RPF-0040-Interview_With_Curtis

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00:00:26.140 | Ralph's, fresh for everyone.

00:00:29.640 | Radical Personal Finance, episode 40.

00:00:32.340 | Would you like to start a business with no debt?

00:00:35.520 | Live where you work? Work 40 to 50 hours per week only during the spring, summer, and fall? Take winters off?

00:00:43.840 | And make 80 to 100 thousand dollars per year while doing something that benefits the environment,

00:00:49.860 | benefits your neighbors, and builds a great number of different forms of capital?

00:00:54.960 | That's what today's show is about.

00:00:57.520 | [Music]

00:01:13.520 | Yes, you heard me right. You heard me right. You heard me right.

00:01:16.120 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast for today, Tuesday, August 12, 2014.

00:01:21.880 | Today's show is an interview with Curtis Stone,

00:01:25.280 | Urban Farmer Extraordinaire.

00:01:27.280 | He's gonna show us a path to

00:01:29.920 | freedom,

00:01:31.920 | entrepreneurship,

00:01:33.200 | all the good things in life. I think you're gonna love this one.

00:01:36.640 | [Music]

00:01:45.520 | If you're not familiar with Curtis, you should be, and after today's show you will be.

00:01:49.040 | We would have mentioned if you listen to show number, let's see, what was that?

00:01:54.000 | Show number 37, interview with Trevor Van Heemert of Pedal to Pedal.

00:01:57.600 | We mentioned a concept called spin farming, and the person that I had heard of in the past with spin farming

00:02:02.480 | was a man named Curtis Stone. And Curtis Stone is an urban farmer in Canada.

00:02:07.520 | And today's show is an in-depth interview with him, and I think you're gonna love it.

00:02:11.600 | A couple of just bits of info to pique your interest.

00:02:14.640 | In 2012,

00:02:17.360 | Curtis's farm, Green City Acres,

00:02:19.760 | grew over 50,000 pounds of food on less than an acre of land using

00:02:25.360 | 100% natural organic methods and only 80 liters of gasoline.

00:02:31.380 | Curtis started his business with a $7,000 investment,

00:02:35.840 | earned $22,000 his first year,

00:02:38.880 | and then last year and this year

00:02:41.840 | changed the size of his business to the point where he works during the spring, summer, and fall, 40 to 50 hours a week

00:02:49.360 | on borrowed land,

00:02:51.360 | farming in the city,

00:02:53.680 | and makes about $80,000 to $100,000 per year, farming in total about a third of an acre.

00:02:58.560 | I think you're going to enjoy the show.

00:03:01.680 | I like this urban farming, as you'll see in the interview. I'm not going to spend much more time introducing the subject.

00:03:06.320 | I hope you enjoy this. And if you're interested in this kind of topic, urban farming, listen to this.

00:03:10.480 | But even if you're not, listen to this and think about some of the techniques that you may be able to use

00:03:16.800 | and apply to your own business.

00:03:18.960 | So with no further ado, here's the interview.

00:03:21.280 | So Curtis, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your being here with me. Happy to be here.

00:03:28.720 | So where I'd like to start

00:03:31.520 | is would you be willing, I know a little bit about

00:03:34.560 | just a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit about the topic that we are

00:03:38.480 | going to be chatting about today, but obviously

00:03:41.380 | I'm not here to be the one to talk about it. Would you give us just a brief introduction to

00:03:48.480 | to yourself, to a little bit about your background, a little bit about spin farming and how you got wrapped up in this

00:03:54.240 | slightly alternative type of agriculture?

00:03:57.300 | Yeah, sure. So

00:03:59.680 | what I do is run a

00:04:01.680 | commercial urban farm, basically. I grow

00:04:05.120 | vegetables in the city of Kelowna, BC, Canada, and I do that

00:04:10.320 | on land that I don't own. And it's most often it's land that are

00:04:15.760 | front and backyards, like right in the city, right in the downtown core.

00:04:19.120 | The farm has been different scales throughout the year, or throughout the five years I've been doing it.

00:04:25.440 | So when I started

00:04:27.200 | it was just with a couple front and backyards, and then

00:04:29.920 | I was really successful at it. I actually made money at this

00:04:33.760 | model of farming right away.

00:04:36.800 | I had zero experience in agriculture. I never had a garden as a kid. I never had any

00:04:40.960 | formal education

00:04:43.600 | in farming or gardening whatsoever. I just basically read some books and

00:04:47.600 | watched videos on YouTube and just went for it. And so the first year I was at about a quarter acre,

00:04:53.440 | I turned a $7,000 investment into

00:04:57.200 | $22,000 of

00:04:59.840 | gross profit that year, and then I doubled that profit every year for four years until

00:05:05.760 | the operation... I doubled the size of the operation and the profits of it

00:05:11.360 | every year for four years until it got to about four acres

00:05:14.480 | of land total on a collection of about 10, or maybe it was 12 different sites.

00:05:19.840 | Some of those sites were up to two acres and some of them were as small as 800 square feet.

00:05:25.120 | And so I did that for until four years until I realized that it was so big. I had eight full-time staff working

00:05:33.200 | and

00:05:35.920 | at that point I realized

00:05:38.720 | I

00:05:39.760 | kind of had to try all these different scales of it to see where I wanted to be. And

00:05:43.040 | at that point it was too big, it was too top heavy, too many overhead expenses,

00:05:46.580 | way too much work versus what I was taking home.

00:05:49.680 | And so at that point I decided to scale back down to almost where I was in my first year.

00:05:54.320 | And so now I'm operating on one third of an acre.

00:05:57.440 | The farm gross is about $80,000 to $100,000 a year. So that's 15,000 square feet.

00:06:03.360 | It can make about $80,000 to $100,000 a year. I have one part-time staff

00:06:08.800 | and I pretty much do everything myself.

00:06:10.960 | And you're only farming a third of an acre? Yeah, I'm only farming a third of an acre.

00:06:15.600 | So what my secret is for that is basically

00:06:18.240 | looking a lot at Pareto's Law, sort of the 80/20 rule.

00:06:22.160 | I basically, you know, when I was at four acres with all that staff

00:06:26.080 | and all that overhead and we had 80 different products that we grew,

00:06:30.240 | I looked at what made money and, you know, it was that real 80/20 rule.

00:06:36.320 | 20% of those crops were making 80% of our profits.

00:06:38.960 | So I pretty much cut out the 80% of the crops that we were growing.

00:06:43.520 | And now I only focus on 15 different crops and I grow mostly for

00:06:49.360 | sort of medium to high-end restaurant clientele as well as I do a farmer's market

00:06:54.640 | once a week. But I used to do

00:06:57.280 | restaurants, farmer's markets, and we ran a 60-member community-supported agriculture veggie box program.

00:07:05.200 | So I cut out the box program and I cut out a lot of the

00:07:08.240 | other restaurants. I basically, with my customers, did the same thing.

00:07:12.400 | Looked at what was the highest yielding

00:07:14.320 | way for me to leverage my efforts and my profits, basically, and I cut all the things out that

00:07:20.560 | weren't at that high margin. So now I sell to about

00:07:25.680 | I have about eight different customers, like restaurant customers, that I sell to and then the one farmer's market a week.

00:07:31.280 | Wow.

00:07:33.680 | I wasn't expecting that.

00:07:35.680 | Previously, I knew that in the past you were running a pretty big operation.

00:07:41.840 | I didn't expect you to say you'd cut it right down. That is awesome. What a great application of

00:07:46.400 | looking to see where your most profitable market is. Are you having more fun now than you did when you had...

00:07:51.200 | Oh my god, yeah. I mean the beauty of it now, I mean this is five years going.

00:07:54.880 | I think I'm past that what they call the 10,000 hour

00:07:58.000 | benchmark, you know, when you put 10,000 hours in something you'd be kind of a master of it.

00:08:03.040 | And so

00:08:04.320 | I've done that and now I work less hours than I've ever worked. I make more money at this than I ever did

00:08:10.000 | and I actually have a life. I actually have a social life. So I only work about 40 to 50 hours a week on the farm

00:08:18.240 | opposed to 80 hours a week on the farm, which is kind of the norm for most small-scale growers during the growing season.

00:08:25.840 | And I no longer grow in the winter. So I used to

00:08:28.720 | run the operation

00:08:31.120 | basically January to January and I did that with

00:08:34.000 | a lot of a collection of unheated greenhouses also

00:08:38.400 | workshop area where I was growing in a controlled environment, microgreens and sprouts and things like that.

00:08:44.400 | So now I only run the operation from April till the end of October and I have so I have five months off a year

00:08:50.160 | and I do other things. I do a lot of

00:08:53.120 | public speaking. I teach

00:08:55.680 | urban agriculture. I'm writing a couple, I'm writing a series of books actually on urban farming. So

00:09:01.440 | I expect some of those out in 2015.

00:09:03.620 | And yeah, I'm kind of focused a little bit more on the education end of it. And so I've tried to make my farm

00:09:09.840 | more manageable so that I can actually focus on creating really high value educational content to inspire people to do the same.

00:09:17.760 | Did any of your previous eight staff members take over?

00:09:21.520 | You know, I don't know what you would call them, your accounts or the land that you were farming

00:09:25.440 | or did they kind of continue on? Were you able to equip them?

00:09:29.520 | They did actually. So with that eight staff in that

00:09:33.680 | particular year

00:09:36.160 | it was a partnership. Like I merged my operation with another operation

00:09:40.340 | that were

00:09:42.240 | not quite as successful as mine, but they had infrastructure, they had some land

00:09:47.040 | and they

00:09:49.040 | more or less knew what they were doing. So

00:09:51.040 | they kind of just kept doing their own thing. Actually kept some of the staff that we had working for us as well.

00:09:57.680 | And yeah, just kept farming and they seemed to be doing all right, too. Good.

00:10:01.280 | Is your financial success peculiar?

00:10:04.820 | Or is it, I mean, I'm

00:10:07.600 | clearly you're applying skill and good business planning to it, but you know the numbers, your $7,000

00:10:15.540 | investment to turn a $22,000 gross profit, is that achievable? Is that replicable or is that unique to you?

00:10:24.000 | No, no, it's not. No, it's not. It's actually, it's very replicable.

00:10:28.500 | And

00:10:30.320 | so

00:10:31.440 | the model that I was using when I started was called spin farming. And in fact, I actually, I still to this day teach the spin farming method.

00:10:38.400 | Though,

00:10:41.120 | you know, and in spin farming they say you can do

00:10:44.160 | $100,000 per acre using spin methods.

00:10:47.920 | And that's the sort of their benchmark figures if you grow these particular crops in this particular way.

00:10:53.920 | Using a bed system, sort of

00:10:55.920 | pursuing some of the direct consumer markets like that I mentioned, like farmers markets, CSAs and restaurants.

00:11:03.680 | But I've actually added a lot of content to the spin model.

00:11:09.440 | And so this is why I'm writing my own book, is that I've developed some methods where

00:11:14.880 | my figures can actually double what they do. So in my method,

00:11:20.160 | you can do $100,000 per half acre or less.

00:11:24.640 | So this is a little bit more of an aggressive marketing strategy, a bit more focus on

00:11:30.400 | the restaurant market.

00:11:33.200 | You know, focus, still utilizing all the direct consumer channels that most small-scale growers pursue, like the CSA model and the farmers market model.

