Everything We’re Doing Right Now is Because we did it Wrong First: Interview with Steven Valencsin of Growers.ag
March 17, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Jobs in Boots
Steven Valencsin of Growers.ag reminds me of Steve Jobs if Jobs ever wore an NC State ballcap and boots. Steven exudes the charisma, energy, and intensity associated with entrepreneurs in the popular imagination. When you leave a meeting with him, you think, “That’s a smart guy who gets stuff done.”
I’ve met many entrepreneurs, and charisma is not absolutely necessary, though understanding people is. What Steven Valencsin has that is necessary for success as an entrepreneur is single-mindedness of purpose. When he zeroes in on an object or project, it moves!
Echoing my earlier interview with John Troy, Steven reflects openly on the challenges of life as a business owner. He’s mystified by the sexiness people attribute to launching your own thing. “I haven’t seen the glamorous side of entrepreneurship,” he says. “It’s been a struggle the whole frickin’ time.”
Key takeaways from the Work Pants Finance Interview with Steven Valencsin
Find your niche. Identifying customers’ pain points can help!
Look for opportunities to be countercyclical in your life and money.
Steven and Growers have taken it one step at a time, from 2010 to today. It always takes twice as much money, three times as much time, and four times as much work than you expect to accomplish anything.
Good communication is key.
Wherever you’re at in life and money, seek opportunities to be generous to others.
My favorite line from the interview is, “It all has to get done, but it doesn’t all have to get done today.”
Invest in yourself and in your own business.
Steven Valencsin’s Book Recommendations
Entrepreneurship is tough for everyone. Steven recommends The Hard thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Steven says, “You’re always selling something…All I’ve been doing for ten years is pitching somebody to hear me out.” His book pick for selling skills is The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson.
For better communication at work and home, Steven likes Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great by Carmine Gallo.
And You can read more from Steven in this ICL blog post.
TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:02] Matt Miner: Steven and I share an open and honest conversation about the bald realities of life as a business owner. Steven says, "I haven't seen the glamorous side of entrepreneurship. It's been a struggle the whole frickin' time."
Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide. Work Pants Finance is show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
This show is called "Everything We're Doing Right Now is Because we did it Wrong First: Interview with Steven Valencsin of Growers.ag". You can read more at workpantsfinance.com/9.
I'm here today with Steven Valencsin. Steven, it's my absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show. I wonder if you could just take a couple of minutes and share your story with my audience.
[00:00:54] Steven Valencsin: Yes, of course. Thank you for having me, Matt. It's an honor to be on your show. Real quickly about me, I'm the founder and CEO of a company called Growers. We're a small technology company based here in Raleigh, North Carolina that is really trying to help bridge this gap between farmers and technology and helping make the adoption of technology a lot easier. We're doing that through providing value-added tools to farmers' advisors, namely in the area of helping them make seed, fertilizer, and chemical recommendations with data that comes from machinery, soils, and sensors.
We've been doing this for about 10 years now, very thankful that the business is going well. We feel like we found an interesting spot in agriculture to insert ourselves and insert our passion for both farmers and agriculture and technology. I don't know, we're having a bunch of fun with it.
[00:01:47] Matt: What's the interesting spot?
[00:01:49] Steven: [chuckles] Well, the interesting spot is marrying the true understanding of how things really happen on the farm and out in the field with the technology and a user interface, is what we found, right? So much of what we see in agriculture today has been developed by really, really smart, sophisticated technologists in companies that are really, really in tune with great technology. Great technology for agriculture I think is in a category of its own.
In order to be great, I think it has to really take the user, the end-user in mind. The history of Growers was we started as a services business focusing on true boots on the ground, helping farmers-- literally, it was with their machinery initially; connect their machine data to their soil data and use it to make recommendations. It was through that experience that we just learned all these little unique insights and nuances of just how complicated that whole process really is and what are the pain points are and why people struggle with it and why people don't and that like grounded, no pun intended, approach to how we worked with farmers.
When we translated that into technology, we saw a really, really strong uptake and adoption. We did things that broke conventional technology molds just from the way some of our applications work. It's not best practice sometimes from [chuckles] what our engineering team sometimes criticizes for, but it resonates with farmers and their advisors. That seems to be our niche, is connecting the two worlds and being the interface that enables farmers to really, at the end of the day, get better utilization of their data. Not sure if that made any sense.
