Barn Talk - The $280 Collar That Doubled a Ranch's Grazing Overnight

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

A rancher outside Kansas City put collars on 30 cows and went from moving them every two days to every four or five days on the same ground, at the same cow condition. That is double the carrying capacity overnight, and we spent most of this episode on how virtual fencing works and what it costs. The collar runs $280 plus a subscription. Users report getting back 8 to 10 hours a week. The GPS is accurate to about 4 or 5 feet, which is roughly one fat cow in any direction. One challenger cow averaged 800 sound warnings a day for three weeks, about one every 30 seconds she was awake, while other cows in the same group got one a week. When a cow does get out, she is back inside 80 percent of the time within 5 to 10 minutes, because her friends are still there. There are around 6,000 of these collars in North America and they only started selling here in June. Then we put the skeptic hat on. What happens to your herd if the company runs out of money. Who owns the data. Why he tells customers to never trust a virtual fence alone along a highway, because the liability is too big. And what happens to cattlemen when Silicon Valley decides cattle are a robotics problem. Also in this one: an engineer who quit a VP title in Norway, visa on Monday and a plane on Friday, a farmhouse built in 1318 and the man who will not give it up, why so many farmers keep a town job for the insurance, and what a Norwegian thinks of American water, groceries, and youth sports. Low profit is the one problem every farmer in every country has in common. The other is that not one of them thinks he owns the land. What do you want us to dig into next week? Drop it in the comments and we read them. JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER & GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to get 10,000 subscribers, and once we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn! Sign up to get exclusive access to tickets and details.👇🏻 Help us get there: https://www.joinbarntalk.com THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY: ● Propane Farm Research Program ➱ https://propane.com/farmfunding TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Fencing cattle without building any fence 04:00 A Norwegian engineer lands in Kansas 06:24 The engineer who got pulled into sales 07:43 Back from paternity leave to 30% cuts 08:57 The gala dinner that changed everything 12:35 The news story that started a company 14:05 Seven engineers, a prototype in 2 months 18:57 Propane Farm Research Program 19:28 Their US hire quit before he ever moved 21:20 Dying broke with a bank of good stories 23:10 Visa on Monday, gone by Friday 27:32 A float trip with people who bought nothing 33:48 Kruger Dunning and the Mountain of Stupidity 43:18 So what is virtual fencing, exactly 44:18 A sound first, then a shock she remembers 51:46 One cow tested it 800 times in a day 54:42 Splitting 100 acres into 5 acre paddocks 01:00:19 Carrying capacity doubled overnight 01:04:01 Cell service, GPS, and 4 feet of drift 01:10:20 Most escapees walk back in within 10 minutes 01:14:53 $280 a collar and 10 hours a week back 01:19:22 Never trust it alone along a highway 01:22:34 Every farmer, every country, same problem 01:33:21 A farmhouse that was built in 1318 01:34:24 When Silicon Valley calls cattle robotics 01:49:16 The Skeptic Block 01:50:03 What if the company runs out of money 01:52:10 Who actually owns your cattle data 01:55:14 Only 6,000 collars, and why pick them 02:10:05 Raising robust kids on purpose 02:13:40 Rapid Fire 02:16:16 Tip of the Hat 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 👇🏻 ● Barn Talk Instagram ➱ https://www.instagram.com/barntalkshow ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS ● Sawyer's Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4 ● Tork's Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS ● Sawyer's X ➱ https://x.com/SawyerWhisler ● Tork's X ➱ https://x.com/TorkWhisler ------------------------------- ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠ Barn Talk is for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, with no warranty of accuracy or completeness. Nothing here is financial, investment, or trading advice, and none of it is specific to you. Do your own due diligence and consult a licensed professional before making any financial decision. Trading stocks, crypto, and NFTs carries real risk and is not suitable for everyone. You use this information at your own risk. #BarnTalk #perc #EP215 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca. 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 that 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 guest episode. Got a great guest coming to the barn this morning to have an amazing conversation about a sector in agriculture that is up and coming that I think can help a lot of cattle guys out. But before we get into it, you guys know the drill. If you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more of this show grows. And word of mouth is we found the best way to grow a podcast, and we would just not be here without you guys.

So thank you to all that shared the show. It really does help us out a lot. Another thing you can do to help us out here at Barn Talk is leave a review on Spotify or Apple. The more of those reviews pile up, the more you credible you make our show, which in turn allows us to have more interesting and great guests coming. to the barn on a regular basis. Last thing you can do to help us out of here at Barn Talk before we get started is you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. It's at, it's join barntock.com

is where you can sign up. It's completely free. We're basically just giving our thoughts about everything going on in rural America, dad and I's thoughts, everything going on in rural America. And we're trying to get to 10,000 weekly newsletter subscribers. And when we get that goal, we're going to throw a live event right here on the farm in the barn and have a good old time with you guys. We're not messing around with that either because we actually are, as I said before, the junk of the month club is coming to an end because we actually are getting the hog buildings all cleaned up, the old concrete and the eyesore around here.

This place is going to look really nice by the time fall gets here. We're getting rid of the eyesores. I'm believing that we're going to get there and it's going to be a show place. Well, it's going to be pretty nice. Hopefully. We'll see what we'll be cleaned up. I still think we should tell them all to bring a hammer or a wrench or... Or broom or... Broom.

All the paint can. Yep, white latex paint. As my daddy always says, white paint covers up a multitude of sense. Well, you need plenty of it. I do. I should probably just paint myself. Yep. I think we were going to hit all those things about... Sawyer said, you know, because of all of you,

we've been able to get really interesting guests, good guys, good gals. and today is no different. So our guest today, he comes all the way from Norway, and he took a really interesting route to get into American agriculture. He currently is living in Kansas City, Kansas, and he works for a company that is building out the wireless collar industry, whether that be on cattle or sheep or goats, And we didn't know anything about it.

So we were like, hey, we need to learn. And he's going to help us do that. He works for a company called Monil. Is that right? That's right. And they are investing heavily in the U.S. market. He actually started when the product came out. He worked one-on-one with farmers in the Netherlands,

and then Denmark, UK, and then came over here to the United States. So it's going to be a wide-ranging conversation, a lot about the product and how it works, but also just about culture and getting used to moving your whole family to a new country and similarities between us, differences, business, and whatever else we can think of. So without any further ado, let's get into it. Well, we're live, boys. So Oliver, last name. Oliver Sreddz.

Welcome to Barn Talk. I wasn't even going to attempt. I wasn't even going to attempt. We made the joke last night. We were eating dinner with Oliver, and I had to ask him, like, what's your last name? And he's like, don't even try it. I got you. So we are honored to have you in the barn today.

Brother, thanks for making the trip. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Yeah. We love what your company and what you guys are up to are doing for farmers and ranchers. It's a new, new thing that I think a lot of cattle guys and grazers are interested in. so we're going to kind of get into all the nitty gritty in a bit, but you kind of made a,

you made a choice to come to America. Yes. And there's, I'd love to get your, I'd love to get your two cents on like, why did you decide to do that and what, what was the mindset behind that when you, when you made that jump? Because it's not, that's not an easy thing to do.

That's, you know. Especially, it's one thing, if you were a single guy, but it had implications because you've got a family, a young family. So, yeah, what was that process like? So I need to cover a bit more ground than just the movement itself because it sort of all ties together. So may I just start slightly on my background and how I finally ended up in this company and then we will go into the U.S.? Yeah. So I don't have farming background.

the closest thing I get to is I grew up with doing forestry with my dad so we have some forest in norway we can take out timber every 30 year and sort of the it's been my joy growing up being in the forest with my dad and a small tractor on a chainsaw that sort of the scale of that I from a very young age I decided that either I will start doing some robotics or I'm going to be a veterinary. When I was 14, I had a week with a vet. And I poked cow asses for a week. The 14-year-old me didn't like that much.

Yeah. I was back then. I decided to go for the robotics. So I, through college and university, I took my degree in something quite similar to applied physics. I really enjoyed and loved the math side of it. And let's say I was a quite good engineer. So in my first job, I ended up in a company called ABB,

so a big global company. 140,000 employees worldwide. But the unit I started in, half of them had a PhD in some engineering degree. And I was really good at translating from advanced tech to something our customers could understand. So I ended up doing that and I was like backward pulled into sales. You were kind of the interpreter. Kind of the interpreter.

I didn't want to do any sales back then because in my engineering head, working in sales was sort of, you lower yourself. You sort of get rid of the technical details and everything I've been proud of doing so far. But to make a long story short, I ended up in sales

ended up being a head of sales for that team. And it felt like it was only me doing all the work and keeping those guys alive. At that time, it was 120 of them. I went on a paternity leave for a couple of months. That's quite normal in Scandinavia. And when I came back, I think we had 20 or 30% reduction in heads

just because sales dropped. And then I started thinking, is this what I want to do? And I met an old boss who has now changed into an R&D institute. And he, oh, hey, Oliver, how are you actually? I said, ah, it's not good. I'm just working my ass off and we're not getting anywhere. Well, come to go to join me.

So I resigned. My old company said, okay, sorry, we'd like you to say. So they raised my paycheck. They tried to put on your golden handcuffs to stay. Yes. They gave me a nice title. and sort of everything looks extremely nice on LinkedIn. After a few months, I ended up as vice president digital.

I went to industrial committee meetings. I met the people I've been reading about in newspapers. I was really proud. I was really proud. At some point, I started to have this feeling. I'm not sure when, but it became really clear to me. when I was invited to a gala dinner with equinor that's one of the biggest oil companies in in europe two people from like the two most in my head the two most important people from different like

industrial players in norway into this big gala 350 people I walked in so proud had a glass of wine and then started to look at the people around me And sort of the ball dropped there and then. It was men, 55 to 65, three shades of gray suits, maybe 20 ladies in the whole room. This crew will never, ever change the industry to what I think is important. And for me, like having a healthy ecosystem in a good industrial base is really important for any country.

Yeah, you were thinking. like where's the next generation? Like where are the people that are going to be the next generation? And they weren't there. And it's always like if you want to do something new, it involves risk in some fashion. And those guys, if they just kept the boat floating, they will retire with a nice payment check and have a good life. If any of those people did something wrong, took some risk.

they will be fired, most likely. And they will lose their pension or big portion of pension. But it's so conserving. You don't get the innovation. You don't get the risk takers in such an established industry. And that was sort of when the ball dropped, I couldn't sleep for days. We have to do something. At that point in time, I had a second kid on the way.

