Barn Talk - How To Find Success In Life?

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, the boys discuss their definitions of success and how it’s different for everybody. SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hey, welcome to Barn Talk. You know, what happens at the barn usually stays at the barn, but not anymore. We're going to let it all out. You are listening to the best darn podcast out there that nobody's heard of, but we're going to change that too. We're on a mission. That's right.

We are on a mission. I'm Tork, and no, if you're seeing the video version, it's not a mirage. It could be my twin, but it's actually my younger, better-looking, taller version of myself. Sawyer, I am Tork's youngest son, and I'll take all the compliments I can get from this one because I don't get them often. So my shoulders are pretty broad from all the ash chewings I've accumulated over time, but we get along enough to do a podcast. together. Well, so far, this is only really the second run, so we'll see how, we'll see how long it

goes before the tempers flare, but that's okay. I think we can manage. So what are you going to do today? What are we going to talk about? Well, I think we're going to talk about a little bit of how we can find success in life and what it means to be successful to us and try to give some people some value is kind of what I was thinking. What are you thinking? What do you want to do today? What do you want to talk about? I like success. I'm going to shush my phone. That's a good idea. I probably should do the same. I don't want to be interrupted while I'm laying down.

Give us a break. We're a little rookies out here. Skills. Skills. How about the markets, though? Yeah. So those of you new to the podcast, which is just about everybody. So we're farmers in southeast Iowa, and we do a little grain farming.

We raise some hogs. So we're going to try to give you a little value. and so I'm going to give you the market update. So I think corn's down a little bit today. Corn's kind of having a rough day. But the cash bids were pretty lucky because where we live, there's a lot of feeders, a lot of hog feeders. And yesterday's close, the cash corn market was right at $5.97.

I couldn't remember for some reason. It was $6, but it backed off. So it's kind of a down day to day. it might have backed off a little bit, but you could get $5.97 if you hauled it to the river, you could get $5.97 if you hauled it 10 miles from me, so that's pretty good. And anybody that doesn't farm and knows nothing about farming,

$5.97? That's what you said? Yeah. For corn, that is a really good number. That is a good number. But also, for anybody that does farm, if you're the guy that sold all your corn out of the field last fall because you had bills to pay, you aren't very happy hearing that because you're like,

I made it a little bit past harvest, but not that far. And I save two loads, so we're going to come haul those two loads next week, so that way I can go to the coffee shop and tell everybody that, hey, I sold my corn for six bucks, but only two loads. So, yeah, it's crazy. These markets are crazy. The economy, as far as the rest of the world and not the ag economy, is kind of iffy right now, but the ag economy is kind of doing well right now.

And what do you always say about the economy and then the ag economy? Well, one trails the other. So it's either one trails or ones ahead. It's all how, you know, you can say the boom in the economy, we had the ag boom there. I don't know how many years ago. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it's probably been 10 years ago now. but, you know, and then the regular, the rest of the economy kind of came on after, and by the time it got going, commodity prices were headed in the tank. Well, now then commodity prices are all headed up, and the economy, I mean, I don't know what you want to call it, whether it's, I think the jobs report came out, maybe it was yesterday the day before, and it was a lot better. It's still not very good,

but it's better. So, I don't know, we may be both headed in a upswing, but, Right now, I mean, everything is up. I think beans delivered to the Iowa side of the river is 1417. And if you want to go across the river, it's 1458, but it takes you a little more money to get across the river. And hogs are $100, a buck a hundred weight. Cattle's a buck 20, a hundred weight. Give people that don't know what an average kind of year would look like.

Not a bad time. Not like a bad price, but like average for corn and soybeans. Yeah, I'd like a $5.57 average would be all right. You know, that'd be a nice average. So we're coming out of a time where, so last fall I sold a lot of corn. I was able to hold on to it a little bit after harvest. And we got to $4. I was lucky because there was one of the hog feeders that they got a little bit short,

so their bid went up. And I sold a bunch of corn for, I think, four, ten. or 415, something like that. But last year's crop or 2019's crop, some of that I held over. I don't know what I got. I think I might have gotten 385, something like that. So what, $350 to $4 is pretty average, on average, giving you? Depends on how far you want to go back.

When I started farming, when I started farming, you know, we sold a lot of corn for a buck 60. We used to play the LDP game where you'd call in to get your LDP, and if you could call for your LDP and then the corn you sold, it went up half a cent. You got that half a cent. Boy, you really thought you were putting one over on Uncle Sam. You were feeling pretty full of yourself. But, you know, we went through the time where we were right where we are now.

Corn got up like it is, but that seemed like. it was about a three-year deal. And then we've been pretty crappy because the problem with it is, and this is like any business, I think home builders can probably identify with this right now because there's a lot of good money in that trade, except all your materials went up. Well, you can pretty much guarantee that the cost of nitrogen, the cost of seed, the cost of fuel. Cost of equipment. It's all going to go.

Oh, equipment. Good Lord of Moses. up. It's already insane, but it's outrageous. That's how it is. Business starts making money. It's a good industry to be in. And then they're like, all right, let's ramp it up for everything that they need. I'll take another dollar for that. Actually, give me 10. So, and then, I mean, that's kind of the Ag update, right, as far as the market. Well, let's get into kind of what we, this is kind of dad and I side thing. We love investing and we love cryptocurrency a little bit. And this is not financial advice. Yes, do not take advice for us. We're poor, we're poor cash farmers, so don't listen to us.

