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Introducing: The Independent Farmer Podcast with Chucktown Acres
705 Plays10 months ago
A few years and 145 episodes in, Barn2Door’s Podcast gets an overhaul. Why the change? Listen to Barn2Door’s CEO and Alex from Chucktown Acres discuss the BIG re-brand from The Direct Farmer to The Independent Farmer Podcast!
Learn more about Barn2Door here: barn2door.com/learn-more barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
Introduction to Independent Farming Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go-to podcast for do-it-yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman, and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn to Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand, and sell online and in person. Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast.
Rebranding and New Features
00:00:44
Speaker
I'm Janelle, the CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode. If you're returning listener to our podcast, you may notice something new. We're rebranding our Barn to Door podcast, the name, a new look, new feel, including a logo, new landing page, new series and upgraded categories.
00:01:02
Speaker
In today's conversation, we'll get into why we chose to rebrand the podcast and what to expect in the future. I'm excited to talk with Alex about it. He owns and operates Chucktown Acres in Charleston, South Carolina. And we've been working with him and his farm now for many, many years. I think Alex is it like since 2019.
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, for years, love it. And also it's an excuse to hang out with Alex and talk about what it takes to be successful as an independent farmer, why it is so critical. And then why this podcast and how it can be helpful to independent farmers across the country. Welcome Alex.
00:01:39
Speaker
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Janelle. Love being here. Yes. Always love hanging out and chatting, even if it means we just got the pigs back in, which is kind of my favorite. Yes. That's good. The wires are hot, so we're good to talk for a while. Yep. I
Podcast Evolution: From Direct Farm to Independent Farmer
00:01:54
Speaker
love it. Some folks don't know we did start the podcast years ago and it was called the direct farm podcast and we are
00:02:02
Speaker
to the independent farmer podcast. And we're very, very excited. We're also 145 episodes in, which is kind of nuts. And I will tell you, you might believe this or might not ask, but we have a lot of farmers who have literally listened to all of them.
00:02:17
Speaker
That's pretty awesome. I've listened to a good handful and I'm a Tom Bennett fanboy, so I always listen to Tom's podcast. But I always learn something really, really useful. This is a great tool for farmers to use. So I've actually been searching for farm podcasts for a really long time.
00:02:41
Speaker
And most of them don't last very long. They usually are going for like a year. It's usually run by a farmer that ends up obviously having too much to do. I was going to say no time, right? We have the luxury of being able to talk to a whole litany of farmers, yourself included. You've been on it a couple of times. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. We love it.
00:03:05
Speaker
I love being on here and being able to chat and hopefully give some information to other farmers out there that can be beneficial. Let me get this straight. It used to be called the direct farm podcast. Now we're rebranding. We're calling it the independent farmer podcast, which I really, really love the name. Can you walk me through the decision process for that? And
00:03:27
Speaker
I mean, I have no qualms with the name. So I just want you to know I love the name. I think it's awesome. I have so many thoughts about being an independent farmer. And it's so much more than being just a direct to market farmer. So anyway, could you I think you just put it in a nutshell. The fact that you are like direct is just like one slice.
00:03:48
Speaker
Right and independent farmers like the all encompassing of know that there is so much to it other than just the selling direct, which I love. So part of the thinking behind it was besides precisely what you said is when we started the podcast years ago, we
Enabling Direct Sales for Farmers
00:04:04
Speaker
as barn to door we're still trying to establish our brand.
00:04:09
Speaker
And so when we launched Direct, we were trying to communicate to the market. We are helping farmers who sell Direct, which is different, right? There's a lot of other companies out there who were maybe marketplaces are trying to do different things for farmers or aggregating and distribution. And we're like, nope, we are software for farmers who are selling Direct.
00:04:28
Speaker
into their local communities to run their business. And so it used to be a lot about it's all in one solution for farmers selling direct, which helped identify us and differentiate us in the market. And so we kept it largely to the middle. Like if you're selling direct, that means you're removing the middleman.
00:04:45
Speaker
Okay, right. So direct, direct, direct. And so that's why we latched on to that word to help folks know what we were about for farmers. And interestingly enough, I think I mentioned to you before this podcast, we actually during COVID launched an online conference. We had a digital conference online, a direct farm conference, it was called. And so part of the podcast actually even came from that same synergy. And so the direct, the whole conference, because by the way, this was new in the market.
00:05:15
Speaker
There wasn't a lot of thought leadership, eBooks, information, data, or useful materials, classes, anything on the business side of farming and for farmers who are selling direct. And we're like, we want to be that we want to be in there. And so what do we need to do to help farmers who are selling direct? And we boiled it down
Key Components of Direct Selling
00:05:34
Speaker
to like.
00:05:34
Speaker
for really, really basic levers, is what we used to call them, to help educate, maybe not the right word, but to help educate farmers and the market in terms of, hey, here's four things to focus on if you're selling direct. One was brand, like you need a brand if you're selling direct, right? Because you have your own customers.
00:05:51
Speaker
you need to make it convenient for your customers to buy from you if you're selling direct because you're competing on a convenient scale with everything else people can buy and then we talked about quality which is kind of a slam dunk frankly i think for farmers like yourself who are like of course it's compared to the garbage in the grocery store you just like it's not even close so
00:06:13
Speaker
Even though that is a way for farmers to stand out, but that's like the easiest one of them all, right? And then the other one was just on price and packaging. We were just really focused to help farmers, both through our software and through all the data and getting information to farmers on how to sell direct and do it successfully. So it was pretty boiled down, if that makes sense.
00:06:34
Speaker
Yes, yeah. And it's interesting how we evolve as businesses, barn to door, being a business. Sometimes you have inspirations and you and I have talked about your inspirations of why you wanted to help farmers out. And I love your backstory too, of your journey through everything that you've gone through. And what was the first thing you'd made up, Farmster? Is that what it was called?
