Drone Distributor’s Saga: Agri Spray Blazes Ag Trails | The DroneOn Show Episode 20

[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, how's it going, folks? It's Mike with the Drone on podcast or the Drone on show. It depends how you want to look at it. Today we have an exciting episode as me and Jason sit down and have a conversation with Taylor from agrispray. Obviously, Taylor is one of the largest distributors for agricultural drones, and we just sit down and have a conversation about business growth, about future, and we get into some personal stuff. But it's going to be a good episode, so let's hop right into it as me and Jason sit down, have a talk with Taylor. Alrighty, guys, welcome back to the podcast today. I wouldn't really need to do an introduction here, but Taylor from Agri Spray Drones, thanks for coming on. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks for having me. [00:00:39] Speaker A: Alrighty. So this has no. Really, like, where we're going. No objective, right? You and I talked and you were. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Like, what's the objective? [00:00:46] Speaker A: And I was like. I was like, wait, what does that mean, Taylor? What's an objective? [00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you Google that, didn't you? [00:00:51] Speaker A: Well, you. [00:00:51] Speaker B: What is. What is the definition of objective, Mike? [00:00:54] Speaker A: I actually don't know. You told me the definition. It's like we're talking, and then I'd like to put in and be like. [00:01:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's a direction you want to take it or, you know, something you want to promote or whatever. You know, that's like. [00:01:07] Speaker A: That's what you have a. Yeah, you have a goal. [00:01:09] Speaker B: A goal out of this. There you go. A synonym for objective, right? You know what synonym means? [00:01:14] Speaker A: Cinnamon. [00:01:15] Speaker B: Cinnamon is what put a toast. [00:01:19] Speaker A: I like it. See, I like it already. So I thought that's where the word sounds the same. No, that's a rhyme. [00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, Cinnamon. [00:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah, Synonym is the same. [00:01:30] Speaker B: No, no, no. Synonym doesn't sound the same. [00:01:32] Speaker A: It's the same meaning. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Synonym means. It means the same thing. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah, see, we're already over the top of my 8th grade education. Amish voice. But that's all right. That's all right. We'll just get rolling with it. Let's start with how did you get into a spray drum? [00:01:46] Speaker B: Well, let's see. It was probably back around 2017, and I started selling ag chemical. So I was a seed dealer, sold seed. And my. It's all my wife's fault, really. We should blame it on her. But my. So we were having our first child, okay. And she was gonna take a year off of school. She taught high school. She would take a year off of school and take care of, you know, our child through his first year. And they allowed her to do that and everything. I was like, okay, I wonder if I can keep her home, right? Make more money, keep her home kind of thing. How can I do that? Because I knew, like, Brody, he has spina bifida, and so he was going to need some more care and everything like that. So if we could do that, that'd be great for him, great for the family. So. So I started selling chemical, and I just did wholesale direct to farmers. I didn't do any application service myself. And I learned a lot about that industry, that business, about the agronomics behind it, how you recommend products and everything. What I also learned is that I became the middleman between the farmer and the aerial applicator. So farmer wants fungicide put on. Most of them don't contract directly with the helicopter guys. They work with the guys who sell the chemical. Like, that was me. That became me. And the problem was, I wasn't that big. I wasn't selling 50,000 extra worth of chemicals. Chemical house, maybe five, you know, and so it was tough for me to garner their attention. [00:02:59] Speaker A: The aerial applicators. [00:02:59] Speaker B: Aerial applicators, yeah. [00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Because, like, an airplane is like, dude, I'm not showing up for 5,000 acres. [00:03:05] Speaker B: Exactly, yeah. They're like, well, we'll be in the area next week, you know, and so if we got the time, we'll come by. But some of these guys were good, you know, but it was never, like. It was never. They said, like, a definite. [00:03:15] Speaker A: You could never count. [00:03:16] Speaker B: They said Wednesday, and then sometimes it would be, you know, Saturday or whatever. So your acres would change and everything. There's a lot of legwork on my end. So I thought, well, there's got to be a better way. Is there a better way? How else do you do it? Right? So that's when drones started kind of coming online, you know, as far as, like, you could see things about them. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Who introduced you to a drone? [00:03:36] Speaker B: Or did you just, like, like a person? I don't think any, like, any one person introduced me to a drone. It was just the Internet. [00:03:42] Speaker A: It was Internet. It was Google. [00:03:43] Speaker B: I mean, I just started Googling, and I don't know what came across it. [00:03:46] Speaker A: Because I remember, like, years ago, the very first time I seen a spray drone was on, like, a news channel. [00:03:53] Speaker B: And. [00:03:53] Speaker A: And it's this little tiny tank on the bottom of. Almost looked like a helicopter. Like, and they were doing it in California over vineyards. [00:04:01] Speaker B: And I was like, that was Yamaha. [00:04:02] Speaker A: I was like, there's no way that this is going to work. [00:04:04] Speaker B: That was Yamaha. Rmax. [00:04:06] Speaker A: No way. [00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah. That maybe what the first one I saw was was Yamaha rmax. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah. When I first seen that, it was so long ago now. I mean, I'm going to say maybe 15 years ago, maybe even more than that. I was like, that'll never work to cover acres. So that's interesting. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Yamaha was doing that back in like the 80s in Japan is what I started doing that. Yeah. And we're talking like real pilots, you know, I mean that you're flying with the sticks and everything. It's just radio controlled RC helicopter. But I remember much bigger, they brought it to the U.S. but you, you can, you can't actually still, you can't get them. You have to, you have to be trained by Yamaha and everything, you know. [00:04:43] Speaker A: Wow. Do they still make them? [00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw one at the World Ag Expo out in California. [00:04:49] Speaker A: No way. I did not know that. Geez, that doesn't sound efficient. [00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah, well, compared to what we have now, you know, with these drones now. So I don't know why they still make them. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah. You see on the Internet, spray drones and you're like, I got to get myself one. [00:05:04] Speaker B: I did research, obviously did a lot of research. And I don't want to pull the trigger because I was like, these things real, you know, I can actually do, you know what I want them to do, you know. And they were small, you know, we're talking two and a half gallon. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:20] Speaker B: MG1P was one of the first ones that was kind of available in the US. [00:05:24] Speaker A: That was DJI. [00:05:25] Speaker B: That was DJI. DJ. MG1P. DJI did not actually design that drone. That was some guy, the MG Comfort from his name. And then DJI bought his, his company. Yeah. And then put it in their portfolio and started from there. So that was one of the first ones in the US and then HSE with was doing TT America. They were one of the first ones to actually really bring spray drones. Like the legislation, like the regulations and stuff, like kind of figure that out. For the heavy drones. They had a 20 liter back in maybe 2017, 2018. And then I don't know, sometime around then they were the first ones to actually get the Ford Car 7 for that unit. But it was, I mean the technology is pretty rough. Yeah, we're talking four little bitty batteries that were on there, you know, and you wouldn't, it would be for research plot is all it was for. So I talked to those guys and I talked to some other folks. Rantisa was starting up right around 2019 or so with the MG1PS different whole different business, business model, you know. So I talked to different folks in the industry, but I still don't want to pull the trigger. But I finally had a seed customer. He's a guy in the 70s with the most technically advanced farmer that I knew. You know, was into all the latest trends and everything, always willing to try something new. So I was talking to him about these spray drones. He was like, you know what, you find me one, I'll buy it. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Oh, there you go. Yeah, that's what you're in. [00:06:39] Speaker B: I can test it without even have to pay any money for it. Perfect, perfect. So it was a Foxtech, it was a Thea 140 Foxtech from China of course. And it had a generator on board, it had a little weed eater engine. [00:06:52] Speaker A: That was a hybrid. No way. [00:06:54] Speaker B: Yeah, hybrid gas engine, you know, little four little motors. It held little over two gallons. Little one liter gas tank on it screamed like a banshee. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Do you have any videos of it? [00:07:05] Speaker B: Have to look way back in the Rolodex. I still have it. [00:07:08] Speaker A: That would be. Oh yeah, have the drone. [00:07:10] Speaker B: I still have it. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Would it fly? [00:07:11] Speaker B: Oh, it would fly, but I have no reason to fly. [00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah, correct. Yeah, but it would still fly. [00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah, we had some issues with it. [00:07:17] Speaker A: You know, did it go down at all ever? [00:07:20] Speaker B: I flipped it. So what the heck happened? Something happened and we were. Half the pumps could work and they're like we gotta, you know, do the software stuff. So I plugged it into the, to the thing to you know, look at the firmware, whatever, and I did like a refresh, a reboot. But I, when I did that, it flipped the like counterclockwise clockwise, you know, rotation the motors, you know. So I booted it back up and it just looked right. [00:07:44] Speaker A: So you started with that drone spraying? [00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I mean let's not try ahead of ourselves. Yeah, trying. Well, what that did is it proved to me that okay, it's real, like it exists, like it's it. You can fly with liquid payload and spray. [00:08:00] Speaker A: Was that all done remote? [00:08:02] Speaker B: No, there was so dji, they did two things when they launched mg, they had that drone of course, but then they also had a flight controller for spray drones. The A3 flight controller, I think. So it actually had a DJI flight controller, an A3 flight controller. And I think it was a DJI remote. Like an old like look like old phantom remote. It's flip up screen and everything. Yeah, I'm pretty sure anyways, if I remember right. [00:08:23] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so yeah, it was all. It was, it was autonomous. It was pretty rough, you know, on the autonomous side. But you could map and it would, you know, spray a little. [00:08:31] Speaker A: One acre, two acres. [00:08:33] Speaker B: Well, I mean we're talking a two gallon drone. [00:08:34] Speaker A: So if you did two gallon work, you're doing one acre. [00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, we did not spray that much with it because it was just a lot of it didn't work more than it worked. [00:08:44] Speaker A: Okay. [00:08:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:44] Speaker A: Okay, so it was actually like a paperweight almost. [00:08:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it became a paperweight pretty much, yeah. [00:08:50] Speaker A: Okay, so now what? Now what are you going to figure out if that's the first drone that you got? [00:08:54] Speaker B: Second drone we got. I saw a video, YouTube video of a guy, I don't remember rice. It was a rice farmer out in California and he had guy from China come and bring an XAG P20 to his rice farm. So I was able to find this guy's, this XAG guy's contact info, got a hold of him and I got a P20. It was their 10 liter, two and a half gallon drone and we got it. And like hardware wise, comparatively to that Foxtech, like night and day difference, like blowing away with the heart. I mean it was the tank plugged in and out, had an RF reader on the tank so it knew how much volume was in the tank because it had a tank filler. The tank filler would fill the tank, had a scale on it and it would write that payload to the like the RF tag, put it in the drone. Drone would know that it had whatever 8 liters in it. Then it had a battery that clipped in and out and everything. It was like what we're used to with modern day spray drones for the most part, just much smaller. So that showed me like what straight on could be. The problem was software side. Right. Not built for the US market. It took forever to get it set up, you know, with the connecting to the RTK and the phone and this and then that, you know, but it worked and it was, it was good software really. It was just, it was too much. We knew we wouldn't be able to efficiently, you know, move from field to field and everything with it. That was my second drone. [00:10:16] Speaker A: So what's your third drone? When did you like actually apply fungicide and like get acres done for your customers? [00:10:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So that drone there, the P20 was at the end of, well, kind of, I guess middle of 2019 after spray season was when it came in. We were too late to start spraying there in 28. Not 2019 with it, but the end of 19, that's whenever DJI announced their T16, the four gallon unit, which was, you know, the successor to the mg, but total redesign. Had the tank that plugged in and out, had the battery that clipped in, had a purpose built charger to charge batteries. You know, know somewhat fast new software. Of course we got, got a hold of DJI at that point in time. You know, they were very small in, in the U.S. okay. Yeah. Got a hold of DJI, were able to become a distributor with a small commitment and got some T16s and actually took that first full year of 2020. [00:11:12] Speaker A: Figuring out, I'm going to slow this down. So you want it to be a DJI dealer right off the rip. Like you weren't necessarily getting these products to be a custom app company. [00:11:22] Speaker B: Well, what I learned pretty early on is not everyone, but a lot of the folks that, that were selling spray drones, you know, there's, there's a few DJI distributors selling DJ agriculture. [00:11:32] Speaker A: Okay, right. [00:11:33] Speaker B: And some of those, those folks that I had talked to, they did not know anything about ag. [00:11:37] Speaker A: Okay. [00:11:37] Speaker B: Yeah, the new drones. [00:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:11:39] Speaker B: But did not know anything about ag, how farmers operate or so they might. