The 1% Rule: How 14 Minutes a Day Can Help Future-Proof Your Farm

Tue, 26 May 2026 20:37:50 GMT

When Angie Traetow’s father returned to his South Dakota roots to farm in 1984, the U.S. agricultural economy was crumbling. He survived the brutal decade through a combination of grit, hard labor and a good dose of deliberate, intentional planning. Decades later, it’s a lesson Traetow is sharing with the wider agricultural community as she urges today’s farmers to dedicate just 14 minutes a day — exactly 1% of every 24 hours — to strategic thinking and planning.

“When you actually do the math, it’s crazy,” Traetow shared during a recent episode of The Dirt podcast. “Fourteen minutes a day equals 98 minutes a week... that totals to over two working weeks a year.”

As the senior manager of North American learning and development for Nutrien, Traetow challenges growers to step away from daily practices and distractions and repurpose 14 minutes daily toward big-picture planning and decisions that can help support long-term viability.

Tackling Volatility And Other ‘Tough Stuff’

In an industry defined by unpredictable variables, proactive planning is a critical need. Traetow notes that dedicating this daily sliver of time allows growers to focus on things like developing grain marketing plans to mitigate financial risk.

Beyond market logistics, the 1% rule can also help farmers tackle the emotionally charged hurdles that many choose to avoid or are putting off, such as succession planning. For multi-generational operations, the sheer scale of this task can cause paralysis. Traetow suggests using those 14 daily minutes to break massive decisions into manageable, “bite-sized” pieces.

She points to her own father’s success as a prime example of this micro-planning in action. By being intentional and communicating clearly, over time he ensured a seamless transition for the fifth generation of their family farm.

“He’s been very intentional with his succession plan to the point where he has communicated to all of us kids, even those that are off the farm, what that succession plan is, so there are no surprises,” Traetow says.

Breaking The ‘Always Done It This Way’ Cycle

Traetow believes embracing strategic planning and management also requires a fundamental mindset shift regarding technology and tradition. Being intentional means adopting modern tools to maximize every acre, rather than relying on legacy methods just for tradition’s sake.

“Don’t just do what’s always been done,” she encourages. “Utilize technology... to work smarter, not harder.”

Thinking outside the box often requires structural creativity, too. Traetow notes that her husband applies this exact philosophy to their own business. “We know we have to diversify our operation to make our farm work,” she says. “He partners with another farmer, and we also do a lot of custom work to help with that.”

Moving Beyond The Farm Gate

Ultimately, the 1% philosophy extends beyond business logistics. Traetow notes that trading 14 minutes of aimless social media scrolling for personal reflection, reading market reports, or simply being fully present with family can yield massive personal dividends.

It’s a small investment with a compounding return.

“I’d like to challenge our farmers and our customers to take 1%, or 14 minutes, of their day and be more strategic and think about the big picture of their operation and their business,” Traetow says. “The results will follow.”

You can hear the The Dirt podcast featuring Traetow here .

The New Survival Skill: Build Like a Polymath, Lead Like a CEO

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:15:55 GMT

Have you been concerned about jobs being eliminated because of artificial intelligence (AI)? My exhortation is that, now more than ever, if you want to protect your position in the market, your company and your role, you must become more innovative and entrepreneurial with and through AI.

To lead, not just survive but thrive, you must become an AI-driven entrepreneurial polymath.

Some entrepreneurs dedicate their lives to building and scaling a single enterprise, but the most impactful among them — entrepreneurial polymaths (or serial entrepreneurs) — never stop creating. They build multiple ventures, innovate across disciplines and contribute to both industry and society.

Polymath comes from the Greek “polymathēs” — “having learned much.” Historically, polymaths like Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin applied mastery across multiple fields. In an entrepreneurial context, a polymath entrepreneur blends adaptability and insatiable curiosity with the commercial instincts to turn knowledge and innovation into enterprises.

Where the typical entrepreneur may invest all energy into one idea, the polymath entrepreneur has a restless drive to solve problems repeatedly. With AI, this isn’t just easier; it has become essential for survival.

The question for you is: Are you a maintainer, a one-venture wonder, or do you have the capacity for ongoing leadership and innovation across multiple pursuits?

Leverage for Leaders

Over my career I have interacted with thousands of CEOs, hundreds of whom have been clients and many who have become friends. The most fascinating and fruitful among them have always been the polymath entrepreneurs.

Whether they wear the title of CEO, founder or simply manager, they are the true engines of progress. They see opportunities others overlook, and in an age of technological disruption and AI, they often find it easy to reinvent industries.

But vision and creativity alone are not enough. As Peter Drucker reminds us, “Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.”

Entrepreneurs often have blind spots in the disciplines of management, strategy, innovation management, implementation, culture, resource allocation, productivity and sustainable value creation. Without these, even a polymath’s brilliance can stall.

One shortcut is leverage: Partner with external strategists who’ve implemented AI-driven innovations across many businesses, so you’re not learning everything the expensive way, through delays, misfires and internal politics.

When partnered with strong functional leadership, however, the polymath entrepreneur becomes nearly unstoppable. Their power multiplies when aligned with:

Operations leadership (chief operating officer/VP of operations) to translate vision into scalable systems.
Financial leadership (chief financial officer) to ensure disciplined capital allocation and risk management.
Specialized expertise (e.g., internal full-time or external consulting or fractional chief marketing officer, chief information officer or chief strategy officer) to deepen customer, technology or domain execution.

As Michael Porter taught: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” The polymath thrives because they can choose across domains, letting go of the old to seize the new. And as Joseph Schumpeter argued in “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,” the entrepreneur is the true agent of “creative destruction.” The polymath entrepreneur embodies this, not just once, but repeatedly, breaking down old models and building new ones.

Unlike the myth that entrepreneurship is a product of personality or charisma, whether Steve Jobs at Apple, Richard Branson at Virgin or Elon Musk with his many ventures, Drucker insisted that entrepreneurship is a discipline. It can be studied, replicated and managed. What separates polymath entrepreneurs is their repeated ability to master this discipline across domains.

Bottom line: The most successful will be those who will be applying the fast-evolving tools of AI to not just innovate and add new value through the optimization of your organization but also to create new solutions for your customer/market that innovate your industry — and often will create a new sustainable business faster and more value-creating than ever before.