00:06:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, honestly, I appreciate that. It's funny you say that because I was just onboarding a couple of new employees this morning and I walked them through basically a whole hour long presentation called Y Barn to door. And we literally go through step by step of we are not a marketplace. Marketplaces are either online or offline grocery stores and they aggregate and they distribute. And that is not what we do.
00:07:22
Speaker
I'm like, we help the independent farmers. I was already explaining around those new words, but we help independent farmers be successful all across the country in every local community, right? So there's thousands of farms, there's farms near every city across the country, and they need basically software, business software to make sure that they have an online store, to make sure that they have marketing materials, to make sure they can quickly do their finances and inventory and orders and help farmers remove
00:07:52
Speaker
Those, all of that friction make it convenient. All the works, Alex, which is so exciting, but it's like, we are not the middleman. We are the opposite of the middleman. We're under the hood, behind the scene, helping hopefully make it easier and easier, not just for the farmers to sell, but for their buyers to buy from them and for them then to save time managing their business.
00:08:13
Speaker
Yeah, well I think that your software allows us to be independent farmers that we don't have to rely on middleman aggregates wholesale big giant wholesale accounts like we're able to charge retail prices like
00:08:31
Speaker
When I think about what it actually means to be an independent farmer, there's a ton of things to talk about there because you've got all the corrupt food industry and they own your big farms, your big chicken houses, your pork houses, all of the traditional farmers that
Challenges and Benefits of Independent Farming
00:08:51
Speaker
grow crops and they just grow soybeans and corn every year. They're not independent. They are completely relying on the prices at the grain elevator. The livestock guys are just praying for a good day at the stock yard. They're completely at the whims of the corporate entities that be.
00:09:11
Speaker
And that's exactly what we don't want. So we are to control our own destiny, charge our own prices and be able to interact with our own customers directly. And that's what makes us.
00:09:28
Speaker
independent farmers. So when I saw the rebrand for the name, I was really pumped because it was like I actually identify way more as an independent farmer than I do as a direct farmer. Being a direct farmer is part of what I do. But I guess my power and authority and what I do day to day
00:09:49
Speaker
is given to me because I'm able to be independent. Now, if I didn't have software of Barnes Adore, I would have a way harder time being an independent farmer. I'd either be at maybe I'd have to be at 10 farmers markets every week, or I would have to just rely on restaurant accounts. But I mean, I literally woke up this morning and I had emails that I sold several hundred dollars worth of meat last night while I was asleep.
00:10:19
Speaker
And that waking up to those emails, sometimes that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. It's like, man, people want my stuff. And probably the hardest thing about being a direct to market independent farmer is selling. The selling is usually the number one hardest thing that we have to do to find ways to get our food onto people's kitchen tables and in their fridge.
00:10:47
Speaker
And so whenever anybody asks me about Barn to Door and my usage of the software, I just can't rave enough about what you guys have done for us because just the ability to create subscriptions that I don't even have to think about anymore. The money comes in, they plug their credit cards in and I deliver them meat. I think about those customers, at least their fulfillments. I think about making them happy and them enjoying my food all the time, every day.
00:11:17
Speaker
But the fulfillment of the sale to get the food to them, I don't think about for about two minutes while I'm putting the meat in the bag to go and cooler to go home delivery. And that is such a massive game changer for farmers. It allows us to grow.
00:11:35
Speaker
to produce the amount of volume that we need to not have to have town jobs anymore, to not have to rely on government handouts, and to be able to be our own farm and do what we want to do.
Supporting Independence and Brand Building
00:11:47
Speaker
So I just...
00:11:48
Speaker
I feel like every time I come on the podcast, I just want to make sure you guys know that I really, really appreciate what you do. And like, it would be really difficult for a farmer to create a software so useful, like Bar to Door, we just don't have time. So to have someone else that's not a farmer actually care about what we do, it really means a lot.
00:12:13
Speaker
That's my day job. We're reliant on each other because before any of us used to bark the door, I mean, gosh, we were trying to take orders on emails and texts and like, what if the farmer's markets closed six months out of the year?
00:12:29
Speaker
What if we live three hours away from a neighborhood and we can't really have a farm store that makes sense for people to come and shop on our farm? We have to have other ways for people to not only know that we exist, but also to be able to get our stuff too.
00:12:47
Speaker
Thank you, Alex. And just partly to sort of clarify, but a part of what you're saying is the buyers today, they love local food. They want to connect. They want to buy it from you, but they also want the convenience. They need to know you exist. So that's where the brand comes in. You must have a brand and frankly be online in front of buyers.
00:13:06
Speaker
buyers are now online and they love to pay with their credit cards online. Um, and so I think I have worked with you long enough to know that part of what changed the game for you in terms of the selling process is now all of your buyers can buy online anytime, even while you're asleep, they can have subscriptions that are year round, even with no markets, they still can get deliveries or local pickups from you. And so you're able to sell year round.
00:13:30
Speaker
and pre-sell even advance of having items again all through having that online store and portal for people to self-serve order and again I think to your point subscriptions has just been I don't know what a miracle drug I think in many cases because people want they want to secure their local food to be fair like you're doing your
Risks of Monocrop Farming and Contracts
00:13:50
Speaker
buyers a service too yes
00:13:53
Speaker
I'll tell you what's really interesting and maybe we go a little deep before we go wide, but you were talking about those huge commodity monocrop type farms. So I think some people feel to understand, and again, like I said, I was onboarding some new employees today who are very excited and inspired to help farmers, by the way, especially specifically independent farmers, because we talk about how if a single crop farm
00:14:19
Speaker
whether it's corn, soy, or even 25 acres of Brussels sprouts. If your contract is with a single grocer or single company and it falls through, you're kind of just screwed. It's actually really risky. Not only are they telling you, hey, here's the terrible price I'm going to give you for that high volume amount of one crop, but I might just flip it. It's the other guy. It's really fragile and risky.
00:14:45
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. That's why crop insurance was created. The whole system relies on crop insurance because if you have a bad year, you rely on the government to bail you out if you're a big commodity farmer. If you're a big farm, yeah.
