Barn Talk - Making Farm Equipment Values Zoom w/Kyle McMahon

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Welcome, Today I have a confession to make. I met our guest way back in 2015 or 2016 and he handed me a hat and a koozie with his logo on it and told me it was going to be big. I kinda chuckled to myself and wrote it off as another ag tech startup that was probably headed to pasture. Little did I know. Today Tractor Zoom advertises over 15 billion dollars worth of equipment. Partners with over 1,900 auctioneers and dealers and has become a leader in providing equipment values for farmers, dealers, bankers and auctioneers. Our guest today is the man with the vision. Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/ SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ------------------------------- ***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. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn until now. For today at least, we're going to let it all out if it doesn't blow out. It's a blustery-ass, blustery-ass day in southeast Iowa. We've got to get our temperature back to average in those days. that get you back to average are kind of painful and this might be one of them. I got a confession to make our guest today. I met in probably 2015 or 2016 and he handed me a hat and a coozy and gave me the

50,000 foot view of his master plan of what he was building and we talked about the business that I was there for and I got my truck and I left and I thought that's nice kid and I didn't really think much more about it and I got to tell you a lot has happened since then so I didn't have any idea that it was going to turn into what it is today

so today tractor zoom advertises I got to look at my notes because the numbers grow about every day it seems like today tractor zoom advertises over $15 billion worth equipment annually and is partnered with over 1,900 auctioneers and dealers and basically has become a leader in providing equipment values for banks, for dealers, for farmers, and bankers, uh, everywhere.

Our guest today is the man that started that whole deal. But before we get into it, guys, you guys know the drill. Pay the fee. If you get any value from the show, shared out your friends, family, coworkers, employees, whoever, uh, the more you guys share the show, the more you guys share the show, the more content we can put out for you, the better guests we can get on. And it's just kind of a win-win for everybody. It's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show.

Also, feel free to leave a review on Spotify or Apple. All that guys helps us out tremendously. And you can let us know what you think on YouTube about the episode or Spotify just rolled out a new kind of feature for the podcast that lets you comment on each episode and what you think about the episode. So be looking for that if you're watching or listening on Spotify. So without further ado, let's get into it. Kyle McMahon, welcome to Barn Talk. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Yeah. Nice rainy day. It is a nice rainy day. Good day to be in the barn. Thank God we got it heated. It took us a little bit this winter to get these units set up. But now I think our guests are comfortable and we're comfortable. So I think we're to the point where any any need for warmth above this will just have to be alcohol related.

You just, if that doesn't, if this doesn't quite get you warm enough, we'll just have to start putting the whiskey and the coffee. Oh, that's all right. Your hay bales really keep it insulated. That's the way that you go. It is. Well, it's green. Green energy, really. That's what we're shooting for here. Got a, that SEG score or ESG score. I'm working on my ESG score. Yeah, absolutely. Let's start. How people get a hold of you and Tractor Zoom for anybody that's, and we'll mention this at the end too. Yeah, I mean, the easiest way to find Tractor Zoom and everything we do, just go to TractorZoom.com. And you can see everything about our company.

If you're interested in pricing equipment, you can do some lightweight stuff there or you can go to ironcomps.com. So those are the two websites of how to find tractor zoom. And I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. How you got a hold of me actually? And I lost my phone number after last time we talked. It was probably seven years ago.

Then a while. Five years ago, maybe. And, yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn. They're pretty frequently. Yeah, I, when I, on the intro I was talking about, you know, we met 2015, 2016, probably somewhere in there. I think it was 2017. The reason I remember that is I was, I think you were working for the pig company then. I was interested in building a hog barn, would be my first one. And it was, it was the fall that the farm across the road from our little hobby farm sold. Yeah. And I remember that one.

Yeah. And I, I, uh, you show me your app. and gave me a hat and told me the story of it. And I was like, well, that's pretty neat and got my truck, drove down the road. And I'm like, well, another ag startup that's probably going to get hammered. Little did I know that you were really on to something. So did you grow up, did you grow up farming and being around equipment? What was the thought process? how did this idea get hatched?

Yeah, I didn't grow up farming. I still technically farm, but I have some of my farms custom farmed. So, you know, no, I didn't grow up wanting to be a developer or build a technology company. You know, there's probably a lot longer story than what you might have today of how I got here. Yeah.

But I think I had entrepreneurship instilled in me as, a young kid. When I was a couple, I'll share a couple of small events of how I got all the way to where I am today or tractor zoom, just some small milestones along the way. When I was 11 years old, my best friend won a little, I think it was a 270x John Deere Lawmower at our local Fairfield High School Raffle. And he and I got together and said, oh, you know what, let's go start mowing some yards so you can make some extra cash. And next thing you know is we're those kids driving up and down the road in Fairfield, Iowa with a lawnmower, a trail on the lawnmower, push lawnmower in there and a blower, and we're mowing as many yards as we could. And I don't know, making 20 bucks a yard

was pretty cool back then. And we ended up growing that and I was in, I was a sophomore in college at Iowa State and I ended up selling my half the business to him. At that time, we had 120 clients or something like that. And I don't know, working for yourself. we were able to, it was 100 degrees outside and we were tired of mowns. We could take off. And we were still working 80 hours a week type of thing. So, you know, that was probably the first thing. And then when I was just from an entrepreneurial standpoint and I grew up, my folks were in,

had run a manufacturing business. When I was 13 years old, my dad took me to, they made refrigeration equipment for supermarkets like grocery stores. and ran manufacturing company down in Kiyosaka, Iowa. And took me to Philadelphia, took me out of school, took me to Philadelphia to go on a business trip. And I thought it was a cool thing. Like, I got to go hang out with dad,

and I get to see what dad does, like, talk about this all the time. Like, I get to go see some of his refrigeration out in the wild. And it was the most miserable trip. We had to go to Philadelphia. I hated it. And from then on, I told Dad, like, I never want to do this.

Yep. So, you know, still really had no idea what I wanted to do in college. But I opted to do what's called the Okaboji Entrepreneurricular Institute at Iowa State. They get together, I think it's five colleges, universities in Iowa, get together up at Okaboji. And you get to listen to business owners tell their entrepreneurial journey and stories. It's just so cool. I'm a sucker for those stories. But anyway, keynote speaker ended up being my boss.

and started working for an ag group right out of college. I loved it to death. And, you know, that's what's really started from how we built tractors in. So we can dive in further, but I kind of pause there. No, that's good. And that's, I think that's a popular, like, mowing yards when you were a kid, I'd love to know how many people that own their own business and that our entrepreneurs have an experience,

maybe not exactly that experience, but like I've told my boys, when they started doing stuff on their own, when you do that and you get a taste of that, it'll pretty much ruin you for working what people call a regular job. Because, yeah, you'll work a lot of hours, but they're the hours you choose. It's addictive.

And it's directly you can quantify. And you have no cap. There's no cap on you. There's no cap. And that's just so powerful to a young person. They don't even realize it, but you have that connection and you're like, you start looking at the world through a different lens because you have that, you know, it's your own.

Yeah, and I feel like that's a trend on, I've seen, like, that's the most popular business idea I see amongst young people on like TikTok and Instagram. It's always lawn care and landscaping. And it's a great business. So that's awesome that you went down that. out. Yeah, just tell people like what Tractor Zoom in is if they don't know. Because some people might not know what it is and kind of what you guys do and who's your target audience. For sure. So

Tractor Zoom helps people find value in finance farm machinery. So what that means is we, we help auctioneers and dealers advertise the machinery online. So it's a very searchable a database of equipment for sale at auction or at dealerships, that farmers can simply go find the equipment. As we continue to grow, we're taking a big element, a data element to where we're leveraging data to help you make better buying decisions on the same webpage. Now you can actually finance equipment on that same web page.

