Business Archives - Page 12 of 13

To scale or not to scale…. that is the question

Too many farmers push themselves to always keep growing simply because they think it’s what they “should” do.

Do you agree?

There are benefits to growing your team and scaling your farm (and we’ll talk more about that in a minute.) But there are also other options that could be just as profitable and enjoyable…and they’re worth considering, too.

At this point in the TOP Producers Model, you’ve already gone through the first five steps to:

Tune In to what you really want
Take Stock of your key financial figures
Take Control of the 6 pillars of your farming business
Objectively Measure your farm’s key performance indicators, for continued improvement
Organise Infrastructure for higher efficiency and lower labour costs on your farm

You’ve just done a tonne of work growing your current farm to operate at peak efficiency.

Which is why it’s so important to pause for a minute and reassess what your next steps should be.

We have farmers in our Platinum Mastermind who choose to stay small and never continue through the TOP Producers Model to the Propel phase, and they’re very happy doing that! We have other farmers who choose to sell their farms for a great price and move on to pursue different work they love.

The key is…they CHOOSE. They check in with themselves to get clear on what they really want next. They don’t live on autopilot and grow for growth’s sake.

And you won’t either, if you pause and Open Up.

Is scaling right for you? Here’s how to tell…

You’ve just put in a ton of work to grow your farm to peak efficiency. This is the time to be true to yourself and make the right decision for you and your family.

So let’s take a breath and re-evaluate your goals based on where you’re at now in the journey.

After all, you don’t want to build the wrong business by chasing the wrong things.

So let me ask you…

At this point in your business — now that you’ve gone through the Transform and Optimise steps in the model — what are your goals?

Revisit your vision from the Tune In step. Does it feel as good as it did at the start of the TOP Producers Model? If not, what needs to change?

Recreate your vision at this new point in your journey. That’s what will carry you through the rest of the process and make it clear what to do next.

At this point, you really have three main options:

Keep your farm the same size
Scale your farm and grow into a larger operation
Walk away from the farm

There are no wrong answers! So give yourself permission to really get honest about which option is most in line with your goals.

And let’s explore what each option could look like for you…

Happily choosing to stay small

The first five steps of the TOP Producers Model might be all you need!

John Symons is a sheep farmer who came to Greg when he was on the verge of bankruptcy and shutting his 550-hectare farm. He went through an early version of the TOP Producers Model to save his farm and turn things around.

Today, John’s had a complete transformation. He pays himself $140K per year and his farm makes $250K profit.

Now that he’s taken control of his farm, he loves the work — being on the land and getting his hands dirty. He works 60-70 hours a week but he’s happy doing it because he’s doing something he loves. He’s so passionate about running such a successful block of land and is very happy with his small operation.

John’s also invested enough money off the farm to have financial freedom.

Although he could move on to the Propel stage at this point, John’s very content where he is. He doesn’t need more and doesn’t have a desire to grow. He just wants to perfect his block and he likes the challenge of constantly improving what he’s got.

…So that’s what he’s doing! And he’s doing really, really well.

You might be really satisfied with your farm and want to stay at this level forever. That’s entirely okay! The Propel phase is like a bonus; it’s not mandatory for you to go on that larger growth journey.

If you’re happy and passionate about farming, you may want to stay here. The skills we’ve provided thus far with the TOP Producers Model are enough for you to do very well without continuing on the journey. You can make a lot of money, feel very rewarded, do what you love, work the hours you want, take holidays — it’s all possible!

However, here’s one thing to consider:

If you’re the sole income earner…

What happens if something happens to you? What if you get sick or injured or can’t work on the farm anymore?

That’s the risk of not going on and scaling your business — you will always have to be the one to do the work that makes money.

That’s not to say you should scale! But I want to be honest with you that there is a bit of risk in choosing not to scale.

There’s no right or wrong answer. But it’s worth considering so you can make the right choice for you.

Scaling and growing the operation

Let’s do a quick gut check:

When you read John’s story in the section above, how did you feel?

Would you be satisfied with his situation? Did it sound like music to your ears?

Or are you someone who wants to buy out the neighbours? Are you on a journey to grow?

We have a in our Platinum Mastermind community who knew he wanted more and chose to grow his farm. He carried on with the TOP Producers Model and now manages a team of 15 people. He has 5K hectares, so it’s 10x bigger than John’s farm. He’s running his operation on a significantly bigger scale, looking after significantly more sheep.