[00:03:35] Matt: No, I think it made a ton of sense. I've been out of this industry for about three years now, but even towards the tail end of that time was still just getting farmers to begin to work with data. As I recall, the tech at that time, and I know it's changed a lot in the last three years, but it was like you had a group of farmers and they're very sophisticated business people, but computer science is not part of their training and frankly not part of their skillset or interests.
Then you had this other group of people that is designing both hardware and software, it was almost like never the two shall meet. I love, at that time, how you guys were out in the field just helping people begin to work with this. It sounds like you're very much moving in a software-forward direction from there.
[00:04:24] Steven: Yes, we definitely are. Our opportunity as a company to make the greatest impact we think is leveraging our learnings from the field and applying that to technology; that's where we see the biggest shortcoming. It's definitely the path that we've chosen to go down. It puts us in a position to make the greatest impact globally the quickest.
[00:04:46] Matt: Terrific. When I first got to know you as I was in the equipment business, Steven, I was impressed by your offering to farmer customers which was to lower input costs, to reduce environmental impact, and improve yields along the way. Then you also had, as you've already alluded to, this very hands-on, knowledgeable farmer empathetic implementation team. I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the decision to evolve from that more hands-on business to where you're taking the company now.
[00:05:17] Steven: Yes, of course. It was really a culmination of all of the different software and programs and hardware that we use inside that hands-on business, we really hit this critical mass as a company whereas we were scaling and growing that business, it wasn't more profitable for us to do that. We were growing for the sake of growing, but there were many limitations from the existing third-party software solutions that are on the market that we couldn't make work for our business at the rate that it was growing.
Most importantly, with the type of data and information that we were gathering which is, as you're probably still familiar with, is like spatial data, which is a complex, very data-dense type of information that is really important to agriculture because we're dealing with actual farms and fields and spots on earth. That data is complicated, and there's a myriad of systems out there that do a phenomenal job at handling that on a relatively small scale. The challenges really start to multiply when you talk about enterprise-level data management applications.
It was really this crux where it's like, "Okay, if we want to continue down this path of growing our business, either we're going to have to figure out some more creative way to use these existing solutions or we go and build our own." We chose the build our own approach and really honestly struggled mightily with it for many years. Just everything from getting the team built out to concepts and minimal viable products and trying to bring a product to market and then the evolving business models.
Lots of pain and heartache along the way, but we think it was the right decision again just to take that, as you said, which I love the word empathy, right? That empathetic approach to what does a farmer and really the whole agricultural ecosystem need from their technology in order to get value from it and put that into a solution to deliver it. It's been quite a process. I feel like everything we're doing right now is because we did it wrong first. We've learned a lot along the way.
[00:07:19] Matt: I appreciate you sharing that. One of the things that makes me wonder as you seek to work with advisors to farmers, I imagine a key thing is having these tools that Growers is building, have the ability to integrate successfully with a wide variety of platforms used by the advisors. Is that how that works? How do you guys create your software to work in that way?
[00:07:43] Steven: Yes, it's a phenomenal question. We actually think that's the holy grail, is like the ease of integration into existing technologies. The challenge with that today in agriculture is those existing technologies aren't really mature enough to make integration the most seamless, straightforward process. For instance, to integrate with Salesforce is really about reading legal agreements and following some really basic API documentation that they make available to dang near anybody. That same level of sophistication and rigor around integrating with a third-party company like that is few and far between in agriculture.
Companies like John Deere and Climate Corporation, some of the larger institutions are definitely leading the charge, but it's still not as simple as one might think it is to integrate with the company and exchange data. We do think, moving forward, that is going to be the key. From our point of view, we definitely don't think we can conquer the whole world by ourselves and we don't want to. We would much rather partner with other companies that have best-in-class technology that we're not going to focus on probably now or ever. But navigating that with a relatively-- what I'd call an immature market--has been fairly challenging.
[00:08:59] Matt: Is there a place for you guys as far as advocacy or coordination or some kind of standards communication that's going on? We're doing strategy right here on the phone.
[00:09:09] Steven: Yes, right here. This is it. Not really. There is some part of the industry, there are some standards. When you say the word standards, the first thing that comes to mind is from agronomy, like in a soil testing standpoint, and there's a lot of standards that are being worked on in that level. There are bits and pieces around standards for how data's being treated in agriculture today and privacy of data in agriculture, but I don't really think so.
