Family Succession: Issues and Opportunities

Chris

Barron: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today we're going to have an interesting conversation around family succession. This is going to be a very important topic. This is going to take a little longer for a podcast because I think we got a ton of stuff to talk about here. And I've got lucky enough to have with me today Andy Bobcageon Junkin. So Andy, first of all, let's have you introduce yourself. I could introduce you, but I think you'll do a better job.

Andy

Junkin: So, um, my name is Andy Junkin. I'm the 7th generation farm boy from a little town called Bobcageon, Ontario, Canada. And, uh, ever since college, everybody's always called me Bobcageon, and that's because there's never a farm kid that was more hell-bent to carry on a 7th generation tradition And for those of you that don't know where Bobcaygeon is, it's basically on the edge of the Canadian wilderness. It's 5 miles north of us. The corn doesn't grow. My family came over in 1832. The first white man killed in our county was actually on the back end of our farm. He was my ancestor. I grew up being told that it was my obligation to carry on a 7th generation tradition. And what a shame. I was an '80s farm kid and none of my cousins were interested in carrying on our family tradition, and it was all on me.

And so what— the year, the day I left for college, um, my mom, she showed me the farm financials and she said to me, if you don't fix these numbers, I'm leaving your father. And so I went off to college to have a good time, but I went to save the family farm. And when I came home, my expectation was that I, I wrote 200-page business plan. I had a good time. I was class president at University of Guelph, had a really good time, and it got to know everybody, had a fun time. But what nobody's seen was that I was actually in university library, went to class to meet girls, but basically came home with 5 Tupperware containers full of information and research. Went down to Australia, New Zealand, came back with 120 pounds in textbooks.

Was really adamant to try to figure out how to make— like, I could not take ideas from a textbook and apply them to our, our operation because we're basically on the edge of the Canadian wilderness. So we had to apply unique ideas from across the world. Wrote a 200-page business plan, gave it to my dad. He looked at the COVID threw it straight in the fire. And then from that point forward, farm succession wasn't so successful. Um, got to the point that my Uncle Claude, he, um, we got bickering. Um, we basically, we were butting heads and pulling the farm in different directions. My dad was very insecure about himself because his is my dad's a true blue farmer. He was very stubborn. He was very— I mean, he had made a lot of sacrifices. He had worked hard. Um, you know, my grandpa didn't do a good job of my father into management.

And so in the years that my grandpa passed away, um, the farm did not make money, and my dad felt very insecure about that. So for his son to come home and, you know, have different ideas My dad was against that, um, to the point my dad actually plowed my crops under, um, the year, uh, my Uncle Claude, he basically said, well, why don't we give the boy the field behind the barn, get you to try those ideas there. That's what we did. And come August, my Uncle Claude, he had, uh, cancer, and he walked that field with us. And, uh, he came into the house and we were having, um, Uncle Claude's birthday party, which we all knew was his last. And so it was a really awkward dinner. And so my Uncle Claude just made a joke that, you know, your boy's going to make more money off of a couple acres than you're going to make off the entire farm this year.

And just said as a joke, but my dad did not think it was a joke. A couple days later, he plowed my crops under. And from that point forward, farm succession just didn't go successfully and things fell apart. And so Basically, my parents got divorced as a result of that. Kind of funny story is that my mom, she said, do not buy any more farming equipment until your boys— you got a business plan with your boy. And so we went off to an auction sale, came home with manure spreader, and I guess you could say the shit hit the fan. So the thing is, I've been turning around shitty situations ever since, and there got a point in time that I almost killed myself. Because being from Bob Cajun was the center of my identity. Like, everybody calls me Bob Cajun. It is— you can call me Andy Junkin on the phone for the first time, but everybody calls me Cajun. It's, it's just the center of my identity.

But, you know, if I wasn't firing Bob Cajun, who the hell was I? And, um, came to the point that, uh, sat in a barn beam with rope around my neck and, uh for some reason got walked away from the barn, and my whole life purpose has changed to saving family farms by helping stubborn farmers work better together. Started this about 16 years ago, and, um, it was rough the first couple years. I did it Western Ontario. 7 years ago, I married a Midwestern girl and moved to Iowa, and, uh, been helping folks in 22 states and 5 Canadian provinces. And do it all over Zoom. And, um, yeah, we, we really, we, we, we really enjoy what we do.

Chris

Barron: Stay a little closer to the mic too as we go. You're doing good. Um, so I really appreciate you, um, giving us that insight as to where, like, where you came from and why the credibility, right? Because, you know, we tell our clients that a lot too, you know, if if Shay and I and Andy and Joe weren't— didn't live what they live or have lived what they live, that it's pretty hard to have that same understanding or to be able to feel the pain or be able to understand why someone has an opinion one way or another. Because if you've under— if you've been there, you understand it, right?

Andy

Junkin: When I went to college, I learned all about these different technologies. You have to understand, like, Bob Cason in 1994, when I left for college, it was still like 1950. I mean, it was just, um, and I went off to college and learned about all these different things. The change in technology that didn't teach us at college was the biggest change is modern health sciences. I mean, back in the '60s, when Dad was 60, he would retire because his hips were shot. I mean, my grandpa, he, he retired in the '60s because of health issues. And I just expected that my dad would do the same thing as soon as I came home from college with a good business plan. That he and my mom did the same thing. She expected to move into town, and, and she had been retired for a couple years as a schoolteacher by that time.

But that's the biggest change in technology, is that we— instead of there being one generation farming at a time, we got three generations farming together, sometimes four generations farming together. And then because the cost of the equipment You got— it doesn't make sense every 25 years to be splitting up the capital between siblings, right? You got to keep it all together in order to have economies of scale to farm. And so we suddenly have a situation where we've got too many chiefs, right? And that issue about decision-making is the problem, is how do we make decisions together without it being a pissing match? And that has been my area of interest in the last, um, 16 years is how do we get everybody from butting heads and pulling the farm in different directions to get everybody on the same page and pulling the same direction.

Chris

Barron: So one of the things, you know, you talk about— and we're going to get into a ton of stuff here in this conversation, but I want to ask—

Andy

Junkin: a long podcast. Yeah, probably going to be the longest with Chris. I apologize.

Chris

Barron: That's all right, there's a lot of stuff here. So, um, one of the things that you talked about is a whole bunch of chiefs, right? And I think a lot of the farms and a lot of us that listen to this, even though, you know, I think, and I think a lot of our, our listeners are pretty sophisticated, right? They, they feel like, and, and me, me as well in our operation, we feel like we have the communication under control. But when we go to peer group meetings or when I sit down and have a conversation with a client and we're going through the financials, 1,000% of the time it comes back to there's some communication dynamics that are interfering with some decision-making that needs to occur. Or there's, you know, those kind of things come in.

And so I'm getting to a question now with that said, one of the things that I learned reading a really good book that was written by two Navy SEALs, trying to think of the name of it. Yeah, yeah. The— there's a—

Andy

Junkin: there's a— it's Jocko Willink, right? Yeah. Executive Decision. Is that right?

Chris

Barron: Now, I'll tell you in a second. I'm supposed to remember that when I'm doing a podcast. But anyway, the decentralized command is one of the— sure, you know, is one of the concepts, right? And, and so in the military, it's like you, you send somebody out with the responsibility in being in command of that unit or of that situation. And so that's one of the things that we've tried to employ with some of our clients, where, you know, figure out what areas of responsibility you can give instead of work, right? So you need to be responsible for this area. So what's your thought of that? Do you, do you buy into that at all?

Andy

Junkin: I mean, I respect why you're thinking that way. Um, and I, you know, some— at some point in time, I probably will talk to Jocko in person and do a podcast the same way. By the way, Jocko, give me a call to do that. But I'm just teasing. The thing is, is that, um, back 100 years ago, one person was the boss in the marriage, and then women got the vote and they said we want to be equal partners. And we have, in our society, we have 50% divorce rate because we still struggle with that transition. We have an issue where basically we have a dynamic between married couples as to who's the boss, and there's no commitment to joint decision-making. It's, it's, it gets into this pissing contest as to who's the boss. And as a result, we got verbal and emotional abuse that's going on in marriages. That's what's causing 50% of the divorce rate.

