Barn Talk - Tariffs, Debt & Legacy: Will Farmers Win or Lose?

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Welcome back to another episode of Barn Talk! Today, Tork and Sawyer dive deep into a highly requested Q&A session. This episode is packed with valuable insights into the agricultural world and their personal business ventures. From discussing the impact of tariffs on U.S. businesses and agriculture to candidly addressing the complexities of running a sow unit, they unpack crucial details essential for anyone in the farming industry. They also share invaluable life lessons on habits and mindset shifts that have driven them toward success. Join us for an enlightening conversation that's sure to inspire and inform. If you're ready to glean some wisdom and enjoy a little farm talk, grab a seat, and let's get started! Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 "Barn Talk Listener Engagement Appeal" 05:37 Unexpected Fire Opportunity 14:37 Iowa Corn Checkoff & Stock Market Insights 20:25 U.S. Debt Crisis Warning 23:55 Debt Concerns and Overprinting Money 30:37 Balancing Budget and Reducing Debt 33:35 Entrepreneurs Unhappy with Tariffs 39:53 Tariff Impact vs. Future Taxes 46:19 Ag Exempt from China-US Tariffs 49:08 Doomed Demographics and Export Dependency 58:26 Sow Unit Health Risks 01:01:54 Early Habit: Plan and Take Notes 01:06:35 Purpose Over Praise 01:11:22 Community Breakfast Gathering Legacy 01:18:21 "Impact of Sending Thank You Cards" 01:20:53 "Value Customers with Personal Touch ------------------------------- ⚠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

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a Q&A episode. So you guys send in your questions and we're going to get them answered on the show. Today, if you have any questions ever and you want us to answer them on the show, you can email us your questions at barn talk show at gmail.com that's the best way for us to receive them or dm us or tic talk whatever but email's the best uh you can if you want to support barn talk you

want to support this show you want to help us grow uh if you get any value from the show all we ask is that you share it share it with the people that you know the more that you guys do that the more that this show can grow word of mouth is the best way to grow a podcast so um we appreciate every single one of you guys that do that. It helps out in a big way. Next thing you can do to support us here at Barn Talk is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Number one, we love hearing from you guys. We want to hear what you think of the show. And number two, it gives our show a lot of credibility. So we can get more guests to come on the show. Our show can grow. We can get just more

credibility to help our show. So it means a lot hearing from you guys and seeing those always fills our heart up. Last thing you can do to support us here at Barnd talk and support our family farm is support our direct-to-consumer meat business, Farmergrade, farmagrade.com. And right now we are actually running an Easter special. We got an Easter box we made with a ham, bacon, bacon, ends, breakfast sausage, two chuck-eye steaks. And we're throwing in something special on the house, completely free. Let's just say it's a little bit of an Easter egg. And there's a magical surprise inside that Easter egg. So if you want to see what the surprise is, is trust me it's worth it you can buy an easter box and we'll get it sent out to you next tuesday so it'll be

be at your house before easter just in time um but there's only like 40 so if you want one get one and you can always use code barn talk to save 10% off on your order that's wonderful it is wonderful it's like it's like halo yeah well you know we just thought you got to think of that nitty-gritty stuff that just makes things fun. So we're going to try to think of some, some cool stuff to do for special holidays for people and, and kind of make it a limited deal to just kind of make it, make it fun. You're going to put a confetti bomb in boxes for the 4th of July when they open up explode? I'm going to put a, I'm going to wrap a firecracker. I'm going to get a fuse so long around a firecracker. And then somehow if you open the box,

It just, it's like flint and steel. I don't know if exploding meat would go in a little that way. I don't think so either. You better just stick with the confetti. Yeah. You might want to run these ideas of, that's why I got a team of guys slowly, but surely we're building the team,

and they keep me level-headed. Yeah, but the problem is the team that you have, it's kind of like when you're kids, all of you together are dumber than any of you by yourself. You might need a woman's perspective on some of those. Yeah, that's a good idea. yourself an advisory board. Yep.

Talk you down. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. I got a little field work done. The weather's been, was pretty decent earlier in the week, a little rainy today,

but I got out and chopped a few stocks and tore out some fence, leveled a few trees. I got a few more to do. But yeah, I got the itch. I got the itch. I talked to David off and on the last few days.

And I think if, I think of this weather holds out. We don't get much rain. I bet you that he tries to plant beans. He's not on the 100% corn bandwagon like I am. So he's going to go waste his money planting beans this weekend maybe. And if that goes well, I would not be surprised that by the time you hear this podcast, we'll all be Jonesen to get started next week. planting some corn. So there's actually, I'm pretty sure there was some corn planted yesterday around southeast

Iowa, so it's happening. It's getting there. We almost had an disaster happened. Our neighbor was burning CRP. And it came over to our CRP. And what did he say?

So my neighbor called me and he said, he said hey uh he said hey uh you wouldn't would you want to burn off your uh filter strips down by the creek and i said i said yeah sure i don't care he goes oh that's good because they're on fire right now because uh it kind of jumped our it jumped our backfire that we started and uh yeah so we're going down and start one between you and and your neighbor and i said that was fine and what was funny about it was when that was all said and done and it didn't get away it was fine and and they needed burned anyway but then my neighbor that owns an 80

beside it the creek kind of wraps around and goes south and and he cleared all the brush along that creek a few years ago and it's all been piled there and he came over to my house the next day and uh he was gone he was truck and he took his semi to get serviced and uh he he stopped by the next day and he goes he's like gosh dang if i would have known you were going to start that fire I would have told you just keep going because I've been wanting to burn those piles. And I was kind of worried about it getting off into that housing development. And, man, if you would have burned that and I wasn't home, that way I would have been completely innocent. And I said, well, I said, we would have done it, but I said I didn't actually have any do with it.

I said it was our other neighbor. And he's like, oh, yeah, okay. So anyway, it all turned out good. But my wife freaked out calling me because no more. had he called me to tell me that they were burning it, but all the fire trucks from our town took off and came blazing up the road, and she thought that the fire had gotten away, and she called me, and she said, oh, the fire trucks are here, and then she goes, oh, no, they're just driving by. So there was another fire up north of us, and they all went to that. And then later that day,

there was a house fire back in town, so the latter truck from the town north of us actually came pass. I mean, it was like, there was a lot of, there was a lot of chaos going on on the countryside the last couple days, but I think all the burning's probably getting about done. So, it'll be time to think about getting planting going. And so the market update today, hot off the press from Kat's Grain, and these numbers will be changing because the market's has just opened a little bit ago. And right now, I think, I think everything is down just, a little bit. But so this would be that this.

My, my stock portfolio looks like shit. Oh, just, just stay the course. I know. Just stay the course. I know.

I'm just saying it's, it's like you don't even want to check at this point. Well, yesterday, though, was a boomer. Yesterday it came back hard. So corn for May, 475 and December corn, so new crop corn,

452. And I don't have a local bid this morning. There was a glitch on the, on, on my sister. and I didn't get that. I didn't get that down. Beans for May 1016 and November beans, $10 even. Bean meal, $295 a ton, wheat for May, $543, hogs for May, $86, just like they've been for like every time that I give them. But July hogs, $91, so there's your $90 mark that I have been, that has been elusive.

