Friday rewind: strategic resource teams for your farm

Shay: Welcome back everyone to the Ag View Pitch. It's a new year, a new decade, and we are super excited for what 2020 has to offer. Today's podcast is one that we believe is really important looking at strategic resource teams. It's something we think that every farm operation needs. Please find a pen and paper, take some notes. There's a lot of things here that you're really going to want to be writing down and paying special attention to moving into the new year. As always, please reach out to us if you have any questions. See cbarron@agviewsolutions.com or give Chris a call 319-533-5703. Enjoy.

Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and today you have myself, Shay Foulk, with Chris Barron, and we wanted to take a few minutes to talk with you a little bit about business decision-making teams and some of the things that you should be looking at in the year ahead. So first of all, Happy New Year's to everyone. Hope everyone out there is enjoying the time they've been able to spend with family and friends here the past few days. I know you and I, Chris, have both had a little bit of an opportunity to do that.

Chris: Yeah, a little bit. We've kind of been bouncing all over the place, haven't we?

Shay: Yes, we have. And we're in the lovely heartland of South Dakota right now. Got a blizzard going on right now, but still getting the job done. So I think it's an important conversation to have here on this business development team. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to jump in some of the topics we're gonna cover here tonight and go from there.

Chris: Sure. I think, um, Shay, one of the things I wanted to accomplish with this podcast was just talk about the importance of, as we go into 2020, just thinking about for our own farm operations and our own businesses, who's on our team, for our strategic resource planning. And so I call this the strategic resource team that you have in business, and you know, the good acronym is the SRT. So it's again strategic resource team, and I'm going to go through the top 10 here first, and then you can kind of quiz me on them. But I just want to bring them up and have everybody that's listening think about their own farm operations as I go through this list of 10. And so the first one is your family. Thinking about, you know, everybody in your family that's important in the team of your farm business.

The second one is your advisory board, and so who are those mentors or people that you work with that know your operation and that you trust, that are maybe not completely involved in the middle of the operation but are somewhat involved. And then number 3 is your financial production consultants or financial analysts, people that you count on to look at financials with you and help you to make good decisions. Decisions from a financial perspective. Number 4 is your lender. Lenders are pretty critical in today's world, you know, with everything that's going on with interest rates and just access to capital and all that. So we can come back on that one as well. Number 5 is your CPA. You know, do you have, you know, a really good strategic thinking CPA that's helping you in meeting all the needs that you have for your operation there?

Number 6 is your attorney, business structure, succession, transition planning, a lot of things there with the attorney that are really important to make sure that you have a good attorney and a law office that can meet the needs there. Number 7 is investment partners. Those would be, you know, landowners, your other peers that are maybe investing with you, other family members, or maybe just some other business partnerships. That you have that are bringing funds to the system or basically working with you and, you know, in a capital aspect. Number 8 is insurance agents. That would be your, you know, your risk management, production, property liability. There's just a lot of things with insurance, and it's not just the agent, but it's an insurance company that you're working with too.

And are you working with more than the agent, or are you just working with the agent and counting on the agent to to figure things out for you. And so we can talk about that more in a minute. Number 9 is marketing and advisors or marketing advisors or brokers, you know, on the marketing side. So, you know, are you using all the tools in your marketing that you could be using? Do you understand what you need to understand? Or if you don't understand what you need to understand, do you have somebody there helping you make good marketing decisions and making sure you're thinking through all those opportunities? And/or are you educating yourself on maybe things that you lack? And then number 10 is peer advisory board. That would be kind of what we're doing, Shay, with our peer groups that we have.

You know, are you participating with a group of other farming peers from other states maybe and getting new fresh ideas that you can bring back to the farm that other producers are doing that maybe you could apply in your business that would really change the dynamics or the direction of where your business is at so you don't stagnate, so that you're, you know, you're looking at all these new opportunities that you could go to.

