A Peek into the Farm4Profit Podcast
Wanted to give everyone a glimpse into one of our more popular episodes with its transcript!
Enjoy and check us out at Farm4Profit!
Zach Johnson:
A farm's a business like any other business. So you want to keep moving forward and you want to grow, but, yeah, you've got to make your own decisions for yourself, and just because the neighbor does something one way doesn't mean you have to do it that same way. If you don't, it may open you up to criticism, which goes back to what we were just talking about.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
It doesn't matter. It's not his farm. It's yours.
(singing)
Dave:
All right, we are at the John Deere booth at the Commodity Classic, and Zach Johnson, the golfer, has just approached the putting green. It's a nice green. He's got a good lie, about a 10-foot putt left to right. How is he going to read this, Tanner?
Tanner:
I've never seen a green this color. This green is almost John Deere green.
Dave:
It's almost fake. It's so picturesque.
Tanner:
It is, but I think it's going to be a little left to right and almost the shape of a D. Kind of like a John Deere D.
Dave:
A John Deere D. That is right. That is right.
Tanner:
It's hard. I don't know how he's going to make this, but, hey, welcome to the podcast. We're having a little fun, if you can't tell, here at the Farm Progress Show, Decatur, Illinois sitting here in the John Deere booth. It is almost like a putting green.
Corey:
It is beautiful here.
Tanner:
Right in front of the stage.
Dave:
We've had the best weather here. This is awesome. It makes up for staying in Decatur.
Tanner:
It was a little warm the first day.
Corey:
Yeah.
Dave:
Yes.
Corey:
That's to be expected.
Tanner:
Why did you almost forget the first day? Late nights or just too much fun? We're going to leave that question unanswered.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
But, no, this was a ton of fun. Listeners, hopefully you enjoy this as much as we do. That's part of the fun for us putting the show together is personal enjoyment, but hopefully bringing value to you. Make sure you leave your reviews. Let us know what you like hearing and head over to YouTube. Let us know if it's a video you want to see more of, but we do got a listener review to share today, don't we, guys?
Dave:
We do. I better get quiet for this. Mike Putt, Apple Podcasts, KJ Flowers. This used to be a show I looked forward to listening to every week. Used to be? What? Feels like most episodes are just paid advertisement.
Tanner:
First off, that was a negative review, but Dave cannot do something that's not energetic.
Dave:
I know.
Tanner:
But nope, you are not a golf announcer.
So this is a funny review, and I do respect it, but the things that we do cost a lot of money. We have full-time jobs and then we have to travel and take time off to do that. So I just want to emphasize how important our partners are. We are not selling out. This is just so we can continue to bring you guys good content.
Now, we could probably address some things with where we put ads, and how long they are, and how they are.
Corey:
And we've started spreading those out a lot more thanks to listener reviews, but I will let you know that the content, the conversations that we have are not the advertisements. So KJ Flower, thank you for that. I really do.
Tanner:
Yes, we love it, but it is hard. It is difficult to learn about a new product without somebody talking about their product. It's going to sound like an ad because you got to learn as to what it is. Our partners are very clear. I think we do a very good job.
Corey:
And we do limit it.
Dave:
And ...
Tanner:
We don't take anybody.
Dave:
... we're Farm4Profit and the people that we bring you as partners help make you profitable. That's the-
Tanner:
Yeah. And if we didn't podcast for profit, we wouldn't be here to be able to tell them about Farm4Profit. So no, KJ, we're poking fun a little bit, but really, thank you for your comment. It does not go unnoticed. Listeners, we appreciate the feedback because that's the only way we get better.
Corey:
Yep. And if anyone has suggestions for how we should handle the paid advertisements or the partners that we have, 515-207-9640. Send us a text, give us a voicemail.
Zach Johnson:
Can't you just go fast forward and reverse?
Tanner:
Right. Right. So we were trying to do that, put them all in the beginning so you could just skip because everyone listens to [inaudible 00:05:43]. I don't know. I don't know what's right. Should we not start with ads?
Corey:
It's a tough balance.
Tanner:
Because we've been told both ways.
Dave:
Maybe you just avoid these intros and then the ads sound way better.
Tanner:
I've thought about that. I've thought about going intro-less.
Corey:
And dive in.
Tanner:
And then 10 minutes into it, you jump into the public [inaudible 00:06:01].
Corey:
Doesn't Joe Rogan do that or someone does that?
Dave:
Yellowstone does that. Anything that Taylor Sheridan ... Is it Taylor Sheridan?
Tanner:
I don't know, I don't watch [inaudible 00:06:10].
Dave:
The guy who's in charge of Yellowstone, Mr. Sheridan. He does that. Because I just started watching one of his other deals and he always just goes right into it, and then about five minutes in, now is the intro.
Corey:
Well, I tell you what. Now, we've made this intro longer than any of our other intros.
Tanner:
Yeah. So would you rather have a couple ads and get right to it or [inaudible 00:06:26]?
Dave:
Or let's just keep talking.
Tanner:
Thanks to everybody, but we've got a really good show together for you here. Almost a crossover episode, so really fun to share this one.
Corey:
Yep.
Tanner:
Here we go. We've got a lot of beginning farmers that are listening to our podcast and it's a lot of fun for us to put into perspective some tools for them because it's hard to, as a podcast, just focus on one specific group of listeners because we've got a cattle episode that was our fastest episode to climb into the top 10 most downloaded, and we've probably only done four cattle shows out of all of our podcasts.
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
But then we have an episode like when you and Randy came down and we talked about tile, that shot clear up to the top and has stayed in the top five forever.
Zach Johnson:
No kidding.
Tanner:
Yeah. Still hanging out there. So we want to do something special for our young listeners and those that are getting the desire to start farming because they don't always have to be young. You can start farming at any age, but wanted to jump in and introduce for those who don't know, Mr. Zach Johnson, professional golfer. Oh, wait, that's not right, right? That's wrong Zach. Who put these notes together?
Zach Johnson:
There is one, though.
Tanner:
There is.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Yes.
Zach Johnson:
He must get sick and tired of being asked about farming.
Tanner:
Do you think he gets all your fan mail?
Zach Johnson:
I would imagine so.
Tanner:
I would imagine.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Because I don't ... It's not coming to me [inaudible 00:07:47].
Tanner:
Mr. Millennial Farmer himself, thanks for joining us.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Tanner:
Farm Progress Show '23 and you haven't seen any of it yet.
Zach Johnson:
I saw the FBN booth and then I was at the Polaris booth for an hour and now I've seen all 40 acres of the Deere booth.
Corey:
All 40 acres. It's half the show.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Isn't it a great place to sit? We had a fun conversation yesterday about this old John Deere D sitting here as they celebrate the birthday. It's a lot of fun to sit here and interact with everybody. So glad you could come over and hang out.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, this is cool. Thank you guys for having me on again.
Corey:
So it's been a couple years since we actually had you on. We've hung out with you a few times between then. I know you've had some life-changing things that you've purchased something, something that's not an ag, like the shooting range. What do you call that?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. So we bought in with a ... There's three other partners in it, three, so there's four families of us total. But, yeah, we bought into the Alexandria Shooting Park, which is the largest trap range in Minnesota. We've got 20 trap houses there and we have actually the largest shooting event in the world every summer. So it's been a lot of fun.
In June, we bring through about 8,000 to 9,000 high school shooters and about 30,000 people over the course of nine days.
Corey:
Really?
Tanner:
That's a lot.
Corey:
What made you do that? Were you a big shooter?
Zach Johnson:
No, I'm not a huge shooter, so I did a lot of hunting back in high school. Scaled back on that a lot when I got a little bit older and I had to spend more time in the tractors during hunting season, but I've always enjoyed shooting. I've enjoyed hunting and I've got a good friend, Steven Gould, who actually married my wife's best friend, and we had talked for a long time about how cool it would be to have some sort of a business revolving around shooting sports. And he's got great connections within the industry.
