As you grow in your business, you're going to learn that there are different phases or seasons of growth as a business owner. And in today's episode, I've invited a guest to come onto the show to explore with me the different levels of marketing, the different behaviors, the different thought patterns that we have at each of these levels, and what we need to do to graduate to the next one. This is gonna be an awesome conversation around how to scale your marketing. Let's get started. Hey there, this is Corinna Bench, and welcome to the My Digital Farmer podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product. You've got to know how to sell it too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer podcast, where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more confident at marketing. Learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. (upbeat music) - Whoa, welcome to episode 274 of the My Digital Farmer podcast. I am your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers that shared legacy farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategies so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. Big shout out to all of my regular listeners, my binge listeners, and if you're new to the show, I'm really glad you're here. Welcome to the community. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. You're gonna wanna do that. And then go check out some of my back issues. You can scroll through. I've got over 250 of them now. And I'm sure you can find something there that piques your interest. If you're really new to the marketing space though, and you need kind of a 101 crash course, I recommend that you go listen to the first 10, or even better get onto my email list because when you do, I'm gonna send you a weekly email for like three months that's gonna walk you through the marketing jungle and kinda get you onboarded into what you need to know. And you can do that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com/ subscribe, I get really good reviews for that. So definitely take advantage of that. Today's episode is sponsored by my friends at LocalLine. Switch to LocalLine and grow your farm to new heights this season. LocalLine is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers and food hubs. Its features include e-commerce, automated inventory management, subscriptions, a website builder, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales and streamline your processes. So whether you're a CSA farmer, you sell meat, you run a food hub, or maybe you sell wholesale or offer a hard share, LocalLine has the tools and features that you need to succeed, we're a big fan. Are you looking to switch to a sales software that does it all? Subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no set of fees or sales percentages. That's huge for me. Plus, if you join LocalLine today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost, so you can be up and running in no time, even in the middle of the season. As a bonus, if you are a podcast listener, LocalLine is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code MDF 2024. So go to mydigitalfarmer.com/localline and then enter the coupon code MDF 2024. Make the switch today. And now back to the show. Well, I'm back, everyone. I have just come back from a vacation to Alberta, Canada. My family and I went up to Cold Lake, the Cold Lake Air Show, courtesy of 350 Farms. Thank you so much, Casey and Renau Marshall for hosting us. It was an amazing experience. And yeah, we just took off in the middle of our summer. It's a good time to do that right before the sweet corn comes in. And we've been doing this for the last couple of years, where we take a mid-season vacation to get off the farm. We leave it in the hands of our capable crew. And this is such a good thing for us as a family, just for wellness and to reset our spirit and get ourselves into a better frame of mind, highly encourage it that this should be a goal of yours to be able to leave the farm if you need to. So I'll tell you more about our adventures in episodes coming up ahead. But today I have a guest on the show and I wanted to explore this concept of scaling your business when it comes to sales and marketing. And specifically around this idea of like, what is it that farms are doing differently as they mature, get more experience, grow their customer base? There are different phases that we go through. And in the early stages, we focus on different things. We have different practices. We think differently about our business. And as we practice being a business owner and an entrepreneur and we make mistakes, we learn some things along the way and then we're more comfortable kind of taking steps to grow and graduate into the next phase of our business. And those types of farm entrepreneurs behave differently. They think differently. They do different things. They invest in certain equipment. They make decisions differently. And so I thought it would be a really great episode to invite someone onto the show who has the advantage of being able to look at a bunch of data and see the patterns and trends of lots of different farms and point them out and say, well, here's what we see these types of farms in level one doing. And here's what we see farmers doing in level two and in level three. So this is a discussion around scaling. And I invited my friend Andrew from local line to come and talk to us about this because they can look at thousands of farms. They've worked with thousands of farms and they see patterns. They see certain styles of farms, certain types of avatars, if you will, within their customer base who do their business a certain way. And we have a fascinating conversation in this interview on how those entrepreneurs think, not just what are the things they're doing, but how are they thinking differently and what are they more comfortable with that allows them to go to the next level and scale. These are really important things to think about. If you're kind of at the beginning phases of business, what are you typically doing? And who are the people right above you and what are they doing differently so that you can start to practice those skills, those mindsets, if you want to move and shift to the next level. I think this is gonna be a really powerful episode and depending on where you fall, maybe you're in phase one and you wanna move to phase two or you're in phase two and you wanna move to phase three, you're gonna hear some really helpful insights in this particular episode. So my guest is Andrew Mihan. And Andrew has worked in agriculture for the past decade. First operating a market garden for seven years and more recently working as a sales rep at local line. Now in his role at local line, Andrew collaborates with farms and food hubs to optimize their sales process by integrating scale and industry appropriate software solutions for them. So he has a bird's eye view of this very question we're discussing today and really, really powerful insights. So without further ado, let's hop into the interview and hear what Andrew has to teach us. Well, Andrew, welcome to the show. - Thanks so much for having me, Karina. I really appreciate it. - Let's start out by introducing yourself to my community. Tell us where you live right now and what's your background? Where's your journey taken you? Wherever you wanna start? - Yeah, absolutely. So I've been working in agriculture for about the past decade, started volunteering on farms and then ended up founding my own market