Being Raw: A Conversation with Jim Smith on Leadership, Mental Fatigue, and Innovation in Animal Agriculture

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Coffee in the Barn, we sit down with Jim Smith, a Senior Swine Nutritionist, Product Development Expert, and Technical Sales Leader with over 25 years of experience in the animal agriculture industry. Jim has played a pivotal role in launching innovative feeding solutions, leading technical sales teams, and mentoring the next generation of industry professionals. Now, he’s taking on a new challenge as the host of Patio Ponderings, a podcast where he shares candid reflections on leadership, agriculture, and the industry's evolving challenges.

Together, we dive into the raw and unfiltered realities of working in animal agriculture, including the mental fatigue that often goes unspoken, the pressures of career transitions, and the balancing act of maintaining resilience while staying true to ourselves.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔️ The hidden toll of mental fatigue in agriculture and how to recognize it
✔️ Why professionals in the industry often feel pressured to mask their struggles
✔️ How Jim is redefining his career with the launch of Patio Ponderings
✔️ The importance of authentic leadership and embracing career reinvention
✔️ The role of Animistic in shaping the future of animal agriculture

🔹 Guest Spotlight: Jim Smith

• Senior Swine Nutritionist & Technical Sales Leader
• 25+ years of experience in product development and market innovation
• Farmer specializing in crops and sheep production
• Host of the new podcast Patio Ponderings

🎧 Tune in to hear an honest and thought-provoking conversation on the realities of agriculture, leadership, and mental resilience.

Resources & Links:

🔗 Follow Jim Smith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-smith-10a3a52b/
🎙️ Listen to Patio Pondering: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2429369
🌱 Learn more about Animistic: animistic.co

💬 Join the Conversation!
What are your thoughts on mental fatigue in agriculture? Connect with us on social media and share your takeaways using #CoffeeInTheBarn #BeingRaw #PatioPondering #Leadership

📩 Want more insights? Visit our website and check out our blogs. 

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Transcript

Introduction – Casey Bradley
 0:00:00
 Welcome to Coffee in the Barn, where every cup tells a story. With a rotating lineup of hosts, we invite you to join us as we explore the diverse challenges and triumphs of modern life and the heart of agriculture. From the fields to the classroom, from innovators to everyday visionaries, each episode brings a fresh perspective and a new voice. So brew yourself a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's uncover the stories that shape our lives, our farms, and our communities. 

Casey Bradley
 0:00:40

Well, we are back with Coffee in the Barn and why not start it off with one of my mentors, friends, colleagues in the industry, Dr. Jim Smith, who is now officially having his own podcast. So I'm curious if I influenced that a little bit, but it is so happy to have the host and creator of Patio Ponderings on Coffee in the Barn with Morgan and Casey.

Jim Smith
 0:01:08
 Great, thank you, Casey. I never thought I would join the ranks of esteemed colleagues like you that were producing and hosting the podcast.

Casey Bradley
 0:01:23
 Yes, and as always with Coffee in the Barn, if you see or feel like it's a little disjointed, it's because we're working moms and working parents. and farmer and professional so you never know what's going to come through the door at our house. So Morgan, update, she's back. We took a little break because who's sitting next to you? I know we can't see her on camera. 

Morgan Hart

Oh yes, we ended up having a little girl the end of October so this is my first official full week back to work after the holidays. 

Jim Smith

Congratulations. 

Morgan Hart
 0:02:01
 Thank you.. 

Casey Bradley

So yeah, we do have reasons that we take breaks, but this was spur of the moment. Morgan and I were not to take a pun from your podcast pondering what we wanted to talk about in 2025. And we read your post on LinkedIn today about mental fatigue, and we chatted yesterday and you made a couple comments, and I think you're strong enough for me to say this in public. If not, we'll edit it out.

 But obviously you were talking about mental fatigue and you don't realize how much of a toll it takes on you. And right now you're going through some mental fatigue of, you know, finding your next career moves. And some of the comments was maybe you made some comments like age, salary range as being a hindrance, but also you made a comment about social media posts and maybe being somewhat negative. And I wanted to put the two together because I think I'm the type of person that wears my heart on the sleeve. So you made it really a point of how do we pick out on mental fatigue with our colleagues? And Morgan's got some good stuff to talk about, too. And so I thought I would really kind of talk about that and how that maybe even changes our perception and what are some tells that we can help our colleagues who have mental fatigue.

