Kevan “Flea” Hueftle We are proud to present U.S. Paralympic Athlete, Rancher, and Father Kevan Hueftle. In 2005 Kevan also known as “Flea” was involved in a hunting accident that led to an amputation of his left leg below the knee. Consequently, Flea struggled with alcoholism due to the tragic loss of his limb and the constant pain he suffered as an amputee. Through perseverance and grit, Flea decided to defy the odds and would eventually compete on the US Track and Field teams and medal as an elite Paralympic Athlete. Kevan is a beacon of hope for anyone struggling with limb loss or addiction.Kevan is a husband, father, rancher, and motivational speaker. He has been a member of the U.S. Paralympic track and field team. Works at Lazy Creek Beef Company LLCstarting when he was 20 years old. He had been hunting and while pulling the gun out of the truck, it went off, shooting him in the foot. After several surgeries his leg was amputated below the knee.“To say my life has been easy … there have been parts that have been harder than others,” he said. “I’m still living a dream of mine.”At the time of the accident, he was on the track and field team at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.Hueftle talked about fitting a prosthetic. He said the first seven years were miserable and the prosthetic didn’t fit. He also talked about the depression that followed the amputation.“I knew it was going to be tough, but it was really, really hard. I was an alcoholic for seven years. I was a person that I would never look up to.” 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/
Hey listeners, welcome back to the Farm for Profit podcast. This podcast is going to have two introductions. It's going to be a little bit different than normal, but we want to share with you ahead of this episode that we had a great conversation. Husker Harvest Days, this is going to be one of the most amazing stories that we get to share. Two things. It's probably going to get turned off.
Some of you are never going to get all the way to the end of this episode. Don't. And I would encourage you, listen. Stick it out. But two, I want to give you a warning. Between the 10-minute mark and the 20-minute mark of this episode, if you are a person that gets queasy, doesn't like potential gruesome stories, there are no visuals.
If you're watching this on YouTube, there is no visual that is going to cause any of this. But there is a portion of this story that... If your stomach is weak, we want you to know it's between the 10-minute mark and the 20-minute mark. You're welcome to fast-forward through that. You're not going to miss the meaning behind this episode. But I know that because I sometimes get that way.
My family gets that way. Maybe this is a message more for my sister than anybody else.
I was going to say, everybody I know will be all right with it.
Yeah, you're also a former firefighter that is in a position in which you can... A little calloused. A little calloused. It's a fantastic episode. Super pumped to share it with you, but wanted to give you a little bit of that warning. So if you're here, stay in it with us. This is going to be fantastic.
If that is the type of person that you are, 10 minute, 20 minute mark, fast forward, come back and join us.
Here we go. 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.
So here to talk nitrogen stabilizers with a great representative from Corteva, I've got Andrew Luzum here. And welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. Appreciate it. You are in your role with Corteva. You get a lot of pushback. Maybe not pushback, but maybe there's a lot of myths that are created. What are some other things that you can help debunk for our audience as we talk today?
Yeah, I think some other myth that we hear is nitrogen stabilizers tie up our nitrogen or make it not plant available, right? That's not the case at all. By keeping it in the ammonium form, we talked through that a little bit ago, but keeping it in the ammonium form, the plant can still utilize it in the ammonium form. It actually prefers it.
So it's not tying up your nitrogen, but it's going to keep it there in the soil profile available when the plant does need it. You know, we really look at corn needs, you know, the majority of their uptake between B6 and tassel. So it's got to be there when the plant needs it. And if it's lost before that, it's just a waste of money.
That's a good point. What about the myth around it's harmful for the soil?
Yeah, we've heard that before too, right? And we actually did a lot of work this last year with Trace Genomics, if you've ever heard of that company. Yeah. But they do a lot of biological testing, right, and tell you overall soil health, bacteria, etc. And we did a lot of this testing between where we have N-Servant Instinct and where we don't have it.
And the reality is we're not killing these bacteria. It is an AMO enzyme inhibitor, but we're not actually a bacteria. So we're not killing these bacteria at the rates we're using commercially today.
If somebody wants to learn more about nitrogen stabilizers, how best do they do that?
Yeah, they should be able to do that through their local retailer to reach out to a local Corteva AgriScience rep. If they don't have success there, please just go to nitrogenstabilizers.com and you'll be able to see everything we've got going.
2024.
We are. What an absolutely beautiful couple of days that we've had. It could have been terribly miserable. Corey and I have sweat through our shirts. Just the back. Because we are finally... I'm still in the sun. But we are absolutely enjoying ourselves. What a great set of interviews that we've had here on the second day. This one, I predict, is not going to disappoint either.
It would be bad if you predicted that it would. I know. It would be kind of rude, wouldn't it? I mean, we wouldn't tell them if it's up. Yeah, this is actually going to be one of our worst interviews. That's right. So this would be the time to go like, rate, review, and share. Because after this point, you're probably going to be disappointed. No, just kidding.
In true sense of humor, we do profit shows on Monday and then we have fun shows on Thursday. But we try to make the profit shows just as fun and the fun shows just as educational.
Right.
We just like to have a couple of different titles. Maybe we just start releasing two shows a week and they're all just regular shows.
I think we could have a show every day if we had the time.
Yeah.
People have asked that. Yeah. I get asked probably once a week that we should do that. It's usually dairy farmers.
Those guys are insane.
Don't they have that? It's called the news.
Oh. Yeah, but that's boring. And it's fake. And we're not boring.
Exactly.
Nobody watches the news, so we can't be every day. What do you want from us? Because if you want something every day, farmforprofitllc at gmail.com or... find our social media, subscribe on YouTube. All of the absolutely great spots. Or 515-207-9640. Call us. Yes.
And what a great opportunity we have to interact with our audience because some of the topics that we, most of the topics that we talk about come from them. We want to know what you guys want to hear. And this is one that I'm most excited about because ultimately we understand how important of what we say is. And that probably hit me a lot more seriously here towards the end of the summer.
And I realized that, hey, we're not having the margins that we've been used to having over the last three or four years in agriculture. And things are starting to come to a point to where we've got to batten down the hatches. And some of those hatches we have to make sure we take care of and don't just shut things out that don't matter. You're not alone. You're listening to this podcast.
We're here with you. One of the listeners is also there with you. And I'm excited to explore the conversation with this gentleman, get his story, and help share that message even further that things can be awesome.
no matter what you are faced with uh these are badass hats absolutely love them i didn't realize dave your hat is different than mine's way cooler you have to know the logo it's like our logo so that's my favorite and then everybody else loves those and i hate them but i wanted to wear my first form shirt because i want to eventually get sponsored by them too so i want to put flea speaks in because you're faking it till you make it hey you know what
You've got to wear them. I'm in talks with them, but I don't have an Instagram following yet. So I'm the guy that always worked in the dark and then just popped up during big events. But I've got to change that when you're trying to be a speaker. So I've got to change my whole mindset about advertising myself.
today. You're the speaker today. That's right. Tanner needs to introduce our guest here. That is our guest that you just heard. Before you do that, I want to say a big thanks to Cody Vanderholm for lining this up.
He brought us this guest and I'm pretty excited for it. Thank you, Cody. Also, big thanks to Maya Kornitz for facilitating this, giving us this beautiful spot to be in. We are proud to present to you a U.S. Paralympic athlete. We have an Olympian. An Olympian. On the podcast. Also rancher. He doesn't have his medal on. Also a rancher. Also a father. He's known as Fleet.
And I can't wait to figure out why. Yeah. Why. But ultimately, he is probably the first guest that we've had on that has lost a limb. Yeah. Well, lost. Lost.
Yes. Okay. I said that key. Yes. Yeah, you did. You did. Okay. We've got some fingers, maybe. I would say he's also the best looking ginger on the podcast. I appreciate that.
The best looking ginger on the podcast.
It's just a mustache is all it is. I do like a good mustache.
That's right. I do like a good mustache. Kevin, welcome to the podcast.
Well, thank you guys for having me.
Or do we call you Flea? Flea. Everybody calls me Flea. All right. Let's start with that. Before we go back to little Kevin, where's Flea from? Because I think of what dogs get.
