The Vance Crowe Podcast

This Week's Ag Tribes Report with Vance Crowe features a special co-host, Tommy Grisafi. This week’s headlines include the impact of the ½% interest rate cut, the likelihood of 45z tax credit to bring demand to the corn market and the impact of a longshoreman strike on agriculture exports.
  • Interest rate cuts can have significant implications for the economy.
  • The 45Z tax credit is still unclear for many in agriculture.
  • Consumer behavior is shifting against traditional agricultural subsidies.
  • Potential strikes could disrupt agricultural exports and supply chains.
  • Bitcoin may serve as a hedge against inflation and economic instability.
  • The value of farmland continues to rise, impacting future generations of farmers.
  • Many farmers lack access to straightforward information about their options.
  • Unions are becoming more vocal in their demands for better wages and conditions.
  • The media landscape in agriculture is evolving, with new opportunities for engagement.
  • Continuous improvement in media production is essential for success.
Tommy the founder and host of Ag Bull Media, is a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, the owner of Indiana Grain Company and is a commodity risk management advisor at Advance Trading.

List of Worthy adversaries: https://x.com/i/lists/1815850820195475962   

What is The Vance Crowe Podcast?

The Vance Crowe Podcast is a thought-provoking and engaging show where Vance Crowe, a former Director of Millennial Engagement for Monsanto, and X-World Banker, interviews a variety of experts and thought leaders from diverse fields.

Vance prompts his guests to think about their work in novel ways, exploring how their expertise applies to regular people and sharing stories and experiences.

The podcast covers a wide range of topics, including agriculture, technology, social issues, and more. It aims to provide listeners with new perspectives and insights into the world around them.

Vance Crowe (04:22.924)
Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report. I'm your host Vance Crowe. Each week I bring a guest co -host to represent the perspectives of a different tribe in agriculture because there's so many that make up U .S. and Canadian agriculture. This week I'm joined by the one and only Tommy Grissaffi, the founder and host of Ag Bull Media, a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, the owner of the Indiana Grain Company, and is a commodity risk management advisor at Advanced Trading. Tommy.

Welcome to the Ag Tribes Report.

Tommy Grisafi (04:54.066)
Thanks for having me, Vance. Always fun to do live media.

Vance Crowe (04:58.032)
Yeah, we try and keep it as exciting as we can. And today is a pretty exciting day because it has been a wild week. We are going to cover the headlines being followed by traders like Tommy, including the interest rate cuts made by the wizards from Federal Reserve Mountain, the proposed new tax credit designed to prop up the price of corn even better than all the other tax credits, and the 77 % raise that Longshoremen controlling most of our food export docs

are threatening to strike over. We're gonna do that, of course, and do the Bitcoin land price report, Tommy's Peter Thiel paradox, and hear about his worthy adversary. And we're gonna do all of this in just 30 minutes. If you enjoy the show, be sure to retweet this episode, comment, and give us a five -star review on Apple and Spotify. This show has been exploding, and that has been because audience members like you are sharing it with other people. This has really been a fun ride.

So if you also, if you comment while we're on the air, we'll try and bring your comments into the conversation.

But without further ado, let's jump into the headlines. The first one we're gonna talk about today, Tommy, the US Federal Reserve drops the interest rates by 50 bips or otherwise one half of 1%. The wizards of the US monetary system came down from Federal Reserve Mountain and they did their spell casting to try and change the price of money, bringing it down by just a little bit. I heard you.

on RFD TV say that you believe the move in interest rates is the biggest thing to happen to the financial world outside of the 08 crash in the last 30 years. So 50 bips is just a little itty bitty number. Why is this such a big deal?

Tommy Grisafi (06:42.034)
It's actually all the energy that went up into building into this. So we kept interest rates so artificially low for so long to spur the economy. This goes back to all the way back to 07, 08 when we had the housing debacle. And so everything that went into propping markets up for 12, 13 years, it finally caught up to the world. And we had rampant inflation for a while up in the 8, 9 % level. And the Fed

really raise rates to get it under control. Now what's interesting about them lowering rates is you lower rates when you need to add liquidity to the markets when you're starting to get worried about something. United States stock markets and world stock markets for that are all really close to all time highs. And so to lower rates, 50 bips, right into stock market all time highs and then brag, you got another 50 coming, it doesn't make sense. the...

we're still, there's still people who are going to be affected from the higher interest rates. So farmers we work with, the store and ignore doesn't work like it used to. The cost of money went up for everyone and it's really a big tax on everyday working people like ourselves.

