Dad's wisdom: on the farm with Mark Schaffer

Narrator: Welcome to a special edition series that we are calling Dad's Wisdom. Enjoy the wisdom and perspective that our senior peers in agriculture can bring. We will be running the series over the next several months, so if you know of a farmer with many years of experience that you feel would be a good fit for an interview, please let us know. Enjoy.

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch and a series called Dad's Wisdom. And we're here with another one with, uh, Mark Schaefer, and he's a farmer in Norwalk, Ohio, here in county and just south of Lake Erie. So it's kind of where, where Mark's located at. How's it going today, Mark?

Mark

Schaffer: Pretty good, Chris. Good to hear from you.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, it's good to have a conversation. So we're gonna We're going to pick on you today for, for your wisdom in the Dad's Wisdom series. And so let's kind of kick it off with a little bit of history in with you. I know, you know, you're really technically a first-generation farmer. And, and that's kind of rare in today's world is kind of hard to get into farming, but you're first generation, but you have been farming for quite a while. So start at the beginning, give us a little history with your family and kind of how you grew up and where you're at now.

Mark

Schaffer: Well, I grew up in a family of 12, and I'm the oldest in the family. And, uh, we lived on a, on a farm, about, uh, 75 acres. And it was just enough to keep us kids out of trouble, uh, in the summertime, gave us something to do. And actually probably got the agricultural disease, so to speak, in my blood. Um, when I graduated, my dad started an excavating business about 10 years before I started mine, but that was back in 1967. And, um, when I graduated from high school, uh, he wouldn't hire me, uh, for reasons, uh, pronounced to me at the time. I was kind of upset, but So I went off and got into construction work with other contractors for a couple years, and a couple years later my dad encouraged me to go in business for myself.

And I remember once saying, my dad always told me, he says, you know, he questioned me and I said, well, Dad, I don't know the first thing about being in business. I said, I only have a high school education. And he says, "Sonny," he says, "I only graduated from the 10th grade." And he says, "I'm not doing too bad." So he helped me. He signed my first loan. It was like $20,000 to buy the equipment to get in business. It was just a backhoe and a dump truck. And this was in 1977. And worked from there. And going back to what my dad said, said about not hiring me is it was probably the hardest thing he ever had to do, but it was one of the greatest decisions he ever made because now we were working as, uh, not as competitors, but, uh, we were working in, in different businesses. He ran his, I ran mine, and, um, and I grew my business.

He kept as a one-man operation and I grew it, uh, into more municipal work. And so from '77 to about 2006, I grew the business from just myself working to about 80 people in utility work doing sewer, water, and those type of jobs. However, in 1994, I saw where my son possibly would be interested in getting in the excavating business. So, uh, I started to do some— I bought my first farm. Um, and, uh, what year was that you bought your first farm? First farm I bought in 1994, and actually it turned out to be an 18-hole golf course. I saw the possibilities. This was adjacent to an existing golf course and. And we purchased the property and within 2 years of farming it, I traded, I did a 1039 to trade some property for that property to buy some more farm ground, actually 3 to 1. So did very well there.

Chris

Barron: That was pretty insightful. Looking at that and having the vision that that's probably going to be or could be a golf course rather than a farm. So a great investment.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, it was a lot of fun too. Connected with a really, really great family, the Blylee family here in town. And there we have about 19 investors in the golf course, and it's a real good community service for the community to have an 18-hole golf course here. Anyways, I had the vision that possibly someday my son may want to take over the construction business. So I just kind of bought a couple farms in the late '90s, and by 2000 my son was already home from college. He had a civil degree, civil engineering degree, and by 2006 he was pretty much ready to start taking over the excavating business. By then, I'd already grew the agricultural business to probably around, uh, I would say 3,000-4,000 acres. And, uh, um, so I handed the construction business kind of over to my son. He is the director of operations here on the excavating side.

I'm still the CEO of the excavating company, but the day-to-day operations are done by my son Jason. So my focus is soybean and wheat. We do a unique rotation here. We don't raise any corn. We plant wheat in the fall and then we interseed soybeans. In the, around the end of May.

Chris

Barron: Okay, let's rewind a bit, kind of back to when you first started the excavation business. You bought a backhoe and a dump truck, your dad helped you or co-signed for you. And what, what are some of the lessons you learned initially in that endeavor specifically that could be useful or beneficial for some of these young entrepreneurs, farmers, business people out here? Here that are trying to figure out how they make things happen. How do we get going? You know, I mean, it takes, obviously takes some money, but it also takes some hard work, doesn't it?

