Introducing: The Independent Farmer Podcast with Chucktown Acres
A few years and 145 episodes in, Barn2Door’s Podcast gets an overhaul. Why the change? Listen to Barn2Door’s CEO and Alex from Chucktown Acres discuss the BIG re-brand from The Direct Farmer to The Independent Farmer Podcast!
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Hello and welcome, to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in, to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, the CEO of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. If you're a returning listener to our podcast, you may notice something new. We're rebranding our Barn2Door podcast. The name, a new look, new feel, including a logo, a new landing page, new [00:01:00] series, and upgraded categories.
In today's conversation, we'll get into why we chose to rebrand the podcast and what to expect in the future. I'm excited to talk with Alex about it. He owns and operates Chucktown Acres in Charleston, South Carolina, and we've been working with him and his farm now for many, many years. I think, Alex, is it like since 2019?
Alex Russell: Yeah, four going on five years now.
Janelle Maiocco: And also, it's an excuse to hang out with Alex and talk about what it takes to be successful as an independent farmer. Why it is so critical, and then why this podcast and how it can be helpful to independent farmers across the country.
Welcome, Alex.
Alex Russell: Thank you. Thanks for having me, Janelle. Love being here.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes. Always love hanging out and chatting, even if it means, you just got the pigs back in, which is kind of my favorite.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good.
Alex Russell: They're in and the wires are hot, so we're good to talk for a while. Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. Some folks don't know, we did start the podcast years ago, and it was called, the Direct Farm [00:02:00] Podcast. And we are changing it to the Independent Farmer podcast, and we're very, very excited. We're also 145 episodes in. Which is kind of nuts and I will tell you, you might believe this or might not Alex, but we have a lot of Farmers who have literally listened to all of them.
Alex Russell: That's pretty awesome. Listened to a good handful and I'm a Tom Bennett fanboy. So I always listen to Tom's podcasts, but I always learned something really, really useful. This is a great tool for farmers to use. So, I've actually been searching for Farm podcasts for a really long time and most of them don't last very long.
They usually are going for like a year. It's usually run by a farmer, that ends up obviously having too much to do.
Janelle Maiocco: I was gonna say no time, right? We have the luxury of being able to talk to a whole litany of farmers, yourself included. [00:03:00] You've been on it a couple of times.
Alex Russell: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Janelle Maiocco: We love it.
Alex Russell: I love being on here and being able to chat and hopefully give some information to other farmers out there that could be beneficial. Let me get this straight. It used to be called the Direct Farm Podcast. Now we're rebranding, we're calling it the Independent Farmer Podcast, which I really, really love the name.
Can you walk me through the decision process for that and I mean, I have no qualms with the name, so I just want you to know I love the name. I think it's awesome. I have so many thoughts about being an independent farmer, and it's so much more than being just a direct to market farmer. So, anyway, could you give us a little intro to that?
Janelle Maiocco: I think you just put it in a nutshell. The fact that you are like, direct is just like one slice, right? An independent farmer is like the all encompassing of, no, there is so much to it other than just the selling direct, which I love. So, part of the thinking behind it was, besides precisely [00:04:00] what you said, is when we started the podcast years ago, we as Barn2Door were still trying to establish our brand.
And so when we launched Direct, we were trying to communicate to the market, we are helping farmers who sell direct, which is different, right? There's a lot of other companies out there who were maybe marketplaces are trying to do different things for farmers or aggregating and distribution.
And we're like, nope, we are software for farmers who are selling direct into their local communities to run their business. And so, it used to be a lot about, it's all in one solution for farmers selling direct, which helped identify us and differentiate us in the market. And so we kept it largely to the middle, like if you're selling direct, that means you're removing the middleman.
Okay. Right? So direct, direct, direct. And so, that's why we latched onto that word to help folks know what we were about for farmers. And interestingly enough, I think I mentioned to you before this podcast, we actually, during COVID, launched an [00:05:00] online conference. We had a digital conference online, a direct farm conference, it was called.
And so, part of the podcast actually even came from that same synergy. And so, the direct, the whole conference because, by the way, this was new. In the market, there wasn't a lot of thought leadership, ebooks, information, data, or useful materials, classes, anything on the business side of farming and for farmers who are selling direct.
And we're like, we want to be that. We want to be in there. And so, what do we need to do to help farmers who are selling direct? And we boiled it down to, like four really, really basic levers, is what we used to call them. To help educate, maybe not the right word, but to help educate farmers and the market in terms of "hey, here's four things to focus on if you're selling direct."
One was brand, like you need a brand if you're selling direct, right? Because you have your own customers. You need to make it convenient for your customers to buy from you if you're selling direct. Because you're competing on a convenience scale [00:06:00] with everything else people can buy. And then we talked about quality, which is kind of a slam dunk, frankly, I think, for farmers like yourself.
Who are like, of course, it's - compared to the garbage in the grocery store.
Alex Russell: Oh, not even close.
Janelle Maiocco: You just, like, it's not even close. So, even though that is a way for farmers to stand out, but that's like the easiest one of them all, right? And then the other one was just price and packaging.
We were just really focused to help farmers both through our software and through all the data and getting information to farmers on how to sell direct and do it successfully. So it was pretty boiled down, if that makes sense.
Alex Russell: Yes, yeah, and it's interesting how we evolve as businesses, Barn2Door being a business.
Sometimes you have inspirations, and you and I have talked about your inspirations of why you wanted to help farmers out, and I love your backstory, too, of your journey through everything that you've gone through, and what was the first thing you'd made up? Farmster? Is that what it was?
Janelle Maiocco: [00:07:00] Yeah, well, honestly, I appreciate that.
It's funny you say that, because I was just onboarding a couple of new employees this morning, and I walked them through basically a whole hour long presentation called Why Barn2Door? And we literally go through step by step of we are not a marketplace. Marketplaces are either online or offline grocery stores, and they aggregate and they distribute, and that is not what we do.
