How the work actually goes
Six steps, though it’s rarely as tidy as a list makes it look. Notice that reaching out to lenders is third, not first — I want to understand your situation completely before I represent it to anyone. And step five exists because sometimes steps one through four aren’t enough, which I’d rather say plainly than pretend otherwise.
Understand the situation before anything else
You send me what you have, as it sits: business and personal tax returns, balance sheets, personal financial statements, budgets, bank statements, land rent rolls and lease agreements, crop insurance records, the equipment list and the notes against it, open accounts payable and receivable. It does not need to be organized. I rebuild it into a picture that actually reflects the operation — every entity, every landlord, every payable, every lien.
Then we talk, and this part matters as much as the paperwork. Why is the bank hesitating? Sometimes a lender got enthusiastic about agriculture five years ago and now wants out of the sector entirely — that has nothing to do with you. Sometimes three dry years dragged your historical debt service coverage below what their policy allows. Those are completely different problems with completely different answers.
I want to know which one you’re in before I pick up the phone to anybody. By the end of this I know your numbers better than your lender ever will, and I can answer their first round of questions before they think to ask them.
Build the lender-ready package
Statements that tie out. A cash flow projection with defensible assumptions. A collateral schedule. A written narrative explaining the operation, the history and the hard years — because a credit analyst who has to guess at the story will guess badly. This is the document that either earns confidence in the first ten minutes or loses it.
Work a long list of lenders
Banks, life insurance company programs, FSA guarantees, specialty ag lenders, asset-based facilities, private credit. Each has a different appetite, a different speed and a different tolerance for a complicated story. We go to several in parallel, so one committee’s hesitation doesn’t cost you a month.
Walk them through it myself
I present the file, take the questions, and answer them the same day. I spent my early career as the analyst on the other end of these conversations, so I know which concerns are real and which are just the next item on a checklist. When a file goes quiet, I call — every time.
If it stalls, change the picture
This is where most of the creative work happens, and we work it from the least painful option down: lenders outside the traditional banks, additional vendor credit, an equipment refinance onto longer terms, a consolidated debt stack, cleaned-up intercompany balances, or a reshaped ask. Selling ground sits at the bottom of that list, not the top. Then back to the lenders with a stronger file.
Support the negotiation
Rate matters less than people think; structure matters more. Advance rates, covenants, reporting requirements, guarantees, amortization, what happens in a bad year. I stay in this part, because a loan with a covenant you can’t meet next season isn’t a win — it’s next season’s problem.
Bring the real numbers
You don’t need to prepare anything or clean anything up first. The messy version is the useful version — it’s what actually happened, and I’d rather find the problems myself than have a lender find them later.
Honesty, early
Tell me about the bad year, the missed payment, the disagreement with a partner. I will find it anyway, and it’s far better handled by us than discovered by a lender.
Documents in one push
The single biggest thing you control is how fast the deep dive finishes. Getting me everything at once, even incomplete, beats a trickle over six weeks.
Permission to speak for you
The value is in me being able to answer a lender directly while you’re in the field. That only works if everyone knows I’m authorized to have the conversation.
A decision-maker at the table
If there are several owners, we need whoever can actually say yes to a change in structure involved from the start, not brought in at the end.
I work with a few farms at a time
This work only functions if I’m genuinely all-in — knowing your financial situation cold, talking to lenders myself, and having enough room in the week that you can call and think out loud with me about an idea. That isn’t something I can do for a long list of clients at once.
So I keep the number small on purpose. It means I may not be able to start immediately, and it means I’ll tell you early if I don’t think I can give your operation the attention it needs. It also means that when I do take something on, you get all of it.
Ready to start the deep dive?
First call is a conversation about your situation — not a sales pitch, and not a commitment.