3:00 We kick things off with guests from TerraClear, innovators in rock-picking technology. They’ll share how their advanced equipment is revolutionizing the process of clearing fields, improving efficiency, and reducing wear and tear on farm machinery. We’ll dive into their cutting-edge solutions and discuss how this technology is benefiting farmers across the industry.https://www.terraclear.com/15:00 Next, we’re joined by Brian Robertson the CEO from Estes Performance Concaves, who specialize in high-performance concaves for combines. He has fun with David and Corey talking about his business background and how he has established strong partnerships throughout his business history. We also learn more about how their products enhance threshing efficiency, reduce rotor loss, and increase overall productivity during harvest. Tune in to hear expert insights from both companies on how they’re driving innovation in agriculture, saving time, and boosting profitability for farmers.https://www.estesperformanceconcaves.com/Don’t forget to like the podcast on all platforms and leave a review where ever you listen!Websitewww.Farm4Profit.comShareable episode linkhttps://intro-to-farm4profit.simplecast.comEmail [email protected] to YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSR8c1BrCjNDDI_Acku5XqwFollow us on TikTokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@farm4profitConnect with us on Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/Farm4ProfitLLC/
But you get into small grains, you have to change concaves.
Okay, you do.
Even with aftermarket, most of them, you have to put bands on, you have to take out half the concaves, put in a different concave. What we design, what I engineered, is good across all crops. You don't have to change concaves.
Ladies and gentlemen, farmers, ranchers, and distinguished guests, thank you for listening to the Farm for Profit podcast, where we discuss the latest ideas, methods, trends, and techniques available to help your farm achieve higher levels of farm profitability. Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.
Well, Corey, we had Todd Dale on here from Estes Concaves to talk to us about getting our combine set for soybean. But now let's jump into those that are starting corn harvest.
Well, corn's kind of, I mean, it's the same type of thing because a lot of the time you're killing the plant by running the combine through it.
One thing we might be looking at is there might be a basis opportunity to get started really early this fall with not good crop prices and all that, but yet wanting to get the corn moving. And people might want to start a little wetter than they're used to. Is there anything different we should be thinking about on the wet corn side of things?
No, not really. I mean, you've got to be able to get it through. The less trash you can bring in with corn, especially at high moistures, also incredibly key. So when you're talking about what are we looking for on the combines, I'd add the headers to that too, especially corn heads.
You know, you want your stripper plates, your deck plates, your chains, all of that stuff in as good of shape as it can be in. Especially if you know you're going to push the limits a little bit more with moisture because you don't want to bring in, and even your rolls, probably your stalk rolls more than anything. You want to bring in air and that's it.
When it's wetter, you tend to get more plant in the combine too. So that's going to, slow your ground speed down, take more power. And that's also typically going to add some more rotor speed to it to help. It doesn't only have to thresh the corn from the cob. It's got to get that separated from all the other additional trash, the green leaves, the fodder that's really tough.
Increasing your rotor speed in those conditions is going to be your best solution to limiting loss. But at the same time, it's going to, I mean, That's going to cause damage. You're going to have to find a damaged amount of grain that you're willing to live with in those high moisture, those 27, 28 plus situations of moisture.
As it's a little bit wetter, it's just going to take a little bit more rotor speed to make sure you're at least getting all the grain in the combine and not losing any.
If our listeners want to learn more about the XPR-3s and what you guys have in store, how best do they look you up?
Just probably Google Estes Concaves. I mean, it's going to be, it'll pop up and everything. Our website's estesperformanceconcaves.com. All the information that you should, I mean, a lot that you need to get started on the investigation process, if it's something you want to move forward with, and then give one of us a call. We've got phone numbers listed on there. We'd be happy to talk with you.
Awesome. Well, thank you much for your time.
All right, it is Corey here with Farm for Profit, and I'm solo today. We actually divided and conquered. We're here at the 2024 Farm for Profit show, and we're here with TerraClear. We have Devin, Brent, and Travis here. Thank you for having us here. Guys, introduce yourself.
Tell us who you are. Great. Well, thanks for coming over and chatting with us. My name's Devin. I joined TerraClear just about a couple weeks ago, and so I'm the new CEO. The new CEO. Super excited to talk to you guys. Yeah.
Travis? Yeah, I'm Travis Mullinger. I'm a Southwest region sales and service for TerraClear in Iowa. Brent?
Brent Lytle, I'm the middle region account manager for Iowa and Minnesota and South Dakota now.
And TerraClear's not that old of a company, right?
No, TerraClear started in 2018 by our founder, Brent Fry.
So what'd you guys do before this? Well, yeah, I'll go first.
So I spent seven years at FBN, Farmers Business Network, for those of you who know that company, and started what was called FBN Financial, built that side of the business up, and so I had a chance to really understand where technology played a role in agriculture, and we were well-capitalized, turned over a lot of rocks, so to speak, from a technology perspective, and got a sense of how technology plays a role next.
So when I was looking for something new, I certainly wanted something that had a really good technology foundation, but it actually worked, and there's not always a lot of cases where that happens. TerraClear must be doing something right if they pulled you from FBN. Yeah, well, I hope so.
yeah yeah I was a career technician with John Deere and ran a ran a shop before TerraClear found me okay I spent 16 years as a retail agronomist and retail location manager before TerraClear so I got to run this technology in the spring so I know all about it but we're kind of putting technology on one of the oldest things that really is the least technological what does TerraClear do let's take it Travis
Well, yeah, we're putting a 21st century spin on a very old problem. We go out there, we map your fields with a drone, we create a high resolution map, and then we can plot all the rocks on the map, show you the sizes that there are, the estimated time it will take to pick the rock, and we even will give you the path to follow to pick those rocks in that amount of time.
Yeah, it's amazing. I almost thought it was a sham at first because I have a vendetta against rocks on our farm. We are in the Des Moines Lobe. The glacier's brought all these chunks of granite down. And I'll tell you what, it's always breaking stuff, ruining sickle sections on the head. I feel like we just break shanks on it and hydrous and tillage tools all the time.
Our disc lights on our planters are just, you know, notched up all the time because we're hitting them. So I've got a claw on the front of my tractor, and now you guys can. How did we even get hooked up?
Yeah, so I got a hold of Tanner. Tanner, I live in Aurelia, Iowa, where Tanner grew up. So I got a hold of Tanner and reached out to you guys to actually do a What's Working in Eggs segment.
I have to know, do you call a Sloppy Joe a tavern too? I do. Really? Yep.
It's a Northwest Iowa thing. Have you ever heard such a thing? No, this is nonsense. I grew up in South Dakota. We don't have crazy things like that.
And we all grew up on farms, so we know the problem that rocks can cause with everything. But yeah, I mean, we farm very close to our Tanner's family farms.
Crazy. So how did this idea come about?
The story was, Brent was out picking, was out handpicking rocks with his father out in Idaho. And he's like, we have all these tools and we don't use them to pick rocks that we have because they just don't work. But he's like, we have tractors that will drive themselves. You know, we have all this technology in agriculture. Why has not anybody put any technology towards picking rocks?
And with his background in software, he had a great pool of people to pull from. And they're like, we can throw technology at this and make this a manageable problem.
I think at the end of the day, you know, as a problem, that was a compelling solution for technology. And I think, you know, that's the start of TerraClear, too, and I think we want to grow beyond that.