I'm like, we help the independent farmers. I was already explaining around those new words, but we help independent farmers be successful all across the country in every local community. Right, so there's thousands of farms, there's farms near every city, across the country. And they need, basically software, business software to make sure that they have an online store, to make sure that they have marketing materials, to make sure they can quickly do their finances and inventory and orders and help farmers remove those, all of that friction, make it convenient, all the works, Alex, which is so exciting, but it's like, we are not the middleman.
We are [00:08:00] the opposite of the middleman. We're under the hood, behind the scenes, helping hopefully make it easier and easier, not just for the farmers to sell, but for their buyers to buy from them and for them then to save time managing their business.
Alex Russell: Yeah. Well, I think that your software allows us to be independent farmers, that we don't have to rely on middlemen, aggregates.
Wholesale, big giant wholesale accounts, like we're able to charge retail prices, like when I think about what it actually means to be an independent farmer, there's a ton of things to talk about there because you've got all of the corrupt food industry and they own your big farms, your big chicken houses, your pork houses, all of the traditional farmers that grow crops and they just grow soybeans and corn every year. They're not independent. They are completely relying on the [00:09:00] prices at the grain elevator. The livestock guys are just praying for a good day at the stockyard. They're completely at the whims of the corporate entities that be.
And that's exactly what we don't want. So, we are inspired to control our own destiny, charge our own prices, and be able to interact with our own customers directly, and that's what makes us independent farmers. So, when I saw the rebrand for the name, I was really pumped because it was like, I actually identify way more as an independent farmer, than I do as a direct farmer. Being a direct farmer is part of what I do, but I guess my power and authority in what I do day to day, is given to me because I'm able to be independent. Now, if I didn't have the software of Barn2Door, I would have a way harder [00:10:00] time being an independent farmer.
I'd either be at, maybe I'd have to be at 10 farmers markets every week, or I would have to just rely on restaurant accounts. But I mean, I literally woke up this morning and I had emails that I sold several hundred dollars worth of meat last night while I was asleep. And that waking up to those emails, sometimes that's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
It's like, man, people want my stuff. And, probably the hardest thing about being a direct to market, independent farmer, is selling. The selling is usually the number one hardest thing that we have to do. To find ways to get our food onto people's kitchen tables and in their fridge. And so, whenever anybody asks me about Barn2Door, and my usage of the software, I just can't rave enough about what you guys have done for us, [00:11:00] because, just the ability to create subscriptions that I don't even have to think about anymore, the money comes in, they plug their credit cards in, and I deliver them meat.
I think about those customers, at least their fulfillments. I think about making them happy and them enjoying my food all the time, every day. But, the fulfillment of the sale to get the food to them, I only have to think about for about two minutes while I'm putting the meat in the bag to go in the cooler to go home delivery.
And that is such a massive game changer for farmers. It allows us to grow, to produce the amount of volume that we need to not have to have town jobs anymore, to not have to rely on government handouts, and to be able to be our own farm and do what we want to do. So I just, I feel like every time I come on the podcast, I just want to make sure you guys know that I really, really appreciate what you do, and like, it would be really [00:12:00] difficult for a farmer to create a software so useful like Barn2Door, we just don't have time.
So, to have someone else that's not a farmer actually care about what we do, it really means a lot.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, that's my day job.
Yeah. Thanks Alex.
Alex Russell: We're reliant on each other because before any of us used Barn2Door, I mean, gosh, we were trying to take orders on emails and texts and like what if the farmer's market's closed six months outta the year?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Alex Russell: What if we live three hours away from a neighborhood and we can't really have a farm store that makes sense for people to come and shop on our farm? We have to have other ways for people to not only know that we exist, but also to be able to get our stuff, too. So, Barn2Door is that.
Janelle Maiocco: Thank you, Alex.
And just partly to sort of clarify, but a part of what you're saying is, the buyers today, they love local food, they want to connect, they want to buy from you, but they also want the convenience. They need to, A, know you exist, so [00:13:00] that's where the brand comes in. You must have a brand, and frankly, be online in front of buyers.
Buyers are now online, and they love to pay with their credit cards online. And so, I think I have worked with you long enough to know that part of what changed the game for you in terms of the selling process is now all of your buyers can buy online anytime, even while you're asleep. They can have subscriptions that are year round, even with no markets, they still can get deliveries or local pickups from you.
And so, you're able to sell year round, and pre sell even advance of having items again, all through. Having that online store and portal for people to self serve order, and again, I think to your point, subscriptions has just been, I don't know what, a miracle drug I think in many cases because people want they want to secure their local food to be fair like you're doing your buyers a service, too.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: I'll tell you what's really interesting and maybe we go a little deep before we go wide but you were talking about[00:14:00] those huge commodity monocrop type farms. What I think some people fail to understand, and again, like I said, I was onboarding some new employees today who are very excited and inspired to help farmers, by the way, especially, specifically, independent farmers, because we talk about how if a single crop farm, whether it's corn, soy, or even 25 acres of brussels sprouts.
If your contract is with a single grocer or single company, and it falls through, you're kind of just screwed. Like, it's actually really risky. Not only are they telling you, "Hey, here's the terrible price I'm going to give you for that high volume amount of one crop, but I might just flip it to the other guy." It's really fragile and risky.
Alex Russell: Yes. Absolutely. That's why crop insurance was created, the whole system relies on crop insurance because if you have a bad year, you rely on the government to bail you out if you're a big commodity farmer.
Janelle Maiocco: If you're a [00:15:00] big farm, yeah.
Alex Russell: Each movement of people being inspired to farm, and they're young, and they're passionate, and they do not want to go buy a thousand acres and plant it all in seeds.
Janelle Maiocco: And if they did, it would be, it would be horror, it would be like a lose, lose, lose.
