Barn Talk - From Racetracks to Ranchlands: Taylor Moyer on Reinventing Agriculture and Agritourism

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today's episode we sit down with the multifaceted Taylor Moyer. Taylor's journey spans from his roots in agriculture to the high-octane world of NASCAR and back to farming and ranching. In this episode, Taylor shares his insights on balancing family care with personal excitement, the invaluable lessons learned from mentors like Richie Parker, and his reflections on slowing down and appreciating life's stages. He also delves into the economic and strategic facets of farming, emphasizing the importance of profitability and innovative agritourism. From his transformative career shifts to embracing new business models, Taylor's story is a testament to the power of belief, perseverance, and community support. Tune in for an inspiring discussion filled with practical advice, entrepreneurial spirit, and heartfelt anecdotes. Whether you’re a farmer, entrepreneur, or just a fan of compelling stories, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways. So, sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation! Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  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 Help grow Barn Talk by sharing and reviewing. 11:39 Bootlegging propelled family business during prohibition. 28:07 Worked in sync with the race car crew. 40:15 Farm lifestyle, Paleo Diet, transformative weight loss. 49:40 Early financial lessons from parents shaped adulthood. 58:29 Visited Black Mountain Ranch, wanted to work. 01:10:57 Custom grazing, backgrounding cattle, flexible enterprises. 01:17:27 Discovering Land Trust for agritourism monetization solution. 01:24:39 Farmers value connections, seeking appreciation and friendships. 01:41:31 Owner expanded poultry operation to retain workers. 01:47:39 Develop a cattle producer network for climate adaptation. 01:59:16 Accountability and support foster courage for change. 02:04:21 Consider timing; opportunities may arise unexpectedly. ------------------------------- ⚠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. ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 another special guest episode. This fella, he's lived through some shit now. So it's going to be a fun one. I think there's going to be a lot of fun stories to tell, a lot of value to be dropped on you guys.

So if you do get any value from this episode, all that we ask is you share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more of this show can grow, the more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. There's a lot of ways to get value. If you learned something, if you laughed at something, and if you related to us on something, all we ask is you share it. Another thing you can do to help out Barn Talk is you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. We love hearing from you guys. and all those reviews help our show have more credibility to get more guests on the show and recruit people to come to Southeast Iowa to get on Barn Talks.

So we appreciate every single one of you guys that do leave reviews. Also, you can let us know your thoughts about the show on YouTube, on our video podcasts, and then on Spotify as well. You can comment, leave your suggestions or leave your questions or just beauty tips. Leave your thoughts, whatever suits you. Just let us know how you think about the episode. Last thing you can do to support our family farm and us here at Barn Talk is you can support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmer-grade. Farmergrade.com.

Direct-to-consumer meat business, we started back a year and a half ago, and we offer all kinds of meat, pasture-raised chicken, American Wagyu, dry-age beef, pork that we raise on our farm. You can always use code Barn Talk. to save 10% off your next order. Yeah. If you're, tis the season, if you're looking to get somebody something, you better hurry up because you're running out of time.

But really, the pressure's off because, you know what? Here's a beautiful thing about sending somebody a box of meat. If you screw up and get them something shitty for Christmas, send them a box of meat. There in January, they'll forgive you. Yep, there you go. Nothing says, sorry, I screwed up better than a good old box of meat.

The nice thing about it, about box of meat for Christmas is they're going to use it. Yeah, absolutely. Unless they're vegan, then they're not going to use it. But you wouldn't do that unless you're sick and wrong. I might do that. But you know that they're going to use it. So that's the nice part.

And yeah, we don't have a Patreon on the show. You know, there's a lot of podcasts out there, a lot of content creators out there that want you to go to their Patreon and help support the show that way. we don't got a Patreon. If you want this show to get better, if you support Farmergrade, you're supporting Barn Talk because what we make from Farmergrade, we're investing back in everything that we do. So this barn's going to thrive. Our equipment's going to get better. We have upgraded some equipment. We just got to play around with it and make sure it works first before we give it a whirl. We're going wireless. We might go wireless. We might go wireless. I don't know yet.

So there's a little suspect. I'm a little skeptical of the wireless mics. These mics have been our bread and butter for a while and they've never let us down and wireless i just i just worry that it's not going to be as good so i'm saying maybe it's also it's also my crutch because it covers up this huge piece of herpes that's on my chin right here yeah there's ever see you go that's why that's why people are giving us comments about looks uh yeah so buy a box basically is what we're saying help us out um mitreone yeah metrione it's not Patreon. We got a Metrion. Yeah, better than a T-shirt, better than a bumper sticker.

Yeah. Before I go into our guest today, which this is going to be a great episode, I wanted to say, I wanted to give a shout out to a friend of the show, Orbit Farm Technologies, because talk about going wireless on our mics. The fact that we have reliable Internet out here in the barn as well as all our other hog buildings is due basically because orbit. Those guys are awesome. And if you've got a farm and you've struggled with those cellular boxes

and all that stuff for your alarm and undependable internet, call orbit farm technologies, those guys are great. They helped us out a lot. And they help keep everything flowing here because we finally have really good Wi-Fi. That said, when you get a guest, when you line up a guest that you don't know very well, we always kind of have this question like well i hope this guy's got some personality and you know i hope we can keep the conversation going uh so we met last night for dinner when he got in here and uh now then my big concern is whether or not we can cover everything that we want to cover because as you

said in the intro there this guy's done a lot of living he man he's got a lot going to on and a great story and we can talk about NASCAR, we can talk about ranching, we can talk about just entrepreneurship and talk about opportunities for like farmers to make kind of a side hustle, and that's something that he's working on on his own farm. Crazy, just crazy the amount of stuff that he's done. He's not very old. And so without any further ado, let's get into it. Taylor Moyer, welcome to Barn Talk. Thanks. I appreciate you guys having me here. Yeah, thanks for coming, man. We actually got the introduction from Joy. So Joy connected us with you, and she was like, this guy has done some pretty crazy shit, and he's done some pretty awesome

stuff, and he's got an interesting life. And we were like, hell yeah, sign us up. So, yeah, give us a little background of just your journey and kind of the things that you've gotten yourself into and where you're at today. And I know that's a pretty strong first question, but yeah, it is. But I think it makes sense to start at the beginning. I'm nobody special. I'm just a weirdo, I guess, and I have an interesting journey. But I'd be remiss to say if it didn't start at my great-grandfathers because all my family's in agriculture, and that's one of the things I'm most proud of in life. So on my mom's side, my great-grandfather, Leslie Norman Applegate, was a potato producer in Jersey. He, at a young age, became the first ever national president of FFA.

And then that potato farm turned into a pick your own, it is now a pick your own orchard of sorts, produce. It's about an hour outside of New York City and Freehold, New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen. Yep. Yeah. And that was passed down to my grandparents and then my aunt and uncle, Uncle Scott and Aunt Lisa, and now my cousin's Kyle and Maggie. and everybody's still involved, which is neat, loosely. So that is my mom's side of my family. My dad's side of my family is Okamoggi Derry in Amelia, Virginia,

which has been in the family since 1895. My great-grandfather, or somewhere along the way, they, I think they came back from Nebraska or Oklahoma, and they settled there in Virginia. Holy cow, now they went out there. They went out there and they got to the flats and they said, boy, this is, this kind of sucks. Let's go back. The story, this story was LaSod Hut and the wind and the depression and they said, nope, we're going, we're going back.

So that's actually where the Okamoggi name comes from. We can't really pin it down other than, because they added an A in there. It's O-A-K-M-U-L-G-E, two-E's. Yeah. Yeah. I think it came back. It might have been pronounced originally Okamogah, or there's some rivers out there. There's some rivers in Georgia and some Indian tribe stuff.

But somehow that name came back, and that is the family farm. That farm is the oldest still operating farm in the state of Virginia, and it's now on its fourth generation of ownership. My cousins, who I'm super proud of, and my child due in February will be my grandmother's 12th great grandbaby. And when we were just home at Thanksgiving, she had 11 of them running around. The oldest ones were in college. So like both sides of my family, I'm so proud of the succession that's gone on and we've kept it in. I mean, somebody had a statistic the other day of how many farms, like the percent chance they have to make it through succession planning. Pretty small and it's getting smaller all the time.

Yeah, both are on four. And both my cousins that manage the dairy farm and the apple orchard now, they're, they're just, just really good agrarians. Like that's not a term that's used a lot, but they're good at like the holistic view of the business and the family lifestyle and the public perception and growing stuff. And they've all worked hard on that,

which is super neat. They've got some, each farm's got some super progressive things going on to push the business to the next generation. And that's pretty neat. But oddly enough, everybody in my family goes to Virginia Tech, except for me,

I was the first one not to go. my dad who's the youngest of his brothers and my mom who's the oldest they met there fell in love dad's a wild redneck mom's this jersey girl fall in love bond over bruce springsteen run away together to vermont where they raised apples originally and then later when i was in fourth grade transitioned from apples when a lot of that market moved to the west coast into beef cattle and we raised yearling or stocker beef cattle until I was 18. And they since sold that farm, but they raised me and my brother in one of the most beautiful places in my mind on earth.

And I didn't know that growing up, but you look back now, and Addison County, Vermont is one of the most idealic, picturesque places. Yeah. A lot of people today would not believe that there's any farms operating in New Jersey, especially when you say you're an hour. I think people from Midwest to West, until you've traveled to the East Coast,

you have no idea how close everything is. It's a long ways to get out there. But once you're there, you know, from New York City to Washington, D.C., to, you know, New Jersey to New York, it's pretty small. It's not like travel. across Ohio or traveling across Oklahoma. Yeah, it's super, super condensed. And I've spoke to my

grandfather a lot, who's one of my heroes in life. And we have really good conversations about ag and why he did certain things. And they were a commercial apple operation. His dad had planted the trees. Good story. And I think it's been a long, long enough. Family's not getting and get in trouble. But during Prohibition, my great-grandfather figured out that he can make a lot of money, bootlegging that mash out of the back of the cider house between the hours of midnight and four and that really propelled the family business and um they got into apples and my grandfather on that side i i sat him down and interviewed him because unlike most people in ag including myself he gets no emotional attachment to land which is pretty amazing to me after he sold that farm he's actually flipped a

couple farms and you literally used ag as the cash flow while the land appreciated and just has no attachment it can walk away. But anyway, when he told me one time about how much land he sold, I was like, dang, you don't see a lot of farms sell down land. And he said, well, I'm a realist. The writing was on the wall. We just started spraying these harsh chemicals in Jersey, and they're building housing developments. Yeah. He said, and the farm next to it got sold. So I went right to the developer, and I said, you want to write me the same check? And he said, and at that point, I realized that perception of all these people was going to be everything to our business. And my grandma, who, you know marketing in 19 whatever was was um a mailing list that you mailed out when the peaches were

different varieties of peaches are going to be fresh and they just went full on direct to consumer station wagons were a thing cars automobiles were a thing and people would drive out um you know it's a little more rural but just like you're saying new jersey is named the garden state for a reason south jersey got some extremely good vegetable production and i mean it's beautiful there's big growers up there still. People just don't think of it in that. Yeah, right. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids

and I want to give back to the community. Ooh. Then, it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG private wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your

family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IDPrivatewealth.com. Talk a little bit about, you know, growing up in Vermont, like, what, you know, what did, what was your task look like? Talk about, like, you know, you're talking about your big, your big car guy or big truck guy. Like, what was it like working on the family farm with your, with your family? We didn't even get into the rest of my history, but that Vermont is what propelled me down

that road. Man, we had a county fair where they pulled trucks, they pulled track. and trucks for four days straight around the clock two nights a demo derby i mean anything my whole county was is dairy farms which would be all mostly agramark farms which sells the cabot cheese apples and then we were like one of the big we were the big beef cattle operator and that's that was kind of addison county vermont it still is and people are just very from a child's eyes and i i argue my mom about this but everybody seemed to be on a very level playing field um you never knew who had money and who didn't and passions were similar. And man, my childhood was four-wheelers, go-carts, anything I could pull out of the scrap pile and

weld together. I mean, I never had the nicest snowmobile or the nicest four-wheeler, but I rode them as fast as they could possibly go. And then the other big thing that's in the Northeast that people don't realize is the short track racing scene and dirt racing and asphalt. But when I was really little, my dad crew chief for some local guys and was pretty good. And then he was kind of done with that by the time that I was old enough to pay attention. But my best friend got into racing go carts.

