My First Million - The Simple Newsletter Making $20M+ A Year With 1 Employee

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

Episode 603: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Kevin Van Trump ( https://x.com/KevinVanTrump ) about his journey from rural farm kid, to commodities trader, to creator of a farm newsletter that’s making $20M/year.  — Show Notes:  (0:45) How Sam met Kevin, then got his mind blown (2:05) Shaan's reaction at his 1st Farmcon experience (Corn futures and options trading) (4:35) The farmer's theory of the old bear and the young bull (5:00) How Kevin's newsletter inspired Shaan to start Milk Road (6:25) Breaking down The Van Trump Report ($18M ARR run by 4 ppl) (8:05) Rural farm kid gets into trading (12:28) Farmers operating at the highest level (13:50) Ag Swag (16:18) The Van Trump Business Model "People buy value not price" (19:00) The customer continuum (20:43) Poker vs chess (23:57) The decision to do nothing is still a decision (25:04) Trader v investor (28:20) How most people should be building wealth (32:37) Why the wealthy are getting into agriculture (33:55) The succession plan for farms (36:00) The economics of professional bull riding (39:14) The come up of FarmersOnly (41:15) How to buy a farm (44:32) Wearables for livestock (45:18) Blockchaining farms (47:55) Kevin's take on lab-grown meat (50:00) Opportunity zones: air, shelter, food, water (52:35) New trend: trade schools (54:24) Roll ups for wealth creation (55:30) How to gain new perspectives (purposefully) (57:50) Windows vs doors — Links: • FARMCON - https://www.farmcon.com/ • The Van Trump Report - https://www.vantrumpreport.com/ • AgSwag - https://agswag.com/ • Bid On Beef - https://www.bidonbeef.com/ • AcreTrader - https://acretrader.com/ • Zoetis - https://www.zoetisus.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Did you save like 30,000 subscribers at $600 a year? Yeah, probably in the 30 to 40,000 range on paid subscribers. You've got to tell me everything here. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road. All right, Kevin, what's going on, man? We're here.

So I have got to do a quick story on how we met. So about four years ago, I think we're in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Design Pickle Conference. I just get done doing this talk about how. how the hustle is like doing pretty good. We're at a million subscribers, whatever. At the end of the talk, I just walk back stage or I walk in the back of the crowd. You're wearing a Ramon's t-shirt and like shorts and you walk up to me and you're like, hey, nice little talk you did there.

And I was like, oh, thank you. And you've got this confidence about you. And you're like, so how many subscribers do you have? And I was like, I think a million or something like that. And you go, well, you know, that's pretty nice. I got a little newsletter myself. We're doing okay. We got about 30,000 subscribers.

and I was like, oh, that's a good start. And you said, well, how much do you charge people to read the hustle? And I'm like, it's free. I make money via advertising. And you're like, oh, you don't charge? And I was like, you do? And you go, yeah, we charge about $600. And it takes about 10 seconds.

And I'm like, doing the math. And I'm like, wait, did you save 30,000 subscribers at $600 a year? And you're like, yeah, what do you expect? And it turns out you've got this massive newsletter business. And I was like, what's the newsletter about? And you're like, oh, we talked to farmers. It's all about farming and agriculture. And I'm like, wait, hold on, man.

You've got to tell me everything here. And that's when my mind was blown. And I was like, we got to get you on. And it took about four years, but finally we made it happen. I appreciate it. Sean, what did you think when you met the Van Trump's and got around his people? Man, I would just call it a series of amazement and confusion. I showed up.

And first of all, it's called FarmCon. So I think the conference is going to be a bunch of farmers. By the way, at this point in my life, I don't think I'd ever met a farmer. I had grown up overseas. I live on the coast. I had never really met a farmer. So I thought it's going to be about farming and whatnot. And instead, it's actually about investing.

So that was the first part where I was amazing and confused about was I walk in and it's a talk going on about options trading corn futures. And it was so far over my head. And I was like, wow, wait, these guys are actually talking about crazy Wall Street stuff. What's going on here? And then over time, I met a bunch of people. The conference was amazing. And they were like, well, what are you doing here?

And I was like, I don't know. I don't farm and I don't trade commodities. So I'm not really sure, but I'm here to talk. I have a talk scheduled tomorrow. And I'm here to just be out of my comfort zone, be out of my bubble because I had only been going to tech conferences. When I was doing my research for this pod, I learned that you actually kind of did a similar thing, which was that there was a period of your life where you wanted to shake things up,

and you started just going to different conferences or trade shows that were totally unrelated to what you were doing and what you were familiar with. You kind of intentionally put yourself in that to just shake up your worldview. Is that right? Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, for sure. That's how I meant Sam. I mean, we were out this, I don't even know what the hell it was. My son had called and said, let's just make it where we make ourselves go to different things, make ourselves uncomfortable, get out of our comfort zone. He called me and said, hey, there's a conference in Phoenix. Mom wanted to go to Phoenix and out there.

And I said, what is it? And he said, design pickle. I said, what the hell are we? They had people speaking out. We're doing like hair. You know, they were at a hair drying business and they had all kinds of crazy. I said, okay, I'll go. Shit, next thing I find myself walking around the courtyard of this place, holding another

guy's hand. Like, you know, shit, I never do here in the Midwest. Right. What is going on? You know, they had us doing some weird stuff. And, yeah, and that's where I met Sam. And so, yeah, each year, we try. we try to go to different things.

Just to get different perspective, different views. You know, we just believe in trading and investing. It's all about perspective. And, you know, you can get blindsided a million different ways. And so I like to be around the younger people to help broaden my perspective because, you know, we always say in our business, it's the old bear and the young bull. As we get older, we tend to get more bearish just because we don't, we don't understand as much as we did when we were younger. You know, when we were younger, we were aggressive and we knew the latest, greatest

things. And now that we get older, most of my older hedge fund friends and traders, we're more cynical and barish. Just by nature, it seems like, because we just don't understand a lot of the newer stuff. Well, I'll give you two things that came out of it. Number one, after FarmCon, me and Ben, in the lobby of the hotel while one of the talks is going on. It was another corn futures talk that was going over my head. I said, hey, let's just hang out in the lobby real quick. I just got to get out of here. I don't understand what the hell these guys are talking about anyways. So we go to the lobby and we had talked to you about your newsletter business. And we go, you know what, we should create a newsletter business around what we're interested in.

And we were very interesting crypto at the time. We had been kicking around this idea, but we hadn't really had the momentum, the energy to just create it from scratch to birth that baby. And so only in the lobby of the hotel where we like, let's do this. And we named it Milk Road, which was kind of like a farmy sort of name anyways. It all came together in the lobby. And then a year later, we sold that business for millions of dollars. And so I got to credit you in a way because we had had a conversation with you the night

before and you told us, you're like, I guess I got to go back to my room. I got to write the newsletter. And we were like, you still write the newsletter? Like, surely you've hired a team of people. And you're like, no, I write the newsletter myself. I've written it. I think you had written it for like some absurd number, like 18 straight years or 20 straight years. You hadn't missed it. And it was you writing it every single day. Is that right? I have a girl Eastwork from the Kansas State Board Trade. Stacey, Great. She's out in L.A. And she helps me with a lot of content. And a lot of the thing, I write corn, beans, wheat. I write the uptop comments.

