RaeJean Wilson – GloryBee

Posted on November 18, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 28.

How do you stand out in front of your customers? Have you adopted a cause that your clients can relate with?

RaeJean Wilson is the Senior Vice President of GloryBee, a family-run company since 1975. Her parents, Dick and Pat Turanski started GloryBee Foods with a dream of providing natural, healthy ingredients for the people of their town. It has grown to international fame, but they have never lost the original principles.

In our conversation, RaeJean discusses how she never saw herself in the family business, but has fallen in love with the process, the customers and the cause they have set out on to “Save the Bee.”

Where is your company going to be in 45 years? Listen Now!

Find out more about GloryBee: https://www.glorybee.com/

Beat out your competition – EVEN if it’s Amazon.com: https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook

Full Transcript

RaeJean: Another fun dream of mine was have a healthy event we have a save to be five k, this will be the six year we’ve been fortunate enough to raise over $10,000 the last couple years at that event because we get people to sponsor the race and then every penny of your race fee goes to save the bees.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family. If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: RaeJean Wilson is the daughter of GloryBee founders Dick and Pat Turanski.

RaeJean has served in the family business in several capacities over the last 25 plus years following college, her focus was on sales and building GloryBees customer base.

She also spent 10 years as GloryBees HR manager.

In 2015, RaeJean stepped into the position of senior executive vice president where she now co-leads the company with her brother Alan Turanski, overseeing sales, marketing, human resources, safety, sustainability and community outreach.

RaeJean Wilson, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

RaeJean: Thank you. Thanks for having me today.

Brian: Absolutely. Now, why don’t you let us all know a little bit about what you do?

RaeJean: Well, like my bio said, I’m the Senior Executive Vice President at GloryBee and I spend a lot of my day sitting in an office in meeting solving problems helping people solve their problems so that we can take care of our customers.

Specifically, I’m involved in our community programs where we give back causes vice president of marketing as well and vice president of sales, working on our branding, our new products, our marketing plan, we’re in the middle of a brand refresh right now.

On the human resource side, I connect that with our safety and sustainability that has a lot to do with our people development and the programs that connect to that that are tied to our values and keeping our employees safe. And making sure they work they do has the best environmental impact possible or the least environmental impact possible.

Brian: Great. So have you always seen yourself in the in the family business?

RaeJean: Well, actually, no.

I never really ever thought I would work in the family business. But after college, I wasn’t really able to pursue the exact career I had hoped for.

Because I realized it would create the need to go back to school didn’t want to do that at the time and so I ended up coming here working in the shipping department got the opportunity to work in sales. Eventually human resources and then here we are year 29, and now involved like I shared earlier, in marketing, sales, human resources and the community.

Brian: Looking over the website GloryBee.com, things that originally drew us to you is the fact that you have beekeeping soap and candle making things, a lot of things that help people become more self reliant. But at the same time you also have a lot of in products like honey supplements.

I see cooking and baking here including, you know, agave syrup and dried fruits and nuts.

A lot of people may be familiar with Aunt Patty’s coconut oil. I remember buying that as well.

We still use it, but I first ran into it years ago. Yes, some of the best stuff on the market. So out of all those things, what would you say is your top selling product right now?

RaeJean: Well top selling is definitely our Northwest Raw Clover Honey. It is really delicious.

It’s going to be friendly for everybody in your family, the raw honey has more nutritional value.

So that is our number one retail item. I also would like to share we have one really cool new item. It’s a brown butter, honey ghee, G H E E. A little bit of salt in it.

And ironically last year when I personally was the person who innovated this product, we wanted to win Product of the Year, and it became a finalist for Product of the Year at Natural Products Expo. One of three products and its category and we didn’t win, but I think it’s an amazing product, so if you get the opportunity to try GloryBees brown butter, honey ghee, you will not be disappointed.

Brian: That’s great. Who is your ideal customer?

RaeJean: Well on the business Is to consumer side, the customer is probably going to be a little bit more educated in the natural channel going to be a lot of families, it’s going to be people who want to use healthy products in their home for cooking for baking to peanut butter sandwiches, they’re going to be conscientious.

And we are right now in the process of trying to do more marketing to the younger generation.

But right now, most of our consumers are somewhere in there, you know, late 30’s, up through the 70’s age range.

Brian: Right. And tell us a little bit about your business, the business end of things.

RaeJean: On the b2b side, really our prime spot is selling to manufacturers, people that are making bars, beverages, cereals, some sort of consumable items.

So our larger customers would be like a Starbucks and Nature’s Path, the Kind Bar, Dave’s Killer Bread, Franz Bakery.

And we’re selling them things like honey and oils and seeds, things that they would be buying as a commodity as an ingredient. And what we really do well in those partnerships is we provide transparency.

We’re SQF Certified organic or Non-GMO, so they’re able to buy quality ingredients from us and at a fair price.

Brian: You’ve been involved for 29 years here, what what would you say that you like best about both your business and your industry?

RaeJean: Customers have always been near and dear to my heart. And I always think of customers as external and internal.

So my employees are my internal customers and the external customers are the businesses that we serve.

And then the combination of getting to be selling food and delicious food that is good for you, really brings me a lot of internal satisfaction.

Brian: Awesome.

What would you say is your biggest gripes regarding the business is an industry?

RaeJean: Well, there’s a lot of challenges in the food industry, its food safety, all the requirements to do business. So a lot of the laws, as you saw, or have seen recently in the news, the government’s a little more involved. Just adds to the complexity and sometimes makes it harder to do business and also to do business with smaller companies that are just trying to get their start, like GloryBee was 40 years ago.

I get how important food safety is. And especially you think about being the consumer, but sometimes it’s very complicated.

Brian: So have all the regulations and everything been more of a recent thing, or has this been slowly growing over time?

RaeJean: I think because you know, back in 2007 we had one of the largest recalls in the history of the nation, there’s been a lot more food recalls. There’s a lot of new laws tied to FSMA, The Food Safety Modernization Act which is tied to international and importing.

And then you know, most companies now are required to have a lot more documentation and some of those smaller companies pretty daunting.

We are at least a size where we can manage all that. But it makes it more challenging for somebody to get started in business much more challenging than it was when we first started in 1975.

Brian: In terms of the b2c side of things, where are you finding new customers that?

RaeJean: We have a 90% customer retention, which is really kind of amazing, but we also get a lot of referrals from our current customers. And then there’s a lot of business development that’s done at some of the more major trade shows.

So that would be like the Natural Products Expo, that would be Expo East Fancy Food.

Also just business development, our sales team out there working for other companies that would be making similar products.

One thing that’s really blown up and I like to kind of have people who are, you know my age, I’m 50 now.

Think back to when you were a kid and you would go to a party or an event and most of the time there was like tea and coffee, maybe hot chocolate, maybe a little soda if you’re lucky.

But today when you go to an event, is there any event you go to where there isn’t like some sort of sparkling water and there’s kombucha and there’s beer and there’s wine and there’s maybe some distilled spirits, because people drink things, all sorts of different things.

So we have had a lot of success over the last few years doing more business with natural beverages.

They use organic sugar and kombucha we actually sell organic sugar. Some of them use agave, people use tapioca syrup, honey of course.

The beverage has been really new for us. We actually sell molasses to some more artisan distilleries that make rum.

So who would have thought, you know, this little fight company in Eugene, Oregon that started in a garage would be getting to do some fun things out there with new types of customers.

Commercial Break: We’re going to take a quick break from this conversation.

You know when people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a business growth strategist and they say, well, what the heck is that?

It’s all about standing out against your competition, standing out within your industry, standing out in front of your most ideal clients so that there is no competition. There is no comparison.

There’s nobody else out there that can do what you do in the way that you do it, whether that be product services or otherwise. One of the toughest places to stand out is when you’re discussing the concept of competition, so whether your customers see it as competition or whether it’s only you that sees it as competition.

If there is competition out there, it’s going to be standing in your way and there’s no competitive force out there that I see as common as you ubiquitous as Amazon.com.

Amazon.com has become the devil to most e-commerce based businesses for sure, and it’s certainly putting the squeeze on offline businesses.

That’s why I set out to write the book nine ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, how to stand out in your industry and make all competition completely irrelevant.

Now, whether Amazon.com is your competition or not, or whether you’re teamed up directly with Amazon.com, this book will help you to look past anyone as your competition, nine ways to Amazon-Proof your business.

This book is not out as of this recording, but if you want to find out when it’s available and how you can get your very own free copy, I want you to go to BrianJPombo.com/AmazonBook.

If you leave me your information, I will let you know as soon as that’s available. And not only that, but anything else that we end up offering having to do with this book.

For example, how you can get a hard copy of this book, how you can get the audio version of this book, how you can take part in workshops related with the concepts within this book. That’s nine ways to Amazon-Proof your business.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/AmazonBook. And now back to the conversation.

Brian: You’re selling your products all over the place, including your own website. Do you see mostly that the wholesale retail market is being your main base?

RaeJean: Yeah, I mean, our main base is really to B2C. We do of course….our products where you’re going to find them are going to be kind of middle to upper scale grocery store chains.

And then we do also sell to some big box, you know, we have some products at Costco, even like WinCo. Which is a little bit more of a scaled back in terms of a gourmet store chain, but does a lot of business.

Brian: Yeah.

RaeJean: And then online, you know, online is growing.

There’s challenges in general with companies of our size with online as some of the big players not to name any names, you could probably guess there’s probably a box waiting on your doorstep right now.

But it’s a little challenging, not always cost effective to sell your products through some of the online major players, because there’s a lot of fees that are charged to companies. And so we are working on some of that because I don’t think that’s going anywhere fast.

People want to have things waiting at their doorstep when they get home and they want to spend their free time doing other things.

Brian: Absolutely. You mentioned earlier trade shows. Do you do any other sort of outreach or marketing that’s offline?

RaeJean: We especially as it correlates to our, Save the Bee and our….we’re also B Corp. I don’t know if you’re familiar with B Corp. We that’s a certification.

It’s a third party certification that a lot of values based companies, they don’t just have to be in the food industry are choosing to explore.

They go through a big assessment and they score you on how do you treat your employees?

How do you pay your employees?

What kind of benefits do you provide?

Do your suppliers you know, are they ethical?

How do they treat their people so all of those things, bring a score back to a company and we work quite a bit promoting our, Save The Bee, and then also we’re part of that B Corp community.

And then in the beekeeping world, we attend quite a bit of events that are tied to beekeeping because we also sell the supplies which is a bit unique, even though that’s a very small part of our sales.

It’s really a lot of our heart and soul and how we got into business.

So we still have an annual bee weekend here, which is kind of fun where we actually bring in live bees.