I just bought a bit too expensive house. I sort of had the depth and everything else. Okay, you're, you put yourself in a bad space. And then I sort of kept searching for somewhere to put my energy where I felt it was useful. As a part of my job, I did there. I did some investments in startups. I've been grown into understanding the startup ecosystem, both in Norway, but also I've been been over here in the US throughout Europe,

seeing various different technology companies. So, ha, those guys, they are the risk takers. That's sort of, if not an answer to the whole question or like worry ahead. These entrepreneurs, these risk takers, I want to help them in some fashion. So I was asked by a fairly famous Norwegian tech entrepreneur and investor and say, hey, you want to join me? I have this project.

And the project is that we want to share the knowledge of how you build a good company. And not like the TikTok side of it, the boring part. I want us to document and write down how do you manage your shareholders? How do you set up a proper financial model? When you're hiring, how do you do that?

When you do sales, how do you do that? All the unsexy things, but the system, that you need to be a viable. Exactly. So I was like, ha, that's a cool idea. I'm going to pour my energy into that. So I joined the investor.

We built up that company over the course of four years. I started, I think that was in 2017. We started that and the investment company also started to grow. grow. When I started there, it was the three of us. And we hired some more people, the ambitions grew. And we started to think about, we have this toolbox now for making good companies. There are some opportunities out there. So the idea behind Mono, the company I'm working with now for virtual fencing, we're reading some news one day about a Norwegian competitor. They were struggling with their delivery.

And I said, ha, is it, is it that, is, is it a big market pull for this? And we started to read up. And we saw the halters and Gallagher's and just saw the whole width of products out there. And I'm thinking, ha, I think we can make something better. And when you build a company, the most important part is the team, right? The investment company, I've been working at it, has been solely been investing in tech companies. So we know the techie people there.

We managed to gather a team of seven, like really, really top-notch engineers and pitched them. Hey, we found this domain, virtual fencing. Wouldn't it be cool to make a company about that? So I did not drive that process. I was in the backseat. I'm telling it like I did that, but that's not true. I was in the backseat. We gathered those seven guys and backseat.

from making microships to making miniature army drones. Two of them came from software. Yeah. So it could sort of, we had all the engineering disciplines needed to build a product. And those guys started in February 2022. And from February to April, we had the first prototype. I joined them on the first farm reset to put on the first prototypes on chaos.

And it still sort of looks quite the same. And we have this idea when we looked into the all different virtual fencing companies and the solutions out there. What do we need to build? What will be our like engineering stars here? The competence of the founding team is making something really, really small and really, really energy efficient. So, so, okay, if we're able to make this really small, it's a lot easier to make a robust

product. It's kind of counterintuitive, but if you make something small, it's also easier to add more padding to it, right? So we want to have a small, and we want to be like sustained on the solar panel. Okay, the best place would be to put it on top. That's where it shines, right? The signals, GPS, everything is on top there. So the mission now is to make something as small and robust whilst being light enough to stay on top of the neck and go from there.

It was a few mechanical parts as possible. But now I sort of told a very long story about the origin of both myself and Monoil. But it's important for me because when Monoil then started to grow in April, we had to be. the first prototype, May, the first functioning prototype, and then we had the first batch of collars on animals to summer of 23. Wow. 400 of them. And it went like above any expectations.

Okay, we're ready to start selling and who can we, the guys that are grown from 7 to 14 over that year. And since I've been helping them, I already have relationships with them. and they were looking for a guy that could talk to farmers, be a bit old, I'm 45 now, and someone just able to create a trust needed to get the product out in the market the first time. That's a cool challenge. I joined them that summer, and we started to selling in September, October, the same year. They basically sold out everything we had.

The Norwegian market is slightly different than the US because virtual fencing has been a thing there for a long time. So you don't question the concept as the same way as you do here. It's more a product comparison. We sold out everything there and then we think, okay, what's the next step here now? Next step would be to go to the UK. Makes sense. Same time zone, English speakers, the culture is somewhat similar. So after we started out the sale in Norway, I was asked to do the same in the UK.

So I did that for a year. My other colleagues, they recruited a team. We had two people in the UK plus me doing the sales and support and everything there. And I was supposed to leave Moniel when that was up and running. But to always have this, we're going to the US. That was always a part of the plan. rather sooner than later. Is that because of the size

the addressable market why that was the intent? I think the original intent was the size of the market but also you guys are educated. Okay, yeah. You have fairly decent cell reception

in most of the US at least many areas. It's a good fit. Hey, thanks for sticking with us. Tired of diesel price swings. We need fuel costs we can count on to protect our margins. Propane offers stable pricing, lower maintenance, and no more babysitting sensors or extra fluids.

Through the Propane Farm Research Program, you can earn up to $10,000 toward new equipment by just sharing your data. Find propane generators and engines at Farm Progress and Husker Harvest Days next month. Go to propane.com slash farm funding to save up to $10,000 on your next purchase. now let's get back to it. Okay. Yeah. But if you just look at numbers, it makes perfect sense to go to the US.

So we hired a guy and he was an American with a Norwegian wife. They were supposed to move to the US in November, December last year. He got cold feet and said, I'm not doing it. He went to do something else. And then our CEOs or the board of directors, Turn around. I think that they asked me as a joke because I thought, like, moving to the US. Because they didn't think that you would do it.

No. So that's sort of turn around about Oliver. Are you interested in moving to the US? Ah, yeah. Why not? Went back and asked my wife. And how would you think about moving to the US? For her, it was a lot, it was a hard decision.

She's called Nina and she is a power bunny. Always like working on stuff, have projects going, et cetera. And she was about to start up her own company. I've been working quite intensely with that for some time. So she had to let that go or at least accept. the risk that we're not able to do the same here in the US. So we sat down and we had this motto when we got married. And it's Latin, it says, Magus Farvor.

Directly, if you directly translated, it means to the animals or like we like to say, it's more craziness. Yeah. And that is always try to, when you have the opportunity, try to make the odd choices, very risky ones. I will die with an empty bank account, but if I can die with a full bank of good stories, good people, that's a good life.

Yeah, that's awesome. I think that's one of the main reasons why we said, yes, our friends are like, are you sure? Are you moving to the US now? like honestly if you read European news most of them it doesn't look very good so it's a lot like American media all negative all the time yes but the United States is painted poorly in Europe is that what you're saying like the idea of going to America is like kind of crazy

yeah yeah and not Americans yeah the Americans are portrayed us as good people. Yeah. But, um, like you said, media, they want to write about

stuff that gets attention. Same, same way it is here. Same principle, right? Um, I said, okay,

that's sort of the picture being painted, but it can't be that bad. So we moved over and had an amazing welcome. Yeah. It took some time to get through the visa process and all that. But when we finally got to, I got the visa on Monday,

and we needed a few days to just get the stamps and everything in the passports. On Friday morning, we left. Wow. So we moved over. So it's my wife and, of course, them two kids. They are age eight and 12. So we need to get them into school. here, but everything

happened so fast. So the only thing we had when we had our suitcases, we had two rental cars and Airbnb for a week. It was well, it wasn't chaos, but it was unsure.

Our CEO said that, okay, I understand the need for something fixed. So feel free to use a private school for the kids. At least you know that there's an option for them to go to a school. but we've been talking to a really nice guy at the barstow

that's a school south of Kansas City and he said and we were quite honest with him and saying hey we are here for a limited amount of time the most important for us is their experience and not their academic results so we need we need them to come to a place where they can get meet friends

and we understood by talking to the private school that hey, the students there are driven only like 40 minutes in that radius. And for us as parents who drive the kids an hour, just to have them meeting friends, that's not sustainable. At least what we think is most important for them to make friends and be a part of society. The guy at the school said, okay, if you want to do public school, you're moving there.

We just move there. Yep. Found a house, a furnished house, rented it, kids into school. They are champions. I have two very different kids. My oldest, he is at 10 on a DHD scale. I wonder where he got that. And that's from me most likely.

But he came, at least I am, and I guess that's quite universal. You're a bit stressed about your kids when going to school and new system like that. When he came home, this is the best day ever. I have two new best friends and a girlfriend. He loved it. He must have some sales ability too. He does. I've taken him with me several times to ranchers and farmers.

I have to stop him because he takes over the compensation. when I start talking about the virtual fencing. Well, you said something not to, we'll go on with from where you got here. But let's go back because you said something last night that kind of stuck with me. Something that the engineers and the people that you brought together to create this product, you said something I thought was kind of unique in the fact that what they really liked about it was Well, you, I think you know where I'm going. I know where I'm going.

So just say that again, because I think that's, I think that's, I think that's good stuff. Yeah. So this is, this is, yeah, this is coming from our founders. So all of them, they worked on products where they almost never met the end user. They have made like universal communication ships that sit in like light bulbs around us here, smartphones, whatever, electronics. And for them to finally look the end user in the eyes and solve a problem, and the problem is tangible.

It's very tangible. And also to have the feedback from the users coming into the fourth year. We still have customers from that first year. I still have customers like calling me out of the blue and, hey, Oliver, thank you so much. for selling me this product. And that's the pride we're all, like, feeling on a day-to-day basis. And for them, just double down on it, being able to work on real-life problems, it's huge. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool.

I was going to ask you, you know, you said that your welcoming was good in America. What, like, based on what your expectations were coming to America versus being here and being welcomed, like what are the highlights or like what are some of the opinions you had about America before versus where are you at now with it, now that you've been here for a little bit? Well, we need to separate America and Americans. Okay. Yeah.

I had the sort of the impression of Americans would be extremely welcoming before I went there. I've almost all Americans. I have a met her like really nice people and welcoming. Easy to get along with. Really hard to make friends with over time. That's been proven wrong now. Part of it is proven wrong.

Still very welcoming. I suspected more like small talk and gibberish. But man, we get into deep discussions quite quick. Yeah. I've been lucky enough to meet people. I want to discuss religion, politics, big questions in life. And there's like two rules from this any sales guy. You never talk politics and you never talk about religion.

Yeah, correct. But I met this amazing people. Like one of them, they invited us for a float down South Missora, of this just before summer. On a river? On a river. And it's like open arms. They're not customers.

