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Established in 2005, BackYardHive is committed to bee-centric practices that increase the survivability of colonies through their Bee Guardian Methods.
Corwin Bell and Karen Sadenwater join us to talk about their transition from starting out as computer animation to developing a deep passion for beekeeping from observing bee behavior, to help save the bee and teach others how to safely help our friendly flyers today, and in the future!
Checkout their leading innovation products like the Cozy Cover and the Cathedral Hive, while soaking up quality information at their site below!
Checkout BackYardHive Today – https://backyardhive.com/
Transcription
Brian: In 1995, Corwin Bell started keeping bees due to a longtime fascination with this delicate pollinator. Along with Karen Sadenwater, Corwin founded BackyardHive.com in the spring of 2005.
They are committed to be centered practices that increase the survivability of colonies.
If the bees are cared for by applying the Bee Guardian methods that they teach, then the survival genetics and healthy behavioral traits will be preserved within the gene pool.
Backyard Hive was the first to offer backyard beekeepers, online resources, training DVDs, and information about getting started in a lifetime of top bar beekeeping. They realize the need early on and became the very first organization to make available fully assembled top bar hives on the web.
BackyardHive.com is committed to sharing knowledge and top bar hive technologies that encourage and enable backyard beekeepers to be successful and completely chemical free.
Corwin and Karen, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Corwin & Karen: Hey, Brian.
Brian: It’s great having you here. Why don’t you let us know a little bit about what it is that you do?
Corwin: Well, we have a business called BackYardHive. And it’s about teaching natural beekeeping for people that are gonna keep bees in their backyards.
So we do classes, we do intensives, we innovate in the bee space. Have two of our own design hives we’ve worked on over the years, and pretty much in unnatural beekeeping is our thing without using you know, chemical treatments at all or smoke or sugar. So we really promote that. That’s pretty much what BackYardHive is doing.
Karen: Yeah, we really want to teach people that method, you know, backyard beekeeping and natural beekeeping and treatment free.
Brian: Well, that’s fabulous. So you started the website in 2005, right?
Corwin: Yeah.
Brian: And tell me about what led up to that, what was your life up till that point?
Corwin: Well, yeah, it’s funny, because when someone says, oh, you’re a beekeeper, I’m like, no, no, I’m a bee researcher more than anything. And even then it’s odd that I’m doing bees.
I started off in the film industry doing TV commercials. Then I moved into doing game design for computer games. I was the first one to put out a computer game on CD ROM for Hanna Barbera called Page Master. It came out on the same weekend that Lion King did so I just crushed our game on the endcaps. But it was great game.
Then, I kept working in the game genre that we work in is called serious games.
Karen: And games for health.
Corwin: And games for health.
So they’re games that aren’t like driving cars and playing with little characters. So from that we did, The Journey To The Wild Divine, which was a big hit. The Dalai Lama played it and it was had finger sensors that read your bio feedback for real and that’s how you played the game. But people call it “mist for mystics” is what Wired magazine actually called it.
And then, we went on from there. So now we’re overlapping. Now we’re doing the wild divine project. And here comes you know, I’m like, oh, these are cool. I want to do bees, and basically went online. Back then it was like the modem kind of online, right.
And I found this guy Marty Hardison who did this thing called Top Bar because traditional beekeeping with the white boxes, the square white boxes, and they were all excited about having their chemicals in there and these frames and it was complicated. I’m like, I’m on 40 acres down and outside of Boulder, and it’s a kid I’ve been climbing trees up to beehives, thinking I’m gonna stick my hand in there and maybe get honey or something.
So I wasn’t buying the idea that these bees were not dying, and no one was treating them. They’re up in the tree and they’re doing fine.
So I was looking for a simple method.
Meanwhile, I’m still doing computer animation on the side and turning knock these games out but so then I built this hive from these plans that Marty Hardison had. And so a top bar hive is a long box and you put basically bear bars across the top and the bees look up and they go, oh, this looks like a good place to draw one of our hundred percent natural combs. Right.
And so then they do that, so that so that appealed to me. I built one hive. And then I don’t know word got out that I was “Joe beekeeper” and I wasn’t and so I just got calls everyone’s like, “we have a swarm” and that’s when the bees split and half them go off find a new home. And so I was getting all these swarm calls and their like, “oh can you get the sworm?” I’m like okay, and I go out and catch the swarm and then I’d come home be like up till two o’clock building another beebox and so I built six beehives.
