After two years of coaching, I had 13 clients.  
 
I thought I was doing really well and wasn’t thinking about growing – I was in a comfort zone. 
 
I knew time management was one of the most important skills I could learn, so I paid for a time management course. 
 
One of the first things we did was document everything we did in a day. This included both personal and business, from waking up to going to bed! 
 
We did this every single day for two weeks. 
 
We then added everything up. 
 
I was shocked to find that I was spending 13 hours a week just driving (to and from my clients)!! 
 
It didn’t occur to me how much time I spent in a car. 
 
The course instructor showed me that this equated to about three months every year – just sitting in Sydney traffic, visiting clients. 
 
It was then that I decided I would stop visiting clients in person – they could either visit me, or we moved to phone coaching. 
 
A couple of clients were unhappy about this, so they left. The rest didn’t have an issue, and most selected phone coaching to respect their time. 
 
The extra time I had now created, plus the extra energy I gained from not driving around, allowed me to bring on another ten new clients.   
  
One decision almost doubled my business. 
  
Most things we do are done unconsciously. We don’t even really know we are doing them.  
 
It takes conscious effort to get brutally honest about how we spend (or invest) our time. 
  
I was coaching a landscape gardener at the time, and also got him to measure his time. He was also spending 10 hours per week driving around dropping off deliveries.  
 
In his case, I helped him outsource this task. As a result, I was able to show him there were a number of much higher-value things he could be focusing on to grow his business. 
  
It cost him $300 a week to pay for a delivery driver, but the 10 hours he found went into strategic decision-making that added another $250k in profit to his business that year! 
  
The first step is to find time and then use this time to work on something with a higher value. 
  
We are really excited to launch a 14-Day Time Management Course designed to help farm business owners and your team. 
   
You will get all of our time management templates (including our ‘Ultimate Organiser’) to help get you really organised – and it comes with 14 days of training designed to help you beat procrastination, get organised and prioritise your time for growing your business.  
 
Each day consists of short, bite-sized chunks (5 to 30 minutes) but will help you understand what you need to change – and you have the option to either watch the training videos or listen to the audio while you work. 
 
We are so confident that we can help you find 10 hours a week that if we can’t, we will refund you and give you $100 for wasting your time. 
  
Click Here: To Register For The Time Management Course

We look forward to helping you get back time to spend on what’s important to you.

Robbo

Imagine working 70 hours every week, only to get to the end of the year and realise you are losing money after paying the interest on your loan (while interest rates were 2%)! 
 
Many business owners do this (not just farmers).   
 
They are so busy working that they don’t even know how much money they are making until they get their profit and loss statements from the accountant (and sadly, these are not even correct as they are rigged to minimise tax and thus not an accurate picture of your business performance). 
 
One of our clients (we will protect their identity and refer to them as Bill and Jack) was in this position.

Here is a snapshot of their reality back in 2014: 

• They ran 3000 hectares of land (farming sheep and crops);  
• 45% equity; 
• Their total wealth at this point (value of all assets less liabilities) was $1.8 million; 
• Their revenue was over $2 million;  
• After paying interest to the bank, their real profit (business profit) was showing a loss of close to $100k. 

 
Bill and Jack were frustrated, but fortunately, they had a great team surrounding them (they are in our Platinum Mastermind Program), all willing to help. 
 
With a few tough decisions (and a hunger to be a top 20% farmer), they turned their business around. 
 
Here is a snapshot of their business in the 2021 financial year… just 7 years later. 
 

• A huge turnaround in the first 3 years, when they began to use their numbers to make informed business decisions to improve their business (rather than just winging it and working harder). 
• They had to make a couple of tough decisions, but they have never looked back since doing this. 
• Business profit is now $900k per year (after paying interest, and 6 figure wages to the owners). 
• Wealth has grown from $1.8 million to just shy of $9 million. 
• They employ a great team to help do a lot of the work freeing them up to focus on what they love. 
• They have achieved their 10-year goals in just 6 years! 

There are a few takeaways from this case study:
 

• This is the power of benchmarking, but also having skilled business minds help you interpret the results to make great business decisions. 
• Working harder is not the key here. Bill and Jack were working 70 hours a week and still not seeing success. They needed help to change direction instead of motivation to speed up. 
• The cost of NOT getting help here was extradentary. They had no idea what they needed to do, so they engaged and trusted the feedback from skilled people who could help (in this case, Farm Owners Academy’s Platinum Mastermind Program). 
• These decisions led to a growth of $7.2 million in wealth in just 7 years ($1 million per year) and a growth of $900k in profit after paying interest (imagine having an extra $75k in your bank account every month after paying wages or $16,666 every week!) 
• This is what separates an average farmer from a Top 20% farmer. It’s actually millions of dollars difference every year. 

