Farm Profit Manager: the history and the why

Shay: Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk and Chris Barron. Chris, how are you today?

Chris: Good. What's cooking?

Shay: Well, it's raining. We're recording this in April of 2026, headed into a new growing season. A lot of soybeans in the ground around us and south of us, but probably a much slower start than what we saw last year, at least here in Illinois.

Chris: Yeah, this is a year where people get to learn patience. Sometimes those years where we learn patience, that's a good lesson for other parts of the business anyway.

Shay: So, well, you know, we're talking about something that's a little bit timeless here. So maybe I shouldn't have started with weather and as we go into the growing season, but I know people kind of like updates on that. The topic at hand is Farm Profit Manager and what that release has looked like for us. We're going to talk about some history. It's going to be a bit more of a long-form podcast here, um, and, and just helping people understand the, the heart behind it, why we're doing what we're doing, why we've done what we've done over the last, you know, 3 decades in your case, uh, going on 7 years now, uh, here for me. And then what does this look like moving forward? And there's a lot of— I think there's a lot of key things that people that have even been around the Ag View solutions like Ag View Nation here for a long time will be interested in hearing.

I don't think we've probably told this story, at least not like this, maybe as in-depth. So I'm excited to dive into that. Before we dive into the history, anything else you want to make sure that we're adding here at the start?

Chris: No, I think, I think you mapped it out good. I think it's just going through and talking about the history of Profit Manager, the purpose behind it, and what we really are trying to bring to the, to the industry.

Shay: Yeah. Okay. So we're going to, we're going to back up, what, 30, 32 years. Tell people what DOS is because there's a lot of people that don't know what DOS is.

Chris: Yeah. Well, if you're, if you're over, say, 55 or maybe even 60, you would know what DOS is. DOS was the original, basically Excel. The problem or the difference with DOS is you had to write the formulas too, though. And so my brother-in-law was a lot more intelligent than me. So he was always helping me with the formulas because I didn't like algebra that much and I didn't like math a lot, but I did like the results and the data so that we could make good decisions. And so we started looking at DOS as an option to build out some software. And so we had software with our hog operation, you know, back in the '70s and '80s even. Especially in the '80s, we had a lot of, um, you know, because I would literally write out spreadsheets kind of like, like your father-in-law does by hand.

And so, you know, the concept of spreadsheets and, and that kind of thing was out there, you know, in the '50s and '60s because, you know, they were manually done. And then when DOS came out, it was the floppy drives, you know, and the original computers way before there was ever internet was ever even a thing. And so we started looking at the idea of, you know, we had really good data and records on our hog operation. And my dad challenged me with the idea of, you know, we need to do that in the crops. And so about that time is when Excel, the very, very first version of Excel started to come out.

Shay: And this was '94, '96 timeframe.

Chris: Yeah, 1990. I graduated from college in '92 after spending about 7 years getting through college because I kept coming back and forth and doing a semester and then work at the farm, then do another semester So, you know, it took me, I think, 5 years to actually do it, but it took me 7 years to get through it. And during that time, we have a Pioneer sales agency, for those who don't know. And so I was helping with sales and I was not— I didn't like the sales part of it. I really liked doing the, you know, I was really interested in doing, helping farmers make decisions because I was living it too. And it's like, how do we make better decisions here? And we had such good data with the hog operation. We just knew everything we needed to know to make good decisions.

And so when we started doing that with the crop operation, I was able to help our, our seed customers in a way that I don't think anybody, even including banks, had helped them, just by virtue of starting to map out our line item expenses and figure out what is it on a per acre basis, what is it on a per bushel basis, and start to lay out the format of, of solid economic and value decision-making as opposed to what we wrote the check for, and comparing what we wrote the check for the year before.

Shay: So talk to me a little bit about the numbers in the hog operation that you had dialed in. You've told me that, you know, you had it down to the penny on, you know, the lot that came through, you had it on an annual basis. Were other farms doing that at the time? On hogs? And if they were, why didn't you go down that path of, you know, maybe doing more with Profit Manager for the livestock industry?

Chris: Yeah, at the time, we got out of the hog business in '90— late 1995. And that was mainly just by virtue of luck, because the year after that, hogs tanked and took a lot of farm operations out of the business. And so that was a pure luck thing. But the reason I didn't go into it or expand it At that point was because we were just going to be row crop farming. And we had the Pioneer agency and the majority of our customers weren't livestock. They were, you know, they needed help on the crop side. And there was nobody doing it. There were no— I mean, if there was and somebody knows something, email me and tell me what it was. Because at that time, there was no way to understand cost of production on the crops. People just planted and harvested and saw what you got for yield.

And there were You know, the seed companies have always done a good job of building yield maps and stuff, but that's only a third of the equation. And so we were trying to figure out how do you determine margin? Because your question on the hogs, I mean, we knew our feed efficiency to the penny, we knew our days to market, we knew our pigs per sow per year, we measured everything. And so we were able to make really good sound decisions based off of data rather than what we thought. 'cause a lot of times what you think versus what the data is are really two different things. And so because of learning that with the hogs, it was not easy, but it was, we understood the process to put that together on the row crop side. And so I just switched all of my focus over to that with a college friend. And we just started putting, you know, building what Profit Manager was.

And then I had a mentor at the time when I was building it out and he was looking, he was like, man, this is amazing. He said, this is, this is going to help a lot of people, you know. And, and I said, well, yeah, I mean, I just, I don't know, we probably should name it or something. He's like, yeah, you should call it Profit Manager. And, you know, he had— and I was like, yeah, that's a pretty good name, you know. And, and so that, that was the impetus of, you know, the very first, you know, when we started calling it that. And then we pretty much just used it in-house for our own farm for about 2 years. And then for another year, I had some customers that were really good customers and I started showing them and helping them put their numbers in it. So it took us about 3 years to build out Profit Manager.

So it was actually, you could put your crop in there, your crop budget in there and see where your cost of production was and tie that into your marketing and stuff.

Shay: So real quick before we get into the details of that, I'm gonna come back. There's going to be some bitter people that are farming here in 2026 as we record and saying, all those damn farmers in the '90s, they were making so much money, they didn't even need to know their cost of production. Was it a mindset shift on your end? I don't remember making very much that way.

