Building the Amazon of Agriculture: From Family Farm to E-commerce Giant with Anthony Jones

Building the Amazon of Agriculture: From Family Farm to E-commerce Giant with Anthony Jones
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Anthony: [00:00:00] the only way agzaga.com was going to be successful was that we had to figure out marketing.

But we didn't understand marketing. And one of the things that I found out, like, just hiring people that has one skill set of marketing doesn't necessarily get you there.

And this is where after about a year of Honestly, just trial and error, but not kind of figuring out any of those wins. I took it on myself that I had to find a better understanding of marketing.

It wasn't where we were going. And then I found this one page marketing book

Allan: Welcome to the Lean Marketing Podcast, where we unpack strategies, tactics to make you more profit, help you build your business, and really love your business so you're doing less marketing and getting bigger results. I'm your host, Allan Dib. Today, I'm joined by a very special guest. I'm joined by Anthony Jones.

Now, Anthony is a client of Lean Marketing, but that's not the reason that I'm having him on the show today. I had the pleasure of speaking to [00:01:00] him very recently and I got off the call and thought, this is an impressive dude. he's got an amazing story. He's come up through difficulties, through various sort of circumstances, he'll cover shortly, but

I got off the call, I thought this is an impressive guy. I want to share his story. So welcome to the show, Anthony. How are you?

Anthony: it's great to be here, man. Absolute pleasure. I know you said you didn't bring me on here because of a lean marketing client, but just wanted to start off by saying thank you. You, your book, your team they have been a very important part of our entire journey. Just really appreciate everything, man.

Love

Allan: look, if on your way to stardom I can say I played some small part in your success, then I'm very happy with that it.

So, let's start with just a brief introduction. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you about? What's the headline, what's the paragraph that describes you?

Anthony: Awesome.

Anthony's Journey in Agriculture
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Anthony: Uh, Let me start with my heart. My heart is to build a dream [00:02:00] that I don't believe I'm qualified to build. But to do something that really can change the world. And I know it's crazy and I know people say things like that. But man, I've been that way even since I was young, I was always a big dreamer, always a visionary.

And I had a lot of things happen in my life and with my family that launched me into being the fourth generation CEO of a company my great granddad and grandfather started, and that would have been nine years ago. And when I stepped in those first two years, I mean, I brought my vision, my passion, all these great things that I want to do to carry on the family legacy.

But in those first couple years we had some success, but man, we had some difficulties. So anyway, through the last nine years of CEO, we've been able to take a family business as a wholesale distributor in agriculture and been able to 10x that. Turning it into a national distributor uh, launching marks, multiple trademarks, national brands but it was about four years ago that we dreamed bigger and crazier than we ever have, and this is what connected me to [00:03:00] you.

I'm very passionate about agriculture. Our family has been in agricultural business for over 50 years and I've always loved marketing, I've always loved the online world, always even loved technology, even if I wasn't the best at it but we had this dream as a company.

Building the Amazon of Agriculture
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Anthony: Instead of just an agricultural wholesale distributorship, we actually wanted to build an agricultural e comm trying to model something like Amazon.

Trying to model that marketplace to help advance agriculture into the online world. And a part of our story is like year one doing everything wrong. \

I mean, it just, it feels like we made wrong decision after wrong decision.

Challenges and Successes in Agriculture E-Commerce
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Anthony: But through grit, great, incredible teammates you know, and just failing quick, we've had a three year run with this online farm store that we call agzaga.com that really is one of the fastest growing e coms in the nation. Just over these last two years, even specifically since we've partnered with your company Man, we just, we've had exponential growth rates. [00:04:00] But the journey was not easy and lots of difficulties and lots of ups and downs, but that's why I would say we're just out here trying to build these fun companies from the ground up make them in a way that they're making substantial difference.

And I don't think we're qualified to do a single thing that we're doing. And that's kind of the fun part of the whole journey.

Allan: I love that. I love that.

The Importance of Marketing
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Allan: I think most entrepreneurs, if they knew what was actually going to be involved in doing their business, they would never do it because in the beginning you feel like, Oh yeah, I could do this. This doesn't look that hard and you get started. But if you really knew what was going to be involved, you probably would stay far away

Anthony: Oh my gosh. 100%. I'm on it.

Allan: I think you, you're interesting, I mean, one of many reasons is because like you're in the agriculture business, which doesn't sound very sexy. It sounds like very old school, you know, everything's done by hand and manually, but I've kind of gone down the rabbit hole recently of like farming and agriculture and all of that sort of stuff.

And man [00:05:00] you, you think it's just people who are just out on the farms doing things the old way or whatever, but they're trading options, they're on the forefront of a lot of tech and all of that sort of thing, because. When we think of big companies, when we think of companies that are in the headlines all the time, it's usually Silicon Valley, high tech, you know, your Slacks, your Microsoft, your, all of that sort of stuff.

But agriculture is like the backbone of, almost every country. Right. And so, I mean, without a good agricultural economy everything had gone to a halt. So what I love about your story is that you're taking agriculture, you're mixing that with tech.

Overcoming Industry Hurdles
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Allan: And like you said, your goal is to essentially build the Amazon of agriculture, which I think is amazing.

