Pioneer Mindset

Episode Summary Drive through the countryside right now and you'll see a lot of clipped clean fields that are going to sit empty until planting. I started wondering if we're leaving money on the table by doing nothing with them for five or six months. That came from hearing the Barn Talk guys talk about grazing cornstalks. I think there's opportunity there, but there's a lot to think through befor...

Episode Summary John Sachse is back on the podcast this week! John is a fourth generation Kansas rancher, Army National Guard officer, resiliency coach and now a published author. His book, Built in the Dirt: The Resiliency Playbook, just released and it's written for the person whose head is barely above water trying to keep the lights on and still show up for their family. In this episode we get...

Episode Summary The farm will take every minute you have and every dollar you own. And harvest is where that phrase hits the hardest. I recorded this one on a Tuesday morning, right in the middle of harvest. We'd just started combining the night before after nearly three weeks of rain. And before I even sat down to record, I got the call about a flat tire on the trailer. That's harvest. It always...

Episode Summary Have you ever bought a farm before? Until you've actually gone through the process, it's really hard to know what to expect. We just bought some farm ground here recently and going through it firsthand taught me a lot. Some of it I wish I had known sooner. Some of it I wish I had done differently years ago. And all of it is worth sharing before you find yourself in the middle of it...

Episode Summary We're back with Zach Smith for part two of this conversation. If you missed part one, go back and listen first. There's a lot of good context in there about Zach's background, how Stock Cropper started and what it's actually like to try something nobody in your area has ever done. This week we get into where Zach is today. The Stock Cropper system has evolved and he's been deep in...

Episode Summary This week I'm bringing on a guy I've been wanting to get on ever since we crossed paths at a friend's field day. Zach Smith, known across the ag world as The Stock Cropper, is a fifth generation Iowa farmer who has spent the last decade doing things most people in his area thought were flat out crazy. If you've been thinking about trying something new, this one's for you. And if yo...

Episode Summary Is bigger better? Or does bigger just mean more risk? That question showed up on X a while back wrapped in a phrase that got a lot of pushback: the only way out of debt is to grow your way out of it. I've got thoughts on that. Strong ones. Because we lived it. In this episode I get honest about our own expansion story. Building the hoop building in 2016, doubling the cow herd, then...

Episode Summary Would your future self recommend the circles you're currently in or think you could do better? This episode came straight from a weekend in Kansas City at the Singular Agronomics dealer conference. Being in a room full of the right people who are genuinely curious, open-minded and willing to try new things was a good reminder of just how much the circles you're in shape who you bec...

Episode Summary I'm back with Doug Ferguson, Mr. Cattlemaster, for part two of this conversation. If you haven't heard part one yet, go back and listen. Doug shares his background, how sell-buy marketing works and more. This week we get into what actually keeps people from implementing sell-buy marketing after the school. We talk about the difference between being interested and being committed, a...

Episode Summary This week I'm Doug Ferguson, Mr. Cattlemaster, to the podcast! He is one of the most unique thinkers in the cattle industry and this conversation did not disappoint. Doug teaches sell-buy marketing, a strategy that flips the traditional buy-sell approach. Instead of buying cattle and hoping the market cooperates on the back end, you capture your profit on the buy and that one shift...

Episode Summary This is part two of my audio field day series. Last week we walked through the strip crop trial. This week I'm taking you through the rest of what we've been doing on our farm this year: small grains, non-GMO corn, twin row cover crops, cover crop management in front of corn and beans and our reduced nitrogen trial. As I said last episode, I'm not a researcher. I'm a farmer trying...

Episode Summary When's the last time you went to somebody else's farm and just tried to learn something? Field days are one of the most underrated things in agriculture and this episode is my version of one. Nothing fancy or formal, just me walking you through what we're actually doing on our farm this year and what we've learned along the way. Before we get into it, I share a thought that's been...