She helps with those. And then I write the stories down below. So it's her and I usually tag team in the whole thing to give her credit. And she's been, she's been awesome. Let's explain, though, a little bit. So your main thing is the Van Trump Report. So vantrumptreport.com. It's a daily newsletter that is, it's a great read.

I actually have read it for a while. And it talks about, I call it for farmers, but it's way beyond that. So it's agricultural-based information, but for farmers, but also for people who are trading commodities. And you have said that politicians read it to understand a little bit about what's going on in that world. And you've told me, I don't remember exactly what you said, you told me that it was doing something like 30,000 people paying something like $600 a year. And it's basically just you writing it, which if you did that math, that's true. That's like $18 million a year in revenue from a newsletter. Is that right?

Yeah, it's just myself. there's about four of us on our staff here. A friend of mine that used to be a golf pro, a buddy that I went school with, Stacey out in California and my son, Jordan, on this side of the fence. My wife does bookkeeping with accounting team, but that's really it.

And like you said, yeah, I did the newsletter and just wanted to write about what I was interested in and everything that kind of interests me. And so, you know, that's really what we do and what we put out. Yeah, we've got several congressmen, senators, a lot of big trading groups, hedge fund people. Yeah, probably in the 30 to 40,000 range on paid subscribers.

It's also got like five pages of memes in it, which I love because I was like, I would read it. And the first part was cool, it was commentary on where you think the market's headed. And it's written the way you talk. It's very informal. It's a straight shooter type of vibe, which makes it fun to read, even if it's not your stick. And then it's got a bunch of memes, which made me laugh. And I was like, this is hilarious that you chose to do that.

Was the product we see today? Is that basically how you started it? Is that what it was at the beginning? And how did you get it off the ground? What was the, how did you get the initial momentum with that? Yeah, pretty much. So I, my, marry my high school sweetheart. We were both from a small rural town here in Missouri.

I go to work for a group that was contract with the NFL, do camps, combines clinics. So I'm traveling all around the country. Got a really cool job making no money. My wife kind of lands her dream job in Chicago. And, you know, we didn't come from any money. Neither one of our parents or anything. We didn't have any money, really, so to speak, when we were younger. So my wife gets this job.

She was going to run the Eddie Bauer. out on Michigan Avenue. They was going to be their premier store and all this. So we thought, man, this is going to be great. You know, we go up there and I didn't know anything. And some of my friends in the NFL are like, you got to get into trading business. Shit, I didn't know anything about trading. And I said, I had a small rural town farm kid played lots of sports all my life.

And they said, well, we'll get you this interview. I go, get an interview of this guy. And the guy just kind of looks me. He's like, damn, you're a big tall guy. And I was probably about six, four and three-fifty at the time. And they're like, you like to fight? and I'm what the hell kind of interview question is it you know I'm like what was it and I said yeah sure shit I go out every weekend you know but I'm getting a rumbler two at the bars and they're like

yeah you're great we're hired and I said well what am I doing I don't even know what the hell I'm doing they're like oh everybody will see you on the floor it'll give us a little edge and advantage so you know I started the very bottom they wanted me to be a phone clerk you know and then moved to where I was in for getting orders off so I meet a few people they start me all I go over and I'm trading Swiss Franks, D marks, and foreign currencies over at the Merck. And then I flipped back over to the board. I was trading treasuries. So, wait, Kevin, this was back when you used to have to kind of push and shove your way with the papers, getting their trade off.

And they were like, your size was actually an asset. Yeah. The dig time, you know, they'd hire a basketball guy's ex-football guy. There'd be fights break out all the time on the floor. So then we got off the floor where we were Arbun Minis, uh, E Minis first came out. We were Arvin minis against bigger SMPs. And then really my strong suit became really more people got interested in grains, corn, because they started using corn as ethanol and things like that.

So a lot of our big energy traders and friends, they didn't know anything about the Midwest, you know. And so it was all just foreign language to them. So they would keep asking me questions. And then I would go back home to my small rural town where the farmers were playing dominoes in the morning, you know, up getting breakfast or caught. And, you know, they'd be like, hey, city slicker, you know, tell us what's happening here in the corn bean. wheat market or cattle market. And I would do, like you said, Sean, I would just dumb it down to my, you know, my back home speaking and more of a blue collar and just tell them, hey, here's what they're really meaning or saying. And so in 2007, I just, it was before that a little bit when

the government came out with the RFS, that's where they turned corn and death and all. I started writing a newsletter, kind of just for myself, a journal. I said, hey, I'm going to be a better trader, a better investor. I've listened to a lot of people. I've been broke twice. I've been broke twice. on a couple of deals and it's like, let's do it the right way. So I started journaling and I said, hey, I'm going to send my notes out to friends. And then it started circulating back to me. It was coming from guys at Goldman and different trading firms. It was circling back to me. And I told my wife, I said, shit, we were investing trying to do some storage units at the time. So I thought, I'll send it out for 40 bucks a month. It'll be like a storage unit deal. Let's just see if people

buy or pay. And it just kind of took off and went nuts from there. And we made. ever advertised and we're about 45 countries now. All the growth was organic then? All, yeah, we've never advertised one time. I love it. And then you have the conference, the thing that I went to. I think it was originally called the Van Trump Conference. You renamed it to FarmCon.

And for those who don't know, you're like a god at this thing. It was really inspiring to see because you weren't trying to be, you know, the front and center of it. But you could just tell you had so much respect from the community. People really appreciated this gathering because they were going to. getting a lot of value out of it. And you ran it like a family affair and you got your son there and he's got his swag business. And so how did the farm con thing come about? And is that like a big part of the business? Why do you do it? Yeah, you know, it kind of, well, it started off just myself and

probably 30 or 40 friends, traders, investors. We'd get together once a year, drink some beers and tell each other what our favorite trades or favorite investments were. And they loved coming to Kansas City because it was kind of an anomaly, you know, or used to being on the coast in New York or California. So they'd come here and it would be kind of fun. And so they would start to invite their friends. And we all had investments in land, bigger land investments, different events.

Next thing, they had a lot of hunting and fishing guys were coming. And just people that owned big farms, they were flying their private planes in. And so, yeah, then we just kind of blew up. And they started telling more and more of their friends. And, hell, next time, we start selling out, most everywhere we'll have of that. But, you know, it's really cool, you know, fun time.

Can we talk a little bit about kind of like your empire and what it is now? So you've got the publishing business, the newsletter. And then you have this thing called ag, swag, which is a merch company. Is that right? Yeah. Let me back on to be clear. You know, some of the people grandfathered in, we started charging $40, about $400 a year, or $40 a month.

Then we went about eight years ago to $660. And we have some people that white label the report and send it to their businesses and their staff and things like that. So that's all in the mix. But yeah, so I had a friend, Dave Krumholtz, he recently passed away. He was the CEO of Payless Cashways. And Dave came back here to Kansas City. He started a business consulting company.

