Barn Talk - World Pork Expo 2022

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Welcome to Barn Talk, World Pork edition. We are joined with the Barntools team and other folks from the industry to discuss all things pig farming! Pay the fee! 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

I got to get out of the bull's eye. I got to slip back into sales. 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, World Pork Expo Edition. We're not in the barn. We're not at our roots today.

We're going, what are we going? We're going on the road. We're on the road. We're on the road. We're in Des Moines for the World Pork Expo. We're in the Barn Tools booth. And as you can see here with this amazing sign, shout out to Greg. He's going to be getting interviewed on this episode.

But he's the one that created this awesome sign. And we're going to sit down with some Barn Tools guys and get their thoughts on how they started the business, kind of what's coming down the pipeline and how each person in the business, what they do and how they got going. Yeah. So any of you that are new listeners of the podcast. or come over here from This'll Do Farm, our YouTube channel. So we, obviously, we've got a really good relationship with barn tools, and it's kind of like a match made in heaven, because we both kind of started at the same time.

When we started the Barn Talk podcast, their first product that they launched was Barn Talk, the alarm system. And we, they reached out to us, and we kind of hit it off, and we both kind of had the same vision for growing. growing our businesses and we've been just added ever since. And so they asked us if we'd like to broadcast or record at their booth. So we're actually at their booth at World Pork. We're going to be here the next day and we'll probably have some more clips, updates.

We're going to interview some customers of theirs, just get some feedback for them. And we're also going to probably shoot some stuff, traips around, seeing who we can see. and that will probably go on this will do farm some of that stuff. But for those of you that don't know what barn tools do, they are an alarm system for hog farmers. So you can put one of their alarm systems in, and it gives you real-time data, and any time there's a problem that goes wrong in your barns,

they let you know, and you can get onto the problem right away. So they're just way better than the competition that's out there, and so that's what they do. Yeah, it's wireless. One of the biggest, one of the big advantages is it's a wireless alarm and the fact that you don't have to run wire from the control box or where it calls out into your barn. All the sensors are wireless.

And then the other nice thing about it is you can really, you can pick. You don't have to get a phone call for every single thing. You can choose if you want to get a text message, if you want to get an email, if you want to get a phone call. You can tailor it for your specific need. And it's all app-based, so you can change stuff on the go. And anyway, we've, you know, obviously we like the product. We use the product.

Yeah, it was a game changer. It's been a game changer for us. And this is a little bit of a weird episode. Obviously, we haven't done an episode on the road before besides my garage. So no market update today. And if you hear any weird sounds of construction going on, everyone's trying to build their booths right now. So if you hear saws or you hear a reverse sound,

and somebody with a skid loader or something, who knows. Forklift, whatever, whatever. Bear with us on that. And also, we only have one mic in this interview between dad and I, so bear with us there too. But no market update, but remember to pay the fee. If you get any value from this episode, share it out with your friends, family, coworkers.

That's kind of the ticket to admission to watch or listen to the show. So we really appreciate all you guys that do share the show and watch and listen. and also leave a review on Spotify or Apple if you want to help us out in any way. So without further ado, let's get into it. Welcome to Barn Talk. This is a remote edition. So we're actually sitting live for now, not live when you get it.

Thank goodness because nobody wants to endure that. But we're actually at the World Pork Expo, 2022 in Des Moines, Iowa, and we're sitting in the Barn Tools 10. Look at this amazing. It's beautiful. It is that. this amazing sign that they made for us. Look at that. This will do farm, barn tools. And they're actually kind enough that they're going to give this to us at the end of the expo. So you must have done something right. I think they just looked at, I think Michael

might have just looked at me and said, you know, for having to work with his dad every day, Sawyer deserves something. So it's a good deal. There's a strategic placement of this in future videos. It will be. It's my secret plan. That's not so secret. It'll be front and center. Thank you. Okay. So with us, we got Michael Hansen, owner and founder and all around, I don't know, cat herder of barn tools. So the last time that we were together, we got cut short because thanks to the technical staff at Barn Talk, you got cut off about halfway through. Maybe we made it three quarters.

There might have been some drinking before. It could have been. Next time you're back, it'll be a lot better. It'll be a lot better. Perfect. But anyway, we've followed about a year since the last time that we all got together. And it seems to me like a lot, a lot has changed, a lot has happened. How do you feel like what's it like taking something that really was an idea and giving it legs and then hoping that what you think is the market turns out to be the market?

How's that experience been? Yeah, let me add that when we first started this, we incorporated the very last day of 2019, and we're like, we're going to chase this thing. And the COVID hit, the packing plant shut down. And so it's been one challenge after another, and the timing when we started this, I mean, since we survived that, I feel like we can survive anything from here on out. But we talked a year ago, like you said, the COVID thing was going to be. kind of we're on the tail end of it.

At least plants were running. The industry was trying to figure out, you know, a flow, putting that behind us. And we spent the, really the beginning, trying to figure out the good old product market fit, right? And when we nailed that, which is we want to be the best alarm system out there and provide connectivity to these farms, I think we really just took off.

We're not trying to be a bunch, a little of everything. I know there's a lot of offerings in AgTech right now, but if we can be the most reliable, easy to use, no install, modern alarm system, and we keep focusing on that, I think we'll continue to get traction, and we've had a lot of traction. So in terms of volume, well, we've outsold what we've done for manufacturing forecast, So that's been nice.