So he actually has a YouTube channel, a couple YouTube channels. He's done exhibition shooting with his brother over the years and he's got a YouTube channel now. He calls Target Focused Life and he does a lot of shotgun reviews and he's very well connected within the industry. And when the opportunity to buy that park came along, he talked to me about it and he talked to a couple other friends about it. And we got a good group together and decided we were going to go in and make it happen. They were willing to sell and they wanted to sell to young guys that wanted to keep it as a shooting park because it's right on the outskirts of Alexandria, Minnesota, which is a decent-sized town, I think it says 13,000 on the sign, but the city limits are small. It's at least double that.
There's a lot of tourism there. It's a busy town. The shooting park is right on the interstate. So it's good real estate.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
And I think they knew there's opportunity there for the shooting park to turn into something else and they didn't want to see that.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
And so that's our intention is to keep it as a shooting park right now.
Dave:
So are you a trap shooter? Have you shot a perfect score?
Zach Johnson:
I have not shot a perfect score. My son has shot multiple perfect scores. He outshoots me pretty easily.
Dave:
Watch the bird.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Dave:
Shoot the bird, right?
Zach Johnson:
Simple as that. That's all you got to do.
Dave:
Yeah, that's all it takes. Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
Have you ever sold a shooting park, Dave?
Dave:
I haven't sold a shooting park, no.
Tanner:
He's been trying to buy one.
Dave:
I've been trying to source one for Ballard trap shooting club. They're looking for one. And so my son just got into trap shooting this last year and they're like, "Hey, you're the guy that sells farmland. We need a spot. Can you get it?" But I don't know how much money they make. I'm still working on that to monetize it for them, but there's some really cool ones out there, but you got to have a love for it. And everybody that gets into it, they're all good shooters and, man.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. It's cool to see how fast that sport has grown with the younger generation because guys our age didn't grow up shooting trap.
Corey:
No.
Dave:
No.
Zach Johnson:
The older generation and the younger generation did.
Dave:
It skipped.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, it did. It definitely did.
Corey:
I shot some skeet and some sporting clays at the Izaak Walton League, but we didn't have it in high school.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, we didn't either.
Corey:
Right? And now it's everywhere.
Tanner:
I felt like I did more target practice.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
There was ... Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Or shoot plays with your buddies or whatever.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Dave:
In our small town, our school where my kid is, their trap team, I went to the meeting and I thought, "Okay, there'll be five or six kids." There's like 85.
Corey:
Holy cow.
Dave:
There's a lot that are there and they're just one of the schools. I think it's a growing sport.
Zach Johnson:
Oh, very much so, yeah.
Dave:
And a lot of females in the game, they say that they shoot without any emotion, so it's easier. They don't get frustrated. Us guys apparently get really frustrated when we miss and then we keep missing.
Zach Johnson:
Yes.
Tanner:
What? How do they shoot-
Zach Johnson:
That is a real thing.
Dave:
That is a real thing.
Tanner:
Is it really? Because my wife has a ton of emotion. I don't think that-
Corey:
Just towards you.
Tanner:
Oh, that's true.
Dave:
Like when you miss a golf [inaudible 00:12:17].
Corey:
They have a good separation of emotion. So they say that in grain marketing, too. They're better grain marketers.
Tanner:
Yeah. There you go.
Corey:
Because you don't want to have emotion in grain marketing.
Dave:
There you go.
Corey:
Get too tied to the product.
Tanner:
No, you don't.
Corey:
How do crops look up there for you this year, Zach?
Zach Johnson:
I'm hoping we have an average crop.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
We have a bad rootworm problem in our corn again this year.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Which is weird. I mean, we haven't had that issue in 20 years, but even the SmartStax corn is struggling with it. So we've got rootworm issues. We were really dry until about the third week in July.
Corey:
Okay.
Zach Johnson:
So things were really starting to burn up and twist up pretty good. And then the rain turned on and we've been good since then, but I don't know how much we took off the top before that. So I'm hoping for average, but the good news is we've had a lot of heat, so I think the corn is going to be pretty dry. We're pretty far along right now.
Corey:
How hot did you get last week when we were ... What we were like? 120 heat index, I think.
Tanner:
It was warm.
Zach Johnson:
I think we were 115 or so. 110 to 115.
Corey:
Really? Okay. So it got up there.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
It did some damage to our corn. I know that.
Tanner:
That's probably almost hot enough to start boiling those 10,000 lakes.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, just about.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, but luckily, they don't boil. You just keep standing in them and drinking beer.
Tanner:
That is fair. Well, I've got a favor. Before we get too far into this, to ask you, we've had suggestions that a great interview would be to interview your hired hand.
Zach Johnson:
Jim?
Tanner:
Yes. How can we get that done?
Zach Johnson:
I mean, I can put in a good word for you and we'll see what he says. Jim is one of those guys that, on the outside in person, he's a tough guy, but he's a softie, so he might go for it. The first time I handed him a camera and I was like, "All right, Jim, you have to record this. Oh, geez, that stupid camera." And then we started editing the videos and he's talking to it and he loves it. It's like, "Jim, you've loved the camera the whole time. You just had to be a tough guy around it."
Tanner:
That's good.
Zach Johnson:
So he maybe would. It'd probably be an interesting ... If you could open him up, it'd probably be a pretty good podcast.
Corey:
Is that in his job description as camera guy?
Zach Johnson:
It's not.
Corey:
No.
Zach Johnson:
No, but he's only worked for us for 30 years, so we haven't had a chance to write a description.
Tanner:
No description yet.
Corey:
You can go on the podcast, Jim, but you're clocking out. Not on my dime.
Tanner:
That's good. I bet you it soars right up there and passes that tile in the episode that we did together.
Corey:
Yep.
Tanner:
Probably jump right to the top.
Corey:
Yeah. We need to get him when he's coming through Iowa so we can do it in person. It's always better in person.
Zach Johnson:
Oh, always, always.
Tanner:
So we've got you here and want to be respectful of your time. We always put together a summary episode or a recap episode of the payoff question that we put together for our listeners. So at the end of every show, if you recall, we always have a question and it happens to be the same one for a quarter or for six months of the year, depending upon how good and repetitive our answers start to get.
Corey:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
Okay.
Tanner:
So what we've got to reflect on today is the answers from some of our guests that is the advice they would've gone back and told themselves at age 18. So that's the base question. It was, what would you do if you could go back and stand next to yourself and give yourself advice at age 18? Now, we know some of us probably wouldn't listen to ourselves.
Corey:
Right.
Zach Johnson:
None of us would.
Tanner:
Yeah, exactly, but this is what some of these takeaways were. We had many more, but I think I just copy and pasted down about eight of them. So we certainly don't need to go through all of them, but that's the premise of the episode. As you work through your YouTube channel and the impressions that you're able to basically hand out, how much of your audience is young under 20 years old?
Zach Johnson:
Under 20 years old, I would say right now, because my audience has noticeably gotten older as I have, under 20, 30%, 40% probably.
Tanner:
That's still a big number.
Speaker 6:
Farmers, level up the equipment you know and love with the latest technology from Ag Leader from SureForce downforce control and SureSpeed high-accuracy planting systems to RightSpot, individual nozzle control for your sprayer. Ag Leader has got you covered. Upgrade your equipment with the latest technology from Ag Leader to reap the benefits of this season. You do it all. So should your technology. Visit agleader.com or contact your local Ag Leader dealer to upgrade your equipment with the latest technology today.
Tanner:
Are you surprised, guys, when we show up at these shows, how many young listeners come up to us and either say thank you or just reach out and say that we're doing a good job? I didn't expect that. I'd expect people to come up and ask for a [inaudible 00:17:07] and want stickers and an air freshener, but to come up and want to tell you that you're doing something they like. So it's neat to put that into perspective.
