Farm Succession Planning: Why Fair Isn't Always Equal in Family Inheritance

Clint Fischer [00:00:00] You know, we really want our son to take over the farm, but he's seen us struggle his whole life financially. We haven't been able to provide for the things that, you know, other parents were able to provide for their kid. You know, he, he looks at it and he goes, am I signing up for a prison sentence?

Vance Crowe [00:00:22] There's a reason why almost every religion has very clear inheritance rules, right? It's so that you don't have to divide things up. It's, it's because they figure it out over time. Hey, this is the way that you keep wealth together. Unfortunately,

Clint Fischer [00:00:36] Oftentimes you see in-laws or spouses or un you know, non-blood relation who are maybe stirring the pot, either behind the scenes or up front, you know, and so how do we anticipate that through our estate plan and transition plan? You know, all those, those components kind of come together. And I'm Tim Bickett, a grain and cattle risk management advisor from Worthington, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Crowe podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:01:09] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today, we sit down with attorney Clint Fischer Lit, made a big splash in the last couple of years on Twitter, talking about succession planning. And in particular, he focuses on the ag industry. But if you're listening and you're not at all interested in the ag industry, or you know that there's no farm coming your way, I can tell you that this conversation will still have a lot of relevance for you. Clint talks about the very core of negotiations and building good relationships, asking some of the tough questions that are uncomfortable when it comes to mom and dad, and really just a great person to think about how to deal with the world creatively, especially when it seems like, ah, there's so many avenues that are blocked off To me, Clint is one of the rare people that's so positive and can figure out what's a new way for me to find an angle to get into this situation? So I think anyone from any walk of life will not only benefit from it, but really enjoy this conversation. We're gonna get to that in just a moment, but I did make a decision about a week ago that I wanted to share with you, and for a long time, listeners know that I don't accept advertisers on the podcast largely. That's because I don't like being told what to do. I don't like having to answer What is our viewership like, what are, you know, what kind of topics are we gonna cover? But I am supported by Legacy Interviews, which is the company that I use during my regular life, where I sit down with individuals and couples to record their life stories so that future generations can know their family histories.

Vance Crowe [00:02:45] One of the services that we offer at Legacy Interviews is a retirement interview. This is where you can have somebody that is retiring from your organization, or maybe they've passed down a farm or a business, and you can allow them both to record their private stories, but also we'll do an additional segment where they can talk about the organization that they either built or helped build. And they get to talk about some of the policy decisions, some of the people that they met along the way, and why decisions happen the way that they did. Clients that have used this have found it to be a wonderful gift to give someone to say, we recognize how much you've given to this organization and we want you to have this gift, but also we want to capture the information that you've had over the years so that that way people that join this company many years from now will really understand and know about it. If you're interested in doing the Retirement Legacy interview, I'm going to offer this deal for the next couple of weeks where anyone that buys this can also have a chance to come on the beginning of one of my podcasts and talk about the person that they got this legacy interview for. This will give you a chance to talk both about this person and the business that they help build so that all of my listeners can have a chance to learn about your organization. And if it fits, they can reach out to you either as employment opportunities or business chances to work together. But it's something I'm doing 'cause I think this'll benefit Legacy Interviews and it will benefit my viewers. So if you're interested in having one of these small spots, we'll do just for a few weeks, go to Legacy Interviews dot com and purchase a retirement package.

Vance Crowe [00:04:22] Alright, without further ado, let's head to the interview with my new friend, Clint Fischer. Clint Fischer, welcome to the podcast,

Clint Fischer [00:04:30] Man. I really appreciate you having me on Vance.

Vance Crowe [00:04:34] So it's kind of funny, when I see you on Twitter, you kind of look like a dork, but as soon as I see you online, you actually are like a, like a, like a South Dakota ag guy. So tell me a little bit about your joining Twitter and starting to talk about your knowledge base of succession planning and, and you know, how the legal world works. Sure,

Clint Fischer [00:04:54] Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you, you, you're seeing me with my, my summer haircut, so, so I don't have my

Vance Crowe [00:04:59] My long

Clint Fischer [00:05:00] Beard Right now, and nor am I in a suit and tie and yeah, so, so on Twitter I speak a lot about farm succession planning, farmer transitions, just general egg business concepts. And the reason that I actually joined Twitter, so I only, I joined about two years ago and I was working one-on-one with a couple of of farmers who were dealing with some business management things. And, and so we were kinda working through that and one of them said, you know, there's this big kind of group on on Twitter, which is now X obviously, and you ought share some of these ideas. What's in your brain on there? I think, you know, some other people could find value in that. And so I said, oh, well, whatever, okay, I'll, I'll try it. So I started posting just, just my general thoughts and ideas on there and, and it seems like what happened is there's a desire and a, there was a, a welcoming of other topics other than what is the weather doing today and what are the markets doing today in the general Ag Twitter world? And, and so I brought in a little bit of a different dynamic, not that I'm the only one who talks about this kind of stuff, but you know, what, how are we looking at farms and ranches as farms and ranches as businesses, and how are we transitioning them either to the next generation or to a third party, you know, some young person who wants an opportunity.

Clint Fischer [00:06:35] So those are kind of my ideas. My background is isn't business in general. So I actually, so I'm an attorney in South Dakota and focus a lot on business, farm succession, estate planning, those types of matters. But I'm a new attorney, relatively new attorney. I spent 10 years out of undergrad working in ag retail, so I managed various locations that sold feed, fertilizer, seed, chemical, all that kind of stuff. And so two things happened during that time. One is that I got to meet and work one on one with a, a ton of different farmers in Eastern South Dakota. And then the other thing is, I just got kind of thrown head first into how do you manage a business, right? And so these aren't production ag businesses, these are ag retail. But what I've found over my career now is a lot of those principles of general business ideas and concepts can be applied to the farm ranch setting that are often not viewed as a business. It's, it's really a lifestyle. And so how do we apply those things? The same challenges all exist as far as, you know, team members and management. And do we have some kind of a transition plan? Are we transitioning management? How are we hiring people, right? All those things apply to other industries, but then also production ag as well.

Clint Fischer [00:08:08] And so as I was working one-on-one with these farmers, I also have this little, this little disease called wanting to be an entrepreneur at all times and at all costs. And so I was starting multiple other businesses and some of which were successful, others weren't. And honestly, I, I learned a lot more from the unsuccessful ones than I did, really the successful businesses that I had started. But all that time I'm learning more about business and learning more about, man, there's a lot of compliance and legal issues and, and you know, who's gonna take over, you know, when somebody is wanting to retire. And so that all kinda led me into wanting to get my, my, my, my law degree to be able to help folks more than just general advisement, right? I wanted to be able to help on, on specific legal issues and specifically setting up some of these succession planning, you know, type structures and, and help arm folks in that world. So that's, that's kind of what, what led me, my, my winding path to becoming an attorney and to really primarily focusing on kind of the, in the ag sector, I would say, but really on the business and the, and the transition succession planning, estate planning side of things.

