John Ellsworth Gives His Quarter 1 2026 Update On The Dairy Industry

In this episode of DairyVoice, Connie Kuber of Sealpro Silage Barrier Films talks with John Ellsworth of Success Strategies on Quarter 1 and what comes next. They discuss interest rates, tariff’s and the Iran war. What impact will these and other things have on the dairy farmer - listen and find out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

You're listening to Dairy Voice by Dairy Business News, a podcast exclusively for the dairy industry.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

One of our sponsors of the Dairy Voice Podcast is National DHIA. NDHIA ensures information accuracy and represents their members' interests. They are the direct voice for the dairy information industry. To find out more, go to DHIA.org.

SPEAKER_05 0:39

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SPEAKER_01 1:50

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Welcome to the Dairy Voice Podcast by Dairy Business News. I'm Connie Cooper with SEALPRO Silage Barrier Films by Connor AgriScience. Thank you for joining us today as always. And please like, subscribe, and share this podcast with all your friends. We appreciate it very much. Before we get started, I keep in mind that we have listeners who are not a part of the dairy industry and we welcome you. We appreciate that you're learning about the lengths that the dairy industry goes to to educate and share information that benefits not just our cows and calves, but the people who consume our products. And that's you. So thanks for listening. Today, my guest is a favorite of our listeners. It's John Ellsworth with Success Strategies. And it's time for our quarterly discussion about what's going on in the world of financial business here with the dairy industry. So we this is always a great conversation, and we'll get straight into it. How are you doing today, John?

SPEAKER_04 2:52

Doing wonderful. Thank you for having me this morning. It's always a pleasure to do these quarterly. And this first quarter of 2026 is no exception. There's been plenty of things going on, a lot of activity with tariffs, oil, interest rates, all kinds of stuff. So we'll talk about those as we go along. But uh I I think it's it's been a pretty eventful quarter.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

So let's just dive right into it. So in our last podcast recording, we talked about tariffs at great length. What can you what have you seen out there as far as how the tariffs are affecting the dairy industry?

SPEAKER_04 3:27

You know, I'm not sure they've had as big an impact as some people anticipated, but they've clearly had some impact. I think the biggest impact, though, has been their effect on balancing the federal budget, which we ran trade deficits forever. As long as I've been around, we've in my life, we've had trade deficits.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

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SPEAKER_04 4:20

The tariffs used to be a way that the federal government in the late 1800s, that's how they financed the federal government. They didn't have an income tax at that time. And so most recently, the Supreme Court, I don't want to say they struck down the tariffs, but they pretty much told President Trump that he could not utilize, he couldn't just freely instill tariffs on everyone. But a lot of those, a lot of those deals have already been negotiated, and so there's some concern that refunds will have to happen, even if they do, I think you're still going to see tariffs in place going forward. Because these countries that have been have had the upper hand in the trade relations, that that scenario has changed pretty dramatically. Because suddenly when President Trump and his team said, Hey, you need us, they kind of went, gee, you're right, but I guess we do need you. We're the we're the largest consumer, and the U.S. is the largest consumer in the world of all kinds of things. So I think the tariffs, if nothing else, they brought attention to this trade deficit. And I think we've had some trade surpluses fairly recently. And I'm not sure where we go with them going forward, but they are a tool. And just because the Supreme Court ruled, they are the Supreme Court. However, there's about three or four other avenues that the president can use to still initiate tariffs. So they basically said he couldn't do it the way he was doing it. And I'm not an expert on tariffs by any means, but there are clearly two or three or four other ways, avenues he can take to still put those tariffs in place. And I think he's already started them because you didn't hear him go, Oh my gosh, I can't do this. No, he said, Okay, you can't do it that way, I'll do it this way. There's there's and I don't know the tax codes and all that stuff. I don't know, that's not my area of expertise. Clearly, he has other avenues, other approaches he can take to instill those tariffs. So I think we're gonna still see them because we just as a country could not continue with these huge trade deficits forever. We just couldn't finance them. Well, we are financing them as consumers and as taxpayers, and that just that just could not continue.

