Farmland Investing with Ian Murphy

george grombacher 0:02
Ian Murphy is the marketing director of farmland LP. They are the largest investment fund in the United States focused on organic, re, generative farming. Welcome to the show, Ian,

Ian Murphy 0:14
thank you, George, happy to be here.

george grombacher 0:16
Yeah, excited to have you on. Tell us a little bit about your personal lives, more about your work and why you do what you do?

Ian Murphy 0:22
Yeah. So my personal life, I am a father of two beautiful daughters, three and five. My wife Aaron, and I live in Ojai, California with them, a small town just north of Ventura, California in Southern California. And I have a wonderful job. I am the marketing director for the largest investment fund in the United States that buys traditional farmland and through a three year conversion process, transforms it into USDA, organic farmland using regenerative farming practices, which means it’s better for the planet, better for people. And the cool thing is, it’s actually better for profits. So it’s a really fun job. And my background actually no background in farming whatsoever, and I have actually no educational background in marketing and communications. So I I grew up as the son of a single mother who owned a PR firm, and so I spent probably 14 years on as an intern. There a free intern to her and and then just grew up within it. I actually come from the aerospace industry, aerospace and science, and then I’ve been in farming now for about a year and a half.

george grombacher 1:41
Excellent. Yeah, what is? What is the opposite of regenerative, regenerative farming, traditional farming.

Ian Murphy 1:48
So conventional farming is also what it’s called. A really good way to understand it is, let’s put it in context. 53% of all farms in this country, in the United States grow corn and soy, wow. And of that we eat, point six, 6% of the corn that we grow. So you can think of that that point six, 6% less than 1% of the corn that we grow in this country. And so essentially, a lot of our traditional agriculture grows crops for fuel and for feed lot, and that’s not great feed lot. So we we want, we focus on food that you can grow to eat. And the biggest difference between traditional and regenerative farmings is the way that it treats the soil. So traditional farming is where you’re going to see plows and tills, and they’re going to plant the same crop on the same soil every single year. It’s called mono cropping. And what we do is we use crop rotation, cover cropping, pasturing, pasturings, when you put animals on there, cover crops, when you plant something that you’re not going to eat, right? And crop rotation is where you move the crops around from field to field, depending on the water levels, the salinity, the quality of the soil. Now, when you farm in that way, you increase soil biodiversity, meaning you have more spiders and more bugs and more mycelium, which is mushroom, right, fungi that connects all of the different plants to one another under the ground, and this creates healthier soil, better fruit, better food, and it sequesters more carbon. So instead of being carbon emitting, meaning you’re plowing and tilling and running the same thing, we can actually sequester carbon in the soil and protect the planet. So that’s the biggest difference between the two. I’m not disparaging conventional or traditional. You know, people have to eat and we’ve got a large farming sector in the United States, but regenerative farming practices certainly are more ideal if we’re looking for a more environmentally sustainable way of farming. The challenge with it in the past has been doing it at scale, doing it large enough in only 2% of farms are organic farms in this country. So doing it large enough where we can service a growing population, and especially growing demand. Demand for organic food is growing as much as 13% in recent years. So we see ourselves in a great position to not only treat the planet better, but also be in this wonderful growth market. Pardon the pun.

george grombacher 4:28
Now, I love a good pun, and I appreciate everything that you’ve been talking about insane. I anecdotally understand, if that makes any sense, that we’re essentially destroying our soil and our topsoil by just growing the same thing over and over and over and over again. I can’t blame anybody for doing it. That’s where the incentives were. That’s what we needed, apparently. And so that’s, that’s, that’s what we did. How can it be that doing regenerative versus mono crop? Is more profitable