Jim Smith
 0:03:33
 Well, mental fatigue is one of those things that falls into that pariah of things to think about. Even though we talk about mental health in agriculture and it's not passe to talk about anymore, we don't know sometimes how to recognize mental challenges. It's really easy to see the homeless person that's got schizophrenic tendencies, tics and things like that.
 But are there times where you might see somebody that's just kind of got that thousand yard gaze sitting at their desk? And I think back to one of the times where I went to the corporate office and I would go monthly, quarterly, depending on how it was needed and there's an empty desk called the hotel. So that's Dr. Smith's desk for the week. It was a Wednesday morning. I'd been there, so that my third day, just partial day in the office, and it was about 9.30, 10 o'clock. This desk was right across from our department secretary. She was towards the end of her career, very perceptive. But something happened in that office, and it was the 930, 10 o'clock activity that happens in an office.
 
 People were talking about what they're going to do for lunch, or talking about what meeting was coming up, and they just said plethora of noises around the office. This was third day in an office setting that I hadn't been in. I was either traveling with sales people or as I joked in my terra level executive suite alone where I can control my atmosphere and she looked at me and says are you okay and I'm like no I'm not she said I'm just overwhelmed and it was the accumulation of three days of thinking and and your brain doing things I wasn't used to and then you add to it that noise of an office atmosphere and she was not fortunately she recognized it because I was, I had that thousand-yard stare. I could feel my heart rate going up, but I didn't know how to do it. But thankfully, she saw it and said, hey, let's go for a walk.  And so we just walked and sat and drank some coffee together and took ten minutes to just recharge my brain for just a moment, just hit that reset button.

Casey Bradley
 0:05:57
 Wow. Well, and that's the problem when we sit in our executive suites that we joke about, Jim, is, you know, working from home, people don't see you. They can't always recognize you in that mental fatigue. Because, I mean, I get mental fatigue every day. And this was the first year that I wasn't excited for the new year.  Like, I don't have set goals. I haven't really planned it out and had a go-get-em attitude. And I said, oh, well, I'm just going to act like it's another day and I it just hit me when you wrote about that in our conversation yesterday in different things is like I think I have mental fatigue.

Jim Smith
 0:06:43
 mm-hmm what surprised me with you working at home not having that stimulation or the the exercise of the face-to-face contact, the tactile contact with colleagues that sometimes might be able to moderate that mental fatigue. Think about, if you were, I saw a picture of you sitting at a laptop with a white coat, I think it was a scale or something.  I'm sure that you had moments of fatigue, of mental exhaustion, as it were, but I would envision that you could turn to your colleague and make a joke or do something to kind of take your mind off of it. When we're isolated in our silos of our own exec suite and we have this task to do and this task to do and we just do it, it makes us really productive, but at what expense?

Morgan Hart
 0:07:42
 Yeah, I think that's at least unique with like, my at home situation with my husband home some days of the week. It's nice to be able, because I don't have any colleagues to like, unless I pick up the phone and say, oh, this just happened, or how do I solve this problem? I do my best thinking when I'm talking out loud, and it's hard to do that when you're talking to yourself, like to get ideas, go and talk into yourself. And so I'll just like walk out to the living room and talk to my husband and be like, and then the ideas start coming or something, or I'll go take a walk with my kids or play on the floor with them or something.  It's nice to have kind of a little break here and there.

Jim Smith
 0:08:23
 And it's not hard, it's not easy to see, as Casey mentioned, the mental fatigue.  It's one thing to see somebody sweating and breathing heavy and sitting down after splitting a cord of wood or stacking a thing of feet, as I mentioned in my post today. But what are the signs of mental fatigue? And if you're experienced like Casey, you and I are, we can hide that.

Casey Bradley
 0:08:50
 Well, we hide it almost I think to our detriment and you know, I think a lot of the crutch that I will say my mental fatigue is my I'll go on Instagram and I'm not sure everybody knows but I do I am in my craft room today You can see all my inks behind me and I'm very creative. So So Instagram or Pinterest I use to break my mental fatigue during the day because I look for something creative and fun and like, oh, I'd like to make that. And so that's how I break mine throughout the day.  But it was really interesting even having a conversation with a client over Christmas break. I said I took some extra time off. not up to date with your project. And I mostly work with Europeans here in the US. And he's like, you shouldn't really worry about it. I mean, what is it about Americans and thinking they have to work all the time?

