Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The ‘Business’ Side of Farming with Chucktown Acres
731 Plays11 months ago
In this week's episode, Janelle talks with Alex from Chucktown Acres about the business side of Farming.
While Farmers may get into the industry for their love of agriculture, they are still business owners. There is much work that happens in the background to ensure success. From marketing to integrations for streamlined operations, Alex shares what to consider in the Farming business.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Direct Farm Podcast
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. Tune in weekly to hear tips and tactics from our most successful farmers on how to increase sales, access more customers, and save time and money. We'll also speak with industry experts, business leaders, and partners to share the latest farm business trends selling direct to market.
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the Direct Farm podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode.
Meet Alex Russell from Checktown Acres
00:00:33
Speaker
As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn to Door offers an all in one business solution for farmers selling direct online and in person.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm happy to speak with Alex Russell from Checktown Acres in South Carolina today. Alex is part of our Farm Advisor Network and has grown a strong following online as well as in his community.
The Business Side of Farming
00:00:54
Speaker
Today, we're going to be discussing not the farming side of farming, but the business side of farming.
00:00:59
Speaker
Many independent farmers get into farming because they're passionate about regenerative agriculture. They want to be part of the solution and they know how important it is. But there also is the business side of farming. In order for those farmers to be successful, that needs to be addressed and done well. Alex, welcome. I know we've talked a little bit about this before, and it's always a fun, hot topic, right? In fact, if I might tee you up a little bit, you did an internship at Poly Face and you did a really good job having mentors.
00:01:29
Speaker
If I recall when you were starting your own farm, you were like, I had learned the farming side of farming. And now that I want to have a farm, I need to focus on the business side. And that was just a few years ago.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I came into starting own operation, owning the whole thing and running it myself, I had zero entrepreneurial business experience into that.
Challenges in Farm Business Management
00:02:00
Speaker
And I knew how to raise animals well, and I knew how to keep them alive.
00:02:04
Speaker
how to raise a really good quality product. And I had a tiny bit of experience at a farmer's market selling some stuff under the poly face name, doing it for them. But for most of it, I was just the livestock guy. And that was my job. And then as soon as we started our own thing,
00:02:24
Speaker
the whole world of business came crumbling down upon me. I have to be a marketer, a salesman. I have to do deliveries and fulfillments and I have to show up and do inventories and I have to do Instagram and all this other stuff that's not farming. When people ask me what's the hardest thing,
00:02:46
Speaker
that you do, my answer is always the same. It's how much time I spend on the computer and doing the business side of running this foreign business. And people are shocked to hear that they think it's going to be getting up early and moving to chicken pins or lifting 50 pound bags all day. That's the easy stuff. It's easy for me and it's become easy as you get good and you streamline.
00:03:12
Speaker
But the hardest thing is you never, most of us haven't been to business school. Most of us haven't been entrepreneurs before. And this is a whole brand new experience. And you just go in, if you need to make a full time living on this, you have to go head first.
Building Customer Relationships
00:03:28
Speaker
And you got to dive into a lot of production. And then all of a sudden, you got to sell it, you got to do taxes, you got to do accounting and QuickBooks. And you wonder if you're going to have any time to go outside. Actually do farming.
00:03:41
Speaker
It's kind of crazy, isn't it? And I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but farming is the fun part of farming. If you were going to pick up the phone and talk to farmers, it would be more interesting to just to talk about the animals and the food and the production and what's worked and what hasn't, and how are you building soil and all the next things versus the business side.
00:04:01
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You start wanting to talk about sales and marketing and emails with the farmer and you're going to lose them right away most of the time. Cause they're like, I had stuff sucks. I'm not interested in that stuff. Let's talk about what kind of breed of cattle we like and what kind of grass we grow. But Alex, can you ignore the business side of farming? I don't know if it's a necessary evil or what, but I think you've talked to enough farms now where it's like the realization that you can't ignore that. You can't ignore it.
00:04:27
Speaker
Yes, even if you're a commodity farmer growing corn and soybeans, you still have to be a business owner. You still have to sell your product to somebody and you still have to work with people. It's way more extreme if you're a direct to market farm selling, doing online sales, doing farmer's markets. You're way more into it if you're selling direct to consumer.
Direct to Consumer Sales
00:04:52
Speaker
And that's an interesting thing that you bring up because the quote unquote sort of big egg farms, and forgive me if this is too much of a gross generalization, but the larger farms or the farms that are working on one or two contracts with big food companies aren't as concerned about some parts, like if you're selling direct,
00:05:15
Speaker
which is great. I love it all day long. That's who we support at Barentador. We want the independent farmer to be wildly successful because you get to maximize your profits. But that also means you have to have a lot of buyers and you have to own those relationships. Like you, Checktown Acres, the farmer, not Barentador, not any company anywhere. Like you, the farmer needs to own those relationships and then you need to keep working them. You kind of need to keep them going.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yes, it's a never ending cycle. You're going to have your base of loyal customers that really like you and will stick with you until you shut your farm down someday or whatever.
00:05:52
Speaker
But you have a lot of people that come and go and you got to make new customers all the time. You never want to be sleeping on your marketing efforts. And like you said, the relationships that you make with these people are really what build the loyalty. The loyalty comes from.