He’s making more money, which is great…but he also carries significantly more risk with the possibility of losing more money than John. One’s not right and one’s wrong — it’s an entirely different journey!

The next level of growth involves an entirely new set of skills. The skills to become a top 5% farmer won’t take you to the next level. You need to learn how to train and manage a team, increase your scale and your systems, and procure assets. This is all about investing in better systems and people to help you maximise your business.

If you decide to grow, you’ll also step into the role of business owner, rather than farmer. You won’t be out on the land anymore; you’ll be in the office running the business. This is really important to consider!

Here are a few questions to help you decide if you want to move on to the Propel phase:

Are you more passionate about farming…or are you more drawn to being an entrepreneur?
Do you want the journey of scaling up and building a profitable empire?
Are you comfortable about the risk that comes with that?

Choosing to walk away from the farm

When we present this third option to our Platinum Mastermind farmers, we can feel a shift in the air.

People are afraid to even consider this option. But it’s so important to think about because leaving the farm may be the best path for you.

Often farmers can get trapped. They keep working because they don’t know what else they would do if they left. Or maybe they’re afraid of being the one to jump ship. Maybe their dad owned the farm and his dad before him…and they don’t want to be the one to walk away.

But the reality is that some farmers aren’t happy with what they’re doing. They put so much pressure on themselves to be great and prove their dad wrong and it’s making them miserable.

We spoke with a wellness coach recently and she said about 50% of the farmers she speaks to struggle with depression. Suicide is also far too common among farmers. It can be a lonely industry and suicide is an epidemic in our industry that’s not spoken about enough.

RELATED PODCAST: Are You Really Okay?

So as you’re Opening Up, it’s important to ask yourself:

Are you really fulfilled with farming? Do you really love your farm?

For John, yes. For many other farmers yes. But for another of our farmers, David…no.

We’ve spoken about David before on the blog — all about how he doubled his profits and halved his hours by working through the first five stages of the TOP Producers Model.

David loves farming…but there were challenging family dynamics on the farm that were making it unfulfilling for him.

He couldn’t find alignment, and when he stopped to Open Up and think about what he wanted next…he realised he doesn’t want to waste his life playing by someone else’s values and rules. So he decided to leave the family farm.

It was one of the most courageous decisions I think anyone could make. He’s walked away from this “mapped-out career” and beautiful block but he knew he couldn’t live like that, being controlled by someone else.

If you’re feeling the same, if you don’t truly enjoy farming or have difficult family dynamics or you simply want to do something else with your life…I want to tell that it’s all okay. You don’t have to stay on the farm.

In reality, you would probably do extraordinarily well if you choose to sell your farm at the moment. In the current market, most of our clients could sell their farms and never work a day in their lives.

Or even if you chose, like David, to walk away…there are still so many options for you.

I know it might feel scary to walk away. But you only get one shot at life. Isn’t it much scarier to live your whole life only doing what you think other people expect of you?

I want to support you in choosing what’s right FOR YOU. And that might be leaving the farm…and that’s okay.

We have about a 50-50 split of our members who decide to go on the journey through the Propel phase. The rest choose to stay small or leave the farming industry.

The most important takeaway is that there’s truly no wrong path!

Give yourself permission to follow your heart and your gut. Only YOU can make this choice.

In the end, the only wrong decision is not taking the time to Open Up and decide what’s best for you.

Want to talk this out with a coach (for free)?

Have a yarn with David.

He walked away from his family’s farm — after doubling his income and halving his hours — because he knew it wasn’t what he truly wanted. So he’s been through it!

If you might be in the same boat and want to have a chat about it, you can sign up for a free call with David by clicking here.

6 steps to take you from family farm to well-run business

If you ask me, it’s an absolute waste of time…

…to try and manage things you can’t control.

No matter how hard you work, you’ll never be able to control the weather, your family’s actions, or interest rates at the bank. So I’d rather help you focus your limited energy on the things you CAN control.

When you take control of your farm…

● You’ll become the master of your time

● You’ll feel great about the money the farm is making

● You’ll get all the important work done AND feel fulfilled at the end of the day

I know this might feel like a vague concept. “What do you mean by ‘take control’, Andrew? How do I do it? What exactly do I need to take control of?”

So let’s make this real…

Inside this blog post, I’ll walk you through the 6 key areas you, as the business owner, must take control of if you want higher profits and more freedom. You’ll learn what to do and how to do it to go from chaos to control in these areas.

This comes from Step 3 of our Top Producers Model which is all about Taking Control.

