Money and Maths

I hated maths at school.

I don’t use the word hate lightly because Mum always used to say that to truly hate something, you have to love it first. I’m still not convinced she was right, because I definitely hated maths long before I loved anything about it.

It all felt meaningless. A collection of formulas that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with the life I imagined for myself. I remember sitting in class wondering when any of this would ever matter. I wanted to write the numbers upside down to form silly words just to relieve the boredom.

So you can imagine the surprise of those who knew me when my first proper job after university was… at the bank.

Honestly, it was never part of some grand career plan. It was a stopgap. A sensible decision. A “this will do for now” sort of job. I assumed I’d learn a few things while I worked out what I really wanted to do.

The mistake wasn’t taking the job. The mistake was believing I already knew what it would teach me.

Looking back, I learned more about myself in those first few years than I ever did during the whole stretch of education that came before it. School had quietly convinced me that I wasn’t “a numbers person”. Yet there I was, surrounded by numbers every day, discovering that perhaps the problem had never been the numbers at all.

Because maths and money aren’t the same. Finance and economics aren’t the same. Neither exists without business. And business doesn’t exist without people.

That simple realisation changed everything.

Around that time my boss called me into his office. “Office” might be giving it too much credit. It was one of those little cubby holes tucked away in an old British high street bank, exactly as you’d imagine it. Certainly nothing glamorous.

He asked if I’d be interested in working with farming businesses. Jackpot.

As someone who’d grown up around farming, this felt like home. These were people I understood. They could teach me, and perhaps, if I worked hard enough, I might be able to help them too.

I had absolutely no idea that one conversation would shape the rest of my career.

I loved that job. Not because of the spreadsheets. Not because of the finance. Not even because of the economics, although that was about to hit me like a cold dead fish.

I loved it because, for the first time, I understood what the numbers were really saying.

Most people see a profit and loss account or a balance sheet as pages of figures with headings down the side.

I never could. To me, they told a story. Behind every number was a family making difficult decisions. Behind every balance sheet was someone carrying responsibility that most people would never see. Behind every cashflow forecast was somebody lying awake at two in the morning wondering whether they were making the right decisions for the people they cared about most.

The numbers weren’t the story. They simply revealed it. And once I’d seen that, I was hooked.

Hopelessly. Genuinely. Unexpectedly hooked.

Fast forward through a global financial crisis, a few different jobs, brilliant colleagues, more lessons than I can count, an old farming business, building a new farming business with my husband Jono and becoming Mum to our wonderful daughter Isobel, and one thing has never changed.

I still love numbers that tell a story.

But over time my curiosity shifted. Less about the numbers themselves and far more about what successful businesses make possible.

Because I’ve never believed profit is the purpose of business. Profit gives us choices. It gives us freedom, it gives us options. Profit isn’t the purpose of a business but, it does make the purpose possible.

It gives us the opportunity to build the life we actually want, instead of simply accepting the one that happens to us. That’s a very different thing.

People sometimes ask why I’ve spent my career in agriculture. The truth is, I haven’t. Not really. I’ve spent my career working with people. It just so happens that many of those people are farmers.

And despite my very best efforts, I can’t stay away from animals for very long without feeling like the sky is caving in. So perhaps farming chose me just as much as I chose it.

What has never stopped astonishing me is the people. I honestly think farmers are among the most extraordinary business leaders you’ll ever meet.

Not because they would describe themselves that way. Most never would. But look at what they’re asked to do:

They’re strategists. Mechanics. Meteorologists. Ecologists. Financial managers. Employers. Parents. Innovators. Negotiators. Caretakers. Risk managers. Community leaders.

Often all before breakfast.

They’re expected to make decisions with incomplete information, adapt to circumstances entirely outside their control and somehow continue showing up every single day because the animals still need feeding and tomorrow’s weather doesn’t care how yesterday went.

The capability that exists within farming businesses never ceases to amaze me. And yet, somewhere along the way, we’ve become surrounded by noise.

Policy. Politics. Markets. Weather. Social media. Opinion. Expectation. Crisis.

The next thing that’s apparently going to change everything.

Some of those things matter. Many are completely outside our control.

And over time, I think we’ve become so accustomed to carrying them that we almost stop questioning whether they deserve our attention at all.

“What choice do we have?”

“It’s just the way it is.”

“We just have to get on with it.”

Do we? What if it doesn’t have to be?

What if the very things that have sustained farming businesses for generations—people, principles and good business—are also the things that will build their future?

What if we turned the volume down on everything we can’t control…

…and turned it up on the things we can?

Turn up your favorite song, smile and wave because these are our businesses and we get to decide how they run.

That belief was sitting quietly in the back of my mind for years. I just didn’t yet have the language for it.

Then I attended Ranching for Profit.

For seven days it felt like coming home. Not because everything was new, quite the opposite. It was because so much of it wasn’t. It felt as though someone had taken years of half-formed thoughts that had been bouncing around my head and gently put them into the right order. The fog lifted.

I’ve never been very good at talking about art. I’m always worried I’ll miss the point or say the wrong thing. But this felt like art to me. Not because it was abstract. Because it revealed something that had been in plain sight all along.

It didn’t give me a collection of techniques. It showed me the whole picture.

People. Leadership. Economics. Finance. Decision-making. Purpose.

They weren’t separate subjects anymore, they were parts of the same system.

No single number tells you everything. No single decision defines a business. No single practice guarantees success.

It’s how the pieces work together that matters. That’s what principles do. Practices change. Technology changes. Markets change. Governments change. Principles don’t.

That’s why they’re principles. They’re fundamental truths that continue to hold, regardless of time, place or circumstance.

And then came the thought I couldn’t shake. For years I’d heard people say, “It’s the people behind the business who make it work.” It never quite sat right with me.

People aren’t behind the business. They’re in front of it. And perhaps even more importantly… it isn’t the people’s job to work for the business. The business should work for the people. That single shift changed how I saw everything.

Planning for Profit wasn’t created because I wanted a consultancy business. In truth, I’ve never been interested in being a consultant or an expert. It exists because I believe businesses can create options instead of limitations.

Because I believe profit gives us choices. Because I believe principles outlast practices. Because I believe extraordinary businesses are built by ordinary people who are willing to keep learning.

Most of all, it exists because I believe in farmers. Not in some romanticised version of farming. In the people. The people who quietly carry enormous responsibility. The people who rarely give themselves enough credit. The people whose businesses have the potential to create remarkable lives—not just for themselves, but for the generations that follow.

If Planning for Profit helps even a handful of people see their business differently… If it helps someone replace overwhelm with clarity…if it helps reminds us why we do this…If it helps create one more business that gives people more life instead of demanding more from it…

Then every step of this journey has been worthwhile.

I’ll always be grateful to Dallas Mount and everyone at Ranching for Profit for trusting me with the opportunity to bring these principles to the UK.

And I’ll always be grateful to the late Stan Parsons. His legacy isn’t simply a programme. It’s a way of thinking. A way of leading. A way of seeing business through timeless principles rather than temporary practices.

Legacies like that don’t belong to one family. They belong to everyone who chooses to carry them forward. I feel incredibly privileged to play a small part in that story.

And I hope, in time, that together we help many more people write their own.