How 46,000 Barges Replace 3.2 Million Trucks: Inside America's Hidden River Infrastructure

Alex Burkart [00:00:00] Well, you know, and I think you talk about the brute force part. So when you look at it from their supply chain standpoint, it's all about just figuring out those keywords that are gonna, or those key phrases that are the, how do I say this? Where their most pressing need is, what, what's their biggest challenge? What's their biggest headache right now? And there's not an easy way to do it that really is just, I'm gonna do a SWOT analysis on this entire industry, and I'm gonna learn the entire industry.

Vance Crowe [00:00:27] I'm Ashley McFarland, a nonprofit executive living in Duluth, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Grow Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we talk with Alex Burkart. I met Alex while doing a tour of America's Central Port. This is where container ships that travel up and down the Mississippi River can on and offload cargo. I knew that cargo was moving on the Mississippi River, but I had absolutely no idea how massive the scope was until I went on a field trip and got to see the facility for myself, Alex and I really hit it off. He is a soft spoken guy, but has an exceptional entrepreneur's mind where he thinks about how can we find and attract new customers? How can I meet new people and build relationships where they wanna do business with us? And I just really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will too. We're gonna head to that interview, but Alex and I had a unique conversation because it's not often that I meet other people that are doing marketing and public relations and communications work. And so you'll hear me mention a little bit about the work that I do that I don't really talk about on the podcast much. This is the work that I do with Articulate Ventures, and we have just a few clients. We're always focused on just helping one or two clients at any given time, help them build into the community. How can they find the right people that they wanna build relationships with? How can they build out their ability to offer services in the community that they're in?

Vance Crowe [00:02:00] And how do they get their name out there in a way that makes the community happy that they're there? So we do this work, but we don't talk about it all that much. And if you'd like to learn more, you can just go to Articulate Ventures. That's it. There's no.com on it or anything like that. Just Articulate Ventures, and you can learn a little bit more about the work that Ben Anderson and I do as consultants. So, without further ado, we're gonna head to the interview with my man, Alex Burkart. Alex Burkart, welcome to the podcast.

Alex Burkart [00:02:31] Thank you.

Vance Crowe [00:02:32] So I came down to America's Central Port. The St. Louis Bank was doing field trips around to different parts of our economy that you just don't see very often. And you were the guy leading the tour. I was stunned by how much barge traffic happens on the Mississippi River, how much cargo moves on and off. And you were the guy leading that thing. So I thought I'd bring you on what, you've worked at the Port for a couple years.

Alex Burkart [00:02:57] Yeah, about a little under three years right now.

Vance Crowe [00:03:00] How in the world did you find a job where you do strategic marketing for a port?

Alex Burkart [00:03:06] Kind of fun story there. The, I was actually trying to land the port as a client for my own consulting practice at the time. You know, I, I love networking and pretty much, I'm trying to think of the line of people here. Spiritual director introduced me to the head of economic development for the Chamber of Commerce in St. Louis. I remember having a sit down conversation with him and he said, just, you know, I hate to ask for free advice, but I'm, I'm gonna ask you for free advice. What would you do for the St. Louis region, just from an economic development standpoint? How would you position us? And what story would you tell that we're not already telling right now? And instead of giving him an answer right away, I started asking more questions. And I asked, well, I've always been curious, what role does the Mississippi River play in the overall economic development and like us bringing manufacturing to St. Louis? And he looked up at me and said, he, just, the fact that I had like that I asked that question in the first place was enough of a, I guess, realization for him that I knew what I was talking about when it came to transportation and that link back to manufacturing and jobs for a region. So he put me onto some type of meeting, had to do with container on Barge on the Mississippi River. And it was a just, you talk about very unique niche meeting only about 20 people in there.

Alex Burkart [00:04:37] And I met the, I met Mary Lamey, she's the executive director for the St. Louis Freightways organization. Told her what I do in that meeting. And then she said, you know, everyone in this room really needs what you do. Just go around and tell everybody what you do. Met Dennis Meyer for the first time, told my, you know, I grew up in Edwardsville, I grew up on the east side, and I had never actually heard of America Central Port, you know, sounds incredible. I'd love to learn more about you guys. And I started our, you know, our relationship right then and there. First time I came out for a meeting with them was offered a job and they, they had a marketing position open at the time, and I was, you know, politely declined. I really wanted to, you know, make sure I was at a point where, well,

Vance Crowe [00:05:28] You're an entrepreneur, right, right, right. Like, so we'll get into it. Yeah. People

Alex Burkart [00:05:31] Have

Vance Crowe [00:05:31] No idea. They're talking to the guy that is like, not only do you enjoy networking, but like, you're incredibly creative with this. Which is why I, I've been so interested. We've hung out a couple of times. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:05:41] So

Vance Crowe [00:05:41] I can imagine America's central Port is a governmental body, right? It's the group on, and we can talk more about it, but it would be a bit of a, of a stretch for somebody like you with your entrepreneurial spirit to just, you know, go take a government job court.

Alex Burkart [00:05:56] Correct. Very, very, very correct. It was for me to do that, it was, it was a bit of a life life decision, and it had to be the right strategic choice. And that's ultimately what it ended up being was nine months later, you know, came back, said, if you're willing to negotiate and talk about terms and what I'm gonna do for the organization, that I'm more than happy to take this on. And they were, and they met my terms. And the, the rest is history. And as far as me taking it on and still like maintaining that entrepreneur spirit, the real reason I took on the role of the Port is there's simply so much opportunity from an insights and knowledge standpoint, very interested in like the supply chain aspect, transportation aspect, manufacturing, how all that works on a national and global scale. And being at the Port, I really do have the access to so much tribal knowledge that you can't just, you can't find on the internet. They don't, you know, write books about this. You have to be in that industry to understand how it operates.

Vance Crowe [00:07:00] I mean, I'm totally with you. The, the idea about communications. The problem is if you go out on your own and you're just like, I'm gonna be a generalist in communications, then you're like looking around and you're like, oh, who can I go that needs my help communicating? And I think what ends up happening is most people go after the same businesses over and over and over again.

Alex Burkart [00:07:18] But

Vance Crowe [00:07:18] If you get into like a tiny niche where you say like, this is a group of people that are super focused on what they do, whether it's chemical manufacturing or transportation or agriculture,

Alex Burkart [00:07:30] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:07:31] Then, then the amount of people doing communications in those space is way lower. The quality of service that they get is, is just, you know, it, it, you're just not competing against the mainstream. And it, it sets you up for a way to specialize. But like most young people, most people, unless you're introduced into that path like you're describing finding that niche,

Alex Burkart [00:07:53] You

Vance Crowe [00:07:53] Just don't even know that those businesses exist. You don't even know what the problems are that you could try and help them solve.

Alex Burkart [00:07:58] Exactly.

Vance Crowe [00:08:00] So tell me a little bit about America's Central Port. Why should anybody care at all about the Mississippi River and the, and the port and the, and the cargo that flows on there?

