Amish Ohio and Why It Matters

If you think of churning butter or horse and buggies when you think Amish, think again. They're not freaking turning butter. They're actually making the world better in some way. Holmes County, Ohio has the highest concentration of Amish anywhere in the world. The Amish population doubles itself every 20 years. After 8th grade, you're 14 years old. You start working. This isn't a poor stuck in time backwater. No, Holmes County is rich.

I remember when land sold out here in Winesburg for 10,000 an acre and people thought they were nuts and we sold some just down the road for 100,000 per acre just about 3 weeks ago. How does that work? Does it cost you try to do good work and it pays off? What do the Amish do with their money? We spent more money than the wife likes on here. I mean, that's for sure. To find out, come with us to meet the Amish millionaires. I absolutely hate horse. You hate horse? Yeah, it's just not fun. It takes forever. This business here, RMA Services, is an Amish bookkeeping business. They build harnesses.

This guy works on heavy equipment. Here is ebike of county. This thing absolutely took off. Now, before we dive into Amish world and learn about the Amish ebike crisis. Now, here's an Amish in a golf cart. We're starting to see this more and more, which is nah, not that great. We need to start with our host, Mike Yodar. Mike was born Amish and his whole family still is Amish, but he and his wife left the faith and now run two very successful drone companies. We are the fastest growing agricultural spray drone company in the nation as far as selling DJI drones. Mr. Beast's team actually just reached out to us to do a

video with one of our big fly cart drones. as they seen how many drones we were selling, they literally came to that shop out there and were like, "What are you doing?" Like, did you It's a guy from China. Yes, 100%. When the uh the Chinese guys coming from DJI, I think when they got to Amish country, they thought it's nice. Like I asked him, did you know people still use horse and buggy? They're like, they don't know what that means. With Mike, we set off into Holmes County about 50 mi south of Cleveland and where 50% of the people are Amish. Everywhere

we looked, there was another business. I never in my life thought I would be in an Amish IT company. Is we have a system that is locked down to not be able to connect to the open internet that is purpose-built for the Amish community. So, the Amish can use computers but can't use the internet. Yes. The church leaders were like, "Business are getting to a point where it's almost impossible to run a business without computers. Can we have something where we can have computers but protects our people from being able to Google anything? You can access a library of approved websites purely functional. It's not so you can go on there and watch YouTube videos.

Correct. The Amish are very intuitive, very brilliant in coming up with ways of doing things that are slightly outside of the norm like computers that don't have access to the internet. So like here like so you can use a computer. Yeah, we could just do like the cash register, but it's a lot easier like this. It's a lot easier than typing in all the numbers and all that stuff. How would it be different being a realtor in an Amish community versus a different community in America? We sell a lot of real estate at auction here. It tends to just simply sell better. It's not sitting on the market for four or 6 months. In about four or

five weeks, you have an auction and you find out. years ago. I remember when land sold out here in Winesburg for 10,000 an acre and people thought they were nuts buying paying that much and we sold some just down the road for 100,000 per acre just about 3 weeks ago. So it is Yeah. Everything is just What do you think's driving? So much higher. People make more money and there's there's not a lot of land available to buy and the Amish population grows and we want to stay here because we don't have vehicles to go 50 or 75 miles down the road. So, we want to stay here. Where we come from is so unique. The businesses, they're just everywhere. But that causes everything to go up.

Wealth comes in. You can't buy an acre of land. You heard that one realtor say it was $100,000. Oh, I should take you to my uh aunt's place. He rebuilt small engines. And he built this business out of his little shop at home. Very successful. busier than he wants to be. Always shake your hand, but I get the sense. Oh gosh, I'm all dirty. I'm I had the this idea in my head of Amish people not being able to use all these all this technology. Oh yeah. Yeah, you can do a repair, but we don't use them for transportation. Okay. So that's all there is. Working on these, you know, motorcycles, stuff like that. Do you wish ever that you could drive them or do you not care?

No, I don't care. When did you start your business? Actually, I started it uh 07. I've been doing this for since I was a kid. If it runs, he was trying to fix it. Even if it ran. Well, yeah. It's like everybody's doing a business it seems around here. Yeah, it is. Mhm. But I can't tell you really why is it because you try to do good work and it pays off. When you make a when you make money, what do you do with it? Put it in the bank. So, you don't do what a lot of people do. No. So, so, so what does a rich Amish person do with his money?

Uh, buys hunting land, goes boating, fishing. Oh, yeah. Hunting land is Yep. Mostly hunting land. Yeah. So, that's the thing. Like, people look at Amish like they're turning butter. They're not freaking turning butter. They're actually making the world better in some way. I'm convinced. What do you think about the ebikes? They're okay. Yep. We see them everywhere. Oh, yeah. They're everywhere. Yeah, they're really everywhere. Do you fix those too or No, no. No, I take them to the ebike shop cuz it's all electric and sucks.