And he was one of the kids that I rode forward with us with every night. And I never really had a desire to drive. But what I really had a desire to do was like take whatever ideas are in my mind, machine them out or bend up metal or weld stuff together and make my things better. And we just had that ability as kids. We had the freedom to do that. everybody had a dirt floor shop and my dad talks about nights that we used to lock him out of his own shop and he could just see the welders in the windows and just being like oh my god what are they doing in

there but we weren't doing anything too bad we were just being creative kids and um my best friend moved up to run on a micro sprint which is like a miniature dirt sprint car it's got a 600 cc crock rocket motor in it and i was hooked like those car those race cars are pure you drive them with the right foot you don't use the brakes and um anthony still races today you're race is dirt modified now and that just propelled me on to like man these things are cool uh i got really blessed as well as all our whole county went to one high school uh middleberry high school and there's a vocational center attached to that where they actually bused kids in from the other counties and um as you'll figure out in this interview my mind works 10 times faster than my mouth

and my mouth runs pretty fast too so me sitting in standard math or science classes just was hard but you could go take like engineering, pre-engineering, and architecture classes and get all your credits. So we had a really good older gentleman who was probably not much dissimilar than me in his younger years who like had a bunch of us rowdy kids in there and got us plugged into CAD. And if you can draw it on paper or put it in a computer, you can send it to machine shop and they can machine it. And it was just that opened up a whole world to me. And from that, and I knew I liked racing and, you know, the internet's around and you start realizing that. that NASCAR has engineers now, right? Which is a little different than just turning wrenches,

but I wanted to turn wrenches too. And that's the full bore of the path I went on. I packed up my truck the day after I graduated high school, and I drove to Charlotte, North Carolina, went to freshman orientation there, and went away for the summer, but came back and never left. And I started down, I guess it would be 18-year career in NASCAR. Got my engineering degree.

And so how when did you when did you make connections with like a team or a car builder like how what was your in? I didn't have one is the honest answer. I just drove down knowing nobody. I know in eighth grade I wrote it on a piece of paper I wanted to be a crew chief by the time I was 30 and I hit that by two weeks. I got signed my crew chief intent letter like on January 2nd and my birthday's January 14th and I would have turned 31. No kidding. Which is kind of cool. But I drove down, and so the reason I didn't go to Virginia Tech or some of the other engineering programs I got into was UNC Charlotte, which is like, there's a whole UNC system. There's a UNC Asheville, UNC Wilmington. Unc. Charlotte is right there next to all the race teams. They're all within an hour's driving distance, but there's a bunch that are within 15 minutes. And racing is kind of one of those things you kind of need to have an end. But UNC Charlotte actually has a motorsports engineering program. program and I was like well let me start there and they have a pretty nice shop facility where they keep different types of race cars and with all mechanical engineering schools there's like formula s ae type stuff which I had no interest in I was like I don't want school race cars I want real race cars so knowing nobody I spent the first couple nights doing what I knew how to do best which

was not much but do you remember those shows like you're probably too young but there was like Monster Garage and Junkyard Wars and stuff. Yeah. I mean, I literally learned metal fabrication by watching Jesse James on West Coast Shoppers and all those shows, like watching people. So now I had this full shop of actual professional metal shaping tools. And I just went in there and the, and UNC Charlotte had some, oh, what do they call those little race cars?

Legends race cars. They're like a, 1200 C C motor, pretty cool power to rate ratio. And I just volunteered to rebuild all the sheet metal on them. And in one week, some kid who worked for who. Puders Pro Cup team was like, hey, we're looking for a guy, you look halfway athletic, you think you can learn how to do a pit stop, and you want to come learn to work on asphalt race cars. And that guy's name was Mike Herman Jr. And his family let me come as a kid that knew nothing. He was about a half an hour north of my dorm. I didn't get paid, but it didn't cost me

anything. And they hauled me all over the country. Like I said, out here to Iowa to the first race ever, and they just taught me whatever I was willing to learn. So it was also kind of a place to just go hang out when I wasn't in school. Yeah. And just learn. And those guys were as much like big brothers and uncles to me. You know, it was camaraderie. They taught me a lot.

And I learned to hang a tire and change tires. And that was my first in. And Pro Cup was still big. At the time, like Joey Legano was running Pro Cup. A lot of the Cup guys now, Trevor Bain. It was still a big short track series. And it was a really good series because there was all these old guys coming down from NASCAR that that was like, they didn't want to return.

tire all the way, but a little 15 race short track series was fun, get their fix. They could work in NASCAR shops, but do this on the weekends. And then there was young guys like me who like needed some guidance, you know, we just, I didn't know what I didn't know and needed some place to learn. And that's, that's where it started. I would just turn a wrench on anything I could and hang tires and change tires and be as involved as I could be. And I kind of felt like if I, I wanted to start at the bottom and go all the way to the top. And it was kind of a blessing in disguise that happened that way. Because since I didn't know a lot of people, there was a lot of jobs.

I got passed up for 10 jobs for every one I got. And we got flying. There's fucking fly. There's one fucking fly. I promise I showered this morning. It's about 12 freaking degrees outside. There's one fly left. Just keeps fucking left.

But no, that's how I got my start. And I worked for a couple other teams. It's a wild story. There's a series a little bit. The same way there was a short track series called Hooters Pro Cup, there was this other series called ARCA, which ran. They didn't run short tracks. They ran all the bigger tracks.

And I went from working for that Pro Cup team. I never went home in the summers. My parents sold the farm in Vermont. They moved to Georgia. I'd go visit and play, but it didn't feel like home to me. Right. And I needed to work anyway to pay for stuff. Just kept working.

One of my friends who I had met, They were hiring fabricators because there was an archeteam. This is going to sound wild and weird, but you can look it up on YouTube and maybe find some videos. There was an archa team that had got a contract to build 48 race cars for one of the princes of Dubai in the UAE. Jeez. It's called the Speedcar series.

And this guy contracted, he put out a bid, and this guy had won, my boss had won a contract to build all these race cars. And they were basically making a billionaires go-kart league over there, where when you pay your couple million, you get a race car and you get a shipping container full of bolt-on parts. And the whole schick of the deal was you're going to go around the world and you're going to go race all these Formula One tracks and these stock cars. I remember this.

And there was like four X formula old Formula one guys. Crazier than heck. I got to meet him at VIR testing that you'd race against. So it's like if you've ever had any ambition and you got enough money, come on with it. And it was like this race car we kind of invented. it was a, it was a arc of chassis. It was kind of a Hooters Pro Cup composite body. It was a fuel injected, fully built like LS1 motor

that was pretty easily programmable. And we built them in stages of eight. And they were like, man, if you've ever wanted to learn to build a race car from top to bottom all the way to engine tuning, that's your thing. And Bob Shack was, again, nice enough to hire some 19-year-old grease ball

that. And we were racing ARCA, which was cool, and we just did it all. And it was with eight of my still lifelong buddies, and we didn't know what we didn't know. And Bob put up with a lot of our stuff, and it was a blast. One of the reasons I really wanted to sign on was they needed fabricators with passports because we were supposed to go to Dubai. And I signed on after they had already gone to Dubai once with the first load of cars for testing. And then we realized it took so much effort to get those cars shipped to the shipping canals and get them over there and get everything set up, it was easier for those guys to come over here and test. So I never got to go to Dubai. But those guys came over the money and the Formula One guys. We went to VIR, which is Virginia International Raceway

to Roadcourse and tested the stuff. And yeah, I was part of the crew that built all those cars. Wow, that's awesome. And about that time that that stuff shut down, and I think I was waiting tables at the time. He's waiting tables at a steakhouse, because if you waited tables, you got a free meal so I could eat steak and a salad and potato every night and not have to eat college food. Hendrick Motorsports had an open pit crew tryout, and that's how I got my foot in the door there. So what was your first job there? At Hendrick? Yeah. Parts kid.

Parts kid. And that didn't even start. So I got in on the pit crew tryout, and this was like a developmental team where they would, you were very green and they'd bundle you together as crews and they'd send you out. So I pitted for like truck team, NASCAR truck team. Sure. Gabby DeCarlo, the great clips team, never any good ones. And just all types of stuff, right? But same thing, a 18, loaded an 16 passenger van and driving to tracks and flying and

leaving on Thursdays as a college kid. Never scheduled Friday classes or worked out a deal of my professors and go pit the truck race maybe on a Friday night and maybe get an Xfinity race on Saturday. I never did any good cup cars. But you're just living, man. It was a blast. You just see the world. And somebody else's dime and make a lot of cash money.

But eventually, Hendrick was posting internships. And I was there every day, like as contract labor, working out and changing tires and getting put together on crews. But I really wanted to be an employee. And it's funny, I got passed up for two internships. And one of the kids, for sure, was my roommate in college, which just really burned me. You know, like his dad was Dale Earnhardt, spotter.

Corey knew, you know, he's still a good friend of mine, but like he had an in. I was nobody. And the pit crew pad where we practiced was next to the parts department. And I just walked in there. You'd get a free pair of gloves and knee pads and stuff. And guy's name was Eric Kearns. And I was like, hey man, I would rather work for you at any level at this company and get my foot in the door than have to wait tables. And he's like, come on. And he's got good racer from the Northeast and really took me under his wing. And the one thing I thought about that I'm glad I did was, so Hendrick Motorsports is a big campus. It's probably 20 different buildings. And I was like, as being the parts kid who has to deliver all the parts, you're going to meet everybody.

In fact, we handled all the apparel too. So I would hand deliver Mr. Hendrick his clothes. And I met everybody. And the next time an internship came passed up, they didn't pass me up. And I was able to finish out college as the, um, chassis shop intern since I knew how to fabricate getting a degree could weld halfway and could shoot the shit with all those old guys pretty well um they gave me that and then from there full time i went chassis shop body shop engineer to then i went so parts department to chassis shop and body shop engineer um then i was hired we got really we got more and more corporate where i wasn't allowed i wasn't not allowed to i wasn't spending as much time welding or working on the race cars as much as much as i was just

Parked being a cad jockey. I was like, man, this doesn't seem like racing. You can't smell them, you can't hear them. I was still doing some short track stuff. I think I was probably still pitting at the time, but just wasn't getting like my fix. If I'm going to do that, let's go work for the energy company and make real good money.

So that's back when we had open testing. So we could go test at any racetrack anytime. We had full test haulers, full test crews, and the 48 and the 88. So Jimmy Johnson at the time and Dale Earnhardt, They needed a new test engineer, and I raised my hand. So you'd put on these full data acquisition systems, which NASCAR race cars have no data acquisition in them. They have a little bit now, but no open data acquisition.

So when we would go test, you'd strap this. All this stuff on. And it was nothing on like a Sunday. If Jimmy didn't run good, Chad would text me canals and be like, have a car ready to leave Monday. And I'd go in, and it was a cool job. like it was there was a start and a finish and it's interesting because it's like an IT job people only talk to you when you're screwing stuff up and if they're not talking to you you're doing a good job but you also get a lot of credit for doing a good job and I like that and I could I'd work funny

hours to fit in the mechanic schedule so I could show them that I was trying and not delay them because everything's an assembly line on those race cars and we'd finish those cars we'd put them in the box and we would ship them to Nashville, Tennessee, which is one-time zone over. And on Tuesday mornings, we would walk on our jet at 7 a.m. Concord, North Carolina time, and we would land at 7 a.m. Nashville time, and we'd get our coffee at Chick-fil-A, and we'd be on track at 9. And then we would be home that night, and the trucks would come back. And I think that year, which would have been 2014, I did as many or equal amount of days gone as the road cruise, which was cool. So with...

And you were part of the road crew. You were just, like, in this auxiliary branch. You weren't at the track with them every weekend, but you were working as hard for them as they were for you. And so it was just a good way to get in with everybody. And then in 15, they took me full time and put me on Casey Kane's car. I was on his car for three years. That team turned into William Byron's team for his rookie year.

I was race engineer on that car with William and Darien Grub. And then in 2019, I got the call to go to Junior Motorsports to be a crew chief. So Junior Motorsports is the ex-examination. Xfinity team for Hendrick Motorsports, or was, still is, affiliated. And it's kind of like AAA baseball, right? And that's where he did. And I was there for five years as a crew chief. The number eight car, for four of those years, the number one car, we had a number swap deal go on and had 16 drivers through five years. And I, I guess, last season, not this past season, the season before, when the checkered flag flew at Phoenix, I had already started my farm.

I knew that NASCAR was not going to be my lifelong career. I'm so thankful for it. I'm thankful for so many good men along the way that taught me things. And it definitely got me to where I am in life and taught me a lot of business skills. But I just knew, like, holistically, I was going to step away from it. And it was the right time. Everything kind of worked out perfectly. And, yeah, I jumped.

So now we're raising beef cows and anything else we can grow in North Carolina. So what? I don't tell a story. It is. It's real cool. I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I feel like you kind of, you kind of stepped in there right at the kind of a pivotal time in NASCAR because, like you said, when you started and they had the chassis shop and all that, like that was the time when you still had guys that were bending metal and you were building your own cars and tweaking them and doing your own stuff. How was that experience, and then how, for people that don't know, like, how's that changed from the time you started to when you left?

