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The Turn Row Podcast
From the edge of the field to the forefront of modern agriculture, The Turn Row Podcast delivers real conversations for real farmers. Focused on agronomy, crop production, and the issues shaping today’s operations, this podcast dives deep into what matters most in the field and beyond.
Each episode brings practical insights, expert interviews, and honest discussions about everything from soil health and nutrient management to emerging technologies, market trends, and policy shifts impacting agriculture. Whether it’s breaking down the latest research or tackling hot-button topics farmers are talking about at the co-op, The Turn Row Podcast keeps you informed and ready for the next pass.
Straightforward, knowledgeable, and grounded in real-world experience, this is where agriculture meets conversation—one turn row at a time.
The Turn Row Podcast
Leadership, Succession and Community in Farming with Ron Ewing
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This week on The Turn Row Podcast, Sponsored by Cross Creek Ag Solutions, Kyle and Brad interview Ron Ewing.
Ron is a Chapter President and Principal with Truth at Work, where he helps business owners, presidents, and CEOs grow their businesses while deepening their faith and leadership. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the construction industry and over a decade serving in church leadership, Ron is passionate about equipping Christian business leaders to live out their God-given calling.
Listen as they discuss farming, loneliness, community, succession plans and leadership in business.
Welcome back to this week's episode of the Turnrow Podcast with your host, Kyle Brumley. This week, Kyle's back with Brad to talk to a very special guest, Ron Ewing. Ron is a chapter president and principal with Truth at Work, where he helps business owners, presidents, and CEOs grow their businesses while deepening their faith and leadership skills. With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the construction industry and over a decade serving in church leadership, Ron is passionate about equipping Christian business leaders to live out their God-given calling. Let's tune in.
SPEAKER_01All right, everyone. Welcome back to the Turn Row Podcast. I'm your host, Kyle Brumley. With me today, as usual, Brad Downing. Brad, today's a special day. It is. It's not just us. We've got our first official guest in the studio.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, ladies and gentlemen, with us today is Mr. Ron Hewing. Uh, Ron is a uh a part owner in a an organization that works with Christian-based companies, um, providing, I guess you could say, kind of coaching skills, leadership skills. Um, I know here at Cross Creek Ag we have uh worked with Ron in the past with some sessions with uh our employees. Um Brad also sets down Brad is it once a month with Ron and a group of business owners. Um, Brad, I'm gonna kind of turn it over to you and let you explain a little bit more about why we're having Ron in today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, welcome, Ron. Thank you. It's a good beer. Welcome to the Turnrow Podcast. So this is officially our first outside the uh company guest. Outside the organization guest. First guest. So uh your numero Uno. It's either gonna go well or you're never gonna do it again.
SPEAKER_02You can't be worse than us.
SPEAKER_01It's already going better.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but no, uh, Ron, you're uh part owner of Truth at Work. And I'm gonna kind of let you introduce yourself here and a little bit, what you do and your background, how you got here. But um, for me personally, I got to know you and invitation from you and a couple other business owners to be part of a um an organization that meets with business owners. We meet once a month for about four or five hours uh on a ours is on a Thursday morning and to really just discuss, you know, just life in general as being a business owner. Um, what are the things that happen within a business? What are the what are the challenges, the hurts, struggles, hangups, and praises we have? And obviously, a key foundation of our company is honor, obviously, in our core values is honoring God, which you know, our our core values that we realigned was because you came in and did consulting with us on those and and redefining our mission statement. So that's kind of a couple years ago when we refocused what we were doing here. That was a big key to it. So uh I heard an interesting stat about you that you've had over 3,200 hours now of basically uh I I'll let you kind of describe what it is.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we call it I call it time in the room, right? With uh with Christian business owners. And so I've been coming up on 800 meetings, four-hour meetings that I've been able to be a part of and facilitate as part of Truth at Work. And um, it's a great joy, it's a special place to be, it's a unique place. You Brad knows it because he he sits in those rooms. Um I joke we meet 12 times a year, we don't meet monthly because a business owner hears that is less than monthly, sounds more than 12 times a year. So sadly, it took me nine years to figure out the uh brain psychology of that that I can say 12 times a year, and it sounds oh, that doesn't sound like very often. No, it's not just 12 days out of uh 365, right? Um, but the idea is just be a peer advisory group for each other, yeah, and uh create a pinprick of time in the month where for those four hours you sat in the room together, businesses of all different kinds. So you get the commonality of being a leader, being a business owner, you get the commonality of sharing for us faith in Christ, and then you get the uniqueness of why how is my industry and my business different than the other industries? So you could be in there with uh well, your group has a you know, someone in manufacturing, someone in real estate, um, you know, got trucking components, you've got equipment components, so just a lot of real diversity in what kinds of companies. Um, and that makes for a really rich perspectives from people, right? Because their their journey to business ownership and leadership is different than the person next to them. But the weightiness of the chair, we always always think about the chair that a business owner sits in, the weightiness of that chair feels the same. Right. When you when you go on vacation, the business is still running. You take your spouse to you know, anniversary dinner, the business is still running, your kid's 12th birthday, business is still running, and so doesn't make anybody's problems better than anybody else, it just makes them different from folks that don't that don't run business and lead in that way.
SPEAKER_03I think it's amazing. You bring that point up the fact that there's people in our group that have four employees, and there's people have 200 employees. Yeah. And interesting enough, I mean, we're all human, we all interact with people, right? We're all we're infallible people.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And what's interesting is the the struggles we all deal with, we all think are unique to us. And realistically speaking, they're sometimes not. Most most time they're not. They're just it's just struggles we deal with in life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it might be different in degrees, if you will, how much of this you deal with versus how much uh someone else does. But I mean, I've had rooms where there's a person in there with 700 employees in a company, and I had a guy for a long time that was in a group until he moved to Atlanta, he was the whole company, and he he uh he traveled the nation teaching NBA players how to shoot three-pointers better. And there's a guy in the NBA right now that shot over 43 percent for eight years in a row because he worked with Joey, right? And so, like he was the whole company, right? And so, um, but the struggles and the challenges of you know, the head trash of leadership and diff dealing with customers, those those things are all common, right? And so so I've been blessed through this. This is my 13th year being involved with Truth at Work. Um, it got worse because uh January 1st I actually bought the organization with a partner of mine. So now I'm not just a part of it. Um that sort of sounds like a hair clip. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04You're not only a member, you're often all right.
