Legacy Farmer The Podcast

A lot of people like to tell themselves that once they fix their financial problems, everything will come together in their life. The issue is, once you fix the financial problems, all you are left with is the real problems. When it comes to solving financial problems, for some people it’s quick, for others, it can take years. When you are trying to build something great with your life, it will come at the expense of those you hold closest. Be it your time, or energy spent with those people. It is a heavy price to pay. You are constantly sacrificing time WITH the people you love most, FOR the people you love most, even though it can feel wrong in the moment. As a father and husband, this will weigh on you. You should recognize the pain on both sides and understand what your family is going through as well.    Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

On the farm there is usually a massive disconnect between leadership, and just telling people what to do. When you are telling people what to do you are just managing them, you aren’t teaching, building them, or growing them, like you would if you were leading. Leadership means leading people to become better versions of themselves. It’s important to lead your team members because they will come up against things they weren’t trained for and that you, yourself may not have come up against. Without your leadership, and helping them grow, they’ll just come to you for every issue rather than coming up with a solution themselves. You don’t want every small decision going through you.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

There are times in our lives where we do take risks, but on the flip side, we must understand when to hold fast and protect what we have. Seekers take on unmanaged risk and always swing for the fences. Which is fine as long as you are considering all the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd order consequences that come with failure. Hiders are risk averse and avoid it at all costs. This is also fine as long as it’s managed and not all consuming. When you are the one that has built up the assets, you are much less likely to risk them. Risk is much more a young man's game, and with age comes the hiding and preservation. Balance is key.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

Right now, because of the economy, both people in the Ag industry and banks are getting apprehensive about taking out, and loaning out, money. Many people are trying to figure out how to recover from poor financial decisions they made back during the pandemic because borrowing money was easy. Greed drove both the banks and farmers to make poor decisions over the last few years. Our Farmer Metrics software is a great pattern interrupter to get you making decisions based on your numbers and not just on the feelings of what you want. Each year that you go through the cycle of making uninformed decisions it gets harder and harder.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

Everyone hates hearing the truth when it’s something they don’t want to hear. We hate feeling exposed and having our faults pointed out. This is especially true when talking about finances. We don't want to fail our business financially, and we especially don’t want to fail our family financially. But, we live in a world of reality and ignoring the truth won’t help us improve ourselves or fix our problems. The longer you avoid the truth, the more you are prolonging the inevitable, and the more painful those lessons will be to learn.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

Sometimes it can feel like all your neighbors in the Ag industry are constantly growing and expanding their operations. It may look good from the outside but the majority of them do not know their numbers and are guessing with each decision they make. Even if you put together an annual cash flow projection, neither you nor your banker are looking at that again after you create it. In Legacy Farmer, we update those projections every month. When times are uncertain, like they are right now, your goal should be to hit singles, not home runs. Just hit a single and survive.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

Zero percent financing is very enticing, it makes you think you’ll save a ton of money, but it’s injecting the opportunity to fail for the year. It lulls you into a false sense of security, feeling like the bank account is full and you don’t need to be as careful with your spending. If you aren’t religiously tracking your numbers you wouldn’t even see the dangers coming until it is too late. It is often best to keep things simple and remove all the complexity to keep things running smoothly.    Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

When you have a son or daughter come back to the family operation, are you setting them up for success, or failure? Are you dropping them in the deep-end with oppressive amounts of debt and no knowledge of how the business works? Or are you giving them space to make small mistakes and learn what they need to know to be successful later down the road? Wanting to help your kids is a great thing, but saddling them with $500K to $1M debt, and no understanding of the significance of that money, isn’t the way to help.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

So many of our members in the Ag industry share the same problems, no matter where they are in the country. One issue that arises most often is dealing with bankers. There are issues with farmers not knowing their numbers, but there are equal and opposite issues with bankers not fully understanding the Ag business. You have to be on top of your numbers so you can give your banker the information they need to not question you, and know you are a great customer.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

When you have a safe job, you get comfortable. This is stagnation, and you can use manufactured pressure to motivate and push yourself. The most successful people can generate the discomfort they need to stay motivated and get themselves moving. Once your business becomes stable you can unnecessarily and accidentally revert back to this mindset and make things harder than they need to be, this is called the “build and burn.” The key to this is finding a balance.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

Everyone wants to sit in the leadership position and reap all the benefits that come with it, but no one wants the price of making hard decisions that come with weight, backlash, and impact on others. These decisions also raise your awareness. You can now see the impact of not only your decisions but the impact of all the decisions of your team members. This awareness is most sensitive when their decisions affect you.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

The number of hills you should be willing to die on in business shouldn’t be that many. So many things we think we need to fight to the death for, just really aren't worth it. When we run up against a challenge, it’s important to ask ourselves if it’s a hill worth dying on, or if it wont even matter in a few hours, days, or weeks. Asking yourself this question also stops meaningless issues from stealing your time and energy.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

When you go out on your own and start your own business you completely remove any safety net and you are completely responsible for yourself and your family. There are farmers in their 50’s and 60’s that are still expecting their fathers in their 80’s and 90’s to save them. If you are still looking for someone to save you, you need to recognize that all the power and growth is found when you accept that no one is coming to save you.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

It’s common to hear farmers say that it’s hard to find good help. The truth of the matter is that they don’t have the correct incentives set up to draw in the right people. If you do have a solid team in place, it is important to ask them what incentives they want to help drive up their productivity and efficiency. Incentives completely depend on the person. Some people want money, some want shorter working hours, the list is endless.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

Not knowing your numbers, poor leadership, deterioration of relationships at home, are all great ways to rot your operation to the core. You can’t kick the big issues down the road and hope that they’ll just go away. They won’t, and the longer you do, the more painful it’ll be when you finally face reality. These issues and rot can even be seen in the banking industry, and it’s important for you to understand that when going in for a loan.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

You need to make a decision or the universe will decide for you. The longer you avoid handling problems or challenges, the more you’ll pay for them later on when you finally decide to take care of them. The consequences later will always outweigh the price of taking action today.     Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org 

As we approach the 7 year anniversary of my decision to leave the banking industry and go out on my own, I reflect on the greatest lesson I have learned. Have patience and trust God’s process. When things don’t go the way we expect, it is very easy to get sucked into the worry spiral. Every time things get rough, God always opens another door that we didn’t even know was there. We are all impatient and try to rush things when God just wants us to slow down and trust his timing.  Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

Sometimes, in business and life, there are doors we need to walk through that require a massive amount of courage. Some people get stuck behind those doors for decades, out of fear of stepping through them. When we attach all of those feelings to a driving force, it becomes much easier to generate the courage needed to do what needs to be done. Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

There are 2 kinds of people in this world, one that makes decisions only based on price, and one that decides based on value. Those that decide only on price are stuck in a world of scarcity and will never be able to move beyond it. Those that focus on value can see the dividends paid out over years and even decades.   Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org

Hope is not a strategy, knowing your numbers is all that matters. This will give you confidence in all your decision making. When working with our accounting arm of the business one of our members was ecstatic to find out that he would have his numbers available to him this year rather than next year, which allows for a level of planning that he has never had before. It allows you to be proactive rather than reactive. Check out the Impact Legacy Farmer is having on the American Farmer here:  www.legacyfarmer.org