Vance Crowe [00:09:35] Yeah, the reason I started off with that comment about a dork is that most of the time when somebody shows up looking formal in their profile photo and they, they say they're an attorney, all of their examples are the most whitewashed bullshit. Like, where are we gonna go with this? And that's what I think I noticed about your Twitter was that you're bringing up real world situations that people have had to deal with. And I know as somebody that goes around and talks about the emotional side of succession, not the legal side, that these things are always sticky and like they, they have so many different perspectives, and I really like that a lot of times you're bringing up like, Hey dad, you know, has always promised the, the son this farm and there was a divorce, and now how's all this gonna get allocated? These are the messy issues that are real in succession planning. I think they don't get talked about often enough.

Clint Fischer [00:10:27] Yeah. Well, to your point, Vance a as, as an attorney who works in this world, a lot of my time is spent not doing legal work. It's, it's being a, you know, a non-licensed counselor and therapist and you know, and he's trying to work through family dynamics knowing that that's basically a universal truth in any type of a family business, whether it's ag or not. You know, we have this, this idea that I built something or I have, you know, expanded on something that I inherited, therefore my children ought to be as excited about taking over as I am. And sometimes that's true, sometimes that's not. But generally what I see happening is we have a farm family who has, you know, poured their blood, sweat, tears their whole life into building this operation, and they have multiple children. And so now we have one child who is, yep, they're gung ho, they're ready to take over the reins, but now we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 multiple kids who are saying, no, I want to choose a different career path. And so part of the issue comes up in my world is, well, how do we manage those family dynamics, those family relationships and leave assets, leave this farm business to the on-farm kid, but also make things fair, equitable, equal, whatever terminology you want to use to those off farm kids, are they gonna have resentment?

Clint Fischer [00:12:13] Is this going to be something where it's too complicated, I just don't even want to deal with it, and I'll just let things sort off after I pass away? Which is unfortunately the default method that happens, you know, regularly. It, it, you know, and so, so a lot of it is managing those family dynamics and the, what I call the soft skills, right? Communication, you know, empathy, trust, all that kind of stuff that comes into a, a true farm transition plan. And, you know, how do we structure it both on the legal side and the financial side, but also in a family relationship that has second spouses and, you know, second marriages and, and stepchildren and, you know, all those kind of dynamics that are interesting. Which brings me to this kind of point of, I wish there was just a template that I could put out there, and I could say, here's what you need to do to structure your succession plan, your transition plan. Unfortunately, that's not the case because every operation's unique, every, you know, family's unique. And, and so, because I can't do that, you know, there's a lot of one-on-one conversations that happen. And then finally, to your point, Vance of, you know, posting that stuff out there into the world, it's so that we can relate and we can understand that we're not isolated. I'm not the only person who's going through these challenges, but then also there's a lot of intelligence in the ag world in general.

Clint Fischer [00:13:46] And so by posing things from a storytelling standpoint, as a question out there on ag Twitter, you know, there's a ton of stuff that I've learned from people who have been there, done that, and I haven't been there, done that. And so I can take these little nuggets of gold and apply 'em to my next farm succession plan that I'm working through and, you know, just, just elevates me, elevates those who are reading it. And, and that's kind of the, the overall goal is how do we pre preserve family farms if they wanna be preserved, and can we just collectively enhance that through knowledge and information and sharing of ideas.

Vance Crowe [00:14:29] Yeah, I think there's a ton of dynamics that are going on in the current farm succession world that I'm not sure if they existed always or if this is something new. But, you know, I think that there was wisdom to some degree in the biblical books. I mean, there's a reason why almost every religion has very clear inheritance rules, right? It's so that you don't have to divide things up. It's, it's because they figured out over time, Hey, this is the way that you keep wealth together. And then you have the added challenge, you know, so a modernity has changed that we don't always say, well, the oldest son should get it all, which, you know, as not the oldest son. Yeah, I appreciate that. But then you, you also have the added challenge of it. It used to be that if you were working on a farm for 30 to 40 years, your body was broken. You couldn't be there running all the decisions. You died early, you didn't stay, you know, in charge. But now you've got a combine that's driving itself, you've got planters that as long as you can get the programming right, you know, it's basically doing itself. So granddad gets to live at the top on the throne a lot longer than, than he used to. So talk about these dynamics going on and the way the world has changed.

Clint Fischer [00:15:38] Yeah, you, you bring up a really good point. And you know, there's, there's this joke out there, obviously in in the egg world that, you know, dad or granddad is going to, you know, die on the combine and in the nineties, you know, in his nineties or eighties or, you know, whatever age that is. And, and so there's, yeah, it's kinda used a little bit as a, as a, as a joke, but there's a lot of truth to that. I mean, with every joke there's that, you know, that kernel of truth. And to your point, we're seeing, you know, obviously less physical stress, you know, from, from a beating up your body standpoint as it relates to production ag. And obviously that's not, that's not maybe supplanting the mental stress and the emotional stress or relationship, you know? Right. All those other pieces. But we're seeing people live longer. And so one of my things is just, is just trying to raise awareness that in order to provide for a family legacy, a generational operation, it is just imperative to transition that management side of the farm operation. I don't care about the ownership side at this point, but who is managing, who is, who is making the day-to-day decisions? Who is responsible for the finances, who's responsible for marketing decisions and input purchasing, all that kind of stuff, transitioning that well before your, you know, in your quote unquote sunset years is just, it, it does two things.

Clint Fischer [00:17:22] One, it shows that I, I I trust you as that next generation to come on board. You may not have any ownership yet because you know, for tax reasons, we may wanna structure it so that you're inheriting this ground rather than, you know, gifting it or, or buying it during our lifetime. So, so one, it establishes that trust, and two, it empowers that that individual who is gonna be taking over the operation to really look at planning for their own individual future. And so one of the biggest questions that I often get Vance is mom and dad, either A, have a plan and haven't told me about it, or B, don't have a plan, and I'm in my pick a decade, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, what should I do? How do I start that conversation? How do I even ask that question? And that is, that is frequently, it's that, it's that kind of successor generation that's trying to understand what is my future? And that's exactly the approach that I, you know, advise folks to take, is it's basically, it's, there is no good answer to that question. You know, it, in an ideal world, the, the owner generation that's, you know, sun setting that's that's looking to retire, would have a plan in place. They would've communicated that plan to everybody involved and everybody would have buy-in.