SPEAKER_02So so but we're all getting plenty of gray around here, so right. So, but um, so it I I love it. We're in we're got 50 round tables around the nation in different cities all over the country, and so probably about 26 different individuals that run those groups uh across the nation. And so any second, Tuesday, third, Thursday, whatever it is, there's a group of there's a group of business owners meeting somewhere, you know, sharing life, faith, and business together. And um it's a lonely place at the tip of the spear of uh of uh leadership, right? Yeah, you you're preaching a choir. Yeah, right. You're you're just out there, you're on the you're on the very tip. And um, and when you're a tip of the spear in a business, and you know, if you're a tip of the spear in your family, and maybe you're in leadership at at your church, so you're the tip of the spear there, like there's no peers when you're out there at the tip of the spear, right? And so, like, it's there's a real need to find someplace where you can sit down and just be around other people and get to say, does anybody else dealing with this? Right, and see other people nod. And it's a little bit like the we just had like whatever it was, 50 years of that movie Jaws, and like they're sitting around sharing shark bite scars and stuff like that. And like it's a little bit like that. Like, oh, you survived that? Okay, great.
SPEAKER_04I you're missing a leg too. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02Maybe, maybe I maybe I can maybe I can survive, uh survive that.
SPEAKER_03No, I know for me, my perspective of being part of this group now for I think we're on year three or four now, it's been a while. Um, for me personally, it's it's it's my version of church. I mean, so my family and I go to church, and that's our church as a family. Yes, that's a body of believers, and but for me, this is more of my church and what I think Christ called the church to be. We got a group of guys that you know are trying to do the best they can with the resources that God's entrusted them, yeah. And you know, we're not perfect, and getting to be transparent with other people discussing that. So, I mean, if from our listener standpoint, if there's you know, we have predominantly agricultural listeners, but there's other people that aren't. Um, I think that's a big thing key for us. If if you're in a leadership position or if you're in, you know, an ownership position, if you can't find a place that you can be vulnerable and transparent, yeah. Um you that it gets even more lonely at the tip of the spear doing that.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Leadership by definition is lonely, right? And um, we see the natural condition as being lonely, isolated, overwhelmed, and then eventually you're going through something you've never been through before. So, us that acronym is lion, the word lion, and scripture tells us the the lion's always prowling to see who he can devour. And in actuality, lions they're always hunting. Um people always say, Oh, the lion hunts the weak. Uh, but the reality is the lion hunts the one that's isolated. He just knows that by definition, the the wildebeest or the antelope or whatever the whatever the prey is, if they're alone, if the zebra's by itself, it's by definition weak, because God designed zebras to be distracting when they're all together, going different directions, they're hard to keep track of one-on-one or one to many. But when they're when you're you're lagging behind, no one's around, you don't have the herd around you, right, helping out, then you're just in danger. And there's no different for no different for a leader, whatever the place is. So it is critical what we do, God did not create us to be alone, right? Uh, it's critical for us to have a group of people, someone in the foxhole with us, someplace where we can go absolutely transparent, and you can you've experienced it, right? Just today, actually. Yep. And so it's it's incredibly powerful, right? Like it reality is any place two or three or more gather in Christ's name, we're a portion of the body of Christ, we're the church in that moment. And so, like, to have that happen anywhere you do that just happens the 12 times a year on Thursday. Your group has to do that, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, I I was gonna say this for later, but you brought it up right now. And uh, there's a quote you actually had today that I wrote down that said, never be afraid to let people feel the weight of who you are in Christ and let them deal with it. And I when you said that, I really thought sometimes we I'm not saying we hide from it, but we're constantly trying to lead and do things, and that we're trying to make a decision based on what we're trying to do right in Christ. But on the other hand, sometimes we're kind of shying away because we're afraid what people are gonna say. And I I thought your comment and your quote on that was you know, let them feel the weight of who you are in Christ, but then also let them deal with it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's the one I adapted that from a quote I read in a book. Um, a mentor to a to a uh a mentee, the guy in the book wrote, and I read that, it's going on 29 years ago when I read that out of a book, and um it struck me because too often we hold ourselves back from who God's made us to be. Leaders just hold themselves back from being how they're wired and how how they're meant to lead. And it doesn't give us permission to be to be pompous and and overbearing or any of those things. Um but there's a reality where it's like if I'm called to be in this spot, then I need to walk in it, right? And um, I need to trust that God's gonna correct me and by you having other people around you, they can you you've been called out before, you've called others out before. Like, hey, maybe you're looking at that wrong, right? These guys call me out every day. So that's that that's called a healthy environment, right? Like that um where we can where uh what's the uh from the book Good to Great Uh Jim Collins, right? Where we can bang tables and rattle chairs and beat up ideas and not people, right? Like that's like that's strong leadership right there. Where you can you can be humble enough and transparent enough and risk enough to say things out loud that might sound dumb, but that's what gets us to the third and fourth great option when we're when we're struggling with stuff. It's a problem, not the person. That's right. That's right. And the the the prideful leaders or people on teams who can't do that, they they get stuck places because ideas are their personality as opposed to just just an idea, right? So yeah, I love leadership, I'm passionate about it. Um I had a grandfather that was passionate about it, and so I got I he he probably drugged me out. He's my Purdue grandfather, I'm a third generation boilermaker.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's good enough. Why don't you why don't you what what got you to this place today?
