Saving the farm: A New Year's resolution worth keeping

In today's episode, we answer the question “What are you going to do today so your great-grandkids can farm someday?” 

Hosts Emmery Mehlhoff and Alisha Nord visit with Andy Junkin about his business “Stubborn Farm.” Andy is originally from Bobcaygeon, Ontario, but now lives in eastern Iowa with his wife and four kids. Andy helps stubborn farmers work better together. 

Join us as we talk about how:

• 77% of farmers do not have a succession plan
• Many farms that have a succession plan have parties who are not happy about it 
• Farm succession should not happen in the funeral home 
• The first land every farmer should buy should be the cemetery plot

Learn how to turn stubbornness into:

• Stubbornness at listening to each other
• Stubbornness in improving your character 
• And stubbornness in having good relationships with your family and your partners

Together, we talk about how to save the family farm. 

Learn more about Andy and Stubborn Farm at https://stubborn.farm

Listen to his audiobook for FREE https://stubborn.farm/stubbornbook/

Take the next step to save the farm https://stubborn.farm/nextsteps/

Contact Andy at caygeon@stubborn.farm or 1-800-474-2057

Or schedule your call here https://stubborn.farm/schedulecall/

Contact Emmery and Alisha at emmery@ndfb.org

Transcript

[00:07] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff.

[00:11] Alisha: And I'm Alisha Nord.

[00:13] Emmery: We are your Farm Bureau duo, bringing you your competitive edge.

[00:17] Alisha: In today's episode, we chat with Andy Junkin. Andy is originally from Bobcaygeon Ontario, but now lives in Iowa with his wife and four kids. Andy's goal is to help stubborn farmers work better together.

[00:30] Emmery: In today's episode, we talk about how 77% of farms do not have a succession plan. Many of the 23% of farms that do had to create it at gunpoint, where one or two of the family members are not happy about it. We talk about how farm succession shouldn't be done at the funeral home. And we talk about how to turn stubbornness in your family into being stubborn at listening to each other, stubborn at improving yourselves and your character, and stubborn at good relationships with your family and your partners. Join us for today's episode. 

[Straight Talk stinger]

[1:04] Emmery: Welcome to Straight Talk with NDFB. Today we have on Andy, "Bobcaygeon" Junkin with his company, Stubborn Farm. I'm just going to let Andy introduce himself and then we'll get to chatting. So go ahead, Andy.

[01:16] Andy: Yeah, my name is Andy Junkin. I'm originally from a little town called Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Canada. At college, everybody called me "Bob Cajun" because basically, 5 miles north of where I'm from, the corn doesn't grow. It's a really tough land. What caused my family to be successful in farming that stoney land? First white man killed our town was back in 1832, and I always thought that he died so I could have a right to farm. And I found out the hard way it's not a right, it's a privilege. And what caused my family to be successful in farming that stone land for seven generations is the fact that we're stubborn. What caused my dad and I to fail is the fact that we're stubborn. And for the last 16 years, I've been hell-bent to turn the word "stubborn" from a bad word into a good thing for farm families. I started off by helping my friends in western Ontario. I almost hung myself in a barn as a result of my own succession experience and been helping my friends ever since. I've worked in 22 states and five Canadian provinces. And seven years ago, I decided to strike against family tradition and not pick up a bride at a family reunion and went on farmersonly.com and got myself an American farm girl. And we have four kids under and we live here in eastern Iowa. And I work with a lot of folks actually up in North Dakota. A lot of farmers and a lot of ranchers. So yeah, very familiar with a lot of folks up your way.

[02:42] Emmery: That's awesome. Sorry, I just got distracted by the farmersonly.com. That's an epic story.

[02:48] Andy: I tell you, everybody always thought, "Well, what's wrong with this boy? He doesn't go on a date more than three times with a girl and he's not interested in her." And I always said, "Well, I was holding out for the right girl." And it took me four dates in order for her to say yes. And we went on a date and I knew that, that was her first kiss and my last first date. And I tell you, four days later, she finally said yes. And we got married as quickly as possible after. And there's been no regrets. It's been happily ever after. So, yeah, farmersonly.com can work and it's way better than picking up brides at a family reunion.

[03:34] Emmery: That's awesome. Well, so Andy, I've recently, well, actually today had the privilege of finishing up a book that you wrote. Just talking about your approach to succession planning and your approach to working with stubborn farmers and how stubborn can be a good thing. It's not always a bad thing. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting was that you said that 77% of farms do not have a succession plan in place. And then you even went further on to say that of the 20-something percent of farms that actually have a plan in place, those plans are almost just put together at gunpoint with the kids and dad and the lawyer being like, "Okay, dad, you got to sign the paper now. You're gone." Or some version of that. I just thought that that was really interesting and maybe we could just start there.