Vance Crowe (07:49.459)
So when you say it doesn't make sense, you're right, stock market just continues to soar. Prices on things going up. Why do you think they raise those interest rates? Or mean, I'm sorry, drop those interest rates.

Tommy Grisafi (08:01.862)
Yeah, I think there's some political motivation. I also think they're behind the curve. There could be some bad things coming down the pipe. They may see something that we don't know. Unemployment's a little bit on the rise, but there could be some slowing. We're seeing credit card debt just absolutely explode. Interesting enough, I know we don't have enough time, but the Chinese government twice in last three days just dropped an absolute nuclear explosion on just making monetary policy easier in China.

And as you know, gold the last five, six days hit new record highs five days in a row. Gold's going up as fast as the White Sox are losing games. They're definitely trading against each other. So to have gold at all time highs, have the stock market at all time highs, and have world banks like what's happening there in China and America lower interest rates as much as they do, something's coming here and it probably won't be good.

Vance Crowe (08:58.856)
Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely clear that the Chinese government is trying to make their stock market do something. People woke up in China, I think, just this morning and found out that their mortgages had a half a point of interest off of their mortgages just taken off. And the reserve requirements for their banks now have been released by a half a point and a half percentage. And this is going to allow so much more liquidity into China's market.

Presumably because they don't like how strong their yuan is coming to the dollar. It's going to make their exports harder and our imports easier.

Tommy Grisafi (09:37.458)
Yeah, who knows, maybe they're getting ready to invade Taiwan. Now would be a good time. We're very vulnerable as a nation. 30, 40 days out to this election, we have a president who hasn't been doing a lot of leading, and we have an electoral race that's just up for grabs. So very interesting, vulnerable time for America. Not wishing anything bad, just smart enough to know people strike you when you're weak.

Vance Crowe (10:03.529)
Well, let's hope not, but let's continue moving on. Speaking of propping up the economy, from Ag Newsday, there is still no guidance on the 45Z tax credit program. Now this is something I didn't know anything at all about, but every single media outlet that's out there is talking about 45Z credit. So I did a little digging and this is known as the Clean Fuel Production Credit. It's a tax incentive introduced as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is

and oxymoron at best aimed at promoting the production of clean transportation fuels. So this is going to replace several of the existing biofuel credits from 2025, but there's not a lot of guidance. Right now it is just a two page document basically saying we are going to give up to $1 .75 per gallon for sustainable aviation fuel or a dollar per gallon of other fuels, which is potentially higher than a lot of other tax credit.

This is also presumably going to have an impact on biodiesel and renewable diesel. But Tommy, why is everybody coming out and saying we don't have any guidance from the government on this?

Tommy Grisafi (11:10.322)
Well, it's a fancy term. you probably ask 10 people what 45Z is, and you get 10 different responses. I mean, just like yourself, I have to Google and say, OK, what is this? How is it affecting soybean oil? How is it affecting canola? The trade in, obviously, canola's grown up in Canada, so there's some, are we going to import canola? Will we be able to use Canadian canola, extract that oil, and turn it into fuel?

Lots of ins and outs on this. The American farmer, we still use one third of our corn goes into ethanol. So corn is fuel. Soybean oil can be fuel. Use cooking oil can be fuel. These are all new things. There was a lot of hopes and dreams. Remember, just a few years ago, they said we're going to have to plant 13 million more acres of soybeans just to keep up with this demand. And now some of these already crushing plants got a little ahead of themselves and are already filing bankruptcy.

Kind of reminds me of when ethanol started. The first group of people spent a lot of money on it. The second group got to buy it for pennies on the dollar. And then the second and third group actually made a profit doing it. There's a lot of risk in building your whole business plan around a two -page document, sir.

Vance Crowe (12:20.148)
Yeah, that's absolutely true. How do you know what's gonna go on, how much demand? The other part of risk that I don't hear anybody talking about is how consumers may turn against this, right? Right now, you are seeing a huge push with RFK getting involved in the Trump administration. You see this doctor from Stanford, her and her brother out there talking about the terribleness of the ag system being set up to produce

really unhealthy foods like seed oils. And while that may not necessarily be the one -to -one comparison with the subsidies that are going to corn, I think there's going to be a cultural push against giving the American farmer large incentives to continue to grow corn, soy, canola. And with this being something that could just transform, really increase the amount of demand.

