Barn Talk - Transform Your Farm For the Better: Overcoming Financial Struggles & Building a Legacy w/Jace Young

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Welcome to Barn Talk! In today's episode we are thrilled to have Jace Young, founder of Legacy Farmer, join us for an insightful and thought-provoking conversation. Jace shares his extraordinary journey from the banking sector to becoming a pivotal figure in agricultural financial advisory. Listen in as Jace recounts a transformative experience of eating from a dumpster, which led him to deeper personal growth and an understanding of overcoming mental challenges. We explore the delicate balance of wisdom and open-mindedness the youth possess, the pressing issue of generational knowledge transfer in farming, and the importance of strategic financial management for agricultural success. We also dive into the emotional and historical impacts of family business failures, the struggles with financial transparency among smaller farming operations, and Jace’s unique approach to building a community of farmers who support each other nationwide. Discover how Jace developed industry-changing tools like Farmer Metrics and embraced public speaking to address real financial issues faced by farmers. Use code BARNTALK for 10% OFF your next order https://farmergrade.com SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  APPLE ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    00:00 Support Barn Talk: review, engage, buy meat. 08:44 Multi-generation farming bears unique pressures, differing challenges. 14:12 Parents' accounts frozen; emotional impact on family. 15:33 Dad ran a feed yard, worked with hispanic families. 24:55 Hard work pays debts faster than expected. 27:27 Three frames of finances offer varied perspectives. 32:10 Dad adapted jobs; always respected his resilience. 38:23 Legacy Farmer offers coaching, community, and software. 46:14 Bridging generational financial literacy gaps through software. 48:17 Separating business amidst competition discussed at conference. 52:53 Moved away, returned, learned: "Nobody's saving you." 57:25 Professional presentation builds trust with investors. 01:03:28 Son's analysis reveals hidden cattle operation costs. 01:11:33 Bank loans extended, affecting building depreciation schedules. 01:16:14 Encouraging diverse investments beyond real estate. 01:22:04 Realizing the burden of accumulating unnecessary responsibilities. 01:26:57 Secured investors to enhance Legacy Farmer brand. 01:32:46 Physical exhaustion leads to mental openness. 01:36:18 Understand differing perspectives; everyone views life uniquely. 01:40:18 Bringing the right people for genuine transformation. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Today is going to be a guest episode. We've got somebody coming down to Southeast Iowa to strap some shit on us, and it's going to be a good one. I think you guys will find a lot of value from it. And if you do find value, all that we ask is that you share it out.

with the people that you know. The more that you guys do that, the more of this show grows, the more guests we can get on, the more episodes we can make. Another way that you can help out Barn Talk is you can leave a review on Spotify or Apple. And also on Spotify, if you're a Spotify listener, Spotify is really up their game. You can comment on Spotify now. You can watch clips on Spotify now. It's a really great place for us to hear from you guys. So feel free to just use all the features on Spotify and let us know what you think. But leaving our review gives our show a lot of credibility and again helps us get more guests to come on to the show. Last thing you can do to support us here at Barn Talk and our family farm is support our direct-to-consumer meat business, farmergrade,

farmagrade.com. We're getting close to Christmas here. We're doing corporate gifts for companies. If you have a small business out there, or if you want to bulk order some boxes for your family or friends we'd love to help you out in any way we can and we're also going to have a big old christmas sale here at the end of the year too so be looking out for that and you can always use code barn talk to save 10% off your next order and you can always use more meat can always use more meat you know we we like to say that you know we don't have a patreon patreon here at barn talk we have a metrion you know a lot of podcasts and a lot of creators out there they like to get you to go to patreon to help support their show so they can make the show better. Well, we don't have that, but what we do have

is we got a meat business. And if you go and buy a box, you're paying the Metrion. And everything that we do, everything you guys do to help support the show, whether it's leaving her view, sharing it, or buying a box of meat, it all comes back to Barn Talk and helps us make this barn better, helps us upgrade our equipment, helps us maybe hire an HR lady to schedule guests. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Or I guess maybe I should say admin. Admin. We don't want HR in here yet. But we need an admin to help get us more guests and get us, help us with our scheduling.

Keep our shit straight. Yeah, because we're not always the best. So what you're saying is, help us help you. Yeah. By eating more bacon, eating more steaks. That's right. I mean, it's a circle of life. It's way better than a T-shirt that the stuff's going to fall right off of it or a bumper sticker.

Yeah. Why not some meat you can throw on the grill? I would like to get in the bumper sticker business, but that comes later. Farmer grade, much better. So, how are you doing? I'm recovering. A lot going on. We're dumping two sites of our hog buildings, and we just got done putting all the manure on.

And yesterday, the wind in the Midwest, or at least here in Iowa, oh, man. I hate, I just hate the wind. It just tore gutter off my house. Yeah, the wind, I don't mind the cold all too much. I've kind of gotten used to it being in Iowa, but when the wind is blowing along with the cold, it's a nasty combo. Yeah, it is a nasty combo, and it ain't much better today. So we got all the heaters kicked on. We got some heaters with some propane tanks on.

So we're trying to keep the heat into this barn as much as we possibly can. But I think our conversation will also. It will be. Really heated up. Yeah, I'm really excited. excited for this episode. I've seen this guy, actually saw him on TikTok, and he's got some really good, really good points, a little convicting to a farmer. That was what caught my eye when I first saw him. We talk a lot on this show about legacy, right or wrong. There's people that argue that that's

something you shouldn't worry about, and we can debate that another time. But he started a company a few years ago called Legacy Farmer. And his, we're going to talk all about what he does, but one of the big things is financial literacy for farmers and knowing their numbers better than the banker and the accountant, which I will fully admit that I am probably lacking in that. And some really great resources that he's put together. And we're going to talk about his journey from He was a loan officer, but before that, he's got a pretty good story about his connection with agriculture and growing up and just talk about what he does. So I'm super excited. So without any further ado, let's get started.

Well, we're live, boys. So, Jace Young, welcome to Barn Talk. I appreciate it, man. I'm excited to be here first time in Iowa and excited to get to. I've obviously been stealing a lot of your guys' videos and using them as reaction videos. so I know you guys really well. But yeah, I'm excited to be here, man. Well, I've actually, I remember seeing you back a couple years ago.

I saw some of your Facebook ads, stuff like that. You've been at it for a while. But before we get into all of it, why don't you let people know where they can find you? Yeah, so obviously on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, you know, I think my tag name under all those is just JST Young. You can also find us under Legacy Farmer as well, but primarily if you just go to those pages,

that's what we're mostly posting on. Yeah, what made me reach out to you is, level of conviction that I felt from your videos. That's great, man. I was like, oh, boy, that's me. I was like, oh, what, your bank, what the banker's not supposed to do your cash flow for you? Oh, shit. And I've watched a fair amount of them now and I'm like, yeah, that really, that really gets you. So with, and I mean, it's, we talk a lot about legacy on here because a lot of people don't have the luxury of having a like an intact family history. Even the opportunity. Right. And that's what we say. I mean, we're just thankful. It's such a small

group that actually have that. And I think the reason that it's probably as strong for me as it is is because when you when you live in a house that nobody ever left, they carried each generation out, you end up with all this stuff and you end up with all these pictures and all these documents. And our family, the history of this farm is pretty well documented for us. And it gives you this kind of sense of perspective that, you know, you're, People like to say that, you know, farmers are just caretakers of land and all that. But when you have that kind of perspective, it really hits you home that, you know, you're just responsible for handling this for the time that you're here.

And we had an old farmer that lived just a little away from us. And he was a product of the Depression. And he had a really unique relationship with. a lot of people, but especially his kids. And he didn't want to spend, he never spent any money. And anytime his children bought any tractor, any implement, he and my dad actually went to country school together. So he was one of the few people that he would, my dad was one of the few people he would talk to because he kind of felt like he had that connection. But if I had a nickel for every time that he would come over here when I was a little kid and he'd get going on some ramp and he'd be like,

Lawrence, it takes three generations to make a fortune, only one to piss it away. And them kids, they're going to do it. I'm telling you they're going to do it. And it probably, you know, he's probably not spent in his grave because they still have all the land. They don't farm it anymore, but they still have it. So they didn't piss away. But that's the, there's a, there's a weight there, though, too, right? So as you get in, you know, sort of being sixth generation, right? So this is why I talk about with customers all the time, because it's very seldom that we have, or very rare that we have a fourth, fifth generation operation coming into legacy farmer. But the weight that those people feel is completely different from a first or second generation, right? And so I've seen both positives

and negatives of it to where, you know, you have a third or fourth generation, you know, guy that comes in and he's got this big balance sheet that was built by the prior generations with zero respect for it. And what I mean by that is to lose 300 grand one year. Bank terms out the losses. And he's like, great, I get a farm again next year. Well, to him, it's like, I'm just farmer tomorrow. To your grandfather, That was 20 years of hard work that you just pissed down the drain and you're not respecting it. So I've seen it from that side, but then I've also seen it from the other side to where people are hesitant and they're scared to do anything because they feel the weight and the responsibility of all the generations before them, which I would rather people be in that, you know, in that place versus the other one. But yeah, it's just it's unless you're living in it, it's hard to describe the feeling, right? Like six generations of your head's name on top of you.

I feel like it's just for me, it gives you a lot of perspective. But I also feel an obligation almost. As, you know, my grandpa fought in World War II. The generation that came and settled this ground had to travel miles and miles and miles to come here to settle this ground. You know, you went through the hog crisis in the 90s. I mean, I just feel immense obligation that, like, here I am in the digital age. I'm the sixth generation.