And then he got hired at a place called American Identity. And I said, Dave, what the hell are you doing a company with American Identity? I said, don't they just sell like hats and Chotchkey stuff? And he's like, yeah, private equity company bought him. and they're going to dress it up. They want to have a big executive team, so they're bringing me in as the CEO. And he's like, I think we'll have a good exit. Well, about three or, I think it was three or four years.

They sold to Staples. I believe it was undisclosed, but the thing, it was close to $8 billion. They sold the staples. And I said, holy shit. I said, what did you guys do over there in America? I did it. And he said, you know, made hats, shirts and Chotchky said, well, who the hell were your biggest clients?

And he's like, John Deere, ADM, ADIM, Cargill. I'm like, oh, shit. I said, I know all those people. I know all the, you know, all the farming community. ag people. And he says, well, I tell you, if you ever get where you guys are going to start something or want something, just under the radar, non-intrusive business, you know, this would be a great way to get something rolling. So I told my son Jordan when he got out of college or he's about out. I said, hey, if you ever, if you want to try something on your own, I got an idea. I said,

I've come up with a name, ag swag, and I said, you know, we could probably spend this off and take care of a lot of our clients and just provide a lot better service and be a lot, you know, more fun and friendly and give people some great fresh ideas. And so we launched Ag Swag. And it's, you know, just a swag company that provides hats, things of that nature to people really specifically in the Ag world. We do other things, but that's really our Jordan's forte. And now he's running that. He's hired an art team. He's got about four or five artists. My daughter came back to help him. He's got a team of logistics people. And I think they're going to do, he said somewhere between 25 and 30 million this year. So, you know, they're growing like crazy.

crazy. And, you know, every day, if we want to pull up a lot of the slide, I can walk you guys through a little bit of the business. Well, I don't know. Yeah, let's do it. You know, this is just a simple example. You draw, you know, you have your scale of uniqueness on the left and your scale of total value on the right. And so if you go to your far right, you have high value and low uniqueness, right? And then you're asking, what the hell would that be? And that's like a tire business. I always use an example. Like, you know, people have to have it. So it's not unique. but there's high value because everyone doesn't know anyone wants to kill their family and any damn tires on their car so they want it to be good that if you see your business in that aspect you know you're in a low gross business model meaning you're going to have to be a low cost provider you're going to have to do volume and you know that's going to be your play if you get up into the upper right quadrant and this keeps me out of a lot of bad business deals here you have low value but high uniqueness you know you start to ask yourself what you know what is Is that, remember what Snap or Google came out with the glasses, those glasses or I was sold over back in my day, like a laser disk? You know, you're going to be cost a lot of money to educate the masses. It's going to cost a lot to get it to market. And there might not be any longevity in it. So you got to be careful in, you know, not a lot of value, but high uniqueness. That's a tough spot to play. Now you get over to where Apple likes to play or some of the others.

You go high value, high uniqueness. That's something like an iPod, 10,000. songs in your pocket, you know, that was their main stick. And it's like, that's where you can create high gross. That's where you can create high margin. And that's where you can make a lot of great things happen. Obviously, lower left corner, you're, you're an idiot if you're somewhere in it. No value, no uniqueness. No bad pedia. You know, and I always say on there, people buy value not price. And this was a hard one to understand for a lot of people. Because if I went into Walmart and I put a whole bin of laser disk in there and I put them for sale for, you five cents. I mean,

bad yet. Nobody's going to buy them just because there's no value to them. You know what I'm saying. Now maybe there is a little now because people are looking to sell some of those types of buying, but I'm just saying you have to be aware. People buy price, people buy value, not price. And so you make the price as low as you want to go. It was just not good. It's not good. And I see people get trapped in that a lot in real estate and some other things. So, you know, this is where we try to, we try to categorize the business deals when they come down the pipe where this. is at and how this is going to play out. Because it's never the soldiers I send in at first,

right? It's never the first money we send in on the deal. It's how many more soldiers are going to get called into duty and maybe never come back home into my bank account or come back, you know, missing limbs and arms. And so it's like, you have to be careful, I think, in that aspect. You know, it's that because I'm my wife all the time, is like, my gosh, we're writing more capital call check. But we kind of know when, if we can categorize in this way, we know what we're getting into. Where we went with Ag Swag, what's critically important, we believe, is knowing your funnel. So your light users, there's obviously you're going to be able to get more market share on your light users.

As you move down the customer continuum, that would be your heavy user. So as Sean pointed out, that would be John Deere, or that would be a cargo. Now, what do you have to understand in all businesses, you're always going to be pulled to the right. So you're always going to be pulled to the high user and low growth. They're going to try to get you over there. If people like what you have, they like what you're doing, they're going to take you over there more to the right and, you know, try and beat you up on your price, try to beat you up on gross because they say they're heavy used. That's why it's really imperative for most people. You don't want to get an order from wall.

You know, you don't want to go that way because it's next to impossible to get your business back to the left. And to the left is where you're going to see a lot more profitability, a lot more high gross. and so we tried to position Ag swag in the middle away from the John Deers and ADM. So we've had calls from them wanting their play is for us to, you know, store all of their merch for the year.

We ship it out. It becomes a logistics business. The gross shrinks up to nothing. And we've got a, you know, a real, you know, we're running a real people business then where we've got a lot of hands and a lot of touches. So we've tried to stay out of that space as much as possible early on

so we can create and build more smaller accounts, smaller business owners and people like that where there's more fragmentation for us. So you have these other slides that I really liked. So you had this, this poker versus chess one that I loved. Um, can you talk about this one? Yeah, you know, I just think, you know, they talk a lot about life being like chess or a lot times you'll hear people talk about those things. You know, um, you know, I say life's more like poker than chess just because the cards are face down and a lot of lots involved a lot of times. So, you know, you can be the greatest, had the greatest skill in the world. I've met some,

the most brilliant, brilliant people, but they don't catch any breaks or don't catch any luck. And, you know, it becomes tough. So I think you have to remind yourself. And that's what we were kind of talking about earlier. If you think you're a genius and you're just smarter than everyone else, I think you run into a ton of problems and a ton of roadblock. That's where I think, you know, you have to look at it more like poker. Like, you know, you're going to get lucky every now and then to get on a run and get a little heater.

And sometimes, you know, that's when you really have to push and go all in is when, when your luck's going your way. When you feel like some of the little things aren't going your way, you got to pull way back. You know, that's not when you double and triple down. That's when you kind of hunker down and let the storm clouds pass and then hopefully their luck will shift and turn around a little bit. Well, it seems like there's three parts to the poker thing, right? There's the cards are face down, so there's a lot of unknowns, unlike chess. Then you're talking about luck and variance.