There's some downsides to this. What do you think? Is the American consumer going to go for the farmer getting more money to stimulate demand?

Tommy Grisafi (13:22.898)
Well, I don't think the American consumer really quite understands this. think if you ask most people about where their food comes from or even, I mean, they'll say the store whatever, but they'll say a farm. But when you really look at ingredients and if you look at something and it has 20 ingredients and then backtrack to where all those ingredients came from and see who had their hand out on that ingredient, there's a lot of big corporations that benefit by all this stuff too. So we got the alphabet soup people.

You know all the brands and names. You speak for them sometimes. So there's all types of people who are very dialed into DC. And they have their agenda, right? Everyone wants to, whatever they're producing, produce more of. If you're Coca -Cola, you don't think someone should have one Coke a day. You should have three or four. mean, it's that way. If you're in the chicken business, you think everyone should be eating chicken. Anyone who has turkeys doesn't think it's just something you have at Thanksgiving. You should have turkey every day.

I've listened to some of the RFK stuff and it's interesting and the American public has not gotten healthier the last 10 -20 years. You can't turn on TV without seeing five ads from five different companies that'll give you a shot to help you get skinny, right? Maybe the best way to get in shape is to not gain the weight in the first place. So now we have the egg side of what we eat and what it does to our bodies and then we have, worry, eat whatever the heck you want. We got a shot for you. It is a little confusing.

I think if you were someone, maybe a time traveler, you went away 50 years ago and came back, you'd be like, what in the world's going on? What happened to these people?

Vance Crowe (14:58.092)
I mean, and to me, the answer that these people are all trying to push towards is, hey, it's not personal responsibility. The government is set up to stimulate demand for farmers to grow things that either we don't want or we don't want it as cheap as it is. And this is what's causing things like the obesity crisis. And while the sustainable fuels are completely different than this, I think there is going to be a lot sharper look at all of this.

going forward because I think the public pressure on why is it that farmers are getting these advantages when me, the regular consumer, is drowning in consumer credit card debt.

Tommy Grisafi (15:39.1)
That's a lot of things that's happening there. Anyone who goes shopping, anyone knows that when they go to the store, the price of everything went up. We're just not sure where is it coming from. And then the price of everyone who runs a business has went up tremendously. It's a huge tax. We've been taxed so much when you watch the political rhetoric out there. I guess I'll ask you before the election and all the viewers and listeners, are you better off than you were three, four years ago, Vance?

Vance Crowe (16:06.42)
Absolutely not, no. Well, with one exception, Bitcoin has done very well. And so for that, it's been good, but Bitcoin responds to irresponsibility of government. So only in that has there been any saving grace.

Tommy Grisafi (16:20.466)
Yeah, same thing with gold. Gold's performing a lot better than Bitcoin recently. Gold's up about 40 % in the year. S &P's up 20 % in the year. Not sure where Bitcoin is in all that crude oil's going down. things have went up that are never going to come down. It's not going to get cheaper for some items that have doubled in price.

Vance Crowe (16:41.209)
Yeah, and certainly when we head to this third and final headline, we're going to see that there is potential for even higher prices because from agri -pulse, the potential strike at US ports could disrupt agricultural exports. So as a result of a dispute between the International Longshoremen's Association and the United States Maritime Alliance, a strike could begin as soon as October 1st, affecting between 25 to 40 ,000 dock workers.

in ports on both the East and Gulf Coast. This is presuming that the Gulf Coast survived the hurricane that's actually ravaging the coast right now as we speak. But if this strike happens, it's going to potentially disrupt supply chains and even agricultural shipments. So the ILA has demanded significant wage increases, initially asking for a 77 % wage hike over six years and a push for job security against automation, things like banning.

automated cranes, gates, and container movements. And so this is not going to directly impact bulk exports of grain because that's done by another longshoremen agreement. It does have the potential to stop things like waterborne pork exports, frozen beef exports, these kinds of things come out of ports and if they can't leave, then eventually that rolls back to the American grain farmer and the producer. So.

Tommy, is this gonna be something that just gets settled out in a week or are we gonna see this longshoreman strike hit us and now watch prices go up because we can't get stuff off the docks?