[04:35] Andy: Yeah, basically 16 years ago, I wrote my first book. It was called "Farm Succession Shouldn't be Done at the Funeral Home." So I just never thought...I put on Amazon, never thinking I'd leave western Ontario. And western Ontario, for those of you who don't know, it's just like Iowa. It's corn, beans, it's really good fertile soil. Where I'm from in eastern Ontario is about 5 hours north and it is rough, rough, rough, rocky soil. But western Ontario is the same as Iowa. And that's where my friends were from. But the thing is that I got called out to deal with the most dire situations as a result of writing a book called "Farm Successions Shouldn't be Done at the Funeral Home." So a lot of situations where dad just wanted to avoid, he'd rather have hemorrhoids or there would be a lot of other things on the list that dad would rather have or do than to have to talk about succession planning. I think that for a lot of farmers, they affiliate succession planning with making funeral arrangements. And the biggest change we've had in technology and farming the last 50 years is the fact that farmers are lasting longer. 

And back in the 60s, when my grandpa was 60, he retired because his hips were shot and he bought a little house in town and did succession planning. But nowadays dad's going in for hip surgery. He's farming to his 80s or 90s. And I think if you want to farm to the day you die, I think that's awesome. But the problem is we have a lost generation. We have three, if not four generations farming together. And because this equipment is so darn expensive, it does not make sense every 23, 25 years to be splitting up the capital between siblings because nobody can work together. You got to keep the capital together in order to be able to afford the technology so you can have the economies of scale. 

Suddenly we've got a situation where we got too many cooks in the kitchen and everybody's stepping on toes and it's leading.... Miscommunication and egos is affecting a farm's bottom line more than markets and weather altogether. I just got off the phone yesterday with a guy, he's 67. His mom and dad are still alive. He doesn't own the truck he drives, he doesn't own the house he lives in. He owns nothing. It's still in mom and dad's name and they're in their 90s. And that is a serious problem. What we have is a situation where you're working all your life basically as indentured labor. It's all in mom's, dad's name and they don't want to do succession planning. And too often I see situations where a daughter in-law or son in-law says to their spouse, you're 34, 35, and you've been working here for 15 years on this farm. And we don't own the house we live in, we don't own the truck we drive. We own nothing. We've tripled the size of this operation last 15 years and land prices have tripled. And you've got three other siblings that are not farming at all. Your sister hasn't been in the barn 15 years. Why should we spend another 15 years basically as slave labor on this farm only to have find out that your mom is going to split the farm four ways equally because "love you all the same." I remember one girl, she said this in front of her in-laws in the middle of a succession planning  meeting. And she said to her husband right there, "I love you. You are the most common sense man I know, but this is freaking crazy." And she says, "Either we have a succession deal by Christmas or else I'm leaving and you can decide whether or not you're coming with me."

And that is where we're at in a lot of family farms. The husband in that situation felt between a rock and a hard place because everything he wanted was to farm. It was pretty obvious that him and his wife loved each other. But we're getting into situations here where the failure to do succession planning is just causing so much anxiety that a lot of young farmers, really middle age farmers, feel they're walking on quicksand because they do not know what their future is. There's a lot of folks that are not encouraging their 14-15 year old kids that are in 4-H and really passionate about farming, to consider farming because there's the fear we're going to be indentured with such debt in order to buy out our siblings. It's not fair to the grandkids and a lot of farm suicides -- this is not talked about -- a lot of farm suicides and farm bankruptcies are caused by **** poor succession planning where one of the non farming siblings is bought out at such an extraordinary expense by a 40 or 50 year-old farmer and 1015 years down the road, they can't afford the payments because their sister is driving a really nice boat. It's crazy, the scenario we have. So the way we're doing succession planning is completely broken. I think that I've been working the last 16 years figuring out a different approach to doing succession plan.

[09:35] Alisha: From what you just said, I have kind of a two part question. So my first one is, I stated my age that I'm 34. So a lot of conversations about people my age that are very frustrated with parents or owners of the farm not wanting to do any succession planning is getting it through the other person's head that it's not them that's going to suffer, because when they die, they die, they're not going to be here anymore. It's the people that are alive that are going to suffer and the fights are going to be between them. And so I guess that will kind of be my first part question, without being abrupt or throwing it in dad's face that when you do die, that this is all going to come back on us, that this is detrimental to the farm when we are all having to deal with it, because when you're gone, you're not here to give your opinion, you're gone. So how do you even bring up that conversation?

