Yeah, that ain’t good, man. That’s that’s a big steak.
I mean, so you’re telling me like you’re sending out.
They were sending out like a 12 oz ribeye and they were getting like a 20 oz ribeye.

They were sending out almost two pounds of fillets and fillets are supposed to be 8 to 10 ounces 2 in thick.
They were getting full on like half a loin tenderloin.

I should have bought some before this.
You should have.
Actually, I think there’s still a bunch in inventory and so buy them now.
Yeah, buy them now.

You’re getting to take advantage of us sadly because we can’t once they’re labeled and out of the facility we can’t take them back through.
So we’re just working through all of the.

We need to get that machine that you just put the meat in and it does all the cutting for you guys.
If we can’t solve this via humans, I would much prefer to have people working for us so we’re supporting jobs but if it came down to it we’re going to end up buying that machine that automates it.

There are some cool machinery that a lot of facilities.

Dude it makes it it’ll take a piece of meat.

So it takes an entire loin.
So there’s this uh company called Multivac is who makes it down.

Yeah, that’s what we went and seen down their factory.

Imagine this giant machine.
You take a full loin.
So let’s say a uh a loin off of a cow, like a a strip loin.
It’s 24 in long by I don’t know 10 in in diameter.

You put it in this machine.
The machine compresses it down to where there’s no air pockets around the loin and then it automatically weighs it and can portion out.
Like if I hit 10 oz strip steak on the machine, it knows exactly what thickness to cut each steak to where you get nothing but 10 ounces of strip steak and you’re left with like 2% yield loss.

What?
Like 2% trim that you grind up into ground beef.

What I liked was that machine they had that made the meat look like it was like 3D.
Well, that was a packaging machine.

But it like yeah, but it it made the meat like stick up kind of out of it.
It was kind of it was crazy because it’s like airtight all the way down.

And it’s not like this normal one where it’s like over.
It was like airtight and then it would go up and shape around the.

It’s like what you see in a fish fillet.
That’s how they package fish fillets.

So like they it’s like you have the package and then the meat actually sticks up like 3D in the package.

Yeah.

But that that packaging machine is $400,000 and um that’s about.

Well, it ain’t that cool.

Let me look in the bank account.
I would say that’s probably $399,500 more than what we currently have in the account.
So maybe maybe next year.

The following year.

There are some very very cool meat facility equipment, but we’re still hand cutting everything, which is good because we have, you know, four people working in the processing room cutting up all of these steaks or cutting up anything that comes in.

The problem with that is you have to make sure that they’re cutting them at the right thicknesses to hit your weights.
Because in our scenario, I’m selling what I think are 12 to 14 oz ribeyes, strips, 8 to 10 oz sirloins and fillets and they’re sending out 20 oz fillets or 22 ounces ribeyes and I wasn’t checking on that.

So again, I go back to I’m like, where is the money that should be in the account based on the topline revenue?
Well, we’re sending it out as these freaking heavy steaks.

Yeah, that’s it’s just anyways, long story short, there are so many lines in the business process that you could lose money at.
And if you’re wrong on any of them or if you have a faulty system along the way with any of them, you’re losing money.

Yeah.

And I would say the businesses that we do, I have the utmost respect for people that are doing very complex businesses.
We have the most simple businesses I could ever imagine.

We wash cars.
We take a cow.
We slaughter a cow.
We turn it into steaks and we ship it out.
That’s a pretty simple business.
It’s not rocket science.

No, it’s not.

And we still suck.
I still learn.

Hey, whoa, whoa.
I don’t do much of the meat side, so this sounds like you problem.

I well, I suck.
I will admit that.

It goes back to that saying.

I have been doing more with this.
So, basically, I’m I’m starting to suck now.

Again, the more I learn, the less I know.
Is that the saying?

Like you started off and it’s actually embarrassing.
I was going back to some podcasts of me back in 2019, 2020 and I thought I was a big dog.

Like I thought I was I thought I was, you know, knew my stuff.
I was fresh off my MBA, few years in business, was seeing some success, had some good money in stocks.
Stocks were flying then, so I was making good money.

And I was like, you know what, I’ve got this life thing figured out.
And I’d go on a podcast and I’d sit there and brag about how smart I was or what we were doing that was leading edge and we were just so advanced in our businesses.

And I sit here today and I look at some of those clips of me back in, you know, 19, 20 and I’m like, that dude is such an idiot.
Like I was so dumb.

I had no idea.
I didn’t know my head from my butt.
And I still don’t, but at least I’m able to admit that.
I guess I got humbled enough to admit that.

Yeah.

You ever feel like that?
I kind of missed that chip on the shoulder though, you know.

So like.

Chip on the shoulder.

That you had back then, you know, like kind of had like.

The arrogant swagger.

Yeah, like that’s what like everybody when they’re in their like prime, man.
Like when he was in it, he was feeling it like at every aspect.

Like you kind of have to have that like swag.
Like not saying you need to be arrogant.
Like you probably deserve to be humble in a few ways.

I I need to too.
I was, you know, everybody tells me online all the time, but I I just read comments.
That’s how I humble myself.

That’s right.

So hop on Facebook for a minute.

Yeah.

Hop on there and you can learn a lot.

