Barn Talk - Is Solar Worth It? - Everything You Need To Know Before You Buy w/Jason Egli

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Welcome To Barn Talk! In today’s episode, we have Jason Egli on the show. We discuss Jason’s journey from farm kid, to solar entrepreneur, going to college as a chemical engineer, how solar works, working in corporate America, managing people and much, much more. SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c ADD US ON: INSTAGRAM ➱ https://bit.ly/3gaobdN TIKTOK ➱ https://bit.ly/3eJfftr ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays at the barn. Until now, we're going to let it all out for you guys. We have another special episode today. We got another guest on.

I'm here with my sidekick as always. Torque, a.k.a. my father. I have the one name intro because it doesn't matter what my last name is. I'm just torque. Well, that's how most people know you ask. So, yeah, when I go to... It's pretty iconic. When most people go to the tire store to get up there, you know, they take a tire and you drop it off, you come back to get it.

It says S. Whistler on it or it says T. Miller on it. When I go, it just says torque. Torque. That's how it goes. Yeah. Okay. Before we get started, I got a shout out. I got a special shout out.

If you're a faithful listener to the podcast, you know that I'm on the hunt for some signs because we've got this barn and we'd like to get some memorabilia in it. And one of the things that's near and dearer to my heart, because I got a lot of free pop as a kid, is Farmers Hybrid Genetics, because we were a Farmers Hybrid Farm. and I've been on the hunt for the large black and white bore power sign,

but I can't find one. We had a really nice one, but my dad patched a hole with it because that's what you do with good metal signs that people give you. But Tom Strait reached out to me on LinkedIn. Shout out to you, Tom. Tom, you're a heck of a guy, and he had, we used to have one of these, and I'm pretty sure we patched a hole in our raised deck nursery with it,

but it is the pig factory bore power sign. So thank you to Tom. friend of the show, all around great human being for boxing that up and shipping to me. And it was no small feat getting it shipped because it was kind of an oddball box. And it looked like he taped three boxes together and make that one work. So thanks to that. And we'll be hanging it up here somewhere. We'll have a place for it.

Yeah, we just got to figure out where we're going to put all this stuff. So, yeah. Anyway, work in progress, trial and error. Trial and error, baby. This will do for now. This will do. So your market update. sponsored by nobody.

Remember, if you want that, if you want that, let us know for a small sum of many thousand dollars. You could be a market update sponsor, or maybe even like $10. You never know. It's kind of an auction. If we don't get eight takers, the price gets cheaper. So your clothes, so we're on a Friday,

so this would be the close from yesterday. Corn is about, for us in Southeast Iowa, 681 at Big River, which is kind of odd. Big River must be really on the hunt for corn because they usually don't have that good a bid, but they've got the high bid. And the local feeders, the high there is about 668

in a 10-mile radius of the Thistledew Empire. And soybeans, 1445. And I think that's it. I think that's Burlington, and they are actually the high. And if the market keeps going like it is, it'll be lower by the end of the day because last time I looked it was down pretty hard. hogs 105 on the board cattle are still hanging in there about 120 Bitcoin Bitcoin has had a good run

coming back last time I checked it was 388 and it got up to over 40,000 I think it was 40,900 so it's come back a long ways from 28,000 which it was at one point last week so the whales the whales are out swallowing it up so I'm I'm glad to see that Tesla Tesla 687 today Dad's pretty proud about that I'm pretty happy about that they had their earnings call they made a billion dollars selling cars first time they've actually made money selling cars and all the haters that think that they made all their money off regulatory credits thumbs down to you because they made it off selling cars and and it only gets better from here and you know, Elon, we're going to have him on here one of these days.

That would be awesome. I would love to see that, Elon, if you're out there. Probably not listening, but if you ever do, we'd love to have you on here. Yeah. So anyway, good run for Tesla. So our guest today is a dear friend of the show, Jason Eggley. And Jason Eggly, known to me, because he owns a solar business here in southeast Iowa. But he's a man of many talents. He's a farm kid, grew up in southeast Iowa.

And at an early age, he must have had a knack for asking questions and looking for answers. I didn't have that knack. So he attended Iowa State University, which that's not unusual. But he received a degree in chemical engineering. No ag studies. No ag studies degree for Jason. So right there, you know, hell of a unit already. You know, I don't know what happened, but something.

And from there, his interests in biotech, renewable energy, has kind of taken him a lot of directions all over the world. And currently he's the managing director at CVP Part Advisors, executive vice president of RE advisors. He gives a lot of advice, which is why we got him, because we're looking for advice. and he's the owner and president of EPO Energy. And on top of all this, he's a farmer.

He farms, he lives down close to his family farm where he grew up. And a little known trait about Jason is that his crazy math skills have enabled him to always know how to come out ahead on any mimosa special at any restaurant. He does the math quick and he knows how many got to have. Is it four? Is it five? Is it three? He's your go-to guy if you want to play the unlimited game. So Jason Eggley, welcome to Barn Talk. Welcome, Jason. Thanks, guys. I appreciate the time and getting together with you guys.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think I appreciate it. You know, like you said, I've known you to work for a long time. Fortunately, I've known your wife, you're better half longer than you. Well, that's all right. Yeah, you know, so I mean, we've always got to strive. And like you said, last time we way over. overachieves ourselves on our wives.

Thank you for not advising my wife. You know, at first glance, you probably would have been like, what? What in the hell is she thinking? Yeah, but I'm sure you have other traits that we don't talk about. I do. I do. That's for a different podcast. I don't want to be in my conversation. That's got a way to be sitting out for that one. It's like when we're on vacation, yeah, we have adult talk and sometimes kids are

and they're like, oh, man. I'm going, I'm going to the ocean. Get me away from here. Going to the beach. But you brought up the most thing. I mean, it's just common math. I mean, come on now. I mean, your ultimate goal should be get them as cheap as you can.

There you go. That's right. Get them as cheap as you can and get as many as you can. Yeah. And I mean, so that's a nice thing about the Dici's. It's small enough restaurant. They can usually keep your refilled pretty quick. They are.

They have good service there. You go to the bigger restaurants. They know. They're not always quick. And so sometimes I got to go and you got to keep two. in front of me. It's part of their ploy. You go to these big restaurants.

They just don't get back to you, and it's very hard. It's very hard. Ten Roos and North Lowery does a good job, though. Yeah, yeah, they do. That's a good place, too. Yeah. Somebody commented to Sawyer off one of the last YouTube videos

because we were unloading pigs, and he made the comment that it was a hot day, and it was going to be time for a bush light, and somebody said, you know, it's hard to drink all day if you don't start in the morning. That's right. So, limosa's a good way to start it off. Well, I got some beer sitting here.

I think it's too early for that. Oh, we're going against what the guy said. Well, it's Friday. I might have to get something done yet. Later, though. That's right. I've been starting about this time. I just got back from vacation.

I just got back from vacation. Well, my dad called it a trip, but we call it. Business trip. I'm sure it's deductible. I'm sure it was 100% deductible for EPO energy. Yeah, we talk. Okay. Yes, sir.

For full disclosure. my relationship with Jason is twofold. I've known him for quite a while through the hog side. But I don't know. It's probably been, I don't know how many years ago did I put solar on? Probably five or six years. And so that was how we got acquainted on a business basis. And so I've had solar on one of my sites for five or six years.

And then the other site, what we call site 2, we have a 30 kW system on it, which is probably about three or four years old, something like that. And so, you know, I can firsthand kind of, I've seen the benefits because in the time that I've had solar, my power bill just keeps going up. But on my site that I have 60KW, it stays the same pretty much. And that's the meter minimum. And when you see what you're paying, because the system I have at my home farm, what I call my home farm site 2, it's not big enough to do everything because my house is on it, Sawyer's house is on it, and then the hog buildings and the rest of the farm. So it just basically takes the edge off and that's about it. But when you see what it's done and you compare it to the other one, you're like, yeah, I'd like to have some more solar. Yeah, and I think when we put that system in, you were just building this building.

So you really didn't know what your usage was going to be. so we knew we were going to have to come. We designed it to come back and add on them. I do want to. Yeah, he did. Designed to come back and add on. But I do want to correct you. You actually sold me something first.

Oh, yeah, that's right. I bought my first dog building from you. Yeah. You had to go. You had to switch hands and help each other. Yep. We should have just bartered that deal. I don't know if Cloud would have let me do that or not.

Would have been good. He wouldn't have missed it. He would have been all right. Yeah. I'll have to ask him about that. No, I'd go. If they cost that much, I'd build a couple more right now. They don't cost that much anymore.

No, that's right. That's right. Okay. You're a young buck in southeast Iowa. So tell us, because I'm curious about this. This, when I didn't realize, I knew you'd gone to Iowa State, but I didn't have any idea what your interest was. So what was your childhood like growing up, growing up, that sent you down the path that you're like,

Yeah, chemical engineering. That sounds like fun because I can tell you, I remember my childhood. And the only chemical engineering that I guess I did is when I take... Put some fireworks and a freaking... Well, take like 5M80s and pop the ends out and pour them all into one. I mean, that was kind of like chemical engineering. But I didn't engineer the chemicals. I just compounded them.

Yeah, so you're more of a formulations type guy. Formulations, that's right. I should have gotten into the feed business. I could have been a nutrition. that oh lord yeah ironically when i was flying from wilmington charlotte i was sent by the director of nutrition for um smithfield oh no kidding and he's a hon from kiotta seriously yeah because like he was telling me where i'm like so are you seerern or a grinder he goes no but those are my neighbors and i'm like he told me where he lived i'm like so you know matt and no and he goes oh yeah actually are my cousins

i know them because it is it is a crazy small world it really is so yeah so to go back to my childhood did um i grew up um you just east across from ireville i which is about i don't know 12 miles from here so um my family uh crop farmed we had corn and soy beans and we ferrode finish hogs we had a 30 crate uh hog operation and then we had a pull to get 10 crate pull together and then one of my summer projects we converted uh corn crib to fair house one summer so you know fun times nice uh one of the moments I've ever had in the farm was when we did that. This would have been back in the 80s, early 80s. Yep, early to mid-80s.