Jim Smith

 Well, we embody that. You can think about what we've done across our career and how we've responded to our roles as tech managers and respond to what our salesmen needed, our customers needed. I mean, it seems like a lot of times people in our technical roles need to be on point 24 hours a day. 

Casey Bradley

Curious, with Morgan being younger in her career than we are, how is that changing with the younger generation?  Are you, because you've talked about in the past you're not on it 24 7 a day where Jim and I? Probably have been in our careers. 

Morgan Hart

I Would say I'm probably more on it than my husband would like me to be Like I usually don't my phone's usually with me even when I was on maternity leave my phone was I didn't shut my work phone off And so like if a call came and I helped to take care of it.  So I would say I'm, I definitely don't have like a hard five o'clock stop, like I'm not gonna answer my phone after five o'clock. But I think that's just my personality that like, if something needs to get done, I'm just gonna take care of it because it's easier to just do it now or acknowledge it and then table it for tomorrow. But what's been interesting is so you know I've been off for the last eight weeks on maternity leave. I've still kind of kept tabs on different projects going on and stuff but I didn't realize how much like my brain had shut off while I was on maternity leave until I like you know Monday was like so I was I worked last Thursday Friday but it was like the week of New Year's so it was pretty quiet. But come Monday my phone was ringing, I had calls, like things were just coming in non-stop. And I went to bed Monday night and I like couldn't sleep. I was just like thinking about the things I had to do tomorrow and you know like all the stuff that had been, I don't want to say in the woodworks, but kind of buried that I had that I hadn't had to think about, you know, for the last eight weeks, you know, it took me probably till yesterday afternoon where my brain kind of like came back down to like a calm state where I could like fully function without like my heart rate going up or like getting stressed out about something because I had so much information that I needed to just like work its way back up to the front of my brain so that it was easily accessible.

 
 And I, from what I remember, I don't remember that happening prior to with my first two kids after I came back from maternity leave. So that was kind of an adjustment, I guess, you know, like I didn't sleep very well Monday night, Tuesday night, just trying to get back into the swing of things. But thankfully, we're back in the swing of things now. But it took a couple days.

Jim Smith
 0:12:50
 I think, Casey, that we being in ag affects that quite a bit. I think about my cohort of friends that I talk to on a regular basis that have children the same age. So I'm talking 30 down to high schoolers. My son and my daughter work in ag and they respond after hours.  In fact, over Christmas I watched my daughter respond to a couple of things. But they're ag-related and it seems to be more time-pressing, or we think it seems to be more time-pressing. I have friends that are in automotive, accounting, non-ag, non-life sciences, life sciences and they shut their phone off at five and go home. They don't have a care about it. It's what it is.
 
 I think being an ag is part of that because we have the immediacy of, hey, it's Saturday, we're out of feed, we need feed. I need an answer because we need feed on Monday or I got sick animals. There seems to be an urgency that we put on ourselves because we're an ag.

Casey Bradley
 0:14:04
 I think so and it was really interesting because obviously I work, I represent mostly European companies today in the US in ag or pet, ag and pet mostly European companies and some of them work all the time and I can see the exhaustion on them because they're a global manager and they said, you know, I'm used to work in early morning to late at night, depending on what time zone. The person reporting to me is right. And I can see exhaustion on that person. And then I had an interesting call.

 You know, he shuts his phone off at 11 and goes to bed. Right. right? And answers me at six in the morning, which is great because by the time at work I have all the answers I need. But yeah, he has got another colleague that answers at 11 at night. So I think it's individual basis. It's in ag for sure. But I'm just curious on how we help people navigate this and expectations of, you know, so we talked about burnout and I think it's more mental fatigue in my mind because and then, you know, how do we handle this moving forward? Because there's a lot of disgruntled information and Morgan's a millennial. She's not a zillennial or however we call it. So your younger children and my children, you know, of not wanting to work and having that mental pressure. And I think it will be in the next 10 years, a hard battle for ag is how we get through that. And I kind of, I just think some Morgan, what are some Jim mentioned a good example in his career? What are some signs that you're under mental fatigue?