Yeah. So that was what, there's two things I loved about NASCAR when I got into it. And it just, things evolve, right? So when I first got in, I think there were 700 plus employees at 100 motorsports for a four car team. Wow. Now, the engine shop and the chassis shop, we built for other teams as well. So you could, if you were a lower entry level team, you could actually buy a chassis and body from. us or rent be on a motor lease program for the whole year to keep expenses low but we literally started with straight rail tubing or round rail and and flat sheets a sheet metal i mean we have these surface plates which are like workstations in the body shop and the chassis shop the body shop and chassis shop are different but each workstation had a team of four guys and maybe six of these surface plates and you'll hear the word team over and over again and then the car would get done and you go

to the body shop and you have a team of four guys that would take seven days and literally shape and mold the metal body. And we would shape and mold different metal bodies based off different types of race tracks. I mean, all these cars were different. Every car number at Hendrick, at the time I was there, Mr. Hendrick had a rule, so we didn't go way crazy. But every car number had 14 chassis in circulation. Some being built. Some being built. Some being, you know, processed out. But that is what I loved about NASCAR. It was a full team effort. And I know we talked last night, Like when I got on the five team originally in 2015, there was 18 road guys, full-time road guys on that team. That's not including the marketing people that came to the track, not including the PR people that came to the track.

You were a, you know, what you did, if you were on a road crew and if you were in the shop, like everybody had a very pivotal task and responsibility was on your shoulders. And it was very much you either do a good job or you do a bad job. It was very linear, which I really enjoy. I think that it actually has a lot of parallels with farming. And there's a lot of guys in that area that were farm kids. People knew they could get these farm kids. I can think of a million. Mikey Atwell is one of the first one that comes to mind.

They're just used to a different work schedule and the understanding that you go home when the work's done in some situations, right? So I was just drawn to that. As the sports progressed for reasons, you know, out of my mind, control the sports change the money yeah a lot yeah money i mean it's an we they have to have viewership and they have to have sponsorship to operate um it's no different than farming input costs have gone up and the product that the fan see on tv doesn't take teams of 18 guys anymore um the teams are very very small the last team of guys i led in the xfinity series was only

five guys including the truck driver you know you would ever pick crews flying on race day but very small teams and it wasn't it's not the team atmosphere fear anymore as big. There's been a big contraction in manpower in the sport. And we don't build the cars the same way anymore. In fact, a cup car can every piece can be bought off the shelf and then you just assemble it. So all that, a lot of that, this is kind of interesting side note. The race teams were like, we have all this talent. What the heck do we do with all these people? I mean, all the race team owners are good men and women. But a lot of them got big into the military contracting stuff. And that's what they're all doing. They all got big contracts.

through the auto manufacturers, because you have all this super good fabrication talent and engineering talent with great creativity. So now the problems in their minds have changed from like, let's go 200 at Daytona to let's pick up this Toyota Tacoma with a hook on the roll bar with a helicopter at going 200 across the Mojave Desert somewhere, right? Like that's what they work on now. And that's what they're building big stuff. They have a whole military side now, which is neat. But yeah, yeah, that's kind of been the progression of the sport. And, I think that like anything, it's hard to say. But if I was born 20 years earlier,

I would have hit my heyday in the part that I really enjoy. Yeah, I was going to ask you that. Did you plan on being done as early as you were? No, no, I'll be 100% honest with that. I'll be honest about all this stuff because somebody from NASCAR will watch this. I was always the black sheep. NASCAR is the same way.

When you're developing a team of people, well, you have to fully believe in your teams. There was teams that I was on where it was the best years of my life and the team was super close. And it's such a butterfly effect in NASCAR. One little thing will happen and it'll end up dismantling your team. And you end up on another one where it's like talented guys, but there's no cohesion and you just don't produce as much as you should, right?

That's what I love about teams. It's like you can take a bunch of black sheep, put them together. 2018 with William Byron and Darien Grub. I think the average age of the kids in our team was like 27. And we were a, I felt like we were the best group of engineers and mechanics in the garage. And we had a rookie driver and it's always a learning curve. And we didn't get to show our skills. But everybody knew, everybody on that team has gone on to bigger and better things.

I became a crew chief, my best buddy Ty, who was the front end guy. He's the car chief on the 48. I mean, everybody went on to expand their career. but it's such a, it's such a, you got to be wanted. I'm a free thinker. I've always had other stuff going on. I told you I had that one business from 15 to 19. I built an e-commerce business while I was a race engineer for something to do.

Crew chiefs don't like that. Because you needed something else to do. They want your one sole focus. And I understand this now after I was being a crew chief. I mean, the perfect employee would be a robot that has no family at home, no emotions, no girlfriend to break up with them, dog at home that he's worried about, no cows he's worried about getting out. So as the sport contracts, what you get is the people that have none of that and are willing

to devote 120% of their life, those are the guys that get the job. And maybe rightfully so. I wasn't willing to do that anymore. So where in your progression did, did you get that little that little itch in your head that you couldn't stop thinking about that like I should I should go get a piece of ground somewhere I kind of miss form it because when you left

you really didn't want anything to do with the farm or raising cattle or anything you wanted to go do that so when did that claw its way back into your psyche that you're like you know I went from a one stop sign town of Shoreham Vermont I think there's like 600 people in that town

to the metropolis list of Charlotte. And I remember, like, laying in my dorm, listening to, like, there's way more ambient light. There's way more sound than you're used to. Like, I remember my bedroom was above the kitchen and our yearling lot, like our processing barn was outside. And the most sound you'd hear was if we had some wean calves. Like, we were in the middle of nowhere. We didn't even have AC in our house. You just had the windows open. You listen to the peeper frogs. And I was pretty, like, what in the world am I doing down here? And I met some buddies from Eastern North Carolina that lived on the coast. And we took this, they brought me home, which was really awesome.

We took this road called 218, and I got about 30 miles east of Charlotte or off the beltway. And I just started getting out in the country. And I'm like, damn, this looks like home. And I marked that in my head. And that's exactly where I bought my house when I graduated college. I just drove out to the middle of nowhere, Olive Branch, North Carolina. And I was like, this looks like home. And these people look like they're probably the same type of people I grew up with.

And I bought a home out there. on five acres. I graduated in 2010, so the economy had hit pretty hard in 08. And there was some homes that had been built that sat and I got a smoking deal. I mean, it was still stretching for a young kid like me, but I got a smoking deal on five acres and a house out there, and I just ingrained myself in that community. I wasn't traveling full time yet. So I would say I decided it back in college because I definitely started saving up my money.

I hadn't really dug too far into like, how am I going to get into farming? But in my mind, it was, well, you got to start with ground. which I'm very thankful I bought ground and I'm thankful I bought it when I did. But maybe that, and that's a different discussion. Maybe that's not that route that everybody has to go. But it's funny enough because I've heard you guys talk a lot about it too. I was, when I was in those cad jockey days, you know, I was lifting for changing tires and stuff. But I wasn't, you know, didn't do much cardio.

I played lacrosse and football and then a lot of pond hockey growing up. And I was always moving. and I'm eating exactly how the doctor says I should eat. Yep. And I'm just getting fat. Like I'm strong, but I'm just like fat. I'm like,

what the heck? We're sponsored by Kellogg's at the time. And I've got like, I think Kashi was like a big organic Kellogg's brand and stuff. I've got every bougie cereal they give it to us for free. I'm like, I'm eating my bowl of this and eating my yogurt. And I'm eating exactly as the table.

The pyramid says. And I'm just, this isn't working. And I got to 209 pounds. I hated who I, was in the mirror. And podcasts weren't really a thing, but I was, like, when I was designing parts, I would listen to YouTube in my headphones. I used to listen like stand-up comedy, like old Bill Cosby and stuff. And I, I don't know what road I got started down. It was kind of like I,

I learned about actually Joel Salatin and some of the things he's saying. I'm like, man, this shit kind of makes sense. Like, I grew up where we always had a freezer full of beef from our farm and we always had a big garden and I was always active and we were just a we were just a farm family who was active and like weight gain was never something I worried about so what's going on and simultaneous to that I'd picked up a book called the primal blueprint which was like they called it the paleo diet but it was keto or carnivore before it was cool and I went from 209 to 160 like that and couldn't stop losing weight and I was just eating like bacon and eggs and steak and maybe like when I introduced carbs back in it was like salad and stuff and I just

started ignoring the doctor and that funny enough through blue cross blue shield we had like a healthy wellness program at hendrick where they do a full diagnostic check basically every year and they told me i had high cholesterol and they told me i should eat cheerios and all that and i said nope watch this and then like the next checkup they were asking me if i was on drugs or something because i was so skinny and i was like no here's the book and the ladies you know they don't they're not doctors they just and they're like there's no way. And I'm like, it's just falling off me. And that really started the whole, the whole thing of like, if I'm going to get into, it just started to unravel. All right, what's my plan to get back into farming? And I read all the Salatin books. And I learned about Will Harris.

And then Greg Judy's, this old crazy guy in Missouri who got divorced and went broke and started a zero. And here's this business model. And I just kept evolving into like, this is going to be a business. I'm going to make it a viable business. It's not going to be a hobby. I'm pretty passionate about that. But I'm going to have to do it different. And I want to be profitable. And I just kept doing like independent learning as I went to kind of get down that road. Isn't it interesting how. And for everybody, for everybody it's a different thing. But like most, I think everybody that we've ever talked to on here that is doing their own thing, there's kind of a point in your life,

and for different people, it's different times, where all of the, whatever it is, but there's something that you've just taken for granted because everybody says it's so, this is so, this is how it's done, or this is what it is, and you have that experience where it isn't. Yeah. And you make that connection in your head that,

wait a minute, I don't think this is right. And I think all these people are just going along with whatever it is because it just has been that way. And that is like your, that's like your aha moment where I think your mind kind of goes, well, I wonder how much other stuff is complete bullshit, you know? And then it just starts you down this path. You know, I mentioned that I was so blessed. If I, like, right around that pivot point in my life, I happened to be parked in an office with a younger guy, it's probably my age now, who's a dad, who was like the coolest guy because he didn't give, he was like nobody else. He was like almost, I don't know, Matthew McConaughey-esque. Like, he was, without even trying, you're just like, he doesn't care about what he drives. He just has a coolness to him. And at the same time about food, he's, he's, he's, he. He just has a coolness to him. And at the same time about food, he's, he, he's, he

he started to explain to me how money really works in this world. And, and, you know, what keeping up to the Joneses does to people and consumer debt and learning the difference between debt and leverage. We would just have these conversations. I mean, I mean, we'd have conversations when I'm soaking this in at 22 years old about, you know, Roth, paying the taxes on a Roth IRA versus a standard IRA and the power of what maxing out your 401K when you're young versus 40 does and stuff like that.

And all these different strategies. And it's funny you said that because, that was, you look at everybody else that I'm graduating with and they're buying new cars and new houses when you know they can't afford it. And I'm like, well, it doesn't. Like, it's way more of a flex to go be 36 years old, retired from NASCAR and have your own farm. I drive a 91 F-150 round that was my grandfather. That's way cooler than me than a $100,000 new F-250 platinum. And it was like that thing that sent me down that road.

And just like you said, on all walks of life, I just became a skeptic. Yep. And I started doing independent research. And I started to follow the trends for the people who truly were successful. However, you define success. And then you wake up one day and you find yourself completely unemployable by anybody else. So you're like, well, I'm going to have to figure this out because there's no way I'm going to work for somebody else. Oh, yeah. You say that and that is so true. I had to have a conversation with my grandpa one time. I was having a tough time at work. And he sat me down and he said, it's not. You're a bit. business to run. You're an employee. If you don't like it, get the heck out. I took that to heart.

And I was like, oh, yeah. Dang, you're right. So I can either become the boss and run it how I want to run it or go start my own. So I wanted to ask this question. Dad kind of went before me, but what was your just not to go back, but just what was your favorite memory about working for NASCAR? Like, if you had to pick, if there was a moment or a memory that just stands out. So I've got five championship rings with Jimmy Johnson with my name on him, which is pretty cool. I've got a grandfather clock from Martinsville, which is a crown jewel race, where I won as the crew chief. With Josh Barry, who is now going to be in the 21 cars in the Cup series, Josh came from nothing. He was not a pay-to-play driver. So it was proof that the blue-collar kids could still make it on talent. That was pretty cool. I kissed the bricks

at Indy with Casey Kane in 2017 as a race engineer. So I've got a couple crown jewel wins. I've Daytona 500 win. I wasn't on the team, but I worked in the shop and we got a ring. Yeah. That was all cool. But by far and large, I gave my dad my jersey from my 2017 win at Indy. And it still smelled like champagne for Christmas. And I watched my dad, who's my hero, cry. And between that and my grandparents and seeing the joy in their eyes when they'd see me on TV

or the people from my hometown that are just blue-collar folks and they're like, if you can do it, anybody can do it. Yeah. And that's why I did it. I mean, it's just hard work. The thing about hard work is it's possible for anybody. I was never the smartest kid. Just keep your heads down.

