Right About Now with Ryan Alford - Trusting Your Gut | Building the Good Ranchers Brand with CEO Ben Spell

Episode Date: May 23, 2023

Join us for an uplifting episode of The Radcast featuring an inspiring interview with CEO and founder of Good Ranchers, Ben Spell.With passion and grit, he shares his inspiring journey and the eye-opening truths about the meat-raising industry and his passion and dedication as an entrepreneur. Discover how he turned his dream into a reality by selling everything he owned and maxing out his credit cards. Plus, learn how transparency and accountability are at the heart of his approach and have set Good Ranchers apart, and his commitment to quality and expert hiring. Don't miss out on this opportunity to be educated and motivated, and apply these lessons to your own venture!Key notes from this episode:Ryan and Ben Spell discussed their shared passion for steaks and meat and Ben’s background and how he was able to jump into being an entrepreneur. (00:16)Ben shares his sabbatical and how he came to decide to go all in with maxed out credit cards and selling everything they owned to start his business. (04:08)Ben shares how he started learning to run a successful business from ignorance to making strategic decisions that led to success. (08:47)The pivotal moments in the development of their business and how quality assurance was key. (14:14)Ben highlights the cost of acquiring new customers, and thus emphasizes the need to hang onto existing ones by focusing on customer relationship management. (21:26)Ben counsels entrepreneurs to make sure they're starting a business, not just a job for themselves, and suggests delegating tasks once they can afford it in order to build something scalable. (25:32)They discuss the benefits of sourcing good quality meat from American farms instead of overseas and grocery stores and how family comes first in his life and in his company culture. (27:08)They discussed forward thinking and progressive ideas. (34:10)This episode is packed with information, wisdom, and passion and we know you will get a ton of value from this.To keep up with Ben Spell, follow him on Instagram @ben_spell and @goodranchers and his website www.goodranchers.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/RadicalHomeofTheRadcastIf you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, Like, Share, and leave us a review! If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

You're listening to The Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of The Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. You know it. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. And sometimes we talk about things I love.

Sometimes we talk about things that I'm sort of passionate about. And sometimes we talk about steak and meat. My two favorite things in the world. We're here with Ben Spell, founder and CEO of Good Ranchers. A good friend, a good partner, and someone I've grown to love a lot. What's up, Ben? What's up, Ryan? Thanks for having me out today.

Yeah, man. I'm pumped. Talking steak. We're talking meat. Let's go. I was like grilling this weekend. I'm like, man, I had some Good Ranchers New York strips on and I will get there. And it's not a promo, people. Ben's a friend. I wanted him on the show. But I'm just telling you when I'm grilling, I'm going to talk about Good Ranchers because it's the best meat in America. We'll get down to that. But Ben, man, I want people to know you. It's great that you like meat. People want to have the good stuff.

They want stuff delivered to their door. But I want to talk about Ben today. I want to talk about your story and, you know, what got you into the industry and some of those passion points that we both have. And let's get to know Ben. Sure. Yeah, man. Like I said, thanks. Thanks for having me on. Super excited to discuss with you today. Yeah. My story is the basic entrepreneurial story of I had absolutely no experience of being an entrepreneur, no plan on being an entrepreneur and no experience in the industry in which I

started a business and just dove in headfirst. That's a typical story, right? Oh, yeah. I got those battle scores myself, baby. You look around sometimes, I think sometimes watching Shark Tank over the years and you're like, man, if that guy can do it. Yeah, it's easy, right? Yeah.

Yeah. No offense to anyone who's been on Shark Tank. No. But yeah, no, I was actually, I was a full-time in ministry. I was a worship pastor. I was the guy playing the guitar and singing, leading worship at a mega church here in Houston, Texas. And it's like my plan, my path, that's what I just was, that's what I was set to do for That's what I just was, that's what I was set to do for the rest of my life, or so I thought. Been doing it since I was a teenager, as far as doing music on like a local church level. And, but right after I got turned around 30, I started having this internal struggle of wanting, wanting more, like wanting more things,

like wanting better for my life, I guess, on a monetary, from a monetary point, but not wanting the church to have to pay that salary, like not wanting tithe payers. Like there was just an internal struggle for me. I have no problem with anybody getting paid. I got paid by a church for a lot of years. And it is, people think that if you work at a church, you only work on Sundays. But I promise you, I was putting in, it was very regular to do