That's the second part. But then the third part was you said that the amateur players just play too many hands. A pro only plays, you know, 15 to 20 percent of their hands, but an amateur is playing half the hands. And so the trick is actually just to pass on the average opportunity to save room for the huge opportunity. That's the other one. And I think Warren Buffett calls this waiting for the fat pitch. He's like, there's no called strikes. You can let 50 opportunities go by and just pass on them. Even if there were some good ones in there, it's okay. As long as you just, when you do swing, you swing at the right ones. 100%. I 100% agree. I mean, you know,

we use that analogy. We use the Ted Williams thing all the time. There's Ted Williams has a batting chart. And Ted Williams was one of the first persons to go and document all of his where he would hit balls and where he could, you know, what his percentage was if it was high and outside, low and inside. And he figured out where his sweet spot was. And Williams were just sitting wait for his bitch and when he got it, he didn't knock shit out of it. So it's somewhere to weigh yourself. You talk about luck and you say passing on the average opportunity to save room for the huge opportunity. And with your trading, what have been opportunities that you thought were huge, that you pounced on, as well.

is maybe some that you didn't because you thought they were average. Yeah, tons. I could go through those like crazy. And, you know, but I agree with that. And we've talked about this myself and a lot of my trading friends. It's that as we've gotten older, we've learned. We can look back through all of our document, tag docs and everything. I mean, the more trades we made, the worst year we had, it seemed like.

The fewer trades, by far the better of the year. And, you know, now we're trading even less and less and less. And I know I think some of our readers got to probably get as great as great. They want the action and everything. But, you know, it's like wrestling. You know, as a great wrestler, a high school, college wrestler, they're super patient. They wait for the market in this case to make a mistake, late for the market to get out of aligned or over leveraged or over tilted. And then you come in and you try to make a play.

You know, most all your money has made, the greatest traders will say all your money's made sitting, you know, sitting and waiting. And it's incredibly hard to do. The decision to do nothing is a decision. And in our world, a lot of times it can be the best decision you could possibly make. So, you know, and as far as like Sam saying, you know, like I said, we were early with Bitcoin. We were early with Tesla. I was trading when Amazon first came out and we had 30,000 shares of Amazon like right out of the hole. And I went negative on it.

I'd never forget story. My wife and I, shit, we didn't have enough money to pay attention at the time. And we were sitting there. And they, I had this position. on it went against me and I said man if this thing just gets back to even and Amazon I trained like three or four bucks a tonne it got back to even and I blew out and I mean it would have been like you know the craziest trade of all times if I'd have stuck with it but I wouldn't have stuck with it probably you know I'm a trader so it's like you can't you can't beat yourself

up saying man if I would have just stayed in that or not stuck with it and I think a lot of people do that to themselves you know it's a psychological game and you just want to try not to beat yourself up and not get down on yourself because then it then it gets hard to fail and recover. What's the case for being a trader versus a investor? Because if you read about all the investing grates, they all kind of poo-poo traders a little bit. They're like, oh, you don't want to be a trader. You want to be a buy and hold guy. You want to buy, find a great asset and then sit on it for a long time. Am I just only reading the advice from the investors and that's why? Or is there something to what they're saying? No, you're absolutely right. I mean, there's plenty of trades I've been in that I've

become an investor because they went against me. And we just kept holding and holding. holding, right? He was meant to be a short-term trade, but turned into a long-term, you know, just ass-kicking. So it's like, no, I agree. My job, though, I was a trader. So, you know, I was at the floor. I was at the exchange. I was at Kansas Board trade. You know, and so my whole job revolved around trading and fairly quick movements in the market. I was never, I did own a day trading firm at one time. And you should have seen, you know, the success rate on people of day trade. It was just a miserable business. So we don't day trade, so to speak. We'll be more swing trading. We'll be multi-days in a trade.

You know, the commodity markets are a little different. For every buyer, there's a loser, and they're a little different than stocks. And there's expirations on the contracts. So, you know, we're more short-term oriented, but we're also longer-term investors, like you would say, Sean. I do think I advise my kids, my own kids, just exactly what you're saying. You know, no, unless you're going to be full-time and you really want the belly-aches, I wouldn't advise probably, you know, trading or trying to time market movements.

Like said, I'm more with. Buffet, you know, I think, you know, everybody's trying to beat the indexes. I mean, everybody's trying to beat the SBA or the NASDAQ. And year and year out, that's tough to do. And, you know, so I think, you know, as a passive investor, long-term hold is probably a good play for the majority of most people. And that's the way to build wealth. How many years have you beat the index? Or how long have you been doing this 20 or 30 years? Do you think that you've beat the index? You know, I mean, the years that we beat it, we beat it by a mile because we get lucky in some certain position or some certain stock. And like this year, I'm, I'm trailing. I have decent amount

put over into, you know, we're still in a lot of CDs at five and a quarter or five percent. And, you know, a lot of our wealth building has come from real estate. That's just buying land, farmland, or what do you buying? Buying real estate. You know, we have everything from commercial properties to single families that we've turned into various Airbnbs. Yeah, land, farmland, regular land. Those have been our biggest winners. Has the majority of your net worth come from the income that the newsletter has produced, or has it been from trading? So I think there's two ways you can do with your business.

You know, when you're breaking money, you can either take the money and reinvest it back in your business, which we didn't do. That was kind of my play. I'm like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take my money and then I'm going to put it out and see and try and invest in other people's businesses. And, you know, and we're partners with a firm, a private equity firm called I, select. So we're early investors in ag tech startups and some biotech. And so we've had a ton of losers,

but they've all led to meeting new people, learning new things. And then that in turn comes to something else. They did that. So, you know, we try to grow our revenue and then take that revenue and invest it in various other vehicles and other sources. What's the, like, sentiment like amongst the people that are reading the newsletter or would come to the conference? You know, are people bullish right now? Are they optimistic? Are they big headwinds? or tailwinds. What's going on in the food producer world? Yeah, you know, it's pretty dark right now over in our world, so to speak. The big jumping rates was obviously kind of a real pinch for a lot of our ag tech startups and a lot of the people just in agriculture in general. So you've had a big jumping

rates. And then we also have, you know, a little bit of a glutton right now. We have a pretty burdensome supply of corn over two billion bushels of corn. You know, we had about 500 million bushel supply of beans coming down the pipe. Sorry, that means that last season overproduced? Yeah, you know, we had a good year last year. South America is coming off a pretty good year. Argentina, like, for example, Argentine production doubled from what they had. They had a big drought last year, had some production problems.

Brazil's got a little bit of, they're down from a little bit. But China, like so, China right now hasn't been a buyer of U.S. New crop beans, haven't booked any cargoes, which is unusual. So we're worrying. We got this election coming. of, anything can happen. We're not sure how China's going to play it with Trump coming back into the mix. Are we going to have a bigger hit on tariffs? So when Trump was in office, we had bean prices break pretty considerably because we got into a pissing match with China. And, you know,

they're the number one buyer of beans in the world. So we're kind of trying to weigh this thing out here and see how things are going to shake out. But we do have some new things on the front. We got sustainable aviation fuel. So soybeans are now going to be used to make sustainable aviation fuel, which is going to be a big one. We're trying to push to get corn to where the corn production is going to also be used to make sustainable aviation fuel. There's a few pipeline issues that need to be addressed and some things like that. But we're moving for more food for fuel is becoming more, a little more prevalent.

So we're seeing more countries move to that for cleaner energy sources. So we're seeing more utilities and more usage for traditional crops. And we're seeing more utility and more usage for land. we were just seeing a ton more buyers and bidders come in for land. People wanting to put in solar, you know, solar fields to create energy, wind fields. There's just a lot more utilities being used now for data centers. We're seeing a big push through the Midwest on companies wanting to build these massive data centers, really through the glut of the Midwest.

