The 5 best practices of top-tier operations

Narrator: We are grateful that you are joining us for another episode of the Ag View Pitch, as we know that your time is very valuable. Our team at Ag View Solutions is always here for you for any questions or comments that you may have. Please feel free to reach out to us at cbarron@agviewsolutions.com. And now here is your host, Chris Barron.

Chris: Welcome everybody to another episode of the Ag View Pitch, and We are here with a kind of special episode. I was with a producer about a week ago and he brought up a question around the idea of what are operations doing that make them the best operations and what things could we be doing in our operation to mimic some of those things, or, you know, what some of— what are some of the things we're doing wrong or whatever. And it kind of prompted an idea in my mind that, you know, hey, maybe we should talk through some of the things that we've seen over the last number of years that we would classify operations as, as really being that executive-minded business. And, and so what we want to do is go through what we would identify, or what we've observed, as the top 5 best practices for the top-tier operations that, that we work with.

And so what I want to do is just take a couple of minutes and introduce kind of the 5 ideas first. And so we've got The first concept, or the first thing that we see that the top-tier operations do, is that they have strong communication. And so we're going to come back through these and spend some time on each one of these. The second thing that we see with the top-tier operations is strong financials. Just understanding their financial position and managing it well. The next one is productivity. So it's production, it's high yields, it's paying attention to the productivity of the operation. Number 4 is marketing, and number 5 is understanding growth. So again, the top 5 things, best practices for top-tier operations: communication, financials, production, marketing, and growth. And so we're going to walk through each of these here now.

And so, um, if you want to pause for a second and grab a piece of paper and maybe take a few notes, I guess the, the thing I would suggest that you do as you listen to this podcast or think through it either listen to it a second time after you've listened to it the first time and just kind of think through some of the comments that I make as observations of the top-tier operations and ask yourself, how would you score yourself? Would you give yourself, you know, a 1, a 2, or a 10? You know, are you really good in that area or do you need improvement? And I think just jotting these things down and kind of doing a review of your own operation, just like I did when I, I sat down and when this producer, you know, brought up this question. I thought it was a really good thought, you know, you know, what, what are the best things that we need to be doing?

And so with that said, let's roll into communication as number one. It is the number one thing that we have that we see people having a problem with. Usually we'll say, okay, what's working in the operation, what's not working, at the beginning of a meeting, whether it's a new client or somebody we've worked with for a long time. And communication invariably comes up almost all the time. And so what I want to do is point out a couple of things that we see the, the top tier or the best operations that we work with doing a great job in that area. And there's several things within communication. And so the first one is just having meetings. And what I mean by meetings is there's different types of meetings, and you don't want to meeting yourself to death. And you want to make sure that if everybody's got to get together, you get together and it's a productive discussion.

So the first thing with that is, is, you know, just having a monthly discussion with the stakeholders. A lot of times what we see is there'll be family members or stakeholders, owners, maybe even landowners, but people that are involved either somewhat directly or indirectly in the operation, but they don't have a clue what's going on. It gets really frustrating for those folks as time goes on when there's a lack of communication. And so, you know, we've seen that some of the best operations, they'll each month just kind of bring everybody in and say, okay, here's kind of how things are going, you know, operationally and that kind of thing. And maybe they'll even, you know, if they don't bring everybody in, they'll do some kind of a written documentation to kind of share with everybody. So that's the first one on meetings.

The next one on meetings is just having weekly operational meetings. Excuse me. So one of the things we see there is just during each, each week, you know, what's the plan for the week, you know, or maybe even the next couple of weeks so that everybody's kind of on the same page in the operation. And this usually means the operations division of the business. So it's the people that are working in the shop, working on equipment. You know, working around the business. Even if there's just 2 or 3 of you, you know, just having a beginning of the week huddle to get together and say, okay, here's the things we need to get done and kind of work on, on, you know, XYZ, and, and let's follow back up the next week, make sure we're staying on task. And so that's the second one. Another one that we see is in the need for is what we would call the biannual big picture report.

And so what that is, is, you know, do you have a biannual meeting halfway through your fiscal year where you would maybe even invite your lenders in, you know, basically just kind of talk through the operation, how are things going. Again, that's where the stakeholders could show up, maybe even an insurance agent and do, you know, kind of talk about an insurance review. Anything that needs to happen mid-year is really critical to kind of involve those people. And so those are, those are some things to think about. And then obviously an annual meeting, and I'm going to talk more about that here in a little bit when we talk about financials. But an annual meeting is really important, I think, to just make sure everybody gets to see how, how the year went. And so like I said, I'll talk more about that one here in a minute.