And that's the great thing about growing up on a farm when your dad's yelling at you a little bit or somebody's on your ass. Like that's work hardening for real life. Life's hard. And the point of life is to live. So like, man, my parents gave me the best childhood, whether they knew it or not.

And to be able to see the pride in their eyes and the pride of people from my hometown and my grandparents. That was by far and large better than any of the wins or any of the prestigious stuff. But, you know, it took some of that to get there. But, yeah, that's the goal of it all. That's badass. Yeah. We were talking last night a little bit about, you know, just working on the farm.

And you were talking about how, you know, your dad, he's like, I can either buy you a car or you can just work and I pay you and you can buy your own car, whatever you want. I know. So just talk a little bit about, like, just, you know, you. you went away from the farm and you wanted to go all in and you got into NASCAR, you lived out that dream, you get back, you'd buy your ground, but talk a little bit about your childhood of farming and the connection that you had to it, I guess. Just those stories, because I learned so much about life through my childhood years by being raised by really good parents.

And I try to give them credit now as like an adult and they're like, oh, we just got lucky. Or I talked to them and they're like, oh, we weren't good farmers. And this is funny, I kind of yell at them. I'm like, no, that's number one, that's horseshit. To me, the definition of success doesn't have to do with monetary value. Yeah, you might have not hit it big. But you were able to, for 24 years, raise your children in the most beautiful place and give us great public school educations and give us all the skills to go on in life.

So I think they're very successful farmers. But part of growing up was like, we were in 4-H, right? And you had the log books and we all had our projects. Well, my mom's an accountant. Oh, boy. Yeah, so she handled that stuff, like, legit. We weren't, mom wasn't doing my logbook. GPS computers had come out but there was like MapQuests and stuff so like we had the tally board in the barn of like if dad's hauling your cows to the cow show in Freiburg, Maine and it's a 200 mile

pull that's 200 miles and every scoop of grain was tallied and every bail I fed to my cows was tallied and at the end of the year when I'd sell my steers at the big e and I'd make 10 grand you better bet we'd go through the tally marks and I'd make about 400 bucks you know the books the books were always cooked, you know, my parents, they never made a dime on it for sure. Like, it cost way more money to let me do that stuff than they ever made. But she made sure that I knew that things cost money and life. Yeah, it wasn't a gimmie. No, not at all. I mean, I remember going to the Bank of Orwell, which was our little hometown bank, one town down when I was maybe 12 to get a loan on some registered cows to show. And I think we did that just so that she could introduce me to the banking

system. I took out a CD when I was a young kid. And those lessons, like, I tell everybody, those lessons took me farther as an adult to not come out of college and be like, I don't know how to use money than anything. But on that same sense, my parents rule was awesome. It was like, we're not going to ask you to do anything for free. You can work as much as you want, but we're not going to give you anything. Like, before school started every year, yeah, we go to J.C. Penny and I get a new set of clothes. And when I was playing lacrosse, my dad made sure that I always had the sports gear I knew. Everything you needed. Oh, I never knew I was poor. Like, we were land-rich, money-poor. Never knew it. I had the best childhood.

And I worked my tail off, and I loved it because it was, I don't remember what my starting salary on our farm was. But when I turned 14, I could legally work for somebody else. Dad lined up my first job. I milk cows down the street, a mile down the road for $5.25 an hour for Roger and Patricia Skolton. They had three daughters. It wasn't hard to convince me to go down there and milk cows. But I'd do that. I'd do early morning milkings at 14 years old. I think we milked 125 cows. I'd come home, jump in the bed for 15, 20 minutes.

Little brother would take a shower first, and I'd take a shower. We'd get in the truck and go to school. And then we'd come home if I didn't have sports practice and work on our farm. I mean, we just always worked. And all my friends worked. And even the girls worked.

Like, it was what she did to make the money to go to the movies. Or buy that truck. Buy that truck. Yeah, so my dad, my dad told me, like a young age, I just kind of had the gearhead passion. I think he could see it. I don't think I was naturally talented about mechanics, but he's like, we better give this kid something to work on.

He's just going to weld everything together out here in the back 40. So we were originally looking for a Mustang, actually, but up there, things russed so bad. It's hard to find stuff. And we got off the Mustang kick because I don't really know. Like, I hunt. I'm like, where am I going to put a deer if I have a Mustang? I want an old one, too. And I found a 91F150.

bought it when I was 12 years old for 1,200 bucks. And Vermont's got, I've always been told they've got this. Nobody's ever checked on it, but I might have broken a lot of laws as a kid. I've always been told there's like a Vermont farm license where if you drive within so many miles of the farm for farm use, you can drive before you have your license. I drove everywhere. And as I got money, we just started lifting the truck and then bigger tires. And then we put a roll bar on that my dad welded to the frame so that when I rolled it, it didn't kill us all. And then we welded the push bar to the end of the frame. So when I hit something, it didn't kill us all. It's funny, he wouldn't let me have anything more than a bench seat. He's like, if you're going to roll this thing with friends in and I only want it to

fit two other kids. Yeah. But that was it. I mean, by the time I got my license, that thing was oh, it was either on 35s or 37s and it was lifted to the sky. It had a 302 and it was automatic. And we had the bands tied down so tight in the transmission. You'd have to lift your foot out of the gas to make it shift. Like, what what the heck? There was a, there's an auto. There's an auto manufacturer magazine j c whitney oh sure yeah dude i get another thousand bucks and we'd be scrolling through that like what else am i putting on this louder exhaust bigger tires more accessories and boltons um one thing on your mind j c whitney's must have figured out that every page cost a lot of money because remember how every like the they packed so much shit into every page you almost needed a

you almost needed a magnifying glass to see all the stuff i can remember going through there i mean there was freaking everything in there, but all the, all the items were just tiny, tiny descriptions. J.C. Whitney and then Crutchfield was the big audio one. Yep. We made the subbox fit behind the seat where when I was having, let's just, when we were having field parties, whatever. We could open the back sliding gas. We could pull the whole, I left the cords long enough. I could pull the whole subbox out and set it in the back of the truck. Sure. And then I had, I thought I was so cool, because I had a remote to the head unit in that truck so you could like be at the pond and change the channel. Oh yeah. We thought we were kings driving around $5,000.

Yeah. But we had the best childhood like that. I mean, we never did drugs, never, yeah, we drank a little beer and probably dip too much Copenhagen because it was in every truck and tractor. But that's the way, that's how I became successful in life. I learned how to be an adult before I was 18, which is maybe an old school thing. And the community, you know, you're raised by community up there. I knew for a fact. My parents knew where I was at all times. Everybody calls everybody. It's a small town. Don't drink and drive. Don't tear up people's farm fields. If you did, you're going to see them at the diner and they're going to whip your tail anyway.

So just the thing of back, I'm like, man, it's funny. I've got a kid on the way now. And I know a part of my goal about buying my own land and my farm. My wife is a farm kid as well is that is the only way we want to raise our child. Yeah, absolutely. That's awesome. Maybe not the drinking and drinking and crazy. What was a can of Copenhagen when you were a kid? If you bought it. It was stolen from dad. That's probably what it was. But it was probably like three, maybe 289 then. I dipped all through racing.

You'd have every, for a while, you'd have every tobacco manufacturer with a trailer out there. They just give you rolls of it. All through college, a lot of our friends worked for U.S. smokeless nail worked on the Copenhagen rig, and we get the half tins. And that was the only way I went as hard as I did between. I got my engineering degree in four and a half years while working full-time in pit and race cars was energy drinks in Copenhagen,

which God is probably the worst thing for me and I don't dip anymore and I really don't drink a lot of energy drinks anymore, but yeah, we were taking advantage of all the free stuff we could get back then. So every VOWAG teacher in the Midwest when I grew up, you would busload after busload of kids

would go to either the Farm Progress show or Husker Harvest Days or whatever it was. And every kid thought that they were the kid that was super sneaky, and they would get the free cans of skull and put them down your boot. And they're like, oh, nobody's going to check my boot. And then you get back to the bus. And our FFA teacher, our VOAG teacher, he just knew which kids were the ones. He's like, all right, take off your boots.

Matt Litweiler Matt Litweiler would have he was the champion because he would have like 12 cans like he would have three on each side of each boot he would have like 12 cans of chew and dumping about of his boots

and what pissed us off was our VOAG teacher you knew he chewed so that was hit like he had free chew for a year off all these so when I decided I needed to quit

my wife helped me decide that too but I did I realized I would sit through a whole race and we got sponsors and TV cameras in your face you're not going to have it in the front I'd sit through a whole race with it packed back here and I'd realize I would never spit

I'm just gutting that stuff and I'm probably like man I'm gonna end up with lip cancer, throat cancer stomach cancer colon cancer So then I got to That's why I always carry a toothpick Like I have in my hat

So I kicked it with toothpicks Which is funny is I don't know if my grandparents will watch this or not But they're old enough to know It's fine, I dipped But then they'd see me on TV and they'd text my mom be like, why does you always have that nasty toothpick in my mouth? And rather than my mom tell them like, oh, it's better than the alternative, she would just throw me under the bus and be like, yeah, we'll tell them to get that out.

And I'd be like, Mom, tell them I have a toothpick in my mouth so I don't have tobacco products in my mouth anymore. Yeah, is what it is. Yep, live and learn. So another thing we talked about last night was, you know, you had a little bit of a journey in the summers while you were a kid too. Yeah. Tell them a little bit about that because I think that's pretty unique and it's really cool that. It is. You were able to do that.

That was a big part of growing up, like I said, being an adult by the time I was 18 and got to college kind of on my own was that when I was 14, my grandparents on the Apple Orchard side, they're big world travelers. And they gave every grandkid the option to go on a trip they wanted to go. And I chose a dude ranch. You know, growing up, we were four-wheeler Cowboys. We moved all those yearling cattle with four-wheelers, and we strung polywire everywhere and intensively grazed those cows. But I did love cowboy. I always loved everything cowboy.

There's pictures of me on my little rocking horse and stuff. So I wanted to go experience that. We went to this ranch called Black Mountain Ranch in McCoy, Colorado. And it's halfway between Vale and Steamboat Springs, about four hours from Denver. As soon as we rolled in, you know, there was basically like college. age kids were all the cowboys, the wranglers. And I think the first day I did, like, there's kind of a set schedule for what people do, but you have the option. You're the guest. And they're my grandparents. They're older. They're very athletic, but they're older than I am.

14. I think the next morning at breakfast, they're like, what do you want to do? And I just remember being like, I just want to work with those guys. And the owner's like, you want to work? I knew how to work. I liked work. I just want to do Western work. And he's like, have at it. They're just like big brothers to me. Those guys were probably mid-20s and I was 14. So at the end of the week, I remember the owner, the guy's name's Noel May, he's one of the co-owners. He came to me. And I don't know whether he was joking or not, but he said, if you ever want to come back, if you ever want to come back, I'll have a job for you here. And he probably shouldn't have said that because I went back to Vermont and I told my mom, I wanted to do that. And she, I'm sure

they must have had a phone conversation. Like surely she didn't just ship me back to Colorado the next summer, 15 years old with a duffel bag and a cowboy hat. Yeah. But I showed up next summer. I think I did a week the first summer when I was 15. And I did two summers and then I skipped a summer. And then I did the last summer between graduating high school and going to college. But by the end, I was always the only junior angler, the only kid under 18.

So they'd usually give me the group of just wild guests that wanted to go, go, go, go, go. And I loved it. you'd have max capacity was 55 guests a week and um yeah you just met we had a huge European or just world following we get rugby player I remember this rugby player from Australia this big old dude I remember there's still people I keep up on Facebook actually from Europe that um were guests of mine that just become lifelong friends and so we would trail ride we had a shooting range they let me run and not looking back I was the only one dumb enough to run a shooting range with all the people have never handled guns. Yeah. Um, but shoot as much trap and skeet as people

wanted, shoot prairie dogs. We would take them rafting every week in Glenwood Springs. And a lot of times I would go and I would just go raft with them. And then on Friday nights, we would rodeo in steamboat springs. And, uh, I would always take that as my day off. And the head wrangler, T.J and the ranch owner's son, who's the ranch manager, Ryan, they would rope in the sevens. And, um, weirdly enough, Ryan, the ranch owner's son had, one fear factor. And he had won the episode of Fear Factor that aired the same night as the final four in basketball that year. He'd won a bunch of money. He's spending on a nice rodeo setup, like a seven horse slant and a big duly truck. So those guys, looking back, they would let me go rodeo with

them just so they had somebody sober to drive the truck back. But you bet at 16 years old, I could get a seven horse slant through the McDonald's drive-thru it and steamboat because we'd roll out of that rodeo. I would just ride the backup horses. So we'd bring extra horses. You'd set up. saddle everything, act like you're impressing the girls, put your shirts on. You'd ride all the spares, warm up the horses, and they'd go rope. And we'd ride with Black Mountain Ranch shirts on. And all of our guests would come to the ranch and watch them compete, which is a big thing. Yep. Yeah. But then we'd hang out in town, and I was just a little brother who drug along. You were just long for the ride. But you being a truck guy anyway, I bet driving the dully around,

you thought, yeah, you thought you were king of the hill. Oh, yeah. And I had driven so much stuff all my life. like, I don't know. The first thing I learned to drive was International 574 was our tractor. Okay. And I, you know, like most little kids do, you sit on your dad's lap and you think that you have to like go like this with the wheel and that old thing just wobbles all over the place. Yeah. But I have been driving stuff since I could touch the pedals, really. So no big deal. But yeah, I did that for all those summers and I made great, for a kid, you just made great

money. Room and Boards paid for. Cash tips were great. rodeo entry fees are paid for, rafting's paid for. Yeah. Fly out, fly back. I had just been mailing all my cash home to my mom, and you get home and upgrade your truck every year. That's what I kept doing. Buying new to me, use trucks.