But we're getting, yeah, we're getting a lot of traction with poultry. Up in Canada, we're getting traction all around. And obviously swine is kind of the home market for us. And that's going well too. Yeah, one question dad and I had on the way up here, and you kind of answered it right there. I know you guys do stuff in Canada, but do you do it anywhere else besides North America?

Do you guys go anywhere else? Or do you plan on going international with it all the way? Currently, just some small pilots, but we are, well, I'm sworn to secrecy, but we do have some plans to do some joint partnerships and really take off in Latin America, South America. I would say those two markets and then with Europe following. I'm sure it's a good, like when you outstripped what your manufacturing projections were,

I'm sure that's a good feeling, followed by a panic attack of what are we going to do. But this is just an observation. I think it speaks a lot towards the product. When we installed our first one and we talked about this, our experience with the alarm system that we'd had was terrible. And when you have those experiences, you say to yourself, well, it must just be me. Or, you know, they sell these everywhere, so this can't be the case.

But I think the most surprising thing that I've found, because we get messages and people commenting on our stuff and DM them, is the response to me has just been overwhelming. And I have the same conversation with almost everybody that I talk to because they all had the same problems that I had. And that's got to be a good feeling. to fix that and to fix it at the scale that you have because for me I just felt like wow I had no idea that the scope of the market but also the scope of the

level of dissatisfaction with what people had it was kind of the status quo right and people are like this is just what it is this is how it is and I think what is really good testament to you know the the product there are customer satisfaction is we're creeping up on like 40% repeat buyers. So we know if, in fact, we have customers who will call us back and say, why didn't you tell me it's this easy? I'm like, we tried. And they'll buy one for their next barn or they'll have four or five barns.

And then they'll completely, you know, deck out their whole operation. And we look at that about how many customers come back and buy more. That metric is really, you know, an indicator of one that we're solving. a real problem too, you know, we're providing the customer support we promised. And then just the products has really made this headache that we've lived with and thought was the norm, really taking us to the next level. So, well, you exactly what you said there. I mean, we started out with one system and then we absolutely loved it and then we did it across the whole farm. And we haven't even looked back since. And you guys keep adding new features. You added a water

meter. You guys are in talks and maybe you added something else. I don't know if you released that yet or anything we kind of have a little inside scoop a little bit but is there anything that you're excited about coming coming down the pipeline as far as if you can speak about it we don't tell anybody yeah top secret i i think one thing that is interesting is so we focus on the alarm we want to be the best alarm but to do that we have to collect data real-time constantly monitor things whether that is water consumption or temperature and And so we're now working strategically with, you know, the data platforms like a meta-farms in the swine industry or M-Tech in the poultry industry and really helping accelerate what they're doing by being that bridge from the farm to these big data platforms.

Don't want to get into that ourselves. That's a heavy lift. We'll let those guys be good at that. but some future integrations to really utilize data with those kind of partnerships are coming down the pipe. So we kind of jumped right into this, but our goal with this podcast today is to interview some of the Barn Tools team, and Michael was the first one to sit down. And so we're going to just go through as many as we can to get their perspective and their story on things. So I just wanted to throw that out there. And we also only got one portable mic between Dad and I, so if you've seen any awkward,

interactions here of him holding giving me the mic or me trying to take the mic from him just like that just bear with us there because we're too cheap to get another one of these so you two might be awkward I'm not awkward at all hey at least maybe a little bit so yeah that's right the the sympathy we get the sympathy vote so a year from now where where do you want to be a year from now I sound I'm like your high school guy guidance counselor what do I want to be when I grow up I think a year from now we want to continue to get adoption, right? But also take care of the customers we have.

I'm not trying to go so wide where we can't support it. I'd rather go deep and build out the functionality we already have. Make the app better. The sensors we do have already, make them do more. We kick around ideas all the time. What if you could say, here's my humidity sensor, and here's my temperature sensor and combine them and get a heat index

with tools we already have. So I don't want to just keep adding to keep adding. Really, let's listen to what the customer has to say, let them inform development, the backlog, but work on the core, focus on being the best alarm. I know it's not a sexy answer, but if we do that well, I think we'll really continue to see growth. Yeah, and we kind of touched on that.

Obviously, the rate that you're seeing people adopting tells you that you've got a good product. But what's the feedback from guys when they get switched over? Do you get a lot of people that are calling you back and telling you, you know, they like it, they don't like it, game changer? I would assume it's pretty good feedback. So we emphasize customer success, which is really an initiative around getting you installed. We benchmark something we call time to value. How fast from when you get that in the UPS or the mail can you see your barn? So we want you to plug that thing in, hang the sensors, and see your operation.

The less you have to do and the quicker you can get there, the better. And then after, you know, certain milestones in this onboarding or setup, we'll see. send out a survey, how was it? How was installation? Okay, great. And the feedback's usually good. And we're also taking a proactive approach where post installation, we monitor every gateway.

Yes, we have the heartbeat, hang it every two minutes. But we also proactively monitor cell signal, et cetera. So if we see any sort of degradation and signal, et cetera, we'll proactively reach out, say, hey, let's try this. maybe we'll ship a new antenna, whatever the situation could be. But as we onboard you and as you're adopting the system, getting your first alarms, we're not off to the next sale for God about you. There's really an emphasis on that customer success element.

