The ‘Business’ Side of Farming with Chucktown Acres
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.
Read the blog here:
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Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door, and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for Farmers Selling Direct, online and in person.
I'm happy to speak with Alex Russell from Chucktown 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. Today, we're going to be discussing not the farming side of farming, but the business side of farming. [00:01:00] 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 Polyface, and you did a really good job having mentors. 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.
Alex Russell: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When I came into starting my own operation, owning the whole thing and running it myself, I had zero entrepreneurial business experience going into [00:02:00] that. And I knew how to raise animals well, and I knew how to keep them alive, how to raise a really good, high quality product.
And I had a tiny bit of experience at a farmer's market, selling some stuff under the Polyface 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, 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 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 farm business. And, people are shocked to hear that. They think it's going to [00:03:00] be getting up early and moving the chicken pens or, lifting 50 pound bags all day.
That's the easy stuff. It's easy for me, and it becomes easy as you get good and you streamline, 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 ahead first 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.
Janelle Maiocco: And actually do farming.
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 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 [00:04:00] business side.
Alex Russell: Yeah. Yeah, you start wanting to talk about sales and marketing and emails with the farmer, and you're gonna lose them right away most of the time, because they're like that stuff sucks. I'm not interested in that stuff. Let's talk about what kind of breed of cattle we like what kind of grass we grow.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: 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 a 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 farmers markets, you're way more into it if you're selling direct to consumer.
Janelle Maiocco: And that's an interesting thing that you bring up, because the quote unquote sort of big egg farms, and, forgive me if [00:05:00] 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, which is great. I love it all day long. That's who we support at Barn2Door. 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, Chucktown Acres, the farmer, not Barn2Door, 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.
Alex Russell: 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, but you have a lot of people that come and go.
And, you got to make new customers all the time. You [00:06:00] 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 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 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 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 [00:07:00] a very intimate relationship with that customer, 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 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 personable, I ask them how they're doing, how their kids are doing, and that really, really goes a long way. And I think some farmers struggle with that piece because,[00:08:00] some people might be getting into this industry because they want to be left alone.
They want to go out and move out in the country. And just be little curmudgeons, and then they realize once they're out there, "Oh no, I have to sell this stuff."
Janelle Maiocco: "I grew it. I grew it all."
Alex Russell: " 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. 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.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, 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 [00:09:00] 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, but 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, et cetera, so, there's a lot. What do you feel like was the first thing that you got good at? And then I feel like along the way, Alex, you had some ah-ha's, where all of a sudden, and we'll get into that a minute, cause 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 gonna buy this, or were you thinking, Hey, I gotta get my finances sorted, or what did that look like?
Alex Russell: It was only four years ago. It was during the birth of [00:10:00] COVID. 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. 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.
Janelle Maiocco: You call them friends, families, and fools. 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.
Alex Russell: Yeah. I mean, we were meeting people in Walmart parking [00:11:00] 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 Barn2Door, because we realized this is going to have to be streamlined some way, and our farmers markets only six months out of the year. 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 many people in Walmart parking lots for a chicken at a time.
Janelle Maiocco: I mean, you can keep doing that.
Alex Russell: You're not gonna have a full time job farming though, if you do. It's not gonna work.
Janelle Maiocco: 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. But, what was it that turned you on to try Barn2Door?
What parts of the [00:12:00] 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've just gotten better and better at all parts of the business, I feel like. 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, you're a business.
Alex Russell: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: 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 [00:13:00] 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."
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 Chucktown Acres before. So, we bought that and then we're like, okay, we need a website. We're farmers, don't give me Wix, I don't know what the heck to do with it. 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. 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 100 chickens in a chest freezer" to "Okay, here's your inventory. We're going to funnel people to your website. We're going to show them your online store. We're going to make orders really easy we're going to make [00:14:00] fulfillments, pick and pack, all that's going to be easy", and like you said, I didn't have to do so many things, because I did Barn2Door.
I didn't have to have all these different 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 ah-ha 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?" I'm like, "yeah, go to chucktownacres.com and go buy it. 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 day. It's not gonna happen".