00:11:42.560 | But I go into a little bit more depth on how to utilize

00:11:45.840 | the restaurant and retail and

00:11:49.520 | other sort of market streams that exist

00:11:52.320 | that are out there. And as the local food system

00:11:56.640 | movement becomes more

00:11:59.680 | popular, more of these kind of business models are popping up. So it's kind of like

00:12:03.440 | utilizing a bit more of those things. Also, some more,

00:12:07.120 | as far as production methods, things that I've developed that weren't really

00:12:11.120 | covered in spin farming. So these are things that I'm

00:12:15.120 | working on to put into my books.

00:12:19.040 | Why are restaurants superior to individuals? Are they more reliable? Are they willing to pay higher prices? Is it that they can order continually?

00:12:25.380 | It's,

00:12:27.680 | it's, well, no, it's not necessarily about the price point. It's about,

00:12:31.440 | the price point is probably about the same. Sometimes it's actually a bit less.

00:12:35.280 | I mean, when you're doing bulk volume to people, you generally give them, you know, 25-30% off

00:12:40.240 | what you would at a farmer's market. The advantage is that they will buy volumes

00:12:45.440 | and they will also buy a lot of the same things over and over again. And so

00:12:50.000 | one example of this is a crop like radishes, for example.

00:12:54.480 | Radishes are a great crop to grow for a farmer's market in the spring

00:12:59.520 | and the fall when there's not a lot of other product available. And, you know, they grow fast

00:13:05.600 | and you can move a decent amount of them to the restaurants. But come summer,

00:13:09.280 | they basically become irrelevant, you know, as you have other summer products that come on stream.

00:13:14.800 | People at the farmer's market aren't really interested in radishes. However, for restaurants, for restaurant markets,

00:13:20.640 | they will buy radishes all year round from you because they want some kind of consistency.

00:13:25.700 | They don't want to have to change their menu every week or every month. And that's kind of the kind of clientele

00:13:31.840 | we're dealing with here is sort of the field to fork restaurants that,

00:13:35.360 | that the niche market type restaurants that actually want to have a seasonal local menu. And so they like to work with farmers.

00:13:41.920 | However, they still do want some consistency. So things like

00:13:44.400 | radishes, you know, I can sell 400 bunches a week

00:13:48.560 | year round or all summer long to these restaurants, whereas at a farmer's market, I couldn't do that.

00:13:54.000 | And so radishes are a really easy crop to grow and they're fast. And,

00:13:57.760 | you know, by focusing on these restaurant markets,

00:14:01.360 | it allows you to really focus your production and go with things that just make money. It isn't about just growing

00:14:09.120 | a diversity of crops so that you have a really pretty display at your farmer's market,

00:14:14.240 | which that's important too, and that's also part of it, but it's about just

00:14:18.320 | cranking out a lot of product that you can move in volumes.

00:14:22.800 | And so this is the best advantage to restaurants is that they will take, you know, a restaurant order might be

00:14:28.320 | 50 bunches of radishes, 20 pounds of salad greens, 30 to 40 bunches of

00:14:33.840 | Tokyo turnips, 10 pounds of basil. You can move

00:14:38.720 | bigger volumes of product

00:14:40.720 | and that means that you can turn over areas of land quicker.

00:14:44.880 | And so one of the things about urban farming is when you talk about making money

00:14:49.120 | on a small plot of land, so I'm on only 15,000 square feet on five different plots,

00:14:54.480 | in order to make money on that land, you have to turn over things multiple times.

00:15:00.000 | So everything I do is in a bed.

00:15:02.720 | So spin farming is kind of where square foot gardening meets commercial farming.

00:15:07.200 | And so everything is in a standardized bed.

00:15:09.200 | And you can't just plant these beds once out in a season

00:15:13.280 | and hope to make money. You have to harvest the contents of that crop in a bed,

00:15:19.200 | amend the soil, turn it over and replant it again. And so some of my

00:15:22.960 | beds get turned over up to seven times in a season. So when I say I'm on a third of an acre,

00:15:29.440 | in a traditional farming sense,

00:15:32.160 | I'm actually on say six times that land because I'm turning that land over so many times.

00:15:37.520 | And so this is why I generally focus on crops that not only have a high dollar value per square foot,

00:15:44.480 | but also have a short date to maturity. So I only focus on crops that

00:15:48.960 | grow and are ready to harvest within about 60 days.

00:15:52.720 | And there's some exceptions to that with tomatoes and patty pan squash.

00:15:56.980 | And

00:15:58.560 | I'm also growing crops that will yield high in a small area. So I don't grow anything like corn,

00:16:05.040 | winter squash, cabbages, potatoes, onions,

00:16:08.820 | melons. I don't grow anything like that. I'm focusing on baby root vegetables, salad greens,

00:16:15.920 | specialty herbs,

00:16:19.120 | and there's all kinds of varieties of things within those categories of crops.

00:16:23.840 | Is the way that you're doing it, is it a sustainable system where you're able to keep doing it?

00:16:28.800 | Or do you have to rest the land after a certain amount of time? We can farm our soil

00:16:32.720 | continuously. I mean, like I said, I've done this year round

00:16:37.520 | for the majority of my years farming

00:16:40.240 | and it's all basically

00:16:42.960 | biointensive organic methods where

00:16:45.520 | high amounts of organic matter go into the soil

00:16:48.400 | and the soil gets better and better. And so

00:16:52.800 | there are inputs. The system requires inputs. So I spend

00:16:56.960 | not a lot of money, but I do buy considerable amounts of compost every year. I build my own compost

00:17:03.280 | and I buy organic fertilizers such as bone meal and feather meal and

00:17:07.920 | things like that. And I have to put things into the soil, but yes, it's absolutely sustainable.

00:17:13.520 | And really one of the greatest advantages to urban farming is if you

00:17:17.280 | talk about maybe a futuristic scenario where we

00:17:21.520 | not a futuristic scenario, maybe it's like a near future scenario where these inputs that I'm required to use are no longer as available to me.

00:17:28.560 | Living in a city, I have access to all kinds of waste byproducts that are seen as waste, but are actually resources.

00:17:35.280 | So restaurants, when I deliver to restaurants, I take their scraps of vegetables and buckets and five gallon buckets

00:17:41.200 | and I build my own compost that way so I can actually build my own fertility into the soil.

00:17:45.600 | I don't do that

00:17:49.360 | so much right now because the economics of it are just they don't really add up.

00:17:54.960 | To build your own compost and soil, the labor that goes into it,

00:17:59.840 | it just isn't worth the value that you get out of it. But in a scenario where resources become a lot more

00:18:07.200 | valued and the price of everything goes up, then

00:18:11.600 | that's a situation that we could utilize that system and it would be economical. But right now it isn't, so I don't bother.

00:18:18.640 | I kind of go with the path of least resistance and go with what works at the current time.

00:18:23.200 | But knowing that if I did need to go that way, it wouldn't be a hard shift.

00:18:26.640 | Right. I mean the economic system is always going to dictate. I think of the difference between

00:18:31.360 | I hate seeing all the garbage that we produce in this country and there's so many useful things probably

00:18:37.120 | in there that we don't harvest.

00:18:41.840 | But I remember being in Guatemala City one time at the

00:18:46.160 | Basurero, the garbage dump right in the middle of the city, and you see hundreds of people

00:18:50.320 | who make their entire living. It's soul-crushing and yet it's also

00:18:56.480 | encouraging. And it's soul-crushing because it's a horrible, in my opinion, a horrible lifestyle.

00:19:02.900 | There are hundreds of people make their entire living in the dump, on the dump, picking off

00:19:10.640 | garbage out of it and repurposing it, whether it's recyclables or whether it's repurposing

00:19:16.640 | a piece of plastic into a piece of earrings. And it's really awful as far as just all kinds of sickness.

00:19:23.120 | But yet on the other hand, you look and see the value that garbage can have when you have an economic system

00:19:28.160 | where that's kind of out of,

00:19:30.400 | I don't want to use the word, out of whack. That's working differently where you have people that need a way to sustain their livelihood

00:19:35.540 | and here are resources that can be repurposed.

00:19:38.320 | And I admire the ability to

00:19:40.320 | repurpose the resources and I would love it if we just did it when it's easy,

00:19:45.280 | in our own front yard, in our own

00:19:48.080 | garbage dump, rather than send it on down the road like they do and it gets picked over by someone who's making their living there.

00:19:55.120 | Yeah, exactly. I mean

00:19:57.520 | in an ideal world, that's what we would do before it came that way, but that's just not how our society works.

00:20:02.240 | I mean, I really believe in prices, that prices of everything dictate

00:20:07.120 | our actions.

00:20:08.800 | As much as I'd like to think that

00:20:10.800 | everybody is going to change their behavior based on the ideas or the concerns about

00:20:16.160 | peak oil and limited resources,

00:20:18.720 | you know,

00:20:20.940 | inflation or environmental destruction, but that's just not the way people think.

00:20:25.760 | People only change their behavior based on the price point.

00:20:29.600 | I mean, it's just the reality of it. And so it's just using

00:20:35.280 | that understanding to

00:20:37.280 | create a sustainable system now on the small scale and being set up for when those changes really do

00:20:43.680 | come forward.

00:20:45.600 | So how did you get into this? You said you didn't have any background in agriculture.

00:20:48.560 | How did you wind up like discovering this as a business?

00:20:51.760 | I was actually, so I was a working musician for

00:21:00.320 | all of my 20s,

00:21:03.040 | almost my entire,

00:21:05.840 | my entire teenage and adult life up until I was about

00:21:08.560 | 29, 28.

00:21:11.260 | I was living in the city of Montreal

00:21:15.200 | and I was just making a real good, making a go at trying to be a professional musician, trying to make a living at it.

00:21:22.000 | And you know, I often tell people you think farming's hard, try being a working musician.

00:21:26.800 | You want to work more hours and not get paid and not get the recognition that you want than just be a musician.

00:21:34.080 | So I was doing that and

00:21:37.120 | I always kind of was like, I kind of came up in punk rock music and I was influenced by thinkers like Noam Chomsky and

00:21:44.400 | Norman Finkelstein and people like this. And I had a lot of concern about what was going on in the world.

00:21:51.680 | And I wanted to do something about it. And the more I was starting to realize that my musical career

00:21:58.240 | wasn't going to make me any sort of a living that I could actually

00:22:03.680 | raise my standard of living,

00:22:05.680 | I started to look elsewhere and I started to look into things that if I wasn't necessarily going to raise my standard of living,

00:22:12.000 | at least work towards something that I felt like I was contributing something to society in the right direction. And so

00:22:18.160 | I started to get really interested in

00:22:20.800 | sustainable living, living off the grid,

00:22:23.580 | natural building, organic farming, what have you, all that kind of stuff.

00:22:28.480 | And I just kind of went down a rabbit hole one year,

00:22:32.320 | just cruising on YouTube, just like looking at all these different solution-based

00:22:35.860 | ideas in the sort of green economy. And

00:22:39.120 | I pretty much at that point realized that

00:22:42.720 | being a farmer was one of the best ways that I could truly live by my values because I could really take hold of

00:22:49.600 | what I was doing in my life.

00:22:52.400 | So at least if I'm controlling the food that I'm eating and taking a stand on that

00:22:56.880 | and then making a living at that, then that would be a substantial step towards living by my values.

