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Episode 016.
Are you selling physical products? Can you scale fast if necessary? Have you considered adding information, education and/or entertainment to your product line?
Kirsten and Christopher Shockey had a farmer’s market-based fermented edibles business (think sauerkraut) that was so popular and grew so fast that Whole Foods Market put in a massive order for their chain of stores! While many would think that was the beginning of a huge product empire, it actually forced them to rethink what they really wanted out of their business.
Years later, they have transitioned to an information-based business, that provides entertaining books, courses and live-training all regard how to make fermented foods of all shapes, sizes, smells and colors.
They have authored 3 great books:
- Fermented Vegetables: Creative Recipes for Fermenting 64 Vegetables & Herbs in Krauts, Kimchis, Brined Pickles, Chutneys, Relishes & Pastes
- Fiery Ferments: 70 Stimulating Recipes for Hot Sauces, Spicy Chutneys, Kimchis with Kick, and Other Blazing Fermented Condiments
- Miso, Tempeh, Natto & Other Tasty Ferments: A Step-by-Step Guide to Fermenting Grains and Beans for Umami and Health
Listen as we discuss their tragedies and triumphs in business, and presenting at shows like the Mother Earth News Fair.
While, in certain spots, this episode is difficult to hear, we’ve provided a full transcript below. Listen & read now!
Find out more about the Shockeys: http://ferment.works/
Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
You’re listening to the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast. I’m Brian Pombo. I’m going to set the scene for you a little bit with this next interview. You see this all started when I was set to meet one-on-one with Kirsten and Christopher Shockey. This is kind of different because up until this point, I had not done any live interviews with anybody for this podcast. Everything had been done either by phone – we also do it by zoom, which is a digital communication similar to Skype and so being one-on-one, I thought I had all my equipment working properly.
Sadly, I was wrong. After finishing up, I realized that my microphone was not fully plugged in to my recording device. What we ended up with was subpar audio. The conversation I had with the Shockey’s was so interesting, was so revealing, that I found it necessary to get as much out of this audio as possible.
What we ended up with is – there are some parts of the audio you may not be able to fully understand what the person’s saying. So here’s what I did to help resolve the problem: We attempted to get the audio to sound as best as we could and I’ve added in transcription where you can actually read what everybody is saying. If you would rather read it, go check out the description or go to offthegridbiz.com, and right in the post, you can read every word that is spoken in the podcast. With that in mind, I hope you enjoy this great conversation that I had with the Shockeys.
Brian: Kirsten. Christopher, welcome to the Off the Grid Biz Podcast.
Shockey’s: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Brian: So why don’t you just let everyone know a little bit about who you are and what your roles are at Ferment Works.
Kirsten Shockey: Yeah, so I’m Kirsten Shockey and what we’re doing now is teaching people to Ferment and most of that is through writing books, and then that takes us all over the place teaching classes. The fun part is fermentation is becoming more and more well known as such an important food for our gut-health and so people are curious. People want to feel better. And, yeah, that’s where we come into picture.
Christopher Shockey: The previous incarnation of the business we made products, we are an organic food company and we would take organic produce in the valley here and turn it into fermented vegetables, pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, things like that. We sold at farmer’s markets and sold in Grants Pass and Medford and Ashland – in that area. And we basically grew to where we service this area. And then when we were facing the first Whole Foods order, that was as big as everything we’d produced before. That was the realization that we either grew and became something bigger, and moved our facilities and everything else, or we decided to transition it to this phase. And this is what we’ve been doing since the book came out 2014.
Kirsten Shockey: Yeah and part of that was when we were at the market, we realized how interested people were in understanding these foods more than we would of known. So, that as part of the decision.
Brian: Very cool. So, how’d you end up here? What’s your basic life? Up until this point?
Christopher: We’re old enough. That’s a long story.
Brian: Just give a brief synopsis. I mean we learned a little bit from your bio.