But the last thing I want to point out in meetings is is when I've done some studies on effective meetings, it's interesting how a lot of times people will say, well, I left the meeting and I still don't know what the hell I'm supposed to do. Well, you know, a big part of it is everybody needs to make sure that the issues at hand are clearly defined. So what needs to be done? What's working well? What's not? What do we need to fix? What needs to— what do we need to do more of? What do we maybe need to do less of? And then once issues are defined, we can take those issues then and look at it and say, okay, what's the solve? You know, what do we need to do to fix this issue? And maybe it's one person in the operation has to take that by the horns and go do it. And, you know, and then what's the deadline? You know, it's kind of like goals.

You know, you can have SMART goals or you can have goals that don't mean anything, you know. So, so think through those meetings and, and make them productive. And don't make them too long either, you know. You should be able to get to the point in, in half an hour maybe at the most, a lot of times, just to make sure everybody's sort of on the same page. Another thing in communication though that I think is important is transition. When you think of the team, you think of, you know, the the multi-generational operation. So you, a lot of times what we see is you've got some of the, some of the people in the operation that need to be, um, or want to be slowing down. You got some people that want to have more responsibility and want to grow. A lot of times the communication isn't real good and there's not really a super good plan for how to transition.

A lot of times there's just the fear from the senior generation of, which means if I start transition some of this stuff over, I'm gonna have a huge tax bill and all these kind of things. And so one of the things that, that I think is critical important, and I know for a lot of you that are listening to this, we've probably already gone through this process, but those of, of you that haven't, you know, we point out the idea that you need to, you need to look at a team of, of 5. And what I mean by the team of 5 is you have your attorney as number 1, you have your CPA You need your lender, you need a financial planner, and you need a good insurance agent. Those 5 pieces are really what it takes to put together a good solid transition plan.

So if you jot that down and say, okay, am I communicating to these 5— the attorney, the CPA, the lender, the financial planner, and the insurance agent— and then where we come in is we're sort of the financial planner that kind of helps be the conduit between all of those various divisions of your transition plan. And then what we do a lot of times is we'll lead that into business structure. You know, the trucks, put the trucks in an entity, put the equipment in an entity, and have your operating entity separate so that you have crystal clear accounting for number one. So that's real important.

The other thing is so that you can transition, so the senior generation can transition to the junior generation and first start out by rolling the— moving the rolling stock over into the next generation, as opposed to, you know, trying to figure out, well, how do I rent certain ground to them, or do I have them rent more ground? Well, that's all great, you can do some of that stuff in the process, but, you know, it's important to separate those out. One thing we'll do, and we'll put in the notes here in the podcast as well, we did a podcast on transition and collaboration, and so There's a lot of details to that around the business communication, business structure. So we'll put that in the notes as well. So you'll have that to go back and listen to as well. SOPs and procedures, another thing under communication.

It's always interesting, and I just brought that one up, not going to spend much time on it, but it's, it's interesting. As farmers, we're notorious to send people out and not give them very good training. So we give them 5 minutes of instruction and say, hey, go run this, go do this, go do that. And they get out there and they're not 100% sure what they need to be doing. And it's really, if they screw something up or they break things, all we did is set them up for failure. And occasionally I hear things from some operations that, you know, well, we just don't have very good employees. You know, they're just not doing, you know, we just can't get the quality employees. Well, sometimes I think as leaders we need to look in the mirror and say, okay, is that the employee's issue or is that we are not leading correctly? Are we not educating them? Are we not training them?

You know, so a lot of times we need to take some ownership in that, you know, piece of the puzzle. And with the labor, you know, we need to hold them accountable, but they need to know who they're accountable to. So another thing we run into on the communication side occasionally, and we see it less with some of the best operations, but we'll sit down with a farm operation and we'll interview the employees and say, okay, you know, Dave, Mr. Employee of this farm operation, who's your direct report? Who do you talk to? Who do you tell, you know, or who do you get your leadership from? And it'll be like, well, it's the grandpa, it's the dad, it's, you know, it's and they, they're confused as to who the boss is, and then they go off and they do something that the son tells them to do, and then the grandpa pulls in and is pissed and says, no, you need to be doing this instead.

