Grant Hilbert
Appearances
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
We're not counting totals. It's like if I need to help him for a day, I'm helping him for a day. If he needs to help me, he's helping me. Any stuff like that, he's always helping.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I don't know. I, I saw, I saw some of that. Uh, it's like, I don't know. I go back and forth. It's, Yeah, you're going to get ripped apart. I don't get ripped apart much on social media as much as I do. Maybe behind the scenes I do, but it's kind of good if you're getting ripped apart a little bit on there. It's not the worst, and I think that's just human nature.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I don't want to say this and sound too cocky, but it's kind of just working smart versus working hard. Exactly. No farmer's going to go out there and plant by hand or plant with a horse, right? So every farmer's run big equipment or just work a little smarter sometimes.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Which is everybody's goal. Exactly, yeah. And I just had more leverage on it just because it's like, well, I'm not selling one copy to one kid. It's like I'm selling a million copies to a million kids that are watching that video. So with social media and internet, it's just like a leverage thing where I just had a lot of leverage. leverage behind me when I was making videos.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And on the like farm sim stuff, there's like, there's been a lot of, uh, I always call kids, but they're probably 15, 18 years old where it's like, they kind of wanted to get into it. And so I've helped them and stuff. And I've kind of showed them, I was like, I'm not that funny. I'm not that entertained.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I just, I just, once I see a little bit of money, I kind of just go after it pretty hard and stuff. I'm like, well, these, you could do the same thing as me and stuff. And so there's been a lot of like kids I've kind of taught to do the same thing. And they almost had a high school. They do it full time now too. So, Uh, so yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Um, on the real life stuff, I haven't figured it out. Like the real life content. So like Zach Johnson's content, he does an awesome job. I try and learn a lot from him and stuff. So on the farm sim content though, um, it's more like, um, I don't know, going viral. It's like not doing what you want. Like I want to just farm in those farm sim videos.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
But what we'll do is we'll do like Dukes of Hazzard role play or something like that. And some of those videos will get a million views or we'll do gold mining. Gold mining has been like super popular.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. You can do a lot of – With what?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
uh no you there's mods where you can gold mine i mean there's excavators there's there's great setups yeah it's insane it's a it's a whole different gold mine game on there basically now hold on just a minute here are you still making videos playing farm soon yeah yeah no i do that that's that but why why don't you make videos playing your own game Oh, so I do both. I do both. Yep. Yep.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
But my own game, so it's a mobile game. So it, it like, it doesn't get as many views. I knew that going into it, that it's not going to get as many views. So we'll rotate like two farm civ videos a week, one mobile game a week. Um, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, so I kind of look at it, and it's one thing you've got to kind of be in that, I'll call it gaming space, to know the difference. So Farming Simulator, they do a great job on their... Well, they do a decent job on their game, but what they did so amazing is they added mods to it. And so it's a very Europeanized game off the base, but all the mods are like American equipment.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And so the amount of stuff you can do in Farming Slayer, because you have a whole creator economy that is making mods... is insane. So basically everybody makes American maps, American equipment. Okay. Now you got American game because of the modders, but on mobile, they drop a game and it's very Europeanized and there's no mods. You can, it's just not possible to make mods on mobile.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So we were like, Hey, we need to make an American game on mobile. So that game is literally made out of Iowa, basically Iowa's terrain. And so any like us kid that comes up to me or like Midwest kids is like, Dane. Yeah. You guys did a nice job on that, but we don't pull as many sales out of Europe or,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
But you guys have probably had buddies that are from city, not farming. Oh, 100%. It's insane how many kids it draws from outside of farming.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
watch oh i play i don't just watch you know it's kind of neat to see what they're like i mean in a way farm farm sim has probably done more advocating than any of us in the actual space yeah exactly uh like farm sim and i'll call it the even though the influence the influencers it's like and back way back to that thing you're talking about earlier it's like they've kind of in a way made farming cool again not that you can give yourself that much pride behind you but
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
