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Accessing Academies: What Barn2Door Academy Pass Can Unlock for Your Farm Business
259 Plays3 years ago
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we discuss the Barn2Door Academy Pass with the Barn2Door Content Marketing Manager, Rachele. The Barn2Door Academy Pass unlocks an in-depth series of virtual classes providing tactical guidance and best practices for Farmers using Barn2Door. Topics include refining your brand, developing content, crafting a social media strategy, driving sales with email marketing, building a profitable Delivery service, and understanding the nuances of Farm finances.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast, the go-to resource for farms across the US looking to grow and manage their business.
Weekly Tips for Farmers
00:00:10
Speaker
Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers, and save time
Industry Expert Insights
00:00:17
Speaker
and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders, and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to the direct farm podcast. I'm Rory, your host for today's episode.
Guest Introduction: Rachel Neil
00:00:31
Speaker
We've got a great conversation for you today with Barnador's content marketing manager, Rachel Neil. Welcome Rachel. We're going to be talking about the Academy pass
Barnador Academy Overview
00:00:39
Speaker
today. So to start out, what is Barnador Academy?
00:00:42
Speaker
Hey, Rory, good to be here. So Barn to our Academy is really an in-depth series of classes providing best practices and tactical guidance relating to a specific topic. So there are three parts that spread out over three weeks. It's one hour per class, so it's really doable and can be doable for a lot of different schedules, but it's hands-on educational courses taught by farmers for farmers
00:01:10
Speaker
and we're just providing best practices and insights backed by data. Yeah, definitely making it something that can align with farmer's schedules is something we're always trying to do. I know we've updated that schedule a few times to try and make sure that we can get as many farmers in those classes as possible and it can align with when they're busy and we can try and get them when they're not so busy.
Academy Pass Details
00:01:30
Speaker
So right now with Barnador, you can access these academies with the Barnador Academy Pass. So what is the Academy Pass?
00:01:37
Speaker
yes so the academy pass it's $39 a month and it really gives you unlimited access to all of our academy classes so right now we have five which is quite a bit considering we started the year out with two so we've made a huge leap this year but what's really nice about the pass is that
00:01:55
Speaker
You have unlimited access so you can attend multiple classes, you can learn new skills. We're always updating the classes too. So we're always staying on top of the latest trends, the latest insights, always implementing the most recent data. So it's really nice and it's a really great value for the amount of information farmers get.
00:02:17
Speaker
So the Academy pass, you know, it's definitely a ton of content that farmers can use and attend and they can do these classes month over month.
Current Classes Overview
00:02:24
Speaker
How can farmers get the Academy pass? Yes. So farmers can log in into their barn store account and in the backend with our add-ons, they can add barn store onto their subscription. That easy. It's really easy. That's awesome. Great. Well, so we've mentioned that there are multiple classes. What classes is barn to door currently offering?
00:02:43
Speaker
Yes, so again, we have five classes. So there's social media. So this is like an overview of Facebook and Instagram best practices. There's email marketing and MailChimp. So diving into the Barnes-Dorn MailChimp integration, newsletters versus emails versus order reminders. And we also have content development, which is a really great one in order to build your brand or hone your messaging across your website, your email and your social media account.
00:03:11
Speaker
and then the two new ones is delivery which is in partnership with route tiffet that one's kicking off here in july or has already started so that's really exciting so delivery best practices which is super fun and then next month we have our new finance academy so diving deep into managing the books how to efficiently grow your business and that's taught by a quickbooks pro advisor
Class Structure and Evolution
00:03:35
Speaker
Yeah, and it's really cool because I feel like all of these classes, they're kind of based on the feedback we've gotten from farmers in what areas they're having trouble with because obviously with Barnador, you know, it's the tool, it's the back end tool to be able to help you sell your products. But at the end of the day, a lot of the marketing still falls on the farmer and they have to know how to use these tools to help them save the time.
00:03:53
Speaker
All of these things, whether it's social media or MailChimp or QuickBooks, Routeific, routing software, doing delivery, there's kind of various levels you can do them at. And so we take it one step at a time in the academies going from very basic MailChimp skills, you know, tagging your customers, getting your contact list uploaded to, by the end you're talking about email automation and A-B testing and things like that. And so it's really cool that we get to walk through that with farmers and teach them the steps so that
00:04:21
Speaker
they can be using these tools to effectively market or communicate or just manage their business.
