#28 | Ranchers Called Us Out Online

I don't know if people feel shortchanged every time they chew on a KFC drumstick. Colonel Sanders back in the day probably said, look, folks, let's just keep this one in the family. Welcome to That Ranching Podcast. Thanks for joining us around this kitchen table where we discuss things that matter to men and women in ranching. What we're gonna discuss today is some of the naysayers on social media and answering some of their challenges which may or may not be reasonable fair challenges. And by the way, anyone that's contributed on social media, we seek to respond and to do it in a fair spirit. We're not here to argue with anybody or have a a fight, you know, on on Facebook, so to speak. So there is times when we will ask people to take it offline. We're not we're not trying to hide anything. We're more trying to have a a conversation that sometimes just isn't best to be done in public. And and I think most of these questions are legitimate. They're naysayers, but they're still legitimate, and we want to address those. For those that are just trying to pick a fight or whatever online, we're not a corporate company, so we're a family business, so please don't. But Marcus, what are we getting for some of the feedback? Alright. So I see this one a fair bit, but mister Schmidt says, pretty hard to buy a product if they don't list their ingredients. What do you say to that? Reach out. We definitely we have a request to tag form on the website. Now the one thing we used to actually have the tag on the website. This would have been several years back, if I remember right, Trevor. And the one thing we run into a fair bit, people tend to misread tags or potentially they've been trained how to read a tag maybe a little bit differently than And our product is so fundamentally different that it's like asking to see a Tesla and looking in the hood to check the engine out and saying, well, it doesn't have a motor. We can share the ingredient list with with you, but what what what really needs to come first, I think, and correct me if if I'm if you think differently, Duane, but is a understanding of how fundamentally different Riomax is? Because just a tag will likely con confuse you. A big example on that Trevor is actually the the protein level on the tag. Yeah. So a lot of people when they're looking at a protein tub, their first thing is, well, what's the protein tub? As you would. As you do. As as you would. Now with Nutrizorb, our digestive pack with over twenty digestive ingredients, what we're doing is helping that cow pull more protein and more energy out of her feed. And build microbial protein. Hundred percent. But doesn't come on any put that on a tag. So and I hope it doesn't come across as trying to deceive anybody or trick them because they don't know what they're buying. Absolutely. If you're looking at buying Riomax and you wanna see a tag before you purchase the product, fair enough. We would just ask that you reach out to us directly as a company. We'll get you that tag sent over, and one of the guys would likely give you a shout just to address and go through the tag with you to make sure that when you're looking at it, you know what you're looking at and you can see what you're buying. And we've done it multiple times, but even having someone send over what they're currently using and we can pull up a bit of a tag comparison for you so you can see, hey, you know, for anyone that doesn't know, the retail price of Riomax is four hundred and ninety five bucks for a two hundred and fifty pound tub. So we're gonna be triple what a normal tub is. If you're looking to spend that kind of money, probably want to know what you're buying. Can I tell a story? Yeah. Absolutely. This is probably fifteen years ago in Alberta. A good customer called me up and he says, I've taken your tag and I've shared it with my nutritionist, and he's plugged it into his software, it's telling me that my cows are losing x amount of body condition by the day. And I said, that's terrible, like I'm very sympathetic, I take that seriously. Tell me, what are the cows looking like? You know, I'm just, in my mind, I'm just thinking of these skeletons, you know, out in the middle of a Chinook. And he's like, well that's the crazy thing, he said, the cows are fat if anything. And I said, mister customer, either you believe your nutritionist or you believe the cows, but in this case, you can't believe both. And that's just an example, nothing against nutritionists, nothing against the feed program, but it was confusing because they were not factoring in the foundational difference of Riomax. Hence, why we don't just frisbee out tags to everybody right away because there's a few steps before that. Trust that makes sense. Just to follow that on real quick, the other part that people are curious about is the Nutrizorb is like, hey, if they won't tell me what all goes into this thing, how do I really know what's going into my cows? Makes me think of why Coca Cola hasn't publicly listed their recipe, but I'd be glad to know what your thoughts are on the NutriSorb side of things. I think that's a good a good challenge, honestly. There's five main components that make up NutriSorb. Yeast, prebiotics, probiotics, fungi fuel Enzymes. Enzymes. Thank you, Trevor. For the person that's wondering what all is in that, I mean, there's twenty different components and and you've well listed out the five categories or classes. I suppose sometimes people are wondering, does it have a drug or ionophore or a chemical or a coccidiostat or does it have something in there that I'm already doing or or something that will kick me out of an all natural program. So I would say upfront, Nutrizorb has been all natural long before all natural was cool. All of those ingredients that Twain listed off, which serve to squeeze more out of the diet and to extract more nutrients out, not just protein energy, but all your minerals, trace minerals, vitamins that are naturally occurring in your forages. Nutrizorb will extract more out of everything. So very much a natural product. Back to the Coca Cola example, Marcus, and there'd be dozens of other examples where in this case, our family business protects the recipe. As you can understand, we're probably not gonna put our intellectual property up on a billboard that we've spent almost a quarter of a century building. KFC, they have their proprietary recipe for their chicken which has been protected for many years. I don't know if people feel shortchanged every time they chew on a KFC drumstick that they didn't