Developing Your Brand Identity with Joelle Orem: From TractorHeels to Orem Farms
Join us for an insightful conversation with Joelle Orem as she discusses how her past experience in Marketing and Design helped her build Buyer loyalty for Orem Farms and her personal brand, TractorHeels.
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Allyssa Knutson: [00:00:00]
Welcome back everyone. You were listening to the Direct Farm Podcast
Today we are having a conversation with Joelle Orem from Orem Farms, Joelle and her husband, Jared, look at their customers, partners, and community as an extension of their family. During this podcast, you'll learn about the history of Orem Farms and how Joelle's background in design and marketing has helped her to establish a loyal following for both her farm and personal brand. I am delighted to introduce you to Joelle. Welcome Joelle! Great to have you here why don't you introduce yourself and how you got into farming and selling direct
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:00:37]
Yeah. So my name is Joelle Orem and I am with Orem Farms. My husband is a fourth generation farmer. His father and him are really the extension of our farm. And what's made it grow in the past few years. So his grandparents actually bought the farm about 1956 or so. And it was right after his grandfather was deployed to Germany. Post-World war II which was an interesting story because his grandmother would run the farm while he was gone. And his grandfather would scrape up enough money to call home. Maybe every two months or so for a 10 minute phone call. And so that's the history of our farm.
They did they did a few calves here and there, it, they worked ground did crops, but it really started expanding when my husband and I got married and we decided to. Roll up our sleeves and step into the family business a little bit more and take it a little bit further than just a hobby farm.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:01:39]
Tell us more about Orem Farms how and why was it founded and how has it evolved over the years.
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:01:44]
Yeah. So Orem farms was really based on legacy and family and just bringing good quality products into our community. We really find value in relationships. And like I said, family is really a big part of our mission. We treat all of our customers like our family. We're on first name basis with most of our customers really.
And I think that's, what's helped us grow in that we're able to be a small farm and we haven't felt like we had to rush into looking or appearing like a huge ordeal or operation right off the bat. We've been able to to grow slow and get to know our customers really build relationships and trust with them. And I really think there's value in community versus competition.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:02:41]
Connecting with your customers and seeing them as part of the family speaks to your brand identity and helps you to engage in a more personal way. What levers between brand convenience, price and quality, would you say really helped Orem Farms grow over the last year?
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:02:58]
I would specifically say brand and quality have been really great for us. We've built a really trustworthy brand around our community. It's really, truly developed by word of mouth. And our demand has grown exponentially in the past basically two years without really any advertising. We do a little bit just on social media and things like that, but it's really been a word of mouth business, and we're really thankful for the customers that refer us and, tell all their friends and family about us.
That also plays into our quality because they know our names. They The experience that they get when they order from us is a lot more personal than most other freezer beef companies out there that you can buy bulk from. My husband actually has a phone conversation with all of our customers and walks them through the process and educates them on how to order what you're going to expect when you're working with the butchers, things like that.
Our business model with the way that we do beef shares, we sell in wholes, halves, and quarters. And sometimes that can be confusing to people because they're not used to purchasing beef in bulk. We also do custom hay baling and that can be confusing as well. I'll just because people don't understand all of the processes to get to just a hay bale. Like I said, my, my husband and really my father-in-law, I really passionate about communicating with our customers. One-on-one sending them a text and, just explaining, "Hey, your order is ready for pickup. And here's what you can expect your bill to be." And things like that, it's it takes time, but it's really helped our quality.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:04:42]
In your opinion, why is brand so important for Farmers selling direct?
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:04:47]
I think brand is important for Farmers selling direct because it, it does build trust with your customers and they know that they're not just ordering something off of the street or they, they can see that. It's a real business and there's real people involved and they take the time to make sure that your product is good quality and things like that.
Your brand really is the way that you convey those things to your customers. It's more than just a logo or colors or how your label looks on your package. It's your brand voice. It's how you speak to them. It's how you communicate with them. It's what they're going to hear on the phone. When they talk to you it's going to be what's in that email that you send them. It's all of that. And so I think a lot of people overlook all of the puzzle pieces and they think it's just maybe a logo.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:05:37]
I love how you touched on brand voice, because to your point, it is a combination of images in messaging and the words and the tone used to communicate and ensuring consistency across all platforms as well is key. Tell us about Orem Farm's brand when you inherited it how have you grown it what's worked and what have you learned.