[10:35] Andy: Well, I have heard several people say it, and just the way you said it, and that conversation was dead in the water. The number one issue we have in agriculture that nobody's ever recognized is we have an issue with narcissism. It's basically unreasonable high sense of their own importance. When you're a successful businessman or farmer owner, you have salesmen coming onto the farm. They're there not to tell you what you need to hear. They're there to tell you what you want to hear in order to make the transaction. You have employees. You have many employees. And when you say jump, they say how high? And when you're surrounded in a world where basically you as a king are trying to move mountains, and your farmers, like your little fiefdom, where everybody around you is doing what you tell them to do, it's really easy to fall in that trap of not considering the needs of other people around you. And it's not just one person on the farm that's afflicted by this mindset. Usually there's two, three family members that are equally as affiliated. And we get so trapped up in thinking about our own perspectives that we fail to be empathetic or fail to understand the needs of other people. 

I remember distinctly there's this one moment where I approached a farmer in his 80s and he had four kids and it was just a succession planning mess about to happen. And his attitude was about doing estate planning is that when I die, it won't be my problem and they could fight about it when I'm gone. And what is the sense of a man building up an awesome family and an awesome family farm if in five years time neither is going to be around? And what we got to do is we got to change the mindset of the family farm from this being my farm to our farm, because that is essentially what's happening. 

Back when my grandpa retired at 60, he basically farmed for himself for about 25 years. But now you're working with two, three generations at a time. And what I believe is that over time, as a son and daughter come home to the farm, over time they should earn more and more shares in the family business over time as they earn it. Not being gifted, not out of entitlement, but because they earned it. Steve Jobs did not create Apple Computers because he owned all his shares and then he paid his employees. As soon as somebody worked for Steve Jobs for two, three years, he would want to keep that person around. So he would give them options to be able to buy into the company, share options over time, after they've proven their worth. Steve Jobs, as a result, had overpaid employees who felt entitled, but he had managers that really wanted the companies to succeed and grow forward. 

What we have is a situation in family farms nowadays where there are sons and daughters that are in the 40s and 50s and they have no ownership in the farm, and they are disillusioned about whether or not they'll have much ownership in the future of the corporation that they helped build. And at some point in time, they get into what I call a communist mindset. Basically, back in the 1970s, Russian agriculture versus American agriculture was completely different mindset of the farmers. And the reason why American agriculture was successful is because you, as the owner, owned the problems. It was your capital online. If you didn't go out and get the job done, you would lose the crop. And so you had a vested interest to go out and do whatever you had to do in order to make the crop work. 

In Russia, people got paid the same, no matter what. It's the same mindset. There's a lot of 40 and 50-year-old farmers these days, they're on salary, and they are adopting a union workers mindset where they don't really care if there's no succession plan in place, no incentive, why would I go to the extra effort at the age of 43 to double the size of my business, to have double the headaches? From the looks of way succession planning is going, my sister is just going to get a bigger yacht as a result. 

What I'm saying to you is the ownership structure is really dysfunctional. And this dysfunctional succession planning is creating dysfunctional decision making between the generations and just creating really dysfunctional individuals. A lot of what has made American agriculture work is having an owner's mentality, not an employee's mentality. And at this stage, we have a lot of sons and daughters who are in their 40s and 50s do not have any ownership and really starting to have an employee's mindset. So we've got to fix that. And so what I believe is that just the same as Steve Jobs would give stock options to potential managers once they prove the merit. I think that should happen from the first three or five years of the son and daughter come home to the farm. And it's what I call the 9000 hour rule. 

I started off doing this for kids that were just coming home from college I had a course called "Coming Home to Farm" and came up with a scenario for just kids that are coming home from college. And the 9000 hours rule is pretty simple. You work 3000 hours a year on the farm for three years straight, and each month you get a performance review. In each month you ask your parents, how did I do? In each month, your parents grade you for ten different attributes and you get feedback on how you can improve your performance. And if your parents feedback, for instance, is showing up to work half an hour late, show up to work a half an hour early the next month we're going to ask, did you actually show up to work on time? And over a 36 month period, I usually say 24 month period, but basically over, let's say, two years, that's 24 times that you have a performance review where you ask your parents, how can I either make a change to my belief system, like, for instance, having a mindset of entitlement where it doesn't matter what time I show up to work. Change your belief system so you show up to work on time a character flaw, which might be stop procrastinating on things, or skill deficiency, such as learning a skill in the farm. 

And each month you're making either changing the incorrect belief, a character flaw or skill deficiency. And you do that for 24 months or 36 months, you're going to take a successor that has potential and they're going to realize their full potential, and they're going to be a successor that anybody would hire regardless of whether or not they're a relative. And if you've got a successor that has a performance review and yet continues to not make those changes to their character, then we've got to have that difficult discussion. Are you passionate about farming or is there something else that you'd rather do? And that's an easy way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff as to who's going to be a manager that is going to take over multimillion dollar farm that took multiple generations to build up. That's a lot for one.....