They're just people we met. They like the technology and like a company. But like he said, I can't afford it now, but I like the product. I'm saving up to get it. Which is fine. But they invited us, took us on the float, a dinner.

We slept in their guest house. and I'm an early morning person, so I got up at like 5.30, and he was already out with his cattle. And like sit down there in the morning and talk about stuff like social welfare, taxes, the position of the church in the law. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands of.

in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.ca.com. Local community. And I didn't expect to be able to have those nice conversations about it. and I have the benefit. I can go in as an observer.

I don't have to be judgmental. I'm just trying to understand. I appreciated it. That's on sort of the personality of the people I met and it's a crossboard. If it's parents in the kids' class or customers, farmers, whoever.

And also I've been taken back by the general knowledge of the farmers I'm meeting. Okay, one thing is when you're working with a technology like this, you expect to meet the forward-leaning farmers. But I've been meeting forward-leaning farmers in Norway, UK, Ireland, Scotland, and now the US. And seeing the level of competence, especially within managed grazing, that holistic thinking

I see in so many farms and farmers your guys are your education is really really good and the farmers are very well educated all right Sawyer make sure you use your big words we don't want him we don't want his opinion to drop down notches after

being on here so he's really buttering us up right now so make sure you use your thesaurus no yeah no that's awesome to hear I mean that we not to do not to farmers don't, I mean, they toot their own horn, but a lot of times I feel like they're humble, but it takes a lot of general knowledge to be a farmer. And especially today, I think in agriculture,

not only just in America, but everywhere, this thing's changing and evolving so quickly like the rest of the world that you have to be on your, you have to be on the lookout for what's coming down the pipe or what you can learn so that you can stay on the cutting edge of what's working and keep your farm viable for the next generation, you know, or ranch or whatever. And so that's really cool to hear that. Like, is it because of the, you just think like their general knowledge of everything

or general knowledge of agriculture is just at a higher level. No, so I work with, almost solely work with cattlemen. Yeah. So I can't tell you about the rest of the agricultural sector. Well, boy, wait. we need to introduce you some hog guys because man

do you know any huh? Do you know a couple? Yeah if you're impressed with those cattle guys you need to meet the hog guys yeah but just the level of knowledge about

especially is sort of the regenerative domain where there's no like there's no single truth of how you run your farm. You have the general concepts

and you have to sort of adapt your farm there. And having those discussions with those farmers, that's been eye-opening and really enlightening for me. Yeah. I had the pleasure of spending half a day like digging through manure together with Wes. Okay, this cow,

she's protein deficiency, too much sugar, fiber okay I saw the like the manure looking like that I did this to compensate yeah and I'm

have you ever heard about the Kruger Donning effect no you haven't this is interesting the Kruger Donning effect it's when you start learning about something new a new domain

you gain knowledge quite quickly and you reach a point where you feel very confident about yourself and know this stuff. And then you start applying this and you learn more. And then you start understanding, shit, I don't know anything. We're at that. We are at that at almost every guest we have

because, yes, we think we learn something, and we think, oh, we know this, and then we meet somebody and then we realize we don't know Jack. We don't know shit. Yes. And this is a quite well-known phenomenon. Yeah. And what you call is sort of an increasing confidence.

And it peaks and goes down. And then you continue learning, learning, learning, learning. And then you start feeling that same confidence again. And then you can probably call yourself an expert. Yeah. That peak is called, I think it's called the Mountain of Stupidity. Yes. Yeah.

Before sort of the confidence goes down and it starts increasing. And what happened on top of the peak of Mount stupidity, you are unknowingly incompetent. Which is a dangerous place to be. That's a dangerous place to be. So I'm trying to avoid to reach that peak of... Yeah. The dad always says what you don't know,

you don't know is what's going to kill you. When you know, when you don't know something, what do you always say? Well, so three things you say. Yeah, so many years ago, I listened to a speaker up in Wisconsin Dells and NPIC, and the just of his speech was that you should be a constant learner, but that you know, you kind of know what you know,

and you know what you don't know. But in most businesses, what is going to give you the most trouble is what nobody knows that they don't know. In other words, what you didn't even see coming. And so I always say,

yeah, it's what you don't know that you don't know that is going to get you. So anyway. Well, I feel like we've done a little bit. Well,

yeah, I want to hear his thoughts, though, on America. You see, talked about Americans, but what about the country itself, America?

We got off a little bit, but... Yeah, no, I have, or my wife, actually, has sort of,

we had to stop and think because my point of reference is a country with 500 million people, a 5 million people and a really wealthy sovereign fund. And it's really small and really transparent. And it's incredibly unfair to take that reference and compare it to such a vast country as US. So I haven't dug deep into it, but I'm from a background where all people matter more. You see it in the prison system, for example.

If you go to jail in Scandinavia, the sole purpose of that jail is to give you a skill set to contribute in society when you get back out. And we pour in quite a lot of resources. Just to do that. So have those people back into work. And the same with parenthood. So if you have a kid in Norway and Sweden, this is sort of the unrolskinevia,

you get parental leave, which is quite substantial, 12 months if you want it, 10 months full time, but people choose to spread it out more. When the kid then is done like ready for kindergarten from year one, you can put them into kindergarten and you pay $200 a month. And that gives a very strong incentive for two parents working and not just one. So it's sort of, that's our, that's the sort of the scant. a navigating way of doing, trying to keep as many heads and hands in the industry, working,

contributing to society. That surprised me a bit when I was over here because, to see, for me it looks like taking care of the unfortunate people or persons, they're so dependent on family, on network, the church, etc. So it's a sort of a different system. It's not a like country-wise system, but it's very local. And for me, that's, it's like heartwarming, that it's a local and very personal touch on it. But I would guess I haven't met many of them.

So this is just guesswork. There are a ton of people out there being lonely without a support network. many of the farmers I'm seeing. The only reason why they have a job next to their farm is not the income. It's the insurance. Yep. It surprises me. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah, there are many, many farmers and farm wives that are employed, and the main reason they're employed is for health insurance. Yes. because it's definitely a problem in our country. Or the wife's got a good healthcare job with good benefits too. That's also another thing that happens a lot with farmers. The health care system is something I sort of discussed with a few of my farmer friends.

And that's the only way, that's the only place we sort of ended up with somewhat heated discussions. Yeah. Yeah, I can believe that. And I think he's like perfectly right in the comeback to me. So you live in a world where you pay a lot of taxes, right? And I said, yes. Well, I think we pay too much taxes in the US. But my glass ceiling is way higher than yours.

And I like that mindset. Yeah, yeah. That's sort of the old American dream, right? Yes. Just there. Yep. Yeah. And that's what I sort of love by meeting a lot of these people also.

Yeah. They have this level of ambition is high. They don't feel constrained by anything. I can do this. Yeah. And that is regardless if it's a first-generation farmer with 10 cattle. So we're in two years now, now 400 cattle in five years. That's sort of my...

That's the stable place or people from the city making a ton of cash doing their thing. It's the same mentality on both of them. Yeah. Yeah, there's tremendous opportunity, but the return, the offset of that is we definitely have more risk. Yes. Well, and I think the other thing that's... I mean, I have spent very little time in Europe, but the comparison is I feel like Americans are hustle and bustle all the time.

We do not chill a lot. Like we do not calm our nervous system ever. We're always in go, go, go, go, go, go, go mode. And when you're ambitious on top of that, already culture of go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You always have a goal. It's always to the next thing. It's always, and it's always thinking about growing, growing, growing, growing. and what I love about just when I was in Europe is you guys do,

it seems like the culture it does a good job of slowing down from time to time and like calming your nervous a little bit and not work. Work isn't, yeah, it's not as, it's just, it's just a two different world's on the work side, you know. And I'm grateful for America because of like that has been instilled to go after what you want your dreams, but sometimes I think we could probably use a little bit of, hey, drink a glass of red wine and smoke a cigar and it's going to be all right, you know what I mean? And the interesting thing now, we are both of us are going in the same trap.

You are talking about, and me are no talking about the U.S. and Europe as two very uniform areas. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yep. it's a it's a big difference from a person in south florida to montana yeah oh definitely massive and we have this the same in europe as well yeah yeah well i feel like we need to we should probably back up a bit so what is mona what is what is what is the problem that you're trying to solve and tell us how it works. Yes. I might need to use this.

Let's start with a name, by the way, Moniel. You remember when I talked about this initial design we had back in April 2021? Yep. It looks like a jewelry, a necklace. Monil means necklace in Latin. So that's where the name comes from. it will eventually be a full brand in the US so this is our product

by name it goes by it's like an apple watch for cattle if you're not in the farming world I usually describe it as have you seen that dog color that contain your dog with a wire in the ground

this is somewhat the same but it's meant for cattle we don't have wire in the ground but we use GPS so you put one one of these callers on all your cattle from an app i can show you that later you draw up the boundary where you want the cattle to be that boundary is download to the caller and when the caller comes up to the same boundary it starts emitting a sound and that sound is increasing in intensity until she turns her head back into where you want her to be. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk. If she doesn't turn around, she will be given a wee shock here. And that is much less than electric fence, but it's unpleasant enough that they... Say, boy, this must not be the right direction. Yes.

And cows are quite smart. So they associate the sound with the shocks quite quickly. So after you put them on your cattle and train them, so you need to train them just to help them to get that association setup between the sound under shock, you basically have a sound barrier you can move around. And this is where it starts to become like really interesting. Because then you, from regardless from where you are and what time of day, you can move your cattle. Yeah.

