‘Shark Farmer’ shares life lessons

MENDOTA, Ill. — An Illinois grain farmer and popular host of podcasts, radio and television shows was the guest speaker at Eureka Savings Bank’s recent inaugural ag event.

Rob Sharkey, a fifth-generation farmer growing corn and soybeans just outside of Bradford, also known as Shark Farmer, spoke frankly of growing up on the family farm and his life’s experiences that guided him along the way.

Sharkey has been on Sirius XM Rural Radio since 2018, hosting a daily show during the week and a special weekend show, and hosts multiple TV shows in RFD-TV and PBS, as well as a regular podcast, focusing on farming and rural life through interviews. He also owns a white-tailed deer hunting outfitter.

He opened his talk by sharing his experiences returning to the family farm after graduating from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

“I basically was a hired hand for dad. That’s kind of how a lot of the kids that come back are. But after a couple years, I’m like, I’m fifth generation and four generations before me built a farm, made it better, made a place for me to come back. Well, I better get going on my own, and I’m not going to do that just working for dad,” he said.

“Dad raised hogs and he raised a lot of them. I knew how to do that. So, I decided that’s what I was going to do. I was going to rent some buildings, I was going to buy a bunch of feeder pigs, and that was in the fall of 1998.

“Anybody here have hogs in 1998? So, right off the bat, I was broke, and it was bad, too, because dad was in the same boat. He had hogs, too, so he didn’t have anything.”

The bank where Sharkey had the operating loan eventually called, and the future Shark Farmer was hoping the banker would provide him and his new wife, Emily, with some options.

“We go in his office, he’s got this beautiful wooden desk, and he’s sitting in front of this beautiful arched window, and we sit down. He’s looking at his papers, and then he looks up, and he goes, ‘Look, you blew it. My advice? You’re young, file bankruptcy,’” Sharkey recalled.

“That just hit me like a ton of bricks because I thought we were going to go on there and say, ‘Hey, you messed up, but here’s option A, B, C.’ No, none of that.”

That evening, the Sharkeys talked long into the night about what their next step would be. The next morning, Emily said, “We’re not going to file for bankruptcy.”

“I didn’t know what to say, because here is this banker that knows what he’s doing, saying, ‘We have to.’ And here’s my wife saying, ‘We’re not going to do it,’” he said.

“So, 9 o’clock came, I called the bank, and I said, I don’t know how, but we’re going to pay this off. Now, I’ve been called a lot of names in my life. We all have, right? But the banker, I remember, he said, ‘You’re an idiot for doing this.’

“That’s not the worst name in the world, but I remember how bad that hurt, and it hurt because I believed it. I truly believed I was an idiot for trying to figure this out.

“It took seven years to pay off that debt, but we did it and professionally it’s one of the things I’m most proud of that we’ve done. It wasn’t easy, but we figured it out.

“It was tough, but we made it work. I think at one point we had seven businesses that we were filing taxes on. I was pressure washing hog barns for other farms, just whatever it took.”

During that period, Sharkey started the white-tailed deer hunting outfitter business, unique to the area at the time, that eventually became successful after some early growing pains and lessons.

Shark Farmer Begins

The idea of Shark Farmer was the result of what transpired during a power outage that started on Christmas and ended on New Year’s Day when he was messaging on Twitter, now X.

“Back then, Emily and I just had like a little red Honda generator that would run maybe the furnace and the refrigerator and my phone charger. It couldn’t handle more. Emily took the kids to her folks and for a week, I sat and watched this little generator and I filled it up every three hours with fuel, because that’s all I could do. That’s all I did for a week,” Sharkey said.

“I started messaging Ameren CILCO relentlessly. I posted, ‘My dog needed an operation. No, I’m not saying this is entirely your fault, but my dog didn’t need an operation when I had electricity.’ That’s what trended on Twitter back then. And when you trended back then, you trended globally. The whole world was seeing this stupidity. I went from like 500 followers to 10,000 followers in a week just because of this. That’s kind of what sparked the whole Shark Farmer thing.”

Podcast Beginnings

The podcast idea started with a conversation Sharkey had with a hunter who had her own podcast in 2016.

“The more she talked about it, the more I’m like, this could be kind of fun, because I had a notebook full of stories, stupid stuff that my hunters had did. I’m like, this will be hilarious,” he said.

Unlike today, there were few podcasters in 2016. She recommended starting with five stories for the podcast.

“I did three with hunting stories, and two where I interviewed farmers. Well, the two I interviewed with farmers, they just took right off. What I learned with the three hunter interviews is if you weren’t there at the hunting lodge, you don’t know people and you don’t know the inside jokes. It was the worst 30 minutes of audio that you’ve ever heard in your life. We violated people’s ears with those first ones,” Sharkey said.