An incredibly good idea and something that obviously is really working well for you already and you've got a lot of traction. How did you come up with that idea? What made you decide, Hey, I'm going to do the Amazon of agriculture, because obviously it hadn't been done before. There's no reason why you would think [00:06:00] this is a good idea.

What made

Anthony: love it. So I'm sure some entrepreneurs can relate to when you have success, you might get a little overconfident. Love what you said about agriculture, whereas it is impressive how far we've come in technology in all the tools from the tractors to the combines. But at the same point, agriculture is often three years, five years, ten years behind the times in some of these that have been coming out.

So one of the things that made the first company that I stepped into called Jones Twine & Net Wrap. We. Imported from the top manufacturers around the world of the products that held hay bales together super small niche in a even niche hay baling world But whenever I stepped in as CEO Even through all the drama and the problems.

I'm this Overcompetitive person that if anyone's doing it better than me I want to know why and I want to know how but when I stepped in I really had no clue where to go But I looked at all my competitors and I noticed [00:07:00] nobody had any type of a good website. No one was doing social or anything.

So just by me doing, I'm talking marketing 101 but this would have been eight, nine years ago in the agricultural world. It allowed us to just soar. I mean, we literally from year two to year three, double the company, then double the company again in two years. And one of the biggest reasons I give that success story is because like, Hey, we cracked some of these marketing codes.

Well, I was learning marketing 101 and got way overconfident, but as we had the success in this business, four or five years later, we started dreaming bigger. What can our company do to last the next 50 years? I'm so honored to be able to build something that I got to be a part of seeing my grandpa build and just my hero and role model.

But the last thing I want to do is to build this incredible company that stops with me. So we started asking these big questions. What's it going to take for our company to evolve over the next 50 years? And you already started seeing all of these online trends. I mean, even agricultural people, the amount of 60, 70, [00:08:00] 75 year old farmers, they got iPhones now, like technology has worked its way into even agriculture and to even all the generations.

But one of the things that we started doing is like, man, we have figured out how to import We figured out how to warehouse. We figured out how to ship coast to coast. So we've kind of learned that in our first four or five years. And there was not a single good agricultural e com out there that was devoted to the online world.

So we kind of started looking through all your Shopify's and all those really simple things. And we kind of heard A lot of good stories, but we heard a lot of maybe some negative stories where it wouldn't fit agriculture. And as we kept researching this, we really felt like the dream was more than just building an e com.

We felt like to actually advance agriculture into the online world, it needed a marketplace. It needed something with the heart of ag, built by ag, people that knew ag, but that we were committed with all of the hurdles. Because I promise you, the e com world and agriculture is it. Um, But that we were [00:09:00] committed to getting there, but we didn't want to bring in private equity.

We didn't want to raise funds. We didn't have all sorts of capital to be able to build this thing out. So we had to do it in stages, but we knew the end goal, but we If we could find a way to build a marketplace, something that had that capacity, that actually carried a far greater ability to change agriculture than just an e com.

And that's where we, I feel like, pick the most expensive, most difficult route with zero qualifications to do. And through trial and error, man, where we're having tons of fun and having a lot of luck along the way.

E-commerce Strategies for Agriculture
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Allan: And so just to set the context, what sort of products do you sell over your e commerce store?

Anthony: So kind of our uh, tagline is the online farm store. And we are almost quadrupling our product offering. every single year and plan to do that again next year. But there's a couple niches if we just go to the farm store world here that we specialize in. Number one, anything in the hay baling world.

Just because we've got so much company [00:10:00] history and industry knowledge in that. And then getting into, oddly enough, farm toys. We found several farm toy manufacturers. We're going to be your largest supplier on the internet. A couple apparel lines, agricultural farm apparel lines that we've been able to get into as well.

But then when we start talking about replacement parts, the parts that goes from the balers, to the tractors, to the combines. That world is limitless. That world is a trillion dollar. I mean, it's a humongous industry. And those are all the lines that we are trying to get in, but it's almost like a one to two year process to be doing that because you can find the manufacturers from around the world.

You've got to make sure the products are of the high quality. The last thing we want to do is start building these agricultural products from countries that maybe make lower quality stuff. And then it's getting on our side and hurting our brain and hurting what we're trying to do in agriculture.

But yeah, I would say the hay baling world, we are getting more into the crop world. We're in the sprayer world. Kind of your hobby farmer, [00:11:00] even like a spraying world, UTV accessories quick hitches is kind of a fun products. That's exploded for us in the hobby farmer world. Yeah that's what we're working on.

Allan: And so I would imagine it would be a challenge to get people in that industry to order online because I'm Presumably, prior to you coming in, they have existing relationships with suppliers, maybe they're used to working with someone locally or whatever. Is that true? Or am I imagining things?

Or how did you encounter that challenge?

Anthony: Oh, yeah, you're spot on. super difficult. Like I said, agriculture is definitely behind. We also are a community and a culture that we love the handshake. You want to know who they are. But our thing is this industry, I mean, agriculture itself is big enough. We're not trying to go and step on the toes of your mom and pops, your feed stores, all of those local shops.

