Mind Your Farm Business — Ep. 107: No will, no plan, big trouble: Breaking the silence on succession

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 RealAgriculture.com Today we're diving into a conversation that can make or break the future of your farm succession planning. I know we've talked about this before but I'm not sure we've talked about it enough because we still need to do better at this but. And we're going to talk about this topic, but not the kind of planning where you draught and you kind of hope you draught a plan and then you just sort of hope for the best. We're talking about creating a deliberate, transparent and well communicated plan for transferring not just your assets but, but leadership, purpose and also responsibility. Joining me today is Tom Deans. He's an author of three books. His best selling book was Every Family's Business. The second one was Willing Wisdom and a new book that you got to cheque out the happy inheritor. You know, Tom is so full of insights and just has so many great things to say. He's travelled around the world speaking to not only farm families, but entrepreneurs in general, helping them shift from what he calls the silent assumptions to more open, honest conversations about wealth, transition and legacy. We're going to dig into why formal wills alone are not enough, how communication is the real driver of successful farm transitions and why the old mindset of keeping the next generation in the dark is setting up families and the farm for avoidable conflict. This is a conversation that may challenge some long held beliefs that you have, but as Tom says, farms that talk about the tough stuff are the ones that endure. Let's get into it. Tom, it is great to have you back on the mind your farm business podcast. I missed you, Shaun. Did you? Sitting there in the hotel room just thinking about me. Enjoy our chats. They're always, they're always a little bit edgy and fun. They should, right? Yeah. We're asking your listeners to carve out a little piece of their day. Let's give them something. Let's give them something rich. Absolutely. So obviously a lot of our audience is agriculture and I've always said that, you know, ag management or egg, you know, farm management issues are really entrepreneur issues. You speak to a lot of agricultural groups, but also groups outside of agriculture across Canada and the United States. What are, like, what are some of the, are there, are there threads of things that you continue to hear no matter what industry you're talking to. Yeah, absolutely. It doesn't matter if it's auto dealerships or restaurant associations, whatever the convention. Agriculture, the one theme that is absolutely consistent and it's actually working and going in the wrong direction. And that is, that's the hint. Nothing. Zero. Silent silence. They don't know how to talk about money. You got farms worth staggering amounts of money. You got 15 million Canadians without a will. You got 137 million American adults without a will. You got half of all business owners in Canada, half of all business owners in the United States without the most basic document in an estate plan. So if you don't have enough, if you don't have a will, you do not have a transition plan. Now, the province of Saskatchewan has one for you. The province of Alberta. I was speaking in Sioux Falls, South Dakota two weeks ago. The state of South Dakota's got a nifty little plan waiting for you in the background. If you don't want to do your own work. They're going to divide up your farm according to that, that formula, that state or provincial formula. And trust me, your family won't be very pleased either with the formula or you now. You're gone. So you may not know, or maybe you do, I don't know. No one knows. But someone's not going to be very happy with, with the fact that you didn't spend, you didn't spend a thousand dollars to write a will. So you know, women in Canada live six years longer than men. I get more phone calls from elderly women whose say farm owner husband has already pre deceased them. And you know what they tell me, John? They want to bring their husband back from the dead and kill them themselves. They are not happy. I could see why though, because it's a, you leave a mess. Oh, and you think, okay, good news, you saved $1,000 on a will, great. Now you got $500,000 worth of legal fees to clean up the mess that has been created when you've got children that are fighting over the farm litigating, you know, in my new book, the Happy Inheritor. It took me 10 years to research and write that book. I'll tell you, it took me forever to find the real number, the, the real accurate number that captures the cost of family estate litigation. And it is $500,000 per person to get to a one day family estate litigation matter a day in court. 