And the root issue is that we have to— it's the same thing for farming, uh, farming partnerships. I mean, you might get along great for a period of time, but there comes a point in time where things go to a head and it comes down to an issue of arrogance, where one person thinks they're smarter than the other instead of having the respect and trying to understand and being empathetic. Trying to understand that person, what they're feeling, what they're— and having respect for what they think. Because, you know, I was arrogant when I farmed with my dad, right? I thought I knew more than him, right? But he knew things that I didn't, right? We had different academic backgrounds. But I think it's what's really important is to have that mutual respect and try to always understand what the other partner's thinking.

So instead of there being one person that's right all the time What's important is the right decision gets made. And that's not by looking at things going into a decision saying, I think we should do this. When you have two different perspectives on the same decision, you should be looking at 3 to 5 different options and then weighing the pros and cons together. There are many ways to skin a cat, and usually if you can get any The key thing about— I mean, I understand from a military standpoint, um, the top-down decision-making process, but I really think nobody wants to be the other guy's slave. And if you have a farming partnership where one person's always the boss, whether it's a dad or sibling, um, you know, farming partnerships where one sibling thinks that they're going to be the boss over their younger brother, that those don't work.

It's what's really important is that everybody— we make good decisions together as a family, and you take the extra time to make the best quality decision. It doesn't matter who's right, who's wrong. What matters is the right decision gets made. Until you have that commitment, this farming partnership won't work. And where things fall apart is when the lack of respect— I mean, you can have a farming partnership go great for about 10 years, and then within 6 months things fall apart where one partner doesn't feel respected. And that's really important that everybody feels respected, everybody feels listened to, everybody's— it doesn't matter if one person has a higher IQ, everybody always thinks, sees things different.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So I'm gonna get to some other stuff that I think correlates with that, but I want to, I want to back up a little bit and sure ask you about some things that you write in your book, and your book Stubborn, which, um, we'll put a link to that. I'll make sure Mac puts a link to that in the in the show notes here so people can click onto that.

Andy

Junkin: And, and they can— yeah, for folks that don't know, I've got a book. I'd be happy to send you a copy in the mail, but you can actually go to stubborn.farm, just www.stubborn.farm, get a free copy of the audiobook. We'll send that to you in the mail and you can, uh, and an email. You can listen to it in 5 minutes.

Chris

Barron: Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: And we'll send it as a text and you can listen to it this afternoon.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, it's, it's a great book. I've listen to it a couple of times because there's a lot of good content in there. So I did a, I did a 19 Minutes podcast a while back on ego, insecurity, and control.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: And so I want to get your two cents on that because as an observation from somebody that's worked with producers for 27 years. Sure. And found a lot of what you bring to the table many times being the most important thing. You can get all the numbers right and you can be very successful and you can grow the business. And then at some point you outgrow your ability to manage. Yeah. And typically what I see that interferes with that— or not, but usually what interferes with it is ego, insecurity, and control by some or all and to different degrees. What's your two cents on, on that? I mean, because I know you talk about the importance of looking at yourself, but have you addressed some of that?

Andy

Junkin: Well, regarding insecurities, I look at the 6 pillars of self-esteem. And when I work with a family, I mean, I don't care how good of a person you are, how successful you are. I mean, Chris, you're— I don't know you that well, but I see, see the, not just yourself, but the talent that you have around here is just incredible. But I don't care how good of a man you are, everybody's got 5% about the character. That's, that's a weakness that if you turn it into strength, it unlocks 50% of your potential. And that part of that's habits, which we'll talk about later. But another part of it is your self-esteem. And self-esteem is such a wishy-washy word, word, and still until somebody gets a punch in the face.

And so what I look at is, is get making sure that a person— there are 6 pillars of self-esteem that I, behind the scenes, I'm working on in the, in the 2 years that I work with family. I make sure not just with the son and daughter, but also for the parents. I make sure that everybody's got a strong— not, um, we improve their self-esteem. And that, that's getting everybody to be purposeful. And what are you all about? What's your life purpose? Um, understanding, um, taking full responsibility for your actions. Um, having high integrity, uh, not just saying that you're going to do something but following through and actually doing it consistently. Living consciously, that gets down to cognitive distortions. So when you get angry, how do you react and how do you think about things?

And if you can think about things and instead of having a temper, if you can change that dynamic— everybody has different things that trigger them. Understanding what triggers you and how you can think about things differently changes everything. And then understanding self-assertiveness, you know, being able to talk to your partners, being able to stand your ground, being able to have crucial conversations, being able to say what you think, not being passive-aggressive. And then self-acceptance, just seeing yourself in the mirror for who you are, identifying both your strengths and your weaknesses, and always being improving yourself. So when I work with a family before we— I mean, succession planning We have 77% of family farms don't have a succession plan. And that's because it brings out the worst in everybody.

And, you know, the thing is, if I can take everybody as the 5% of their weaknesses and turn them into strengths, then when we sit down and have that conversation, it doesn't turn into World War III. And that's— I think that's the critical part. So basically, over that 2-year period, basically want to make one improvement in everybody's character every month, both as far as how you work together as a team and also each, each person's character. If you make that change, let's say you have 2 partners, that's 24, uh, that's 24 changes in their character in the course of a year. You do that over 2 years, that's 48 changes. And then you add on one improvement and how you guys work together a month, then it really does— at that point in time, we talk about succession planning. I mean, the thing is, with my dad and I, I thought I had to be the boss.

If you get a family working better together, it doesn't matter who's in control. What matters is that you— I mean, if you get a family working better together over a 2-year period, it doesn't matter who has more equity in a safe on a piece of paper. You will want to include your partners no matter how much. Even if you have a partner that doesn't have any ownership in the farm, they sell out all their shares. They will be welcome at the kitchen table, be involved in decision-making, because, um, nobody feels insecure about themselves. And I think that's absolutely critical.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. And that's— a lot of that has to do with trust, right? It's having trust within each other. I mean, how do you— how do you continue to build that? And then the other thing too, you know, you said you make 48 changes in 2 years. Sitting here thinking, you know, a lot of people will be like, how do you, you know, what changes are you making, you know, or how do you make—

Andy

Junkin: well, I'll give you an example. Like, um, I mean, simple habit changes. Let's just, let's just, let's just take team habit changes, okay? I'll just, I'll just read from— and the thing is, if anybody goes, uh, just sends me an email, I'll be happy. Anybody that listens to your podcast would be happy to send them a book. So just— I have basically 30 in the back of my book. I list off 30, uh, changes to a person's character. So I'll, I'll list them off just last here. Like, lack of life purpose, personal, professional goals, which greatly affects your, uh, motivation. Lack of forgiveness. Inability to set boundaries and manage work-life balance effectively. Seeing farming, farming relationships, lifestyle as a right not as a privilege which has to be constantly earned. Those are just the last 4 on that list of 30.

Now that's, that's, uh, from a personal— I don't care how good of a person you are, um, within that list you can identify 2 or 3. And let's start—

Chris

Barron: well, most of us gonna probably identify 1 or 2 that are really big ones. I'm sitting here for myself thinking conflict avoidance is, is mine. Yeah, right. I, I just want everybody to be happy, so, you know, if you just don't talk about it, maybe it'll be okay, right?

Andy

Junkin: But I, I would actually counter— I mean, that, that's— you'd be surprised that So basically the last 16 years I've been the mediator, right? That's get called in the most dire situations. The guys that have the biggest conflict are actually not the ones that are abrasive and abrupt. They're actually the nicest guys like yourself, right, that are passive-aggressive and that they, they try to hold— they, they, as they say, bite my tongue. And learning how— I mean, the simple act of getting a family of 2, 3 partners to be able to learn how to um, um, not be passive-aggressive, to learn to have crucial conversations.

