Invest your time like it's money

Chris

Barron: Before we jump in, a quick reminder that we publish our premium podcast, 19 Minutes, 3 times a month on the 9th, 19th, and 29th.

Andy

Caygeon: It's a short, focused update designed to help you think ahead and make faster, clearer decisions. You can subscribe using the link in the description.

Chris

Barron: Thanks. Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today we are talking with Andy Bobcajan. Andy, how's it going? Good. How are you? How are you? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. We're going to talk about time today, right? Is that the plan?

Andy

Caygeon: Invest your time like it's money.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Well, time, you know, one of the things I was thinking and I just kind of came to my mind now, but, you know, last time I checked, we can all make more money. But last time I checked, I don't think we can make more time. Is that right? How do we make more time? You don't. Time goes. Time just continues to go away.

Andy

Caygeon: Yeah, I think you can put a big push on in the fall. But the question is, if you, if you don't make each day count in January, February, March, you squander that away. And I think that we don't recognize that the importance, you know, it's easy to put in 18, 20 hours in a combine during the fall, you know, to be a hero. But the question is, in the month of January, are you making each day count? And I think that if that's the— that's what separates the wheat from the chaff, uh, from guys that are successful, is, you know, there's, there's importance to have spend time with your family, but the question is, are you making each day count, whether it's quality time in the shop or quality time with the family?

Chris

Barron: It's interesting you say that because I think, um, I mean, we're kind of just right diving into this, which is good, but The analogy you just used with the combine, and I see that with lots of different things that we do. I mean, we can get in a tractor in the spring or combine in the fall or a semi or something as producers and don't even think much about a, you know, 10 to 15, 18-hour day. We don't think too much about that. But then if we get to sit in the office for 6 hours, it's like, holy cow, I'm dead, you know, or whatever. And we just don't, don't like to spend time working. As Shay and I always call it, we call it, you know, how much time do you spend working on the business versus in the business? And like you said, I think it's a really good way to put it. I hadn't really thought of that.

You know, we, we don't, we don't even think of the 16-hour days, but we sure think of the 5 to 8-hour days when we got to be in the office doing the office stuff. But last time I checked too, I mean, that's where the money is made is when we're working in the office, when we're working on the financials, we're working on the people part. The people part's the big part. That's always the, the one area that when we're doing peer groups and stuff, it always seems like, you know, when we look at weaknesses for an operation, it's always, you know, the big one that always comes up is communication. And I don't think a lot of us spend a lot of time on communication, leadership. What's your thoughts on that?

Andy

Caygeon: I, a lot of time I think, I think the thing is, is that for all— I'll go a different route here. I mean, I've got a farm family where they just put this up on the shop just before Christmas and there's, there's, they last year, 2 years ago they lost $750,000. They actually did your profit profile, Chris, and the profit manager, profit manager, and they broke even this year. List last year because of that. And it's because they invest. They, they, instead of just working on busy work in the shop, they, they really spent time dedicated management. And this past, this next year, um, their goal is to, to really put, um, extra 10 to 20% in order to get an extra 10, 20% return on investment on what they're doing 5 years down the road.

They don't know what, what it is, um, but they you know, they're growing corn and beans just like everybody else, but they're, they're looking at different alternatives to crops to grow. But it really comes down to a time management thing. Like, they're only planning to, to grow a couple different crops, um, like on 1% of their land, um, the next couple years. But they're, they're really investing their time like it's money into seeking opportunities of niche market crops. And I think that the key thing for them is they're switching their hours that they're going to work from. They show up, don't normally show up at the shop at 7:00. They both, father and son, have decided that they're going to show up at 5:30 so that they have a 90-minute window, the first, first 9 minutes before the guys show up, their employees show up.

And then instead of wait, their goal is to get home by 5:00 at night. And spend more quality time with their families. What they did was they moved their office operations from their house into the shop, and they just did that over the Christmas break. And I think the key thing is, is that what they put up on their office wall is that real grit is in the discipline to sit down in a chair and solve a problem which you can't fix with a wrench. And, you know, I think that that's— no, no. Is it audacious for them to say we want to invest 20% of our time to get 20% return 5 years? Absolutely. But I think that the, um, the key thing is, is here's, here's what they actually wrote. Um, the key thing is, is that to, to set that— I mean, when you start investing your time like it's money, it changes the trajectory of where you're going to be in 5 years' time.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. You know, I, I like what you said there. You know, we did a podcast, I know you watched it, um, with the Toquam family on just the brain of the business, which is really the brain of the business is the people, but it's where the people are located, right? It's that they're not, they're not around the kitchen table. They're not around, you know, Dad's kitchen table or the, or the kids' kitchen table or an employee's workspace. You know, it's a, it's a central, neutral location. It doesn't have to be super fancy, although I think investments in offices are Probably a better investment than a tractor most times. Yeah, probably, probably tied for tile and irrigation or something maybe. But you know, the ROI on having that space professionalized in a way that, you know, when everybody shows up, you know, the time spent there should be comfortable.