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, you have to have a, you gotta figure out what your passion is. That's the true driver of any business is having the passion behind it. And even today I have a true passion for excavation. I find myself doing farm improvements a lot. And, you know, that goes hand in hand with excavation. So, you know, that's something I really enjoy.

Chris

Barron: You bet. So tell me a little bit about your dad. You know, he, he probably watched you growing and changing and doing some things. Was there some good advice that you got from your dad? You know, if you could pull out a couple of key things, what are maybe 1 or 2 key things, advice from your dad?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, I will do— I will give you a quote that he told me many times. He says, "Son, sometimes you scare the hell out of me." But I was aggressive, and I was blessed with the vision to see what I could do. I was blessed with some opportunities. I had an opportunity to hire some very, very good employees back in the '80s. And to learn and grow the business. I mean, it's a lot of hard work. My wife and my family suffered from me not being there, but I was there when it was important. But I got to give my wife a lot of credit. She really was a support person that helped me through the growth of my excavation business.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, talk to me a little bit about, as that excavation business was growing, what were some of the financial challenges you ran into? You know, your quote from your dad, "You scare the hell out of me." I would imagine a lot of that had to do with, with growth. I know you just well enough and have worked with you for a couple of years now, and one thing I would say, which I think is a strong suit from a business person, is you're not afraid to jump in and, you know, go all in on something. And if you're going to do it, do it right, but go all in.

Mark

Schaffer: Again, that goes along with a lot of passion that you see. You see a job that you'd like to do, you get very aggressive, and you think through the process and think of ways that maybe you attack a job that someone else wouldn't have the thought to doing. And And a lot of times that's what gives you the success. At the same time, you can also have failures. And believe me, I've had a lot of failures and I've learned a lot from those failures. But it is very tough. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of work with your local banks and being creative on how to make that next jump up. In your business plan. And sometimes it's against some of your team members. And when I say team members, your attorneys, accountants, bankers, you know, against their— they're willing to give you the authority to go ahead and do so. They— you have to challenge them sometimes.

Nobody knows your business like you do. So that's really important is if you have a dream and you just have to push hard for it sometimes. Yeah.

Chris

Barron: You said that, you know, there was, there were some lessons for you along the way and some failures. You know, if you could pick out maybe one or two of the failures that happened, what, what would, you know, give us an example of what one of those failures or a couple of them and what did you learn? What do you do differently now in business that that you wish maybe you would have known before that?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, the downturn in the economy in 2009, construction-wise, when we had the economy really slip really low, it cut our revenue by 50%, and we were right in between buying a new fleet of equipment and got kind of stuck in the middle. With the new fleet and had the old fleet here. Those were struggling years. And you just have to dream and think of ways and talk to people and try to figure out what's my options and fight through it. But you have to have the desire to do that. No one's going to do it for you. You have to be constantly thinking about what can I do next to improve the situation.

Chris

Barron: So you were sitting there with half the revenue, a new line of equipment that you couldn't turn away, and an old line of equipment that had to be moved.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, we had, we had made plans to have an auction to sell off the old equipment, but during the transit, it takes about a year to transition that new equipment to from the old equipment. And when we did that, the value and the used equipment dropped by 40%, and I wasn't willing to accept that kind of loss. So I kind of fought through trying to make payments on both fleets and did some creative refinancing and worked through it. How many—

Chris

Barron: I mean, if I can ask you, I mean, what kind of dollars were you talking on that used fleet that you were hanging on to?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, the used fleet had a value around $5 million, and the new fleet was somewhere around $10 million. So, uh, they were large dollars.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, that's crazy. That's, that's the thing, you know, just thinking about, you know, how, how business is done in different industries a lot of times helps agriculture because there's a lot of similarities. And, you know, especially with the equipment, with your excavation business, how that's, uh, similar to farming. It's very capital intensive. And, and just a lot of— can be a lot of challenges with, with the demand in the market and what kind of opportunities are out there or might not be out there. Let me ask you, let's switch over to the farming side for a minute. You know, you and we've talked before, you know, we did a podcast there after we did a peer group meeting there, and, and we talked, we touched a little bit on the corn and soy or the soybeans and wheat. And you stopped growing corn just on one particular year and switched over this whole program.