Throughout the 2-year period, we'll have probably 4 or 5 meetings, and then probably throughout the, through the 2-year process, I'll probably have, um, 5 or 6 conversations one-on-one with each individual about how they can learn how to understand things from their partner's perspective, learn how to think how their partner thinks, how they think differently than their partners. And to learn to be able to deal with conflict. Because the thing is, is that if you as partners, when you go into doing a succession plan, if there's— what I'm concerned about, in order to have the trust, you have to have absolute transparency, and then you have to have the ability to work through any conflict and the faith that there's nothing we can't handle. As far as us being able as partners, um, to work through any type of problem.

And in order for succession planning to happen, for Dad to give up 51% and maybe give, um, give up majority control of the operation at some point in time, he's not going to be willing to do that unless he has the trust that there's, there's, there's nothing we can't work through together as partners. I don't need to retain that control. And that's absolutely important to do.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, interesting. So I guess, you know, let's kind of keep going down that, that train of thought. I mean, when you're, when you're working with a family and there's resistance, you know, um, I'm sure you've seen a lot of that, you know, where sometimes, you know, people don't want to see themselves. They just want things to continue on the way they are. It's working, so why are we screwing around with it? Why are we changing in it. Usually, you know, I always come back to ego, insecurity, and control. It's one of those three. It's to some degree, uh, that causes that. Any comments on that?

Andy

Junkin: Um, I think the thing about succession planning is we, we just— let's just take this word succession. So, I mean, the word succession for a lot of operations, it's, it's an ugly word that's to not be brought up. You know, it's the, it's the wealth in a room nobody wants to talk about. Yeah.

Chris

Barron: Or they know they need to and want to, but it's more, um, we'll get to it eventually. There's more important stuff to do today.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah. And I think that we tend to procrastinate because we don't want to admit that things are going to change.

Chris

Barron: Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: And I think that, that the simple solution to succession is actually one line. It's not grandpa signing a piece of paper and transferring the assets to the operation. It's getting the family to this one simple line is between the word success and the ION, in, in that we got to get everybody hyper-focused on what success looks like. Where do we want our family farm to be in 10 years' time? What type of relationships we want to have? Get it— I mean, from a production standpoint, but also, you know, what is our life purpose? Like, why are we on this earth? Because at some point in time, we're going to go to the same cemetery probably buried 5 feet from each other. How do we make sure that we can at any point in time, at any moment, be comfortable with being 5 feet from each other and not hate each other, right? And we gotta fix, fix that.

And the I-O-N is actually a Greek word for change. Um, you think of action, transaction, transition, right? And I— so what I'm, what I, what I'm really hyper-focused on is getting the family hyper-focused on what success is and getting the family really good at change. And part of that is getting the family really good at problem solving together through having crucial conversations. Get, get everybody over their insecurities so that they feel comfortable, you know, being— it's almost like being comfortable with being in your underwear at the kitchen table instead of being prideful. You know, when we get into family farms in conflict, I mean, pride kills family farms so quick. I mean, took 7— from my family, it took us 7 generations of pride is what, what kept us going. But pride caused us to fall apart in 7 minutes. And that happens with a lot of family farmers.

I mean, you just think about the neighbors. And so what I think is really important is that you get— you adapt. Instead of having a sense of arrogance within your operation, everybody's got to be humble. And to get everybody to be humble with each other It's easy to say, but it's hard to do. And the way you do that is by getting everybody to continuously improve themselves. Don't see farming with family as a challenge working with people, but as a challenge to become a better person. Instead of everybody pointing fingers at each other, everybody looks at the three fingers pointing back at them and has a sense of humility and always improving themselves. And if you have a partner, a partnership where everybody's trying to work on themselves, nobody's ever going to be perfect.

But if everybody's trying to work on themselves and be a better, better man every day, That's how you're going to have a successful farm 20 years down the road from a production standpoint. Also a place you want to work at.

Chris

Barron: How do you overcome— you know, some of us in life are shorter tempered than others. In the spring and fall, you know, crop farmers get frustrated because you get tired. Yeah. Or things aren't going right. It never stops raining. I can't get the crop in or you know, or pork producer that's loading hogs and the pigs want to go the opposite direction than the direction you want them to. And then that elevates emotion. Yeah. And then, and then a lot of times things get said that people don't mean, but they're pissed, they're frustrated. How do you overcome that? How do you, how do you tell the receiving end, you know, you're going to have to absorb that, but yet at the same time tell the the person that's doing that. We got to change that because that, that a lot of times what I see is, is what really turns people off. And, you know, you look at employee retention.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: You look at all these kind of things. People say, well, I can't retain people. Well, back to your three fingers pointing at you. If an employee leaves, you got to ask yourself, what did you do? Yeah. To cause that situation, whether it's a family member or not.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: You know, so talk a little bit about that.

Andy

Junkin: Well, I mean, there's, there's a guy named Beck, and he basically identified 16 ways that person gets angry, a person gets triggered, right? And usually everybody has 2 or 3 different of those cognitive distortions. And when I start working with a family, it's not the first thing I work with. You know, we work on everybody making a few habit changes first, but then once we get through that, um, after a couple months, after you feel comfortable with the actual process of identifying— the biggest hurdle I have is getting each partner to identify that there's something that they could actually improve about themselves. They can always point out fault in one another, but to actually identify that there's something I can improve, that's the first challenge I have when working with the family, right?

And it might take a couple— a month, it might take 6 months to really get everybody to really understand that, you know, in order for this farm to be successful 30 years down the road, I have to improve. It's not just my partners that have to. But then, and then through that process, I'll, I'll learn about how does a person react to things. And it's just a matter of understanding things. Um, there's certain psychology tools that I, I don't act— in our conversation today I'm, I'm talking like I'm Dr. Phil, but the thing is that I do not— when I'm talking one-on-one with a farm family, they never feel like I'm talking with Dr. Phil. I never get everybody hold hands and sing Kumbaya. I just get them— there's some, some learning tools I have that I say, okay, this is how you react to things, this is natural, this is a different way for you to process things.

Like for, for myself, for instance, I turn a mountain into a molehill. Molehill— I should say that again— molehill in a mountain, right? Make things 10 times worse. And so for me, I learned a different way to look at things. So I don't do that, right? And so I actually have a good marriage because of that. But that's something I learned about to improve about myself. Everybody has those ticks, right? And it's just accepting that everybody's got those ticks. This is something I need to work on. Working with people, being in a marriage, being in a business partnership, it's not a challenge being with people, it's a challenge become a better man. And if you can just work on one thing a month and do that over 24 months, I mean, it's a game changer.

Chris

Barron: So what is it? What if it's a pet peeve? Let's say that it's— I'll just pick a dumb example. You get in, you get in the pickup that everybody uses, and you got one person that's a clean freak, and you got two others that trash the thing, and there's pop cans and shit laying everywhere on the floor. Sure. And that, that guy gets in there and he's pissed because You know, that comes right back though to the communication, right, of, okay, you know, what, what, how do you fix that? You know, is it the, is that the clean guy that's got to give in, or is that the, the other guy's gotta, you know, pick their shit up?

Andy

Junkin: I think everybody's got threshold, right? I mean, there's, there's, I mean, you have to be like, leaving tools around is a big pet peeve on a lot of operations, right? One of the first things I work on, there's always one guy that leaves tools around, or they get, they become missing.

Chris

Barron: It's like, where the hell did Where the hell did the 9/16 wrenches go?

Andy

Junkin: Right. And so just simply getting everybody on that farm to commit the next month, we're going to put tools away. And if I, if I, if I get caught putting— not putting a tool away, I'm going to put a dollar in the beer fridge and into the can on top of the beer fridge.

Chris

Barron: Right. Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: And, and, and just having everybody identify that they got flaws And that if you, for 30 days, let's just take the putting tools away, right? For 30 days, when I work with a guy, if his, his, his habit change that he's resolved to do, when he gets up in the morning, I get him to write out, I'm going to put tools away tonight, right? Before I'm done, before the end of the day, I'm going to put tools away. So when he, when he puts on his boots in the morning, I actually get him to write that down. Right? It takes 20 seconds to do, right? As he's putting his boots on, I have a, um, a notebook and he just writes out, "I'm going to put my tools away today." And then at the end of the day when he comes back and takes his, um, work boots off, he gives himself a score, A to F. How do I do? And there's going to be some days that he forgets to do something, he might give himself a D.