Corey:
I'm just as surprised, though, when a 75-year-old comes up and says he listens to our podcast.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
I'm like, "Do you know how to download a podcast?" Yeah. They're smart. They're smart.
Zach Johnson:
Some of those guys are the first guys that caught onto my channel.
Tanner:
Yes.
Corey:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
And now it's them and their grandkid watching them.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
It's just like the range is all over the board from age one to a hundred.
Corey:
What a bonding time with your grandchild, right?
Zach Johnson:
Right.
Dave:
If you can get ... My neighbor's a grandpa, and if he can send it to his grandson, what a cool thing to text your grandson, "Check this out."
Zach Johnson:
Right, right. Yep. Have that in common with them and have something to talk about.
Tanner:
Yeah. I'm going to start with Joy VanWyngarden.
Corey:
Okay.
Tanner:
So Joy was a really fun episode. One that I don't think we expected to be as good as it was. And I don't mean that as anything against Joy, but her personality was infectious.
Corey:
Yep.
Tanner:
And that was a lot of fun, but I can see where this is. She says, "Pick friends that are where you want to go and hang out with like-minded people." And I can see her doing that.
Corey:
I like it.
Dave:
Well, he does. He's got YouTube friends in the shooting world.
Tanner:
That's right.
Dave:
YouTube for YouTube.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
I align with that, though, because if you hang out with, I'm not going to say lesser, but you hang out with the same old ones and maybe they're like, "You don't need to go do that. Just sit here and drink beer with us or whatever." They just drag you down.
Tanner:
So as you've grown your YouTube presence, grown your area of content creation, has it changed the people that you've hung out with?
Zach Johnson:
I mean, it's definitely ... I've met a lot of new people. It's broadened my horizons. I've learned a lot about how things are done differently but yet within agriculture. But day to day, week to week, on the weekends, I'm still hanging out with the same people that I was before I started the channel. So I've got the same friends back home, but I have new people that I now keep in touch with, too, and new friends that have come along with it.
Tanner:
I think that's the fun part of having a platform, of having a podcast, is the people that you can correspond with. All the corresponding I do with them is sending TikToks back and forth.
Zach Johnson:
Well, that's fun, too.
Corey:
That is fun.
Tanner:
It is. It is, but I feel like that's a level of personality exchange. Maybe if time suck, right?
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
But it's ...
Corey:
A little bit.
Tanner:
... time that you enjoy.
Corey:
Yeah. That's your TV time.
Tanner:
That's my TV time.
Corey:
So the next one I'll pick because it's the shortest one on here, and I can't read, Tom Stanton from Redstar said, "Don't be afraid to move and don't be afraid to try something new." For me, personally, sometimes I don't want to do that thing that makes me uncomfortable, but I've gotten to the point of realizing, when I become uncomfortable and get through it, it's so much better for me professionally, personally, mentally. Do you had to have issues or had issues of pushed through something you don't want to do?
Tanner:
He's sitting here right now.
Zach Johnson:
I have a YouTube channel.
Corey:
He's sitting here right here. He did not want to ... His contract obligates him to be here. I'm here so I don't get fined.
Zach Johnson:
Mostly just talking to you guys. Just starting a YouTube channel in and of itself was an idea that I had for three years before I actually took the leap and did it.
Corey:
Right.
Zach Johnson:
And I wish I had done it three years before that when I had thought of it.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
So ... Yeah. I mean, don't be afraid to go outside your comfort zone and don't be afraid of what other people are going to think because it doesn't matter. It's not them.
Corey:
No, not their life.
Tanner:
That's hard. It's hard to not worry about what other people think.
Zach Johnson:
It is, very. Yeah.
Corey:
But once you can get out of that mindset, it's freeing. Yeah.
Tanner:
Yeah. I can't remember who it was that said you have to ... Oh, it was just today with Emily, you have to be comfortable with who you are before you can become something for someone else. You have to understand what you got going on for yourself, what your priorities are going to be, what your desires are.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
That was just an interesting one coming from Emily.
Dave:
I think you guys need to be like the yes man. Have you seen that show? Jim Carey. Where he's got to say yes all the time.
Tanner:
Oh, the movie, yes.
Corey:
Yeah. Liar Liar.
Dave:
Liar Liar.
Corey:
Yeah.
Dave:
No, is it Liar Liar? I don't know what it is, but, yes, he has to say yes to everything. That was like when you asked me to do a podcast, it's like, "Whatever, let's just do it. Yes, I'm in." I wouldn't be here today if we didn't, right? I told you about my story when I was in Vegas. Yeah, just say yes. You might end up somewhere really cool.
Tanner:
Or have a good story.
Dave:
Or have a good story.
Tanner:
I came across a good story in the restroom about 20 minutes ago.
Zach Johnson:
A good story in the restroom.
Corey:
Yeah, there's a good line in there. It's like the women's restroom, I think.
Tanner:
It's a good story.
Zach Johnson:
Is this a story you can tell here right now in this booth?
Tanner:
It is, it is. It's going to be a public service announcement. There are no paper towels left in the bathrooms.
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
Okay. Out of paper towels. Didn't know that. So, yes, finished doing what I was doing, went and washed my hands, and went to the paper towel dispenser and there was nothing there. So I actually went back and washed my hands again because I just touched the paper towel dispenser. As I'm walking out, the guy goes, "Oh, there must be no paper towels." I'm doing this with my hands. If you can't see this, you should go to YouTube and watch.
And his words were, "Yeah, I'm not going to wash mine. I know where I have all been, but I don't know what all has been in here." And I'd pause for a moment. I stopped outside that door and I went, "What? What does that even mean?" I know where all I have been, but I don't know what has all been in here.
Corey:
In the bathroom?
Tanner:
In the bathroom.
Corey:
I'd say everything's been in there.
Tanner:
Right. That doesn't mean don't wash your hands.
Dave:
I think it means just don't piss on your hands and you're good. It's that simple.
Tanner:
You still go wash your hands. So I want to find him.
Dave:
All right. Fair enough.
Tanner:
We're going to have to find him. He had a red hat on.
Zach Johnson:
That narrows it down.
Dave:
That narrows it down. Carhartt logo maybe [inaudible 00:23:15].
Tanner:
That's right. Yes. Carhartt logo, red hat.
Dave:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Boots, pair of jeans.
Corey:
Got one, Dave?
Dave:
Sure. So Royce John, singer, songwriter, said, "Don't trust everything they say." I'm guessing as you grew YouTube, you were like cautious like, who do I trust, where do I go? Consider what they say and listen, but make your own decisions.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. I mean, I would agree with that for everything in life.
Tanner:
Yeah, what about on the farm? Because the farm grew as your YouTube grew, right?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a farm's a business like any other business. So you want to keep moving forward and you want to grow, but, yeah, you got to make your own decisions for yourself, and just because the neighbor does something one way doesn't mean you have to do it that same way. If you don't, it may open you up to criticism, which goes back to what we were just talking about.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
It doesn't matter. It's not his farm, it's yours.
Corey:
I think that's been the best thing that I've gotten from social media is you're in this little bubble growing up that you think it has to be done the way your grandpa did it or the neighbor does it, and then you get on this Twitter or Facebook or TikTok and realize you got a guy over in Illinois or Minnesota or whatever that's doing it differently and, hey, it works for them.
Zach Johnson:
Right.
Corey:
I didn't know you could do it that way.
Zach Johnson:
Yep.
Corey:
It's a resource. I love it. This guy grows mint.
Tanner:
So do you have any-
Zach Johnson:
Carries it around in his pocket [inaudible 00:24:37].
Corey:
I didn't even know there was mint. Yeah.
Tanner:
So do you have any fun projects on the farm that you're going to be taking on next year or two?