And I was a little bit of a skeptic. I mean, I said, yeah, sure, come try it on our farm because we've got a lot of rocks. We just, time is our most valuable asset, as everyone, but as farmers especially, because it seems like our windows have gotten shorter and all that.
That used to be what you did when you grew up on the bucket of the 40-20, and Grandpa would drive it up and down every 6 to 12, 24 rows, whatever, and the kids would pick rock. And that isn't, like that anymore. So tough to get there. You know, they're demanding more money now. It's getting expensive to have these kids. And so Brent came along and gave me this option.
He said, let me just fly some fields for you. And I said, sure, go out. Here's a couple of our rockiest fields.
And I think we found, I don't know, on 160 acres, we found what, like 300? It was around 300 rocks on your farms. It wasn't a lot of time to pick them up. So what would that normally take you to pick them up?
I'm just going to tell you right now, we would have never picked the whole field, right? We just wouldn't have had time. We would probably, we would go from mapping them in the tillage if we couldn't pick them up, get them off the clock, drop a point, you know, the big ones that we do. And then the other ones are farmable, right?
And as I get, as farmers age, I have my dad or my grandpa in the tillage tool. That was normally who picked up the rock. So that probably would have taken, if we were to go pick the whole field, right? at least a day, probably more realistically, two days. Especially with the size of some of them, because not all of them were handled.
I think it was two and a half hours, something like that. That's my next question.
I'm going to tell you right now, for the listeners, they have this technology, they fly it with the drone. and they give you, you don't have to use their service to pick the rock, right? You can just get the map from you guys.
Yep, you can get the map sent to you to a tablet, any Apple or Android tablet, and go out there, use the map yourself. I've done it several times. Yeah, I think you flew the field and had the map back to me in a day or two. It took about three days to turn the map, and then you have that map on your cell phone. I think you drove around and found a few of them.
I know Tanner actually used the map on their farm. They actually have a rock picker. Yep, they have a rock picker, so they use that option.
But like I said, time is our most valuable asset. Definitely. you know, what would that normally have taken? That would have taken eight hours and then took it down to two. So that's, what is that? Six less hours in the tractor, six less hours you had to pay the man sitting in it. Exactly.
Yeah, I think even from a mapping perspective, one of the questions I had when I joined you guys, you should keep me honest, like, well, what value does that have? Are we identifying more rocks than you can identify by sight? And from the early studies, what these guys told me is that, you know, oftentimes it's 60, 70% of the rocks if you just drive them around with the sight on the side.
And so, map, you actually see everything. You get to then decide what you actually want to take out of the field.
We have an example here at the show where we had a farmer in northwest Minnesota who mapped their field. There were 1,600 rocks in a 600-acre field. They went out and picked it the old-fashioned way just to kind of outsmart the technology, right? I mean, that's what we all want to do. We've got to see it work. So we went back and remapped the field after they picked it their way.
There was still almost 1,100 rocks in the field. They missed 65% of the rocks. And part of that is just being able to see from the drone, you're seeing from 121 feet above the ground, and you can see straight down versus looking for them.
Oh yeah.
Definitely.
They came back and they said, we're failing how we're doing it now. They're like, what we've been doing is not working anymore, so they're going to be using us from now on.
Especially if you've got a crew working their tail off all day long, and then just to learn they missed that many rockets.
And it's funny, you can tell they started from the south end of the field, because it's a better job in the south end, and by the time they got to the north end, it's a lot less of a job.
They were done picking rocks. And one thing we've had now with the mapping technology, we've had guys be able to go pick rock at night. You know, you've never been able to do that, so we're expanding that window that we can actually work now. So that's kind of been a big change for people, too.
I imagine it's a lot of data. I saw you can zoom into each rock and actually see the picture of what it saw. Because I wanted to ground truth something myself. Is this a 7-inch rock? Is this a 12-inch rock? And it's very accurate.
Those files got to be huge. Yeah. They are. One of the big efforts we have, because we're looking at, you know, two, three millimeter resolution. You can start mapping a whole field like that. That's too much data just going to beam up to the cloud. So what we're starting to work on is what we call edge computing.
It's how you get the compute power out to the field so you can start generating maps in real time. Because time, like you said, is your most precious commodity. So you want to be able to get a drone out there, map it, get a map, and get to work in that field at the same time.
Yep. So instead of two or three days to get the map returned to the farmer, we're hoping for a few hours.
So if I'm a farmer and I'm just discovering this technology right now, what's the best way to start working with it? Do I have to buy one of those buckets or is it the service that would come out to my farm?
Yes. Yeah. We, you know, it's kind of a la carte what we can do. We can go map it and present the map to you and you can go pick. If you don't want to pick, we can come out and do the entire process for you. We just need your field boundaries and we take it from there. So we can make it really effortless to manage your rocks now.
We have a pretty dramatically expanding sales and service provider network that we're building right now. If folks are interested in that, as a source of income for you for entrepreneurs who are here locally, it's a great opportunity. And that is the, you know, sort of the resource that we have to go out and do so much more.
Well, it's getting harder and harder to make cash flow on the farm, especially in this commodity environment. This could be what the old seed dealership was, you know, the hog barn type deal to get the kid back to the farm. This could be a service that you could provide.
We've had a lot of great conversations of even farmers looking for something for their sons to do. Doing the picking and then even the flying of it is it gives them a place on the farm that they can come back and still be part of the operation. So it's opened up some more doors for these younger guys.
Yeah, a lot of farms have big skid loaders already, so they can get into it for a not high additional cost to them.
So I've got two things before we actually go watch it pick rock. They actually can do that here at Farm Progress Show. I'd be remiss if I did not ask, guys are going to want to know, we're farm for profit. What is this going to cost? Is it a per rock? Is it a per acre?
Is it one plot fee? What is it? So the mapping service starts out around $4 per acre. Okay. We have some early season discounts going on that get you down under $4 an acre and some acreage discounts going on.
The average cost, I can't remember what your farms were for a quoted cost for us to come pick them up, but the average cost for us to come pick up a field is somewhere between $8 and $20 average per acre. And that includes the cost of map.
Right. Which can sound a little expensive, but if you actually... pay yourself at all and go do it yourself. It is cheap.
And if you have a rock ingestion on a combine that starts at around $30,000.
You're gonna pay for it either way.
I wonder if we could maybe get like a cut on our insurance premiums because of you guys coming in and cleaning it out. The other thing is, okay, we're taking all these rocks off. What do we do with them?
We actually pile them where you tell us to pile them. There's a function in the app where you can actually mark a spot for us to pile them. Some of our service providers are also working with the farmers they're picking rocks for and taking them with them. Some of our service providers are landscapers, so they have a use for them.
it's crazy i thought the piles would be a lot bigger when you start talking 300 rocks that are this big and yeah i was like it wasn't that big of piles no and it was i actually used it because i had the points and i had a couple landlords hey can i come get some rocks for landscaping which my mom hates getting the rocks that we pick away she wants them for landscaping i just yeah just go to this pile here you have as many as you want we just keep them in the fresh ones now yeah yep yep so i want to i want to get that logistics figured out on the back end and just get them right to the landscaping business and then maybe we can make the surface free
If we could sell them. That offsets the cost of the service.
We do have customers doing that. Yes. That'd be pretty cool. That'd be pretty cool. Well, is there anything else before we go look at picking that you want to make sure that we know our listeners know about?
No, I mean, the last thing I want to mention, we're constantly doing R&D and looking at other areas to try to solve problems for farmers and reduce time, reduce that commitment. One thing, kind of with our core market here, we are starting to develop some real autonomy for this type of picker. And so imagine this thing with nobody running around picking rocks. So...