It should be a place that everybody wants to go to improve the business. And once they start seeing the fruits of their labor, like you just described with this family, I think it really starts to motivate them. But the other thing you said that I— that's kind of a take-home or something I think people should capture from one of the things you just said was, you know, they're starting earlier in the morning. I don't know, some, you know, whatever it is, 5:30, 6:30, whatever it is for the operation. What is the— what is the agreed-upon time everybody kind of gets there at the same time? Yeah, but I love the idea of you know, quality time at work and quality time at home is basically my takeaway from what you just said.

Andy

Caygeon: What I'm like, that the father, he's actually younger than me. He's only 47. I'm 50. You know, you're old. I'm getting old. Yeah. But the thing is, is that he— which 50 years old is not the time to be having babies, Chris. I don't know if you—

Chris

Barron: anyways, but you got to figure out what's causing that, dude.

Andy

Caygeon: Yeah, that's probably one of the things that's causing that. Anyways, but the thing is, is that he, he feels the only time he can get a break right now is when he goes on vacation. So they're spending a lot of money on vacations to get away on cruise ships because that's the only time that he can feel that he's off. And I think that by us getting a boundary that we're not going to work at home, we're going to work at the office, the quality of productivity of work that you get done that first hour and a half is going to be tenfold what they're actually doing when they're just chipping away, always working. But more importantly, the quality of his marriage. And more importantly, that the son just recently got engaged. And, you know, going forward in the long term now, you know, is it when, when there's tractor tires moving, you got to, you got to put in the hours.

But I'm a firm believer that if you're showing up to the shop at 5:30 in the morning, there's no reason why. And you're putting it during the Q1 of 2026, and you put it— you work until 5 o'clock that afternoon, maybe take a, take a half an hour break. That's an 11-hour day. The question is, are you making each day count? And I think that being very intentional with what you want to get done each— with each hour of each day and what your big goals are for the— but to accomplish by the end of the day and then by the end of the week is absolutely critical. And it can be a huge game changer as far as strategic growth of the business as well as productivity.

Chris

Barron: What you're saying there reminds me of a quote that I stole from, um, uh, from Joe Vaklovic one time. I was talking to him, and you know, he's a content busier than heck. I mean, a lot of people I don't think realize how busy he is, and he does work from home, but he's done a really good job of separating the family from the workload. And, and I was asking him one day, I'm like, how do you How do you do that anyway? How do you, you know, how do you keep, you know, be so productive? And sure, he said, well, the difference is, is he said a lot of people go to work. He said, I go to work, I go to do the work, and I'm productive while I'm there, and then I'm done. And one of the things that that made me think of, and get your two cents on this one too, is that— and I'm picking on farmers, and I am one, so I'm raising my hand. I'm guilty of this sometimes too.

But sometimes, you know, when people call it the you know, leaning against the tailgate of the pickup or whatever it is. But, you know, I think sometimes in the offseason, because we're so busy in the field and doing activities, you know, we're functioning and moving. When we sit down and if there's anybody else in the room or when we're talking, it's real easy to go down a rabbit hole, right? I think it's real easy to get like sidetracked and not not stay on task. Do you have any, anything that you use to help people in terms of like time management when they're working together as a team, as opposed to, you know, as opposed to just kind of winging it?

Andy

Caygeon: Well, I mean, I think, I think what, what you're talking— when you're talking about Joe, you're talking about a guy who's highly successful. And I would— I'm a big fan of his show as well as you are. And, and I can see a guy that he's very wise in how he invests his time and shows. And I mean, it just demonstrates the success. And I think that's really, when you think about it, for any successful family farm, that's the differentiating factor is the productivity of your time. Um, myself, when I, when I work with a farm family, um, the first thing I do is we start working with a boot journal. I'll give you a quick tour of it. because I think that, a few of your producers might, might find it interesting.