Yeah, and we have felt that with our systems. We've always felt like if we ever ever have a problem, you guys are there to be helpful. And what you were talking about earlier with having a simple approach to, you're, you know, scaling. I think that's what you want just as a system. When you talk about alarm systems, simple and easy is like the two best things you could possibly say for an alarm system. And that's exactly what you guys give. And reliable. Yes, definitely. And that's what you guys give people. One class question that I had for you is if you could give advice to young entrepreneurs out there that want to get started in business, start a business,

what was one big piece of advice you'd give them? Putting you on the spot here. That's a good question. So it's weird because I sometimes think about these things. And so I'm going to give you two. Okay. It's kind of a two for one. One, as corny as it is, don't give up because there are so many times with COVID. And when back to the packing plant's closing, we watched every wallet close with it, right? And to go to market the wrong way. oh this is an alarm this is something else and just be totally rejected it's like go fast go often learn keep pushing forward pivot as you go there's so many times I feel like it's like all this isn't gonna work but you just got to keep adapting okay and I know this that is like totally never quit but just try something else keep experimenting right so if I maybe I should say that keep experimenting because you will find a way and if you if you learn from your experiments and adjust I truly think

you'll you'll get there you could read a book about all this but my other half to this advice is just go do something right yeah I mean you can take the business school let's do a SWAT analysis and none of that matters try learn keep pushing forward that's good that's real good well I know that you got to keep the wheels turning so we'll we'll let you let you let's you get on with it but we really appreciate you taking time to sit down with us and we'll catch up again thank you appreciate it so now we're joined with another awesome person of the barn tools team it just it's going to get better and better as each person we go through so I feel

sorry for the last guy I feel sorry for the last guy he's not going to be able to live up to our expectation so we'll let you give a little brief introduction to who you are Jim and what you do at barn tools how you ended up How you ended up in cahoots with Mike? Yeah, Michael found me on LinkedIn. So we started working together almost four years ago, and we were doing some steel fabrication for the hog industry, making feeders and gates and crates.

And so he recruited me. I have a lot of experience in manufacturing. I actually grew up on a hog farm just outside of Oskillusa in Mahaska County. My dad, John Reichen, still raises pigs, for JBS. When I was there it was Farrow to finish all the way, all the manual labor, grind and feed with the tractor. Well, if you can make that work, you can do anything. So that's like, that's your ticket.

Yeah, so I got, I got hogs in my roots, went and worked with Michael, and then as he mentioned earlier, about two and a half years ago, we decided to leave the low margin business of gate manufacturing. It's a race to the bottom. It is a race to the bottom. I'm going to come over to technology and we've been working together with barn tools. And I'm the C.O.O. So I make things happen on the operation side, supply chain, getting things done. Different problem every day. Maybe more than one.

From what we've gathered from meeting with you guys, Michael seems like the big idea guy. He's always dreaming and you seem like the guy that says, Michael, now, that's the sounds good, but how are we going to get it done? That's exactly how it works, Sawyer. He's the visionary, and I'm the integrator. So my job is to take those ideas and make them a reality, and also my job is to say no when the idea maybe isn't quite right, or maybe now's not the time. We kind of have similar roles.

Sawyer is the big dream guy, and I have half your position. I just say no, because I don't know how to make any of them happen, really. But you can shut some down? But I can shut, yeah, I try to shoot down as many as possible because I'm just looking for the path of least resistance. That's experience talking. He's looking for the way to get to the mower with a rider with a coozy on the side of it. So he can keep his beer in there.

But, yeah, so tell us a little bit about these water meters. You seem to know you want to talk about that and shine some light on how those are performing for people. Yeah, we launched, well, we launched all our products last year at World Pork Expo, including the water meter. And our ultrasonic water meter doesn't have a propeller inside. There's no moving parts, so it's robust. You can mount it in different directions. But what we really like about it is we're taking a water meter reading every 20 minutes.

So we have the ability to see what's happening in near real time regarding water. And we've been building out and testing alarm. related to water flow, and we've had some really good success stories. So we've been able to help guys detect leaks way earlier, on average, 18 to 20 hours earlier than they would have. That leak starts right after they've done Chorrin, and they don't get back till the next day, or if they skip a day, or they don't see the water leak on the first day. We're sending an alarm. We've helped guys save 10,000, 20,000 gallon of water, and they've said, hey, I wouldn't have known about this, but your alarm told me I had a leak,

so I had to go find it. Yeah, you know, I think that's one of the byproducts. That might not be the right word, but that's one of the big differences that we've noticed between what I would call a stagnant alarm system. In other words, the alarm that we used to have, it was there, but if you wanted to know any information off of it other than an emergency, you would have to call it and get a status update. And that was a very genetic. So the thing that I...

Did you ever do that? No, I never did that. The thing that I find that I really like about our alarm today about Barn Talk is that that information is so easy to get where now I find myself when I'm, you know, it's hot out and I just think, oh, I wonder what the temperature is. I wonder how much water they're drinking. I wonder if everything's okay. And when you can just bring that up so quickly,

it's much more, it's not, you know, that information might have been there before, but you didn't want to go through the hassle of getting it, and now it's right at your fingertips, and that's kind of a bonus that when we put that in, I don't think we really thought about it, but that information is so much more usable. so I find myself actually using it and checking on things more than what I ever used to.

On the water meter, two sizes. Do you have them made five sizes? Five sizes. So we had quarter inch increments from half inch up to inch and a half. Nice. So three quarter inch is the most common one. Almost for every gateway we sell. On average we sell one, three quarter inch water meter. Sure. And then sow farms, bigger farms. might need something bigger. If you're going to get into a room level, then you might get down to that half-inch water meter. So on the app, on the interface, how, what kind of information can you get off of that today?