Christopher: So we met in Arizona Community College. We back in the day, back in the 80s. For those of you that maybe don’t remember, it was as crazy as it looks in the pictures. And my first career was at Hewlett Packard. So, um, we lived in Boise, then we moved to Corvallis. So that’s what brought us to Oregon. East Corvallis. In the meantime, we had four wonderful kids. So Kirsten homeschooled, she was trained as a school teacher. So, she homeschooled the kids and we got ever progressingly larger pieces of property to also manage. So we had an acre in Corvallis and then we wanted the kids to grow up in a rural setting to know where their food came from.
And we looked all over the country actually. Everything from played out dairy farms in New York to South Dakota. Places you could get a lot of land for not a lot of money. It was one of the trips down to California. We came through this valley and we have friends, the Pennington’s that live in the valley. Yeah, just fell in love with it. We found a farm that was – the people had raised four kids there and they had it on the market for 14 years. And basically they’re waiting for a family like, that they wanted to take the farm over. So we kind of interviewed for it, really (didn’t know it) but it was 110 that day and so the kids stripped off and played in the creek, and you know… it was the place we probably should’ve found. So that was in 1998, and that’s what brought us here and we’ve been trying to figure out how to make farm pay for itself ever since.
Kirsten: So we were homesteading and a lot of that, like Christopher said, was so that the kids could know where their food came from, a part of just being rounded individuals. And so we had dairy animals and that led us to cheese making. Not as a business ever, but that was kind of one of the first ferments that we were doing. The farm came with a lot of really old, wonderful apple trees. So cider making also became a thing. And then vegetables sort of started with a Christmas present. My mom gave us a crock with sauerkraut in it already fermenting wrapped up under the tree. So, from there we realized that fermenting vegetables from the garden was a much better way to preserve them and back to trying to find a little family business to make the farm, you know, a little bit profitable. That was when we did the small sauerkraut company.
Brian: And so you transitioned from having the physical product into basically….you’re an information business in a sense. Right?
Kirsten: That’s true.
Brian: So you’ve written a few books. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about them?
The first book is, Fermented Vegetables and that’s the one that really came out of that whole farmer’s market experience. And so what we were doing is, we were taking seconds and overages and things like that from the local organic farms. We get called up and ” I have 400 pounds of burdock or parsnips or fill in the blank, can you do something with this?” And at the time there wasn’t a lot about vegetable fermentation on the Internet there weren’t a lot of recipes. There was nothing that said, “yes parsnips are safe to ferment,” or “not safe.” “This is how they would taste good.” And so I just started experimenting and turns out the science is such that you can’t kill yourself with fermented vegetables, any vegetables will ferment. But at that particular time I didn’t quite have that down yet. So all that experimentation became, what, 50 or so varieties in that first year, because we were just working so locally, um, and just creating recipes from what was available at that moment in time. So, that became that first book. That and having people come to the farm and learn and really listening to their questions and what people didn’t understand. And so we tried to make it a book that was like somebody coming to the farm and then also something where anything that came out of their garden or from their CSA gasket they could figure out what to do with it. So the second book was a – taking that a little further with condiments and hot sauce.
Christoper: I went to the Grange and brought too many peppers home. So we had a lot of peppers and we didn’t want to dry everything. And so Kirsten to start experimenting, fermenting because that’s what we knew. We came up with some great hot sauces. The first book is in five languages now, I think. And we were just in South America for the Spanish version, teaching people in Buenos Aires and Chile how to ferment; and we were just in Spain teaching the Spanish version. Some cultures like spicy things and some cultures don’t. Fiery Ferments has had – where people who like things a little bit spicy, they love it. And for other people, its like the first step into something a little more spicy. But they don’t have to be hot. Then this latest book is something still for fermented, but very different than those first two. And this took us three years, write. Labor of love.
Kirsten Yeah. There’s a lot of topics in there. So it’s fermenting grains and legumes – beans. They’re all very different and with different microbes. It’s a fun book.
Brian: Well that’s great. And those of you who are listening, if you haven’t seen these books, they’re very thick. Full of a lot of colorful pictures. Very well produced. I mean that’s just really impressive. What led you to write the first one?
