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5 Fastest Ways to Build a Successful Farm Business
231 Plays3 days ago
In this episode, Alex Russell of Chucktown Acres joins Janelle Maiocco to share the "Entrepreneur Farmer" mindset and five actionable strategies to help beginning Farmers fast-track their journey from a hobby to a profitable, and scalable business.
For more Farm resources, visit: barn2door.com/resources
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Transcript
00:00:09
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.
00:00:20
Speaker
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. I'm Janelle Mayocko, CEO of Barn to Door and your host for today's episode. As you may be aware, Barn to Door is all about helping independent farmers make more money, ditch the office work, and look like a pro.
00:00:55
Speaker
By getting a system in place to sell direct, market under their own brand, and manage orders, farmers can skip the middleman and build a strong local business with recurring sales. And we just debuted helping farmers with local delivery.
00:01:07
Speaker
In today's conversation, we're going to get into the five fastest ways to build a successful farm business. Today, I'm happy to welcome Alex of Chucktown Acres in South Carolina, who is part of our Farm Advisor Network and has joined us for a number of years, actually teaches our grassroots marketing class, and I consider him a friend. We have way too much fun, so I always look forward to our podcasts here. I'm excited to talk to you today, Alex.
00:01:33
Speaker
Oh, the feelings mutual. i was so happy that you asked me to come back. and This is one of my favorite podcasts ever. So I listen to like every episode too. So I love getting to be on too. ah I bet you get a kick out of it because you actually now personally know some of the other farmers we're chatting with through our Farm Advisory Network. And they're just a brilliant group of people who are just paving the way. And it's so cool to listen to their sage wisdom and advice on all different topics around being a successful farm business. Yeah, we we send each other DMs on Instagram like, what did you mean when you said that that?
00:02:10
Speaker
It's great. I've had some great conversations with Peter and Tom and all of the gals out there running their awesome farms. So it's a really cool honor to be a part of this group and getting to kind of work alongside these other elite awesome people. It's just a treat. I love it.
00:02:26
Speaker
I love that. Elite is right. We actually secretly were inviting one or two more. So very excited to have some more amazing farmers from across the country join the co-work. By the way, farmers helping other farmers. So the FAN program, Farm Advisor Network is about a dozen strong. But just slowly over time, we we've engaged folks to advise barn to door and also help other farmers. So Alex, for example, and many of the farms on the podcast host office hours. It's just one of the many features and benefits and when you're choosing to work with barn to door is you get to talk to amazing farmers who are having great success and have all kinds of important, not only opinions on how to go faster, but also potables to avoid.
00:03:05
Speaker
It's pretty great, pretty amazing. And it's just so neat to see the momentum with independent farmers where you could sell direct. That's the ideal business model. So you can maximize your profits and at Barnes to Door, it's a joy for us to be able to support that business model. And helping farmers be successful. So thank you. Thank you for advising Burn to Door and helping other farmers through that network. It's just nuts. It's amazing. I love it.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, you're so welcome. I mean, the whole reason I got into the farming world was to be a part of the regenerative farming movement. I didn't even get into this to have my own farm and do my own little thing in my own little bubble. I see this as much more of a global movement that we're all a part of. And the great thing is because we're all local farms, we're not in competition with each other.
00:03:50
Speaker
So we can give each other advice and support. And one of my favorite things is getting calls from new farmers. And they're just like, hey, I have these three problems. Can you please help me? I just love it. That's what I live for. Just to be able to have the experience of having my own farm. And we've seen some great success of what we've done. And then just being able to pass on the wisdom to other people and not be worried like, ah are my sales going to go down because he knows how to raise pigs right now? I don't have to worry about that. It's so great.
00:04:18
Speaker
I love, I've had the huge joy and honor of being able to watch you over the last few years and just continue to explode and grow your farm, but also your presence in the community, being able to help new farmers, existing farmers, everybody else. I love that. It's like we're all on the same team. And frankly, we're fighting against big egg and commoditization and nasty food with no nutrition. You and I need a whole podcast on that. I'm going to have to just invite you to national headquarters and we're just going to get in the booth and talk for like two days straight. We got our official podcast room set up. So game on.
00:04:51
Speaker
We're going to do it. I can't wait to come and see it. I know. It'll be good. Okay. Here we go. So. We talked about today the five fastest ways to build a successful farm business. Alex and I were texting back and forth and it's like, actually i have to read it, right?
00:05:06
Speaker
Here it is. You're like, what exactly is this boiled down to? I said, very much this, just starting out farmer. So they have a jumpstart on good decision-making to save time and their ability to be successful faster than if they had not listened to your, aka Alex's, sage wisdom. I also love using the word sage because it's an herb. So today's podcast is zero 60. I'm a beginning farmer. It's the first couple of years. How can I fast track that? What should I be focusing on? What is quote unquote normal look like in those first three years? And how do I tackle that prudently? Alex and I were also discussing how 0 to 60 is today, but 60 to 120 will be a follow-on podcast because once you have momentum and you have like, okay, this is legitimately a business now. I've gotten here by being scrappy, et cetera. But 60 to 120, if you will, miles per hour, is a different set of things. advice, recommendations, and framing for your business. And so you actually do have to shift gears at that point in order to keep scaling. So that's also a very interesting yet separate conversation because it is too much to pack into today. So today, zero to 60, diving in how to fast track and be smart about those first couple of years when you're going from essentially a beginning and starting to a legitimate business because you might love farming but you're growing a business and that's the context for your farming to be successful before we start can you tell everybody what it is that you farm and what stage you are at ah all right so we have a regenerative farm in south carolina right on the coast we're just a couple miles from the ocean and we raise grass-fed beef which is way hotter than it sounds on sandy soils haven't found a book yet telling me how to do this. So we're learning as we go. I might write it once I figure it out. Forest-raised hogs and all your pastured poultry. So broilers, layers, and turkeys. That's what we focus on. We have a few in-person sales channels that we run all our stuff through. And then we obviously use Barn to Door for our online sales. We've been here, June will be seven years.