If you do the big monocrop, obviously it's horrible for the soil, the nutrition value of whatever monocrop that is, is about similar to a piece of cardboard, and if the contract doesn't go through, it's not going to work anyway, so the net, net of it is, it's a fragile system that is not great, and so when you look at, and I was sharing this morning, like if you look at the opposite, if independent farmers don't succeed, which clearly they are and we love being part of everything we can do to move mountains to make sure that's true, I showed them pictures of pigs on pasture, and then pigs in their actual little factory cages, and I was like, if you don't have independent farmers, you have a big crop centralized ag [00:16:00] system based on the government, where you get no choice, no nutrition, and very little control as a consumer, and it's just fragile, fragile, fragile, and also not healthy.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Like I don't even see any win in there. Do you?
Alex Russell: No, I don't. And honestly, it's super sad to look at the amount of suicide numbers amongst farmers, because it is just, like you said, you just constantly lose, and you never win. You can own your business, you can control your own thing, but you never ever win.
You never get on top, and you never feel like you're really making a big difference to the world, and you're just a cog in the wheel, being a big commodity farmer, you never even get to meet your customers. And that is such a killer for someone who actually grows food. If you never meet your customers and they never get to thank you face to face for the food you grew that they got to eat and nourish their family with, [00:17:00] it all makes sense as to why people don't want to be a farmer like that anymore.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, it makes me happy to see people wisening up, obviously farmers are already the wiser, but consumers as well, right? Wanting to buy direct. Realizing that their world of food, if they're just going the typical route of grocery stores and big box and whatnot, that it's not as healthy. They can look around and see that, right?
And I think the power in the independent farmer, to your point, you mentioned, it's like you don't want to just sell to one big contract and have one crop, the success rate of that is next to nil, which is to your point, why you do have farmers who have high rates of suicide, but you move then towards the farmers that are independent farmers all across this country, there's so much power in that and it's so exciting and we want them to be wildly successful and then we want more and more and more, right?
It's like, sort of a great takeover, and for us, that's the motivating factor for our growing team is like building the software, [00:18:00] giving the support, getting the data, what do they need, what do they need, what do they need, and why we've built out so much of what we've built out, not even just software, but, marketing tools, and even classes, you even teach a class for farmers.
Alex Russell: Yeah, I love it. Can I talk about it?
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, it's sort of like all things to help the independent farmer and just what Alex is going to talk about. It's one of the things we offer, obviously they get a lot of support from the Barn2Door team. There's a lot of do it yourself resources on Barn2Door too, like you can do videos, read ebooks, get all the data on what to be successful.
But then we also literally offer what we call academy classes for farmers to attend. And it's taught by other farmers that are having success, that we work closely with, but who are crushing it across all the things, all the things that you need to do to be successful as an independent farmer, because I think the key here, Alex, is you said selling was like the hardest thing.
And if you back up one step, you must do marketing in order to [00:19:00] transact sales. And you must consistently do marketing for consistent, ongoing sales. And so, the funny key is you must do marketing for sales. So, it's really like one step back to be highly successful in sales is the little marketing engine, but we do everything we can here at Barn2Door to facilitate ease of marketing, including everything from social media assets and newsletters and classes.
So tell them about your class, including what it's called.
Alex Russell: Yeah, so I teach the grassroots marketing class. And, it's so much fun. It's always full. We have to teach it every month now because it was on once every two or three months at the beginning. And all of a sudden, it was like as soon as we started offering the class every month, the class filled up every single time and we've got usually about, 20 people per class, and I get to take them through all sorts of, not just marketing strategies, but [00:20:00] also brand building which is a really, really huge thing for me that I spend a lot of time giving them courage to see themselves as their brand, to boost their brand, to see themselves not just as a business, but as an idea and something that people experience.
And so, we spend three weeks, once a week, we go through it, the class is an hour long each time, and we just really, really have a blast, and you're absolutely right that for the sales to work, you have to do the marketing and getting into farming, no one thinks about, it's not, you don't get into farming to sell things.
You get into farming to, to grow things, usually. Or to get away from things or to get out of the city and live in the country. You have to figure it out. And then, you get all these animals and then you have all this meat in your freezer and you're like, man, I should probably sell this stuff, so let [00:21:00] me figure it out.
So, the avenue through sales is to have marketing to make people aware that you exist, to let them know that you're there and to give them an idea of what they're going to experience when they buy your products. And so, I was really excited that we were talking about rebranding this podcast, because I spend a decent amount of time in the second week talking about the brand that they need to establish as the marketing tool that you don't market just ground beef, you don't just market lettuce, but you market your brand.
Janelle Maiocco: Correct.
Alex Russell: And you give people an idea of what you're about through your brand that they're going to experience. And so, I find that a lot of people, when they start their business, whether it's a farm business or not, they're afraid to rebrand. And, we went through a rebrand about a year into our business, [00:22:00] and our business was not called Chucktown Acres for like the first year.
And so, I needed the courage to change the name. You think it's going to be a huge deal, but just for any of the farmers out there listening, I give you permission to rebrand. It is okay. You will be alright. I know it can be a nerve wracking idea, but if you don't like your farm name, if you don't like your logo, if there's things about your brand that you don't like, do it, because you will be so much happier.
I tell people, think of a name that you wouldn't mind saying a hundred times that day. And for me, I can say Chucktown Acres all day long. That name came to me, through this brainstorming meeting that we did that was really, really useful. And, I just could not get Chucktown Acres out of my head for days and days and days. I was like, this has got to be it. Like, I would be happy answering the phone and saying, thanks for calling Chucktown [00:23:00] Acres. So anyway, I wanted to ask you, were you nervous to rebrand or at least rebranding just the podcast, or was this something that you've known that you wanted to do for a while?
I'm interested in that thought process too, as a business that's not necessarily a farm.
Janelle Maiocco: I appreciate that. I think, I mean, if you're a business selling, you need to have a brand, right? And you need to do marketing. So, I'll answer that question, then I want to back up and talk about farmer brands because that's such a big part of being an independent farmer.
