Kip (00:00:02) - Hey everybody, welcome back to the show. I am pleased and honored to have Chris Walley here on the show today, CEO of Harvest Returns. How are you doing today, Chris?

Chris (00:00:12) - I'm doing great, Kip. Thanks for having me.

Kip (00:00:14) - Oh my pleasure. Absolutely. well, maybe let's start with with your origin story, maybe talk a little bit about the story behind founding of your firm, or, you know, maybe yourself personally and then the founding of the firm and just kind of a little bit about the background and what led up to what you got going today.

Chris (00:00:30) - Yeah. Of course. I guess we'll go way back. my father was an entrepreneur. And so that's kind of where I got the bug to, to own my own company. as a as a kid working in his, his buildings, he was involved in, in self-storage development back in the 70s in Texas, one of the first guys to do that. And so as a little kid, I was always out there helping him.

Chris (00:00:54) - It's kind of my first job summer jobs, painting and sweeping and cleaning and weed eating and all the things that, you know, you would do to to maintain a building as, with no skills. So that was that was my first, sort of foray into understanding, how running a business works. And then I went to Texas A&M for college, and after that I was, commissioned in the Navy. So went completely on the other, other side, opposite of entrepreneurship, working for the, the military. And did that, actually for, for quite some time, I was a total of 30 years active in reserve service. So did some time, on active duty, worked on a destroyer, deployed the Persian Gulf, then worked in the Pentagon, and then, left active duty, but maintained in the reserves for for several years for, you know, over 20, 25 years, about 20 something years and deployed some more after nine over 11 got kind of sucked back in, went to Iraq and Afghanistan so that that is relevant to, harvest returns.

Chris (00:02:02) - but my first job out of the Navy was, working for JL Watts. Now, JLL back then was Jones Lang LaSalle. So I worked in commercial real estate and so kind of caught the real estate bug. Then, eventually started investing in my own real estate projects. worked for some other companies and on the technology side and, and, as a defense contractor and then eventually kind of started. Early forays into entrepreneurship by being a consultant, independent consultant, independent contractor, things like that. but that brings us up to around the mid 20 tens where I got interested, after doing real estate investment for a while, I kind of got bored with it. I really liked the mechanics of it. I like the way people make money with real estate, but the buildings, just didn't. That they weren't doing it for me. as far as, holding my interest. Which is which, is because I like to. I'm an outdoors kind of guy. So I was looking at, well, what what kind of what kind of real estate is outdoors.

Chris (00:03:06) - I traveled a lot, as I mentioned, with the Navy. Went to a lot of places where, there was people were very impoverished and saw that there was the one thing everybody had in common was a connection to farming, especially in those those third world countries. And so started thinking about investing in farms instead of, real estate. And I moved out to. What was then the country, but it's now kind of rapidly becoming developing in suburbs about ten years ago. and there was a lot of ranches and a lot of people making money with, with or at least doing, agriculture, farming, ranching, that sort of thing. So I, I thought about how can I invest in a farm? turns out it wasn't easy. I didn't have a farming background. I went to Texas A&M, but I knew people that were ranchers grew up on ranches. But but that wasn't me. I grew up in the city and in Dallas. So I started looking at the mechanics of investing in agriculture. And at the same time there was there was technology and regulations were allowing people to invest in real estate, just online, kind of just like one might invest in stocks.

Chris (00:04:13) - So, brought in a partner, a friend of mine named Austin, and we set up a company called Harvest Returns. And it's essentially a platform for people to invest in farms and ranches and businesses related to, to farming. And we've been doing that since 2016. raised quite a bit of money for farmers and ranchers and, and at the same time, we work to provide a nice returns for our investors.

Kip (00:04:38) - Oh that's amazing. Thank you. How about any just kind of in that space? What are some future trends or opportunities that you're seeing or that you guys are most excited about?

Chris (00:04:47) - Yeah. So agriculture is really interesting. Me, a lot of people, you know, the one thing that. I think about agriculture is, is people take it for granted. I mean, most of the US, they're urbanized. Most people live in, in or near or a big city. so we're we take it for granted that we can go to a grocery store, 365 days a year and get get fresh produce, just about anything you want.

