Episode 14: When "One Day" Comes Sooner Than Expected w/ Buddy Powers

Links

PeaceLink Financial Planning
Big Spring Farm

TRANSCRIPT

Leland Gross CFP (00:01.258)

All right, welcome Buddy Powers to the Self-Employment Success Podcast. Excited to have you here today.

Buddy (00:06.388)

Yeah, what's up Leland? Thanks for having me on.

Leland Gross CFP (00:08.606)

Yeah. Folks may remember the first episode of the Self-Employment Success Podcast was with John Powers. So today we have his brother Buddy Powers on the podcast. It's a whole family of entrepreneurs. So Buddy, tell us a little bit to start just about yourself, your family, your business, and where it stands today.

Buddy (00:29.116)

Yeah, so it's funny you mentioned family of entrepreneurs. I was just talking to my dad last night, who just sold his business and is retiring. And we were reflecting on how most of the people in our family owned a business. They don't for whatever reason, there's exceptions to that, but it's in our blood, I guess. Yeah. So my wife and I own a farm and a wedding venue and technically now a micro resort.

But I don't know, that sounds a little grandiose to call it that, but really we just have lodging. Yeah, that's what the zoning now says. Basically we wanted to build lodging on the farm and that's the only definition under our existing county zoning that would allow the lodging we wanted to have. So we also have, yeah, well, that's why I say, this is probably the first time I've said that in any sort of.

Leland Gross CFP (01:02.026)

Micro resort, okay.

Leland Gross CFP (01:18.73)

It's gotta be good for marketing. Yeah.

Buddy (01:25.452)

public setting that is technically that. But yeah, no really it's a working farm, a wedding venue, we have lodging on site. We also built basically like an agrarian neighborhood where my in-laws now live, where my brother John's in-laws have a house. My mom and dad have built in our building house over there. So yeah, and we have several friends that have built or are building houses on that part of the farm too.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And it's been a good journey to where we are today and excited about where we're headed.

Leland Gross CFP (02:03.454)

So knowing a little bit about your background, you grew up in Northern Virginia, which for anybody who's been to Northern Virginia, there's not a ton of farmland in that area. Not the most agricultural, not the most agricultural industry just outside DC, but so how did you get into that? What made you, like you went to college, did you study farming? Where did the love for farming and owning a farm come in? How did you get started on this journey?

Buddy (02:15.06)

No, none left. Yeah.

Buddy (02:33.128)

Yeah, that's a good question. Growing up in the suburbs of outside of DC was a great way to grow up. Um, wouldn't change that, but it was definitely devoid of, of anything remotely farm related. And I think in part, that's what like, got me curious, you know, like what is a farm really like even at like a young age when we'd go on like a road trip, saying we'd get out into like farm country, just stirred something, um, in me, not even knowing where that might lead. Right. But.

In high school when like, you know, your guidance counselor would ask you what you wanted to do I was kind of a punk but I would be like I want to be a farmer, you know Just to because they're like they have no like gauge for putting you on any track for that Yeah Yeah, you don't want to be a attorney a doctor or whatever. Yeah, like yeah, so I Went to when I was in college. I was studying philosophy. So not agriculture

Leland Gross CFP (03:15.47)

like you don't want to you don't want to be a politician or a consultant

Buddy (03:32.12)

down at CNU, one of the greatest institutions in the Commonwealth. It's where I met my wife. And so yeah, a lot of blessings came from that season of life. But anyway, at Christopher Newport University, I'm studying philosophy and I come across this book called The Omnivore's Dilemma, which is by Michael Pollan. He's a great speaker now for all of the sustainable or regenerative agriculture movement. But-

He was a professor up in, I want to say NYU, somewhere up in New York. He was a professor and he got curious about where our food comes from. And so in this book, it's all about where we get our food in the Western world. And I'm this philosophy guy. I'm interested in the same things. I have this dream in the back of my head that I could be a farmer, but no context for what that could look like. And I come across this farm in the book called Polyface Farm.

which happens to be right here in Virginia. And Polyface is one of the foremost regenerative livestock farms in the world. The founder, Joel, speaks all over. He's got like Ted Talks and he's written a ton of books. So anyway, I go down that rabbit hole of just all the Polyface stuff and reading the books and I find out they have this internship. And so I...

called, tried to get, actually tried to get a year-long apprenticeship, which I did not get, but they said, hey, but we'll give you the internship, which is just a summer-long program. So after graduating college, I went and did this internship at Folly Face, and that was like jumping into the deep end of farming, you're working six days a week, and they did give us a day off, which was great, but it was a really cool experience. Like, okay, this is what...

Leland Gross CFP (05:07.384)

Mm.

Buddy (05:25.08)

my dream, this is the reality, remove the romanticism, this is what it's really gonna be like. So that was pretty cool. And then from there, after that summer, I got a contract with Polyface to manage one of their farms because they have multiple farms near their home farm near Stanton, Virginia. So yeah, started farming.

Leland Gross CFP (05:28.085)

Mmm.

Buddy (05:53.148)

by myself completely at one of their rental farms under a contract with them. And that's the farm where Jill and I got married. So I'm trying to think that I guess that was before we met Leland. That was.

Leland Gross CFP (06:02.699)

Mm.

Yeah, I've only ever known you with Jill.

Buddy (06:07.784)

Yeah, okay. Yeah, so that was our backyard wedding at our first farm was kind of where the dream for the wedding venue started as well. We loved our wedding and just the setting. A wedding at a private property, I know you've been to weddings here at the farm and at other beautiful places. There's something about that versus like a ballroom or something that's much more.

Leland Gross CFP (06:24.898)

Mm.

Buddy (06:36.948)

uh, you know man-made and uh, yeah and so Um to this day we still hear people saying like oh your wedding was so cool. It was just so beautiful And not because it was that nice or anything. It was just that setting that made it so special and the people that were there. So yeah, that's where that dream started. Um and uh Well, there's kind of the long version and the short version of this story, but the medium version of this story is um

Leland Gross CFP (06:39.534)

Mm-hmm.

