Mind Your Farm Business — Ep. 106: Taming the beast — Scaling the farm business for profitability

Foreign. Business on RealAgriculture.com is brought to you by RBC Royal Bank. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mind you'd Farm Business podcast, brought to you by RBC Royal Bank. I'm your host, Shaun Haney of Real agriculture dot com. Today we're taking on a question that's top of mind for farms of all shapes and sizes and geographies. How do you scale or grow your business? Now, this question is incredibly important, especially in an economic environment where margins are tight and decisions carry more weight than ever. Now, to get into this topic, I'm joined today by Evan Schout. He's president of Maverick Ag and co founder of Farmer Coach. Evan works with farms across the country in Canada, Canada and the United States, helping owners define growth, improve profitability, and make smart, scalable decisions. And here's the twist. Today, growth doesn't always mean more acres or more animals. For some, it means better returns with fewer headaches, building more time for family, or even more importantly, maybe diversifying risk. In this episode, Evan breaks down what scaling a farm business really looks like today in 2025, the risk to avoid. And knowing your numbers and your limits is critical to success. Let's get to it. It's the Mind your Farm Business podcast. Enjoy. Evan, welcome to the Mind your Farm Business podcast. Thank you, Shaun. Okay, we are going to talk today, but I think a question or a topic that a lot of farms are going through now, this isn't just a question for the largest of operations. This can be the same question for the smallest of operations. It's how do I scale or grow my business in times like this? Now, I know you work with a lot of farm business owners is do you see people struggling with this question? Yeah, obviously. I mean, I have a business revolves around this question, to be fair, Shaun, it's come up and I think the biggest difference is that 10 years ago it was, how do I buy acres? That's not the conversation anymore. It's how do I scale my business? And that might be in acres. It might be in diversified lines. It might be in new niche products. It might just be, how do I get more time with my kids? Like, the. The answer of a scalable business has changed dramatically from when I started farming. Because when I started farming, it was get more land. Get more land, get more equipment, size up. And with the economics we have now, that. That's a totally different discussion. And every farm's independent now. Yeah. Like how. How do I scale my business? Could be just how do I create more profitability based on my output, based of workload. Right. Well, well. And that's what we're finding. I mean as margins tighten. That's actually probably the bigger discussion is before you even try to scale is how can I get more profitability out of. What I'm currently doing is there's lots of farms that have consolidated to a point where maybe they're comfortable. One family, two families involved. It's with these exploding costs and tighter margins and commodity volatility. It's how do we actually make a go of this and make more money with what we currently have without having to stick our necks out and take on more risk? Okay, so we're, we're going to try to provide some practicality to this, not just the theory. So I guess let's start with the what, what are things we shouldn't do? Like what comes to mind for me is being adding way too much risk for what, you know, your cash flow or your maybe much money in your bank. It can't sustain the risk. You're. That's way out of whack. That's one thing. What comes to mind for you. Yeah, I think obviously, I mean weigh the risk. I mean make calculated risks is what we like to call it is instead of just growing because you have an emotional attachment to your land, which seems to be a lot of what the growth factor is, is that quarter touches land I already have or the quarter across the road from the farmers for sale and let you have to buy it. There's no other option. Generational opportun. Yeah, yeah. And I've been waiting for that land for 20 years and it finally came up. So we're buying it no matter what and we're going to bid as high as it'll go. And it, it's got to be a calculated risk. So if you can cut the emotion out of the decision making, know the numbers, know the ratios and I, I hate sounding like an accountant and you forced me to go there right away, but it's, you have to understand what it's going to do to your business because taking on three quarters of land, you might be making no money off that or you might be going backwards. And yes, control of land is nice and it's real estate and if it appreciates, you might get a return there. But these are all questions and discussions you have to have before making that decision. And I feel that's where most make the error is they go after the land then try to fix the decision after. Yeah, you know, I Know, a farm, and these are rough numbers, but they went to like 15,000 acres, a dad and son, and they figured out they were more profitable, about 8,000 acres than 15, roughly speaking. Right. So they knew their numbers and they figured out, you know, they scale, like you said earlier, scale came with a different definition than they originally thought. Yeah. And, and I mean, that can come in a whole bunch of different ways. Right. Like we've always talked about economic units on machinery, for example, is growing by 1,000 acres is actually probably the worst thing some farms can do because it adds another whole line of equipment. Or you have to grow with those economic units, especially at the cost of the equipment we have today. But then also there's the human capital side, is, as you said, once you get to 15,000 