Once you get a handle on these 6 areas, your farm will run like a well-oiled machine

CLARITY: Decide on the big vision for your business

The biggest challenge I see farmers face is procrastination…

Which I believe stems from lack of clarity.

Vision is a clear picture of where you’re going and WHY you’re going that way.

When you create a vision that’s compelling, it’s like a magnet. It instantly creates movement in that direction.

If I set a vision to become a professional golfer in 10 years’ time, suddenly my actions will change, right? I’ll start doing things like:

hiring a coach
saving up for new clubs
watching golf videos on YouTube

See how the simple act of creating a vision improved my clarity and changed my behaviour almost immediately?

I’m a big fan of setting a 10-year vision that’s a bit bigger than you think you can achieve. Set something that’s a little bit scary! That will push you and create more positive movement than a smaller goal.

Your vision has to enrol and inspire you as the leader, so you can enrol and inspire the team to get onboard the bus! Put your 10-year vision somewhere where everyone can see it daily to motivate the team and remind you where you’re going together.

Because it creates so much movement, I would put creating a clear 10-year vision down to the #1 most critical thing you can do if you want to move forward and create a profitable business. Don’t overlook it!

ACTION: Fulfil the big vision

Someone might go off and spend hours coming up with this beautiful 10-year vision. But without Action, it remains a dream…and you remain stuck.

That’s because you can’t manifest your big vision if you don’t have a system to get stuff done.

That system starts by breaking down your big 10-year vision into 3 smaller chunks:

What should your farm look like in 3 years, to be on track to that 10-year vision?
What do you need to achieve in the next 12 months to hit that 3-year picture?
What do you need to accomplish over the next 90 days to stay on track with your 12-month goals?

See how that works? We’re winding back the clock to make it crystal clear what you need to do over the next 90 days (we call this a “quarter” in the business world) to eventually make your 10-year vision a reality.

So work backward to decide on your 90-day goals…and then ONLY focus on those goals for the next 90 days. Make sure every action you take, every job you do, is related to one of those 90-day goals.

One of the ways we practice Action here at Farm Owners Academy is through a weekly meeting to make sure we’re staying true to our 90-day goals. I actually get quite derailed if someone starts talking about something outside those goals for the quarter. It’s like, “Hang on, it’s not on the plan! So we’re not going to focus on it.”

I keep my 90-day goals open in front of me every day. I know that if I focus on those 90-day goals, I don’t even have to worry about the 12-month goals — they’ll take care of themselves if I work the 90-day plan.

If you’re serious about taking Action on your farm…

We have a free webinar that will help!

Action is the essence, the backbone of our webinar 3 Steps to a Highly Profitable Farm. (I feel it’s the most valuable part of the whole training, if I’m honest.)

This webinar will help you articulate your Clarity Action Plan so you can set your 90-day goals and take massive motion towards your 10-year vision.

Click here to join the webinar (It’s free!)

People: Because teamwork makes the dream work

I know that’s a cringey saying…but it’s true! You can’t achieve your 10-year vision by yourself.

Once you have clarity and you know what needs to get done over the next 90 days, you also need to build the right team to help you. You can’t do it alone.

Often farmers will hire the first person they meet at the pub. This person doesn’t fit your company culture and you end up getting frustrated with them and spend all of your time fixing their issues.

In the end, you think you’re the only person that can do the job right so you sack them and go back to doing it all yourself.

That’s where taking control of your people comes in. It involves:

Finding the right people for your farm (I promise, they’re out there!)
Leading your team and motivating them to succeed
Managing people and making things run smoothly

Taking control of people is challenging! That’s why there’s a whole module on this inside the Take Control program that shows you how to find great staff, write job roles, and manage and lead your team. Click here to learn more about Take Control.

Process: Build a business that can run without you

A successful business owner knows they need to create processes for their people to follow. Otherwise, they’ll keep being the only person who can do the jobs on the farm.

Processes also improve the quality of the work that’s being done. When your team has a system to follow, there are fewer mistakes, there are fewer issues for the farmer, and things start getting done the way you want them to.

Don’t get overwhelmed here…

There are only really 3-7 core processes that you need to worry about. You don’t need to create a 250-page operations manual!

Just pick the 3-7 tasks you do all the time and ask yourself…

How can I take this out of my head and break it down into steps?

You can either write down the steps in a Word document or film a video of you doing the task. Boom — you just created your first process!

Documenting your processes is helpful for your team members…and it’s also helpful for you to get that knowledge out of your head.