Leland Gross CFP (06:51.363)

Hmm

Leland Gross CFP (07:04.018)

Thank you.

Buddy (07:05.044)

We, I did the rental farming thing with poly face for, uh, four years, I believe it was. Yeah. And, uh, no, I'm sorry, three years. And, um, during that time, Jill, uh, she had started a wedding photography business in college and she was doing it on the side. Um, uh, before we got married, while she was working a marketing job, once we got married, she left the marketing job, moved onto the farm with me and started shooting weddings as her like.

full-time thing, even though it wasn't quite full-time yet. But that also was the other big driving factor for starting a wedding venue, because I started shooting weddings with her as well. So we'd go to all these different wedding venues, and it was like years of market research, of seeing like, okay, this is how this place does it. And we shot, her business really started to grow. I mean, she was shooting more and more weddings at more and more upscale places. She started traveling a lot, shooting.

Leland Gross CFP (07:50.792)

Mmm.

Buddy (08:02.368)

Yeah, so it was like we had these parallel, but like very different locations of like farming, you know, up before dawn, seeing every sunset outside. And then on the weekends, we'd get somebody to babysit the farm for the afternoon and we'd go shoot a wedding at, you know, go into DC or, you know, go down to Charleston, South Carolina. We'd shoot a wedding. We'd come back to the farm and just keep rolling. So those were busy years for sure.

Leland Gross CFP (08:10.013)

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (08:23.52)

Mmm

Leland Gross CFP (08:27.246)

Gosh.

Leland Gross CFP (08:30.834)

Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it. Yeah, just the fact that farming, you mentioned this, like it was nice that they gave us a day off. And in my head, I'm thinking like, most people get two days off, but not with farming. Yeah, that's.

Buddy (08:39.09)

Yeah.

Yeah, oh yeah, once we started farming, no, yeah, once we were on our own, we basically had no days off. The only days off were when we went to go shoot a wedding, so...

Leland Gross CFP (08:49.982)

Yeah, and you needed to have someone babysit the farm. And then, so you are fresh into this farming, you're doing it for four years, kind of mostly just farming. And then Jill is running her own wedding photography business. And then how did you guys end up at your current farm, Big Spring? And, because you sort of.

Buddy (08:53.537)

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (09:16.33)

Like you said, you were doing market research kind of over here. You're doing the farm. You have the vision. How did the vision come together? How did you marry those two things?

Buddy (09:25.532)

Yeah, you know, we had the most credit I can take for it in terms of all of it coming together was being willing, Jill and I being willing to have those dreams and actually consider that they could become a reality because we thought maybe someday we'll start a wedding venue. Maybe someday we'll find the perfect farm to do that at. And that someday, it always seemed like it was

really far away. But we were willing to like, this is what we want to do someday. Someday it came much sooner than we thought. My brother was instrumental in connecting us with the couple that used to own Big Spring. They were looking for a young couple to give it new purpose, new vision, and they needed to be out of this property and so, or wanted to be, you know, out of this property. So, yeah, so we...

Leland Gross CFP (10:01.178)

Mmm.

Buddy (10:24.6)

connected with them, with the previous owners, through my brother, and we told them our vision, which was, hey, we wanna build a working farm centered around a wedding venue, we wanna build community centered around an agricultural existence, and that's grown into also one that pours into marriages and relationships too. So we had like the seeds of that we.

shared with the previous owners of Big Spring and they said, hey, we love that. Um, God's timing and all that's crazy. Cause they were, they were willing to say to two, gosh, I think we were 23 years old at the time, 24 or something. Two kids basically, you know, yeah, okay. We'll trust you with this property. And, um, they leased it to us for a couple of years. And, um, and that gave us the runway to, to test all of our

all of our theories of starting the venue and that working, moving the farm here and that working, continuing to shoot weddings. Yeah. And so we just made the jump. We put everything we energy wise, resource wise into starting the farm. And yeah, here we are.

Leland Gross CFP (11:38.67)

And was a part of the fact that like, hey, we moved to Big Spring, we're now managing this space. Was the fact that like that's when the wedding venue started because with the Polyface farm, you had Polyface kind of telling you what you could and could not do. Is that how that worked? And now on Big Spring, it's yours. It's totally your freedom to make the farm do whatever you need to do or really whatever you want to do with the space.

Was there like a freedom of moving to Big Spring that kind of allowed you to do that? Or was it just Big Spring was a better venue for it? Like a more suitable space to have a wedding venue? I guess I'm just curious.

Buddy (12:15.86)

Yeah, yeah, Big Spring. Well, so at the first farm where Jill and I got married, we didn't own that property, right? That was a farm that Polyface rented the farmland on, and we rented the house on. And the owners actually lived in Charlottesville. So they're really, really sweet people. Especially, you can tell the less have our wedding on their property. But we thought about maybe we could turn that into a wedding venue and...

It just didn't feel right at the time. So yeah, we were kind of looking for that perfect place. Um, and when we found big spring, knowing, you know, the years of market research, right, shooting weddings, knowing what to look for, I was like, Oh my goodness. This has lots of different views in a really compact area as a really cool old building, really unique spring fed Lake right at the middle of it. There's nothing else like that. Um, you know, in the, certainly in the area. And, um,

And also it's on this big acreage, but it's really close to a town that has tons of hotels and restaurants and there's caterers. It was like, man, this is all the, it is very unique. You know, there's not a lot of places that have all of those things. And like I said, we've shot weddings, not just in Virginia, but all over. So yeah, so there's definitely something unique about Big Spring that is almost hard to put

put your finger on even just sort of like the feel of the property. But when you're here, there's, um, we, we kind of knew like this, this really could work. The previous owners, um, of big spring were like, do you think people would want to get married here? And they were kind of a little bit like, are you sure? And we're like, oh yeah, we're sure.