This industry is evolving at this strangely fast pace. It's the Wild West out here where everybody seems to be competing for the few precious resources, i.e., that are farmers. It's interesting. You don't find a lot of companies that shield down, want to collaborate, sing Kumbaya, and like, "Let's do this together," and then ones that are getting approached by myriads of other organizations. It's been a challenge to navigate, but to your original question, we do think it is going to be critical for success in the future, is integration with third parties.
[00:10:14] Matt: Cool. Probably a lot of my listeners are not directly connected to the agriculture industry. In just a few minutes, can you give us a survey of the ag landscape and the ag tech landscape as you see it in late 2020?
[00:10:25] Steven: Yes. The ag landscape today, it's funny because most people who aren't connected to it don't realize it. I remember back in-- 2020 has been a strange year as everyone knows, but back in 2019, right? Let's go back to the last normal year that we all had where the economy was generally booming. It was a good time for America; when you look at the stock market, the business that you're in. From a financial standpoint, most people were doing pretty well, and the industry was doing well, and the economy was doing well.
Typically, the farm economy tracks almost opposite of the general economy. At the time when most of America and most people in America were doing so well, agriculture was just getting completely socked by really, really low commodity prices. There was a bunch of trade complications with China that made the news a couple years ago that just disappeared from the news but have been an ongoing issue for farmers. Commodity price has been at an all-time low for a series of years, and inputs and equipment especially continues to rise through the roof, almost exponentially year over year. It's been a very, very challenging farming environment.
2020, in literally the last three months has gotten much better. It was just as recent as August I think the price of corn was as low as it's ever been since I think maybe 2006 or something. Since then, it's made a pretty significant rally. Again, as there's been some instability introduced into the US economy, the farm economy has rebounded upwards, and the price of corn gone up about 25%. I say price of corn because that seems to be the standard by which all things are compared in agriculture for how things are going; if they're good or bad, all depends on the price of corn.
For your listeners that aren't really connected to agriculture, it's been tough out there; farmers have really been struggling. I was relieved to see a little bit of optimism come back into the conversation and their spirits just in as few as the last two months as the markets have turned around.
[00:12:33] Matt: Yes. It's interesting, you talk about farming being countercyclical. I got sucked into that industry in 2008 because that was a pretty crappy time to be coming out of business school. That doesn't mean I wasn't inherently interested in it, but it was like, "Hey, here's a sector with bright prospects and big bonuses. By the way, the banks just fired everybody." It was a great time to get into agriculture when everything was melting down; '08, '09 were quite strong years for the US farm economy.
[00:13:02] Steven: Yes, that's just the thing. If you're not connected to it, you realize that or would miss that. 2007, '08, and '09 were about as good as it's ever been in agriculture for really any generation that's still alive and farming today.
[00:13:14] Matt: Yes, that's right, certainly going back to the mid-'80s. Any quick words about the ag tech industry? You've made a few allusions to it earlier in your talk.
[00:13:22] Steven: Yes. I think the only thing I'd say about ag tech is, right now, it's a fascinating time to be in agriculture because there is more technology that's present in agriculture than ever been available before bar none in the history of the world or maybe even since the earth cooled.
The adoption of technology still is fairly low. I think 20 years ago, everybody overestimated what the level of adoption would be in agriculture when all this new technology was coming online. Again, I've alluded to some of those, the reasons and rationale on where I think a lot of technologies missed the mark. Today, you have a ton of players with no real clear winner and a lot of people jocking for that precious spot. Like I said, it is the Wild West out here still.
[00:14:08] Matt: All right. Well, moving from that super high-level view to something a lot more intimate. In 2020, I was delighted to read in the news that Growers had been acquired by ICL. You were smiling in all the pictures, so I can only assume that the terms were adequate. I wanted to ask you, as an entrepreneur, how has that changed the company and how has it changed your life as the top manager at Growers?
[00:14:30] Steven: I would say it's all been for the better. As I look back on it now, it was a very intense period and very stressful period in life to go through that due diligence process. ICL is a public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and also in Tel Aviv, so their process and the due diligence for a company with that level of regulation and oversight on was intense. When we actually finally got the deal done, it was amazing.
