Barn Talk - We're Starting a Direct to Consumer Meat Business

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

Pre-Buy is Live! There’s only 500 boxes available ➱ ⁠https://farmergrade.com⁠ Welcome to Barn Talk, in today’s episode we let the cat out of the bag. We’re officially getting into the meat business! We’re going to tell you all the trials and tribulations that went into starting Farmer Grade & much, much more. Thanks for watching and listening! Barn Talk Merch! 👇🏻 https://www.thislldo.co/  SUBSCRIBE TO THE PODCAST ➱ https://bit.ly/3a7r3nR   SUBSCRIBE TO THIS’LL DO FARM ➱ https://bit.ly/2X8g45c  SUBSCRIBE TO BARN TALK CLIPS ➱ https://bit.ly/3BlZnqq   LISTEN ON: SPOTIFY ➱ https://open.spotify.com/show/3icVr4KWq4eUDl7Oy60YMY  ITUNES ➱ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/barn-talk/id1574395049 Follow Behind The Scenes👇🏻 ● This’ll Do Farm Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/30KPBNk   ● Barn Talk TikTok ➱ https://bit.ly/3qciekS   ● Sawyer’s Instagram  ➱ https://bit.ly/3BtX0n4   ● Tork’s Instagram ➱ https://bit.ly/3LGZJxS    ------------------------------- ***PLEASE NOTE*** Barn Talk is a significant break from the typical content viewers have come to expect from This’ll Do Farm. Please be advised that we will be exploring a wide variety of topics (some adult-themed) and our younger viewers (and their parents) should be advised that some topics will be for mature audiences only. ⚠NO FINANCIAL ADVICE / DISCLAIMER⚠  The Information discussed and shared on Barn Talk is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or success for any particular purpose. The Information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. The Information on this podcast and provided from or through our content is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional, professional broker or financial advisory. Understand that you are using any and all Information available on or through this website at your own risk. RISK STATEMENT– The trading of Bitcoins, alternative cryptocurrencies, NFTs, individual stocks, etc. has potential rewards, and it also has potential risks involved. Trading may not be suitable for all people. Anyone wishing to invest should seek his or her own independent financial or professional advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of the food we eat and much of the clothing we wear comes from plants and animals that are raised on farms. Farms are different in type, in size, and even in name. Welcome to Barn Talk. What happens at the barn stays in the barn, but not today. We're going to let it all out for you guys. Screw the intro. Today is an exciting day. If you're listening to this right now, Farmergrade.com is live. Our pre-buy website, our direct-to-consumer meat business that we've been working on behind the scenes for a couple years now is live. You can go to farmergrade.com right now and buy a pork box that is directly from our farm, our pigs. There's only 500 boxes available. So if you want a box, go get it now. The pigs are coming from our farm, going to an American butcher shop,

and then they're going to be going July 20th. And then we're going to be handpacking those orders in our own warehouse in August. So it's going to be pre-buy. So you're pre-purchasing. Like I said, been working on this for a long time. And your support, your fee today, because I know we usually have a fee, but your fee today is head over to Farmergrade and support us there. If you want to support this show, support us, support our farm, that is where your support would be greatly appreciated. And if you're listening to this, and this is the first you're hearing about it, and

you're like, holy shit, how did these guys do that? Well, you are in luck because today's... episode is all about the origins of Farmergrade. So you will get all your questions answered. And like Sawyer said, go over to Farmergrade.com. Go ahead and put your email in because even if we're hoping we sell out, if we don't sell out, well, I might have to look for a different line of work. I guess if we don't sell out, the good thing about it is we will have the most well-attended farm auction of, in his... history because everybody's going to know about it because it's going to go or it's going to blow one

to two and then we're just going to be selling everything if it blows sell it's selling it all selling it all legacy out the door yeah it's not quite that bad we're just doing 500 boxes but if you if you aren't lucky enough to get one of those boxes put your email in because uh we're planning to do this our goal is to get this to where uh it's a regular it's a regular deal that you can get or meat anytime you want it. So stay tuned. And before we get into the good old fashioned market update, because we got to have one of those to make it an official barn talk episode. If you're curious on what's in the box, we have one pack that's about a pound of bacon. We got around a pound of cottage bacon. We got a pound of Italian sausage, a pound of breakfast sausage, two to four

pound pork roast and four pork chops. So that's what's in the box. In the future, we'd like to expand into other cuts, but we had to do it for this box to start. So that's what's in the box. And now, without a further ado, we'll catch you up to date with today's market report. You good? I'm great. You got any last words? Nope, I'm great. I'm ready to hear. Farmergrade.com. Farmergrade.com. I think they got it. I think they got the gist. It's an exciting freaking day, man. I'm pumped. It is an exciting day, and we'll get into it. But I mean, this has been a long time coming. and a lot more involved than what we thought it was probably going to be when we had this idea. So this is probably the most accurate market update that you've had in a while

and the fact that we're actually shooting this in an evening. We haven't done an evening podcast in quite a while, and it's nice. We actually should do it more often because it's not so hot here in southeast Iowa, and it's just pretty darn relaxing. And we've had, it's been a busy day, but we're trying to take it down a couple notches. the markets are running on lack of water. And until we get some water widespread, I think they're just going to keep running.

So corn today closed at 6.71. You can get 712 at ADM and Cedar Rapids if you want to sit in line for however long, if nothing breaks down. 689 locally. Beans 1515 on the board. 1529 in Burlington, 1543 cross the river in Quincy.

We eat 734, beanmeal $4, $439 a ton. Hogs, 9475 for July, and I wanted to say, I meant to say this last week, I want to say that three episodes ago we were talking about the hog market and how basically the only person making money right now is the grocer, and I made the comment, kind of a snarky comment, that, The grocers, they don't ever want to lower their price because once they get somebody used to paying what they're paying, they don't want to lower it because then when they got to raise it back up, everybody raises hell. And my friendly neighborhood grocer caught my ear when I was in a store the other day and told me that that's not true.

And so I'm going to give you the information he told me. So their chain of stores, they have a, basically they have a margin within whatever they're paying for meat. So when they're buying their meat and it's at X for a price, as long as it stays so much above that or so much below, they don't change the price. But if it moves outside of that margin, then they adjust accordingly. So he said as the price goes down, they'll lower it, and as the price goes up, they'll raise it. So there he go. So in full editorial honesty, I wanted to get that out there because I told him I would clarify that. Cattle, $177, feeder cattle $227.

Crude oil, $72. Thanks to BlackRock, Bitcoin's $30,000. So it's been lollygagging around for a heck of a long time. it's very interesting because you can find all kinds of videos of the high grugis at Black Rock, Vanguard, whoever you want to talk to in money management, just slurring the shit out of Bitcoin over the last five years. And just as recently as like a year ago,

and then here a few weeks ago, Black Rocks, well, you know what, I think we're going to launch a... I think we're going to get into Bitcoin. and the Bitcoin market responded accordingly, and we went from about 25,500 to last time I checked, we were just over 30,000. So, hey, thank you, BlackRock, for helping me out there. Ethereum's 1900.

Tesla's 260. I might have said this last time, Ford and Chevy both are going to adopt their charging standards, so you'll be able to charge your hybrid from those two companies at a Tesla supercharger. and Rivian came out just a few days ago and said that they're changing all their vehicles that they're selling, which is a lot smaller market, but it just shows you the traction that Tesla is getting. Good things to come. Budweiser, I just like bagging on Budweiser lately, so I just left them in there.

They were down a little bit today, 5673. However, they just received a marketer of the year at a smug little deal they had at the cane. If you've heard of the Keynes Film Festival, they also have the Canes Lion Festival of Creativity. And Budweiser run one marketer of the year. So apparently the upper crust of the world, they think they're doing a hell of a good job. And I will just end with this. My thoughts on with the Bitcoin thing is that I've had the thought for quite a while that Bitcoin was going to grow and become more widely adopted just from the amount of digging that I did and people that I listened to and all of the research that I did.

And I basically developed my own conviction, much like I did like I have with Tesla. and it's so funny because I would tell all of you that we always tell you this isn't financial advice and we tell you that, you know, what we say, that's our opinion, you need to check it out for yourself. However, you know what, if you spend the time and you dig and you develop your own conviction about whatever the subject, you'd be surprised how often if you wait just wait long enough, the rest of the world will finally come around to, I think you call it common sense, but you just wait long enough and they'll come around. And I feel a little bit, I feel a little bit, I don't know what the word you want to say,

but I feel like, oh, yeah, well, see, I guess I wasn't so crazy after all. Now, Grant, there's plenty of things I probably am crazy about, but anyway, I'm less crazy about Bitcoin today than what I was a few days ago. And that is the market update. I was going to chime in there and say, you're probably the first person that ever said, thank you, Black Rock. Yes. Because usually it's the opposite.