Leland Gross CFP (13:46.202)

Mmm.

Leland Gross CFP (14:00.754)

Which that's that is an interesting observation because it is incredibly beautiful. Like your property for those who have never seen it go look them up online. I mean, it really is probably one of the most beautiful venues I've ever seen. And I don't know if this was just maybe before the times of the like outdoor wedding. Is that like a new era thing? But I mean, it's funny to hear.

Buddy (14:09.453)

Mm-hmm.

Leland Gross CFP (14:28.714)

someone say like, would someone really wanna get married here? I'm like, have you seen it? Of course they would.

Buddy (14:32.032)

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So.

Leland Gross CFP (14:38.102)

I've been to a handful of weddings there. I mean, John's included, your brother. And I mean, every time you're just like, this is an awe-inspiring place. I mean, it's just completely beautiful.

Buddy (14:47.104)

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's where I say, like what I said at the beginning, like, um, there's that balance, like with entrepreneurship there, because there's so many things that are out of your control that line up when something works, you know, and, uh, and there's things that you definitely do and, and stand for to make something work. Right. But yeah, the beauty of big spring is, you know, we've redone buildings and added landscaping and stuff, but really it's just.

the way God made it, it's a unique, very special, very beautiful place that, yeah, when you come to visit, you know, like, whoa, how, like, how did I not know about this place? That's what I remember thinking the first time I came up the driveway.

Leland Gross CFP (15:31.507)

Yeah. So, okay, you've moved on to the big spring lot and now we're like all guns blazing towards, all right, we are launching this wedding venue. So now we have wedding venue that we're trying to market, get the word out about, get, you know, landscaped and ready for events, which also includes probably finding caterers to partner with and workers to help put out chairs and tables and tents and things.

Buddy (15:36.738)

Mm-mm.

Buddy (15:48.556)

Yep.

Leland Gross CFP (15:58.83)

wedding photography business and we're farming. We haven't even gotten to the to the micro-resort level or the neighborhood across the street on the farm. I'm like we basically just added a third relatively full-time business into the mix with your other two full-time businesses. So what was it like balancing that? Like how I mean I'm running one business and it's a lot to balance and so

Buddy (16:00.924)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Buddy (16:06.681)

No. Yeah.

Buddy (16:18.7)

Right, right.

Buddy (16:28.685)

Yeah, I don't know that we did a great job of that. I mean, the reality of, so we moved, so the first year, the reality was we had Jill's business on the photography side of things was probably having its biggest year to date. And so we felt comfortable about that. Okay, good, we have that rolling. On the farming side of things,

we were walking away from this contract relationship with Polyface amicably, there's no, it was just like, hey, we're gonna go do something else. And they said, good luck. And we still talk often with those guys at Polyface. But, you know, that was like, we didn't realize it until we were leaving that contract relationship, that it was a safety blanket in our minds. Like when you enter into that deal, it's like, hey, we know we're gonna make this much money as long as we produce this much stuff for you.

Um, so yeah, I balancing all of that. It, once we walked away from the contract, we suddenly had no sales in the farm side of the business. So we had to really start all over. We had, we did have all the equipment. I had, you know, now like four years of farming experience, um, which was helpful. And, and yeah, and we had just enough capital to get that going alongside of launching the wedding venue as well. So within the first year.

Leland Gross CFP (17:32.576)

man.

Buddy (17:54.712)

We thought, oh, we're gonna farm mostly and kind of do weddings on the side. And we realized in terms of like balancing things, I think just being willing to shift was huge because we realized like the farm is not gonna be able to be the focus. This wedding venue thing is taking off. I think we wanted to do like five weddings our first year just to kind of work out all the kinks and make sure we knew. And they were all like friends weddings basically so that we could.

And that we had no major issues, thankfully, but you know, so we could learn. And we ended up doing seven weddings the first year. And I think for the next year, we booked like 20 some weddings. And then for the year after that, it was like doubled again, you know? So we quickly, there was, so there was year one where we did farm. We moved everything there. We started farming. We did the seven weddings. And then year two, I believe we farmed and did the weddings. And I realized like,

Leland Gross CFP (18:34.58)

Oh my gosh.

Leland Gross CFP (18:38.292)

Wow.

Buddy (18:51.944)

I can't do both of these. So I had to leave farming behind for a couple of years, actually, we only just raised a little bit, basically became homesteaders, but just enough for our family and share with friends and stuff, but we didn't raise enough to sell really. And that was a big, again, I didn't realize until I was walking away from, like with the contract, when I was walking away from farming,

Leland Gross CFP (19:03.241)

Mmm.

Buddy (19:19.704)

That was like a big part of my ego that I was like, I'm a farmer now, you know? I'm the suburban boy that has fought for years to be a farmer. And all of a sudden I'm gonna hang it up, like what does that mean? And you know, it was really, that was a good lesson to realize like, hey, my identity is not in these things I'm doing, you know? It's really easy. I did not realize until I...

Leland Gross CFP (19:22.811)

Mmm.

Leland Gross CFP (19:29.259)

Ha ha ha!

Buddy (19:48.064)

stepped away from farming for a couple years, how much my identity was wrapped up in I'm a farmer. And I think we all do that with, you know, I know finance or I am a real estate guy or whatever. So yeah, that was a great lesson for me and I'm honestly needed to relearn it all the time because my identity slips into things that aren't really me, you know?

Leland Gross CFP (19:53.823)

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (19:59.02)

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (20:12.414)

Mm hmm. So, OK, so because you're running three businesses, it became just too much. So it was like, all right, we need to shift, we need to make a choice. And we're going to choose the wedding venue because that's really taken off. And we're going to kind of go with that momentum. And were you the one primarily doing the legwork on the wedding venue? Or did you have like a manager staff? Like, what did that?

