AdAgrA 2023: Digging Deeper

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

In Business for the Kingdom

Jonathan Dysinger

Developing Entrepreneurship in Children

I'm sure there's going to be more that are going to be trickling in.

But we're going to talk about developing entrepreneurship in children.

And it's something that I don't know, I don't feel like I have great qualifications to talk about.

But I grew up with parents that really encouraged entrepreneurship and they encouraged me and my siblings.

Okay, it seems like it's working better now.

So, anyways, I grew up with parents that really definitely encouraged us in business endeavors, which I am very thankful for.

I think that I naturally had a desire and an interest in entrepreneurial things, so I think that helped in my position.

But all of my siblings have also had different business endeavors and and My 2 brothers that still work on the farm both have their engagements in the farm but they also have their own occupations and other endeavors that they have on the side.

So it was encouraged as we grew up and again I'm thankful for that.

He was gonna, I had asked him if he was going to be able to like come in and share because he has kids that are actually doing business endeavors, but I'm not sure if he's going to make it.

So, anyways, I'm going to share from my experience the way that I was raised and then also basically just sharing things that I appreciated, but also some of the areas that in hindsight I think could have been done better and that I think would be beneficial to you all as you're encouraging your children in their own entrepreneurial endeavors.

So, I was going to start off with a funny little video that I took.

And they were probably, I don't know, they were young at the time.

And they had this little lemonade stand that they had set up on the farm.

And they were not very, you can see, it's going to be fuzzy, but you can see my little, what is it, cousin, half-cousin, whatever, cousin's kid.

He's standing in the road like this, trying to stop me so I can come buy some lemonade from him.

Start off with a little humor and give you a fun look into a little entrepreneurial endeavor for a child.

Then how much money do you have right now?

So I can get the lemonade now and then come back later?

So do I have to bring $0.50 for Alistair and $0.50 for you?

Just bring, yeah it would be nice to see you bring 2 dollars.

Because Alistair did help me set up this.

Alright, so anyways, that was just a fun little look into their little lemonade stand business that they had going on.

I found out later that they had sold cups to some other people for 50 cents.

So they were not running a very good little operation there.

All right, I got to figure out how to get my presenter notes back up here.

So this is the developing entrepreneurship in children class.

We're going to be talking about how you can encourage and mentor and guide your children in entrepreneurial endeavors that they may be interested in or that you'd be helping them out with.

So, Okay, so like I was mentioning a second ago, my parents growing up did a really good job of encouraging us in entrepreneurial endeavors.

And we were in a good position growing up on the farm.

From the time I was about 5, it seems to be working now.

From the time I was about 5, my parent, my dad started farming and so we had a lot of opportunities to help out on the farm And you know as my parents were running their own business it opened up a lot of opportunities for us to help out in that and to have kind of auxiliary businesses like We did lemonade That's kind of I guess the stereotypical children's business but yeah, we did we we started out growing strawberries, So we had you pick strawberries in the spring and strawberries would be ripe and all the customers would come out and we would make strawberry lemonade.

So we'd mix up the lemonade and kind of puree some strawberries, mix it in there and it was delicious.

I don't remember how much we sold it for, but I think we had a set price and we didn't waver like, well, it'd be nice if you gave $2.

Over the years, we had a lot of opportunities on our farm.

And my parents never, growing up, we never got like an allowance.

And I think that's something that I think is really beneficial because the allowance, the whole concept of an allowance kind of puts kids in a position where they think they just deserve to get money on a regular basis for just being a child in your household, which I just don't think there's any value in that, and we always learned that, you know, we had to be a contributing part of the household.

So we never got any allowance or any money for doing things like washing dishes or brushing our teeth or making our beds or stuff like that.

And I just, I do really, I want to just iterate the fact that I don't think that's beneficial.

I think that kids need to learn that being a part of the household and helping around is just part of being a child and bringing value to your household.

But I do think that it's important from a fairly early age to start to encourage kids and give them opportunities to earn money.

It's kind of the foundation of society is like bringing value, earning money for the value that you bring, and using that money to bless others and to support yourself.

And, you know, as we grew, our parents, eventually, we got to the point where the parents would give us, like, we had to purchase all of our own clothes and stuff like that, and they would give us, like, allocated funds to do that.

But we just had a lot of opportunities on the farm, but then 1 of the things that looking back I think was was wise that they did is they helped facilitate opportunities outside of our household or the farm.

So I remember now it's really not going to be working.

Well, I needed to get a new computer anyways.

I can remember our neighbor down the road had like a retreat center.

And so, We would come over there, myself and my sister and a couple of our cousins, and we would clean the whole retreat center, you know, top to bottom.

I don't know how many bedrooms it was, but it was a lot of cleaning.