00:07:15
Speaker
So we're recording this in April. So we're coming up on seven years now. And it has been so crazy. And I really wish that this podcast would have existed. Like this episode that we're doing today, I really wish this would have been available seven years ago because we're going dive into some stuff that I've learned along the way that really helped us out. I love it. I asked Alex to send me five things for those first three years, zero to 60. And we looked at the list together this morning and we discovered that four of the five literally were sales and marketing, which is really interesting. And by sales marketing, I mean channels and how you get going. That's really critical and important. so a bulk load will be focused on that, but you will pick up many tips all along the way. Then number five is kind of a secret.
00:07:57
Speaker
So you got to stay till the end to find out what that is. Yes. If you need help learning how to like run a farm on the farming side of things, there's a lot of books out there and there's way more podcasts about like how to farm than there are on how to sell the products that you raise. That's why this is one of my favorite podcasts because once you get the farming side figured out, you just replicate and you grow and you double and you triple your production. You kind of got it, but the sales stuff is always changing. always more and more dynamic the deeper you go and the more revenue you do per year. So I will say we're not going to cover how to raise pasture-raised broilers today. We're going to be talking about how to sell those broilers and how to explode your business. Thank you for saying that. That is brilliant and
00:08:46
Speaker
Something we don't probably see out loud often enough on this podcast, which is there's so much out there about farming and the practice of farming and how to be great at farming and all of the lessons learned. But at the end of the day, you literally are running a business. Most successful farms that we're talking to, largely on this podcast, I think about the business as much and sometimes more than farming. Because you have to lean into that and you have to invest in the business.
00:09:11
Speaker
You must invest in marketing and sales. And that doesn't always mean you're pouring tons of money into it. You will need to put some money into marketing and you should allow for that and plan for that, especially up front. But there's a lot of grassroots marketing and smart pricing packaging, et cetera, that you can do that. Don't cost money, but you must have a marketing and sales minded brain.
00:09:31
Speaker
Most recent podcasts I've done, I'm not even kidding, in the last like two weeks have been smart farmers like yourself saying, I think about business and sales and marketing every day and how can I move the needle? Just one little thing.
00:09:42
Speaker
increment today on sales and marketing? How can I sell more? And it's like a daily attention and focus. That is just coming out more and more as I see farms gaining and success in scale. It's really neat to see that happening. You said you use Barnes & Rove for online sales just for everybody listening out there. We're actually a complete system. So we have a POS as well.
00:10:03
Speaker
It's essentially in-person sales, online sales, all the inventory and orders map out perfectly and seamlessly in the backend. We help facilitate all the transactions on all sales channels. Now we're actually helping farmers with delivery, which is so cool. Anyway, that's an aside, but let's jump into the five things, four, of which are under essentially sales and marketing, getting started. I'm going to list them and then we're going to dive in. So these are the four that you gave me.
00:10:28
Speaker
In-person sales channel, online sales channel, partnerships, and marketing strategy. So we're going to dig in on those. We're going make them wait for number five. We're going to make them wait for number five. So in-person sales channel go. This is in farmer starting and running hard. All right, so our first point of five, maybe six, is going to be an in-person sales channel. Some beginning farmers, a mistake that I see them going for is believing that they will not need an in-person sales channel. It's going to be the opposite of point number two. So we'll tackle number one first.
00:11:01
Speaker
You really gonna have to just believe me here. You need an in-person sales channel. These are most likely going to be farmer's markets and farm stores, perhaps some wholesale accounts that natural grocery stores, independently owned grocery stores, places like that, that will buy your products wholesale and then sell them on their shelves. So you have some kind of real in-person interaction with real people. This is not something that you wanna skip because if you wanna have a successful online sales channel, then you're going to need to have a place where you meet these people in person and then convert them to online shoppers. We're just in two farmer's markets. So there are some people out there that are doing up to 30 farmer's markets. Some folks, I think Veterans Liberty Ranch, they're doing five to eight. So we're at two, but we're at two really, really, really good farmer's markets. Okay. It's been quite the journey there. At the beginning, I felt the sting of being the new guy at the farmer's market. Nobody knows who you are Nobody knew who Chuck Town Acres was. This is seven years ago. And I was just there with a chest freezer full of chicken and some cucumbers that we grew. Whatever I could get to grow, right? That's how it is in your first year. I think I'll grow vegetables and winter squash. I'm going to plant a bunch of apple trees and I'm going to do cows and sheep and pigs and chickens and goats.
00:12:31
Speaker
You realize very quickly that is not a sustainable way to run a business. It might be a nice way to have a homestead where everyone's eating for free and having a good time and you're just feeding yourself. But if this is a business, you really have to focus on something a little more specific. So we started with chickens and cucumbers and eggs. Nobody knew who we were. So we had to go through the slog of the first year at the farmer's market. When you're brand new, it's not easy.
00:12:58
Speaker
People will just walk past you. They'll think you're weird, especially if there's another vendor that's already doing what you're doing. We were up against this one guy that had been at this farmer's burger for 20 years. He did chicken and eggs. And then we were there with chicken and eggs. I just have PTSD from the line that this guy had. He just had 30 people waiting in the baking sun, waiting to buy his chicken and eggs. And I'm over there with nobody. I know we're doing it all the same. The first year can be really tough, but the redemptive part of all of that is we go to that farmer's market every Tuesday still. Six plus years later, we do on average about $5,000 every market. We have about over sales
00:13:41
Speaker
her market and we're getting email addresses left and right, and we're meeting new customers all the time. I understand when you're beginning, you either are gonna think, I don't need a farmer's market, I just need a really good website and an online store and everything will be fine. Or you're thinking the other thing, I just need a really good farmer's market. So when you get there in your first year, your best day is $300. You want to quit so bad. It is so intense. I say all that to make sure that everybody listening knows that it is so worth it to stick it out, to stay consistent, show up when it's hot, show up when it's raining, show up when it's snowing, Be the consistent in-person farmer for these people, and they will start to trust you more. They'll start to rely on you more. Then when that farmer's market closes down for five, six months, three months out of the year, then we convert them to online shoppers. I know we just did a whole podcast on farmer's market, so I don't need to spend too much time there.