It's usually screw you, Black Rock. You think Black Rock is a large hog farmer that will remain nameless, but as a friend of the show, used to have a saying when Cargill was involved directly in hog production, and he would make the comment that there's only two kinds of people, those that have been screwed over by Cargill and those that haven't been screwed over yet. I think you might be able to throw that statement to BlackRock. I don't know.

I bet you definitely could. Pretty close for sure. Not a huge fan, not a huge fan of BlackRock. Farmer grade will never lead you astray. Nope, and they'll never have, BlackRock will never be involved. No, they'll never ever be involved. They will never sit on our board. son if you're watching this 60 years from now and if farmer grade makes it don't be like bud wiser

and sell the company and turn it into shit oh gosh you not ever give a share to blackrock ever we'll we'll splice that in for 60 years later we should we should probably take this episode and do like they do in these little towns buried in it what do they call that a time time capsule yep we should go bury this in central park yep and if anybody out is what we're doing, say, listen, this is, this is important shit we're doing here. Get away from me, son. You bother me. Okay, well, that was great. That was a good market update. And I'm excited to get into this one, guys. This is, this is an episode I've been looking forward to for a while now. And it's been real

hard to not let the cat out of the bag. You know, there's a few times in there when we were developing this, like, oh, should we do an episode? Should we put a box out just to, just to tease it a little bit, and I was like, oh, we can't do it yet. We can't do it yet. We got to make sure we got our ducks in a row. We got to make sure we got our ducks in a row. And finally, we got our ducks in a row,

and I'm just excited to get into it. When Sawyer says, you know, oh, we wanted to, what he's really, what he really means to say is he's actually had, Sawyer has a much better poker face that I do. Like, I'm just giddy about it. And you don't know how many times that we've talked about. building an audience talking about, you know, all kinds of different stuff and talking about, you know, building an audience and then using that audience to further your brand with the idea

eventually you're going to bring a product. And I was like, oh yeah, I want to tell them about the product. Tell them about the product. So he was like, no, we can't tell them about the product. Which, smart on your part because what many of you don't know is we were actually almost the close to doing this over a year ago. Mm-hmm. And then we found out that there was a lot of things about the meat business that keeps people from getting into it. And we ran into one of those snags, and we had to wind her back.

So, yeah, I just guess I want to start out with just, you know, what is farmer grade? Why didn't you just brand it this will do farm? Why isn't the website this will do farm.com? You know, why, why not just stick to your farm? Well, farmer grade, the idea of it is we're a direct-to-consumer meat business focused on the story. We're a story-based direct-to-consumer meat business. So a lot of the direct-to-consumer meat businesses out there really focus on the claims, not the story of the farmer. And when we started this podcast and the This Will Do Farm YouTube channel of showing what we do every day,

we started getting comments from people asking us, you know, where can we buy your guys as pork? What brand is on the shelves that possibly could be your guys's pork at the grocery store? Like, we want to buy your pork. And that got my wheels spinning because I always wanted to be a business owner. You know, you guys know if you've been listening to the show for a long time that, you know, farming is my passion, business is my passion too. And anything that we can do to make this farm viable for the seventh generation, we're working towards that.

And I believe that this is a good add-on to the farm. And so when that idea came into my head, I realized that, hey, I'm not the only social media farmer out there. We're not the only social media farmers out there showing people what we do, why we do it, who we are as farmers, and really just showing it how it is. This is what it is. We're transparent about it. And yet people still want to buy our product. There's plenty of social media farmers out there that are doing the same thing that raised livestock. And so farmer grade is really going to partner with all,

We're going to try to partner with as many social media livestock farmers as we possibly can here in the United States. Give them the opportunity to sell their meat directly to their audience and their consumers, the people that support their farm. Because what we've found out is it's not easy to just get into this. When you're a farmer and you're making content, that's a job in itself. And to get into the meat business on top of that is challenging, really challenging. So we want to work with those farmers, give them the opportunity to directly sell to the people that support them. So that's what Farmer Grade is as a whole. We're going to really hone in and focus on the farmers that have a brand and have a story and have an audience to sell to.

That's essentially what the idea of Farmer Grade is. Farmer Grade wants to build. We want to build the infrastructure that, yes, we can market, this will do pork. But we want to work out the kinks and make it to where somebody that's creating content that is a livestock farmer can partner with us. And we will, we'll make it easy for them to where basically they just need to deliver their animals. And we will do the rest. We'll do the rest for them. And then they market it too. And then they help market it. And it's just, after being through everything, after going through what we've gone through,

it's like there's got to be an easier way to do it. And that's something, there's a reason why there's a few big players in the meat business because it pretty much has gotten honed down to efficiency and everybody wants big. And when you're not big, it just, we found out it's very difficult and we've learned a lot. Yep. And I would say what we're trying to do, like our big mission is we're trying to feed people in a way that's never been done before. And what I mean by that is just I want to, I want to strive for Farmer Gray to be transparent from the farm to the butcher shop to the warehouse to the consumer's door. Nobody's doing that. No other directed consumer meat business is doing

that. The grocery stores aren't doing that. So that's really the idea. Transparency throughout the whole process. And we're just going to pioneer the modern way of buying and selling meat through social media. And that's, that is the why kind of behind what Farmer Grade is trying to do. That's the mission behind it. And another thing that makes us different, what makes Farmer Great different from all the other direct-to-consumer meat businesses out there is what I found throughout researching getting into this space, a lot of these direct-to-consumer businesses, they are nothing more than just a middleman. I'm not talking about the family farms out there that are doing it by themselves. I'm talking about the big players, and I'm not going to name names because I'm not bagging them by any means,

because they're capitalists. They build a great business. A lot of them have built great businesses, but it's just not the way that we want to build our business. And what they do is they go to a cutting facility or a warehouse that already has claims-based meat in that warehouse, and they just partner with these warehouses or cutting facilities, and they slap their label on it and throw it in their box, and then they throw it on their website and sell it to you. A lot of them are partnering with large integrators, you know, that have a plethora of farmers under that integrator, but they don't really go directly to the family farm and buy that meat or buy that animal from them. It's really just going to the integrator or going to a cutting facility and slapping their label on it. And

that's okay, like I said, but I believe. if we want to put the power back into the American farmer's hand, we need to go to these family farms directly and give them the opportunity to market their own meat and really not have to be solely relying on the commodity market. That's what's killing family farms. We raise this product, we put our, you know, our blood, sweat, and tears into it. And then we have to rely solely on the commodity market and the big packers on if we're going to have have a have a life and I don't believe that's I think we need to change that I think there's change there and there's opportunity there to change that and I also want to say we're not buying fucking meat from Australia we're not buying meat

anywhere else besides here in America we're only going to be working with American farmers and ranchers that have social media followings that are showing what they're doing and I want this I want this brand to really be American first. I want it to be an American first supply chain, American farms, American butcher shops, American warehouses with American workers. I really want to try to help the American economy. And, you know, just like what we talk about on this show, we stand for America. We're obviously, we obviously love America. We're patriots here on this show. And I want Farmer Grade to reflect that as well. So that's what also makes us a little. little bit different. Yeah, and I'll just add the pork that we're selling is the pork we raise here.

We're not getting it anywhere else. But I'll also tell you that we're not making claims about feeding these pigs walnuts or rubbing them in butter. Rubbing them in butter. Because we know, we know how good our pork is because we butcher these hogs. These hogs feed our family. And we raise the pigs we raise are raised the way 95, 90, maybe 99% of the pork that is raised in America is done. And we get a really bad rap for it. Everybody wants to beat us up and say, you know, oh, you're doing it wrong and it should be this or it should be that. No, this is how we have done it because we want what's best. best for the pigs as far as environment, but we also want to be able to feed the world,

and you can't do it on a little scale all over. You just, like, you can't do it. Yeah. And we're confident that our meat is every bit as good as anybody else is out there. We want to showcase that. And so that was part of the inspiration, too. And it's the same way with, you know, if we do beef with somebody, if we do beef, poultry with somebody. We're not in this as a as a marketing ploy, as a gimmick as a, oh,

it's this or it's that. No, it's the best practices available, the best feed available, the best genetics available, raised by family farmers, that this is how we're making our livelihood. Yeah. And that's what we want to showcase. And I also believe that we're not, I'm not up here saying that we will never sign a pasture-raised pork guy, or we'll never sign a pasture-raised poultry guy, or we'll never sign on a grass-fed beef guy. Totally fine with that. But, like, that's what I want Farmer grade to stand for. I want people to believe in the American farmer again that, hey, that farmer is doing what's best for them in their operation, in their geographical location, and I trust them because I can see content what they're putting out, and they're taking me

along for the ride. Therefore, I'm going to buy their product versus what you're saying, trying to sell people just on the claims. I think there's way more to it than just the claims. And I'm not opposed at all to buying pigs off a pasture or to sign a farmer on that has pigs raised on a pasture or have a farmer signed on that raises beef on grass. That's totally fine. that's why this brand stands out a little bit differently from everybody else because it should be up to the farmer. The farmer knows best. We're not a bunch of dumbasses that, you know, we obviously know what's best for us and our operation where we're at. And so does a lot of the other farmers out there. They know what's best for them and they know what's best for their animals. So who am I to say, oh, you should raise it this way or you should raise it that way?

you probably have a reason for why you're raising your livestock the way that you are, and that's cool. Keep doing that. Show people how you do it and work with us. And we'll help you directly sell that to your audience. That's all it matters. That's all I care about. This argument of, oh, you got to raise it this way or, oh, you got to raise it that way.