And that is huge, especially, and that's one of the reasons why we started here in the Midwest, because there are so many farmers and ranchers that have their job next to the farm like we just spoke about and for them to be able to always keep an eye on their animals and move them several times a day from an office in for example Kansas City or Missouri somewhere so it's a huge time saver for them but maybe even more so on their flexibility and their needs of planning and when they need to be where. Back to what kind of problem of resolving. I would say

we are freeing up farmers and ranchers time so they can spend on something else. And we do that by containing their cattle. Yeah, yeah. Well, an interesting note to this. I didn't, until a year ago, I didn't know anything

about callers, nothing. Nothing. and I just, I had a random conversation, I think, last fall, a neighbor of mine that I'm actually on corn growers with, we were at a, we were at a function and we were talking and they said something about their cows and I only know them as grain farmers, had no idea they had any cattle, and I know where they live, and there's no, there's no like, no, nobody. big pastures, no feed lot, anything like that. And I said, where do you have cattle? And they said, oh, we just graze them in the waterways between all our cornfields. And I said, well, how the heck does

that work? And they said, we have callers. And so they, and they don't run a lot of cattle, but that's what they do. They have all this ground that they farm that has terraces and waterways that run through them and they literally keep their cattle through the summer until they can turn them out on stocks and those callers make that possible and they said without those we'd never be able to do this but that's given us the ability to do it and i was i was just like so that's what got me really interested in it and that that that is a tool obviously yes a time saver but in their case they wouldn't be able to have cattle if it wasn't for the fact of have well i suppose you could if you had 13 kids that really

like to build fence. But other than that, I don't think it would work. No, I recognize that description. Yeah. Not specifically that farmer, but that's something we see over and over again. So initially, we thought that our

main goal is to provide more forage to the animals. That's sort of where we start and that's sort of, okay, virtual fencing, that's it. that effect that I think for me is important. I'm a very like relationship-driven guy. So the secondary effect of farmers having a lot more time on their hands,

I think that is, for me that's more important than our original goal. That's what motivates me. Yeah. So how does it, so how does it save time? Because people, so like, because you have to, do you have to, you still have to move the from place to place, right? Or, like, how is it saving farmers' time? Because if it's acting as your infrastructure for fence without the fence,

do you still have to move the cattle? Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So let me talk you through some standard examples and some edge cases, because it's a bit more fun. Standard is you move your cattle. at some intervals. We have users moving them four times a day or every second day.

If you want to do that kind of movement, you have to go out there and you take up the polywire and you move the kettle. And how much time does it take to like just open up a gate? That's half a minute. Still you have to drive there. Spends on diesel. Your time. Ideally with cattle, you should do the moves somewhat predictable.

timing every day. So the cows establish a habit of these movements. If you have to drive out there several times a day, you get tied up doing that. That's sort of the obvious time saver.

These callers are also detecting if a cow is in heat, if she's sick, moving less than use than normal. So instead of going out there and look at all the cows, you go to the one with that message. Go directly to her and treat her.

That will save you a lot of time, but maybe even more so you can save her before anything. Yeah, you might save your cow because you may not, if you're not paying close enough attention, that cow could be pretty sick before you catch her. Yeah. So on the first example, so if that guy's not driving out,

out there and moving them and open in the... So basically what that does is you can make your outline around a certain part of your pasture and then just move... Can you move the cattle? Can you like buzz them enough to move them towards the direction that you want? Or do you just unlock the parameter and then they move by themselves and then you shut, shut the parameter? Yep.

It's... So from the phone, you just like open up the perimeter slightly. Yep. And we have to, so that I spoke about technology like it's a sound and buster that's what makes it work. And very important part of it is cow behavior. So they are herd animals and you have in any herd you have a hierarchy. You have the leaders and you have the challengers and the ones just hanging out in the center. You will always find one or two individual that will they will constantly check the perimeter of that fence.

and she will push the system I've seen a cow with over over three weeks she had an average about 800 sound signals a day if you take away the sleeping time

of that animal that's one sound every 30 seconds so she's just going like this checking she's checking it looking for a spot yeah and other individuals have like maybe one sound

a week in the same group. When that said farmer just opened up one side, she found it immediately, and then the rest of the crew just followed her in. And we see also, have you guys ever seen sort of a break shift on

cattle using polywire? No, no. So what will happen is that, we talked about doing this on certain intervals, right? So when the farmer gets out there in the field, move the polar wire, all the cows get up there, I'm ready to go. You open up the wire and they all run in. Yep.

And usually they spread out on the whole area quite instantly. When they do a shift with a virtual fence, the behavior is very different. So you have the first cow, she will see, okay, I can go here. And she will just start going in ever so slightly. And the rest of the cow will see, okay, just moving over there. to the nice fresh grass. Oh, just follow. We have this much like calmer entering the new area, just walking in there.

And we also see that there are more grouped together. So they're grazing in groups more than seen on traditional fences. I sort of asked a farmer that, okay, why would they sort of pack up in groups like this? and my thinking they are nervous they are scared of something that's why they're staying together like that and I said no no this is like this is just perfect normal

behavior for my cows they want to be that way and they collaborate on finding those borders so it's sufficient for them to just grace together in groups yeah well if you can

so then the other obvious labor saving is you know you said about moving your polywire, well, if you use that, you don't need that. So you're not spending the time to build. Unless you have to physically put them on a truck or walk them over the road, you really don't have to move them. Because if, like, for example, if we were going to graze our corn stocks after fall or after harvest, we would graze a certain part of the cornfield, have the collars on. And then once we, they ran through that.

we would just open up the parameter and the one would lead and they would leave and then you just shut the parameter and do another section of the cornfield. Is that correct? And you wouldn't have to go out there and move them or open the wire because there's no wire. They just move. Put in the wire. Or put in the wire. So to me, to me it's like this, this is the perfect product. at a time when more and more people are embracing rotational grazing, to me, one of the downsides of rotational grazing is labor because a lot of guys, you have one big pasture, and you fence that whole pasture,

and you have all the labor of having that fence, all that perimeter fence. So the idea of rotationally grazing to somebody like that is, well, now I got to build all these interoperable. intermediate fences to make all these paddocks to move these cows. And they're like, I'm not doing that. I'm turning the cows in and let them go. But when you can do it virtually, now that 100 acres of grazing,

you can split that up into, you can split that up into five acre chunks if you want, and you're not building the fence, which is a huge time and money savings. Yes. And what is the benefit? Like, what is the average cattlemen usually, like, how big of a paddock do they make? Like, in a, like, what's the science behind wanting to keep, like, rotational graze and keep your cattle in a centralized place and then move them?

Is it the fertility, the soil health? You know, it kind of gets centralized and then it moves and then you give it time to rest. Well, if you look at the way nature around us, all the, all the native grasses, almost all plants you see on the prairie. There has been growing under a condition for millions of years a flock of bison

will come in there and eat almost everything and move on. They won't be back there until months later. So the grass, the genetics, everything is like centered around that kind of, those conditions.

You had the groups because we had predators. But now if you just let the cows out, they don't behave the same way. There's no predators there anymore. If you just let them eat and eat and eat the same area, you basically kill the root system of

those plants. They're suboptimal. So what you're actually trying to mimic, that's the rotation of bison over a prairie. And that's what you're mimicking. So you are actually making the cows behave

the way the plants has evolved over centuries to adapt to. And that's, at least for me, that's an explanation I can expect. Yeah, so, and part of what goes with that is if you turn, it's no different, any, whether it's goats or sheep or horses or,

well, I shouldn't say goats, they'll eat everything. But, like, cattle, if you give them that whole pasture, there's going to be certain types of grasses, certain types of plants, and that's what they really like. So they're just going to go around and they're going to eat all of that. Meanwhile, if there's a weed out there that they don't like,

that weed is going to prosper because nothing's going to eat it down. And so what happens is over time, you end up with a field that you have to go out there and spray with 2-4D to kill all the weeds because that's the only thing that's flourishing because the cattle are eating that down,

where if you contain them to where this is all you have, they're going to eat everything, and then you move them to the next chunk. And the rest thing, the key here is the resting period. So like you said, when they go in and start grazing, they eat the nice stuff. If you keep them there, they will come back and eat nice stuff when it just starts growing.

You will never meet any likeful potentials. And you will never meet the sugar, protein, and fiber potential either. because it's still like kept down. If you give that same area some like a good rest, time to get like the proper growth of fibers, you get the sugars up there, the proteins, roots, the most important part. So it just makes a lot of sense. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer.

That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, Join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. But like they, I only speak into farmers into like regenerative. They know the reasons of why they're moving their cattle.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're just providing the tool to. I'm trying to learn as much as I can. Yeah. But what they're doing. And we had like, like, we spoke about now how sort of you time, you save a lot of time on doing rotational grazing and seeing where the animals are.

But you also get a lot higher carrying capacity by utilizing your pastures a lot more. One farm called Steelbridge in just south of Kansas City, they moved, they have a bit of special setup because the farmer in question, he's a first-generation farmer. He lives in Kansas City, bought this ranch outside of Kansas City, and his dad lives there. So his dad takes care of the cattle on a day-to-day basis, and John just comes up as often as he can. so that's that used to rotate the cows every second day they made the grazing plants so it was sort of planned always a week in advance when they started to use callers instead of spending two days on each pasture it went to four to five days and the condition of the cows are the same so in carrying capacity on that ranch that's a hundred percent

increase overnight. We have to wait and see though. We have to wait and see a year if it's 100% of 50% of whatever. But it's straight out of the box. You increase your carrying capacity by different grazing management. And this is an excellent tool to make you have you do that. So now instead of John sitting in Kansas City and just speaking on the phone with his dad and asking when did he shift the last time,

John is now, he's in charge of four daily movements of the cattle and his dad spends time on some carpentry work, maintaining the farm instead. His only job is to make sure there's water in those tanks and occasionally open up a gate. When they're moving the cattle now over big distances, there is quite spread out. If they want to go from one pasture to another one like a few miles that way they just make a gate and they wait

two days later they're in the right spot you can make a gate with those like you can make a straight line yeah we have one of our Norwegian customers so a Norwegian farm

will typically be a main farmhouse down in the valley that's where you grow with forage and keep the animals during winter. In summertime, you take them up in the summer grazing area. That's usually up in the mountains, and you have a cabin or something where the people that takes care of the cows can lead there.

That's a traditional way. But also by tradition, you walk them. This could be 20 miles, 50 miles maybe, of a walk. So he took, last summer he had a quite small operation, he's 30-something cows. Just put up virtual fences. along the road in sections of five miles and just walked them. The night came, they made a pastry out in the forest,

but the pitcher a tent, slept, continued walking the next day, just making these skates. I find it super cool. That is crazy. That is crazy. And like, if you want to, like, shift from one cornfield to the next, just make a corridor. You might need to walk them there.

