Tyler Nuss: Building a Brand, Side Hustles, and Regenerative Agriculture

Tyler Nuss wears many hats in his day to day life but, whether it’s working his day job in supply chain and operation for Rivian, an electric car startup, or being an advocate for sustainable agriculture - he’s on a mission to change the world. Co-founding the podcast the Modern Acre with his brother Tim. Tyler’s goal was to provide a community about innovation in food and ag business. Indirectly, it has built Tyler and Tim’s relationship with their family farm, allowed them to consult on other farms, and continue to broaden their horizons and, subsequently, the opportunities of Nuss Farms. 

The mission of The Modern Acre was to inspire other entrepreneurial and like-minded people in agriculture with their podcast, making a cross-pollination of people on the farm, farmers that were innovating and doing different things from the “normal” systems, and business leaders in the world of food and ag. 

“We both knew very early on that this was a long-term vision and that we saw the value in building an audience, building great content, and putting it out in the world,” says Tyler. Despite the original plan to make a “Bigger Pockets” concept, the show morphed on it’s own as they focused not on monetary gain, but on putting good content out for two years. 

With good content creation comes amazing opportunities, which the Nuss Family Farm has begun to see as an indirect result of the Modern Acre podcast. While the most common form of podcast monetization is sponsorships and advertisements, Nuss Farms has been able to partner with new business model opportunities and then promote them through the podcast. 

At a minimum, Tyler says that these opportunities have been extremely fruitful as just recently, their sustainable vegetable farm has partnered with Pasturebird. Pasturebird is an affiliate program that they have incorporated and, while it may seem like an untraditional concept, it provides a unique multi-faceted opportunity for their farm.

Find your niche and what makes you different - then lean into that! Both Tyler and Tim have built careers off of the farm, Tyler in technology and Tim in import/export of produce. Finding what makes them unique makes it interesting - no matter what. For example: Tyler talking about farming is okay; Tyler who is a fifth generation farmer talking about farming is more interesting; Tyler, a fifth generation farmer involved in the building of electric pickups talking about farming is very interesting!

If it wasn’t for the podcast, Tyler doesn’t believe that neither himself nor Tim would be as engaged in the farm as they would have been without Modern Acre. As they learned more information and chatting with more industry professionals, they found themselves routinely going back to the farm to have open conversations with their brother and father about the operation. They have also found themselves having consulting conversations with others in agriculture, specifically those looking to diversify their farm and move into a more sustainable or regenerative farming aspect.

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