50, 60 hour weeks, sometimes even more, especially on, on, cause I was on the production side. And yeah, that music doesn't sound good. Just practicing like before the service on Sunday morning and organizing everyone and getting and picking songs and production. Yeah, I've watched all that go down. And it gave me hives a little bit about how it is involved. Yes, I know. And I was at a very large church, like I said, told thousands of people, hundreds of volunteers that I was coordinating and running. And it was always hilarious to me because almost every Sunday I would meet someone new and they would say, so what do you

do during the week? Or what do you do? What do you actually do? And I'm like, and so that could have been a thing too, because maybe I never felt validated. I'm going to, I'm going to go. Yeah. Let's get the psychology of it. Yeah. Maybe I just never felt like that was enough. I might need to talk to someone else. I could get my couch out over here, my virtual couch, and we can lay on it. Yeah. But no, but honestly, it was one day I was leaving the church, and I was getting into my car, which was a pretty nice car. It was a BMW 6 Series, and it was used. But the car parked next to me was this older gentleman, and it was not, but the car parked next to me was this, was this older gentleman and it was

not nice at all. And he looked at me and he said, man, he said, oh man, I really liked that car. And just the way he, I didn't like the way that made me feel honestly. And that knowing that his tithe was paying my salary, affording me that car. I just didn't like it personally. And so I started, I started praying and just asking God to open up some ideas and what else could I do on the side? I never thought I would quit ministry or ministry at the church, I should say. And so I was just asking God to open something up. And I took a sabbatical in 2014 and went and sold meat out of the back of a truck for, I had a friend of a friend doing it for this company

and it allowed me to travel the country and kind of thing. And I thought, you know what, let me just try something new. And so I did that for a few months and absolutely hated it, every single thing about it. And I was like, I do not want this, put me back at the church. And I did that for a few months, didn't like

anything to do with it, like I said. And then over the course of a few years, I kept having the thought of, man, somebody should start a meat company doing what they're doing, but actually doing it ethically and sourcing and these things. Because I did it long enough to realize that, and this was the shady, I'm not embarrassed to say this because I didn't know it getting into it. And that's why I quit so short a time into it. Like it was very misleading of telling people

the quality is better than it is. If anybody's ever had people come to your door and try to sell you meat or set up in a parking lot, selling X amount of ribeyes or T-bones or something for a very low price. 37 ribeyes for $40 or something like that. Yeah, that's what it was. And coming into it, they told me, they was like, oh, we're the same quality as Omaha Steaks. We're this.

And I didn't know, I just believed what they said. But it didn't take very long to figure out that was just complete BS. So I stopped doing that. And so went back into ministry, working for the church. But over maybe the next year and a half, two years or so, I kept thinking, man, somebody could do this. Somebody should do this. Somebody could take that and actually build a brand if they just would do. And I kept having all these business ideas. And again, I had never been an entrepreneur, never done anything like that before. And every two or three months I would have these thoughts on this meat business, but it was never me being the one to do it. It was always going to be somebody else. And then, and I'd even talked to my wife about it periodically. And then

one morning toward the end of 2017, I was in the, I was in my bathroom, I was getting ready. periodically. And then one morning toward the end of 2017, I was in the, I was in my bathroom, I was getting ready. And, and I started having those thoughts again, thinking, man, like this would be fantastic if somebody would do it. And I heard God's voice. And I don't say that lightly, but I truly, I, I heard God's voice say, you do it. And it was loud and it was clear. And I was like, oh. And I, so I walked out of the bathroom and I went to my wife and I said, hey, God just told me to start a meat company. And she looked at me and it was hindsight. It was the best thing. It was the safest thing she could have said.

But I thought she was going to give me some pushback. But she looked at me. She said, if you heard God, then I trust you. And which was amazing. And so we basically this is we basically sold everything we owned, maxed out all of our credit cards, and put it all on the line to get the company started, for lack of better words. We went all in because I didn't know any other way. So we had just had our first son, and he was just a few months old. He was probably three months old when we decided to start.

