A Cattle Feeder on Beef Packing Monopolies, Dry Aging, and Why Honest Criticism Matters

Vance Crowe [00:00:01] As the crow flies on the Vance Crow podcast. Alright, the outlaw Joseph Ring. Welcome to the podcast. Podcast.

Joseph Ring [00:00:12] Okay. I don't know why I'm the outlaw. Like we talked about this earlier today. I don't feel like I do that many more illegal things than most people.

Vance Crowe [00:00:21] I think you're one of the only people I know that that you know, once you hit a certain age, once you get into your mid thirties, suddenly the adventuring that you used to do and that most of your friends were in the process of doing kind of goes away and I met you and Michael and all of a sudden when Coronavirus hit, you guys went into like supercharge mode and you're driving up to go get freezers and you're figuring things out. You guys were just running around and there were no rules. And I don't think of it as outlaws in like we need to arrest you and send you to jail. I just mean it as like guys that are out adventuring.

Joseph Ring [00:00:55] Yeah, we definitely do that a day. Well I had a kid ride along the other day and we got like halfway through what he was supposed to come along for and our plans kind of pivoted and then we got to the end of the day and he is like, is this like your day every day? Like like I don't know, just all this stuff that goes on. And I was like, I mean it mostly went according to plan but kinda. Yeah. And he was like, that's awesome.

Vance Crowe [00:01:22] Yeah, I think there's some element to to that with farming and livestock in general. Just that there's never gonna be a day where the page is just straight and clean because animals don't behave the way that you want them to. They behave the way they want to.

Joseph Ring [00:01:35] Yeah. I saw this job app for a ranch the other day that was like, have the ability to make good plans and and keep things on track. And the next line item was also consider that sometimes making plans doesn't matter.

Vance Crowe [00:01:51] So you are Joseph Ring the one half of the Ring Brothers that supplied me with Ring Brothers beef. You guys have been running around, you raise cattle. You live in Northern Illinois and you're one of the most interesting characters I've ever met. So this is been a long time coming but I never really knew how to, how to do this interview because you guys are weird characters.

Joseph Ring [00:02:14] I get that a lot. Yeah. I was kind of surprised by that comment over the weekend that you were like, I don't know how to do this. And you said you wanted to include Dan but you weren't sure how to do that either. Yeah, I guess I should kind of talk a little bit about myself. I'm Joseph Ring. I farm with my family in Northern Illinois. My I day job, I guess is handling some of the operations for our indoor cattle feed lot. We custom feed cattle for other people so they send them to us and we take care of them until they go to market. And I do that with my brother along with the rest of my family. I grew up with my aunt and uncle and extended family and cousins and stuff 'cause we lost our parents when we were younger. But I think we've become very independent autonomous people.

Vance Crowe [00:03:16] You and your brother you mean?

Joseph Ring [00:03:17] Yeah, more so because of that probably.

Vance Crowe [00:03:20] How old were you when your parents passed away?

Joseph Ring [00:03:22] Seven and nine Unrelated incidents. Yep. So so that's been quite a while ago. I'm 25 now and yeah, we just kind of roll with the punches and try to keep things going. And at the beginning of Coronavirus Vance was like, man, you guys should like fill this gap 'cause people aren't finding beef in the store. And we were like, all right.

Vance Crowe [00:03:52] See, I mean it's one thing to be like, you know, you come into situations and people are like, oh somebody ought to do this. Right? And you throw out ideas and people kind of play around with it. But one of the things about my like whale pod, the people I spend time with, if you throw out an idea and there is a plausible way for them to make it happen. They do. And you and Michael were right in there with all the other people, the Kate Crosbys, the Dwayne FABERs, Jared McDaniels of like,

Joseph Ring [00:04:18] Hey,

Vance Crowe [00:04:18] I see an opportunity, I'm gonna go for it. And I mean the craziest thing was the amount that I would've gone for it. I probably would've gone till 9 30 10, 10 30, 11 working hard. You guys worked till like two in the morning running around, driving around doing stuff and you always have this spirit of like, that's just what I'm doing next.

Joseph Ring [00:04:38] Yeah. I don't think that's like exclusive to us in ag though. Like, and, and not even other professions. I'm, I know plenty of people that work awful hard doing other stuff. I, I think sometimes we just run odd hours because it's what works for us. But like, like we'll have to be applying liquid manure in the winter and it have to run when it's a little colder. So the, the ground is a little more dense so we can get it knifed in but not get stuck and, and that's just you, you just do it at night 'cause during the day it doesn't work. So it's just kind of rolling with, with what you got. But yeah, on the, the beef deal, we did throw together a few things and we were able to market like half of our home raises calf crop over the last three months that way.

Vance Crowe [00:05:29] What does that mean, half of your home raised calf crop?

Joseph Ring [00:05:33] So we raised our like 80 calves and then we kept some replacements back and sold a few lightweights last fall. But the ones that we took all the way to finish, we, we were able to market about half of those directly to consumer and have them processed at, at custom processors and then have 'em pick up there. So it was basically just legwork on connecting people and meat.

Vance Crowe [00:06:05] I mean I think the craziest thing about it is you guys made it seem so natural, but like I was telling my family and the other people, I mean I've, I people really love your ring brothers beef when I give it out. And it's, it was kind of like your private label. It was the, the calves those the cattle that you guys have been raising on your own. How long have you and Michael had your own little separate herd?

Joseph Ring [00:06:27] I think we're going on year four or five that we've kind of done it on our own. But I mean we, we got our first cows, I think grandpa bought us each a cow when we were six I wanna say. And we'd just like go out there every day in the summer and scrape up some hay in the hay shed that was out of a busted bale or something and take, take it out in our wagon literally and dump it out there for them to eat. Like I, I've always been around it, so I don't know. I, we we're also extroverts in some ways. So like the making the connections and talking to people like while you're waiting for a truck to load, you answer some Facebook messages. That wasn't like, it didn't seem outta the ordinary I guess. I, I don't know.