Janelle Maiocco: Your brain is way too busy for all the details. Well, and people don't realize technology can help, it's not [00:15:00] 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... The business solution for farmers who hate the business side of farming. Yeah. Because 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 that technology like ours, for example, can just do for you.
Like, we integrate with QuickBooks 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 [00:16:00] spreadsheets and labels? You have better things to do with your very limited time as a farmer.
Alex Russell: Oh my gosh. Yeah, you could be play 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.
It's a small, 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 hoorah of the whole thing from that little chick, 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 [00:17:00] online in the inventory, making the 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, and if you're not organized, you will screw up that last piece of the fulfillment, the pack list, the labels, the 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. My delivery day is Wednesdays, so Tuesdays at noon, I have all the orders shut off 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 Barn2Door, cause I didn't sell [00:18:00] any turkeys 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. I said, "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 at farmer's markets, 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.
Janelle Maiocco: Turkey free Thanksgiving. Not okay.
Alex Russell: 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 Turkey that you raised for five months, and then you don't have it for him because you [00:19:00] 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 Barn2Door. We're going to organize it. 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. And then Monday morning, we literally had everybody show up on the day and pick up every single turkey that we sold. And, I was eating turkey this year for the first time.
Janelle Maiocco: There you go. Cause you didn't have to give your own turkey away.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: I'm happy that Barn2Door, and just technology in that case, has been able to help the logistics side of things and 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] You were like, "hey, I want everybody to go buy on Barn2Door". I want to be really clear, Alex. They're buying on Chucktown Acres website.
Alex Russell: Yeah, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: We're like under the hood. Alex, I don't care if they don't know about Barn2Door ever. I want them to go to your site, Chucktown Acres, 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 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 Barn2Door the brand. It's about Chucktown [00:21:00] Acres. 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 years, is how important your brand is. So, tell me a little bit about the evolution of you being like, "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 for our animals", and I think the really fun part is when you decided, even though you were anti social media, which is pretty normal for a lot of farms, you're like, no, no, no, no, and then finally you sort of caved.
Tell us about caving. Just share a little bit on that one.
Alex Russell: 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 [00:22:00] tried to be anti social media for the first like six months of it. And people 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, 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, preaching to them for an hour. And they were like, "Dude, you need to tell more people. You can't just be talking to one person at a time. You need to tell more people about this crazy stuff. And point them back [00:23:00] to what you guys are doing at Chucktown".
And it was like, "Oh", after like 12 people told me that I was like, "okay, 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. I started just putting up pictures of meat and, we were even growing veg at the time.
Just 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 to people in the algorithms. Oh, 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 [00:24:00] people and that's what's going to get you more traction and more visibility. From not just the people around you, but across the country too".
I said, "fine, I guess". All of 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. Real flimsy, it's sandy, it's 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?"
Took one minute, and it had like instantly two or three thousand views. All of a sudden people are sharing, "oh, man, look at this it's so cool. Look what this guy has to say. Wow. I didn't know chickens could do [00:25:00] 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, I guess this is what I have to do now". 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 harm to do 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. So, I started doing videos and if you're really good and professional on 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 and the perfect day and you understand the algorithm.
I'm a farmer, I stand in chicken poop every single day. I'm [00:26:00] not that guy. I'm not that organized. I don't have anyone else to do it for me.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: 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 some hay to the cows.
Or, I'd be driving the four wheeler to go check on the pigs. And I would have an inspirational thought that would come to [00:27:00] 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, 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 running 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? What's the difference between my grass fed beef and the $2 a 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.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Alex Russell: And I started to realize there's not enough of this in our space, in the social media space, you know, we have [00:28:00] some good documentaries, but we need more and more education.
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. 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, 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 [00:29:00] face on there talking to the screen.
Janelle Maiocco: And I would say, that's probably another of your ah-has, 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.
Alex Russell: 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.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: 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] 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 posts up around dinner time, they did better. So, I started recording the video during the day, post it at night, and then, make sure you have captions on the video because apparently no one's listening with the audio on anymore.
Janelle Maiocco: That's a good takeaway. Dinner time, a couple times a week, put the captions on and learn to look for the opportunities for that to occur.
Alex Russell: Yep, yep. 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. Then [00:31:00] after a while, I started forcing it to happen and I decided I'm going to take a three month, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna not post anything and I'll come back fresh and it was just, I've just come off my hiatus, back into, posting regularly.