Alex Burkart [00:08:10] Oh man, that's a, that's a fun question. I'll go back to just one thing you said earlier about just the number of barges that are on the Mississippi River. I post this on LinkedIn a couple days ago. I thought it was an interesting stat. So this is according to like 2009 numbers. So I, I thought it was safe to say this, but about 46,000 barges interchange with Lock 27, which is right where it's the last lock in the Mississippi and it's the lock right next to America Central Port. And the reason I bring that up is that the, without that lock system, and without the chain of rocks canal there, that the Army Corps of Engineers put in place, you'd have to, that would block off access to the entire upper Mississippi. There's a, that lock and dam system, you have about 29 lock and dams there that they basically interchanges of 420 foot stairwell of water from Minneapolis all the way to St. Louis. But then you also have, right, in St. Louis, you have 17.5 miles of chain of rocks under the Mississippi River that they had to create a canal to go past that.

Vance Crowe [00:09:19] It's essentially like the slowest waterfall in the world, right? Correct, correct, correct. Like, it's like the chain of rocks when you describe that, like you're like, I don't know why that matters, but if you go look at the Mississippi, it's dropping a huge amount of distance except for it's over such a long space Yeah. That it made the water so thin, you know, so the depth so low that you couldn't bring a barge that's loaded down with coal. Correct, correct. Or corn or soybeans or anything like that. So you, the port is right at the very la the very first one, if you're going north, or the very last one if you're taking your cargo south.

Alex Burkart [00:09:52] Right. And on the point of taking it south, you have the, it takes about 30 minutes to interchange through a lock and dam system. So the reason that St. Louis is becoming known is that Ag coast of America really is that it's the best place to offload all of your agriculture commodity because you have that, it's your economy of scale, you're gaining the most for your buck on that barge transportation all the way down south to the Gulf. And not having to wait on maintenance of locking dams or just wait time in general, staining behind barges. The, but back to that 46,000 number, if you didn't have the entire system that exists, you'd have another, something like 600,000 plus rail cars or 3.2 million trucks that would be needed to transport the same amount of commodity to wherever it needs to go. So I thought that was kind of a little cool stat about why that infrastructure's needed. Back to your question about why people should care about the port beyond just the Mississippi River access, I feel like a lot of people that are in barge transportation already, they're pretty familiar with how barge transportation works. What I don't think is out there and clear is the, our access to rail as well as just the fact that we have about 900 acres of our 1200 acre campus is a former military base that's been, you know, for the most part, fully updated for industrial users. So, you know, we have a little under 2 million square feet of warehouse available high voltage power options.

Alex Burkart [00:11:32] You know, we have Mississippi River right there. So water, you know, you can do 2 million gallons of water a day. There's just a significant amount of high grade industrial infrastructure there to be able to meet ma like small manufacturing needs. And then on the rail side, what I've noticed recently is that, I guess a recent epiphany of mine is related to specifically chemical manufacturers. And I say that because the, our warehouses do have a height restriction of 22 feet. So that kind of restricts what can go in there. There's obviously calm spacing and things of that nature, but the sheer fact that we have so much rail on our property and it's all in one location. So take a typical chemical manufacturer, like a mid-size chemical manufacturer, say like a $200 million operator versus say Phillips 66, you know, billion dollar company, they're gonna have a significant amount of rail on their property. Whereas that $200 million player, more likely than not, is just gonna have a spur, like a rail spur that comes into their facility off of a main line. Well, and that one spur, they're gonna be limited to the number of cars that can fit on that track space. Right? So maybe that's 10 cars and they get, say, two switches a week from the class one railroad. That means production wise, they're gonna be limited to like 20 cars a week.

Alex Burkart [00:13:05] We're at America Central Port because we have, so we have about 20 miles of track on that one property. And that we don't have, we have plenty of space to like interchange on that track. So you could have a warehouse where you only have maybe technically four spots outside your property, but you could interchange a hundred cars per week. So your production value can go, or your production output can go significantly higher.

Vance Crowe [00:13:37] And for people that like aren't in manufacturing or don't move things around, this is like, ah, these are like tiny details. But it's a, it's a phenomenal thing because you're talking about you could be bringing in chemical from anywhere in the world, right? It could come into the Gulf of Mexico. You bring it up through the Mississippi in, in Louisiana and cart it all the way up there, and then you can only get it off of those cargo ships drip by drip by drip. If you don't have some port that allows you to pull it all off of the, the barges and then put it on the trains and then the trains can take it anywhere in the United States. And that includes not just going east on the other side of the Mississippi. 'cause you're on the Illinois side. Correct. So, right, right now we're in St. Louis, we're on the miss or on the, on the west side of the river. Right.

Alex Burkart [00:14:20] And

Vance Crowe [00:14:21] It's just a fascinating thing and I don't think I really would've appreciated it until we went to see that tour.

Alex Burkart [00:14:27] And

Vance Crowe [00:14:27] It's just absolutely mind blowing how much stuff is moving. And I had spent time, so I used to be a decade and I, I was worked on the west coast, so I've seen the port of la I've been down in San Diego and all of that cargo people see it because you can see the cranes from so far away. It's kind of a part of the landscape. So you kind of,

Alex Burkart [00:14:48] Right,

Vance Crowe [00:14:48] I I think people on the west coast that live near those, those things kind of have a sense for how that there is cargo going on and the Mississippi, it's totally hidden,

Alex Burkart [00:14:57] Right? So

Vance Crowe [00:14:57] People have no idea that you have this river here, you're like, eh, it's the big muddy, you know, we occasionally have songs, I think they used to do River bar, you know? Yeah. You know, river Fairies there. Mark Twain talks about it, but that's all they know about it. Not realizing huge volumes of, you know, grain is moving there, coal chemicals, all these things. And it's hilarious. Your your point earlier in the beginning of the story where you were like, you know, I pointed out to the guy, I wanted to know more about the Mississippi River and how we're using it. Because I would say if you asked people like, tell me the top 10 things around St. Louis, virtually no one would mention the Mississippi River, despite the fact that it's right there,

Alex Burkart [00:15:35] Right? Correct.

Vance Crowe [00:15:36] 'cause nobody uses it, right? Like No, no. Like you don't go down street.

Alex Burkart [00:15:39] Yeah. I mean your, your your everyday person doesn't, but yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:15:42] And so what's gone on since you got to the, to the port? You know, you, you got there and you were supposed to do strategy well, how did this work out?

Alex Burkart [00:15:53] I'd say it's worked out pretty well so far, or at least that's what my leadership team tells me. Well, put it this way, we, and I can't take full credit for it. So, you know, Frank Papa, our sales manager, does a phenomenal job for us. But we started at 70% capacity, so about a 30% vacancy rate in our warehousing. And that was bus, basically our biggest challenge was we need to fill this. We're currently at 97%, I believe. So I'd say we're doing pretty well. You know, after that, I think within my first six months, brought on a, pretty much laying in my first like warehouse deal. It was a, for, i i, I don't know it, two year with multiple options. Basically like a 10 year agreement on 43,000 square feet of space at 3 35. So not a bad deal. Great organization, Reinhardt Electric, and happy to have him at the port.

Vance Crowe [00:16:59] It was cool, man. Like we were driving around and we were seeing these different companies that are there. And like, this is something, I don't know how you solve this problem in the United States because just like we were talking about with communications people, right? Like if you're a generalist, you only know the companies that you see the billboards of or you drive past on the interstate, but at your, at your port, right? There's people that all they do is they press out screws and like really specialized screws and bolts and

Alex Burkart [00:17:26] Those

Vance Crowe [00:17:26] Kinds of things. And then right across the way there's a guy making super high-end telescopes and he's like, you know, milling the glass to be absolutely perfect and they're multimillion dollar scopes. It's just a funny thing that goes on because I, I think people can get down on the United States and we can be like, oh, you know, all I see is the gloom and doom that's on, on tv not realizing like every day there are thousands of people going to work producing things that we need all around us. We just don't see it when you're in the city.

