A few weeks ago, I drove my two boys up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for their annual weeklong Air Show.
The EAA Venture Air Show in Oshkosh is the largest air show in the world, and for seven days, it also becomes the busiest airport in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this air show every year.
We first discovered the event a few years ago when my son Jed first started getting into aviation. Everyone told us, "You need to go to Oshkosh."
Well, they were right. If you're an aviation enthusiast, you eventually end up at Oshkosh. In fact, I would argue that it's almost the equivalent of making a holy pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Our first trip to this aviation experience was other-worldly. It was so over-the-top, and it turned us into rabid superfans of aviation. In fact, it was SO powerful, I remember thinking, "I need to do a podcast about this. The brand culture here is so potent."
The thing about Oshkosh is that there are some very specific principles at play that are creating community and turning us plane nerds into superfans. In this podcast, I wanted to point them out to you. I show you how you can take these same principles and put them to work in your farm business, so that you create a community among your customers.
Because people come for your vegetables. They come for your meat and your flowers. But they stay for the community.
As a farm, you must learn how to build a community to achieve longevity. Oshkosh (and this podcast) will show you how. This turned into a great episode!
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Some of the resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode 203: How to Build a Glamping Enterprise on Your Farm -- Everything You Need to Know with Kasey Marshall - I mention our vacation to Canada to see the Cold Lake Air Show, and our hosts Kasey and Renaud Marshall at 350Farms! Kasey was on my podcast last year to talk about their glamping operation. If you want to learn how to set up a glamping operation, THIS IS THE PODCAST to listen to.
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How do you create a brand culture in your business? That's what we're gonna talk about today. Here's what I have learned. People come for the vegetables, but they stay for the community. So how do we create the community that locks them in and makes them lifetime customers? I'm gonna share my experience of going to the Oshkosh air show and what it taught me about how to create this loyal community. Let's get started. (upbeat music) 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 gotta 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) Well, welcome to episode 275 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 kind of 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 Local Line. Switch to Local Line and grow your farm to new heights this season. Local Line 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, Local Line 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 Local Line 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, Local Line 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, today we are doing something fun on the show. At least I think it's gonna be fun because I'm gonna be sharing a personal story from my life and drawing out some marketing wisdom and I love it when I find a story like this that becomes almost like a parable. That's a great example of how to do brand energy well. And the story I wanna start out with is by talking about the Oshkosh air show and you went out there into aviation like our family is. So if you like planes or you like RC airplanes, then you know about the Oshkosh air show. Air shows are things that aviation enthusiasts just do. We either drive two, three hours to go to our local air show and watch planes do amazing feats in the sky and hang out with other like-minded aviation enthusiasts. Or we do crazy stuff like spend lots of money to fly to air shows around the country or in our case, the continent to watch airplanes fly around in the sky at different air shows. And there are some big name air shows in this space that are really well known, that attract a lot of the high-end aerial performers. And if you're lucky, you get to go to these and see them perform. And once you're in kind of the culture, you learn what those are. And it kind of becomes a goal to make a pilgrimage to some of these places so that you can experience them. Now Oshkosh is sort of the grandmother of them all. And this is the show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. So shout out to all of my Wisconsin farmers. If you live near Oshkosh, or if you live near where in Wisconsin, you probably know about the Oshkosh air show because for one week of the year, and it's actually happening this week as I record this, there are hundreds of thousands of people who come to this show. In fact, it's probably even higher than that. This is the busiest airport in the world for seven days in a row. Because not only do the aerial performers come and showcase their work, but pilots from around the country, the continent and the globe fly in. It's like this huge fly in and they fly their planes in. They land at the airport. You can tent underneath your plane. They have places where just planes are parked and guests who show up for the air show in their planes have a place to park their plane, set up a tent. There's grocery stores that they set up for this week so people can buy food for the week. There's shower houses. It is crazy, it is an event. And the first time that we heard about Oshkosh was two years ago, three years ago, I think. And Jed was like, we gotta go to this mom because they're talking about it on flight test and how they're gonna be