There are so many kids that watch YouTubers that aren't even interested in farming, but they're watching farming YouTubers. It's insane.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I honestly, like per week, the amount of hours I spend on FarmSim, 10, 10 hours a week or something like that. Like it's not much.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, I've got editors that edit it. They'll do the thumbnail. They'll upload it to YouTube. All I do is just drop them the video kind of. So I've just made it pretty simple.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, it's honestly not much at all. Then the American farming side, like that game, we still have – six, seven people on that team and we're still building a lot more projects and content and stuff. And that I've got a project manager on there that he does everything. And that was by far the best decision is to get a project manager.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I realized really quick, I'm not a good manager when it comes to managing developers and coders.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Uh, six, six and a half, I'll call it cause of part time or something. Sure. But yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Definitely, definitely. And I feel like that's what we've seen. And maybe in agriculture it hasn't been taken advantage of as much, but it's like when you build an audience, like a large audience of some sort, then when you build a company or have something around that audience, you can scale that really quick.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
You have all those marketing and advertising costs out of there, and you can scale really quick. So you see a lot of big YouTubers like the Mr. Beast, the Pauls. Like I remember Paul Brothers. They were like, yeah, we're going to be the first social media billionaires. I was like – There is no way. And then now you look at it, it's like, yeah, they're going to get there. Same with Mr. Beast.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
He's going to be a billionaire. It's like they're scaling these companies so quick. And so I wonder if in agriculture we'll have that where people start building, I'll call it, large company off the backs of their kind of followers. Not in a bad way, in a good way.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, even that – how do you pronounce it? Boasofra? Yeah. I even saw that, and I texted Corey. I was like, I'm doing that right away. And I wouldn't have known about it at all.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
yeah and that's one of the things i realized about farming it's like and i i make i try and make this very clear because there's some young kids that watch like the youtube channel that i'm only here because of outside capital like i'm not a good farmer is what is what i try and try and tell the kids but the outside capital it's like when there's when there's tough times it's like you can really take advantage of those by having just a little bit outside income that's that's the biggest part and then you compound that over
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
40 or 50 years of taking advantage during the tough times with some of that outside capital. And it's like, that seems like the perfect game plan. But then it's like, if you don't have that, then it's like, boy, it would be tough for the next 40 or 50 years. And so...
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
This is the first, you know, I've only farmed four years, but this is the first, I'll call it downturn that I've seen. Yeah. Just watching equipment land prices. So even over it, like I'm, I'm like, Holy crap. This is like, there's some equipment that's selling at 30 to 50% of dealer list price on auctions this summer. And then land, even in our area, I mean,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's honestly down 15% to 30% on a lot of sales compared to last year that were 18,000 or whatever.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Uh, I mean, so Spencer just bought a farm from Dave and that was, that was a no sale. And that was Dave had to get a job done kind of, and that was, it went no sale at auction kind of. And I feel like we're, we're seeing a ton of those. It feels like on some of those.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah. And he's, dude, he's way better at YouTube than I am. So I have him, he's gotten so good where I have him just do my, like, on the real life channel, he edits all those videos. He's setting the camera there when we're out there. Because one of the hardest parts is when you're farming to get the camera set down and stuff. And, you know, when we're out there farming, I'm like, why that?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Why the heck are you spending a bunch of time setting up that camera? And then when you go back and watch the video or the clips, it's like, thank God he set the camera there or something like that. And so he gets views to go viral somehow. He had one get 7 million views, and he's figured that out a lot better than I have.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Spencer's not even talking much there. He's just getting a bunch of the shots and stuff that are like, oh, that's an interesting deal.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No. So like I own, besides XFITR, I think I own all the equipment. And so I own three farms. He owns two. Basically, he gets to run all the equipment for free on his ground. He helps me on any of the land I own and a bunch of other stuff. Right.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No, no, no. He doesn't own any equity or anything, but he helps a ton. He'll advertise in the YouTube videos and stuff like that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly, yeah. I feel like as brothers, we get along really good where... how will this work when we're, you know, 30 years older, but we, uh, uh, we don't like, I don't know. We're not counting totals. It's like, if I need to help him for a day, I'm, I'm helping him for a day. If he needs to help me, he's helping me any, any stuff like that. He's always helping.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly, exactly, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's one of those scenes, even if we're cursing at each other like a terrible day, an hour later, it's like, totally forget about that. Don't even have to say anything. Totally forget about that. I don't know. It's a pretty good relationship, I'll say.