Chris (00:05:13) - We take it for granted. You can go to a restaurant and order, anything off the menu. And and because of that, people are disconnected from how food is produced. And so. And the more we've done this, the more we've gained an appreciation for agriculture, and not only for the farmers that grow it, but the ways they grow it. And we're seeing, you know, more directly to your question, we're seeing a lot of trends in agriculture that are that are for the positive. And so one of those is regenerative agriculture. So this is a farming. It's really kind of back to the future sort of farming, back to the past where everything is organic. People are working to keep the soil healthy, rather than just pouring chemicals on the soil to produce the highest yields of crops they can, they're working to with more sort of holistic ways, either grazing or using things called cover crops or no till where they're trying to make the soil better, increase biodiversity of the soil, and, and also make a profit.

Chris (00:06:13) - And, you know, that's where our piece comes in. We bring investors in and we're looking for profitable country companies that are doing that. There's indoor agriculture. That's a really interesting one. Like hydroponic farms, hydroponic greenhouses. People are growing food where it doesn't normally grow. Most of the I think not many people are aware in the United States that most of the leafy greens, the lettuce, kale, whatever that we eat is all grown in California, Salinas Valley, California, like 70% of it. And so people are starting, indoor farms all over the country. And, and that's so they can grow that, that lettuce or whatever, the products are closer to where it's consumed. And so there's, there's some a lot of advantages to that. So we've invested in that. We've invested in a lot of, cattle operations and especially the sort of regenerative kind. And and then we also have sort of a venture capital piece to the company where we invest in early stage agriculture technology companies. So these are companies that are using things like, AI or Synthetic biology or natural biology to improve the way foods grown.

Chris (00:07:19) - Robotics to reduce labor in which is a big one these days because as as there's a labor crunch in agriculture, just like there's a labor crunch in many industries. So people are trying to automate as much as of the processes as possible. So these are really interesting. And it's, you know, people, people see agriculture is very one dimensional. But it's not it's it's really, it's complicated and it's it's dynamic and it's it's interesting. You just kind of have to peel back the layers a little bit to understand it.

Kip (00:07:46) - No, absolutely. We've, we've we've actually been doing a lot of like executive searches lately around egg agtech and other like, international companies coming to the United States to apply a lot of these things. That's it's super.

Chris (00:07:58) - Exciting. I mean, there's definitely a demand in the industry for, for talented people. so it's it's great that you're you're part of that.

Kip (00:08:06) - Yeah, absolutely. How about any maybe along those lines any. Strategies or your approach to like retaining high performance leaders within this space.

Kip (00:08:16) - I mean, you talked about you didn't have an edgy background and came into it. How do you look at finding good people?

Chris (00:08:22) - Yeah, that's that's a great question. And it's funny because probably half of my team has some sort of connection to agriculture, and the other half doesn't. I mean, I have finance people that can learn agriculture, agriculture, people that can learn finance and investing. so that's that's kind of fun. I think it brings it brings a more, broad based approach to, to, you know, solving the problems in our industry to have a variety of people with a variety of backgrounds. I mean, some of us have military backgrounds. We see the world one way, others have marketing, finance. and then we have advisors that are very experienced that that have, you know, broad based and running companies and, and, but also agriculture and financing agriculture and things like that.

Kip (00:09:07) - Oh very good. How about any strategies that prove most effective for identifying, excuse me, identifying and capitalizing on opportunities in the ag space or and like how do you guys.

Kip (00:09:20) - About opportunities.

Chris (00:09:21) - It's it's good. You know, I'm kind of a forward looking guy, so I'm always looking for the next thing. And, you know, the way we do that is, is, is sort of study broad areas of the industry. as I said, agriculture is, is not very is very dynamic, but it is also very tribal. So there's the ranchers, there's the farmers. And that's been like that not just recently, but for thousands of years. The the people, the animal people and the plant people. We're looking at all aspects of it. We're looking at the technology side. We're looking at the conventional side, the organic side. We go to a lot of shows. we just we have a very broad based network. And I think that the broader your network can be, the the more you can understand, an industry, it not just a high level, but but at a deeper level.

Kip (00:10:13) - Oh. Very good. How about any biggest challenges you faced while building harvest?

Chris (00:10:19) - Yeah.