Got a couple of those units running around. They're not quite ready for prime time, but certainly keep tuned for that to come to the market soon.
If someone does want to buy a bucket and get into the service, does it take a special skid loader?
You got to have certain flow? It's all low flow hydraulics. With the TC80 here, anything above about 75 horse skid loader is pretty darn safe. So you can get in most mid frames on up.
And you don't have to have tracks. It's just nice for the operator in the field. Yeah, it's a lot smoother in the field.
Because it can get pretty rough going through rip ground.
Absolutely.
Did my saying from my video this spring, yeeting rocks, did it stick? I have used it multiple times.
I have also gone with Tanner's slurping rocks. That one has stuck pretty well as well. Yeeting, I don't know, but I do like eating rocks.
That's great. Well, let's get reset and watch this thing pick some rocks. That sounds great.
Thanks, guys. Thank you. And listeners, welcome back with the Farm for Profit podcast. This is David Whitaker and Corey Hillibose here.
And where are we at? We are at the 2024 Farm Progress Show here at the John Deere booth. We are on the third day and it's supposed to be the hottest day, I think, here, but we at least have a very good breeze. You might hear that in some of the mics. Hopefully Tanner can work his magic on the editing side of things and make that go away.
I think you're all right. Yeah, it has been a wonderful show. Of course, we're here at the John Deere booth and always glad to have a proud partner there with John Deere. They set us up awfully nice. And we get to interview all types of people on all different types of subjects. And, of course, one thing, Corey, on Farm for Profit podcast.
that we talk about just a what's working right now, what's working in ag, and that might just be one product specific.
Yeah, but first, before we get to what's working in ag segment, we need you guys to go like, rate, review. Oh, always. Hit us up, give us five-star reviews, and then we say you can type whatever you want. If you want to say Tanner has a big nose, go for it. We don't care. We just need the reviews because that helps.
It's basically like you patronizing us without having to give us any money or anything like that.
Tell you what you can do. It makes us... We have a new employee, Emily, or no, Rachel. Here we go. Just kidding. I did that on purpose. Rachel is our new employee, and you need to go and just ask questions about her, and then she can comment on social and tell you all about herself.
And you can also call or text us at 515-207-9640. You got it. And that'll go to Tanner. So bug him at all hours of the night. That would be great. Yes, we should get into our What's Working in Ag segment. We have Brian Robertson here, CEO of Estes Performance Concaves. I have worked with Brian for several years on the concaves.
I think I'm on my third set just inherently because I've had to get rid of combines and all that kind of stuff. Awesome stuff. So, Brian, welcome to the show. Give us a little background about yourself.
No, I appreciate you having me here. It's a good day. Yeah, so just let me give you a little bit of brief background. background on everything, and then we can go into some more specifics. So I'm originally from Kentucky.
Okay.
I grew up in a farming community. Everyone farmed. My mom was a teacher at county school. My dad is an electrical and mechanical engineer. Okay. And so I went to school there at Murray State. Yeah. I went in pre-med, ended up with a chemistry, math, and finance degree. Okay.
And from there, I went and moved to Dallas, Texas, and decided I wanted to go into finance, so I went into wealth management. did that for a little while, had a startup, went into the startup world, exited from that, went into private equity, did private equity for a while, and then got into the agriculture.
So I've kind of seen a whole range of things, and my background is, even though I've worked on farms and been around farms, My background isn't exclusive to farming.
You didn't grow up, you know, going out and helping dad combine something or feed cattle or something like that.
Exactly. So I've done that, but that wasn't where I grew up, and it hasn't been my entire life. I've done a lot of other things outside of that. So I think that gives me a unique perspective. And I look at things a little differently than probably a lot of people can't see the forest because of the trees type thing.
Right. Well, so a little perspective for you. You may not know. Dave is kind of the same. He did not grow up farming. And this is actually his first. He's been in agriculture selling real estate and equipment for how long now, Dave?
16 years, 17 years.
And this is his first year he bought a farm and he's actually farming.
Well, there you go. You don't know what you don't know until you don't know.
I almost think, though, like not getting bit by that bug when you're young. Like, I'm going to farm because that's what I'm going to do. Now you can kind of step back and look at it as a business, as it should be treated. And you have that different perspective. I bet that helps you in a lot of your business.
Oh, for sure. And, I mean, Randy Dowdy is a great example of that. Yeah. You know, I mean, when you come into it with a different lens, you're going to ask different questions. Like, you're going to ask different questions coming from real estate. Oh, yeah. You know, you just have a different paradigm coming in, and you're going to get a different perspective. And I think that's helpful.
And even if you're a generational farmer, Groups like you and some of the others help introduce some of that into it. Even if you don't have a consultant or a mentor or someone that's outside of that, you can still tap into some of that knowledge base.
It is interesting to watch Dave, though, because he knows a little bit about everything, about every piece of equipment, every brand, land, and all that. But then when it came time for him to actually do it, boy, you were on the phone with me a lot. Once you're trying to get hyper-focused, he's like, I know I need soil samples, but why? Or I know I need to spray, but what?
And even talking about it for the last five years on the podcast, lots of people, and maybe that's all of agriculture, because as I've walked around, people are like, well, I know that. It's almost faux pas, like I should know this because I'm a farmer. And so they don't ask questions. I just inherently ask a lot of questions and talk with a lot of people. Well, why'd they build it that way?
Why is the side of it plastic? Why is this? Why is that? But that's how I learn.
Yeah.
so what was you in the process decision process to go from kentucky to texas just thought it'd be a good place um well i'm like i said i'm from a small town and i always want to do big things okay so it it kind of was i need to you know you're a product of your environment so i was wanting to seat myself around successful people
Um, and the type of people that I wanted to become and kind of think like and everything else. So, uh, it was uncomfortable. It was something I didn't want to do. And usually when it's something that you don't want to do it, you need to do it.
Right.
You know, if, uh, if you're uncomfortable, if you're just kind of the whole thing, if you're comfortable, you're not growing.
Right. It's kind of one of those, you try not to be the smartest person in the room type of deal. Like surround yourself with smarter people than you are and you'll continue to grow.
Even take that statement. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing. My wife wasn't all on board for buying the farm.
Yeah.
But I saw it as an opportunity to understand my customers, understand where their position is, and have a little dabble into what they feel every day, right? And so that gives me better decision making. But to borrow another X amount of money makes you uncomfortable. Yeah. But I do think we're growing bigger, even conversations with locals like, hey, you're in the club. Now you're farming.
You feel it just like we do, and we got 390 corn, and that's what it is. We're going to go down together. It makes for a more relatable conversation, though, where I'm not a sales guy. I'm just one in the club.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree with you. But it made us, we had to be uncomfortable to do it.
And I'm still there because I don't know if we're going to make any money.
Yeah. Yeah. So you went to Texas.
Yeah.
You were, you went there, you were in finance. Is that what you said?
Yeah. Went into wealth management and then did a startup and then went into private equity.
So back up one step. You're in like Vanderbilt territory down Murray, Kentucky area. And there's a lot of medical devices, a lot of meds. So you were kind of going pre-med. Was that just a decision to help people just to go back even a little farther?