Chris: I don't remember making very much. I mean, that's the thing too, you know, sometimes, you know, you don't make any money, you don't make any money, and then all of a sudden you're wealthier, you lose money, you lose money, and all of a sudden you go broke. I mean, Nothing ever happens all of a sudden, you know, things happen over time. And, you know, in the grand scheme of things, we're in a margin business. You know, farmers were in the margin business in the 1930s. I mean, and we still are. You have to manage that margin. And that's, that's the thing. I mean, what we all love doing is driving tractors and doing the fun stuff. I'm the same way. I'd much rather go out and plant corn than sit in the office and look at the computer. But we also got to look at the businesses as they grow. And the same thing was happening in the '90s.

My family was looking at how do we grow the business? Well, my dad was really crystal clear on we're going to grow the business by knowing our numbers, not, not by just going out and doing stuff to do stuff. You know, we don't need to go out and do 3 extra tillage passes because we, because we can, we need to do 1 if 1 is sufficient, and we can get the same yield or whatever. And so we started measuring our decisions and our processes. And then started a lot of things started to change then, you know, and we also didn't have to farm more acres.

I mean, we were able to farm that, you know, not go out and try to do a whole bunch more, we were able to, you know, we actually did a little custom work and some things because we figured out, you know, what our equipment cost was like, oh crap, we got too much equipment, we need to either got to do a few more acres, or we're gonna you need to stop buying some stuff. And we had older stuff at the time too, you know. We ran— when I was in third grade, I'll be 60 this year— when I was in third grade, we bought a John Deere 7520, and we traded it when I was a junior in college. So we ran that 7520 all those years, and we bought another one when I was in, I think, sixth grade or something like that, and ran it until I was a senior in college. So I mean, you know, it It's not really any different now.

The difference now is we have way more technology and everybody has way more vested on a per-acre basis relative to what we had back then because of the technology and what the equipment can do in today's world. So that's some of the things that we learned over time. And so when you ask, you know, were we making a lot of money? I mean, the government, the government money that came in, in the, you know, in the '90s and early 2000s was similar to what we're getting now. As we record now in the, you know, in the mid-2020s and, you know, all the way up probably to 2030 is not that much different. I mean, our margin was— the money we were making was coming from the government. Our margin was that 8% we got from the government, which is sad to say, but I mean, it's true.

I mean, it's, you know, and there were a lot of years where we— not a lot, but there was, you know, you take a 12-year window, kind of like we see with Profit Manager now, you take a 12-year window, in a 12-year window, guys are going to have 2 years where they're going to kill it. They're going to make 30, 40, you know, and there's going to be some years where we lose 10, 12, 14% ROI just by virtue of, of the way the industry works and how the inputs go up, the commodity prices go up, commodity prices come down way faster than the inputs do. That's, that's happened forever. I mean, that's not something new in 2026 or 2027. That's not new. That It's always been there.

Shay: Yeah, the commodity markets are ruthlessly efficient. I want to talk a little bit, you know, you've made some mention there of, you know, sounded like your dad had a good vision of, you know, farm outlook there, what was going to make the farm money. You mentioned your brother-in-law helping with some of the formulas and DOS, roommate helped you build some of the initial versions of Profit Manager. And then along the way, which we haven't you know, spoke to yet. But to get back to your point earlier, as it developed, it was farmers helping build out what they wanted to see in the tool. And by working with people and taking that feedback, ingesting it, putting it back into the tool, that's what built Profit Manager, you know, legacy Profit Manager for you know, the better part of 20 years there. Talk to me a little bit about that process. How did you navigate it? Was it intentional?

Or was it just kind of organic? How did you think about that?

Chris: Yeah, well, at the time when we got rid of the hogs, and we were really focusing on the grain markets, I decided at that time, we needed to have a consulting firm work with us too. And so we hired Russell Consulting, Mo Russell, for anybody that knows him. Does a lot of the same things we do at Ag View Solutions today, back then. And when we were building out Profit Manager, he started looking at it and he had some clients that he said, you know, hey, maybe we should get this in their hands and have them looking at it to build it out in a little bit more robust way. Because I had told him and I had told a few of the other people that I was helping with it, you know, I had 3 Pioneer customers and our own operation. And then he connected with 4 or 5 other operations.

So that we could kind of, I guess you would call it in today's world beta testing, you know, we, what I told him is I want this to be built by farmers for farmers, I sure don't want to build something and try and sell it. I want the farmers to build it first. And then we can monetize it. Because what happened back then even, and more so now is you have companies building all this software, so that they can sell it, which is understandable. That's a business. That's how you do business, right? I get that. The problem is, is the design, the needs of, of us as producers needs to be dictated by the producers of what they want. And so what happened is, is I spent 3 years developing it and figuring out what I, what I needed to start with. So I had that really good starting point. But then I spent 7 years before we really monetized it very much.

We did monetize it a little bit, but we spent 7 years having farmers build it, you know, so that it wasn't just one person or a team of engineers or a team of data people saying, here's what we need to do, and talking to 3 farmers to build it in there. No, we had farmers completely saying,, you know, multiples in different situations saying we need to do this, we need to do that. And it was— that wasn't being done at the time. And so, you know, I look at Profit Manager today as kind of the grandfather, you know, the original version, which is what you guys are building in today's, you know, Farm Profit Manager.

It's, it's the same, it's the soul of that Profit Manager that you guys are building into Farm Profit Manager today, which is really cool because You know, like you, you know, too, I mean, what we— 4 or 5 years ago, we looked at coding and looked at building what you guys are building now with AI. There was— that was not an option. I mean, unless farmers were going to have to pay or were going to be willing to pay 10 times more than what they were paying for that service, and it probably would have been worth it. But, you know, it just didn't feel right because we were serving everything. It's kind of like when, and not picking on equipment manufacturers, but you get all this stuff that's standard now, right?