All that does is, is just create confusion, eventually frustration, and then you have a short-time employee. And it's really not the employee's fault, it's, it's the leadership. And with these top-tier operations, we just see really crystal clear accounting and leadership.. And we see them helping their labor force to grow, to get better, and to be better. And so I guess, you know, those are some of the things on communication that took a little bit. We'll be a little shorter on some of these others, but communication is always the number one issue. But it is the number one thing that we see people do really well, and then all of a sudden their financials, everything else goes well if the communication's going well. You can have all the money in the world,. But if you don't get the communication right, it really doesn't matter. And again, I would say score yourself on these top 5.

First one, that was communication. So how do you rank your operation? Is it, you know, on a score from, you know, 1 is the low, 10 is the high, where are you at? And if you're, you know, say below a 7 or so, um, probably need some attention. And when we look at this with a lot of operations, The first time, a lot of, a lot of people will rank themselves kind of on the low side of that. And so again, pay attention to that, look at it. If you got questions, please give us a call. We can talk through some of that stuff with you if you have questions on communication. So number 2, strong financials. Financials is number 2 because we see that being something that the top-tier operations really have a ton of documentation. They, they, you know, I always get a kick out of, you know, people will say, you know, what's the most important thing for a farm operation or a business?

Well, you need to know your numbers. Well, no, no crap. Yeah, yeah, you need to know your numbers, but the numbers need to be accurate, right? You need to have an accrual set of books. You need to have an accrual perspective of the business. We use Profit Manager for that view. And the other, the other side of it is, is a lot of times, you know, really good operations have really good set of accounting, but accounting is postmortem. It's already happened. It's— if you're making decisions into the future for the next year, you know, or the next 2 years, and you're using your accounting system, that's difficult to do very well because, you know, you need to be looking down the road of where the business is going. And so, you know, you got to make sure you are not carrying forward the, the, the revenue from prior years. You're not carrying forward expenses from prior years.

You have to look at it from an accrual perspective. And, and too often we see, uh, operations not as crystal clear with that as they should be. And so hence the, the best operations know what those numbers are. The other thing we see with the best operations is they, they have a crystal clear understanding of their machinery and equipment cost. It's the second largest line item expense, and they know what it is. I mean, they look at their costs on machinery, they have a 3 to 5 year plan, they know what their replacement regimen is going to look like. You know, they're managing that in addition to their working capital as they go through that.

And so, you know, having a strong working capital position is extremely important, but you also have to manage that and, and be able to stay current on, on equipment replacements, be wary or be aware of opportunities for land purchases and those other things as you grow your business. And so we see that with the best operations, they do a great job of of managing that working capital and just keeping everything in line there. The other thing too that, you know, and that I think this is probably the maybe the biggest thing, I learned this about 20, little, literally a little bit over 20 years ago. I had a client tell me, you know, I'm preparing for my state of the operation address, and I'm like, well, what's that, you know?

And He's like, this is, this is, you know, every year I sit down with my lender, I sit down with my family, I sit down with our employees, and I give them the state of the operation. And, you know, ever since I learned that from this producer, I've done that in our own operation. We put together a PowerPoint presentation every year and we present that, or I present that, you know. So if you're the person in the operation that's the leader or the one in the operation that needs to make sure everybody is on the same page and understands the vision of where the business is going, you know, you sit down and you look at that, put all that stuff together, and it's about a 7 or 8 day deal a lot of times to round up, you know, your profit center reports, you know, labor cost, you know, your detailed global picture.

Cash flows for each profit center that the business has, and, and just laying all that stuff out. But then not only laying it out on a— in a book and having a bunch of numbers, but putting it together in an organized manner on a PowerPoint presentation that's simple to understand. If you can't explain to a group of 8 or 10 people what happened in your business fiscally last year, you don't probably understand your business. And so, you know, and that sounds harsh probably, but the problem is it's true. I mean, you, you don't understand what you can't explain. And, and it's, it's a test or a testament of your fortitude and discipline to sit down, round up all that information, and then condense it in a, in a way that you can you know, stand up in front of your, your stakeholders, your lender, your family, and explain, here's the state of the operation.

If you can do that, you understand your numbers. And that's what I mean by knowing your numbers is being able to explain them. The, the last thing on, on strong financials too is when you do that, you, you have the opportunity to bring in additional lenders. And And I don't necessarily mean you need to go borrow money from all the lenders, but I learned this from Mo Russell, who was our farm's longtime consultant for years, you know, 15 or 20 years ago. Always have a lender on the bench. And as financial times get tough, you know, how do you have a lender on the bench?