Chris (00:10:19) - So great question. It's it's we have a two sided problem. So we work with farmers and we work with investors. The farmers are very conservative. And in some cases the investors are very conservative too. So that's that's a great, great thing. And and when I say conservative, I'm, I mean in the sense of the word is like they're slow to change to adapt new growing methods or in, in the case of ours, new ways to capitalize their farms. So they go, you know, ag finance's a lot about going to the local agriculture credit union that perhaps your father went to and that that system and those banks really haven't changed in probably 60 years. and we're bringing this new method to finance the farm. So there's an educational aspect on the farming side. And then on the the investor side, most investors haven't even considered investing in like a farm or agriculture, that the way we do things. And so we have to educate them. So that's bringing those two disparate worlds together is is one of our is our challenge.

Chris (00:11:24) - And and it's a constant game of education and, making sure everybody's on the same level of understanding.

Kip (00:11:33) - Yeah, I'm sure there's a million different ways you do this, but how like, how do you typically structure one of these deals with the investor? Yeah.

Chris (00:11:41) - It depends. So, we do a lot of different types of deals. I shouldn't say a lot. There's, there's probably three types of deals. We we do. It's all so it's all private capital. So we have a pool of investors that come in and they invest anywhere between say 10,000 to a couple of hundred thousand dollars. We pull those those investors together and then we take that that basically LLC company, we start and we invest in the farm, or we give the farmer alone, or we do invest in a convertible note if it's in early stage, sort of agriculture technology company where it's hard to provide a valuation. So and then we, you know, after we do that, that's all via the platform. It's all automated.

Chris (00:12:24) - of course there's a lot of non automation. It goes into understanding and deal and and putting the deal together. But once that happens then we, we keep up. We're, we're invested in the farm for the long term. and we have to keep our investors updated and, and build that relationship, maintain that relationship with the, the farmer or the rancher or the or the the company we're invested in, just like any other sort of asset allocator would have to do.

Kip (00:12:53) - Okay. Very good. How about just broader economic impacts, just like what's going on with our economy here locally in the US and globally. How is that impacting.

Chris (00:13:02) - Yeah, I mean it's been a, you know, our industry and the economy in general. But agriculture has been impacted in many, many the same ways, in many different ways, than other parts of the economy, say the past. Let's go five years. Right. So where there was Covid, well, what did Covid do? It screwed up. Supply chains and supply chains are critical to agriculture.

Chris (00:13:24) - And then there's inflation. So inflation drove up the cost of diesel fuel which every you know every producer needs to drive trucks, tractors, harvesters, whatever. It drove up fertilizer costs significantly. That was made worse a couple of years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine. So the 2022 fertilizer prices shot up. So that caused a lot of the what we call the input cost into crops to raise, way up. That's so. Farmers have had challenging times just like every other business person. And that's one thing that I think a lot of people don't realize as farmers. They're business people. Some farmers don't even realize their business people. They think they're just growing. But yeah, they're business people. and we, we want to work with farmers that are business people. And then on the investment side, you know, the world changed significantly. The investment world changed significantly about two years ago when interest rates went from basically zero on up to what they are now. So that provided a much higher risk free, investment opportunities for for people that had cash on the sidelines.

Chris (00:14:28) - So where their cash before was earning zero. So they had to find something. Now they can put in a seed or a t-bill and make close to 5%. And so that's that's changed the way we look at investments that change the way that many of our investors approach us. So, that's driven driven some challenges from the investor acquisition side. And then there's just kind of the economic, political uncertainty that that especially every four years we see that that makes things tough. If you're trying to forward plan, beyond just, you know, the election cycle, people, people are uncertain. So, election years can be tough for for those reasons.

Kip (00:15:06) - Yeah, yeah. Oh, and we talk a lot about like, free markets and capitalism on the, on the show here. In what ways is like embracing the free market system or capitalism benefited, you know, your particular business model?

Chris (00:15:20) - Yeah. I mean, it goes back to we're we're investing in small businesses. So farms or small business, the type of farms we invest in, our small businesses, we're not investing generally.