It's It's hard to overstate. I mean, when you're you're driving through a rural area here and you have business after business, it's the opposite of what you see all over the country. What disadvantage are Amish people at? What can Amish people not do running this business that I could do if I ran the business for me because I built my business on social media? Uh, it's probably them not being on camera. If the uh owners of that company would get on social media and be in front of the camera and say how we get our product in and how we hand, you know, mill everything, it would probably grow his business even more than it is right now.

It's all made locally here, but we don't make any of it ourselves. And 85% of the furniture that we sell goes out of the area, like more than 35 miles. People drive here to buy this furniture. Are the buyers typically Amish or non Amish? No, not Amish. English. English or whatever you want to call it. Has it gotten easier or harder in the time that you've been running it? Uh, probably harder. Competition is tougher. People come to this area expecting to have something custom made. and they tend to expect to get it for nothing.

Amish community lifestyle. How has it changed in your lifetime? The rules have changed. I would say we're probably more faith-based than we are rulebased than we were 30 years ago when I joined church. But the rules are they're just how would you a lifestyle? They're not salvation or anything like that. They're just they're a choice of lifestyle. You want to please God, not because it's a rule, because that's what you want to do. Like this community, majority of them are like this type of Amish. And that's why you see what you see when you drive down the road. You see nice houses, nice businesses, nice lawns because of this.

What are you going to say? If this video gets a million views, I'm coming back for this chair. You better watch yourself. It'll probably be a million views, dog. It's probably going to get a million views. Bro, you got to give a This video gets 10 million views by coming back for this chair. Now, before we get to the Amish auction, now this is the part of the video where the gambling companies wanted us to tell you to go and bet on this election. They came in the office a lot of money. We turned it down because frankly, we just don't believe in that. Now, the fact is though, it does cost a lot of money to make these videos. We are trying to build a news company and at the same time, we're denying money

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This is a different type of Amish. You see out there? They're picking up those uh shocks. This is like how farming used to be when I was an Amish kid. You see them up there picking up all that stuff. So that is about as Amish as you get Amish. Those are the ones that have never left or never progressed whatsoever. Also, so but even those guys, they've got a business here. Buggy wheels and repair. Yep. Buggy. Buggy wheels and repair. But now look at their place. Look at like look at their driveway. And rarely do they leave like as older people. Now, if their young folks leave, it's bad deal, meaning they won't talk to him and shun him.

Now, it's worth noting that some non Amish are critical of Amish business people. Because the Amish faith rejects insurance, federal law exempts Amish businesses from paying Social Security taxes for their Amish workers. Some states also let them opt out of workers comp. This means their payroll costs can be up to 15% lower than non-Amish businesses. Yet, it's also clear the Amish benefit from being hard workers with a supportive community. So, Mike, what's going on here? Uh, this is the community fundraiser event for the local Amish school. Everybody brings an item, they sell an item, but then we go through this. This is a hay stack. Have you ever heard hay stack?

No. Okay. So, we just uh you go through and you put it on your plate and you just keep piling on top of each other until you get to the end. So you guys are eating meat that's literally from your neighborhood. At the end here, you top it off with crushed burritos. Station 300%. What do you guys want to be when you grow up? Just for a job. I want the office job. Office farmer. You want to be a farmer? What type of farm? Oh my god. I don't feel like to be a favorite basketball player. You should be, bro.

Not better than Yeah. Do you guys take electric bikes or horse and buggies? Electric bikes and both. I absolutely hate horse. It takes horse. Yeah. It's just not fun. It takes forever. Everyone's playing pickle ball down here. over here, softball game with a bunch of people watching. It's the opposite of most of the small towns that we see around America. Most of this nice stuff that you see is funded by local businesses. So, they reached out to me to build that uh pickle ball court. When they when you see them play softball in their dress, it's like, what in the world? But

they'll like they'll have leggings and they'll tuck their dress up into their leggings and uh yeah, that doesn't slow them down. We used to have a lot of farms where everybody had hogs, chickens, and dairy cows. Do you feel like with the change in which the stuff's come in, it's become any less Amish, or do you think it's just it's still We got more Amish. The Amish population, what does it mean? It doubles itself every 20 years. Do you feel like it is beneficial for your faith or what impact it has on you as a person? That's more a way of life. Our rules and stuff has nothing to do with our faith really. It's more a way of life.

We have very supportive community around here. Oh yes. Like if somebody's in need, everybody dips in. Do you think that's in part because of the way of life? Yes. That is Yeah, that is definitely the way of life. our way of like helping each other with each other's burdens and stuff. Yeah. Do you guys have kids that are non Amish? Yes, we do. We got two sons and both of them are not Amish. Is that a normal thing or is that a difficult thing to It's normal? I we'd call it normal.