Well, when you put all these numbers together and you put a financial report together, You already have— you've already done all the work, so go do it with 2 other lenders and explain to the current lender, you know, hey, I'm not shopping, I'm not trying to leave you, but I do need to have somebody else on the bench, you know. And then ask yourself, are you borrowing money from the bank, or are you borrowing the money from that loan officer? Is it the relationship? Is it the lender? Is it the bank? What is it? And a lot of times it is the relationship you have with the lender. So if the lender leaves the bank, who are you working with then? You know, who's the backup? And so, you know, and conversely, it might be the other way. You might love the bank or be super happy with the bank, but that bank gets bought out. Who do you go to?

You know, so my thing that I see some of these top-tier operations doing is they could pay off their bank in 3 weeks because they have lenders on the bench. They have other lenders that would gladly take their business, and, you know, within 3 weeks they'd be able to pay the other bank off and, and not really have a glitch. And as interest rates climb and as, as things change in the economic environment, I think it's becoming more and more important to, to have a lender on the bench. So those are some of the things on, on the financials So we had number 1 was communication, number 2 is financial. Let's get into number 3. Number 3 is production. Why do I say production and why do we have that in the top 5 things of the top-tier operations?

The main reason is because the fastest way to lower your cost of production, and I say this all the time in our marketing podcasts and stuff, But the fastest way to lower your cost of production is increase yield. And so, you know, our top-tier operations that we work with have phenomenal yields. They sometimes might even be the ones that complain the most a little bit about the weather and stuff like that because they have super high expectations. So kind of pick on a few of them, and if you're listening, you might know who you are because we, you know, These operations just expect perfection, and you can't control the weather. However, you know, what we look at is, is, uh, you know, equipment settings. You know, those operations are methodical about making sure the equipment settings are the way they want them.

They also spend a lot of time with operator training, so they don't just send somebody out to run the planter, somebody run the combine, or whatever without really good training, without having all those things kind of dialed in. And then the other interesting thing I've watched with some of these top-tier production operations that really just get the super high yields is they follow up on everything. I mean, they have data like coming out their ears on, you know, everything from stand counts on emergence to you know, to placement, hybrid placement, variety placement, historical, you know, agronomic information on the fertility. They're using a lot of GPS and variable rate technology, which a lot of people do, but I just noticed on these top-tier operations, they have this stuff really dialed in.

So it's just a huge, huge goal for, I think, a lot of us just to continue to get better at that. A couple of other basic ones. Think of this one, drainage. What is the reason, you know, some of your fields maybe don't yield like they should? A lot of times it can be as simple as tile, you know, or it might be as simple as irrigation, but how do you justify spending that kind of money on a pivot or that kind of money tiling a whole farm when you need money in other areas. The one thing that, that is interesting is just the conversations that some of these top-tier operations have with their landowners. We have a tool in Profit Manager for having that conversation on the landowner sharing on tile, sharing the expense. We've had some really good luck with that, you know, doing 10-year leases and, and sharing on that tiling cost.

Those kind of things just seem basic, but sometimes the basic stuff makes the biggest difference because you can do all the agronomic stuff right, and if you've got too much water or not enough water, all of a sudden it— a lot of the work you just did really doesn't amount to as much. Um, again, you know, the agronomic consistency and documentation, like I mentioned, is a huge one. Another one is not to cut corners. When cost of production goes up like we've seen the last few years, as we record this podcast in the middle part of 2022, you know, it never fails, you know, a lot of times we get calls on like, what expenses should I be cutting? You know, and it's not been as much, you know, 2021, '22, we've had some pretty good market prices. As market prices go down, the first thing a lot of people think about is cutting cost, you know, whether it's insurance or, you know, whatever it is.

Agronomically, I think it's super dangerous. And again, it's just an observation of watching the top-tier producers do a good job of getting yield almost no matter what. I mean, they, they aren't chintzing on the best hybrids, they aren't chintzing on you know, fungicide, or, you know, putting the best, you know, crop protection products down, being timely, doing all the things that you need to do and not worrying about spending that extra $20 an acre, you know, with that. And so I think just being real careful not to cut corners on production. And then the last one I have for production, you know, I think is a good one to kind of rank yourself on from that 1 to 10. We call it product loyalty. Uh, think about this for a minute, you know, are you a loyal customer or are you a price shopper?