garden in 2017, operated that for seven years. Had a few personal lifestyle changes. We started a family and as it turns out, small scale market gardening and living in the city is not always a compatible lifestyle. So I started working at Localign, actually, the software company that I was using in my business in 2023 and have been working there for just over a year now working with farms, finding solutions for their online sales. - So what made you decide you wanna start working for Localign? Did you actually seek them out? Did they seek you out? Or were you just looking for a big career switch? - Yeah, I was looking for a career change at the time. I actually use Localign in my own business. So I was familiar with the software, familiar with the company. I just stumbled on their website one day and saw that they were hiring and shot off a resume and yeah, the rest is history, so to speak. - And what is your role at Localign specifically? Like what are you responsible for? What metrics are you responsible for? - Absolutely. So I'm a sales rep at Localign. We refer to ourselves as farm outreach as well. Essentially, we are the first point of contact for all farms interested in exploring the software. So we do a lot of demos with folks who are interested in learning more. We do some cold outreach if we think a farm is a really great candidate for Localign. We may give them a call or shoot them a quick email. But yeah, we're kind of the first touch point in answering questions, trying to understand people's business. And if there is an opportunity to work together to streamline their sales process and help them just optimize their online sales workflows. - Now I bet that because you have been a market garden farmer, that this gives you a really unique perspective when you're talking to farmers and probably makes your conversations richer or you maybe even know the things to ask or to look for. So can you talk a little bit about that? - Absolutely. So I think being a market gardener myself lends a little bit of credibility. I try not to leverage that too much, but there's certain lingo, there's jargon within the industry. But there's also that shared experience, right? So it just makes it really easy and natural for me to speak to some of the features that are really important for farms, whether it's how can I sell to multiple customer segments while sinking my inventory from one aggregated inventory pool or offering different types of payments and fulfillment options to my different buyers as well. So there is a lot of nuance to the software solution. And there's a lot of important things to touch on when we do have an initial conversation with somebody to see if they are a good fit. - Okay. When is a farm humming to talk to you? When are they reaching out to a, it doesn't even have to be local line, it can be any e-commerce platform. Like what do you think is triggering that moment? What do you, in those conversations with farmers, what do you find is the impetus for, I think I want to sell online, what's going on? - Absolutely. In many cases, the farms that we speak to are already selling online. So to speak in some capacity, but what they're really seeking is a way to optimize that process. And when I say that, I mean, they want to find a way to make it more efficient. They want to save a little bit of time. They want to eliminate errors. In many cases, people are operating on some spreadsheets. They're aggregating orders from emails, text messages, Facebook messages. And what I have found personally and what I hear is that that takes a lot of time. And inevitably, there's going to be errors when you're kind of manually compiling all of that data. So that's where local line is incredibly powerful. It just allows you to make your known inventory available to your customers and then generate some really crucial data exports, whether it's harvest lists or packing lists or order summaries that will tell you all of the delivery addresses you have to hit on a certain delivery day. So that's most often what I hear is people looking for a way to optimize their sales workflow. - Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. This is my monthly membership where farmers can come in and build marketing assets one at a time in special 30-day build projects that I've created for you. There are currently over 14 different projects inside of Farm Marketing School, including your website homepage, building a promo calendar, building a promotional email challenge, testimonial and reviews, how to build a better offer, your email nurture sequence, your lead magnet. There's a sales funnel audit. There's a ton of good stuff in there. And I'm adding new material every couple of months. Plus you get a monthly Zoom meetup with the whole group in the middle of the month and we'll be doing some book studies off in the fall. I'm really there just to try and empower you and help you get your marketing assets built. So the way this works is you subscribe. From month to month, you can cancel whenever you want. Go in, you take the assessment. There's also a crash course in marketing that you can watch to just learn the lingo and the vocabulary and the framework. And then you get started building your first marketing asset. Every project includes a hour long tutorial, a resource folder that gives you lots of templates and examples to help make the process of actually building your own version really fast and also a project planner to help you time it out and make sure you get everything done. If you wanna learn more about how to join farm marketing school and try it out, you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com/fms. This is my new kind of flagship offer, my community that I'm gonna really be pouring myself into over the next six to 12 months. Really excited about it. So I'd love to interact with you. Join at mydigitalfarmer.com/fms. And now back to the show. I wanna get into the meat of this podcast episode because I did kind of invite you on here to talk about a very specific thing, specifically how to help farmers slowly scale and graduate to the next kind of level of farm. And with a behind the scenes view of all of these farms, I mean, local line, I have to believe, has at least hundreds if not thousands of farms that it's serving. You've got a lot of kind of data. You can see patterns and trends among some of these farms. And I know you probably have people that you would qualify as maybe beginners and then there's some who maybe are a little more intermediate and then like the heavy hitters. If I were a farmer, well, as a farmer, I'm really curious to know what distinguishes, what are the markers that distinguish these different levels of farms so that if I wanna grow to the next level, like what are those farms doing at the next level that I'm not, right? Whether it's practices or mindsets or behavior, what are they not doing anymore, right? Just to help me know what I need to be aiming for if I wanna scale. So that's what I want this whole episode to be about because I know you've got really good stuff there. And so I guess wherever you wanna begin, I mean, maybe the first question I'm gonna ask but I'm gonna really let you lead this now is can you describe how you would even like characterize some of those different groupings? Is it beginner intermediate advanced or is there a different way you would name them? And then what are some of the different factors that you see? - Yeah, it's a really interesting topic and we do have a lot of unique insights