“So, we pivoted, and we started interviewing farmers, and we made a conscious choice. We’re not going to be interviewing secretary of agriculture, we’re not going to be interviewing presidents of Farm Bureau. We’re just going to be interviewing average people in agriculture — farmers, salesmen, mechanics. We just wanted to get those stories out there.”

He shared other stories of his early podcasts of interviews and the reactions they received from listeners.

The popularity of the podcasts eventually led to a meeting with the Hefty Brothers — Brian and Darren — that was the beginning of Shark Radio.

Sharkey then had an idea for a television show that he wanted to pitch to Patrick Gottsch, who owned Rural Media Group, which also includes RFD-TV.

Gottsch was onboard with the idea. Gottsch’s daughters, Raquel and Gatsby, continue to support the RFD-TV program.

“Then we get a call from PBS. We’ve been amazed with this. The RFD show is a national show, but we feel, honestly, there was a lot more feedback from this show than the national one. It’s amazing to be walking in a Walmart in Peoria and some lady that has nothing to do with agriculture starts talking about corn and soybeans and stuff like that. It’s kind of a dumbfounding when you think about it,” Sharkey said.

“We recently did a live show at a barn theater and it’s just incredible the people that showed up. It wasn’t just farmers. So, we’re getting outside of the agriculture bubble and we’re trying to bring people into our side because they’re voting on politicians that will eventually make rules for us.”

Other topics Sharkey covered during his presentation included planting mistakes, farm succession, and father-son relationships.

Family Support

“I failed a lot in my life, a lot, but I don’t consider myself a failure, and I don’t think anybody should if they’re able to learn from what they failed on,” Sharkey said.

When he was considering to start the outfitter business, he admitted he had low self-confidence.

“I was so worried about trying something new, because I just failed at pigs. So, I’m going through hogs and dad comes in and goes, ‘Tell me what this whole outfitter thing is.’ And when he did it, I mean, my heart just sank because I didn’t want to tell him because he’s gonna make fun or whatever,” he said.

“I told him the whole idea, and the whole time he’s looking at the ground. I get done, he looks up, and he goes, ‘I don’t get it. I don’t get what you’re trying to do.’ As my heart starts racing, he goes, ‘But I’ll help you.’”

“That meant everything to me because, looking back, I guarantee, if he would have laughed at me, if he would have told me it was a dumb idea, I don’t think I would have done it, and I wouldn’t still be farming. This whole Shark Farmer thing wouldn’t have happened.

“Think about that, if my dad had chose to laugh at me at that one moment, it would have altered everything.”

Now as a father, Sharkey pays that support forward to his son.

“I farm with my son. I try to be like my dad. I try to say something sort of creativity or something to help him. And I always say, ‘If this is what you want to do, I will do my best to help.’ I’ll never forget that with my dad. I just won’t.

“I hope that story maybe could impact some relationship you have with farming or whatever going down the road, because it’s awful easy to be the smart aleck and just laugh and say it’s a dumb idea. But you never know where the other person is.

“So, if there’s anything I leave you with that, because if my son decides to go with these ideas, and if he fails, that’s going to be a better lesson than I ever teach him. But if he goes with these ideas and he succeeds, that’s what it’s all about.”

Inaugural Ag Event

This marked the first ag event for Eureka Savings Bank, which is celebrating its 140th year. The bank’s headquarters is in La Salle, and it also has locations in Peru, Oglesby, Mendota and Wenona.

“We are committed to the area, we’ve been around, and the ag piece of this is relatively new to us. We got into the commercial business about nine years ago and about four years ago we acquired Wenona State Bank and they had a nice ag portfolio,” said John McCormick, Eureka Savings Bank president and CEO.

“We thought this is a nice way for us to continue to provide services to our customers and our communities that people can benefit from. So, we’ve embarked on this program.

“This is our first ag event and we’re excited to have it. We’ve got a couple of lenders who are full-time bankers and also full-time farmers. They both have family farms that they farm.

“I think that experience gives them authenticity when it comes to dealing with customers. They get it. Not only do they talk the talk, they walk the walk. They’ve lived some of the things that their customers are going through. So, they understand and that’s so important.

“We want our customers to know that we understand them. The numbers are what the numbers are, but we need to understand what they want to accomplish, so we can help them accomplish it.

“If your goal is to rent your farm ground, that’s great. We can help with that. If it’s to help pass it on to the next generation, we can have advice and help, and we can play a part in that.”