Yeah. But anyway, Bitcoin, what's that at? Like $62,000? Not quite. 61-8 last time I checked it. It's been floating there. It had a rough time. It kept getting up and knocking on 60, and then it'd fall, and then it'd go. It was 55 for a long time. But then it broke, and it went up, went up hard, and it's now then it's just kind of floating around. around 62, 63. I don't know what it'll do. It depends on when the next whale comes out and buys up a big chunk. You know, there's a rumor going around that Walmart was going to buy, I don't know,

$1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin or something. What do you, what do you would you say to the, you know, average person out there thinking about buying Bitcoin? Just give them a rough quick. Would you invest in Bitcoin if you were, I mean, do you have more risks out, not invest in Bitcoin or more risk, you know? How much time do we have? because this is a whole rabbit hole for another.

So I'm pretty bearish when it comes to the economy, the world economy, the dollar, inflation, pretty much everything because we've printed so much money. If you look at the money supply, it's just insane how much money they've printed. And, you know, we don't have any inflation yet. everything that we deal with is going up. And that's why you're seeing, you know, they can say whatever they want about lumber and this and that. It has a lot to do with the money supply.

It's driving it. There is inflation. But I just, a lot of people, and I was one of them, I was very skeptical of Bitcoin specifically, but crypto in general. And it's a hard thing to get your, kind of get your mind. around. But the key thing is it's a limited supply. They can't make more of it, whereas dollars,

any currency you want to invest in, just about anything you want to invest in, if it gets to be worth money, it's just like corn. It's, you know what, guess what? Next year, somehow, some way, we are going to find all these acres of corn and the yield. We're going to find all the yield and every time that some guy says you know we've hit a new plateau in this corn market that is a good sign that you're about to get screwed because all the farmers are going to figure it out they're going to figure out we're going to make it work we're going to plant yep they're going to do it they're going to make it work and get the crop we've never we've never met a time that we couldn't overproduce and most things most stores of value are that way you know they say golds that way

but that's not necessarily true either because they're mining more of it all the time the technology is getting better and the problem with gold is somehow you got to store it and it's real hard to go to the grocery store and whip out a big sack of gold and say well yeah take a one ounce one ounce coin and tell them you want to make change for a gallon of milk you can't do that right now bitcoin's a different deal and um granted you're not going to buy milk with it you could if you wanted to in the right place but you're not going to but um it it's a limited supply. There's a limited amount of it.

And as the value of fiat currency, I sounded, that was a fancy word. I used their fiat currency. I've been listening to a few, I've been listened to a few smart people throwing that stuff out there. But as confidence in other currencies fail, you're probably going to see cryptocurrency,

Bitcoin specifically, that value increase because it's already being adopted more and more mainstream. You saw Tesla, you saw micro strategies, you saw the insurance company, mass, I don't know if it's Mass Mutual, I can't remember, and there's been some others. And now you see these investment houses getting into it. Coinbase went public a few days ago, which is a big crypto exchange. In fact, like I think Micro Strategy and Tesla, the Bitcoin that they own on their books, they bought it through Coinbase. So it's getting more and more mainstream. But if I was somebody that was sitting out there and I didn't know what to do, I'll tell you,

and this applies to exactly what we're going to talk about today. The hardest thing is to start. And a lot of people get really caught up in, it's kind of like us starting this podcast, where we sat around and we were like, well, it's got to be this and it's got to be this. be perfect. You got to have, you got to have all the answers. Yeah. And we, we don't have all the answers. Don't have all me. We're just lucky that this barn hasn't caught on fire for as many things as we've got plugged into the power strips running around here. Yeah, exactly.

But the important thing is to start. And the earlier you start, the better off you are. And you're going to make mistakes. But, you know what, if you got $100 to put in Bitcoin, buy $100 worth. If you're putting $100 in your 401k or your mutual funds or you're just buying individual stocks, you know what? if you're doing anything, if you're doing anything, you're better off than a lot of people that have no plan whatsoever. So there's some good, I don't know whose quote it is, but I'm sure it's some war quote. It might be Winston Churchill, but in the absence of, you know, basically

any plan, any plan is better than no plan at all. And so basically my thoughts on that is, if I didn't have any Bitcoin today and Bitcoin's gone up a lot, you know, a year ago, it was, I don't even know if it was 10,000. I think it was like 10 or 12,000, 15,000, something like that. And you look at that and you're like, well, gosh, I don't want to buy now because it's the high. Well, you know what? There's a heck of a lot of people out there that are buying Tesla today, and you could have bought Tesla for $7.

In fact, there was a great article. I think it was in Barron. Some guy started buying Tesla five years ago, he started buying it for $7, $8, $9, and he's 39 years old and he's got 12 million dollars worth of Tesla and wow that'd be awesome well i'm getting too far in because this all goes down to you know trusting yourself and and and doing your own homework and all that and whatever but the important thing is just start so you know bitcoin is kind of a hobby of ours it's it's something that we're really interested we kind of track um so that's your that's your market i would just catch i would just catch i would just

catching, I would just chime in here and say, I personally think you have more risk not putting a little bit of money into it versus if you didn't put any money at all. Because the potential and the, I don't know, the cap that it could get to is huge. Like the, there's no cap on Bitcoin and how far it can go. I mean, there is because there's only a certain amount. There's what, 21 million bitcoins ever. That's all there is. And it's only at $60,000 right now. And it's only at $60,000. Now, if it gets adopted the way people are thinking it's going to get adopted and the way that people believe it could, having just a little bit in it. Your future self is going to thank you for it. So that's kind of my.