because we deal with farms at all different scales. So where I'd like to start is talking about production and maybe the diversity of products and enterprises that we see farms producing. So for beginning farms, what I tend to notice is that people are kind of throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. So they may be operating multiple enterprises. They might be growing some market garden vegetables. They might be operating a laying hen operation. They might have some meat birds, maybe a couple pastured pigs. And in addition to kind of producing a wide variety of different products, they're also selling across different sales streams. So they're going to maybe a farmer's market. They're selling off of their farm store. So they're just kind of testing the waters to see, is there interest for my product? What grows well in my climate and on my particular soils? So it's kind of an experimental, I would call it almost like an exploratory farm. Sorry, kind of exploratory farms. Yeah, experimental. There's a lot of trial and error in those early stages. And those folks are often not selling online, at least not using any technology to do. So they might be just posting on Facebook or Instagram. And again, manually aggregating orders from all of their different customers. From there, I would probably describe the next category as an established farm. Not to discredit people who are starting out, but that's how I would describe kind of the next stage up from there. And an established farm is going to be a farm that has more employees, for sure. They're probably bringing in some labor to help with harvest, washing and packing. They're going to be looking at integrating different technology solutions to help manage things like their sales, maybe crop planning software as well. And they're going to be probably expanding on their customer segments and the different groups that they're selling to. So they're likely going to be doing direct to consumer, maybe at a farmer's market, maybe with some online sales, potentially a CSA, herd, share, egg share, something like that. And then they might also be kind of testing the waters in the wholesale buying realm as well. So whether that's delivering to local restaurants, retailers, you name it, they're just a little more robust and diversified. That being said, in terms of their production, they may be trimming the fat and cutting off those additional enterprises that they realized did not necessarily work well for them. So if they were raising livestock and growing produce, they might just be growing produce now and kind of focusing in on that. But in many cases, growing a wide variety of produce so that they can show up to a farmer's market with 35 different crops or satisfy CSA customers who are looking for a variety of products. So yeah, that's kind of the established intermediate group, so to speak. - That almost sounds like you're saying the second group is a little bit more data-driven even, like they really understand where the money's coming from and they've decided to almost niche down and release things that maybe they're selling some but it's maybe draining some of their energy away and they're really focusing more on just a few things. - Yeah, absolutely. I think these farms have likely been in business for a few years. So whether it's just intuition or whether they are using data to justify these decisions, they are tending to focus on the things that are generating revenue and driving the business. - Okay, and what's, is there a third level? - For sure, yeah, I would call the third level like a large-scale operation. So in terms of revenue, I would probably put them at maybe 500K plus. So that is like a pretty wide cross-section. Obviously the ceiling on that is incredibly high and you have massive farms across the country producing all manner of different things. But generally speaking, what I see at that stage is people who are really starting to specialize. So they may still have multiple business models. For instance, they could be operating a very large and thriving CSA program with hundreds of returning customers. In addition to that, they could also be focusing on really lucrative wholesale relationships with large-scale retail, restaurant, food service buyers and these types of things. - Got it. What would you say is the sticking point for people not being able to move from, let's say, phase one to phase two? - Yeah, that's a really good question. I think anybody who has worked in agriculture knows that it's a challenging career. It's a challenging way to make money, right? So often that is the barriers that people simply aren't able to leave a full-time career with maybe benefits and salary and to make that leap into farming full-time because then the numbers simply don't add up. So often when I see people successfully make that leap it's because they've had the opportunity to, whether it's through financing or their personal savings to fully commit to farming as a full-time career, usually for a season or two to really make it work. - Yeah, I think there's also something to be said for the fact that it legitimately does take time to go through the exploratory state and you can't really cheat that. It's not like you can leapfrog over it. And so if you don't have the capital to just make it through that time to learn and to develop your customer base, to make the mistakes, to learn what you need to learn and then to invest in those capital investments, the right ones to allow you to scale then to level two. Yeah, you may just kind of peter out and not quite make it yet. Let's talk about kind of those intermediate level farmers now and you probably have an especially good perspective of this since you work out a software company, but what do you see the benefit of leveraging technology, like softwares to not just your software, but like it could be tools like C time or whatever. Like what benefits do you see for a farm starting to leverage technology as they begin to scale? - Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I'll say is that there is a cost of technology, I know some smaller farms are reluctant to pay for software, but you have to think of software as a tool, just like you think of a tractor or a broad fork. So when you buy a tractor, you're buying it because it's going to ultimately save you time and alleviate some of the physical labor, right? So there are these kind of concrete justifications when making that decision. So I like to think about software in the same way. So what is it going to do for me? Because it is an expense added to my budget on an annual basis. So it is going to ultimately save you some time. It is going to eliminate errors. It's going to provide you with some really critical data to better understand your business because now you're actually going to be tracking your sales. So you can make these informed decisions on what to focus on. We all have our favorite vegetables to grow. And I'm sure livestock producers have inclinations to raise that heritage breed pig or whatever it may be. But ultimately, if we want to stay in business and farming, we have to understand what is profitable and what's driving our business forward. So having something like a sales software where you actually can track that data and understand what is selling, what our customers buying is critical to kind of growing to that next phase. - Yeah, as I just said earlier, I feel like the minute you start actually studying the data and analyzing it, then you can make data-driven decisions. And in the early stages of our business, we didn't have a tool. We didn't have e-commerce. We were just doing it by hand, right? And so anecdotally, we just were making assumptions that we thought we knew what was driving the business. And I think that had we been running that stuff through actual systems that could analyze it, we would realize that the data was saying something very different and probably would have shortened that phase a lot quicker and would have allowed us to jump to the second level faster and then bypass a lot of that pain and sacrifice that is a part of stage one, a necessary part, but you don't want to stay there too long, for sure. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, data is incredibly important in all businesses. And then beyond that, there are some kind of hallmarks again of these intermediate farms that I tend to see. So this is where something like local line is very, very useful. So these farms are often selling across multiple customer segments. So there may be, again, getting into some wholesale distribution, whether it's restaurants, retail grocers, whatever it may be. So that's where software can also be very useful because what it is allowing these farms to do is to sell to these multiple customer segments while drawing from an aggregated inventory pool. So what I mean by that is I'm going to create a direct-to-consumer retail price list in local line where my direct-to-consumer buyers can buy 150 gram bag of spring mix. At the same time, I could also make a 10 pound bag of spring mix available on my wholesale price list at its own unique price point. But the really nice thing about the way local line operates is that whether or not I sell that 150 gram bag or that 10 pound bag, it's all going to be deducted from my aggregated inventory pool of 50 that's available for that week. So it just streamlines the selling across these multiple customer segments, which, again, is critical to kind of leveling up to that next phase of a farm operation. - Whatever you can do to reduce friction within the buying process, but also like the workflow behind the scenes that the farmer's doing, right? So when I don't have to think all the time and pencil out math and make sure that I didn't make a mistake and be like, oh, I overcompensated or undercompensated, I'm going to go to the cooler real quick and switch some things around. Like that's interrupting my flow, interrupting my efficiency, burning me out and frankly, like it's one other thing that my brain has to hold onto, right? And kind of keep in the back humming when, and then I can't give my full focus to something else. So having a tool that you know is reliable, a system really that you can just trust and it's kind of humming in the background that that is definitely huge. - Yeah, absolutely, what it brings to mind for me is just the momentum of something like a harvest day, right? Like we always harvest it on Fridays at our farm for the big Saturday market and restaurant deliveries. And there's nothing worse after harvesting all morning and realizing, ah, we have to go get three more bunches of carrots. So again, being able to generate exports that are going to tell me the total quantity of all products for both my markets, my, you know, household deliveries and my restaurant deliveries is incredibly powerful to have all of that data aggregated to one single harvest list and pack list is something that, you know, farms at, again, that scale, I think can't live without. - What do you notice about these different levels in terms of how many customers they have? Like is there sort of a number, a range of numbers or is it more like, are they paying more attention to the customer value over the number of new customers acquired? Like what are the metrics that I guess are more important to be focusing on in each level? Does that make sense? Like I, cause I feel like at the beginning you're just trying to get customers. - Absolutely. - But then, but then your focus of metrics kind of shifts as you move through the stages. Yeah, I'm still always trying to get new customers but I'm more interested in some other metrics. Can you speak to that a little bit? - Yeah, absolutely. So this is more of an anecdotal kind of observation but what I tend to see is these intermediate farms are developing some more intimate relationships with their buyers. So whether that's a CSA customer that's returning season after season, whether it's a restaurant that's going to be buying from you, you know, from spring through to fall on a weekly basis or, you know, customers at the market who are returning every Saturday morning. So it's about, you know, being able to bring that consistency in terms of your production, the quality and customer service, of course, is critical in any farm business as well. - Yeah. So creating buying habits among those clients that you worked so hard to get and then making sure they're coming back again and again. - Absolutely. And that's another place where I think technology and software has a role to play. Whether it's, you know, marketing emails that are being sent out through something like MailChimp or an automated update email being sent from local line. You know, nudging your customers to get their orders in by a certain cutoff deadline. It's these things that you integrate into your weekly routine that, again, eliminate friction and put people in a position to buy really quickly and easily and conveniently, whether that's online or at a farmer's market. - Yeah. I also feel like the software has helped me get better at managing and making offers. So knowing like, oh, I'm going to make a weekly special. I'm going to stick that at the top of my store or I'm going to run that across my banner on my website or I'm going to say, you know, I have a coupon code XYZ. I know you guys just launched coupon codes and those coupon codes can be a special offer for that month or that week and it drives people to go buy and creates urgency. Those are all things that used to be hard to do because I would have to say it one by one to every person, right? And now it's an automation. It's just, it's something you set up and then you can walk, I don't want to say set it and forget it, but kind of, you know, it just works on autopilot for you. So it's kind of another example of, again, looking for inefficiencies that you don't have to keep thinking about it every time you can just create the system and then trust in the system to do the work for you. - Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the systems, I think are, again, a hallmark of these intermediate and large scale farms, whether that's in your harvest routine, washback or, you know, marketing and communications with customers, I think the more we can streamline and automate those workflows, the more success we're going to have. And I think it also presents an opportunity to be a little more spontaneous and creative when you know that a lot of the kind of baseline communications with your customers are going to be taken care of, that frees you up the space to maybe make that more compelling, interesting and organic social media posts or, you know, draft that more engaging, you know, newsletter email to your customers when you do have kind of that headspace available as a result of automating the rest of those processes. - Yeah. Let's move on to the kind of the third category. Is there anything that you want to bring up there in terms of patterns and trends that you notice for those advanced farms? - Yeah, I