there and they're gonna have a booth and they're gonna be flying RC planes and I wanna go. And the first time we went to Oshkosh was actually two summers ago. And I wanna talk about that experience here at the front end because that moment was so powerful, so many emotions and like inspiration feelings flooded my senses during those two days that we were there. I remember actually coming home for that on a high and thinking to myself, I need to do a podcast about this because there was something going on there that made me even more of a super fan. And I was just then becoming kind of a new aviation mom enthusiast, right, like I'm not like super crazy into airplanes, but my boys are. And so I'm learning everything I can because I wanna support them and I wanna take them whatever they can go to learn about it. And I remember feeling really overwhelmed and disoriented the first time I walked into that air show because of the scope of it, it is massive. I wish I could tell you how large just how many miles across it is. There are so many people that come through there over the course of those seven days. There are celebrities that come to this event. I mean, it is huge. Camping, flying, there are static displays. They have shuttle buses that move you around because you can't even walk across probably more than once or you'd be exhausted. Famous, famous planes show up there either to fly in their aerial show or to be in the static displays. And they have educational workshops. You just, all kinds of categories of planes, you name it, they're there. It's sort of the place to go. If you want to shop for a plane, if you want to learn about the latest innovation in planes, if you want to see old planes, if you want to fly in a plane, if you want to hang out with famous aviators and see great show, it's just, it's the place to go. It's the Mecca, okay? And so I wanted to talk about this on the podcast, what the experience was like because we're actually going there again tomorrow. So I'm recording this a little bit early. This isn't gonna release till like August 7th, but I'm getting ready to go again with my kids. And we just came back from an air show in Canada in Cold Lake, shout out to my friends, Renaud and Casey Marshall, who invited us to attend. And so we got to watch firsthand how an air show actually comes together because Renaud was the head organizer, like the lead organizer of the Cold Lake air show. And I got to stay like in their glamping operation at 350 Farms, it was so awesome. And so we would hear stories from him at night when he'd come home about some of the things that come up behind the scenes. And we got to go to the survivor party. They called it that at their house, all the aviator performers came that night and had dinner there. And I watched my son kind of hang out with them, it was so cool. And I listened to the air boss, give them this inspiring speech and present awards to the aerial performers and just thank them for their work. I mean, I just saw the inner workings of how these shows go together. And I can only imagine that a show like Oshkosh, which is a hundred times what Cold Lake was, is even more of a huge enterprise to put together. It just gave me a huge appreciation for the thoughtfulness and the values and the leadership that goes behind building the kind of rich, powerful experience that you have as a customer when you go through these experiences. And the Cold Lake air show was incredible. We couldn't actually see a lot of the aerial show performances because there was smoke from the wildfires in Canada. And yet even so, the show was a top notch air show. Like I'd still give it a nine out of 10, even though we didn't get to watch a whole lot of flying because the static displays were so well done. And the performers were walking around interacting with us and plus we had a pretty awesome VIP experience, right? So, okay, I'm kinda rambling now, but what I wanna focus on today is what goes on, what went on specifically at the Oshkosh air show 'cause that's kinda what blew me away, where I saw this really powerfully. What is going on in these air shows that creates this incredible sense of belonging and identity as an aviation person and a sense of brand loyalty, or maybe I don't know about brand loyalty, but like loyalty to the concept of aviation. And then what can we learn from this story within our own brands because we're doing this, we have the potential to do this really well within our own business. And we can learn some things from how the aviation industry has built a culture of super fans. How do we do that with our own brands? What are they doing? And I could actually see some principles, some very specific things that were happening and I thought I would share those with you. I think I have a list of five different things that I wanna walk through you with in this episode. And I hope you're gonna find this kind of interesting. I love when I can, like I said, share a story and see marketing principles in it and then help you kind of identify what does that look like in a farm business? What are examples of that happening in a farm business so that you can be more intentional about trying to build this kind of culture. It's about building a culture because the thing is like when I left Oshkosh, I was more united behind the mission of aviation, I was more enthusiastic as a fan, I was more bought in, I was more, I started spending more money on aviation, I wanted to do more things aviation wise with my son, I understood what we were all about. I was just a super fan and it happened in a matter of two days partly because of what was going on when I went on this pilgrimage, what was going on in that space. And I think we can recreate that within our own brands. So, first