Yep. Yep. So. That's pretty awesome. That is pretty sweet. Yeah. That taught me a lot, actually, about talking to people. I mean, being.

Sure. I guess customer service or being front facing. Well, you got an engineer braid, and then didn't you say you minored in math? Yeah. So, well, I think. I think I'm one credit short. I think basically if you're in engineering school long enough, you're only like three classes away. So normally you graduate in May, but race teams don't hire until December in the off season. So I was like, it doesn't make any sense for me to graduate in

May. And the course load is like, I think you do two years of full course load at like 18 credits or whatever. So I basically took one credit off each of those and made a fall semester with a smaller graduating class, but I had to fill some time. So I took like the history of math and some stuff like that. You're basically getting, I took all the math classes for my engineering degree anyway. You're just on like the philosophy of math at that point. But I don't know if it's on my degree or not, but I took every math class they had to offer. And that's just kind of how my brain works anyway. Yeah. Well, I just say that because, you know, usually you talk to the engineers and they're introverts and they don't love socializing or talking like you talk. And I, you say in that's like,

you're a well- you can talk you yeah i mean you got i appreciate you thinking i'm smart yeah but bar is not super high here yeah it's right it isn't it really isn't what's funny is the uh what what i've really taken to later in life which has been my path for farming and ranching is like the economics and finance side of business like it's almost small business i like as much are equated farming i like that farming is my best vessel for my small business but that's the side of when I looked at like how can I build a farming or agriculture business that I wasn't the production side that I've got sucked into it was the it was the business side

and the more I followed you know more ranching I don't have much equipment that's kind of written in my business model you know I'm following ranchers out west who are extremely successful now when everybody says you can't be and the thing I kept learning about they all have these similarities and a lot of those similarities are just like really good business practices. And that's kind of the route I went through self-education as I've been moving towards my farm, which is ridgerly landing cattle. Yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about that. You made the decision you were going to, you were given up. You made the decision to retire from NASCAR. Yeah. So then it's kind of like, you kind of like burned the boat. Yep. So you got this,

you've got this ranch. So what were you fully, were you fully up and running when you made the decision to leave and go? Kind of. When I bought that farm in 2018, the barnyards were 30 years abandoned. The fields have been kept up a little bit and it was just pasture ground. And the fences have been kept, perimeter fence been kept up good enough. And the people that had cows there are great friends and people and neighbors of mine. And, you know, I called them one day. I was like, I own this now. They're like, oh my God, okay. And I'm like, you can stay. I said, but it's definitely my goal to have some cows of my own. So if you don't mind, I'd like to kind of like learn beside you. And it started with one cow that I bought and put in the herd. And then it started with me buying some heifers from that herd,

which in reality was actually a really good, really good option, because those cows have been born and raised there and building like that. And they kind of let me build my herd and implement some practice changes that weren't too disruptive to them. Basically, I just started keeping track of some management stuff. I got really into, you know, what is my competitive advantage? Well, competitive advantage of North Carolina is we can grow grass about year-round with good grass management. So I started to keep numbers and keep track of stuff as I was learning to kind of let me like, they were really gracious and they let me learn alongside them. And I would always share those numbers with them. They're cows. I'm keeping track of who, caz, cahs, what, and this and that. So there's probably

some benefit to them, but it would have been easier if I wasn't involved, I'm sure. So I kind of learned along the way, and then I started to get, I had heard about ranching for profit, which is owned by ranch management consultants out of Wheatland, Wyoming. And they offer these seven-day extremely intensive classes, which everybody says, anybody that's got like a university education and then gone to there, is they're like, it's kind of like getting your master's, like, not fully, but you are everything you're going to cover in a year of getting your master's. you're going to cover in seven days in this class.

You're going to get fed with a fire hose, and then you're going to come back a couple times. You can go back for only the cost of like room and board and take it as many times as you want. And I was just waiting for it to line up with my NASCAR schedule, and it did in 2020. It lined up, and I took the class. And then I had some like structure to apply these numbers to

to start to build a business plan. But there's still some things you can't ever know until you start, like some of your cost of productions. And then at some point, you just got to start. And that's kind of the advice I give folks. Like, I'm bad at sometimes about being, you know, paralysis by analysis. And I just needed to burn the boat and jump off the ship. So when I went out on my own, I want to say, so a year or two before I left NASCAR, the family that I farmed alongside with, we had a conversation and we didn't farm alongside each other anymore. And I'm so thankful of them for, you know, being gracious. But they understood it. They didn't have enough cows there to really make it worth their time or effort, and I needed to have more cows to scale.

Yeah. So I went on my own. And luckily, the way that cow herd was grown, I was traveling every week. And I was living at a second location closer to the race shop and the airport. So those cows would see me on Thursday, which was usually my travel day, and then maybe Sunday. And that was it. So that let me grow, use the type of genetics, and grow the type of herd that. was really self-sufficient, which is kind of a competitive advantage in a cow herd, you know,

just keeps your input costs way lower if you're not having to prop these things up. Yeah. There's cows raised for that reason, and that's fine. They just can't, they're not going to make it in my herd. They're going to get sold to somebody else who can. Yeah. So when I jumped in 2000, whenever I left, so 2023 was my last season, I started making my plan about halfway through the year and I'm looking at cattle prices and I'm making my plan to scale.

and this and that, and I get to November, and you look at cattle markets, and we're at historic highs, and I'm like, wow, scaling just got a lot more expensive, and interest rates are at X. And actually, funny enough, I think she's been a guest years. I had heard Mary Joe Irman years ago, 2018, maybe, or 19, and I started then with a dividends paying whole term life insurance policy, and I made that my plan as my operating note to give myself time. But I still wasn't enough in there that I was going grow to a scale where it was going to provide a living that I was going to make myself. And even then, I wanted, in my business model, I wanted cash flow penciled in. Like a cow calf herd is the least, it's a great way to build equity, but it's the least cash flow and thing in the world.

Yeah. So I had built a relationship with now a client and a friend that we were going to grow cattle for them, which is what we do. So we are a cow calf herd. And then we are also custom grazers, meaning that we graze other people's cattle and we get paid on a per head per day basis. And we get paid monthly, which for a young business, cash flow kills. And that's what we needed to make it to keep the wheels turning at the beginning. And then we have a third enterprise, which supplements both of those. Well, I guess we have fourth enterprise, including agritourism. But third cattle enterprise, which supplements both of those herds as well. And that's just a really good mix of like, I literally envision it in my mind as like a transmission. Um, you know, I've got one big gear that when it crosses start on the monopoly board and its payday, it's once a year. And then I've got the custom grazing thing that crosses every 30 days. And each of these are a different size and they go together. They can complement each other well. And I can, um, I can trade things from enterprise to enterprise within the business and I can track it. Um, but I'm not necessarily writing checks back and forth. And then the third enterprise, we, we would call it backgrounding, which, um, by the time this episode comes, out, Cole Sunny's episode will be out, how him and Brian background is a little bit different than what we do in the east, but we basically get groups of cattle that are unweaned, unvaccinated, coming from small herds, and we take the risk and we straighten them out, meaning castrating, vaccinating, and weaning, minimum of 45 days, and then that gives us a lot of flexibility and options

from there to then resell as a straightened out or backgrounded calf into a premium market, or it gives me the option to sell to my custom grazer because we're actually always needing more inventory, which is cool. And that lets me put eyes on that inventory first, make sure it's not a problem cow, not a fence jumper, not a one-nutted wonder. It's something that can go in my herd and be a part of my program. So that's kind of how the business evolved. That's where we're at now. Or I guess we've got some chickens too and agritourism as well. But all those things complement each other. And I'm very cautious about ever adding more overheads. I try to keep, I'm very adamant.

There's three things to help profitability. It's increase your gross margin per unit. It's turnover and it's keep your overheads low. And we just work on all three of those things. And yeah, that's how we're making a go of it now. We just made it through year one. I would say of like really being a business. We have an awesome accounting team.

You know, I assemble the team of people. Ranch Wright LLC out of Wyoming, John Haskell. he's the team we use and they're business coaches they're also managerial accountants and they help me keep numbers and really make good business decisions and I feel like I'm just going to give it 120% effort it's what I want to do at this moment and who knows we might get 10 years into it and I want to sail a boat across the world I don't know what else you're doing for now it's something else here now something new from exclusively on paramount plus it's the series Stephen King calls scary as hell.

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The pivotal moment in my adulthood. Like that gave you the tools necessary to start this first-gen farm and just... And the network. And the network. You were immediately tied in with... Like, you guys probably know... I mean, you're in a big agriculture community, but agriculture can be a lonely place, especially if you're the kid doing weird stuff.

Like, the amount of times that people I meet gentlemen that really mean well and tell me how I should be doing it, and then tell me how it's just there's no money in it. And I'm like, well, that's a contradictory statement. So when I'm doing it the opposite, and I look like the weirdo down the road, it's like, well, it gets pretty empty. So, I mean, I think mental health and all that's a huge thing in farming. And through ranching for profit and the Alumni Association, which is a Facebook group, I mean, any question I have, I can ask somebody. And raising cattle is raising cattle. I don't care where you are in the world. It's the principles are the same. It's just the practices are different.

Heck, one of the guys in my group is a guy from Iowa. I haven't reached out to him in a while, but he makes his whole, at the time, ranching for profit, they had a breeding herd of some pretty fancy sheep. But then I think the only time he runs cows is all he does is lease stocks and lease cattle from sailbarns. So he leases stocks, he doesn't own anything. He leases corn stocks, he puts up the fence, and then he goes to the sale barn where he's got a good relationship with the owner and that that sale barn owner sets them up with cows that are used to some corn corn feed so they don't get acidosis and that's his that's his stick and he makes a good I thought he probably does it 100 I don't know how long he does it for many days but that's his thing and it's

just being around all those types of people who think about it differently and you know can think can help you through situations like that or that's been game changer for me because I don't know where else you go for that stuff right I let I have a very good relationship with our extension agency. And I'm in some programs with NC State and University of Tennessee, but like government and like state, you know, they're always 10 years behind on information. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. What's the, uh, there's like the human, human bell curve, human adoption curve. There's innovators, early adopters. I'm definitely on that line somewhere. And I like to associate with those folks for sure. Yeah. They don't want to be, you don't want to be the last person

to get on the train. No. Well, because then the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, trains had to do a different station. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's the thing. They leave you behind. I definitely handled a little bit too. Like when I was in NASCAR and had that income source, I was more apt to try some crazier

things that could fail. Like I did supplement, use my salary from that job to supplement some things. I'd be remiss to say that my salary from that job bought the land. But one thing that's always going to go against me, and I can say it on this podcast and say it till I'm blue in the face, nobody's ever going to believe. me. There's always going to be a faction of people who look at me and say, oh, that kid's in NASCAR crew chief. That's just some gentleman farm over there. I promise you that's not the case. You don't have to believe me. But starting this year, the farm pays for itself or the farm profitability

is what grows the farm, which is cool. I'm not saying we won't take outside money or, you know, business steps, but there's no crew chief salary that pays for that farm. Those cows do. Yeah, well, I think that's a good, I think that's a good jumping off point to. to you found another kind of income stream that is not disruptive to your, to your business plan. How did you, yeah, talk about that fourth gear. Talk about that fourth pillar of how you make your farm profitable. So one of my best friend's wives, she's a good friend of ours too, she's a photographer, very talented family photographer.

And she just happens, my farm is kind of, halfway between Metro Charlotte and where they're at. So she started asking me, our farm's very, very pretty. We've got creeks and big oak trees and tall grass, which is good for photography. And she asked if she could meet some clients there and take pictures. Like, yeah, no problem. Well, then outside of her, we would start to get requests. And my mom, being raised on the apple orchard in New Jersey and having that many people come through. And she just always hammered like the liability thing in my mind. And okay, now this is my piece of dirt and I could lose it all. So I was like, I knew the agritourism part could definitely be a very viable revenue source.