00:04:27
Speaker
exactly yes and on that point it really embraces the fact that you can join at any kind of like skill type or level you have so if you have no experience in social media you can jump into the course and you can by the end of the three classes you can have a complete social media posting schedule or if you've never sent a MailChimp email by the end of the class you'll know the difference between when to send an email when to send a newsletter and what information to include in each yeah
00:04:54
Speaker
And like you said, all of these classes are based on data. And so that's how these topics were chosen because we know that these tactics and these practices really work to aid farmers and their success. And so we just want farmers to embrace them, teach them, you know, the time saving ways to do it and then see those sales come in.
00:05:14
Speaker
Yeah and for some of these things it's like literally instant transfer to sales especially with something like MailChimp where if you get your email marketing down right you can be sending out a single email and generating hundreds or thousands of dollars off those. Yeah we know one farm over in North Carolina she sends out her weekly newsletter and she generates 80% of her weekly orders just from that one email. Crazy this is powerful stuff.
Origins of Barnador Academy
00:05:39
Speaker
Powerful tools. Awesome. Well, walk us through kind of maybe like the history of academies at Barnadore. How did these kind of start up? Why did they start up and how have they evolved since then? Yeah, great question. So Barnadore Academy debuted in spring of 2021. And we started with a Facebook class and Instagram class. They were two separate ones. And then we also had our MailChimp email marketing course. And they were initially taught by Barnadore success team members.
00:06:05
Speaker
And the goal has always been to offer live virtual classes to teach these best practices. And we found that when we break down these specific tactics for farmers that we know will generate results, it can be really powerful for them to grow their businesses to get sales like we were just talking about.
00:06:23
Speaker
And so since then, like we've mentioned, we've really switched up the curriculum, we've switched up the format, we keep updating new things. So today, the main difference is that farmers are teaching farmers in these courses. And we know that people of all industries love to learn from their peers.
Peer Learning Benefits
00:06:40
Speaker
And so by having farmers come on who are experts within these categories themselves and show their tools, their tactics, what they do, it's been really powerful and it's really
00:06:51
Speaker
created this virtual room full of like connection and sharing experiences and brainstorming and really coming together to foster that. So that's really cool. It's really awesome. I get to sit in on a lot of the academies just hosting and welcoming people. I don't get I don't teach. I let the pros do that. But it is really cool because you know we can talk about delivery all day long and the best ways to do it. But being able to bring Brie Cassidy from Terra Firma Farm
00:07:17
Speaker
Into the classroom and have her tell people about her delivery program which she's doing like almost 80 deliveries a day at this point that's who you want to be hearing from or tapping into our other farm advisors like Valerie to teach the MailChimp Academy Valerie lumen with grass-fed cattle company who's literally using the email automations plugging these in generating revenue for her farm with MailChimp. That's who you want teaching the MailChimp Academy So that's kind of my favorite aspect of it is getting to have these farmers lead the class and
00:07:45
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. And something about the farmers too is because they, you know, are in the front lines doing these things themselves, you know, they come to us and they're like, Hey, like, did you know, like I learned things from them too, which is awesome. So it's really cool to see like Valerie implements her automatic welcome stream and mail chimp. And that's just a really good way to spur, you know, order straight off the bat as someone subscribes to your newsletter.
00:08:08
Speaker
So these little like tips and tricks that the farmers are using and just being able to amplify their voice, give them a platform and then have all of our farmers learn from them. Yeah, definitely.
Content Planning Insight
00:08:18
Speaker
Well, Rachel, I'm curious, what is your role in putting together these academies?
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a lot of work that goes on producing these courses. So like I said, there's three classes per course. So when you think about it, that's 15 different presentations. And we were just talking about this earlier today, but the team, it really starts with team planning, as you know, you're a part of us.
00:08:40
Speaker
planning process and so when we decide on what topic we want to do so for example the delivery academy when we were thinking about this topic we had to be very methodical and thoughtful about how we wanted the course to play out so we start with you know outlining what each class will entail
00:08:58
Speaker
because we obviously want it to be very consumable in an hour format, but then also where we teach best practices as well. So it starts with the outline, we throw in the talking points for the slides, and then that's when the fun part starts with building out the talking points and really hitting in on those data points, because we want to share and amplify those tactics that lead to success.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah. And I feel like laying out the steps of what goes into these almost simplifies it because even just like outlines alone, that's a lot of content to be pulling and you want to make sure that you're flushing out the entirety of a topic kind of at the, the two oh one three oh one and four oh one levels. That's the levels of each classes that we do. So it definitely is a lot of content to be put into those and then taking that and diving into data on it and building out those slide decks. It's a lot of work.