Can you talk us through kind of the why behind why you did that and what your experiences were prior to that and kind of how it's going now?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, we're farming in central, north central Ohio, and I often call it the threshold of hell as far as fertility and ground and— and growing crops. We have a very shallow, uh, uh, topsoil line. We typically, we only have 6 to 8 inches of topsoil over a pretty, uh, pretty native clay material. So our water holding capacity is not the best for corn. You can grow it here, and, and, uh, but we saw many years of growing corn where July would dry up and August would be a little drier, and we'd see 30 to 50% of our potential yield drop off our corn. So experiencing that, we just thought we would look at other options and started doing intercropping, interseeding about 10 years ago and just got more serious about it.

And about 7 years ago, we quit growing corn and, and went with that rotation and And it served us very well, getting a crop of 85 bushels of wheat and 50 bushels of beans. It's a decent revenue and it's a lot less expensive to put the crop out than taking that risk with corn. So that's the main reason and probably because I I'm contractor, contractor driven. If it's not making me money, I am not interested in pursuing, pursuing it. So that's probably a little bit behind it too.

Chris

Barron: A couple questions with that, the, with, you know, did you jump into all that at once? I mean, did you, did you switch over to everything in one year? Is that something you transitioned to?

Mark

Schaffer: Oh no, we, we, we had been intercropping, uh, 4 or 5 years before we decided to do it as our main rotation. So we had some experience with intercropping prior to that.

Chris

Barron: What— so talk to me a little bit about, and we'll explain to the listeners, you do have a large grain setup. Tell us about how you were set up for corn, what you're, you know, describe your grain setup, tell us how you were set up for corn and why. And then how you're using that, that capital investment for a profit center as well now.

Mark

Schaffer: Well, uh, originally we, when we were raising corn, we built our, our grain facility so that I could at least store grain and market it over a year, year and a half, have a year and a half's worth of storage for my farm here, which, which is right around, uh 1.8 million in storage with a, with a dry, 2 couple dryers and a couple legs. So that was one of the things that when we quit growing corn, we had excess, excessive storage on sites because we didn't have the naturally the commodity size between corn and soybeans and we Gotcha.

Chris

Barron: Okay, well, um, I want to transition now to another topic, and that's, uh, that's family. Um, you kind of touched on the fact that your son went to college, came back. He's, he's, you know, running alongside with you, running the excavation business. Tell us a little bit about your partner on the farming side.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, my daughter, she, uh, she went to Kent State University and acquired a, uh, a bachelor's degree in nursing, and she was off as an RN nurse for a couple years. She came back to the farm. She called me one day and said, "Dad, you got anything that I can do outside?" She goes, "I'm tired of being inside all the time." She'd always been kind of an outdoor girl. She was always at my side when I was looking at work and doing different projects. So It didn't surprise me when she called me, but now I made a place in a farm here. She's actually my nutrient manager, and I, I just tell everyone that she went from nursing people to nursing my plants. So she, she is very passionate about what she does and is a very key person to the operation here, especially with our rotations with wheat, soybeans. We're constantly keeping an eye on diseases and weed control.

Chris

Barron: One thing on the, on the personnel management side of things from you that I've observed, talk a little bit about your philosophy on quality of life and managing the people, kind of how you do that. And if you don't talk about all of them, I'll pull them out of you. But you know, everything from that I've observed from your operation is safety, to, you know, quality of life balance, you know, if there's family things that need to be done, you know, you have a large amount of employees, obviously, some of which are family, and your importance of that. Talk, talk to the listeners a little bit about that piece.

Mark

Schaffer: Well, I'm fortunate to have a labor pool here. We have 5 people that are dedicated to the farm. But we're all employees of the excavating company. A farm is like a job to the excavating company. So everyone here works as a team at our operation, whether it's construction or farm. And sometimes when we need each other as far as labor, we cross over back and forth because again, all the employees are Mark Shaffer Excavating, not Mark Shaffer Farms. So that's kind of quite unique in its own, in its own fashion. So yeah, we have, I have a team leader on the farm side and also on the grain. I have a gentleman who's in charge of the grain station. And then my daughter pretty much in charge of the computer programming of the crops and all the harvest manages all the harvest information. So, and then my son has his team for running an excavating company.