So what we like to say, in under two minutes, if you're a farmer, you can find value and then obtain financing all online through Tractor Zoom. So that's really who we are, I think, farmer-facing. But what we do in the background is what I call our secret sauce and really what we do to provide and propel the industry forward from the equipment's perspective. We are tracking about 60% of all farm machinery that's selling in the market. So this year we'll market about $15 billion of equipment.

And we take all that data, we process it, analyze it, and then we're providing data analytics and market trends and industry standards to dealerships. and banks that rely on our information to really run their use equipment side of their business. So for the listeners out there, if you're negotiating with a dealership, chances are they're probably using some of our information to help them make better decisions, just like people in the auto industry. And you can use that too. When you're thinking about making a change and you're, you want to sell a piece of equipment

and you don't have any idea what it's worth, farmer can go on there and say, you know, what's my 7820 worth if I'm going to, if I, should I sell it outright or should I take it to a dealer? The dealer's offering you this. You can go see what, what people are paying for them and decide, you know, should I try to sell it myself, whatever. So 8430s are way too high. What's up with that? Can you find me one of those tractors for a good deal? That's the dream tractor of mine. 8430. So I, so I, so I know your, your, your passion about 8420s and 8430s. So before I hopped on, I did look, there was a couple 8430s coming up for sale. There's something coming up for auction.

And what's actually really cool is you can actually go on Tractor Zoom. You can find that 8430 or 8420. And it'll help you identify, okay, what's actually going to sell for at auction? So we call it our price prediction. Or you can just start to go out and price equipment. You can literally go to Tractor Zoom, start understanding where the market's headed from an auction or dealer perspective. But yeah, if you want to dive in, I did pull some marketing. information on those 8430s for you.

Hey, I'll take any advantage. I'll take any advantage I can get. Well, Greg Cook's got one. I think Greg Cook got an 8420. I did see it. I did see it over there. I had to get out and go look.

Yeah. Just dreaming. I just keep dreaming. Just do like any good farmer. Don't ask permission. Just buy it and then call Tim Merrick at Farm Credit and go, hey, Tim. Hey, you know, there's going to be a check coming through on my operating.

And we, yeah, we might need to, well, we might. need to work on that. Might have to come over with the budget. See what he says. Yeah. Well, the prices just keep going up so you know, it's been selling a gradual incline to do the interest rates the way they are. Yeah, talk a bit a little bit about the market and like what you see coming since we're on that, you know? Yeah. So what I will say, what I'll preface with, every type of equipment's totally different. So like the strength we're seeing in the tractor market right now continue. It all depends on low hour, late model like manufactured in the last three years versus something that might be 10 years old. something that's like a track road crop tractor 10 years old they're relatively flat maybe increasing

slightly right now i think we've kind of seen the inflation bubble uh get to its peak there but there's still incredible demand for you know sub thousand hour row crop tractor like we're just looking at uh at ar four tens uh just the other day we're analyzing all those those prices just continue to skyrocket and, you know, the OEMs come out with their available new machines. And we saw an increase of about 7 to 10% immediately in the used market for used machines because dealers are not getting as many as what they expected to. On the flip side, we're starting to see maybe a little bit of weakness appear in the combine market. There's quite a few machines coming to market.

And there's been less focus on those as I think a lot of guys have been able to. would update them over the last two years. Yeah. So we're actually starting to see a little bit of strength or excuse me, weakness there. Yeah, there's so many variables in, especially I feel like when you get to this time of year, harvest is done this year. You know what you got. And you feel pretty, farmers feel pretty good about that for about three days.

And then they start thinking about what do I got to buy and what's it going to cost me to put in my crop next year. And then is that going to make me any money? And so, you know, within any operation, the comfort level, as far as what you're willing, what you think is a good deal today or what is important to you today, a lot can change to where that thinking might be totally different in a month or two months or whatever. And so that market strength and weakness, there's just a lot of variables. But thinking about when you started.

So you had the idea of this. What was your biggest struggle? Like, where did you start? Because you're not, I don't, I'm not 100% sure, but you didn't wake up and say, you know, I need to develop this app. Or if you did, you probably didn't know how to develop an app. So what was that thought process like?

You said you went to the guy, the keynote speaker, you started working for him. Kind of take us from that point. how you got going on tractor zoom. I had no idea what I was doing to be honest. Yeah, so right at a college, I worked for a land investment group and was buying and selling land. I had what I think the best, most robust data set of land comparable sales anytime I was to buy something, we knew exactly what that local market was doing. And of course, we're only in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, but there's some hyperlocal markets that will totally change and you

think you're getting a fair deal, but you're not. So data, data was really important and I wanted I've always wanted to farm and so the first had access to a tractor and had access to some ground. So I said, you know what? I need a little side hustle. I love working my butt off and land investment industry. So I was dead set and buying a Kinsee 3,600, only one planter, plant 15 inch beans, 30 inch corn, wanted to run no-till. So I had I had my, the ideal setup completely in the back of my head. But as soon as I started shopping for them, I found it was just a total pain in the ass.

I had, I think I subscribed to 20 newspapers. This is in 2016. I subscribed to 20 newspapers, and I started bookmarking every auction website I could find, just to figure out where these things are at auction. You can go online and you go online and find everything at a dealer lot, but not an auction.

So that was like the number one thing is, I want a place I can just search online, Kinsey-360 Planner and show me all of them coming up at auction. Lightbulb. Yeah, because you had experience in the land market of having a database that you had some frame or reference that this piece of land was probably going to fall somewhere in this window. And when you went to equipment, not shit. Nothing. Yeah, well, I couldn't find them at auction. I mean, it was, I spent months trying to find the right one or one I didn't have to put too much precision equipment on.

or whatever. And so that was number one. Then I found the one I wanted and I had no idea what to pay for it. Yeah. Because as you guys know, planners like this, I was a, I was a newbie. I didn't grow up on a farm. Right. And so there, you know, there's some listed for 30,000. There's some listed for 115,000. So trying to figure out, okay, yep, what's right, what's wrong? What should I actually pay for one? Yep. So we needed the comparable sales. So where the light bulb actually clicked on was, I was, this was right after Christmas and I was driving out to Wyoming on a snowmobile trip and immediately got on the highway. It's like, oh, wait, there might be a business idea. And I called everybody. I had my Rolodex, auctioneers, farmers, friends, bankers,

hey, is this, just do other people have the same problem in my, or am I the only one? Later, our company, we actually did research in 82% of farmers number one pain point when buying and selling equipment is no one else worth. Yep. because there's nothing a farmer hates worse than overpaying for something or missing out on what they should have bought when they realized it was actually a good deal. And I don't know if farmers ever made a dollar either. No, they haven't because they overpay all the time. On paper. Well, okay, so then who, what kind of a team did you assemble to try to get this rolling?

Yeah, so I knew nothing about software. I actually went to school for landscape architecture at Iowa State, and I had to work on AutoCAD and computers. It was the most miserable thing. And I said, I'm never, never working on computers again. Love the land industry. You've got to build relationships. And all of a sudden, here I am.