Buddy (20:20.95)

Yes.

Leland Gross CFP (20:41.002)

I don't have zero idea what it takes to run a wedding venue, but...

Buddy (20:44.628)

Yeah, we, uh, in the beginning, we did not have any, uh, staff or anything, um, on the farming side or the, or the wedding venue side. I mean, I think actually that's, I think I had like one helper who would, who would do like a couple of days on the farm with me and would work the event with me, um, you know, the wedding event at the farm with me and that was year one.

That was one of the lessons we learned, right? That didn't really affect the wedding day was awesome, but like I remember after our first wedding, I was just laying on the floor. It felt like I had been in like, you know, like a fight or something. I was just so physically exhausted from running around carrying stuff and, you know, making sure people were happy all day. And yeah, I realized we need more people. So yeah, very quickly, you know, in that second year, we started to build a team of

Leland Gross CFP (21:21.124)

Hahaha!

Leland Gross CFP (21:31.168)

Yeah.

Buddy (21:38.496)

people to help us with the event side of things.

Leland Gross CFP (21:42.846)

And then what changed to be able to bring back farming? Because as I understand it, now you're back to, you've reintegrated the farming aspect. So something's changed. Something has changed to give you that capacity to be able to do that. But I also know you've had four children enter the mix in this timeframe, so I'm like, it's not like your life has really slowed down. So what's happened to be able to say, all right.

Buddy (21:51.873)

Yeah.

Buddy (21:59.341)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (22:03.435)

Yes.

Buddy (22:07.881)

No, yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (22:10.838)

you know, I can get back to being the farmer.

Buddy (22:14.456)

Well, some, one thing I would say is we've been really fortunate to hire key people that do things in the event business that I can do, but I don't either don't do as well as these hires do, or I'm just not as passionate about it, you know. So one thing that has changed that, you know, today versus when we first started.

is we now have an admin who helps with all of the emails and the, there's so much that she does, that all of the like behind the scenes stuff that keeps, that used to keep me in front of the computer for hours a day, she takes care of. And then we have our farm manager Bailey, who is the man. I think you've met Bailey Leland, maybe, yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (23:09.946)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have. He's great.

Buddy (23:13.104)

awesome. All my friends that watch the show Yellowstone say he's like he's like our rip because he's like he'll do anything for you he's just like yes sir yes ma'am he's an awesome young guy. He's married has two kids so he works for us full time and that created the bandwidth for me to lean into the things that were kind of like bigger picture and also just things that I

Leland Gross CFP (23:19.273)

Hahaha!

Buddy (23:42.624)

you're good at, as an example, you're good at envisioning what this part of the property could become. Like that just naturally happens for me and I enjoy doing, you know, drawing out an addition to the barn or designing where these cottages could go. And yeah, so it gave me the bandwidth to lean into that kind of stuff, which has led to buying, you know, another farm and doing the...

neighborhood over there and also the lodging on the property as well.

Leland Gross CFP (24:20.766)

And I'm struck something you haven't talked about yet, but that I was recording an episode a couple weeks ago and we were talking about how you a lot of people know their trade, but don't totally understand business or like the idea of like running the business side of it can be really difficult. Or there's people who really love business and can do business no matter what the trade is and are fine to sell widgets and do whatever.

it is, but they really love running a business. For you, having had vision of farmer farming, running a farm, and then having vision of, you know, wedding venue and Jill's an entrepreneur, has there always been a business side to it? What was it like for you to enter into that space as, you know, I have to create a profit and loss statement. I have to like do these things that aren't formally taught in a philosophy major, you know? And so what was it like for you?

Buddy (25:17.757)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (25:20.974)

throughout this journey entering into the business side of all these businesses because now you're running multiple, I don't know if they're multiple LLCs or holding companies, when you have multiple businesses, you can have quite the complex structuring to all of that. So what has that been like for you just going through that learning curve?

Buddy (25:29.194)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Buddy (25:39.266)

Yeah.

Buddy (25:44.64)

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, yeah, we have a great accountant. Yeah. If you're listening to this, you have to have an account. I, the first year in business, I thought I don't need an accountant. And I tried to read the IRS tax code and it's like, I mean, yeah, I just thought I'll just read it and I'll be able to understand it's like, no, oh yeah, it's huge. You can't. Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (25:49.938)

Very important, everyone get a good accountant.

Leland Gross CFP (25:55.863)

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (26:03.03)

You just started reading the code itself. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever.

It's like thousands of pages of Greek.

Buddy (26:15.144)

It's not even, it's like a different language. Yeah, so quickly realized, not possible. Yeah, I think I actually like, I was just talking to a couple buddies who are like super successful business guys. And I was joking that I don't love business. And I think what I meant was like, I...

I had this tendency to like go to the next thing, just go, like always go into the next thing. And I'll kind of binge like, okay, this is the plan, this is the financials, this is how we're gonna make it work. And then I just start, you know. So yeah, I've really had to grow in that, to be honest with you, because I, not everything has worked, you know, we've tried things and put money behind things that kind of worked, you know, like, oh, okay, that.

Leland Gross CFP (26:55.413)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (27:08.012)

that didn't financially work the way we thought it was going to. Um, and we've had that, I guess, like honestly on the, on the losing or breaking even end and then on the, on the other end too. So, um, so yeah, that's something I've had to really learn and grow in. Um, and that's something I realized that's key to vision is like, yeah, it's great if you have all these ideas and if you can start moving and executing, which I'm also good at. Um, but, um, yeah, frankly, slowing down.

Leland Gross CFP (27:18.21)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (27:37.64)

and realizing that I do enjoy and can be good at putting together those profit and loss things but also frankly there's a point where I need somebody on my team who's really good at that stuff. And you know I know that for the longest time when I heard someone say that I thought like well I can't really afford you know to hire somebody to do that.