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So that is, um, it costs seven 99 to purchase. And then we have a lot of in-app purchases. Ah, yep. One of those are average users. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No. So we have a bunch of companies licensed to use their equipment, but there's no money exchanged between any of them. It's value on each side of that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I'm talking both Farm Simulator and... Farm Sim is a little different where they got to find modders. But for us... For us, no, no, not at all. But we have a lot of cost incur on that side because some of these models to build these things gets real like it, like half of the team is art related where they'll build these models, you know, basically from scratch.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So like one of our, like the, one of our biggest tractors in the game, literally, and there's some dev cost factored into building this model, but it literally cost me more to build this model than my real life planner cost me in farming. It's like, but that was a crazy, that was a pretty crazy model, but it's like, we do it right and we want to get it perfect.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And so it gets expensive, it gets expensive building these models. Like artists spent two, three months building that thing. So it took, it took a while.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
We can get it in. We can get it in. Especially, and it works really good if they have like 3D models they send us. Usually if they're lower poly, it works pretty good to get them in game.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Gosh, and I texted you about that. I don't remember who got that in there, but I saw that, and I used it. And the video got, like, half a million views. Like, people loved that thing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
There we go. We just need to get John Deere in there, though. I got to get John Deere in there first. They're not in there yet? They're not in there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
They're tough. They're tough to get in, man. It's challenging. It's funny because you'll see kids will come up to you like, Grant, have you ever thought about getting John Deere in-game? No, I never have. Never have. I have all John Deere equipment. That would be great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're working on it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Okay. In Farming Simulator, you can. You can do whatever you want. In American Farming, there might be some licensing stuff, restrictions, because, you know, we're selling... We'd basically be selling that game.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. It's all tractor sounds. And a lot of them are, honestly, recorded, so... Right in Nevada there, there's C&H, so we'll go out and record every single tractor out in that C&H Industrial Center lot. Really? So I'll fly my audio guy out there. I'll go drive whatever, and we'll just go record those out there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly. They'll give you a key. It's that half a million dollar machine. You fire it up and get every...
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the other audio sounds will just come from like when I'm combine. I'll just go throw the combine out. I mean, we filmed so much that we got that audio from the YouTube side. I'll steal it sometimes. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No, I'm curious for songs too, though. I think you guys could get in there. So on Farm Sim, you could easily get in there. On American Farm, as long as we had your permission, we could technically get you in there, basically.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, and I think on Farming Simulator, a lot of people, like I've done this, I'll just open another tab while I'm playing or something, and you can pull it up on Spotify or something like that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, I've never been on Twitch or anything. It's literally just been YouTube.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yep. Exactly. It's like, you got to be there the whole time. We're on YouTube. There's videos that are four years old that are still pulling in a lot of views and we'll just get randomly recommended. And so it's almost very passively. That's a lot.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
See, I just consume TikTok. I don't make any content, but I still follow a lot of people in it. But I honestly don't know much about the band, but it's like I would place my bets on that it doesn't happen if I had placed my odds. But that's with very little merit behind that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Sorry, there is American Farming TikTok for social media. Personally, like on real life content, I don't have any. We also do on the squad content. We'll post some farms and videos. But that's, I guess, other people on my team posting those.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So TikTok's going to be wiped if it's not bought by a U.S. company, basically.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Thank you. Clap, Rachel. I think it was, what, two years ago it came on again?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's per new download.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. X. I would say if Biden banned it or got rid of it right before Trump, Trump has something to come in and save the day with. He needs something to come in and save the day with. Well, I guess you kind of look at the China side too, but that's why it's interesting with him.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, he's out tearing down houses right now with his excavator. So that's what he loves. He's out doing that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I get that. 20 million views on TikTok. On TikTok. What about you? Do you know YouTube?