You buy a tractor and it's got a massaging seat and it's got, you know, it's got, you know, a refrigerator nicer than the refrigerator in your office and it's got, you know, and all these things are standard. So no matter what, you gotta pay for that stuff. And so with software and with data, I think we need to have what is practical first And we have to have what's going to generate information that the producer wants uniquely, right? So, I mean, kind of what we did with Profit Manager over the years, and you helped the last 7 years, we were able to take the spreadsheet. And the reason we stayed in the spreadsheet version of it was because you got in a program and in that program, all of a sudden you're in these walls and it's like, I would like to see this report. I would like to do this number. I would like this and the other thing.

And you couldn't do it in a program, you were in the walls of what that program would do. Whereas with Excel, and as Excel improved, we were able to individually make that system work for farm operations, whether they had 12 crops or whether they were cotton and rice or whether they were corn and soybeans and everywhere in between. And so that wouldn't have been able to be, wouldn't have been able to do that economically for the producer and in the right way and get them the best information, you know. And now, though, with AI, this whole paradigm has shifted. There's a paradigm shift. And all we're doing and all you're doing, to your credit, is adopting to that paradigm shift in real time as opposed to being, holy shit, what's going on here? You know, we're adjusting and adapting to that. It's going to evolve.

I mean, it took— it's like I told you the other day, it took us— took me 3 years to develop it. It took— it's taken you guys 3 months to do what I did in 3 years and have it accurate, right? And my stuff was accurate, but it took a long time. It was a process. You guys are using the same process. It's just more rapid because of the tools we have. And then it took us 7 years to get farmer feedback. Well, we didn't have social media, we didn't have email, we didn't have the ability to instantaneously communicate, change something and have an instantaneous change. That was not, you know, and so that's what the paradigm shift is now. And what we're doing at Ag View and what you've initiated, I think is going to be so powerful in the next year or two. And it's going to probably be amazing in the next 2 months.

But it's going to be evolving a little bit too, because we want to, You know, we want to make sure that the farmers have input as we continually make it better and better to where we get to a Profit Manager, a Farm Profit Manager Premium, let's call it, that is like the farmer flips a switch and he's got, you know, he's got the power unit, the tractor that's got all the monitors and everything they need, you know, and I've always related Profit Manager to like a combine too, because, you know, a manufacturer builds a combine and it has to work in about 30 different crops. So does Profit Manager, right? And so the settings, you know, how you set the sieves and how you set, you know, the clean grain and the, you know, and the header and all that kind of stuff. We have the same thing as an analogy with Profit Manager, right?

And so that's the, I think, a differentiator that we have as one is that we're going to adapt all the operations and all the different crops. And if we have to fine-tune some things, You know, and sometimes that's where the consulting comes in and why we end up working with some farms deeper than just the numbers, because all of a sudden there's other things going on that are influencing the numbers. So we're not just selling them a software program, we've got a team of people that come with it to, to have conversations because, you know, and I'm getting ahead of myself here, but I've always told people ever since the first day my my college roommate was helping me build Profit Manager. He's like, this is gonna, this is gonna be so cool. We got all the numbers. And I said, that's great.

But just understand this tool isn't what brings the value to me as a producer or to anybody as a producer or a business person that uses this software. It's what you do with the data. And I think farmers learned that over the years when yield monitors came out, they had, they get to about year 7 or 8 and they had all this frickin yield monitor data and weren't doing anything with it. And eventually we, you know, over time there were systems built to manage that. Well, you look at what John Deere's doing now and Case and all the manufacturers, they're doing a great job of getting the boundaries and bringing all this stuff in.

And never before were we able to integrate all that stuff into Profit Manager, which is, those are all things we're going to be able to do really efficiently as time goes on and provide a tool that I think the farmers are going to get to dictate how is it completely built.

Shay: You know, let me, let me interrupt you there. I like that example of the combine because equipment manufacturers set combines, but how often do they put on clinics on how to operate a combine? And there's good operators and then there's drivers and there's good data in the yield monitors and there's bad data. And good data in, good data out. We, with the support behind the Farm Profit Manager and what we decided to do, what you decided to do a long time ago, which I'm going to come back to, is how do we help people with that decision-making? How do we, how do we help people set the combine and make sure that they're efficient with how they operate and understand all the tools in the system? So I want to go back to, let's call it 2006, 2007 timeframe. You had that period, 6, 7 years with, with feedback from farmers, building it out.

Talk to me a little bit about when you started doing a bit more like outside consulting with Farm Profit Manager. When did you start charging for, for Profit Manager? How did that change over time? Give me a little bit of the background about that. I think the listeners will get real value out of that.

Chris: Well, we didn't charge anything until we had, until we had, you know, everything working correctly and And a farmer one time told me, he said, man, this is bringing me a ton of value. I, I, you know, how are you going to monetize it? Well, I hadn't thought about it at the time, you know, I'm like, well, because I was just trying to figure out how we get the right numbers in front of. And I think the very first time we started selling Profit Manager for $120, and that came from Mo Russell. He's like, yeah, we definitely need— this is really bringing some, some pretty big value now. Well, That was like nothing in today's world. But, you know, we had to start somewhere and I had a lot of time in it too. I mean, I invested my heart and soul into it for literally for about 5 years. I mean, I was pretty engulfed in, you know, not just the numbers, but helping people.

And that comes back to your question is what I started to figure out is like when I went to a customer that was supposed to be selling them seed and they came in the room and they said, hey, can I, can I grab my balance sheet, my cash flow and We can sit down and look at the numbers for a bit, you know? I mean, that's how you help people, right? You go deep, you know? You know, and that was when I learned about the importance of going deep instead of wide. I didn't want 80,000 customers. I wanted 8 that I knew their operation all the way from, you know, their kids that were in high school or middle school or their nieces and nephews and the family and what's going on. And you say, well, what's that got to do with the numbers?

Well, it has a hell of a lot to do with the numbers because people were, you know, even the people that got their numbers completely correct, I would say, we would start to have conversations around how some decisions were being made. And there might be some dysfunction between two siblings in the operation that are decision makers on what equipment they needed to trade or what hybrids to plant or what chemical program they were using. And there was some communication dysfunction And the numbers weren't necessarily driving the decisions, partially because they didn't know how to have a conversation around the numbers. They had the numbers, but then what did we do with them? And so I started realizing, and in full disclosure, when I graduated from college, I had a degree in communications and psychology, not finance. And I really quickly learned that the finance part's just numbers.