Alex Burkart [00:17:58] Correct. And, and I blame it on, you know, like the fact that all the buildings are like, there's squares and rectangles, you can't see anything there. There's, there's no, there's no character on the outside of the building that says anything. There're typically no signs because they don't want to be bothered by seeing like, you know, cold calling and salespeople. So there's really nothing to tell you that there's employees there other than the cars that are in the parking lot. So, you know, Frank at the port always told me he is like a good way to judge a building and know that there's productivity is to look at the type of cars in the parking lot. And he's like, that'll tell you if it's give you a good idea, that's probably a manufacturer with good paying jobs in there if you're seeing a bunch of, you know, mustangs and whatnot in the parking lot. So I thought that was,

Vance Crowe [00:18:41] That's that's probably, that's a good point. I I I remember coming away from the experience of the port tour

Alex Burkart [00:18:47] Feeling

Vance Crowe [00:18:48] Like energized. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:18:49] Because

Vance Crowe [00:18:50] I think that there's, I, I don't, and like, I don't know that we should have some, you know, emotional campaign out there that's like, look, other people are going to work in manufacturing things. You should feel good about it. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:19:00] But like

Vance Crowe [00:19:00] When you drive across the Mississippi from St. Louis,

Alex Burkart [00:19:04] Particularly

Vance Crowe [00:19:04] If you're on, you know, like the 64 55 thing. So this, for anybody that doesn't know it, if, if you're driving, if you wanna drive right past the arch and you know, past Cardinal Stadium, you're driving across the Mississippi, then you hit East St. Louis, and it's just an industrial wasteland. And at one time that was filled, it was teaming with all sorts of business. There were packing houses, there were chemical manufacturers, a bunch of Monsanto work got done down there back when they were a chemical manufacturer. But now it doesn't exist and it just looks like a, like a rusted waste bin. So my conception of the other side of the river was that nothing was happening over there. Right. If you go far enough, you find an Amazon warehouse, but then your impression of that is somebody is manufacturing stuff over in China and then they're just storing it here before it gets shipped out. But the port showed me like, no, no, no, no, no. There is a lot more building going on than than we even realize.

Alex Burkart [00:19:59] Yeah, no, the significant amount of manufacturing. I've talked to other employers that, you know, a lot of people talk about the state of Illinois and the doing business in the state of Illinois. I think what keeps people here really is that workforce potential. Talk to many employers on the manufacturing construction side and the, like that that's their main reason for staying. That's

Vance Crowe [00:20:24] Why they stay in Illinois or that's why they stay in this region.

Alex Burkart [00:20:27] I'd say this region in general, but the ones that we do have in Illinois, same thing there. There's no, there's no real point moving, you know, their workforce lives here and for them to grow, there's enough of a workforce here to establish that.

Vance Crowe [00:20:40] And, and the crazy thing about your port is because it was an old Army barracks on the, or army base, really, the, there's also like actual housing there. So you guys, in addition to doing ports and rail spurs and getting shipped container ships unloaded and loaded, you also are running like all these apartment buildings where like there's people there, there's schools, there's, I mean, it, it's like its own little world over there. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:21:04] We basically, any way that we can possibly generate money, you know, within means. But yeah, we've got 150 apartments, pretty much a hundred percent capacity at this moment. We just, you know, we do a decent job marketing those and they're pretty high quality for where the location is. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:21:25] Let's talk about how business moves that you've seen. So you're working on a part of the, the business world where most people don't know, but occasionally somebody says, Hey, I need a whole bunch of warehouse space, or I need the access to the Mississippi River. Most people don't have a concept of that. Right.

Alex Burkart [00:21:43] But

Vance Crowe [00:21:43] Every once in a while a company puts out like a, like a request. Like a bid. A bid, right? Right.

Alex Burkart [00:21:47] How

Vance Crowe [00:21:48] Does all this work?

Alex Burkart [00:21:49] Gotcha, gotcha. So from an like, it's, it's a world called economic development. So your pretty much anything as low as maybe $3 million investment all the way up to a $4 billion investment, and your prospects, they're typically anonymous until you finally get a meeting face to face with them. But it's,

Vance Crowe [00:22:13] So they put out like a thing saying, this is what we're looking for on the specs, this is the amount of space we need this much electricity, we need this much blah, blah, blah. But you don't even know who they are.

Alex Burkart [00:22:22] Correct. Unless

Vance Crowe [00:22:23] You're Amazon.

Alex Burkart [00:22:23] Yeah, it's typically, yeah. Right. Amazon was very public about it, but it's typically named project something or another. There's, there's some code name project assigned to it, and then that's given to the states that they're interested in at the, the state level. Then that gets disseminated down to all the economic developers throughout the region. So St. Louis has Greater St. Louis Inc. And Alliance STL, and they represent the entire St. Louis MSA with sites in both Missouri and Illinois. And then many cities also have their own economic developers. So like Halton, granite, city America Central Port would be me. And I represent the 200 square mile district that makes up the port district. And then there's other ones throughout the region, state, Illinois, state of Missouri. So how that disseminates down is that we, sorry, vibrated phone. The, basically we just fill out whatever they're asking. It's much like an RFP that you would, you know how your pi it's, it's less on the pitching side at that point really is do you meet what we have. Like, they'll get people that respond and like just submit whatever site they have, even if it doesn't hit the requirements. So half the battle is just making sure you stand out as, yes, we fit exactly what you're asking for. You want rail, telling 'em there's actually rail there. It's not five miles away. And that's, that's a whole other problem in like real estate industry is that rail served real estate means different things to different people.

Alex Burkart [00:24:02] You know, that can mean that there's rail technically near the property, but the class one carrier hasn't approved for that rail extension to happen. So that's, and then there's rail served like America Central Port where no, the spur is on the property. Construction's already been taken care of. You have service that's rail served. So that's just a little tidbit detail there. So anyway, once it gets to the economic developers, they go through that finalized process, they sort through the sites, and then if you're in that top amount, they'll start doing site visits. And then it's just a kind of competition of incentives, workforce numbers, and what's the best bang for the buck and strategic outlook for that company to locate in that position.

Vance Crowe [00:24:52] It's funny to think about attracting different companies into your city, right? Like that there's like some sort of whining and dining that goes on. Who takes responsibility for that? Is it just the, the one company and you were mentioning the different economic authorities,

Alex Burkart [00:25:07] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:25:07] It's funny because until I met you and, and heard about this, those things seem like such an opaque business, right? It's like, what do you do all day? You know, like, but you're trying to find businesses that wanna move are totally like open to it,

Alex Burkart [00:25:21] Right? Bring

Vance Crowe [00:25:22] 'em in and showing 'em a good time because that's the representative of the city,

Alex Burkart [00:25:26] Right? And, and a lot of it, so I mean, you gotta think about your, again, looking at the Mississippi River as one asset, but what are your main assets as St. Louis?

Vance Crowe [00:25:36] Not the airport. I'll tell you that. That's, that's, I, I don't know how we fix that problem, but it is not the airport.

