build a big, we built a lot of stuff in Missouri, but we build a big complex down north of Columbia, Missouri. and we were there for, you know, all summer. And there was this group of farmers. And every day they would just show up there at the job site on their side by sides because it was the most exciting thing going on, you know.

So they would just go and they'd stand around there and watch. And it really set the hook for me of what farmer retirement should be because these guys would be there, you know, about 10 o'clock. they'd come rolling in and they'd sit there and talk for a while and then want to be like well you know i think i'm going to go get a slice of pie at the cafe so then they would leave and then they'd come back after lunch you know at like two o'clock and they'd be like about three o'clock they'd be like well you know i think i'm going to go get a i think i'm going to go get a nap in and then i'm going to go to the cafe and get a bite to eat and and i thought you know i think

these guys have got to figure it out because I pie and naps and a side-by-side ride I I think I could work my way into that yeah it wasn't spring it wasn't spring or fall well when was it oh I think these guys were pretty much I think most of them were cat they cattle they had cattle and if they had row crop I don't know if they farm but I think a lot of them rented their row crop out and just had their cows and they had it figured out yeah I had it figured out so that's what I'm striving and four, try not to mess it up for me, Sawyer. Try not messing up. Yeah, I'll try.

I'm trying my best. You make it hard sometimes. I know I do. I am kind of a liability. Yeah, you are. Go ahead. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about American farmer.

Okay, yeah, yeah. So what was the, like, what was the, what was the itch on that? Because you obviously spent a lot of time playing farm simulator, but you got the bug that you're like, you know, what was it that drove you to go down that road? It was more so like, okay, so from 2014 to 2020,

I played Farming Simler. That last four years there, I played that every day, posted a video every day on YouTube. I was like, okay, well, the company that makes this game, they make it great, they're smart, but they're over in Europe, and everybody on the North American side complains, this game is not like North Americanized.

It looks nothing like Iowa, nothing like the Midwest. It's very Europeanized. So I was like, okay, here's a perfect opportunity. You know, you're like one of the biggest farming similar YouTubers. So you have the marketing down already for the company. Now you just need to go build this. Let's go build an Americanized farming simulation game. So we started on mobile.

And in 2020, around college, I just started hiring a bunch of developers, artists, just on LinkedIn, interviewing all these guys. And then once you get one down, then another one's like, hey, I got a buddy who's really good. And it kind of snowballs. into creating a team and then took three years to build that game a little longer than it should have and then we launched that in November 23 and now we're working on a couple more projects and just scaling the company and getting the right people in place. I feel like that's huge

to have the right project managers in place to scale that and building a lot more stuff coming. So yeah, it's one of those dreams where it's like let's go after that and kind of pulled it off the first game and working on some more stuff now. So at any time during that, you know, you have a, you have a gift. Yeah, he makes shit. Yeah, you could take, like you could take,

I'd like to have you like narrate, uh, narrate D-Day. Like, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much, you know, you just get. So at any time, from the time you thought, you know, this would be awesome to make an Americanized version of this.

And I would love to do it. at any time during that process did you wake up and go what in the absolute have I done like why there no there wasn't a moment where I was like scared like I've got way too much capital invested we're not going to get it out anything like that no there wasn't there wasn't a moment it was just like okay I know I was pretty confident whether it was delusional confidence I don't know but I was pretty confident in the fact that we could get this done get built and it'd sell pretty well just the grind to doing it yeah just had to grind it was there any struggles? Like, was there anything that was like, you look back and was like, man, that was hard,

but we worked through it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There was definitely moments where everybody was freaking out at each other and meetings and stuff like that. But it was like one of those growing pains where, okay, so like, like we were delayed over a year since when I thought. So I said I was going to launch in like 2020 and we finally at least in 2023. So through that, like I had all these people, like, hey, when's this game going to come out? And the whole, like at the company, we were just rushing to get this thing out. We didn't really know when we were going to get it out. And so it's one of those things where like, yeah, that was definitely a struggle. And, but those people you work with now, like, you know really well because you found like at the lowest times of the company when you're

building and you're struggling, you got to know them really, really well. And if you're still working with them today, you have like a really solid relationship now. So now we're in a place where it's like, okay, we can do anything. We got through that tough time of running some struggles, building some code and stuff like that. And now we can, uh, we can, we can. can do anything so yeah it was definitely a struggle so i got a couple more gray hairs at 27 years old than i should probably but yeah it was uh it was fun i looked back and i'm like that was a heckway experience so yeah dude uh building a building a game building an app building a game like i think most people just even thinking of the idea of doing that they're scared with just even saying it

just everything that entails and the complexity of it and all that so like it's when you first told me that you built it, I was like, holy shit, dude, that's wild. Yeah. And like the hardest thing about it is, okay, like, it's, it's easy to build a game for a PC with good graphics because you got this, you know, giant tower that you have, all this processing power. But then go put it on this, this phone. It's extremely tough to run a high graphic game on this phone. So that's the issue is we're always balancing, okay, is the game crashing? Is it burning up phones or is the graphics too poor, to poor quality where people are going to complain. So it's like that perfect balance.

I mean, we went through like five, six months where it's like, why is this crashing on this device? Why is this crashing on this device? And when you think about how many devices, you know, there's probably a thousand different versions of an Android phone out there that one of them could have a weird processing power that doesn't work, so our game crashes on it. We got people complain that their game doesn't crash and they got,

we screwed them over or something like that. So it's a lot trying to balance it. Yeah. So do you have any plans for that? I mean, you said you're working on. future projects. Can you disclose any of those future projects? Not yet. Yeah, I can't until we announce it. Okay. But big things. But yeah, yeah, yeah. People are going to be happy. You think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. People are going to be happy and stuff. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I, it's funny because I've gone to a lot of family functions.

And I've talked to a lot of people and, you know, their kids playing American farming. And I think you have a lot of kids that love, love you guys for your farm simulator videos, love that you built that game, but you got a lot of moms that get pissed off. Their kids constantly asking, yeah, their kids are costly asking, mom, I want, I want a million more dollars. Can I buy, can I just buy the end game cash? Just $10. It's just $10.

I got to get this tractor. Yeah. Well, our project, I always thought about that. And our project manager made a really great point. He's like, okay, what does it cost per entertainment time? Like, what does it cost to go to a movie? I haven't been to one in years, but what? 10, 15 bucks or something like that?

Okay, so if you go to a movie for two hours, you spend 10, 15 bucks. If you spend 10, 15 bucks in our game, kid probably plays that for a week or two. Like, the per hour entertainment costs is actually not that low. It's just getting the, yeah, parent usually, because I've got a lot of moms that come up to me, like, you cost me so much money. And I'm like, I'm sorry, but it's kind of how we make money.

And it takes a lot of capital to build this thing. I think I have more money invested in that software company that I do my farming operation at all. So like it took a lot of, it takes a lot of capital to build something like that. And the software company, isn't it called squad built? Yeah,

cool. Yeah. That's, yeah, man, kudos you guys are doing some pretty amazing things. And just outside looking in, I've always just admired what you guys are up to and what you guys,

the journey you're on and all that. And I think a lot of people do. That's why you guys have such a great following is they just look at, your work ethic and your ability to just go in and endure and just go out the outside of the box thinking what are some tips or what are some pointers that what you would give to somebody that wants to become a first generation farmer you know what is like the best piece of advice you could give somebody like that you guys have done it if you're probably starting out from ground zero no relatives know anything you live in town probably the first thing to do is not farm and probably get stabilized, get some sort of income,

learn about investing and saving because farming is very expensive, especially to start out. You can start small, absolutely, but if you're going to start small, you're going to have to have something else going on. And so just looking at us, that's exactly how we did it. Like I said, Grant, his first piece of ground he bought, he was still living in our parents' basement. So there's some sacrifices that are made. Do you really want it? And then just you can go out on the curve even more and wait 10 years and be more stabilized and learn.