It's, it's a lot of practical stuff I self-taught. And, you know, quickly realized it's the psychology, the emotion, and the communication. That's the most important part. The tool is amazing. And the tool had to be there as the foundation from which to drive the business forward. But it was when we had a conversation between the 3 siblings that were farming together and mom and dad, about why it was time to update machinery or why it was time to rent that farm or buy that farm or whatever, based on what the numbers showed. Cash flow is always the number one thing. And so then we started working with some banks and started looking at, okay, well, you know, to the banks, cash flow is the most important thing. Well, Profit Manager all of a sudden provided what this, this new one is doing most importantly.

And the most important thing is I always told people what we need is a windshield of the business. Accounting is super important, right? And everybody's got really good accounting systems and we should have, but accounting is postmortem. It's already happened. And if we're making decisions based on the accounting, we're about a year behind on every decision we make. My other analogy is it's like if I put you in a car and said, drive down that road, but don't look anywhere except at the rearview mirrors, it's going to take you about 15 feet and you're going to be in the ditch. Why is business any different? We need a windshield, and the windshield is Profit Manager from the standpoint of it's a forecast for the next year, maybe 2 or even 3 years out, as far as where are we going with this business.

And then that's when you sit down with the family or the, the people in the business, the leadership team, depending on how you're structured, and have a conversation, or with spouses, or even non-actively engaged people in the business explaining to the non-actively engaged family member that's like, you guys are making a ton of money. I see all the machinery and stuff in the yard. Well, no, here's the cash. You want to see the cash flow in a real simple format, which is what Profit Manager is. Here's what's going on. And about that time, that non-actively engaged kid says, I don't want to do that. You know, I didn't realize you weren't making it. You know, I didn't realize it was that tight of a margin. You know, and Profit Manager scares people sometimes too. I mean, I had a guy one time tell me He bought it and he's like, I'm not sure I want this. I said, what do you mean?

He was an older guy getting closer to retirement. He's like, this scares the hell out of me. He's like, I didn't realize my margins were so tight. I was just, you know, making it somehow, you know? And he's like, it's given me anxiety, you know? And that's one of— that's the only one that ever had that happen. But he's like, you know, I, you know, it shows you reality, but it also enhances your ability to be motivated to market. I just had a meeting yesterday with some market people from a big company and they were basically telling me, you know, it's just, they're amazed at how hard it is for farmers to make sales.

Well, the reason it's hard for farmers to make sales is even though they think they know their cost of production, a lot of times they're still not quite right because they haven't spent the time to really dial those numbers in and it's getting easier and easier to do it and it's taken a little less time. It did take a lot of time initially, But the people that we worked with over the years that spent that time at the computer crunching the numbers, every single time made more money at the end of the year and didn't necessarily have to go out and farm another 500 acres or 1,000 acres because they were making more money on the 1,000 acres they were farming than the neighbor that was farming 2,000 acres and didn't know their numbers. And maybe they were making the same amount of money with a hell of a lot less work.

Shay: So I'm going to, I'm going to jump ahead here. What I wanted to get out of that, which I think you communicated really well, is what was the heart behind it? And the heart behind it is the decisions that you make as a result of having the information. So there's value in knowing the information. There's value in making decisions with the information from a marketing and cost of production standpoint. But the, the bigger value that you've seen over decades of experience and that I've seen since being back is how you handle the— I don't want to say the bigger, but some of the longer-term, very important decisions within a farm operation around things like transition and succession planning, around business structuring, around collaborative opportunities, around growth management and strategic planning.

And to fast forward to today, One of the reasons that I put my foot on the gas pedal is the speed at which these transitions, farm consolidation, just big changes in the business are happening, is making some people's heads spin. And we see it in real time because of who we work with and the speaking events that we do and the people that we interact with in the industry. And it's only going to get faster. And, and part of the reason that I push so quickly to get this out to more people so that people understand the heart behind it is not many people from a general sense understand what all that we do on the consulting side, the one-on-one consulting, the going deep with farm operations, the, the helping people work through these challenges that feel insurmountable. Or that are so daunting as they go through them.

Again, the succession estate planning, how do we handle all this land that's going to be sold? We're looking at losing acres, we're looking at adding a bunch of acres. The heart behind it and why, why we accelerated the release of Farm Profit Manager, why I really pushed it within the team is I want people to know about that part of what we do. The tool brings value. I guarantee you, if you're listening to this and you haven't downloaded Farm Profit Manager, whether you're a legacy Profit Manager user or not, and you go download it, you will get massive amount of value this year for 2026. You'll get it in a month. You'll get massive value out of the free tool right away. And, and that's a huge advantage.

But I wanted to make sure that we opened up our audience, the people that we touch, you know, at a, at a local standpoint and at a global standpoint to understand the services that we provide and understand that people are out there helping them make the decisions. Like you said, in the '90s when you started this, you didn't know anybody else that was doing it. There's still people that aren't aware of, you know, at least the different types of services that are offered. And so that's part of the heart behind why we did it. With intentionality to serve farm operations, to serve business leaders. And there's a ton of other benefits that we're going to talk about here. But again, that's the heart. That's, that's kind of the why, that's the foundation behind why we're doing what we're doing. It's not, we're not selling your data. It's not a long-term money grab.

It's not saying, hey, we want this to be a, you know, something that we're, we're going to sell to a large company. That's not the heart behind it. And I think that, I think that's important to communicate to people.

Chris: Well, yeah. And I've always looked at it as the data is the farmer's data too. It's not— it's private. It's their information. It's in— and the only reason, you know, we will look at it and work with them is if they want us to, because that's where the value comes from. I mean, we have an expectation, you know, and we'll help. I mean, we've done that forever. I mean, that's where, where there's, you know, a value proposition comes a little bit with that consulting piece, right? It's like, let's help you make sure you understand the flow. Let's make sure the data is right, because you said it earlier. I mean, what I didn't ever want to do was sell a, sell a service that people put crappy ass numbers in and make crappy decisions from.

