Business lessons from 2025, solutions for 2026

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Shay

Foulk: Thanks. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We are going to talk 2025 lessons today., and then how we're going to apply those into 2026. And so far, before we started recording, we had all kinds of banter going on back and forth between these guys about gray hair and intelligence and birthdays and all kinds of fun stuff. So anybody got any comments for anybody else on the team here? And then we'll get started on the real stuff.

Chris

Barron: Well, I think Jeremy's, uh, go ahead, Jeremy.

Jeremy: I, I was just going to say, we were talking about gray hairs and how they come in the beard quick. Uh, you know, Shay, you were worried about it. Just wait till your kids start driving. Oh man. Because I, I think that's about the time where I went from like, you know, really nice dark looking beard to like almost Santa beard when I had two kids on the road driving.

Unknown: The wisdom came in fast, huh?

Jeremy: Yeah. That's when that happened.

Shay

Foulk: Okay, perfect. You got Andy shaking in his boots. I can already see he's got, he's got, yeah, it's wild. Kids running around.

Narrator: If they drive vehicles like they drive their Razor around here. Yeah, there'd be a lot of gray hair.

Shay

Foulk: I don't know, you guys might want to up your insurance premium or, you know, increase those levels of coverage a little bit. Maybe put your kids in an LLC or something, you know, that might— so sounds good.

Narrator: All right.

Shay

Foulk: I suppose we better get to the, to the real thing here. We're wrapping up 2025. Who knows when people listen to this, but there's There was some lessons in 2025, I think, for a lot of us. I think some things that were pretty painful to learn, and there were some things that were a little, a little light, more lighter-hearted along the way too. So I guess we didn't talk about who wanted to go first, but I'm going to ask it. Does anybody on the team here want to go first on, on a key lesson learned in 2025 or lessons that, you know, you've seen from other clients or things like that? Don't everybody jump first.

Jeremy: I'll go. I mean, you know, I've talked to, I think, Joe and Chris, I've talked to you both about this on my own farm. And, you know, I think a key lesson that I have, you know, I guess let me just take a step back, you know, some of the things that have been frustrating on our farm is that we've, we've grown record yields. The last 2 years in a row and we still aren't showing a hell of a lot of profitability, you know? And so, uh, we went down the rabbit hole of, you know, why, where we can, you know, start, uh, you know, pulling back expenses or returning to profitability. And, you know, it kind of just hit me like a freight train that, you know, the second biggest line item in my, uh, expense, the machinery side of it, I just, I have too much of it and You know, that was really a lesson learned is I've got too high a machinery operating costs.

And so, you know, I want to get a little bit lean and mean. That's a little bit of a process that's not, you know, for us, you know, it's probably not going to be something I can rectify in year one all entirely, but I'm certainly going to try to get aggressive and move in some pieces that, you know, that that aren't as efficient, maybe going back down to one planter, trying to get the crew a little bit leaner, and the machinery working a little bit better for me from that side of it. I think that's really what has killed a lot of my profitability. You know, we could talk about, you know, the commodity prices and seed prices and all that. But being agronomically, you economic on growing those bushels, when I look back at some of the fixed expenses and the overhead expenses, you know, big lesson learned is that I've got, I get too much labor and I have too much machinery.

Unknown: Well, if, if you want, Jeremy, it's December 31st. I take gifts in all shapes and sizes. If you're looking to downsize, I don't think that helps the working capital position, but—

Jeremy: No, no, no. It helped the income statement maybe just a little bit and some taxes that, you know, I might be able to carry forward if I ever return to profitability.

Unknown: But yeah. Can you, can you talk through specifically what you're thinking on strategy there? Is it like for the machinery, is it right-sizing into the right class of combine? Is it taking a tractor away? You know, can you talk kind of what's on your mind there?

Jeremy: Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Good question. So, you know, I've got, we used to farm quite a bit more. We unwound a collaboration and we really never right-sized that equipment after that collaboration was unwound. And so what we ended up doing is, I mean, I've got two, you know, I've got two planters, I've got an interplant for beans, I've got a 30, you know, a 16-row for corn. I'm wanting to get rid of the bean planter, going to, you know, just really strip-till, hiring it out, doing a little custom hire there. By doing that, I think I've got 2 tractors that are pushing 5,000 hours. I'm looking to trade both of those for one tractor that's kind of the same amount of horsepower, but a little bit more versatile. If you're a John Deere guy, I'm going for, you know, I'm wanting to go from an 8230 and a 9220 to like an 845R. I'm sorry, 8345R. God, I couldn't spit that out.

That would, you know, be able to handle some of the, you know, potentially conventional stuff that we do with our hog manure and that type of stuff. But I'm really wanting to go to strip till. I'm wanting to downsize equipment, get rid of, you know, a couple passes, or at least the need for some of this extra equipment. I've got 2 dump carts, wanting to trade that in for one to be a little bit more efficient. On just trips back and forth. You know, both are under 1,000 bushels. So it's a little annoying that you can't just pull up and load a semi with one of them. So little things like that, and trying to get myself a little bit more lean and mean and right-sized on the machinery.