And we think it's kind of like Cushing's Oklahoma, where we store our oil. Now we think data is going to be kind of the new oil. And so we're going to try and store our data here in the U.S. centrally into the Midwest. So we're seeing a big bush in some farm ground being gobbled up for big data. My father is a produce broker. So he owns a small brokerage where, like, let's say that over the course of 20 years, he's sold $100 million worth of onions, you know, over the course of 20 years. The margin is like 5%.

So he'll make $5 million over 20 years or whatever if he sell $100 million worth of onions. So it's a huge quantity. but in that space, he's a small dog, you know, really tiny. But I remember during 08, like I remember I was only 17 or 18. I was watching the news and I was like, you know, Dad, why do you seem like you're making more money now than before where everyone else seems to be going broke? And he was like, well, look at the corner of our kitchen. There's onions and potatoes there.

Like, people are still going to buy this stuff no matter what. And then when the economy is going well, like you're going to go out to eat and I'll crush it then too. So it's like, I'm in a good business. And I remember thinking, like, as I got older, I kind of forgot about farming. And I forgot about food and agriculture. And I just, I didn't really think about it. But what I've learned is that over the years that America is really good at two or three things.

One of them being culture. So we export culture, like amazingly well. So Hollywood is like our biggest export, I would say, or culture. The second thing that we do really well, we are so fucking good at growing corn. America is so good at growing corn. And I forget how important agriculture is to our way of life in America. So when you're talking about some of these things about what China's doing, what Brazil's doing, if China's buying stuff from us, how big is like this entire industry that you're

associated? I mean, what percentage of the GDP or economic value is it creating in America compared to other things? It's all massive. I mean, it's, you know, one of the, and we're seeing more and more of the, and we're seeing more of the wealthy get into agriculture. And that's where I'm saying it's a really hot area. And you're seeing the Gates Foundation, Buffett's group,

well, Warren's son, Howard, he used to be a big farmer. And he had just recently gotten out and still on the ground, but they're having some other people farm and do some things like that. But yeah, seen a big, big push and more and more people being interested in ag and interested in food and where it's coming from. We're seeing Sean, what we're also saying is more people going direct to the farmers. Just recently in the last few weeks, we've seen more. ranches come online, kind of form a little coalition.

There's a group of about 70 good ranches down in Texas that are now selling direct to the public. You know, they were getting maybe, they were getting minimal for their beef. You know, and now that they're selling direct, they're really doing well and people like buying direct. And so you just buy off their website or there's some startup that's doing this? Yeah, they have an auction. I think it's called bid for beef. I thought that was a dating site. Yeah, yeah, you know, so, yeah, yeah.

It could be, whatever you're into. Yeah. Yeah, but they're starting to make more traction. And we're seeing that across the board with other plays. What's going on with like farms that are kids don't want to take it over? What does the succession plan look like? And is somebody solving that problem? That's a huge issue.

And that's being discussed heavily in the ag world that, you know, so you have this big succession rollover. I think, I don't know what the number. I can't remember it off the time of head. It's okay. 80% of the farms are owned by people over 60, you know. It's a really aging demographic. And a lot of the kids, you know, have other jobs or went off to great colleges and great schools and they don't necessarily want to come back.

So, yes, there is a big issue. And a lot of the people in the farming world keep their cards really close to their chest and they don't really talk a lot openly with their kids or they don't have a lot of great succession planning in place. And we're seeing that a lot. I think, you know, we've tried to be super open with our kids and discuss everything and show them everything and say, hey, here's where everything's at. here's where you need to know, here's where you need to be.

And, you know, hopefully, you know, we tell our other friends to similar type things. So, yes, secession planning is very important. And I think it's, you know, something that we all have to address as we own businesses. Well, what do you think is going to happen? Like, if 80% of these are owned by people over 60 and a lot of the kids are going, like, is this just going to be private equity owns all the farms? Like, what happens here? We are going to see a lot of rollover and a lot of turnover.

So in the farming space, or when you're buying acreage, there's a, there's, two bidders that are going to come against you. The person whose farm butts up against you, they're going to be willing to pay a big premium because the land may only come available once in their lifetime. And so they're going to be bidding heavily. So whoever's in close proximity, because as you know, driving the combines or driving the hard, it makes a lot of sense to get a continuing piece of ground. And now you're also having like California teachers pension fund bidding against you. You have other high profile, fun people bidding against you. So yes, who runs it? They just place somebody to go live on the farm and run it. Sean, have you ever been

on a farm? No. I don't even know where I would go to find a farm. Where do you got? Have you had a map somewhere? My aunts and uncles and cousins are farmers in Oklahoma and they have like two or three thousand acres. And they are, I guess they're ranchers. And so they own like 1500 cattle, I believe. And a bunch of their cattle are, Sean, you probably never heard of this term. They're buck and bowls. Have you heard of you know what a buck and bull is i do not so what they do is they uh the pdr which is the professional uh rodeo association they if you get a good bowl a good bowl can be worth i don't know kevin what like 50 grand all the way up to a million dollars and yeah more than that some and these good bowls you get you make money in two ways you make money because at the rodeo the writer

gets paid so if you stay on a bowl for a certain amount of time you win and you get paid but the bull that bucks the hardest also gets paid. And that's like a rating system. And so there's like famous bulls that are known as like really hard buck and bulls. Who's the Michael Jordan of bulls? It's Bushwacker. Bushwacker has been the best for a long time. No, Bushwackers is a famous bull. The guy who like dominated Bushwagger, what's his name, JR or something? He like just retired, I believe, right? What was that guy saying? My son played football with a couple of kids that were PBR, bowl riders. They're insane. So my cousin and the family, this is what they do. And so I went and stay with them every once in a while. And we get up at like

eight and starting at like 10, you go to the feed store and you buy a huge amount of feed. You bring the feed back, you call the bowls and you throw it all over like the like you scatter it out throughout the area and they come up and they eat it. And then on the weekends, they drive these bowls from Oklahoma to Texas, which is like 12 hours. And these bowls, when you put them into the truck, you would think a bull that you birthed and raised, like they will literally be there when they birth this bull. But once the bull hits puberty, I guess, or it has balls.

It wants to fucking kill you no matter what. It doesn't matter if you raised or birth this bull. This bull what's to murder you every chance it gets? And so just to get the bull onto the truck, it's like a life or death situation every once in a while. Like this, it's a 1500 pound thing that you got to get into this

truck. And they would drive these balls all around the country. And they get paid, I think, four grand just as an appearance fee or something like that to show up in the PBR. And then the other, the cows, the females. And so they make their money by raising the cows that they sell for beef. And then the bulls, they either sell them to get bread or they make money directly for the rodeo. And it's like a huge cash business.