Alex Burkart [00:25:42] Ah, I don't know about that. I mean, there's, there's, there's potential there.

Vance Crowe [00:25:46] There's potential, sure. But it doesn't exist right now.

Alex Burkart [00:25:50] Okay. I, I can't comment on that. The No, I met with, with Rhonda there, their executive director kind of learned a little insight about that and how that works. I do know that on the commercial side, it really does. They're very similar to us as a port authority. I I had no idea about that. I don't know if you knew that.

Vance Crowe [00:26:13] No. Uhuh.

Alex Burkart [00:26:14] So yeah, just a learning aspect on the fact of them is that, so all their decisions do have to go through like the board of Alderman of St. Louis, and then their funding is very much tied to the same way, like we go after grants. So for like their commercial base, like for us to do more to grow as an airport, you're, you're mainly looking at like the commercial cargo side as well as as the passenger side. And it seems to be that a lot of the traffic that's coming out, like the business aspect of Lambert is related to like leisure travel of people from St. Louis going elsewhere. Whereas like compared to like, say

Vance Crowe [00:27:02] Nashville for example,

Alex Burkart [00:27:03] Nashville right, is like a destination kind of city from a travel standpoint. And yes, we get that with St. Louis, but is, I mean the, I feel like the argument can be made,

Vance Crowe [00:27:17] It's kind of a chicken or egg

Alex Burkart [00:27:18] Thing is what you're describing, right? Like we need to, I wouldn't put the full blame on the, like put it this way, I wouldn't put the full blame on the airport. It's how do we, it comes back to that economic development decision of who do we actually target to that makes sense based on St. Louis's profile or the greater St. Louis area's profile. And on the business side, I don't know, I'm, I know, I know the

Vance Crowe [00:27:45] Industry, like I spend a lot of time in that airport, right? Because I'm flying all over the country and, and architecturally it's a really cool place part, there's two different terminals. Like it's got some really interesting character to it. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:27:57] But

Vance Crowe [00:27:57] There's something that happens like as soon as you're moving throughout that and as you're describing it, I'm like, oh, that's what it is. It's decisions being made by committee. Right? It's like an ordinary business wouldn't make the decisions that they're making. These are made decisions being made where you're accounting for many, many different interests as opposed to one entity saying, I I wanna see this

Alex Burkart [00:28:20] Be realized. Right? It's, it's not a private entity. Yeah. If, if it were, I imagine like that that comes with any government entity is that you have to go through a checks and balances system of figuring out, you know, how all that's gonna work. So

Vance Crowe [00:28:34] Well anyway, I know I'm putting you on the spot, but let's, let's change the subject. So one of you were talking with my executive producer, Ben Anderson, and he pulled out, after he talked with you, he pulled out of his wallet, a card that you had

Alex Burkart [00:28:46] Oh boy.

Vance Crowe [00:28:46] Which was free coffee with Alex. Yeah. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. He's offering coffee. But that actually wasn't what you were doing. You were offering coffee and then you would write an article about the experience. Correct. Is that right? Yeah. So talk more about that. How did that come about?

Alex Burkart [00:29:00] You know, I, I think it's similar to like podcast world in the sense that, I mean, don't get me wrong, like this plays incredibly on my pride. So I, I do something similar, but really, I started it for a lot of reasons. One, I saw somebody else doing it, so I kind of copied her idea, but I wanted to like write, like start writing and actually have a reason to write and just get better at writing. So I started this back in like grad school and I also wanted to have like a portfolio for writing. 'cause I was looking at marketing jobs way back when, right? The other aspect there was I wanted a way to gain interviews with certain people on a faster basis. So sometimes you can reach out and just say, Hey, let's grab coffee. But it doesn't always work. You know, typically you need a little bit more of a carrot to get that first meeting. And it's not that I like want anything from these people other than just to learn what whatever it is they do. So, you know, I had interest from a like, healthcare standpoint. I really wanted to understand pretty much like how the healthcare continuum works and what all the different branches are and everything. So I needed someone who had pretty much a high level executive level with a hospital system. And I found one, I reached out to her and I asked her and she said yes. So it, it's stuff like that. And, you know, it's always a positive article. I always let them look at it before they see it.

Alex Burkart [00:30:32] It's, I'm not gonna say any, it's not like a journalistic, you know, inter interrogation. But no, it's just a kind of fun way to continue networking. And in a weird way, you could say that I, I landed the port via that blog. 'cause the, the chain, the chain of people that I met and how I met them. I remember the interview I had with it was Elizabeth Westoff, she was the director of marketing for the Archdiocese of St. Louis. And I met her via Twitter. 'cause I used to do a bunch of networking on Twitter of all places. Met her there, invited her to coffee blog, do that. And then years after years, I mean she introduced me, my spiritual director, s director Jim Alexander with the Greater St. Louis Inc. And then Port and the rest is history.

Vance Crowe [00:31:26] It's amazing how it, like I am, I'm surprised that how easy it is to get ahold of people. Like for, for me, like people will write my Twitter and dms, right?

Alex Burkart [00:31:37] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:31:37] And, and like, I absolutely love this. And they'll be like, I don't wanna take up too much of your time, but just like you had said about the, the ego thing, right? You've, you've produced something, right?

Alex Burkart [00:31:46] You put

Vance Crowe [00:31:47] It out into the world, you don't know what people are gonna respond to it. So somebody shows up and they're like, I listened to this thing and I thought this about it. It could even be a negative thing. Yeah. In fact, I would say probably I've, I've probably developed better relationships with people that have told me things that they didn't like about what I was saying. 'cause I'm like, Hey, there's a person with an opinion. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:32:06] But

Vance Crowe [00:32:06] It, it's like one of those things that it, once you get over the initial fear of reaching out to somebody, you wouldn't believe how many things can can open up for you. I used to, when, when I was first starting my company Articulate Ventures, I used to give out a weekly award called the Simplicity Award. And I would find somebody that I thought took something really complicated and made it simple to understand. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:32:32] And

Vance Crowe [00:32:32] The award was like a picture of a puppy with a ribbon on it. Right.

Alex Burkart [00:32:35] But it was

Vance Crowe [00:32:36] A blog written about why they did what they did. Right. And I'm not even entirely sure I thought through just how effective this would be. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:32:44] But

Vance Crowe [00:32:45] It exploded, right? Because you'd have people, like, I did one for this guy who has a YouTube channel called Smarter Every Day, which now people know. But at the time the guy had maybe 10,000 right. Subscribers. He went around and told everybody that he won an award. And then I, you notice like, hey, if I keep doing this more and more people, like it's not just writing a blog about 'em. It's like, Hey, somebody recognized me for things I'm doing. And then they go share it and then more people come. It's an interesting thing. All you have to do is have a little bit of ingenuity and put a little bit of work into expressing what it is that you noticed or what kind of experience you had. And it really has a powerful impact on building out your network.

Alex Burkart [00:33:23] Yeah, no, for, for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:33:25] So you mentioned the spiritual director a couple of times. This is your spiritual director or one just in general?