Cattle for April, $203. $2.804. crude oil, I don't know if anybody paid attention to that, but when these tariffs started, I want to say oil was down to like 53, maybe, 53 or 55, something like that. And it rallied back yesterday, and it was just about, I think it got to 62. It settled at 6183. Bitcoin, Bitcoin's off this morning, it was 80, or 80,000. last time I looked, but it got up to 83, $84,000. It had been as low as 71 maybe, got down there. The S&P 500 was 54-56, but it's off right now the last time I checked.

Tesla 272, and it shaved 20 bucks off of that on the open. It was 252 when I just checked it. Gold 3,100 and silver, $2,800. S&P 500, 54-56. What is... 54,000. That'd be 54,000. What does that mean, though? So that's the sum total of all the stocks that are in the S&P 500. All right. So does that change? Oh, yeah. A lot. It changes every day. It changes day. So it's the 500 biggest companies in the world. Ah, got it. And so there was a, there, there was a story on X yesterday that some, some bank, some rating firm, whatever. They had a, they had a prognosis that, the S&P was going to hit 61,000 companies this year, the total. What's the highest it's ever been? Do you know? Oh, that would be the highest. Okay.

The S&P has gone up over time because all the companies in the S&P keep getting bigger. Right. So that makes sense. But they cut their, they cut their deal from 61,000. They don't think it's going to make it now. And I don't think anybody really knows. But it was so interesting that when all these tariffs were announced, people like Jim Kramer came out and said, oh, Monday, it's going to be Black Monday.

It's going to be the greatest, you know, drop since the Depression and, oh, everybody's going to lose their ass and all that. Well, after yesterday, the only people that lost their ass were the people that sold, because yesterday the market rallied back like hard. Now we're back off again this morning, and I think you're going to have that, because you just got a lot of uncertainty in the markets, but the stock market is not near as bad as shape as everybody would like to say. And, you know, the other thing that I don't think gets talked about enough

is, for one, with the exception of what? The seven biggest tech stocks, if you take them out of the equation, the stock market hasn't really, like, has not gone up that much. It's like Apple, Google, Nvidia. The seven big tech stocks,

they've pretty much driven this market. But the other thing I don't think people talk about enough is, what, 70% of the stock, that are owned in the United States are owned by 30% of the people or 20% of the people or something like that. I mean, it's a crazy number and I think like 50% of the population of the United States don't own any stocks. Or own a very small percentage. And yet we put this like when these tariffs went on, oh, Americans are just going to lose their ass because the stock market's going to go down. Well, you know what? The stock market does go down, for one thing. I mean, it's not a guaranteed rate return. Now, if you're in it for the long haul, it has historically performed very well, and you could say that it's given this much gain. But it doesn't do that all the time. There's been periods. If you bet over the wrong period of time, it's actually been down. And I was listening. I was listening.

to PBED podcast a couple days ago. And there was a guy on there and he was talking about how he hoped the market did crash because he's a millennial and he said that he's just never had the opportunity to buy

to get in because stocks have been too high over the last 15 years. And man, they kind of raked him over the coals because they were like, so have you done any investing? He's like, well, I've day traded a little bit, but that didn't work out very well. And they said, so you're telling me that over the last 15 years that you've been as an adult outworking, you haven't invested any money in the stock market because you thought it was overvalued.

And he said, yeah. So then, of course, you know, they got out the calculators and the graphs, and they showed him, like if he put $100 a month in the S&P, for the last 15 years what he'd have versus not doing that. But it's time in the market. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. When you grow corn in Iowa, you're not just growing a crop. You're invested in the future of Iowa agriculture.

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it needs to be successful. To learn how Iowa Corn Checkoff is working to increase demand for corn farmers profitably. Visit iwacorn.org. Now, let's get back to it. I know that there's really good people out there that can do better than the S&P because they're just, they can trade stocks and they're good at it, but that is a rarity. If you're in the stock market, I mean, as an average show out there, and you don't have the time to look into stocks, I mean, index funds, and if you're investing in the stock market, I mean, it's a long-term game. If you're not going to be one of those guys that is an expert that can trade that shit and get a 15, 20% return because you're so good or more, then you're playing it for the long game. And so, yeah, the bad times are always going to come.

It's a market. It's going to go up. It's going to go down. It's going to go down. So it's kind of inevitable. You just got to ride the wave. Yeah. And when it's cheap, it's cheap.

I mean, like, like Claude used to always say, you said he used to say, and there's blood. in the streets. That's when you need to be buying. And that's what it's going to be. You know, when there's blood in the streets, that's the time to strike and have opportunity. It's a good time to have cash on hand so you can buy assets. But I think that's what you saw yesterday. I think that's why you saw the market come back so hard is because you had people that bought that dip. They saw that and they're like, I'm buying. And I don't know if that gets talked about enough. And maybe it doesn't make a big difference because like you said, you know, I don't know. 70% of the stock's owned by what, 20% of people, maybe, I don't know.

We're just, I don't know the stat. You just said it. So, um, but people's financial literacy has gotten better. Yes. And so like, I don't know if that affects how hard our dips, you know, how, how, how, how, how effective the bad times are, I guess, because everybody looks at it. Now, if you get enough people that are like, that's opportunity. Yeah.

How long does it stay bad before everyone just buys and the market goes back up? You know? If everybody knows like, oh, blood in the streets, time to buy, that's an opportunity. And you get more and more and more and more and more people, everyday people, realizing that. Because there's just so much content now. There's so much. You can learn how to invest. You can learn how to become wealthy, the smart way.

There's a lot of information out there. And I think a lot of people are finding that information. I think it makes the volatility greater because I think today you get people that knee jerk on the back, on the front side. Well, knee jerk and I think people when they see the momentum, I think you see more people get out with the idea they're going to get out and then get back in. Yeah. It's not anything like it was. Like when I was growing up, when we were just getting started having a family, There was no online trading.

There was no instantaneous trading. I mean, you literally had to go down to your Edward Jones guy or your American Express investors and go in there and tell them what you wanted and they'd look up and see what that stock's trading out today. and I mean, it was like, it was like a commitment to get into the stock market or do a mutual fund or to anything. And that's all changed. Now it's, you know, like that. But anyway, I just thought it was pretty surprising that nobody knows. Nobody is as smart as they'd like to have. And that's the other factor too. The news travels so much faster and you can make decisions faster.