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yep, yep. It's a link belt. It's like a 50,000 pound machine. He always has to try and find a neighbor to haul it, but it seems to work.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, and even if, say, Tanner, okay, say you went and got a job at a company. Well, the most effective thing you'd probably be doing is running some type of marketing or something just because of all the experience you have now with marketing and stuff. That's the highest leverage job you'd probably be doing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No, he hasn't got that figured out, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly. And he's on a streak. He had, I think he's gone to three or four neighbors' houses, and it's like moves a mile down the road, does a project for a neighbor, moves a mile down the road, does a project for a neighbor.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. And it's funny. If you go look at maybe some of your TikTok or YouTube shorts – Pick out one of them that went viral, and you'll see this on a lot of podcasts. It's like, where's the link to the full podcast? And it's like everybody just wants to go to the podcast and listen to it after they hear that viral short or comment or whatever.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
RPM, revenue per million. Revenue, that's what it is. Or 1,000, sorry.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yours is really low on shorts.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's all based on your content. So the highest, at least of what I knew two years ago, the highest would be like if you made investing content or something like that. Um, there's a Graham Stephan that makes a lot of finance and I think so. Yeah. Finance and stuff like that.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Like he's got the hot, one of the highest RPMs, the lowest, um, will be obviously your shorts cause it's tough to run ads on there. Uh, what else would be lowest? Like if you had a bunch of overseas viewers, out of country viewers, that's the U S always has the highest CPM. Um, so I'm somewhere I'd be like right in the middle. Some of the real life farming content is pretty high. Um,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And it's all an auction-based system where a lot of these companies are just there's only a certain amount of investing videos that you can get out on YouTube, but there's a lot of people that can make a lot of money on running investing ads. And so a bunch of people are just chasing after that investing ad. So that's why that's literally the highest RPM on YouTube.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
have a lot more money that could come in and in long form too if you have like a two or three hour video and you and you lay like 30 ads on there or something like that that's where uh you make a lot of you make a lot of money so spencer he had a like three hour video i'm only saying this because he put it he put it in his video and it went viral it got like seven million views and uh three
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
A house, and then here he's taking out a shed for another neighbor.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
hour video like a three hour video got like seven million views there's a lot of movies that don't get that did you watch the full one over that or no not the no okay but he put it in his channel and that that one video made like 120 grand that one video made like 120 grand because he layered ads in there and a bunch of people enjoyed the content and it went viral sure um and then farming the farming content is kind of goes viral too so one video so i selected that we've got 31 million views this last year
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Like 98% of them are shorts. It seems a lot easier to get a lot more views on shorts, obviously.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Like the squad channel, that only gets like – I don't do any shorts, but that's only like – two to five billion views a month. So you're probably getting more views a month with the shorts and stuff.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I don't know if he even knows that, let's say.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Some otter probably did that. Probably added it. Yeah. I've seen them out going, though, for a neighbor. And I talked about it in my video as I've seen them going and stuff. But TerraClear was going.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And I went from an area that didn't have any rocks to an area that guys are like, watch for rocks. And I didn't know that before I bought that first farm, even in this area. I didn't realize rocks were in this area.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Uh, like 2017, 2016.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Kind of, kind of right around that timeframe. Yeah. I'd say, um, Yeah, I think I've said this multiple times, but the guy that really got me into it was Mr. Beast at the time, back in, like, 2017. He was the one that, like, first explained it and stuff.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
No, yeah, yeah. Back in 2017. It's just when we first kind of got into it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So we started buying, yeah, in 2017. And you mess around with all sorts of altcoins. And then 2018 bear market happens. And then that's really when the learning stage takes place. And you start learning more about Bitcoin. It's like, okay, Bitcoin is a real thing. Some of these altcoins just pump on some of Bitcoin's bull markets. Pump and dump. Yeah, exactly.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And then we started – it was right after college. Right when I graduated college, we bought – some Bitcoin miners in Grundy Center. And so we bought those miners and we actually just, we just actually exited them a couple weeks ago, actually. The mining? Yeah, yeah, mining.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So, yeah, JP, yeah. So I know JP pretty well, yeah. So his site, so he... JP Barrett. Yeah. Yeah, he – which I listened to that. That was a super good podcast.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
