What if Farms started like Tech Companies? - Accelerate Rural N.C.
In this episode of the Direct Farm Podcast, we're excited to host Dennis Tracz. Dennis Tracz is a serial entrepreneur with experience in technology, sports management, and consumer products goods start-ups. He is one of the board members for Accelerate Rural N.C., a business accelerator program focused on helping active businesses in rural communities, such as local direct-to-market Farms, streamline the growth of their businesses.
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Rory: 0:26
Welcome to the Direct Farm Podcast. I'm Rory your host, we've got a great conversation for you today with Accelerate Rural NC a business accelerator program put on by the East Carolina University Miller school of Entrepreneurship and the crisp small business resource center. The program focuses on rural and ag focused businesses in North Carolina. I'm delighted to welcome Dennis Tracz, the Director of Accelerate Rural NC. Welcome Dennis. It's great to have you here today.
Dennis: 0:54
Thank you. Great to be here. I'm a big fan of Barn2Door.
Rory: 0:58
That's great. We love to hear that. To start out, could you maybe just first off explain what in a business accelerator program is and what their purpose is?
Dennis: 1:07
Sure. I should say that historically business accelerators are aimed at potentially fast growing technology firms primarily. That's where you see the accelerators model used a lot. And the idea is to condense the really important things to know in order to get your business to grow fast. The term accelerator is really kind of a, streamlined method of getting the important information that you need to know in order to grow your business quickly.
Rory: 1:34
I know a lot of people have probably heard of a business incubator. What would be kind of some of the differences between an accelerator and an incubator.
Dennis: 1:41
Well, an incubator is more oriented toward, I'd say pure startups who are literally to the point, like, know, I need a logo. Where should I get, should I be incorporated, you know, really basic fundamental. And they put them in, they call them incubators and they're essentially. Rented space, shared office space, where people can share ideas and hopefully get some motivation and resources to help them get started. An accelerator usually is somebody who's already in business, a one form or another. It could be in our case, we see a lot of people who have, you know, a physical business and would like to figure out how to do an online business, given the pandemic. They already have kind of the foundation and they just want to grow quickly or in some cases, pivot to a new way of doing business, such as going online.
Rory: 2:28
Awesome. For maybe some context, what would be some examples of companies that you know of that are, and that our listeners might know of come out of accelerator programs?
Dennis: 2:37
Sure. So there there's really two major programs that have a reputation in this space. One is called Y Combinator out of Silicon Valley. And the other is called Techstars out of Boulder, Colorado. Some of the companies that have come out of those programs are Airbnb, Door Dash, Stripe, the payment processor, and the list goes on and on really there's a whole bunch of companies that use these accelerators.
Rory: 2:59
And that's really cool to hear definitely some recognizable names there especially in the tech world. So, what is the goal with Accelerate Rural NC specifically, and how is that different or more unique than other accelerators?
Dennis: 3:10
I think our accelerator is pretty unique in the sense that we are not focused on fast-growing technology companies. We operate in a very rural area. And we don't really see many of that type of business in this area. So our, goal has been really to help rural small businesses, whether it's farms, food related, or even totally unrelated to agriculture, figure out how they can grow. And primarily focused on helping them sell online. You know, when you're in a rural area and you don't have very many customers, it's difficult to grow slowly, let alone quickly if you don't have any customers or the populations really scattered. So our, our primary purpose is to help these companies figure out a way to grow as quickly as they can. And long-term, to be kind of an economic development effort for these small towns and these regions. they can end up hiring people, you know, even potentially someday selling out for millions of dollars and helping their community in that way. really our goal is, growth through online helping these companies figure out how to sell online. And also we spend a fair amount of time on how to export, how to sell to other countries. In addition to selling, you know, in the United States.
Rory: 4:22
what, What is your role as the director of the program.