Morgan Hart

Your night yeah I would say at least for me I can't go to sleep I guess probably like I cherish my sleep like I go to bed at 9 and I wake up at like 730 whenever the kids are newborn she's huh so far she's been a really good sleeper well you don't think she goes that at like 9 and wakes up at 4 or 5 o'clock to eat and then goes back to sleep till like seven.

Jim Smith
 0:16:31
 So there's mothers out there that hate you right now.

Morgan Hart
 0:16:34
 I know. I'm counting my blessings right now. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm taking for what it is right now. But yeah, I think like my sleep is probably the first sign of like, I'm stressed out, I need to like, either take a mental health day or just do something. Where in that case, you know, I am just like up at night thinking about all the different things I need, I need to do. I've noticed that if I'm gone from home or I travel for an extensive amount of time, whether that's over one week or two weeks or whatnot, I can get burnt out pretty quick. For the most part, if I can control my travel, spread things out a little bit or at least make things manageable. So I've learned that over the last year or so. 

Casey Bradley

I think that perception one's feelings and why is it that we feel like we always have to share the the fake like life is great attitude?

Jim Smith

Are you doing the Vulcan mind trick and getting inside my brain.

Casey Bradley

 well I want to portray this because I think sometimes Jim, you and me both or other people were taken the wrong way. What I like about Jim Smith is he tells you how it is. And what you don't realize about Jim, that I feel like if I was in a battle, you'd be right by my side to the death. And that's the type of person you are and loyal and caring and But yet sometimes when you're real with people and raw Sometimes that's taken wrong because oh everything's great. Let's all just get real here. Everything's not great Right, everything's not great. Oh, no. You know, Jim doesn't have a job. Or he has a great podcast, but you know, you're looking for your job. The hog market sucks. Producers are going out of business.

Corn and soybean growers, you grow corn and soy. That's not very profitable from what I understand are looking so great for this year either. We're gonna have a lot more corn than soy because soy markets tanked, which just kills producers like you and my brother in the same region, right? You guys aren't far apart geographically. You know, it is challenging times right now in agriculture and the world. We see not just in ag, but tons of companies laying off the middle management. So jobs that you and I are qualified for or Morgan. We have lots of friends that don't have jobs. You know, we're telling all these kids to go get a Ph.D. and the more experienced people are losing out to young grads because we cost more money. So what, why do we have to put on this face when we're mentally fatigued or things aren't going right, like everything's just fine and dandy? Why can't we be raw with each other? What, what is it about, you know, we all know that we'll, we were all raised, the three sitting here, that we do whatever it takes to get the job done. It's agriculture. The animals need us, right? There's no excuse. There's no day off.

 There's a reason we answer the phone after hours, right? Because it could be an emergency. We don't have feed. We care about our animals. We care about our land. We have a job to do. We have a higher mission. Why do we always have to put on this rosy face that everything's okay when wake up, it's not. And nobody's talking about the rawness and the not being okay in ag today.

Jim Smith
 0:20:57
 Well, you bring up a point that I've talked or thought about the last – over the last four months of my daily postings on LinkedIn. You self-edit quite a bit. And I think that, oh, I can't say that because I said something negative last week, or I complained about leadership last week. And I found myself in the last week or so, and particularly on Monday, I woke up and told myself, I have to post something celebratory because it's been kind of Debbie Downer. What I think we struggle with when we try and be raw is the fatigue of being raw. And you don't want to be turned into you're always complaining.  You're always complaining. And one of the things that I found in sharing our challenges on our crop farm was when a colleague told me sitting at the bar at K-State's swine base several years ago saying, you've always got broken equipment. Well, I was just sharing throughout harvest, we had three good days and we broke this in the combine, we had another three good days and this broke in the combine. That was being raw, truthful, here's what happens. It was perceived as me complaining that we had old broken equipment, when in reality it was just sharing to be raw. So I don't know if the people that read our stuff are ready for us to be raw. And I've self-edited quite a bit over the past four months because, oh, shoot, what if a recruiter read me being, quote, unquote, raw about something? They take that as being a bad employee, being not mentally stable enough for this job, being not a mature. So I think there's a lot of second guessing that goes in and technical people like we are kind of have that bent for not wanting to offend. So I think that plays into our challenge to be raw.

