Choosing to Start Over

Brett Hicks held the reins to a thriving agricultural operation, a specialized real estate business, and a demanding role in his local church. He spent 11 years building his life in south Mississippi. He had the land, the deals, and the guaranteed income. Then he walked away from all of it. He sold his poultry farm, left the real estate firm after a falling out with his partners, and looked at the blank slate in front of him. He did not panic. He decided to move forward.

Hicks learned how to work long before he bought his first flock of chickens. Growing up in south Mississippi, his father worked offshore in the oil fields leaving home for 30 to 35 days at a time. The daily labor fell to a six-year-old Hicks, his older brother, his sisters, and his mother. They had to keep the operation running regardless of the weather, the school schedule, or the fatigue in their bones.

"As a mantra that I still say, the cows gotta get fed," Hicks says. 

At six years old, he figured out that tasks have to be taken care of regardless of how you feel. Animals die if you decide to sleep in. He developed a deep respect for the work. He learned how to compartmentalize his life early on. You put your personal feelings in a box, you walk out the back door, and you do the job. Who else is going to do it? There is no backup plan on a family farm. 

That raw work ethic followed him to the University of Southern Mississippi. He spent three years as a punter for the football team, navigating a punishing schedule. He woke up at 5:00 a.m. for workouts, went to class, attended study hall, and ran sprints in shoulder pads. It was a full-time job with zero glory. While the rest of the student body slept in and went out, he was learning how to outlast the competition. 

His head coach at the time, Larry Fedora, taught him a lesson that stayed with him for two decades. They would run, lift, and hit until the roster felt completely broken. 

"He said, your mind will quit before your body does," Hicks recalls. You let your mind tell you that you will not survive the conditioning, but the truth is, you will. The mental game is always harder than the physical one.

A Quick Pivot

After college, Hicks tried teaching and coaching. He hated it. He looked around at the cattlemen in his area and realized the cash flow just was not there to sustain a young family. A quick pivot led him and his wife, Haley, to buy a poultry operation. He calls it an impulse buy. He wanted to farm, he needed consistent income, and the poultry barns checked the boxes. 

Then came the real estate business catering to poultry growers, alongside a demanding role as a youth minister. He ran all three at once. The Easter weekend stories alone prove the chaos of carrying multiple heavy roles. He once had to get 22 kids and a team of volunteers ready for a church trip to Nashville, only to get a call on Monday that a flock of birds was arriving at the farm on Thursday morning. The church found men to step up, his wife took the kids on the road, and Hicks stayed back to raise chickens through the holiday weekend. There are no holidays in the farming business. You just pivot and do what the day requires.

The weight of running three demanding roles could crush a normal man. Most people would fold. Hicks operates on a different frequency. He looks at failure as a simple cost of doing business. 

"Worst case scenario, we fail," he says. "Okay. So what? We move on."

Eventually, the tension snapped. A falling out with his real estate partners handed him a clean slate. Most men would fight to hold onto what they built. Hicks saw a cleared runway. He told his wife what happened. Her response changed his trajectory completely.

"She said, 'Hey, don't worry about it. We'll pray about it. It's gonna be all right,'" Hicks recalls. 

Burning the Ships

Within a week, he decided to go into ministry full time. He believes in burning the ships. People like to hold onto what they know. They want the next door wide open before they let the old one click shut. Hicks looks at it differently. He points to the biblical story of Moses at the Red Sea. 

"Moses took a step into the sea before he raised his staff," Hicks says. "He didn't know that water was open." 

If you are tethered to a safety net, you will never reach the edge of what you can actually do. Sometimes, you just have to make a hard decision. God will not present the next thing until you are willing to step away from the current thing.

Today, Hicks is the minister at Brenham Church of Christ in Texas, living deep in the Brazos River bottoms. He still talks to farmers, ranchers, and men trying to figure out what to do when they hit the wall. He sees men in their fifties and sixties who have built massive operations and amassed millions in liquid cash, but they feel completely empty. They want to sell, but they are terrified of what comes after the paperwork is signed.

Hicks leads a men's Bible study at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesdays. They have been reading through Proverbs, looking at what a man does with his time. He tells the retired men that they cannot tie their worth to their business. When the farm is sold, and nobody is depending on you to make the daily calls, you have to find a new way to be useful. He points to a retired veterinarian in his congregation who teaches agricultural classes at the local school and writes poetry. You have to take a break, go to the beach for a few days, and then get back to work doing something that matters. You have to pass your knowledge down to the next generation.

A Marathon He Didn’t Sign Up For

The same logic applies to men just starting out. You cannot look at the massive operation down the road and let it paralyze you. Hicks recently ran a half-marathon. He did not set out to run 13 miles. He wanted to run a 10k, but the race was full. He started his training by running one mile a day for 10 days. Then he bumped it to a mile and a quarter, and then a mile and a half. 

"You can't be a thousand-acre farmer until you start with acre number one," Hicks says. 

You put the seed in the ground. You figure out the fertilizer and the water later. You take the first step. You do not wish a six-pack of abs or a profitable farm into existence. You wake up, you do the work, and you outlast the guy next to you.

Hicks is 40 years old now. He realizes that 20 years go by like a freight train. He is raising two daughters, Kennedy and McKenzie. He watches them grow, knowing that in a few short years, it will just be him and Haley again. They make their trips to Sephora and Ulta, they spend the money, and they enjoy the days they have right now. He refuses to live in a state of anxiety about what the future holds because he already knows how the story ends. 

He reminds the agricultural men listening to him that they belong to a rare breed. 

"You are in the top one percent of this country of people who know how to work," Hicks says. Holidays, sickness, and tragedy hit, and the job still has to get done. They put food on the table for a nation that thinks meat just magically appears in a grocery store aisle. 

He also reminds them to keep their heads up and look at the bigger picture. You can build a massive operation, you can buy the best land in the county, and you can amass millions in the bank, but none of it comes with you. 

"I'm playing with house money," Hicks says. 

What you do in this life matters, but your ultimate worth is not tied to the size of your farm or the balance in your ledger. You just have to figure out what you are supposed to do next, take the step, and let the rest handle itself.