Shay: So that's a pretty big list here, and you and I were talking about this a little bit offline. I think what's important is almost to utilize this as a checklist. So I guess what I would encourage people that are listening to do is, you know, grab a pen and paper real quick and start writing down people that might fit into each one of these groups. You know, like you and I were talking, you can go back through and, okay, family, who is it? Who do I need to talk to? Who, who, who needs to be a part of this conversation moving forward? And who have I maybe not had as involved? So, you know, as we go through these points, I encourage you just to write down some action items that you can be taking. And the other thing that I want, you know, listeners to remember too is these are, this is your strategic resource team.

You know, these are resources that are meant to be used You're meant to reach out to them, and you know, you need to take full advantage of that because within this team, you might be the coach of your operation, but you have to rely on all these players, everyone that's involved here. So let's jump back in real quick. You know, who do we need to be talking to that's involved with family, uh, on the side of the operation?

Chris: Well, the family one can be one of the most fun or the most challenging one of the whole list, and You know, so a lot of times we see brothers, we see cousins, we see siblings, we see all these family dynamics, grandpas, uncles, daughters, you know, trying to figure out how to work together. And the biggest thing that I guess I would say is, is just like you just pointed out, Shay, is sit down and write down who is part of the family and then another list of who is part of the business.

Because you have a set of family governance that has to be discussed in terms of, you know, what, what are the family dynamics, what's the family governance look like, but on the other side of it, what does the business governance look like, and those are two entirely different components of how decisions should be made, and so, you know, if you have actively engaged kids that are involved and some kids that are not actively engaged, You know, it's an entirely different conversation and it's just making that list to your point and having these conversations and, and figuring out, you know, what that looks like. And but it also has to do with spouses and that kind of thing. You know, a lot of times we see brothers that farm together and sometimes some of the challenges come from the spouse that sees, you know, well, my husband's the one doing all the work. He doesn't do nothing, you know.

So sometimes, you know, it's a communication thing and sometimes Sometimes we as the operators are at fault because we're not communicating with our immediate family members and they see something that is glossy and looks good from our perspective and maybe they aren't seeing things from the other side. And so, you know, the family dynamics and the communication, like I said, from the family governance to the business governance is critical.

Shay: And a lot of what you're referring to there is influencers who are part of this. So they might not be directly involved with the operation, whether it's those that are spouses or, you know, distant cousins, whoever, but they're influencers within the decision-making of that operation. And a few, you know, specific examples where it maybe gets a little sticky with family is looking at the transition that's going on within the operation, as well as, you know, if there's trusts that are set up on the land. You know, we say this frequently, fair, fair is not equal and equal is not fair. And so looking at those complex decisions and And then the other thing that leads into our next point is a lot of times the family members can actually serve on the advisory board.

Chris: Right, and they may not be actively engaged, but they might be a partial owner or a director on the board, somebody that's on the board of directors and that kind of thing. So that's really true. The other thing that you said too that I want to touch on for a minute, you mentioned like influencers, that's one thing. You know, if any of these listeners here are selling to producers, if you're selling something and you walk in, you're, you know, and you're selling seed or you're selling crop protection or, or providing any kind of service and you come in and you talk to only the, the senior member of the operation and don't pay attention to the junior member of that operation or whatever, all of a sudden, you know, and you leave or you don't talk to the spouse, you sit there and you talk to whoever you think is the lead person in that business.

But if you're not talking to the influencer, that lead person in the business, that might not be the one making the final decision. That person might leave and Grandpa steps up and says, hey, we're going to do this different. This is what I'm saying and this is what I saw from what that person said. Said, and that, and that grandpa just influenced the decision that, that, that producer maybe was going to make because that was the person being talked to and grandpa wasn't focused on, or the son or the daughter or whoever it is that might be the influencer in the operation.

Shay: And that's part of their family, that's their advisory board. Right. They're going to those trusted people.

Chris: Right.

Shay: So who else might serve on an advisory board?

Chris: So the advisory board was number 2. So we had family as one, advisory board is number two. So, you know, that's family. It's really key employees too. A lot of times I think that gets overlooked. You know, you have somebody in the operation that just does a great job and sometimes that person isn't recognized in the way they should be. And number one, told and said, hey, you know what you're bringing to this operation is extremely beneficial. We appreciate everything you're doing and keep 'You know, and would you be willing to sit in a meeting once a month and give us your input on kind of where we're going and how this looks?' And, you know, and just get input from them.