SPEAKER_02Right? It's wild. I'm a so I'm the son of a uh I started out as a child. Anybody else, right? So um uh I'm the son of a uh school teacher, Purdue grad, and uh dad boiler up, yep. And so our family started at Purdue in the fall of 1947, is when grandpa aura Callahan went to Purdue as a as a freshman, and there was uh no room at the end per se. He he and 50 other guys were in the uh attic of the ag building and bunk beds and footlockers because post-World War II there was no not enough dorms for all the men coming back from the war and going to college. And so that's how his uh his college experience used to be. He would hitchhike back from uh between Rushville, Indiana, and uh and West Lafayette. That's how he had a he had a suitcase with a big gold P on one side, a big red R in the other, and he'd just face it the right direction based on where he wanted to go. And uh could mail his, he'd always thought he'd mail his laundry home for a quarter so mom could do all his laundry back when he was a student. So so no, uh he he started the the Purdue thing in our family. Uh my dad's uh was a concrete truck driver, but his also was uh back then you couldn't pour concrete all year, so he had to have work in the winter. So he was an entrepreneur. He he farmed on the side. He's always done that since he was 12 on his own. And then he had a snow removal business for years and years, and so it was we were always something was always breaking. We were always out fixing. I'm the oldest of three boys, so I got the uh the uh un enviable task to be the the oldest that gets drug out, and no matter what the weather, you were I was labor, right? And so had uh that's what they had kids for, right? That's right. From from from holding a flashlight and never doing it right to uh to uh we never had right for being yelled at that I didn't back the tractor up right to get the hitch just a line for the wagon so he didn't have to be jerking the tongue around. So yeah, I I I lived through all those scars. We still do that to our kids today, so it's all right. That's right. So um but yeah, so now I'm I um uh went to Purdue. I actually graduated in engineering. I'm a I'm a licensed professional engineer technically, although I wouldn't never have never been considered to be a typical engineer. Uh I went into construction. I'd like to say it was because it was a people business, right? Which all business is, but construction especially. But it was really because uh I never had to take chemistry again, if that was the uh school of engineering that I that I chose. And so that was the so I guess you could say uh uh chemistry made me the construction manager that I that that I was for 25 years. I took all the chemistry for you. That's all right.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say chemistry is the only thing I was good at.
SPEAKER_02You could have my mom aced uh my mom uh aced uh chemistry at Purdue all all of her years. So like I I did not get those genes, right?
SPEAKER_03See, my problem is I had to start in biochem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, she aced biochem too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I had to start there. That was even harder.
SPEAKER_02That was but um no went in construction and loved it for 25 years. That's what I did. I managed large construction projects, everything from multi-million dollar church projects to ended up in um K-12 um high school projects to universities. So, and it was a great career. It was it was such a um construction is fast thing because it was a great um it was a PhD PhD level course in leading and managing people from all walks of life. I literally had a specific day. I was 15 years into my career and I was at uh Ball State University working on projects up there that we were we were managing. And in the morning I started talking with two guys that were actually 15 feet in the ground in a sewage ditch, not a sewer ditch, but a sewage ditch. Yummy, yummy. And um, throughout the day, I worked my way up the food chain working with everybody in line of that project and that challenge and that problem. And I ended a meeting in a future project discussion that included the president of the Ball State University. I remember driving home that day thinking, I don't, I don't think everybody has days like this. Like I think some people just wake up and all they talk to all month long is purchasing agents or whatever their their line or their place in the industry is. And um, that's when it hit me like this was this is unique, right? Because if you can engage with some blue-collar guys on a on a job site and you know, get information and communicate to them and then go sit in the boardroom and do both. Like, and I just love that. I really loved that that fluidity. And um, partly because I just love people. I think that's the the real thing for me. I was the kid that didn't have a click in high school. I was in all of them, right? I worked on my own car, I played football, I was in the band, I was in 4-H for 10 years. So, I mean, I I got all the I could check all the boxes or about any place that I wanted to slide into and have a conversation with someone.
SPEAKER_03You forgot to mention you played football at Purdue.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, they let me practice for two years, all I wanted, right? And so um, and then uh it was that moment of choosing the engineering school was the the moment when I was still a sophomore in freshman engineering. That was when I had to make that hard decision. Like, I think football just became a job, right? And so and so um I hung that up. Now my my wife and I, my wife Megan, we actually met on the football team. She was a student athletic trainer. We we dated illegally or unlawfully to the football rules.
SPEAKER_03Was that PurdueMatch.com?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right. It was uh so we uh if you break a rule, break it forever, right? So we were committed to it. And so we've got a 25-year-old daughter who's a creative, an artist, and a and an author. And then um we got a 22-year-old son who's married now and still a student at Purdue, and he is on the football team, and so it's uh now he's fourth generation, so that's pretty wild.
SPEAKER_03Plus, you just got uh a couple weeks ago, you got to marry your son, right?
SPEAKER_02Uh well, I got to see him be married, right? I didn't I I didn't perform that wedding, right? All right, and so but um, but I got to be there, and that's that's wild. It ends up my wife and I are the outliers here because we're the only in four generations, we're the only Purdue people that weren't married in college. Grandpa was, my mom was, and now Tom and Tom and uh Tom and Megan are. And so, like, it's really that's really weird.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you guys went outside the box.
SPEAKER_02And we I yeah, well, my wife even broke up with me one time in college because I wouldn't get married. So, like, here she was ready. She was trying to keep the data stream going, and I was I was the I was the painful outlier. She really loved you. Yeah, she did. She did.
SPEAKER_01That's good. Uh so I guess kind of getting into the meat of it. Um you know, I've heard Ron mention a couple of times today kind of that that tip of the spear and what it takes to be a leader and be the tip of the spear, Brad. So like it or love it, you are the tip of the spear at Cross Creek Act Solutions with us here. Um so let's just dive into a little bit deeper on kind of you know, you talked about your experiences at Truth at Work. That's that's kind of outside of the business in a way. Um, but you decided to bring Ron in house to have a couple sessions with with myself and the other employees here. And um, I believe we're getting ready to kind of start round two, maybe round three of that. So talk a little bit more on just kind of what what you saw, what you as a business owner, kind of what you saw, where were we at at that crossroads on why you thought we needed to have kind of some outside come in, and then really it's kind of led us to where we are today is you know, with the growth that's happened, some other big changes that are kind of in the come.