Our Founder/Managing Director – Michael DeSa – was invited by Bob Louthan last month to join him on the Spotlight podcast hosted by the Veteran Crowd Network. They discussed everything from Mike’s time at Texas A&M, his diligence trip to South America, the power of making long-lasting connections, and tips for transitioning veterans looking to step into the entrepreneurial space.
When Mike was 10-years old, he sought to join the US Marine Corps by writing a letter to his local recruiter, expecting to join soon thereafter. The recruiter wrote back telling Mike to come back when he was 17. Steadfast on becoming a Marine, he completed his education at Texas A&M in Agricultural Engineering, and after receiving a commission into the US Marine Corps, went on to be an Infantry Officer for the next 7 years.
Today, Mike is the masterminds behind the company that is AGD Consulting. He is also a published author in Global AgInvesting News, Global AgInvesting Gazette, AgTech Nexus, Agri Investor, Huffington Post, and the Marine Corps Gazette.
Listen to the full recording here
Or enjoy the transcript from the conversation below!
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Bob (00:14):
Welcome everybody. This is Bob Louthan and host of the Spotlight, and I’m pleased to have as my guest today, Mike DeSa, the Founder and Managing Director of AGD Consulting. And just to give a little background on him, he’s a Texas A&M graduate, a member of the Corps in the Class of 2007. We’re going to talk about some of those nice high boots those seniors got to wear. He went to Texas A&M on a Marine Corps scholarship and commissioned as an Infantry Officer in the United States Marine Corps. Mike, welcome to the program. Thanks for being here.
Mike (00:50):
No, thank you for having me, Bob. It’s really a pleasure.
Bob (00:52):
Well, it’s good to get to know you. I always like to start out with our guests and learn a little bit about their background. Where’d you grow up and how’d you end up you know, pursuing a Texas A&M [degree] and going into the Corps. I want to hear all about that. I like the Aggies.
Mike (01:09):
Yeah, sure. I grown up in San Antonio and I had always been interested in the military, but it wasn’t until I was really 10 or 11 that I can remember sending a handwritten note to the [local] Marine Corps office. I think it was one in the San Antonio area saying, “Hey, I’m interested in joining. What’s the process?” The head of that office actually responded back with a typed note that said, basically thanks for writing, but you can’t really join until you’re 17. Come back to us then.
Bob (01:47):
World War II veterans lied about their age to get in the Marine Corps, right?
Mike (01:52):
Sure. Even at 10 or 11, I think that would have been a hard sell, but I can remember thinking, wow, that’s really impressive that they would respond. And at that point it looked like it was a typewriter generated-note that they had hand signed. Enclosed with the note was a poster, the typical picture of the Marine in camouflage with a dark background and a weapon. That poster hung on my wall basically until I left for college. And it just so happened that I joined the junior ROTC program at the high school I went to in San Antonio and lo and behold, the senior enlisted advisor at that program was a retired Master Sergeant – Tony Cavazos. That was pretty much it. I graduated high school, got a scholarship in the Marine Corps, spent some time at A&M and then was commissioned in the Marine Corps in December of 2007. And I remember asking Master Sergeant Cavazos to come back at commissioning. He actually gave me my first salute. And so you had this sort of full circle kind of mentorship. So it was really impactful for me.
Bob (03:09):
I’ve always been impressed with the Corps at Texas A&M. You’re one of the seven senior military colleges like Norwich, Citadel, VMI, Virginia Tech’s Corps as an example. And of course, you’ve got the Texas Aggie band, which I just, you know, that’s probably a bucket list item for me, see them perform at the halftime of a football game. But tell me a little bit about being in the Corps there. I mean, it’s a pretty big enterprise, but part of a much larger school.