of all, just wanna point out a few things, these are in general like observations as a brand new person walking in to the Oshkosh air show for the first time with a new son at the time who was, what like 13, maybe at that time he's 16 now, but he was a new enthusiast with RC airplanes, really into planes, but I didn't know a whole lot, okay? So I walked into that space very much as a rookie and as a new being and curious, what is this going to be like? And here were some of my first impressions and I want you to think about, as I talk through this, I want you to think about this through the lens of a new client coming into your culture, your farm culture. If you're trying to turn them into someone who's a super fan, who feels like they belong, who takes on the identity of a farm, foodie, locavore, farmivore, whatever you wanna call it, what is it that they probably experience at first? So, first of all, the first word I wrote down when I was preparing my notes here was disoriented. I felt disoriented when I walked into the space because it was so huge, it was so big, it was so magnificent, like all of my senses were firing, I remember getting the map of the grounds and being so overwhelmed, like where do we even start? Not realizing it was this big, realizing I really needed to get tickets for like three days if I wanted to see the whole thing. Feeling like I needed to see the whole thing, right? And not sure where to start, not sure where to start, which is an interesting observation to make. And I just want you to think about that. What is a brand new person who comes into your culture? What do they feel like? Are they disoriented? What do they know where to start? And I think it's normal to be disoriented. I think that's a natural part of the process of a person coming into your brand, but there are some things that need to happen on the front end to make that phase be as short as possible. And that quickly began to happen as I moved into the space, things were very well marked, it was clear where to go. We decided what to tackle first, and we kind of learned the ropes, but I remember being disoriented. I remember also being confused by the lingo. This is something else to think about. Just what, there were acronyms, and I was gonna try to find the map from last year, 'cause I actually saved it to use for this podcast, and then I couldn't find it. But I remember there were acronyms all over that map, and as a new person, I'm like, "I don't know what these mean." Like, they're throwing around aviation acronyms. Like, we all know it, and I was like, "Where's the dictionary? We need a glossary." But also just categories of aviation felt like new lingo to me. Just experimental versus ultralight versus warbirds. My son knew what some of this was, but as a brand new mom, I had no idea that there were even categories of aviation, right? So learning that there was a lingo that I needed to learn, that there was a vocabulary that everyone in the group, in the community knew, and was using, and I felt like an outsider, initially, because I didn't know the language. And I felt highly motivated to learn it so that I looked like I belonged, okay? So just pay attention to that. Think about this through the eyes of your brand new customers. They want to belong to something. They find their people, and yet they feel like there's so much they don't know, and they're eager to learn the lingo and the vocabulary. And what are we doing to make sure that we onboard them quickly? And do we know what that lingo is so that we can tell them? We can take that confusion away. I was also immensely inspired. I felt like I want to belong to this place. I want to belong to these people. And I realized in a second that we are not alone in this crazy hobby of RCA planes and aviation in general. I mean, I knew there were people that liked it. I had no idea there were this many people that were this into it, like more into it at the time than my son. Now I would say that my son is probably pretty hardcore like all of them. And it was raising the bar for us. It was like saying this is what it means to be an aviation fan, and you wanted to rise to it. You wanted to belong and speak the language and walk the talk and wear this swag and do all the things that these people did. You wanted to show them that I deserve to be here. And the types of people that you would meet who were just top level innovative leader type folks. And you're like, wow, I could be that way. I could be long with this group, right? It just made you want to be better, a better version of yourself. And then finally, I wrote down this kind of concept of community and belonging. I remember thinking, these are my peeps. And I like to do the things that they do. And when you're into aviation, kind of in your own little small group community out here, like there are too many people that like it when you start talking about planes. I mean, they give you a few minutes, but then their eyes glaze over. And you soon realize that you can't talk about that forever. I know that you have that happen with farming too, right? Like you can only talk about farming with farmers. Everyone else is sort of like, meh, after a while. And that's how it is with aviation too, where when you find someone who's into it, like you just glom together and you just geek out and you say, wow, I found my people. So to go to a huge place where there are close to probably a million people that walk through there over the week and to see, you know, all these people that also understand aviation and love it as much as you do, that is super empowering. And it makes you feel like you're not alone. Right, I belong here. It's a social proof metric too that all these people are in one place saying that it's okay to