Winter 2015

When Mike Swan’s father, George, taught him
the values of responsibility, hard work and
protecting the family name as they worked
side-by-side on the family’s commercial cowcalf
ranch in Montana’s Ruby Valley, it wasn’t in
anticipation of a phone call from the actress Jane Fonda.
“My phone rang one day and it was Jane Fonda,” said Swan,
owner and managing broker of Swan Land Company in Bozeman,
Mont. “She said, ‘I’ve heard your name in several of my circles and
I think you’re someone I need to meet.’ All I could think was ‘How
in the world would Jane Fonda know my name?’”
In hindsight, it’s really no mystery. The world of high-end real
estate investors is as small as Twin Bridges, Montana, where
Swan was raised. In little towns and small circles, news travels fast
and reputations matter. Swan sold Fonda’s New Mexico ranch in
October 2015.
“It all comes back to who you are and what you stand for,”
Swan said. “No matter how much success you enjoy, you have to
remember where you came from, the lessons of your upbringing—
and to do the right thing every day for every client in every
situation.”
“Whether you’re sitting down with business executives in
a corporate board room or ranch families at the kitchen table, if
you’re not a person of your word, they will see right through you,”
he said. “As a team, we serve a very selective, exclusive niche.
We do what we say we’re going to do—and work day and night to
perform for our clients.”
Swan’s personal work ethic again reflects the lessons of the
land. As youngsters, Swan and his brothers were expected to be
working on the family’s ranch when they weren’t at school or at
sports practice.
“My dad believed in hard work and instilled a strong, strong
work ethic in us—nothing is given, but everything can be earned,”
he said. “Giving up was not an option—we learned to persist
through some very challenging circumstances. You find out what
you are made of at a young age.
“He handed us tremendous levels of responsibility at very early
ages. It shaped all three of us into the men we are today.”
Production agriculture is a tight-margin business. When a
family has three strapping boys like the Swans did, it doesn’t
make sense to hire help. So the youngsters took on the real-world
responsibilities of tending livestock, growing crops and running
machinery at the time other kids were learning to make their beds
and mow the grass. Their efforts directly contributed to the bottom
line of the family business. It was not made-up work.
“There were times when I was a teenager that I didn’t
appreciate the way I was raised, but now I wouldn’t change one
minute of it—one lesson from it—for the world, ” Swan said.
“We were taught that we were responsible to the land and our
livestock.”
Swan and his wife, Nancy, have chosen to rear their children
on a small ranch on the outskirts of Bozeman, just a mile from his
parents. Life revolves around school, sports, church and 4-H. As a
family, they raise, show and sell club lambs in order to teach their
ninth-grade daughter and sixth-grade son how to be responsible
and work hard.
THE ROUTE TO REAL ESTATE
When your roots are sunk deep in the rich Montana soil and
you’re anchored in the West’s rich ranching tradition, it’s not easy
to consider the possibilities of life beyond the gate. As a recipient
of a grand legacy, the emotional benefits of the lifestyle can cloud
the financial realities.
“I loved the livestock side of the ranching business,” Swan said.
“As a teenager, it was hard to imagine doing anything else—except
sports.”
Once again, his dad and his mother, Betty, who worked as a
nurse in the local community, were clear-eyed and wise.
“My parents insisted that we all go try something else,” Swan
said. “They told us to spread our wings for a while before deciding
whether or not we would ranch. They promised, if after we’d flown
solo, if we wanted to come back to the ranch they’d do everything
in their power to help us get established.”
The elder Swans were both collegiate athletes. Their sons
followed in their footsteps. Rory played football for Carroll College
in Waukesha, Wisconsin, while Steve and Mike were track and field
athletes at Montana State University in Bozeman.
“Agriculture and athletics were what I knew and enjoyed,” he
said.
As a freshman at Montana State, Swan found a passion for both
coaching and athletic management. He focused on becoming a
collegiate athletic director. Doug Fullerton, who was then athletic
director at Montana State and is now the Commissioner of the Big
Sky Conference, took Swan under his wing.
“I worked two part-time jobs while I was a sprinter for the track
team and an intern in the athletic department,” Swan said. “In
all of that chaos, Doug not only showed me the ropes of athletic
management, but really taught me how to use them without
getting myself tangled up.”
When a knee injury ended his athletic career, the university kept
Swan on as a sprint/hurdle coach. Upon graduation from Montana
State, he enrolled at Idaho State University in Pocatello where,
while interning in the athletic department, he earned a Master of
Administration in 18 months instead of the expected two years.
In 1992, three weeks from completing his Master’s program,
a friend pointed him toward an assistant sports marketing director
job in the athletic department at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Swan flew from Pocatello to Colorado Springs for an interview on
a Wednesday, was offered the job that Friday, and flew back to
Pocatello on Saturday where his dad met him with a horse trailer.
Together, they loaded up all his worldly possessions and drove back
to Colorado Springs so the younger Swan could begin work at 8:00
a.m. Monday.
“I called my professors at Idaho State to tell them that I
wouldn’t be coming back to school because I had a job,” he said.
“They helped me wrap up school with phone calls and the U.S.
mail —I was walking on air I was so excited.”
Three months into his new job, Swan got a phone call from the
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