Yep. You can act fast, get news fast, and get the information how to invest. properly fast. Yeah, and you talked about how there was a guy that you listened to his podcast, and he talked about how back in the day, basically he leveraged the information that he found a way that he was getting information about how a particular commodity market was moving before anybody else. Yeah. Oh, God, I can't remember his name. It doesn't matter. But that was a day where information was king and if you had your edge was your edge was that you got information before other people had it and there were a lot of people that were involved in in the stock market and that was their edge as they were connected they knew so many people so they knew about trends before

it was reported in the newspaper well today it's very hard to have an edge on information i mean there's there's people that do and that's part of the reason why there's laws against insider trading but we all know it still takes place um but for the regular person there's never been a time that you could have access to so much information and so quickly and so um yeah i i i'm pretty it begs the question i mean it begs the question do you think there'll ever be another great depression because i mean there very well could be but it's just like people are just so much in the know you know what i mean so many people know so many people are getting information fast it's like i said information fast make decisions fast and are getting

the right knowledge on how to invest do you know how we could have a depression again a stock market crash like that how if we don't pay off this 36 trillion dollars in debt you think that's the only way that's going to happen. I don't think people, it just drives me crazy with all of this shit that's going on that people want to throw a hissy fit about this government agency, they shut this money down, or they're firing these workers, or fill in the blank, whatever, whatever issue you've got a, a big, hard on for you know what the thing that every single American should be probably worrying about we are 36 trillion dollars in debt and if we don't get our shit together this year we'll add two trillion dollars to the debt and every year after that and every year after that and the

interest on the debt is like more money than what we spend on defense spending like it's the biggest light item in the budget is paying the interest on the debt. Why is this not the single most important issue out there? Like why is that? Why are we fucking around worrying about why are we worrying about all this crap? Like one of the stories that came out this morning was there was a town hall CNN. I got it. You got to love CNN. in. They had a town hall with Bernie Sanders, which I'm sure that was riveting. But Anderson Cooper introduced this by all, if I had to look and guess, I would say, this was a woman. And he introduced this

person, this lawyer, and said, she is a lawyer, she is a Democrat. And she corrected him and said that her pronouns are they them. And they're making a big deal about it because here's CNN, the media of inclusion and, you know, whatever. And how could Anderson Cooper misgender somebody? What an idiot. And somebody I saw a post by a guy that said that Anderson Cooper misgendering her set back relations for people like this by years, and this was almost as big of atrocity as January 6th. And now I didn't even have, this was on X, and I don't even know that person, but they had to have blue hair.

Oh my God. Yeah, people are fucking dramatic. This is what, you know, this is what we're doing. This is what we're occupying our time with. It's like, this is not, this is like, complaint. to your husband about the paint that's shipped on your porch post as you're going to the bank for them to tell you that they're going to foreclose on your house. That is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, get your heads out of your asses. So what? Okay. Why should people be

concerned about the debt? Because I don't think that gets talked about enough. No, because they think, because they just think everybody's in debt. So why does it fucking matter? Yeah. So what do you say to that? That's exactly right. They do believe. I think that people genuinely believe that we can just print money like we've done and we can keep doing it forever. The problem is at some point you run out of people to buy your debt. And do you know who the biggest buyer of American debt has been? China. Somebody's got to buy all these bonds.

So in other words, you're financing this debt. So whether you do it through your economy growing and the value of your dollar or you print money out of thin air and then you sell this debt, somebody's got to buy all that debt. And when everybody in the world is in debt, it's a limited market to who the hell is going to buy it. And I think that everybody, just looks and says, well, as bad as the United States is, we're still the best, we're the best

performing economy in the world. That's not a long-term solution. It's just not. And at some point, what will happen is all the benefits that you love so near and dear, like your Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, unemployment, food stamps, the Defense Department, whatever, everything will get cut. It'll have to get cut. And, but... What do you mean by that? If shit goes south, everything will get cut, or what do you... Yeah, you won't be able to afford those government programs.

Well, so, yeah, what... Does it just, like, do you think... Like, what's the long-term outcome if we don't solve it? So you don't. At some point, the debt has... I mean, it has to be paid. And what it'll mean is, it'll be like what happened in Europe when they... They were all upside down and they raised taxes on everybody and they continue to raise taxes.

So more and more people pay more and more money. And let's face the United States, we all complain about taxes. What, half the people in the United States don't hardly pay shit for taxes. And the top 1% pays like, I don't know, 30% of the taxes. And everybody thinks that's not enough. They should pay more. but that's not how you're not going to tax your way to prosperity there's because it eliminates incentives that's where europe's at europe you have zero incentive to be an entrepreneur why would you be an

entrepreneur because as soon as you try to make a dollar somebody's going to take 62 cents of it i mean it it's why not just get a job working for the government and get guaranteed money and all the free stuff and just you know be good at drawing cartoons i don't know whatever, but it eliminates all your incentive. Well, so the dollar, it eliminates our power of the dollar too, right? I mean, the dollar gets weaker if we just keep this debt, keep printing it, right? Yeah, and there's people, there's people that like, if we lose that, if we lose that, because so many people are going off the dollar, right?

Well, there's a lot of people that would like to go off the dollar for sure. Well, but they're on the dollar right now. Yeah. And if we keep making it weaker, that's not going to help our, help our stock. All kinds of bad things that can happen downstream as America's economic power dwindles because we can't get a hold of our debt. And this whole thing about tariffs, this is about China because you saw yesterday that Trump came out and said, okay, I'm going to pause the tariffs on everybody else that has messaged or called or, set messages that they want to negotiate. We're not going to put any of those tariffs on them

other than the 10%. There's 10% across the board on everything, and that's staying. But the reciprocal tariffs that are shutting them off, except China. And now what he's trying to do, I think, is he's trying to cut a deal with the rest of the world to put China in its place because China is our single biggest adversary. I mean, they are, for all in terms of the time, intensive purposes, we're already at war with China. We're just not at militarily. But when it comes to, when it comes to intellectual property, when it comes to AI, when it comes to relationships with other people around the world, investment around the world, when it comes to currency manipulation, I mean, China's already doing everything they can. I mean, we're basically fighting each other

And everybody acts, you know, nicey nice, and even Trump's like, oh, you know, I have respect for China and da-da-da. There is no love there at all. But this whole tariff thing is the idea is that Elon is trying to find over a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget. And you just saw yesterday, $350, $400 million. dollars or billion dollars i can't remember of waste within the unemployment there was they found over 25 000 people that their age was over 115 years old that were getting unemployment benefits and they found 30 or 40 50 000 i think you have to look these numbers up they're out there on x uh 50 000 children between the age of one and five that were getting unemployment

benefits. And then they found like 10,000 people that their birth dates on their forms with the unemployment were future birth dates. They weren't even born yet and somebody's getting money off of a number. It's shit like this every day. So on the one hand, you're trying to, they're trying to find over a trillion dollars of waste in the U.S. government. And they're trying to get a trillion dollars worth of income, extra income brought into the United States. And part of that is through tariffs, trying to level the playing field with all the trade deficits that we have with these other countries. They're trying to save over a trillion dollars, grow over a trillion dollars, and balance the budget. So in other words, not even get it, not even get it to where

we're paying a bunch of the debt back. We're just not adding to it. That's their goal, is to get a budget that we actually don't spend more money than what we take in. And then on top of the that, if they can put enough pressure on the bond market and push the yield down on the 30-year treasury, because the United States has bonds that are up for renewal all the time. So every time they have to renew a bond and the interest rate is higher, the interest expense the United States goes up. If that bond rate is lower, they're refinancing it at a lower rate, that's saving money to the U.S. Treasury. And if you can get interest rates to go down in the United States,

that helps the economy grow, and then that brings more income into the government, and then if you can balance the budget today and you can grow the economy, the next thing you know, you have a budget surplus. You have a surplus, and we can actually pay off the debt. Okay. Well, so, God, you're just going to.

off there. Do you need a water break? I think I just might as well pop open the widow Jane. I'm just going to start drinking right from the bottle. Hey, before we get started today, I got something special for you. So Farmer Gray has a deal. Coming up on Easter, we're going to ship out orders Tuesday, and you'll have it before Easter, and it's got everything you need. It's got all my favorites in there.