SPEAKER_05 6:49

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SPEAKER_04 7:36

Now, there are other issues, of course, congressional issues with this thing called balancing a budget, which you all, including all of our listeners, you folks, me, we all have to balance our budgets. We don't get to at least not indefinitely go run deficits. We may at times month to month, but on an ongoing basis, we can't do it. And the federal government's been doing that for years, and it's just incredible. But when you want to give away a lot, as they do, and I've heard somebody refer to that as vote buying, I think. Then that that clearly it's expensive, and you and I get to pay for that. So that's my latest on tariffs. I think you're still going to hear about them because of our next topic, the Iranian situation, the Iran situation. I think that's probably taken the forefront of the news because you know with the news, if it pleads, it leads, and there's there's a lot of uh bloodshed and all kinds of things, excitement going on there.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I just I I I want to note, John, that today is March 25th that we're recording this, just in case there's other things that happen in the world as we go through these discussions. But but yeah, let's talk about the Iranian situation and and what is their impact on the inputs that we're looking at getting into here.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Well, I think on the Iranian situation, the challenge is it won't directly imp impact the U.S. as heavily as other countries because we are now energy independent, we're food independent. It has an impact, and but it's more psychological, psychological in the marketing market prices. We may be the beneficiary of it from a standpoint we we have excess oil that we export. So as a country, we could be better off. We might be better off as a consumer. For you, our listeners, myself, we're gonna pay for it in some respect, at least some way, shape, or form. But I just finished a trip, a car trip from Kansas City to California and back over the last two and a half, three weeks, two weeks. And it's ironic, there was a definite trend as I left the Midwest that the fuel prices continually went higher and higher, and they peaked on the West Coast in California, partly due to taxes and partly due to the impact, the psychological impact everywhere of the Iranian oil situation. In California, as I understand, I've just read this two days ago. It's not only the taxes that drives the price up there, but it's also the impact of that Iranian oil being diverted. They're having to get oil from Korea and places like that, because the refineries have pretty much not all of them, but they have been really limited in their production in California because we're saving saving the planet one state at a time. Anyway, regardless of uh where people land in that spectrum of green versus you know oil usage, there's there's clearly an impact. And some of the things that have been instilled nationwide, but particularly in California, it in a situation like we're in right now, it's probably driving the prices up even more. And it's it's gonna be painful. The the sad thing is it's not just fuel, it's fertilizer. The people that grow those crops that you do such a great job of protecting when it becomes silage, and uh all of my clients, too, or not all, but all the dairy clients I have, they are gonna pay for it in a way of fertilizer, not just in price, but in availability. Because there's some issues with natural gas that comes out of Qatar and some other Middle Eastern countries, it can't get out of the straits of Hormuz right now, and so as a result, there's a real tightening and just absolute unavailability of liquid natural gas. We have in the US, we have a pretty good supply. So I don't know how much we'll be impacted. But I was reading about some South American countries, Brazil, Argentina, that produce a lot of feed. If they can't get the fertilizer and the LNG that they need to produce those crops, there could be a shrinking of the availability of the world feed supply, which could drive feed prices up. And so that's a long circle of events. But if you think about it, our dairy producers very much could be impacted by that, could suffer not only on their own farm for lack of fertilizer or expensive fertilizer and fuel, but the impact of for a dairyman, if market prices go up because of less supply of feed from South America, for example, that that could be pretty painful. And it's something we want to think about, you know, as we look forward uh to the to the future of the next six months. Uh hopefully there's talk already about negotiating a settlement. I'm not a political analyst, and I don't know, I am not a wartime analyst either. So how quickly that comes together, I think it's in process. I in good faith, I would hope that it is coming together. But I don't we never know how fast that's gonna come together. Who knows? Two days from now, we may have the whole thing in Iran settled and maybe everything goes back to normal. But the doubtful part of me says, I kind of don't see that happening. It's gonna take longer than we think.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

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SPEAKER_04 14:26

Yeah. And as I said in a recent blog, blog and video I just released yesterday. In fact, I think we need to keep our focus. All those issues are happening, but I can't control what's going on in Iran. So as if I'm a producer, I need to think about what I can control and focus on those things. Maybe like make sure that I've got the fertilizer I'm going to need if I'm planting corn this spring, that type of thing. And really, that should already have been ordered. I mean, that should already be lined up.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