Tommy Grisafi (18:18.002)
I think they will strike and I think this is a perfect time for them to strike. It'll create total disruption and chaos. They'll be 25 days away from election when they go do this, allegedly. And you're seeing other people strike. We've had a strike with some workers in Canada. We're seeing Boeing right now. just talk to Teamsters are thinking about doing a movement. What a great time to say, you know what, let's just make a massive disruption right before the election. Now, who's going to step in? it going to be the

Secretary Pete Buttigieg, is it going to be President Biden? don't like, you know, just speaking in general is a problem for him, let alone settling a trade dispute like this internally. The reason people are stressed out is that average every day folks, whether it be police officers, port workers, nurses, there's nothing left over. We do live a good life. Life is good. But there's not a lot of us who are going without. And we all have nice iPhones and look at all the fancy cameras you and I have.

But with that, are we able to pay, if we put it on a credit card, are we able to pay it off at the end of the month? And it looks like the American consumer and even the world consumer is just absolutely getting buried in debt. And as you know, interest rates have tripled from where they were a few years ago. And so there's just that overall tax of paying more on your, more interest on your mortgage, more interest or more money on your health insurance and everything else. So you tie this in.

The everyday working man and woman needs a race and they're demanding it. We're going to see who wins, who loses. It could take a government intervention here just to stop it.

Vance Crowe (19:56.143)
Yeah, and right now the White House is saying that they will not step in. I think they're trying to generate support from those dock workers saying that if you need to strike to get what you want, but man, this is a very dangerous game we're playing. Once strikes start happening and goods start freezing on the docks, you just never know what that will do to an economy. So let's hope this gets sewn up quickly, but I agree. I mean, like I can see why they're afraid of automation and I can see why they...

Only get to renegotiate their contracts every so often. So do it when people are vulnerable I don't want that to happen, but I can certainly understand where they're coming from any last words on this

Tommy Grisafi (20:36.37)
Well, the Teamsters didn't back either presidential candidate, and that's only happened a few times in last 40, 50 years. So unions are starting to get vocal. Sometimes saying the loudest thing is just saying nothing at all. That's what the Teamsters did. lot of unions are flexing their muscles and hats off to them. I hope they get what they want.

Vance Crowe (20:53.796)
Yeah, and I mean to have the unions show up at the Republican National Convention, that's that is a first. So, you know, everything is up in the air. So much is changing. All right, that's it for the headlines. Now we're going to head to the Bitcoin land price report. Before I ask Tommy about the price of high quality farmland in his area, I want to address a concern a listener had about the Bitcoin land price report.

So a listener called me up and told me, Vance, nobody wants to trade their land for Bitcoin and it's offensive that you even ask this question. And I wanna respond by saying, I think the truly offensive thing is the act of printing money and how it tricks people into thinking that their land is more valuable than it really is. Rather than what's really happening, your dollars are buying less. So I think personally that Bitcoin is a pressure relief valve.

and it's a way to store the value of your work. It'll give money managers an alternative to buying the only other truly scarce asset in the world, which is land, which is going on right now. If you wanna park your money somewhere where you can hold its value, you buy land, which ends up bringing up the price of land way beyond its utility value. So I believe that Bitcoin has the ability to save the American farm and keep land in the hands of the people that are working it. Over the longterm, it is better.

for land to be priced at its utility value because as a store of value, it will be purchased by people that don't tend the land and don't understand how to take care of it. So that's why every week I'm going to report on the price of an acre of land compared to the price of a single Bitcoin and then show how many acres of land you can buy with a Bitcoin. It's not to say that Bitcoin is more valuable than land. It's to say, hey, maybe if right now you can't buy acreage right where you're at, maybe consider buying Bitcoin because the chance that you can use that Bitcoin

in the future to buy a lot more land is very real to me. So Tommy, after that long diatribe, I wanna jump into you. Where is it that you're coming in from, Porter County? How much does an acre of really good high quality farmland run in Porter County?

Tommy Grisafi (22:59.026)
We've seen some run for 12, 13, 14 ,000. Now we are in that area where the houses push against the land. as they need more subdivisions, as people leave the not so great state of Illinois and move to the great state of Indiana and become a Hoosier, we're building a lot of homes in Valparaiso. And that's pushing in to our great agricultural ground. So you're seeing land that I think people buy and they say, know what, in 10 years, it's going to be a subdivision.