So my big dive was like six beehives right out of the chute, paralleling that we did the first CD ROM, we put Newsweek on a DVD, okay, which interactive and then that was a big deal. Or it wasn’t Newsweek it was Oracle, that got written up in Newsweek.
In my spare time, I’d go look at my bees and try to figure him out. And pretty much after about three or four years, I was just figuring it out because I didn’t have a mentor and it was a totally new hive and the beekeepers were talking a different language.
They didn’t respect the kind of hive I was doing. And I was like, okay, whatever. So I’ll just be in my little bubble. And so pretty much I just learned everything about them through observation.
What I found was that I wanted to see what they were doing inside the hive. And so I started putting windows in. So every hive we came in observation hive, and I could open the door that thing and look in there. It was like the ultimate ant farm.
Then we put the website up 2005, because we have the German woodworker that was making these hives with windows so we’re the first ones to sell a fully assembled hive. We’re the first ones to put observation windows in all the hives.
So then we did a lot of pretty well respecting, well known computer games for training doctors about patient safety. And that was all interactive stuff there. We were doing, you know, big animation type stuff.
Then was about, I think it was about six years that I just was working with the bees, and I start realizing that I probably knew a heck of a lot more than a lot of the beekeepers out there. Because I just spent a lot of time observing them.
Interesting enough, when you understand the bees as a super organism, which they are, right. It’s not like a bunch of insects in a box.
It’s actually one being and how they interact is amazing. There’s not hierarchies, the Queen’s not leading the show, they all are like little computer programs that have little software installed in them. And that’s how they all interact.
And so you see all these emergent behaviors like you would see out of a computer game, or say particle systems. When you put a bunch of particles and give them rules, they all it starts to do something she’s in emerging behaviors.
So then I realized that what was happening to the bees, because they were starting to collapse and have problems is that the breeding of the bees, they’re flattening the genetic pool.
And they were basically breeding out all their computer programs that would keep them healthy and happy. And since I didn’t do the traditional route, where you go by bees and like in the mail, um, it’s kind of a weird thing. But you can get these kind of bees that are packages.
Yeah, they call them packages, I was just catching swarm. So I was catching wild swarms out of the woods, you know, bringing them in. And then everybody thought that I needed to be teaching them how to do this. So I had mentioned apprentices for a while.
Let’s see, I got selected as a 2007 master artists in Denver. So I did a big show, and that all went out to Burning Man.
So a lot of it has to do with I innovate and whatever space, I just like innovation. And so what I set out, I was like, I’m gonna create the ultimate hive but I’m gonna let the bees tell me, show me how to build it, what do they want.
I build these different shapes and different passages. And there’s different ways and I’d give it to them for a year innovating and be space is hard, because you can’t get it done and see what happens in a day. It’s a whole year, right.
I just give them these different beehives, and I would watch how they interacted with the nest space and how their it’s called a nest, technically for their brood and their whole thing that they build in a beehive.
So then I came out with The Golden Mean Hive, which is all these ratios, which was amazing, because they just some how that ratio was just perfectly what they wanted, they wanted 40 liters of space. They wanted to have this certain proportion so that the bees did really well on that. Everything out the window.
Still were selling those pretty well, online.
So then I work towards this one hive, I call it The Cathedral Hive. And it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s just an amazing hive. And what was cool is that it’s kind of been adopted.
People, like there’s a Langstroth Hive, which is the white boxes.
There’s a Warre Hive, which is a smaller kind of Langstroth type hive.
And there’s a you know, the old skeps of course, that you see in the movies and pictures and stuff.
What happens, everyone started treating The Cathedral Hive as a hive type.
Incidentally, they just didn’t know, when like newbies that would come into the bee world would go, oh, there’s a Cathedral Hive. And it’s like, well, The Cathedral Hive isn’t that type, it is our cathedral, right?
So yeah, I think that’s pretty much how I got where I’m at now and then just expanded out the website and I kept innovating. You know, the bee space is so easy to innovate in because the technology for beekeepers is like 100 years old?
There’s just been no innovation because there’s no money in beekeeping. Until all these people that had money wanted to have bees.
And then the colony collapse thing hit. I was the first one talking about it and saying what was going on. People are saying you’re the expert. Like, I’m not an expert. I don’t think anyone can be an expert with bees. They’re just too complex.