Clint Fischer [00:18:54] I mean, that would be the ideal situation. Well, we live in the real world where that's not always the ideal situation. And so if you're that younger successor generation, how do you approach that conversation? How do you even ask if a plan is in place? And so, you know, there, there's a couple things to keep in mind for those folks. One is, you know, we need to be looking at this, not with our handout. We're not entitled to anything. We, at the end of the day, it's the owner assets to do with as they wish. And that's what I always tell, you know, clients and folks I work with say, yes, you know, you, your kids may have ideas of what you want to leave or, or what they want you to leave to them, but ultimately it's, these are your assets, these are your wishes, and you get to decide what ultimately happens to them. And so as that younger generation, I'm coming to 'em saying, I'm not entitled to anything here. So I'm humble when I approach 'em. And my message is, you know, I am building this family, I'm building my life. And part of that, part of being a good steward to my family and to, to my own, you know, future operation is to do proper planning. And so for me, I'm trying to plan what does it look like in the future for me to be either A, involved with this farm, or B, do I need to kind of set up my own farm outside of it, because I don't know what the future holds for this operation.

Clint Fischer [00:20:32] And so I'm approaching this humbly and I'm saying, I am looking out for my family, try to plan for the future because that's what a good steward of a business and, and a and a family would do. And so if we approach that conversation kind of from, from that angle, I've seen it sometimes work and sometimes it doesn't, you know, sometimes it, it's just no, you'll find out when they read the will, you know, and okay, well that's not a defeat. That just tells me as that younger generation, I need to plan for nothing and I need to make sure that I'm, you know, my family is taken care of outside of whatever the family farm operation looks like, because I'm not guaranteed to inherit anything or to have any type of an operation to take over. So it, it may initially come across as, you know, a, a, a negative saying, well, you're not gonna know anything until I pass away, which frankly happens often, right? And, and unfortunately in my opinion, but it empowers that that next generation, even just having that initial conversation to go, all right, well now I need to take, take action, take initiative, take accountability, and build up my own family's future. And if anything does come my way now it's a windfall. And so those are the conversations that, that we ought to be having, that we ought to be, you know, looking at and, and having take place.

Clint Fischer [00:22:12] And not nothing that we just talked about was legal issues or, you know, how do you even structure it? It's just having the conversation and how do you approach the conversation. And those are just significant barriers to a lot of transition planning in general.

Vance Crowe [00:22:30] Yeah, I think one of the big challenges that a young person has is, you know, from the outside, if you're a city person, you don't know anything about farms, you think like, ah, you know, why should they get that? Why does everybody care about it? But if you're a young guy and you decided, Hey, I'm after school, I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna work on the farm, I'm gonna get paid less than what I probably could be making if I were working privately. I've got a wife and kids now. My wife is, you know, nervous about the future, what's gonna happen? And so she's pushing me to ask mom and dad, but she doesn't really understand the family culture. So, you know, if I go push mom and dad on this, it's only gonna alienate people. And there's just all these dynamics that happen that if you're not around this stuff, you kind of think like, ah, you know, it's like something you see in the movies, but it's real for, you know, almost everyone involved in a family farm.

Clint Fischer [00:23:20] Oh yeah, definitely, definitely real for, you know, those dynamics that approach it, you opened up kind of this, this, this box of Clint, why do you advocate so much for operating, managing a farm as more of a, a traditional business type? And one of those reasons is because in order to, so, so I have this firm belief that there are really two things that need to happen in order for a successful farm transition. Number one is to build an attractive farm business. And what does that mean in an attractive farm business? Well, yes, it means a financially viable business, but it also means something where that next generation looks at it and says, I can picture myself being there to work for years and years and years and years, having a good work life balance, having positive relationships in my life, having close ties to the community. And all of those things are kind of necessary to incentivize or attract that next generation to come in. And, and the reason why I say an attractive farm businesses, oftentimes, I, I hear this, some variation of this quote, and it is, you know, we really want our son to take over the farm, but he's seen us struggle his whole life financially.

Clint Fischer [00:24:56] We haven't been able to provide for the things that we know other parents were able to provide for their kid. You know, he, he looks at it and he goes, am I signing up for prison sentence or is this something that I actually want to come and take over? Is this a voluntary choice? And so when I say, you know, let's make this an attractive farm business, obviously yes, the, the the financial side of things is not something that you can change overnight, but there are some things that you can work on quickly to change. And that is, you know, what is the culture? What, how is communication happening? Is there a structure for when that, when that son comes or daughter comes and, and starts working in the operation, do they have a job description? Do they have a title? Do they have an understanding of what they're supposed to be doing? Or are they just coming in to get barked at by dad for doing things wrong? You know? And so, so there's a lot of these things that we can do to build a more attractive farm business. And so, so that's number one of, you know, how do we have a successful transition? And then number two is having that written transition plan down communicated with everybody. And so I have these kind of two generalities. The second point of this having a written transition plan is we're looking at management roles, responsibilities, duties, things like that being transitioned before the actual ownership, before the assets pass hands.

Clint Fischer [00:26:30] And so having that, that, that comprehensive plan in writing re indicated with not only, like you mentioned Vance, not only with son, but also with son's wife, you know, who has a lot of questions that she's unwilling to ask mother-in-law and father-in-law, you know, but, but just having this, this nice tidy transition plan saying, Hey, this may change in the future, but as of right now, this is how we expect, you know, the operation to change hands. Having those two things in place is just going to greatly exceed, you know, having one or neither of those in place as far as a successful transition plan, succession plan, whatever you wanna call it. And, and so a lot of that has to do with the non-financial, non-legal side of things. And that, and that's part of what I try to advocate for is that, you know, a lot of this stuff that other industries do from a succession standpoint is applicable to agriculture in general. And, you know, the more that we can try to view things in those terms, I guess I'm of the belief that we're gonna be more successful long term. If, and I say this with a capital I and a capital F, if our goal is to preserve family farm legacies, if it's not, then we have significant asset base here because we're, you know, just, we're chronically asset heavy cash poor in agriculture, you know, land rich, cash poor.

Clint Fischer [00:28:09] And so if the idea is, hey, you know, this has been passed down, we've built this thing up, but we are just wanting to cash out. And then there's, there's a lot of larger conglomerates and, and investors and, and options to get the highest dollar. If that's not the goal, then I think that there's some work that needs to be done on the farm business side or the ranch business side to make it attractive and transition that operation over to the next generation.