It's never been easier to reach people. Yep. build a business whatever and it's just like all the hard shit that they went through I need to be seasoned this opportunity yeah I have it easy yeah you know I think about that too even with my my granddad he went through the dirty 30s in Kansas and used to tell stories of they they would sleep under the covers and they'd wake up in a thick you know blanket of dust on top of them just crazy to me but then you know looking at the hardships they went through he built you know started our family farm operation with nothing my dad would tell me that you know his first

financing guy he drove out to Denver and got a $15,000 handshake loan and that's how young cattle company started in western Kansas you know and turned into to what it was which was 14,000 had feed yard a few thousand acres of ground a grain elevator facility and stuff like that so and you know and then he had five kids all of them back and involved in the farmer and the operation because they felt same thing as you is like hey this is what we do this that old school mindset and everything but with my granddad and everything though too you know he went through all these things and now with legacy farmer and how it came to be, I feel that obligation as well. You know, yes, our family farm operation went under in 2005 and, you know, I saw that, I felt all that. I was with my parents still because I was in high

school when they got to file chapter 7, got kicked out of the house, they raised their kids in for 30 years. And I saw family members move away, didn't talk to some of them for 10 years that I grew up with. You know, I see all that. So now I even feel an obligation with legacy farmer because that story is the bedrock of why I do what I do. And it's my opportunity to try to get it out there and and help people, but also to just educate people on ag and how good the people are, you know, in this industry and everything as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good hop-off point. So how did you? Like, how did you come to the, what was your why? What were you doing and what was your why that made you step in and start this? So like I said, my granddad started it back in the 50s

and then my dad was born in 59. My dad started riding pens when he was five, right? So for, and the feed yard went under when he was 45. So for 40 years, years that entire feed yard it sat a half mile away from our house so my dad we were a big basketball family so we had a basketball court out back but in the background though is the feed yard right so it's just right there my dad's life's work all the bunk line all the pins you know and just slowly building that thing over time and ultimately that was my childhood grown up there were things that I absolutely hated about it and you know some lessons that I learned along the way especially when it comes to working with family that's kind of how legacy farmer first started which was talking about more of the operational side and

dealing with family because my dad and my granddad, um, they butt heads 24-7. And it wasn't just like, you know, it wasn't just, uh, light budding heads. It was F you go to hell. Knock down, drag out. Yeah. I mean, you know, they worked it. They would work together, but not speak for 30 days. You know, which is just crazy. And I saw the same thing with my brother as well. So growing up, my brother was 12 years older than me. And so my parents are, they got married when they were 17 and 15. And then I got pregnant with my brother two months later. And so young parents, especially even compared to today. But witnessing all that stuff growing up, yeah, didn't make me very excited about working on the feed yard long term, just because I saw what the relationship was between my dad and my

granddad, my dad and my brother. I was like, I don't know that I want that. But anyway, so fast forward through all that, you know, my parents and they never left Tribune, Kansas, married 1715, literally moved straight out to the farm. My mom sacrificed her life to be out there and raise a family and stuff. And anyways, summer 2005 is when a whole feed yard went under, unfortunately. So it was basically just a shock to my dad as well. My dad always, you know, we had, I had two aunts that worked in the office with my granddad. My other two uncles ran all the farm ground and everything. And there was no warning signs about it. My granddad literally came up to my dad one day at the feed yard. We had 15 employees on the feed yard, 14,000 ahead, a lot of different moving parts there

and said, hey, banks shutting us out and we're done. And my dad said, what were the hell to this come from? him. Why did this happen? And my parents got locked out of every bank account, everything they had was frozen immediately. And, uh, you know, so that, that was a very tough point for me because I remember I was at, uh, open gym that night at playing basketball and I came home and my dad was just sitting there at our kitchen table and we had this big back window and out the back window. You could see the basketball court, but then the feed yards in the distance. And he's just sitting there and it's just like, he's there, but his soul is like dead inside. And that's when he told me and everything. And so, you know, that was my sophomore going into my junior year of high school.

So, you know, I was there for, you know, the worst. People don't want to talk about them. My mom cried every night for a year. You know, there was so much resentment, so much anger there across the board that it was, I'm grateful that we went through it because I feel like my maturity level jumped about 10 years going through that with them because I was in high school, right? I was focused on girls or senior vehicle or something, just stupid stuff like that, you know.

And they're, my, my dad called me and told me one time, um, because they, they couldn't get any cash out of their bank accounts. And he goes, we have 12,000 bucks in a shoe box and the, uh,

the attic entrance in our closet. He goes, I'm not, I'm just telling you that because that's the only money we have and that's, I need you to know where it's at in case I need you to get it. So my dad, you know, went from running a team of 15 people and, you know,

on the feed yard of stuff, especially out there, a lot of the, the families and stuff that we had there are you know Mexican families but some of them my dad had worked for for 30 years they lived on the feed yard we had trailer houses on the south edge of the feed yard there um about 10 of them they grew up out there too and so you know my dad had to eat i did an interview um we did a documentary back in 2020 called saving the american farmer and uh i asked the guy to interview my parents and my dad is a very old school farmer right he's like he's like so much like

john dutton you know without all the killing and stuff like that but just the overall mentality right like very closed off, doesn't cry, you know, that type of stuff there. And that was back in 2020, and that's the first time I've ever seen him cry, you know, on camera and talking about it. And like the pain is still there. But, you know, it's just that was 15 years since the feed yard went under and they still feel it today. Right. And there's so many things looking back at it, um, that he says he would have done drastically different. He put a lot of trust in my granddad and people running in the office that, hey, they were taking care of everything financially and, uh, ultimately found that out to not be true. And, you know, they had to go through that. But,

So that was kind of the first experience there. I don't know. You guys want to have questions on that. Thanks for sticking with us. In recent years, pork has taken a back seat to other proteins in the grocery aisle. As a pork producer ourselves, this has been a big concern. Fortunately, National Pork Board is directing its research and marketing efforts towards building a bigger appetite for pork.

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our long-term relationship with consumers. National Pork Board assembled a diverse marketing advisory group representing State Pork Association, board members, and pork producers. This group emphasizes the collective efforts to market more successfully. By strategically aligning the industry, we can achieve more, faster for pork producers. To learn more about National Pork Boards, Consumer Connect, and even take the quiz to find out what type of media, eater you are, visit go.porkchecoff.org backslash consumer. Now, let's get back to it. I was just going to ask, you know, that is a lot. That is a lot. But I was just going to ask, you know, how, how did that, like, how did that happen? But you kind of explained it. Was it just miscommunication? Nobody was on the

same page? It's one of the, it's one of the biggest issues that we face today, right? My granddad, it was 2005 and he's trying to run an operation like it's 1975 you know back then my dad would tell me that price cattle would maybe move three to five cents in a month you know obviously we see a lot more volatility than that today but also expenses as well right it was a lot more fixed you had more certainty and what your profitability was going to be as whereas that today you have no idea and so you know we get to two thousands internet age happens and now all of a sudden we have global trading versus just local market trading that volatility starts going a lot faster and there's a lot more moves there. My granddad fed all of his own cattle.

So even back in 2005, we had a $6 million operating line that he would buy cattle with, which I can even imagine the size of operating line it would take today. It'd easily be two or three times that, maybe even more than that. But anyways, 04 or 03, he lost a ton of money on some cattle. And then they started to jump on the board and he was trading contracts, tried to get it back. Anyways, ended up losing about $2 million. That was it. Yep. Yep. But I remember there's pictures of my aunts drawing out charts,

cattle charts, on a chalkboard in his office. Like that is what they were looking at back then. So I say that because the game changed entirely, and he just wasn't keeping up with it and wasn't ready for it, which is, you know, the story is age as old as time because we see the same thing happening today too. And he thought he would fix it. He thought the cycle would come around.

And he also believed that there's no use. You know, Lawrence Swiss, my dad, would have been, he would have been similar because he never talked about money because his, his viewpoint of everything was if you can't do anything about it, there's no use talking about it. Yeah. And so it was his responsibility to make the money. And if you weren't making money, he wasn't going to trouble anybody else. You know, he wasn't going to talk about it because, well, what are you going to do about it?

Yeah. So, which is, well, communication is terrible. And the thing is, though, too, like with these cattle guys, I had so many customers. I worked as a banker, too, for six years. So I saw the financial side, which is a very important part of the story for me to really be able to look in and see why they lost everything. But I also worked at two banks, though, that my granddad actually applied to to try to save the farm. So I got to see in the weeds, details around exactly what happened there as I was looking back over old records and stuff. But, you know, these cattle guys, man, they just have this mentality of like, if I'm a cattleman, I feed cattle.

I don't care if I lose a million bucks one year. I'm still buying cattle next year. So even though, let's say the bank would have said, you know, Vaughn, we're going to give you one more year, guarantee he would have done the exact same thing because they're so attached to that identity, they'd rather die than not be doing that. You know, and even my granddad passed away in 2015.

And so from 2005 to 2015, you know, he's in his 80s and going into his 90s and stuff. I walk into his house every now and then the guy still just has auctions up on the TV. Like he's that old school where there's literally a picture of a cowhead on the wall and he's just watching auctions all day long. Yep. Like it's just that guy. You're right.

That's their identity. I bet that was nice to kind of get some closure, though, of seeing the past records and all that of just just see kind of how it all went down numbers. There was all these rumors, right? I mean, when that happens, you got an operation that size. There's five different families involved. And even the grain elevator that we had, too, like my granddad owned a ton of local farmer's money.

You know, so like our family going under, we had one of the biggest operations in the county. it impacted a lot of people there. But yeah, looking back at that and being able to see the story and what really happened, it just changed my perspective. But it also led me into, I tell people I was a bad banker. And they're like, oh, what, you do not know numbers? No, I know numbers very well. I was a bad banker because when I would work with my customers sitting across the table

from me, you start to see the problems. And I couldn't look at them as just, you know, John and Jill. I looked at them as like my parents. sitting across there. Like the decisions they were making, I'm like, you need to understand the level of risk you're taking and the weight of responsibility that you are taken on here by making this decision. And so I always, you know, butted heads with my bosses in the banks and stuff like that as well because, yes, it was my job to watch out for the interest of the bank and protect that. But man, all right, like, I'm here to serve people as well and try to do what's right by people.

And, you know, we have customers that are making decisions on ground that's been in their family 150 years. You know, there's a lot that goes with that. I think that, and I think it's still this way today with an awful lot of guys, especially young farmers, I think, because I was that way. People have this perception that the banker, the banker, and I'm not going to dig on bankers, because most of them. We can make that clear. It's okay. I get plenty of hate messages. It's okay. But you have, like when I started, so when I decided I was going to go out of my own, I bought 120 South Farrow to Finish operation from a neighbor of ours that was moving.

And I was, I knew, I knew everything I needed to know about raising pigs. Yep. I did not know shit about financials. Yep. I couldn't, I couldn't make a balance sheet. I was 20, I think I was 20 years old. And the, part of the reason is my parents, my dad, my dad worked, my mom did the books. and you were with grandpa working and i was working and nobody knew and my dad was the mentality and so

many of that generation were that if you just outworked everybody else the rest of it take care of itself more work and it was like a good story was when when they remodeled the house that we live in i asked my dad you know because he built he built our first confinement buildings just after they had redone that house and moved up there and i asked him you know did you do a morgue on that or whatever and he said he said no I just I bought all the all the gilts that I could have room for and I just started breeding them and the guy that built the house he'd tell me how much money I owed for every month he paid he'd give me a bill every month and then I just sell enough pigs to pay the feed bill and whatever owed him yeah and then when we built the hog billings

I went and got a loan for it and I was so afraid it wasn't going to pay it back I put it on a 10-year note and then we paid for it in three years. This was in the 70s, though. But it was that mindset that as long as you, as long as you work hard, the rest of it will take care of itself. But anyway, my point is, I remember going to the bank and I had the money for the down payment for the loan to buy that from working for my dad. And the banker laid out a cash flow. And I've never seen the cash flow. and this was 1992 and hogs were hogs were 70 bucks high high high and the prospect was they were just

going to stay that way. I mean they oh yeah so good times are always going to stay good. I'll never forget the banker said to me he's like well this is the average you know cost per pound and we're going to be real conservative. We're going to use a we're going to use a $46 a $46 100 weight price for pigs. And at that, you're not going to have any trouble doing this. We'll put this on a seven-year note and da-da-da. And I was 21 and or when I turned 21, I started selling the first pigs out of there. The hog market was 70 bucks. 21 years old. And my wife didn't grow up, farmer, didn't know anything about it. I thought I had the world by the tail. And that was 1993. By 1996, the hog market was $27.