love this and to be crazy about planes. You take on the identity of an aviator and an aviation enthusiast, like as a result, because there are so many other people around you that are doing that and it's much easier to adopt that identity. And it just locks you in as a plain nerd or super fan, okay? So those are just some overall impressions. I quickly, over the matter of two days, began to feel like I was learning how to be in this new identity. And by the time we left, I had claimed it. I was like, yeah, this is what we do. And we're gonna come back and we're gonna try and make more disciples of aviation. And when we find someone who's into flying, we're gonna support them because we were so welcomed and supported by the community when we came in. That was the other thing too. Like everyone was so nice. The volunteers at all the air shows I've ever been to have been talkative. They've wanted to support my son. They're so interested in the fact that he's into aviation and very helpful. And you just go over the top to give you a great experience. Again, I just wanna give a shout out to Casey and Renaud at the Colley Care Show who went over the top for us to make sure that we had a great time, even though the aerial shows were canceled on the first day. Like they gave us VIP tickets. We got tickets to the performers tent. They gave us a second set of general admission tickets on the second day so we could try again. They gave us access to the survivor party at the end so we could hang out. So my son could hang out with these people. I mean, it was so, so generous of them. And I just feel like it was what all aviation people do at these air shows are just so nice. Anyway, okay, so let's move on to kind of the takeaways from all this. So what can we learn from all this? Because it's important as a business to pay attention to the culture that you are creating, the culture. You are building a culture. Are you aware of that? And the really great businesses and organizations have it. You step into it. I'm just think about some of your favorite brands or your favorite businesses or leaders. And you walk into those spaces and you can feel it. You can feel the culture that has been set. So what are some of the things that great cultures do and have in common? And that's what I want to walk through in today's, the rest of today's episode. 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. Okay, the first principle that I wanna point out here is that we come together, we come together, we find our community. So we may practice our hobby or our interest in private, but we find ways to get together. So I want you, this is kind of a principle obviously for aviation, but I want you to think about it as a principle for your farm business. Your customers need to come together. You need to find a way to deliver a community experience to them. And this can happen in a couple of ways. The first obvious one is like to create what I call a pilgrimage event, which is sort of what the air shows are. The Oshkosh air show is sort of like everyone going to Mecca or going to Jerusalem for their big holy pilgrimage. Usually it's a great idea to create one signature moment and event that people come to or everyone can stream to and have a common experience. The other option is to create small groups, small group experiences or small group opportunities within your farm business. So this might, within the aviation space, I'm thinking like they have local chapters, they have like flight test is a business that does just RC and it creates its own little community of people that come and fly there. I think about things like church. These giant mega churches or even large size churches, there's sort of the large group worship experience. But then the real power is actually when you create friendships with a small group of three to five people. And I remember when I was in the church as a leader, that was actually part of our work. Like our mission was to try to connect new people as they came in with at least two people because we knew if we could do that, if we could create a sense of small group community, someone they could come and talk to who knew their name that they could begin to build a relationship with, if that would be the glue that held them and cemented them into the larger community. And then from there they would get invited to volunteer and find a small group kind of mission within the church. And I see that over and over again in other businesses, like that the really strong ones find ways to create small communities, opportunities for a community to happen. Now within our farm business, what I feel like we do this really well, it's shared legacy farms. We have this Facebook group just for our CSA members and it is just on fire, especially right now in the main season. This is operating as a place where the community can come together in a smaller way and connect with each other, inspire with each other, show what they're doing, teach one another, raise the bar and show what's possible. We also have like the feel, the big feel to table dinner is maybe what I would call our pilgrimage event. And this is where a lot of people come and it's a high touch point, lots of feel good feelings. At the end of the season and when we do a lot of vision casting and it's the crowning achievement of the year. And they can meet other people that are like them, right? We need to see other people who are like us as customers. Service projects might be another option as a farm that you could do for other farm events. Even picking up at the CSA site becomes an event where people build relationships with their site hosts or if they have to stand in line, maybe they see some of the same families week after week. Those are examples of where you