Christoper: We were lazy. So anyone that has the romantic image of being at the farmer’s market and selling things. And you go through and you say, “someday I’m gonna leave my job and be one of those people at the farmer’s market.” The reality is, is that, you know, you’re getting up early. You spent the day before putting all this stuff in jars and labeling and touching it about seven times. Keeping it cold. You get to the farmers market about seven in the morning, you get it set up at nine o’clock. And then all day long people come through, they tell you how good your stuff is. They may or may not buy it. Then you take home everything that you haven’t sold and you repeat. It is, I mean, we met so many people, but it’s a hard way to make a living. It’s hard because you end up doing farmer’s markets four times a week. Building a product, making product in between.
So one was, it was hard to see doing that for a long period of time. We’re also bad drug dealers in that people would get addicted to the product and then they wouldn’t have the money to pay for a jar. And so we would start passing out recipes to teach people how to do it. Because I would say, “You just need a cabbage and some salt and you can make this yourself.” And they’d say, “Really?” And I’d say, “Yeah.” And they’d comb back and say, “Well it’s not as good as yours, but was really good.” And I’d say, “Alright.” And so, I think between those two things, we just had more of a passion for seeing people having success and being happy about eating it. The product which “you should of bought ours” versus somebody else’s. And so that’s what lead us in to just, “We should just teach people how to do this” instead of making it and having them eat our version of it.
Kirsten: We just feel like the food is empowering and making it yourself or with friends or whatever is so much more empowering then going out buying it.
Brian: So about the book-making process, the writing and everything that goes into the production, do you enjoy all of that?
Christopher: Yes, we’re a little unique in that we are a husband and wife writing team.
Kirsten: We’ve made it through three books and haven’t killed each other.
Christopher: There have been times.
Kirsten: Actually, we’re on the 4th one and we still haven’t.
Christopher: We have a lot of author friends now. One of the biggest things is finding a company that’s good to work with. Storey Publishing is who picked us up. They’ve been really fabulous to work with. If you have a good editor that, you know, can walk you along the process. And like you said, they’re really beautiful. They have really quality photographers that come out and shoot these things. So you know, it looks very professional. It is very professional. So that helps. The writing processes, it’s interesting because Kirsten and I are very different in that I’m more of an ideas guy and kind of scattered and I like to talk about things. I don’t necessarily write anything down. Kirsten is also a big ideas kind of person and also she’s the one that can put flavors together. Since this is going to go with that, I don’t know if you gave me water colors, I’ll always end up with brown. You know, maybe I want to paint something pretty, I just add too much. It ends up always brown. So she’s got that flavor palate skill. Between the two of us, we kind of fill in the gaps. Don’t you think? She keeps me on task. I’ll say, “Oh my gosh I found this piece of research, its really great, it explains this.” And she says, “Did you write it down?” I said, “No, but, I also just-” “Stop. Go right down.” It’s working.
Kirsten: Oh very much. I, mean, there are day.
Brian: Yeah.
Kirsten: Deadlines are ugly.
Christopher: Like today: So, this is our second podcast. Just did a demo. We’re on tour – just starting to tour for this book. We just got the manuscript back yesterday for the next book. And Kirsten’s working on the third book.
Kirsten: We don’t get bored.
Christopher: Partly we’re just kind of squirreled away, trying to come up with words. It’s much more just work ethic, you know, it’s just like any other job. Several – I have multiple projects at the same time.
Kirsten: And I think what’s probably changed with writing is you do have to find other outlets. So, physically teaching or teaching online, or whatever that is, is a way to help make the books possible – because you certainly don’t make a living writing books. And then the other thing is, I mean, our books sell so well, but there’s a lot of work just constantly trying to be out there with just free content for social media or whatever. Just constantly putting it out there, and I think that’s probably what’s changed a lot for authors. It used to be your royalties and whatever made you the living, and you could “squirrel away” like Christopher said – but now it’s, it’s not like that. I think, you just, you’re constantly just reminding people what you’re doing. Who you are. Whatever.
Brian: So where would people go beyond the books with you? You said you have classes that they can get involved with?