00:14:43
Speaker
I will add this, which is, you said it all already, but it's so important. It beckons to be repeated, which is even though you were mucking through the slog of year one, which by the way, is completely normal for your year one. Even if you're a restaurant, everybody who knows that if you open a restaurant, the first year you're blown. You're not gonna make money. But you also said something really important, which is you collected emails. You started to gain relationships, put your face in your brand out there consistently. You might not make money, but you are there putting your brand out, collecting emails. We can't say collecting emails enough times because literally, statistically, we can map out the number of emails a farmer has to their revenue outcomes. And then you were also saying in-person and Farmer's Market's definitely one of the in-persons. That's why I'm saying, everybody go read this grassroots marketing ebook. It's about to come out with Farm Story. probably just be able to go to our website and find it here shortly, but, or it'll be on our social media handles. There's so many in-person opportunities, not just at Farmer's Markets, but with local businesses, local schools, local churches, et cetera. and So there's so many opportunities for people to be putting their brand out there, popping up at events, creating double branded events along with other partners and brands, et cetera. Although to be fair, Alex, I would suspect you would also recommend if years two and three, they're not making money, that just might not be an ideal market.
00:16:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So with your farmer's market, you want to make sure that it is going to be concentrated with your target base. We're trying to find more suburban and urban farmer's markets. We're not looking for rural farmer's markets that are like four vendors and some guys selling peanuts and whatever. You want it to be a very well-populated, very well-attended farmer's market. They're initially difficult to get into. So I tell people, apply for five, six, seven different farmer's markets and expect that one will say yes. This is a very important detail. If you go to a very country, rural farmer's market and it's really slow, that means you probably shouldn't be there. You need one with a lot of foot traffic, a lot of suburbanites that want to shop there for their weekly groceries.
00:16:51
Speaker
There's also a lot of city markets or craft markets, and that's not the same thing either. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a farmer's market that's the same day every week. It's consistent and it has a lot of food vendors. Some of them are just like growers markets, and that's the kind of market you want to be in. Would highly suggest if someone's listening to this and they haven't listened to the Veterans Liberty Ranch episode that you guys just dropped about farmer's markets, please listen to that because that was super valuable as well. It was a very fun podcast. I don't disagree. You also did say in-person is super important, but also to drive them online. Why would you say that?
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, we have seen a major uptick in our business when we concentrate on collecting email addresses and making contacts in person so we can push these people to online. The main driver that we're looking for is recurring revenue for our online store. My very, very top number one favorite thing about Barn to Door is the subscription models that you can build on your online store and have recurring revenue guaranteed for your farm. This is like a dream come true. I still remember the first like two or three winters. It was winter because there's no farmer's markets here. We were so broke. It was terrifying.
00:18:10
Speaker
I was just begging and scrapping and clawing for any kind of sales that I could get in those first two or three winters where I was like, I don't even know if I can cover payroll this week because we've got about $800 in our bank account and I got to pay this guy soon and I really need a couple more sales to come in. We're just begging for those one-off sales. orders to come in online, which are great and are a great asset to your online store. But as soon as we got subscriptions running, I literally have not worried about a winter ever since.
00:18:44
Speaker
The subscription of online sales changed my stress level, changed my marriage, changed my relationship with my family, changed my bank account. It changed everything for us.
00:18:57
Speaker
So if you can use those in-person sales to fuel the online, because it's the online that carries you year round. Everybody's got to eat. No one stops eating in the wintertime. So if you can use the online platform to give you that base of consistent, reliable income and sales, you really can get past this zero to 60 thing that we're talking about. And you can get yourself into the second phase of your business where you know the money's coming in, repeatable, then you work on your profitability and your scalability after that. If you're listening to this and you think, I don't need online sales channel, I just need a good farmer's market and I need my neighbors. You're going to have a pretty rude awakening six to 12 months into your business where you've already sold everything to your neighbors and they're not coming back. Or maybe you're too expensive for your neighbors because that's something we see in these rural relationships where you have to have a farm in a rural area, but the people who live in rural areas can't or won't pay your prices. Not your target audience. Your target audience is in a metropolitan. It doesn't have to be a huge metropolitan, by the way. So even small cities are fine. We have many farms that just target one or two or three small cities near them. We have others that definitely target larger metropolitans. But the important thing is consistency for the buyers, convenience. First, you have to get the buyers. First, it's collecting those emails, and that is then how you can and engage those customers beyond the farmer market to then be sending them order reminders and increase the frequency with which they purchase from you. You can't wait for the once a month when they show up at the farmer's markets. You want to convert them into folks that are anytime thinking about eating beef or poultry they're buying from your farm. You need to displace the grocery store purchase.
00:20:47
Speaker
And so whatever product you may have, and we have a great survey that we sent out to like more than 30,000 buyers. We got statistically significant results. How often do they eat poultry? Well, twice a week on my dinner table. Okay.
00:20:59
Speaker
How often would they buy from you? Of course they would do a subscription because then you just displaced why they would ever buy chicken from the grocery store because you match the frequency of their eating habits with order reminders and or subscriptions. If they're not hooked into the subscription, you want to be hitting them with an order reminder with that exact frequency. So once or twice a week, buy my chicken, buy my beef, buy this. Because again, you're displacing the grocery store. That is a business strategy. Hopefully that is gold. you want to think of your in-person and online as in tandem. Those are two pillar sales channels for your farm. And I was just looking up the statistic, an average of 33% of Americans use the internet to so search for local businesses every day.
00:21:41
Speaker
So basically we're all looking up local this, that, and the next thing online, one in three people every single day. So do you want your farm to be there? Yes. Do you want to have just a website with no store? No. Why? Because if they show up at the website and there's no way to shop, they just went to another farm store and made a purchase. You can't market without a way for them to convert that into a sale. It's like an online brochure that they just throw in the trash. You have to be able to put in the credit card. They need to be able to make a purchase. So you have to have a store. It works together. That's the cool part. Online and in-person both reinforce one another for your brand.
00:22:18
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. They're peanut butter and jelly. That's your number two, which is online. We did in-person and online peanut butter and jelly. I love that. They're so good together. I would never try to do this without both. You would just be chopping yourself in half. You would lose your customers half of the year and then have to regain them again. That is so difficult. unnecessary friction to put on yourself.
