Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
The Abundant Farmer: Mindset and Money in Agriculture with Hayley Grosser
Hayley Grosser is a farmer and business coach based in Victoria, Australia, who helps farmers change their relationship with money so they can create more abundance in their lives. Hayley and her partner both grew up on a farm, and they started their own farm when they got married. They encountered financial difficulties early on and struggled for years to break through a financial ceiling. Through research, mentors, and coaches, Grosser realised that it was their mindset about money that was holding them back, and as they learned to think about money differently, their financial situation dramatically improved. Now, Grosser teaches other farmers how to retune their mindsets to wealth and abundance, so they can experience the same kind of transformation.
- Shifting to an abundant mindset can unlock financial success. When you believe in the infinite nature of money, you are more likely to see opportunities that can lead to positive financial outcomes.
- An important aspect of achieving an abundant mindset is changing your language about money. When you reframe negative money beliefs into more positive affirmations, your mind is more likely to look for evidence that supports abundance, leading to new opportunities.
- Viewing your time and money as investments can help you prioritise activities that yield the greatest return. Recognising that working harder isn't always the answer can lead to more efficient and profitable operations.
- Surrounding yourself with like-minded people and seeking mentorship can be invaluable. Learning from individuals who have successfully implemented abundant mindsets in their own lives can accelerate your progress and provide support.
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd Podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo here at NextGen Agri International, where we help livestock managers get the best out of their stock. Before we get started. Thank you to our two fantastic sponsors for continuing to sponsor this podcast. Msd Animal Health is perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia and for their AllFlex range across the world with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products. Heinegger is a one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. We are grateful to our sponsors for their support, helping us bring Head Shepherd to you each week, and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. Great to have you listening along this week. We're excited to have Hayley Grosser join us. Hayley talks about abundance and a mindset around money. Before we get to talk a bit more about that, sophie's written another article this week. Sophie, it actually ties pretty closely to what Hayley talks about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a complete accident. I was editing the podcast this morning and realized that we're pretty much talking about very similar things. So this is my second installment in lessons from therapy and just talking about how you talk to yourself in situations and how that can actually be detrimental to everything. If you're mean to yourself, yeah it just creates a lot of things that reverberate on throughout your life. And Hayley sort of says the same thing. You know, if you think that there's no money in farming, well there'll be no money in farming, and if you think you're an idiot, you'll feel like an idiot. So, yeah, just really looking at why we talk about to ourselves the way we do and that negative self-talk and what we can do about it. And yeah, it just was a really valuable lesson for me in therapy, just realizing I actually didn't seem to like myself very much in my head and the huge differences that have come out of actually speaking to myself kindly in stressful situations and stuff like that. So, yeah, it ties in wonderfully with Hayley's podcast. It's a good coincidence.
Speaker 1:Excellent. And yeah, before we get into that, we've got another live this month and, as hopefully people are noticing, we're actually keeping to thanks to you, thanks to Sophie, we're keeping to a monthly schedule of lives. We've had some really good ones in the last couple, this one being December. We thought we'd do a bit of a wrap-up of the year and sort of have the opportunity that we've done every now and again, which is ask questions to me. So we're really keen to get those questions in and so we can respond to them live. But also we'll throw it open so people can contribute on the day and interact, and we don't know how well that'll go, but anyway, we're keen to have a chat. It's your opportunity to be part of, hopefully, a podcast you've been listening to online for years. We'd love to have you join us and ask your questions, have a chat. So that's an open invitation. We're doing that on the 16th of December that's a Monday. That's going to be 8 o'clock NZ time, so six eastern states, australia and three in WA. But yeah, or wherever you are in the world, you're welcome to join us and have a yarn. But I guess the key to that will be getting your questions in before we do that. So if you've got some things that you think would be good to ask some curly questions, we'd love to have them prior to that you can send them through to sophie at next in agricom and we will get them, uh, queued up or jump on the hub and put them in there somewhere and we'll find them as well. But uh, yeah, looking forward to that one. That's always fun. It's good to good to be rounding out the year with a good fun podcast. Hopefully, um, and obviously we'll try and release that sort of on the over the festive period sometime. Obviously people are more interested in eating probably again catching fish at that time of year, but maybe they'll have time to listen to a podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess this podcast this week Hayley Grosser. She's based in Nick Kniever in Victoria. She's on farm. She talks through her journey, of going through, I guess, changing her mindset around money and she's been part of the Farm. I guess changing her mindset around money and she's been part of the Farm Owners Academy, which some people would be aware of, and been a mentor or started off as a farmer in there and then a mentor in there and now does a bit of her own thing as well, just really chasing or talking about the yeah, just the mindset around money and how much power that has, which again again sounds as we talk about on the podcast. You'll hear in a minute it sounds all a bit, I guess, airy-fairy or a bit hard to grasp, but yeah, it's really really, really, really powerful stuff. So, yeah, I hope people get a bit out of that.