00:06:13
Speaker
what you do and you sell your story as a brand that is doing something good on the earth that raises really high quality food that builds a lot of loyalty with people that's almost the way to get them interested in and intrigued into what you do but the way you keep them is you always deliver on the quality of your product which is super important but you also just have the relationship with them you're a small business you're literally bringing
00:06:40
Speaker
food to their house that they're going to feed their children and they're going to eat three times a day. There's not a lot of other things in your life that you do three times a day every single day. So you, as the person who grows the food and sells it to that person, you have a very intimate relationship with that customer
00:07:04
Speaker
because you're doing something that ends up on their kitchen table three times a day and the people are paying extra for your product. They're doing that because they're motivated because they want to know who's growing their food. They don't want any crap in their food anymore. They don't want any processed garbage anymore. They want to know who's doing it, how they're doing it, and they want to have that relationship with you. I have
00:07:29
Speaker
Plenty of customers that I text on a regular basis to see how they're doing to get feedback from them. And they love it because you can't text Walmart. You can't text ButcherBox and get the same person calling you back and answering you. Same thing with emails. I always try to make sure my emails are personal. Ask them how they're doing, how their kids are doing. And that really, really goes a long way. And I think.
Streamlining Operations with Barn to Door
00:07:55
Speaker
Some farmers struggle with that piece because some people might be getting into this industry because they want to be left alone. They want to go out and move out of the country and just be little curmudgeons and then they realize once they're out there,
00:08:12
Speaker
Oh no, I have to sell this stuff. I grew it. I grew it all. And I'm not a soybean farmer. I can't just call one guy and have him come pick it all up with a combine. I actually have to make individual sales to individual people. So therefore, I'm going to have to be charismatic. I'm going to have to be nice. I'm going to have to be respectful. I'm going to have to talk to these people. I may be dealing with some crazy people out there that I got to deal with.
00:08:39
Speaker
And you have to be able to build the skill of dealing with customers and a lot of individual personalities that takes skill and that takes practice. And not a lot of farmers are naturally like that. Yeah.
00:08:54
Speaker
And that's fair, but at the end of the day, like you're saying, there are different parts to owning your own business and having to be successful and growing it, unfortunately just isn't enough. If you want it to be a livelihood, you have to have buyers and to your point, relationships, and ultimately it's built on your brand. Now let's back up a little to when you first were starting. If you can remember this, I'm kind of putting you on the spot.
00:09:16
Speaker
From a business perspective, what were some of the first things you felt like you tackled because you can't tackle it all at once, right? Like, I mean, yes, you have to get good at sales and marketing and finances and inventory management, etc. So there's a lot.
00:09:32
Speaker
Yeah. What do you feel like the first thing that you got good at? And then I feel like along the way, Alex, you had some aha, where all of a sudden, and we'll get into that a minute, because I know a few of them, and I'm sure you have more to share. But what was the first thing you did? Did you start growing first? And then you're like, crap, I've got to sell. I need to figure out who's going to buy this? Or were you thinking, hey, I got to get my finances sorted? Or what did that look like?
00:09:55
Speaker
It was only four years ago. It was during the birth of COVID. And so the whole world was upside down. Everyone was freaking out. Where's the food? We had already started planning the farm and started buying some livestock before COVID really struck the United States like March 2020. But we launched, officially launched and started selling product in June of 2020. So it was just absolute madness.
00:10:23
Speaker
We tried a test batch of chickens in December 2019, a few months before we launched. And we just sold them to like neighbors, friends, put it on our Instagram or our Facebooks or whatever. And they actually sold really well. Usually you have those sympathy buyers like your grandma and your neighbor. You call them friends, families, and fools.
00:10:46
Speaker
People who just are kind enough, have some sympathy, are trying to support them personally, but might not be a true business proven out just yet.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we were meeting people in Walmart parking lots to sell them a $20 chicken. And so actually it's funny that you asked this question. I don't know if you know this answer or not, but pretty much the first thing we did besides forming our LLC was signing up with Barnadore because we realized this is gonna have to be streamlined some way. And our farmer's market's only six months out of the year.
00:11:24
Speaker
We're gonna have to make money in the winter time. We have got to figure out how to sell this stuff year round. And it's not gonna be by meeting people in Walmart parking lots for a chicken at a time. It's not gonna be the way it goes. I mean, you could keep doing that. You're not gonna be able to have a full-time job farming though, if you do. It's not gonna work. This is what we do all day every day at our company is build software and provide resources to farmers who are independent and want a successful business.
00:11:53
Speaker
But what was it that turned you on to try Barn to door and what what parts of the business did they solve for you out of the gate clearly like maybe at the beginning and then I think you evolved with us really, you just gotten better and better at all parts of the business I feel like.
00:12:11
Speaker
But we're meant to be an all in one business solution for the independent farmer. And a lot of people just think, oh, we help them have an online store, which is just one piece of what we enable because we want farmers anywhere to transact with their customers. I want somebody to buy from you no matter what you're doing at Chucktown at any time online or in person. And we want to power those transactions, right? Because at the end of the day, your business.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah. But there's a lot of other moving parts to a business, not just, Hey, all your customers in their pajamas at 11 at night can go shop at your online store.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that I was going to say, that's one of my favorite things about the entire business is waking up in the morning and checking your email and seeing that you sold $200 worth of stuff while you were sleeping. I mean, your whole day is just like sunshine and roses from that point. But to your original question, we saw that there were a few options of different software that we could use. Once we decided like, Hey, we're going to have to streamline this. We're going to have to choose.
00:13:13
Speaker
It was probably the fact we didn't have a website yet. All we had was we bought our domain for like $20. Um, it's funny. No one had ever thought of chuck town acres before. So we bought that and then we're like, okay, we need a website and we're farmers. Don't give me Wix. I don't know what the heck to do with don't give me square. I don't know what to do with any of that stuff. So we're like, we need someone to build this for us.
00:13:36
Speaker
And it just so happened that you guys build the website and you build the online store and you have this onboarding process that helps us get from, Hey, I have a hundred chickens in a chest freezer.