So my name is Kevin Hifley, but it's a German name, Hifley, so it's spelled H-U-E-F-T-L-E, so nobody ever could say Hifley. But my first name, Kevin, is spelled K-E-V-A-N, so nobody could ever say Kevin either. It's just Kevin. It's not Kevan or Keevan. So, Hifley got cut off. There's a lot of Hifleys in Eustis. Like, that's all the town is.
So, you always call everybody by their last names, you know, in high school. You know, Hifley this, Hifley that. Well, there's too many Hifleys. The Hif just got cut off, and the Flea just stuck, and I've been Flea ever since. Cool. Wow. Well, that's a lot simpler of a story than I was expecting that to be. It's just the names.
I mean, even then you have to explain to yourself why your name is Flea, but you have to explain to yourself. I was thinking of something like I itched and went away.
Yeah. I was one of those things. Those guys just showed up everywhere when you didn't want them to be there. Well, that's true, too. Okay. Let's go back to young Kevon. Yeah. Kevon. Flea. Flea. Young Flea. How was that? What's the growing up look like?
Uh, to be honest, growing up was a little rough when you have bright red hair in elementary and high school, and it was... I actually had, in high school, I had hair down to my shoulders, too, at one point in time. I could see that. It was.
It was very... Well, my grandpa Carl told me one... It was, like, in my freshman year, told me I needed to get a haircut, and it was, like, short, and I didn't get a haircut for, like, three years. Ah.
Don't tell me what to do.
Yeah, so... No, but I got bullied quite a bit when I was younger. I had a gap to suck my thumb until I was, like, eight years old. Like, big old frame glasses, you know, my dad wore. So it was a little rough, and then... High school was, I mean, kind of the same way for a while, but then I found sports, and I figured out I was an athlete, and that kind of turned everything around a little bit.
What kind of sports? So everything. Football, basketball, track. I was actually in musicals, too. I was in math counts. I kind of was in the whole high school experience, and I kind of... When I do my speeches now, it's kind of different because I was bullied.
But then when I got in high school and like elementary or in high school more, I turned into a bully a little bit because I was from one side to the other. So I've seen both sides of, you know, that and how it can be difficult anyway.
So that's not something I'm proud of, but I'm actually glad I went through because now I can talk to elementaries and junior highs about I've been both sides of it, you know. So it's not fun. And where was this at? Eustis Farm High School in Eustis, Nebraska.
Okay.
So about an hour, hour and a half west and south of here. Yep. Great. How far away is that from Colorado? Not that far. You got to be getting close to Colorado then. So we're nestled in the corner. We're like an hour and a half in the corner of Colorado. Can you guys say Ogallala? Ogallala. Ogallala, Nebraska.
Yep. Can you say Tanner? I bet I can, but could you say the Ogallala Livestock Commission and Ogallala Livestock? Do you ever have to say that when you auction? Have you ever auctioned in Ogallala?
I have.
I've been there once. So, yeah, the Scow family works there. Dave's an auctioneer, really, so he talks fast.
Have you not noticed how fast I talk yet?
Right? Very, very fast. You're going to appear really fast because I talk really slow. We're going to the comments section. So... So we got to play in sports.
Yep, play in sports. And I was good in sports in high school. My senior year, I was all-state basketball, all-state football, state record in track. So, you know, it was... That's where I've learned to work my tail off. I was the guy that didn't... The other athletes didn't really enjoy on your team because I was the guy that... I wasn't the most athletic, but I would work my tail off in practice.
So I didn't lose 21s in basketball. I was always the guy in track practice that would make sure I came in on time. Like, I didn't not do a workout and... The only reason I played a lot of times was because of my hustle. So that's all I had. I wasn't gifted to be an athlete, you know. So I was 110 pounds and 5'7", and it wasn't going to be in my cards unless I worked for it.
I think you should change from work your tail off to work your leg off. That's right. At that point in time, I still had two legs, thank goodness.
But, yeah, so. So where are you at? Let's fast forward, and then we'll go back to the middle. So fast forward to now. Married kids, where do you live?
Still live in Eustis. I live a mile and a half away from the house I grew up on. Still live on the family farm and ranch. I actually localized everything, so I farm and ranch everything within two miles of my house. Wow. So I don't have to travel. As of last year, I don't have any more travel. What do you mean? You got to choose where you're Well, yeah, I got rid of the valley ground.
It wasn't being profitable, and I just farm closer to home now, and I just do less acres and more cows on less acres and more profitable. What kind of cattle do you have?
Red Angus. Red Angus?
And a cow-calf? Cow-calf. I actually have Lazy Creek Beef Company also, so I do a direct sales beef company as well. Okay. So I'll finish, you know, 30 to 60 head of year. Do you do that after COVID or before COVID? I started that in 17. Okay. And when I started buying beef, it was $1. $42 a pound hanging waste when I started buying beef from the ranch. Got it. Now it's $3.20.
So you did 300 and how many head a year?
No, I do 30 to 60 head is what I'll finish a year. I thought you were saying you finish, like you could slaughter a calf every day. So years ago, I was doing four to five head a month, which is quite a bit for one guy delivering beef across. I have beef in like seven states at that point in time. Wow. But it's just me in a minivan delivering beef around the country. Got it. Yep.
Oh, my God. All right, so back up. Now, we know where you're present. Back up to where we became paralyzed, if you would, or where you lost your leg. He's not paralyzed.
He did walk in.
So why do they call it Paralympics then? So it's Paralympics is parallel to the Olympics. See how that segue worked? Yep. Yeah, you guys had no freaking clue. No, no, no, no. Bunch of dumbasses over here.
That's right. So, yeah, so my speeches always start on October 23, 2005. I was out scouting for deer. Well, actually right where I live now, and I was on top of a big old hill, and I saw a coyote, and I grabbed my .243 probably 100 times in my life. I grabbed the gun out of the pickup.
And next thing I know I go to step out of the pickup and the gun was no longer, well the gun was in my hand but my foot just started going ba-boom, ba-boom and my head was ringing and I looked down and I had loper lace up boots on and my top bow was still together and I untied that not knowing what actually happened and my boot literally fell off my foot.
And the boots, the seam on the inside, the heel on both sides and all my laces were blown apart. My foot was that, went from being normal foot to being that big.
Pause there for a second. Do you guys know what ropers are? Those lace-up ropers.
They're just regular boots that you lace up like tennis shoes all the way to the top. All right. You guys need some ropers.
You should bring it back.
I have some.
Bring it back.
All right. Okay. Keep going. So then I realized I shot myself in the foot with a .243 about two inches away from my ankle bone is what had happened. Gotcha. This is back in 05. So I had a cell phone but didn't have any service. So we had two radios for farming.
So I got a hold of my grandma who got a hold of my uncle who got a hold of my dad or my mom who got a hold of my dad who finally came and picked me up. And I think I was there for like 45 minutes by myself at this point in time. I probably could have ended up driving if it had been any longer than that.
I don't know how long I just sat there before realizing what actually had happened, but I took my, they said the bull went in so hot that it actually kind of cauterized the vane going in or else I would have been bleeding out a lot worse than I was. That's a good thing, yeah.
Yeah, so I took the sock off and I shoved it in the middle of my foot and just kind of held it there and then dad had an old 7.3 diesel and he just came roaring up the, it was actually, it's a pivot that we grazed and it just, hitting all those pivot tracks all the way up, I could hear it from a mile away. He came and picked me up, took me to the highway, and the EMTs met me.
And I ended up going to Cozette, Nebraska, a small town hospital, where I finally got some morphine in me. So things were pretty good after that. But then they had to find me. Nobody really wanted me. They called me O'Carney, Lincoln, Denver. So I ended up going to the med center in Omaha. Yeah, it was pretty bad. Ended up going to the med center that night. They wanted to amputate that night.
I was 20 years old. I was running track at Kearney at UNK at the time. So my life was still sports. I wasn't going to... A guy with only one foot that was going to be able to run track anywhere. So I'm like, I'm not cutting it off. Side note is my parents getting down there, they took...
The crop dusters, a friend of ours that cropped us, Dave Malcolm, they took his brother's plane with no interior lights in it. So my dad's sitting on the bucket holding a flashlight, flying into Blair, Nebraska, took off at Johnson Lake to get down to Omaha to see me because they flew me in the helicopter. Yeah. So I had my uncle meet me down there.