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Have been selling DJI products before the agriculture started. [00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, that, that's where that was DJI's first distributors for ag drones was like enterprise dealers. Yeah, enterprise dealers. You know, there was, there was a couple that were not enterprise dealers to start with, but some of those were enterprise dealers and it was pretty clear talking to them that they didn't know anything about ag at all. [00:12:03] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:03] Speaker B: They were, when you asked about the drone, they were just reading from the. [00:12:06] Speaker A: Like a spec sheet. [00:12:07] Speaker B: A spec sheet. [00:12:08] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And that was. Okay, well this call was worthless because I have this information already. I want to know real world feedback. [00:12:15] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:12:16] Speaker B: How does the drone actually work? What are the pros and cons? How do you use it? What do you not do with it? What can you do with it? All of that because I knew farmers, you know, you have to speak farmers language. Right. And so I knew pretty early on that if this thing works and if it can do what I think it can do, then others will want to do it as well. [00:12:36] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:36] Speaker B: And when it comes to competing against those who don't know ag. Right. I would have a pretty big leg. [00:12:41] Speaker A: Up on that first one. Was your goal to sell drones to the farmers, like so they could apply their, the chemical that you're selling them or was your goal to apply the chemical using the drones that you were selling to them? [00:12:52] Speaker B: I guess both, really. [00:12:54] Speaker A: Okay. [00:12:54] Speaker B: You know, I mean, but you didn't. [00:12:56] Speaker A: Have a clear direction at that time. Like, I'm going to build a massive distributor ship. [00:13:00] Speaker B: Like, not at all. [00:13:02] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:02] Speaker B: Not at all. Because I didn't know where the technology was going. How. I mean, I hadn't even used, you know, a T16 really, at that time. [00:13:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:10] Speaker B: But. But I. But I knew. Sorry. [00:13:12] Speaker A: No, I just find it interesting because you tell me you became a distributor for this. Like, what made you think, like, I want to be a distributor rather than just buy the equipment, go do the applicating? [00:13:24] Speaker B: Well, because I knew I'd have to support myself. Oh, okay. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:27] Speaker B: Yeah, so. [00:13:28] Speaker A: So that's what it was. It's because these guys that you were calling didn't know even how to support. [00:13:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I knew I wouldn't be able to get much support. [00:13:34] Speaker A: Okay. [00:13:35] Speaker B: It was pretty evident. It seemed pretty evident to me anyways. And so I thought, well, if I have to learn on my own anyways. Right. [00:13:40] Speaker A: There you go. [00:13:40] Speaker B: Then I might as well learn it very deeply on my own and then, you know, benefit from that. Because I knew that, yeah, we could, you know, sell these drones potentially, if they did what I thought they would do. [00:13:50] Speaker A: Yeah, to the farmers. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, to the farmers. Yeah. Sell them to the farmers. [00:13:54] Speaker A: Okay. You got a drone that starts working. How much custom app did you do yourself? [00:13:59] Speaker B: Not that much during the first. It was 2020. Was it 20? Yeah. 2020 was our first season doing that, and we hit. We ran two T16s, and I just did local for my seed customers, you know, so I probably did a couple thousand acres. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Okay. [00:14:14] Speaker B: That first year. But of course, that was. I mean, I was still doing the seed business, you know, so my time was limited. [00:14:19] Speaker A: Okay. [00:14:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Had a little baby, you know, so. [00:14:22] Speaker A: Yep, yep. So you did those 2,000 acres. You probably learned a ton, I'm sure, using actual equipment. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Learned a ton. Yeah. [00:14:30] Speaker A: And now you're bringing that into a business of selling the equipment because now you've gained knowledge of actually doing it and now you start selling it. [00:14:38] Speaker B: So through that season, I learned that, yeah, you can actually do what I wanted to do, you know, spray 100 acres a day. Right. That's kind of what I was thinking. If you can plant 100 acres a day as a farmer, then you can spray 100 acres a day coming fungicide season, and you can, you know, do your own aerial application. I have to rely on somebody else to do it for you. Get your timing, you know, to where it should be pretty accurate. Cut some Cost out as well, increase yield, have a diversity on who you work with as far as your chemical supplier, you know, all these benefits. Worked with the farmer. So I learned a lot, learned how to, how to use it, and then now I know how to use it. I can teach people how to use it now. So then there, at the end of 2020, beginning of 21, really hired first employee and we, we incorporated agri spray drones in the beginning of 2020 already. But we didn't really start selling until January of 21. [00:15:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:31] Speaker B: And the first was I had like five or six seed customers I built relationships with, of course, for over many years, you know, who trusted me. And so those. My first customers were those guys that bought those drones. [00:15:43] Speaker A: Do. Do those guys still fly drones? [00:15:46] Speaker B: A couple of them still do. [00:15:48] Speaker A: Okay. [00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:49] Speaker A: So were the first drones you sold were T16s? [00:15:51] Speaker B: No T20s actually, because the. The T16 was on its way out. T20 was its successor. Largely very much the same. It was kind of like going from a T40 to a T50. Right. [00:16:02] Speaker A: Okay. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Largely very much the same frame motors, you know, but flight controller was a bit different. Pumps were a bit bigger, radar was a bit better, you know, software remote was a bit better kind of a thing. So that was the first one we started selling, you know, took a big. That it was. It was difficult because I knew nothing about, you know, shipping, international shipping and logistics and all of that. So I had kind of a local guy, kind of a mentor at a big. Had a business where he did a lot of stuff, you know, kind of helped me out who to work with kind of a thing, and convinced the bank to give me a loan and got some drones coming in. [00:16:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:16:40] Speaker B: But that was Covid aftermath, really. Covid. So shipping prices were crazy high. Lead times are crazy. [00:16:47] Speaker A: So you've only had this company since COVID wasn't Covid just like, dude, years ago, Cove. It's been like five years ago. [00:16:54] Speaker B: It seems like just yesterday sometimes. Yeah, sometimes I forget about it too. I'm like, did that really happen? [00:17:00] Speaker A: Oh, no way. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. Yeah, 2020. So I remember specifically we were supposed to go to China to get certified by dji and like we had the trip scheduled for March of 2020. Yeah. And then everything shut down. We couldn't go. Huh. [00:17:21] Speaker A: So you start selling drones. What made you want to do YouTube content? [00:17:26] Speaker B: Yeah, the YouTube thing. We started a bit, a bit with the T20, but not much because a lot of that was just a lot of traveling, firsthand demos kind of thing. And still Figuring it out, really. You know, we didn't know how to support customers. We didn't know. I mean, it was. We had to figure all that out, right? So that first year, 2021 was like, okay, how do we actually make this successful to. Our customers are successful. Right. So that we can make sure we structure this. And most of that's just. You just work your butt off is what that really boils down to. Yeah. The T30 got. Was launched end of 2021, and we were. Had a lot of momentum, you know, going into that and the teeth. That's whenever we started working a lot closely with like, FAA and like the, you know, approvals and all kind of stuff, you know. So I got approved for the T30 end of 21. I think that was like my first YouTube video. [00:18:16] Speaker A: Okay. [00:18:17] Speaker B: So I was like, we were pumped, you know, super pumped. We were like the second one to get approval right after Rantizo, I'm pretty sure. But it's within the same week. And so I'm like, hey, let's go shoot a video of this, because I'm stoked. [00:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:30] Speaker B: So Kit, our. Our operations guy, our COO now he was working for me as a mechanic, basically fixing drones. But he was pretty good with the camera. So I was like, hey, let's go shoot a video. Like a hype video kind of thing where we're approved, whatnot, we can help you guys get certified, all that kind of stuff, you know. So we did that. Then I started realizing that, you know, when you look kind of. I. So I taught myself how to do CAD, how to run CNC machines, how to do 3D printing. All online, right. All through YouTube and, you know, forums and whatnot. And when you look for spray drones, none of that existed. Right. There was no information. There was promo videos, was all. Yeah, promo videos. Didn't tell you what you wanted to know, Right. So we just went to the field and started shooting. I think the first real video main. Main video we did was on the T30. Just demo, right? Y. We've done it. We did a hundreds of demos, you know, prior to that, just all the time we were doing demos. So I knew. [00:19:29] Speaker A: But just not on YouTube, just on. [00:19:31] Speaker B: YouTube, just in person. Yeah. So I was like, what? I mean, we can't get to everybody. More people want to see this stuff. So let's just make a demo video. How does this thing work? How does the battery work? How's the software work? How's it fly? All of that stuff, you know. And so we just did A single shot, you know, just running the drone. [00:19:48] Speaker A: How'd that video do for you? [00:19:50] Speaker B: Really good. Yeah, it picked up really quickly. I mean, I don't remember the metrics off the top of my head, but I mean, we. We got half million views, like, pretty quick. [00:20:01] Speaker A: How much of your success would you say was because of YouTube algorithm? [00:20:07] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Covid helped because a lot of people staying home. Right. Just scrolling. Right. So Covid helped with, you know, the YouTube rise. The YouTube channel, for sure. And it gave wind into our sales. So know that, hey, this is. People want this. Yeah. People want this information. Let's do more of it. Yeah. So, yeah, YouTube's been a very, really big part of. Of our success, but it's more like the way that we do our videos. We just want, you know, people just want to see how it works. The raw, you know. [00:20:43] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:44] Speaker B: The. The details of here and that, you know, they want to know from a. [00:20:48] Speaker A: Farmer'S perspective also, how many drones did you have to sell before you were like, okay, I'm not selling seed anymore. [00:20:53] Speaker B: Yeah, let's see. I sold the seed business. And the end of 23, that was. [00:20:59] Speaker A: Okay, so it was your business. You weren't working for somebody. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah, my business. And I had a. I knew this might happen. Well, that and okay, again, I'll blame on my wife too. [00:21:11] Speaker A: She might be listening. [00:21:12] Speaker B: She might be. Well, I made a promise to her whenever we. Whenever we got married. She. She did not want to live in Centralia, Missouri. You know, she want to live back home in Butler, 3. Three hours away after college anyways. [00:21:25] Speaker A: And so why did she not want to live wherever you were? [00:21:28] Speaker B: Oh, because. Well, she did after we got married. Yeah, but she. She made a slight comment, you know, because we were dating in college. You know, we weren't engaged like that. And she was like, one day, she was like, well, I'm planning on going back home after college. I don't know what you're doing. There's nothing tying me down here. You know, I was like, aha, I get it. I understand it. [00:21:53] Speaker A: So the scenery is not nice there. Is it flat? [00:21:56] Speaker B: No, it's fine. Yeah, but it's just further away from family. [00:21:58] Speaker A: Okay. [00:21:59] Speaker B: Family. [00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:22:00] Speaker B: From the. Close to family. [00:22:00] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:22:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Which I. I would like to as well. But we had an opportunity, right, to stay, you know, there, just north, where I went to college and take over a seed business. And so I was like, hey, let's give this a go. Right? And I told her five years. I was like, let's do this for five years. Let's give it a go, and then we'll move back. That's cool. So it's always, always a plan to move back home, back on the. On the family farm, right? [00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:23] Speaker B: And I wanted the same thing she did, but, you know, just not as. As deeply, you know, or as quickly, I guess. [00:22:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:29] Speaker B: So I. I told her five years, and it was. We were approaching 10 and. [00:22:34] Speaker A: Oh, geez. [00:22:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Had not, you know, but we were. We were growing the seed business, you know, so it's like it was. Things were working well for us. We're developing a community. [00:22:42] Speaker A: But did you bring it up at all at any time? [00:22:44] Speaker B: Like. [00:22:45] Speaker A: Like Taylor? It's been five and a half years now. [00:22:48] Speaker B: She never really brought it up. No. [00:22:50] Speaker A: Sounds like a good lady. [00:22:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, she's. She's great. Yeah. But she didn't, you know, as we. As we kept investing, you know, into the seed business, and that tied us down more and more there, you know, so, like, some of that she didn't like so much, but, you know, she. We grew to like, you know, the area and. [00:23:08] Speaker A: Do you still live there? [00:23:09] Speaker B: Nope, we moved. So anyways, yeah. Thank you for getting back on track. I knew that, you know, we wanted to. I wanted to move back home. You can't move a seed business. The customers, the land. Right. You know, is there. So you can't move a seed business. And I know I wasn't going to work full time on. On the farm, you know, so I didn't probably. I really want to work for, you know, someone being your. Your own boss. I kind of like that. Right. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:37] Speaker B: So. Wanted to have a business that could be. I could move potentially. Not one that's specific to this, just one area. Right. I could be in this radius of places. And so that's where. Yeah, that's kind of what started the drone sales side or interest in doing that was I thought I could, you know, potentially move and make my promise good to my wife. [00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:01] Speaker A: So you didn't. You didn't tell me how many drones you had to sell before. [00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Right. Getting there. [00:24:06] Speaker A: That's all right. [00:24:07] Speaker B: Yeah. So probably. Let's see. I don't know. I mean, we. At that point in time, basically, it. [00:24:14] Speaker A: Had to hit a certain dollar amount before it made sense. [00:24:18] Speaker B: Not only that, but, I mean, I had an obligation. I developed relationships with my seed customers, you know, and I want to make sure they had someone that could take my place, that could take care of them. Well, you know, and so you had to find that person too. So we found that person. It took a couple years, but found that person. She was great. [00:24:38] Speaker A: So you weren't necessarily selling the business just for a cash out. It was like, I'll sell this business if somebody is going to take care of my customer. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:24:46] Speaker A: Dude, that's. That's awesome. [00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So found her. She's great, great agronomist, very hard worker. And, you know, she. So basically two years. She worked for the business for two years. And then I was like, all right, well, stars are aligning right now and it's time. [00:25:03] Speaker A: Did you have employees in that business? [00:25:06] Speaker B: Just her. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Just her. [00:25:07] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I had part timers, you know, part timers. But it was pretty, you know, seasonal work kind of thing, you know, so just part timers. She was the first full timer. [00:25:15] Speaker A: Okay, and so when did you move? [00:25:18] Speaker B: How many? So, so, so he sold the business end of. End of 20. 23, I guess it was okay. Now I forget. What's 22? Maybe it's 22. I don't know. [00:25:27] Speaker A: Anyways, during COVID did you move during COVID Just think of COVID years. [00:25:30] Speaker B: No, no, no. Well, I don't know. It was 22. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Covid was like officially end March 20th or March of 20 was when the US started shutting stuff down. Yeah, but then when did I think, dude, it was like a year and a half, I think. I think it ended sometime in December of year, I think. I think it was 21. [00:25:51] Speaker B: I think you're right. [00:25:52] Speaker A: I think. [00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:53] Speaker A: And like Covid came in and then it was done at December. Like it had a specific day that it was just like, okay, no, no more. No, no. They literally said, on this day we're going to stop doing restrictions. Wait, so, okay, so Covid, it knows at. Just on December 4th, at 12 o'. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Clock. [00:26:09] Speaker A: We got to get out. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it was done. Yeah, it was done. Oh, geez. [00:26:15] Speaker A: There's probably not people listening that don't know what we're talking about, but maybe in 10, 15 years from now, you know, when we're older and there's young generations listening to this podcast, they're going to be like, AI, what is Covid? [00:26:28] Speaker B: Oh, they'll study it in school. [00:26:30] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, history. [00:26:32] Speaker B: Dude, it changed the land. I mean, it changed the global economic, social, politics, everything. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Why do you think it was a thing? Do you think it was political? [00:26:42] Speaker B: Or is it this kind of podcast? [00:26:46] Speaker A: Dude, this is. This is whatever we want to talk about. [00:26:50] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, I don't know. I mean, there was A lot of politics behind it, let's be honest. Yeah, right. [00:26:56] Speaker A: I mean, if they did not do it on purpose, they definitely used it. Yeah, for sure. [00:27:01] Speaker B: Yeah. In some countries more than other countries. But any. [00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it definitely shifted the whole, like, how things are done. Just from a sales standpoint, I feel. [00:27:11] Speaker B: Well. Oh, 100. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:13] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean. Yeah. How business is done shifted immensely. [00:27:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:16] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of people benefited from it. A lot of people did not benefit from it. So. [00:27:21] Speaker A: Okay, so we figured out that you moved probably right after Covet was done. [00:27:25] Speaker B: Oh, no, we just moved last year. [00:27:27] Speaker A: Oh. [00:27:27] Speaker B: Yeah. So we stuck around in Centralia because we also. We. We. You know, Agrifa drones was expanding. We moved three times in three years. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Oh, you did? [00:27:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:38] Speaker A: Agris rate. So, like, different zip codes or just a different building? [00:27:42] Speaker B: Just different buildings. Yeah. And then a different zip code. Yep. So, yeah, moved out of this. We were in the seed shop, you know, so we had seed here, drones there, you know, kind of thing. And we had, at one point in time, in the seed shop, I had seed, chemical drones, drone fixing part. And then we were building these mobility devices, our fork mobility project. We do. We were building those there, too. So I was getting pretty crammed in that. Wow. Yeah. [00:28:10] Speaker A: You didn't expect to grow this rapidly. I assume I did. [00:28:15] Speaker B: Oh, I knew. I mean, I knew this technology would be revolutionary. Right. [00:28:18] Speaker A: Okay. [00:28:19] Speaker B: I mean, let me think about it just from a concept and say, okay, farmers, you know, traditionally, as, you know, time's gone on, have. Want to do more and more on the farm themselves, you know? You know, there's kind of the service aspect there. You hire some things done, but as farmers grow, they want to bring those services back onto the farm. And I was witnessing this firsthand with the farmers that I've worked with. Yeah, Farmers were growing in size, and instead of relying on the, you know, custom guy become spray everything to the fertilizer, they were putting in their own fertilizer plants. They were getting their own, you know, ground rigs and everything. You know, just better timing, better control of how things are done. You know, it's your farms. You're gonna take care of it better than someone else. Well, what about aerial application? [00:29:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:06] Speaker B: Name a farmer who has their own airplane. There's very few. [00:29:08] Speaker A: Very few. Unless they're really, really big. [00:29:10] Speaker B: Yeah, we're talking. I mean, we're talking, you know, a lot of farmers have their airplane, but what farmer has their own crop duster plane and their own pilot, you know, to do that? Very, very few. It's just not attainable. It doesn't make any sense unless they have a business offering the service, you know? [00:29:27] Speaker A: Right. [00:29:27] Speaker B: And here you have a piece of technology that's very affordable, can run by anybody, and now they can do their own application. [00:29:34] Speaker A: And it does a really good job. [00:29:35] Speaker B: And does a great job. Yeah, yeah. It does a. Yeah. Better job than what they're used to. So I knew just that as a concept alone would be revolutionary. Yeah. [00:29:45] Speaker A: And so you prep yourself for growth or you just. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Not at all. Not at all. [00:29:51] Speaker A: Whatever happens, happens. [00:29:52] Speaker B: Not at all. [00:29:53] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:29:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Because I would say that's kind of how we were here at New Way and also drone deer recovery. It's like. Right. I just started something kind of like you did, and on the drone deer recovery side, doing thermal drone stuff, I never knew that my shop wouldn't be big enough. I'm like, my shop is big, and we're having drones in there, and in no time we move. Now we got to move again. It's like, how often are we going to have to move this thing? [00:30:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:20] Speaker A: So growth. You were like, oh, we're just selling drones. And then next thing, you had to order more drones and you didn't have space. And now you're like, well, you were. [00:30:27] Speaker B: Probably sitting so close, you know, so close to the technology that, you know, taking a step back and looking at the big picture, you know, wasn't really in your view. [00:30:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:36] Speaker B: No, you were just using the technology. Right. So, yeah, that's exactly how we were on the. On the spray drone side. [00:30:44] Speaker A: Huh. So did you go buy a building right away or. [00:30:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So built. Built a shop next. Right next to my house. My commute was great then. Just sidewalk. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. [00:31:00] Speaker A: But how big was the shop that you built? [00:31:02] Speaker B: It was 60 by. By 80, I think. [00:31:07] Speaker A: Okay. I was gonna say if you say 40. That was my shot. [00:31:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:11] Speaker A: A 60 by 40. Yep. But you built that specifically just to hold drones first. [00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah. For. For spray drones. Yeah. [00:31:19] Speaker A: And you were like, okay, this is gonna last me for a while, actually. [00:31:22] Speaker B: No. [00:31:22] Speaker A: Okay. [00:31:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So after built that, I remember I told. I told Kit, our. Our CEO now I told Kit that we're going to be moving in a year, less than a year. As soon as we moved in, we're moving stuff in. [00:31:38] Speaker A: That's so crazy. I just did that to Kevin. We walked in, he's like, dude, look how big it is. I was like, kevin, we'll be out of here in a year. We're not even in that year. It's like it doesn't work. [00:31:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:48] Speaker A: That's so wild. [00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly what happened. Yeah. [00:31:52] Speaker A: Did you guys build another one or you buy it? [00:31:55] Speaker B: We bought one. There was one. Boonville, where we're at now, actually. Boonville. We moved in there in 23. Spring of 20. [00:32:04] Speaker A: How big is that shop? [00:32:05] Speaker B: It's 30,000 square foot. [00:32:07] Speaker A: The whole building. That's with the offices? [00:32:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So like, basically, like, the. The shop parts, probably about 22, 23,000. And then, like, you know, offices. You know, there's two floors there. So much office space. [00:32:22] Speaker A: How soon are you adding to that? [00:32:24] Speaker B: Well, we're looking for another space now, either to add on or there's building another building in town there. [00:32:29] Speaker A: Okay, but you have a good bit of land there. Couldn't you just add on to it. [00:32:33] Speaker B: Or we could add on to it, yeah. [00:32:34] Speaker A: Okay. Are you thinking you might need to move to a bigger location? Easier shipping this or that or. [00:32:39] Speaker B: No, shipping's fine. Out of there. You know, what we're looking into is, you know, as this industry grows, the geopolitical climate we're, you know, looking at now, this year especially. Yeah. We all know that, you know, some level of US Manufacturing has to. Has to take place in the. In the near future. And so that's kind of what we're looking at. A space where we could do that, right? Yeah. [00:33:02] Speaker A: Would you manufacture in Boonville or would you manufacture in. In another state or town? [00:33:07] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we're looking at all options right now. [00:33:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So everything's on the table at this point. [00:33:14] Speaker A: Are there? I mean, I don't know. I never looked at manufacturing. There's probably certain areas that are better because there's more people, and it's already kind of set up. [00:33:23] Speaker B: Yeah, there's more. More support in certain areas. Yeah. So we're looking at those areas. But then we. Our teams in Boonville, you know, so. And there's, you know, the college is just right down the road there, and they have a pretty good engineering department, too. [00:33:35] Speaker A: So. [00:33:36] Speaker B: Yeah, there's several. [00:33:39] Speaker A: Your team from Boonville, because you live a couple hours away, don't you? [00:33:43] Speaker B: I do now. Yeah. My commute is not so great now. [00:33:46] Speaker A: And that's why you're getting. I was gonna say that's why you're getting your pilot's license. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Starting to fly. Yeah. Yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker A: Get yourself a little helicopter and just. Dude, did you see the Jetson drone? [00:33:58] Speaker B: Was that the one? I think they were at the Farm Progress. Was that the one? The Farm Progress show? [00:34:01] Speaker A: I don't know was. There's a couple. That's pretty cool. It's a For real drone for you to sit in. Yeah. [00:34:06] Speaker B: You can't fly that far though, can you? [00:34:07] Speaker A: I think it's 20 minutes. [00:34:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah. 20 minutes time. Like 20 minutes at 40 mile an hour. [00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:12] Speaker A: So probably wouldn't make it there. I would not make it there. [00:34:14] Speaker B: No. [00:34:14] Speaker A: You need like yourself another year or so. Robertson, 22 or something. [00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, well, Kit. Kit's. He's a helicopter pilot. That's what I went to school for. And he's. [00:34:23] Speaker A: Did he come out of the military or something? [00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah, he was. He was in the army and then he went to. Studied up. He was up in North Dakota and he got. He studied some drones and of course in helicopters kind of aviation. I don't know what his major is exactly, but he became a helicopter pilot and he can. He can train people. He's got. He's got to get his. You know, he's got to get some more hours, you know, and kind of. What, not get recurrence. [00:34:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Like recurrent. [00:34:48] Speaker B: Yeah, but he could train people. That's cool. [00:34:51] Speaker A: So did he do helicopter flying as a. Like a professional career? Okay. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Right. Right out of college, straight to spray drones. For real? Yeah, well, basically, yeah. [00:35:04] Speaker A: How'd you get to know him? [00:35:06] Speaker B: Well, he. He went to high school in Centralia. [00:35:09] Speaker A: Okay, so you guys knew each other? [00:35:11] Speaker B: He knew Tanner. Tanner's our sales guy now. He. Tanner's working for me. At the time. He knew Tanner. Tanner knew him. He got in touch every time. I told him, hey, this drone thing, you know, I know you. We want to do a drone. He was wanting to do a drone business, like scouting and whatnot. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:35:25] Speaker B: So I told him, now, don't do that. Come work for me instead. [00:35:28] Speaker A: That is like. [00:35:29] Speaker B: Sounds good. [00:35:30] Speaker A: So how many people do you have on your team now? [00:35:32] Speaker B: There's. We're 34, I think, now. Wow. Wow. [00:35:36] Speaker A: All working at that location or some. [00:35:39] Speaker B: Now they're scattered out, you know, and some. There's some work from home half the time, you know, and then they probably have 12 and 10 in the office on a daily basis. [00:35:48] Speaker A: Okay. What. How many drones do you think you've sold from the time you started selling a drone to now. [00:36:00] Speaker B: To today? Probably 3, 500. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:03] Speaker B: I'd say somewhere around there. [00:36:05] Speaker A: And it would probably be a lot more than that if we would have never been restricted. [00:36:09] Speaker B: Holy moly. You ain't kidding. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Yep. [00:36:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Same thing with you. Yeah. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Yep, yep. I. I was doing a podcast with the guy that's here from McCarryn. You should talk with that guy. Dude, it is nuts. And you can listen to the podcast, but he has stats, like. And he is telling us the growth that is half. It will happen. Not if it will. Based on all these other countries that it's already happened to. Using that data with acres, looking at acres here and the growth they had and what he thinks we'll do here. How many drones do you think will sell in America? Like, meaning every year until we hit. [00:36:55] Speaker B: You know, like, what's the. [00:36:57] Speaker A: If it was unrestricted. [00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the capacity? How many total drones? Right, yeah. Can the US Fit? Basically? That's what you're asking. Oh, gosh, I haven't really done the math on this. It's. We're probably looking. I mean, we look at like Brazil and like China. Right? I mean, gosh, last year in China, I think there was what, 60,000 or so or more drones sold in one year. [00:37:25] Speaker A: Yep, one year. [00:37:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:28] Speaker A: So his numbers are for real. And this guy is a credible guy. He works for the UN as well, on a salary, helping get this data for UA operations. He is saying that when we hit peak, the amount of acres here will support 128, 000 drones needing to be sold every year. [00:37:51] Speaker B: Wow. Is there every year? [00:37:55] Speaker A: That's what he's saying, is that. Is it every year for a couple years. Yeah. Or going forward every year for a few years. And then there's going to be new technology that's going to be coming forward as well. Because let's face it, it's technology and it's going to be kind of outdone, outdated, because things will get better. That's what he's saying. Right? Like, will it do that constantly? We can't even do that right now if we wanted to. [00:38:21] Speaker B: There's no way possible. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Yeah, just. That's why you're saying that manufacturing needs to happen here. Because trying to import all that stuff with the restrictions that we have already, it wouldn't happen. [00:38:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:31] Speaker A: Couldn't happen. [00:38:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:33] Speaker A: So we can't. [00:38:34] Speaker B: Well, we can't do it here, though. We don't have the infrastructure to make a hundred thousand drones a year. [00:38:38] Speaker A: But, like, if. If all China import stuff would stop, we'd need a billionaire to pick it up to. Like, let's push this because the whole. [00:38:47] Speaker B: Have you had Elon on the podcast. [00:38:49] Speaker A: Yet, dude, we're gonna. We need to talk to him. We're gonna talk to him. But when he said that, based on the actual stats that other countries have done. It's like, dude, that's unbelievable. It's shocking. [00:39:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:02] Speaker A: Like what we're gonna have to do. [00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. I mean, the Brazilian market, in my opinion, is probably closest to like the US Market in terms of, like, unrestricted growth. If we were to have unrestricted growth, you know, because a lot of the manufacturers in China have put more resources into that market here over the past, you know, three years or so. And the growth there is wild compared to the growth here. [00:39:28] Speaker A: Did you talk to Steve Lee? He said the growth here at the. The conference was a 70% increase. He. I forget his name from Ukraine, said that if that is accurate, just on the attendance here, that the actual growth of drones being sold should equal about 70%. I think it's probably right that every. Right. We're probably not going to hit 70% forever, but it'll be doing that and Xing itself For the next five years, 10 years is my guess. [00:40:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:08] Speaker A: The amount of drones that. That is. If you just stop and think about that. I mean, come on, guys. Crazy. [00:40:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:14] Speaker A: If people are. If you have sold 3, 500 drones and you're like the biggest guy doing it, that is just somebody who sold more drones than you. [00:40:22] Speaker B: I don't know. Maybe. [00:40:24] Speaker A: But you're definitely one of the biggest. [00:40:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:27] Speaker A: Like. [00:40:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:29] Speaker A: So 128,000 drones. That is so. So think about this. I don't know if you use AI or not, but you should. You. You have an Android, so you can't get it right now. [00:40:38] Speaker B: Oh, come on, GRO3. [00:40:40] Speaker A: Come on, give. Give me so CROC3. You can't get it on Android right now, but if you ask it with all the data available, how many registered drones? Right. We know there's probably drones out there that are not registered. There's only 6, 900 resistered ag drones. [00:40:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:40:55] Speaker A: But we haven't even hit 10,000. Like, the. The growth is just going to freak us out. [00:41:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:02] Speaker A: But it's going to be the. Can we get it in? [00:41:05] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. Supply is gonna be the restricting factor for sure. [00:41:09] Speaker A: All the time. [00:41:10] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:11] Speaker A: For how long? Do you think? Forever? [00:41:14] Speaker B: Well, prop. I would say probably so. Yeah. [00:41:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:18] Speaker B: Do you think it's because the demand is going to outstrip supply? [00:41:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Forever. [00:41:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:23] Speaker A: That sucks. [00:41:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:24] Speaker A: I mean, it's kind of good. It's a good, good business. [00:41:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Because you just can't. It stinks so much when somebody wants to come buy a drone from you and you don't have it. [00:41:33] Speaker B: Yeah. You think? I mean, these drones are getting more efficient though, so maybe some of these models aren't accurate. Right? [00:41:40] Speaker A: I mean, dude, he is pretty convinced on his numbers. [00:41:44] Speaker B: Is he? [00:41:45] Speaker A: I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that it's like a half. Let's say it's half that. It's still insane. [00:41:51] Speaker B: Oh yeah. Still. Yeah, yeah, that's true. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Even, even a quarter of that is insane. Yeah, that is true. So 128, 000. Half of that. I mean we're talking still over 60,000 something. [00:42:04] Speaker B: And yeah, there'll be a point in time. I mean these drones just make so much sense on the farm. [00:42:09] Speaker A: Give me, give me a reason why. Why does it make so much sense, Taylor? Well, for the people that are listening, that they're like, I don't understand, like. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Yeah, so why, why does the drone make sense to. Why does, why does it make sense for a farmer to have a drone on the farm? Right. Well, when you look at value in use, I mean farms are businesses, right? Yep. So that one, one factor is value and use and roi. Right. And when you're talking about you can take a spray drone that costs you 30, 40, $50,000. Right. Let's just say. And you know that you can recoup as a farmer, probably 10, with a yield increase. Better timing. 