So well, and I'll I'll say something for my own industry too. If if you don't have your silage, your harvest needs, be it whatever it is, silage, inoculant, or protection sealing, seal probe, whatever, you need to get going on that because I think before before we started recording here, I was telling you that we've gotten notices from our suppliers that prices are going to go up. And so that needs to needs to happen fairly quickly.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

Yeah, and I think as a supplier, you do the best you can to keep prices down, but you uh you have to pay for your personnel, your travel expenses, your deliveries, and I think some people sometimes some clients seem to suggest that I have some free flights or something, but but I don't I have to I pay full market price, and if the yeah, if the market price is going up, that's that means my costs are going up too.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Well, and that's another thing is you talked about shipping is and and just trucking from one place to another is could has the potential to be more expensive. So the earlier you can get that shipping stuff done, the better off you are. That's in our business, at least shipping is a is a huge issue.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

So and it's not just the cost of it, it's the how fast can it get there, the limitations because some things come out of the Middle East and not necessarily out of Iran, but the impact of that whole conflict. It's it just has a tidal wave effect on other things and other areas. And I I think the people that are gonna get hurt worse are the European countries because they're very dependent on the liquid natural gas. Since they're not buying from Russia, they must buy it there. I don't know if they can get it out. I don't know if they can get it out of the Middle East to get it to Europe. So uh they're gonna be they're gonna be hurting probably even worse than than the US will be.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:58

Uh and I feel bad for them, but that's part of it is they've determined they've set the path for some things. They made some decisions that they were gonna do away and go totally green, and that has sort of backfired on them because some of those things have not worked. The wind doesn't always blow everywhere all the time, and the sun doesn't shine all the time everywhere. Those are good concepts, but I'm not sure that they're sustainable just by themselves.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Well, let's move on to another subject, and and that's always fun is interest rates in the United States. What do you think is gonna happen with that?

SPEAKER_04 17:34

I think we saw two or three rate cuts, quarter percent rate cuts in the fall of 25. I still think we're gonna see more cuts as we go through 2026. But I thought initially I had, or previously, I had thought that we would see a cut by May. I'm not so sure that that's gonna happen now because the Fed is so focused on controlling inflation. And of course, the very things we talked about, the fuel fertilizer, all these things that are fuel related going up and food included, is going to create more inflation. You know, there was even recently talk about the Fed talked about raising rates, which I don't see happening because uh one of the Fed governors, I think it's Christopher Waller, is a labor expert, and he knows what's going on in the labor markets better than anyone else on the board. And I think that the job constriction of the marketplace for jobs, there are a lot of people out of work. Raising interest rates does not help that. And in fact, it's quite contrary to helping that. So I think what's going to happen is I think we'll see rate cuts almost out of necessity if the economy starts, if we head into recession, I'm not sure it'll be a full recession, but it could be. If we see those things happening, then I believe we'll the Fed will actually cut rates to kind of stimulate the marketplace a little bit and hopefully reduce some costs for consumers, more importantly, perhaps businesses, because almost every business has money borrowed, and if it's not at a fixed rate, you're kind of that hurts. So I don't see rates going up. It would be very nonsensical to raise rates in the environment we're in, but we may see rates come down. I just don't think it's gonna come as fast as most of our listeners, our producers, my clients, your clients, as quickly as they'd like them to. But I think we will, I'm expecting by July we'll see at least one quarter percent rate cut. And there's gonna be a change of Fed, the head of the Fed, too. I think it's in May. That could initiate some changes. And initially, I thought one of the candidates they were talking to was very much let's cut rates, let's get the economy going, which the president Trump is very in favor of, of course. But the the new Fed governor that's gonna head the Fed starting in May, I'm not saying he's against rate cuts, but I don't think he's I think he's more concerned about inflation, and I think we we probably won't see it till July, any rate cut to speak of. And I hope I'm wrong. I hope it comes April or May, but I don't anticipate that happening.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

What do you see as the future here in the for the industry in the next six months, year?