Chris

Barron: Gotcha. Talk a little bit about your safety program. One thing that's interesting in your operation, everybody does have uniforms. And, you know, to the typical farm, it might seem like a little bit of an overkill thing. But you know, you guys put a heavy emphasis on safety. And like you said, you know, you have your excavation business, which, which kind of runs side by side with the farming operation, which gives you some added benefit to the farm on the safety side. But talk a little bit about that.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, we've, we have really ramped up our safety program within the excavating company because it's very important. We want our people to go home every night to their families. So We want to do everything that we can do to keep our people safe. And we hire some consultants to actually do surprise visits to our job sites to monitor how our people are being safe on the job site. We do random drug tests on all our drivers. And then we also— it follows right to the shop area here, which includes the farming operation. And I'm very confident that our farm employees would not be as safety conscientious had it not be the excavating firm right alongside. So, and being an actual employee of the excavating company, we have standards. We said everyone has reflective clothing they wear on the shop and on the farm here.

Safety glasses are a requirement and ear protection whenever there's noise. They also are— they have to have respirators, certified respiration, have training on how to fit a respirator whenever they are working around the grain setup. So hard hats are required around the grain station, you know, those, those types of things.

Chris

Barron: Well, and that seems like probably to the average farm listener, hard hats around the grain bins, but I know, I mean, I run our our grain facility in the fall, and there were a few times late in the season last year, as late as everything got, we'd have stuff ice up, up on top of the grain leg, and all of a sudden you got chunks of ice falling and all kinds of things. And you just don't think about that stuff. But you know, when you're around enough farm operations and you see people get injured and things happen, you just can't put enough emphasis on safety, can you?

Mark

Schaffer: No. And you know, when you run a grain setup, there's so much stuff overhead and you You know, you, you raise your head up and you bang your head against a cross member on a, on a bin or a tower for a structure, or, or you got vibration through a tower that's a couple hundred feet tall or 150 feet tall. You know, a bolt comes out and flies down to the bottom. The time it gets to the ground, why, it, it can do some real damage to your head if you didn't have a hard hat on. Right, right.

Chris

Barron: OK, I guess is there, you know, we're, we're going to continue the conversation here a little bit. I want to talk, you know, you mentioned shop and I kind of forgot to bring that up at the beginning part there, but you have a really amazing shop and you've done some things with your farmyard. And a lot of it has to do with because you have the excavation business, it creates some synergy and some. I don't know how I want to say it, it creates a really nice opportunity for some, some good equipment and workspace. Tell the listeners a little bit about your shop, the size of it, and, and how that shop came about.

Mark

Schaffer: Well, Chris, you could just tell everyone I'm a huge recycler. That's the— exactly, that's been the, uh, thing that's happened here that's allowed me to expand my buildings here. Being an excavating business, you know, we were always ripping out pavement and interstates and coming up with slabs, and we actually placed slabs here in the yard and grouted them in. They're kind of like cobblestones in the yard, but it keeps us out of the mud. And then our big warehouse, which is just under 2 acres in size, was an old drugstore that actually wasn't that old. It was 4 or 5 years from a local town here that instead of ripping it apart and, you know, shearing it for steel, we took it down piece by piece and brought it back out here and put it back up. And that's been 25 years ago that we did that.

And I remember standing from one corner to the other And I said, wow, that's, that's, that's a long ways across the corner of that building.

Chris

Barron: But having a 2-acre—

Mark

Schaffer: it was one of the best things I ever did.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, well, having a 2-acre shop 25 years ago was a huge shop then, and it still is, you know.

Mark

Schaffer: A lot of, a lot of times it didn't have a concrete floor in it for a long time.

Chris

Barron: So yeah, well, in a, a lot of times, you know, as producers, we, we build what we can afford. And, uh, you know, and then we think, you know, well, we're never going to fill this shop up, and it takes about a year. You do though use that 2-acre shop. I've been there, I've seen that. I mean, you fully use the whole entire thing, don't you?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, yeah, because we have a fabrication, we have a wash bay, we have the guys who work on all the farm equipment, we have a rebuild area for some of the heavier construction equipment. So, and then we also park all our semi-trucks every night. They come in and they have the luxury of pulling their rig in after they've worked all day and angle park in this building. We had— we can hold about 14 semis inside the building, so that takes up quite a bit of room too.