00:15:01
Speaker
Yeah. People being inspired to farm and they're young and they're passionate. I love it. And they do not want to go buy a thousand acres and plant it all in schools. No. And if they did, it would be horror. It would be like a lose, lose, lose.
00:15:17
Speaker
If you do the big monocrop, obviously it's horrible for the soil. The nutrition value of whatever monocrop that is, is about similar to a piece of cardboard. And if the contract doesn't go through, it's not going to work anyway. So the net net of it is, it's a fragile system that is not great. And so when you look at, and I was sharing this morning, like if you look at the opposite, if independent farmers don't succeed, which.
00:15:42
Speaker
Clearly they are and we love being part of everything we can do to move mountains to make sure that's true. I show them pictures of pigs on pasture and then pigs in their actual little factory cages. And I was like, if you don't have independent farmers, you have a big crop centralized egg system based on the government where you get no choice, no nutrition and very little control as a consumer. And it's just fragile, fragile, fragile and also not healthy.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yes, I don't even see any wind in there, do you? No, I don't. And honestly, it's super sad to look at the amount of suicide numbers amongst farmers because it is just like you said, you just constantly lose
00:16:28
Speaker
And you never, you can own your business, you can control your own thing, but you never, ever win. You never get on top and you never feel like you're really making a big difference in the world. And you're just a cog in the wheel.
Value of Customer Interaction and Feedback
00:16:42
Speaker
Being a big commodity farmer, you never even get to meet your customers.
00:16:46
Speaker
And that is such a killer for someone who actually grows food. If you never meet your customers and they never get to thank you face to face for the food you grew that they got to eat and nourish their family with, it all makes sense as to why people don't want to be a farmer like that anymore. Yeah. It makes me happy to see.
00:17:07
Speaker
People wising up obviously farmers are already the wiser but consumers as well right wanting to buy direct realizing that their world of food if they're just going to the. Typical route of grocery stores and big box and whatnot that it's not as healthy they can look around and see that right and I think.
00:17:27
Speaker
the power in the independent farmer to your point you mentioned it's like you don't want to just sell the one big contract and have one crop and the success rate of that is next to nil which is to your point why you do have farmers who have high rates of suicide but you move then towards
00:17:42
Speaker
the farmers that are independent farmers all across this country. There's so much power in that. And it's so exciting. And we want them to be wildly successful. And then we want more and more and more, right? It's like sort of a great takeover. And for us, that's the motivating factor for our growing team is like building the software, giving the support, getting the data. What do they need? What do they need? What do they need? And why we've built out so much of what we built out, not even just software, but
00:18:09
Speaker
marketing tools and even classes. You even teach a class for farmers. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:16
Speaker
I love it. Can I talk about it? Yeah, it's sort of like all things to help the independent farmer and just what Alex is going to talk about. It's one of the things we offer.
Educational Resources for Farmers
00:18:25
Speaker
Obviously they get a lot of support from the Barn to Door team. There's a lot of do-it-yourself resources on Barn to Door too. Like you can do videos, read eBooks, get all the data on what to be successful. But then we also literally offer what we call Academy classes for farmers to attend. And it's taught by other farmers that are having success that we work closely with, but
00:18:44
Speaker
who are crushing it across all the things that you need to do to be successful as an independent farmer. Because I think the key here, Alex, is you said selling was like the hardest thing. And if you back up one step, you must do marketing in order to transact sales. And you must consistently do marketing for consistent ongoing sales.
00:19:05
Speaker
And so the funny key is you must do marketing for sales. So it's really like one step back to be highly successful in sales is the little marketing engine, but we do everything we can here at Barnet or to facilitate ease of marketing, including everything from social media assets and newsletters and classes. So tell them about your class, including what it's called.
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I teach the grassroots marketing class and it's so much fun. It's always cool. We have to teach it every month now because it was on once every two or three months at the beginning and all of a sudden it was like as soon as we started offering the class every month the class filled up every single time and we've got usually about 20 people
00:19:53
Speaker
per class and I get to take them through all sorts of not just marketing strategies but also brand building which is a really really huge thing for me that I spend a lot of time giving them courage to see themselves as their brand to boost their brand to
00:20:14
Speaker
see themselves not just as a business, but as an idea and something that people experience. And so we spend three weeks, once a week, we go through it classes an hour long each
Marketing as a Key to Farm Success
00:20:25
Speaker
time. And we just really, really have a blast. And you're absolutely right.
00:20:31
Speaker
that for the sales to work, you have to do the marketing and getting into farming. No one thinks about, it's not, you don't get into farming to sell things. You know, you get into farming to grow things usually or to get away from things or to get out of the city and live in the country. You have to figure it out.
00:20:55
Speaker
And then you get all these animals and then you have all this meat in your freezer and you're like, man, I should probably sell this stuff. So let me figure it out. So the avenue through sales is to have marketing to make people aware that you exist, to let them know that you're there and to give them an idea of what they're going to experience when they buy your products. And so I was really excited that we were talking about rebranding this podcast because I spend a decent amount of time
00:21:23
Speaker
in the second week talking about the brand that they need to establish as the marketing tool that you don't market just ground beef. You don't just market lettuce, but you market your brand and you give people an idea of what you're about through your brand that they're going to experience. And so I find that a lot of
00:21:47
Speaker
people when they start their business, whether it's a farm business or not, they're afraid to rebrand. And we went through a rebrand about a year into our business. And our business was not called Chuck Town and Acres for like the first year. And so I needed the courage to change the name. You think it's going to be a huge deal, but just for any of the farmers out there listening,
00:22:14
Speaker
I give you permission to rebrand. It is okay. You will be all right. I know it can be a nerve wracking idea, but if you don't like your farm name, if you don't like your logo, if there's things about your brand that you don't like, do it because you will be so much happier.
Rebranding for Better Alignment
00:22:32
Speaker
I tell people, think of a name that you wouldn't mind saying a hundred times that day. And for me, I can say Chucktown Acres all day long.