SPEAKER_04 20:30

The cost front is gonna be painful for producers, but I think if if you look out over the next six months, what I anticipate is gonna happen, the cost is going up. We could see some rise in feed costs given the fertilizer situation, excuse me, not just in South America, but in the US, the cost of everything, including, as you said, transportation is going to be higher. We could see a hit on transportation in shipping milk. That could go up too. So I think on the cost front, it's gonna be a little painful. But if you go back three months when we did this last time, we were going, oh my gosh, this first six months for milk price is going to be horrendous. And January and February, which also gets compounded by being a 28-day month, that doesn't help anything on the milk check front. Those were pretty brutal. And you also had some co-ops who were instilling their or enforcing their production caps, and you had some co-ops who had frankly just lost some money over the last few years, and their lenders were pressuring them to shore up their balance sheet. Now, what that meant was they were basically taking bigger deductions,$2,$250,$4, maybe, to basically build their balance sheet back up. Now they they took it from the producers, but the producers didn't really lose it. They still hone it because they have more equity and they have better equity in their. Co-op that they own. So, in all fairness, the co-ops, they were just trying to make their entity more lendable, if you will, uh, lender friendly, because they do borrow money and they're doing structures trying to increase plant capacity and throughput. And you know what? They get all the same cost increases the rest of us get too. They're not immune to those either. So, particularly on labor, fuel, electricity, things like that. They're and anything that's got plastic, and Lord knows the dairy industry has a lot of things in your segment, my segment, co-op segment that has a lot of plastic and hence fuel-related costs associated with it. But overall, in answer to your question, I I still think 2026 could be a pretty darn good year in terms of profitability. Cost cutting is not necessarily just the answer. We can never, we can't, it's great to contain costs and it's great to cut costs where you can, but when it starts impacting the cow, or when it starts impacting the profitability and the milk flow of the operation, that's very costly. I mean, I still think people who have prepared with the dairy revenue protection program, putting that in place, will benefit from it. Now, given that prices have come back up, they may not benefit as much as they would have. But as I've said a million times before, it's insurance. It's not supposed to be, we're not we're not rolling the dice here like it's a gamble to see how much money we can make. It's more a matter of protecting against the downside. And like any insurance, that's the way we need to look at always have some protection in place on at least a portion of their milk. Surprising to me what percentage of the industry actually uses price protection. And I think though the banks have pushed very hard for it because they don't want to see another 2009 where basically no one was covered, and which you know, people ended up buying their farm or their dairy for the second time. They may have had it paid off and they had to buy it again by borrowing against it to get through that downturn. 26 will be a good year for producers, but it's going to be a year where the people that really watch their costs and monitor their revenue and expense flows will be the best, they'll be better off than anybody. Because I as and I've said this a number of times, but if we measure something and that includes your cash flow, we can get a better understanding of it. If we understand it, we can get control over it. And of course, anything you can control, you can improve, whether it's a cost going down or revenue going up. The thing that's really helped too for dairy producers has been the high co-cow prices.

unknown 24:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 24:52

And the calf prices are just incredible. And there is and I don't anticipate for another two years that that's going to change, which is a good thing for the producers. Not sure it's good for consumers because it makes meat very expensive. It's just an element of what we're going through at this time.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

So the beef market has seen such incredible change in in itself in the last five years that that's really made an impact on the dairy industry.

SPEAKER_04 25:23

The shortage of cattle out there in general has really benefited the dairies. You know, the coal cow price, calf prices, two to three times what we would what you and I would call normal has been the godsend for them. And 2025 was profitable for most people, but they didn't make money milking cows. They broke even doing that, and maybe a little money they made. And then the big money they made was on the coal cows and the calves. Right. And of course, there were some other government programs that helped people as well. But that's that's the biggest thing.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

You talked about you mentioned control, what you can control. What's your advice for for dairy producers here in the States in the next year?