Ian Murphy 5:02
because the rents on the land. So when you’re selling organic food, you’re going to be able to sell that food for more so think of organic blueberries versus traditional blueberries. You see a traditional blueberry, $3 maybe $3.50 in the in the grocery store, you’re going to see those organic berries, that same package, $5 $5.50 so when you do that, you’re also looking at the difference in rent. So we we farm, we’re very unusual, or I’d say, unique investment firm. Why? Because we actually farm a third of our land. We have a 55 person farm team, and you’re not going to see that in other investment funds. Most investment funds are just buying up the land and then renting it out. Now we do have two thirds of our land that we rent out to very experienced organic farmers who farm in this way. So there is a lot of farmers who are already doing this. They do a great job at it, and they need the land now. Why don’t they do it on their own? If you’re a family farmer, and you are, let’s say you make $250,000 a year, which is about the average that a farmer is going to make great life for yourself, right? You need three years to take your land from conventional to tradition, or from traditional to regenerative farms, right, to organic farms. The USDA. It’s a very expensive process, and it takes a long time. Takes three years, you would not be able to grow food on that land in those three years, because you are transferring the land that would crush a local farmer, right? And if you’re a large ag company who makes a ton of money on corn and selling feedlot and ethanol and financial incentives aren’t there either, because in order to do this, we do 40 crops. That’s a large rotation. That’s a lot of different things and a lot of different things at market. And so that’s why you kind of see only 2% of these farms organic, because it costs money, it takes time, and it’s difficult to do. When you do it, you are going to be more profitable because the value of farmland is the value of the crop on the farmland, we also find that the value of that farmland is two other things that typically aren’t thought about. One, the quality of the soil, the better the soil, the better you’re going to be able to do farming there, the better yield you’re going to get, the better crops values you’re going to get. And also the one thing people forget is the water. So we my, my boss sometimes jokes, we we buy the land and we get the water for free, and people don’t realize how valuable that water is. So on most of our farms, we actually have water rights that are senior to the state of California or to the states that which we operate, which means that we draw water before the state does. We have very, very old water rights. That is really important when you’re trying when, especially in a state like California, where water can sometimes be throttled based on drought, and you wouldn’t want that to affect your farming operations. So we think of ourselves as very climate and weather forward in order to do that and and that results in roughly triple the rents. So $300 is the rent on a traditional farm, you’re going to get $800 you know, roughly 800 $850 on those rents after you’ve converted it to high quality organic farmland.

george grombacher 8:19
That is really interesting. So it takes three years to Trent to switch over from traditional, conventional farming to regenerative farming. Is that? Is that a government rule? Is that just what it takes to to to, for lack of a better term, fix the soil?

Ian Murphy 8:38
Yeah, you know it’s, it’s a great thing to say. People don’t realize this a lot. When you think about your government right? You think about government agencies, you think about government waste. You think about government red tape. There are agencies within the government that do some incredibly important things in our lives that we just don’t really give them credit for. The USDA is one of those organizations that works very hard to create a system of ideals, a system of protocols, in order to make sure that you are USDA organic, and why so that when you see that badge on your food, you can believe in it, and why you need to believe in that badge? Why is that so important? So 80% of people in the US have glyphosate roundup in their urine, right? Why do 80% of people have that in their blood, if only 2% of people work in agriculture, because they’re getting it through their food when you’re getting poison and pesticides. And you can see a recent Guardian article was great about this. You can look at look up Apple peels in The Guardian but you they now say you even have to peel your apples, because even if you peel them, you’re still going to get a layer underneath where you’re you’re going to end up getting a little bit of poison or pesticide with it, and that’s not a good thing. We want to make sure that people are eating clean food, and we’re not really sure what that Roundup is doing to people. People, and so I’m pretty sure what it’s doing. What’s that

george grombacher 10:04
I said? I’m pretty sure I know what it’s doing. Yeah, you