Chris (00:15:30) - And like massive, you know, like. Massive, Tens of thousands of acres ranches or tens of thousands of acres, row crops or strawberry farms or anything like that. We're investing in small businesses. Some of them are just getting started. Others have been around for, you know, a while. And they're doing they're doing well. and because we're investing in small businesses, you know, we we have to embrace capitalism. We have to it's what drives the economy. We're producing jobs. You know, these companies, they get capital from us. They hire people, they they sell, they grow, they do research and development. and then they're, of course, they're producing things or producing crops. Or in the case of the ag tech companies are producing technology and selling it to farmers. So it's I mean, it's it's great because we're like, right in the middle of all that, you know, all that capitalism, all the entrepreneurship and and, you know, small businesses are, I think, what drives our economy, you know, what drives a big segment of the economy, right, drives a lot of jobs, but also drives kind of that entrepreneurial spirit you don't see in the larger companies that have been around for 40, 50, 100 years, that are just.

Chris (00:16:44) - Static and staying in business and producing shareholder returns and, and, you know, kind of very risk averse versus the people we work with are risk takers and, and risk, you know, take that risk to, to build something terrific.

Kip (00:17:01) - No, absolutely. How about any common misconceptions about capitalism that you encounter or and how do you address those things?

Chris (00:17:09) - I mean.

Chris (00:17:10) - You've seen it. We've all seen it. you know, capitalism, evil or capitalism as people, you know, these businesses are, are, are gouging consumers like I, you know, as I explained earlier, input costs have gone way up. So specifically the food, most food now on average is about 20% more expensive than it was four years ago. So whether you're, you know, going to a restaurant or going to a grocery store, almost every single commodity or food is more expensive. And that's not because the farmers are making 20% more money than they were four years ago. It's because it costs at least that that much more to to produce the food and to sell it and to grow it and to move it and transport it, distributed all those things that go in, you know, from getting a, a cow in the, a cow in the pasture into a, into a hamburger, a package of £1 package of hamburger in your grocery store, that's all.

Chris (00:18:14) - All those prices have gone up. So the cattle barns have gone up. And in some cases, you know, there are some cattle ranchers and producers that are doing very well because they've, they've maneuvered around the situation and, and been able to make benefit from that. excuse me and so of our investors, but but there's also, you know, that perception that. People are just out to do this for for higher and higher profits is is not is not necessarily accurate. especially in, in the agriculture industry. And like I, you know, the the other side coin is farmers are out there. They're just doing great in there. They they're doing well, but they're losing money in most farmers are not making a lot of money. And but they still keep doing it. sometimes even when they shouldn't be doing it, but they, they're doing it because they, they love it and they want to produce good, healthy food.

Kip (00:19:07) - Uhhuh. No, absolutely. How about any any ways that you personally just advocate for capitalism or free markets, even, like outside your business activities? Just in life.

Chris (00:19:19) - Yeah. You know, so we volunteer in Texas A&M has a something called the McFerrin center. It's a it's a entrepreneurship center. So there's they held all kinds of events. They hold a thing for for veterans who have business ideas. They hold high school pitch competitions, college, college business competitions. And and we volunteer there. And and it's great to see, you know, those ideas and the companies and the energy behind all these startup companies. I, I invest in as an angel and in some startup companies outside of, our own, our own firm and our own interests. So that's, that's also fun. I think, you know, there's a lot more ways crowdfunding, equity crowdfunding, which is more or less the business we're in to invest in startup companies now than there was, say, ten years ago.

Kip (00:20:11) - Yeah. How about culture and core values? I mean, that's just so core to to businesses. How would you describe the culture within your firm and how is that contributed to your success?

Chris (00:20:23) - Yeah.

Chris (00:20:24) - our culture is, is very much, wrapped around integrity. So, you know, the people that we work with, everybody in the company understands that that that we're entrusted with other people's money. And, you know, the last thing we want to do is lose other people's money. And there's obviously things that are out of our control sometimes in the companies that we invest in, they have challenges and they have issues and, and occasionally, you know, they they falter and we understand that. But it is a baseline business practice, you know, doing what's right and trying to trying to take care of our, our stakeholders, both on the, the farming side and the, the investment side. Are, are is kind of key to our culture.

Kip (00:21:08) - Very good about core values. And you to the extent you have them do you do you have like identified core values that permeate through how you run the business and make your decisions?