And part of, honestly, what Barn2Door helps with, so I want to get into that. But in terms of rebranding the podcast itself, I would say I didn't love our former name, Direct Farm Podcast, for some time. I loved what it meant. It was emphasizing the importance of the transaction with no middleman, which of course is still what we're passionate about for independent farmers, that we are just a software that farmers use under the hood to be successful, and ideally all the tools[00:24:00] to market and sell and manage orders, inventory, finances, etc.
So we're very bullish on it being direct, but I also didn't think it was clear enough or quite enough Explained quite well enough all that we did and what we were truly passionate about, beyond the helping the farmer who is selling direct, skipping the middleman. Like, great, awesome, that's square box number one, but what does it really mean to be an independent farmer? And honestly, Alex, the name didn't come to me until recently, over the last couple of months. So, I love that you're like, I could say that all day long, because when it finally came to me, again, thinking about and rethinking, right, rethinking, because you do evolve as a business and your messaging sometimes becomes more clear and your value and your mission and vision become sometimes more clear.
And in our case, I think in the greater context of the food system even, it's like we're not just helping farmers that are selling direct. We're helping the independent farmer everywhere, anywhere in this country be as successful as [00:25:00] possible, as, as fast as we can. Like, here's the software.
Great. Now, you can have an online store for your customers to buy. It's really simple. Here's your pick and pack list for delivery day. You've got your inventory in real time. Great, let's save you a ton of time. Let's get it all situated, but let's help you be successful. Let's then take the next layer, which is, how do you be successful?
Cause we know, from data, you should offer subscriptions. And if you offer quarters, halves, wholes, great. Have you thought about a subscription bundle box, cause people have smaller freezers? Or, if you have an online store, if you have 400 items in that store, most people only scroll past the first two and a half pages.
So it's like, we have this data that we can then turn around, help people be successful, and we've just been adding layers and layers. We're just like success, right? We'll build it in the software. We'll get you the data. We'll get you the classes. And then, of course, one of my favorites is our marketing toolkit now, which is like 50 or 60 graphic designs that [00:26:00] my design team puts together every single month for farmers to then use on their social media, MailChimp templates, templates for their newsletters and content ideas.
We just really aim to be turnkey, but for the independent farmer. And I think the passion from that comes from, we want farmers to sell direct because we know they can maximize their margin.
Right? We want farmers to make the most money they possibly can. We want them to make recurring sales, month over month over month, which is great for subscriptions. And we know that, and because you can set your own prices, like you said, Alex, all of that's beautiful, but the responsibility to have the advantage of your own freedom as a farmer, making your own decisions, setting your prices, knowing your own customers, calling the shots.
Some of that comes with the responsibility of, okay, you do actually have to do your finances. You do have to do some of the business side of farming that's not as fun, managing orders, logistics, answering customers, and also marketing. And [00:27:00] marketing isn't always a farmer favorite, but it is part of the freedoms that come with the independent farmer.
And I think any farmer knows that there's parts of their job, just like my job and any job that is not going to be your favorite. That doesn't mean they don't need to get done, right? And marketing is definitely part of that. So, on the brand front we, and I want to share the new preamble, but we're talking about we are software for independent farmers to help them create and promote their brand, number one, number two, to sell online and in person.
And then number three, to save time managing their business. That's kind of in a nutshell what Barn2Door does. And you know I love sell online in a person because now we have the only POS built for farmers, but that's neither here nor there, right?
Alex Russell: Yeah, right. That's awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, but so I love the rebrand.
I love your recommendation to people, a brand is important. It's recognizable. You're selling you, as a farmer. You're selling your vision as a farmer. You're selling, whether you have animals or [00:28:00] produce, it's the whole package of health and local and you got to sell that.
And so, we have add on services, we have the marketing tool, but we also build logos for farmers. Right? If they don't have one. And then, to your point from a brand perspective, we build their website, we help them with their shop button on Facebook.
We have an integration with MailChimp, so the newsletters are really easy. Have you used some of those things, and are any of those saving you time or being effective?
Alex Russell: Yeah, so we got our logo created right before we signed up for Barn2Door.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I love your logo.
Alex Russell: We got lucky by using a cheap service to get a great logo and it worked out fine. I would have loved to have Barn2Door, because you guys know me, you know my business. But our logo is great. But really, the website building was huge, because I just can't even fathom trying to build a website, let alone an online store connected to it, let [00:29:00] alone MailChimp connecting to the online store and just being able to have all the nerdy stuff behind the scenes there done for me.
I mean, that's more time with my cows that I can spend. That's more time with my kids that I can spend. That's more family time. That is going to save me so much time not having to worry about that stuff. You mentioned pick and pack lists.
Like I can literally gather up all the sales from that week in about 45 seconds, print off my pick and pack sheets. And within a minute and a half, I have all the sales that came through that week organized, categorized by pickups and deliveries. I literally just have to go put meat in bags and put it in the delivery truck.
Not having to go through all the emails and texts and remembering, someone literally texted me today like, hey, can [00:30:00] I get six dozen eggs, and two packs of bacon next week? And I said, yes, go on the website.
Janelle Maiocco: Here's my link. Here's the link to go order, right?
Alex Russell: There's no way you should trust a farmer to remember your order on text alone. There's just no way we could keep up with that. And that was the hardest thing, for me getting started, was getting used to spending time on the computer, getting inventory up, getting the wheels turning.
But, now we have momentum with our online store. The Instagram stuff I still do, but I have everything really streamlined for our business to where people used to ask me, "What's the hardest thing about being a farmer?" Or "what's the thing you like the least?" And I would tell them, the amount of time that I have to spend on the computer, because I'm like learning how to do this, and it was not very fun, but [00:31:00] that's not my answer anymore. It's just so easy now that I have the momentum with the software, even with putting up social media, newsletters. Once you can figure out the stuff and streamline it, you could spend way more time farming, or with your family, or I went on a coffee date with a friend the other day, and I was like, I could not have done this the first couple years, like, I would not, I went fishing the other day, and it was like, on a Monday, I went fishing, and I was like, this didn't happen the first couple years of farming, because I was spending so much time trying to figure stuff out, so.