I mean, we want people, you know, if we need to coach you to help you get the right numbers in or to make sure you're analyzing things correctly, that's really, you know, when I talk about going deep, it's like I want to help you. I don't want to sell you anything. I mean, you— it will sell stuff. I'm not worried about that. I want to— I want to be there. You know, the why for me has always been the legacy of the, of the farm operation. It's like, I want, I want 5 generations from now of your farm operation to still be there legitimately. That's my why for me personally. And that's why I brought you in. That's why I brought Joe Paulson in, Andy Ruby, and and Jeremy, because you guys all have that same philosophy, right? You guys genuinely want to help people. And that's, that's the team we have now.

And we're continuing to build that, that team out so that we can help farm operations and go deep with them. Like I said, Profit Manager and Farm Profit Manager now is the, is the, is the foundation of the business. And yeah, we're going to have additional things that are going to come, you know, that are going to come with a value proposition down the road as we build them out. But the reason, you know, that took me even a little while, Shay, to like, why, why does Shay have his foot on the frickin' throttle here? Is so that we can do kind of what I did back in 1993 and '94 and '95 was get enough people on it so that we can build it the right way for the people. So it's being built by farmers for farmers. And then the value proposition becomes much more apparent and much more acceptable because the farmers have built all of the fine-tuning stuff.

We've got all the basics there, but in today's world, what's happening now that we're already seeing, right, is when people go in there, they're clicking, you know, I have this request, I have this request. Well, we can almost, not instantaneously, but relatively quickly, we can build some of that stuff into the system I could do that too, but it took years. It didn't take months. And I still go back to the fact that, yeah, we could have built this out all privately with just our team and spent 3 years building it out and then announce it and here's the price and here's what it is. Well, that's all well and dandy. The problem is you're inside of these boundaries again now. And you had no influence as a consumer or as a customer or as a user to say, this is what I wanted to do.

So that's why, you know, that's the why of Farm Profit Manager Basic is here so you guys can get into it, start getting information in it, start telling us what do you want to see? What are these extra things that we're not doing that you want so that we can get those things to you, and then we can start talking about the value proposition so that it's built by farmers for farmers, which is what we've always said. I've said that since, you know, since the very second day we were crunching some numbers on a spreadsheet or in DOS or whatever. And so that's, to me, is the big thing.

Shay: I wanna talk through how the value of Profit Manager, the legacy Profit Manager, changed what, what you were charging for the tool. But I want to talk about like the consulting behind it so that people understand. These are the numbers that I know of just from what we've talked about over time is, you know, it went from $120 to like $295 to $495 to $995 to $1495 to $2495 over about 20 years. And when you index with that, If you index that with inflation, it probably wasn't enough.

Chris: It wasn't keeping up. No.

Shay: But, but what we did, what you did, and then what we did when I came back is the value that we were providing to people because of the quality of the tool, but more importantly, the service and support that went behind it is that was a one-time lifetime purchase. So you own the tool anytime up upgrades were made in Excel, you got that sent to you or you had it available to you. And also what you had was the ability to email or call or text Chris or me or anybody else on the team. That function still exists today and it's still $2,500, by the way, just now with the software. And so the heart behind the decision-making is what do we have into it from time to best service and support you as a customer of either Legacy Profit Manager or Farm Profit Manager as we move forward here. And in that price increase was not just increasing the price to increase the price.

Again, one-time purchase, you own it for life, is totally different than most of the subscription models that are out there because we heard farmers asking for that and that's why it was in demand and was popular. And that's why it's just absolutely exploded here in the 2 weeks since we've launched that. So as that value proposition changed over time, it was a better onboarding process, it was better follow-up, it was better information. We started providing the podcast. You were anonymizing and assimilating the data into aggregates to give feedback back to customers when you talk to them. And at speaking events. And then what we realized and what you had the forethought into— well, I think we both kind of felt it right in 2019 when I came back. Uh, you looked at me and said, hey, I want to do a podcast. And then 4 days later, we started doing a podcast.

Like, we just figured out how to do it. But part of the reason behind that is we would get phone calls 3, 5, 8 times a day, especially with moves in the market, on, hey, what's going on, or what do you think about this? And so, what we realized is if we can put out information like the Sunday Market Outlook or some of these other topics that we've now done 850 or 900 episodes on between the two podcasts is people were better informed. Our clients is who we were focusing on initially. They're better informed. When they call, they're asking better questions and they feel part of a group. You know, they're part of people that understand the decisions that they make and how that goes. I say that just to help understand how the price changed over time.

And now then what we did is you weren't just giving Excel away then and saying, you know, okay, well, if you don't need the consulting, that's fine. We were charging for the tool and the consulting. What, what I looked at there and what I pressed for and that, you know, what we move forward with is the value is not in the tool. And so let's double down on that because everybody else is charging annual expensive annual subscription services. We can offer very basic, like everything that Profit Manager essentially was for free, get it to more people. If they want to continue to have the onboarding, the support, the looking out the windshield, the navigating the business decisions from a cost of production and kind of business standpoint within the parameters of what Profit Manager and Farm Profit Manager offer. We still offer that service. But that's, I mean, that was the heart behind it.

And that was a, that was a radical concept. I don't want to, I don't want to downplay that. I mean, when I presented that to the team, I think your head about fell off. And, you know, it's just, it's just totally different to think about. But as we cast our vision forward, as we look out the windshield of Farm Profit Manager and Ag View Solutions, I think we'll look back on that and say that was absolutely the right move.

Chris: Yeah, it's, it's a growing pain for us on our side a little bit, which if we, you know, you've always said if, you know, you need to learn how to, um, be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Um, I'm, I'm getting there, you know, but, uh, you know, I, I think as, as Profit Manager develops There are so many things now as a paradigm shift, though, that that can bring us as producers. That's why we needed to get a whole bunch of people on there. As I look at it now and look at, you know, your, your proposal of how we're doing this is making sense from the standpoint of we got a lot of farmers in there now that are, that are changing some things and improving some things for the industry, right? I mean, we're doing it for the for the individual farmers. We're not doing it for us to start with. Because I think that's the right thing to do.