Chris (00:21:19) - Yeah we do I mean it's it's it's integrity is one of them.

Chris (00:21:24) - the farming is is should be profitable for for farmers and investors. So kind of that goes back to. Working with farmers that that understand, you know, business but also, you know, making sure that the, our investors are taken care of. Farm production is is one of agriculture, is one of the most important industries on earth. It's the one industry that touches every single person because we all have to eat. So, just that, that tie into agriculture is really important for us.

Kip (00:21:57) - Yeah. How about I mean, leadership? I mean, obviously with your military background and thank you for your service. That's incredible. How what's your personal definition of of leadership and maybe how is that evolved over time throughout your military career and your business career?

Chris (00:22:14) - Well, that's a good question. It definitely evolves. I I'll say for me personally, leadership is is motivating a team to accomplish goals together that they wouldn't normally accomplish. I guess that's one way to put it where you're getting everybody on the same page.

Chris (00:22:30) - You put a vision in front of them, and then you unleash them to achieve those goals. And, you know, there's a lot of different ways you can do that. There's there's, very decentralized ways. There's more hierarchical ways. And, and but achieving the goal and making everyone, working together. To to achieve a common. A common goal is is kind of the essence in my eyes of leadership and and also bringing out the best of people. So, you know, everybody has weaknesses, everybody has strengths. And so you're maximizing those weaknesses in your or minimizing those weaknesses and maximizing the strengths.

Kip (00:23:13) - Yeah. How about any example of just like an innovative approach you've taken in leadership or management that's really made a big impact for the business.

Chris (00:23:23) - Yeah, I don't know, you know. So we were doing remote kind of hybrid work model before that was a thing during Covid. We've been doing that. You know, we've had remote employees way prior to Covid and we've had, you know, people on different schedules and we don't do things like, you know, we don't have paid time off.

Chris (00:23:39) - We just people, people tell us when they're going to take vacation. And we we, we're we're a small company. So everybody's got multiple hats. so they, you know, they, they cover it for each other. So when somebody needs to go on vacation or, or out of the office, for one thing, we've got redundancy even on our small team. And so that, you know, we're trying to build an environment where people are have the flexibility to, to work and grow and contribute, but also, you know, have that that family life balance that that is hard to get these days sometimes.

Kip (00:24:13) - Absolutely. How about like servant leadership? What role is servant leadership played in fostering your culture and and the success of the business?

Chris (00:24:22) - Yeah. You know, I think everybody's a leader. So we have people that are, you know, from my age that have been around a while and our advisors that some of them are a little bit older than I am, down to our fresh out of college or even in college interns and.

Chris (00:24:39) - We want all of them to have the opportunity to to lead in some form or fashion. So our. New. Our younger staff gets to lead interns. and then as so. Most people leadership is, is I think for some people it really is innate. In others it's not. But but it is a skill that can be trained. And so part of that is training. But but in order to train somebody, you really have to give them the opportunity and to learn those lessons. And, and you know, both myself and in my partner Austin, you know, based on our military and other leadership experiences, we we kind of try to try to not just set the the first thing is setting the example on what we think, you know, leadership should look like, but also, you know, providing coaching to to younger folks that are still developing your leadership skills.

Kip (00:25:27) - Yeah. How about any any particular investment that you guys have made or maybe one that you guys looked at that was just particularly unique or exciting or really getting guys fired up and.

Chris (00:25:39) - Yeah. You know, it's.

Chris (00:25:42) - There's a lot of different companies we've invested, you know, we've invested in, I think 50 something companies. So our portfolio is pretty, pretty wide. Some of the companies have done really well. Others have not done well. Investing in early stage companies, especially on the tech side, is there's you're always going to have winners and losers and kind of hangers on. one of the great companies we were really excited about is a company called urology that was we invested. Gosh, it's been about for four years or so. those guys, they they they were really one of the early adopters in what's called precision agriculture. So precision agriculture, a lot, a lot of depth to it. But essentially what it is, is, is taking technology and applying it to certain pieces of, of agronomy or, or growing things to make. To get better at it growing. I didn't explain very well, but what it is. So in this particular case they have sensors, the sensors going around, they go in the field.