But uh yeah, I don’t I just feel like you got to have some type of like uh like pep in your step, you know, like you got to have some type of.
I’m not saying you got to be cocky.
Like I’m not saying act like, but I’m saying like you got to be confident in what you’re doing.

Which not saying you’re not, but I think that life is sort of obviously it’s a roller coaster ride, but the element of success, especially in business, when you first start out, you’re so oblivious to how hard business actually is you walk around with this confidence that is not built on evidence.

It’s like sheer obliviousness to the business world.

So you walk around like feet barely touching the ground.
I have my own business.
I’m a big dog.
Like I know exactly what I’m doing.

And then you start off with all this enthusiasm and optimism.
And then as you learn the real worlds of business, you get humbled.

And then you go through like this pit of despair of like I know nothing, I’m going to fail, everything is horrible, I’ll never make it out.
And then you just start to creep your way out of that as you actually become somewhat experienced and seasoned and have the battle scars on your back to prove it.

I feel like that’s where kind of we are.

Yeah.

You know, like we’re coming out of the pit of despair.
We have the battle scars that will keep us humble if we ever do get extremely successful again.

Yeah, no, for sure.

I mean I can tell you this, I will never talk crap like I know anything ever again.

Oh, I never did in the first place.

Oh, bull.
You acted like you knew everything there was to know about farming.

No, I did not.

Did you not see you on the episode about the lease?

Yeah, oh yeah.

This was 60 bushel soybeans all day long.

The farmer that had that farm at the time.

If you planted that farm this year, would it have grown 60 bushel soybeans?

Yeah, it would have this year 100%.

Okay.
In a normal weather year.

I mean I would say that farm was a very good farm.

I still to this day like I guarantee you if I go look at the crops on that farm they’re not already harvested.
It wasn’t corn.
It’s good crops on that farm.

Is that because Cole wasn’t in the tractor planting that farm?

No, it’s not.

It’s because we I mean our crops right now look good.

I mean everything we do suck at the end of the day.

Like I mean I feel like all you do is just talk about how bad we suck.

No, we’re not.

But you also have a lot that’s going good too.

I mean there’s a lot that we do that is good.

Like we wouldn’t be where we’re at, we wouldn’t have what we have if we sucked at everything.

Like I I do know like our crops this year like we’re going to average 55 bushel soybeans.

Yeah, I mean our crops look good.

I mean they’re not nothing insane, but we were in Davies County also.

We’re not like on pivot ground and the bottom over on Missouri River bottoms.

So no, I agree with that.

So yeah, I that farm I 100% think will grow good crops every year.

Okay.

It was a good farm.

It had no tree lines on it and it was big fields open, drained good.

Had waterways on it where it needed them.

It drained perfectly.

Had no standing water on it when we looked at it.

Well, it was late summer, so that’s probably why.

But we’ll just call that the one that got away then.

Well, yeah.

And everybody gave me so much crap about that.

That actually made me mad because the reason that fell through was because he wanted paid 100% up front and we like doing 50/50.

It just didn’t make sense for us from a cash flow perspective.

And I get it from a landowner’s perspective.

They want to mitigate their risk.

But from a farmer’s perspective, cash flow-wise, we just don’t want to be in that position.

But where we’re at now though, it worked out for the best.

Like we would have been spread too thin.

That farm was a pretty good ways from here too.

Yeah, it was.

But it was a good farm.

I’ll give you that.

No, it was a good farm, but it wasn’t something we needed.

Not the way prices are right now.

There’s no lease that makes sense.

It doesn’t matter how much yield you get if you’re selling it for pennies on the dollar.

Yeah.

Even this year with corn.

There’s good corn out there.

But the prices, it doesn’t matter.

The price of corn in the 1980s is basically the same as today, but inputs have gone up like three or four times.

So think about that.

We’re still selling it for the same amount, but everything costs more.

That’s what we’re dealing with in farming.

And we tried to beat it by growing more bushels per acre.

That’s the only way.

But in our area, it’s hard to consistently grow high yields.

It’s risky.

It’s a gamble.

And when you factor in rising property taxes and land prices, it’s even tougher.

So as much as we complain, other places like Illinois have it even worse with taxes.

Lease prices are insane.

Some starting with a four.

It’s crazy.

Land prices, lease prices, everything has gone up.

But we’re still selling crops for the same price.

So the farmer is the one getting squeezed.

Back in 2012, corn was $8.

Farmers had their heyday.

Since then, not so much.

We started too late.

Prices now are rough.

Farming is tough.

Entrepreneurship is tough.

Respect to anyone who has figured it out.

There are so many moving parts.

From customer acquisition to fulfillment to delivery.

Those who have perfected it deserve respect.

And at the end of the day, it comes down to balance.

Quality of life versus income.

Everyone has to decide what matters more.

For me, there’s a threshold where more money isn’t worth the stress.

Some people want that grind.

Others prefer stability.

And there’s nothing wrong with either.

Because at the end of the day, being your own boss means you never clock out.

You’re always on.

Always solving problems.

Always thinking about work.

And sometimes, the idea of a simple 9 to 5 where you shut it off at the end of the day doesn’t sound so bad.

But that’s the tradeoff.

And it’s one you have to choose for yourself.