The Agriculture Version
I live in an agricultural area. When you think about California, many things probably come to mind. Sunny and 77. The beaches. The crazies. Hollywood. But I live in the heart of California where farming and ranching is king.
In my town, there is a saying, “Smells Like Money”. We have a dairy on every corner. No matter what part of town you live in, depending on whether you are upwind or downwind, some days it’s going to smell like money. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m referring to the manure that always accompanies dairy farming.
My grandfather moved to Central California in the 1920’s. He came to work as a farm laborer. They lived in tents. Today they would have been considered homeless. But my grandfather had a dream and honestly, he was a bit of a genius.
My grandfather’s job was tending a fairly young walnut orchard. He went to his employer and asked if he could plant cotton in between the rows of trees and work it on his time off. His employer agreed, and that’s how he got his start in farming. My grandfather loved farming and I still have memories of traveling around with him in his pick up truck setting water and checking the cotton. To this day, seeing really healthy cotton gives me a positive emotional charge.
My grandfather took that seed money profit and bought some land. Then he bought some more land. His dream was to have one piece of property to leave to each of his kids, which he accomplished before he passed away. He also had phenomenal mechanical aptitudes. He was an inventor who invented farm equipment and had several patents to his name.
Nice story, what’s my point? Today, like retail, like fast food, like working with your hands, agriculture is sometimes looked down upon as a way to make a living. I think the opportunities are still there. But many over look the opportunities because all they see is a dead end farm labor job.
I received an email recently from Michael Senoff. Actually, Michael is a marketing genius and I get an email from him everyday. But that’s a different story for a different day. Michael sent me an attachment with his email that told a story about a man who grew up on a fruit tree farm. As a teenager he was set up with a little fruit stand to make some extra money. He had a knack for it, and just kept trying out new ways to improve sales. He experimented with location, signage, everything. Over time he came up with a very successful system. Then he started hiring people to man the stands and multiplying the whole operation. He spells out the system in pretty great detail in this link where you can choose to either listen to the interview or download a pdf transcript:
http://www.hardtofindseminars.com/Fruit_Guy_Interview.htm
Here’s my point. What I absolutely know, is that you and I have been blind to 100’s of opportunities to make a lot of money doing something we are talented to do because it was hidden behind a type of work that we have been deceived into believing had no potential. How many times have you and I both driven by a fruit stand imagining that the owner was struggling to get by?
Don’t rush out and start a fruit stand. Don’t go out and buy a cow. Just don’t over look an opportunity that you are drawn toward because you are “sure” you couldn’t make a living doing that. And maybe even more important, don’t discourage your kids from pursuing something that they are drawn to because you can’t imagine a good income. And that leads us to the next “Deception”….
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