00:13:50
Speaker
to, okay, here's your inventory. We're gonna funnel people to your website. We're gonna show them your online store. We're gonna make orders really easy. We're gonna make fulfillments, pick and pack, all that's gonna be easy. And like you said, I didn't have to do so many things because I did barn to door. I didn't have to have all these different
00:14:13
Speaker
software programs and stuff to use or take orders over like emails and texts and like crazy stuff like that. Things get messed up all the time. I tried to do it at the beginning and I quickly dropped. That was an aha moment. It was like, don't take someone's order over a text message. I just tell people, go to the website. If you want our thing, go to the website. Even some of my best, closest friends, they'll say, Hey, can you bring me five pounds of ground beef this week? And I'm like, yeah.
00:14:42
Speaker
go to chucktownacres.com and go buy it and then it will show up on my pick list and I will have it for you. I'm not gonna remember to bring it to you on Wednesday during delivery. Your brain is way too busy for all the details. Well, and people don't realize technology can help. It's not rocket science for technology to track an order, subtract the proper inventory and spit it out onto your pick and pack list for logistics, right? That's the fun. Maybe we should rename it like,
00:15:10
Speaker
the business solution for farmers who hate the business side of farming. Yeah. Well, we're trying to save so much time, like you're not valuing your own time. And so you're willing to do the manual processes because farming is manual and often you have to fix it by yourself. That's why every farmer I know loves duct tape and zip ties, right? But like seriously, there are manual processes that you must do as a farmer and nobody else is going to do it if you don't do it and it's going to fix things. But there are manual processes in business
00:15:40
Speaker
That technology like ours for example can just do for you like we integrate with the book so you don't have to worry about finances. We'll spit out your pick and pack list and here's the orders on labels for your boxes. Don't waste your time. I know it sounds silly but don't waste your time on the manual things that shouldn't matter. Who cares if you're assembling Excel spreadsheets and labels. You have better things to do with your very limited time as a farmer.
00:16:04
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Yeah. You could be playing wrestling your five-year-old instead. But if you're not doing that stuff, you're going to be up all night trying to organize yourself and think about how many farmers are very, very organized people.
00:16:21
Speaker
It's a small percentage of farmers that are super organized. And I'm not in that category. So I am very grateful to pay for a software that will organize the final fulfillment of what I do. The very last time I touch that chicken breast is going to my customer. That's the final hurrah of the whole thing from that little chick
00:16:49
Speaker
to all the feed I have to buy, to picking a processor, to picking a hatchery, to picking out a chicken coop, and doing all that, and getting it processed, and getting it in the freezer, and getting it online in the inventory, making this sale the last thing. I don't want to screw up the last thing because I just spent the last two months trying to grow a chicken that's really, really good.
00:17:12
Speaker
If you're not organized, you will screw up that last piece of the fulfillment, the pack list, the labels, getting it to that customer with exactly what they ordered. You're going to screw that up over and over and over again. If someone's not organizing it for you by delivery days, Wednesdays. So Tuesdays at noon, I have all the orders shut off.
00:17:36
Speaker
and I can print out all my sheets and I can go to the freezer and I can do all my orders. I'm not having to write notes down and keep a whole separate spreadsheet for my buddies that I'm bringing their stuff to. We just finished up our Thanksgiving turkeys and all I had to do was print off my pack list on Barnador because I didn't sell any turkeys
00:18:01
Speaker
on any other platform but my online store. I didn't take orders at farmer's markets. I didn't take orders over email or anything else outside. If you want a turkey, you're going to go to my store and you're going to buy it there because all my inventory is going to be organized there. For years, I did a little bit of farmer's market. If I had buddies asking me, I'd write theirs down and I would forget and I would sell too many turkeys and then I'd have to let somebody down.
00:18:29
Speaker
Turkey free Thanksgiving. Not okay. Not okay. These people are coming to pick this bird up the Monday before Thanksgiving. You can't screw that up or you will ruin their holiday. And I did that too many times. It is the worst feeling to let your customers down who already gave you the money for something. They planned this whole holiday around your
Managing Sales and Marketing
00:18:55
Speaker
turkey that you raised for five months and then you don't have it for him because you promised your buddy down the street that he could have one and you miscounted. It's the worst feeling ever. So I just said it's going to be all on Barnador. You're going to organize it.
00:19:10
Speaker
Monday for pickups, all we had to do was print off our pack list. And we had phone numbers for everybody. We had exactly their order. We were able to export it on a CSV and organize it alphabetically so I could find their last name. And that was all I had to do. I sent everybody a text that night. Don't forget to pick up your turkey.
00:19:30
Speaker
And then Monday morning, we literally had everybody show up on the day and pick up every single turkey that we sold. And I would eat turkey this year for the first time. There you go. Cause you didn't have to give your own turkey away. I'm happy that barn to doors and just technology in that case has been able to help the logistics side of things in your delivery days go super smooth. And we definitely hear from a lot of farms that it saves a ton of time, but I have to correct one little thing and you have to forgive me for this.
00:20:00
Speaker
You were like, Hey, I want everybody to go buy on Barn to door. I want to be really clear Alex. They're buying on Chucktown acres website. Yeah. Yeah. We're like under the hood. Alex.
00:20:11
Speaker
I don't care if they don't know about Barn to Door ever. I want them to go to your site, Chuck Townacres, and buy from the store that yes, we happen to power. We built the technology to make it because farmers selling food locally with pickups and deliveries and door to door and pickup and all the different schedules they have and everything else, the different needs that you have as a farmer.
00:20:33
Speaker
is nuanced software. So happy to do that. But at the end of the day, it's not about our brand. And this is a really fun topic because from having talked to you before, you're very passionate about brand. And at the end of the day, we're excited to work with farms, because it's about the farmer brand, not about us. And we love being behind the scenes. And we love being like the operating software system to make their life easy. But it's not about Barn to Door, the brand, it's about Chuck Count Acres.