But if you'd write that out every day for the course of 30 days you're going to gradually change who you are, right? And I mean, whether it's you losing your temper or you, um, you, you putting tools away, everybody got a few habits to change. And if you make simple habits, if you have an operation where everybody's making a commitment— I mean, nobody's ever going to be perfect, but if gradually over time everybody's committed to making gradual improvements, you have not just a more successful operation. I mean, obviously, I mean, I've seen farms where Guys spent, lost $10,000 worth of tools. They have to consider— I mean, Snap-on loves their operations because they keep on losing that 9/16 wrench, right? Yeah, right. It costs that operation, but it also causes a lot of frustration between partners, right?

And so if you have an operation where everybody's working on themselves, but little things like that, that's where a lot of frustrations happen with the partnerships, as well as a lot of money slips between the cracks, you know. Um, simple, simple act like procrastinating. Um, if you, if you make a habitual change— I'm going to do the hard things first. So the first thing you do in the morning when you start your day is make the phone call to the lawyer, um, to deal with the neighbor instead of procrastinating on that for 2 weeks. If that's the habit change that, that a partner has— I mean, everybody's got, got habit changes they have to make. And I think that if you, if you do that over the course of 2 years, you have a partnership where everybody wants to work together. It doesn't matter who has more equity on the safe. It's fun working together.

And more importantly, the trust will be there that I don't care how good of a son and daughter you have. I mean, everybody thinks that there's a reluctance to transfer the farming operation to the next generation as far as equity because of concern about alcoholism or some sort of vice. It's those little things like procrastinating. It's those little things about, um, not paying attention to details. That causes farms to lose 50% of potential, um, potential. And the thing is that for a patriarch to pass over the management and ownership of their life savings to the next generation, there's a lot of trust issues there.

But if the patriarch has seen— and that they usually, when I sit down and do succession planning, there's probably 4 or 5 things that the patriarch is reluctant to transfer assets over to the next generation because They want to retain control of the operation because they don't trust their son complete or daughter completely. And if you over that 2-year period fix those root issues, what, what the patriarch or matriarch have as far as those trust issues, then, then succession planning can be a 3-hour conversation instead of a World War III.

Chris

Barron: A lot of that, it seems to me, and from what I've seen with operations I've worked with, and, and we do a lot on the business side and do some on the communication side by virtue of necessity, right? Yeah. But when we look at the, the trust issue, sometimes it's a communication thing though too, it seems like, from the senior partner to clearly map out their expectations. So sometimes it's like You know, I feel like— and so you can correct me if I'm wrong or tell me where I'm going wrong here— but it seems like sometimes the senior generation isn't— not— it's not like they're trying to not map out their expectations, but it might be, you know, we'd eat the grass around the telephone poles on that ditch that we mow, or whatever. Or, you know, just little things.

Sometimes it's those little things that they don't say that if they would say, I want you to do this, this, and this, and I'm going to feel a lot better. And then when those actions are taken and they're done, I think, you know, that fixes a lot. But talk about, you know, am I going wrong there or something else?

Andy

Junkin: I think the thing, what I do to, in order to get everybody on the same page is, I mean, the first thing when I work with a family is I get everybody to invest their time like it's money. So the first— I mean, a lot of operations, like, you may not know what your partners are planning to do this afternoon. What I— the first thing I do when I work with a family is how we have family meetings on Monday mornings for 20 minutes. And I have the son and daughter come to the table with an idea, a list of what has to get done on the operation, as well as mom and dad, right? And the patriarch and grandpa, whoever, Uncle Bill. And what I do is I get everybody to look at their investment of their time, not just my time, what I'm planning to do this week, but also Uncle Bill's time.

So if, if I can get everybody being able to be more— we don't look at it as an investment of my time, but the investment of our time. We get the family being able to We get the family be able— if, if we have everybody looking, if, if we have— well, I'll take an example. I, I had a daughter and she was always frustrated that her grandpa wouldn't get around, or her uncle wouldn't get around to paying the bills, right, on time, right? And for her to say, okay, and when we sat down on Monday morning her uncle— I mean, the 1st of June, I think, was, was on Thursday, right, or Friday of that week. And so for her, her uncle, Uncle Bill, like, cutting the lawn. And so for her to say to her Uncle Bill, Uncle, Uncle Bill, can you— and that's not her— his real name.

But the thing is, is that for her to say to her Uncle Bill, instead of cutting the lawn on Thursday afternoon, why don't you get Jose to do that? And you spend Thursday afternoon paying bills, right? For them to be able to look at their time— I mean, Uncle Bill at first, I mean, did not like being told by his niece how to invest his time, but he knew the truth. That was a— that— I mean, he was always late in paying bills and it caused the farm some problems. But what in that situation was that made the farm better, more efficient? They started— and, and more importantly, what they started doing in that situation, they looked at the farm as not, this is his responsibility or her responsibility, this is what we have to do together as a team. And we got the, the operation to stop thinking this in terms of as individuals, but as a team working together.

Uh, working together is investing our time into this operation. And then once you get a family being able to bicker and disagree with each other about how we use our time, then 6 months later, when it comes to making financial decisions, it's 10 times easier because we learned a way— I mean, there's nothing more finite than the use of your time, right? I mean, finances, there, you have finite resources, but there's nothing— I mean, once, once an hour is gone, it's gone. So if your family can better learn as a team to how to better invest your time, then 6 months later to have a talk with finances, whether it's buying the farm next door or buying a combine or whatever, or just making a simple production improvement that could only cost $5,000. Um, you, you learned Becker.

So where I, where I spend a lot of time working with farms initially is how do we better use your time so that you get more done in a day? And then, and then also not just how do you invest your time into the operation, but also into your, your families. And so you get better work-life balance as well.

Chris

Barron: One of the things that messages in that whole comment there revolves around the idea of getting everybody in the same place at the same time. In other words, having a meeting structure, right? And that's one of the things that— I'll preface this with a question here in a second, but it's one of the things that I see, especially in row crop operations. I mean, I'd say we have probably 70% of our clients are row crop, the other 30 are row crop and livestock and other businesses and stuff. Everybody's so busy and it seems like there's always a lot of excuses for not everybody getting together at least once a week or at least twice a month to have a conversation, especially with the size of some of the operations we work with.

You know, they've got 6 employees and they've got 5 family members, and so there's really 10 people on the leadership team— excuse me— that should get together, or maybe at least 5. And sometimes it's hard to get them all together, or when you do, everybody does really good in the summer or really good in the winter. But then all of a sudden spring hits or harvest hits and the meetings don't happen. And then getting rekindled again is a tough thing because, you know, like Shay always says, you know, the, the most important time to have the meetings are when you're busy. And people don't want to take a lot of times, they don't want to take that 20 minutes, which by the way, probably saves, you know, 20 hours in the grand scheme of things because of the better communication and less frustration. So talk a little bit about the meetings and how you—

Andy

Junkin: I have an operation. There are 13,000 acres. I won't say what state they're in. But in that situation, it's two brothers in a partnership. One brother's a narcissist. Well, they're both a bit narcissistic. One brother is a control freak. And then he has two nephews that are coming into the operation, one's in his 40s and one's in his 20s. And, and at this stage, the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. And the one partner, he's always micromanaging, and he'll make a plan, and then 4 or 5 hours later, just, he has to change that plan. But when I started working with them, we started, we got I mean, in that situation, one nephew referred to his uncle as a walking task list. And in that situation, the nephew was in his 40s and he didn't know how to organize his day.

And these men are now in their 70s and there's real concern about, can the next generation be able to take over this operation because these guys don't know how to organize their time? And that's because they have always done what they've been told. And so by when I started working with his family, the first thing I did was get them on a 6:30 call. And I sat on the phone call with them for 2 weeks to just get them in the habit, right? And then actually about 3, 3 weeks later, had to come back and work with them for another 2 weeks, just get them to stick to that. But by them, them having a time and place— so we meet on a weekly basis, we plan out the week. On Monday mornings, right? And then, and then we touch base for— it's like a 7-minute call.