SPEAKER_04 26:08

I think focus is the key. We've got to stay on top of things, and things are moving so fast. Like we talked about the Iranian situation. What I just shared with you today, tomorrow could be entirely different. Right, right. In in either direction, for the better or the worse. And so I think it's a good time to stay on top of things. There's never a good time to panic, but there's never a bad time to focus. And I encourage people to just stay on top of things. You measure things monthly because you can't you drive yourself crazy watching it daily, but you you make the best deals that you can. There's still room for growth, but there's that along with the growth of larger operations, comes the demise or the disappearing of smaller operations. I don't have any control over that. That's been the market trend for 40 years, and I don't see that anti, I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon. And you know, if I look at somebody's cash flow, look at their budget, they're almost always better off with more cows than they are with less. And so we jokingly say, you know, what's the what's the answer when milk prices are low? We milk more cows. And then we jokingly say, what's the answer when prices are high? We milk more cows. And that's and and that's been the trend. I didn't create it, but it is reality. And I think we're we're gonna continually see these trends, fewer herds, bigger herds, continued consolidation. I have two clients that sold out in 2025, two dairies. One averaged almost$3,000 a cow, one averaged$3,400 a cow. They both were at a time in their lives in their careers when they wanted to exit. They were just waiting for the right time. And goodness sakes, I mean, how could you find a better time? Now, maybe three years from now, somebody will look back and say, John said$3,400 was good. I'm$4,000 for my and you know, God bless you. If that happens, I'm happy for you. I'm thrilled for you, in fact. But in these two situations, they were both in a position where they wanted to not wrap up their career, they're both still operating, but the one's running a heifer ranch, and one is doing a great deal of farming, and he has almond trees too. So he's focusing more on the things that he really loved doing, and he's leasing his facility out for heifers, and he may even sell it at some point, who knows? But they're happy with the outcome. But I think in both their cases, they were land-rich and cash poor when they started, and they're both fairly young guys, they're both younger than I am, but they got out fairly early. But if you think about it, and I'm not patting myself on the back when I say this, but if you think about it, I worked with those both of those clients every month, one since 2002, one since 2004 or 5. They were positioned to make a decision and they decided like that. They decided very quickly. When I say very quickly, very quickly, based on 20-some years of experience and looking at things every month, they knew exactly what their cash flow was, they knew what their costs were, they knew what the opportunities were in the marketplace. And when you put all those variables in together, it was an overnight success. It just took 20 years to get there. Yeah, and so I say that jokingly, but I think it's kind of like if I have a really big year, people go, gosh, that was like an overnight success. No, it wasn't. It's I'm in my 28th year of doing this consulting work. I should have some success at some point. Not that I haven't all along, but it's funny how people just see a snapshot and they go, Wow, that's really exciting. Same in a dairy. Wow, this has been a phenomenal year for you. That it just happened overnight. No, it didn't. It happened every month for 20-some years. They were preparing for this. And but but I also saw some people that wanted to get out but were afraid to. Well, if I only get if I get 3,400, what if the market goes to 4,000? I'll leave money on the table. And while that may be true, I think things have stabilized a little bit. Two-year-olds are still expensive, but I don't I don't see them. I who knows, maybe they'll go to 4,000. I'm not sure. Maybe they've been there at times. Or maybe they'll drop. And then what? I just guide people. I don't I ultimately they have to make their own decisions. But I and I'll give my opinion based on these are three things I'm seeing and what I see coming down the road. But ultimately, people have to make their own decisions because they we can only equip them to make those decisions. I can't make it for them. But they both made them and made them fairly quickly. One arranged for a sale, the first one arranged for a sale in less than 30 days and did really well. The second one maybe took a little longer than 30 days, but he did even better, and that was later, later in the market. I still think there's a lot of opportunity in this industry. If you're wanting to continue with that, I call it the definition of insanity, doing the same same things the same way and expecting different results, it's not gonna happen. It's a time when you've got to adapt. Not saying you have to adapt everything the AI throws our way. Used to be artificial insemination, now it's artificial intelligence, right? Yeah, yeah. But it's not that we don't have to adopt everything, but the things that really fit your business, even if you're milking 200 cows, some of these things will just make you so much more efficient, and you'll say, gee, I could go to 225 or 250 or whatever. And you can do it through internal growth, you don't have to do it overnight necessarily. There's so much new stuff coming along that can help people be more efficient.