I'm so grateful to have this stuff so streamlined, so easy. And really I don't have to think about sales nearly as much as I did at the beginning.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it.
Alex Russell: Part of that is the subscriptions thing. I cannot talk about the subscriptions enough. They have saved our business. They have taken us to new levels of [00:32:00] peace and prosperity with our business.
And it is an absolute game changer. I want to send a message to any farmers that are not doing subscriptions right now. Go start one. It'll take your customers a little while to figure it out, to get used to it, but start it. Get the ball rolling because in six months, you will be making money that you did not have to work for in a sales channel at all.
You just got to go grow it.
Janelle Maiocco: It's so crazy. And I want to say two things about that. One, is it's subscriptions. I told those new folks that were starting today, I'm like subscriptions is literally one of my favorite topics because Subscriptions save lives.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Right? I mean, you're talking about...
Alex Russell: We should make a t shirt.
Janelle Maiocco: I know, but like this, and I hate to mention the suicide rates, but you're right. People have indicated that that's especially tough for farmers, but what they're not indicating is it's because it's farmers in particular who don't have control over [00:33:00] their pricing. They don't have their own customer relationships.
They're all at the whims of somebody else and it's scary and risky. And really uncomfortable. You don't have freedoms in that situation. And so, you and I are talking about a completely different breed and opportunity. For farmers who are businessmen, who are owner operators, men and women, excuse me, who are owner operators of their own business and have the freedom to farm and the freedom to make those decisions and we love that.
But I will tell you this, subscriptions is one of my favorite features that we build at Barn2Door because, if you use another generic software that's not built for farmers, it doesn't work so well for farmers because subscriptions, on other just e commerce services that, like I said, are very generic and not built for farmers are very clunky.
They don't have the things that farmers need. So, when we built subscriptions in house, we're like, okay, so farmers need start and stop. So, they have seasonal subscriptions. So they need a start date, they need an off date. And they [00:34:00] need somebody to be able to join halfway through. If they want somebody, if they want to offer someone to join halfway through, they can have that option.
And oh, by the way, farmers need the option to say, Hey, can you pay up front or you can pay as you go?
Alex Russell: Oh, that's a big one.
Janelle Maiocco: And, do you want to pay up front? You can pay up front by check. Ongoing is credit card links, gotta make sure the farmer gets paid. But ultimately, it's like all the options for farmers to sell seasonal subscriptions, to pre sell, months ahead, before that even begins.
And then we have many farmers, then after that we build ongoing subscriptions. So you literally can have, we have tons of farmers now who are doing year round subscriptions, yourself included.
Alex Russell: Yes, absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: And it saves lives. It does save lives.
Alex Russell: I'm religious about ongoing subscriptions.
Janelle Maiocco: I swear because I mean, we have some farms that have like a good 70 80 percent of their food pretty much pre sold every single month at this point. And we get the feedback, we sleep better. We have a moment. I almost cried one time. One farmer wrote back and said, she actually, she's a [00:35:00] single mom with three kids, farming, amazing woman. And she's like, I actually get to sit down and have dinner with my kids.
And I lost, I totally lost it. That made me happier than happiness. She knows she's getting paid. People are subscribing to her farm products. She's growing like crazy now, because when you have things sold ahead of time, pre sold subscriptions, or even pre sold before the butcher dates of things, cause you can do that with Barn2Door too and get deposits ahead of time, like you sleep better, but you can also think about do I want to expand?
I have time to maybe do that now.
Alex Russell: Yes, yep. When I talk to farmers about the difference between relying on a la carte orders versus subscriptions, I tell them about Blockbuster versus Netflix.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, yeah.
Alex Russell: Because Blockbuster relied on you going there, picking a movie, you pay for the movie, you go home, you watch it, you have to bring it back.
Netflix, you just give them your credit card one time, [00:36:00] and then you have access, and you never have to think, you don't think like, oh, did I pay my Netflix bill? It's not a thing, it's not a thought. It just comes out of your card without you even thinking about it, and you get to enjoy the benefits of paying for that service.
And that's what you can offer your customers with a subscription. I try to encourage, if farmers have the inventory, especially if they're on the protein side like I am, offer the ongoing subscription because it's way harder to rally people up to sign again when you stop them. If you do a 12 week subscription on, let's say it's like mine and mine's meat and eggs.
I've got plenty of meat and eggs to sell past 12 weeks. So, why would I shut them off and ask them to go back on and sign back up again when I can just make these subscriptions ongoing and they get to enjoy and they don't have to think about it. That's a huge [00:37:00] thing for buyers now is that they're so busy.
If you can save them two minutes of having to take some effort out to do something, they're going to sign up with you longer.
Janelle Maiocco: And they're going to sign up to keep paying without even thinking about it. We call it click and forget.
Alex Russell: Yeah, yeah. It's really, really powerful.
Janelle Maiocco: They click, they buy a subscription, they forget, and then they keep getting your lovely farm food.
And they are, I guarantee you, once they taste it, we can get back to all that, right? It's just game changers. They love it. They love supporting local farms. The demand is there. Everything that we can do to help make it easier for farmers, customers to get their food regularly, it makes us so happy.
Love it. Okay. So now, I have to jump back to the podcast. If people paid attention today, they heard the new intro little song and ditty for the new Independent Farmer podcast, but I'm going to read it and then at the end, they just need to listen to the outro or the little ditty at the end, [00:38:00] which is kind of fun, right?
You have to choose music and say a little intro and goodbye. You know, all the podcasts you listen to, it's kind of fun.
Alex Russell: Yep.
Janelle Maiocco: It takes a lot longer than you think to choose the songs.
Alex Russell: Oh, it's like part of the brand. You connect with that little, like the commercial. Like you connect with that.
Janelle Maiocco: All over the place. There's so many options for music.
Alex Russell: It would take me days to pick one. So, glad I didn't have to.