[17:42] Alisha: So that resonates because last night I advise the NDSU collegiate Farm Bureau chapter. And so we went to a dairy last night as an industry tour, and they were explaining that after so many years or so many hours of work, they didn't go into detail, but that you can buy ownership into the dairy. And so essentially, the dairy that we were at was 98% owned by everybody that worked there, whether they were a milker, whether they chopped the silage, cleaned the barns, whatever it was they had the opportunity to buy into that dairy. And I think feeling valued is something that is so huge and so underlooked. Because when people feel valued, they want to stay and they want to do better and they want to improve. 

But if you don't feel valued, you want to leave. There's frustration, there's more fights. And they said, that is one of the biggest things that their dairy, why they run so smoothly and so efficient is because people have buy-in to the dairy because they have ownership in it and they want to make it the best that they can. And going back to talking about these family farms and some of the kids, they kind of giggled, and they were like, "My dad's been farming for his whole life and he doesn't even own anything." And that goes back to directly what you were saying is we have families that their kids have been working and they're 20, 30, 40 years old, and they have zero ownership in anything. And they essentially, like you said, are that slave to the operation. And eventually you get that in your mind, like, "What am I? Where am I at in my life? I'm 45 years old. I own nothing. My dad still makes all the plans, like, what am I doing with my life?" It really makes you sit back and think and can really kind of get in your head. And that whole depression cycle can set in.

[19:37] Andy: We have a higher suicide rate than war veterans returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. There's a reason for that. We blame the markets and the weather, but the truth is, everybody feels that they're walking on quicksand, and it's pretty hard to get your *** out of bed in the morning to go fix a combine if you don't know, why would I put the effort into fixing that combine and making it work if three years from now, I'm going to have to be buying that combine at an estate sale against my neighbors for a sibling that lives in California that hasn't been on the farm for 20 years. And why would I do this? If I take on the debt that this farm is actually worth on paper, I'd be putting my kids into burden of debt for the next 30 years. I'd be doing them a disservice. We have a situation that's crazy. 

My simple solution is this, is that I started off doing this with kids coming home to the farm after college. If you make one improvement a month over 24, 36 months, you guys decide the period of time. Two years, three years. I think at some point in time, you've got to earn the opportunity for you to become a partner. You've got to prove that you're a partner and friend, anybody we want to work with. Right. And that does not mean that you're going to give your son and daughter 25% of the farm when they're 27. I'm not even saying that they get any equity on that date. All I'm just saying is that, okay, going forward, I proven myself as a potential partner over the last three years. For the next 36 years, for each thousand hours I put into this operation, do I get a percentage of the farm's equity? Or you decide what the rule of thumb is and then extend that opportunity to your siblings as well. So that sister that's in California, she says, "Well, that's too much of an opportunity for my brother to be taking over a $10 million farm." Fine, come work here for three years, prove that you're a partner for anybody want to work with, and you can have the same opportunity. And that's how you get fair and equal, not based on somebody on their deathbed deciding which child they like more.

[21:44] Alisha: So that goes into the second part of my question is, with siblings, whether there's two or five or ten, some are going to want a farm, some are not going to want anything to do with a farm. But I know you said it doesn't come down to money, but sometimes it does come down to money. So what have you seen in your 16 years As there is no such thing as equal in my mind. And that doesn't, even if you have two kids, there is no way that splitting a farm will ever be 100% equal. So what have you seen have the highest success rate making things, I guess if you want to say fair to siblings that are on the farm doing all the work, to the siblings that have their own job, that aren't on the farm, but still have that emotional attachment to the farm and is like, "Well, just because I had to go off and get a job, I would have liked to come back, but there wasn't room for me," or "There's not enough income to support my family." How do you kind of see that working with the families that you've helped?

[22:49] Andy: We talk too much about splitting the pie. We don't talk enough about what was the recipe that made this business successful and how do we grow the pie. Let's say that back in 1996, you had a $5 million farm, and that's when all the kids left the farm for college in their careers. Right. And one or two of the kids came home after college and careers. To me, it makes sense if the farm was worth $5 million in, say, 1996, and now it's worth $20 million, that the farmers that are actually farming, they get a portion of the growth from the $5 million to the $20 million in higher proportion than their other siblings, and that they can buy out their non-farming siblings for the value of the farm when they left high school for college. And they do that for 30 years. So after mum and dad passes away, the non farming siblings are bought out by the farming siblings at the price of what the farm was worth the day they left high school. And they do that over 30 years. And that's a debt that most farms can afford and also ensures that the non farming siblings are paid for their inheritance. Right. But if you grow the size of the business, Steve Jobs, he didn't become successful because he said to his employees, "Hey, if you work for me for the next 30 years, I'll be nice to you at my funeral." There was a transparent deal in place after you worked there for a couple of years and you had the option at that time to either take it and work hard for the next 30 years or you had the opportunity to go on to a different career. And to me it makes sense. After two, three years, the son and daughter coming home proven that they're a partner and friend anybody would want to work with. To have that conversation, for your siblings to be part of that conversation so they see it's fair and if they want to be part of the farm in the long term, they can work under the same terms and work their way into the operation the same way. And you guys got to figure out how to make it work so it can support many households. But that's a realistic way of doing things instead of the nightmare scenarios we're seeing now. 