Dennis: 4:24
Well, I'm kind of a resource guy I guess. My job I see is to really identify resources that can be made available to the team so that they don't have to spend a lot of time searching how do you get a website built, how do you get payment processing? You know, all of the various things that they come across, we try to I guess, put that all together in some ways, kind of a hub model where these kinds of resources can be identified so they can quickly access them and not have to spend so much time making mistakes, like I've made over the years in my entrepreneurial efforts. So I, I see my role as primarily managing resources and that includes. Mentors, guest speakers is a really big thing I spent a lot of time on. And of course, various technology or other tools that can help them with their online efforts.
Rory: 5:11
So Accelerate Rural NC runs for 10 weeks. Could you give us kind of a look into what those 10 weeks would look like for a farm?
Dennis: 5:18
Sure. So really what we do is we start off with kind of a an interview type process. The very first thing that we try to get them to think about. And this drives our entire program is, what is your purpose? Why are you doing this? What is the reason that you want to do this? That's really critical. You know, because it's hard, this is hard stuff to do. And if you don't have a real strong motivation, a real strong purpose, it's awfully difficult to persevere and get through. And that's really the most important characteristic is perseverance and a short memory. Just keep on trying. So we go through that process of their why we use Simon Sinek. Who's a well-known speaker. Encourage everybody to listen to his very first video, which is, Finding Your Why. It's outstanding. I think it's the most watched video ever on TED and then after that process, we start to look at things like who is your customer? Where are they located? What type of customers are they, what are their attributes? And that kind of leads to identifying markets. And we try to find niche markets. You know, we try not to go after the whole enchilada and go after specific niches that I think these, these folks, particularly the farmers can pursue. And then we also spend a fair amount of time. We normally have at least one guest speaker week. Sometimes we'll have two or three, and these are most often people who have been where they've been, they might be older. They may have successfully built their business particularly in the consumer space, which we kind of focus on. We don't do as much B to B, if you will. Most of it is, business to consumer selling directly to consumers. And so we, we do a fair amount of that. And we just we go through marketing, we go through research, we go through you know, platforms like which platforms should you be on? Should you be on Etsy? Should you be on or your own website? You know, is social media? How do you use that? What are the tools? We also spend a fair amount of time helping them, figure out how they're going to get this stuff done. Because one of the problems with a farmer is they're so darn busy, but to be truthful, the busy-ness is somewhat seasonal. They're not necessarily the same busy all 12 months of year. So getting them to think about off season or before season, you know, what can they do? For example, we had one farm that traditionally closed November 1st because they had nothing more to sell. And they went and got their Barn2Door website and got it up and running and actually sold jams and jellies and other packaged products at this farm had arranged to get made. They sold over the Christmas season for the first time in their history. They were selling products all through the Christmas holiday. So that's an example of how we can help them maybe see a different way than they've experienced in the past, but that's essentially what we do over the 10 weeks.
Rory: 8:01
Yeah, that's definitely super important for a farm business is taking advantage of the few times that you do have downtime and kind of putting those processes in place so that once the season does pick up, you're ready to go. So a big part of the program that you've already kind of mentioned is the mentors. So how do you go about selecting mentors for the program?
Dennis: 8:20
Well, I'm a cheater. So, I'm an eight time startup guy, so I I've been around a lot. And you know, I'm old also. So I have a lot of business associates and friends and partners. So basically our, 35 mentors that we have are, are all personal friends of mine or acquaintances or people I've done deals with. And I approached them all on the basis of, Hey, would you be willing to help people in a rural area? And without exception, they all said, yes, even though there are, some of them are actually billionaires. At this point, they really have had very little exposure to rural areas and they really like the opportunity to really help these folks that they've heard about, they've read about, they understand there's a divide between you know, the digital and the non-digital. And so they've been really willing to help these folks, even though in some cases they may not be particularly helpful based on their experience. They are smart enough to help these folks in ways maybe that they hadn't thought of.
Rory: 9:16
And so what kind of role does the mentor play in the accelerator program in terms of the real support that they provide to participants?