Speaker 1:It's times like this in ag where we need to really step up. We've been talking a lot about that on Next Gen Agri with our clients. But yeah, I think it's a really interesting and fun podcast with Hayley, who I think is a real powerhouse. I'm really looking forward to this chat and we'll get into that right now. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week it's great to have Hayley Grosser along. Welcome, hayley.
Speaker 3:Hey Mark, how are you going? Great this week. It's great to have Hayley.
Speaker 1:Grosser along, welcome Hayley. Hey, mark, how are you going? Great to be here. Going well, hayley. You're there in Knava in Victoria, obviously on a farm, but I guess today we're going to talk about, I guess, your story, how you changed your relationship with money and how you help other people do the same. Maybe we'll just start with that background of where you were and where you are today.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. I grew up on a farm and my husband grew up on a farm and about the time that we got married, we decided to go alone in farming. So we started a farming business in our own right and so as we went through that process, we learned a lot of lessons along the way, I suppose. And realistically, we went into farming, you know, aspiring to do lots of things, as you do when you're young and you're free and you think I'm going to take over the world and create this, you know, massive empire of a business and it's going to be fantastic. And we actually walked into. Our first year in farming was a decile one year. So we were like it looked fantastic and then the spring cut out and we're like, wow, welcome to the world of farming. This is exactly what it is. You know, we had all these plans of what we're going to do because the season looked fantastic for starters, um, and then, yeah, just ended in, you know, not such a great year, and I think that first year we might have harvested fifty thousand dollars worth of grain off our 1300 acres that we were farming. So it was a a very big, I suppose, initiation to farming, coming into it, and right from the get-go, because we started our farming business ultimately from scratch. We had 320 acres that we were farming that come out of Marty's family partnership that we got to basically utilize to start our farm. And then we leased 1,000 acres and then we had some contract harvesting that we were doing on the side to boost cash flow to kind of get it going and working a lot off farm in that space.
Speaker 3:But money was always an issue, like right from the start we were running on very little equity because most of our land was leased. So we always felt this pressure right from the start that money was always the thing, was always the thing that was holding us back. It was always the thing that we were watching, it was always the thing that was, you know, sitting right in front of us. And, like I, come into the space with a business background. So I've trained as a property valuer growing up, went to uni and did that, went back to uni and did my master's of accounting. So I was very well versed in the business side of it but and my husband was really well versed in the technical side of it. But what we couldn't understand was why things weren't coming together and why it wasn't gelling. Like why weren't we getting ahead with money? Like why was it that we were still hitting the loggerheads? And like I'm probably really good at picking up patterns, which is why I think in coaching, now I can see what's happening with people and why they're creating the things in their farming business that they are especially around money.
Speaker 3:I could see this cycle happening that no matter what we would do, no matter how good the season was, we would always end up back at the same level. We would always end up back at the same kind of I call it a set point where we would have a great season but something would come up to pull us back, or we would, you know, we might have a poor season and then something had come along that might pull us back to a level. So if you looked at our kind of five-year average, we would always go back to the same place. It was like a ceiling, a financial ceiling that we'd put in there for ourselves. And so, like I looked at that and was like, why is this happening?
Speaker 3:Because if this is all that we're going to achieve in farming, then I don't want to be a part of it. We had to really seriously overhaul what we were doing and how we were doing it, because clearly what we weren't doing and how we were approaching money wasn't working at the time. So that's probably a nutshell of where we got to. And then, from that point, I had some people and places get put in front of me where I started to realize that it was actually the way we were thinking about money and approaching money that was actually having the problem in our farming business. It wasn't actually what we were doing or the lack of what we were doing, because we were doing everything that we're told to do around looking after money, budgeting, actuals, all of those things forecasting the strategic side but it was actually our mindset and the way we were thinking about money.
Speaker 1:That actually was the thing that was missing and it was affecting every single area of our business yeah, interesting, and I reckon there's I don't know a large chunk of people who are resonating exactly with what you just said. And certainly growing up on a farm and, yeah, it all sounds very, very familiar and I've always been blown away by the power of subconscious mind to change outcomes. I mean, some people are sitting there going. It sounds amazing. How do I change? Obviously you were coached out of a mindset or you sort of had to coach your way out of a mindset, or how did that work?
Speaker 3:A little bit of a combination of both. So I, when I realized that it was our my mindset or both of our mindsets that were really kind of the thing that was letting us down, I I probably dug my head into books and research and all of the things that I could find around money mindset, especially mindset too, but specifically money mindset, because that was our biggest gap and I dove head first into every resource I could find around that and I found mentors also that could help me in that space and coaches as well. But a lot of the things that I did was self kind of. I self coached myself a lot through that. So I would research an idea, I would come up with some resources and then I would put it into place and play around with it.
Speaker 3:And what we started to realize is I could start to see a direct correlation with when my mindset shifted to what then happened in our bank account. And it was really interesting at the start because my husband was a bit like, oh yeah, you know sounds great. And he's like, yeah, okay, and then things would happen and he'd like you know, we might have some unexpected money come in, or lambs would sell for more or something else would happen. He's like, oh, that's just a coincidence. And he did that for a couple of times until he went. Well, this has happened too many times for it to be a coincidence.