Leland Gross CFP (28:07.413)

Mm.

Buddy (28:07.48)

And, you know, I totally get that. I felt that same way and financially, you know, we were in that same place. But my, if I could talk to my former self, I would say like, dude, just keep pushing. Because if you can get, if you can keep pushing and lean into what you know, the value you know you can add to whatever it is you're doing. In my case, you know, farming and events and photography.

lean into the value you know you can add, because if you create just enough bandwidth, it's gonna be so worth it to get that person that can help you pay your taxes and keep your financials straight, so that you can keep doing the thing that you're better at than reading the tax code and understanding it, you know, in my case. So, or keeping your monthly, or however your business do it, but yeah, your monthly cash flows and all that stuff.

Leland Gross CFP (28:56.926)

Reading the text goes something.

Buddy (29:05.38)

uh in check so yeah our account does all our bookkeeping now all of that stuff for us

Leland Gross CFP (29:06.983)

I think that that...

Leland Gross CFP (29:11.834)

I think that is, that thought is so paramount. I really wanna highlight that, not just on the account inside, but the idea of, to really figure out what, how am I spending my time, and what is the most valuable way for me to spend my time? How can I really do more of that, the stuff that I'm really good at, that I really love doing, where I can provide value?

And for all these other tasks that suck that time, how do I outsource that? And I'm with you, I understand the thought behind I can't just hire an army of people, I can't just throw money at all of my problems. You do have to work hard and grind, and there are seasons where you have to be doing every role by yourself, but as soon as you can, to be able to say, you know, what's the most valuable use of my time and how do I just do that more, and therefore what do I need on the other side, is it?

bookkeeper because bookkeeping takes forever and is just dry and I don't want to do it. I heard someone recently talk about like figuring out what your hourly pay is. Like, what is my hourly wage that I'm setting for my value? Is it $500 an hour? Is it $1,000 an hour? And then looking and saying, well, is creating an Instagram post worth $500 an hour?

Probably not. So I will outsource that. But as, you know, for me, like building someone's financial plan and developing their recommendations, that's worth that. Like that's valuable time and that's something I like doing and something I'm good at. And so to kind of figure out like, how do where, where do I add that value? How do I add that value? And then for all these other things that have to be done, because it's part of a business and there are other hats and roles that we're all wearing. How do I figure out how to outsource that?

Is it bringing someone onto my internal team, hiring an employee, or is it bringing someone onto my greater team by outsourcing to a CPA or a virtual assistant or fill in the blank? But I think that's a really, like that thought that you just gave is really valuable for all entrepreneurs starting out in their journey or kind of entering their journey and hitting that bandwidth mark where it's like, I can't do every...

Buddy (31:08.791)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (31:32.866)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (31:37.218)

piece of this on my own.

Buddy (31:38.688)

Right. Yeah, that's definitely, I mean, that's not, I don't think it's every person's entrepreneurial story, but I think a common one is where you feel like we are in the trenches right now and I'm doing everything I can. And I can't imagine, you know, hiring somebody else. And that's where I think of like to that person. It's like, well, hey, to, you know, think about where you're providing the most value and keep leaning into that, you know, maybe, maybe you miss.

putting together your P&L this month, it's okay. Just keep going because if you stop because of that and you lose the value, you stop putting your energy into the value you're creating that's gonna push the whole thing forward then, and yeah, then that's how you can kind of just get burnt out versus like, man, keep pushing into that value and yeah, and hire or bring on people that can do the...

Leland Gross CFP (32:13.323)

Yeah.

Buddy (32:35.692)

jobs that need to be done better than you frankly, for those areas. And I will also say too with that, there's like a balance there. We've over the last, really the last like seven months, we kind of started as almost like a New Year's resolution, looking at business and life things, and not just from like a financial perspective, because like life stuff different, but business wise, we've been thinking about like, okay, where are we?

Where have we like leaned too far into like, you know, like tech plugins, like you can start adding up how much you spend on tech plugins and you're like, how am I spending this much money a month on all these subscriptions and you know, all these, all this stuff. It's like, Oh, that's a, that's a, this, my business is spending a lot of money on this stuff. Do I need all of these things? So there's a balance there too, for sure. Um, and we've made some changes this year to just like trim down stuff that we thought was the right solution that we were.

Leland Gross CFP (33:15.187)

Yeah

Leland Gross CFP (33:18.943)

Yeah.

Buddy (33:34.756)

putting money towards, we're like, oh no, we can solve this better by, we don't need to do this anymore, or we can solve this better in different ways. So there's like, there's a balance there, I think.

Leland Gross CFP (33:42.942)

Yeah, I totally agree. The financial planner in me is like, everyone should check their subscriptions because you have zero idea how much you're spending on those.

Buddy (33:48.936)

Yes. Yeah, because you're like, oh, 15 bucks a month, whatever. Pilot on.

Leland Gross CFP (33:53.554)

Yeah. And again, like freeing up $15 a month in and of itself is probably not going to move your needle very much. But when you like track that out over hundreds of things and it's like, when was the last time you really used like Canva Pro? Like maybe all the time. Maybe you got it your first year because you thought it was going to be really important. You haven't used it since, you know, like. And when that adds up with lots of those, yeah, part of me, the financial planner in me is like screaming that.

Buddy (34:00.034)

No.

Buddy (34:09.108)

Yeah, right.

Buddy (34:15.093)

Right.

Buddy (34:22.384)

Yeah, yeah, and it's good just even a gut check like oh like for our personal stuff like one thing was like Oh, so we have like, you know, all these subscriptions, you know Netflix and prime and you know Apple Plus it Well, I was like YouTube TV. I didn't even I don't even know if I realized that we have all these and Cuz I don't wait. Yeah, but and what they all cost like actually seeing them all together like oh, okay Let's let's get rid of a couple of these things, you know

Leland Gross CFP (34:23.245)

Um...