So yeah, I was kind of one of the four runners in that net Colony Collapse thing that was going on. And you know, it’s kind of like the chemical companies trying to pitch say it’s the beekeepers, management problems.
The beekeepers are saying, well, it’s pesticides and the chemicals, and it’s both commercial beekeeping and the way they do it. Since then, I’ve created this thing called a Robber Trap, which is robbing in beehives that are in people’s yards is skyrocketing, because everyone’s getting beehives in their backyard.
Okay, we did this thing called a Cozy Cover, which basically is this canvas dubay for a beehive and it wraps around like this jacket really tight.
Because it was 2017, 2018, between that then that winter that I started to see these massive drops in temperature. So we did the whole spreadsheet when all of that to 2006 in the Front Range, and started graphing 40 plus drop temperatures, seeing the increase of them because of climate change.
That was knocking everybody out 2000 around here, Montana, Kansas, there’s this huge dip that came down and just wipe everybody out. And that was just a huge wake up call. Because, you know, being in that space, no one else knew it from the outside world going to King Supers and going shopping.
No one knew what had happened behind the scenes, but it was heavy. And it was big.
And of course the beekeepers came out of it because they just kept splitting their hives and stuff. But everyone was strapped on that. And so the Cozy Cover is actually filled with wool, sheep’s wool. And it’s being studied at Cornell last year and again this year with Thomas Seeley and Robin Radcliffe, they’re finding out that the beehive with the cozy cover is looking like the inside of a tree over winter.
It’s buffering all these big drops in these, you know, dives and sharp temperature fluctuations. So that’s really exciting.
I could go on about the innovations, but I mean, it was just such a fun space to dive into and start innovating. Yeah, so that’s pretty much where I think we got a current now.
Brian: Yeah, well that’s fabulous.
So Karen, how do you play into all this?
Karen: I started actually, with the computer games with Corwin. He was one of my instructors for computer animation actually was a instructor for a while and that’s where we met.
That’s when I worked on The Journey To Wild Divine, that computer game for health.
As we were working, we’re working on that, and it was swarm season. I was kind of learning a little bit about bees, because he was already doing bees. And I think the very first time we got the hive with Carlos was that, umm…yeah, we were busy, it was swarm season, but I had caught a swarm. And we’re like, we don’t have time to make the hive.
So we asked Carlos and he was able to whip one up and whatnot. And so that was the first kind of backyard hive.
And then Corwin is like, well, let’s put an observation window in the next one, and this and that. Just kept developing off that, you know, kind of initial thing and that kind of relationship with Carlos to get them made, and then online.
Then we had a friend that you know, knew how to do websites, and some marketing. And so we got it up there. Yeah, I was just kind of helping do all that and learning some at the same time. I knew a little bit about websites back then and know a lot more now.
Corwin: What was funny, too, is right at that time we were like everyone was like, well, how do you do this, and they were living in different places. And so they couldn’t come to a class.
So we made an hour and a half DVD about bees, how to get started, how to do and all this and filmmakers and video editors, we kind of knocked it out of the park. Because I was like we didn’t have to hire a team to do it. We just shot it all ourselves.
And it’s still selling out there. It’s been selling for about 10 years. Now people go, you give them a DVD and say hey, check out the bees, and they’re like, I don’t have a DVD. So now we’re streaming it.
Brian: Isn’t that funny.
Corwin: Yeah.
Brian: Oh that’s fabulous.
So if we took you back to the very beginning, when you guys first got the website out, 2005, how did you get your first initial customers?
How did the word get out from there?
How are people finding you?
Corwin: Well we had our friend Doug, and he was really good at doing some web marketing even back then. And so it was kind of new to us for sure. He kind of, I think, got some keyword searches.
That was pretty new. I mean, he was pretty on the edge of that, getting some articles written up. So we would all get together and he’d take notes, you’d have this weird concept that when you wrote these articles, you had to have these words in it for some reason, you know, I was like, why is it gonna put that right towards the top?
And he did the keyword searches. Because they put these in here, like, well, why don’t we just duplicate it?
No, no, no, don’t duplicate pages. And all this, you know?
Brian: Yeah, yeah. I remember I was in that field at that time, so I know what that’s like. That’s great.
So those initial people that were coming in, what were they seeing on your site?
Did you have a hive available up for that time, did you just have the training?
What was available in the very beginning?
Corwin: Yeah, we had the beehive. And then we had the DVD and then a bunch of articles.