But if you have time, you could just make that corridor. and let them find the way. Okay, let's talk a little bit about the nuts and bolts of how that works. So in the U.S., are you relying on, is it running on cellular data, towers? Yep. So the nuts and bolts here, you can say the system consists of two things. you have the callers that stays on the animal that's sort of the interface towards animal and that's where we gather all our data and you have the other side of it which is equally and maybe more

important that's the system side that's a software and the analysis we do on in cave movements etc in order for us to communicate with the caller and to get some signals we are dependent on what's called lTE or nb iot protocols standards that's a part of part of the 4G network setup. So these callers have a SIM card in them. That SIM card speak. So for this model we have here, it speaks T-Mobile or AT&T. It will just pick the network with the strongest connectivity.

You can have any subscription you want on your phone as long as there is. You can use your phone on Wi-Fi. These callers, they are dependent on this 4G connectivity. What we do with that connectivity is that we will dive. download the fence geometry to the caller and the caller will send positions and alerts back. That's the communication. If a caller had set up a fence in the caller and the caller goes outside of connectivity, it still works. There's still emit a sound and a shock signal.

You as a user will not see where she's at. Okay. Yeah. And you can't change the fences. So, and this goes back to when I, when we, get a call and that's some of the first questions we asked is, how's your cell connectivity, the cell service signal? And it was like, ah, well, it's spotty.

Okay, what's your ambition of a number of movements? Oh, I want to move them every second day. Okay, then spotty could be, that could be good for you. This is not a product if you want to do four shifts a day, because then you will not be able to update all the callers when you want it. connectivity is a requirement. The callers themselves use a GPS receiver under here. We speak, we can speak

to all of the different global positioning systems like Lomas, Galilee, etc. We're using the European and the US GPS or GNS systems. The accuracy of one unit, it's like an uncorrected signal. So you can, it's four to five feet in any direction. That's sort of the standard deviation of precision of a caller. About the size of a fat cow. You can be off one cow either direction. Yeah. But the callers themselves, you have 20 of them, 50 of them, they all see the same sort of atmospheric disturbances that causes these uncertainties. So in

relation to each other, it's sort of the same. Okay. In the caller itself, we have an accelerometer and we have what's called a magnetometer that are always monitoring for some movements, but also the

direction of the caller. So we can tell quite a lot of the animal behavior based on that pattern. We use quite a lot of machine learning and AI tools. just to distinguish what kind of movement is this on a cow? Right now we're, for example, tracking rumination cycles on the cow

in order to say something about her health conditions. So we use rumination and their activity to say something about heat. So if a cow, the rumination drops and activity peaks, the cow is most likely in heat. that's sort of that kind of information we can provide from the accelerator there on the magnet meter we like we say we know the direction and we can also say something about if she's eating or walking around or really bad if she's laying down if she's laying down then you will get an alert on your phone saying color has either fallen off or she's dead go check it's not it's then that happens

yeah the caller will fall off so just plan for that especially if you're doing some grazing in a in a forest or places with twigs

the band you see here it's a spare part so it's made to break if she does if she gets stuck in something yeah we can just replace the band so yeah what usually like

so what what happened like what are your worst case scenarios with this like what breaks because something's had to break you guys have done these before is it usually the band uh what happens when a cow gets out of the perimeter like what if you have a crazy cow that's like piss on i don't care i'm running through this thing does that happen often has it happened before does it you know what's we're dealing with cattle you will have the full plate of crazy stories. Yeah. I am not aware of

incidences where the behavior of the cow reaches a level that the farmer will get rid of her. The farmer will more likely get rid of her because she behaves badly towards him. Yeah. Not necessarily on the fence itself. Yeah.

Yeah. But we've seen some cases and you see that the rancher will know. I can say, okay, before you put on the virtual fence, please tell me which of your cows will be the challenger here. If he's a good, he or she is a good cattle man, they will know. She is going to cause me problems.

And that's their behavior, personality. They will be trained. Yeah. They will be trained. we have I mention that its technology is also like animal behavior is an important aspect here

there are herd animals so if one of them escapes unless she is a really egocentric individual she wants to get back to the rest of the herd and we see in that like 80% of the times if we see a cow escaping the virtual offense

she will be back 80% of the time within five to 10 minutes inside the fence just because her friends are there. If she decides to run off, let's say you have a predator in your pastures. That will cause several cows to run off. And still then from your sofa, you can just expand the fence around them, guide them back home. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. That's absolutely right. So like in your experience with the farmers that you've worked with or ranch you've worked with, how does this pay? Like what's the payback on these callers? Are they happy with the payback that they've seen? How are they? I know they're saving time, but are I also saving money? Are they able to generate more money because they're not spending so much time on the day to day stuff? Like what's been the gut reaction with the farmers that you've worked with on that front?

the most of course it comes with a cost i think the the general feedback i get is that darn i should have started years ago doing this you have the financial value i see quite okay you will measure the financial gains by carrying capacity less time and diesel especially if you have to drive to that farm. Forage utilization, that goes with carrying capacity, of course. Saving animals. That's quite easy to put some dollars to. The biggest value and the main reason why many farmers are saying,

I should have started this a long time ago, that part is hard to put a dollar. all around and that is sort of you know where cattle are you know they're safe you know that if something happened i will get a notification and that's that's from most of our users they actually respond that my mental health has improved because i'm not going around and worrying about my animals 24-7 yeah yeah that makes sense that's really that's really hard to put a dollar to. And I can say that as much as until the air bleeds, you might not trust me on that.

You guys won't trust me until you hear this from your neighbor. And that's where we are right now in the US. We are more and more farmers, ranchers, starting to use virtual fences. So people can get the benefits from their neighbors and friends and not just the company like us or yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just like a hog barn alarm. Yeah.

So we have alarm systems in our hog buildings just in case, you know, the water shuts off or the power gets cut off. Or we have bin sensors to know when a bin goes out of feed, we know to order it. So we have constant feed there. That gives you peace of mind too, you know? It's the same principle.

It's just a tool. Knowing that the sky isn't full. falling. And if the sky is falling, if there's a problem, we're aware of it and we can do something about it. You know? And I like John that Stilbridge, I mentioned. He is also a business owner. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, joined thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk.

Challenge yourself, friends and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Several businesses. So he is always doing his math on cost. When I first met him, I introduced him to the callers, and he was like, what's the cost? $200 for a caller, $40 in subscription. I have 30,000.

Okay, how much time will I save? We have reports of about 8 to 10 hours a week. Don, I'll take them. I'll, I will save that over less than a year. We got a call on him, and I went back to him and asked, okay, so your Excel sheet. Can you still sort of justify the investment? With what you know now?

I said, man, it's completely different. I didn't know the value of me being connected to my farm. And he's against cities, moving cattle now four times a day. He feels connected. He has data on his cows. What's the value of that? You have these alarms. One of his cows have, half.

They couldn't find the, the cow. at all. They went like in grids all over his farm to find the calf. Then his dad said, but John,

why don't you just turn off the virtual fence and just look where she's going? So they did. Turn off the virtual fence. Half an hour later she was with the calf.

Found it. So stuff like that. And he said, my point of reference before buying this, I could compare it to time and fence cost. But it comes with so much more that it's hard to put a dollar on now.

I said, my decision process with what I know now would be very different compared to what I knew when I took the initial decision to invest in the system. Well, the way I look at it, just, you know, not being a cattle guy. I'm not a cattle guy. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah. Not yet. But when you look at, when you look at the flexibility.

ability it gives you to utilize your pasture because there's you know I just think about I just think about the places that we have that we're not grazing that

because if you're going to run a row crop row crop operation and you're going to graze cattle it would be very problematic to fence all of those areas and then still run row crop. But virtual fence with callers, you can make that work.

Where basically you couldn't utilize that before. So to me, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, in our use case, it's like if we wanted to graze our cornstalks after harvest, being able to cut off 10 acres and say, we're going to start them here and we're going to we might custom graze them or we have our own cattle whatever um but also the fertility benefit of keeping them all so it's not only they're you can keep them centralized to one place so they make sure they get everything get all the stocks down

but also all that manure value is going to stay right there and much more consistent it's going to be consistent it's like yeah it's basically like we drag line manure you know and it's consistent and it changes. It varies depending on where you are in the field, but you're putting the adequate amount of manure dragline in it through your field. With this, it's kind of the same thing. You can look at your cattle like, well, we're going to fertilize this field even more and we're going to do it consistently. We're going to keep them in these sections and move them. And so that's like as a grain farmer, thinking about having cattle, that to me is super appealing for that. For that. for that reason.

And yeah, if you don't have to put up the fence, well, I mean, even if it's... And you don't have to go out there and move them. Even if it's a case that you have to put... Say you got 160 acre field. Even if you are, I guess you'd say skeptical, or it's by a highway and you're worried about it, the cost of just running a perimeter fence

and then just using the callers and the technology to make your individual paddocks still a huge benefit. Even if you want to have that perimeter fence as a safety factor. You're touching on an important element here. I've seen quite a few short and nice commercials.

No more fences with virtual fences. I would say that's somewhat right, but can be really, really bad as well. So, always, when you evaluate if I can use a virtual fence in an area or not, you always have to think about, okay, what's the liability if one animal gets out? The positive thing with a virtual fence, you will know immediately. It's not a neighbor or the sheriff giving you a call, but you know yourself. but let's say at the highway I will never tell any of my customers to trust on the virtual fence alone

that liability is too big if you're grazing up to a forest or other like corn stocks where if a cow gets out you can just follow her you have to always do that kind of evaluation for yourself it depends on where you're at yeah it really depends

on where you're at or what you're grazing and where. Yeah. And the liability for escaping capital. Yeah, and that's, in everything we do today, you have to think about liability because it's the world we live in. Yeah. A question about your technology. One, you know, in parts of the country where cell service isn't great, and I don't know

whether this is, I'm assuming this way everywhere, because our good friend Elon is is pushing Starlink hard and it's growing exponentially. Is Starlink a viable option in the future, do you think, for places that don't have good cell service? Is that something you guys are interested in at all? Yeah, but there are many satellite providers. Okay. Yeah.

