Chris Barron: The Communication Advantage

Chris Barron [00:00:00] At some point if you don't stop and look around and say, we're pretty blessed to have what we have. And, and so often people don't do that.

Vance Crowe [00:00:11] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. I interview Chris Barron. Chris is the head of Ag View Solutions, which is a consulting firm that helps agriculture and businesses around it become the best businesses that they can become. Now, I, as I'm saying this out loud, I feel like a little awkward about it because we all know that often consultants are the people that can't actually do the work and they teach other people. But what's so cool about Chris is that he is actually running a very complicated farm operation in coordination with people that are both in his family and out of his family. And on top of that, they are doing this consulting business. What you are about to hear is the construction of a really interesting way to help businesses become the best that they can. Chris and I have gotten to know each other because he had me give a speech at his big conference on interest based communicating. What you'll see here in this conversation is Chris talking about the very application of interest based negotiating, having better conversations and overcoming conflict so that that way your entire organization can succeed because you know how to communicate like a leader. If you are interested in taking the interest based communications class that I offer, know that we have classes coming up here at the beginning of July and then at the end of August, and you can learn more by going to Articulate Ventures slash IBC for interest-based communicating.

Vance Crowe [00:01:42] Alright, I'm, without further ado, let's hop into the interview with Chris Barron. Chris Barron, welcome to the podcast.

Chris Barron [00:01:51] It's good to be here, Vance. How are you today?

Vance Crowe [00:01:53] I'm doing really well. So, Chris, for people that don't know you and they're just listening, you are kind of an older guy, but you're super fit. And when I met you, the very first thing that popped into my mind was, this is a disciplined person. Have you always been a disciplined person?

Chris Barron [00:02:09] Yeah, I think so. Ever since when I was a little kid and my dad would flip the light on and off in the hallway to wake me up at about five o'clock to go do chores in the morning. I think that was the start of discipline, I suppose.

Vance Crowe [00:02:23] Yeah. And, but like, it's one thing to be disciplined, but then you gotta figure out when it's on your own, nobody waking you up. Hey, what am I gonna eat? What am I gonna do for exercise? How am I gonna orient myself? You were always a pretty motivated guy.

Chris Barron [00:02:36] Yeah, I think so. You know, I I I've always not been like when I was in high school or in college, even just not super athletic and, but I did discover that I like weightlifting and 'cause that's, you know, kinda your own thing. You can kinda do it on your own time. You can do your own thing. And so I started weightlifting probably when I actually, I started when I was probably in middle school and I just got sort of addicted to it and I've done it my whole life. And if I don't get a chance to at least lift weights for about 10 or 15 minutes, even if that's all I get in the morning, I feel like my day isn't complete. So, so I, I think the, I think the weight training is the big thing. And then nutrition I've done, if anybody's familiar with the 75 Hard, Andy Frisella, I've done that program a couple of times. I'm not as disciplined on the nutrition side as I should be all the time because I, I like licorice and I like candy and un unfortunately, you're always hungry for that stuff at night. So sometimes my discipline goes off to the side once in a while with that. But I, I try to, I try to eat clean and my wife's done 75 hard I think six times now too. So when you have a spouse that that's extremely disciplined, she's, she's even more disciplined than me. So that really, that that helps a lot too.

Vance Crowe [00:03:57] So for people that don't know this, 75 hard is really a pretty brutal regime. You have like standard amounts of I think water. You have to drink books, you have to read physical activity, you have to get, it's pretty intense.

Chris Barron [00:04:11] Yeah, it's very intense. It's, yeah, you, you, you know, you gotta, you gotta read 10 pages a day, you gotta drink a gallon of water. That's was the hardest thing for me. You can't drink any alcohol, which I thought, well, that, that was gonna be easy till I start walking through airports at four o'clock in the afternoon and everybody's drinking beer. It looks like it anyway, and it sure looks good and you can't, and so you know that. And then, you know, and you gotta exercise 45 minutes twice a day. You got one outside, one inside and it's always cold or rainy or windy or something outside where it's not very comfortable. And so you gotta do that every day for 45 minutes. And, and, and then you gotta take a self-improvement picture. And that's always a little humbling too. And you take your shirt off and take a picture and, and say, am I improving? Or, you know, and it, it takes a while. And so that, that intensifies the discipline a bit too.

Vance Crowe [00:04:57] Yeah. It's been my experience that doing challenges ha brings with it a big benefit because you're like, Hey, I can do this for X number of days, but the problem for me is I get past the challenge and then I skid out of, of control. You know what I mean?

Chris Barron [00:05:13] Yeah. How does it become a part of your life? And that, and that is hard. I mean that's, that's where really, truly the discipline comes in. I did, you know, I, I farmed my whole life. I'm in, I I live in, you know, east, east central Iowa and kinda grew up on a farm being physical and stuff. But I, I did, I decided when I was, I think I turned 40, or no, I wasn't even 40, I was 38, I think I was just a little bit younger probably than what you are right now. And I decided I, I can either have a midlife crisis or I can get myself in really, really super good shape. So I got myself down about 5% body fat and I ended up going to some natural, all natural bodybuilding competitions. And I did those for about three, about three years too. And that really takes a ton of discipline because you gotta be shredded and you gotta be, and I'm not there right now, but I'll be 60 this year and I feel like I'm in pretty good shape. I think, you know, maybe when I'm 65 I'll, I'll do some more competitions or something probably that was one of the guys that was doing the competitions at the same time I was, was 65. He was shredded. And if you didn't look at his face, if you just looked at his body, you would think he was 25 years old. So there, so you can, you can fix a lot of, a lot of things with nutrition and, and exercise.

Vance Crowe [00:06:29] When you did that, you know, the, it has to consume a huge amount of your brain space, right? You're just like attention on things.

Chris Barron [00:06:38] I would say it's maybe the other way brain fog goes away. So you're, you're really intent, you're, you're focused. I don't, I don't know if you're like me, you know, some days you have a list of things to do and it's a bigger list than what you think you can handle. And you get more done on those days because you have to, you, you, you've gotta structure things. And so, you know, I I used to, I don't anymore. I I still am as I've gotten older, I like to sleep till about six 30 or seven in the morning. But in my thirties and twenties, thirties and forties, I would get up every morning about four 30 and go to the gym by five and work out for an hour, hour and a half every day. I don't quite do that in as intense now. I, I lift lighter, I like my joints to feel good. And so as you get older, you, you, you figure out how to, how to be a little bit more intelligent about the exercise too.

Vance Crowe [00:07:31] So when you're doing all this weightlifting, what are you doing for work at this time in your life when you're in your forties?