Morgan Hart
 0:23:02
 I think there's a balance that and I don't it's probably a different balance for everyone. And it's I don't think anybody knows where the where the balance should land. I always focus on the positives like yes we need to acknowledge the negatives but if you're always looking for the negatives in your day or in your week that's all you're gonna see. You're not gonna see the positive side of things. So yes I know like you know Jim you've been on a unemployed for the last four months, but you have your patio pondering thing that has come out of it. You know, what on the positive side has, you've had time to focus on creating content and maybe focus on other family values or things that you maybe not had time for before. So, I'm sure you had, or I know you had a really good career prior to the last six months, you know, but this is just like a small snapshot bump in the road and you have lots of good years ahead of you.

Jim Smith
 0:24:12
 Oh, yeah, and I think that comes back to resiliency and the inherent optimism of agriculture. And I think back to a mural that was hanging on my college girlfriend's mother's kitchen. And it's, I can see it, I can't remember, but it was, to put a seed in the ground has faith and optimism. And that's, I mean, think about it, we're getting ready for lambing season. What are we going to have? I mean, are we going to have triplets? We're going to have, I mean, there's an optimism that you have to have being an ag, because put a seed in the ground and it turns into a corn plant. And my son talked about on his podcast this week that one of the things about ag, the lesson he got from ag was grit.

 0:25:07
 And as he explained it, I'm like, oh, okay. So I think there's a lot of lessons we have in ag that help us adapt. I think that we've gotten into these little silos of ourselves with working from home, being remote because it makes sense for me to be in northeast Indiana than elsewhere. or talking and particularly thinking about younger people in our industry, came up with three MLM, mentorship, leadership, and maturity.

Casey Bradley
 0:25:49
 No, I was –

Jim Smith
 0:25:50
 You should have all three of those.

Casey Bradley
 0:25:52
 Yes, and we don't do a good enough job at mentoring, and people like you and I have stepped up to do that, and there's others I see following suit to help that. I just wanted to get raw there for a minute because I start off my day so I have started the last I think four to six months with the 5 a.m. Club so I do 20 minutes of workouts 20 minutes of Bible study in 20 minutes of gratitude, which is prayer and gratitude. And I am very grateful because, you know, every day is a new day and new opportunity and I am optimistic. I just wanted to rip that off for the audience to feel what it means to be raw. Because when I read Jim's posts, I'm like, yeah, we can have great success. But there's always things that we have to overcome. And you know what about all following Jim's post for the last five years about ag is we have those really bad days, but you know what, we still pull through and we get the job done. And that is resilience, right? Because some weak people would just quit. I could run people off the farm easily. I purposely don't give them the gauntlet the first week to see if they're going to be able to survive, you know, make it. And I'd rather have them gone early than, you know, three months later, you know. So that's just kind of how I am. Here's what you got to do. Either you can handle it in the first week or you can't. And I just want to make sure people realize that it's okay to talk about the negativity and be honest about it and It's something you need to check in with yourself because you know I Call Jim. I check in on Jim. I call and check in on my friends and I I think that's something that we have to make sure we're doing for our remote friends or people we haven't heard in a while. Are you doing OK? Are you checking in? And, you know, because travel and trade show season, this is the time of year.  It's not just mental fatigue. We're actually under physical fatigue as well. of being out in a hotel room, in an airport, driving, all of that is physical as well. So I think it may not be feeding a nursery full of feed and going through two tons of feed bags of physical fatigue, but it's still, I think, that combination in our career.
 
 And I just really wanted to say, I'm not gonna be this glowing Casey. How do you help your people through it? And if you're having a bad day, I hope Casey is one of the people you call because I'm going to help you through it. If you don't have somebody like that, you have me. you know, my faith and gratitude that gets me through it. Grit, being an optimism and ag, right?  And, you know, I think Jim is, doesn't need to be a swine nutritionist anymore. Jim's got other talents. That is what I realized the last four years is I'm trained as a swine nutritionist, but that's not who Casey Bradley is anymore. 

Jim Smith
 0:29:41

Well, as you were talking about reaching out, helping somebody doesn't have to be grandiose. You don't have to turn it into, oh, I got to take them out to dinner. I got to do this. 

Morgan Hart

Grand gesture. 