start to see small group community forming. My point here is that if you want to build a culture, one of the things you have to do is create spaces where people can come together. So take a look at your business and ask yourself, where are you creating these pilgrimage moments, these large group events? Where are you creating small group opportunities within your system and what could that look like? Okay, my second principle is that all great brand cultures share in common rituals. The air show is an example of a ritual that aviation enthusiasts all do. We all go to air shows. It's just what we do. And in many cases, we try to collect them. And we all try to go to the grandmother of the mall in Oshkosh if we're so lucky. But what does that look like in your farm business? What rituals do you have in place? And you have some that your customers eventually discover and fall into that make them feel like I'm a foodie or I'm a farm of or I'm a supporter of this farm. And here are just a few that I thought of that may seem simple, but they are rituals. So the unboxing every week of our CSA box is a ritual. The unboxing video is a ritual that we try to encourage everyone to watch. There are mistakes that every new person makes. Those are rituals, even though we try to warn them, it still happens to a lot of people. Rituals like wasting food and composting, that is a part of it. And now we poke fun at it, poke fun at it. We pointed out and we say, yep, that was me. I did it today, I composted and we kind of almost celebrate it. Food prep, getting the box, the process of waiting in line in our cars, going through the pickup line. That's also a ritual and people bring their kids along and they look forward to it. It becomes an event. Canning tomatoes would be an example of a ritual that we all start to talk about at certain times of year. We're freezing corn or the first corn picking becomes a ritual that we all look forward to. Watching that or experiencing that. The first time we eat sweet corn. Buying from the online store becomes a ritual. There's a certain day and time where people want to be able to do that. Trying certain types of meals. The carrot top pesto is an example of that. Or the beet muffins. There are certain ritualistic recipes that everyone is encouraged to try and that many people do because it's just part of what we do and what we encourage people to do if they're in the group. Start a garden. I have many people who eventually start to do that. That becomes a part of their food ritual. They buy the start-ups from us. They share their pictures online in the group and it makes people want to start gardening. That's just a small list of things that I quickly jotted down. What do those look like for you within the scope of your business? What are your rituals? Are you teaching your new community what they are? Are you making them aware of the path? This whole concept of the customer value journey. Once a person buys from you, you don't just jettison them and say good luck. But you need to be their guide and you need to walk them from milestone to milestone to milestone so that they become better and better at what they do. This is the whole reason I have the academy for my CSA members. My online academy and it's also available to CSA farmer farmers in general now if they want to subscribe. It's the place where we have these resources. We walk them through the roadmap. Here are the steps. These are the things you learn as you become a better and better at cooking in the kitchen. What rituals do you already have so that you can be intentional about pointing to them? What rituals do you have to create? Do you have any at all? If you don't have any, this is an important thing to add because if you're a part of a group identity there are things that we all do together, right? If I'm an aviation enthusiast, there are certain things that we all do together. If I go to church, there are certain things that we all do together. We pray, we read our Bibles, we go to worship, right? We serve, et cetera. So what does that look like for a farm business community? What are the things that we all, most of us, do together? What do we have in common? You've got to help them find the rituals. Okay, moving on. The third principle I want to point out here is that we speak the same language. There is a lingo. There is a vocabulary within a community of followers within a brand. You may not realize that you have a lingo, but you have one. When I first started watching my children get into aviation, I remember sometimes not being able to follow their conversations. I still struggle with that, frankly, a little bit because they're really into the technical side of building things, so they're talking about servos and receivers and different styles of propellers and thrust and wind airfoils and all this, like, it's very specific, and I just gave you the categories there, but they know the specific ones. They know all the different play names. They can identify a plane just by looking at it, right? There's just so much horsepower, arrows of aviation. I just kind of blinken on my head, and sometimes I just look really interested, but I have no idea what they're saying, okay? There is a vocabulary within aviation, and there is one within farming. Well, among farmers, there is two, for sure, but even just as a customer of a farm, there's a lingo, and sometimes those cross and sometimes they don't, but we need to teach them the stories of agriculture, the stories of food, and the stories of how to cook, how to use the food that you're growing for them. So I want you to identify what is some of that insider language that you're currently using. Don't assume that your new people know it. Remember that at the beginning, I talked