And the other thing I'd say is, you know, it's very volatile. It goes up a lot, goes down a lot. But every day that it progresses and becomes more mainstream, the odds of it totally crashing and burning gets to be less and less. could it go to 20,000? Yeah. Excuse me. It could totally go to 20,000. But it's probably not going to stay there. It's sure not going to go back to zero. I don't think. But this isn't financial advice, but. No. And I mean, we could go. Yes, this is, this is a massive topic that we spend a lot of time and we have our conversations between us that we like to talk about the Bitcoin. We like to talk about the investing and all that stuff. But that's not what this, this, this, specific episode's going to be about. This specific episode is going to be about how to find success in life.

And the first thing that I want to cover on that topic is in today's society, I think everyone's perception on success is just asked backwards, to be honest with you, because it's just, it's all about materialistic things. You look on Instagram, you look on TikTok, you look on Facebook, and everyone's flexing and posting their new truck, their new house, their hot wife, they're all these things that, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter. And it's just to flex on people when it's all about status.

And that stuff isn't what I found, and I'm pretty young, but I've come to realize is none of that stuff's going to fulfill you. It's not going to make you happy. And it's very hard because when you sit on your phone, that's all you see is just people posting stuff to flex on everybody else and status. And I'm not saying you shouldn't be proud of what you, you know, buy or purchase or whatever. But I think people like to just buy things for the idea of to impress people rather than genuinely liking what they bought. Like if you're a Lamborghini enthusiast and you absolutely love Lamborghinis or if you're a, you know, Dermax, you love diesel trucks, you know,

go for it, buy them if you're interested in it. But I think a lot of people just buy them because it's the cool thing to look like you have it, you know, and it's not about what you personally like. I don't know. I think, yeah, I don't know. I think culture has really just turned success into something that. It's like glamour shots. Yeah, it's glamour shots. It's not really. There's no, it's just, I don't know, the definition. mission success is just all messed up in our culture, I think. A little bit of it is that because of the technology we have, the ability to reach people 24-7, 365 is there.

And there's a lot of money to be made selling stuff. And so you are getting bombarded all the time with somebody selling you something. Even when they appear to not be selling you, they're probably trying to sell you because everybody needs a payday. And, you know, our economy is so based upon consumers, consuming. And so it's just driven, driven, driven to convince you that, you know, the car you have might be fine, but man, the 2020. Yeah. That is better. That is so better. Yeah, and I can post that on social media and I'm going to get so many likes. Yeah, that's right. There is hope and there's even hope for me. But as you get older, I feel like as you get older, you just get a little bit. One, you get a little bit numb to it, but two, I feel like you start to wise up a little bit. You know, I went through that. When I was selling, And I was making good money.

I was making good money selling. But when you do, you get this idea that you need to drive a certain kind of car. You need to look a certain way. You need to dress a certain way. And you just, it, it's kind of like a vacuum cleaner because the more you make, the more you want. And to be able to, to be able to, to be. able to kind of disconnect yourself from that and and prioritize is this a want or is this a need. And if you can get to that, if you can prioritize want versus need, you find out real fast.

There's a lot of stuff that you might want, but you really don't need it. Yeah. And it's back to kind of what I was saying was like, if you genuinely love a diesel truck, a Dermax, and you're like, you're just a diesel engine enthusiast and you love that stuff, treat yourself a little bit. But, you know, if you're just doing it because, oh, I'm making more money now and I think that a truck is going to make me look the part versus actually genuinely liking it. You know what I mean? And that's the hardest thing. And everyone's guilty of it. No matter who you are, you are guilty of it. I mean, I've been guilty of it. And when you're in high school, that's all that is, you know, status and trying to look apart and all that stuff and fitting in. But I don't know. It's a problem. them and I don't know if it's ever going to get better. I think people need to, you know, self-evaluate and see because this social media thing isn't going to go away and this, these pictures popping up all the time, people showing you their new stuff. It's going to keep happening. And I think that there's

just going to be, there's going to be a disconnect there with people finding happiness and, you know, seeing what's successful versus, or knowing what's successful to them versus what society's telling And that's, and that's the other thing is success is different to everybody. Yeah. What you, what I perceive as being successful, well, obviously anybody that looks at us is going to say, well, these guys are hog farmers. What the heck are they thinking? There's nothing successful about that. And, you know, I've taken a big circle to get back where I am.

And if I told you the whole story, it's kind of crazy, but I'm. I'm probably the most content. Well, I am the most content now that I've ever been. And I have the least stress that I've ever had despite Sawyer. Whatever. And it took a long time. It took a lot of mistakes. And you're going to make mistakes every day.

But if people could see what you went through to get back. You're content now because you went through so much to get to the place that you are now. Yeah. And so my, what I consider success versus what somebody else is or even what Sawyer does, you know, it's totally different for everybody. And that's fine. And that's, you know, we don't all have to conform. And thank goodness that we don't all want the same thing.

But, you know, you should embrace that, that, you know, what you want is what you want. And there's nothing wrong with it. You just, you just have to make sure that you're doing it for the right reasons. Yeah, I totally agree on that. And I think that, yeah, I feel like everyone has to be somebody now, like because of social media. And I'm going to say that a lot in this one. But it's the truth. Everyone has to be somebody.