Zach Johnson:
Well, we took most of our projects on over the last year after the storm came through. So we ended up building ... I had a new shed built last fall, finally got put up the week of Thanksgiving. Then we had a new bin built to replace the one we lost here earlier this summer. We're still working on that. The bin and the floor are there, but we can't get grain in or out of it yet. So as of right now, it's just a big tin can.
Corey:
How do you plan to get grain in it?
Zach Johnson:
Well, they're hopefully going to come out and finish that so that we can, otherwise we can't.
Corey:
Yeah, it's not a leg or an auger.
Zach Johnson:
Oh, as far as that goes, they got a pipe and air system into it.
Corey:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
So it'll be an air system and then we're going to have a double run at the top also.
Corey:
Double run.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
So you haven't used the air system yet?
Zach Johnson:
Well, the air system we've had for a while, but not into that bin.
Corey:
Okay.
Zach Johnson:
So there's nothing plumbed into that bin.
Corey:
So I got myself a Sukup air system as well. I wanted the leg, couldn't afford it. And so ... Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Even with the podcast?
Corey:
Yeah. You know what? A leg ... Just not even the leg. The structure for the leg.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
Have you ever priced that?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, it is. It is.
Corey:
It's almost as much as one of these tractors.
Tanner:
Yeah. Just to be 200 foot in the air, 150 feet in the air?
Corey:
120, 130, something like that. And then just things you don't think about, how much has to go underground when you go that tall, and if you add stairs to it, you have to get engineering involved because there's wind shear because we get 130 mile an hour derecho winds once in a while.
Zach Johnson:
Once in a while.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
If you take what Tony Latcham said, he says, "Don't stress. Don't worry about it." Just put the leg up.
Dave:
Just put the leg up.
Tanner:
Just put the leg up.
Dave:
Pull the trigger.
Tanner:
Oh, he said more words. He said, "Enjoy your time. Life is too short. It passes by in the blink of an eye."
Zach Johnson:
It makes more sense when you read the whole quote.
Tanner:
Yes, it does. That was just a really poor attempt at the joke.
Dave:
As part of any media, yeah, you only took [inaudible 00:26:35].
Tanner:
That's right, just the headline. That's all.
Dave:
You did.
Tanner:
Don't stress about it. Don't worry about it. Take your time. Enjoy it. And that's hard. We just ... We're having that conversation about our time here at Farm Progress Show today. We are busy.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
Everyone's busy.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
Everyone says that. We got to find a way to not say that. How do we say that?
Speaker 7:
Hey, farmers, transform your planting season and get the advantage when you use a seed tender from Meridian Manufacturing. The combination of efficiency, ease of use, and dependability. Meridian's bulk seed tenders and box seed tenders redefine how you sow the seeds of success. Meridian seed tenders are your planting partner engineered for ease of use and design for dependability. Visit your local Meridian dealer or dive into the details at meridianmfg.com. The Meridian advantage helping you improve your planting game today.
Dave:
When somebody asks you, "How's it been?", you're just like, "I'm busy."
Corey:
Right, right.
Tanner:
It's been busy. I've been [inaudible 00:27:35].
Corey:
Everyone's busy.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
So what do we say?
Dave:
I try and tell them what you're busy with.
Tanner:
I've been good busy. Oh. We don't have an answer for this.
Corey:
No.
Zach Johnson:
I always just go with living the dream.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
That's fair.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Somebody else's dream maybe, but [inaudible 00:27:50].
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, that's what I followed up with. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know whose dream it is, but I'm living it.
Tanner:
Yeah. Hopefully, they're happy with the way it ends.
Dave:
[inaudible 00:27:56] old boys said better than I deserve.
Corey:
Better than I deserve. I like that one.
Tanner:
A lot of cattle guys say that.
Dave:
Yep.
Tanner:
If I was any better, I'd have to be something.
Dave:
Yep. Busier than a one-armed paper hanger.
Zach Johnson:
A one-armed what?
Dave:
Paper hanger.
Tanner:
Paper.
Dave:
Paper hanger [inaudible 00:28:10] paper.
Zach Johnson:
I never had that one.
Dave:
Oh, man. There's all these good quotes from ... Got to go to coffee with the old boys.
Tanner:
That's pretty good.
Corey:
I'll get to the next one. Elaine Froese. We've had her on three or four times talking about farm transitions and all that kind of stuff. She says, "Be aware of what your strengths are, know what you're good at, and what you should be valued at. Have family meetings because you can't assume everyone wants and feels the same as you."
Are we getting applause?
Zach Johnson:
That's what I wondered.
Tanner:
Elaine was.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, Elaine was.
Corey:
Yeah. The family meetings is pretty big. We started doing that after she did. Do you guys try to sit down and have the family meetings, or?
Zach Johnson:
It just doesn't happen. We're too busy.
Corey:
Too busy.
Dave:
Do you have safety meetings?
Corey:
Just you and the dog?
Zach Johnson:
No. Yeah, me and the dog have lots of meetings.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Yeah. What about the second part of that? Do you know what you're good at?
Zach Johnson:
Oh, I mean, I think so. It's pretty hard to be self-aware of everything, right? I think everybody has a sense of what their strengths and weaknesses are, if you're honest with yourself.
Tanner:
Yeah. So do you try to do more of what you're good at and let others do the pieces that maybe you could work on?
Zach Johnson:
I've gotten to be more that way. Yeah. You know what?
Tanner:
I concur.
Zach Johnson:
Used to be a little too proud. If I wasn't good at something, I was going to figure it out anyway and now it's the opposite. No, I'll just go do what I'm good at.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Right.
Corey:
I think that's what took our podcast to the next level was it's been Tanner's baby, there's no hiding that, and he edited everything and did most of the work. Still does a lot of the work, but when he could finally give up control of the things that was causing him the most stress and he could just focus on what he's good at. I mean, we just jumped tenfold.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
It's crazy.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. And it took stress away.
Corey:
Oh.
Zach Johnson:
So it improved what you were trying to do already.
Tanner:
Yeah, made it more fun.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
It's so much more pleasant to be around. But it's still not great.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, I was going to say, this is as good as it gets here.
Corey:
Yeah, way better.
Tanner:
Man.
Dave:
Yep.
Tanner:
This is rough.
Corey:
We're still a banker.
Tanner:
We still have-
Corey:
Hasn't improved that.
Tanner:
We still have to hang up with him tomorrow.
Dave:
I know, right? Yeah.
Tanner:
And drive back with him.
Dave:
Well, I'll go with Tanner's quote. Go do it. You're never going to be ready. I like this. People say, "When are you going to have kids?" As soon as you get married. You can't have kids until you get married, but, boy, golly, as soon as you get married, everybody asks you, "When are you having kids? When are you going to have kids?" Just go do it.
Tanner:
Just go do it.
Dave:
You're never ready. You are never ready was the point of that.
Tanner:
What ... And I will say from the banking side of things, the conversations about those that sit in my office and do some budget preparation. And there is, there's conversations around, well, we'll never be able to afford a family. It always figures itself out. Life adjusts, your way of living adjusts, but the damnedest thing about the fact that I said that is I don't do this.
I do. I still need to go back and listen to myself because there's times to where we've got ideas and we don't just go do it.
Corey:
That's true. We get to the point of almost doing it a lot so that it [inaudible 00:31:11]. Whatever happened to that? Yeah.
Dave:
What happened to that idea? Well, we did. Yep.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
What happened?
Corey:
Well, I think we were self-aware enough, though, in those situations that we knew we couldn't yet do it quality. Yeah, it's not that it's not going to happen, but we know when-
Zach Johnson:
You're too busy.
Corey:
We know when we need to pull the trigger.
Dave:
Listen, he said he would've started three years earlier.
Corey:
I know it.
Tanner:
Right. And learn as you go.
Zach Johnson:
I just wasn't ready.
Dave:
Just wasn't ready.