And in that situation, by them all being on the same page as to what the plan is for the day, the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, which is a big frustration in a lot of operations. Um, now the, the bigger thing is that the nephews are the ones suggesting the agenda for the day. Now That doesn't mean they have to stick to that agenda. Usually the elder generation tweaks the agenda, but what they're learning is how to manage time and prioritize. Prioritization. Yeah. And what we're learning through that process is for the family to learn how to prioritize together. Instead of having a pissing contest as to who's smarter, it doesn't matter whose idea it was. What matters is the best idea gets done. And if we can look at the next 12 hours as an investment of our time, if we've got 3 partners, that's 36 hours, 36 hours we're about to invest.

How do we make sure that each one of us is, you know, if we have 3 partners, we have 5 employees, how do we make sure that our time is worth $100 an hour? Right. And that we're best using our resources so that we're able to, to, to, to, to. And if we can get a family being able to better allocate time and get most done with your day, um, it's unbelievable how it improves the firm's bottom line at the end of the year because you're able to talk about the— you're able to go back and forth a lot better, and it skyrockets your profitability. It's a huge difference. Like, we're making 5%. You might think this is crazy, but we're— it's between 3 to 5% improvement in, at least in profitability, if not a lot more. It's huge. Yeah. And you got to think about this: anything you can do to improve the quality of decision-making That is what's going to skyrocket profitability.

And the best way to have— if I can make an improvement in how you as a family allocate time, man, it's unbelievable how you skyrocket profit.

Chris

Barron: Well, and time is, you know, we've been like in our operation and we advise a lot of our clients to do this is to start tracking time because you can't improve what you don't measure. And so we track it by categories. And, you know, like in my operation, we've done it, I think, for 5 years now. And it's always pretty interesting because we have a perception of what we think is happening. And then when we have to track it and you go back and look at like, oh geez, I didn't realize I spent so much time doing this versus this. You know, I didn't realize I'm spending, you know, this amount of time in the office versus this amount of time in the shop or wherever. And I think those, those perceptions can be dangerous. I think sometimes, too.

Andy

Junkin: I mean, this is, this is what I get families to fill out every day is what's priorities for the day. And then what the thing, what are the things that have to happen? Then at the end of the day, I get them to reflect on what actually happened. And when you, I mean, there's going to be things that happen in the course of farming, you're going to have a flat tire, you're going to have problems. But the thing is, if you actually make a plan at the beginning of the day and actually see how close we stick to that plan by sunset, You'd be on— over the course of 2 months, you'll, you'll make a huge difference in not only your improvement efficiency and, and your ability to prioritize.

I mean, a lot of family operations when I work with, they're probably at the beginning when they start doing this, they take on more objectives through the course of the day, and then they realize, hey, we didn't get this done, we didn't get this done. Did the priority thing— did the priority things get done?

Chris

Barron: Right?

Andy

Junkin: And what we find is that if I can work with a family on that, we put 80% effort into 20% of things that really matter, and that makes a huge difference in profitability. But more importantly, that sense of accountability. If you have a partner says, I'm going to get this done by tomorrow— by tonight at sunset— and he follows, I mean, he will be more apt to follow through on the priority tasks, get done. And you agree— what I have the families agree on is the budgeting time and then the prioritization of tasks, right? Is that a score of A or is that a score of F? Is that— if it's an F, it's a lower priority, right? How important is that task to get done, right? And by you making sure that the critical things get done, it makes a huge difference to your front profit.

I mean, you know, in your operation here, like, there's, there's tasks where you're worth $100 an hour there's tasks that you do that are worth $10 an hour. Mm-hmm. Making sure that the farm is getting the $100, $200 tasks done right instead of being filled— your bucket being filled up with $10 an hour tasks, which is easy to do, right?

Chris

Barron: Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: Makes a huge difference at the year end for profitability. Yeah. And more importantly, it's a respect between partners. Um, you have a lot of frustrations that your partner's responsible for doing something they said they were going to do something, they don't follow through with it, or it doesn't get done right. I mean, that's that.

Chris

Barron: It's in pieces in the shop, and I was going to go in there and do something else, and now this is in the way because it didn't get done.

Andy

Junkin: And, and if I was Grandpa in his 70s and I seen a grandson that I loved to bits, but I don't know if he can handle my— I mean, is, is he going to be able to pay the bills when I'm in the nursing home? Right, because he doesn't good with his time. If you fix that and you fix little habits that cause— I mean, if you look at time, what are the things that— what are the bad habits that you have that cause you not to get things done? And you embracing that and learning, become more self-aware, just be by looking at the next 12 hours, the next day, what did we— what did we say yesterday we're going to do? And then what— why didn't we get that done? What can we learn from this so we don't have the same problem again and again and again? If you do that over the course of 365 days, your operation is going to be a whole different operation. Yeah.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. The time thing is, you know, I did an analysis that has been a few years ago, so I won't be exact on the numbers, but I think our average client's cost of production time was like 25% of the, of the total.

Andy

Junkin: Oh yeah.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. In terms of the cost of production, I'd have to go back and look at my notes again, but somewhere in that range. Yeah. And it was more for livestock operations because the time is, you know, all the time. And so I think it's just something that's really worthy of conversation. Like you said, just—

Andy

Junkin: I think you can cut your labor costs by at least 20%. But more importantly, you can, you can make sure those 20% of things that don't get done that should get done are getting done. That'll make a difference. 100% of your profit at the end of the year.

Chris

Barron: Well, and you talked about the spouse. I mean, I think some of us are guilty of sometimes staying longer than we should too. You get the work done and you stand around over the pickup bed and talk about shit at the end of the day, and it's like you could go home and see your—

Andy

Junkin: which is important to do.

Chris

Barron: It is, and I get that, that's important. But there's also a balance between, right, between how much time, you know. Joe Vakovic told me one time, he said there's people who go to work and there's people go— who go to work.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah.

Chris

Barron: And he's like, I go to work so I can go home, so I can be done at the end of the day. And so, you know, being productive while you're there, I think, is a— is something that sometimes I think when we get out of the season, we're, we're all extremely productive and we put in a ton of hours in the spring and fall picking on crop operations again. But, you know, you get into the summer and winter months. Yeah, there's probably some extra time there that could be spent with family too. And I think A lot of us are guilty of maybe just being— I'm just bringing that up as I think something that's—

Andy

Junkin: well, I think we all got to be happy. I think it's brought two important points. The month of February, I want to, I want to talk about, like, a lot of families, I start working with them in January and February, and we get done by February, by Valentine's Day, we get done what they didn't have done by April, right? You know, because we, we are looking at how much is your time worth What are you getting done the first 6 weeks of the year, right? And then they can spend this time of year, instead of, um, plant, um, fiddling around, they can be doing tiling and these other tasks that really make a difference. But then more importantly, um, we have 50% divorce rate in our society, and we're not quite there in agriculture yet, but we're quickly getting there. And that's because of the misallocation of time. Right, right.

And, and making sure that we have time— there's a time to work and there's a time to play. And we, we, we, we are really good at working, but we're not good at playing. And making sure that your time is best allocated so that you're able to get home and invest those time in your kids. Because what's the sense in you— there's a lot of farming partnerships where they have, you know, very successful operations, but they don't know their kids.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm.

Andy

Junkin: Right. The only way that the kids got to know their dad is by going out to the opera, out, out, out, being the tractor. Right. And what I think is really important is that you, it's not just you're concerned about your time with your family, but you're equally concerned about your siblings spending and your partners spending time with their families because nothing will screw up your operation more than a partner getting a divorce, either financially. You can, you can, I mean, you're really good at, um, Chris, at restructuring things so that there's less liability from that perspective, but their head's off the game. They're, they're, they're, they're mentally, mentally they're not there, right? And their motivation's not there.