Alex Burkart [00:33:31] No, my spiritual director. So

Vance Crowe [00:33:33] Tell me more about that. Not everybody that I talk with says, you know, makes reference to their spiritual

Alex Burkart [00:33:38] Director. Makes, makes reference, well, changed my life. So there's that. No, it's Monsignor Eugene Morris. He does the Latin mass. St. Gregory, I believe. I know I may have gotten that wrong. He might, he may be mad at me for that. But no, great guy. And just honestly, I knew I wanted a spiritual, so I'm, I'm born and raised Catholic. And pretty much what did it for me was, I had just gotten done doing like training, like personal training for the first time in my life. Lost a ton of weight. But what I realized was the, just the amount of coaching that came into that and that I didn't know what I didn't know about fitness, health, and everything else. And I saw the same thing in my faith. And I was like, man, I just really need someone who like gets me, understands where I'm at level wise, and then can just tell me, here's, here's what you should read. Here's what you should focus on here. Here's a map. This is what you need to do next. So I reached out to, I contacted Elizabeth Westoff, who now is, I mean, career wise in the Catholic world of things. She, she's pretty, pretty impressive woman. And she hooked me up with Eugene Morris. So.

Vance Crowe [00:34:51] And so when you describe it as a, as a map, do you feel like you notice a distance that you've traveled? Like a place where you were to a place where you are?

Alex Burkart [00:35:00] Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:35:02] Tell me more about that. Definitely.

Alex Burkart [00:35:05] Hmm. Just like full on understanding. So I guess I don't normally talk about this, but the, as a Catholic, not having like a full on relationship with Christ, how do I get to that? The, I remember the first meeting I had with Monsignor, it was, he was like, Hmm, okay, do you pray? And I'm like, and he goes, that's a no. Okay. He's like, we need to, you need to pray. Right. You know, like daily. And then he is like, do you go to church? And I was like, no. And he goes, well how about you start with praying regular, like daily and then go, just go to church on Sundays and, and then we'll check in after a month. So started there, started with a rosary. So I now say at least one rosary a day, and then go to church on Sundays, or at least try to. And honestly, after I remember, well put it this way. So when I met Monsignor, I met Monsignor. And then a month later I was with, like, when I was doing my own consultancy, I lost my, pretty much my clients. So contracts that I had had all expired. And then the last one I was in a position with a former client of mine where I basically contract, got terminated, was offered a full-time job.

Alex Burkart [00:36:38] I did not want the full-time job. I wanted to like stay with my business. And I had to make a decision, okay, zero contracts, zero income coming in, what do I do next? Do I take this job or do I say, you know, screw it. I'm gonna try and do my own business. So I said, screw it. And I wanna know that I've put everything I possibly can into making this work before I basically quit and go full-time. So this is the real story of how I got the port was I took that on. I knew I had nine months of income, like savings and whatnot. And I remember, so all that happened like two days after I met Monsignor. And then I kept up that prayer life. And I remember meeting him a month later and he's like, how you doing? You look amazing. Like, you just look like lighter. And I go, you know what's crazy is like career wise, it's, it's very stressful, but like, I feel better than I've ever, like nothing, nothing matters anymore. Like this is like, I feel fine. I feel like everything's gonna be fine. There's nothing that I can't take on. So I kind of credit my prayer life to that entire journey. But yeah, I spent the next nine months basically networking, networking, networking, just trying, like I had at the time when I landed the port or like met them and started going through that process of landing them as a client.

Alex Burkart [00:38:11] Had a few other, I had plenty of other lines in the fire. Like if the port hadn't planned out, like I did have other ones lined up. But I kind of look at that as a success in of itself. 'cause I, I didn't land 'em as a client, but I had nine months to better my, I guess, position. And I did pretty significantly from where I was at before.

Vance Crowe [00:38:33] Yeah. I mean, I think the, the inner life of people, like where, where faith comes from, what is the voice that tells you you should take this chance or let this chance pass, or this is something Yeah. Is such an interesting thing. And it's so like, it's so deeply embedded into literally everyone. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:38:54] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:38:54] Like there, there are no NPCs, the non-player characters. Like if you're looking around, you're, you see a person, unless they're completely drugged outta their minds, they have this conversation going on in their head at all times, both with themselves and with some other being or whatever. Yeah. So these conversations about how did people get in touch with whatever that inner voice is, is one that's one of my favorites. In fact, on the podcast we often talk about it being somebody's Damon, right? Like what is that voice? Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:39:25] That

Vance Crowe [00:39:26] You have a conversation within your head, but it isn't really necessarily like, like a, like an actual voice. It's just something, right? Like I, you know, you're right now having a dialogue in your head in the same way that I am.

Alex Burkart [00:39:38] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:39:38] Who is it that you're talking with? And then how is it that you can funnel that into being something that's productive? And I think whether that's, you know, the Catholic faith or some other faith, I don't, I don't know the right way, but I, I'm super interested in figuring out how other people commune with that voice or those voices.

Alex Burkart [00:39:56] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:39:59] So tell me about you were your work in, you know, before you got into this, you did some really interesting entrepreneurial stuff. You have some interesting ways of brute forcing and figuring out like, hey, who would be a good person to reach out to. So can you talk about some of your, your strategies for finding new, new people to work with

Alex Burkart [00:40:19] Business development? So yeah, one of my recent ones is we talk about the brute force aspect. It's using Google maps to canvas entire regions. And a lot of this comes back to my experience in the real estate side now, but being able to look at a business from an aerial or like a, a building and just by doing that, pulling up their website. And then really anything I see about the outside, we go about the, we talk about the cars that are in the parking lot. You know, obviously I'm like going off of data that like the Google satellite took a picture that day. So if there happened to be off or, you know, I might not get a good shot. But for the most part, we'll talk about like in the rail serve, real estate side side of things. You know, lists that I've developed for the port are every single rail served facility and tenant and business in the St. Louis MSA. I also have that for, I'm basically doing almost the entire United States. I'm targeting cities across the United States and building that out for the port, but ultimately building that out for St. Louis in general, and I say St. Louis in general from a site selection standpoint. So like if it doesn't work for the Port, it's in our best interest to bring it to somewhere in St. Louis or the greater St. Louis area.

Vance Crowe [00:41:45] So you're taking a look at these photographs, you're saying, Hey, that looks like a pretty big square box that from from up top,

Alex Burkart [00:41:51] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:41:51] And then, you know, who, who is this company? What is it that they're producing? And then are they looking for space? Are they

Alex Burkart [00:41:58] Right? Well, you know, it, a lot of it comes back to something you said earlier of, unless you're, unless you're in that niche, unless you're, your parents did something like, did that industry before, you don't really know that that business exists. Half of like business development to me is just figuring out what companies are actually in your own backyard. So I remember one of my biggest pet peeves of getting outta college was you're not really educated about that. You're told about the big guys. You know, like everybody knows Monsanto and Purina and you know, Boeing and all that is in St. Louis. Great, fantastic. What if you, if you can't get a job with them, you're left thinking, well what are my other options? And how do you even find the companies that, like, you don't know what you're, you don't know what you're Googling, you don't know what you're actually looking for other,

Vance Crowe [00:42:45] And interestingly enough, those companies don't know how to find you either. Correct. Right. Like there's this weird gap.

Alex Burkart [00:42:51] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:52] And like, you're right, the big boys all know how to, how to like go out and, and

Alex Burkart [00:42:56] Take

Vance Crowe [00:42:56] The cream right off the top. But if you're running like a bolt manufacturing company, you don't have somebody sitting around being like, this is the way we're gonna get their next crop of bolt manufacturers.