So my cousins and aunts and uncles, they'll always have a lot of cash because they'll go to the auction. And it's just like a really heavy cash business. They get, let's say, 10 grand for selling 10, 10, 10. cows, they take that 10 grand and they spend eight of it like that day on more cow feed. And so it's like a really heavy, I'm probably getting some numbers wrong, but it's a really heavy cash business and it's fucking hard. My cousin Sam would drive around and he'd be drinking like natural light while he's driving his truck checking on all the like on all the cows. It's a hard living and it's really fun. I've like spent time on there. It's been it's fun for me as a

visitor, but it is a hard job to do this shit. You are working and walking constantly. Yeah, you're right. And, you know, I lost, I lost a good joke a month, not a big joke, but I did what you said. Some buddy's mind getting said, hey, let's start raising these bowls to be PBR bowls, you know, rodeo bowls. Shit. I don't think I ever cashed one check. I think it just, it was a lot of fun. Like you said, a lot of drinking Natty Light and driving around the pickup, checking on them. And, you know. Yeah, it's like fun, but it is fucking hard. And it's a very capital-intensive business. Hey, I'll give you one. I'll give you one that it was a big miss. Now, a guy came to me and Sam were going to kick out. Guy came to the hell is probably 20 years

ago and 50, you know, the internet was just getting going. He said, man, I got this great idea. And the guy came in and he was all suited. And I said, well, he's an English major and all that. He says, what I'm going to do is I'm going to build his websites and I'm going to hire a couple other English majors. And we're going to write really eloquent descriptions of these cattle and these bulls and their stems, the stem that they call the sperm, you know, and he's like, then I'm going to sell this sperm all over in Japan, all over the world. I said, dude, this shit ain't going to work. You know, this was early on, dude, blew it up.

He blew it up. How do you eloquently describe the sperm of a bull? What's his website? You know, the background, the lineage. I don't know. I have not followed him for another year, but I remember if he came back through and some people were like, man, this guy just, hey, I'll tell you one, we were at the Louisville Farm Show. They had me come down there to speak.

It's U.S. is world largest indoor far range show. And so I go down there to be the keynote speaker. And there's this little booths set up next to this. They got all these coloids on this little 10 by 10 booth tent. And I go over to talk to guys. So what the hell is this thing? He's like,

it's called farmers only.com. And you guys have seen all of the ads. I mean, I'm not shitty, Sean. We're like all making fun of him. And then the next year he comes and he has like a 20 by 20 booth. And then the next year he's there. And shit is boot. Damn it.

John Deere. I mean, his booth is massive. And we're like, the hell. Then he's got Super Bowl ads. It's just phone.com. You're looking to marry a farmer. You know, that thing just blew up. And he, shit, he turned that into great deals. When you, so let's say I wanted to become a gentleman farmer. I wanted to go buy a farm. Walk me through that. So first, where would I find a farm? Is this like sold like on Zillow or is this brokers only? How do people find farms to buy? You know, some people are now investing fractally through, I'm in, I'm invested their company. the Acretraider.acretter.com. So we buy farms.

We even have farms out in your neck of the woods, Sean. Out in, we had nut farms out in California. We have regular other road crop production farms through Bakersfield in that area through there. You know, and all over the United States, you have various farms grow various different products. So a farmer is selling a fraction of their farm. What happens at Acre Trader, we go in and actually buy the entire farm from a family,

say they're wanting out or that's a session planning. and they want to leave. So we'll buy the entire farm. And most of the time, we'll have a farmer in that area that has called us about the farm and said, hey, we don't have the money, but if you guys would want to put up the money, we'd be happy to farm it for you and do revenue sharing, crop sharing, or some type of, you know, split into the revenue. We're looking to just hold the ground for appreciation over 10, 12 year period. The years, you have good years, you have some really good years. Some years, though, you're going to have some losing years. But over the course of time, 10, 15, 20 years, your appreciation on the land's going to be.

that's really going to carry you forward. And that's what a lot of the hedge funds are looking for, a lot of the funds are looking for that longer term appreciation. Well, what do these trade for? Like, if I go buy a farm, what is the multiple you pay on a farm typically? Or would it be just price per acre? Price per acre. And it's gone nuts lately.

I mean, my buddy just sold, his mom left him a chunk of ground that they had in the family. And he said, hey, what do you think? And I said, I don't, man, it's a great time. This was about seven, eight months ago. I said, you know, farmers are flush with some cash. about a year ago, and he ended up getting 20,000 an acre down here outside of Missouri. Now, that's pretty rare off the books. You know, acreage around here typically go for, you know, five to 12 to 15. But if someone needs the ground or wants the ground, and it's a continuing piece of track to their

farm, you can see guys get the bidding war. And so you get bidding war. And yeah, you can go out anywhere, look up farm grounds. You want to, you know, there's a lot of things you want to look for. Like in Kansas, you can't drill any wells in him. You can't drill new wells. And so Kansas, is in Nebraska, there's a lot going all with the underground aquifer, and there's a lot of problems with water using. And so, you know, we believe, though, we like C and B grade ground. We like ground that's maybe in a floodplain, or we like ground that's water deficient, because we believe that all the technology and the money from Gates' Foundation or Buffett, they're really putting their money into new technology that will help grow crops in third world countries that

have really porcelain. So, you know, Iowa has. the best soil, Iowa and Illinois, they'll argue with each other who's got the richest soil. And they've got great soil and great farms that you really don't have to do a lot to. You get to some of these peripheral areas, though. No, it would be like these guys, you get a biker jacket, but you've got no bike, right? That's more of my, my lane. So I just need to know. I'm asking questions, just so I have the lingo in case I ever get pressed so that I can sound like I know what I'm talking about without actually knowing anything. Yeah, you're, you have to get some land to match that

car heart coat that you want to get. I get that. Yeah, I get that. Well, what about the other tech? So, like, I've seen people do these, like, Fitbit for cows where they're like, you know, like cows valuable, you know, asset. And you don't know if it's sick. You got to keep driving around and keep checking on it. What if you could know before it's too late? What tech is working? Yeah, it is.

And we're invested in a few companies to do that. And they'll tag them. They'll tag the cattle, you know, because there is a push to have less antibiotics, less, you know, less, you know, shots and things into into our food supply. So if you're able to identify when they have a fever earlier, you could get them segregated from the herd, get them away from the herd, give them the, give them the medicine that they need in a more timely fashion. So yeah, all those are great. You know, Zoetis, the publicly traded company, they're a leader really probably in the animal health space. If you're looking for something a longer term, we're invested in Zoetis. I have a business, Sean, that my friend's working on that might interest you too, Kevin. So basically he's putting, he's put RFT, RFD, RFID, sorry, tags on chickens and cows. And you know how like a chicken will like when you buy eggs, it says free range. And you just kind of trust. Like I guess that means a chicken was just like out walking around, which is better for me

because it's somehow healthier. And it's also like if you care about animals, you're like, all right, at least I know it had like a better life and whatever. But free range, I think that's a technical term actually where it has to have a certain amount of space. But I don't think of that it's actually necessarily always followed. And so what he did was he's putting these these tags onto cows and chickens. And so you know the beef that you bought, the tag number, and you could actually go and see how much did it walk around and where did it go, which sounds a little morbid and weird.