A lot of farmers that when I set up this program initially, I thought I'd just be setting it up for kids that are coming home to the farm. And what we found is 80% of the people that have called me about this program have been sons and daughters in their 40s and 50s. What I think is important is that when you're working cattle, you don't spook the cattle. You got to go in the pen in a calm way with a plan. You just can't be yelling back and forth, you can't be waving your hands around. Working cattle is the same way as doing succession planning. You got to go in in a calm, cool manner and don't spook the cows. If you go in trying to talk to dad about when he's going to die, that is not a conversation he wants to have, but what you can do. Let's say that one of your friends that you guys have is 35 years of age today. Okay? What I would suggest to him or her is that they say to their parents, "For the next six months, I want to go through performance review. And every month I want you to go through ten factors for a performance review and give me feedback so I can see objectively where I'm at. And then each month I want you to give me feedback on one thing I can work on. And if I consistently take that weakness and turn it to a strength for six months, then I want to start a two-year process where we all go through the same process and everybody becomes partner, friend, anybody want to work with." And after two years, we sit down for an afternoon and we do succession planning. And then we put it in the back burner for six months or a year. And then after a year, we get a deal in place. And it's not that I want at that moment to be entitled to having any inheritance. It's just that we got to have a transparent plan about how if I grow the size of this operation, that there's a vested interest for me to be a partner. 

Through that method, you can have three, four generations, have shares in a corporation, and simply put, as the sons and daughters put more and more value into the business, they own more and more stock. And there's a transparent plan as to when somebody passes away, how are those shares going to be divided in a way that nobody feels like they're walking on quicksand? And what I see through that process is two different things. 15 years ago, I'd be doing succession deals and get the parents herded into the lawyer's office and getting them signing the paperwork to pass over the farm to the next generation. And essentially, those moments were like a hostile takeover. There was a real question by a lot of parents, "Does my son and daughter, are they just going to run this farm in the ground?" And what you guys know about the third generation curse is it takes one generation to start a farm, second generation to grow it, third generation to **** it away. What I've seen is that parents are really good at transferring assets, but they're not very good at transferring wisdom. And so what I want to see, before we see, even start talking about the transfer of assets, I want to see a son and daughter that have potential realize their full potential. And farms are not, I mean, something like somebody procrastinating, something like somebody being passive aggressive. I don't care how good of a person you are, everybody's got 5% of their character that's flawed, and it holds you back from realizing 50% of your potential. And, for instance, I just had a farm, they farm over 10,000 acres. The son took over the ownership of the operation and lost half the land because he just wasn't very good at working with neighbors and working with landlords. The parents knew that, but they were forced in a shotgun deal where they had to get doing succession planning. The son rammed his way into taking over. It takes decades to build relationships with landlords. So for a son and daughter to learn that they have to work with people, son might be a really good mechanic, but just because you're a good mechanic doesn't mean that you're good working with people. Sometimes learning skill sets to turn your weaknesses, such as not being passive aggressive and being able to have crucial conversations with people and be able to proactively solve problems instead of yelling at people or blaming people. Those are the type of skill sets you got to fix first before we start talking about you becoming a partner. And so if you have 24 months, I tend to work with people for two years. So 24 months, we have monthly meeting where each son and daughter make one improvement of their character. At that stage, you've got a son and daughter that anybody would invest in, and they've taken their 5% of their habits, and they're not going to be perfect. But if we can reduce half your bad habits, you're going to have twice the potential that the farmer who's still going and growing 30 years down the road.

[29:43] Emmery: Well, and that goes back to a question I was going to ask earlier that you already answered was,"How do you start this conversation with dad without sounding entitled like, okay, dad, want a piece of your pie? Now, let's talk about how we're going to divvy that up between. Well, for example, I have nine other siblings, so, dad, how are we going to split that up between the ten of us?" And one of the complaints that my dad has had over the years is, and I don't think he's alone, I think a lot of people in his generation have the same complaint, is that my generation, millennials, particularly, are a very entitled group of people. Where we come at something, we're like, hey, we deserve part of this for whatever reasons we have, but for some reason come across as entitled, and maybe that's because we are. And so this whole idea of approaching the owners in the farm with a very, for lack of a better word, humble approach and saying, "Okay, so here I am. I'm interested. I've grown up here. I've put some work into here, but let's really take a step back. And Dad, you show me where I can grow. You show me where my, I might have character flaws. You show me the skills that I need to learn and working together." And so often when we behave a certain way, other people start copying that. So I can imagine a scenario where you're doing that for two years, where you're humbly coming to the owners, to mom and dad, to the siblings, and saying, okay, where can I grow? Where have I failed? How can I be better? Most likely they're probably going to start copying that. And I can imagine, like, in two years, you're going to have a very different group of people sitting down to talk about how do we really grow this business? Because it seems like really the difference is from how do we split this thing up to how do we grow this business into something that can provide for all of us? And even more.