The other one is just outside sources, is somebody from the outside looking in that doesn't have any emotional connection, somebody that is a trusted person in business and maybe in a different, whole entire different industry. They don't need to be in agriculture.

They could be involved in airline industry for all that matters, but look in and see how the business decisions are being made, you know, and it might be peers, it might be trusted mentors, and the list kind of goes on and on, but it's just, you know, having somebody that's on an advisory board, in other words, you know, maybe 3 or 4 people that you get together with a couple times a month, or well, not a couple times a month, maybe, you know, once a month at a minimum probably, and have a conversation around, you know, here's the direction of the business, here are some of the issues that we have, some of the challenges we're dealing with. Are we dealing with them correctly? What could we be doing differently or better? And that's kind of where the advisory board comes in.

Shay: And as a lot of people say, you can't choose your family, but you can choose your advisory board.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. You can choose who is going to help you make, make key decisions in the business.

Shay: Right, so let's move on to the next point, and that's financial or production consultants. Who might this be in different operations?

Chris: Yeah, so, you know, the financial production consultants is number 3. Strategic planning, you know, coaching, education, you know, thinking about, you know, what are you doing to educate yourself more on accounting, for example, or what are you doing to bring somebody in from the outside to look at the process you're, you're doing on the financial analysis. And are you making good cost of production decisions? Are you looking at production accurately? You know, it might be, it might be an agronomist, it could be a feed nutritionist on the livestock side of things, but those are all people that have a direct correlation to production and financial analysis.

And in most operations, you know, you can think about who are those people, you know, it might be the vet, you know, that has a really good understanding of the herd health and everything that could step in and, and start looking at the financials with you and saying, okay, we can help you here, help you there. And so a lot of times the financial is so closely tied to the production side of things, but it's just identifying who those strategic people are that can really help you in that area.

Shay: And I think something else that, you know, we may be able to look is we don't need to pull just from where our group is now. Go to these meetings, go to these events, network and create those contacts, because oftentimes that's how you're meeting these new people that, and, you know, eventually become part of your advisory board or become part of these consultants that really are integrally involved with your operation.

Chris: Right, right. Yeah, for sure.

Shay: So let's move on to lenders here. You know, what are some of the key roles that they have on the strategic resource team?

Chris: Well, the first one in today's world is, you know, working capital has gotten so tight for a lot of operations, it's really just access to capital. You know, who is that lender out there that's going to be there through you thick and thin? You know, you have a couple of really rough years in a row, you could be in a situation where you've burnt through the majority of your working capital. And you need somebody that understands what's going on in your operation, and that lender is really a critical part of that. You know, understanding where the interest rates are at, understanding your— they're going to help you understand, you know, what's your debt repayment structure, can you really handle, you know, how the business structure really needs to be set up so that you can cash flow and all those kind of things. I think that lender relationship is really critical.

One other thing though that I want to point out with lenders is that you could have a phenomenal relationship with your existing lender and, you know, something could happen and all of a sudden that lender takes a different job or steps out of the equation. Now all of a sudden you're in a situation where, well, I was borrowing money from that person, you know, and now that person is not in the equation, and I don't really like this bank I'm at. You know, so now all of a sudden you don't have a lender. You have a bank, but you don't have a lender. And that lender relationship is so critical. So one of the things that I learned years and years ago from Mo Russell, who was very eloquent and always coining the phrase, you should always have a lender on the bench.

And by having a lender on the bench just basically means that at the end of the year when you do your financials and you turn all that stuff into your existing lender, find another lender when you don't need one and take all that financial information to another lender, give that information to them and say, "Hey, if I ever get in a situation where I need another lender, would you be interested in being that person? Would you be interested in being that bank?" And 99% of the time they'll say, "Oh, absolutely, we want to do that.

We want to have an opportunity for a new customer." And that's being extremely proactive so that when something happens— because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when— something happens to the lending institution that you're currently working with and you have to make a change, that change isn't difficult and it's not really stressing out your operation or stressing out you personally because you already have a lender on the bench, you know. So that's just something I think that's really important to mention.