Um, but the thing, first thing I do is I get the farm family to, to basically look at, the, at the beginning of each week, we sit down as a farm family and we, we did, I mean, before this is, this is what a producer would use to prep for the Monday morning meeting himself. So Sunday night he would sit down, go through what he thinks the urgent tasks are for the operation, rate on a score of 1 to 5. And basically for each the job that he's doing, he's putting down the what's the value of that job. Is it a $15 an hour job cutting the lawn, or is it a $200 an hour job doing, um, doing crop budgeting or accounting? And I think that, that really going through and identifying that on, on before your Monday morning meeting, before you sit down with your partners.

Then sitting down with you also before you on your Sunday night, identifying by the end of the week, if I only accomplish 3 things, what are the 3 things I want to accomplish in the operation? Like, do I, do I want to change out the seed boxes on, on the planter? Um, you know, and, and then looking at management goals, like for dairy farm, for instance. Um, just last week, um, or just before Christmas, We got them to identify, okay, doing milker training is the objective for the next week. I'm going to sit down, make sure all my, my, my employees are, are milking these cows consistently. And when we sat down and calculated it, um, it's about $500 a day, um, improved potential for that dairy. Um, just, um, it will improve milk production. They figured by 5 pounds of milk because right now all their employees are milking the cows inconsistently.

So really identifying what are the 3 things that if I invest my time like it's money into in the next week, make that a priority. Where am I going to get the biggest bang for my buck? And then identifying what are the 3 biggest problems I got to solve with my partners. And I think that that's really critical for you to think about Sunday night before you sit down with your partners on Monday morning. And then, and then identify also decisions that the team has to make this week. You know, if there's— what are the— I mean, you probably have to make 10 decisions with your partners. The question is identifying the 3 that, you know, if your partners weren't involved in that decision, would be really pissed. And for you to consciously write that down Sunday night make sure it will make sure those issues get addressed during the week.

And then I think what's critical is to identify what's one big thing, what's my one memory to make with your family this week. Like for me, last week was, it was taking the kids to a hockey rink and taking them skating on Saturday. You know, that was what I wrote down last Monday for myself, you know, and we went out and made that memory happen. And I think for farmers to be intentional in how they invest their time, like it's money, not just with the farm but also the family, is absolutely critical. I mean, if you have an unsuccessful marriage, it obviously impacts the farm's viability. Even— I don't care about prenuptials. It does have an impact on the farm's bottom line.

Chris

Barron: You know, 10 years, 50% impact pretty fast.

Andy

Caygeon: That's really quick. And also the emotional toll. Also, like, I mean, if your kids are 3 hours away, what's the legacy of the operation? So for you and all your partners to simply sit down and think about what's— if for you and your partners to have the PAC, okay, we're going to make and be intentional in having successful marriages by, by, by sitting down, writing down a goal of something we're going to do to make, make our family's lives better. Is as important to the farm's bottom line as anything else, I really believe. Does that make sense, Chris?

Chris

Barron: It does, 100%. The one thing I really like that I think, you know, I think that allows for people not only to quantify and qualify what needs to be done, but I think also it allows for, I think something that's super important is follow-through. You know, because you can— if you don't write it down or you don't map it out, it seems like a lot of stuff just keeps getting— the can just keeps getting kicked down the road. And then you really start to get screwed on time because you're not, you're not actioning or actionable on the plan. You know, this holds you where you can come back and you can review it and say, how are we doing too?

Andy

Caygeon: I, I think a lot of guys feel that they're fighting a blizzard when they're taking on— like, they got so many different tasks If you can filter down to 3 operational goals, 3 management goals, 3 problems you have to solve, it really makes it intentional. And hey, if you, even if you knock off 2 out of the 3 problems, you're going to advance the needle instead of always be fighting fires. You're going to, you're trying to do fire prevention. And then, and then when you sit down with your partners, you just basically plan out, okay, Monday, okay, what's the 1 or 2 things I'm going to do? What I like to do is have on—

Chris

Barron: on mine, always get pushed to the next day. I have my list instead of 5 is like 10. Well, I think 4 of them done and then I can keep pushing them down.