Vance Crowe [00:28:45] So before this podcast, I went out on Twitter and said, Hey, what questions do you guys have about succession planning? I got a lot of questions, and one of them kind of fits into what you're talking about right here. Tom Brenner, he, he asked, like, if you, if the younger generation is attached to a will or a trust, and they've been shown the succession plan, hey, this is the way that it's gonna play out, if that will or trust changes, do they have some mechanism that says that that's changed and that they now are working? Because I can imagine you could get yourself in a situation where somebody said, you're gonna get all this, why don't you work for less than minimum wage? And then at the end of the, at the end, when the person passes away and the, and the will is being read, they don't get anything. Yeah,

Clint Fischer [00:29:29] Yeah. No, that's, and that, that's a good question. And that is a concern when you look at, you know, that that owner generation who may have a, a, a, a new marriage if their spouse passes away and they get into a second marriage in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and then there's some influence and, and persuasion to maybe change what was already basically solidified in the estate plan. There's a couple of things. So, so not getting too much into the weeds, but with a trust, if it's structured properly, what can happen is if one spouse passes away, then basically the, the beneficiaries, the terms of that trust can be locked in. Or there's, there's what's called an irrevocable trust, which locks it in today, as soon as that trust is made, and it says, you know, these are, these are what's going to happen. You know, there's pros and cons to various different types of trusts. So as a, as a, as we're looking at kind of from the trust aspect, yes, there are some protections that can be put in place for that beneficiary. You know, that, that that successor generation, if we're talking about just a will, you know, frankly, there's, there's not much protection. Yes, it's great. It feels warm and fuzzy that I'm named in this will, but that will could change so long as, you know, the, the testators have capacity, mental capacity to change their will.

Clint Fischer [00:31:04] So a a, a good example of this actually just just came through my office a couple weeks ago, and this is not a family thing. This is a young guy, he's in his mid twenties and he's developed this great relationship with his landlord. And so he started farming, he works in town farms on the side, trying to build up his land base so he can farm full time, which I advocate for. And so they came in, him and his, his young wife, and they have a young family, and they came in, they didn't have any estate plan, so we, we did a simple, you know, wills and powers of attorney and, and, and that kind of stuff. You know, we got to talking about, you know, what's, what's he renting for, for ground? He said, you know, I have this really good relationship with this older landlord. He is just about to go into the nursing home, and he's been renting to me for, you know, pretty good terms. And he even showed me a copy of his will that it says it this farm ground that I'm leasing to, you know, to this young fella, he has what's called the right of first refusal, which means he has the first chance to purchase that land if it were to transition hands. And so he was feeling pretty good about that and feeling pretty secure. And I explained to him exactly your question, Vance. And I said, so what happens if that will changes? You can't, you, you have no say in. And he said, well, he won't, he would never do that.

Clint Fischer [00:32:36] And I said, hope, I hope not. We don't know. We can't, we can't bank on that. We can't rely on that. And this, this, this gets me into this, this idea of what the heck does an attorney actually do? Well, an attorney at the end of the day just tries to mitigate risk, right? We're just trying to address risk as an, as attorneys. And so I, you know, I explained to him, I said, well, one, you don't have a written lease agreement in place on this farm ground that you, you know, have been relying on for the last handful of years, and that you are expecting to take over. But so I said, why don't we simply put a, a, a a, a lease agreement in place with a right of first refusal provision in there stating that yes, you get to, you know, have this ROFR, right? If that land was ever to change hands, basically, we're just doubling up what the will already said. But the reason that a lease is important is that it takes my client, the tenant, it takes his agreement to change the will is unilateral. You know, the landlord can change that whenever he pleases. And so I bring that example up because there are some tools that can secure that next generation when there's a will in place. And, and oftentimes it's leases.

Clint Fischer [00:34:08] It's, it's these, these simple, you know, contracts that are out there that are maybe not generally thought of as applying for these purposes. But yeah, those tools exist and that's why it's so important to understand not only, and which is a a great question, not one I get often, frankly is, okay, I feel good that I'm named as a beneficiary of a trust or a will. Does that really secure me? And the obviously the lawyer answer is, it depends. And if, if, if the answer is no, it doesn't secure you, then there are potentially some tools to, to, you know, to address that.

Vance Crowe [00:34:53] Back in January, I was invited to Michigan and I, I give a talk called My Grandfather's Acts, and it's really a talk about how much can you change about something and still have it be the same. And this really applies when you're thinking about how much can we change this farm organization, this farm business, this business. And it touches on succession planning. And you can always tell when a, when a talk resonates with people because they wanna talk with you, not only afterwards, but they line up to tell you other things. Like, Hey, I want to, can I get your advice? Can I get your input? And this guy wanted to talk, he's super nice guy about the situation he was in. He's in Michigan, he's, his dad had run the farm as the, the head of the farm, and he got divorced, mom died, and then a new woman came in and she got married. And then when dad died, all of his assets transferred to new mom. And new mom now wants to have her children have the, the assets passed down to, so she can participate in. And he's saying like, this is all we had, you know, I trusted my dad. He, he always did right by me. And now we're in this situation where new mom is, is taking all that and giving it to somebody else. Is there recourse in this? Does anybody have any options if, if she owns that property?

Clint Fischer [00:36:19] I mean, absent, absent some kind of improper, you know, what what's called undue influence or, you know, if he didn't have the capacity to change his estate plan, absent that, no, you know, I mean, I mean there, there's really not a lot of options for that, for that generation, which is one of the reasons why I advocate for, you know, yes, it's great to have this transition plan in place, but then what are, what, you know, what are the kind of these, what are the ways that we can secure for that next year? You know? And obviously for me as an attorney, it's always interesting to, to see things as, is my client, the owner generation that wants to keep control or that wants to keep some kind of a say, but maybe wants to pass assets because of inheritance tax reasons or, or things of that nature? Or is my client the next generation who wants to secure as much as possible without ownership? And so not saying that there's necessarily a battle right back and forth, but there are different perspectives and goals and objectives for, for each generation through an a transition plan. And, and so I think it's important to identify those just like what you did or what are the risks of that generation. And you know, I guess frankly, I'm here to say I haven't seen any of these plans that don't have any risk, right?

Clint Fischer [00:37:54] It's, it's, it's life. We're dealing with humans. I was just speaking with somebody the other day, who is, they? They, they're running a farm business with a number of employees. And you know, somebody just came in, put in their two weeks notice, this is the, their, their top farm manager and basically just said, I thought that you were going to fix this dynamic between myself and one of these employees, and it didn't, it wasn't fixed soon enough. And so I'm quitting. And we were just talking about, man, wouldn't it be nice to run a business with just robots? No people, no emotions, no. You know, but it's the same thing with a transition plan, right? It's, it's people are going to act individually, they're gonna act with emotions and, you know, and so we can't mitigate all those risks and, and still, and still keep

Vance Crowe [00:38:47] That fa family dynamic,

Clint Fischer [00:38:48] You know, solid.

Vance Crowe [00:38:50] And speaking of that fa family dynamic, the,

Clint Fischer [00:38:54] You

Vance Crowe [00:38:54] Really can't become an adult until you've seen the way that people act after the death of an important person in a family. Because all the way up until that point, you can look around at the way people are interacting, how much they help one another, how much things get along, but somebody dies and inheritance is up. I have seen families that were very close, become the most adversarial people that you can imagine and have that thing come, you know, totally between them, people saying, you know, well, I I don't care that mom's not gonna have anything to live on. You know, I need this land and I'm, I'm gonna take it over. And, and you see, you watch people that they, I'm not even saying they're wrong, but they, they, everybody comes from the to the position. Like, I'm the hero. I'm the one in the right and I'm gonna do this for whatever their reason is. But you watch these behaviors come out of people that are truly staggering and help you understand that humans are different underneath the surface than you might expect.