Chris (00:26:42) - one of their examples is, is vineyards. So, you know, California, I think this year and in previous years have as a problem with wildfires. And, you know, what happens is that smoke comes across grapes and vineyards, and it creates what's called smoke taint. So it screws up the screws up the taste of the wine. So in the past there would be a big wildfire. Smoke would come across a vineyard, and you'd have to basically ditch all those grapes because they were tainted. Right. So now they've got these precision center sensors astrology does. And they know, okay, this part of the field is great. This part of the field is tainted. This part is, you know, okay. It has certain levels of the smoke taint and and it saves the farmer a lot of the the winery in the vineyard, a lot of money. They've taken these same sensor technology and now they can measure moisture, carbon, whatever, sends all the data up into the cloud and then provides, you know, essentially information for farmers to analyze and get better at growing, produce a higher return on the farmer investment.

Kip (00:27:44) - That's amazing. That's very cool. Yeah. How about how about in your military career? Serving any particular? Oh. It's exciting. Experiences I've had are just like memory burns. Positive ones that were just like, yeah, I've.

Chris (00:27:58) - Got all kinds of great experiences in the military. Fond memories, you know, just primarily revolving around the people I got to work with. Yeah. I was very fortunate for about ten years of my career, kind of middle career through, the early 2000 to the 20 teens to work with a lot of special operations guys. So I deployed to Afghanistan with Seals, deployed to, East Africa, also with Seals, did a couple other things, worked at Special Operations Command. So that was that was really rewarding because those those folks are they they bring out the best in you because they're such high performing people. And to be around them, you have to be on your A game. especially, you know, when you're, when you're deployed in people's, you know, life and death is in people's hands.

Chris (00:28:42) - So you have to do, you know, they make you want to perform better at a higher level, whether that's physically, mentally, focus all those things. So it's it's that was a great experience. And that was, you know, a lot of that rubbed off on me the way I, run the company.

Kip (00:28:58) - Oh. Very good. How about, you know, just building legacy. And how are you working to build a lasting legacy through through the business or just the other efforts in in life for you? Yeah.

Chris (00:29:09) - You know, I guess my legacy with this company, we're still very early in the stages of the I mean, we've been around for eight years, but, obviously I want the company to grow, to impact as many farmers or investors as we can. So, when we're always looking at trying to innovate methods to bring new forms of capital into the agriculture industry, where we're working on some revenue based, loans right now that, you know, as, as the debt load of every, every business or many businesses increases, you know, that that's can be a challenge and insert risk, into an industry.

Chris (00:29:46) - So, rather than having farmers, you know, get higher and higher levels of debt that they have to pay interest on. We're looking at things that are, investment structures based on revenue. So I think that would be an interesting, you know, if we can introduce that into the entire industry and make it more standard, I think that would be a pretty cool legacy to to leave with.

Kip (00:30:09) - Yeah, absolutely. I mean. Bring primarily writing value to to the farms and ranches through capital. And there are any other ways you guys are trying to add value other than, you know, cash? Or is that primarily what what the.

Chris (00:30:25) - Primarily what we do. But, you know, we we work with, you know, the companies we work with where we try to connect them to other, you know, other resources, whether a source of capital. you know, for on the early stage, company, the agricultural technology companies, they're, they're growing and sometimes they need additional capital from venture capitalists or whatever.

Chris (00:30:46) - So we're building our network there to help them or private equity, or investment banks, whatever. So we've got, you know, our, our all of the ag finance is, is interconnected yet disparate. And so trying to be sort of a connector for those different, different sources of ag finances is important to us.

Kip (00:31:08) - Yeah.

Chris (00:31:09) - We also provide them advice. A lot of them are early stage companies where we've been in early stage company. We've kind of passed the startup phase, but, you know, have having been in their shoes, we know some of the challenges they face. So we're always open for advice. Occasionally we'll take an advisory board role on some of the portfolio companies, but, that's pretty infrequent. But for the most part, we're there. They need us, you know, we want to see them succeed.

Kip (00:31:32) - Yeah. I mean, are you are you looking all across the United States or is there a particular region you're focused in? Yeah. No, we're we.

Chris (00:31:39) - Work all across the United States.