And maybe it's reaching out to a neighbor, helping them just to get some experience. I say our first like three years, we were paying a lot of tuition payments, but we weren't paying, you know, it was just costing us. So to learn we were doing it ourselves, making mistakes from setting up the planner for the first time to just figuring out when to plant, when not to plant. is it too wet to harvest little things like that so for sure have a second side income and do something else unless you have a relative an opportunity you understand hey if i do a b c d this equals this and i can make a living off this great do it um but if you're starting out with with no no background you have to do something else at the beginning yeah i look at two two different ways if you're starting from scratch me and know like family connection you either have okay i hop into it right now i get

going and i farm for 20 30 years and i borrow money borrow a bunch of money from the bank and it's tough it could be tough on my family like it is extremely tough doing it that way and maybe i have some small outside job or in my opinion i think the smarter route is to go as a delayed gratification discipline route of okay this is just like any other business i'm going to save a lot of capital up to invest and start this startup or this business. I'm going to save for 5, 10, 20 years and then get into it once I have a little bit capital and some outside income source is how I viewed it. And then it's like, okay, I put the hard work in up front, even though it was tough,

I was able to farm for 5, 10, 20 years. And then now I'm able to farm, but it's a little easier farming. I'm not sure. It's not stressful on my family. We've got some outside income helping fund the farm because obviously you guys know it's extremely competitive out there. So if you're starting from scratch, it's so much easier. you have a little bit of capital or some outside income outside income behind you supporting that

i feel like then when times are tough you can get a little more aggressive with some of that outside income that's that's how i've personally viewed it um at least yeah we i mean that's the way i've always said it on here yeah is i've always alluded to you you guys what you did because it's like i mean you can try to go work for a farmer and you know be his be his left hand right hand man and you know, learn everything that he knows and maybe he'll sell you a piece someday and get you started. But can you trust that? Can you put your faith in that versus betting on yourself? Go make the money outside of farming, then get into it. It just seems like that's the best way. Well, or, you know, you just get a copy of the plat book for wherever you're at and then watch the obituaries.

And, you know, you got so many smart-ass comments today. Holy shit. Oh, my gosh. It's a good joke, though. Platbook is a good one. Yeah, yeah. Well, you can always see who you need to marry. Who's the, who's that? So, and if there's married for worse.

If there's like an 18 or to 22 year old kid watching that's on the family farm, probably a really important thing to do is somehow get skinning the game early and earlier the better. So whether that's, I don't know, your family's buying an 80-acre field two years from now and you're putting in and you're buying 10 acres there through that some way. Just somehow get skin in the game and then you learn a lot more when you have skin in the game. And you kind of feel, oh, wait, this isn't for me. This is too much risk. I don't feel comfortable.

This just isn't a good business. And at times, most of the time farming isn't a good business. And so if you don't want to do it, you should probably get a little feel for it before you dive all the way in. So that's one thing. And then probably don't over leverage. So the first field I bought April, 23. If we probably, I'm predicting the future here, so understand that. But if we zoom out in the next 10 years, I probably bought the top in land.

Let's zoom out five years. I probably bought the top in land, but I try not to overextend myself. And if that comes down 30, 40 percent, we're fine. I can make the payments with no farm income because we have other off farm income. So don't overextend yourself in that way. Then you have stress and worry. But we do believe, too, when we started farming, we were buying ground. And so understanding that that's an asset you want to hold, you want to buy, get equity in.

And so that's leverage. Yeah, leverage. And that's, yeah, there is power to debt. I'm not saying don't use leverage, but don't overextend yourself. But over the long term, that's usually a good thing to be used as a tool. I guess if you look at the farm operations over the past 20, 30 years, and you guys have talked about this. I mean, it's really like, what's really grew the balance sheet is owning the land, having that equity and that leverage. coverage tied to you. And so with farming, it's almost a lot, 75% of it's probably a real estate play of

just owning, owning the asset and not, and not just renting all the ground or something like that. I know it's tough, easy to say, tough to do to own the asset, but that's where a lot of people have made a lot of wealth over the past decades. Yeah. So that's kind of the play we've tried to go to, obviously. There's, there's some people, uh, there's some people that have bought land at the opportune time where that 10 years down the road they look back and they say wow that was a really good deal and if you hold it long enough you will say it was but part of it is i just think and i don't think people realize this when you when you buy something like when you buy something like a like a house or a rental property it's kind of the same but it's not in the fact that when the going

gets tough, you could flip that and people flip them all the time. You know, they get out of it. Like when I started and I built those hog sheds, you're not flipping them. You're stuck. Which that could be a little scary, but at the same time, it disciplines you that, okay, I got to make this work. I got to do whatever I got to do. And farmland's the same way. And then when you get over that hump on the back side of it, then it's, then you feel you can feel real smart and people are like, boy, that would, you know, that turned out right. Well, part of it is it's an asset where it disciplines you because once you're in it, you're probably not getting out of it until, you know,

it's paid for. And so it, it is, it's, it's just more like it's more of a concrete deal when you get into the farming, when you get into the farming, when you get into ag real estate you probably are going to once you make that commitment you're probably going to see it through which is probably a good thing. It's a forced savings account kind of that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah that is 100% right. One thing I'll say about to you two and we say this to each other. I think that and it's not for everybody to your point like you know you might be. get into something and then you realize that that's too much risk for you and you don't want to do it but for us man it is even when something's not a when one of the things you're doing is not very

profitable and like for us we always make the comment grain farming is not very profitable for us but all of the other things that we're doing we hope at least one of those things is profitable at any given time. But what a blessing it is to not be limited. Like our biggest thing is for the amount of time we

have, we aren't sitting around trying to decide what we should do. We're trying to make the decision do we do this or do we do that. Like we have way more opportunities than we have time.

And I think that's And I think you guys are kind of the same way. And that is a great, like that's what keeps us going is it's like we know we're just thankful that we're not like capped. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you there. I think it doesn't hurt to have options. I mean, that's always good to know that you have opportunities.

Hard thing is to say no. Oh, don't know. Always say no to opportunities is the hardest part because the more you do, the more you know, the more you do something, the more successful you become, the more people want to work with you or there's more opportunities there are that you can capture and potentially do. But, I mean, you know this. Any business that you go into, any partnership you go into, there's a lot more to it than just what it seems on the outside, you know.

And so just deciphering those opportunities is the hardest part. But yeah, no, it's definitely, I mean, I wouldn't want. to be doing it any other way. It's a lot of stress. It's a lot of hard work. I mean, the thing that you guys were talking about, you know, the part of advice to a first-generation farmer, but something else that I don't think they, you guys kind of touched over a little bit. You guys didn't party in college. Like, you guys grind it. I mean, like, the mindset, too, is like, okay, people say they want to farm, but are you unwilling to, are you willing to give up going to frat parties? How bad do you want it? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, that part of it, the mindset you guys had too of, yeah, you guys on paper, this is how you did it. But also, like, you did the actions and had the discipline to not do the sexy thing or the thing you're supposed to do this in this age to go after what you wanted. And there's a lot of people that say they want something, but their actions don't actually mean that. So buying a brand new BMW or super nice car, you bought a tractor. things like that that hold their value more to be fair and I shone to your tractor

in my mind it's very similar to but you could have a doyts for less in today's world though you would

people gravitate towards I would rather have the nice car than the tractor but you understand you're right the tractor to you

is the good looking car yeah it's reversed so yeah but yeah but yeah during college I don't think I went to single party

I mean the amount of beers I drank a count on hand pretty much But yeah, it was just stay disciplined. You know, eventually in the future, you know, these things compound and they'll pay off in the future if you stay disciplined on a half a decade or a decade period.

At least they'll start paying off. Yeah. And we were always, we played sports through high school. So I, some young kid watching this right now, that's a great way to build discipline, go out for wrestling, football, go out for wrestling coming up this winter, played rugby, enjoyed that.