And it probably had to be with land prices next to being that close to Charlotte. Like, that's the realism part is you're going to have to get, you're going to have to work in markets that aren't just the commodity markets. Or you're going to have to get some type of premium. So I was searching for, I knew I didn't want to just have to build a whole website for that and do payment handling and then get insurance. policies and do waivers and like that sounds like a lot of work for i don't know how much return and um i've always been a big podcast listener and i heard nick de castro of land trust on working cow's podcast which is clay connery's podcast and i'm like whoa that is like um that is like a turnkey monetization tool of anything i want to monetize on my land i'm like that this almost seems too good to be

true. So I went to landtrust.com and sure enough, like, there's a landowners page and that is what it, that is what it is what it is. Like they handle all the financial transactions. They build you a listing. So if you didn't have your own website, you have it all through them. They have a liability policy. The people that come have to sign up through them. So they're signing up to hold the landowners non-liable. I'm like, this is, this is awesome. So we signed up our landowners. We signed up our just for photography and we actually do farm tours. I actually guide people through. Now, the platform is, it was started and is still primarily a hunting and fishing platform.

But we are growing into what is called farm experiences. So then kind of full circle without having this massive herd of cows. And it's debatable on how many cows provide a full-time living for somebody. but there's some pretty good numbers. And I wasn't to the point where I was busy eight hours a day doing couch chores. Right. And I did spend a lot of time in my office working on my business, not in my business. Yeah.

And like those are the skills I have. And I just cold called the CEO, Nick, or maybe LinkedIn messaged him. I think of LinkedIn. And I've never been scared to talk to anybody. And I said, given my background, which probably seems so darn weird. Like what qualifications does an X NASCAR creature? chief have to work at a recreation access network company, but he's like, do you mind trying out some projects on contract labor basis? And I was like, no, let's try it. And they have a really cool way they work.

And the head office is in Bozeman, Montana. That's where the company was founded. But we have remote guys all over the world, actually. We have guys in Europe that are on our engineering team. And they were like, well, just get in with the team and work for us for a cycle or two and see if it fits what your family needs and we'll see if it fits us. And what I've found is that the, the farms that adopt this stuff, farms and ranches that adopt this stuff most readily, those people a lot of times think a lot like me, very progressive thinkers. So it's kind of a natural fit. And then they came back and they're like, you want a full-time job with us? We're going to make you the landowner marketing and partnerships manager. And I'm like,

the landowner part sounds great. I don't know anything about marketing and partnerships, but sure. That's why I'm here with you guys. I mean halfway. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's on our farm. We don't, because we're not, we don't offer hunting and fishing. We have to really do a lot of that marketing ourselves to push that. But heck, this Saturday, I've got a photography booking session booked for 75 bucks an hour that I don't even partake in. The photographer meets her client there. On this case, the client booked it and they both book in and they go do their thing and the money hits my accounts. Yeah.

So it's actually like Airbnb for just landowners to host experiences on your land. That is exactly what it is. And you guys take care of all the liability and insurance and all that. And it's all hosted on that, right? Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty, I mean, we talk about, you know, ways you can diversify your farm on here all the time. And like, you know, we were talking to you last night and just you saying what you're

saying, it's just like, it really gets your wheels turning. You know, last night after after dinner, dad was like, well, I could tell you. your wheels were turning a little bit after we left because I was like, yeah, I mean, farm tours, talk about horses, you know, talk about photographer. I mean, there's so many things that you can do. So talk a little bit about some examples of what people are doing on their land. It's got to say, like hunting and fishing is the bread and butter. That's where it started. And that is becoming, sportsmen are now knowing to check our website before they go out. So it's almost marketing it itself.

And those have a little bit of advantages too because you can post game cams and you can post pictures and people can really keep up with that. But we have people using it for everything. I do photography and farm tours. We have a botanical garden in Georgia. I don't know what that is, but people can go there.

We have some archaeological hikes. We have a lot of people that list just general recreation in the summer. During COVID especially, our founder, Nick, I know that he's got three little girls and there's a lot of people that are just looking for wide open spaces, let their kids go run around in. We leave every decision up to the landowner. Pricing, what you'd like to offer.

Now, we're going to advise you. There's no minimum acreage, but if you're trying to do an Elkhunt on four acres, we're probably going to say that's not going to fly. Like, it's not going to work. We don't want to enter into that partnership type of gig. So the options are endless, but you got to know that you're going to be. to have to help market that if it's something really out of the box. Yeah. But if it is something really out of the box, just use us as the facilitation tool for the

signing up, the screening of the people, the liability insurance, property damage insurance, and then handling all the financials. And then you handle the marketing. And we'll market alongside you. We love to collaborate on Instagram and all the social media. That makes it so much easier on us than having to track down photos of what you got. Like, you guys do something like tag collaborate. We'll just keep pushing that.

And that's what we do with a lot of our properties. Gator hunting. A lot of people offer lodging in addition to. So they treat it just like an Airbnb. They use it just like Airbnb. Or you could just go rent the cabin or cabin in the fishing pond or rent the fishing pond or rent the cabin. Rent a spot to throw a tent.

Absolutely. Tents. Grain bin sites are great for, I think harvest hosts knows this, right? Grain bin sites are great for quick and easy RV hookups. Sure. Maybe if you don't have your drive. dryer on. Yeah. But there's definitely a faction of people who would rather pull in and talk to y'all

and buy a half a quarter beef or a cow or pork and be around real people with their RV as they're going across the country than they would at a COA. Oh, that's, yeah, that's true. I mean, and what we've noticed is, this is like a personal thing for me, but what I've noticed is like a lot of the farmers and ranchers, you act, we all, we all act like people and that's why we're in farming and ranch. But we do like people. And we want to share our stories. And we certainly like people that appreciate what we do. And that's a lot of times people that pull in. And those friendships become lifelong, which has been really neat. But yeah, the options are endless. There's a different marketing lift on what you, if you have 500 inch elk running around or 200 inch white tail or, or you're an hour from Charlotte

and you have a big bass pond where somebody can picnic and take their families, those are pretty easy. No, no brainer. Yeah. Because, because hunters and fishermen are getting on there and looking. Seeking that. Our goal is definitely to be in five years synonymous with before anybody goes outside anywhere. They check our website and our maps and they look

and that's an option for them. You can go to a city park, you can go to state park, but if you want exclusive rights to a piece of property and access for just you and your party, then check us and the pricing is all over the board because we let the landowners decide. It's their time,

it's their piece of ground, and it's whatever. their time's worth. So we've got cow elk hunts in Nebraska for 25 bucks. That's a lot of meat for 25 bucks plus your tag, I guess. Yeah. And that's that landowner doesn't, he's not trying to get rich off of it. He's using land trust as the tool to keep the elk pressure off of his pivots and keep the elk pushed up in the hills out of his crops. That's how he's using that tool. That's pretty smart. And then we've got guys that have trophy class elk or have access, private land access to big pieces of public ground that people want. Oh, sure. You know, You can go pop your camper or your tent on his piece of private ground, and you've hopped

and skipped the 20-mile hike that the guys on public ground have to access. Yeah. So people always ask me, like, who's the most successful or how do I make the most money? And it's all very, it depends. It's about, well, for whatever you're interested in, it's accessibility. Well, and it's value. I mean, people that bring the most value make the most money. Exactly.

I mean, if you want to make more money, make your land or the experience. it's more valuable. Gosh, we could put a hook up up at the bin, and then people pay for that, and then I could, I could give them free counseling. Or I could give them $100. Right here, right here in the bar. I can tell them everything that they're doing wrong. Yep.

And what I would do. You could sit them down at the bar and just let them know. If the counseling doesn't work, you just turn them towards the bar and they figured out over the bottle. There's a surcharge for that. Yeah, there you go. It's the upcharge. Yeah, no, that's really cool.

And when we were talking about it last night just now, I mean, it gets your wheel. turn a man because it's just like what over the what are the what are the things that you said there's like four things there's no it's not based off commodities it's not it's a revenue stream it's a viable revenue stream for a production ag operation that's not based off markets sorry markets commodity prices politics or bullshit yeah yeah you have full control of the effort you want to put into that revenue stream and the results are pretty linear what's the how does the How does the money side of it work through there? It's purely a revenue share.

So there's no, there's no fee to sign up. There's no contract to sign, like legal binding contract that we're locked in. You could try this for one experience. We put a lot of work in to get to that experience. So we build out the website, build your listing. You spend a lot of time on the phone with our customer service guys getting that done. And then when you get your first, when you get any bookings, it's a revenue share of that booking. 80-20. You guys as the landowners get 80, we get 20%. That pays us back for the time we have invested

in you and the insurance policies we carry. And that's it. That's purely all this. And you see that right on your interface as a landowner. You see the full amount of the booking and you see your take. Yeah. And so when people are trying, like people, just say around here, the right year, pheasant hunting is great around here. So you got a piece of land and you want to offer it for people to pheasant hunting, but you don't know what you should be charging. Is that something that you guys can help with? Like if I say I'm going to charge X, you can say you're not charging enough or you're charging a little too high or? Yeah. We, again, we let you make all the decisions, but we are certainly there to advise you. Yeah. So we have, we have over 1.5 million acres in our network

now. We have over 700 listings and we're in 42 states. So we have a pretty good picture on the hunting stuff especially of what sells well or what your value is so we can certainly set you set you up with the starting spot and then i like to tell people i believe in free markets i think the best way to um curb your time is like if you're getting too many bookings maybe your price is too low you know maybe you should raise your price or if you're not getting enough maybe you should lower your price use that as the barometer for whatever and the nice thing is too you can block out sections of time where you don't want to receive any booking. So like, middle of harvest, you're just like, I don't want to deal with it. Block it out. But we leave that

all up to you and then we can help you out with that 100%. Do you see people that start, uh, that start to do it and then they, they kind of realize, yeah, this works. And then they're calling you and like, okay, how can I make this? Like, how can I make this go more? Yeah. We see that a lot. Um, you know, it's funny. I don't know. I grew up as a sportsman and a farmer, but I don't know that that's synonymous for everybody. Yeah. I know, so there's some farmers that just aren't sportsmen, so they don't see that value. So we'll get them to dip their toe in, and there's probably some skepticism of like,

who's going to come pay to shoot these pheasants? They're in the ditch. They're in the ditches all the time, you know, South Dakota, let's say. And you're like, the upland guys will come to pay to hunt these pheasants. Like, there's a lot of people in the hunting space that take pride in this DIY model, and they just want access. So we've seen people, let's say, make 10 grand the first year. Let's just throw these out as examples.

And they're just very straight row croppers in South Dakota. And they're like, well, 10 grand's not anything to shake a stick at. Yeah. That buys a lot of Christmas presents or buys like, I don't know, a tenth of a new pickup nowadays. Except for my poor marketing decision. And they'll call us back and be like, man, that was great. Exactly what you said. How can we make this better?

The wheels are turning. Yeah. This one instance, we looked around, holy cow, like, where's the closest lodging for people? And they're like, oh, it's like three hours. Like, hey, let's just, let's make it so people can stay. Just access for a flat spot for a tent, dry camping with an RV, just a level spot. Or if you can want to put in a hookup for RVs, just anything where people have the option to convoy out there and stay more days. Now you can connect the days and they can get more hours of hunting in.

that farm three extra bookings next year. Like, okay, now people are, they're not driving back and forth two hours for their pheasant hunts and their dogs are in the kennels, and now you can get done hunting, you can kick off your boots and light a campfire, and the dogs can run around and stretch, and everybody's happy.

Call us back to next year. These guys aren't hunters, and they're like, this is great. What do we do next? Here's an idea. My father-in-law is a real cropper. I used to help a lot of real croppers before I traveled. I'm like, I know you guys love staring at your yield monitors.