acres, our benchmarks are somewhere in that 2,000 acres a person. Well, now you're running a team of seven or eight people. And not to be a bit downside, but farms weren't taught how to do human capital and HR in school. So all of a sudden your team goes from you and your son to you and your son and four or five employees. And, and how do you do goal setting and how, like it's a whole different atmosphere and if you're not ready for that growth or if you grow, then try to find the people. You find out there's a lot of other issues outside of just financial that tend to hurt you on scaling. And, and maybe I kind of jumped ahead here. Like, maybe there's some like, broader questions we need to ask ourselves besides, hey, we gotta scale this place. It's kind of like, okay, like what is, what is the actual long term vision for this? For, you know, the business or, you know, the business, the, the, the operating family, like those kinds of things, those are, those sound kind of like 300,000ft in the air. But that kind of drives what the, what the outcome is going to be. Well, I mean, something as simple as what are the values that the family or farm wants to follow. Right. Like what are we trying to do? Are we trying to be the 100,000 acre conglomerate institutional farm or are we just trying to be 7,000 acres and we can have three families working together? Like without those long term goals, you're creating a strategy without any journey or any destination. And that doesn't work either. So I mean, a lot of what we do with clients, the first step is actually writing down on paper what that goal might be, because a lot of farms have it in their head, but you got three generations working together and the oldest has a goal in their head and the youngest has never heard it. And like it's one of the downfalls of a lot of farms that we see is that there is no long term planning. It's just go, go, go and you're busy and you put a crop in and get it off as fast as you can. And oh, we made profit this year. We didn't. There, there has to be a long term vision, especially if you're ready to scale and expand. Okay, so say we, we figure that those goals out and we decide that we need to scale because maybe there's another kid coming back and more, you know, that we, we, it can't, you know, this place can't sustain two families. It, it's, it's a one family kind of operation. So we, we got to scale there. Maybe we want to diversify our, our, our risk or whatever that is. Is, does it start at the, does it really start at the finances? What are we capable of doing? Like how much equity we have, what kind take on to make this happen? Like are, is it, does it really start to the finances? As the accountant I want to say yes, but to be fair, it probably starts at the ability of the ownership. Right. So, so can, can we actually, do we have the capabilities to do this? I mean do we have a business mindset? Do we have the production capacity? Do we have people that can fill all the roles that this is going to take? I mean farming's complex. You, you're going to be the janitor, the CEO, the marketer, the procurement, you're going to do all that stuff and you might do it within one day. So I think that's number one is just make sure we know our capabilities before making that judgement. And then number two, it's always the finances. It's our can we actually afford it? That's number one. It's not do we want to, it's can we afford it and if we can't afford it, what do we have to do? Or what do we have to give up? Because lots of farms try to expand and they go on land and equipment and people and everything all at the same time and you're going to learn that, that, that really hurts. So most of my guys, if their goal and their diversity is to go for land, they might not be able to roll their equipment every year or every second year, every third year because they're going to put most of their leverage into their land. But some guys would rather grow more bushels on the acres they have so we'll go into technology, we'll go into equipment. Well then you're probably going to have to scale back on your land expansion. So it's, it's always a tug of war both back and forth, but it, it always starts at the ownership capabilities. It always does. Yeah. And you know, the, the what your operational capacity, you're like what, what, what are you really good at? And do you have the people around you to fill some of the gaps? And you know, on, on RealAg Radio on the Thursday show in the former Rapid fire, we talk. I, I've, I've talked to a number of growers across the country that talk about the, their growth, like what they've seen, what they've done and we've talked about the land piece a little bit or you know, more animals, like, you know, more head. There's also the people that have grown like trying to move vertically, integrate. Right. So, and, and I have a few that have said to me like, you know, they, they're, they're, they have some cattle, you know, they, they figure out to get them butchered and cut and they're trying to sell into the restaurant market or sell direct to consumer. And they'll always talk about how, man, that's a different set of skills. And, and man, I underestimated what I was getting myself into and is this hard? And some are able to make it work and some are like, yeah, that was fun. I learned a lot. Chalk it up to a really expensive education and I'm gonna try something else. Right. And so there, that's where you really have to look at your operational capacity is when you're moving outside of something, you know what it, when the thing that, that you're going to do next is different than what you got you to where you are today. That's where you really got to ask those tough questions. Well, and let's be fair, a lot of farms are very successful these