Leland Gross CFP (34:50.202)

Yeah, I you think like cable is so expensive, I wouldn't get cable. And then you're like, well, you've got like 10 different like streaming platforms all for like 15 bucks a month. And that's the same.

Buddy (34:59.432)

Yeah. All of a sudden it's the same as cable. Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (35:05.094)

Yeah. So something that is unique to you over your journey, not just the fact that it hasn't been just one business, but it's been a conglomerate of them, is that you've also been doing all of them with your wife, Jill. You guys literally live at work and work together and run these businesses together. What's that been like navigating business, personal?

When are you business partners and when are you spouses? You know, how do how have you guys navigated that?

Buddy (35:36.624)

Yeah, I mean really we're basically both all the time. And it's more like, yeah, I think the way we've been navigating it recently that has worked, I'll tell you what's worked and what has not worked. What's worked has having a schedule, frankly, especially with, we have four kids now. They're all six years and younger. So four young kids and we...

work from home, especially in the summertime, they're here a lot, they're not at school. And so it really has worked to have a schedule and to really like stand for that, both in the business side of things and the marriage side of things. Like I have in my calendar, you know, every Monday night is Jill's and my night. We're fortunate to have our in-laws live across the road here on the farm. So.

our kiddos can often go hang with them and Jill and I can just go on a walk or whatever, have some time. So same thing business-wise, like really scheduling out stuff, weekly meetings and all of that kind of stuff. And I think just like we also, on kind of the other side of that coin, like we conversationally like to hold things like more loosely, like, hey, if we're, maybe it's...

Leland Gross CFP (36:38.315)

Hmm.

Buddy (37:00.348)

9 o'clock at night, but we have this business idea. We just want to talk about it. If the other person's into it or is open to listening, like we'll hold it loosely, we'll talk about it. Even though it's, you know, we're, we were laying on the couch watching Ted Lasso and, you know, wait, pause it. Hold on. I got to tell you about this idea. And, um, so, so I think there's that too. Um, those things have worked really well for us. We love to brainstorm an idea. We always say like, there's no bad ideas during brainstorm.

Leland Gross CFP (37:26.539)

Hehehe

Buddy (37:27.057)

Afterward, we can talk about how bad that idea was. But no, just kidding. Ha ha ha.

Leland Gross CFP (37:32.053)

In this moment, it's not bad, but once we're done with this conversation, I'll tell you that it was really bad.

Buddy (37:35.924)

Yeah, yeah, what were you thinking? Yeah. Yeah, no, but yeah, we so we love to brainstorm too So there is definitely a lot of that. I think what hasn't worked is So Trying to go back So what didn't work well in the past was like there was a lot of tension When it was just Jill and I of like who's the boss basically because like when we were shooting weddings Jill was the primary photographer I was just the second shooter and

Leland Gross CFP (37:58.684)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (38:05.212)

I was joked I was really just the pack mule there to carry all of her camera bags and set up all her flashes and stuff. So I struggled with like, no, you're here like working for her. You're not in charge right now. Like just, you know, just help, just do it. The boss says kind of thing. So I think navigating that whole dynamic, we just, I didn't step into that well in years past.

we would get in a fight about, she told me to go do something on wedding day, and I'd be like, do I really need to do that right now? She'd be like, I'm asking you to do it. I've listened, listen to me. I've shot lots of weddings, but I'm like, all right. We'd get into, I don't think I need to right now, whatever. So I think both trying to like, like me not understanding this is what's needed in the moment. I think that hasn't worked. I think also,

Leland Gross CFP (38:39.862)

I'm sorry.

Leland Gross CFP (38:48.268)

Yeah.

Buddy (39:00.492)

something that this is maybe like not that specific, but I think like we've learned a lot more about ourselves in the last few years. Like I've learned more about me personally, Jill's learned more about herself personally. And I think like there was a lot I just didn't realize about me that affected the way we would interact in business and of course in personal life too, but.

I think just like getting to know myself more, like we started doing marriage coaching Gosh five years ago now And that has been huge. You had Julia on the podcast, right? Yeah

Leland Gross CFP (39:36.826)

Yeah, so for listeners, he's referencing Julia Woods, who was episode maybe like 10, 9 or 10. And she does like an incredible transformational coaching for couples. And so feel free to go listen to that and look her up.

Buddy (39:50.484)

Yeah, super awesome. Yeah, definitely check out Julia. She is amazing. I mean, she was instrumental in us like rebuilding our marriage, you know, five years ago. And yeah, where we are today, it is, I never knew marriage could be like this and it's awesome. Not to say that it's easy and that we don't have any problems. We have, all of the problems are still here. It's just a whole new perspective.

Leland Gross CFP (40:08.394)

Hmm

Buddy (40:18.212)

and all that with what we've learned through coaching. So yeah, but I think both of us learning more about ourselves, like what we're good at, what we, how we like to do something, all that has like made the way we work now much better and not to say we've arrived, but we both have noticed like, so Jill's, we have a newborn who's six months old and Jill had taken a step back from really work in general because we've got four kids, we had, you know, she was pregnant, newborn.

And just in the last like couple months, Jill stepped back into like, okay, I'm going to start working again. And I've just noticed like, man, this is awesome. I'm so grateful for all the gifts she has that I do not have, you know. And we, yeah, we're working together like we never have before. And it's, it's really awesome.

Leland Gross CFP (41:01.919)

Hmm

Leland Gross CFP (41:10.882)

That's awesome. I love hearing that. So what has surprised you the most about your journey of entrepreneurship?

Buddy (41:21.304)

Um

Buddy (41:25.184)

I knew you were gonna ask that question, but I didn't think about what I was gonna say. I wanted to have a really authentic response, so. Yeah. Yeah, oh my gosh. Yeah, I mean, there's so many things that are unexpected about it. I think like.