Unknown: Thanks, Jeremy.

Shay

Foulk: Sometimes that's kind of tough too, Jeremy, isn't it? Or, well, and if you haven't started doing that yet, it seems like in, in the past when we've helped some guys right-size like you mentioned, the 2 grain carts and switching those into one sometimes might save a little bit of money, but it's tough because you're going to want a really good grain cart and you're going to, you know, you move, you change some things around and it's tough to get, you know, the, the total investment dollar amount in line. You can, you can right-size the equipment, but getting those dollars is a challenge. So it's going to be Fun to watch you and help you do that.

Because I think that's a, that's something that I think a lot of guys are, are probably looking at, you know, when you look at machinery and equipment fleet, I'm sure there's probably one or two people at least that are listening to this that probably are like, yeah, I got a little more equipment than I need. You know, it's either, either got to farm more acres or, or right-size the fleet. And that's really good. Who, who wants to go next with a lesson from '25?

Narrator: I can. One thing I noticed with working with some Ag View clients is the lack of distractions and the compounding effects of that. It seems like operations that have less distractions, whether that's diversification or tons of other things going on are pretty laser-focused on their business. And that tends to pay dividends to them. So that's been pretty eye-opening for us. I mean, we have quite a bit of diversification in our operation. It's not that I want to unwind that, but it's maybe we need to rethink our labor pool and taking stuff off of my plate and some others' plates to allow us to not have the distractions and maybe be, quote unquote, a little bored. Because it seems like when you do have that downtime, that's when you really focus in on some of the things you really need to, that you never take the time to do.

Unknown: Like what type of things?

Narrator: I mean, I think you could do— for me, it'd be a better job marketing grain. It would be looking into different equipment deals or spending more time on input procurement. Just a lot of— I think there's a lot of things you could do to pick up 1 to 2% savings that you kind of like. For myself, I just do it as a checklist. Like, hey, I know I need to order fertilizer, I'm going to check with 2 suppliers, opposed to taking a half a day and maybe checking with 5. And grain marketing, it's— I know where I want to be, I got some targets, but it's like, am I, am I watching basis daily? Or am I looking at spreads or different opportunities that I know there are out there, but I just don't have the, the time capacity to do that.

Shay

Foulk: Interesting. Um, Andy, also, you know, like you said, you got a lot of different things going on. Is there, you know, do you see any like one thing that you need to be doing more of in 2026? That's, you know, you, you talk about distractions. What's your core competency and what do you need to do more of? Because sometimes it's You're doing a little less of something, maybe you can enhance something else.

Narrator: Just kind of keep— Yeah, for me it's, uh, less time outside and more time in the office. You know, it's pretty easy to get pulled outside when the weather's nice and we got tons of things going on and we might, you know, you kind of need that extra person outside. Could they get by without them? Yes. But you naturally want to go help and be part of the team and I think that the business really suffers from that distraction there. Back to the, you know, we're doing $30 an hour jobs opposed to $300 an hour jobs.

Shay

Foulk: Mm-hmm.

Chris

Barron: Easy to do. I found a fix for that, Andy.

Narrator: What's that?

Chris

Barron: You don't put on work clothes when you leave the house in the morning.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, I would do it. You just wreck some of your good clothes then, because I've done that. You go out and you have to hook a hydraulic hose up and then you get grease all over that nice pair of shorts. So, all right, sounds good. Thanks, Andy. Who wants to go next? There's 3 of us.

Unknown: One of us.

Shay

Foulk: Go, Des.

Chris

Barron: Okay, I guess I'll go. So, um, you know, bunch of lessons, you know, we're always learning, right? And, uh, you know, uh, this year, uh, the thing that probably stood out the most was how important like good culture is. And, and it can be a productivity tool. It's helped us attract some, some new people, high caliber people, which has given us horsepower to take on some additional work that just happened to kind of fall into our laps. And, you know, that's been, and that's how I plan on deploying it in 2026 is now, now, now I have the people to do it. Yesterday, my wife and I were sitting here having coffee the other morning, and I was putting together kind of a, putting together a kind of a state of the, state of the farm PowerPoint. I'm meeting with my banker here in 2 weeks. And, you know, it's, it's a, it's a kind of a new relationship.

The banker's new, you know, since Jeremy left. Uh, the analyst, I asked for the analyst, uh, to come along with when, when we do the meeting. And I happened to, as I was putting that presentation together, just trying to give them context of, you know, where, what our story is, because that, that makes a difference, you know, and I was looking at my PowerPoint presentation from my peer group 5 years ago. And, you know, one of the recurring themes in that was, is, uh, um, forget how I worded it, uh, you know, that labor, labor was one of the issues that I probably need to hire some more people because that was the common theme of, uh, why my idea of the week wouldn't work is because we didn't have the I didn't have the people to deploy any of my ideas. And now we got the people and now we're able to, you know, deploy some of those, those things.