Jim Smith

Yeah, I got three texts this week from friends that said, hey, I'm proud of you, or something like that. I got a Snapchat response from a young man in north central Kansas as he was moving snow that said, how you doing? Took him 30 seconds to do. So I think those little things to show that people are thinking about you can go a long ways as opposed to making it a big gesture. Oh, I'm worried about Casey. I should send her some flowers.
 
 Well, send Casey a text. How you doing? Thinking about you. I think about one of our cohorts that's in the same boat I'm in that's been in for over a year.  I'll send him a note on LinkedIn saying, hey, it's the end of the week. Hope you had a good week. Sometimes it's the small stuff that goes the furthest.

Morgan Hart
 0:30:48
 Yeah, for sure. 

Casey Bradley

It is and I but I wanted to make sure on Coffee in the Barn that I think we need to be real and raw. I think you know Jim I love your patio ponderings and it's a total change in Jim but I would also say just because a couple people Did not like you being raw mean you should not be raw at times. 

Jim Smith

0:31:20

Well, I'm gonna disagree with you Casey.
 It's not a no me that's always been there. But no, I self-edited I've yeah, we're like 25 years of the swine nutritionist. I've self-edited I haven't had the balls to call out somebody in a meeting except there's one time to Skippy Jackson and I shouldn't have done it the way you edit yourself yeah but but we but us typically as tech people and the way that our brains are wired as tech people we want to we're cautious and we don't call bullshit as much as we probably should yeah now I freedom of some of the bullshit.

Casey Bradley
 0:32:01
 In a nice way, in a nice way, Jim, it's okay.  I think you're being a little nice about it.

Jim Smith
 0:32:06
 My former bosses, if they're reading things on LinkedIn, they know I'm talking about them.

Casey Bradley
 0:32:10
 this reality and we're human and I don't hold anything against my former bosses anymore. I've let that go and I am thankful for every one of them being in my life, good, bad or indifferent, because they all taught me something and they helped me grow. Oh, and, you know, I've always wanted to write my book. So I did set a goal, everybody that I'm going to start writing my book. Nice. If you haven't seen me put as much energy on social media, it's because I'm saving that up, that creativity, for a book. But I never wanted to write it because I knew I didn't want to write it. It was so bitter. And now it's not bitterness. It's actually like, thank you for making me go through that. Thank you for making me feel marginalized. Thank you for making me feel not important or valued or not intelligent or you know my voice doesn't matter because I had that maturity right it took me 20 some years for that to understand that raw emotion I was feeling back then was right to feel, but it's also okay to forgive and use that to inspire others.

Jim Smith
 0:33:48
 Well, it's that regret of your past needs to stop being regret because the past made you who you are today.

Morgan Hart
 0:33:59
 Yeah.

Casey Bradley
 0:34:00
 There's like no more regrets. It's should I have done things differently? Should I have not said certain things? Or, oh yeah.

Jim Smith
 0:34:09
 But you said them, and here you are. 
 
 

Casey Bradley

0:34:14
 Yeah, but not, but I wouldn't change it because then I wouldn't be who I am and I wouldn't be the value I am to the world today. 

Morgan Hart

I still find myself doing, I mean, I did that this week we had a meeting and I I've I'm very raw and I've been known to like come off very bold sometimes and after we had our meeting one of my colleagues that was on the meeting with me I called him like the next day because it was just one of those things I was thinking about that night and I was like did I come across too, I don't want to say aggressive, but just like too bold in like the comments that I was making. And he's like, no, I think you were okay. And I was like, okay, like I just kept thinking about it and I just wasn't sure on how you perceived it or whatnot. And so it's, I think it's, it's good to reflect even today, like even if, even if it happened, like you don't need to regret it, but just like reflect on it and be like, okay. And he brought up some good points of like, well, we didn't know who else was in the room, you know, because it was just a phone call, we couldn't see faces, like, you know, engaging the environment that you're in and kind of, you know, adapting like we talked about earlier. You know, say what needs to be said, but I don't say tread lightly, but say it in the context where it's not going to be perceived, could be perceived negatively or in a way that it shouldn't be perceived. So, you know, I'm still learning that but it's also good to be, and I feel confident in my team that I can, you know, say, hey, like, did this come across wrong or did I, could I have said this in a better way? And I think having the maturity to be able to do that is one side of it, but then also being able to like reflect and then change accordingly is another side of it.

