Winter is a great time to get rid of that terminal case of piles in your farm office. Someone once said that “clutter is a delayed decision”. My business consulting friend Stuart Morley of Ontario, wrote me a story from his observations in Africa, that I think might be an encouragement to you. My new office is making me more money with better systems in place. Beauty does create energy, so get to work after you read Stuart’s observations:

As a city kid, growing up in Africa I spent my holidays with friends who lived on farms. The farmers seemed to be the ones with cars, planes and tractors unlike us poor city folk. I figured all farmers were rich so I decided I would become a farmer.

However I was a little taken aback during my third year of my agricultural degree to find most farmers lived pretty poor. Some died rich but few lived and died rich. It was the early days of computers and to save costs for farmers and give us a project we needed for college we persuaded a group of about 30 farmers to give us their financial records and in return we would tell them how they were doing compared to the average. It kept the professor happy we had a project and we liked the idea of experimenting with computers plus on a hot day the only room that was air-conditioned was the computer room.

Once we overcame the usual concerns about confidentiality we found the farmers not only liked to see how they were doing but now wanted to visit the farms of those who were doing better than the average. Some wanted to see these farms because they suspected those doing better meant they were not counting all their costs and others wanted to find the secrets of how others were doing better. Continue reading Farmers with Beautiful Office Make More Money! »