Yeah. Everybody has their choices and stuff, you know. You're born and raised Home County. Yeah. How has it changed throughout your lifetime much? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I've seen a lot of changes. Still old order Amish, yet you see things like the ebikes. Yeah, that's something that we've had now what about maybe uh 12 13 years. Is that Is it that long? Yeah, because I was one of the first ones to get one. Is there anything any technology that you'd say should never be allowed into the community?

Oh boy. Yeah, you know, like uh pornography and all that stuff. A lot of them can get in there and parents probably don't even know that they can do that. It's not very I that's bad stuff. So, we heard you have one of the top roofing businesses in the area. I have a roofing company. So, all day we've been seeing examples of Amish people being phenomenal entrepreneurs. Why do you think that is? their work ethic when they grow up probably the guys are willing to get up at 4:00 in the morning and go to work and they'll work all day for you. And do you think all the change the becoming more advanced? Is it all for the better? Oh, it always is. It there's the good and the bad, but you got to stay with times as well. And I think they're doing good with that. And the

farming has always been a big thing under the Amish, but you always you have to be able to make a living. And it's much harder nowadays to make a living being a farmer. There is some very wealthy Amish business owners that people don't realize how educated they are. And there's there's there's Amish uh companies around with hundreds of employees that are owned and operated by the Amish that have been very successful. What do you think people should know about like education? I went to 8th grade education and I did not have a good school record by I mean I wasn't very smart in school and I do have a roofing company. It's not the largest

and the best roofing company around but I became a business owner. Sometimes the people that struggle more that do better because they got to figure everything out on their own. There's a lot of stuff that you learn in school that you never use in your life. And there's many people that go through college that never pursue or end up doing what they went to school for. So after 8th grade, you're 14 years old, you start a job and you start working and you just learn how to work and then the business part of it, it'll come. You can't get the government jobs, but we don't really need those. The most important thing is know how to read properly, right? And maybe some math. Do you want to learn how to build rockets and you know how to read?

There's plenty of literature you can read to teach yourself whatever you want to do. If your kids wanted to go on with their education, go to college, would you try to dissuade them from doing it? Do you think it's a waste of time? Uh for me personally, unless they're going to u try to be an a lawyer or a doctor or something that absolutely 100% requires a degree. Yes. Totally. Like you don't need a business degree to be a successful business owner. I started at uh construction when I was 15 years old. I couldn't do all the big stuff, but I was there helping. Had to get out of the house. I don't know how to do a lot of other stuff outside of roofing because

it's all I've ever done. You know, for you, is there something as like rules change and you know, society advances. Are there certain things that you draw a line on and you'd say I don't want that coming in here? So, our church right now, we would not have electricity. Um, we would have the horse and bucky and obviously the ebikes came into this area. So, that's a lot of the transportation. And then, uh, we don't drive. We don't have cars. They don't drive the cars, but he can own the cars. Yeah. So, his company owns cars and trucks and trailers and equipment, but he wouldn't have a driver's license to go drive those cars. So, and it's 2026. You need in order to keep up with the competition, you need to be able to be advanced as well. So,

the company needs to be able to email. We need to be able to have access to the internet. Um, we need to have trucks to get around. We work out of the area a lot. We work in different states. So, we need to be able to get around and we're allowed to do that. Do you think in the next 20 years Amish people will start to drive? I don't think Amish will ever drive because when you start driving, you're no longer Amish in my opinion. Amish is just a lifestyle. It's not going to get you to heaven before anybody else. It's it's just a way of living. You think I uh I think I seen you go with the truck and trailer today with a bunch of corn on it.

Yeah, we get ready for that opening day. We spent more money than the wife likes on deer hunting, that's for sure. But it's a h it's a good hobby and now my son loves it. Uh he shot his first deer at 5 years old and he I hardly ever go out without him. Real estate is always kind of thing where you get your money back out of. So you probably spend a little extra money on it than you should, but you expect to get it back somehow. Across America, rural communities and their businesses are dying. In Holmes County, the opposite is happening. The reason, it seems, may have less to do with anything special about the faith, but because this is a tight-knit community where

family, discipline, and hard work are paramount. You know, Amish's first is Christianity, believing in Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. But uh the Lord blesses people that try to do the Lord's work. I mean, I'm telling you there, you can see it when we go to Holmes County. While the Amish try not to take our technology, perhaps we should try to learn something from them. Thank you so much for watching this video and thank you to Mike Yodar who took us out. Please subscribe if you support this and enjoy what we're doing. And if you want to get in touch and help us see your area anywhere in the world, it does not have to be just Amish country.

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