Vance Crowe (23:26.11)
Yeah, that's, I mean, that's another big pressure that's just not gonna relent. People wanna move out of the city, they wanna get themselves a little acreage. The only place to do it is in the American farmland. So when we were talking, we kind of, before the show, we said about $14 ,500 would be somewhere around that. So if Bitcoin's price before the show time was $65 ,117, that means 0 .22 Bitcoins per acre. And in other words,

If you had one Bitcoin today, you could buy four and a half acres of farmland in Porter County. How does that strike you, Tommy?

Tommy Grisafi (23:59.59)
makes you realize how much, valuable land is. You know, I have several clients who, yeah, I own a thousand acres, I own a thousand acres, and they just casually, I don't think they could fathom the wealth effect that land has brought in here. And I just don't know how the younger generation's ever going to be involved in farming when so much of the wealth is held in concentration by wealthy people, right? I'm worried for the next generation in agriculture.

Vance Crowe (24:26.931)
Yeah. Absolutely. And as the price of that land keeps going up, it makes it harder and harder to keep that land in your family. You go to pass it on and people have to sell acreage in order to be able to just pay the inheritance tax. And you break up these farms that people have spent generations bringing together. Okay. Well, I want to make sure that we have time for your Peter Thiel paradox because Tommy, you are an unorthodox thinker. So.

Every week during the Peter Thiel Paradox, I ask somebody like Tommy, what is one thing that you believe that almost no one you know in your tribe agrees with you on?

Tommy Grisafi (25:03.726)
And that is, I believe, you know, folks in ag are kind of keeping people in the dark, that they're making simple things complex and that they're really not taking time to educate farmers. think a lot of people, whether it be commodity brokers or ag lenders or everyone else, really tries to make everything complicated instead of just sitting someone down and saying, listen, this is easy. I think the information given to farmers is very calculated by just a few companies.

They say, this is what you're supposed to know. Trust us. We know what's best for you.

Vance Crowe (25:38.76)
What would you, could you give an example of that, something that would help me understand this?

Tommy Grisafi (25:43.622)
Well, when it comes to like ag lenders, I love ag lenders, they send me clients, but I also see ag lenders pretend they're marketing people and they pretend they're this. I see marketing people pretend they're ag lenders and I think everyone's trying to add value and I really don't know that I can look right in the camera and say, if you're out there, you do not need a commodity broker, you could do this on your own. So why aren't people like me teaching farmers and ranchers how to hedge commodities and do this on their own at a competitive rate? Why are we pretending like we have some

wizardly type of talents when we don't. think there's still a whole group of people who make their money farming farmers.

Vance Crowe (26:20.0)
Well, this is an interesting one. It's one I haven't heard before, but I think there'd probably be a lot of people that would agree with you on this. So I'm gonna actually give you a 5 -1 on this one, Tommy, which is, I know you have more controversial opinions stuck away in your mind, because I listen to your show all the time. It is, it's a pretty rough... But it is what it is, and the next time you come on, you'll be able to hit me with something harder.

Tommy Grisafi (26:37.298)
Is this like a pizza review? I only got a 5 -1. That's not a good score.

Vance Crowe (26:50.195)
This week, we are going to talk about Tommy's worthy adversary. We spotlight worthy adversaries because it's a chance to find those people out in social media that you respect, but you don't agree with. And this helps us get out of our echo chambers. So Tommy, you had a little bit of a chance to think about this. Who is somebody on social media that you respect, but you deeply disagree with?

Tommy Grisafi (27:13.202)
I used to love the Scaramucci there, over there, and then he, if you don't know who he is, he became secretary for President Trump for 10 days, Anthony Scaramucci. I met him personally. I liked him. I've watched him my whole life on CNBC and social media. He was the biggest Republican ever. He literally just went in the White House, became the, what do you call it, where he was doing the briefings and everything else, the press secretary.

blew up, imploded, switched everything, became the biggest Democrat, and he went from just absolutely in love with Trump to he spends his whole day on social media just saying Republicans are bad, Trump's bad, you know, trust me, my name's Anthony and I have my hair slicked back. So still like him, know he's intelligent, but just think the guy's a turd, that's all.

Vance Crowe (28:03.86)
Wow, I like it, that's interesting. I too met Scaramucci at a talk I was giving and he is incredibly intelligent. I mean, far, far more intelligent than you would be able to tell watching him on TV, but I'm totally with you. He jumped from one camp to another and that seems like the behavior of somebody that's difficult to know if he's only gonna tell you things because it benefits him. So bravo on that.