There's so many factors that play into, like people want to take a broad brush and just paint it and say, oh, all pigs should be raised in a barn or all pigs should be raised on pasture. There's so many factors that play into why some people raise pigs on pasture and can raise pigs on pasture and why pigs are raised in hog barns. There's a lot of reasons. Weather, you know, transportation, logistics, inputs, feed, feed costs. Weather's a big one. What the, what the landscape looks like. I mean, you can raise pigs on pasture in Georgia way easier than you can't here in Iowa.

Iowa. I mean, you just can't. Especially in January. There's a lot more forestry down there. They can go in the woodlots up here, a lot of crop ground, weather is absolute dog shit in the winter. Pigs, it ain't going to be good. So that's, and that's another, and then there's other examples for row cropping too. Millennial farmer in Minnesota can't just strictly do no-till because his ground temperature isn't going to get warm enough for when he needs to plan into it. So he has to do some tillage. versus here in Iowa, we're fortunate enough. Our ground temperature gets warm enough, and we don't have to till. It's the same shit.

How a millennial farmer does it is probably best for him and his operation, and he knows that. And that's the whole thing that we've got to get across to people and get across to consumers. You can't just take this broad brush and just paint and say, this is how it should all be done. You fucking can't do that. You just can't. And the beautiful thing about it is, as we grow this, you're going to have choices. Our goal is to let people have choices

and let people support, let consumers support the people that they have a connection with. And that's the beautiful thing about the social media side of agriculture is we want to give people the opportunity that not only can you, you can subscribe to that channel and you can do whatever, but you can actually support those people outside of just, like and subscribe and share. Yeah. And that's, I think that's awesome. It's super awesome. And I think what, what I always kind of had this in the back of my mind, uh, you know, we have something so

special here raising livestock. As farmers, we have something so special. Uh, you know, we're showing people what we do every day. And you know, you can sell t-shirts and you can sell hats, but, and you can sell merch. Merch is great. But, we have something. more than that. We have a process of showing these baby pigs coming into our barn, raising them up all the way to market size, and you'd be able to watch that whole process. And then the fact that you could be able to buy that pork product from that farmer is just unique. There's nothing out there like that on social media. You know, the fitness industry, a lot of fitness influencers or people that are creating content around fitness,

they're not the ones just creating the supplements in the factory. They might create a supplement line, but are they like, are they raising that product and showing you building the supplement brand or growing the, making the supplements? No. I mean, that's the thing. It's just so unique and so cool.

And I believe that like this really can put the power back in the American farmer's hand. If you're willing to get out there, and create a brand for yourself and show the consumer what you're doing on your farm. So I'll give you one other piece of this. When we started down this road, obviously, you have to find somebody to process these animals. And I'll just tell you that when you meet, I don't know, can I tell them who's processing? assuming I can't I? Yeah. So when you meet the crew from Milo, Iowa that own Milo Locker,

uh, you, you're probably going to, you're probably going to like them more than you like me, because they are super good people. Family owned, family operation, and that's what's great about this is because you are supporting us, but you are also supporting a small business in the middle of Iowa who does a great job at what they do and they're excellent, excellent people. And it's, that's how, that's how you grow the economy in this country is by helping small businesses be able to make it. And they are a perfect example of that. And we are super happy to be partnering with them. And, you know, it's, that's been a journey. But we, we are very lucky that we got in touch with them. And,

So much of what we're talking about now, I don't remember what episode that was, but we did an episode and I think it was 2022 and we said our lesson that we learned in 2022 was just ask. Okay, that reference is pretty much tied to this project because at every step of the way, we had no freaking idea what we were doing. Like, we didn't know what we needed for anything. We didn't know. And it's so hard to find out. And we literally, to Sawyer's credit, would call people up.

They didn't know from Adam and just say, hey, this is who I am. This is what I'm trying to do. Can you help me? And you know what's amazing? I don't really know of anybody. that wasn't willing to try to help you. Not everybody could help you, but... Yeah, there was a few that...

There was a few that would shut, you know, wouldn't give you much, but there are a lot more good people out there than bad, not bad, but a lot more people would give you the time of day than you think. And I want to say that I want to give a shout out to Angie and Daryl. They own Milo Locker, and, you know, I would love to get them on the show someday and get them on here so you guys can meet him and talk to them

because they are the epitome of what makes this country great. They took a chance on a kid with a dream. And, you know, I cold called them, and I got in touch with them, and I told them my vision, and they never shot it down. And I had bumps in the road. I had trials and tribulations. We had to reschedule one of our processing dates, and I had to wait for a couple months,

few, probably maybe a year to get back on their schedule because I had a hiccup in the middle of this process. And yet they still gave me the opportunity and said, keep tracing your dream and we'll be here when you need when you need us. And that is, that is rare. That is really rare. And those people are amazing. And yeah, we want to get them on the podcast. So I just got to give a shout out to them. Some of the biggest challenges that, you know, you might be asking, well, what are your biggest challenges? This all sounds great. and I'm kind of giving you the long-term goal and vision of Farmer Grade. But the challenges, man, there are so many.

When you're going to start a business, and I'm sure this applies to any business you're trying to start. But when you're going into the meat business and you don't know shit, I mean, every step of the way, there are roadblocks. You have people that shut you down that don't give you the answers you'll need. You've got to have a USDA inspected facility. to be able to ship out of state lines. There's very few of those. Then you have to figure out, okay, well, how am I going to, where am I going to pack all these orders at?

How am I going to fulfill these orders? Because they got to, we got to put the boxes. We got to put the meat in the boxes and ship them out. Trying to get a fulfillment center to do that, you know, when you realize that, hey, because that was originally my goal, that was probably the biggest challenge that I faced. Finding a processor was challenging. Don't get me wrong.

I had to do a lot of cold calling and figuring out who's USDA and who's close. And luckily enough, we found Milo. But the biggest challenge was finding a warehouse or fulfillment center was going to do this. And originally I was planning on, okay, we're not going to fulfill all the orders in house. We're going to have somebody else to do it here in Iowa so that the meat will go from Milo to a fulfillment center. And they'll handle it all for us and we'll pay whatever we got to pay to fulfill those. orders. What I quickly realized was that your margin of making money on that box gets just disintegrated really, really fast because they put a handling fee on every step of the process. So not only do you

have to buy the raw supplies that are going to go into every box, but then they're going to have to put a handling fee on top of that. And when you're trying to make this box pencil, it doesn't pencil worth of shit. And also what I figured out with most of these fulfillment centers is they are asking you, okay, well, how many pallets of meat are you going to bring us a week slash month? And my, my intention and goal through the whole process was we're going to do a pre-purchase because this is the only way I'm going to be able to get this started, get this business started. We cannot upfront the cash and have all this inventory just sitting in a freezer. We have to do a pre-purchase. and so when they were asking me how many pallets and I would say well I'm doing a pre-buy they'd almost

give you like a dumbfound like yeah we ain't got to touch you with a 10-foot pull kid like that ain't happening we're not we're not we're handling in volume we're handling in palates and you're not you're not that so then and originally I had I had a fulfillment center that I thought was going to work with but it fell through through communication and lack of communication say and just realizing my margin was going to be changed up and I guess not getting the full story of what they could do for me. It fell through. And like I said, Milo stuck to their guns and said, keep chasing it. You'll find a solution. And so I had to figure out, okay, well, we're going to have to do this internally because that's the only way we're going to be able to make money, one,

and two, handle our own destiny. I guess that was a blessing in disguise because we could, we could document and show the whole process in the warehouse, which was cool. But I didn't know where I was going to find that. And that was my last step I needed to get this thing going, was getting a warehouse. And luckily enough, just in the last two or three months, so I had, I had, and I got to give you, I got to give you context. I had the box designed, the website designed, everything was ready to go, but then that fulfillment center fell through. I had a processing date lined up with Milo, and then that fulfillment center fell through, and then I had to reschedule. So I had all this stuff already built out ready to go. So all I needed was to get a warehouse,

get a warehouse, and then I can get this thing going. And just about, I don't know, three months ago, three or four months ago we were luckily enough to find a warehouse in our own town that we could lease out and back to you just got to go over and ask and you just got to you can't be afraid to ask we went and looked at this at this building and they listed it for like $650,000