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that you really have to evaluate yourself and look as a leader at a business owner, whatever it may be. Um, if you think you have all the answers and you can solve all the problems, you're lying to yourself and the devil's lying to you because you there's vanity, there's there's uh ego, there's lack of self-awareness. And I think as we developed the company and grew, and we had some employees leave and some come in, some you know, I looked at the company and said, Okay, our mission statement and overall core values when we first started, Marsh and I built them from you know her and I's perspective.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03Um, the company had grown, it gotten bigger, there's more influence, more things, and we were looking around saying, I just don't know. I mean, they're not wrong, but they were they needed revise. And so I said, Okay, we got to do that. And then it really kind of occurred to me the fact that I don't have all the answers. I don't pretend to have all the answers. And um there's one person that actually Chris Barron over in Iowa that's uh uh Ag View Solutions and uh uh Carson Baron Farms, uh, he once told me a kind of a synopsis of a scenario. You know, you can look at let's say the whole world is in front of you, this giant sphere, right? And I see it from my perspective. And then, you know, Kyle, you can come in and you shine a light from right here. Now I see it from your perspective too. But until I have that third person come in that's outside of our sphere to really look at it and shine a light from the backside, I have no idea what the truth perspective of the whole picture is until I have that person. And I I like the idea of saying, yeah, you can have multiple perspective perspectives within a company by your view, Spencer's view, Jason's view, uh, Alyssa's, you know, uh Jonathan, Sam, you can keep naming down the down the list. But until I bring somebody outside the company that I really trust and I'm entrusted to that they're gonna lead us the right direction and give us some suggestions and overall view. Um, I really didn't feel like we knew who we were and who we wanted to be until we had that put together. Um, and obviously I was in truth of work for about a year. And I said, Ron, would you mind coming in and doing some of that consulting to help us kind of lay a better foundation than what we had and really build from there? Because I don't want to keep changing this to change it. I want to do it because this is truly who we are and what we want to be. Yeah. And that's why I brought Ron in, and that's why, you know, Ron's going to be doing more consulting with us. And I think um that was probably the biggest thing is I knew I did not have all the answers. I knew that I needed to continue to do my own leadership and understand how I can lead everybody better here and also lead the company better. Um, but you know, people need people and help needs help. I don't care who who you are. I mean, you can be the president of the United States, and that guy really needs to take some leadership back, and I love him to death. But I mean, I think we all need to sometimes humble ourselves and realize we need other people, and so that's why we brought you in, and um, that's why we looked at you know different different views of leadership, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, you guys had had growth, you'd had more people come around to be part of the mission and vision and what you were doing, expanded, it just gets broader, you had more perspectives, you'd add you'd added services and areas and focuses uh to the company, and um like it was one of those natural um those natural um hinge points where you say, Okay, it's more than just A mom and pop organization now, right? So let's let's have that conversation, right? I love those conversations. I've it it uh the words of my great grandfather, it cranks my tractor, gets me out of bed in the morning, right? And um uh because the great thing, I get to come in and like I didn't have any answers, and which is good because it wasn't my company, right? And so um, but it is you say it's really good to have some of a third or outside perspective come in because when you come in from the outside, you don't know what the sacred cows are, right? So sometimes you you tip them over and you know you didn't even know it, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_04We can all pick them back up. Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_02They'll just tilt it back up, right? That's right. But um, but you just get to come and ask good questions and try to reveal, hey, what what is the core of who you guys are and where you're going and what are your values, and and sometimes the the if you if you were to distill them down, maybe nothing changed. But if the wording changes because it sounds more like the the group of us now, then that's then that's a really effective change.
SPEAKER_03I'll give you a key key point. I didn't interrupt you there, but I mean key point. We one of our core values we found through this whole thing, and you know, you guys were kind of the ones that led that was one of them is disruptive by design. And everybody's like, What does that mean? Like, what is that? No other company has a core value called disruptive by design, but what we do we we already had it and we we already were disrupted.
SPEAKER_01We were living by design. It was just like Ron said, it's it's the wording. I mean, words are powerful. And when we as a group worked through that, it just it clicked in my mind. I know it did in everyone else's as well, but yeah, just how powerful that was because, like we say all the time, I mean, your famous saying of, you know, we're ice skating uphill against uh a lot of large, you know, ag corporations, ag companies who who don't want to see us succeed. Um, and to kind of stand out, we had to look at things from a different light, do things in a different way. And it's just kind of your nature, my nature, and most people around here's nature is to just do things differently.
SPEAKER_03Well, the one thing that you talk about that and we bring that up is the fact that when disruptive, well, yes, I'm leading a company and I'm leading employees and stuff like that that are part of our team and our family. Um, but more more than more than that is we're leading customers, we're leading other people we're trying to affect because it's their money that's keeping us in in business, and we're trying to provide that private trying to provide them a service and also a a result and ROI. That trust comes with leadership and education. So that's that's one thing we talk about.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, you guys found that disruptive by design. It was almost it was almost like an archaeological dig. I love what you said. You already had it, you were doing it, you just didn't have a singular phrase that captured it, right?
SPEAKER_01It it it kind of felt wrong to say it. And it yeah, to an outsider, it still I'm sure probably feels wrong. You want to be disruptive, but when you look at it in the scheme of kind of what we're trying to do, then it makes total sense.
SPEAKER_02And and core values, like I love Patrick Lincioni's book, The Advantage. I just love how he words and looks at the whole mission vision values, which is a really tired phraseology and has um this isn't my term, but it has a lot of semantic overload. You could ask a hundred people to define mission, vision, values, and you might get a lot of good definitions, but they'd be really interchangeable, and no one would really tell you why one is one and why the other is the other, right? And so I just like his framing of that. It's a it that's a good resource book for for a business owner if they want to look at those things in a new light. And um, one of those things was that we talked about with your values was it first and foremost has to make sense to you guys internally, right? It can't be a marketing values, can't be a marketing strategy, right? And so, but once it means something to you internally, then it's really effective to share it with your customers because when you guys say, when you say to someone, hey, we're we want to be disruptive by design, it that you have no customers saying, Oh, yeah, we see that. That makes sense, right? They're like, What are you even talking about? Right. And so that which is great because now you've got their attention and they want to know what does that even mean, right? And and that it's tied into just differentiators, what makes you guys different?
SPEAKER_03Well, I know we got some questions that we had that we kind of put together for Ron. There's also some questions that were coming from the outside looking at leadership that we kind of wanted to ask you.