Chris Barron [00:07:37] Well I do, we do a lot of business consulting and so obviously I farm as well. So my family farms a little background there. I grew up on, on the farm the first 20 years of my life. We had a hog operation. I would do chores every morning before school. And, and I had a stack of, please excuse Chris for being late for school already pre-made from my mom that I had a stack of. So if I was busy doing chores and I was still late for school, I just grabbed one of those notes and went to school and the ladies in the office knew, knew I was gonna probably show up late most of the time, especially my junior and senior year. 'cause I always made sure I'd study hall the very first hour. So I just kind of showed up when I got there, you know, and it, it just, you know, when you're in a school in a smaller community like that, I guess you can get away with that stuff. In today's world, that probably wouldn't work very good. But, but I had the work discipline and I was busy. I was, you know, I was literally was, was running the farrowing units in our, in our, you know, I was in charge of all the, the baby pigs being born and getting them all taking care of and stuff. And, and that was a role that I had that was just my responsibility every day. And, and you don't get to put that on a schedule. You kind of, animals kind of need you when they need you. So, so that was, that was good. But then, you know, so I grew up on the farm and, and had a lot of those responsibilities. And, and so to get to your question of like what do you do now for physical? Well, fast forward to today, I farm with a several business partners.

Chris Barron [00:09:10] We have one line of machinery and equipment. We farm about 7,000 acres of corn and soybeans in, in east central Iowa.

Vance Crowe [00:09:18] What does that mean? You have one line of equipment?

Chris Barron [00:09:21] Well, there's, there's eight of us that farm together and we just have one line of equipment. We don't that, you know, we don't all have different sets of equipment. We have one, one set of machinery that services all of our operations. And so we farm,

Vance Crowe [00:09:36] So like multiple combines, but not one and one for everyone, right. Just enough for when

Chris Barron [00:09:41] You're trying

Vance Crowe [00:09:41] To get stuff outta the field.

Chris Barron [00:09:43] The entity has two combines. It's a machinery and equipment entity. So it, it services all of our farm operations. And then, and so I kind of helped to lead that portion of the business. And

Vance Crowe [00:09:55] Hey, did you say that you run that as a business of an equipment? So like the equipment is its own company and then you guys contract out the equipment to farm on your individual acres? Yeah,

Chris Barron [00:10:06] So the machinery and equipment is owned as a separate entity. So like in our case it's called hard green. So obviously we have John Deere equipment, not a commercial, but that's what we run name of the company. And so we have a per pass basis. So like for our, our consulting business that we run, which is what I do daily a lot now, pretty much in the spring and or in the summer and winter, I'm pretty much doing the consulting business. But we we're working with this mach line of machinery that essentially services the other eight of us and it's a per pass basis. And so the planter passes 33 75 an acre, the harvest pass is $68 an acre. The, you know, so, but we all have our individually structured roles and responsibilities, you know, we know who the planter operators are, who the tillage operators are, who the sprayer operators are. And we all have our roles. We meet several times in the winter and, and plan for the spring work and, and everybody knows their roles and we put the crop in just like it's one family operation even though some of us are family, some of us aren't. That really doesn't matter. You know, it's, we're we're doing that together. It's lowered our machinery and equipment costs significantly because we're right sized. We have, you know, if you have, you know, we have a lot of clients that, you know, three, four or five $10 million worth of machinery and probably could get by with 5 million instead of 10 million or something, you know, and, and so, you know, we've, we've been able to right-size and get very efficient with the, the equipment fleet, which machinery and equipment's the second largest line item expense for every row crop operation.

Chris Barron [00:11:47] And so if you can get that line item expense down, it, it adds to profitability pretty quick.

Vance Crowe [00:11:52] So how have you thought about who to bring into this operation? Because it's maybe not quite communal ownership, but it certainly feels that way.

Chris Barron [00:12:00] Yeah, so you're getting into a question around collaboration, which Shay and I actually teach that at at TEPAP, at Texas A&M or we have over the, the last I think five years now, and we just had one day, my family operation has a pioneer sales agency and we have a lot of customers. I had a customer stop in one day and he said, Hey, can I talk to you for a minute? I said, sure. And he said, well I'm, I've got this situation. He said, I've had a couple of farm operators come to me and they said, if, if you're interested in slowing down, I'd be interested in maybe renting your ground. And I'm, I'm like, oh, okay. And, and he said, well, I gotta tell you something. He said, that really pisses me off when I'm only 62 years old and they're already trying to kick me out and rent my ground. He said, you know, that tells me that they don't really care about me. They care about getting my land so they can farm it. And I said, well that's interesting. I'd never thought of it that way. And he, and and then we started to have this organic conversation around the idea of, he's like, I just don't wanna, you know, be responsible for a harvest completely and I just don't wanna be responsible for all the decisions. I'm okay. I, you know, I, I like doing tillage, I like doing certain things, I like doing marketing. But he said, I just don't wanna have to wear every hat anymore. I don't want all the responsibility. And so I started asking him questions around your line of thinking always is, you know, okay, so tell me more. What are you, what are you saying? Explain that to me better. And so we, we again had this organic conversation around, well instead of you officially retiring and renting the ground out, how about if you, how about if we form a collaborative transition?

Chris Barron [00:13:38] In other words, we'll we'll bring your machinery in and we'll combine it with our machinery and we'll take what you have that doesn't fit the situation and what we have and we'll trade that stuff and we'll right size it to your acres and our acres as one operation and we'll just farm together. You still have your acres, you still have your independence, but we have a fleet of equipment then that can manage the, the operation, you know, with, with ease. And now instead of hiring a hired man, I've got, his name was Keith, I've got Keith there to help run machinery who has vested interest and who cares. So you don't hire somebody that's wrecking your stuff because they're just there for a check. And so, you know, so all of a sudden we, we organically ran into this idea of collaborative transition. And so we have a lot of clients today in our consulting business that we help exactly do that. I coach a lot of young people to be really careful the types of conversations you have with probably a, a potential successor or a potential opportunity to grow your business instead of asking, you know, I'd be interested in renting your ground. Maybe ask, could I learn, you know, could I learn some things about your operation? I've watched you be successful over your life and you know, I'm trying to be successful and, and I I've recognized some things you've done. Could you, you know, would you be interested in sitting down for an hour and just having a conversation with me? And that sets the tone and lays the groundwork for the ability to ask a bunch of questions. Farmers like to tell their story, you know, they can start to build a relationship and then that's gonna give you a lot more opportunity for growth personally, professionally, and in a business perspective by virtue of building the relationship rather than just, you know, sending a letter out or calling somebody.

Chris Barron [00:15:27] You're going to see 'em at, at the, you know, at the parents' funeral, you know, to ask for the ground. You,

Vance Crowe [00:15:34] You're talking about the very heart of interest based communicating, right? And part of the interest somebody has when they're going to either rent their ground or sell their ground is, is this gonna go to somebody that cared about it in the way that I did? Or that they're gonna care that I was here or they're gonna care what I contributed. And even if people that are renting that ground are not aware of it. So the the thing you're describing there about sitting down and asking 'em for their wisdom, this is where, why relationships are so complicated and beautiful, right? That it actually can blossom into something you didn't expect. But my experience from recording Legacy Interviews is that oftentimes nobody's ever asked them to, to reflect on their wisdom. So

Chris Barron [00:16:14] They've

Vance Crowe [00:16:15] Had these experiences, these things they did things that maybe they were proud of or things they overcame, but they never get a chance to talk about it. If you are the one that shows up and gets them to talk about it, they end up processing those stories and closing that chapter and they're able to move into a new chapter, just like you were describing with the guy that was like, Hey, I wanna still farm, but I don't want to do all these things, right? I don't need to be in charge. And it's so powerful when you build a relationship and you ask people to tell their stories that this is, you are spot on using practically interest-based communicating.