But it's actually supposed to be like reassuring where it like, look, my farm is now, you can hold my farm accountable to know that this meat was actually raised in the way that I promise it was going to be. And that's like an interesting idea because I think, Sean, you said this. I think you said in like some period of time, 20 or 50 or 60 years, we're going to look back at the way that we treated kines. and we're going to be like, that was pretty unfortunate. Like, it shouldn't have been done that way where an animal is just born in a pen and never leaves and then we eat them. And I actually agree with that. I agree with that sentiment where, like, the way that we treat certain animals, I'm cool

to eat them, but it's better to, better than have a certain life. And so this idea is kind of interesting to me. Yeah, we think that that's going to be prevalent throughout. We think you're going to block chain a farm is what we're calling in our world. You know, you're going to block chain a farm, meaning the fertilizer companies and the input companies are going to have to report all that. and you're going to know what was put on whatever it is you're eating or, you know, and the reason they want to blockchain it is just like, remember when Spolte was having those

issues several years back, you know, with some things. They want to be able to go right to the field, right to the spot and know exactly what happened and what was put on and what time and where it was at. So, yeah, I agree with you. Sam, I think that's definitely where the world's edited. And, you know, I think we're seeing farmers make that transition more and more. They're a lot more tech savvy than people giving them credit absent the world. They're very tech savvy, as a matter of fact.

And nobody treats their animals. I mean, my opinion, I have never been on a farm in my entire life that I seen any abuse to animals. I mean, nobody treats their animals better just because it's generally, typically the way they make their own living, the way they make their money and they teach their kids to take care of the animals. You know, they love them and show them in four inches and go all around. It's sad that they do get it such a bad rap in the media when I've personally never come across it. And what's your take on the alternative meat movement thing where in Silicon Valley there's a bunch of startups that are trying to grow beef from cells so that you won't have to farm the animal, you won't have to harm the animal to be able to have the same genetic meat. It should be virtually identical, genetically identical. What's your take on that movement? And is that where you think things are going?

I think there will be a segment of the space that continues to grow. And I think you're going to see it continue to gain market share. I think as, as population shifts and moves out, you know, as the baby boomers continue to age and move, oh, we get more people. I think you're going to see alternative types of protein can be developed. And I think as they get more money in the labs, they're getting better at reducing the cost and creating better flavor. And I think as those two things continue to move forward, just like with Tesla and Elon Musk, you know, it's only a matter of time.

How's everything happened gradually that all at once? And, you know, it's like the electric vehicle. I think you have, you know, a lot fewer moving parts. It's a lot better than the combustion engine. I think you're going to see things, you know, would gradually gain more and more market share. Well, have farmers taken to, like, I always read the comments of like in Texas message boards and things like that. They, it doesn't, it seems like it's 50-50 if like the rural community thinks that electric vehicles are worth it. Yeah, right now at the time, no, because just the distance traveled, you know, a lot of folks that travel massive distances out in rural.

America. And so it doesn't make a lot of sense to them at the moll. I think eventually, yes, I think they'll see it have better torque, you know, better low end get up and go out of the hole. And I think you'll see a lot more transition. I like anything, no, nobody wants to, I guess, let go of their heritage and their roots. And, you know, it's same with the fake meat. You know, a lot of farmers just bash it and want to go nuts about it. I think there's definitely going to be a play sport. And I think it's going to be able to gain and grow some marginage or, you know, probably, you know, as they get costs lower and lower, I think it'll be, you know, a way that we see things happen. If you were 24 years old again and you had the entrepreneurial energy to go do

something, what would you be, what would you advise that 24 year old to go to go do in this space? Where do you think the opportunity is? I think there's going to be a big push with air quality, you know, just the quality of air from this whole virus, just to testing for the viruses. And we're seeing a lot more testing tape plate in general, just over the entire space. So I think there's going to be a big push in things to do with air and creating good air quality. We're seeing a lot more kids that have asthma or asthma-related problems. And I think, you know, not just here in the United States, but I'm talking globally and taking some... But what's an example solution? What's an example solution of that from an agricultural

perspective? Well, you know, we're big right now into the carbon market. So, you know, we're trying to reduce carbon footprints and no one really reduces it much more than the, you know, a giant cornfield, the cornfield plants, you know, things of that nature. And so, you know, yeah, I think there's a big play and a big push into the carbon, trying to reduce, like I said, trying to reduce the footprint, anything that'll help save energy, improve our water usage, improve water, purity. You know, I think anything to do with the natural resources that are just to become more heavily relied upon. If we transition all this to electric, I mean, the rare earth minerals are going to be hard. They're going to be scary. I mean, there's going to be a lot of plays in,

you know, what we see on the, on that whole side and that whole front. So I think, you know, natural resources, things to do with natural resources, things to do with air, water, like I said, food quality. You know, we really love the blue collar space. I mean, I think we love, you know, like what Cody Sanchez has going on or some of the other things. We like the thought of buying blue-collar businesses rolling them up and, you know, kind of packing them up and selling them. Why do you like that? Because they're retiring. I think they're retiring. I think we didn't see near as many kids go into the trades as we had in the past. You know, my dad and my wife day, I mean, everybody was in trade back then. That was everyone's goal to go to college.

So, you know, you just had a big lull or a big, I guess, you know, where they're just a short supply of good, skilled people. Now, we think you can go into that space. And we've tried it a couple of times and, you know, where we can build out some things. And I think you provide people with good quality service and an onboarding process that, you know, you can cut your customer retention rate down to a feasible level. I think there's just the sky's the limit on growth. Do you use, Kevin, do you use TikTok? I'm on it. Yeah, I see it.

Have you guys seen the, like, popularity amongst young people and the trades? Like, it's it, like, they glamorize it in a, in a cool way. and I think an accurate way, which is like I'm making however $150 or $120,000, I just want to trade something for two years. It goes so well on TikTok because it's like a novelty. It's like going to the zoo. It's like, wow, you made that.

You know how to do things with your hands? And that's what a carrot looks like when it comes out. Like, that's incredible. Swipe. All right, onto the next one. That was easy. But I actually think that some of these young people are actually being influenced by this because they're like, shit.

I graduated with 150 or 200 grand in debt. And I don't make anything. remotely like that amount of money and I'm sitting on my computer all day. Like, this might be a little bit more intriguing. And I don't have any data, but it does seem like young people are more open-minded to the trades than at least Sean and I's, like, graduating classes. Yeah, I'm seeing that as well. I'm worrying that from some of the younger kids that are opting not to go to college and they're going in to be a pipe fitter or going into pipe fitters union or the plumbing union or electrical union. So yeah, we're definitely seeing. A.I ain't going to replace plumbers or electricians or

age fact people. It made me one day, but, but no time soon. And like, I do think that stuff's getting more popular. And I think that's really cool and fascinating. There's like, it's also like, ripped buff dude. So it's always like chicks like, like, about like, have you seen that guy, Sean, who just cuts wood? Yeah, the lumber, yeah, the lumber, yeah, the lumberjack guy. He's incredible. I love that guy. I'll sit there and I'll watch that video twice. It's just an incredible video. It's this guy that uses an axe and he's sometimes shirtless, sometimes not. And he's just like, you know, obviously a 10 out of 10. He's just chopping wood. And like, everyone's like, I need this in my life. Therapeutic. Have you been a part of any roll-ups?