Every year, we host a two-day in-person workshop called the TOP Producers Workshop. I’d never host that event without a checklist! It removes mistakes and makes me more productive because I don’t need to keep anything in my head — it’s all on the checklist.

We have a whole module on processes inside Take Control. You’ll learn which processes you need, how to break them down into steps, and how to get your team to follow them. Click here to learn more about Take Control.

Data: The key for continuous improvement

Imagine playing sport without keeping score…

You’d never do that, right? But so many farm owners don’t “keep score” by tracking their data on the farm!

It’s important to make sure you’re measuring what you’re doing. Data allows you to make decisions objectively, rather than basing them on emotion. And most importantly…what gets measured improves.

The data component is about implementing what we taught back in Take Stock and ensuring you:

Benchmark
Create regular profit and loss statements
Maintain regular balance sheet statements
Check in with your cash flow regularly
Understand the RESULTS that are coming from your actions

Having objective data (and checking in with it regularly) helps you make smarter decisions as a business owner.

Did you know we have a course called Farm Financial Framework that teaches you everything you need to know about your farm’s financials and how to make profitable decisions based on the data? It also comes with a customised mini-benchmark report so you can clearly see where you need to improve. Email us at [email protected] for more information.

Issues: Because no farm is perfect

What business doesn’t experience issues?

None! Problems crop up in every business, no matter how well it’s doing. But the key is having a system in place to address those issues.

What a lot of farmers do is wing it and resolve the issues when they arise. This causes them to get derailed, to lose focus, and to be at the mercy of whatever issues pop up (something you can’t control.)

Inside Take Control, we teach compartmentalising — a way to handle issues without getting distracted from your 90-day goals.

When an issue crops up, ask yourself:

Does this need to be addressed right now?
Can it wait until the weekly meeting?
Or can we park this for now and discuss it at the quarterly or annual planning meeting?

This makes life a lot easier. It doesn’t mean you don’t deal with the issue…but it means you can make some things wait. That helps you keep momentum and traction where it should be: on your 90-day goals.

Having a system to work through your issues without derailing your traction allows the farm to keep moving forward.

Those are the 6 areas you, as the business owner, must take control of if you want higher profits and more freedom.

…Did you notice the key phrase in that last sentence?

It’s not profits or freedom.

It’s business owner.

There’s a massive difference between a farmer and a business owner of a farming company. A business owner takes control of his business; a farmer lets it control him.

Are you ready to start acting like the owner of your farm? Start by taking control of these 6 areas.

Look, I’ll be honest. There’s only so much I can teach in a

blog post…

If you want the proven system to Take Control of your farm, our 10-week mentoring program is the perfect next step.

Inside Take Control, you’ll learn to master these 6 key areas so you can step up and become the business owner your farm needs for higher profits, better efficiency, and more freedom.

We’ve helped over 160 farm owners Take Control…and we’d love to help you, too.

Click here to learn more and join Take Control.

Decision making – wing it or win it?

When most farmers make decisions, they wing it.

They don’t have any tools or systems to help them decide whether something is a good financial decision or a bad one.

…Which leads to bad decisions that cause big problems like:

Unnecessary spending
Constrained progress (when it comes to profit)
Major financial pressure

But here’s the good news:

All it takes to turn the tables and is a solid decision-making process. And that’s where the Objectively Measure step comes in.

This is step 4 of the TOP Producers Model, which helps farmers Transform, Optimise, and Propel their farms.

Really, in a nutshell, Objectively Measure is all about bringing reality to your decision-making in the best interest of the business.

When you use this 3-part decision-making system, you can confidently choose things that will truly help you achieve your financial goals. And with every new decision, you’ll become a much more intentional business owner.

Part 1: Choose your farm’s KPIs

To make smart business decisions, you first need to decide on your KPIs.

KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator, and it’s a figure used to evaluate the success of meeting a goal.

Let’s pretend you have a goal to become a professional golfer over the next 10 years. How could you measure whether you’re on track to achieve it?

Simply saying, “Yeah, I feel like I’m making progress,” isn’t a very effective strategy. You need objective data to PROVE it.

One KPI could be your average handicap. Every year, you’d need this to decrease to show improvement.

Another KPI could be your world ranking. Seeing an increase year on year would tell you that you’re moving towards your goal.

A third KPI could be how many yards you can hit a golf ball, and you’d hope that would increase over time.

See how all of those KPIs track objective data, rather than subjective feelings? That’s key!

It’s important to define your KPIs because “success” means different things to different people.