500,000 per person. You got four kids, you've got five lawyers at $500,000 wow. I tell people all the time, if you think divorce is expensive, that's like a dress rehearsal for the really big show, which is family estate litigation because there's more lawyers. But here's the best part, John. Guess who pays the legal fees? Only lawyers would invent a business model like this. The estate pays all the legal fees for everyone. So you got a $3 million farm, you got a $10 million farm. You'd be shocked at how quickly lawyers can grind down 5 or 10 million dollars of an estate to zero. Yeah, you probably see it. I do see it. Yeah, I do see it. If money is so like, this is what I don't understand. If you provide the example, the thousand dollars, let's. Okay, so to do it, go to the lawyers, get it done, you can update it. It's like, you know, it's, or it's not like a set in stone sort of thing. You can always update it. I updated mine recently. It's a thousand dollars. And the other hand, especially in a lot of, like with entrepreneurs and I think especially in agriculture, we don't talk about money and it's precious. Like there's a lot of generational like, like the, the Depression, like where people are tight with their money. And so why, why, why, like why are we so missing on the cost benefit part portion of that? We think about the upfront cost versus like the, the cost that is out we're trying to save ourselves from. And people talk about all the time, hey, I want to keep this family together. I want the family to talk when this is all over. I'm not around. Well, one way to guarantee that nobody talks is to not figure this stuff out when you're living. There's a couple of really well documented and well researched examples and explanations of why people do nothing. Ready? Number one, superstition. There are some people who believe if you go to a lawyer, give them that lawyer your instructions, have the will drafted, sign the will, bring the will home. They believe that studies show that you will immediately die. I don't know if you know that. No, I, I, I didn't know that was a thing. I'm, but I'm here to learn. Listen, I have taken my will out in the middle of a keynote and thrown it out into the audience. You should walk people. I don't know. I don't want to touch that thing. It's like folks read it. I don't care. I die. My wealth goes to my wife. My wife and I die at the same time. Our wealth goes towards two children, they're 31 and 30 years old. We have just made them co executors. Seriously, I don't know what the big deal is, but there are some people who have never seen a will, never read a will, never held a will. So superstition. So there's cost, there's superstition, and then there's this idea of procrastinatus, which is, I don't want to spend $1,000. You touched on it, actually. I don't want to spend $1,000. Right. My will, because my brother's going to have a kid, I'm going to have a new nephew, and this is going to be outdated. So I'll wait for that event to happen, then I'll add them a little bit. So. But you know, and I know there's always something coming down the road. If that's our logic, we'll never get one done, and then we're going to leave. And by the way, if we don't have a will, we don't have a financial power of attorney, we don't have a healthcare directive. We go in for the will, but we come out with those two bonus documents. Those two bonus documents are very much about the living. Right? We always think that estate planning is about, I don't know, answering the question, who gets my stuff when I'm dead? The reality is, estate planning is very much about the living. Say you, I don't know, walk out of your office, you slip, you bump your head, you're unconscious. Good news is you're going to get better. But in the meantime, your financial power of attorney has appointed someone to run your personal finances as if they were you, in your best interest. Pay your bills, keep things going, then you get better, and then it's revoked, and then away you go. You don't have a will, you don't have that document. You don't have a will. I can tell you right where are you right now? Are you in. I'm in Lethbridge. I'm in Lethbridge. Okay, so right now in Lethbridge, in your local hospital, there is a family in the hallway, and the doctor has gathered all the family members. Maybe someone's flown in from Toronto or Calgary and the family's there, and the doctor's looking for clarity on how they want to proceed with mom or Dad's life. And there's no healthcare directive, so there's no document guiding that conversation. So now it's a committee. How do you think that's going to go if there's been no prior family discussion. In many families the children have a copy of that document and they're waiting for very to hear very specific language, irreversible brain damage, vegetative state. You know, you hear those words, you know how to proceed. This is an incredible non financial gift to give children clarity around how they can serve you when you lose capacity. So in the absence of that document, you tell me how that family is going to pick the right second or the right minute of the right day to terminate their parents life. Someone's going to feel like they moved too slow, mom and dad suffered or moved too quickly. This is how the administration of an estate begins. Because there's no document. There's chaos, family ambivalence and acrimony. And here we go again. The courts are absolutely