15 bucks an acre, most likely. How many acres that take to repay that investment? Less than 5,000 acres. Right. How quickly can get that done? If you're a lot of farmers are. I mean they're farming pretty close to that 2,3000 acres. You're talking less than two years. And if you, if you're spraying multiple passes. [00:43:07] Speaker A: That's crazy. You bring this up because I'm going to talk about him again. He has these stats and proof based on the data that he has already and the numbers are almost matching up exactly what you're saying. He is saying that the farmer, for his ROI and to throw the drone away, would need to cover 10,000 acres. [00:43:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:26] Speaker A: And the drone made sense buying it to gain that and then be done with it after 10,000 acres. [00:43:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:33] Speaker A: That's nuts. [00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:34] Speaker A: There's surely there's no other piece of equipment that you can buy on the farm that does. [00:43:38] Speaker B: Very few. Yeah. I mean, no, no traditional equipment. There's no like tractor or combine, additional sprayer or whatever. There are other like seed treaters. Seed farmers should get their own seed treater. [00:43:49] Speaker A: What does that do? [00:43:50] Speaker B: Treats soybeans like. Okay, you apply like fungicide, insecticide, like biological components, coat the beans in that and that's like, that's a custom service done by people. Like, I used to do that as a dealer of seed. [00:44:07] Speaker A: Okay. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah. But, like, I know what I charged, you know, to do that. And it's like, farmers can save a lot of money if they do it themselves. [00:44:15] Speaker A: Okay. [00:44:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And they can choose what products they use as well. And more farmers are doing that. There's more farmers now as farmers get bigger. Like, that's a piece of equipment that can actually pay itself off pretty, like about the same time frame as a drone. Really? Yeah. [00:44:25] Speaker A: Okay. [00:44:26] Speaker B: Yeah. There's other little pieces of equipment, like things here and there, a lot of provision, ag technology that can pay itself off pretty quickly, too. [00:44:32] Speaker A: All right, so I kind of cut you off when you were giving us the acres and what the drone costs and getting in there. Something else. Why they should buy the drone? [00:44:42] Speaker B: Well, yeah, they. It's. It's an application technology that. It's a. It's a time machine is what it is, that gives them time. They don't have to worry about what the ground conditions are, you know, which is a time factor. Whenever they want to go out there and apply product at the right timing, which is based on the growth stage of the crop, they can do it. And so that is a time factor. Not have to rely on, you know, the right time to apply it with the. With the ground conditions. [00:45:10] Speaker A: So what you're saying. Have you ever heard that a drone can provide a higher quality? Of product. [00:45:18] Speaker B: Of application? Yes. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Of product of an actual crop. [00:45:24] Speaker B: Oh, you mean. Okay, yeah. Higher. Higher quality. Yeah. [00:45:29] Speaker A: Like, I never thought about this. And it's. It's because they can apply exactly when it needs to be applied. And he was talking about blueberries. Like, there's a specific window, and if they can apply it, then the whole quality of that fruit is actually better. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:48] Speaker A: I mean, never. I never even thought about that. [00:45:50] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. Yeah. It's huge. [00:45:53] Speaker A: I mean, farmers got to think about this. So all they need to know, all they need to do is be educated that this is available and it's not that hard to use. They think of new technology and they're like, oh, gosh, I can't do that. No, like you actually can do that. [00:46:08] Speaker B: Yeah, anybody can do it. But there, again, the biggest challenge that has always faced, like, farmers getting into it. Barriers to entry. Right. We look at barriers to entry. Why aren't more farmers doing it? Of course, there's a supply thing where I talked about that, but really, it's more. So there's regulations. Right. Involved fa Regulations are. I mean, brutal. Brutal. [00:46:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Just to be honest. It's just brutal. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Like, are brutal. I mean, for someone doing their own property. Right. It should not be that hard. [00:46:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. You should have at least like a private property thing or waiver. Yeah, yeah, it's a private property. Your own farm or something. Some type of waiver. What do you think it should be? You own your own farm. [00:46:47] Speaker B: What. [00:46:47] Speaker A: What ranks should you have to fall to? [00:46:50] Speaker B: I don't know if the. I don't know if the FAA is the right one to regulate it on the. On the federal level. Right. I mean, on the. On the state level, in Missouri, if you're a private applicator, it's an incredibly easy license to get. [00:47:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:01] Speaker B: You know, you go like this, the extension office, basically. And you don't actually have to take a test, you know, educated. You have to sit. Sit through a class, you know, and that's. That's it, you know, and so that's kind of what it should be. That's. That's the problem too with the faa is like, you don't. There's no actual training or education to get your licensing. [00:47:19] Speaker A: Yep. [00:47:20] Speaker B: I mean, your 107 is the closest thing, but that's nothing. [00:47:23] Speaker A: Paperwork. [00:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:47:24] Speaker A: And that's exactly what I told the fa. I said, you give me this paperwork and. Okay, so when I go. Want to go get a pilot's license that you're trying to get right now, you will learn everything. You will be coached. You will be taught. Here it's like. Here it is. Teach yourself. Figure it out. [00:47:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:40] Speaker A: How's this make any sense? [00:47:41] Speaker B: You're not allowed to be taught by someone. [00:47:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell them why. Why can't. Why can't you teach me how to fly my drone? [00:47:51] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's all in the conditions, limitations and whatnot of. Of your 137 and 4 7. [00:47:58] Speaker A: So I want to buy a drone from you. [00:48:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:00] Speaker A: I know nothing about it. Like, Taylor, can you teach me how to fly my drone? [00:48:04] Speaker B: I am not a certified flight instructor, so. [00:48:08] Speaker A: But can you become a certified flight instructor for drones? Not a thing, right? No, no. [00:48:16] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's not a thing. So no one is allowed to teach you how to fly a drone, but. [00:48:20] Speaker A: You can do the paperwork that allows you to do it, right? [00:48:22] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:48:23] Speaker A: Allows stupid you to teach yourself that knows nothing about it. [00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. YouTube, you learn. [00:48:30] Speaker A: Sorry, I got sidetracked here, but it needs to be talked about. [00:48:35] Speaker B: It does need to be talked about. It's Ridiculous. Yeah. So that's where I don't know if the FAA is the right one to regulate, really, any of the spray drones, because they. They don't know that much about the actual, you know, how they operate, how these drones operate, and the things are. [00:48:52] Speaker A: 10Ft off the ground most of the time. [00:48:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:54] Speaker A: Like, what are we doing? [00:48:55] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. You're out of. It's not like all hundred of the time. Right. [00:48:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:00] Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't think it makes sense in the FAA side. It should be a whole separate organization. Right? It should be. Maybe it's something that this industry itself, you know, all of us in the industry actually create this organization. Right. That oversees the, you know, training and the rules and the rigs, whatnot, and makes. Make it make sense, you know, allow Mike to go out there and train somebody. Right. [00:49:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:23] Speaker B: That's the best way to do it. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Oh, it's the safest way to do it. [00:49:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:26] Speaker A: Yeah. If. If the FAA wants to talk about safety, that they're all about safety. Nothing about what they're trying to tell us right now sounds safe at all. [00:49:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:34] Speaker A: Like, give John a drone. Take it out. You got this paper. You're allowed to do it on your. You have to teach yourself. Yeah. Makes no sense. Would be very nice if it would be out of there. How do we get here? I'm trying to think. It was. It was based all on how hard and the growth. [00:49:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Why. Why aren't more farmers doing it? And regulations is a big piece of that. Of that puzzle. [00:49:57] Speaker A: So do you think that more will. Okay, so will more drones be sold to farmers or custom app guys? [00:50:05] Speaker B: Well, at first I thought that every farmer's gonna have a drone. We were selling to farmers. Right. And we were marketing to farmers, whatnot. But then I learned that actually early on, it shifted, and it was more custom applicators. Young guys, I know starting a business just like you did, starting an application service that became the biggest customer base. Still is, I think, but there are more and more farmers doing it themselves. [00:50:34] Speaker A: I agree. There's more and more farmers. So I keep referring back to Ukraine. I asked him that question, and he was like, no, you will always sell more drones to service providers, and service providers will get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then there will be the biggest service providers, like branches having here and there. And I was like, interesting. He's like, yeah, he sold so many drones in Ukraine. And it was just, service provider gets bigger, adds a bigger fleet. He had one business that had 112 drones that would Provide service. [00:51:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:08] Speaker A: I thought it was a lot when I had six to eight. [00:51:12] Speaker B: It's a lot of people to manage. [00:51:13] Speaker A: Oh, my God, a lot. [00:51:15] Speaker B: Yeah. But that's why he's got those robots. Batteries. [00:51:20] Speaker A: Dude, wouldn't that be cool? We might have that, like, you know, Elon sends us a robot, he goes up the new way trailer. Can you imagine that? We laugh. No, dude, it could be. [00:51:34] Speaker B: It could be a thing. Yeah. Why not? [00:51:36] Speaker A: Why couldn't. [00:51:37] Speaker B: It should be a thing. [00:51:38] Speaker A: If it can carry my groceries into my house, it should be able to carry a battery. [00:51:42] Speaker B: The problem is you're gonna get frustrated because it'll be too slow. [00:51:45] Speaker A: It'll start dang robot. It'll learn how to go faster. Or I'll blend it up with the drone itself. [00:51:57] Speaker B: Well, I mean, that. That is part of it too. I mean, it does. So spray drones, they. They take a lot of labor. Right. Which is an opportunity. Right. It's. It's creating jobs, you know, creating businesses. Creating jobs. It's great thing for. For agriculture in general and for, you know, rural Americans in general. But on the farm, you know, you're not. You get a drone and you're not saving yourself time in most cases. Right. You are creating an additional job. [00:52:26] Speaker A: Yeah. On the farm. Yep. [00:52:28] Speaker B: And so some farmers, you know, don't necessarily realize that they're used to kind of having some time off there in July, and now all of a sudden they don't. Right. And then they're also, you know, they're not going out there spraying thousands of acres, using these drones all the time. So they're not the most adept, they're. [00:52:44] Speaker A: Not the most efficient. [00:52:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Understanding how the drone works. And they might have more problems than other guys might have because every year they gotta reel or teach themselves, you know, so that's another. Another thing that we see their farmers that think they want to do it and sometimes last a year, and they're like, it's not for me. I'll. I'll h to do it, you know. [00:53:01] Speaker A: How long do you think it'll be until it's a really good used drone market? [00:53:06] Speaker B: Used drone market is developing right now. This is kind of the first, you know, real year you see a lot of used drones out there. I feel like last year there was some for sure, too. It's going to be a while yet because the technology is not stable as far as, like, where's it going to end? You know, where's it going to kind of like plateau at. Right. That we haven't seen that Yet. So, like it's a guessing game as far as what your used drone is worth. You know, we're seeing some stability start to take place there, but still much kind of a guessing game. There's, you know, one of our guys, account managers for us. He loves auctions. He's an auctioneer. Yeah. And so he's like, there needs to be an auction. You know, use your own auction where you can just be like, you know what? I'm done with this thing. I just want to get rid of it. I really don't care how much I get out of it, you know, as long as I get, you know, you know, 30%, 40% of the value, I could have it. Just make it easy and just send it out there, you know. And so he started flown drones. It's an auction service. Yeah, for. It hasn't launched yet, but he started that. He's like, I think we can get rid of a lot of drones for people. [00:54:10] Speaker A: I just feel like we're going to get. Yes, there's going to be a time for a used drone market. But I believe that the technology will get so good that by the time that it's used, it's so used that it's like almost not even worth buying it to get into. It's better, you're better off keeping it because you're not going to make any money on it. Keep it for a spare or something. And