Dennis: 9:24
It really depends. So we started it last September. So we have had, 93 companies come through our system. And, each, I call them cohorts to be fancy, each cohort is really completely different, right? Earlier this year, the kind of winter cohort was almost all farmers because they weren't busy. They had that's when they could take the class. So, I had more farm related stuff that cohort than I had the next one, which the farmers were too busy, you know, getting ready for the season. So I had one farmer. The other thing is, the way the mentors work and we're a little unique in in this so we actually work like some of the technology accelerators. We do not assign the mentors the teams pick the mentors. So we make available who the mentors are and they are free to reach out directly or through me and select a mentor that they you know, think will be helpful to them. And what I've learned about that process is many of these people are so shy and reticent, you know, like I'm not going to ask that big CEO, you know, so I'm learning, I've got to do a little better job of letting them know that, Hey, they won't bite your head. But we had, like, for example, we had the CEO of Etsy give a talk and we had the CEO of Burt's Bees. And after both of those of many people in the group communicate with me said, wow, I never met a real CEO before he was so nice. And so, they just had not been exposed to that level of business, so they were shocked at how nice they were and how willing they were to give up themselves. So that was kind of cool.
Rory: 10:52
That's really cool to hear that you guys are able to provide that kind of support for the farms that do choose to participate in the program. So how do you guys, because you do have to apply to be in, Accelerate. So how do you guys go about choosing which applicants to bring into your Accelerator program?
Dennis: 11:08
So what we try to do is we try to get companies that least have a website, have some semblance of what they're doing because we just don't have the time to deal with somebody really at the starting gate. Basically I look for some sort of existing business. Some sort of game plan for what they're trying to do. You know, I asked him in the application, what do they hope to accomplish? So if they show me that they've got some idea what they're doing and they look like they might be able to do it. I'll look at the, type of product they might be growing or selling or so forth. And it just kind of picked, you know, based on that. No real science, more art than science I would say.
Rory: 11:43
Accelerators, they've kind of grown to be more common in, in recent years. What do you think is maybe some of the reasoning for why, a lot of times farmers have been left out of consideration for programs like these or why there aren't many programs like these in existence?
Dennis: 11:56
I think I'll start out by saying that accelerators really originally. We're aimed at a fast-growing technology companies. So really any business that wasn't that, was left out. It wasn't just farmers. It was a lot of main street retailers, could be jewelry people, cosmetics, all these people were left out of this concept of accelerator because frankly it didn't fit the model. So, the accelerators now, the methodology of really giving pertinent information and access to resources. In a shortened timeframe and kind of a non-academic approach, more of a practical, Hey, on I'm trying to help you in your business type of approach, I think is going to lend itself to be much more popular. If you have an incubator, your major goal is to rent that space out. It's really a real estate play in my opinion. So your success is hey, how many of these offices can I rent out? Well, when you do an accelerator you could also be an incubator. We're not, we don't play that game, but the accelerators' success is based on these companies growing. And these companies giving the word to next level participants, Hey, this really helped me or, you know, surveys. And so word of mouth is really important to success. So I think accelerator modus operandi, or methodology, I think you're going to see, grow and be expanded to categories beyond just technology.
Rory: 13:18
That's really great to hear. What would you say are some of the primary roadblocks that your program sees farmers facing and how does the program help mentor farmers kind of through those challenges?
Dennis: 13:29
The primary thing really believe it or not, is not really like building a website or starting things. Their problem really is maintenance and ongoing involvement. Right. So, you know, when you set up a website, You know, everyone gets real excited. You launch your website, it's a lot of work to keep that thing up to date, yada, yada, yada. So I, my biggest thing that I see is just the lack of resources, operational resources, you know, once they get into a website, how they going to get stuff done, how are they going to get pictures? How are they gonna do emails, how are they going to do social media? So kind of operationalizing these processes. Really what I see is their strongest need and the way we go about it we have a group of interns that are undergraduate students at our university. We task them out all the time. They'll build out Shopify sites or help them that, you know, whatever they need to do, they'll help them get on the road. And ultimately, you know, they're going to have to decide if they, you know, I always use the word. Do you want to be competitive? Or are you just doing it for the hell of it? If you want to be competitive, you're going to have to hire someone to do this, or figure out some way to do this, or don't do it. Because to do it, and really look poorly upon your brand or your farm or who you are is really a big mistake. And so I really emphasize helping them get resources to operationalize this online
Rory: 14:54
So obviously we said the program is 10 weeks long. So what are some of the steps that you guys take to ensure that long-term success for farmers? That it doesn't just stop after the program ends?