Vance Crowe [00:07:14] How do people respond when in the middle of Coronavirus you guys had beef available

Joseph Ring [00:07:19] Like crazy? It was pretty easy to move at first. It slowed down a little eventually we did pay for a little bit of Facebook advertising, but like we've pretty much everything we've been able to get processed. We have gotten sold pretty quick. So

Vance Crowe [00:07:39] Have you learned a lot about like, I mean I, I know that you've learned a lot about butchering because when you first, when you and I were first working it out, it was like how much, how much room in your freezer does a quarter take up? Like what is a half take up? And these are things that like you, you guys knew intuitively the different chops or the different cuts and I was just like, can't I just order half a cow and have it show up? And you're like, well you gotta make these other decisions. What else did you learn about the difference between what you guys knew about cattle and slaughtering versus what the general public knew

Joseph Ring [00:08:13] A lot about aging. That's probably the thing we've talked about the most. 'cause like if you buy stuff in the store, it's not gonna be aged. Whereas ours gets butchered and then it'll hang in a hole or well half or quarter carcass for 14 to 17 days. Typically if we go through our local processor and, and then it's cut up and that just breaks down the connective tissue and there's this whole process with enzymes and stuff and I'm not gonna get into that but changes the flavor profile and tenderness and, and it's just a lot better eating experience when you dry age it for a certain period of time. So that's, that's probably the main thing. And then talking about the possibilities of the different ways you can cut it, that was, we've gotten a little bit better on how to convey that but still have some learning to do. Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:09:00] And so are you guys gonna keep going with this? Are you planning on continuing the route of retail sales to to friends?

Joseph Ring [00:09:08] Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna keep going with it. We've been looking a lot into getting certified to do some ourselves. 'cause with all the hogs during coronavirus that couldn't get processed because processors were shut down. We took, we went to some neighbors and purchased some off hogs for not very much 'cause they were just trying to get rid of 'em to not have to euthanize them and actually butchered them ourselves and just kind of split it up between the friend group that we did it with and learned a lot that way too. So we've been looking,

Vance Crowe [00:09:45] So he was just a group of guys around in your garage slaughtering the pigs.

Joseph Ring [00:09:50] So my dad built kind of a butcher shop with a walk-in cooler and grinders and all that back while he was still alive, obviously like 20 years ago or whatever. I guess it'd be 25 years ago he built it now. But yeah, we literally got a group of neighborhood guys together that do deer and my brother's father-in-law used to work at a locker and he came and showed us how to do a lot of it and we've done a fair amount of them since then and got into like making brass and, and all that kind of stuff too out of that. So that's been a great learning experience and it's been a lot of fun to, to do that with everybody. So

Vance Crowe [00:10:29] Yeah, I think that's exactly what I'm talking about. Like it's one thing to do that with a group of friends once where you're like, oh somebody ought to slaughter those pigs 'cause there's extra pigs that are being euthanized. But then you get into it and you're like, man, this is a mess. And man, you have to clean up and once you start you can't stop for hours and hours and hours. And then you've got these problems that are gonna come up that you can't predict and you gotta deal with. And then you guys are like, okay, well we did it that time but now we're gonna do it next week and then we're gonna figure out a way to do it again. And I think that's one of those things that as I get older,

Joseph Ring [00:11:00] It

Vance Crowe [00:11:00] Is super healthy for me to be around people that don't run into problems and say, ah, you know what? I don't have to mess around with this so I'm not going to. And instead of like, no, we're gonna figure this out 'cause we're trying to transcend, we're trying to get somewhere else.

Joseph Ring [00:11:13] Yeah, I don't like, there's not very many things that we run into that we just throw up our hands at, like you might take a break, but whether it's mechanical or stuff like that, we, you usually can find somebody or just work through the problem and and figure it out. And Michael's pretty good at that, especially on the mechanical side, like that's what he went to school for, diesel power tower, power technology. So when, when we get into some of the mechanics of that whole process, he fabbed up some different stuff that made it go quicker and it was a lot easier on some backs and, and then as far as like cleanup and getting a process down the way it was set up was kind of helped streamline that already. So yeah, I, I mean we got to where we could do five in an evening as far as like taking 'em from halves into finished product.

Vance Crowe [00:12:14] Crazy. And what makes the guys that show up to help you guys out? What makes them wanna do it? Are they getting a cut of the profits? Are they taking pork home? Are they just around for the beer?

Joseph Ring [00:12:25] It, it's definitely a lot more fun when you can just kind of take your time at it and have a good time and, and that, that comment was brought up, man, this is more fun when you can have a couple beers while you're doing it. But yeah, I I mean everybody ended up with some really good pork was was a pretty good motivator. I think everybody was happy in the end and, and enjoyed it while we were doing it. So

Vance Crowe [00:12:51] Speaking of pork, you and I just got back from this weekend of going out to Jason Mocks field days. So he has this company called Constant Canopy for people that don't know, I've interviewed Jason a couple times. He's this like mad scientist farmer that runs a completely conventional operations. So he raises a, a ton of hogs and he raises corn and soybeans, but he takes a certain percentage of his land and he tries all these experiments and you, he just gets so fired up about trying things that are different that when he invited me to come out to his field day, I was like, yeah, I think I wanna go. That'll be really fun. And then a few of my friends ended up throwing their hands up and you were one of them to come with me. What were you expecting and what did you see when you got there?

Joseph Ring [00:13:36] You know, I don't really know what I was expecting. Like I, being there was cool to see it all in person, but he posts so much you get to see it like step by step and that's the great part of it. And that's, I think that's why so many of us follow him on Twitter. But what I, what we found there was a group of very open-minded Lyle said oddballs was was his

Vance Crowe [00:14:08] Lyle Benjamin you're talking about?

Joseph Ring [00:14:09] Yeah. His guess of the, the type of people that would be there, meaning people that weren't necessarily worried about fitting in and, and were, were more willing to try new things and, and not care what people thought, but it was a lot of people that were looking to the future looking for regenerative practices rather than sapping the nutrients and having, you know, soil runoff go crazy in, in certain scenarios. And so it was a great group of people to bounce ideas off of and network with. And I think that was the most valuable part of it because

Vance Crowe [00:14:51] Yeah, I think, I think I got red pilled by those people, right? Like, because my experience of the people that are involved in organic or regenerative ag has been all these like marketing people and it's the same as like, you know how you don't like the PR people from pretty much anybody's company. Like I I I mean that well intending I am a PR person. I'm just saying like normally there's like this inauthenticity that comes with them where they're basically saying like, Hey, that guy paid me to say something shiny and nice to you about how great my thing is. And so I've never seen a, a really good distinguishing between people that are doing regenerative or corporate ag. They've always just seemed like we're trying to make ourselves win, but these people, like they were so much more passionate about like understanding some deeper thing that they, that was built as they were doing farming. That that it really struck me that there is a layer of agriculture that I just have not been in touch with at all. I just didn't, I didn't understand, I didn't even know was there.

Joseph Ring [00:15:51] Yeah. And I feel like you've talked a little bit more about like the maybe the niche or the differently thinking producers ever since the beginning of quarantine, but yeah, definitely spending time with them there, you could see so much of it at once. It was, it was a pretty neat view.