Chris Barron [00:16:47] Yeah. And, and it was not a plan. I would like to say I had this grand plan to do this and, and to come up with this collaborative mindset and then, and we made some mistakes along the way. And so that's where the consulting comes in, is we can show people what not to do a lot of times, which is more important sometimes than what to do, you know, of how we communicated with the neighbors and that kind of thing. Because instantly when we started to work with, with Keith, he had, he had a, a sizable amount of acres and so did we pretty sizable, I mean we were a little larger than him, but you know, we went from, you know, him having a a 12 row planter and us having a couple 16 rows to 2 24 row planters, a couple new, you know, four new tractors, couple newer, newer combines, and all of a sudden we're going down the road and you know, if you went to the coffee shop to see what we were doing, we rented all the Keith's ground for $400 an acre cash rent up front because you know, everybody in the community always knows more than you do about yourself. You know,

Vance Crowe [00:17:49] You

Chris Barron [00:17:49] Go to the coffee shop. So, so there was a little bit of, you know, communication things that I think we did or didn't do that we should have done better, but that's what we help operations do as they grow their business and, and how to, how to work through some of those things in the community and internally, both there's, there's HR and there's pr and I think both of those kind of go hand in hand with some of that stuff that, that we coach people on. And

Vance Crowe [00:18:16] You know, you're using words that ordinarily with people, I kind of cringe you're using like consulting and coaching. But the reason I don't with you, 'cause most of the time when somebody does this, they are, they're, they were not able to be successful at what they were doing. And so then they went out and became a consultant. And I mean I see this in, in business all the time. There are guys that wanna come along and be your business consultant, but they didn't run a successful business. Right?

Chris Barron [00:18:40] And

Vance Crowe [00:18:40] So, but with you guys, I have been astounded, I've actually learned quite a bit and even applied things I've learned from what you have taught me about how to get groups to come together to, to do their consulting in the way that you do it. So before we jump in, I have a lot of questions about it, but what is it that you do when you're doing consulting? You bring farms together, but not in like a just necessarily one-on-one way?

Chris Barron [00:19:05] Well, we do a lot of one-on-one stuff, but we do, you know, it started out years ago, my thing was was to help people understand their cost of production. And we developed a tool called Profit Manager 30 years ago. And it was to help people understand their numbers and what we, what I determined, or what I learned over about a 10 year span was we were starting to do a really good job of getting cost production figured in and we could, you know, people could make really good marketing decisions because they knew their numbers really well and they, and that type of thing. But what I started to discover is you could get all the numbers right and people screw everything up. 'cause we were, we were still seeing a lot of miscommunication between family members and business partners and that kind of stuff. And so what what I did was started deciding that, you know, I had a degree in communications and psychology from college. I'm like, maybe I should start using what I studied for, you know, six years, five years, however long it took me to get a double major. You know, it's, and so anyway, I, I started implementing some, some essentially coaching but helping, helping family members talk better together and understand each other and kind of where you talk about drawing pictures, that's kind of what we do. I mean we, we draw a picture on a big flip chart of what exists currently, how the farm is structured, where the roles responsibilities are at and who's doing what stuff, where the money is, where the money isn't, where the profitability is. And, and, and then what we do is we ask them as a business or as a family in 10 years, what would you like this business to look like?

Chris Barron [00:20:42] Okay, you're, you know, the, the kid's 37 and the dad's 57, okay, you're gonna be 47 and dad's gonna be 67. What do we want this to look like? You know, what is, what does success look like? And we literally can start to draw a picture and then start to involve, you know, if there's non-family members and that kind of things, we can start to involve and open up the door of communication and transparency so that when we, we, instead of taking things a day at a time, we can, we can literally create a vision of where that business needs to go and then we can build a bridge from where we are to where we need to go. Because what happens so often is people take things a day at a time and there's no measurement or no vision or no objective to where exactly it is that they wanna get to and what that looks like and what is success. And, and I, I use the analogy a lot. I mean I've, I've got, you know, four kids, Shay is one of 'em who you've had on several times here he is my stepson, you know, that, you know, they all go out shooting and the first thing they do when they go, you know, to go out practice, you know, with guns and shooting is they set up a target. They don't just, the four of them go out and start shooting, they end up shooting each other. And that's kind of what I learned as an analogy in business is people with are shooting each other all the time because they didn't have a clear vision of where the business needed to go. And so, and so that's really truly why we do that. And so that's, so when I say one-on-one, that's a portion of the one-on-one.

Chris Barron [00:22:13] But then, yeah, it's, it's super important to bring the whole team together and then ultimately bringing farmers together to learn from each other instead of the consulting. 'cause like you said, when, when I bring other consultants in to help me, you know, I've done this for 30 years and in the last probably seven years I've been bringing and coaching people how to do what I do to help. And so far we've always brought in people who are continually, that are still farming because you know, I've always told people, if I can't make it doing this myself, then I'm probably not gonna try to coach you because I, if I can't make it and can't do it, then I'm not gonna try to tell you how to do it. And so, you know, I pray every day that I'm, that I, that I keep making and I do okay because, you know, it's, it's one of those things where agriculture is a difficult business. There is a lot going on and you know, I've delegated, I'll be 60 this year, I've delegated most of the roles on the farm to my nephew and to my son and, and to a couple of key employees and they essentially run the farm. I show up and help, I do all the marketing, but I show up and help. And, and I tell senior operators all the time, if you wanna get to the pinnacle of success in a business as a leader, you know, people transition from management, which isn't leadership, they're managing, you might as well do it yourself. If you're telling people what to do all the time instead of delegating responsibility, then you transition into leadership. And that's typically where we see the, the parents a lot of times when they reach out somewhere in their fifties and sixties to transition.

Chris Barron [00:23:50] And then what I tell 'em though is, is the pinnacle of success is when you've transitioned all of the responsibility over and you become a mentor instead of a leader. And mentorship is super powerful because they've gotta carry the responsibility of the results, but you get to coach and lead as a member of the business. And so I think that's so important for people to understand. 'cause a lot of times the senior generation really has a hard time giving up control, mainly because I think they, you know, it's, it's their identity, right? They've done it their whole life and they've got the steering wheel and they don't wanna let go. But I've been able to help a lot of senior operators understand that it's okay to let go and, and you gain control by giving up control. I always say, you know, and, and I mean that by you gain control of your life and the quality of life improves because you can eliminate some of the stress, put it on the next generation, let them, let them carry the load. And I think that's, that's so important because, you know, we're, we're in this life a short time and you know, at some point, and and Shay pointed this out to me a few years ago with a client, we were at a client meeting and he asked the senior generation, he said, how many times do you or have you celebrated success? And he kinda looked at us and he got pretty emotional and it was like, I don't know if I have, and that's a problem, right? I mean at some point if you don't stop and look around and say, we're pretty blessed to have what we have.

