Conference debrief 2026

Shay

Foulk: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today is the Ag View Solutions Executive Conference debrief with Andy, Jeremy, and Joe. Jeremy may need to dip out early here. So Jeremy, I'm going to start with you. You've been to the— is this the first year, second year you've been to the conference?

Jeremy: This is my first year actually.

Shay

Foulk: So you got fresh eyes and fresh perspective on it. Uh, tell me about your initial impression of how things went and then if you would maybe just hit on like your one or two key takeaways.

Jeremy: Yeah. Um, you know, like you said, first, uh, for me, first time seeing it, uh, I've heard a lot of people, you know, obviously, you know, you, Joe, Andy, Chris, um, and some of the people we work with talk about you know, the, the, the power behind the conference and, uh, witnessing it for the first time. It really is, you know, the one things that I, I guess I really liked about the conference is that, you know, there wasn't a lot of sales pitches. You know, it was really focused on, you know, your business getting better, being a better manager, you know, things that, that, that you can take home and apply without, you having to buy something to make that change. That was a huge eye-opener for me. And, you know, just something that I think Ag View does really well. The other thing, you know, is just the positivity.

I mean, we can, you know, we're in a challenging ag market, you know, to say the least. And the amount of people that, you know, came up to me and said, wow, they're, you know, the positivity, positivity and the optimism is just, you know, it's electrifying amongst the whole group, amongst the speakers. I think that was, you know, a really notable trait of the conference as well.

Shay

Foulk: I thought Vance Crowe said it really well. He said when you get all these people in the room that listen to the same podcast, you know, they listen to the Eggview pitch, 19 Minutes, the Vance Crowe podcast, Joe Vaklovic's podcast. They listen to all the same commentaries. You have a bunch of people that do different things but are like-minded in the idea of education and learning. And I, you know, I wasn't sitting at a table kind of like you were, Jeremy, but it seemed like everyone in the room was taking notes.

Jeremy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, to answer your other question, Shay, the two key takeaways I came back is that I think number one, the power of, you know, AI. I've been playing with it since I got back from the, you know, the presenter that did the AI, the things that it has unlocked and helped me be more efficient with, with just modeling things out, looking at my numbers, you know, getting ready for the banker, even though I'm a recovering banker. I mean, it's just, it's taken something for me that, you know, potentially would take all day and I did it in about 2 hours. So I've gone a little bit down an AI rabbit hole this week, but I think that's one of my key takeaways. The other key takeaway, you know, that I came out was just, it was kind of a mixture between Vance Crowe, you know, some of his stuff and, God, I'm trying, I'm going to train the trainer.

I forget his name off the top of my head.

Shay

Foulk: Dick Whitman.

Jeremy: Dick Whitman. Thank you, Joe. Oh my God, I was having a brain fart. Too many things going on in my brain at now. But between the two of them, you know, some of the transition things that we're going through with our farm, how to approach people, how to be open-minded, you know, how to still work through tough, you know, negotiations or tough conversations, but doing it in a way that, you know, you really hear the other side, you know, you try to keep yourself a little bit more biased to it. I think those were some big takeaways for me. Um, you know, those were probably my two biggest. And it looks like we had Shay just drop off, right?

Shay

Foulk: Yep. Yeah. It looks like he's, he's joining us back, but we'll let, uh, let him get reconnected here. Joe, let's, you know, kind of let's shift to you. What were your two big takeaways or stuff that, that really interested you?

Andy: So I thought, um, you know, Vance Crowe led the conference off. And I felt like he just really kind of set the tone for, um, for the whole thing. And some of the things that he talked about, um, were steelmanning. I'd never really heard that, uh, that approach before. And that was, you know, construct— like, if you're debating with someone about an idea, could, could be your dad, about what you know, way to do things or something like that, is to help construct the strongest— help someone construct the strongest version of their argument before engaging in it or refuting it. And I thought that was just a super, uh, just an interesting tactic and, uh, helps make a better discussion. Um, mirroring, you know, for conflict management is genuinely repeating back what people say. Um, and then, and then, and then, and then, you know, tell me more.