Shay: And we just did a podcast on that, or rather you did a podcast on that, on Lenders. So I encourage anyone and go back, uh, really in-depth, almost an hour long, talking about some of the benefits that you can have there. And, you know, another point I want to make too is just because you have a good relationship with your lender doesn't mean you're always going to get what you want. It's more so just being open, being honest, and establishing that relationship so it's not someone that you just talk to once or twice a year. You're actively involved in including them on your strategic resource team.

Chris: Yeah, keep the lights on for lender all the time.

Shay: Don't go dark, right? So let's move on, uh, talking about CPAs, something that not a lot of farmers, or not all farmers, are intimately familiar with. Talk about that a little more.

Chris: Yeah, I think the relationship with the CPA is really important, and I think the relationship with the CPA has a lot to do with, with them not just going along with everything we want to do as producers and not pay taxes. I mean, we, we as producers want to do everything we can do to not pay tax, and one of the biggest things that I've seen some of our clients get in trouble on is, you know, buying some new stuff and then, you know, to mitigate having to pay a tax bill, but at the same time then they have to borrow money on that asset that they gotta buy so they don't have to pay tax. Well, now they got payments on something that they may or may not need, and so I think, you know, ask yourself you know, from your strategic resource team, is the CPA that's on that team somebody that really is okay with giving you constructive criticism? Are they, and are you willing to take it?

Right. You know, it's not just that are they willing to give it, but do you listen to them, you know, and are you making good decisions based on that? And then the other thing too is just understanding the difference between your tax books and your market value situation. So, you know, don't just rely on the CPA and the tax return to give you any kind of feedback or information. That's just one piece of the tax, of the cash side of your business. But really making sure that your CPA understands what's going on with your business and kind of where you're going in the future. Are you going to continue to farm indefinitely or are you going to start winding this thing down in the next 10 years so that they're part of the plan? And part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

Shay: Right. No, that's good. So how and why should your attorney— this is number 6— be part of your operation?

Chris: Well, I think the attorney is somebody that a lot of times we avoid going to see because it can be an expensive visit. But, you know, it's important to make sure, number 1, that you do have a good will. When I ask most people, When's the last time you updated your will? Oh, I don't know, maybe like 10 years ago, you know. So it's just something that, you know, we need. It's kind of like the dentist, you know, we don't really want to go see the dentist, but you kind of need to go to the attorney, make sure number one, you've got your will in place, but be thinking about your succession planning and your transition planning. You know, are there any legal outliers there that you have in your business? Do you have the right business structure?

You know, think about, you know, a lot of times what we see happen is farmers will maybe have their trucks in an LLC, but they don't have their machinery separated out into a specific business, and they have some really big liability exposure, or they just have too many business things blended and haven't really thought about a really good, sound business structure. And that's where the attorneys can help you. You know, I go back to to your financial and your advisory board. There's some areas there where those, those areas can help you too, but, but the attorney is what makes that stuff legal, you know.

So you can plan and change how you're doing business, but if you don't structure that stuff and set up, you know, an operating— an official operating quote-unquote agreement or something along those lines and have it a legally binding process, then you really do have what you're trying to achieve.

Shay: And I think a lot of farmers think that the attorney is scary, but really they're there to help facilitate what your goals are. So it's your responsibility to clearly outline, this is what I want to happen, this is the structure I want to see, can you help me build this? And having a well thought through and developed plan, it doesn't need to be perfect, but you can take it to them and they can say, yes, we can do this, no, we can't do this, and here's how we can help. Yeah.

Chris: And before you get to the attorney, you really need to kind of have somewhat of a plan together, because a lot of times attorneys are going to look at you and, "What do you want me to do?" You know, and so you really got to think through that. And again, I go back to the advisory board, I go back to the financial planners, you know, the lenders, the CPAs, you know, people like us, you know, that come in and kind of help you figure out, you know, what's the most appropriate business structure for your long-term goals and the vision of your business, kind of set that up, and then the attorney's there to, to put a tie a bow on it, you know, and, and make it official.

