About

You love your family and they are your best friends today. My strongest advice is that you never take this for granted and do everything you can, as soon as you can, to take how you make decisions with them to the next level. Farmers spend thousands of dollars annually on fire insurance but never realize that the biggest risk to their farm is burnt bridges.

My dad was my best friend, and I wanted to be a 7th generation to farm in Bobcaygeon, just like him.

The problem was that our farm wasn’t profitable. Bobcaygeon is on rough land on the edge of the Canadian Wilderness (nobody grew corn north of us) and my dad had been taught by his father how to work hard but never was taught how to manage. The day I left for Ontario Agriculture College my mother showed me the farm’s financials and told me I had to learn modern farming techniques and change things, or she was going to divorce him.

I graduated from college with many shiny awards, an entitled attitude and a 200-page business plan for turning around the farm. I had a good plan and had a great father; yet didn’t think through how I approached change with him. Although I had the best intentions, the way I spoke to my father wasn’t the right way and very quickly he got offended. When my uncle commented that my new methods were going to work, my dad ploughed my crops under out of jealousy. This quickly spiraled into a decade of bickering.

My parents did get divorced, sparked by a fight over my dad buying a manure spreader. It wasn’t about the equipment. It was years of everyone not hearing each other.

A decade later, on my Birthday I was sitting on a barn beam with a rope around my neck. That was my "wall". I realized that my father and I were so stubborn we were willing to destroy the very thing we both loved: our 7th-generation heritage. But in that darkness, I had an epiphany. What had made our 7th generation family farm succeed was the fact that we were “STUBBORN” and what caused us to fall apart is the fact that we were “STUBBORN” with each other.

I walked away from the barn that night and have never been back to Bobcaygeon since, feeling called by God to help “Stubborn farmers work better together”. I feel my life isn’t mine, it’s dedicated to helping family farms survive AND THRIVE like yours.

My professional journey

I incorporated my company in 2007 (Agriculture Strategy) and saving family farms has been my obsession ever since. Every morning starts at 4:30am, reading 75 pages before breakfast to get better at what I do. I know what it’s like not to get together with family at Christmas due to a failed family meeting and am obsessed to make sure that what happened to my family doesn’t happen to yours. I started off doing farm succession planning like everyone else and have been obsessed with tweaking and reengineering a better way to learn from every client interaction.

At this stage, we’ve helped over 1,000 farm families in 22 states and across five Canadian provinces. We’ve created a completely different approach which professionals from across the world from places like England and South Africa now seek our mentorship.

Not only does our method save family farming partnerships, but it also saves marriages!

While others talk about taxes and lawyers, we talk about the kitchen table dynamics that make those legal papers worthless if the family isn't talking. We have a track record of turning around some of the direst farm family situations and over the last twenty years have developed a counterintuitive yet 200%+ more effective approach (we have the numbers to prove this) than any competitors in the farm succession and farm management space. Why? Once you remove the egos and tweak the dynamics of how a family interacts under stress, making difficult strategic decisions with your family is ten times easier! THEN doing complex joint decisions like farm succession can get done in afternoon, not a decade feud!

What excites me most is that many families are choosing to adapt to our program PROACTIVELY as the kids come home from college (like a pre-nuptial class) and are avoiding the strife my family endured! I hope this is my legacy for future generations.