I think it'll get to the point. I don't know this for sure, but I'm thinking of computers. So if you have a computer and it's working, but everything like software gets rewritten, it'll only work on certain hardware that is of certain age. You know what I mean? So if you get too old of a MacBook and you try to download this certain software, it won't run on that hardware. [00:54:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I get it. [00:54:57] Speaker A: And I, I could, I could see the drones being the same thing. That software will get better, the features will be. Get better. You won't be able to get all those features if you're running an old. [00:55:07] Speaker B: System that's kind of like a lot of precision ag technology. I mean, there's a ton of farmers that have, you know, a couple of old ag leader light bar guidance systems just sitting in a desk, you know, in a. And you know, a drawer in their shop, you know, because it's not worth anything. Nobody wants it. You know, they've got systems that cost less and actually drive the tractor for you now, you know, so. [00:55:31] Speaker A: Yeah, okay, Drive tractors. So agris Ray releases. We're going to sell an auto steer system. Why? Why do that if you're into drones? [00:55:40] Speaker B: It's precision ag, right? I mean, which. This is all precision ag. And you know, what we found is that these drones, you know, they're not just going to the biggest farmers out there, right? They're going to a lot of different farmers of all sizes. I mean, guys that are farming a couple hundred acres, right, are getting some drones. They're doing their own work. They're doing some custom work, too. And so we kind of learned some needs of, you know, some farmers of all different sizes, you know, and one of the needs of, you know, farmers who are farming very little, right, is they, you know, don't have the capital or the acreage, the scale, you know, to invest in some of this more expensive, you know, ag technology, Precision, you know, ag technology, auto steer. And there's a true. I mean, it helps you as a farmer be more efficient with your time in the field with your. [00:56:32] Speaker A: But the guy still has to sit in the tractor. [00:56:34] Speaker B: Yes, the guy still sits in the tractor. Yeah, but you can take an old. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Truck, he's gonna fall asleep. [00:56:40] Speaker B: Have you ever operated a auto steer on a. Like a tractor? [00:56:43] Speaker A: I've never really. Yeah, I've never driven a tractor to do any field work. When we did field work, I grew up Amish, so we had like horses in the plows. [00:56:52] Speaker B: That's auto steer, isn't it? [00:56:55] Speaker A: Until it's not. They would steer to wherever. [00:56:58] Speaker B: You just hang the carrot in front of it, in front of his head, then it goes in a straight line. [00:57:02] Speaker A: Yep. No, no, I've never. Why, why do you say that? Is it. [00:57:07] Speaker B: Well, because that, that can actually happen, you know, falling asleep, you know, in the tractor. [00:57:12] Speaker A: So does it make the turns and stuff? [00:57:13] Speaker B: Can. It can make the turns for you? There's a lot of different stuff it can do. So these systems, I mean, first off, it's kind of like drones, you know, like a lot of guys, they just want a drone to go spray back and forth, fungicide on corn, right? But you can do a lot of different stuff with these drones. You can do a lot of different types of application, a lot of different, you know, methods of, you know, control and everything. So same thing with auto steer. Most guys just want auto steer to just drive in a straight line. [00:57:38] Speaker A: Okay. [00:57:39] Speaker B: You know, back and forth. That way they're not having to, like, guess, you know, like on their other tillage equipment. A lot of tillage equipment. Like, you don't, you know, know you kind of like gauge it based on. Okay, I can see I'm kind of overlapping by a foot. And my, my corner post on my, on my tractor is kind of lined up with that, you know, that part of my last pass. So if I'm. Keep it kind of like right there and you kind of like watch that. That's how you do it, dude. [00:58:01] Speaker A: Didn't even think about it. [00:58:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So with auto steer, you can reduce inefficiencies. So instead of overlapping, maybe overlap a two foot or three foot here, one foot here. Maybe you're. Maybe you skip some here. You're dead on every time. Right. And so you reduce a lot of inefficiency on some of your, you know, your, your tillage equipment, your fertilizer equipment, where maybe it's not the newest and latest and greatest equipment, but you still want it to have auto steer. That's where this system, it's very affordable, easy to install. You do it yourself? Yeah. [00:58:31] Speaker A: Huh. That's interesting. I never even thought about auto steer and a tractor because I'm not a farmer. [00:58:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:37] Speaker A: I'm going to get down this rabbit hole. You asked me. Work, life, balance. Dude. Because you work a lot too, right? Yeah, I mean, I do, dude. I'm working all the time. Right. We all have families. We're sitting in Alabama right now. I have a wife and two children. You have. How many children do you have? [00:58:54] Speaker B: Three. [00:58:55] Speaker A: Three children. And Jay has three children. So it's like me and Jay back home. I don't know. You know, I don't see you every day, but I can imagine that you work about as much as I do. Maybe not. We talked about it a little bit, but it's like I'm always working. How do you balance that? [00:59:10] Speaker B: I mean, things have changed over the past couple of years for sure. We moved back home. I'm away from the shop, you know, every single day. [00:59:18] Speaker A: So. That helped. [00:59:19] Speaker B: That helped. [00:59:19] Speaker A: Okay. [00:59:20] Speaker B: Getting moving myself in the shop and kind of like forced myself to rely on others, you know, trust others, trust other, trust. [00:59:28] Speaker A: That is difficult. Come on, dude. Oh, dude, you just gotta do it. I'm telling. I know. Give them worse. Oh, my God. Give them worse. I just feel like. [00:59:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:37] Speaker A: I don't know. I do not like to let people down. [00:59:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:59:40] Speaker A: So. And I don't like doing it, but. [00:59:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. [00:59:46] Speaker A: I have a hard time letting go for sure. [00:59:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I get it. 100. I get it. Yeah. It was, it was tough for a long time. I still, like, find myself, like, I I'm kind of shaking. I need to be doing something. I need to be doing something. I'm not. Something's going on. I'm not a part of. Something's not going right. [01:00:03] Speaker A: It's not going fast enough. [01:00:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:06] Speaker A: Just let me show you how to do this. Let me just do it. Let me do it because I can do it faster. [01:00:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So take a deep breath. That helps. [01:00:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I know. We want to make things go fast and we should. Right. We want to help the customers. But doggone it, not all of this was made in 30 seconds. [01:00:24] Speaker B: So. Yeah. [01:00:25] Speaker A: Letting go. So work, life, balance. Leaving the shop, that helped. [01:00:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Leaving the shop helped myself. Relying on others, making sure that people had authority to make decisions that need to be made. That's good. And had, and had my blessing. Right. You can, you know this. Right. Still in confidence. Right. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:49] Speaker B: Which, you know, has been, you know, a growth for, for everybody. I think it's been great. [01:00:54] Speaker A: How do you train yourself to not pick up the phone? Because let's, let's be real. That sucker doesn't care. It's ringing at 9 o'. [01:01:00] Speaker B: Clock. I remember, you know, we're getting into this thing. I was on the phone one like 75% of my life, you know, basically on the phone. [01:01:10] Speaker A: Landon over here, producer, he, he was saying, oh, look, Chase on his phone again. Every time we're going out, it's, it's, it's just non stop. It is. But, but you. And we're just getting started, like. [01:01:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:01:22] Speaker A: Okay, so you're, you were on your phone for 75 of the time. How, how'd you figure out? [01:01:26] Speaker B: Well, I made a, I, I made a commitment. I said it out loud. I told my wife too. I said, this time next year, I'm going to reduce the time I'm on the phone by 50% because I knew, like, I can't always, I can't be on the phone. Yeah, right. And, and do things that need done. Right. So it was, you know, putting systems and processes in place, making sure that people had the right information to, you know, help our customers. Right. Hiring more people was a big part of it. Trusting them to, you know, give the right information and get the job done. You know, I don't know. I mean, it's just been a natural progression kind of thing. Yeah. [01:02:03] Speaker A: So it, it wasn't like, it was like a light switch. Okay. On Monday, I'm just not answering my phone on, you know, if it's seven o', clock, I'm not doing it. It took a Little bit of time to get through. [01:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it took quite a bit of time to get. To get through it. You know, we set up a lot of the calls were support questions. Right. [01:02:22] Speaker A: And that's why I feel for Jay. It's like that's part of his role was to get that going. But it's like we can trust somebody to just figure it out. Just like we figured it out. [01:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, our tech department kind of became developed, you know, through. Through that, to take those. Those support calls, and then they became better than I was, you know, as far as, like, making sure that, you know, from a. From a start to finish, you know, opening the ticket basically to closing the ticket was a more. It was a better process for the. For the customer. [01:02:55] Speaker A: That's cool. Like, once you get team members that want to build a system better than what, you know, like I have myself, it's like, okay, we're on the right track. Yeah, that's cool. So would your wife say that your work life balance is right there? [01:03:10] Speaker B: Like, I don't think so, no. No. [01:03:12] Speaker A: Okay, so what. What needs to change? [01:03:13] Speaker B: Well, I think, you know, it's. It's definitely better, you know, but I'm still gone, you know, away from home at night, usually two nights a week, you know, every week. [01:03:25] Speaker A: So you stay at the shop? [01:03:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because I. I can't help myself. I can't stay away for. For a long, extended period. [01:03:31] Speaker A: What are you doing then at the shop? [01:03:34] Speaker B: Just, you know, everybody comes in. Right. Everybody who's somewhat local anyways, comes in on those two days. So I make sure to be present. I make sure to, you know, be the guy to unblock those who have questions about certain things, certain directions, you know, make sure we're moving in the. In the same direction, in unison, all as one, and then fly drones. Right. It's been doing a lot lately, you know. [01:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:04:01] Speaker B: Fly drones, Test drones, which has been great. Haven't got to do that, like, very much for the past, you know, year and a half, really. But now I get to do it a lot more because we got more team members and. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. [01:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:14] Speaker A: So when I mean, him went out, was it last week? First time in a long time to do an actual spray or a spread job. Yeah, we were spreading and it was like, dang. This is actually. Man, it's fun again. Yeah. [01:04:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:25] Speaker A: So we haven't got to doing this in a long time because we're busy doing other stuff. [01:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:04:29] Speaker A: But those other things need to be done. It's just learning to delegate and learning to trust. It's like I, I was just saying that to another guy that I was talking to on the podcast and oh, the young guys from Michigan, they're wanting to scale, but it's like they also know that they want to apply the best way and they care so much because it's their name. It's like, I totally get what you're saying, but if you're going to scale, it is that trusting thing. Like believe that this individual that you hired has the same care that you do. Right. They might not to 100% because they don't own the company, but you can still interview them to hope that they would do the same thing. Every company goes through it. Just like us owning the new way you own agri spray. It's like you, if it's gonna scale, we have to trust people to help us do it because a one man show is not gonna go that far. That's cool. [01:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:05:25] Speaker A: So do you think that what has to happen for you to not have to go in or, or. No, that's not the right question because you probably, you could probably not go in and the team can find out. [01:05:37] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. Yeah. And we've got. So Alex, you know, Alex, he was, he's my chief of staff, I guess basically now. And him and I, you know, think a lot the same way as far as like, what needs done, priorities, alignment. And he like me wants to get things done, you know, so he really is helping a lot as far as like easing, you know, my mind. [01:06:07] Speaker A: That's awesome. [01:06:08] Speaker B: On, you know, knowing that if I'm not there. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Yep. [01:06:12] Speaker B: I don't have to worry. Right. And I can focus on other things too. [01:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. [01:06:17] Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't have to go in now, but I like to, I. [01:06:19] Speaker A: Want to, you know, it's fun, it's just, it's just fun, fun. Like doggone it. Like if you would ask me what, you know, what my work life balance is, it's not good. It's just because I enjoy working so much. Not only do I enjoy flying drones, but I enjoy helping people get a business started. It's like it's rewarding. And so to, to go to work. I want to go to work. Dude, I'm getting up. I'm like, yeah. And then I pitch myself and I say it on the videos on drone day recovery videos and new way. It's like I get paid to do this. [01:06:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:06:52] Speaker A: Like this is insane. And there's more and more people that can Say that same thing. That are custom applicators because of a drone that flies across fields at 10ft. It is nuts. So what does Taylor like doing for fun? [01:07:05] Speaker B: I don't know. For fun. You mean, like when I'm not. Basically what I. What I. What did I do whenever I'm not. [01:07:12] Speaker A: What kind of hobbies. [01:07:13] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So I don't. I don't play any sports. I don't golf. [01:07:17] Speaker A: Have you ever. [01:07:18] Speaker B: I don't. [01:07:18] Speaker A: Have you ever played sports? [01:07:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I was good at football. First team all state. [01:07:23] Speaker A: Dog gone. [01:07:23] Speaker B: First team all decade. [01:07:25] Speaker A: Okay, so he's really good. Is it your long legs? You could run fast? [01:07:30] Speaker B: No, I was a lineman, actually. I was left tackle. What? [01:07:34] Speaker A: Wouldn't I guess that. Would you have guessed that, Lana? No, Yeah, I was definitely thinking it was your long legs and you were running fast. [01:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I was probably not that very fast. I was strong. [01:07:43] Speaker A: Okay. [01:07:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Strong. Yeah. [01:07:45] Speaker A: Nice. [01:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. But, you know, I was like, I'm not going to. Not going to do this for us. My life. Yeah, you know that. And I just. I don't know, I enjoy working more. So when I'm not working, I guess, on. On drone stuff. We've got. My wife and I have a nonprofit where we make mobility devices for children with disabilities. My oldest son has spina bifida and we created a couple of different mobility devices for him. You know, a little wheelchair. [01:08:08] Speaker A: Let's get into that. That's so cool, because when you share this, like, I think it's just so cool. So your son can't walk. Right. And so can you tell us the story of where you were? Like, where's my son at? And then he was gone. [01:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Well, I created a. We called it the Frog. It was a little crawling device, and it was really unique to him. I didn't know it was that unique. You know, I just made it for him kind of thing. And so we created it for him. And it took him a while to kind of get the hang of it, you know, and be able to kind of move around a little bit. But he was about a year and a half, I guess, at the time. But he was. I mean, after. After a while, he was able to kind of move our living room, go over his toy pile, you know, and kind of, you know, do things he wanted to do. It was pretty cool. And so, yeah, there was one night he was in it, and my. My wife and I were in the. In the kitchen. She turns around, he's gone. He's not in the living room. And we were so used to him, like, being where we put him, you know, most kids that age, they're crawling around the house, you know, we were used to him, you know, being where we put him. He was gone. And she freaked out. [01:09:10] Speaker A: It's not cool that he's gone, but it's like, oh, now he's. [01:09:12] Speaker B: Well, it's like, okay, where's he gonna go? You know, Right. It's. We're on a one story house, you know, so it's not. He can go anywhere crazy, but so she ran to the house and he was in his room tearing apart his humidifier, getting into trouble, you know. And so it's like a moment of like, epiphany, of like, holy cow. This is like the first time like this has happened, you know, for him. [01:09:33] Speaker A: That's so cool. [01:09:34] Speaker B: You know? And so once that happened, we were like, all right, we gotta make these for other kids. Like, how do we find these kids? So that's when we launched a non profit through the help of our physical therapist for our son. She was awesome and started getting the word out, created GoFundMe, raise some money kind of thing. Want to give these out for free, you know, to kids and keep them low cost. Anyways, if we couldn't do that and ended up snowballing, got on World News Tonight and wow. Yeah, we raised $150,000 and like over. Over the weekend, you know, like that. Then they had us on again two weeks after that, and it was another $50,000 that we raised, like, holy cow. That did not expect this. Wow. And then a bunch of, bunch of families learned about it, you know, which is the best part. And so all of a sudden we had like 200 families wanting, you know, a frog for their, their child or for. [01:10:27] Speaker A: And you were personally making these off of like a 3D printer or what? [01:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah. So. [01:10:32] Speaker A: So your son, is it like a lower body? [01:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So spina bifida, it's a malformation of the spinal column or cord. And it affects every child differently. For him, it's basically from the chest down. He's paralyzed. So he has no mobility, no motor function from the chest down. [01:10:56] Speaker A: And he was born like that? [01:10:57] Speaker B: He was born that way. [01:10:58] Speaker A: And was that something that you knew right away? [01:11:00] Speaker B: We found out at the 20 week ultrasound. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Wow. That was. [01:11:07] Speaker A: Is that something that gets worse over time or does it just stay the same? [01:11:10] Speaker B: Like it's. It's different for every kid. [01:11:13] Speaker A: Okay. [01:11:13] Speaker B: It's different for every kid. So there are some things that can get Worse. Some things that can get better. He was part of a. Of a research study. When he was six months old, we started doing a spinal electrical stimulation. Basically like a. Like those. Put those pads, like on your muscle, you know, it was kind of like that, only with like a different electrical signal. So he's part of a study and basically to kind of like send signals through his nervous system to kind of help regain function, hopefully. And with pets, you know, there was some. Some success, but like, ultimately didn't really, like, help him too much. But because of, you know, him started doing that and figuring it out. Other kids now sort of doing it. Now our physical therapist, she does that full time. And there's been children who have regained sensation in their toes, regain continence, you know, through this. [01:12:03] Speaker A: Wow. [01:12:04] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's been pretty cool to. To kind of see. [01:12:06] Speaker A: That's awesome. [01:12:07] Speaker B: Part of her journey. [01:12:08] Speaker A: So you raise a bunch of money because you were on. This was a TV show or like, news channel. [01:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah, World News Tonight. I. I don't watch it, but it's ibc. [01:12:18] Speaker A: Sorry I interrupted you. Did you make the. The frog personally? On a 3D printer. [01:12:24] Speaker B: So I made the frog. First frog was made out of, like, old hardwood flooring, and I just kind of cobbled it together, you know. But then I learned. [01:12:32] Speaker A: Dude, I want to look this up. Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Okay. [01:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, go to our Facebook. Yeah, so frog mobility. Search that on Facebook and you'll find us. And I think if you scroll down a little bit, she put some retro posts out there, like the old, like the first frog, and you can see some, like some of the other kids like in the other devices. [01:12:48] Speaker A: So you. [01:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's us. There's. Yeah, so there's. There's little girls in the. And that's. That's the. Go, bro. Go bros for go. Brody, my son. [01:12:57] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. [01:12:59] Speaker A: So it kind of looks like. For the listeners, it kind of looks like a little wheelchair, but little mini wheelchair. [01:13:07] Speaker B: That's. That's. That is essentially wheelchair. The. She just puts stuff on here with our kids, you know. So that's just at the playground. Yeah, there's the go. It is. It is a wheelchair, and it's made for toddlers, basically from one year and. [01:13:23] Speaker A: Up to this point. There was never anything made like that. [01:13:26] Speaker B: So there are some little wheelchairs. Like, the frog is very unique. The frog is a crawling device. There's very few of the frogs on there. Maybe just keep scrolling down. You'll find them the frog is very unique. It's a crawling device specifically for children who have. Don't have lower mobility. Right. And I say children, I mean like babies, basically. So whenever. When does it. When does a child learn to crawl? When they start. [01:13:46] Speaker A: Mine is just, just now army crawling. And he's eight months. [01:13:51] Speaker B: There you go. Yeah, it's about eight month time frame is when they. So it's designed to basically be, you know, small enough and lightweight enough, and it mimics crawling in a way where, you know, children. [01:14:02] Speaker A: There it is. [01:14:03] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the first, the very first one. [01:14:05] Speaker A: No way. [01:14:05] Speaker B: That's the very first frog. That's hardwood flooring and old, old kid toy wheels. [01:14:09] Speaker A: No way. Okay. So that. That frog there that we're looking at would allow them to kind of lay down. [01:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah, they lay. They lay down and then. But it has big wheels in the middle that carry most of the body weight. Yeah, about 50 to, you know, you can actually adjust it 50 to 70% of body weight or so. So it's just like crawling, you know, where you're carrying your weight with your arms on the front and then you kind of move yourself up and down with it. So. Yeah. So kids who can't crawl won't be able to crawl now. They can at the same time frame that they would have been able to. So, like, for, you know, psychological development and just, you know, intellectual development of a child, being able to move around is extremely important. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Dude, that is so cool. [01:14:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:54] Speaker A: Okay, so you started that and so that you would say, that's a hobbyist. Just getting. [01:14:58] Speaker B: That's what I do whenever I'm not doing this. Yes. [01:15:02] Speaker A: That's cool. [01:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:03] Speaker A: No, camping. You don't go camping? [01:15:05] Speaker B: Nah, nah. [01:15:07] Speaker A: Going skiing? On horseback? Riding? [01:15:10] Speaker B: No. I used to have a dirt bike, but I don't do that much anymore. [01:15:13] Speaker A: Yeah, you sound like me. A guy asked me. A guy asked me, what do you do for a hobby? And I was like, oh, I forgot about that. What is that? No, I used to, like, I used to. I had this. I have. I say I had this because I haven't used it in that long of time. I have an ultralight and I used to just go cruising. Like it's like a go kart with wings. And he asked me that and I was like, dog gone. It. That is. I don't know if that's good or bad. [01:15:37] Speaker B: I think it's fine. I mean, you love what you do, don't you? I mean, so if you love what you do, then why do you need a hobby? [01:15:42] Speaker A: It's. I mean, work is a hobby, basically. Yeah. At this point, right? [01:15:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Hobbies are for people. [01:15:47] Speaker A: There's days where it's not a hobby, but a lot of days it is. [01:15:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I. I guess it depends how you want to look at it. My wife would want me to maybe have a hobby with her where we go play softball or something. [01:15:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah, could do that. [01:16:02] Speaker A: Your wife doesn't have hobbies either. How old are your kids? [01:16:06] Speaker B: Eight. Well, almost eight, five and four months. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Okay. [01:16:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:16:10] Speaker A: How old are you? [01:16:11] Speaker B: 34. [01:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah, he's our age. Well, you're young, dude. I. I thought you're. For some reason, I figured you're in your 40s. I don't know. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Why? I look old. Huh? [01:16:18] Speaker A: Not necessarily. I don't know, you're just, you're very. [01:16:21] Speaker B: The past few years have been pretty rough, guys, let's be honest. Done a lot. The old face, the money maker. [01:16:27] Speaker A: No, I don't know. It's not that you look old. You're very successful guy. I don't know. Did you ever start a business that failed that or. [01:16:34] Speaker B: Oh, yes, I did. I forgot about it and I don't know. I don't know if I actually started it, but had an idea for when I first. I was broke, you know, all, you know, all through, you know, college and whatnot. I'd pay my own way through school. And so I never had any money. And so I finally, like, made a little money selling some seed and I'm like, oh, cool. I kind of like this whole business thing. Maybe I'll start one. I saw, I was like, there's, you know, farmers using the Internet, whatnot. So I started a. Got a developer to, you know, to make a website and stuff and pull some data in from different sources to make like a single source of truth for test plot research data for different seed varieties and whatnot. It's called yield plot yieldplot.com and. [01:17:18] Speaker A: Sounds very complicated. [01:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Never did it. So it was made. Just never really did anything with it. [01:17:23] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. What'd you go to college for? [01:17:26] Speaker B: Agriculture, Business management and Ag System. Ag engineering. [01:17:31] Speaker A: Would you say that that college helped you with the business that you have now? [01:17:35] Speaker B: To some degree? Okay, to some degree. [01:17:38] Speaker A: Could you have done it without it? [01:17:39] Speaker B: Well, no, because I would not have had the connections. I like the people that I would have met. I would not have worked for the farm that I worked for and worked as hard as I worked for the farmer because I had to. And I would not have learned as much about agriculture, you know, and a lot of it was outside of the farm. [01:17:57] Speaker A: Did you grow up on a farm? [01:17:58] Speaker B: I did. I grew up on a dairy farm, you know, but, you know, it's different whenever it's like your family's farm and it's just like, well, we just have. We go milk the cows. Because we have to milk the cows. Like right now. We go, yeah, you know, feed the hay. Because we have to feed the hay. It's different whenever, like, you want to, because you're earning a paycheck and, like, you're kind of learning something new as well. Then it's like, it sparks something in you kind of thing. [01:18:22] Speaker A: Yeah, that's cool. That's about all I got. I mean, I feel like we could sit here for a while yet, but, man, I appreciate you sharing so much and laying it out there. [01:18:32] Speaker B: You bet. [01:18:33] Speaker A: Being on. What. What are some exciting things that are coming that you'd like to share? [01:18:39] Speaker B: Well, there's a lot of exciting. I mean, this 2025 is gonna be wild. A wild year for this industry. [01:18:43] Speaker A: It definitely feels like we just entered into a rodeo ring. [01:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:18:47] Speaker A: There's all kinds of new cows and calves, and they don't really know how it's all gonna work. Some clowns. Yeah, a lot of clowns. Dude, that was a perfect example. Yeah, I didn't even think of that. But yeah, because the industry is kind of getting shook up with the whole DJI band thing. [01:19:04] Speaker B: It is, yeah. [01:19:06] Speaker A: Okay. How many of these drones do you think would have came in if DJI were not been slowed down? They like all these other ones. [01:19:14] Speaker B: Yeah, all these drones would have came in, but to what level? [01:19:18] Speaker A: Not to the recognition that they have. [01:19:20] Speaker B: They would not gotten the recognition that. That they. That they have for. For sure. Yeah. [01:19:23] Speaker A: I believe that. Because in China, it's not just dji, it's not just xag. They have a lot of other ones as well. [01:19:32] Speaker B: DJ and XAG own majority of the market, for sure. But the market's so big in China that there is room for others. And so now the market here, it's confluence of things. Market's growing. Right. More and more people. Just like we said, there's a demand is outstripping supply. And now you have the DJI issue going on. So it's just there's much different opportunity for. For new things. We're going to see more new things now than we ever this year, than we ever have, I think, because people want to innovate. People want to be first. People want to you know, you know, make their products the best, you know, and so that's exactly what we're trying to do with agri spray drones. And yeah, I'm excited for this year. [01:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah, really excited. What about 2026? Do you think it'll get, get itself figured out in one year? [01:20:12] Speaker B: Who knows? I don't want to speculate. Yeah, right. I don't want to speculate. You know, I hope so. [01:20:16] Speaker A: Why not? Why don't you want to speculate, Taylor? [01:20:18] Speaker B: Well, because I. Several reasons. Right. [01:20:24] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:25] Speaker B: We. We don't know. I mean, it's out of our control. It really is. Like we, we think, you know, we have this big voice, you know, part of the ASDC and whatnot and legend, you know, talking to legislators, whatnot. But I don't know that our voice is that big, frankly. You know, we're a niche within a niche, you know. [01:20:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't want to, I don't want to speculate about any of anything. I hope, hope farmers have the access, access to the best technology. Right? That's, that's what I hope. I hope everybody has access to the best technology that's out there. And freedom of choice, freedom is great. You know, that's what is best for the end user. [01:20:54] Speaker A: So what, what if it's freedom of choice of only US made drones? Would you be okay with that? [01:21:01] Speaker B: H. Well, depends how many different US made drones there were, right? [01:21:06] Speaker A: No, no. Like they. No more China drones. [01:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, that would be a problem if that happened today. That would be a major problem. [01:21:12] Speaker A: It would be that. I mean, there is just. No. Is there a good US Drone that you know of? Like, does it matter the price? Is there just a good drone that can go apply product? [01:21:22] Speaker B: Not that I, I mean, okay, good is defined differently by everyone. Right? Okay, but is there one that competes, right, with China, with China built drones? No, there is not. [01:21:37] Speaker A: Not even. [01:21:37] Speaker B: Doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah. Might be getting closer. But then the question too is like scalability on making these things. We're talking they can make a couple hundred a year. What? [01:21:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that's why I don't know if I brought it up in this podcast. I've done a couple of these now today, but it's like, I feel like if that's going to happen, we need a billionaire to get into it. Yeah, it needs to be a. Yeah, it needs to be a billionaire because like just tens of millions doesn't do it. Like, look at Helio. They've tried raising how much money already and they're still so far behind and they had millions. [01:22:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:22:12] Speaker A: So you wouldn't want to see that necessarily. All China drones get stopped and let's have a billionaire step up the plate because this is a multi billion dollar industry. [01:22:20] Speaker B: Well, it can't be like a light switch. Right. I mean, I want U.S. manufacturing. Right. That's, that's the whole reason that we do this at Agri spray drones is to, you know, create more jobs. You said it yourself, you know, you love seeing people, you know, start a business, you know, and have jobs and use these drones and do that. So US manufactured drones would do more of that, right? Yeah. And so if we had, you know, a lot of US Manufacturing, that means more jobs for more Americans. Right. [01:22:50] Speaker A: And, and we need them like we do. [01:22:52] Speaker B: We actually, we actually need them. Yeah, we do. We need them. So I, I want that. I think everybody wants that. [01:22:57] Speaker A: I think so too. I think pretty much everybody wants that. [01:23:00] Speaker B: Yeah. But it can't be like a light switch. We can't just say, all right, we're done with Chinese drones. Go figure it out. Now you have to kind of develop that. [01:23:09] Speaker A: Why did they develop it before we did? [01:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. So why did China develop these spray drones before we did? Well, it was product market fit. Right. When you boil it down to a simple like, you know, why product market fit? So in China, you've got very small farms. We're talking family farms, you know, 20 acres or less. Right. In a lot of cases, yeah. [01:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:23:30] Speaker B: And, but you also, they're also applying the same type of chemistry that we're applying here with insecticides, fungicides, whatnot, by, but it's by hand. Right. Farmers didn't. Don't have access to the capital that we have access to here. They don't have the machinery that we had access. They're kind of developing that now. Right. So if 10 years ago. Right. Or a bit longer, whenever, you know, the first spray drones were made, they're made in China because A, China had a need for it on the, on farms to improve efficiency and safety, and B, they also had the manufacturing capability for drones to make them. And so we're talking very small drones like that foxtec, you know, or even smaller than that, you know, and that increased efficiency so much and safety so much that the Chinese government actually subsidized the purchase of drones spread on. [01:24:19] Speaker A: I was, I was wondering if you're going to bring that up because people don't know that. I didn't know that until a, a China drone manufacturer approach me actually randomly showed up at A demo. And he's like, I manufacture drones. Like, do you want to do something? Like, wait. And so I got into that. That's good you're bringing that up. Is. So they actually got paid. Like the government paid the Chinese farmers. Right. If they used spray drones or bought spray drones. How was. [01:24:45] Speaker B: Yeah, so I believe it was the farmers were basically given money, you know, to go buy a spray drone. And so that's, I mean, you might as well just give it to the manufacturer. Right. Because it's, you know, it increases demand much. They know there's going to be X amount of demand. [01:24:59] Speaker A: Right. [01:24:59] Speaker B: And so they build out the manufacturing capabilities to supply the demand. [01:25:04] Speaker A: Do you think that the government should do that here? I mean, I don't think there is a need to do that. [01:25:08] Speaker B: Yeah, there's. [01:25:09] Speaker A: It would be mayhem. There's no need to do that. If they would. And stop all the flow from China. Now there's. Now the billionaire knows that it's going to happen because there's subsidies. [01:25:20] Speaker B: I think it's kind of inverse here in the US Really. I mean, because farmers have access to capital. That's not the. [01:25:26] Speaker A: I did hear they're getting some checks now. Yeah, well, did you hear that? Yeah, yeah, there's some type of program going on that Trump did. I don't know. Was it because of the low commodity prices? [01:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. Oh, that. Yeah, that's something that's always happening. There's always. There's always subsidy checks and whatnot. And crop insurance is subsidized, you know, so U. S. Agriculture is pretty heavily subsidized. And there's a big reason for it, because we don't want farmers to go out of business and then farm, you know, farmland not be farmed. Right. That's a problem for our food supply. Yeah. And for the economy, frankly, you know, want to be food independent, you know, kind of thing. And so, yeah, agriculture is pretty heavily subsidized for that. [01:26:05] Speaker A: That's cool. [01:26:06] Speaker B: Yeah, there's. There's history with World War II and how that all. Like why that. Why that's there? Because of it. But yeah, so, yeah, I don't think farmers need to be subsidized necessarily to buy these drones here in the U.S. [01:26:15] Speaker A: Yeah, no, there's a huge need for it. People would buy it. [01:26:18] Speaker B: Like, yeah, manufacturing should be subsidized, I think. [01:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree with that. [01:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah. The whole, like, the whole what? Yeah, if you starts the chips act, you know, to make more chips. [01:26:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:30] Speaker B: Here. [01:26:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:31] Speaker B: Computer chips. [01:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Have you approached any Senators, would you subsidize me if I started manufacturing? [01:26:37] Speaker B: We talked to the governor of Missouri two weeks ago. [01:26:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:26:41] Speaker B: And. Yeah, they all want the same thing, you know? Yeah. But it's like there's also. I mean, federal funding. It's kind of being cut a little bit, too. There are programs out there being doged. It's being doged. There's programs out there that will assist, though. [01:26:56] Speaker A: That's cool. Doggone. I feel like we could go all night, but you know what? We're just going to. We're going to wrap it up. We're in this building. It feels like we should probably move. So I'm doing. Thanks so much, Taylor, for coming on and sharing, like, being open and going. Going through it with your growth and being open. I had fun. [01:27:14] Speaker B: Thanks for having an objective, Mike. [01:27:16] Speaker A: What was my objective? Oh, shit. What was it? I didn't even get it. [01:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah, you didn't do your objective. [01:27:23] Speaker A: I didn't have an objective. [01:27:24] Speaker B: Okay. [01:27:25] Speaker A: I'm not getting a joke. Tell me to joke. [01:27:27] Speaker B: Well, we talked about what, you know, the objective, what that means and whatnot. [01:27:32] Speaker A: But I didn't have an objective. [01:27:33] Speaker B: I know. Yeah. [01:27:34] Speaker A: Did you say. [01:27:35] Speaker B: I said thanks for not having an objective. [01:27:36] Speaker A: I thought you said thanks for having an objective to. I was like, I don't think I did. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:27:40] Speaker A: Okay, cool. All right, well, that's all we got for you guys. [01:27:43] Speaker B: Thanks.