jam, full of families fighting over farms and cars and you name it. It's just, it's really, it's gotta change. And that's why I wrote these books. Or an element here like because you know, you, I have seen you give your, your keynotes. You've been talking about this for a long time. You got three books out on it. There's other people that you know are, are in this space as well. Are we improving or are we fighting human nature here? When I, when I started Shaun, there were 12 and a half million people. This is 18 years ago. 12 and a half million Canadians without a will. Now there's 15 million people. Oh Lord. Seriously, my wife has suggested I stop travelling and speaking and writing books on the subject. The numbers getting worse. Tom Deans, you're not helping. It's not funny. I've been trying to put fun back into funeral for a long time but it's not working particularly well. It's really, really frustrating. But listen, my newest book that just released the Happy Inheritor really includes. I've given this a lot of thought, 18 years of thought in fact. There's only one solution to all of this and that is a facilitated family meeting where the senior generation who has built and created wealth gathers their children with a trusted advisor. You can't do this on your own. If you try, it's not going to work well, this family's going to devolve into chaos. But if you have another third party, professional accountant, lawyer, wealth advisor in that family meeting with an agenda tackling relatively easy questions first to build some success and then move into more difficult issues. This is what successful families are doing. We're just not, it's not being reported, it's not being. Who wants to watch or read an article about a successful family that meets once a year with their advisor to share their estate planning documents. Build trust and mutual respect around the concept of money. Answering the question, who will inherit how much when? And who wants to read that? Storey, what are we watching on Netflix? Chaos. Blowing up their, their wealth and blowing up their family. Look at the sitcom succession that, that's, you know, bad stuff. Grossing. Biggest grossing sitcom drama full time on that platform. So. So go ahead. You can go back to the 80s with Dallas. Yeah, it's the same thing every decade. We, we just, we love this idea that families of money should blow it up. Shirt sleeve to shirt sleeves. Yeah, right. That's just the way it is. Well, it's nonsense. There's lots of families that do a really, really good job of preparing their, their heirs to receive what is a staggering amount of money. Now even the modest estates are in the millions. We, we had a recent mind you'd farm business podcast guest that talked about the having discussions with your kids and he had mentioned, you know, the idea of family meetings talking about money. But he also emphasised because all your kids are different and the way their relationship with money is different, don't he. He encouraged to have one on one meetings as well so that the, you, you could have certain messaging to some of your kids versus some of the others. Yeah, I think, I think going back to the family meeting, the biggest benefit of family meeting though is that everyone hears the same thing at the, at the same time, which is very different from a parent dying. There's been no family meeting and then someone steps up saying, I don't know if you know this guys, but yeah, dad definitely wanted me to have the boat. Yeah. Like when there's family. Oh, by the way, that dad wanted you to have the house in our, in the small town where we grew up. He wanted me to have the lake house. Yeah, he said that to me. You didn't have the conversation with you. That's weird. That's super strange. So weird. So family meetings gets, gets deals with that right on everyone's, everyone's there. There's real discipline and rigour in governance. Right. We treat our businesses with respect. Well, that business say that business gets sold and now it sits as cash, not as land. That cash needs governance, it needs help, it needs structure, it needs to be the people who are going to receive that cash need coaching. So the family meetings that I attend as a speaking resource, I've spoken in hundreds of family meetings as a, just as a speaker, author, speaker and it's unreal how much transparency there is about money. And people know what is coming their way and they're prepared for. And here's the best part. They share the same advisor. Okay, so it's not. The parents are with Raymond James and the kids are with Edward Jones and the grandchildren are with, I don't know, fill in the blank. Some other wealth advice. Seriously. They share accountants and lawyers and the same wealth management. And there's continuity of advice. And the, and the advisors are offering parents to work one on one, to your point, with the children to teach them about advanced financial concepts like spend less than you make, the power of compounding interest. That's great. Oh, I know. Nutty stuff. It's so crazy it just might work. But that is what they do. They teach they resource, they educate their