Leland Gross CFP (41:28.238)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Leland Gross CFP (41:34.086)

Hey, and here it is. Here's your time to shine.

Buddy (41:46.556)

I think one thing... You said, what's the most unexpected?

Leland Gross CFP (41:52.062)

Unexpected or what surprised you the most? Like if you had this vision from high school and college of what farmer buddy would be doing versus kind of where you're at now, the success you've achieved, like what surprised you the most about what that felt like, what that experience was like?

Buddy (41:55.052)

surprised me the most.

Buddy (42:05.016)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (42:11.956)

You really, thank you. I need you to really tee it up for me. Now I'm, now I had time to think. I would say one big thing is like.

Leland Gross CFP (42:14.624)

Yeah.

Buddy (42:26.485)

I often still go into this thought, but I much more in the past would have this thought like, well, once I get here, then, you know, every this will be better or this will change or you know, the grass will be greener once I get past this level of stuff or this goal in the business or whatever. And like there are there is some truth to that. It's not like that's wrong.

But I just thought that was like, you know, solid gold truth, like, oh yeah, once you make a certain amount of money, or once you have like a certain amount of free time, or something, whatever your thing is, you know? And I just realized like, no, there's gonna be benefits there, there's gonna be lots of good things, but it's not like, and now everything's great, you know? And I've arrived or something, it's like, no. I like listening to...

Leland Gross CFP (43:17.59)

Hmm

Buddy (43:23.896)

the My First Million podcast, and they have these guys on, you know, that are like crazy successful. They always talk about how like, you think you, you know, even these guys at these way successful levels with hundreds of millions are like, you know, you look at them and think like, yeah, but you feel that way now, right? Like you feel like you've arrived. They're like, yeah, no, I just kind of go to the next thing that I want to do. So mine, to be clear, not my scenario, but.

Leland Gross CFP (43:25.314)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (43:53.292)

not hundreds of millions, but I think... Yeah, exactly, all my friends. But yeah, no, I think for me, a dream was like, if I had my own farm someday, because I was always farming other people's land. And then that dream came true, and it's like, it is great having your own farm, but it's not...

Leland Gross CFP (43:55.845)

When I was listening to this podcast with all my peers who are the Rockefellers and you know.

Hahaha

Buddy (44:21.788)

it's not going to satisfy you completely. It's not going to be like, and I've arrived and that's it. Um, you know, so I think that has been a surprising thing and a good lesson to like relearn because I keep tricking myself into like, oh yeah, but if we get, if we hit this target, if we build this structure, you know, then it'll, then you'll feel better about this thing. And, and again, there is truth to that. Like you'll solve a problem and that will be good and it'll feel good.

Leland Gross CFP (44:26.879)

Mmm.

Leland Gross CFP (44:44.33)

Mmm.

Buddy (44:51.692)

But it's not like, and so that's it. It's like, no, and then there's gonna be more to do and that's okay, you know, that's a good thing.

Leland Gross CFP (44:59.07)

Yeah, I think that that's true. That theme has come up a lot on this podcast. And I was talking to one of the guests, Joel Ankeny, whose podcast actually airs today. But he was talking about, he's kind of on the latter end of his career. He's thinking about more like exit planning, but was saying like his definition of success or kind of what he was longing for changed throughout the years. Because as he would achieve that next level,

almost the line would move backwards, like would move further ahead. And it's like, oh, well, like for you, if I build this structure and we're able to rent it out. And so we've got all this other stuff going on, like that'll be awesome. And then we'll be able to rest and then that happens. And then there's the next thing. And we kind of trick ourselves into thinking that, like we will one day arrive. And that's just not how this life works, unfortunately. We all wish we could arrive, but.

Buddy (45:30.692)

Mm-hmm.

Buddy (45:56.014)

Yeah, that's our hope for eternity, just bleeding into the wrong places.

Leland Gross CFP (46:00.83)

Yeah, totally. What was the low point for you on this journey? I mean, what we've talked about so far sounds like amazing, but I'm sure it's come with challenges and seasons that are harder than others. So what was the low for you?

Buddy (46:18.808)

There's been several low points. One that is, I'm just thinking of because Jill was looking through an old hard drive of pictures. And we found pictures from back in 2012 at our old rental farm when the derecho hit. Did you live in Virginia when the derecho happened? You know it? Okay. Okay, I think derecho, it's Spanish.

Leland Gross CFP (46:41.434)

No, I have no idea what you're saying to me right now. Was that a plague?

Buddy (46:48.86)

No, but I mean, yes, it was just as bad as a plague. So for anyone who's in Virginia in 2012, you're gonna know what I'm talking about. This storm came Leland and it came out of nowhere, and I'm pretty sure derecho means from the left, I think, it's Spanish, but it had, it came in from the west and blew across the state and it just had horizontal winds and it was...

Leland Gross CFP (46:52.138)

No!

Buddy (47:16.128)

It caused a ton of damage. And the crazy thing was it wasn't like a, wasn't like a hundred mile swath of winds. It was like these pockets of 90 miles an hour. So like back then you could be driving down the highway after the derecho hit, like, and you'd see like a forest on one side. And then it would just be a section that's like a hundred yards wide, where all the trees are just snapped in half, like 30 feet up. Like big, huge pine trees would just be like a matchstick. And it was,

So that hit our farm in 2012. And Jill was looking back through old pictures and saw pictures of the aftermath. Oh my goodness, that was really bad. Because we were only a couple years into farming. We had very limited cash and reserves. It hit in the middle of summer. And basically, we had 2,000 chickens, meat chickens, on pasture on this.

hillside. We drove out to go check on them that night to see like okay how did they survive after this derecho hit and picture they're supposed to be a thousand chickens in one set of these shelters and a thousand chickens in another set of these shelters that are like basically like a big box of sheet metal and or roofing metal and chicken wire that they live in. Supposed to be 30 of them in the pasture, 30 of these boxes with 2,000 chickens that spread across them. All of those are gone.