So when you look at the app, we always show you the water consumed in the last 24 hours. So it doesn't matter if you're looking at it. First thing in the morning, middle of the day, at night, that number, you kind of get to know that, you get a feel for that number, and if it looks wrong, then you can click. on the tile open and up and we'll show you the consumption every day for the last

week and you can go back four weeks and on that graph we also put a three-day rolling average so you can tell if you're going above or you're of your going what your trend is exactly and then I'll so and then on the alarm side we have four different alarms that you can set related to water how many how long without any flow so oh my pigs are out of water yeah then you got this leak detection which can detect these big leaks. And then we have, we can in a short period of time

tell you how much above, if you're a lot above that average, that three day average, or if you're below. And on the below side, we've been able to detect those 25% drops in water, which has always kind of been a rule of thumb. And when you see pigs go off water, something bad's about to happen. And we can see that on average one to two days before the caretaker realized that. Hey, these pigs are coughing.

They got PED now. I got to start treating them. Mortality kicks up. The sooner we can detect that, I think the better job we can do helping people stay ahead of disease. Yeah, absolutely. You want to?

I'd take it, yeah. I was going to go backwards a little bit. So you guys got into tech. You know, you were in steel and doing gates and stuff for the hog business. But how did you have experience with tech or did you guys say, hey, we're going to learn. this and we're going to go jump into it because we see a need in the business.

How did you get into tech? Tech is always, computers has always been a hobby of mine, right? So when I was growing up, they started selling computers in Walmart, and I would go into Walmart, and I would go up to a computer with a terminal, and I'd write a program and I'd walk away. Because I just, I was in middle school, probably, maybe early high school, play around with tech. I've always been into databases, and I've loved common data from wherever, and, and, and, and, and, and, analyzing it and putting it to good use. And so thinking about ag tech, we saw a gap.

And animal agriculture wasn't really taken advantage of the technology. And the tech side is out there ready to be used. We didn't have to come up with some cutting edge tech. We're taking stuff that's been proven in other parts of our lives and putting it to use in animal ag tech. And it's really been fun, satisfying, challenging, yes, but super rewarding.

Yeah. Yeah, it's nice when you do something, it actually works and it actually helps people, helps solves a problem, as opposed to creates a problem. So I loved, last year we loved talking to people who just said, I really wanna put this in because I want some peace of mind, because I don't live on the site anymore.

I'm always five miles away. But I don't know what's going on. And those pigs or those animals are my livelihood. And I can sleep better at night if I've got a good alarm system. That just kind of makes you feel good when you can provide that kind of product. Yeah. To just a farmer. Amen to that because a year ago, when we were up here, we had one barn talk system,

and that was in Sawyer's Barn. And it was hot. It was, as it usually is, it's either scorching hot or it's rain in here. Although it looks like we might have pretty decent weather this year. But Sawyer got, he got an alarm text that his temperature was high. Well, when we had installed it, we hadn't set the thresholds. We hadn't changed them from what the default was. So he just got on the app and raised it up and it was fine.

Then about five minutes later, my alarm started calling me. And it wouldn't take my password. and I had to call my fieldman and beg him to drive to my site and raise the limit because I hadn't raised it from winter because I always lowered it in the winter. And that was when I knew that we'd made the right decision, but we should have started with my barns instead of Sawyers. You had a little alarm envy. I did have alarm envy. And so now you've got systems in every one of your barn. Not only is a younger, better looking Whistler, he also had a better alarm system.

So it was just added insult to injury. Well, your story is like a lot of our customers. People like to get one. They install it. It was easy. It did what we said it was going to do. They started to rely on it. Come back and buy more.

The one thing that I absolutely love about barn tools is you don't have to keep buying new hardware. You guys aren't going to come out with a new gateway every single year. You just have the data. You have the software that gets updated like an app. And we don't have to continue to buy a new gateway every year. year that's new and improved with new features and that's something that Tesla does that dad really loves biggest companies in the world that's smart companies in the world are starting to do that kind of stuff and I think that's huge for people and it's big for me too because I don't want to keep buying

a new gateway every single year I don't want to have to upgrade I would love to just keep the same system and keep the app getting updated so that I can get the new features that way yeah I think that's a I think that's something that I guess we haven't really talked about may not get talked about enough, but you know, as you get in this, being able to use that data in different ways means that some of the benefits may not be any hardware that you buy. It's just more information that you're able to get from the app. Absolutely. I think our alarms, you mentioned dumb alarms. We call full potential alarms is a word we like to use. and we see we'll continue to be able to get smarter information

to keep our customers informed or alerted if there are issues that they need to know about. Okay, one last thing I want to talk about, and that is the dry contact that you guys have added. You have, if I understand right, a wireless dry contact, how long has that been out and what all, in what ways can you use that? So a wire, yeah, we make a wireless sensor that can measure a dry contact.

We also have dry contacts in our, in our gateway, but the dry contact typically be used to measure, let's say water pressure. We've got a water pressure switch with a couple of wires coming off and normally open and normally closed in a common wire. You take a pair of those, wire them into this wireless dry contact. And that sensor can be two buildings away, or it could be in the pump house measuring water pressure. your gateway is in your office and we'll send that wireless signal. It's an event-triggered alert. So when the switch changes state from open to close or close to open, we can create an alarm that you can be notified.

Hey, water pressure has gone down. People have put those in when they have multiple buildings. You've got one ventilation controller, be it an AP expert or Chortronics or whatever you got. for your building controller. All of those were built with an error wire that used to go into your other alarm system. Daisy change.