about how I walked into that Oshkosh airshow, and I felt confused by all the acronyms, and I didn't know where to start. I didn't know how to talk the talk. So make sure that you begin the process of introducing what some of these words are. Maybe you have to have a glossary in your handbook. Or just be intentional about, hey, I need to occasionally explain what this concept means, what these labels and certifications mean, what, you know, we use the word exit strategy a lot within our CSA. Some people might be like, what does that mean? Like, what are they referring to? And it's like, oh, the different ways that you can get rid of food, you can create an exit strategy. The seasonality of food would be another example here of something that people need to learn. We talk a lot about green bags, Debbie Meyer green bags. People have no idea how awesome of a tool those are and how helpful they are in keeping their produce lasting longer. And so that's a big part of our indoctrination process at the beginning. Even just, like, different types of vegetables having to explain, not assuming that people know what a patty pan squash is, right? They're going to pull that out of the box. A lot of times they compost it because they're like, what is this? I don't even know what this is. And they don't take the time to even know that they can go look that up. Or a ground cherry is another one that people are often confused by. Yeah, so just like, what are those cuts of meat that confuse people? And you just sort of assume they know how to use it or they even know what it is. You might have to be a dictionary for them at times. Processes how pickup works, how buying from the online store works, how your sanitation process works, how do they know that the stuff is being cleaned, how the truck gets packed. I don't know. There might be some stories on the farm that are actually interesting to them and they want to know how that works or it makes the experience richer for them if they can get a behind-the-scenes view. And this is all part of teaching them the lingo. I remember the first year that I saw broccoli bolt. Remember, I didn't grow up on a farm. And I married Kurt, and that first year I watched the broccoli go to seed. I didn't know what go to seed meant. I didn't know that lettuces will turn into these huge towers if you let them go. And I just thought that was so fascinating. And so I make sure that I show those stories and tell those stories every year because I know I've got 20% of my people are new and I'm guessing that a large percentage of them are like I was and don't know that. And I think it's cool. I mean, it just makes the story of farming so interesting. So the relevance point here is I want you to be thinking about what are the examples of insider language that you're using. Maybe try to identify what some of those are and make sure that you like write them down and make sure you're talking about them from time to time throughout the season and definitely make sure you have that in your onboarding process when you're indoctrinating new people into the group. There should be a process where you intentionally bring that stuff up to them. Okay, let's move on. Number four, I have two more. We wear the team uniform. If you're trying to create a community within your brand because communities are what bond people to you. People come for the vegetables, but they stay for the community. They need to create the community for the longevity. I've just noticed that people want to wear a team uniform. And when you go to the air show, this is really evident. Everyone either has on some kind of an aviation t-shirt branding them as, yeah, I know planes or they got a hat or they got a pin or they're wearing a military uniform or they've got some piece of gear or a picture of a logo that is identifiable and that has status in that community or they have a plane. I'm not joking. So many people have a plane. Yeah, swag, okay, swag, logos identify you as I belong to this community. So your people, they want to wear your logo. They want to wear your tagline. They want to wear your uniform. What does your uniform look like? And I use that word in air quotes, okay? I'm not saying give everybody some bibs, but they want to show that they belong and this is a way that they can do that is by putting on your shirt, carrying around your insulated bag, whatever it is. I remember that was actually just last January when we were in Oregon, visiting my brother. In the airport, Jed was wearing a shirt. I think it was his flight test shirt and he was getting something to eat in the airport and he happened to be standing next to a guy who was also in aviation and he asked, he was an older gentleman and he asked Jed about it. He's like, oh, you know about flight test and they ended up having a really beautiful conversation about planes in the middle of Portland, right? Two strangers and it come to find out that this guy is actually an air traffic controller at the Oshkosh air show, right? What are the odds of that? And we're like, oh my gosh, I've been there and right there, a moment of community happened because of a piece of swag. So we find each other through the T-shirt and through the swag. So don't discount the need for your people to show that they belong. Give them that and it ends up building community but it also has this bonus effect of social proof and marketing for your farm. Okay, I lied, I have two more. The next one I want to talk about is that when we're building community, brand community, here's what I've noticed. We believe the same things and we share the same values. There is a creed, there's like a set of doctrinal principles, a doctrine that your customers are bought into and those values that creed, they become things