00:23:03.120 | So

00:23:05.360 | when I kind of decided at this point about 2008 that I was going to leave Montreal and move back out west, and so I was

00:23:11.440 | originally from

00:23:13.120 | BC

00:23:14.320 | in Canada, and so I moved back out here

00:23:16.320 | and I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet, but I knew I wanted to do something. So I had planned this

00:23:22.640 | bicycle trip down the west coast. And so a friend of mine did this and really inspired me

00:23:26.880 | to do the same, and he rode his bike all around the US and

00:23:31.040 | just had this incredible experience. And so I had this big trip planned where I was going to ride my bike from Kelowna.

00:23:37.600 | Originally, I was going all the way to New Orleans,

00:23:40.900 | but I basically had stops all along the way planned on organic farms, off-grid homesteads, eco-villages,

00:23:50.160 | people just living off the land, all kinds of things like this, commercial farming as well.

00:23:53.520 | And I just popped into these places on my bike and I would stay anywhere between

00:23:58.320 | two to three days to two and a half weeks.

00:24:01.680 | And so I did that and it wasn't so much what I'd learned about farming and living off the grid or living off the land

00:24:09.120 | on that trip as it was what I learned about myself, kind of putting myself out there

00:24:15.120 | and really wearing my values on my sleeve. You know, when you're traveling by a bicycle, people can kind of clearly identify

00:24:22.100 | what your values are to a certain degree. And so I discovered that everywhere I went,

00:24:26.240 | I was just constantly approached by people that were

00:24:29.360 | the kind of people that I wanted to talk to. And so it was just this serendipitous experience that everywhere I went,

00:24:35.200 | I just had these amazing, met these amazing people and all these amazing acts of generosity.

00:24:40.420 | And I was just building this sort of network of people that shared my values.

00:24:44.800 | And by the time I got down to San Diego, I was just so inspired by what I had done

00:24:49.920 | and just so

00:24:52.400 | jacked up on my own energy and what I created that I was like, oh my god,

00:24:57.120 | I have to live this way all the time. This is the way to do it.

00:25:01.680 | And so at that point, I felt like I could do anything in the world.

00:25:04.480 | I came back to BC or Kelowna, BC.

00:25:07.680 | I did another season of tree planting.

00:25:10.480 | That's a job that I did for nine years to kind of support myself.

00:25:13.120 | As a musician, I would go and work for two or three months and I could make,

00:25:16.720 | you know, 20 to 40 grand in that time and go back and live as a

00:25:20.400 | poor musician in Montreal. I was kind of helping support myself. Yeah, it's a thing that a lot of...

00:25:24.240 | I've never heard of that.

00:25:25.520 | Tree planting. It's something that'll...

00:25:27.600 | It's a job that a lot of Canadians do to put themselves through college. It's a real Canadian experience.

00:25:33.920 | Where are you planting the trees?

00:25:35.520 | Really, it's really, really hard work.

00:25:37.360 | Just in

00:25:40.160 | forested cut blocks, basically.

00:25:42.160 | So this is the trees that have been logged and you're...

00:25:45.440 | Yeah.

00:25:46.000 | Okay, got it.

00:25:46.640 | So you're replanting what had been logged, basically, with little seedlings. And so it's something I did for many years.

00:25:51.920 | That's cool.

00:25:52.800 | So when I came back to BC, I did that for another year and then

00:25:55.760 | I figured at that point, okay, I had this five-year plan at this point. Like I'm gonna

00:26:00.960 | save money, do another five seasons of tree planting, save a bunch of money and then buy a piece of land. Because at this point,

00:26:07.760 | I thought that that was the only way you could actually farm, was to buy land and sort of in the rural context or

00:26:12.720 | peri-urban context, buy land and be sort of a market gardener as we know it today.

00:26:18.240 | But the land here is so damn expensive.

00:26:21.520 | That goal was getting harder and harder to reach. And so

00:26:26.080 | I realized then, oh my god, I don't know if I can actually do this.

00:26:30.240 | And it was like a serendipitous experience that a friend of mine

00:26:33.120 | told me about this spin farming stuff. And he said, oh, these guys making 100 grand a acre of land and

00:26:38.640 | they're farming in the city on lawns,

00:26:40.880 | turning lawns into gardens. And so I was immediately intrigued. I bought this book called Spin Farming.

00:26:45.600 | And

00:26:47.920 | that's pretty much it. I read, I spent a winter reading and researching this book, going online, learning as much as I could and then

00:26:54.000 | started the farm. And then that pretty much is what

00:26:56.960 | takes me to where I left off earlier when I told you

00:27:02.080 | where I am today.

00:27:03.280 | So was this out of a desire?

00:27:05.280 | One of the themes that I'm interested in exploring with my show is

00:27:09.600 | how people make the transition from employee to entrepreneur.

00:27:13.620 | And so I would think of you as an entrepreneur, but it sounds like, you know, you're an entrepreneur as a musician.

00:27:19.120 | So this was less about the desire, and correct me if I'm wrong,

00:27:22.080 | but it sounds like this was less about the desire to be an entrepreneur and be your own boss and run your own thing and

00:27:28.080 | more about your desire to connect with your values of

00:27:31.600 | sustainability. Is that right?

00:27:35.100 | Yeah, that's exactly it. And well, actually being an entrepreneur is the best way to do that.

00:27:39.040 | Right. And it often leads to

00:27:41.360 | some of the most successful entrepreneurs and successful people in my life

00:27:44.960 | that I see in my life are the people that say, "These are my values," and then they live by them and they show that to

00:27:49.920 | people. That's got to be one of the most attractive things that draws people to you. Right. And so

00:27:55.200 | yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, I guess I always wanted to be an entrepreneur in some way or another,

00:27:59.840 | and I guess I always have been. I was kind of,

00:28:01.840 | I kind of grew up in an entrepreneurial family. My dad was, did all kinds of different things, and

00:28:07.600 | he took me on the road when I was really young, when he was a traveling salesman, and he started a restaurant

00:28:13.700 | when I was about 13, and I worked in his restaurant. And so I'd kind of been around entrepreneurialism

00:28:19.300 | a lot in my life, and so it kind of just seemed second nature to me.

00:28:23.920 | And I think a lot of the values that my father taught me

00:28:26.400 | growing up, I didn't really think about until I actually started to work for myself. But,

00:28:31.600 | you know, just things like

00:28:34.160 | understanding the basic economics. If you're spending more money than you're making, then there's a problem with that. Right. And sort of the frugality

00:28:39.700 | of my dad really helped me in business starting out. And it's funny,

00:28:44.080 | you think that a lot of people understand that stuff, but they don't.

00:28:47.200 | And it's like the number one reason that people fail. So, right. I had a lot of that stuff, and

00:28:52.640 | you know, just the basic

00:28:54.400 | values, like old school businessman, you know, my dad was like that. He was like, you know,

00:28:58.080 | he said, you know, if you shake somebody's hand, you make a deal, that's a deal, and you

00:29:01.440 | do everything you can to make sure that you follow up.

00:29:03.760 | And I had a lot of that stuff going in, and it really worked well for me, is just to be

00:29:08.480 | the best I could be,

00:29:10.880 | operate the most honest, and offer the best value as I can to anybody. And that stuff has done,

00:29:15.440 | has worked magic for me. So I've had success at this for

00:29:20.800 | five years now, and I've,

00:29:22.800 | yeah, I guess I've made more money at it than I ever really planned on doing. And

00:29:26.240 | making money at it wasn't even my intention. My intention was to live by my values, but I've discovered that

00:29:31.760 | when you make your values clear to people, and they see you living by those values,

00:29:36.500 | the money just comes, and there's no real limit to what you can do with it.

00:29:40.240 | Yeah. It's one of the things I have a tough time sometimes talking with, when conversations turn

00:29:46.080 | political, and turn towards,

00:29:49.840 | when conversations turn political, and turn against capitalism,

00:29:52.740 | I always, I often reach an impasse, because to me, I just see money, money is just simply a method of accounting for an exchange of

00:29:59.200 | value. That's all it is. And

00:30:01.200 | so if you don't, I mean, the idea that money is somehow

00:30:04.720 | evil, or that somehow we've got to do away with money, or somehow we've got to do away with

00:30:08.960 | a capitalist system, it's just a system of accounting among people to say who's bringing the most value.

00:30:15.920 | Oh, I totally agree with you. And I actually, I personally believe that is just a massive propaganda campaign.

00:30:23.280 | You know, I could go into all kinds of conspiracy theories. Do it, we like conspiracy theories.

00:30:29.760 | Well, it's just, you know, I got sucked into that whole thing too, with like shaming the rich and all that stuff, and

00:30:38.000 | I guess once you see things from the other side,

00:30:41.280 | your opinions change. Right. And

00:30:45.600 | I don't know, I actually was, really grew up as a total socialist leftist.

00:30:51.040 | My mother is a card-carrying NDP member, which is the, in Canada here, the New Democratic Party,

00:30:56.880 | which are probably the most leftist party we have here,

00:30:59.520 | and a full-on socialist party, and I was kind of brought up with that value, because I spent most of my time growing up

00:31:06.080 | with my mother, because my parents are separated,

00:31:08.080 | than I did with my dad. And so my dad had a bit more of the conservative,

00:31:11.740 | libertarian, even anarchistic values than my mother, but my mother had more of an influence on my values growing up than my dad did. So,

00:31:18.300 | you know, I believe that, yeah, I mean, if we should tax the hell out of the rich,

00:31:23.660 | we should tax the hell out of the people that are productive and all that, and I'd,

00:31:26.460 | I believed that stuff until I actually started getting into business and going, you know what,

00:31:30.700 | I'm just creating value for people. And so it wasn't so much,

00:31:34.860 | you know, I think, I think the money, the system of account we're using can be changed.

00:31:41.180 | I mean, we don't have to use the US dollar. Capitalism, to me, the fundamental

00:31:44.960 | idea behind it is like what you said, is value for value. So it doesn't matter what that unit of measure is.

00:31:52.460 | All that matters is that it is a unit of measure that you use into account for value. And that is widely accepted.

00:31:57.980 | Exactly. And it could be all kinds of things. I mean, I'm really excited about where the

00:32:01.900 | cryptocurrency development is moving, and I think there's going to be a lot of future in that

00:32:07.980 | system. And

00:32:10.060 | so the

00:32:12.060 | what we're using exactly doesn't make a difference at all.

00:32:14.620 | It's just that we are using something and I think it's very liberating in a sense to think that we have these

00:32:20.140 | new systems of account that are popping up. I mean, I personally believe, I guess I would consider myself a

00:32:26.220 | volunteerist or one that believes in more of the anarchist principles of things, is that these things are going to

00:32:32.860 | actually give us a real shot at living in that kind of world now, because a lot of these systems that we're creating

00:32:40.140 | are allowing us to not depend so much on the services that governments and central banks provide.

00:32:45.020 | And so this is really, I think we're really living in an exciting time. Some of this technology that we're seeing today

00:32:51.020 | is

00:32:52.620 | allowing us to do incredible things. I think about 3D printing and we can print fabricated steel now. So it's

00:33:00.220 | really exciting to think

00:33:02.940 | that we're doing these kind of things and all this stuff's available to us.