So what KPIs should you track on the farm?

We’ve got the answer inside the FREE Ultimate Farming Enterprise Cheat Sheet! Inside, we summarise the 10 KPIs and targets that will help you continually improve profits on your farm. Click here for your free download!

Part 2: Remove emotion and use LOGIC to make decisions

Many decisions in farming are based on emotion.

“This lease land feels right to lease!” or “This header seems awesome to help me get the job done!” or “Yes, I feel like I need this new $500,000 tractor today!”

Whilst emotional decisions might feel nice to make in the moment, they can cost you a lot of profit.

(I can practically hear Greg talking about this at the TOP Producers Event…“That one emotional decision to buy the $500,000 tractor just eroded your entire profit for the next three years!”)

It’s easy to get caught up and make emotional decisions. Natural, even! That’s why you need a set of tools to counteract that tendency and help you arrive at LOGICAL business decisions.

Always analyse your options from a logical point of view to make sure the numbers add up and are leading you towards improving your ROI. Don’t let feelings make decisions for you!

Our clients Cheryl and Tim are unbelievable at this. They’re so good at making decisions to maximise profitability and they never buy emotionally. That’s why they’ve been making 40% profit for 20 years…because they make such logical decisions!

It’s hard to explain it all inside one little blog post but if you want to go deeper on this, we teach a whole suite of decision-making tools inside the Platinum Mastermind program.

For now, remember this…

Before you make a big money decision (and I class anything over $10K as “big”) pause, take a breath, and look at the KPIs and your goals.

Will that new purchase help improve your KPIs? Do the financial figures make sense?

Then — and only then! — should you move forward with an investment.

Part 3: Continually monitor your KPIs with a benchmark

Don’t track one figure (like profit) and use that to generalise across the board. You want to track different KPIs to analyse from different angles.

Let’s use an example…

Pretend I have a goal of feeding my son Oscar healthy food on a budget. Let’s choose some KPIs to tell me whether I’m on track with that goal.

We’ll start with cost per meal — I want to keep each meal under $3.

Last week, the average cost per meal was $2.50. Am I successful?

Well, we don’t know yet! Because cost is only one factor — we need to weigh up the other KPIs…

I also want Oscar to have 5 servings of fruit and veggies per day. Last week, he only had an average of 3.5 servings. So even though the cost KPI was on track, the fruit and veggies KPI wasn’t.

That clearly tells me where I need to focus next: on finding low-cost ways to get more fruits and veggies into Oscar’s diet.

So the following week, I try adding in a few different foods. I have an average cost per meal of $2.75 and that Oscar’s up to 5 servings of fruit and veggies per day — which is great!

But then I notice another KPI (the grams of sugar Oscar eats per day) is way over target.

I realise that the applesauce I started feeding him, while it contains a serving of fruit, also has quite a bit of sugar in it.

So my next challenge is finding a low-sugar applesauce.

Now, I know this is a simplistic example. But do you see how that works?

Every decision affects your KPIs in different ways. That’s why you need to look at things from many different angles.

This is where benchmarking comes in…

A benchmark is a report that analyses your business’s performance in loads of different areas.

Here’s a sample page from one of our Platinum Mastermind member’s benchmark report, to give you an idea:

In this example, you can see we’re comparing the member’s actual KPIs with their target in a load of areas. This helps us see where they’re doing well (the dials in green) …and where they’re doing not-so-well (red and orange) and need to focus on improving.

The data inside the benchmark helps you answer two key questions:

How is my business performing, compared to the KPIs of a successful farm business?
What changes do I need to make, on reviewing this data, to improve my numbers?

That’s why tracking your individual KPIs through benchmarking is such a game-changer.

Just like with Oscar’s healthy eating example, it makes it clear and unemotional to decide where to focus your efforts to improve. It gives you hard data to create a strategic plan and work on improving year on year.

That’s how our client John Symons was able to grow his profit year in year out over a long period of time…

Watch his case study of how FOA helped him in our reviews – https://site.farmownersacademy.com/reviews/

As a business owner, you’ll need to make decisions all year long. There’s no denying that!

To make the smartest ones you can, you simply need to:

Choose the KPIs to measure success
Make decisions logically (not emotionally)
Continually track your KPIs through a benchmark report

There’s no more emotion at play and you can now rely on actual data to improve and grow.

As I always say, what gets measured gets improved. And what’s objectively measured gets improved so much faster!