Chris Barron [00:25:28] And, and so often people don't do that. And that's the why for me. I mean, it makes me emotional thinking about it because that's why I do what I do. I want people to understand that, that you get to a point in life and it's okay. What I see a lot of times is senior generations are guilty. They have, they have operational guilt. In other words, if they're not helping, if they're not doing something, they gotta be the last one to leave at the end of the day. They gotta be the first one there at the beginning of the day. And it, it takes a little coaching to get them to understand. No, you don't sleep in. Enjoy that. You know, let them, let them start the day, come in and help.

Vance Crowe [00:26:13] Alright, we're gonna take a quick pause because I want to talk about what I'm doing when I'm not teaching classes. Normally in this studio just over there, I sit down with individuals and couples over a full day to video record their life stories so that future generations can know their family history. The way this works is that grandma and granddad can stop by in the morning, we'll have some coffee, we'll get comfortable, get to know one another, and then sit down first with mom, then we'll take a break and have a conversation with dad. Then we'll have lunch together and then we sit down with the two of them together and have a great conversation about their lives as a couple. If you are interested in having me record your loved ones so that future generations can know where they came from, know their family history, go to Legacy Interviews dot com, having the legacy interview, you know, really helps 'em open up. I was surprised at the depth the questions went into and to see very authentic answers. I was watching it. I was like, whoa, okay, this is like a new side of jade that's coming out. I can see like how much excitement it brought him to share the things that he has a hard time talking about. I think in a day-to-day conversation you won't be provoked to answer questions like that. I believe that mentorship is a critical, you know, archetypal part of the human experience, particularly for men that if you've lived a life where you got knocked down, it does not.

Vance Crowe [00:27:46] People that are mentors, I think sometimes they consider like, oh you have to view yourself as successful already. But I think that really mentorship is like somebody that experienced falling down, needing to fix things, having to learn over and over again from stuff. And then when they go to pass this knowledge down, it's not because they're in charge, it's because somebody looks up to them and they're interested in what this person has to pass down. And for the, for the mentor. And I got to, my mentor lived to be 105, he talked about being in the winter of his life where you're giving something back. You know, I think this was one of the, the most precious parts of his life, but it's not experienced in, in the way that youth is experienced, it's experienced in letting other people move forward in helping them in, in this way. From your contributions of, of the lessons you learned throughout your life.

Chris Barron [00:28:45] Yeah, for sure. And you know, I think a lot of times with mentorship, it's, it's for the next generation easier to listen when it's coming and viewed as mentoring. It's not saying I'm micromanaging this situation and I'm saying you gotta go this way around the tree instead of that way. It's the last time I did it, this, here's what happened. Just so you're aware of that issue or potential issue. It could be a hurdle here and a hurdle there, go the direction you want, but just here, here's, you know, and when it comes with that without a tone and when it comes with care and respect, it's received pretty well. And a lot of times the advice is taken, sometimes it's not. And that's okay. You know, and I think that the, what I, I see a lot of times is what the next generation wants typically is a, you know, responsibility, a more clear vision and clarity on roles, responsibilities, and decision rights. And what the senior generation typically wants is security and respect. And if, if we can get everybody to understand that and then even ask the question, is there anything else you want as the senior generation? Is there, is there another piece of this puzzle that that makes you feel more complete or at ease or comfortable? And then the same thing with the junior generation. Is there, you know, of the things I just said, is there another thing?

Chris Barron [00:30:18] Is there something else you know?

Vance Crowe [00:30:20] Well and what's fascinating 'cause you're working this through with people, oftentimes they don't know what they want until you ask them, right? Like their mind has been so caught up in whatever they're working on, focused on trying to get done that really stopping people and getting them to be like, what, what is it that I want? What, what would make me feel secure? What aspects of this do I want? And I always say like, letting somebody speak, encouraging them. Hey, is there more? How will this work? Is a gift because you're most people, they have to, they can't think unless they say things out loud. And so by being the type of person that can prompt people to say what they want, you'll find out that most people don't know what they want until you ask them,

Chris Barron [00:31:02] Right? Yeah. And, and that's, that's a really good point because I also think, you know, there's different personalities and you have some people that have to think out loud. And you have some people that I see this in a, in a, in a fair amount of operations, there'll be somebody in, in the family business that is, doesn't say much. And I always tell everybody, when you have somebody in the business like that, when they speak, you better be quiet. 'cause they probably have something that's super important because those individuals tend to be more analytical in their thinking, at least in my observation over the years, is that, is that they're compartmentalizing everything. They're categorizing things and they're organizing their thoughts. And when they speak, they've already gone through that. They're not just, they're not just talking, they're not thinking it out loud. They've already processed it. So when they're putting a message out, be really careful to listen and to take that message down because they might not say it again either.

Vance Crowe [00:32:06] That's a great point. I mean the, the, the biggest challenge is trying to draw out those people when you're in the moment to get the, to have the conversation going. That diagramming of ideas is one of those things that's enabled me to bring introverts people that you're, you, like you're talking about people that normally would sit in the back and wait for everybody to kind of process everything through. When you start diagramming one, you give them an additional channel so they don't have to have all the words. They're starting to put things up in symbols and draw things out. But then two, you know, a lot of people, they don't speak up 'cause they, they're not trying to be in a fight. They just wanna throw in an idea. They just wanna make things better. And by drawing ideas, both of you now are standing shoulder to shoulder and looking at the idea as opposed to standing opposite each other and and, and having some kind of conflict.

Chris Barron [00:32:56] And when you say the word conflict too, I think that's a, that's something that I think is why a lot of communication gets avoided is they, you know, even people are okay with conflict. I think sometimes it, that there might be a, a small conflicting thing that they're not gonna bring up. 'cause it's not even a hill they wanna die on. But there's probably a lot of times when, when we get together, I tell operations, I guarantee you that if, well every operation I've ever, I haven't found one yet that doesn't have some discommunication dysfunction at some level. And so when we sit down, one of the first things I do is I, I ask them about five key questions. I have 'em all write 'em down and then they all share. So that starts to open up the dialogue gets everybody kind of warmed up a little bit to talking and then we'll transition into the, the concept and the idea of there's gonna be some issues and nothing's personal. This is not personal today. We'll, you know, we'll spend a full day with a team and it's like, we're gonna get the issues on the table and no, you know, nobody, nobody means anything to anybody personally. But if we can start to solve these issues, there's a dramatic and and direct impact on financially on the bottom line. Because that's what I learned when, you know, 10, you know, 30 years ago for, for the first 10 years doing the numbers, we could get all that right. But what I started to figure out is that the communication dysfunction, the family dynamics, the, the inability to lead very well as opposed to control.

Chris Barron [00:34:39] And I've always brought up the, the three emotions that I've always observed is, is, you know, is con is ego, insecurity and control. And we all have those emotions in us. They all come out. But in, in business those three tend to surface to the top the most. And each of us has one that's probably more so, and I, and, and with men I've kind of noticed the biggest one is fear mask by either ego or control. Because usually they're afraid if I let somebody go plant corn for me, they're gonna screw it up 'cause I'm the only one that can do it. Right. You know, so it's usually technically if you dig into it, it's fear. And so, you know, so what those issues are, getting them on the table, but then stepping back and saying, okay, why is that an issue? What do you, you know, what is the concern here? And getting to the nuts and bolts of that really, really starts to change the communication, which then makes it a lot easier for everybody to look at the numbers and let the numbers dictate decision making moving forward then because, you know, you, we all have, you know, Vance, you have a perspective, I have a perspective and somewhere in the middle are the facts, but we, they need to be measurable, especially in business. We need to be able to measure those. And so that's, that's kind of our process at least on the one-on-one portion.