Speaker 3:And so, as we shifted our mindset, we could see a dramatic shift in our bank account.
Speaker 3:And he even mentioned to me the other day that he can remember the times when we were really working hard on our mindset, the times that our mindset dropped or we let it go for a little bit or we let it dip. In that first initial period he could see the flow through in our bank account, because what would happen is we'd get unexpected bills pop up. We had the bank ring us and say oh sorry, we forgot to charge you $5,000 worth of interest. We're just going to take that out today, which back then it was $5,000 was a big amount for us and it made a big difference to our business. Now not so much, but we could see this direct correlation with how we thought as to how money showed up to us and the opportunities that we saw coming off that. So it was a really interesting space where I was coaching myself through this and we were seeing the outcomes in our business and we were seeing our business start to turn around, actually quite quickly yeah, cool.
Speaker 1:So for, like, I guess, to drill into that, what is actually happening? So obviously we, you, can't just change your thought processes and all the good luck comes your way. It's not. It's not about luck, it's, it's about how you're viewing opportunities versus threats or what's the? I guess I mean you've called your business the Abundant Farmer, which and we've, I mean, I've done a bit of reading around the abundant mindset versus the closed mindset, and there's lots of people out there kind of who get into this competing mindset because they're sure that there's only so much money to get and so you've got to get your slice of it, whereas an abundant mindset is all about there's heaps of opportunity out there. It's just going and grabbing your your bit. What's, how does I don't know for someone back, if you were back when you started, and there'll be plenty of people listening that are in that position what, what was sort of, if we put some sort of I guess, guess flesh on the bones, what does that look like?
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%, and I think you create your own luck through your mindset. So what happens is how we think about money, how we feel about money, how we view money and how that shows up is exactly what we're telling our mind to look for when it comes to money and opportunities. So if we have a mindset that we have to work hard for money which is classic in farming money's not easy to come by. I heard a great quote yesterday that their parents used to tell them money comes in on a drip and goes out like a flood, which I thought was the coolest one actually that I'd heard as a limiting belief, which I thought was the coolest one actually that I'd heard as a limiting belief. So if our mind is trained like this, then we're actually asking our minds to find exactly that for us, because our mind always has a bias where it'll find us exactly what we think about. No different to if we think about. If I asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine everything in the room that was blue and then I got them to open their eyes and say, tell me all the things that are red, their mind just can't find it because that's not where their focus is. So we'll always get what we believe to be true, and so this is where luck comes into.
Speaker 3:It is that this is where creating your own luck comes from changing your mindset. So when we start to think a different way and we open our mind up to possibility because that's the biggest shift that happens first We've been thinking about a way for so long and then we get to a point where we hear something like this, or we read a book or something that exposes us to a new way of thinking. Then we just open our mind up to the potential that what happens if what we've been thinking isn't actually true? We've just been telling ourselves this story for so long and we've been getting evidence of that story. Because we can't not get evidence, because you can't have a mindset like that and then expect a million dollars to drop in your bank account. So it's being open to go okay, wow, maybe how I've been thinking is wrong about money. Maybe money isn't the thing that I thought it was, because we create a lot of meaning around money and how we think it shows up where money's purely a tool, it's just we create all the other stuff that comes around it.
Speaker 3:Maybe how we've basically misunderstood money up until this point, and then we start what I call retuning our mindset to wealth and abundance.
Speaker 3:So what we start doing is we start noticing where money already is, we start noticing how money shows up, we start to tell ourselves a different story, that making money is easy, money flows to us easily in increasing amounts, and we start telling ourselves a different story.
Speaker 3:Then our mind can't help but find the things to give us evidence in our life. So we create this new cycle where, instead of having the old story where money's hard to come by, we see evidence of that and then it just spirals and goes around in the same bias, where it creates and embeds a belief in our mind. We then start to open our mind up, we create new ways to think about money, we get new evidence, and so the more we get evidence of that and then more we think the same way, we then create a new way of thinking about money. So which then? That is what opens us up to opportunities, because in our old mindset we could literally walk over $100 on the ground because we wouldn't actually see it. Our mind would just delete the fact that it's there. And then change your mindset and you'll start seeing money everywhere, because that's what we're training it to see.
Speaker 1:It's an amazing concept, considering we all think we're chasing money or I mean, most of us capitalists do. I suppose we think that we're doing everything we can to find money. But, yeah, 100% agree with the power of the subconscious mind and the best example I often use, which is not a very good one, but it's kind of when we first found out having our first baby and all of a sudden, like I'd never seen a pram or a stroller or any baby gear in my life, my mind was completely blind to it. And then all of a sudden, everything you could see was baby gear and and I'll never forget that very, very clear mental shift in my brain that all of a sudden it was seeing a whole different world that never had existed before because it wasn't important to me.