Yeah, no. So I wanted to help people. And I had a chemistry background. I did the whole high school chemistry thing and competitions and all that. Okay. It was kind of a natural fit. I like solving problems. Awesome. So that's kind of where it came into, and I wanted to help people. And then when I got into it, it was a gut thing. I just didn't feel like I was going to be happy in that profession.
And a lot of medical people have a lot of wealth, so transition right to your wealth management. And there's a lot of ways to do wealth management, from consulting, advisement, selling insurance, et cetera. Did you go down a certain path? No.
Yeah, so I actually went to Dallas, had an interview with a wealth management firm. They hired me on the spot more or less. And we were, you know, it was a traditional assets under management type firm. So you're managing portfolios and obviously you're prospecting to bring in new clients and things like that. But that's kind of where it started.
I manage wealth for Corey every time he wants to buy a new watch. I'm like, Corey, that might not be a good idea. Or a pin. Geez. Well, that one's got gold in it, so you're good. That one's good. That one's good. Order straight from Germany. Yeah.
Just kidding. That's TractorZoom's problem. They may have turned me into this. They turned you into this. Okay, fair enough. That was at $5 corn, though.
Not to dig too deep, but I'm a serial entrepreneur. You went startup ways. Was it your startup? You had an idea and went that route? Yeah.
Yeah, so I had a startup in finance and then was doing that, and the CEO of our company, I did an interview in New York or something and was on Bloomberg and whatever, and the CEO called us in. We were good friends, and he said, well, I got a call from corporate or one of our partners, and they said, There's a conflict of interest. You can't do both. So I quit on the spot, went and did startup.
Okay, cool.
And the startup, was that the Estes Performance Concaves?
No, that was a finance startup. And then from that, I moved into software and did oil and gas accounting software. So I'm a quick learner, luckily. but I can, and I'm, I can get hyper-focused. I can learn stuff really, really quickly. When I went into oil and gas accounting, uh, it kind of turned into that, but it was ERP management, uh, which is just another type of resource management. And, um,
you know, just kind of jumped in and, and learned it, learned it quick and then went from there.
And that's how you're probably able to adapt to agriculture pretty quick. I mean, you got to learn and get, because there's a lot of every old boy at the coffee shop would like to tell me how I'm doing it wrong, but you got to take the good with the bad, with the ugly and the pizzas and cream with liver and onions.
Yep, exactly. Like you asking a lot of questions helps. And that might be annoying for some of my people when, asking a ton of questions, but that's just the way I've always learned. And I think that's a key thing. And I think a lot of people need to do that.
And speaking of 350 corn or whatever, I had some questions that I wanted to present kind of rhetorically to get people to kind of think about what they're doing now. And if you've got these market conditions in this environment, What do you need to do differently than when prices were 30% higher or twice?
I think we can answer that with the whole title of this podcast is choosing a good partner, identifying good partners. So I hitched my wagon with Corey. Why? Because I know he knows more than I do in that field and will tolerate me asking questions. Yeah, I think he's advised me right and to make those decisions because my finances depend on it.
And when we talk about the suppressed market or depressed market a little bit, you know, do I need I've been asking him, do I need to upgrade my I want to I like tech, I'm with you. So I want to upgrade a planner because I think it's cool. And he's pumped the brakes, Dave. You need to do this first. You need to do that first.
So I think anybody to win the Super Bowl, sometimes you're not the quarterback.
Identifying that is hard. Oh, man. And that's one of the hardest choices you can make.
Especially when you're an entrepreneur.
I mean, and every farmer is. They're the master of their domain. Yeah. So before we get into those questions, because we actually do need to get into the meat of that, we don't have to go deep into it, but at some point you went from the finance and the startups to Estes Performance Concave, which is why you're here today.
Exactly.
So can you give us just a little bit about that?
Yeah. When I was doing private equity, we bought companies and then we would, let's say on the decline or revenues declining or whatever, we would come in by ownership majorities and then work with management, replace management. fix the companies and then sell them with some sort of timeframe in that, sometimes five years, sometimes seven or whatever it may be.
So Kimber's grandmother had an ad company Cambridge Air White? Yes. This is CM Welding. And they had always produced and manufactured combine parts and including the original RPR system. So they brought me in kind of as at that time and as a consultant to help. uh, sales were declining. Um, the product was more or less getting stale. Okay.
Um, so we came in and I helped, uh, started the Estes Performance Contest brand, which was an affiliate of CM Wadding. Okay. Um, so we started doing farm shows, we're working on branding and kind of what I'd had learned other places, just let's get it back. So in a month's time, we went from, let's say, 50% down on the year Well, it was actually two months, 50% down on the year to up 30%.
Awesome. So there's a big swing there. And a lot of that was the rebranding and doing more partnerships and hitting the farm shows and things like that. And out of that, I started taking all the tech calls. Um, just because that's where we needed help. Um, so I learned very quickly when I was taking all the tech calls, how to set machines, what worked, what didn't.
And there was just a big need in the market. The RPRs are great. They're great in corn and beans, but in small grains And not so much. I, from my background, um, went and started prototyping a whole bunch of stuff and then we were running and testing stuff. So, um, out of that, I've got like 30 patents now.
Wow.
on our system and other things. So the XPR3 system now is proprietary to us, and we still sell the RPR system. That is the system that I've engineered and that we've used, and we're always testing. Like, even this year, we're always testing. I'm always, you know, the combine is a game of millimeters. You adjust the concave one millimeter at a time.
You, you know, 50 RPM on the rotor makes a difference. So there's endless possibilities that I can do with millimeter changes. Awesome. And it's, you know, what makes that different?
It's time for a Nitrogen News Minute. Here we go. We're back with Taylor Ferguson. We've got another tip that we want to provide you this fall. As you think about your application process, we have been sharing these tips with you about making your fall fertilizer applications. But ultimately, I want to dive into it.
Taylor, how do we get the most benefit out of fall applied versus spring applied nitrogen?
The way to get the most benefit out of your fall plot is make sure you're utilizing a really reputable nitrogen stabilizer like Inserve and Instinct NextGen, depending on the source that you're applying. That's going to give you that overall trust that that nitrogen is going to be there in the springtime when we go out and put the corn in the ground.
And whether that's splitting into two applications and coming back with a side dress application, it's going to give you that overall confidence that we have made the most out of that investment and we're going to minimize as much loss as we possibly can below ground.
Tighter margins means we need to preserve all of those assets that we have, including the ones that we put in the soil. How does the product work in providing us that guarantee?
way that product works specifically is the active ingredient in it is nitropyrin or also known as optinite technology and essentially what it does is it works on the enzyme that nitrosomonas bacteria feeds off of and so that's the bacteria that overall ignites the conversion of ammonium to nitrate when we add nitropyrin to the soil it's going to slow that overall process and starve that enzyme from that bacteria to be able to feed on it
Therefore, keeping that ammonium in that positive form significantly longer to where it's going to keep your nitrogen more available longer term.
I like that. And this has been a great set of segments for us to share with our listeners this fall, especially sharing your expertise. But if they are concerned or want to learn more about what to do with spring applied nitrogen, how should they do that?
Yeah, so reach out to your local retailer, your Corteva AgroScience territory manager, or go to nitrogenstabilizers.com.
Thanks again, Taylor. Thank you.
So, Corey, as we talk what's working an egg, I always want to talk with a farmer that has this product. You have this product, right? So let me interview you for a second. Of course, you can buy concaves that come with a combine. So for our listeners that haven't listened to previous events and they're like me. and maybe don't know what a concave is first.
Explain to me, what does the concave do for my combine?