And so I grew up on hog farm. You know, and one of the things, you know, people asked me about college and stuff. I kind of, I did a lot. I got into chemical engineering, but I ended up doing more management of operations versus true engineering and stuff like that. And a lot of that has to do. Like, my dad always told me, I never realized it when I was a kid, but like when I was 12 years old, we had a guy or two to work for us on the farm and he'd go he'd tell me what to do then I'd tell them what to do because he didn't really like to manage the help so like when I was a kid I didn't

really think anything of it then you know 10 12 years ago you was yeah that's what I did I'm like okay that makes sense it's always been in you to manage people yeah and I mean I guess I don't really at that point you don't really think is management right you're like okay yeah I was helping guide people what we went done that day and my wife and my sister say that I'm still pretty get at it so i don't know if that's a compliment or not though you just tell them teamwork makes dream work that somebody's got to run off can i can i can i'm sure my kids this morning weren't happy with me you know we come back from vacation and i got them clean out of bean that's been sitting there for a month that's good salesmanship too right there if you can pull that off it was early salesmanship i just

kind of told them mulley pulpit but uh yeah so grew up on the farm um but like uh they the 80s was rough for farming kind of went through a farm crisis then and and uh you know one of the things because of the financial situation my parents uh i ended up started farming around about 200 acres when i was 15 um and i farm that through college that kind of what put me through college and you know yeah i in the end it really wasn't i bought the input sold stuff and stuff like that but i mean i still used my parents equipment and things like that and like when i was in college they I wasn't home all the time, so they'd still put it in. But I mean, so I started farming when I was 15 and farmed until I was 21.

And then I, like you said, I graduated a chemical engineering degree. So what's that, what was that journey like? Because, okay, when you went to Iowa State, you know, you decided you're going to Iowa State, was that your major right off the bat? Yeah, so I knew I was going into engineering. I didn't have a clue what. So, like, I went up for orientation, one of my friends from, I'll graduate from Winfield.

My union went to Waco until I was a sophomore. I transferred to Winfield. So you might lose some podcast guys if I say that too much. So you're, so were you special needs going to Iowa State coming from that area? I mean, did you get a free, well, you're on a scholarship for? No. No, really?

No, that's surprising. Actually, to be honest, I didn't know a lot about that stuff. My wife went to the Waco school district, so I can dig on them a little bit. No, no, actually, that's where my kids go now. I can't say too much. No. But, you know, chemical engineering. I knew I was going to engineering,

and one of my friends that I ended up room with my first year from Winfield, he goes, you should go into chemical engineering. You like chemistry, physics, and math. Okay. So I checked chemical engineering. And the nice thing about chemical engineering at Iowa State at that point is you didn't have to apply. So like mechanical and electrical engineering,

you have to go for a year and then apply to get into the colleges. Oh, I got you. Once you, at that point, all I had to say was chemical engineering, so I was actually in the chemical engineering college. So what that allowed me to do is I started taking chemical engineering classes my first semester of my sophomore year. And so, but it puts you in some different chemistry classes, like a higher level chemistry class, my first year and things like that. So it really kind of spirit. And to be honest, once I got in, I didn't know any better to get out of it. So you were naturally good at math and, you know, some.

and all that stuff in high school. And so you were just like, I'm going to go into engineering. You just didn't know what kind of engineer you wanted to be. Yeah. Yeah. And to be honest, my parents didn't know what engineers did. I'm like, I just remember my graduation party in high school. My mom had like a picture of a train.

Gave you a striped pat. Yeah. I'm like, uh, no, that's not what I do. And to be honest, I didn't know a lot about what chemical engineering. There was no internet. You could just, what's an engineer? So I've heard this. Tell me if I'm wrong. But also you, you were a little bit practically self-taught by the time you were, like when you talk about your math, your physics, did you, I thought I heard a story like that you guys kind of taught yourself. Yeah. So Winfield, there's five or six of us that basically starting my sophomore year, we all took higher level science and math classes. When I was a senior, we took calculus and we took the AP test.

and we got a new math teacher my senior year fresh out of college and she couldn't teach calculus so we ended up kind of working together and just teaching ourselves and to be honest that that's I mean that's how you learn yeah yeah if you can teach somebody something you understand it learn by doing I mean and so learn by teaching yeah and it really helped me because my first two calculus classes iowa state weren't weren't too hard for you right yeah I mean the end of my second semester, it got hard. I mean, then my third and fourth year, or third and fourth class,

the calculus. And once you got in a physical chemistry, well, that's shit, like, like, peorbitables and stuff like that. Yeah.

It's like one time, my dad sells fertilizer, and we were at a meeting with a professor from Purdue, and he started talking about puerables, and my wife's actually a chemical clinic one or two. So we met at Iowa State. We can talk about that later.

I weigh outkick myself on this one. when I got her but he was talking about you know why beers the color it is because of pure oil bottles and all this stuff and I'm like okay I remember that stuff but yeah I have no idea how much how much of calculus

do you actually use in the real world uh actually a fair amount a fair amount yeah um I use more trig than I do calculus but I I would say like when I worked in the I mean when I worked the corporate world I mean

do use calculus and volumes and calculations and stuff like that, I'd use it on a weekly basis now, a few times a month. Yep. I mean, because... Yeah, that's how it is here at this will do. Wouldn't you say? Yeah, we get on, we get a pen and paper out,

and we just go to town. Yeah, I think between calculus and trig, it's almost a toss up here, this will do. Yeah. Which one we use more. I wish I had that luxury being good at math, but I absolutely hated math. I did too much talking and not enough looking at the picture.

And then once you get behind, in math class. Good luck. You're screwed. I think you're... And I think one of the things that helped me is I never... I mean, even college, we couldn't use calculators in math. Wow, wow.

And a lot of our classes, they're like, you know, as long as you understand the concept, the math they weren't as worried about. Right. And so that's one of the downsides of today is like, my kids can't do simple math sometimes because they use calculators of them. Right. Yeah, and that's, you know, I think any,

I think most people will tell you the doing that if you can find an application, like if you can find an application that somebody is interested in, math becomes very simple because I wouldn't say I was terrible at math. I just didn't apply myself very well. But when I got to the building business, it's crazy how the calculations that we used for finding volume, for square footage, for or air exchange. Boy, I could learn, you know, I picked that up really easy, and I could rattle that stuff off, and people are like, oh, you're pretty good at math.

And I was like, no. But when you find something that you actually use, that benefits you that you can use it for, then it's easy because it's in concrete terms that you can see. Right. So much of what, you know, gets taught. I feel like is kind of an abstract and people can't connect with it. Now, some people can learn that way, but I couldn't.

I wasn't. And I hated, I used to hate reading. I used to hate reading in school because they'd give you books like, I don't know, they'd give you books that don't, fiction books. You don't know because you didn't read them. Right. I'd go look on websites and get the summary of it and then I'd fill out the papers. But now I like to, I like to read because I actually read stuff that I think is going

to bring value to my life and I connect with it. You're a renaissance man. Well, son of a gun. No, I'm the same way. I mean, I've probably read two books since I've been out of college. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but I'll read lots of articles and stuff like that.

I mean, I just, I don't know. My wife, she can sit and read 24 hours a day. She likes to read. Okay, so you're in college. Yep. So you've got kind of a unique, another unique experience. So what, what's your connection with the, I know you, I know you like Iowa State athletics? Did you always like Iowa State or were you a Hawkeyes fan?

No, I've never been a Hawk fan. I get out. Honestly, just stop, just shut it off. Just get out of here. Hey, somebody's got to be smart down here. Ooh, well, I mean, honestly, I liked option football, so I liked Oklahoma and Nebraska.

Oh, sure, yeah. When I was in high school and younger. So, I mean, those were kind of my teams. Now, not so much. Right. But, yeah, no, I was fortunate. I had the opportunity to be the manager for the basketball team at Iowa State. I got to work for Coach Johnny O'R, kind of legend in the basketball industry.

Actually, we rode bus every once in a while, and I'd sit up there and just listen to him and talk because he was actually the number one draft pick in the ABA when he came out of college, which was unique. And then I got to work for Tim Floyd. Coach Floyd, I could text him today and he'd call me tomorrow. That's awesome. I mean, still great contacts. A lot of the players.

actually tomorrow they're having alumni banquet up at Iowa State so me and the family are heading up there which is cool because a lot of the guys that are in the NBA now and a lot of the guys that were around when I was there so we could see them get to meet TJ the new coach at Iowa State I've never he's been there but I don't remember meeting him yeah but I mean it's it's a cool thing and like prom did a great job doing that and so the nice thing about that is like he come I mean I didn't know him from adam and he come and sit with doctors five 10 minutes from the outside looking in, that had to be a great experience in the fact that being in the engineering, you deal with a lot of people that are very intelligent, but can't necessarily,

aren't the most articulate. And being in the sports world, you deal with some, and I mean, I think there's some people in there that are very athletic, but maybe you aren't articulate, but you probably learned a lot about public relations and dealing with people that had different point of view.

views that it's don't you feel like i'm not trying to put word no yeah no i mean exactly i i think i learned as much for what i do what i did in the corporal world and what i do now from being a basketball major because you're going to learn how to manage people right um and in the athletic world you work with all backgrounds and walks of life yeah right uh you know i mean one one guy one guy got to know pretty good because like the first week uh he was there he got in trouble and so ended up driving to his parole officer for two months. You know, so I mean, you get to know people for different ways. I mean, but these are guys that I still have some contact with.

And there's guys that played in NBA for 15 years and stuff like that that I, you know, was able to get to be good friends with. And like Troy Davis, he was a, I mean, if, you know, college football, he was an outstanding running back. And I got to know him. we'd eat dinner together. You know, people that, I'm like, normally, you just wouldn't get to know that well. Right, right. But it's kind of fun.

Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. But, you know, like I said, I mean, I still keep in contact. Like, there's guys that, you know, have businesses around here, small business. It's kind of like me, and you talk to them and get to know them real well. I mean, like Clay Edwards, he's in Winfield. So, you know, he was there towards the end of my career, but he came Winfield. And so it was kind of fun hanging out with him.

And him, actually, my kids and my kids run around quite a bit. How, so is? Yeah, when you talk about, you know, the skills you gain from doing that, who's the guy? I can't ever remember the people, but I was just listening to, I think. Bradley, Ed Milit. No, it was off the, it was off Navel's or Naval's podcast. Yeah, because he was talking about how that, you know, if you try, if you try to focus

and be the best at one skill, the list of people. The list of people that are good at that skill for whatever it is is pretty lengthy. But he said, if you are somebody and you can be in the top 25% in, say, three different skills, you've basically made yourself invaluable because the chances of anybody else being good in those three things, the odds drop exponentially to where you become invaluable because you can, well, you know, you can do chemical engineering, but you can actually manage people and talk to them. Yes, manage people and explain to them what you're doing, which there's a lot of people on all three of those that they can do one of those things, but they can't do all of them.