My aunt got pulled over going to the hospital with my family. They got a police escort to the hospital after she got pulled over from Blair. And this, yeah, so it was a... It's a crazy couple of days, but they wanted to cut it off that night. I decided, you know, obviously I was pretty high the whole time, but there's no way I was going to cut my foot off. So we tried to keep it.
We had five surgeries within six days of cleaning all the shrapnel and bone fragments, and it was a gnarly foot. They literally had to lay it over all of that pinky toe to clean all. My x-ray was, if this is my pinky toe, my x-ray was just like a Christmas tree. It just had a piece of shrapnel everywhere. The bolt really never came out. It hit bones and just exploded right there. Really? Yeah.
Was it a partition?
They make nozzler partitions?
Oh, no, no. It was just a regular soft tip 243. Yep, just regular soft tip 243. Some of them bullets are made to do that. Holy smokes. They sewed me up good enough that when I actually left the hospital, I could put my foot up and I could see you through the hole where they sewed. So my ankle bone was here, and then the bullet went in right above here.
I could see right through my foot, and I could take pictures of my friends through my foot when I went home. So they did not amputate. Not then. But that was your choice. Yes, they wanted to. And I was like, there's no way I would be able to play sports or anything. And they sent me home with a wound vac, which is a sponge in there.
And then you seal it up and it puts negative pressure and actually pulls your muscles and skin and back together so it heals better, which is great. But when you change it every two days, you're literally ripping off its bright red tissue. And you're ripping something that grew to it every single two days. And that was the most painful thing.
Right after the hunting accident, ripping that off every couple days. Within a month, I was actually, so October 23rd, by January 13th, I was walking again. Wow. But it was never going to be a foot that I ever really wanted to have. So March 30th, 2006, we went to Omaha, Nebraska, and we chopped her off. Because of complications? I was never going to be an athlete.
I would be limping around it the rest of my life. It was fused. I was missing like 30% of the bottom of my foot. It was never going to be a foot I could ever use, really. So it was just going to be a foot that looked like a foot, but it was nothing that I was going to be happy with or be able to actually play sports with or anything like that.
So did you just cut the ankle off, so tib-fib bone where your shin is?
Seven and a half inches from the ground.
Seven and a half inches, okay.
Well, this will be a first-time podcast. So back then, you only used to be able to put feet underneath on a pylon system. So you had to put an adapter on the bottom of your stump, and it went to a pylon to a foot. Okay. All right. So they didn't make any feet that were lower than 7 1⁄2 inches to fit in there. So I could have cut it off there down here because my accident was actually right here.
Yeah. You know, blew this part away to my ankle bone right here, but they couldn't do that back then because, um, the adapter, nothing would ever fit in the bottom of your foot. Well, now we have feet that you put on the back of them, posterior mounted feet. Now I have a lot more athletic build and spring to them.
And so you could have did different, but my stump is really awesome because of the accident wasn't where my stump's at. So like I healed really, really well. Like everything went great. And, um, Yeah, I tried to go back and run track by June 1st after amputating March 30th. That was a mistake. I was still bleeding and thought I had to get right back into it and start training right away.
And that leads to the next 10 years of my life of being an alcoholic. Gotcha.
I'm sorry that I offered you a beer. No, that's really fine.
You said that very casually. Yeah. And so I read on your flyer here, sober since 15. August 7, 2015. And I was going to ask you, sober, is it just when people say sober, I've had some that just say, I decided not to drink. No, no, no. Not necessarily sober. So you actually felt like you were drinking too much and you call it sober for that reason.
So at the end of it, I could drink a whole 175 of vodka or a 30-pack of bush light in a day just to function. Wow. That's a lot. And that was pain management? That was not so much. It was a little bit of legs not fitting right in pain management. Mostly it was mental. I mean, I was a 20-year-old kid that decided to cut his leg off and thought it was going to be just as happy-go-lucky.
And then you're a farm kid who doesn't talk about your feelings. You're small. You know, you're 20 years old, and then it just keeps building up. You know, I was, I was the life of the party and hang. I mean, I had a great time in college. I went to Beatrice SEC and, but the entire time I was not mentally okay.
Like I was struggling every single day and that was just to get me by was just drinking. Like I, there wasn't days, I don't remember five days in 10 years I didn't drink. And the last five years it was every single day. Wow. Every single day. It was three beers prior to wake up. I knew if I was going to Eustis to get parks, I could drink three beers on the way to Eustis, which is 4.5 miles.
I knew I had a routine. When I go check cows, I take at least a six-pack. So did you go deeper than beer and into recreational drugs? When you have a prosthetic and a foot issue, you have Oxycontin and Percocets if you want them. Alcohol is my number one choice, but I would always use those in backup if I was always going to run out somewhere or I was traveling or something like that. Gotcha.
Oxycontin and Percocet were definitely in the system. Some more over-the-counter, though. Yep, never dove into anything else. But, yeah, I was 5'9", 200 pounds, and just...
worthless at that point in time to be honest i noticed your bracelet pounds yeah i was 200 pounds that when i when i got sober so i noticed your bracelet uh says i can do all things through or i can do all things and normally that's a philippines 413 reference to the bible yeah right here and so um if if that's there was there a religious tie to quit drinking and to change your life and to move forward as well not at the time i did it um but since then absolutely okay
100%.
I got sober on August 7, 2015, and it was just one day. Then it was two days, and it was three days, and it just kept snowballing. Like, I don't know. There's no reason. I didn't wake up that day and say I didn't. I tried to quit drinking multiple times before this. I mean, I would go two weeks without drinking, and all of a sudden, you know, something would go wrong, and it's just right back.
But then what people don't understand is when you're an alcoholic and you quit for those two weeks, you don't start back up at two beers a day. You start back with the same place you finished off. That's where you start right back up the same day again. You might have one beer on Thursday, but Friday morning, you're drinking 30 beers a day. That's just like that.
You're instantly an alcoholic again. That's how my mind works with everything I do. I'm addicted to anything that I do. There's a reason I got so well. I got so fast in the Paralympic world for track and field. I was addicted to working out and making my body better and things like that as soon as I got sober.
Sue went from 200 when you stopped drinking. What did you point at? The people in the hazmat suits? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I saw them walking out early. I don't know. There's people walking by with hazmat suits. But side note, we just did a podcast. We talked about tattoos. That's the tattoo I want. Philippians 413. I've wanted it for a long time. So were you married at the time?
No. When I was an alcoholic? Yeah. So, yeah, I met my wife in 2007. Okay. So I met her playing Presidents and Assholes at a party in Beatrice and Rasta. And I was very good. I mean, I was very good at all the drinking games. Yeah. So post-amputation. Yep. So I'm APA in 06, met my wife in 07. So she literally met me as an alcoholic.
Like she's only known that until 2015 of me being that person, which is tough because that person wasn't driven like this person is. It's a wholly different person. Gotcha. It's a totally different person. So we've had issues. I mean, obviously every marriage does, but of me being too much because I can be. I know I can be. When I think of something, I want to do something, it is on my mind.
And it's going to either happen or I'm going to die trying to get that. Yeah.
Like I said, an addictive personality. That's 100% what I have.
But she's got to like you a lot better now. Absolutely.
Absolutely, yeah.
Yeah. Was it hard for her in that, you know, if you guys both met drinking at that time, I'm guessing she was drinking too. And then you, if you quit cold turkey, did she quit cold turkey as well?
No, because it never bothered me to have it around the same when I quit. Okay, got it. She has almost like a year sober now, but not because she had a problem, just because we just don't drink anymore. Mm-hmm. You know, but when she was drinking, like, it could be in the house. It did not bother me. I go to bars and hang out.
My rule is always if you told me the same story twice, that's when I'm going home. So I could be around the bar for the first story, you know, around the table. But as soon as you came over and told me the same story you told me 10 minutes ago, then, yeah, I've been here long enough at the bar to hang out. It's time for me to go home.
So do you guys think, I saw somebody's Facebook post the other day that said hashtag sober on the bottom. He's just getting fit is what it is. I don't know if he stopped drinking because of any certain reason other than he's just trying to get fit. Does the word sober mean that we maybe had a drinking problem or does the word sober just mean I quit drinking?