I mean, we're trying to legitimately trying to improve the industry and help us all individually. Now, you know, the paradigm shift here is, you know, the, you know, say the John Deere OpCenter, the integration with all of the accounting systems, the marketing, the grain inventory, eventually the livestock. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And it's essentially almost infinite, right? Well, as those things develop, we'll be able to develop a, you know, sort of a value exchange, kind of like I did with Profit Manager. I started out, it was nothing, and then it was $120, and then it was, you know, so we're not— we're trying to do this the right way, I guess, is what I would say is, and not that other businesses aren't, there's some great tools out there. There's 3 or 4 of them that are freaking phenomenal. Yeah. But there's room for competition.

And I think, you know, I think there's nothing better than competition too. I mean, we get a lot of our inputs from 3 suppliers on, on the seed side, on the chem side, on the equipment side, on, you know, and there's— and we get all this limited competition. And so I think, you know, we need to disrupt the industries a little bit and do what's right for the farmer once in a while instead of maybe what's right for the you know, whether it's a shareholder or whoever, you know, the, the, as the farmer, and that's the thing too, with all of us on our team, we all farm. And so we're not a consulting company that's just consulting. That's not our only bread and butter. So, you know, you can either, you know, you, you kind of got to look at it and say, where's the credibility, right? What, what Why are— why is this being done? Why is this company doing it this way?

Why is that company doing it that way? We're trying to do it for the farmers first and having the farmers have, have the say in what we build.

Shay: Yes. And the consulting is where no other businesses or very few businesses are doing any level of consulting offering on the back end. And we'll talk a little bit. I want to get to the integrations here in a minute, but You know, that's kind of the biggest differentiator there is, is what's offered in the background as well as that, that constant feedback of, you know, we have a, we have a support ticket button in there like, hey, if you have a bug or an issue and this is a work in progress. I mean, we, we had a minimum viable product that we knew functioned as Profit Manager legacy should, which rolled into Farm Profit Manager and then did the, did the beta beta access, and then we did the, you know, kind of soft launch, I guess I would call it.

As we move into the hard launch here, though, we've done a tremendous amount of improvements already— field-by-field breakdowns, some really cool marketing things— and we have a docket of like 5 or 7 things that we know that we're going to roll out here in the future that I think people will be really pumped up about. But we, you know, we wanted to get that in front of people and And Chris, we'll release this, you know, kind of after we get the public press release that goes out and have some more discussions internally here. But what I want to share with people just to provide some perspective, not that numbers are the sole goal behind this, but we released it basically the beginning of April, some beta testing last couple of days of March. And within 10 days, we had 1 million acres in the system.

And, you know, I say that because it showed, it affirmed to me, and I think it showed the team as well, that there is a huge demand for not only what's being offered, but also the quality of what's being offered. So a no-cost, low-cost tool for cost of production that comes from a trusted team and has the support behind it. And I think we're uniquely positioned to do that rollout based on what you've built for 30 years and what the team has done over the last 5 or 7 years. And then we haven't even mentioned, you know, the whole, the whole heart and soul of where it is today of Mack and Sam. So Mack Schmitz is my younger brother. And then Sam Fale is my cousin, relation obviously with all of us. They are students at Iowa State that saw what Legacy Profit Manager can do and said, we're getting feedback from our peers. There's things that we would want to see in this.

Like, this thing has tremendous legs underneath of it. We just need to build it. And they've poured their blood, sweat, and tears into it. Here in 2026 to make this possible. And so now you have youth energy, different perspective injected into the Ag View Solutions team, all for the right reasons to have that rollout. And so I was, I was so proud of them to see 6 months of hard work cumulate with 1 million acres of adoption. In 10 days off of basically a soft release, word of mouth, emails, do a little bit of sharing on personal social media accounts. I felt that that was amazing. And, you know, I guess I share that one, so people understand the perspective of the adoption, but also two, just to make sure that you and I are reiterating how grateful we are for them on the team because none of this is, none of this is possible without them. I had my foot on the gas pedal.

But they're the engine that's making it run.

Chris: Mm-hmm. For sure. And I think, you know, the differentiating component with us too, a couple of things. One of them is the human interaction too. I think, you know, you can call it consulting, call it whatever you want, but, you know, as AI progresses, I think, you know, there's all kinds of good, bad, and different and all that kind of stuff. And I just did an AI podcast I highly recommend people listen to if they haven't already. Around where is AI now, where's it going and why. And I think the human, the differentiating piece with us is like you said, we have people that come with it. So, you know, we want people to know if they're using Profit Manager, you can go on the Ag View Solutions website, find everybody's phone numbers. I don't know unless you guys take mine off of there, but—

Shay: Yeah, yours needs to be gone.

Chris: Yeah. But, you know, but, but you can find the phone numbers there.. And I'll answer the phone too, quite frankly, because I care. That's something that other businesses, I guarantee you, if you pick up the phone and want to call an individual and talk to them about a certain specific situation and somebody that's probably doing the same exact same thing you're doing in their own life, that's, you know, I'm not saying that's not possible anywhere else, but it's not as probable. As it is with us. Mm-hmm. You can reach out to any of us at any time, and if we don't get back to you right away, you can text us, you can email us, or whatever. We will get back to you and we'll have a conversation. And that's where the value comes in. And that's why, you know, over the years from the Legacy standpoint, that's why— how I got started doing consulting.

I didn't know I was going to do consulting. I didn't plan to do that. It just happened over time when people started needing us to go deeper with their business because, like I said, the numbers are the foundation. The business needs to progress from there.

Shay: So, so I want to talk a little bit forward-facing here just as we record again, you know, middle of April 2026, about some things that I'm excited about. And I want to hit on the data piece just because, you know, I think it was made a big deal with some poorly handled data decisions by some other companies in the past. So I want to, I want to talk first about integrations and some of the integrations that we have available now, which is different than what legacy Profit Manager was, is the ability to connect and import like field-level data from your John Deere Operations Center. So we have a, we have a connection there. We have a connection to pull in banking information. And then we have the ability to connect to QuickBooks Online.

I think we're going to have a significant number of additional integrations within, you know, 2026 here, I'll call it, just so Mac doesn't throw anything at me. We're going to have a significant number of other integrations. But I want to talk about the big picture on integrations. And this is something that I actually didn't even think about probably to the depth that I should have at the time is the ability for other business partners to integrate into the Farm Profit Manager system if you as a user choose to share that data. And so when you sign into Farm Profit Manager, there's a data sharing opt-in or exclusion that's very clear on if you're okay with sharing data or not. If you click through it and then you forget what that looks like at any time, you can go through and actually deselect it in your settings. So that's, that's one thing from the data standpoint.