00:22:42
Speaker
That name came to me through this brainstorming meeting that we did that was really, really useful. And I just could not get Chucktown Acres out of my head for days and days and days. I was like, this has got to be it. Like I would be happy answering the phone and saying, thanks for calling Chucktown Acres.
00:23:00
Speaker
So anyway, I wanted to ask you, were you nervous to rebrand or at least rebranding just the podcast? Or was this something that you've known that you wanted to do for a while? I'm interested in that thought process too, as a business that's not necessarily a farm. I appreciate that. I think, I mean, if you're a business selling, you need to have a brand, right? And you need to do marketing. So
00:23:26
Speaker
I'll answer that question, then I want to back up and talk about farmer brands, because that's such a big part of being an independent farmer, and part of, honestly, what Varn to door helps with. So I want to get into that. But in terms of rebranding the podcast itself, I would say I didn't love our former name direct farm podcast for some time. I loved what it meant. It was emphasizing the importance of the transaction.
00:23:48
Speaker
With no middleman, which of course is still what we're passionate about for independent farmers that we are just a software that farmers use under the hood to be successful and ideally all the tools.
00:24:00
Speaker
to market and sell and manage orders, inventory, finances, et cetera. So we're very bullish on it being direct, but I also didn't think it was clear enough or quite enough explained quite well enough all that we did and what we were truly passionate about beyond the helping the farmer who is selling direct skipping the middleman. Like great, awesome. That's square box number one, but what does it really mean to be an independent farmer?
00:24:25
Speaker
And honestly, Alex, the name didn't come to me until recently over the last couple of months. So I love that you're like, I could say that all day long. Cause when it finally came to me again, thinking about and rethinking, right? Rethinking. Cause you do evolve as a business and your messaging sometimes becomes more clear and your value and your mission and vision becomes sometimes more clear. And in our case.
00:24:48
Speaker
I think in the greater context of the food system, even it's like, we're not just helping farmers that are selling direct. We're helping the independent farmer everywhere, anywhere in this country be as successful as possible as, as fast as we can. Like here's the software. Great. Now you can have an online store for your customers to buy. It's really simple. Here's your pick and pack list for delivery day. You've got your inventory in real time. Great. Let's save you a ton of time. Let's get it all situated, but let's help you be successful. Let's then take the next layer.
00:25:18
Speaker
Which is, how do you be successful? Because we know from data, you should offer subscriptions. And if you offer quarters, halves, wholes, great. Have you thought about a subscription bundle box because people have smaller freezers? Or if you have an online store, if you have 400 items in that store, most people only scroll past the first two and a half pages. So it's like, we have this data that we can then turn around, help people to be successful.
00:25:45
Speaker
And we've just been adding layers and layers. We're just like success, right? We'll build it in the software. We'll get you the data. We'll get you the classes. And then of course, one of my favorites is our marketing toolkit now, which is like 50 or 60. Graphic designs that my design team puts together every single month for farmers to then use on their social media, meal, chimp templates, templates for their newsletters and content ideas. We just really aim to be turnkey, but for the independent farmer.
00:26:14
Speaker
And I think the passion from that comes from we want farmers to sell direct because we know they can maximize their margin, right? We want farmers to make the most money they possibly can. We want them to make recurring sales month over month over month, which is great for subscriptions.
00:26:30
Speaker
And we know that, and because you can set your own prices like you said Alex, all of that's beautiful, but the responsibility to have the advantage of your own freedom as a farmer making your own decisions, setting your prices, knowing your own customers calling the shots.
00:26:46
Speaker
Some of that comes with the responsibility of, okay, you do actually have to do your finances. You do have to do some of the business side of farming that's not as fun, managing orders, logistics, answering customers, and also marketing. And marketing isn't always a farmer favorite, but it is part of the freedoms that come with the independent farmer.
00:27:06
Speaker
And I think any farmer knows that there's parts of their job, just like my job and any job that is not going to be your favorite. That doesn't mean they don't need to get done. Right. And marketing is definitely part of that. So in the brand different, we, and I don't want to share the new preamble, but we're talking about we are software for independent farmers to help them create and promote their
Time-saving Solutions for Farm Management
00:27:27
Speaker
brand. Number one, number two, to sell online and in person.
00:27:33
Speaker
And then number three, to save time managing their business. That's kind of in a nutshell, what Barn to door does. And you know, I love sell online in a person because now we have the only POS built for farmers, but that's neither here nor there. Right. Yeah. Right. That's awesome. Yeah. But so I love the rebrand. I love your recommendation to people. A brand is important. It's recognizable. You're selling you as a farmer, you're selling your vision as a farmer, you're selling whether you have animals or produce, it's the whole package of health.
00:28:02
Speaker
and local and you got to sell that. And so we have add-on services. We have the marketing toolkit, but we also build logos for farmers. Right. If they don't have one. And then to your point from a brand perspective, we build their website. We help them with their shop button on Facebook. We have an integration with Mailchimp. So the newsletters are really easy. Have you used some of those things and are any of those saving you time or being effective?
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah, so we got our logo created right before we signed up for Barn To Door. Yeah, I love your logo. We got lucky by using a cheap service to get a great logo. It worked out fine. Yeah, I would have loved to have Barn To Door because you guys know me, you know my business.
00:28:46
Speaker
But our logo is great, but really the website building was huge because I just can't even fathom trying to build a website, let alone an online store connected to it. Let alone MailChimp connecting to the online store and just
00:29:04
Speaker
Being able to have all the nerdy stuff behind the scenes there done for me. I mean, that's more time with my cows that I could spend. That's more time with my kids that I could spend. That's more family time. That is going to save me so much time not having to worry about that stuff. You mentioned picking Atlas. I can literally gather up all the sales from that week in about 45 seconds.
00:29:32
Speaker
print off my pick and pack sheets. And within a minute and a half, I have all the sales that came through that week organized, categorized by pickups and deliveries. I literally just have to go put meat in bags and put it in the delivery truck.