Ian Murphy 10:07
can, you can. You can definitely make that leap. When you eat non organic food, when you serve it to your children and you serve it to yourself, you just have to know that you are ingesting pesticides with that. Why? Because pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer have to be used in order to maximize those yields. Now we use compost. We use no pesticides, no herbicides. So those types of things where you’re using all organically approved, USDA approved, and the government really needs to be the check for us, because it’s government. Is what we all choose to do together. And I think that all of us have chosen, hey, we want to eat clean food that’s good for us, and the USDA protects, protects that label. So yeah, all of our farms, they’ll be approved by the they are approved by the USDA after that three year process. They’re very much involved throughout that process, there’s testing that goes from the soil to the plant life to the soil biodiversity that they’re testing all the way through. And when they have reached that, that critical threshold, and they have to prove that for a three year period. So

george grombacher 11:14
excellent. That makes a ton of sense. It is pretty scary about the whole glyphosate thing, so it’s obviously a conversation for another for another day you are farmland. LP is the largest investment fund that is focused on this. Now, most investors want return on investment, and you have a three year down period where you put the money in, when you’re purchasing a new farm, where you’re not going to get anything out of it. I’m sure that it costs a lot of money to convert that as well. So not only do you not have money coming in, but you’re also putting money into it, which is what investment is. So mean, thanks for doing that, and just tell me a little bit more about that. Tell me about your ethos, about the your desire to do good, but also make money, and balancing that,

Ian Murphy 12:08
sure. So let’s take just a random six year period. Right? Your farm makes x over that six year period, so after six years, you have 6x right now, let’s say your farm. Let’s take that same six year period, and in that first year you don’t farm right, and then the three years you make zero, so no x, 0x 0x 0x now at the end of that three years, you’re making 3x right, because you’re now able to plant, you’re now able to triple those rents. Now let’s see, even if it’s 2x right? Well, 3x times 3x times 3x or 3x plus 3x plus 3x in those final three years is 9x so you had six, and now you have nine. Extrapolate that another 10 years, and you can see how that J curve works. So the barrier of entry here is you need money to make money. This is not something that if you don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, it’s going to be rather difficult for you to do this, if you do and you know how to play the long game, as our founder, Craig wishner determined in 2009 when he created farmland. LP, that if we are to do this, and we have those numbers coming off the back end of the model, which we’ve now seen through fund one, that this is going to be a very promising exercise. I think the second thing people need to know is that two things with farmland, one, farmland outperforms other assets class. If you go back to 1990 you looked at the s, p, you looked at bonds, you look at real estate, it’s going to outperform that. And you can go to our our LinkedIn, and see those charts. We’ve we’ve got that all up there. So when you’re outperforming those other asset classes, you’re getting better value on the land, right? And so the real estate values are going up. I think that other people look at stability within an investment. And if you look at farmland as just real estate, like it is so commercial real estate’s another form multifamily housing. If you take all three of those markets, they’re all about the same size, about 3.8 trillion. And if you look at the $3.8 trillion farming market versus commercial real estate or multi family housing. You look at the debt that’s on that sector, you know, 80% debt in commercial real estate. So if something goes wrong, that’s that’s a leveraged position. Multi family, you’re looking at 50% debt, 40 to 50% debt, and on farmland at 13% debt. So I think that when you think about the process in which you’re going to make money off the land, and then you’re going to look at land appreciation, you’re going to see positive results there. Finally, it’s supply and demand. Four acres of farmland disappears every minute. So I don’t know how long we’ve been on the phone here, 20 minutes or so. 80 acres gone. And the demand the population is going up. Where is it going? It’s disappearing to urban development. It’s disappearing to just people getting out of the farming business and land being transferred over for other reasons. Sometimes private equity groups are buying up that farmland to expand cities. It’s the natural progression of civilization, and that’s been happening for 22 years. Consistently, it’s been going at that rate of four acres a minute, according to the USDA Farm and land and farms reports that come out every single year. So that’s a if your supply is going down by four acres a minute, and the demand for food is going up, and your the value of your investment is based on the value of food and its demand, then you’re going to have a positive return at the end, which is why, if you see the curves, you’ll see farmland outperforms. It’s just a traditionally very difficult asset to invest in. There’s not ETFs everywhere. The ETFs that are out there. You do have to see what’s in there. What are the holdings within that ETF sometimes that’s not the most transparent thing. So you just want to be really careful. Who am I investing with? What type of farmland am I investing in? And is it in Iowa, Texas, California, Washington, Oregon, and if so, what’s the trend for those farmland and that farmland in that place? You know, we know that the climate’s changing. We know that the growing regions are changing. The corn growing region specifically is moving about 25 miles north every year. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s 250 miles over 10 years. Now that means in Texas, they’re growing a lot less corn, and in Canada, they’re growing a lot more corn. So you can see how things change. So I think as as you’re making investment decisions, as you’re looking for the value of something, you have to look at it from a lot of different factors.