Tommy Grisafi (28:08.614)
The mooch, the mooch.

Vance Crowe (28:30.484)
I'm gonna bring up mine. I think it's only fair for me to put stuff out on there. There's somebody out on social media named Joe Norman. He used to study under Nassim Taleb, who people know is very against things like GMOs, hates Bitcoin, is just a vitriolic person. And Joe Norman was one of his acolytes. And what I've discovered is there's a lot of things that Joe talks about that I...

that I don't agree with. He doesn't think very highly of me. He's talked poorly about me in the past. However, I have to say this guy has his finger on the pulse of what I think is going on in large cultural movements. And I have to say that I check out his stuff from time to time to see what he thinks is coming down the pipe. So I'm gonna go ahead and put Joe Norman or Normanix on the list as a worthy adversary out there.

If you are somebody that wants to check out people that me and the guests on this show have said, I don't agree with them, but they're worth checking out, you can find that list on my X and I will include a link to the worthy adversaries in the show notes. Well, Tommy, this was a lot of fun. If people are interested in catching more from you, your shows, what you have going on, where would they go to find that?

Tommy Grisafi (29:47.25)
Yeah, just Google Agbill, Agbill Media, those are all the social medias we stream every day for advanced trading. That's called ATI Pro Media and just having an absolute great time every day at nine o 'clock, myself and a group of others stream and then keep an eye on the Agbill social medias. We got some really neat things coming down the pipe. I wish I could tell you Vance, but I get in big trouble. with that, stay tuned. we're.

Vance Crowe (30:11.35)
Yeah, you have really come so far. remember your very, very early days when we were first doing podcasts together. And I mean, it is really incredible to see how your media empire has bloomed.

Tommy Grisafi (30:23.088)
Well, now we have to figure out how to do money with all that. Thank you so much. I'm learning a lot, and it's from people like you. You have to get out there and be incredibly uncomfortable, and then one day you're just comfortable doing this, and then you gotta go to that next level of uncomfortable. So we gotta constantly be pushing ourself to get better in media, in distributing both the vocal and written word.

Vance Crowe (30:47.03)
Well, thank you for coming on. also want to thank our sponsor, Legacy Interviews. This is where individuals and couples can record their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. If you are thinking about doing a Legacy Interview, go to LegacyInterviews .com to find out more. All right, we're going to end it for now. We'll be back next week with another Ag Tribes Report. And remember, feel free to disagree.

Vance Crowe (31:15.65)
Hey, we nailed it, got it. That was good, in and out in 30 minutes. What'd think?

Tommy Grisafi (31:17.916)
Good stuff, that was easy. I like it, yeah. How do you like using Riverside?

Vance Crowe (31:24.194)
This is the first time Tommy the very very first time that I have not had an issue with it while doing the podcast So I'm happy with it today. I'm not sure if it was user error or or what but it's better now I'm glad we have it. What do you use?

Tommy Grisafi (31:31.898)
Okay.

Tommy Grisafi (31:39.602)
When we livestream during the day I use StreamYard. I like StreamYard a lot. I like Riverside. I started off with Riverside, but StreamYard's almost never, never, never not worked. And the ability to have tickers and pop -ups and overlays and I mean I could show you stuff on StreamYard. I'm paying a coach right now to help me. His name is, think of like Ted Nugent. His name's Kirk Nugent.

Vance Crowe (31:43.106)
What do you think of that?

Tommy Grisafi (32:07.61)
And the guy is just an absolute genius with StreamYard and Canva and overlays and just, you just send him your logos, your themes, your this, you pay him some money and he just cranks it out. And he's like, here, do this, do that. Here's how you prep for show. And so I'm not afraid to go on the camera and talk, but I love graphics. I love pop -ups. I love videos and visuals.

Tommy Grisafi (32:36.678)
That's what he is. Yeah. he's a he just Google him. Just go on YouTube and search Kirk Nugent. And you're to be like, holy shit, this guy's good. And I asked Kurt, I said, how did you get into this? Because I had an interview with him. And he said that he's like a preacher and he wanted to really get his church online during covid. And so he worked, you know, hundreds of hours to just get the cameras to stream. So this to that.