He runs – he like built that site and then we just invest in the miners. We buy those miners and then we put them on his site basically. And so we – Those miners eventually get old, just like a laptop. You're not using a six-year-old laptop anymore versus the new technology. So then we sold those miners, or we got them out of there two or three weeks ago.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And the idea is just to sell them when Bitcoin miners are at high price here, kind of in the bull market here. And so, yeah, in that mind... That mine, it's crazy. That mine actually, so we pulled our miners from there like three weeks ago. And probably a week ago, I get a text from a buddy. And it's like a KCCI article. And that whole mine burned down. JP's whole mine burned.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
burned down and he did a whole twitter thread about it kind of how it happened how do we miss this yeah it's on like news stations it's uh uh but a space heater burned a majority of that mine down space heater why did they need space exactly exactly yeah yeah that's what a lot of comments were that one employee that was just their toes were cold
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Tribes. The tribe report.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Okay, so we're going to hold you accountable here. Has the Bitcoin per acre, has that peaked? Will farmland only be cheaper in the future? Per Bitcoin. Per Bitcoin. Denominated in Bitcoin. Okay.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So farmland has peaked out, theoretically, you could argue. It's peaked out. In its comparison. It'll only get cheaper when denominated in Bitcoin.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Gotcha, yeah, yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, that mine's gone.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Why wouldn't you reinvest? No, so... I don't mean to diss on any Bitcoin miners, but what we found out was that mining or owning Bitcoin gets you very close to the same return as mining. And you have a physical thing. You have to insure that physical thing. Sometimes... is it theft? I think theft or something doesn't cover under insurance.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Some of these insurance companies are very skeptical about insuring Bitcoin Myers. And so we found out it's like for the risk you take the reward, there's not as much upside. You're getting close to the same return as owning the thing. And so that's where it's like those big miners. I mean, there's a lot of miners down in like Texas, um, and some of these regions that they're at large scale.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's one of those things where if you can scale it really big, I think you're making a lot of money mining, but if you can't scale it big, uh, I think you're better off just owning the asset itself. So that's what we've kind of learned, and so that's where we're going.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yep. It's, it's yeah. Bitcoin's like a hundred percent true capitalism. It's a true commodity. Like it's, everything is, and the two week difficulty adjustment. So if a bunch of Bitcoin, if a bunch of Bitcoin miners jump on the network because the price is going higher, just like in farming, right. It gets, it actually gets tougher for the existing Bitcoin miners on two week difficulty adjustment.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So that's, It's the exact same thing as growing a commodity or farming.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Yeah. That was, it'd probably be a year into making real farming content. And yeah, I didn't know too much then like about farming stuff kind of getting figured out, but now I'm starting to get kind of learn a little more every year and starting to feel like I, I know a little bit at least.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I don't. I don't. I only own Bitcoin. Although, like, this cycle, this is kind of a prediction, but a lot of these altcoins will pump towards the end of a crypto cycle like crazy. I don't think there's much merit in them, but I bet you there's way better upside owning some alts than Bitcoin on these cycles.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I think anybody could just create something for agriculture.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
For what use case, though? I don't know.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, I guess I've kind of viewed it where Bitcoin runs on four-year cycles, and I still haven't figured out why. There's a lot of theories to why it runs on four-year cycles, but it's extremely cyclical. And so you'll have bear markets where it'll fall 60%, 70%, 80%, and then you'll have that euphoria stage at the end of a four-year cycle where everybody and their grandmother's buying this thing.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And it just keeps repeating. And so we'll take a little bit of profit, but... Everybody who's taken profit on Bitcoin and who hasn't gotten back in has regretted it to this day. And so I think you got to kind of play dumb and just play that trend for the long term. And some of it, I'll go down with the ship for sure. I want to see where this thing ends up.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
I want to see if it ends up as a global reserve currency because that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate bull case for it. And I think... over the next 30, 50 years, there's merit for Bitcoin being one of the global reserve currencies of the world.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yep, 21 million. But, I mean, you have Trump. Trump's in here saying, hey, the amount of Bitcoin that U.S. owns, we're going to hold that as a reserve. And then he hasn't said specifically he's going to buy more from that. But it's like if you're...