Andy

Caygeon: What I'm really concerned about is just identifying the top 3. And then when I have in block 4 and 5, I like to have a plan B. If a bonus would be if, if we, if we can, if we can get the top 3 done, then bonus would be this, this or that. Or what the plan B is if it rains. This is, this is what I'm going to do instead. We're going to make this each day count. But I think that the real intention is to get guys to make each day count. And then what I do is each day is, is have the guy, the Phillip, the night before around 4:00 in the afternoon plan the next day and you can lay out your plan for the week, but then obviously things are going to come up and you got to tweak things. And, and what I think is really important is just identify one thing that you want to get accomplished by tomorrow night that'll move the needle on what you want to accomplish in the week.

You know, what's your big goal that absolutely has to get done? Also, I like to identify what's— what— there's, there's three categories I like to have. What's a quick task that I don't want to do but should do? And I think that scheduling hard things is absolutely critical. It might be cleaning your truck, but if you get the daily discipline of doing one thing you don't want to do but you should do, you know, you start off with— it might be cleaning the truck, but it cascades into you never procrastinating on doing hard things.

Chris

Barron: It might be the phone call to a landowner Exactly. You know, it's always those difficult conversations that people put off, and those a lot of times are the time-consuming ones that mess with your head because your brain's not where it needs to be. So you're stressed and you don't even know it. Absolutely. I see a lot happen.

Andy

Caygeon: And I like to, I like to get a guy— one of the things I like to get a guy to do is identify a 5-minute training for an employee. So what's, what's one thing you're going to do with an employee one-on-one? It might just be interact with employee, talking with you know, life plan, but something that you can interact with, with your, with your, with your, with your employees for a teachable moment. So you're constantly offloading responsibilities off of your plate and empowering them to be able to do more. And then— sorry, go ahead.

Chris

Barron: I think that's super important because a lot of times I think it's just for a lot of people, they think it's just easier to do some of that stuff themselves and they never never train. It's not that they never— they rarely train. They, they limitly lead. In other words, they're, they're leading a little bit, but they're not, you know, I mean, you, you lead by empowering people, like you said, letting them do some things that you're uncomfortable— if you're not uncomfortable letting an employee do something, then you're not letting them do enough stuff. Yeah, you better be uncomfortable with it because that's, that means you're, you're letting them grow.

Andy

Caygeon: And when I— on the first day, first, like on Sunday night, when you're planning out the week, I like to star— get the guy to star the tasks that really only I can do right now. And when you start starring the 2 or 3 tasks that only you can do, then you can start to see, okay, these are things I could actually delegate to somebody else and have more time to invest into doing the critical tasks.

Chris

Barron: It seems like Yeah, and it seems like Andy too. I mean, I think people look at this and there's probably a lot of people think, I'm not going to fill that stuff out, I'm going to just try to do it or whatever. What, what's like 1 or 2 things? Because people, people a lot of times, at least from what I've learned over the years, is they want to do a little bit at a time. What are, what are like the 1 or 2 things, you know, like in your boot, boot journal, if they were going to start getting like Working into it, what's the, what's the number one thing?

Andy

Caygeon: I would just simply put this on. By the way, Chris, I would just simply put this where you sit down. When I call a boot journal, it's where you take your boots on and off to go in and out of the house. Okay. And what that does is it helps you mentally prepare for the next day. If you can't spend 3 minutes, if you can't, 3 to 5 minutes, it doesn't have to be notes that anybody else can decipher. It could just be a couple of words, your own. Helps you organize your thoughts. And more importantly, when you walk off, walk into the house, it takes weight off your shoulders because you can— you've got the next day planned and you can focus on your family, which is— it's a game changer for a lot of guys, you know.

And what I— what for a lot of farm families, well, I really think it's important is that you sit down, do this, whether it's in your truck or on the boot, uh, where you take off your boots, and then you pick up the phone and have a 5-minute phone call with your, your partner. And so the right hand knows what the left hand's doing. And by you actually preparing your thoughts, um, you're not going to call them back 15 minutes later because you forgot something. You're going to have prepared your thoughts. And, you know, the, the question is, if, if you, you have guys working 10 hours the next day And let's just say that's 3 guys, that's 30 hours that you're about to invest. If you can't spend 3 to 5 minutes making sure that that, that is the best use of your priorities, I mean, you're just not gonna get as much outta the week. Yeah. One of the, I mean, the question is the burn rate.

We don't think about burn rate. I mean, we, we think about burn rate during spring planting and fall harvest. But we don't think about the month of January. If you've got, if you got 3 guys working for you and they're— that's, that's, that's— you're about to put in 30 hours tomorrow, right? Let's say they put in a 10-hour day, just, just for simple math. If, if they're putting in 30 hours, that's— and, and you're, you're paying them $20, what's your burn rate in that, that next day? If you can't spend 3 minutes thinking that through, making sure you're getting best value and having a conversation with your partners to make sure that you agree on the priorities, what are you doing?