That was in the beginning of 2018 when we pulled the plug on starting. And all I knew was to sell meat out of the back of trucks because I did it for just a few months and I thought, okay, that's all I knew. I found, I got some meat, parked a truck in Waco, Texas. And again, didn't know anything about anything, but just started learning it along the way.

And fortunately, I truly believe that sometimes entrepreneurs are able to do great things out of ignorance because they're like, for me, I will tell you my cases, I was too ignorant about all of it. And I just got really lucky or early on, really blessed early on with some decisions that I didn't know were bad decisions and they just happened to work. And what I mean by that is, I think you know what I mean by that. I know what you mean. Cause sometimes you don't, there's two sides of the, and I'm a, I've learned the hard way too. I've made some of those decisions myself that didn't work out personally, but I do know and recognize that sometimes,

and I started my ad agency this way, I knew there was a better, different way to do it. And I was going to be ignorant about what it took, but it took that ignorance to a degree to think about it different. And once that happened, some things fell in place. So I think there's two sides of the coin. Well, you don't know what you don't know,

but sometimes when you're blinded by that, you might find the other side that no one else would have ever found. That's exactly right. Yeah, exactly right. And I think it, I'm a marketer at heart. I really am. Like if I-

You are. Oh, I want to get to that. I've seen that firsthand. It's funny because even in my early 20s, again, I'm a musician. I've seen that firsthand. It's funny because even in my early twenties, again, I'm a musician. I play several different instruments and I like to write songs and stuff, but I would always find myself writing jingles for companies or just I'd see a billboard. And I always thought if I didn't work for the church, if I wasn't in ministry, I wanted to work for a marketing agency. And then starting

Good Ranchers, we basically built our own because we run everything in-house. But I said that to say there's a difference, and this is what I learned really early on, is there's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. And there's so many marketing agencies, and this is not a knock on anybody, but there's so many people out there that want to tell you this is what you have to do and say, oh, you have to do this and this. But if it was just that easy of doing this and this, then everyone would be doing it. Everyone would be creating a product, building a product, and selling a product. It's a whole lot easier to tell someone how to do something versus actually being in the shoes and having to do it yourself. Oh yeah. That's why all these gurus become gurus and they don't own companies. I actually own four

companies and the ad agency. And some are better than others, but it's just a whole lot different. And that's why they become professors. I can teach others, but if I had to go do it myself, it's so true. It's very wise, a lot of wisdom in that it's not just as easy as the textbooks like to make it out to be. Yeah. Again, and this is, I learned this along the way too. There is no plan. There's some best practices maybe, but man, there's no book that tells you how to start a business from scratch and for it to become successful. You just gotta, it really is a leap of faith and you gotta trust your gut and sink or swim.

For me personally, I don't think there's an in-between, especially on, I think you can make some, if you can make some calculated decisions. I don't, you know, I am not a proponent of being an idiot. I like to, I'm an office fan and Dwight Schrute said something very wise one time. He said, I think of what an idiot would do and I try not to do that. Yes. Sound, that's going to make the highlight clips.

Sage advice from Dwight Schrute and Ben Spell. Yeah. Anyway, but like I said, my wife and I, we went all in. We definitely had a lot of moments early on of, oh crap, what did we do? What's going to happen here? But I never saw like a clear vision, but I just, it's like, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And we, where we are today is not where we started. And today, like I said, we, I started, it was me in the back of a truck in a parking lot in Waco, Texas, just five years ago with my wife at home, trying to running social media. I was on Facebook, ago with my wife at home trying to running social media. I was on Facebook trying to learn how to run Facebook ads and stuff like that. But fast forward, now we're completely online. We made

the Inc. 5000 list last year. I'm positive we'll make it again this year because our growth is even more than it was the year before. And we're catching up to our competitors. There's not a lot of competitors in this space, which is why we started, which is why back in 2017, when I really started, I heard God's voice like, you should do it. But then I did start, okay, let me plan as much as I can. And I did start looking at some things. And really what I noticed then was, man, Omaha Steaks owns this market, especially in 2017. There's a lot since COVID, there's been a lot more competition and a lot more people in the space. But back then, Omaha Steaks was really the only people delivering meat. And it's not very

good. They don't disclose the grading. and they actually sued us last year for writing a blog about that it was fine sometimes the truth hurts right yeah we said they don't sell graded meat and the they don't disclose their grading so they don't tell you what grade it is but in the technicality they do sell graded meat they just don't tell you what grade it is but in the technicality they do sell graded meat they just don't tell you what grade it is they have their own grading scale system and we got it all worked out hey i like the bonus yeah but anyway but what was the moment ben like the five years ago what what flipped the switch from and i know you're like me you you never go, oh, we made it. I never like to say those words.