Corey:
So we need to take our own advice and just hire help [inaudible 00:31:40].
Dave:
You're never fully ready.
Tanner:
Yeah. We're going to talk to Zach about hiring him when we get done with this.
Dave:
Here we go.
So what would it take ... Look at the time. Look at the time.
Corey:
You don't want to know.
Tanner:
Well, that's the fun part that I enjoy about portions of our audience. So we have a unique show structure that is supposed to be entertaining and educational. We try to merge those two together. Sometimes it doesn't always happen, right? It just becomes educational.
Dave:
Remember the question was, what would you tell yourself at 18? You didn't listen to yourself at 18. You still don't know.
Tanner:
I know.
Dave:
So you probably-
Tanner:
It makes this tough.
Dave:
Some of these are more specific like Corey's. Be more specific of 18, but it's not just like feel good, be good.
Tanner:
So Nick Tsiolis. I said that, right?
Corey:
Is that how you say it? Yeah.
Tanner:
I don't know. I assume it is. Nick Tsiolis, Farmer's Keeper, if anybody follows him on Snapchat. He said, "Be a sponge. Absorb and learn as many questions as you can. You have the energy and the time and less commitments. You can really throw yourself into learning your craft. Totally immerse yourself in learning." I mean, it's a really long one.
Corey:
It is.
Tanner:
Who do I want to be, not what do I want to be. Look at people further along in life that are more successful and have more experience. So, yeah, kind of interesting there is a lot of our attentive audience is doing that. They're being a sponge. They're choosing to listen. They're choosing to watch.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
It's interesting. We've had a lot of conversations about what the future of TV is.
Zach Johnson:
That's a really interesting one.
Tanner:
Does it become more millennial farmer? YouTube.
Corey:
Yeah. Well, it's already ... It's all streaming, right? It's all Netflix and Hulu and whatever on-demand type of stuff versus ...
Dave:
We used to have to watch whatever, wait until the time when it came on.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. We had Channel 7, 10, and 42.
Dave:
You couldn't record it. You couldn't wait for it. You had to-
Corey:
Do they still make a TV guide?
Zach Johnson:
I wonder that all the time. Can I find out what's going to be on at 7:00 on Tuesday?
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
That's true. I mean, there's digital.
Dave:
It's Channel 2, isn't it? Isn't Channel 2 the TV guide?
Tanner:
In the hotel rooms?
Dave:
Yes, it's, I'm pretty sure.
Corey:
I've been here for, what, three days now? I have not turned the TV on once.
Tanner:
I haven't.
Zach Johnson:
I haven't turned [inaudible 00:33:53] adult life.
Corey:
I'm not sure if it would go on, though. I got a lot of outlets that don't work in my room.
Zach Johnson:
Do you?
Dave:
Had a little bit of black on the ceiling.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Yes. But that's a good point, right? So the further into that conversation last night was that he had watched his sons consume what they wanted to consume when they wanted to consume it. And they were constantly engaged. They're constantly learning or picking something out of what they were consuming. Gone are the days of watching Cheers and Seinfeld and Mash.
Zach Johnson:
Unless you want to.
Tanner:
Well, that was my response. [inaudible 00:34:27] my wife and I will sit and do work on the podcast, laptops open, but we'll have Seinfeld on the TV. We've seen all of them, but that's what's on TV.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
How many seasons of there, Seinfeld?
Tanner:
19, I thought.
Corey:
Oh shit. My wife watches Friends like that. She's seen every episode 10 times.
Zach Johnson:
Do you get sick of that?
Corey:
Yes.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, I get sick of that one, too.
Corey:
Yeah. Yeah.
Tanner:
What else does your wife watch?
Zach Johnson:
A lot of junk. A lot of stuff that I can't stand to sit and watch.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
Probably Larson Farms.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah [inaudible 00:34:57].
I like documentaries. Like a good one-hour documentary because I can't stay awake any longer than that. So give me a one-hour documentary.
Tanner:
Yeah. I think Corey just came up with a neat TikTok for you to do is you need to have your wife watching Larson Farms and you walk in on her and she's like, "Oh, crap," she shuts her laptop really fast.
Zach Johnson:
It's nothing.
Tanner:
It's nothing, it's nothing, I swear.
Corey:
Paying taxes.
Dave:
[inaudible 00:35:26] paying taxes.
Tanner:
State Farm [inaudible 00:35:30]. Jake from State Farm. I think you could do it.
Zach Johnson:
I think I could.
Corey:
That would be good.
Zach Johnson:
It seems like it would take some editing skills, though, and I don't have that figured out [inaudible 00:35:41].
Tanner:
See.
Corey:
She'd have to edit it.
Zach Johnson:
She would've to edit it.
Tanner:
That would be dangerous. Yes.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
I'm going to go with mine. I'm going to pick my own. So going back to 18, I would've told myself to buy land however you can. I don't know if I would say that now, but back when I was 18, land was ... Oh, gosh, I'm going to date myself here, but it was like three, four grand an acre.
Tanner:
Man, you are old.
Corey:
And a sale just in our area, sold for 14, 275 this morning.
Tanner:
275. Did you hear that? They cut it all the way down to 25s.
Corey:
Dave doesn't do that.
Tanner:
No?
Corey:
No.
Tanner:
If you can bid 25, you can bid 50.
Dave:
Corey was in the crowd just [inaudible 00:36:21].
Corey:
No. I had no cell service-
Dave:
Half quarter.
Corey:
I couldn't get cell service. I didn't even see the auction. We're busy.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
See, busy.
Zach Johnson:
Too busy to buy land.
Tanner:
So would you have taken Corey's advice? If you had the wherewithal, looking back on it, would you have bought more land? Would you have bought more equipment? Would you have bought more businesses outside of ag?
Zach Johnson:
Well, that felt like three questions.
Tanner:
It was.
Zach Johnson:
So to answer the first one, would I have bought more land? Probably not because there's no more land that's been up for sale around us. It just doesn't move. It's locked down tight. Land does not move around us. More outside businesses, I mean, just really wouldn't have been an option until recently. There just wasn't really an opportunity for that.
Tanner:
Because we get a lot of conversations around diversifying and that diversification word goes from, we're going to do corn, soybeans, and have cattle.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Or we're going to have corn soybeans in a contract, either a poultry barn or a hog barn to diversify income sources. And then we got way deeper, and I can't remember his ... Dale, Mike. I can't remember the name of the guest that was talking about outside investing, crowdsource investing into apartment buildings and real estate.
Corey:
Oh, yeah.
Tanner:
And-
Zach Johnson:
I listened to that one while I was blowing snow.
Tanner:
Wasn't that interesting?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, it was.
Tanner:
That there's groups in agriculture pooling their money to buy investments outside of ag.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
To generate cashflow.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Some people are corn soybeans, a YouTube channel, and a shooting partner.
Tanner:
That's right.
Corey:
I don't know if you can be more diversified than that. It's all about mitigating risk.
Zach Johnson:
Oh, you could. I got some ideas.
Dave:
I got some ideas.
Corey:
Okay.
Dave:
I'll go with Jackie Wilson. Saw her this morning. Flying Diamond Beef says that life will have challenges. Keep a positive attitude, think about the big picture, and do things for others. So a little bit of giving back. And I think the positive attitude is the main portion of that whole deal is there's a whole lot of negativity ... Well, you're on Twitter, so-
Corey:
Yeah.
Dave:
Yeah. You get the drift. Keep a positive attitude.
Corey:
I'm on X.
Dave:
You're on X.
Tanner:
What is that? Zach, what do you do now? Instead of tweeting, what is it?
Zach Johnson:
I don't know. Yeah. Do you X? You cross out.
Tanner:
Do you cross up? What is it?
Corey:
I don't know.
Zach Johnson:
I don't even know ... Why did he do that? What's the idea behind it?