00:21:00
Speaker
It's about the farm brands in your local community and the relationships that you're collecting in your community and the love that people have for your brand. I think that's one of the things that when you talk about brand that I feel like you've learned the fastest and deepest in the last couple of years is how important your brand is. So tell me a little bit about the evolution of you being like,
00:21:23
Speaker
Hey, wow, I have to promote my brand. And before you said, Hey, here's my story. I care about regenerative agriculture. We feed these certain things to our animals. And I think the really fun part is when you decided, even though you were anti social media, which is normal for a lot of farms, you're like, no, no, no, no. And then finally, you sort of caved. Now tell us about caving.
00:21:48
Speaker
Yeah, share a little bit on that one. Yeah, I caved under pressure and I've never been happier about it. I was very anti social media before I started this farm and then I even tried to be anti social media for the first like six months of it. And people
00:22:07
Speaker
kept telling me that I should make videos, reels, and these started taking off 2019, 2020. And because I'd be sitting at dinner with some friends or I'd be at church or I would be at a park with some friends or I'd be anywhere and I would just start going off.
00:22:27
Speaker
talking to people about regenerative agriculture, what we do, what my passion is, how terrible the food in the grocery store is for you, the secrets behind all the food industry and the corruption, and people are like learning all new stuff. They didn't know any of that stuff that I told them and I would be like,
00:22:48
Speaker
preaching to them for an hour. And they were like, dude, you need to tell more people. You can't speak up one person at a time. You need to tell more people about this crazy stuff and point them back to what you guys are doing in Chucktown. And it's like, oh, after like 12 people told me that I was like, OK, fine. So we started an Instagram. I didn't want to do it. I was very reluctant. And I didn't start doing videos right away.
00:23:15
Speaker
I started just, you know, putting up pictures of meat and we were even growing veg at the time. It's putting up pictures of zucchini. Nobody cared. We were not getting any traction. I don't care how great your leg quarters look. We don't care. And Instagram has an anti meat thing going on too. So they were definitely not showing my pictures of meat. Yeah.
00:23:39
Speaker
to people in the algorithms. I was getting really frustrated. I was like, first of all, I didn't want to be doing this anyway. Now it's not working. And I am talking to another friend about how frustrated I was. And they said, dude, you need to make videos and tell people what you do because that's what you're passionate about. And that's what inspires people. And that's what's going to get you more traction and more visibility
00:24:05
Speaker
from not just the people around you, but across the country too. I said, fine, I guess all this has been kicking and screaming the entire way. Finally, I make a video of me standing in grass that had been run over by a chicken tractor a month previous. And the grass is like two feet tall. It's lush, it's super green. And right beside me was the spot where the chicken tractor had not hit.
00:24:33
Speaker
real flimsy, it's sandy, it looks terrible. And so I did a video about, I called it the power of chickens. And I just did a one minute thing of like, here's what happens when you put chickens on pasture and you move them the next day. Wow, isn't this amazing? It took one minute and it had like instantly two or 3000 views.
00:24:53
Speaker
People are sharing, oh man, look at this, this is so cool. Look what this guy has to say. Wow, I didn't know chickens could do that. And people are sharing it to their friends or putting it up on their Instagram stories. And all of a sudden I was like, okay.
00:25:08
Speaker
I guess this is what I have to do now. And my face had not been on social media for about six or seven years before that I had been very protective, very private. And I still live very private, but I realized it's not going to do me a bunch of
Social Media and Storytelling
00:25:25
Speaker
harm.
00:25:25
Speaker
to videos on Instagram about farming. It's not like I'm telling them where my mom lives or where I'm going for Christmas or anything like that. It's just me with videos about farming. Okay. I can get over that. I can do that.
00:25:41
Speaker
Oh, I started doing videos and if you're really good and professional Instagram, which I am not, you organize it. You plan out what kind of videos you're going to do. You post them at perfect times in the perfect day and you understand the algorithm. I'm a farmer. I stand in chicken poop every single day. I'm not that guy. I'm not that organized. I don't have any. I don't think most.
00:26:04
Speaker
I think it's great to give yourself permission not to be polished. You're literally in the weeds and sharing when you are inspired. And I love the idea. I think to your point, you just have to force yourself to do it, even if you're uncomfortable and especially not polished. That's fine. In fact, it's better in many instances, especially if you're a farmer growing food for people, they want you to be real.
00:26:28
Speaker
Yes, and I think that you're starting to see people care a lot more about transparency, especially in the food industry. They want real people growing real food and showing people exactly how it's done. We're not pretty polished people. We're farmers and we understand that. So I would just be driving around on the tractor, maybe moving a chicken coop or feeding it some hay to the cows. Or I'd be driving the four wheeler to go check on the pigs.
00:26:57
Speaker
And I would have an inspirational thought that would come to me out of nowhere. And that's all my prep that I needed to do for a 60 second video is I would just jump off the four wheeler, grab my phone, and I'm standing out in the middle of a pasture with my arm out.
00:27:13
Speaker
I'm taking a video of myself. I feel like a complete moron doing this. Like if someone pulls up the driveway, I'm throwing this phone down and putting away as fast as I can. Standing there, my phone out in front of me and I'm explaining to people why it's important for me to move the chickens that day. Why it's important to have the pigs in the woods under oak trees, eating acorns. Why is it important that the cows move every day?
00:27:37
Speaker
What's the difference between my grass-fed beef and the $2 pound ground beef you can get in the tube at the store, you know? And that stuff really, really started gaining a lot of traction. That's awesome. And I started to realize there's not enough of this in our space, in the social media space. You know, we have some good documentaries, but we need more and more education.