00:22:40
Speaker
I know people are listening to this and they're new farmers and they probably don't have an online sales platform yet, and they're thinking, well, is it worth the cost? It is 100%. If you're serious about having a farm business, you have to have an online sales channel. You just, you have to do it. Don't do something crazy. That's $2,000 a month, especially Barnador is way more affordable than that. And it will convert thousands of customers over to you. You won't think about the cost once you see the thousands of dollars hitting your bank account from people who signed up from your weekly or monthly subscriptions that are automatically getting food. So please, if you're in the first couple years in listening to this, heed my words, you have to have online and you have to have in person.
00:23:28
Speaker
Don't do it without, you you were literally chopping your feet off if you just do one. It's so important to get this right because I want you to succeed. I want your farm business to do well. And so I just want you to know the most successful farm businesses are doing this. So model your business after this. If you look at the big guys, White Oak Pastures, Polyphase Farms, all of these other massive places, they have places that you can go so shop in person and then they have their online channels and they work in tandem together. So super important not to skip one of those. Amen. Love it.
00:24:03
Speaker
Yeah, because you are losing customers before they even buy from you is essentially what's going to happen. If you're not online, you've just lost a litany of buyers. You have to expose your brand. You don't just put up a website in a needle in a haystack and people are going to find you. You have to work in tandem to bring people to your website, to bring people to your business. in-person events. That's marketing and sales. Both marketing for the purpose of sales. Those are sales channels. In-person is, online is, social media is a sales channel, email newsletters and order reminders, another channel because you're appearing in their inbox. Website with the store, another channel if they're searching. So those are all different channels. It's just the different ways and places that you show up in front of your existing or potential customer. Yes. Yeah. All these people shop differently. So you want to try to have as many of those channels set up as you can to be able to hit all the streams of customers that like to shop differently. Some of them want to go to a store.
00:25:04
Speaker
Some of them want to drive to your farm. Some of them want to go to a farmer's market and some of them just want you to bring it to their house. Those seem to be the biggest four ways that people are going to shop for your product. do You want to put yourself in front of them in all four ways. Yeah, I love that. Amazing.
00:25:21
Speaker
Okay, so we have in person, we have online social email, working together, getting your brand out there. One way to show up and keep showing up locally is through partnerships. That's your number three. So talk a little bit about what that looks like and what the point of each of those partnerships is. Yes. So one thing here is that you don't want to have to try to do everything yourself. This is one thing that we see really aggressive beginning farmers. They'll try to do every single thing yourself, whether that's with your actual production model of you want to raise all the chickens and pigs and cows and turkeys, guineas and strawberries yourself or your sales channels. Just a minute or two on each one of those to make sure that beginning farmers don't totally burn themselves out. For the sales partnerships, don't try to build your own website and your own online store, your own online everything. Partner with another business like Barnador that will do this for you, that will hold your hand. You will not be banging your head up against the wall trying to build a website on Wix and and it's not working or it looks dumb or it doesn't work right, okay? So partner with someone for your online and sales. Also, partner with people locally that have shops, that have cafes, coffee shops, local gyms, yoga studios, Pilates studios. And my new favorite one is chiropractors.
00:26:44
Speaker
The chiropractor game is so, so fun and cool because chiropractors are an alternative kind of medicine. Anybody in the synergistic, holistic, alternative medicine space is going to be your new best friend, helping you get your word out there and then maybe even working as a pickup location. You could just have flyers on the counter. I've got one chiropractor that I go to and I got to bring this guy more flyers every time I go see him because he brings his family out to the farm on Saturdays. He loves us. We've got several chiropractors that are totally in love with us because they don't want to buy food from the grocery store. They're alternative thinking people.
00:27:21
Speaker
They don't want to just take whatever's in front of them or whatever's the easiest thing because they think about things critically and they see that meat at the grocery store, there's something wrong with it. they're The vegetables at the store, there's something wrong with it. Everything in the middle of the store, all 28 aisles in the middle, something wrong with it. Okay. There are going to be people who want to find alternative food models, which is usually a local farm. they want to support you and they want you to do well because they want to feed their families your food. So if you can find chiropractors, acupuncturists, synergistic medicine places or holistic medicine places, this is kind of why i'm so pumped about this. This is like my new thing. I feel like we just discovered it. In the grassroots marketing class two weeks ago, somebody mentioned chiropractors and I was like, oh yeah, I already do that. And I didn't even think to put it in the class. But it's such a great avenue. Get them a nice clear plastic flyer stand and just put it on the counter. And if anyone's interested, they can grab one.
00:28:16
Speaker
My other favorite is the natural locally owned grocery store. We've got two of these that we partner with now as pickup locations. And also they buy our product wholesale and they sell it in their store. When people go on our website to buy our products, they can pick it up at these places and then they can shop for wine, cheese, raw milk, and supplements, wild caught salmon, and all these other awesome things. You mentioned the local loop, the heart and center of the local loop is this kind of independent grocery world. Every city and town has one to five of these places in there. And you just got to find them, introduce yourself. They can be really, really good partnerships. Anything else there, Janelle, that you were thinking of too? It's so interesting because there's so many great examples. And I love that you had the chiropractor, Aha, one of our account managers who has that same passion for helping farmers work with CrossFit gyms. We actually have a whole section on building partnerships in our up and coming grassroots marketing ebook.