And we have demonstrations where people can learn how to become a beekeeper.

And that’s an April every year.

And then we also, which has been another fun dream of mine was have a healthy event, we have a Save to be five k, this will be the sixth year.

And we’ve been fortunate enough to raise over $10,000 the last couple years at that event because we get people to sponsor the race, and then every penny of your race fee goes to Save The Bees.

That’s a few fun things that we’re doing.

Brian: Oh, that’s great.

RaeJean: Yeah.

Brian: If we were to talk again, let’s say a year from now, and we would look past over the last 12 months of what you had done, between now and then, what would have had to have happen for you to feel happy with the progress concerning your business?

RaeJean: We’re kind of in an interesting phase.

You know, we’re 40 years in now and we are working right now internally on building some bridges between departments in terms of processes that allow us to serve our customers better.

That would be a change. We also have…this is a crazy number, we have like 3,800 skews, so 3,800 different products and so we’re right now also in the process of streamlining that. Cutting back about 1,000 skews because that thousand skews only equates to a couple percent of our sales.

People have to move that product and count that product and we’re trying to be a little more focus would be the best word and then I think we would really have gained some market share more beverage, I think would be a big deal.

I think some of our new retail products that honey ghee we have a fermented honey we have chocolate and regular cream honey, that are new.

We have some placement on that. And personally, one thing that would be important to me is that we would have raised more money to Save The Bee, because I feel like that’s pretty important to just our industry and to just the next generation.

Brian: Absolutely. So what are the obstacles stand in your way of reaching all those goals?

RaeJean: Honestly, I think it’s too much to do.

I also think right now, it as many people probably are experiencing employers that are kind of in the same stage as us is that there’s more competition, people that are the right fit the landscape with unemployment being so low and changes in the dynamics with different generations.

I think employers are challenged a little bit because everybody, we kind of want it all right, we want to make good money. We want work life balance, we don’t want to work too much.

And I would guess that if you surveyed a lot of employers, they would all say, that’s pretty challenging.

Brian: Absolutely.

So bit of a personal question, but…..because it could go completely outside of business, Right. What project are you working on right now, that’s most important to you?

RaeJean: Well, I’m working on this sounds crazy to say, but I’m working on a marketing plan.

It’s really, really different than what we’ve ever had here at GloryBee.

I believe it’s fully integrated with our values and our customer promise on the b2b side, and the b2c side and I’m probably nervous as much as I am excited could help provide some clarity.

One of the things about this plan that really I have to give the credit to the firm that’s helping me is they were able to explain something that I tried to explain to them that I don’t feel I was doing a good job.

And that is that every customer has a customer when I go and I sell, you know, what if I were selling you advertising, right?

Well, you have a customer so remembering that when you’re selling to a business will and the consumers side that’s obviously a direct customer.

But on the business side, they have a customer.

So if I can help them do a better job serving their customer, I can build loyalty for a long term relationship with them, because I care more than just making the one time sale.

Brian: Oh, that’s that’s very insightful.

That, that’s definitely something that I think a lot of people would relate to out there because we we have a lot of business owners and executives that listen to this.

In that sense. Is there any other advice that you would have for business owners that are out there in similar markets?

RaeJean: This is a tough industry right now. Because, you know, mainstream conventional businesses have figured out that those of us like I said, in my generation were aging and so healthy food, healthy products, and then the fact that food is a lot about relationship. There’s a lot going on.

So I think my biggest desire for our industry or for businesses, like GloryBee is to keep focusing on your vision, values and don’t forget what those are.

Because at the end of the day, if you can go back and know that you are true to those, and how those related to how you do business, who you are and how you serve your customer, it’ll serve you well.

You’ll have bumps in the road, you’ll have good years and bad years, but you’ll be able to go home at night and be proud of the work that you did.

And sometimes you can lose sight of that, because there’s so much going on. And there’s always a lot of work to be done.

But that helps us feel like you’re doing something that can impact the world in a way that is positive. I too am challenged about that at times, but it does help me stay grounded as a business owner.

Brian: That’s fabulous, fabulous advice. That’s really good.

What could a listener do, who may be interested in finding out more about your products?

RaeJean: Well, like you said, logging onto the website, www.GloryBee.com is a good way and we of course, do sell online, through third parties like Amazon, you can visit some of those grocers.

I mentioned, from a competitive standpoint, probably ordering the products online, you’re going to get a real fair price for the products that we have here.

But we sell to a lot of retailers like the sprout like well regionally in Oregon and Washington and California Sprouts and Fresh Time and Markets of Choice and New Seasons, in Town and Country are all going to be able to provide you some of those fun retail products I shared with you.

Brian: That’s great. Thanks so much RaeJean Wilson for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

RaeJean: Thanks for having me. Have a great day.

Brian: You too.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Wow, RaeJean really knows her stuff.

It’s really interesting talking to somebody who’s working with a company that has such a huge history and has grown to such a large level.

It’s a very different conversation and some of our other conversations say with somebody that’s just starting out trying to get their business up and going.

And you see the differences in the things that they’re focusing on. But look at the amazing things they’ve been able to accomplish.

I mean, she said 90%, customer retention, that’s huge.

I don’t know how they’re able to calculate that. But that’s really, really cool that they can, and the fact that they’re focusing on customer referrals and focusing on trade shows, that’s really, really neat.

Her focus on being an Award finalist, if you think about the authority that comes along with that.

And the fact that when a company is this big, they’re focusing on getting awards like that, how big of a difference could it make, for those of you that have companies that are more on the mid range.

If you’re really looking for attention, focusing on awards is a big deal and that kind of gives you a concept of where their focus is across the board is all on this whole idea of building goodwill within the community, and also being ubiquitous, just being everywhere being seen everywhere.

That’s a really big deal when you’re at the level that they’re at, where they have a brand name. They’re being seen in all the major stores.

Now it’s just about being out there and promoting yourself in a very good way, creating the good thoughts and feelings around your brand name.

The other things to keep in mind as you’re growing as a company. They’re very similar issues that we’ve seen with the larger companies.

We’ve talked about talking about regulations and recalls, and overall all the levels of government that reach into your industry.

How are you dealing with that?

How do you look at dealing with that in the long run, larger companies need to deal with it in a much larger way.

But everyone’s got to deal with it in some way in each industry. The huge piece I see is their focus on causes also like the basic the cause of the race for the bees and helping out the whole situation with the beehives and talking about the fundraisers that are related back to that, that really creates the good feelings.

If you just look at it from a completely practical point of view, not the point of view of the fact that they really want to do good. But the fact that what that affects your business on a business level.

How is that affecting you?

This is a company that is relatively well known, but then being able to be liked and trusted. You have to have eventually show yourself to have a cause behind you whether that causes directly related with your product and service or whether it’s more of a larger worldwide cause that you’re being a part of.

That makes a huge difference to how people see your brand, your products and everything around it.

And also keeping in mind what the point is of selling in one location. So if you’re dealing with a wholesale retail connection out there, does it make sense to work in a place like Amazon.com?

Where are you selling?

Does it make sense?

Are you making the money back from there?

Is it enough to make it worth the headache of going through that process?

We had this very similar conversation with Ann Malloy at Neptune’s Harvest, you can go back and relisten to that one, where they were discussing their issues that they’ve had with Amazon.com.

These are all things to keep in mind, the places of which you’re selling the places at which your advertising doesn’t make sense in the long run.

In the short run, it makes sense to be seen everywhere.

But in the long run, you really have to pay attention to all the dimes and nickels that are associated with these things because look at their issue with the fact they have 3,800 plus SKU’s, right?

They have to say, hey, how do we cut where we can?

How do we make all of our products more robust and more available.

Well, we got to cut out some of the things that don’t sell as well. It’s the whole 8020 principle that we’ve discussed on earlier episodes. You can also hear me discussing at 20 quite a bit on the Brian J Pombo Live, which you could find at BrianJPombo.com.

Which is my other podcast where I discuss these type of things on a daily basis.

I think the big question to walk away from here is where is your company going to be if you aren’t already, 20 years plus old?

Where are you going to be in 20 years?

Plus, even if you are over 20 years old as a company, where are you going to be 20 years from now?

How large are you wanting it to be? What do you want to be known for?

What is the legacy of your company once you walk away from it?

Are you going to sell it?

Are you going to shut it down?

It’s good idea to start thinking about these things even if you have a brand new company. a

Outro: Join us again on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast brought to you by the team at BrianJPombo.com, helping successful but overworked entrepreneurs, transform their companies into dream assets.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact. Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Joe Stout – Mt. Capra

Posted on November 17, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 27.

Are your customers part of a community? Do you actively educate your customer base to make them more informed consumers?

Joe Stout is the President of Mt. Capra Products, a family-owned, sustainably-managed goat dairy located in Centralia, WA. After receiving a Masters of Science in Clinical Human Nutrition and a Bachelors of Science degree in Human Nutrition and Food Science from Washington State University, Joe found himself in a position to take the lead of the family business.

In our conversation, we discuss how (even as an infant), Joe has had a unique perspective regarding the nutritional qualities of goat milk products. We also delve into how such a simple commodity like goats milk, can spin-off into many different consumer realms and business opportunities.

Are you seeing all the customer groups for your core product or service? Are you creating systems in your business so that it doesn’t require YOU to make it function?

Joe’s story will stretch your thinking and inspire you. You may even walk away with a new belief in how you can truly effect people with your business.

Not only that, the end has a surprise testimonial by Brian’s wife Kate Pombo regarding their son Lucas and Mt. Capra’s Goat Milk Formula ingredients.

Listen Now!

Find out more about Joe Stout and Mt. Capra: https://mtcapra.com/

Beat out your competition – EVEN if it’s Amazon.com: https://brianjpombo.com/amazonbook

Full Transcript

Brian: Let’s say a year from now, we brought you back on the show and just kind of looked over the past 12 months and look back on that.

What would have happened from now till then for you to feel happy with the progress concerning your business?

Joe: Understanding the customers needs, maybe even before they understand what their need is, and having the information that they’re going to request available to them and even automatically given to them before they even request it.

Really, really good for customer service because the customer then is like wow, yeah, how they know I needed that that’s exactly what I needed?

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: All right, with us today is Joe Stout president of Mt. Capra.

Joe received a Masters of Science and clinical human nutrition from the University of Bridgeport and Bachelors of Science in Human Nutrition and Food Science from Washington State University.

Along with running the farm, he is engaged in graduate studies of sustainable food systems at Green Mountain College and is certified in permaculture design.

Joe and his wonderful bride, Elizabeth had been married for 11 years and have been blessed with seven beautiful children.

Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe: Brian, thanks for having me on the show. It’s a pleasure to be here and congrats to you on the new addition to your family.