Yeah, and I mean, so like when I interviewed, I mean, so one of the other things, fun things that I did in colleges. I went to London and took my chemical engineering labs. So I got three semesters of chemical and engineering labs done in one summer. Plus, I was there with 30 of my best friends from Iowa State. Plus there was six other colleges there. So we had a, it was a big party basically for a month, three months. But I mean, you know, so like when I interviewed for jobs, when I came out of college and internships and stuff, I mean, they never really asked me about engineering stuff. They asked me about traveling to London and what that, and then doing the basketball manager stuff.

Yeah. So, you know, those are the things that people want to know about. And then I already know that you can do the engineering part. They just want to know if you can, what you got out outside of that. As long as I got a degree, they figured I could do the calculations and all those things. Yeah. So do you think your college experience was worth it? Do you think college was worth it at the time that you went?

Did you get enough out of it? And what do you think about college today as far as what kids get out of it? Yes, I do. I think college is, for what I got a degree in, I mean, there was, technical degree. It gave me a lot of opportunities. Granted, the cost of it is about 25% of what it is today. So, I mean, from a value standpoint, yeah, it was very valuable.

Today, I think college degrees are good, but I think you need to make sure you, technical degrees, medical degrees. Get something. There's some degrees that are just complete horseshit. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't, I mean. there's other things that you learn in college besides your degree.

So, I mean, interacting with people. I mean, there's some kids, especially now. I mean, with apps and, I mean, you don't have to talk to people now if you don't want to. Right. I mean, well, I can't really say last year. But, I mean, normally you're going to have some interaction with people. Yep. And you have to learn how to interact with people.

Yep. So hopefully, hopefully that helps you and what you're doing the rest of life. I mean, it might be taking an order of McDonald's or something like that. but I mean, especially if you go to Iowa. My, sorry, I just said, I tell you what, the knives. I didn't go to Iowa. I just like the knives are out.

Well, that's true. You can, you know, you learn a lot of things outside of what you might necessarily be going for. As an example, my one semester at community college, I'd never drink beer out of the funnel, you know, with a garden hose. And I learned that the first week I was there. And that's a skill that, you know, that stayed with. That's just, invaluable.

It really is. It really is. You can't get that anywhere else. But you guys, you don't want to get air in it. Yeah, you got to dump the whole can in other ways. You get air in. You got to get some of this too to stir it up.

That's right. You do. That's right. That's a good trait to learn. And I learned that early, though. Oh, yeah, I learned. I didn't go to college and I still learned that. Still got that.

Why? So I didn't drink in high school or anything. You were too busy. Plus, Darrell, my family didn't drink. They're a good Christian family. So I didn't. Honestly, never really. My friends didn't, so that helped a lot, too.

Do they ever just look at you and say, I think they live in a house with lead paint? I think that's probably probably how it went. A little sniffing. Yeah. Well, I know why you went to London because you've, so you've got your kids home scooping out of bean bin this morning, and you're like, well, go to London for the summer

or go home and scoop out bean bins. I think I'll go to London. And to be honest, it saved me at least a semester of college. Yeah. So from a time standpoint, just because I was able to get to last. done. Right. So, but yeah.

I mean, yeah. Okay. So you made, you made it through. Yep. So what was your first, what was your first job out of college? So, um, my summer between, so I graduated, it took me four and a half years to graduate. Um, and it just says timing of classes and how I took my balance load, my class load and stuff. But, um, I graduated in December, 95.

So four and a half years. So the summer between. the spring and fall. I interned with deer corporate in Moline and I worked at Harvester. So I was kind of a joint person between them. And I worked in her paint and pre-treatment department. And so I bamboos them enough that they actually offer me a job before I left. And so, you know,

a nice thing is my last semester. I just had to pass. So nice. Which is good and bad because I didn't have a huge class load. and I was just going to be there for a semester. So there was another kid. There was a mutual friend of one of my friends. He was actually a kid from Kyoto.

Kevin Gent was his name. So I roomed with him my last semester. And for some reason, we found this apartment, which was like half a block from campus town where all the bars are. Just for anybody that's not familiar with geography of southeast Iowa, What's the sign say for Kyoto, Iowa, the most extroverted town in America, maybe? I don't know. I don't pay enough attention when I drive.

So basically what Jason is alluding to is if you're a college-age kid and you make friends with someone that's from Kyoto, chances are you're probably going to learn some things and you're probably going to have a good time because as a general rule, those guys, they know how to have a good time. Yeah, so, and Kevin was in translog. So, I mean, not as difficult as chemical engineering, but I mean, it was still somewhat technical degree. But no, so, I mean, it was a good time, good time, got it. So I started working at deer. I worked at corporate and went back and forth the harvester.

So I ended up, at corporate, I ran, I did a lot of paint, pretreatment testing. So, like, they have plants all throughout the world, and we test their paint. salt tests, weathering tests, those types of things. And then I ended up moving down the harvester, which is where they build the combines. They're in what they call the E-coat. So basically you just dip the whole body in a big vat of paint, turn on electricity, paint on the track to it.

It's pretty cool. Yeah. What's it look like before it gets painted? Is it just steel? It's just metal steel. Yep. Looks like a gleaner. Exactly.

That's how they save money on the... They just, they get it that far and somebody's like, you know, shut it off. Let's just put the decals on it and call good. What do you say? Save some money. No. So not quite that pretty. Oh, it's not.

We're there. But, you know, I ran that for a couple years. And the fun stuff, though, is I got to meet a lot of people. Got to help to design what the current system is they have in there. And then, like, they were, that's when they were just working into the rotary that they have now. And so, like, I'd go in at midnight on a Saturday. Saturday night and we'd paint new test bodies and stuff like that. So that was kind of interesting seeing those.

I mean, like they keep covered up and like everybody had to sign a confidential agreement. It was in a plant. I mean, there's not disclosure. Four people in this huge plant. Yeah. And, you know, but, you know, from, that was the first place I really did in management as in the corporate world. But the thing about it was a union.

So, I mean, the nice thing about it is these are the rules. And, you know, people were like, what was it hard? I'm like, no, actually it was the easiest place. I ever managed people because these are the rules. Obviously, you're not a corporate guy today. No. So you got that job out of college. What changed, or was that, was that voice in the back of your head always that, you know,

I kind of want to do my own thing? Or was that an evolution? In other words, you know, did that come later? Or did you always have that kind of fire in the back of your head that? Like I said, I started farming when I was 15. I mean, technically, I'm... Yeah, I was going to say, I'm like, he was a farm kid, so he probably always had it.

It was there, but it started screaming at me after a bunch of corporate years. Yeah, and I work for three different companies. They're all like base companies. I work for deer. Then my wife and I got married, and she was working on Monsanto and Muscatine, and I worked at Deer for another year,

and then I got offered a job and worked in Muscatine. We worked there for five years, and that's about the time that Monsanto, know it was when she started with her special chemical pharmaceutical and egg chemical. So she then they started, then they spun off their special solution, special chemical side. And then when I got hired, right after I got hired, the rest of Monsanto got bought by Pharmacia. And then we worked for a front, but they spun off the egg division. And so we were really still just a chemical side.

And that's when Montanamo started getting the seed side of things. Yeah. And so I was actually the first person to kind of do interaction between the seed and the chem side. I did some pilot stuff up at Grinnell with the Cobb and those types of things up there. So that was pretty fun, unique, because the cultures and seed and chemical are complete different. Completely different. Yeah. Man, you just got a lot of different perspectives.

You were Armkin, then you went to Iowa State, and you were on the basketball team. and just up the engineering side. Yeah, and I mean, one of the things, my wife always gives me crap, I'm very good at introducing people to make. So, like, if you do this and you do this, I'm like, I'm very good at knowing people

and introducing people. I haven't figured out to monetize that yet. I don't know what I'm still working on. Let us know. We're still figuring it out too. But, I mean, the neat thing about it is, I mean, I know people all throughout the world. I mean, so I'll, like,

actually a guy from Brazil called me this morning, so I was talking to him this morning, and I got buddies in Thailand. I got buddies in Europe. I got buddies in Asia. Connections is huge. Connections is huge. You know matters.

You know, from Monsanto, my wife actually got a job with Eminem Mars candy, and so we moved from there to Waco, Texas. Wait, wait, wait. Doesn't, isn't it hard to keep the chocolate from melting in Waco, Texas? No, no. Actually, she worked on the sugar side, so Starbursts and Skills she made down there, but they had chocolate there too. too. So she really didn't work on the chocolate side. It was fun to visit her because they give this big ass box of candy every time or there. So like, I was going to say, do they ever just stick? Did they ever just stick their finger in there and just? You know I would. You know

I would. Starbursts are coming off the line. Believe or not, that's kind of frowned upon. Yeah. If I was a starburst guy, there would be somebody out there that go through a whole bag and there'd be no orange ones. They'd be like, where are all the orange ones? Well, they're all in my lunchbox. So one thing, though, it's cool. It's like M&Ms and Skittles. They actually stamp the S and the M&Ms on each. Really? They go on a plate and they actually have a press and it.

puts the M and the S on them. That's cool. I didn't know that. Which is crazy. God. Some engineer somewhere figure that out. But, I mean, the craziest thing is watching the Snickers line. They'd pack each thousand Snickers a minute.

Holy cow. Do you think it's higher now? I don't know if they do it faster per line, but then I mean, Obviously, the big thing is that multiple lines. You're not satisfied with a thousand minutes? I don't know. What year was that? 90s? So, John, he was the one born on it.

He's going to be 18 in September, so it was 18 years ago. Okay, so like early 2000. 2002. Hell, what? Three. He was born in three. Well, you still had a frickin' flip flown back then, didn't you? We had a phone.

We had bag phones. Yeah, I'm sure I had a bag phone. I bet they make 10,000 Snickers. minute now. Packaged 10,000 Snickers a minute. Some of those things, how they make it, those engineering, those are pretty cool. Especially on the food side.

But then I didn't get a job down there, so I got, and we had two kids and my family. My mom, dad had some health issues. So my mom had surgery, open art surgery, and I was up here for that. And then after she had surgery, my dad was sitting there.

He was like, hey, yeah, I'm not. feeling so good and kind of went and he goes, he's really, because I'm like, well, in a freaking hospital, let's go get it checked out. They ended up in a room across the hall from each other. He had some stints put in, she had surgery, and unfortunately, they couldn't drive, so I ended up staying up here for a week or two. So after that, we kind of got the wheel spinning.

Yeah, and my wife, we liked Waco, but it wasn't great. I mean, there's a lot of craziness going on down there, so. It's a good thing you got out before Magnolia started or else, you know, You would have been screwed. Yeah, you'd have a big fancy barn house down there with black shutters and a whole bunch of stuff in it. A huge amount of credit card debt. Probably. It's a good thing.