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:05:57]
Yeah, I'll tap into the brand voice just a little bit. Like I said, we treat everybody like family. And so because of that, we've actually chosen to. Slow our growth just a little bit, because we're able to maintain those relationships with our customers. My husband spends hours on the phone.
But that's something that's setting us apart right now. I don't know that we're always going to be able to do that. But. We've heard so many people say that they appreciated hearing his voice and him listening to their needs. And just that one-on-one communication that they're going to get it, it really It really solidifies that, we feed our family the same food that we're feeding you and you can trust us.
And sometimes technology gets in the way of that human connection. And so I think human connection has been a big part of our brand because a lot of people are wanting to grow so big, so fast and they're wanting to. Expedite everything. And sometimes if you just step back and listen to their needs and we thought that our customers would not like the process of going to a custom butcher shop.
And we, we had these ideas that we would simplify our boxes and some of our cuts and it would be, Just the package deal and here's what you get with your box. But we talked to a lot of our customers and they liked the experience of getting to pick what they want.
And because of that, we decided to shift a little bit.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:07:30]
Transitioning here to your personal brand as you've also grown an impressive Instagram following for Tractor Heels walk us through the Tractor Heels brand in your vision for the page
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:07:42]
Yeah, Tractor Heels is it's basically me as a person and it's my mission to help other women entrepreneurs. So what I'm finding is a lot of other Farm women are unexpected business owners as well, and they maybe fell into the role or figured out that they work well in the role of managing the business of the Farm and maybe.
Yeah. They don't have the resources that they need. And so I think a lot of these women struggle and they don't realize their calling, whether it be their farm or other business pursuits that they have on the table. And so Tractor Heels is my way of bridging the gap between rural and professional and providing encouragement for other rural entrepreneurs like me.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:08:31]
That's inspiring to see that you're taking the lessons you've learned over the years to create a community focused on supporting and encouraging others. Focusing in on your diverse background in design, marketing, fashion, and event planning how has that training and your past experience in those areas influenced your marketing efforts with Orem Farms
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:08:52]
Yeah. So I have a pretty broad spectrum. As far as a career background. I used to work in event planning and I did, kind of graphic design, visual communications for large corporate travel programs. And it was such a fun job. I really enjoyed it. I got a lot out of it and I got to learn a lot of things from that job.
I also have a little bit of web development, a little bit of graphic design. Like I said I studied design in school. So I'm thankful to be able to apply those things for our own business and kind of focus my efforts a little bit more. I do some contract work on the side. And because of my decision to leave my corporate job I'm able to focus a lot more on, my contract work and what I'm doing with our farm and, helping grow our own business, basically in the meantime,
Allyssa Knutson: [00:09:46]
Taking into consideration your past experience in marketing walk us through how you craft your posts and what goes into that decision making process.
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:09:56]
Yeah. So I really think about our customer's needs. And I try to put myself in their shoes. We look at our local community, maybe what's going on around us. And we try to think about the questions that they're going to ask before they ask them. When we post something on our social media, whether that be.
The three E's, Educate, Entertain, or the E-commerce. We're trying to think what questions will they have after we post this? And we tried to just answer those, all in one so that we're giving as much information as we can. And like I said we try to put ourselves in our customer's shoes.
So we try to think of what's the season that's coming up. What will they be thinking about? What kinds of things will they want to be ordering? Maybe they want to get a creative Christmas gift for their. their kids or something, and maybe it's a quarter cow or a quarter beef. And that would be a great Christmas gift by the way.
And so when it comes to planning and thinking about our social media posts and things, I don't say, I wouldn't say that we're the best at planning ahead most of the time, but we are really in tune with our community and our customers. And so that kind of gives us a little bit of freedom that we can be flexible with what we are posting. And I do think it's important to plan ahead. If you can, if you batch out some ideas for the week or for the month, whatever is possible for you to do it, does make it a lot easier because your brain is in that mindset. And you can create a lot better quality content.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:11:27]
What's the best time saving tactic you recommend for other firms focusing on growing their brand?
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:11:33]
Yeah, so this is something I touch base on with my Tractor Heels platform as well. And I really emphasize time-blocking is huge, especially for me because I am involved in lots of different things and they require very different brain spaces as well. One minute I'm outside helping my husband.
With pastures and cattle, and then the next minute I'm, in a spreadsheet and then I'm maybe taking photos and I'm talking about fashion or something like that. And so as much as I can condense one topic into a block of time, that really helps me. Thing that I do specifically is I theme my days, depending on what's going on that day.