So what I'm concerned about is that, I mean, with each, each, uh, each day I have each partner just identify what's one thing that you're gonna do with your kids Tonight, that is only going to be 20 minutes or so, and I want him to announce that to his partners. I'm going to take— like last night, I took Colt, my, my, my, my middle child, I took him to the park for 20 minutes, one-on-one, right? And, and after, I took him to baseball. I, I planned that out yesterday morning, right? That's one-on-one time with his daddy, right? And, and I think it's important that you have are— you got to have your partners being intentional how they invest their time, not only in the business but also in the families. Because we have 50% divorce rate, I mean, in, in, in, in our marriages, because we're not intentional with their time.

And we got to get guys being more intentional and purposeful in what they're doing with their lives as beyond work.

Chris

Barron: While we're on this topic, and this is a just— this is connected to this, but One of the things I've seen a lot as an observation with clients is, let's say you have a couple brothers or cousins that farm together and the spouses have jobs off the farm, but they see and hear from their spouse. Yep. And so sometimes what we see is there's opinions of the other, you know, the other guy's not pulling his weight or, you know, you know, a lot of times I think you know, we go home as, as the farmer and we tell how our day went. Sometimes it doesn't go so good. And, and I think, you know, sometimes we probably need to be somewhat careful about what we tell our spouse about everybody else in the business because sometimes we don't paint maybe as accurate a picture. We're, we're getting, we're, we're getting frustration out sometimes. Talk a little bit about that.

Do you ever observe that or see Well, like ways around that.

Andy

Junkin: I think I should first of all say that a lot of— like I said, 77% of family farms don't have a succession plan. And one of the biggest concerns that a lot of, a lot of patriarchs and matriarchs are hesitant to do succession planning is the fear of divorce, right? And I think it's, it's everybody's best interest, um, for everybody to have excellent marriages, right? And it's not just, just the guys in their 20s and 40s, it's also the, the my parents got divorced in their 60s, right? And there's the biggest, um, there's a lot of stubborn farmers that, uh, refuse to change their, their habits, and they like to work, and their spouses are like, you know, I only got 10 years left on this earth, and I am not going to spend the only time that I can get a vacation with my husband if it's going to the Kentucky Farm Show. Right? She wants better quality of life than that.

And getting your parents to make a change in their habits, um, like, like a, um, somebody who lives and breathes farming to be, you know, make an investment into their— what their spouses are interested in, not just what they're interested in. That, I mean, that starts with, with, with getting a patriarch to start. Uh, the first step is to get him to I start putting tools away and making little habit changes. But basically, over 2 years, what I see in, in the process, we work with families, is we, we get, uh, habit changes 360 degrees around. So coming back to your issue about, um, spouse going home and complaining to your spouses about your partners, what I found is that What causes a lot of marriages to fail is, is the first thing is obviously an absence on the home, just working too many hours, right? And getting better work-life balance is key.

The second thing is that bad habit you have. It might be leaving tools around the shop, it might be being passive-aggressive, it might be having a short temper. Those are not just issues that are in the shop. Those are also in the home. And if you can get your partners to— I mean, let's say turn a molehill into a mountain. Like, I have a bad habit, right? I turn— make things 10 times worse. If I was in a farming partnership and I made that change by working with my partners, then my partners can know with confidence that they'll probably transcribe that at home too. And that's going to reduce the probability of divorce in that case. We've found through this process, me working with families, we fix things in the farming partnership and how they work together with their partners, but also a game changer in their marriages.

And as a result, when we sit down and do succession planning 2 years later, there's no hesitation about divorce because they have that much better quality of marriages as well.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. So I'm kind of bouncing around here, so I apologize.

Andy

Junkin: All over the place.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: That's, that's all right.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. You know, it's, it's keeping it interesting, I guess. So when the partners, you know, again, you know, family members, employees, whatever, a lot of times these farm operations have employees that are like family, right? I mean, they're essentially the same thing. I'm kind of going back to the meeting thing again for a minute because I'm not sure we totally resolved that. So when we see either the lack of or insufficient meetings, because sometimes, like you said, a 7-minute meeting once a day can fix a ton of stuff, or a 7-minute meeting even once a week can fix a ton of stuff.

Um, one of the things that I hear a fair amount of when, when we're working on business structure and getting things put together and, and communication creeps out, whether it's at a peer group meeting or an individual client, is this thing called triangulation communication, where you get more than 2 people and, you know, so for example, you got, you got 4 people, these 3 talked about a decision that was going to be made and this person over here didn't hear about it because they weren't all together at the same time, at the same place. So these, these 3 went ahead and made a decision and this one's like, well, what the hell? Just, I didn't know we were going to do this. All of a sudden a combine shows up in the yard. I didn't know we traded. Yeah. Or I didn't know, you know, we were gonna, you know, do whatever, any kind of change. And that creates a ton of frustration.

Is that something you see, or is that— can that be solved completely by meetings, or is that one of those things that maybe the whole group needs to work on?

Andy

Junkin: Well, I think, I think the first thing is we, we make all decisions together. It's got to be the commitment, right? It doesn't matter who has more equity in the business, right? We make all big decisions together. I mean, obviously there's going to be um, and everybody's kept in the loop, and constant communication is key. If you have a daily phone call for 7 minutes, and let's say the two of you made it, um, if there's four partners and two of you guys made a decision on whatever— you bought a— let's make a simple decision like we bought, we bought a, we bought a motor for whatever, right? Um, you just announced that as part of the phone call. At night or in the morning, right? And say, hey, we talked about this. This is the decision we made. So through that process, you're making all decisions together.

You're keeping all your partners in the loop and at least keeping everybody informed. Absolutely. And then, and then having a time and place that there's some bigger decisions that, I mean, you don't cover in a 7-minute phone call or in a 20-minute meeting on Monday mornings and just say, okay, we're going to talk about this on this day. And then I get you guys to write it down at the back of the book. I get everybody to carry a little pocketbook. And, and we actually sit down, go through those things one by one by one, right? And so that everybody's involved in decision-making. It might be one person has more area of expertise, but what's important is that you have the humility and you have the respect for your partners to ask their input. I'm thinking about doing this, what do you think? And through that sense of humility, um, you get rid of all the pride in the operation.

You have a farm to be proud of.

Chris

Barron: So I'm, I'm working my way back to the front here because this brings up another thing. So you made— I want to make sure that everybody understands narcissism because it's something that you write about in the book. Yeah. And you talk about, you know, when you point your finger at somebody, you got 3 fingers pointing back at you. In the book, you talk a little bit about the importance of doing the opposite of that or identifying what that is. Can you, can you address that real quick? On as far as kind of what narcissism is and how to, how to kind of recognize if you have those, some of those traits, and how to fix them.

Andy

Junkin: Yeah, I'm just going to read this from the book because, um, like a narcissist is at the— I'm going to read the 10 points of narcissism because I think it's really important.

Chris

Barron: Get to the mic too.

Andy

Junkin: So, uh, me-first mentality. They always put themselves before the needs of the business or the partner. 2. Attention craving. They seek constant recognition, often overshadow others' contributions. 3. Lack of empathy. They struggle to understand or care about the feelings or concerns of the colleagues or the spouse. 4. Exaggerated achievements. They brag excessively about their excess successes, downplaying others' efforts. 5. Exploitative behavior. They may use their co-workers or their partners for personal gain with a without guilt. 6. Entitlement attitude. They feel entitled to special treatment regardless of others' needs or priorities. 7. Jealousy and envy. They feel threatened by others' accomplishments that may undermine them. 8. Manipulative tactics. They use cunning methods to achieve their goals, often at others' expenses. 9. Blame shifting.

They avoid taking responsibility for errors blaming coworkers or spouses instead. 10, defensiveness. They react fiercely to criticism, often turning it around on others rather than reflecting on their own behavior. Now, my dad was narcissistic. He went and plowed my crops under. I equally was narcissistic, right? In many other ways. There are several of those traits. My mother, She was narcissistic as well. And so I blame my dad for so many years of having these narcissistic traits, and he is an extreme case, right? I'm not going to get into the details of that, but the thing is that we all are on a spectrum. I think a lot of psychology, they say, well, if you have 7 out of these 10 traits, um, then you're a narcissist. Well, the truth is, um, we all have some of these traits, and any of these traits are, uh, is what causes us to, um, not have a good partnership.