Chris

Barron: I like that idea a lot. One thing I'm— that keeps like bouncing around in my head is, and it's something that Jason, our, um, one of our key employees and, and partners does, is like in the spring he'll, you know, he kind of leads the show. So he actually will have each person's name down and he'll write down 3 or 4 things himself as well, take a picture of it and then sends it to everybody. So it gives you, at least gives you an outline of what everybody's doing and you get one person that's responsible for that. That communication goes a long ways. It doesn't mean that it's perfect and that everybody's going to follow that exact thing, but at least it gets everybody sort of on the same page. With what everybody's doing.

Andy

Caygeon: If you can get everybody disciplined to do this in January, February, you're going to get so much done by February 28th. You're going to be ready to go. I mean, most of the farms that I work with, where we start getting them in January doing this, they're getting all the equipment ready to go by Valentine's Day. Whereas the years before, they were still plugging away at it when they should be planting. And, and more importantly, what it does is if you can get all your, all your shop work done by Valentine's Day, then you have the opportunity to do tiling, you have opportunity to do jobs outside when the weather's nice. And that really makes a big difference in your productivity on the farm. It's, it's a huge difference, right? It is.

And I think the thing is, Chris, is that Nothing is going to go as planned, but recognizing at the end of the day, okay, what came up, and then putting a star beside the things that, that came up that you could have planned better last night, that creates the discipline to be more intentional and think ahead. And, and, and what you have to ask yourself is, is the second page I have everybody do is what didn't go as planned today, and identify one thing that didn't go as planned. And if I was to redo the day, how would I, how would I redo it? And the physical act of writing down one line or two lines gets you thinking critically. I mean, and, and asking yourself, should we address this? Should we improve our system? See, see, I think we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fail to the level of our systems.

And if you can contend, if you can be disciplined in the investment of your time like it's money over the next 90 days, you can start to knock off problems and how you work together with your partners and through your Monday morning meetings or, you know, even in your nightly phone calls. And you can get more disciplined. And, and I think the learning from your mistakes, it's a game changer for a lot of farm families and how they work together.

Chris

Barron: Interesting. Yeah, I like that a lot. I mean, I think especially for the leadership team of any operation or the leader of the team starting doing this is going to start to spill over. The good, the good actions of that will spill over instead of the, the bad, the bad actions spill over too.

Andy

Caygeon: So if I can get a family, if I can get a family investing their time like it's money and doing that for 90 days, and learning to agree or disagree with each other as to the priorities for the forthcoming day, then you learn to listen to each other. I mean, a big— what I do is I teach basically a course in conflict management, and it's a 12-week course called the Stubborn Habits Program. And essentially, if I can get a family disagreeing on their priorities, their use of their priorities, and learning to disagree, disagree in a way that's honest yet respectful, and get more productivity out of their day than sitting down and talking about farm financials or the long-term goals of the farm family. It's easy. And doing succession planning, it's, you know, within 6 months we can sit down and do succession plan.

But it's only when you learn to agree, agree to disagree in an honest yet respectful way, and taking how you communicate together from good to great through the use of your time, then you can start to communicate with succession planning.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, I always tell people, you know, conflict is a good thing, but you got to have trust. You got to trust each other. And so what you're talking about is, is building the trust. I think that's really a key thing too. Yeah, with that transparency.

Andy

Caygeon: And I think the thing is, as a successor, if you are extremely productive with your time, you know, if you are extremely productive, if you're, if you're showing up and you're putting in a 10-hour day and your, your, your parents and your grandparents agree that that is the best use of your time, that is a huge game changer to the family relationships related to succession.

Chris

Barron: Me.

Andy

Caygeon: It's a, it's a major trust builder. And the only thing— you aren't in control of much, but you are in control of your time. And, and your ability to say what you're going to do and then do what you say is a first step towards being trusted with the management of the operation. If you can't manage your own time, how are you supposed to manage employees? And manage the farm assets.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Well, and I think too, a lot of times the, you know, I guarantee there's people watching here that, that do spend significant time in the office, do spend significant time working on the right things. But sometimes I think it's the communication to everybody else occasionally too, of what you're doing, because I think sometimes they're like, where in the hell is Dave at? He hasn't been here. He hasn't been here all week. I don't know if he's even working. Well, no, he's working. He's in the office doing important things. But I think just sometimes too that we've heard in peer groups and different things is just cycle through the shop for half an hour or whatever. Or, you know, like with this book, you know, take a picture. Here are the things I'm working on just so you know I'm not in the house or in the office goofing off. I'm literally working on these things.