Get your own custom benchmark report

When you join the Platinum Mastermind program, you’ll not only get your own custom benchmark report to objectively break down your performance and compare it to a successful farm. You’ll also get personalised consulting to make a strategic plan to improve upon it.

When you’re part of the Platinum Mastermind, there’s no winging it. You’ll learn our suite of monitoring systems and tools that clearly tell you when you’re going off course.

You’ll get incredible insight and strategic planning PLUS a coach holding you accountable to making the changes you commit to. That’s why it’s such a game-changer…and why our members achieve such incredible success.

Click here to learn more about the Platinum Mastermind program.

The 7-step plan to higher profits on the farm

“How do I make more money on my farm?”

That’s got to be the top question farmers ask us.

It’s up there with…

How do I get more time off?

How can I increase yields?

and…

How can I strike a deal with the weather gods for great rainfall this season?

Whether you dream of buying more land, going on an extra holiday, or paying for a great boarding school for your kids, more money is definitely a good thing.

Here’s what I want you to know:

More profitability does NOT mean working more hours!

Most farmers think that making more money is impossible, because they’re already working as hard as they can. But the truth is, it’s not about how many hours you work — it’s about WHAT you’re working on during those hours. That determines how profitable you are.

Keep reading for 7 simple-but-powerful ways to make more profit on your farm…without working any more hours.

Stop working on the $25/hour jobs

It might sound counterintuitive…

But the fastest way to become more profitable on your farm is to stop doing the work.

Let me explain…

A mentor of mine once said, “You won’t get rich cleaning the house.”

Yes, the house needs to be cleaned. And yes, taking care of your home is an important job. But you’re not going to get rich doing it.

Here’s the reality:

80% of the work on a farm is technical work that’s valued between $20-$30/hour.

These are the jobs like fencing, driving the tractor, crutching and drenching, branding cattle, and cleaning.

These jobs are important and need to get done. But they’re never going to make you rich…no matter how great you are at them.

When you stop spending time on the low-income jobs, you free yourself up for the $500/hour work. (More on this in a minute.)

If you think you can’t afford to hire help or that you need to do it all yourself, I hear you. But stick with me. I think you’ll start to see why you can’t afford not to hire someone, if you want to run a highly profitable farm…

Make time for the big-money tasks

Most farmers are so busy with the low-level technical jobs on the farm, they simply have no time or energy for the high-level work, like:

Strategic planning
Creating systems for efficiency
Looking for opportunities
Negotiating
Creating new markets
Marketing and direct selling
Training your team
Working on genetics
Optimising your farm for efficiency

This is the $500/hour work.

Let’s look at a really simple example of how this plays out…

You could work 40 hours a week doing $25/hour tasks, to make $1000.

or…

You could hire a farmhand to do those 40 hours of work for a cost of $1000.

You now have capacity to work on $500/hour tasks.

Imagine what would happen if you spend just a few hours every week moving from $25/hour to $500/hour work. You could easily make an extra $475 every week, just by trading ONE hour of $25/hour jobs for $500/hour work!

Top farm owners spend 80% of their time on $500/hour tasks.

Make that your goal and focus on small steps every week to get there.

Create a strategic business plan

Let’s pretend it’s your anniversary next month and you want to plan a surprise holiday for your wife.

You make a plan of everything that needs to be done, like:

Pick dates for the trip
Choose location
Book flights
Make hotel reservations
Research great things to do and places to eat in the area

And because of that planning, you enjoy a lovely trip together, soaking up the sun and getting some much-needed relaxation.

When it comes to holidays, most of us are good at making plans. But very few farmers have strategic business plans for their farms.

The top 20% of farm owners plan their days, months, and years.

They decide on their goals — the BIG ones, like where they want the farm to be 10 years from now — and then work backwards to map out what they need to do to achieve them.

This process of starting with the end in mind and mapping everything back to today is called strategic planning.

Top farm owners create strategic business plans and update them every quarter, or 90 days. It’s a way to keep the forward momentum moving…and eliminate the daily decisions that waste so much time.

We created a strategic planning tool called the Farm Operating System (FOS). It helps you break down your 10-year goals and map them back to what you need to do in the next 90-days to keep you on track.

Click here to download your strategic planning template for free

Track your numbers

Peter Drucker, the founder of modern business management, said:

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

That’s why tracking your numbers is a key part of the Take Control Program… and all the growth work we do with farmers.

If you want to do things like:

Make higher profit per item
Reduce overhead costs
Speed up growing cycles
Increase crop yields

…You have to start by tracking your numbers.