You made it out. Yeah. No, so we moved to Omaha and I went to work at the Cargill facility. I worked for a Dutch company called Pierac and I think now it's called Corbion or something like that. So ran a facility there. And after some stuff there, my wife went to work for ConAier Foods. She worked in her R&D frozen refrigerated division. And she got offered a job in Cedar Falls.

And I met a group of guys down here in Southeast Side were trying to build a couple of ethanol plants. And so they hired me to help on the operation side. And I ended up doing more fundraising and operations. And unfortunately, that was about 2008. So it wasn't a good time to be. No, it wasn't a good time to be asking for $300 million. Yeah.

Is the secret to your security? just the fact that you just can't say no to anybody. Because it just sounds like, it just sounds like that anybody that was like, hey, you want to go do this? You're like, well, sure. I tried to evaluate a little bit. Yeah.

But you've done, I mean, you've moved a lot. Yeah. And then we, so we went from Omaha to see the falls because my wife got offered a job in ConAgra where they make snack back pudding. Yeah. As a quality manager and she moved through a few different engineering roles there. But we lived up there until. six or seven years ago and my mother passed away so my dad was farm on his own so we decided

to move back down here and I we'd always kind of wanted to move back down here mainly me you know my wife's from Des Moines so yeah moving over to the country but I'd prepped her for yes we'll be married 24 years this year so I kind of prepped her for quite a few years to get her to move down here and it's been good I want to make sure I didn't raise city kids yeah right absolutely I mean You know, you know, they're city kids. They wouldn't be scooping out of a bin this morning. That's right. That's a life experience you can't get in Des Moines.

That is an hour. Okay. What was your first venture on your, entrepreneur? That was on your life. So when I moved to Sea Falls, I met some guys and a guy and through church, and I started doing consulting,

ethanol plants, biotech stuff. That's kind of my background. I'm working with them. I did some sales. My dad sells fertilizer. for AgaGroro. And so I'd done some sales with him.

Sales, believe it or not, it's not really my thing. No, I can't believe that. I know. I don't like to talk to people. You know so many people, but you only talk to them. Especially people that don't agree with you.

Yeah. Yeah, actually. When you lay it all out and then they don't buy it, you're like, wait, what's wrong with you? That doesn't bother me because sometimes I'll lay it all out and I'll go, this doesn't make a lot of sense for you. So from that aspect, I'm not the best sale. You know, I never have.

that when I was selling hogglings. I don't think I ever met a single person that I talked to, no matter what, their situation that I didn't think, no, you need this. So I could, I would say, join ethanol plant. I mean, ethanol plant, I was working for a board, but I mean, I was really driving it. Yeah. And then, um, there and then, uh, the solar business, you know, it was kind of probably the biggest venture. Okay. I got into. Okay. So, you've been on this journey how how did you find yourself

starting EPO energy oh so I was the Cedar Falls and working consulting one day my cousins they farm down by Fairfield pretty decent sized farmers and stuff like that and one day my oldest cousin calls me he goes hey

you can help me with paperwork on the solar project I'm like sure you know so about two days later later they uh they call me he calls me back and he goes hey you think you help me find equipment and like yeah sure no problem because some relationships and stuff that i had we'd worked on some other projects with renewal equipment and i'm like yeah there's a group i can call a couple groups i can call so uh so did that started did one other couple their buildings they have i don't know how many

they have now at that point they had a bunch yeah a bunch they had 10 or 11 hog buildings we've done or the four of their sites and their neighbor calls us and goes, hey, you think you can do ours? And after we did theirs, another neighbor calls and say, hey, can do one for me? And after about three or four of those, they're like, all right, maybe we should make this a business. Yeah. So what year was that? 13.

13. 2013. Yeah. So southeast Iowa, for whatever reason, became like solar central. I've often told people that when they come down here, people be like, wow, there's a lot of solar down here because all these hog buildings have solar. And when I was selling hog buildings,

I would explain to people, I said, if there was a tax credit for having pink flamingos in your yard, Southeast Iowa would have more pink flamingos than anywhere else in the United States. Because when that whole solar thing started, between the grants and the tax credits and the fact that we as an industry we have all these really long buildings mostly laying east to west with a roof on the south side so it kind of lended itself to putting solar on well and the nice thing it too is the hog going is pretty much their energy consumption is pretty constant over the year I mean so like depending on the types of hogs if you do wean or feed to finish through your cycle, your average is going to be the same pretty much every year.

Yeah, and that makes it good for... It makes it good for easy from a design standpoint. Yeah. So that's how you got started. So what was the biggest struggle? Because I'm assuming that was kind of a new, it was a learning curve on what worked and...

Yeah, I mean, a nice thing. From an insulate, it's like Lincoln or Legos. I mean, putting them together is not overly complicated. You got to understand some of the electrical side, I understand how the string. them and those types of things. The technology's changed, obviously, a fair amount

over the last eight years, but I mean, in the end, you have racking, you have the DC side, the inverters and the optimizers or the string, and then you've got the panels. So, I mean, those are really three things. I mean, honestly, the biggest thing is what the state requires from a permitting standpoint, from a labeling standpoint,

what the utilities want to see, how they do things. That stuff has changed more, and that's the stuff that's paying the butt. Right. It's figuring out what they want, Because, I mean, we had some stuff when we started. We really helped the state understand what they needed to do. And then they'd change their mind.

And they're like, no, like, we'd have stuff installed in one week. And they're like, oh, no, no, that's not what we want to do. You'd do it this way. So you'd have to change things. 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 flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero?

More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Okay. So for somebody out there that's watching or listening and they don't have any exposure to solar, and they're thinking, you know, this is something I'm interested in. How do you start? What's the first thing they should do? So the first thing that I'm going to ask for, if you call me and go, hey, I want to put solar.

Soilers, hey, I want to put solar in my new hog building. All right. Do you have 12 months of utility usage? For a high building, it's not as critical. But, I mean, yeah, that's what I'm going to ask for is the last 12 months. I'm going to ask for your bills, too, so I understand how they're billing you, what your utility is. Because each utility handles what I call net metering or excess power differently. A lot in midam are the same.

But if you go to an REC or municipality, everyone's slightly different. Okay. Let's talk about. State to state different, too? Yeah, states to states different too. Yep. So we, and then I'm glad you brought that up. So, I mean, we did, we've done stuff in Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, and Iowa, obviously,

where we've, we've working on some projects in Nebraska, bidding those, Texas, Arkansas. I mean, so kind of the Midwest is kind of our niche area. Our, our key focus is ag. Yep. But that's, that's really where we've been. And each state is different. Each in Minnesota palates different. So is the reason for that more because of building code?

It's probably somewhat simpler to do an installation in ag when you don't have to deal with zoning and building permits and all that. In Iowa. Yeah. In Iowa it is. Yeah. Is there other places where it's... Minnesota is more difficult. All the way along.

Just because in each county is different there. It's like we did a project for a gentleman up there that's a decent-sized hog farmer and crop farmer. I think he farms like 40,000 acres or something. DeS size. He's just about like us. Just a little bigger. He depends on where he put the decimal point. He got bored, so he started hog farming too.

So, but he's got buildings, multiple counties in Minnesota. I mean, we had stuff like literally 100 feet across the cross-county line. No, state line. And Iowa is much, much easier. And in Minnesota, every county is different. They have different setbacks. They have different rules on what you can do.

It's like building in the city. So you have to stay up on. You got to have somebody that's staying up on all that. That one was more to learn painfully. We had to move stuff. Well, you learn by doing, Jason. You figured it out, damn it. Trial and error.

Trial and error. So you got the 12 months. They need the 12 months of their bills and everything. What's next after that? Then from there, we'll size it. I mean, part of it's going to, to determine on what utility you're on and net metering. And explain net metering in layman's terms.

Sorry, I got to keep my hands down. Oh, you're good. What that is, so the solar system will produce power based on how much it's southern it is and angle and length of time and stuff like that. But when the solar system is producing more electricity, the power will be used on your farm or your house or whatever first. so what I say so and then if you produce excess power it'll go out through the meter and that's what they call net metering and how does your

utility handle that excess power do you like alliance midam right now so like you guys are on the old grandfathered in on we got in on the we got in on the old system well you did I didn't you're on the good yeah torque's on the good system and um what he has is basically it's unlimited basically the excess power goes into what I call a savings account as a kilowatt hour and it will it'll stay there so like at night when you're not producing solar power it'll pull out of there or during the winter months when the days are shorter and stuff like that you're using power so it goes into that savings count and it'll come out of there now with minam and alliance um you can pick either in december 31st or march 31st it'll empty that savings count

torques on the old one a lot of the guys original guys is that actually just stays there and it never appears as long as that account's open. Yeah. So the beautiful thing about my first system especially is, so I have 60KW roughly on a 4,800 head site. And through the summer months, I overproduce, even though my barns are running in tunnel. And it depends a little bit on the size of pigs. So if I luck out to where you're getting wiener pigs in the... Yeah, I'm getting wiener pigs in the summer. I'm really... Not running heat lamps or something like that. I'm really overproducing.

If I've got big pigs, then I'm not overproducing as much. But I am still overproducing. So right now you're just overproducing because we actually got feeder. I mean, they're feeder pig size. But we've been in the summer. So really, we've only started running tunnel in the last two weeks because it's gotten super hot. Other than that, we've been in natural. And that means that my big tunnel fans aren't running.

And so we're getting a lot of sun, so I'm making a lot of power. but what's really nice for that is that site that I'm at is actually where my drying bin is. So I've got a shivers system with two-burner, twin-burner deal. And when I'm drying corn, if I'm drying wet corn, I'm burning, it makes the meter spin. But because I bank unlimited, so I'm just banking, banking, banking. pretty much unless we get into a fall where, and I haven't had a fall like this since I put the solar up there and did that system, pretty much every year I can dry my corn for free because I've got enough credit that I don't burn up everything I've used by the time I get done drying corn. And I think that there was one year in there where I got into maybe like February and I had a, let's just say I had a $300 bill because I'd actually used up all of my credit and you're in the short,

we had a lot of snow that year and I wasn't producing much. So I actually got back to- Was it more wet or was- I don't remember. I feel like it was. I feel like that we must have had to dry corn longer because usually the way it works is, you know, we only run, we only have to run about two batches and then it's drying down so much in the field that we just blow air on it and call it good. but anyway um but you take like last year last year we dried all the corn went clear through

and my bill is consistently what i'd say i think it's just the meter minimum it's all the 20 yeah 20 25 dollars and so that system up there i mean it's sized it's sized perfectly for the old for the old way well and like you said your variability's in your corn drying yep i mean so your hog building It's over three-year time frame. You average it out. Your UCs is the same. Your cost. Because the alliance costs that went up 50% in the last six years, five, six years.