Mike (03:46):
Yeah, it was. And candidly, I didn’t know much about it at first. I had it set in my mind that the Naval Academy was really where I wanted to end up and I had made it all the way through the Senate application and approval process. And I was set on going but for some reason, towards the end of the process, it didn’t feel right anymore. And I remember a relative saying to me, well, what about A&M, what about the Corps of Cadets? And it opened at that point, a whole other door for me that I didn’t even know existed that was four hours from where I grew up. So, I went down there, spent the night with the Corps of Cadets, where you go and you stay with either a sophomore or junior in their room. And you experience an evening formation, an overnight, and a morning formation. If you’re lucky enough to go on a Saturday, you can stay through a march-in. And at that point that I realized that there was a lot about the Corps of Cadets that was fitting as to how I wanted to spend my time in college. It was not obviously a typical public university time, but one I very much enjoyed.
Bob (05:05):
What is the first year like? I mean, they put you through sort of a Plebe year, correct?
Mike (05:13):
Yeah. From what I understand, it’s very similar to what Rats go through at VMI. A guy whom I served with in the Marines was a VMI guy, and we exchanged stories about it. It turns out that there was a lot happening that was similar to what we experienced through the Corps of Cadets at A&M.
Bob (05:31):
What do they refer to first year cadets?
Mike (05:40):
Fish. All of your time, from the time you wake to the time you go to bed, is structured. So you’re up early, you’re doing some type of activity with the unit (the Corps of Cadets is all broken down into different units). And because I was on a Marine Corps scholarship, I was in a Navy/Marine Corps unit. And it just so happened that my unit, K-2, was also the same unit that my future wife’s father was the CO (Commanding Officer) for as well as the First Sergeant, sometime in the 1978/1979 timeframe. And so it was just sort of divine intervention I think at some point. But you do a morning formation and then usually about seven or eight, after breakfast with your unit, you’re off to classes most of the day. But what you still do during the day and how you treat upperclassmen and interact when you get to certain areas of campus are all very regimented and controlled. And then when you show-up in the afternoon, we’ve got an entire two hours or so of afternoon activities. Some are good and some are not so enjoyable. And then
Bob (06:55):
It’s a lot about time management, isn’t it?
Mike (06:58):
Time management, physical fitness, responsiveness to orders. I mean, a lot of the same stuff that you experienced. It was pretty tough through that entire first year, both semesters until you finished that year. And then you show up the next year as a sophomore or a “pisshead” at that point, and your sort of directly responsible for training of the [new] freshman class. So it was really a unique experience, one I didn’t really know existed at all, but one I wouldn’t change.
Bob (07:36):
So you graduated from A&M in 2007 and go into the Marine Corps?
Mike (07:43):
Correct. After A&M, I went through The Basic School in Quantico, which every Marine goes through after they get commissioned and depending on how you perform there, you pick up your Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). And I was in the top 1% of the class, so I picked up infantry, which is where I knew I wanted to go. And then the Infantry Officer Course which is actually right across the street from The Basic School. So, I spent another three months there and then went to 1st Battalion, 9th Marines (1/9) in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina as my first duty station as a Platoon Commander. And that really started a seven-year career. My first deployment was with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), which 1/9 was the Infantry Battalion in support of the MEU. My Company, Charlie Company, was the helicopter company for the MEU. They have other companies like the Truck Company, Tracks, etc. As part of that deployment, we first stopped in Haiti after the earthquake 2008, where we performed some disaster relief and damage assessment work. We did some small unit training and program development work in East Africa and the Middle East (Jordan) before coming home later that year. After that, I moved up to the Executive Officer (XO) position and then deployed to Afghanistan 2010.
Mike (09:17):
At that point, it was a really decentralized footprint, very partnered-focused. As a company of 250, we took over a 350-square kilometer battlespace that had previously been held by 2,000 Marines. We were tracking and maneuvering against an enemy that used anonymity to the best of their ability. We had Marines and DoS supporters spread out across 15 to 18 different positions across that area. There was a lot to manage and track, but the interesting thing in a way, I think, is how many of these learned skills relate to agriculture. We learned to deal with fluid, interconnected environments and people, the benefits of putting a local face on a solution. We learned to triage and solve the most pressing problems first. We actually used a lot of data; patrol-generated data to facilitate operations, human data and intelligence to drive operations. These challenges and learned solutions, I would find out later as I stepped into agriculture, were not that dissimilar. In fact, they were very similar to some of the same challenges that you face in agriculture.