children. They teach them what wealth is and quite frankly, what wealth is not. They tell family storeys, they tell how that farm was started and what happened over the decades and the risk and the tragedy and the farm accidents. And they tell those storeys to connect that rising generation, to understand that what preceded them was typically, almost always a really tough journey of wealth creation. We're going to get back to my conversation with Tom Deans, 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 passing down or picking up the reins happens here. Succession planning is about more than just handing over the keys. It's about creating a path forward for your farm, your family and your future, whether you're stepping aside or stepping up. RBC and their team of experts are here to help guide the transition. Visit RBC to learn more. Now, we got to be careful though, because I think a lot of, well, you tell me if I'm wrong, but a lot of times we, we talk about this like, you know, teaching, you know, as if the younger generation is like the problem but the older generation can. They're an accomplice in some of these disasters. 100%. Yeah. Because. Well, I can give a long answer, but let me give you a relatively short one. There is an academic, academic study, Families as a System, as an organisation. And the central idea of family systems theory is that families repeat. You got two parents who smoke, you're going to have a probability that one of your children's going to smoke. You have two entrepreneur parents, high probability, you're going to have a child who's an entrepreneur. We repeat good stuff. We repeat bad stuff. Okay, we Have a generation take the farming sector of farmers who are going to leave just a staggering amount of wealth to their children. Yeah. And they are practising estate planning exactly the way their parents did. And half of those parents didn't have wills. So you have, you have. Listen, there's someone listening right now with a $30 million farm with no will. I'm not kidding. And they probably. Yep. Even after hearing this, they're just going to repeat what their parents and grandparents did and it's going to, and it's going to end bad. And this because the stakes are so high and there wasn't eight kids in the family. There's two. But no, like the, the. So what's at risk now is much larger. That's why people are lawyering up and the courts are full of families and disputes over farms because, because there's only two kids. 30 million divided by two is 50 million. That's a lot of cabbage. A lot of money. So the stakes are higher and of course they layer up and here we go again. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying to get out in front of this and I'm not doing it. I'm, I'm encouraging people to work with advisors who are trained, who understand that picking stocks is table stakes. There are advisors, whether it's the blue team, the red team, the green team, the gold team. Listen, everyone can pick stock, especially with AI. So what is differentiating a great advisor and advisory firm from another. It's. What is it? It's all those other bolt on services that they can add to the client. Relationship retirement planning, cash flow planning, estate planning, business succession planning, all those things. Good. No, great advisors are providing that for their, for their clients. Yeah. You know, there's, there's a lot of farm families out there. I can think a couple off the top of my head, you know, friends of mine where the succession happens. People think it was taken care of and there was a plan and then like things like tax consequences happen and like who the heck was advising mom and dad that this was the outcome? Because there was a massive blind spot and all of a sudden like we've got a whole bunch of costs we really didn't need to incur, but it was, it was it just set up improperly given, given the circumstances and how the business had grown. Back to your point about that. Managing the succession plan is if the farm's still worth, you know, a million, now it's worth 25. And you, you need different tools and tactics. And, and, and, and especially from a tax planning perspective. So there, there's a, I think there's a lot of people out there like that too. Yeah. So there's a statistic in the wealth management industry that's alarming and that is that 80% of inherited money packs up and moves to a new advisor. And the advisors know this, so it's starting to change. Advisors are starting to really key into this fact that, you know, this next generation is going to pack up unless that advisor reaches out. And that's really what they're trying to do. They're trying to offer this facilitated family meeting to get family to come together to talk about their wealth. And listen, the first casualty of estate planning is perspective. We're talking about families gathering to talk about surplus capital, transitioning on death. That is a really, really nice problem to have because there's another family down the road who doesn't have any money and they're not meeting. Well, they are meeting, but they're meeting to talk about how to fund, you know, I