And I was losing 30 bucks ahead on every single one. How old were you then? I would have been 23. Yeah, yeah. And married and Trisha probably was pregnant with Clay because he was born in 95. And the thing is, I still had no idea. Yeah. And my only frame of reference was get out of the house and go work.

and go make sure that I had pigs to sell. Yeah. Didn't matter that I was losing. So that whole thing to me, but the bet, so people have this perspective, they look at the banker as their, kind of their guidance to tell them,

but talk a little bit about that because the perspective of what the banker's looking for versus the perspective, what your accountant is looking for, versus the perspective that you should have as the business owner. Those are three very different. That, that concept. maybe you've seen this before in some of my videos. I call that three frames of finances.

That's what I use to describe that, right? So if I take a guy's numbers and I put them in front of an accountant, a banker, and another business owner, just another farmer, each one of them is going to have a different perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of that operation based on what their incentives are, right? So the accountant is looking at it from the perspective of, okay, how can I minimize tax liability? Bankers looking at a perspective of, okay, do they have assets that I can have as collateral to make them a loan? And then can they cash flow it? And then other business owners looking at it should be from all three perspectives, but also, too, from an operational standpoint. What's my line of credit balance going to be throughout the year? Can I make

sure I can cash flow this operation? You know? And so that's a huge thing there too where again, I agree with you 100% because when I was in the bank, I got started fresh out of college and so, you know, 22 going in. And my issue with it is, and again, this isn't knocking on bankers. I'm going to make that disclosure. Don't send me any hate messages. I've already gotten those over the years. But I am not going to take business counsel or advice from somebody. that is not a business owner. And at the end of the day, I'm not saying bankers don't care about your operation

and stuff like that. But a lot of bankers like to say, yeah, I'm a true partner with my customers. Oh, really? Is your name signed on the odd line? Are you taking all the risk? Or is your risk collateralized that you're going to go get your money back in the event that they go up, belly up?

And also, too, after 5 o'clock, what are you thinking about versus what's your customer thinking about? Because I don't know about you guys, but my mind never turns off. I'm always thinking about our team, what we're scaling to, our customers, where they're at.

it just never shuts off and I don't want it to. That's what drives me. That's what makes me part of who I am. But we just need to be realistic around, okay, the bank is a for-profit institution. They're, the loan officers are there to distribute capital to get a return on investment for the shareholders, period. So they're looking for safe investments and, um, take a step in and take counsel. Like with me, I was in no way qualified to lead customers down making a million dollar decision when I'm making a salary of six, 60 grand a year. Really? Like, that's where we're at. And so same thing with the accountant to. And again, I'm not knocking on any of these people. This is more for the farmers to where, you know, my entire perspective of legacy farmer

working with our customers, they need to know what the bank's going to say before they even walk in there. Yeah. They need to have the numbers structured and organized in a way that is exactly the way the bank wants to see it so that all the questions are answered. And now when they're walking into the bank, it's not walking in saying, hey, can I get this loan for this? It's saying, hey, here's this opportunity. Would you like to invest in it? Yeah. That's how it should be presented in my opinion. Yeah. Okay. So how, what was the, what was the, what was the point that made you say, I'm assuming you were in banking when you decided to launch? Um, so I was, I can tell you know, I grew up working on the feed yard. So mornings, you know, during the summer started at 4.35 o'clock.

Um, you know, for my dad, they started at 2.30. That's just a biological clock. But I, like being outside, like you guys, I knew within the first week of walking in the bank, I was like, there's no way in hell. I'm sitting here for 40 years. Nothing against the people that do it, but there's no way I could do that. So I lasted, you know, five, six years in that place and ultimately left. And when I took the jump, I was 26. Me and Rachel had two babies at the time. I had no plan. I'd not have her approval. I walked into the bank and said I'm done and walked out and trusted God. And like, hey, we're going down this pathway. And then that was 2016. And so I really struggled for the next two and a half, three years, trying to find my pathway and how I could help the industry before I finally launched

Legacy Farmer in 2019 and then everything took off took off from there but those two and a half years of struggle man yeah wow had no money had two babies we had we had our third in that time too I destroyed all trust with my wife expectedly right logically why would she trust me and uh went on this pathway and it was you know it was tough but I wouldn't change it did you always feel like you wanted to be your own did you always feel like you wanted to be an entrepreneur like that was kind of or just work for yourself that was kind of in you? No. No, I think honestly, guys, I think if the feed yard was still operational today, I'd probably be back there. And I think that's why I have to look at the journey that I went on and all the experiences that I witnessed my

parents go through. I think that shaped that identity in me, or at least that drive to where, like, I wanted to do something, you know, on my own and, you know, and try to go out and make it happen. So I don't want to keep going back, but I just, I wanted to ask, after, sort of like were you just planning when you're in high school you're like I'm planning to come work back at the feed yard so like when that all happened what did your parents do what did you what did your whole future just like go out the window and now you're like all right well I got I got to I got to just figure out what I want to do like one big question mark right yeah so one thing I'll always respect about um my dad you know my dad goes from he'd been running the feed yard by that time

for 20 years right in the entire team 15 employees and their families there and stuff like that He goes from doing that to two weeks later driving trash truck for the county. Right. So I will always respect my dad a ton to do what needed to be done in that time. Like think about his ego at that time. Think about his pride and stuff. It's like, man, I went from this to this just to get by. And my mom eventually ran, became the county clerk, and she's still the county clerk

in Greeley County. So, you know, and I was the only kid left in the house too. My sister just went to college. My brother 12 years older than me, so he was obviously way gone. my brother was on the operation when it went under, right? So my brother actually, he's a banker now, too, and which is kind of how I got into ag banking. He's been doing it for 15 years plus now. But, I mean, he applied at Walmart. You know, I remember in Garden City, Kansas at the time. So, you know, you just do what you have to do. I'm not saying those jobs are bad or anything.

They need to be done. But it's just from going from this place of like, hey, I'm going to be third generation, taking over a 10 million plus dollar operation and being able to carry on the family legacy to that. It just shifts you internally, I would say. So your, your brother got into banking and that was kind of the thing that you were like, well, I'm going to try it out too. It makes sense, right? Like, it just worked out and went to college and wasted four years of my life there is. I don't know if you guys agree with that, but definitely wasn't productive. And yeah, my first bank I worked out. I worked at a bank in college and then worked at one in Goodland, Kansas. That was my first like ag loan officer type of position there. Yeah. So what, for people that don't know what legacy

farmer is, explain it. Yeah. So when I first started the, the company, And again, we launched January 2019. That's when I launched the first Facebook ad. And it started out actually. So 2016 through 2018, I did quite a few different things. So I got into crop insurance for a little bit. Then I got into, I became a financial advisor. I was just always trying to figure out how can I help people out financially, right?

And I've always had a big interest on money. I know you guys had a podcast recently on Bitcoin. I'm a huge advocate for Bitcoin. And it's just ironic that today that we're speaking that it breaks 100 grand and everything like that. not because it's just because I do my research on that type of stuff and I try to look at things. I'm always questioning the bigger picture. Right. So, but anyways, so 2016, I went and got into crop insurance. I also got my Series 6 and 63 license to become a financial advisor. And going through that, I had that license for two weeks. The reason is, is because you go out and, you know,

the people I was working with at the time, it was like, you know, a ride of passage to pass these tests and get these licenses and these tests are supposed to take three months to get them approved. But anyways, once you have those licenses, now you can sell stocks, bonds, you know, all those things. So I go through and I take those tests and I passed them in two weeks. I'm not saying I'm smart. I'm saying that they were that easy. You can remember stuff. That's it. That was a huge red flag for me. Reason is because, okay, cool. So I go study. I pass two tests. And all of a sudden, I'm qualified to go manage somebody's multi-million dollar investment portfolio. I got a red flag for me. huge red flag.

So I continued on the journey from there and eventually found whole life insurance. And so Legacy Farmer actually started from me wanting to do whole life insurance policies. And I know you guys have had Mary Jo Herman and stuff I got on here. So I'm also licensed with One America. And I've met her one time, I believe, but it was several years ago. She probably wouldn't even remember. But anyways, that whole type of strategy, I loved it. I'm all about putting power back into the hands of us, right, the individuals and stuff like that.

And so when I first started Legacy Farmer, I had been doing insurance policies for about a year up to that point and decided, hey, I'm going to help out farmers with this. But my problem with it, though, is I had tons of applications of stuff coming in. People didn't know their numbers. Right. Right. So you know with these policies, you need to be able to commit a certain amount every year to be able to execute it and use it the way it needs to. So I felt I just wasn't going to be in integrity if I'm trying to sell somebody a policy to put in 20, 50,000 a year. They don't know their numbers.

Right. So then Legacy Farmer transforming from there to more co-economic. or group consulting there. And we were talking operations and numbers and stuff like that. And I had this assumption for a lot of years that farmers just knew their numbers. Or I thought they did more than what I thought at that time. Yeah. I continued getting banking questions.

And so Legacy Farmer 2019 was all group coaching consulting in most of 2020. At the end of 2020, I hired a developer who built out the first version of our software called Farmer Metrics just in Google Sheets. So paid him six grand, built it out in there. and then started getting all of our customers onboarded into it. So balance sheet, monthly cash flow projections, field by field level of profitability, like all these things there,

just simple Google sheet format. And it worked really well. And so what I'm really grateful with is that going through that process, I was able, one thing I do feel like I have a skill for is taking complex things and putting them into simple formats. And so with the numbers, you guys think about the thousands of numbers

that are coming into run an operation. When I started building out the software, I'm like, okay, how can I condense all this to where, where when Farmer Joe needs to make a decision, it's one number he's looking at. And how can we remove 95% of the emotion from that decision? And so, yeah, built out, built out that.