Corey:
Because we're talking about it right now probably.
Dave:
Because you leave your mark.
Zach Johnson:
Oh, that's a good answer.
Tanner:
You leave your mark.
Dave:
Yeah, X marks the spot. Leave your mark.
Tanner:
I just figured he was young and bought up a web domain, had bought x.com thinking it was funny, and finally had an excuse to put it to use.
Dave:
He probably did.
Zach Johnson:
Is that what it is? You can go to x.com and that's Twitter?
Dave:
Yeah.
Corey:
Do you think he's got every other letter of the alphabet?
Tanner:
I don't know.
Corey:
Dave, get on it right now.
Dave:
I don't know [inaudible 00:39:12]. Go, daddy.
Tanner:
We're going to start renaming companies to letters.
Corey:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Dave:
Well, when you're typing it in, it is easier to remember and spell.
Tanner:
I don't like that it looks like the TikTok app.
Corey:
Yeah. Black.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Corey:
Same color scheme.
Zach Johnson:
It's right next to TikTok on my phone. Now that you say that.
Dave:
If the government outlaws TikTok, then he's got old Vine that used to be Twitter and maybe he wanted it to look like TikTok. He's just all strategy. I bet.
Corey:
I do miss Vine. Did you get on Vine?
Zach Johnson:
No, I never was.
Corey:
Yeah. Just YouTube and MySpace.
Dave:
Just MySpace. I was waiting for MySpace.
Zach Johnson:
ICQ.
Tanner:
What's that? I think you said that the last time we had a conversation. You and Randy [inaudible 00:39:52]. You and Randy were talking about that.
Dave:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
You guys don't know what that is?
Tanner:
No.
Corey:
No.
Zach Johnson:
Well, if we talked about it last time, then I'll skip it.
Corey:
What is Randy up to? I haven't seen him for a while.
Zach Johnson:
He's working.
Corey:
Yeah. He's busy.
Zach Johnson:
He's busy. Yeah.
Tanner:
Jason Cope said to understand that perseverance is an important factor. Stay focused so you can achieve and accomplish. Minimize the background noise. We had to do that with our mics earlier today.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Was to get rid of some of those high-pitch whining. Just make sure everybody could stay focused on what we're doing. Do it in a way, though, that is good for yourself, but also good for others. That ties into what Jackie was saying about taking care of others. We had an interview with Gavin Spoor and Ethan Clarke. And Gavin and Ethan both framed up that you have to be aware in your community that everybody's watching. And that doesn't mean, oh, they're trying to spy on you or keep an eye on you. They're watching for you to do good things because that makes them feel good about you doing good things, which potentially allows you for new opportunities.
Speaker 8:
Spraying crops is one of the most demanding jobs on your farm. It's time sensitive. It requires precision. It needs RightSpot, Ag Leader's latest entrusted application technology. RightSpot's nozzle-by-nozzle control allows you to maximize the effectiveness of your inputs with the right droplet size coverage area to give your crop what it needs while minimizing wasted product and time. Level up your spraying operation, Ag Leader it. Contact your local Ag Leader dealer or visit agleader.com for more information.
Dave:
I got a question on that. So everybody's watching, right? I'll ask you this, Zach. I work out with a gal, she's a principal, and she says, "Dave ...
Tanner:
And she watches you?
Dave:
... I always have to be the principal no matter where I'm at." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, but there's times when you're not the principal. You're mom, you're whatever. You're go to the game. You're a tailgate person." Said, "Nope, I have to be the principal all the time." But you're a guy that gets watched a lot. Do you feel like you have to be on point all the time or do you finally just say, "You know what? I don't even care."
Zach Johnson:
I'm going to say in my case ... So in the case of the principal, I can see that, right? I understand that. I get that. Everywhere she goes, if she wants to sit down and have a beer, there's another family or the family of a kid over there watching the principal have a beer or whatever, right?
Dave:
Yep. Don't pick that job.
Zach Johnson:
Right.
Dave:
Got it.
Tanner:
No more principals.
Zach Johnson:
That does seem like something you just can't escape from.
Dave:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Until you leave your community.
Dave:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Right? For me, with what I've done, I've never been anything different than myself. So I don't feel like I ever have to worry about that. That doesn't seem like a thing to me. I don't feel trapped in having to be the millennial farmer because the millennial farmer is me.
Dave:
Got it. Very good.
Corey:
How sad is that, that she feels that way and that's her career that's supposed to be a 40-hour-a-week job and it's her whole life?
Dave:
That's what I thought.
Corey:
That's not worth having.
Dave:
She's like, "I would have to go to Germany or somewhere where no one knew me to" ... I don't know what she wants to do. I'm just saying the fact that you have to be on point principal all the time, but I guess it'd be like being the president. You're always watched.
Tanner:
Did you just hear what you said? Aren't farmers on all the time?
Zach Johnson:
Yes, but it's probably more because we love to do it. And if we don't want to be on, go to the lake.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
Right? There's not ... I mean, it goes back again to where if you're going to judge me for being a farmer and enjoying some time off, then go ahead and judge me.
Dave:
Well, and relatable is what farmers like. I mean, that's exactly.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
I'm guessing she didn't grow up playing principal.
Tanner:
How do you do that?
Corey:
I don't know.
Tanner:
You'd line up a bunch of stuffed animals as teachers. Yeah.
Corey:
You boss people around and send them in detention.
Tanner:
You need to use your work hours better.
Corey:
You need to call me doctor. You're not a doctor.
Tanner:
You're not a doctor.
Dave:
Doctor, doctor, doctor.
Corey:
You have a doctorate.
Tanner:
Well, this goes into what Veren said, which another ... What is he? He's the most attractive short man. No.
Dave:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Fat guy.
Corey:
That's what he calls himself.
Tanner:
He called himself the most attractive fat guy.
Corey:
In agriculture.
Tanner:
In agriculture.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Keep taking chances. Don't worry about others' perception of you. Do your own thing and go for it. That's hard.
Corey:
And he's done a lot of stuff and gone for a lot of stuff.
Tanner:
Yes.
Corey:
Wrapping bales and products and all that stuff. That was a good one.
Dave:
Is there a farmer adage to Michael Jordan's you miss 100% of the shots you don't take? Should we make one?
Zach Johnson:
It seems like maybe you've already made one.
Dave:
I haven't. I haven't. I'm asking right now, hot on the spot, do we have anything?
Tanner:
Dave, just go do it.
Corey:
You don't grow any seed that you don't plant.
Dave:
I like that.
Corey:
There you go.
Dave:
You re-put yourself. Maybe that was the ... Yeah.
Tanner:
It was already there.
Zach Johnson:
It was already there.
Dave:
It wasn't, it so wasn't.
Corey:
You think that's what the guys-
Zach Johnson:
You're the first one to say that.
Tanner:
That's great. We should start saying that. Yeah.
Corey:
That's probably what they're saying when they're going across. They're the guys that are out there two weeks too early and the soil's 30 degrees and it's like, "If I don't plant it, it ain't going to grow."
Tanner:
It ain't going to grow. Don't plant it.
Well, the last one we have on this list, except for Dave's, is Jacqueline Loeffler, not Jackie. We learned that.
Corey:
Yep.
Tanner:
Jacqueline. No matter how you grew up in life, no one can take away your education. But I would change now, in her opinion, the word education to experience. If you can figure out that the sky is the limit, you're going to go far. There's no limit to success. If you have that mentality, you have success already. Her episode was the last recap episode of what does success look like to you? So she sat in your role, Zach, and gave that answer. And I don't think she's wrong. I got more out of the experiences since college than I ever did in the education that I got while I was there, but I wouldn't trade having gone to college for something else.
Corey:
I think you go to college to learn how to learn and deal with other people sometimes, but then I also learned that you don't have to go to college.