We made a ton of changes internally at Growers, honestly, and a lot of things that were a long time coming to just get the company now positioned really in it for the long haul. The part I mentioned in the history is we've been doing this for-- I've been doing this for 10 years and bootstrapped the company for the first about five and a half years and then raised a little bit of venture capital. Then eventually, it was acquired here in 2020.
Playing that game, which is probably the best way to describe it when you're working with venture capitalists, you just do things differently, fortunately or unfortunately. I wouldn't change what we did or how we did it in terms of how we funded the business because it got us where we are today. You're running the business differently when you're trying to satisfy the needs of short-term investors.
Now that we have the financial backing and support of a large multinational company that is very interested in the growth of our business over the long term. We made a bunch of changes internally in how we organized our team, how we refocus some of our technology and really rebuilt a very integral foundation of what is Growers and the structure that we need moving forward. It's been amazing for me personally, getting to work with the ICL organization and the management team. My new board that I work with over there has been phenomenal. I don't think I could have written the script better on how things played out, to put it that way.
[00:16:23] Matt: I'm super happy to hear that for you professionally. It sounds like, given your passion, it's great that they've asked you to stay on and run the place.
[00:16:32] Steven: Yes, for the time being, as long as I keep doing my job. [laughs]
[00:16:35] Matt: There you go. I wonder if you could comment also on how that acquisition has affected life for your family?
[00:16:41] Steven: Honestly, the biggest one is that growing a business and building a business and being self-employed is a family endeavor. I think this whole acquisition process in where we are today with ICL, one of the things that my family got to see I think over the past 10 years was really God's grace and mercy of answering so many prayers over the past 10 years because it's been a physical, mental, and emotional, spiritual struggle every step of the way. Just to see how things panned out and that we were taken care of in the process has been awesome. My family got to witness both the hardship and some of the victory, so that's been the coolest part.
[00:17:21] Matt: That's terrific. If you could just describe what it's been like to be you as you lived through the process of launching something, nurturing it, growing it, selling it, and now continuing to run it. How do you reflect on your own emotions through that timeline?
[00:17:36] Steven: I don't say this to be cute or fluffy but blessed really is the word. It's been an awesome, awesome journey and really do feel blessed to be in the position that we're in now; to still be a part of Growers, to still be able to run the company, and really to continue to execute on the vision that I had and that members of my team have had for so many years.
It was the second company I started. Before Growers, there was a soil testing laboratory. And when I sold that business to a partner and then started running Growers full time, again back in 2010, it's just been one step at a time, has been this process. Just to see where we are today, thinking back on where we began, humble beginnings doesn't even I think come close [chuckles] to explain what this journey's been like, but it's been really awesome.
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[00:18:30] Matt: Today's show is brought to you by workpantsfinance.com/resources, where I feature my newest white paper "Hacking the Grocery Bill". Whether you earn a hundred thousand or a million dollars each year, your health and budget can benefit from greater focus on this important spending category.
One of my early guests was a woman named Charlotte Whitmore who grew and sold a business while she really wanted to be out of it. At the time, she described it as going from being a global expert to being manager of her own estate. That was how she felt when she was no longer running it. I think that for you, maybe some of that is that feeling may not be here exactly right now because you're still doing what you were doing. In fact, you seem to be liking it as well as you ever have, or maybe better than you ever have, working with ICL. I feel like that's a real feeling that entrepreneurs sometimes have post-sale.
[00:19:27] Steven: Yes. I can understand the sentiment, but I definitely think where I'm at today in having gone through that whole process, I think this is as good as it's ever been. I'm more optimistic about our future and the impact that I think we can have in agriculture today than I was yesterday and certainly more than I was a year ago. I think having the right partners in ICL and having the right people at that organization and the leadership there that understands the importance of what it is they're working on and also the time horizon that it's going to take for us to achieve that-- few people, I think, get that level of opportunity, so super excited about it.
[00:20:05] Matt: Well, Steven, this is a show about family, career, and money. I wonder if you could take a minute to reflect on where you are today with your family, career, and money and what you love about that?
[00:20:16] Steven: Of course, yes. From a family standpoint, this podcast being recorded in 2021, one the things that's been probably most interesting about this year, my wife and I, we joke about it now often is we've never spent this much time together in the past 10 years that we've been married. I've got two young kids that are four and six, and just at that age where it's all energy, all attention all the time.