Vance Crowe [00:16:09] Yeah. And I think that like the way you were saying it, like the oddballs, like there were a lot of those people were, I met a couple of men that were either mechanical engineers or machinists or people that really understood fine grain detail. So then when they weren't trying to sell me their regenerative ag products and they were actually just telling me why they do what they do, there was a whole different dynamic between us as far as like my ability to ask them questions where the answer to that question wasn't even necessarily the question I was asking. It was like them explaining these things that I didn't even know were important.

Joseph Ring [00:16:48] Well that's when you get the, the best answers when you're being genuinely curious, right?

Vance Crowe [00:16:53] Yeah, that's right. They had your chaos there, right? Yeah,

Joseph Ring [00:16:55] Yeah. So yeah, there was, there's a ton of people like that and the way like, and the way Jason thinks about light and the mechanics of it. Yeah, I can definitely see why why there were people like that there that thought the same way. And, and you're right, the people that we hear about cover crops and that kind of stuff are usually the ones trying to sell you the seed for 'em. So it it, it is a nice break to, to see people doing it that are doing it because they want to make this land live on and that kind of thing. I was,

Vance Crowe [00:17:28] Yeah, there's something totally different between the type of person that's that's, that works at a large ag company that says, we'd really like you to do cover crops because we know that that will make sure that we don't get in trouble. But then you've got these other people that are like, the benefit of cover crops is you have a living carbon that's storing the things next to it. So it keeps it so much looser in the soil. Like I just never heard that and, and maybe somebody was saying this stuff and I just wasn't listening, but it really came through to me at ATM's MO'S event, I would say that name wrong.

Joseph Ring [00:17:58] Yeah, yeah, you you've got the hang of it now for the most part. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I don't know where you want me to go with that, but Yeah, I agree.

Vance Crowe [00:18:08] I mean I just, it, it was an

Joseph Ring [00:18:09] Interesting

Vance Crowe [00:18:09] Evening. We like, so we go there, we see the, the, so if you've never been to a field days, normally this is really common for farmers to have field days normally that are selling seeds. So for a lot of people they bring you a plot and they show, hey, under these conditions, this corn did this way or these soybeans grew in this way and this, they had this resistance to these diseases. So it's not uncommon for people to go around on plot tours, but this one was like, you'd go see a plot tour and there'd be soybeans and then a 60 inch space and then another soybean row, but in between could be hemp, it could be wheat, it could be whatever. And then he maybe sometimes had animals going down between the rows or he was trying all different kinds of experiments. And then we get done seeing all of those. He had a couple of speeches I gave one quick and then we had a few hours of just people hanging out, drinking beers, doing whatever, and then there was a band. And to see a band after three and a half months of coronavirus was like shocking.

Joseph Ring [00:19:05] And they were good,

Vance Crowe [00:19:06] They were really good. The flying buffaloes.

Joseph Ring [00:19:09] Yeah. And, and their the opening act was awesome too. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:19:14] Yeah. That kid. So it was just, it was bizarre. Had you, had you seen live music during Coronavirus before that?

Joseph Ring [00:19:21] No, not really. No. Like I've played at home, but like, no, no, it's been a while.

Vance Crowe [00:19:30] What instruments do you play?

Joseph Ring [00:19:32] Piano, guitar, drums, little bit of bass. Michael's way better at bass though. Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:19:37] And how did you pick those instruments up?

Joseph Ring [00:19:40] My mom had us start playing piano when we were six and then the other stuff when we were eight and we just kept that up and I played in bands in high school and stuff and at our church and that, that's probably where I've played the most is with church groups. Mostly acoustic guitar, little bit of drums. But, and that's kind of why I got into the, the audio stuff. So how I met Vance was like, what, like three or four episodes in you? You posted one and I was like, man, like this is a little novice. Like these are a couple things you could do to make it better. And I feel like you got really pissed off about it at first.

Vance Crowe [00:20:29] Oh no, I mean it was just the experience of it was you put something out there and then somebody has pointed out things that you thought you could hear, but that somebody else kind of pointed it out maybe more clearly than even I knew. And so then you're like, you're, it doesn't matter who you are, your face is gonna get red, you're gonna feel sheepish and then you're gonna wonder would it be better to pull these things down and hide or should I try and evolve it? But for me, I was so grateful that I was producing somebody something and somebody was reacting to it. Because most of the time when you ask somebody for feedback, they say, oh, that was good. And they think they're being nice, but really they're not telling you anything. They're just, you know, oh, white plank blank page is all they're saying to you. Whereas you were like, Hey, these are your problems. And I was like, shit, there's somebody out there that really cares.

Joseph Ring [00:21:18] And it got better so fast. Like I told you, like when, when you got to your episode with Annie, I was like, wow, I actually heard all of the nuances of those voices in that one and I wrote you about it. And, and it's once it got to the point where like it wasn't annoying and distracting and you captivated the emotions of the situation and the tone and the, and the, the verbal body language, I guess then that's the point where you were like, okay, now we're, we're making something here. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:21:57] Yeah. I mean I, I think that the, the lesson outta this for me was if you find somebody that is willing to criticize you, that's a person you, you probably wanna pay attention to, right? Like the either the, like, it's like Jordan Peterson says, there's only two kinds of people in the world that'll tell you the the truth about you. It's the people that love you and the people that hate you.

Joseph Ring [00:22:15] And

Vance Crowe [00:22:15] So like if you, if you only go around finding people that will tell you good things about yourself, you're probably not being around people that'll help you get better. But if you find somebody that tells you feedback and you find out they weren't doing that just to hurt your feelings, then you gotta be like, who is this character that took, that took a chance on me being pissed at them to tell me something that I needed to know? Do you do that with a lot of people?

Joseph Ring [00:22:39] Yeah, I'm fairly disagreeable and, and, and I mean that in the, the straightforward Myers-Briggs way, Michael's a little bit more agreeable than me, but he might just do it in also a, a more tactful way sometimes. And I've, I've tried to get better at that, but yeah, I mean especially the, the format that you talk about giving feedback in, I I do give a lot of feedback and I I can always improve, we can all improve with our communication skills, but I'm, I'm not afraid to say, hey, like you could, you could be better in this way.

Vance Crowe [00:23:19] Have you ever, have you ever actually, have you ever taken the big five personality test?

Joseph Ring [00:23:23] No.

Vance Crowe [00:23:23] Oh man, I would be so interested to see where you rate on the, on the disagree ability scale. It's, so the one that I, that I did was the understanding myself, which was this Jordan Peterson collaboration with the university. And when I got done reading that thing, did I ever tell you about this? No. When, when, so I, I read this report and I see that it says that I am very disagreeable. Like I'm out of a, from a zero to a hundred, where would you put me? Where do you think

Joseph Ring [00:23:53] I would put you at? Like probably a, I would actually put you pretty high on that, but you can convey it in a nice way.