And just keep it there. Yep. Yeah, okay. I want to get your overall thoughts on agriculture as a whole. Let's go broad, which is agriculture. Broad, we're going to go broad. So you've worked to agriculture, Norway, Britain, America. What's one problem that you feel like all of agriculture,

no matter what country you're in? We're all facing right now. Just the world of agriculture that you feel. experienced there's two two common factors I met with and I think that's about hundred percent of all farmers I met as the profit is low yep that's across everywhere everywhere yeah and the thing I love about farmers which is and that's the time horizon and this is universal for the farms I met, the ambition is to leave it slightly better when I took it over.

Yeah. That's Norway, UK, Ireland, whatever. That sort of that mental model of I don't own Islam. I just take care of it for a short period until my family or someone else in a very long relay lasting. generations, centuries. Yeah, we're generationally thinking about the next generation. We're always thinking about who's going to take this over next. And it's just our time.

Yes. With, yeah. And that is universal. Yeah. At least I found it's universal. Yeah. So low profit and this holistic, like, ambition. But do you think, do you think that's the second one's a problem?

Or do you feel like that's just a universal theme that you've seen amongst them? I mean, the first one. one's a problem that we all face. Profit, we all feel like that. And isn't it funny that, like, is the public's perception of farmers or everywhere you've gone

amongst common folk that don't farm? Do they just think farmers are rich? Because I feel like a lot of times in America, there's a lot of people that just assume farmers are making all this money because they have out of this equipment and it's, it's, there's a, you know,

the land's expensive. equipment's expensive, that they just, oh, it's the rich farmers. But it's just funny that you say, like, you've had kind of a worldly experience of agriculture, and it's still, like, the number one problem is profitability. Yes. So do other, in your experience, do common folk in every country kind of perceive farmers to be rich?

Or no? In Norway and the US, no. Yep. in UK that's a small step back on UK an island

you had a royal society with Jarls and dukes and whatnot landowners and that's the legacy of UK so if you have a title you have land

you're rich if you're land you're also a farmer so if you get filled rich in the UK by doing some financing stuff in London, you're not properly rich until you're a farmer. That's a culture.

That's a culture. So it's slightly different there. Yeah. Yeah. So you see, I met several proper landlords with full organization of farm managers just been hired in so that the landlord can actually be a farmer. I'm going to start referring to you as the Duke of Jackson Township. The Duke.

I'll take it. I'll take it. I like it. Back to the question. So I think I haven't seen a lot of people outside of agriculture thinking that farmers are making a ton of profit. Yeah. But also, and I hope this is a change because we have like a great invention back in 1960s. That's called a supermarket.

Yeah. That made a lot of goods and groceries available for an average household with a huge variety of stuff you could buy, right? The supermarket is also a lot of big negative effects on farmers and people's connections to their food. So even though it's a great invention, it's caused quite a lot of trouble. Yeah.

What I've been seeing across many different countries is an increasing awareness of the public on what kind of farmers are buying my meat from. Yeah. We were just saying this yesterday or last episode, but here in America, it seems like culture is really shifting. It's becoming cool to buy a half beef from a farmer. Like it's becoming a flex in the city to have a deep freezer and you bought a half beef from a farmer down the road that you know. And like feeding your family farm fresh beef is cool. And like that's always kind of been a Midwest rural America thing. Like we've kind of, there's always been hunters that kill a deer and, you know, fill their freezer or have a steer that they take to the, you know, take to the butcher and put it in their freezer.

But I feel like it's really starting to catch on everywhere. And I just think it's nice to see you. It's kind of nice to just compare notes with you and say, I think culturally in a world, it seems like that's becoming more and more important to people, which is awesome. Yeah. And I hope it becomes more and more normal

because I'm happy to pay a premium for my steak. If I know, that it must be taken care of. Yeah. And I'm buying all. my meat from my customers. Yep. It's, it might be a bit psychological, but I really, really believe that the taste of those

stakes are a lot better than anything I can buy in like a general supermarket store. I agree. I agree. Yep. And I try different variances of like grass finished beef, corn finished beef. I haven't made up my mind yet, but at least. at least I know that those animals were taken very good care of.

Yeah. Yeah. So back to the first point you put up about, or the second point with the generational thinking for farmers. Yeah. What do you think about that? Do you think that's a good thing, bad thing? What are your thoughts on that?

I love it. Yeah. But it puts so much, there's so many elements that go into that, that way of thinking. It's, how do you think about long investments in your farm? And for you two have the same actually,

how did you think about the relationship to him? That's a very generational way of thinking, right? It is. So it affects a lot more than just the day-to-day decisions. It affects the way you have relationships in the families to... what can I do for the nature around me? But it's a wide concept that I...

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Our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Nispresso.com. I like it because it's a really good guiding principle. Yeah, it changes your decision process for sure. You know, my my dad,

he never, pushed any of us to stay and be involved on the farm. However, the decisions that he made were really, when I look back now, I realize that those decisions were made with the idea that somebody would continue it, basically making it to where there was a path. and then when I look back, when I started farming on my own, I wasn't concerned at all about the next generation, but once you have kids and then you start thinking about what you're doing,

you know, if I didn't think that any of them were going to want anything to do with it, it would have made no sense whatsoever for me to build all the hog buildings I built because I didn't need all I wouldn't have needed that but you know in hindsight that worked out and now now that we're we're really lucky we sort of and I have something that my dad and I didn't have and that is that um we're a lot closer in age to where while I'm I'm I'm I'm old I'm getting older every day but we we share a lot of excitement for the future on shared ideas and shared vision of where we want things to go which that's when you get to do something like that and you get the next generation involved

it changes your whole point of view and it really it really uh like it we've kind of talked about this two episodes ago what's kind of unique about Sawyer and I is that we have one thing in common, the social media and like this podcast,

where while on a lot of things, I'm older and I have a lot of preconceived notions and I like to think that I know better than him, and he probably would admit that on some things just because I've done it longer. But when it comes to this, we have something that we're both learning at the same time. So in that regard, we're like equals.

although he's quickly outpacing me in his knowledge of social media but anyway, yeah, thinking about the next generation and realizing, you know, that the decisions you make are not just for you because if I didn't give a,

if I didn't care about the next generation, I'd sell this, I'd sell all this high price dirt and move to the villages in Florida and just, you know, kick back. But that's not the plan we're on. So, yeah. A short story to share with you.

The same year I started in Moniel, we went to a fair. And then gentlemen, he must be like, 60 something and came up to me and started talking about his farm. And so on the issue of profit, I'm struggling really, really bad with profit on my farm, but I'm not giving up. And I said, why? On my farm, there's a high. house, it was built in 1318. I will never give up that piece of land. When I'm alive, that was someone else.

So it's this, like, this is strong heritage. I'm standing on the shoulders of generations before me, right? I'm not giving this up. Right. Nobody wants to be the one to piss it away. No. Yeah. You know.

Well, and I think we all have this innate, we have this innate desire to build something that's going to outlast us. I think that's just human nature. I think there's connection to land too. I want to ask you about just your industry. So Halter, the $2 billion player in your category,

says publicly, it's not an ag tech company, it's an AI and robotics company that happens to work in cattle. When Silicon Valley, and this is the question, for you. When Silicon Valley money decides cattle are a robotics problem, you think that's good or bad for the people who own cattle? It's kind of a loaded question. Yeah, yeah, it's a load of a question.

I have to think about this. And I might change my opinion during the answer. Okay. That's all right. on the good side when Silicon Valley says these are robotics and this is an AI stuff they are speaking the language of the finance world which is good in that setting because the language of the finance world it will make capital

flow towards technology that can help a farmer and there's a but if both we and Walter start treating the animals and the farmers like just an anonymous item we happen to be a part of thinking like this is something robotic

and this is just a data point. They're just a number. Just a number? I think you're properly screwed up. Yeah. So the answer is like two-sided. I think it's really good to just have sort of the capital coming towards agriculture. Agriculture.

But the pitfall here would be to, if we end up with having too many people in these companies that don't emotionally understand the customers. Yeah. And of course also practical. When I hired, we hired a team of six people now in the US. All of them come from livestock. And that's one of the main reasons why we did it. We can't go in, we can't end up as a company that is not personable.

Not like a fully mechanical company. That's not where we want. to be. It's crazy hard though. We have it like on, it's high on the agenda and it's it's almost in every board meeting, leadership meeting. We want to be a very personable company, understands and empathizes with our customers. That is crazy hard when you have several hundred employees, several hundred millions of like dollars going through your bank accounts. So that's something we're actively working on to maintain that personal, emotional connection. And I think, I think one key here is when we pick, when we are recruiting now, we're very

specific on you need to have some livestock background especially if you're working towards any customers but also that I have this sort of the same mentality as the rest of us but we care it's a bit painful

when you get some with a customer complaint it hurts and we're talking about technologies or something will break and we yeah yeah no that I was going to say, I think in a world of, it's your point you always say,

dad, about service. I think service, customer support, given a shit about the consumer, is on an all-time low for every company in every industry out there. Like, I think the consumer and the customer feels like they get bottom-of-the-barrel service most of the time with a lot of the products that they interact with

or a lot of the companies interact with on a daily basis. And agriculture is not apart from that observation. I mean, just from the time dad started farming to where we are today, the people that provide us things that we need for our farm, service has gotten worse. And farmers and anybody, you take that somewhat personally, because if the service goes to shit and the communiation goes to shit, and the customer support goes to shit,

how do you feel? You don't feel very important to them. And I think that is a huge advantage that nobody really talks about is if you are a company that can grow and scale and keep that at the forefront of your mind, you can go a lot further than others

because I think people are craving that for companies to provide a great product but also provide great service on top of it. Yeah. But also, if you take on like the investor hat here or business hats,

all of the virtual financing companies they have some sort of subscription. If we don't provide excellent service, we will lose that subscription. So I would say any product, I would expect that any product I buy, especially if it's a subscription

to it, something you pay annual or on regular frequencies, you can go and like point a finger at that company. Hey, you're going to lose my money if you're not giving me by the servers here. Yeah. So that's general.