Karen: You know, it’s just like you would interview Corwin, and he just say, you know, this is how I learned it and this is what I did. We just make articles out to gain rank.
Corwin: Yeah, and those in those articles kept driving traffic.
So anytime anyone googled something about bees, we would be on the first page because we were really in that backyard have bee space before anybody else really got there.
There was a lot of low hanging fruit that we just didn’t have the time because this was just a side thing that we were doing it with the
We could have really hit that a little harder, I think, you know.
Brian: Sure, yeah.
So how are new people finding you today?
How are they coming across you?
Karen: I mean, there’s a lot of beekeeping sites out there, but we still try to keep ourselves kind of up there on the top. And just because we have some legacy articles and content and efforts, that’s really good for Google searches, you know, but we’ve taught classes now for since almost the beginning.
We teach classes, it’s word of mouth, we’ve traveled, we’ve traveled internationally, some we went, and we do conferences. We did like the first organic beekeeping conference down in Arizona, classes here all over Colorado, California, Washington, I mean, on and on East Coast we’ve done some conference and just keep the ball rolling.
And we definitely fine tune our website as much as we can and have time to, we don’t always have that we always just keep up with that. Yeah, and then, you know, put out an email blast all the time and get people information, and, you know, just keep people engaged.
Corwin: I definitely think that the innovations are drawing the attention to us.
Karen: That’s true.
Corwin: And then the Cathedral Hive, I mean, if you know top bars, and you know the other two hive types, it’s just fantastic to work with. You can tell that it’s the bees do really well in it, and the Cathedral Hive is now you know, everyone’s like, well, what’s that?
But really linking that and what we do to natural beekeeping, and so a lot of people are now going well, you know, we tried doing the bees this way and they keep dying. So maybe we’re not doing something right. Let’s see what these guys are doing. Yeah.
Brian: Make sense. That’s, that’s really cool. And who would you say is the ideal customer?
Do you have an ideal customer or do you have is it kind of go across the range from beginners to more advanced people that show up on your site and get the most out of it, or what would you say about that?
Corwin: The ideal customer is women, they like gardening, and maybe they have backyard chickens. Then it’s funny, because a lot of people, you know, they want to do something for the environment.
They want to do something for, you know, nature and the planet and what can they do is amazing thing that you can do keep the pollinators healthy and happy. And so we coined the phrase, a Bee Guardian. When I was starting people thought, oh, you’re a beekeeper. And I’m like, I’m not a beekeeper. Because I don’t smoke the bees. I don’t put sugar and I don’t do all this stuff. So I’m don’t put me in that.
And then the beekeepers tried to say, oh, your a Bee Haver. Like kind of derogatory, like, yeah, oh, you’re a hobby beekeeper.
I’m like, no, dude, that’s not it. This is, we’re talking about genetics. We’re talking about super organisms and we’re doing research projects.
So that’s why we’ve coined the term Bee Guardian.
So our ideal person out there wants to be a Bee Guardian, and some that helps preserve and protect the genetics of the bees and from that angle.
Karen: Yeah. And then once people get these in their backyard, it’s amazing. We just because we hear everybody’s story all the time. And it’s like, they just have this huge awareness of what’s around them now.
Now they know when the first plants come up, and they recognize yo the dandelions are so good. And then they recognize, oh, what’s next in their yard and what their neighbor has, and then their neighbors get involved.
So it really just expands this huge kind of growth and community just around somebody having the beehive in their backyard.
Corwin: Yeah. And so what if you look kind of like an internal mission statement. It’s bringing meaning into people’s lives. And the vehicle is the beehive and the vehicle is healthy beehives.
So when you see people’s face light up, when they get their bees, oh my gosh, it’s so rewarding to see that. It just brings meaning and they can open up the windows and the kids can look in the beehive and they can see the honey being made and they can like neighbors come over.
It’s really project based learning for kids.
Here’s this, I mean, the bees you have to deal with you know, weathers and temperatures and and know your biology and know your math and because the bees have gestation periods.
So we go into a lot of elementary schools and set them as little citizens scientists trying to figure out why the bees might have died and fantastic and seeing those kids.
And I mean, you get a class of kids and they know more than the adults and you say who knows what a drone is they’re like I know. Yeah, so really, that’s that’s rewarding that we don’t have scared kids running around because bees are gonna sting them.
Brian: Yeah.
Corwin: Bee’s are cute.
Brian: That’s great. That’s really, really cool.