But as far as the integrations go, think of, think of a lender connection, think of a marketing advisor connection, think of the ability to share with your team members, which is already built in. But for anybody and everybody on your, your farm team to have access to that data. That's where the integrations are so crucial moving forward. Whereas with an Excel-based system, historically you were operating off of, you know, a OneDrive or a Google Drive or some other, you know, shared system there that was cumbersome and maybe not as efficient. Today you can all have individual same login, share the information, and to connect to some of those strategic partners I mean, there's massive, massive potential there.

Chris: Yeah, for sure. And that's going to continue. I mean, we can say 2026, but you know how technology is, things continue to evolve. And as those things evolve, you know, we're going to be committed to keeping those iterations either current or added as a farmer reaches out and says, hey, I have this connection with this lending institution, blah, blah, blah, you know, I want to You know, so I think there, there could be some one-offs even potentially with a value exchange there, probably depending on what people need. And that's, and that again, that's what I did with Profit Manager over the years. I mean, there were times when we had to take 3 individual operations that had sort of a different structure and kind of fine-tune that. You know, as time goes on, those are some things that we're probably going to need to look at.

And, and like you said, you know, you got there's, there's more equipment manufacturers than just John Deere too, you know, and as their data and their information comes, comes about, and, you know, and we look at all the different accounting systems, you know, there's, I think QuickBooks is, is the one that has, I think from our standpoint, Shay, probably the majority, or, you know, there's a high percentage of users that are in that system, but there's also a number of other accounting systems that we're going to continually try to be working on to to get interface with them as well. And based on what you guys asked for too. So that's, you know, we don't know what we don't know until you guys ask or communicate with us what those needs are. And then we can look at those.

Shay: And to be clear, so the integrations, they're a paid-for service. It's a paid-for integration. We get charged by QuickBooks, by JD Ops or whatever. We pass that cost on to you because I'm not, you know, we're not going to burn cash to subsidize the program. We're not at a point to do that. And I don't know if we're even interested in doing something like that down the road. It gives you the option to opt in, decide what you want to pay for at a throughput cost to you, and then that's your decision. What you, you know, whether you choose to have that, that's an add. These integrations are add-ons. It's like an à la carte build out what you want.

And as you alluded to, what that might look like down the road is premium offerings within Farm Profit Manager that you're still going to get everything that Farm Profit Manager was from a basic, you know, cost of production, budgeting, outlook, access to, you know, a series of everything that's tied into how you manage your business and make really good decisions. But we might have some really cool additional features. As an example, one of the add-ons that we have in there now is the ability to run reports instantaneously based off of your information with AI-generated content. Well, that costs tokens, that costs physical dollars to do that. So that's a paid portion of the service that we're offering that was never something that was offered with Profit Manager Legacy.

But if you think that that would provide value to your operation, you know, you can, you can choose to move forward with that.

Chris: So click the button, you can turn it off too, because right now, you know, with any— that's the differentiator with us is you choices. You know, so many of these have created situations where, you know, it's a set amount and you get what you get. There's no choice of I need this, I need that, and I need that, but I don't want these other things or whatever, you know, or I don't even want any of that. I'm just going to do just Profit Manager Basic is what I need. Good. Just run with it, you know, call us and if you want help or whatever. But, you know, it's the industry You know, the farmers, again, back to what I said earlier, we as farmers, we need to be able to dictate what services we want and what we need. We don't need to necessarily get other add-ons and have to pay for them just because, you know, the power windows are standard in that vehicle.

So you're going to pay for them whether you want them or not. You know, I mean, it's just, it's giving people choices and it's also making sure that the data is yours, you know, you know, and, and you can flip the switch on if you want to You know, we're not there yet, and maybe when people are listening to this, we are there, but, you know, doing local benchmarking as opposed to the benchmarking I've had to do over the years has always been, you know, multi-state. And so you have to take it with a pretty big, you know, grain of salt in terms of that's perspective, but it's far from your numbers probably.

We'll be able to do some benchmarking that's a little bit more regional, which will give you a little bit better information as we get more operations in the system, which is what we're going to try to do is The more we get, the more aggregated data value we're going to get out of it, and that you will get out of it as an individual operation too. And so, you know, that's just going to be ongoing. A lot of this stuff's just going to be continuing to develop, some stuff faster and some stuff might take a bit longer. But, you know, keep telling us what you want, keep telling us what you need, so that we can be working on that stuff and bringing you what Ag View has always brought, which is You know, we care. We want to— we want your— we want you as a person and your business to thrive. That's ultimately what we want.

Shay: And, you know, on that point, if you want to help build out this tool, if you have suggestions, if you have feedback, if you're inspired by listening to this and like, man, I have this really cool idea, that's what our team is for. And that's where like Chris and I are kind of filtering some of the things that's coming in, helping Sam and Mack prioritize like what needs to be done. We have some really good integrations and rollouts that we have planned for the future. Here. But if you have ideas, get into the system, play around with it, plug your numbers in. What do you like? What do you hate? You know, Mac always says, I want to know what you hate, because there's a lot of things that people like about it. But what do you hate that we can fix and kind of make easier to use? So reach out and do that.

The last thing I wanted to mention as far as like a forward look here, well, two things that I want to mention is by the end of 2026, our goal is to have Farm Profit Manager for livestock And that might seem a little fortuitous or coming full circle for you, Chris, I guess, starting, starting, or ending your hog career.

Chris: I'm interested in the hog one.

Shay: 31 years ago. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I guess full circle here on some of that. But our team is going to be working hard to get that rolled out because it was asked of us. And particularly over the last 5 years, we've had more and more people that either have livestock operations and don't understand, you know, kind of the distribution or the subsidization that's happening between the entities. They want to know their livestock cost of production better. Or they're interested in getting into livestock, but it's daunting when it's a whole new sector of the industry that they maybe don't have experience with. So we're going to be rolling that out. Because that's new and something else we don't know what the value prop is going to look like on that at this time. But I just wanted people to to be aware of it.