Got to figure out to build something on computers again. So I ended up hiring that part out, you know, know what you're good at, know what you're not good at. And I'd have failed miserably if I tried to do it myself. So found a group of developers that could help us develop the prototype, which is actually, you're probably one that saw it. Yep. And I mistakenly bought swag thinking people would think the name Tractorgym is cool and they have no

idea what the heck it is. But, you know, we started from there and started making some investments on building the technology learned along the way. I made some what I thought were pretty big critical mistakes early on that set me back and, you lost my own money trying to start this thing, but it's not knowing what you don't know, but you get into it. And then it's probably like buying a tractor sight unseen from the 1990s. And it could be a ticking time bomb with 15,000 hours on it. It's like, all right, what is it? And you open up the transmission. It's like, oh, my gosh, there's so many problems here.

That's probably what I was working on. So you bootstrap the whole thing. Did you take outside capital or was it were you just bootstrapping? Yeah, I would spend all my own money at the time. And then we got to some milestones where investors thought it was a pretty interesting idea. Of course, it's still really early. But I was able to raise some capital probably after nine months, nine months or a year after starting. And so that really gave us the breathing room to start hiring the people that we needed to keep building a company. And, you know, it's kind of been just a snowball since then. And we've raised a couple rounds of venture capital.

We're a venture capital back company, but that really provides us the ability to hire some amazing talent, amazing people that have done amazing things elsewhere in agriculture and in financing and elsewhere in software engineering, that we're able to bring them under the hood at Tractor Zoom and say, okay, we have a blank slate. Like there's so much opportunity in the Ag equipment space for us to provide better data and better information.

my original idea has been probably gone 10 times. What would have been if it was me at the helm all the time. Talk about those. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you off, but talk about those mistakes, just maybe one or two that you were talking about where you started and you were like, you had a mistake and you lost a lot of money,

but you figured a lot of shit out. So talk about one or two of those that really were pivotal to what. The biggest mistake was I lost probably, I don't know, $30,000 of my own money building software. And what we did was, and I said, all these auctioneers out there, they got to have a way to get their listings on a tractor zoom. So I built this really cool little widget where they could take pictures and they could upload all their inventory on tractor zoom.

It's like, of course, no brainer. They'll do this. It seems really easy. I took it to market and I didn't get a single person to use it. All the auctioneers already had their own ways of getting it online and they weren't going to change. So I could have either just. failed then and said all right well move on to i'll go get a job and go do something else or i can

go do it for them yeah so for the i don't know for the first year i was just banging out numbers adding listings myself burning the candle at both ends like you had to uh in order to get started basically i had to do it all for them in order for them to see any value but hindsight's 2020 you see that now like you had to put in that work you had to you had to build that inventory base the forening farmers are going to come. Right. So we just took brute force, maybe as a lawn mowing mentality of work as many hours as you can to try to make some money. And that's what we did early on. Yeah, because that's the other part of it. When I was thinking about this, I thought, so on the one hand, you got to build the machine that provides the data for people. But two, you got to convince people to use it.

and when I sit here and I think about bankers, auctioneers, farmers, I'm like, yeah, those are all three groups of people that love cutting edge technology and are always real eager to jump on some new platform. So what was that experience like? Did you get, how hard was it to get people to buy in? And it may still be, I don't know. Yeah. It is. So there's a variety of challenges. Honestly,

farmers are the easiest out of all of them because they love equipment and anywhere they can look at equipment. That's the reason to get on. No look, right? We were at a trade show one time. We were at a trade show for farmers and an older lady walked up

and she goes, what do you guys do? It's like how we advertise equipment. She goes, oh, God, my husband calls this tractor porn. You can't let him over here. And, you know, from then on, that's just been kind of an inside joke. But yeah, I mean, this last month we'll probably have 250,000 equipment shoppers on Tractor Zoom. So people look at the equipment. That's, I say it's easy tongue and cheek. There's, There's different growth metrics that we have to get past that. But when you have the inventory, it makes a lot easier. Yes.

When you have amazing marketers in your team, it makes it even easier. But from auctioneers to get them on, we had to do, to get them to list their equipment, we had to do everything for them. We still do everything for them. Yeah. Literally, it's a phone call, hey, can we get this auction up for you? And we do it for them, even today. Because that reduces the hurdle of them interrupting their business and their operations. And so we had hit so many auctioneers.

years we'd hit 500 auctioneers on the platform and all these dealers were tugging our coat tails saying hey look you you've got something cool going on let us on the platform we kept saying no no we don't have enough staff like if we did that we'd need to hire we just literally couldn't take on the volume we flipped the switch on a year ago October and we've added 300 dealer stores so it's like making sure you get the process is right yeah and then you have the right staff to handle the volume flip that switch on and dealer up left and right. So that's just getting the inventory on. Now on the back side where we help people value all this equipment, we, it's just incredible. The infrastructure that we've built to analyze process all the data around the equipment and valuations and structured data. Like I won't go too deep

into the technology side. Yeah, because that's the secret sauce. It honestly is for us. I mean, it's our process. Having the, you know, it's one of those things. It's like it kind of feeds on itself because getting the people to give you the information as far as posting the auctions, posting the equipment, all that, that's really important. But what makes, what brings the value is that data that you're able to provide. And that's also the, that's also the moat because if it was just a matter, and we talked about this with Rob, that's the difference

we're coming out of a time where there's a generation that thought that success and for the most part it was success was I just got to mow more yards or if I just, you know, if I put in the hours, if I put in the time, if I just work harder than everybody else, I'm going to be successful. And that's the side of going

and doing the work for all the auctioneers and all the dealers. But the secret sauce is the technology. Because if you didn't have the technology, you don't have anything different than what somebody else could do if they wanted to put in the time to do it. But that data, that modeling, that software, that's, it's, you have two pillars that are both very, very important. And you can't really have one without the other. That's right. So if you're to look at the real estate industry, the housing market, there's something, called the MLS where realtors can post all their listings on. And it's relatively easy to go gather all those listings and spin up a website and show you have $100,000 houses for sale. There is no such

infrastructure in the equipment world. It's probably just too niche, right? Nobody's ever done it. And effectively, that's what we're doing is we're creating that standardized process for that. So it also helped for my real estate days. I'd already had relationships with some good auction companies. that when we launched it, it's, well, you join the platform and, you know, saying sure, but I got to run my own business. If I didn't have their support early on for us to allow to go do that, we wouldn't be here. But the other thing is we did recognize the opportunity with the data.

We did ultimately want to be the Kelly Blue Book of Far Machinery. We wanted to really, really help and propel this industry forward to really understand asset valuations and market fluctuations, because it is so incredibly tied to commodity prices and net farm income. We recognize that really early on. And so what we actually did is we told all the auctioneers and these dealers. It's free to list your equipment. We'll even do it all for you.

But we have a trade of we're going to leverage this information to help the industry value machinery. And I think we've had one auction company not be okay with that. And so that fierce independence. They think there's always those that think that somehow not giving out that information is somehow going to keep them ahead. Yeah. And that's okay. You're always going to run into people that have their blinders, you know, pretty well on and they want to protect their themselves. You're going to have that. That's completely okay. But we're not trying to replace dealers. Like there's no way in the world we could ever do that. how are we going to service your equipment? Well, right. Right.