Like, I don't know yet. Don't tell me that because I don't know. I don't want to, if I start acting that way, it just doesn't go well. But what was the, was there a seminal moment or a decision or something that turned a corner from, I don't know if we're going to make it. I don't know if we're going to make it. I don't know if we're going to make it. We're doing our best. We're all in, we're all in, but Oh, we're somewhat around a corner or something. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know that there's ever a, we made it moment, but I think there's, I, we have our ebbs and flows of, I can take a breath right now. Yeah. And

there's some moments where, Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap. And then if we can just get to this and then you get there for us, that's how it, that's how it was where we had some, yeah, hills and valleys, but to keep climbing and, but for us, it was 2020. It was when the world fell apart and that 2019 was really hard. 2018, we launched again. It was me under a tent and I have six brothers and I started, I knew we weren't online. We were just selling meat out of the back of a truck. And I was smart enough to know that, okay, if one truck can make X amount, then two trucks can make more. And there's my business school for you. Scaling.

Yeah. The only way we had to scale was more trucks. And so got my brothers and some childhood friends and different people that I knew. And 2019 was, 2018 was, like I said, dumb luck. And I was like, oh man, it's's pretty good we did about five million in sales in 2018 our first year which is nothing to shake a stick at for just nothing jumping in and doing it and then and i and i then i thought oh man i made it i got this and then 2019 was was was really hard was not profitable lost money the whole year, just like thinking, do the same thing. Just rinse and repeat from last year. Didn't work. And so then went into 2020 going, okay, we're going to have to be a volume business.

So we need more trucks to really be able to pay for the amount of marketing and advertising and stuff. Because we were going into metro cities and buying like all the syndicated radio. Go to the country station, the rock station. And that's not cheap. And so we said, okay, for us to really make money at this, we've got to have more. And honestly, thankfully, because of COVID, we were very profitable in 2020. And if it wouldn't have been for COVID, we probably would have went out of business. So when you just talk about just right place, right time, because we went into the year just super stretched

with the ability to have 15 to 20 trucks on the road at any time. Because like I said, I thought the only way we can scale is to have more trucks. If we wouldn't have had just this huge spike and increase of demand for meat because the grocery stores ran out, the restaurant shut down, it would have probably been a bad decision. But thankfully, again, we were on the right side of just an entrepreneurial decision that felt right with our gut. And that was the aha moment because that allowed us to have enough. We've never raised money. We're self-funded and self-owned. allowed us to have enough. We've never raised money. We're self-funded and self-owned. That really gave us the capital to be able to invest in getting online. And because online, the barrier

to entry on perishable goods is really difficult. So we're able to actually put some money in the bank in 2020 and start being able to, one, figure out how to sell online shipping and packaging and all that stuff. And so we, by the end of 2020, we were selling online and then, and then we were seeing this doing the, still doing the trucks and still selling meat and trying to sell meat online. And then about mid 2021 in the summer of 2021, I made another gutsy decision of what we're the two businesses are cannibalizing each other. If we're going to grow online, we got to kill the trucks, but the trucks were the only thing that were profitable.