$675,000 and we were like well shit we don't have that we went out we went behind the house and we dug up all the cans all the cans duke buried and it didn't come up didn't it we missed it by just a hair i'm not going to say how much but we didn't have enough money to buy the building yeah so we well hey let's let's talk about though some of that as far as the fulfillment center falling through some of that was actually a blessing in disguise because as you say

before, there was so much that we didn't know. And we found out, we learned a lot. We learned a lot from the time the fulfillment center deal fell through until today. And I don't know, do you want to go into the changes that we made? I mean, you don't have to talk about name-wise, but the whole issue with. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So initially, I was going to call this business something else. Initially, I was going to call it something else. And yeah, thank God I didn't because I, I don't know why I didn't think of this. Well, we didn't know it. Another thing we didn't know anything about. Yeah, we didn't know anything about it, right? And this is just, this is a, this is a call out to anybody out there that's looking to do something like, you know, looking to do something on your, on your own, you got to just take the

fucking leap and go and learn and take action because this is the only way you're going to learn and figure things out. I'm a true testament to that because we didn't know shit. We didn't know shit about anything. And so I had a different name, different entity that I was going to name this business. And I heard somewhere, I can't remember. I saw a video and they said, first thing you need to do, one of the first things you need to do when you start a business is you need to make sure that you can trademark that business. And I was like, hmm, well, I realized that, because I already had bought the domain, there was no social media profiles out there that had this name. Nobody was using the brand anywhere that I could find. Nowhere. And so I was like,

well, I got the domain. I got all the social media handles. Nobody's using this. I should be good, right? I'll be fine, right? And then you go and you talk to a lawyer about trademark, and you quickly realize that the trademark laws aren't what I think most people think they are. So, I was going to call the business honest meats is what I was going to call it. And what you figure out is if anybody has, you know, for my example, honest in their name and then any meat product, they could have honest turkey, honest pigs, or honest pork, honest salmon, whatever. Honest tilapia. All of those things are meats. All those things are meats. Because your one word is honest, but your second word is a generality. And you can't trademark a generality. In other words, you can't trademark meat.

Yeah. So they own, pretty much the lawyer had informed me that, yeah, I wouldn't do that because you can get sued because somebody else has honest blank as a trademark. And you can, they can come after you in a heartbeat and they have first refusal to it. They've been here first. They've had that trademark and he basically said you'll be fine unless you ever make any money. Yeah, you'll just get sued. And we're not going to go into it all, but it probably would have made some difference as to who owned that trademark. Yeah.

But the company that owned that trademark, they had, they've got enough money and it's a big enough company that they'd ruin your, like they got 30 lawyers on retainer that just sit around looking for something to do. So it was a huge red flag. But beyond that, when you said you talked to a lawyer, so we thought that, you know, we're covener bases and we talked to the lawyer that we use for a lot of stuff. However, we had never talked to an intellectual property lawyer, and isn't that what his specialty is, intellectual property and trademarking and registering and all that?

Well, when you talk to somebody like that, you're like, wow. And so, yeah, so yeah, I had to change with the name. I mean, I had to totally pivot and change the name and figure out a new name. And so that was a whole process in itself because like I said, I had the website built out. I had the design for the packaging already made. I had the brand identity made, you know, what I wanted this business to be about. And a lot of the core foundation of what the business was is still Farmer Grade. idea the why the reason as to why we're starting what we want to do was the same but we just had

to change change the name and change the branding a little bit and that's how farmer grade was born so that was that was kind of the pivot i had to make so just that's the thing uh like you have to pivot like if you want it bad enough there are so many times i remember like and people tell you this if you listen to high level you know if you talk if you listen to business podcasts or you listen to any business creator or anybody you can get business advice they're always going to tell you you're there are going to be days where you want to quit and you want to throw your hands up and say this is just not going to work i'm fucking done and you you sit there and you go yeah yeah i won't do that or yeah it will come but i'll be fine i'm not going to i'm not going to

lie when the fulfillment center deal fell through and i had this processing date lined up i had all this shit built out and that fell through all the way to the floor and I was like I have to cancel everything and I have to go to the drawing board again. I remember feeling like, fuck, I want to throw in the towel. Like, I can't do this business. Like, I literally had those thoughts and I didn't think I would ever think that. And like, I legitimately had those, had that feeling. And then I gave it a couple days.

And that's what I give my, give advice to anyone out there that's trying to do something similar, try to start a business or has that feeling, just give it some time because I gave it some time and I got back on the saddle and I went after it again because I knew that this is what I want to do. This was my dream. This is something I've been working towards and I'm not going to give up. I've gotten this far. I just got to keep moving forward and figure it out. And then a trademark lawyer tells me, you do not want to do that as your name. That is not what you want to do. Same kind of feeling. fuck. Now I have to rebrand and spend more money on redesigning everything. Yeah. Same feeling. So those two things didn't happen like at the same time. No. When the fulfillment center fell apart,

we were like, okay, we got to pivot. And our first thought was, well, we've got a big, we've got a big garage. Yeah. And they sell chest freezers all day long. Yep. And there's some guys, there's some people on there's some YouTubers that sell meat and literally they they they do drops and their entire warehouse is in a garage and they just got like 15 chest freezers and we were and we were like okay that's what we'll do we're going to have to fulfill them ourselves we're going to have to go buy a bunch of chest freezers and we'll just have to make it work and then then the trademark thing yep came and that was probably the lowest point in the whole deal. Yeah, that, that was, I don't know, they were both,

they were both pretty shitty. I'm not going to lie. I think the fulfillment center was actually worse just because I had everything already scheduled and I thought I was, I was so close to getting it, so close to getting it off the ground and then it just, it fell apart. And so this was, I already was kind of used to it, fell apart. And so that, just another, just another right hook. And I was like, son of a gun. But it's just a testament to when people tell you, learn from your mistakes and never give up and never quit and continue to push forward and just keep going. Like, I am a full believer in that now. I have seen that through and I know there's going to be so many more roadblocks. Because I haven't even, the business has any, I mean, it just launched today. But just getting this

business started. You're going to have right hooks and left hooks and right hooks and left hooks. We still don't even know if anybody's going to buy a bomb. Exactly. There's so many things like that, but I just say it's a testament just to never give up and keep going because you, and when you figure out, that's the, that's the awesome part. When you are at your lowest and you feel like, fuck, this is not going to work. I have to give up. I got to throw in the towel. You wait a few days. And then you, then you giggle it back to the drawing board and you figure it out. that is super rewarding. That is super like, okay, we're good. We can, we can push forward now. We can move forward. We got that step figured out. Now what's the next thing we got to figure out? And

that is just like, it's a whole mix of emotions, but honestly, like I'm grinning right now because I love that shit. That shit is awesome. I mean, I love figuring stuff out and building shit. And that, that's the, that is the hardest part about it. But it, it's the most rewarding part about it because you can figure it out. If you just, if you just do enough digging, wait enough time, you'll figure it out. Okay. So I don't want to get us, I don't want to get us, we're at the point where we dug up all the cream cans and we figured out we don't have $650,000. Yes, but back to that. But I think we should go back because we left out this part, and I know this question's going to come up, because,

Anybody that spends any time with our channel knows that we contract finish pigs. So we don't own a sow unit where these pigs come from. We contract finished pigs for an integrator. And to me, this is a really great story too about just, like just going, just kind of going for it. because your idea of doing this has been rolling around almost from the time we started the YouTube channel. And it was one of those things that we just had this conversation that like, oh man, if we could just sell our pork, if we could just sell our pork. And then it kind of morphed into Farmer Grade, like being as we talked about. and you actually like started down the road and putting the pieces in place and finding somewhere

to get these hogs processed and then we said we said okay it looks like we can do this uh what are we going to do if our integrator says what hell no we're not going to sell you we're not going to sell you our pigs. And so talk about that. Talk about that story. Because it's a great, I think it's just great. And I'm, we're not going to, if you follow us at all, you're not going to have to work very hard to figure out who we actually contract feed for, but it's not my place to throw their name out there. So we're just going to, just, we're not going to. But anyway, talk about, like, remember how nervous we were. Yeah. I mean, we were like, oh boy. I mean, I made a whole, I made a whole pitch deck.