Clint Fischer [00:39:56] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think you have every estate attorney everywhere who's listening to this nodding in agreement for one, for two. I think, you know, there's, there's a certain nugget of truth in that saying that money doesn't change people, it just brings out their inequalities. And, and so yeah, it's, it's, it's an unfortunate reality is, is how I would describe that Vance, is that, you know, we, we see that often what would otherwise be, so yeah, out from the outside looking in a, a solid family dynamic, as soon as the patriarch or you know, that that generation passes away, and now unless there's a tidy airtight estate plan that clearly describes what is going to happen with these assets, with this property, then yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:41:01] Then,

Clint Fischer [00:41:01] Then there is a lot of infighting. And even even with a good tidy plan, you know, some people are still gonna have hurt feelings and, and things of that nature, which you bring that up. One of the things that I've been seeing more recently is this idea of, and it's not, it's not a new idea by any means, but there's, there's more of a trend for what I would call professional trustees and in estate planning. So to give, you know, listeners, just, just a bit of background. So you, you set up a trust that's got all your property in it, and the, the, the idea of that trust is to, one, avoid probate. And two, two, basically it's a list of instructions of how you wanna leave your property when, if, if you should pass away, it also does other things. But in that you have to designate who is going to manage these trust assets, both while you're alive and then after you pass away. And what I've been seeing more is designating not a family member or even a trusted friend, but one of these professional trust companies to distribute the property, to handle the administration of the trust because of those reasons. Vance, it is basically saying, I don't want for my legacy to be muddled and left. You know, I don't want my kids to, to start fighting with each other over things that are clearly laid out within a trust.

Clint Fischer [00:42:40] And the reason I bring that up is, so, so let's say I have three kids, I named one of them as my trustee after I should pass away. Well, that person is in charge of interpreting what the trust says and then distributing assets. Well, that comes with some, some solid responsibility as a fiduciary of those assets to follow what the trust document said. And it also comes with the family dynamic of, well, one mom and dad chose Linda to administer this trust, she's just gonna take it. And, and she's not following the trust. I wanna see, I wanna see the document. And now it comes to a battle of interpretation and, you know, did she really follow all the rules? And, and now we have that family dynamic. And so, so I've, I've been seeing some, some estate planning, you know, clients saying, I don't wanna avoid that. I'm gonna hand this off to a professional corporate trustee, and they are going to handle all the administration of this trust with the hopes of, you know, avoiding some of that, that that conflict. And so, I mean, there's steps that we can take to avoid conflict. At the end of the day, you know, again, we're dealing with humans who have emotions and a sense of entitlement sometimes. And, you know, they're gonna put up a, a, a battle. And, you know, I guess the last thing I would mention on that is, unfortunately oftentimes we see in-laws or spouses or un you know, non-blood relation who are maybe stirring the pot either behind the scenes or up, you know, and so how do we anticipate that through our estate plan and transition plan, you know, all those, those components kind of come together.

Clint Fischer [00:44:33] And, and again, that, you know, that was for this time we've been visiting together vans, we, we just, we just spent maybe a couple minutes talking a little bit about trusts, and that's really the only stuff we've talked about, legal speaking arrest is, you know, how do we, how do we, you know, handle things from a, a farm, any type of a business transition, even if it's just a general estate plan, you know, these family dynamics always crop. And then, and then finally,

Vance Crowe [00:45:02] I had a

Clint Fischer [00:45:03] Go ahead.

Vance Crowe [00:45:04] Well, I was just gonna say, I had a chance a company called the White Commercial Corporation. So they do grain trading, they work with people that own grain elevators, so they're not, you know, farming, but they're, they're adjacent to that. And they had me do this really cool project, which was interview the people that had successfully passed down their grain elevators, because what they wanted to do was to share these videos with people that knew they needed to do succession planning, but hadn't really started. And a lot of that comes down to, people are nervous about, Hey, I'm gonna have to make some decisions about who's gonna be in charge of this business. And for example, one of the families, and they've been very open about this, I'm not sharing anything, I shouldn't, the, the family said we had to make the decision that our youngest son was gonna be the CEO and it wasn't gonna be the oldest brother. Yeah. Or even the, the older sister. But this was one of those decisions that we needed to make because we wanted everyone in the family to benefit over the longest amount of time. And the youngest son was the one that had the deepest interest in grain markets and, you know, all the legal things you have to do. And so this was our decision, but you can imagine the consternation leading up to this, you know, they, these are very spiritual people, very biblical. They were concerned like, are we doing something that's against, you know, our faith if we are elevating one of our children above the oldest? And it is a very, very interesting thing to hear about how people have to deal with their own interpersonal to turmoil.

Vance Crowe [00:46:40] And as a parent, you know, it is really, you think from the outside, oh, it'll be easy to choose a kid. Yeah. If that's, that's not easy. That's hard.

Clint Fischer [00:46:47] Oh, yeah, completely, completely. You know, Three terms come to mind when you, when you share that story, wisdom, discernment, and then judgment and all of those character qualities or traits or whatever you wanna call 'em, need to be present in order to make that decision. 'cause that had to have been a tough decision for that family to make. And, you know, and, and, and run the risk of, well, mom and dad are playing favorites and, you know, all that, all that kind of behind the scenes stuff that might happen. And to a, to an earlier point that you made, one of the, i, I can sit here and I can shout from the rooftops, the importance of a transition plan and the state plan for whatever type of business you're in. And it oftentimes will fall in deaf ears. Oftentimes it'll, you'll come into somebody's brain, bounce around for a little bit and then leave. But where I see the, the most action being taken, because it is such an easy thing to procrastinate, where I see the most action being taken is when they are individually put in a position where mom and dad passed away and now they're dealing with their estate and it was probably not structured properly, and they're having to deal with the fallout, so to speak, of what we are trying to, you know, protect against.

Clint Fischer [00:48:19] And they come in and they go, I and dad passed away this, this happens, you know, I'm, I'm dealing with this, cleaning up this whole estate mass. We've got sisters and brothers who are not speaking. This has been going on for six months, a year, two years, five years. I don't want that to happen with my kids. And so it's like that kick in the pants to get on, you know, to, to actually take the steps needed to, to start on their plan. And so, you know, for me, one of the things I wanna see is, is how can we look at and take examples from those successful transitions, like you were just describing vans and, and, and I guess basically following those footsteps, right? What did they work, you know, learn from those, what did, what did they do that worked well? You know, what are these, these nuggets of, of truth that we can pull out of there to apply it to each individual situation? And you know, I, I've shared online a handful of, you know, these successful transitions that are from the outside looking in seem to be what generally speaking would be called successful. And, you know, it gets like one, 100th of the engagement of the horror stories, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:49:38] So

Clint Fischer [00:49:39] It's, it's this, it's this weird dichotomy like these are the things we should be learning from, but nobody wants to talk about the good stuff. They wanna, you know, talk about, well, this happened to me and this was a terrible, terrible succession, you know, estate plan issue. And, and so those are the ones that get all the engagements. So it's, it's interesting how that works and, and human nature.