think it's all about specialization at that scale. So they still may have a bit of diversity in terms of their sales outlets, but they're really hammering the sales outlets that are working for them. So again, if it's CSA, you know, they probably got a few hundred, if not thousands of members and they're doing a really exceptional job of creating a compelling experience for those buyers. So they're finding a way to tell the story of the farm. They're finding ways to, you know, allow people to customize their share so that people are engaging with them on a regular basis and feel involved in the process. If they're selling wholesale again, they're probably specializing as well and bringing specialized equipment to, again, optimize, you know, their process for producing a particular crop. So it is, yeah, I think people will kind of bring in a magnifying glass and really honing in and focusing on what it is they're doing and cutting off all access, you know, waste at that point. - Among these three different groupings, do you see any different, do you see any changes in the way that they approach marketing? Like in terms of how, what tools they're using primarily to help the market or are there one or two that are staying pretty consistent? - For marketing specifically, I find at the beginner level, it's a lot of, you know, social media, tools that don't necessarily cost anything, but costs, you know, a lot of time. - The time, yeah, which is a lot. - Yeah, absolutely. And then as farms grow, they tend to, you know, maybe have somebody who has a unique skill set in that area kind of take on that particular task. So there is this element of delegation and kind of specialization in terms of your staff. And again, that is where they are starting to bring in tools to help automate that process, whether it's, you know, marketing, email software. - SMS, I know that's a one that's a, yeah. - Yeah, absolutely. So I don't, yeah, I don't have, I guess maybe a great answer for that at the larger scale. I feel like, you know, branding becomes important at that point in time, especially if you're gonna be selling to retail grocers. Obviously, you're having a professional logo and you're packaging that is, you know, reflective of a professional organization that becomes critical as farms grow as well. - Yeah, I would add like certifications, investing in, you know, getting certified organic, putting that logo everywhere and, you know, other accommodations or affiliations you have with other brands, like just trying to give yourself credibility. - Yeah, that is definitely critical. I would agree with that, you know. - Or food safety even too. - Yeah, gap is what I was gonna mention. - Yeah, I'll be happy to do food safety. The next level of food safety. - Yeah, absolutely. - I know that's kind of where we are right now. We were like at food safety level one, and now that we're kind of in the wholesale market, we're with Whole Foods. There's like a whole nother level of food safety inspection that's way more expensive, but it's like, okay, well, this is the table we're playing at. So we've got a-- - Absolutely. Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, for sure. - I wanna go back to a comment you made at the very beginning about how there's kind of this fear at the beginning to invest money in a tool. And I want us to explore like, you know, what is going on there in our minds? And actually what made me think of that just now was this food safety thing where we had this opportunity to move up to the next level, right, to kind of experiment and grow this, 'cause we've been dabbling in wholesale, but now there are doors opening. And we wanna allow that to happen. And so it kind of came upon us like, well, you're gonna have to now play with the big boys and you're gonna have to spend this money to do this food safety thing. And it's like, oh, okay. And it's not just that, it's also the time. It means like changing some of our systems to make them even more stringent. And that's retraining the team, getting some other things on our farms so that we can meet those stringent requirements, changing some workflows, all of that, right? And there's this resistance to change. Like I could feel my brain saying, no, just keep doing what we've always done. Like the pathways that are comfortable that we know, right? And I guess I just wanna like bring that up 'cause I feel like that is our initial gut reaction when someone says you should invest or you will need to spend money to make money, you know? There's like this, ugh, really? I don't think so. I'd rather stay over here where I know how it works. And I wonder if you could maybe, we could just talk about that a little bit. Like what do you think is driving what's behind this resistance we have to spend money to make money kind of concept, right? - For sure. - 'Cause it relates to you with software, but it shows up in a lot of other places as a farmer, like spend this money on this piece of equipment so that you can save time. - For sure. - Irrigating or whatever. - Absolutely. - Did you experience that as a farmer? Like where you are constantly battling that? Like, oh, I don't wanna have, are you sure that's gonna pay off? Is there gonna be an ROI? And that's like we don't trust. It's like that if there's fear of risk, right? There's a fear of making a mistake or not working out. And so we don't want to step out onto that, onto that Indiana Jones bridge. I'm thinking of the last crusade movie, all of you, if you listen to the scene. Yeah, so what comes up for you when I say it? - For sure. Farmers are human, right? So I think it is human nature to be adverse to risk. So a couple of things are going to happen when you take on a new system or a new tool, you're A, gonna have to pay for it. So it means, you know, coming up with money, when money is often tight and farming operations. And then it also requires you potentially learning a new skill or adapting your workflow, which is likely something you're comfortable with. So it means change on a personal and a business level. So those are kind of two things that quite easily can deter people from taking a step forward. What I tend to do to try and counter that is, you know, make the logical argument that you are going to see a return on investment with this specific tool because it's going to save you time. But I find what is often most compelling is social proof. So hey, let's look at these farms at, you know, maybe the scale that you want to get to. And what is it that they're doing? Have they adapted technology and software to streamline their sales process? Why did they do that? They did it because it was a necessity in order for them to scale their business. So that can be a great way to show people that an investment, you know, can be justified. Again, you know, seeing examples of other people succeeding is really important in taking that next step. - Yeah, I'm glad you said that. Because I know that that's been a huge piece for us whenever we've felt those feelings of dis-ease. - Well, we do, we look at the people that are just a little bit ahead of us. And we take a look at what are they doing differently and how did they feel about it? What are some of the growing pains that we should expect to feel? And let's talk about that for a second, 'cause I think there can be this... You hit a wall, whenever you're asked to learn a new skill, you feel a little overwhelmed. You don't really maximize the use of the tool initially 'cause it's just, there's so many things