So to know, you kind of need to at least know a little bit about a combine, period, and how it works, and it takes it in with the head, through the throat, and then it comes into, the newer style combines, comes into a rotor. Mm-hmm. which forces the grain around in a circular fashion and basically thrashes it against metal. So we're taking the kernel off the cob.
And you're trying to get the kernel off the cob, kernel out of the pod, get the weed off the stem and all that kind of stuff, and separate the seed, what you want in your grain tank, from the chaff.
Gotcha. Gotcha. And so necessity breeds invention. And so you saw a way to do it quicker, better, faster, and more efficiently. So you're the total package as a CEO. You're not just the financial CEO. You're the, I listened to the customer. I figured out what's wrong, repatented it, made it better. Corey, you bought this. So now you have these in your combine. And so how better, worse?
What do you think? 100% better. And I'll tell you my story about coming into it was our OEM concaves and our
combine were worn out our dealer told us and we could make at that point we could make the choice to put those in or we could try to find something better and there's a lot of options on the market right um well farmers were in such a tight margin business we're always looking for that extra roi extra right like if because if we can pick up dimes eventually we'll have dollars
At every stage of the game, there's little things, whether it's being more efficient in the field, planning the right hybrid, getting the right combine, putting the right concave in. There's all these different things I can sit there and pick up little nuggets and get value. We were looking for that ROI. We weren't quite happy
you know it was tough to set the combine we were you know kind of pushing some through the back and then we'd tighten things down and we get a little worse grain quality and that really hurt us in beans because they dock us pretty bad there so let's speak to some of those nuggets that we can pick up with these concaves how does that make it easier for us as farmers
Yeah, so just to frame things out right now and today, if commodity prices are down, when's the most important time to get a positive return on any $1 that you spend?
It's easy to say now, but I would say it's just as important as a business.
owner as a business person that you should be worried about getting all the bushels in the grain tank when it's seven dollars the same as this when it's three well and brian if i take your example so you were wealth management you had a company in your portfolio that was 30 percent down kind of like our market right now cory yeah and you got to spend money to make money he invested marketing farm shows is what i just heard previously and all of a sudden you were up
Yes. You made money. You've got to spend money to make money. You've got to make those decisions, though.
Yeah, and it's more important to think about and position yourself and to pick the right things to spend that $1. Correct. Because if you've got a war chest and you've got excess, well, you don't notice as much. off the top if you've got a bunch of excess.
But when you're having to run lean like a startup environment, you have to make sure that every dollar that goes out comes back with more dollars. And so you have to really analyze things. And this is one of the things that I've noticed that I wanted to point out. When we talk with big farms, Big farmers, big operators, it's very simple. They think of things not so much on an emotional basis.
They think of things in terms of numbers. So they look at things and they look at the input cost, the output cost, what the ROI is. And if it makes sense, it's kind of like a capital budgeting problem. If it's got a net positive revenue or net positive value, they do it. They don't think about it. If it pencils out and it says... For every dollar that you spend, you're getting 10 back.
It's a no-brainer. It's your smaller farmers and operators, I think, that really need to think about this because they get more emotional and they're going to act. They typically would have done is operate more out of fear rather than the bigger farmers that just go by the numbers. And sometimes you need to just go by the numbers.
And that's what we do. We are the Farm for Profit podcast. We're trying to help you. Get that emotion out of your business and treat it like a business. And I love it when you can put hard numbers and just look at something. It's like, I know I don't want to spend this money, but I'd be stupid not to type of deal. I mean, you just have to.
But in their defense, you walk around the Farm Progress Show here, and every booth has a three bushel, a five bushel, something that they're promising you. But that's just their numbers. These are actually hard numbers, right?
Yeah, these are hard numbers, and it's very obvious. I mean, you can go to the demos and see that there's grain coming out the back of the machine. I mean, it's very obvious.
And that might be a good segue right into how to choose partners. So you said it, Brian. Hold on. I want some of the numbers. He's got numbers for us. Very good. Well, let's go into numbers then. We are going to get into Tanner's.
I didn't know you had numbers. I'm much more interested in this side of things than Tanner's, you know, whatever, even though it's important.
I like it when we go rogue because Arthur, yeah, he's not. He's got numbers here.
I'm going to let him tell.
It is profit. Profit's in the show. We need to know it then. Go for it. So really, there's a few main categories when you're thinking about concaves or combine and harvest. Like you said, there's a thousand products out here, but on the harvest side, there's not that many. Right. It's usually inputs elsewhere. Here's a couple things. One, fuel savings.
People don't think about what a difference they can make in fuel savings, which can add up. The second one is what we talked about earlier, which is grain loss, motor loss out the back. The third is that people don't think about is dockage. what they're getting docked at the elevator, and then storability. And those go hand in hand.
So if we want to talk about storability real quick, when you harvest corn, When you look in your grain tank, you can't see the hairline cracks and the fines and things like that. Unless you do the iodine test and then you can see it. Where you notice it is when you, if you dry it, or even if you don't dry it, it's whenever you empty the bin. And we had a farmer, we've had several farmers,
The very first year, we reduced their grain damage and their fines that they hauled out the next year, $300,000. Wow. Just in docket? 50 semi-loads. Wow. That's just storability. And you don't see that immediately. You see it later. Okay. When the kernels dry down and then those splits become bigger, just like, you know, anything else would. Shrinking, swelling, all that.
And then they're left with this pile at the bottom.
of the bin yep and so that one factor alone is a 30x yep and we know this very well because our other partner suka manufacturer makes rain bins yeah and if we get a lot of fines in the bins we can't move the air through like we need to and then you get spoilage and then it becomes not a dockage it just becomes where they're not going to buy it yeah type of deal
to parlay that into dockage so we talked about corn and soybeans it splits so like bex did a study with us we've done studies with other ones we've done our own germ test and everything else And we reduce splits, say, from 3% down to usually like 0.2%. And that, a lot of times, you see that directly at the elevator because they dock you on the splits.
And on 1,000 acres of soybeans and corn on dockage, that's $16,000. Wow. And just that. So those are the two big things that people don't think about. The fuel savings is the system typically gives you more. It increases capacity. And sometimes we see a 2x in capacity of a regular machine. But where you really see that is with the capacity and the combine is able to run more efficiently.
So combines work best when they're loaded up, when you have max material. When you have OEMs and you try to load the machine, what happens is you end up having rotor loss. Because in order to load the machine to where it needs to be efficient, it can't thresh it as fast. and more goes out the back.
And when you have to run lower, that's when you get into you're not running as efficient, and that comes into fuel savings and everything else.
So your fuel savings isn't coming necessarily as less fuel per hour. It's coming on more productivity?
Well, it does both. I mean, we've seen 0.9 gallons per acre improvement. Now, in hill country, you may not see it as much because you've got to climb the hills one way or another. But in fuel savings, it's one thing. But the big thing that most people notice, and you can see at the demos, is the corn out the back. Okay.
What differentiates us more so than anything is we can have a 1% loss or less at 7,000 bushels an hour. And for an OEM to get that same 1% loss, they're at 3.5, 3.8. So that's the productivity. But we can both get to 1% loss. It's just that the OEMs are doing half the speed to do that 1% loss. Okay.
And I can speak towards the splits you were talking about on the beans because we have seed beans on our farm. And the first year that we had them in our combine, Dave, we actually got an award from the company we were growing seed beans for because we had the, out of all the growers that grew that variety of beans, we had the lowest, they call clean out.