george grombacher 16:58
Yeah, well, it certainly makes sense. The 53% of all farms growing corn and soy. Do you see that remaining steady, or is that going to be decreasing?

Ian Murphy 17:12
Is that not at all? That’s a great question. It would be very difficult to change big agricultural activity without policy changes, without continuing to see demand at the end of the day, farmers are growing food to feed people or to feed markets, right? There’s a demand for whatever they’re doing, and that demand has been fulfilled and and we can pretty much say we kind of know how much food people are going to eat. The people who distribute blueberries, they’re watching that pretty carefully, so they know that how much needs to be built. We aren’t eating more corn, but how we feed our animals and how we fuel our cars is and so we need to think about how we treat our animals. We need to think about what we put in our vehicles. As people continue to make sound decisions, not just for their pocketbooks, but for the planet and for further their fellow citizens, we see the trends moving in a way that you would probably typically see those types of farming operations maybe begin to decrease, and we certainly hope that our way of farming continues to expand. There’s been also wonderful movies, like the folks that kiss the ground and others that have built some incredible documentaries. Common Ground is another one that talk about this movement, and it really is a movement. It really is a an opportunity for us to all say, Okay, I’m going to make good decisions about what I put in my body, and that will make the market make good decisions about how they want to advance their farming practices and how we want to grow our food and distribute it to our people.

george grombacher 18:56
We vote with our dollars. Yeah, civilization

Ian Murphy 18:58
isn’t going to make it one day without food? That’s a crisis situation. So there’s a reason why we grow so much, why we have excess supply.

george grombacher 19:11
Got it Well, I think that this is really exciting, and I appreciate you laying it all out for us. Thanks for coming on. Where can people learn more about you, and where can they learn about farmland? LP, for people who want to invest. How does that work?

Ian Murphy 19:25
Yeah, so it’s for accredited investors. So you have to be an accredited individual. So you can check what the what the guidelines are for your accredited you can just look that up. If you work with a wealth advisor and Ria, then talk to them about it. They can get in touch. And actually, the thresholds for investment are a little different. Little different if you work with a wealth advisor, and the best place to go is farmland lp.com you can also email us anytime at IR at farmland lp.com and I encourage people to go to our YouTube channel at farmland LP, or our LinkedIn or. Or your preferred social we put a lot of great charts up there. We put a lot of great videos up there. And every two weeks, our farmers do a video about what’s happening on the farm in the last two weeks. So we like to share with people, here’s how, hey guys, here’s the corn we’re growing. Because we grow sweet corn, people like to eat it. People eat all our sweet corn. But and, and we do all sorts of other great things. So we kind of show people how to farm in this way, and and give people kind of behind the scenes look at what farming is actually like. And I think it’s really eye opening. And if people are interested, we hope you reach out excellent

george grombacher 20:35
Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, so Ian your appreciation. Share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas. Go to farmland. Lp.com check out everything that they are working on. Check out their YouTube channel. Check them out on LinkedIn. And I love the idea or the reality that you have farmers giving updates on what’s going on with the farm. I think that that’s super cool. Inside baseball, well inside farming, that I’d certainly be curious about. So I look forward to checking that out. And if you are an accredited investor, and what Ian was talking about resonated, check out the investment opportunities. If you’re working with a financial advisor, ask them if they can help you get involved with farmland. LP as well. Thanks again, Ian.