I would too. I know everybody's got that piece of ground that droughts out on top of the hill or or drowns out on the bottom or it just doesn't. And you know like yeah, you need to harvest it off probably. It's going to be putting the thing or you can drive around it. And that's straight pheasant habitat in this case for the winter when they do get snow that blows in there. I know a lot of people, you know, bush hog their ditch banks or even bail their ditches or whatever. Now they might need the hay. But let's let's save you, money on the farming side. Farm a little dirty. Do it in the back where the neighbors don't see it if you're embarrassed about that. But farm a little dirty, create some habitat. Because now you have

this thing that's earning you a lot of money. And we've seen that particular farmer. Like now, I don't know if he's got a book about pheasant habitat, but there's a lot of pheasants there now. And that's where we send people because he's putting in the work. And it is, it is just increasing. Like upland birds especially, they say, you know, create the habitat and they will come. You can't really put pen raised birds out. It doesn't, they don't make it. But if you create the habitat, they'll come. And that, that is an instance where we've seen that just take off. The other, the other one that was cool was the one I was telling you guys about the, uh, the rancher out in Wyoming. I'm sorry, rancher out in Montana that him and his,

um, I believe it's his granddaughter-in-law, if not his daughter-in-law, that like, they kind of gave her the agritourism wing. And then I think she put the bug in his ear of like, we need a place for people to stay. And he's like, oh, we got this, I think they're big range country. He's like, we got this old trapper shack up in the hill or calving barn or something. He's like, we'll drag it down here and get it built out as a cabin. And they did that and now people can stay. And now like, that's their thing. Like, that's what they connect on is these two people, I don't think it was a contentious relationship, but they have this thing they bonded over, which is like the ag tourism side of their business and the wheels are

turning all the time. You can tell he's excited. The production ag sides passed off to the boys and he's excited to have something to think about. And then he's got his, he's got fresh people to tell his stories to you, whatever. Exactly. Exactly. That was the Mr. Fred Subi in North Dakota that I interviewed. They've got a little house and the Subi Ranch in North Dakota. I forget exactly where it's at, but on their land, they have like the deepest reservoir within a good, good radius of all that pothole prairie region. So it freezes up last, so he's got good duck hunting. And he told me how much, he told me, but his wife really told me how much they love and look forward to those duck hunters coming out. Because at night, he gets over there in the cabin,

and every week where he lives the same stories from his glory days when he was a young whippersnapper. See, Sawyer? They're not alone that I tell my story. That's right. I've just heard them a hundred times. My dad's no difference. He just needs an audience to speak to it.

Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, it definitely got our wheels turning, and I think anybody listening that has an operation, owns land. I mean, it gets your wheels turning for sure. And I think it's pretty awesome what you guys are doing. I encourage anybody to look into it because we're going to definitely look into it. I mean, there's some things in my mind that I instantly go to, farm tours, you know, pheasants. Like, we already have pheasants, but we don't do no work to make sure that they're there all the time and increase the population by any means. If you could start with like,

pheasants to get some reviews on your listing. Yeah. Because it's like Airbnb. So we review both, Airbnb and Uber. We review both ways when you leave. The guests that come have to sign up through our website. And when they sign up, they're ID verified and we have the credit card on file. We handle all that.

And when they leave, they're asked to review their experience and you're asked to review them as a guest and you get a ranking. We do that. So if there's any issues, we can work it out. We're a real company run by real people. we have a customer support team. So what we tell everybody is, man, if you even have just a fishing pond to get people there, get you your first review, or pheasants, or turkeys is actually a big one for a lot of guys are like,

I'm not giving up my deer hunting. I'm like, that's fine. You got turkeys? Yeah, who would want to hunt those? That's during planting season. Our average turkey booking is like $800 a day. There's a lot of people that I want to hunt those. Sorry, not a day, a booking.

Like a lot of guys want to come two, three days at a time. and the average value of that booking is like seven, 800 bucks. And that's how people dip their toe in the water. And do that, get a review on your property, then it just snowballs from there. And then you got people talking about your property, and it's just driving traffic as much as you want. Yeah. No, that's sweet. And for us, like, you know, if we ever did like farm tours, you know, you were talking about, you know, hunting and hunters and fishermen come to the site pretty. frequently now. But if you are going to do something that's little not traditional to that,

you'd have to do some marketing of your own probably, right, to get people to come. Yeah. And honestly, that's part of my job. And at any time in this whole relationship, or even if you're just a stranger, we have, you can get a hold of us three ways. So simple. You can pick up the phone and call and you're going to talk to Colin, who's in North Dakota. You're going to talk to Josh in Colorado. And they're real people. and they're going to talk to you about any question you have. They can't answer that question. Like, if you're a production ad guy and they've got questions you can't answer,

they're going to call me, and I'm going to call you back. If you don't want to talk to people, you can go on our website, landtrust.com, and we have a chat bot. Same thing. You're going to type a message in there, and Colin or Josh are going to get, just like support. Or we have, we even have a texting service now. So you're just going to talk to real people,

and that's what I encourage anybody. if you're curious at all, just give us a call. If you don't want to give us a call when you sit down and watch TV one night, flip open your laptop and just ask us any questions you have. And if we can't answer them, because it's truly like a mutually beneficial relationship and it's a partnership and we don't make money unless you make money, we're not going to set ourselves up for failure.

We're not going to do a bunch of work to know that you'll never get a booking. Right. We're going to be real honest with you to say, hey man, your farm tour in Iowa sounds freaking great, but what can we do to get some eyeballs on it? Exactly. So I don't think it's out of the realm of questions at all, especially on the farm and ranch tour, for them to pass you to me and be like, you know, Ag, how are we going to connect with people to get you your first booking? And then you and I can sit down and talk about all the

crazy ideas I've got. Yeah. Maybe it's some TikTok song and dance. I don't know. Yeah. We'll get people out here. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's really. cool. So you got your four gears there on your operation of how it's all going. What what, where do you want your operation to go? What are, what's your goal with it? Do you? So I like to be a scholar of agriculture as much as I like to be a producer in that I've looked at where we've come from. I've tried to learn where we came from and how we got here. Just so I can make my own, same thing we talked about earlier, make sure I'm not. Make sure I'm not taking somebody else's word for it because I'm a skeptic of everything. And I look at where

the future is going and I look at input cost and land prices and how investors view land right now and what Bitcoin's doing and that's a whole other subject and how the public perceives land. And I think the, I believe the future for young ag operators like me is honestly going to be a sharing economy of I like cows. I like grazing cows. I have nothing against real cropping. I just don't know that as a first generation guy that I want to enter into the capital, how much capital it takes to do that. But I think I could complement a real cropping operation really well with my livestock operation in that I could graze, be 100% responsible for my animals and fencing in that on your acreage in your, I guess, fallow season or graze them on stocks.

or, and I think that's the real opportunity for the different generations of farmers to work together and for young farmers to expand without having to come up with wads of capital. Yeah, yeah. Because it's not sustainable. Wads of capital that don't have on one enterprise operations, they don't have the utility value in the land anymore. If there's anything I, every ag guru, right, every one of them I have a, there's things I've tried to from them and things I don't agree with. But one of the things I really agree with with Joel Salatin is the stacking of enterprises on the same acreage. And that's really, when I go speak about land trust,

that's what I tell people. I'm adding another revenue stream on the same piece of ground. So now my cows help pay for that acre. My agritourism helps pay for that acreage. Actually, we talked about it briefly at dinner last night. We do some kind of, we do some pasture poultry on our acreage now, but I say that and this is like the sharing economy thing. I didn't I guess I'm responsible because I'm the farm owner. But I have a young gentleman that works for me that I didn't have enough work for. My custom grazers claimed to me and they wanted to custom graze some pastured poultry. And I was like, man, I hate to strap myself to this farm every single day to chore.

But the neighbor boy that works for me that I think the world of, I want, I want something for him to do at my house so I can keep him working or I'm going to lose him. So he ran 800 pastured broiler chickens across our ground. last year and they want to do 2000 next year. And he thinks it's so cool that when he goes back into school in his FFA class, he can just point to Charlotte and be like, you can go to the big farmer's market and buy everything I grew. He worked 15 minutes a day. Actually, that little joker, he got a tally mark on the board for 30 minutes increments he worked and he got it down to 12 minutes a day and I'd pay him for 30. That's awesome. Do you want to see innovation? Like let people like that go. Yeah. But yeah. So I think that's where our farms headed. I want to create opportunity for

other producers on my own acreage. I own some ground, which is like my home base. I want to keep leasing land for, I like to have a good balance of lease land and own land. But just stay profitable, number one. Stay, have enough liquidity to jump on opportunities when they arise. Maybe that is buy more ground someday. I don't know. Right. But really, my goal within my own community is to get people working back together. Because I look at all these farmers that I used to help and that I really love and care for because they help me get my spot in my community. And they got kids coming out of college and there's only so much ground.

It's like, what are we going to do? So if the kid coming out of college opens a farmer grade, it's a great example. Or they like cows and dad real crops and he figures out how they can keep, I don't know, keep cows in the swales during the harvest season and then they're on the crops and they're just helping recycle the nutrients. The big one I see, and I fully understand that I don't know the number as well, but like using state averages, especially in states where the growing season short cover crops are, could be a great thing for your soil, but your growing season isn't long enough. And then there's a termination cost. And unless they're a subsidized thing,

they really might not pencil in a traditional sense. So then you can either just go get, try to find grant money to do the right thing, but it's still not. it's not helping them the way it could. Right. Or what about if you're like, I need to make this cover crop pencil. I'm going to have the expense of putting it in. But now I have like a crop that is actually a lot of cow days per acre

or stock days per acre that I can lease to somebody like me. And I'm like, dang, that's two months of forage for me that I take from standing whatever it is. I mean, run it through a cow. And yeah, it's not drag lined in. But, I mean, that's fertilizer, pretty darn quick. And you just work out, you work out a real business deal on a real contract and you talk about all the things up front, you know, I would encourage people to have a little sacrifice

area that if it gets rainy, he might keep the cows up in the corner and put a bail out and only wreck two acres of the field. But to really try those relationships out, because I think that's where the big opportunity in agriculture is going to be. Well, that's a really great perspective because, you know, we have people come on here all the time and we always talk about all the problems that we have. Nobody's got a fucking solution. You know, everybody talks about all the problems in the future of ag, but nobody brings up the solutions. And so I think that I think you're really on to something there. You know, I think we got to get back to being more community driven and really help each other out. And I mean, it's got to work for both people, but sometimes I feel like people just

stay in their own bubble. Yep. And they don't want to deviate from what has, what they've been taught or what it's always been. And they don't want to, they don't like change. People don't like change, unfortunately. I have a firm belief. I know I read it in a book originally, but then it's just been in my mind for years of like,

everything in this world is a people problem. Like, everything's a people problem. And it's those who can communicate the best and just communicate with people. Like, you might be a farmer. who you're the only employee and you're the only guy driving tractors are moving cows, but you still have a team of people to be successful. You probably have a banker, maybe a lawyer, you probably have a spouse or a family member. You have somebody you market your product too.

Yeah, that is equally as important working on those relationships as is my tractor the newest on the block or are my cows the biggest genetics there is, right? Like there's a lot more money to be made in the people and the relationship side of things. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, we talk about it all the time, but like this podcast, you know, it's not the money that we've made from the podcast or anything like that. The most valuable thing about doing this is the people. Yeah. Us talking to people like you and hearing your ideas and hearing what you bring to the table and different experience farming in a different area in the country.

Like, that's a whole, you know, some of the shaker. you strapped on us we've never even heard of you know and like that's that's that's it's people people is the thing said that about what are my goals and i have been thinking about this i feel like balance is really important in life and it's not my we turn the crank pretty hard this year i mean part of that's because i get sometimes a chip on my shoulder but i started to think towards the end of the year uh i i wasn't really getting burnt out but i'm like man the chore the chore is even on our which is we graze cattle. We don't, if we don't feed a lot of hay, we have enough hay put aside for basically like, we get, we actually get a winter in North Carolina, but we stockpile

grass and regraze. And you're like, man, wouldn't it be nice to take the wife like to the Caribbean? And we're young. Like, I've got a part-time employee who's 15 years old. I trust Lane to do anything in this world. But if something really went haywire, I'm going to be calling neighbors up, like, can you help get this, you know? So I say that to say I've always been like, this goes with the weather thing we were talking about. Man, it'd be awesome to have a network of producers within a truck's ride distance for cattle, which is probably 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, depending on how hot it is, areas in different climate zones to be able to move the whole herd to.

Like, my non-growing season in North Carolina is July and August and September. We burn up. We got to grow like summer annuals to keep grazing. This year I tried to stockpile cool season perennials, my fescuses, and my orchard grasses, and I had grass, but the cows are eating it, you just tell it was empty of nutrients. But wouldn't it be cool if I'd just ship my cattle away for two months? Let my land rest, let me and the wife rest. Maybe we work on the books, go on vacation, pay somebody, and it'd have to be economically

feasible, but pay somebody, a young producer that's got land up in the Virginia mountains that's on a different elevation, and he's got two months of grazing available. that might be enough money for him and his wife to start farming. And shipping back to us, I'm revitalized, the farms revitalize, we've got unbusy enough to work on the honeydew list or whatever that never gets done. I don't know. I just think there can be a seasonality to farming and ranching as well. That's a conversation that doesn't get talked about enough either.

I think farmers pride themselves on always having shit to do, never taking a day off. I don't care about my mental health. I don't care how I'm feeling. Just do the shit and get it done. But I think that conversation needs to be had more too. Got to have a life too. I think you're no good to anybody if you don't take care of yourself first. And that's not like a selfish statement.