Janelle Maiocco: I have to admit, yeah, it was certainly fun. See, rebranding can be fun, and we should encourage that, right? The new intro says, Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman, and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers.
This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door. We offer software for independent farmers to create and promote their brand, sell online and in person, and save time managing their business. That's the nutshell, Alex. That's why we moved to Independent farmer.
Alex Russell: Love it. I feel way more empowered just hearing that intro.
Janelle Maiocco: [00:39:00] Oh, you're so kind. Well, you're the one doing the hard work. I get to do the fun of supporting awesome people like you.
Alex Russell: Yeah, thank you. Very rarely do we get to have other people encourage us, like other people who understand what it means to be a farmer, and to especially be in the regenerative, direct, independent space that we're in.
And so you guys have thousands of farms that you work with, and we have meetings with you guys all the time, we have account managers, and so you guys understand our struggles, what we go through better than anyone else does. So, to empower your farmers with that intro is awesome, and then, again, just having this podcast be a place where farmers can come and listen while they drive.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, or learn from people like you. Right? I mean, it's just like, you have all the wisdom of what worked and didn't. It's so important to have these conversations. To your point, I think once you told me before, you're like, you're on your farm, you're by yourself. [00:40:00] And you know there's farmers everywhere with so much wisdom, and when all the independent farmers are working so hard to be successful, you don't want it to be in a silo, forgive the term, but, no, like, you really don't, but, like, I'm just saying, you don't want the individual independent farmers to be in their own silo, etc. You really do want any chance we're getting here to try to create like shared knowledge, shared success, shared data. Here's what works. Don't do that. On the new independent farmer podcast, we have five categories, and then we have three sort of series that are like focus areas.
And one of the series is the new farmer, so it's like a new farmer series. And I think your last podcast, Alex. Is like top of the list in the new farmer series because you have so much advice.
Alex Russell: Oh, that's awesome. Any way you can skip a few steps in the beginning, if you can learn from other people's mistakes when you start your farm, there really is a scale that you set a trajectory when you start your [00:41:00] farm business.
And if you try to do it without reading the books and listening to the podcasts and watching the videos, if you just go on inspiration alone without the wisdom of those who have failed before you, your business will not take off for a very, very long time and you will have a ton of unnecessary frustration.
So, I'm just pumped to hear that. Even with this marketing class that I get to do with you guys, I get to talk to a lot of, you know, not everyone is a new farmer in that class, but some of them are, so, I feel like I get to help them turn that trajectory up higher so that at year one, they're at the sales number that they would be at year four, had they not gotten any advice.
So, if there's farmers listening, please read the books, listen to the podcast and learn from others because, I have [00:42:00] plenty of farming friends that don't do this and they go off of, I don't know, blogs and articles, and then that's it, and they spend a lot of time failing. And a lot of time not making money and a lot of time animals dying, losing crops.
It's serious stuff. Failing on the farm, you need to learn from your mistakes for sure. But, when your mistakes equal dead animals, like the coyote comes into the egg mobile because you didn't set the automatic doors right? And you don't have as many eggs to sell.
Janelle Maiocco: It's a costly mistake too, yeah.
Alex Russell: Not only are animals lives losing that you cared for, you got these little things when they were chicks and they just start laying their eggs six months later. And then a coyote comes and kills 10 of them in one night. If you would have listened to somebody and gotten the knowledge, man, what a difference it would have made to, especially in your trajectory, because your mind is all over the place when you're starting.
And any little failure can really, really mess with you.
Janelle Maiocco: But [00:43:00] also make you better. I mean, you can't avoid failures.
Alex Russell: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, it's so funny. So, let me tell you the five categories that we have on the podcast. Cause I'm sure you'll love to hear them. And we revisited the categories that we had had on the Direct Farm podcast.
So, we looked at those and we're like, hey, I know that we were pretty focused on, farm having their brand, selling direct, but how do we sort of take it across to the entire business, independent farming, and what's the, obviously the benefits and the passion behind that, but what do they need to be successful across their entire business, right?
Both engaging customers, but also managing things on the back end. And so, one, we kept one that was in the barn. So, that's just if you're hearing from Barn2Door team members, what we're working on, what we're building next for farmers, which we obviously get very passionate about. And then we introduced a second category called audio books and it's, we have 62 eBooks.
I don't know if you knew that, but we write a ton of eBooks and it's on pretty much moving away from the sale barn, getting examples of [00:44:00] six farms making over six figures, it's how to successfully do social media. It's pretty much anything that would be useful to any farmer.
Just go cherry pick the audio book of your choice. Whether you're trying to learn how to do delivery or grow produce for profitability or move away from the sale barn. I think there's some cheeky one about profit over poverty for pasture poultry, there's some good nuggets in that one.
We'll be reading those as audiobooks, so that farmers like when, especially if you're like driving or doing some things on the farm that aren't particularly loud, you can listen to the audiobooks and we'll just read them, which is just a whole series of great things to absorb.
And then the third category is all marketing. Marketing, marketing, marketing.
Alex Russell: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: What works, what doesn't, what you can do organically, what's grassroots marketing. What can you automate in marketing, and how to do your brand, how to build your brand channels, how often should you engage your customers?
Right? There's a lot, it's interesting. A lot of farms [00:45:00] in the last couple of podcasts I did, they're all like, I was so afraid to send an email and I now send them every single week.
Alex Russell: Nice.
Janelle Maiocco: I think you said that too, didn't you?
Alex Russell: Yep. I was afraid of being annoying, but I had to get over myself. I saw that there were companies that were sending me emails every day.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Alex Russell: And that drove me nuts. But then, I would get an email from another company that would only send me one like once a month. And I literally had forgotten that that company, I did not think about that company from the last email until I got the new one a month later. And people eat every day.
Janelle Maiocco: Insert farmer.
