Chapter 4: Blasting Off to Planet Profit (6 Figures A Month)

I finally had a chance to make a difference. Here's how I did.

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“Are you still poor?”

The mother and son looked up at me. The boy’s overturned fedora sat on the cobblestone with a few coins and crumpled bills inside it. At first, they didn’t recognize me as the guy who’d given his last dime to help them. I repeated the question slower and louder.

My generosity had led me to Jean-Claude—and now I had the chance to turn his farm profitable and launch him into a stratosphere of wealth creation that Provence had never experienced in its short history.

The mother and son sat in silence. Finally, they recognized the generous man from a few weeks before. The tears streamed down her cheeks as the mother stood up and pressed her face against my hard, full, square chest. Her son followed suit and I embraced them both like my own.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The two of them sat in the back of Jean-Claude’s truck as I drove back to the farm. My mind was filled with plans. With these two on payroll, there was no stopping me. The path to a cashflow positive future was as clear as the road before us.

There were a few levers I would immediately pull that would double profits overnight. The rest required more work but would turn a dying family farm into one where the primary crop was cash.

“No,” Jean-Claude said between chews of bread. “No, I won’t raise prices.”

“Jean-Claude, you need to trust me. Do you trust me?”

“Yes, Johnny, you know that I trust you.”

“Then do what I say.”

He sat at the table and turned to look out of his kitchen window. It was a bright day. The type of day where you believed you could do anything and be anyone. The morning sun when it was Jean-Claude’s face really showed his age.

“Okay then,” he finally muttered. Then, he repeated the words with a slap on the table and smiled. Here I was, the young American, sent by the gods to save this farm. And now I finally could. I looked down at the table. My hands were calloused and dirty. If it was easy, I thought, they wouldn’t call it work.

“Jean-Claude,” I continued. “Do you remember when we met? How I had no money because I gave it to those poor people?”

He nodded. “It was one of the nicest gestures I’d ever heard about. It was unforgettable.”

“There are people I want you to meet. Isabelle, Lucas, come out,” I called.

The pantry’s door opened slowly. I’d asked them to wait inside it to surprise Jean-Claude. Unfortunately, shortly after my return, there had been an urgent issue with the barn that had required our attention for a number of hours. Isabelle and Lucas had waited faithfully in the pantry all that time and it assured me they were the right hires.

Isabelle stepped into the kitchen like a hot cup of tea on a winter’s day. Having received the gift of employment, the stress of life had melted away and she’d let her hair down. She was as stunning as a galloping mare ccrossing a snow-covered field. Lucas wasn’t bad himself—young and lean with a frame that would be filled out by the hard labor of farm work. I knew that kind of labor and what it did to a young body. That labor raised me. Lucas now wore his fedora proudly on his head. Jean-Claude rose to meet them both.

“Jean-Claude,” I said. “Meet your newest employees. They live with us now.”

After warm introductions and afternoon wine, I got down to business.

First, we would increase prices. The local restaurants were getting too friendly of a deal from Jean-Claude and it was time to make some enemies. We doubled our prices overnight, making our margins fatter than a pig. We projected to triple them by the next year.

Second, I shared our new strategy for market days in town. Jean-Claude had the charisma of a statue and almost no sex appeal. From now on, he would go with Isabelle who was instructed to act as a siren of sorts to lure would-be buyers. If we played our cards right, we’d make enough at the market to cover her salary in just a number of weeks. With basic costs covered, I could turn the farm into a money printer.

For my final plan, I sat Jean-Claude down and explained the value of social media and how we’d leverage influencers to commodify the farm and turn it into the V12 diesel engine of a capital creating machine with near infinite profit potential. As my final act, I would create the ultimate event space and B&B. We’d capture the super high-net worth segment of society made up of oligarchs, oil barons, manufacturing giants, and social media influencers.

Believe or not, Jean-Claude had never seen the internet before. With a wink, he joked that he was more of a magazine guy.

When Lucas wasn’t in the field working, I assigned him the duties of being our social media manager. Brand is everything online, which is why I am so careful with my own. I needed the farm’s branding to sing. No one but me seemed to comprehend how much was at stake.

Lucas began posting photos of the farm on the web. Jean-Claude watched confused.

“Jean-Claude,” I began, “are you ready to make money in your sleep?”

He chuckled. “Impossible.”

“You’re about to make so much money that it makes you sick,” I said. I left the room and made my way outside.

I looked out at the land. Soon, the whole world would be lining up to be here, at this farm. They would travel from almost anywhere. They would pay almost anything for its produce. They would take photos here to cement their legacies. But for now, it was just the four of us.

I watched Isabelle in the distance, bent over gathering legumes. I heard Jean-Claude laughing with Lucas inside. The sun inched closer to the horizon. The sky mirrored the lavender fields before me, and God himself seemed to paint streaks of orange and blue against it. I’ve saved this farm, I thought, and soon, it will soon be time for me to go.

Then I thought about all the things far away. I thought of my own hometown—the people in it, the muddy football field and its empty bleachers, the old diner where Joe used to smoke our back, and finally I thought of my own family, each of them bent over like Isabelle, out working on a different farm that was waiting for someone to save it. And I was not there to save it. I was here. And I had come all this way.