Episode Summary We took our family for a little staycation last weekend and somewhere between baiting hooks, untangling fishing lines and watching the boys get excited every time they got a bite, I started thinking about some things a little differently. Turns out fishing is basically a masterclass in business and life. And in this episode, I share eight lessons that hit me while I was out there o...

Episode Summary If you're struggling with feeling like things are constantly out of your control, it might be because your day is filled with things that are literally out of your control. For most of us, our days are stacked top to bottom with chaos, fires to put out and things that are just out of our hands. And when that's all your day is made of, it's no wonder we end up burned out, run down a...

Episode Summary Unless you change the mind, you won't change the results. The the phrase that sets the tone for this episode came straight from a cattle marketing school I attended with Doug Ferguson, Mr. Cattlemaster. I went to learn sell-buy marketing. What I didn't expect was to spend the first half of a two-day class talking about paradigms, commitment, fear of success and why most of us wish...

Episode Summary We're over halfway through the year, halfway through the growing season and right about at that point where things feel just a little less chaotic than they did a month ago. And that moment, the pocket between the busy seasons, is exactly what this episode is about. As business owners, farmers and parents, we spend a lot of time just trying to figure out where our time is best spen...

Episode Summary Last week I talked about scarcity. What it is, what it steals from you and why it hits hardest when you're already vulnerable. This week, we flip it. This episode is about what becomes possible when you shift from a never enough mindset to one that actually believes there is enough. Not by ignoring reality. Not by pretending the challenges aren't real. But by choosing to see them d...

Episode Summary The truck needs tires again. You just got done taking the sprayer to the shop. The wife wants to go on vacation. Five Target boxes showed up. And somehow it all hits at once. Those little things have a way of compounding fast. And when they do, it's easy to get sucked into a spiral that's a lot harder to climb out of than it was to fall into. In this episode, I get into the scarcit...

Episode Summary You pull up the marketing app and there it is again, corn down another six cents. Fifty cents off the highs in just a couple of weeks. That sinking feeling sets in and all the coulda shoulda woulda stories start running through your head. This episode came straight from a text I got from a client: "Corn really took a hit. It makes it a really big challenge to create new crop sales....

Episode Summary Are you treating your cost of money like every other input on your farm? Because that's the question I had to ask myself recently. We're in the middle of a land deal and I had to decide whether or not to tell our banker we were shopping around with FSA and Farm Credit for a better rate. Sounds simple but it wasn't. All the usual stories ran through my head, what if he takes it pers...

Episode Summary Coming from the son of the father who tried to get his son back to the operation, it's a tough thing to wrap your head around that if it wasn't for me, the farm would not have had to endure such hardships. But also, if it wasn't for me, the farm would not have survived. In this episode, I take you back through the full story of our operation. Where we were before I came back to the...

Episode Summary Here's a question most farmers never stop to ask: how much equipment do you actually need? If you can reduce your overhead, you're giving yourself a raise. So why do we keep signing up for the opposite? This episode is a direct challenge to one of the most deeply ingrained habits in agriculture, the automatic reinvestment of profits back into equipment. I dive into why we do it, ho...

Episode Summary I was in the sprayer the other day and a thought hit me: should farmers actually be sharing equipment? So I took the question to social media and the responses came flying in. Some people swore by it. Some said it had blown up in their faces. Others said it depends entirely on who you're doing it with. In this episode, I dive into that question head on and talk about the real econo...

Episode Summary Happy Memorial Day and what better way to honor it than by sitting down with someone who actually lived it. This week I brought on my good friend Tyler Sharp, Southwest Kansas native, former private security contractor, 22-year fire department veteran, and owner of Sharp Shooting Supply. In this episode, Tyler opens up about going overseas to Kandahar, Afghanistan as a precision ov...

Episode Summary This is part three of our series on the real stressors of the busy season. We talked about the weight of the workload. We talked about keeping the business from falling apart. Now we're getting into the one thing most farmers won't admit is suffering until it's already broken: the work and family life balance. In this episode, I get honest about the realities of trying to be a good...