“Make money with the pencil and with your back.”
That was something my dad said to me about farm profits when I was a teenager. Starting at age 10, one of my jobs on the farm was to scoop hog manure by hand every morning and every night. Dad’s point was you have to do things like that, working hard, but you also have to work smart and figure out as many ways as possible to make or save money with things like input costs, taxes, financing, etc. While most dads probably spend time with their kids doing things like playing catch, going to games, talking sports, fishing, hunting, or just hanging out, I don’t know if my dad did any of that with me for more than about 10 minutes total. Our time was spent working, talking business, and of course, him yelling at me for doing miscellaneous farm work incorrectly. That was fun…