[31:48] Andy: The bigger question is how do we work together better? Because like you said, I always say six months. Okay? So if your uncle Jack is abrasive to any suggestions about succession planning, because he's only in his 50s, he doesn't want to mention the word that he's getting old because he thinks of succession planning as having a foot in the grave. You say for six months, I just want to improve my performance, and anybody's going to jump at that opportunity. Right? And that's approaching things from a sense of humility. But the thing is, usually within a couple of months of doing this process, the parents and Uncle Jack, they jump on board with it going 360 degrees. Once they feel comfortable with the process and understand what it's about, used to these meetings, they see what it's about, then they'll volunteer to improve themselves. 

But I think what's really important is I had an aunt and she married the richest man in our hometown. He might have been rich, but he was a jerk. And she didn't stay married to him for very long. And just because you have a nice farm that's worth $10 million doesn't mean that anybody wants to work with you. Sense of entitlement has got to go 360 degrees around. If you want your son to carry you from your hospital bed into the combine to make sure that the last fall, that you've got cancer, but you still want to be able to harvest and your son and daughter want to involve you in day to day operations when at least have the respect to carry you from your hospital bed into the combine so you can go for a ride around field for an afternoon instead of being just concerned about their work. You've got to become the partner in front of anybody want to work with. And what I see in a lot of situations where there's a hostile takeover, they say, "Yes, dad, you could come work for us." But essentially Dad's got character flaws as well. And at some point in time, within six weeks or six months after the ink is dry, where the son and daughter have majority ownership of the farm, dad is no longer in the shop and he might have, on paper, a lifetime lease to live on that farm in the house. But essentially what it is is hostile takeover and you're not welcome. And that's the ugly, dark truth about the 23% of farms that do have a succession plan. There's a lot of cases where parents are not welcome in the shop. And to me that is the saddest thing for a man to spend his lifetime, 40, 50 years building up a family empire and to not be welcome in your own shop. That's why a lot of parents do not do succession planning, right? Because they feel that it's a fight for control. 

But the thing is, if you've got everybody for two year window, making one improvement in their character, you're not going to fix all your character flaws, but you're going to reduce the things that cause friction, the things cause frustrations, you're going to reduce that by 80% and you're going to actually go from being a family where everybody's out for themselves to everybody's doing what's right for the family. Instead of succession planning meetings where everybody points fingers at each other and nobody's looking the three fingers pointing back at them. What I'm concerned about is over that two year window, that 24 meetings, everybody making one improvement to their character. You're still going to have character flaws, but you're going to have a family environment where everybody can work together. And it's not an issue of control of the farm, it's how do we work better together. And if you can have that attitude within your family, then you're going to be farming together as a family. Even if when grandpa has less ownership at the farm because his sons and grandsons worked hard and built equity in the operation, grandpa's still going to be welcome at the table because he has evolved, he's become an actualized person. All his negative bad habits and how he's stubborn. He's learned to be stubborn on himself and turn his bad habits into good habits and be the partner in front anybody want to work with. And I think that's important for the successors to do as a first step. But I think that has to go 360 degrees around. 

And we have to stop talking about the family farm and actually become family farm, a real family farm, not just a corporation. And that's the fundamental philosophy that I have is every month, everybody makes one improvement to your character. Over time, the mindset of the farm goes from me, me, me to we. We get rid of all the sense of narcissism. Everybody's empathetic and humble and looking out for the good of everybody. So we're doing what's good for the family. We're not just looking out for a number one interest. 

And the third thing I'm looking at doing is joint decision making. And I set a rule that every meeting I have with family farms, you come to the table with an idea to improve farm efficiency but it can't cost more than $1,000, at least for the first six months. And the idea is just to improve how you work together, improve your management efficiency. And if every meeting you have over 24 months, you make one suggestion on how to prove the efficiency, it's either going to be a good idea that improves the efficiency of the farm, or it's a dumb idea and your uncle Bill tells you why. Right now, for a lot of family farms, all you hear is Uncle Bill telling you why, but you're not picking up what he's saying. As soon as you get a hold of the reins of the farm, you're going out and doing exact opposite what Uncle Bill has done for the last 30 years, because you think you know better. 

If you make one improvement to the efficiency of the farm, grandpa comes to the table with an idea, granddaughter comes to the table with an idea. Half the ideas you're going to have suggested are going to be good ideas that improve efficiency of the farm. The average farm meeting that we have, we make between $3,000 and $10,000 in 1 hour. Just improvements, little tweaks here and there in the operation. And half the ideas are dumb, and we're explaining why. So we're transferring not just assets. Before we start talking about the transfer of assets, we're transferring wisdom. 

