Ask Not, Get Not

We've reached edition 10 of Accidental Ag. When I started this I didn't know if I would stay consistent with it, but I'm seeing the value in documenting the entire process of getting a new way of life up and running. This is still going out to just a select group of people, and maybe it always will. However, I do hope that at some point it can become something more, where I'm giving people hope that want to take a leap into a business of their own. And hope in the sense that it doesn't have to look the way everyone else thinks it should, because I clearly didn't do this in a traditional sense. Just quitting a 6 figure job with a wife, 3 kids, and 0 guaranteed income can't be recommended by all (or any of) the experts.

Alright, let's get into it!

From the field:

There's starting to be more and more overlap with people I'm calling. I'm realizing that it is indeed a small world, and it becomes even smaller as you work in a tight geographical area. Everyone knows everyone, and it seems like somehow they're all connected in some way. I had a phone call today with a guy from one town, and then he said he was going to coordinate the chemical drop off with a guy in another town. A guy which I'd already been in contact with, and know his operation a little bit. This isn't the first time something like this has happened either. The dots are being connected.

Light on the updates this week from the field, because everything I mentioned last week is still in process. The insurance, the funding, all that. This section is going to get increasingly interesting as we speed into July - we're less than 4 months out from spraying season at this point.

From the office:

One of the things I've always known (but rarely implemented) is that making a written list of things to do is very effective. I was whining in a previous newsletter about my daily schedule and its lack of structure. On Sunday night I wrote a list of everything I wanted to accomplish this week, and I've already got 3/4 of it done on Wednesday. It would seem that this is something I should continue doing.

I'm sure many of you have heard the phrase "Ask and it will be given to you", or "Ask and you shall receive". Matthew 7:7 in the Bible. The Upwork path has dried up a little bit over the past week. A combination of me driving 6+ hours each way to retrieve a puppy (don't ask) last week, and then recovering mentally, emotionally, and physically from the trip over the next couple days. 12+ hours in a van with 3 children in 2 days is intense, then throw a puppy in the mix?

I digress.

In summary, I haven't been actively seeking projects on Upwork lately and effectively killed some of the momentum I'd been gaining. Lesson learned.

OK, back to the Bible verse. I reached out to my point of contact at one of my recent Upwork projects and said I had bandwidth to take on more. He got back to me within 30 minutes and said "when are you available"? Alright then, we're back in business!

What I'm reading:

This week it's Jeffrey Gitomer's Little Red Book of Selling. For those of you who know me well, you're aware that I'm an accounting/finance guy, which tends to be about as far away from the world of sales as possible, at least from a skillset perspective. I can analyze sales numbers with the best of them, but to make the calls, book the business? Not so much.

But I don't want to be a traditional salesman that calls 8 times and eventually beats down the prospect to the point where they just say yes to get you to stop calling. That's 100% not my style - I'm very non-confrontational. Some might argue that I'm too non-confrontational, and I'd agree with them because it avoids confrontation.

Anyway, one of the first lines of this book grabbed me, because it shifted my mindset. The author suggests thinking about sales as "end of time" instead of "end of time period". For example, rather than thinking about getting my book of business for 2024, I should be thinking about developing a relationship so that I can keep that book of business until 2029, 2034, etc. I like that philosophy. More about relationships than it is about quotas or the dollar bill.

Thanks for hanging in - until next week!