Another thing I, you know, which was huge is I rented a tractor this fall just to have on the high-speed disc so that way we weren't trading, you know, trading things back and forth. I've only got one high-horsepower tractor for the strip-till bar.. And the tractor was a, was a $200,000 tractor, $230,000 tractor. And the dealership rented it to me for $150 an hour with no minimum. And I think the total bill on the thing was like $16,000, $17,000, something like that. And, you know, if you work, you know, you think about that, hell, that that would have just barely covered the interest bill on, uh, if I would have purchased that tractor. And, uh, no maintenance cost, you know, we changed oil on it once, um, you know, so that, that was a— it was good for me, it was good for the dealer, uh, you know, gotten to be good friends with that guy.

And, um, you know, he's got a lot of inventory and he was more than happy to, you know, work something out. And, uh, so that's, that's kind of my, uh, highlights of le— there's other lessons learned, but those were some of the big ones that stuck out.

Unknown: The State of the Farm address. How much time have you spent putting that together? How much time you think you'll have into that? And can you just kind of comment real quick on why you find that useful or what it does for you and the, you know, the rest of your team, the banker, the whoever.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So I think I'm probably going to have like 2 hours in it. I'm not super efficient with PowerPoint, so, you know, some of it's learning. The— I find a huge value in trending your financials, whether it's your just simple stuff like total liabilities, total assets, and equity, you know, you know, I've, I've got a, I've got a spreadsheet or a chart that goes back to my very first year of farming, it's got 20 years of data on that of what my, you know, debt-to-asset ratio has been through that entire run. And, you know, us as farmers tend to laser focus in on one year at a time. And, you know, so if that year is bad, oh my God, it's all bad. And it's, it's a— but if, but if you kind of, kind of zoom out to the 30,000-foot view and you look at your, you know, the trend and it's like, well, you know, we're trending in the right direction.

And, you know, putting this presentation together is— has just given me some really good perspective on the business. You know, we've made some major changes here in the last 3 or 4 years. We totally switched colors from red to green. We, you know, we've added quite a bit of acreage in that time, time point. We've added people. It's, it's been a big 5 years for us. And, and then being able to see how those financials are trending through these big changes gives great perspective to where the business is going. Why we're doing what, what, what we're doing. And it just helps, helps the bank understand, you know, this is, this is what, this is what we're trying to do. And, you know, these are the ways that we're going to tackle it.

Unknown: Awesome. Thank you for that.

Shay

Foulk: Sounds good.

Jeremy: I'll just give you a quick, just a real quick perspective. Shay, you were talking about how does it help partners? And, you know, one thing I would just say from being a recovering banker is that, you know, all of the detail that you could put in your state of farm, your state of the farm address helps an analyst or the lender or the, the credit team. It helps them understand like the gaps that they can't see in the numbers. And I feel like a lot of the times that's where things can go amiss with your lending team? Is it, you know, if they're, if the questions aren't answered, you know, what assumptions are they making in place of you providing that data? And, and, you know, naturally I think lending institutions tend to be a little bit more pessimistic. So a lot of the assumptions I think end up not being in your favor.

So from just a, you know, an ex-lender perspective, the more details you can put in there that that just clarifies what the numbers are telling you will help you immensely on how your, you know, your lending team views your operation.

Unknown: Awesome. Thank you, Jeremy.

Shay

Foulk: Hey, Jeremy, kind of, you know, just to ask a question that maybe a bunch of people might be thinking is, you know, things look pretty rough from a lot of the guys. Is there any, you like one or two things that needs to be highlighted or needs to be focused on for a lot of these operations that, you know, have maybe had one or two or three years of not real good numbers? And, you know, is there like kind of one or two things they should really focus on in that state of the business address or trajectory they're, they're working toward or whatever? Is there something that you look for as a lender that those of us who have been trying to manage through a three-year window here need to be doing?

Jeremy: Yeah, I think, um, just action as to what you're doing to fix the whatever the issue is, you know. Um, highlight that. Um, I like Joe—

Shay

Foulk: don't cover it up.

Jeremy: Yeah, don't— well, don't cover it up, but like, you know, it's okay to say, well, in my situation, okay, I mean, the last 2 years I've had record profits and I haven't made money, you know. So I need to go Record yields. Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry, record yields, but haven't made any money. And so, you know, in my meeting here in a few months, a few months, a few weeks, um, you know, I'm addressing that. I'm, I'm highlighting what I'm doing to return to profitability. And, you know, I've got, uh, you know, like what Joe said, we've got trends, you know, that show that we've gone in the right direction over the course of, you know, 20 years. You know, our assets have You know, our equity positions have gotten better. We've burned some working capital. We've had some things that, you know, didn't work out for us in the last couple of years.