And I'm not saying one is bad or one is better or whatever necessarily, but I'm just going to say that as an observation, when we watch the top-tier operations, they're very loyal. Do they pay a little more for their products and their service and stuff? Um, yeah, they do. I see the numbers and I can also though tell you when supply is an issue, they got taken care of, and they got taken care of at a better price because they've been loyal throughout the years. I can also say that, you know, they, they get taken care of way better, and they have a lot better service, and, and, and they have a partner. And so if you happen to be one that's out there shopping on your, your fertilizer, let's say, because it is a commodity. I get it, I understand. But if you're bouncing around all the time, eventually those suppliers aren't dumb.

They figure out, you know, well, I'm not gonna necessarily give you— if they're only gonna sell you one year and then they might not sell you again for 3 years because they got to compete against everybody else, you know. And it doesn't mean that you shouldn't price check. You should you should be aware of what's going on. You don't just, you know, blindly be loyal, but you, you know, don't worry about a buck an acre or a couple bucks an acre. If they're close and you can stay loyal, that loyalty pays. So that just, just again is an observation that I see with, with those top-tier operations, that that loyalty is key. So that's all I've got on production for now. If you guys think of more stuff or stuff I didn't mention in some of these categories too, let me know. So we talked about communication, we talked about finances, uh, we talked about production.

Now we're going to hit marketing for a minute.

Marketing: consistent and disciplined. This is just something that we see with the best operators that we work with. They don't really jump around and change how they market and they also manage their emotions really good, probably better than me and a lot of us. But I think it's interesting because they, they're margin managers instead of price chasers. And a lot of us, it's really tempting to chase the prices around. I mean, when the price gets high, and if it's— especially if it stays high for a long time, we become complacent or maybe even get paralyzed. We just don't do anything because we're you know, we're, we're either paralyzed or we're comfortable. And, you know, and the other thing too is there's always that fear of missing out.

And the thing that we see with these margin managers is they'll, they'll cover their risk pretty easily through either using some, some, you know, strategies on option strategies, minimum pricing. They'll They'll do some cash sales. They'll, you know, they'll, they'll manage their basis really well. So those are just some things, again, as observations. Marketing is one of those tough ones, but, but it still comes down to that consistency. A lot of those operations don't try to do anything different from one year to the next because they're going to be right about 80% of the time. They're going to be wrong 20% of the time though because You know, there's been years, um, we were just, you know, as we record this, we're coming off of a couple of years where the smartest marketers did nothing. They didn't plan. Well, that doesn't mean you don't plan for the next several years.

Can, can you honestly say that you think the market's going to do what it did the last 2 years? I don't know. You don't know. The best analysts don't know. And so, you know, ask yourself, are you a margin manager or a price chaser? And rank yourself as a margin manager. Give yourself a score from 1 to 10. Are you good at managing the margins? You know, and then ask yourself, okay, what things do we need to do to improve that? And it's back to that consistency. You know, I, I think the other thing too is it's okay to have some trusted advisors. In fact, I, I'm a fan, and, and I see this with, again, with the top tier operators, they work with— most of them work with 2. And I would say, you know, 1 to 2 trusted market advisors that you can pick up the phone and call.

So if you got to pay them for that or whatever, that's fine because you, you are going to be able to get some consistent information and consistently follow some of their strategies and let them get to understand your operation. Let them get to know what you're up to and what you're doing. And I think that's really, really key. But I think there's a difference between working with 1 or 2 and listening to 15 of them. Because when you're listening to— and I'll pick on the media for a minute— but the media is there to sell news. They're there to sell discussion and advertising and all that crap. You don't need that stuff. What you need is a person you can pick up the phone, call them, and talk to them and say, okay, here's what I'm thinking. Okay, I think that's critical. But let me tell you the other side of the equation too that we observe with these top operations.

They don't bitch and complain about the person they're working with when they're wrong. If they're— if that market advisor is wrong, it's just because they're human, and they always— they'll always have a time when they're right, and they'll always have a time when they're wrong, just like we do on the farm. The reason for having them is so you can think out loud, is so you can make sure you aren't missing some things, and so that you as the executive business decision maker in your farm operation can make decisions. And they're— they need to be our decision, they need to be your decision for your farm. You have to pull the trigger. But if you pull the trigger and then 3 weeks later the market's gone up a whole bunch, and that was something that your market advisor agreed with you're the one that pulled the trigger. It's not the market analyst.