Shay: So let's move on to number 7, investment partners. Tell me a little bit more there.

Chris: So investment partners, obviously, and all of us in agriculture have landowners that we deal with, we have family members that we're vested with, either part owners with, or we have to farm with them whether we like it or not in some cases, you know. But, but, you know, these investment partners are really critical components of what we do in our business to be successful long-term. And so, you know, let's use landowners as an example. You know, are we doing everything we can to do the best job of communicating and bringing them in? You know, are we asking some advice? I mean, even the absentee You know, landowners, a lot of times we work with clients that have landowners that are, say, in California or on the East or West Coast. And, you know, you're farming in the middle of Iowa or the middle of Indiana somewhere. And you think, well, they don't know anything that's going on.

We'll invite them in at a certain point in time in the year, if they would ever come and see your farm, ride in a combine, ride in a planter. Get out there with you and see what's really going on. I think that's really critical. But, but another component on the investment partner side of things is just really good sound communication and really good layout of, of what the plans are, you know, for current and for the future, you know, financially.

Shay: Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up because communication is, is such a key component, whether it's someone that's close to home or far away. And sometimes we can lose sight of that, of, oh well, you know, they're right next door, they see what's going on, or even that they're involved with the operation every day. You still need to have that key communication. You need to lay out meetings, you need to have established plans on what can we be doing to improve our communication for the Strategic Resource Team, right? So another one that I know you and I are both very reliant on and that we think is extremely important is the insurance agent.

Chris: Yep, number 8, insurance agents. That's a big one. Um, you know, this is probably the area where, you know, if, if you have a catastrophic problem, it's probably the one area that could take you out of business. And, you know, you, you know, a lot of producers think of insurance of all crop protection, or, you know, just my liability coverage for the year, or, you know, my collision or my, you know, whatever it is, you know, my umbrella coverage for the whole farm operation or the whole organization. Realistically, there's a few really critical things. Number 1, ask yourself, do you have an annual review with not only the agent, but with the underwriters or with people from within the insurance company that you work with.

The other thing I'm going to ask is, you know, in your farm operation, if you're listening to this, do you have one insurance company that covers you and your other partners? So let's say that you're— you have an alliance with somebody and you're harvesting with them and you're sharing a combine, or you're sharing, you know, hay equipment, or you're sharing, you know, maybe even some labor, or whatever it is that's going back and forth between one operation to another, does your insurance agent know that? So often we think, well, let's not tell the insurance company that because, you know, then that's gonna raise our premium or whatever. Well, when you have a loss, it's gonna be way worse than your premium increase. It's gonna, it's gonna be not being covered in some cases.

And the other thing too is a lot of times when we sit down with specifically with farms that are considering a collaboration or some formal alliance, we, number one, and you're aware of this, Shay, number one, we sit down, don't we, and we ask them, you know, do you have the same insurance company? If you don't, guess what, you're going to get the same one. Because we don't want insurance companies pointing fingers back and forth, you know, when you have people forming alliances or working together. And it's the same thing within families. A lot of times, You can have two brothers farming together and they have two different insurance companies, and that's about the worst thing you can do. You know, you need to have that formalized.

And then when you do that annual review, they can look at everything you're doing and be as transparent as you can within your farm operation to the insurance company and say, these are all the things we're doing. Is there anything we're doing that we shouldn't be doing? And if you are, it's probably something that can be insured. It's just, you know, You know, you may have to pay for that, but do you really want to pay for the incident or the catastrophic problem that could occur by not having coverage? And so a lot of times we see a ton of gaps of coverage, and so that insurance agent relationship and the relationship with the insurance company is really a critical one. It's number 8 on the list, but it might be the one that's, that could be the most important in the event that you have a loss.

Shay: And something for a lot of operations to seriously consider moving forward in the year ahead. Do we need to reevaluate this part of our business? And I think to lay out a very real scenario, you know, you went over it briefly, but let's say you form an alliance with an operation and it's Bob and John in this alliance and Bob is running John's combine, but they're doing custom work for Tom and they have two different insurance companies. And all of a sudden there's an incident. That, I mean, the headache starts right there.