I mean, you can't. Because everybody goes, well, I'm paying more of a bill. I'm like, well, is your UC's the same? Yeah, right. So I want to, one question I got for you. So dad's got solar on all his hog barns. I just built a hog barn last year. And I'm obviously interested in solar.

Would you recommend me, because dad talked to you about this a little bit. Would you recommend me putting it on the ground instead of on the roof? Yeah. I mean, so it comes down in space. So, yeah, if you have space, ground is best because I can make it smaller and it's going to produce more on a same size. Because you can angle. Yeah, because the angle is perfect. So 30 degrees is what we do in this part of the state.

That's the best for summer production. The flatter in the summer, I mean, some guys talk about moving, you know, rotating things. We have not done any of those. We evaluate some of them, but one of the things that people like about solar is that there's no moving parts. Right. So things don't break down.

Yep. durable. Right. So, yeah. So if you have space, we'd recommend put it on the ground. And also on high buildings, every two to three years,

we'd recommend cleaning them. And it's not because of dust. It's more of the oil, the vapor side of the things. When it comes out, it'll get like an oil, Grammy grit on your panels. So, like,

we cleaned yours a couple years ago. Yeah, so if you put your panels on the south side of your hog buildings in front of where you have six 30-ton bins that get filled with feed and then, you know, when they fill it on a windy day and the feed blows on top of the solar panels, you get some, you get some soybean meal on there, a little bit of oil. Yeah, but it's that oil, it's that, like if you look at a hog building down at the end and it kind of wraps around, there's that black stuff. That's the stuff that you got to get off.

Yeah, eggly power washing came or eggly solar panels. cleaning ink LLC trust whatever that's the privilege having kids man I got four them a K-a slave labor came and washed my panels for me it's a decent job and you know get a basket what he gonna do when you run out all these kids get more oh we've done with that oh maybe we'll have grandkids no I'm oh boy careful for that I know my oldest would be 21 this fall so yes one thing I wanted to just say guys if you are interested in, you know, purchase the solar, if you're interested in, you just want to talk about it. We'll have Jason's link to his website and his number down below. You can give him a call,

and Jason will give you a discount. Yeah. And mention this will do Farms or Barn Talk, and we'll give you a discount on the system. I mean, depending on the size of system, but I mean, what kind of discount you think? Depending on the size of system, up to $1,000. Up to $1,000 off, guys. That's a hell of a deal. if you're interested at all, we'll just look down below and we'll get you, we'll get you linked up with Jason. Yeah, like I said, you know, we're focused in the Midwest, but like we've talked to people all over to you guys. I mean, then it comes down to, if we can get enough jobs in different parts of the U.S., we'll move. We'll go there.

He's ready to take you on. Well, what I like, so, I mean, you know, obviously we've got a relationship. But the reason that I had Jason on here is because this is one of those things that you, there's a lot of noise out there and I see ads on social media and I see ads on on TV, TV, TikTok, whatever, talking about, oh, you can get rid of your power bill. And the thing is, at the end of the day, it's a pretty, you got to know, you got to know what you're doing. You got to know how to size the system. There's a lot of different equipment out there and some of it's better than others. And I don't have time. When I decided I wanted solar, I didn't know.

anything about it. And I just wanted somebody that I knew, one knew my business because does the same thing I'm doing and has done enough of them that they know what works, they know what doesn't work, and they're not going to use junk. And then the other thing is, and this is a perfect example, because two weeks ago, I was looking at my system, my small system, and one of my, one of my inverters was sitting there blinking, and I didn't know what was wrong with it so i called jason and they had somebody come out and they figured it out and they fixed it because it's not just getting that system up it's maintaining it's maintaining it and if you if you don't have somebody that you're comfortable enough that you can call it and you call a regular

electrician that electrician may not know anything about what's sitting there'll be sitting up there for five hours and they charge you five hours for work and it may not they may not so you know anyway If you're thinking about solar, just give Jason a call and, you know, it doesn't cost anything for a phone call. Right. Yeah. I mean, like my motto is, I'm like, if you pay taxes and buy electricity, you should at least look at it. That's a good, we need a motto. Well, this will do, baby.

I know. Try on air, get you a long ways. This will do. No. You got a lot of one-liners. We need a lot of T-shirts. We do. We should get in the T-shirt business.

It's kind of like a forest gump. You guys could be like the forest gump of podcasts or something. Kind of, yeah, kind of. Stupid is. The stupid does. Yeah, that's kind of us. One of my kids had one of those. So, time frame.

From the time somebody decides that they want to go this route, they get you their information as far as their bills go. Then what's the next step? Yeah, so the next step is design in it. Then we have to turn in paperwork to the utility. company, depend on the utility company that can take up 45, 60 days, and then getting equipment and installing. And then really comes out on our schedule.

Okay. What is the, what's the climate as far as grants, rebates, tax? Right now, everything's on the tax side. There is some rep grants. Actually, I just got an email last week about they're looking for more. grant. So like when we first started, USDA had a program called REAP, which is like a rural electric

something. Something, something. Yeah, something, something. But we were successful the first couple years of that because they targeted solar, like two years prior to that, they targeted grain drivers. And then once they kind of, they moved on to something else, it was harder to get those grants. I've applied for a hundred of them, probably got 70 of them. So, it's, It's worth the time if we can get them. And so I don't know if they're, with this administration,

it seems like they're targeting renewable energy again. So looking at those programs, right, when you guys got a utility, when, sorry, when torque received, or when we put a system in, some of the utilities had grants. Yeah, right. Rebates, whatever you want to call it.

Right now, to my knowledge, there's not a lot of that out there. Yeah, I think they've gotten enough systems that, they don't need to entice people to do it because people have figured out that it's a good deal it's a good deal so right and you know and some of that that stuff could pop up and change and depend on utility so that's part of the getting information when we ask for the bills is looking at that utility and understanding what they have so what's next so you know from the time you started till the day what's what's changed so what's changed obviously technology's changed i mean

equipment so panels were like when we started 13 14% efficient now they're 19 20% efficient inverters the technology we there's what they call a string inverter so it'd be 13 panels in a row and each panel you know you're you're restricted by the minimum one they have now they have what we use as optimizers in a string so each panel operates independently there's also microinverters so like when we started they were just coming out in microverts so the difference between that and um like a string inverter even with optimizers is that It converts it right at the back panel, the DC to AC power. So the solar system makes DC power, but the grid is AC power.

And I don't remember though. You developed what, but there was a battle back to 1800s about which more efficient, stuff like that. Nicola. But so there's technology that will convert it right at the back of the panel. So each panel really is operating it from DC to AC. We bring it to an inverter and then convert it from DC power to AC. power there. The reason we do that is it's not specialized wire and it's quite a bit cheaper to do from an installation standpoint. So I'm clear on that. So, and minor this way where it's DC power

all the way to, I've got solar edge inverters. So you're bringing DC power off the roof. You're gathering it up off each panel, bringing it down, it goes to inverter. But now then there are people that they make a, they make a, a box, microinverter. That it's converting it right at the panel. Okay, but then if you do that, I'm assuming that it's probably more wire or bigger wire or. It's a different,

it's more of a specialized wire. So like the stuff that we use, you can go to most electrical stores and buy the wiring that we use. Yep. So the good thing about that is we cut it short or we move panels around, we can modify that there whereas with in phase the microinverter side of things it's they have truncated cables and you get in doing foot length but if you move oh this I can't put this panel here I got to move it to the other side right then I have to order that wire and bring it so it just

it's what we do or how this most of the systems that we install it's it's basic wiring yeah and I get thing about that is so say I go away or whatever five years or or 10 years or 20 years or whatever. If some wiring goes bad, you guys could replace it with what's there. See, Jason understands. See that? Yeah. He's like in 10 years when you're not around.

So we have this. That's what that always says to me. He says, you know, he built all the, he built these barns. And in 10 years, when stuff starts going to shit, it's going to be my responsibility. I'm just going to have to figure it out. And he's just going to be on a swivel-coosy mower, mowing, drinking beer. Yep. So.

I don't want any of the headaches. I guess if the wires go to shit too on the solar panels, I'm going to have to figure it out as well. Torque ain't going to be here to help. Well, he'll be just sitting on his ass recording podcasts and drinking beer. We'll be honest. We'll be honest. If it went bad tomorrow, torque wouldn't figure it out.

No, I'd call somebody. Call Jason. So, yeah, so, I mean, there's different types of systems. There's different technology. But, I mean, it's a lot more efficient from a cost standpoint. our equipment cost is about half of what it was when we started. Yeah. That's awesome.

You know, if it gets, it's a supply of demand thing. I mean, if demand goes up, I mean, equipment will get more expensive. I mean, and right now, I mean, from a component standpoint, they're computers. Yeah. So, I mean, the inverters of stuff, costs went up. You know, the rackings, aluminum. So some of that costs went up. So, I mean, from that aspect, material costs went up.

So our costs went up, too. Yeah, but your panels are a little more. a little more efficient, so that helps a little bit. Right. So you don't need as many. You don't need as a biggest system. So what's next? Where are we headed as in this side of the renewable energy side?

I mean, I honestly think I'd keep growing. I mean, when we started part of the problem, we dealt with was like, oh, does this technology work? We're past that. I mean, I never get chaos asked, does this work? Right. No, I think the- Is it snake oil or does it work? No, I mean, and that's,

like when we started like oh it's been around for 50 years we just not um big in this area yeah and actually um one thing is like Iowa you know does i have much sun i'm like well i think from um radiation standpoint or how much power can be produced ios like 16th in us wow that's surprising yeah we're in a good spot yeah and part of it's you know we don't have as long as you know you go south you get longer days you get more sun and those types of things what's number one texas Arizona California is huge, obviously. Yep. One of the things, so actually higher elevation and cooler weather is better for solar

is if you get over 5, 88 degrees, they actually become less efficient. Because the panels heat up so they don't convert as well. Yep. So it's like an engine. I tell people it's like an engine. It gets hot. It doesn't perform as well. So even though like these days we've had, it's just plenty of sun, but it's also

been blazing hot, they probably aren't producing as well as a 78 degree day. We're full sun. Like actually in the wintertime, sometimes it'll peak. Hell, we were hoping, you know, we're having the solar king here. We were hoping maybe that Mother Nature was going to be like, well, I just always thought that the sun. I'm going to bless you guys today. Well, I just figured the sunshine just followed Jason around. I know.