Ian Murphy 21:20
Thank you, George,

george grombacher 21:23
yeah Till next time, remember do your part by doing your best. You.

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.

george grombacher 0:01
Kristian Hansen is the jeans guy had slow he and his team are redefining what it means to build companies through community with zero ad spend and 100,000 person waitlist, they are starting a slow Fashion Revolution. Welcome, Christian.

Kristian Hansen 0:17
Hey, thanks very much for having me. Appreciate it.

george grombacher 0:19
Yeah, excited to have you on, tell us a little about your personal last more about your work, why you do what you do?

Kristian Hansen 0:26
Sure. I mean, I’m kind of the definition of a serial entrepreneur kind of always been that way. He just kind of jumping from project to project kind of my whole life. And so, you know, startups and building things has kind of always been something that makes me feel like me. And so, you know, really, this project kind of happened completely by accident. And it’s, you know, kind of just a byproduct of, you know, many different projects and many years of work that’s kind of just, you know, blossomed into to what we’re doing today. So that’s, that’s kind of my little in a nutshell.

george grombacher 1:01
Appreciate that. So, from project to project, slow, just kind of happens. Tell me more about that.

Kristian Hansen 1:10
Sure. Yeah. So I mean, I was in the fashion industry, I first I was a hockey player originally, and I had a nasty injury ended up not being able to play hockey anymore, as usually, that’s kind of how those stories and, and ended up moving into, into fashion just to something like didn’t want to sit there and do nothing. My agent at the time recommended, you know, hey, talk to this person, just get a job, just get moving again, get back into life. And so I did, and I took a job in the fashion industry working for a big fast fashion company, because I didn’t really know very much at the time. And, you know, I kind of discovered some pretty horrible things. It’s a very broken industry, very heavily polluting industry. It’s, you know, a giant machine built on a lot of exploitation of people. And so I couldn’t really be a part of that. And I thought, you know, I really do like fashion, but I want to do it right. And so I started working on sustainable fashion brands, from that point, kind of just jumped one ship to the next. And one day in the pandemic, I accidentally went out and bought a pair of jeans at a thrift shop just for myself. And they turned out to be women’s jeans. And I made a tick tock about it saying, Hey, ladies of the world as this literally, this is what you’re expected to wear every day. The pockets are horrible, the material is itchy, they don’t fit. Well, this is the standard. And it went mega viral. And that was really the beginning of slow or I went, Hey, I’m already in this industry. I know how to make things. I know manufacturers. I could fix this. And it just exploded since that it’s now been a year we’ve made 11,000 pairs of jeans. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s been pretty rock and roll.

george grombacher 2:51
So you’re in this thrift store for former hockey player. So I imagine you’re a bigger person. Yeah. And you’re like, these are cool jeans, you just kind of didn’t think too much about it. I’ll grab these because they’re probably inexpensive.

Kristian Hansen 3:06
Totally, I’m six foot three. So there’s not a chance I ever considered. Oh, okay, that’s my inseam. I know that’s my NC and these will fit that definitely men’s jeans. And you know, it’s still to this day, I tell this story to fashion people. And they’re like, what you found you found jeans that fit you

george grombacher 3:22
crazy? Funny. You’re like, wait a minute, what’s with these pockets and everything else. So

Kristian Hansen 3:30
I dropped my phone that was those that would basically was so frustrating. I had no social media following anything. I was just walk into the train station, trying to put my phone in my pocket, just like jamming it in the pocket. And I’m like, What is going on with these things. And I just dropped my phone and it breaks the case. And I’m like, Oh my God, these are women’s jeans. And this is what I’ve heard about this is that elusive tail that I’ve heard about. I’m now living it. I need to I need to rant about this. And that that was really what exploded. From there.

george grombacher 3:57
How funny. So I am interested in a better design on women’s jeans. And I’m also interested I think people would be in, in the non sustainable aspects of the fashion industry as it was before you decided to put a dent into it.