Chris

Barron: So speaking of the semis, tell us a little bit about your— the trucking business that is part of the excavation company.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, we, uh, trucking has always to me been kind of a necessary evil. But my son, he's kind of taking the trucking to the next level. He's actually have got about 11 full-time drivers now that he keeps these semis running every day, whether it's a lowboy or hauling stone or hauling grain or hauling salt. It's a full-time business. It's a full-time business. And it is part of Mark Shaffer Excavating. So yeah, that's grown immensely. We just purchased our second new fleet. Our first new fleet we bought in 2009 and we just purchased 10, or I should say 12 brand new ones just this last year.

Chris

Barron: We talked a little bit before or another time when I was visiting with you about the difference in the semis too. I mean, a lot of farmers— this might be interesting for the farmers to touch on for just a minute, but, you know, do you ever go out and do you buy these trucks with 400,000, 500,000, 700,000 miles that have been overhauled or that are going to need overhauled, save some money buying, you know, trucks out of a fleet? Are you better off buying new? And it kind of depends on how many miles you run. But, you know, we were kind of coming up with about 50,000 miles. If you can put about 50,000 miles on a truck and you're going to buy one with 400,000 miles on it, you might be better off to go new. Talk a little bit about the fuel efficiency and a couple of things you guys discovered on the, on the new fleet versus the old one.

Mark

Schaffer: Well, the old fleet, the old fleet, there's no question that when I bought those trucks in 2009, it was the worst time to buy trucks because that was just when fuel emissions were, were really getting ramped up in the trucking industry, and there was a lot of problems that went with that. But since then, they've really ironed that out and came out with some really good warranty plans to help protect the, the, the owner also. But I know I read an article in Heavy Truck that A guy was quoted as saying that if your fleet was older than 4 years old, that you're actually losing money from fuel efficiency. And I kind of dug into that and studied it and actually was amazed by the fuel efficiency difference of these new trucks.

We figure with the economy that we're picking up with these new trucks that in 4 to 5 years, these trucks just pay the— pay for themselves just in fuel savings from our old fleet. So I would, I would recommend anyone who's running a truck, you know, 50,000 to 80,000 miles a year, and you really should be looking at the fuel efficiency of a new truck versus buying something that's used. We bought, we bought 6 to 7 used trucks to kind of help fill in with our growth. Before we made the decision to buy some new ones. And they were very costly to maintain, even though they were well-maintained trucks. It's just to bring them up to our standards, we spent a lot of money that we wouldn't have had to if we'd have bought new.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. And tell me about the oil change. You were saying something a few weeks ago when I was with you.

Mark

Schaffer: Yeah, the efficiency of these new trucks is if you're line hauling and you're not in a, you know, a very dusty environment, you know, the oil changes now are up in the 50,000 to 60,000 to 75,000-mile range. So that's a huge savings in itself just in maintenance. I mean, just maybe twice a month bringing it in and looking the truck over and greasing the drive drive lines. But other than that, you know, you're looking at maybe 1 or 2 services a year on that truck. So, you know, that's a, that's a huge efficiency for both keeping a truck in line, online working versus, you know, being down for maintenance.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, because when you start looking at the amount of money, and we see that with a lot of the clients we work at with trucks, is just the amount of maintenance that you spend. If you keep track of those dollars and cents truly on each individual truck, it's phenomenal on, on what it costs just to keep, you know, an older truck up and running. It's pretty close to the, you know, to the situation where you can either be paying interest or you can be paying repairs. And I guess it's a choice we all have.

Mark

Schaffer: But yeah, but the fuel efficiency really pushes the pendulum towards new on that, right? Yeah.

Chris

Barron: Sounds good. And you're saying what, 3 miles to the gallon better than your old fleet?

Mark

Schaffer: We're real close to that. We were getting anywhere from 5 to 5.5. 5.5 with the old. And again, these were automatic transmissions, and we opted to go with the automated transmissions on these new ones. And yeah, we're pushing 7 with our mileage.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. Well, we spent a little time on the trucks, I guess, but that's kind of an interesting— and we have a lot of producers we work with, pretty much almost every operation we work with has to deal with the trucks and those decisions. Um, let's, let's roll back and, you know, is there anything that I haven't brought up? I mean, like I said, we talked a little bit about, you know, quality of life and balance and, and just kind of where you came from, um, you know, with the excavation business and, and, you know, not really having a college education and trying to, you know, and figuring this stuff out. A lot of hard work. Is there anything that I haven't ask that, that you think would be valuable for the listeners to, you know, what's the one or two things they take home that they could apply in their operation that would be of value?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, I think I would tell the listeners out there, especially the young listeners who have the passion of agriculture, I think you need to look at something off the farm or a jumpstart business to get you into that business because it is a very high capital business to get into with, you know, pretty, pretty short or sly returns in the agriculture world. I will tell everyone that the only reason I ever could farm was because I started excavating. The excavating company did me very well. I made some very good money and was very profitable and created the collateral and the capital that I could go out and buy some farms and actually grow the farm to a size where I didn't think I'd ever get to, but I had a hunch I might get there. But it was one of my dreams and they were fulfilled.