Or is there a better term for I just decided to stop drinking?
I think it's just you just don't drink.
Okay. I didn't know if there was a background. I'm trying to think of the word with it.
It's a lot more popular now than it used to be just to not drink, just to be healthier. Yeah, correct.
I'd just say I cut back. There you go. Exactly. I mean, I drank a lot in college, and I've cut back this summer. That's how I've lost some weight, you know, doing that. But I could do more, but... I still like the social aspect, but I've never had the, I drink 30 beers in a day or a bottle of this or that. Unless we're on a trade show trip.
No, I mean, even then, like I probably had six or seven yesterday from three in the afternoon. Sure. Maybe, maybe 10 after, cause I forgot that we started so early, but like.
Yeah. And I never drank and I was cool with never drinking until I wanted to do it socially because everybody else was. So that's the term everybody else was. Yeah, socially.
He didn't drink, okay, I want to test this theory here. He didn't, 27? 27, I think. He didn't drink until he was 27. Wow. Is he trustworthy? Well, like he didn't even, he wasn't even like, because this isn't part of your childhood or like coming up, like you're experimenting. Stealing beer from dad once in a while. Right, yeah.
My parents didn't drink. I've never seen alcohol in the house. I've never seen my dad drink, ever. So he was drinking a lot when he was young and they cut cold turkey. Their first kid died of congenital heart disease. He blamed it on alcohol. They've never, never had alcohol. Even at our wedding, we had wine and he's like, make sure that my table does not have alcohol at it.
And so he has never since then, I've never grown up seeing my dad, mom, anything with any kind of alcohol. We never went to like games or tailgated or any of that. We went in bars and played pool, but we just never drank. So just whatever your norm is, it's a social norm. It just was never normal until I moved away and then everybody else was drinking. I just had a record going.
And just like you, if you've got a record going, you want to just keep going with it and not fail. So I was like, all right, screw it. I'll just go until 27 until finally I decided. Yeah. Let's give it a go.
So I want to keep on the story because your story is fascinating. We still haven't gotten to a piece that I did talk about in our introduction. You're an Olympic athlete. Paralympic athlete, yes, that's correct. So you get sober. Yep. And you're like, all right, I'm going to go to the Olympics?
So I got sober in 15, and the first year was just me not drinking. I dropped like 20 pounds. Like I didn't work out. I didn't do any training. It was just me eating better and not drinking 5,000 calories a day. And then 2017, on January 1st, I took a leg that I hadn't worn –
um a sprint leg which is it's like a big c so it acts like an ankle so it compresses when you run on it to give you the same bounce as an ankle would give you springboard kind of thing well it's it's you get 100 and whatever 50 50 percent return out of your ankle you get 30 out of a prosthetic it's not as nearly as much people think unless you're using the long jump leg which that's a whole different story but they make it they designed a long jump leg you can go like eight and a half meters on that's really it's wow but so
Took the old 10-year-old leg and went to Carney, Nebraska, and had a new socket made, which is the top part of the prosthetic where my stump goes in. They made a new socket, and I went to the Y, and I ran for the first time since 2006. And it was slow, and it about fell, and it was horrible. And next thing you know, I ran two days in a row, then three, and then I got a training partner or a coach.
He started helping me out. One of my old athletes I ran with at UNK, he was coaching in Colorado, and he was like, all right, do these workouts, and do this, this, and this. I actually flew out to LA to do a track meet called the Angel City Games. It was the Paralympic Nationals that year for Team USA. And I was in a 10-year-old... leg, and I was also 30 years old at the time.
Well, 32 years old at the time, which is kind of old to be a sprinter. I was getting made fun of out there because my leg was old, I was old. I played a place in 7th and 8th and 100 and 200 and 3rd and the 400 meter dash.
But I met a person out there called Nick Stilwell who runs an organization called the Never Say Never Foundation who gets prosthetics usually to kids because these aren't covered. Sprint legs aren't covered for insurance. Oh. So if you want a sprint leg, you have to pay for it. It's out of pocket.
It's all carbon fiber.
It's all carbon fiber and it's very expensive. And so to get that set up for kids most of the time, it's unrealistic. You can't get it. Every kid should grow up running. So he does mostly kids, but for me, he saw my leg and saw I was fast. He's like, dude, what are you on? And I'm like, what I have.
And so he set me up with a guy in Seattle, Washington named Greg Davidson, who runs Davidson Prosthetics. And he sent me a new foot out there, a new socket, everything for free just to fly it out there. And I started training really, really hard. Yeah, and then I got fast. Got fast. Were you fast when you had two legs? Yeah, I was a state record holder in a 4x4. We ran 326.8.
I ran a 48.5 400 in high school. That's kind of fast. And then I never ran the 100 and 200 because that wasn't my events. But for the Paralympics, the only events I get to choose from in Paralympics, I'm a T64, which is a below-the-knee amputee. That's my category. Okay. So we run with the T62s, which is the doubles in the 100, but then the 200-meter dash, we're just our T64s.
But I only get the 100, 200-meter dash. Javelin, shot put, discus, high jump are the only events I get to choose from for the Paralympics. So I'm a 4.8 runner, but at the age I am, probably not so much a 4.8 runner. So I hadn't been in blocks, starting blocks, in my life until 2017 to try to be a sprinter for one of the fastest people in the entire world.
So it was a little bit of a learning curve there right away, but I got fast really quick. I started running a lot of college track meets. I mean, I'm training three times a day, 5 a.m. workouts on my own, and I'm taking kids to the weight room after that, and I'm an hour and a half workout in the track. I'm doing all this with the beef company, running too many head of cattle, still farming.
I pretty much had to have my dad come out of retirement. He was almost 70 to take over my slack because I was gone an hour and a half in the middle of the day. I had to train when it was hot out because all the track meets you go to – are hot. So there's no point in me training earlier in the evening.
If you go to the track meet and it's not 100 degrees out, you know, and you're not used to it, you're going to run like shit. But I just kept training and training and it was, I mean, it was tons of work. I mean, it was a lot of doubting going on because, I mean... My goal was to make Team USA, to make Team USA to be one of the fastest spinners in the entire world.
Like, you have to be top five or they're not even going to really look at you because it's so expensive for them to take you places and this and that. Well, I run enough track meets that I got noticed, and they actually sent me to Lima, Peru to run the Parapan American Games down there.
I ended up placing first in the 100, and got second place in the 200-meter dash in the Parapan American Games, which, I mean, I was ecstatic because you get to hear the national anthem being played for the first time from a kid that's less than five years ago.
It was 2015, so four years ago I was an alcoholic, weighing 200 pounds that I wouldn't trust with my own kids at one point in time because I was driving around drinking with my daughter in the vehicle. I mean, it was just a normal thing for me. It was horrible. I never had a rock bottom, but I had a lot of moments looking back where I'm like, I'm a freaking idiot.
I can't believe I got away with this, this, and this. My son has never seen me drink a drop of alcohol in my life. My daughter's 11 and Hayes is 8, so he's never seen me drink ever in my life, but To be honest, the worst day of my entire life was when I was actually sneaking alcohol into the hospital my daughter was born. Because that's how much it had a hold on me back then.
Wow.
And it was ridiculous to think back at that I had to do that to survive. And so I like to promote, you know, Obviously, social drinking is not a big deal, but when you're something like that, I'm here to help. I've been through a lot in my life, and hopefully I can help other people that are going through the same issues that I went through, knowing that you can be at the bottom.
I came out of the bottom, and I went clear to the top. So, yeah, I got to wear that red, white, and blue. They send you a big old suitcase with it, and they... have all the Team USA stuff in it, which is the most amazing feeling in the world, knowing that you've worked that hard to be able to represent your country.
Yeah.
And then we went to Lima, Peru, which I don't know if you've ever been to Peru and Lima, but it's pretty run down where we were at. The buses we were taking, we had a road to the track and where we stayed at the village. And there was cones that were supposed to be, you know, lining your way. And there was people that are on both sides. Their job was to put the cones back up.