Dave:
See, I think you go to college for ... I want to hire people that went to college. Here's why. Because they can complete a goal. So they set a goal, they finished it. I don't even care if it's basket weaving. You set a goal and you finished it. The second thing is you can put up with somebody's bull crap. What I mean by that is I guarantee during your time at college, there was a class that you didn't want to go to or an assignment that you didn't want to do. Now, I'm the employer or a job that I would like you to go do that you're going to do it because you want to complete the goal. I like that.
I like the fact that you want to do it. I don't even care what your degree is, but it tells me a couple things about you that you can complete a goal. You can set a goal and you can put up with a little BS.
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
I don't know how he's this philosophical at the end of day two at Farm Progress.
Dave:
I tell you what, got all the good stuff. Go back to when I was 18, what I would tell myself, don't be in such a hurry to grow up because I wanted to do nothing but work and didn't want to go to college and just wanted to get right into it, and there is some cool experiences and some relationships I probably would've made at college, but I was in a hurry to grow up. So I would tell myself, be patient.
Corey:
Did you go to college?
Zach Johnson:
I went to tech school.
Dave:
Same here.
Zach Johnson:
Yep.
Corey:
There you go.
Tanner:
Tech school for what?
Zach Johnson:
High-performance engine building.
Tanner:
Oh, that's right.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, I went to school to learn how to build race car engines.
Tanner:
How has racing been?
Zach Johnson:
It's been a decent year, decent summer.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
We've got a good car right now, so we got a few big shows left and hopefully we can make them go our way.
Corey:
Are you coming down to nationals in Boone?
Zach Johnson:
In Boone, yeah. We don't run any IMCA stuff.
Corey:
Oh.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
So I've always been curious about that comment. Well, we've got a good car right now. Is that like Corey saying, "Well, we've got a good sprayer right now?" What does that terminology mean?
Zach Johnson:
It means that any track ... For me, what I mean by that right now is any track we go to under any condition, our car is pretty balanced. We're going to be running good. We're competitive right now. There's times where you spend a year or two and you just struggle. You're just not up to par and you just fight and fight and fight and trying to find the balance of the car and find what it wants, find what you want, figure out how to set it up at different tracks. When you get the balance of the car and things are right, that's when it's good. That's when you start picking off winds.
Corey:
So it's not that you feel like you have 20 extra horse or anything like that, it's just balance.
Zach Johnson:
No, it's the balance of the car. Yeah.
Dave:
Is that like a farming deal, too, when you're combining, when you're harvesting, the right speed, your cart drivers are coming at the right? We have no downtime. Everything's set up just perfect to where we're ... Just getting enough, just unloading right. All the trucks are going just right.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. And nobody has to talk on the radio for six hours and you knock out a hundred acres, right?
Dave:
There you go.
Zach Johnson:
Everybody's got the rhythm going.
Dave:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
But then you move to the next field and you're screaming at each other on the radio while you take out end rows.
Dave:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
That's the difference.
Dave:
Corey, I'm going to hear you say that on the radio. It's like that ... My combine is just we got a good combine right now.
Corey:
Yeah, I got a good combine.
Dave:
You got a good combine.
Corey:
[inaudible 00:49:10] good about it.
Dave:
You feel good about it.
Corey:
[inaudible 00:49:12] season. Yields are okay.
Tanner:
Look at this. We're coming up with content while making content.
Dave:
Yeah.
Tanner:
I think we could.
Zach Johnson:
That's art.
Tanner:
It is. I still think Corey has always had the idea of putting on a racing suit with all the sponsor patches.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
For Farm4Profit.
Dave:
Oh geez.
Zach Johnson:
I actually ... I suggested that to Farm Focus that does all my shirts one time. I'm like, "Why don't we come up with a NASCAR shirt?" So every company I worked with is on the shirt. They thought that was a terrible idea.
Tanner:
Oh really?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
[inaudible 00:49:41] on the-
Zach Johnson:
Then the more I thought about it, I'm like, "Yeah, it's not." It might be funny, but I don't think ... That's not a hot seller.
Tanner:
It's one of those you make 10 and it's a limited edition.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Or I just wear one one day and don't say anything about it and just watch the comments.
Dave:
Just run against Tony and get for president. Put your name on it.
Zach Johnson:
That's a good idea.
Dave:
You guys could have the [inaudible 00:50:00]. We'd be the moderators. This would be great.
Tanner:
Sorry, go ahead.
Zach Johnson:
I could put in a 30-second ad at the end of it slamming Tony. It's like something he said 15 years ago.
Dave:
Yes, yes.
Corey:
When you put a new shirt out, so you came out with a farmer around to find out, right? Isn't that yours?
Zach Johnson:
Yes, yeah.
Corey:
And that just came out a couple months ago?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Corey:
How many do you sell? It's crazy, it's got to be [inaudible 00:50:21].
Zach Johnson:
It's a very wide range of from the good ones to the ones that don't sell.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
I mean, it's literally from zero to 10,000. And I think that's been a good shirt, but honestly, I haven't talked to him yet to see how that one's doing.
Corey:
Really?
Zach Johnson:
I like it. I think that's a great shirt.
Tanner:
Yeah, I think it's funny.
Corey:
It is. It's great.
Tanner:
I do think it would be funny, too, if you saw these politicians standing up and they had to wear the logos of all of their sponsors.
Zach Johnson:
Right.
Dave:
Oh, my.
Tanner:
We might start a trend that moves over into politics.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Tanner:
I think that's probably right now is the most politics we've ever talked about on this podcast.
Dave:
I think so.
Zach Johnson:
How deep do we want to get?
Tanner:
Nope. Nope. We're going to skate-
Dave:
Did you guys see that?
Corey:
My plant thing.
Tanner:
Oh, I was actually ready to segue into something away from politics and it's this fly. I think we're going to have to call this episode the fly episode. It has pestered all of us.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
So they are. You're going to have to go to YouTube and watch just to see which one of us because I almost hit you just to end it. Zach's getting it right now.
Zach Johnson:
Did you guys watch Breaking Bad?
Corey:
Yeah
Tanner:
I have.
Zach Johnson:
You remember the fly episode?
Corey:
Yes.
Tanner:
Yes.
Zach Johnson:
That was a weird one, wasn't it?
Corey:
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Tanner:
That's funny.
Corey:
There's several weird episodes on that.
Tanner:
God, yeah, I hadn't remembered that.
Zach Johnson:
None as weird as the fly episode.
Corey:
Yeah. Yep. You wrote some things down there. What do you got?
Dave:
You just say, what was your point of this? Were you having him make something?
Tanner:
No, I just was going through these. We just get to spend time with Zach, but I think he knows.
Dave:
Did you write your own? What would you tell yourself at 18?
Zach Johnson:
I did because I felt the pressure like that was probably coming, so I was rolling through that in my own head. And I wrote down ... I don't know if you were watching or not, but I wrote mine down because I wanted to put it into some words. And I wrote it before you read Jacqueline's quote here, but it would branch off of hers. But I wrote that your success shouldn't be measured by your acres, your money, or your work hours. Concentrate on quality of life and being happy.
Tanner:
Work hours. Work hours. That's tough. We all know the people that are proud of the hours that they work.
Zach Johnson:
I saw ... So I'll give Twitter or X a little credit for this, but I saw on there a couple of months ago, somebody mentioned something about farming doesn't need to be a competition of who can work themselves to death the quickest.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
And that's true. Nobody else does that, do they? Other industries wouldn't take pride in that.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
The electrician that wired the new studio doesn't work weekends unless there's an emergency.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
And I said, "Well, how do you deal with that?" Because he owns his own business. He's, "Well, it took a long time for me to discipline myself and now I don't answer and my voicemail says that if this is in case of an emergency, you need to call another number," which is just a Google number that comes back to his phone, but he knows that that's-
Zach Johnson:
That's an emergency coming through.