I think COVID had traumatic impacts on a lot of different people and businesses, and it's just been a really strange experience for everybody, but one thing it has done for myself as well as about everybody else in the world is force us all to spend a lot more time at home and a lot more time with our family. I think that's been an amazing past eight or nine months that I wouldn't trade or exchange that time for the world. Having come from traveling three or four days a week every week to not traveling for months and months on end, it's been really nice to get to spend that time with family.
With work, I probably elaborated on that a lot, I think things are going really great with Growers; I'm very optimistic about our future. Then from a money standpoint, I feel again, just the blessing that was the acquisition and getting to sell my equity and what I had invested in over the years has really put us in a position where we can be really generous to others, and that's I think the thing that's been most exciting for my wife and I, especially in the year like 2020 when there's a lot of need and hurt and suffering. We've gotten pretty plugged into some organizations and institutions that we've been able to support in ways that we never could before.
[00:21:54] Matt: That's terrific. As you look back on your journey as an entrepreneur, what things would you double down on and what, if anything, would you avoid with the benefit of hindsight?
[00:22:07] Steven: Oh, man, so many. I think one of the ones to double down on that just immediately rises to the surface is communication. I just don't think you could ever underestimate how important it is to be a master communicator at all levels. I think every day I'm just continuously amazed at how easy it is for things to be miscommunicated especially when we're working with international teams and remote workforces now. This applies to our everyday lives too with family, of course.
As an entrepreneur and from a business standpoint, I think proactively working on being a master communicator and being very thoughtful and diligent with how you communicate in sales conversations and with employees and colleagues and investors and board members. I wish I could go back and study up on that 10 years ago and probably be maybe in a different spot, but I think that's one of them. Oh, things to avoid? Gosh, I don't know. I don't have a good answer on things to avoid right now. [chuckles]
[00:23:08] Matt: All right, fair enough. Steven, what's one piece of advice that you've benefited from in your life that you'd like to share today?
[00:23:14] Steven: The thing that first comes to mind is maybe an interesting one, but I remember I had a gentleman who was also very, very invested in multiple different opportunities and he was very entrepreneurial in a bunch of different ways. I remember he said something to me one time that I definitely didn't appreciate at that point in time because it was the last thing I wanted to hear, but now it makes perfect sense. He said, "It all has to get done, but it doesn't all have to get done today."
I just literally remember for years and years and years, I was mister doom and gloom that if I couldn't fix it, if I couldn't solve that problem, if I couldn't answer that call or couldn't help that farmer out or couldn't fill in the blank, then it was the end of the business for me. Seeing how our business has grown, I've had to get much, much better at delegation and putting off for tomorrow the things that can wait and seeing the impact of better prioritization of tasks and how that can really, really help as a manager and as a leader, you'd be a heck of a lot more effective, that one interesting comment that was made to me.
I know why the guy said it, it's because I had this opinion that I literally had to do everything that day or else we were going to fail. He was trying to be encouraging, but it did leave a lasting impact on me. And now seeing actually that it's true and that we all have a myriad of things coming at us from all different directions and it's easy to get sucked into the chaos of just how busy we all get but, being a master at prioritizing, which by the way I'm not a master at prioritizing; I'm working on getting better at. [chuckles] Has been a really important lesson for me as a business leader.
[00:25:00] Matt: I love that one and I often reflect also. It's an area of growth for me along with communication. I reflect on the comment that you made about it, not all having to get done today with another quote, which is that the cemeteries are full of indispensable people.
[00:25:16] Steven: That's right.
[00:25:18] Matt: It just testifies to the need to do those things that are really important and take it all in stride.
[00:25:25] Steven: Yes.
[00:25:25] Matt: One of the things I like asking people about on this show are books that have been a benefit to them either now or in the past. I wonder if you have any titles either that you're reading today that are changing your life or ones that you've loved from times in the past?