Bob (10:47):
So, here’s the transition question – how did you get into the ag industry? Tell us the story of how AGD came into being.
Mike (11:01):
A couple of years before I left the active duty, I felt like I was being called to walk a different path, one that was more entrepreneurial in nature. It just happened that at that time in my life, I was looking to invest in something tangible, uncorrelated – an asset class with appreciative value. And I also wanted something that was geographically diversified away from the United States. I had previously invested successfully in Latin America in the past, so I had a general idea of how it worked and what the region was like, but I had never really considered the production side of agriculture as an investable asset class. The previous deal was more land development than it was production agriculture, but as I started to look at [production agriculture] more, it had a lot of the same criteria that we were looking for – lack of correlation, tangibility, positive appreciative trend, etc.
Mike (12:11):
So, this really set off about a two-year research endeavor for us into all regions of the world that could support increased demands on agriculture in the coming years. And what we found was that Latin America had a lot of these different criteria we were looking for. So, we understood the fundamental challenges of investing in a foreign region without boots on the ground experience. Therefore, we knew very quickly that we needed to see this for ourselves. When I left the active duty service in the summer of 2014 and in early 2015, our family executed what would probably best be described as a six-month, six-country due diligence trip down into Latin America. I think all total 15,000 miles or so traveled. We looked at a 100+ different assets across the agricultural value chain and ended up investing again in a mixed ag project in the Southern cone, which we still manage today, but Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Panama, and Colombia [later].
Mike (13:27):
We tried to really see and experience as much of it as we could to build the groundwork for the consulting company, AGD, which I started in the early part of 2016 after we got back and got resettled. Today, we’re on a small farm near the Longview, Texas area, a couple hours East of Dallas. You could probably best describe it as a subsistence farm or a small-scale farm where we grow and raise most of what we consume – vegetables, leafy greens, garlic tomatoes, some tree fruits. We do some greenhouse work hydroponically. We have bees for honey and pollination, laying hens for eggs, broilers for meat, goats for milk and cheese, and cattle for beef. I mean, you name it, we’ve tried it. We also try to do as much of the processing and storing in house and ourselves as we can. It’s not a commercial endeavor for us. It’s more of a way of life and it’s something that’s really a part of both who we are personally and professionally.
Bob (14:42):
You’ve got an initiative for veterans in ag and talk some about that and some of the skillsets that you think veterans bring
Mike (14:52):
Yeah, I would have never really, again, put these two things together until about two years ago. I had started writing for a publication group called New Ag International – one of the largest, if not the largest, publication organizations and events groups for high-tech and precision agriculture. So we had published a couple articles with them and developed a relationship with their staff. After we wrote an article for our own organization about different tools of the trade, if you will, their staff reached out and said, look, we’d like to do something bigger together here. There’s lots of coverage on the mental health benefits and the transition benefits of a veteran going into production agriculture – a sense of purpose, a part of something bigger, producing something again with your hands. And so…
Bob (16:05):
Do you have any statistics about veterans in agriculture? I mean, this is an underserved market? Is it hard to figure out?
Mike (16:13):
There are no numbers that come to mind off the top of my head, but there are a number of organizations that support this. The Farmer Veteran Coalition, the USDA has several programs that specifically target veterans. There are certain pockets of money through different organizations that are designed to help veterans transition into these kinds of organization. There are lots of these sorts of intangible benefits that are specific to ag that veterans, I think, find attractive that they used to do in the service, but things like we had talked about – the ability to cope with fluid situations, etc. Agriculture is very interconnected. There’s lots of different factors that influence it, just like there’s lots of factors in a military member making a decision about an enemy or a unit action. We understand, as veterans, the idea of skin-in-the-game also, right?