00:29:17
Speaker
which again is coming out in another week or two. Value add, that's when we have some farmers that do a really good job. They sell butter and then they partner with somebody who sells jam and bread. Partner products, that's one way and or reselling for other vendors like that. have another firm I've talked to recently who is like, look, I make more tallow than I know what to do with, but I don't have time to make tallow, candles, and soap. So I partner with somebody who makes that for me to resell myself or for them. So there's some very interesting ways to look at partnerships. I would say one is expanding the cart. We're trying to offer more variety of products, like coffee and bread, if you don't sell eggs already and taking over the grocery cart. So that's a business strategy is expanding the cart. Another business strategy is value add. So partnering with people to help you create more product for you to sell like dried herbs and preserves and pickles, tallow, silver, all of those for you to add on. and Then the other one that I think is really important that you absolutely hit on, but I think is super interesting, is track new local buyers and deepen buyer loyalty for existing customers with branded experiences and events. And I know you did this well, so going to go on for a second. You can partner with a restaurant for a farmstable dinner that gets your name out. Ask a coffee shop to host a pickup location or chiropractor gym, school, et cetera. Invite vendors to your farm for an event. Now, where this starts to get interesting is if you're having a farm event, say you invite somebody who does apple cider or somebody who paints faces, I'm just making these up, but you think entertainment and additional products that don't compete with yours, you create an event. What happens? um You get exposure to all of their following and their customers themselves. in addition to them cross-pollinating with yours. So of course, make sure it's a brand that you want to associate your brand with, but you can get exposed to literally another whole set of customers that are loyal to another partner brand. So think of it that way. yeah Face painting is brilliant because all your best customers have kids. They all have kids. Well, you do farm tours. You do such a good job of this. I have to say one quick thing, because you said partner with Barn to Door for websites. Why we at Barn to Door are so passionate is we don't just build generic stores. We build stores for farmers' needs. So we literally are always only building for what farmers need to have an online store that's successful, which means like seasonal subscriptions, selling to wholesale retail, having different prices for the same product.
00:31:44
Speaker
different unit sizes for the same product. The inventory is accurate across both. You can sell online and in person. So it's a lot of people like, oh, it's a website. It's like, actually, it's a platform for independent farmers to run their business seamlessly, smoothly, and save a ton of time on orders, inventory management, have it just the same. We talk about helping farmers make more money, ditch the office work, and look like a pro.
00:32:08
Speaker
Ditch the office work is us handling all the gross, administrative office work in the background, but look like a pro is the website piece. We help if farmers need a logo and make sure that they have branding on their social channels and we have an integration for newsletters. Like we just make sure that they have all the seals channels open. So it does fall nicely into that bucket.
00:32:27
Speaker
But we care just like you do about all these farmers being successful. And sales channels is one of the things we literally create. Get out there in front of all the customers and we will help make that as turnkey and lovely and easy for buyers to buy as possible.
00:32:43
Speaker
i mean, you guys work so hard. And so it's such a joy to come alongside. So yes, we love being in the partner bucket all day, every day. So we have number one, in-person sales channel. Number two, online sales channel.
00:32:54
Speaker
Number three, partnerships. Anything yet there before we get to the next one? One thing I just wanted to add in, and you were hitting on it with basically selling other people's products that you love, that you know you love their coffee and you love their sourdough bread and you love their milk. I do that a lot with our in-person on-farm store. I have honey and maple syrup and all these other things are so amazing. And I'm so glad I don't have to grow them. Just the mindset of being able to sell something that you didn't have to produce yourself is like the best feeling ever when you've been the farmer that you took the cucumbers and the chicken legs to the market. and you're like, I had to do all this myself. Well, one thing that we hit after about year four is that our sales were so high. And our literal land space, our acreage was not big enough to hold all the product and production that we needed to grow to be able to sell everything. It was a great problem to have. So we ended up making partners with...
00:33:57
Speaker
different enterprises that we were doing all ourselves at first. So I now have somebody who's growing all of our hogs for me offsite. This guy, he had a small hog operation. He wanted to grow it. And he said, I want to expand, but my sales aren't there. And I was like, well, Our sales are there. So let's partner together. And now he came under our umbrella to grow hogs for us. That was just the most stress relieving business decision that I've made since day one. Because you guys know when pigs get out, it's horrible. It's like the worst thing ever. We just ran out of room to be able to do pigs well. So being able to create a partnership with someone to raise hogs for us was just one of the best things ever. Okay, first of all, folks, this 60 to 120. When you have such a lovely umbrella and you're having so many sales that it's a good problem to have. And I'm actually glad that you said it, Alex, because you need to have the vision for that. You need to know that your chicken legs and cucumbers in year one, when you're not selling anything, but you're slowly collecting emails, will get you to the point where you're selling out and now you're getting creative with the business and looking at how do I make this repeatable, scalable? How do those partnerships work? Are there specific partnerships that you you would recommend to somebody in year one or two?
00:35:17
Speaker
Yes. I would say it depends on your land space. I find that cattle are very expensive and difficult to manage if you don't already have experience. So usually it's laying hens that people start with. In year one, They're just going to get some broilers and some laying hens. They don't run away very far.
00:35:39
Speaker
They're easy to manage. They're easy to maintain. I find that if people try to just get like three cows because they have eight acres, then they end up getting so sick of cows because it literally is the same amount of work to raise three cows as it is to raise 35 cows. So if you're going to do it use those eight acres for poultry and grow your poultry operation. This is what I see working the best for people. Partner with a grass-fed beef farm that you really love. And if you are struggling with pigs, I would also suggest buy another farmer's pork that you love. You vet that farmer. He's doing it the right way.
00:36:18
Speaker
And you can sell his forest-raised or pasture-raised pork alongside your chicken and eggs and get your feet under you first. I just find that if you try to do everything yourself at the very beginning, the years one, two, and three, You've got eight cows. You've got 16 pigs. You're trying to farrow and you're trying to finish hogs and you've got broilers coming in and out and you got laying hens that you're trying to deal with year round. Then you're trying to run a business at the same time. It can be so exhausting and you just feel like the work is never, ever, ever going to end. You'd never see your family. It's just killing you. This is where I see a lot of farms failing in the first couple of years when they try to do everything themselves. Not to mention a lot of farms try to do vegetables on top of that. on top of all the proteins. I tell people, get really good at one or two things, repeat that, scale it, and don't be afraid to bring in someone else's product to complement your own because you could sell grass-fed beef right away. You buy the beef wholesale from your neighbor down the street, you mark it up, you make sure you make a profit on that product, and you could be selling grass-fed beef in the first year that you didn't have to raise yourself. I just think it's going to save a lot of people from horrible situations where their fences aren't quite ready, but the people are demanding the beef. They just try to risk it and then the cows get out on the road. I've heard that story so many times that I really want to tell beginning farmers, you don't have to do it all yourself. You don't have to do the dairy and the cows and the pigs and the chickens and the turkeys and the vegetables all at once. You can partner with people who do that as well. That is so perfect. Thank you for that.
