Driving Innovation and Building Networks Through Podcasting with Brian Kearney
Have you ever wondered how a startup in the agriculture industry generates revenue and builds relationships? In this episode, Brian Kearney reveals the innovative business model behind his venture. You'll discover how his team leverages podcasting to create strong industry connections and navigate the challenges of a traditionally slow-moving sector.
Join us as Brian discusses the hurdles of raising venture capital, the critical role of reputation in business success, and the powerful impact of podcasting on relationship-building. Packed with insights on scaling startups, marketing strategies, and more, this episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of business and podcasting.
Listen To The Full Episode Here:
What You’ll Learn:
The unique revenue model for startups in the agriculture industry.
Why reputation is crucial in the agriculture sector.
How podcasting can build strong industry connections.
The challenges and benefits of raising venture capital for startups.
Effective marketing strategies for niche industries.
The importance of content repurposing for SEO and audience engagement.
The value of relationship-building at scale for business growth.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“In this industry, relationships are everything, and people are everything, and your reputation is way more important than how much money you can make someone. That lends itself perfectly to podcasting. Podcasting is, we always like to say, it’s relationship building at scale. And that is exactly what you do with a podcast.”
“Podcasting is good content and you can repurpose it. So we’re going to be repurposing for a blog post, for our newsletter, for social media, for white papers, for many things. ”
“The most important part of podcasting and the most important part of a relationship is doing what you say you’re going to do.”
Resources:
Brian Kearney: LinkedIn | Farmland Stock Exchange | Land Ledger Podcast
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Welcome to Cashflow Podcasting, where business owners reveal how their podcasts have supercharged their success. My podcast completely transformed my training business, so I've seen firsthand the magic that podcasts can work. And here's the best part. You don't need millions of downloads to boost your business's revenue and impact. Let our guests show you how.
Pete Mockaitis: Brian, welcome.
Brian Kearney: Thanks for having me.
Pete Mockaitis: I'm excited to dig into your wisdom. I know you are a believer in podcasts. That was how I think our business relationship first started, if you may recall, years ago. You invited me to a podcast.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, I do remember that. That was kind of the start of my podcasting journey. And I've learned a lot of hacks to network with podcasting since then.
Pete Mockaitis: That's cool. That's cool. Well, I want to dig into all of the goodies there. But first, let's get oriented. Who are you and what is your business?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, my name is Brian Kearney. I live in central Illinois, in God's country as we like to call it. But the business I have is Farmland Stock Exchange. And what we are is a way for farmers to keep the ground that's in their business and allow outside investors to partner with them, but not have the outside investors own the whole farm. So, that's our company.
Pete Mockaitis: That sounds very cool if I am a farmer. I like those, that value. So can you help me figure out how do you generate revenue?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, great question. So a couple ways. The first one is when a farmer buys a farm, we get 2 percent of the farm value to set up this deal and to bring investors. That's the main way we make money. The other ways are when investors allocate money, we have a sliding scale based on the amount of money they're putting in.
And we charge a small fee for that between 0.5 percent and 2 percent one time. And then it's a 0.5 percent asset management fee. So it's a fund. It’s asset management fee were really low fee because we want everyone to be able to access this asset and a 2 percent fee just doesn't make sense with this asset.
Pete Mockaitis: I see. So it's sort of, if I may, in some ways it's, you're like part realtor, part investment banker, part financial planner, asset manager in the agriculture world.
Brian Kearney: I would say not part realtor ‘cause it's not a real estate transaction at all. It's a financial transaction, but you're spot on with investment banking and fund manager.
It's kind of like a weird mix of those two because each of these farmers, you think of a farmer, you think of someone driving around their tractor in a small area, but you don't know if that tractor is actually been driving itself for five years. It's autonomous way before Tesla. And the average farm operation is three to 5 million dollars in revenue. They're big businesses.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. And I hear you when it comes to your strong reaction on a realtor. It's like, “No, no, no, no, the land is not changing hands. The farmer continues to own that land,” and that's critical.
Brian Kearney: Correct. Exactly.
Pete Mockaitis: Understood.
Brian Kearney: The farmer has to own 51 percent with our model. We'll never buy more than 49 percent of a farm.
Pete Mockaitis: Okay. And so what's interesting, I believe all of our other guests have been bootstrapped businesses, but you have venture backing and are fairly young. When did, when were you founded?