00:29:52
Speaker
not having to go through all the emails and texts and remembering someone literally texted me today like, Hey, can I get six dozen eggs and two packs of bacon next week? And I said, yes, go on the website. Here's my link.
00:30:10
Speaker
There's no way you should trust a farmer to remember your order on text alone. There's just no way we could keep up with that. So and that was the hardest thing for me getting started was
00:30:24
Speaker
getting used to spending time on the computer, getting inventory up, getting the wheels turning. But now we have momentum with our online store, the Instagram stuff I still do, but I have everything really streamlined for our business to where people used to ask me, what's the hardest thing about being a farmer? Or what's the thing you like the least?
00:30:48
Speaker
And I would tell them. Oh, that's so great. The amount of time that I have to spend on a computer because I'm like learning how to do this. And it was not very fun, but that's not my answer anymore. It's just so easy now that I have the momentum with the software, even with putting up social media newsletters. Once you can figure out the stuff and streamline it, you could spend way more time farming or with your family or
00:31:17
Speaker
I went on a coffee date with a friend the other day and I was like, I could not have done this the first couple of years. I went fishing the other day. It was like on a Monday, I went fishing and I was like, this didn't happen the first couple of years of farming because I was spending so much time trying to figure stuff out. So I'm so grateful to have this stuff so extreme blind, so easy and really
00:31:41
Speaker
I don't have to think about sales nearly as much as I did at the beginning. Part of that is the subscriptions thing. I cannot talk about the subscriptions enough.
Stability Through Subscriptions
00:31:54
Speaker
They have saved our business. They have taken us to new levels of peace and prosperity within our business. And it is an absolute game changer. I want to send a message to any farmers that are not doing subscriptions right now.
00:32:10
Speaker
go start one. It'll take your customers a little while to figure it out, to get used to it. But start it. Get the ball rolling because in six months, you will be making money that you did not have to work for in a sales channel at all. You just got to go grow it. It's so crazy. And I want to say two things about that. One is it's
00:32:34
Speaker
Subscriptions, I told those new folks that were starting today. I'm like subscriptions is literally one of my favorite topics because subscriptions save lives.
00:32:42
Speaker
Yes. Right. I mean, you're talking about... We should make a t-shirt. I know, but like this, and I hate to mention the suicide rates, but you're right. People have indicated that that's especially tough for farmers, but what they're not indicating is it's because it's farmers in particular who don't have control over their pricing. They don't have their own customer relationships. They're all at the whims of somebody else, and it's scary and risky.
00:33:07
Speaker
and really uncomfortable. You don't have freedoms in that situation. And so you and I are talking about a completely different breed and opportunity for farmers who are businessmen, who are owner operators, men and women, excuse me, who are owner operators of their own business and have the freedom to farm and the freedom to make those decisions. And we love that.
00:33:27
Speaker
But I will tell you this, subscriptions is one of my favorite features that we build at Barnes-door because if you use another generic software that's not built for farmers, it doesn't work so well for farmers because subscriptions on other just e-commerce services that, like I said, are very generic and not built for farmers.
00:33:45
Speaker
are very clunky. They don't have the things that farmers need. So when we built subscriptions in house, we're like, okay, so farmers need start and stop. So they've seasonal subscription. So they need a start date, they need an update. And they need somebody to be able to join halfway through if they want somebody that if they want to offer someone to join halfway through, they can have that option. And oh, by the way, farmers need the option to say, Hey, can you pay up front? Or you can pay as you go? Oh, and do you want to
00:34:14
Speaker
You pay up front, you can pay up front by check. Ongoing is credit card links, you gotta make sure the farmer gets paid. But ultimately it's like all the options for farmers to sell seasonal subscriptions to pre-sell months ahead before that even begins. And then we have many farmers, then after that we built ongoing subscriptions. So you literally can have, we have tons of farmers now who are doing year round subscriptions, yourself included.
00:34:38
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. I'm religious about ongoing subscriptions. I swear because, I mean, we have some firms that have like a good 70, 80% of their food, pretty much pre-sold every single month at this point. And we get the feedback, we sleep better, we have a moment. I almost cried one time, one farmer wrote back and said, she actually, she's a single mom with three kids farming, amazing woman. And she's like, I actually get to sit down and have dinner with my kids and I lost.
00:35:07
Speaker
I totally lost it. That made me happier than happiness. She knows she's getting paid. People are subscribing to her farm products. She's growing like crazy now, because when you have things sold ahead of time, pre-sold subscriptions, or even pre-sold before the butcher dates of things, because you can do that with barn to door to and get deposits at a time, like you sleep better, but you can also think about, do I want to expand? I have time to maybe do that now.
00:35:33
Speaker
Yes, yep. When I talk to farmers about the difference between relying on a la carte orders versus subscriptions, I tell them about Blockbuster versus Netflix. Oh, yeah. Blockbuster relied on you going there, picking a movie, you pay for the movie, you go home, you watch it, you have to bring it back. Netflix, you just give them your credit card one time,
00:36:00
Speaker
And then you have access and you never have to think you're the only thing like, Oh, did I pay my Netflix bill? It's not a thing. That's not like not a thought. It just comes out of your card without even thinking about it. And you get to enjoy the benefits of paying for that service. And that's what you can offer your customers. Yeah.
00:36:18
Speaker
with a subscription. I try to encourage if farmers have the inventory, especially if they're on the protein side like I am, offer the ongoing subscription because it's way harder to rally people up to sign again when you stop them. If you do a 12 week subscription on, let's say it's like mine and mine's meat and eggs,
00:36:43
Speaker
I've got plenty of meat and eggs to sell past 12 weeks. So why would I shut them off and ask them to go back on and sign back up again when I can just make these subscriptions ongoing and they get to enjoy and they don't have to think about it. That's a huge thing for buyers now is that they're so busy. If you can save them two minutes,
00:37:07
Speaker
of having to take some effort out to do something, they're going to sign up with you longer. And they're going to sign up to keep paying without even thinking about it. We call it click and forget.
