During the boom years of $8 corn and $17 soybeans, many farm operations bought lots of new machinery and built giant shops. These added assets altered the balance sheet, creating a large liability in debt payments.

Today, with tight margins in farming, these liabilities are massively burdensome for many operators. I’ve been banging the drum for a long time, but you need to know that cash is king. You won’t go broke because you don’t make money; you’ll go broke because you run out of cash.

You’re burdened with debt, but there steps to get out from under it. Follow these six steps to lighten the load.

Good farm employees are hard to find, and even harder to keep.

It seems that today, people just don't have the work ethic they used to. But you, as a farm manager, have a role to play too.

The default training system of many farmers is to throw an employee in a tractor and tell them to go. But that doesn’t make the employee successful, confident, or motivated.

Believe it or not, it’s easy to motivate people—if you have the right plan. Use these 10 strategies to keep work morale and ethic high on your farm.

The whole story behind Cash Cow Farmer originates with my dad.

He’d been in charge of a farming operation for decades, and I wanted to prove my value to him. And not only that, but to prove it so well that I could completely take the reins from my dad.

When he thought of me running the operation, I wanted him to feel proud, comfortable, and excited.

Here I was with this business background, so I built a spreadsheet to show him what every bushel of corn, beans and wheat cost to produce, and then I developed the Cash Cow system as an expanded version of the spreadsheet.

I knew I wasn’t the only farmer who wanted to prove himself to his father. So this is for all the next generation farmers out there who want to take over their family farming operation.

Here are six things you can do to prove you have what it takes.

As we strive to assist farmers like you become better managers through the software Cash Cow Farmer we noticed a common problem among our customers, grain marketing.

When I ask farmers "How do you make your grain marketing decisions?" I get the most bizzare answers such as "we throw a dart at the calendar and sell on that day" or something crazy like that.  The grain marketing decisions easily trump every other decision on the farm in importance because that determins the year's paycheck.  Farmers generally only collect about 30 paychecks a lifetime so each one of these grain marketing decisions is important.

We decided to partner with the best grain marketing advisor we know, Randy Martinson of Agvice in Fargo ND.  Randy has successfully sold farmers at or near the top of the market for the past several years and even suggested forward hedging with futures contracts back in 2012-2013.  He is the best and now he is on our team.

Below is a video introduction of the new relationship and some services that are now available with Cash Cow Farmer and Agvice.

Don't have time to read, click play above or subscribe to our podcast on itunes.

Most farmers know that 2015 was a tough year. Unless they owned their land free and clear, they probably lost money.

And 2014? It was even worse—twice as bad, in fact.

If you lost $25/acre in 2015, then you likely lost $50/acre in 2014. That’s $75/acre in losses that you have to make up. The problem is bigger than most farmers want to think about.

However, you’re not doomed to repeat those losses in perpetuity. Making a few adjustments will allow you to swallow the losses of the last two years and move forward on an even playing field.

Follow these five strategies to wipe away the past and work toward a profitable operation in 2016.

Don't have time to read, click play above or subscribe to our podcast on itunes.

I just came back from a farm show (yep, another one), and I heard something that made me bolt upright in my seat.

The keynote speakers were considered master farmers, deeply knowledgeable about every aspect of farming. Every single one of them said there was one main problem in farming:

How do farmers manage and organize all of their data into an actionable format?

That’s the million dollar question. What the heck do we do with all this data we collect?

Oh, man, did that prick my ears up, because that’s exactly the problem that the Cash Cow Farmer software addresses.

Afterwards, there was a breakout session. People came around, and I explained Cash Cow in 15 minutes, just like this:

Imagine you’ve got all your fields sitting in front of you, and you know what it costs on each field to produce corn, wheat, soybeans, sunflowers, and whatever else you’re farming. Therefore, you know what each field’s level of profit is. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

They all agreed.

Everybody was talking about my product, they just didn’t know it.

Don't have time to read, click play above or subscribe to our podcast on itunes.

Competition is a beautiful thing.

At least, it is in the marketplace. Competition is what allows farmers to shop around and find the best deals.

Since farmers are buyers of a lot of expensive inputs, shopping around is crucial. I talk to so many farmers who buy from the same supplier and use the same custom harvester every year.

While I don’t think they need a cutthroat attitude, I do think they should understand that they’re in business to make money. They should price check and negotiate with their supplier. It’s nothing personal; it’s just business.

For you farmers out there, there are ways to conduct yourself to ensure an outcome that’s best for you and your suppliers. In other words, you can secure a win-win, and who doesn’t love that?

Here are four steps for making a win-win deal in farming.

Don't have time to read, click play above or subscribe to our podcast on itunes.

We’re at a low point in the cycle of agriculture.

Commodity prices are low, and margins are razor thin. So we need to strategically plan each field like our whole farm depends on it.

You will probably be able to make decent money on a couple of corn and soybean fields, but for those other fields, you might have to consider different crops to make money.

When the growing gets tough, the tough get a calculator.

Your finance partners want to make sure you’re putting all you have into making money next year. Use the following tips to show them how dedicated you are to making money in these tough markets. These five strategies will help you make every field produce a cash crop this next year.

THANKS SO MUCH for taking the time to join me at the event.  I hope you were able to take something away to help you get you toward your goals and into the "good life"

Below are some link to actions you can take right now to start making progress towards achieveing your goals.