The Full Episode Audio:
Show Notes:
What if the most underutilised tool in your family business isn't a piece of machinery, a management software, or a new hire — but a structured room full of the right people, asking the right questions?
In this episode of the Agricoach Wealth & Wisdom Podcast, Ben Law sits down with Mike Logan AM — farmer, business coach, and one of Australia's most respected advisory board chairmen — to unpack why some of the most successful family businesses in agriculture have quietly adopted a structure that most farming families have never even considered: the family advisory board.
Mike brings rare credentials to this conversation. He didn't come from a boardroom — he came from the paddock. A cotton and beef farmer who once stretched his balance sheet to breaking point to build something bigger, Mike knows what it means to make high-stakes decisions with no-one in the room but yourself.
That hard-won experience eventually led him from farming to chairing advisory boards across Australia and internationally, and it gives him a perspective on family business that few advisors can match.
This conversation goes well beyond the concept and into the mechanics — how these boards are structured, why they work, and what stops most families from ever getting the benefit of one. Mike shares the framework he uses to run every board meeting, why he's obsessed with cash over profit, and what the single biggest trap is for any family that tries to run a strategic conversation without the right structure in place.
There's also a moment in this episode that farming families with the next generation coming through will want to pause and replay — a candid exchange between Ben and Mike about what it actually takes to transfer wisdom from one generation to the next, and why leaving it to chance — or to osmosis — could be one of the most costly assumptions a family ever makes.
Whether you're running a multi-generational enterprise across thousands of hectares or a tightly held family operation just starting to think about succession, this episode asks a question worth sitting with: Are the right people in the room when the decisions that matter most get made?