Vance Crowe [00:49:59] Yet I would say two pieces of wisdom that I picked up on while I was doing this project. The first one, you've probably heard this before, but I think it bears repeating what is fair is not always equal. And by being able to address this, you know, we always think like, okay, I'm gonna give 50% of the land to this person and 50% of the land of this person, or I'm gonna divide the assets, you know, the, the machinery this way. But the reality is you could really be cutting your family off at the knees by, by thinking about things in terms of what is the hard asset value and just dividing it that way. Then the other piece of advice, which John Werner, who was with the white commercial corporation said it, he said, you know, you gotta look around at your Thanksgiving table and imagine what you want that Thanksgiving table to look like after you're gone. And what are the decisions you could make now to make it as possible for everybody around the table to still be joyful when they see each other. And there's the, just like you had said before, there's no individual template that's gonna do that, but if you're the patriarch or the matriarch of your family, you gotta make those hard decisions based on how is this going to impact people and are they, are they going to be able to swallow the decisions that you're making and still come together as a family?

Clint Fischer [00:51:15] Yeah, absolutely. To your, to your initial point there, that's probably my number two question. If, if my number one question is how do we even have that ques have this conversation? My number two question is, what, how do I leave things equally or fairly? And my response to that is often let's, let's, let's get rid of this whole nomenclature of fair and equal. Let, let's replace it with equitable. And what I mean by equitable is we have, in a farm transition, oftentimes there's an on-farm kid and multiple off-farm kits, and we have this farm business that, again, if we go back to my point earlier of number one is make this farm business an attractive thing to take over. One of those things is financial viability. And so if we look at, all right, we have this farm business, the vast majority of our net worth as retiring or sunsetting, you know, owners is tied up in the farm assets. How do I leave that to junior who is on farm, but then I have these other three kids who are gonna be left with, you know, 10% of that from a dollar value standpoint. And so looking at it saying, all right, first we need to take, and this, this will get just a little bit into my approach to farm transitions in general. The first thing is we take an inventory. So we just identify everything that we own.

Clint Fischer [00:52:47] We can't give away anything that we don't own, you know? And so, so we say, all right, here are all the farm assets, here are all the non-farm assets. 'cause oftentimes there's investment accounts, there's it 4 0 1 ks, there's, you know, other, maybe, maybe some rental real estate, you know, a lake house oftentimes is part of it, you know, things like that are not part of the farm business. So we identify all these things. The second thing is now we lay out our goals, and if our goal is to keep the farm in the family and make it financially viable, then what are these tools that we can use to, to accomplish that? Well, it used to be before land values just skyrocketed. It used to be that life insurance was a good way to, to kind of make that happen. So we have a, you know, a policy death benefit goes to the off-farm kids, it kind of balances out dollar wise. Well, that's tougher to do now. Premiums are through the roof if you're trying to get that amount of coverage, you know, on life insurance. So what can we do? And that's where I want people to understand that trusts are, trusts are not necessarily a, you know, bad word when it comes to estate planning. Oftentimes they're seen that way because people have negative experiences about 'em. But comp but newer trusts have a lot more flexibility than, than some used to, you know, in prior years. And through that trust, we can basically structure a lot of flexible different plans that allow for the on-farm kid to eventually inherit the ground, but in the meantime might have a long-term lease in place with the off-farm kids who are benefiting from the profits of that land.

Clint Fischer [00:54:38] And so, so now we're looking at this whole picture as an equitable way to leave our legacy while preserving the on-farm, you know, business itself. And, and so you talk about fair versus equal, you know, there's, there's two points to that that I like to make though. Number one point is leaving a farm business that involves land is different than leaving a brokerage investment account. One is liquid, one has no sentimental value, one does not have any strings attached, so to speak. It doesn't involve future work. And so if we look at that, well, we can maybe discount that amount, right? If I'm leaving a, a, a business that has a lot of blood, sweat and tears, turmoil and sentimental value to it, but it's not liquid, it's not something that is gonna be easily sold, so I can go on vacation, you know, then that we, we can, we can discount that, that that dollar value in comparison to the off-farm investments. So that's number one. Number two is we can structure, there's a lot of legal tools and that's where, you know, getting in with a, a good estate succession planning attorney will help to structure some of these legal tools that allows for income benefits to the off-farm kids. But really it ties up the land, it ties up all the farm assets in order to keep that legacy going forward.

Clint Fischer [00:56:11] And so that, those are the really, the two ways that I look at this fair versus equal idea instead of just 50 50. And because then what happens is resentment comes because the on-farm kid has to then buy back, quote unquote the family land from brothers and sisters and resentment ensues because one of those brothers and sisters wants top dollar and they want to take it to option. And he may or, you know, on-farm kid may or may not be able to afford that. And so then that's all of a sudden now we have all this conflict and resentment and, and so how do we avoid those things? Well, there's tools out there, but we have to have the conversation, we have to know the, the background and the family dynamics in order to recommend those tools.

Vance Crowe [00:56:59] Yeah. In the beginning of the podcast you talked about, you know, you have to be prepared for what happens if you're not gonna get anything. And I think that, you know, the Christina Kohler mentioned, you know, the golden carrot, she talks about how sometimes people will have something dangled out in front of them. One of the things that I really am impressed with your Twitter feed is that you talk about ways that people can be entrepreneurial and still be in farming or even break into farming. That I think is really important because right now there is a national, you know, discourse or, you know, sense that if you weren't, if you didn't inherit a bunch of land, there's no chance you can get into agriculture. But when I read your stuff, that's, that's not your perception of it. What do you think, how can people break into farming if they didn't come in with land?

Clint Fischer [00:57:49] Yeah, that's a great question there. It, it, it opens up a lot of, a lot of discourse into on what does it even mean to be a farmer or a rancher? Does it mean I have to own my land? Does it mean I have to own my equipment? Does it mean I have to own my cattle or crops? All those kinds of things. And so, so 1, 1, 1 place to even start is what does the definition, what, what does it mean to be a farmer? Right? So, so through braintrust ag, I had a first generation farmer on here a couple months ago telling his story and he went from managing a minor league hockey team to being a first generator generation farmer. He farms on, I think it's like three and a half, four acres now. And he started a market farm and, and he's got five employees and he is making a living. He quit his full-time job, right? So, so one thing I like to look at a little bit more the broadly is, you know, our, when we say it's impossible to get into farming as a young person who doesn't have family assets, well what do you mean by farm? Right? And so, so just defining that in general, if we're looking at farming from the traditional sense of we're gonna grow commodity, grow crops, we're gonna, you know, grow commercial cattle, you know, raise commercial cattle, what does that look like? Well, there are ways in which we ought to be building relationships in agriculture with other sunset, retiring farm operators who have this inmate desire to leave their family legacy, but they don't have a successor in place.