don't know, the next generation with debt. There's nothing. So, you know, these are awesome problems to have, but problems nevertheless and they can't be ignored. In putting this book together. It's, it's, it's the third one in the trilogy. What was your biggest learning? Maybe you did anything kind of in doing your research, anything kind of change your opinion on something? First of all, yeah, I have never, it occurred to me, having presented to a lot of families, that they were just, all these meetings were ending really, really well and I was trying to like, what, what is it? What is, is it that? Is it about the design of the meeting? Is it? And then it really occurred to me that families are self selecting. So parents who are kind, decent and empathetic, who want the very best for their children, they're going to have a meeting, they're going to listen to this and they're going to be curious. They may even read a book. And so others would not have a family meeting. They would maybe hear this, they certainly wouldn't read the book and they will never have a family meeting. Do you know why, Shaun? It's because they already know everything. There's a certain personality that is attracted to business ownership, let's call them a covert narcissist who craves control. They use control, they use their business, they use their money to control their adult children and every aspect of their adult children's lives. They are deeply corrosive, destructive. They're not building families, they're destroying families and they're even promising assets to their children that they don't even own. Like they're pathological liars. So they're not going to have a family meeting. And this is why family meetings tend well because they're self selecting families that meet and gather and work with their advisor from the point, from the perspective of creating great outcomes so that their children live productive, interesting lives. Those are decent people and there's a lot. Most people are decent and kind and want the best for their family. They have may have concerns about their children and their drive and their ambition and their talent and their commitment to the farm. But they are still using their family meeting and their advisor's expertise to explore those relationships. What role, there's like what role do the, the, the non operating family members or like I was thinking like non operating spouse where you know it's, it's mom's farm and you know or, or vice versa and you know, not involved but not involved so to speak. They can be a real driver to having a good outcome. Yeah, I mean the whole point of a family meeting and let's talk about the design of these family meetings. They're you know, some of the best family meetings are, you know, two generations to start with and typically are you. This is going to sound weird but they're sitting at a round table. You know what a roundtable is? It's democratic. There's no head of a round table. Right. So it's not like I've got the money. Let's have a family meeting. I'm going to ask you kids a bunch of questions. Whoever's got the best answer is going to get more money. That is not what I'm talking. The best family meetings are at roundtables. It sounds weird but they're democratic and everyone is seen and heard with equanimity. Everyone is allowed to express their unique talents and skills and hopes and aspirations. They're incredible meetings. I have seen two parents in a family meeting, a recent one actually struggle. They really wanted to treat both of their children equally financially at the. With their estate. Except they had one son who was like a super high performer mba, just a rock star making a tonne of money. And the daughter was struggling with addiction and just trying to care for herself. And yet they were had this cognitive dissonance. Right. Two core beliefs that were in opposition. I love both my kids, I want them to treat them equally. But I'm really worried about our daughter and what, what money would do to her. But she needs Help they're struggling with. And I see this play out in the family meeting and I see the son go kind of like this. Go like, time out, mom and dad. Just, just let me just say. Say something. I'm. I'm okay. If you give my eyepiece to my sister, I would be thrilled. She needs our help and she needs some help, real help, and it's going to be expensive help. And I would love. I would like to relinquish my. My portion of the estate and give it to her. I have seen moments in family meetings that are shocking. There is great decency in this world. We always. And if that family hadn't had the courage to start this process, they never would have. They never would have revealed that ultimate gift, which is this real compassion that a brother had for a sister. That is impactful in this process. How important. I, I think, you know, I. The. The answer is it is important, but putting the objectives on the table, like, what are we actually trying to accomplish? And, and realising that all of the stakeholders are coming at it from some sort of different angle. You know, for some, for somebody, it may be like, I, I'm having a