Because there's no... Stoplights don't work in Peru, Lima. Like, it's just... You get to an intersection, you just figure it out. Yeah. And they have all the tuk-tuks there and everything like that. Well, there's people that... They were leaning against... There's a cement wall and then cones. They were putting these cones up and they would be against a cement wall.
And they're this far away from the bus. And we're going by at 50 miles an hour. Jeez. Like, you'd put your head against the window and you'd be sleeping. You wake up and you see eyeballs go by. It was... Insane. And you go from that and go to Dubai. We went to UAE Dubai for the World Championships. Completely opposite. The bus we had in Dubai had every seat.
It was heated and cooled seats in Dubai. All the Ubers were BMWs and Mercedes. A lot of wealth in Dubai. Yep. It was the craziest experience of my life going to Dubai. We stayed in the hotel. It was the longest hotel in the entire world. The hotel is like three quarters of a mile long. Like... And I ended up placing fourth in the 100 and 200 meter dash in Dubai.
I missed placing in the podium at the World Championships by .03 seconds. So that was rough to come home from that. So what year was that? That was 19. And then the story keeps going. Roll into it. So then what happens in 20? Yep, COVID. COVID hits.
And when you're already 30-some years old, that you're too old to be training in the first place for this, and you're already on a schedule that's insane for years of you doing it. Because I wasn't athletic enough to be able to take time off. If I didn't keep with it, I knew it wasn't going to be fast enough to make this Paralympic training for Tokyo. Yep. And so they canceled, of course, COVID.
And then 21 comes around and I'm in the best shape of my life. I am, the weight room is insane. I'm flying on the track practices that have never felt better. Like I'm not just making the team in my mind. I'm going to Tokyo and I'm placing, I'm coming home with a contract. I'm coming home with a sponsorship.
I'm doing all this at one point in time, but two people have helped me out, the home agency and Paulson's Incorporated. Only two people ever helped me sponsor by this point in time, you know, and that's only been a couple thousand dollars and years of doing this. So it's been all on my dime. It's been all my time.
And for me to actually know that it all was worth it because my daughter grew up in the track with me. Since she was three years old, she's been helping me. So it's been great, but it still costs money to do all this and travel around. The kids can't come with me. The wife can't come with me to Minneapolis because of COVID. So it's just me up there by myself trying to make this team.
There's hardly anybody in the crowd. I'm doing block starts on Tuesday morning, and I had the most confidence I've ever had in my entire life on track. I mean, my life is going great right now. I'm doing block starts. I'm 30 meters out on block starts, and all of a sudden I hear something snap, and I look down, and my right ankle won't move. It won't work. I just tumbled. So the opposite ankle.
Yeah, the one that's supposed to be the good one. So I ended up getting help to the Team USA tent and ended up finding out later. We didn't know that at that point in time, and I— Snapped my posterior tibial tendon and spring ligament in two. So I didn't have nothing holding my foot together anymore.
Which is a team USA training team, and Dee Mahoney was in there, and she's like, all right, so what are we going to do? And I said, just tape it and go. Like, I've trained for four years for one track meet. Like, you think I wasn't going to run regardless if I was crawling across that finish line? Like, mentally, I had to do something.
It sounds familiar. You're in the hospital after your gunshot, and no, sew this thing back together. Yeah, just let's go.
So I was non-weight-bearing from Tuesday to Friday afternoon. So I crutched into the track meet Friday afternoon. When the tent, she taped my ankle up enough that it would function as an ankle at least. Because if I would hold my ankle up when there was no tape on it, it just went like this. I could literally not move. It literally would not work.
The tendon and ligament were literally both completely torn apart. Wow. Yeah. And so I competed, and I still placed fifth in the 100-meter dash. And the time I ran in Lima, Peru and won with, I ran faster at trials with no ankle. So you're telling me how much faster I would have been actually with an ankle? It would have been a really fun Paralympics for me to go compete. That's amazing.
How does that even happen?
I don't know. You didn't have one ankle. The 200-meter dash the next day, and I placed fourth in that as well and missed Team USA by like six-tenths of a second with no ankle. And that one was even – if there was anything left on Friday of the ankle, completely got rid of it by Saturday. Then it was gone. So my warm-ups consisted of stretching and a one stride. I couldn't even stand on it.
It was the most pain I've ever had in my – well, no. Third most pain I've ever had in my entire life. Just mental toughness then. Well – You start replaying the back of your mind how many things you've missed. I've sacrificed the last four years. My family has sacrificed. All the nights I was up at 5 a.m., 4 a.m. to go work out, and it's like I had to do something.
I really didn't care if I was crawling across that finish line. Mentally, I don't think I would have handled it to not be able to try at least and compete. So you had to get surgery to fix that? So I had surgery on the opening day of the Paralympics in Omaha, Nebraska, which is not a good thing to be all doped up on surgery when you're trying to watch all your friends do the opening ceremony.
And then I decided that day I was going to try to come back again. And trials were two months ago in Florida, but April 14th of this year, I pulled my hamstring. And so I went to trials at 85% and still placed third in the nation. I just didn't have a fast enough time to make it for Paris this year. But you know what's in four years? LA 2028. So here we go, baby. Gotcha.
How old will you be then? 43 years old. And what's the average age of an Olympian? 24.
23 25 yeah like not that so do you think the injuries are from age or just like you just overwork everything because you're making it hard that one actually was i got a new prosthetic and i was i was set out to haul so i was actually reaching too far and i was sprinting and that's what that issue was with the leg um i just got a new leg in march and i wasn't ready for it yet it was it was gonna be faster eventually my body my body wasn't
ready to actually go after that hard and of course i don't have a filter when it comes to that so it was more on me than anything my body feels i don't feel 39 right now like um on my 39th birthday i box squatted 3 390 pounds on my 39th birthday like i can still deadlift 500 pounds right now so like i'm still the weight room is still my life i still that's what's made me um impressive on the track is the work i put into it day in and day out
What is the – there's a coach for, like, not the weightlifting and training, but, like, the actual art of, like, how you move your body, like, efficiently. Is it, like, kinesiology or something like that? Oh, yeah. Yep. Do you think something like that would possibly – Yeah, it might not hurt because – Like, hey, you know, don't push so hard.
Move more efficiently. So that's what – we've changed the workouts completely since I started this. Now it's a lot more efficient compared to – I can't outwork somebody anymore. My body won't hold up. But I can do things a lot more efficient. And, you know, there's different types of workouts now. So it's a lot more, it's quality over quantity now compared to just grinding, grinding, grinding.
So what, I've been grinding towards a championship in auctioneering, the world championship there. And I've taken third, but I've never won it. And somebody said to me last year, Dave, you're never going to win it until you're ready to know what it feels like if you don't win it. So I got to ask you the question, what if you never win it? I know you got a goal. I got a goal too.
And are you ready to not win it? Because everybody tells me that's when you're going to actually win it. When you say, look, I don't care. I got a good family at home. I got a business. I got a whatever. That's the day that you're actually going to make it happen. Have you ever thought about that?
Yeah. So when you hit, when you set your goal so high like that, how many goals are you going to hit before you actually hit that goal? So you're going to hit 150 goals before you actually hit that goal. And if I don't actually make the Team USA for Tokyo or for LA 2028, I'm going to impact thousands of people's lives before I get to that point. So is it really? Am I going to be upset with myself?
Probably not. Am I going to be in the back of my mind like, oh, dang it? Yeah, because I'm a competitive person that wants to do that. Yeah, for sure. But the speaking thing now and helping people, what I've been through in my life is what my passion is now. That's up until... this year was always training, family, then speaking.
Now it's, now, well, family and training should be a little flop back and forth once in a while, but it kind of went training, family once in a while. Now it's family, speaking, and now training. So speaking is above that because that's what I love more than the actual training part of it. Like, I still love going to college track meets and beating 18-year-old kids. Like,
There's nothing better than lining up with an 18-year-old kid that should just kick the shit out of me, and I smoke them. I got you. At 40 years old. That's kind of fun. It's very much fun. And then they don't feel about, I mean, they have two choices in their life. It's either get better or get worse because they just got beat by a 40-year-old. 39 and a half, I guess.