Yeah, exactly. So we would say buy one gateway, put it in one barn, put it next to your ventilation controller and wire that ventilation controller into the gateway. But on barn two and barn three, just grab this wireless dry contact sensor, go hanging in next to that ventilation controller, and now you'll be notified when each of your

buildings if there's a problem in either one of your buildings. Yeah, you know, and that brings up a good point. One thing that I really like about our barn talk system is wireless. Because in my past life, when I did service, one of the most common problems and one of the most frustrating things to track down is when you had a sensor that was faulted, but it wasn't necessarily the sensor itself. It was somewhere between that alarm box and where that sensor dropped, which could be a long ways.

And you're trying to oam out wire and find, you know, and mice and wiring don't get along. And mice with hog buildings, they do get along. And so it's a problem. And not having all those wires is a great asset or a great way to do it. You could also use that dry contact. Like if you wanted a door alarm, I'm assuming. Pretty much anything you can wire do it normally open, normally closed.

Exactly. And then you can, we also install them with relays. We have one here in the booth. So you can measure a one 10 volt circuit. And if that circuit comes on or off, you can create a wireless signal off the dry contact to let you know what's happening. Yeah, it just gives you a lot of flexibility. So if you have an auger, if you want to do measure auger run time, grab a relay, put this sensor in there. Then you set when you want to be notified.

So if the auger runs more than 60 minutes, tell me. And you can do that with those wireless dry contact sensors as well. That's awesome. Yeah, that's a lot of possibilities. Okay, so I think we're going to be wrapping it up here with you, Jim. But one last question I wanted to ask you is the same one I asked Michael at the end. One piece of advice gives to the young entrepreneur out there that's wanting to start a business, what advice would you give them?

I'm an engineer, I'm a little risk adverse. I like to do my calculations and then do them again. If you're going to start a business, when you're 75, 80% sure you've got something, try it, go and learn and it's similar to what Michael said, but I would say the same. You've got to have an attitude of just do it. Stop debating or procrastinating. Do you think Michael, do you think Michael? Do you think Michael would have been at 75, 80%, or do you think he would have been more like 40?

We're a good balance. Yeah, that's our rule. That's how, Ying and Yang. Yeah, that's good. He's ready. I might want to take a little more time. Eventually, we do go. You've got to go.

That's right. Well, thanks for sitting down with us. Yeah. Okay. So now, you like these quick changes? We just, we got this going now. Now we're joined by Greg Burroughs, and he is the, He is the guy that makes sure that all of you out there actually knows anything about barn tools

and anything that you see or here that is barn tools. It's because of this guy right here. Can you describe it all, right? No, it's impressive. It really is impressive. And it really, if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be here either because you're kind of the one that got this ball rolling. But let's take a step back. You want to go ahead.

So when did you come on board and what's kind of your background? How did you end up here? Sure. A long twisted road for sure. I started, I think back in March of 2021 with the Barn Toll's team. I think I was maybe like the fourth or fifth team member at the time. We were super small. I did a COVID career change.

My background's all in the live music industry. and Michael and I connected at a roadside dive bar right off I-80. No, just kidding. We found, I had just done like a software coding boot camp, and it started to do applying for jobs, searching for my next chapter. I'd been booking bands and had no idea when that was going to come back. So we found on a website called Angel List,

that is a place where startups go and look for, you know, different jobs, kind of a classified field there. Yeah, so that was touching on. Greg was the one that kind of introduced barn tools to this-l-do farm because I got an email from Greg, and it was like, hey, we like what you're doing. Do you guys want to collaborate? And at first I was like, who are these guys? And then Michael reached out to you on LinkedIn, and then you mentioned to me and I mentioned to you,

and we looked in it to him more. So Greg was the first one to really get this thing rolling for us. I think we, if we're being honest, I think we probably tried every way to get a hold of you guys. I don't remember who first introduced us, but I think we had an email. I think I messaged you guys on Facebook. Michael hit you on LinkedIn. Yeah, it was, I think Marcio introduced us to each other. But Greg is the guy that when we're planning out some barn tool skits on some stuff we're running or if new stuff comes, new ideas come to collaborate.

barn tools. Greg is the guy that hears all our rambling ideas and he even has to tell us no sometimes because we get a little crazy and he, you know, we have good fun and you, we always collaborate and come up with some good stuff. So yeah, I mean, really, barn tools, barn talk and barn talk, this will be far. It's like, it's like divine providence because when Michael reached out to me on LinkedIn, we were both kind of like, wait, So you're, he's like, so your podcast is called Barn Talk. It was like, your chocolate's in my peanut butter because I was like, wait, you got a company called Barn Tools with an alarm called Barn Talk? And he's like, yeah.

And we always make the, we always make the comments like it's a match made in heaven. But it was totally, like we just totally kind of started at the same time. And the fact that we're both in the same industry, it was just, it was meant to be. It really was. The synergy was definitely immediate. We got to give a shout out to this sign here. This is all Greg right here, too. He surprised us with this sign.

He said, I said before we came up to the show, I said to him, hey, Greg, wouldn't it be cool if we had like a poster or a sign something saying, hey, this will do farm doing this thing? And he said, oh, don't worry, guys, I got you covered. It's a secret. It's a secret. I got you covered. And when we showed up here today, this puppy was sitting here, and it's badass.

And we're going to put it in the barn somewhere. I think it's even better in the barn. than it does here if I'm being honest. Yeah, I was a little reclaimed. I was, I almost, my wife would be proud because I almost had a feeling there. But then I, I smashed it, I buried it way down deep. And once we're done, we're not going to speak of it again.