[00:25:39] Steven: Yes, I will admit, I'm not reading any today. I feel like-- I know-- I think the age of podcasts, I know this is a podcast, I'm not kicking rocks at podcasts and audiobooks, but I feel like what I do now is-- I'm going to choke over everything I just told you, but I feel like I'm always trying to double task with reading a book or listening to an audiobook or a podcast while doing something else. I don't spend as much time turning pages as I used to, but there's a few books I think--
Most of what I read is catered around business or leadership or management or things like that. One of my most favorite ones as an entrepreneur that I'd recommend to anybody to read when you're really in the pit of despair of entrepreneurship which you have to go through that at some point in time, it's called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. He's one of the partners of A to Z Ventures, him and Marc Andreessen. It's just a really interesting book that you can appreciate from the perspective of somebody who's started a business and had to raise capital and just dealt with insurmountable odds all the time.
The moral of the story is that it's just hard, there's no way you can short circuit the hard thing about all those hard things. I wouldn't say it's an encouraging book, [chuckles] but it's a good book to just ground your perspective that, "Yes, this is tough for literally everyone, you're not alone. You're probably not doing anything wrong, it's just business is just hard."
I don't say I do a lot of the sales for our organization, but I think to grow and start a business, you naturally have to be good at sales because you're always selling something; you're selling a customer, an investor, a fellow employee or a job candidate, all you're doing is pitching. I feel like that's all I've been doing for 10 years, is pitching somebody to hear me out.
A really great book, probably my favorite book from a sales standpoint is The Challenger Sale. I don't know if you've heard about it, but it's more like a technique or a process. Brent Adamson I think is the author. Probably one of the most impactful books around communication and selling. Then the last one again on the communication tactic is really anything by Carmine Gallo; he's the one who has written a bunch of books like Talk Like TED.
One of the most recent ones I finished was called Five Stars by Carmine Gallo, it was basically from the power of persuasion and communication and how important it is to be able to articulate and persuade people, not in like a slimy persuasion tactic. Literally trying to get people rallied around the ideas that you think are important and how important that is inside business.
I feel like every day, again, I'm having to persuade and communicate with whether it be candidates to come join our team or board members to believe in the vision that we're working on or anything. It's just like it goes back to my point about communication. That's a great book for anybody who's interested in how to be a better, more effective communicator.
[00:28:33] Matt: Terrific. Steven, we've covered a lot of ground today, I wonder if there's anything else that you'd like to say to my listeners here in December 2020?
[00:28:40] Steven: Maybe two things. From an investing standpoint, I don't know if this jives with the personal financial planning handbook.
[00:28:47] Matt: I invited you on the show, so you can say what you want now and then I'll correct it later.
[00:28:51] Steven: There you go, you're a brave man. I think generally at least at this point in life, I think some of the best investments I've made have been in myself, my own investing in the business. I think it's like you have a lot of control over the dollars and cents that you can invest in yourself, and there's a sense of accountability and ownership of that, in every sense of the word.
It's like I was anticipating you asking some sort of question like this about like, "Hey, what are you doing from an investing standpoint?" You didn't, so I'll give you the answer anyways. It's like I didn't do a good job is the answer in thinking about wealth management over the long term in the way of setting up very conventional methods for managing finances, but I did do a lot of investing in myself and investing in businesses that I was really, really passionate about. I think if people are in a position to do that, I think that's wise because it's something that you directly can control over.
I love being in a place or in a business where sometimes you're the one that's in control of your destiny versus what the markets are doing, what the economy is doing. I also know that's a much, much higher risk than a lot of other options, but I think it's something that's-- It served me well, and I think if your listeners are of that mind, I think that'd be maybe the last parting gift that I'd offer them. Then maybe the other one, if you've got room for one more?
[00:30:15] Matt: No, I got room. You're going to have to sit here or I guess you can hang up, but I'm going to record a response to your first question, I have definite views on that.
[00:30:23] Steven: Okay. The second one would be something that I don't understand is the glamorizing of entrepreneurship. If your listeners are in a position where like, "Oh, I want to go start a business," I've honestly never understood that. I think it's a space that you really have to feel a deep calling to. I think if you do, you can be successful in anything you do, right?
I was in a conversation recently about somebody who was just evaluating, "I want to go start a business, I'm not exactly sure what type," and I couldn't wrap my head around that. "What do you mean you don't know what type of--? You're just going to pull something out of the air?" I think if there's something that you feel deeply called for or deeply called to and want to pursue it, I think I'd be the last person to advocate against somebody not doing that.
I think it's a phenomenal decision, but I don't get so hyped up in the people that are over glamorizing what entrepreneurship looks because I haven't seen the glamorous-- I don't remember the glamorous parts of it, it's been a struggle the whole freaking time.
