058 Farming is a business with Michael Kilpatrick

Michael is a farmer, presenter, inventor and blogger who lives to help farmers apply business principles and practical, proven solutions to grow their businesses and simplify their lives. He has managed large certified organic farms and businesses, consulted with industry experts, and spoken at dozens of conferences. Transcript: Hi, I’m Betsy Pake. I’m a reinvention strategist and NLP coach, author and speaker. But really, I feel like I just work with people all over the country to help them be happier. And to help them have a little bit more ease in their life. Today, I hope to do the same for you. Thanks for listening. Now let’s go live. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. I’m here today with my friend, Michael Kilpatrick. Hey, Michael, how are you? I’m doing good yourself. I am awesome. I’m really excited that you’re here for a different reason, then most people listening with no. And it’s, well, why don’t we? Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. And then we can really get into it. And then it will all come together and make sense. Yeah, so my background is my brother and I started a farm when we were 15 and 16. We are parents, we moved out to the country around 2000, the year 2000. We want to kind of escape the city. There’s seven of us kids. So when you kind of needed some space to roam. And so my brother and I started this farm, we really had no idea where we’re doing but with really good mentorship, and just really a lot of hard work. And looking at the business side of farming, we grew the business quite rapidly to you know, a large vegetable farm, which meant and we managed about 500 acres, and had about 20 employees. So it was a large operation. And so obviously, that journey, taught us an awful lot about farming a lot about business, a lot about marketing. And then 2013 I actually actually 2012 I was privileged to intern at polyface farm in Virginia, where I met my wife, I kind of had a real life crisis, I was 25 and been running the farm for you know, 10 years wasn’t quite sure what was next. And so decided to take a summer off and intern. And it was kind of crazy to step away from a business like that. But it survived. And I survived. And anyway, the next year I got married. And then in 2015, my wife and I had a child and decided that you know the full time farm up in New York, it was a long way from her family. And so we decided to relocate to Ohio, where we are now. And at that point, we’re also like, you know, we farm for a while we keep watching farms go out of business one after another, you know, all the farms that we were going to farmers markets with you know, they’d be one that come up out, start for a couple years and then go out of business. And so we started watching and we started really researching why they were going out of business. And so now our phase of my life is really devoted to helping firms be successful helping them build their asis profitable, sustainable business system on their farm. And so last year, we started a consulting company, and it’s taken off, it has really taken off. So it’s so fascinating to me. And you know, the reason I was so excited to have you on is, you know, I grew up in Vermont, my dad was a dairy farmer. Uh huh. We didn’t live on the farm when I was growing up, but he grew up on the farm. And then you know, he sold it, maybe I was like in third grade. So farming has always been like something we talked about something that was part of our life. And a lot of my friends, families farmed, also. And so I find this actually really fascinating. I want to go all the way back, because I really don’t understand.