00:33:08.300 | And it's like this sort of the open source idea that we're seeing, you know, that open source technology

00:33:14.560 | sharing these ideas. I mean, we can develop things at an exponential rate now because of this.

00:33:19.580 | And we're seeing this in farming too.

00:33:21.740 | I mean the internet and this sort of mass communication that we're able to disseminate information so quickly to each other.

00:33:27.740 | We're seeing all kinds of developments in even in my field in agriculture than we've ever seen before.

00:33:33.820 | And this kind of technology with 3D printing

00:33:37.900 | and whatnot, people are developing all kinds of small machines and

00:33:40.700 | doing incredible things. And so I think the future is really bright actually when I think about this kind of stuff.

00:33:46.780 | You're preaching my gospel, you know, it's just the connectivity and the exposure.

00:33:50.800 | And

00:33:52.860 | frankly, the reason I wanted to start this show is to expose people to some alternative ideas and ways of thinking.

00:33:58.780 | Because you know your path, you pull up YouTube and you say, "Whoa, that's possible? That's possible? Whoa!"

00:34:05.420 | And all of a sudden it makes your mind just burst with ideas.

00:34:08.860 | Well, listen, if that guy can do that, and if that's possible there,

00:34:12.700 | wait, I see here's something that I could do locally and I could apply this in my area.

00:34:17.740 | And then all of a sudden you have an entire economy transformed. And

00:34:21.580 | you know, in a sense, I agree with you about cryptocurrencies. And I get so excited when I see how many

00:34:27.340 | merchants and how many different people are willing to do business in Bitcoin. Because in a world where

00:34:34.380 | somebody can pay you for your vegetables in Bitcoin, especially at the farmer's market,

00:34:41.020 | I don't know if you have any restaurants that are doing that, but the world is coming where they can just simply pay you there.

00:34:45.900 | You can go to overstock.com, you can buy the stuff you need there,

00:34:48.940 | you can trade with your neighbor for the meat or another producer for the meat that you need.

00:34:53.660 | You can trade your rent. I mean you set this up. And in a world of competing

00:34:58.060 | currencies, and that's why I hope that there are five cryptocurrency

00:35:04.220 | options. I hope there's a barter network that's based on... I hope there's a hundred of them.

00:35:07.260 | Yeah, I hope there's a... Go ahead, you go. Well, I think the really exciting thing for me is

00:35:13.900 | seeing how the ethics of nature are starting to come into our

00:35:18.940 | way of living in society. And I think

00:35:23.020 | we have to start looking at

00:35:26.300 | sort of anti-fragile or resilient systems. And so I think using the natural world

00:35:32.620 | is the perfect model

00:35:34.620 | for how to design our system and to design our societies. And if you look... So let's just take a forest, for example.

00:35:41.340 | Let's just take a natural forest ecosystem. There are millions, billions, or trillions of microorganisms,

00:35:48.080 | mycelium,

00:35:51.160 | all kinds of, you know, synergistic

00:35:54.480 | life forms that exist within that system. And there is no

00:35:59.980 | central authority. There is no government in nature. Government is a monoculture. And so when we talk about

00:36:05.740 | why the food system is failing and why we're having all kinds of...

00:36:09.740 | We're finding all kinds of chronic illnesses now after 50 to 100 years of the green revolution.

00:36:16.480 | We're seeing all these chronic problems and illnesses that are popping up in people because we've been doing it wrong.

00:36:21.900 | In the natural world, there is no monoculture. Monocultures don't exist in nature.

00:36:27.660 | And there's a reason for that is because they are fragile.

00:36:30.780 | If one thing goes wrong, the system collapses. Whereas in a natural system, in a forest ecosystem,

00:36:36.960 | there are many checks and balances that keep the system resilient.

00:36:40.700 | So this is this anti-fragile idea that I like to talk about. And this thing exists within nature

00:36:46.780 | everywhere in the universe. And I think

00:36:49.980 | where we're moving to right now

00:36:52.780 | and where the successful people in the world will be moving to is looking at how to be anti-fragile. So how to diversify,

00:36:58.800 | how to have

00:37:01.500 | systems that are resilient. And so those are systems in the economy, in the food system,

00:37:07.100 | in production,

00:37:08.940 | in manufacturing, all kinds of things. And I think the more small scale we get, the more diversified we get, the more anti-fragile we are.

00:37:15.980 | And so looking at nature as a model,

00:37:19.580 | we can look at that as a way to design a truly anarchistic capitalist system.

00:37:24.700 | Because we don't need to have a centralized authority. All we need

00:37:28.940 | are individuals that are willing to volunteer and choose what's best for them. And so what will succeed

00:37:36.400 | will be the thing that serves the most value for the most amount of people, not

00:37:40.380 | this is a gun in your face and this is how it's going to be whether you like it or not,

00:37:44.060 | which is the traditional model of government that we have. And so I think all these things, whether it's

00:37:49.480 | Bitcoin and these Fab Lab manufacturing, all this kind of stuff is going to diversify us.

00:37:55.440 | And I mean, you know, it's going to also turn, I think there's going to be a value shift.

00:38:00.080 | I think it's happening now where people are starting to say,

00:38:02.480 | okay, this sort of consumerist culture of where we're just

00:38:05.840 | human beings in society, we're just consumers. People are starting to go, let's just be productive because that

00:38:13.200 | 3D printing stuff, all the apps and amazing technology that we're creating,

00:38:20.320 | people are creating so much value for one another that

00:38:24.560 | we can be productive again. And I mean, just for one example, and it's really old school thinking,

00:38:30.560 | but as you mentioned, you touched on it a bit there too, is trading.

00:38:33.360 | So trading value for value. The great thing about being a productive person and offering a service that people need,

00:38:40.240 | which in my case is farming. And so I think that's where the basis of any

00:38:43.600 | new society is going to come from is food production. And then things kind of stem out from there.

00:38:49.120 | But for myself as a farmer, I offer a product that everybody needs.

00:38:53.280 | And so this gives me an incredible amount of economic leverage and I can go and trade

00:38:58.400 | the products that I have with all kinds of other services that exist. So I can get a carpenter, a welder,

00:39:04.320 | any kind of skilled labor to work for me on trade. And what I love about trade,

00:39:08.720 | even though trade is kind of inefficient in the sense that

00:39:11.040 | for the people that don't have something that everybody needs, trade doesn't really work.

00:39:15.600 | But for the productive people, it works amazing because it allows you to get the highest economic

00:39:21.380 | value for your energy. So

00:39:24.320 | if currency or money is just a reflection of your economic energy, when you put that into a dollar,

00:39:30.240 | you immediately lose your economic energy. It's like putting it through a really inefficient

00:39:36.400 | copper wire to transmit energy from point A to point B. You have all this

00:39:40.800 | sort of like

00:39:43.200 | runoff of energy. And so it's the same with dollars. You go into dollars, you immediately lose to inflation,

00:39:48.080 | you immediately lose to income tax, you immediately lose to sales tax.

00:39:51.920 | Whereas when you go trade value to value in a trade scenario, you get the highest value for your economic energy.

00:39:58.400 | And so it's something that I discovered was an amazing way for me to raise my standard of living

00:40:04.480 | really quickly without having to work more,

00:40:06.560 | put in more hours or make more money. It's just

00:40:10.160 | moving this extra stuff that a farmer always has into some kind of trade scenario.

00:40:15.840 | So it's allowed me to eat the highest quality meat and dairy, honey, all the things that I don't grow myself.

00:40:22.480 | It allows me to get all that high quality nutritionally dense food for nothing, basically.

00:40:28.240 | So it's allowed me to raise my quality of living. And so I think all this

00:40:33.520 | going into being a productive individual is what's going to change our society.

00:40:40.160 | And I think we will go back to valuing the productive individuals.

00:40:44.020 | I think so. And I think it seems to me,

00:40:46.800 | part of the reasons why

00:40:49.520 | I'm so interested in your story is because it just seems like a better way to live in this sense.

00:40:59.680 | It feels to me, when I graduated from college, I went to university and I studied business. And when I went into school,

00:41:05.360 | I thought my goal was to graduate and be a Fortune 500 CEO because I was obsessed with the ideal of business.

00:41:13.440 | And then somewhere in college, I studied abroad in college, and all of a sudden I studied abroad and saw a whole new side of the world that I'd never

00:41:20.800 | really thought about. And that completely threw me for a loop. And I said, what am I doing?

00:41:25.120 | And I wound up finishing still with a business degree.

00:41:28.160 | But then I went and worked a year in a corporate job.

00:41:31.200 | And I just,

00:41:33.200 | I only did it a year. And then I went and worked in the cubicle world.

00:41:36.480 | But that opened my eyes to what it was like to work in the cubicle world. And I went from,

00:41:40.800 | prior to, so during college, I was actually working in agriculture.

00:41:45.300 | And I was running a,

00:41:47.840 | on a temporary basis, just for a few months, I was running a tree nursery here in Florida, where we grew

00:41:53.760 | basically a lot of ornamental trees, palms and various types of palms and things for sale to landscapers.

00:41:59.540 | And I was running this for a few months and it was,

00:42:02.720 | it was hell. I had to be there at five, I had to be there, let's see, what time did we start?

00:42:08.000 | So the cruise started at six. I think we basically worked six to four.

00:42:12.720 | And you know, the 10 hour day is standard in agriculture.

00:42:16.480 | So I had to be there, you know, before six to get things set up.

00:42:20.880 | And then I would wind up there till five and I would just go home, go home, just completely beat and

00:42:26.560 | not do anything except sleep all night so I could get up and do it the next day.

00:42:30.320 | And I wasn't making a ton of money. I was making just, I was making enough.

00:42:34.240 | But it was just kind of this constant, this constant work.

00:42:37.120 | And then, so I had the opportunity to double my income and cut my hours by, you know,

00:42:41.920 | 30 percent by moving into the corporate world. And it wasn't a double income.

00:42:45.680 | It was, I don't know, I don't remember. An increase, a significant increase in income

00:42:49.040 | and a significant decrease in hours by going into the corporate world.

00:42:52.080 | So I went and did it. But the problem was I missed kind of that that sense of

00:42:56.400 | beauty of doing something with your hands where you finished it and you looked at it and it was beautiful.

00:43:02.160 | You know, you finished trimming the palm trees and they looked good.

00:43:05.600 | You mowed the grass and it looked good and you had that sense of achievement.

00:43:10.400 | And then I just went into a world of spreadsheets.

00:43:12.400 | So then you look at it and you say, well, let's analyze what's wrong with it.

00:43:16.800 | Well, in the corporate world, you're just, you're one,

00:43:19.280 | you're one part of many and that has huge value.

00:43:23.040 | But you're just a pawn. You can be taken out and you can be put in.

00:43:26.000 | I wound up getting laid off from the corporate job several iterations of the job later.

00:43:30.080 | You can be taken out and someone else can be put in. And you don't have the sense of

00:43:33.760 | satisfaction of doing something. You don't have that sense of effort of doing that hard work and being done with it.

00:43:40.480 | But you go to agriculture and you say, I'm doomed to no money and a terrible standard of living.

00:43:46.160 | But when I thought back about it, I said, well, A, if I'd actually, let's say that I was in what are the bucolic

00:43:52.800 | traditional view we have of a farm. What are the advantages of it? I work from home. I control my own schedule.

00:43:58.560 | I'm doing something where I can see. I'm doing something that matters. My family can be fully integrated.