So how does Tractor Zoom make money? Yeah. So is it you get paid for having that data to use for these dealers and farmers and all that? Or is it like a subscription? Like how does that all work? For anybody that doesn't know, just how does Tractor Zoom get paid? Yeah. So we make our money by providing premium data and valuations and market trends to equipment,

dealers and banks. So that's where we make our money. It's actually, like you recognized, it's the data. We collect this data. We compile it. We standardize it. We make it really easy for a dealer and a banker to value machines. And we sell that to them on annual contracts. Which you need to because, you know, bankers and equipment dealers are not very bright. We talk about that all the time. Oh, wait. No, we talk about it in private. They're good people, all of them. I love all of them. I love my banker. I love you. Really. There's just so many gut decisions that are done in the industry. It's starting to use data. So case in point, we actually have a dealer who's using this up in the Northeast.

John Deere dealer, I think there may be 10 stores, something like that. By simply saying, okay, we're going to stop trusting our gut and we're going to use data and analytics, they're increasing their use equipment sales margin by 18%. Yeah. Wow. Literally by using information, they're increasing their use equipment profit market. margin by 18%. That's a variety of ways. They're selling it faster. It's not

just price increases. They're actually decreasing some prices and they're not having to move it faster. Move it faster. Exactly. Was that the biggest like jump for you guys as far as far as growth is getting those dealers on? Was that like the holy shit we just hit a new level?

That's been one and the other has been able to hire some amazing people. Yeah. Yep. So my vision was stopped two years ago. theoretically right and we brought on some really great people who've you know pushed hot buttons and we've had some hard conversations and ultimately they won and said okay let's go do that and it's paid off so i i've heard good things on venture capital and bad things because some say if you go to the venture capitalist route you are kind of whatever they tell you you kind of have to follow

and that kind of sucks sometimes because it might not be the direction you want to go versus bootstrapping at all. You're the guy. You take on all the risk. You build it. But if it works and you're successful, it's still all yours, right? Tell me about, tell me about like your experience with venture capital. And like, how's that gone? Is that helped you a lot? Or has it kind of taken away a little bit of your freedom? If you don't mind me asking. Yeah, no, that's, that's a perfectly legit question. So the way we think about it is for us to be successful and for our product to, really help the masses and agriculture. We have to have a volume and a velocity of data.

And it's pretty capital intensive to go do that. We're effectively disrupting the traditional ads-based business model of, hey, dealer, put your equipment on tractor zoom and we'll charge you an advertising fee. We don't do that. So it's the data play. It's us gathering the data so we can provide that value back to the industry, which is what's the secret, like the secret software. of what we do. And it's, I guess not that secret because we say that all the time. But

from a venture capital standpoint, it has significantly helped us scale that. And it would take us another five years if, you know, we're trying to continue to bootstrap. And then we have to figure out of the revenue models for us to, you know, make it. Instead of us saying, you know what, we're going to help the industry by providing data back to the market to help farmers, make better decisions, dealers and so forth. We've been really fortunate with the investors that we have, that they're amazing, they're on with the same mission and vision that we've told them.

But more importantly, like, I think we have such a good relationship is because we execute on exactly what we say we're going to go do for the most part. There's some things that don't work and you just have to be honest with yourself, like raisin hemp in Southeast Iowa or something like that when everybody's hot to trot on two years ago, right?

And so I can see both ways. But don't forget if when people fundraise, you should choose your own investors. You should choose people that you like, that you get along with, that know they'll push you along. But every time you take money from somebody, you raise the stakes and you literally just have to keep going.

Yeah. Yeah, because there's a lot of benefits. Like it just seems like it's the hot thing to do to go and raise capital. Like everybody's doing that at Silicon Valley. It's like the thing. But it's, I think, because you get the connections, like you said, you get connections, you get great people to come on, you get capital, you can grow faster.

You get expertise. You get expertise. But if it's the wrong guys, you're kind of, you're kind of screwed then because now it's, if they want to sell the company and they don't want to grow it and hold it, and you want to grow it and hold it, but they're like, we want to sell this thing, you kind of have to make them happy. It's, you know, it's giving. and take, but at the end of the day, to your point, the more diligence you do on the front end,

the better that relationship's going to be. I mean, that's what it comes down to. You've got to make sure that you pick good people. Because they're obviously, you know, they're looking at you. If they're interested in investing, they think that you're, you're that good person, but you have to do your diligence on, on your side to make sure it's a good fit. So, yeah. But you, the advantage or speed. I mean, you can do so much more when you're well capitalized, when you're not spending the majority of your time just trying to keep the lights on, let alone worrying about how you're going to hire the people that you really need.

I also feel like it might be hard when you are going to investors to weed the ones that actually have your best interest in mind. Weed those ones out. You know, weed the ones that don't have your best interest in mind. I mean, like, was that hard to find the right investors or were they all kind of, like, what are your tips on that of how to find, you? the right investor and what things to look for because some can seem kind of fishy, you know? Yeah. I think I learned that pretty early on. I went pretty far down the path with, you know, Iowa investor that seemed like they had money and then we got down to the nitty gritty and it's like, oh, wait, you have to go raise money? Like, I thought you already have it. You can, you know,

come on board. And so I learned that pretty early on, which was, which was fortunate I learned it at the time I did. but you have to interview them like you need to find the right people and the other thing that that I like to do before I actually make a decision is try to talk to some of the other companies that they've invested in to understand okay what is what your experience been like with these guys or with this group that's invested in you and I think that's where we've probably stayed away from anybody else the other thing is when you start to talk about farm equipment. Some of these investors from Silicon Valley are like, wait, what are you doing? Like, who, why should I care? Yeah. See, that's where I also think it'd be hard for you

specifically is like not many people understand ag. Like there's very few investors probably that understand agriculture is. But ag right now is super sexy investment because inflation and farmland, like, there's so much focus on ag. There's, okay, here's a staff that's that's that I think's crazy. In 2017, there was $700 million invested in United States venture capital and agriculture. Really? Like a year or two ago, it was up to like five or six billion. So in that short amount of time, there's that much, there's that many dollars coming to agriculture. It, you know, we had Mitchell on. We had Mitchell Hor on. Oh, yeah. And he's a perfect example. I mean, now it really, sexy is the, is the best term because he said now people that, just when he, he's, he, he's, he's a perfect example. He said,

when he started that had no interest, they're like falling all over themselves to try to find something. It goes in a cycle to where nobody wants to talk to you or and nobody wants to support anything to do with that genre. Then you get to the high point where people are just throwing at money at stuff that anybody that's actually knows anything about it is like, that's a, that's, that'll never work. Doesn't matter because it's the end thing. And it just kind of ebbs and lows, but it's definitely a hot deal right now. Well, I was just going to say, the last thing, I feel like AgTech specifically, though,

like exactly what you're doing, that's such a niche. There's so much opportunity in AgTech to make things better. Like, for example, barn tools, you know, our barn alarm system, what we had previously to what they did. Yeah. Totally changes the game when it comes to barn barn alarms. And it was just something so simple. I mean, I don't know if it was that simple,

but something that was a problem, got fixed, and there's just all that across so much in agriculture. Yeah, I mean, technology, in my opinion, you should do two things. You should either make life simpler for you or it's making more money. There's like the only two things that technology should do, otherwise you're going to do it the same way you're doing it. And if you can be lucky enough to come up with something,

does both, then, hallelujah, you're on the right track. I was going to ask you, adoption. Like, do you know how big the market is and how far along are you? Or what's your rate of penetration within that market or within the number of dealers and auctioneers? And how far do you think you can grow that? Yeah. So there hasn't been a lot of, we're having to do a lot of our own research. Yeah. Right. So we do significant amount of research because ultimately those the numbers and those are those are the numbers that we run our business by so the exact market size so in north america there's about 30 billion dollars of farm machinery that sells each year and we are