And having them, helping them, um, express themselves the best you possibly can. And then diagramming ideas out, you know. Uh, I thought this could be super useful when it comes to transition planning, you know, having that older generation. Well, you know, I don't know what to do. You know, I got these other kids and You know, having them actually take out a piece of paper and start drawing out the buckets of assets and how that could— that made a ton of sense to me. Those were some of my big ones. And of course, the AI conversations were awesome too.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. Yeah, I would tend to agree with both of you that the AI was eye-opening. You know, it's like I knew there's some power there. I played around with it. It's like the realizing the amount of time we need to spend on it, or what it can do for our efficiency and knowledge base is pretty unreal. I think I probably got a little more of a 1000-foot view of the whole conference was more so the attentiveness of everybody. You know, I felt like everybody that was there wanted to be there. And they wanted to learn. And then the attendees were very approachable and willing to share data with each other. You know, it's like, I shouldn't say data, but just, just ideas and concepts and what's going on in their operation. So kind of from that networking standpoint is, I felt like everybody really wanted to share information to try to get information.

So that's, you know, unlike a lot of other conferences where you kind of feel like you just kick the tires and everything stays at that. Very plain Jane level. There's a lot of good conversations going on. So those are probably the two biggest things that I noticed. Andy, you did say— sorry, Andy, you did say the food was an 11 out of 10. So yes, I don't— yeah, yeah. You know, I would agree.

Jeremy: I would agree. It was— I forgot to mention the food, Shay. So if I could do a 2A, you know, or a 2B on, you know, takeaways, the food would be one of them.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, I didn't mean to cut you off there, Joe.

Andy: Go ahead. No, I was gonna say is that Ag View does a great job of forcing people into this networking by, you know, giving a set of questions and then having a table discussion. And, you know, they're— it's not like you're being forced to, you know, disclose anything that's uncomfortable, but just, you know, conversing, talking about just thought-provoking things that just help getting conversations started. Uh, you know, we had it right before lunch and they're like, all right, lunch is ready. You guys can go out. And I don't think anybody got up for another 15 minutes, you know? Um, so that's—

Shay

Foulk: and that's some of the biggest feedback that we get too from the surveys is we want more networking, you know, and people get a chance to network at breakfast and lunch and then the designated networking, and then dinner, and then breakfast, and then lunch. And it's like people are asking for, you know, we blocked an hour and a half for networking. And I would wager to guess that most people that have been to a conference have never spent an hour and a half of designated networking time. And we have people asking for twice that amount just because of the quality of people that are interested, there to learn, willing to share their experiences.

And from a good vantage point of you have young producers that want to learn from those with more wisdom experience, and then you have the gentlemen and ladies that have been doing it for 40 years that want the youth and enthusiasm perspective. And that's hard to come by. So I just think a really good age range across the conference. And I would also add, I think we were right around 10% of attendees weren't directly farmers. They were people that were in the industry, you know, whether it's grain marketing, crop insurance, connected some way, but they were able to provide some different perspective there that I think is, is really helpful. I don't know what your guys' thoughts are there, but—

Andy: Yeah, there was a banker at our table.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah, I kind of a question for you, Shay, is I thought there was a ton of new faces there. I didn't feel like it was the same Ag View clients that we normally have or people that we typically associate with. It was a really good opportunity to meet a ton of new people. Yeah. And in the years past, you know, and I think it's good both ways. I think it's good to have a bunch of repeat attendees. I think some of what we've seen is some people want to go to Florida and some people want to go to Arizona or, you know, they rotate back and forth. I would urge you to do both because we've been able to keep the speakers so engaging and interesting year over year. So I think that's part of it. But I would guess this year, and you guys can tell me if you think I'm wrong, but we were maybe 30% of people that were there are people that we've worked with from a clientele basis.

And then the other 65 to 70% of people, it was either their first year at the conference or we've, you know, we've never worked with them. And I think that added just a huge amount of livelihood and invigoration. Now, I will say, and this is not me just promoting the 2027 conference, we've had 45 people from the 2026 conference say that they're going to be at 2027. So we have a third, we got a third of the conference booked. So if you have any inkling of being there in 2027, don't hesitate to reach out and let us know. But I think that's, I think that's exciting and engaging from that standpoint for sure.

Andy: I'm— as, as you were talking about being to the conference, it occurred to me that I've been to more conferences than you, Shay.