I mean, clouds follow us around. I am a ray of sunshine. You are a little ray of sunshine. No doubt about that. Okay, what about, what about batteries? So there's a lot of talk about there, there was just a deal. I'm going to talk about Tesla for a minute. So in California, people have Tesla power walls,

if they're feeling generous, because my understanding is that they don't get anything for this, but they've set up a deal now where people can set a minimum limit on their power wall, and if the grid, if California Edison or whatever, if they need power, they can choose to let, some of their power go back into the grid because they've got this battery storage. Around here, very few, I don't know of, I know of almost no, I don't know anybody that has, that is using the battery backups.

Yeah, so we have not installed any battery systems. We've evaluated some, but the cost of power here is relatively low compared to the rest. I mean, so like you go to California, I mean, cost of power is double what ours is. especially during the beat time. So is that kind of the threshold to where it makes sense? If you're produced, so my understanding is in a situation like I've got where I'm overproducing, I'm sending that power up the grid to the lion.

But if I had a battery system. Send it to your neighbor next door. Right, wherever it goes on. It's fine. And it's, you know, and that's, you know,

the disagreement like that we have with utility companies as an association, is that we're saving you money on transmission costs. Sure. And infrastructure. Yeah. Because anything you overproduces going to your neighbor next door. But if I had a battery, if I had a battery system, the way that would work then is I would burn what I'm going to burn, then the balance would fill the battery. And then if the battery was completely at capacity, then it would go to the system.

Yep. then when the sun goes down, I would draw out of that battery before I tapped into the grid. Correct. But if my energy cost is low enough compared to what those batteries cost, is that the limiting factor to whether that's a good investment? For my standpoint, yes. I mean, so right now most batteries have a 10-year warranty on them. Yep.

And so, in my opinion, if they don't pay for themselves in less than 10 years, It's not a good investment. Right. So does that mean they'll not work after 10 years? No. Yeah. But that's, you know, it's a risk. It's a number of cycles and what percentage of the...

Right. Right. In Iowa, right now, mid-am in a line, or acting as your battery. So why would... You know, and people go, well, what if I lose power? Because the systems that we install don't operate if you don't have power. Yeah. The grid's off.

Even if the sun's shining, you can't draw power directly from your... your panels into your system if the grid's down right because the because they have to have AC power to operate yeah which is the systems we design or the systems we install and so you know people are like well you know what if I want if power goes out yeah that's you know that's something but I go right now economically I'd put it in generator okay just one you know it's going to run for however long you don't have power economically that makes sense we're getting closer the batteries making more sense than putting in a generator, but if people... We're not there yet.

Yeah. I mean, if you asked me what I would do, I'd put it in a generator. Yeah. So, and that's what I've done, to be honest. So in my house and my hog buildings... Tesla won't sell you a power wall anyway. No. You're getting great.

The nice thing about your buddy Elon is that he changed some stuff last fall, so if you want to install power while, you have to buy their panels. There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most. side of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams,

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power roof. And you have to be a certified Tesla installer. Installer. And there's some of those in Southeast Iowa were not one of them. And actually, so I've been talking with Genrack. Yeah. They have a new battery powered system and are integrating that into their generator transfer

switches and stuff like that. So I've been having, actually had a conference call with them last week about that. And so we're evaluating some of that because there's a couple projects that we're kind of, then you know, evaluating putting batteries in. Actually, one of them is a guy down here in South East Iowa is doing some of your crypto mining stuff and he'd like to have a battery backup for that so good plan yep okay so the best thing for somebody to do is if they're thinking about it just call yep yeah like I said we're we've done so like we're talking a little bit about um you know we're local I understand egg I understand you tell

me what I'm you're doing I have a pretty good idea how your operation operates we we don't do a lot residential but we've been doing some installations for companies from california those guys don't have a freaking clue what hell's going on well some do the ones that are leaving i've swore it people from california more in the last three months and i have in a long time or ever hey cut that out we're huge in california oh wait are we i don't think so i haven't got the really like us we haven't got the demographics yet i understand it's okay we're not We can't please everybody. No, I think we covered.

I mean, but each system's unique. I mean, but one of the things I tell people I go, solar's kind of like the cell phone industry. I mean, before cell phone's come out, you're locked in a landline, and I mean, they could charge you whatever the heck they wanted to for a landline. Solar water gives you an opportunity to design a system for your operation and get you away or help minimize what you need for a utility company.

So the bottom line is just freaking call Jason. It's called Jason if you need some damn solar, if you're interested in it. I mean, let's be honest. Yeah, and we at EPO, we don't do a lot of marketing. That's one of the things I'm kind of working on. I'm an engineer for a reason. I don't do marketing. I don't do sales very well, I guess, you know, because like probably 90, 95% of our customers have called me.

Look at that. You're more like Elon than you thought. Elon they don't spend money on marketing. Epo and Tesla. He just tweets by Doge. Yeah. Do you have a Twitter storm that you go on every once in a while? Are you on Twitter?

That did I know of. Well, we'll have your Instagram and stuff down below. I'll help you out a little bit with that. But yeah, so I think we covered everything we want to cover on solar. Yeah. Let's talk about how long you were away from the farm, and we kind of got in this a little bit, but was the ultimate reason why you wanted to come back was,

you know your parents were just getting older or you always had that burning desire that you wanted another you want another chance at farming again yeah so a couple things i i think i mentioned earlier so the kind of the driver was my mother passed away so my dad was farming on his own um and for so in my wife and i kind of always knew we'd end up back here probably more me than her but but i honestly See, the other thing, too, is I got four kids. My oldest is he'll be 21 this fall, and the next one's going to be a senior. Then I got a daughter that's going to be a sophomore, and my youngest son's going to be in seventh grade. Boy, you're pretty dumb right now, aren't you?

You're probably about as dumb as you've ever been. We're on vacation last week, and my daughter was like, old people are stupid. I'm like, all right, that's fine, whatever. I don't miss those days. You went, go to the beach. Yeah, it wasn't. We'll just keep talking. No.

So, I mean, you know, and the thing is, all right, I look at when I was a kid, my parents thought, all right, we had three channels or four channels of TV. You can listen to radio. Now, kids these days, I mean, they can watch anything they want different apps. They can stay inside as long as they want to. And never get bored. And I'm not one of this paranoid pointers that I'm like, all right, I don't want you on Snapchat or TikTok. I'm like, all right, all we can do is kind of guide you.

And hopefully they have a little bit of common sense. Yeah. So like, you know, my kids have jobs outside of the farm. And one of my kids, she, obviously I said, she, so my daughter, she got her job. They're 1099er. So I don't know if anybody, I'll just leave that. If you don't know what 1099 is, I'll let you guys figure that out. Yeah.

I'll let these guys complain them. And so she doesn't get taxed out. Well, she wanted to buy something. And she goes, well, it's 300 bucks. Like, well, actually, it's 321. I'll pay for it. It's just why it's 321.

I'm like, well, there's sales stacks. And so we explained what sales tax was. She goes, wow, out using any of that stuff. I'm like, really doesn't matter. Yep. So hopefully we can make her into a conservative yet, but I mean, that's beside the point. Well, I'll just tell you,

the sooner that you can get kids to earn an income that they find out what tax is and that they have to pay it, the sooner that they'll come around. It's like, so Elijah, my oldest son, he's been working, he works from, my cousin's got a landscaping company. He's just will weigh on, so he's been working for him for a couple years, and he's done other stuff. You know, he chores for people on the weekends, and so, um, Him and I are talking to her. I'm like, well, at least, you know, they took out income tax.

I mean, your $600 a check to be $400. And then I go, if you want free healthcare, now it'll be $200. And if you want free education, now it'll be $100. So your $600 checks is done. She's like, well, that's stupid. That's stealing.

That's robbery. Welcome. Welcome to big government. So you might want to cut this out. But she goes, why doesn't the governor guys just get jobs? Yeah. That's a great question. That's a great question.

So when did you come back? So when did you decide to... And how long were you gone? So I went to college in 91. We came, moved back six years ago, so 15. So, I mean, 20 plus years. I was gone. You know, I was, like, when we were in Muscatine, we'd come down, like, during the week.

I mean, it wasn't that far away. One of them, we lived in Waco, Omaha. not as much. Seater Falls, we come down. But I mean, there's a couple things that drove it. One,

with my mother passing away, and, you know, okay, that makes sense. I want kids to know my dad better because we didn't live far away, but we live far enough.

Far enough. It wasn't like we're going to hop down every night and stuff like that. The other thing is, too, is like, all right, I'm living in town. Seat Falls is a great town,

good community, great education system, but like my kids can only clean their house or both the air. or do so much so on a day. So I want to give my kids an opportunity that I had growing up. I'm like, hey, it's Friday morning. Let's go clean the bin.

Yeah, right. Or, hey, dad's got to do something. You go to chore this morning. You know, those types of things. Teaching my kids, work ethic, responsibility. It's not saying that you can't do it in town. Yeah. But it's just hard.

It is a struggle. Yeah, it is. I mean, another thing, too, is like, my youngest kid's 13, he's been driving my dad's for. two years. Yeah. You know, we live four miles away.

So any police officers just don't drive over by where I'm at. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I started driving when I was eight. I mean, I'll never forget.

First time I drove, I was going, we were going from my dad's house to actually the farm where I live right now. And I couldn't, I couldn't push the clutch in on the big tractor with equipment. He goes, you drive a truck. That's easy to drive.

Well, we turn on the highway for a car we met his cop. And he just waved at me. but I was following my dad. I don't know if they'd be that lenient today or not. Right. Well, we talk about that. We understand.

We talk about that that, you know, when we grew up, one of the advantages that I feel like young people today don't have is there were probably, and I bet you could tell these stories too, there were times where you made a mistake. that an adult called you on your mistake but didn't ruin your life. Yeah, didn't ruin your life. Didn't ruin your reputation. And I feel like today, young people, not just young people, just pretty much society in general, we are so quick to cancel somebody over a mistake they've made. And for young people, sometimes there's no recovering from that. Yeah, I just feel like society makes it so you have to be perfect all the time, which you're never going to learn.

if you never make mistakes. Right. And they're making it seem like mistakes are bad. They're not learning experiences. Don't ever make mistakes. I've had more failures than successes. Right. Right.

Financially. I mean, you know what I mean? I would learn more from my mistakes. I know now, I mean, they're from, you mentioned, all right, I do a lot of shit. Yeah. A lot of different things. But, I mean, I have, I mean, if it's not egg, if it's not chemical based or there's, you know, a couple other things.

I don't do them. Right. Because I've done other things that it didn't roll out. You know what you're. Yeah, I know what I know. Yep. I mean, I guess that's a privilege being. That's wisdom.