I made a whole pitch deck. Just, I spent hours on making a pitch deck on how I was going to present this, or how we were going to present this. And, yeah, I mean, that was the biggest, like, back to, you got to just ask. That was, like, one of the biggest ass. So we called, you know, the guy running the show, or one of the guys running the show down there, that was who's our integrator and you know they know we have this social media brand they know we have

this following they know we've been showing people what we do and we call them we set up a meeting we worked on the pitch deck and like a dad said dad and i had been sitting you don't know how many conversations we've had in this barn we've had in the workroom of our of our hog barn sitting on a bucket just throwing this idea around how we're going to do it what it's going to look like how are we going to do it these are the steps we got to do like replaying this over and over and over again how we're going to do it and we finally get down there we sit down i start get up i i sit there and i'm going through the powerpoint talking about what i want to do how we want to do it all this stuff and we get to the end of the presentation and the guy the cFO the cFO just looks at us and he

goes, oh, you just want to buy the pigs out of your barn? Well, so his first thing was, his first thing was so he's like, so are you wanting us to invest in this or what? Yeah. We're like, no, no, no, we just want pigs. And then we just want to buy the pigs out of our barns that we raise. And he's like, oh, yeah, we could do that, no problem. And I was like, he said, shit, you didn't even have to go on this pitch deck for 45 minutes.

He actually said, and he was kidding, of course, but he actually. goes, oh, I'm just, I'm just happy that you actually are willing to pay us that you weren't just going to take the pigs and then tell us that you were, that you did this many extra like you're short. Yeah. Yeah, that was, the thing was, we were there for over and out. We were probably there over an hour. And we're, we're building this up and we're building this up. And Sawyer and I are just, like, we're pretty damn stressed about it because if, like, that's if if that if they say no if they say hell no then you are totally back to square one and then you got to make the decision okay do we believe in this so much that we either go like we figure out

how we're going to buy into a sow excuse me a sow unit to get our own pigs and go down that road and make this massive investment or do we just kill this dream and so on one side of the table, we're just like kind of sweating bullets. And on the other side of the table, I think that he was just thinking, oh, man, these guys want us, they want money. They want, yeah, they want us to invest in it. And when he said that, and we were like, oh, no, no, it was like, it was not even a thought. He was just like, oh, yeah, that's fine. No problem. No problem. And I was like, oh, my gosh, all that, all this for, oh, all this for that. All this for that. All this for that. all of us for that answer and we could have probably just walked in there and just said hey

can we do this and they would have probably said yeah and all i will say this um we are we are so blessed to work with that group because i know from our channel there are people out there that comment our stuff that say you know they feed pigs for whoever and you know they're not even allowed to take their phone in the building. Yeah. And they have allowed us. Which is dumb, by the way. It is.

But, you know, it's, it's, some parts of our industry come at it from a, they, they come at it fearfully. And some of that's rightly so, but some of it's misplaced. But we have been allowed, I mean, we've been allowed to, you know, have you seen it, we shoot loading pigs, getting pigs in, moving pigs. We've done videos about what happens when people. pigs die, you know, everything, and they've been great. And this is just another example. I mean, there's a lot of people that they could have just as easily said no.

And, yeah, a lot of, we've got to give them a shot. I mean, just big thanks to them. Yeah, just great people. They are great people. Okay. Another, it takes great people to make great things happen. And they're one of the, they're one of the great people that already have the luxury to work with, uh, just as much as, like, you know, it's like. It's not. It's like my low locker. Same deal. We're just fortunate to work with great people and that's what it takes. That's what it takes. And I mean, I just want to touch on that point. I mean, you know, we would be lying to you if we said that, you know, one of our goals would be if we got this going enough where, you know, we were selling so much damn pork that it was just absurd. The idea of

raising our own pigs and taking them buying chairs into a salient, is definitely on the table. And I would think that our integrator would understand. And they probably know that. They're not dumb. But that's something that we want to work towards as well. Because, you know, we want to control our own destiny too.

And we want to, you know, we just want to do that. You know, it's more profitable when the years are good. Right. But that's just something we want to work towards too. So that's in the works. But back to the warehouse. So we go and look at this bill. building. $675,000 it's listed for. And dad actually sent me this post while I was, it was over Thanksgiving

break or Christmas break of last year. Or no, this year. This year. So this was winter. Dad sends me this listing and he's like, this business went out of business and I'm getting out of here. 1,500 square foot cooler. Walk in freezer. And I was like, oh, man, that would be awesome. And then we see it again. It got listed. And, and, we see it. We call a realtor and we're like, we want to go look at this. We want to go look at this. When can we go look at this? We go look at it.

And it's in winter, right? It's wintertime. And it's listed for 675. And we were like, holy shit, there's no way. There's no way we're going to be able to make this thing pencil or start in a business. Even if we ran it out because there was an office space there, even if we ran it out the office space, we ran out this and that. It's just not going to pencil. Plus utilities on top of that, just not going to work.

And so there is a construction business that sits right next to this warehouse. And this warehouse has a huge parking lot. Huge parking lot. And so we're fortunate enough to know the owners of this construction business. And so dad and I go, well, let's go across the driveway. Let's go across the driveway. Don't be afraid to ask. And we walk in and we just go, hey,

you should buy this. Yeah, pretty much. You say, you should buy this. And they didn't even know it was for saying. Yeah. I don't think they knew. Because it just, we literally, Yeah.

It had just come on. Yeah. I think maybe they might have known because I think the old owner came in and told them that they were leaving. Okay. But it was fresh, really fresh. And they were thinking about purchasing it,

maybe, potentially. And we just said, hey, if you guys go over there and you purchase that and you use the parking lot for whatever, we would love the opportunity to lease out the freezer and some of the space for packing orders. And we left it at that and we left.

And like I said, three, four months ago, got the call. They bought it. They closed on it. They gave us the opportunity. We're leased in that building now. We're leasing the office space. Releasing the freezer space.

Releasing the packing room. We're going to pack the orders. And it's just seasoned opportunity. I mean, that's the other thing, guys. You got to go seize opportunity. I mean, that was one of those things that, you know, you could have just threw another example of just thrown in the towel and say it can't work, we're not going to do this.

But you just got to think outside the box and you got to go, we can find a way to do this. We can find a way to do this. How can we do this? And we seized it and we went and asked and it ended up working. out and thank God it worked out with those amazing people because they are also some amazing people they own amazing construction business great family-owned business and very fortunate to have them as our landlords so just crazy shit I mean this is the this is what the epitome of business

is though this is what makes being in the trenches hard but like I said it's rewarding it is rewarding the right that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SUV, German engineered for all.

because at the end of the day we are so much better off than if it would have worked out at the very beginning because 1,000% 1, if it would have worked out with that fulfillment center, I don't think we would have ended up making, I don't think we would have lost money.

Yeah, we would have lost money and been like, well, this wouldn't work. Got sued. Because they would have nickel-dime. Then if it would have worked, I have no doubt that we would end up being sued because of the fact that we are really, we are really hell bent on leveraging the social media. So there's no scenario that I don't think somebody would have found out and been like,

well, what are these fuckers doing? Yeah. Yeah. And then the other side of it is, now we think about the quality of the content that we're going to create because you are going to be able to follow the journey from our barns to the locker to the fulfillment we're our own fulfillment facility it's our family that is going to fill your orders and just that that circle that connection between you the consumer and all the steps that brought that animal to meet to a box to your door so much better than if we would have gotten it all to work. And yeah, the other way around. Yeah.

Yeah, it's special. I mean, I feel like, you know, I think this is a good form of capitalism. I talk on this show a lot about how, you know, there's corrupt businesses and corrupt businessmen out there, and there's some businesses out there that don't do a lot of good for society. But this is one that I feel good about. This is one that I feel like, you know, I could dedicate my life to this. this business. I really could. I might be getting the car ahead of the horse here, but I'm not ever,

if this works and it goes and it pans out, I truly believe that I want to dedicate my life to building this business because I think it provides a lot of good to the world, to America, to the world, to farmers, to the consumer, everybody. I feel good about it. And it is really special. And I feel like we can really make a difference not only here in America, but just the meat industry in general. I think it's really cool. So, and that's what you got to do. I mean, you got to try to create a business that, you know, is different and is providing,

is doing something different for the, for the benefit of humanity, for the benefit of a, of wherever you're living. So I feel really good about it. So this, this, more than anything else that we are. doing, you've heard me say that, you know, it's really awkward when you go to sporting events or graduations or whatever, and you run into people and casual acquaintances and they say, oh, hey, how's it going? What are you guys up to out there? And you want to go, well, we're starting this direct-to-consumer meat business

and what we want to do is we want to partner with the biggest the biggest online content creators in the ag world to bring meat direct-to-consumer. And then you think that all through your head and you look at that person and you know that if you say that, they're going to look at you and go, all right, well, yeah, good talking to you.