Janelle Maiocco: I think that's actually really wise, which is keep an eye on the balance of making sure it's authentic. 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.
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 [00:32:00] competition? What do the buyers expect? Obviously, buyers love digital payment, they love shopping online in their pajamas, that's one of the reasons why Barn2Door was created.
We're like, well, we want to make sure that people are buying from the farmers, and this is how people buy. So, let's make sure there's an online store and, obviously, we rebuilt the 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.
Alex Russell: 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. Because, there's so many options out there now.
I mean, [00:33:00] you could get a big ButcherBox style meat box delivered to your house from some mystery farmer who you have no idea who's growing it, just have to trust the labels and we all know that the labels are very unreliable now. There's like 20 of those, there's probably more.
There's probably 30 of those businesses that are all marketing really, really, really heavy to people who care about their food. 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 7, 000 followers, you're kind of blasting it out to all of them in a mist.
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 [00:34:00] 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. 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 have to...
Janelle Maiocco: Noise!
Alex Russell: 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. 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 [00:35:00] 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 hectically busy, especially if you live near a big city. Everyone's running around like crazy. They got soccer practice and Taekwondo and they got kids and, you know, cause most of your, yeah, they're all into mixed martial arts for some reason. Not sure why.
So, they're all crazy busy now. You are going to have to fight to get through the crazy muck of their world and 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, but they don't do [00:36:00] 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 Cattle Co., they have the most beautiful newsletters ever. They're clean, they're crisp, they always have a great sale.
Janelle Maiocco: And that's one of their gifts, right? And that's great.
Alex Russell: Yeah, absolutely. And that, that's not my gift. So I was like, okay, instead I'm just going to 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 a sale that we're running or what's new or it's a new product. And that's about it.
Janelle Maiocco: 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".
Alex Russell: Yep. And... The craziest thing that I've realized with the newsletter marketing is that, and then this is counterintuitive, I have sold [00:37:00] way more product 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 percent off". And I did not think that that's what it was going to be, but I realized these farmers are begging for education 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.
Janelle Maiocco: You're a beacon of light in the darkness.
Alex Russell: 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 [00:38:00] 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.
And it just feels really, really good to market that way. Because ultimately, I have to sell this 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. To order our stuff, like people haven't done grocery shopping online until like 2018 or something like that. It's a new concept.
Janelle Maiocco: Most people, thanks to COVID actually, the trend in the greater market was going that way. But because of COVID, it accelerated. It's more than like three in four people now who have done online grocery shopping. But that's good for farmers. That [00:39:00] 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 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 and prevalent that food is farmed in healthy, responsible, regenerative ways, such as yourself and many of the farms that we serve.
So, quick, little tip for those listening then. What is your best tip for collecting emails, maybe even quickly.
Alex Russell: 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 [00:40:00] 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, 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.
Janelle Maiocco: 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?
Alex Russell: Yeah, it was probably 50/50 because we moved from Virginia to South Carolina, so we've got 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.
Since then, almost, [00:41:00] probably, 90 percent 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 going to cook that pork tenderloin, and why 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. 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. Our farmer's market is only six months out of the year. So in that last month, we collect probably [00:42:00] half of our emails that we get over that whole farmer's market season coming at the very, very end.
That's been the best way for us to get it. Now, we will get just people who find us by Googling regenerative agriculture in South Carolina. We'll 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 with a pen and a spreadsheet that has what's your name and your email, and that's all we ask for and I just let them know I'm only going to send 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.
Janelle Maiocco: But every week is good. 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.
Alex Russell: Yes. Oh, [00:43:00] 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, eh, once a month, once every other month, and I would be sitting there with no money in our bank account, freezer's full of meat, wondering why aren't they buying the stuff?
I'm putting pictures of zucchini online, why are they not buying it? And eventually, it clicked, they forgot about me. They were going to shop 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 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 [00:44:00] here. I still have the good stuff".
Janelle Maiocco: "Here's my weekly email. Here's my video on social. I'm in your face, but in a really proactive, lovely way".
Alex Russell: Yes, exactly. Don't be annoying about it, but, you have to be consistent.