Kristian Hansen 4:15
Sure, yeah. I mean, the biggest issue with fashion, whether it’s women’s fashion, or men’s fashion, or anything along those lines is we’ve really we’ve had this kind of shift in like a manufacturing kind of a paradigm shift per se, kind of in the early 2000s When fast fashion was really born. And you know, clothing collections used to be released with the seasons. You know, you probably very familiar with summer collections and fall collections and winter collections. That was the standard for, you know, 100 years, if not more. And all of a sudden in the early 2000s with kind of like the beginning of the rise of social media and kind of just media and the internet in general. These brands realized we don’t actually have to hold it to four collections per year. We can do a collection every month. And then it started in a collection every month, and then it was every week and ever, you know, multiple times a week. And with that kind of shift came this shift in consumer behavior where it’s like, oh, I can buy this. And I only need to wear it a couple of times, because it’s cheap. And next week, there’s going to be new things for me to buy anyway. And so, as a whole, you know, that’s really what’s affected everything from denim, whether it’s women’s denim, or men’s denim, you’re probably seeing the quality of clothing getting worse over time, the price is staying the same or increasing over time. And it comes down to this mass standardization model, they’re trying to get as few sizes as possible, as few options as possible, pump out hundreds of 1000s of the same thing, put them in stores around the world and basically hope they work. And as a result is created a massive waste problem, because we have a hundreds of 1000s of garments around the world that are not being sold that are being sold in the wrong markets that aren’t fitting people well, return rates are through the roof on ecommerce sites, because things just don’t fit properly. And it doesn’t really matter because this fast fashion machine that’s that’s actually music to its ears, because people are gonna just keep on buying. And so that really, you know, is what motivates us to you know, call ourselves slow, you know, we are slow fashion are the opposite. We’re trying to take it back to the way that things used to be made where you would almost, you know, commission a piece, you’d go to a tailor, you would go to a seamstress and be like, hey, I need a suit, I got a wedding this summer, these are my measurements, make me a suit. And the tailor would say, Hey, I got this fabric, I got that fabric. And that was really inspirational piece for us was let’s bring it back to the way it used to be and make sure that every pair of jeans that’s leaving our factory, it already has a home. And so we’re making those jeans specifically to that person to their preferences to their sizes, we know they’re not going to be returned for a sizing issue. And we’re keeping those you know that waist low.

george grombacher 6:52
I love it. That makes a ton of sense. So I’m just going to talk about my personal experience as just me, I would buy a pair of jeans and keep it for a decade. Are women is? Is my experience common with men and with women?

Kristian Hansen 7:11
I would say you know, for good pieces. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the biggest issue really, for women’s jeans in the last about 1015 years has been the trend has been going towards like basically thinner and thinner and higher stretch fabrics, which you know, they’re very polyester based, they’re not designed to last, and denim went from being this thing, 100 years ago that, you know, miners would wear, you know, because of how rigid it was and how, you know, you could wear it in the fields. And you could wear it at the bar. And you know, it’s like tried and true, you can have that, you know, denim jacket for 25 years, we’ve now taken it and just basically created this version of fabric that looks like denim, but isn’t denim. And that’s really what’s kind of infiltrated the market and has created this kind of longevity problem. So one of the key things that we’re trying to do is go back to that using real denims from real mills that lasts a long time and don’t have that kind of throwaway effect.

george grombacher 8:07
And how hard is that? Is it just easy to start making real damn again?