Just a little bit of communication. Goes a long ways too, I think.

Andy

Caygeon: I think, I think everybody shows up to the shop with good intentions, um, to, to be productive with their time. But if you get everybody bought into, this is the best use of our next 8 hours, um, tomorrow, tomorrow from what— this is the best use of my time, um, then everybody's on the same page. And, and you're going from butting heads and pulling the farm in different directions to getting everybody on the same page and everybody pulling the same direction. It's a game. It's— I mean, the use of your time effectively as a team and taking that to the next level, it's a game changer. How the family works together and the trust, it's game-changing.

Chris

Barron: Can I shift gears on you here for a second? I want to— I want to ask you about time tracking, and I want to give you a preface, and then I'll get your take on it. And you can disagree or agree or whatever. Warren Russell. So one of the things that I see that's the biggest issue— not the big, there's lots of issues we all have— but one of the big issues is just, you know, there's, you know, whether it's a spouse or whether it's employees working together, we all have a perception of time, and each of us have a different perception of time. So let's say you and I are working together on, on a farm, and you're doing, you're doing the livestock and I'm doing the grain, and we're not working together, and we're not tracking our time and sharing any, any kind of our productivity measurements with each other. Yeah.

And I go home and you've done some stuff, and I could have used some help and you didn't help me, and then I was going to help you, but I got busy and I wasn't able to. You go home and bitch to your spouse, I go home and bitch to my spouse, and now you've got, um, you're creating this divergence of, of relationships. Um, and even if you don't go home and complain, it's just you have this perception. And so if I have a perception and you have a perception, somewhere in the middle are the facts. And so what I always try to get people to do is be disciplined to track your time. There's all kinds of— I'm sitting here with my, my app on time tracking, which is, is this, which is I'm using Workforce Time. I can tell you exactly how many hours I worked either on Ag View Solutions on the consulting side or on the farm side and what I did in divisions of the farm and categories.

And so can everybody else in my family's operation. It did take a year or so to get calibrated because the first year we did it, we weren't great at it. And we're not perfect, but we're damn good. I'll just say that. Okay, we do a really good job of that. I know that it takes 22,000 hours in my family operation to get everything done. That doesn't include Ag View, that's just the farm operation with our seed business and our trucking and, and what we do on the farm. I, I would venture to say that a lot of farm operations don't know how many hours it takes to get everything done. And once you know that, you can do a whole bunch of stuff. You can divide that by your bushels of production or your pounds of you know, pork or beef or whatever, milk, whatever sold, all those types of things. Yeah. It— how do we get people more disciplined in doing that? Because people will start doing it.

You know, we're recording this at the, you know, at the time of year, quote unquote, when people could start doing it. How do you get them to keep doing it? I mean, you can kind of get people to buy into it, but a lot of times it's like, well, my employees need to do it. No, you need to do it as the leader. Not only for the work but also for your spouse and your family. I'll shut up now.

Andy

Caygeon: Well, I think geofencing is—

Chris

Barron: is it—

Andy

Caygeon: I, I have— there's, there's quite a few time tracking apps where you can actually track, you know, you know, when, where, when you're in the house, when you're in the shop. And, and that's that. I mean, for guys that continuously forget to clock in, clock out, that's—

Chris

Barron: I forget all the time, but it's— I can edit it.

Andy

Caygeon: Yeah, but I think I think what was really important at the beginning of the year is to have an agreement amongst partners as to how many hours we are about to invest in the forthcoming year. Right. Am I going to be putting in 3— I mean, the average farm family that I work with is, is about 3,000 hours, right? $3,000 to $3,500 hours. And if you're in your 20s or 30s and you're not putting in those hours, my question is, how serious are you about being a farmer 30 years from now? Right, right. And, and, and it's okay for Grandpa to put in fewer hours as long as they're effectively invested in the operation. But I think there should be a discussion at the beginning of the year. What is the— what's the expectation as far as hours? And then to kind of lay it out over the course of the year. I mean, in the month of May, what's the expectation for hours on the average week?

Chris

Barron: Right.