00:09:48
Speaker
There's a lot of planning. What items are you offering for delivery? What are your routes? How do you even decide what routes? Are you choosing it by zip code? Are you going by neighborhood? There's a lot of different nuances that even varies by each farm. There's so many different paths that you can take it. Like you said, being very methodical about what kind of content is in each class, that also leads a consecutive class as well and builds upon each of the classes before.
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, and that's kind of also a great point and that it's great that these are live classes because they are live We don't record them and so when you're attending it, you know, it's a one-of-one experience and it's really cool because I think farming has so many nuances and there's so many specific
00:10:33
Speaker
ways that a beef farmer might want to market their business versus a dairy farmer or a produce farmer. And so making it live and having instructors that literally do the same thing, they can speak to all those people. And if you have questions like, I just started doing bundle boxes, like how should I be marketing that on social media? And they can speak to that specific question or I'm just about to launch my CSA. What's the best way to promo that in with email marketing? It's cool to be able to get it into those specifics in the live class and get real time answers really.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah. And even with the content development one, like maybe you're going through the website design process and you know, you get your form and you're like, Oh, I don't know what, how to write about my brand or what to say about our story. And that cost literally step-by-step walks you through like methodically how to think about how to write your about page of your website or how to use email marketing and what content to put in there or things like that.
Benefits of Live Classes
00:11:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we've definitely talked about how these classes are led by farmers. Who are the teachers of these academies? How are these people chosen?
00:11:31
Speaker
yeah that's a great question so we call them our marketing development experts our mde's we love acronyms here at bernadore and they are literally what their titles are they are experts within these different categories of our classes and so
00:11:46
Speaker
We select them very strategically and we're really always there looking for farmers who are on the cutting edge of implementing best practices or that have developed new and unique techniques to engage their audiences. Maybe it's time saving tactics, things like that. So you named a few, but we have Valerie of Grass-fed Cattle Co. and we have Camille from Little River Farm. So it also runs the gambit too of protein, produce, dairy. So it's really nice to see that variation with our instructors as well.
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're up to four or five MDs now, which is really cool because we originally had two Joelle Orem of Orem Farms. It was the first one in Valerie, like we've said. So being able to grow that team has been really fun too.
00:12:28
Speaker
And what's nice too is they all host Connect as well. So if you have additional questions after attending one of the classes, you go join a Connect session with them and you can further continue the live conversation with them, which is really nice. Yeah, it's really great because it's an hour long, but it's a packed hour. Every class is, we're covering a lot, we're diving through things.
00:12:48
Speaker
And sometimes we're able to go through and answer every little question, but sometimes we have to keep the train moving because there's so much more to cover. And so Connect is a great chance to be able to connect or follow up with those people after the fact and still be able to pick their brain. So why do we choose to do these classes virtually in person? Why do we choose to do these classes live versus a pre-recorded thing that maybe we just send out to people?
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, so having a live class, it really gives the farmers the opportunity to connect with others. And we also know farmers are really busy. And so setting aside and having this on your calendar, it's one hour for three weeks. And so you're really putting in the time and effort to solely focus on one topic, which that's a lot of the feedback we get is, wow, it's just really nice to sit down and fully devote time to learning about one thing that they really wanted to learn about.
00:13:39
Speaker
And then what's also nice in these virtual meetings, it's like you said, it opens it up for live Q&A connection, not only with the instructor, but connecting with other farmers too. So I know in the social media Academy, we have people post, you know, their Instagram and Facebooks. And so we know what people are following each other and it's really easy to foster, you know, bouncing ideas off of each other and fueling that connection from farmers across the country.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, even our MDEs, the people leading the classes, they'll subscribe to the newsletter maybe say in the MailChimp class. They'll subscribe to the newsletter of a farm that's a participant in the class and they'll get their emails every week or every month for forever. And they remember those people. They are able to see them implementing the practices that they got to teach them. And so that's a really cool community building opportunity too. And it's a great way to keep each other sharp because you get to see
00:14:29
Speaker
Oh, what's this farm over on the west coast doing that I could implement on my farm in the east coast? And yeah, it's definitely a cool element there with all the community building.
00:14:46
Speaker
Like you said, we've really been so heads down on developing delivery and finance. And then now that they're finally in the water, it's fun to be like, okay, what's next? I don't know. I think we've been talking a little bit. We could see taxes in the future. That's such an important topic, just like finances. And that can have its own three-part series. There's so much to dive into. I think another one potentially could be like inventory or packaging best practices. I know the success team gets
00:15:11
Speaker
Lot of you know questions around that and they provide a lot of guidance there. So I think that could be a good one and subscriptions Yeah, I think subscriptions could be a really good one There's just so much we can do with any of these topics and so that's the fun thing too We're always expanding our course offerings. Yeah.