And it’s great when you’re able to have you know, from the outside people see, okay, you’ve got a business, you’ve got a website, but when you’re able to find the magic behind it, like you just described, you know, bringing meaning into people’s lives of the vehicle, only being the bees and the beehive.
That’s fabulous, and it’s important that everybody listening understand that there’s magic behind every one of our, you know, we talk a lot about business on the show. It’s a business. Yeah. But there’s something deeper there.
That’s really cool that you’ve discovered and you can put it into words.
Corwin: Yeah.
Brian: What would you say is the top seller that you’re dealing with right now?
Is it the Cathedral Hive, or is it one of your training courses?
What is it?
Corwin: The top ones definitely the Cathedral Hive, then the Cozy Cover.
The Cozy Cover is just saving bees like crazy. I mean, people, that is really the next step that people need to get those bees, so they don’t have to deal with those fluctuations.
I’ve done a ton of research on that working with University of Colorado here. We’re doing some temperature studies and insulation studies. Then the courses are just I mean, we pretty much have to cut them off and so they definitely do that.
And you know, I still doing these computer projects, I just don’t drop everything go fly around the place everywhere.
Karen: We are just now just coming, you know, because of the COVID and everything, coming up with online module bee classes. Pretty soon, we hope by Christmas that we’ll have those up and running, we’re actually editing as books we get off, so.
Brian: 0h, great.
Well that brings up another good point. We’re recording this, regardless of when you’re listening to it. We’re recording this in October, late October of 2020.
So we’re still dealing with the effects of COVID-19 and everything surrounding that, how has that affected you and your business?
Corwin: When it first you know, struck. Everybody, you kind of went quiet, you know, all our online stuff is coming up and disappear for about two weeks. That’s like peak season for us. You know, that’s when it’s getting geared up and getting ready for spring.
Yeah, so there was also this period when it was a real quiet lul, we’re gonna maybe we should chalk it up the vegetables.
Then everyone just kept going. It’s such a powerful thing that people wanted to do wanted to do. And they just, it’s not going to stop them. And it’s not that expensive to get into. So pretty much you know, now we’ve got a little bit of the election lul.
And also, this is our low season to October.
Brian: But leading into it you did you see a bit of a rise like a lot of other people in this space, just because people were at home and they’re looking for things to do?
Corwin: Yeah, for sure.
And we do some hive plans for our hives and we sell kits. So a lot of people are staying home. We also found out that the lumber yards that we get our wood from were just stripped. Everyone was home doing home projects.
Brian: Oh, yeah.
Corwin: You might have to go get a you know, drill bit. Like, where are all the drill bits? Surprise, surprise.
Brian: That’s interesting, because the thing that you wouldn’t normally think about. But it’s true. I think I think we saw the same thing in this area.
So touched on a little bit of this already, but as a whole, what do you like best about your business and your industry?
Corwin: Well I mean, I’m not making something that’s polluting, that’s makes me happy. And I’m helping others to help themselves and the environment. That’s a big plus, you know, you don’t get turned away at a potluck.
If you have a big hunk of comb. You know, you bring another pan of quiche and everyone’s like, we’ve got a lot of that going around right now.
But uh, so the honey is amazing. It’s interesting, all the things that I mean, honey was more than gold in several times in history, its weight and gold, it was more precious.
So we’re trying to bring more awareness to you know, cheap honey is sugar water and karo syrup mixed with some honey.
So you’re really, you know, it’s kind of like, good olive oil. You’ve got to know the farmer, you got to have be traceable. Otherwise you’re getting a doctored…God what you’re doing the honey is crazy, this stuff you get at the stores.
Brian: Yeah.
Corwin: Chinese honey and all the stuff. That’s nice. So there’s a lot of ways that I think that we’re affecting society, maybe in those kind of respects is like bringing that awareness. So that’s I think that’s we have a mouthpiece. We have something to say in that space, right gives us a way to talk about it.
Brian: Oh, that’s fabulous. On the other hand, if you could change one thing about your business or your industry, what would it be?
Corwin: Get the beekeeping practices off of the sugar, get away from the chemicals, getting farmers to know that they’re spraying is affecting the pollinators, not just the bees. I mean, it’s crashing, all the other pollinators are crashing, and it’s like no one’s seeing it because it’s not a managed livestock, if you will, changing that industry for sure.