Janelle Maiocco: 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 to understand like I have to email them once a week at 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 everywhere you go all the time, whenever you're showing up, that will just exponentially increase your [00:45:00] sales. Sitting there looking at your freezer means you probably should go back to your desk and send an email.
Alex Russell: Yeah, exactly. I remember there was one week, you know, 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, 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, [00:46:00] weekly's been really, really good for us.
Janelle Maiocco: 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 once 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.
Alex Russell: Yes, remember you and I did a presentation at the APPPA 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 gonna go to Costco to get all of our flour and sugar, we're gonna like stock up for a month's worth of stuff at a time. Your customers do not [00:47:00] shop like that. They go two to three times a week to get their food. And that was a huge ah-ha moment for me, when I was considering whether we should do bi weekly 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, that's too much for me. Weekly is a really nice, easy flow. We've organized our protein CSA in a way that works. We have another one that's offered bi weekly 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 run out of eggs. And we've been able to kind of nail the flow of deliveries really well, just by getting feedback and looking at data, like that graph that we had that we did a presentation for those farmers in Dallas.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that. I think one thing that we haven't sort of, dwelt upon, [00:48:00] 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 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, 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 gonna do that night like literally over nine out of ten times. They're gonna do that click every time, if you're top of mind through marketing and you're delivering the same way they can get [00:49:00] any other goods.
Alex Russell: Yeah. Yeah, if 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, but it just seems like you miss out on a lot of people. Yep, yep, absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: 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".
But, the other [00:50:00] 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.
Alex Russell: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Like you, you are now winning.
Alex Russell: Yes, yeah, and they're gonna 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 the email me.
It was like, "I forgot how terrible grocery store eggs were, 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 [00:51:00] vile and disgusting.
Janelle Maiocco: I know.
Alex Russell: 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 thawed 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 on an $100 box every other week and I can rely on her for, 200 bucks a month.
Janelle Maiocco: Just remember the quality is so much better that if you can just get it into their mouths, you have changed people.
Alex Russell: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Those buyers are changed forever when 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 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, and I know because you've told me, but I want you to say it again, which is [00:52:00] subscriptions made a difference for your business and for revenue.
So, say 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.
Alex Russell: 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. And the depression that came on me that first winter of like, "I don't think we're gonna 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 gonna have enough money to pay the bills. And that is because I do not have to [00:53:00] rely on a la carte orders to come in on our store anymore. 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 percent of our sales that we make come through on our subscription CSA that we do. Because we sell proteins that are frozen, 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 different kinds of proteins, give them easy stuff. Don't give them ham hocks and cow tongues, you know.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, you gotta call it a chef box then.
Alex Russell: Yes, that's the chef box. [00:54:00]
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: Exactly.
Janelle Maiocco: I mean, the world would be a better place if everybody knew what to do with chicken feet and ham hocks, I'm just saying.
Alex Russell: Yes, I know. I mean, I have literally lost customers, because I gave them Osso bucco in their box. And that is the saddest thing ever to me, because that's my favorite cut on the whole cow. I'm like, do you have any idea the tacos that you could make with this? It would blow your mind. But people want convenient food.
If they're going to sign up for something. Now, if they really want Osso bucco, we have it on a la carte and they can pick up a packet of that on their own. 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 [00:55:00] 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 than at the beginning I was giving them pork fat and tip roasts.
Janelle Maiocco: 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.
Alex Russell: This way they do not have to think about it. They can, they know that they can rely on me to bring them all the protein that they need to their house. They just need to go get their veggies from my friend who also does a CSA.
And they're good 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 for the first time as our like, in our farming 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 [00:56:00] that to the subscription CSA model that we have on Barn2Door.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
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 ah-has 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.
Alex Russell: Yep, absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: Thank you for all of those amazing tidbits. [00:57:00] There is more from Alex. He did a great podcast recently on best tips for doing reels on Instagram. He obviously teaches a grassroots marketing class, for a Barn2Door Academy. So, we can get some of that information out there.
Thank you again, Alex, for joining us, on this week's podcast episode. At Barn2Door, 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 barn2door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to seeing and chatting with you the next time on the Direct Farm Podcast.
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