That's actually our bread and butter of our original company. In the agriculture, everyone knows John Deere. Everyone knows New Holland, Case I, Vermeer, and then everyone [00:12:00] knows Tractor Supply. So you've got your implements that sell your large machinery, and then you've got your huge box store of tractor supply over here.

Our bread and butter was actually going after everyone else. We went after the mom and pops, the feed stores, the small seed stores. And we found ways to get product, pricing, and service to support them. So we always want to make sure that Agzaga never actually gets to the point that it's hindering them.

But the problem is even with all of these agricultural stores the amount of times that a farmer needs something or wants something and that farm store doesn't have it, or for whatever reason these prices are skyrocketing. To be able to have a place that you can literally just go online, trust it, know that it's agriculture, find your product easy, order it, and we have found a way to ship coast to coast in three, four days.

We're not quite Amazon, we don't have prime deals but we can ship, get it anywhere coast to coast in a week. That has actually been really well received. We've seen almost everybody that we're talking to, just like, they know that not only we need this now, [00:13:00] but we do need this in the future. But it's difficult.

Most of your agricultural things, even that we ship, One of the reasons agriculture isn't real strong in the online world is because it is difficult. Everything we ship, it is tough to package, tough to box. We have to get unique boxes for it. Um, And then you got to go over and above it. It's getting shipping that there's no dings or damages or anything like that.

Because when you're out there in the field, if you put something in and, and it's not exactly how it needs to be, it'll ruin your whole farm day. And when you're in the middle of harvest season, you don't have that luxury of taking the day off. So. We don't believe we're taking away from those awesome farm stores that people love to go to, but we do believe we're adding a huge benefit to everyone, especially maybe you don't have that farm store by you.

You can hop online and you can find what you need. We can get to you.

Allan: And to you, what were they doing? Were they just waiting longer or buying from people waiting for it to come in? Or like, what were the options prior to you guys coming in?

Anthony: Great question. Yeah. when it's bailing [00:14:00] season, the farmer doesn't work a 10, 12 hour day. I mean, it's the moment the sun is up till the sun goes down. You're going and you have a very limited time with some of these windows and when something breaks And you got to go buy that replacement part.

You got to find what you need You might have to drive to this farm store. They're out You might go check your local implement and they're out of that. It'll take three days to get in are always places that will have it But the, whether it's supply chain, distribution, inventory, whatever the problem is, you might spend a whole day just trying to find it.

You could just pull up your phone and type in agzaga.com right there on the tractor. Boom, do that. And then maybe you can't finish bailing right in the middle of that season, but you can go to something else on the farm, especially that time of the year. And that's where, once again, if you've got a great local farm store, go there, take care of it, but they might be out of inventory.

But who is doing what we're doing? There's a couple people that I might say are competitors. But if you go to their [00:15:00] website the user journey, the ease ability the ability to find it the ability to even understand SEO, social media, all these things to make sure that I'm looking for this replacement part.

How do you even get there? That's what Agzaga is doing. We are going all in on how to do marketing on e comm correctly, not just for sales and growth, because we actually want to have the farmers when they need something, be able to find us and find the products on there.

Allan: So what would have been in some of your most valuable marketing processes that you've put in place? What's kind of really moved the needle from a marketing perspective. So thinking of you as an e com store, you're targeting farmers who may be not super sophisticated with technology and search and all of that sort of thing.

So what's been the stuff that's moved the needle the most?

Learning from Mistakes
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Anthony: Can I answer that question by just saying some of the dumb things I did to start?

Allan: course, please.

Anthony: I knew the power of the only way agzaga.Com was going to be successful was that we had to figure out [00:16:00] marketing. We also picked the most expensive way to build a website. I mean, it's completely custom built.

We own every single thing. There's no other site or entity that controls agzaga.com in any way, shape, or form. But knowing that we wanted to build this real special thing, but not knowing how to do e comm marketing, I hired a marketing manager that didn't have a tremendous amount of experience in the marketing world.

Then we just hired a social media person. That was kind of a local college person we thought might be able to do some posting. And just as we started trying to build this thing, just finding the amount of a lack of success that we were doing of actually getting traffic there of getting people to hear and see us, but we were trying, but the problem is we tried really hard for a year.

But we didn't understand marketing. And one of the things that I found out, like, just hiring people that has one skill set of marketing doesn't necessarily get you there. Just throwing money at [00:17:00] marketing definitely doesn't get you there. And oh my goodness, will it dig a big old hole that you got to find a way to climb out of.

And this is where after about a year of Honestly, just trial and error, but not kind of figuring out any of those wins. I took it on myself that I had to find a better understanding of marketing. It's the thing that everyone knows, but dear Lord, is it fuzzy? And I started reading all the rockstar books that I could find, guerrilla marketing, magnetic marketing.

All of.com secrets, all of Russell Brunson's books. and I had issues with every one of those. So like, it just wasn't a fit for us. It wasn't e-com centric. It wasn't where we were going. And then I found this one page marketing book. And I'll never forget the way you, I don't even wanna quote you 'cause you are here for crying out loud.

But the way that you broke down marketing is when the circus comes to town, you know what I'm talking about?

Allan: do. I do.