SPEAKER_05So yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think um, you know, we'll get to that. I think, you know, after we get through those, before I forget, I mean, I think another thing that we really need to hit on today is like you mentioned, Brad, I mean, the majority of our audience out there are our farmers, farm owners, people in the ag industry. Um, outside of the industry, I think people usually forget that a farm's not really a farm, a farm is a business. And in today's day and age, with the cost of equipment, inputs, and everything else, it's a multi-million dollar line of business. So I'd kind of like to get your perspective on just, you know, not so much what you've seen here with us, but just as a generalization from some of the smaller businesses you've worked with, like where are some of the main pitfalls, especially if some of those businesses are kind of family operations as farms usually are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what's the joke of our family business? Um, we put the fun and dysfunctional, right? When it comes to family business, it's valid. And like the reality is all businesses people, right? No matter even technology businesses are still people, you know, there we're there's always this mad rush, especially in this age of AI, we're gonna get to someplace where it's gonna be perfect because we'll have no people, and and people are running the math on that right now. If that happens, then guess what? There's gonna be no people to buy any of the products that you want to have, right? And so a farm is a group of people coming together to to to do something, right? To have a cause, to to be about something. And so, and people are universal in the sense of just how they operate and how they think, and people are always gonna be messy, like people are never gonna be efficient in the sense of like how we interact and how we communicate it because things are going on in our lives. People are living life in the sense while they're also serving your company in some role, and so that's why I love I love business because I love leadership, and I love leadership because it's about people and it's about how do we how do we come together and be more effective together as a group than we than we are as individuals. Otherwise, we'd all just run 1099 countr companies out there on our own and right bump into each other as subcontractors and suppliers. And but it's it's it's better when we come together, right? It gets more complex, but it's we just we can leverage we can leverage our passions and our interests and our intelligence and the giftings that God's given us to put those put those to the same work ahead of us. And farms are no different, except farms have unique things, right? It's when you get to see it in your round table, like people have all these different business cycles of how what's sales like in their their business versus hey, yeah, we we we we exist on this annual cycle here, right? Yeah, it's called the weather, right? It's called winter, it's called spring and summer.
SPEAKER_03I love what some of our groups that are engineers or in a manufacturing company talk about, you know, quarterly this, quarterly that, and then look at all the factual sheets, and we look at ours and like, yeah, sorry, that that doesn't exist in AG. We're worried about what happens in the weather in the cycle of the uh season, not the year. Yeah, hey, we got this exciting idea.
SPEAKER_02Great, let's try it for a year, yeah, and then see if how it came out, and then figure out was that even a real year? Or did you know, was there was there storms when we didn't usually get them, or was the weather different?
SPEAKER_03Or yeah, so that's and they get 10 cycles in a week to see if they made a change and we get one a year.
SPEAKER_02We'll try it third shift now, right? Just second shift, right? So no, so I I think it's fascinating. I think there's a danger in in people outside of AG not thinking as farming as a business, and I think there's a danger in ag of not thinking of their farm as a business because you could take a great business accuen and just tried and true things that are just true, but you can ignore them because well, we're well, you know, we're we're a farm, we're farms, right? So that's different for us, and and there are things that are different, but you ignore you ignore a lot of what we know to just be good and right and true and effective. You ignore those things that you're in peril, right? And so the the key is to take take what's a good body of knowledge and experience and techniques that people have and say, what fits what works for us, right? And um, that's why I love the process when we got together and just started getting in the room and and you know, filling the filling the walls with, you know, big giant sticky notepapers of ideas and phrases and banging tables and arguing over phrasings, and um, because you were just trying to find the uniqueness of what makes us. Yeah, yeah. You're unique inside other farms or other ag companies, and and everybody's gotta, you know, you get the chance to do that if you if you choose to take the risk of what it's like to have those conversations. Right.
SPEAKER_03Joanna Fabrics loved us because it looked like we had wallpaper all over across the whole conference room, I think.
SPEAKER_02It wasn't very pretty, right? No, no, it was a lot of script. My left-handed writing was, you know, was is poor, but you're in your right mind, though.
SPEAKER_03That's right. That's why I tell my life just left-handed. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01So let's put uh let's put you in the hot seat again for a minute, Brad. Uh oh. So being being the leader, what are some of, if not the one, kind of pitfalls as a leader that you've you've kind of run into as this business has grown? And how is kind of the the advice of your your truth at work group and that kind of helped you through that? It's a good question.
SPEAKER_03You uh that was that wouldn't have a prep question. That was a deep question I wasn't prepped for. Nice job you got me on a zinger here. Um I think the biggest thing is we the pitfall or some of the things that I've ran into is um when we started this company as just Martian I.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um it was just us, and then we brought in Jason next, and then uh I believe Spencer was next online, if I remember right. Is that right, Spence? Gabe, then Spencer, yeah. Then so um, you know, the big thing as we grew, we were still kind of acting like it was just Martian and not realizing that um there was some and I even today with all the employees we have and you know all the states we're in and that we've continue to expand, I'm not the best at delegating. I mean, shocker, right?
SPEAKER_01Shocker.
SPEAKER_03I I think that's my biggest pitfall is I I struggle because we started it from scratch. This wasn't a business that that existed that we went out and bought. Um, this was a business that literally started from scratch with a farm. And when I left, you know, I was uh starting the farm essentially from scratch. Um, I think we left with 30 acres we owned and 122 we rented. And so Marsh and I, there was a little bit of pride in that. And I think some of our what we felt like was our identity is because we did do it from scratch and we fell into that pitfall and that false narrative that really didn't come from God.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, from the standpoint of this was ours, we built it, we've done it. Well, yes, we started it, but what I've gotten to today is we collectively, as a whole entire cross creep employees today, past, present, and future, that is the we. Yeah, it's not, it has nothing to do with me. And I I I've kind of we've come we've had a lot of talks about this over the last, you know, I'll say year. We've talked about it internally. If something happens to me, I mean, I can pull out the driveway today and have a beer truck run me over. Okay, I mean, it's over, it's done. What happens to Cross Creek? And my biggest concern, and that's why we around here are making concessions. So if something ever happened to me or happened in Marsh and I uh I want our customers to know, I mean, this place goes on. Yeah, it's not like, well, Brad's gone. Now we can't. This place goes on.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um, whether you know how the ownership looks, it we're taking care of that on the back end. But my biggest pitfall was I I was worried about being just me and Marsh. And now we've started that transition of saying we it cannot be about us, it has to be about we.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. You said something so powerful there at the beginning of that. Like it's so easy as a leader, as a business owner, as a farm owner, it's so easy for that to become the identity of who you are. Right. And we talk about this in Truth at Work a lot from a faith standpoint. Like that the role or assignment that I currently have can't cannot be my identity. Because when it gets taken away or it changes, then all of a sudden you're rudderless and you have lost your identity, and that's where people get get depressed and end up in in big ditches that they can't get out of, right? As opposed to saying, Hey, my identity is who I am in Christ. I this is who God made me to be as a person. And I have these assignments and these roles at this point in time in my life. For you, it was when you and when you and Marsh started the business, right? That became a that became an assignment and a role that that you took on, right? Um, you know, my son just got married, so he's got a new role. He's husband now, right? And um, you know, the his wife is our daughter-in-law. That's a new assignment or a role that that she has. Um, that's what being that's what being an owner, being a business owner, being an engineer, being a farmer, though, those are just assignments, right? And so you have to be careful, never let those let your let the joy and the um the satisfaction and the happiness of your life be resting on assignments or roles, because those change. That's why some people retire, um, retire and they're they they're never the same again. Uh John Piper wrote a book called Don't Waste Your Life. And there's a chapter in there where he says, uh men don't die of old age, they die of retirement. Right. Because they lose their purpose of what they're going for, because that was everything that that's all they've known. I'm a well, I'm a bricklayer, I'm a I'm a school teacher, I'm a bus driver, whatever that whatever that role is. It was never meant to be your identity.