Vance Crowe [00:24:04] So 100 is perfectly agreeable. And that's the mother with the sleeping child, right? She does not care at all what the argument is about. She says everybody should get along 'cause I don't want the baby to be woken up. And then the the zero is, you know, Doug salmon's Rob Long, you know, they, they, they, if there is a problem, they don't wanna move forward until we've resolved that problem and they don't care how much conflict it starts.

Joseph Ring [00:24:29] Okay, so I'd put you at like a 30

Vance Crowe [00:24:31] No, I'm a one, I'm a one on the disagree ability scale. Yep. And, and at first I thought that, that I was like, this, this thing can't be right. You know, so I'm reading

Joseph Ring [00:24:41] This thing Rob's like a negative 10 then

Vance Crowe [00:24:42] Yeah, rob's a zero, right? And it's an Asim tote, right? So when you get out to those, it's, it's, you know, it's what percentile are you in? And that zero it could be miles away from that one, right? It just means that you're at the maximum of that scale can can gauge. But the, when I read this thing, the understanding myself, the disagree ability was only one thing in there. So I'm reading this thing and I'm like, nope. And I close it 'cause I'm like, this can't be right. And then I was talking with my brother about it and I was like, can you believe it said I was a one on the disagree ability. And he was like, oh yeah, that's a hundred percent right. It's exactly 100% correct. And, and then you go back and read it and you realize like, this document that I have here describes something deep about me that I myself didn't even know. And so it it, it became this thing that I, I like put away in a do in a folder and hid it away. I didn't, I didn't wanna show anybody it at all because I was kind of concerned about how much it knew about me.

Joseph Ring [00:25:42] Hmm. What were your other ones? Do you remember?

Vance Crowe [00:25:44] Oh yeah man, I'm, I'm pretty high in openness, but not as high as I think I, I would've liked my extroversion is way, way off the charts of course. And what, what are the industriousness is pretty good, but definitely one that you're like, I'm more industrious than that really I am.

Joseph Ring [00:26:05] Yeah. But

Vance Crowe [00:26:05] It is a, it's a, it's a great test. I I think if you've ne if you've not done it, it's a good experience to do it for yourself. But the thing became really clear to me how valuable it was when Annie took it and then we actually took turns talking about it and it was, it was like a great night. It was like a Friday night date night kinda thing where we read a little bit and then we talked about, oh, that I see that in you and oh that's a challenge and oh, da da da. It was very, very good. And then it gave us a language to discuss different challenges in our lives that, that, that felt very comfortable. But I, if I would never just leave that thing lying around in my house,

Joseph Ring [00:26:42] I bet I would enjoy doing that with my wife. That, yeah, that sounds like a good evening.

Vance Crowe [00:26:47] So you told me this weekend that your wife can run circles around you about how hard she works. That was an unusual thing. You don't, you don't typically hear people describe their spouses that way. Tell me more about that.

Joseph Ring [00:26:58] Oh, she, she, she works pretty hard. I usually, what I say is she can sort cows better than me, which is true also. And I've worked with a lot of cow. So yeah, I, I mean we, we met because of working on pen bulls and den, well actually we met at a cattle show in Des Moines, but then we got together after we worked on some cattle in Denver for a while and then just kept talking and she was gonna school in South Dakota at the time and decided to drive down here and hang out one weekend and yeah. And then we got married like less than a year and a half after that. But I've known her for like 12 ish years. So, yeah, it's been

Vance Crowe [00:27:38] A while. So you, I mean for typical us you know, relationships, you got married pretty young. You were 23, 24.

Joseph Ring [00:27:45] Yeah, 24. Yeah, right before I turned 25.

Vance Crowe [00:27:49] Did you know you would get married that young? I mean that seems young to me to get married, but I didn't get married till I was 30.

Joseph Ring [00:27:54] I was gonna say a little, little younger than you, but no, I didn't have an idea. I'm, I mean I've, I've always been a very much a things happen for a reason and this is what we have to work with kind of guy and, and we're gonna make the best of it. I mean if you look at my pre like growing up, you can kind of tell why, but yeah, I don't know. I didn't have a timeline on that. I was just like, when I meet the right person and then I kind of got to a point in my life I was like, you know, I am just kind of tired of this dating scene. 'cause I didn't really date anybody before that either. I'm talked to different people, but I was just like, yeah, this isn't, this isn't working out. 'cause we, I definitely need some, some pretty serious aligned interests here.

Vance Crowe [00:28:40] I mean you would have to find a person that was either completely ca capable of being alone a lot or somebody that was like, because I mean, you're working all the time. Like it takes a certain kind of spouse that says you're work, you being apart from us isn't taking away from me. There are a lot of people that they get married and one of the spouses wants to work harder than the other one. And I don't think it's always the man. I think it, it divides along another axess that's not male and female and if the other person is not on board with that, it is a lifetime of

Joseph Ring [00:29:12] Conflict. Yeah. And, and we do have days when we wish we had more time together and, and as usual, I, and actually I saw a statistic on this today, but it's, it's probably her a little bit more than me, but also, like before we had Ella and she would come along whenever she wasn't at work.

Vance Crowe [00:29:38] You had your daughter is what you're saying, El and your

Joseph Ring [00:29:40] Daughter? Yeah, yeah. She would come along and help whenever she could or wanted to. So that, that was pretty nice. And now I've been trying to be around like the, the hour before Ewin usually goes to sleep at night and, and spend some time with both of them. So it's, it's definitely a balance and, and something we're learning, always learning and have to work on every day. So

Vance Crowe [00:30:10] Yeah man, I got that coming up. How old is Ewin?

Joseph Ring [00:30:13] She is seven months now. So she's at a pretty fun stage right now.

Vance Crowe [00:30:20] What is it, what does seven months mean for a fun stage?

Joseph Ring [00:30:24] Like she's super, super interactive but also like, just barely not crawling yet. So she, you can like set her there and play with her and it, I don't know. I I like it.

Vance Crowe [00:30:40] Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm, we're we're coming up, it's end of August for us and then who knows, everybody keeps telling me that sleep is all disturbed and I have to tell you like, that is the scariest thing on earth for me because I, like, I don't sleep a lot, but I have a hardcore schedule and if that schedule is not met, I can't think. And if I can't think I am, I'm not me. So I'm, I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this.