Shay

Foulk: Oh, you're going to have to emcee next year. You just locked yourself into emceeing, Joe. Good job.

Andy: You were forced to miss the last one. I haven't missed one yet.

Shay

Foulk: And I think as a review, just for those who have attended and in particular for Ryan Moe, he emceed last year and our joke this year was we were going to come out And I was, you know, he was going to be emcee, start doing introductions, and I'd come out dressed as Stone Cold Steve Jackson, you know, just like throat slam him on the table. But we thought with only 35% repeat attendees that maybe not everybody would appreciate that as much as we did.

Andy: That's awesome.

Shay

Foulk: I guess so. As far as, you know, we really want to focus on implementation takeaways. You guys have all mentioned AI. I've spent a bunch of time on that this week as well. Had a presentation yesterday that Joe and Sarah were at to see some of the abilities there. What would you recommend for those who attended and are listening to this of, you know, how do you not lose that momentum that you have coming off of the conference to, you know, lean into your operation, lean into your business by taking those takeaways and putting them into action?

Jeremy: Yeah, well, I guess I'll go first since, you know, I got about 8 minutes before I got to drop off. You know, I think that, you know, it all starts by just your mindset. I mean, if you're a learner and you want to always improve, you know, you've got to have the discipline to put that in action. You know, just a couple ideas. I mean, I took notes there. I've reviewed them. I've looked at them all this week. You know, I've just kind of, you know, gotten right into it. On the AI piece, you know, one of the things that I thought was powerful that I did right away is, you know, I built a virtual board and I started, you know, utilizing that for challenges that I'm having in my own business. The feedback from that is, it is unreal that it is so accurate.

And it is so concise and you can even drill down, you know, I, I, I use Grok, so I used it that way and it's got, you know, drill down features where, you know, I was, um, it, it was talking about my pressure wash business and it would, you know, they had some of the feedback from, you know, a business coach, an accountant, you know, financial advisor and some tech. And they were talking about marketing and trying to get my marketing dollars to turn more into, clients and what that ROI is there. And so I just asked it to drill down a little bit more, tell me more of a concise marketing plan. And I think it mapped out about 4 or 5 months' worth of activities that I could do.

And so, you know, and all of them are things that I kind of know, but until it was laid out into that format and I was able to take that and, you know, roll all of that narrative into like a Word, you know, processor sheet, you know, of stuff where I keep like notes and, you know, my to-do action plans. You know, I can get really distracted. This is a week where we're washing hog buildings. We're doing so many different other things. I can get distracted and forget about everything, you know, or I can take one or two things that were my big takeaways and I can start implementing and just watch that snowball grow as, as all of a sudden, like, you know, I'm curious as hell. Of all the other things that I should be doing and that, you know, this can help me with. And it's opened a lot of doors to just changing my thought process, networking with people.

And, you know, I think if you just dive in and take the bull by the horns and say, hey, you know, this is a year, it's do or die, I got to do it and lean on your trusted advisors and network with everybody you met there. I mean, we're all going to hold each other accountable to getting this, this thing across the finish line.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. Thanks for the feedback, Jeremy. I know you need to duck out, so thanks for hopping on and we'll let you jump out here. Joe, let's, let's go to you and then we'll let Andy bring us home here.

Andy: So I think it's easy to get overwhelmed and usually when you come home from the conference, you know, you have some momentum and, you know, you might have a whole bunch of items Just start small. Pick, pick one out and say, we're going to do this one. Share it with the team. And, you know, you got to start working on it immediately or else you get pulled away. I think start small.

Shay

Foulk: Andy, what do you get? So usually I steal Joe's, but this time Joe stole mine. So which is fine.

Andy: Well, great minds think alike.

Shay

Foulk: That's right. Yeah. No, the other thing is to communicate within your group, you know, the main— what your main takeaways of the conference were. I think it's important for the other people to try to get an understanding of what was going through your head because usually you come back with a bunch of enthusiasm to a bunch of people who don't share that same enthusiasm because they weren't there to, to live it. So just kind of debriefing the rest of your operation about what implications potential changes can have and the benefits of it. Yeah, and I would, I would maybe advocate or pitch for the fact that we had, I think, 3 families there that had either 4 or 5 family members from their operation because they didn't want to have to go back and have to try to convince everybody to do all these other things.

