Alright. Hello there. Hi, Karl. Carl Nelson from Bushel here. A technical product manager. So I I don't usually get to be maybe in front of customers all the time, so I'm super excited. We have Michelle from AgVantage here. Michelle, if you want to introduce yourself. Hello, everyone. I'm Michelle Blomberg, the president and CEO at AgVantage Software, and I'm very honored to be able to talk with Carl today about our relationship and our integration with Bushel. For sure. AgVantage has been one of our oldest integrations or our oldest, what we call a push partner. We had a long history with AgVantage, and it's been a great relationship so far. Yeah. Awesome. And so what we wanted to start with first is talking about competitive advantage. What is AgVantage's competitive advantage? Or, otherwise, what is your Hallmark customer profile that you look for in grain companies or egg retail or otherwise in the egg industry? It's a great question because it you know, it's tricky. And you guys know this too when you're when you're out, you know, trying to get new customers or even, enhance your current customers. I would say that our hallmark, position is that we have software solutions for really everything that a ad business needs. So, you know, a lot of times our competitors will be focused on a particular product line, whereas ours is from the start, the ERP system is kinda at the base of everything. Back this is our forty eighth year in business. So, you know, all the way back to almost the beginning, we also had a grain accounting system. And that's what you know, and that as you guys know too, to me, it's the most sophisticated, area of ag business, grain accounting. Mhmm. You know, no offense to the other industries, but I also think you know, because we also have a really good piece of software that is very sophisticated in the economy division. You know, that kinda goes all the way from the beginning, which is where they're creating a plan, take it all the way through to the finish line where they're applying it on the field, mapping and dispatching, the growers paying for that via all kinds of different contracts. I mean, it's all very sophisticated and complicated. And then we have a piece of software of a suite of software for the energy division, which includes, again, like, the the beginning, which is the mapping and dispatching portion, maintaining the tanks, and then, apply have a piece of software that runs in the trucks. So they're out delivering fuel. We have a customer that runs roughly fifty trucks a day. That is across several state lines. So you have taxes and all the things that go with that. And then feed and seed and really patronage, we are mostly in cooperatives. We have probably maybe ten percent of our customer base that are private companies, but the rest are cooperative. So then they're you know, they need us to track the system for equity and patronage, and on and on. But like you guys, then then you get into the mobile space. And that to me is where the industry has gone here in the last four or five years is really needing, strong presence to the grower on the on the front end with the mobile app and stuff. So, yeah, we'd I think our kinda key is that we have solutions for everything and then connecting to business partners like yourself for the the weaknesses of the areas where we're not as strong. So Yeah. With all those different offerings, would you say that you primarily like to grow with your customer base? You know, Eggman has been around for a long time. I assume you started with Yeah. One part of your total offering. How would you say you've grown with customers, with those that you support? Yeah. It's that's, again, another really good question for me because I I love that part of our company is that we, we cherish our relationships with our customers so much that when it is time for them to grow into other areas or even through mergers or, you know, kinda connecting with other people in their areas or needing new pieces of business outside of what they've always done, kind of, you know, growing with the change, that they come to us first. And they're asking us for our solution. So a lot of our growth, especially in the last, like, twenty years has been related to mergers where, you know, that's outside of our control. So customers of ours that are gonna be merging with somebody who's not an Agnantage customer, we we have been winning the majority of those mergers, mostly I'd say because of the relationship that we carry with the customer that's on our system. So that's been our kind of bread and butter, is the current customers that we have. Every year, we'll we will get, you know, two to three new customers. This year, we've already gotten two at the beginning of the year, but it always you know, it you look for where is the future going and what what does that look like. A lot of our future is driven by, different kind of pieces of the industry itself. So for example, right now, there's a small, software company that's going out of business by the end of this year. Back twenty years ago, it was a competitor. Now they're going out of business by the end of twenty twenty five. So the CEO of the company reached out to myself and said we have these, you know, eight to ten co ops that are looking for software. Can you guys, you know, provide them with a solution? And right there, we get we just got ten new customers. But those are then that takes us the whole year to get them installed. You know? So it does drive that's what kinda drives our our business is creating relationships with people like yourselves too. We'll