Because we benchmark all of our clients yearly, we see results like this all the time. 

There really is a HUGE difference between being an average farmer and a Top 20% farmer. 
 
Have a great week, 
 
Robbo 
 

P.S. for a short time, we are offering a complimentary ‘Strategic Roadmap Session’ to help you create a winning plan to get you from where you are currently at to where you want to be. With the 3 additional bonuses, it is valued at over $2,000, and it will give you the chance to test drive how coaching works. Click here to book a call whilst it’s available.

When I first started coaching, I was responsible for everything – all the administration, finance and, of course, coaching clients.   

The problem was I really hated the administration and the finance (bookwork) part of the business. 

Two years into my business coaching journey, I went to a business course. The teacher who ran the course said, ‘if you are doing work you don’t like, then you are giving off negative energy, so you are smarter to hire someone else to do this even if you think you can’t afford it.’ 

At the time, I was in considerable debt and wasn’t making much money. 

But I bit the bullet, and I hired a bookkeeper. I also employed someone for a day a week to do my admin. I really couldn’t afford to do this. 

But the most amazing thing happened. 

Once I let go of tasks I didn’t enjoy, I started enjoying work more. 

Because I was happier and had more time, I brought on new clients. After a while, my administration assistant (who I called my personal assistant) was working for me for four days per week.  

Then, I also hired a salesperson to help me as well, and I realised I had my first little team, including; 

1. A finder (salesperson) 
2. A minder (me looking after the clients) and 
3. A grinder (someone to do all of the administration) 

With this team in place, I could coach three times as many clients without extra effort. I was finally making some good money. 

It wasn’t long until I put my first coach on. Just two years later, I had a team of 13 coaches and a total team size of 25 (including an experienced operations manager running the show).   

I ended up selling that company. But, I was lucky to learn the concept that having a team of people allowed me to get to a goal ten times sooner than trying to do it all on my own. 

Even at Farm Owners Academy, many of you wouldn’t know this, but we have an incredible resource working from the Philippines called John.  

John helps Farm Owners Academy in so many ways and even ensures this blog post is uploaded, sent out and added to the website.   

All I need to do is write it. 

John runs all our IT, manages our websites, creates a lot of our web pages and many other things. He is amazing, and it would be hard to run our business without him. 

A great question for you to ask: ‘could you achieve more and even be happier if you bit the bullet and hired some help to do some jobs that you don’t like?’ 

Maybe even start with a bookkeeper for a few hours each month? 

Or maybe an administrator to help you two days per week? 

You could even hire someone from the Philippines for under $250 a week (full-time) to do both of these jobs for you. 

Do what you do best, then delegate and outsource the rest. 

Have a great day, 

Robbo 

Many farm owners believe that in order to become a top 20% farmer, you need to work harder (or do more).  
 
This is not true. 
 
The top 20% of farmers just do things slightly differently. 
 
In fact, I would argue that many top 20% of farmers are working less than an average farmer. 
 
And a top 20% farmer is reaping hundreds of thousands of dollars more each year than the average farmer and will end up with many millions of extra net worth over the next 10 to 20 years.

Here are 8 traits of a top 20% farmer:  

1. They have a strategic plan with clearly defined goals for the next 10-year, 3- years, 12 months and 90-days (with their 90-day plan broken into smaller steps to make it easily implemented). They reset their plan every 90 days to keep everyone in their business on track
2. They plan their week and day. They ensure they stick to the plan and the high-priority items are implemented. They allocate half a day each week to work ON their business.
3. They hire others to complete lower-value tasks and have learned to delegate.
4. They complete a financial benchmark yearly and make decisions based on this. They have financial literacy and don’t make random ‘gut feel’ decisions. All decisions are based on return on investment and where is the highest return for the least effort
5. They hire experts, listen to the advice provided, and implement the recommendations. They seek the best of the best to help them.
6. They put systems in place because they know that systems work and bring efficiencies to their business.
7. They are good leaders. They attract good people and retain them, so they can let their team look after things and trust that things are done well. As a result, their team look up to them and respect them.
8. They work on their mindset because they know how they think is attributed to 80% (or more) of their success. So, they read, get mentoring and help in this area. 

When you really look at the difference between an average farmer and a top 20% farmer, you will see that working on the above is far easier than you think.
 
I don’t know about you, but I would do whatever it takes to learn these skills if I didn’t have them. 
 
Have a great week, 
 
Robbo