Joseph Ring [00:31:10] Yeah, I, Kendra is breastfeeding, so she got up pretty much always at night and I'll, especially normally I'll be home and give Ella a bottle at night. So she's used to taking a bottle if she has to. But otherwise Kindra did most of the getting up at night because it's just like, unless I was gonna go thaws some out, it was kind of a necessity. But I talked to Travis a lot about this Travis Leig on the weekend and Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:31:46] 'cause Travis went with us to the Jason Mocks event.

Joseph Ring [00:31:49] Yeah. And, and we, we were both like worried about you, I guess. So it'll be good though.

Vance Crowe [00:32:01] Well, 'cause Travis has been around with me since the 4:45 AM workouts. Like he knows that as long as I get to bed on time I could do anything. But like if I can't, so changing subjects though, we have 4th of July coming up.

Joseph Ring [00:32:15] It's

Vance Crowe [00:32:15] A big barbecue month or barbecue time of the year. What is it that a cattle producer knows about

Joseph Ring [00:32:23] Grilling

Vance Crowe [00:32:23] Out or you know, cooking meat that just a regular person wouldn't know or wouldn't think of?

Joseph Ring [00:32:31] I, I'm not that much of a, a cooking connoisseur. Like I can handle a grill all right. But I'm certainly not the best at it. I, I don't know, like I'm pretty minimalistic on my seasoning 'cause I'm like, I made this product, I want to taste it, you know?

Vance Crowe [00:32:48] Yeah. We don't put anything on your stuff and I mean like nothing at all. And you're, the, the, you mentioned it briefly earlier about the aged beef. I had no idea that al almost all the, the meat in the grocery store, it's basically turned right around. And even if somebody had told me that, it was like, hey, we kill it and we deliver it to the grocery store, I'd have been like, Hey, that's fantastic. Right?

Joseph Ring [00:33:09] Fresh,

Vance Crowe [00:33:10] Fresh, as fresh as possible. And it just never dawned on me that hanging a cow for 14 days could radically change the flavor.

Joseph Ring [00:33:19] Yeah. And, and there's niche places that'll do even 2, 3, 4 times longer than that, especially in specific primals. But yeah, I mean everything we sell is aged at the very least a week and usually 14 to 17 days. And that way it can, it can have a whole different flavor profile. The connective tissues can break down. There's this whole enzyme process that I'm not smart enough to explain. And it, yeah, it's just a whole different deal when you get out to the other end of it and, and a lot more palatable, tasty product. So.

Vance Crowe [00:33:59] Well, and you can see why that would be so rare and why people would advertise that they have dry aged steaks. I never knew. But it's because it takes up so much space. I mean, you gotta hang the entire carcass of a, of a cow or, and, and, and refrigerate it and so, so you, it's a limited amount of space, but man, the value of that is way underestimated. I I I don't think most people even know that that's a part of the whole beef process.

Joseph Ring [00:34:27] Yeah, yeah. It's a big deal. I mean, if, if, if it was done at scale at all the big processors, they'd basically need like 12 or 14 times as much cooler space and, and that's just not economically feasible. So yeah, they, they do as much as they can to, to put it through as fast as they can. And we're, we're trying to make a very niche product that is very high quality. So we need that calf to be at the optimum finish and have the right amount of aging and all that. And

Vance Crowe [00:35:06] Let's talk about that. Be like, so for people that don't know, can you walk through the process of, of a cow having a calf and then that calf going from being on a pasture to, or whatever it is, raise that calf all the way up to the point of slaughter?

Joseph Ring [00:35:20] Yeah, so I mean honestly we're pretty conventional in how we do it. We just fine tune some stuff and, and try and pick 'em out at their optimum finish point. So we're conception to plate on this ring brother beef program. Like you can AI em or you can natural breed 'em with a bull on, usually on pasture. But there are indoor cow calf setups. So you breed them at 14 ish months, give or take, and try and calf 'em about two years old the first time. And then they'll raise that calf for six months or so. You wean it typically since we have very early spring, late winter, they're on pasture all summer and then you wean 'em at the end of the summer. And then in a normal scenario they would go to a backgrounder, which is a guy that puts together all these small groups from these different cow herds into larger groups that a feedlot can handle and then give 'em a couple rounds of vaccines, get 'em on feed. So they're, they're eating more of a, a grain diet and, and that takes some time to acclimate their gut to a higher energy diet.

Vance Crowe [00:36:37] Wait, what does that mean? Do they get sick or they just don't eat it? Or how, how is that transformation process?

Joseph Ring [00:36:42] Well it it's like going from eating lettuce all the time to Snickers bars in a day. If, if, if you just throw 'em right on the, the high calorie finisher because with cattle their whole life they have different nutrient requirements. I mean, when they're small they don't need as many calories for maintenance. And then when they're big, and especially if it's cold, they, they need a lot for just maintenance. So your calorie intake is going up their whole life and so is your, your dry matter intake of like, like the, the amount of feed that they take in that is dry and not water. So yeah, that all the stages is basically just ramping them up through that process and, and I don't know why they're called backgrounders, like the people that get them after you wean 'em, but I guess it's giving them a background that people can look at and say, oh, these guys have had a couple rounds of vaccines and they're set and ready to do.

Vance Crowe [00:37:47] Do you mean what you were saying when, when you made that analogy about the Snickers bars, like salads to Snickers bar, is that how you feel about feeding cows grain?

Joseph Ring [00:37:57] Well, like to a point, it it, you go from a very high fiber content to a very high starch content because cattle in the US eat a lot of corn and corn products. So like our hot ration by the time they are headed out would be 62, 63 mega calories per hundred versus when they come in it's in the low fifties. So yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:38:29] Wait, explain those numbers to me. Mega what?

Joseph Ring [00:38:32] I'm not a nutritionist, but mega calories, it's, it's an in, it's a unit of measurement of energy, just a bunch of calories. So,

Vance Crowe [00:38:41] So it's just like instead of saying like a millimeter or a centimeter is just a different, like, because if you tried to convert cows onto human kilo calories, it would be so large that you'd be writing zeros for no reason.

Joseph Ring [00:38:54] Yes. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:38:57] And when do you guys decide that it's time for a cow that has been on grain? That's when you're fattening them, right? The fatted calf?

Joseph Ring [00:39:04] Yeah. So you'd start 'em on like grass for the first X amount of their life and, and then you finish them up.

Vance Crowe [00:39:12] What is that percentage though? You're skipping over The interesting part like the, because I think most people when they think, when they hear you say indoor feedlot, they think the cow was born there and the cow had a calf and it was born there and they lived there their whole lives. Most people don't know that almost all the cattle in the United States are on pasture for most of their lives. But I, even when I say that, I'm only saying that as like a vague understanding. I have no idea how many months they spend on pasture.