Chris (00:31:41) - We've done some international things. we have a company that we did a very successful raise with called Green Gold Farms or in Ghana in West Africa. I've got some connections to West Africa for my, military days. And, they're they're doing great things there. You know, they're working in a very challenging environment and a challenging time and, and growing. And so we we would love to be more do more international things, connecting investors all over the world with with farms all over the world. But that's that's a challenge. It, you know, at the scale we're at right now.

Kip (00:32:15) - Yeah. Is it is it pretty complex to do that international work?

Chris (00:32:19) - It is. Yeah. You know, taxation, regulation, foreign currency exchange, all those sorts of things can be challenges.

Kip (00:32:26) - Yeah. Oh absolutely. How about just kind of looking back on your career, I mean, thus far in the business or even in the military career, any decision or action that you've taken that you would say that has been.

Kip (00:32:39) - Most pivotal or or just very pivotal to your success.

Chris (00:32:43) - Yeah, well, I can think of several pivotal moments, both good and bad. you know, the hard, the hard ones are. Deciding to start something. I mean, for people that are want to start somewhere, whether it's a business, a project, a podcast, whatever it is, you know, there's you got to take that step. And and so I can think of a number of times throughout my career starting Harvest Returns being one of them for me, knowing that it had a having done some sort of solo type businesses, investing, real estate investing, real estate projects, consulting, I knew I needed a partner. And so that was probably the key decision to to reach out and, you know, think about it and then develop this relationship or deeper relationship with Austin, then bring him on. and we've been together ever since. I know a lot of partnerships struggle. you know, there's a lot of friction. And of course, we have friction, like any, any kind of group of people that have been together and working in challenges.

Chris (00:33:44) - But, you know, we, I think we complement each other skills and weaknesses. And it's been, it's been great having him on board.

Kip (00:33:52) - Yeah. So what are some of the things that Austin has brought to the table that you don't have that really?

Chris (00:33:58) - I mean, so Austin Austin grew up, you know, he grew up in in Georgia and spent his summers working on his family farms. Okay. so he had that experience, you know, that I didn't have, whether that, you know, whatever that what all those experience moving hay around and and selling peaches, the farmer's market, all those different experiences that I didn't quite have. He's got a great you know, he's got a great repertoire, rapport with farmers that come in. whereas I, I kind of take the investor side, you know, we, we switch back and forth, but, we complement each other in those ways. the idea guy, he's the bring me down to earth guy with, realism, providing a little bit of, a little bit of circumspection.

Chris (00:34:47) - A. For the the decisions the company makes altogether. So it's it's been a very complementary sort of relationship.

Kip (00:34:55) - Yeah. And you said you guys met in the military together.

Chris (00:34:58) - No. We actually met via A and M family connection many years ago. But he he served in the military. I served in the military. We both went to A&M, so we we had a lot of things in common that kind of drove us. And then we did a little bit of consulting work together. prior to starting Harvest Returns.

Kip (00:35:13) - Yeah. How about any big memories? I mean, everyone I know that went to A&M like. Yeah, lives and breathes the Aggies even like years and years later. Any particular great experience you had while when you were feeling. Yeah, I mean the.

Chris (00:35:26) - Whole thing was was pretty great. I was in the Corps cadets. So we went, you know, that's comes with a lot of, interesting aspects. It's it's, you know, you're in uniform. The first year is very tough, and the last year is amazing and glorious.

Chris (00:35:40) - And it gets, you know, it gets better and better as you get to be more of an upperclassmen. And, you know, Aggie football is is a thing that people don't understand unless they've experienced it, unless you've been there at the field, it's it's, you know, a whole other level having been to, you know, other other stadiums and watched other teams, play live. It's just it's a it's a really interesting experience to be at Kyle Field. So that's that's great. And you know that the Aggie spirit and the Aggie traditions are big. one of the tradition I there's there's a lot of them, but one of the ones we have every year is is called muster and Aggies get together. And you remember, your former students that that passed away the previous year. So, I get involved. I do that every year. go to that. There's local A&M clubs all over the country. My club here in Fort Worth is great. We have a great group of young folks that, run it and do all kinds of interesting events, from happy hours to the, the big muster.