Brian: Oh, thanks. Thank you very much.

Yeah, we just…I was telling Joe, we were going to be meeting sooner but what ended up happening is we ended up with an arrival of our third child in my family. So that was that was cool.

Joe: Super exciting. Yeah, you get any sleep?

Brian: Just barely, lol!

Joe: Just barely yeah, I feel it.

Brian: Get it where I can, you know.

Joe: Right.

Brian: So why don’t you let everyone know what you do, Joe?

Joe: Yeah, great.

So we’re based up here in Washington State actually, we have a goat dairy. It’s actually the largest goat dairy in Washington state, we run about 500 head of goat.

What we do with those goats is we take the milk that we get, we have a processing facility that we process that milk into different nutritional components of things like goat milk protein.

Will extract the minerals, the lactose will also extract some of the cream and turn turn it into ghee, which is clarified butter.

We do a lot of things with goat milk ingredients and things that surround kind of the alternative nutritional world.

Brian: That’s a great way of describing it….the alternative nutritional world.

I can see that kind of goes back to your background in nutrition.

Why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you got started in this whole thing.

Joe: One of the things that we’re pretty proud of in terms of our company story, we’ve been continuously family run now for over 90 years. Actually 91 years this year.

Back in 1928, a father and son team known as the Eggers family, they began goat dairy, and we’re creating cheese from the goat milk.

One of the leftover products that you have when you make cheese is something called Whey.

Whey has a little bit of protein in it, but it has a lot of minerals and electrolytes in it. And so they were concentrating that way down into something that they called Wex for whey extract.

So there was no cheese and about 25 years before the health food supplement market even began, they were selling a an extract of way they had a bunch of different ailments and whatnot that they really prescribed it for.

And so in 1985, a year after I was born, my dad met with Son of the Father Son team, they decided that they were going to pass on the business on to him because he was a young up and coming aspiring farmer.

He was a city kid that wanted to work on a farm also at the time.

I was one years old and I was very allergic to cow’s milk.

He was working on a cow milk dairy at the time.

And so he saw it as something that not only would diversify away from the commodity market that cow milk is, so he would develop a niche line of products. But also being that one of his kids was even allergic cow milk anyways, that it really made sense.

So I grew up with the business, I grew up on the farm.

When I went off to college, I originally was going off to college with the idea that I would become a veterinarian, just because I enjoyed working with animals. As I experienced some of the initial course work for veterinarian and work.

I really found myself being drawn to two things.

Number one is the human sciences and human nutrition.

And also, I loved the work that my family had been doing with this business.

I wanted to make it my career as well.

So that’s why I ended up getting two degrees in nutrition and in 2012 my dad who was 62 at the time, decided he was going to go back to school and become a doctor and become a naturopathic doctor.

And so he asked me and my wife come back to the farm.

We were living in Spokane at the time. To come back to the farm and run the farm, run the business.

Basically handed me the keys to the whole thing and said, I’ll see you later I’ve got work to do.

So I’ve been running things since 2012. And it’s been going really really well. A lot of things that I’ve learned along the way that’s kind of the story up until this point.

Brian: Yeah, well that’s fabulous.

It’s always interesting to me how people involved in the goat milk industry oftentimes get pulled in by some type of personal nutrition issue.

Joe: Yeah.

Brian: And it’s just funny. Your whole family got it.

Joe: Exactly.

Brian: It’s very, very interesting. Really shows you that the amazing properties that goat milk has over anything else out there and you guys are definitely going to town with that.

I mean, if you guys go to MtCapra.com, you can see they’ve got all these protein products related including powders, and so forth.

They’ve got the Ghee, as you mentioned. You guys have goat milk soaps and supplements, including probiotics and electrolytes, which most people don’t necessarily relate back to, especially goat milk.

So that out of all these products that you have going on right now and on your website, what would you say is the top selling one?

Joe: Because we are a niche company.

One of the things about a niche company is that you have to define what your niche is going to be, or your niche depending on how you say that word.

When you decide what your niche is going to be. Part of that is deciding what your target markets going to be.

With Mt. Capra, our niche is goat milk, and it’s less the target market. Our target market can vary throughout the whole lifecycle of nutrition.

From little bitty babies to use our ingredients to make goat milk formula recipe, all the way up into the elderly, who use our goat whey protein to really help keep weight on when it’s so hard to keep weight on when you’re in those older, older periods of life, and then everybody in between.

And so in terms of what product would be that would be best selling for us. The product that we start, we’ve been selling for the longest as a product known as Capra Mineral Whey.

It’s in a red bottle. It’s right there on the front page of our website.

It’s a product that has the word whey in it, but it’s really not a protein supplement.

What it is, is it’s that minerals, those minerals and electrolytes that have been concentrated down from goat milk. And that’s been a product that for a lot of people is one of the best all around use products just for good health.

Minerals in our diet are something that have been steadily declining as we practice something called industrial agriculture.

Industrial agriculture is very bad for the environment from the standpoint of improving the mineral concentration of soils.

And so we farm a lot of… not Mt. Capra, but as a culture we farm using chemical salts, nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus because those are the only three minerals that you need to grow a plant.

You end up getting a plant that’s grown. But all of those other trace minerals that normally would be present in that plant, they end up not showing up anymore because you’ve just used nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to grow this plant.

I think if you look at what the mineral content was of, say, a head of cabbage in 1950, when the USC actually set the mineral content for that, I think you have to eat like 16 heads of cabbage now to get the same mineral content.

Brian: Wow!

Joe: Because our soils are becoming so depleted of minerals.

The difference about Mt. Capra though is that we don’t practice what’s known as tillage agriculture, we grow grass.

Now grass is pretty much useless to humans because we can’t digest it. But grass is amazing at pulling minerals from the soil, because the grass and the soil have this symbiotic relationship where they can break down all of the spectrum of minerals found in the soil, and they can make it bioavailable not to humans but to goats.

Goats, cows, dear, sheep, those are ruminants they can actually take something worthless like grass, to us nutritionally and they can turn it into a product that’s extraordinarily nutrient dense for us.

And so things like the mineral content of our soils gets passed into the grass.

The ruminant, the goat takes the mineral content in that grass, it makes it bioavailable for us.

And so that Capra Mineral Whey has just a really amazing ability of delivering trace electrolytes and minerals to our diet that you otherwise wouldn’t be getting from a product.

So that’s been certainly the product that…the Capra Mineral Whey has been a product that we have been selling for the longest time. We’ve made that available for almost a century now.

Probably the one people are most familiar with when they come to for nutrition is protein products. And so we have a lot of, quite a variety of different protein powders.

From like chocolate protein powders that are balances of both casein and whey protein, two products that are just whey concentrate exclusively. So probably those two products would be our most popular ones.

Brian: Very cool. So who’s your ideal customer, you sell a lot of things on your website described them their mindset and so forth?

Joe: Sure, the ideal customer for us are a lot of times what it ends up being in the term we use here internally, as we call them, end of rope customers. They’re at the end of their rope because they’ve tried everything else.

And they’re just super sensitive to all kinds of ingredients.

Now, dairy products are very, very nutrient dense, meaning that they have a lot of nutrition packed in a very small amount of space.

But the problem is for cow milk, cow milk ingredients, is that a lot of people are allergic to them. Very, very sensitive to them.

And so our ideal customer generally is that person that’s looking for a product that is going to be real optimal digestion and absorption of a product. And it might be because they’re really sensitive to other ingredients, or because they just see the benefit in finding a product that is going to be more nutritionally complete in its digestion and absorption.

Brian: Well, how are you finding that those ideal people that are in the search for something different to be able to help their nutrition?

Joe: There is certainly no silver bullet that we found.

Word of mouth is definitely a huge one for us.

We’re a small company. And it’s just a small family farm here.

But we’re, we kind of are doing big things in terms of the products that we’re able to offer to our customer base. So we really, a lot of it has to do with kind of wowing our customers with our service, and then they go tell their friends, hey, come check this out.

But also, you know, we found a lot of success in accessing different marketplaces.

And so a big one was, of course Amazon. We got into that three years ago.

And we got in that primarily because we weren’t really that familiar with selling on Amazon, but we noticed a lot of customers. A lot of wholesale customers were just reselling our stuff on Amazon, but we’re not providing that level of customer care that we wanted to see.

And so we jumped in and have had really good success with it and have been basically have gotten access to a customer base that otherwise would probably just ignore us because they want the convenience of Amazon.

Brian: Yeah.

Joe: So and then, you know, we do a lot with making sure that we’re available through our social media channels, probably less prospecting and more, you know, real customer service.

A big part of what we do, as a company is provide ingredients that parents can go make a goat milk formula, using a recipe so we don’t produce a goat milk formula.

But we produce ingredients that people use to make the formula.

Well, it’s a very education intensive prospect doing that. We found a lot of good success in just making sure that we’re available to the customer to answer questions whenever needed, you know, whenever they need those questions answered.

And so we have a registered nurse that’s actually full time with us that pretty much all she does all day is taking care of our customers that are using the ingredients for the goat milk formula. You know, she troubleshoots with them and he will even dialogue and interface with their doctors to make sure that the kiddos are getting the nutrition that they need.

Brian: Wow, that’s fabulous.

That’s really, really interesting. Especially…so what you’re saying is you’re using social media more for after you’ve already brought a customer on board.

Joe: Yes.

Brian: And that ongoing support, ongoing community that you kind of built up there.

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

We as a company really value education a lot in because we value education. We want our customers educated, as well as we’re educated.

One of the things that there’s a actually just north you a little wise is an organization called the Nutritional Therapy Association. It’s called the MTA organization.

And they produce a nine month education course. And they produce something called NTP’s or Nutritional Therapy Practitioners.

Everybody that’s interfacing directly with our customers. They all go through that training.

And so they have a very, very good understanding of the nutritional requirements of the human condition as well as they understand what we value and why we value it and how we can give that to our customer base as well.

And so really, and then, you know, of course, I have a couple of degrees in nutrition and my dad at 62 went back to become a naturopathic doctor at the most prestigious school, best university up in Seattle.

To say all that, to say that even though we are goat farmers, we’re goat farmers who really value education and value not just an educated staff or educated team members, but educated customers as well.

Commercial Break: We’re going to take a quick break from this conversation.

You know when people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a business growth strategist and they say, well, what the heck is that?

It’s all about standing out against your competition, standing out within your industry, standing out in front of your most ideal clients so that there is no competition. There is no comparison.

There’s nobody else out there that can do what you do in the way that you do it, whether that be product services or otherwise. One of the toughest places to stand out is when you’re discussing the concept of competition, so whether your customers see it as competition or whether it’s only you that sees it as competition.