Everyone has to be a business owner. They got to be a fitness enthusiast or they got to be an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur, you know, they have to be successful and successful. But, you know, like dad said, everybody's different. What if you just want to own a nice house and, you know, have free time where you can just spend time with your kids and grill and smoke meat and that's kind of your hobby? You know, I have a buddy that, you know, his, what success is to him is, you know, I want a nice house. I want an acreage and I want to be able to just do what I want and smoke meat when I want and hang out with my family and go to work when I want. And it's like that right there is his definition of success versus, you know, Elon Musk who wants to go to the frickin moon.

He would like to die on Mars. Or the Mars, Mars, not the moon. Yes. But I've thought about getting some magnetic plate or magnetic stickers from my 2001 Chevy Tahoe that says, entrepreneur. Slap them on when I go to town to get a pop. Your old rusted out Chevy Tahoe. Yeah.

And, you know, that's an example. It hadn't been that long ago that I wouldn't drive that thing around. I would have had to have. If I would have come back to the farm seven, eight years ago, I guarantee I'd have a brand new, brand new three-quarter tonne duromax. Wouldn't use it for a darn thing other than hauling some bag feed, but I'd have one because, and I'd love to have one. I would.

It's just there's things that I would rather have right now than have that, so I prioritize. And that's money and success are not, they don't go hand in hand. they're both exclusive because there are a lot of people around this world that have a boatload of money or make a boatload of money and they're miserable now granted there are some people that make great money and they're very they're super happy and that's a great place to be but we've kind of been sold that you just got it you got to drive you got to drive you got to drive but then you got to have the stuff

You've got to have the stuff to go with it. And that is a vicious circle because the stuff always is one notch higher than the money that you're making. Because each step you see something that's just over the hill. They're like, ooh, I'd like to have that. I'd like to trade this in that I got last year for this new thing. Yeah. It's like a vicious circle. When I was selling, I mean, pretty much I was a horrible, I couldn't make a budget to save my tail.

because I'm too much of an optimist. So when I would see something I liked, I would very quickly take the purchase price of that and divide it by the commission of what a 2,400 head hog building would be to sell. And I would look at it, I go, oh, well, it's only like 5, 2,400s. If I could just sell 5, 2,400s for decent margin, I could buy that. And that's how I did it. Now, I can tell you, that's not probably the right way to run your business.

books. But Optimus Torque was like, oh, yeah, we can do that. No problem. Exactly. Yeah. So I, I just want to, I really want to nail the point of, you know, people are different and what society tells you isn't necessarily what success could mean to you, you know. It's all up to you. And it takes, like you've mentioned your stories, it's like it takes time to realize what's important to you and what success looks like to you. Because I'm sure seven years, seven year torque ago, I don't know, seven years ago for torque was success was different than what it is now for you. If you think about it.

Let's do the math on that about right. Yeah. So seven years ago, I was about at the, I was about at the pinnacle of as far as the money-making side, I was making more money than I'd ever made in my life. right about seven years ago, seven, eight years ago, something like that. And I wasn't very happy. I mean, I was, but I just felt like I felt like I was on this treadmill where it didn't matter how much I made, how much I sold. It was never going to be enough. And then the worst part about it was every year, you just kept setting yourself up higher and higher.

How am I going to outdo what I did last year? And then the other side of it is at some point, you start doing things for the wrong reason. You know, it's, you start trying to rush the process. You start trying to cut corners as far as maybe you're not, you're trying to cover yourself so thin to get further that you're just doing stuff faster than you should, or you're not taking things as seriously as you should,

or you're trying to rush things. And anyway, I could have kept doing what I was doing. Heck, I could probably, I could have probably still been there, although I think at some point they would have probably gotten tired of me and told me that I needed to leave. But, you know, I could have stayed there a long time. And I loved what I did, but I just, finally got to the point where I knew I had to change. I knew that if I stayed, if I kept doing

what I was doing then, that I was going to turn into somebody that I didn't want to be. In fact, I already felt like I kind of was. And so I decided to make a change. And it was, it was scary because it was a hell of a pay cut. But at the same time, it was very freeing because I didn't feel like I had that weight on my shoulders, and it really made, it really made my family, um, prioritize what was important, which that needed to happen. And it gave me, it gave me more time, not necessarily, not necessarily, uh, like I didn't work as much as I did before, but I was not, I was much more present than what I was before. Because so much, when you put yourself in that position, my mind was running on selling every wake and hour.

I mean, heck, I dreamed about selling. And, you know, you're always thinking about the next one and where I got to go and who I need to talk to. You're just, it's just a loop and it's running all the time in your head. And that was, when I got out of that, it's like, wow. I slept better. I wasn't tired all the time. I mean, I'm still getting tired. You still have your naps. Sawyer works me like a mule. But anyway, so it's been good. Yeah, so that kind of opens up into our next point is like over the time that you were,

you did your thing there and you kind of transitioned, you realized that the time, the time factor is more important than the money that you were making because, like you said, that was the best time of your life as far as money making. You know, you're making the most money that you've ever made in your life there. And now you're here and you just, you have, we've talked about this, that you think time is the most important thing and that comes with age. Is that like, you know, you're 50 years old and it's not, it's not your priorities of change, you know? Yeah, I think, and every person gets to this point where you, you look, you know, you're, you know, You wake up one morning and you realize that you probably don't have as much sand,

you don't have as much sand in the top of the hourglass as you have in the bottom. Now, given my genetic potential, I think that I've got a lot of good years ahead of me. I think with a few trips to Panama and some implants, I think I can make it to 110, 110, 115. Oh, yeah, you'd rock them easily, definitely. However, it is thought-provoking. And we're kind of sold this idea of living, you know, we need all this stuff and work, work, work, work. But the most valuable thing you have is your time because it's really that hourglass is glued to the table. And I think that's, I think that might be a song.