we'll we'll get called into a coop that uses Bushel. But maybe they're not happy with their back end. And they'll say, you know, we wanna, look at you guys, we'll recommend us. And that's kind of a neat part of, you know, having strong relationships with Bushel and and others. So yeah. For sure. I think that leads right to the next question of what has AgVantage heard from customers that are on Bushel? I think you just like us, you get you have a loyalty, where when people start using Bushel, you know, a lot back I remember back when we first created the integration, it was and this is nothing it's nothing that we didn't both, hear all all the way around, but it was sticker shock for a lot of of our joint customers because they would say, like, oh, man. You know, we wanna get into the global space, but we didn't realize that it was gonna be this much of an investment. And and now I think when they look at Bushel, they think what a great investment that they made back five years ago because they invested in you, to create what they had with us, which is a strong relationship. And even from my own team, what I hear from my team related to your team is you are one of our favorite business partners to work with because your service side, your support side is very good and very responsive and very, very easy for us to work with. So it it matches up really well with Advantage to Bushel because we both, you know, cherish the relationship with the customer. For sure. If any customers haven't been to the AgVantage conferences, I used to test those. Those are always a good time, and I think really shows your commitment to your customers and your relationships. Yeah. Same. You know, we I haven't been to your event, but we we sponsor it, and I know that it's, you know, awesome. And I I always tell my team it's so tricky for us because, you know, we're we try not to sort of play favorites. You know, we're not supposed to really play favorites. But somehow, you can't help it. And somehow that has happened. Little buddy. You guys have have always been a really, easy relationship for us and and one that's been kinda matched up really nicely. So Awesome. Yeah. So why is it important for your business to integrate with Bushel? You know, we talked about our integration that we did many years ago, when we first started off, kinda breaking new ground together there. Why would you say that that has been important for your business? I guess maybe the most important reason to have our relationship with Bushel is that, we'll we'll get people that will come to us and say, you know, kinda like you said, maybe they're not happy with a certain part of their system, but they are very happy with their relationship with Bushell. So they don't even wanna look at us unless we can work with you. You know? And so that that becomes, probably the greatest strength. Outside of that, I, you know, I always kinda look at relationships with our business partners as the ones that I don't hear very much about are the ones that are the best. Because you know they're just working. You know it's working. And if I don't hear about it, that means that everything is working great and the customers are happy. People don't tend to call out when they're like, hey. I just wanted to tell you that we're super happy with our, you know, mobile integration today. That's not a but if it's not working, that's the phone calls that I'm gonna get. And especially with the mobile app because they're, you know, that's the farmers themselves. That's the face of my customer, their growers. If they're not happy with their mobile app, they're gonna they're gonna yell pretty loudly, and that's gonna get to me. So I don't and that's what I I mean, this might sound like not a compliment, but it is a huge compliment because it means that everything with you guys, the service side must be working really well because I I don't hear much about it, but I know we have tons of customers that are happy. So that's pretty that's pretty great for me. Like, it it's settling for me when I have that relationship that works that well. Rickasen. That's good to hear. Yeah. So, you know, we've continued to onboard a number of AgVantage customers over the years. And, again, AgVantage customer base is one of the most used partnerships at Bushell. We have several integrations going the route of APIs. And it's something that is currently being worked on between our companies. You know, we talked about how we had our integration many years ago that first started that broke a lot of new ground. Now you have a lot of APIs available, compared to previously. And so what do you believe, are some advantages and capabilities of the provided APIs that you have built? So the main, kind of point of our API with you guys is gonna be the the more integration that we can get, the better. And with our API, right, today, currently, we don't have I mean, we have minimal information that we're able to send over to you guys through the through the integration that we wrote because we like you said in the beginning, Carl, we wrote it so much long so long ago that it is kind of one of the beginning. Well, now that we have the API, there's just a ton of information in there. And that's what I've always wanted with our integration with you guys so that then you can provide to the grower, you know, the final grower and you and really our customer as well, way more information. You know, getting having them have access to their agronomy information, their patronage, their invoices down to the detail, getting payment on account. All of that is a part of our API. Our