advertising about 15 billion of that each year that's pretty so we're at about half of all equipment is marketed on tractor zoom and a year ago we would have been at 15% yeah maybe um and so now we have $26 billion of equipment that we can leverage from a comparable sales standpoint just over the last couple of years that have sold. And so we can start to build market trends and all that information. So we do watch that really closely. I think the one thing that we sometimes struggle with is how many actual farmers matter. But what we're doing is all about equipment buyers. Like there are so many shoppers on tractor zoom that are hobby. Hobby farmers or like the USDA classifies there's 2.1 million farmers, but only, what is it, 75% of those only sell $50,000 with the commodities

here. So you bring that down to 525,000 farmers that are selling $50,000 worth of commodities. And then if you take that to, it doesn't take too much, right? Yeah. And I, you take that to, you take that to, if you take that and jump it to a quarter of a million dollars, you probably cut that number in half. Oh, yeah. So like the farmers that produce a majority of all corn and soybeans, let's say, in the United States is less than $100,000, in my opinion. But we're dealing with equipment shoppers. We can, it doesn't, it doesn't matter what walk a life you are. If you're interested in buying a 25 horse tractor, a 50 horse tractor or 600 horse tractor, like we can service. We can service that. And ultimately, where we're headed is the construction market, the transportation market. So then you can start to make things bigger. And it opens up that buyer pool. I remember when I was pitching a venture capitalist, he's like, so how big is his market doesn't seem that big? And I said, okay, well, when you leave this conference and you fly out on that 737, I think

we're in Tennessee, and you fly out, just look down, look at every construction site, look at every semi-truck that's driving around. And then once you get about 10 miles out of town, look at all that land out there. That's all farmers. And he goes, yeah, you're kind of right. Yep. So there's a big opportunity there. Yeah, that's cool that you're going, you're going to go, do you guys currently do the construction side in equipment too, or is it just all ag right now and then you're trying

to branch out eventually? Totally focused on agriculture. There's only so many irons in the fire that you can have. So we're 100% focused on ag, but we have that scalability, opportunity long term. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And as far as the people, you know, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter where those people, people fall, if they're buying equipment, it just adds to your database. Because at the end of the day, it's, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the sales and the purchases that helps your algorithm helps your, helps your, helps your database. And it really doesn't matter who those people are or what size of farm they are. It's, it's the volume of, it's the volume of purchases that drives the,

helps helps, helps the data set. Yeah. And I think a lot of people in agriculture get really scared about data. And I mean, when we talk about, when we talk about data, it's what did that tractor sell for and how many hours are on that tractor like that's the type of data that we're looking at and then we start to benchmark that and that's where it gets really interesting it to your point i don't i don't really care how many acres you farm i don't care what genetics that you're planting on your farm i don't care about any of that i just want to know what the tractor sold for yep so let's get into like the business a little bit you are the CEO of tractor zoom correct right So like what what's your role as a CEO?

When you got venture capitalists bringing this money, you have this great team that's doing their skill set, making Tractor Zoom what it is and making it better. Like what is your job as the CEO? What are you doing every day? Because I always hear if you're a CEO, you want to hire people that are smarter than you to do the jobs that they are really equipped at doing.

And then you kind of just come in and, you know, do what you do? So what is that? Like, what are you doing every day? Well, early on, so we're 20, about 25 employees now. And we have job openings. If anybody's looking for a job, just go to Tractor Zoom slash careers. I think we have five or six positions open right now. But when we were five people or when I was just me, like you're doing everything, right?

So each time that you scale and you're able to hire more people, you're effectively delegating. So what I was doing two years ago, was I was still doing sales. I was still doing marketing. I was still bringing on auctioneers. Like as you scale, it changes, I'll say. It's not just stepping into the role of CEO and you get that cool title, right? So it's always changed. But what I'm up to right now, now that we have amazing leaders in marketing, sales, technology, product, CFO, like we have some amazing people there that come from great backgrounds and are just executing right now. And it's so cool to watch them work and continue to scale the company because they want to make an impact,

right? And so my number one job that I think about is bringing on as good as people as we possibly can. So I'm recruiting all the time, always talking to investors. But I think more importantly, I'm helping our employees put out fires. I'm helping them identify, okay, what are the challenges that you have a meeting with employees all the time? And they're saying, hey, I'm struggling with this. roadblock, can you help me? And then I have to go find resources to figure that out, right? And then ultimately, you know, the strategy, where are we taking the company? Where do we need to be in a year? And what are we doing today to make that successful? How? It's not, it's not unlike a farmer, right? You're already thinking about, okay, how do I raise a more profitable crop next year? What genetics am I going

to plan? You're already planning for that result that you're going to get at the end of 23. We're doing the same thing just with different KPIs. So you've got to be. be the visionary, but you also got to put out those fires that the employees bring to you. Sounds about right, like foreman, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. You need to treat me better because they got job openings. I figured you'd kick me off before you left. Oh, heck, no, then I'd have to do all the work. Oh, I'm looking for... Oh, don't worry, we'll put you to work. I'm looking for... I'm sure you can pedal something. Oh, yeah. You could sell something. I think I could dust off. You might make it on the sales team. Maybe. I don't know. A lot of pressure, a lot of pressure.

um what what's been the hardest adjustment as you've grown for you personally because you know when you start out you you aren't necessarily you might not necessarily have the interpersonal skills to coach employees or you may not have the skills to be able to help somebody look at uh financial stuff and analyze it like you have to to grow as that company grows because your role changes. So for you personally from starting, what's been the hardest lesson personnel-wise that you've had to learn? I think early on it was delegating and I think I've gotten pretty good at delegating now. But now it's motivating with as little, motivating your company and employees with as little involvement as you can because they

want to make an impact. They came to Tractor Zoom because they believe in the mission and vision and they want to leave their mark to grow the company. And so zero micromanaging. Give them full autonomy and the only way you can do that, in my opinion, is setting the right goals and milestones. Okay, where do you want to be personally professionally? And ultimately, here's a company goal. What are you going to do to help us get there? They set that and then they effectively run. and I'm just there to support, right? They have their own goals and initiatives. They have their own employees that they run with.

And you just got to believe in them, right? Yep. I wanted to just go back a little bit because I've been sitting on this question for a while. You go to college, you get in a land investment, you know, a firm. Did you, but you, did you always have the desire to start something like this, make something big because you went into the lawn care and you said you've always had entrepreneurial tendencies but it sounded like you were pretty good at your previous job so what

was that like was there any hesitation at all of like i'm just going to do this because i just dream about it or was it like i'm you might think about staying in the investment uh land investment firm like talk walk us through that a little bit i i've always wanted to start a company right and so growing up I told my dad I'm going to be a boat builder and my dad's going to work for me. He loves telling that story today, right? Because he does kind of work for me. But I always wanted to start a company or own a company, right? And this is, I've always been kind of an idea guy.

I'm a big bow hunter and archery and just outdoors. And so I'd always have these, like, cool little gear ideas, but it's either been done or it's not a big enough market to go chase, right? And thankfully, my dad's a good mentor mine, and he knows when to tell me no. And I know when to hang up the phone and just go do my own deal without his advice too. But I still catch myself staying up till midnight looking at farms online that I can't afford. Like, I still love it. Lands my passion. Equipment happens to be the asset class I'm dealing with, right? And I may be more passionate about land itself, just because, that's really where I cut my teeth and I've probably just been around that.