SPEAKER_03Well, you you really just dropped a bomb on AG right there. Because if you look at most farms, yeah, especially the two generations I've watched in my lifetime, my grandfather's generation, my father's and uncle's generation, they don't retire. Yeah, they die because their entire identity has been the farm. I am a farm, I'm a farmer. Yeah, and they they when we see this in ag and I'm gonna step on a lot of customers or people's toes we're talking to out here in the ag community farming. They don't get out and they don't retire because that's who they are and what they do. The problem is when that's happened, we've seen some challenges internal with families and businesses because there was no legacy piece, there was no transition, there was no champion the next generation. And you've got people that are 60 years old now taking over the farm because dad's died in his 80s, right? And they've never wrote a check. Yeah, and I'm not no idea the how to run the machinery of business, right? And they've done it, but the problem is they've never had control to make it their own, and that's a major epidemic challenge we have. And I know that's gonna make a lot of people mad listening to this, but I mean we're disruptive by design for a reason. But honestly, if you're hearing this podcast and discussing that, I challenge you to look inside your own family, your organization, your business, your farm, and and look at it from a true business standpoint. Why does the older generation they can still be part of it? Absolutely, they don't have to retire, but they've got to give up the reins to see progress. They can't just control it from the grave.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_01In reality, they don't want to be the ones making those decisions, they want to be the ones that are still buying the seat of the tractor, doing things like that.
SPEAKER_03But like you said, they've their identity has been in that for so long and they don't know how to not be that, yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I checked the data right before we went on here and um save a couple people in scripture, like everyone has died ever. Shy. So, like nobody gets out of this alive, right? And so, but the reason people don't disaster plan, like you talked about, like what if the what if the semi catches you on 26 out there, right? Um no one, people who are afraid of their their own mortality, right? Maybe they're wrestling with I don't want to think about what happens after I exhale the last time, and everybody exhales, everybody's last breath is an exhale, right? They don't want to think about that, or they can't even imagine who they are if they're not doing the thing, the role, the assignment. In this case, we're talking about being being a farmer when they have that fear of that, and they won't even want to talk about the potential for that. We've all known those people in our family that if the subject of death comes up, they they I don't know, they want to change the subject right away, right? Um, but God tells us there's a season for everything. And Ecclesiastes makes that clear, right? And passing is one of those things. So business succession planning is just an acceptance of this is what God says is normal, right? Psalm 90 says the the years of a man are are 70 by reason of strength, they're 80. You've been through my tape major exercise that none of none of my members like. Um, because it just makes you take account of, because also in that same psalm it says, Lord, teach us the number of days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. So just numbering the fact that my days have an end says I can I can get a heart of wisdom. And so succession planning is the business responsibility of stewardship to say, if I don't see tomorrow, what will happen? How will this go on? How will my personally, how will my family be cared for? Like, what will that you know? What is there a will in place? Is there life insurance? What are those things? But then what's the stewardship reality of I have this business, this land that I care for that God has, but we don't own any of it. Like that the local government says we do, but we don't actually own it, right? Or stewards for a short amount of time. We're stewards for a little bit of time, right? But it takes things in this world to put in place to say, how does this go on without me? Right. If I if I really care for the land, then I want to care about who takes care of it after me and how does that how does that get cared for? How does that stay in place? And it takes some bravery to say I'm gonna be willing to talk about that. It can be really uncomfortable, right? But business succession planning is just that like it has to be faced with my own potential mortality. And then once you realize that, hey, it doesn't have to be my identity. I I watch, I've been blessed, I've watched and been affected and mentored by people who have stepped out of those early roles of being a business owner, and then have loved the role of being an advisor and an encourager and a helper. And like they didn't they they retired from the thing that provided their financial independence, if you will. And that's a blessing in this day and age if you can reach that point, right? Um, but now they get to take on a role where, like, hey, now how do I choose what to do with my time? How do I be obedient to to what my calling is in light of my identity when I don't have to do this every day for the pure financial standpoint? And um that that's also terrifying to some people, right? Just trying to figure that out. It's good to run to something and not away from something, we we talk about. And um, but that's a faith journey of itself to like, what are you gonna do next? If you can't do this, what would you do? Right. And so we're all just one phone call away from having to do something different, right? And so the I I find if you can be a business owner and be brave enough to say, okay, well, what would I do? Right, we always scenario plan when bad things happen. The storm comes that we don't want, or the tree falls where we didn't want it to, or the equipment breaks when I didn't didn't plan on it. Happens a lot a lot, right? And so, like, why can't we just treat the reality of our own mortality and to make sure this goes on beyond me? Why can't we treat that as the same scenario? And um, there's a great phrase in that success succession planning is if that truck hits you, how do we make sure the biggest mess is in the road and not here inside the business ownership?
SPEAKER_03That's that's that one's deep.
SPEAKER_02It is, right? It's because it hits hard. Because like I've I've met people who we talk about the archaeological dig, right? I've met people that had to go into like forensic accounting to even figure out like where is this business and who owns what and how much do we owe. And I mean it's it it fails because there isn't there's not even a little bit of a plan or a little bit of transparency on you know, here's the here's the drawer, here's the key to the drawer, go go get the instructions, right? If I if I don't if I don't wake up tomorrow.
SPEAKER_03It's all written on uh no cards or not thereof.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, right, right, yeah. Or a little inside joke, a uh piece of cardboard with a sharpie. There you go.
SPEAKER_02That works.
SPEAKER_03Oh now there's now now they're throwing spears at me.
SPEAKER_04Now they're throwing spears at me. Okay, all right. I'm no longer on the tip, they're just throwing them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that that may be my uh way of giving them a uh uh order on our chemical mix sometimes.