But if you go in with a solid plan of how to return to profitability or actions you're taking to solve this, that I think that's the number one, that's the number one thing you can do. If you go in hoping for, you know, your lending team to fix your issue or saying, I don't, I just don't realize, you know, I just need to grow more corn or I need to grow this, you know, that I'm not sure that's exactly addressing what the concerns of the lender are. So, you know, return to profitability, how you get there, actions you're taking, highlight all that.

Shay

Foulk: Gotcha. Thanks.

Unknown: I'll go, Chris. I'm, you know, curious. We were joking. I don't have as many gray beards as Jeremy does, you know, gray hairs in my beard as Jeremy does here. But I've been thinking a lot recently of as we go throughout the year, I think everybody experiences this. But it's the real highs and lows of like, you feel really good that you're doing things right. You know, your path is good. You've done a good job marketing. And the next day it's just like someone kicked you in the nuts and everything's going to hell. We're going to fail. It's not— and I think I just want to— I wanted to highlight that and say it out loud because I know we've all talked about it individually. And for the people listening to this, that's a very real thing.

You know, one day you feel that you're on top of the world and then the next day the two semi-trucks out here in the parking lot are froze up and, you know, the legs are froze up and everybody's grumpy and it's just like, what in the hell are we doing all this for? And so I think I've had to take a step back in 2025 and look at the wins that we've had. You know, we still have had record yields in some area. We're getting more done than we ever have before. We're setting the baseline foundation so that when we get out of this period of a lack of profitability, we're set up for success as we move forward. And I think that's probably an area for me to continue to focus on of like, you just have to remind yourself, we're doing the right things. And you have to almost like paint that narrative to yourself of here's why we're doing the right things.

And so, I think the exercise of explaining it to the banker, explaining it to your business partners, taking the time like Andy alluded to, to just reflect and make those good business decisions is something I've really had to focus on. And my, my lesson from 2025 is the only way that I'm able to do that is to backfill my role in other areas of the business at a faster rate than what I have been. And Chris, you've said it before that, and I just say this from what you've said, you know, I've done a pretty good job delegating at an earlier earlier in my career, but I need to do it faster, you know? And it's backfilling my weaknesses and letting people take over certain areas of the business that I'm just not as good at. And it's also making sure that I'm taking more time to do the right things.

And an example of that, both Joe and Andy alluded to, back in October, we had a— Joe, I think you might have actually sent me this link. I don't remember who it was, but there's a strip-till/no-till program out there that for the county, you know, you applied, they were only going to do X number of acres. Well, I basically locked myself in this office for 6 hours to fill out this stupid application, and we're likely going to get $35,000 for what we're already planning to do in our business. Well, that just hired one guy for half a year because I spent half a day in the office. And you don't get those opportunities all the time, but I'm just sitting here when I got that email 2 days ago, it's like, what the hell else am I missing? You know, when I'm out trying to, you know, the conveyors need unfrozen, that still needs done, but I don't have to do it, you know?

And those guys don't mind doing it. You know, they wanna work, they wanna be outside, they wanna be doing those things. I think that's just been my biggest thing is backfilling my role, get things off of my plate. And I think some people feel that delegating is like taking all the shit things that you don't want to do and giving them to someone else. And in some cases, that's true. You know, sometimes that's what you hire people to do is to do the shit things that you don't want to do. But there's also delegation that's good things of, How do I reframe this and say, I need to train my employees to do the roles that I need to do. And if I don't give them the experience, they're never going to get the experience. Time takes time and experience requires experience. So I'm trying to lean into that into 2026.

And hopefully that helps us capitalize more on the high-level management things that we need to be taking more time to do.

Chris

Barron: That's a fantastic point, Shay. And that's something that Chris instilled into me almost from the beginning. He used to say, you know, always be hiring your replacement. And, and I've had clients before say to me, well, if I hire somebody to do, like, what am I going to do? Oh, you'll find stuff to do. You know, there's always plenty to do. And, and you're, you're building room in the system, you know, like when you're maxed out and frantic trying to get everything done yourself, uh, there's, there's no room for additional opportunities. And, uh, you know, when you got the people, you got the horsepower to do it and, uh, and the bandwidth, you know, never underestimate the bandwidth.

Unknown: My, my father-in-law Mark has commented several times on, um, just how much more money is in the world today. And which is very true the last 5 years because like 80% of the currency has been printed in the last 5 years. But minor detail, we'll worry about inflation later. But the idea is that it's like we also, you know, we look at downsizing on a lot of these things, or how do we save 3, you know, and I'm, and I'm not negating this, both things are true, but you know, how do you save money on fertilizer like Andy said? How do you right-size equipment? The other thing that I think a lot of farmers that we work with don't take into consideration is what else is out there, you know, and it doesn't have to be diversification. It can be the laser focus on what do we need to be doing in our business to make money or save bigger amounts of money.

You know, energy saving grants, that's a big one. Solar panel projects for home use, that's been a big one. Just the sheer amount of dollars that are out there, it's kind of staggering actually.