00:44:04.180 | I have breakfast, lunch and dinner with my family.

00:44:09.360 | We have seasons where we work really hard and then we have seasons of rest.

00:44:14.880 | And so that natural cycle, I think to me, is what I desire of this natural cycle.

00:44:19.920 | Sometimes we work really hard and sometimes we rest. And so you say, but that's not possible.

00:44:24.400 | One side of my family is in traditional agriculture out in Colorado and Nebraska in the western states.

00:44:32.000 | And

00:44:33.600 | I look at the economics of their business and I say, it's crazy.

00:44:36.720 | But then I look at the economics of your business and say, wait a second. You're telling me that with

00:44:40.320 | a very small investment

00:44:44.000 | and relatively no overhead because there's no debt

00:44:47.440 | and I can live right next to my farm and in the surrounding area and I can work on the human scale

00:44:54.320 | and I can make a good wage. It sounds like

00:44:58.400 | your book should sell like crazy. Well, I think it will. I mean, this information is going to revolutionize farming.

00:45:05.760 | I also, you know, just kind of picking up

00:45:08.160 | where you left off there is that

00:45:13.120 | the other thing that's going to

00:45:15.120 | get people back into farming on the large scale is the price point.

00:45:19.040 | Is food prices are going to go up

00:45:21.600 | no matter if we like it or not. There's a few reasons, but the one basic reason is the average age of a farmer.

00:45:27.920 | So in Canada,

00:45:30.320 | I'm not sure what it is in the US, but I'm pretty sure it's close because worldwide it's around the same.

00:45:34.240 | But in Canada here, the average age of a farmer is 59 years old and the amount of people that are leaving

00:45:40.620 | agriculture do not even come close to the amount of people that are coming into agriculture.

00:45:45.680 | So, you know, I don't know if you listen to Jim Rogers, the economist Jim Rogers,

00:45:50.540 | but he actually talks a lot about this and it's interesting to hear an economic

00:45:53.660 | economist talk about this stuff, but it's absolutely true.

00:45:57.900 | Is that there is going to be in about 10 years or so a real crunch unless there is

00:46:04.220 | a mass

00:46:06.860 | move back into agriculture, which I think is possible.

00:46:10.720 | We are going to see food prices spike like crazy and I'm not just talking about

00:46:14.800 | prices set to inflation. I'm talking about 100% increases in food prices because if we don't have the people

00:46:22.240 | in the field that can actually grow the food because they're just nobody wants to do it,

00:46:26.720 | we're not going to have any food at any price. It doesn't matter

00:46:30.240 | what it is because if there's not the farmers that can do the work,

00:46:33.920 | then

00:46:35.200 | the price will have to go up because it's going to have to draw people back into the system. And so

00:46:39.520 | I personally think going forward

00:46:41.520 | getting into agriculture now is going to be one of the best investments that people make because food is

00:46:47.840 | paramount. Everybody needs to eat. And so if you look at the numbers of people leaving,

00:46:53.520 | they don't even come close to the people getting into it.

00:46:56.960 | And so the liberating idea is that, you know,

00:47:00.240 | when I tell you that you can make a living and feed a family of four

00:47:03.840 | on an income from a third of an acre and a good living too, I mean 100 grand a year,

00:47:09.680 | that's upper middle class, right? Like I'm not just talking about

00:47:12.480 | you know working your butt off for 40 grand a year.

00:47:16.000 | Yeah, it is and more importantly. 100 grand a year is a pretty upper middle class living and I think going forward

00:47:22.720 | we're going to see farmers become

00:47:24.800 | the new sort of

00:47:27.840 | upper class of society because it's a value shift. I mean and these things happen throughout history, right?

00:47:33.360 | I mean we see over specialization into one thing,

00:47:36.240 | then there's a saturation and then there's sort of a mass exodus from that. I think, you know, no offense to you,

00:47:41.360 | but I mean in the financial world, that's what we're going to see. Sure, absolutely. We've seen

00:47:45.360 | so much growth

00:47:48.320 | and development

00:47:49.680 | in the financial world, but I mean some of these guys aren't making any money.

00:47:52.960 | Like it's the top dogs that are making a lot of money, but I mean some of these underlings working at Goldman Sachs,

00:47:57.920 | you know, maybe they're making 80 grand a year, but they're working 80 hours a week. Right.

00:48:02.480 | Whereas this kind of farming now and also, you know, you touched on the lifestyle a bit too

00:48:07.040 | and I think that's so important and it's something that people don't really look at

00:48:10.960 | the other capital that exists and there are many forms of capital and one form of capital that I'm really big on.

00:48:17.680 | And so when I call myself a capitalist and I'm very proud to call myself a capitalist,

00:48:22.080 | I say that word of pride,

00:48:23.360 | but I also tell people that I'm a social capitalist and that I don't just build capital that is dollars and cents.

00:48:30.160 | I build social capital. I build community capital. I build educational capital. I build capital that exists within my community.

00:48:38.180 | And but being a farmer has got to be one of the best ways to build social capital.

00:48:43.040 | And so what I mean by that is as a farmer when you offer services

00:48:46.980 | and products that everybody needs in your community, there's a real needs benefit to that relationship.

00:48:54.080 | And this is one thing that I think in our overly statist society,

00:48:58.720 | you know, we talk about neighborhoods where people basically don't even know who lives next to them.

00:49:03.600 | We live in these suburban communities where nobody knows each other.

00:49:06.240 | There's a reason for that is because there are no needs benefit to that relationship.

00:49:10.960 | And so going back into a society where we have

00:49:14.800 | people growing food on the community level, getting to know their neighbors,

00:49:18.880 | this is what's going to reconnect us with our neighbors. And so that's where that social capital comes into play.

00:49:24.080 | And so the amazing thing about that is just like when you do good business and you do honest business

00:49:29.440 | and you do the best you can to offer the most value to the most amount of people,

00:49:32.960 | all that stuff comes back to you. And it doesn't just come back to you in the form of money.

00:49:36.560 | It comes back to you in social capital. So building relationships and people doing favors for you.

00:49:42.240 | I mean, it's a lot of really old school thinking and a lot of it, you know, for myself came from like Dale Carnegie's book,

00:49:47.120 | How to Win Friends and Influence People, but it's, you know,

00:49:49.440 | this other forms of capital that we can build that have this intrinsic value,

00:49:54.480 | but also have a value rooted in a community and rooted to the people you know.

00:49:58.560 | That's what's so great about being a farmer is you get that really high quality of life where people

00:50:03.200 | really respect you and they want to help you because you help them.

00:50:07.280 | Two themes. First of all,

00:50:10.160 | it's more than a hundred thousand dollars when you compare it to what the cost that you've pulled out.

00:50:15.840 | So let's say that you have a hundred thousand dollar

00:50:19.600 | job

00:50:21.600 | of salary and let's say that you have a hundred thousand dollar net profit on your farming business.

00:50:26.560 | Ignore taxes, ignore any of the savings from barter, ignore any of the,

00:50:31.440 | ignore even the own food that you eat from, that you produce from your own hand.

00:50:36.080 | Ignore that. Just from the quality of life and the difference between being a hundred thousand dollar a year attorney,

00:50:41.920 | where you have to support a vehicle that's appropriate, you have to support a wardrobe that's appropriate,

00:50:48.240 | you have to support the charitable contributions to the golf tournament and the lunches and the drinks with your friends because you're,

00:50:55.040 | you know, you can't handle your job and I'm certainly exaggerating. Not everyone is in that situation.

00:51:00.420 | But there are, but the hundred thousand dollar a year farming lifestyle where you walk out your back porch

00:51:06.240 | and on your block, on your, on the three city blocks, I mean your situation, you ride a bike to all this stuff, right?

00:51:11.440 | Yeah, for the most part I do use a small truck to do my deliveries to like my further customers.

00:51:17.120 | But yeah, for the most part we run it all by bikes and trailers.

00:51:19.600 | So you go out your back door and you got a bicycle and you got your three block radius

00:51:25.440 | and then you do your work there. I mean there is such a,

00:51:28.800 | the hundred thousand dollars net profit is a hundred thousand dollars net profit with very few associated expenses.

00:51:35.940 | And so that's a big number. And the second thing,

00:51:38.880 | go ahead and respond. No, you go ahead. Okay.

00:51:41.920 | I was going to say the second thing about financial capital and I'm glad you brought it up.

00:51:46.160 | I would like to do a show,

00:51:48.000 | I've pinned it down, and I've wanted to do a show on all the different forms of capital that I can think of,

00:51:53.840 | but it goes directly back to your

00:51:56.080 | forest web versus monoculture example from the biological world.

00:52:02.000 | Is that in many ways, look at how devastated many people are when they lose a job.

00:52:07.760 | It's terrible because their entire, if your entire system is, if the only capital you have

00:52:14.480 | is the financial capital that you can earn by trading your human capital, your life energy for a paycheck,

00:52:20.480 | and then that paycheck is interrupted and you're in the habit of purchasing

00:52:23.860 | all of your solutions through the financial system. Well, if the paycheck is interrupted,

00:52:29.060 | then your entire plan falls apart. And so many financial planners would say, well,

00:52:33.520 | then you should have some backup for that. And some backup might be a savings account, an emergency fund,

00:52:38.560 | you might have some investments.

00:52:40.080 | But the problem is many times all of those things are predicated upon the financial system.

00:52:44.720 | And what happens in our society is oftentimes by only focusing on one way of thinking about it,

00:52:51.360 | by only focusing on the financial system, we can only get financial solutions.

00:52:55.780 | But if you can bring back in things like the social capital, things like, I'll give you a very practical example.

00:53:02.480 | I do in part of my work, I've done a good bit of long-term care planning.

00:53:07.840 | Basically, what's your plan if you get older and you're not able to care for yourself?

00:53:12.080 | Well, throughout all of human history, that has been a fairly

00:53:16.320 | okay thing because you had an intense social network, you had a lot of social capital, you had family capital,

00:53:23.200 | where your family would provide that for you.

00:53:25.440 | So you didn't need to go and work and earn money and save so that you could pay a nurse to care for you.

00:53:31.680 | Same thing with retirement. You didn't always need to just go and say,

00:53:35.440 | I've got to save a lump sum of money that's a certain amount so that I can afford to retire.

00:53:40.320 | You had a family structure, you had a friend structure. If you reach the point, if you were a farmer, and I know again,

00:53:45.600 | some of these metaphors maybe are a little bit too idealistic, a little bit too bucolic,

00:53:50.000 | but if you have this idea, if you have a farmer and you're getting older and you're not able to do it,

00:53:54.080 | you would have younger members of your family or the neighboring farmer would come over and would lift the heavy thing or would help with

00:54:00.080 | the item that requires a younger body to do it. It would help with these things.

00:54:06.560 | But in today's world, then all of that social capital and family capital has been greatly diminished if not destroyed.

00:54:13.700 | And so now you're set to say, how on earth do I sit here and build,

00:54:17.760 | how do I save the million dollars that I need to save? And then how do I buy the long-term care insurance policy

00:54:23.140 | that I need to buy so that I can pay for those needs that I have with a financial system?