Monthly Content Updates
00:15:28
Speaker
No, that's awesome. I'm excited to see what will be next
00:15:30
Speaker
So we run these academies every month. We do two a month and they rotate between the five. So not every month is the same, especially if you're on that Academy pass, it's nice. By the time you actually re-encounter an Academy, there's likely updates to that software platform like MailChimp or QuickBooks. And so there's new things to learn and we do work really hard to keep these up to date. But what's coming up in August? What academies will be featuring that
Introduction to Finance Academy
00:15:53
Speaker
month?
00:15:53
Speaker
Yeah, so we will be debuting our new finance academy. It is sold out at this moment, which is crazy because we just launched it. So that will be coming up again in the fall. So keep your eye on your email if you're really interested attending that finance class. And then we'll be having the very popular social media class again. So that'll be great to have that. I think the last time we had that was June.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. And so maybe for people that are listening, I know we also just did a podcast about the Finance Academy and with Taylor who's going to be leading that class. Why is that an important one? Why might people want to keep an eye out for that when it comes available again? Finances are so important and farming is such a nuanced industry. So farm finances are of course very unique. So when it comes to managing the books, understanding, you know, profit versus loss, expenses versus income,
00:16:43
Speaker
Those are all really important things to any business, especially farm businesses. And so Taylor, who's a Quickbook Pro advisor, she's also a farmer. She will be hosting it and she'll really be going into best practices related to the Barn to Door and Quickbooks integration because we know that farmers who on Barn to Door that
00:17:04
Speaker
have QuickBooks are our most successful farmers. They gain insights into their numbers and it really helps them plan ahead for the future as well and see in the areas that they are profitable. When I was talking to her the other day, she said something like,
00:17:21
Speaker
You know, finances is something that you have to do. Like you just have to if you want your farm to stay afloat. And so you might as well be good at it and then do more than stay afloat. You can actually use finances as a way to plan ahead for success and grow your business. And so, yeah, it's going to be great to really dive into even just starting with the basic financial statements and then going from there is going to be really cool.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah
Simplifying Finances
00:17:41
Speaker
and finances it's an overwhelming topic. Definitely. Like there's so much to it and like I know even when I think about it I'm like oh man like where do we start like there's a lot to it so Taylor is really going to break it down step by step and make it very easy to understand and by the end of the course if you are currently intimidated by finances or need that extra help you're gonna be a pro or you're gonna have someone on your side like Taylor that'll help you. Yeah definitely.
00:18:10
Speaker
I know she's really excitedly and it's great too. She and her family have their own hobby farm Which is great that she can have that kind of insight, but then also she works with a lot of farms I believe she's located over in Virginia So it's great to be able to bring in somebody that kind of has that prior knowledge already, too Alright, so as a final like maybe pitch or as the person who puts together the content for these academies Rachel Give me two reasons why farmers should sign up for the academy
Value of Academy Pass
00:18:33
Speaker
pass
00:18:33
Speaker
there's so many reasons. I think the first reason would be it's really rare to have the time and the opportunity to sit down and just focus on one specific topic and just the community aspect of being in it and learning with other farmers from across the country I think is such a huge bonus. And the second one
00:18:52
Speaker
The Academy Pass, it's a super great value to learn all of this information that we're providing. All of these tactics we're sharing, it's proven to help farmers increase sales and save time and save money. And it's only one hour a week. I know farmers are so busy, but you can just put one hour a week, you're bound to learn at least one thing that you can implement that'll help you drive sales.
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And I think too, if you asked any farmer, Hey, would you want to for one hour a week to sit down in a room of other farmers and bounce ideas off of each other about how to grow your business, how to be successful as a farm business? I think everybody's saying yes to that. So it's really cool that this kind of provides that opportunity. Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining, Rachel. Thank you.
Closing Remarks and Resources
00:19:35
Speaker
I want to extend my thanks to Rachel for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Here at Barnadore, we're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country who implement sustainable agricultural practices and support their local communities. To learn more about Barnadore, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm, go to barnadore.com slash resources. And to learn more about academies, click the link in the description of this episode. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week.
00:20:03
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms used to grow and manage their business, visit barnadore.com slash resources. Also don't forget to subscribe to the Direct Farm podcast to automatically download our weekly episodes. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.