Chris

Barron: That's great advice. I think, I think, you know, figuring out ways to generate additional revenue to the farm, whether it's, you know, family members that work off farm and bring in healthcare coverage, or whether it's, you know, somebody going and working off farm part-time and on the farm part-time, or like you said, you know, thinking of a synergistic business, something that that you could do, whether it's the trucks or whether it's the excavation or any of those things. Really appreciate your time today. Any final thoughts?

Mark

Schaffer: Any last— Yeah, I think I would say something to the young producers out there also, and that would be don't be afraid to continue your education. It's a different time today with with all the high-tech information and everything that is available to producers or business owners. Having that thought process through higher education is really key in my mind. I see it in my people who I hire. I'll be honest with you, all my team leaders here at the farm do have 4-year degrees. It's me, and they're not even in agriculture, but I think it's just huge to have that extended education for them to make them better thinkers on all their decisions.

Chris

Barron: What about continuing education? You know, say that the, you know, producers there, they do have their degree, they are up and running, but they, or they have some employees, or even them themselves, any continuing education that you recommend?

Mark

Schaffer: Oh, absolutely. If you, you know, if you have a key person that is lacking a certain skill with taking them to the next level, there's all kinds of programs and seminars out there to, you know, educate your staff or team members to become better at what they do. It's an injustice to see people with potential, but they don't have the time or the effort to properly train them for where they— where you could take them.

Chris

Barron: Great. Well, we appreciate your time today, Mark. I guess we kind of hit a lot of topics today, and you know, you've done an amazing job coming from working, working with your dad on a 70 5-acre farm, trying to stay out of trouble to having your own backhoe and truck to get started and working your excavation company up to what you did and building a farm along the way says a lot. And you're also a huge person in the community too. You do a lot for the community. That's one last thing I want to leave people with. Talk a little bit about the fire department or your local, some of the local things that you've done in the community?

Mark

Schaffer: Well, I have a personal saying, and that is you can't outgive, um, God. And, and the reason I say that, for every time that I ever donated or given my time or helped someone, has come back to me just like the Bible says, tenfold. And I, I'd like the listeners to really focus on that. The spirits, the Holy Spirit in my life is very, very important. It's the number one thing that I live my day-to-day duties for, is for the good Lord. So thank him every day for everything, the good and the bad, because a lot of times the bad we think is bad at the time, but as time goes on, it was necessary for us to be to take that next step. So, and it gives you the faith and hope of carrying on too. So, that is, that is probably my number one driver is thanking the good Lord every day for anything he puts in front of me, good or bad.

Chris

Barron: That's awesome. I can't think of a better way to wrap up. About the wisdom and, and, and like you said, the importance of God in our lives and, and, and what that, what that can do to help us help others. So again, thank you so much for your time. This has been an amazing conversation. Again, you know, I talked to you a lot and I've learned a whole bunch more again about you and appreciate your wisdom again. That's, uh, that's really why we're doing this podcast, is to bring the wisdom out from the dads in the operation. So, um, thanks a lot, Mark, for your, for your time today. Uh, we really appreciate it.

Mark

Schaffer: You're welcome. And if any listeners want to, uh, talk to me individually, uh, you can probably, uh, get ahold of Chris and he can get my contact information.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, you bet. And, and I would say, you know, there's probably no better person to have a conversation with on any kind of specific topic because I've watched you, Mark, help a lot of people and that says a lot.

Mark

Schaffer: Thank you, Chris. We appreciate that.

Chris

Barron: So, all right, well, again everybody, thanks for listening to today's Dad's Wisdom and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.

Narrator: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Dad's Wisdom. Please make sure to leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts, and for any questions or ideas that you would like discussed, please email us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. Have a great day.