Jim Smith
 0:36:10
 Well, I think you just illustrated a great mentorship lesson. It could be really easy for your supervisor, whoever you bounce your ideas off or ask your question about, to just close a meeting and go on the road and forget what Morgan might want to ask.
 And I think a lot of times we miss that. And Casey, when I think about what we've done in the past, gone into a meeting, said some stuff or did whatever, and the tech person goes, does their thing, and then the sales team goes, has a beer, and then bitches and moans about what Casey and Jim said.
 0:36:54
 And we've been in a very isolating role in our careers, if you really want to look at it. I mean, there's times that we were just a book on a shelf that somebody grabbed when they needed something. And other times we were the ones that were in charge of everything, from a product development or a launch standpoint. But we didn't have the intimate teams around us that some other parts of our business does.

Casey Bradley
 0:37:24
 No, I think that's all really good points. I think we're running tight on time. We'd like to keep it so our audiences can listen to this in their morning workout routine or drive or commute. But I think, Morgan, let's summarize some of the stuff on mental fatigue, being raw and perceptions. What's your three main takeaways on our conversation? 1
 
 

Morgan Hart

0:37:50
 If you can, listen to your body. Whether that's, you know, like I carry my stress on my shoulders, you know, if I'm getting tight or if you're not sleeping, you know, try to focus on yourself and try to recognize when you might start becoming fatigued and figure out some sort of, you know, whether that's taking a half day, going for a walk, what strategies can you mitigate to help relieve that mental load on yourself? As well as like, don't be afraid of what other people think. I'm not going to change myself to appease others.  You're always going to have negativity and bumpiness in the road. You know, you can acknowledge it, talk about it, but always keep your eyes on the positive. 

Casey Bradley

Well, that's wonderful. Jim, to give you a little bit more spotlight here, because I really think your podcast and your ponderings either in written form or verbal form are very enlightening and beneficial. Where do they follow you? How do they listen to it? What's your release schedule? Tell us a little bit more about the plans between behind patio ponderings and how people can get involved.

Jim Smith
 0:39:07
 Well, patio pondering started as me taking my therapist's advice to do something every day. Now, living on a farm, we have something to do every day, but I get up every morning, make a cup of coffee, and I think, ponder, on what I'm gonna share. And sometimes I've got it on my, I've got a list of topics I wanna talk about, and sometimes that patio pondering comes from an inspiration or something I see as I'm making my cup of coffee. So I publish those every morning on my LinkedIn page, which I don't know what my LinkedIn address is, Jim Smith, Swine Nutritionist, you'll find it.

I've started a Facebook page as a clearinghouse to share those. So that's patio pondering on Facebook. And then I started my podcast last month. My plan is to release eight o'clock on Mondays and eight o'clock on Thursdays. The podcast has two objectives. One to hit on timely topics in agriculture, whether it's commodity prices, the new Ag Secretary. The podcast is going to be released on Monday. It talks about consolidation in the swine industry and where we might go the next decade. And the other half the time is just trying to find some of the expected and the obscure in people's agricultural roots. Those guests can be people that are still in ag, people that are not in ag, but just talk about how agriculture influenced us. And those I release, those are shared on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, a bunch of different podcast platforms.

Casey Bradley
 0:40:53
 Awesome. Well, thank you. And I'm sure we'll have Jim back. We have a little bit more free time and time to ponder things, but Jim's been a great mentor, a great friend, and I really hope people get involved, see your podcast, want to support it. We're still looking for support for Coffee in the Barn. As we've mentioned, this is just the start of what we'd like to see it become. We'd like to grow it into a non-profit and raise funds to help professionals and working parents go from surviving to thriving. That's part of my mission, but this is just one of those outlets to help hopefully go down that path someday. So that's kind of where personally Casey's marching a little bit and hoping to get to in life. And, you know, maybe I'll build my business. And, you know, hopefully it was the whole point was to fund this project was through my business. And in doing that, I've been thankful for four years. The coffee in the barn is still on. It hasn't been that great publicized listen to but I really hope people do get on the bandwagon and enjoy the different type of content that we try to provide for agriculture and not just people in the different type of content that we try to provide for agriculture and not just people in ag but outside of ag as well. 

Morgan Hart

Yep, thanks for joining us this week. 

Jim Smith

Thanks everyone.