that you exemplify, that you perpetuate as a new customer to newbies. You want to go out and evangelize and find these new people and bring them in, right, and get them indoctrinated into this doctrine, into this creed, into these values. When I looked at the aviation space, I saw these values. And so if you're an aviator, see if you agree. It's a very welcoming space. I see leadership and innovation. It tends to attract people who are innovative and leaders. It's fun. There's just this spirit of fun. It's about the enjoyment of the hobby. Service is a huge one too and I don't know if that's because a lot of people are in the military and then end up kind of going into recreation. But how can I help? How can I help an eagerness to serve without expecting anything in return? Safety is a huge, huge one. I probably should have said that first, but that trumps everything. Protecting our freedom of airspace. I remember hearing that a lot my first year and I'm like, what is the big deal? Like they keep talking about how we need to protect our airspace, the freedom to be able to fly in our airspace, right? Almost like they were afraid that that was going to be taken away by regulation. Those were just some examples of things that I noticed came up within the space of aviation. It was like this understanding that if you want to belong, these are the things you're going to believe. These are the things you're expected to espouse and evangelize to others. What I want to challenge you with is in your farm business, if you're trying to create community, because that is what bonds and holds people together, what is your creed? What are your doctrinal values? What's kind of your mission? Do you talk about it? Do you live it? And do you see it replicating and being passed on by your customers? Have they adopted it, embraced it as their own? And that starts with leadership. All the great brands have this going on. They have a creed, they have values, they have these beliefs and principles that they exemplify and perpetuate in their followers. One of the things I wanted to bring up here was actually something that is talked about a lot in church leadership and since I used to work in a church, I just wanted to share this because I think it's actually very insightful for businesses too. There is a principle that comes from the book of Deuteronomy, which is in the Bible, Deuteronomy 6, chapter 6 verse 6 and it says this, "These words that I am giving you today," this is when Moses was delivering the Ten Commandments and all the commandments to the Israelite people, delivering the creed. He said, "These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart, repeat them to your children, talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, when you get up, et cetera, et cetera." And the point of this is to teach the Israelites and in our case Christians to make sure that you're telling the creed to your children. This is how it gets passed down from generation to generation, that you actually have to teach them your doctrine and you have to teach them your values. But not only that, what we liked to point out when we were in leadership was you have to remember as you're teaching this to your children, to teach your children to remember to teach their children. Okay, that sounds really meta, but this is a concept that we talk a lot about with our kids. We say, "Hey, it's not enough for you to just remember to teach what we're teaching you about the faith to your own kids, but you need to make sure you tell your kids how important it is to tell their kids to teach their kids." So that the act of teaching is what's being celebrated, right? It's being held up. It's not just the knowledge itself to be passed down, but make sure you tell them to become teachers. That this is an important thing to remember to do as you become an adult. You have to teach people to pass it down. And I think that that's something that you see within great businesses too, like that there isn't just this evangelism kind of moment happening where we all believe the same things and we learn it, but we sort of take on this mantle of, "I'm going to make sure that future generations are told to pass it down, because if we don't pass it down, if we're not told to pass it down, then it gets forgotten." So that's definitely something that I think is also a part of this principle, in order to perpetuate the values in your brand and what's important, you've got to train your customer to make sure that they're helping you train the future generations up. Okay, let's move on to my last sort of principle that I pulled out of this huge example, air show example, and that is leadership, so great brands that are building community, they all have a leader. They have a leader at the top. A few key leaders, there isn't just always one, there's usually like a leadership team who are responsible for the vision. And in the aviation space, like at the air show where you see this, the most is actually the announcer, the person who's doing the announcing during the actual aerial show itself. They're not just giving you a play-by-play of what's happening in the sky or, you know, look to the left, you're about to see the hornet come pass by, but it's in between the acts when there's kind of dead space. They're using those moments to do vision casting, to share safety things, to remind people of what they need to do next, or what they need to believe. There were several moments where they would talk about the importance of protecting the freedom of the skies in the airspace, and they're using every possible moment to guide and show the people what it is that they are to believe and what they are to do next. The air boss is another example, this is the person that is responsible