BELLE FOURCHE—In his day job, he is just a rancher taking care of the ranch—giving the first round of shots, calving, branding, feeding and any other job that comes up. But Kyle Lyons has accidentally turned his regular job into a daily spectacle that is watched by over a million followers.
Under the moniker The Unhinged Rancher he has turned his social media presence into a money making endeavor. “I’ve been doing the social media TikTok thing for about a year and a half—I don’t feel like I’m famous or popular but everybody else seems to think so.”
With a following of 945,000 on TikTok, 478,000 on Facebook, 389,000 on Instagram and 38,000 on YouTube it would be safe to say he has developed quite a presence on social media. But it wasn’t anything Kyle set out to do. It just happened. “A really good friend of mine is actually doing something similar. He was at my daughter’s birthday last year, last March, and he’s like, ‘you should make a TikTok! It’d be funny!’ And I kind of just wrote it off then decided, oh heck, and that next Monday I tried it—I started making some videos, and one thing led to another, and now it’s kind of taken off!”
Kyle says he isn’t everybody’s cup of tea! It is advised not to tune in if you are looking for educational tips on how to be a rancher. “I mean, there is probably a slight educational tone on some of it but most of it would probably be more comical,” he said. “A majority of it is me yelling at cows and water tanks, yelling at cows doing things they are not supposed to be doing, yelling at equipment, just generally yelling at everything—pretty much!”
Even though he currently lives with his wife and daughter in West Central Kansas, Kyle is a Belle Fourche native and he still calls it home. “We were out there at the Lawrence county line between Belle Fourche and Saint Onge and my dad worked for Bud and Terry Moe for many years on the dairy farm out there.”
In an attempt to keep his ties to Belle Fourche alive, he comes back to touch base. “I go back to Belle Fourche for class reunions—I was there at the 10 year reunion in 2018 and I’ll be back in a couple of years for the 20 year reunion—I still consider that my class,” Kyle said.
Kyle has fun making the videos. “I do enjoy doing it. It’s kind of outgrown what I ever, ever could have imagined it would ever do—like to the point where I have social media agents and a company that I work with that do a lot of my posting for me on my pages,” he explained.
His large following has also turned lucrative for him. “I enjoy it but I’m still also doing it because we’re making money off it,” Kyle shared. “So like on the TikTok side, I get 100% of that profit—which can range from $500 a month to $5,000 a month—it just kind of depends on what kind of views you get on your videos. On Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, since my talent agency manages those, we split that 70/30. I mean, it’s generating $1000s of dollars a month in revenue, which is life changing for somebody like me!”
Kyle has a new website with his merchandise launching this week. He will have hoodies, hats, cups, t-shirts and more available to purchase. You can find that at TheUnhingedRancher.com. That is the same way to find him on all of the different social media sites where he posts about the daily things that go wrong in his life.
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