00:28:03
Speaker
We are fighting against a corrupt system that is really good at PR, really good at marketing. They can hire people for six figures that are going to try to make a Tyson chicken breast look like it's something really great, raised outdoors with happy chickens. That's our competition. That's who we're up against.
00:28:23
Speaker
So if we can show them how it's done, then we're going to inspire a lot more people to switch over to supporting regenerative farms, sustainable agriculture, and it's going to take a lot of transparency, honesty, and maybe a couple more faces on Instagram. But that was the other thing is that I realized that Instagram in the algorithm
00:28:45
Speaker
it will boost your post more if your face is on it or if it has any human face they're going to show it to a lot more people because psychologically we will stay engaged with content longer if there's a face on there talking to the screen.
00:29:03
Speaker
And I would say that's probably another of your ahas was, first of all, social media and videos work. Oh, and by the way, if it's a video and if you put your face on it, that word of mouth digitally is arguably more powerful than in-person word of mouth.
00:29:21
Speaker
Yeah, yes, it can be. You have to be good at both, but you can reach more people. It's more efficient to do it that way with social media and email marketing too. You can reach a lot more people with one message than individual conversations at a time.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah. And for the farmers listening, how often would you say, and then I want to move on to email marketing, how often would you say you do throw up a reel or a social post or a video just for reference sake, generally speaking? Yeah, I was originally I was just going with the flow of the universe and nature and I would only post when I would be inspired.
00:30:00
Speaker
But eventually I started trying to stretch myself a little more to actually look for the inspiration in the little things that I'm doing throughout the day. And I would try to post twice a week. And I realized if I put my post up around dinner time, they did better. So I started record the video during the day, posted that night, and then make sure you have captions on the video because apparently no one's listening with the audio on anymore.
00:30:27
Speaker
That's a good takeaway, dinnertime a couple times a week, put the captions on and learn to look for the opportunities for that to occur.
00:30:36
Speaker
Yep. Yeah. And I don't know if this is something that I would advise, but I have given myself permission to take hiatuses from the social media stuff because it does grind you after a while. And I noticed that I was running out of inspirational things to say, and I was forcing it. There was a point where I was looking for inspiration and it was really good, high quality stuff.
00:30:58
Speaker
Then after a while, I started forcing it to happen. And I decided I'm going to take a three month. I'm just going to not post anything. And I'll come back fresh. And I've just come off my hiatus back into posting regularly. I think that's actually really wise, which is keep an eye on the balance of making sure it's authentic.
Email Marketing and Competition
00:31:25
Speaker
And often enough where it makes sense for you. And if you need to take a break to be inspired again, that's fair game, right? Okay. I want to talk about email marketing because in prior conversations and in most conversations with most our farms that we work with, frankly, it comes back to emails because part of this greater context, and this is what I really want to touch on is what environment you are trying to be
00:31:50
Speaker
Right now, you're trying to be a successful, independent farmer in what economic environment or what reality out there in terms of who's your competition? What do the buyers expect? Obviously, buyers love digital payments. They love shopping online in their pajamas. That's one of the reasons why Barnjador was created. We're like, well, we want to make sure that people are buying from the farmers.
00:32:12
Speaker
And this is how people buy. So let's make sure there's an online store. And obviously we built a POS too because farmers sell in person as well. So we track how buyers buy and what buyers expect because we know if farmers are doing those things, the likelihood of them being successful is so much greater. But how interesting that in a digital world, emails actually become an important thing.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yes, because an email is a personal invitation to that person to see what you're doing on your farm if you have sales. And I think the most important thing that the email newsletter does is it reminds that person that you exist.
00:32:55
Speaker
because there's so many options out there now. I mean, you could get a big butcher box style meat box delivered to your house from some mystery farmer who you have no idea who's growing. You have to trust the labels. And we all know that the labels are very unreliable now. There's like 20 of those business, probably more. There's probably 30 of those businesses that are all marketing really, really, really heavy to people who care about their food.
00:33:25
Speaker
And so the email from a farmer becomes a very personal experience that that customer has. And instead of an Instagram post where you can have like 7000 followers, you're kind of blasting it out to all of them in a mist.
00:33:43
Speaker
the email newsletter becomes a very personal invitation. You can actually have their name on there saying like, Hey, Susie, here's what's happening on the farm 20 minutes from your house now. Here's the sale that we have going on. Here's some of my thoughts about
00:33:59
Speaker
food corruption and why regenerative agriculture is so important. And you can really, really make a major improvement to your sales by sending these people invitations to remember you on a very regular basis. That's why I decided to send a newsletter every week
00:34:19
Speaker
Even if I didn't have something amazing to say, I didn't have some big sale, I just decided there's so much competition out there and there's so much murky, muddy marketing going on now that I'm going to noise. Yeah, it's so much noise. It's not billboards anymore because people's eyes aren't on billboards. They're on their phone now and they're on their laptops.
00:34:46
Speaker
And so you're fighting all the big boys for the attention of your buyers. I decided to switch to an every week newsletter just to stay on the top of the mind of my customers to let them know you don't have to go to Whole Foods this week to buy your chicken breast. I will bring it to your house. And you just have to remember, especially since COVID, everyone seems way busier. Their lifestyles are like
00:35:17
Speaker
hecticly busy especially if you live near a big city everyone's running around like crazy they got soccer practice and and taekwondo and jiu-jitsu and and they got kids and you know because most of your yeah they're all in the mixed martial arts for some reason not sure so they're all crazy busy now you're gonna have to fight to get
00:35:38
Speaker
through the crazy muck of their world in their mental space to remind them like, hey, you really do care about local farms and buying local food and feeding your children the healthiest stuff possible. I've seen a lot of really successful farms do really pretty newsletters.