If there is competition out there, it’s going to be standing in your way and there’s no competitive force out there that I see as common as you ubiquitous as Amazon.com.

Amazon.com has become the devil to most e-commerce based businesses for sure, and it’s certainly putting the squeeze on offline businesses.

That’s why I set out to write the book nine ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business, how to stand out in your industry and make all competition completely irrelevant.

Now, whether Amazon.com is your competition or not, or whether you’re teamed up directly with Amazon.com, this book will help you to look past anyone as your competition, nine ways to Amazon-Proof your business.

This book is not out as of this recording, but if you want to find out when it’s available and how you can get your very own free copy, I want you to go to BrianJPombo.com/AmazonBook.

If you leave me your information, I will let you know as soon as that’s available.

And not only that, but anything else that we end up offering having to do with this book.

For example, how you can get a hard copy of this book, how you can get the audio version of this book, how you can take part in workshops related with the concepts within this book.

Brian: If you’re talking about the industry and your business as a whole, you’ve been president since What, 2012?

Joe: Yeah, correct.

Brian: From your experience so far, what do you like best about your business and the industry as a whole?

Joe: Yeah. I love working with customers that care, customers that are very well informed and customers that really seem to understand and respect a company that cares about the things that they care about.

I really like that a lot.

I’ve never felt like I don’t understand the language that people are talking to me, you know, so if I was to say, I don’t know, take over a garage or some you know, like a mechanic shop, I would be in over my head because I don’t I’m not a mechanic.

And so I love being well versed in what my customers care about.

But I also like, how things are constantly changing and there’s constantly you know, nutrition is such a baby science, that it’s just, we’re still in just the infancy of nutrition.

That’s why it’s kind of frustrating.

But things seem to change so much in the official recommendations and being on the bleeding edge of that education means that, you know, you can start offering your customers information, and you can start offering your customers knowledge that the public health officials will be giving to them 30 years from now.

But, because the public health officials, they’re always 15, 20, 25 years behind the times, they still think things like saturated fat is bad.

And yeah, you make your whole diet based off of whole grains.

But you know, 20 years from now, they’ll have adjusted that. But we’re able to give that information to our customers now.

And I’m able to learn a lot of that stuff, as a lot of things have changed even since the 10 years ago that I was in school. And so I love the progressive nature of that landscape.

Brian: Oh, that’s fabulous.

So what’s your biggest gripes about your business in your industry?

Joe: It goes along with one of the things I like the best, is that there’s so much misinformation. People are our told so many different things.

And you know, being in the industry having some education, it’s pretty, it’s somewhat straightforward to, you know, synthesize the different information and come up with a logical conclusion.

If I was mechanic, I would understand all the things about mechanics. But most of my customers wouldn’t you know, people bring their car into a shop, they don’t know anything.

That’s why they brought it to you.

And so I would think a lot of the misinformation that our customers get is frustrating because there’s so much misinformation that’s out there.

Brian: Absolutely. If we were to talk, let’s say a year from now, we brought you back on the show, and just kind of looked over the past 12 months and look back on that, what would have happened from now till then, for you to feel happy with the progress concerning your business?

Joe: One of the things that we’re really looking to improve as a company is understanding the customer’s needs, maybe even before they understand what their need is, and having the information that they’re going to request available to them and even automatically given to them before they even request it.

Not only is that really, really good for customer service, because the customer then it’s like, wow, yeah, how’d they know I needed that, it’s exactly what I needed?

But it also frees us up for more time developing more content and developing more information that they need.

And so we’re really trying to increase the way in which we personalize our automation with our customers through our email marketing platforms.

We’re seeing some good feedback on that some better interaction all the time.

Then one thing is we create more and more content for our customer base and give them that you know, content is king. So give them that stuff that’s very valuable and premium, maybe even moving into a model where you have paid content to where they actually have maybe some customers are good with just you telling them hey, just do it this way.

That’s all they need to know.

Or maybe some customers want to go way deeper having the resources the financial resources to justify go making them goes deeper.

They want may come with a con maybe 12 months from now, if you were having me back on the show, we will have more of the model where we can have that as an option to our customers.

Brian: That’s excellent.

You could see that your website is heading in that direction. You guys have a lot of great information there.

Joe: Sure.

Brian: But the one thing I hear you going back to over and over again, is the idea of educating the customers and giving them the information that they need, right?

So have….thinking about that ahead of time and make it a big part of of your process. That’s going to be really great to see, I can’t wait to see how you guys doing that.

What are the obstacles you see standing in your way of getting there?

Joe: I’ll tell you exactly what the obstacles are.

Everyday, there’s, you know, 10,000 things that need to get done.

And so it’s prioritizing things enough that you carve out space for that big thinking creative moving forward.

Not just the reaction times because you know, a big part of running a business, of course, is reacting to the problems and the needs and the things that are in front of you right now.

But one of the things that oftentimes gets overlooked then, is the actual future of the business. So I’ve hired on some more people to work on our office team. And it’s been really good.

And it’s almost like the more help I get, the more projects that come up. It’s kind of like the more some of that future thinking stuff kind of goes away.

Brian: Absolutely.

Joe: Definitely balancing those two things, dealing with the day to day stuff that has to be dealt with, but dealing with it in a way that systematized and that’s systematic enough that you’re not only doing that 100% of the time.

Brian: Yeah, got it.

So you think a lot of it has to do with how you personally handle these things is affecting how the company is, is moving along. And if you can get that under control, you can see the whole process moving faster.

Joe: Yep, yep, absolutely.

Brian: So that’s really insightful. And I think the other people listening to this are going to get a lot out of that and really relate back with you on that because that seems to be a common issue of anybody.

Joe: Exactly.

Brian: Especially one that is on the smaller end of tight you know, you got a tight family run goat farm and you’re growing out internationally.

I mean, you could imagine that these things are the things that pop up along the way.

So really, kudos to you for moving forward with that. And really having….looks like your focus is really in the right place on that end.

What advice would you have for other business owners and executives who might be listening in that, especially ones in other industries?

Do you have any blanket advice that you’d be able to give them something that you’ve learned a little piece along the way?

Joe: Working on ways that the system can work without you is really key.

If the system only works because you’re there making it work, kudos, because you’re very important.

But really, what you want as a business is you don’t want a ball and chain. You want a business that’s going to work if you are there or not.

That’s not to say that it’s a business that doesn’t ever need you.

But it’s a business that the nuts and bolts of it can work whether you’re there or not.

And so to do that requires a lot of systematizing of the business and I’ve got far more growth to do with our own business on that than I have done. I say that only as a junior traveler on that path towards systematizing.

I know it’s important. And now it’s just a matter of actually getting out there and doing it and making sure it happens.

Brian: Right on, fabulous.

Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you think that’s important to bring up regarding Mt. Capra, or regarding yourself?

Joe: Those are good. I mean, when you’re talking about, especially with your audience want to know the nuts and bolts of how businesses are successful and what things make them successful. I think we’ve touched on a lot of those things that have kind of been the the secret sauce for Mt. Capra, which is, you know, define your niche and figure out who your customers going to be and figure out how to wow them.

There’s a lot of other things that are included in that but as the overarching goals, that’s really key.

Brian: That’s a great synopsis.

So what could a listener who may be listening and interested in find out more about you guys?

How could they find out more about your products and services?

What’s the best direction to send them?

Joe: Yeah, sure. I mean, come on over to the website MtCapra.com.

That’s M as in Mary, T as in Tom, Capra, or a check out the website, give us a call.

If you want to hear more, we houst all of our own in house customer service. And so everybody that when you call down there, you’re going to get a very, very educated staff person answering the phone, and we’ll be more than happy to walk you through any of the products if you want more information than what’s already on the website.

Brian: This was a fabulous conversation.

Joe, I really appreciate you spending time with me.

Definitely go check out MtCapra.com. Thanks a lot, Joe. Hope to see you again sometime.

Joe: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on Brian. Good to talk with you.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Okay, so after I had the interview with Joe from Mt. Capra, I went home and told my wife because the one thing I did not mention is that our son had been having trouble in the eating department is about two months or so.

And we had been having issues, the fact that Kate (Brian’s wife) had difficulty breastfeeding him he was eating mostly formula was not gaining very quickly.

And we were looking for alternatives because we knew the ingredients in normal formula was not that hot. So I went to Kate and told her about all the stuff that Joe had been discussing about goat’s milk formula.

And why don’t you tell them what you thought.

Kate Pombo’s Testimonial: When my son was born, I was determined to breastfeed him, but unfortunately, it wasn’t in the cards. So fast forward a couple of months, we’ve struggled with giving our son regular formula he wasn’t liking it wasn’t drinking enough.

He was barely 1% for his weight.

And when a baby is in the first percentile for weight, that means in comparison to an average baby who would be 50th percentile. My baby was only in the first and it really stressed me out as a mom because it’s my job to make sure the baby eats and thrives.

And initially when I heard about goat milk formula, it blew me away because I had no idea that you can make your own. And it was so unbelievable to me.

I spent probably about five hours on their website reading their blog and comments and all the research that they have available. I’ve read it all, we thought we would give it a try.

So we purchase the kit.

And there’s been a few times where we tried it and weren’t consistent enough with it. But guess what, at about three and a half months, our son was still in the first percentile for weight, after only three weeks of him drinking this formula and liking it and drinking more than he’s ever drank before….he clocked in at seventh percentile.

So you can imagine how happy we were as parents to see him, be so healthy and finally put on a little bit of cheeks and thighs and just grow finally and have a little bit more weight on him.

I feel that it’s been a miracle and that we were led to try this formula.

I’m not one to get carried away with anything out of the ordinary, that is not mainstream, I don’t get carried away with things that are unusual.

So it was difficult for me to change my mindset and give this a try because I don’t experiment with things, I stick to what’s true and proven and known.

And this was really a big change for me big paradigm shift.

I’m glad I did it because it really has worked very well for us. So I would definitely recommend anybody who’s looking for the best formula for their baby to give Mt. Capra’s goat milk formula a try.

Brian: So that’s my wife Kate, and so you understand how personal this episode has become for us.

Also on the business end of things if you re listen to this, you will hear many business concepts being promoted by Joe that you can take and add directly into your business.

Look at how they’ve been able to create a community over what are very simple products, very straightforward products.

And yet by focusing on one market or another, they’ve been able to create a large amount of community.

They’ve been able to plug into communities that are already out there.

In the end, all business comes back to the who.

Who are you going after?

Who were you talking to?

Who are you putting this in front of?

What do they want most out of your product or service?