Speaker 1:As you went through that process, like I think a lot of people we see in farming kind of think that okay, we, well, yeah, we just get up an hour early and we or we go to bed an hour later. That's how we kind of head towards, head towards our goals of making more money. It's, it's the. Our easiest mechanism is just sleep less or work harder. Um, and part of that often is shifting enterprises. Like it, like we're gonna, I don't know start doing something on the side to process wool through or have our own little meat brand or whatever, and try and think that there's a different way that to. But but you're not talking about necessarily changing enterprise. You're just talking about doing what you're doing now and and doing it kind of better, with a more, with a more focus on on their, on their outcome, and changing the way that you see, see cash yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3:I think there is an element that happens that there might be an enterprise change and that comes later, like mindset always comes first, like the thinking always comes first before the action or the doing. And I think what happens is we are conditioned like as a society in farming, I think to work harder. Oh, we need to make extra dollars, or we don't quite have enough money coming in the bank. We'll go and do that, we'll go and find a better way, or we'll go and make our business complex, or we'll add another enterprise, or we'll just work longer.
Speaker 3:But if you actually sit back and look at that, if that was the case, everybody would be millionaires or billionaires. Like if working harder was the answer, everyone would be a billionaire and certainly every single farmer would be, because they're the most hardworking people on the planet. But it's actually not true. So that's the question I pose to people is why is it that I can give two farmers exactly the same resources land, infrastructure, tractors, seed, every single thing and if you tapped in with them at the end of the year they will have very different bank balances? And because the only derivative or the only change in both of those scenarios is what happens up here, what happens in their thinking and where their mindset sits, because one could have a very bleak mindset and a very negative mindset and be in a very victim space, and the other one could be very opportunistic, know that money is infinite.
Speaker 1:You just need to know how to tap into it and have this really positive outlook on life and you'll just get these two vastly different sets of results yeah, 100, and you mentioned sort of victim headspace, which I think is is often playing out a bit and people we want to blame kind of everyone else or every the government, the weather, the, the rep, whoever someone else is getting the blame for how it's rolled.
Speaker 1:And I love the quote that life is whatever, 10% what happens to us and 90% what we do about it, which is kind of trying to break out of that victim mentality, because it is driven by how we see our world. How much is our societal pull, like the tall poppy syndrome? I kind of always we talk about this a bit that we're sort of destined to be average because we as australians and kiwis and probably I've just been to canada and they're similar as well like we don't. We don't like tall poppies, like we like to pull people down if they succeed too well, then we also don't like people that are below average. So we're sort of forcing ourselves in this middle bit where it's kind of this comfortable normal where we're all just struggling away together. How much is that sort of setting our mindset when we're as farming communities?
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's a limiting factor.
Speaker 3:So it's like we'll always see the limitations that exist to keep us playing out the same story.
Speaker 3:So I think the tall poppy syndrome plays into that, because what happens is farmers think, if I have more money, or if I talk about money, or if something else happens with money, then all of a sudden I'll get an outcome where I'll get rejected by society. But what most people realize is when they have more money, they actually become more of who they are. Now, some of those people could be assholes as such, but for most of us farming, we still remain humble, we still remain doing the same things that we're doing, and most people wouldn't know that we had more money unless we chose to outwardly show that. So it's actually more. I think the tall poppy syndrome comes from, or the, the worry about the small. Uh, the tall poppy syndrome comes from the fact that we've what we've got associated to the meaning of money and having more money, what that actually means, more so than you know it actually happening yeah, yeah, good point when you go through this process how much is?
Speaker 1:is language like how, what, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to others in terms of, um, yeah, like the words that we use, because it's kind of like we are just a combination of the things we hear, obviously. So I mean surrounding yourself or making sure you're not. Yeah, I guess, how much is language? I'll just stick that question there rather than try and re-explain it, but yeah, I think language is massive.
Speaker 3:I think language is kind of like 90% of 90% of it realistically, because as we're speaking, we're speaking out our beliefs like they're the last path that they come to fruition, and our language is really strong because how we speak is how we're creating our life. So if you just slow down and actually be conscious in terms of what you're actually saying and you listen to what you say, you are speaking your life out exactly the way it is and you're re-embedding the same story about your life. Or what's happening is you're speaking something into reality that you actually don't want in the future. So what a lot of people are doing is it's like they might be speaking I can't afford it, is it's like you know they might be speaking I can't afford it. Or they might be speaking this season's gone a certain way, or this is you know, money is hard to come by All of these things that we're speaking out, or even like, oh, we're struggling right now, or money never comes to us, or all of those things we're actually asking for more of that. So the whole abracadabra that a magician says so that's Hebrew, for we create as we speak. So we are literally creating our lives, the way we speak about it, because they are a reflection of our beliefs.
Speaker 3:So when my husband and I first started this process, the very first place we started is in our language. So we started just showing up and talking differently about money, about life, about business, about farming, about opportunities and if we said something that wasn't aligned with the future where we were headed to, we would pull ourselves up. We'd either pull ourselves up and say, no, that's not what I want to say. I want to say this. Or we would say to each other is that really what you want to create? Is that really what you want to speak about? So we were very hot on our language to make sure that we were speaking the way we wanted to unfold.