Christopher: We wanted something that people could use to start easily right away. So on our website, we’ve got a seven-day course that they can sign up for – which is free. There’s no hidden anything in there. And then we’ll start email them each day with, “Here’s what you need to get,” “this what we’re going to make.” And we’ve got thousands and thousands of people who have done that and sometimes they bought the book, but they still just needed that very focused, “We’re going to make sauerkraut tomorrow. So today you’re going to go buy cabbage, and some salt. And tomorrow we’re going to make it. And we’re going to make lemon kraut – lemon dill. Then we’re going to.” We get people all over the world to do that one and so like I said, I don’t know how many thousand people completed that and that’s usually the first start. We usually do a whole classes on our farm every year and we have people that come in either from the west coast, or we’ve had people as far as New Zealand and Europe come to the class, so it’s a chance to do an intensive couple of three days, just dive in and do all kinds of ferments. And then in the Rogue Valley, we do a lot of libraries and things in Ashland and Medford. We just try to keep doing things for the community. Usually they’re free or your minimum costs things so people can come. Sometimes they just need to see it, experience it and then we do things around the country in terms of Mother Earth News Fairs, workshops, other places that are doing things like that. We do those things too.
Kirsten: We’ll partner with people to put together workshops, so that, you know, everybody gets paid. And we’re working on some online content and classes and things like that that we don’t have date for all that. But we do have a lot of big ideas and hopefully that will help supplement so that we don’t have to travel as much. We enjoy the traveling, but still just paying for our time to you know, find more of those sources of (what’s the word I love?) passive income.
Brian: Yeah.
Commercial (Brian): Okay. We’re gonna pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We’re going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business. When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page. Put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this. If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away. These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited there, talking about how to use events, books and speaking all to build your business. That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets. And now back to the conversation.
Brian: Makes a lot of sense and you mentioned the Mother Earth News Fair, for those of you who weren’t aware, they’re going to be speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair and Albany, Oregon. What are you going to be covering there?
Kirsten: Ferments. We’re going to be talking about making condiments. Fermentation with condiments. We’re going to be talking about gut health. A lot of what we’re doing now, it started out just really just culinary, like, “Preserve your vegetables” or “You can get some probiotics. Your vitamins are going to be increased” and all of that. But since the first book came out, five years ago, the country has gotten sicker and the science has gotten stronger that our guts are everything.
Brian: Yeah.
Kirsten: And so we do the talk on gut health and kind of pull it all together. We’ll be talking about the new book. We’ll be making some hands on miso so folks to sign up for that class.
Christopher: I’ll be teaching hordes of little kids how to make sauerkraut. Kirsten will disappear right before that then she’ll show up at the very end. It’s really cool because you know, part of it is just, it’s one of the things that people – well, they basically park their kids someplace and go do stuff – so kids have very low expectations about what’s going to happen. And when we say, “How many of you like pickles?” Maybe 2 kids will raise there hands out of 50. Or, “How many like sauerkraut?” And there’s always like one brave little girl, who finally raises her hand. And everyone else – kids’ll be holding their nose. Then we talk about what it is, we talk about microbes and their job is to eat sugar, and fart. And then the kids are like “I’m interested – that’s a job!” And we’re going to do that. And then, “We’re going to get to touch our food.” And they’re like, “With our hands? Yuck!” We’ll have them taste raw cabbage, and I would say 80% of the kids have never tasted raw cabbage. They don’t know. And they taste it and they say, “It’s sweet .” “That’s sugar, that’s what the microbes want.” They’ll say, “There’s sugar in vegetables?” “Yeah!” And then they’ll taste it and we’ll make sauerkraut and we’ll say it tastes like salt and chips. And they’ll be like, “Oh that actually tastes like a potato chip.” I’ll say, “Well, yeah, kind of.” And then they’ll put it in a Ziploc bag, and we’ll talk about, you know, millions-
Kirsten: -We have them taste it. We bring already fermented food so they can taste that.