And it can be different every day, which. Some people, this may not work for it, like I have our meeting today that we're talking about this and we're doing this podcast interview. So you know, that kind of helps me shape my day that I can be in that same mindset. So today I'm working on some some things for our farm. I'm putting together a newsletter things like that.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:12:34]
I love the idea of having theme days in time blocks to zero in on the top priorities, because sometimes it can be overwhelming to juggle multiple projects with overlapping deadlines. What does it mean to you to invest time up front in order to save time later and what do some of those key efforts look like?
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:12:51]
So for us investing time upfront kind of means communication. We have several people involved in our Farm operation my husband and I and his parents are we're very hands-on and very involved in all the decisions that go into our farm. We have meetings frequently. In fact, I think as we get together around Christmas, we're probably going to throw in a meeting in there cause we're all gonna be together.
And so we talked about, what's upcoming, what decisions need to be made. Things we need to be thinking about things on the horizon. So communication is a big deal that way. You're not going backwards if you make a wrong decision that somebody doesn't agree with or something like that also something that is a good investment of time is just educating your customers.
Because if you think about all of the touch points that it takes to communicate something to your customers and how many times you're doing that, the same process over and over that could be simplified by maybe a graphic on your website or something like that. We ran into an issue Couple of years ago when we were really started expanding our beef business with customers just wondering how our pricing worked, because they were they were paying the butcher separate, and then they were paying our farm and they were just confused.
And so we actually just created a little graphic put it on our website and then anytime somebody asks that question, maybe through messenger or on the phone, we would just direct them to the website and it answered all their questions.
And sometimes the FAQ page does get overlooked. So if you can hide little nuggets of information, maybe in a blog post, you can direct them to that blog post. We have so many people ask, I have this big of a freezer. Will half a beef fit in there? And we've got a photo and we've got all the information that we can answer all those questions ahead of time. By just directing them into one, one location.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:14:51]
Tell us about the key drivers that led you to explore a Barn2Door and walk us through your onboarding process.
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:14:59]
Yeah, working with Barn2Door has been great. They really directed us and helped us build out our website. And it's been a really big time-saver for us, because the way that we were taking orders previously, it was just, it was very time-consuming. I think we were using PayPal and it was just really clunky and the way that we had to collect money and stuff our Barn2Door team has just has really listened to our brand and our story and taken that and made.
A beautiful platform for us, that we are proud to send our customers to, frankly. They've all found it very easy to use. We love, that we can stay in touch with our customers right through our Barn2Door account through the message feature, things like that. Something that we've really enjoyed is just.
The support that they've offered. I can jump on a chat and answer a question real quick if I have it. And my, my husband's able to look up orders very quickly and keep everything in tune with our butcher schedules and things like that. I'd say it's been a really great experience.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:16:08]
Throughout this podcast, you touched on everything from staying true to your brand identity, to treating your customers as family and ensuring you communicate effectively. What's your final piece of advice for farmers selling direct and what's next for RM farms
Joelle Orem - Orem Farms: [00:16:22]
Yeah, I think my final piece of advice would be just be in tune with your customers and don't feel the urge to grow super fast because there's so much value in the connection and the relationship that you have with your customers. And they really enjoy getting to see the whole process and seeing who is working on this farm, who is producing my food, who is the person driving the tractor and rolling the hay bales.
Like it helps to really communicate and to be hands-on listen to your customers. You might have ideas and you might have a conversation with one of your customers and realize, we have to do things differently and being able to shift last minute and do things a little bit different than what you had planned will really help you in the long run.
We're really trying to simplify our process. We're also trying to expand to, to be able to help other farmers, like I said, there's so much value in community over competition, in our. Our area specifically, there's a few competitors, and instead of feeling like we have to be bigger than them or better than them, or have, all this stuff, we're really just trying to focus on what we're doing and what we're doing well that may be, is filling in a gap that they don't serve.
And Kind of staying in your lane and sometimes you have to put the blinders on a little bit and just focus on what you do and not pay attention to everybody else and just do what you do and be the best at it.
Allyssa Knutson: [00:17:54]
So again, that was Joelle Orem from Orem Family Farms. If you're interested in learning more about in her story. Visit the Farmer Spotlight Orem Farms featured on our website.
Join us next week to learn more about the upcoming APPPA, a conference from executive director, Mike Badger and how the American pastured poultry producers association has supported pastured poultry farmers across America for over 20 years.
Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to you next week.