49. Yes. Yeah, that's what it is. So, you know, my kids that think we're stupid. Yeah, there are things that I've learned. Yep. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Stay in your wheelhouse of what you, what you know. You know from what Claude taught you, you know, you do one thing right. Keep doing it over and over again. Yeah. If it works, keep doing it.

I mean, obviously keep learning new things, but if it works, why would you stop? Yeah. I mean, but the other thing is like, all right, if you would ask us five years ago about crypto stuff or hell, electrical. Yeah. I mean, there's new technologies come. Doesn't mean you can't get into them. Right. I'm more cautious, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll get this thing whittled down. The one thing I wanted to ask is, how do you balance? everything you got going because you're trying to raise kids you're running a you're running a business you're involved in some other business and you're farming so what's the what's the secret time is your most valuable asset that's what we always say so how do you how do you manage your most valuable asset it's still learning you know work in practice yeah i mean unfortunately

I still firefight a lot. Yeah. Who screams a lot is what needs to get done. You know, there's certain, like my dad calls, I mean, very rarely do I not go. Yeah, right. Well, he's got seniority. Ask my wife, I'm probably, she goes,

he's piss bored with this. Well, but we're all in that way. We all struggle with this. You know, I mean, one of the things, and you're like, yeah, we want a vacation this week, but I am not. ever I don't I don't shut down you're not a you're not a guy that wants to sit on the beach for six months and sip on a Mai Tai not yet yeah you know this white ass body you don't want

allow me to that but I mean I I don't my mind doesn't shut off mm-hmm yeah do I want to get there yeah that'd be great if I don't think about what I got right what I mean the good thing is even the corporate job I mean even when you're on vacation you said stuff to when you came home but I mean there I mean you're like one thing I learned from my first or second boss of deer you know in the corporate order he goes you're a number I mean if your number comes up tomorrow the corporation could get rid of you all right doing what we do yep our number never comes up right right right that's the beauty of it yeah it's the beauty of it downside of yeah right yeah I mean because

it's all on you and you know my wife and I talk about this so I you know if my heaven bed my dad to pass away tomorrow, I'm pretty much the person that knows what's going on. Yeah. Now, if something happened to me, what's, you know, what's the next step? Right. I mean, same with you. I mean, Sawyer, you kind of know what your dad's got going on. Right, but I don't know everything.

Right, but I mean, would your brother be able to do it? I don't know. I think he'd probably figure it out. Right, but it wouldn't be it would be more of a challenge probably. You know, so that's the downside of owning a business. You don't have a succession plan. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a per- It's harder, I guess, to put it that way.

A perfect example, and I'll throw this out. So a good friend of mine, actually, professionally and personally, so my accountant of, I don't know, I don't even know how many years, he actually passed away in a motorcycle accident last Saturday night and hit a deer. And I think that I was more like taken aback, bamboozled by that, than when my dad passed. Because, you know, my dad was 99 years old, and it was one of those things where you knew time wasn't on his side. And you kind of prepared yourself that any day, you know, I could come up here and he wouldn't be here. But Mark, that just floored me.

and and not so much from, you know, we were, we were good friends and he was a good guy. And he and I, he and I on paper shouldn't have been friends because politically we were at opposite ends of the spectrum, but we had a lot of respect for each other and we'd grown to be to respect each other. Let's all be honest, this is what more people need to hear in this world. You don't have to agree on all fronts to be friends. Yeah, we didn't agree. Son of a gun.

We didn't agree on a whole lot of anything. Well, I shouldn't say that. We found a lot of things that we agreed on, but, you know, the heavy hitters that our society gets so divided on, we didn't agree on most of those. But you stayed friends. Yeah, but we, yeah. And I mean, I was his client, but. It was more than that. Yeah, it was way more than that.

And, but his, he, his business, there's nobody. He was a one, you know, he had his, he had his business. and I just think about the people that work for him and the people that he worked with because there's people just like me, I'm trying to find somebody and I'm never going to find, I'll find somebody to do my accounting,

to do my taxes. And they may be a great, they may be really good at it, but I'll never find somebody like that guy. Yeah. And I mean, and a lot of stuff I do ends up being relational. Yeah.

I mean, yeah. So like, I'll go, like you ask me what things do I need, but I mean, I'll go talk to a customer. Most time, I'll talk about sold for five or ten minutes, the other hour of them there. I'm talking about your family. What do you do? I mean, just trying to get in the, because sometimes, I mean, the nice thing about own your own business is I can kind of pick a choose who I want to work with. And sometimes you realize like, all right, I, this, I only have so much time that, you know, when it comes to, that time. There's certain groups or customers and stuff that it doesn't make sense for either one

it does. Or whatever reason. Maybe I can't supply the service or the need that they have and or they, I can't do, I won't meet their, I won't satisfy them. Why now we do things. Right. Yeah. So it's easier just to not start than it is to. Yeah. And that's, that's maturity too, being to the point and being good at what you do to where you can you can make that decision you can't choose you don't have to get every every job that that's what i tell myself yeah well i mean yeah it's nice if you can get them all but claude used to tell me if you sell all of them you're selling yourself way too cheap so what i have one i have another question what's your biggest goal with everything that you're doing what's like your end-all be-all goal why what what drives you what's your purpose

We're getting deep now. We're getting deep. Yeah, I mean, so obviously I want to, I mean, the biggest thing is for me, I mean, is try to prepare my kids for a better life than I had. Yep. Move the needle forward in your family. Leave a legacy. And I don't mean that I don't want them to work or anything. I don't want to set up a trust.

You asked me five years ago what I'm trying to build an empire. What's that? What's that mean? I don't know. I mean, but I want to, when I die or whatever. You want to be the best damn ugly ever, ever on this planet. Right. I mean, you know, and I don't mean that in an arrogant way.

I just, you know, I'm trying to do things to make society and the world better. Yeah. Yep. You know, but. Oh, I can, we can definitely agree with that. I mean, everything that we're doing, we're trying to be the best. I always tell dad, dad always says that his dad was the greatest generation. I always tell my dad.

is the greatest generation of Whistler because, you know, he pushed the needle forward. And I'm trying to push the needle forward for my family. And, I mean, do good for the world and do good by our family. So I can definitely identify with that. I mean, I always say, if people can't find their why and their purpose, just think about your family and trying to be the best, you know, person that's ever lived in your family. Try to move the needle forward as best we can for your family and for the world. That's the biggest driver for me.

Yeah. Leave your legacy. I might slaughter this a little bit, but I think about this. Gary V. He was given a speech somewhere, or somebody might have been interviewing him, and he said that his goal was that when he died, people that didn't even like him came to his funeral because they felt like they had to because he did such a good job.

And I'm like, that's a pretty good. that's a pretty good way to live. And I don't think that's a way, I don't think that's arrogant by any means. No. If you want to leave the greatest legacy, if you're trying to push for a legacy that's really, really great,

you want to be one of the greats of this world, you know? That means you've done a lot of good for the world. So that's not arrogant, I don't think by any means. If you're trying to do good and be, you know, selfish in your legacy, you're benefiting everybody in the world

that you... Unselfish. Unselfishly, yeah, right? You know, I've had this conversation with my wife. I'm like, I mean, as a manager, I'm not going to make everybody happy. Mm-hmm. Right.

Hopefully you respect me. You don't have to like me. But, you know, I think, yeah, I mean, my goal is to try to make things better for my family. That's a lot of different things. Yeah. You know, it's not just financial. It's work ethic. It's teaching them.

Right. You know, and the good thing, you know, like, so my daughter's actually, she's, she's, just turned 15 so this week um but she wanted to make money so i went out and found her a job and she works at 14 i mean the nice thing is a lot of people two or three years ago wouldn't hire a 14 year old right because of the situation right there's but now a shit ton of jobs are open right now and one of our friends he's got different businesses and stuff like that and he goes like yeah i'm like and she's good at it. And it's like he actually, his dad

texting me a couple weeks ago, he goes, I love your daughter because she'll try anything. He goes, I tell her to do it. I mean, she's, but she was laying floor. She's hanging cabinets. She's building toilets.

Yep. And I'm like, so, because I'm my ass, I'm like, so when you're laying floor, what do you do? Do you like the measurement? She goes, no, I'd do all the cut. And I'm like, I don't think I'd do that. But you're giving them the tools.

Right. The tools are the most valuable. Yeah. Skills, tools. It's not always about money and financial. I mean, teaching your kids. It's like teaching the man to fish. Yeah, you got to teach them how to fish.

Because if you give them the tools, they don't need your money. Right. And the thing is, they'll find their passion. I've listened to a bunch of people, but I think Dan Pena says that, you know, you don't want to leave your kids. The greatest thing you can do for your kids is not leave them a shitload of money because growing up, obviously. Is that how Dan said it? Well, yeah, right.

Dan threw a lot of explicits in there. but, you know, he says if you grow up in poverty, it's your greatest, it's your greatest, like, advantage and asset because you're hungry. You're hungrier than everybody else. Obviously, take that a grain of salt. And I agree with that to a point. Right, right.

That's how I think about it too. And, I mean, you don't want your kids on the freaking street homeless, but also don't want to give them everything either. To grow up in poverty, but to grow up in a society where you, you can get the tools. that you need to prosper. Just growing up in poverty where there's no way out of poverty, that doesn't help anybody.

Right. I mean, unfortunately, some societal things or location things or whatever, I mean, when you grow up poverty, you just don't know. Right. You don't know what things you can do to be successful in those. So, I mean, I don't, I mean, I don't want to go down that path. But, I mean, you know, what, you know, you know, when I grew up, we didn't have money.

Yeah. I mean, I never wanted. I never wanted without food or anything like that. But, you know, there's people that do. I mean, there's people that work three jobs and still don't have enough money. I mean, it's not, you know, it's situational. I mean, so, but I mean, you know, going back to what is my goal? My goal is a teach my kids work, I think.

Yep. Try to do things that help society. help things. I mean, obviously, we all want to be successful financially, but in the end, do I want to be a gazillionaire? Right. If it turned out that way, I'm not going to complain. Yeah, I'm not going to complain, but I mean, that's not my ultimate goal. Right. I'd like to build business. I'd like to do things to pass on if my family decides that's what they want to do. I mean, in the end, you know, so the guy that my daughter works with, he's a teacher about passive and, you know, passive income.

