John Ellsworth has served the agricultural industry in numerous capacities during the past 30 years. Following his graduation with degrees in Dairy Husbandry from both the State University of New York at Cobleskill and the University of Georgia, John worked as a consultant for the Holstein Association from 1979 until 1987. During that time, he had the opportunity to interact with hundreds of businesses throughout the US in the areas of management and genetic improvement and delivered presentations to operators in twenty different states. He also taught a major management seminar for 30 dairy industry leaders in Budapest, Hungary in 1980. John was ranked number one in Consultant Productivity from 1981 to 1984 and was selected as recipient of the Holstein Association’s “1987 Top Consultant Award.”
In an effort to serve businesses in a different capacity, John opted to pursue a Master of Business Administration degree with a focus in Finance at Duke University where he was the recipient of a Business School Scholarship. During his attendance, he was also awarded the Robert Rumler Business Scholarship twice. Following his MBA graduation in 1989, he served two years as Director of Operations for NASCO International, Inc. of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin where he was directly responsible for strategy development for six subsidiary companies and managed worldwide business operations for this $120 Million mail order and manufacturing company. He also guided the turnaround of the company’s Canadian operation by growing sales 20% in one year to assist in the subsidiary’s return to profitability that same year.
John has since served eight years in the banking industry, working with two of the three largest commercial lenders to US agriculture, with a particular focus on agribusiness financing. During his three years at Wells Fargo Bank, he redesigned their budgets and cash flow models for use in borrower analysis within their $2 Billion agricultural lending division and authored a bank wide report on the use of options within agricultural commodities. From 1994 until early 1999, John served as a Vice President and Commercial Loan Officer for Sanwa Bank in Modesto, managing a $73 Million portfolio of borrowers throughout California.
In late 1998, John started the development of a client base throughout the US, working with dairymen and related businesses in the areas of strategic planning, debt restructuring, and cash flow management. He has worked with over 80 different business operations during the past 24 years, assisting them to improve their financial picture. He believes we are in an exciting era for most entrepreneurs, where decisions that sometimes must be made in a heartbeat can impact a business for many years to come. As a result, working through his company, Success Strategies, Inc., he and his Team are striving to provide a positive impact with clients that want to move forward in the financial success of their business.
John has been a regular columnist in multiple Dairy Business publications since 2001 and has been heard on DairyLine Radiofrom 2007-2010 where he offered his insights through his “Success Strategies” program. In 2005, he authored his first book entitled A Roadmap for Success. He has since authored two more e-books: The Business Confidence Maximizer and Where Have all the Lenders Gone? In April & July of 2013, respectively, he published two more books: Taking Your Business to the Next Leveland The Five Factors Guaranteed to Impact your Future. Most recently, he published another e-book entitled Surviving the Firestorm of the Dairy Industry. He is a regular guest on “Dairy Business Corporation’s Podcast Interview Series,” as well as a guest twice on the Jefo Corporation’s Podcast Series “RumiNation,” speaking on the topic of building business profitability. To view his regular monthly Success Strategies videos & read the related blogs, please feel free to visit his website at www.success-strategies.com.
He loves to read, maintains a regular exercise program and enjoys extensive travel throughout Europe, South America and Southeast Asia. He is happily married to Judy, his bride of 41 years, and together, they are the proud parents of two very successful children, Spencer & Melanie.
“If you measure something, you can understand it. If you understand it, you can control it, and if you can control it, you can improve it.” The same holds true in your monthly budgeting.
The reality is that it is nearly impossible to complete & follow a monthly budget without improving your overall financial position. There are several reasons for this, so I would challenge you to do this.
First, just developing a budget for yourself will raise your awareness of what you have for revenue or income sources and then also boost your cognizance of how much you are spending each month. Next, you will come to grips with the reality of one of three facts. Either you need to boost your income sources, reduce your outgoing expenditures or, thank goodness, if you have more income than expenses, you can then save some money. Of course, this is fantastic! You just need to determine where you will store or invest those extra funds each month…
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