Trapped Value

Extracted from the Farm Tender weekly Newsletter - Sign up and get the email every Wednesday morning before 6 am. www.farmtender.com.au

By Dwain Duxson.

We didn't know the back seat of our car had value until Uber came along. We didn't know the spare bedroom in our house had so much value until Airbnb turned up.

These are classic, what we call "trapped value" scenarios that have been unleashed, and created markets we never really thought were possible.

What is the trapped value on your Farm or in your Rural Businesses?

Could it be Farm accommodation, using your ute as a delivery service, niche more high-value Crops, more intensive Livestock enterprises, Sheds as storage, Machinery Hire, the list goes on.

It could be an entirely new business model for a current enterprise. It could be that your fill an empty Hay shed with Hay when the price is rock bottom. That would qualify.

It could be something completely left field.

The limit is your imagination.

So how do we untrap the trapped value in our businesses? Is it actually viable for you to put time, money or effort into something else? Will it be a small blip on the radar that is not worth pursuing? Where do we start?

Most Farmer's I know are pretty busy, and starting something new will only add to the workload. But there are things out there there that only require a small amount of work but can deliver decent returns.

A good exercise would be to get a list of potential trapped value things and investigate further the low hangers or the ones that require the least amount of time or effort.

An example of this could be grabbing a notebook or iPad and walking around your Farm and identifying Machinery or Equipment items you haven't used for 2 years, and potentially offloading them.

You might need to insert some form of technology to bring the trapped value to the surface. For a free plug, Farm Tender could be the tech (online Marketplace), and your trapped value is the Tractor sitting in the shed gathering dust.

In these times, where costs are rising, wouldn't it be smart to offset some of those costs by looking for revenue earning ideas outside the core operations?

So make sure you allocate some "thinking time" into what might be the trapped value in your business.

End of message.