for the actual air show and getting the performers lined up and making sure they know what they're doing and the safety and all of that. He's sort of leading, he's like the stage manager, he's leading the show, right? And everyone's looking to that person to drive the energy and the vision. When we went to the survivor party at the Cold Lake Air Show, we watched the air boss get up in front of all of the performers, there was like a hundred of them at the party. And he basically gave a rah-rah, like thank you, vision cast speech, and just said, "Hey, this wasn't just about you flying your plays in the sky, but this was a moment for you to create a connection with civilians, and we appreciate that you went the extra mile and walked with the people and shook their hands and did autographs, and went to all the extra events. This is an important part of what you're doing, and just, you know, there were awards that he passed out, and there was this elevated spirit like we're all trying to meet this bar, and that was set by the air boss, right? He didn't have to do that. And so in your business, you have that mantle, or someone on your team should have that mantle of carrying the vision, talking about the message, showing people what's possible, motivating the team, making sure the team is indoctrinated so that they can be your leadership team, and you're not doing it all by yourself. So who is guiding the ship at your farm right now? Who's guiding the culture? Are you claiming that role? Are you inspiring people? Are you equipping? Are you appreciating your team? Are you holding your team accountable when necessary? Do you raise the bar? Do you cast vision? Do you have a vision? Are you leading by example? Are you serving? Or is there a negative spirit in your heart, right? Great brands are built because there is a leader at the top who is inspiring. And so I just want you to think about that if that's not something that you've spent a lot of time on, or if it's a role that you've been reluctant to claim, it's something to think about because it's something I see as a pattern in the great brands. There is always a great leader standing behind it that is responsible for the values and the vision of the business. In the church we used to talk about how all churches, the culture of churches tend to eventually over time, copy and pattern themselves off the top dog leader. It's sort of a principle. And so that will happen in your business as well. People will begin, you'll attract people that have similar qualities and values and beliefs that you do. So be thinking about what is it that I want to be standing for and make sure that you're putting that out in your messaging. All right, this turned into a long episode, but this was fun. And I hope that this has given you some food for thought. I want you to look at your business, at your farm business and really ask yourself, am I creating a community, a branded community? I'm here to tell you that if you want to create super fans, if you want to create a long term established business, this has got to be a part of your strategy. It's not maybe the thing that you start out with, but as you mature, this should become a focus. I didn't really see this until quite a few years into our business, but people are not, well, let me start over. People will come for your product initially, but they will stay for the community. So if you're having a retention problem, one of the things you want to think about is, am I building a spirit of community? Is there a culture of community here? Am I doing things to bring people together? And I've just shared six different ways that this tends to happen in the great brands. So look at each of those six categories, and maybe there's something that you can tweak or start being more intentional with in the remainder of this season. Or you can sit down with your partner and kind of talk this out and evaluate yourselves, score yourselves on these six areas. Maybe there's a couple that I forgot about. Maybe there's some that are jumping out at you right now that you want to add to the discussion, but really discuss this with your business partner, with your team and say, what can we be doing to create a culture of community? So that our customers feel like they belong, and we've raised the bar for them to want to aspire to be this incredible group of people that can make extraordinary things happen in the world. All right, that's all I got for you today. If you enjoyed this episode or you were inspired by it at all, please share it with a farmer friend. You can send them the link to the show. You can go to a Facebook group and bring it up. You can email it to someone, put it in a list, serve whatever. Just let people know about it. I think it's a great food for thought. I think it would be a great topic at a workshop to discuss. Please take this information and run with it. If you liked the show, please leave me a rating or a review on Apple podcasts. I would love to get more of those. And if you want to get onto my email list and get more inspiration for business leadership and marketing, please. I have free stuff to send your way. You can always unsub if you are like, this is not helpful. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com/subscribe. I think you're going to find it really, really helpful. Don't forget, I'm now on Instagram at my digital farmer. I've been a little bit quiet the last few weeks because I've been on vacation, but I'm going to get back in the saddle here again, especially now that my voice is strengthening. So that's good news. Thanks for joining me today, you guys. Have a wonderful week. And remember, I believe in you. I believe in you. I'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] (upbeat music)