But the opportunity presented itself and it was just there's too much opportunity to solve people's challenges that I couldn't ignore it. And it really didn't take me long to make a decision. That snowmobile trip to Wyoming was, I don't call it, December 30th. And I told my employer January 30th that I'm going to go build this company. and he said, you're not going anywhere right now. And they hung on to me until May. And I literally said, I can't do both.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's truly betting on yourself, you know, just going for it. Yeah, and I got called crazy. I remember there's, when you do your own thing, there's always people out there that may be a little negative. I could recall a couple of individuals I looked up to that said, you'll fail, right?

And so I think that's also part of it, part of what, what drives you? Yep. That's the fire. Yeah. That's a common thread. A guy that we just had on here, we asked him about, you know, who really influenced him. And he made the comment that, you know, when he was a teenager and he talked about his,

what he wanted to do, his dad's friends, which he looked up to, all told him that that never work and he shouldn't do it. he was going to fail out. And when we asked him, you know, what, what drives him? He says, I still hear, I still hear those guys telling me that I can't do it or I couldn't do it to this day. And it's funny how you can have, we've talked about this too, that as you grow as a person, people that you are around may or may not like that direction that you head because sometimes when people look at you, it's like a reflection back, they see themselves. So when you step out and you take that chance and you start building that business, it brings up all the thoughts

inside of people of why I can't do that. They don't like being like people. People like being around people that they're the same as they are. And when there's change, some people do really well with that change and cheer that on and other people resist it. Yeah, most people. Resist it and are hostile to it,

I guess I'd say. No, I agree. It's an interesting, I guess that's more psychology. Do you feel like it was a lonely path? Because a lot of entrepreneurs, they think that that journey is lonely because it is exactly what.

what you're saying, you feel like, it's kind of you against the world sometimes. It almost feels like. So did you ever feel like shit? Am I going to be in this forever alone? Am I going to ever get this going? Can I ever talk to anybody that understands this? No, I have never felt that way. We have a really cool employee base that, you know, we share the wins and we share losses together. So they're always there. We're super open, transparent as an organization. So I think that's helped. My wife's always believed in believe to me and said, you know, go go do what you need to do and make it successful because you believe in it and you've got your mind of something and she knows that I'll probably just keep going and, but also knowing when to stop if it's not going to be successful, right?

Yeah, right. Being honest with yourself and, you know, I just haven't felt lonely from that standpoint. Well, that's good. I do think you have to have your outlets like early on and the grind was you are in a room by yourself and we're actually we had some software engineers that helped build the original prototype that were in vietnam so i was staying up till midnight yep and then i'd be it because it's 12 hours time time difference so i'd work with them from about 9 p.m. central time to midnight and then i'd go to sleep and i'd get up at 4 and i'd close down their day from 4 to 6 p.m and make sure we're

getting things done that that sucked yep i mean but you have to embrace the suck if you want the reward at the other side. Yeah, 100%. Just, I mean, it's, that's so similar to farming. Yeah. There's, there's some, there's some people in technology. They just have it. And like, you'll go to these conferences, be like, oh, yeah, just built this widget.

And these are like technical people, right? Yeah. They are software engineers. They built this widget and it just happens to be success overnight and that's what gets mainstream media. But 99% of entrepreneurship are building your own thing, whether it's in technology or your own hog barn or your own farm or whatever it is. It just takes grit and yeah. Gotta be willing to embrace the suck. Jocko. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Did you speak at FBN,

their conference that they had? I thought I saw. Yeah, did you meet Jock? I didn't meet Jock. I was talking to a customer in our booth and I didn't have the heart to tell him leave so I can go listen to Jock. I told dad like, that's dedication. I would have just thrown him to the ground. said I gotta go see Jock. I told you. I was like, we freaking missed out on going and meet in Jocko, and you were kind of pissed.

I was kind of pissed. Yeah, we should have went. But what do you see? This is kind of a random one I'll throw out there that I think is interesting and you might have thought about it. But what do you think about blockchain technology?

Do you think that had ever come into your world a little bit? Or what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, maybe for money transferring. I really think, Perhaps, in my opinion, it'll originate from the financial side of the entire equipment business. I don't think we really need blockchain to show farmers pictures of tractors or anything like that. But, you know, I think there are some more innovative. You know, if we start to think of, okay, what will equipment be, equipment buying be like by the year 2050?

I want your guys opinion on this, too. What will it be like to buy equipment in 2050? Okay, you got John Deere saying they're not an autonomous fleet by 2030. Let's just say equipment's going to get smaller. I think it will. If we have really autonomous equipment, equipment's going to get smaller. We don't need 600 horsepower tractors. Like we're at max capacity because of the road.

You can't get any bigger. Yep. My opinion is over the next 30 years, equipment will get smaller and you just deploy bots, right? At that point, you do not need, in my opinion, you don't need premium cabs. you don't need ILS suspension. You don't need all these comforts that, uh, that you buy when you order a tractor from a manufacturer today.

And it's, it's literally a tool. It's going to be a chainsaw. Does it work? Does it not? Well, and I feel like John Deere would be smart. You talked about that one stat of, what was it?

How many of them actually sell 50,000 more? 50,000 or more dollars of, of ag products. Yeah. Only how much percent do that? Uh, 25% and so you got 75% of the market small farmers and like they're going to want small equipment and do you think like dealers are recognizing that and are like we need to serve that market no and frankly dealers don't care right they're market takers they're taking whatever the oEMs are going to

produce and and they're all about driving that to build a business right and and because they want they want to they want to service they want to repair those machines and sell parts and other relationships like that's that's what they need to do it's the oEMs that are building production schedules five years out from now, what's the future going to be, right? Yeah. Well, I think, I think one of the big drivers of where the market is today is generational in the fact that, so I'm 51, and if I had the money, I would have too many tractors, all of them green, all of them with premium cabs and I would enjoy, I would enjoy doing the field work being out there. But I don't. I don't have the money. And we have to look at everything as far as what's most

efficient for us. And so we have a lot of custom work done for us. And we're super thankful because we've got a neighbor that loves iron, loves data, loves technology, has all the goody-go-fast stuff. does a great job for us, love him, and we get all these fancy printouts of what the ride quality was and the population and my manure maps. And I have

the same level of technology for my little 400 acre farm as somebody that's farming way more than I am. So I look at the future and we, full disclosure, we had Craig Rupp on. Oh yeah, Sabano.

that has Sabonto. And you don't have to listen to Craig very long and your wheels start turning, okay, well, I could take my 4066 R that I just used for puttering around and mowing waterways and picking stuff up and put a four row mounted planner on it and turn that sucker loose and just let it go 24-7 and spend the money on the technology, not the hardware. Spend the money. money on the software, not the hardware. That looks to me, as a smaller farmer, that looks to me like a way better investment than buying big equipment. Well, I think the large farmers, too, because think, okay, you got 20 fields. You get 20 small tractors with the technology. They're way cheaper than the big old four-wheel drive. You got 20 tractors rolling. You're just monitoring all.