And then once we've got 100 plus customers using it, I was sick and tired of having to update it manually every time I needed to make an update. Yep. Hired our first software team in May of 21 out of Wichita, Kansas, and then now have a full on enterprise software. And, you know, people come into Legacy Farmer. We help them get all their numbers structured,

organized and position so they actually have some clarity. So do you still do consulting too or is it really so you do consulting and then you have the software. You're really just helping them out with numbers. Yeah, and numbers and everything else on with the business too, right? So from my, from my viewpoint, finances are the foundation of any business, right? So you were talking about, you know, you knew how to work hard. And most farmers, on average, I was talking about this the other week with the customer. On average, you guys work what, 3,500 to 4,000 hours per year? but most farmers won't spend 100 hours on finances, the heartbeat of the business.

You know what I mean? And it's not because they're bad or whatever. It's just like, man, we're just so used to doing things a certain way there. So yeah, when they come in, we basically have two different, it's evolved into two different programs, right? So we have legacy farmer, which is for the people that want coaching, consulting, the group, the community, and then also the software. And basically our team is going to help them one-on-one get onboarded.

And we work with them for a year. And then if they renew there, which most of our customers do, we continue working with them because as time goes on, different scenarios come up. We're showing them how to use the software if they want to buy this piece of ground. Here's how to look at it from the accountants view, from the bankers view, from the business underview, here's all the variables we need to watch out for. So we have that. And then now that we have the software, we do have a software-only option where people can just

buy farmer metrics. I have an entire training program in there that they can go through. So for the younger guys, it works pretty well if they can navigate it for the older individuals or people that aren't as tech savvy. They jump in and join. but, you know, I talk about the community piece is really important for us. So I'm literally after we get done here. I'm heading back to Kansas City and we have our live event tomorrow and Saturday. So we'll have 60 of our customers coming in from across the country. It's tough to

build a community of farmers. Everybody's private, right? And so the value, we do a weekly community call. And so at this point now, we have thousands of hours of calls in there, which is gold, especially for younger guys coming into the industry. I'm a huge advocate in that a majority of successes in learning what not to do versus learning what to do because what to do changes every year. But what not to do, I remember my grandfather's mistakes. I remember my dad's mistakes, all those things there. That's the value in the community is that we have people coming on calls. I will literally pull up their numbers if they're looking to making a decision, whether it's buying ground or maybe they're, you know, wanting to figure out how do I distribute assets to my kids or whatever that is. All those

scenarios are on those calls that we're walking through. And so for somebody younger and even in farming too, 30s and 40s, like that's gold. As far as, man, how can we take a 26-year-old and give him the wisdom of a 46-year-old at his age? Yep. You know what I mean? And so that's what a lot of people have been shocked that we've been able to do that. The only reason we have been is because our customers are spread all over the country, right? Nobody's, it's very seldom that we have somebody that's living within 20 miles of the other person, you know,

so they're willing to share that. They want to share that and to help the next guy out. Yeah. And the thing is about just like the farm community, I think you're right. It's really hard to build a community of farmers. I mean, we're trying our best to do it. But there's not like a, there's not really a thought leader in agriculture. You know, you have the advocates, what we try to do, promote, you know, promote ag in a positive light. But it's not like you have somebody really out here playing out scenarios like that and post some content about it. You know what I mean?

Yeah, for sure. where there's the business guys and the entrepreneur guys, they're talking about the sales call or when you get to $100 million, this is what you should do or zero to $1 million. This is how you should build your business. So that's really cool that you've built something like that because the only information or the only resource you can really use is talking to farmers in your community, really. I mean, but. And they're not going to disclose everything. Right. They're not going to say, well, yeah, let me show you how I adjusted my balance sheet to solve this problem. But when you got a community of farmers all over, they're probably more willing

to be like, well, I'm farming in Oklahoma, you're in Iowa. I could probably give you a few pointers on this situation for you because you're not in my territory. Yeah, and that's exactly what happens. And that's what will happen in the room tomorrow there as well, to where, you know, it's what we're calling it, it's our annual planning event, right? So we're setting business targets for next year. It's not going to be a business discussion. We're going to get some points out of that, but it's going to be a place for these people to go and talk about. all the tough things and challenges they're going through that they can't talk about back at home. You know, whether that's personal challenges, dealing with family, whatever that is, we're going

to cover all of that on day one tomorrow. And that's the type of space that these people really need. Because otherwise, you know, that shit bottles up and it typically explodes at the worst possible place of the worst possible. So that's what happens. You're giving me the look there. Because he knows. He knows. But also, too, you said it before we started. I can tell the conviction in your videos. Like, Torque, my conviction is built. off of hearing this so many times. Yeah. So we,

I mean, we've had over 300 customers in Legacy Farm where we've talked over 2,000 across the country. Yep. You know, and it changes your perspective when,

one, you have customers on the phone that are talking to you about suicide. Two, talking about just losing everything, right? And they're, or they're in their 40s and 50s and they're crying on the phone because mom and dad made them this promise

that, hey, if you come back, you'll inherit these assets one day. So they move a wife and kids back there. They've set up their life there and they're 45 and they have nothing to show for it. Yep. You know, so anyways, that's where that's where my conviction comes from, because it's no longer a question for me.

Like, I know this is happening, and the proof is right there. I tell young people, so we were, we were super, we were very blessed that we had Thanksgiving and we got, I had all my nieces and nephew, except there were two that weren't able to come. And we actually got all of them up and they helped us load pigs on the day before Thanksgiving. Yeah, super cool. Yeah, that was, that was pretty awesome. There was only one of them, I think, that was about ready to turn green and pass out. But she was a trooper.

She kept out of it. But I tell them, like, wisdom is a really fancy word for, one, winning the lottery that you lived long enough that you have a long list of mistakes to reference of what not to do. And that's wisdom. To respect what you've just been blessed yet. Exactly. I mean, it is. And I have everything that I have learned, I've gotten damn lucky a few times, but most of what I learned was from all the mistakes I made. Yeah. And the other thing, here's something that I, you know, I feel guilty about it because like you and your brother are both, you're super successful.

and people will say, you know, people will... I wouldn't go that far. Well, but you're on your way. You're getting there. And, but I wish I could take responsibility for it. But this one will tell you for sure. One of my biggest faults, and my dad was the same way, because I don't feel like that I have done near enough,

near as good a job teaching my children financial literacy as what I should have done. and I don't think maybe the farm community is any different than a lot of family businesses. No, it's not. But the mental side of being the guy, being the person, being the one carrying the water, you know, whatever size your farming operation is, I know a lot, well, I guess I shouldn't say a lot. But in my area, the number of farmers that I know that are by all outside looking in, they are hammered down successful. They're farming a shitload of ground.

They're running a lot of equipment. You know, they got all the stuff. But most of them are 100 pounds overweight. And their daily routine is to stop at Casey's. And they're just running, running, running. and the back end, their home life is terrible. They're stressed out of their minds. They're shoulder and all that themselves because they don't have anybody that can talk to. Yeah. And one honest question, though, too, that gets people really honest, really fast is,

you know, we get people on sales calls, right? And they're talking about operation, all this type of stuff. And it's like, okay, great. Based on all the challenges and what your life has been like, would you even want your kids to come back? Yeah. And that's, that moves past the farm. That moves into personal life, the battles, the fights, the yelling, the arguments, the resentment, the anger, all that type of stuff there. And most people, they're like, the way it is right now, no. But you said another thing, though, too, you know, the toughest thing when it comes to passing on that financial literacy is for old school guys, like my granddad or like my dad, all the numbers are in their head, right? So what I wanted to create as well with our software was that connection or that

bridge to where we get all the numbers out of their head into a simple format that the next generation can now start being involved in those financial conversations and really understanding like how the business works there. So that's been another huge thing for us where we've had 15, 60 year olds come in and they're like, he's like, everything is in my head. If I die, we're screwed because nobody knows how things are going to work around here. I need to start transitioning this stuff. This is the conversation. So my, my wife and I have coffee every morning. She's a newly minted coffee drinker. So her life used to never start before 9 a.m. Oh my gosh.

And then when I came home full time, I'm like, just give it a week, Tricia. And now then coffee, the need for coffee wakes her up in the morning. You got a starbucks barista in your kitchen there. Yeah. So 31 years of marriage, we've had like five years now that's like, it's like brand new because I've never seen this person at this time of day. But at least once a month, that very conversation is, if anything happens to you, what, you know, where's this, where's that, whatever?

And my really shitty answer is that I'm insured well enough that if anything happens to me, you'll be the most eligible widow and you've got nothing to worry about. And call Clay. Sorry, Soter. Call Clay. He'll have it all organized. So, but that's tough. And how do you, like when you, so what's the motivator for somebody that calls you?

or how do you find how do you get how do you get your how do you see your business coming to you um well yeah so we i mean we're running ads and everything but you know i was at a conference last year and they had six businesses that's setting up there and and this was basically a startup you know a conference that i was at and i had six people speaking before me i was on this panel and i was last person to go and all of them the question was is how are you going to separate out your business in a world of you know constant competition and people you know doing this and you know you It was the typical answer for all of them. Oh, we're going to try to save them, you know, X dollars per acre, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I got to the mic and there's all these people in the room. And I said, well, pardon my language, guys, but I'm going to talk about the real shit and the real problems that people are actually dealing with. Because very few people are willing to talk about the pain at the level that people are actually dealing with and do it in a public format. And that's why I've had bankers messaged me pissed off about what I was saying or just other people message me. Yeah. Sorry, guys. but you know and so that that is uh it took me a long time to get to that because i was even the way i'm speaking now and stuff like this man this is i was not this guy when i left the bank yeah i was

reserved i was an introvert like it was a process over three years of getting me to have the courage to open my mouth and speak a message there and then be able to take all the pushback on it but you know if 50% of your people aren't talking shit on your message then your message isn't strong enough you got to stand for something nowadays nobody likes vanilla yeah no 100% where if you guys look at my Facebook ads and everything, my customers talking about this all the time. There's all these shit talkers on there. Oh, yeah.

Oh my God. Just blasting me. And I've never heard Justin Timberlake of farming, but some guy helped me Justin Timberlake. I just lost. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me, dude? You need to make a T-shirt. Yeah, I know, we should.

But, you know, and I tell my customers, I'm like, hey, you know, out of 100% of the people that see my ad, 50% of them are going to just talk crap, right? I said, but 50% of them are also going to kind of agree with the message or at least ponder it. I said 20% of them are going to click on it. And then out of those, maybe 10% becomes customers. And that's you. And I said, out of every one of my customers, I said, have any of you ever wasted time commenting on my ads? Like, no, not once. Exactly. That's exactly right. Price to pay. You got to go through that to get to the people

you need to serve. RBC Training Ground has discovered potential in over 20,000 Canadian athletes and counting. Your story could be next. If you've got the drive, they'll help you find your path to the Olympics. what you've got. Sign up for free at rbc training ground.ca. The the, the, that friction, those people, here's the, here's the dirty little secret and I don't, I don't care because we talk about a lot, but I love the haters. Like if you're building a business and you're using social media in any way to do it, uh, the, if somebody truly doesn't like what you're doing, the best thing they could do is not say anything.