A pilot uses a series of dials in their cockpit to help them make informed decisions. Tracking your farm’s numbers is like checking in with your dials to make profitable decisions.

If you don’t track your numbers, you could be wasting time and energy on an area on your farm that just isn’t profitable — instead of maximising the returns on a highly profitable area of the farm.

Profitable farmers make decisions based on data. Not gut feelings, not wild guesses, but tangible proof.

Decide…fast

The latest numbers flying around the internet estimate that an adult makes about 35,000 decisions every day.

When you’re ineffective at making decisions, you waste time. You have too many things going on in your mind, which causes you to procrastinate, because you’re not sure what to do.

But not all decisions are created equal.

There are three main types of decisions:

Major: life-changing decisions (e.g. marriage, buying a new farm)
Medium: cost a bit of money and time (e.g. hiring a team member, buying a new tractor)
Minor: largely irrelevant (e.g. what colour your logo should be)

Profitable farm owners only invest their time in the major and medium decisions. They do their research, they look at the data, they ask for advice from mentors and business leaders they respect. And then they make informed decisions.

For minor ones? They make fast decisions and stick with those decisions once made.

…Then they get back to working on the $500/hour tasks and making things happen.

Master negotiation skills

Profit = Revenue – Costs

One way to make higher profits is to increase revenue (or sales). Another is to reduce costs.

That’s where negotiation comes in.

Negotiating to reduce costs or increase margins is a very effective strategy to maximise profits. With just one phone call, you can add hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to your bottom line each month. But most farmers never even try!

Here are a few things you can negotiate:

Better prices for goods you purchase
Better prices for goods you sell
Better margins if you use agents
More hours or outputs out of your team members
Better deals from your off farm investments

Don’t be afraid to start the negotiation conversation. There is almost always room for a better price, if you ask. But if you don’t ask, you’ll never get it.

Not comfortable negotiating? No problem. It’s a skill that can be learned. Click here for a great template and training on how to negotiate.

Operate like a business owner, NOT a farmer

Lindsay Fox (who runs Fox Trucks and has a personal net worth of $2.91 billion) got into the trucking business because his father was a truck driver.

When Lindsay was asked, “So, are you like your father?”

He replied, “No. Dad drove a truck. I owned my first one and got someone else to drive it.”

This sums up the difference between a farmer and a farm business owner.

Business owners act like the manager of a sports team — managing the players, developing the skills, and creating the strategies to win games.

A business owner operates at a different level, doing things like:

Designing great systems to run their farms
Hiring and training and leading great people
Tracking the important numbers
Creating a strategic business plan
Making informed decisions to lead the farm forward
Looking for new opportunities (buying land, negotiating better terms, leasing land, etc.)

The top 20% of farmers look at themselves as business owners. That mindset shift is what leads to such high levels of success for their farms.

If this list of 7 things feels overwhelming, remember, you don’t have to tackle everything at once.

Pick just ONE of these strategies to test out on your farm and watch as your profits increase week by week.

Negotiation Skills Training

In This Session …

Learn why negotiation is so important and that we are negotiating every day
Understand how to reach compromise instead of resolution and find a win-win every time
How to help someone really understand what it is you want and why its a must for them to help you get it
We uncover an amazing template to turn you into a negotiation master

Download the template here

The biggest lessons to help farmers succeed in business

The biggest lessons to help farmers succeed in business

I started my career as a Business Coach 20 years ago. Having clocked over 10,000 hours of coaching and working with over 1,000 clients, I see some amazing similarities to why some exceed and why others don’t.

The list below is my biggest learnings from 20 years of business mentoring and I hope it helps you.

1. The top business owners know what they want. They operate from a centered space and have a very high level of clarity. Because they know what they want, they only focus on doing things that get them to their goal. They don’t fluff around doing things that are not aligned with this. In addition, they ALL focus on one thing. Not two things – just one. They understand – if you try and chase two rabbits, you will catch neither.

They Focus On One Course Until Successful (FOCUS). Because they can clearly see what they want, they can easily handle obstacles when they arise.

2. They puppeteer the process. Imagine for a moment a team playing a game of soccer. They are about to kick off. Now imagine that you are floating above this game of soccer. You can see your team below. The centre forward, the left and right forward, the wings, the goalkeeper, etc.