Grant was a really good lefty pitcher. So, you know, it was just, we were always out kind of pushing, always lifting weights, working out, trying to build some discipline there. And yeah, so we were fairly straight edge. We didn't have to start, I mean, it's not like we wanted to go out and party. And a lot of times if we did go to a party, we're like, oh, this is not what I want to do and I actually want to go and do something else and go to work.

And so that was, those are almost motivators, a little bit forced and a little bit of discipline, but some of it is natural of just what we wanted to do. and that wasn't, that was like kind of be focused and work on something and build something because that's, in a long run, that's what's fun. Yeah. Well, so today's Whiskey Minute is. Just kidding. All right, boys.

I'm just messing around. Yeah, no, that's, that's just something that I think I was hearing you guys talk about your story of just like advice. And it's just something that I think people say they want something, but are they willing to do the things are not do the things necessary to go get it, you know, and that's, you guys not only laid out how you wanted to do it, but you went out and you did it. And that's, that's what it takes. That's what it takes, no doubt. Let's change gears a little bit. Um, where, I know when we had grant on in 21, Bitcoin was a little, you know, you were, you were into it. You were getting, I think you were starting to mine it at that point.

You know, not every, not every guess we have on is bullish on Bitcoin. They don't want to talk about Bitcoin, but we got two guys that are on the podcast day that I would say are fairly bullish on Bitcoin. So I just want to talk about. Yeah. Where, where has your mindset evolved with it? And where are you sitting at today with Bitcoin? Yeah.

So, what, we did podcast summer 2021. So gosh, was that? running into the moment. That was running into a bullmark. So probably what, like 10K or 15K? Yeah. Running into that into November, December was the top. And then it peaked with the FDX crisis. What, 120 now, 124 now or something like that. Yeah. But yeah, we, so we, I was mining Bitcoin back then. And then in, when did we get out of mining? Was this past January? So past January, so eight months ago, 10 months ago, something like that. We got out of mining Bitcoin. Just because our miners got old, just like any computer, a five-year-old.

computer doesn't ride as good as a modern computer today. And it became unprofitable. So we got out of that. But one thing I realized out of that is like, you can make very similar money to owning the asset versus mine it and then you don't have to deal with a physical asset. So I've been just on the trade of just own Bitcoin. Don't go mess with mine it. And so we got out of mine it. But I'm sure for some like, like just like farming, when you start scaling in size, you start making better margins and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. But from the time you guys started mining,

How many halvings was there? We went through one halving. Oh, because I mean, halving every four years. Okay. So the thing about mining too, which I've noticed is,

uh, there's a lot more Bitcoin miners in Iowa. There's a lot. I don't know how many there are, but I'm guessing there's over, there might be over a hundred different Bitcoin mine sites in Iowa. Seems like everybody's got a small town where there's a, yeah,

where there's a Bitcoin miner going in or something like that. Um, yeah. So it's, and then since then it seems like, I mean, all these great, like a lot of great macro investors back pre-2020 were like against this and they were like not touching this. Yes.

Like this is a scam, blah, blah, blah. And then a lot of them are really rational guys that think through things and they'll say, hey, I was wrong about a certain topic. I was wrong about this. There may be, Bitcoin may have a chance. It may have a small chance, but as a chance. So we've seen a lot of like, you know, Ray Dalio, Howard Marks. Like a lot of great investors come out and say, hey, I might have been wrong.

let's allocate just a small percentage to this thing. So I think that's been a huge, huge macro change probably in the past four years that seems to happen. So yeah. And when we look at the world like, okay, so you have like, you have like your fiat currency, right?

And everybody, we're just easing all the time. And it's like, okay, whenever we're ever going to pay off this debt, how does this look in three decades from now? What does the global reserve currency look like in three to four decades from now? Is it still U.S. dollar? Does fiat money collapse? What is it? Well, there's probably a small percent chance, a very small percent chance that it's a mixed type of money or something like that. And Bitcoin's in the running for one of those. So it's, so it'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next years. But yeah, I mean, super interesting to see our president. Just be behind and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had a conversation over lunch when I came up in your guys's neck of the woods. And, you know, this was when we, you know, Trump was talking about. we're going to cut the fat we're going to cut the fat we're going to quit printing money all this stuff and i was like you know what if you know with all this debt what if the what if the dollar

does collapse like you think bitcoin will take it over and you said something like we just got talking about it and you said soyer when a crisis happens and whoever's in power and they have the pressure from the public that they need aid and they need money is the president going to not print it or are they going to print it and I'm like they're going to print it and he's like exactly they're not going to stop printing this money like it's it's not going to happen because their legacy is going to be tainted forever if there's a crisis going on yeah we're a we're a society so one of our great uh what one of the great benefits of america is that we're not we're not

dictatorship, we're not, we aren't run by a king or whatever, but one of the downfalls is that we have put ourselves into a four-year election cycle where every politician has grand, grand ideas, morals, standards, whatever, but when you get put in that position, it is exactly what you guys were talking about. It's like what you want to do versus are you going to have a full-scale beauty on your hand. Well, yeah, it's what's best for the country for the long run, or it's what's best for the country right now, depending because of the optics of whatever situation's going on

in my legacy for these four years. They're going to pick the thing that's going to lift their legacy up in the four years. Because you, because we have built a society now that we're all squirrels. Yeah, short-term pleasure, long-term pain. Like no politicians ever going to get elected. I mean, Trump kind of did saying, hey, we're going to balance the budget. We're not going to spend a single dollar.

This is going to, we're going to make life hell in the U.S. to get our fiscal and monetary responsibilities down even. Like nobody wants that. I mean, we know we need it, but nobody's going to vote for that. Everybody wants it. Yes, yes. Everybody wants it until it affects their neighborhood. Yes, yes.

So, okay, so what does it look like when we have this easy money world and I think we're going to continue going down this path. At some point this fiat currency has to collapse. It could be three decades. It could be, you know, eight decades from now. We're going to collapse. I don't know. And you don't know.

Do you feel like Bitcoin has a chance to replace that? And this is just your thoughts. This is not financial advice. But do you feel like, you know, Bitcoin has a chance of replacing that? Do you feel like people are just going to look at Bitcoin as just the gold, the gold of, digital currency like how do you what do you think bitcoin's role is if the dollar does collapse what does it look like i think it's got i think it's got a possibility i think on a merit-based society if a bunch of us sit down and say okay well what what is probably the best

money it's it's probably bitcoin you could probably say bitcoin's probably the best money whether governments are going to everybody's going to go on a bitcoin standard i i'm not necessarily full bullish saying like that's going to happen i think there's a there's a small small chance that happens, but, but I don't know if that happens, but there probably will be a good allocation of people running 5, 10% of their portfolios are just owning Bitcoin. It just start, it might just be the fastest horse in the race when nothing stops this train. Lin Aldeen, that's her saying. And so after this podcast, if you guys are interested by what we're talking about,

there's like a 20-minute video, Lynn Aldine, she's a macro investor. The title of the video, just search it. Nothing stops this train. Really good kind of broad macro idea on what's kind of going on. and then the bull case on Bitcoin right at the end. So that's cool to watch and kind of wrap your head around it. And so one idea, too, is Bitcoin might demonetize all their assets. And so money might flow.

You might not see it normally. But when you price things in Bitcoin, land's gotten cheaper. So over the past 10 years, land's gotten a lot cheaper if you were storing your wealth in Bitcoin instead of USD. Now, lands up 60% since COVID. everything's up a bunch since since whenever the printer turned on. But, but, okay, then we need to ask the question

why did Bitcoin go up the fastest? I understand it's still early. Only a $2 trillion market cap right now versus other assets. Like gold is 10 or something. So to match that, we got to go up. What, gold's up 70% on the year. So to catch gold, you got to go even higher.

But why? Try to answer the question, why did it go up? Why is maybe it's in, Some people spend in the crazy money, the gambler's money is going towards Bitcoin. Well, that might have been the case in 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. But now we're sitting here in 2025, and you have the president. Think of whatever you want of him. And in the end, there's going to be a bull market.

