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This is Tayo Solagbade and today is 22nd of December 2014.
We’re approaching the new year, and in my normal end of year ritual, I’ve been calling a lot of my subscribers and past buyers – farm CEOs mainly, who use my products, my software especially for farm business management – maybe the Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator or Poultry Farm Manager.
And some have bought my handbook on Feed Formulation and things like that. As I normally do every year, I call on them and ask what their plans for the new year are, what goals they have, how I can help…and of course I usually make an offer:
I call it a Christmas Gift offer in which I just give some ridiculous crazy discounted rate for them to acquire one of my products or services or products and services. The objective is to forge a closer connection with each one of them, and of course to just get them talking about me.
So I’ve been doing that in December. I’ve been in Nigeria now for at least roughly 4 weeks and a half or so, and it’s been interesting to talk to them about this year’s offer, because over the years, I’ve come to the realization that a lot of farm CEOs.
Note that the ones I work with are not the ones that carry hoes around(no offense intended – just clarifying).
Most of my clients or buyers or members of my Farm Business IDEAS club are people who run medium sized to large sized farms, and mostly in livestock production, especially fish farming and poultry farming.
And many of them have…they use smart phones they use laptops, they are technology friendly and more often than not, these days I have found that more and more of them are actually people in paid employment in big companies who are running businesses part time, probably managed by their spouses, and they are generally people who travel a bit.
So these are guys that I feel can operate at the level I operate, and I realize that they need to understand that they can use technology much more intelligently, to succeed better at what they do.
And many of them don’t realize this.
I think one of the big challenges we have in our part of the world here in Africa, especially Nigeria is that people don’t know that farm business doesn’t have to be same old crude, drudgery filled activity that the peasant farmers are known for.
If you’re going to …I mean a lot of these guys make millions in a month…okay maybe hundreds of thousands in a month, producing these animals, these farm products.
So, nothing stops them from reaching out to buyers who will give them better returns for their efforts.
One of the things that has driven me to this year make the offer of helping them to make more use of technology, especially the use of the Internet to find buyers, at zero cost, so as to cut down their Cost Of Customer Acquisition (COCA) is the story I read in the Vanguard newspapers earlier in the year, where a group of farmers in Plateau state …I think it was the Poultry Farmers Association approached the MD, the Managing Director of Grand Cereals and requested his help in mopping up what they called an excess production of eggs, because they said they had a glut in Jos or Plateau state as a whole.
And I recall feeling very odd when I read that report. I said the Nigerian market doesn’t even have enough eggs. So what do they mean that they have a glut? Where is the glut?
So, I called up some of my clients who is based in Jos, I spoke to one of them – Bitrus – and I said “Look what is this thing about a glut not enabling you sell, and then you needing somebody to mop up eggs from you at all cost so you can keep producing?”
And he was telling me “You know Tayo when you go from 2, to 3 here in Jos here, you will find 2 houses or homes they have poultry farms.”
I said “So what? The thing is must you sell only to buyers in Plateau state or Jos? Why can’t you reach out to buyers outside your state.”
And he didn’t initially get what I was trying to say. I said:
“Look, nothing stops you from reaching out to buyers outside your state and getting them to come and pick up eggs from your farm.That’s one. Then two: Even within your state, it is possible that you’re missing the point. You don’t need to make yourself vulnerable and exposed to people who are going to come and buy units of egg trays from you.
You can actually reach out to organizations and individuals or businesses that require eggs in large quantities or bulk periodically, and then have an arrangement with them to pick up eggs from you, on the understanding that they will get some price concession or benefit. The point is you don’t have to go the traditional route to sell your farm product.”
So, when I said that he said okay. I told him I would send him some materials as a gift.
So I sent him, I think it was a story, about a gentleman somewhere in South West Nigeria, who used one of the online forums …popular online Nigerian forum, to – over a period of about 9 months – build up what you could call a thread of conversation, in which people began to request to have him send his truck, his bus, to supply them eggs in different parts of the country.
It didn’t happen overnight, but over a period of about 9 months, what he did was to successfully attract people using this platform, free.
Not his own website now, some discussion forum, where people were responding to pictures he posted of eggs he had, which were quite big and then the offer he made to supply in bulk at reduced price, and all of that. He’d bought a brand new bus and put the picture of the bus, and he did this.
I followed the thread of the discussion from 2012 into 2014, and it was amazing to see that in 2014 when he got somebody who now came and said he wanted him (the Farm Owner) to supply eggs to them in, probably I think PortHarcourt or something, he had to respond and say:
“Look I’m overbooked. I have people who come now to the farm and pick up the eggs at agreed rates, and there’s actually a queue of people. And so if you know you want to get on board you will have to come and do the same thing, because I no longer supply to people off farm. They come and pick it up.“
Now you can imagine what that would mean for that man. First of all the Cost of Sales would drastically drop. The stress, the amount of work, time, effort that would go into marketing and selling his eggs would have dropped considerably. I’m sure that would mean major, major, major gains in terms of profit margins retained in the business. And most importantly the headache, the worry about how are you going to get these eggs sold off would have been eliminated for this man.
So unlike other farm business owners who produce eggs and birds and then begin to worry about how they are going to sell them off, because those market women come and begin to give them all these ridiculous conditions to buy the eggs and chicken off them, this other person is actually finding himself in a position where as he produces, the thing is being mopped up.
Now that’s the way a farm business should run, because if you’re going to maximize the capacity, that is maximally utilize the capacity of your farm business, for instance your poultry farm enterprise, you need to be able to have a ready outlet for the eggs you’re producing, and the birds that are ready for sale.