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So go there now. Well, okay, somebody did ask us about tariffs. I mean, it's what everybody's talking about, right? And so they asked us, do you think tariffs will work or why? And I think we just went right into it after the market update because it just fit. But I think what you're saying, that's a plan, right? That's the plan that they're trying to execute. And when you talk it out like that, it makes sense. But there's a lot of people that it's going to be short-term pain. Yes. And I don't know how long that short-term pain is. I don't know if that's, you. years. I don't know if that's months. I don't know what it is. But you got to go through the short-term pain to make that plan work. And people don't want to go through the short-term pain. But at the same time, people, because people are like, I saw Sam Parr. So Sam Parr, he does my first million. He's an entrepreneur, sold his business. He owns a company called Hampton. They have a great podcast, by the way. And it's just a large community of entrepreneur founders. And they pulled

people inside that community about tariffs. And a lot of them are not happy with the tariffs. A lot of them don't think that this is going to, that they can bring American manufacturing to America to help their businesses and that the consumer is going to end up paying and they're not really going to work. That's what they, that's what they think. And so when you see stuff like that, It's like, well, how can these tariffs really, how can we get it to work? Because not every industry they can bring, build a factory that's going to make American goods.

It's going to, it's no longer they have to buy shit from China and pay this tariff. They can just manufacture in America. Like Shay Myers, he posted a video yesterday about onion bags. His onion bags. And he's kind of fucked because, he doesn't control the onion price. Uh-uh.

But he gets those bags from China and he can't get them cheaper here in the America. Yeah. So he's like, I can't put the cost on the consumer. Right. Yeah. Because I'm a price taker. So I got to eat the cost of this onion bag. So that's an example of like, that's pain.

That's pain. But I guess it's like you said the other day, what the fuck's, what's everybody else's fucking. Yeah. How the fuck else do we get out of this mess? Because like it's either we just print money, keep going and kicking the, kicking the fucking can, keep kicking the can, or we do something about it and have to endure a little bit of pain. And I don't know, I don't know what I, I don't know what's the right answer. I mean, if this plan doesn't work, it's going to be a blue wave next time the election comes around. And so they better make sure it fucking works. But I'm all about trying to,

different shit. I mean, at this point, we got to try something. We got to do something. We can't just keep kicking the can and fucking printing money and saying, oh, everybody else is in debt. I mean, you got to do something here. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting. But I will say, I do see where people are coming from where there's pain. There is pain. And in the short term, it's going to be, it's going to hurt. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, of businesses. It's going to hurt some people. But hopefully, like you said, if the plan goes well, you cut a trillion, you make a trillion, get a lower interest rates, you can help the treasury out. The other part of that is, so here's where this is, I think this is the biggest fly in the

ointment of making the whole thing work, is you are depending on the legislature of the United States to actually write some law and to pass some law. Yeah, I was going to say, And they are a bunch of worthless fucks. I am more disappointed with, and I don't, Republicans, Democrats, all of them. They have done nothing. They have done nothing. So the reason that we have such a strong federal reserve in the United States is because we have not passed a budget in this country in like, I don't know, 12 years maybe. I don't know when the last budget was actually passed by Congress and signed. No idea. So the, so, So essentially, the Federal Reserve has been doing, has been determining economic policy for

definitely more than a decade, and I think it's a lot longer than that. And the reason is because Senate and the House, they don't get anything done. All they do is bicker, and all they do is fundraise. They fundraise off of every issue that is going on in this country to stay in power. Their number one job when they are elected is to get reelected. That is the only fucking thing that any of them care about. And they all sit there and they all tell you that they're working so hard for you. They are not.

They are interested in consolidating power and holding on to power. And it is so frustrating. So here's what I'll say about this. If you can raise these tariffs to bring more income into the United States and to incentivize American production to help the middle class in this country to bring better high-paying jobs back here. And at the same time, you can eliminate income taxes for people making less than $150,000 a year and get rid of the bureaucracy, get rid of death.

That would be a great thing. Let's get rid of death. That would be fucking great. you have people that yes things cost you more money i will get and i will just give you a perfect example so my wife had a home decor store in our local town for a few well she had it for a long time and then when the when my kids were in everything she sold it and uh just did full-time mom and then she came back and opened a new store a few years ago and during covid great time to own in a home decor store during COVID, but she got an email from basically all the different suppliers that she buys stuff.

And just any of you know that have gone on a shopping trip, all that trinkety shit that you see at all these stores, just think Hobby Lobby, that shit comes from China, like predominantly China. Little from India, little from Vietnam, maybe some Indonesia, but predominantly China. So she gets an email during COVID that everything in their catalog has an 8% surcharge, and it was all about transportation. You couldn't get stuff here, and transportation was expensive and all that. Okay, she still gets those emails because it's like everything. If you ever tried to get off of a mailing list, it's like you'll be getting emails to me

15 years after I'm dead. It doesn't happen. So she gets an email from Creative Co-op is one of the companies. she bought a lot of stuff from. Cross the board, 14%, 14% surcharge for the tariffs. So if you're selling a pillow, if you're selling a pillow and that pillow, if you're selling a pillow and your cost on that pillow is $25. Well, now it's, it's what, $27, something like that. I mean, it's just that much more that you're adding on top of everything else. I understand that. That's a problem. But do you know what your tax rate's going to be if we don't pay off the fucking debt?

Like, yeah, you might be able to get cheap shit from China. But when your effective tax rate triples, which that's probably where we're headed if we can't get this debt under control. And people don't want to think about that. People don't care about it because it's somewhere out there in the future. We all care about what's right here right now. So this costs me more money today, and I'm pissed off about it. But what you need to be thinking about is, what's it going to cost me five years down the road? And I don't think we do a very good job of that. But our Congress has got to get off their ass and clean up all the regulations and clean up the waste and the fraud. The reason nobody talks about all the shit that Doge is finding is because there's a hell of a lot of people,

a hell of a lot of people connected with government politicians. They may not be directly related to them, although I have a feeling there's a hell of a lot of family members that are family members to members in Congress that are getting greased. But there is a shitload of people that have prospered from the waste, the fraud, the abuse within our government and you and I are paying for it. We're paying for all this shit. I'm just sick of it, and I just laugh. These people that comment on our stuff,

this might be a good segue into this. Well, I would just say, I... The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen TIG one. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available two. A 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge.