So instead you just go, ah, not much. Yeah. Sure hope it'd rain. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go on your way. I mean, it's just, this has been rolling around years. Yeah. And it's kind of all-consuming.

So one thing that I really sticks with me, and it was from a guest that was on our show, Marshall Yonda, future Hall of Famer, played for the Baltimore Ravens for over a decade. he said that he thought about football every 10 minutes for almost two decades from the time that he was in high school playing football to when he retired in the NFL. And that is, you know you want to do something and you know you're passionate about something when you do exactly that. And I've had to, I have thought about this business every 10 minutes. every day for years because it is it is become an obsession. I go to bed dreaming about it. I go to bed

thinking about it and that's when you know that you are going out for something that you want that you're passionate about. It's true. Like seriously, this has been a dream for a long, long, long, long, long time. And I'm just, I'm excited that we're here. We're finally got here. Now we just got a make it work. Right. Just got to make it work. I don't want you to sugarcoat anything. I don't want you guys to think that we're on the fuck. We think we're on the mountain top that we got this thing started. It's just getting fucking started. We're actually just in the mountain. We've just made it. We've just parked the car. We've made it to the gate our way. Yeah. To the base of the mountain. Yeah. It's pretty much

right. Exactly. Exactly. Because, so talk about, talk about all of the things that are behind the scenes. So when you decided that you wanted to put meat in a box, that sounds pretty easy. We're going to get these pigs. We're going to get a process. We're going to put them in a box. We're going to shipping people. Talk about like just the amount of steps and people and just like the conversations that we've had about tape. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are so many small things. like you can sit here and you can you can strategize the general things that most people can think about when it comes to a business but it comes down to the nitty gritty details you got to be obsessed you have to be you know i am not an attention to detail person when it comes to cleaning the house but i am an

attention to detail kind of person when it comes to packing tape when it comes to what the website looks like one little thing you have to be obsessed you have to be detail oriented and like how much dry ice you put in the box to where it's going and you're going and you have to be detail oriented and like how much dry ice you put in the box to where it's going in the United States. That matters. Do you want the product to show up thought out in raw? No. You have to think about those things. You have to think about shipping rates. Different zones in America have different shipping rates. How many days can it get their ground? How many days is it going to get there today? How much is it going to cost for ground? How how much is it going to cost on two day? You can't ship your boxes out on Thursday or Wednesday or I wouldn't

even shipping them out Tuesday because if it gets stuck, if it gets stuck and they don't get to the person's door on Friday, it's going to sit in a warehouse for two days on the weekend and your meat's going to be fucked. Those are all things you have to think about. And, you know, the tape, you have to make sure that if you want it brand, do you want your tape branded? Do you want your box branded? How much is it going to cost for a branded box? How much is it going to cost for a generic box, how much is going to cost for regular tape, how much is going to cost for branded tape, dry ice regulations, do you have to slap a warning on your box? Do you not? Sales tax. Sales tax. You have to think about sales tax. How you stack your meat in the box.

What kind of liner are you going to use in the box? How is it going to stack up? It has to be tight because air, dry ice dissipates, not because of temperature, but because of air. So the more that your package is packed tight, the better that dry ice is going to hold up. All these things. And nobody tells you. No. So we have ordered. I've ordered probably five to six direct-to-sue meat business is boxes.

Competitors, competitors' boxes. And literally, dad and I, I called dad, I said, you got to come over here. We got to do this. We've got to figure this. out. I put a GoPro on my, on my light over my island. And we unpacked the box and filmed it. And we literally got a scale out and we put how much of the boxway, how much dry ice is left, how much meat is actually in there. What's the liner? What are the packing materials? Do they have inserts? Do they not? Do they have a dry ice

warning? Did they ship ground? Did they ship two day? All this shit. I mean, because nobody I'll tell you. nobody's going to tell you. Nobody's going to tell you shit. And it's just the statement that, you know, you can give everybody all the information that you could possibly give them. And yet most people will quit is true because there, most people cannot stick it out and do the steps necessary to figure shit out. They give up too quickly. But that is the shit that you have, like if you want it to happen you have got to take you got to take it into your own hands and make it happen and like that is an example I said fuck I don't know so I'm going to order

from five different companies and I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to ask questions because you can't be afraid to ask but some people won't give you the answers right and I mean there's just so many small things that go into any business but well this is just another example The details, make no mistake. So the difference between actually making money and not making money, it's not in the cost of the meat and it's not in the cost of processing the meat.

The difference is all of those little things. Like how many boxes do I have to buy to get my best price per box? How many rolls of tape do I have to buy? So then you've got to make the decision. Okay, well, are we going to be able to sell enough boxes that we're going to do another drop? Because if we can buy this much of whatever, it's this much better that it helps our margin. I mean, that's the thing. The devil is in the details and it.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Another detail that we're leaving out, and you might be wondering, well, how, why do you have the specific cuts that you have in your box? Oh, yeah. Well, this is probably the biggest, this is one of the most important details, a part of the box.

So when we made out, went to make this decision, you have to think about, okay, we're going to do a 500 box drop. We're only going to do 500 boxes because I didn't want to get overwhelmed. I didn't want to be able to just give free range to anybody that wanted to buy a box

because I don't want, I want to do my best. I want to dip our toe in the water. I want to make sure it's done. right and not be just bombarded. So we set that limit first. And I knew that I was going to do a pre-buy the whole time I knew that was the only way this business was going to get off the ground.

But you have to figure out, okay, well, we're going to do one curated box that's going to be the same and we got to sell 500 of them. And we got to make sure that every customer gets every cut of meat that they're all that they're offered and that they're all the same. But on the flip side of them. that, we got to make sure that we're going to use as much of that pig as we can because the disadvantage that we have as a small farm, when you think about a big packer, literally today, when they say that they use everything but the squeal in that pig, they're 100% right.

so all of the parts of the pigs that you and I would say I'm not eating that there's somebody around the world somewhere that they love that and they want it and so when that pig is processed they there's there's no waste there I mean there's a little but it's very little okay when you're a when you're a small town locker or processor you can't shit the head of that pig to Indonesia or Thailand or wherever that the snout in the tongue or a delicacy. So in other words, for us, we had to try to figure out, okay, what cuts can we do that we're going to use as much of the pig as we can? And we can make sure it can fit in 500 boxes and everybody gets the same amount. Plus, you got to have to have. You got to to make sure that your pig is big enough. We had to plan out the date. Also, you got to, you got to know what is meat, what is the average yield on a hog? You got to know these things. You got to know how many pounds of meat can I expect per pig, right? I mean, these are all things

that you, you have to figure out. And like, that's why we picked the specific cuts in this box that we did, because we have to use the loin. We have to use the shoulder. We have to use the belly. We have to use all these things in the pig the best that we possibly can. We knew we couldn't oh it'd be great if we could sell baby back ribs. Yeah, it would. But you sell four half racks of ribs because you got two racks of ribs and each pig cut them in half. You got four. Well, that only equals out to 200 racks of ribs. There's 500 people buying a box. You couldn't put

ribs in all 500 boxes. Everybody wants a pork. It'd be great if we could ship y'all a seven pound pork butt. Yep. Because I love to, I love to smoke a pork butt. However, there's only two of those in a pig. Yeah, can't do that. You know, that's our goal. Our goal is to get this to the point that we're just processing pigs out of every group and we have we have enough volume that at some point we can al a cart. At some point we could do

a barbecue box that's pork butt and ribs or something like that. But, you got to walk before you run and yeah and subscription another goal like if you're asking well can we do subscription can we buy all the cart can we buy whole halves or quarters i mean all those things are something that i'm interested in doing we're interested in doing it's just that we got we got to walk before we run we got to walk before we won we got to become profitable and i'm a big believer in i don't want to take VC money i don't want outside capital i want to be a profitable business and the right way and not have to behold to behold to anybody. Yeah.

And so this is the same. We're going to bootstrap this. Yeah. This is the same reason why, well, it's why we're not, this podcast isn't sponsored by anybody. I mean, it's, we want to be independent. When it comes to this business, we did not want to go borrow money and we did not want to take investors.