Christopher: Then they take a little Ziploc bag home with millions of microbes here, they have to take care of, and sauerkraut. I mean, so they’re looking at the bag, and they’re so excited that they’ve done this. And, you know, the parents will come to pick them up and they’ll like, “Oh, I made sauerkraut! Look at all these microbes are farting!”, And you can tell the parents are like, “What?” At the Farmer’s Market, the thing that would just kill us would be: kids would come up to us and they’d start grazing on the samples and they loved it. And the parents would slip in and say, “Oh, you’re not gonna like that, that’s sauerkraut.” And the kids would, like mid-fork, put it down, “Oh I didn’t like it.” But they loved it. We grew up with sauerkraut coming out of the can and it sucked. So, we perpetuate those things that we think are bad without letting our kids taste it, or experiencing something new. And so I think for us who are kind of dedicating our lives now to this, getting to the kids is really important, because shortcut out that part of what we as adults think and just go straight to them. And you know, they typically love it and if they’re brave and they taste it and they like it, they don’t know it’s weird, and they just eat it. And then now they’ll tell their kids, “Yeah that’s sauerkraut and you can eat that.” So to us to make a huge difference, kids are really important. Everywhere we go, we’re trying to make sure there’s some kind of kids thing that we do to, sort of, infect them with this cool thing.
Brian: That’s huge too, because the demonstration and getting their hands in it, creating that memorable experience. I mean that works with adults, but with kids that’s highly impressionable. That’s awesome. What do you hope that everyone else is going to walk away with after watching your presentations? What’s your main goal there?
Kirsten: So fermented foods, are basically processing food with microbes. And for the last 100, 150 years we’ve been told that ears told that microbes are not often a good thing. Antibacterial is what we do. And for good reason. Um, however, now we’re realizing, “Oh, wait a minute some microbes are good. In fact, there are a lot that keep us going.” So I think that people come with fascination, curiosity, they’re feeling bad, they want to feel better, but they also come with a head full of fear about these foods. They don’t understand them. And so walking away, understanding them and feeling safe enough to go home and try it. Because, honestly, you know, these foods – sauerkraut, you leave it on your counter for a few days or a weeks and then you stick your fork in it, right? Now everybody’s been told you don’t do that, right? Or some of these ferments in the new book, you know, you’re growing fungus, so you’re in, working in these temperature zones that we’ve been completely told will make food spoil. So I think that’s a big part of actually when we’re live with people you’d be surprised how many people are raising their hands because they’re afraid of the food. The big take away is: it’s easy, we’ve got this, it’s not scary. I know safe.
Brian: It’s really funny about American culture and how you’re slowly seeing this change, and I think it is because it’s in the news all the time about the gut biome and the connection to mental health and everything else and it’s amazing all the things that are tied back to gut health. And just thinking of American culture. Me growing up, that was the same thing is, “You won’t like that.” Especially when it came to sauerkraut and things of that sort. And it was always one of these things where, we were always pushed away from that. And nobody was doing it on their own, that I knew of that, was actually fermenting foods themselves. My wife was born in Ukraine and they did a lot of that. So when we started hanging out together, she was showing me all these things she was doing. It was different, but at the same time I’m adventurous so I was willing to go with it.
Kirsten: And she’s probably cute.
Brian: Oh yeah, of course! So it is really interesting how things are changing. You guys are helping to change the world here. It’s really cool. If someone is thinking of going to, let’s say the Mother Earth News Fair, let’s say, the one in Albany, Oregon or any of the ones that they’re putting on all over; what’s the main thing you would say to encourage them to come out?
Christopher: Well, the neat thing about the Fair is that it’s one place that they pull together a lot of similar – even if you’re into homesteading or self-reliance or alternative energy. It’s all there and you can go at your own pace. There’s usually a group five stages going at every time, so you can plan it out. It’s very kid friendly. So you can take the family and learn everything from tractors to microbes and everything in between. There’s lots of animals. And so it’s kind of got that country fair feel to it too. But at the same time if you really have projects or there’s something you’re trying to figure out, you can go and ask someone who is in that line and you can answer your questions face-to-face. And I see that all the time, when people ask me really in-depth conversations about starting a farm or gardening or going into business doing one thing or another. And I think that’s really neat that there’s a place with like-minded people and lots of vendors, but kind of focused around that.
Kirsten: It’s really – if you’ve seen the magazine – it’s kind of like the magazine come to life. You know, the speakers are very accessible and there’s just a lot of information shared.
Christopher: Yeah, and there’s a huge book store. You really can see somebody speak or look at the book, go ask them questions, you know, look through the book before you ever make that decision to buy the book. So it’s kind of nice that way too.