Brian Kearney: We were founded six months ago, so very new. Maybe seven at this point as we're recording. Yes, we have some funding.
We got 400,000 initially, and we are currently negotiating a million-dollar raise, which we will sell 20 percent of the company for. So that is the funding. We're very new and we have three farms locked down. We'll probably have 10 million of assets under management by the end of the year.
Pete Mockaitis: Okay, cool. Well, so then that's the business and we're oriented there. You're pretty bullish on podcasting.
Brian Kearney: Yes.
Pete Mockaitis: Take us through your journey.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. So where do you want me to start with my journey?
Pete Mockaitis: How about your first podcast ever?
Brian Kearney: Yeah. My first podcast was actually for my first business. I started that one was bootstrapped and it was a handmade rosary manufacturing business and rosaries are a Catholic prayer item. Interviewed Pete for a podcast I was launching for that brand, met him through University of Illinois, through nonprofits. And that was kind of crazy to me. It was my first view that you can pretty much get anyone you want on your show, if you try hard enough, ‘cause Pete, you have a large podcast. You're on the board of a nonprofit that my wife was working at.
I also got one of the larger influencers in the Catholic world to jump on my podcast. And he hadn't ever met me and there was no connection there besides you have a podcast and–
Pete Mockaitis: Was that Matt Fradd?
Brian Kearney: So that was not, yes, Matt Fradd too, but it was actually Jason Everett. So Jason Everett jumped on. Matt Fradd, we were working on that when I sold the business and then the podcast did not continue.
Pete Mockaitis: And it's funny in the universe of podcasts and I've heard this many times. There are like these niche celebrities, right? And folks get so excited about them. It's like, “Oh my gosh!” So folks who are into listening to Catholic media stuff are like, “Oh my gosh! Matt Pratt, Jason Everett, wow!” And everyone else is like, “I don't know who those people are.”
And I think that's intriguing in terms of relationship building because in a way, again, this comes up again and again, you don't need to be huge, but rather you just kind of have to be engaging the niche, the community that you're into.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's very true. And I've had another podcast since that has, it will restart, but my co-host and I both run startups.
So it's just, it wasn't really working. And with that one, it was on investing in Africa and it was the same thing. We got multiple billion-dollar founders from Africa to jump on the show. And we're not VCs. We don't have any money. It was just talk about your journey and that resonated with them. So we were able to get those people on the show where if we would have asked for, “Can you jump on a call for 30 minutes?”
There's no way they would have said yes, there's no way. But if you pitch it as, “Do you want to be interviewed for 30, 45 minutes?” That's intriguing to them. That's value for you and them because it's also something they can use. It is more press. It is more PR. That was kind of the second show. The third show we're actually launching right now with Cashflow Podcasting.
The last one was with Cashflow as well. And we are interviewing people in the farmland space and a couple of the names I don't want to drop yet, to be honest, but they are kind of like when we were talking about Matt Pratt and Jason Everett, you would not know their name unless you're in the industry.
But if you're in the industry, you're going to be very impressed with the type of people we're getting on the show already, again, for a startup that's six months old.
Pete Mockaitis: Oh, well, that is super cool. Just six months in it. ‘Cause we say, we're very honest and upfront. Hey, podcasting, in terms of generating business, it's a long game.
You're not gonna expect, you know, make an episode and then money falls from the heavens into your bank account. And yet, you're seeing some results immediately in terms of opening doors that would have previously been closed. And so, this is kind of speculative at this point, but I mean, it's kind of cool and fun and makes you feel like a smooth VIP rubbing elbows with these folks. But how do you think those conversations will result in actual business benefits?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, well, the two that I'm thinking of specifically, one is one of the most powerful people in agriculture. He was on Trump's agriculture committee. Like, he is very well connected. He's very big in the investment side as well, so it's good to be connected with people like that.
And short term, I don't think anything, to be honest, will come of it besides being able to get other guests by saying he was on there, which is kind of cool. And those relationships will be quicker to convert. But it is just building that relationship. Having someone like that know you, where you're not going to them as a, you know, do me this favor.
It's almost as a, not quite as a peer, but a different type of relationship where it's closer to being a peer because they're coming on your show. That's pretty different than, “Hey, can I pick your brain for 25 minutes and buy you a coffee?” That's a different type of relationship.
