Stan Parsons wrote, “If you want to be a cowboy get a job.” A business owner’s job isn’t to put up hay, work cattle, or build fence. It is to…
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Most family ranches are subsidized with free, or underpaid, family labor. Sometimes the difference between what family members get and what it would cost to hire someone else to do…
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How is the next generation ever supposed to step up if the current generation can’t step down or at least step aside? The short answer is they can’t. It’s one…
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Most people assume that the biggest estate planning fights involve “Who will own what?” It’s been my experience that, “Who will run what?” is often an even bigger issue. “Who…
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University of Wyoming Extension agent and Ranching For Profit School instructor, Dallas Mount, recently led a management succession workshop in Baggs, Wyoming. Dallas is a gifted, innovative teacher, and I…
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If you have a family ranch, whether you know it or not, you have a family employment policy. At least your kids think you do. In the absence of a…
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I occasionally lead workshops I call Hard Work and Harmony: Effective Relationships In Family Businesses. In it I like to ask participants to explain to the person next to them,…
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In an earlier ProfitTips column I wrote about a young couple who, after attending a Ranching For Profit School, came home to meet a brick wall of resistance from the…
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Many of us hope and fear that the next generation will want to be part of the family business. We hope because we feel validated that we must have done…
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Legacy is a powerful concept. Perhaps that is because we see our legacy as a form of immortality. In some families it has survived generations now long gone. Many people…
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