Yep. But they can't help themselves. And we get so much, we get so much interaction and so much, um, good conversation from some of the worst comments. I mean,

it's like, they're just driving engagement. Exactly. Right. So that's what I was going to say. Jokes on them. They're decreasing my ad costs. Yeah.

Yeah. You're watching the watch time of this video and you're commenting. You're, you're doing the algorithm just fine for us. Yeah. The best comment. that I've ever gotten was actually, I think it was actually a Facebook comment. Some person said, your videos make me so mad that I, I just can't stop watching. I was like, thank you. Your response

is, read that again. That is perfect. Thank you. I, we appreciate it. So what was your, so what was your journey into social media? Like what made you, obviously you started, and that was kind of the time where Facebook ads was really kind of working. But then, like, I totally found you through TikTok. And, like, I started out, because I saw a clip that you had, you had taken something we'd used, but I love the comments. And it's really, you've got a, you've got some great, you give some great insight, some great value.

So how, what was that journey like, the progression of when you started, using social media. Yeah, so what's, you know, going back to 2018, for example, so I'm still in the life insurance journey at that time. And my wife and I had an opportunity to basically go down to southern Utah, and I had some guys that offered for us to come down there. They were going to provide leads and I was going to continue doing whole life insurance, but not specifically for farmers or anything. Anyways, that whole thing fell apart. And that was probably the darkest time of my life. I did not have any money. I was broke as shit. Wife and family, marriage, everything was falling apart. We had three babies at the time. I packed up and moved my family 14 hours from home.

You know, it was a huge move for us. And basically got out there and it seems like one long vacation because it lasted about eight months. And they said, yeah, we're not going to do this anymore. Good luck. And so we pack up. And I talk about that because I had to go through that level of pain because it was like on that drive back. If you haven't ever driven through Utah or Colorado, I mean, it's just beautiful. Like it's impossible for me to not be connected to God in that journey because of all the creation of stuff there that you see. but it's like, I was trying to just questioning, like, why is this happening? Like, how much longer can I really put up with this? Because it's been two and a half years at that point.

I still hadn't gotten any traction and stuff. And the biggest lesson I'll ever learn in my life was on that drive. And it was that nobody's coming to save you. Like, nobody's coming to save you. And so up to that point, talking about social media, I was hesitant, right? I would hold the phone out in front of me, but you're like shaking, right? You're nervous about it. Like, you're worried about what people are thinking about you.

And it was like at that point, I shamed. everything, all that weight, all that stuff. And I actually stopped in my parents' house in Tribune that night, just because it was on the road back to Hayes. And I said, you know what, I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to drive out to the feed yard, which is about 15 miles more the Tribune. And I recorded the first video for Legacy Farmer. And it was the most natural, free-flowing, you know, video I had ever made. There was no nervousness. I was in my environment. I was right by, you know, certain alleys and stuff where I grew up as a kid and just talking in the feed yards in the background, but it's all deserted and stuff like that. And, uh,

Two weeks later, I launched that video and everything goes from there. It's just crazy on the divine timing of that because I was so tired. I was to the point where I was like, yeah, I'm just going to go back to the bank. You know, just go get a job. I'm tired of struggling. I'm tired of putting everybody through this and then everything took off from there. Right when you get to the, have you ever seen that graphic of the minor? There's two miners.

Digging for gold. And right when you're getting close to gold, some people quit and go. and you were right there, you know? Yep. You were like, I might turn around, but you hit gold, you know? And it's just... It took that long, but yeah, it's like I... Every time, you know, we have a lot of customers coming to the legacy farmer where, you know,

part of what we're doing is some of them, man, they got to make some big moves. They got to jump off the edge a little bit. Some of them, they may need to even stop farming and focus solely on their seed business or something like that. It's cash on all this money and everything. And I always talk about whenever you jump off a cliff, every single, time and this happens at different levels of growth in business too whenever you jump off and you start down this new journey you're going to go through a darkness or valley first like in that two and a half

years for me that was me earning my stripes like with god to to a point where it's like okay now you finally made it now i'm going to make things start happening for you and that's where i talk about looking at the sequence of events in my life that led us to starting legacy farmer and the perfect timing across all of them like it's in arguable to me that uh yeah god had planned this for me and like, hey, this is what I'm here to do, and I need to honor that and try to move forward with it. So what are some key, with all the conversations that you have with farmers and what you see inside the community of legacy farmer and the calls that you do, what are the things that farmers can do to set themselves up in their operation for success? Is that off, you know, is it off the farm income?

you know, is it, can they run their acres more efficiently? Succession. I mean, there's so many factors, but like, what are you seeing from the people that you work with, how they're making things work? Yeah, you want to know what it takes to be the top 1% of farmers in the country? Yeah, I love to. Have a structured and organized balance sheet monthly cash flow projection, like literally that simple.

Like with our customers too, and this, again, isn't a question for me. Our customers are a bank's grade A customers. Like, period. Once they come in and they get their stuff structured and organized, they're going to be in the top 1% of customers in that bank, which gives our customers the ability to negotiate interest rates, terms, anything like that,

which I don't know if you guys have an operating line right now, but the average rates, the past two years, as you guys know, has been nine and a half to 10 and a half percent for a lot of people. Our customers have been getting six and a half to seven and a half because their banker knows

that that is a top-tier customer that is structured and organized, that customer can go anywhere, export their PDF, send it to any bank down the street, that bank will love to have them. And so it's shocking to me, we'll talk about additional sources of income too,

but it's shocking to me that that's literally all it takes to separate yourself with every bank and with every other farmer and rancher. So you're saying if you're more organized, oh my God. Bank will eat it up. Oh, yeah, because think about it, they are an investor. If I asked you guys to invest in Legacy Farmer and I brought in a half-ass balance sheet and cash flow just written on a piece of paper and gave it to you, what would you say? Absolutely not. Why would I give you my money for that? So I talk about how presentation, packaging and presentation matters. And, you know, I want our customers to look like professionals and look good and everything is structured and built out in the exact way the bank wants it to be. So it gives our

customers a leverage there, right? And, you know, this isn't about taking power away from it. It kind of is. I'm more focused on building a really good relationship between them built on trust and transparency because your banker is really going to matter in the bad years. And I think 2025 is going to be a year of reckoning for a lot of these farmers and ranchers because they made decisions back in 21 and 22 with low interest rates and greed and banks were shelling out money. I think it's a problem on both sides of the board there. Farmers get greedy, but banks get really greedy as well. And people make commitments that they're not prepared for. And I think if prices stay where they're at, people will be able to restructure this year. 2025 though, I think you're

going to see a lot of operations going under because they're just not ready. So, but yeah, that's kind of it from a financial standpoint. From an additional source of income, all the big operations that we work with, every single one of them at one point in time, spent time building up an additional business that ran alongside the farm operation that has gotten them through the bad years. And those customers right now are sitting on so much cash and so much leverage and equity that they are just waiting. They're waiting for markets to drop. They're waiting for these opportunities because everybody, especially when it comes to buying ground, right? You guys have a piece of ground pops up over here. You're going to have a bunch of people jumping on it. A lot of them

are going to be jumping on it because they tell themselves a story that, oh, it's perfect. It's a perfect location. It's never going to pop up again. I got to jump on this now. And, but they're doing that all out of emotion, right? With our customers, I told everybody even last time, my guys, just wait. Take your profits, capitalize on grain prices from 21, 22, pay your taxes and do everything strategically. When you have your numbers to get put together as well, just say, you know, our customers save tens of thousands, some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in taxes,

just because now they're having conversations with their accountants starting in October, not December 15th. Yeah. You know, so just, again, it's just, it's going to help you across the board there. But those big customers, though, that are worth 10 million plus or 20 million plus, every single one of them has another business that runs alongside. That's a service-based business that just spits out cash flow every year. Yep. That's amazing.

That's, I mean, that's, well, we always talk about, you know, when we get dreaming and the driving down the countryside and we look at that piece of ground or that piece of ground, you know, you're right. It is emotional. The idea of farming more ground, it's what we love to do. We enjoy it. growing the operation. It's exciting. But you run the cash flow on grain farming. And it's not that good. It's really not that good. And it's not getting better. I spoke at a young farmer's convention thing in Montana. This is back in like 2019. And anyway, so I had all these young farmers there. They were just graduating from college. And we did a side session. So I had my own room. And I asked them in here,

I said, how many you guys want to own ground one day? And all, you know, all of them raise their hand. I said, how many of you guys, what do you think the probability is that you'll pay off that ground one day? And everybody raised their hand. I said, your probability is less than 5%. Yes. And the kid pops up. He's like, what do you mean? It'll be a 20 year note and I'll pay it off. I said, great. So what are you going to do the first year you lose $200,000? You're going to refinance the ground. You're going to restart the payment. You're going to just, you're going to extend it out as long as you can so you can have free up as much cash flow. And that's the thing that I want to stop. Yep. Right. Just the structure of the organization. You know, out of 2,000 calls with customers, over the years. We're probably closer to 2,500 to 3,000 by now. But we always ask them one question on the call, which is, okay, so based on where you're at financially, how much money do you feel

is leaking through the cracks in your operation every year? Because you're not tracking anything. It's always minimum $100,000. Yeah. Minimum 100,000. So, yeah, you start to plug those leaks and everything like that. The thing that we've noticed is it just changes everything about how you operate as a business owner. And we're trying to transform how those people think, right? I want to wanted our software to essentially be a pattern interrupt where you see a piece of ground pop up. First thing coming to a guy's mind is, okay, uh, checking my numbers. Let me call my banker. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then they're waiting a week back. Um, I wanted it to be a pattern interrupt where it's like, okay, remove all the emotions. I'm going to go back and check my numbers.