I might have just plagiarized somebody's song there, but that's okay. And you aren't going to get it back. And the time you waste, the time you waste doing stuff that's unfulfilling to you, you're not going to get it back. And granted, we waste time every day. And, you know, there's a certain amount of it you can't get it, can't get away from. But, you know, my worst day, raising pigs, I mean, granted, if the hog billing burned down, I can't say this. But pretty much, what would be a bad day raising pigs is better than just about the best day working for somebody. else. I mean, it just is because I get to work with family. I'm, you know,

flexibility. Yeah, freedom. Freedom. It is. That is the thing. That is the that is something that we've always discussed. It's like freedom is the key. To us, success is freedom. Having time to do what you want to do

with who you want to do it with whenever you want to do it. You just stole my, you just stole my mom. I was going to throw that down. We've talked about that before, but I mean, that's the truth. That's totally the truth of it all. It's like, and not everybody can get to that point, but like maybe you have to sacrifice a few years of doing something that isn't fulfilling for you to get to you to the point

where, you know, you can have freedom and you can do something that's fulfilling to you. And you can spend this much time doing something that fills you up. And the rest of the time you can spend, you know, with your faith, I mean, obviously, hanging with your family also fills you up. But you can just spend time on the stuff you want to spend time on. And it's not easy to get there. I mean, it's not. But, yeah, there's definitely, you know, people talk about today,

you hear people talking about grind. You got to grind, you got to grind. Going through the hard stuff, you have to do that. I mean, you have to do that because if everything in life is easy, you aren't going to appreciate it. You're just not. And so it is a journey. I mean, you can't get around it.

You have to do some unpleasant things, one, to hone yourself. Because it's, you know, the armed forces are big on this. You know, the training that they do, they break people down, and they literally are sharpening them. I mean, you know, it's kind of philosophical. but you know it is that that tough that training and that pain that they go through it pushes them to be better than they ever could be reading it out of a book i mean they'd never get there and when they look back on that on those moments they feel immense pride i mean i would think i mean anytime you do something that's hard in the moment it sucks and it's maybe not what you want to be doing but when

you get to the point where you are where you want to be and you look back and say shit That was hard, but I'm proud of myself, and that's how I got to where I am now. It's like you're never going to get fulfillment and happiness out of, you know, just sitting on your ass looking at TikTok videos. I mean, you're just not doing, getting up and getting after it every day. Yeah, sometimes you don't want to do it, but it's a necessary evil and you're going to think your future self is going to thank you for it. I mean, that's what I always look at when I'm, when I'm sitting on my,

button. I don't want to go load pigs at two in the morning. I'm like, it's going to be worth it. Yeah. So that's a perfect example. I was sitting here trying to think of a, of an example, but, you know, in our business, we have a lot of freedom as far as our schedule, if we need to drop everything and go do something, you know, if I want to go have lunch with my wife, if she wants me to take her shopping. You know, side note, my hog billings are four. 400 feet long, and I can walk back and forth through them time and time again, and my feet don't hurt. But if I set foot in a target, I can't even get to the back of the store without my feet hurt. That is facts. I hate. There's something about your feet hurt more in a shopping center than they do

on the farm, working. The only redeeming value is if you go to Target at this time of year, I'm pretty sure that they've got the patio furniture out. So you can take a pit stop back there in the northwest corner. Just sit down. Sit down. Anyway, I digress. But, you know, I have flexibility. But some people would look at what we're doing and say, well, you don't really have freedom because those pigs need chored every day.

You've got to do all the stuff that has to be done. I have stuff I have to do every day. But that is what. worth it to me because I can manage my time well enough that it gives me an immense amount of time for the time that I have to trade taking care of those pigs one it gives me income which I feel like I'm very well compensated for the time that I put in and two if I want a chore at five o'clock in the morning one day and I want a chore at three o'clock in the afternoon another day I can do that or if I'm going be gone, I can get Sawyer to chore for me, or I can get my neighbor to chore for me. It's flexibility.

And that, that's priceless. Now, to somebody else, that wouldn't, that doesn't look that way, but to us, that's how it is. And like, I think people my age wouldn't, wouldn't think that that is because it's what you're fed. We're fed this idea that success is the stuff, the stuff, the stuff, the stuff. But when you, it's like you said, that hourglass, it's going down no matter what. And the sooner you grasp the idea of doing something that fulfills you and getting freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it with who you want to do it with, flexibility. Like it's, like you said, it's, it's priceless. And I think that, I think that is what people should really try to see as success, rather than all the stuff.

And there's some people that they love grinding. Like there's people that run companies. There's guys I know. There's guys I know that farm. And I mean, that's all they want to do. They don't take a day off. And they're running crazy. But that's what they love.