Speaker 3:And so we hear quite a lot of people who might sit and go. Let's say, for example, the budget's tight or things like that. So what that does is it presupposes to our mind that it's already made a decision, that something's happening, so your mind will go great, the budget's tight. I'm going to bring you more things that give you a tight budget when we, if we just change our language slightly to okay, we got less. Our parameters that we're working with are smaller, in September, for example, or there's a possibility of being, you know, having less money at that time of year. Great, let's do something about it. Has a much different energy to it than what the first one did. The first one shutting down all possibility. The next one's opening up possibility. So what your mind will do then is go to work, going oh, there's a potential of this. Let's go to work and find solutions. So our language is really, really key in terms of how our money, our business, our opportunities show up to us in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool. I'm thinking as you start down that journey. That feels weird for the first month or two yeah, absolutely yeah, and then once you're in I guess I don't know you're we're talking a number of years ago now, since, like, as you've sort of gone through that transition that, do you still need to force the language or is it sort of now, like you just known, like it's just second nature, you're not going down the negative, or do you still catch yourself a bit?
Speaker 3:There's a little bit of both. I think 90% of it probably comes a lot more natural as you work through and basically open up your mind to a different way of thinking about money. It's like you reach different levels in your thinking, like you'll go through a different level and you'll hit a barrier of thinking, so that barrier will bring different beliefs with it. So the other 10% I think comes up that are showing those new beliefs. So I think like it's really good, for sometimes, you know, I've got to catch myself again because it shows me the new area that I have to work on and where I have to change that language again. So I think, yes, it becomes natural, but yes, it also does show up. And I've had people who have listened to me in conversation and I've pulled myself up, changed the way I've wanted to say the same thing, and they've really appreciated the fact that I've taken the time to actually re-change it to the direction that I want it to be in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, even as we jumped on the call today and I did the normal weather random chat that we do in the farming community and you were way more positive than most people in your district. I reckon with how you discussed that, which is obviously evident, with how you've trained your brain to think that way, which is really cool. How much did sorry?
Speaker 3:No, no, I was going say with that and um, it's really interesting that you say that because I've trained my mind to stay open to possibility, so I've said this all along. Who's to say that by the end of the year we're not saying, wow, how amazing was this year? Like nobody can tell as time unfolds, like absolutely no one. So if that's what I'm telling my mind, how amazing is it going to be when we look back and say this year was amazing? And at the moment I'm sitting here going, wow, considering the rain that we've had, we're in decile one. The crops look really good, like yes, they're not our bumper crop that we've seen, but isn't it amazing what we've been able to grow in this time?
Speaker 3:And so I think when you remain open to possibility, your mind filters your life to find more of that.
Speaker 3:So even if I'm focusing on that and the season just ends as it ends, it's still much better than if I was carrying a victim mode and basically down on myself, because you know the external circumstance didn't show up the way that we wanted it to, because in reality, the weather doesn't know that we're making money off of it.
Speaker 3:So how can we actually be annoyed with it for not showing up the way that we wanted it to to make money Like. We just can't. So the more we can be open to possibility about what could happen, because I don't know then from that space of possibility that something else may pop up to fill in that income that we may have got from farming, or who's to say, it isn't actually perfect timing for something else. So I think until we see the bigger picture in a few years time, we could actually look back on this and go well, that year was the catalyst for this, that and that, and look how good a position we're in now. So I think we can never judge things just based on what we can see. We have to remain open to possibility because we can't see all of the story.
Speaker 1:Starting it off? Awesome, that's great, that's fantastic. As you go through this process I mean there's all those quotes about that you're the product of the three people around you, or whatever does does your, the people you hang out with, change or is? Um, yeah, I mean I don't know lots of people. There's the odd negative person getting around in our industry and so and associating with those people is pretty draining and and can impact your mindset is do you find yourself having to change who you socialize with or not?
Speaker 3:Definitely, and at the start of the journey and this is where I realized I did have a massive problem with money in terms of how I thought about it is because I used to be really scared of people with money Well, not so scared, but I would get anxious about people who had money because I didn't know how to show up to them and I felt like I was miles apart from them and so I didn't socialize with those people necessarily.