So the lowest pods, lowest splits and all that, because they need a full bean to grow a seed for next year. And yeah, we got an award for that. We didn't get paid anymore. That's what I was like. Thanks for the paper. Well, that's awesome. You know, but yeah.
And let me, let me tie it into, uh, we're, we're here at the John Deere booth and of course, uh, our great partner. Um, and there's concave sitting right in front of us and there's a combine sitting right in front of us. And I know I've asked you this before, Corey, I'm like, well, If stuff's so much better, why don't they put it in the factory unit?
You told me it's because most of the time when an OEM is building something, great partner, they're building it to cover lots of different areas, maybe not just the guy doing seed beans or just the guy doing this. And that's where both companies work symbiotically together, where you assist for certain things, correct? I mean, different small grains and big grains?
It's a bit like a race car. right like everyone has aftermarket parts and all that that make it goes faster make it the suspension to work better or all that like they make a great combine okay right out of the box that could go anywhere in the world and harvest
And multiple. They're just souping it up. Oh, I got you. Yeah, and so our concave, there are specific concaves in the aftermarket that are for, like, corn and beans. But you get into small grains, you have to change concaves.
Okay, you do.
Even with aftermarket, most of them you have to put bands on. You have to take out half the concaves, put in a different concave. What we designed, what I engineered...
is good across all crops you don't have to change concaves you don't have to put bands it's not fun to put concaves no no so you're saving time and labor and yeah in small grains they're just not as good as OEM I mean we have we had a farmer a couple years ago that they are they take their wheat seed and have it cleaned and re-drill it for the next year
They were doing 4x the speed of cleaning the wheat that had been operating for like 30 years, said he's never cleaned wheat this fast because there was so little FM in it. That's crazy.
That's absolutely crazy. And you went from XPR2s to you just released the 3s.
Yeah, so the biggest thing with the threes is we were able to make a few millimeter adjustments that made the difference so that we could get rid of the bands and covers. So the twos had covers and bands that we would put on there to help hold in the crop material a little longer for the small grains mainly. And we were able to completely eliminate that.
And just to prove the effectiveness, we were in 30, 40 bushel wheat, which is low material to begin with, even with a draper, but running a stripper head. So you're bringing in almost nothing. And we were able to get below 1% FM with that too.
um and increased capacity and we save that farmer 20 days just on harvest time of their wheat wow well and if you figure if you value your time at all and if you value the well you should value the deduct or depreciation on the hour yeah the machine oh yeah for sure that's a big i've never even thought about that oh my gosh i mean you're right if you start thinking what the depreciation on our of these tractors and combines are yeah yeah it
I bought a newer tractor at 2020, John Deere, 8345, and we paid a lot of money. It was the most money we've ever spent on a tractor. I was shutting the thing off when we were in Beans because I knew how expensive every hour was on that thing because you can physically go see that tractor at 2,000 hours sells for this, that tractor at 1,000 hours sells for this.
It's a very easy calculation to go, that's an expensive.
So now I've got to make a new spreadsheet because I haven't even modeled that.
There it is. And another person that we've interviewed on the podcast, Tractor Zoom. I use Tractor Zoom Pro as an auction company. And so they're studying those analytics to where it might be somebody to talk to because they're telling me that as soon as I hit...
right at about 1800 sep hours on the combine it that the bell curve so it's like uh yeah and then I mean it just crashes right at about that time because then it's almost where guys don't want to buy it and it's worth just buying the new one or you know upgrading from there so they have a lot of data on that of course that's their their data there's just so many moving parts
They do such an amazing job, but there's just so many moving parts and bearings and wear surfaces and things.
Oh, mercy.
And these high-yield crops that we're putting through them, it's crazy. We bought a 1,000-sep hour S780 that was four or five years old two years ago. So 1,000 hours, right? Yeah. We had to replace the auger. Oh, mercy. Because they had put so much grain through the dang thing. And I'm like, man, these guys must have been healed in like a band. It came out of northwest Iowa.
So, yeah, they just grow 300 bush corn, you know, just throwing seeds out there.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And in rice country, you know, they don't want you putting more in. 100 or 200 hours on any one machine just because it's so abrasive. Yeah, rice is very abrasive.
Yeah, we had a friend that bought a rice combine once on an auction and got it home. I was like, oh, no.
Yeah, and the augers are one of the first things to go.
Yep, yep. Oh, cool. So anything else on that before we actually jump into what Tanner wants us to talk about? Got any numbers on there, Matt?
I mean, I could talk all day, but we can move on. Let me give you a couple of these, and they tie into everything, and that is, boy, I love the progression of how we got there to now we're not just— That's a great story. We're an engineer now. We're not only an engineer but running a company and trying to still improve for farmers. What's next? So we've got new models of Estes concaves.
What's the next portion for Estes?
That's a good question. So I've got a few things in my back pocket as always that we're testing and trying and trying to fill out the market and kind of on an isolated basis and pilot programs and things. As far as the concaves go, like I said, I've got 10 different versions I'm testing this year.
I'm always testing trying to beat, we always compare against OEM and we always compare directly against our current system. I'm always trying to beat it. So, you know, right now we're just heads down focused on this and getting it right. And it's one of those things. If you, if you chase two rabbits, you might catch none type thing.
So right now we're just head heads down, focused on this personally. We have like, I'm in real estate and private equity still. So I've got other things that we do, but as far as S is concerned, um, Our primary focus right now is just the concaves, and we feel like that's actually a competitive advantage. We want to stay focused. We want to become a resource to be harvest experts.
Well, and that's what people, if you had a heart attack right now, Corey, you would not Google general practitioner. What do you think you'd Google? Cardiologist, right?
9-1-1.
Everybody wants the expert in that field. I mean, that's why I specialize in just farmland. not even other real estate, farmland specifically, because people want to hire the expert in that field, and you guys are the expert there. So being that expert, I'm guessing, Corey, you have data. I know you're John Deere Ops. You're using other things to get that.
Does that help you, Brian, if they bring their data? So new customer, never used you. Hear our podcast. they're like, hey, wait a minute, this is cool, let's try it. Testimonial from Corey here. And they're like, all right, we're going to dump the clutch. Do they bring their data to you and say, we've done this, here's our yields, here's our that? Or do you just give them like, here's our product?
We don't typically, but if they are willing to, like if they have multiple machines, a lot of times I'll say keep one OEM. Put our system in another.
Oh, never thought about that.
Okay. And then I'll let the op center tell you. Yep. And it's very obvious. Okay. So where do they find you? So let's get the picture. So ssperformanceconcaves.com. They can find us there. We're at shows also. Just go there and all the information and we can get your brochures or whatever. We like talking to everyone because we like to understand where the market's at.
We like to understand the farmer, what their needs are, what they're wanting. And we try to form relationships with our customers.
Perfect. And one more question that I just thought of before we go Tanner's way. So at a show, I'm a salesman. There's always naysayers that, well, you can't sell my farm or should I sell it at auction? There's got to be naysayers. What's the biggest naysayer when they come up to your booth here? What do they say? And what's the answer to the question?
The biggest naysayer is typically, that's a hard one. Honestly, we don't, if they come to us, usually they've done enough research. They already know about the product. Yeah, they're usually buyers.
If I know most farmers, it's probably like, what's the price?