Be it table birds like broilers, or turkey or whatever else. And of course the old layers you need to get rid of because you need to bring in the next batch Point Of Lay birds – Pullets – to start production again. If you have a farm enterprise, you’ve got to be able to ensure that your Turn Around Time or Cycle Time, is optimal. That’s when you’ll really be able to reap the possible maximal returns on your business investment.
A lot of people don’t have that.
If you don’t have control of your marketing, of your sales, you’re going to have big problems running a livestock business enterprise.
If you don’t secure that ahead of time, when you start producing, way before the products or birds are ready for sale, you’re going to have big issues making your money back.
You’re going to find yourself sometimes feeding birds that are supposed to have been sold out, or unable to find space to stock your eggs because you can’t get them sold at the same rate at which you’re producing.
In today’s world, there’s no reason why any farm CEO should have to go through that.
And that’s what I’m trying to say here to farm CEOs. They need to begin to think intelligently. A lot of them use Smart phones – pretty powerful devices, laptops, they are Internet connected and everything. And yet they don’t leverage the Internet to do this.
It’s nobody’s fault. This is not to say they are not as smart as they should be. The point is they just don’t know the power they have in their hands.
And this is where I come in.
What I’m trying to do starting from now into 2015 and beyond, is to begin to let farmers see that they can use the Internet intelligently, to achieve better marketing output.
And not just that, but also to position themselves in a manner that will enable them generate passive income streams for themselves.
Look, a farm CEO is a consultant. If you run a farm business that is profitable, you are an authority at what you do. What you’re doing is what somebody else who is in paid employment is worried about establishing and succeeding at.
It therefore means that if that person wants to come out, you are in a perfect position to provide consultation – PAID consultation – service to that person. You can train people, you can give people induction to be able to succeed in their own farm businesses based on your own experiences and achievements.
But how do you get them to know that you can do that for them?
If you use a properly setup web platform, you will be able to offer that and generate what is called PASSIVE INCOME. Active (non passive) income is the one that you’re generating when you have to work, you have to run the farm, you have to supply the eggs to the buyer in order to get money in.
But what about the one when you’ve done all the work that needs to be done, and then people just come and say I’d like to have it and they just pay?
Like you write a handbook on what it takes to run a farm, a poultry farm, right from the day old bird to the date the birds have to be sent out for sale.
What if you could do that, and you had it as a handbook?
I’ve been selling my Feed Formulation handbook since 2002. I wrote it in 2002, it’s just 65 pages thick, but I sell it as a PDF for N8,000 (Eight Thousand Naira).
I recently (3 weeks ago) had somebody, a Filipino guy, who is based in Dubai working in a company, but he has a pig farm back in the Philippines.
And he sent me a message through my website, after finding me through Google. Then I called him and we spoke. He wanted to buy my feed formulation software. I now asked him if he knew anything about feed formulation and he said not really much.
Then I said : “you have to understand the practical side of Feed Formulation and Compounding, first of all, before you use the software, because if you don;t you won’t have a basis for making proper use of the software to formulate rations for your animals.”
So he said “What do I do?”
I said “Well, you need to buy my Feed Formulation handbook first of all.”
And he went to my online store and bought it for $82 USD (Eighty Two US Dollars).
Think about that. I wrote that book in 2002, and I got somebody to buy it for $82. I can tell you I have other books like that.
Now, as a farm CEO, you are an authority at what you do. The thing is you now have to know how to take your knowledge and expertise, and convert it to money.
You have to be able to monetize what you know. If you can do that, it means people coming to buy your farm products may just take a look and say “Can I buy your book? Can I have that your DVD audio training CD?”
You can convert your knowledge into all forms like I do. I sell all kinds of things. Most of them are just stuff I create from my head, because I know my subject.
Farm CEOs can do the same thing.
We are moving towards an economy in which Agriculture is taking centre stage again. You guys who are farm CEOs are going to be the like the pivot for the progress and development of Nigeria and the rest of Africa.
If you can begin to leverage the Internet properly the way I do, believe me, you will get to a point where you will actually be making much more money selling your knowledge via the channel of passive income generation, that you would even from the farm you’re running.
(This is) because you will get to a point where you will even be invited and get PAID to SPEAK to audiences of people who are prospective retirees. They want to hear from you because they want to do farm business.
Farm business is going to be one of the most lucrative areas to go into, in the near future in this country and across this continent.
So, if you can begin to use the Internet the way I recommend, by using what I call a Web Marketing System, you’re going to be set for life – and then you’re going to be able to help other people do the same.
That’s what I’m trying to do here. You will become a point of contact to help other people to develop the ability to stand on their own two feet as against looking for salaried employment.
So people coming out from school will actually be able to come to your farm, and you can even offer residence based programs. People will take up rooms on your farm, and they would actually be on apprenticeship with you. And they would pay, up front, 100% in advance.
I know what I’m saying. I already do a lot of that – and I’m going to have a Farm Research and Extension Advisory Services centre to do more from.
But I want to help farm CEOs do the same thing because I cannot do it alone.
Now, I’m speaking like this because I realize that a lot of farm CEOs when I make this offer to them, they don;t get it.
So I’ve decided to offer my 3 part audio series that I recorded in 2011 titled “Why You Need a Web Marketing System” on a DVD for interested persons. The MP3 audio from which THIS text transcript you’re reading now, was made, will also be included on that DVD.
If you’d like to get a copy of the MP3 audio recordings, click here to let me know.
By the time you’ve listened to the series, you should come away with a much better idea of how a Web Marketing System can help you.
Good luck!
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