So, you know, if you're at a point in your business, whether it's family or whether you got some key strategic team members, bring 2 or 3 people from your operation because that collective power is logarithmically more effective when your team gets back in order to start implementing some of those things. So that, you know, that's kind of my pitch, I guess. My takeaway, I love the surveys that we get back. You guys were there, but I told people like, if you don't fill out the survey, I'm going to hunt you down in the dark of the night in order to get that survey filled out.

Jeremy: And after your video, after your video, I think that made an impression on a lot of people.

Shay

Foulk: The, you know, the, the fact that we are seeking that critical feedback, I would just encourage those who attended and those who are thinking about it is my intent is to continue to make this the best event out there from an executive business-minded operation. We're going to fix all the little tweaks. We're going to make it exactly what you expect and exactly what we feel that you guys deserve for those who take your time out of your day-to-day business to come learn, to come interact, because you provide as much value to the conference as we as speakers or hosts do on our end. And we're sincerely thankful and appreciative for that. So I'm pretty— I think I'm more motivated and excited about the 2027 conference than I have been for any of them over the last 5 years. That's kind of my, my key takeaway. So as we wrap up here, Andy, I wanted to pick on you one more time.

You're going to be hosting a profit manager workshop coming up here in March. Can you just give a few details on that? Yeah. So we want to have an in-person workshop to allow operations to come and spend some one-on-one time with us to fine-tune their numbers. We're going to kind of talk through different things as a group of what are some of the struggles we're all having. You know, just really fine-tune those numbers, we'll probably go over some, some things we're working on too. And then, and then kind of some small group benchmarking stuff, as you know, as, as a group as a whole that's at that meeting is, you know, where we rank and what things can we do better. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that'll be March 5th at your location. You want to give a little bit of background on like where that is exactly? Yeah. Yep. So for, for broad terms, we're in Angola, Indiana. Yep.

And it'll be right here at our office on March 5th. Yeah. And it'll be a full day. I know they're going to provide lunch. I have a baby coming March 10th. So Hannah told me if I leave, she's going to shoot me. So I'm probably not going to be there on March 5th. But we're here to support. I think it's going to be a great showing of people. And again, guys, we, Chris and I have done this a couple of times before to have people sit there. You got your profit manager pulled up on your screen. You're all going through scenarios, running equipment analysis, thinking through how do we improve our operations. It's very high impact. It's, it's an intense day and it's a great time of year before you start getting swamped with field work. That's, that's what I was going to say. Swamp to Fieldwork. No.

And yeah, I guess just to kind of pick up where you left off, it's, it's that kind of one last time before we are busy in the field and distracted to say, all right, is my plan truly what I want my plan to be? And not only a chance to talk to you and I, it's a chance to talk amongst a group of, you know, what are you trying that maybe I can do to save, save a percent or two here or there?

Andy: Yeah, you and Jeremy are going to be there, correct? For sure.

Shay

Foulk: I will. I will for sure be there. Kind of— we're not sure if Jeremy's going to zoom in or Shay's going to zoom in some or kind of what, what that's going to look like exactly.

Andy: But gotcha. Yeah.

Shay

Foulk: Okay. So yeah. So anybody that's, that's interested, reach out to Shay or I and we'll get you guys the details accordingly. So what else? What else you got, Joe?

Andy: Anything? No, it's going to be a hell of a month. I'm actually going to be in North Dakota that week. And, and then heading to Argentina. I'm seeing a, there's a farm that I work with, do some work for, and they farm about 400,000 acres down there. So they invited a few of us cooperators down to see their operation. And it's about a 5-day tour up through Uruguay and Paraguay and see some cattle, some irrigation, share some thoughts, going to see a Farm Progress Show down there. So That should be a pretty interesting trip.

Shay

Foulk: Awesome. Yeah, that— I'd be curious to see, you know, hear what you have to say about it all afterwards.

Andy: So yeah, maybe we'll do a debrief when I get back. You can interview me.

Shay

Foulk: Yeah. No, that sounds good. So thanks everybody for joining us for this. And for those that attended the conference, you know, thanks for attending. And we truly are appreciative for attending and hope that we see a lot of familiar faces next year. So thanks again.

Andy: Thank you.