days. I mean, I know lots and, and they, they don't all follow our method of you have to be a business and blah, blah. They've grown really good crops, they're really good producers. But then like you said, if you go up or down the vertical chain or even horizontally, you, you're going to find skill sets that you might not have. And I've always tried to say, like, do what you do best, hire out the rest, right? Like you, you're a good producer, you're good at running the family farm. You've done it. You learn generations. That's where your Education is hire other people if you're going to go up or down that chain or at least have the right advisors in your corner, because you're right. It's a whole different business model. I mean, if you went to retail or if you went down the other way to storage agreements for elevators or run a consult or run a consulting and a coaching firm, like, there's a totally different set of skills required to do all of those jobs and the chance of one individual being able to do them all and, and knowing enough to, to invest in them all. It's just a whole different skill set. Yeah. In today's world, too. Are there technologies that can help me? Oh, right. And of course, everybody jumps to artificial intelligence and stuff like that, but, you know, are there technologies that allow us to maybe do this better or different or like, what's our, you know, how can we help ourselves in that regard that you got to kind of go through that evaluation as well. Yeah. And I mean, we're finding it simpler, I guess, as technology comes in. And what I mean by that is it used to be you had to be part of the farm every single day to understand what was going on. So you needed to be out there with the guys to know who's repairing what, or you needed to see the financials. Or like nowadays with tech and with AI, we're able to get dashboards or we're able to get information much more quickly. And it's accessible, I mean, to my phone. So I know what's going on at the farm, and I'm five and a half, you know, five hours away. But I could tell you what they're doing today, and I could tell you what the numbers look like today, and I could tell you what the markets have done today. Like, that's the X access to information that we currently have. So now all of a sudden I can concentrate on the consulting side or I can concentrate on the vertical integration or the cattle or, or some type of other business model. Because I had so much access to information so quickly, I don't need to spend all my time focusing just on the production side of the farm. And for me, I, you know, talk for a living. So I find benefit in bouncing ideas off trusted people where somebody can tell me, dude, that is dumb, don't do that. Or like, have you thought about, you know, have you thought about this? You know, or, hey, you should talk to this person, because I, I know they did something similar or they may have some perspective from what they did, what they do at their job. Like having that trusted group of people that you can bounce some stuff off of, especially when. Especially if you're an eye in the disc profile like I am. I got a new idea every week and I. I sometimes need somebody to bring me down to, to the ground floor. So having that trusted group, I think is critical. And to be fair, I mean, not to say the pandemic did positives for us, but the one thing it did do is it made it so that we could communicate through technology much more easily. And especially on the agriculture side, I mean, farmers did not use Zoom before we had to. And all of a sudden, I mean, I started Maverick with Christian right in the middle of the pandemic. I had clients I'd never seen in person and we dealt with on Zoom and through digital. So, I mean, what we found is that getting those advisory boards together and speaking with your advisors and having this direct communication like you and I are having right now, it became so much easier that all of a sudden you could put a whole bunch of really smart people onto one phone call or one Zoom call and you were getting answers, you were getting whiteboards. And I mean, our number one feature at the farm that guys ask about, it's not the tech, it's not the people, it's the whiteboard wall that we painted, because that's where 90% of our work gets done is guys write it on the whiteboard and we go through all our discussions and our. I mean, the number one tool that Christian, Jeff and I utilise to make our leadership discussions is a whiteboard, because that's where most of the information comes from. We'll get back to this episode of the Mind you'd Farm Business podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor, RBC Royal Bank. This episode of the Mind you'd Farm Business podcast is brought to you by rbc. Your idea of tomorrow's success happens here. When it comes to growing your operation, making strategic investments, or securing the future of your farm, RBC and their team of experts are ready to help you chart the course. They'll work with you to develop a personalised plan that sets your goals in motion. Ready to take the next step? Visit rbc.com agriculture and get started today. Yeah, that feels incredibly easy to access and tangible, I think for a lot of people that are. That are listening and, you know, I think, you know, originally we were talking about, like, what are the goals of the business and what's your, you know, your family business vision and all that kind of stuff. But as the driver of it and maybe that's you, or maybe that's like a group of people. Like in your, in Christian's case, you got to ask yourself like, okay, what are we actually trying to accomplish here? Are we doing this for the good of the business or are we doing this because of external pressures or what people expect us to do? And I think