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
United States government that has the reserve currency right now game theory suggests why wouldn't you just why wouldn't you just own it or buy it just so you're ahead if other countries if other countries start buying the same all right so for our listeners explain game theory on the spot I'll help you if one person does this what are you gonna if one person does this move what's your move I guess is the basic way of explaining game theory
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
24 was good. So I'm farming now kind of in the region both you guys are and where Corey is. And so my year went exactly like the way Corey described it. It was pretty much like flooding, probably 10, 15% acres had to replant. And then, you know, your stand, like Corey described in another podcast, he was so spot on. It was like... A week delayed of stand.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, I didn't hear what Kyle said about it, but what was the other guy, the Big Short guy?
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, he was against it. He was against it.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Gotcha. Yeah, no, it was – I forgot the guy's name.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Gotcha. But anyways, yeah, it's super interesting to see how it will play out. It's because you've had a lot of great macro investors that have been against it and then they've flipped. And really the only great macro investor is like Warren Buffett. I would say that's against it who hasn't flipped or Charlie Munger who passed away.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Before. It was like Michael something. And so I think for the... Steve Eisman? Steve Eisman, yep. Steve Eisman. But yeah, he was against it. It's funny because at the expo I had a bunch of people texting me like, see, you got to listen to this guy and stuff. It'll be interesting though.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
How do you say that? Hoddle. Hoddle, yeah. Hopefully slowly expand the farming operation. I would say we haven't – so we went – I mean, we only rent 100 more acres than we own, so we don't rent much ground. We're pretty small. So the goal is just to kind of expand slowly there and then just keep –
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
On the Squad Built, the software company side, just keep adding more content, working on more projects there. And the YouTube side, keep going on that. Nothing crazy.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
You had corn plants emerging a week, two weeks after. And I'm going out there on YouTube and I'm like, guys, this is 160 bushel corn max. Like we're not going to get it. And then summer keeps going on and on and on. It's like, dang, this is actually getting close to perfect. Like perfect situation you could have asked for after all that rain. And so we ended, I'll call it amazing for the spring.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Squad on YouTube. Grant Hilbert on YouTube also for the real-life content. And then the game's just on iOS and Android. Just American Farming. So...