Dennis: 15:04
Yeah. The main thing is really figuring out operationally how they are going to go forward. And it's different, you know, depending on the company. In many cases I'm successful at getting them to get their children or somebody to help them. You know, even an intern. You know, I know that if they have that in place, they've got a shot. If they don't have it in place, I know they're not going to get anything done. Sometimes I just feel like they really don't want to do what it takes. You know, like if you were a farmer and I said to you, Hey, you want to set up a store in your town. That's a lot of work to do a store, right? It's not much different than a website. There's a million things you have to do with a physical store. So it's not just a website. It's the whole idea of selling direct to consumers and all that that entails. If you aren't ready to do that, then you need to figure out how to partner with somebody or you need to figure out a platform. You know, like an online farmer's market, there's a lot of those around find some way that you can support wholeheartedly that will really move the needle on your business.
Rory: 16:05
For farmers that aren't in North Carolina what would be some of your top tips or advice for them starting out, or maybe they've just started their farm business, but want to continue to grow it and expand their operation?
Dennis: 16:16
The very first thing we try to do is customer surveys. Find out what is it that customers want. When you're going direct to consumer, so you may be a farmer who has sold restaurants, for example, or you've sold to distributors. I don't know if those products are exactly what you'll be able to sell or not. I just don't know. So I think it's important for you to get a sense of what do customers want from you? And it gets a little bit complex because I think, you know, this whole idea of CSAs, you know, where you have a box with all different kinds of stuff. I think a lot of people just default to that, I don't know that it is necessarily the right way to go. I think you need to find out, do your customers want a box like that? Or do they want something else? So trying to understand what products and services you're going to offer I think is a really critical first step for any farmer wanting to go direct to consumer. And you know, we tell people to try to reach out to a hundred potential customers. And it takes a while. You know, it takes a little bit of time. If you may have a list of a hundred, or you may be able to get it from your farm bureau or some other organization that you're involved with, but I would encourage that engagement to try to figure out what is it that you would be able to sell and not just automatically, and you may not have a choice. I understand, but don't just automatically assume. That you can continue doing everything the way you've always done it because things are different now.
Rory: 17:39
As a final question here for you what is growth and kind of moving forward, look like for Accelerate Rural NC.
Dennis: 17:45
Great question. So we recently got a large grant from the US Department of Agriculture because they really liked what we were doing and they are talking to us about the possibility of growing us on a national level. Which I don't see any reason why we couldn't, you know, all, it takes a few bucks to really get the people and the stuff you need. It's not a super expensive program to do online. So, you know, we may find ourselves in a situation where we're able to expand beyond like even in North Carolina, when we first started. We were really oriented toward our kind of area, the Eastern part of North Carolina. And there's 29 counties east of I-95 in North Carolina where we kind of focus I guess, or where we started. And it turned out that we got applications from all over the state, just word of mouth. We did no advertising or promotion. I don't have any doubt that this could go across the country who knows maybe Barn2Door would help us in some way make this happen. But we can help these people and we can help them very quickly with a minimum of BS.
Rory: 18:45
That's awesome to hear. And it's great to hear that you guys are looking to grow and expand and, and support more rural businesses. I want to extend my thanks to Dennis and all the farmers that Accelerate Rural North Carolina. At Barn2Door, we're delighted to serve farmers in all 50 states, including farmers in North Carolina. For more information on Accelerate Rural NC visit acceleraterural.org. To learn more about Barn2Door, including access to numerous free resources and best practices for your farm. Go to Barn2Door.com/resources. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you next week.