Like I said, bringing up the value of honey so that beekeepers don’t have to take all these shortcuts. They should be able to go to the farmers market and be getting as much money as a lawyer because you have to know a lot.
So it’s definitely bringing that awareness up.
And then in terms of our own business, what would we change?
Karen: Going to be doing the Bee Guardian Project and getting that kind of, you know, really focus more on more of the research and working with some of the universities.
Corwin: So yeah, we started the Bee Guardian Project, which is the advocacy limb of BackYardHive.
And so that’s doing research studies, raising money to get more awareness to the kids. So doing a lot more kid projects, trying to get some, you know, funding in to continue innovating in this space.
I would say that thing that I could change, but I’m not sure quite how to change it is just the supply. I mean, the supply like we have a woodworker that makes the hives is one guy.
Everyone thinks were this mega business that have some warehouse somewhere, we have all these employees, and it’s not what’s happening.
We have several really hardworking, and some couple really awesome interns. That’s a tough, you know, because here, it’s coming up to Christmas, and you need to have 40 hives built and ready to go.
But and we get a few calls now and they’re like, you guys haven’t returned my call today. I’m like, gosh, if you’d saw make calls we get. And I got a computer project.
Brian: Well, that’s great. So if we were to talk with you saying a year from now, and we look back over the last year, the last 12 months, what would have had to have happen for you to feel happy with all the results in your business in your life?
Corwin: The key is that, you know, as we were now we have a board that’s on the bigger end project. And they’re all super sharp and, you know, branding lady that’s done, she started a branding company sold a branding company, she knows her stuff.
We got a producer lady that I actually, well, two of the women on the board, I actually went to elementary school with in Boulder and I met them in first and second grade. So they’re trustworthy.
So when they looked into our little world of BackYardHive from their outside vantage point, they’re like, you know what, you got to do these modules because your audience is big, but you can’t go to do 20 or 30 people at a time on farms and expect to really get the word out. So that was pretty exciting.
And we have a lot of people that will fly in, you know, coming from Australia, and they’re like, are you gonna be in Europe? And I’m like no.
So, yeah, I would say that what needs to happen is we need to get these modules out there.
Like I said, these people on the border saying, you know, you’ve been doing this so long, you have so much to say and it’s so unique. My perspective, because I’m not an epidemiologist, I’m not a beekeeper.
I’m smart because I do computer game design. So I’m coming at it from that different angle. So I think that getting these these modules out and giving these people a different way to approach beekeeping, or being a Bee Guardian. That’s so that’s what I hope to be saying a year from now is that, yeah, we succeeded in getting that information out there in a nice, pretty way.
Brian: What are the obstacles standing in your way of getting there right now?
Corwin: That I have to build beehives every now and then, too many. And I’m not, I guess I’m a woodworker now, but I’m not really a woodworker. If we just get another be another woodworker on, then now you’re kind of dealing with paying those guys, right?
We don’t want to become a mega beekeeping supply house. That’s not what I don’t want to manage people.
And that’s not my skill base. Nor do I care to do that. People are kind of hard to manage.
Karen: We keep it to really excited interns and people that are really who we like to manage.
Corwin: Yeah, having, you know, we call them A student, or even just, anyone that comes on our team is someone that is really sharp, they’re the top of their game, we’re not going to go for the bee, you know, and kind of get this and, you know, and that’s and so being nimble in this space and being nimble as a small business, that I think that’s the key to it for us.
Brian: That’s a great point and a great a great tip out there for all other business owners out there. Do you have any other blanket advice that you would like to give other people that like to build something like this or would like to take their companies to something like the level that you’ve been able to build BackYardHive to?
Corwin: The thing that I hear the most is someone’s got this idea, and then they built so many little businesses and sewing little product and innovated in spaces and it’s like, first of all, you’re making it for yourself because you want it and you want to see it and you want to play with it and you want to, it’s got to be what you want to do.
So don’t go out and try and build something because you think that the horses are going to come and feed your trough, right?
You want to first make it for yourself and be happy and satisfied with the quality that you’re doing there. I would say nimble team for sure. Don’t get greedy and expand too fast.
Also, you want to diversify, but you have to diversify very smart, very wisely. Because one little limb of product, if you will, it starts to kind of get in shaky ground or something, you still have something else that will prop it up. So diversify, don’t diversify too quick.
Karen: Research what else is out there. If you have an idea about something, you know, look who else is doing it? Or you know, what other companies or somebody else out there doing?
