Okay.

It's interesting.

I should be clear since this is audio.

I'm like the white guy here who is – so the white settler guy who's been just trying to figure out this for 30 years.

And just when you're speaking – One of the things that really strikes me, it actually reminds me of a book by John Ralston Saul called A Fair Country.

And one of the points that has really stuck with me from his writing is the description of really two different approaches to this land or country from people from Europe.

Partially because Canada was a cold, challenging environment.

Because if you can't stand by that agreement, then your word's no good anyway.

Where do you envision that capital going? What is that making possible for Filevine?

Let me back up just a little bit.

So we actually didn't use, some of that money we used to purchase a second company called Pinsights, which now forms the core of our drafting team, our AI drafting team.

But the other company, because they were struggling, we actually got them very, very cheaply.

So fortunately that one didn't cost us very much money, but their founders will end up doing really well because they got some Filevine stock.

The truth of the matter is, and this is hard, but I think everyone in this room needs to hear it and hopefully more people in the state of Utah hear it.

I just think if you haven't transformed your entire business, if you were a tech company today, if you were a SaaS company, and there's a lot here in Utah, there's a lot of SaaS companies.

What, I guess, where do you anticipate or hope that FileVine will take us? is or has accomplished or, you know, five years from now? I know that's a difficult question, but...

Yeah.

I'm the Chief Operating Officer here at Steward.

The company was founded in 2016, and we are, like I said, a private commercial lender.

We really started, our focus was on providing financing to the farmers themselves for land acquisition, infrastructure, equipment, those kinds of on-farm needs.

And one of the things that we've really seen over the last couple of years that's so essential is that you can't just support the growth of the farm through that on-farm financing.

Ultimately, we need to be driving sales to consumers.

And so we're now deploying capital throughout the supply chain, all the way from organic certified input manufacturers to a lot of processing and that sort of middle infrastructure, all the way to CPG brands.

Good.

Right.

Finding that why, that burn, um, and staying anchored to that, revisiting that, um, and, and making it more about them than the number, right? It- the number will come.

The success is gonna be inevitable as long as we're focused on, you know, just making sure that their, their main mission, their main purpose, their main goal in life is being met, you know?

For sure

... it's, it's for them, really, when we ask them, "How's your day look? How's your day going? Did you get this done?" Um, but then what I, I try to do a lot is I don't, I don't talk, I'll be honest, I don't talk a whole lot about numbers.

When I'm on the phone with them, I'm talking to them about their own mom.

I'm talking about their kids, the house you're buying.

I'm talking about, like, all these other things because if we're just focused on the number, like I said earlier, and we're not re- rehashing, like, why it is that this number's important, you know?

Yeah, I think that, that makes sense because, you know, AI kind of allows you to kind of separate the, you know, the wheat from the chaff, and then you can focus more deeply on the things that you need to focus on and sort of leave the other ones.

Yeah, I'll, I'll speak to that for just a moment too from a kind of a market perspective.

You know, two, three years ago, there were a lot of predictions around what would happen to engineers, coders.

Fileline employs a lot of coders.

I think we will end the year with something like four hundred to four hundred and fifty engineers, about half of which are ML engineers, but, uh, the other half would be kind of your traditional coders.

And there were quite a few predictions that AI would reduce the need for corporations, for tech companies specifically, to have as many engineers because the theory was that there will be so much code written and it'll be so much easier to be written that you won't need as many engineers.

And so you'll-- they'll actually just see some layoffs, and you'll see fewer engineers hired.

So Ryan, when we talk about lowering costs to capture a dormant market of middle-class clients and small businesses, what specific practice areas or legal needs do you think will see the quickest influx of new work? Uh, how does Filevine view this unfolding from a macro strategy perspective?

You're not really doing foreign policy so much anymore, but what are the areas where you're really focused today?

Yeah.

I mean, I, I would say to a certain extent, we're focused on many of the, um, the necessary preconditions for liberty, uh, and, and, and for liberty to flourish.

Meaning things like the family, uh, things like education, things like the churches, right? I mean, you need all of those institutions to be really healthy and strong in order for ordered liberty to be possible, right? And, and I think this is something distinctive about the American tradition, is that there, there needed to be a lot of non-governmental institutions, and I would say the, the family, the church, and the school would be at the top of the list, that need to be flourishing and really going well in order to allow liberty to be possible.

Because otherwise, I mean, think then what happens if the family falls apart? You get the government trying to step in and pick up the pieces, right? And you see this in the form of the welfare state and the police state.

And, and what is the welfare state and the police state doing? It's trying to replace a missing father and a missing husband.

And, right? And the husband and the father would've been historically the provider and the disciplinarian, and instead you now have a government trying to fill the gaps.

Where does EPPC fall in kind of that spectrum?

Is it going to work out for him in the Belmont, and why?

I think so.

I'm on the same horse I was on for the Derby.

It's commandment.

I got to take it one more time.

Look, the trip, if you watch the Derby back, Luis Saez had this horse in a perfect spot going by the wire the first time.

And then somehow by the backstretch, he had moved this horse up about six lengths and was on top of the pace that completely fell apart.

Okay, Ryan, who is your exacta and who is the horse you think is the biggest fraud in the field?

The question I'm gonna ping you is how much better? Like, how much better could this line be if it hits its ceiling, if, if Wilkins is a good tackle, Haywood stays healthy, Kawecki's the center they've been looking for for three years? Could this be an upper tier Big Ten offensive line? Could it be a really good offensive line? Are there a couple NFL guys here? What's the optimistic look at this? Because there's no doubt that this offensive line is better than last year's as long as there's not a rash of injuries.

I mean, it could...

I think on the pl- on the, the optimist side, this could be a late Crist era offensive line where, you know, it's been a while since we've had that f- group of five guys where everyone's an NFL caliber stud.

We've had a lot.

We've had, you know, our Joe Tippmann and then a couple UDFAs or we've had guys who are UDFAs who give them a couple of years, they end up being NFL type players.

There's a lot of talent in this group where the, you know, we talk, the, the floor is higher than it has been in the past.

And I also trust the work that Coach Mateos can do 'cause he did it at Arkansas.

Um, would you agree or disagree on my kind of assertion that this offensive line sets up for a dominant run, running team? Like, I think that is maybe their strength.

Right.

I was trying to show her what normal life was about and what unconditional love was about, you know what I mean? 'Cause a lot of people always turned on her, and that's one reason, Sarah, I've never come out and have fully bashed her.

Now I'm, you know, people think I'm not mad at her or not this.

No, I'm, I'm furious.

You know, like, but that has subsided over time as well.

You know what I mean? Like, I can't hold onto that hate forever.

And but I always told myself I was always gonna show her what unconditional love was, and I was always gonna...

It was an email, right? Where you referred to Gypsy as-

up.

Yeah, I'm not trying to fuck up.

I'm like literally on the straight and narrow.

I'm done sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I've been in and out of institutions since I was 13, 14.

Like, I'm done.

I'm not selling any drugs.

That's why you rack.

You're not, you're not trying to up at this point.

Yeah, I'm not trying to up.

I'm, I'm, like, literally on the straight and narrow.

I'm done, sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I've been in and out of institutions since I was 13, 14.

Like, I'm, I'm done.

I'm not selling any drugs.

Right.