I'm not going to rely on my accountant or my banker to tell me what's best for my business or whether or not I can afford this. I'm going to go check these things out and everything too. So even even with legacy farmer, yeah, do I want people to use our software long term? Of course I do. But do I want them to have to rely on me or my team to educate them all the time? No, I want to give them the education, the knowledge, and the power to where at one point they don't need me anymore, right? You know what I mean? So just to go off that again, you said the successful operations got a business running side by side with their operation. What about the operation itself? Do you see a lot of the successful farmers out there? Are they running cattle? They got feed lots? Are they

hog guys, are they strictly grain farmers? Is it across the board? Yeah. There's one slogan we could probably have for legacy farmer. It was a customer brought it up. He's like, Legacy farmer, we get you to sell your cows. The reason it is. So when people come in, most of them, they have farm operation cattle, maybe they have a side business. But we're, we're breaking out each business to where it has its own balance, sheet, its own cash flow. For the first time, these customers are seeing very clearly on, hey, this is where I'm wasting time, energy, and money, this is where I'm making money. And for the ones that don't have a paid off herd, cow herd, always every single time, every time. It's been a waste of time. I mean, think about cattle, right? We never went on

vacations as a kid. Now my dad, he loves travel. He never traveled when I was younger because the cows always have to be taken care of. And so when you go and you start, you know, kind of laying these things out, yeah, for a lot of people. It's like getting out of cattle altogether. That's funny because there's a guy that there was a guy that we sold some hog billings to and he was actually getting out of the cows and basically because his son

had come into the operation and he did the numbers and this guy said he said yeah he goes he goes you know I just couldn't believe it because he goes them cows he goes there's no it didn't cost it I always told my son it doesn't cost you anything because all the ground

you're running on it's not like you're going to farm it anyway and it's like there's just not much cost there. He goes, until you realize that the only reason you own that extra tractors is because you got to do this. The only reason you own a bailer and the only reason you own this. And he goes, then you start going down the list of all the equipment that you have that you wouldn't have to have or all the stuff that you're pawned off of the operation. And he said then, you know, all the money that you get tied up that you're paying interest over here because it's sitting in these cows. He's like, yeah, he goes, he goes, it's actually, he goes, it's

actually kind of enjoyable now that I actually have money to do stuff since I got rid of those cows. Anyway, I thought that was pretty good. You know, for example, you know, most of these guys that do run cattle, right, they're not big enough to where they can have a team that can hedge them appropriately, right? So you get into these big feed yards. There's, you know, Western Kansas is cattle country, right? So there's, we had a 14,000 head feed yard, which a lot of people are like, man, that's huge. There's 150,000 head one next door that took up, you know, a square mile. A highway runs through it, right? those types of yards there, they have a full hedging team, right? They're placing contracts and doing things to protect their price as much as possible

every single day with our guys and our size. Can't do that. Yeah, they don't have the time or the education or the knowledge to really do that. And I don't try to help them with that either because it's a whole different world. I would need 10 years in that life just to become an expert there. And so, yeah, for most of them, we had one customer in Western Kansas that's, you know, not too far south of me, had a 300 head cowherd. figured out after running their cash flow, him, his dad and his brother both worked a year

round to manage the cowherd. Got to put together cash flow, realized that they made $8,000. Oh, shit. No salaries being paid either. Literally 8,000 net. After all the hours, all three people put into that operation there to manage that. But obviously, the ground's paid for. So same story. Like, oh, yeah, why wouldn't we do this? Yep. This is why. Yep. So, Time's got to be worth something. Yeah, for sure. So, I'll ask you, I'll ask you, I guess, a rhetorical question. So what do you think?

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whatever's next. Learn more about their customized little plans. That's squareup.com. At this point, we all know that we need these numbers. It makes sense to have these numbers. What's the thing that holds most farmers back from, from pick? Whether it's you or whether it's somebody else. There's all kinds of people out there that want to help farmers get their, get their shit together. But why don't they? So most of our, I mean, just the truth of this is that Grown men. Yep. Hate being exposed.

Ogo. Once you get the number structured and organized, I don't care what your story has been up to this point on all your excuses that happened in the past 10 years. The numbers are going to tell us what really happened, right?

And I'm not saying it's all farmer's fault. I think the accountant contributes. I think the banker definitely contributes, right, which is why I'm not relying on a banker who's making 60 or 70 grand a year to give me financial advice on a multi-million dollar operation. I'm just not going to do it.

But yeah, this fear of being exposed. So we've had customers coming in over the years. And they came in primarily because the wife is scared to death, can sense that they don't have their shit together. She's doing QuickBooks for the numbers there, which QuickBooks serves as purpose, but it doesn't tell you as a business owner where things are actually at. That serves the accountant's purpose, but not the business owner. She's got that feeling. Yeah, she's got that feeling. But then so she comes in because, you know, she's the one setting the sales call and, you know, talking to our team and stuff.

And her husband jumps on the call and they ultimately make the decision. come in, but we've had customers come in before we take them through a process, we help them get a structure and organize. And then that first meeting after that, what do you think the husband's like? Doesn't want to talk about it. He just shuts down. Yeah, because everything's been exposed. And so that's the thing is like, you know, we've had people talk to us about getting our software to banks and stuff like that and having banks distribute it for us and or even having banks license it, for example. And I'm like, the problem with this, though, is that the person has to choose this. You can't just try to throw it on a bunch of people. They have to recognize and get to a deep

enough level of pain in their life, whether that's finances, marriage, or a mixture of both, and finally make the choice for themselves. You know what I mean? So that's why we really respect the process of bringing in customers. We're not trying to just sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, most of our customers, they've already been following for six months or a year, right? So they've been, they've heard me say this multiple times there. Yeah, but yeah, to answer your question, number one thing is you're being exposed. Yeah, they got to find the pain. And I'll tell you what, I've got a great example of why that like why it doesn't work. So I'm in the farm credit system.

And a few years ago, they, and I've always told them clear back. So when I was selling, we would get these young kids building these barns. And they could really benefit from some financial literacy. And, you know, I was always telling them, you guys need to like, push that more. Well, they actually bit the bullet. FCS America bit the bullet and they, they were offering a really good financial software, maybe a little too complex, complex, but they actually spent the money in every office. They had somebody working there that would help you. And guess what? They did it for, they did it for two years and they quit. And you know why they quit? Because people

weren't choosing it. Nobody was using it. And the reason, reason nobody was using it is because the pain wasn't there. And I just thought that was, I thought that was, it's very telling because if you're not like the person, that farmer, until he gets the point that it's like right there in your face. The problem is they don't, it's a slow bleed. It's not always hits an artery, you know, so they don't know that there's pain yet. Right. Yeah. And that's where I talk about too the banks on that side of things it causes problems when you have a farmer that loses money and they do this consistently year after year and the bank just restructure and restructure and restructure at some point that's a slow bleed right that's why i talk about uh bankers um and being drug dealers

because essentially you think about a drug a drug addict they're going to go and they're going to try to get one more hit to solve their symptom for right now but it's not solving the root problem which is an addiction you know what i mean so it's the same thing when we're just terming out loans I'm not saying we don't do that for one year. We restructure. We had a bad year, whatever that is because it is a long game. But when you do that year after year, at some point, you have to ask the question like, okay, we're not solving the real problem here.

And the thing is, too, this was a quote that I heard from a mentor a long time ago that always stuck with me. Everybody thinks that, man, if I just had another half million or million dollars, all my problems will be solved. If money will solve it, money is not the issue. And that always stuck with me. You have to look at the individual person. So that's why I say with our software and just with our program, like I'm trying to

transform how people operate as business owners in the way that they think, not just be a short-term solution for them. You know what I mean? Yeah, you got to play the long game. You do. One of my favorite saying when I was selling hog billings to people was when I would find somebody or when we would sell a billing somebody that was their first shed, I would, I would get when the contract was signed, I would shake their hands and I would say, congratulations. You've just purchased a large tax liability and I'll be back here in about four years to sell you another one. There you go. And that was so true because, and this is where bank,

I think this was my first inkling that banks, a lot of bankers are doing people a disservice because when you could build a building and it would cash flow and you could pay for it in seven years, that was a dream asset because the depreciation schedule, match the payment schedule. Then we went to 10 years. And 10 years was good for us that were building buildings because it was that very thing.

Guys would call you after four years and they'd be like, well, yeah, we had a pretty good year this year. You know, what are buildings? Because they're looking at that depreciation and they're like, oh, we better build another one of these. Then we got to 12 years. Then we got to 15 years.

Well, you get a young person with no other real outside income. You buy an asset, for a million dollars and it's going to take you 15 years to pay for it and you're going to run out of depreciation after seven years so then you're paying taxes on the income you have for an asset you don't own that you're still paying for and then that asset starts to require maintenance yep guess what the bank does refinances it and they refinance and it's not land it's a depreciating asset that requires more and more upkeep that is a That's like a death cycle.

But see, but think about this too. Like that, that exact scenario right there, that is not public knowledge. You are not taught that when you go get your ag business degree in school. And so that's been my issue too. We have some people that come in. They're like, well, yeah, I'm sending my son to, you know, he's going to get an ag business degree or whatever. I'm like, great, that's awesome.

But you're still wasting money because they're going to teach theory. I'm talking about reality here. And it's those types of scenarios there. They're not public knowledge. And I can't. I'm not because people are dumb. No. It's because they don't have access to the information there.

You don't know that's going to happen until you're in that position and you go, well, why in the hell didn't somebody tell me this? Exactly. Yeah. Well, and the other thing here, too, and especially when it comes to working with bankers or accounts, you need somebody that can see the global picture, right? And that's why I talk about the three frames of finances. They need to understand how what's going to impact from multiple different areas here when you're making these big decisions. Because there's no, there's no small decision in farming anymore. I mean, just like that, a million dollars. Yep. A million bucks ain't nothing anymore. When I first got started in the bank, a brand new combine, it was 350. What are they today?

million dollars you're buying both heads million freaking dollars for a freaking combine are you kidding me like just crazy so the the size of the numbers and the size of the risk that people are playing with today they're literally playing it's like they're gambling it's just their own casino um and not having the clarity or the confidence and they're just shooting from the hip yeah it'll be it would be a question what is dad and i always talk about this and just with the future of farming you know there's a lot to be bullish about there's also a lot to be a little worried about. And, you know, when I think about the farming operation, you know, we're doing this.

I'm running a meat business on the side too. The farming operation, it just seems like numbers are getting more and more squeezed, but it's a really great place for taxes, right? I mean, it is. And, you know, you think about the cash flow you make from farming versus other businesses, it's not that great, but the tax advantages of owning an operation and the legacy here is what makes you want to keep it going. And so I just wanted to ask you, do you feel like that conversation is being had more where these guys that do have the successful service-based business,

they have that legacy tied to that farming operation. There's great tax advantages, but really they just know that their bread and butter is that business. Yeah. Yeah. Is that like, Do you feel like the conversation of the family farmer, just the farm in general, is being changed to just to go more that way? I think the conversation of legacy is changing in our industry. And what I mean by that is the same thing with our customers, same thing with me. I don't know any farm ground, right? When I created the name Legacy Farmer, I didn't know this in the beginning, but that's a term people identify with. You know what I mean?