And my brother and my, who was, who works for us at the time doing operations and still works for us now doing operations. And then my best friend who's now our our COO I looked at them and told them hey we got to shut we're shutting down the trucks we're going fully online because that's where we need to be and I got a little pushback got and rightfully like we had to we needed to talk about it but like an avalanche falling on top that got a pushback yeah probably yeah yeah but yeah but we made that decision and and we haven't looked back 2022 was our first year solely online which was last year and we saw exponential growth from from the year before and so 2020 was definitely a it it was a milestone for us because

we were able to put some capital to actually build the business and the bank to build the online part of our business. It was also another milestone for us because that's really when we changed up all of our sourcing to be American only. And early on, we didn't know, again, I didn't know anything about meat. In 2018, 2019, we were just buying from brokers because we didn't have enough buying power to buy from anyone else and did not know. But a lot of what we were selling was coming from Mexico. A lot of it was coming from South America. It was just coming because there's no country of origin labeling law in the US. But as soon as we found that out, and then with getting some buying power in 2020, we were able to start going direct to the source, be able to cut out those middlemen

and be able to actually verify what we're buying in. And so 2020 was like the pivotal point for us, not only shifting business from the trucks to being able to sell online, but being able to deliver the quality that we have today, which is first and foremost, the most important thing. I read this in a book, Creativity Inc. I can't think of the guy's name. He was the guy that started Pixar. Yeah. Maybe John Lasseter.

Something like that. Something like that. I feel like I'm not doing him a service. But he says this at the beginning of the book, quality is our business plan. And that just always stuck with me, especially selling food. I thought if we're going to build a business that's going to scale, if we're going to build a business that people, if we're going to sell a product, especially meat, that people, we want people to buy more than once, our quality has to be there. Where others

would have sacrificed quality to make more money, especially in all of our early days, we kept increasing quality and making less money because we were trying to play a long game of building a product that people would want. Because it's easy to get somebody to buy something one time, but to get them to buy it over and over again, you have to provide something of quality, of substance.

Ding, ding, ding right there. There's lesson number one from the Ben Spell playbook, quality matters. And it's one thing if you snow someone over for one deal, right? No matter what it is. But that's not sustainable. That's what I tell people all the time. Sales are great, but you've got to get repeat sales. You can't just be in a constant acquisition of new. You've got to have that cycle of repeat purchases.

And the only way to do that is to provide quality and people get at least what they thought they paid for, if not more. That's right. Yeah, because take this to the bank. Your customer acquisition cost is only going to rise the longer you're in business. Yes. It's going to keep getting more expensive. Yeah, because in order to reach broader and new different audiences, right? Yeah, so you better hang on to the ones that you paid for.

Yeah, exactly. I have two books in the works. One's called Raising a Brand, which is all about NIL and stuff like that. And the other one's called Lifetime Loss. They talk about lifetime value, lifetime value of the book. And it's so true because referrals, people don't understand the cost of acquisition. Plus when you lose a customer, you lose referrals, you lose goodwill, you lose social proof. It's so important. I'm stealing that word from you. I will give you credit. No, you can please. Yes. Yeah, no, I'm taking it.

Not lifetime value is lifetime loss. I mean, and I'm not a half glass empty kind of guy. I'm a half glass full, but losing a customer, you need to think about it as a half glass empty. That's right. Yes. Yeah, that's right. And we tell, and so we do for that reason, we do all of our customer service in-house. We don't outsource any of that because again, we pay a lot of money to get these customers. And it's not about we're not in the business like like our space, the direct consumer food space. The margins are like we're not selling like this, the Amazon stuff, like we're like we're selling premium quality meat. So our margins are much, much smaller than most businesses.

So we can't afford to not hang on to customers. But truthfully, anybody trying to build a successful business shouldn't look at it like the customer has to matter. You have to care about the one that you already got. And so all of our customer service, we do it in-house for that reason, because I want them hearing what our marketing team's talking about. I want them knowing what's going on. I want them hearing what our operations teams are talking about. That way, when someone calls, they know what to tell them. It's not this blanket FAQ page that somebody's reading from.

It's actual people in the office hearing us run the business and hearing me every week talking about the importance of what we do and the importance of our customers. And, and we tell we, every new customer service person on the first day, we tell them, and then we remind them over and over. We start with a yes. We start with a yes. When someone calls and they have a problem, we start with a yes. Because why, like, why not? Again, lifetime value. If we've already paid to get them, let's just keep them. Bingo. So I'm hearing a few things and a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs or people thinking about it or side hustles and all that. So I'm hearing a few things from the beginning, trust your gut or trust God. One or the other, they're both, but you trusted God to make the

decision, but that you trust your gut in some very key decisions. Quality, that it matters. Say yes first, talking about customer experience and all those things. Is there other things, Ben, talking about building good ranchers and what you've been through? And you are a natural marketer,