In the end, there's going to be a bear market. They call it the crypto winner. Right now on the cycle, we're Q4, 2025. This is at the time Bitcoin's supposed to go up. Two, three, four, X. People are calling 500K Bitcoin, blah, blah, blah, blah. there will be another bear market. It might come from Trump getting crazy with it.

And then Trump's like, hey, we're hands off. It crashes 80%. Super volatile, but usually volatility is something you want, especially when you're getting into something. And you can kind of play that. We were lucky. We both went to Iowa State. And the only classes I was ever interested was econ and finance.

And so that's what I ended up getting my degree in. Grant was Ag Economics. So this was something, Bitcoin is just a really, interesting. I always liked history classes. Bitcoin's very interesting history lesson. If you kind of go down the rabbit hole, understand it, and you kind of, changes your mind a little bit. And then it kind of helps just understand over history of how people stored their wealth. If you wanted to pass something on to your three generations into the future after you pass away, we have land. That's worked out pretty good. But if America is not going to get taken over, but if they did, you're kind of

relying on a third party to make sure that your border is correct, that this 80 acres is in my name, there's deeds, there's all these things that we secure our land with. And so Bitcoin is one way where you can secure it on your own and you don't have to rely on the government to, you know, protect your borders. If we got overrun, you own 1,000 acres, well, whatever country, these are bad talks, but whatever, you know, in a, and go all the way to the end of the line, you actually own gold. Somebody has to verify that it's real. is their gold in Fort Knox? Does the government actually own any gold?

We need to go in there and physically verify it. We need to pay a security guard to stand outside Fort Knox. So there's different costs. And so Bitcoin's kind of the first... There's a lot of ideas, Bitcoin's, you know, as big of an invention as the Internet. It's adoption rate is faster than the iPhone. There's different things there.

And so there's a bunch of calls for Michael Saylor, $27 million Bitcoin and $2037. there's crazy stuff out there. There will be bare markets. Things will get crazy and there'll be opportunities to pick up

just like maybe the top in land was in 2023 and we're going to see over the next five years, 10 years land come down. We were going to go to Fort Knox, weren't we? Wasn't Trump he going to go to Fort Knox?

And then I don't know what happened. Remember we had this whole thing we was going to go there and Torque, what's your prediction on Bitcoin? because I know you were big into macro. or you probably still are big into macro and stuff and you're following Raupol

with macro voices or actually not macro voices was he run now? Real vision. Real vision. Yeah. Yeah, I mean everything, there's two things that stick in my mind and I think this gets lost.

Like it, and I think this is an old, like you get older you think about this, but it is truly amazing to me how history just gets brushed. History becomes unpopular and people don't want to like, it doesn't seem to have the meaning when people bring it up. But to your point, like if you look as far back in history as you want, every society that created currency,

many times it was based on gold or silver or some precious thing that had a limited supply. and then guess what? Every one of those societies needed more currency than what that precious item was that it was based on so then they found a way to print it.

The British did the exact same thing. Everything was based on silver and then they went off the silver standard and then inflated the heck out of it. And the world pretty much was on the gold standard and then everybody went away from the gold standard because we needed more money so we had to print it and we couldn't have that much gold.

And there is a great video and I should just save it, I should post it. And I don't know who the guy is and it's not very long, but this is at the kind of the height of the European currency meltdown when Greece, everybody was afraid Greece was going to basically go bankrupt, which they basically did. The EU bailed them out.

But these two guys are sitting here and the guy said, who owns Greece's debt? And he goes through the list of all the European countries that own Greece's debt. And then one of them is like France. And he says, okay, well, how much debt does France have? Oh, this much. Well, who owns their debt? And it's so and so and so and so.

and Britain, how much debt do they have? And he goes in this whole circle and it pretty much all goes back to Germany because Germany was the only country that actually had any money. The rest of the EU is broke. And then how much debt does Germany have? And then the end thing is, well, who owns their debt? Well, Greece owns their debt.

And you realize that basically none of these countries have any money and they're all completely sold out and indebted to the point that they'll never get their deficit paid off. And I remember the first time I saw that, and that's what drew me to Bitcoin, was the idea of the limited supply, and they'll never be more of it. And it's kind of a check on what we as societies are worst. that, which is fiscal responsibility. When you elect people

on your behalf, they should never be the amount of compensation that they're going to receive should never be greater than what the real job was. And that's the way the United States used to operate, and then it switched to where now then we have politicians that want to be politicians,

because it's a more profitable venture than what they were doing in private life, if they ever did anything in private life. And so now then you're asking a group of people that are incentivized to stay in power and to increase their power to make the decisions that run us. I just think a lot of, all of that to say, I'm very bullish on Bitcoin. And I agree with you. I think that we're in a run right now. we had kind of like a pause where Bitcoin retreated.

Some people took profit. And I don't know, you guys might, I have my own opinion about this, but like I think about how many people actually own Bitcoin as a store of value that it is like they're going to hold it no matter what and how many people are just speculating on it. and so like Jamie Diamond, a good example.

Like I love playing his, his, one of his clips where he's just, just bagging on it. Just so hard. Just, oh, it's the stupidest thing ever, da, da, da. Guess what?

Now then they offer, they offer an ETF in Bitcoin. And so you just really, you have to have your, you have to build your own conviction. Yep. I mean, you have to literally go down the rabbit hole

and educate yourself about, how the world works money-wise and how we just continually, I mean, government people are no different than any other human than you and I, and we fail. We fail repeatedly.

And society is the same way. The thing that is funny to me is every society, every generation, every group, that has ever walked this earth, think they're the smartest son of a bitches that have ever been around. I mean, the Romans, oh man, the Romans they had it, Dick,

they were smarter than everybody else. They conquered the Egyptians, they built this, nobody's ever going to touch them. The sun would never set. The sun would never set on the British Empire. You know, the United States was formed by divine providence. And we all sit and we all think that we're smarter to everybody else until we're not.

and to me Bitcoin is a hedge against our own worst tendencies. Yep, if the government can print money,

they will. That's a great way. And every currency fails. Every currency has failed through history. Yeah. I mean, even gold failed us

as a currency in the United States. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, and I mean, I don't know. Well, in a way,

it didn't technically feel. Like Ray Dalew, he... Redoubt is huge. Yeah, he flipped a switch to the past year. He had. I think a lot of people have flipped the switch.

My thing with it is, like, I guess what I try to, what I'm trying to rationalize in my head is, you know, how much of my wealth should go into Bitcoin versus how much of it should go in land versus how much of it should go into trying to build my own income up versus how much of it should go into the stock market. You know, like, you hear people talk and they're like, this is the greatest wealth opportunity of our lifetime,

like go all in on Bitcoin. And I know that to become wealthy and to accumulate wealth, you need to make big bets, but I'm just not, I believe in Bitcoin. I think it has a place for our, in our future.

I just don't know enough about it to have the conviction to just be like, I'm only, I'm only going to do this and I'm only going to invest in this. And I'm only going to invest in Bitcoin. I just don't know enough yet to really, I see your point.

You're like, okay, even if Bitcoin does 50% a year, it's like, why do I get, I'm an entrepreneur by trade. I'm going to go create my own business, put all the money in that business. And then if one of those businesses takes off and I have a bunch of capital, that's when it's like, okay, let's start allocating a lot more to Bitcoin or something. I see exactly your point. It's like, why not go bet on myself? Yeah. I feel like you have to bet on yourself first. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The best return on investment, especially starting out, is not going to be buying land, houses, Bitcoin or anything. it's going to be betting on yourself and investing in yourself rather than other assets. So yeah, you have, whether it's going to school or paying $100 for an online course to figure out how to edit a video, whether it's paying $1,000 to a three-month AI course right now to learn

how to use every AI tool, or it's just not paying anything and just getting on YouTube. That's free. So, yes, the best investment right now is not Bitcoin, not land, not houses. It's investing in yourself. and it's as cheap as it's ever been, even though school, whatever school you're going to, it's pretty expensive and tuition rates are super high. Well, the alternative is YouTube ed, YouTube, University, or you can get on Twitter. You can curate your Twitter feed, pay the premium, get rid of ads, get rid of all the garbage on there.