So when did the speaking come into play? Years ago, I just got asked by, you know, first month I had FCCLA and I talked about failure. And then it just kept, you know, everybody's like, you have a great story. And now I'm changing and just, you know, telling my story to actually punching home the points of why I am like I am, you know, of the things I've had to do to get where I'm at.
I just love the fact that I can't help people. For this last winter, I did like 38 days of ice baths in a row in Nebraska. Middle of winter. The coldest it was in the middle of a blizzard, it was like negative 38 wind chill, and I was out there in a stock tank taking an ice bath on Instagram Live.
And I kept getting people's comments later on about, you know, they're going through depression right now, and I would just do like six minutes of talks or whatever was on top of my head that day. If you didn't talk in the ice bath, it was horrible. But as soon as I started just ranting on about, you know, Anything and everything, I always hit somebody.
I always get a message the next day about, hey, that really helped me out.
So is this just a social media speaking deal? No, no, no.
I'm live anywhere.
This is something that you want to professionally speak at a large keynote type deal and tell your story.
I really don't have a huge social media following. No, I have zero. I have like 1,650 people. And I have, like I said, I've always been the guy. I didn't want it. When I was training hard and being an athlete, I didn't want people to know what I was doing. Like, I had the edge of when I got to the world championships, nobody knew who I was.
So when the tent going to the 100 and 200-meter dash, they weren't afraid of me in the tent. I had an edge over them. Well, now, obviously, when you do it that well, people know who you are. But I'm the guy that, as far as athletic-wise, I will always train in the dark and just pop up out of nowhere and be like, dude, where did he come from? But now I have to revert to I'm really bad in self –
Promotion. Yes. I always feel like I'm bragging, and it's not that at all. Like, I need to be better about, you know, I've worked. I had somebody tell me at trials that you understand that I always said, oh, if you're in the right situation, anybody could do what I'm doing. They could all run the beef company and the family and the training. And I had him come up to me and say, that's not true.
Like, not everybody can do what you're doing. If you would help people do what you're doing, there's people out there that want to listen to you that actually could learn from you.
And so that's... Gotcha. So real quick, just throwing a plug there, what... You have a website for your speaking engagements?
Website's being built right now. The Instagram is at fleaspeaks. At fleaspeaks? Yes. So, yep, the website is being built right now.
We'll try to get you some speaking engagements.
Yes, absolutely. Have you done quite a few? I did 10 high school and elementaries last year and a couple of bigger corporate ones. And this year I'm hoping to get, you know, double, triple that this year. Do you have multiple messages or, like, it's just one kind of thing? So, like, elementary and junior high – Mostly on the fifth and under.
It's mostly prosthetics and just informative about Paralympics and what I did. Junior high, I get to talk a little bit more about the bowling side of it and working hard in high school. I can be myself, for the most part, alcohol in high school and things like that.
College athletics is where my life went wrong and where I actually can be my true self and not sugarcoat my life and actually tell them I was a piece of... I did this, I did this, I did this. I'm not proud of it, but if you guys want to learn from me, you know, and that's where I can actually be.
You can push the points of not just working hard to get what you want, but you have to be really consistent. I mean, everybody can be motivated one day at a time to get what they want, but if you want to get up every single day and be consistent every single day, consistency wins over motivation all the time.
Most consistent podcast out there.
That's right.
That's what we say. We're not the best. But you're most consistent. If we work the hardest and if you're the most consistent. Quality, timing, all that kind of stuff.
Tanner, you are such an inspirational guy when we do podcasts like this. I can see your mind just freaking blowing up over there. You've got to relate this somehow.
My assumption. is that we have listeners that are going to have a very tough time. I think they're going to spend this fall in the combine or in the harvest process trying to mentally forget about where their cash flow is, where their profit margins truly are because that's the favorite part is harvest time.
For most people, getting that crop in and there's going to be a couple of different areas in which I predict. Not everybody's going to be in this position because we know there is great crops out there. We know there are some folks that do some really good marketing. But I also know we've got the flip side.
We're going to have areas of our listener base that were still in a drought this year or they had too much rain and their crop is going to be less than average or they don't have enough sold and they're going to be underpriced and their profit margins aren't going to look good. And a lot of people are scared to have tough conversations. Yeah.
I hate asking long questions like this, but I'm trying to provide perspective for our listeners as to why this interview is important. And in my opinion, Once harvest is over, we're going to have some listeners that are in a very tough spot and we are farm hard. Yep. We're not going to want to talk about it. Yep.
And if this podcast can get into their ears and we get to share some of the perspective in the rest of this episode from you as to what we can do to identify, because we might lie to ourselves and say, no, it's not me. What we can do to get help, give ourselves some help and grace and, And come back and take frickin' 2025's crop year by storm and get out of a funk.
So I don't know if that's too harsh and maybe I'm offbeat with my assumptions. But that's my hope with the rest of this episode is your story is f***ing awesome. Thank you. And I hope you get to speak and tell it over and over again. And I think there's things that we can do to help you get your message out. But now I want to know, as you look back, and it's a shitty time. Mm-hmm.
What's the first thing we should do to realize it is and move past it?
Man, when you're sitting there and you know you're almost like you're feeling helpless because, like, we had a chance to sell corn at $6. You know, last year's corn, and we didn't take opportunity. We just kept dropping and dropping and dropping, and you keep looking back. The same thing with being an alcoholic was I kept looking back what I did wrong. Well, today is the day.
So what can you do tomorrow, today to make the situation any better? So like for our program, like if me and my dad's mental health isn't right, like if I don't work out and I don't do things like that, I'm a shit employee. I just seem depressed all the time. So number one is take care of yourself because you can't make multimillion dollar decisions if you're not clear on yourself at the same time.
It's tough out there right now because you're watching money fly out the window. There's a whole not a lot coming in right now. Like for our operation, we downsized and got away from, I was spending $5,000 a month on fuel, just checking things all the time. And now I have, like I said before, I have everything close to home now. Within two miles, I have everything right now I can take care of.
I got rid of a pasture. I'm making more money per head. I have less cows though now. But I had more money per head running them on a section of grass and 90 acres irrigated than I did when I was running 1,000 acres. And, you know, I had to rent it for $46,000 when there was no grass out there because we had a drought.
So I was planning ahead a little bit on this because I wanted to push the speaking some more. Agriculture is in my blood, and I was born on a ranch and farm, and I've had it my entire life. There's a time where I've seen my dad thrive when the markets were great, and I've seen the hardest times we've ever had, and that's coming up. My life hasn't been great for farming.
We've had a couple of good years in there, but it's been rough. I'm trying to get to the point where I can make the farming side of it the most enjoyable side of it with my family and make the speaking thing is what's going to save. opposite. And a lot of people don't want to hear you might get another job. I mean, that's what it comes to.
If you're not big enough to sustain, like I have the beef company, I have, I do, I still day work for people and I'm, you know, cowboying. Um, and speaking like that's, I want to get to the point in a couple of years where the farm part of it is my tax write off and I can go work my cows with my family and enjoy the hell out of it and not think about the money side of it as so much.
And eventually if I can get to the point where I'm selling all my cows through my own beef company, Even better.
I got two questions. You said cowboying. Do you have a special stirrup? No. Just regular stirrup on your saddle? Awesome.
My leg has fell off before.
Do you wear cowboy boots on your prosthetic? Awesome. Second question. Corey, do you think, I heard a guy say yesterday that we as, in Iowa anyways, farmers had drought the last couple of years and everybody got into harvest, get their combine in the field, they were kind of like down, you know, it's droughty, we need rain, we need rain, and Man, there's a 10-day stretch of like 90-degree weather.
I remember you saying that on the podcast. And then all of a sudden, everybody got out in the field and it was like, oh, okay, this is better than we thought. And all right, we're happy with this. Now, this year, we've had the rain. Does everybody have false hopes that this is going to be better than what it was in drought? Because in drought, we were all like, oh, hey, we got 250 bushel.
That was better than I thought. Now, this year, we had rain. Are they going to go out and it'll be like 240 bushel? And they're going to be like, ugh.
I think you're thinking you've got a little bit of backyard-itis going on here. We've had too much rain in Central Iowa, but I think a lot of people have gotten good rain, especially out east. A lot of places in Nebraska that didn't get hailed out had a lot of good rain that they normally don't have. So I think we have a good crop coming.