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More like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Like I said, I think trying something different and having a fucking plan, it makes sense to me. Yeah. That, what you lay out, their plan makes sense if they can execute it. Yep. If it doesn't work, they're going to, it's just like it's man in the fucking arena. Yep.

If it works, everybody's going to praise you and say, all great job if it doesn't work it's going to fucking hurt and that's going to taint your legacy and it's going to be a failed administration and that's that's the risk he's willing to take and that is what it is but at least he's doing something about it and he's trying something new um but i also i also sit here and go great okay if he executes this plan but we get a fucking we get a lib in the next year we get somebody else in the next year and just reverses everything right we're back to fucking square one where they're going to just spend two trillion dollars every year and just add to the debt and don't don't pay it off don't balance the budget that's why congress has to act yeah

because if they don't act every one of these things that trump has done is the next person in the door just and that's been a problem for for every administration every administration it's i mean the president sees the same fucking way as congress it's been i mean four years somebody comes in reverses the shit that the other person implemented it. I mean, not everything, but it fucking happens. The politician class in this country has got to be held accountable. And if they don't start producing results, they need to be turned over every, every time. That guy, if you elect that guy and that guy doesn't do anything, he needs to be out. He needs to be out. Yeah. And I don't know what that looks like, because it seems like, I am just absolutely amazed that people like, people like Maxine Waters,

people like Nancy Pelosi. Hell people like Chuck Grassley. What in the hell you cannot tell me that any of these people should be in office for as long as they are. I have nothing against Chuck Grassley. I mean, I think he's done a lot of good. I really do.

But really? Nobody steps up. No. Well, the problem is the machine is so powerful the machine is so powerful that people are scared shitless to take a sure thing because like if you're Chuck Grassley, you're a sure thing. They're scared to death to take the chance that a Democrat's going to get that seat. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the problem. It's ridiculous. It's not about, I don't care if it's a D or an R by your name as long as you're, all I care about with politicians is putting the American people first. Well, and I think that's, and having a plan that actually makes, sense to put the American people first. Not just give us broken promises that you're not going to I mean, it's like the Biden thing, guys. You talk Biden, like we said, the last episode we talked about. I mean, he was supposed to be the uniter. He was going to unite America and not rough the feathers

too much. His administration was an absolute fucking shit show. And it was completely opposite of what people thought it was going to be. How are we supposed to trust any, any, and it's not even just the Democrats. It's Republicans too. How are we? supposed to trust what you say you're going to do, you're going to do it. Because most of you fucking lie and don't actually do it. You actually do the opposite. So, anyway, sorry, this was a long political rant here. That really was. I don't know. I think it's important. Everybody's talking about tariffs. I mean, like I said, I, I, uh, I'm not, I'm not fucking, I'm not for, I don't really know. I'm kind of, I'm in the middle right now. I, we'll see how

it plays out. Are you vanilla? kind of vanilla right now on this on this topic i tell you what i we'll see how it plays out i mean at the end of the day they're going to do what they're going to do they're going to try to execute the plan if it fucking works it's great and if it doesn't it's not going to be great and there's going to be pain but i don't see anyone else bringing anything else to the table that's going to fix this problem so uh if somebody's got something fucking better speak up and and and let's talk about it because got to do something yeah got to do something different well one of the questions that somebody asked David asked us, what do we see the hog market going with the tariffs between China and the USA?

And I think ag, so ag is probably one of the first things that's going to get, if there is negotiations, one of the first things that will get exempted is ag. Because all these countries have learned one thing you don't want to mess with is cheap food because that makes all the underlings restless. so I honestly don't think it's probably going to affect stuff that much. And if you saw this week, there was a really big deal about basically cargo ships that were registered in China that came the United States were going to get, they were basically going to get tariff. Like every ship was going to have to pay this fine to load the United States.

And it was some, it was a crazy big number, whatever it was. Well, now then that's all getting, that's all getting walked back. and that's part of the reason you saw the grain markets pick up yesterday is because now then it sounds like that ag or any commodity. So whether it be coal, natural gas, lumber, pork, soy, whatever, probably going to be exempt. Okay, so you take that off the table. I don't know. I don't think it's going to, I don't think it's going to affect things that much at the end of the day. But I think one of the, that nobody seems to talk about. And I mean, I might be crazy.

And there's a lot of people that think I am. But setting your hopes on that somehow this market in China that us as American farmers are going to get this big upside from all the shit we're going to sell the Chinese, you are getting smoke blown up your ass, if you believe that. because the world has changed, and China is a shit show. It is a shit show. So they're one of the only currencies in the world that is not,

their currency does not float with the dollar. I think there's about seven. Russia's, Russia's doesn't, Iran's doesn't, Venezuela's doesn't, basically the bricks. And China, they set their own, every day they come out and say, okay, our currency is worth this many dollars or whatever. It does not, it's not allowed to float. Anytime that they've opened their economy up to where currency could move, guess what happens?

All the shitload, anybody that can afford to get their currency out of the country, they do and they convert it to dollars because they want out. That's the problem with a communist agenda. But their demographics are terrible. I've said, of this so many times. Their demographics are terrible. They are headed in a really bad direction, and it's only a matter of time before their time among one of the big dogs in the world is limited. I don't know whether that's my lifetime or not. I think it is. I think you're going to see it happen. And when it does, it ain't going to be pretty. So all of that to say, I don't think that this is going to affect terrorists that much.

But I also think as American farmers, we need to get off this train to think that exports to China is going to be what saves our asses because it's not. We better grow our markets everywhere else and we better learn to grow shit other than corn and soybeans because if you are betting on that train, your margin is just going to get cut every year. I think the only way, I mean, my gut feeling is

the only way China makes it is if they expand their regime. And, you know, win the AI battle. Yep. Buy farm land in America. Corrupt our politicians.

Everything that happened. Control our media. Try to get into our media. Feed us propaganda. I mean, attack America from the inside. That's how you win. If you're trying to,

your demographics are fucked. Your currency's fucked. You don't have a lot of land mass for agriculture. You got to rely on a lot of importing of goods for agriculture at least. And if you're looking at your future, you're looking like, oh, fuck, we got to do something. And that's why you probably see them buying farmland in America. That's why you see them trying to corrupt politicians. You see them trying to control media and you see them trying to win the AI battle because they know they're trying to

trying to work every, they're trying to pull every lever they can to get an advantage. Yep. That's, and, and you can't blame them for that because they're like, we got to win, we want to keep our country going. But I think you're right. If they don't win that battle, if they don't win that battle, they're not going to be, they're not going to be as big as, a big of, a big of a powerful country as they are. And I think you see that. I think Trump's realized, I think he knows that's why when they came back and they raised the tariff, to 84% Trump turned around and raised ours to 125%.

And I don't know if they raised theirs last night. I haven't seen X to know. But if they come around and raise it again, Trump raise it again. And a lot of people, I mean, I've seen people are like, just don't mess around, just take it to 400% and say, here, are you going to play or are you not going to play?