Joseph Ring [00:39:38] Yeah, I mean I could talk about that part of it for like a day and I'm, I'm not always good at getting all the details in the right spot, but yeah, most cattle spend half their lives on grass because a lot of 'em spend their whole life before they're weaned off the cow on grass. And then they're also grown after they're weaned on grass as as stockers and then they'll go to a feedlot setting to finish and finish on green. And, and that is meant to get the, the fat on like the back fat and the intermuscular fat in them. So you can have that quality ta taste experience at the back end. But yeah, I they do spend at least half their lives on grass. Typically our cows since it's cold calve at some buildings that have corn stalks or straw for bedding and whatnot and then it warms up and they go out on pasture. But the vast majority of cow herds aren't in buildings. They're out on wide open range land. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:40:47] Yeah. People don't realize that a lot of the land in, in places like Missouri, right, there's people that might own 200 acres and there is no chance you're gonna put that thing under the, under the plow. It's either too rocky or too hilly or too too wooded or too whatever. And so people use that land and in order to cover the taxes or to cover the rent or whatever, they throw cows on that. But then there's not enough land there for those cows to be grass fed all the way up to a size that they could sell it to the large lockers is my understanding.

Joseph Ring [00:41:18] Yeah. Plus there's not the calorie intake to get on to finish. Like I said, there's, they use more and more for maintenance and, and you can finish cattle on grass, especially if you sump supplement 'em a little bit. But to get that experience that we're, we're all used to, you really do have to finish 'em on a higher calorie and intake rash. And so, and, and then that's what we do and, and we talked a little bit about hitting the right finish. Like you can get them over fat where they're just like waddling around and, and can't hardly hold themselves up. But that is not ideal and not what we're going for. So once, once they get to a certain level of finish where they'll grade average to high choice to prime is, is when we're trying to get most of them to market.

Vance Crowe [00:42:04] So, and for you guys running a business that's a custom feedlot, people say, Hey ring brothers, I want you guys to raise our cattle. So the backgrounders lines you up and how does that process work? So people are paying you to feed out their cows or is it like putting 'em in a retirement home or you gotta pay 'em per meal or how does this work?

Joseph Ring [00:42:25] Yeah, well usually they don't, they don't say ring brothers 'cause it's the rest of my family too. But they, we've got some customers that we usually work with. We, we've like, we're, we'll pick up a new guy here or there just kind of depends on our pen availability. But yeah, they'll call up and say, what do you got for pens? We'll say, oh, we have this 90 head pen or this 150 head pen or whatever. And they'll say, okay, I'm going to get 90 head of 800 pound steers and send 'em your way. And then we'll charge X amount per head per day just to take care of them and, and cover like the, the betting costs and scraping pens and delivering feed and that kinda stuff. And then we will charge another fee for the feed they eat and any meds they need, vaccinations they get and that kind of stuff. So, and, and then we get to the end of the cycle and we actually have processors come to our farm and look at pens and bid on them. There's Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:43:28] You don't even take 'em to auction?

Joseph Ring [00:43:30] No, no. So very few of the cattle in the US less than 20% are sold on this cash basis. A lot of 'em are just formula or grid where they have a contract with the large packer and they'll say, we'll give you x amount per pound of choice beef or whatever. But we have a, a show list that we say these pens are on the list and you can come bid on them and it's usually on Tuesday we'll have four or five cattle buyers come by and leave us bids. And then whether the cattle belonged to us or to our customers, we, we tell the customer what the, the bids were and they can either take 'em or they can say, no, I want this much and we'll see next week if they can do better. And that that's usually what we do is sell on a live basis over our scale and, and it's, we like doing that. So

Vance Crowe [00:44:27] We What does that emphasis you just emphasized over our scale? What does that mean?

Joseph Ring [00:44:31] Yeah, so we have a certified scale at the feedlot here that we weigh them here and then we shrink them 3% and that is the sail weight versus loading 'em on a truck and sending 'em anywhere from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to all over the place and hoping they shrink less than that and taking whatever weight they say it was, we'd rather know what we're getting. And that's a pretty common practice when you're selling live to be able to sell over your own scale. So,

Vance Crowe [00:45:04] And then once the processor picks up that bid, then they show up the next day with, with the trailer to, to take the cows away.

Joseph Ring [00:45:10] I wish.

Vance Crowe [00:45:11] Okay.

Joseph Ring [00:45:13] No, that's kind of varied over time with all the volatility in the market, it can be anywhere from tomorrow to a month from now. Like during coronavirus, I think a lot of people saw in the news that a lot of packing houses were shut down and so we went almost two months without shipping anything and then, and then we did move a, a ton of 'em that really needed to go. But yeah, sometimes they'll give us a date right off the bat. Sometimes they won't.

Vance Crowe [00:45:47] And then when, when they go off to the processing, how far away is it to before those, how, how far are those cows traveling by truck to get to a slaughterhouse?

Joseph Ring [00:45:57] Yeah, it really depends on who bought 'em. Like last week we sent some to Pennsylvania and so northern Illinois, Pennsylvania, it's pretty good job. It's

Vance Crowe [00:46:06] A long drive. Yeah.

Joseph Ring [00:46:06] Yeah. But the closest one I, well the closest one would be either Aurora here or Joslyn, which is a Tyson plant. So

Vance Crowe [00:46:16] And are those plants back up and running at full capacity?

Joseph Ring [00:46:19] For the most part, like our kill numbers are back up pretty well. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:46:24] What about the price of beef? Has that stabilized? I know during the beginning of Coronavirus there was a whole lot of talk about price fixing and people being very upset about things, but I haven't heard very much about it lately.

Joseph Ring [00:46:36] Yeah, it's backed down again that, I mean that's why we really started selling direct to consumer because we were like, oh, cattle are 95 cents. Well I don't really wanna take 95 cents, so let's do something different. And so we, we did get back up to I think a dollar 17 or so, but now we're back down to a dollar or lower. So they, they, they were saying,

Vance Crowe [00:47:04] Man, that's a 17% drop.

Joseph Ring [00:47:08] Yeah, it's, it's more than than that. But yeah. Yeah. It, it fluctuated pretty quick. I mean, when it was coming back down this last time, we lost 12 cents in a week. And on a, on a 14, 1500 pound calf, that's a fair amount of money. I mean three, 400 bucks a head. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:47:28] Yeah. Multiplied by 150 head and the pen. So yeah. That's, that's a lot.

Joseph Ring [00:47:33] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:47:34] What do you think, is this just the way of the world, as long as you're selling a commodity product, you're always gonna be stuck in that realm? Or are things going to structurally change because of coronavirus to change that pricing model?