Anthony: And it was just like the most beautiful. Explanation of what marketing is, but then it's also like, but what do you do with this? Cause there's so much. And that's where, man, we were [00:18:00] trying everything that we could as a quote, you know, you got to track stuff, you know, you got to systemize stuff.

We didn't know what questions to ask, what to track. So by golly, did we sure have 35 different KPIs and all these different metrics, but every week it's like, well, what is this even telling us? And long story short, we read the books, we watched the YouTubes, we did everything we could, but what we really needed is we needed a um, an experienced team, an experienced person that actually knew how to walk us in there.

And as I read one page marketing there was some things that I could tell. Number one, you found a way to simplify it. You took the mystery of marketing and just in your simple one page plan, it's like, Oh, well I can fill up those nine boxes. And that is going to build a, who I'm actually going after with the message.

And it just almost exposed So many things we were doing wrong, but then when I went through that and saw what people were doing, right? I'm like, oh now I can start to connect these dots And then getting on the phone with your team and trying to figure out what do you guys do for training and I'll be honest your team was awesome, but I was like [00:19:00] I was asking every single question making sure it just wasn't a book and fluff or something.

It was a great book, super well written, but like I didn't know all the background of your team and who we were going to be working with. So I'm like grilling the people that are talking to me, like, what are the e coms you're dealing with? What's their revenue? What's their success story? What did you guys do to get them there?

But I was doing that because I knew we needed help. We needed to be able to ask the right questions to get the right answers. And we were just clearly asking the wrong questions. So anyway, as we really partnered with you, what were the things that were like huge game changers for us? Number one, just figuring out what are the right KPIs?

What are the actual most important things and what are they indicating and why do you need to be tracking them? And now we track all those weekly. We're making strategic decisions. Everything is based upon numbers. But then from there, so like, not only learning the KPIs, but then two, all the systems.

I have never seen a company that had SOPs like your company, Allan. Um, I mean every single thing, top to bottom. But what [00:20:00] that does when someone is winging it or we just don't know, the SOPs gives you that instruction manual. Hey, this is a way to start building your messaging. And then to me, just the last thing is, we never expected your team to understand agriculture.

We had the people here that knew agriculture, so we figured out the messaging. But learning how to do it at the right level and then learning to do it in the different marketing channels How you build your home page and how you build out an ecom is completely different to how you're doing your social And then how you're doing your social is different per social Figuring out not just to write random articles and stick them on your side But how to actually write SEO at the highest level making sure that you're capitalizing it if you've been in marketing for a long time, that might make all sense to you.

But when I'm a dreamer, visionary, trying to build this thing and just don't know you being able to walk us through how to not only do this, but do this effectively. I mean, yeah, it was us not only learning how to do it and having the foundation and made it [00:21:00] where we enjoyed it. Before marketing was this vague, difficult mystery.

And like, after two years, now I've got all these people that are like asking me for advice and I feel like I can help them, but it's also like, yeah, but you got to start by reading this book. Cause this is kind of what we've been breaking down along the way.

Allan: I love it. That's great feedback. I want to double click on a couple of things there. So, a a large part of my goal with the book and the program and everything else is for people to feel like, Hey, I can do this. Because I've been there where I had no clue with marketing. I needed to get clients and I had no idea what to do.

certainly with the program, it filters into everything that we do. I want people to be able to feel like, hey we can demystify this. We can create a step by step.

And by the way, we really don't know anything about ag, agriculture and we, Often a large part of what people ask us is like, Hey, do you understand this industry? Do you know agriculture? Do you know medical or whatever? And while we've worked with people across tons of industries, honestly, the industry specific stuff is a very minor part of it.

And the client nine times out of ten knows it. [00:22:00] A hundred times better than us and can guide that part of the process. But putting in the SOPs, the systems, the processes, all of those sorts of things. Those are things that my team are absolutely awesome at. And that's something that we're very proud of because, hey, we can take this SOP.

how do we implement that? You know, social, how do we implement a new website structure? How do we do all of that sort of stuff? My team are incredible at that and they've done a really good job with it. so what I'm hearing is basically you went from kind of like just random acts of marketing to now, okay, we're having a systemized approach.

We're looking at KPIs, we're looking at key things, we're measuring things. and then we're affecting those things by following a defined kind of process. we're not doing random stuff anymore. We're

Anthony: Yep.

Yep. I mean, could you imagine having to put some big ol large thing you order on Amazon together without instructions? I mean, it's a mess. And to me, yeah, that's where you guys have been absolutely incredible. You know, I mean, we got to figure out how to build the [00:23:00] messaging and really get the agricultural world to know us and trust us.

But man, when you get the SOPs, the KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, and you get all those things down yeah, it's been incredible. I mean, like you said, the marketing strategies. Whatever industry you're in, the marketing game, the marketing strategies isn't extremely different.

You just got to tweak it per your industry, per your customer.

Allan: So give me a firm example. When was the first time that you really saw, oh wow this is actually working? that we've implemented has now changed. So was it, something that you did on the social side? Was it something that you did with the website? Like when was the moment you're like, oh wow, okay, so this, I'm kind of getting traction.

This is some of the hard work is starting to pay off..