Brian: If you were to describe, like, the ideal person, the person that maybe you’ll have a long-term relationship with or what have you, that you’re meeting at something like this, who is that person? Who is the ideal person that when they come in contact with you, they’re like, “Wow, this is a piece I’ve been missing and I can’t wait to learn more.” Just the people that just really eat it up.
Christopher: We can do a couple, because there are demographics – um, 20-somethings are really, as a demographic, they’re kind of rebelling against being told what to eat.
Kirsten: That whole Millennial group, they’re rebelling against that thing that was really loved in the 50’s like, “My burger is always going to taste the same at this place.” I think we’re getting away from that now, and that generation is really leading the charge.
Christopher: And there’s so much more information out there. So when somebody tells them, “That’s harmful,” people look it up in the phone they have in their pocket. And so it’s a time now where society can make their own decisions about things. And so, when we are at some places, it’s funny, because it’s those younger people that just think this is cool and they want to do it for themselves, that really “do it themselves” ethic, and flavors. And then, surprisingly, it’s an older population too. We have people now in our classes that are in their 50’s, 60’s, 70’s who are very traditional, would be considered traditional in-terms of-
Kirsten: -Just conventional lifestyles.
Christopher: Yeah, and for some, they’re working on their health. You know, and they’ve come to this from whatever avenue, whether it’s diabetes or osteoporosis, some lifestyle thing. And they found fermented foods and they want to make it themselves. You know, they’re eating enough of it that they want to do it themselves. They’re the ones that I think, email us when they make the first one – they show us pictures. Our email… If – we get a lot of attachments and – the good and the ugly. We see, we see successes and failures all over the world.
Kirsten: I think we mostly see failures.
Christopher: Sometimes we’ll see one and they’ll say, “Look at my beautiful thing it worked!” It’s like that’s a pretty one. We get a lot of mold pictures. Because people just want to know “Is this okay eat still?” And so we do a lot of that, a lot of outreach about that. But those are the kind of people that, once they’ve had a success, they get excited, they start combining flavors. They’re just proud that there doing it and they want to share it with people. So we become friends.
Brian: We have a lot of business owners and executives that listen to this podcast because we look at the self-reliance field from the business point of view of not just what you’re providing people, but specifically you and the fact that you’re looking to, kind of, run things to become more self reliant. I mean that’s your whole story. You think it would be worthwhile for them to do something similar? Would you encourage other people to write books and speak in the same way that you guys are doing?
Chirstopher: Well see, so our path was: a product company and then. Like we said, we saw information now. It’s a very crowded world as you know, you’re one of a few podcasts, right? I mean, people have limited amount of time. So, I think, just in the information economy, as well, you need to have a clear voice. Something that’s strong and differentiated from the others. And the other thing is you just have to keep building upon it. So if we’d stopped with Fermented Vegetables, we would be one of many, many Sauerkraut books now, out there. We kept learning. So that’s the it advice, is that even if you have a niche, whatever it is, you need to continue building upon that with your own experiences or others or new information and data to stay up on that and be willing to pivot. You know, we thought we were a product company, and now we’re books and classes. Don’t know what we’ll be in the future. But whatever needs are there, you’ve got to keep your eyes open about what’s not being filled, right. Books are like that too. No one’s really written about that. So we didn’t grow up making miso or tempeh or natto. It’s not like Kirsten’s Korean and I’m Japanese, and she said, “Let’s just do these flavors that we grew up with because these American’s don’t eat it as much.” You know, I grew up in the Midwest, “casserole city”. Yeah, so you have to be willing, I think too, when you see an opportunity to be able to invest your time and expertise to really learn that deeply, and then write from that knowledge. It’s also very rewarding.
Kirsten: Well, and it’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of hustling. For – I mean, we’re making it, and it’s fun; and I think that’s the best part. We’re doing what we want to be doing and we’re doing it together. Which – you know, our product company was our first go at that, because before that we had a traditional – Christopher had the outside job, and kids. But you know we’re also, we’re traveling. We live where we want to live. Don’t necessarily need anymore. A little more, may be good.
Christopher: Oh income?
Kirsten: Yeah.
Christoper: Always.
Brian: You won’t turn it down if it shows up, right?