So, well, I'll go back to what I said earlier. I mean, we're at war with the Chinese. And this whole Tara thing, It's just part of it, but the bigger picture is we're trying to get control of interest rates in the United States, and we're trying to square away our budget, balance it to where we can actually not add. We're not even trying to pay off debt. We're just trying to not add any to the debt. So, anyway. All right.

To switch gears now, Aaron asks, have you ever thought? of building your own sow unit. We have. We have. But we scratched that pretty quick. Man, the hog business, okay,

I'll let it to you this way. The only way that I think you can raise your own pigs and own your own, well, I don't even know. A lot of the guys that are independent nowadays, they were buying shares into a sow unit. So they don't know the sal unit.

free and clear besides the big boys, the big integrators. They own the salient and clear themselves. I think owning your own salient at 100%, you, you got to either be a big boy or you got to have another market. You got to have a premium or something. So for us, I think if we ever raised our own pigs, one, we got to run enough pigs through Farmergrade to, because we're at the point where trying to sell your, your, your, hogs on the open market and betting on that and hoping that that works out, man, when the times get, when there's blood in the streets in the hog market,

it is fucking hard to weather the storm, unless you have a shitload of cash on the sidelines. That's, I mean, we, what, what was that a year ago, two years ago? It was fucking bad. $50, $60 ahead you were losing on every pit. It was bad. And the best guys out there that are independent will tell you that the only way you stay in this business is you have to be a relentless cost cutter. Like you have to, you have to be extremely sharp on your expenses and you have to do a hell of a job marketing and buying your input.

So in other words, the days of, oh, we're going to raise this many pigs and we've got this land base and we've found. farm, we raise corn and beans. So we're just going to, we're just going to subsidize our corn. We're going to raise our corn and we're going to grind it and we're going to feed it to the pigs and we're going to walk that corn off the farm. That's not, like, that's not the extent of it. The extent of it is, on the one hand, you may sell all that corn right out of the field or you may market it separately at the best possible price you can. And then on the flip side, you're turning around and you're trying to buy corn or play the futures to buy corn at the cheapest possible dollar you can. So it's not like, you know, when I grew up, the idea was that hogs were the mortgage lifter. We raised corn,

we ground the corn, we fed it to pigs, we walked the pigs off the farm, and we got paid more money for our corn than what we could have ever made selling it. Today, these guys are working, you've got to work it both ways. You've got to try to get the best possible price for the crop you raise, and you've got to try to buy your input costs as cheaply as you possibly can. And we're just not, well, we're just not equipped to do that. And you better have one, like Sawyer said, you better have a lot of money backing you up,

and you better have a huge operating note behind that in case you need it, because you might need it. Yeah. So all that to say, the only way that we would ever raise our own pigs is if because I don't want to play that game. Yeah. I don't want to play the game of grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, become one of the big guys, right? Like that's, and that's not, I don't even know if that's possible at this point.

The only way that works is if we can run, I don't know how many, I don't know, 50%, 50% of the pigs through Farmer grade and get paid a premium for, those hogs. Build our own premium. Build our own premium for those hogs. And then you could sell the other 50% on the open market, but then you have, you kind of have a dollar cost averaging. Well, yeah, but you have a, you don't have to sell them all in the open market. And so when the times get hard, hopefully by selling 50% of your hogs, and this is just an arbitrary number, I don't know if it's 50%, 75%, whatever, you just figure out the numbers. But, you sell majority of your hogs to get a premium, that'll help you weather the storm and not have to strictly rely on selling them all on the open market and just lose your ass and bleed out of your

fucking eyeballs. So that's the only way that I see SB on all to do it. Because other than that, you got a, like dad said, big operating line. Super efficient. Super efficient. And have a lot of money in your war chest. And like, not saying that if we did that route, we wouldn't want to be super efficient. You would, right? You'd still want to play that game. But just, just saying, oh, fuck it, let's build a sow unit like that. It's really hard. The other side of that is, it's like, okay, where are you going to spend your, where are you going to spend your time and talent? And a sow unit, you're relying on a group of people to do a great job of making sure. And, you're, that sows get bred and make sure they ferro. And the sow unit has to be able to stand on its own.

In other words, you have to get great production out of that sal unit for it to be efficient. Otherwise, it's costing you more money per pig than what we could just go buy pigs off the open market. And that's where disease comes in. Yeah, I was going to just say. So you can have a sally units just humping along, just smoking along, and you get purrs in it. And, and it may have, you know, all it takes is for the wrong time of year for a feed truck from some other, some other company, some other sow unit to drive past the one you have. It's, there's just so many ways that you can have health issues within a sally unit. And I don't care if it's filter or not. The guys that love filtered, most of those people are somehow aligned with people that

sell filters because if you build a filtered unit, it's only as good as the poorest quality construction worker that work there because every air leak you have in that filtered barn is a place where some disease can get through outside of the filters. And I've worked, I've done construct, I've worked on a crew. I would not want to rely on your average building crew to determine whether your sow unit is an impregal, is a fortress of solitude, you know. There are just too many things can go wrong. So, yeah, we are definitely not at the point where.

And I don't know if I'd ever build one. I think I would just, I think if we'd ever do it, we'd buy shares into an existing sow unit with good labor, performs well. Somebody else is managing it doing a good job. Because guys, the other thing is, I don't envy these guys, these big hog integrators. That shit, you want to, I mean, they have really built something truly incredible. But motherfucker, that is a lot.

Like, that is a lot. That's a whole other ball wax can of worms that you're opening up there. To go fully integrated. And you have, we own the pigs, we own the sow units. We own the sow unit. We own the meat business. We own the cutting facility. Dude, that's too much.

That's way too much. So I don't think we'd ever build one, truthfully. So anyway. What's one habit or mindset that has completely changed your life? Boom. What's one habit or mindset that's completely changed my life? God, you went way off. Where did you fucking pull that one?

It's the next question. No, it ain't. Oh, sorry, I jumped to the second page. We're at the fucking half. Do you want to take that one or not? Yeah, I guess I could take that one. Once one habit or mind shift that completely changed your life. I would say one habit that I wish I would have picked up, I can give you one for each question inside that question, I guess.

one habit i would say is i wish i you know when you're in school they give you these planners every year you give you a planner uh i never used a fucking planner up until i became an adult because i was like school just wasn't school wasn't for me i didn't probably prioritize it enough i didn't have enough buying or love for it you didn't know what you were doing hour to hour yeah i didn't i i just didn't use a planner um and it would just get that damn thing i'd get to the end of of the year. None of the pages had been written into. It'd be dirty or whatever. Planning your work and working your plan, if you can get in a habit of doing that early in life, it'll serve you really, really well because I plan all the time. I think planning and note-taking.