Evan, in a lot of small communities, and this is like, this is not just an ag thing, this is just an entrepreneur thing, is where people feel there's an expectation they need to be always growing this growth mindset. And maybe that's not for you. Maybe what you have going is exactly what you, is the perfect size. A personal evaluation here, I think is, is a something, a practise you need to go through. Well, I mean going back to it, like when we started the coaching courses, the number one thing guys wanted was more time. They, they built, they built these monsters. And to be fair, they're monsters. I mean we have a complex farm. Even at 3 to 5,000 acres, you're in charge of everything. So now scale that up to 15 or 20. All of a sudden you're missing baseball games with your kids or you're missing family events. Most of our guys, it wasn't the scalability of just land. They wanted more time. So they wanted to know how they could build a team or they could get people in that are qualified and they could trust. And I mean the biggest one was the guilt factors. Can you actually leave a day during seating and trust your employees and not feel like they're sitting there saying, well, I'm working and he's gone? Right. The guilt factor is real. And honestly, it's probably the number one thing guys talk about is when they start scaling their business, if they get to that point where they can take some time away with the family. Most still have their cell phone beside them and most still take phone calls. It's funny, like somebody needs to call me. Like somebody call me. Like, why is my phone so quiet? It's very uncomfortable. But you just hit on. I had a friend who, their family had a, you know, a medium sized farm and he, he, he tried to really grow it or his intent was to grow it so that he could get some more staff around him so he wasn't so tied to the absolute like every nail going into a fence post and, but he knew he had to get bigger in order to justify that, that, that, that, that strategy, right? Otherwise his, you know, his people cost is too much compared to what the farm size is. And that's not being a good farm manager. So there's, everybody's driven for, for, for different reasons. Well, and it's no different in agriculture than any other industry. I mean, we have key man issues in agriculture. And the question comes up a lot of the time, if, if something happened to you tomorrow, can the farm still operate? And, and the honest answer for most farms in Canada and the US Is no, because, because you are the sole decision maker or you are the one that knows where all the passwords are, or you're the one who knows the crop rotation. I mean, we, we have a very large key man issue in ag. And that's mostly why guys want to scale, to be fair, is they can't, they can't be in control of everything. Right. If they are. I mean, I read, we read the book Built to Sell and it's solely based on this is you're building a business, AKA a farm or a livestock farmer, product, grain production, but you're building it in a way that it could be sold. And if you're the key man and it doesn't operate without you, that's not a sellable business other than the assets. Right. I was just going to say that, you know, one of the differences here, if you look at entrepreneurs in general, I've been to a number of different entrepreneur conferences and there's some really annoying things about those kinds of meetings. And one of them is, is that people don't even, they have an idea, they have no revenue, but they're already figured, they've already figured out a multiple and what they're selling the business for. It's like it's, you've got three businesses going. It's like all this kind of, it's, it's sort of annoying in, in the case of agriculture, a lot of people, like I get the, you're building to sell, but you're really like, you're, you're building a structure around you, but it probably is to create more of that family legacy that's going to be, you know, you're putting your stamp on it to move to the next generation who will put their stamp on it, who hopefully will get to the next generation. So it is a little bit different, but we're kind of motivated. Building it to sell is not actually to sell it, it's actually to hand it off to the next generation in a really, really good state. Yeah, it's not handing it off to the next generation as a monster because that was the biggest fear of a lot of guys that I work with. Is we've created something so large and because a lot of these farms have scaled to that certain size, it's probably too big for me to pass on and not overwhelm the next generation or be too large. And I mean, and then if you want to go even further, I mean guys say oh well you know what if the next generation doesn't come back, I'm just going to sell it. Well if all of a sudden every farm in Saskatchewan And Alberta is 30,000 plus acres, who's buying them and who's buying the infrastructure to go with it? Because you've probably built a Binyard for 30,000. Like we're getting to the point where scaling and even at a 5 or 10,000 acre at today's land prices, we've scaled a lot of these farms to the point where it's easy to say I'm just going to sell and leave the money to the next generation if they don't want to farm and there's not enough buyers, if everybody has that same sentiment. So I think we're running into is we have created monsters and, and it's really hard. Whether it's complexity for the next generation or it's just too big of an asset to sell. We're going to have to have some real conversations on this going forward. Yeah. And I think, you know, some people get mowed. Like I don't want to get trapped into where it's only the largest farms that go through this because also small, the, you know, the smaller end of the equation and mid size, the