Pete Mockaitis: Certainly. In a way, that's the beauty and mystery, I suppose, of relationships is you don't know where that could go.
That could turn into a couple introductions like, “Oh, it sounds like Brian does exactly what you need to do with your farm. You should talk to Brian.” Three, nine months later, okay, glad we had that conversation, or, “Hey, you know what? We're gonna need another round of funding actually in some time from now,” it's like, “What do you think? So you know what, I got a really good vibe from you, I really, you seem like an honest swell guy, and I enjoyed our exchange.” So all kinds of cool things can happen when relationships are built. If it's just fun, or if it's cash money.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And the couple of things I'll note there, the one is particularly in this industry, relationships are everything, and people are everything, and your reputation is way more important than how much money you can make someone.
That lends itself perfectly to podcasting. Podcasting is, we always like to say, you know, it's relationship building at scale. And that is exactly what you do with a podcast. The other note I'll say is you also can't go about it with a view of I'm going to book this interview because I want this to convert at this time.
Part of why I want to book this interview is he was the fourth-largest hog producer in the country at a time when hogs were selling for nine cents a piece. You could buy a pig for nine cents. And I just want to know, how did you survive? I don't know that industry that well, but I have to imagine it costs way more than nine cents just to feed a pig.
Pete Mockaitis: For a day.
Brian Kearney: Correct. So I just, I want to know that. I want to know how he survived. That's just fascinating to me. And that's so valuable to me and the audience that he would be willing to have that conversation.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. And that knowledge of perspective is so cool in terms of where that can lead as well. I was at a random seminar once and I thought it was very well said. He said there are, there's a variety of forms of wealth. You can have wealth in money, you can have wealth in time, you can have wealth in knowledge, and you can have wealth in relationships. And these things can really kind of, in some ways, be traded. It's like, “Oh, I'm going to part with money to go to an event, so I trade some money wealth for relationship wealth because I'm going to meet some people at the event.”
I just thought that was really kind of cool how that, those things are interchangeable and valuable. And, and it's kind of expanded my mind horizons a bit. So, but, well, let's see here now, when it comes to raising money, you get a lot of input from a lot of investors who say you should do this for that with your business, with your marketing, with where you place their funds.
So I'd like to hear what have they been telling you is the optimal or suggested means of putting your marketing dollar and how have you thought through podcasting relative to the alternatives?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, that's very true. And that's part of the beauty of bootstrapping is you get a little bit more say. We've got great investors, so they're more understanding, but they still have their ideas.
And the main places people spend advertising are like performance marketing, things like Facebook, Google, all of that. And then SEO is a big one as well. Those are both really expensive, way more expensive than Cashflow Podcasting. And I don't think the long term ROI is there for some of that at our scale.
Once we have more money, once we have a clear persona, it makes sense. But right now we're just trying to build relationships at scale. And I think you do that better from these types of conversations than you do from Facebook ad or a Google ad. So the two places we are doing marketing right now and in full transparency, we'll do performance marketing probably in six months plus, I don't know, but right now we're just doing podcasting to build kind of the bank of content for which is SEO, like SEO people talk about, “Oh, I'm going to do this or that,” for this, like a femoral SEO thing. And all SEO is, is good content. If you have good content, people will come. So there are some things you can do to make Google rank it, but that takes an hour. Most of it is the content.
Podcasting is good content and you can repurpose it. So we're going to be repurposing for a blog post, for our newsletter, for social media, for white papers, for a lot of things. We're going to build a build out of it. So that's why we're investing there early with our kind of limited money. And then we're actually doing mailers, which is also not something that VCs like to hear, but–
Pete Mockaitis: I love it. I mean, I know like the Dan Kennedy Copywriting School Guides.
Brian Kearney: Exactly.
Pete Mockaitis: And sometimes, and they'll tell stories in terms of, “Boy, there's these, some young 20-somethings doing direct mail,” all their peers think they're nuts, but they're seeing some cool things happen.
And especially with an agriculture, I'm speculating, you tell me, it feels like some of the old fashioned things are appealing or even more trusted.
Brian Kearney: Yep. Oh, that's exactly it. And the people were mailing, you know, we're putting a picture of like me and my family. We're saying, “Here's our office. Come by and stop in.” Like, grab a coffee. Because there's always that, like, view of I'm getting spam mail or scams. It's like, “No, we're the real company. Stop by a little old El Paso, Illinois, and drop by and grab a coffee.” So, yeah, you're right. I think it does. And also, part of what I want to hit, is I was reading Claude Hopkins' book, I think it's My Life in Advertising.