It's just that there's been times in my life. I've tried to be everything to everybody. And you don't have any time left for yourself and you feel your life out of balance. And honestly, that was a big reason for me to get out of now. car was that rightfully so it's professional sport and it takes so much your time i would spend my whole lunch break for one hour working out which i like to do um and then i'd spend hours in the evening working on farm books and i would give my wife two hours like my time was so allotted out like holistically i'm like nowadays i do some body weight workout stuff but i also do some chores

manually on purpose to get my sweat in. And when I'm done, I'm at the house with my wife. And instead of putting like 20,000 miles on my truck year, holistically my life is, I'm more satisfied. I have more time to be included in the community again and to think about things. And I like, I almost got unbusy to free my mind. And it's become a lot better version of myself through that. Yeah. Which I know, I, I, I know, that it's not hiding, people go, I think when people are insecure or unsure about things, they hide behind what they know. So if you just know hard work your whole life, you just put your head down and work harder. We're just not in a time anymore where hard work necessarily directly relates to profitability or outcomes. Yep. That's 100% right. Like the best example I have

of this because I grew up in yearling cattle is like you can buy 10 truckloads of number number one, 500 pound black Angus, number one top grade, Eastern Montana steers. And you can put three pounds a gain on those suckers all summer and grow the best possible product or the most bushels of corn or your cows can milk the most. And when it comes time to market, the market can shift on you. You've done it all for free. Yep. You know, and that's just a good example of it takes more than just the production side

and you just got to have the wheels turning about all this. Yep. And that's where the marketing side comes in. and the extra revenue streams your place can provide and having a little resilience in your business. Yeah, I really like your idea about just working together again. I think that needs to be talked about more. And I do think that idea of working together again

could also just be, hey, I need to take two weeks and can you just help me out and I'll pay you, you know? It's funny you said that when I was in Ranchin for Profit, they have a really good discussion, like a full-day discussion on mental health, and people management and stuff. And I always had this idea because most people in ag like ag. And you like to kind of see ag in other parts of the world.

And me and the wife, when we do summer vacations, we generally go to another part of the U.S. with ag in it because that's the people we like to associate with. We did some places in California. We did a big tour through Montana. I always wondered about just like a straight farm swap for two weeks. Like, I want to come around a pig farm and you come around my cow farm. Like I don't know if that's a good premise.

a TV show right there. That easy and simple. Maybe you have to leave a hired man at both places so the world doesn't actually get a little bit of a backstop. That is a hell of a TV. That would be a hell of a TV show. Seriously, it would.

Wife swap. Let's do farms. That would be fucking good, man. Because you know there'd be problems. There would be some drama for sure. We just got to find a TV station that'll carry a rider. So when somebody blows something up

or wrecks something chorn. We'll just call Taylor Sheridan and say, hey, I know you've never. done reality TV, but here you go. Yeah, he'd be a good one to do it. Man, I don't know. I, I've made so many friends throughout the U.S. now through Ag that I talk to every single week. In fact, here's a cool story, and he needs to be a guest on your podcast. There's this crazy dude named Jackson Allen. He's got a YouTube channel, Wild Wild West. He's a bull hauler, a cattle hauler out of Lewiston, Montana. He's also, his family owns a ranch. He was the auctioneer at

the billing livestock for years. He's in a band. And in NASCAR, and running the Xfinity days, we only had one primary hauler driver, but now that they keep track of logbooks, anything over 11 hours, we need a backup driver. So we'd always use contract guys. And I'm like, I met Jackson, through YouTube, actually. My wife and I stayed with him, his whole family for a night on our honeymoon, on his ranch. And we just clicked it off like this, because he sees the world, hauling cows everywhere. He's out there and I'll fall run right now trucking somewhere. And I called them up and I'm like,

hey man, this is a wild idea. But what about through the summer, since you're not so busy hauling cows, why don't you come be my backup hauler driver and document this on YouTube? Good for your business. We get the value add. We're going to fly you in and then you're going to drive.

And you're a hard worker, you're a ranch kid, like never been around a race car, but he restores all these sweet cab over semi-trucks. He's like, let's do it. So that's what he did on that final, my final season was Jacks came and hauled. And he has the same thing. He's somebody I talk to weekly because I can call him and be like, what are the cattle markets like out there? He's like, well, I just haul the load from Western Montana all the way to Nebraska.

And this is what they said in Eastern Nebraska. This is what they said in Western Montana. This is what we do out here. It's just cool, man. It's just learning. Yeah. It's just learning and living. Like, I think you stop.

I think people get old and they stop learning. So, yep. Yeah, I think there's a lot of people that, uh, they just, they're just going through the motions. You, you just see the people, you know, you just tell. They don't, they don't have the passion. They don't have the drive and they're going through the motions of life. And I don't know, I feel the most alive when I'm constantly learning

or learning something new or doing something trying or getting through it and, uh, having a passion. I mean, you got to have it. Yeah. I mean, you hit the nail on the head and I'm, I'm not pointing fingers of people. burnout. I was burnout in NASCAR. I'm a firm believer that the point of life is living. So get started. Yeah. Like my poor wife, she's a trooper man, because we don't move slow. And she knows that she hooked on my wagon, and we're going to see a lot of life. You said it last night. I'm 36.

And I've lived a lot of life, which is cool. But that's just kind of how I am. So let's, like I like learning. I like doing new things. I, in a sick way, I kind of like a sleepless night now and then. because when I was too, when things are too comfy, you know a wreck's coming. And I like to be kept on my toes a little bit. And about now, I've got it. When I first went out farming, it was way too many sleep this night. She, you know, I'd be in my cup of coffee when she'd get up in the morning. Like, what time did you get up?

One. Why? I don't know. Brain was running hard. Yep. Now I've got her back down to like maybe once every two weeks. But yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Something that biggest observation that I've noticed with you and we've talked about it so much is there's, you know, you told a lot of stories on the show, but you are not afraid to ask anybody, anything. And that is something that I've learned, as I've kind of gone down the road of Farmer grade, you know, cold calling people and just asking. That people are so,

they are crippled by fear of just asking people. But your story, and there's a lot of other people's stories, if you just are not afraid to ask, more than likely, you're going to get an opportunity. Yeah. And, I mean, when you went out to the dude ranch, and when you, to get on that, get a change in your career, a NASCAR, yes, yes, yes.

They can't steal your birthday. They can't take your last name. Your mom's still probably going to love you. And there's bankers out there that are going to keep shoving money your way at high interest rates. So just give it a shot. Now, I'm not saying be reckless. I'm actually pretty risk adverse.

Yeah. But take care of your, family, but put enough excitement in your life, you've got a reason to wake up every morning, and I feel like. Yeah. And you have a, get a land trust listing and bring a bunch of strangers over. Yeah. You want to get reinvigorated? Explain what you do over and over again. And it's funny because I think those strangers might push you to do something different because they're going to ask why a hundred times. Yeah. And if you're like, you know, I don't know why we do that because we've always done it. You might reevaluate, hey, do we need to be doing that anymore? Like, I don't know. I just think

that's a cool way to approach life. Yeah, I do too. I think that's a great. That is great. I got two bigger questions to ask here at the end, and then we'll end in this. But who do you think has had the biggest impact on your life or the direction of your life if you had to look back? I mean, I know, I know you know a lot of people, but. Yeah. Man, that's a tough question. I'm so thankful for having a great family. man my grandpaws, even my grandfathers that are my wife's grandfathers. Yeah. Just good, solid family in my life has been everything for me.

Yeah. And I love to say I've had so many good mentors in my life. I'm a person that actually really likes mentors and I work harder. Like I always want somebody to look up to so I work to impress them. That's when I do my best. when I just feel like, like, who am I working for, I get lost. But yeah, I'd have to say my dad, my grandpa's, my mom, my grandma's. Like, just even my little brother, who's my best friend, like, you need some accountability

in your life and you need some people that not necessarily keep you on the straight and narrow, but in the back of your mind you don't want to disappoint. So I think that's been so valuable in my life of always, you know, knowing I had the support to fail. I mean, I had to have a really hard conversation. with my family to say, I'm stepping away from this. Nobody's going to understand this. None of your friends are going to understand this. You're not going to understand this, but this is something I have to do. And I did another podcast, and I sent it to my family. And a lot of people call me back,

and they're like, oh, no, now we get why you're doing what you're doing. Like, that's awesome. Yeah. So that's probably, probably my family. But there's a laundry list of good men. I like, I need to think along the way. Yeah. But I think that's a critical thing is like when you find somebody in your life that wants to take the time to teach you. Maybe it's an next door neighbor farmer. They're going to forget more than you're ever going to learn. Like the guy was talking about that taught me about money. I had a coworker that taught me about, I sat with a coworker. He was my boss and then my co-worker and then my boss again at Hendrick Motorsports who was born without arms and was an engineer at Hendrik Motorsports for years and typed with his toes under his desk

and designed things. Men just went on and just quit, but he was like one of the athletic directors at University of Virginia football named Richie Parker. He taught me to worry about the things you can control in life. You can go say, T, like, you just worry about what you can control. I can't control any of this.

He never had an excuse for anything. Restored old cars, welded, whatever. He stopped by the farm the other day just to shoot the shit. And find the people in life that you want to become. Try to get the advice out of them. You know, if they'll give it to you.

If not, bug them until they give it to you. Ask. And then just keep you. keep progressing. Yeah. Okay, well, best advice you could give to your 18 year old self. To my 18 year old self. Well, I don't know. Getting started in life. Somebody young. Honestly, I have two pieces of advice. The best advice I could give to my 18 year old self would be slow down a little bit. I was a kid in college who couldn't wait to get done to go to work. I was the kid in high school who couldn't wait to go to college. And if you handed me $10,000

in a time machine right now and you said, go back to end. any time you want in your life. I could tell you the week. And I hope my buddies listen. It would be, I would be a junior in high school going into my senior year. I just got back from Colorado. I came back because we're playing preseason football and our county fair is going on for a week. Yep. And anybody in my life in Vermont knows what happened this week and they're going to laugh when they hear this. But it was the best week. We were, we would, we had double sessions football. And then we were, one of us was working on a farm, milk in. So we'd run over there. It helped them milk cows to get finished up. We work for like a lawn care company all day. Then we go to

evening football. Then we go to the county fair and put our cars in the demo derby, chase girls from other schools. And it was like the best, most fun week of my life. Nobody died. We ran so hard. A lot of laughs. A lot of good times. A lot of people mad at us. But that was like a time in my life that I wish I could have just appreciated more when I was in those moments. You know? So, slow down a little bit. You're going to get there, let's slow down. And then my advice to everybody, and I definitely stole this from somebody, but I just love it, is whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Yes. And I just believe that. If you're going to try cover crops for the first time,

if as soon as it doesn't work, you're like, oh, it didn't work. It's never going to work. You got to want things, and you have to have the mindset to make it work, or at least learn from your failures. So I fail daily, man. And that's what, me and my wife talk about like fail fast fail forward and make my failures not sink the ship is what we try to do i mean i i don't know how many times in this first year i've come in i know cole said this too you know come in and if you're in livestock you're going to have something die once in a while and it's never the one you want it to it's the little baby calf tears your heart out right and come in in in tears and like i'm just failing and you got to turn around and be like well

you lost one you give this you know there's a thousand more i don't have a thousand cows but if i did there's a thousand more out there you know so yeah whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right it's all about the mind yep yeah well real good stuff stuff man i think people got a lot of value out of this one but where can people find you if they want to shoot you dm or just fall you or just see what you're up to yeah um start with land trust you can find us there You can get me through land trust. If that's what you're looking for, just go to landtrust.com.

Or we're on all social media. So land trust underscore hunt on Instagram. We have a Facebook group, Land Trust, the recreation access network. But I would encourage folks to go to landtrust.com if you have any inkling of this and just talk to us. Because it might not be the right fit,

but it's great to have that conversation to just start the thought. We have so many people that will get like two years later that are like, It wasn't the right time, but it's just been this burning little thing in the back of my mind. And then the neighbor house came up for sale and we bought it. And it's an Airbnb. And man, we do have a lot of pheasants.

So now our Airbnb in Iowa doesn't get a lot of traffic in the winter, but we got pheasants. Hey, now's the time. So, yeah, please hit us up at land trust.com. And then me personally, I love to talk about ag. My wife tells everybody I'll talk to the fence posts about cows. I will. Call me up. We'll talk about it all.

go to ridgeview landing cattle.com is our personal website or ridgeview landing cattle on any social media or taylor seymoyer on any social media and you can go back far enough you can look through all the nascar stuff too um i never took that side of my life down i'm still very involved with a lot of those people and i still have a lot of good friends in the sport but if you do too much googling around on me you're not going to find that many cool things in naskar a couple race wins and a real short crew chief in a fire suit once in a while. It's awesome. No, that was good, man. I really appreciate you coming on. We appreciate you telling the whole story and for dropping so much value. So, yeah. Guys, if you got any value, share the show, go follow Taylor, see what he's up to. Go check out Land Trust. Share the show.

Leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Check out Farmer Grated. And we'll see you back here next week for another episode. Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like, Ojo Time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play-Ojo. The online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games. What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws. Hey, I just won. Woo-hoo!

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