Alex Russell: But people shop for their food once or twice a week. And so, why not give them the opportunity to buy your food once or twice a week? You gotta get on their level. And don't be afraid of being annoying. These people are your fans. They love you, so.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes, they do. They don't love the other companies [00:46:00] emailing them every week, but they love the farmer emailing them every week.
Actually, that reminds me.
Alex Russell: Every day is too much.
Janelle Maiocco: You and I did a presentation once on buyer survey on how often they shop for food and how to get in front of them once or twice a week. And that's actually in an e book. Did you know that?
Alex Russell: I didn't know that.
Janelle Maiocco: It's an e book. We'll have to read it and put it in the audio section. I'll make sure to tag you.
Alex Russell: I love it.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, it's good. So we have all marketing, because marketing is essential. So, we have audiobooks, marketing, in the barn. And then, we have one called Business Matters. It's just everything from finance to operations to just business. Any of the new farmer things would fit here.
How to think about pricing, how to think about packaging, how to double your business. We had Tagge's Fruit have a whole podcast on doubling her CSA and she did it like in two years from like 500 to a thousand, like it was nuts. So, everything business decision wise, right?
That doesn't squarely fit under marketing or sales. And it's really [00:47:00] like how you think about the strategic side and expanding your footprint or being more effective or saving time, frankly. And then, the fifth one is called Food Matters. And so, we have this great spot for talking about the bigger things and the bigger trends, and some passion areas, if that makes sense.
Alex Russell: Yes, right. I love that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I could tee you up for some good topics there.
Alex Russell: Oh man, don't hold me back.
Janelle Maiocco: I know, we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later. I love it.
Alex Russell: I want to give you a little feedback. I love that you guys turned the e books, or I guess you're in the process of turning the e books into audiobooks.
Because, we're so busy as farmers trying to make sure we can make a living doing this. It takes a lot of, we work ungodly amount of times. Most of us are working 50, 60 hours a week to make this happen. And so we don't have a lot of time to sit around and read. And if we do, we're usually exhausted from [00:48:00] working all day.
As farmers, there's a lot of monotonous tasks that we do. Packing eggs, washing lettuce, driving to the farmer's market, driving to pick up some more pigs. We do a lot of things that don't take a ton of brain energy. So, we can listen to these audiobooks, in times that you can't really read something and pack eggs at the same time, unless you're like a samurai with eggs.
So I really, I wanted to give you that feedback because I think that's a game changer and that will make the effort that you guys put into those eBooks, it'll pay off way more as an audiobook because that's what we have time for.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I'm happy to hear you say that. We started with e books and then moved to a podcast and found that that was really consumable.
And, in terms of like you're saying, farmers have more time to listen than they do to read. And that's okay. We're like, well, whatever [00:49:00] format that we have some farms who are like, Hey, I'm do it yourself. Even when they're getting onboarded to Barn2Door, they might want to watch videos and just figure it out themselves.
But there's other folks that are like, Hey, I want all, like we've had people listen to every podcast. We have farmers who listen to 145 and running, which is awesome. Anything to help farmers be successful, frankly.
Alex Russell: Yeah, and sometimes you have to figure out what your consumers want and give it to them.
Because, I'm just thinking about our subscription. When I started our subscriptions, not to derail us too much, but...
Janelle Maiocco: No, it's good.
Alex Russell: I think this will be helpful. When I started our meat and egg subscriptions, I created three very different subscriptions. And I had one that was like, if you like all the weird stuff, the organs and the bones, this subscription's for you.
If you want the fancy stuff only, chicken breast, filet mignon, ribeyes , pork tenderloin, this one's for you. If you only like really simple stuff, ground beef and [00:50:00] sausage, this one's for you. I think we had one person sign up and I had three subscriptions and I had one sign up and over the course of like months and I was so frustrated because I was like, I'm covering all the bases here.
What's wrong? And what was wrong was, my people didn't want any of that. That's not what they wanted. It's what I wanted them to want.
Janelle Maiocco: I love how you said that.
Alex Russell: Cause then, it would cover all the bases of my walk in freezer. Every corner is now sold if I can get them to sign up for these things, but they didn't want it.
They wanted very simple cuts, and they wanted to pay how often they got it. So now, I have the same subscription, but I have it in three different increments. You can get it every week, every other week, or once a month.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep. Yep.
Alex Russell: And now we have 40 something people signed up spending 75 to $150 every time.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Alex Russell: And those are sales that I don't have to think about anymore. [00:51:00]
Janelle Maiocco: I love it.
Alex Russell: And they just wanted chicken breast and sausage and ground beef and wings, and they didn't want any of the crazy weird stuff. They didn't even necessarily need filet mignon. They just wanted something that they could feed their kids that they felt good about.
That wasn't going to be super difficult for them to cook.
Janelle Maiocco: It's funny you say that because, actually it brings me back to conversation both with Tom Bennett and Laci on recent podcasts, and by the way, there we have a top recommended podcast section now on our new landing page, the new landing page is next week.
Well, actually, whenever this goes live, it'll probably be about live too, but including some juicy recent podcasts. And this would go under the category of business matters, right? Like when you're like, okay, I tried this, this, this, that didn't work, that worked.
Okay. Apparently you need to listen to your customers. Fine behavior. You know, or different things like that, that just seems so obvious once it's said out loud, but you can learn it the hard way again too, right? It's a lot of [00:52:00] wisdom and a lot of nuggets coming through that are just remarkable.
It actually reminds me of a conversation this morning, with some of our team members. We were talking about branding because we build logos for farmers, and we were talking about logos, and one of our farmers, we had built her logo, and she put it on the side of her delivery van, and she gets like 10 to 15 new customers every single week.
Because, they see her vans with the logos on the side. Now, isn't that a great piece of information?
Alex Russell: That's incredible.
Janelle Maiocco: Don't you want all the farms to know this? Go be successful. Get everybody hooked on subscriptions and amazing bacon and beautiful produce, and nutrient dense food.
Let's take a huge swing at this. And then, not slow down, right? And help independent farmers be successful.