scale's just different. Right. Like, and it can be, in some ways it can be even a more of a significant aggressive growth plan, relatively speaking. Like it's actually really, it's fascinating. I don't everybody's situation be different but in some ways like going from small to medium might be is, is like much different than like medium to large. And those are very big generalities. Much, much harder. It is, it is. Okay. What so talk about that. So, so once you get to a certain size and I mean don't get me wrong, we went through this going from even 7 to 15, 15 to 20. There, there was hurdles in there because you, you're not of that size where all of a sudden you have a big team and the economies of scale and the equipment, like there was some ceilings we hit but going from 20 to 40, which seems astronomical. The team was there, the processes were in place that all you did was add people and you already had good people to train them. It wasn't you doing everything. Like, there is some ease as you get large enough to scale. It's no different like a Walmart. The first couple of stores probably weren't that easy. The next 300, yeah, it got easier where what we find is the family farms, where it's, you know, Maybe it's a 2,3000 acres and you got two kids coming back. So now we got a scale to have a size that we can have all three families. That first scale, whether it's financially or whether it's roles and responsibilities or processes in place so that everybody knows what they're doing and not jumping on each other and stepping over each other, those are the hard hurdles. Once you get to have a full team and third party, you know, employees and stuff, it gets easier. You know, I was just thinking roughly, like we were back when our family was farming, say 5,000 acres in around Picture Butte area. Then we take on my mom's side of the family, they have 2800 acres of dry land 45 minutes away, right? That was a big scale because there was, you know, all of a sudden there was greater distance. It was all dry land. Not irrigation, like, was like, not. There was the equipment side of it and the people side of it, but there also was like the, the mindset. Like it was, it was a, it was different farming, right? Like different climatic conditions, different inputs, different what the expectations were, the, the revenue per acre. Like, I remember those first couple years, man, it was, it was, it was a, it was, it was a, it was, it was, it was challenging, like, just to get to do it right. Well, and you're learning a new business essentially, right? Like you've, you've grown up around. I'm growing canola wheat, and here we go. And then all of a sudden you move and you plot farm somewhere where all of a sudden you're into pulses or you're into irrigation. And, and those, those aren't easy just to jump. Like, those are new skill sets. And to be fair, how many hours does it take to learn a skill? I mean, we've gone over this with sports and everything else. It's not an EAS jump in and, and know something. So even the guys who I'm finding aren't scaling because of acres because they're too expensive. They're getting into irrigation or pedigreed seed or cattle or whatever it might be. Those aren't easy leaps. Like, that's a whole new business line. And I, I mean from even our businesses here. I mean, jumping from consulting into coaching or Coaching into insurance or whatever it was their whole new business lines. The only way that I was able to do it was to hire people that already knew what they were doing. They were doing. Yeah, because that, that was the only way I wasn't going to all of a sudden know the insurance industry inside and out. You know, it wasn't going to happen. You, you and I did a session at Crop Production show and it was supposed to be about diversifying your business. And it went off the rails. It went off, yeah. Like, not surprised. It was fun. It was a great, it was a great work. It was fun and somebody had asked it that. And I've had this question a couple of times through the winter. You know, we've seen a lot of specialisation in agriculture where people like, you know, mostly it feels like, you know, the move that everybody talks about is getting out of cattle and you know, we just crop farm now. Well, now crop farming is, you know, a bit of a down cycle. Cattle are outstanding. And so people have asked, you know, because there's people that chase the, you know, chase the dollar, what's good, right? Y And so, you know, I, I wonder, will we see more farms becoming that mixed farm of different shapes and sizes again into the future? I, I don't know if I personally have a feeling or a theory on that, but that's also, that's also scaling is, you know, just getting back into old fashioned diversification. And, and I think, Shaun, the conversation that doesn't happen enough is probably the ROE conversation or return on investment or return on equity. Because even with land prices where they are, I've had guys who have gone after high rental rates because we had 15, 16, 20 canola, right at those rental rates I can make money. They didn't scale up the equipment, they kept the equipment stagnant where it was and they were going to push it. And if in two years, if the industry got tight, which it has, that land, that was just a play for a return. If we got to give it, if we got to let it go, we'll let it go. And, and that's a new concept in agriculture because of the emotional tie to real estate. We've always said, well, you don't give up land, you never give up land. Well, it's a short term play for money and a high return. And as long as you don't push your other metrics, your equipment, your labour, all that stuff into a different spot, you made a few bucks off that land. You didn't put a whole bunch of fertiliser down because you knew it was a short term rental and all of a sudden it doesn't make sense anymore. And then it also gives you the leverage on some of those discussions because now that renter, either he's got to go find a new landlord or he's going to come down to play in the tighter margins and have to drop. Which we haven't seen yet. But it's those discussions of it's based on return. It's not this emotional tie that we have that I find agriculture's had for a long time is where's the dollar? Can we chase it without over capital and over pushing ourselves? And then if we have to get out and pull back, we pull back. Yeah. In a lot of corporate settings they'll talk about their internal hurdle rate which is basically what return are we going to do? We need to get on this to say yes to this project. Right. 