Anthony: Love it. of the biggest ones was one, I didn't have the full revelation of how powerful emails were. in the marketing world. And even when we got an email the way that we were structuring them. One of the traps that I think a lot of people get into is we just try to market everything to everyone.

And I think I'm quoting you here, but if you're marketing to everyone, you're marketing to no one. [00:24:00]

And we were awful at that early on.

Email Segmentation Success
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Anthony: But actually getting all of our email into the proper segmentation, you guys pointed us to the right software partner to be able to use that. It immediately synced with our website.

So now we took out all the human error, all the human entry. Everything was automated. Not only did it save us tons of time but then we started partnering with. I don't know if I'm supposed to say whoever your employees was, but one of your amazing copywriters Candice, Candice was absolutely off the charts helping us write these emails.

The importance of the subject line, the importance of your very first paragraph and making sure that you're not just putting in filler that just doesn't do any good and then making sure that you've got a great CTA, you've got a great call to action. There's a purpose for this. But we literally just by doing that, I mean, was probably one of the biggest things that in this last 12 months, I mean, we're going to grow three to 350 percent this year.

We grew a 400 percent last year on the back of really partnering with you guys. But yeah, our emails is one of our biggest revenue generators [00:25:00] right now. And we were a hot mess. It was bad. We were not, we started doing that thing.

Allan: I mean, email is the backbone of our own marketing. I mean, we make millions of dollars from email marketing, a lot of our clients. And so just getting that sorted can be a game changer. And of course, shout out to Candice. She's one of our awesome coaches. So, uh, good work, Candice.

and, um. prior to this, what were you doing with emails? Were you collecting emails didn't

Anthony: We,

Allan: or what?

Social Media Strategy Overhaul
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Anthony: So our email collection before we had a pop up that did not have a good CTA was not well written in our heads. It was, but then as we just kind of analyze it, it's like, Oh, this is not going well. You guys walked us through hot jar and some of those things that you can do to see the user experience on your site.

We just tell it wasn't working. So we revamped that. And then previously the way we were doing social media, everything was just, you know, using our social media to try to push a product and a sell. And lo and behold, no one ever saw it. No one ever engaged with it. No one ever did anything with it, but by golly, we were telling you about our products to go and buy them.

[00:26:00] But you guys really coming in and helping us build a social following because they want to follow who we are. They want to follow our story where we're educating, we're entertaining. But when you actually build a social following, then you actually can do campaigns to build leads through that, to be able to capture emails through there.

So we've done that we're supporting some incredible agricultural organizations that we've done some lead gen campaigns through. And you guys have helped us develop some of those campaigns to leverage social on capturing those. But yeah, that's just. Another way of using your guys strategy and skills to do socials, but even just doubling down on

Allan: And so what, what,

What was the shift specifically that you did it from a social? So you started telling your story, you start telling the story of your clients or like what was the before and after look like?

Anthony: Love it. So first just the mindset shift, whereas the mindset that no one wants, even though all the socials are getting blown up with advertisements left and right nowadays, you don't go on social because you just want to see a product or you just want an ad. You want to go to social cause you want to engage.

You want to hear people's stories. You [00:27:00] want to see what they're going. You want them to be transparent. You want them to be real. And we had this incredible story, but all of the things that we were posting were just about our products or this new deal or this discount right here on our deals page. But really learning why people are on social and your team just really walking us through that is a complete mindset shift.

And then this is one of the biggest things as well.

Remote Team Building
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Anthony: I live in the literal middle of nowhere. 500 people in our town, I'm 15 miles away from a stoplight, I'm an hour away from a mall, like we are in the land of way more cows than people, like we are straight up in the country but I, don't have a lot of marketing majors in my neck of the woods.

You guys even helping us go from a, we had to hire everyone here local to a remote model. And B you helped us through that entire hiring process from the interviews to the onboarding. Oh my goodness, man. Like I've got a team right now of people that are just unbelievably talented and being the catalyst for our e-comm going to where we're at right now and continuing to go.[00:28:00]

And I would have never had the mindset to even think in that way. But just getting you guys to be able to help us find those people that there are ways to build these e-comms even if you're in the middle of nowhere, even if you have all the, you know, the deck stacked against you. But yeah, no, I've got a world class marketing team right now.

That's several in the United States. We've got a couple from overseas and I'll take our marketing team against anybody right now. We're killing it.

Allan: I love it. I love it. I always say, you know, the best person for the job is not necessarily in your zip code. And in your case, I mean, there's not a lot of people in your zip code, right? That's cool. What's been the most difficult part of the whole process?

Challenges and Growth
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Allan: So, over the last two years, you've had a big transformation, a big amount of growth. What's been the most difficult part of doing that and how have you overcome it?

Anthony: when I would say the most difficult part, gosh, I still want to go to like the first two, three years of even all the personal struggles that I had, but really in the last two years of just continuing to [00:29:00] grow the e comm

to me at the end of the day, feel like if we wanted to do this in the way that there are so many publicly traded companies, like, I actually think I see a course, I see a strategy that if there were an abundance amount of funds that were just to flow in, I actually think I could build this thing rapidly and very quickly.

I'm building something that my grandfather started that I grew up being a part of. and I just, I always want to build this thing that has his heart, that has his culture. I mean, I just had the most incredible grandpa ever as a role model and he's still one of the biggest reasons why I make the decisions that I do today.