Shay

Foulk: Shay, I had a question for you. You know, having, you know, been in the military world and the precision and the expectations and just, you know, we're a little softer in the rest of the world. How do you handle that or how do you feel like you're doing if you're grading yourself in terms of delegating and stuff? Because I think you guys— I've noticed that with, with Sloan too, you guys are way better trainers. I mean, as farmers, we suck at training the employees. I mean, we will, we'll give them the responsibility, but then we really suck at training. How would you grade yourself? I mean, and is there any advice you would give people as they're doing that and putting these people in those roles and doing those things? Because I think that's a big piece of it.

Unknown: Well, I'm not going to ruin my presentation for the Ag View Solutions Executive Business Conference, but—

Shay

Foulk: Okay, don't do that.

Unknown: No, no, no. I think about this a lot, is that the things that we do in the farm, most 95%, 98% of the time is not a life or death scenario. It's okay to allow people to make mistakes. And I think there's so, so many people are hesitant to hand over control because what if they screw it up?

Jeremy: Okay, what if they screw it up?

Unknown: What's the worst case scenario? You know, the guys didn't close some of the covers on the conveyors here before they left on Christmas. We got freezing rain. They didn't empty the beans out of the trap. So guess what? They spent 4 hours yesterday unfreezing every fricking conveyor and every elevator that we have. And I didn't get mad about it because yesterday afternoon they were running and guess what? I bet they don't forget to cover everything when they leave next time ever again. And I wasn't, I wasn't upset about the downtime because there was a lesson learned there that I can't, I can't just teach that. You know, I can say, hey, close the freaking trap, and I can get mad about it if they don't do it or whatever, but that doesn't teach the same lesson as what they're going to learn. So, um, you know, I was thinking about this last night actually with one of our new hires.

He— there was a situation where he needed to move some stuff around and he didn't have confirmation if he was good to do it, and I was like, just get stuff done. Like, that's what I'm hiring you to do is get stuff done. You have the autonomy to make decisions. I'm hiring you to use your brain. And again, Chris, you're probably like, oh man, not everybody would just like think like that. But I deployed with this guy, so he gets it. And I was just like, I'm hiring you to use your brain.

Narrator: Use your brain.

Unknown: Like, I want you to think, I want you to make this operation better. I don't want you to do the same things every day that we've been doing. We have another guy we hired in. I want to hand off all of our maintenance program to him. Like, I don't give a shit what's going on with the tractor. I don't care what's broken. I just need it to be fixed, you know? And, and I'm giving you control to do that. And the weight of the responsibility is if something doesn't work or something isn't fixed correctly, then that's on you. But I'm not going to be mad at you about it for handing that responsibility off because I need to be doing other things. So I think it's, I think it's recognizing that it's not life or death scenarios. It's okay to hand off some of those tasks and responsibilities. If they don't get done perfectly according to your standard, they'll get there.

And likely, the likely scenario is when I teach these guys and hand off and let them do things, they're going to see, they're going to see 7 things that I didn't see to do the job better, and then they're going to do it better than me. And it's like, that's what I want. You know, I want someone to condition soybeans better than me. I want someone to truck better than me. I want someone to do maintenance better than me because that's what, you know, the mission in this case, that's what the mission requires is for us to get better and to do things more efficiently.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. Even if they're not doing it exactly the same way you would, it's still getting done, right?

Unknown: I mean, yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's still like the reasons that you have SOPs and doctrine and stuff in place in the military is there is a right way to do things. You know, there, there are things that you don't want to to do. But it doesn't mean that everybody's going to go hit the target the same way. You give 10 military leaders the same information and they're probably going to attack the same target 10 different ways. Does the mission get accomplished? If it does, then that's probably okay.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, Shay. Appreciate it. I'll wrap up with the lessons learned and then we'll go full circle and wrap the whole thing up. But I guess mine is, kind of rhymes a little bit with what you guys have been saying. Um, mine's a little bit— I give a little bit of a backstory. Um, in my family operation, my brother retired a couple years ago, and he was replaced by Sloan, my son, which had a different role. So my— our accounting switched over to, to my nephew, to TJ, and So when he left, we, we kind of backfilled him, but just in a different space, and we kind of reallocated the labor force. And then my brother-in-law retired and basically isn't able to work. And so we essentially lost his labor contribution to the business, and we didn't replace his, his contributions to the labor force.

And then we just had another guy who was our primary truck driver retire this last year. My role's gotten busier with Ag View, and so I have a few less hours that I can contribute back to the farm. And so we haven't replaced any of this labor. And I think sort of in an effort to reduce labor costs— and I'm pretty damn suspicious that it's increasing our labor costs. And what I mean by that is we're not getting stuff done that we should be getting done in time, because when somebody leaves I think sometimes we think, well, we're gotta save the money, you know, and I did a 19 Minutes, I did two different 19 Minutes, um, this summer and people need to go back and listen to 'em 'cause I spent a lot of time working on 'em. But one was on scarcity mindset. And I feel like when we get in one of these economic troughs, we get into this scarcity mindset where we gotta save money. And we do.