Mike (17:16):
As veterans, we have vested sometimes our own lives and wellbeing in a mission, just like producers today are vested in their land. This is their livelihood. This is what they do to survive, but it’s more than that, right? It’s generational and this ability to understand skin-in-the game, triage these different problems and which to solve first that will make the most impact to yield, the same way that military members triage problems. And so, there’s all these soft skills, if you will, that I don’t think have the voice they need yet. And so, what we wanted to focus on with New Ag was bringing to light the skills that are unique to agriculture and, and the business side of agriculture in particular – running teams and organizations – all the way through to perhaps entrepreneurship. And so, what we’re starting to put together with New Ag is as holistic of an approach as we can as we can think of, targeting different parts of the transition process. So groups like Bunker Labs, Patriot Boot Camp, Centurion Military Alliance (CMA), HireMilitary, etc. We want a voice for them and to bring to light the issues that veterans face during transition that perhaps corporate agriculture or the business side of agriculture do not know about yet. Then we want to bring together the sort of recruiting end of things because sometimes veterans are not great at talking about the things that they did. There’s a humility factor in there that maybe feels uncomfortable to come veterans.
Bob (19:07):
No, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of farming that got done in the Marine Corps either. You know? And so, it’s a translation of skills and disciplines that sometimes you get stove-piped, you know as there are not a whole lot of positions from machine gunners in the private sector either. What are some of the steps you’ve taken so far that have led you to where you are you today and then paint a picture of where you’re going, where you hope to be? I don’t know, next two years from now.
Mike (19:46):
Yeah. And so, I mean, we have tried to grow as a firm as organically as possible. So, one piece of advice that I would want to give to a transitioning veteran that might be thinking about going into entrepreneurship – start to save and plan for it as early as you can. Tuck a little bit of money away every month, try to live as modestly as you can, because if you’re going to start something, oftentimes the easiest and most efficient way to do it is to bootstrap it, which is what I’ve tried to do and what we’ve done to date. But that takes preparation which starts while you’re still in the service and while you’re getting a paycheck. The other thing I would say is that I never would have guessed how valuable the construction of a network is and would be to starting a business. And I’m not just talking about the Aggie or, A&M network. I’m not talking just about the veteran military network either. I’m talking about the network that you build within the industry that you want to go into. It takes time to build this network and often, that time that you’re spending building it is not generally paid time.
Bob (21:03):
Well, let’s talk about that for a second, because you know, when you’re in the military, you have a military network, right. But you were in Jacksonville, North Carolina and now you’re in the Plains of Texas. You picked up and moved your family. So part of the transition problem is that veterans typically don’t stay where they are. The second thing is they have a military-based network and they haven’t cultivated a professional network. So if you could give one or two pointers on cultivating that professional network, I mean, how did you do it? And did you use tools like LinkedIn or what was the approach?
Mike (21:46):
I’d say there’s a couple of points. The first is that you would be, at least I was, surprised at how diverse the network base can be from within the military community. So there’s group of guys that I’ve served with and mentors and leaders at different points in my career, whether that was teaching at the Infantry Course, 2nd-in-command of a company, etc. Those leaders that you respect have their own networks, and maybe they did careers before the service, but there were lots of instances where that’s the first place I would turn. Again, you would be surprised what recommendations and networks they may be able to point you towards. So, you start where you’re comfortable. The second thing that I did that doesn’t cost any money and is a very efficient way to start to build a network is to start writing, to whomever will listen.
Mike (22:43):
A little bit a day, write a couple hundred words a day describing what it is that you want to do, or what you find interesting about where you want to go. And then before, you know it, you start to get decent at thinking about the things that are important, the challenges with an industry and possible solutions. Start to write and put your thoughts out there and lo and behold, that not only builds your network within the industry that you want to go into, but it also starts to get your brand out there.
Bob (23:17):
You are blogging? Where are you blogging about the subjects you’re interested in?