Vance Crowe [00:36:05] Well, and you're talking about business and family and culture, there's a lot mixed in there and there are a lot of things you know about stuff like money where what you were raised in is just kind of how you implicitly feel about things. I remember when my wife and I went to get married, we had to take this class and it was like a couple's class and I kind of rolled my eyes thinking like, oh, what do we need this for? But they sat us down and they were like, all right, how much money can either one of you spend before you have to ask the other person, like how are you joining your bank accounts together? How are you doing things? And my wife and I actually had talked about a lot of these things, but you could hear other couples be like, one person thinks I can spend $500 without asking. And the other one thinks you can only spend $50 without asking. And so if you scale that out, not just from a marriage but for a business operation, what decisions can you make? How much money can you spend? What kind of investments are you allowed to do? What type of long-term thinking are you allowed to have without getting somebody else on board? These are just hard things to bring up because a lot of people didn't grow up with good habits around them, right?

Chris Barron [00:37:10] Yeah. And that's, that's what we see exactly what you just said. And I'm sure you see this when you're working through the communication stuff is people have not had those, those conversations just, you know, some of the most basic things that probably we should all be talking about with our business partners or our family members, which in a lot of cases the family members are the business partners, which even complicates things further because of history and all those types of things. And then those things aren't resolved or, or even talked about and they don't get less, they get more, they get deeper and deeper, you know, and so it, it, it starts to really create an issue as everybody gets older and you continue to carry that baggage forward without, you know, opening it up and reviewing it and then just dumping it out and getting on with the next thing. 'cause it's so easy for, I think a lot of us as we get older, and I'll speak to that as I, as I've gotten older, it's like you gotta consciously not look back and consciously look forward. And, and we do that with, on the, on the financials. I tell people, and with our program with profit manager by design, it's designed so that you look out the windshield of your business, accounting is postmortem, right? It's already happened. Like if you're, if you're running your business using accounting and looking into the next year and you take your cash flow from the previous year and just roll it into this year and say, this is how I think the next year's gonna go, you just decided to drive down the road using the rear view mirrors of your business with profit manager.

Chris Barron [00:38:44] What we're trying to do is pull out the opportunities and the perspective and the thoughts and the ideas and the growth potential and use the windshield and, and let's don't even look at any of those numbers. I mean their perspective, right? That you can look at 'em and that's how that year ended up, that year's done, let's look forward and say, okay, here are all of our new expenses, here's our new potential income, here's what this year looks like. And then be able to, to run scenarios within, okay, if this happens, then this happens. If that happens, then that happens. And that's really what that's, you know, without going into the weeds on on Farm Profit Manager, that's what literally what we're doing is, is enabling people to look out the windshield. Well

Vance Crowe [00:39:28] The other big thing you're doing, and I got a chance to come to your event last year and was just blown away by the level of depth of connection between your consulting clients, like the people in the room, they knew each other, some of them have been in these groups that you guys have set up and it was like brotherhood. Like I, I would, I think something akin to what people experience from being in the military with other people. Like they really have a deep connection with other people that can only come from how you guys are consciously constructing these group meetings. Talk a little bit about that side of your business 'cause I'm fascinated by what you've built there.

Chris Barron [00:40:09] Yeah, well the, the first part of that before I would get into like the peer group structures that we do is something that I've had the philosophy on for a long time and I've, I've got that in integrated into the minds of our other associates. So whether it's Shay or Joe Paulson or Andy Ruby or Jeremy Krueger, who are our other associates that help farm operations is we don't want to go wide. In other words, we don't wanna, we don't wanna help every farm or every business, you know, we work with some other business besides farm operations too, but we don't wanna work with every business across the land. We want to go very deep. And so when we start having a discovery conversation with an operation, and I've never met 'em before, I'm gonna spend an hour on a Zoom meeting and I want the e everybody that needs to be involved in the conversation. I don't want the junior generation that thinks they need to hire us to go back and talk mom and dad into us getting together. I want them all on and I wanna understand what are their challenges, what are their opportunities? What, what are some of the needs that they might have and what are the services that we can provide and do we match up? But then when we start working with an operation, I wanna go super deep. I wanna, I wanna understand the family dynamics. I wanna understand how much grain storage you have and what head capacity do you have for livestock or you know, I wanna understand everything who's not involved in the farm but has some vested interest or who is, you know, how are, how do you guys make decisions?

Chris Barron [00:41:39] Where were you 30 years ago? Where are you now? What does the future look like? That takes some time, right? And so that's the depth that we wanna do because when as business people, if we go work with an attorney, we're gonna get an hour or two of really good legal advice specifically. That doesn't mean that they understand that we got some family dynamics going over and they just made a recommendation for X, Y, z and I got another issue over here that might not work because they don't know the whole picture. And so, you know, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:42:11] And what a banker is incentivized to tell you you ought to do, might not consider how your relationship with grandpa and your Uncle Frank is.

Chris Barron [00:42:18] Exactly. And so, you know, its the same with the lender, it's the same thing with the CPA, you know, you're, the CPA's job is to, to try to help mitigate tax consequences, but there may be a reason that you shouldn't be doing certain things that they think is the right thing for you to do in a cookie cutter approach. You know, same thing with financial planners, the same thing with your insurance agents. You know, and, and we call that, you know, your strategic resource team, it's all of those, it's your lender, your banker, your CPA, your insurance agent and your, you know, so what we do is we come in, we help facilitate communication between your, your strategic resource team. And that's why we go deep. And so when we do that, we, we, we form a really close bond with our clients and too, I mean, I, I consider 'em friends, I care about 'em. When you do that, you go deep. I mean you, you all, all of a sudden, you know, I feel like I'm a part of the business, you know, so when, when somebody calls that I've worked with and, and, and that's what's been hard to take on new clients too because we go so deep, everybody is starting to renew every year. Even if I feel like when I go and spend another day with them and we, and we, they renew for another year. I feel like the confirmation please sometimes, but I had a client tell me one time, that's exactly what I want. I want to have you call me out on some stuff, or I want you to agree with me on some stuff because you're looking at it from 30,000 foot.