Fabulous episode. I can’t wait to have Joe on in the future and be able to talk to him more about where Mt. Capra is going from here.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Justin Lair & John DeSpain – Fiber Light Fire Starters

Posted on October 24, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 26.

What has been the ideas that have catapulted your business? Have you found them yet? Were they where you expected them to be?

Justin Lair is a United States Marine Corps Veteran who has created “one of the best Natural Fire Starters on the market .” John DeSpain, who met Justin while working in real estate, partnered with Justin and is helping expand the brand through trade shows, additional retailers and new products.

In our conversation we go over the obstacles, the wins and the future for Justin and John. Their journey is very unique, but the principles they discuss are helpful to any growing entrepreneur.

Listen Now!

Find out more about Justin, John and Fiber Light Fire Starter: https://fiberlightfs.com/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Justin: I knew that I wanted to start looking at big box retail. This was my first not my first business, but my first product, right?

So I had to learn a lot about how retail works. And I found out very quickly that buyers for big box retails, they don’t return phone calls, and they don’t return emails ever.

So I was determined to figure out how do I get ahold of these people?

And I found out that they spend most their time and attention at trade shows.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Justin Lair is a Marine Corps veteran and entrepreneur moved from Southern California to Oregon four years ago.

Once in Oregon, he started, Fiber Light Firestarters. Two years after the start of Fiber Light, Justin met John DeSpain and brought him on as a business partner.

John, who moved to Oregon from the Bay Area at a young age, is a brilliant young entrepreneur heavily involved in the real estate business. Justin Lair and John DeSpain, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Justin & John: Thank you. Thank you.

Brian: So besides what we heard in your bio, tell us a little more about who you are what you do.

Justin: Well, I’ll start my name’s Justin, appreciate you having us on the podcast.

It’s pretty exciting for us. Been a serial entrepreneur my whole life.

I started my first business when I was 15. That business inadvertently got shut down just because I went to the Marine Corps and my best friend who was my best partner at the time he went off to college and we so we shut the business down.

I spent my time in the Marine Corps and then came back home, which is my home is considered Southern California. Got married, we moved down to Orange County, me and my wife. We have two kids.

Started a couple other businesses during that time of my life.

All my previous businesses were service based businesses. The last business I had down there was a wood floor company, sold that company and ended up moving up here to Oregon.

And then the fiber Light started once I got up here, yeah, that’s pretty much where we’re at now.

John: I’m john, move to Klamath Falls, Oregon from the Bay Area when I was in the fifth grade, graduated from Klamath Falls, at Henley and had great role models growing up.

My father, my mom, just taking me down the right path. It was easy for me to kind of follow in their footsteps getting into some real estate and everything and then Justin came to me with a very awesome opportunity with Fiber Light.

We just kind of hit the ground running with it. I’m super stoked to be part of this company.

Brian: So for people that don’t know about what Fiber Light is, why don’t you give us a little bit of background?

Justin: Yeah, so Fiber Light, it’s funny, at trade shows we oftentimes, the customers are the people walking by the booth and they see the product, they have that moment of like, Wow, this is so simple.

Why didn’t I think of this? or How did you come up with this?

You know, I want to know the story. It’s not very exciting story, but it’s an interesting one that I find myself having to repeat rather often.

But it was kind of an accident down the street from my house is a very large wood mill, up here in Oregon.

There’s what, two or three wood mills here in our town, and we live in a tiny little town.

And there’s a wood mill that had waste product, which was a wood fiber and they just throw it away.

And from what I understand if it hits the ground to waste and they throw it away. And so as an entrepreneur, everything that comes to me everything I hear, I’m always thinking about, you know, is there a way to make money or way to turn that into a business?

So I saw this waste and I was like, man, there’s something I could do with that. I got the waste fiber and I started playing around with it, mixing it with some other stuff ended up turning into a really awesome fire starter.

Talking about fire starters, we’re talking about fire starting tools for outdoor hiking, hunting, camping, stuff like that.

Once I kind of discovered this thing that I had made, I then began the journey of figuring out if it was any good.

Owning several businesses throughout my life, I’m always very aware of the idea of like, dude, do I have an ugly baby? Or is it really a good looking baby?

So I didn’t want this to be my ugly baby. Needed to find out if if in fact, it was good, as good as I thought it was. That there was a market for it and that people would buy it.

I spent the first year going along that journey. And I sent it off to a lot of outdoor people that I knew spend time in the woods that I knew had experience with other firestarters. I got really lucky, I got in touch with a handful of outdoor YouTubers that are like you know, gear review YouTubers.

Sent it to them and got everybody’s feedback.

Everyone really liked it and kind of confirmed my ugly baby was not so ugly, ended up selling 36,000 cans of the Firestarter that first year.

And that really solidified the whole thing.

I started growing the business, essentially a fire tinder. I did not yet sell something that would that would light that on fire. I assumed that everybody who purchased it had their own way of lighting them on fire, obviously with matches or lighters, but I wanted to have a more dependable way to light it on fires.

I started doing research and finding the best supplier the best manufacturer of ferrocerium rods and which I feel like I did I basically contacted as many manufacturers of ferrocerium rods as I could.

Had them send me samples and I tested them all because, you know, by then I had Fiber Light on the market for a year and I was growing very fond of my product. I wanted to have a really good companion to it.

I didn’t want to have a really nice fire starter but a not so good ferrocerium rod to start it with, because I took it very seriously. And I believe I found the best manufacturer of ferrocerium rods.

Those are the same rods we have today.

And then I started just expanding with other fire starting tools, other things that I felt kind of went well with Fiber Light. You know, now we have a whole lineup of products that are really awesome fire starting tools.

Another kind of pushed for me to get the fairgrounds figured out was I knew that I wanted to start looking at big box retail.

This was my first not my first business but my first product right, so I had to learn a lot about how retail works.

I found out very quickly that buyers for big box retails, they don’t return phone calls and they don’t return emails ever.

And so I was determined to figure out how do I get ahold of these people and I found out that they spend most of their time and attention at trade shows. Because the trade shows they get to touch it, they get to feel it, they get to talk to you face to face.

Then I knew I wanted to go on a full like a national tradeshow tour that second year, but I wanted to go with more than just the can of Fiber Light.

So that’s another thing that pushed me to to get the ferrocerium rods and some other products.

That next year, I traveled to as many big trade shows as I could. I spent over six months on the road with my family. And we just went from trade show to trade show. And it was an amazing experience.

Anybody trying to bring a product to market that is a key factor.

It really took Fiber Light from being just something I was making in my garage, to like a real business.

I met a ton of very big outdoor people that I’m grown a lot of great friendships with big people in the outdoor industry.

I met a lot of the buyers and you know, Fiber Light came on the map at that point.

We’ve got a ton of exposure on YouTube and social media. It was just really all from that, six months I spent on the road at trade shows getting out there in front of the people. It was awesome.

And we still do trade shows today.

We, me and john, we do we try to do at least one big trade show a month.

We just had one this last weekend, we have another one coming up. That’s a really big one that we’re really excited about in the end of October.

And so, yeah, that’s kind of the history of Fiber Light.

And then if it wasn’t clear what fiber light is, again, we make different fire starting tools for outdoors hiking, camping, hunting, general survival preparedness, even like the occasional zombie apocalypse.

Brian: Excellent. You mentioned trade shows.

That’s how I originally heard about you was you guys were at the Mother Earth News Fair and Albany.

And Janice Cox was the one that alerted me to the fact that you were there and she wanted to make sure that we got in touch.

But I don’t think we ran across you. So it’s great to be able to see you here. What got you in touch with the Mother Earth News Fair. And is this your first year of doing that?

Justin: That was the first year of Mother Earth News. Can’t remember exactly how it came up.

But you know, whenever you go to a trade show, there’s always people there saying, hello, hey, there’s this other trade show that you guys would do really good at, you should check it out.

Somewhere along the way, Mother Earth News was brought up to me that it would be a good one for us to do. So it was on the list.

And I think we ended up missing that next year, which would have been not this past Mother Earth News Fair, but the year before we just end up missing that one. And so I knew that I wanted to do this one this year.

Brian: Excellent.

Justin: It’s always nice when we have a pretty good size, you know, well known trade show that’s not too far away from us.

Brian: Now, in terms of your long-term customer base, are you focused mainly on doing the wholesale end and getting it through them and having them put it in front of your end customer?

Or are you also looking for a direct relationship with customers?

Justin: At this point, it’s both. It initially started direct to customer again, it was first time ever in retail with a product, I had no idea what I was doing.

The only thought was, you know, put it on Amazon, get it in front of the biggest market that I could find.

It’s funny, I didn’t even have a website.

In the beginning, I was kind of intimidated by the idea of a retail website, because again, it was something I had never done before.

I had a domain name, which is still our domain name now, but it didn’t….this is so funny. It didn’t go to a website, if you went to the domain name and went straight to our Amazon page.

Then I kind of quickly got tired of the Amazon fees.

And I knew that I would direct people to my website and sell at full retail without having to worry about Amazon fees.

But I also I absolutely understand the value of Amazon and the size of the market there.

So I mean, we’re still on Amazon. So that’s how it started.

I was direct a customer through Amazon and then eventually through our own website, and then I started having a desire to want to sell in retail stores.

So I started pursuing that deal.

The other thing is, it’s really hard to ignore wholesale because the reality is, if we look at it now and we take the percentage of sales, retail sales of Fiber Light versus wholesale sales of Fiber Light. The wholesale side just completely destroys the retail side for us.

That approach actually came to me when I think like right after I started Fiber Light, the whole trend of the monthly subscription boxes was kind of exploding. And it was exciting.

It was a new thing and every market that you could think of was starting to have their own subscription box.

That was my first focus was contacting all the outdoor monthly subscription boxes and sending them you know, sample products, just so I could get into a subscription box and we’ve been in every single major outdoor subscription box and those are huge.

You’re looking at 10 to 20,000 pieces that go all out at once, directly to the customers hands and that really grew brand Fiber Light.

You know, gave us lot of exposure.

Another funny thing is, I remember, maybe three months in after I officially started Fiber Light, and I had the packaging. And again, this is at the time where we only sold just the the round tins of Fiber Light.

My first big wholesale order was the most obscure. I can’t even believe that I sold it. And they’re still a customer today, but it was to a radio show.

They sell a lot of survival products on their website. And I don’t even listen to the radio show.

I heard about it through a friend.

And then I ended up contacting them and they ordered 2,500 pieces and that was three months in. And that was my first big sale.

It was like, quite interesting. I didn’t even have the ability to manufacture that many. Like I didn’t have the manufacturing tools in place.

So I was doing it all by hand and it was I lost three fingernails during the process. It was interesting.

