The easiest way to make money is…

Everywhere we look there are people recommending ways to make money. You have influencers online promoting side gigs or MLM companies promising easy cash. The farm community is not immune to this either. Have you ever heard - If you are going to raise some animals, get more to earn a little cash. Or just add on an egg business for easy cash. How about the buy a feeder cow in the spring, feed on pasture, and sell in the fall.

Now, I am not saying you can’t make money from these activities, especially with proper planning but these are definitely not easy ways. Say you buy those feeder cows in the spring. Now you need fencing, water, a trailer, etc. You need to watch them every day. Anything could happen - get sick, injured (or if you bought a goat it might just lay down and never get up). What about if the market changes by the fall? So many unknowns and I see too many people jump in without proper planning and just as important, a mentor.

I believe the easiest way to make money is:

Save money!

Why is saving actually easier? I believe every process has waste that can be cut out if you look for it. Now I am not saying go with the cheapest products you can, there is a cost/benefit to everything. Ever notice the wasted feed from your chickens?

This is especially true when you look at your personal finances. Let’s say you find $10 per week to save. Most would say, “Congrats! You will save $520 per year.” That is true but think of it from a self employed perspective, in order to have $10 per week to spend, you had to sell more. If my profit margin is 50%, I would have had to sell $20 in order to profit $10. This doesn’t include taxes either! I look at it as, “Congrats! this savings impacted $1,040 worth of revenue.”

When I was in college, my sister converted everything to ramen noodle packages. Yes as broke college students we ate a lot of instant noodles. So the $10 became 100 packages of ramen noodles! Slightly silly but you can think of it the same way for your products. That $1,000 of revenue is 10 sold goats or 5 less breeding head that I NEED to have. With todays current ramen noodle price, that would also be 3,000 packs of ramen noodles…