Alex Burkart [00:43:06] Well, and you don't realize, just when you think about just supply chains, I mean one way to think of it really is just start thinking of industry supply chains in general. So if you're trying to identify niches that make sense for you to target, you know, say you do a lot of work in the PR and the marketing and the agriculture side, what's gonna make sense from a, you know, like other clients you should go after that are gonna see your work with that person or with that entity as relevant to what they do, you start to look at their supply chain and then just map it backwards and you'll find out that, you know, like grain co-ops are practically membership, I mean large membership bases. And to think that they don't need to update any of their marketing and reengage their pro, like their their

Vance Crowe [00:43:54] Oh, I hear talking all the time. Absolutely. I mean,

Alex Burkart [00:43:57] I think that's a huge opportunity. I've seen trends, especially on the agriculture side, like your, I think we're gonna see more and more of this in the future, but this is a long shot. But, so a while back was at Walmart, basically the large retailer side gobbling up more and more of the supply chain and like dominating markets that have never had to compete with anybody else. So I think about the farm co-ops that do more than just grain. They do like agricultural equipment, things of that nature. Oh

Vance Crowe [00:44:33] Yeah. Or chemicals. Oh, chemicals and

Alex Burkart [00:44:35] Whatnot. Well, the re like to me,

Vance Crowe [00:44:40] There are people right now listening to the show that are in grain co-ops. You don't have to slow this down, right?

Alex Burkart [00:44:44] Yeah, right. Okay. Go

Vance Crowe [00:44:45] Hard, man. But

Alex Burkart [00:44:46] The, you know, if Amazon can figure out Amazon or Walmart figures out the supply chain aspect to being able to deliver those products to you, like to those rural areas pretty much on demand. And it seems like that's where they're inching towards. Those are markets to me that are not gonna, like, they're not gonna be able to compete. And they've been because they've been in that strong niche and it's, there's no one else, no one else has been trying to enter that market.

Vance Crowe [00:45:14] I've got a hilarious story for you on this part. So in, in, in, in Monsano, right? So Monsanto doesn't exist anymore. When I was getting trained, they, they sent me out all over the place. So I would get to go on these experiences where you'd meet, you know, people doing genetics or seed chemistry or whatever. One time we go out to a guy that he's a seed salesman, but not a Monsanto seed salesman, right? So he's an independent broker that all that gets Monsanto seeds and he can sell them. So, you know, he's selling DeKalb and, and Asgrow. And, and so I'm, I'm listening to him talk, he's in his farm shop, there's a couple of us there, and I raise my hand and very innocently ask, you know, why does somebody need to come to you? Like, can't they just order the bag of seed on the internet? And the guy, like, it was as though it was the first time anybody had ever presented this idea to him, right? And so his face drops and he's like, I don't know, is that possible? And all the handlers that were around were like, no, no, not possible.

Alex Burkart [00:46:17] No, not possible.

Vance Crowe [00:46:19] And like I I realized instantly what I had done. But I mean, this is a reality. Yeah. So for people that aren't aware of how co-ops work, what they do is you have, you know, you see a green grain elevator, you got people bring their grain in and they sell it to the co-op, but they get a special rate, they're a member of it. And then the co-op pools their buying power together. So they say, Hey, we have, you know, 50 farm families and they're gonna buy this much glyphosate, they're gonna buy this much fungicide, they're going to, you know, buy this equipment. And so why don't we go to these various suppliers and we will do bulk purchasing. Right?

Alex Burkart [00:46:56] And then

Vance Crowe [00:46:56] You get the better prices for that. But you're exactly right, right? Like if, if you can come in and cut out the middleman that makes that price, and typically by the time it gets to the co-op, there's like two different things. And they have a way to digitally get the advice that the co-op is giving them. You know, like, Hey, we've analyzed your soil. We know what, what the right soil is, what the right seeds are for your soil type. It becomes a, a, a big threat. So now what, what, where's your idea here? You're, you're saying,

Alex Burkart [00:47:28] Well, I think on the, it was mainly just identifying where there's most likely marketing slash or like creative business development need coming forth.

Vance Crowe [00:47:40] I, I think, and what you're describing, I think the way that ag recognizes it as is a problem of succession planning. Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:47:47] So

Vance Crowe [00:47:47] They've built these amazing institutions, right? They are like unparalleled. The rest of the business world does not have the same institutions that ag does.

Alex Burkart [00:47:57] But

Vance Crowe [00:47:57] The problem is they don't have anybody to pass these things onto. So you have a co-op that's being run by the same 80-year-old men that were running it when they were 50 years old, right? Right. So they're now 30 years older and they're not staying up with the technology. And they, and then they're saying, we don't know. There's nobody for us to hand it down to. We don't really know. And that I think is one of the biggest opportunities right now in, in agriculture. And it's also one of the biggest threats to agriculture right now. If they don't figure out how to pass those co-ops down, it will only be greater and greater centralization and less, less diversity.

Alex Burkart [00:48:32] Right. But I see. So there's a similar to the co-op side, I also see it on the manufacturing side. So I don't, I don't know how many years ago, this was a couple years ago, Walmart came in and they did a, they basically decided to produce their own dairy. I don't if you heard about that.

Vance Crowe [00:48:53] No, keep going man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is my world. So, okay, go on.

Alex Burkart [00:48:56] So they, well, you think about, so on the retail side, if you're Walmart or if you're Kroger or Amazon or any of these guys, you start thinking, all right, well we've got the money. We want to expand, we want to like increase our, you like make our shareholders happy. How do we keep growing if we've totally tapped out these markets? And then you look back in your supply chain, you start asking question, well, could we, could we manufacture like some of the products that we currently sell? So like the great value like milk or whatever, Walmart came back, they, they pretty much purchased their own manufacturing facility.

Vance Crowe [00:49:37] They're processing facilities.

Alex Burkart [00:49:39] Yeah. Right. Their processing facility for that type of product. I can't quote, I can't remember if they like completely annihilated all their vendors that they used in the past, but I wanna say it was Dean's milk that got screwed in that one. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] I mean, like, this is definitely happened. So we had on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, a young woman who their family produces the chicks Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:50:02] That

Vance Crowe [00:50:02] Then go to become broilers for Costco. So like that vertical integration and Walmart in the dairies has an interesting thing. 'cause because dairies, unlike a lot of other things, have an upper maximum on how much milk you can produce per square mile. Right. So Right.

Alex Burkart [00:50:20] You,

Vance Crowe [00:50:20] You like, because you have all this manure you have to get rid of, and if you have to truck the manure further and further away, it becomes more expensive. You only have so much hay. So there, there are some interesting quirks to it, but like all of the chicken that is purchased right now, those, the, the chicken that you're eating, their parents' eggs were produced and owned and, and contracted out a year and a half ago. And that whole chain is owned by Tyson or whoever else is producing it. And dairy that you're totally right. Like when Dean got their, their contract canceled from Walmart, right? This is the largest grocer in the United States. They were like, oh God, we're we're all dead. Like, what are we

Alex Burkart [00:51:04] Gonna do? Right. And the, and the cat, like that was part of that story was all the, I guess cow cattle farms or the milk farms pretty much went out of business. Some of them were able to stay around. But for the most part, that's your only client, your only form of income. And then you're scrambling to, I guess get another contract that size.