So, but it is truly awesome. We thank you guys for that. It was great. This is actually hanging in the bar that Michael and I met, and that's how I knew that we needed to bring it here to you guys. Yes, I like it. I like it. So that kind of the same,

the same, I guess, line of questioning. So when you came to Barn Tools, four people, five people, and you were tasked with, okay, we got this great product, now go sell it to everybody, or go get it in front of the world. So was that kind of a daunting task? And I guess the second part of that is from where you started to today, how is the team grown? Sure. So our plan, I think Jim talked a little bit about it, but our plan was to target World Pork Expo of last year for our kind of official launch. And I think that coming from my background in the music industry where we're constantly trying to break new bands, and in all of the moving pieces,

the different dynamics that that looks like, it was not probably as foreboding as it should have been. It felt very just kind of relatable. It was something that's like, hey, you just gotta get out there and start moving, get some action, get some momentum, start taking some steps. I think we kind of started getting the word out

on social media, which is where we obviously connected with you guys and we're like, hey, there's an immediate relationship here, with we're both trying to grow social media brands initially, right? And then we had DMG marketing. They were a firm, more of a traditional marketing firm, that really helped us prepare for World Pork and get our feet under us, bring the booth together,

get some flyers and promotional materials together. We were really, really lucky to have them on. And then we started hiring more and more because we got some great success going. Definitely kind of started snowballing downhill a little bit. We brought on Drew Mogler to do sales. We brought on Adriana to start doing some sales, start doing some support, some shipping. All of us have definitely worn lots of hats early on.

And just here recently in the last six weeks, eight weeks or so, our team has almost doubled in size, which has been awesome. Jim and I have both kind of joked that this is. is the first time where we don't know exactly everything that everyone's working on every day. And that's a little scary, but also really exciting too. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, so was it a challenge coming into the, because you weren't in the hog business at all. Like, you never knew the business, like you never were involved in it. Was it a challenge to kind of adapt to that?

Or did you have some, was there anything that was hard to try to adapt when coming into the hog business from never coming into it or never having any sort? experience before. Well, oh, nice catch. Yeah, thanks. Uh, I, if my, my two sense is it probably wasn't because, you know, speaking as a hog producer, I feel like I'm a rock star every day. So, I mean, I imagine the marketing's very similar. Yeah, you know, um, is this, is this okay to say non-PC stuff on here? Yeah, I think it is. Okay. I think it is. Um, I think my mindset when I approached Michael with the job listing was that I've been selling shit to rednecks for a long time. That's good.

And so, not just selling, but marketing, too. You know, I was living in Nashville for a decade, playing country music, and been all over the country in little redneck dive bars and talking to all sorts of people from all walks of life. That definitely helps. That helps, you know. And I think that when we, obviously, I had no idea any of the terms, vocabulary, any of the way to do anything.

But I guess I just kind of dove right in and asked a bunch of dumb questions. And Michael and Jim were super patient. with me and answered all my dumb questions. Okay, I lost my train of thought, but now I got the thought back. When you're doing a podcast, you got to just grab the frickin' mic and go with it. So, every, you know, a lot of people in this business, a lot of businesses, you know, companies in the hog business, they look at what you guys are doing as far as marketing-wise, and they go, they must have a 20-person team doing all this, because you guys got magazines,

you got, you know, you got social media, you're running ads, you're doing all this stuff. how many people are in your marketing team and how do you get it all done? Good question. So one of the recent hires that we did was Maddie McGarry, who joined us. She was working for Senator Ernst in D.C. And so she'd been doing a bunch of the press secretary type stuff there. And she came on board right in that same six, eight week ago, time span. And she's the second person on our team.

It's pretty much just me and her running the marketing. Michael is a huge help. Michael and Jim give us all the leash that we want to be able to run crazy ideas into the ground or hopefully make them fly. But they're super supportive of us and let us try dumb stuff and see what works. Okay. So think about for a minute, if you wind the clock back when you started, in an era that didn't have social media, do you think that, do you think that barn tools could have achieved the speed of growth that it has without social media. Hmm.

I think that's an easy no. Yeah. I think it's just amazing. It's just amazing how many people you can reach and how kind of diverse the avenues are for reaching them. Because just like with us, you know, we split our content up and we put it on all platforms. Yeah. But the reactions, the comments, the amount of time people spend with us varies so much by platform.

For sure. But for starting, you know, for getting the word out there, whatever you're trying to market or whatever you're trying to do, it's, we truly live an amazing, amazing time. We do. It's been a real force multiplier for us for sure. I think not only with having you guys, But we've been really urging our customers to try to post, tell their friends, kind of try to hit some viral stuff, get some user-generated content out there. And that's been just a huge help. I don't know, people like to talk about stuff that they like, you know. Especially farmers. Yeah. If they got something, they like, they'll tell you all about it.

And then hopefully makes their daily lives easier. Right. And, I mean, your guy's product does that. I was going to touch on what you said, trying to cultivate, like, you are the pioneer of, you know, marketing on social media for the hog business because they're really, I think you guys are the well, I'd say for a business, you guys for a business in this space, in this industry, have done a phenomenal job. And there was really no one else to look to to see, well, what are they doing? You know, you guys kind of were like, well, no one's really doing this.