But Legacy Farmer, would I identify with that term? Absolutely. Am I going to pass on Farmground? No. probably not. So when I talk about, I think the definition of legacy or the idea of legacy is changing to where, and we talk about this with our customers all the time, I want to pass on opportunities to my kids. Whether that's farming, great. Whether that's another business, great. But I want to make sure the opportunity is there. And so that's why I try to get people detached because otherwise, the people

that are not on top of their numbers, they will use that emotion to go buy a shit ton more real estate, then they can actually feasibly buy right now. You know what I mean? And so that's what I'm trying to separate there. It's like, okay, guys, you know, the other thing though, too, is we have some customers with big balance sheets and farmers, again, their identity is so wrapped up in it. If they have a ton of equity on their balance sheet and we have some of these operations that do really well, they think they can only invest in farm ground. Right. Like, guys, you have this massive balance sheet. There are so many other ways here to make money and to use this, use this capital in a wise way. So I try to, you know, those specific customers there, I try to get them to change their frame.

here to where like I'm not just running a farm operation. I'm running a family office. Yeah, family office has multiple different. Yeah, that's a great. So who did you guys have on? Gosh, dang it. That big farm up in Montana. Jesse Bounds? What's the, he's from Oregon, the hay guy? No, I can't remember who it is. They had a show. McBeas. Missouri. Yeah. Okay, great. So that, you know, that guy, I think he was here with you guys, right? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, you know, a couple of the customers, when their show took off and everything, a couple of the customers like, man, they must run a size of a little operation.

I'm like, you guys don't get it. I'm like, that farm right there is a hobby for them. Those people are marketers. They have a show. They have car washes. They have coffee houses. They are running a true family office. I mean, that's just stuff I saw.

There's probably so much more there that they actually have going on there. I was like, they understand marketing. Yep. Like that's what they're doing. The farm operation, yes, it's important, but they're running a family office. So that's what I'm saying. There's all these other opportunities that these customers can get into, but it's, we have to expand their mind a little bit. And, you know, that was the biggest thing for me. You know,

when I first left the bank, I thought I could only serve customers in like, you know, for example, the county I worked in. It's like, now, dude. Like the world is so much bigger than that, especially with technology and, you know, how easy it is to get your message out today. Yeah, why can we serve customers across the nation or across the world or something like that? That, that right there is, that's exactly, you just, you simplified that down to pretty much what I was saying. That whole mindset, that conversation needs to be had way more than it's being had about you can't just be one dimensional focus solely on farming anymore and think that that is going to be the ticket that is going to pass it on to the next generation or a generation

offer after. You got to think about it being a family office. Because it's just, it's not like it used to be. And not every kid's going to be built for the farm operation too. Right. have the desire to do that, you know? And so that's the thing is like, I mean, I have four daughters. Who knows what they're going to want to do? I'm going to try to make them all become entrepreneurs like me because I know the freedom that it'll serve or give them. But man, I want to make sure I have the assets to support whatever it is that they want to get started with. And I want to be there to help them. I'm going to have a different viewpoint on this because the identity in the ag industry is like for a kid to come back, mom and dad co-sign on a half million dollar note to get

them started. I am not doing that. So I will help them. I'll lead them through tough times and stuff like that, but I'm not going to rob the lessons of them having to build it themselves, because I've seen that time and time again too. And that's where I talk about the farmers that are third or fourth generation that lose 300 grand and sleep like a baby that night because they know it's just going to be refinanced. Like, you know what I mean? We robbed them of lessons there. So anyways. Since we're on that topic, succession planning, not even just for farming, but just what you're talking about there? Like, what are some things that you've learned or what are some things that you hear to set your kids up or set the next generation up for success?

Yeah. So that is, I would, based on, again, on the numbers and just on the conversations we've had with people, we've only had, I can count on one hand, three customers come in over the years that actually have their full estate plan in place. And so our process with people, it's tiers, right? So we start at the foundational level of just getting business structure and organization, right? So they can have clarity in the numbers, clarity in the decisions. We help them out with, you know, getting tax planning in place and connecting with people like that. But at the top of that, though, this is all leading us up to. Once customers get that stuff structured and organized, I refer them over to an attorney that helps them go through and map out the entire estate and

succession plan, right? Because how many of our customers come in that are in their 40s and 50s you think are still trying to figure out, how do I get dad to start getting this stuff set up? Well, yeah, of course. You've made a lifelong decision to come back to the farm. Maybe you've got two siblings that live in the city and you have no idea what you're going to happen. You know what I mean? So how do you do it? Well, you start by having to the farm. the conversation, but the reason it works really well with us is because when our customers are, when I, by the time we refer them over to the attorney, everything's structured, everything's organized. All the dollars are there. Send it straight over. They can get it set up. The toughest thing

is, is deciding, how are we going to distribute things? Who gets the kids in the event that we die? Like, those are the conversations that take time there. Yeah. But I'm in my 50s and all I want to do is pawn all my shit off. I'm not very good. Yeah, it's so I talk to people that are like, well, I shouldn't say that. I mean, I still, I still enjoy building stuff and all that. He talks, he talks a big game. I do. But then always says this shit. Oh, I just want to run the lawnmower. Bullshit. He wants to be in the boardroom too. Yeah. Well, if you'd get me a nice mower with that swivel coozy, that would help get me. They have the cat ones now, don't they? Yeah. There you go. But it's, it's different from ever, it's different for everybody. But part of that, part of that is perspective.

Um, like for me, it was when my dad, when my dad passed away. You, when you see all the things that people hold on to that, and the older they get, that generation had a tendency to hold on tighter and tighter. Yep. And in the end, it really doesn't, like, it doesn't matter. Yeah. And it really made an impression on me that I don't want to be that guy. And like, you really want to get your shit together. And I had a guy, I can't remember where this was that I heard this, but, and I talked about it with Vance Crow, but he was talking how that everything he'd ever done, every business he'd ever started, every piece of equipment he bought, every car he bought, you get a key. You get a key. And by the time you get to be, you know, 60 years old, 70 years old, you have this real or imagined

giant key ring full of keys. And then you wake up one day and that thing is so freaking heavy. Yeah. You don't want to carry it anymore. Yeah. And it's like, who can I give these damn keys to? Well, I don't, like, I feel, I feel that now. Yeah, for sure. And I'm not ready to hand them all off, but I definitely want to get it done so that I know how they're going to be handed off. And you know, there's a four-step process that I talk to our customers about that are trying to get their kids involved more. And there's a journey that you go through as well when it comes to handing things off. And I talk about it as being teacher, trainer, coach, consultant, right? So when you're teaching, it's like your kids are fresh, young on the farm.

You're teaching them all the basics of everything here. when you get to training, right, you're going to be a little bit more tougher on them. You're going to have, they're going to have some responsibility now. When you get to coaching, now you start to really build their mindset here and make them think about things through a different way. And instead of telling them exactly what to do that you do in teacher and trainer, now you're just asking them questions. And you want them to arrive at the question, or the answer themselves to build their mindset.

And it builds confidence in their ability to make these things happen. Once you get to consultant, they just call you when they're just mowing the, you're just mowing the lawn. The son calls you up and be like, well, yeah, this is, is what I did. That's what worked for me. Good luck. Go figure it out. You know what I mean? And so, but that's a transition though that a lot of people, unless they adopt it, they're going to be stuck in that owner and they're not going to let go of anything. And then they rob their kids of developing. Yeah, well, yeah. I know farmers that they're, they're, the dad's in their 90s. And he's still making all the decisions.

He's still driving the comp. Yeah. It's still making all the decisions. And that they're, he's not letting him make decisions. Well, and he's welcoming a war there too, just so you know. Yeah. Because we've got so many customers that came in to where parents passed away and now they're in lawsuits with siblings or cousins. Yeah. Because parents didn't set the stuff up earlier.

Like he's welcoming a war by doing that. Yeah. Yeah. One of the worst things that you can do is not have the hard conversations. And then you end up making your kids have the, having all that pain for your assets. Yep. Like they're your assets. Yep.

you have to step up and have the hard conversation so that it's not on them because they didn't make that mess. You did. But so many people, and part of it's because we all think that we all get in this idea that we're all going to wake up tomorrow. Yeah. We're not going to get that, you know, we're not going to get that call that we've got this or we've got that or, you know, we meet the wrong guy coming down the highway. We all think that it's just going to go on forever. And it taints your legacy, though, too. We're now when your kids think about you, that's going to be such a challenging time in their life

that they're going to have hard time not. Like, even with my granddad, right? Like, when I think about him, I think about all the stuff that went unsaid or all the things that were hidden because he did not want to be exposed and all the things that came out of the closet after everything went under. Like, there was a lot. And for me, I will always think about him in that way. Yeah. It's true. It's not just about the shit you build. It's about how they, how they feel about you. Yeah. At the end of the day, too. So you talk to all these farmers all, you know, a lot and you have these calls and you meet with farmers a lot. Do you have any interest of getting back into into farming, buying some ground, starting an operation? Nope. Nope. Nope. I mean, I'm just being honest. I mean, based on, I mean, based on time commitment and stuff like that, would I have interest in maybe one day owning real estate? Um, maybe. But to me, though, though,

we talked about like, you know, Bitcoin earlier and stuff like that. Like I have a different, completely different view on store value, money, what is money, all that type of stuff. I have a completely different view there. So for me, yeah, it doesn't make any any sense. Yeah. Damn, I love living out in the country and the person behind me has cows. I just sit there and be like, man, my cow herd looks good today. Yeah. I don't have to do shit with him. Yeah. That's right. So financial hack for you out there. So what's next for you? Like what's on your, what's on the horizon? And what are you working towards within personally or legacy farmer? So we actually, the end of last year, so I bootstrapped Legacy Farmer up until last year.

So I actually went out and found some investors last year, not because we needed them, more because we already run a profitable business, right? So most consulting businesses are profitable. But it was more because I wanted to start building connections into the industry to level up the brand of Legacy Farmer to where, hey, this isn't just some guy out in Western Kansas. This is a legit brand here with a full team and stuff like that. So we went out, raised some capital, got some really good investors and stuff on our team. And, you know, the capital has been beneficial because now I'm able to drive up here and do this, for example.

Right. Like I have to have that in order to be able to hire the right people. And, you know, we can scale and grow there. But, yeah, the goal is, you know, as of right now, software is pretty well built out. And, you know, with the software, again, I told you guys, I'm always focused on taking complex things and making them simple. And with software, it's kind of just a weird business because there's always more features you can add. to me though, that's a net negative. Right. Complication.