Yeah, and the biggest thing... Yeah, you're probably right. I guess if you wanted to go the price route, they could say, okay, well, you're 30% more. And at the end of the day, whether it's $6,000 or $10,000, when we're talking about $300,000 in storability and $50,000 out the back of the chain... It's a appreciable value, et cetera, et cetera. It's peanuts.
So it's really our job to convey the value because $6,000, $10,000, it's all the same. When you're talking about the ROI, and it's very easy, you know, just on 1,000 acres of corn, 1,000 acres of beans, 1,000 acres of wheat, the ROI is 800%.
You need a sign that says, the juice is worth the squeeze. The juice is worth the squeeze.
So if you do 10,000 acres, multiply it by 10. Yep. Okay. Okay.
800%.
That's a very large amount.
And these are proven. I've got five, six, seven years' worth of data from Op Center from everywhere proving this.
And is that six to $10,000? Is that the range that you normally fall in? I mean, I know it's different for every model and all that kind of stuff.
Yes. Yes. It's, it's all within that depending on the model, but it's, it's right there. And I would be hard pressed that you will find any harvest investment that gives you that kind of ROI, especially day one in the field. Yep.
I could see that. I could see that. So let's jump into Tanner's portion. This will be a smaller portion of the show than the great stuff. But you went in and bar-rescued, basically, is what I was thinking when you went and did this. I imagine you had a lot of different hiccups and partners that you had to do. You had to make some tough decisions. This is about partners.
How do you choose your partners, and what partners did you choose when you were bar-rescuing this welding business?
Yeah, so I'm from Texas, and the Texas way is you do business with people you know and trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it doesn't matter the cost. If I know and trust you, I don't care that you're 20% more. Yep. I'm going to buy from you. Yep. You know?
Corey, is that the way it works? When I sell your farm, you're like, can you do this cheaper, cheaper, cheaper?
Yeah. Well, it charged me a little more commission, but I guess I like them. I guess I like them.
Part of that comes because Texas is a wool and gas, so the margin's there, so it's not as big of a thing. But it comes really down to that. So when we came into it, when we moved to Texas, we were looking at manufacturers in Texas. So I really look at the company's ownership and management.
I want to know that they have the same values and the same, I don't know, beliefs or lack of better words than we do as a company.
Relatable. Are they relatable to you as your customer? I mean, I do business with people that look, feel, act like me, you know, so relatable.
Yeah, and I also look at who their customer base is. So our first manufacturer in Texas was a pretty large operation. They did defense contracts, did stuff for Lockheed Martin, did stuff for Boeing. They did stuff for Berkshire Hathaway Railroads and other things. Wow. And when you're doing... Anytime you're getting into aeronautical stuff, there's no margin of error. No. You can't. So just that.
So I looked for competency through who they're currently doing business with. And that was a big thing. The downside to that company was that they lacked... flexibility they're a big operation 500 000 square feet um maybe a million now and the the thing is whatever you put into the plans to do a rev on or change uh you were you were eight months to get that implemented wow
And that works, you know, if you're making trailers and you're pumping out a thousand trailers a year and the change that you're doing isn't that big of a deal, you can work that into inventory in the product cycle. But with us, you know, sometimes we notice something and we want to make a change now. Even if it's just a tiny change, we're testing and we see the benefit of it.
We wanted to have quicker rev cycles. And that is when we decided to bring things in-house. Um, so everything that we do now is in house. Um, we also wanted to be, uh, in control of our own procurement and steel and our own welding and everything else.
Um, and we'd had some, we'd had some bad partners along the way that we would, even though they did most of it, we would sub some stuff out and quality control, uh, suffered because of it. Now we still did our due diligence, but you, uh, Part on the subs, as a contractor, as you know, they don't have skin in the game. They're not as invested. And they may cut corners that you're not aware of.
And so that's one of the things you kind of have to be careful about. And that was another factor that led us to bringing everything in-house.
Corey, I'd say this is a great argument that I make all the time. for when you're picking a partner. So you might pick a partner to sell your farm, right? Well, when you do, there's big companies. There's $900 million companies and then there's smaller companies too. I like being the smaller company because just what Brian's saying is when you want to turn the boat,
and you see something that can help your customer, we can pivot really quick. And my fishing boat can turn a whole lot faster than their cruise liner. And so when it takes them time to implement, look at Amazon and how quick they can make a change and how forward they are. There's the Kmart's of the world. They got a good product. They've been here forever. Great.
You've been here around 90 years and you're huge. But look at how Amazon, the world's changing and we need to be able to pivot.
I imagine that the partners that you did have, the good and the bad, were all part of the process of turning this thing around and realizing that you needed to bring this in-house. I'm going to tie this back to the same reason a farmer would want to buy a concave. We talked about time on yourself and time on the machine. I'm sure, yeah, it's fine.
You were doing your due diligence that you were finding these errors, but your time is worth it as well.
Oh, for sure. I mean, we run lean and mean, and that's part because of my background. And that's one of the biggest things is you have to value your time. And as any executive knows... That's all you have is your time and making the most of it.
So, you know, I think in terms of ROI on even myself and how I operate my calendar, you know, because I've got to pick because I don't have time to do everything. Right. And I have to pick and choose, you know, what to do. And same thing with farmer. You have to pick and choose. what you're going to spend time on, and where you're going to put your resources.
Maybe that's the answer to this question. Do you, Brian, have advice for our listeners? How do they pick the right partners that they're going with to boost their farm income? So you've done it with a couple different businesses from startups to where you're at now. What advice do you have for our farmers?
Well, I will still always go back to really trying to see if that company is willing to have a conversation with you. Okay, good. Are they willing to have a conversation? Are they willing to listen to you? Do they really have a vested interest or care about you being successful? And that kind of ties into the trust and no part as well. But that's where I would always start.
And if if they do that, then I would move. That's my first question. Then I would move into the product and the competency and the numbers and ROI and stuff. But that's my first. My first one is, you know, do they care about my success?
Right. Tanner and Dave always talk about having an advisory committee, surrounding yourself with people that maybe aren't in your industry, but they're very smart and all that. That's part of the way I choose partners. Do you have an advisory committee or trusted advisors around you?
Oh, absolutely. When I first came to Dallas, when I was doing startups, I was introduced to a guy at the club who actually... The club, that sounds official. Yeah, at the club, who had the first internet company and cellular phone company. And he's been my mentor ever since. He's in his 90s now. But I have met with him once a month for the last 10 years.
And he's very successful, has more money than he could ever, you know. Yeah. But he has kind of helped shape my mind paradigm in getting here. So, like, advisors and mentors are crucial. And the problem, there's this old saying is, do you have 40 years of experience or do you have one year of experience repeated 40 times? And the question is...
You may have a great generational farm and you've learned from your dad, but you may be repeating one year of experience 40 or 100 times. And you need some outside input, some outside perspective, some outside objectivity to ask the right questions, to rethink about things. And it's not that everything's wrong by any means.
Right.
But you have to kind of pick nuggets and come in from a clean slate or objective and kind of piece it together. And that's what you do.
That's 100% what we do. And agriculture is the perfect example of that. If you continue to do what grandpa, what dad, and all that. They did the best they could with the times and the resources that they had. But the technology and everything is moving so fast.
Like Dave said with the Amazon example, we have to be willing to keep a good core of what we know is good business, but then adapt and try new things and surround ourselves with good people.
And that's why everybody is at the show. The middle word, farm progress. To make progress, everyone here has new something. And I don't think it's all just sales pitch. It's like, can this work for your operation? Can this work with what you're doing? You know, et cetera. Yep.