And I think that's where we got to go to if you're going to run a farm. you we grant hillberg and i always we well we don't always say this but i talked to him a while ago and he was just like so where you know the sad truth is if you want to be a successful farmer you can't always be the one in the tractor and that's the truth you can't always be in the tractor and it i think that's going to be more and more kind of the trend moving forward demographics are against us everybody's short and labor you're looking to hire everybody's looking to hire and average farmer age is 60 or more. So if we're going to continue the level of productivity that we have today, with fewer people doing it, we have to get more productive. And as you said, we can't make

equipment any bigger. We've hit, we're working on speed now. It's like we can harvest, we can go run an X-9 and get this throughput. But even that is kind of at its limits. So if we're going to be as productive as we are, the technology is going to have to get better. And that probably means more pieces of smaller equipment to me that is connected and does not necessarily need someone driving it. Yeah. I mean, in my opinion, the most profitable decisions and action items aren't in the cab of the tractor, right? You don't, to run a profitable farm, you don't have to drive machinery. You need to be good at marketing and buying the right inputs for the right farms in my opinion right i'm not a farmer i just i have my stuff custom farmed as well

yeah because i'm too busy at tractor zoom and i also recognize the depreciation on equipment yeah right um or i'm wrong right from an investment standpoint there's been appreciation of the last year two years but but back to your blockchain question right in 2050 if we have all these small machines are all autonomous and you just deploy them you can buy side in sight unseen you can't right you can there's going to be fewer functioning parts on these pieces of equipment so personally i see a day where you guys are going to buy equipment for your 400 acre operation and it's going to be all digital right and your local dealership will still service it you'll still buy all your parts through your dealership they'll be they'll be there for you but the acquisition is going to happen

online you're going to get your finance insurance you're extended warranty your shipping logistics like it'll all be Amazon one click checkout. Yeah. Yeah, I totally could see that happening. Well, that could all happen maybe on your platform. We're building something for a purpose. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Well, I think that, I feel like we live at a time of real, there's almost like two, there's two worlds out there when you look down the road of technology.

there are there's a lot of people that see a lot of problems with technology and how it can be used and we've we've seen that and people think of a lot of displacement of workers a lot of problems environmental problems social problems then on the other hand there is this vision of technology just solving an amazing number of these problems where

people are going to have more time than they've ever had to be creative and to do bigger and bigger things and it's if you look at the media and not to get political

but it's so funny because there really is two camps. There is kind of a doom and gloom camp, anything to do with technology and people that are involved in technology. And then there is the people that of the people that are actually in that technology showing us a vision of what can be. And it's going to be really interesting. I just hope I live long enough.

Let's just hope it doesn't get corrupted because it does look great. Technology is great. It's been great. but if it gets in the wrong hands, it could be to our detriment. Absolutely. You just have to. That's absolutely.

We just got to hope one end prevails than the other doesn't. But at the end of the day, I think the opportunity is amazing. I have, there is very rarely a day that I don't get up, uh, that at some point I am just amazed at

the opportunities that are out there. Um, and, So for you guys, I'll ask you this. Do you ever like, do you ever feel overwhelmed because you have too many possibilities? Like when you guys are talking about what you want to do, you can't do everything. And so do you ever just are like you really have to narrow down your focus because there's actually so much you want to do? All the time.

Yeah. So many irons in the fires. there's so many ideas, some of the opportunities. Yeah. Because the way we look at our organization is we're a data company to an extent that serves agriculture and serves machinery, buyers, sellers, all stakeholders involved. And so it's all these what we call shiny objects. We used to keep a shiny object list that any time somebody had a shiny object,

the list is like, don't even talk about it. Just put it in the list and we'll review that list like every six months. That's awesome. Because there are a lot of little pieces that you get sidetracked with that you think are just so cool. You want to go execute. But every time that the way I like to think about is every time you want to go do a new shiny object, it's a whole new business. And you have to operate as a whole new business to the to the standpoint of what resources are you going to need. What's the strategy? What's the pricing point? What's the problem you're solving? Like literally every individual

little widget that you want to build, it's kind of its own little business. Yeah. And you can spend days going down in rabbit holes. You just sometimes got to put your blinders on and say, this is what we're doing. And it's like me saying, hey, we're going to go to construction someday, right? Yeah. It's like, okay, I can talk about it. It's really cool. It's, it's a neat opportunity, but it is a whole other animal to get there. And you basically have to, yeah, we know we'll have the velocity. So let's just execute the niche we have and just take it one step at a time. Prove success. Once you prove success at one point, you'll have the capacity, mental and capital capacity to go do something else. What do you do for fun? Wait, is there it?

Well, I just wanted to ask him, I just wanted to ask him, you know, are you in it for the long term of for Tractor Zoom? Or do you want to grow it and cash out? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. Anytime you take venture capital dollars, like they need to see a return, right? Yeah. And so there's like literally any company that you see that takes venture capital dollars, they're going to need to see some return at some point. So yeah, I mean, we're going to grow. We're going to make the, there's so much opportunity that we have to go execute on right now in order to make something bigger.

And that's really where we see some of the opportunities. And personally, I have some really big successes that I want to see it come out of the company that we're not there yet. So naturally, I could see another organization owning Tractor Zoom to be completely transparent. And where I could see that fitting is a strategic organization that can leverage this information to push agriculture forward or push the machinery market forward. Yeah. Do you feel like... Because we're the only one, we're the only ones in this market that have the capacity

to bring price transparency to the market today. Yeah. Yeah. You guys are like killing. You're like killing it. You own the market pretty much. I mean, you don't own it all, but you're 50%. You could get even higher than that.

The data side of it. And the data. Yeah. So if, okay, hypothetically, if that happens, are you the guy that's, I'm going to go farm all this ground because I love this land and I, you know, you said you kind of wanted to be a farmer? Are you just going to be like, hey, I'm going to go farm. Or were you on to the next problem that you can solve?

because I am striving to be an entrepreneur. I would love to start my own business one day. I'm kind of like you and that. And I have found that I kind of like the game of growing something, growing a following, growing a business, seeing the progress. And like, I have yet to find something else that really gives me that feeling. So tell me a little bit about what, would you go and do something else, or would you just kind of chill out and like farm?

Hard to say. I mean. 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.

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But I know that's only going to last a year, and my wife will kick me out of the house, and she'll say go back to work. Yeah. So me, I'm going to go on to the next thing. Yeah. Because it's just in you. Yeah. I think it's just in you.

And I remember my grandfather, my grandfather was in, was in the military and I remember him telling me like when I was really young he goes you know there's only there's only two things that you should do when you get older serve your country or serve your people so either serve your country or go build a build a business that employs people that makes livelihood better whatever you're doing that's what his vision was and so my dad in their company employed people in manufacturing space right And I've kind of seen him sell his business and then get bored very quickly. Yeah.

And so he does a variety of other things that are in the same space and it keeps him happy, right, and keeps him young. And I think the thing I'd fear the most, especially when they get older, is if you retire, you do something for a long, if you do something for a long time and then you retire or you sell a company or whatever, you just stop and your health goes downhill. like I got to keep building something. Yeah, you got to be busy. You got to keep.

You got to keep something. It's like grandpa. Yeah. Farm tell you're 90. He lived to be 98. I remember when I was buying deer tags the other day. And I remember there's a there's a guy at Walmart. He goes, you know, my, I'm, I forget what he said, 84 years old.

And I'm still working here at Walmart. And my sister's 80 years old. As soon as she quit working here, her health just deteriorated. So I'm bound to determine the work the rest of my life. And I was like, I hear you. you, buddy. Yeah, I mean, I think it's more mental than just, I mean, it's physical, getting up doing something every day, but keeping your mind active and thinking about what can be having something that drives you, it doesn't have to be a big thing, but something that stimulates you.