Kristian Hansen 8:13
No. It’s been really, really hard. It’s, it’s, by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It’s, you know, you think about pants, you’re like, Okay, it’s easy, I go to a store or buy them, I take them off the shelf, there are hundreds of decisions that go into a single pair of pants. And unless you’re like on that side of it, you never think about any of it. And you know, there are dozens of pages of just technical information to make a single size, a single size of pants, you know, not even getting into engineering the textiles, like we’re talking about real denim or not. And so it’s really complicated. But you know, it’s been about we’re about a year in now. And we finally got the hang of it. Now we’re building our own manufacturing facility so we can take more control over things and really kind of dive even deeper into it. But ya know, it’s hard.

george grombacher 9:06
Like, oh, that’s why they just make the cookie cutter stuff.

Kristian Hansen 9:11
Yeah, exactly.

george grombacher 9:13
Do you have that moment are like, Oh my gosh, this is going to be too hard. I’m going to quit. did. Maybe you’re thinking that right now?

Kristian Hansen 9:23
No, you know what, I think it’s much the, you know, the despair of some of my partners. I think I’m just far too headstrong for that. I think it goes back to like sports and you know, and whatnot. I you know, I I have such strong belief in the team that we’ve created and the product and the vision and the need for it because of you know, this community that we’ve grown and I get DMS and emails and messages from people every day who are on both sides of the coin to say thank you I finally have jeans that fit me and also please make this please make that please do this. So there’s such strong consumer demand. It’s like okay, At times the socks, I’m going to figure it out because we got to make it work.

george grombacher 10:06
So the, that first viral video of you in the lamenting about the the the the plight of women having to wear a crappy jeans that that gave you the idea? And he said, Okay, I think that there’s really something here that we can tap into from a community standpoint. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Kristian Hansen 10:29
Yeah, totally. You know, at that point, it was like, Okay, what is that? What a fashion brands do? And why is it not working? And the first thing kind of came to me was fashion brands. It’s not a two way conversation. It’s a one way conversation. It’s always been it’s, this is our new collection, look at the celebrity that we’ve paid to endorse it, look at it on the mannequin in the store, you want this. And I think that was really the root of the problem, because you have 1000s of people saying we don’t want this, we want that. And so from the beginning, it was like, you know, what, if we’re going to do this, this has to be like completely, like open source based on what people actually want us to make. And let’s just ask for ideas. And so I put together a Google form on a really bad website, linked it to my tic tock and just started making tic TOCs. And in the first three months, we had over 700,000 form submissions. Wow, it was ridiculous. It was like we, at one point, I had to figure out, I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the notifications on my phone. And my phone kept crashing, because basically, every minute there was so many form submissions, I couldn’t get into the phone. It was ridiculous. And it was like, Wow, this means something to people. And it’s so simple. It’s pants, you know, but that was the core of it. It was, look, there’s this huge demand, let’s listen, and let’s just build this feedback loop that doesn’t exist in this industry. I’ll take your suggestions, I’ll show you your suggestions. If you like it, I’ll make it. And that’s really the loop that we’ve been building now for the last year, and then the loop that we’ve been operating. And that’s the core of kind of the direction that we’re trying to hold moving forward as well.

george grombacher 12:06
It makes sense. It’s one of those good problems when he can’t access your phone. Right? Is it? Is it? Is it genes? That that is there something special about genes that this is resonating because of or is it just just the industry that we’ve been talking about?

Kristian Hansen 12:25
This little bit of both, you know, jeans, I think there is something special about jeans. And you know, if you just look at it from an economics perspective, there’s something special about jeans, jeans have transcended culture, you know, around the world, you know, there are almost a dozen markets in the world wear jeans are a billion dollar industry, you know, everywhere from you know, you go all the way to the Far East, in Japan, they love their jeans in India, they love their jeans in the States, the classic Levi’s have been there for 100 years. And you know, every single country on Earth that you go to, if you walk around, you will find people wearing jeans. And it’s become such a staple of fashion, it’s the most popular garment on Earth. And I think that there’s a lot of people that, you know, they romanticize the idea, especially with the origin story, you know, back and cowboys and the Wild West, and you know, that whole Gold Rush kind of era, and then into the 70s and 80s, where, you know, it was a staple in disco and movies and pop culture and denim has hand in hand been a part of pop culture around the world for 100 years. And so I think there’s a lot of people that felt left out, and they felt left out for function, they felt less, you know, left out for fit. And all of a sudden, I’m here saying, hey, you’ve never been able to find a pair of those things that everyone else has, I can make them for you. And that, you know, was something that no one had ever said to them before. And that was, I think the core of it. And so it is larger than just jeans. And we are already branching out into more things in fashion. And there’s a lot of problems to be fixed in fashion. But there’s something special about denim.