And I just don't ever lose that. But to me, the biggest difficulty is one, agriculture is not known for its high profitability. And you know, we are behind the times. It is an uphill battle. But just the lack of resources and the lack of funds. I love even, your company of lean marketing.

I kind of sometimes want to call it ROI strategy, ROI marketing strategy, but it's like, I kind of love that we are building this in a way that like we're not just throwing [00:30:00] millions of dollars at this and that every single strategy we're doing, we have to be calculated. We have to make sure that we're tracking the numbers, that we are doing ROI.

We kind of had that mentality in the first year of like, oh, we'll just throw a bunch of money at this and See what happens. But no where we're at now, I actually feel like we have the strategy to turn this thing into a man. I sure think I can turn it into a nine figure company. I know we're going to hit eight figures.

That's a cakewalk. But yeah, to me it is when you kind of get the dream and you kind of get the vision, but you really don't want to lose the control. Just to be able to bring in funds to do it. I think that's probably the biggest thing that I personally struggle with, but that's, you know, that's me, that's my heart and that's the way I'm

Allan: Yeah. I mean, we first talked I said, you know, an option for you is to take on VC funding and grow faster or whatever. And um, and that, definitely an option that you could consider. But, you're more content to grow slower, but on your own terms and grandpa's vision and really make, do things your way rather than just focus solely on the growth which [00:31:00] I love because as an entrepreneur you get to define life and work and business on your own terms.

And I love that you've really thought about that because a lot of people just I see like a lot of mindless entrepreneurship where people are just chasing the next high, the next revenue, the next profit, all of that. And nothing wrong with that. Of course, I love big numbers and I love impressive stats and all of that sort of thing.

But to really, sit back and to say, you know, this is the reason why I'm doing this. And this is where I want to go and to be really articulate and intentional about where you want to go. I think that's really powerful.

Personal Struggles and Mindset Shifts
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Anthony: So like that is, can I have like just a little bit to tell where I struggled so much in my first two years as CEO before Agzaga and everything like that? So when I step in as a CEO, I'm so underqualified. Prior to that, I was literally in the ministry for 10 years and loved it every day. I got to help people, bless people, try to train people, help them step into who they're called to be.

But when I stepped into business, like there was still an excitement because I [00:32:00] always view business as a. Avenue to help people and encourage people. I saw my grandpa do that, whether it was an employee or a customer or whoever it was, like he was just always helping and encouraging and blessing people.

But man, when I stepped in, I just feel like I was brainwashed in those first two years that we had to have certain amounts of growth. We had to have this amount of revenue and you got to have hustle culture and you got to work this many hours a week. I love time with my family. I love time with my wife and I didn't want to build this company in a way that even the people that were working here were having to work 60, 70 hour work weeks.

Like, I wanted to build this in a way that really cared for the people. But in those first two years, The pressure that I put on myself from chasing, I don't know, I just want to call it like Western thinking, if that makes any sense, that we're also self identified with our job title, our revenue, all these metrics.

And it's like, is that your heart? Is that your passion? Is that your [00:33:00] purpose? Is that what literally wakes you up? And I mean, even now, every time I talk to any entrepreneur, what do we talk about? We talk about what you do. We talk about revenue. You know, we talk about all these big numbers and it's just like, At the end of the day, if you just chase those things, you never figure out what your heart is really pursuing, you can get in a bad place.

And I mean, my first two years as CEO, like, because I'm dreaming. So I'm dreaming of this big dream to carry on what my grandfather built, but I didn't know how to do it. I didn't know, I didn't have any of the strategies figured out. But all that pressure, dude, I started having anxiety attacks. I started having anxiety attacks.

IBS that feels like a grenade goes off in your stomach. Struggle in just every single area. And like mindset shift that happened in between year two and three was just that this is not about title. It's not about a revenue. It's about finding what felt in my heart. And I just had to go back to the reason I looked up to my [00:34:00] grandpa.

There was a thing that he did of helping people. And I'm a little bigger dreamer than my grandpa. My grandpa was actually really risk averse. I'm like this crazy risk taker, like, let's just go for it. We'll figure it out. But with that being said, like just even locate that the reason I love business, is that I literally believe it can be an avenue to help other people's dreams come to a reality.

So like, if I can build my dream in a way that I can help other people build their dreams, I get so much more reward and satisfaction and joy from that in my life. And that's where it's like, yeah, maybe we will a 500 million company and that'd be incredible. But if I ever lose my purpose or my passion or my heart, or Simon Sinek would say you're why I just don't know what I'm building at the end of the day.

Like this is more important than that.

Allan: I think it's so important to be intentional. And I think every entrepreneur has got to go through that. I don't know. I think to some extent they have to get to that, rock bottom or that turning point. You know, for me probably it was maybe four or five years ago.

I was overweight. I was on the brink of [00:35:00] divorce. So I had hardly ever spent time with my friends. The only thing that was going well was business. and I'm like is it a win if you get to a hundred million and you get divorced, your family don't know who you are. You're sick and you're unwell.