Stimulates you to invest your time in that you look forward to. Because if you have nothing to look forward to, purposeless living sucks. Yeah, that's right. Okay, I have one last question, and it's back into business, but, you know, we don't always have. have a CEO of a company on, especially in the venture capital world. And I always ask these people this question, but culture is like everything. If you want to have a great company, you know, that's kind of what I've learned. So like, what are some ways that you kind of instill the culture? Because that's also a key, a word that gets thrown out there that can get taken and it's pretty cheesy, like, you know, culture, right? But what are some good ways to instill culture in a

non-corny way that employees actually can buy into and feel like they're a part of something great. Yeah. My opinion in culture is it starts from the top. So whatever I do is what the culture is. However I manage the company is what the culture is. Like it is just a, it's a response to how the company operates. So personally, what I like to do is we have our core values plashed on our wall. There's five core values that those are the those are the core values that. Those are the, those are the core values that you should hire or fire by. And I hate to be so cutthroat on that. But like, that's just the mentality of this is the, these are the people we want here. And we want to work really hard, but also have fun. Right. And so if you're not having fun, why are you here? Go do something that

you enjoy. Like, you're not going to hurt my feelings if you want to go do something else. But the same time, like really analyze that in the hiring process of are they going to be a culture fit, right? Yeah. So, yeah. no, that's good. I mean, I heard it in a way, like, yeah, those core, the core values, the mission and the vision, like your mission is what you're striving for. The vision's how you're going to do it. And the core values is kind of what, it's like how you make decisions inside the business. And so, like, if you're making decisions that don't match those core values and your team sees that, they're going to go, well, your core values don't mean shit. And so that's why. And I think, I think core values can get like over.

Right. It's cheesy, you know. The last company I worked for had a list of values. There was like 12 of them. And I was like, I was sitting in on that group. And I was just like waiting for somebody to go, I think this is too much stuff.

Nobody did. And I kind of knew that my time there was probably somewhat limited. And I'm like, I'm not going to, I'm not saying anything. But I was like, if they can't remember, if you can't remember past number three, you probably, you probably got too long a list.

Yeah. And, you know, one last thing on that is, like when we're hiring people, I get that question all the time. What's your culture? I'm saying, you know what? I could tell you what our culture is. I could tell you my scripted answer. Why don't you go ask our other employees that you're with? Ask them how they like working here and ask them why they like working here. Also, ask them what they hate about working here. Yeah. And that's what you're going to get into. Yeah, that's a good answer because that truly is your employees are of the culture. What they do, how they interact in the company. They are the example of what it is. So that's cool. But when you're only one person, so you're in a certain your own company and they ask you what your culture's like, just say, we're working hard. And that's all we're doing. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and ask the question you wanted to ask him before I jumped in. So how is the pheasant population down your neck of the woods? this year. It's not that good. Yeah, I haven't seen shitty. So what I'm led to believe, I don't know if you look at those DNR reports out there, but it's like 220% higher than I think they just saw

two pheasins instead of one. Yeah, well, you know, we had, we had a horrible collapse in the pheasant population. I feel like it's 10 years ago, maybe longer than that, because we used to have a great population

of pheasants around here. And it got to where he didn't see any. And the last few years, I felt like it's getting better. But man, this fall, I didn't feel like I didn't see squat. And so I didn't know whether that was just a Washington County thing or whether that's widespread in southeast Iowa. How do you, how do you balance it? How do you balance running a company? But right now it's- I don't talk about hunting before balance. Yeah, go ahead. This is, this is the balance. This is hunting now. Well, I was saying you're here. It's like, you be out. All my buddies and all my friends up in northwest Iowa limit central. They're just limiting out left and right. They're having a bunch of fun. So I'm jealous

to those guys. Yeah. So I, the winter of 2020, February 2020, we had a really hard winter down here. Yep. And I got COVID. And my wife said, go to the basement. This is when like nobody knew what to do. Yeah. I was like, I'm not sitting here for 14 days in. this is up in Des Moines. Yep. And so I was down there for maybe 15 minutes. I called and said, hey,

I'm out of the back door, head to the farm for my 14 days. And it ended up being a false positive. I never actually had COVID, but I was down there for 14 days. Yep. And I got so bored. I bought a cheap snowmobile and I bought a bunch of corn

and I was out feeding pheasants and feeding deer and just having a, I don't know, it felt like a health vacation for 14 days. Myself at the farm and I could work every day. But I can't tell you how many dead pheasants and quail I found. No kidding. Total hard freeze.

They couldn't get down. There had been a layer of ice on top of the snow and just. And we're still feeling the effects of that. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. We don't have any problem with the deer though. Yeah.

Deer just, they are an absolute juggernaut no matter what anybody does. Oh my God. To their own detriment, I think. I feel like we're, if we can't get a hand. I feel like the DNR has got to make it. easier and cheaper for people to hunt deer because if they don't it's 30 it's like 35 yeah 30 that expensive it's like it's not that expensive it's not it's not dollars to hunt deer no it's the

access to the ground yes true i think that's what gets people true but well and hunting all the gear that you got to get i mean every wife out there in america for a hunter they're like that's a culture yeah because i know you can go out and spend however much you want to spend. But you don't have to. Right. You don't have to. It would be pretty gross for me to, when I kill another elk,

for me to tally up all the stuff I've bought and all the miles that went into that. My price per pound, I bet some be over $100. Yeah. Yeah. But it's the experience. It's like that's, bar none, one of the best things I love about hunting is the experience is you hang out, people you really enjoy. And it's just a whole.

whole process to it. But balance to what your question was. Especially right now, because like you should be getting after it, right? I've only been the deer stand four days this year. Four, yeah, four days this year. So it, I used to hunt probably 45 to 50 days a year and now I'm hunting five days a year. Yeah. So there, there is balance, but the way I look at it is we, we have so much momentum at tractor zoom like it takes diligence it takes focus you have to keep going um that i'm i'm investing all my time and energy there and at home when i'm not working with the family because we've got four kids all under five years old so there's a there's a lot of uh that's busy there so the like i'm gonna have the rest of my life to hunt right yeah right so it's i love it i'm

passionate about it. I look at my trail cameras every day, but I don't get out very often. Yeah. And even more, some of the things I love is just getting my German short hair out on a Saturday morning, Sunday morning, and going to walk public ground. I don't care if I shoot anything. I get out there with my dog. I clear my mind. Yep. And half the time I get back in the truck and I start emailing and like, I don't know. It's good peace time for you. Yeah. Got to have a get away. Yeah, you got to get away. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Do you got anything else? You got any questions for us?

You got anything? You got anything? I think I'm good. I appreciate you coming down. And it was a real pleasure, and I'm looking forward to seeing this thing go because the growth you've had is unbelievable. But when you build a good, when you find a pain and you find a way to fix it, things generally work.

And what you got is definitely working. Well, same with you guys in this. podcast. Like I said, I remember in 2017 when we were talking about that hog barn, I never would have figured I'd see you starting a podcast. So, congratulations to you guys for building this. So right when I was coming down, I got a message from one of our employees and goes, are you going down to see Sawyer and Torp? And he put the two and two together. So he made sure to send me all the data on the 8420s and 30s. That's awesome. I've got all the analytics back here. We might have to dive into all.

Yeah, we should. All right. We'll do it off camera. But hey, we appreciate it, Kyle. for coming on. Go follow them on LinkedIn. Go check out TractorZoom.com for all your equipment purchase needs. And you guys know what to do. Pay the fee. If you got any value, share it out. I know we did. Share it out with your friends, family, coworkers, employees, whoever. Buy some merch. We got Barn Talk merch in the link of description if you're watching on YouTube or the show notes if you're listening on Spotify or Apple. We'll see you guys back here next week for another episode.