Some Ideas Should Fail
How many of the new ideas that you implement work? I hope not 100%. If 100% of the new ideas you implement in your business work then you are probably being too cautious. There is a healthy portion of new ideas that should fail. I spent a year riding pens in a feedlot. I really […]
Read MoreBusiness is a Noble Endeavor
Last week I along with Jordan Steele and a few RFP alumni attended the EntreLeadership Summit put on by the Ramsey organization in Nashville, Tennessee. It was an amazing week hearing from world-class thought leaders and business trailblazers. Dave Ramsey gave a presentation called The Nobility of Business. His point was that so many condemn […]
Read MoreLagging vs Leading Indicators
“When we choose the wrong measurement, we get the wrong behavior” (James Clear, Atomic Habits). At the Ranching for Profit School, we talk about how paradigms, actions, and results are related to ranching. These concepts look hard at why the business does what the business does. First let’s talk about money. A very common financial […]
Read MoreWorking Backwards
One of Stephen Covey’s seven habits of highly successful people is to “start with the end in mind.” We use this a lot at our Ranching for Profit School, particularly during the evening coaching sessions when students are preparing their economic numbers. The Ranching for Profit economic model breaks down a business into gross margins […]
Read MoreUses for Profit
When we talk about uses for profit some people roll their eyes. “Profit – yeah right! Like that ever happens in agriculture.” The reality is that most ag operations are not profitable. In fact most are really expensive hobbies. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Many are profitable every year. Some are highly […]
Read MoreBreak Your Legs
Remember in the movies when the bookie’s tough guy would knock on the door and threaten to “break your legs” if they didn’t pay up? Sometimes, I think many of us would be better managers for our operations if someone broke our legs. If our legs were broken we wouldn’t be able to go outside […]
Read MoreWhat is Your Role in the Ranch?
Is your primary role in your business working as a doer or a planner? When the doer goes out the door in the morning, they get to work doing all the things that need to be done in the business. The list is never ending. Fix the water in the Smith pasture, put out mineral […]
Read MoreMoneyball is a Movie About Ranching
The first time I watched the movie Moneyball, I about came out of my chair thinking, “This movie is about ranching”. The correlations are strong and the lessons from the movie are absolutely appropriate to agricultural businesses. In the movie Moneyball, Billy Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A’s, who have just lost […]
Read MoreGoing Backwards Working for Wages
I was having a conversation with a ranch family the other day about doing their own trucking. They haul cattle to corn stalks and back each year, so they hire about 20 loads hauled to get it done. They were running numbers thinking about what owning a semi and cattle pot (trailer) would cost. They […]
Two Mornings to Change Your Business
If you’ve been through the Ranching For Profit School you recognize the importance of working ON the business (WOTB). If blocking out time for WOTB is challenging for you, you aren’t alone. Scheduling adequate time to work on the businesses is often THE most difficult challenge RFP graduates face when they get home. The problem […]
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