And so, you know, I got to, we got to give you guys. credit for, you know, taking the bowl by the horns and just saying, we're going to try everything we can. And you are like paving the way for other people in this space or in this industry to market. And so, and we were kind of the same, you know. You know, we were kind of the same because there's no other hog producer out there doing what we're doing. And, you know, we're like, you think we should show this? You think we shouldn't show this? And we're just, you know what?

We're going to try it out. And so. And I think that's why we were so adamant to reach you guys at first. We're like, they're out there putting their faces on everything. showing everything, pulling the curtain back. We want to do that exact same thing. We're brand new, but we saw you guys as a huge tool, a huge asset, and been a great partner. This is right in line with what we're talking about, right in line.

You said something very powerful, and I just want you to know that when we redo the podcast table, I'm getting one of those like plaques that they have at the bank with your name on it, And it's just going to say force multiplier. That's what I want my new nickname to be. I want to be force multiplier. I think that is, I think that sums up what I'm about. Just multiply it forcefully? Forcefully.

It's the Family and Friends event at Shopper's Drugmark. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC optimum app to get your coupon. Should add more kids then. I guess it should. It's not too late, right?

Maybe I use too much force. That's... Hold on. Heart at it. Okay. Well, I think we've held up progress long enough here at the Barn Tools booth. And we appreciate you stopping by. We appreciate you guys coming by and having us.

And once again, thank you so much for allowing us to... broadcast from up here to shoot up here. It's going to be a great time. So likewise. Can't wait to see this bad boy up in the barn. Yep. Glad to be here. Thanks for coming. Thanks for getting sitting down with us, Greg. And can't wait for more of the expo. Welcome back to World Pork Expo 2022. We're joining in the booth right now with Ryan from Bramer Featers. And you kind of notice a pattern developing because if you're a follower of the show you've definitely seen in Sawyer's barn a set of their PT feeders and so Ryan why don't you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Braimer and what you guys do yeah so my name is Ryan

Bramer I work at Bram Manufacturing I am an HR at Bram Manufacturing and do project management oversee all the projects estimating we got about 60 employees back in where do we're located? But yeah, I've been following you guys for a while now. You guys are great for the industry. Love watching it. We appreciate that. And we met Ryan, well, I met Ryan, last Pork Expo.

And, you know, it's hard to find young people in the industry. And so we kind of hit it off when we talked. And so we've been just talking and we love the product. And so tell us a little bit about how the show's going for you and what makes your guys' PT feeder better than the company? feeder better than the competition. Yeah, so the show this year has been great. I think everybody's kind of put COVID in the past, but we're still being safe. It's had a lot of interaction. But our feeder is, we have a hog feeder. It's a wet dry feeder. That's what you guys have. It's called a PT

framework feeder. It's a paddle and tray mixture. The best thing about it is management. Very easy to manage. That's why we chose it because you know how good our management skills. are. That's exactly what you guys are. So we needed something simple. Yeah. That's what you told it. Yeah, so it's very easy to manage.

The waste on feed is going to improve. It's just a, and then we've been building feeders for about 28 years now. So we know it works, how not to build it and what lasts. So the longevity of the feeder is going to, it's, you'll see that. One thing I wanted to ask you about is it's got to have been a struggle in this last year because obviously you make a lot more things than just feeders but most everything you make is made out of metal. How much of a struggle is it to try to price things when you don't know what next week's

metal price is going to be? Yeah, so we used to be able to price things for our months at a time and it would last for six months or so, even a year. And this so far, it's gotten a little bit better, but we had to change every week. You could never really get a price sheet or anything like that. And it has been a struggle for demand. Demands high. There's not a lot out there, but the price has just gone crazy.

One thing I wanted to throw in about the PT feeder, because all of my feeders at my barn are PT Bremer feeders. And our manure quality has been so much better out of that barn just because with the water cups, a lot of those nipples will leak and the water will go into the pit and it will reduce the manure quality, but with these wet drys, a lot less water goes into the pit. So for us as hog farmers, on top of being grain farmers, that manure is really valuable to us. And the better nutrient value that manure can give you, the better, you know, that manure is going to be for you.

So that's one thing that I really love about wet dries in general is that, and your guys' feeder does that. But I will say you will get some wear on your feeder pads a little more because they're not going to be going to the water cup. they're going to go to the feeder for water and food, or feed. So it's been really good, though. I love it. I recommend it to anybody out there that's wanting to get wet dry.

Yeah, wet dry, they always told us that you get to wait a lot faster. As Brahmers, we were also hog producers, or we've grown hogs ourselves, so we know it doesn't work and what works in that industry. We built a feeder that is easy for maintenance and stuff, because when we were in the barns, we didn't want to do all that hard maintenance and engineering-wise and kind of made it nice to easy for the guy actually taking care of the hub. Yeah, so for people that might not, you know, you might not feed pigs, you might not be familiar. So in our industry, typically there's really two types of feeders out there.

So my site one and my site two, they are a traditional site in the fact that they have, dry feeders and cup water. So in other words, they've got a hopper feeder that's got a gate that you can adjust on each side and the pigs eat feet out of that. Then when they want to drink, they go to a water cup and get that. So there's a lot of back and forth. And if you look at the wear in my building, there's a lot of wear from the feeder pad to the cup because the pigs are going back and forth. They eat some feed. They want to drink. They get a drink. Then they want some feed. They go back and forth. What a wet dry feeder does is it moves the water to the feeder, and in them there's nipples down in the bottom above the pan, and the feed sits above, and the pigs have to move a tray back and forth or move a paddle. And the PT, when they say paddle tray, that's what it means. They have paddles below the tray that agitated.