But for our particular backyard, we will be disappointed with our yields. Okay. I think.
Gotcha. I mean, because we had too much rain. I mean, I was even in northwest Iowa. That's where I heard it, or northeast Iowa yesterday. That's where I heard it from up there. They didn't think there were crops. They thought they were good, and I'm looking at them thinking, maybe not.
Yep. So I have three things. Okay. Real quick. Do you still hunt? I do. Awesome. You still hunt with that same gun? I do.
That's still my go-to gun. Absolutely. It's a Model 700 Remington 243 with a three-power weaver on it that's never been sighted in since my dad had it. You can throw it out of a pickup 10 feet in the air and... The scope is crap. It's a three-power Weaver. Yeah, no way. And I'm 100% with that gun. I've never missed yet, obviously, humans or animals. So I'm perfect with that gun. One for one.
That is the beat-around range pickup gun. Let's clarify. Can we get We get the coyote. Like, what happened to the coyote? So I hunted for him after. Yeah?
I was curious if you were sitting there, like, I might just grab that gun.
He was an old coyote. He was dark on top, but he had silver gear on the side of him. I know exactly what it looked like. I hunted that thing so hard afterwards, but never did find him.
Second thing, you've got to be thinking about doing a book if you're not hungry.
Yeah, so I did a podcast a while back, an APT podcast, and, like, that's – Obviously, on the top of my mind, like, you've got to understand, I'm just a dumb freaking farmer kid who just decided to work hard. So, like, all this social and all this other stuff is hard for me to even fathom. Like, how do you even start a book? You know what I mean? Like, with internet, you can do research. Exactly.
But in my mind, you know, I'm still on – I have no idea yet. So, I'm learning this as I go just because I don't have any – you know, I don't have mentors or this and that. I've learned – everything I've learned, I've been self-taught pretty much the entire way. So, I'm learning that I need to –
ask for more help even on the ranch i set corrals up by myself you know 150 pound panels i do it i'm always by myself like i guess how i do everything so it's hard for me to ask for help that's what i've got to learn to do better especially on this side of it because i would do the world injustice if i didn't share my story more and actually do it i've always wanted to write a kid's book too i think it'd be great to write a funny amputee kid's book kind of i mean it's always it's always nice when a speaker comes around has an inspiring story people want to patronize you and i
You know, buy a book or something like that. So I think that would be a great addition to your services. Oh, absolutely. They can patronize you on beef, though, as well. So how do they find you on the beef?
So that's Lazy Creek Beef Company on Instagram as well. And then we're going to have – the website's going to be tied together with – I've got a person that's working – well, it's LazyCreekBeefCompany.com, too, but it's – Somehow they're tied to flea speaks and the whole internet thing. I don't understand exactly how that all works yet.
Is it red Angus because you have red hair?
So my grandpa bought red Angus back in the 70s, and then my uncle is a sea stock producer, and he sold some magnificent tens of thousands of dollar bulls, and I kind of got always a red Angus guy, but no, it's way better than black Angus. So Red Angus has a tenderness gene that Black Angus doesn't have. Really? Yes. So my aunt and my uncle found it and has it. You can test for it.
And so even without the way you have amazing marbling anyway, but even with less marbling, you still let more tenderness in.
You totally need to trademark that because even being in the industry, not knowing that, you need to label it instead of organic. This is like an extra tender or something. You need a label you just put on your beef. And just mark it up 20 bucks.
Oh, yeah. It's, like I said, it's double the price as I started this in 17. Slap all the labels on it. Oh, yeah. And then you have to deal with, you know, people advertise their own ranch stuff. You know, no hormones. Well, every beef has hormones. There's no animal hormones. Yeah, correct. And animatic free. Well, they all are. They all are by the time. We're not idiots. I think you should add.
When you're your own worst nightmare, if you're doing that to yourself, like we have, as an industry, you have to be better to understand. You know, you can't advertise like that. You know, you can't. I hate going through the aisles anywhere because it's all lies. Like chicken antibiotics is the worst thing ever because they're not given in anyway.
I think you should slap the label on there. Raised with one leg.
Well, I have a big burger business I want to start called Half-Leg Hamburgers.
A lot of the veterans, you know, say veteran-owned. That's true. Well, like, is there a world of amputee-owned? I don't know. We're going to have to start something. There's got to be some certification out there. And I'm guessing you get that question a lot, that maybe, are you a veteran? Oh, it's all the time. I was going to say.
I'm the right age, and I'm fit, and it's just, yeah. Correct. Yeah, so there's times I'm like, oh, sorry I didn't. And if it's a thank you, and I walk away, and I just leave it at that, and there you go.
I would assume you'd get that question a lot. It is, quite often. So for the listeners, as you think about, again, the perspective that we're sitting in, what advice do you have to motivate them to keep going?
Oh, man, what's the point of stopping? I mean, if we're being completely honest, after 21, in 21 I was the top of my game. I was ranked third in the entire world on the 200-meter dash going into the trials. At the third fastest time that year in the 200-meter dash. Like I was at the top of my game. The ankle blew up, had surgery.
That winter we had negative, like, 20-degree temperatures for weeks in a row. I was feeding multiple alfalfa bales on stocks for cows a day, and the cows were just looking like we had lice. It was one of the worst winters of my entire life. I went from being the top of the world in June of 21. I was suicidal that winter. That's how fast it happened.
I was literally sitting in my pickup with a 9-millimeter for multiple days checking cows going, is this the day? I've been there. And I had to sit there and think about all the things I've did in my life.
and all the good I've actually helped people, and I'm a freaking idiot for even thinking about this, but it was there because I worked so hard, the ranch side of it, the sprinting side of it, and what was it for? It just all fell apart at one time. And so I had to pull myself out of that hole. I had to start working out harder, and I had to find something that I was proud of.
So even though the farming side can be hard, the weightlifting and the running made me proud to know I'm still working at something. So I had to always find that niche for myself to be proud of myself, even though things in other parts of my life weren't going well.
Does your wife ever ask you, when's enough's enough? Yeah, a lot. I mean, I've had my wife ask me that. She's like, you've already won some championships. You've done this. When's enough's enough? I just wrote down in my notes, what's the point of stopping? That's quite interesting. Now, you might not be doing the same thing, but you might change and pivot.
You know, any entrepreneur pivots into something else. Maybe your pivot is speaking. It is. You know, maybe a pivot is something else. And Tanner related back to agriculture. Maybe you don't make money this year, but as Flea said, maybe you pivot and go get another job in town.
I hope there's as much impact to our listeners as what you said to me. You have to find something that you can be proud of. And whether that's physical activity or a mental exercise, you're writing a memoir or a book or something along those lines.
Like prayer obviously helped quite a bit too. Because in the darkest times, there's one person that can help you out, and that's God. Yeah. I shouldn't be here, to be honest. The things I did in my life, there's not one reason why five things in my life shouldn't have put me out, been done with it.
Like, you know, and every time, God always asks, you know, everybody always asks, why does God tell you this happened to you? Because he's a freaking genius. Because the guy let me shoot myself in the foot. Let me be an alcoholic. Let me get to the top of that. Let me fall off the bottom of that just to sit here and talk to you guys. Like, there's a reason I'm still here and I didn't, you know.
have those thoughts go all the way through because I can help people in this world. And this world is a shitty world sometimes. It can be amazing, but there's a lot of days if you're working on motivation and happiness alone, you're not going to be okay. You have to find your own happiness.
You have to work at something to be happy because there are times when you, when everything is going great, it can be a shitty world. So what's going to happen when it doesn't go great all the time for you? So it's... We can get pretty calloused. Absolutely. No.
You know? No. Mm-hmm. Been there. Probably still am. Tanner, I'm waiting for your payoff question at the end because I am just waiting to hear what this one. Before that, though, I want to say.
Yeah, we're not there yet. I just want to say thank you. This is going to sound bad. I'm glad you shot yourself in the foot.
I am too. Because you wouldn't be here. Every day. It is the best day of my life. Isn't that crazy? Yep. So that question, what is the best day of your life? Obviously, your kids being born is always up there. My sobriety will always be at the top of my list because that's my sobriety on April or August 7th. I'm not here. None of this happened.