And you want to learn about real estate? Well, you can follow 100 people on Twitter and they're going to walk through the whole thing. and half those people are just looking for investors to invest in their own project but they're spilling all their beans on what they're doing. You want to learn about ag? There's ag Twitter. I know it's X now.

I just keep saying Twitter. And you can follow 100 different farmers. And instead of just talking to your neighbor, you can now listen to 100 different people around America on what they're doing, how the harvest is. So that's the best return on investment by far. And there's more opportunity now today than any other time in history. So super optimistic versus.

there's a lot of pessimists them. Yeah, I would say that. Like, I don't agree with the people that just like, I don't get Bitcoin. It's not tangible. I can't hold it. Therefore, I think it's stupid and it has, it's just not going to be a part of the future.

And those people, I'm like, dude, go, go seek that out to make sure that you're right in that belief. You know, just saying, oh, I just don't know enough about it, so therefore I don't give a shit. And it's not going to have a future. that that's not that's not the right mindset i do think that it's going to have a future in some capacity and i think it's worth looking into to get the conviction whether you're going to be for it or not for it i mean make that conviction for yourself say something but i have a question

follow-up question oh you've seen uh michael sailor right in 2013 tweeted like bitcoin's just internet gambling money or something along those lines i forgot what it was but just anti-bickcoin and then 2020 comes out and then 21, 22, 23 just goes leverage, you know, like crazy, like crazy leverage on his company. I mean, he's been everything on this. And it's just interesting to see, it's interesting to see how everybody once starts off like, I'm not going to touch that. It seems like a waste. Seems like a scam, blah, blah, blah. And then you flip a switch. Yeah. Even my account day. He was like, in 2020, I came in and, you know, we talked about Bitcoin stuff and he was like, man, like he didn't say much about it. And he was just like this.

it's not for me. And then, you know, 2023, 24 now, like, he's into it hard. He's texting me all these things. He's like, dude, I thought you were, I thought you were insanely crazy. I'm going to be honest. I thought you were one of my crazy clients. And he just flipped a switch. And got into a lot more and probably into it more than me. A lot more people are into it more than me that were once against it, I feel like. But what's really interesting is, is, and you were kind of predicting the next three months bowl market for Bitcoin to retail is kind of out, institutions are buying it and so I don't have any friends or family texting so absolutely no idea what's going to happen in the three months next three months there's going to be a bear market and probably

it might be Michael Saylor selling all his coins because he went to leverage and you can uh and it's going to be down 90% two years from now absolutely no idea yeah um but maybe it's down 90% off of 600,000 absolutely no idea. To me oh do you want to make your yeah i was gonna i was just going to ask you guys or grant, and if you're not comfortably answering this, don't answer it. But how important was your investment into Bitcoin early on to helping you create the businesses or the farm ground or any of the stuff you're doing today? Was it, was it a factor?

Was it a big factor? How important was it? I would say it wasn't that big. haven't I've taken some I've I I've sold a little bit of Bitcoin when there's when there's crazy optimism when everybody's text me should I buy when everybody tax the driver's telling you to buy right yeah I've sold some and when stuff goes up 5x 10x like you're like okay this can't go on forever you take a little bit profit so I've taken some profits but I've pretty much rotated that into one farm that's it otherwise I've pretty much like held everything else so it's it's

it's helped from a balance sheet standpoint, but it hasn't actually gone into funding a lot of stuff. I would say a lot of the YouTube income has gone into funding a lot of kind of the farming operation, software company, but really like when you don't sell a crazy amount, it's just almost one of those things on the balance sheet. And when you present it to a banker and you need to go buy something, right,

that helps. Yeah. You've basically used it the way you should use it. It's kind of your rock. It's kind of your, base layer of your of your assets. Like you use it like some people

would use gold. You've held it and your intention isn't really to sell it. And some of the buys have been when it's down 80% and it's like this feels terrible to buy this just feels disgusting buying a product that's on 80%. But you know it's good to buy it when everybody's

like this is going to zero. I mean that's when you should be buying it. Those have always been always been the best buys with it. There is something there is one of the most pleasurable experiences in my life is being a contrarian. Now it doesn't always work out, but boy, I'll tell you what, I'll use this example. The first time I ever experienced it and I didn't even realize what I was doing other than I just worked on a construction crew. When RJR Reynolds and Philip Morris was being sued by the United States government and their stock went to nothing,

I mean, it was like $8. I think Philip Morris was a $120 stock. They owned craft. They owned all. It was this huge conglomerate, but it was a tobacco company. And I was working on a building crew with six guys. And on the news every day was this lawsuit, the United States government was suing R.J.R. Reynolds and Philip Morris over cigarettes. And CNBC, they're going out.

They're going to have to sell everything. They're going to go out. and every morning I would pick up a guy that was the foreman of this crew that didn't have a license because he'd lost it for drunk driving and we'd stop it come and go and he'd pick up two big slams of Mountain Dew and two packs of Marlboro Reds. It didn't matter what the price was. If he didn't have enough money, he didn't buy the Mountain Dew,

but he always bought the Marlboro Reds. Every job site we went to, everybody walking around there, smoking Marlbrose. And I came home one day, and one of my friends of mine, we used to get investors business daily. Paper, come in the mail every day, rated all the stocks in the stock market, and we were day trading.

Kind of day trading, as much day trading as you could do in rural Iowa with dial-up internet, you know. I had a, anyway, the internet bubble had happened, and I'd lost a bunch of money, and I didn't have a whole lot of my initial investment. One day I was like, you know what, there is no freaking way

that Philip Morris is going out of business, because people don't care, they're going to keep smoking, and I bought it. And within six months, that all got settled, and guess what, that stock just went off. And that was the first time that I was like, you know, when you look around and everybody is saying something, chances are they're pushing a narrative and it's not really that much that way. the second time was Tesla. Tesla was the one that just, I didn't know anything about it,

but everybody was just bagging on it. And so one day I just decided. 2012? Like what years was this? 20. I don't remember. It was after it. So this was after Model 3 had come out and he had made it out of the.

Oh, so like 17, 18. Yeah, right in there. Yeah. but it was it was before it took off yeah it was before the split it was before the first time it split and i was like you know what i'm going to download the damn prospectus and i'm just going to read the annual report and all that and i actually read it and i started going down a rabbit hole and then i said i remember i said to my wife i'm like they're gonna they're gonna fricking crush it they're this deal is going to work like he knows what he's doing and i remember

telling my Edward Jones guy that I wanted to buy, you know, X number of Tesla. He couldn't even sell to me. I had to sign a waiver. I had to sign a waiver because Edward Jones was so anti-Tesla, like they weren't recommending it to any of their, and he's like, well, yeah, you can buy it, but you got to sign this. And had you sat in a Tesla and drove one before the car? Heck no, I didn't need to. No, oh, yeah, not. That was before.

That's what's interesting. That's what's interesting. Is we, we had an uncle who bought, maybe this is 2013, a model S in. and maybe we sat in it in 2015, yeah. And we sat in that car. Now I was 15 years old, didn't have a big perspective on the world. Hadn't been in very many vehicles,

but I still sat in that and I was like, this is a spaceship, this is insane. Now I wouldn't have the conviction because I was 15 years old, but it's like being the contrarian, just sit in the vehicle, don't think too much about it and be like, this is the best car in the world.