Speaker 3:What I did was I socialized with the people who were more in the space where I felt comfortable with the same money as us. But what I come to realize is, if you're in a room of people and you're the smartest person, you're actually the dumbest person. So we then changed to go to okay, who do we look up to as mentors? Who do we surround ourselves with that are really positive? Who do we surround ourselves with the same level of thinking, the same level of growth, the same level of positivity? Because that becomes really, really key. If I was to go back and hang out with the people that we used to and it's nothing against them, it's just I don't want to choose to put myself in a space where I'm going to lower my mindset to come down to a place where it puts me back into kind of a negative spiral.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's always a risk of yeah and we, yeah. As you said, if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room, and I think the beauty of what I do is I end up in lots of rooms that you kind of, at the start, feel like you don't deserve to be in, but eventually you get your head around the fact that we all deserve to be where we want to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think some of this sort of thinking across various books I've read is sort of getting away from the $25-hour jobs and moving on to your $500-hour jobs or whatever, or whatever the numbers are. But that's part of I don't think a lot of farmers think you can sort of save your way to prosperity, which isn't. I don't think there's much evidence that that's true. You've sort of got to invest your way into, and I'm thinking this change in mindset is about how, as well as where, the money comes from, but how you invest it and how you invest it more wisely, how you invest your time more wisely, not just through hard slog and $25 hour jobs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, everything that we're doing is an investment. So everything that we're spending money on in our business is an investment and we should be looking at it the same way, even though you know like our time, like you said, is also an investment. So what the aim is like, as you open your mind up, the aim is that you're looking at your business from a space of where do I invest my time, money, energy that's going to get me the biggest return? So is me doing the $25 an hour jobs going to get us the bigger return? Is me being constantly busy and just being busy for the sake of it going to give me the best return? Or actually, me stepping into the CEO role and allowing other people to do the $25 an hour jobs and giving myself space to think is going to actually create probably 10 or 20 fold the amount of money that that person was going to.
Speaker 3:You know that that person's doing, or if I did that job instead of them. So it actually becomes. You get a different perspective where you don't just view money as a time exchange, because I think farmers still do that. They're thinking as they're exchanging their time for money, even though we're selling a commodity and it's not coming necessarily in every week, but what we have to start doing is start thinking about how we're exchanging value for money, and when it becomes a value exchange, it's a whole different conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure, and I think well, I see this play out a little bit in. I think it sort of almost feels like there's two gears in ag at the moment, and that is the people who keep telling me it's really hard to get staff, and others who have always got staff, and I think it's again that's the way they think about that a bit Like it's going to be. If you're going to keep telling yourself it's hard, it will be hard.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 100%. You'll always get given what you think to be true. So if you think it's hard to find staff, you'll get all the evidence in the world that it's hard to find staff. But if you look back and go, wow, well, there's lots of people in farming that are getting staff and getting it easily and they're actually knocking on their door, then we have to start busting that out and take responsibility, for how am I not showing up to my business that staff don't want to come to me?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, society-wise we NZ, Australia, canada are all pretty humble sort of people and obviously, like if we take California or the US, for example, where, like salary is written on the wall of some businesses and everyone's willing to talk about money, Are those things correlated. Like that's not necessarily what we're talking about either. We're not saying you have to be talking about money all the time. It's more how you are, it's just what you do internally that matters.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think, like I notice a big correlation between the people in, like my abundant farmer community who talk about money openly. Now what's interesting is the perception of people talking about money, because we have this thing that if you know, we have a belief, it goes back to our limitations again. We have a belief that money is greedy and all of this stuff and you shouldn't talk about money and all of this. Then we'll have a problem with it and ordinarily it won't show up for us. But the people that I see in the Abundant Farmer Program they're talking about money and they're talking about it openly and they're talking about it like just as in everyday life, as they would talk about business. There's no negative or positive association with it. They're just talking about it to, you know, share their win, share their challenges and work through their blockages around that, like what's stopping them from having more money flow in and so just by them having those conversations and surrounding each other with just that, I don't know. I suppose a space where they can just be open and honest actually correlates more than with the amount of money that is flowing into their business versus somebody who will not talk about money and it's not, like I said, we're not talking from a space of I've got this much and I've got this much and I've got this much and my net worth is, like you know, across my chest, or I'm a sixth generation farmer and I have $200 million worth of assets, or anything like that.
Speaker 3:It's actually purely from a conversational space where you're like everybody's, supporting everybody and genuinely excited for people's wins and there for support and having that space where it's really neutral to people who, like I said, are really closed down and won't say anything about it or won't do anything about it but it's not correlating in their business because, in a way, you're hating on money, you're making money a thing or making a money a problem, where what we need to do is create a relationship with money, no different to a friend, like I had a really beautiful Filipino lady at one stage say to me. She was always taught by her mom that money's here to be your friend and so like. If you live by that, like money's here to be your friend and so like if you live by that like money's here to be your friend, it's not someone here for you to follow and you're at its beck and call, but you need to befriend money. So if you can't talk about it, how do you then think that it's going to flow into your business?
Speaker 1:Yeah, how much I mean one of the. This is a mindset thing, so I'm being careful. Yeah, how much I mean one of the. This is a mindset thing, so I'm being careful. Within ag, obviously succession is like lots of people, lots of businesses, suffer with succession or not suffer. That sounds like a disease, but succession becomes a major cause of angst and often family breakups and all sorts of bad stuff. How much of that is because of the mindset around money? That's sort of choking, that conversation half the time.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, if you think about it, everyone who comes to the succession table has a different view and different perspective on money, and each person has their own kind of let's call it swamp around money, their negative kind of associations with money that they're bringing to the table. And also, within that space, you've got multiple generations that are usually coming to the table and each generation has experienced different levels of money. So say, for example, each generation that's come forward have been able to make money easier. There's been ways to make money easier so we can make money. We can make a million dollars a lot easier now than potentially someone could in 1910, but the relative value of that has probably gone up.