It's a completely different world just in general. I mean, just the size of operations and farms and everything else. It's not just the technology. It's just a different world completely. So it's not just what your dad did, but it's a completely different environment that you're operating in.
And you know how we went computers where, I mean, I'm older than you, but I remember when we bought the first PC that you got from Best Buy and, you know, dad didn't want to touch it.
Played Oregon Trail.
Yeah, Oregon Trail, and you had nothing else than AOL and, you know, long phone modems and et cetera. And look at how fast that has duplicated. I think we're set up, I mean, horse and buggy, now X9 combine sitting right here. How much faster is it going to duplicate now with technology? I think we're just setting up to go even faster.
Well, I've already written AI patents four years ago for seeing what was coming. Awesome. I mean, machine learning and AI is here. I look at NVIDIA. I mean, trillion-dollar market caps. Even with the S7, new cameras, all it is is input. All that machine learning and everything works off inputs and data in. And data is king in this day and age.
And you have to have the data, and everything is coming down to that, and it's going to exponentially increase.
So you're writing AI patents on the concaves or other things?
On the concaves and working with the combine systems.
So you have other patents besides the concaves? Yes. You said you had 30?
Yeah, I mean, the majority of the patents are concave related. Okay. Because, I mean, when we were coming out of the gate, I knew that our competition was Deere, Case, Vent, Echo, Kloss. I mean, we were, I don't remember exactly what Deere's market cap is now, but $150 billion companies that have
resources to the end of time, you have to, if you're going to come in, you have to also look at asset protection. Yep.
very nice i'm interested in the ai stuff on the other side because like i think of concave that's like it's still a piece of steel right but when you're harvesting so so this is where it really came down to the fundamentals is that's the reason people say what does your concave work in like a massey ferguson or new holland or does it work in the new system or whatever if you think about it the one constant thing of all combines is their threshing
the crop with a rotor against some physical hard surface. And the OEM, the traditional, is a round bar for like corn and beans. So whether it's a deer combine or a case or a fin, you're always threshing that grain or compressing that crop against the same hard steel physical surface. process. So the patents is we change that piece of steel at your threshing.
So it's more efficient, more effective. And that's where the majority of the patents are based. And then, like I said, I'm always constantly testing. And when we're testing, I'm always writing patents for seeing the future as best I can.
Cool. Where did you learn how to write the patents? Was that when you were in finance or just figured it out?
Just knew we had something that worked really well and we needed to protect it.
And having gone down that game a little, the thing is you don't think about, Corey, is you want to write a patent in my world that I know about it is broad enough that you cover all of the basis, but specific enough that the patent office says that this has a function to what you're trying to accomplish.
But if you go too broad, then it'll come back and it'll say, ah, that's like, I own a company, Virtual Auction. They're like, well, virtual is a thing and auction is very broad. You need to narrow that like what it is to specifically what you're trying to accomplish here, you know.
But we didn't want to write it too narrow that somebody could just change a widget, a fidget, a something, and then they have the same thing that we were doing, just they used a different, you know, meter or something. Yeah, because you have some patents, right? We did one when we wrote virtual auction software, yeah.
Yeah, and it's very, I mean, it's art and science. And a good patent attorney is key, but it's not the easiest thing. But when you're in our business and when you're in the market with the competitors that we have, there's no other choice.
And they don't come overnight. There's like a provisional patent, but they can take like the ones that I did anyway, two years. two, three years to go through the process. Have you seen the same thing?
Oh, yeah. So it's on average three to four years before it's published if you can get. So pending patents just mean they're under an examination.
Correct.
And it's not until a pending patent doesn't really mean anything. It hasn't been litigated. And once it's gone through examination and litigated and you have a published patent, that's when it has the value. Yep.
Very cool. We went all over the place. Oh, man. Probably didn't cover anything that Tanner wanted, but I think this was a better show than he could have ever thought of. Yep. So we do ask every guest, we kind of rotate, I don't know, maybe quarterly, a new question. And then we compile all the answers. And this question that we're asking now is, Brian, how do you juggle...
Work and home life. And while you're thinking of that, I'll give you a second to think on that. So juggle work and home life. Listeners, one of my takeaways from this, as Brian's thinking of his answer, is do they care about my success?
I kind of wrote that down on my paper, and I was thinking, man, as we are thinking of somebody to identify or choose a partner with, I know wholeheartedly that Corey wants me to be successful on my farm. and so he's giving me the right advice.
When you pick your partners, whoever those partners are, when we on Farm for Profit are studying this, we're trying to put you with people that we think and feel care about your success.
I like that. I like that.
Did you figure out a question or answer for that?
I'm going to have probably a unique answer. But it's all integrated for us. It's all integrated. So Kimber breeds horses and shows horses and does that whole world. And I go to horse shows and I go out to the farm and I go see the foals when they come out. And just in that specific example...
everything is everything is kind of integrated so we we don't necessarily we couldn't bifurcate it if we wanted to and it's just it's just not possible you talked about it earlier that she cared about where you were going with your business so she cares about your success it sounds like you care about her horses and what she's interested as well exactly and when we when kimber and i were doing all the farm shows she was in the booth selling he picked a good partner see
I can tell you, she can set a combine and tell you more about concaves than majority of farmers. And what the heck are you sending me Ethan for?
Well, you know. There it is. I don't think it's that unique of an answer because it sounded like a farmer's answer. Yeah. Like farmers and their lives are all intertwined and sometimes don't have this barrier between home and work and all that.
I mean, we do set a set side times for six things. Like we try to have nights where it's just us and we go out and we make a point to have time just for us. uh, whether it be a trip somewhere or just going in and eating somewhere. I mean, we, we, we make sure that we have that time where we can lay all the business and other things aside and just like enjoy each other and connect and whatever.
So I think that's, I think that's important, but on a day to day basis, uh, it just kind of all flows together.
Corey, do you find this? So my wife and I have been married 20 years now and, uh, We'll go out to eat. We used to have stuff to talk about. I say used to. Now we go talk about it. Of course, we talk about business. And we've tried to keep business out of the conversation. And we'll go out to eat. And we're just sitting there staring at each other thinking, man, I want to ask her about this.
And she wants to ask me about that. And I'm texting you like, did you get this contract?
What do we talk about if we don't talk about business? Because we are intertwined into that. I don't know what everybody else talks about when they go out to eat. It's like, well, all right. Maybe you just take cards and play card game or something. Yeah, but it's like, well, I know everything about you, and you know everything about me, and it's this old hat.
So now we've got to come up with something new. It's just spending time together. It doesn't matter what you do or what you talk about. It's just being together, I think.
So now we just started judging people. What do you think they do? It does take a certain ability to get out of that mindset.
And, like, when I get in analytical mode and it's not the same as me going on the lake and trying to surf. Correct. Like, there has to be some kind of ability to separate those. And I think that's a challenge for everyone.
I'm kind of glad Tanner wasn't on this episode because two analytical people like that would have just.
Oh, my goodness. We would have derailed. Yeah.
We, like, kept it on the rails.
Yeah, we'd be talking about Starlink.
He'd have Excel up and spreadsheets with you. Yeah, it'd be a mess. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, thanks for being our guest there, Brian. Appreciate it. And again, if our listeners want to check your service out, give us the website one more time.
It's estesperformanceconcaves.com.
E-S-T-E-S.
Correct.
Yep. Thanks for coming, and listeners, have a good one.
Remember, if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.