It's driving itself. Look at this. This is crazy. Yeah, but you have to have the conviction to make the buy, and then you also have to have the patience and conviction to hold even when it keeps going down because you're not going to hit the exact bottom or you're not going to sell the exact tops you got to have that conviction to hold through it could

have been another year or two until that till Tesla actually took off probably yeah and now now I realize it didn't I didn't buy a car company and I don't think when it's all said and done that's not what's going to make it that's not what's going to make it as big of a part of our society is what I it'll ultimately end up being is if you look at AI Tesla not only is making the chips but has probably the biggest cluster for AI learning like nobody's to me I didn't see I didn't see grok coming I didn't see that that would be I didn't see that being a player in the AI but I think it is and then you take that and you think about having that learning in in the robot and then licensing the software for all because nobody else is going to get to

full self-driving before they do i don't think i don't think anybody has a chance i think that chevalier and ford and everybody else will give up because they're just bleeding money one they don't have any money okay well let's let's wrap it around here and just talk about go back a little bit to farming where where are you guys i know you guys are pretty much optimistic about a lot of stuff but the state of farming where we're at today in agriculture what are you excited about what are the things you're most optimistic for and what are the things that you're a little

worried about in the world of farming moving forward oh i mean just um realistically commodity prices are low and a month or two i'll come out with a video on 50 acres have soybeans i'll break down my input cost my land costs and I'm sure I'll lose quite a bit on a per acre basis. So in terms of that sense, for the past two, three years, been lower times in terms of just farm income.

For me and stuff, this is just a part-time deal, so it's not the end of the world. And again, I reached on earlier. My first land I bought was in 2023. That's probably the top in our next eight-year window. And so, yeah, just, I mean, it's not a, I'm in a position where it's not overla. leverage and it's a very weekend warrior thing.

But in terms of optimism, just on our personal thing is just this first harvest was we really actually got going and felt like we were getting somewhere doing something, a team. We had, my wife was like in the grain cart for a couple days. Grant was in the combine. I was hauling. So that was fun. You really enjoyed the process. The actual doing actual day to day, enjoy the process.

We actually, this was the first full year where we thought we got something done and we weren't, what's next. than yeah as far as future i mean right now it doesn't look like amazing to be optimistic about but for a young for young farmer like it's going to be a little bit easier to expand i mean when tough times happen this is where you can if you're aggressive you can really the opportunities come hopefully expand i shouldn't i shouldn't pray on tough times but but optimist to look at like hey there's going to be some opportunity there's going to be some guys that are like okay probably done here i'm going to retire i'm going to let somebody else take over so those are times and then right Like if farmland comes down, it's a little easier to afford a job or afford a farm,

especially if you're working an outside job. So like, yeah, I guess, you know, if tough times happen, get a little, it can get a little more aggressive. Because when the good times happen, 2020 through 2024, it's, it's a lot tougher to expand, right? Like the. You aren't getting old to anything because nobody's going to let anything go. Exactly.

So like, that's one thing as a young farmer, I shouldn't say it, but the honest truth is, should probably look for a little tougher times because there's going to be probably some opportunities that come up in those tougher times. So that's just the kind of optimist and me selfishly, I guess. Well, the other simple thing is there's going to be less of us. I mean, that average age of farmers

is it's going to catch. And everybody talks about it, but it keeps happening. I mean, all you got to do is go to your local seed corn dinner and look around. And the number of people that don't have white hair or have hair, very few. So there's going to be a lot of land that's going to have to move over the next few years. And I think if you do a good job and if you just can create normal relationships, do a good job,

I mean, you're just going to grow. It's just, it's going to happen that you're just going to continue growing with the amount of land that's going to be transferred. I'm guessing. But then at the end of the day, it needs the pencil too. If you're going to grow up. Yes, yes, you're right. But it takes two, three, four. And, you know, we were talking about cycles and investing and stuff.

Usually, right, the land cycles every 60 years. So you had the homestead, like the mid-1800s, then you had, what was it? You know, the 1930s, and then you had the 1980s. So it was 60-year cycles, what, were 40 years from the 80s, yeah, 45 years from the 80s? 40-40 would be on a 60-year cycle, I think we're looking at. Would be where land prices correct and come down.

Yeah, we aren't wishing pain in anything on anybody's operation or lifestyle, but we're trying to talk to the young person that's wanting to get started. And when land prices are coming down, that's but the curve is a lot bigger six of year cycle you only have one opportunity in a if even one opportunity that you're never going to buy the bottom but yeah that's the optimism is things might pencil better in five years than they do now and maybe it's three four or five years of pain and maybe in the long run we're better off i have no idea yeah yeah no idea it's hard to it's hard to know i mean i think the big things people talk about on here is just it's harder inputs continue to

rise, land prices continue rise, machinery goes up. It's harder to make a buck farming, but I think that could change, like you said, if land prices go down. I mean, that one thing alone can change the cash flow of your operation. You know, machine equipment will go down. The inputs, I don't know if they'll come down. It seems like every time there's a bailout for farmers, the government gives farmers money. Those companies just raise their prices even more. They continue rise every year but i think diversification of your farming operation diversification of outside businesses um i think the conversation of running your farm like a like a business and like maybe a family office kind of starts to be talked about more and more because i think it's just not as

profitable as it once was but there's so much value in owning the land owning the assets having that leverage tax benefits, etc. People need to, I mean, the role of farm is going to have to

change. More and more people run a farm instead of the farm being the stool, the farm is one leg of the stool, you know,

having multiple businesses and... You're saying now people, the farm is the stool, but they need to have it as one. It needs to be one leg. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's no better way to there's no better way there's no better way to launder money than through a farm I guess yeah I just think people are stuck on it being the stool right because that's how it was growing up grandpa I mean that's how it was everybody can make a damn good livin you know farm in hundreds of acres and that's all you how to do and it's just so much has changed you know so much has changed. So it's just interesting to see where it will end up. But I think you're right. There's a lot of opportunity. A lot of opportunity for young people. Okay. Question for everybody here.

If you could go farm in one decade, let's assume the 80s wasn't terrible. What decade would you go farm in? Would you go farm in 20, 2000, 2010? Or would you go farming back in the 60s or 50s? Or would you farm today? Assuming they all made the same amount of money. Oh, I'd farm this. You'd farm the day. I'd farm in the 70s. You farm, okay, 70s. If I was raising pigs. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, I probably will say the same thing because, you know, I think the guys in our county that are crushing it, raised pigs got ahead of it built fast scaled, and they're in a fantastic position now, and they've carried it on for a long time. So, well, it's so, that's such a heart. if I knew what I know now. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. I mean, you could build a juggernaut. Because you were right at the point where where labor, labor, leverage, and management all kind of converge. because before the mid-70s, if you were a good farmer, it came down to how many hours did you want to work?

Because if you wanted to sit on that 40-20 long enough to farm those extra acres, you could make more money. It was all, if you wanted to Farrow 200 sows versus 160 sows, well, if you just wanted to haul that many loads of manure and that many loads of feed that many loads of water.

I mean, like, how much did you want to work? But then right there was when technology came to where, okay, I could raise, I could farm an extra 80 acres, and I could do it in the same amount of time. I could actually do it in less time. I could ferrow 40 more sows, but it really didn't take many more time because I put those sows inside,

and I had an automated feed system, whatever. and then it was actually like people started to hey I'm actually going to I'm actually going to keep track of whether this field that I rented over here what the yield was versus this and what this hybrid did I actually make more money by paying whatever I paid to Billy Bob to rent that it was when all that started and so if you were if you had the if you saw that shift oh man like shooting I don't know that's pretty hard to compete with that answer I guess I really haven't thought hard about that but yeah I just just knowing where we live

and knowing the guys that made it and had a really successful operation today a lot of it was built on hogs in this in this county and so I would definitely ride the wave when that was good. And if you had the knowledge to know what was coming, you know,

then you could pivot and make the right decisions to ride the lows of the market. Yeah, you know, sometimes I get down. I get in my own head about, you know, where we're at and farming what we farm and all that. But then I think about it and I'm like, but we're still farming. And when I go, when I drive down the road and I think of all, the farm, all the people, all the families that sold the farm, gave it up, whatever, moved off.

