The particularity of the farm determines that it is inevitable to take the asset-light route. The virus that is running around the world this time makes us understand that in today's changeable situation, controlling costs is a necessary option for business. But asset-light is definitely not as simple as crowdfunding, it is a technical job that is likely to hurt bones. I have summarized some simple principles, not very precise, but practical.
1. De-landscaped
Scenicization and landscaping should be regarded as the first major pit of leisure agriculture. Many farms spend the most money on the wrong, that is, desperately engaged in landscape.
Make the farm beautiful and bright, the boss can understand the mood. But do tourists rush to the farm for the "landscape"? Hard! After all, no matter how hard you try, you can't do Jiuzhaigou and Zhangjiajie.
The core of the agricultural brigade is pastoral, it is a leisure vacation, but also a play. The outdoor leisure experience based on the pastoral garden is not only a unique advantage of the farm, but also a long-term planning. Landscaping is not about not going to landscaping. Instead of competing in scenic spots, more in the landscape sketches, cultural and creative sketches, in the local pastoral landscape to show the natural fashion of the scene charm.
2. Remove the bottom
Many farms have spent a lot of money to build many projects, but they still can't attract tourists. why?
Quite simply, because too many "color projects" have been created, and there is a lack of "drainage projects".
There are many projects that look bright, but it does not bring traffic, more is the icing on the cake "face". Such as luxurious doors, such as beautiful restaurants, such as some sculptures.
When you make a lot of money, the "face" project can be done. But in the early stage of entrepreneurship, it is still more important to "Lizi". It may be more valuable to spend money on projects that can "divert" traffic.
3. Cut off the skinny dog
Obvious face-type projects, we are very recognizable, but there are always some trade-offs, we are uncertain, in China this is called chicken ribs, in the United States this is called thin dog.
In the matrix model of the Boston Consulting Group, the business is divided into 4 dimensions: star business, problem business, Taurus business and skinny dog business. Problem-based business growth rates and market share are both low, and are often cut out by a quick knife.
4. Control the rhythm
Most of the owners are emotional players who want to make the farm perfect, more perfect. But I keep stressing: Don't be the perfect farm.
The traditional industrial mindset is to bet on the type of product. If you bet right, you win, and if you bet wrong, you lose everything. However, the changes in the Internet era are unpredictable, and it is popular to eat chicken in the first half of the year, and the glory of the king in the second half of the year. At this time, the lean entrepreneurship methodology is: single point detonation, rapid iteration, and continuous amplification.
5. Sharpen the blade
How to detonate at a single point? Simply put, it is to smash funds and resources to a focal point. "Good steel is used on the blade".
Asset-light is not about saving money. In the strategic spending of the "core selling point", we need to spend more and be more sustainable than our opponents.
The core reason why customers pay for you is your blade, and everything else is the back of the knife. Knowing clearly what money can't be saved is the only way to start saving money, and spending it correctly is much harder than saving money on a one-size-fits-all approach.
6. Optimize the personnel
Personnel salaries are the highest piece of operating expenses. Many farms are complaining about the lack of talents, the difficulty of recruiting people, and the difficulty of staying. In fact, we should think more about how to optimize the allocation of personnel and positions when the off-peak season is so prominent.
7. Tie up the platform for interest association
In recent years, the concepts of crowdfunding, investment promotion, and sharing have continued to explode. Everyone is trying to use this model to build assets lightly. What I want to say is that the core of crowdfunding, investment promotion, and sharing is not just to sell interests to attract funds, but to find the interests of several parties.
8. Modular operation
Modular operations have four levels:
One is to take advantage of the socialized division of labor and the emergence of a large number of professional institutions, and many projects can be deeply cooperated with social institutions;
The second is to standardize the operation process of a single project, increase the amount of large passes and reduce dependence on people, improve efficiency and reduce costs;
The third is to reduce the investment in fixed hardware and turn to a large number of "flash mob" activities with different themes to achieve the purpose of rapid iterative conversion of tipping points.
9. Learn to take advantage of the situation
The wind outlet is big, and the pigs can fly - which shows the importance of "taking advantage of the situation".