Alex Russell: Yeah, I hope she can keep up with all the volume. I mean, she better start growing.
Janelle Maiocco: I mean, that's one of those, that's when you get into the good problems to have, right?
Alex Russell: Yes, absolutely.
That's so important that people, that you have a [00:53:00] recognizable brand, too. Like, you know, the Nike swoosh, everybody knows what that means.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Alex Russell: And I use that a lot in the grassroots marketing class, you don't want a logo that nobody could really understand or see and it just looks like a bunch of blurry lines.
Let them know what you're about, you know? Don't make it over complicated. And, I love that she put that on the van and then it brings in a ton of sales.
Janelle Maiocco: That's kind of crazy.
Alex Russell: Initial work is there and then sales from there.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. And I tell you, there's so many important topics to talk about.
And I guess that's why we're really excited about the rebrand of the Independent Farmer. And you know this, and you and I could talk about all of them for hours, frankly, but there are parts of being an independent farmer, there are parts of all of our jobs that we're naturally really good at.
And then, there are parts of our jobs that we aren't as good at, or don't like as much, that we still need to do. And I'm sure everybody can think of those, right? Literally you can talk to anybody. It's like you can talk to an engineer and maybe [00:54:00] they love to build code, but documentation's not their favorite.
But, that's really important because the next engineer coming in needs to know where to pick up, where you left off, right? So, there's really important parts of everybody's job that they need to do that it's nobody's favorite. Even the biggest CEOs of the biggest companies have parts of their job they don't prefer to do. Right?
And so, as an independent farmer, it's good to think about the things that you love to do great, like check the box, but then what are the parts that you actually incrementally should face head on, get better at, get comfortable with, and do to a point that you actually aren't afraid of it, scared of it, want to avoid it, but you know that it's buttoned up and you've got it, right? And I feel like in independent farming, like one of our new series is called Money Talks. And so it's everything about how to do your finances. What do you do when it comes to accounting, reporting?
How do you do the pricing? And to think about money, and Tom Bennett, I'm sure one of his podcasts will land under money talks because he loves to talk about how do you price things? How [00:55:00] do you value your time? And has some really honest conversations about that.
So, face those head on. As soon as you start to master some of those things, your confidence and your business will benefit from it. And you will, again, we're all about sleeping better here, right? So money talks, I feel like falls there.
Marketing falls there for a lot of farmers and we can help and you've crushed it yourself and you've just gotten better and you're crushing it now. Who knew you were going to be like an expert on reels and teach grassroots marketing to farmers?
Alex Russell: Yeah. Not me three years ago, that's for sure.
Janelle Maiocco: You did not. Yeah. You did not want to touch social media with 10 foot pole and now you're literally teaching grassroots marketing, Alex.
Alex Russell: Yeah. And we have a pretty great section on using Instagram to educate people. So...
Janelle Maiocco: See, so it's just a few years in to facing all the different parts of the business side of it.
Being an independent farmer is going to help people be successful and we just couldn't be more excited.
Alex Russell: Yeah. Yeah. It's a great resource. I love it because it's just stuff that you [00:56:00] would probably have to read the whole book to get the knowledge that you would get out of that one podcast, and so you guys are weeding through the mess for us to get what we need as farmers because not a lot of books are written for farmers, especially in the business, sales and marketing world.
Janelle Maiocco: That's all we want to do.
Alex Russell: There's only like a few examples of like really famous farmers that sell direct. There's like only a few of them that you can name off the top of your head.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Alex Russell: But, if you think about the business world, the marketing world, there's thousands of people that have written books in general marketing, but it's really, really nice to have a resource like this podcast. You can come on. I didn't even know you guys were doing categories. That's really sweet.
Janelle Maiocco: And series, which I'm so excited. Yes.
Alex Russell: Yes. And I love the series that you guys did with Farm to Consumer Legal Defense.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh yeah. I'm glad you said that.
Alex Russell: So awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: We're keeping that like a [00:57:00] legal series. Um, did you listen to a few of those?
Alex Russell: Yeah, yeah. I love those.
Janelle Maiocco: Do a shout out for the farm to consumer legal defense fund, I think it's like roughly a hundred dollars a year for a farmer and you literally get free legal advice like it's miraculous, and important, so they do such a good job.
We do podcasts with them on e commerce across state lines, on halves, quarters, wholes, on raw milk, on shifting regulations from state to state on various topics. What do you need to know about selling direct when you're selling bundles, or on the hook, etc.
So, there's a lot. I love providing farmers with the knowledge that is power for them to make good decisions and just keep on going.
Alex Russell: Absolutely. We've been a member with them since the beginning, and we needed them in our first year. We had one of their attorneys fought for us, for poultry processing rights and our state of South Carolina was not wanting to give us our poultry processing even though we were under federal exemptions.
We [00:58:00] brought them in, they kicked their butts, and they got us the processing licenses that we needed. And it was just like...
Janelle Maiocco: God bless.
Alex Russell: Thank God that I have an attorney on my side that can fight for me, because...
Janelle Maiocco: I love it.
Alex Russell: Yeah, like I said, there's not a lot of resources for farmers like this.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, we're here.
And we're not slowing down and we are happy to provide any and all, at all times. Including this new podcast, right?
I wanna extend a big thank you to Alex for joining us on this week's Independent Farmer podcast episode.
You can check out Alex and his farm on his Instagram handle @chucktownacres. Check it out. It's good, clean, fun. And he's a great one to follow. Good example. Clearly he's teaching classes on topic.
If you're an independent farmer who is just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while, and want help creating and promoting your brand, selling online and in person, or need to save time managing your business, it's pain free to take a few minutes to go to [00:59:00] barn2door.com/learn-more.
Thank you for tuning in today. We look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast, and please enjoy the new outro. Listen to the music, enjoy the last little recorded words after this. This will be the first time we share it. Thank you everyone, and can't wait until the next podcast.
Thank you for joining us, on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door.com/resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.