We hired three people on service, three people on sales. And ideally, I think we could manage with one person on support. but it's like you said I think the winner will be the ones that are actually able to provide that service level

but also able to recognize you the next time you're calling one thing I wanted to say was I think it's very difficult today when you are starting a company

because the the technology and the availability of information is kind of a double-edged sword because when we were talking about that previous statement about AI, we know a guy that is building a company and they have taken venture capital

and they're on a five-year runway to get to basically being bought or going public or whatever. And we were talking about AI. And their business is a software business, mostly. But he talked about how as soon as they went down the road of venture capital, every presentation that he gives that's in front of banking, financing types, it's included in there as part of their business is AI

because AI now to the financial people that's like if you don't have that in your business plan well they don't want to talk to you because that's the sexy thing so you have to wear two hats you have to play the game you have to play the game so when you're in front of that group of people

you have to talk to talk when you're in front of your customers you have to talk to talk The problem is that those statements that you make in front of those people, they're going to get distributed to everybody, and however they want to interpret that, they don't know the general public or whoever. It goes both ways,

but they don't always realize the context that that conversation was made. And it just makes it difficult. I mean, it's a tough, it's a tough, world, like you said, you've got to wear both hats and go both ways. Yeah. This is also a bit interesting. Remember I told you about the Kruger done effect? Yeah.

The peak of stupidity. Unfortunately, most of the investors are there. Yes. They know just enough that they fancy themselves an expert when they don't know the whole story. Yeah, but it's also, yeah, when as an as an investor, you have to get the money somewhere. If you can tell rich people that I'm investing in AI. Oh, I follow you. Yeah, you got to get the money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's always always follow the money. And there's like we talked about this robotics and AI for cattle tech.

with the Holter. That is communication to money, finance people. Yeah. One of the last thing on the whole ag side, just with your whole experience, being in different countries, do you feel like agriculture as a whole is consolidating around everywhere you've been? Or are some farms in different countries getting subsidized more to keep the small family farms, you know, alive? Or is it just kind of across the board? we're losing farms. The sad answer is across the board losing farms.

Yeah. We see both, and this is almost like an experiment. See in Scandinavia and UK farms being consolidated, based on the idea, the more I have, the more efficient can I run, and hence I will have a better profit. still is sort of the same profit margin but in total I can make a living out of combining several different farms

we don't know that yet US is on that same plan makes me a bit scared and that's the thing like we talked about this like what you were saying it seems like the trend is worldwide the consumer wants local

they want to buy from their farmer but a lot of consumers aren't willing to pay the premium price like you are to get there. But they don't understand that like farmers face the reality of it's either get big. Like in America, we always say this on the podcast. It's get big or die or create your own market or find a way to do both. Because that's just what it's going to take. You can't stay small or you can't stay doing the same thing that you're doing and say,

I'm going to stay the same size unless I have to go try to do something else at the same time. Because you're, you can stay the same size, but your standard living is going to go down because the cost of everything goes up. Yeah. And so it's like, I'm optimistic that we'll figure something out because it seems like that's what the consumer wants. Yes. And I hope new markets open up. You know, I hope somebody comes out with markets that allow more farmers to go direct to the consumer and really make profitable decisions that way. but yeah, it's scary. Sometimes it's a scary reality. There's an ongoing shift in Europe though. So when Russia attacked Ukraine,

Ukraine has the biggest wheat production and is basically feeding half of Europe with wheat. It became quite a lot more clearer for many politicians that, oh, farming, that's a national security issue. If we don't have the farmers, we are in a deep crisis as a nation, because you're not self-sustained, especially in Norway where you have these mountains and forests everywhere. I think we can utilize like 3% of the total landmass for food production. So it's

with the Ukraine and the fact that we're sharing border with Russia, I have several friends being on the Russian border, like doing patrolling there. General anxiety is increasing farming and food production has been put a lot higher up on the agenda just the last couple of years. Yeah, well, it's the same way. That certain parts of American agriculture is that same way, certainly on the input side. So what we talk about a lot is fertilizer for our. industry, for our ag industry, for 40 years, it was all about who can we buy it from the cheapest

and get it shipped the cheapest. And now then it's coming down to, well, you may not be able to get it at all in any price. So you better figure out a way to onshore it and produce it here. And I'm sure it's the same way there. Yeah, I think we're in a situation where global trade works really, really well as long as everybody plays nice. Yeah. And when they don't, things start to break down. And that's when people realize, we better have a plan B, C, and D.

Yep. So let's go to, let's go to, I'm going to call this my skeptic block. Oh, nice. So this is going to be, this is going to be our skeptic block. So don't take any of these personally. These are just, we're putting on our different hat here, okay?

Yes. Can I put on a naughty hat then? Yeah, you can put on a different hat too. You can put on the aggressive hat. So a rancher on a public forum said halter and no fence can change fence settings over Bluetooth when the network is down. And Mo Neal can't. Is that true or is that false? And if it's true, why haven't you guys built it?

It's partly true. We can turn off fences. We can't edit them. That will not stay true. for a long time. You're working on it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, working on it.

Okay. Let's say if, okay, let's say if Monel runs out of money next year, what happens to my herd, my callers and my subscription? You know, you guys are lean, you're running, you're gunning, you're trying to grow this thing. thing. You're running the U.S. team. You know, what, what do you do?

Like, what happens if that, if that takes place? that's not an insult. It's just like if there's a, if there's somebody on the fence and wanting to buy it, work with you guys or not, what happens in that situation? You know, what,

that might be a potential risk at their... Yeah, I sort of really appreciate that kind of questions. Yeah. And that also shows a customer who has been out of winter day before. That's very Scandinavian saying, but they have seen some shit go down.

Yeah. I said, first of all, we will not run out of money anytime soon. So that is... You're well capitalized. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We don't need to raise more capital if everything goes as planned. Yeah.

But we will because it's useful. Yeah. So far, raising capital has been very, very straightforward. So let's say we do something really, really bad. Let's say all of our callers starts exploding, like let's let's bethally blowing up. That's a big issue. I think like financially we can recover from that, but reputation-wise.

and not just for us, that's a whole virtual fencing industry that will be feeling that. That's stuff like that is a disaster. And that's why we are monitoring. All of our colors are monitored in, we can actually proactively go in and replace colors long before they're failing. We're sort of building up mechanisms to prevent that, of course, the design. Then a joining question to that challenge you just gave me. That is, what happened if Mon Niels decide to sell all the shares to an aggressive investor or someone I don't trust?

What about my data? What about your future operation? Data-wise is fine. Our end users, they own their own data made by the callers. So we can't just, you can't change that overnight. From a business perspective, if the new owner choose to not continue operation, that's a stupid business decision because now we have many, many,

many, many thousand callers that from our perspective will generate revenue for us to subscription. If that new owner chooses to stop that, they shouldn't have bought it because that's the that's that's that's the driver of of income that's that's why you want to buy monaul to tap off that revenue stream of course I can't guarantee anything what happened if the company has been sold but all business sense I say that the service will still be there and they have an vision of buying the company, so hopefully it will be better.

I personally, I know the biggest owner of Monaco. I actually have my employee contracts with the biggest owner. I'm hired into Monreal to help out scaling and growing here in the US. And Firda as an investment company and the two other biggest owners. there's very long-term ownership goals for this company. Yeah. We want to build and grow into something like really sustainable, global adventure. Yeah.

And we have some hairy targets. Yeah. I love it. We always had hairy targets. Yeah. But we have met them here. the year of the year. And still, I can go back to, like, looking at the first sort of slides you made.

Are you sure? Yeah. Now we're there. Yeah. It's been a lot of hard work. How many callers do you have out in North America? Or do you know that number offhand? I see.

We're getting closer to around 6,000, 6,600. 7,000. 6,000. That is not a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But you also bear in mind, we started selling in June. Started selling in America in June.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was just going to kind of segues in me into the other question I had. So sell me the other way. If I put your caller, Gallagher's, no fences and halters on this table. Yeah. Why does you, why, why you guys? Why Mo Nell?

Why choose you over the other players? the game. Why do they, why do we, why, why do you deserve to have a caller on my operation? If you're a farmer listener, a rancher listening, why? Why, Mono? We are the nicest people ever. No, I, I, I don't know the other, like, representative for the other companies, so I can't say that statement, but, uh, we have recruited for how, like, really, really, really, really good people. That's, I would say that's number one. We want the right persons in the company. Weight-wise,

so you have sort of, you have Halter and us are the two only companies where you put it on top of the neck. And we think that makes perfect sense. You have it up there. On top of the neck, you will also follow the movements of the animal very closely. Meaning compared to the ones with something hanging under there,

we have a very different data set. so we can do our AI stuff with. We're actually using quite a lot of AI, but we just don't talk that much about it. Yep. But we understand animal a lot better. So better data? Yes.

Higher quality data. Higher quality raw data. When you're high quality raw data, you can act with better precision on your analysis and what the cow is doing. And the main reason why people are actually wanting to buy these colors is the design of it. If you look at the design on not so much on the halter, but the rest, there are several mechanical parts. They look quite industrial and big.

So this is the lightest color. we didn't understand when we made the first prototype how important the look and feel of our products was. We have so many people coming around saying, this looks great. This must be comfortable. This must be good. So the design has been really, really important for us.

I'm not sure if I want to speak. and bad about our competitive. Yeah, no, I don't want that. Yeah, I just... No, I think the representatives I met from almost all of them has been really, really nice and welcoming. Yeah, yeah.

And it's a huge, the thing is, it's a huge market. Yeah. You know, it's one of those things when you start in to, you're basically building an industry. Yeah. To where nobody at this, point really knows how big

is the addressable market. I was going to ask, so is part of the reason for the bottom side of that collar to have as much weight there as you do to make sure that the top stays at the top?

Yeah. Yeah. The collar will rotate around. Yeah. When the cow scratches, for example, it will rotate around with the scratching. Yeah. That's fine by intention. Also, made everything in like this plastic type and would also again have a few like mechanical

parts as possible here. Yeah. I can show you later on the outside. But it's to get back to your question, design, wait. We especially here in the US, we have rigged our product team to be quite precise. responsive in US specific requirements. We have just over the last couple of months done, quite a few major updates just to cater for the American market.

And for me, like speaking with a customer one day and said, I want, I want groups. I want to be able to put my animals in groups. Do you have that? I say, no. Calling back the day after. Okay, we're planning to release groups in four weeks time. How about that?

stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to just kind of finish up with some, some, some, some, some of your perspective and live in real America. And so you've kind of answered a lot of stuff regarding, you know, what you've noticed about America versus, and what do you notice about Americans and what's similar about agriculture here versus over there. But what, what instantly kind of felt familiar, you know, being in Kansas and then what felt like you were just on

like a completely different planet when you came to Kansas? I think being on a... Well, let's start on the airport. Tornado shelter. Yeah. What the... That was one of the first things.