Speaker 3:So the thing is you have that generational stuff. So we've got the older generation who could have had been through tough times high, and then you've got a younger generation that hasn't necessarily been through that yet, and so there becomes a disconnect between the generations that need to be worked through, as well as the fact that everyone's got their own stuff and everybody can see money in a different space, and that could mean multiple family members coming to the table that have a dysfunctional relationship with money but want more of it. That then comes in clouded. So you're never making the succession. When it comes to the money side of succession, it's never being made on anybody's clear judgment. It's always being made on the emotional bias that everybody's bringing to the conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, no 100%, and we won't go into that further because we could spend the next four hours talking about succession. But with your successful transition, obviously you're financially trained and most people aren't. How much does that matter? I guess I'll tell you what I think and that'll be that you get your mindset right, then that sort of gets you interested in some of those financial mechanisms and then you end up kind of finding ways to be better with money because your mindset's changed. But is that? You obviously had the financial training and then just had to change your mindset, whereas others may need to get more adept with financial mechanisms as part of this process or not?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think like, realistically, even though I had training, you can always learn it. So because even with all the training I had and the level of financial like the level that I was keeping our finances still wasn't getting us ahead, so it wasn't any more valuable than me necessarily not having financial knowledge, if that makes sense yeah.
Speaker 3:So the mindset is always I think 90% is mindset, because the action that you take and the behaviors that you have around money come from your mindset. So most of the time, the people who probably aren't got the financial skill, there's something in their mindset that actually is holding them back. First, something that they're telling themselves or a story that they've created, so they're not taking the action. Get the mindset right and you actually want to show up to your finances and money in a whole different way, because all of a sudden you see it differently and then you see the correlation between business as well and why you're doing the things that you're doing.
Speaker 3:So I think everybody most people in the farming space know that they need to keep a budget, they need to budget versus actuals.
Speaker 3:They need to obviously, like, do their forecasting, do sensitivity analysis, all of those things that we know we need to do financially, but not everybody does them because they just don't have the mind that's driving them towards it. So get your mindset right and you'll show up to them differently show up to finances and you'll want to actually do the training to be able to do it, because in actual fact, you don't need a high level of financial training to do the bookkeeping side and be very on top of your numbers in your business, like it's so easily taught. But the mindset is actually the biggest thing that probably takes a little bit more time and the biggest thing that people hold back because they completely disregard it. They don't think it's a thing. Most people don't even think about mindset. They think you're a little bit crazy when you're talking about mindset. They just want the doing stuff like give me the thing to do and I'll go and do it. But doing only gets you so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and was there? I mean I 100% believe in what you're saying because I'm sort of nowhere near to the level you are, but I've certainly been changing my mindset slowly but surely. There's going to be a fair chunk of people listening, thinking we've sort of been smoking something. The um is there a? Is there a particular book that read that you read that sort of chain like that was a key, key shifter for a key mind shift for you. I mean, I read a little bit cool um book called who moved my cheese, which is I don't know if you have you read that little book yeah, I have yeah, who moved the cheese, whatever it's called.
Speaker 1:Anyway, all about mindset and really easy to read and like almost ridiculously like a fairy tale, but it's kind of. The message is really clear and easy to comprehend. Was there anything that, yeah, any one book that you would recommend?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker, I think, is a classic book when it comes to just opening up your mind about mindset and starting to see how different people think and why they think a certain way. I think they all like it's interesting. Like when you first read them, like you said, it can seem like almost like not, this is too easy. But in a way it's like really Like this is just all we've got to do, think differently, and stuff like that. The challenge that I've given to people is it actually doesn't cost you money to start in like, start getting curious and thinking in different way, or start getting curious and open up to possibility, even if you think it's a load of garbage, like my husband did at the start, and then go well, what have you actually got to lose? Because in the end, if you're thinking more positive, then it's going to have a positive effect on your life and relationships. Then how is that a bad thing, even if you practice that?
Speaker 3:So, I think you know that's kind of the key here is that sometimes it can sound a little bit, like you said, fairy tale for some people, but it's actually the thing that makes the difference and a lot of the time, the thing that people are missing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100. Is there any examples of where it kind of doesn't work like, is it like I guess you could be just right out of luck and you can be, have the right mindset and everything goes against you? Yeah, I guess there's a like nothing, nothing is, is completely magic, but yeah, can it go horribly wrong or really it'll go bad, but it was going to go bad anyway and you can. You're still in a better place because of it.