Chris Barron [00:43:49] You're not here every day. You're my working on the business partner, not my working in the business partner. So when we show up, we're looking at things as on the business. We're not looking at what, what planning rate should they be doing or what pesticides they should be using or insecticides or what the herd health diagram needs to look like and all that stuff. On the production side, we're looking at the business, we're looking at the communication, we're looking at, at the decision making roles, responsibilities, decision rights transition, financial cash flow. So

Vance Crowe [00:44:23] After you've had this deep dive with people, you take 'em on as a client, what is it that they experience in these in these groups? How do, do you bring everybody together? Oh, because I think there's a philosophy here that's worth digging into. Yeah,

Chris Barron [00:44:36] Yeah. So, so you know, you might say, okay, well you work with an operation for two or three years, they probably should be graduated, right? We, we should graduate them. I mean, we've done about everything we can do. There are, you know, they, they came to us. Most of the operations that sign up are all I would say probably are 85 to 90% efficiency proficiency as a business executive, right? But they're trying to get to a hundred percent. They don't wanna just be really, really good. They wanna be excellent. And so we're really super blessed because we don't have anybody calling us that's at 30%. It's like, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, we have people call us that are like already pretty executive level. And so when that happens, it's like, okay, well we work with you for a couple years. We've fixed a bunch of things, we got everything really dialed in and now we got a bunch of other clients doing the same thing. I start looking at 'em and I'm like, you know, if we put eight of these together and we got 'em, so they're not in competition with each other from different states. And so what we've done over the years is we've formalized a, what we call a peer group advisory board, which is these peers, we will assemble them with current clients and we have some operations that we haven't worked with, with clients that have heard about us now. And we vet them pretty deeply if we're not gonna do individual consulting with them, I'm gonna dig in, I'm gonna ask all kinds of questions, you better be really vulnerable. 'cause I wanna see everything but your underwear drawer pretty much jokingly, right?

Chris Barron [00:46:08] I want to, I want to know everything so that I literally, we send out an onboarding form or an application, wanna call it wherever you want, which they fill out all their information. Literally physically. I print all those off and I literally lay 'em out and I'm sitting in my conference room right now looking at the table that a lot of times I'll lay 15 or 20 of these out. And at any given time, we usually have about 15 to 20 or so in the hopper of consideration, we want them to be diverse in locations. So we want probably all eight of the operations, but probably to be from eight different states. If there's a couple operations from the same state, we want 'em to be long ways apart so there's no chance of competition because in any business, you know, your, your neighbor or the person that's close to you is probably gonna be in, in business competition at some level. And so you might not wanna share your financials with, with the person that's right next to you on how your business is doing if you're in competition, especially in agriculture. It's such a visual thing. So anyway, we get the diversity of, of, of operation from that standpoint. And then I look for, because we get to know 'em, right? We talk to 'em. So I start to look at the, the intellectual mindset, the executive mindset and a giving personality because some of us, when I have somebody tell me, I wanna make sure I'm in a, in a, a group with operations that are all smarter than me, bigger than me, and better than me.

Chris Barron [00:47:41] So I can gain and grow. Those are usually the ones that I slide off and put off in the back of the room somewhere. And I might think about 'em later because I wanna hear that they want to come in and learn from each other and help some other people because you get in life what you give. And I want people that are givers in these groups. And what happens as a result is when they go through this experience and when we put these eight operations together, the way the process works is they make their final decision after I've, me and the team have gone through and, and identified these eight operations we feel like are a good fit, synergistically, geographically diverse. They might have some operational differences. There might be a dairy, there might be a cattle operation, there might be two or three row crop operations. There might be a, you know, an operation that's growing rice and one that's in Canada, you know, growing pulse and mustard and all kinds of other stuff that they grow up there, you know, and, and just very diverse that way. So we bring them together on paper, I'll send out all eight to the eight operations, and they can look at the other seven and they can say, yeah, that looks inter yeah, I want to be in that group. The way the group is structured. Then if they all decide, yeah, we wanna be in that, one of them will decide to host first. When they host the other seven operations are gonna come to that hosting operation. And they're gonna, they're gonna have the opportunity to see the financials, all the things that are working, all the things that are not working.

Chris Barron [00:49:18] And what we do before they host is we work pretty extensively with the hosting operation on who, who needs to be interviewed. We identify anywhere from seven to 10 different people that need to be interviewed. And it depends a little bit on what that, that farm operation needs. For some, it's like we're in the midst of transition and we need some advice on transition. It might be our financials aren't very good and we're really struggling financially trying to grow the business. Or somebody might be, we've had all these opportunities and we've outgrown our ability to manage and we're trying to figure a bunch of stuff out. It, it's different for every operation. We usually typically identify three or four things. So let's just say it's a financial one as an example. So what happens then is that hosting operation might say, you know, our working capital's tight, our financials are iffy and we're trying to bring another family member back the farm but can't quite afford 'em or something. You know, how do we do that? And so that's, those are the questions that the peer group's gonna dig into. So they're gonna decide the hosting operation to decide, I'm gonna have my lender, my lender's gonna be here, my, you know, my uncle that's not involved in the farm, that's a mentor for us, or another consultant that we work with. Or it might be, you know, whoever they want. It might be a, a key employee that's been there forever that knows it, you know, if that other person comes back, what's that gonna look like? You know? And, and so they decide who all is gonna be interviewed. And then typically at the end it's, let's say it's the mom and dad and a son or a daughter, they're gonna get interviewed too.

Chris Barron [00:50:49] But individually at the end, those interviews are private. They cannot be in the room. So, so the first day what we do, it's usually a two and a half day thing. The first day we get together, everybody shows up, they share what's going on in their business with a PowerPoint. Everybody gets 20 minutes to show some pictures of the family, the farm, what's going on. They update each other on that day one, the hosting operation does a history. They're gonna have a PowerPoint that's gonna be about an hour and a half long. They're gonna show the history of the operation, where they're at, and where the operation needs to go and what their challenges are currently that they want to group to work on that night. We have a social, everybody has a couple beers, talks to each other, gets to know each other. If it's the first time they've ever got to know each other, the relationships begin to bloom. The next morning there's usually a physical farm tour. And then we get back in a conference room, either a hotel or at the farm or somewhere in a conference room. We kick the hosting operations out and we begin interviews. The rest of that day are interviews. Usually any, any interview might be 20 minutes, might be 30 minutes. They're not there. So they, so your peers are asking them very specific questions and they're digging into the dirtier operation and they're gonna figure everything out. So you can try to hide something, but good luck there. It's gonna come out. And so when all of that stuff is learned that night after the interviews are done, we begin a SWOT analysis late that afternoon. We, I, the, the peers identify their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and their threats. This

Vance Crowe [00:52:15] Is wild man. I, I mean, the amount of openness is unparalleled. I don't, I don't know of anything else, any other consulting thing that is this intense.

Chris Barron [00:52:27] Well, and that's what draws the relationship to become very, very tight. And I get to that in a second. But what happens then is, is as they work on the, on the swat, each opper, each peer, somebody is gonna present strengths. So we identify, okay, somebody, one of the peer says, I wanna, I want to present strengths tomorrow. The next day somebody does weaknesses, somebody has opportunities, somebody does threats. And then we also start to work on action items and recommendations based on all the things. What are the action items that they should be doing, what should they be thinking about? And so we also assign an accountability partner to each of those action items to follow up with them, to make sure they're chipping away and working at those things to actually get results from that process. And so as we work on that, then it, it's pretty powerful. So the end of that day, you know, we, we, we get started on it, get a good, good feel for what some of that stuff is. We do another social that night, everybody, few drinks and nice steak dinner or something, you know, that the host family provides. And then the next morning, seven o'clock or so, we'll take another hour, hour and a half and finish the swat, finish the recommendations, and then we bring the family in about 9 30, 10 o'clock in the morning. And your peers present to you on a really nice formalized PowerPoint. Your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities, and your threats. And, and they'll take turns coming up and presenting to the family. And then as that gets done, there's the action items. Usually two people will come up and we'll talk through that.