And so be careful that you take on your own extreme ownership. Be accountable for your own decisions. They're not there. If, if you, if you're, if you're going to make those decisions and you don't want to have an advisor because you know that much more than, than others, then just don't have an advisor then and just do your own thing. Because you'll, you'll go through an advisor about every 3 years because they're going to be wrong occasionally. And, you know, it's still though, I think, like I said, good to have a couple of them to bounce ideas off, but then you need to be your own executive. So that's a little bit of my soapbox on, on marketing, but I see it with the best operators. They take accountability for their own decisions. It's never somebody else's fault. It's their business and they make their own decisions. So that's really all I've got on marketing.

Marketing is one of those things that that, um, a lot of times people put more weight on marketing over production. And I would say that, you know, if you want to move, you know, there's kind of that 3 pieces to the puzzle of your business. You've got input costs, you have marketing, and you have production. Those 3, you know, that, that triangle of things. The most important piece of that triangle is productivity. If you don't grow bushels, you don't have anything to sell anyway. That always trumps everything else as far as the biggest deal. And then the second one always is marketing, and then the last one is how much you're spending. And, and I think a lot of times we spend a lot of time worrying about what we're, what we're spending, and we should probably be spending more time on, on just making sure we're growing a good crop and then trying to get it sold.

So with that said, um, so we've covered Communication. We've covered financial. We've covered productivity. We've covered marketing. Last one, growth. We start with the question with our new clients, how do you define growth? And so if we haven't worked with you, or we have worked with you and maybe some things have changed, but asking that question again, how do you define growth in your business? What, what does growth look like? Um, you know, it's, it's one of those things that, that it's personal, it's professional, it's business, but you know, only you can define what growth means to you and to your business. But back to the communication thing for a minute, does everybody else in your operation know what that is? You know, do they, do they understand the vision of your business?

And you know, so I think that's important that you talk about what growth means to you 'Cause for some people it's financial, you know, I want to improve our working capital. I want to have 100% working capital by XYZ year. Maybe it's something else too. Maybe it's, I want, you know, we need 1,000 more acres by XYZ year or whatever, you know. So, you know, is it more acres or maybe it's more head of cattle, more head of hogs, more of, you know, more larger dairy, whatever it is. It's, it's defining what growth means and then making it a number and making it a measurable, you know, place to try to get to. A couple of other things on growth that I, I see with the best operations is they spend a ton of time on education. Nothing against the media or whatever. I know I'm picking on the media, but I'm gonna anyway. So it's where are you getting your education, you know?

Even podcasts, I mean, that's fine. These are great, you know, I'm doing this for you as an educational opportunity or for something for you to think about. But what are you doing? Are you going to things like TPAP at Texas A&M to, you know, surround yourself around other producers and get, you know, the latest greatest information? Are you going to the agronomic meetings where they're doing planter clinics and trying to understand that kind of stuff? But even more above that though, I would say, is are you going to business meetings or going to educational opportunities where you can learn about business? You know, you are a business and you happen to farm. You know, I think that's the key thing that we see with our farm operations that we work with. The best ones, the ones that are in top, that I would call top tier, they don't talk about themselves as farmers.

They're business people and they just happen to farm, you know, that's just the, the industry that they're in as a business person instead of thinking, you know, we got to make this farm a business. And that's what happens a lot of times back when we were talking about production, uh, as the third, you know, is number 3 out of the 5, you know, a lot of times what we see is we'll start working with a farm operation that's grown tremendously over the last, say, 5 or 10 years or whatever, because, you know, maybe a couple of the kids came back and they had to grow, and it's gone really well, and they've been very productive. A lot of times what happens is they've outgrown their— their production has grown so much they've outgrown their ability to manage their business, and they've forgotten that they're a business, not, not a producer.

You know, you're, you're You're a manufacturer when you're manufacturing livestock or, you know, crops or whatever it is. And it's a business that has to be managed, or otherwise, you know, you're going to be managed by everything else that's going on around you instead of you being the manager. And that's really, really the key of understanding, you know, how to manage that growth. Another thing I would say is that we see with these top-tier operations when we start talking about growth is they love change. Most people don't like change. Most people don't want to, you know, adjust their business or do something different, you know, like organic or something, you know. I mean, we've got some farm operations that have converted some of their operation over to organic, and they're just doing some things that are out of the box, you know.