Kelly Coffin

Turn It Over. The Plowshare of Business

And I was asked, I want to say, Tara could share, I think it was maybe 2 years ago that I was asked to present this.

And I had the wonderful COVID, which really wasn't all that bad, last year when this was on finally again.

I was raised on a dairy farm in northern Vermont.

I had no background in ad Agra or faith of any sort.

It was through my experience in agriculture that, through my experience in agriculture that I came to have the faith that I have today which is grounded here.

And I'm gonna share a little bit about that with you today.

But I have to warn you first, I had much of this prepared.

And then I spent a little bit of time with a few young people yesterday.

And I had a number of people talk to me last night.

And then I had to go back to my hotel for meetings.

And then I stayed up probably a little later than I should have to tailor this more for us today.

So I hope this is going to be a blessing, because I wanted to really tie not only my experience and some of the technologies and whatnot we own, but principally because we're at an agricultural conference here, to share with you how the principles that I learned, that I believe with all my heart, the experiences that God afforded me when I was young led to a number of the companies and the technologies that we employ today.

So I'm going to share a little bit with that about this with you today and what I'm going to do I've got 2 presentations there's this 1 there's 1 right on its heels I'm going to go as quickly through this as I can.

Anyways, I will try to get to every question and if we don't have time, then I'll make sure that you can contact me and we can talk more if we need to, but we'll get started here.

So we're gonna be talking today about turning it over, and the title of our talk today is called The Ploughshare of Business.

And I'll share a little glimpses of history here and whatnot as we go through.

But I was raised, I was born in the early 70s, and I was raised on our family's dairy farm.

So I had a lot of experience with, in fact, horses, believe it or not.

When you're in that world that I was in, you had very little resources.

So you had to innovate, you had to develop, you had to be creating and employing your own technologies, some new technologies and whatnot.

So I was actually there on the heels of the time with horses and whatnot.

And you'll get to see a little bit of that today.

But we're gonna be asking a few questions this morning.

And the primary questions that I wanna ask today, I wanna look at what does it take to engage in mission-centered business.

I was through my life I learned that you are always doing something for others.

But today we're gonna be talking about not just business, but mission-centered business.

I'm gonna get my little thing here and see if I can flip through these remotely.

I'm always anxious, so I'm always wanting to employ my hands with something.

So What does it take to engage in mission-centered business?

And it looks like our screen is not, is that gonna work for everybody?

And incidentally, you can go online and watch probably tens of thousands of videos on, get lots of instruction, lots of really good instructions on business, and they'll tell you some incredible things.

I mean some things that are absolutely necessary in business.

We're gonna be talking about some foundational things today and we're gonna talk a lot about the focus.

Remember, we're talking about mission-centered business here.

And I'd also submit that every business, secular and otherwise, has a mission.

The mission of many is, I mean, there's a lot of really good altruistic missions out there.

There's a lot that are absolutely focused on the dollar.

Some of the greatest people that were the most, that formed the most formative roles in my life were secular businessmen.

And then most importantly here, what must be lost to achieve it a lot of a lot of information out there about what you must gain to find success in business I want to talk about what needs to be lost okay ever plow a field How many have ever plowed a field?

Okay, this should resonate with you then.

Why on earth would somebody plow a field?

Okay, so you know when I was young I absolutely loved tractors, loved tractors.

I would sit there and just listen to a tractor.

I'd go out in the barn when nobody was around and I'd start a tractor up just so I could hear it run.

Love to hear that and I always tell people, I always tell people going back to to that slide there, you could have any colored tractor that you wanted on our farm as long as it was red.

We're gonna talk about why you would plow a field.

And I wanna tell you, these things really resonate with me because when I was young I just felt that I was going through the motions what I was sharing with the children yesterday was that that when you're young you actually have a business your business is to learn and expand and grow and it's 1 of the only you know they always say that there's there's a couple things in life that you can depend on death and taxes.

Do you know that there's a business that you can engage in that they cannot tax?

It's your mind and the employment of your mind when you're young and you can even get away with that with today for the most part even when we're adults but you got to be careful because they do like to tax even that.

It's really interesting how we go forward and you find a lot of the new no-till technology and whatnot, you know, just apply some glyphosate, you know, wait for the residual to be gone in what 48 hours and you're good, just plant your crop.

You know, a lot of things that are contrary to principles in this.

And I want to encourage you while we're talking today to think in several ways.

Think about the spiritual connections here, but I want you to think about business and what you may already have, what you may be wanting to create and I want you to think about you personally.

Think of plowing and just think of your your own self personally and then I want you to think about others.

What is it, What are the implications to others on this?

It's difficult to put all this into a short series like this, but future crops depend on it.

When I was real little, we had 52 head of cattle.

We had a couple of Ash Ears, I don't recommend anybody ever get an Ash Ear, they're not very nice.