00:35:59
Speaker
but they don't do them very often, maybe once a month. I had to deal with who I am personally, and I'm not the pretty organized display kind of guy. Grass-fed towel company, they have the most beautiful newsletters ever. They're clean, they're crisp. And that's one of their gifts, right? And that's great.
00:36:19
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And that that's not my gift. So I was like, okay, instead, I'm just gonna hit these guys every week with something a little more basic. Still interesting, but remind them I always try to hit on what's going on on the farm. What's the sale that we're running or what's new or it's a new product. And that's about it. Short is fine. You're just like, I'm reminding you, I exist on the top of your inbox every single week, buy from us, I'm gonna make it easy.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yep. Yep. And the craziest thing that I've realized with the newsletter marketing is that, and then this is counterintuitive. I have sold way more product.
00:37:02
Speaker
when I send an inspirational email about why what we do is important and the secrets behind the labels at the grocery store and stuff like that, I'll sell way more product off of that email than I will with an email that says bacon's 20% off. And I did not think that that's what it was going to be, but I realized these partners are begging for education
00:37:30
Speaker
And they want to see through the darkness of greenwashing and false marketing of mislabeling items. And they want, they just want the truth. And they're fed up with the lies of the food industry. You're a beacon of light in the darkness.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah. And that inspires them. And they say, okay, I guess I have to sign up for the CSA now if I want to feed my kids healthy food. And bam, they sign up. And I feel really good about it because it's not like I'm tricking them into buying something. I'm helping them along their journey of making a healthy choice for their family. And I'm really, really confident in the quality of my food that I produce.
00:38:08
Speaker
And it just feels really, really good to market that way because ultimately I have to sell the stuff that I'm raising if I want to continue on running a successful business. So I need the customers there and I need them to be loyal to us because they believe in what we're doing. We're not the easiest people to buy from. We're not the cheapest people to buy from. It's going to take a little bit of sacrifice
00:38:35
Speaker
to order our stuff. Like people haven't done grocery shopping online until like 2018 or something like that. It's a new concept. Most people, thanks to COVID actually, the trend in the greater market was going that way.
00:38:50
Speaker
But because of COVID, it accelerated. It's more than like three and four people now who have done online grocery shopping. But that's good for farmers, that people are used to that looking for their food online. And that's been very much normalized. And to your point, they are looking for truth in food.
00:39:08
Speaker
and transparency and actual quality, knowing where their food comes from so they can feed their family, because frankly, that's not as prevalent as we wish it would be, but by buying from you, they can help make sure that it is increasingly true
Engaging Customers and Maximizing Sales
00:39:24
Speaker
and prevalent that food is farmed in healthy, responsible, regenerative ways, such as yourself and many of the farms that we serve.
00:39:33
Speaker
So quick little tip for those listening then, what is your best tip for collecting emails, maybe even quickly?
00:39:41
Speaker
Initially, I'll tell you what we did because I'm not a guru with this kind of stuff. But initially what we did was we reached out on social media channels with our personal stuff. And I didn't have anything at the time, but my wife did. And I had some friends reach out for me. And then we just did a social media blast on our personal pages and just said, Hey, we're starting a new farm. If you want to know what we're doing and how you can be involved and what we're going to be doing.
00:40:12
Speaker
then we would love to have your email so we can put you on our list and inform everybody. So we got a few hundred emails right away from that, right off the bat. And were they mostly local? Would you say you reached out to like people from church and school, like it was local enough where those were pretty high value emails to start with?
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, it was probably 50-50 because we moved from Virginia to South Carolina. So we started a lot of friends in Virginia that were super interested right at the beginning too. So it was probably about 50-50 locals and then some friends in other states across the country. Then we got the initial base of a few hundred emails that way.
00:40:56
Speaker
Since then, almost probably 90% of our emails have come in through a farmer's market, meeting people, talking to people, being nice, being charismatic, asking them about their kids and what they're into and how they're gonna cook that pork tenderloin. And why do they like our eggs more than the other guy at the farmer's market? And having those conversations, people get really interested in you as the person, as the brand.
00:41:25
Speaker
And your whole farm becomes an interaction that they have. And that's what we consider to be the brand is the interaction that they have with your business and the experience that they have. And all of a sudden they are more than happy to give you their email because they really love what you're doing. They want to be involved and they want to get your products when the farmer's market is closed. That's the time that I capitalize the most.
00:41:53
Speaker
Our farmers markets only six months out of the year. So, in that last month, we collect probably half of our emails that we get over that whole farmers market season coming in at the very very end. That's been the best way for us to get it now we will get
00:42:11
Speaker
just people who find us by Googling regenerative agriculture in South Carolina will come up on Google searches. So SEO is really important, but that's a small percentage. Most of them come in person. I don't have anything fancy. I have a clipboard.
00:42:26
Speaker
with a pin and a spreadsheet that has what's your name and your email. And that's all we asked for. And I just let them know, I'm only going to see you one email a week. We won't bombard you with this stuff because everyone hates getting an email every day from the same freaking company. It's just like the best way to lose.
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah. And you say that then in the six months when you're not at the farmer markets, you're emailing those people and delivering to their door. So you're expanding your sales cycle well beyond that six months.
00:42:58
Speaker
Yes. Oh yeah. The first winter we had was pretty desperate times. It was tough because we were the new guys in town. We didn't have that many emails. We weren't sending out an email every week at the beginning. At the beginning, it was just once a month, once every other month. And I would be sitting there with no money in our bank account, freezers full of meat, wondering why aren't they buying the stuff? I'm putting pictures of zucchini online. Why are they not buying it?