And I didn't even tell you, when I got my Team USA bag on 2019, it showed up on April 7, 2019. Wow. It showed up on my four-year sobriety date. My Team USA bag from UPS did. So you tell me God's not doing something, they'd look down at me and say, hey, this is for you. So, yeah, shooting myself in the foot was one of the best things I've ever did in my entire life.
And I'm also glad that you picked up the speaking thing because I do know, you know, we can't maintain – Olympic status for all of our life, right? And I would hate to see what happened if you lost that.
So now you have a different drive. Well, I'm already pivoting because I've already looked into the triathlons after sprinting. People can do that in their 50s. I almost wanted to do it for LA 2028, but I love sprinting so much. That chapter is unwritten for me. The hamstring issue was an issue. I want four years of just... This is the part that people don't understand.
I love making myself miserable. Does that make sense? Like, I love going to the gym at five. I love that. If I don't do hard things, I'm a piece of crap. I don't work hard that day at work. If I don't get up and I don't make myself suffer, I don't do well. So I love the sprinting part of it because it's really, really hard. You know, sprinting is not like jump running and jogging.
You don't get in a zone when you're sprinting. I sprint for three seconds to ten. 27, 30 seconds as hard as you can. That's it. Have you ever thought about doing long running? That is not yet. Those people are weird, aren't they? I honestly think eventually I'll get into triathlons and Ironmans and this and that, but that takes so much more time too.
When I make my millions in speaking, I guess I can have more time on my hands. I can do that more or more of a time.
If you ever do get into long running, hook us up or hit us up because our good friend Michael Bergen, who's in Tokyo right now, would normally be here. He was an ultra marathoner.
Oh, my God.
Those guys are insane. He could pace you and do all that kind of stuff. They're nuts.
They are. Is that literally the most time we've mentioned somebody who's not been a guest on the podcast?
We're in Nebraska.
Every episode, we keep shouting out, he's kind of like our mascot in Nebraska. That's great. Our cheerleader. Oh, my God. He's the snark of Nebraska. No, our mascot. I do appreciate your openness. Vulnerability. Your willingness to share your story, and I do hope that it pays dividends.
I didn't know how this episode was going to provide value to our audience, but I knew that we needed to have the conversation. And for us and our show styles, because our listeners know who we are, to label this a fun for fun episode is tough. But I had a ton of fun. Mm-hmm.
You have to. I mean, you dropped some swear words in this one, so it has to be a fun one.
Well, I was watching some of your profit ones, you know, and, like, I'm not that guy. Like, I'm not the guy that went bigger to get, you know, two more acres. I went the opposite way. I went smaller, making more money per head, but happiness is on my forefront and just having less input in everything I do. So, like, those cows, like, I'm running, the section's paid off.
The ground's all paid off around there, so it's just the rye input a year and cane input and planting it and then fertilizer. So it's just a whole different process of how I'm doing it. Especially working through the beef company, I know exactly where that beef is everything's from. Like it. Yeah, it's... It's a different, because I was coming in the same way.
I'm like, man, I'm not, I'm the opposite of what these other guys are doing. Talking about, you know, numbers of the millions and this and that. They're not great. I'm the downside of that side, you know. I only had to drive 2.5 miles in my side-by-side now to check everything. And you know what, it cost me $2.
Instead of when I used to go to the valley and drive 150 miles in a diesel pickup, that was $30 a day just, you know. So.
Yeah, that's exactly what proves the theory. It's not one way for every single farmer.
Mm-mm.
And this episode is not going to resonate the same way with every single farmer. Nope. It will get turned off. This episode, I bet you we have a lower completion rate all the way through to the end of the episode. And that's fine. I hope they go back and pick it up. Yep. I do. Why don't you start the episode with that clip then? Dave teased it.
We have been asking all of our guests the same question. You got a little bit of a privilege if you paid attention while you were sitting here the last time to get an idea of what it's going to be. How do we juggle work and personal life? How do you do it?
I almost went to the bathroom because I didn't hear that. So, all right, this is off the top of my head. I incorporate them together, 100%. I have my kids help me with the irrigating, with the cattle side of it. That's the nice thing about being a half mile away from my cows and stuff and checking is I can drive by. They can hear me. My house is here. I drive by the farm road to the cows.
if they want to go with people to hop on the side by side of the four-wheeler too and meet me over there you know I had to it's got to be together because that's the part when I was running all the stuff in the valley um and more cows it wasn't I wasn't home till eight o'clock at night it was miserable for everybody because I wasn't enjoying life and to have those together now is the most it's so amazing to be able to see your kids grow up with a work ethic um and have forage calves and
Everything for me is a lot slower. I can go do speeches once in a while and make a couple grand. That would take me all month to make, you know, on the farm. So I have a lot more time at home. You have to change your mindset because I was always brought up, if you're not, manual labor is work. And so you guys are the same way now.
I sit on the computer and do research now watching YouTube videos on how to get a TED Talk and do courses. That's also work. You have to change your mindset. In the middle of the day, I can sit down if I have Wi-Fi and work and not just clean pens or do this and that. Working on your business, not in your business.
I had to incorporate the life together to make it work or else it wasn't going to work. Let me change it up a little bit. How do you balance the motivation to be a world champion and family? You talked a lot about your family integrated into the cattle business, but You have a whole nother time suck over here, a big time suck. How do you balance that?
Because it's your dream, maybe not your family's dream.
Yeah. So I try to incorporate, you know, the kids go on the track with me as much as possible as well. When Hayes was growing up and littler, he would take all this farm toys to the sand pit. And when I was training, he'd be farming in the sand pit. Like I said, my daughter Chessa, since she was three, had been on the track with me.
She grew up in Cozad with all the girls knew her in the pole vault pit. They knew her by name at three years old. Just include.
Absolutely.
But it's not easy because I have to travel quite a bit for these sanctioned track meets. And that hasn't been easy because I can't take them because it costs too damn much to take. I was going to these track meets in L.A. and Arizona and staying in Airbnbs that were a cement floor, a twin bed, and a bathroom for $50 a night. And that was still pretty shady stuff.
You know, I couldn't afford the $200 a night hotels for my kids and stuff to go with me. So I've had to sacrifice that. But I try to incorporate that. I mean, everything I've did, eventually it's going to pay off for the family of me being home more and me being able to take more time off.
And the speaking thing is the part that's cool because I can incorporate them coming with me in those speeches. And we get paid to go take a little mini vacation somewhere.
Very cool. So if our listeners want to follow you, want to look you up, hire you to speak.
Flea Speaks is on Instagram if you guys have any more questions. My phone number is also 308-529-1186. Like I said, I talk on a bunch of different topics, mostly about...
consistency of our motivation is what I really I tell my story but it's it's a lot more points of how you can be how I got to where I'm at because I didn't wake up wanting to do the things I do every single day yeah if you work out when you're tired and when you're pissed off and when you're depressed you will work out when you're happy then too and you will get things going
That's great. I appreciate your perspective. Appreciate your time. Appreciate you hanging out with us here at Husker Harvesting. Yeah, this has been great. And listeners, we appreciate you as well. Yes, we do. I want you to write in, farmforprofitllc at gmail.com if you need anything. We're not experts. We can get you in contact with experts. But if there's anything, 515-207-9640, text us.
We can be friends.
Remember if you aren't farming for profit, you won't be farming for long.
After our talk here, if you... So, first prom, are you wanting them... First form. First form, are they the person you want for a sponsor?
So, I'm a legionnaire with them right now, which means I'm working underneath them to get more people just to their app to be healthier and fit. But eventually, the goal would be to be one of their athletes and be invited to their big function. Oh, cool. You know what I mean? Something like that. So, that takes, obviously, followers as well. That's part of the process. But...
I've already been conned. They know who I am. It's just, it's not a good fit yet because I, you know, if you're ever world champion of something, you're actually Paralympics. It's a little different, but I didn't make that far yet.
Nike contract. Farm for profit. Sponsored. Could be.
Sponsored athlete.
There you go. Barstool athlete. It doesn't pay very well, but hey, we're the first.
That's right. But no, thank you again. And I want to wrap it for our listeners. I want to thank them for listening and until next time, have a good one.