but are there other things that you counsel people that are starting businesses or they're doing that have been like just decision-makings and maybe you're scaling and those kind of things that have come to mind? Yeah, yeah. I'll say to anybody wanting to start a business, make sure you're starting a business and not a job for yourself. Make sure you have, if you're going to take the time, because both of them take just as much work. And if you're going to take the time and the risk and the money to start a business, make sure you're, make sure you have, like, you never know all the things, but at least have

some sort of a plan of at some point, this can scale and this can be bigger than me. I can take myself out of it. And I got that from the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad years ago. And that's one of the lines that really stuck out to me where he says that most people think they're starting a business, but they really just create a job for themselves. And I talk to people pretty regularly that say, hey, I have this idea. I want to do this and this. And a lot of times it falls into the category of, hey, if you just want to be your own boss, go for it. But if you're really, really starting a business, it's building something that can run without you, or at least eventually. You're going to work a lot. But either way you cut it, you're going to work a lot. But I would challenge people, just make sure that you are building something that can scale and don't be afraid to turn over, to delegate and to turn over. As soon as you can afford to hire someone to do something, you have to do it. Because if it's truly a business that can scale, then you got to get it to scale. And for that to happen, you have to get yourself out of doing all the things. Otherwise,

you're just creating a job for yourself. And it's like you said, you're going to do the same amount of work one way or another. So you need to be building a foundation for something bigger than just a job. Ben, I do. We've talked a lot about the entrepreneur journey, your stuff, but I know there's some passion points around the meat and you've talked about that a little bit, but let's give good ranchers a little bit of love. It's look, it's delicious meat delivered to your door. I never thought that I could get me delivered to my door. That was as good as it is. So I'm going to give you both credible and real love here because it is it. Once you have the New York strips, you won't go back. I'll just say that, but talk about some of the tenants of Good Ranchers, what people can expect.

Yeah. So most of the meat you buy online, especially all of our competitors, won't name any names, but all the meat you're buying online is being, a lot of it, the majority of it is being sourced from overseas, being sourced from South America, is being sourced from these places that just don't have the standards that the United States has. If you go to a steakhouse in the US, not Outback, but like an actual steakhouse, they're sourcing Angus beef from American farms. They're sourcing upper choice and prime Angus beef from American farms and ranches. And the grocery stores, most of your grocery stores,

most of your grocery stores aren't selling that. I'm not here to get into, oh yeah, my store does, maybe. But Costco's not selling it. People all the time, they're like, oh, I can get prime at Costco. What you're getting is dairy cattle at Costco. Because you're not getting Angus,

you're getting Holstein, which is- Not great. All the males, all the dairy cattle, 50% of them are males and can't produce milk. So those just get fattened up. And that's what your grocery stores, most of them are buying. And there's a big difference between Angus and Holstein and the breed of cattle. So steakhouses. And so what we looked at, we were like, okay, what are the steakhouses selling and how do we sell that? And how do we bring that directly to consumers? And so we take a chef's approach, a steakhouse approach when we source, and not just our beef, our chicken, our seafood, everything. We take that approach, not a retail approach.

All of our competition, they're taking a retail approach where, because the grocery store, they want to, they use meat to get you in the store to hoping you'll buy a bunch of other, a bunch of other stuff. And so they want to get it as cheap as possible from wherever they can get it. That's right. And they're not going to age it because they got to get it out. They got to get it off the shelves and they got to get it through as fast as possible. And so we, we started looking, we actually met some chefs, met some different suppliers that all they do is supply to high-end steakhouses. And so we take that approach. We raise, we source, and we raise the right way. And we partner with ranches that what the cattle eat, how they're raised is very

important. But the next step is how it's finished, how it's processed, and how it's butchered. And so we took the steakhouse approach, not the grocery store approach. And that's what makes, that just makes all the difference in the world. I would, I would compare any, I would have, I like a lot of times I think if people go, oh, I'm gonna send something to maybe a celebrity or to somebody who I want to impress. Don't tell somebody to go handpick everything. We never handpick anything to send to anyone, whatever, if it doesn't matter who we're sending something to.