Kirsten: No, I mean, I guess what I’m saying is (and I believe I said it once, but) book writing isn’t a path to wealth.
Brian: Yeah.
Kirsten: It just isn’t. But it is a path to credibility and opportunities that get your message out there. If you have a passion and something to say too.
Brian: Well said. Great Advice. How did you end up becoming a speaker at the Mother Earth News Fair? Was that through your books? Did Storey [Publishing] set that up for you or did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? How’d that work?
Kirsten: Yeah, the first Fair was through Storey, who set it up. Yeah, the first go-round, the first set of fairs that I did was all through Storey. We have a good relationship now with Mother Earth News Fair. And we both do, you know, freelance articles, things like that with Mother Earth News – and they’re launching Fermentation Magazine. Just coming out in September. So we’ve been helping with that.
Brian: I bet.
Kirsten: And then otherwise, you know, it’s really like any other field it’s like who you know, and we all try to connect each other. And you know, this friend says, “Hey, we know these guys doing a fermentation festival here. Why don’t I do an email introduction?” You know, and we do the same thing. The fermentation community is very welcoming. Like any business, it’s the same thing. It’s just, who do you know, and connections and trying to get yourself out there.
Brian: Awesome. And you guys have been traveling a lot, because you’ve been hitting all the different fairs and so forth. So, what are some logistical tips that you would have for other people that are doing, speaking a lot of traveling.
Kirsten: Well, if you have to travel with ferments, good luck! You’re going to always be checking your bags. You’ll always get a love letter from TSA.
Christopher: Traveling with knives and blocks of mold. Pretty much gets you on their list.
Kirsten: Jars of sticky things that are is getting warm in your bag and starting to waft up. Hot sauce bottles.
Christopher: We both teach in the workshops and I think in all those cases, my biggest thing is manage your energy. Because when you’re, you know, some of those things, some of the days you teach for six hours, a few hundred people and you really drained at the end. Just staying on top of a class full a hundred people with knives is, you know, that’s a lot of mental energy just making sure no one whacks somebody with a knife. And everybody’s got fingers at the end of the time. There’s no blood, and everybody’s happy. So just taking care of yourself on the road. You’re getting enough sleep – drinking enough water. Trying to eat right. It’s tough for us, because we wind up in really difficult places, that just have chain places to eat. And so just taking care of yourself when you’re on the road, because it can seem very romantic and you want to just go experience everything. You just come home completely drained for a few days if you’re on the road all the time and you don’t have those recovery times. So I think that’s a big one on the speaking side. The other one is just, you know, it’s a business too. And so we can get caught up speaking and not take care of, “Where is this going next?” Making connections. You know, trying to plan out like Kirsten said, you’re always hustling. So remembering that you are the speaker but you’re also the CEO and you’re also the marketer and you’re all those things. And so, depending on –
Kirsten: – You’re also the contact person. Sometimes for my personality it’s hard to say, “yeah I actually do need pay for this.” And I think that’s probably something that writers and speakers in this day and age really, really suffer with because so many magazines or blog posts, it’s like they’re happy to get free content and they’ll expose you to so many people. And I think while this online self-publishing thing started, a lot of writers, in a way, shot themselves (and the whole writing industry) in the foot in that people expect free content and it still takes work to make it. It still takes time to take pictures, and develop the recipes or whatever your content is you’ve invested in it. And yes, you do have to give some of it away – that’s part of it. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing – I’m just saying at some point if you want to make it a career, you have to start valuing yourself and being able to say, “Yes I’ll do this, but here’s what I require.” Whatever that is, if that’s $50 dollars or if it’s $2,000 dollars. And that’s hard move to make.It’s really hard to take that leap, to say, “Yeah I would love to come do this. But, let’s talk about how to make that happen so it’s good for everybody.”
Brian: Absolutely. It’s funny I spoke with Gary Collins with The Simple Life earlier today. He was mentioning the same thing about having to deal with the fact that we’ve created kind of an entitlement society in a sense that people kind of all have their hand out and they’re expecting everything for free and it’s eventually you’ve got to put a price on things because if it’s actually going to be valuable because everyone needs to eat. That’s some great, great advice, definitely if you’re new to the information business is something you definitely need to keep in mind. If you aren’t new, you already know it but you have to keep on top of that for sure. I really enjoyed my time here with you guys. What could a listener do who’d want to find out more, want to read your books, everything else, and all the classes that you provide, where could they go?