energy side, we have a piece in the energy that will allow, you to have the grower be able to even see how their tanks are, their propane tank that's on their farm. They can see that, you know, how full it is. And if they wanna order a fill, they can place an order. I mean, there's all all kinds of future, capabilities that are already in our API. So it's a matter of just, you know, really, it's it shouldn't be and we know this already. It's not gonna be a tough change because you're ready for the API. We already have the API. The the biggest part is really gonna just be testing to make sure, especially, you know, like, for us, testing on our mobile app integration with the API is the most important because it is money. Mhmm. You know, when a farmer is putting money to pay their account out and they're trusting you with this money, then they're you're trusting us with that money. You know? So there's a definite when you when you look at mobile apps and you're knowing that money is exchanging hands through the mobile app, it it's then now it's like, that can't be wrong. So testing that fully, fully, fully, like, the most we can possibly do. We have we have a mobile app that we're, you know, and ours is more of a, like, people that have used us for our e products in the past. They just kinda look at us for, like, grabbing data from the system, whereas people like yourselves, they're looking for a much, like, more sophistication and the ability to then connect to a lot more platforms outside a bushel, mobile app is you're gonna you're gonna get a lot more opportunities outside of just what's on the ERP system. Exactly. And that ERP system is so important in that. And what we're finding in the market more and more are things like CRM, being able to relate Yeah. To our records and just be able to do notes and maybe other, business processes quickly be right? Because people are out on the road, people are doing calls, replacing those sticky notes with maybe something that had been more longevity to it. Yeah. Absolutely. There's just so much that you're gonna be able to do once we get the API connected, that is beyond what we're doing today. The scope of it is gonna be you know, you're gonna have you're gonna feel like I think Bushel is gonna feel like you just opened up a whole world of opportunities for your customers. So For sure. Yeah. What what is AgVantage thinking about for the future? What excites you, Michelle? Hope you're coming around. You've grown a lot with your customers through the years. What what's coming up that you're looking forward to? You know, so we we kinda crossed over into the a different level of business now where we're once you you know, we've always kinda seen ourselves as a small small company. And one thing about Advantage that is unique to almost all of our competitors is that we're employee owned. And we're currently fully, I'll I'll say it kind of in a weird way. We're sold out of stock because our employees over the last three years have bought all the stock that the company had to sell. So we are one hundred percent employee owned. And out of our fifty three employees, forty six own stock in the company at some level. So that makes us really unique in that because it, you know, not only are they here to, you know, do their jobs, but they also are here as the owner of the company, which has such a loyalty to it. And for so for me and what's next in our future, you know, probably all CEOs are looking at how is AI gonna impact us, what's you know, what can we do better to develop faster, you know, different pieces of our software. So to me, those are all, like, normal CEO responses. I think what excites me is that I have this young group of employees. You know, in our past, we are always like and we really do have about fifty fifty right now of what I would call legacy employees versus young new employees that are at the table. And their, their stock they own part of the company with their leadership roles. The last three years, we've developed some leadership roles as we've grown to get some of the young, people into those positions. So with that comes a lot. Right? They are owners of a company and one where they are on the at the table talking about how do we continue to grow, where's our areas of success, but also what, what are our customers looking for. We like to drive our future based on our customers' input. So when you men when you mentioned that, Carl, about our user conference, that is the the biggest thing we get from the conference is so much input from our customers at the event. You know, the them being able to come to us and say, this is what we're looking for next and making sure we can, you know, be with them hand in hand on whatever their next development opportunities are. So I have a really good I really like my development team. There's, at the company, there's fourteen computer programmers, and then there's thirty five people on the company who are what I would call our support team. However, about seven years ago, we we added we changed a bunch, how we run the company. And our support team now, also designs the software and works with our customers to do the design and then works with the developer on the creating of the software. And then they're the ones too that are doing the, the marketing of it, the training of it, the deployment, and the testing, all of it falls on our support team. So we had to shift the way we look at, you know, serving our customers because they are the people that talk to our customers the most. Yeah. That would put them right there in the trenches with the customer on