To them, that's their success. It doesn't feel like work. Yeah. To me, it would feel I would wonder off is what would happen. You know what? And that's a beautiful thing about. out it is, you know, we don't want to sit here and tell you, this is what you ought to do. Everybody's different. You need to find what it is, but I think our point is, don't let society

tell you what success is to you. Because that is going to be unfathly. You might, yeah, and you might not have all the answers. Like, if you're 21 years old like me, like, I don't know. I have a kind of an idea of what success looks like to me, but I'm still trying to figure it out day by day. dad seven years ago isn't the guy sit in front of me now as far as success what he wanted so it changes and it's different i still don't know what i want to do when i grow up but i'm working on it i'm working on it well this is a good spot for us to talk about like what are your what is your personal definition of success like what are your points so my first i guess my definition of success is freedom. I mean, that's what we talked about. Freedom is, but my personal goals and what I want to

accomplish, I genuinely love the thought of taking something from scratch and building it up to be a successful thing. And that's a big reason why I started, this will do farm. It wasn't the only reason because I wanted to do something good for the ag industry. But also, I just love the grind of just building something up and taking it and going where I'm taking it to where I want it to go. And that's not everybody. And I think I'm a purebred entrepreneur. I love that is the something that I absolutely love to do. And there's days that I hate, you know, I don't want to do work, you know. I don't want to do it, but it's back to what we said is like, you got to do it because it's going to help you propel you to get to where you want to go. But that's personally for me. I value

taking something from scratch, building it up to where I want it to go. And that's kind of my biggest thing. I want to start a company. I want to build a brand. I want to do these things. And that's kind of my success. That's what I want in freedom and time with my family. And the definition is do what I want when I want to do it with whoever I want to do it with. That's the definition success to me. Boy, that's a really good. That's a really good idea. I wish I would have thought of that. Oh, wait. Don't act like you came up with that because we've talked about that before. That's not just a torque,

torque quote. Boy, I wish I would have thought that up, though. I know. It's a good one. I have a daily planner that you, you know, I try to write my thoughts down and every day. And I don't always do a great job. But there's a line in there that, you know, what is your goal?

Like, what would a win be for today? But then it has what your overall goal is. And I used to write different stuff down. You know, like my goal was to get this done or get that done or pay this hog billing off or you name it. And then I ran into that quote, and it really stuck with me. And from then on, the goal that I write down is,

I want to be able to do whatever I want with whoever I want for as long as I want to do it. And really, if you get to that point, yeah, you pretty well, you pretty well got it going. But there's, I wrote down like nine things that I think are important. At least they're important to me. And these aren't in any particular order. Wow, you actually came prepared today? I know.

You had a plan? I bet you. This is a rarity. I mean, it's not a rarity, but dad is, he is an optimist, and he is kind of a, you know, it's like what you talked about with the hog buildings. You're like, oh, that costs that much.

I can swing that. I can make that work. And, you know, just go in there and wing it. But I'm impressed. I love it. I like it. I take this stuff seriously. I know you do.

This is going to be the best podcast on the planet, so I hope you come prepared. Good things don't happen by accident. That's right. That's right. The first thing I wrote down was to have a cushion. And this probably comes more with age. So for me, it's important to have like an emergency fund. I have, I figure up what are my expenses that I have to pay every month. And I want to make sure that I have money save that I don't touch that I don't use for anything else I don't buy Bitcoin with that actually it probably should be in Bitcoin because then I could have a lot bigger emergency

fund but yeah that'd be going against my that'd be going against what I should be doing so there you go but anyway you know that's just and and the thing is I've and this happened to us when we when we went down this road and said okay you know we got to get our finances in order and um we start it down that road almost as soon as you decide you're going to have an emergency fund guess what happens you'll have an emergency so as soon as you start saving money the water heater will go out or something like that i've i've heard so many people say that and that's probably kind of true but you got to stick with it you got to take some you got to take some money and just set it aside like you lost it like it's gone and and that will grow and you'd be surprised how much peace of mind that will give you just knowing that

worst case scenario, we got the bills paid for a period of time. The second thing is, for me, passive income, and by passive income, I mean, you know, I'm at the stage now where if something happened to me, we could hire somebody to take care of my hog buildings, and that check would come whether I got up every day and did it. Now, granted, it'd be a smaller check because we'd be paying somebody to do it, but it's there. And it's the same way if you've got rental property, it's the same way if you're doing anything that has residual income. And I think that's something everybody should strive for because so many people are trading time for

money. And it goes back to what I said earlier about, you know, that's your most valuable asset you have is your time. And if all you're doing is trading time for money, you're going to end up with not enough money and you're going to run out of time. And so having streams of income that come, whether you're there or not, that's important. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flame thrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk.

Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. I would totally agree with that statement. That was a good one. Deep thoughts. Work that satisfies me. and, you know, I can say that now. I have the luxury.

Yesterday I went through, we were getting ready to get a group of pigs, and I went through, and I checked all the heaters, and I had some inlets I had to fix, and I literally spent the last two full days up there getting that hog billing ready, and it was very relaxing, because in the past, when I was working,

and before Sawyer was chore in the barns, every time I got a group of pigs, it was like, I was just running through there because you had so much stuff you had to try to get done and checked, and you just hoped that nothing was really wrong because I didn't have time, because I was always trying to run it as tight as I could. And so having that flexibility, yeah, that just, there's nothing glamorous about, you know, what I was doing, but it was oddly satisfying. And that's great. That's what I like.