On the one hand, learn to take advantage of the potential of policies, take the initiative to dock the current policy direction and the needs of government activities, and strive for the support of policy funds;
On the one hand, we must learn to take advantage of the situation in operation. Skillfully use the needs of different other institutions to achieve win-win cooperation with minimal investment.
In addition, in marketing, we must not only create momentum, but also take advantage of the momentum. Who says it costs money to find a media promotion? The media also need good content, and they also need to collaborate on events.
Learn to take advantage of the situation, dig deep into the "pain points", and sometimes become passive to active.
The asset-lightization of farms also includes the integration and utilization of external resources. For example, farm ingredients can come from farmers in surrounding agricultural production; agricultural product distribution services can be outsourced to professional logistics service providers; amusement projects can be directly introduced to the outside world, and can also be rented out after construction; and even the daily management of scenic spots can also be outsourced.
This has several major benefits, avoiding and reducing the operational risks in the early stage of the project; freeing up limited manpower from complicated transactional work, concentrating on the core business, and at the same time having a sufficient buffer period to cultivate the core operation team. Make the organizational structure flat and the use of manpower more efficient.
Among the leisure agricultural investors and large and small "landlords" that we come into contact with on a daily basis, there are many who sit on superior resource conditions and location advantages, but suffer from limited funds and cannot be developed. So, regardless of financing, can we be an asset-light leisure farm?
First, the main cost of leisure farms
First of all, we need to understand several large costs that are indispensable for leisure agriculture: the cost of obtaining land; the cost of planning infrastructure; the cost of labor; the cost of project design and operation, including the cost of follow-up operation and maintenance.
Generally speaking, for small and medium-sized investors, the average cost of the budget investment is about 10,000 yuan / mu, that is to say, according to the proportion of 10,000 yuan per mu of land, the design budget is more secure; if you do a leisure farm for the first time, unless you have strong financial resources, it is best not to exceed 200 mu. In the early stage, when the entire cash flow can flow, then increase investment, do not want to eat a fat man.
In addition to the above costs, the characteristics of doing leisure agriculture, there is also a cost under the iceberg that most people do not realize, and the idle cost in daily operations is seasonal idle fee. There is a saying in the industry that leisure agriculture is an industry that uses 200 days of business hours to pay for 365 days of operating costs. Why? Most leisure farms and agricultural parks are holiday visitors, and the working hours from Monday to Friday are "snubbed in front of the door" - employees have nothing to do and pay wages, and they will think about it.
Reminder: Investors or bosses of leisure agriculture can actually have many ways to save money and create an asset-light leisure farm.
Where do you save money? Leisure farms have several major costs, and they save money from which major cost links. As long as you master the method, from land acquisition, site selection to project, to construction, labor, and then to project design, you can save tens of millions of billions of dollars, so that you can't imagine!
Second, how to save thousands of dollars from taking the land?
At present, the cost of obtaining farmland is actually not low. At the beginning of the rise of leisure agriculture, the cost of land, that is, the annual land rent is basically only 200-300 acres, or even as low as dozens of yuan per acre. With the vigorous development of leisure agriculture and land circulation, in recent years, the country has generally exceeded 1,000 yuan / mu, and it is not surprising that it is not surprising that it is more than 1,500 yuan / mu in high places. Such a land of one or two thousand acres, not counting the cultivation and construction of one, two or three productions, the annual cost of obtaining land alone is one or two million.
How to save money by taking land? Leasing land specially supported by some national policies is the most economical; second, where agricultural land is transferred, try not to circulate it from a single peasant and concentrate it from the government. Can save the cost of land acquisition.
Lands specially supported by national policies, such as four wastelands (barren mountains, barren ditches, barren hills, and barren beaches), ecological restoration of old mining areas, legal bases, and so on. Remote wasteland may save more than 70-80% of the cost. In addition, try to choose hilly wasteland, occupy less fertile land, and choose hollow villages with high vacancy rates, which can save a lot of land acquisition costs.