And what are they doing?
Corwin: A week of looking around and going, am I just reinventing the wheel? And then you have these other guys that are like you’re just drinking your own Kool Aid, you’re so convinced in your little world that what you have is your idea to build this business is so amazing.
You got to look outside your box and get feedback from your friends and other business people.
Brian: Awesome. Corwin and Karen, that’s great advice and I really appreciate the time you spent with us, you got an incredible story behind you. And both where you’ve been where you’re going with BackYardHive.com.
Is there anything that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to answer?
Corwin: I think like you were saying just there in your outro was that we have a good story. And that’s what the people want to see when they go to your site.
I think we all do this when we go to look at a site. And you know, Patagonia or whatever you want to hear the story you want to hear there’s real people there that are making good decisions, kind of decisions, right?
And respecting other people and the environment on their way to make those decisions.
So I think having the story to, you know, fall behind a product or an idea or a business. I think that’s the key is having the real true story. Not something made up and prefabricated but something that you really are passionate about.
Brian: Awesome. Fabulous. Thank you so much.
Let any listener know that wants to find out more about backyard hive.
Corwin: Yeah, BackYardHive.com. And that’s hive. It’s not plural. It’s just BackYardHive.com.
And there’s tons of really good information on our site about starting a beehive or the DVDs are really good thing to start with two is watching now. It’s pretty inspiring.
Karen: Yeah, sure. People really enjoy it and they do get a lot out of it. And it’s something that you can just keep watching, you know, get it before the hive and you get the hive and you go back and look at it and just you know you’re able to rewatch it.
When you got bees then you go, oh yeah, that’s what I need to be doing.
Brian: That’s great. Well, I can’t wait to see where backyard hive and your Bee Guardian project and everything else is going in the future. So we’d love to have you back. But Corbin and Karen thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.
Corwin and Karen: Thanks Brian.
Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Great having Corwin and Karen on the show, I really like that there’s so many different perspectives. I can go on and on about this conversation, but I’m just gonna break down a couple of ideas that are coming to me right now.
One is that you have this physical product, this beehive, these top bar beehives that Corwin was developing. They had a life of their own, they were selling plans for them everything else and putting that out there and letting people get a try on that.
Then at the same time, they have the information side of the business where they’re training people up on what these do and what the thought process is behind them. And how to go about being a Bee Guardian as he puts it, that brings a whole nother end it, but I’ll get to into that in a second.
First, the concept of having a physical product versus an informational product. And those are two different types of businesses, but they marry well together.
So if you have an information based business, sometimes having a physical product brings a whole nother dimension into the business. You’ll see your customer base completely come live in a different way when you introduce a physical product, if you haven’t had one up until then.
At the same time, if you have only physical products, having informational products that back that up makes a huge difference and adds a whole nother revenue stream to what you’re already doing.
So that’s really cool how he’s been able to do that.
Also being able to define themselves as Bee Guardians, versus beekeepers, or any of the other terms that he mentioned, just completely standing out. Saying we are not like everybody else.
When you plant that flag in the ground and you put yourself above and beyond what everyone else is doing out there. Not that you’re saying you’re better than everybody, but that you are just different.
This is something different, you have to experience it, you have to listen to our story, you have to try what we’re doing because it isn’t like anything you’ve done before.
This goes back to a principle that you hear people talk about a lot called the Blue Ocean Strategy is based on a book. And the idea is if you can make yourself so completely different than everybody else, that you have a completely blue ocean all to yourself. You’re not in so much competition with other sharks for food, that the waters become red with competition. It’s a blue ocean, it’s your own ocean, you define what it is.
And by defining themselves that way, allows them to stand out, which is really a cool thing.
But also all the difficulties that he talked about that he’s faced in his business, he can see that a lot of it comes back to not being too close then in your own box. And you know, surrounding yourself with just what you want to hear.
You have to get outside that box and have to talk to people outside the industry. You have to talk to customers, you have to talk to other people and really get other ideas in there.
Because as business owners as innovators oftentimes we get stuck in, well, this is what I want to do and this is what I think should happen. But we don’t always take into account other people’s opinions or other thoughts, and we kind of create our own echo chambers.
I like that advice that he was saying toward the end about really making sure that you look at it outside of your own dimensions. That’s really a big difference.
All in all, great conversation. And really great meeting Corwin and Karen and talking to them can’t wait to see what they have coming up in the future with BackyardHive.com.