00:37:54
Speaker
I was just looking it up. I had a podcast with Rachel Schenk, another farmer. It was a pricing strategies for scaling your farm. Went live on February 27 of this year. She said it in there, Alex, that I think this is the year they just started Cowser. It was last year, but now she's like, okay, finally, we've been sourcing beef from a grass-fed beef farmer to then resell to our customers. It's been great. And she just has a lot of wisdom of Same thing you're saying, which is don't do it all up front. But in fact, source those various proteins and products before you even start to do them, add that to your farming operation. Because you actually end up learning a lot about pricing and packaging just by being in relationship with that other farmer, you're going to learn a lot, interestingly. So she's over the moon to start having their own beef, but she's ready for it. It's also not writing off more than she can chew because it's like in the year five and six and they just waited for the right time to add that.
00:38:50
Speaker
I just had a podcast with Phil last week. He focuses on the daily. They lay eggs every day. People drink milk every day. So sell the things they sell every day or eat every day. But you also get the chickens and especially if they're the meat birds that you can turn over every what, five, six, seven weeks. So that's a cash coming in the door. It is a good first product. Then add another one on. Yeah, absolutely. If a fox comes and kills your chicken at night, you lost 10 bucks, okay? If your cows get sick because they ate something in your pasture that isn't supposed to be there, you lost several thousand dollars. So the stakes are so much higher. If your sow dies, God forbid, during labor, and you don't really know what you're doing with farrowing hogs, then you just lost hundreds of dollars. I just find the poultry thing to be less risky, a great way to get your feet in the water, and so easily scalable.
00:39:46
Speaker
If something does go wrong with your chickens, it's not going to kill you. It's not going to destroy your business if you lost a pregnant mama cow in labor. That's just real farming world. So that's why I suggest cows and pigs to be your partnership options because the risk is way lower for you if you're just sticking to poultry. Yeah, and you did some produce and whatnot along the way too. We did until it killed me.
00:40:10
Speaker
I mean, don't discourage the produce farmers out there, Alex. I don't want to. i have way more respect for produce farmers after doing it myself. It's very, very rare that you see someone doing produce and proteins at the same time.
00:40:24
Speaker
A lot of times people, they'll do poultry and produce. That's a more likely combination. The other reason why it's meat to potentially partner earlier, again, that doesn't have to be the first year, but maybe years two, three, you do look to partner with some protein operations. In the first year in particular, especially when you're standing there for hours at your farmer's market stand trying to figure it out. You have so much to learn as a business owner. You're not just learning farming, you're learning business. you have to create some space for yourself to learn both because you are now a business owner operator in addition to a farm owner operator. Those are four pretty big buckets.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah. And you end up becoming a plumber and an electrician and a fence installer and a mechanic. and It's a lot to handle in the first couple of years. A lot of brand new skills to learn. Welding, we could go on, right? Yeah, no, it it is. So cut yourself some slack, stick to some pretty basic product lines because you're going to thank yourself later. Okay, so marketing strategy number four, and we got to keep scooting along because you know, you and i could actually theoretically do Joe Rogan style three hour if we want it.
00:41:29
Speaker
All right. So number four, marketing strategy. Please do not go into this business venture of farming without a marketing strategy. I've written down a few ideas on where to get started that either are totally free or might cost you a little bit like, let's say, flyers and business cards. Okay. They're going to be a penny a piece or something like that. Number one item on your marketing strategy is you have to know your ideal customer. All your marketing efforts are going to be centered around your ideal customer.
00:42:02
Speaker
I'm going to save you this stress of having to pull all your customers at the beginning and just let you know your number one customer is a suburban mom. It's just over and over and over again. We see the suburban mom, we call her suburban Sally. She's pretty famous now. She's going to be the one that keeps the lights on on your farm. So this affects everything in your business. It affects your cut sheets. It affects the way that you put stuff on social media. It affects the way you write your email newsletters. It affects what you emphasize on your website. It affects your subscription sizes and prices. If you can make sure that you remember the suburban mom at the heart and center of all your marketing, this is going to be a huge help. We also have, I like to put in two additional ideal customers and i maybe Janelle, you might have another one. I like the fitness community. Anyone in the fitness community, they're going to be spending so much time on how they treat their body. And so they also want to fuel their body with super clean food. That's what you're there for. And then you've got anyone in the wholesale world, mostly restaurants or wholesale independent grocery stores like we talked about before. People are going to buy your product and resell it to someone else. That puts your name and your brand in front of a ton of people that you would have never gotten in front of before.
00:43:22
Speaker
And those tend to be the healthy folks, people who are caring about real food, clean food. And there's a lot from all different sorts of walks and genres of life that have clued into the brokenness of Big Ag. But you're right, the local shops that cater to that. persona are a great target for you. And the other two, suburban Sally or suburb suburban mothers, if they've been eating crap food all the way through college and they get married, start having kids, they all start really caring a lot about what they're feeding their children, which is just a beautiful thing. And then the fitness ones, like in my own business here at Barn to Door, Alex, I can look out on the floor and I literally probably have 50, 60 plus people, but the genre of Especially the young men, I will say in their twenties, thirties are in particularly, they all are very, I'm at the gym. I add salt to my water. I eat lot of steak. They listened to Sean Ryan, Joe Rogan, you know, all of the advice on staying clean, eating clean, being smart. It's really cool to see. It's very inspiring. But they want a source from farmers too. They tend to be pretty protein heavy. I think Suburban Sally is probably more likely to be in the vegetable world, world which is kind of interesting.