Vance Crowe [00:51:25] Yeah. I mean, I don't know where to go. That's exactly right. Like processing facilities. Like if you've been producing all this milk,

Alex Burkart [00:51:31] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:51:32] And then there's nobody to buy that milk, you can't just like turn off the milk spigot. Right, right. It just keeps like, it's, it's like a hose that you can't shut down and then that causes all sorts of problems. And so then those cows become a real liability. So then you go cu the herd, right?

Alex Burkart [00:51:47] And

Vance Crowe [00:51:47] Then now you have less cows and it, it gets all sorts of problems. But I to your point, all the way back at the beginning Yeah.

Alex Burkart [00:51:55] Unless

Vance Crowe [00:51:56] You, somebody has given you an entry into this market, you don't even know that this exists. Correct. Like, you don't even know that these people have problems that some that, that your work could somehow help solve.

Alex Burkart [00:52:08] Right.

Vance Crowe [00:52:09] And but I, I've never heard anybody figure out a way to brute force their way into this. And I'm really impressed with it. You've got an idea on it. Because like, I wouldn't know about grain co-ops if I didn't work in egg.

Alex Burkart [00:52:19] Well, you know, and I think you, you talk about the brute force part. So when you look at it from their supply chain standpoint, it's all about just figuring out those key words that are gonna, or those key phrases that are the, how do I say this? Where their most pressing need is what, what's their biggest challenge? What's their biggest headache right now? And there's not an easy way to do it that really is just, I'm gonna do a SWOT analysis on this entire industry and I'm gonna learn the entire industry. And I told the port that, and I got, I kinda laughed at that. Like, they're, like, they, it was, they didn't laugh at it. They just said it was highly, like, it just seemed highly unlikely. And I can, I can understand where a client or like any organization would look at that and be like, so you're telling me you're just gonna come in and teach yourself transportation, logistics, freight and everything and understand it? I was like, yes. Like that's what I do. That's like probably my, I'd say one of my biggest strengths that I bring to the table. So the, I mean, I have the, I have kids single, so I do have a, a significant amount of time on my hands.

Vance Crowe [00:53:27] So

Alex Burkart [00:53:27] I do have, I have that going for me right now, but I do. So I, I don't think I can speed read, but I, I read pretty fast. And the other aspect, I've just gotten really good at asking the right questions and knowing how to teach myself just about any topic as fast as possible. So I'll read entire textbooks. I'll basically go the route of, you know, if I were gonna go to school for this, I'll figure out the tracks. So like, right now, now that I understand that chemical manufacturing is like the most prospect, like prospective group to go after for America Central Port, working on understanding the petrochemical supply chain, have already broken it down into the actual chemical bases and figuring out what these chemicals produce on the back end. So all your different type of polyurethanes and all the different materials that go into that. And really understanding those products. So if I, if I can understand that and I can understand where the business opportunity is for these manufacturers, then I can speak directly to customers,

Vance Crowe [00:54:34] Hey, I can customers solve a problem that you have. I

Alex Burkart [00:54:36] Can solve a problem. Be like, so then our conversation is less about, you know, we have warehouse space available, or we have space for you to grow. And I'm leaving it up to them to decide they're gonna grow. I get to change my messaging and say, Hey, I noticed that your market's growing and that there's opportunities in these markets for this type of product. And you're gonna need a facility that can produce at this scale. This is like one of only maybe four in like a 500 mile radius. That's where our message becomes. And when you can say that instead of the ladder, typically your engagement goes up.

Vance Crowe [00:55:12] Man, that is ingenuity. As you think about, you know, we both did communications, both studied in school. What do you, how would you change what students are taught to make them better capable to do what you're doing?

Alex Burkart [00:55:26] You know, a lot more on critical thinking, problem solving, entrepreneurial thinking. But I go back to, and not just for us, I, I sat in, you talk about networking, I'm pretty proud of this one. So I wanted to know more about the NGA in terms of like them coming to St. Louis and what they would be interested in.

Vance Crowe [00:55:49] So say, say what the NGAs,

Alex Burkart [00:55:51] National Geospatial Agency. And I wanted to know what they were, who they'd be looking for from a contract basis. In other words, what companies are they gonna wanna work with and what are the stipulations for them from maybe the cybersecurity standpoint? Like they're not just gonna hire any software company. Like they have to match the levels of security needed to work with the, you know, the National Geospatial Agency. So I was looking for events. I got lucky, found one for free. It's at Georgetown in DC it's called Callis, and it's an intelligence conference. Legitimately all the intelligence community is there. And this, this, a couple years ago, it was hosted by the NGA. So I met the executive director, the head of hr, head of operations, and the head of analysis as well as what's, what was that guy's name? I, I still have his card. He told me, like, he gave me his title. And then, so my sister, my older sister works very high level with the FBI. And she told me later, she's like, you, you met someone that like, maybe like, like very, very few people in their career working at the NGA will like ever meet. But through all that, like I learned, I can't remember how I got on this topic, but I just, I, I learned what like they were actually looking for. And I mean, it's kind of, I already said it, but it's like we have stipulations from a cyber standpoint.

Alex Burkart [00:57:23] You have to be like, at this high grade, like it's not, we're not gonna be able to take a bunch of St. Louis companies and just automatically expect to get contracts with the NGA. You're gonna have to go through whatever that,

Vance Crowe [00:57:35] I mean, I never a business development class when I was in school, but you think about like more than 50% of your work is as a communications person, hundred

Alex Burkart [00:57:45] Percent or a

Vance Crowe [00:57:46] Strategist is is is actually finding the client, right? Right, right. That's, and and in fact, like that's, that's what the client ends up paying you for is your ability to find them and then produce the work for them.

Alex Burkart [00:57:57] So that, that brings me back to what, why I got on the NGA topic. So here in the head of analysis, so like she manages the 400 analysts for the NGA say to a group at Georgetown University. It was asked the same question. Like, what, what do we need from our talent going forward? And everyone on this panel, including her, you had someone from darpa, someone from the CIA, like they all said it unanimously was critical thinking. We cannot stress it enough. We need critical thinking. So on the business end or on the, on the national security end, what that basically means is it's like the nine, it's preventing nine 11 equation, right? We need people that can look at a ton of data, ton of, you know, all these data points and look for the thing that they weren't taught to look for. Like, it's not textbook, there's no syllabus for this here, here's all this stuff. Now figure it out and problem solve. And we need you to do that on a regular basis. On the business side, I mean it's, it's a lot less scary than preventing nine 11, but it really is looking at it from more of an entrepreneurial standpoint, not thinking, oh, I have like, so

Vance Crowe [00:59:10] I mean, everybody has access to Google Maps, right? Everybody has the ability to look down and see the white boxes from correct. And, and yet nobody does. And so,

Alex Burkart [00:59:19] I mean, it's incredibly time consuming and it, it takes a lot of, you know, like just super focused effort and knowing that yeah, you're, yeah, I really just come back to that type of creative entrepreneurial thinking and that your, your time is not wasted. Like you're, I guess being more mindful with how you use your time and the difference from, how do you call it? Like I I call it like return on investment based, like time management. So understanding exactly what whatever you're doing in this activity and how that's gonna impact your bottom line, not just staying busy.

