Coming Home to Work
If you have a family ranch, whether you know it or not, you have a family employment policy. At least your kids think you do. In the absence of a formal, written policy, kids often grow up with the expectation that regardless of their education, experience or talent, there will be a role for them […]
A Great Place To Raise A Family
I occasionally lead workshops I call Hard Work and Harmony: Effective Relationships In Family Businesses. In it I like to ask participants to explain to the person next to them, why they ranch. Some say they love being their own boss, or love working outdoors and with livestock. Almost all of them say something about […]
What Does Mom Want?
We use a process at RMC to help families and business teams create a shared vision and a plan to achieve it. We start by asking a very basic question: What do you want? Each participant answers individually by writing several short statements describing how they’d like things to be in three to five years. Once […]
The Great American Tragedy
In an earlier ProfitTips column I wrote about a young couple who, after attending a Ranching For Profit School, came home to meet a brick wall of resistance from the folks. The couple wrote, “They were very upset when we showed them the numbers and compared them to the RFP benchmarks. We proposed several […]
Read MoreParticipation Trophies
When my kids were young they played in a youth soccer league. At the end of the season all of the players were given a participation trophy. I sat there and applauded the kids as they passed out the awards, but the applause wasn’t sincere. I thought, “Self-esteem out of control! You don’t get awards […]
Home On The Range?
Many of us hope and fear that the next generation will want to be part of the family business. We hope because we feel validated that we must have done something right when our kids want to follow in our footsteps. Many of us see it as our role to create opportunities for our kids. […]
Top 10 Challenges In Ranching
In the last ProfitTips I asked you to share the challenges you face in ranching and share you did. Here is your list of the top 10 challenges facing your ranch: #10: We have a victim attitude We will never succeed if all we do is blame others for our failures. Self-proclaimed victims abdicate […]
Read MoreFool Me Once
Life isn’t a fairytale. Sometimes regardless of how good our idea is, how well we listen, how well we prepare and plan, we still run into a brick wall of resistance. Sometimes we don’t all live happily ever after. I’ve had more than one ProfitTips reader write me to ask, “What now?” The answer is […]
Don’t Hire People To Work
Most of us hire people to work. We write job descriptions telling them to do this or that. But what people do and how long or hard they work is not important. It is only the means to the end. The end is the results they produce. As an employer you would be well […]
Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later
Abby of Dear Abby, passed away last week. I don’t intend to take her place dispensing relationship advice, but I do get my share of Dear Dave letters. Here’s a Dear Dave inquiry I had last month: Dear Dave, We have a problem. Our ranch manager is a family member but does not have […]