hard time. I need as much money out of this as possible. For some people, it may be I want this business to continue to the next generation. You know, the legacy aspect of it, everybody has a different angle and they have different personal needs or, or desires. Is, is. Is laying that out the. Really just something super critical at the beginning of that process. I would, in fact, I would say it is at the very beginning of the process. Every family meeting that I have attended, really with one objective, and that is to have the first meeting be a success, actually even fun. So that is what they do. They create a family mission statement together. They just say, basically, we're meeting, we're going to meet as a family going forward at least once a year. And so, like, we need like a constitution that's too way too formal a word. Like you need a family mission statement. Like what would be a great two or three sentence that captures where we want to go together as a family, using our wealth to, like, really deepen relationships and trust and mutual respect. So they craft that mission statement. Then they also have a confidentiality statement which everyone signs and agrees to, so that, that kind of clears the way for everyone to speak very honestly and openly. And once you have those two documents in place, then families can then get down to the business of really talking about really easy and basic and fun topics, like topic number one for the first family Meeting could be selection at executor. So mom and dad could say, listen, I've gathered. We've gathered you kids here today, and we're just going to tackle one thing. We're flying on a plane together. Nothing says, you know, that we're going to land safe. So we have to update our will. Instead of proclaiming who are. Who our executor is going to be, we thought we'd get you guys in the room together. We thought we'd kick it around together as a family and, And. And have everyone weigh in on that, and maybe we'll make a better decision as a family. Yeah, you see what just happened there? That relinquishing of control and power and saying, we're old, but we need your help. Because whoever we selected, an executor will really impact your lives. They're going to be dealing with an executor for a couple of years after we were dead. So you should probably weigh in on that. Is it you guys? Do you want to do it collaboratively? Should we hire a public trustee? Let's get access together. That's. That's a family meeting. That's. That could be family meeting number one. So we got. We got wills, we got family meetings. Are there. Are there any other common characteristics of family businesses that do this? Right. Well, yeah, so family businesses also have the family meetings. And so they're gonna. They're Gonna Ultimately, after 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 successful family meetings, knocking off, you know, progressively harder subjects. They're. They're. They're ultimately gonna get to the elephant in the room, which is, where's this farm going? Okay, where's it going? Like, we got one child off farm, one child on farm. How. How is fair going to be equal? What does it look like? So, like, these problems don't go away, but they bring in experts, and they start saying, well, here. Here are your technical options. Here's how you can get at fairness and equality. Here's how you can use insurance products or different legal structures, but they get at that collaboratively, transparently. That's very different from what's going on right now on the prairies, for example, where someone sat down with a lawyer, dropped at a will, kept its secret squirrelled away, and everyone's waiting for clarity on who's going to get the farm. And it's only going to be revealed at the funeral home when someone pulls out the will for the first time. Right. Way too late. Way too late. You're tackling those tough things. And we talked about the round table, it's more democratic, but at the end of the day it's not a democracy. But my assumption is there's some transparency around how this decision is being made and why it is so in a way that's different than this is the hand that writes the cheques, I'm assuming. But you have to go back to my first book where I talk about the transition of a family business, where I talk about, and this is where if we have next gens listening, they're going to cringe. But here it is. I mean, the book has sold 1.5 million copies primarily because of this message right here, right now. And this is it. If the next generation wants to buy the farm, they need to buy at a full market value based on a third party valuation. No discounts for kids. So the next generation right now just heard that and they're like, oh my God, I hope my parents don't hear this. I remember I've heard you say that to, to, to like to farm to groups at a, in a setting. I, you can hear, you can hear. People just hear the gasping. But then I slide right into part two, which is, it begs a question, where is Junior going to come up with $25 million to buy a farm that's worth $25 million? And you know, 50,000, like, they're just, they don't have the cash