00:43:26
Speaker
And eventually it clicked. They forgot about me. They were going at Trader Joe's because they forgot I'm all the way out here in McClellanville. And they have a Trader Joe's five minutes from their house. They're not thinking about me. And you can't be mad at them for that. There's just ways that they've been shopping their entire life. They've been shopping for food at grocery stores.
00:43:50
Speaker
their whole life. And so if you want to be moving them to buying your stuff online with home delivery, you have to remind them, I'm still here. I still have the good stuff. Here's my weekly email. Here's my video on social. I'm in your face, but in a really proactive, lovely way. Yes, exactly. Don't be annoying about it, but you have to be consistent.
00:44:14
Speaker
Consistent I think is good because I think what you're saying don't be annoying. Like I think a lot of farmers feel like once a month is okay and once a week isn't. I think you moved the annoying needle.
00:44:26
Speaker
understand like I have to email them out of my way get a minimum and it doesn't annoy them because guess what it was only at the top of their inbox for about 10 minutes and then it got buried as fast as it was at the top and so you literally have to stay top of mind top of inbox top of their phone screen through social media and then they're like oh yeah I love their eggs click buy right like as long as you provide that click link the button to shop
00:44:53
Speaker
Everywhere you go all the time, whenever you're showing up, that will just exponentially increase your sales. Sitting there looking at your freezer means you probably should go back to your desk and send an email.
00:45:04
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I remember there was one week, now we do weekly deliveries, which is also aggressive, I think by the standards, but it's been really good for us. It's been perfect for us. Now with the caveat, our farm's not very far away from our customer base. Our furthest customer is an hour away from the farm, max. Most of them are about 35 to 40 minutes. So deliveries every week is very feasible for us. Some guys, if you're out in the boonies,
00:45:33
Speaker
This is what I tell them in the grassroots marketing class that I teach, if you're a way out, I would not suggest going every week unless you have a driver and you have a ton of orders coming from a big hub. If you're near Chicago, if you're near Atlanta, or if you're near, if you're two hours away from big cities like that, maybe once a week would be worth it to you. If you're going to have to travel really far, I like every other week. But if you're close to these people, weekly has been really, really good for us.
00:46:02
Speaker
Yeah, I would say weekly or twice a month. Once a month you start to lose buyers because they buy their eggs more frequently than once a month. They buy their chicken more frequently than months a month. They buy produce more frequently and dairy, they literally buy all of those items more frequently. And so if you want to match the frequency at which they buy the products that you sell or else they're going to substitute the store and you're not training them with the correct habits of buying just from your farm.
00:46:31
Speaker
Yes, remember, you and I did a presentation at the APA conference in Dallas last year. And one of the main takeaways from our presentation is your customers do not shop for food the same way you do. As farmers, we live out in the country. We're going to go to Costco to get all of our flour and sugar. We're going to stock up for a month's worth of stuff at a time.
00:46:57
Speaker
your customers do not shop like that. They go two to three times a week to get their food. And that was a huge aha moment for me when I was considering whether we should do biweekly deliveries or what we should be doing. And it was like, these people would rather that I brought it to their house twice a week, but it's too much for me.
00:47:23
Speaker
Weekly, a really nice easy flow. We've organized our protein CSA in a way that works. We have another one that's offered biweekly for smaller households, kind of two people. And that flow works really good. Their eggs are always in the fridge. It's like on the same day as delivery day, they were out of eggs. And we've been able to kind of nail the flow of deliveries
00:47:48
Speaker
really well just by getting feedback and looking at data like that graph that we had that we did the presentation for those farmers in Dallas. I appreciate that. I think one thing that we haven't sort of dwelt upon which is fine but you've hit on it anyway is the environment farmers that are trying to be successful today is you have to cut through the noise from a marketing perspective and stand out with that
00:48:08
Speaker
authenticity and obviously quality of food. And then the other one that they're up against, you're up against big companies and it could be like the Tysons of the world, but it could also be like the Amazons of the world. You're up against companies that have created buyer expectations of delivery to my home. And so I think that's another one that we have found is that when farmers do offer door to door delivery, like you do on a weekly basis, they sell more.
00:48:34
Speaker
Right. You've removed the inconvenience for these buyers who are just used to that. You're like, Oh, I could click here and buy from Amazon or I could click here and buy from Chucktown. Well, that's a no brainer. I like Chucktown better. He sent me a personal email and I chatted with him on Saturday. So they're going to do that. Not like literally over nine out of 10 times. They're going to do that click every time. If you're top of mind through marketing and you're delivering the same way they can get any other goods. Yeah.
00:49:01
Speaker
Yeah, they had to wait a month for a pack of ribeyes and a dozen eggs. They're just not going to do it. They're like, yeah, I'll think about it when that delivery day comes up. Maybe if you have some really hardcore customers, they will remember that once a month delivery and they'll do big bulk orders.
00:49:18
Speaker
But it just seems like you miss out on a lot of people. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And including the frequency they would want to consume those items match your marketing and your deliveries to the frequency at which they consume what you're selling. Yeah.
00:49:34
Speaker
But you know what's really, really encouraging and inspiring? If you cut through, I almost want to say cut through the fat, but that's not really fair. If you cut through from a marketing perspective and you're in front of your customers and you're staying top of mind, to your point, if they experience your brand, and I don't mean just I chatted farmer's market or the emails, the inspirational emails where you're like, Hey, this is why we do this and that. And this is why it matters.
00:49:59
Speaker
But the other big one is when they eat that on their table and you know, it's better, those eggs, those pasture proteins, like you are going to win all day long. If you can just get it onto their table and they can experience your brand through eating what you have grown, like you, you are now winning.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And they're going to stick around for a long time. When my customers go out of town and they have to skip a delivery and they are in Denver and they have to eat the eggs at the grocery store, they come back to me and they text me and they email me. It was like, I forgot how terrible grocery store eggs were.