I mean, and if you can, instead of, if we recognize what these traits are and we do exact opposite, and, and we, we identify, okay, there is zero room for this BS on our farm, any type of these, any, any one of these 10 traits we have no room for. And we have an attitude of, of not pointing out fault in one another, but also identifying, okay, how are we sometimes narcissistic? And what I find in succession planning is that somebody that might be a 4 out of 10 as far as the level of narcissism, you get them in a meeting where everything that matters to you, being the farm, your personal relationship with your family members, your pride, it all gets ratcheted up to 10. And what I've seen families that everybody in the community would respect, um, succession planning brings out the worst in everybody. And that's because we could become so focused on our own needs, right?

And we just become— it's like somebody's coming for our heart out of our chest. And what I want to do over that 2-year period that I'm working with a family is getting the family from a mindset of me, me, me to we, right? And when you get married, you stand before God, family, community. We have these ridiculous white outfits. I don't know where we got and weren't dressed like penguins, right? But that what you're saying is not a ritual. What you're saying before God, family, community is that from this moment forward, this other person's priorities are more important than my own, or equally important. And we don't have a marriage ceremony for a family farm. And where family farms fall apart is when we become narcissistic. And what we've got to get is a sense of humility and empathy and putting family first.

And if you can get a family where we get rid of any sense of narcissistic traits, and through the process of self-improvement, look at it as a process to become a better man or better woman. Then when we sit down and do succession planning, the trust is there because I know that my dad has my best interest at heart. I don't need legal documentation to say he's going to look after my spouse when, if I get hit by a beer truck, as you say. Right? I know that he's gonna put family first, right? And I think that that's what's got to happen, is, is when I work with a family, I get them to identify, um, 5, 5 traits that basically combine— this is the— this is a culture statement I get them to identify. One is be humble and empathetic, always considering everyone else's needs and feelings, not just your own.

Two, take responsibility, always focus on problem solving root issues without blame or playing defense. 3, never feel entitled to more than you've earned. Work hard to earn everyone's respect daily. 4, treat everybody with kindness, respect boundaries, never take advantage of anybody. And 5, never need praise or be envious. Be grateful and daily appreciate each other's contributions. Now I put this on the toilet above every farmer I work with. And every time you go to use the washroom, that's always in your face, right? Right. And then on a weekly basis, I have everybody go through and it sounds silly, but have everybody on a personal note go through and identify what's— how do I do this week on a scale A to F for these 5 factors? How did I do?

And at some point at the end of the week on Sunday mornings, you'll actually identify one— once one moment that I might have had a bit of narcissistic traits. And what did I learn from this moment, right? And if you have every— over a course of 52 weeks, everybody's working on, you know, reflecting on their week, how they were. How can you become a partner and friend that anybody would want to work with? And how do you go from me to we? How do we work together here as a team? Um, then doing succession planning is no problems 2 years later.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. Yeah, I think, I think the The whole thing there is self-awareness, right? And I think that's probably one of the big, big issues with a lot of us is, are we as self-aware as maybe we should be?

Andy

Junkin: Well, I think when it comes to decision-making, like you said, it's egos and pride that gets in the way of making the best decisions. If you get rid of any sense of narcissism and it's a real team effort, right? I mean, what, um, being socially aware or um, you know, it, it changes everything in your operation, improves profitability dramatically, and more importantly, it becomes a place anybody would want to work, right?

Chris

Barron: Yeah. So as we get closer to wrapping up, I want to, I want to ask you a question on, on transition, succession, but it's, it's really a transitional thing. It's when the senior partner decides internally in their mind to transition. And I— and this is the way I put it, so this is my, my, uh, my rhetoric, and so you can take it how you want and tweak it however from your perspective— but it's, it's when this transition occurs and the senior partner goes from being the leader to the mentor and passes that leadership torch over to someone selected in the business to have that responsibility. And a lot of times I think it's hard for that senior partner to not come in sometimes and micromanage, or to get frustrated, or whatever.

Have you had some situations— and this comes back to also the third party, and where I think it's so important that operations— I mean, I always tell people in our— I mean, we hire a consultant to come in here a couple of times a year to help us communicate, and I do this stuff. Because I need to participate as, as part of our farm operation, not as somebody that's there to help. I'm, you know, because I think sometimes we think we can just take care of it ourselves, we can help ourselves. And I think the same thing happens a lot of times with senior partners. It's like, you know, we can— we've done it this far, we can just continue to do it.

Well, sometimes having that third-party perspective really has some benefit, and I just kind of want you to touch on that as we get close to wrapping up on the importance of third party and the importance of, of what it looks like to transition from, you know, leadership to mentorship.

Andy

Junkin: Well, I think that, uh, from my perspective, I don't get to know an operation until 6 months into it where I'm touching base quite frequently. Yeah, because, you know, you know, I used to 10 years ago, um, what happened was I started doing more. I started writing for Progressive Dairyman, started, you know, helping farms all over North America. And, um, you know, what I found was that I started doing things over Zoom because of the distance between the operations. And what I found was I was getting 10 times better results than me going out to the farm because if I can touch base with a family— there was an operation that was actually, it was only 45 minutes away. And so I had just done, um, Zoom meetings with a few family operations where we were meeting for half an hour.

And I find that the short, sweet little improvements— if I can make one simple improvement in how the family works together every couple weeks, it's, it's over time it adds up, right? Instead of trying to make 10 changes all at once.

Chris

Barron: Well, you build it, you build a trusted relationship as a third-party assistant too, right?

Andy

Junkin: Yeah. And also it's cost-effective, right? I mean, my, my consulting bills, a fraction of what other operations are. I mean, there, there's— I like to go out and shake guys' hands, but I mean, I don't need to pet your dog, right? With, um, I find that if I can make half an hour change, have a half an hour meeting, and we make one simple change every week or every couple weeks it over the course of the year, that, that gradual transition is unbelievable, right? And nobody feels that they're being singled out. So I think the thing is that, um, the level of granularity, of depth, of improvements, the operation, as opposed to me driving out there twice, 4 times a year, it's, it's a huge difference, right? The amount of changes that we see in an operation. To come to your second issue about the mentorship Um, 77% of farmers don't have a succession plan, 23% do.

I don't think that we talk about the dark secret about succession planning, which is that a lot of operations, it's a hostile takeover, and the partner that sells his assets is basically being pushed out of the operation. And I think that if you've got an operation, if you first of all fix family relationships So it doesn't matter whose idea it was, um, that the best idea wins. If you get an operation so that we remove the egos, um, from the operation so that everybody's looking out for the best interest of the family and is willing to improve themselves, and every— all those pet peeves you have working with partners, if you— I get a little closer— tweak those, tweak those pet peeves so that they— you enjoy actually working with them. Then that mentorship is going to continue whether or not they're partners on paper or not.

And one of the biggest things that I've seen is, is actually, you know, is your, your son going to stop the combine on a nice fall day when you have cancer and you only got 6 weeks left to stop and, uh, carry you into combine so you can go for your last ride around the field? And I think it all comes down to that nature, that relationship you have, right? And, you know, I think that a lot of farmers would rather die with their work boots on than, than, uh, than their slippers. And I think the difference is improving the family relationships. So we're working as us against the world, and we're working together as a team. And so when I work with a family over 2 years, we change the dynamics of relationships. We make everybody be the partner and friend anybody would want to work with. And we're making better quality decisions because we got rid of the egos.

