Exploring creative ways to make additional farming income by using your skill set and a look behind the scenes as I speak with potential sponsors.
GUEST: Alan Stone (eFowl)
Podcast Page: www.farm365podcast.libsyn.com
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/Farm365podcast
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT by Lauren
Thanks to my lovely wife for transcribing this episode.
Alan (eFowl): I think it’s awesome what you’re doing and I think you’re going to spread the word about your story and how a small farm gets started, and what it really takes to leave your career and launch something like that is really special. And I think it’s really exciting and I’m excited to hear more.
Support for this podcast comes from WWOOF-USA:
www.wwoofusa.org
INTRO MUSIC
Diego (Host): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Farm365 podcast, a podcast that documents the journey of a beginning farmer, and gives listeners (that’s you!) an insider’s look into the chaotic life of someone who is trying to start a brand new business, and not just any business, a farming business. Which, if you’re a farmer, you know it’s even harder. How is this all going to end up? I have no idea, but if you join me for this journey, I think it will be a whole lot better! So make sure your headphones are tight and snug and enjoy today’s episode. I am your host, Diego, and this is episode number 3.
For this episode I wanted to bring you guys behind the scenes of the making of this podcast. You see, since this podcast is all about documenting the start of a farm business, and sharing real life events from my life as a farmer and a young entrepreneur, I think that an episode about why I started this podcast would be appropriate. And also, how can having a podcast help a farm? After all, I can be out there right now doing numerous amounts of chores or networking with the local community, trying to make new products and market them. Any farmer will tell you, there is always something to be done around the farm.
So first the why? Why did I start this podcast? I’m a huge fan of other farming podcasts. In fact, for an entire year prior to becoming a farmer, I listened to as many farming podcasts as my phone battery would allow! I listened to it while painting my house, while cleaning the rugs to make sure the house was ready to be sold, while mowing the lawn. So I started the podcast marathon by listening to the Ethan Book podcast. Actually it’s called the Beginning Farmer Podcast. And then I was all caught up with that, and then I moved on to the Growing Farms podcast with John Suscovich; both awesome shows to listen to. So a big shout out to those guys! Thank you for helping me and inspiring me to start a career in farming. Your advice has been invaluable. The things I listened to, and now I get to live, are amazing.
So with so many great farming podcasts out there, one thing I did not want to is create something that already existed. Those guys can do it much better than I can, but farmers aren’t always that accessible, so we can mix 21st century technology and bring their voices through your speakers or your headphones, and you can harvest the wealth of knowledge they have to offer. We need to revive century old techniques of farming, bringing animals outdoors and out of the four walls of a warehouse. And that’s a whole another rant for another episode. I don’t want to get there now, but let’s get back to the focus here.
Now the How. How did I start this podcast and how will it not be a distraction to my very long workday? Again, I can be out there right now doing chores, repairing fences, making connections with potential customers, and this may sound like an obvious statement, but a farm is a business and businesses have to make money. No matter how ethical or noble, or charitable your cause may be, a person has to put all their skills to work to get their business off the ground and continue to grow it. I consider this podcast a digital enterprise of my farm, and since audio editing is something that I enjoy doing, I combined that with something that I’m interested in, and there it is! A farming podcast!
Now to the second part of that question: How can having a podcast help my farm business? It can help in many ways, but if you’re a chicken farmer like me, raising chickens on pasture and feeding them the best non-GMO or certified organic feed that you can find, you focus on how can it help you pay for chicken feed. And the answer is, a podcast can help me pay for chicken feed by by finding sponsors for it!
Now I’m not sharing this with you all to convince you to start a podcast so you can pay for your expenses at your farm. I’m sharing this with you as an example of you can take something that you are interested in or a skill set that you have and use it to help grow your business. And you don’t even have to build a website, or a prototype or even have a name for your product or idea. It all starts with the idea itself. Introduce the idea to your audience, get some feedback and then invest the time building a product. A lot of people spend a lot of time building something that is not needed, and trust me, the world does not need another podcast. I read that there is something like 1,000 of them submitted to iTunes every week. But what the world does need is more farmers, and if I can use a microphone to expand my reach and broadcast my story out there, and inspire one person to become a farmer, that’s valuable to me.
But I knew I couldn’t justify the time I’d spend on the podcast without sponsors to help pay for that chicken feed that’s getting consumed out there at the rate of 50 pounds a day. So before I even invested an hour working on creating this show, I took 30 minutes to write an e-mail about what I had in mind and sent it off to 5 different companies, which I thought would be a good fit to sponsor the show.
To my surprise, I heard back from 3 of them. So just to clarify, I e-mailed these companies before I even had anything to show them. At this point it was only a concept expressed in 150 letters or less, and the only person that was sold on it was me. It was only after the 3 companies showed interest that I scrambled to put together, like a sample episode and send it to them. Getting the content was easy, but the editing part is where hours are poured into it. To get the content, all I had to do was take a microphone to a family gathering and ask them questions. And the great thing is that I was being fed while there, and there was no harm done, and there was no downside to it except sitting down and editing the content and putting it all together. So those hours are crucial in time spent out indoors versus outside producing.
So anyways, I put together a pilot episode, and it was off to the inboxes of those companies that showed interest, and I anxiously waited for feedback. And two out of the three companies decided to move ahead with the sponsorship. And of course, this being the podcast that gives you an insider’s look to my journey, I couldn’t have missed the opportunity to record the moment when I secured my very first sponsorship.