And for us, what we really like about it is that from where the pigs come in as weiner, until they go out, the amount of adjustment that we have to make in those feeders is just actually a few notches, and you don't have to adjust them very often. And that's just less management on our part and less feed wastage, less water wastage. So, yeah, that's my two cents. One last thing I want to ask you is you guys do a lot more than just feeders. So what are some of the other products that you make out there? So we've been building feeders for 28 years, but in the last about six years, we've really gotten into fertilizer equipment.

We build fertilizer boxes, tender boxes, which is a big one of our industry now. And now we do a conveyor. That's one part of our business. We do entire recycling equipment. We're in 28 different countries. And with that, so we do a lot of different things, which is nice, diverse in the manufacturing world, like you said, with all the metal and pricing, staying in the market with that, it's nice to have different products that can bounce off each other.

So do you guys have anything new coming down in the pipeline, or are you just focusing on doing what you guys do best? We're still focusing on getting our feeder out there because the word of mouth's been great. I mean, just hearing you guys, we feel really good about it. So we want to get that more out there and help production, get pricing down as we're really focused on now. But yeah, at Bramers, we're always looking for the next thing. We're trying to build a new conveyor for fertilizer with different kind of products and ways of building it to make it easier for the customer. So, yeah, we're, we feel pretty good about the future.

Well, we appreciate you coming, stopping by. Nice talking to you. And if you guys want to get a wet dry, where can they reach out to you to if they weren't if they're interested in any of your products? You can call Bram Manufacturing at 4.02. 687-2655. You guys got a website too? Yeah, go bramer.com. And we have a Facebook and Twitter page. So take care of you. You heard them, folks. If you want to wet dry or anything out there, go out, reach out to them. Okay, welcome back to Moore World Pork Expo 2022. We're back in the booth and we got Rachel with us. Rachel is a fellow southeast Iowa, actually Washington County person. So we're a good company.

and we wanted to get her on today. She works for integrity builders, but she's also kind of a fellow social media guru, and she's really gotten into it, and we just kind of wanted to get her thoughts on it. So Rachel, why don't you tell us a little bit about you and what you're doing today and whatever else? I'm sure.

I am Rachel Fishback out of Washington, Iowa, where Tork and Sawyer both live. Ironically, Trisha, his wife, who was my kids' preschool teacher back in the day. How's that possible? And so, yeah, I work for integrity builders, and I do social media, marketing, and a little bit of sales for them. Awesome. Yeah, so what kind of got you who's wanting to start getting on social media?

What drove you to do that? So I did it in other positions that I held in the past. I started at Integrity two years ago. Darrell has been great at just letting me do my own research in social media and put their message out, trusting my background, I guess. And so, so yes, I'm just trying to facilitate and utilize all of the social media channels out there for our company. Yeah, I'd say you do a really good job. I see you on TikTok, Instagram.

and I always say this, but like, I don't care who you're, who what you do in this industry. I think everybody's story matters, whether you're building, whether you're a nutritionist, whether you're a vet, whether you're a producer, everybody's got a story. And if we could show that to the consumer, like, hey, we're calculated and how we take care of these pigs and make it easier for the person taking care of the pigs.

And like the building side of that shows that because, you know, there's a lot that goes into building these buildings to make it great for the animal. and the person taking care of the pigs. Definitely. Like, I mean, and you guys both see it. You've been in the construction side. I mean, you stop and think about all of the hands that go into constructing a hog building

that so many people wouldn't even know. They just see a hog building sitting there. And then so many hands that go into making that hog building operate and the care and the expertise put into those livestock farms and the love for animals. Like, I just, I agree with you 2,000%. So many more people need to be telling their story. Yeah.

And something that isn't touched on enough when it comes to ag construction is every state and every community, they like to promote economic development. Well, when you go down the list of all of the suppliers, contractors that go into building these buildings, it's like, creating jobs all over the state of Iowa, predominantly in the state of Iowa. Obviously, there's some things that are made out of state, but man, it is, it's a great economic developer within the state. So how's your house construction season this year? It's been a great spring, hadn't it? I mean, so, yes, it's been a rough spring. We've had cold, wet rain final, I mean, thankfully, down in southeast Iowa, we didn't have the horrible. problems they've had up in Minnesota or even Western Iowa to experience and even parts of Illinois.

Like there's guys that are still planting and my heart feels for them. You know, we've had springs like that and it's just not fun. So we're getting some things underway, trying to share a lot of the building process this year with our audience and showing you the different hands that go into constructing a hog building and, like, you know, economical development. I just did a slap video last week with Custom Preast. 17 semi-loads. That's 17 semi-drivers just to get those slats to a building.

You know, you stop and think about that. And then you think about how many tires a semi has on it, how many tires in their community are being replaced by their tire company. It's a great. It's a great thing for the whole. It's good for the Midwest. It's good for the economy. It's good overall.

How's the booth? How's your booth doing this year? How's your experience with the World Pork Expo this year? I think the crowd has been amazing. Like we were a little nervous. Some of the state shows have been a little bit quiet. But I have to give it to them. Like this is a great opportunity. We've seen so many different people, the countries that are covered here. It's great. Like I think our turnout has been amazing. Yeah, I feel like the mood is is a lot better than what it was last year. I think people are happy to be out, happy to be here. They might be worried about how they're going to pay for gas to get home, but they're happy to be here. So, well, thanks for sitting down with us. We really appreciate you spending some time.

We hope you have a good rest of your show. And we look forward to seeing more videos because you do good. Thank you.