flow. So what I really, and I see this in family meetings, what they're, what the parents are doing is they're pulling some of that wealth out of their operating business and they're gifting it to their children while they're still alive. And then they're saying to their kids, do you want to buy one share in the business, yes or no? And don't tell me you don't have money because we just gave you some. Do you want to return the money I just gave you in exchange for that number of shares? But that money can purchase that full market value. Yes or no? Here's what I've been learning, Shaun. Guess what the next generation does. They say no, they take the cash. Oh yeah, it's going to say they. Like the farming operation, they like their work, but they don't want, they don't want to, they don't want to be owners. They don't want to risk it. They don't want to risk their inheritance to buy the farm. Some do. I mean, it's not all of them taking the money and run. But this is. So when, when parents pull their money out, some, some cash out of the farming operation and then give it to their kids. The value of the farm comes down by that amount. Yeah, right. It becomes more expensive, less expensive to purchase. Can we just do younger generation? Not understanding the math though? Because if, if I, if I buy that farm business at a high, like you know, it's expensive, I don't know how my cash flow is, but I'm buying it for that high amount. My parents are getting the money. Yes. I'm not increasing my inheritance. Well, keep going because you're absolutely, you're right on track. So watch this. You're the farmer. You take $10,000, $20,000 out of your farming operation. You got two kids, you give them each $10,000. Now you say, do you want to buy the farm? One of the kids go, yeah. So they give $10,000 back to their mother and father. Now mom and dad get hit by a bus, they're dead. Now there's a will that treats both kids equally. So they give of that $10,000 that was returned back to them, they give 5,000 to one child, 5,000 to the other. What I'm actually describing is actually children, how they can buy their parents business if there's two kids for a 50% discount. It actually works. Now the one. So this is how we get farming operations into one branch of the family. Otherwise what we're going to, what we're going to continue to do is put brothers and sisters into business together as equal shareholders. Bad ideas. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. And so usually the child off farm, what do they want from their brother or sister who's on the farm? I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with funny. They want money and they want it quick. Right. Remember their last parent is dead. Is dead. They're getting, you know, letters from cra, ask for capital gains like there's no cash flow. It is a disaster. And so the, the children are wearing the shame and the blame for blowing up their parents farm. It's not their fault. It's not that they're lazy. It was just designed to blow up. And they wear the public shame in the community. Yeah, it's not right. That's a burden too. Tom, thanks so much for joining us here. This has been awesome. We could. We got to do this more often. I always appreciate discussions with you. Again, mention the book. Yeah, it's called the Happy Inheritor. You can find it. Listen, it's, it's just you're not going to find it on Amazon and even if you do, it's probably going to be a used copy that's all marked up. I got a tonne of. I got a problem with Amazon to keep all these resellers selling used books as new. Don't go there. Yeah, go straight to my website, Thomas williamdeans.com and you can find all my books there. Shipping is free, prices are great and but wait, that's not all. We'll throw in a bamboo steamer. You know what, if you get a chance to cheque out one of Tom's keynotes, excellent, excellent, excellent. I highly encourage everybody to do so. And if he is coming to one of your local farm meetings, encourage, encourage you to cheque them out. Tom. Thanks a lot, John. Always a pleasure. Cheers. That wraps up another insightful episode of the Mind you'd Farm Business Podcast. Big shout out to Tom Deans for sharing his no nonsense approach to farm succession planning. Tom's message is clear. Succession isn't just a legal or financial exercise. It's a family conversation that needs to happen early, often and out loud. And it's those conversations, not just documents, that protect the farm, the family and of course, the legacy that you've worked so hard to build. For more episodes of the Mind you'd Farm Business podcast, it's simple. You can find the podcast wherever you get your podcasts or you can go to mindyourfarmbusiness.com Also, big shout out to RBC World bank for supporting this podcast series. If you got any feedback, is there things that you heard from Tom there that triggered some thoughts? Maybe get some comments, maybe some more questions? Maybe you disagree with some things? You can send me an email shaneeyeal agriculture.com or you can call 855-776-6147. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, keep on minding your.