Recorded greeting: This call is now being recorded.
Diego: I sent you the link to the landing page of the podcast. Were you able to go in and listen and take a look at what the podcast is about?
Alan: Yeah. I did check it out. I think it looks really great. I think it’s awesome what you're doing, and I think that fact that you’re going to spread the word about your story and how a small farm gets started and what it really takes to leave your career and launch something like that is really special, and I think that that’s really exciting and I’m excited to hear more.
That was a call I had with Alan. He is with eFowl, and I’m very pleased that they are a sponsor of the show today. That call came right after that sample episode went out, and we decided to go ahead and get on the phone in order to try to close this deal. And I’m also sharing this call with you is to encourage you to move forward if you’re thinking about adding adding an enterprise that would potentially bring in an additional source of income to your farm. It is a bit of a process, it may not always come easy, but if you think it all through, get some feedback, and have a game plan in place on how you’re going to deliver this product or service to your potential customers -- and I’m going to say this again. You don’t even actually have a product at hand; all you need is an idea, a vision, and a listening ear. And what do I mean by that? Do share your idea, and help them see your vision, but then sit back and listen to what your customer has to say. Understand their needs, and oftentimes, they will do the selling for you. When I worked in retail and sales, one thing that they always told us in training was, “You have to do less talking when selling, and more listening.” And since this is a show about farming, let’s dig in a little more, and get into an example. You have a farmer’s market stand, and you’re selling eggs. Somebody approaches your stand and the small talk begins. What if you introduce the idea to that person that you’re thinking about baking a cake tonight, and your vision is to make something so amazing and different that your family would love, while putting those delicious pasture raised eggs that you produce to good use, and see if the person has a special recipe or a secret family recipe to share with you. And that is their feedback on your idea and your vision, and in building that relationship, you might just sell a few dozen eggs by the time that person leaves. And remember, that is just a result of your passion. You’re not trying to force anybody to buy anything, and if you’re not a baker, don’t make up a story that you’re gong to bake a cake. Talk about something that you’re passionate about and you will find your audience; you will find the people that can help you on your way to do whatever it is that you have in mind.
Before we get too off topic, let’s get back to my phone call with Alan and this is the part where I listen to their needs:
Diego: I’m also interested to learn about eFowl’s vision. Part of developing the ad will be me personally knowing about your mission, so can you tell me a little bit more about what the company does?
Alan: Sure! Absolutely. In the past, we’ve really worked mostly with larger hatcheries. They call themselves hobby hatcheries, but they’re really midsized to large hatcheries, and we’ve tried to offer the widest variety and the best availability of live poultry on the web as a retail space. And what we kind of have realized is that there is just such a huge demand for this. The pasture raised poultry industry is growing at such a rapid rate, and it’s hard to keep up with supply, and we really want to do more to empower smaller farms and the smaller hatcheries, so we’re really trying to create a marketplace for pasture raised poultry that provides everything from educational materials and how-to guides, products and supplies, as well as connections with many, many small to midsize hatcheries or poultry producers across the country. So we want to invite these smaller hatcheries to sign up with eFowl, so then we can offer more products to this growing community of sustainable agricultural minded people and people that want -- they’re interested in the pasture-raised poultry industry.
Diego: I believe the company has a great vision, and now that I know more about them, the responsibility is on me to create something that would best represent them in front of my listeners. So this next clip is all about how I’m going to move forward with the information that I just received.
Diego: And I guess the next step is to develop something that we can put together an audio clip letting listeners know that you guys are backing up the podcast and hear about your sponsorship.
Alan: Cool. That sounds great. I actually just sent a message to my team today with the template you sent me regarding that audio clip, and so let’s do some feedback from the team so we’ll get a lot of different opinions from our small team here on what they think our vision really is and so we can hopefully collaborate and come together with something that is going to best representative of eFowl and where we’re trying to go with the future of our business.
Diego: And that has been the behind the scenes story that allows me to tell you that support from this podcast comes from eFowl, an online marketplace providing cost effective solutions for hatcheries and small farms committed to pasture raised poultry. A proud supporter of sustainable agriculture, eFowl offers educational materials, supplies, and connections, with the best sources of poultry around the country. Check out their website at efowl.com.
www.efowl.com
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I had a blast! It was all about showing you how you can come up with some creative way to make additional income, in your case, if you have chickens, to buy some chicken feed while those chickens are growing out there. Hopefully, so is my audience for this show! I appreciate you sharing this with your family, and anyone that is interested (or interesting) in farming, sustainable agriculture, or they’re simply trying to start their own business, which, by the way, is not simple, but is much easier when you have a community around you. And talk about community, this is a great way for listeners of this show to get what they need and save money. If you need to purchase baby chicks or incubators or nest boxes, or any other poultry supplies or equipment, again, check out the folks at eFowl.com. They are offering us 10 percent off our entire order (live poultry only), when you enter coupon code FARM365 at checkout. That’s FARM365 at checkout for 10 percent off your entire order. Now stay tuned for scenes from our next episode. Thanks again for listening to the Farm365 podcast, and we’ll see you next time.
Preview of the next episode:
Diego: It is 12:36 a.m., and there’s not a soul around. And by the way I don’t know if I’m whispering. Perhaps I don’t want to become prey and let something know that I’m out here.
This episode uses sounds from Freesound by user juskiddink, Envato Marketplace, Jason Shawn at audionautix.com and Dan-O at DanoSongs.com