00:54:28.560 | And there's another way of doing it. I still think that the financial planning is incredibly valuable,

00:54:33.280 | but how much stronger is a financial plan if we build it like a web, where you can earn an income from a job,

00:54:40.880 | but you can supplement that income with a side business and you can supplement that with all of the

00:54:46.400 | eco-solutions that we have now, the sustainable,

00:54:50.560 | you know, someone's farming your backyard and you have a guy that's farming your backyard.

00:54:56.320 | So there you have a portion of the food. I assume that's how you structure your rents in some way.

00:55:01.040 | You have some, instead of every month earning so that you can pay for your electric bill,

00:55:06.160 | you've built out the insulation on your house. You've changed your energy usage patterns.

00:55:11.120 | You've installed some form of alternative energy source that you can buy, such as a solar panel,

00:55:16.880 | where you can buy it for a one-time thing instead of an ongoing thing. Now your needs for the financial capital are

00:55:22.940 | efficiently lowered. And so now we're building a much stronger plan, a web, instead of a single monoculture solution.

00:55:30.620 | Exactly. And you know, this is interesting because the more I talk about these things,

00:55:35.420 | a lot of these ideas come to light for me.

00:55:38.380 | And hearing you talk about that kind of spelt it out in my mind is that,

00:55:44.300 | you know, the idea of the welfare state that's been taking care of us,

00:55:50.540 | and the idea that we don't have to work so hard, it's actually done the opposite of what it is intended to do.

00:55:55.740 | Because like you just demonstrated, all that need for that financial capital,

00:56:01.500 | because we don't have that social capital, that community capital, that human capital that had been there in previous,

00:56:06.940 | you know, in previous generations that would be there to take care of you when you get older, puts more pressure on us

00:56:12.460 | for the importance of financial capital.

00:56:16.780 | But in an inflationary world where the value of our dollar is perpetually diminished,

00:56:21.200 | it means that we have to work harder and harder and harder to do so. So it's interesting to think that,

00:56:26.540 | you know what, to go the other way,

00:56:29.020 | focus on the community, focus on the social capital, those are the things that actually enrich our lives.

00:56:35.100 | Right. Those are the things that actually will improve your life in the long run. Because when you really strip it down,

00:56:40.380 | when you really strip down to what is important in life, what will actually

00:56:46.700 | make your life rich, it's not money, it isn't things, it's human relationships. That's all it is.

00:56:52.540 | And

00:56:53.900 | any of the big, even the most successful business people,

00:56:57.180 | entrepreneur people will tell you that all you've got are the people you know and the skills you've learned.

00:57:01.820 | That's all you've got. So,

00:57:04.060 | you know, strip all those things away. That's all that matters. And so

00:57:06.780 | building on those things is going to be the thing that's going to make your life better in the long run,

00:57:11.660 | even in the short run. So I think it's a very

00:57:16.060 | interesting idea and it's not something that a lot of people talk about. We put so much

00:57:19.900 | importance on the financial side. And you know, it's interesting the way you explained that the $100,000 scenario there.

00:57:27.260 | It's very true. It's very true because I can't even,

00:57:30.220 | it's hard for me to quantify

00:57:32.860 | how much capital I've actually built outside of the financial capital.

00:57:37.420 | I mean, it's kind of beyond my imagination when I really think about it.

00:57:41.020 | The amount of people that I've connected with and the network of friends and partners that I've built up in this community here,

00:57:47.020 | that when I really need something, there's somebody there to help me. Right. And you could, and here's the thing, if you,

00:57:53.180 | I don't know, I don't know if, are you single? Do you have a family?

00:57:56.620 | No, I'm single. Okay. So here's, if you, if you,

00:58:00.460 | if your economic situation, something happened, you lost all your money, you lost your farm, you lost all your equipment,

00:58:07.740 | you had a, whether just natural disaster, tornado destroys, you know,

00:58:11.500 | your town falls into the, into the ocean, for some reason, everything is gone.

00:58:16.060 | You could get, you know, you could hitch a ride

00:58:19.100 | to another farm

00:58:21.580 | of somebody that you know, and in your work of speaking and being an evangelist for the sustainable agriculture movement,

00:58:29.020 | you could have a roof over your head, a meal in your stomach,

00:58:32.860 | and a way to earn an income to build up your savings again to start your own business.

00:58:37.260 | You could have it by the, by the end of the day. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is,

00:58:41.180 | this is one of the main reasons I got into farming, because I looked at what I had,

00:58:45.420 | and I didn't have much. I had a degree in music composition,

00:58:48.320 | I had no practical skills, and I didn't even really have a lot of social capital, though

00:58:52.700 | I didn't even think in those metrics back then. But as a farmer, you have that intrinsically, and you can,

00:58:58.860 | you always have value to people, and that's, that's something that people overlook today.

00:59:03.660 | They don't even, it's not even on their radar. It's like, what is your value?

00:59:07.500 | What are the things that you do that people need and people value? And that's all community is, is needs.

00:59:14.140 | Right. If people talk about

00:59:16.540 | building sustainable communities, like it's something that the government can do. It will never be something that the government can do.

00:59:22.300 | It has to come from the needs of the community, and until you have a reason to need your neighbor,

00:59:27.740 | there's no incentive to get to know your neighbor. Right.

00:59:32.060 | And this applies,

00:59:34.060 | our systems in many ways, one more example, the social capital, are so

00:59:39.900 | twisted, even just in terms of family. And I'll give you an example. When I was talking about retirement,

00:59:45.100 | I think about, I think about this sometimes. My father is, how old is he?

00:59:49.500 | I can't remember. He's in his early 70s, and I think about my, my mom is

00:59:55.420 | as well, about, about 70. She's, yeah, just, she's 70.

01:00:01.820 | I always get your ages mixed up in my head. So,

01:00:05.020 | but the thing is, is that I'm the, you know, I'm the youngest of seven children.

01:00:08.700 | And we have such a tight relationship with my parents. They live on their own right now.

01:00:13.500 | They live, they live,

01:00:15.820 | they're enjoying their condo lifestyle

01:00:17.820 | in West Palm Beach here. But we have such a strong relationship that I would never want to see my parents.

01:00:22.780 | I hope that they don't live on their own forever.

01:00:25.100 | I hope that they have an opportunity

01:00:27.180 | to come in, to come, and I hope that they have an opportunity in the future to live with my family,

01:00:31.180 | to live with my siblings, and to be able to enjoy their final decades on earth with their family.

01:00:37.420 | And to me, I don't view that as a,

01:00:40.140 | as a negative thing, of something that I would have to do. I view that as something that I want to do.

01:00:44.140 | So I look at that and I say, how did my parents build that desire in me?

01:00:48.060 | Well, it was built by having a strong relationship. Then I look at my son and I say, well,

01:00:52.460 | how am I going to do that? There is, you can't pay me enough money

01:00:56.460 | to take a big prestigious, you know, 60, 70, 80 hour a week job where I'm going to be away from my family.

01:01:02.780 | Because it is so much more important for me to invest

01:01:06.080 | in the social capital, in the family capital with my children.

01:01:10.140 | That is such a more valuable investment

01:01:14.000 | than any stock I could buy, than any business I could invest in.

01:01:18.860 | And so the idea is saying, how can I invest my time and invest it into building this family capital?

01:01:25.820 | And if you look at it, the financial system in many ways seems to be exactly at odds with it.

01:01:30.220 | And the financial system has brought about a higher standard of living for more people than ever in human history. And yet it has also brought

01:01:37.660 | fractioning families. It has brought, you know,

01:01:40.860 | depression, you know,

01:01:43.420 | it's brought many negative things. So the problem is not the capitalist system. The problem is this misidentification

01:01:49.360 | of the various forms of capital and how to

01:01:53.740 | work within the system and find a solution. So, I mean, I would start a spin farm,

01:01:58.700 | or I would start a Curtis Stone farm in my backyard, whatever you call it,

01:02:02.940 | in my backyard, before I would go and take that salary job. Because then that allows me to simultaneously reap benefits of investing in my health,

01:02:12.220 | investing in my business, investing in my community. And I have a business now, my family can work alongside me.

01:02:18.140 | So now I'm investing in my family. And now by stacking the benefits up,

01:02:22.140 | just like with good permaculture design or good design techniques, instead of just saying, I'm going to take one benefit,

01:02:27.900 | whereas I'm going to go away, I'm going to take a job, and I'm going to earn this, you know,

01:02:31.820 | $60,000 of financial capital, rather we say, I'm going to invest in my health because I'm being physically active.

01:02:38.220 | I'm going to invest in my mental health because I can see the work of my hands.

01:02:41.180 | I'm going to invest in my family's health because I can have my family relationships.

01:02:45.520 | I'm going to invest in my financial health. I'm going to build social capital. I'm going to build this broad network.

01:02:51.340 | It's just a much more holistic planning technique to apply to life.

01:02:56.860 | Absolutely. I mean, I think we just solved all the world's problems right there.

01:03:01.020 | We got to quit now.

01:03:03.020 | But it's, you know, it's that's exactly it. I mean, it's actually really exciting to hear

01:03:08.220 | somebody like yourself

01:03:10.460 | speak in those terms. And I think

01:03:12.460 | this kind of information needs to be disseminated to people. We need to get out of this whole

01:03:19.500 | system. And I think it's by design. I think

01:03:22.220 | the fact that we've locked everybody into this idea that all capitalism is creating financial

01:03:30.300 | value.

01:03:32.700 | I think that is

01:03:34.220 | what has driven us to be so divided from one another.

01:03:38.060 | Because if you really embrace the idea of capitalism, like what we've just been talking about for the last 20 minutes,

01:03:45.020 | it's absolutely, it's totally liberating because it makes you realize that

01:03:50.380 | human beings, in my opinion, human beings by their nature are very productive. We are very resilient.

01:03:55.740 | We have survived and evolved over millions of years and have accomplished

01:04:00.060 | amazing things. And

01:04:02.760 | to think of a world where we live sort of like the movie Wall-E

01:04:06.300 | or

01:04:07.900 | Idiocracy, if any of your listeners are familiar with those movies, where people are basically just useless turds.

01:04:13.100 | They just like sit in chairs and robots do everything.

01:04:16.860 | And this is a sort of dystopian future that I think Hollywood is kind of trying to perpetuate to us for

01:04:22.300 | maybe there is a reason for it. But

01:04:25.820 | I don't think that it has to go that way at all.

01:04:28.860 | I think when human beings or us in society start to

01:04:32.300 | really understand what real capitalism is,

01:04:36.460 | we can create

01:04:38.840 | enormous amounts of value and turn all these problems around that we have. And I think

01:04:43.960 | it all starts with this type of thinking, is like what is real capital? What kind of capital can you build? Because

01:04:49.800 | if we're all locked into just thinking of everything in the metrics of financial capital,

01:04:54.440 | then we are so, we will always be dependent on the state

01:04:58.520 | to provide all the other things that the other forms of capital didn't provide for us.

01:05:02.680 | And so when you really liberate your mind to say, hey, there's like probably 10 to 20 different forms of capital,

01:05:08.760 | and if you diversify within those forms of capital, you can create an amazing amount of abundance in your life.

01:05:14.360 | And that's what I've done. I mean, just by doing this,

01:05:18.040 | it's all kinds of opportunities that come my way that I never imagined would have done so. By just farming.

01:05:24.600 | And the great thing about being a farmer is that

01:05:27.400 | you learn a lot of different skills because you have to fix things all the time.