So. It really got me thinking a lot more holistically around what are we doing this for? What's the actual goal? And so ironically things when you do that, things actually got better business wise, you know, made more revenue, made more profit things actually go exponentially better.

And it's I was talking to Joseph Nguyen on a previous podcast. And it's like, when you're trying to force the solution to a problem, it just almost never comes. And it's sort of when you let go often when the solutions come. And I think business and entrepreneurship, it's really a personal development journey in many ways.

I often say there's no such thing as business problems. There are personal problems that manifest themselves in your business. One of the things that sort of inspired me when you and I were talking is I [00:36:00] know you, you mentioned the business was passed on to you but you did not have an easy journey.

You did not have an easy background and look, if you're comfortable talking about it

Because I think It's inspirational to a lot of people because you had every reason not to be successful, you know, and they would have been valid reasons. You had every reason to not try and to really get to where you are.

What's your background if you don't mind sharing and what are some of the things that you've had to overcome as a result?

Anthony: Don't mind. Love it. Great question. And to me, I even if it's a hard story to share, I love sharing the story because as I've continued to get to know entrepreneurs all across the country, man, it just seems like we've all went through so much difficulties and we all got our own story, but like. When I've heard their story, the encouragement that it's brought to me.

So I don't mind sharing the story at all.

Family Business Turmoil
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Anthony: So what caused me to go from the ministry Stepping into the family business. I mean, there were some prayer time of like, God, did I fail or anything like that? But it really was the stepping into the business world that I felt like I could help people just as much as I could in the business [00:37:00] world as I could the ministry, because I saw my grandfather do that.

But the other tipping point is that my grandfather got diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. So I mean, this was our patriarch. This was the rock solid guy. My father, who has been in the business helped with sales for all these years. And I love my dad. I honor my father, but he had all sorts of addictions, lifestyle issues.

Him and my mom, about three years before this date actually got really, they found a doctor in town that if you just paid a little extra, it would describe you any opiate you want. So as there was just that huge opiate spike my parents got really wrapped up in that and it just sent them in a horrible train wreck.

So six months later, my grandfather ended up passing away and the hope is that my dad would step up to the plate. I was doing everything I could to be able to help and to learn the business. But my dad actually really spiraled barely started showing up to work, was making all sorts of financial decisions that in one year almost cost our entire company to the point the banker literally came and knocked on my grandmother's door.

My grandmother was the full owner at that point and said, if you [00:38:00] guys don't turn this around, we're going to close everything. And in that conversation with my dad, hoping that he would open his eyes. He actually got really angry and ended up leaving that day, one of the hardest days of my life. And after several, couple of days of conversations with grandma, just going, Hey, what can we do to figure this out?

You know, it was all of the pressure of everything but stepping into that CEO role I didn't really have a choice if I wanted to carry on this legacy or help my grandma on these situations, but I would have a friend that does business EBITDAs and assessments and things like that. So when I stepped in, we were literally evaluated at a negative 247, 000.

I would have had to pay someone 247, 000 to take on our business. And through that first year I mean, it just seemed like it went from, it's like, I'm an optimist. So whenever I step into this whole world in my head, even when grandpa was sick, like, I just have a Disney movie in my head, man. Like, it's [00:39:00] going to be a Disney story.

We'll, there'll be some lows, but we'll sing Kumbaya and we'll figure it out and it'll be great. High Energy, and I just, I brought that into the company, but like, oh my goodness, should it just turn into a Jerry Springer episode? Not only did dad continue to spiral, dad actually started working for our number one competitor, and then literally tried to go after us.

So my whole first year, I was literally even battling with my dad and just, I'm literally going with every customer just like, Hey, here's my dad's information. We are the company you've dealt with but here's this. And then three months into that, my mom, the opiate addiction caused a suicide situation that was unbelievably difficult.

And then even the rest of that year, when I'm stepping in. If you ever talk to someone that has dealt with family business and you have a younger generation working, especially with two generations above sometimes the older generation doesn't love change. So I'm coming in and wanting to change how things have done trying to get this business to carry on and just all sorts of conflict with me and my grandma.

And then the stress of not only is there all [00:40:00] this family drama I want to take this company and turn it into one of the best netwrap and twine and hay baling suppliers in the nation because I'm this dreamer. I don't know how to turn it off if I wanted to, which just increases the pressure of everything.

And this is where anxiety attacks and IBS and all these horrible things that was just destroying my body. And then through the, you know, a couple of years of from the marriage to my kids. I mean, it was just this uphill battle. But we found ways to grow. We found ways to thrive in it but the amount of, so I guess I'm just going to spin it into this Allan, like the amount of entrepreneurs that I've talked to through that are in their own trauma and in their own struggles, but it just felt like they found ways to pacify it or to just deal with it.

I'm not wired that way, like not hard. I'm a high energy, addictive personality. Like that's how I'm wired. And it was like, I could not keep showing up to work with this [00:41:00] fake mask on pretending that I had it all together. Like I had to be incredibly real, but I also had to find ways to do this in a way that I enjoyed.

The process, I enjoyed the journey. It was never, it couldn't just be about a destination. But yeah, man, year one was a train wreck. I feel, and then like year two, I started having nine figure competitors, like industry leaders start putting sales reps, like 20, 30 minutes from my headquarters. I mean, just, it seemed like we couldn't catch a break.

