The Entrepreneur's Ethic

This week’s podcast is an interview with Al Myers, Founder and President of Ag Leader Technologies. Al is a pioneer in precision agriculture technologies. Ag Leader launched an on-the-go yield monitor in 1992 and has introduced many innovative precision agriculture tools since that time. Today, Ag Leader has almost 300 employees who make tools used by farmers around the world. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Clayton Mooney, Chief Farmer and Co-Founder of Clayton Farms Salads. Clayton’s journey to today, ‘delivering the world’s freshest salads,’ is a winding one. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Wilbur Wright. Wright’s work, along with his brother, Orville, exemplifies Ethic 3: Fail Successfully. This is the experiment-orientation of entrepreneurship. www.kevinkimle.com

Jim Fay is an innovator who’s been a part of development of multiple billion-dollar products. Jim defines his work as that of an ‘Entrepreneurial Product Engineer.’ He shares four product development principles, with a contrarian view of the idea of a minimum viable product. He also shares seven principles for success. www.kevinkimle.com

Zeitgeist is a word that comes straight from German — zeit means "time" and geist means spirit, and the "spirit of the time" is what's going on culturally or intellectually during a certain period. In the last podcast of 2023, I take a shot at interpreting the spirit of the time for change-makers, what I’ll call the entrepreneurial zeitgeist. What’s potentially interesting or notable for innovators and entrepreneurs in late 2023? www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is with Dr. BJ Johnson, CEO and co-founder at ClearFlame Engine Technologies. We talk about his design of a sustainable diesel engine with the capability to reach net-zero emissions and even reverse greenhouse gases to yield a negative balance in carbon emissions while reducing the costs of long-haul trucking for fleets large and small.

This week’s podcast is an interview with Dr. Josh Storrs Hall is an independent scientist and author. One of this books is, Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past. Dr. Hall was the founding Chief Scientist of Nanorex, Inc, which is developing a CAD system for nanomechanical engineering. He remains a member of Nanorex' Scientific Advisory Board, and well as a Research Fellow of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. His research interests include molecular nanotechnology and the design of useful macroscopic machines using the capabilities of molecular manufacturing. His background is in computer science, particularly parallel processor architectures, artificial intelligence, particularly agoric and genetic algorithms as used in design, and reversible computing. Editor's note: this interview was conducted virtually. We apologize for a handful of internet connectivity hiccups throughout, and have done our best to maintain what Dr. Storrs Hall was conveying. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s podcast is an interview with Joel Harris, co-founder and CEO of GenVax and my compatriot with agtech investment fund Ag Startup Engine. Joel co-founded another business more than fifteen years ago, Harris Vaccines, that pioneered development and commercialization of mRNA vaccines in the livestock industry. The GenVax team is working on the next generation of livestock vaccines for diseases that would be devastating for agriculture and food security like African Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth Disease. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Henry Ford. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. Ford’s work exemplifies Ethic 2: Solve Hard Problems. This is the priority setting-orientation of entrepreneurship. It tackles the profound question of “what should I work on?” This week’s podcast is an historic case study from early in Henry Ford’s journey. While set at a time more than one hundred years ago, it deals with an issue very relevant to today, the tension between entrepreneurial talent and risk capital. What proportion of rewards for entrepreneurial success are owed to entrepreneurs and what proportion to investors? Ford and investors in his early businesses struggled with this in a manner no different from entrepreneurs and investors today. www.kevinkimle.com

In this week’s podcast, I interview Brent Blum, Executive Director of the We Will Collective at Iowa State University, an organization that supports student-athletes through NIL deals and helps them to contribute to the community. www.kevinkimle.com

In this podcast, I try a new format, a solo riff on mentoring. Last week’s podcast on talent; how to attract it and how to keep it, resonated. So, I’ll do a deeper dive into mentoring through the lens of three decisions I’ve made, one practical, one principled, and one whimsical or weird. www.kevinkimle.com

Matt Pozel is an Associate at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, which provides access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity. He is deeply knowledgeable about Ewing Kauffman’s story and legacy, and I enjoyed insight that Kauffman offers us on attracting and developing talent and translating business success into community and philanthropic impact. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is Ewing Kauffman. Kauffman founded Marion Laboratories, a pharmaceutical business, in Kansas City in 1950. By the 1980s, Marion was a billion-dollar business. But a non-pharmaceutical piece of Kauffman’s legacy is in professional baseball, and this case study will dive into one of the most interesting experiments in professional baseball talent development in history, the Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy.

Agricultural entrepreneur Zack Smith is bringing ancient agricultural ideas into the present time at his startup, Stockcropper. Combining livestock and crop farming is ancient. A robotic barn with multiple species and a creative strip cropping method? That's new. We discussed three decisions, one practical, one principled and one weird. There’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, whiskey and Twitter stories you don’t want to miss. We’re always looking for feedback on the podcast as it evolves, so let me know what you like and what you think can be improved. www.kevinkimle.com

Agricultural entrepreneur Harry Stine has worked over his decades on another core agricultural technology, the seed, at Stine Seed Company. He started breeding soybeans before there was intellectual property protection for open-pollinated crops like soybeans. Today, his business is the largest independent seed company in the U.S. This is the fourth installment of my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge from my upcoming book The Entrepreneur's Ethic. www.kevinkimle.com

Serial entrepreneur Colin Hurd has worked on much more modern tools for agriculture and beyond. His most recent business, MACH, develops technology for solutions in perception, navigation, route planning, monitoring, and connectivity. If it’s off-road and autonomous, Colin is probably working on it. This is the third installment in my exploration of historic entrepreneur John Deere and the way he exemplified Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge. www.kevinkimle.com

In this week’s podcast, I interview Deere historian and archivist Neil Dahlstrom about John Deere and his legacy. Neil describes John Deere as a frontier entrepreneur archetype. You’ll enjoy learning about what he means by this and how a frontier mindset might be useful for you today. This is the second installment in my exploration of Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge, as exemplified by historic entrepreneur John Deere. www.kevinkimle.com

One of the Entrepreneurs featured in my upcoming book, The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, is John Deere, the historic agricultural entrepreneur. Deere’s fame and fortune resulted from his work innovating the plow over decades, that most ancient of agricultural tools. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic. Deere’s work exemplifies Ethic 6: Enjoy the Edge. This is the truth-seeking-orientation of entrepreneurship. www.kevinkimle.com

This week’s episode is a great conversation with Jon Housholder. Jon is co-founder, co-owner, director, editor and producer with Unrivaled Films. Unrivaled Films has produced critically acclaimed documentaries for major streaming services, network television docuseries, viral music videos, and nationally televised commercial branding ventures all around the world. He is a three-time Emmy Award winner as a producer, editor, and director. This is the fourth installment in my exploration of Ethic 4: Invest in Tomorrow.

This week’s episode is a great conversation with ⁠Derral Eves⁠. Derral is one of the world’s top YouTube and online video marketing experts. As an example, he’s coached and worked with ⁠MrBeast⁠, whose ⁠YouTube channel⁠ is considered to be the most-subscribed channels whose owner is an individual. There are seven parts of The Entrepreneur’s Ethic, as discussed in my upcoming book. This episode is the third installment of my exploration of Walt Disney, whose work exemplifies Ethic 4: Invest for Tomorrow. This is the future-orientation of entrepreneurship.