But the last time I checked, and this is just experience, and I don't have a gray hair, I shave it off so that way it's not gray here, but it's still gray here. Mark. But I have experienced over the years just in watching observation or watching operations and watching our own where you can't save yourself to prosperity. You can manage expenses and you can manage costs to a point, but you can manage them so much that you start going the other way. There's too much of something. And that's one of the things that I'm observing right now with some of our clients. I think they're on that razor's edge of maybe doing too much of that. And I think, you know, and, and where I'm going with this is on the labor side of it. This comes down to time tracking. Um, for those of us who are not as disciplined on it, we need to get disciplined on our time tracking if we're the ones running the operation.

We need to figure out where our time's being spent. The only way you do that is to track it, because— and then you can— and then you have some data to, to reconcile and to make some changes. I know in my family's operation it takes 22,000 hours to get everything done. At the end of the day today, I'm going to pull in our T-sheets, and I, and I don't know what it is right now, but I'm pretty damn sure that we got less hours. In fact, I know we do. 'cause we have less people and you can only put in so much time. There's only 24 hours in a day and people can't work 16 hours a day, every day, all day long, or you screw up what Joe's trying to fix, which is called culture and morale. And so I think, you know, my lesson learned from 2025 is to stand up for the understanding that employees are not an expense.

They're an investment, no different than buying a tractor or buying a combine or building an office or whatever it is. If you don't have the resources to do everything, and one thing we never put on the balance sheet, Mr. Banker, I'll pick on you, is the people. I mean, how often do we turn a balance sheet in that we say, you know, here's John and here's Bill and here's Dave. And here's their contributions, here's what they do to the business. I think we need to step back and do a better job of that because I see that in my family's operation right now to where we're going to have to make a change in 2026 to make sure that we have enough resources to get the work done and not just get it done but to do it well and to do it, you know, to do it excellent, not pretty damn good or getting by, because getting by does not improve profitability.

And so that's kind of my lesson learned from 2025 is, you know, is making sure that you have enough investment in, in those resources and stop trying to save money on not hiring somebody or not replacing somebody. If that person was there, something was getting done. If they leave, how do you, how do you still get that done? You know, and I think, you know, for our whole team here, we see it and we live it. And I think that's the great thing about, I think what we can do at Ag View is because we live it, I think we can help people understand some of the decisions they need to make. And maybe that's a sales pitch, but it is. I mean, we can, we understand it because we live it. And I think, you know, that's where, you know, I always tell people, make sure you call us and have that 8-minute conversation around, geez, should I— what should I do here?

You know, sometimes it's an 8-minute conversation to just make a freaking decision and then do it, you know. So I think that's, that's kind of my lesson for, for, uh, from '25 and, and the application for '26 is we're going to have to replace some labor and, and stop having a a, you know, a mindset of scarcity as opposed to, you know, and I— and when things get good, watch how many people have an abundance mindset. That's when farms gets bought, that's when machinery gets updated, all that kind of stuff. And that's when people overextend. And the same thing happens on the other side of the, of the equation. Then, you know, when things get bad, we get a scarcity mindset and we don't do enough.

Unknown: So I think the other way And I'd be curious your input on this, Chris. I think the other thing that people push back on with the labor side is, well, how do you measure what success looks like? Because as Jeremy said, if we're getting everything done, we got record yields and everything else, but we're not showing profitability. Well, you know, how do we rethink that labor? So I mean, do you pair that with, you know, what's your quality of life? Do you have a quality of life rating for the employees? Or how do you truly measure what success looks like on that end? Because What people struggle with, I think, is it's, it's one of those intangibles of, you know, the culture's right, you know that people aren't working 16 hours a day. Aside from the time, is there any— how do you measure that, I guess? How do you define what success looks like there?

Shay

Foulk: Well, I think it has a lot to do with each of us as owners of the business, because I think we We carry stress that, um, I mean, all of us do, right? We, we carry the stress of the whole business, and we don't— we talk about delegating. Well, we aren't going to delegate the stress off of us until we delegate some of the workload. It comes right back to what, you know, either you or Andy, one of you were saying, you know, the, the $30 an hour jobs that we go out and do, and we're sitting there thinking about all this other shit we got to get done that we're not getting done. And, and so I think it's a stress thing. When you talk about quality of life, it's a mindset, right? That scarcity mindset comes from stress. And so I think we got to step back and say, you know, we got to delegate this, we got to delegate that. And, you know, Joe, I give you a lot of credit.

You know, of, of everybody I've worked with in the last couple of years, you've probably done the best job of building a team and bringing a culture to that team. And, and growing it. But the one thing that we all have to do a better job of is when you have an opportunity to hire somebody or to delegate somebody or train somebody, you damn well better be doing it quick and get on it, you know. And, and the best time— and I think I've told you this before, Joe, too, you know, when we first start having these conversations, it's like, you know, even planting or the things that we think that we, we love to do, we want to do, sometimes you do— you need to cross-train too. And, and the best time to cross-train is when you're having the most fun.