And some Jerseys, which were the sweetest little guys.

When we got, when we completed farm, when they sold our farm, I left.

It was in northern Vermont, I left, and I moved to Montana, and I never looked back.

But it's always looked back at me and it's always followed me.

But by the time we were done, we were up to 250 head of registered Holsteins, which then was a huge operation.

Tear It Apart. The Harrow of Business

I wanna, on the heels of that last question about ministering to others, we're talking a lot about employees.

You will have opportunities, the world around you.

I meet with governors, politicians, business owners.

In fact, he actually, I wasn't going to ASI last year.

I ended up going to, because he said, hey, have you ever heard of ASI?

But when I met him, I got to know him just through business.

And I told him 1 day, we were talking about health, and we were talking about food and crops and things like that.

And I told him, I said, you're going to have some kind of an event.

And I think it's going to be a significant event, coronary event.

And I said, if you survive, if you survive, because he was laughing at me about, we were talking about something 1 day, And I said, if you survive, I want you to call me.

24 hours later, his wife calls me and she said he survived.

And he had a, He said the last thing he remembers, he was at the McDonald's drive-thru, he had just taken a cup of coffee, and he had put the coffee in his console, and he said, I remember reaching with my hand, and he said, I had an Egg McMuffin in my hand.

And he said, I was starting to bring it into the car.

Well, his friend that was riding with him will tell you that his head hit the steering wheel, his foot hit the throttle, or hit the accelerator, and he shot across the road up into a auto dealership lot in amongst some other cars, and then the ambulance came.

Anyways, so all of this took place through business and following these principles.

We ended up sending him and his wife to New Start at Weimar and I can't tell anybody how powerful that is.

I got on him the other day because he'd strayed a little bit, and I was seeing some of it.

And he got on me the other day, and he said, you're in trouble.

He says, I'm 4 pounds from where I was when I left Weimar.

He ends up, he bought a hospital and put an addiction recovery center in, a HIPAA compliant addiction recovery center in, and guess what he's rolling out?

Guess what programs he's rolling out across the boards?

He even bought a facility to host New Start.

He bought the old Seventh-day Adventist church that had closed.

And you get to know these people and love them.

And I mean, it's just a tremendous experience.

So OK, so I'm going to unplug this for a moment here.

And we're going to get started with our next 1.

I'm going to start, if you'd like, I have some, you want to see some pictures of our life?

Okay, I'll give you, show you a few pictures of our life here.

So I'm gonna go, before we go into harrowing, we're gonna, we'll spend a few minutes here and we'll look at some pictures.

I shared this, and I see some new faces here.

Of all plowing and harrowing, the plowing and harrowing of our own hearts is the hardest work, and I think I may add, it prepares for the richest harvest.

When we got into the food business, we're in all kinds of businesses, but when we got into the food business, I remember reading a statement and It spoke about harrowing.

Now that resonated with me because I'd harrowed many a field.

But the statement said that to those who would engage largely in the food business, that's 1 of the technologies that we had developed, we were going to go into the food business, they would find it to be the most soul harrowing work.

And I read that, but I have to tell you, I didn't really understand my position like we had spoken about in the last session, and I didn't really apply it.

I can tell you that that business has been, now when you think about harrowing, what do you do when you harrow a field?

Now the field is turned over, the clods are broken up And the harrow comes in and rips it to shreds, tears it to pieces, pulverizes the soil.

There's lots of different kinds of harrows out there.

And I realized early on that the farm and agriculture had well prepared me for the world that I was entering into today.

And I didn't even know God, but he knew me.

And these, if you think, that photo actually is from the 1970s.

In fact, the first real color camera was 1 that I got for my birthday.

And I just blew through the film and then couldn't afford more film.

But anyways, you'll get to see a few of these.

I can tell you it's 1 of the most beautiful places you've ever seen in your life.

I think you could see across the state of Vermont from there.

You could see into New York and you could see into New Hampshire.

I used to climb up on that roof right there.

I wasn't supposed to, but I'd climb up on that roof in the fall and I'd look out, and I remember laying there on that roof and thinking, how can this be so beautiful, so beautiful?

This right here, 60 feet to the top of that ridge pole.

And this was actually before I was born, because there's the new barn.

And if you ever needed anything, I guarantee you that was the place to go.

And I remember my grandfather, there was a young boy 1 day, my dad, my dad was a businessman, married my mom, it was my mom's side of the family that had the farm.

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Series

In Business for the Kingdom

Turn It Over. The Plowshare of Business

Transcript

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Parent Conference

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Recorded

Parts

Developing Entrepreneurship in Children

1h

Turn It Over. The Plowshare of Business

1h 15m

Tear It Apart. The Harrow of Business

1h 21m

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