you could do with it and you've got a lot going on. And sometimes it can make you think, oh, I knew it, this wasn't a good idea. But if you push through that wall, you have to kind of expect that there's a learning curve, right? That there's a point where you are gonna have some missteps and you're gonna screw up that piece of equipment that you bought until you get it right, you know, you're gonna lose some seed or whatever. You're gonna make some mistakes. And eventually though, you're gonna get it working and you're gonna figure out a way to kind of get it humming along in your workflow. And, you know, why do we have that reluctance then with our software system, like to hold back and say, no, I'm not gonna invest. It's the same thing happens with that too, right? You try anything, it's gonna be a little clunky of first as you try to figure out how to use it to maximize it, but eventually it all comes together. Yeah. There's a trial and error period, I guess, is what I'm trying to communicate with. There is, of course, and I think where it gets complicated for some folks is that it's not only the farmer adjusting to a new operating system, it's also a fear of customers, you know, adjusting to this new workflow. So that is a very legitimate concern. Again, it's one thing to learn a new software yourself, but okay, are my customers actually going to use this, right? And that's where I think a lot of the fear is like, are my sales going to dip when I make this change? So that can be resolved in a few different ways. What I tend to suggest to folks who are exploring switching over to new software is reach out to a couple of your really good trusted customers and have them place a couple orders and provide you with some feedback. What work for you, where did you get hung up so that you can resolve any issues before you actually launch on a new platform? Something else worth mentioning, just because I think migrating to new software or starting on a new software can be overwhelming for people, something I think, you know, exceptional that we do at local line is our onboarding service. So what we offer to all new users is free onboarding. And what that means is that we will actually help you with all of your account setup. So we can build out all of your products, we can import customer lists, we'll walk you through setting up your online payment gateway and building up fulfillment. So that you are not left on your own feeling overwhelmed sorting up this brand new system. So it's a nice service, it not only saves people time, which is always scarce and informing, but there's a training element to it as well to make sure that you're actually comfortable and confident using the software. - Yeah, I know that's happened to me a few times where I couldn't remember how to do something and like within, you know, sometimes 12 hours, I would get not just an email back, but I would get like a screen flow video showing this is how you do it. And so then I could just kind of watch it step by step, that was pretty cool, yeah. - For sure, yeah, yeah. Just to touch on support at local line as well, that's something we take very seriously and we realize again that timing is critical for farms. So yeah, we make sure that people are taken care of and whenever there is a snag, things are resolved very quickly. - I wanna go back to what you just said about how you counsel farmers to test run it on a couple of customers. And I really like that. I have a coach and she often tells me whenever I'm thinking about taking a big step in her business and it always feels scary. She says, well, why don't you put some boundaries around it? Like turn it into a pilot project. Just say, I'm gonna try this for three months and I can always re-decide if I really don't like it, right? And that always takes the fear out of it for me. It kind of reminds me that I am the owner of my business. I can change my mind later, right? And I can try something on a small scale. I can either just do it for a small amount of time or I can choose a small amount of customers or just one segment of my business that I'm testing it on or I could say, I'm only gonna do this for one season and just see how it goes, right? And kind of set myself up for success that way. So that's something to think about as well. - Yeah, I think that's really important to keep you engaged in your business. So whether it's trialing a new crop, I noticed that you guys were trialing some rice this year, which is very cool. On our farm, I always tried at least a new variety of tomatoes or a new crop on an annual basis. We didn't invest everything into that experiment, but maybe we'd grow a specific pepper variety for a certain restaurant buyer. So I think it is great to have these controlled experiments as a way of keeping your customers interested and engaged and yourself as a farmer as well. Again, you're not going to change your crop plan entirely on an annual basis, but integrating these kind of exploratory experiments are very useful, I think. - And I think that that maybe is a characteristic of farms that are in the upper levels, like the second and third level is that they are more comfortable with taking risks, trying things, realizing they might not work, but being okay with that and seeing it as a part of the process, just like the engineering process, you just expect there to be some winding turns until you finally figure out what you need to do. And you're comfortable, quote unquote, wasting time to do that because you know that is the only way to figure out where you need to go. - Yeah, I think at that point of a business, you've probably failed so many times that the fear of failure is diminished because, again, in order to have gotten there, you know, you will have failed multiple times along the way. So there is more of an appetite for, you know, calculated risk, I would say. - Yeah, yeah, it really is like a mindset muscle that you just got to train it. Yeah, I love that. - Is there anything else you want to bring up in this conversation about, you know, how we compare the three different levels and just some distinguishing markers between them or have you hit it all? - Yeah, I feel like we've more or less covered the basis, Karina. - Okay, sounds good. I'm going to ask one more question before we wrap up. How does a farm move from only selling at a farmer's market to selling through an online platform if you were wanting to get started? 'Cause I know there are people listening who have been thinking about it, but there's something holding them back. Maybe it's that fear or the side like, oh gosh, I don't know. Just don't even know what I need to know. How do you kind of like just tease your way into it? What are the steps? Or are there any tips for getting those customers to become an customer that gets used to pre-ordering? 