Mike (23:21):
I first started writing a little bit for the Huffington Post. They had a travel section when we were in Latin America, so I started there and we quickly realized the value of what that could bring. When we came back and started AGD Consulting, we dedicated a section on the website to our own content. And then we realized that there are gobs and gobs of efficient and respected publications within the industry that we just started building relationships with. “Hey, I’d like to offer you some content,” or “I’ve got this idea on sustainability and technology within the cotton industry. Do you mind if I put something together for you?” Most of the time they’re always looking for content as well, so if you can develop a technically-supported piece of content that speaks to the industry that you want to go into, adds value, a new perspective, or perhaps incorporates some of the things that you experienced in the military, then you’re talking from a base of experience and also getting your point out there and building a reputation.
Bob (24:37):
So, to the listeners, I mean, you just hit on a very important point. I mean, so creating content, it creates value. We’re an open society now with social media and so forth. So how do you get your message out there and in doing so you know, you create the image or become a thought leader or an expert within the industry. And it’s a great way to expand your network. And I can’t say enough about the importance of this. I sort of call it “digging the well before you get thirsty”, or you just never know where these relationships are going to come from. And when you might need somebody who has connections in a certain place. If you only have 250 people on your LinkedIn you know, connections, you need to get to work, you need to have thousands and play that to start.
Bob (25:42):
What was the number? Hundreds of millions of people I think on LinkedIn right now. And it’s just, we don’t know them all yet. We’re not finished. So tell me a little bit, who are your competitors and how are you, how do you sort of fit in the market? I mean, if called you up tomorrow and said, I need your help. What are the services that you provide if you were going to list them?
Mike:
Yeah, I would categorize them as things like independent due diligence, business development and market access and access to earlier stage or later stage type capital, depending on where you are. And I think in support of diligence services, we’re unique in that we can work on behalf of either a buyer or a seller as we’re generally unencumbered by return hurdles or geographic mandates typically associated with private equity groups and institutions
Bob (26:44):
What are the type of client’s you’re working with?
Mike (26:45):
So typical clients are private equity funds specific within agriculture, asset managers, agricultural technology start-ups, and/or producers themselves to which they need one, if not many of those different kinds of services. But as a…
Bob (27:03):
Let me interrupt you. A lot of people have heard about aquaponics. And so what’s sort of an interesting agricultural technology that maybe I haven’t heard about. Is there something out there that’s just really cool that comes to mind, Mike?
Mike (27:21):
Oh, there’s so many. You talked earlier about [the reality that there] may not be a direct applicability in agriculture for a machine gunner, for example. But the point I would make back is probably not a machine gunner, but if you were a drone operator in the Air Force, then all day long, you’ve got applicability in the agricultural space. If you were…
Bob (27:46):
I’ve heard about people flying drones over fields and kind of assessing the moisture and, and those types of things and figuring out how to affect a unit.
Mike (27:56):
So that’s one. They have drones that have different sensors on them, different cameras. Most of them are autonomous. They fly out on a pattern and those images can be used to build different kinds of agricultural maps that help you make decisions. They also have ones that have payloads in tanks that you can fill with crop inputs that fly a certain distance off the ground that deploy that crop input chemical.
Bob (28:35):
So that’s kind of fascinating stuff, you know, in the U S agriculture, are we leading the world in productivity in terms of agricultural output or…
Mike (28:46):
In terms of what we actually pull out of the ground?
Bob (28:50):
Are we lagging behind others, you know, and in different areas?
Mike (28:53):
In the permanent crop space like almonds or stone fruits, they have a strong presence in Western United States and the Pacific Northwest. When you look at more row crop type, soybean and corn, we’re generally isolated what we can grow based off of climate in the Midwest. But when you look at a country like Brazil or Argentina, where land masses capable of producing crops are significantly larger than they are in the US. And so again, it kind of depends on what you’re raising and who you’re trying to sell it to because that has a big factor as well. If you’re a European producer, you’re a lot closer to China than, than we are. And so, there’s a lot of nuances…
Bob (29:48):
It just all depends. I’ve also seen an enormous amount of investment recently in greenhouses to bring things like leafy greens, closer to the markets. Right now, a lot of lettuce comes out of California as an example, so why not have a greenhouse in Pennsylvania and serve New York City? You can get fresher product, less time to the table, those types of things. There’s a lot of investment going on there. Have you done any work with in, within that side of the industry?