It's like when you're going across the field, you got the end rows all in and you're planting, and you got another 150 acres to plant, and you're just going back and forth eating a sandwich, listening to the radio, just enjoying life because this is why you do it. That's the time to train them. That's the time to get your ass out of the seat, put somebody in there, let them do the easy stuff because that's how they learn, and then they can start doing the end rows and some of the other stuff too. You know, that's just an analogy, but You know, I think that's, that's what I think a lot of times we, we miss and, and don't do. Consequently, Shay, then we have the stress, and, and it's subconscious, but then it leads to scarcity mindset.

Unknown: That's a great answer.

Shay

Foulk: Thank you.

Chris

Barron: So we, uh, I've told the story before, and to just elaborate one step further on the hiring, um, you know, having the right Hiring the right person makes a huge difference in making sure that they align with your, your core values and, uh, understanding like what type of person you're really looking for. Um, I had a guy at TPAP the very first year that I was there. I was up in the, uh, you know, the hospitality suite, um, you know, hanging out, met a, met a guy from Canada. And he told a story about how he used to wait for the work before he would hire the person. And, and he said, I had that backwards. I should have just always been hiring, always had my eye out. And when a good person came along, didn't matter what was going on, I just picked them up. And he goes, the work always came.

You know, if I had the people, I was able to, I was able to take advantage of the opportunities. The opportunities seemed to show up. And so that's one thing that I wanted to kind of drill down on is, is just always be looking, you know, and opportunities always come in inopportune times. And, you know, you need to— it, that's when you need to strike when the iron's hot is, you know, when the opportunity comes, not when it's convenient.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. I stole that quote from, from Andy Ruby. I've told— I've said that in like a couple podcasts. I've been like, yeah, so I got to give credit to Andy Ruby on this one, but the best opportunities always come at the worst time. And that's— and you said that like, yeah, back every time, last time we were talking or something, and I stole that. So it's, it's a good comment.

Narrator: Well, and that's kind of back to my point of being bored a little bit, is is if you are, you have some free time, you can be prepared for those opportunities too, because when they come, they come at the worst time and usually you're super busy or don't have time to crunch numbers or meet with the banker, you know, if it's a growth opportunity. But if you have some flexibility now, you can be prepared for that. So when those opportunities come, it's yes, I know I can do that. I know that's in the wheelhouse of what works for our business.

Unknown: So, and I'm going to reiterate this at the risk of like, yeah, duh, but if you're not doing it in your business, no one else is. It's just not, it's not getting done. Like people, anybody can change the oil on a tractor. If you're not doing those things, no one's doing it. No one's coming to save you.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. Yeah. Hey, what I want to do is I'm going to start with Jeremy and then I want, I just want a quick answer or Oh, a long answer. I don't care, you answer however you want, but I'm gonna give you my takeaway from what your, your deal was. So, shit, for, uh, so Jeremy, yours was you're gonna right-size your equipment, try to lean things down and make sure that the operation is lean enough and, and mean enough to continue to make high yields but yet be profitable. What's the one or two things you're going to do first in '26?

Jeremy: So first in '26, you know, I would say I spent a lot of time talking about the equipment I'm working on with the two different dealerships on getting some quotes on the two tractors I want to move, trying to find an 8345R. We took the initiative this fall to strip-till all of our corn.. And so we already have a little bit of a leg ahead on getting that done. Moving, you know, almost 100% to strip-till is kind of the, you know, the goal, but we've already taken that on our corn ground. So we've been a little bit, you know, since probably September, you know, pre-harvest, we talked a lot about some of that. We've been a little bit more laser-focused on actions we've wanted to take for '26. So, um, have prepared a little bit there. Like I said, I want to move some assets, um, and, and, uh, I'm looking to do that here before we get back into the field.

Uh, I want to cross-train a couple of my guys, uh, to be doing some other things as well so that I can still focus on procurement. Um, that's, I think, a big area as well of, of getting lean and mean. Is, uh, on the agronomic side. And, and so those are key steps here in the next few months is to, to get some machinery moved, uh, really sharpen the pencil on the procurement and get people cross-trained so things can still get done.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. That's on record now, dude. So we're gonna hold you accountable.

Jeremy: Yeah, I know. I figured that's where you were going with this.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. We'll be following up, man. Um, and, and, and the thing I want the listeners to be paying attention to is be thinking about your thing. You know, the listeners, what, what is your deal? What, what are the— what's the lesson from 2025, and what are you going to do in '26? Andy, you're up.

Narrator: Yeah, I think it's focusing on the, the jobs that need done in the office and not getting distracted with what's going on outside, per se, or in the shop. Um, and then also I think, Joe, back to that story you were telling, is keeping your eyes open for the right employees. It's, you know, for us personally, I don't think we need any more help turning wrenches or running equipment. But on the administrative business side is where we do, and it's looking for those right people and finding them.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. Sounds good. We'll be holding you accountable too.