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
We had like best possible scenario. I'd say could have caught one more rain in August. It would have been.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. So I farmed one of these farms the first time this year, and it has a pothole, like a 10-acre pothole. And I was like, if we get a dry year, this is going to be perfect. Praying for a dry year. We get the opposite of a dry year on that farm and stuff, and it needs a lot of tile.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah. That's one of the things we did is we – That's one of the things when you go into farming and stuff, it's like, what are they putting pipe out there? Why are they so aggressive doing it and stuff like that? And you go do it, and, you know, like in 22, I had a terrible crop because I planted a crop wet. It was wet, you know, didn't wait for it to dry, and then it got dry late too.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And so those spots with tile, it was – you could see it across the yield monitor. So that's when I was like, okay, we need to start pattern tiling every farm, you know, at least a majority of the flats. And so then we bought a tile plow this –
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
this fall and we're just going aggressive on just every own piece we're going to tile tile out as a goal so where did i mean so farming is one thing but tiling is completely different than farming like how do you how'd you learn how to do that uh so ben iowan farmer so if you guys he's in southern iowa there he bought a soil max tile pile he bought a quad track and then he came and custom tiled one of my farms we did all the labor he ran the tractor and
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It's like, dang, once you get the hang of it, this is pretty easy. And then you realize how much the custom cost is. They do some calculations. It's like, dang, this is a $500 an hour job. Heck, I should hire everything else out of the farm and just run the tile plow.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It seems like so.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Exactly. And there's some – like around here in your area, there's some big mains. You've got to put in like 15, 18-inch mains. That's where it's like I'd hire somebody out to do those projects, but all those laterals are –
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. And the nice thing about this area is we're around some big towns. It's like you could hire some college kids out of Iowa State or some of these big towns around here to pay them $20 an hour or whatever to come help you with a lot of labor. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Ooh. Okay, yeah. So basically, keep it short and sweet. Basically... Grew up in central Iowa.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
True, true, true. Grew up in Ankeny, Iowa here. And then my grandparents always farmed in northern Iowa. So they were into cattle a lot in the 70s and 80s. And then they were just mainly row crops. But as a kid, we were always just back up on the farm. And so that's where you got kind of addicted to the farming is like sixth, seventh grade. Spring break and summers and stuff, you're back up there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
And then, I don't know, I kind of always had knack, not for, well, basically for entrepreneurship. But as a kid, we were always doing these, I'll call it little tactics to try and like make money and stuff like that. Like we were doing drop shipping when we were like seventh and eighth grade. And trying to figure out that, we failed at a lot of that stuff.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
But then eventually we were like, okay, well, let's... Let's start a YouTube channel. And it was honestly my buddy's idea. So we started a YouTube channel. We just played like a bunch of new games, video games that came out. And the idea was that everybody's going to be searching for these new games, going to get a lot more views than playing like GTA or something like that that's already popular.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
So then we did that and then, uh, eventually farming took off and I was addicted to farming and stuff like that. First time I actually played the game, I just posted it on YouTube, started taking off. And then a lot of, uh, a lot of like ad kids started watching it and I'll call it by. by the time I was going into college in 2016, I've been doing YouTube for two years.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
We're at like 30,000 subscribers. I was like, okay, we got an opportunity here. Um, there's a clear path. Let's just go at it hard for the next four years. And so from 2016 and 2020, I just posted a video every single day. And then like close to when I was graduating college, uh, that the squad, the farm is their channel hit a million subscribers. And, uh, and then it was like, Dane,
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
maybe I could go out and chase being a farmer. And so I just started buying some farmland in southeast Iowa there. And then at that same time right after college, I also started a software company where we created a mobile game called American Farming. So we got like Case IH, Versatile, New Holland, Licensed, a bunch of different brands in there.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah. You can make it sound kind of interesting, yeah. And now you're doing it in real life. Yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the funny thing now is most people think playing video games is fun, but I look at the video game part, like the YouTube part, as the work. Then when I go and farm, it feels like I'm playing out there, basically. And that's the goal, is you always want to do something you feel like is just play. Right. But yeah.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yep, yep. COVID year.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah. Like, that senior year of college, I was looking at, like, every morning before class when I woke up, I'd just look at, like, all the realtor listings. And the goal was just to honestly buy a property that I could, like, flip, kind of, just do work and flip and do a good buy. I should have just bought quality, high-quality farm ground at the start there, but... Live and learn, kind of.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like when I was in college, it was like, you know, full-time income plus that and stuff. And so by the time you're exiting college, it's like, well, Dane, you go get a farm credit loan. And that ended up being like a really lucky time period because that was COVID. Yeah. Interest rates were low.
Farm4Profit Podcast
Grant Hilbert - From Farming in a Game to Farming in Real Life
It was lucky, yeah. Went and bought, yeah, three farms in the span of like four months right then and then locked everything in for like 30 years.