And I won't, I won't do either. borrow money maybe on a line of credit because if you're buying livestock at any I mean it's it's that's kind of the business that you got to do that sometimes but when it comes to investors I am not a fan because once you get on the VC train you can't get off and they behold you are beholding to whatever they say and that's not something that interests me at all at all so yeah I mean really our goal would be great to do subscription to do al-a-car to offer offer whole halves in quarters to people and to partner or with as many social media livestock farmers as we possibly can and really give them the power to take their own destiny

and put it in their hands and to give the American consumer a quality product that has a story to help the American economy. I mean, there's so many things, but we want to sign as many farmers as we possibly can on. But we've got to walk before we run. We've got to become profitable. We've got to be able to build out. This will do farm pork.

first and really see how that goes and really, you know, test the waters. And if it works and it goes and we work out the kinks inside the warehouse, we work out the kinks with our processor, we work out the kinks with distribution. Distribution and logistics. Signing on another farmer, I would love to do it. I would love to get beef involved in the mix. I would love to get poultry involved in the mix. So if you are a livestock farmer that is on social media, or if this podcast gets, sparks interest in you, I would love to work with you. I would love to work with you. We'd love to work with you. Farmer Gray would love to work with you. We want to, we want to, we want to put the power back in the American farmer's hands.

So we want to be a part of that journey. Our goal is to make all the mistakes on our own stuff. Yeah. So that when we get to that point, the producer has a fantastic experience getting their, their meat to market and our consumer has a great experience being able to buy multiple uh multiple meats from different producers yeah and we figured the best way to do it was do our own first make our mistakes figure it out i mean pretty much eric if you if you've watched us for any time you know that this whole deal We just figured it out.

Trial and error has gotten us a long ways. You can do, guys, you can do anything you want. Like, when I say that, you could fucking roll your eyes, but like, you can literally do whatever you set your mind to. Because we are, guys, we are kids that grew up in southeast Iowa, a town of, I don't know, less than 10,000 people. And we didn't know shit. about podcasting. We didn't know shit about creating content online. We don't know shit about a meat

business. Yet here we are and we're doing it. And it's because we're going after it and we're quitting and we're learning from our stakes and we're researching and going out there and finding the answers. And it's just pure drive. It's just pure drive. I was not the smartest student. I was not the most gifted athlete. I was not the most intelligent person in the world by any means when I was a kid. Neither were you. I was. just, I was just going to think, say, I was going to say some line of bullshit like that I was, but you shot me in the ass. Well, I did shoot you ass. You know it's true. No, it is true. It's a thousand percent. It's a thousand percent true. And like, we're not cream of the crop.

Like, there's no cream in the crop. It's literally just putting your head down and going after what you want, man. You can create it. And especially in this day and age, you can do it. You can do whatever you set your mind to. We, the, amount of, we say this all the time. So fucking go for it if you're thinking about it. Because the amount of knowledge that is out there for free and some of it you got to really dig. You really do have to dig. But holy cow, I mean, we, the rabbit holes that we went down on, on boxes and tapes and fulfillment centers and shipping and just everything. Like, we didn't know how do you move that meat?

Like figuring out the crates that you use to put the meat in, to put on a dolly to get it from the pack, from the processing facility, back to our warehouse. Who do you call? Like, okay, you got this freezer. Does it have to be inspected? Who inspects it? Who do you call?

Do you need a license? I mean, all that stuff, we just found that out from online and calling and calling and calling and asking and asking and asking. Seizing opportunity. You have to seize it. And you truly, you got to want it. I mean, you're just not going to put in the time. You're just not going to dedicate your life to something if you don't want it. I mean, it's just a truth. And if you want it bad enough, you will make it happen. When people say that, they mean it because it's the truth. If you want it, want it bad enough, you will find the answers and you will work at it and you will figure it out. You just will. Yep. And like I said, we haven't done shit yet. We're just getting to the, we're just getting to the Grand Canyon.

We haven't done nothing yet. We just get into Mount Everest. We haven't done shit yet. But, you know, hopefully by the end of this podcast, everybody's already bought a box and we're sold out. I haven't checked my phone yet. Yeah. But I guess last kind of a couple things, you know, I wrote this question down.

I wrote this point down, you know, what happens if Farmer grade fails? You know, will you be devastated? I will obviously be devastated because this is something that I've been dreaming about forever. But what I've already learned just by trying to get this business started, the skills that I've acquired, the confidence I've built in myself, the relationships and the gumption to cold call people, like just so many things that I've learned. learned, those will stick with me forever. And I'm sure that what I learned from this first drop and all these other drops and working with farmers and working with whoever, like all those things,

yes, if it fails, it would suck. But I'm going to find another thing to go after. I'm going to tell you that right now because I'm not going to stop and I'm not going to quit. And I love business. And I'll find a new avenue to go down and I'll take the skill set that I learned from from something that failed and I'll apply it, excuse me, somewhere else. And that's my mindset. So it could fail, but I'm going to love learning everything and I'm going to love the process and I'm passionate about it and I'm giddy about it and that's not going to change. So I'm going to do everything in my power. We're going to do everything in our power to make it successful. And if it fails onto the next thing and I'll take that skill set and I will make whatever is next work, but I don't think there's going to be a next.

We've already learned. I mean, the amount of stuff that we've learned from this, it's, yeah, I mean, if we were to go do something else, not even in me, if we were to do something else, if we decided, all right, well, that, that deal for whatever reason, which I can't, I really can't, like, I don't know, I say, sorry, I sit here and I say, I'll move on to the next thing, but we're embedded here. Yeah. It's different. I mean, we're far,

this ground has been in our family for six generations. Like, making this meat business work, I'm gonna, like, I don't think I'm gonna quit. Like, I genuinely don't think I'm gonna quit.

It's a product that everybody, most people eat is meat. Like, it's a consumable product. We just got to find the way to make it work. And so I do not see this failing. I'm not going to let it fail. I'm not going to quit.

We're going to find a way. to make it work, whether it be retail, whether it be wholesale, whether it be going to restaurants, farmers markets, direct to consumer, I don't give a shit, we're going to make it work. If we got to change the farming operation up to make it work, we're going to make it work. We are going to make it work. And something that you found this out when you were researching, which I think is pretty neat because farming is one of the few businesses that is a generational business. and, you know, it's harder and harder to keep it going.

But the food business is really interesting in the fact that what did you say? Most of the biggest businesses in the food industry are privately held businesses, their family owned that have been 100-year holds. Therefore, they do not sell the business to anybody. They don't have BlackRock come in. They're privately held. family businesses and they build them for long centuries. I mean, they, they build them for centuries or holds. And so that's the thing about consumer products. Uh, grocery stores meet,

grocery store products. Margins are tight. Margins are tight, but it's a consumable product. People always need it. And so having a whole, like, that's why I say, if that, you know, I would could dedicate my life to this business. business because I feel like it's something that has longevity and it's you're doing something good for the world you're feeding people like you're genuinely feeding people it's it's an amazing thing so yeah that's that's kind of stat 100 year holds privately held family owned business some of those some people don't like some of those those family businesses those big food businesses but right it's just the matter of fact yeah last thing that I'd say and I wrote this down because I was

just kind of think of it. And this is, we're not experts in this field by any means, but how do you balance your time between farming and running farmer grade? Not very well. This is something that honestly I've given some thought to, but it's one of those things that it's a battle every day. It's a battle every day trying to make the most of my time. And my biggest fear in life probably is not being able to,

to dedicate my time. I don't want to wake up. I don't want to be like the movie click where Adam Sandler just skips through his life and wants that promotion. And then he finds out after he hits the button that it's 70 or it's like 30 years later

and he wakes up in this office and he finally had the promotion and he's rich as fuck. But his kid walks in and he realizes that his kid and his relationship is shit. And because he just spent his whole time just dedicated to that, to that promotion and he doesn't have a relationship with his kids and he like wants to fast forward

and go back in time and so like time is one of those things that I want to do I want to do something great I want to add a lot of value to society and provide value to the world but at the same time you got to have time for your family got to have time for your friends you got to have time to enjoy your life. And so, like, I want to work hard. I want to farm. I still want to farm and do this business, but I think the only way that I'm going to be able to, we're going to be able to balance it all is partnering and hiring good people and bringing on good people to be a part of the team. And that's what it takes. That's the only way that great things happen is great people. And so that's the only way I see us being able to balance it all. Right now, getting it started. And

and still farming and still choring the pigs and still doing the podcast and still creating content, I'd be lying if I said it was easy. It's really not that easy. I don't have, I mean, dad and I've said it on this podcast before and I'm just keeping it real. I don't have any hobbies. I don't.

I spend time with my friends, have a good talk with them, grill out, drink a beer, maybe go camping. And I go, maybe go on a trip with them once a year. Cat and I, since we've been together, I've never gone on a vacation together. I go to the gym, but I don't play recreational basketball.

I don't go fishing. I don't go hunting. I don't do these things, and I'm not saying anyone out there that does those things, good for you. You probably have way better work-life balance than I do. But, like, this is what it requires. This is what it requires,

and I'm willing to sacrifice now to benefit later, and I love, like, I don't want to get it twisted. Like, I love doing this. Yeah. This is my, like, this is my hobby. Farming and doing the social media and trying to start this business and hopefully run this business someday, like, that's where my fire lies, I think. That's, that's my passion.