The way to learn to drive is by being behind the steering wheel, not being a backseat driver. And we have a lot of sons and daughters. They're in their 40s and 50s. and they're backseat drivers, and they are always constantly criticizing what their parents are doing. But if you come to the table with ideas to improve the efficiency of the farm, and you're able to have a really good discussion and be able to weigh the pros and cons, because I'm there to be able to facilitate that conversation, not just Bill saying, that's a dumb idea and that's the end of the discussion. Me forcing Uncle Bill to explain why it's a dumb idea, to make sure that this next generation understands that. By that happening, you'll transfer wisdom and you'll come to consensus about how we're going to operate this business for the next 30 years. And you can be certain that regardless of how much you work on the operation for the next 20 years, you can be assured that the farm will be managed with the same wisdom that you develop over the next two years in those family meetings for the next 30 years, and it will triple the probability of your family still farming 30 years down the road. 

And what it does also at the same time is it gets rid of that sense of arrogance that we have. We all have this attitude on, I'm smarter than you. If you have a family meeting where you suggest an idea and you learn to actually listen to why your Uncle Bill thinks it's a dumb idea, you get rid of that sense of arrogance. You get a sense of humility instead of having fights over power and control, too, and start making smarter decisions together as a family. I want to see that happen. I mean, if we can squeeze out 10% improvement in efficiency each year over the next two years by having these discussions, then we can talk about where the farm is going to be ten years time. If you have a ******* contest, you can't make 10% improvements of your efficiency here and there. There's no way in heck that you could talk about strategic planning, where the farm is going to be in ten years time. We got to get rid of the stubborn first. We got to get everybody to stop being stubborn with each other, and we got to get everybody be stubborn at listening to each other and being stubborn at doing the right thing. What's good for the long term of the family, not just for me.

[39:27] Alisha: I think those are two of the key things that I just took away from you that I hadn't really thought about are the joint decision making and the transferring of wisdom. Because when you think about it, when it comes down to it, when the people under the boss are not being involved in that and dad or uncle or grandpa are purchasing this or doing that, and you weren't involved, and you had ideas, you feel undervalued. And like, what your opinion, what you have to offer means nothing. And then it goes back to the other side of the table where the younger generation, if they are taking over, and they are more of the bosses and kicking dad, grandpa, uncle off, like, oh, we don't really need you here. We got this under control. Well, now they're feeling undervalued. Like, hey, I've been doing this for 80 years and I want to share this with you. And now you see no value in me because you're the head boss. And so those are two really key things that I just took away that I hadn't really thought about how they tied in so quickly and how that can become a hostile environment. And then going back to what you were saying with the succession planning is, a lot of people are like, oh, yes, we did our succession planning AKA, "I took my son to the bank and we transferred $10 million." That's not succession planning. It's so much more than just transferring funds over to somebody else or whatever that may be, that it is truly the work ethic of wanting to improve your operation yourself, who you work with, and making it a good environment to be around so that you can, number one, make your operation be profitable, and then also something that everybody who works there is proud of.

[41:14] Andy: Yeah, I think the thing is that I just had a father and son in Ohio yesterday go out and buy gravesites. I mean, all this talk about farm succession planning, it's like making funeral arrangements. And I have a whole different perspective on things. The first piece of land I think that a son and daughter should buy is not the neighboring farm that's worth a million bucks. I think it should be that cemetery plot, $300, not just for himself, but for his family members. And my question is that for your Uncle Bill and you to have grave sites beside each other, it changes the whole perspective. Okay, we're here on this earth. We don't know how long we're going to be here. I might be dead in a farm accident two weeks from now, but what is it that I want to be doing with my time here on earth, and what are we doing together as a family? It's not just my individual needs. We're going to be buried in this cemetery plot that's probably 3 miles down the road from the home farm, and we're going to be farming this land as stewards of land for the next 30 years, for our lifetimes. Right. What do we want to do between now and then? And the bigger question I got is what my focus is on is if we're going to be buried 5 ft from each other, how do we create the evolve the family culture so that we always want to be 5 ft from each other when we're alive? How do we work better together? My mission statement, I don't sell life insurance, I don't sell financial plans. I can bring in people from any state. I can get you the best in the state. We can have that three-hour conversation with those people. We got to first of all get it to the point that we can sit down and have intelligent conversations with each other. But more importantly, day to day, we got to get in this mindset that we enjoy working beside each other. So it doesn't matter who has more shares in the corporation. What matters is that we are taking the world on together as a family. And to me that's what a family farm is. And we've lost perspective on things when we get fighting over shares. 