Mike (30:20):
Yeah, we have, actually. We looked at some renovation work for one of those kinds of larger-scale, more localized greenhouse producers. They were looking to transform what they had done into a different crop type. But I think you hit on it when you described what these localized greenhouse production companies are trying to do, which is – bring the food source closer to its consumption. Right? They’ve got these display shelves now that they’re talking about putting these miniature greenhouses within supermarkets. They’ve got these kinds of standalone units that can go right into a display area. The whole thing is about number one, bringing that food closer to the consumer, it’s about making the supply chain that brings that product to the consumer more efficient. And if COVID has highlighted one thing within the agricultural space, I would say it is the fragility of our supply chain.
Mike (31:29):
In a lot of ways, it’s very complicated. It’s lengthy. It comes from operations that do things at scale, right? And so, when you look at right now abattoirs or smaller scale processing companies, on the rise, you have to wonder why? When Smithfield shut down several of their plants because of concerns over COVID, they shut down millions of pounds of product that was supposed to be destined for the consumer market. Well, consumers then said, “where am I going to get my meat from?” And they had never really looked locally or within their own communities that said, “Hey, there’s a local processor, 10 miles down the road here. It may cost a little bit more, but I know exactly where that food came from. I know exactly how it was produced and I can buy it right now.” And so right now you have these small-scale, decentralized processors that have months-long waiting lists of getting producers and product, their cows, or their pigs to their processors, because they can’t keep up with the demand. So, it’s really interesting.
Bob (32:42):
And then you have an E. Coli breakout somewhere, and all of a sudden, you know, you’ve got real issues there. So, a final couple of questions – if you could go back and talk to you know, Lieutenant DeSa right now, you know, go back 10 or 15 years, what would you say to that young second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps? And you know, what’s the next six months look like for you?
Mike (33:13):
So, I struggled a lot in the service at first in the sense of, I think I’ve got a fairly strong work ethic and attention to detail tends to be at the top of the things that matter to me. But what that did in the service as a young second Lieutenant was slow me down. Because I was always waiting for all of the information. I was always trying to put together the plan that could not be undone by the enemy. And it just, it just didn’t work.
Bob (33:51):
That doesn’t exist. Does it?
Mike (33:52):
I had to make a lot of decisions over time without all the information. And what I found was that the more I did it, at least in my experience, the better at it that you got and the faster that you got. As the Company XO (Executive Officer) in Afghanistan, the day-to-day operations were really sort of my responsibility. I can’t tell you a number of times that you’re in a command type center, whether it’s where you were stationed or where you had set one up, where you have to make a very fast decision with not a lot of information and then task those units to support that decision. And I wouldn’t have believed you had, you told me when I was 23, that you kind of suck at this right now, but the more you practice it, the more you do it, the better you will get at it.
Bob (34:49):
You’re not old enough yet, but you know, it takes 20 years to get 20 years of experience. You get comfortable with that decision-making process. The good thing about the military for a young person is it forces you into a position where you have to make those decisions. And some of them have a great deal of gravity to them right now, they’re life and death decisions. How does someone get in touch with you? How do you how do we reach out to you?
Mike (35:20):
You can check out our website at www.desaconsultingllc.com, or you can just do a Google search for AGD Consulting.
Bob (35:33):
Do you participate on any social media platforms and putting any stuff up?
Mike: LinkedIn
Bob: We’ll put links to Mike’s connections here on the show notes. Really appreciate you coming out today and speaking with us. We’ve been talking with Mike DeSa, the Founder and Managing Director of AGD Consulting. And you know, this is the Veteran Crowd Spotlight. We publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays and are available on Apple podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Anchor among others. And I really appreciate Mike being our guests today. And thanks so much for coming out.
Mike (36:19):
No, my pleasure, Bob, really thank you for the opportunity.
Bob (36:22):
Again, you’ve been listening to the Spotlight on Veteran Crowd, and we appreciate you joining the show. Look forward to hearing and speaking with you again, take care.