Narrator: Sounds good.

Shay

Foulk: All right. Joe?

Chris

Barron: Um, I guess in '26 is just, uh, a little bit, uh, using these, using the people that we have to, uh, you know, lean, lean on them to give me more time to focus on, uh, the things that I need to be focusing on and allowing myself to be a little bit bored. As it were. You know, that's a, that's a, that's a good way to put it, Andy.

Shay

Foulk: I got to get that way. I haven't figured that one out yet either.

Narrator: So I'm not good at it by any means.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: And I think my ADHD really, really interferes with that.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. And maybe, Andy, your definition of bored isn't, isn't like how I'm taking it, but it's like the ability to sit down stare at the wall and think.

Narrator: Just—

Shay

Foulk: yes, think.

Narrator: Yep, yep, think. Or, you know, I think we can all relate to this. When you're doing those $30 an hour jobs, you think about stuff you have to do but also other things you are intrigued by or want to pursue. So I guess my definition of bored is having the time to— personal example, I want to use more AI. I started using some AI stuff within our business and you see a ton of efficiency. I am at the beginner stage of it, but I can, I can see the power of using it from a time management standpoint and how fast, fast and effective I can do things. But I need to be bored enough to have time to learn that, to be able to be more efficient doing it.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. Shay?

Unknown: I'm going to make a list of specifically what I need to delegate in 2026. And then take that list, hand it off to the employees or the other people in the team, and reiterate what my expectations are of those delegated tasks. Um, yeah, supply management. You can order pallets and bags and slips. I don't need to do that. You know, just something stupid like that that I've been hanging on to, and it's like I'm sitting here thinking, why? Why in the hell do I need to be the one to order? It doesn't matter. Like, just put that in charge of someone else. But reiterating the expectations of, I am hiring you, we are hiring you to advance the business, not just run the business. You know, you are here, you are here for the goal. And I think that's what I need to reiterate is clearly mapping out the expectations of here's where we are, here's where we want to get. And guess what?

You're a crucial part of that ladder to get us there. So lean into that. And then, you know, by doing those things, it's just focus on how do we make more money. I mean, that's, that's the environment that we're in right now on need to make more money. And what are the, what are the ways to do that? Is it getting laser focused, like Andy said, on certain areas of the business, doing a better job marketing? Are there opportunities like Joe's looking at? I think it's, I think it's a combination of all of them. But, you know, allowing myself more time to just focus on how do we make more money for the business.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. All right, Chris. Well, I guess mine is interesting in the sense that, you know, and I've told lots of people this that we work with, um, you know, what we do is we help operations and businesses thrive. And I hire a consultant from the outside of Ag View to work with our operation because when I sit down I can't facilitate our family meetings and business, even though that's what I do. I need to participate as a member of the farm. And I think that's important to, for me, is to make sure that I totally utilize that third-party consultation that I'm going to have this year with the fact that we work through issues. And one of our big issues right now is I think in our team, we have, we're developing a scarcity mindset.

That is going to impact the operation for future growth, especially in the short term if we don't make sure that we have ample, you know, ample resources on the labor side and then distribute them correctly. Because I think we're just not getting— we're stressing, you know, and my partner Randy Blinn said one time when we were in the fall and we were running long hours, he's like, man, you're pulling these banjo strings awful tight. You know, and I think that's what we're doing right now in our operations. We've got these banjo strings pulled so tight, something's going to snap. And so we gotta, we gotta sit down and we gotta discuss that as probably one of our primary issues this year. And, and not just discuss it, but we have to solve it. And so we want to make sure that we get that, that solved and say, okay, what's the solution?

You know, what do we need to do for labor and how are we going to invest in it as opposed to look at it as an expense to make sure that it's generating more revenue and gets us right back to what you were saying is, is making more money. So I think that's really a key thing. So that's, that's my, my wrap up. It looks like we might have lost Joe. Are you still there?

Unknown: He's, he's done. He's ready to go take action.

Shay

Foulk: He's like, let's go. Oh, here he comes. I'm going to—

Narrator: thought he moved on to 2024.

Shay

Foulk: Joe, we thought you were, you were going to to work with the team right away.

Chris

Barron: I was like, ah, to hell with this. Yep. No, I got internet connection is not great up here.

Shay

Foulk: Gotcha. Gotcha. Awesome. Well, does anybody have any final thoughts? Otherwise, you know, we can wrap it up, but Shay or anybody else, any final thoughts? Everybody good? Good. All right. Well, happy New Year. We, we as Ag View, that's on behalf of Ag View, Shay and Jeremy and Joe and Andy and myself. We want to make sure that everybody knows that, uh, we're, we're here with you. And my voice works. We're here with you, and we want to make sure that, uh, if you guys need anything, give us a shout. And, uh, hope you guys have a great new year. And with that said, we will catch you again next time on the interview.