Andy

Caygeon: And then at the beginning, on Sunday night, or Monday morning, whenever you sit down for your management meetings, kind of look at what, what are you announced to your partners? I'm planning to invest these many hours. Now, you may have to be, you know, get a, you know, some breakdowns and have to work in more hours. But I think for you to announce at the beginning of the week as to what you're intending to invest both into your family and also into the farm, and they'd be held accountable to, to try to hit that number. I think that that's the way trust is built. And I think that, you know, we're pooling our capital as a farm family. But I think that, that there's, there's, it's important to look at it as investing, pooling our time as well. And, and I, yeah, you go ahead there, Chris.

But I think getting an agreement at the beginning of the year as to how many hours are expected for the successor and the different partners plan to put in the operation. And to track that is absolutely critical.

Chris

Barron: Yeah. Well, and I think just to add to what you said, I agree. I think, you know, there's, there's a couple different ways to look at the time too. It's like, you know, everybody's time is a little different depending on what stuff you're doing too. So you might be an operator, you might end up with more total hours in the end, but you get to sit in the combine and do quote unquote, more of the fun stuff, as opposed to maybe you're the one running around, you know, doing truck logistics and cleaning and doing, you know, doing more physical stuff. And, you know, so sometimes one person's hours and another person's hours may be different, but that still may be okay. But I love what you said about discussing the expectations and why those hours differences are the way they are between team members. I like that because, because everybody's going to be a little different.

You know, you might not be exactly the same. You know, like you said, you know, especially in some of these multi-generational operations where you've got 2 or 3 generations farming together, and they're kind of doing some different roles. And, you know, but on the same token, I think if you don't track that time, and there is a conflict in terms of, you know, maybe it is too far out, of line. Yeah, with the measurement you can improve it. But you know, anything— I always tell people this on time— if you don't measure it, you can never improve it. You can't improve what you don't measure. And so I don't know how to— it's just the discipline of doing it. And it's— and there's so many apps, there's so many ways to do it now.

Andy

Caygeon: I think it just, it eliminates a lot of resentment, a lot of resentment and unspoken expectations.

Chris

Barron: Well, they're not— might not be resentment for a while, but it resentment builds over time in a huge way.

Andy

Caygeon: And I mean, like, I work with a lot of dairy operations where there's one guy that's cash crop and basically running the cropping enterprise, one guy as dairyman, and the guy that's running the cropping enterprise is like, it's 11 o'clock at night, my partner's asleep. Why? Why am I here working when he's gone home? Well, he hasn't thought through how many hours he's spent this past year in January, February, March doing chores every day.

Chris

Barron: I mean, yeah, Christmas morning or whatever.

Andy

Caygeon: I mean, the succession planning means that builds up. So having an agreement at the beginning of the year, what are we investing here? And is— I mean, and then that, and then holding your partners accountable to that within horseshoes and grenades is absolutely critical. And if somebody says, hey, I'm going to put 3,000 hours into this operation, they end up putting 1,500. Then we have the discussion at the end of the year, how serious are you about being a farmer? You know, are you really want to be successor here or are you just going to be a glorified employee?

Chris

Barron: All right. Well, I think we've covered a lot of stuff here, Andy. Is there anything that we haven't covered that we should have? I'm going to give you my takeaways in a minute to make sure I got everything out of it.

Andy

Caygeon: I should— I would just— I would just challenge you. I mean, I think it's important to identify the tasks that are $15 an hour tasks, and for successors to make sure that they're 10% of their time. Like, I'm really about trying to make sure that, that you're highly effective with the use of your time. But I think it's also important to spend at least 10% of your time as a successor doing the shittiest jobs on the farm. You know, and showing that leadership to your employees that there's no job that I'm too—

Chris

Barron: probably not 50% of your time.

Andy

Caygeon: Exactly. Exactly. But showing that leadership and like I said, identifying the tasks that you don't want to do but should do so that you're showing that leadership. I would, I would dare say that the easiest way for a farm family, if anybody wants a copy of this book, I'll send it to them. Just, just reach out.

Chris

Barron: We'll put a link in. I'll have Mac put a link.