Speaker 3:Well, I think it's the perspective of how you view it, okay. So I think people think, when their mindset changes, that everything's going to magically fall into place and then it's going to be this magical like, like you said, this magical process where you just go poof and it all works out, which actually isn't the case. What happens is when you work on your mindset and things start to change, you see positive things happen Absolutely. But it's like when we get to the point and we say we want a different financial reality, for example, like we want more money to flow in, what actually happens is you also get thrown the challenges that you need to be able to shift through, the things that you need to move in your mind, the blockages that you need to move in your mind to be able to get you to a better financial reality, because there has to be a disrupting in your thinking for you to create change, and no one will create change if they don't have any pain right. So what happens is we get triggered. So what I mean by trigger is you feel uncomfortable in some kind of way, to varying degrees, about something that comes up, and let's use money as an example how most people would see it is that it's all going to shit and that this is a load of crap, and so it's all meant to be fairy tales and magic, isn't it? But what happens is your triggers are actually the gold. So your triggers are the things that you need to work on to help you shift through that kind of challenge, to get you to the other side, to give you the learnings, the lessons, the things that you need in order to get to the next level of money, because if we didn't have triggers around it, how would we know where we've got to go, how do we know where our gaps are, how do we know what we've got to do? So it's like it's almost like the challenges give us the things that we need to also go to the other side.
Speaker 3:So if we think about it in a year like this, I think this is a great example. This has actually been a really great example this year because there's a lot of people who probably aren't necessarily used to having the rainfall that we have, because even in our area we're in a pretty reliable area. We generally get rain most of the time and we generally get pretty good crops and pastures most of the time. But it's very easy to kind of skip through with money when it's easy to make and when it rains and it's just a natural occurrence. But in times like this, what it shows to us is where our gaps exist in our business, in our relationship with money, in how we even show up to ourselves. So if we didn't have the discomfort of these kind of years, then we wouldn't have anywhere to improve on, and human existence needs evolution. So if it was just all rainbows and lollipops we'll call it we'd be like great, this is actually not that fun. We would actually create our own challenges.
Speaker 3:So in years like this, I look at it and go okay, this is a great year to be able to refine our systems. Where do I need to work on? My mindset, first and foremost, like, where are the things that are starting to like? Where am I starting to waver in my mindset and where do I need more? Um, where do I need to work on? Where do I need to waver in my mindset and where do I need more? Where do I need to work on? Where do I need to work on in our numbers? So, okay, I'm feeling really good.
Speaker 3:We've come in under budget this year in terms of where I'd forecast we were going to be Great. I feel like I'm ticking along okay with that. Is there anywhere that I have room for improvement so that we can maybe, you know, make sure that in other years it exists like this, we're actually being really proactive about it. And then, where, operationally, can we improve? So we've spent a lot of time like driving around our district taking notice of different farming practices and people who sprayed in summer or haven't sprayed in summer, or all of this stuff, and seeing, okay, what performs in years like this. So or we could go over there and bury our head in the sand and go this is all shit, the world's gone to shit, it hasn't rained, it's crap, my budget's not working, the bank don't want to talk to me, all of that stuff, and you know where are we going to end up Like, what's the better outcome and where do we want to put our focus?
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I love that. I love that concept of looking around and seeing what's worked in times of tough because it's yeah. I mean, our natural tendency is to get the green-eyed monster out or whatever and be like, oh, they're lucky because they sprayed on the right time or whatever. But if you just look at it as an opportunity to learn rather than an opportunity to get angry with something, so we probably need to pull it up there.
Speaker 1:But it's been a really great conversation, I think, as I lead our company and every farmer leads theirs. Often it is lonely at the top and obviously you've set up your business to try and enable people to talk about this together and I think that's a key part of all this stuff. It's a lot of these when you obviously can go down the rabbit hole and sort it out yourself, but it's a whole lot easier learning from others and probably getting that room or a virtual room set up where you are sort of can be vulnerable and can learn without judgment. How do people find you and find the work you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so 100%. Just in comment to that too, we can't read the label from the inside of the jar. So most of the time we're in the inside of the jar and we can't read what's happening to us or the patterns that are playing out, and we need that external person to come in. So because we just can't see what we can't see, and so that's why it's been really important for me to build a space where I'm actually be able to show. I can show people you know what's on the outside of the jar and what the label actually says and what they're doing, because you can't see that internally. So you can find me on Facebook under Hayley Grosser, the Abundant Farmer, and on Instagram under the Abundant Farmer. I've also got a website, hayley, at hayleygrossercom, that you can find all the details about my coaching and programs.
Speaker 1:Excellent. We'll put all those links in the show notes so people can find them. But yeah, it's been fantastic to have a chat, hayley, and really appreciate you taking the time to to share your insights and and being. I think the best thing about this discussion is like just being vulnerable, to discuss where you were, where you got to, and that's kind of what we need more of in our industry that, plus celebrating success when it when it all does go well. But, yeah, no, I really appreciate your time and and and the work you're doing out there to to keep people farming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Excellent Cheers. Thanks again to Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply of professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. Thank you to MNSD Animal Health and Norflex Livestock Intelligence. They offer an extensive livestock product portfolio focused on animal health management, all backed up by exceptional service. We thank both of these companies for their ongoing support of the Head Shippet podcast.