unknown 32:06

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:07

And we're using some of the things in our business, a little bit of AI, not a great deal. I look back at 28 years ago when I started consulting. Back then, we thought we were real high-tech. We had a cell phone and we had a laptop. Well, I still have both of those, but I have a lot of other things that make things life so much easier. Yeah. Uh, and we had the internet, of course, but not to the extent I have it now. We could we could hang up from this call in 10 minutes. I could book a flight to uh Europe. Just have to have the money to do it. And I I don't necessarily have that, and I'm not going there anyway, but but just as an example, we can do things so much faster. And my parents are not alive anymore, but if they were, could they do that? Yeah, they could, but would they do it? I think the difference is they wouldn't adapt, they wouldn't adopt that new approach. And you can miss out on a lot of opportunities by not be willing to take a chance on those. And a lot of the stuff that we're talking about has been around for a while, it's gotten better, whether it's robotics of milking or whatever. And it almost that's that's one example I've seen people is almost not a backlash, but people are saying, see, I don't know if I like the robotics. I think I like the rotary barn better. You know what? It's still way more efficient than that flat barn we used to milk in, or that tie stall barn that I grew up milking in. It's being on top of those things and staying ahead of them that that makes it all worthwhile. And every one of those things we talked about the tariffs, the Iran situation, the impact it'll have on fuel prices, or it is having already, fuel prices, fertilizer, food, and other costs. The thing the clothes we wear will be impacted to some extent, I'm sure. Interest rates, it's staying on top of those things. And that's part of the reason that I think uh I encourage people to read. Read as much as you can. You don't have to be an expert in everything, but read as much as you can. Because I heard this speaker one time, he said you need to read, and I've done this since 1992, read one or two books per month since 1992. That's 34 years ago. So you can imagine our library is pretty big, and we've we've shaved some, we've sold a lot of the books off that we had because we ran out of space. I wasn't running a library. This speaker said, I it's important that you stay on top of things, and one of the ways to do that is to read. You'll increase your vocabulary, you'll increase your general knowledge level, and you can find industry-specific things to read about too, things that impact your business. But he said, if you know how to read and you don't, you're really no better off than the person that can't read. And I thought, wow, that's pretty that was a dagger. And I thought, he's absolutely right, I better get going. And so I did 34 years ago, and I would encourage people to do that, whether it's and it doesn't have to be books necessarily, it could be magazines, could be industry magazines. And I've always, for the last 30 years, 35 years, I like to read some non-industry publications. Right. Kemplinger's is one I read every month. I get a number of different newsletters that impact a lot of what I know about the Iranian situation, interest rates, I get from those publications. And I think that's it's important that we stay on top of those things because it not only impacts my business, it impacts the business of my clients. And if I can help them make it clear, okay, so fuel prices are going. The first thing we think about is oh, tractor fuel is going to go through the roof. You're probably right, but it goes way beyond that. It's the plastics, it's the fertilizer, it's all these other things every day that we consume. It's going to impact a lot of things. It's not just the tractor fuel, it is the tractor fuel too. But how about the diesel fuel that they use to pick up milk? How about the diesel fuel they use to deliver the very inputs for the milk barn that we're using? Uh, it's it's gonna impact a lot of things. And I will be the first to tell you, people may think I'm real well-versed in a lot of these things. I'm I'm not an expert in a lot of them, I just do a lot of reading and I try to stay up current. Yeah, you you don't I don't want to be an expert in everything, I just want to be, I want to help clients get ahead. And if I, for example, trends on interest rates, I watch them very closely. There hasn't been a lot of movement lately. In fact, it's been kind of frustrating because I had hoped by now the Fed would lower rates even more, get things going. You know, and I and I heard one of the newsletters I get the the author talked about, well, that's the last thing you want to do is cut rates. That's a sign of weakness. Well, yeah, maybe it is, my friend. But I'll tell you something. My clients kind of think that it would be very nice to have a cut in interest rates, and and I do too, for those that are borrowing, whether you're buying tractors, cars, pickup trucks, whatever it is, if you're financing them, those are those are big impacts on your business.

SPEAKER_01 37:13

You made a nice summary of everything we've talked about today, John. Is there anything that you missed that you wanted to add in?