It's not what the typical producers doing in the area or whatever. They're constantly looking for that next thing, and then they're testing it. They're testing, they're measuring, they're testing, they're measuring. And, and so those are all really key things. And, and they tend to not have backyarditis either. They have connectivity to people in other states and other areas that they're, they're in tune with, um, you know, whether it's universities or individual farm operations or whatever. But they manage that backyarditis. Because I mean, just face it, think about it. I guarantee you, if you know, when you hear this, you're going to be like, yeah, I'm guilty of that in the past, or maybe still am, where, you know, you look around like, man, it's super dry. I don't know why these stupid markets aren't going up.

Well, you know, it's because we're looking at everything around us, and the world is a big place. I mean, it's a global market. It's a, it's a global productivity thing.. And so we got to really manage that. Another one on growth that we see really trending is collaboration. Again, I'll have— we'll put that in the notes here in the podcast, but you can go back and listen to the podcast we did on collaboration. But, you know, that's something that we see more and more. You know, if you've got machinery and equipment, and you're not sized appropriately. If you, you know, you have one combine and you actually need a combine and a half, or maybe, maybe you've got two combines and you're overpowered a little bit and you need to spread that equipment out over more acres. Or maybe it's planters, power units, tractors, whatever.

But it's, it's what we call right-sizing your machinery and equipment, and that's really a key thing too that when with collaboration, you can do some cool things. And, and it also leads to, you know, helping with transition too. If you're— if you've set yourself up to be a, a collaborative mindset operation, you know, you can think of 10 operations in the area right around you that you probably in a million years don't want to ever farm with. But, you know, the art is to think of the 1 or 2 operations that you could work with in your area and maybe they want to phase out, and you could allow an older producer to come into your operation and, and still wear one or two hats, be an employee for the operation, or still, you know, farm some. And eventually, who do you think they're going to rent their ground to? You know, they're going to, they're going to rent their ground to you.

And so it's, it's, it's just that collaborative mindset has a lot of opportunities. And then The last one for growth, and we'll kind of wrap things up here, but think out of the box. I mean, I just, I can't say it enough. It's what we see from these top-tier operations that do the best job. I mean, they're constantly looking for those different things. And the plug I want to put in as we wrap up here is for peer groups. We have 4 actually 5 peer groups that we facilitate. I know there's a lot of others out there that facilitate peer groups. And, and what I mean by a peer group and the value of that and how that can help you with growth is just getting perspective from other operators that are not next door to you. You know, working with an operation that's 3 states away or 10 states away and seeing how they do things different can give you an education that you just can't get locally.

And it can, it can help you step back and look at your operation from 30,000-foot view or 50,000-foot view. And so I would encourage you, if you're interested in peer groups, um, we'll also tag a couple of peer group podcasts in this podcast too that you can go back and kind of listen to where we've interviewed some people right after the podcast. And you can scroll through our podcasts and find a bunch of them, but we'll, we'll tag a couple of them there as well. So with that said, I guess I want to wrap it up. Uh, again, I really appreciate the question, uh, that was asked to me, um, just a few days ago. You know, what, what in our operation do we need to do to be executive-minded and do a better job? Uh, you know, what are other— what are the best operations that you work with doing? I thought that was a great question. Uh, it led to this podcast, it led to this discussion, you know.

So what we are seeing, the 5 best practices for top-tier operations: strong communication, strong financials, high productivity, good marketing, consistent marketing, and growth-minded. Those are really the top 5 things. And I hope you got a lot out of this. I hope that you've been able to take some notes. I hope you've been able to take some some nugget out of this. Even if you just take one thing out of this, make a change in the operation, do that one thing, do, do two things. You know, you can't do everything probably, but just come back and say, okay, what's the nuggets I got out of here? What did I, what did I score myself at, at a 3 that I probably should be, you know, an 8 or a 9? What do I need to do there? So really, that's what we want to do again with the Ag View Pitch. We want to give you perspective. We want to be here to help you.

If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to Shay or myself and let us know if there's anything that we can do to help. And, or if there's other podcasts, other content, other information, or some things that I didn't say. Basically, I put all this together and kind of am winging it as I talk through this stuff. So if you got some comments and like, hey, you know, you should have mentioned this, throw it my way. I love constructive criticism. Pick on us, that's great. We want to improve too, we want to grow. So with that said, hey everybody, I really appreciate you listening, and we will catch you again next time on the Ag View Pitch.