01:05:31.320 | And so I've learned carpentry. I've learned a bit of welding. I've learned how to fix some small machines.

01:05:38.120 | I know how to fix my bikes.

01:05:39.960 | You know, all kinds of things that you learn from being a farmer is incredible. And in Japanese, actually, farmer kind of,

01:05:45.480 | that word actually means

01:05:47.400 | the jack of all trades. It's like somebody that does

01:05:49.400 | everything. I didn't know that. That's neat. Yeah. What a cool, what a cool word. Yeah, I mean, and you have

01:05:55.080 | you have all those things as backup plans. Like if farming, let's say that, let's say that your predictions about the price of food are

01:06:03.540 | 50,000% wrong and the price of food cuts is cut by 95% and your entire business model devolves,

01:06:10.520 | you have now a variety of trades that you can fall back on and you could go in a

01:06:16.500 | completely different direction because you've built skills. Exactly. And this is the thing that

01:06:22.820 | I won't go into now, but I've got a whole show planned on skills.

01:06:27.780 | And it just seems so simple to me when you think about the fact that

01:06:31.060 | the amount of, this is the concept that's lost, going to financial capital.

01:06:35.540 | The concept that seems to be lost, that I don't hear expressed very much in our society, is

01:06:41.380 | that

01:06:43.860 | the amount of money that you earn,

01:06:46.180 | let's assume an hourly wage, the amount of money that you earn as an hourly wage is exactly what you are worth in the marketplace.

01:06:53.400 | I'm not talking about your worth as a human being and that. I'm just talking about the market value,

01:07:00.100 | exactly what you're worth. A radish is worth X dollars per pound and a tomato is worth a different dollars per pound.

01:07:07.220 | So each of us has a certain value that's described by the marketplace.

01:07:11.000 | And the only way to increase what we earn is to increase our skills, which increases our values.

01:07:17.620 | But somehow we spend a lot of time, instead of going crazy on saying,

01:07:22.180 | "How can I develop my skills and how can I develop my value?"

01:07:25.240 | And then the marketplace will ultimately recognize and reward that value.

01:07:29.620 | Many people just don't seem to grasp that. And that's what frustrates me so much

01:07:34.740 | when I

01:07:36.580 | get into, when people are working in jobs and I get into hourly wage and minimum wage discussions and I say,

01:07:42.340 | "Why are you earning minimum wage? That's a good place to start, but go out and get to work and increase your value."

01:07:49.220 | Because guess what? There are people that earn

01:07:51.300 | $100,000 for a day's consulting and you could do that too. You just got to develop the value of yourself.

01:07:58.100 | Exactly.

01:07:59.860 | Two last questions that I have and they're kind of two themes.

01:08:02.580 | I don't necessarily need them to go on long or short, but they're two disparate themes.

01:08:08.740 | And I'm going to finish, I'll tell you in advance just so we can guide our conversation there.

01:08:14.580 | The last question I wanted to end on was kind of how to get started if someone was interested.

01:08:18.100 | But before we do that, I'm interested because you do have exposure to

01:08:23.220 | many of the ideas that are coming out of sustainable design and ecological design.

01:08:29.140 | I don't even know what the word to put on it is.

01:08:31.220 | Have you ever thought about applying any of the sustainable design ideas to

01:08:36.820 | personal finance?

01:08:39.380 | And what I mean,

01:08:41.220 | and I'm just interested if you have any ideas. I think a lot about this and I think a lot about how to get off

01:08:46.900 | of the earn

01:08:48.980 | and buy treadmill and get on to the build and own so that I don't have to buy.

01:08:54.180 | So I think of for example, I haven't seen one in person yet, but

01:08:58.260 | YouTube videos, I look at the earth ships that they make out in like in New Mexico and I think

01:09:03.460 | I don't want to live in, I don't really like the style,

01:09:06.820 | but how cool to be able to live in a building that heats itself, cools itself, provides its own water, provides its own

01:09:14.240 | electricity, provides that, you know that, how valuable is that on a dollar basis

01:09:19.840 | if we could bring that design in.

01:09:22.640 | But I struggled, but so I think there's a lot of exciting technologies and I think that

01:09:27.680 | in many ways we should be

01:09:30.160 | focusing our financial planning on that, on figuring out how can I provide shelter that is efficient,

01:09:37.280 | that doesn't require, that doesn't suck money out of my budget. How can I provide these things for myself?

01:09:42.800 | Do you have any thoughts or have you ever thought about that from a financial planning perspective?

01:09:46.160 | Well, yes, actually I have and

01:09:48.960 | there's some interesting work being done by a fellow named Mark Shepard

01:09:52.800 | and he is a,

01:09:55.520 | what does he call his system? It's... He's the restoration agriculture guy, right? Restoration agriculture, exactly. And so

01:10:02.400 | you know his whole idea of buying these, buying tracts of land,

01:10:06.960 | so this kind of ties into like real estate financial too in the sense that, you know, buying

01:10:11.680 | really marginalized pieces of land

01:10:14.000 | and building those up and to be these like total utopias of

01:10:18.960 | food forests that are just like a garden of Eden.

01:10:21.840 | And the amount of value we can really think about that stuff and this kind of goes into that the anti-fragile sort of

01:10:27.600 | resilient

01:10:29.120 | system stuff is that how valuable is that?

01:10:32.240 | You know, you've got this food, this natural food system that more or less takes care of itself.

01:10:37.520 | You know, you need a lot of inputs to set it up, but once it's set up the system pretty much

01:10:41.200 | takes care of itself and it builds on itself just like a natural forest does. How much value is there in that?

01:10:47.040 | I think there's going to be huge financial opportunities in those systems.

01:10:50.960 | And so the exciting thing about that idea is that all of a sudden now there's an economic financial incentive to actually

01:10:58.820 | heal the damage we've done to the planet in a lot of different ways. Right.

01:11:03.440 | And so I think going forward there's going to be immense opportunities in that. I haven't gone into it myself, but

01:11:08.880 | you know with the Earthships too, exactly the same thing. Another idea that I've had is

01:11:14.160 | building small-scale district energy

01:11:17.280 | off-grid systems. So instead of having a

01:11:21.680 | solar power system entirely

01:11:24.640 | custom-built for your house, you collaborate with a group of neighbors and you build what's called a district energy system where you have

01:11:33.600 | there's one battery bank for 10 houses and maybe we share the solar panels on our house,

01:11:38.560 | but we collaborate and create kind of small-scale grids within our system.

01:11:43.360 | So the only thing stopping us from doing that is government, is regulation and

01:11:49.200 | however else they try to

01:11:52.480 | prevent us from doing these kind of things. But I think there's enormous opportunities in those kind of things.

01:11:56.640 | I think what people have to start doing is just putting their necks on the line and just taking the chance and just doing

01:12:02.800 | it. We need to stop asking permission.

01:12:05.220 | We need to just start doing stuff. And when people come together

01:12:09.440 | and pool their resources and build that social capital in our communities where we know we've got each other's backs,

01:12:17.200 | then people won't be so afraid of taking risks. And I think that's where we're at today is because in our

01:12:23.520 | overly statist controlled society, it's like we are proletarians living in 1984. We're so paranoid and afraid

01:12:32.480 | of pulling outside of the matrix and actually

01:12:35.600 | standing to say these are my values. I'm going to live by my values. I don't give a shit

01:12:39.840 | if this is against the law or not. I'm going to take a stand.

01:12:44.240 | If people start building that social capital in their communities, people will no longer be afraid to do that. And I think that's so important

01:12:51.600 | going forward because there's all these opportunities that exist, but it's the fear of regulation and the fear of

01:12:58.400 | being shut down that prevents us from doing it. The fear of destroying a career and it's fear.

01:13:03.120 | And what's interesting is that once you get past it, you look back and say that was it.

01:13:07.600 | But

01:13:10.240 | when you're on the side of it still fearing, it seems huge.

01:13:13.440 | And so much of that comes into state of mind and this is like total Tony Robbins stuff.

01:13:18.720 | But in my opinion, there's two states of mind. There's fear and scarcity mindset and there's joy and abundance mindset.

01:13:25.520 | And so you have a choice every day on what mindset and state you're going to be in.

01:13:30.000 | And so I try on a day-to-day basis to choose the mindset of joy and abundance because when you're in that state,

01:13:36.240 | that's all that you see and that's all that comes your way. I don't know what it is.

01:13:40.800 | I don't even consider myself a spiritual person. I can't explain how these things happen.

01:13:44.960 | But when I'm in a state of mind that's of joy and abundance,

01:13:48.340 | all I experience in my life are good things. All these things are drawn to you and it's magnetic.

01:13:54.000 | But when you're in a fear and scarcity mindset, you're worried and you're afraid of

01:13:58.480 | losing things.

01:14:01.040 | And that mindset exists for rich and poor people.

01:14:04.080 | When you're really rich and you have all this stuff,

01:14:06.960 | but now you're afraid of losing it because now you have so much to lose.

01:14:10.560 | You get stuck in that mindset and all the experiences you have in your life will be negative.

01:14:15.840 | And so that's been a big thing for me is being in that positive joy and abundance state of mindset.

01:14:23.120 | And then when you're there, all these good things happen to you.

01:14:26.000 | And I can't explain how that happens, but it does. And I think,

01:14:29.760 | you know, we need to

01:14:32.320 | empower people and to make them understand that, you know what, as an individual person,

01:14:37.040 | you have an incredible amount of power and you have an incredible amount of potential to be productive.

01:14:43.040 | It's just getting outside of that fear and scarcity mindset and moving on to something that's more joy and abundance.

01:14:48.500 | Well said.

01:14:51.120 | If I wanted to get started,

01:14:52.960 | if a listener is maybe just interested in

01:14:57.360 | pursuing

01:14:59.520 | what you've done and building something similar,

01:15:01.920 | where would you suggest people start and kind of how to go about it? And feel free to go as

01:15:06.480 | deep as you want or as shallow as you want. Yeah, I have a YouTube channel right now.

01:15:11.680 | It's called theurbanfarmer.co. If you just put that in your ULR, it'll take you to my YouTube channel.

01:15:17.040 | I've made a series of videos on what I do.

01:15:21.440 | So if people also want more information or interested in taking any of my workshops or

01:15:26.160 | want to know about my book when it comes out,

01:15:29.280 | they can just go to greencityacres.com and then just like sign up for my mailing list.

01:15:33.680 | You can choose, you know, what you want to sign up for, if it's my speaking events or whatnot.

01:15:38.000 | And then, so the book that originally got myself into this was Spin Farming. So they can go to spinfarming.com

01:15:45.380 | and check out that book.

01:15:48.480 | And that's kind of what I used to get started.

01:15:51.760 | And yeah, I think that's about that will turn people in the right direction.

01:15:56.640 | Is this the kind of thing that's possible to do part-time?

01:15:59.360 | Yes, it is. In fact, I encourage people to do it part-time to start. It makes the transition a little easier.

01:16:05.920 | If you can set yourself up

01:16:08.400 | where you've got some kind of job, where you've got sort of secure salary,

01:16:12.480 | and you are able to cut back, say 15 to 20 hours a week to focus on the farm,

01:16:18.000 | it's absolutely possible to do that. And I really encourage people to do that where they don't have to necessarily go in,

01:16:22.640 | you know, all cards on the table,

01:16:25.440 | full risk, and have that transition.

