In this concise interview, Professor Pete Alexander asks Chris Raleigh, CEO and founder of Harvest Returns, six rapid-fire questions about his work and insights. Raleigh explains that Harvest Returns is a platform enabling investment in agriculture, emphasizing the essential nature of farming especially highlighted during the COVID pandemic. He stresses that managing and mitigating risk—spanning market, operational, and black‑swan events—is a critical chapter every company should study, drawing on his military background. Raleigh advises leaders to stay flexible and ready to pivot, taking a holistic view of their business, market, and geopolitical landscape, warning against the complacency that doomed companies like Blockbuster. He recommends fellow business coach Tamara Payne of Ensemble Coworking as a podcast guest. Reflecting on his first job bagging groceries, he shares how early customer‑service lessons shaped his sales approach. The episode closes with contact information for Harvest Returns across its website and social media channels.
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This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast, where business leaders share their insights. It is 6 questions in 7 minutes because successful business leaders are busy and rarely have more time to spare. So let's get to it. Question number 1: In a few sentences, please tell me who you are and what you do.
Hi Pete, glad to be here. I am Chris Raleigh and I am the CEO and founder of Harvest Returns, and we are a platform for investing in agriculture.
Chris, it's so great to have you on the show. Question number 2: What's the best thing about working in your industry?
Well, farming is an essential industry, and as we've all found out during the COVID pandemic, that people have to eat continually. And whether it's shelves that are empty in rest— in, uh, in grocery stores or restaurants that are shut down, people are still eating. And farmers are the ones out there that are consuming, or they're producing a product that we're all consuming. So it's wonderful to work with America's farmers.
And you said so, so true that, I mean, without food, I mean, how people aren't going to survive. So it's, it's a, it's an absolute essential business. So question number 3. Absolutely. Question number 3. I have a fictitious book with all the answers for business. What chapter would you think most companies should read?
I think they should read the chapter about managing risk. One thing that— another thing that COVID has taught us is that if you don't understand potential risks that face your business and how they could impact your business positively or negatively, you're gonna have a much harder time running the business. And there's so many types of risks, whether it's market risk or operational execution risk, black swan risk, like we see with COVID or just risk of the unknowns. Learn to identify the risk so you can manage and mitigate the risk. Spent many years in the military working in high-risk operations. And one of the things we learned is you have to, before you start any new project or evolution, you have to identify what those risks are and lay them out so that you can properly prepare for them and manage them.
And, you know, as you said, there's so many different risks and any particular risk, if it's not mitigated, I assume that it just causes enormous stress to the employees of an organization?
Oh, for sure. Whether it's, you know, risk of layoffs, which we're seeing a lot of these days, unfortunately, or risk in sales falling, revenue losses, or just general risk that can impact your employees or your customers.
Absolutely. Question number 4: Other than the generic work harder, have a great attitude, and care for customers, what advice or insight would you give to other business leaders?
Be flexible. So always be flexible, always prepared to shift your focus, whether it's shift the business wholesale to accommodate major trends or crises as we see now. And one of the ways that I like to be flexible is by always kind of taking a holistic look at what's going on in my— with my immediate business itself, but also the market that we're in and also a bigger spectrum of geopolitical and situation that could potentially impact your business. And the way you address that is just be prepared to shift or to flex, pivot, as some people say, and being flexible, not being set necessarily in your ways, it just helps you to respond to changing events.
Yeah, I think that's really insightful about, you know, don't be just set in your ways because then, you know, you go, you end up being like, I like to use the example of Blockbuster, you know, all of a sudden it just, there's the business model doesn't work anymore because they didn't respond to the changing market.
Right. You don't want to be stuck with the Betamax model or the buggy whips, whatever the obsolete product is. Be prepared to meet changing market demands.
Absolutely. Question number 5. What other business leader like yourself would you like to acknowledge and invite to be on my podcast?
So I'd like to acknowledge Tamara Payne. Tamara Payne is a really dynamic person who is the owner of Ensemble Coworking. She's also a business coach here in Fort Worth. It's where we started Harvest Returns, our company. It's such a nurturing community that she provides, the atmosphere, and love people to get to know Tamara Payne.
Perfect. I'll reach out to her. Thank you for that referral. And our final question, question number 6: Please tell me about your first job.
So my first job, uh, was in high school, was bagging groceries. And I learned a lot from that job. One of the things, uh, the main thing I probably learned was customer service. I mean, yeah, I learned how to not squish your bread and your eggs, but the real important thing was customer service. One, the customer's not always right. Um, you pick that up very quickly that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you may not satisfy everyone. Uh, you just have to deal with that because people are different and that having those customer service skills that translates into sales skills will serve you great for the rest of your life, no matter what you're doing in business.
Absolutely. And that, that's true, whatever you're doing in business, because you need the customers. And I like that you're saying the customer is not always right. Once, once you've gotten some experience in business, we all understand that. So thanks for reinforcing that. So, Chris, thank you so much for being on the show. How can people find you?
So several different ways. HarvestReturns.com is our main website, but we're also on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, all those, all those channels.
Perfect. This is Professor Pete Alexander with the Winning at Business and Life podcast. For more insights and ideas, please go to LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or iTunes and search for the Winning at Business and Life podcast. Thanks for listening.