I mean, farm profitability improves dramatically. Um, my goal is to double profitability, and it generally does, because anything you can do to improve the quality decision-making, that's going to skyrocket profitability, right? Um, but more importantly, um, there's an intangible factor that cannot be quantified. What's— when you transfer your assets to the next generation to take over, feeling welcome in the shop that you built, there's an intangible quality to that. But I think it's important and to feel appreciated and to feel respected. And to feel welcome on the operation. I think that has— it makes a difference in a man's, um, the last 6 months of a man's life. Might make a difference in a couple years of a man's life, right? Because a lot of guys feel— I mean, as soon as they do the succession plan, that they feel worthless, right?

And because they don't feel welcome in the shop, because they, they make, make a comment, their son doesn't take that comment the right way, and they have a disagreement, and then that the son says, Dad, you don't need to show up at the shop anymore. And so what you— what you— I mean, there's, there's a huge— what I want to do is get rid of all sense of ego, get the family being able to make decisions together so that you are able to graduate from being the boss to being a mentor. And what you have to say is appreciated, not look as criticism from the cheap seats. And I think that has a huge, um, quality of, of family relationships is hard to quantify.

Chris

Barron: That's, that's really powerful because I think, you know, that kind of thing unfortunately happens a fair amount of the time. A lot, you know.

Andy

Junkin: And, you know, it's man's world. I mean, nothing more disappointing than the last 6 months of your life feeling worthless, right?

Chris

Barron: And to your point, I, I think that's where the mentorship comes in on both sides though, right? It's not just the senior partner becoming the mentor, it's the, it's the junior partner, um, accepting and listening and taking bits and pieces of the wisdom, right? You know, because there's a difference between wisdom and intelligence.

Andy

Junkin: Absolutely. And also for the junior partner to feel appreciated when he's in his early 20s, right? That makes a two-way street. That makes a huge difference to how much get-up-and-go that son has if he's told for a decade, by the time he graduated from college to the time he's 35, if he's told that every dumb— every idea he has is dumb, how much wind does that kid have in his sails, right?

Chris

Barron: Right.

Andy

Junkin: So it makes a huge difference in the long-term success of the operation, right? Yeah.

Chris

Barron: So as we wrap up here, I want to ask you, what didn't I ask? What what would you like to leave the listeners with in terms of, of, you know, these are some key things, you know, we've talked about a lot of stuff, we've talked in a circle and then back again. Sure. A couple of times here. But I think this stuff's really important because when we work with farm operations as Ag View Solutions anyway, we, we're a little different than what you do, right? We show up and we help. Let's shore up the, the liability.

Let's make sure that the economic conditions and the structure of the economy, of the economics of the business, and we understand our numbers and that the cost of production is clean and that we have a clean balance sheet and that we understand exactly that the, that the attorney knows what's going on, the CPA knows what's going on, the lender knows what's going on, our financial planner knows what's going on, and the insurance agent knows what's going on. We're communicating with, with that whole team of, of legal and professional, and you're dealing with really some super important stuff, which is you can get all that stuff right and all it takes is two people to screw it all up. So, you know, with that said, you know, what, what do you want to leave people with? You know, because I think, you know, what we do and what you do are— yeah, kind of different, right?

Andy

Junkin: I mean, they're complementary.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, they're complementary, but apples and oranges, right?— that they're key things.

Andy

Junkin: I think the thing is, is that one thing that— I mean, this all sounds like wishy-washy stuff, but it makes a huge difference in the farm's profitability.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, it does.

Andy

Junkin: And I think what you have to understand about how I invoice is I don't invoice a farm unless I'm seeing a 300% return on investment at least. If I, if I bill you $1,000, I need to see a $3,000 improvement in farm profitability as a result of me helping you improve your efficiency, your operation this month. And I do that month by month by month. And so this is not wishy-washy stuff. This actually transcribes into real improvement and profitability. Um, the second thing is that if I'm not seeing that improvement in, in, um, in, in, in real changes being made in your operation, there's some farms that, you know, I say, look, you're not— you're, you're being stubborn, but not being stubborn in a good way. And a big emphasis I have is being stubborn in the habits that matter, right? Turning your weaknesses into strengths.

And a lot of families, you know, there's, there's not a lot, but there's some families that, you know, we take a bit of a break. Um, I say, look, you're, you're not actually serious about changing here. You're wanting to point out fault in your partners, but you're not willing to make improvements yourself. And so I just don't invoice, right? If I don't see a 300% return on investment, if I don't see positive changes happen in the operation, I just because I, um, I should say because it didn't drive out there or flew out to the operation, I can just write it off. But generally, at least half of those farms, a couple months later they come back, a couple months later, a couple years later, they're like, you know what, we actually need to make these changes, right? You called me, they have to be ready. And, and sometimes it just takes a while for, for a guy to come around to things, right?

Chris

Barron: Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: But the thing, what, what I'm saying to you is, is that this is not wishy-washy Dr. Phil kind of stuff. This this transcribes in a real improvement of profitability and the quantitative value improving your life, both in, in terms of your relationship with your partners and your relationship with your spouse. As a side effect, you learn how to be a better man. It's huge, right? Awesome.

Chris

Barron: Well, hey, I think— ever any, any final comments?

Andy

Junkin: My biggest thing is just go to www.stubborn.farm and It's, um, I'll send you, uh, in 5 minutes I'll send you a text that you can actually listen to the audiobook at the, at the back end of the book. Just reach out if you like the book, just reach out to me, I'll send you. I mean, you can go on Amazon, I guess. Um, I'd be happy to send, send a farmer, uh, copy of the book. I mean, what's, what's going to cost me, $5 to print a book or something like that? I'm not, I don't care. But the thing is, in the back of the book, there's actually 30 improvements that are— that you can start off with for areas for improving, improving your own character. And there's 30 areas that are common problems within how families work together as a team. And what I suggest is that you actually just try to do this yourself, right? Just make one improvement yourself.

Actually, the last page of the book is, is so important. It actually says, if you like the ideas within this book, you can give a copy of this book. And the last page, identify the bad habit, identify the new habit, and what's the fix. So maybe the fact that you leave tools around, right? And the fix is, I'm going to stop leaving tools around. If I'm caught, then I have to put a dollar in the beer fridge fund, right?

Chris

Barron: Yeah.

Andy

Junkin: And the thing is, I pledge to make Stubborn, uh, and, uh, become stubborn in a positive way over the next 30 days to make this new habit stick. And then you give this book to your partners and say, one condition, read the book Stubborn. If you do, I'll take you and our other partners out for lunch in a month to discuss its concepts, right? I'm serious about catalyzing change by changing myself first. If my partners don't see this habit stick, then I'll tip our server $100. So that's a simple— make the server happy too. I mean, I, I— but the thing is, is that that's showing your partner that you have the balls, that you actually want to self-improve, right? It's one thing. And, and for you to actually— some, something simple like you leaving your tools around, right?

You actually make that change and your partners will see that you're serious of actually making improvements yourself. And then you can have a conversation maybe next month, what's one thing each one of us can do. And there I provide a list of 30 things. Yeah, I'm sure you can pick that out. Yeah. And then you can actually apply this process on your own to actually fundamentally change. And I think that's the biggest thing, is we got to stop being stubborn with each other. We got to start being stubborn in the habits that make a farm and a farm family successful. And that's not by you telling your partners what they have to improve. It's by you listening to what they have to say and being willing to change yourself, become a better man, a better woman. In order to farm successfully, for the farm to be successful 30 years down the road.

And then someday you're gonna be buried beside each other. More importantly, between now and then, you want to be 5 feet from each other, right?

Chris

Barron: Well, hey, this has been a very informative discussion. Um, again, we will put the contact information to get a hold of you in the show notes. Yeah, um, here, stubborn.farm, stubborn.farm. And with that said, Andy, Bob Cajun Junkin, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Great conversation.

Andy

Junkin: Good to see you.

Chris

Barron: So, all right. And, uh, again, as usual, would like to thank everybody, uh, for being here again on the Ag View Pitch. If you got other ideas and thoughts, um, let us know. And by the way, um, our conference in January for the 2025 conference, Andy will be there as, as one of the presenters. So we're excited to have you on board for that. So there'll be more information coming out about that here in the next couple of months. So With that said, thanks everybody, and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.

Andy

Junkin: Appreciate that.