Vance Crowe [01:00:00] I think that's a great point, man, that I think trying to think about, yes, this may take a really, really long time, but if it does pay out, the payout will be X. And so I can, I can make that justification rather than I think the, the typical sensation that people have when they're working in a corporation is I've gotta be busy doing something and that, that the, it should be a linear thing. I should be able to see, I put this much work in, right? I get this much output in, in a very short timeframe.

Alex Burkart [01:00:28] Right? And, you know, I, I look at, you know, take the port. I remember when I got interviewed and kind of what I told 'em later on was they asked like, so what about social media? Can you do social media for us? And I, first, first answer was, why? And they're like, what do you mean why? And I go, well, what's your outcome? Is your outcome to generate leads and prospects to fill your warehousing? Because I'm not engaging with your like a CEO of a petroleum company through Facebook. Like, I mean, I guess I technically could, but it's not gonna be like the best use of my time. Not to mention your,

Vance Crowe [01:01:03] And then, dude, I'm so happy to hear you say this. Like, that was such a like, I understand it was just like, for a long time companies were like, no social media, no social media, no social media. Oh, now everybody's doing it. And so therefore we must too. But if you're making bolts, you know, like you don't, you're not gonna find your next customer that needs, you know, the, the 31 CX bolt for on social media. You're gonna find doing, doing some other strategy than social media. You,

Alex Burkart [01:01:28] You taught, you bring up bolts. We had a, so we did a round, we the port, we do these round table discussions. We'll bring in manufacturers throughout the region and just talk workforce, talk their problems and try and see if we can't solve any of 'em for 'em. 'cause we like to connect people to other people. But St. Louis screw and bolt's GM made the comment, SIU was in the room and they asked same question like, what can we do to make better students? And he goes, well, when I went to school, all I remember was like working on like case studies for the Fortune 500 as though you had a hundred million dollars marketing budget. What do you do when you have a $30,000 marketing budget? You know, like, I need pe I need people I can hire that under, that

Vance Crowe [01:02:08] Can work with

Alex Burkart [01:02:08] Constraints, can work with like super constraints. And Yeah. I thought that was a good point,

Vance Crowe [01:02:14] Man. I think you should be, you should be teaching. I think this is really important. So we're gonna wrap up, but before we do, I had thrown in into your mind the concept of the Peter Teel paradox. I don't ask everybody this Yep. But people that have unorthodox thinking they're the right ones to ask. So the Peter Teel paradox, for anybody that doesn't know for your refresher, it's what is one thing that you believe is true that almost no one agrees with you on? And the reason it's paradox is 'cause if you say something that people already agree with, you failed. Yeah. And then if you say something that nobody agrees with, now you've gotta talk your way out of this, this corner that you've put yourself in. So do you have a Peter Teel paradox? I mean,

Alex Burkart [01:02:54] I think I do based on, you've given me that premise before. I'll just say it. You can, you can be the judge of that, right? It's basically, it's, it's around the idea that manufacturing needs to come back to the United States. And I know that I'm not the only one that thinks that. There's obviously quite a few people that do, but it's never really defined. So it's this idea of can we ever compete with China, India, and your other developing countries when it comes to manufacturing? And my point is that I think the United States really needs to focus on basic human needs based industries for our economic plan moving forward. And when I call basic human needs industries, I've thought about this for myself too in growing business is what industries can we focus on to be resilient? So in other words, no matter what's gonna happen, natural disaster, economic collapse, whatever it may be, what, what industries are always gonna thrive and which ones are always gonna have demand going forward? And I looked at, this came really came back from the how to feed the world by 2050 concept and the demand for food concept. So demand for food, you're also gonna have demand for fiber, energy, and pretty much every basic human need area. So think of like Maslow's hierarchy and needs and apply it that way. So as you see a population increase across the world as well as like increasing incomes, you're gonna need food, water, energy, all these things.

Alex Burkart [01:04:26] And I think the United States really needs to bolster those industries.

Vance Crowe [01:04:32] And so we do have it with food. We,

Alex Burkart [01:04:34] We,

Vance Crowe [01:04:35] And we have it with energy.

Alex Burkart [01:04:36] We, we have it with food. But the thing with food, and I see this is where the, to me the biggest threat with food is transportation and our, our lack of infrastructure on transportation. So if like our biggest competitive edge with other countries, say like Brazil on the food production standpoint, is that our infrastructure is significantly greater than theirs.

Vance Crowe [01:04:58] Yeah. And maybe if they wanna get their grain into the ocean to be able to transport it. Correct. They have to cross a mountain and to basically, they have two roads into the,

Alex Burkart [01:05:06] But if you look at their, like their commodity price, I mean, I'm not a commodity trader, but the last time I looked at their commodity prices, they're not that far off from the United States. So if they inc like if, if they had a massive boost to their infrastructure and everybody says, oh, it's not gonna happen because there's too much corruption in Brazil. And it's like, well what if they have an what if they have a nice little partner called China come in and say, you know what? We'll build your roads and bridges for you. I think that'll become a threat to the United States. And, and it's not just Brazil, it's any other market that can potentially compete with us on an agricultural side. So yes, I a hundred percent agree that we have a strong foothold in agriculture, but unless we like, continue to massively upgrade our infrastructure and keep that edge, I think that that's a huge threat.

Vance Crowe [01:05:56] What would you prioritize in an infrastructure? I mean, they're doing a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. This seems to be so large that the human mind cannot even wrap their minds around it. But what would you prioritize in an infrastructure upgrade?

Alex Burkart [01:06:11] Man, I'm not the right person to ask. I'd say Bill Stallman, our engineer would be a perfect person

Vance Crowe [01:06:17] To

Alex Burkart [01:06:17] Talk to about that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:06:21] I'm all about making sure the Mississippi River is, is well utilized. That's, people have no concept because we don't, we don't treat it like the Amazon or the Nile, but it is one of the great waterways, you know, in, in all of the world. Right? And, and we, I think, I don't wanna say, yeah, I don't, I think it's not that people take it for granted, it's that people have no idea it's, it even exists or what it can do. Right.

Alex Burkart [01:06:44] And I, I, I think that that would probably be one of, I mean it's biased because obviously we're on the Mississippi River, but the fact that I know what would happen if they closed. So I think it's the threat, the threat of doing nothing or the threat of loss more than the opportunity of gain. And I know that kind of sucks, but you're your threat of loss if you don't fix the lock and dam system like those lock and dams like were built in the twenties and thirties. There's a lot of maintenance problems on 'em. I'd say a full upgrade of that. But also you took it, you look at like container on Barge being introduced as a service, fully maximizing the use of the river system to the nth degree that we possibly can. I'd say that that that'd be a large one.

Vance Crowe [01:07:34] Well Alex, this has been very interesting. If somebody wanted to get ahold of you to talk through your ability to problem solve, how would one go about getting ahold of you?

Alex Burkart [01:07:47] Well, I think you can just go to my website. You go to name, my company is Never Industries, so that's N-E-V-E-R industries.com. And just real quick, 'cause I always get asked, why'd you, why'd you use a negative to name your or your company? And it's just, I, I needed a reminder to never give up on a regular basis. That's basically what that's named for,

Vance Crowe [01:08:11] Man. I think that's a cool name. I think that's, that's a very memorable one. Alright. Right Alex, thanks for coming on man. I

Alex Burkart [01:08:17] Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.