Why New Leaders Should Earn Their Roles on the Farm

Anyone who meets Bruce Frasier of Dixondale Farms quickly realizes he’s a great story teller. His anecdotes always tell a bigger story. As we drove around his operation last April, he shared how he first got started on the farm.

He was fresh out of the military with the type of rank (lieutenant colonel) that draws job offers from Fortune 500 companies. His father-in-law asked him if he really wanted to work for Procter & Gamble, who had recruited him.

“No, sir. What I really want to do is work for you, but you haven’t offered me a job,” Bruce told him. His father-in-law, Wallace Martin, offered him the job, but told him he needed to do a couple things. First, he wanted him to go to the local car dealership and pick out any truck he wanted. And Martin would pay.

“I bought the plainest pickup they had. Though it had AM radio and air conditioning,” he said.

Martin waited in the driveway as Bruce drove up. He gave him a single nod. He passed the first test.

The next test was for him to go to the farm foreman Miguel, who’d been with Dixondale 50 years, and do whatever he told him to do.

“For the next two years,” Martin said, “I expect you to be the first person on the farm, the last one to leave, and you do only what Miguel tells you to do.”

Training the Next Generation

Back when I was in the garden center industry, a store owner proudly introduced me to his son, who was the new general manager.

The son looked like he had been at a frat party the night before and couldn’t be more than 22 years old. He had a bored look on his face. Behind him were the rest of the staff. The owner didn’t bother with individual introductions, just bragged about how long some of them had been there. None of them looked happy.

That garden center went out of business a couple years after my visit.

Bruce Frasier’s father-in-law prepared him for running a farm the right way. Start from the bottom, respect the experience of those around him, and fully understand what and who you lead. An excellent education and resume only matters once those two things are in place.