know exactly what was in there but old colonel Sanders back in the day probably said, look folks, let's just keep this one in the family because we don't want the chicken shop down the road doing the same thing. We're just a family just making sure that the customer is at the center of everything we do, and then, yeah, we're probably not gonna just tell the world the secrets of a family recipe, much the same as grandma didn't wanna share her brownie recipe because it was hers. The other question that I see coming in a fair bit, mister Frattinger is saying, someone told me they're made in the same place as one of the other brands, just different label, possibly just good marketing. So I think there's two questions to that is same place, different label, and the other part is these repeated claims about it just being good marketing. Those are both good. I appreciate people like Trevor had said earlier, there's some fair challenges out there. Just to address the the one about the different, you know, same product, different label. If you've heard that they've they're made in the same plant You're right. You're you're right. Yeah. Thanks, Trevor. So as a as a company, we do have plants that finish our tubs for us. And Trevor, you could maybe go into this a little bit more, but I'll just do a quick high level. Yeah. Here at in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, we premix Down the road here. And put together all our main components, really the guts of Nutrizorb and Esqort, the the main things that go into the Riomax formulas that really set us apart from everything else out there. That is all premixed in house here, and we ship out those premixes to plants around the country that then produce tubs for us. So yes, produced in the same plant. No, not the same tub with a different label. I've had it for years where people said, if it comes out of x y z plant and we use multiple plants around the country, it's probably the same thing. The only thing that is the same would be the molasses that is nothing but a carrier to the ingredients that deliver the mode of action. But a very fair challenge. So is it just marketing? We believe in marketing as a tool to speak to the wonderful people we serve and get the message out there. We wanna help others you know, with seven hundred and fifty thousand mother cows on the program and and folks seeing this hay savings, forage savings, weaning weights, conception rates. We wanna just help others as we've helped them. People wanna be part of a winning brand, so we have people getting on video for us. People are enjoying the journey and they wanna do good by their neighbors and friends within within the ranching industry. So I don't really talk call it marketing so much as is spreading a good message that can help other folks. If I if I could just jump in here, couple things is one is you've probably seen some of our customer testimonials. There are ranchers that there's there is some of our dealers, to be totally transparent that shoot videos for us as well that talk about what they've seen in their operations. Which stay ranchers at heart? Again, they're they're ranchers. They're ranchers first and foremost. You know, our dealers are ranchers that then turned into Riomax dealers. In many cases, they've grown up since they were little in that area, and they're not gonna put their reputation on the line to sell a couple tubs. That I can assure you. You know, the the ranchers, dealers we work with. But then in the main, the videos we get are from ranchers that are just Riomax customers. They have no stake in it. I can assure you they like getting on camera about as much as Trevor and I do or possibly less. Which is not a lot. But Marcus, you're, you know, you're in charge of shooting a lot of these videos. How much do we normally pay people per episode? Absolutely zero. Sometimes we've had requests for payment or a certain amount of swag or something, and I will not not that I don't think it's worth it for their help, but I will decline it because I don't want them ever being bribed or incentivized to share the message. I want it to be whatever they honestly think, whatever they honestly feel, and only that. So Marcus, then if if there's no payment, no swag, no bribery, what is motivating these people to get out of their comfort zone like we are right now and do what they do on camera? I think it's on the basis of helping other ranchers. Like, most of who's seeing these videos and and who's impacted by them is local ranchers that say, hey, that guy's not that far down the road, he runs a similar type of operation, and he's seeing these results. And so I think they feel motivated to if they found a good thing that's actually adding performance, putting dollars on the bottom line for their operation, enabling them to grow, they feel like it's the least they could do to help spread that message and help their fellow ranchers. What does that look like? Like, if you're gonna go ask someone, pretend I'm Rancher Joe, how do you reach out to me and ask me to shoot a Hey, Rancher Joe. Would you ever be willing to share what you've seen on the tubs to help out fellow ranchers? That simple. People just respond to that. Yeah. Sometimes it's a little back and forth of what it means to actually get on camera and that it's Well, might say, why? I ain't a real good talker. You know? I'm not I'm not no good at speeches. And I think those are some of the ranchers we've got the best content with. We don't need no smooth talkers, we just need real people that are part of this journey and they wanna help their fellow rancher. That is the genius to this and to all, I think there's well over four hundred just on our YouTube channel as as we speak, and then, you know, on other social platforms and to me it's not a marketing campaign, it's a movement. They're winning on their ranches in terms of, you know, actual tangible measurements like financial ROI, return on investment, and they just want to help others win. I think ranchers are a very special breed, salt of the earth, and so willing to help the neighbor with branding, help the neighbor at weaning time, help the neighbor if there's a fire or a sickness and it's that same thread that runs through, they they have good results. I'm not saying we're the only tub on the market. I'm not saying we're the only family business in the industry, but they would just wanna spread that word. They're like, this is a winning brand. I'm winning. You know? Let's be part of the journey. Thanks again for joining us on That Ranching podcast. We'll see you next week.