And we're just going to, they're going to get whatever comes off our line because that's how much we believe in our quality of what we do. I can tell you it's quality. My kids are even going, it's a good ranchers tonight, dad, when there's stuff on the,

I'm just saying, because I speak it a lot. The burgers coming out and then they're fighting. If I get a burger in that New York strip, like it used to be, they want the steak no matter what. But now I don't even have that argument anymore because those Waiku burgers are tasty. It's so good. You know what I love about you, man? We're coming down to time.

We'll do a version two of this with Ben Spell. But you talked about it a little bit. Your wife is involved. Your brother's involved. It's a family business. And you're a family guy. And that's why I love you. And I love what Good Rancher stands for.

But let me talk about that family dynamic as we close out a little bit. Yeah, for sure. I will say this. I have had some family that I've had to fire, which is not, it's not fun. And honestly, it really sucks. But I also have a family and friends that have been working for us for since the beginning and are still here and have moved up and are helping me run this thing. And if you are going to bring family in, just know that you could lose the relationship. Just put that out there. And I absolutely hate that I have lost some family

relationships, but the business has to come first because there's a, there's a lot of people that aren't family that also work for good ranchers. There's a lot of jobs that are on the line of people and the business has to be able to, you have to, business has to make the right decisions. Not even me, like the business has to make the right decisions for it to stay profitable and to keep growing. And you have to take family out of that. Now that said, I love family. I love my family. And I have, there's still very close, very close friends that work for us and multiple family members as well. And my wife and I have four kids and we, we preach this throughout

our staff. We, your family comes first. Every person that we hire, it doesn't matter where they sit, whether in customer service operations on our development team, marketing, it doesn't matter. We tell every single person, Hey, your job doesn't come first. Your family comes first because I put my family before this company. And we try to practice what we preach. I think when you treat your employees, when you allow your employees to know that their family is important, you get such better results. The community that we have, the culture that we have, like people will go above and beyond for us. Like we have just a fantastic thing happening.

And it's because we put family first. We do it in our own life. And again, we practice what we preach. We tell everyone, hey, put your family first. If you, I'm not watching the clock going like where so-and-so. What matters is the job getting done. That's really what matters. And then another thing that we're really trying to implement in our own life as we're growing and figuring this whole thing out is not using the term work-life balance, but using the term work-life integration. but using the term work-life integration.

Because I'm traveling a lot more now as the business is growing and as we're doing some of these sponsorship, some of the IndyCar sponsorship that I told you. And this weekend I was in Indianapolis, but I brought my five-year-old, my four-year-old, my two boys, and they were there the whole weekend. And so it's like, yeah, I'm there working, but I'm also, I was also able to bring my wife

and two of my kids, and they're making memories that they'll never forget. And so that's the difference between work life balance and work life integration. And as a business owner, you have the ability to integrate your life versus just balance your time. Yeah. And that's forward thinking, because that's the way, especially if you allow that as it makes sense for your team, those kinds of things to where they feel comfortable doing those things. That's a win-win all the way around. Very progressive. Yeah. I love it, Ben. I want to be conscientious of your time. You got a big company to run and a family to keep up with. We'll do a part two and catch up on some of the latest things, some of the things coming down the

line for good ranchers and yourself, Ben, and more on the Indy car sponsorships. We have a lot to talk about there. That's a big deal and a lot of work and a whole other episode probably in and of itself. But Ben, tell everybody where they can keep up with you and Good Ranchers. Yeah. Goodranchers.com is where you can order meat, which is pretty important. Yes. And you can follow us at Good Ranchers and you can follow me at Ben underscore Spell on any of the platforms. Hey, guys, I hope everybody got a sense of Ben. Very humble, but very successful and a great marketer. On top of that, you'll see that when you go to their website. Very, very creative and on their social media.

So go give them some love at Good Ranchers dot com. You know where to find us. The Radcast dot com. search for Ben Spell. You'll find all the episode highlight clips from today, or just look at that sponsor good ranchers and good ranchers.com best meat in America delivered right to your door. Hey, I'm at Ryan Offord. You'll find me verified on all the platforms before you could buy it. We'll see you next time on the radcast. To listen or watch full episodes, visit us on the web at theradcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account, the.rad.cast or at Ryan Alford. Stay radical.