SPEAKER_04 37:21

I think it's gonna be a challenging year because of what's going on in the Middle East right now. But it still can be a really good year. And I would encourage people to stay positive, stay focused, and stay up. Do the best you can. You're not gonna hit a home run on everything. And believe me, in case anybody thinks that I do, that's not the case either. I'm gonna have some misses as well. I'm almost embarrassed. I looked at the end of 2025. We talked about this earlier. At the end of 2025, I looked at the cost trends for travel and all the things that are that they aren't feed inputs like our dairymen have, but they're inputs that I have to deal with every month. And you do too in your business. And you're going to trade shows, and you know how expensive hotels and food is. I'm I'm almost embarrassed to look at that and go, my gosh, I knew it was going up, but I didn't realize that rental cars were 40% higher than they were six years ago. I didn't realize that food was you know 40% higher than it was 10 years ago. It happened, and I kind of looked at it and went, wow. Part of the reason I did this drive to California, we just decided we're going to do that a couple times a year. Sometimes it's take client Christmas gifts, sometimes it's for other reasons. You know, we may bring some wine back with us, which we enjoy from California. Getting 45 miles per gallon with my hybrid that I drive is I enjoy it partly because I don't I like to drive, and my wife does too. And the other thing is, you know, I I like to fly, but I have flown so many miles in my life. I'm like 1.4 million miles on United Airlines right now. And between you and me, if if I didn't fly for six months, I'd probably be okay with it. It would be quite all right. Yeah, but that's another thing that, and I'm not blaming United Airlines because their costs have all gone up too for fuel, labor, other inputs that they have. If ever you wanted to not see anything, just stay on the internets in America or the uh interstates rather. But the reality is if you really want to not see anything, just fly over half the country or all of the country, and you'll miss a lot of really neat things that we have available to us in this nation. So we're gonna have a good year in 2026. I think my clients took a hit in January. I think February is a little better, although it's a shortened month, so that kind of stings a little bit. But I think we will have a good 2026. However, having said that, it's gonna be dependent on some of these other things we talked about: interest, fuel costs, and all the related cost increases that might go with that.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

So and and then and them staying focused and staying in control of what they can. Don't get distracted by the things you can't control.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

The things you can't control if you worry, spend time worrying about those. Mark Twain said worrying is like paying interest on a debt you never owed. And you have no you can't control it. You can try to, but you can't really offset it completely. So that's the reason we we want to monitor things month to month.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Where can our listeners? Do you have a website that you want to uh promote that we can send our listeners to if they want to learn some more about your organization?

SPEAKER_04 40:43

They can they can go to www.success-strategies.com. That's our website. They can email me, John, at success-strategies.com, anytime. And we don't charge or respond to emails. People want to talk about something or they have an idea. We I'm absolutely open to that. Some of the best clients I had came from conversations like that. We have this new thing on our website called the I call it Save, which stands for simplify, analyze, visualize, and then execute. And that's the process we take people through. When they have a real problem, we try to simplify it, bring it down to earth for them. We analyze their current situation and what a change changes we suggest might make. And then you can't see the future without visualizing it. You if you don't visualize it, you just get what you get. Right. And that's never as good as it can be for you. Yeah. And then execution is is the fourth thing we focus on. And and that's month by month staying on top. Okay, where are we building this freestyle bar? Where are we on that? Where are we on the financing? What's going on? Are we running over on cost? We're running over on time, all those kind of things. But also on our website, people will find hundreds of videos. If you ever want to entertain yourself, and it might be because of the funny-looking speaker there, uh, yours truly, but just if people want to read, we have blogs for geez, I don't know, since 2015. We have videos since around the same time that they're they'll take you to YouTube and you can look at them. I have a whole channel of things there that can be helpful. And they're titled, so you can pretty much tell ahead of watching any one of them what the what the subject matter is. But hopefully that's helpful to people. Again, that's success-strategies.com.

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Well, thank you so much, John, for being here today. And John Ellsworth. Yeah, John Ellsworth with Success Strategies. You know, John is a great uh financial advisor, but he's also a great psychological advisor for our dairy producers. Thanks for listening, everybody, today. I'm Connie Cooper with SealPro Silage Barrier Film by Connor Agri-Science. Out here in the West, people are planting and growing because we've had this tremendously warm, unusual season. Uh the Midwestern weather has been crazy, as well as in the east. As we get going planting, it's a great time to listen to Dairy Voice by Dairy Business News as you're out in the tractor. So please subscribe, like, and share this podcast. As we head into spring and you're out there with that equipment, please stay safe. That's that's the main message here. Stay safe out there. And thank you again for listening, everyone. We'll talk again soon.