Chris: Oh yeah.

Shay: Before you even get started. Yeah. And so making sure that you're all under that same roof, making sure that you have clear communication, and not only doing that annual review, but even more frequently than that, if you can meet quarterly and look at any gaps in coverage to prevent that upfront, sometimes paying that premium upfront is not as much heartache as it would be on the back end.

Chris: No, it's just good peace of mind.

Shay: So let's talk a little bit about marketing advisors, number 9 here on our list.

Chris: Yeah, so, you know, I'm not sure that, you know, we've, we've had, we have had with Ag View Solutions have had the privilege of getting to work with a lot of different brokers, market analysts and everything. And I think they're all so very critical. And, but, but saying that, I would also say that it's really tough to really know where this, where the market's going to go. Go on the commodity side of things. You know, um, you know, I could say tomorrow the price of corn, it's either going to go up or it's going to go down, right? It's going to go one way or the other, or it'll stay the same. Yeah, or it might stay the same, you know. But the reality of it is understanding your cost of production, and that's where kind of we come in, right? So it's helping growers figure out exactly, this is, this is where you're at, you know.

And, and maybe you don't have the crop grown yet, you know, your 5-year average. We take the total expenses you have using that 5-year average and we dial it in on a per unit cost. So when you do talk to either your broker or your hired market analyst or whoever it is that you work with on the marketing side of things— we don't do that, you know, we're helping people understand the cost side of things— but when these growers work with these market analysts, you better be able to tell them where your cost of production is at with some accuracy. And if you don't have that, then these, these analysts are really just kind of shooting at a target that doesn't exist because, you know, so then they become, you know, price, um, you know, high price objective hunters, you know, and who knows where the high price is going to be.

But if they know your cost of production is $3.60 on corn and it's $9 on soybeans, whatever those numbers are, and the price objectives that you need to have so that you can get to a margin target, you know, a margin of profitability that's acceptable for your business, then they can help you design the tools that you need. They can help you mitigate risk on the downside. They can help you leave the topside open. There's so many things, and we've watched so Some of the best marketing advisors work with growers that know the numbers on the front end and do so much better job financially that it's just, it's just a, you know, it's a piece of the strategic resource team that's one of the most critical ones. But they can only do their job if they know where their starting points are and where the target is so that they can shoot for their appropriate target.

Shay: And if I can digress here for a couple minutes, I'd like to bring this full circle to why we're doing this, this podcast, and why we, we've done over 100 episodes now. This started as an idea initially when we brought on Dwayne Lowery as part of our, our team, as a trusted advisor, part of our strategic resource team, really, uh, to help make decisions. And when we were brainstorming this whole idea, we thought, how can we get to producers better to help them ask the right questions, right? And so for us to have these conversations just like we're doing tonight, these are topics that we feel are extremely important so that when they call up yourself or myself or Dwayne or whoever it is on your strategic resource team, you can ask those better questions.

And I think it's so crucial, especially when it comes to the marketing knowing your cost of production, asking the right questions, and fully utilizing those market advisors.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. I can't say that much better.

Shay: Great. So let's move on to the last point here, talking a little bit about peer advisory boards. We have a little familiarity with that there. Would you, would you speak to that a little bit more?

Chris: Sure. And then if I don't do it eloquently enough, you can finish, you can finish me up here. But, you know, we're, we've got a a couple of peer groups. We're starting a third peer group. Eventually, I'm sure we'll work with some more. And we've got other, you know, people that we work with that on the consulting side that have, that facilitate other peer groups. And the whole idea of a peer group is to have somebody that you can rely on, or a group of other farmers that you can compare notes with, that can hold you accountable, that can understand your operation, and you can help understand their operation. And it's just a network of learning, you know, back and forth from one farm to another. The way we structure ours with our peer groups is, you know, we— say for example we have 6 farms in one peer group.