Joseph Ring [00:47:45] I don't know. And I'm, I'm seeing more direct to consumer than ever, but there's such a, a local processors are such a limiting factor in that, right? There's only so many butchers around, it's kind of a lost art and that's kind of why we've been trying to get into it more and why we wanna actually open up a, a custom kill deal. But that's gonna be quite a while in in the making. But I, I do think we're gonna have a lot of volatility for a long time. I'm not, again, I'm not like a market guy either really. There's plenty of people I know that are a lot better at that than me, but we have had a lot of black swan events that have really made some prices swing even before Coronavirus. There was a plant in Holcomb, Kansas that caught on fire last August and the market tanked then too. And both times box beef went up and live cattle went down. And actually after the Holcomb fire, we killed like 5,000 cattle more the next week. And, and to give you kind of a idea of scale, we kill about 650,000 cattle in the US every week. So the fact that they did 5,000 more with this pretty good size plant down, they were lowering the live bid because they were like, oh, we aren't gonna have enough shackle space. But then they killed more and we were like, oh cool guys, thanks for that. And then they just made a bunch on, on box beef because it went up.

Vance Crowe [00:49:16] Yeah, it seems like the thing that was happening with cattle producers is like something that so many people around the world face anytime there's a consolidation, I mean, when you limit the number, when the number of people that are bidding on your things goes down below some certain threshold, it makes it so you don't have those hidden pressures to, to, to push on you. And I mean, it's unlikely to me that we will see a ton more slaughter facilities come up. You're not gonna see a group of people. It, it'll be very unlikely for a group of investors to say, let's go put together a,

Joseph Ring [00:49:48] What,

Vance Crowe [00:49:49] What does it cost? 250 million to build a, a large scale processing? Maybe more than that.

Joseph Ring [00:49:55] Yeah. I mean it depends on how big you wanna build it, but I mean, what was it, 2014? I'm probably wrong on that. They closed one down. 'cause we, they were having to pay a lot for 'em and then they consolidated shackle space and now they get to, you know, pay the price they want, but 80% of the meat is processed by, what is it, four different processors right now. So I mean that's, that's pretty common conversation in the cattle world. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:50:24] But this is what makes my, my Peter Thiel paradox idea so brilliant is that if Missouri buys East St. Louis, I believe there is a great deal of packing plants that used to be there. We just bring 'em back online. We can, we can rent out the space to private producers. It's, this is, this is gonna happen, man. They're

Joseph Ring [00:50:43] Probably a little outdated, but

Vance Crowe [00:50:46] How much could cattle processing change over the last 30 years?

Joseph Ring [00:50:50] Oh, a lot. But I, I have heard that idea before and I mean, they'd probably be all all about it. Who wants to be paying Illinois taxes?

Vance Crowe [00:51:02] So we've actually been seeing a lot of each other lately because not only did we go to Jason Mocks Constant Canopy event, but we also had the book club with the Thomas Jefferson Bible this week. What did you think of that book? What were you, what did you go in expecting and what did it seem like?

Joseph Ring [00:51:17] Well, I didn't know anything about it before it was suggested. And as usual, while Lyle had a great book suggestion,

Vance Crowe [00:51:26] Lyle Benjamin

Joseph Ring [00:51:27] Lyle Benjamin, it was a very dense read and it was a very good read. I I really wasn't sure how the, the conversation was gonna go because like, there wasn't any character development. I mean there is, but it's basically like Jesus at 12 years old and then at 30 or whatever, and then he's just that age roughly until the end of the book.

Vance Crowe [00:51:49] So for people that don't know, the Thomas Jefferson Bible was Jefferson's attempt to simplify the Bible. I went in thinking he was trying to take all the mysticism out or all the religious aspects of it, but when you go and read it, that's not it at all. Like what he does is he distills it down to when is the Bible actually talking about Jesus and what he said and then they, instead of having any of the lineages in there, or the complicated cities or how who was in power, it was just as, as little of that information as you could. So you're left with this distilled compilation of, hey, he, when he was teaching to the, to the people when he was 12 years old, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. These were the parables that he told and these were the stories that, that he talked about or the, the philosophies that he had. And then they moved to the next thing and just rattling it out. And the craziest thing that you captured, at least that I took away from it was I didn't realize that the way the Bible had cataloged this teaching really makes ton of sense. Like as you listen to the sermon that he's giving, you're like, oh, now I see how those things all flow together in a way that I never did when I was reading the Bible.

Joseph Ring [00:53:00] Yeah, yeah. And, and it just goes so fast too in the way Jefferson did it because he did cut out so much. But yeah, just focusing on basically the moral teachings of Jesus is, is what I got out of the point of it, I guess. And, and it's very valuable. I mean, it's a lot of common sense stuff, but there was also plenty of stuff that was like, whoa, I had never really thought about it that way. So I, I really enjoyed it. I've enjoyed every book so far I've been able to participate with, with the book club.

Vance Crowe [00:53:35] Well, the book club this month, like got great because all of a sudden, because of the Articulate Ventures network, now there were a whole bunch of people that were in the book club. So we had a guy from Nova Scotia who clearly said like, you know, I'm, I've left a, a religious tradition, it's not my thing. And, and he, and it was his first Zoom call he'd ever done before. So this is a guy that's not like high on technology or anything. And I thought we would have him run into, you know, there's quite a bit of people from the ag world and you know, that, that are devout Christians. I thought those two things were gonna smash into each other. And I was like, how do you moderate it if people get in a disagreement? But instead the opposite thing happened. It was like everybody was able to offer a different vantage point of what they thought and no one was offended by anybody else's. In fact, I found myself being like, damn I never would've thought of that.

Joseph Ring [00:54:26] Well, I think you've kind of curated a group of people that are not only open-minded, but don't take offense to people disagreeing with them. You're like, okay, you have an idea and I'm gonna think about your idea too, because maybe I can learn from it. So I, I feel like that's kind of why it's the vibe there. But yeah, having everybody that's joined Articulate Ventures join in on that has been great. And I've really enjoyed every book club we've done. And I, I don't think you might've suggested it as much, but I think Jekyll and Hyde has been my favorite one so far that we've read.

Vance Crowe [00:55:04] Really?

Joseph Ring [00:55:05] Yeah. I really liked that book.

Vance Crowe [00:55:07] Wow. Why, man? I would say that's the only book that I was like, well, didn't I make the right decision choosing that one? That didn't seem like a good choice.

Joseph Ring [00:55:16] I feel like I was the one with the weird perspectives on that one. Like, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:55:20] That's definitely right. A hundred percent right. Yeah.