00:37:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's really, really powerful. They click, they buy subscription, they forget, and then they keep getting your lovely farm food. And they are, I guarantee you, once they taste it, we can get back to all that, right? It's just game changers. They love it. They love supporting local farms. The demand is there for everything that we can do to help make it easier for farmers, customers.
00:37:38
Speaker
to get their food regularly. It makes us so happy. Love it. Okay. So now I have to jump back to the podcast. If people paid attention today, they heard the new intro, little song and Diddy for the new Independent Farmer podcast, but I'm going to read it. And then at the end, they just need to listen to the outro or the little Diddy at the end, which is kind of fun, right? You have to choose music and say a little intro and goodbye. You know, all the podcasts you listen to, it's kind of fun.
00:38:07
Speaker
It takes a lot longer than you think to choose songs. Oh, it's like part of the brand. You connect with that little, like the commercial, like you connect with that. All over the place. There's so many options for music. It would take me days to pick one. I have to admit, yeah, it was certainly fun. See, rebranding can be fun and we should encourage that, right? The new intro says, hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer podcast, the go-to podcast for do-it-yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business.
00:38:36
Speaker
Skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn to Door. We offer software for independent farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in person and save time managing their business. That's the nutshell, Alex. That's why we moved to independent farmer. Love it. I feel way more empowered just hearing that intro. Oh, you're so good. Yeah. You're the one doing the hard work. I get to do the fun of supporting awesome people like you.
00:39:06
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. Very rarely do we get to have other people encourage us like other people who understand what it means to be a farmer and to especially be in the regenerative, direct, independent space that we're in.
Expanding Podcast Categories
00:39:22
Speaker
And so you guys have thousands of farms that you work with. And we have meetings with you guys all the time. We have account managers. And so you guys understand our struggles, what we go through better than anyone else does.
00:39:36
Speaker
So to empower your farmers with that intro is awesome. And then again, just having this podcast be a place where farmers can come and listen while they drive. Yeah. Or learn from people like you. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's just like you have all the wisdom of what worked and then it's so important to have these conversations to your point. I think once you told me before, you're like, you're on your farm, you're by yourself.
00:39:59
Speaker
And you know there's farmers everywhere with so much wisdom and when all the independent farmers are working so hard to be successful. You don't want to be in a silo, forgive me. I know you don't. You really don't. But like I'm just saying you don't want the individual independent farmers to be in their own silo.
00:40:15
Speaker
et cetera, you really do want any chance we're getting here to try to create like shared knowledge, shared success, shared data. Here's what works. Don't do that. On the new independent farmer podcast, we have five categories. And then we have three sort of series that are like focus areas. And one of the series is the new farmer. So it's like a new farmer series. And I think your last podcast, Alex is like top of the list in the new farmer series because you have so much advice.
00:40:45
Speaker
Oh, that's awesome. In any way you can skip a few steps in the beginning. If you can learn from other people's mistakes when you start your farm, there really is a scale that you set a trajectory when you start your farm business.
00:41:01
Speaker
And if you try to do it without reading the books and listening to the podcasts and watching the videos, if you just go on inspiration alone without the wisdom of those who have failed before you, your business will not take off for a very, very long time and you will have a ton of unnecessary frustration.
00:41:25
Speaker
So I'm pumped to hear that even with this marketing class that I get to do with you guys, I get to talk to a lot of, you know, not everyone is a new farmer in that class, but some of them are. So I feel like I get to help them turn that trajectory up higher so that a year one, they're at the sales number that they would be at year four had they not gotten any advice.
00:41:50
Speaker
So if there's farmers listening, please read the books, listen to the podcast and learn from others because I have plenty of farming friends that don't do this and they go off of, I don't know, articles and then that's it. And they spend a lot of time failing.
00:42:11
Speaker
and a lot of time not making money and a lot of time animals dying, losing crops. It's serious stuff. Failing on the farm, you need to learn from your mistakes for sure. But when your mistakes equal dead animals, like the coyote comes into egg mobile because you didn't set the automatic doors right and you don't have as many eggs to sell.
00:42:33
Speaker
Not only are animals' lives losing that you cared for, you got these little things when they were chicks and they just start laying their eggs six months later, and then a coyote comes and kills 10 of them in one night. If you would listen to somebody and the knowledge, man, what a difference it would have made to, especially in your trajectory, because your mind is all over the place when you're starting.
00:42:56
Speaker
And any little failure can really, really mess with you. But also make you better. I mean, you can't avoid failures. Yes. Oh, it's so funny. So let me tell you the five categories that we have on the podcast, because I'm sure you'll love to hear them.
00:43:10
Speaker
And we revisited the categories that we had had on the direct farm podcast. So we looked at those and we're like, Hey, I know that we were pretty focused on farm, having their brands selling direct, but how do we sort of take it across to the entire business, independent farming and what's the, obviously the benefits and the passion behind that, but what do they need to be successful across their entire business, right? Both engaging customers, but also managing things on the back end.
00:43:35
Speaker
And so one, we kept one that was in the barn. So that's just, if you, hearing from Barn to Dorm team members, what we're working on, what we're building next for farmers, which we obviously get very passionate about. And then we introduced a second category called audio books and it's, we have 62 eBooks. I don't know if you do that, but we write a ton of eBooks and it's on pretty much moving away from the sale barn, getting examples of six farms and making number six figures.
00:44:02
Speaker
it's how to successfully do social media. It's pretty much anything that would be useful to any farmer. Just go cherry pick the audio book of your choice, whether you're trying to learn how to do delivery or grow produce for profitability or move away from the sale barn.