00:44:30
Speaker
And she wants stuff that's going to be really easy to cook, that she's really familiar with. Your chicken breast, your ground beef, your sausage and bacon that she can just throw in a pan and be really easy. i mean, you wouldn't believe the amount of chicken breast we sell. It is just crazy. The amount of ground beef, burger patties, our butcher makes Italian meatballs with our ground beef, bacon, sausage. I almost take all of our hogs and probably 80% the meat that comes off of our hogs go to sausage. It's wild. It's what people are comfortable with. I am so proud of farmers because it works, but you're marketing people like
00:45:07
Speaker
Chicken feet make the best chicken broth in the world. That's my favorite broth to make, which you have to educate. And tallow's taken off because it literally made it onto the food pyramid, which is hilarious, amazing, and wonderful. But part of the mission of the collective independent farmers across the country trying to change the food system, and we're here to help. is educating consumers. And you do such a great job of that, Alex, on your channel, you're clearly speaking to the buyers. But the people that are comfortable, they're comfortable with ground beef, they're comfortable with chicken breasts, they're comfortable with a certain steak or two. So those mainstays are what they're going to buy because they don't have to think when it comes to a harried life and then I show up and I have to make dinner. But it's good to keep educating people or doing value add in a way that works for them because you can really hit the jackpot there in expanding your product line. The pricing strategy podcast I referred to earlier, Rachel did an incredible job outlining value add and add-on and how much progress she had made. I can't remember it tallow or chicken bones or what it was, but she was getting deep into how successful she had been in slowly but
00:46:11
Speaker
truly educating her buyers on the value of items that they were maybe less comfortable with, but now she has great demand for. Yeah. The further you get in your business, the more people hear your name and the more expansive your reach gets. So you'll be able to finally reach those people that want the weird stuff. I love it when people come into our farm store and they're like, can I get some chicken feed? i'm like, yes, I found you. You're my person. Carnivore blend. That's a big one for the fitness crew. Yeah. You get to use up all the Ofala and the, yeah. We don't even slice livers and hearts anymore. They just go into our organ blend. We sell it like crazy because people want the nutrition from that, but they don't want to have liver and onions for dinner, which I can understand. Two non-negotiables for your marketing strategy. These are really basic. Really simple, but I just want to make sure people don't skip these. Your email newsletter. We talk about it pretty much every podcast episode. What we see is the best way to do it is to have a weekly email newsletter that goes out.
00:47:13
Speaker
We like MailChimp, but there's plenty of other places. MailChimp does integrate with Barnador, which is pretty slick. So you need to send out a simple weekly newsletter. I mean, you can send out a big monthly one too, if you like, but if you're anything like me, it's too cumbersome to try to come up with like the most amazing long 10 page.
00:47:33
Speaker
but I feel like the data is not there to back that kind of strategy up. where if you can have a really simple one, here's a sale on bacon, here's what we're doing this week, he meet my dog, here's our internship. Really, really basic, simple weekly newsletters are really a great way to stay top of mind for your customer, to remind them that you're there, and to give them a couple links to click to go to your online store to shop.
00:47:59
Speaker
With that, I always add in the order reminder that is powered through barn to door. I got to have a confession here online. i forgot about order reminders for like a couple of years. And so I just turned them back on like three months ago. And I am so embarrassed because the amount of orders that come in through our order reminders is totally insane. Like we were getting like five X more orders online because we turned the order reminders back on. So that's embarrassing, but it was great.
00:48:29
Speaker
That is embarrassing. That's why they're literally automatic. I tell people like basic marketing 101, get your emails, turn on order reminders, send a newsletter once a month and that's gold. Go.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah, just do it. My people are getting two emails a week for me now because one is an order reminder and the other one's a newsletter and I haven't had anyone complain or... care about that. Okay. I was worried about being kind of overbearing or whatever, but it's only benefited us. And for some reason, this might be helpful for some people.
00:48:59
Speaker
For some reason, order reminder on Sunday mornings at 8am is like magic. It's gold. It's for some reason, a lot of people want to buy their food Sunday mornings at 8 a.m. m There may be another day in time that works better for you, but I'm just giving you my experience with this so far. I mean, started getting a lot of newsletters on Sunday mornings, and so I just took the hint and was like, I think like the wizards know that there's something with Sunday mornings and online shopping.
00:49:27
Speaker
So we did it. And I can't believe how many orders come through on Sundays. It's really crazy. So people are free to steal that. Yes. Back to match the frequency that people are going to buy to your product anyway and make sure that you are the one they are buying your product from. If you sell chicken and you only email them once a month, they are definitely buying chicken somewhere else. If you sell eggs, if you sell dairy, if you sell beef, and you're not the one reminding them more frequently than they're buying it somewhere else, you need to send an order reminder or they will forget you. So you have to do it that frequently. It's no joke. And yes, we have automated order reminders at Burned Door that we highly recommend to all farmers because you can just set it and forget it. And you know that they're getting a little tap-drapping.
00:50:09
Speaker
on their shoulder, top of the inbox, at least once a week. And it's just like, people don't like to read long. I would say most pharmacy newsletters are about 60, 70, 80% too long. Hopefully that's empowering. Like you don't have to come up with big important things to say every time. People don't have time. Once in a while, sure.
00:50:26
Speaker
But if you're not in the mood and don't have a lot to say, and it's like just two paragraphs, fine, ship it. You know, don't stress yourself out. The most important thing is you have a heartbeat. They feel like they have access to you. They get a little brand touch.
00:50:39
Speaker
and a place to click to go make a purchase. And you're in the process of building a relationship. Every conversation doesn't have to be deep. Yes, absolutely. All right, your number two, I know we're trying to wrap this up. So i want to make sure we get number two on the non-negotiable for your marketing strategy. Everyone already knows it, social media. You got to have at least an Instagram and a Facebook. If you want to do TikTok and X and all those other things too, that's great. you want to do YouTube,
00:51:04
Speaker
that's great. But I say your non-negotiable is at least Instagram and Facebook and post on there consistently. It just seems like the more you post, the better it is. So if you can do something each day, that's a really good groove to get into. If you can only do every other day,
00:51:20
Speaker
That's fine. But get in the habit, especially if you're a new farmer, get in the habit of putting something online on your social media every day or every other day. And honestly, I will say they really reward you for putting your face on there. So if you're bold enough yeah or dumb enough like me to put your face on there, they really, really reward you for that. Our our social media presence was total crap.
00:51:43
Speaker
Until I started taking videos of myself explaining things in a field. I mean, we don't have the craziest social media following ever, but it is what I would consider a successful account for a farm. So those are my two non-negotiables. I love it.
00:51:57
Speaker
Can you give one quick plug to the importance of both new potential customers that you're trying to attract, but then engaging customers? existing customers. I feel like we've just covered that a lot, but it's worth saying out loud is you're trying to attract new customers, but you're also engaging your existing customers to keep them nearby and to keep them loyal and reminded to buy from you. But those are both very important.