And this is a number, I said this on a prior episode somewhere, but this is something for you guys to think about. I would love to know, and you might be able to come up with this because you're brighter than I am, you might be able to come up with this, definitely. So I would like for somebody to get the formula of when a family farm is sold and you know land prices are what they are but you've held all that value in that farmland when that family sells that asset and they get that big windfall how long does that wealth last before it's just scattered to the wind in taxes and stuff that doesn't return money. I'd like to know because my guess is it doesn't last very long.

And it goes to your point about like we were talking about a forced savings account, there is all this wealth out in this country of farmland owned by families and a whole bunch of it is going to get turned over. How long is that wealth going to last within that family? And my guess is not very long. No, I fully agree. Probably won't last to another generation. Not even to another generation.

No. no where yeah where does it go where do most people that when their parents die they go sell the farm they live in california new york where where does it usually go i'd be very i'd be very curious on that too does it all go to equities does it all go to residential real estate what yeah what does it go to i think it goes to goes to the ozars yeah i do baby i think it's i think it's all the shit i think we live in a day and i mean it might it might not be it's hard to know but because I bet there are some smart cats that, you know, they're, they sell the land, their parents pass away and they're smart.

They got an expertise in another field and they deploy that in the way that they know how. But I'm sure there's a hell of a lot, probably majority where they're spending that money on upgrading their lifestyle, upgrading their life for them in this present moment. Because we live in a day and age where it's right now. It's right now. keep up with the Joneses, how I look on Instagram, you know, it's all about yolo, you know,

like, just enjoy. So I would say probably a lot of people spend it. I'll ask, you want to, I guarantee you're 100% right because I'll ask you guys are all young, so I'll ask you this. What do you think in the United States today is the average balance

of a retirement account of a 65 year old person? What do you think the average balance is? That's hard. I don't know. 80. Oh, I'll go 37K. Damn, that's low.

You went 80? 65-year-olds. It's got to be low. There's no way it's going to be crazy high. Yeah, if you're taking the average. Average American 65-year-old person that's ready to retire. Average retirement savings. The zero's got to bring it down hard, you know.

That's what I would say, too. I mean, I'll go in the middle. I guess I'll say like $55,000. $10,000. Okay. Holy shit. So that answers your question. I mean.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very little money that is. But do you feel like our generation, though, is a lot more mindful? Oh, 100%. Because of just the information. Well, I shouldn't say that. I shouldn't say that because I was just talking to a young person the other day.

I guess it's, yeah, I guess. It's hard when our 4U pages and our YouTube feeds look like they do versus I don't know what majority of 25 year old. Well, a lot of young people feel like that the deck is stacked against them because housing has never been higher as far as trying to buy a first time home. The stock market's at highs where, okay, am I investing at the top to where it's just going to drop and, you know, or is it going to keep going? and everything is more expensive. I'm struggling. So there is a lot of people that they're more focused on experiences

than they are on assets. In other words, I'm going to take the vacation rather than make a mortgage payment. I'm just going to rent. We're just going to rent. Yeah. Yeah, there's a,

I get polarizing, I get polarized, just looking at content. It seems there's this one camp of young people that are like, I'm going to go enjoy my 20s because you only live once. And we're just in the Matrix and we really, they're nihilists, nothing matters. No one's going to remember me after I die. You know, whatever.

Then you have the other side that is legacy, buy assets, legacy, investment. investments, building businesses, et cetera. Delayed satisfaction. Yeah, delayed gratification satisfaction. So I don't know. Maybe that number will go up as time goes on because I believe it are the younger generations more. They're just more information to know what to do as far as like it's not hard to open a retirement account.

And S&P 500, you know, index funds. Like it's not hard. But who knows? We'll see how that plays. out. Yeah, one thing I wrestle with, and we're talking about just the past and mentioning, what is it? Six years of the average American income right now, it takes to buy your first house. We're back in 50 years ago. It was maybe at seven years now. It was four years then. You have to work for four years in 1960, and you can buy your house all cash. Let's just say, if you kept,

saved every penny you made, had no expenses. And so it is more affordable when you run those numbers. And then I also cater to it. Maybe you could. You graduated. high school you could work in a factory you could do something and it's one income uh you know not two and different things like that was a little more affordable but then i'm also and i have no answer you i'm just kind of thrown out a question almost today anybody can kind of start from nothing and build something where if you want it like we're doing this podcast right now if you want to start a podcast you had to know the guy who owned the studio you had to be uh your uncle had to had to own it and let you come on so those were kind of the only opportunities where now you can like we are we were we were

started in our parents' basements, pretty much, and you can kind of build something. So I wrestle with that because not everybody can do that. We're back in the day, 80% of people, if you do ABCD, you know, here's your outcome. Personally, me, I'm more attracted to. You do ABCD, there is no guaranteed outcome, but the upside is infinite and the downside zero. So I don't know what's better for society there. There is an argument to say better for society that it's a little more guaranteed outcomes

and there's less volatility. But to not have the upside and the freedom and the opportunity we have today, that's also demoralizing a little bit too. So I don't know what is the best situation. Yeah, it is hard. That's a good thought, you know, more opportunity than ever before, but it's harder to get started as a young person than it's been in a long time. Well, the answer is just...

Keep playing farm simulator in American farming. Well, yeah, just go buy a steak, cook it up, and play American farmer, and think about it. That's the answer. Yeah, go buy some Hilbert beef. Something. Get your phone out. Yep. Play some American farming.

Yep. Maybe watch Grant and Spencer's YouTube channel. Listen to a podcast. Get inspired. Yep. And you might figure it out. You might. A little Gary Vee doesn't hurt.

A little Gary Vee. Gary Vee, a little Alex Formosy. Your, Grant, I hadn't seen the video where you called into Gary Vee and whatever you ever was. Yeah, I remember that. It was like five years ago probably wasn't. Yeah, that was a long time ago. Yeah, that was like, that was COVID. I think that was 2020. So that was, I grew up and he was kind of one of the first people that, I know when people hear Gary Vee, I think a lot of people, they have a misconception that he's just a grifter. But if you really, like, if you really get down to the bare bones. of him. He is an operator. He's built real shit.

Yep. He just has a content team so big that you just see him everywhere and it gets annoying. But the dude is a savage. Like he is a beast entrepreneur. And, you know, anything marketing related, that guy knows what's coming. He is on it. He's got it. And, you know, and COVID happened. He had, that's when people started to have a text, a text community where you could like, get text from whatever they're up to. And he started this show called Tea with Gary V. They did every morning because it was COVID no he's going

to the office. And so they just said text that number with your question and get on the show. So I just texted it every day for like a couple months. And then they finally got back to me and said, okay, yeah, great. So then I got on and asked him a question. I actually, the question I asked him was

I asked him two questions. I asked him about starting a meet business off the back end of my audience and he like lit my fire on that made me feel good about that and optimistic like yeah do it you were supposed to send him the tongue no the snout he said he said he grew up eating pigs now because i think you grew up in a russian household and so they it was a delicacy or whatever and then i asked him just about the loneliness of entrepreneurship and like how you because at that at that time i didn't go to college went right in the operation doing this youtube thing like want to start a business

don't know how to do it and then like there's nobody around like there's no there's no community right it's lonely you you guys know oh definitely and so i asked him that question too but yeah that he's definitely a good resource for people to listen to i think the youtube long-form stuff for him is really good because that's where he gets down to like the meat and potatoes of his frameworks and thought process of where the world's going but the clips are more that you see on instagram i feel like that's where people he has a tainted stigma because of that. But at that time, he was one of the first guys that was like brought back brutal honesty.

Like his keynotes from back then are just so savage. That's what drew me to it. It was just so common sense and so like, quit being a whiny little. Those books about, he started on YouTube before anybody. Like, oh, eight. Yeah, like one of the first shows on YouTube. There's a clip of him saying people are going to make 50 grand a year off YouTube. And that's going to be the full-time job talking about Star Wars and find a niche.