george grombacher 14:02
Yeah, yeah, that’s really well said. Jeans are a billion dollar industry in 12. Markets. Is that what you said?

Kristian Hansen 14:09
Correct? Yeah, we produce it’s 100 and roughly $20 billion industry worldwide. We produce about 3 billion pairs a year. It’s it’s crazy.

george grombacher 14:21
Got it. So getting back to creating a really quality denim. I’d love to learn a little bit more about that.

Kristian Hansen 14:33
Yeah. I mean, there’s many stages and you got to kind of do it right, you can pick right you can get really great fabric from a really great mill and put it together really badly and you still get a bad pair of jeans. And you know, that’s what we see a lot of right now in fast fashion, fast fashion. There’s a lot of companies that are using great denim, maybe you’ll see if you walk around to one of these big brands to see the tag they’ll say like organic cotton or you know this certification and that certification and in some cases they’re out Actually, they’re they’re legit. They’re really good fabrics. But they take those fabrics and they ship them to Bangladesh. And they have them made by children in sweatshops and the quality ends up being horrible. And you can’t call that a sustainable garment. You can’t call that a good end end garment. And so really, for us, it was about figuring out okay, how do we not cut corners at every single stage? And how do we add an experience to something that typically isn’t something that you experience the experience for most people buying pants, you pull a random person off the side of the road? You say, Do you enjoy buying pants? Most people say no. Most people are like, I don’t like buying pants are hard to find they don’t fit well. I don’t like buying them online. Why there’s just it’s a bad experience. Why is it bad experience? So going back to your question, what is quality denim, I think it comes down to that whole experience, it comes down to fit, and making sure that you have a size set that works for everybody for all body types and a new way to collect those sizes. And to get those people sized. It’s making sure that you’re using quality fabrics and quality construction that you’re making them from people who are qualified and you know, are working in ethical working conditions so that they’re happy, the happier the people in your factory, the better your teams are going to be. And then not cutting corners, and all of these different areas, whether that’s buttons and metal where and all the little pieces and accessories that make a product great. And so for us, it’s really just been about you know, not trying to cut corners, and people think I’m insane. I walk into these these different factories and showrooms and mills. And they’re always trying to show us the cheapest stuff possible. Because most people who show up, they’re like, I want the cheapest garment possible, get it on the shelf for five or $6. And I’m here like, show me your best stuff. And they think I’m crazy. And you know, so it’s it’s, you know, in a nutshell, long story long. It’s really just about making sure that every single stage that you can possibly put the thought into you do. And that’s really at the core of what we’re trying to be as a brand.

george grombacher 16:52
Beautiful. Well, Kristen, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Or can they get a pair of slow jeans?

Kristian Hansen 16:59
You can come on our website at slow jeans.co SL o jeans.co. All of my socials are there as well. My personal email is there as well. If you’d like to ever reach out feel free. I love having conversations with people about anything. So yeah, everything’s right there and our genes are right there as well.

george grombacher 17:17
Awesome. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did show Christian your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas and loves wearing jeans. Go to slow jeans dot C O S O S LOJEA M s.co and pick up your pair. Thanks, Ken Christian. Yeah, thanks

Kristian Hansen 17:38
for having me. Appreciate it.

george grombacher 17:39
Till next time. Remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.