Chris Barron [00:54:00] Some of the peers will help back whoever's presenting up to give a little bit more context to an idea or a, a suggestion or a action item. And then once that's all done, you know, if, if somebody hasn't cried by that point, we haven't done our job. I mean, because it's emotional, right? I mean, you, you've got your blood, sweat and tears into this. And it's not that you're crying because you're mad or sad or you know, it's just because like when you hear the strengths that the operation has for, let's say the senior generation recognizing the success and the things that they've done over their lifetime in, in a lot of cases, has never been recognized before. Like that in a, in, in, in a way that it's peers that are people that you would respect, that respect you, right? And so that brings out a lot of intensity. And then at the very end of that, once that's all done, and they've, you know, we kind of always joke, you know, they do the strengths first and they do the weaknesses. And there's always one person that always does the weaknesses. It's always the one that comes up and says, now that we built you up, we're gonna tear you down, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:55:14] And go through the,

Chris Barron [00:55:15] You know, this is the reality. You know, dude, you guys got, you know, your communication needs to really improve or whatever it is that, you know, isn't, isn't functioning like it should. Those weaknesses are identified.

Vance Crowe [00:55:27] Man, that sounds like a metanoia experience where somebody burns off a lot about them. And a lot of the fears that you, you know, wonder in the back of your mind, I wonder if people notice about this shortcoming or I wonder if they're gonna pick up and, and nothing

Chris Barron [00:55:42] Goes unnoticed. I mean, yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:55:44] Process

Chris Barron [00:55:45] And, and being on that side of the table is pretty humbling. You gotta be willing to be vulnerable. You know, you gotta be, but, but know that you're gonna get to do this with seven other operations and you're gonna get to be on the other side of the table. And what happens is, at the end of that process, then on, on day three, and we're usually done by noon on day three, we get all done with the SWOT and the action items and stuff, then we do takeaways. And takeaways are, what did you learn? And the last two and a half days that you're gonna take home and you're gonna apply in your own business, that's gonna either improve, change or adjust how you do business in a manner that's really gonna make a difference. Because that's why you're there. You're there to help them. But you can also take something home. But you gotta take that thing home and apply it. So when you come back the next time and say, well, my takeaway was this, here's how I applied it, here's what I did. Because we need to have results from these things too, while we're building these really tight relationships. And so like, if it's the first time everybody shakes hands and they, and we always set up like a texting group and then they're always like, texting, I just bought urea and I paid this much. Or here's, we just got a seven inch rain. Here's the flooding, or our crops look good. You know, so they're always like communicating via text and, but they maybe haven't met yet. They go to that first meeting, they shake hands and they're respectful to each other. By the end of that first encounter of a peer group meeting, they're hugging their best friends.

Chris Barron [00:57:20] I mean, they, it, it changes and you can't explain it. And I literally tell people, you can't explain, I'm explaining it to you, but it does not do justice to the impact that that has. The last one we just, that I just did, we just had a group complete their four years. 'cause it's a four year commitment, eight operations. We meet in the summer, we meet in the winter, you know, so we just completed a four year, it was up in Canada and you can't explain it. I mean, they, they were all, they're all best friends. They will be forever. And you know, most of our operations that when they get done with a four year experience, they're like, I wanted in another one. So let me know when you get another one put together. I want in, I mean we're running about a 90, 95% reentry rate where people have been through a peer group. We've got operations that have been through three of 'em now, and they want to continue on because of the relationships that develop.

Vance Crowe [00:58:16] Yeah. So my observation was when Shay invited me down to your conference, it was in Arizona, you know, I go to conferences all over the country. I get to give keynotes and I, I like my work and I get to see how groups of people relate to one another over a long time, right? I've gone to farm bureaus multiple times, different co-op groups, banking groups. But when I showed up at your event, the, the interaction between people and what they were sharing and the value of the communication, it was somewhat surreal. It was like you could be in one group of people and hear them exchanging level like a le with a level of candor that you just couldn't believe. Then you go to another conversation and it'd be that same level of candor but in a completely different subject.

Chris Barron [00:59:05] And

Vance Crowe [00:59:05] So to me it was like there is something going on underneath the, in the inner workings that you just described that really, it's amazing 'cause they've gone through something pretty intense.

Chris Barron [00:59:16] Yeah. And there's a difference between, you know, you know, and I jokingly, I I think I told you this earlier offline or something, you know, Shay and I talk about like how, you know, when he's came in and started helping me with what we do on the consulting side, you know, I, I tell him, I'm like, you're way smarter than I am. I said, but I've got a little more experience on you. But the thing I like about our associates that we brought in, and you as well Vance because you, you, You exude this too, but people wanna know that you care. It's not about being able to fix everything. Those of us who have spouses, sometimes it's, you know, when we have a conversation, it's like sometimes we don't need the solution. Sometimes we just need to care and we need to understand. 'cause there's some things in life you can't change. I always talk about control and the controllables. We have a lot of things we can control and we need to identify what those are and we need to manage those and we need to lead them and we need to transition them. But the uncontrollables, we need to figure out how to navigate them. And that's really the key of what we try to do. And we try to have not only ourselves help these operations, but then graduate them to them helping each other. And people get more, I mean, I could be the best consultant on the planet. They're gonna get more out of seven of their peers than they are from any one single consultant.

Chris Barron [01:00:48] No matter if you're the best consultant on the planet, you know, it, it comes down to, you know, what are you gonna do to change your business? And what you do is, is ask yourself, who would you listen to? You know, am I, am I getting good sound counseling here or not? You know, is this, and, and so I think, you know, when, when you, you put a brain trust together of eight operations, you've got a level of intelligence that you can't get otherwise. And then when you have the care that comes with it, it's un it's unmatched.

Vance Crowe [01:01:22] So I guess maybe I'll give you a little bit of the medicine that you've been giving your own clients kind of as we're wrapping up. But I'm interested to hear you got this big Ag View Nation sign behind you. What is your tenure when you're 10 years further along in your career, what do you hope Ag View Nation looks like?

Chris Barron [01:01:42] That's a good question. I would say that for me, I still, I mean I, I I, I'm, I'm gonna be 60 this year. I still feel like I'm probably in my early thirties or twenties, I guess even sometime, most of the time. I, I hope that I still have good health because I wanna continue to help people. I wanna have a team that as needs increase. 'cause I think they're gonna, as businesses get more complex and more complicated, I want us to be able to, to continue to help people when they need help and when they don't need it, get out of their way. And I like competition. I, I wish, and I hope there's still more people out doing the same thing we're doing, but it's hard to find people that are doing the same thing. There's some, and, and that's good. 'cause I, I, I want competition. I think that's good. That makes us all better. And we're seeing that on the farm profit manager side. And I hope we continue to, 'cause that's gonna make us all bring the really best things we can to the consultants. The other thing I would say for me is time with my wife and my kids. That's the most important thing. And then the last thing I would say is the farm. I've always said I want to, when I grow up, I wanna be a farmer. That's a key thing. That's what I want to do. So, you know, and I, I think the most important thing for me is people, relationships and it's family and it's doing what you love,

Vance Crowe [01:03:26] Man. There's nothing more beautiful than that. And I have to say that I remember shaking your hand for the first time, although what I didn't know at the time was how much my life would change after we shook hands and got to know each other. 'cause you've been a great business partner. We're going to do some cool stuff up in, yeah. E even in North Dakota coming up in January with the North star Ag. We've got a, we're doing some stuff I think at Texas A&M, the TAMU program. I, I'm really excited to have met you. If other people wanted to be in contact with you, learn more about getting involved in your program, where should they go?