We— when the peer group starts up, we take a turn going to each farm and analyzing and looking at everything from the financials to the family to the business and everything in between of what's working, what's not working, and what can they do to improve and, and to go on to the next step of their business. And we give them a SWOT analysis— strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We break that all out to really help them understand from their peers what their objectives should be, you know, maybe in the next year or two as they move forward with their business. What things could they do? What action items can they apply? And then you have, you know, 5 or 6 other operations holding you accountable to that set of information and those things that are objectives that you can do to take your business from where it is today to the whole next level.

And so that's really what a peer advisory board or can do, you know, being involved in a peer group can just really bring some outside perspective into your business that it's just really hard to get anyplace other than from your own peers.

Shay: And I think there, you know, this can go both ways. I think having an outside perspective is sometimes almost as important or more important than even the people that you work with on a day-to-day basis. So it might look like two different peer advisory boards of the people that you have locally, you know, looking at the advisory board of family, key employees, and trusted members, but also beyond that, looking at the peer advisors from people that can take an outside look at your operation and either say exactly what you know in your heart, but you haven't heard from people close to the operation or something that you might not be seeing right now. So I encourage people to just maybe redefine a little bit of how you consider peers and step outside your comfort zone, have that open and honest communication to really look at building the strategic resource team to the next level.

Chris: One of the things you said, Shay, too, is I think that's really important is, you know, for any of the listeners that are, that are listening to this, if you're a dad or a son or whatever, you know, or a daughter, somebody that's a family member to another family member within your operation. And if you don't bring third-party perspective into your, your business, you really start to miss a lot of things because it's really hard as time goes on to listen to each other. So, you know, so two brothers could be talking to each other and Brother A could tell Brother B, I think we need to do we should do this or that or the other thing. Give a specific example of what they think we should do. And, you know, Brother A says that, Brother B's like, well, I'm not listening to you, you don't know what you're talking about.

Well, then, you know, the advisory board comes in and could say the exact same thing as a piece of advice. Oh, well, that's a good idea. You know, so when you listen to your family members, sometimes you don't get out of what they're saying because you're with them every day. And there's an emotional component that's there that just exists within families and it's just human nature. And so bringing that third-party perspective in breaks that up a little bit and kind of puts a new light on things and kind of opens up the door for, for new opportunities and places and things that the business can really go that a lot of times you don't even see.

Shay: And there's a reason why farmers and farm families encourage kids or nephews or nieces to go and do something else. You know, you said the word there, perspective. And what we're trying to provide here is a little bit of perspective, an outside look. So, you know, I think we pretty much hit on all the main points here. There's a lot of important things, and I hope you're taking notes, uh, for the listeners out there. You know, what do I need to be doing? Who do I need to be talking with in my family? Do I need to meet with my lender? How do I get my attorney involved? You know, should I be reevaluating the insurance for next year? All these 10 points that we listed, just go through, think about some of these key issues for the year ahead and really encourage you to, to dive into this. And if you have any further questions, please reach out to Chris or myself or Duane, anyone here.

If we can't answer your questions, we have a great network of people that we've worked with over the years that we know will be able to help you out along the way.

Chris: Yeah, well put, Shay. And I think, you know, just to run through it real quick again, Strategic Resource Team, you know, just think of it as your SRT team, right? So it's your family advisory board, financial production consultants, lenders, CPA, attorney, investment partners, insurance agents, marketing and advisors, and peer advisory board. Pretty simple. Top 10 list.

Shay: Absolutely. Well, thanks everyone for listening. We're really looking forward to the year ahead. We know 2020 is going to be a great year for so many of you out there. Please reach out to us if you need anything, and we will catch you next time on the Ag View Pitch Podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to listen. We know there's 100 different things that you could be doing, but hopefully we continue to provide value to you. With that being said, please reach out to us if there's any topics that you want us to cover. We have a lot of great ideas moving forward. We're going to continue with the Dad's Wisdom. We have a lot of important things on, uh, transition, collaboration, profit management that we're going to hit on more in depth moving forward. But really, if there's anything on your mind, please reach out to us.

I know we had some listeners look at, you know, how we can specifically improve improve profitability moving into 2020. We have some great strategic planning tools for that. Reach out to us if you have questions or want access to these tools. We really look forward to hearing you. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a great day.