I always find roll-ups to be a really interesting business strategy. It seems like there's a lot of money to be made in a successful roll-up. I'm curious if you've been a part of anything. I am not. Personally, no. I usually either exit ahead of time or, you know, get a little nervous. So it blames out. But I have a couple of friends that, yeah, that's their whole, their whole way they've created all their wealth. You got one of the gentlemen I'm speaking of right now, he's dealing it with cranes. He's buying small crane companies that'll have two or three cranes, and he's buying

them and he's putting them all together. And he's going to sell that out. And he's done it with several other things, whether it's restaurants or different things in the past. So, yeah, I thought it was interesting on the crane play. You know, he came to me about an investment night. We just didn't do it. But I'm sure he'll hit a huge among with it.

Dude, Sean, I think the shit that Kevin's doing is way more exciting than the shit that our friends are doing. You're going to quit and go do it? No, I don't know about that. It sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like a lot of words then if you're not going to go do it. No. What it means is I like hanging out with these types of people sometimes. That's what it means.

Yeah, and it gives you guys, you know, I think it gives both of us. I like hanging out with your group of people because I think it gives me different perspective and learn different things that you guys have going on that I can make applicable to my world as well. And so, you know, yeah, there's a good synergy there between all. And how do you do that practically? Because I think you do a good job of getting yourself into positions like we talked about going to random conferences

that are totally outside your industry that you didn't need to go to, but you wanted to go to to shift your lens a little bit. Or hanging out with younger people who may be demographically just doing different things, culturally doing different things than the guy who made it and is at a country club now might be disconnected from whatever the culture shifts are. How do you tactically go about doing that? How do you put yourself in those positions?

What questions do you ask? Honestly, just make myself. I always yelled at the kids and we were growing up. So I played sports at a high level and had several friends of One World Series. And, you know, Super Bowl, as we always talk, you know, we, you get a bad coach. Everybody get a bad coach or things like that. And it's like, look, man, you got to be able to steal something from the guy. The guy was great player.

He was that, you know, you got to go in there with an open mind and you got to be able to take away some things that they've done well and that they've done positive. and then use those and put those errors in your quiver. So I just always have the kids looking for new crazy, weird conferences or things to go to. And from there, I'd make myself go the last couple of years I didn't want to go. And I'm like, but each time I went, I took away several little gold nuggets that we implemented into our business models. And hell, we've made big returns on them, each one of them. And, you know, I didn't think I'd get anything out of going to the car. I was just like, this is going to be a waste.

But I just sucked it up and did it. You know, it's like going to work out or you got to run or something. It's like, yeah, shit. I guess I just got to go do it. Yeah, we had a friend when we were going to FarmCon who was supposed to come with us. It was me, Ben, and our buddy. And the morning of, we're like, hey, we'll meet you in the lobby. You know, your flight was, you landed like an hour ago, right?

And he basically woke up, looked at it. And he said Kansas City, he looked at the flight time. Then he's like, you know what? And he just bailed. And I was like, man. But of course, I felt that. Everybody feels that in the moment. Like, do I really want to go do this thing that I don't have to do?

that is unknown, right? It's back to your thing about, are you willing to sprint for an unknown distance? And we didn't know what value we would get out of it. That was the hard part. That was the challenge. And doing it when we didn't know what would come out of it was really, really valuable.

And it's ironic because that same friend, he gave me a great analogy one time. We were talking to a younger friend. This guy was the youngest VC in Silicon Valley. So 19, 20 years old, he was investing, I don't know, $10 million into things. He was like, he got written up. as the youngest VC in Silicon Valley.

So we were meeting with this guy, but now five years had gone by. And it was like, you hadn't seen him really progressing at that same rate that you would expect somebody who definitely had that sort of phenom type of upbringing, where it seemed like he had all the potential in the world. And I was like, man, what do you think he's doing wrong?

What would you do differently? He goes, oh, it's like windows and doors. He goes, he's only willing to do something if it's a window. If he can immediately see through and see the, what's on the other side of it, then he'll do it. But anytime there's a door and it's opaque, and you don't know what's on the other side of it, he's not willing to knock on a door

and open it up and see what might be inside. He's only looking at doors and windows, he's never willing to go through a door. Once he starts going through doors, this guy's career is going to take off. And I remember hearing that and really taking that to heart because I thought that was very, very wise. That's a great analogy.

Yeah, I never heard that for. I've heard a lot. Yeah, that's a great one there, for sure. Sean, the reason why you liked a lot of these folks in the Midwest and some folks in the South is because you love phrases. You love phrases like windows and doors. You love cool sayings.

And you know what? I love them too. And that's why I'm happy. I'm friends with both of you guys. We were at a dinner. So at FarmCon, you invited us to like a private dinner at the end. It's like 10 people.

This guy stands up. And he delivers two of the coldest lines I've ever heard. So he stands up. And we're doing our intros. And so I stand up and I give some super vanilla intro. Hi, I'm Sean. I live in San Francisco. and I'm a tech founder and investor.

All right. Sit down. Forgettable. This guy stands up. He's got a big presence. And he goes, I don't remember what his name was exactly what he said. He goes, you know, I don't know a lot of things. I don't know the score of the game right now.

There's a big game going on. He goes, I don't know the score of the game right now. I don't know anything about this. And he goes, he goes, hell, I don't know where the remote is in my house half the time. But I know deals. I made a lot of deals. He's like, I'm a private equity guy. And he starts talking about his deal making. I was like, wow. He goes, I've been around for a long time. You cut me open. You can see a lot of rings in the middle. I was like, wow, that's one way of saying it.

He's just on fire. And he goes, somebody asked them, they go, well, what if they don't, what if they don't go for it on this deal? Sounds like you really need them to say yes. What if, what if they say, no, what if you get rejected? He goes, I'm not afraid of rejection. And he's a big, big old dude. And he goes, I've stood in front of women in my life naked before. I've heard no, no, no, no, no. I'm okay. with it. I was like, wow, this guy is like half comedian, half businessman, and I loved it. But it was just, it was just another day at the office for him. But for me, coming from our world, that was like, the charisma levels and the gift of the gab was so, so incredible to see. I loved it.

Yeah, it's definitely wild times. Yeah, and you got that too a little bit that I like, just hearing what you have to say, Kevin. And for the people listening, maybe it's maybe we'll get you some new subscribers. It's the Van Trump report.com. I like your, you always, you do something cool, or you'll just like have a selfie with you and your wife. And you're like, say, today we're on vacation.

Here's what we're doing. And you'll say something kind of funny and cute. And I love it. But we should just get like a group of 20 of our listeners, a select small group to go to FarmCon. We'll all go together as a field trip next time you guys do it. When is it? First week in January, January, January 8th and night this year coming up.

How much is the ticket? I think this year we're like 12th. hundred bucks or something. And you sell a lot of them too, right? Yeah, we'll sell out whatever they give us, you know, capacity. We sell out the hotel every year. Yeah. We appreciate you doing this. You're the man. Thank you. And thank you for years of being a cool dude. You've always been a great guide to me. So thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. Good luck, both of you guys and your families. That's the pod. Thank you very much. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Bye.