Because if you don't write it down, you are going to forget it, especially if you're busy and got a shitload of stuff going on. Any conversation that you have that you have that you get something from any connection that you make any any project that you want to work on any youtube video that you watch just writing notes taking notes writing your thoughts down and also planning your work and working your plan that i wish i would have done that and learned that a lot sooner because it's it's definitely i i could not do we could not do everything that we got going on if i didn't do that. There's no way in hell I could keep it all straight. I would lose my mind. No way. And I would forget that this person reached out to, you got to be organized. If you're ever going to

want to be, have some level of success or grow anything or do anything, you got to be organized. And that's just, that's just like professional life. You're not even talking your personal too, right? Your personal shit down too. You got Timmy's B-ball, T-ball game. You better, you know, if your life's crazy and you don't write it down, you're going to forget. Then you're going to get your fucking ass chewed. Yeah, because your kid's going to be there at seven o'clock waiting underneath the street lamp because nobody picked him up. Yeah. Yep. That happened to me a couple times. And then the other one, the mindset, I think just, man, I'm glad I learned this early. You got to stop value in other people's opinions of you. You cannot let people dictate what

people say and talk shit about you, if people talk shit about you and what they say about you affects how you make decisions to go after what you want in life, that, that will, that, that's not going to serve you at all. And the quickest you can get over that, the quicker you can get over that, the better off you're going to be. Because it's crabs in a bucket mentality. People do not want to see you succeed. People don't. People don't. don't want you to step outside the box of what's normal. People don't like that shit. And they will talk shit about you. They will say bad things about you. They will say, what the fuck are you doing? They will make fun of you. But you cannot let that alter your execution on what you think

you know you want to do and what you want to go after. You cannot. And the quicker you can let those people just talk shit and not give a solitary fuck about it, the better off you're going to be. So that, that, and I'm not saying don't ever care about anybody's opinion of you, right? You want to be a respectable person. You want to, like, you got to care a little bit. But when it comes to your dreams and what you want in life, don't let people shit on your parade and that stop you from going after what you want. Because that, you'll regret the shit out of that.

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How? Did you blouse? No. The Devil wears Prada too. He's the movie event 20 years in the making. Honestly, can't with the secrets anymore, so I think we just should tell her. Will you two please spit it out already? This Friday, be the first to experience it only in theaters.

In light of the recent scandal, I'm here to restore your credibility. Oh, because we're a team now. That's a nice story. The Devil Wares Prada 2 in Theaters Friday. Yeah, I just heard a guy today say that he became most, one of the ways he became most success. or turned a corner in his life was when he quit seeking advice from people who had a vested interest in the answers that they gave him and started valuing the opinion from people who honestly had no reason to give him an opinion but were just kind enough to offer it.

That's good. That's pretty good. That's really good. I will say on the habit, one year, five year, 10 year plan. Write that down what you want and revisit that once a month. And if you look at that, you'll be amazed subliminally after 10 years. You'd be like, man, I accomplished a lot more out of that than what I thought. Because if you don't like, if you don't write it down, like we all have these dreams rolling around in our heads.

But if you don't write that down, there's a connection. you put that on paper, in your mind, that makes a much stronger connection than when that idea is just rolling around your head. So a one year, five year, 10 year plan and revisit it, and you may have to modify it. You're not going to accomplish all that, but you could, but you're going to accomplish more than what you probably think that you will when you write it down. And then secondly, mindset, I guess I would caveat off of what you said. I was just thinking about this this morning. One thing I want everybody to know about me is I don't want anybody that comes into contact with any of our social media to think that I'm doing any of this stuff because I really need the affection.

and I really care about what you think about me, and I really want you to pat me on the back and say, oh, you're the best. That is not why we do any of what we do. I love doing this podcast, and I like making the videos and all that. But really, we just do it for ourselves because we enjoy it,

and we're trying everything we can to, make it so that this family and our little piece of Iowa can continue another generation, that's it. That's like I don't want to be, I don't, I don't want to go on talk show hosts or go on talk shows, and I don't want to be anything other than what I am. And I just laugh when people,

there's literally people that hate everything we say yet they consume everything that we do and I think that's funny and that's awesome I love you I'm glad you do and hopefully you know I don't care whether you like my opinion or not but do what find what you love to do and do it but make sure you do it for the right reasons that's it I would also say I think we enjoy it's not just for us I think oh speak for yourself it's all about me I'm a son of a bitch I I just think I like just, I just like bringing value, I guess, and just, I like having great conversations with people that gives, brings value. And we have a platform that allows people to get some value, I hope. You know, you get something from it or you related or you, like you learn something.

You're related on something. We made you laugh or something. We just, we added to your life in a little positive way. Yeah. Whatever that is. And yeah, we're not the. we're not the smartest tools in the shed we don't claim to be we're just two farmers father's son and just given our life given our opinions on things and it seems like people enjoy it we love that you enjoy it we just love giving value but to me starting social media like dad said it was never about i don't care about the fame i don't care about i i don't yeah i don't want to be an influencer i don't i don't like i don't that shit i don't even like it i i don't i don't I think it's just...

Yeah, I could have said that better. I like... I like... I like running a business. I like connecting with people. But I... The whole influencer thing, that's never... We never did this for that.

We never started this to be an influencer. You know? That's just... I hate that word, by the way, too. It just makes you cringe. But it's... It's just fun. We love doing this.

And we love providing value. I've said it many times. The single greatest benefit of everything we do is the people we've met. That's, that's, I mean, I guess really to say that's what I love more than anything else is just the conversations that we're able to have. But, man, you read the comments and don't, I guess my social media advice to anybody starting is don't read the comments because unless you, unless you are just of the mindset that it's entertaining. and it is entertaining, but boy, you would have thought, you would think that we, you would think that we're pretty, we're pretty evil people. We're out to ruin the world. So, um, anyway. Yeah. Don't let, don't let other people, uh, tell you, uh, how you should feel about something. That's, that's my advice. Okay. We should probably go back since I was on the wrong, since I was on the wrong page.

Oh, well, that's good. Uh, what does leaving a legacy look like to you? and not just business-wise, but as a human? That's tough. I think, I guess I'll put it this way. We went to a, we went to a breakfast that a gentleman has in our local community every third Wednesday. And he gets, he opens the shop doors up for 100 plus men to come in there, eat breakfast, conversate, connect. And then a speaker gets up that's either a pastor,

or somebody in the local business owner or whatever, and they talk and they give a speech and try to connect to these men. And that, to me, is legacy. That is some of the, that is, I left there thinking that was the coolest shit ever because it's like, this business owner, he's a business owner, right?