Learning on-the-go with Audiobooks
00:44:17
Speaker
I think there's some cheeky one about
00:44:19
Speaker
profit over poverty for pasture poultry. There's some good nuggets in that one. We'll be reading those as audiobooks so that farmers like when, especially if you're like driving or doing some things on the farm that aren't particularly loud, you can listen to the audiobooks and we'll just read them, which is just a whole series of great things to absorb. And then the third category is all marketing. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
00:44:44
Speaker
What works, what doesn't, what you can do organically, what's grassroots marketing, what can you automate in marketing, and how to do your brand, how to build your brand channels, how often should you engage your customers, right? There's a lot interesting, a lot of farms. In the last couple of podcasts I did, they're all like, I was so afraid to send an email and I now send them every single week. I think you said that too, didn't you? Yep, I was afraid of being annoying.
00:45:12
Speaker
but I had to get over myself. I saw that there were companies that were sending me emails every day. And that drove me nuts. But then I would get an email from another company that would only send me one like once a month. And I would literally had forgotten that that company, I did not think about that company from the last email until I got the new one a month later.
00:45:36
Speaker
Bingo and people eat every day insert farmer people shop for their food once or twice a week and so Why not give them the opportunity to buy your food once or twice a week? You got to get on their level and don't be afraid of being annoying. These people are your fans. They love you So yes, they do they don't I love the every week emailing them every week But they love the farmer emailing them every week actually that every day like too much
00:46:06
Speaker
You and I did a presentation once on buyer survey on how often they shop for food and how to get in front of them once or twice a week. And that's actually in an ebook. Did you know that? I didn't know that. It's an ebook. We'll have to read it and put it in the audio section. I'll make sure to tag you. I love it. That's good. So we have all marketing because marketing is essential. So we have audio books, marketing in the barn. And then we have one called business matters.
00:46:33
Speaker
It's just everything from finance to operations to just business. Any of the new farmer things would fit here. How to think about pricing, how to think about packaging, how to double your business.
00:46:45
Speaker
We had Taggy's fruit have a whole podcast on doubling her CSA. And she did it like in two years from like 500 to a thousand, like it was nuts. So everything business decision wise, right? That doesn't squarely fit under marketing or sales. And it's really like how you think about the strategic side and expanding your footprint or being more effective or saving time, frankly. And then the fifth one is called food matters. And so we have this great spot for talking about the bigger things and the bigger trends.
00:47:14
Speaker
and some cash in areas if that makes sense. Yes, right. I love that. I can tee you up for some good topics there. Oh, man. Don't hold me back. I know. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later. I love it.
00:47:29
Speaker
Yeah, I want to give you a little feedback. I love that you guys turned the ebooks, or I guess you're in the process of turning the ebooks into audio books, because we're so busy as farmers trying to make sure we can make a living doing this, it takes a lot of we work.
00:47:45
Speaker
ungodly amount of time. But most of us are working 50, 60 hours a week to make this happen. And so we don't have a lot of time to sit around and read. And if we do, we're usually exhausted from working all day. As farmers, there's a lot of monotonous tasks that we do. Packing eggs, washing lettuce, driving to the farmer's market, driving to pick up some more pigs. We do a lot of things that don't take
00:48:15
Speaker
a ton of brain energy so we can listen to these audiobooks in times that you can't really read something and pack eggs at the same time unless you're like a samurai with eggs. So I really, I wanted to give you that feedback because I think that's a game changer and that will make the effort that you guys put into those ebooks, it'll pay off way more as an audio book because that's what we have time for.
00:48:44
Speaker
Yeah. I'm happy to hear you say that. We started with eBooks and then moved to a podcast and found that that was really consumable. And in terms of like you're saying farmers have more time to listen than they do to read. Um, and that's okay. We're like, well, whatever format we have some farms who are like, Hey, I'm doing it yourself. Even when they're getting on board at the front door, they might want to watch videos and just figure it out themselves.
00:49:08
Speaker
But there's other folks that are like, Hey, I want all like, we've had people listen to every podcast. We have farmers who listen to 145 and running, which is awesome. Anything to help farmers be successful. Frankly.
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes you have to figure out what your consumers want and give it to them. Because I just thinking about our subscription, when I started our subscriptions, not to derail us too much, but I think this will be helpful. When I started our meat and egg subscriptions, I created three very different subscriptions.
00:49:41
Speaker
And I had one that was like, if you like all the weird stuff, the organs and the bones, this subscription's for you. If you want the fancy stuff only, chicken breast, filet mignon, ribeyes, pork tine loin, this one's for you. If you only like really simple stuff, ground beef and sausage, this one's for you. I think we had one person sign up. And I had three subscriptions and I had one sign up. And over the course of like months,
00:50:10
Speaker
And I was so frustrated because I was like, I'm covering all the bases here. What's wrong? And what was wrong was my people didn't want any of that. That's not what they wanted. It's what I wanted them to want.
00:50:23
Speaker
I love how you said that. Because then it would cover all the bases of my walk-in freezer. Every corner is now sold if I can get them to sign up for these things. But they didn't want it. They wanted very simple cuts and they wanted to take how often they got it.
00:50:41
Speaker
So now I have the same subscription, but I have it in three different increments. You can get it every week, every other week or once a month. And now we have 40 something people signed up spending 75 to $150 every time. Yeah.
00:50:57
Speaker
And those are sales that I don't have to think about anymore. And they just wanted chicken breast and sausage and ground beef and wings. And they didn't want any of the crazy, weird stuff. They didn't even necessarily need filet mignon. They just wanted something that they could feed their kids that they felt good about. That wasn't going to be super difficult for them to cook.
00:51:17
Speaker
It's funny you say that because actually it brings me back to conversation, both with Tom Bennett and Lacey on recent podcasts. And by the way, we have a top recommended podcast section now on our new landing page. The new landing page is next week. Well, actually, whenever this goes live, it'll probably be about
00:51:34
Speaker
Live to but including some juicy recent podcast and this would go under the category of business matters right like when you're like okay yeah i tried this this this that didn't work that worked okay apparently need to listen to your customers.
00:51:49
Speaker
buying behavior, you know, or different things like that. That just seems so obvious once it's said out loud, but you can learn it the hard way again too. Right. It's a lot of wisdom and a lot of nuggets coming through that are just remarkable. They actually reminds me of a conversation this morning with some of our team members. We were talking about branding because we build logos for farmers and we were talking about logos and one of our farmers, we had built her logo and she put it on the side of her delivery van.