This one to me is probably the most important, and I feel like this is something that I've kind of only realized in the last, really in the last year, which is kind of sad. But you really need to trust yourself and do your own research and find your own answers on no matter what you're doing. And the way this happened is Tesla. Tesla is basically what taught me this lesson. And I won't go off deep in it, but about a year ago, I had some stocks that I'd had for a long, long time, and they weren't anything glamorous. And I owned them, and I didn't own them,

them within an investment company or anything I just I just owned them outright and I didn't really do anything with them didn't know what I was going to do with them but one day I was I was even really remember what I was looking at but I was on YouTube I was probably watching I was probably watching this'll do is what I was probably doing or or something to do with video editing or something like that like and subscribe like and subscribe this will do farm this will do for me. Anyway, I watched a video about Tesla, and I didn't know anything about it. I thought that it was kind of a joke. I'd always thought the idea of electric cars was kind of a joke, and I won't go into all that detail, because a lot of people still do. But anyway, it really

interested me. And I asked somebody, I asked a friend of mine something about it, and I asked, and And they just laughed it off and, you know, they gave me the, the world's never going to go to electric vehicles and, you know, Tesla doesn't make any money. And I was like, yeah. And then I started watching more and I started reading and I downloaded their annual report that year. And I dug and I dug and I dug. And I got to the point where I basically convinced myself that that was a good investment.

and I took these stocks that I had and I cashed them in and I went to my I went to my investment representative and I told him I wanted to buy Tesla and he tried to talk me out of it and then he told me that he would I could buy the stock within my account but he was going to make me sign a paper basically telling me that he had advised me that it was a risky risky deal. And I went through with it because I had conviction. I had done my homework and I knew right or wrong, I was convinced it was the right thing to do. And you know what? It did turn out to be the right thing to do. The money that I put in, it's been a great investment. And we'll talk about Tesla some other time. But after that, through all that, I realized that that, I realized that that that,

that anybody that you talk to, they're going to give you advice through the guise of who has taught them and what their life experience is. I don't care if you're talking about investment or you're talking about what brand of seed corn to plant or whether you're talking about, you name it. you have to be true to yourself and you have to trust yourself because there's a lot of times that you're going to make a decision and there's going to be plenty of people that are going to tell you're wrong and they're going to give you all the reasons that they know why you're wrong but you have to remember that if you've done if you've dug and you've read and you've watched and you've prayed on it and you've put in the time to know that that's the right decision for you, I'd say it's pretty rare that that will end up being a bad decision.

It'll end up being a good decision. Yeah, and I think really do your research, you know. Yeah. You didn't, dad didn't just look into Tesla and, you know, a couple days. And he was like, yep, I'm buying Tesla. It was he put some real time into an annual. reports, videos, articles, real time. And that, that might not have used to be the case as far as going out and be able to research the amount that you can research now. But you, that's the one thing

that I will say that's a great positive social media. There's a few great positives and there's a few negatives out there. But one huge positive with social media and YouTube and the internet is you are able to go and find information about anything. And you can research and research and research and research and research. You didn't have that back then. You just really didn't. And there's a very few people, and let's be honest here, there's very few people that use social media and the internet for their own personal good. And growth. And growth. And then majority of people, and I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm guilty. I scroll TikTok, but a lot of people only use the internet and social media to consume their time and distract them from their lives when they could be using it

to learn and grow themselves. And you can either have, you can either use social media or let it use you. That needs to be a t-shirt. I mean, that's, that's the facts, though. That's facts. But yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, you were, maybe long ago, you couldn't have done that. You know, you couldn't have find Tesla information or whatever stock it was back in when the internet wasn't around, but you did the due diligence and you were able to do that, and it's possible. A freaking hog farmer investing into an electric car company. Yeah, now what's sad is that I can talk to people low level about machine learning and autonomous driving, and I have nobody to talk to about it because nobody wants, nobody wants to hear that. So I just have these

thoughts in my head about, you know, stuff that excites me that I have nobody to talk to that. So we might have to do a whole episode about Dojo, but we'll save that for a different time. I don't even know how far I was. Oh, this is something else. We talked about time. You know, I'm in a point now where I have time if I manage it right that, you know, I can help my family, you know if if one of the boys needs need something i can go drop everything and go help them do whatever and that's that's worth a lot and if we you know if we ever get back to whatever normal is you know my wife and i can if we want to go somewhere we can pick up and go somewhere because we've got the time to do it um so that that's important but something else that i think is key to success but also

I guess being prepared is to have some skill work on skills that you have that are marketable that you can fall back on and and I'll give you an example um my eyesight's not any good and if I had to do this I think I'd need some pop bottle glasses to do it but if all if everything went to heck tomorrow I'm pretty sure I could go back to fix and hog billings I'm pretty sure I could go back to fixing controls and fixing feed systems and all that. I know how to put in a day's work, and I know how all that stuff still works. And, you know, that's something that I don't use that much,

but I feel I do enough of it still that I have those skills if I ever needed them. And that's a good thing to have. It's good to know a few things that don't necessarily fit into what your regular job is. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, for me, I'm a farmer and I learned how to edit and do a bunch of videography and all that stuff. I had no idea how to do any of that.

And that's kind of touching on the point of our last point. I learned all that stuff through the internet. I had no college classes. I didn't read books. I learned that all on the internet and self-teaching myself in action. Yeah. And that's a skill now that if, let's say, our hog barns burned down and, or the hog market takes a crap or, you know, the ag economy goes to shit.

That's probably a skill I could take and use anywhere because anyone in the country needs digital marketing. Anyone needs a videography. If you're a business owner, you have to have a social media page at this point. But that's a really good point because. And if you never say never, because I'm going to be 50 years old this summer and I just learned how to use Adobe Premiere Pro. So if you're watching this podcast or hearing it, it means that somehow the old man muddled through and actually got it edited because Sawyer does all of the YouTube stuff and most of the Instagram and race will do farm.