SPEAKER_01So I guess I mean I feel like we could have this conversation literally for hours. I mean, we've been sitting here for almost 40 minutes already, believe it or not. So um I've got kind of just one more general question for the viewers that I want to ask. Much like all these questions, it's gonna be kind of loaded, and then I'll let Brad kind of bring it home for us. Um, so as you said today, what's the biggest opportunity that's hanging out there with let's say smaller to mid-sized business owners that that they're missing that they would be able to take that next step into?
SPEAKER_02That's a great question. But there's some real inflection points out there for for business owners, right? There's um, well, I I look at this. I I I came up with a framework a few years ago on like um I played football. Um uh I took an NFL franchise that looked and said, hey, there's a star player, there's a coach, there's a general manager, and there's a team owner. And um, it's great because everybody knows those roles are super well defined when you look at an NFL franchise, right? The joke is we always um oh gosh, I just lost what's that only Jerry Jones. Jerry Jones, Dallas Cowboys owner, right? He's he's known to do things out of bounds, right? So, but everybody knows if they look down on Sunday afternoon and Jerry Jones is down there talking to the quarterback, like the star player, then like, hey, something's not Right in that organization, right?
SPEAKER_01Which is exactly what he does. And sometimes he does. For you cowboys fans out there.
SPEAKER_02I think he's gone to the coach before. I'm not sure he's gone actually going to the quarterback during the game, right?
SPEAKER_04And you wonder why they haven't been back to the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, and I played with the guy that won two Super Bowls with them. So how about that? That was fun. So um, but like I I love the analogy because it's just so simple to see, right? But as you, you know, as you grow as a business owner in the early days, if you're that solopreneur or you're the founder, like you are you are the star player, and because you own the company, you're also the coach and you're also the general manager and you're the owner, right? And so like you you you you hold all of those roles. What I've learned and observed through you know thousands of hours of working with business owners is that as a business wants to grow, there wants to come a time where you're not the player anymore in some area or all areas of your business. And you have to stop running out on the field when the whistle blows, right, for the kickoff. And you have to come across that time and say, I'm gonna have to hire players to go play, and I'm gonna have to be content with just being coach and general manager and owner, right? And that's super hard. Most most business owners never make that transition where they don't where they ever retire from playing in in the business. And usually we're always in some kind of messy middle where I'm a player coach or I'm a I'm a coach GM, right? But there's a migration towards can I retire from parts of the game, parts of the business, in the sense of I don't go to bed that night being the only one thinking about sales, right? Somebody else puts their head on the pillow where they know their primary responsibility is they have the they've got the responsibility to handle sales. I'm still the owner of the company. I still they still report to me. I have all the rights to inspect and ask questions and all of that. But does somebody else put their head on the pillow to be the star player in the different areas of the business? And that I find is the biggest. You talked about the difficulties of delegation, right? It's it's letting go of the reins, letting go of the reins of saying I'm I'm gonna hire someone and learn to coach them and not be the player. And because every coach knows the last day they played, if they played the sport, right? And every coach knows now if I run on the field between the whistles, I'm gonna get a penalty, right? And or get kicked out of the game. And I tried that with terrible. I was watching that game, right? 1985, Steve Reed at three three lines anyway. That I digress, but like that's a reality, and like the the companies that grow and flourish and and get multi-generational and learn how to have succession planning and and have a company that lasts beyond the founder, they have learned how to do the really hard thing, which is to retire from being the star player in an area or all the areas of the business over time. And you so what's maybe is in our pre-conversation, you ask, boy, how how do some people do that? Some people have so much success, or something happens where there's so much of the business they don't have a chance to do it, right? And that I those people actually get it easier, I think. Sure. It's it's the incremental growth that we have, and farming can be incremental because it can grow by acre, it can grow by piece of equipment, it can grow by, you know, just uh buying another farm in another part of the country or whatever. And so that incrementalism can be can be really hard because I can still think, oh, I can still, I can still do it. I can put in more hours. I can right we you get older, you got less energy, you got there's and get we just can't be in two places at one time. And so time is time is the the great equalizer. And so that is the to me the biggest challenge that business owners have in growth is can I retire from some part of the business and become a coach, become someone who actually equips people, trains them, helps them, assists them, and be excited at their success as a player when I'm just the coach. And I've I've done both. I've played and coached, and I I think coaching was more exciting than playing because I got to watch 11 guys on the field at one time have success as part of a whole team. I only ever got to play one position at a time, right? But you get it as a coach, you get to influence the futures and direction and effectiveness of a whole team at a time, and but that's hard. It's it's hard to it's hard to take off the helmet or the cleats, or you know, it's hard to be the I started my last tractor or I plowed my last field or whatever. Like that's that's a hard transition for people. It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_03I totally get that. I got one more here at the end, kind of a general question, but also I think inside agriculture, uh, I don't mean to be Debbie Downer in this, but we there's a lot of pressures inside of agri now from a financial standpoint. We talked about on previous episodes, Kyle. I mean, all of us farms, if you're a farmer, you wear every hat, especially if you're not in a multi-generational family, it's just you and maybe one other person. You're everything from CFO, COO to bank, uh accountant to mechanic to agronomist. I mean, you're wearing it all. So I'm gonna kind of ask there's a big issue with mental health inside of agriculture right now, and there's a high percentage of um suicide rate that's happening inside of agriculture and farming because of the stress and the pressures and financial and everything going on. Uh, I want to ask you about, you know, tell me about a season when nobody saw the pressure you were carrying behind the scenes, and how did you deal with that from um personal or leadership standpoint?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's good. Um yeah, I'd probably be the cautionary tale, right? Of not always dealing with it great. For me in construction, it was um when when you do education projects, it was uh uh schools coming, start of school, right? And um uh the start of school is unforgiving because no matter what, they're gonna drop off 1700 high school students at Plainfield High School in 2006, right? When we opened the first part of that that building. And so um, yeah, those are those are rough, right? And my struggle was like everybody's struggle was carrying too much of it on my own, right? Or um I was probably growing, I know I was, I was growing in my faith in that time. I was uh dad of two young kids and living in that season, and it was like I I got this, I can make this happen, right? And like that's a hard spot to never ask for help. It's a hard spot to really even hold it back from God and say, Lord, I just need your help. I need you to send me someone. I need I I need you in this, because if I try to do it on myself, I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna crash here. And um at times, if we don't ask those questions, God will let us crash. Right? He'll let He'll let us He wants us to come from a faith standpoint for me, He wants us to come to the end of ourselves where I can't do it. Right. Like, like now that's different than saying me, absolutely, right? Um, which is a funny, I heard this great saying, um, uh, I've never heard where another man humbles another man, but God says he'll humble us, right? And so, like, that's a that that's different, right? So I try not to be the Holy Spirit for people. Let him, let him, he's gonna be in the Holy Spirit. I'm I'm not. Um, but there's this aspect of saying, like, while I can't do it, at the same token, me and God are a majority, right? Because he says, I'll I'll I'll help you do all things, right? I'll always be with you. I'll never, ever, never, ever, ever, never forsake you. Right. And so when you walk in that spot, then that that's different to me. Now it's like, okay, Lord, how are you gonna help me get this done? Who you gonna put in my path? Who are you gonna encourage me to go ask for help on? And I think if we stay isolated, right? We talk about um uh feeling lonely is inevitable, staying alone is a choice, it's just a choice, and so we have to learn how to ask for help. And look in AG, we have a we have a heritage of getting help from people, right? My dad had a heart event of several years ago, and like I don't think he asked anybody, and his and his crop got planted, right? And in the fall, his crop got harvested, and and that was very humbling to my dad, I know. And yet it was cool because it's the same kind of thing that we see generationally of hey, somebody's barn burned down and we're gonna show up and we're gonna help we're gonna help build that barn. But we can do that on a micro level, it doesn't have to just be on catastrophic events where we do that, right?