design and testing, etcetera. So so, you know, a game changer for the company. And so that's kinda how we've grown is with those two departments, the developers and the support team doing the all the design work, they are, you know, ninety five percent of the company. And we don't really have a sales team. They're the sales. They they talk to customers, and they're the ones doing that selling and marketing, but also servicing, also designing. So the growth and what I'm looking for is just more of the the young people and what they're looking for, And I talk with them every month. I have a all staff meeting where I'm kinda talking with them, like, what are we doing next? And just kinda keeping in touch with what our needs are from their eyes. So that's my that's my favorite part of it. I love hearing that. Yeah. Even at Bushel, we also see support often knows the product somewhat the best within the company. Right? They're in the Yeah. Talking with customers. They know the product really well. They know maybe some areas that, are, you know, difficult or some areas we need to improve. But then they also know areas that are are working really well. And just like you said, sometimes those features you don't hear about are probably the ones that are working the best because we're not we're not hearing about that. So Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Like, being part of of product. And something I also wanted to mention too about the user conferences, it it's interesting as both tech companies. Right? We're, you know, trying to bring in this, kind of change to be to be more tech focused or at least, provide efficiencies within tech, but nothing really matches that face to face contact that we have with our customers. Yeah. Being able to talk, being able to talk through problems that's going on that they're facing each day or that they're facing in the future, nothing nothing I don't think will quite replace that. And that's definitely been a component about why we started a conference as well called the Buddy C Conference. Yeah. Nothing matches that face to face. I couldn't agree more, Carl. And it you know, like, COVID kind of put a halt to all that and all of us figured out how to work through it. But I think we're there again. I mean, I know personally from my employees' perspective not being, you know and we don't have a required be on-site be come into the office. We have a we have a soft two days a week. We try to specific the days too. We say, like, this week, let's have it be Tuesday and Thursdays. Because then everybody that comes in knows that their people are gonna be in here versus just randomly coming in, and nobody's in the office. They just you know, they came to see people. But from a, you know, customer perspective, getting face to face time is I mean, there's nothing like it. And it it always, you know, it always seems to be the best, thing that we can use, though. I completely agree. Yeah. You and our CEO, Jake, must be talking. We also have us after two week or two days a week come into the office, particularly for those around the Fargo Moorhead area. Yeah. We do have quite a few remote employees now. Yeah. I guess falls outside of that range. Yeah. For sure. We we also have the two two days a week, and that collaboration is really nice. There's efficiencies gained by working from home. Mhmm. But then there's also some really nice things about working in person. And so being able to balance that, I think, for years COVID has shown us a little bit, maybe shown us why we somewhat miss coming into the office, but then also and we can still get work done from home as well. So it's been a nice Yeah. Like the kitchen talk, the hallway conversation, and we can get those you just get that more often. But, yeah, it's it's been a definitely from a leadership perspective, it's been a challenge. I think a lot of other things came to the surface through all of that is, you know, a lot of, exposure to mental health challenges and making sure our employees are safe and healthy and taking care of themselves. And that that's something that, you know, when you're back into our eighties and nineties, when we're in college and you're looking at what you wanna be someday, you don't know that part of your job is gonna be psychology. You know? But it is. It is part of it. Working with people, you know, people are people are technology. Right? It's very yes. Yes. That can be and so in a lot of ways, the hardest part of the job. Yeah. And, you know, depending on but just making sure people are okay. And I try to spend I come to the office in person every week. I try to spend a day and a half or two days here, and I try to just kinda clean my calendar off of anything just so I can go around and talk to the people, make sure everybody's okay, look them in the eye, like how are you, how's things going from here, and just getting immersed into their life to make sure they're, taking care of themselves too. Sure. Yeah. That's awesome. I don't have any more prepared questions. I felt this was awesome to hear from you. Thanks, Carl. You too. It was fun. I think you had some wonderful answers and just Awesome. Learning so much about Advantage. This has been a really great relationship, and your team is always so good to work with. It's it has been really well. You too, Carl. We really appreciate everything that you guys do for us too. So thank you for today. Thanks for talking. This is fun. Yeah. Yeah. This was really good. Thank you for, agreeing to it. You bet. You have a great rest of the day. Okay? Yeah. Thank you. You too, Michelle. Okay. Bye bye.