Andy

Caygeon: Sure, sure. But the thing is, is Stubborn.farm. But the thing is, is that my biggest challenge to everybody listening to this is to show up to the shop an hour earlier in 2026, and your partners might not show up, whatever. It doesn't matter. You are initially— initially. But the thing is that you are only in control of your time. You're not in control of their time or their thoughts or their behaviors. But by you showing up, it shifts your behavior, it shifts your habits. And once you shift your— I mean, once you, once you show up to the shop and are intentional in making that, that first hour in the shop worth $100, you get, you get— it's a, it's a shift to your identity and your habits throughout the course of the year.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Awesome. Well, I think that was good. I'll give you my quick takeaways here. Yeah. One is You know, well, I'm— one of them is just the one Joe Vaclovic said I think is really good, is do you go to work, you go to work? I go to work to do the work. I think that's a, that's a really good one takeaway for people to think of. I think, you know, again, you just said it, but, you know, are you doing— are you spending time doing the $30 an hour jobs or the $500, $5,000 an hour jobs? I mean, there's things in leadership and, and the things in the business that need to be done in the office. You know, I think the time working in the business versus on the business, how much time are you spending on that? I did just take away what you just said, though, too, about the 10% of your time. That's one thing we've not done. I've got all that data.

It'd be interesting to go back as another takeaway from what you said is, you know, are we— what percent of the time are we spending in each category of the work? Yeah. You know, in terms of a percentage, I know hours, but it's like looking at it from a percentage standpoint and thought about that. So that's probably a good way to aggregate and to kind of look and to measure success and how you're doing. And then I think the last one too is just, you know, the quality time at work so that you can have quality time at home. I think that's my biggest takeaway is, you know, Alyssa told me tonight, I said, what? I said, I'm going to be in at 5:30. She said, you're going to be in at 5. I said, okay, I'm working harder to be ready to go home by 5. So, you know, I think that having those parameters are a good thing.

Andy

Caygeon: I think that my, my big takeaway is what's the return on investment on your time each day? Not just your time, measure your time, but also measure your employees' time. You know, are you paying your employees $20 an hour and are you getting at least $60 out of them each hour of the month of January? Or are they spending an extra half hour reading the farm paper and have an extra coffee? You know, if you can, if you can really— I mean, how you switch the use of your time like it's money in the month of January is going to redefine your year.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Well, and I like that too. And I'm just sitting here thinking as you were talking about that is like maybe, you know, the whole team maybe should watch this podcast. So those of you who are watching this are in leadership role. Yeah, let the others see this too so that they can hold you accountable or hold us accountable. Because it's easy for us to say we need this productivity out of you, but we need to, we need to do the same thing. Kind of back to your 10% of your time, but the other 90% of the time, are we being as productive as we have as expectations for, for everybody else?

Andy

Caygeon: If you're a successor that shows up to the shop at 5 o'clock in the, in the morning and you're there and getting work done quality work done before the guys show up to the— at 7 o'clock, you're— I mean, you're going to earn their respect. And I think that for any successor, um, you want to be the boss starts with you being the boss of your alarm clock and, and showing the— actually adding value to the operation the first 2 hours of your day. And look, if you, if you get if you're able to show up at the shop at 5:00, then nobody's going to have a problem with you getting home by 5:00 in the afternoon and having a good work-life balance.

Chris

Barron: Nobody, right?

Andy

Caygeon: And that's not just for your parents and grandparents. It's all the employees that you're asking them, them to follow you.

Chris

Barron: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and I think, though, Andy, correct me if I'm wrong, but the 5:00 is a, is a, is a time you're just referencing because, I mean, there's going to be some Yeah, some young people that are sitting here listening, like, I got to take the kids to school at 8. Well, you know, you could go work for a little while, go then go grab the kids and take them or whatever. But yeah, you know, navigating that stuff, that goes back to my final takeaway, which was the one where you said, you know, at the beginning of the year, everybody says, here's, here's what my time management strategy is, and having that conversation so expectations are met. Because I think sometimes people have an expectation of somebody doing something, and then that expectation is not met, and that's when people get pissed.

Andy

Caygeon: Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

Chris

Barron: Yeah, cool. All right, well, hey Andy, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate it, and, uh, we will get you back again, and we'll have another topic here eventually, and we'll just keep chipping away. And eventually we'll just have operations so damn profitable with all the money.

Andy

Caygeon: If anybody wants to copy my book, I'll be happy to send it to them. Stubborn. Just, just, just go to stubborn.farm and I'd be happy to send a free copy of my book in the mail.

Chris

Barron: That sounds good. Hey, again, Andy, really appreciate it. Great conversation and we will catch you again next time. All right. We'll catch everybody again next time. Thanks a lot. Catch you on the Agri-Pitch.

Andy

Caygeon: Thanks.