He owns a good business, been around for a long time, but opens his doors up for guys to come in there, connect, and bring value. Bring value to the community. bring value to the community get a speaker there that's going to provide value get get the men together to conversate and talk about what's going on in their life feed them and then let them go on about their work day like that i think that's so fucking cool that is like that is legacy to me and so i think i think you know as men you want to leave a legacy for your kids but i think serving so you're

never going to leave a legacy by being a selfish prick. You're never going to leave a good legacy being a selfish prick. And so being a good human and serving people in a big way or even in a little way, that's how you're going to leave a legacy. So I guess I would just say, I just want to be remembered as somebody that just gave, gave in a big way, whether that's to your community, that whether that's through your business. Like with Farmer grade, and I know this is business, this is just business, but for Farmergrade, I love the, I love the idea of selling meat because it's something that people get to enjoy, brings families together, you're feeding people. And I think there's a lot of awesome stuff that we can do as the

company grows. I have a lot of ideas of how we can serve. And I love that part of the business too, because it's like, man, you can give back in a lot of ways if you can, you know, with meat. like there's a lot of things you can do to serve and um that's that to me i think's the most important that's probably the thing i want the most is just to when i get on my deathbed just know that i one set out to do what i wanted to do and didn't regret shit hopefully not regret a lot and that i was just remembered to somebody that just gave and had a had a good impact on the people around them just just had a good impact gave value in a big way you know so that's that's what i would say i don't think i have to say anything i i think there you go so there's my legacy sitting right next to

and whatever if he does all the stuff that he just said uh i think i can i think i can sleep happy and my other son's the same way and um I mean, that's all true. And I go to the Presbyterian Church in our little town, and it's, you know, my dad went there, and my ancestors, actually, there used to be a Presbyterian church just across the field over there. And when they came here from Illinois in 1853, they, out of the chunk of ground that my great-great-grandfather bought,

he donated the land that they built this little Presbyterian church on, which eventually it was dissolved and rolled into the church that was in town. So, I mean, there's a long history of Presbyterians there, so, you know, we like to vote on stuff, and we like committees, and we don't get too excited. You'll never, you'll never confuse the Presbyterian church. church for a Baptist church. I don't think you have to worry about that. But all that to say, I often sit in a pew in there, and I've spoke about this at church, but I think about the people that,

you know, made impression on me that I still think about. Like, I still occasionally think about people that were involved in that church that were just really good people. And I couldn't really, there's some of them I couldn't tell you exactly what they did for what their business was or whatever. I just know that like every community fundraiser or anything that they did, whether it was putting a wing on the hospital or plant trees in the park or building this or getting new street lights or whatever, you knew that that person was probably going to be involved in that

because they gave. They gave a lot. And, you know, that's what makes communities. It's not government planning or city planning. It's people. And that's what makes living in small town America, what it is is people who care enough to give of their time when they're tired. You know, when they have spent all their time trying to build a business

or keep a business going or working a job to feed their family and then on top of it, they give. They give their time and their time is their most valuable thing. That's somebody worth remembering. You know, if somebody remembers me when I'm gone, then I think I will have done a pretty good job. So there you go. good.

That's good. That was good. That was really good. Yeah. I, we gotta probably get wrapped up here soon. Yeah, we do. We've rambled way too long. I think I ran it a lot more than I should.

It's all right. It was good. It's all good stuff that we needed to say, or you needed to say, I guess. I couldn't have put it into words like that like you did. So, I guess I'm going to say this because I wanted to answer this. Terry asked what's something that worked in your business that you didn't expect. I would say for me, doing the nitty gritty shit that nobody wants to do can get you some results that I didn't expect.

So one example of that is we've been, so we started sending thank you cards out. and I have some of the team send thank you cards out like some of the guys that work in the warehouse I have them send a personalized thank you out that's just like from the warehouse team you know just real raw authentic to them I send one um the whole team sends one and so we got like a $1,500 sale right after we sent a thank you card like two days after we sent a thank you card and that's just one example of dude the stuff that you the nitty gritty stuff that's not sexy

that people don't talk about on social media or people don't want to they just don't think of it like that stuff matters especially in today's world gratitude calls we call customers and just thank them for their business because

just saying thank you how many direct to consumer companies of any product call up their customers and just say, hey, thanks for spending a dollar with us. Thanks for supporting us. What can we do better? How can we make your experience better? And then write and thank you cards. I think the most underrated aspect of business that no guru will talk about is cultivating a loyalty side of your business, whether you're talking about thank you cards, gratitude calls, send it out free gear.

Any way that you can try to connect. Connect with your existing customers. Everybody talks about getting new customers, getting new customers, getting new customers. And yeah, that's important. But what people don't talk about enough is valuing the customers that you have and making their experience fucking awesome. So that they want to stay with you for as long as you're in business. That is so,

that is worth your time. And that's something that I didn't, like, when you send a thank you card out, you're not really expecting much out of that. But then you see it, you see it, you see the impact. You see it happen. And you get on a phone call with a customer and you tell them, thank you for your business. And they're like, dude, like, that means, it just means a lot that you even called. Like, you know, that doesn't happen, you know, that nobody does that kind of stuff. And so I know that that gets probably harder when you scale because we're small right or small business you know and i think we use that to our advantage those are ways that you can use that to your advantage but as you get bigger that's definitely probably a lot harder to do that kind of stuff but man i think that's an

underrated um thing that's worked in our business it's just value your customers dude value your customers and and and do things that other people aren't willing to do to make them feel valued that That goes a long ways with people, especially nowadays, because that shit, the connection between people, getting a handwritten card, getting a handwritten letter, getting a phone call, not an email or a text message or an automated email or text message from a brand. Like, that doesn't happen. So, anyway. Do you know it would mean a lot to me?

Free pork sticks for life? If you just sweep out that bean bin for me. so I didn't have to. Yeah, I know. I wish I could. I got guys that are inventory and meat right now that they need me to tell them where to put stuff. I got a meeting at 11 that I got to get on.

That's why I'm kind of trying to hustle here. All right. Well, maybe next time. Anyway, yeah, I wanted to answer that one because I thought that was a pretty good question. But we didn't get to all the questions. We went a little long on the tariff deal, but I think that's a really important topic

that people are talking about right now all over the world. but really all over the country. Differing opinions. Let us know what you guys think. Like we said, we just talk, we don't have all the answers. We don't claim to know everything. And I hope you never get that impression because it's like we are just two regular dudes that are living in America going through our experience talking what we believe and what we think. So let us know what you think. Let us know if you agree. Let us know if you disagree. Let us know if we're not thinking of something. And if you're going to hate on us, keep hating on us because it just helps our engagement. That's all right. If you want to comment on every single episode and hate on us, that just knows

that means a lot because we know you're watching and you're watching every episode and your engagement means a world to us. And it is pushing our content out to more people to listen. So, thank you for the hate comments. But we appreciate the hell out of all you guys. We really do. We love doing this. We love you guys. We love the community that we're trying to. to build here. I think it's pretty damn cool. And at some point, uh, dad and I would love to do like an in-person event someday of getting people together and just, you know, having, having some damn good barbecue, maybe getting some speakers, maybe get some previous guests on the show that you guys loved and just connecting with you guys even further. But there's all the ideas

just making them happen. So when we get to that point, we'll let you know. But it's the wheels are turn in that direction. So anyway, you got, you good? You have any value? If you got value out of today's show, just share it out. Just share it with people you know. We appreciate it. And we love all of you. And I'm sure there'll be more to talk about next time. So we'll be back here next time. And we can't wait to let you know where we're at. So have a great week. And we'll see you on the next one.