Tanner:
Yeah.
Dave:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Sometimes I still answer those and it's people that their outlet doesn't work and the TV won't turn on. And I can classify that as a nonemergency, but sometimes it's a branch fell on a line and we really have an emergency.
Zach Johnson:
Yep.
Tanner:
But otherwise, it was neat because you think of farmers as business owners. That's what we've preached on this podcast for so long is we want you to farm more like a business, be more profitable. And other business owners take weekends off.
Zach Johnson:
Right.
Dave:
See, that almost ties into ... What he said almost ties into one of the other questions we asked. How do you define success?
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Dave:
And I think of that, your work hours, as you said, it's not a race to who can work the most. Sometimes it is because we've been somewhat brainwashed that success is money. And so that takes more work hours and more work hours to make that happen. Yeah. Success might not be that for everybody.
Zach Johnson:
Right. Yeah, it's flexible, right? Success for all you guys is probably different than what I would view it as for me.
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
You're right.
Dave:
I'm good with the big score in golf, but Tanner's not. Success is just making it to the 18th hole.
Corey:
Yeah.
Dave:
And I still have balls in my bag.
Corey:
Right.
Tanner:
Hey, sometimes that's how I gauge around a golf is how many balls I found compared to what I lost, yeah. But you know I found those looking for one that I had lost.
Corey:
Have you played the golf game where each beer you drink, you get one less point?
Tanner:
I have not.
Corey:
I think I'd be a little more successful with that.
Dave:
You think you'd be more successful.
Tanner:
If I could golf like that. I might rival Tanner.
Dave:
You might.
Corey:
Yeah.
Zach Johnson:
It's worth trying.
Corey:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Don't try anything once.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
Right. So what's on the horizon for Zach? What's coming up? What's new? Any fun projects you're working on?
Zach Johnson:
Boy, specifically right now, I mean, nothing's jumping out to me as far as being totally out of the box. We're getting ready for harvest and-
Tanner:
Yep. Time to start filming harvest content.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. So that's always busy. It's weird. Harvest is, obviously, our busiest time on the farm. And then we've doubled down on making it the busiest time because that's when we produce the most content on the YouTube channel as well.
Corey:
Yep.
Dave:
New cameras this year or anything? New equipment.
Zach Johnson:
I've always got new cameras because I destroy them.
Dave:
Oh, fair enough.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Tanner:
It's an expensive hobby, isn't it?
Zach Johnson:
It is, yeah. Yeah, I have a drawer full of cameras that ... I mean, they're junk, I should just throw them away, but it's like you don't want to, right?
Corey:
Yep.
Zach Johnson:
Paid money for it. But-
Corey:
You got a new sprayer, didn't you?
Zach Johnson:
We did. We got-
Corey:
With the John Deere technology on it?
Zach Johnson:
Yep. We got a 410R and put a bunch of upgrades on that and it was a big upgrade from our 4830.
Corey:
So you're doing the See & Spray stuff?
Zach Johnson:
We are not doing the See & Spray just because when it came down to looking at how much residual chemical we're always putting on, and then we bought a used sprayer, so you can't really ... It was tough to do that because you can't get two different tanks on there is where you have a residual tank and the See & Spray tank.
Corey:
Got you.
Zach Johnson:
But I've seen that technology work and it's crazy. I mean, the places where they need and can benefit from that is going to be a game changer.
Corey:
Yep. Yep. Do you get the Fast Fill System?
Zach Johnson:
I don't know.
Corey:
You don't know?
Zach Johnson:
No. It feels really quickly.
Corey:
Okay. Well, because I should know. So that Sage-
Tanner:
I thought you knew.
Corey:
Yeah, Sage said, "Hey, we've got millennial farmer sprayer over here," a mile from my place. They upfit for Deere.
Zach Johnson:
Okay. Yeah.
Corey:
And they said they were putting it on there.
Zach Johnson:
It probably doesn't.
Tanner:
So you've got fast food.
Zach Johnson:
It'll take it as fast as we can push it.
Tanner:
Did you also find the present Corey left for you in the camp?
Corey:
Did not. It would've been good, though.
Tanner:
[inaudible 00:56:50].
Corey:
It would've been good, though.
Tanner:
Yes.
Zach Johnson:
I did ... When I bought the first 780 we had, there was a note in the refrigerator from just some kids in that town that had heard I had bought that combine.
Corey:
Okay.
Zach Johnson:
And they wrote a note, gave it to their sales guy buddy, and he put it in the fridge in the combine.
Tanner:
That's funny.
Corey:
That's cool.
Zach Johnson:
It was pretty funny.
Tanner:
That's dedication.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, it was. Yeah.
Tanner:
Absolutely. That's good. Well, I would say this has been a fun conversation, but that wasn't going to be your challenge.
Corey:
No.
Tanner:
You did extra credit because we've got a new question.
Zach Johnson:
You changed it up on me.
Tanner:
We do because we're going to create another episode summarizing all of the answers from Farm Progress.
Dave:
Home page, blank sheet.
Tanner:
That's pretty easy.
Corey:
It is easy.
Dave:
It is.
Tanner:
What do you enjoy most about being a farmer or farming?
Zach Johnson:
I got to pick one thing?
Tanner:
No, it could just be the answer of what you enjoy most. It's been fun to get some of these answers, guys, that we've had specific to the interactions with other people or specifically to I love driving tractor.
Corey:
Yep.
Tanner:
And then some get really broad and really insightful. So no pressure.
Zach Johnson:
I would say if I'm going to pick one thing, because I'm going to, to keep it a little shorter, I would say raising my kids on the farm is probably the most rewarding. And raising them, being able to see the cycle of life and what it takes to work hard and watch a crop come to fruition every year, and if you've got livestock, I have to imagine it's that much more rewarding and there's that much more experience involved with it. So that's what I would say would be raising my kids on the farm.
Tanner:
Yeah. Would you agree, Dave?
Dave:
Yeah, next gen. I was thinking even in my case, because my wife's the farmer, so I enjoy watching her enjoy it.
Corey:
You just enjoy watching her, period.
Dave:
Yes.
Zach Johnson:
As you should.
Tanner:
We had a Dallas State Fair in the ag education building where they have sows giving birth to piglets and cows having calves and chickens laying eggs, but this year, they had a John Deere cab that kids could climb in and take a picture. I don't know how you could take pictures through the windshield for all the fingerprints and hand prints on it, but my daughter saw the line and we asked, we said, "You guys want to get in there and take a picture?" And she goes, "No, I'll take a picture when I'm driving one."
Zach Johnson:
There you go.
Tanner:
So just, all right, perfect.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah.
Dave:
Yep.
Tanner:
I like that answer.
Dave:
Well, cool.
Tanner:
That's good. Zach, if our listeners don't know who you are, for some reason, how do they find you?
Zach Johnson:
I'm a professional golfer. No, the best place would be YouTube. Head over to Millennial Farmer on YouTube, but it's Millennial Farmer on everything. So I've got Instagram and Facebook as well. I'm on TikTok, off and on, but I'm over there.
Tanner:
Good. Thank you.
Zach Johnson:
Yeah, thank you, guys. I really appreciate it.
Tanner:
You had a busy day and hopefully you had a little bit of fun with us.
Zach Johnson:
I did, for sure.
Tanner:
Listeners, I hope you had some fun, too. And just in case, Corey, why don't you send them out?
Corey:
Oh, I always say crack a Busch Light. You deserve it.
Speaker 9:
Are you ready to unlock the true potential of your equipment? Look no further than STEINBAUER USA. USA, USA. STEINBAUER offers cutting-edge performance upgrades that deliver more power, torque, and efficiency to your engine. Visit steinbauerusa.com today and unleash the full capabilities of your equipment. Farm smarter and stronger with STEINBAUER.
Farm4Profit, powered by STEINBAUER.