That might be, yeah, I think that's Claude Hopkins. And he had something in there where he said he sent a thousand mailers and got 200 sales. And I'm like, “Hmm, that's absurd. I want to figure out how to do that.” That is insane. Could that work now? Could that work with my product? No. But, If I could spend $3,000 to get 300, I'm going to do that every time. 300,000 not 300. That's more like performance marketing, but anyways.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. Understood. Okay. And so now in full disclosure, you are a part owner and advisor in a Cashflow Podcasting, but you did not get a discount. So thank you for your–you're like the hair club president who's also a client. But your hair is great.
Brian Kearney: I appreciate it.
Pete Mockaitis: So you're paying for it. And I'm curious, so you, in some ways, you know better than most kind of how the sausage is made and what's under the hood. What sort of gave you the confidence? And you also know, frankly, how to do a podcast all by yourself or with a cost-effective helper somewhere. Why go this route?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, I mean, you're right. I could do it myself, but I don't think it's where I'm best suited, if that makes sense. It's not the best use of my time, and in business, that's more important than money. Could I do it myself? Sure, but it would take me, I don't know, 60 hours to set it up and do it really well.
It would take me 10 hours every episode. That's 10 hours a week. Like I don't have that kind of time. I don't have four hours a week to do it. And I know that getting multiple opinions on the content with people who do live in it day to day, because yes, I am a co-owner of the company, but I wasn't doing the podcast coaching or the podcast production every day.
Like I know how. But they're experts, like our team are experts in that area. So I let them do what they do best. And what I do best is going out and getting more deals. And that's how my company makes money. So if spending that 60 hours means I sell one less deal in the year, I just paid for Cashflow Podcasting for the whole year. And that was one deal. So that's how I looked at it.
Pete Mockaitis: Understood. And tell me, since you've launched a podcast a number of times, can you contrast the experience of doing it yourself versus having the Cashflow Podcasting team in your corner?
Brian Kearney: Yes, I definitely can. My first podcast was not great. The design was bad. It was super unprofessional. The editing was bad. I just did it myself in no time at all. So the quality of product I'm putting out with Cashflow or with on my–or doing it on my own are very different. And when you have a business, that quality that you're putting out is a reflection of your entire business.
So you'd, it'd be better to not do it than do it poorly. And I know if I did it on my own, I'd probably do it poorly ‘cause I don't have the time. So the, I mean the time savings, insane. I've probably put maybe 10 hours of work into everything for the show. Then half of that was just like talking through what I wanted to get done with the show or doing outreach to guests.
So it really is not a huge lift. And I think the quality of product we're putting together is really, really good. The one thing I'll say is you want to be somewhat involved as well. Like it is your business. It is your vision. You are going to understand it more than our team does, but you need to be able to explain that or our team's not going to be able to capture that vision that you're going for.
And you also need to, you know, if something comes back that is not exactly what you want, let us know that because we have to know that to correct it. And then we'll be able to get to what you want. And I'm super happy with everything that we're putting out. And if I would have just ignored any input from my side or just completely let the team handle it, that doesn't work well either. We can get out a product. It'll look good, but it might not match your vision.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah, I think that's very well said. And I too have had the experience of launching some podcasts on my own and then really in a way being client associated with the relaunch of the Cashflow Podcasting podcast.
So meta. And it just feels so great in terms of, “Oh, you worry about everything.” And it's like, I don't have to be the boss for a little while. Which is what I like. It's like, I get to be the client and say, “Yes, I like that a lot. Can we take that? Can we change that? Thank you.” It was like, “Hmmm, make it better.” And then they sweat it as opposed to me sweating it.
And it's cool. And then once we're dialed in, it's like, “Oh yeah,” you're just off to the races. It's just, “Okay, well now I'm just going to have some fun conversations,” and then they do everything else. And I chime in here and there. Easy peasy.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Completely agree with that. And the automation side of not having to do the show notes or the blog or the social templates like that is also huge. That I was not good at keeping up with when I was doing it on my own. I could create all the templates, but I wouldn't do them. I just, in the end, just record it, post it, didn't even edit much because time gets filled up.