Therefore, it is recommended to do a good job in the pre-planning and development plan of the project before obtaining the land, and win the recognition of the local government departments and villagers, which will benefit you a lot.
Third, how to save thousands of dollars from site selection and projects?
(1) Lease or accept a farm where others have lost money and operate it
Many farms are losing money to operate, the water circuit is complete, toilets, parking lots, restaurants, accommodation is the same, just want to find a partner or the garden out, such a park conditions are suitable for the disk to do, and save a lot of upfront input costs.
(2) Operate in a scenic spot cut into a piece of land
Do farm to learn to take advantage of the situation, many scenic spots are not only mature, the flow of people is also more, in such a place to pack a piece of land, do parent-child agriculture, is a good choice.
How to save thousands of dollars in planning and construction?
If there is not enough financial support, then the farm planning should do a good job in the input-output ratio budget, try to adopt the asset-light model from the beginning; reduce the company's capital investment, especially the large fixed asset investment in the production field.
Specifically, if the natural conditions are good, try not to move more soil, make full use of nature, agricultural resources and good terrain conditions, and do a good job in planning and construction according to local conditions. If the natural conditions are not good, you can use crops and seedlings and flowers to create a landscape with the help of the concept of garden construction and landscape design.
How to save thousands of dollars from the design and operation of the project's software and hardware?
If there is creativity, the farm can turn waste into treasure without spending money. For example, waste mineral water bottles can be transformed into flowers, scrap iron pots can replace expensive flower pots, scrap iron bowls can be transformed into fresh mushrooms, and so on. This practice not only saves a hardware fee, the farm can become "tall" in seconds, and also has its own IP, which greatly enhances the farm's pressing. There is such a "scenery" in the manor, I believe there will be many tourists rushing to take pictures.
The concept of doing parent-child farms is "light investment, heavy operation; shallow development, deep research and development; light facilities, heavy content", in fact, this idea is also largely suitable for leisure agriculture - especially small and medium-sized farm owners with limited financial resources, which is more worth pondering.
Use project operations instead of hardware construction, and use creativity instead of facilities. It doesn't have to be a bustling playground worth hundreds of thousands of millions, or a bizarre light and shadow device. A sand pit, a few torn clothes, can be designed into a project that can be revenue, and there is no need to raise people to operate and maintain every day, saving thousands of dollars?
Sixth, how to save thousands of dollars from labor costs?
Park staffing, professional operation and management personnel, university graduates, local simple farmers uncle 3 in one. The first type of person should be less refined, and the white-collar workers in the city are also difficult to recruit, because the leisure agriculture projects are usually far away in the suburbs, and the rural life is relatively hard and monotonous, not as convenient as the entertainment of the metropolitan life, and the relative treatment is also higher. Therefore, send less people from the city and try to recruit locals.
The cost of hiring local left-behind farmers, women and children is relatively low. Giving priority to recruiting locals can not only save costs, but also benefit from the policy and financial support of the local government and the recognition of residents.
How to save thousands of dollars from outsourcing and platform operations?
Many amusement projects seem to have little initial cost, but they are not a one-time investment. In the later stage, it is often necessary to allocate special personnel for long-term maintenance, and the cost is not small. The taboo of doing leisure agriculture (including family farms, agricultural parks, pastoral complexes, and characteristic towns): the more people you raise, the heavier the assets! A person who came over once lamented: "The more projects, the more workers, the more wages, the more tragic the death!" ”
Using outsourcing and platform thinking, we can invest as little as possible, raise fewer people, and implement "asset-light" operations. Outsourcing needless to say, just platform thinking. Amusement projects can be directly introduced by external cooperation, can be rented first and then built or even only rented without construction, and even introduced not only do not pay money, but also collect rent.
The so-called platform thinking refers to the core project self-built, but other projects do not necessarily think of everything to do by themselves. It can be cooperative, it can be joint venture, or it can be outsourced to collect rent. But ask for what you need, not all. Where their main income is, the rest can be outsourced or jointly operated. This way, there are fewer investments, lighter assets, and more stable incomes.
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