What is that? How does that work? Well, basically, if you don't want to work, you had income coming in. So, I mean, you know, hoggdon's a great example. I mean, in the end, yeah, we do the work, but, you know, somebody that you guys talk about a little bit, we can hire somebody else. to do that. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, I think the ultimate, I think the ultimate goal we've talked about this on here is freedom. Right. I mean, living a life of freedom versus being a gazillionaire. Right. Is, you know, that's, that's what everybody should be trying to aim

for is freedom. I got one thing. So we talked about college. Yep. Was it beneficial for me. Yeah, it was. I mean, but I mean, I had a technical degree. It's not, I couldn't go out and work for a Montanar or John Deere if I didn't go to college and get a degree in good paying companies, good benefits all that stuff you know um the other thing too i mean junior college i mean so like there's a lot of i mean there's a lot of need for semi-technical degrees electricians plumbers and all that stuff i mean there's a lot of you know two-year degrees that you can so my nephew he started you and i didn't work out for him he ended up going to uh hawkite community college and got his electrical degree and he made the dean's list. I mean, it worked out great for him because it was stuff

that he enjoyed doing. Not, four-year colleges aren't for everybody. Right. And so do you, you know, I was talking with another guy here in Washington and owns a business. He goes, depending on what you wouldn't do. I wouldn't go to college. Yeah. Yeah. It's not, it's not such, like when I, when I remember when I graduate, everyone's just was saying to me like, you, I mean, you're not going to go to college. You have to go to college. You have to go to college. You have to go to college but I feel like it's kind of changing now where everyone's kind of figuring out well if college isn't for you you don't have to go it's not so like college and that's it if you don't go to college you're a failure that's kind of how I thought it was when I was so my oldest son he graduated two years

ago um he's good at school but I mean it's not something he enjoyed to do and I'm like all right I he wasn't ready to go to college and so I mean I but I've always told my kids like by the time graduate from high school i would rather you know what you don't want to do versus what you want to do yeah that's really my job i mean you know grow up on farms you do shit that you don't want to necessarily want to do yeah right and so that's just i mean and there's a lot of different jobs like that i mean yeah there's if i would have to work at macdonalds i would have known in a day that's not what i want to do right one because i don't like the cook and i don't like people yeah there you go and no i'm i like people

most of the time. But, you know, I mean, so he went to Thailand on a mission trip for three months. Yep. And he did stuff there. Like, he taught English from K through third graders to a group. He was for a month. He asked him to do that in U.S. There was no in hell he would ever do that in U.S.

So he grew. Yeah, it grew. Yeah. And he goes, it was great. I mean, like, he'd go walk around the villages, a little kid. You know, he likes kids. and stuff and so he goes but honestly he goes the best food i ate over there was all the old old ladies that cooked at school they go out the market and bring fresh food in

and cook you guys that's the best food i ate over there yeah you know and then when he came back he went to nicaragua on a miss a trip with our church in washington and then COVID hit and then he started working with my cousin and now he's his point he's like yeah I want to go to school yep all right but now he's ready yeah and i yeah i also feel like there's a there's there's pressure there to just figure it out. When you hit 18, you figure it out and you got to go or don't go or start working. But you can take a bird year. I mean, you can take a year off and figure out, you know, what the hell you want to do.

It's not a year off jacking around. Right. You got to do something. Right. I mean, I don't know. I still don't know. I mean, I want to do. I have no idea.

And Gary Vee, I listen to him and he always says, you know, you could get more experience and learning what you want to do and what you don't want to do, you know, doing exactly what your kids. did, you know, going, traveling. Elijah. Elijah. So I got four. Elijah Jonah. Elijah. Elijah. Elijah, yeah. You could do that and you'll learn. I mean, like you said, he wouldn't have taught people in the U.S. But it grew him to teach people in Thailand, English. And he would have never, and who knows, he might actually enjoy teaching now a little bit. He would have never. Yeah, that might be a stretch. But I think, though, but like over there, I mean, like Bob, the guy, the gentleman, and he went over.

So my uncle's a minister And so he knows he's evangelist. So he's ministered all over the world And this is a friend of his. And so like when Elijah was He's senior year and he's like, I don't know about school. And you know, I'm like, all right, I'll find some of those. You want to do, and you want to get.

And he likes to travel. So like he just got back. He went to Italy. So we had a foreign exchange student from Italy. They lived with us, Pietro, went to Waco. And so Elijah went over and spent the weekend in the Netherlands. with some friends of mine. So when I worked in Omaha and stuff like that,

then he went and spent a week with Pietro and his family in Italy. You know, so like, so he's been to Thailand, Japan. I mean, he's to travel places I've never traveled. I was talking to my dad. He goes, just, boy in hell, I would have done that one.

I was his age. I'm like, you know, but I mean, you know, for him to travel on his own now is not a big deal. Right, right. So,

like, he was coming back from Thailand. And when he went there, they stamped his passport wrong. And so, like, you have, he had to get a visa to go over there. And so, like, you can be in, for 90 days, you can be in Thailand and not have any issues on your visa. Well, part of the mission stuff they did is they would go so, like, illegal immigration over there as soon as you come in, they put you in jail. They separate families.

That's the first thing they do in Thailand. And so, like, one of the things that him and Bob would do is they go to these immigration camps, prisons. and they would come together so the families could come together and basically have some time together. And so like when he was leaving, they were like, hey, oh, you've been here three days longer than you're supposed to be. He goes, how much is it?

He goes, I didn't, because I didn't ask. He goes, ATM, just tell me where an ATM is. So it was like 80. I mean, it ended up being like 80 bucks or something. But he knew the question to ask. He goes, I've been to Thai prisons. I am not going to one for being. for three days longer than I was supposed to be he's enterprising oh yeah he's like didn't he goes

always a team and give him whatever to 80 bucks is like 400 bot or something yeah some silly number yeah he just didn't even didn't phasing yet but like coming back from Italy he didn't realize he had to get a rapid test for COVID yeah so like he was in Amsterdam like he was mad because they're like yeah you got to get this rap test where you know I'm playing just like I'm playing just like I've been vaccinated. I've been, you know, but it's just funny stuff that he had to do on his own.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not there to help him. I'm like, but you've given him the tools that he can think for himself. Right. And that,

I mean, that's something, there's a lot of people walking around, not just kids, a lot of people walking around in this country, around this world that can't think for themselves. Well,

and I mean, and he's, I mean, granted in the Netherlands, majority people know how to speak. speaking English. Right. But in Thailand? Yeah. I mean. Right. So basically he's like just all he goes, all I said was at ATM. And they knew what that was. We went got money. Came out. You know mean, but it's things like that. I mean, yeah. I mean, he was, he's been in other countries and

stuff, but he's learning how to deal with situations. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. And not. And learn with, learn different cultures and work with different kinds of people. Like kind of how you're going to be a manager. Yeah. You better be careful. Won't be long. and you'll wake up and you'll be in the bin again. He'll be like, kick your ass to the curbs. These kids, you scoop the bin out, dad.

These kids have managed me back into the bin. Going back to the bin scooping this morning, so I got three of my kids. So my youngest and Jonah, my second, and then my daughter, I'm like, all right, you guys got to work today?

No, all right, all right. This is what you're going to do. It's going to be cool. And so my youngest, though, he's probably driven the uny loader more than the other two. So I'm like, all right, you remember I would do this?

Yeah. And I had to teach him a little bit this morning. and he didn't freak out and but all that stuff. Elijah, my oldest, like, oh, you get driving unit? That's a management position. But he did ask me, though, and before I left, he's like, so if I'm driving to you know, and I'm getting, yes, you still have to get in the bandless scoop. You're not getting out of that job.

Well, one last question I want to ask, and it's just got to be quick. We're going to wrap it up here. But quick, quick, quick question. Do you find more fulfillment out of what you're doing now and being a business owner farming than you did working in the corporate world working for somebody else yes and no yes i mean so i like running businesses i like trying to create jobs i like doing things i mean part of the reason i created the businesses when i moved down here i mean like when i started EPO when i started my consulting business all right my wife and are a chemical engineers to come to southeast iowa and find two

chemical engineering jobs it's not the easy thing to do so really what i was trying to do is build a business that I can I can basically have a wage and the same way with my wife. And so, yeah, I like the freedom. I like the challenges. I like those things. I mean, the nice thing about corporate, I mean, in the corporate world is that I saw Monsanto, Deer, Pyrr, Cargo, I met a lot of very intelligent people. I mean, I learned a lot from doing it.

what I have been as good as what I'd so what I'd be as successful as do as well as what I do now without doing that stuff first no not at all right overall for me what I do now is more fulfilling and better than what I did I mean it's nice getting a check every two weeks I don't lie to yeah I mean yeah but what you did paved the way for what you're you couldn't do now what you're doing if it wasn't I mean for the experience yeah I mean, all right, starting farming when 15 and having responsibility, managing people when I'm 10, 12 years old, kind of paved the way for what I did in college. I mean, I was not an overly outgoing person when I was a kid, but I mean, sorry, I got to watch my hands. I don't want to block your dad or anything like that.

But, I mean, it kind of paved away for my way. I mean, what I changed the thing I've done in my life, a few things, but I mean, that's, I think overall how aggression of my life and my education and my jobs and stuff like that, it's been, I wouldn't change anything really what I've done. Yep. No, that's, you know, could I have done what I've doing now without doing that? No.

Yeah, right. Not all. Right. Yep. Yep. And a lot of, I mean, I am, I'm a relationship guy. I mean, I don't, I mean, I know your dad because he sold me a high building, but I know your dad because him and I talk about.

other stuff. Right. Yeah. It's more than just business. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, I mean, yeah, I mean, my ultimate goal is to sell you solar system. Right.

But if you don't buy one, I'm not, or if you bought one from somebody else, I don't, okay, I'd still be, I'd still like talk to you, do things, go to do this every once in a while. Yeah. You know, it's not that, you know, I have friends that buy solar systems from other people. I might call them a ding-dong or an idiot or something like that. But, you know, in the end, they have the reason. Yeah. Right.

so it is how it is you just got to look over that stuff and get through it yeah i think we're gonna wrap it up i think we've covered it was a very very good informative podcast like i said guys if you want to get in touch with jason and as far as trying to install some solar wherever you're at we'll have everything you need in the in the description below his number the link to his website all that good stuff um jason we really appreciate you coming on the show buddy it was a good it was a real good one i thought got a lot of value i got a lot of value personally and i hope that you guys did too. So yeah, thanks for coming. Yeah, I mean, guys appreciate it. Um, it's always good out and talked by yourself. So especially me. You know how I am. So no, I appreciate it. Thanks for the beer.

Yeah, of course. Um, appreciate it. We'll have your tab down. We'll have your tab downstairs. All right. I'm just playing. We have no mimoses, unfortunately, but we'll get those for next time, maybe. All right, guys. We'll, uh, we'll leave it there. We'll leave it there and we'll get back with you next Friday so have a good rest of your week and stay safe out there.