Pete Mockaitis: Mm hmm. And I'm curious, is any part of your experience, has it been especially wowing?
I mean, hey, saving time is great and that feels good. But were there any moments along the way like, Oh wow, that is brilliant and I would not have thought of that. Or, what a refreshing delight to be working with you, who's more on top of it than most.
Brian Kearney: Yeah, two places. I would say the cover art we have now is really good and it took a little bit of like iteration to get to really what like I had in my head, but I couldn't quite say perfectly and I never could have done something like what it looks like now on my own, like never, but it's perfect for the industry.
It's perfect for the company. And then the other one is the music. I'm just not very good at that. I know for a podcast I had in the past, I chose my music and it probably took me like four hours of going through these different like music ones. And I'm like, “Oh yes, I found it. It's perfect.” And then I showed it to my wife and she's like, “That sounds really bad.”
Like, all right, back to the drawing board. And that part I'm just particularly terrible at, anything with design or music. It's not in my strengths. And the music we have for this one's really cool. I didn't even need iterations. I just got the, like, three samples and I'm like, “Oop, that one's really good.” And everyone I've showed it to has said the same.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah, that's true. There is really no substitute for slogging through dozens of options there. And I've gone both ways in terms of trying to find pre-made stuff and working with a composer. And in both instances, there's no substitute for someone, somewhere has to go through a lot of options to get the goods, even if they're trying to create it from scratch.
So having that leverage is handy. Okay. Well, tell me anything else you want to share about what you might've done differently or other top tips for folks who might be thinking about a podcast.
Brian Kearney: Hmm. What I might've done differently. I think that building as many automations as you can is vital. And getting to the point where–I love Tim Ferriss. He was my first intro to podcasting. He was many people's first intro to podcasting. If you've been in the industry more than like six years, it was pretty much Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan, or maybe Serial. Like those were the three that got you into podcasting.
I love his idea of what would this look like if it were easy? That's the quote or the thing he always asks himself. And building systems with that in mind is really helpful because you're running a business. It's going to be crazy, but the most important part of podcasting and the most important part of a relationship is doing what you say you're going to do.
And when you're podcasting and you say it's going to be every week, it needs to be every week because that's, if you don't follow through on that, how can the audience trust you with other things? So making it as easy as possible to hit that weekly cadence is really important. So things like Calendly links is huge.
Booking time to do outreach to guests ‘cause that's the, usually the biggest reason people stop their podcast is they don't have enough content. They don't have enough guests. If you're doing a solo show, definitely booking specific time each week for ideation and then a specific time each week for recording. Just systematizing everything is super important. And historically I've not been very good at that, but the past like three or four years I've been really pushing into being a little bit more organized and it makes a huge difference.
Pete Mockaitis: I think that's a good notion associated with the trust and the expectations. And you don't have to set the expectation that's going to be a show every week. It could be every other week, every month, it could be seasons, but just so long as–that's kind of what kept me pushing through when I felt tired. It's like, there are thousands of people with their phones in hand awaiting this episode.
And it's true. Like I've got the data on the back end statistics there and it just says, I think we've all felt the disappointment of, “Oh, there's not a new episode of this thing I like. Oh, okay, I guess I'll do something else.” And just to not deliver that thousands of times to people was enough of a motivation to, “Okay, let's power through.” And even better, if you have someone else powering you through on your behalf.
Brian Kearney: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's exactly the case. That's actually my main gripe with Dan Carlin, if you know his podcast.
Pete Mockaitis: Oh, Hardcore History?
Brian Kearney: Yeah, it's so good. I think it's the best podcast produced. I really do. It's insanely well done, but he's just so inconsistent. It drives me insane. Part of it's because they're like literally book-length. It's like 12 hours of really highly edited recording. It is hardcore. But man, I just, I would love if you put it out in like two-hour increments once a month. I'd be so happy with that. So that's, yeah, that's an example from my life.
Pete Mockaitis: Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, Brian, this has been fun. I wish you and Farmland Stocks lots of luck and hope that your conversations and podcasts flourish and do all the things.
Brian Kearney: Perfect. Thanks, Pete. Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for joining me today. If you're ready to start your podcasting journey to grow your thought leadership and boost your revenue, schedule a call with us at cashflowpodcasting.com/chat. Don't wait to take your business to the next level. I'm Pete Mekitas and until next time.