SPEAKER_03And um, I think COVID drove a lot of that too. If I go back to it, you know, we talked about this morning and I brought up the conversation or the the uh quote, you know, I think many farms today, regardless of age, have a social media presence or they're on Facebook following people. Our network as a society, but also it's at a ag our network has gotten bigger. Yeah, our connection has gone down. Yeah, and I look at many farms, the connection piece is it's behind a screen, they're on a network, they know a lot of people, but they're isolated, they're alone, they feel like they're the only ones dealing with the problems, and yet that connection piece has not gotten there. And that's that's one thing with us. I mean, I think I can speak for all of us at Cross Creek. Get away from everything else we do. I don't I don't care about the seed, the bionutrients, the litter, everything we do farming. I think all of us can agree. Like if there's one thing that's God's put us on this earth to do is we want that connection with our customer base. So if if you're out there and you have those issues and you're feeling alone, I mean, I I strongly encourage you to call any one of our staff. Um, you know, that we're here for that connection just to be a be a voice, be a friend, and and let you know that uh we're all in this together, you're not alone. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, you've experienced in your round table, right? When when someone says, I'm just really overwhelmed right now, right? Yeah, and and the the lie is, well, nobody else is. Yeah, I'm the only one that's in that situation, right? And just because three other people tell you, hey, I'm I'm really feeling it in our farm as well, like I'm just not sure what's gonna happen, right? It doesn't change the fact that we're still in a hard spot, but it does change the fact that we feel like I'm not alone in this, like we have a common struggle here, right? And so the the uh I I heard a great um heard a great phrase just recently. Someone said, uh, no one's ever been over encouraged. Right. And so like we just need the encouragement. And sometimes it's encouraging to see, like, okay, you're doing the same thing. Okay, well, that I can I can do another day if I know you're over there and you're you're you're you're slugging it out in the same thing, and um, that I don't have to pretend or believe the lie that I'm the only one. We're the only ones that are really struggling. Everybody else is, you know, I see their trucks and their signage and their, you know, I they see their turn rows, and I everything looks great over there, right? And um, it's like social media, the downside social media is we see everybody's I'm old enough to remember records, we see everybody's A side of the record, we don't see their B side.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, comparison's a thief of joy.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely, that's exactly what that is, right? And so, but yeah, but reach out, be connected, um, make a call. Um, I've learned anymore. I called an old teammate yesterday. Um, if I get prompted to think about someone and their name comes to my mind, if I'm driving and I can, I just pick up the I open the contact list, I grab their phone number, I call up, just say, Hey, just your name came to mind, just want to see how you're doing. Right. And like I can't tell you the amazing conversations and impact that's had. And so do the same thing for someone else, right? Take the call and um just listen there, listen to each other and share what's going on. Be honest about it. Don't, don't pretend, right?
SPEAKER_03Life's too short. No, no, we're all in this together. We're all we'll only get one trip around this. The only two people ever be resurrected was Lazarus and Jesus. And so we ain't in that group.
SPEAKER_02And and everybody still went to Lazarus' second funeral, right?
SPEAKER_01They all end up dying. So well, Ron, deep conversation, great conversation. Brad, I can't think of uh really a better first guest to have other than Ron. No. If you just look back at our past couple episodes and kind of some of the topics we've brought up and kind of how we wanted to put a little bit different spin on on some of the episodes that we do of this podcast, you know, away from agronomy and what we talk about every day.
SPEAKER_03So with that, I think the only way to really end this, Ron, you mind leading us in prayer?
SPEAKER_02I'd love to.
SPEAKER_03Let's do that.
SPEAKER_02I'd love to. Hey Lord, thanks for um just being together. And um thanks for being you. Thanks for loving us and uh Jesus for leaving heaven and coming and stepping on this earth, uh, the earth that you created and you hold together. And uh you came not to be served, but you came to serve and um to be a suffering servant, to die on a cross for sins you didn't commit, so that you could make a way, Lord, that if we would believe upon you, confess with our mouths and believe in our heart that that you are Lord, that that God raised you from the dead, that we would have a savior, we would have eternal life with you. And so we just say thank you for that. May we never ever forget what you've saved us from. And uh, Lord, I just pray for the folks that are listening, their businesses, their farms, and I just pray you'd bless them, Lord. I pray they would um trust in you, as it says in Proverbs, and not lean on their own understanding, that they'd acknowledge you in all of their ways. And um, Lord, that you just pour out favor and blessing upon them. Uh, show you, show them, Lord, where you're working and leading them in their lives. Um, help them to settle on their identity of who they are in you. And um, and then to have acceptance and joy in the roles and assignments you give us, but not let that become the who we are, Lord. And so uh thanks for these guys. Just pray your blessings on uh Cross Creek and and uh it's just a joy to be together. And um, we just thank you for loving us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of the Turnrow Podcast. This episode is brought to you by Cross Creek Ag Solutions. From precision ag technology to smarter, data driven decisions, Cross Creek helps farmers maximize every acre. Ready to grow more with less guesswork? Visit CrossCreekag.com and see what your operation's missing. Cross Creek Ag Solutions. Farming Smarter starts here.