Yeah, for this will do farm, which is our farm, our farm channel. And so when we decided to do this, he said, you're going to have to learn to edit. And you know how you were like, oh, you're prepared today. Well, when Sawyer told me that, I was like, oh, yeah, ha ha, okay, yep, no problem. Don't worry about it. I'll, yep, we'll figure it out. And then when it actually came down to doing it, and I sat down in front of that thing and we

opened it up and I saw, you know, all the panels. And I'm like, oh, boy. What is this? It does look intimidating. I will say, it does look intimidating. But I'm muddling through. I think you're muddling through. You're going to get, if you get this, if we get this on YouTube,

people will know that you, you made it work. So I'm going to add that to my LinkedIn profile. So feel free to give me a thumbs up of my skills to build my resume in case everything goes to pop. There you go. Is that your whole list there? I think that's, I think that's, oh, the one last thing is, success to me is having the luxury of saying no.

and that's a hard thing to do. I really think that's hard to do, but I've finally gotten to the point that there are people and there are things that happen, some of them are opportunities and some of them are not, that in the past I would have felt compelled to go, oh, yeah, okay, I'll do that.

But you can't do that. Your time is too valuable to waste. And I can't even say waste. There's some things, you know, there's a lot of things that are opportunities that you could do this or do that. But you have to decide what is important for you and what is important for your family. And is this going to take time away from what's important?

And if it is, you got to say no. And that's, it's hard to know. That is very hard. That is a very hard thing to do. Yeah. It, because you don't want to, you don't want to hurt people's feelings and you don't want to let people down. And, you know, I'm not, we're not sitting here saying tell your, tell your family know if they need help moving or anything like that. But like, well, actually, that's not true.

If I can work my way out of helping somebody move me, I don't even. What's worse? Target feet or moving upstairs when you're moving stuff out of a. I have a saying. And that, you know, everybody has friends that they're really close with. And if you have friends. that ask you to help them move and they tell you that they think of you as family, that means you've been devoted. You're screwed. You've been demoted. So moving, that's not a good,

that's not a good thing. No, no. So what I was going to, I think we'll wrap it up here, but the last point that I wanted to make on success and, you know, trying to find your own success and, you know, it's different for everybody and, you know, for us, times and freedom is our definition of success um everyone there there are somebody out there that has the success and the life that you want and all you got to do is go out there and seek that information and it's just what we talked about with Tesla it's just what we talked about with me figuring out editing and videography and all that stuff i knew i was a videography baboon i knew nothing about it and it took me half a year a year a year to really hone in my skill and now I'd say I do a pretty decent job at it and that that applies

with success too there are so many people out there that have the life that you want or have a good life or have a or have the skills that you want that will get you where you need to be yeah they have it out there and you just got to find those people and they're giving out information about how they can make it not everybody is but I think I think a big concern with people when and learning online is they're afraid of getting scammed. Like, they're afraid that the scammers are out there and stuff. I think it's getting to the point now that people can really pick up on if you're real and genuine and when you're not.

And people can weed that shit out really fast because how many years has it been that social media has been around? I mean, if you're a scammer, it's very hard to get away with that. And I think there's got genuine people out. Well, I know there is because I listen to these kind of people that, you know, have the success that I want, they give out information for free because they genuinely want to help people get to where they want to go. So all I say to you guys, if you don't know where you want to go and you don't know what success looks like to you, do some things to figure it out. And then

once you kind of have an idea, find people that, you know, have that success or have that skills that you're looking for and just listen to them and watch videos and research. Because I'll give you a lot of clarity. Where I am now versus where I was three years ago when I graduated high school, it is, I don't think I've grown more as a, I've grown more as a person in the last three years than I ever did being in school. I'm just going to be honest. And it was hard in the beginning, but it really shaped me and I really went out and searched and found it mentors, online mentors or teachers that had, I had a little bit of an idea of like what I wanted to do and what success look like to me and I just kind of acted on it and those guys they'll help you

find that clarity and give you some tools that you're like okay that that sounds nice to me or whatever but it's out there I'm just saying it's out there you just got to go find it and seek it so yeah and I guess I'll close with saying all if we double all the way back the beginning the main thing is nothing's going to change if you don't if you don't take a step if you don't start. The hardest thing is to start. And then if you start 20 minutes a day reading about what you want to learn, 20 minutes a day watching somebody that has the skills that you want to develop, 20 minutes a day goes a long way. Goes a long ways. And if you make a mistake, just get back up, just start. But the main thing is if you don't like where you are today, you don't feel like

you're successful today, you got to change something and you got to start. You got to take a step. Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. And what I will tell you is you'll learn way more doing rather than just seeing on the computer screen and research and learning. Taking the information that's given to you and applying it to your life, that is where you'll learn. Because you can YouTube all day long and come across all these great ideas and these great people giving you information, but if you don't take the information that they give you and apply it, it's, you know, you know, if you don't take a step with the information that they give you, you're not, you're not going to get anywhere. So action, action, action is the biggest thing that I will

say that you have to do. And it can be little every single day, five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. And if you don't get your 20 minutes in for the day, get five minutes. Something is better than nothing, you know, that's the thing. So, yeah, I think that is going to wrap up this podcast, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Barn Talk. We're going to be putting new podcasts out every Friday. Tell us what you think.

Yes, no. Tell us what you think. Rate us. Give us a good rating and genuinely give us some feedback on what we can improve on or, you know, the lighting's not right. Or if, you know, if something's not, is catching your eye and you want to give us some feedback, we'll take. the criticism. Our shoulders are pretty broad. If my jowls look abnormally large, we'll change the, we'll change the lighting, we'll back the camera off, whatever. All right, guys, have a good one, and we'll see you next Friday.