But just through our team being passionate, having a why, having a vision, being gritty, doing whatever it takes, like, yeah, man, we, we built this really incredible thing. And the exciting thing is now we got this trajectory that I hope I can keep the Jones legacy going for multiple generations to come.

Allan: Amazing. Amazing. Look, it's incredible what you've had to overcome and very inspiring to a lot of other people. Like I said, you had [00:42:00] every reason to not do what you're doing. And you know, no one could really blame you, but what have been some of the tools that have been helpful for you to overcome some of these issues.

You talked about anxiety. You talked about all the stress from dealing with what was happening in your family life and your business life and all of that. What helped you kind of deal with all of that?

Implementing Traction and Hero Strategy
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Anthony: So I can say there was one incredible tool, but the biggest thing was getting the right mindsets to acquire the right strategies. the one tool that between year two and three and implemented year three, four Gino Wickman's got a book called traction. It's an EOS system right now. I think the system is called bloom growth, but going through that book honestly, because if you're at this place watching you, you've seen what lean marketing did for us with marketing strategies traction, the book and the system did that for just business itself.

It simplified it. It gave us platforms for [00:43:00] meetings, vision casting and just really how to step into leadership. So that was a complete game changer. But at the same point, like. I remember even going through the identity crisis in those early days of like, how do I be a CEO? How do I grow this thing?

What is HR? You know, and just all these different struggles that I had. And one of the things that I've done that I just haven't seen a lot of people do is I call it the hero strategy. But I'm really big into finding the industry leaders and you've got to make sure they're the industry leader. The amount of trainings and coaches that are out there now is just unbelievable, but actually finding the people that are leading the industry and then whether it's a book, whether it's a YouTube, whether it's podcast really deep diving into the mindsets that they have and the skill sets that they have to be successful.

And then start modeling those. So like early on you know, me and my team, none of us really knew how to sell. We could talk, we communicate, but we didn't know how to sell. So we found some of the best industry leaders in salesmen and went through their training programs, went through their models. [00:44:00] And as we kept growing, like we still use that same principle today.

It was the reason in marketing that led us to you. But just Knowing how to find industry leaders, how to ask the right questions to make sure that they are, make sure they actually have experience along with training to help you grow in those areas. Like that's been the thing that I think has continued to make us successful.

We model Agzaga off of the other world class e comm and marketplaces out there that they have million dollar budgets that I don't have. So yeah, just fine. I call it the hero strategy, finding hero visions and hero strategies with industry leaders.

Allan: I love that.

Advice for Entrepreneurs
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Allan: mean, I have found that to be such a cheat code in life and business to just find the person who's done it and get them to guide you safely through the rocky waters and because they know where, the problems you're going to encounter, they know the issues and the challenges and they know how to safely guide you to where you want to go.

I wish I had done that much earlier on in my first business because I made every [00:45:00] mistake in the book. I did trial and error and it was mostly error. And, you know, while I learned a lot of lessons in that process, I could have saved a decade of time, which, how valuable is that? So, I've done that in all areas of my life where, whether it's relationships, whether it's fitness, whether it's business, whether it's sales, whether it's anything else, is just to find the person who's done it and can guide me through and it's just such a cheat code and such a great strategy.

Anthony: Um, One. It was that you almost had to find them for every major specific area of your life that you're passionate about. And just being able to ask the right questions to to I didn't have anyone in my life that didn't have an opinion of what I should or do. Bankers told me what I was doing was dumb.

Accountants told me what I was doing dumb by chasing these dreams. I mean, it seemed like everybody was telling me to do the opposite. But then you hear the stories of the people that have built 10, 50, 100 million dollar companies. And I'm like, no, that this is the mindset. These [00:46:00] are the risks that they take.

These are the strategies that they're bringing in. But man, you gotta be so careful of the opinions that you allow to speak into your life. Because if they don't have the mindset and the strategy of where you want to go, they can literally lead you astray. So

totally.

Allan: And you're 100 percent right. Everybody has an opinion. You really want to follow the person who's actually done it and just get it done. Follow their advice because they're someone who's actually been there. It's very cheap and easy to have an opinion. Well, Anthony you're a real inspiration.

You're an incredible entrepreneur. Thank you so much. you know, you've been incredibly insightful and generous with your time.

Closing Remarks and Contact Information
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Allan: Where do people. find out about you. You're at agzaga. com? anywhere else someone should find out about you if they want to know more or

Anthony: Come on. Agzaga.com

Allan: order some, Hey Baylor gear, like where

Anthony: So if you want a little company history, go to jonestwine. com. Jonestwine. com is where you're going to get more of my family history and things along those lines. Agzaga. com, I'm just a believer that we're building it as a team. So like it does [00:47:00] tell my personal story, but it's really the heart of Agzaga is kind of what we do there.

And then heck, follow me on LinkedIn and I've got all the social pages and everything along those lines. And if anyone has any questions or anything, man, I love to connect with people. It's

Allan: Amazing. Thanks so much Anthony. It's been a pleasure having you on.

Anthony: Thanks, Allan. You too. Have a good one, man.

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