And I think that's the key thing, is that if you want to pass over your grandma's farm to your grandchildren, we got to learn to actually share. When we're playing in the sandbox behind the house, we got to apply the principles grandma taught us and just apply it to working together as a family. And that's what I help folks do. I act like grandma. I just help them take how they work together from good to great. And I want to do that over a two-year period and in a couple of hours we can do succession planning. After that it's easy and we can bring in the best financial experts from across your state and get a deal done within a couple of hours. But first of all, I want to make sure that it doesn't matter who has more shares in the safe that we're going to enjoy farming together for the next 40 years.

[43:54] Emmery: Do you have anything else, Andy, that you want to make sure to add on here.

[43:59] Andy: There's just two things. You can listen to the audiobook for free. So just go to my website, www.stubborn.farm and I'll text you a link within five minutes after you sign up and we'll just send you a text. It's a two hour and 45 minutes book. You guys can speak to the book. I have an audiobook format because who reads these days? It's a book that anybody can read, listen to just the same as you listen to this podcast. And it takes about 2 hours and 45 minutes. And if you like it, you can share it with your family members. But in the actual hard copy the written copy of the book in the back, I have basically, like, a new year's pledge and where I get you to say to your family members, "Okay, I recognize I have this fault, and you just fill in the blanks. And I'm going to work on this one fault for the next 30 days, and then I'm going to buy you breakfast at Mel's Diner. And if I don't have made this change my character in the next month, then I got to tip the waitress $100." And your partner will laugh. I don't care how good of a farmer you are. You might tell everybody you're perfect, but everybody knows something that frustrates your partners. And for you to take the knee, be humble, and approach your partners instead of a sense of pride, with a sense of humility, and say, "Hey, I want to make one improvement. And then I want to have a conversation. I want you to listen to this book over the next month, or read this book, and let's talk about it." That's the way you get things going. And I would just approach this as a New Year's resolution on Groundhog Day, February 2. Because, let's be honest, during the month of January, we're kind of in a coma as farmers because it's too **** cold outside. Right? The real new Year starts February 2. Right. So the thing is, just approach it like a New Year's resolution, not like a succession planning battle. Just approach this like a New Year's resolution and say, "Hey, in the next six months, I want to take my character from good to great, and I'd like your feedback on a monthly basis. If this works, then whenever you feel like you're open to making improvements yourself, let's all try to be the partners and friends we want to be and so that we can have the family farm we want." It's a mindset of actualization. And so that's basically the last message I have for you. My question is, "What are you going to do today so your great grandkids can farm someday?" And it's not by you telling your partners what they have to change. It's a matter of you asking with humility, "What do I have to change? How can I become a better man so that I become the partner for anybody when I want to work with?"

[46:33] Emmery: And I'll just go on to reiterate that Alisha and I both listened to Andy's book that he had on YouTube, free audiobook, and just both enjoyed it immensely. Wish that we could shove the whole thing into this short little podcast here, but really would encourage listeners out there to go check out his website at stubborn-dot-farm...

[46:55] Andy: www-dot-stubborn-dotfarm. 

[46:58] Emmery: There you go. Or reach out and shoot him a text message and we'll go ahead and link all that information in the show notes and you guys can access it there. But really appreciate your time today, Andy. Appreciate your own openness and sharing your story. It just is crazy and kind of sad and really an eye opener for what can happen when family relationships and family farm relationships don't go well. And we just encourage you guys to check that out. And then just the way that Andy takes his wisdom and his experience and really shares that with the listeners and you've definitely shared that with us today. So I really appreciate that. 

And my parents have a house down in Arizona and I actually tomorrow morning am leaving to go visit them for a few days. And I know that one of the things Dad wants to talk about is the future of the farm. And so Dad's probably going to fall over backwards, but I go to him and say, "Hey, Dad, I want to spend the next six months working on my character, and I want you to every month give me a character review and tell me where I can improve." And that's going to be so different than the conversation we had last year, which was, "Dad, you're doing all these things wrong on the farm," that I don't even know what he's going to say. So I'll let you know how that conversation goes.

[48:17] Andy: I do a lot with folks up in North Dakota. I mean, Zoom, I rarely go out to the farm. I go out there a couple of times over the course of the two-year period I work with your family just to have pie and to just shake hands and get to know you. But I do it all over Zoom, and we do it just through weekly and monthly meetings over Zoom. And I find that we can make little changes over time that's way better than trying to make all the changes in one afternoon. And that's how you avoid World War three. But if you're ever down in Cedar Rapids on the way to Arizona, be sure to drop by. We'll have a pie together.

[48:55] Emmery: Awesome.

[48:55] Andy: Yeah, that sounds great.

[48:57] Emmery: Awesome. Thanks, Andy. 

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[49:00] You've been listening to Straight Talk with NDFB. You can learn more about Andy Junkin and Stubborn Farm by visiting www-dot-stubborn-dot-farm. You can also find us at ndfb-dot-org.

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