Unlock Your Business’s Potential By Utilizing Data-Driven Decisions #MakingBank #S7E34
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Unlock Your Business's Potential By Utilizing Data-Driven Decisions #MakingBank #S7E33

Welcome back to Making Bank. On today's episode, we have Jeff Smith. His company was founded to extend the legacy of the family cattle ranch that was homesteaded at this location in the early 1900s.The ranch has been a continuous operation since 1913, and being born through the fifth generation of family ranchers, Kara, Jeff's wife, also has an inborn love and passion for the cattle industry. Their story is super authentic. What they do and how they raise their beef, how they connect with agriculture, their environment, and being able to produce an amazing product for everyone.

Check out today's episode with Jeff Smith on Making Bank.

(2:26) Background

Jeff Smith grew up in eastern Oregon. He went to school at Colorado State University, has a degree in agricultural business with minors in finance and accounting. He went to work for a big company called Cargill and was an operations manager there. He went from company to company doing multiple jobs to finally deciding to start Colorado Craft Beef.

(6:55) Business Assessment 

With his wife having a master degree in cattle nutrition and also being better positioned geographically along with some industry knowledge, Colorado Craft Beef started in 2017. Beef shipping began in 2018, with a ton of focus groups.

(12:28) Colorado Craft Beef

Due to lack of having a mother cow, Jeff partnered with four or five ranches that they work with directly. They help the cow calf producers with genetic yielded data to help them make business decisions that make their cattle more efficient.

(16:10) Business Growth

When you sell the cattle to the processor, and then the processor sells the meat and it goes to a wholesaler, and then the wholesaler sells to a retailer, and then the retailer sells. Everywhere along that chain, there's a percentage taken. Jeff Smith said they've been able to actually keep the pricing about the same for the end product, by retaining all those margins in house.

(20:57) Mindset

Jeff Smith says that Agricultural people are fiercely independent and sometimes they drive him crazy because of that. It's a mindset shift that a lot of people need to have, whether it's just in agriculture or elsewhere. And that's something that has helped them to be a little more mobile, a little more nimble, and a little more transparent with the people they talk to.

(23:07) Regenerative Agriculture

What we do at our ranch is different from what our neighbors do because we're in different spots, even though it's literally just over the horizon. If you want to support a different food system and you want to support different things and you want to be informed, do it and vote with your dollar because that is what's gonna change this system.

Links:

@colocraftbeef @jeffsoptic @coloradocraftbeef