'Cause they might be trained like, oh, I just show up at the farmer's market and you always have what I need. And now you want to try to get them to start pre-ordering more 'cause that helps you out, right? They don't have to bring out your entire inventory. How do you slowly move a customer to start doing that behavior? Do you have any tips that you've seen? - Yeah, absolutely. So I can speak personally on this. I have some fantastic market customers who have moved to exclusively pre-ordering online. So it's kind of like a field of dreams scenario, right? If you build it, they will come. So obviously people cannot order from you online if you don't have a storefront, first and foremost. And then in addition to that, I think farms of any scale should have, as a baseline, a website, right? I do see a lot of farms with just a Facebook page. Again, I think it is this aversion to spending any money, but there are some extremely affordable website builders. So even if it's just a three page website with an about me contact form, people need to be able to find you online. There's just, there's no denying that people shop online and spend a lot of time on their computer. So that's a table stakes, I would say at this point in time is having at the very least a website. Some other ideas for getting your market customers to purchasing online is, you know, starting to collect emails and contact information so that you could enroll those customers in, you know, a newsletter or at the very least a weekly update email letting them know what products are gonna be available for pre-order. So, you know, generating that, that Rolodex of customer contact information is critical to making that transition as well. From there, you know, looking at ways to incentivize online ordering, so maybe offering unique discounted pricing to generate interest to begin with discount codes. As you mentioned earlier, it can be a great way to generate some initial interest. And then ultimately, I think what people will realize when they've started ordering online is that it's actually far more convenient. In my particular context, we had some fantastic customers, but, you know, they like to sleep in on a Saturday morning. They don't wanna come at 7 a.m. before the, you know, before the tomatoes sell out at 10. So what they realized is they could, you know, just place their order online. They could show up to market at noon and still get all the great stuff that typically, you know, would have been sold out at that point in time. So I think once you get people to, you know, adjust and try out purchasing online, often they'll realize that it's, you know, to their benefit to do so. And of course, as a farmer, you know, it's very beneficial because you're probably gonna be, you know, bringing less produce home at the end of the market and throw it in the compost file. - Yeah. Well, and then you, you're committed as a customer, if you've pre-ordered your committed. So if it rains at the farmer's market, you know, you still gotta go and get your stuff. You don't sit there and go, no, I don't wanna go. So it's, yeah. - For sure. Yeah. It helps. It's a bit of an insurance policy against, you know, bad weather or holidays or whatever it may be. - Yeah. One of the things that I've started doing is I only offer certain products via online ordering. Like you can't even get some things unless you go through the online process. And so if you take away something that's very popular and make it only accessible that way, that'll, that'll do it real quick. So it's a little tip for all of you listening. It's really hard to do the first time 'cause you feel like you're gonna upset some people, but you know what? This is business by your design. So. - That's just that there are always levers to pull to. - Yeah, there are. - To influence people, for sure. - You're coming about having a website and that there are still farmers who don't have a website. I feel like I just needed to say, I didn't wanna interrupt your beautiful exposition there, but I feel like it needs to be said that you cannot scale to the next level if you don't have a website. I don't wanna say you never can, I'm sure there are some outliers, but I think it's really hard to scale to the next level because it's social proof, it's credibility. You know, if you wanna work with wholesale, like, and you don't have a website, that's gonna be, yeah, it's just gonna be tough. And then you don't have Google working for you, you don't have SEO working for you. Yeah, just, it's gonna be, it's gonna be tough. So for all of you farmers who aren't there yet, just, it's okay, it's not that much money. - In some cases, it costs nothing. - Yeah, like you'd have to host it, but yeah, I mean, under $100, I wanna say, a year. So, again, something to test, and if you're wrong, you can change stuff. - Absolutely, yeah. Completely agree on that one. - Yeah, all right, well, are there any final words of wisdom, Andrew, that you wanna leave my audience with as we talk about scaling? - Yeah, I think, you know, the theme from this conversation and in my experience at local London faring myself is that we have to be open to adapting, right? And if we wanna grow, we have to understand that there are fears associated with spending more money and changing our workflows. But ultimately, you know, in order to achieve more, we have to do things a little bit differently, whether that's trying out a new software, buying a new tool, you know, hiring a staff to take on some responsibilities, yeah, growth comes with change, it's inherent in the process. So, yeah, I would just encourage people to just be open to change and understand that any changes you make are not permanent, it's okay to experiment and try new things and often what you'll realize is these changes will be for the better. - Yeah, I would add to that, like find another farm that's a little bit ahead of you and, you know, reach out to them or see if they'll mentor you and try to study what are they doing differently in terms of their practices, what systems do they have that I don't have, how are they thinking differently about business, how are they spending their time, what did they let go of, right? Like, that's what I do, I go and look at, you know, the people I wanna be like, and I'm like studying them, like, what are you reading, what are you thinking, what are you not thinking anymore, you know, and trying to, yeah, model, model my behavior and thought patterns after them. So, I'll just throw that into the mix. - Yeah, I think that's exceptional advice and something I did myself when I was farming. Yeah, it's pretty easy to slide into. - That might be something that local line could even do is, you know, have a list of some farms that are in each of these categories as part of your sales process even and be like, you know what, this is someone you should start following or reach out to because they're probably the kind of firm you wanna become and that would be super helpful. Sometimes I think as a farmer, we just don't even know, I'm fairly isolated over here in Ohio, I know a few farms, but like, I don't even know who to, who would I ask, who's the next level? - For sure, yeah, and we do have some quasi ambassadors. So, if anybody wants some direct social proof and to connect with a farm using local line, we're more than happy to do that and have a roster of folks who are happy to have that conversation. - Yeah, well, this has been fun. I've actually learned some things that are probably gonna be spin offs in future episodes. So, thanks, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about how to do e-commerce better, specifically with local line? - Absolutely. So, our marketing team is amazing. They're constantly publishing new guides on, you know, how to increase sales, how to leverage offers. There's so much great information and resources on our website at localline.ca. So, I would highly encourage anybody who's interested in learning more to go there and check out all of that free information. And then, if you are interested in learning more about the software specifically, there's a link on the website to book a demo with myself or my colleague Kyle. And we'd be more than happy to have a conversation, learn