News - Success Strategies

It’s a Different Ballgame!

In one of my previous blogs, I had referred to comments from Viktor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, where he stated that his survival at Auschwitz, the vilest of Nazi concentration camps, depended upon the realization that his old life was over. His new life and future would be vastly different.

April 13, 2019/by jellsworth

Plugging the Leaks

In my last blog, I talked about knowing your costs of milk production on a per cwt basis. While some may be thinking that knowing this number is great fodder for your local coffee shop conversations, there is truly a lot more benefit to knowing this number. If you know your cost per cwt, you will be positioned to complete a number of tasks. . .

March 28, 2019/by jellsworth

Tips for Dairy Producers Having Cash Flow Problems

This week, John Ellsworth of Success Strategies sat down with Joel Hastings of DairyBusiness.com for an interview. In it John gives some tips for producers and business owners who are "stuck." That is when they are faced with a number of problems, and just can't decide how or where to begin to solve them and how they can move forward.

March 28, 2019/by amindaxer

It’s Ground Hog Day!

Recently, I was reading a book entitled Your 5 Day Weekend and discovered the following quote, which was part of an analysis that the authors Nik Halik and Garrett B. Gunderson were relating to their readers about the dangers of the historical mantra of putting in our 40-hour work week and then retiring, after which we would get to live on about 40% of the income that we had previously received each week when we were working. I’m not here to judge the merits or challenges of doing this, but it got me thinking about another “drug” that we sometimes get trapped by when we are in business.

March 14, 2019/by jellsworth

Where Do We Go from Here?

Wow! This has been a difficult start to our new year. Cash flowing has been difficult with milk in the neighborhood of $14-15/cwt. Given the rising cost of so many inputs and the recent difficulty of acquiring the financing you need, what can you do? Most banks still seem to understand this, but there is, at best, the possibility of delays on loan renewals because even their patience with the dairy industry has been wearing thin. One of the items I am most concerned about, in the entire scenario of finance and the world economy, revolves around the seeming presence of paralysis – that is, the inability to make a decision.

February 28, 2019/by jellsworth

An Often-Forgotten Topic: Interest Rates

Wow! If you watch the headlines in the dairy industry, you’ll note that there are a tremendous number of changes going on. Exports are up in some markets. Others are down. Block cheese prices are up, but barrels are down. The trade balance is changing, and our recent government shutdown is impacting some reports we receive. However, while all of this is true and likely of interest to you, there is another factor that you might just want to look at – interest rates. They represent an area that has not received a lot of attention lately, simply because they have been so low since 2008’s financial crisis.

February 17, 2019/by jellsworth

Will You Be Ready? – Part 2

As I promised in my last blog, I said I’d offer some key examples of producers who had positively turned the corner, following 2009’s disastrous results. In all of these examples, they were ready for an upturn in milk prices, in terms of what those higher prices could add to their business. However, they were also producers whose herds had Pregnancy Rates above 20%, Heat Detection Rates over 60%, and Milk Flows well above their breakeven levels at normal milk prices.

January 30, 2019/by jellsworth

Will You Be Ready? – Part 1

Back in 2010, I recall writing an article that asked the very same question I listed in the title of this blog: Will You Be Ready? Ready for what, you might be asking, and my answer would be ready for the higher levels of profitability that await us in the next several years.

January 14, 2019/by jellsworth

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