00:50:41
Speaker
Because you've set a new standard for how things are supposed to taste. And now I can't go back. I had a lady that said she literally will never buy another chicken breast at a grocery store again. Because first of all, mine aren't slimy and yellow when they show up at your house, which is so vile and disgusting. I know.
00:51:01
Speaker
And they're also not the size of a softball either. And they just look like normal pieces of meat that were well taken care of and frozen at the right time and delivered to their door, not all thought out. She can't even look at the chicken breast at the grocery store anymore because she's become spoiled by what we offer her. She says she's a customer for life and she's... I love it.
00:51:25
Speaker
He's on an $100 box every other week and I can rely on her for 200 bucks a month. Just remember the quality is so much better that if you can just get it into their mouths, you have changed people. Yeah. Those buyers are changed forever. It's like them waking up. It's pretty exciting. So one more little thing to touch on because that really is a great place to actually stop, but I can't help myself.
00:51:47
Speaker
because I know you have one more nugget here, which is subscriptions. And the reason I bring this up is because we're talking about the business side of farming.
Implementing Subscription Models
00:51:55
Speaker
And I know because you've told me, but I want you to say it again, which is subscriptions made a difference for your business and for revenue.
00:52:05
Speaker
a little bit about how and why so that the farmers out there who are thinking about having a successful business, the business side of farming and hopefully we can help wherever we can. But there's some good things that they can be doing and hopefully they've picked up on a number of those today.
00:52:19
Speaker
Yeah, my message to all the farmers listening is start some kind of CSA some kind of subscription, figure it out, it will be well worth your time. If we can rewind back to the winters of me staring at the freezer, begging for email orders to come in and they don't come in.
00:52:38
Speaker
And the depression that came on me that first winter of like, I don't think we're going to make it, man. We're just not selling enough stuff. You fast forward now to this year and this winter, I have not thought about if we're going to have enough money to pay the bills. And that is because I do not have to rely on a la carte orders to come in on our store anymore.
00:53:03
Speaker
I have customers that have given me their credit card one time. They've signed up for the subscription and they do not have to think about it again. And it has been the biggest game changer for us. I think I ran the numbers a month ago and about 80% of our sales that we make come through on our subscription CSA that we do. Because we sell proteins that are frozen,
00:53:31
Speaker
We can sell the same box year round. It's a farmer's choice box. I pick what you get. It's $75. And you're going to get about four pounds of meat and two dozen eggs. And there's so many people that want that box. If you can mix up a couple of different kinds of proteins, give them easy stuff. Don't give them ham hocks and cow tongues. Well, you got to call it a chef box then. Yeah, that's a chef box.
00:54:00
Speaker
Then people will know it's all the stuff that nobody knows how to use, but they should learn because they actually really are amazing. Exactly. The world would be a better place if everybody knew what to do with chicken feet and ham hocks, I'm just saying. Yes, I know. I mean, I have literally lost customers because I gave them Asabuko in their box. And that is the saddest thing ever to me because that's my favorite cut on the whole cow.
00:54:26
Speaker
I'm like, do you have any idea what those that you could make with this? Then blow your mind. But people want convenient food. If they're going to sign up for something. Now, if they really want Asabugo, we have it on a la carte and they can pick up a package of that on their own.
00:54:44
Speaker
But these guys, they have kids, they have families, they have stuff going on. They live in a busy city. They want chicken breast, ground beef, sausage, pork chops, steaks, wings, they want easy stuff to cook. So that's the stuff that I put in my farmer's choice. And I've been able to retain way more customers that way. Then at the beginning, I was given pork fat and tip rows.
00:55:13
Speaker
And one-time orders, which is brutal, because then they have to remember and remember and remember to come back versus one and done with that subscription. This way, they do not have to think about it. They know that they can rely on me to bring them all the protein that they need to their house.
00:55:31
Speaker
They just need to go get their veggies for my friend who also does a CSA and they're going to go. Yeah. And like, it's been the biggest game changer for us over the winter, especially like we are not desperate for money in the winter.
00:55:46
Speaker
for the first time as our like in our journey. And it is such an amazing feeling the relief that you have not having to go beg for orders to come in. And I owe all of that to the subscription CSA model that
Key Takeaways for Farm Success
00:56:03
Speaker
we have on Barnard. Wow.
00:56:05
Speaker
I love it. Thank you. This has been an incredible conversation full of so many great tips and tidbits and hopefully business decisions that people can make early on. I mean, we're talking, you started from nothing four years ago and are now a successful independent farmer, but I've learned some really critical things about the business side of farming along the way that have been
00:56:26
Speaker
ahas and game changing from putting your face on videos to collecting emails, having year round sales and obviously subscriptions. But let's not forget too, maybe my favorite is the brand and really cutting through the marketing noise to stay top of mind with your customers and then frankly, get your product onto their tables. That's just game changing. And the loyalty factor is just exponential. And in many cases to your point, lifelong loyalty from your customers.
00:56:55
Speaker
Yep. Absolutely. Thank you for all of those amazing tidbits. There is more from Alex. He did a great podcast recently on best chips for doing reels on Instagram. He obviously teaches a grassroots marketing class for a Barnetador Academy. So we can get some of that information out there.
00:57:12
Speaker
Thank you again, Alex, for joining us on this week's podcast episode at Barn to door. We're humbled to support thousands of farms across the country that sell to more than a million buyers. We are delighted to offer services to help farmers build a successful brand and business. If you're eager to sell your farm products direct and maybe grow your farm the same way that Alex did, please come and learn more at barn to door.com backslash resources. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to seeing and chatting with you the next time on the direct farm podcast.
00:57:45
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in. For more free farm resources, tips, and tactics that are most successful farms use 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.