more about your business and see if, you know, local line would potentially be a good fit for you. - Is that something you would recommend farmers doing, like right now, in the middle of the season? Or is it possible to like switch quickly? Like, how long is this process? If you say, I wanna get something going in the next week or two, is that even doable? Or is this something that they should wait and work on in the winter? - Yeah, it's a great question. From our side, we're very agile. So, if somebody is really in a rush and wants to make it happen, you know, in a week or two, we can always accommodate that. That being said, you know, I know that July is typically a very busy time on the farm. So, some people don't have the bandwidth to make a migration this time of year. So, we do see a natural influx kind of fall, winter and spring. That being said, there are, you know, folks in certain sectors, whether it's ranching where, you know, July might not be quite so busy as it would be for a produce grower. So, we might be onboarding some more livestock producers this time of year. But that being said, we onboard new farms 12 months of the year. - Yeah, and if you're one of those farms, it's kind of moved into category two after listening to this episode. Then you might actually have someone that you can delegate this to on your team and say, hey, let's check this out. And let's do a pilot project for the next, the last two months of this quarter, right? And see how it goes. So, I know it's a, I think it's a very reasonable price point. So, we've been super happy with it. Well, great, thanks so much for being on the show. This has been amazing. - Yeah, thank you, Karina, I appreciate your time. - I hope you enjoyed that conversation. And here's what I want you to do with this information. Hopefully you were able to place yourself in one of those three buckets, which phase of farm business do you currently fall into? And I didn't know where I stood either. So, I really appreciated this conversation with him. I was kind of curious. I'm like, am I in the second or the third tier? And I've sort of discovered after this conversation with him and understanding the context, the bigger context that he sees, you know, he can see all the different levels. I've kind of realized that I'm definitely in phase two, but that we're beginning to shift into phase three. And we're going through some of those growing pains, some of those fears of, oh, what do we have to do to get to the next level? And oh, we have to lay out some capital here in order to try and get there. And are we sure we want to do it? 'Cause it's real comfy here. And we know that this works. And yet we long to grow and try new things and explore new territory, right? So we're kind of in that transition phase to the final third group. And so I just want you to walk away from this episode, number one, trying to identify where you are. And then ask yourself the question, do I want to move to the next level? Because maybe you don't, maybe you're completely fine staying at level two. And there's a lot of businesses that make good money, live good lives, and just hang out in level two for their entire careers. Or maybe you just want to continue to have a side hustle only and you don't want to make this a full time gig and you're just going to stay in level one. And that's also okay. So are you okay with where you're at or do you want to graduate to the next level? And then what is it that you will have to do differently in order to scale? What were some of the things that you teased out of this episode? And this wasn't an exhaustive list, but are there some hints at things you can practice? And I know for me, one of the things that I brought up in the episode was how important it is to find a farm that's a little bit better than you are so that you can copy them or you can learn from them or you can ask them to be your mentor or hire them as a consultant for a couple hours and go visit their farm. I know Kurt's done that quite a bit in the last couple years where he's reached out to some of these people developed relationships with them and then said, "Hey, would you mind I'm going to pay you a couple hundred bucks "to come out and spend an hour, two hours with you?" And in the off season and ask you a very specific question and then build a relationship from there and then it continues to grow over time. And that's another option you have for you, right? So I want to encourage you to think about finding a farm that's doing it well that's just a little bit ahead of you so that you can learn how it is that they're setting up their systems. What are they doing differently than you are? What can you practice? And what are their thoughts? How are they thinking differently about business? How are they spending their time and what aren't they doing anymore? Can be very insightful. The second thing I want to offer here is to consider, finding a coach and that could be this mentor person but it could be someone else. And I know that I have a business coach and it has been transformational for me on so many levels. And I don't talk enough about how important mindset is but having really worked on mindset the last year and a half with a one-on-one person, a one-on-one coach, I can speak to how I feel like I'm a different person now. Like I feel like I've shed my skin and I think I have a different identity. I think differently about the world about what I value. I've had to literally practice new thoughts and practice new behaviors even when they felt uncomfortable and felt foreign to me. And the more I practice the behavior, the more it began to feel more like me. And now some of those behaviors are like the new behaviors. So just this becoming more open to the idea of finding a coach that you can work with one-on-one to help identify some of your limiting beliefs and what you need to kind of get past 'cause sometimes I think that's what's keeping us from graduating to the next level if we wanna scale. It's the thought patterns that we're trapped in that keep us from taking action but the action that's going to make us grow. All right, so that's my homework for you. And let me know what you learned from this episode and what you're gonna try and do more of to get to that next level. You can let me know at my digital farmer on Instagram just head over to the messages and shoot me a little message. I would love to connect with you there. And don't forget to get onto my email list. You can do that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe and I'm gonna send you a ton of resources to help you get better at your farm marketing. It's gonna be a process. This isn't something you're gonna learn overnight. But if you stick with me for a year or a couple of years, just reading those emails or coming into farm marketing school and working with me in the off-season, there is so much that we can accomplish together to help you learn how to build this system, this marketing system that can start to get some of your sales on autopilot and more consistent revenue and build that confidence. Well, that's all I got. Today's show notes can be found at mydigitalfarmer.com/ two, seven, four, if you like today's episode, please go share it with a friend, go into a Facebook group or farmers, tell them it exists, share it on a listserv, or leave me a rating or a review on Apple podcasts. Have an awesome week. Thanks for joining me today and don't forget, I believe in you. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