00:52:17
Speaker
And she gets like 10 to 15 new customers every single week because they see her vans with the logo on the side. Now, isn't that a great piece of information? Like don't you want all the farms to know this? Go be successful. Get everybody hooked on subscriptions and amazing bacon and beautiful produce and nutrient dense food. Let's take a huge swing at this and then not slow down. Right. And help independent farmers be successful.
00:52:46
Speaker
Yeah, I hope she can keep up with all the volume. That's one of those, that's when you get into the good problems to have, right? Yes, absolutely. That's so important that you have a recognizable band too, like, you know, the Nike swoosh. Everybody knows what that means. Yeah. And I use that a lot in the grassroots marketing class. You don't want a logo that nobody could really understand or see. And it just looks like a bunch of blurry lines.
00:53:14
Speaker
let them know what you're about, you know, don't make it over complicated. And I love that she put that on the van and then it brings in a ton of sales. It's kind of crazy. Initial work is there and then sales from there. Yeah. And I tell you, there's so many important topics to talk about. And I guess that's why we're really excited about the rebrand of the independent farmer
00:53:35
Speaker
And you know this and you and I could talk about all of them for hours, frankly, but there are parts of being an independent farmer. There are parts of all of our jobs that we're naturally really good at. And then there are parts of our jobs that we aren't as good at or don't like as much that we still need to do.
00:53:53
Speaker
And I'm sure everybody can think of those, right? Literally, you can talk to anybody. It's like you can talk to an engineer and maybe they love to build code, but documentation is not their favorite, but that's really important because the next engineer coming in needs to know where to pick up where you left off, right? So there's really important parts of everybody's job that they need to do that is nobody's favorite.
00:54:14
Speaker
and the biggest CEOs of the biggest companies have parts of their job they don't prefer to do, right? And so as an independent farmer, it's good to think about the things that you love to do great, like check the box, but then what are the parts that you actually incrementally should face head on, get better at, get comfortable with,
00:54:33
Speaker
And due to a point that you actually aren't afraid of it, scared of it, want to avoid it, but you know that it's buttoned up and you've got it. Right. And I feel like in independent farming, like one of our new series is called money talks. And so it's everything about how to do your finances. What do you do when it comes to accounting reporting? How do you do the pricing?
00:54:51
Speaker
and to think about money. And Tom Bennett, I'm sure one of his podcast will land under money talks because he loves to talk about how do you price things? How do you value your time? And has some really honest conversations about that. So face those head on. As soon as you start to master some of those things, your confidence and your business will benefit from it. And you will, again, we're all about sleeping better here, right?
00:55:13
Speaker
So money talks, I feel like falls there. Marketing falls there for a lot of farmers and we can help and you've crushed it yourself and you've just gotten better and you're crushing it now. Who knew you were going to be like an expert on reels and teach grassroots marketing to farmers? Yeah, not me three years ago, that's for sure. Yeah, you did not want to touch social media with 10 foot pole and now you're literally teaching grassroots marketing, Alex.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah. And we have a pretty great section on using Instagram to educate people. So it's just a few years into facing all the different parts of the business side of it, being an independent farmer is going to help people be successful. And we just couldn't be more excited.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's a great resource. I love it because it's just stuff that you would probably have to read the whole book to get the knowledge that you would get out of that one podcast. And so you guys are weeding through the mess for us to get what we need as farmers because not a lot of books are written for farmers, especially in the business sales and marketing world.
00:56:19
Speaker
That's all we want to do. There's like a few examples of like really famous farmers that sell direct. There's like only a few of them that you can name off the top of your head. But if you think about the business world, the marketing world, there's thousands of people that have written books.
00:56:36
Speaker
in general marketing, but it's really, really nice to have a resource for farmers podcast. You can come on. I didn't even know you guys were doing categories. That's really sweet. And series, which I'm so excited. Yes. Yes. Yes. And I love the series that you guys did with farming consumer legal defense. Oh, yeah. I'm glad you said that. So awesome. We're keeping that like a legal series. Did you listen to a few of those?
00:57:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I love those. Do a shout out for the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund. I think it's like roughly $100 a year for a farmer. And you literally get free legal advice. Like it's miraculous and important. So they do such a good job. We do podcasts with them.
00:57:19
Speaker
on e-commerce across state lines, on halves, quarters, fulls, on raw milk, on shifting regulations from state to state on various topics. What do you need to know about selling direct when you're selling bundles or on the hook, etc. So there's a lot. I love providing farmers with the knowledge that is power for them to make good decisions and just keep on going.
00:57:42
Speaker
Absolutely. We've been a member with them since the beginning and we needed them in our first year. We had one of their attorneys fought for us for poultry processing rights and our state of South Carolina was not wanting to give us our poultry processing, even though we were under federal exemptions.
00:57:59
Speaker
We brought them in, they kicked their butts and they got us the processing licenses that we needed. And there was God bless. Thank God that I have an attorney on my side that can fight for me because I love it. Yeah. Like I said, there's not a lot of resources for farmers like this. Well, we're here and we're not slowing down and we are.
00:58:21
Speaker
Happy to provide any and all at all times, including this new podcast, right? I want to extend a big thank you to Alex for joining us on this week's independent farmer podcast episode. You can check out Alex and his farm on his Instagram handle at Chucktownacres.
00:58:37
Speaker
Check it out. It's good, clean, fun. And he's a great one to follow. Good example. Clearly he's teaching classes on topic. If you're an independent farmer who is just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and want help creating and promoting your brand, selling online and in person or need to save time managing your business. It's pain-free to take a few minutes to go to barn2door.com backslash learn more.
00:59:00
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer podcast and please enjoy the new outro. Listen to the music, enjoy the last little recorded words after this. This will be the first time we share it. Thank you everyone and can't wait until the next podcast.
00:59:27
Speaker
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn to Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country. For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodoor.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.