Chris Barron [01:04:07] Yeah, I, I would say just go to the ag view solutions website, ag view solutions.com. I would say reach out to Alyssa. She distributes, she's the one who distributes the, the workload. And I kind of identifies who needs to, to do the discovery process because the big thing is, is just doing a discovery process with people and asking, you know, what is it that, that your operation needs or your business? 'cause it doesn't have to be agriculture. I mean we've, we've got some businesses that, that are involved in some of these peer groups that are actually in a different industry and it brings a whole new dynamic and it allows the farmers to see a different industry. But we all are in business. So business is business regardless of what, if you're building widgets or if you're growing corn, it's a lot of the same dynamics. And so I think just reach out to us and, and we'll do a discovery process and do an onboarding form and from there we can see if, if, if there's a fit for you.

Vance Crowe [01:05:06] Well man, I think you guys are implementing interest-based communications on a scale that is really amazing. So thank you so much for sitting down and chatting with me, Chris.

Chris Barron [01:05:16] Yeah, and I don't

Vance Crowe [01:05:17] Mean to be a blubbering idiot, but a lot of this stuff means a lot. Very

Chris Barron [01:05:22] Important.

Vance Crowe [01:05:24] That's gonna do it for this week's show. I'm really glad that we got to do that. Chris and I actually had a bunch of meetings in the morning and then we jumped on here and I don't know if you could tell, because Chris is just really fully engaged in what he's doing. That heartfelt experience that he had throughout the conversation, I think is indicative of how much he cares about his program. And I feel similarly, I really feel deeply about the work that we're doing with interest based communicating. So as we sign out, this is a little video explaining interest-based communicating. And if you are interested either in having us deliver it to your entire organization or coming as an individual, you can go to Articulate Ventures slash IBC. Alright, we'll be back next week. I already know with Benjamin Anderson, who's gonna talk all about his life here in St. Louis running an up and coming biotech company. Alright, we'll be back later. My name is Heath Hunter. I'm a managing director at Broadview Group in our business, your success is dependent on how you're able to effectively tell your story to relate to your customer or your potential partners. And we needed a course that could train our staff on how to do that. I was looking for something much less than what Vance delivered. I literally just wanted him to come in and help us a little bit with storytelling. And he came back with this curriculum, which was awesome. How to craft a memorable introduction, build a story around our firm and how we personally weave into that story.

IBC Course Testimonials — Heath Hunter, Broadview Group + others (ad segment) [01:06:55] How do we continue the conversation through asking good questions, how to negotiate in a collaborative way versus a competitive way so that we maintain that relationship that we've worked so hard to build. Our relationships are everything. To me, Interest-Based Communication is really understanding the perspectives and the point of view of others being able to meet them where they are. Interest-Based Communication to me is creating a dialogue with someone else sitting across the table for me. It allows each party to really describe what they care about and work together to accomplish that for each party. A lot of people, myself included before I took Vance's class, really went in with higher weight on what was important to me. Everybody has a tendency to just focus in on the price, but there are hundreds of other components that come into something as complex as a transaction for a company. What are they actually interested in? What do they hope to achieve and what does success look like for them walking out of a negotiation, those could differ widely from how they're showing up. If we can somehow get on the same page, you can create these collaborative solutions that are a win for everyone, we've definitely woven that into the process. We're trying to ask those deep probing questions on what are their motivations, what do they care about? Really understanding who they are, introducing yourself to better communicate who you are and your background. What makes a good introduction? This is something that I, I really appreciated and I've been in the workforce for, you know, 27 plus years and done lots of introductions.

IBC Course Testimonials — Heath Hunter, Broadview Group + others (ad segment) [01:08:33] I've heard lots of introductions, making a good introduction. I think everyone just assumes that you should just kind of start talking about yourself and go into your title and what you do. And frankly, that's typically not very memorable or interesting. Going through this course and learning about storytelling and the arc of a story and how to embed that in your introduction was honestly like nothing I'd ever heard before. And it makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you're a good storyteller, you tend to sort of capture an audience and you want to be able to do that with your introduction, sort of that hook that you need in, in a story. For me, the big thing was having faith that sitting back and really paying attention to the conversation will help draw out a connection. Before I would spend my time trying to, okay, what do I have in common with this person? Oh yeah, this is a chance to interject and, and establish that link. Ironically, just kind of stepping back and saying, I'm just gonna really pay attention to what's in front of me. It really has impacted the conversation because you can get deeper faster. I used to think it was all about how interesting I could come across, but what I've learned, and honestly what Vance taught us, the most interesting folks that you run across, ask really good questions. That's been a game changer for me. Instead of trying to focus on myself, focusing fully on the other person and really just listening for like, what are the details that they're giving me, because there's a reason that they mention that. We assume that folks can kind of see what we see in our heads.

IBC Course Testimonials — Heath Hunter, Broadview Group + others (ad segment) [01:10:04] And what this course taught us about diagramming your ideas is to put it on paper, put it out there so the other parties can see it. We were meeting with a group that week and we were trying to communicate different ideas and outline a vision for this potential business. Instead of doing it in a PowerPoint format, we did it on a whiteboard. It was transformational. The CEO he, he just lit up. We actually handed the pen over to him and we said, Hey, show us where we've got it wrong. Show us where you have additional ideas. The level of engagement, you know, went through the roof and he got up and you could see he was almost giddy. Having that limiter of the speed of your hand, you're bringing them along and you know your idea you're trying to convey. So the practicality of the course, the mirroring, the diagramming, the exercises. I think that's one of the things that I appreciated most about the course. Super candidly, I've been through a lot of these in my career and you walk out of there and you're like, well that was a waste of time. What I can tell you about what Vance brought to the table. I, at no point ever felt that way. I was able to walk out of every single session and put to work immediately what we had practiced that day. He has a great way of connecting concepts so that you have this, you know, holistic framework, so to speak, to connect with people, which is something that we do all the time. But deliberate practice of it really helped up my game. I would recommend that everyone take this course and I would venture to say that this has been more impactful for me at home than at work. Pretty much everybody is having conversations and negotiations at home.

IBC Course Testimonials — Heath Hunter, Broadview Group + others (ad segment) [01:11:35] I feel super lucky and blessed that we were able to have this course at work and that it sort of bleeds into home life. I think that's kind of the best of both worlds. Any corporation or any firm, no matter what the size I think would benefit from something like this, who I'd recommend this to, is a small group of professionals who are really dedicated to self-improvement. Interest-Based Communication to me is a holistic way to build relationships. Can benefit anyone.