It forced us to move along quickly. It was awesome. Actually, I was pretty happy about that moment.

Brian: So besides all the wholesale opportunities you’ve had in the retailing via the Amazon, your website, the trade shows, are there any other forms of marketing that you’re doing on a regular basis, either online or offline?

Justin: We do social media. In the first year, first year and a half, maybe even like into the second year. I really spent a lot of time on Facebook.

And I would do like live broadcasts on Facebook and just kind of talk about our products and talk about competitors products.

I would even talk about just totally random stuff that had nothing to do with my company. That was fun.

I built up the Facebook group to a pretty decent size. And I spent a little bit of money on ads there.

I’m absolutely aware of how powerful social media is. We spend most of our time now on Instagram.

I don’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook anymore. I don’t really know why that happened or how that happened.

I think what it was was before the trade shows, when I went on that trade show tour, I was heavy on Facebook and then I was just away from my home office traveling for that six months, and I just totally got away from Facebook.

And then when I got back, I was just kind of busy in a different way than I was before I left.

So the Facebook thing never really came back into my daily routine. And then my wife was always pushing me to that I should get on Instagram.

I did see during that time how Instagram is kind of becoming the new Facebook and a lot of ways for businesses. So I just started to spend a little bit more time on Instagram, but I’m still not very good at that, like consistency and stuff like that.

You’ll notice my Instagram posts really just kind of revolve around the trade shows that we do once a month. And that’s when I’m most active on there.

In between the trade shows I’m not super active on it.

But I’m very aware of how powerful social media is. And that’s one thing I would like to get better at.

We do have a marketing team that we’re ramping up to begin some very large campaigns both on social media and in traditional marketing. It’s just not happening, yet. But it’ll be happening soon.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to 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.

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. They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: How would you describe like your ideal customer?

Justin: Ideal customer is, obviously an outdoor person, camper, hiker, hunter, survivalist.

We did PrepperCon two years ago and that was quite successful.

That pretty much encompasses at all, I mean, if they like camping or hiking, hunting, they totally get it.

It’s interesting because we started doing me and john, we just did a couple fairs. It was the first time I’ve ever done a fair and it was so surprising how different a fair was compared to like an outdoor show where everyone who’s there obviously loves the outdoors.

Brian: Yeah.

Justin: Or for example, like PrepperCon everyone there is like a prepper. And they want to buy gear and they want to, they all have the same mindset.

But when you go to a fair, you have every single demographic there.

And so it’s a lot more work at a fair. We’ve got to do a lot more demonstrations for people, you know, the light bulb to go off and people to understand what we’re showing them, as opposed to, you know, and an outdoor show that before we even start the demonstration, they already have a total understanding of what we’re doing.

Brian: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, the two fairs that we just tried, they were just local fairs.

So I don’t imagine that we would travel very far to go to any other fairs, but we might continue to do the local fairs every year.

Brian: Excellent.

John: One thing that I’m really surprised about with the fairs and stuff like that is since we do live in Oregon, we do have quite a bit of snow and stuff like that.

There’s a ton of people that after you show them the demo, they do see amazing value about even just putting our product like in the glove box of their cars, something like that.

So if they do get stuck on a pass, and this last year, we had a pass that got shut down for 36 hours and people were stranded up at the top of the past with 72 trees across the highway. After that, people started to realize the value of having a reliable fire starter that can be lit when it’s wet, snowing and anything like that, that could possibly save their lives.

Brian: Oh, that’s very interesting, kind of a practical emergency prep end of things. That’s great.

Justin: Yeah, there’s definitely two types of customers.

You have the customer who they see it and they plan on using it like the next time they start a fire.

And like every time they start a fire from there on out, and then you have customers who they’ll be totally honest, are like, I can’t tell you the last time I started a campfire, like I we don’t camp like I don’t do this.

But when and if there is a time where I need to do it. This is going to be a great product for us.

And so you got those customers who aren’t planning on using it the next time they start a fire, and then they’re not planning on using it all the time, they’re planning on using it that one time that they desperately need a fire.

It’s a very useful tool for, you know, to get the job done. That’s another very good description of the two different types of customers.

Brian: What do you like best about your business and your overall industry?

Justin: Oh, that’s a good question. Let me think about that one really quick.

John: I know for me, I’ve always been into fishing and hiking, hunting, just outdoors in general. So the people that get an encounter at all the trade shows and everything, I can relate with all of them very well.

I just enjoy talking to them. And it’s just super easy to relate to our clients and the people that we sell to.

Justin: The other thing I think is really cool, is it’s something so simple as fire, but it’s also something so important as fire. A lot of people take fire for granted.

Because it’s so simple with the tools that we have or you know just, the different resources that you have now is with technology and things like that.

But when it’s real serious and you don’t have all your you know, you don’t have your home and all your tools at your disposal, and you’re forced to in a situation that you need fire. I think a lot of people would be surprised how many people don’t know how to make a fire with limited resources.

You know, in the right situation. Fire can be the most important thing in your whole entire life at that moment.

Our tools allow for that simple thing of fire that sometimes might not be so simple to be able to get it done. We oftentimes say in our demonstrations at trade shows it’s like a cheaters way to start a fire.

Super easy, takes all the frustration sometimes out of fire.

We hear it countless times over and over again.

Customers, a lot of times it’s wives complaining about the husband. Like last time when we oh my gosh, we should have had this with us camping last summer because Johnny couldn’t get a fire started for four hours.

John: And it’s nice because our product, it’s not cumbersome. Like it’s super easy to use to pack when you get right down to to it, fits inside the same size tin as what I altoids tin is. It’s not going to be bulky or big or add a lot of weight, you’re adding three ounces to your pack, which isn’t anything.

So it’s just super easy to carry, super easy to use, just all around convenient.

Brian: If you can change one thing about your business and industry, what would it be?

John: That’s tough.

Justin: That is tough. Because we’re pretty proud of it.

The industry is really strong. I find you know, I haven’t been in too many other industries. So I don’t have first hand experience, but it feels like the people who love the outdoors. It’s like a tight knit community.

We all love the same thing. We all you know, enjoy the same stuff.

The community is great, maybe just making buyers more accessible, but it’s more of a joke.

Brian: Anything about your day to day business life that you’d like to be different?

Justin: We need a bigger shop and we’re working on that.

We should be having a new shop in the next month or two just and that’s really actually a great problem to have, we only need a new shop because business is so great and we’re outgrowing the shop that we’re in.

John: And we did that quick too.

We moved into the new shop and what it’s been for five months, and we already outgrew the one that we got. Yeah. And then just a couple things on our side with a production. We have a couple little things that hold us up, but we’re also working with couple engineers to figure out our little slowdowns and make our process work a little bit more efficient.

Brian: Very cool. That’s excellent. That’s great to hear.

If we were to have you two back on the show, let’s say in a year and we looked back over the last 12 months, what would have had to have happened for you to feel happy with your growth?

Justin: You opened up a can of worms.

The next year is going to be unbelievable. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about it.

Brian: Laughs.

Justin: I could tell you a little bit.

We have a new product coming out that we were hoping to be able to debut to the market this November, at the Outdoor Retailer show in Colorado, some things got held up and prototyping and we didn’t want to rush to the launch is very important to us to for it to go as smooth as possible.

So we are, we pushed back the launch till June of next year, which is the next Outdoor Retailer show that particular product.

We’re submitting for innovative product of the Year Award, we believe we have a really solid shot of getting that the most heaviest weighing factor in winning the innovative product of the Year award is environmental impact.

And our new product hits that harder than anything I’ve seen come out new in the outdoor industry.

I wish I could tell you more about it because I’m so excited about it.

It’s been something I’ve been working on for about two years.

And with Johnny coming on board. We’ve accelerated that process. We’ve gotten two prototypes back and we’re working on the third and final prototype right now.

We have an entire engineering and design to alongside with us helping us get this thing going.

It’s one of the most exciting things that is going to come to an outdoor world.

I know it’s so hard to even hear what I just said, because we’re such a little guy in the outdoor world, we make a little Firestarter out of wood fiber. But this is something totally different.

It’s absolutely related to what we do. It’s never been done before in the outdoor world.

The idea of that completely shocks me that this has never been done before.

It’ll be another one of those things that when you hear about it, and see it, you’ll be like, Oh, my gosh, why has this not been done before?

How is this gone, so many years?

Someone hasn’t come up with this concept yet.

Kind of like when Uber happened, and everyone’s like, Oh, my gosh, what?

That’s such a simple thing.

It’s one of those moments and it’s going to be a great moment, and that’s debuting next June at the Outdoor Retailer show. So next year, if we talked we would have gone past that and hopefully we’d have an innovative product the year award sitting here on the desk, and our lives will be completely different than what they are now.

Brian: What are the obstacles standing in your way of getting that award and moving forward with a new product?

Justin: There’s not too many. We’ve been overcoming them for the past two years, at least I have Johnny for the last year alongside with me.

So we’ve overcome a lot of them.

The last one is just finding the right manufacturer first is getting this final prototype exactly the way we want it. After that would be to find the perfect manufacturer for us.

And then the last thing we’ll just be launching, you know, we want that debut to go as perfect as possibly can for the market the rest of the market to instantly see what it is and how much of an impact it has.

I think about that all the time. I want people, that day, I envision this day in my mind all the time.

And the one thing I want to make sure we get right when somebody walks, they’re walking down the showroom floor, right I’m at Outdoor Retailer and they’re going past this booth and they’re going past that booth.

And then they come to our booth, that moment that they make eye contact with our booth.

The timeframe between the moment they make eye contact with us to the moment that the light bulb goes off in their head with I understand this, I want that to be as short as possible.

Definitely doable, and we got to make sure everything is perfect, but um, that’s really the obstacle.

Those are the three things prototype manufacturing, and that day at the show. And if all that stuff happens the way we’re expecting it to happen, yeah, we’re on our way at that point.

Brian: Awesome. Boy, that’s quite a tease. We gotta wait till June to find out. That’s amazing.

Justin: Yeah, the one thing you or any of the listeners can do. Our website FiberLightFS.com. You can also get there by going to FiberLightFirestarters.com.

Obviously, the fiber light FA is short for fire starter.

That’ll take you to the website down at the bottom of the website. You could sign up for the email list.

Me and John, we’re the only ones that run the website.

I don’t even know how to do like run an email marketing campaign.

So you’re not going to get spammed with a whole bunch of stuff.

So you don’t have to worry about that. But you could go to the website and join the email list. We do expect that everything is going to be ready for the product long before June. And then we’ll probably have some sort of a soft launch before Outdoor Retailer.

So yeah, we will send out emails and it’ll be on the website, what the product is, and we’ll launch it there. So that’ll be the way to learn about what we’re talking about the quickest.