It's a little easier to do now in 2024, but back in 2020, he just got good at it. And then people are like, how did you do this? How did you do that? And he said he was helping people for free. He's like, holy cow, I'm being overrun. I actually have to charge for this. So he said his business started by accident. So I paid him maybe $1 ,200, $1 ,300 to do the package. OK, then he'll stream with you. You can pay him $350 a month for six months.

and he'll just make it better and make it better and make it better. to me, that's a sm

Yeah, yeah, so just Google Kirk Nugent. You can go and get it. I just went on his YouTube and there's a Calendly calendar and I was like, holy cow. So with that, just from looking at his YouTube, now when I do my live stream, I'm like, hey everyone, book a free half hour appointment with Tommy Grosafi. Just click here. And I have to hook the Calendly up to the YouTube still. haven't done it. But I'm just telling people, I'll give you a half hour of my time for free. They're calling in one every other day now. Once I get that Calendly,

I'm going to see like, whoops, I have a four o 'clock, a five o 'clock, a six o 'clock, right? And so the power of media to get out there every day when I live stream, maybe there's on a good day, a couple hundred people watching live and a thousand on the replay. Those are 200 people who somehow just watched. mean, those they didn't get there by accident. And depending on how long they stay on the show and if you can get engagement and call the actions and all that stuff. So just little things like that. How do you get engagement? How do you get call to actions?

Tommy Grisafi (34:36.997)
One thing I learned about production is people don't care that it doesn't need to be perfect, but you don't want to sound like shit. So you and I know, you know, we have good mics. That's fine. Need to sound good. You could just look okay and still have a huge show. Right now there's a guy live streaming as we speak, Ryan Hall Yall on YouTube. When I was over at my mom and dad's right for this, he had 98 ,000 people watching him live stream. Ryan Hall Yall, the weather guy, Illinois guy. Do you know him? I think he's Illinois.

Anyway, guy's just a god. You should watch his YouTube video on what his setup looks like. so I am really, really, really, really, really, really diving hard into streaming with the computers, the stream decks, the switching. I'll go multiple cameras pretty soon. I have bunch of PTZ cameras. And that's why I was just like, hey, what do you think of this layout? Or what do you think of that? The ticker, I don't know. It's probably no good. It's very distracting for people. But I like this Kirk Nugent.

Tommy Grisafi (35:41.477)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Tommy Grisafi (35:50.788)
I normally have more light, so you were the one who taught me about the lights behind me, and I kind of wanted that dark mood today, so I have like a blue light below me and whites. I normally have three or four whites on here. This was literally an empty space a few hours ago, and I just threw it together. I was just goofing around.

Tommy Grisafi (36:15.204)
Right. The ticker's coming off the wall. I just mounted this Agbill sign, or I didn't, but I had a handyman over. Everything in the basement's going on wheels. So this Agbill sign is on wheels. The ticker's gonna be on wheels. There's a Dell monitor over here that are, everything I have is gonna be on wheels like a studio. And so what I wanna be able to do here pretty soon is that instead of going to Nashville and filling in for RFD, I just wanna do it from

So I want to get the basement set up to like, okay, welcome back to Market Day Report. I'm Tom Grosafi because they're always calling the people to zoom in. And so it makes it really easy if they box them and box, you know, box both of us. And I love going to Nashville and working at RFD, but it's a lot of work, time, and energy, you know. Have you ever... I do. I mean, the fact that that cow guy is letting me host a national TV show.

and I'm the only person, know, it's wild. It's fast -paced. You'd be good at it. You'd be really good at it. Have you ever hosted a show?

Tommy Grisafi (37:26.212)
I will give them your name because I think, can you read off a teleprompter?

you did? I didn't know. No, I kind of...

Yeah, but do you have a teleprompter app on the TV or you had your Word doc on a TV?

Tommy Grisafi (37:45.65)
and you were just scrolling your mouse, and you made a hillbilly teleprompter. It works fine. Okay, also, they have these teleprompter apps that are just money. I mean, I have one on my iPhone. cost me like $30 a year. And so you can, do you know what I'm talking about?

Tommy Grisafi (38:12.306)
But the hillbilly ones work in fine, right? You literally have a monitor behind your camera. It's the same thing. It's like one's free and one costs, you know, $1 ,500 or $2 ,500. mean, as long as you're seeing words and reading them, I was wondering how you're reading everything off so fast. Okay. You know, I think you'd be great at hosting a live show because you understand markets, you understand politics, you're very quick on a comeback. So if someone, if the conversation goes down a rabbit hole, you can...

bring it in, dial it in, add color. I don't know, it's fun. There's nothing like it. I don't care what anyone says to you. mean, talk about bringing your A game up. That is it. You go.