Clint Fischer [00:59:42] And I see this frequently and it it, and I get frustrated because you, you post this stuff on Twitter or wherever and, and immediately, you know, people will, will throw out the comments that, nope, it's impossible. It can't happen. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm here to say it. I work with those folks weekly who have made it happen. And, and so I bring that up because relationship building is so important. And so how do we build those relationships? So well, one is, you know, you cold call landlords, you know, some farmer you offer to help, you know, you, you spend a few years getting to know 'em. And you know, that's, that's one opportunity. But the other one that I, I really like to kind of promote is this idea of, of what I call an egg adjacent side hustle. And that's where, take the take for instance, here, here in Brookings, South Dakota, we have a, a, a couple of fairly large manufacturing companies. And so if I'm the employee who's working 40 hours at the, at the, at the factory, but I really wanna farm and I am going to look in my free time in my, you know, life outside of my 40 hours, how can I structure my own side business? That is what I call ag adjacent, which means it does a couple things. It helps you to get in, in front of these opportunities, right? Opportunities are are around, but it's oftentimes through connections and, and, and relationships, things like that where we actually learn about these opportunities.

Clint Fischer [01:01:17] So how am I getting in, in proximity to these farmers and these landowners, and how is this going to compliment my future farming operation? And by compliment, I mean, are there assets here that are going to be useful for my farm? Are there different skills and knowledge that I'm acquiring that is going to help me to be a better farm operator in the future? And so we set up this, this, this what I call an ag adjacent side hustle. And now we are in proximity of, of ag people who we want to either take over their operation or work for them, or, you know, somehow get involved with their, their, their life. And then two, I'm also building this business that if I'm doing it properly, it's supplying me income so that I can try and get over that hurdle of these insane capital requirements that it takes to actually get into farm. You know, I can either do that through leveraging that business for, you know, picking up some land or taking over somebody's else's business and opportunity, or I can sell this business potentially and take that windfall and go buy land, you know, and start up my, my farming. And so, so there are ways to do this and it, it sounds hard, right? It sounds like, man, that's a lot of work. I sure wish that I just had a family member who was gonna give me a farm.

Clint Fischer [01:02:49] And that's true. I mean, it is hard work, but that's where, you know, I I I've been recently looking at this, are you doing something because you're passionate about it or because you fell into it, right? And so if you're truly passionate about wanting to work independently, have that lifestyle plus business of being a family farm operation, that you're setting up a legacy for future generations. Yeah. You know, it's, if you're starting from nothing, it's gonna be hard, but is doable. And that's what I want to encourage folks. It's doable because I've worked with people who have done it and have met people who have done it. And so if I hadn't met those people, I'd probably be silent on this topic, right? Because I would say, yeah, you're right. It's hard. It's seems impossible. Don't even try. It's not worth your time and the risk. However, since I have met these people and I've worked with these people, I'm here to encourage, you know, that those younger folks to, to find these creative solutions in order to get involved. And, and I I will say this one thing, Vance, there are going to be, I think I'm, I'm predicting this, and you can, you know, go back, listen to this and tell me I was way off. But I'm predicting that there's going to be more opportunities for folks to come in, work for an operation for a year, two years as kind of a trial farm manager period, and then work into that succession plan as a non-related third party. I think that in the next five, 10 years, that is going to be more commonplace than it is.

Clint Fischer [01:04:22] And what I would say is it's actually occurring currently. You know, I have a farm who I'm working with right now who has done that. We actually went out, posted a job application, you know, looking to hire basically a successor, right? They're coming in to, as a farm manager and with the intent, with the goal of if things work out and the year two years, ownership management, all that kind of stuff is gonna be transferred in this nice laid out transition plan. And those opportunities exist. That individual who is retiring, he's got, you know, a a few kids just don't want anything to do with the farm. He is of the mindset that I could just sell all these assets to the nearest neighbor, to the highest bidder. It would be easier for him to do that. But he has that attachment to what he has built, and he wants to give an opportunity to that young farmer, that young generation coming in to succeed. And so it's more work for him, potentially less money for him down the road. He's willing to do those things because of his value system. And I think that there's a lot of folks out there who just don't realize that's a possibility, who don't realize.

Vance Crowe [01:05:35] Yeah. I I to your point about the farm adjacent side hustle, you know, I have some good friends that have talked about how valuable it was to start their snowplowing business because there's, you know, when granddad passes away and grandma's still living on the farm, the guy that shows up and says, Hey, do you need me to plow your driveway? You know, and they give him a, a rate that it's profitable for him,

Clint Fischer [01:05:58] But

Vance Crowe [01:05:58] Now he's there, he is always working. He can, he can check in on, on grandma. And now all of a sudden, other opportunities open up and you just, they're not gonna happen if you're staying at home and saying, it's too bad I didn't, I didn't get this opportunity. And your into your other point about relationships, you know, I can speak firsthand. I live in a house, I have no business living in this house. It's worth way more than I ever should have been able to to get. But when we went to tour the house, we saw, I had read in the obituary that the, the man that was his children were selling his house and he was an avid birder and he had a birding clock in his, in his house, and he had all these trees. And I, when we put our bid in, I essentially said, I promise that I will do more to adding trees and more to bringing birds here. If, if this matters to you guys at all, this is what I see. My children will grow up here and it won't go to a family that's gonna knock the house down, build a mega mansion and not have kids here because they're, you know, in their fifties or sixties. And that reasoning resonated with them. Yeah. Right. More than the money. And they could have gotten, I would say probably 30% more, but they as a family came together and said, this is what dad would've wanted. Yep. And so those relationships can turn into, you know, real value. And, and even today they come visit us about once a year and see all the trees that we've planted and, and talk about it. And it, and it makes the house so much richer for that. And I think it only comes if you're willing to like, be creative and think and read and, and be connected with people.

Clint Fischer [01:07:33] Yep. I agree. And, and, and you, you brought up just a, a really good point, which is you understood, or at least you su you, you suspected what their motivation might be for accepting an offer. And I think it's so key that people, especially young people who are looking to rent or who are looking to buy something, is to sit down and go, what is really the motivation of the landlord here? Because oftentimes, you know, one of the hot topics is land rent and land rent is, is through the roof in so many places, it's just really expensive. And the kind of the general consensus is, well, they're just going off the highest dollar. Just two weeks ago, we at Brain Trust Ag, we had a peer group meeting and, and there was a bunch of landlords on there. And to the, to the one of 'em, they all said, no, there are other factors that I look at when choosing who I'm going to rent ground to, who is going to be my tenant than just the dollar signs. You know? And so those exist, but you know, the, the, it's it's easy to, to complain about. No, they, they're just after the, you know, the highest dollar. But folk look for what is the motivation of that landlord? And that's just negotiation in general, right? Is, is to understand what is the motivation that I'm for that person who has something that I'm trying to get.