Brian: Fabulous, a great lead in and a great way for people to keep in touch with you.

We’ll make sure we have a link in the description. Any final advice that you have for other aspiring business owners or current business owners or executives that may be in a similar position to you?

Justin: Yeah, I’ve got a lot of advice.

Um, first thing if anybody wants to pick my brain ask me questions about bringing a product from conception to market. I love that type of stuff.

I know that I had people help me along the way. And so I absolutely love to give back as much as possible.

I’m extremely transparent.

I’m not afraid of talking numbers talking about things about the business. The other thing I would say is find a mentor, find somebody who’s done it before and lean on them.

I think that’s really important.

Because you can get a whole lot more stuff done by asking somebody who’s already done it, then just you searching Google, try to figure it out yourself.

It’s not impossible. It’s, it’s very possible.

There’s a lot of tools and resources and things that I’ve stumbled upon or things that I’ve learned about that have helped bring this thing along as far as it’s come.

The idea of thinking out of the box in regards to like the subscription boxes, or little things like that is huge subscription boxes are always looking for new products to put in their boxes.

And it’s a very quick way for you to sell 15 to 20,000 pieces of whatever you’re selling.

And the great thing about subscription boxes is It’s not like as a retailer buying a bunch of your product to sit on their shelf, it’s already sold, your product is going to go in a box that’s already sold to the customer.

All the customers are going to receive that product, all 15,000 of them are going to go out.

So the subscription box is huge for a new company with a new product, trying to you know, spread the word and let people know about the business.

Subscription boxes are huge and subscription boxes are like every industry, you could get a subscription box for lipstick, you could get a subscription box for cologne, you could get a subscription box for shoes and watches and everything.

And so whatever your market is, their subscription boxes out there for that.

And those subscription boxes. That’s all they do every single month that it’s time to set up a new box and they need new products to go in that box.

So that was a big thing that helped us a lot.

But yeah, my email is on my website, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me. I’d be happy to you know, answer questions or give you some pointers and point you in some sort of direction that might help out. Yeah, that’s pretty much it.

John: What Justin and I always live by too, is we always tell each other, don’t talk about it, be about it.

Don’t just say you’re going to do something good. Get down there, get grinding and make things happen.

Don’t expect things to happen for you.

Justin: That’s actually….I’m so happy John said that because no joke. We tell each other that like on a daily basis, whether it’s in a text message, or whatever.

And so many things have happened because of that mindset. Whenever one of us is like, Oh, hey, I had an idea. I wanted to contact this company to see about this…

As one of us is saying that, the other person just looks at the other person and just says, we’ll just call them. What are we talking about this for?

You know, don’t talk about it, be about it.

That’s something we remind each other all the time, and so much has happened because you just make the phone call.

Brian: Fabulous. you’ve provided so much value to this episode. I know that anyone that listens to this is going to want to re-listen to it and be able to catch all those little tidbits.

I mean, there’s fabulous stuff. It just goes on and on.

There with Fiber Light Fire Starters. Justin Lair and John DeSpain, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Justin & John: Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Wow, that was some good conversation.

I bet if you go back and re-listen to that, you’ll hear so much of what we hear from other business owners, but also so much that you’ve never heard before.

It always amazes me how many people are able to find other elements that no one else is using anywhere near their market.

And Justin and John are certainly examples of that.

I love how they tested the feedback from their market as early as possible. Justin was discussing how he got it out there and got it in people’s hands, got them to try it out, got feedback directly from them sold directly to the customer as early as possible.

That is such important advice.

Anybody could use that, especially people that are starting right off the bat getting it directly in your customers hands, your ideal customer.

Especially when he was talking about trying to get into the big box retailers, talking about how buyers don’t return phone calls or emails. That’s a reality check for a lot of people who are just starting out trying to get the attention of buyers from retail locations. And it’s absolutely true.

I’ve seen it in my own situation. I’ve seen it in other people’s situations.

And a lot of times they’re caught / you’re caught off guard if you’re new to that field.

If you’re trying to get attention. If you’re doing any form of business to business, you will be amazed how little callbacks you get.

I mean it will it is amazing when you actually get a return phone call or return email or reply back. You will really know that you’re on track when you get that call back or that returned email, the conversation having to do with trade shows and how they’ve been able to use trade shows, especially in the outdoor niche in order to help them and having that be a key factor in building his business.

That’s a huge deal.

Knowing which ones to go after is the important thing though. As he said, he’s getting a different result from going to the Mother Earth News Fairs, as opposed to the outdoor specific trade shows.

This is something to take into account when you’re looking at events of any form, especially trade shows, fairs, things of that sort, and how the audience fits into what you’re attempting to sell them, whether it be a product and or service.

This is all things great questions to consider before you go out there and put your hard earned time and money behind trying to attract an audience via an event.

I think this is one of the first times we’ve had anyone discuss subscription boxes to such a huge extent and talking about that being a huge event in their business using subscription boxes.

Are there subscription boxes out there that could contain something from your business?

Even if you’re doing a service?

Can you offer some form of coupon or initial consultation?

Or what have you, whatever it is that you’re offering?

Can you productize it and shove it inside a subscription box inside to reach your ideal audience?

That’s a great idea and a great place that I think most people would never think of in a million years. How do you relate back with your clients?

Do you have the same attitude that Justin and John do, as this is our people, we understand them we’re outdoors, people like them, we know where they’re coming from, we know what they’re looking for next. And not only that, they’re so confident about that.

Our next product is going to hit that market so directly, that shows you people who really understand their customers.

On top of that, they mentioned the concept of awards, having your products or services win awards, that builds authority.

It builds trust with your marketplace, you’re looking to stand out that’s important to see what awards are available.

And some of that final advice that Justin mentioned about finding friends and mentors that can help you along through the process. I think if we ever talked to Justin again, I’d love to dig in and find out his story about who have been the friends and mentors that have helped him build his business and do it relatively consistently having consistent growth.

Love to see where they go from here and what their new product venture is.

That’s coming out soon.

What a great talk and look forward to seeing more from Justin and John at Fiber Light Firestarters.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Rick & Elara Bowman – Backyard Green Films: Part 2

Posted on October 24, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 25.

This is “Part 2.” Be sure to listen to “Part 1” here: https://offthegridbiz.com/rick-elara-bowman-backyard-green-films-part-1

Do you use events (topic-based and trade shows) to grow your business and interact with customers? Is it worth the expense and time?

Rick Bowman is audio and video producer. Elara Bowman is a project manager and accountant. Together they have teamed up to travel country to record and promulgate the stories of incredible people and a monumental dilemma that everyone.

Here we continue the conversation we began on the last episode and dive deep into attending events and long-term goals.

Listen Now!

Find out more about Rick, Elara and Backyard Green Films: https://backyardgreenfilms.com/
Watch their videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnQm6NOFcMrvJQrv09Xzt6w

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Rick: First off, having the film out there is to me the biggest thing.

Elara: Yes, my big thing too.

Rick: Because I feel like that will open up our audience a little bit more towards maybe wanting to listen to our podcast as well going and maybe becoming more interested in heritage breeds and seeing some of our clips of interviews that we’ve put up on our YouTube channel. Hopefully what I’m thinking with the film is that it’ll be able to venture off and be able to make another film that continues the story of heritage breeds and of farmers.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Looking back on just what you’ve done up until now going to events like the Mother Earth News Fair, like the Heirloom Expo, would you recommend other people plug into the same type of events?

Elara: I think it’s very individual depending on the type of business they have. And here’s one of the problems that has occurred. I mean is anybody in business knows we are going through a fundamental shift in not only the way we do business, how we do business, how we finance, how we market, there’s a huge shift. And I would say businesses have to be really really agile in order to adapt quickly.

Because a lot of storefronts are going out of business because you know, people don’t come in the door anymore. You just order it online.

You know, you might have strategic partnerships between similar businesses are completely different businesses and you really have to stay up on that in order to be able to compete with people that can.

In a way, our experience has been very similar to the animals you have to adapt to survive, you have to and you won’t make it if you don’t.

But the ones that do have might have quite a bit to offer.

So we think that businesses now have to look at your model, look at at your market and then maybe it may or may not pencil on the momentary basis, but on the long run, it might bring more to you.

So you might be a business that’s a essential oil company. Do I need to go into a fair to show my product?

I would almost say you do because it’s a scent oriented thing.

And you will get people that need to do that experiential moment and smell and or maybe touch fabric product. You have to get it out there.

Either that are you going to ship it somewhere and have people rave about it.

And then you’re going to have to do this thing where you ship back and forth. So I think it really depends on the business model.

But I think you really, you have to be able to be agile to decide the short term goal and the long term goal and it is not a cheap thing to do to go to fairs and events and things like that.

But you have to be able to say, what will that add value to my company, my product, is it in your decision?

Rick: I think it’s good to go to the fairs whether that be the Mother Earth News Fair, the Heirloom Expo, the Weston A. Price convention, any of those because most of the people that are at the fair in the same boat we are at, they are looking for their core audience.

And so I think certain fares are that core audience for a few hundred bucks to rent a booth. It’s worth it because you’re going to have people coming by.

I will say from us on a filmmaking standpoint and a podcast standpoint, we had a lot of people stopping by asking what our podcast was about, us getting to discuss what our upcoming film was about.

And I take it from the approach of I don’t know if how many people out there are familiar with the film Endless Summer.

It was a documentary about two guys that filmmaker followed.

And they served the summer going. They traveled all around the world to keep surfing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with classic.

Brian: Yeah.

Rick: So Bruce Brown, who made that film, in a way did it is grassroots. He did the film. And then he took it to the audience. He rented theaters, and showed it for one night.

And that’s the way I kind of look at the documentary filmmaking and getting it to the audience that is going to be interested in this film.

Then when we’re done with that, we will probably try to do something similar where we take it out on the road, as well as hopefully did other distribution. But get it out there to bring it to our audience.

And instead of getting stuck in there with all the other films, the thousands of films and documentaries that come out every year, and people looking to flicks or somewhere streaming, I want to take it out there to them.

Elara: I would also say that, at least in my experience, it’s a networking experience as well.

So if you’re a business and you’re thinking about going to one of these fairs, I mean, we met so many people that are interested in same things we are and a good number of them have businesses, it’s not just the consumers going anymore.

It’s almost like a huge trade show in a way.

So used to be just homesteaders that would come to one of these or at the seed fair, maybe at the Heirloom Expo, it was just a seed people and people that want some, oh, I have an animal or two.

And to me, that’s a great value. That’s why we initially went the first place to, I think, is because we have chickens and but there’s a networking value because you’re meeting people with like ideals and with businesses that are in the similar vein.