I mean, he was probably the first on that trend. Oh, man. Was there anybody before him that was like really like, okay. I just feel like he saw what was coming before anyone. And I mean, he's also his personal investments into companies. Like he was an early investor in Twitter, early investor in Uber. He's invested money in Facebook. Like,

because when he started talking about all that stuff, nobody else was. Nobody else was. He became kind of a specialist and an expert, and he got into doors. Yeah. With people and met Zuckerberg. He had met the guy started Uber.

And he was able to invest some money into those companies too. But he does get you a good mindset. It's very good. Yeah. Yeah. And gets you fired out. Every entrepreneur first needs that mindset, right when they get started.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I agree. Yeah. Because you feel like you're a lot. And when you listen to him, you're like, yep, yep, yep. I mean, you just checked all the boxes.

You're like, yeah, okay, for sure. So then I try and compare today now you can put earbuds in, listen to Gary Vee, who's in your corner. Maybe you're in a household where there is no entrepreneurial spirit or even get after it spirit, get to work. And, you know, you just have a rougher upbringing. Well, now instead of just being by yourself, you can put somebody in your ears who's going to get you going. So again, I'm trying to just compare to the past. Some people are like, today's the worst time ever. and I just think today's the best time ever

and probably will only get better in the future if you look at it that way. And then also his big thing was like in 2008 he has a clip and I mentioned this earlier somebody you can make a living talking about what you really love. So somebody's not going to pick on

an accountant here but maybe they don't want to be an accountant but that's just what they did. They did ABCD went to school but now in like what we did after school from 4 p.m. 5 p.m. to tenant at 10 p.m. we worked on what we were really passionate about and what we saw, what we wanted to grow. So now there's the opportunity to do that. And if you're super passionate about NFL football,

there's a million guys in their basement right now with a camera acting like the, you know, breaking down Saturday morning or Sunday morning what the games are going to be like. And they're, they're making a decent amount of income off that, doing what they love. And that's probably the real meaning to life is doing what you love. So now there's an opportunity to do that. there wasn't 50 years ago. It used to be that knowledge, knowledge was the key to success. Because like you've talked about the guy that had the newspapers,

the guy that he knew. No, it was, it was like speed of information. Yeah. It was Rockefellers. They owned a newspaper. So they got the news before anybody else. So they just, they could act on it. Today, to your point, knowledge has never been.

cheaper. It's free. Knowledge is free. It's the execution. It's what you do with that knowledge. That's what sets people apart is it's not just, you can go find anything that you want to be, anything you want to do. It's just will you do what it takes, discipline, to execute? 100%. I was going to ask you guys about AI, but I feel like we're running pretty long. So Open AI just released, what was it, SANA? Osana, Sana, they just released a new video platform that basically pumps out video AI like a mofo. And as a content creator, it does worry me a little bit. And I didn't know if you guys felt the same way.

But because, man, I think in three years a lot's going to be different, especially on social media and being a content creator. and I think there's going to be a lot of people that get displaced, and I think we got to be thinking about how we can adopt it. Like you think AI is going to take over like, how's that going to, yeah, what's your thought process? I listened to a guy on this podcast called Open Residency, and he's like an AI content creator expert, and he makes, he's this, his, like, his niche is like anything new in AI,

he makes a video on it, explains it, breaks it down, shows it. he says by 2028 there will be guys that will be able to have a Google document that lays out exactly what kind of videos you want AI to make for you with yourself, your tone of voice, everything, and it'll be an automated funnel where one software will be able to take that Google document, make it, make different variations, and then post it and be able to post. it costs you right now he said you can do it right now but it's not as good it's not as great yet as far as getting you viral and being a 10 out of 10 piece of content and it costs about $4 a piece of content but he said in three years it'll probably cost you 50 cents and as AI learns every single

video that it pumps out it's going to be a 10 out of 10 video that's going to perform extremely well on the platforms he said so people got to get used to the fact that you're no longer going to be competing against real people. You're going to be competing against bots. You're going to be competing against people that have set up automated funnels to post their content and they're all 10 out of 10 pieces of content that are going to perform really well. We're going to be fine.

So that, that's, I think people really need to. Okay, do you think 10 years from now this podcast is going to be able to be, like, do you think AI is going to take over this podcast 10 years from now? Like you guys aren't going to be sitting here? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know enough yet to know. I think there's a, there's a chance. There's a chance. There's definitely a chance. Just trying to figure out how it plays out. There's definitely a chance. And that's the thing that scares me is just, you know, I'm all about longevity and we're all about sustainability, right?

And doing something long enough and not getting displaced. And I think that's everybody's worry with AI. And so I think content creators, there's a storm coming. My optimism, though, kicks in and saying that, I think people want real, still want real human content. Yeah. But this new OpenAI app that just came out two days ago, I mean, they're having videos of Michael Jackson doing a comedic stand-up bit that is, it looks, I mean, you can't even tell that it's not Michael Jackson. And there's a video of, there's videos popping off going supervisor on social,

media they're all AI generated right now. It's funny because I go back to Naval and him saying creativity is going to be the one thing that will never be able to be replaced with AI. Naval's been ahead of a lot of people on a lot of stuff. We go back to it and it's like, man, maybe maybe AI will take over creativity to like that it may happen. And that probably will. That's scary.

Yeah. I think as a human race, got to have that creativity part. Yeah. but hey at least we're farming people are still going to need to eat so that's what i go back to yep and i haven't been able to get that tesel bot to chore for me yet yeah yeah keep waiting but waiting for elon to give us a demo on that yep yeah yeah so i think i can always chore pigs there you go okay well what what what uh what do you guys got going uh what do you want to hopefully achieve by the end of the year what's what's kind of what's next for you guys here

coming up um gosh not too much next three months i want to get a little some things organized i feel like we've been running around with their heads cut off a little bit from transition in our farmland uh just moving into this shed here this isn't organized um like two or three years ago i got my truck stolen and all my tools were in it and they broken into a shed and so like i haven't uh regroup so just um actually um so i just need to get my things organized that's just on my top of my to-do list next three months Probably a goal too is there's one video Spencer made. It was like the past 700 or whatever it is, two years farming basically.

He put like a two-hour video together. Yep. Well, I was like, okay, Spence, could you edit a video of mine the past four years of the past four-year farming, put together like a one-hour video of the past four years or five years of farming, put that all together and get it out because that's one thing on the list we've always talked about doing.

But yeah, that's probably something we should do before. All those videos from day one to today. somebody who's new to the channel, new to our story or whatever, can just watch this hour, 45 minute long video. And you're off to date and kind of just share the journey there. So we haven't really done a good job on that. I feel we've been running around kind of spread thin. Yeah, organizing, focus, get our things done.

And yeah, just keep making really my job really, or what I enjoy doing is trying to make really high quality YouTube videos for the channel and stuff. and then just, and then, you know, I started my channel like two years ago and everybody's making farming videos. How do you be different? And so one example was I just showed like how much farming was made. And then even on that video, it got like 8 million views and I showed exactly how much that made on YouTube bad sense. So kind of just going into the mindset of maybe you can be AI by actually trying to provide.

AI is not providing value to the viewer. It's just junk. Like you said, maybe it's actually a real person showing real. things and maybe you're better off because AI is the other option or it's you and nobody everybody went the easier route has AI make their videos and the content creator that sits down actually provides quality so that's what I'm trying to work on I guess yeah yeah not too much yeah but yeah I'd say a little bit though and your your game you're really excited about that work working on it or building building the software company and stuff and and that's been a big big chore for you and and and then we just

work together on farming. Sounds like you got enough going on. Well, we appreciate the hell out of you guys for making the trip. You guys are stand-up guys. I admire what you guys do. I think you guys are going to keep killing it, and you always know. I'm a phone call away.

I always love talking to you guys. I'm glad you guys made it to the barn. So we're going to wrap it up. You guys got any value from the show? Please share it out with the people that you know. Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Go buy some Hilbert Farms, Fresh, Raised Beef on Farmergrade.com right now. It's live.

I don't know how long it's going to last. When it sells out, it sells out. You can always use code Barn Talk to save 10% off your order. We love you guys. We'll see you in the next one.