Clint Fischer [01:09:06] And in this, in this context, you know, a landlord says, I want somebody who's going to be personable, who's going to be a good steward of my land. And I will take a 15, 20% less return on my investment to help out that younger person. And, and who has this, you know, shared values, who has a, a young family who's gonna establish roots in the community. And, you know, all those aspects come into play. But if we're, I guess, naive and thinking that they're just after the, the dollar amount, well then we're dissuaded from trying to even like what you did put in that offer that we expect is gonna be lower, but we're hand right in there, Hey, this is what I'm going to, I'm willing to do in order to secure this bid. And man, look, it, it worked out for you and it's worked out for num, you know, numerous other people. And so I like that idea of creative thinking, creative structure, because yeah, we just have to, if we can't compete from a dollar standpoint, we have to think outside the box and how do we expand,

Vance Crowe [01:10:18] How do we grow? Yeah. And anybody that's got, anybody that's got that gusto to, to get up and do a side hustle, you know, if you can put yourself in the mind of another person that earned and built up a business,

Clint Fischer [01:10:29] You,

Vance Crowe [01:10:30] You can find ways to connect with them. You know, during this conversation a couple times you've mentioned Braintrust ag. Why don't you talk a little bit about what that is, how it got started and, and kind of what people get outta being involved in it. Sure.

Clint Fischer [01:10:42] Yeah. So Braintrust AG started ultimately has a way for me to answer a lot of the frequently asked questions that I would get when I would post stuff onto it. And so what I mean by that is, you know, I'd post something about, you know, looking at a balance sheet or, you know, using some enterprise budgeting or, or having these, these conversations with fam farm families about transition planning. And, and I'd get a, a lot of dms and questions saying, well, I don't even know where, where are these tools that can help me with that? And so Branch of Egg really started as me saying, here, I'm going to dump a bunch of this stuff that I use on a daily basis working directly with folks, and here's these resources, you come download 'em, use 'em kind of at your leisure. And so that worked for about a month or two. And then I freak the quickly realized that that's not really what they were after. They were after Insight and meeting other people who have been there, done that and wanting advice and just to bounce ideas off each other. And so what started as kind of this warehouse of resources evolved very quickly into this peer group setting where now yes, there's still this warehouse of resources you can go on. The, you know, me, members of Branch of Stack have a bunch of different things that they can download and help with their farm businesses. But, but really where the value has, has really shown is being able to connect with other folks in ag in general, some who have been there, done that years and years ago and have wisdom to share, and some who are kind of in the same, same space that may be same age, same operation type, but they're in a different state.

Clint Fischer [01:12:33] And so now they're not their next door direct competitor. And so what happens is folks are just free to share information. Here's what works on my farm, here's what doesn't work on my farm that I found. And we're not in direct competition because we're not at the local coffee shop or the local gas station at Coffee hour or the local elevator. And so that's, so Braintrust Ag really is evolved into this online peer group for Egg people. And there's experts on there who are, you know, professionals in a state and succession planning, professionals in tax accounting, you know, professionals in grain merchandising and risk management insurance, right? All these areas that are necessary for farm businesses. And we're all interacting as this group of people who are just basically trying to figure out how do we preserve this family farm legacy and ultimately grow our operations and transition 'em to the next generation. And, and so I, I encourage folks to check out braintrustag.com and just see what we're about because it's really a way to defeat the isolation that's inherent in ag and, and, and just sharing insight and ideas and learning from one another, just kind of in this, in this way of just, just just being teachers and mentors and helpful versus what we see maybe in other areas of social media, you know, the other places where we can communicate online where there's a lot of dissension and, and non-productive type conversations.

Vance Crowe [01:14:23] Yeah, I mean, I, I think that that's one of the reasons why people are so drawn to you on Twitter is that you're having the kind of conversations that are both real. They're, they're talking about the actual things that are happening, but at the end of the day, it's really positive. You, you really have found a way to talk about what can you do as opposed to how the system is stacked or sloped against. And so I'm really excited to see that you're, you're developing brain trust, ag, I think agriculture, really any small business needs, places where, where they can come together and share things and talk and figure stuff out. So I'm really glad you're doing it. Yep. Clint, as we wrap up, if there is, if people are thinking, Hey, I, I probably need to start getting some kind of a plan together. You're an attorney in South Dakota, are you the guy that they should call even though they may be in North Carolina or California? Yeah,

Clint Fischer [01:15:15] I mean, so in the, in the legal world, we are only allowed to practice law in the states in which we're licensed. So I'm, I'm licensed in South Dakota, however, I not only have this network of people thanks to Braintrust Ag who I can refer, you know, folks to from a succession transition planning side, but also I just enjoy having that conversation and it can get folks kicked off in the right direction as it relates to what do I even ask the attorney? What, what do I bring to my initial consultation or to my initial meeting to make the most

Vance Crowe [01:15:54] Effective

Clint Fischer [01:15:55] Use of, of our time? Because, you know, it's hard scheduling time with attorneys and, and with CPAs, you know, everybody's busy, busy and we want 'em, you know, just be as efficient as possible with everybody's time. And so I can kind of point 'em in the right direction and say, you know, here's what I would recommend. And so, yeah. You know, reach out to me. Honestly, the best way to get in touch with me is really through either braintrustag.com or Twitter. I guess XI should stop calling it Twitter

Vance Crowe [01:16:24] X, right? X. Yeah. I, I don't mean to call it Twitter. I'm, I'm not one of those people that's like, I'm never calling it Twitter. I think that's silly. Like I'm prepared to call it X. Yeah,

Clint Fischer [01:16:32] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:16:32] Well, I,

Clint Fischer [01:16:33] It's, and Clint,

Vance Crowe [01:16:34] I'm,

Clint Fischer [01:16:35] I'm at Clint, Clint w Fisher on there, and yeah, otherwise you just Google me and you might be able to figure out a way to get in touch with me.

Vance Crowe [01:16:46] Well, Clint, I am so glad you're not the dork that you look like on your profile photo. Yeah, I

Clint Fischer [01:16:51] Gotta change that now Vance. I gotta, I

Vance Crowe [01:16:53] Gotta, yeah. The, the, the truth is, I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you can come back on more regularly and I'm, I'm, I'm really glad to have to have finally met you, Clint.

Clint Fischer [01:17:04] Well, I appreciate what you do, not only for the ag industry, but just for telling stories and, and you know, and leaving these legacies as a whole. I think it's, it's such an important thing, Vance, and I'm so thankful to be Yeah, just a, a small part of what you're producing out there in the world. Thank you.