And then the other thing here too that's, that's different is we, we will be rolling this out and releasing it on essentially a global scale, pushing out to Australia, to European countries, to South American countries and anywhere in between. We have currency conversions, we have metric conversions, we have the ability to to do that and give producers all over the world the ability to better manage their information on a platform that, that can work for them. So, you know, I'm excited about that. And the follow-up, you know, kind of last comments that I have here is if you're still the producers that we've seen hundreds of people over the last couple of years want to sign up to work with us, to work with our team, I know you mentioned Joe Paulson, Andy Rumi, Ruby, Jeremy Dutch, yourself, me, and we're going to have some more people on the team here down the road.

If you want someone to work with and help you, you know, get your numbers, like understand your numbers in Farm Profit Manager, we're not going to plug your numbers in for you. We're not an accounting service. We don't do any of that. But to give you the perspective, to give you some guidance, to maybe offer some suggestions on what we see with clients that we work with. That $2,500 one-time purchase is still there to sign up for the consulting as well as— and again, my bigger picture here is most of you listening to this have a growth opportunity. You have the ability to rent a farm or purchase a farm, or a neighbor is going to retire. Mom and Dad are getting out of it. You don't know how to navigate it. That's the big picture here.

That I wanted to make sure that we are sharing outside of just the people that we've worked with for decades, that we are sharing to understand that these services are available. There are people that are here to help you and care and want to go deep in your business as part of it. And that's, you know, Farm Profit Manager opens up the ability for us to help more people and, and to be part of your business, to be part of your operation. So You know, I'm super excited for that opportunity as much as I am anything that we're doing on the Farm Profit Manager side.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I guess my— one of my parting thoughts, if we're getting close to wrapping up here, is that, you know, there's a lot of trial services too where you can get on there for 20 days, 30 days, whatever it is. The neat thing about Profit Manager is you can get in there and you can start moving around and looking around and use it, and you're, and you're not locked out at 30 days or locked out at a certain amount of days. Some people, it takes 5 days to figure out and make a decision. For some people, it might take 5 months. So we're not limiting you to go in there and say, well, you know, I got to make a decision or whatever, you know, it It gives you some time to sort of metabolize what our process is, what we're doing, gives you the opportunity to reach out, contact us, or have a conversation where— so you make the right decision for your business.

And so that you look at what is right for you rather than what's right for us. We feel like if we do right, you know, if we give the right way, we'll get back. And so we're trying to, you know, we're trying to do the right thing by helping people and giving people a chance to scope it out, to use it, to have some influence in it so that it fits your system. And then, and then there's value, right? And so that's, that's kind of the— my last or one of my parting thoughts, I guess.

Shay: And, you know, we'll probably have a clip at the beginning for where this was, but we never actually mentioned where to go for this. It's Farm Profit Manager. App.app. It's a web-based application now. It works really, really well on your phone because, you know, people ask about mobile, like if I call and make a sale, I want to be able to plug that in on the phone. So it works really well from a mobile standpoint. I'll talk with the development team, but their intentions are to have it available on iOS as an app eventually. I'm not going to put a timeline on that, but we're moving in the direction to do the things to make it easy, as easy as possible for you to use. I was, I was doing a delivery for a Seed customer the other day. He pulled it up while we were talking and we were sitting there for 10, 15 minutes just kind of shooting the breeze.

And he had, he had all of his initial numbers plugged in in the 10 or 15 minutes that we were sitting there. He's like, I'm going to go home tonight and I'm going to get this really dialed in. But this is, this is a better baseline than frick, you know, than we've ever had. It took 10 to 15 minutes for him to just get some numbers plugged in with how the setup is there. So yeah, go to farmprofitmanager.app. You can email me, shay@agviewsolutions.com. You can go to the agviewsolutions.com website. Where our phone numbers and emails are listed for the entire team. Reach out to Joe, reach out to Jeremy, reach out to Andy. Don't just take Chris and I's word for it. Talk to those guys about if it's a right fit, if you need the consulting services, uh, to go along with it to help you get set up.

And, you know, I— Chris, we talked to a lot of people that if they needed a $2,500 jackhammer to do a project, or if they need a $2,500 on the part on the combine, they're just going to go buy it. They're not even going to think about it. Right. And it's not, it's not to say that that's not a lot of money, but the value that you get out of the decisions that are made from it are not a $2,500 value. They're an exponential value with how you make decisions over time. And so, you know, to be able to partner with those guys, Joe, Jeremy, Andy, anybody on our team, with the decisions. Our commitment is to be with you, you know, as you go throughout your farming career into the next generation of your business. That's what we're here for. And that's what we're excited about. Chris, I'll leave you with closing thoughts here.

Chris: Yeah, I liked your analogy of the tool purchase, which this is a tool, but it's a multipurpose tool, right? It's not a drill press that's going to do one thing. It's going to, it does multiple things for the business. And so that's, I think, really the value. But I guess, you know, the last thing I would say is just, you know, take a look at it, get in there, you know, play with the numbers. Honestly, I did the same thing because I'm a legacy developer and user, and it took me a few minutes to look at it and to think through it and everything. And that, again, I think that's why we want to have it so people can get in there and start using it, and then you can decide what you need and what additional things you need. With that. The last, last thing I want to say is that there are a ton of really good tools out there. Um, competition is a great thing.

It's, you know, there's room for several different tools out there. As a farmer, look at what it is that you need and, and just be selfish. Do, do you. Don't, you know, we can tell you, you know, do probably— you got to do Profit Manager. That's our sales pitch. That's, that's right. And And we feel like it— obviously we're biased— we feel like it's the best tool out there because not of the tool itself as much as the team that comes with it. But, you know, do you and do the right thing by your operation, but do your numbers and make damn sure they're right. That's the key thing. And then once the numbers are there, are you managing the business? Are you, you know, planning the legacy? Are you doing the transition? Are you looking at peer groups? Are you thinking about ways to enhance your learning and your thinking.

And those are all things that I think are the most important part because competition is a good thing. Hopefully we're waking up the industry a little bit to make sure that those who are helping us are doing it for the right reasons. That's all I got. Amen.

Shay: Great way to close out. Chris, thank you for the conversation today.

Chris: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Shay: Thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We will catch you next time.