100%. There's floors of accounts to do that kind of work and remind all of us why we don't want to be an accountant. Well and the problem is we're in a very highly capital intensive industry. That's the one thing that agriculture has. It's a little bit different than most of our other industries. We have to put out a lot of dollars just to put the crop in. And that's equipment, that's labour, that's infrastructure, that's land. And with those. Which is why sheep like as an example or more people getting into go seriously that, that because low cost, low cost of entry. Yeah. And no different. I mean our consulting, a couple computers, that that's what it was. It was a diversification for us. That took a skill set which I had and which some of our team had and we took it out to other producers and that's where we went. Because there was no capital, high cash flow. It was meant as a diversification of the farm. To be fair. That's what it is. It is a insurance policy for the farm. So if the farm has a tight year, we have cash flow coming from other businesses to keep the debt serviceability and to keep the expansions. And it's all it is and no different. I've seen farms that do car washes. What kind of business can we do that produces cash? Because the one thing farms don't have is, is cash. It's a good point. There's you know, farms that maybe have some trucks on the road, some farms that you said car wash. I know a farmer that he, he has a bunch of ATM machines there is a lot of examples that all of the two of us and all the audience could come up with. But those also are diversifications of the business. And you know, it's kind of unique about those is that they're outside the industry in some cases. So you're, you're, you're also lowering your risk potentially too, if the industry has a real downtime. Yeah, I mean we hear farms of. Let's say you do the plot farm. Okay. You're getting geographical risk reduction. Right. Or you are bringing in cattle. So now you got a diversification that doesn't follow with the grain production side. That's all they are, is their diversifications to mitigate risk. And for us, it was. Our biggest risk was cash FL flow. And to be fair, anybody who believes as you grow, the cash flow gets more. It doesn't. The numbers stay the same cash, the, the 40,000, 50,000 acre guys and the 3,000, 5,000 acre guys. Cash is tight because we're pushing our working capital. We're using it for other investment where, you know, we're using operating credit like it doesn't change. That's something that stays similar for most farms. Unless you haven't had the ability to buy land in. You've probably been a little complacent. Then you have a, then you might have a treasure chest. But. So for us it was our biggest risk was cash flow and, and what kind of businesses can we invest in or look at to bring in cash flow to the business even in down years? Because our biggest risk is that we have a few down years, our cash gets too tight, we have to use our land to, to back some cash increases. And then all of a sudden a big expansion comes up. And now, now we're, now we're tied, now the financials don't work and now we're stopped. And then the tax man comes because when you stop expand. Oh, the biggest hit is the tax man. They do, they're always there. They death and taxes. You do not get away from them. Well, Evan, this has been fantastic. I know a lot of the real agriculture audience is, you know, going through, especially with all the, the windshield time that people have during the growing season thinking about that strategic plan, you know, how do we scale this or how do we grow this business and what are the different ways to do it? And the thing is, everybody's situation is different. There's lots of ways to do this. So this has been a fun conversation. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. You betcha. Anytime that wraps up another episode of the Mind you'd Farm Business Podcast. A big thank you to Evan show to Farmer Coach for joining us here today and sharing his practical and honest perspective on how farms can grow smarter, not just bigger. This is an important question. How do I scale my business? Evan, remind us that scaling a farm business isn't just one size fits all. For some it's about land or more cattle. For others it's about building stronger teams, adding off farm income, or reclaiming some time without sacrificing any sort of financial returns. The key is understanding your numbers, your capacity and your goals and growing on your terms, not somebody else's. Who cares what somebody else thinks? For more episodes, the Mind you'd Farm Business Podcast. Head over to mindyourfarmbusiness.com and a big thank you to RBC Royal bank for supporting long. We're over 100 episodes now and I RBC World bank has been there since the beginning. I really appreciate that. If you have any feedback you can send me an email shaneeyeal agriculture.com or call the Real Life Feedback Line 855-776-6147. In the meantime, keep on building your farm business.