Kirsten: Our website has got our calendar for classes, we also got the free e-courses at Ferment.works. That’s probably the best place. I think we’re most active on Instagram as far as just, sort of that, what’s going on kind of place. And that’s also “@ferment.works.”
Chirstopher: There’s Facebook.
Kirsten: Facebook. And the books are available anywhere that you buy books. You’re a little mom and pop, brick and mortar store to big online sellers, they’re there.
Brian: Fabulous. Hey, thanks so much for being on the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.
Chirstopher: Thanks for having us.
Kirsten: Absolutely. Thank you.
Brian’s Final Thoughts: I really enjoyed sitting down with Kirsten. Christopher, I wanted to point out just a few things from this conversation. First, the fact that they use an initial free course, this is common throughout Internet marketing, but not as common within the realm of self-reliance businesses and it’s something that I think is quite useful. They mentioned, they have thousands of people who have signed up for this course and it’s called, “Five Ferments in Seven Days.” It’s an e-course. You can find it on their website. Ferment.Works. So why is something like that so useful? It’s useful because it starts the conversation. It gives someone something quick valuable in exchange for their email address so that you can continue communicating with them from that point on. And today, the world is so distracting. Any chance you get to be in front of the same person more than once is a good thing for your business. Something you should keep in mind is any form of lead generation like this, a way that you can have a lead that you can go back to that you could communicate on a regular basis with that is very valuable and it’s way overlooked by most people in the self reliance field.
I love their story of starting and stopping having these tough days at the farmer’s market. Getting their product out there, going through all of the hassle, realizing finally when they’re at the peak, when they’ve got this great deal with whole foods that this is going to get even harder. You know, with the physical products and them looking themselves in the mirror and saying, what are we doing? Where do we really want to go with our business and making the courageous decision to say, no, we’re going to pull back and go in a different direction. And how did they choose that direction? They chose it by listening to their audience. Their audience wanted to find out how to do it themselves. It’s all because of the fact that as he said, they’re bad drug dealers. They were giving it away. They were giving away the information straight off the bat, allowing people to make their own, but through doing that, they found out that many people were more interested in doing it themselves.
Then in purchasing the final product and the dirty little secret is that an information business is a lot less backbreaking if it’s done correctly and this is the thing that they point back to over and over again. They’re doing what they love to do. Yes. It’s a little tiring if you’re traveling, if you’re on the road and promoting a book, putting on presentations, these are all things that you have to way along with it, but overall information is delivering a book in the mail. It’s sending information online. It’s having online courses like they’re talking about having more of. The best thing about information, it could be added to any current running business. Even if you have physical products that you’re already getting out to people, you can tack on an information business like we’ve heard other people do, like Gary Collins. You can go and listen to our conversation with him and that would give you more of an idea of how he’s been able to do it.
I think it’s great that they’ve been able to work as a couple. They can deal with all of the stress that comes along with that because they have two very different personalities, but at the same time they found a way to work around it. Part of the struggle of having an information business is constantly reminding people who you are and what you do. And that’s what Kirsten said and that’s dead on. That’s a huge piece of what they’re all about right now and it’s important that they have their eye on that. It’s also important that they have a focus on developing passive income because they don’t want to run around forever. They don’t want to have to keep this thing going on its own. They have to have some pieces of their business that run on their own that allow people to access it without them having to hold people’s hands every step of the way. That’s what automation is all about. That’s what outsourcing is all about and I’m glad to see that they have their focus in that direction because I think they’re going to get the best results with that in the long run. And finally they mentioned that free information problem that Gary Collins had also mentioned and this is something that that the information marketer has to think about. What can I afford to put out there for free of the free stuff that I am putting out there? How much of it is encouraging people to take the next step? We can go on and on and we will definitely be touching about that idea in the future. We will no doubt be talking again with Christopher and Kirsten because they live so nearby me. I can’t wait to be able to dig in a little deeper into their concepts of business and the adventurous they’d been having on the road.