00:52:20
Speaker
Yes, they are. I mean, you definitely don't want to lose the customers you've already got, you know, especially with like email marketing. You don't want to send them an email every single day. You'll really, really piss them off. Or never through the winter. Yeah. Remember the winters. We've had farmers say, wow, our loyal customers love us. And then they forget about us all winter long. I'm like, well, expand your product line.
00:52:41
Speaker
longer take pre-orders going into the spring and then make sure you keep the relationship warm through the winter absolutely and i think the subscription model is the best way to do it there's a lot of other ways to do it but i think doing a subscription if you have year-round products i mean you can rely on those people And if you're trying to reach new customers with like, let's take your subscription model in particular, I make sure to post every meat and egg CSA that goes out on our delivery truck. I post it online and I write it as if I am writing it for the very first time. You know, did you know that we send out a weekly box, a biweekly box and a monthly box that is delivered to your door? Here's six pictures of it.
00:53:24
Speaker
And I make sure that goes out on our Instagram account every week as it goes out and shipped to people because there's always going to be new people that see your stuff. And so you want to make sure that they kind of have a basic understanding of what this looks like. You know, what would they be getting if they signed up for the thing, you know? Yeah.
00:53:42
Speaker
I love that so much. We have three tiers at Barnsendor and the people subscribe for to use the platform to run their business. But at the top tier, what we call scale tier, our team actually goes in and helps farmers set up email campaigns through MailChimp because we have a direct integration so you can pull your store items into the newsletter. But we help them set up welcome email campaigns and then separately we'll help them set up essentially lifecycle campaigns. email campaigns for customers who are loyal customers, who might be specialists and or those who are laggers who haven't bought in six months. So it's really neat to splice them up that way and to keep that in mind. You mentioned subscriptions and recurring revenue already throughout this. That was actually the number six, which was the cheeky comment I made about re repeatable. Like first you have to figure out profitable and scrap your way to it. Repeatable, you want recurring revenue. Repeatable is kind of also matching the habits of your buyers. Make sure your delivery and pickup, make sure those are consistent. Create the habit for them to fall into. If I show up on your online store for the first time and I see that I can order my favorite chicken breast family size every single Wednesday, especially a subscription, done, I'm locked in.
00:54:52
Speaker
Because I'm the busy mom. I'm suburban Sally. And I just need to know it's showing up. I don't have to think about it. It's from the farmer. It's the best thing for my family. Done. I don't need to make that decision again. It's done. Especially if it's consistent. And I know I'm going to use it because I cook it every week. So it's the repeatable pieces that are important.
00:55:11
Speaker
which again, that's 60 to 120. We'll talk about that next time. And then we have to quickly mention, well, you mentioned convenience too. That's gotta be part of your marketing strategy. You have to show up for your buyers within like a five mile radius of where they're going to pick up and or on their doorstep. And frankly, you can do yourself. You can charge for your deliveries. You can literally actually make money on delivery. Don't be afraid of it. And now I think I said at the beginning, we just have rolled out. Actually, we have multiple delivery partners where farmers can just opt in with a delivery partner in their area so they don't actually have to do it themselves, which is amazing. Man, as the guy who did it myself for the first four years, I'm like so pumped. It's kind of crazy how it's taking off. And then I know I'm rushing us. The hidden one that we saved till the end is attitude. So you get to tell us why that matters.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yes. Even if you do all these other things that we've talked about today the right way, if you have the wrong attitude going into this, it will still collapse everything.
00:56:15
Speaker
This is something as I was preparing for the podcast, I was just thinking about this over and over and over again about the farms that I've seen fail and the farms I've seen succeed. And the people who succeed are I came up with five attributes that I see the farms that succeed do the best.
00:56:32
Speaker
Humble, scrappy, stubborn, flexible, and frugal. Those are my top five. I literally feel like you just described how I was raised in a farming family. It's the entrepreneurial five right there. Because if you're going to run a company in a business, you will be shocked at the amount of things that go wrong. And it's just, you have to be able to figure it out yourself. You have to be humble enough to admit that you screwed up.
00:56:58
Speaker
You have to be stubborn enough to stick with it. You need to be flexible enough to be able to change your strategy when things go wrong. And one of the biggest things I've seen kill farms is they're not frugal and they go buy the brand new giant tractor. They buy the brand new giant truck. They buy the brand new giant trailer and they get all this really fancy stuff and the side by sides and they're ready to blow it all on the farm.
00:57:23
Speaker
And then the bills start coming in and that will just really, really, really crush you in the first couple of years. If you can avoid the fancy stuff for, let's say four to five to 10 years and really make sure that your model works in your area, on your farm, with your own personality, then reward yourself with a nice tractor after a while. You reward yourself with a nice truck after a while. But don't start that way unless you're a millionaire to start. But if you're like me, you had nothing coming in and you have to be super frugal on the front end and make sure that it's going to work before you take on tons of debt. So that's my entrepreneur farmer five. Wow. Yeah. Thank you. All right, I'm going to wrap this up. That was so amazing. Thank you so much. We've got two more podcasts coming. We have 60 to 120 because today was zero to 60 in terms of getting your farm started. But your farm dynamic and paradigm business paradigm shifts are really important at about years three, four in terms of scaling and making that efficient. And then we have to do one on the persona and the personality of what it takes to be successful in farming because it's the gritty part of those first few years in particular. You're just always having to push through, be humble, all the things that you mentioned. I love that.
00:58:38
Speaker
Okay. I want to extend my thanks to Alex for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Keep an eye out. There will be more coming from he and I to you very soon. Check out Chucktown Acres on their Instagram at Chucktown Acres. Find Alex pointing the camera at himself, talking in a field with great success. He's a wonderful example of how to do social well. Please go check that out.
00:59:00
Speaker
Here at Barnes & Noble, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country. We're delighted offer services and tools to help farmers make more money. Ditch the office work and look like a pro. Please go crush it. We want you to be profitable, repeatable, scalable. We're going to do this. You're going to be wildly successful. Thank you for tuning in today. you look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
00:59:31
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.
00:59:48
Speaker
For free farm resources or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barntodore.com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.