[00:31:20] Matt: No, I think that's very well said. On that second point, I have a friend who's an entrepreneur who says that there are a lot-- he calls them fauxtrepreneur in the world, like fake entrepreneurs and people who, like you said, glamorize entrepreneurship as entrepreneurship. I think entrepreneurship is like marriage and that entrepreneurship needs to have a focus. If you can imagine marrying anyone other than the person you're considering marrying, then you shouldn't marry them.
[00:31:50] Steven: That's exactly right. [laughs]
[00:31:51] Matt: If you can imagine doing anything other than going and starting this business that you feel called or particularly gifted or able to start then you should go do that other thing because, otherwise, it's just going to be too terrible to get through it.
[00:32:04] Steven: 100% agree. I tell people all the time, the only reason I'm doing this right now is because I am good at nothing else. There's nothing else I could do but this.
[00:32:13] Matt: Or said more positive, you couldn't imagine doing anything else, yes.
[00:32:18] Steven: Yes.
[00:32:19] Matt: Then on your first one, I want to say that I endorse that wholeheartedly. In fact, there's a famous commentator in our industry named Michael Kitces. He's serving investment advisor whose job is to help people make a financial plan and also typically to use market-based investments to achieve that plan. He went on record recently saying that he's not using any traditional retirement vehicles because he has so many bigger opportunities within his business to invest that same money and grow the value of his business. I agree with that one completely.
Said a little more conventionally, I always encourage clients to take risk in their business and career and then to take some of that money off the table as they go along so that if they face wipeout risk in their career or business, that they have set something aside. I view financial markets not as something you can control, as you said, I agree with you on that. I do view them as something that actually over long periods of time are quite predictable.
Absent some massive political or institutional upheaval, I think that over 20 year periods, US equities are going to continue to provide predictable returns of 7% to 11%, and I think that that's a great place to park your money that you've already made by taking risk in your career or business.
[00:33:41] Steven: Yes.
[00:33:42] Matt: That's how I think about that.
[00:33:42] Steven: That seems like good advice. [laughter] I agree.
[00:33:48] Matt: Steven, that's the end of my questions for us today. Do you have any way that you would like people who hear this show to follow up with you?
[00:33:54] Steven: I'm pretty miserable in the social media realm, though I am working on it. I think if anybody had anything, in particular, they wanted to follow up with, the best way to probably reach me would be on LinkedIn, absent my personal email; that'd be the best way to get in contact with me. I'd be happy to chat with anyone who--
[00:34:11] Matt: Terrific. Then if they want to learn about your company, you're at growers.ag still?
[00:34:16] Steven: Growers.ag, that's it. Yes, we're undergoing a pretty massive rebrand right now that won't be formally out until the end of Q1 2021, so depending on when this when this airs, growers.ag could look totally different. [laughs]
[00:34:29] Matt: Nice, a new website. All right, very good. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. As always, I enjoy talking with you.
[00:34:36] Steven: Thanks, Matt, its an honor.
[music]
[00:34:38] Matt: Steven had great takeaways for us today. First, find your niche; identifying customers' pain points can help. Second, it's easy to say and hard to do, but look for opportunities to be countercyclical in your life and money. Third, Steven and Growers take it one step at a time from 2010 to today; this is so typical of entrepreneurs. It always takes twice as much money, three times as much time, and four times as much work than you would expect to accomplish anything.
I love Steven's reflections on the importance of good communication and generosity. My favorite line from the interview is, "It all has to get done, but it doesn't all have to get done today." Steven goes on to highlight the benefits of investing in yourself and investing in your own business.
Coming up next on the show for Flashback Friday, I rerelease my interview with Professor Shane Dikolli of UVA's Darden School of Business. Shane and I share a wide-ranging conversation on work, life, and money; all of this show's favorite topics. Until then, this is Matt Miner encouraging you to make a financial plan that works as hard as you do.
[00:35:50] Female Speaker: Matt Miner is a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor and founder and CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina registered investment advisor where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted advice to clients for a fee. He's also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him. Matt is a certified financial planner professional and holds a Series 65 securities license.
He earned his bachelor's degree in finance from Arizona State University and his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids, and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics. Workpantsfinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information, it does not financial tax or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.