Tommy Grisafi (39:07.726)
Mm

Yeah, and you know that I call him Ted Nugent, Kirk Nugent. He just did a live stream about why live is so much more popular than recorded. And YouTube favors it, people favor it. People like want to watch you screw up. I mean, during the USDA reports, it's nothing for us advanced trading to have 1 ,000 viewers live.

thousand people live. All of RFD TV during Market Day Report only has five thousand people watching live. Cow Guy has twenty five to fifty thousand live. Could you imagine speaking in front of twenty five, fifty thousand people? That'd be a stadium. a huge, you know, that's the United Center in Chicago. But I get to do that and it's really wild and so I...

I do have some things coming down the pipe. I'd love to come meet with you. I might leave advanced trading and go on my own. And the part I'm disagreeing with them is the media. They're like, yeah, thanks for starting this media group. We own it. We own this. We own that. I'm like, the fuck you do? I mean, they do. But if I don't show up tomorrow, they don't own shit, right?

Tommy Grisafi (40:28.92)
No, fuck no, I bought it all. No, every -

Tommy Grisafi (40:51.952)
Right, so I need a partner in Agbill Media, not in the company or money, but if I start live streaming every day, I need a co -host. So you asked about opportunities. I need a partner if and when I leave, which I probably will. I need a partner, I need a backup, I need some talent with me. can't just be a one -man band. No one's that good.

Tommy Grisafi (41:30.128)
Yeah. How is the consistency of legacy interviews? How is the money consistency from legacy interviews?

Tommy Grisafi (41:44.562)
for the better.

Tommy Grisafi (42:14.578)
So like some months you could make 20 grand doing legacy interviews and some months you could make two grand?

Tommy Grisafi (42:30.066)
16 and 4, right, okay. So that's why Kirk Nugent would be so good for you because your production, well, on what you're doing with Legacy Interviews, I understand why your production level's so high. That's not a livestream. don't get to, know, shit, we'll do it again tomorrow. It didn't go well. Like, it's a one and done. Half the people are gonna die after you see them. It's a different, you're doing like Hollywood -style production.

There's a cost to that. But there's other things you could do, you know, live. You couldn't get those people to talk and open up like they do live streaming. Like, it's so easy to hide behind this camera and lie and not show emotion. But in that room, you've, you know, it's interesting. No one has, God, I don't want say no one. Very few people have what you're doing. So I know that part's special. Getting the word out for that.

I don't know, there's, you whatever. You have so much talent, so much raw talent. You just probably don't have enough time.

Tommy Grisafi (43:49.297)
Mm

Tommy Grisafi (44:00.08)
Yeah, and then you could say, you know what? It's not fitting me, but call this guy or gal.

Tommy Grisafi (44:08.742)
Mm -hmm. No, it's OK.

Tommy Grisafi (44:14.886)
Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, let me show you something real quick. Just stand by for one second. This is all just thrown together half, you know, it's a mess. But that's where I livestream from every day.

Tommy Grisafi (44:36.56)
Yeah, this is a fucking mess down here. Excuse my language. But,

You know what I've learned from, I know you gotta go real quick, let me think about this. Tucker Carlson was interviewing Donald Trump Jr. And there was one camera, two people mic'd up well, and it was just the cleanest, purest setup I've ever seen. And the content was incredible. So sometimes we make this harder than it is. One great camera, two great mics, two really interesting people.

And I have the picture on my phone and I'll send it to you and be like, Vance, kiss, keep it simple, stupid. You just gotta have the quality mic and a decent camera. It doesn't need to be this hard. Like the ticker and all, it's all noise, you know, whatever. all right, I got a ton of ideas. I've already paid for all this. I own hundreds of thousands of dollars of stuff. have dual studios. I'm probably gonna move one of the studios down to Nashville. That's another story for another day.

There's a lot of talent in Nashville, a lot of people who can help us with this stuff. But you go see those kids. That's the most important thing you have to do. OK?

Tommy Grisafi (45:55.46)
Okay, and I'd like to come see you in person. I like that better. okay. See you, buddy. Bye.