They are all in position and they know what they need to do (score goals and win the game). They are the puppets and you are just the puppeteer. That is, you need to:

1. Figure out what the game plan is and what the game is about

2. Decide what positions you need to fill

3. Hire people based on the right skill.

4. Keep them focused on doing their job to a world-class level.

Great farming business owners puppeteer the process and remove themselves from being the puppets (workers). If they ever do get onto the field to play, they stay in their genius and hire people to take on the roles they are not great at. They spend a lot of time ‘off the field’ analysing “what do we need to accomplish here?” and “who can I find to help me accomplish this?”. They look at their game from a 30,000-foot view.

3. They hire an Implementation Manager. The most important decision you will ever make in business is ‘who is my second in charge?’. The CEO sets the vision for the business. The Implementation Manager then keeps the team accountable to fulfilling the vision. A great Implementation Manger makes the plan happen and ensures that the people are sticking to what they are paid to do, and working as a unit with everyone else. This 2IC will free the owner up about 50% of headspace and time.

Too many business owners I meet never take the risk and engage this person…so remain trapped in working really hard. It’s often the wife of a farmer that does this role and often without the wife, the business will fail.

4. They focus on a stop-doing list, more than a to-do list. They know that doing less is the key to their success – so constantly hand tasks over to others. They work on a stop-doing list at least every week. They are masters at delegating and handing tasks over.

5. They put themselves first, team second, then farm work third.

If they are not functioning at a high level, then the rest of the business suffers. Top farm business owners take 4 to 7 weeks a year out of the business to recharge. They understand that 1 hour of inspired work beats 6 hours of uninspired work – so they are ok taking lots of breaks. If you go to a gym and do weights, you won’t actually get the growth until you rest. The same is true in business. Your growth, insights, and inspiration come in your downtime. They look after themselves mentally, physically and emotionally.

6. They don’t waste time trying to figure things out. They really understand that one of their greatest sources of leverage is other people’s knowledge. They are very comfortable in asking for help.

They find other successful farmers and take them out for a coffee or lunch to learn from them. They know this is the fastest route to their success. They all have mentors – paid and unpaid – and are always acting like the ‘dumbest person in the room’.

7. They all have a weekly scorecard. They know where their business is at on a weekly basis. They receive a weekly scorecard (or at least monthly) that tells them the key figures they need to know to run their business.

Let’s assume you are on an island, and you needed to know some key monthly figures that helped you run your business. What are the 5-10 things you need to know? Top owners get these reports weekly to help them make decisions. They also forecast their sales and expenses and review their profit and loss.

8. They get that one of their number one tasks is hiring the right people. That is always on the lookout for the best of the best. They respect the impact a high-performance team member can have on their business – and they are not afraid to take the risk to invest in the people to help them grow. They almost always see a ROI from these decisions.

9. They understand that attack is their best defence. If you were to watch a sporting team defending during the game, you can almost guarantee that they are going to lose the game. When there is a difficulty, great entrepreneurs step up and attack. They get clear again on what they want and move forward to attain this. They play to win, not to defend against loss.

10. They invest enormously in self-education. From reading books and listening to podcasts, to going to courses and engaging coaches and mentors. I have never worked with a top performing business owner that didn’t invest a huge amount of time and money into their self-knowledge.They know it’s what they don’t know that hurts them most.

11. They get the power of positive vibration. They know that when they are feeling great, and giving off a great vibe – amazing things come into their life. This is why they work daily at keeping this vibe. When they are in this positive vibration, everything flows. When they enter a negative vibration, they are quick to recognise this, change state and get back into their positive vibe.

12. They have a lot of fun.They just get it’s the process and not the goal that is the most enjoyable part. They don’t do work in roles they don’t like or are not good at. They turn it into a game and play to win, but play always because they enjoy it. If you think of a game of golf, what is the point of rushing around the course just to finish because you don’t enjoy it? Business owners respect the journey and make it as fun as possible.

13. They plan their year, quarter, week and day. If you don’t have a planning system in your business by now, my suggestion is to get one – or go and get a job. There is just too much to achieve, and you need a system to help you figure out what needs to get done and what order of priority you will do it in. Top business owners invest 2 days to plan their year out, 1 day each quarter, then 60 minutes each week and 10 minutes to plan each day. This creates a huge amount of flow for them and helps them move forward in a really controlled and powerful manner.

14. They have an open mind. They realise they are on a journey and if they let go and trust, everything has a way of working itself out. They all understand that there is a higher power and regularly take time out to reconnect to this. This helps keep them in their heart and out of their head. They understand that “Ego says “Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace.”

Andrew Roberts

Farm Owners Academy

Any questions? Contact us!