I took pictures. What is this? Okay, so the strange stuff. For Nadoes, lack of nature around the Kansas city. I'm used to some contours, mountains, rivers. It's flat. Nothing out there.

It's flat. Yes, flat. I get bombarded with commercials. everywhere. Yeah. Just driving down the highway. How many million dollars are you guys spending on advertising space there? We don't want to miss out an opportunity for some consumerism.

America does not, they do not, they always are trying to sell you something. Most, I mentioned the people. It's been like the people, it's been like great. Yeah. The water in, unless I'm drinking well water, it tastes like swimming pool. Oh, yeah. You like well water, though. Yes.

I like well water too. I personally think it's the best water. Yeah. It's funny when you're a kid and you always have your city friends that are like, oh, city water's better. And I'm like, no, well water is better. It tastes like drinking out of the swim. Yeah. My US friends thinks I'm a special case.

I filter everything we're using. I'm also using my filtered water to boil pasta. If I'm not using filter water, I still taste that chlorine in my food. I have never spent so much time reading the content of the food I'm buying. Oh yeah, that's a good point. I still get surprised by an whole industry that's supporting growth of

bacterias by using like disinfection soaps or everything. That is that sort of how do you make a resistant bacteria? Well, you start killing off the ones just start killing bacteria

until you find some bacteria that will survive that and grow yep that's crazy for me that we see that in the stores here I have gained quite a lot of

pounds after moving here I still work out I still try to eat as healthy as the first couple of months I ate everything. But I'm sort of now trying to, okay, you have to go leveled out. Yeah, leveled out. What's like, what, when you came, what was like the thing, you're like, I have got to try this. Like, I have got to eat.

Kansas City Barbecue, baby. Kansas City Barbecue. Yeah. You're a man after Sawyer's heart. Hell yeah. I love barbecue. The various deep fried stuff. Yeah. Everything is so convenient. If I need something, I can use DoorDash to get anything delivered at my door. Which isn't always a good thing. It's not always a good thing.

Yeah, that's exactly right. I found healthy food being crazy expensive. I can feed my family for less than 20 bucks a day. If I just go for ultra-processed rice pasta. I'm paying quite a lot to have, like, clean vegetables. It doesn't have to be organic. I'm not that picky, but at least clean vegetables. Nice meat.

Yeah. What do you miss about Norway? Nature. I've seen, we have been traveling in national parks. And, oh my God, you have some beautiful spots in this continent. We do. So I miss nature, but that's more because of where I live right now. Yeah.

Not as like a continent. Yeah. So you have so many amazing places. I'm going to Yellowstone in a couple of weeks. I'm so looking forward to just to see that. Where have you been before? So we went to Sion National Parks, Bryce Canyon, Great Canyon, Fire Valley

we went to Las Vegas I hated Las Vegas but at least we seen it sort of on the bucket list we went to my wife has a sister living in Los Angeles so we went over to see them

and did the ultra-American thing and going to Disneyland which was fun I enjoyed it but two days was That's enough. Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of people watching there. And I've been on the road a lot, driving around in Missouri, so many in Iowa. Yeah. We have quite a lot of customers down in those sorts. Nice. Yes. Pretty country. Pretty country.

Yeah. Missouri is better L.A.'s nature-wise than Kansas. Yeah. And Iowa, I would argue. Flint Hills in Kansas, that's a nice area. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really nice area, but very different.

This is like Perry something. Yeah. What else am I missing in Norway? Well, I've set up myself in a way that I do get like free health care here in the US. So I can't say I'm missing that. Yeah. It's just different. Just different.

Yeah. I actually like your school system quite well. Nice. Yes. you start out specializing a bit earlier than we do in Scandinavia so my son who could actually now he's 12 he could actually choose

a subject that is naturally motivating for him yeah and that I really like that that's smart thinking in my my book at least um wish they would have found that for me.

Yep. You would have been a lot better off. I, if it's like one thing I'm missing, it's, um, activities, sports for my kids that I don't have to pay

a thousand of dollars for them to attend. Yeah. And I think that's, that's, that's an area where the culture is, is quite different. Um, it's a no brainer that any kids,

in Norway should at least do two to three different activities after school being football, skiing, wrestling, whatever. I think here in the US it's much more, first of all, it's a lot more expensive to participate in activities.

But also it takes quite a big load from the parents just to get them around. And it's hard to find. Yeah. I miss, actually, maybe this, like, the kids' activities and the accessibility of that back home compared to her, that's one of the bigger things. Yeah, I think it's all geared to sell large SUVs. Yeah.

Because once you start down that road and you got two kids and all the stuff and you got to go to this traveling team and here, it doesn't take long and mother needs a suburban. So General Motors, I think they support every child, child sport there is because they know they're going to sell a vehicle. Yep, everybody needs a Tahoe. Yeah, I was going to ask you speaking on your kids, last question for this. And your kids are going to grow up, you know, half Norwegian, half Midwestern. What do you want them to take away from this experience of being in America in the Midwest? Like, if they could take away anything, what would you want them to take away? The answer here, and we've been quite deliberate behind this.

We don't know if our kids will be successful or not. You never know. But if they, if we show them like just one way of living, they only have one truth. They have one level of success. When we can take them here, they will see the farm, erase cattle, raise pigs. Could this be something for you in the future?

It can be like me, an engineer. Could this be something for yourself in the future? This is the way we're operating in the US. This is the way we're operating in the R. I think that by deliberately give them a variation of potential lifestyles. I think there will be a lot more robust. down the line in life. Because

I'm not saying it's this way, but let's say they only did like, if you just stayed home, they would be living in a white suburban, fairly wealthy part of Norway. Uniform friends,

uniform lives. They don't get that variation. I think they need for a later place in time to be robust. So the answer is robust kids. That's why I hope to bring back home from the US. Yeah, it's awesome. I love that. That's a good, I think a lot of parents could, whether you live in Norway, you live in America, I think, giving your kids the spice of life is probably a good thing. You know, giving them different lifestyles and different perspectives. And it's the same for kids as us adults. Yeah, 100%. Have you ever read the book, comfort crisis? No. Read it. Okay.

Who's it by? Do you know the author? I'll remember that later. Yeah. But the short theory here is that the human brain will always sort of seek comfort because it's energy efficient. But we are also losing quite a lot of stuff along the way when just falling that way, that comfort. So self-inflicted discomfort,

even like being your bed or your life, that's good for you. Everybody's got to have a little David Goggins in them. Yeah, that's actually a not necessarily eye-opener, but it's a nice book about both a human brain, but also being tentative to actively choose some discomfort, actively do some risk-taking. and get your ass to that gym.

Yeah, get your ass to that gym. I love that. I love that. Do you read often? Are you an advent reader? I wish I could have say yes. I think everybody. Everybody struggles.

Everybody wants to, but it's the time. Especially now. Usually I get about five, start working. Then kids wake, get him to school, back to work, back home. Some activities, workout myself, dinner. Oh, it's 10 o'clock. I have to go to bed. Yeah.

They're done. Yeah. Summertime, I'm able to read more. Yeah. We're going to go rapid fire here. Quick. We're going to go quick. We're going to end this podcast with the rapid fire.

So answer as quick as you can, but if you've got to give a little context, you can. Best meal you've had since moving to the United States. That was Joe's barbecue, a set man. Z-Man sandwich after being in queue for 45 minutes. Okay. Harder to learn cybernetics or reading a cattle herd. You will never...

Cybernetics is numbers. Numbers are easier to understand than a cattle herd. What's one thing about American farmers that Norwegian farmers would never believe? Is there anything? How a dedicated farmer can how the cows outside year around without feeding any hay? Everything eaten directly off the ground based on good planning.

That is, what? Unheard of. Okay. Yeah. One Norwegian word that has no good English transition or translation. Dugnod. But you sort of have a dugnod. That is, so if you were to have a duknot here, you will call all your friends and say,

hey, can you help me do this job? You will have a waffle as payment. And you do this, that's sort of a regular way of helping out each other. So it's a word that is used quite a lot. For my kids' activities, we do a dug-knit. All parents ship in with their time. The marching band, we ship in with our time. Yeah, we do not.

In the neighborhood, we have a dug-knot. Okay. Do not. Okay. Awesome. I have one English word. I'm missing in the Norwegian language. That's serendipity.

Serendipity. That's a beautiful... You love that word? Oh, yes. Because it has something, there's an element of luck. Yes. It's also an element of you taking action. Yeah.

To get that gain. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Okay. Last, last, we have one last section here on the show that we end every guest episode we ever have. It's called Tip of the Hat. Okay.

Who's somebody in your life? What's a brand that you use or a business that you use? that you want to just say, hey, I want to tip my hat and say, they're doing a heck of a good job, and I want to just give them my flowers. It can be somebody that's been along your journey. It can be a brand you use,

just something in your life or someone in your life that you want to give your flowers to and say, hey, they're doing a good job. That is an easy one, but it's a boring one. That's Nina, my wife. Yeah. She led all her plans to decide to come with us here, to create a family story.

That has cost a lot, so everything to her. That's a good one too. That is a good one. How do people find out more about what you guys are doing? You go to monil.com, if you can see that there.

Give us a holler, call us, mail us. It's either me, will, K.B. or John answering the sales calls. It will be Elizabeth, Olivia or Jerry being on the support side. And I'm a few words on this amazing. And I forgot to say something about what I really, really enjoyed about hiring people from the Midwest. That work ethics being raised on a farm, that consistency,

staying there, it's amazing. I was warned that you will find poor work ethics in the US. That is not true for a farmer raised kid in the Midwest. Amen, brother. Amen. Amen to that. Yes. That is, we hear that. I mean, that's kind of, we've, we hear that all the time from people. If you're raised on a farm or ranch, you tend to be a good work, be a good employee, good team member. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

They're great. Look forward to the conversation with them, or me. Yeah. Well, Oliver, man, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for spending the time with us today and making the trip. It was a good one. Thank you. Guys, if you get any value from the show, share it out with the people that you know.

Go check out what these guys are up to. If you're a cattle rancher, I would definitely look into virtual fencing. We love you guys. We appreciate you, and we'll see you back here next week for another episode.