No chickens, no boxes. They're all, the boxes are the chicken shelter. They're all just gone. So they literally had blown to like the other side of the hill. And so, and all of our infrastructure was down. We didn't have power for like three days. It was crazy. And luckily we had some of our best friends visiting. Josh and Mandy Poe who live in Virginia Beach. You know them, I believe we were. Oh, shout out to the Poes. They were actually coming out to, they had just gotten married.

Leland Gross CFP (48:45.614)

Oh my gosh.

Leland Gross CFP (49:07.23)

Yep. Shout out to the post.

Buddy (49:14.988)

They were coming out to like babysit the farm for us. And so they were gonna do like a day or two of kind of learning all the systems from me. And then they were gonna give Jill and I a night away because they knew we were like in the trenches and could use a break. And they get there, the first night they get there, the derecho hits. And so they spent the rest of the weekend, like we were, the farm was hanging on by thread, man. We barely kept all the animals alive. We really only lost.

Leland Gross CFP (49:35.99)

I'm going to go to bed.

Buddy (49:44.352)

I mean a small amount of chickens considering what could have happened. The cows all survived, the pigs all survived, but it was totally crazy. And I thought like this is the end of the farm.

Leland Gross CFP (49:53.794)

Wait, so you said a lot of the chickens survived. Where did you find them?

Buddy (50:00.536)

So they were in the, they were the next, yeah, they were the next field over. So what we, so we had to carry them all back to, we had a, we filled up this water cube so that they could get water. It's like a 250 gallon cube on a trailer. We filled it up down in the creek, brought it up on this trailer to the top of this hill and then brought all the chickens to it so they could get water. Cause I didn't mention, but this derecho hit, I believe it was in July.

Leland Gross CFP (50:01.398)

Like they all blew away.

Buddy (50:28.364)

It was the height of summer, so it was like 97 degrees for the next three days after this. So we had no power, no water. Josh, Mandy, and I all slept in the front hall of the farmhouse that we lived in because there was no AC and it was just so hot even at night. We just slept there with like the door open. It was a low point. Yeah.

Leland Gross CFP (50:47.022)

Gosh, that is wild. Yeah, that sounds like a low point. So this is a podcast all about success, but if you pull anybody on the street and ask them to define success, you're gonna get a different meaning from different people. So for you, how would you define success and how would you know if and when you have achieved it?

Buddy (51:17.3)

It's a great question. I have a feeling I might say something similar to what others have said, but the most important things to me Personally that feel like success are When I'm connected with the Lord when Jill and I are connected and our relationship is Close and when

I'm getting to spend a lot of time with my kids and my friends. That feels like the most in terms of just personal, that's like top priorities. And then I think business-wise, success for me has a lot to do with legacy. I just think especially because with farming, so many, all of our, not all, but most of our neighbors are like fifth, sixth generation farms.

Leland Gross CFP (52:00.357)

Mmm.

Buddy (52:13.548)

they've passed down from kid to kid to kid. And so it's kind of in the farming DNA to think legacy. And so I think that in business, what legacy am I leaving for my family, for the couples that come through here to get married here, for the people that buy meat from us off the farm, and the health and the good food that they're getting for their family. So I think like,

that having a sense of legacy makes me feel successful. I think kind of like what we were just saying earlier, like always remembering that there's gonna be another hill to climb. You're gonna think like, once I get to the top of this hill of business, I've made it, you know, I've summited Everest and there's gonna be another one. If you're an entrepreneur, you're gonna get to the top of that hill, doesn't matter.

Leland Gross CFP (52:54.402)

Hmm

Leland Gross CFP (53:04.462)

Mm.

Buddy (53:08.44)

who you are and go, I mean, look at like Jeff Bezos. He's like, okay, so now I'm gonna go to space. You know, like.

Leland Gross CFP (53:13.769)

Mm. Yeah, I have conquered everything on Earth, and so now we will conquer beyond Earth.

Buddy (53:19.304)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what it's just, it's so in our DNA. I think that's one of my good buddies who's an entrepreneur here in Lexington. And I talked a lot about this because he asked the question, like, when do you feel like enough is enough? And it's like, well, you got to remember, like there's not, there's, there is like the, you want to, you want to take care of your family, you know, those kinds of things, there is that level of things for sure. And then it's like.

Um, yeah. And then I think it's like, you're going to just keep finding hills to climb, even if you have a lot of worldly success. Um, so yeah, so that's where I go back to like the biggest things for me are. When I'm in right relationship with the people most important to me, that's awesome. And when I'm leaving a legacy that will go on for longer than, uh, my time here, then that's awesome. And I see that's what we're, that's what we're building or leaning into with.

Leland Gross CFP (54:13.957)

Mm.

Buddy (54:18.22)

building lodging here so that people can come back and stay here and experience the beauty of this place. And that's what we're doing with having marriage retreats, which we just started last year. And yeah, and they're going really well. Our marriage coach, Julia, leads those. And we've attended, my wife and I have attended all of them so far. And yeah, we wanna pour into marriages and see marriages thrive beyond their wedding gate.

Leland Gross CFP (54:44.322)

Mm.

Buddy (54:47.81)

here at the farm. So yeah, legacy. Love it.

Leland Gross CFP (54:50.606)

That's amazing. That's an amazing vision that I haven't heard you articulate before, but the idea of investing in marriages, not just on their wedding day, but using this space as a continued, we want to be for these marriages and continue to fortify them, even after the initial day, is really amazing. Well, Buddy, thank you so much for being on the Self-Employment Success podcast today. I...

It's just a joy having you here. All right.

Buddy (55:19.468)

Yeah, man, thanks for having me. Oh, thanks for having me, Leland. Talk to you later.

Leland Gross CFP (55:23.798)

Bye.