01:16:27.780 | Sometimes that works better for others. For myself, actually going all in worked really well for me because

01:16:33.280 | once I had some real skin in the game and had a real risk of failure,

01:16:37.760 | that made me push really hard.

01:16:41.120 | So, I mean, different strokes for different folks, right? Like some people like to do things a little differently.

01:16:46.560 | I'm more of an all-in kind of guy. I always have been.

01:16:49.440 | But yeah, the transition can be pretty advantageous to a lot of people.

01:16:54.160 | Yeah, it seems to me that the key to

01:16:57.680 | a business like yours would be developing the market.

01:17:00.960 | And if you don't have the market, no matter how great you are,

01:17:04.800 | you know, sticking seeds in the ground and having them grow up, you don't make any money. And so it would seem to me that

01:17:10.960 | I mean, that's why the commodity food system is so attractive to many large farmers,

01:17:15.280 | is because you don't have to worry about developing the market.

01:17:18.320 | But it would seem to me that, and I think the market, I don't know about your experiences,

01:17:23.840 | but I bet you've probably got more demand than you can handle. I know that here...

01:17:27.600 | Go ahead. I do. And just to pick up on what you're saying there, you're absolutely correct.

01:17:34.160 | The marketing is the most important part of farming. The farming is the easy part. The work isn't easy.

01:17:41.440 | Nothing is easy.

01:17:43.840 | I'm not going to tell anybody that any of this is easy,

01:17:46.000 | but if you talk to any successful business person or any successful person in life, nobody's going to tell you it's easy.

01:17:51.040 | It's all hard. But the amount of enrichment

01:17:54.260 | and joy that I get out of the work makes it all worth it.

01:17:58.480 | But yeah, you're absolutely right in marketing. That is the most important thing.

01:18:02.160 | And so when my book comes out, that's my focus.

01:18:05.840 | In my book, I'm not going to talk about how to build the best compost, how to build the best soil.

01:18:12.240 | This is about the marketing and how the marketing ties into the production.

01:18:17.120 | And so that's what sets the way I farm apart from what how most other farmers do.

01:18:22.080 | Most other small-scale market gardeners, they plan their farm.

01:18:26.800 | They do a farm plan in the winter that basically dictates every single week what they plant.

01:18:32.560 | My farm is totally improvisational because I operate on a small scale.

01:18:37.760 | I grow quick-growing crops and I'm totally based on what the market demands.

01:18:42.000 | And so with my book, I'm going to get into how that relates to farmers markets, primarily restaurants,

01:18:47.600 | how to change your production on a fly and shift towards market demand.

01:18:52.400 | So my farm is sort of like Tai Chi. It's sort of like bending to the will of what the market demands.

01:18:59.120 | Good, good. Because that's the thing. The economics have to be compelling.

01:19:03.280 | And although the market, I mean, I tell you, Curtis, I don't live in a foodie place.

01:19:09.360 | Although, well, here's my evidence. I think if we can get, I'd love to see millions of people start doing this.

01:19:15.120 | And who knows, I may do it. I've talked with some friends and we've talked about it.

01:19:18.480 | I just haven't seen the way to kind of get started with all the other commitments of my time that I have.

01:19:22.880 | But who knows, I may. But I don't know. I have friends from across the economic scale,

01:19:28.160 | from across the political scale, from across the age scale.

01:19:32.720 | And I don't know anybody who isn't concerned about the quality of their food.

01:19:36.960 | And where I live, there are on all sides, let's see, a quarter mile away is a store that's called Greenwise.

01:19:46.160 | It's a Publix, it's our local, it would be like a Safeway, it's a regional brand.

01:19:50.000 | And that's their organic store. There's a Whole Foods about less than a mile from me.

01:19:54.560 | And then there is a Trader Joe's going in about a mile and a half from me.

01:20:00.240 | And there are a couple of more gourmet markets that are within two miles of my house.

01:20:05.840 | And so, I live in a wealthy place, but I just look around and I say,

01:20:11.760 | "The market is here for individuals and the market is here for all of these restaurants."

01:20:16.720 | And I cannot find any local producers here in my area.

01:20:20.720 | Now, I've not looked as hard as I'd like to look, but I've tried to change where I'm buying.

01:20:25.200 | I'm sick and tired of not knowing where my food's coming from.

01:20:27.920 | And I've tried to find producers and it's hard to find.

01:20:30.800 | So, I think this is a tremendous business opportunity.

01:20:34.560 | If you can hammer out and give the instruction on developing the market,

01:20:37.840 | there's plenty of great information on developing the product.

01:20:41.280 | And then I'll help people make the financial transition

01:20:43.920 | and give some of the financial planning tools to make the transition.

01:20:46.800 | And together, we'll make the world a better place.

01:20:49.680 | How's that for a rousing try to end on?

01:20:51.840 | Yeah, sounds like a great deal. Let's do it.

01:20:53.760 | Anything else you want to share before we go?

01:20:55.760 | I think that's good, Josh. We covered a lot of stuff there.

01:20:58.640 | Curtis, thanks so much for taking the time to come on. I really appreciate it.

01:21:01.760 | Hey, my pleasure.

01:21:03.200 | (SWOOSH)

01:21:05.200 | I hope you enjoyed that. Curtis, I certainly enjoyed the conversation.

01:21:08.800 | It was exactly the kind of conversation that I love to have.

01:21:11.840 | Wide-ranging, thoughtful, challenging one another,

01:21:16.080 | but yet agreeing and finding points of common interest.

01:21:18.160 | I really enjoyed the interview.

01:21:19.840 | I hope you have some things to think about.

01:21:21.680 | I find this kind of stuff everywhere.

01:21:23.920 | I think a lot about financial planning.

01:21:26.480 | And I find inspiration in ways to think about financial planning

01:21:29.600 | in so many different areas,

01:21:31.040 | as you can see from just thinking about nature

01:21:33.040 | and the web that nature lives in,

01:21:35.520 | and polycultures instead of monocultures,

01:21:40.400 | and how to apply those concepts to financial planning.

01:21:43.120 | So I hope that you have a lot to think about.

01:21:45.120 | Again, as I said in the introduction,

01:21:47.360 | consider how you can implement some of these ideas in your own business.

01:21:51.600 | If you're interested in urban farming, check out some of the links in the show notes.

01:21:54.560 | I'm going to put some links to a couple of other interviews

01:21:57.280 | that Curtis has done,

01:21:59.680 | one on an excellent podcast called Permaculture Voices

01:22:02.560 | that is particularly good,

01:22:04.000 | and then a couple of other ones as well.

01:22:06.000 | And check out his stuff, check out his information,

01:22:08.240 | and see if there's a way that you can...

01:22:10.640 | If you're interested in getting involved in this kind of thing, go for it.

01:22:12.560 | To me, it seems I'd rather do that than work in a cubicle.

01:22:15.200 | In case you haven't figured that out yet.

01:22:17.360 | But if you're not interested in this, skip it.

01:22:20.640 | But learn some of the concepts and figure out how to apply them,

01:22:23.360 | because there are thousands and thousands of similar ideas

01:22:27.120 | and thousands and thousands of ways to implement some of these ideas

01:22:30.960 | to your own venture.

01:22:32.560 | Think about how he lowered the risk in the beginning.

01:22:35.600 | Think about how you can lower the risk of any startup plan,

01:22:38.560 | design a plan to get you from here to there.

01:22:40.480 | That's what good financial planning is.

01:22:42.240 | It's all about designing a plan that's going to work

01:22:44.400 | to get you from here to there.

01:22:46.240 | I hope you enjoyed that.

01:22:47.920 | That's it for today's show.

01:22:49.680 | A couple of quick updates as far as the rest of the week.

01:22:52.400 | Tomorrow I'll be bringing you the final bit of the three tax planning ideas.

01:22:57.680 | We did the timing strategies.

01:23:00.000 | And then tomorrow's show I'm going to finish out the conversion

01:23:02.960 | and the income shifting strategies.

01:23:04.400 | So we're going to do some hardcore financial planning.

01:23:06.400 | That hardcore financial planning, I hope you're able to enjoy those shows.

01:23:09.600 | Yes, they are hardcore, but you need to understand them

01:23:12.400 | in order to figure out how to apply the stuff you always hear about.

01:23:15.440 | Things like IRAs, or if you're up in Canada where Curtis is,

01:23:17.840 | your RRSP or ERSP or something like that.

01:23:21.600 | Or if you're in Germany or Finland or wherever in the world you are,

01:23:24.640 | there's some version of this.

01:23:26.800 | And you can apply these tax planning techniques no matter where you are.

01:23:29.840 | On Thursday I'm going to bring you an interview with a musician

01:23:33.600 | who has been able to make an income on the web.

01:23:36.240 | That'll be good. I hope you enjoy that one.

01:23:38.560 | And on Friday, I'm hoping, I don't promise,

01:23:41.280 | but I'm hoping to have the show lined up

01:23:43.120 | with how to become a millionaire on a minimum wage job at Walmart.

01:23:47.440 | And I think you'll enjoy that.

01:23:48.800 | I'm going to talk about some of these concepts

01:23:50.560 | and show you how financial planning really integrates.

01:23:54.560 | The technical financial planning that you're used to hearing about

01:23:57.280 | in finance books and everything, integrates with everything else.

01:24:00.800 | And I'm hoping to bring that out in the show that I have planned for Friday.

01:24:04.880 | I'm a little nervous about it because I want to do a really good job on it.

01:24:08.640 | But it's challenging.

01:24:10.560 | So I've got the idea.

01:24:12.080 | We'll just see if I can execute it. I'm pretty excited about it.

01:24:14.640 | Leaving Thursday morning.

01:24:15.760 | So Thursday and Friday shows we pre-record.

01:24:17.680 | Leaving Thursday morning and driving out to Texas for the podcast.

01:24:20.480 | Movement conference.

01:24:21.520 | Looking forward to that. Talking to some other podcasters.

01:24:24.000 | If you're interested in podcasting, I would encourage you to come.

01:24:27.200 | It's going to be in Dallas, Texas.

01:24:28.320 | The conference is on Saturday and Sunday.

01:24:29.840 | The tickets are reasonably priced.

01:24:31.680 | And I think it's an amazing opportunity to connect with other podcasters.

01:24:34.640 | I think in essence, in some ways, podcasters are going to save the world.

01:24:38.560 | I'll prove that to you another time.

01:24:39.760 | But I have high hopes for the industry of podcasting.

01:24:43.680 | So those shows will be pre-recorded.

01:24:45.200 | I'll be driving back on Monday and Tuesday.

01:24:47.280 | If I can have some shows lined up to be released to you,

01:24:49.600 | I will have that. If not, well, you should have enough content here

01:24:54.400 | to go back and listen to something else.

01:24:56.400 | Peace out, y'all. Enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.

01:25:00.080 | I can't believe I said peace out.

01:25:06.240 | The holidays start here at Ralph's,

01:25:09.840 | with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new.

01:25:13.520 | You could do a classic herb roasted turkey

01:25:16.000 | or spice it up and make turkey tacos.

01:25:18.320 | Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail

01:25:20.560 | or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto.

01:25:24.880 | Make creamy mac and cheese

01:25:26.480 | or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese.

01:25:30.160 | No matter how you shop,

01:25:31.440 | Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions.

01:25:35.520 | Ralph's. Fresh for everyone.

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