Joseph Ring [00:55:23] Yeah. Like, you were like, man, it, it feels like they're referencing addiction. And I was like, no, because this, and that's why I got that vibe. And you were like, oh, well, I mean, that's another way to put it. Put it. So, but yeah, I, I mean, I, I think we had a lot of different ideas on that one, but I, yeah, I was probably the out there one on that, that book.

Vance Crowe [00:55:45] I think the one that was my favorite so far, I think it's gotta be Dante's Inferno. And that was the first one we did. And I think it was because it's, it that was the beginning of the book club and you were first getting the experience of like, this is hard, but I've got other people around me that are reading it too. And they're struggling and you can ask people what they're thinking. And it felt so good to get done with a book that you struggled with. And not that I didn't like it, like, it wasn't like, I was like, oh God, I gotta read Dantes Inferno again. It was just like, okay, let's, let's get ready. It's gonna take some time. I gotta have patience and I'm gonna read this. But it felt like accomplishing something. And I feel like I internalized that book in a way that I hadn't internalized a book in a long time before that.

Joseph Ring [00:56:29] Yeah. I really enjoyed that one too. And I, I kind of jumped into the book club probably because of that one and that it was old. And I, I really, I joined because I wanted to get into reading like classic timeless books and being able to do it with a group of people was very in attractive to me. So I, yeah, I did the audio version of, of Inferno and really enjoyed it.

Vance Crowe [00:57:00] The, I I think the weirdest thing about the book Club is that it's been so paralleled to what's going on in the world. Oh yeah. And the whole goal of the, of the book Club has been, let's find Lindy books. Let's find books that had, that have been around long enough that there's some meaning distilled in there that you can't necessarily just put your finger on and be like, oh, if you just understand this sentence, you understand the concept, it's that it takes a while for the idea to mature. But that those books have last stood the test of time. So Dante's Inferno, I think the, the most recent book we've probably read was Logan's Run, but even that felt kind of timeless in a way.

Joseph Ring [00:57:35] Yeah. And I didn't, I didn't join in on that one. I was just kind of in an odd spot and I couldn't get into it, but I, I think the least Lindy one we've done was Naked Sun, but it still fit the timeline perfectly.

Vance Crowe [00:57:51] Yeah. Naked Sun being all about, you know, people being afraid, space, people being afraid to come in contact with other human beings because they were so afraid of germs. And this was right as Coronavirus was starting. So it was like, how could people only wanna see each other over video chat and then all of a sudden everybody's video chatting in the entire world. It was creepy. Yeah.

Joseph Ring [00:58:11] And it's an Asimov book, so it was a great read too.

Vance Crowe [00:58:14] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So have you read this month's book, 1984? Before?

Joseph Ring [00:58:19] I hadn't, no. So when that one popped up, I was like, man, I've kind of wanted to read that one. Anyway, so that's why I was definitely in that boat on that.

Vance Crowe [00:58:27] This is a barn burner. This is one of those ones that I remember when I read it in high school. And I, I know there's, I, I am really looking forward to going back and refreshing my memory that it got into my dreams. It got into like, the, the space in your mind where you're like, Ooh,

Joseph Ring [00:58:40] You have the weirdest dreams anyway, though,

Vance Crowe [00:58:43] I don't think I have weirder dreams than anybody else. No. I think that I spent, no, I think I spent a couple, like about a year and a half where I became very, very dedicated to write them down. And that gave me a whole different perspective on what I do with my time when I wake up in the morning. So one of the reasons that I'm so aware of, of my dreams is that I have a habit. If I, if I have one, I write it down and I try really hard if I've had a dream to not pick up my phone in the morning and then go and get a cup of coffee and drink it and pet my dog and then get ready for running or lifting or whatever I'm gonna do. And during that time, I stretch out the dream and I think about it. I, I, I think in a lot of ways I'm, I'm playing with it. So it's probably not the exact dream I had while I was asleep, but I'm still in this kind of un awake state. And, and that's when I learned probably the most about myself. That's why I have trouble telling when people are like, oh, what should my journal entry be? I'm like, I don't know. Mine comes to me in my dreams.

Joseph Ring [00:59:41] Yeah, maybe it's just 'cause you talk about it more that, that I say that.

Vance Crowe [00:59:45] Well, I mean, I would challenge anybody to, to go for two weeks and say, every morning when I wake up, even if I don't have a dream, I'm going to open up. Instead of checking my phone, I'm gonna write something down about what sleeping was like. And eventually it comes to you and then they become clearer and clearer and clearer and clearer.

Joseph Ring [01:00:03] Hmm. Okay.

Vance Crowe [01:00:06] So, man, we did, we started this late. It's because of my schedule, so I gotta get going 'cause I'm gonna fall asleep before too long. But thank you Joseph Ring for coming on the podcast. You and your brother did something for me and my family that I will never forget for my entire life. That was a, it was a pivotal time. We wanted to fill up a freezer, we were worried about the future. And our two friends, Michael and Joseph, you know, made it happen. Your brother showed up and help me get it all squared away and it was something that really meant a lot to me. And now I understand the, the local producer in a whole different way. So you've changed my outlook and the trajectory of, of where my mind was headed and I'm deeply grateful for it, man.

Joseph Ring [01:00:48] Well, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty appreciative for like all of the things you've done for us too. So yeah, being able to bounce ideas off of you is, has been a great experience. And, and like you were the first Ring Brother beef purchase, so,

Vance Crowe [01:01:06] Oh man. I will proudly take that dude. I will proudly take that. Well, just today Ben and I were talking that we are going to open up the Articulate Ventures network, so we're no longer gonna do invitations. So if anybody wants to join, all you have to do is just go to Articulate Ventures and that's where Joseph and I hang out. So hope, hope you guys join us, join our will pod. It's pretty interesting crew.

Joseph Ring [01:01:28] It's definitely very valuable and we have some great conversations there, even in the very small group. It's been so far in the beta deal.

Vance Crowe [01:01:37] Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm a little nervous, you know, we're going from 30 to however many people join, but you know, so far every ounce of that growth, every person that's come in has added something new and interesting and it's been great.

Joseph Ring [01:01:48] Yeah. And I think it'll attract some, some pretty valuable input and, and people that are looking for progressive conversation. And I don't mean that politically, just good conversation and, and positive outcomes. So

Vance Crowe [01:02:05] Yeah, this morning there was a whole thing on what do you do if you're awakened with a terrible thought and how do you go back to bed and what do you do with it? And it was really interesting to see who responded. These are, these are not like mushy people. They're, they're like super emotional people and they were in there talking about what they do and what they think. And I love it. I love it. Anyway, let's get outta here. Thank you so much Joseph, and we'll talk to you later.

Joseph Ring [01:02:29] Yeah, thanks.