Matt Ronkin
speaker
37 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Matt Ronkin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, good morning, guys.
Yeah. Uh, so first of all, thanks for having me. I've seen a number of your podcasts, love the energy, uh, love the communication and the conversation. So I was just happy to be a part of that. Um, so my background, I've been the CEO of uncommon farms for about three years now. Uh, before that I was not in agriculture at all.
I, uh, spent the first 25 years of my, uh, career at nested curing on pet food, uh, in St. Louis. And, uh, Started in business development roles, brand marketing, et cetera, and then moved into more general manager roles. One of my last roles for Purina was to lead the strategic planning group between our brand portfolio and then our retailers. So I know a little bit about strategic planning.
Louis.
Yeah. So Uncommon Farms actually started as a business entity 60 years ago, 6-0, as a company called Agris Solutions. And The founder's vision or thought was that farmers needed better mastery of the numbers in order to make better business decisions.
And obviously back then, no computers, no apps, et cetera, but just a philosophy that farmers were just not on the whole good business people when it came to looking at the numbers and then ultimately able to make better decisions. About 25 years ago, that same founder started a concept called the Family Farms Group. And what he saw was that in livestock,
there was you know violent consolidation and just saw that same dynamic that was eventually going to come in row crop and so wanted to prepare the farmers to be better business people and to be better masters and have a better skill set in order to run their business you know and work on the business not just in the business so the family farms group was started in 1996. i came on as the ceo of the family farms group in 2021 um
you know, not having a strong ag background, I spent the first six months of my time as CEO on farm with our members and just trying to get an understanding of what were some of the challenges, what were some of the pinpoints, what were they doing to better themselves in terms of better business people.
And, you know, it was clear to me that to take the common approach to farming was going to end in a not so good way. And that's a little bit of ironic, right? Normally, you know, do the same things and get the same results. The reality of what's changing so much in farming and what has changed forces you to take a different approach.
And so I was passionate to change the name of our group to a community of uncommon farms. And the whole premise again behind this is business unusual, not business as usual. So you've got to build that skillset And think about yourself as the CEO of a very dynamic multi-million dollar operation that has all of the challenges that a corporate CEO has and not define yourself truly as just a farmer.
That's right. And so, you know, at our core, we define ourselves as business advisors, growth advisors, and kind of that aggregate, you know, MBA, if you will. And so, Farmers are very good at what they do. And so don't get me wrong, the instincts and the quintessential entrepreneurs and have the entrepreneurial mindset and the innovation mindset, et cetera.
It's how do you round that out and how do you put it into a framework the same way that a corporate CEO would look at their business. So everything from strategic planning, which is what you all started talking about.
These are family farms that succession planning is always a big piece of this, risk management, financial acumen, leadership, HR and people, and all of those where, yeah, quite frankly, where would they pick up those skills? And you didn't need those soft skills, especially as much as you do today, a generation ago. And most of the farmers have learned, you know,
business from the dad or from their uncle um maybe they've got a cohort or some kind of of network around them that they've learned from but for the most part they're doing it through instincts and so what we can introduce is is some framework around that and a guided tour if you will a sherpa tour through that in terms of setting up strategic priorities and plan the work and work the plan
Not too late.
That's right. Yeah. So at our core, like I said, we're business advisors and we work with each one of our members one-on-one and, uh, and give them the value that they, that they need the real value. And, uh, and so earmuffs to the rest of my organization doesn't come from the learning that they, we can provide to them. Um, it's really about building that, that community.
And as you guys know, farming, you know, as a vocation, it's a very isolated, uh, you know, job by nature physically. And, uh,
it's also isolated emotionally and mentally right and and mentor wise it's very difficult like i said it's a very myopic relationship between you know the generation above you and below and maybe a little bit around you but to provide a community um where there's peer learning um like we've set up is quite unique and so We build that in a number of different ways.
We do member conferences, we do region meetings, we do what we call training Tuesdays, which is every other Tuesday we'll do Zoom calls and every one of our members can jump on with a speaker or workshop. We've got a member portal that they can tap into and, hey, I'm thinking about getting heavier into the trucking side of the business.
Anybody out there have this thing figured out and amazing just the robustness of that. The biggest part of our community building is around our peer group program. just recognizing that these guys don't have the coffee shop to go to, especially at the size that they are. I mean, it's just not, they're gonna be in competition for land or competitive advantage, et cetera.
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