That's the hardest. For me, that's the hardest part. And for, it's hard for people to understand because, and it's hard. for people to understand even within your own family, I think, because we're busy all the time, and there's always something that needs to be done. And we don't love doing all of the things, but, man, we do love, like, for me, I love, I love doing it all. Yeah, there's individual things in each part of it that I don't like doing. And so that's what makes it so hard. People, like, it's one thing to be tied to a job and you don't like that job and you don't want to have to go there

and that's drudgery and that's a whole other deal that you know that's a that's a really that's a bad place to be but i think the the problem that i have is it's really hard to keep that balance when nobody's twisting our arm to get up and get after it we just love doing it And when you love doing it, it's really that much harder to balance it because I want to, like, I want to be flexible and be able to go do things with the rest of my family and, you know, go on trips or do whatever. But, man, I'll be, I don't, like, I just don't do very well. I'm good for a few days of doing nothing. And man, after that, it's just like, I just start Jonesing because I got to get back to it. I'm wired kind of the same way.

I don't know. I'm just, I'll be honest. We're just not very good at it because, like, we talk about it within our family. And so, you know, Sawyer's brother, Clay, he's the same way. And we all sit around. And we all just, we have. that passion, but then we all three will sit and talk about, you know, it'd be nice to slow down. Like we talk about it'd be nice to slow down and nice to, you know, take a vacation as a family.

And we, but none of us really want that. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Hear that, that's your next obsession. Every coffee, a new world. Every sip, a new taste. This is the new espresso. One touch, endless possibilities. iced, flavored, long, short, because some days call for that espresso kick, and sometimes a smooth, silky latte just wins.

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Save the everyday with Amazon. Yeah, I mean, it's like, I think, yeah, I think we will. I think we do, we do, but, yeah, I think it's back to what you said. I mean, I am the same way as far as sitting on my ass and not doing anything. It's just it gets, you only do it for a certain amount of days and you're like, okay, we got to, we got to do something. You know, I can only do this. There's no, there's no fire here, you know.

I guess, yeah, and I, I, to anybody out there, like, I am not saying that this is, this is probably not, like, the way for everybody. It shouldn't be the way for everybody. If you're not wired that way, do not. feel like we're attacking you and saying that you need to be wired that way at all. That is not what I'm saying at all. That's not what we're saying. I am just saying like, this is how we're wired. There are days that balance, there is no balance. There's no balance. But most days I wouldn't want to have it any other way. And that's how I'm wired. Some people,

they would say, fuck that. I don't want to do that at all. And that's what makes people different. And that's good. If everybody was like us, it might be a shit show out there. Might be a shit show out there. I think what it all comes down to is you really got to get to know yourself. You got to know yourself. And you also have to, you also have to keep yourself in check for the rest of your family. Yeah. Because I mean, I will be if my wife was sitting here right next to me and she wasn't petrified of being on camera and does not ever want to be shown, she would say 100% that.

I have an unhealthy work life balance. And it just is. And I make time for the things that I know are important to her. And I enjoy that because I know that she enjoys it. And you have to do that. And you do the same thing. Yeah. I mean, well, and I will say this, what also makes me love the idea of being, in the meat business or just food business is the best times that we spend as a family is around a dinner table. Oh, 100%. The best, most heartwarming, most memorable,

most just the best times that we've had as a family is around a dinner table. No matter if it's at a restaurant, it's at mom and dad's house, no matter if it's at Clay and Corey's house, no matter if it's at our house. Like, food brings us to, together and no matter what craziness is going on in our family's life, like that is the one

piece that we can come together and share a meal and like talk about each other's day, catch up, talk about the crazy ideas we got going on, like connect. And like, that's why I also feel like this is so important. This business is so important. And nothing can bring people together better than farmer grade. Shameless plug. Well, I was just going to say, uh, geez, dad,

you're funny. So that, uh, that box, you might be wondering what, uh, what farmer grade, why,

why farmer, like what's the, what's the name stand for? And when we were coming up with the new name, um, I want people to kind of think about, you know, when people say,

military grade. Military grade-ass shit is some high-quality fucking shit. Like, oh, that's military grade. I want people to look at farmer-grade and go, that is some farmer-grade-ass shit. That is good shit. That is farmer-approved. That would be served on the farmer's dinner table

to serve to his family. That is farmer-grade shit. That's farmer-approved. And that's what I want that shit to stand for. I want it to be like, just kind of like military grade, just on the ag side. So that was kind of the meaning behind the name and the logo Farmer Grade. Kind of a stamp of approval.

It's the stamp of approval. Yep, that's right. Well, speaking of stamp of approval, I think that if we were going to have a farmer grade, if we were going to have a Farmer Grade whiskey, why not have it be Eagle Rare? We haven't done Eagle Rare. That's some high quality. and we're going to taste it.

I don't know what you're going to talk about while I'm pouring it, but you tell the folks what they can do to help us out while I get this ready. I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. If you've made it this far, just know we love and appreciate every single one of you guys. We couldn't do any of this without you. We couldn't do Farmer Grade without you. And if you really want to support us in our farm and this podcast, head over to Farmergrade.com and buy a box.

of meat. That would be the best, the most, I would appreciate it. We would appreciate it so, so very much. And if, I hope, you know, to be honest with you, I hope it's sold out by now. But if it's not, go get yourself a box. How is that? I think I was good. I mean, it's, this is just another, farmer grade is just another example. I don't know if example is the right word, but we are, and I speak for pretty much the whole Whistler clan, we are incredibly blessed because, you know, we started a YouTube channel, and that's been great, and I've enjoyed it, we all enjoy it.

We started this podcast, and this podcast has grown way beyond our wildest expectations. And, I mean, I want to do this thing for as long as I can, because I love talking to all of you and I love hearing what you think when you comment and now we're doing this and how great is it

that we've been able to do what we're doing and we're just getting started. Yeah. And it's all because of, it's all because of you guys. I mean, I know you got to put out good shit for people to listen to it,

but for you to take time out of your day to watch or listen to one of our shows of us two dumb ass is sitting in the barn talking talking shit it's it's really cool and and we do like sincerely we do really appreciate or really do appreciate it because it is special and we do we do value it a lot like we get as much out of this doing it as any you know i i hope you all get value from it we get a lot of value yeah it's a lot of fun it's a lot of fun so cheers to all of you and cheers to Farmergrade. Yes, sir.

That's pretty good. That isn't mad. That isn't bad. Yeah, so Eagle Rare is another Buffalo Trace product, and they kind of built their own juggernaut. That's pretty good. Yeah. Ten years.

I don't know. I don't think it has a proof statement on it. But it's good stuff, and it's, I'll tell you what. Iowa sucks. Iowa sucks when it comes to whiskey. And I think any state, part of it is whiskey has gotten into, in fact, Buffalo Trace kind of, I think, started this in the fact of getting whiskey kind of allocated and holding it back and making it scarce. But man, it's hard to find good with, well, I shouldn't say that. There's a lot of good whiskey out there. But the bottles that you see, that you're like, wow, I'd like to try that, gosh, dang, they're hard to come.

come by. And if you want to buy them on the secondary market, I'm sorry, but it, some of that ship's just crazy. So anyway, Eagle Rare, I would recommend it. I would, I would recommend it too. I, you know, I usually you can just tell by my facial expression on how good or how bad the whiskey is, because the worse it is, the shittier my face looks, but that one was not bad. I think my face actually was pretty decent on that one after I took the shot. So it's pretty smooth. It is. It's a It's pretty smooth. I'd say, and let's face it, I'm not an eloquent. Yeah, we're not.

Whiskey. I wouldn't add that to our resumes. No, it's not. I like whiskey. You know what? I like, what I like, what I like about whiskey is it's unique and it's, it's a very American thing. And all these companies have character. And it's, you know, it's just neat.

I like finding new bottles. It's got history to it. Yeah, exactly. what's cool about it. It's kind of like farming in that way. Yeah, but I'll say that's a smooth whiskey, but it's a quick finish. It doesn't linger very long, but it's dang good. I agree. So, if you like today's podcast and you want to know more, where can you know more?

You guys can head over to farmergrade.com and you can pre-buy a box. July 20th, the pigs are going to the processor, getting the meat back in early August, and then we're going to start hand-packing those orders. and send them out to your door in August. And if you want to watch the whole process of this, you can watch it on our YouTube channel. This will do Farm or where we are going to literally document the whole entire process from the pigs leaving our barn

to go to the processor, to go to our warehouse, to fulfill the orders, and send them to your door. We're going to show the whole thing. Transparency, baby. So go get a box. We love and appreciate every single one of you guys. and we will see you back here next week for another episode. Thank you very much.