Yes. More features means more complexity. I need average farmer Joe to be able to step into the software and know where to enter numbers at and stuff like that. So to me, the software is almost a finished product. And so now I feel like we're to the point where it's like we start spending a lot of money on ads. We try to scale. We grow. We try to help as many people as we can. Yep. That's it. We'll see what happens. If you'd ask me if we'd be at where we're at back in 2019, I'd say, yeah, no way, dude. So for me to try to predict and say, say, yeah, that's where we're going to be at 2027? I have no idea. How is, so now that you've come out of

that valley, has your wife forgave? Oh, yes. For Dave. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it, man. Tell the story about that. Man, thinking about marriage and stuff like that, having four kids and everything. Are you married yet? Getting married in June. Okay, cool. So to you then, your marriage probably starts in June. Yep. I will tell you, from my experience, your marriage starts the first day you go through the deepest, darkest shit together. like and that's when for me that's when marriage starts right so even looking back at that time um it was challenging you know we're we're raising kids in the middle of that chaos no money coming in like so one of my mentors calls it the trifect of insanity when you're trying to build a business

keeping marriage good and raise kids at the same time it's constant chaos right and uh anyway so going through that hard time though um man that's what made us build trust you know and so yes i didn't have her trust but over the years though like the trust that we have now would not be as strong as it is if we didn't go through that experience together, if you know what I mean. Yeah. And so I talk about that with a lot of customers, too, like, you know, I think what's the old saying, great sailors aren't made in, in, calm waters. Yeah, calm waters. Same thing with marriage, right? Every couple that I know that I really look up to, it's because their marriage, they went through

some shit together. Maybe it's not, you know, between them two, but maybe it's with family members or whatever, you know, scenarios life's going to throw at you with, you know, kids and drug addictions and stuff like that. Like, there's some deep, dark stuff there. If you can get through that with your spouse, yeah, it's just going to build a lot more trust. So to say all that, yes, you trust me. Trust me a lot more now. And can show her bank accounts and everything.

And we're fine. Good. That's good. Do you feel overall optimistic about the future of ag? And do you feel like the people, the farmers that you work with, do they feel optimistic? Yeah. I mean, so this year, obviously, you can definitely sense an energy shift, which is why the room tomorrow is going to be really important at the live event.

People need a place to share those fears and share those concerns, but also too, just get focused for like, hey, this has happened before. I mean, every farmer, I mean, I don't know if you guys hear this around there, but every farmer, you know, each year is a bad year. Like, oh, man, I don't know how we're going to make it past this year. I'm like, okay, cool. Joe, did you say that 20 years ago too? Yep, said it then.

Okay, cool. So you're still here. So we are fine. We're going to be all right. We're going to get through this. I am excited about our customers, though, just because a lot of them, you know, they're been using the software now for three years.

I've seen them transform how they operate. And so I'm excited for them for their future because they're not going to hopefully make any more emotional decisions, but also too, like they just have a game plan in place, right? So how many farmers have their 2025 cash flow projections done right now? Very small percentage of them, but our customers do. You know, so those are the things there.

That's why I'm excited for them. It's just because most people in 2025 that aren't tracking the numbers, the reason I say it's going to be a year of reckoning because you're going to see a lot of operations go out of business because it's just going to catch up to them. Yep. So, made a lot of emotional decisions.

I am optimistic about our customers because I think if you are structured and organized there, you're going to have different opportunities that others just won't get. Yeah. I'm going to ask you two more deep questions before we let you let you go. But you talked about having mentors in your life and your journey. Who do you think has had the biggest impact on the direction of your life? I went through, and you guys can Google him and everything like that, but it's a guy by the name of Garrett White. And so he runs a company called Wake Up Warrior. Back in 2017, when I was in, you know, obviously a hard year for me. I saw this guy's video. Somebody sent it to me. And he's a master marketer. He's a master at frames and everything like that. He grew up basically in trailer park, Utah, and built in to, he just got a massive empire now. But his message really connected with me. Anyways, I signed up and I went to this thing called Warrior Week. week in 2017. It was August 2017. Our third child was born a week before I went out there.

Warrior Week is essentially a four-day beatdown. And so imagine getting trained by Navy SEALs for essentially four days. And so the first two days are the absolute worst of the worst. They are beating you down and breaking you down. You're exhausted. Each day was 14 hours. You know, putting you into fist fights with other grown men and like just like seeing who you are. Right. And so for a lot of people, they're like, man, that sounds crazy. And my mom, you know, she's freaking out. Holy crap. She's,

you know, scared to death. But going through that experience, though, like it just, it wakes you up. So the first two days are the beat down

where it's all physical. And the reason that they do that, one of the most powerful lessons was, we talk about being in a deep level of pain is when people are ready to be exposed, right? Like choosing to come in. The reason you beat down a person physically

is because after each physical thing we went through there, everybody's so exhausted, the lesson came after that. The reason I say that is because when you're so exhausted physically, mentally, you don't have the strength to make up any bullshit stories. Like, you're finally ready to receive at that point. You know what I mean? And it's like, that was a tough lesson for it. Like, you don't learn unless you actually go through it. And so going through that experience, you know, I paid 10 grand for those four days. Did not have it, credit card. And then we had the 90 day challenge after that, which was 25 grand. I said, well, dude, you can run this, but I have no idea if it's going to go through. And the first payment went through, I'm like,

right we're on the way um but yeah that was the starting point there to where i'm still in his program today i've been with this guy for a long time and seen his journey and everything um but definitely the most impactful you know reason it's called wake up warriors because like a lot of men like just need that like you need that experience there um and everything so that's definitely by far the most impactful person there it's something else here now something new from exclusively on paramount plus it's the series stephen king calls scary as hell Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-Fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. What, um, I just got to ask. Like, what did you guys do? Were you holding logs? Oh, everything.

Everything. Imagine, imagine everything, you know, um, that, you would do going into the Marines, you know, now I'm not saying I'm a Marine, because I'm definitely not. Those guys go through it for months at a time. So mine was baby level compared to like what those guys go through. But yeah, log PT. Um, first day, I mean, shit, they took us down to a beach and we were running miles on the beach, um, into the water, out of the water into the water, but you're in full gear though, too, right? So they had you in boots and thick pants and all, all this type stuff. Um, just to show you how low it got, like where about broke me, that first night.

we finally get cleaned up. We'd had mustard and ketchup and all this shit dumped on us, in and out of trash cans and stuff, all in the public place, by the way, too. They had it licensed and, you know, insurance and stuff. And anyways, that first night, go get showered, get cleaned up, have on clean clothes and everything.

We're like, okay, guys, supper's over here. And so supper's right there. We go grab it, and we think we're going to sit around and do some talking. They're like, into the dumpster. I sat and ate supper. And ate dumpster, squatted down. with all the shit we had earlier in the day.

So all my shoes, clothes, everything, dirty again. And you're in there with six grown men. I about broke. And then they threw a smoke bomb in there. It made you eat in there. And they closed the lid. Talk about misery. So after this, I'm like, I tell him the guys in there,

I was like, I'm done with this shit. I'm done. I'm going back from first flight back tomorrow. So anyways, the whole lesson from doing that, though, was like, okay, cool. So are you done treating yourself like shit? Because exactly what we just put you through is what you do to yourself mentally

back at home. And like that was so that connected with me at such a deep level because, you know, I think about all the farmers and stuff and the most dangerous thing for, for our industry is that you're by yourself 18 hours out of the day. So what's going on up here and what stories are wondering and how much are you just beating yourself up over this stuff? So anyways, yeah, that was a, it was a terrible experience that I paid for. Great fall I went through it though. That's awesome. It's tough to get through. That's awesome. And last one was, um, best advice you could give to 18 year old Jace 18 year old Jace yeah um best advice I would give him and I've also thought about this with my daughters too and kind of the most important lesson I can

teach them is it's extremely important to understand that everybody is going to have a different perspective on the world and what's right and what's wrong and what you should and should not be doing right and just that level of awareness the reason I say that is because I had I was so opinionated back then, right? You're young, you think you're right about everything, all this stupid stuff. Whereas, like, the real wisdom comes from being able to, one, keep your mouth shut. And two, be analyzing how other people view the world. Right. So one of the frameworks, again, that Garrett White taught me that we always talk about is, you know, everybody has a frame on the world. And on the outside of this frame, you have your beliefs, you have your rules and your laws, and then you have your morals. And all those things

coupled together create your stories. And your stories ultimately drive your results. Have to understand that Everybody has a different framework, which means, especially when it comes to 18-year-old Jace or Jace getting ready to leave the bank, I shouldn't have asked other people's opinion on what I was doing. They had a different view on the world. They couldn't see it as a possibility in their frame, but I could see it as a possibility in mine. And so anyways, I think once you establish that, my level of awareness grew, right? So even when I'm working with people, I know they're going to come in and they are going to have certain laws, certain rules. I think about my granddad, for example. It was his way or the highway. You know, he was so locked into his frame where, again, if I can have an upper hand on people,

if I'm able to not respond, you know, be able to create some space, understand and ask them questions. So I can understand where they're coming from. And that tells me how they got to where they're at. And now we can lead them forward and try to build out a new frame there. So anyways. Yeah. I like that analogy because that's, I use that. You know, it's like people, people talk about, you can,

have time and you can have money but rarely to have both at the same time. And I think about that with young people and that perspective or wisdom because so many people that we run into, the older you get that wisdom or those mistakes that you see, your defense mechanism shrinks your window and you get to be my age. And every, you try to put everything within this framework and if it is outside of that you're like no no time for that this is it yeah and your reason for that is because you've seen this mistake or this happened or whatever real or perceived all the experiences build and young people like like when he was first starting this journey it's like your window's this big because you haven't been knocked you haven't been knocked on your ass yeah and

you could go any direction like you could have started you could have started a fitness channel instead of a raisin hogs channel or you could have gone to college or you could have done this you know it's just wide open and the the balance i feel like the balance of life is to use that wisdom but at the same time don't let it keep you boxed it try to not let that window shrink so much exactly what you just said right there if i had to simplify why i went to Warrior Week, it was to break that frame that I had up to that point on what was possible in my life and who I was. Right? Because everything about growing up on the farm, we are indoctrinated with what is right and wrong, what you should believe, what your morals are

and all this stuff. Whereas you get older, it's like, I started to question those things. You know what I mean? And so that was the whole point of going through that was breaking that frame. Where can people find you or want to work with you? Where do they go to work with you? Yeah. So if they go to legacy farmer.com and just literally click on the Apply Now button in the top right hand corner and they'll get scheduled with our team. And, you know, I always talk about when we're, I don't even call our people salespeople. We call them on, or we call them advisors.

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, we don't bring in everybody. We want to bring in the right people that are at the right moment and time in their lives where they're ready to transform, not just for, not just wanting a quick fix, you know, and stuff like that. So we're always respecting that process

and respecting people's journey. And we want it to be, you know, one thing I've always believed in is it's got to be a win-win. Whereas a lot of people feel like, man, in order for me to win, I have to take from somebody else. I don't operate that way. I want it to be a win for them coming in and the money that they're investing in us. And it's a massive win for them and the value that they're getting back as well.

So yeah, just go on to legacy farmer.com and that'd be the place. Awesome. Well, guys, that's going to wrap up the show. Jase, we really appreciate you coming on. If you got any value from the show, share it out with the people you know, leave a review on Spotify or Apple. Go to Legacy Farmer if you want to get in touch with Jace. And we'll see you back here next week for another episode.