Chris (00:36:36) - So yeah, it's it's a, it's a family. It's a little cultish, but it's you know, A&M is it's a good place. I mean you've got Aggies on your team. So you kind of know some of those stories.

Kip (00:36:46) - Yeah. Yeah. Like like I said before we hopped on my close to A&M. So did her husband. And then our other best friends, husband and wife both went to A&M. And he I mean they yeah I mean A&M football I mean that's all no matter how good they were doing. Like he got his name. That's all he talks about during football.

Chris (00:37:07) - Yeah. We don't you know hopefully we'll we'll have the the record to live up to the, the hype. and the energy and the excitement to we'll see what happens this year.

Kip (00:37:16) - Yeah. No that's exciting. And and A&M did great in basketball this year in men's basketball. That was a lot of fun too.

Chris (00:37:22) - Yeah a lot a lot of basketball. Some of the women's sports a lot a lot of different sports were great at.

Chris (00:37:27) - Yeah.

Kip (00:37:28) - How about just kind of down to that maybe advice you'd give to young entrepreneurs, people that are aspiring to succeed in, in today's economic climate.

Chris (00:37:38) - Yeah. So so the first is like I said, just start. You got to start somewhere, even if it's an idea that you think is crazy, go, go get some, you know, go get some advice, reach out to people. it's really easy to find mentors these days. I think just go to LinkedIn and find somebody in your industry and cinnamon, a LinkedIn message, and they'll probably respond, I think probably, you know, eight out of ten times they're going to respond and, and meet you for coffee or, or, you know, a virtual zoom and just have a have a chat about what you're doing. So take advantage of those resources. But, you know, first of all, don't be afraid to start something, even if even if you're not sure where, if you have an idea, just go for it.

Chris (00:38:17) - And, you know, don't let naysayers stop you sometimes. Sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. We've seen that, unfortunately. But sometimes, you know, bad ideas are just misunderstood ideas and they're really amazing. And, you know, that said. A lot of it is execution. So a lot of entrepreneurship is grit and execution. And, you know, if you don't have grit, figure out ways to get grit, put some stress in your life. If you're a young person, you know, a lot of people have been fortunate and had very easy upbringings, and that's great. But, if you don't put some personal stress on yourself, whether that's physical or, mental, and there's a lot of ways to do that, you know, working out and going outside and exposing yourself to the weather and all these sort of crazy things we did. in the military. That's a good way to. You know, run a marathon Tough Mudder all day. There's so many ways to like put stress on yourself to do it.

Chris (00:39:14) - Because if you don't have that grit to kind of push yourself beyond your limits, you're not probably not going to be a great entrepreneur.

Kip (00:39:20) - That's excellent advice. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, pushing yourself beyond your limits and then seeing you could you can do it or you or you can fail and come back and keep going.

Chris (00:39:31) - And failure is the best teacher. And so don't be afraid to fail because you're going to fail. you know, we still have failures. I still have failures, and you just got to kind of push past them.

Kip (00:39:41) - Yeah, I think that's excellent. I, I think all these kids have been raised to think to be fear failure. And like, failure is good and like it is like you said, no matter how far you get in your career, you're still failing, which is a good thing. You're failing forward and you're trying different things, and it's so important to just get comfortable with that. Again, if you want to be an entrepreneur. how about kind of last question, kind of looking into the future, how do you plan to evolve your business strategies to continue, you know, thriving in the landscape going forward?

Chris (00:40:11) - You know, yeah.

Chris (00:40:13) - Great question. We're always looking for different structures to grow the business to, to help farmers. So we're going to continue to do that. like I said, I would like to expand more internationally at some point. And you know, just see how many, how many, how much capital we can deploy to impact the future of farming. that's that's kind of what we're all about.

Kip (00:40:33) - No. That's awesome. Well, thank you, Chris, I really appreciate this. Has been this has been awesome. Yeah. Everybody else. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Chris (00:40:40) - No, it's, happy to be here. Kip. Thanks.

Kip (00:40:42) - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone, if you like this, if you got value, please share the show. You know, that's how we continue to. To expand and grow and add value is by sharing the show here. But thank you, Chris. This was an absolute pleasure.

Chris (00:40:56) - Yeah. Likewise. Kip. Thanks. All right.

Kip (00:40:58) - You bet.