You’re making connections in a way that you otherwise might not be able to make because there’s so much information out there on the internet and there’s so much visibility anybody can start an Instagram account.

Now, anybody can start a Facebook page. But the people that are actually willing to go to a fair and walk around and talk to people, that’s a very specific niche.

Brian: Absolutely. You brought up traveling so much. And I’m sure the two of you could probably write a book on travel tips, but could you give us some off the hand, logistics that perhaps someone could use if they’re going to be be traveling to events like this?

Elara: Events or interviews?

Brian: Either one, yeah.

Elara: It’s both for us.

Brian: Kind of time all together.

Rick: Like the person you’re traveling with?

Elara: Yes.

The first thing to do is to try it as far as I’m concerned, you have to yes, like the person you’re traveling with, and hope that your marriage is solid enough to cover being with them in a car for the next two weeks.

But I would say as much as you can put in a short period of time in terms of business, as you can, that’s a huge thing.

So for us, we went to the fair in Albany, we put a an interview on the day after we were at the fair we went to buy the wheat farm and book to the gal about the her Jacob Sheeps fantastic, great experience.

It’s a little exhausting because you do two days of a fair, you do a day of a setup beforehand day, the fair.

Second day, the fair and then an interview on the third day, the fair you get there on Friday night and you set up for the fair. We have a little teardrop trailer, which is where we could have sold that thing 50 times over at the fair cuz it’s a very cute little teardrop travel trailer. Little retro one.

But you know, you set that up, you put your booth together and it takes a couple hours with that.

Preparation is really really important before you get there.

So when you do come in on Friday night, you can just go boom, boom, boom and set it up. And then you two days of the fair and then Sunday night you break it down, same kind of thing.

Put it away, make sure your stuff is together, make sure you’re not leaving anything and then get up and go again.

So as many things as you can put into one trip, you’re much better off in terms of your cost savings,

Rick: We decided that we would drive up to Albany for the Mother Earth News Fair because in our booth, we do like to have our travel trailer there the little teardrop trailer as part of the display. Because for the most part, we do drive to a lot of the interviews.

But if it is something that’s on the East Coast, or Canada, and it might be a little too far for us to drive, we have flown and when we do go somewhere like Elara touched on, I would say the biggest point is trying to maximize your trip as much as possible.

As far as for us, it’s getting as many interviews that we can film and record while we’re there. And in the short amount of time.

Elara: Yeah, so that would be the first thing is logistics. So I guess to consolidate my long and involved get your logistics down upfront.

Rick does most of our printing reproduction, he gets the booth booth items ready before he goes and he starts a month out. So that would be the first thing I would do make sure that you’re planning logistics are taking care of advertising marketing calls. For us, we have to do production, we start what two months out with that?

Rick: Lots of times at least a month to two months to get prepped for the interviews.

And when we are traveling to a trade show, again, we try to just not be going to the trade show. So we set up those appointments, whether we’re driving or flying in. And we usually try to do one or two interviews before a fair and probably filling it and do another interview or two after the fair before we travel back, plus whatever interviews or talking points that we’re trying to do while we’re at the fair.

Elara: So we did two on Thursday, we did like to think we left on Tuesday it was….drove up?

Rick: Yes.

Elara: We did two interviews on Thursday in Southern Oergan. Our actually one on Thursday when I forgot, anyway.

We did two up there a Thursday and Friday. We set up the booth on Friday night did the show on Saturday, Sunday did another interview on a Monday and then we flew out to Seattle on Tuesday and we had a friend drive our trailer back down.

So in addition to forward thinking, logistics and prior planning, planning is going to save a lot of money.

So make sure all your printing is done at home, make sure your graphics are done at home, make sure anything you have to give away in the booth is done ahead of time.

So you don’t have to make 52 runs to Staples.

Rick: Not that I’m trying to promote but, Southwest has been pretty good for the fact that when I do or when we do have to fly since two bags fly for free. That helps a lot when I’m carrying equipment not having to pay extra to check in, some of my equipment bags.

Elara: He’s got a big Pelican kit and a drone case and you know, then we have to have the it’s any gear you have it really really saves otherwise it’s what $75 a bag?

Rick: It’s about $50 per bag.

Elara: Yeah each way.

So I would definitely say, as much of that type of thing as you can do, you wouldn’t think it would cost that much. But, you know, if we took a flight every month last year and took an extra bag and went two ways, that’s $150 per round trip. So things like that is really, really helpful to think ahead

Rick: And look for airfare sales.

Elara: Yeah.

The next thing I would say is if you’re going to stay in hotels and things like that start a month or two out because they get really get expensive as you go forward. You know, you can save sometimes $100 a night by going two months out. And some of them will let you cancel closer to the start the start date.

So I would definitely say you have something like Southwest that’ll let you swap your tickets.

If you have something like refundable hotels, start way in advance and that way at least you’ve got the option. Find out if there’s people that are going to the same places that you go again, this networking at the fair thing is a great thing, we had a friend that was taking a wanted to take a trip from Seattle and drive down the coast.

So we went one way in the truck in the trailer, and he went the other. So that saved us, and allow me to get back to work two days earlier.

So use your resource pools as much as you can. And that includes things like if you feel comfortable sharing a hotel room, you just cut your cost in half. So that kind of things really important.

Brian: Fabulous. Those are all great tips.

So we talked a little bit about the events. We spoke briefly about your podcast about social media, you guys do a fair amount on social media.

Where else do you find new audiences that are there any other mediums or is it mainly a one on one thing?

Elara: The grocery store, (laughs), no, we’re not really shy people in general.

And like I said, we find life is an interesting place. So it’s not like I run down and attack people but you know, just keep your eyes open because you never know who you’re going to meet.

People are just fascinating when you start to talk to them, they’ve got such, like I said, 400 something years worth of stories we could do, because people are just interesting.

You never know who might say, oh, I’ve always wanted to know about that. And you have a business card.

Rick has been really good about that. He has business cards for our podcasts, and for our film company, and we just hand them out and say, yeah, follow us. You can’t be shy about saying that.

Rick: Yeah, I would say as you mentioned, Brian, we do have our social media accounts that we promote the film, our filmmaking and the podcasting and those ventures.

A lot of it’s word of mouth, but also being on a show like yours, that’s going to reach another wider audience for us. Just trying to get out there more and more in that avenue, whether it be another podcast, whether it be an article in a magazine.

Elara: It’s not like it used to be I don’t think it is where it, you know, it just used to be something that was very narrow in terms of your field. If you have a fitness club, you’re only going to have people that are into fitness that listen to you.

But that’s not true.

You know, you might have everybody be interested in fitness because everybody wants to stay in shape.

So in one way, shape or form, almost everybody is going to be interested in your fitness club. The same thing follows with something like this. This is food that we’re talking about. It’s also animals, its farming, its life, its culture, its people, its society.

You know, all of these things reflect who we are. And this happens to be a topic that everybody can relate to, if they eat, everybody can relate to, if they you know, if they came from other countries, you know, think about the demographic diversity that’s represented in a cow that comes from Spain.

That’s now American, the most American animal that many people think is an American Mustang. Well, that’s a Spanish horse.

That’s a mix of many different things.

So our relatable audience is extremely broad, but you have to be willing to find the things that relate in almost every single person. And it’s not this thing where it’s very, very, very narrow. So they’re finding that cross promotion among businesses is really important now, in ways that it did not used to be, you can find different areas that would not seem to relate previously, but are very definitely connected.

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 are 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.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: Makes a lot of sense. So if we were to talk again, let’s say a year from now, we had you back on the podcast, what would have had to have happened over the last 12 months for you to feel happy with your progress concerning your organization?

Elara: Again, you’re asking a marital question.

Rick: First off, having the film out there is to me, the biggest thing,

Elara: Yes, my big thing too.

Rick: Because I feel like that will open up our audience a little bit more towards maybe wanting to listen to our podcast as well, going in maybe becoming more interested in heritage breeds and seeing some of our clips of interviews that we’ve put up on our YouTube channel.

And hopefully what I’m thinking with the film is that it’ll be able to venture off and be able to make another film that is continues the story of heritage breeds and of farmers in that vein, and that’s that’s to me what I hope to be coming back to you 12 months to tell you.

Elara: I think that my opinion was to be to get the film in the can and get it distributed.

I hope it comes together like we had hoped it would. My hope is also to, I gotta be honest, I really want to launch a series on this, I really would like to do it.

We have video footage, we have audio footage, we were not scared to talk to people. So we have all this great information. And the American farmer is in crisis right now.

So I would love to be able to get a wider audience and do segments of this that are not necessarily going to make it into the film where we talk about farming, we talk about food, we talk about people, we talk about diversity, we’re all kind of an amalgam of different cultures and different aspects.

And that I think there’s a broader picture right now in this country that’s being discussed about diversity.

I think the animals are a piece of it that really, really illustrates beautifully the strengths that can be brought to the fore by saying, Hey, what do each one of our individual strengths have to bring to us as a whole?

As a culture, my personal preference would be able to have something out there that does a series on this that talks about the different strengths of these animals, and why we’d have a stronger agricultural production system because of it. And why the people that farm it are stronger because of it.

For the average farmer. They’re just feisty, gritty people. They are wonderful people that they have backbones, and they are not scared of hard work.

I find it fascinating, the process by which they got there. And so it’s kind of a mirror of our animals and our migration. So I would say that and then my third thing, I love the podcast, I hope the podcast is successful.

Rick: 25.

So we’ve put out how many episodes now honey?

Elara: 25. So in a year, we hopefully would have how many more in the can we put them up every week.

52 (laughs), So yeah, I hope in a year we’d also have another 75 in the library.

Brian: So what are the obstacles standing in your way of getting all those things?

Rick: Well, besides finishing the film, and that’s not an obstacle, I mean, that’s just us getting the editing done, which we’re in post production on it right now.

I would say the obstacle is like with any artist or going back to farmer, being able to get your product out there, but get it to the people to the biggest obstacle is finding the audience.

Elara: Yeah, I think for me, just to get personal, that one of the big obstacles for me is maintaining the energy and the passion that you feel.

It’s, you know, it’s the same, but you’re in a business podcast. That’s one of the big difficulties with business as well. Maintaining the energy that you feel the excitement that you feel when you know something can be really, really great and Yet you have to deal with the everyday grind the everyday, you know, things that come up in business, the challenges.

So for instance, I love traveling with my husband.

I have a friend that laughed at us say, how can you stand being in a car with him for eight hours?

What is there to talk about?

And you know, sometimes we go across the country, and we don’t even turn on the radio because we’re busy looking at things and looking up things and talking and but sometimes when you travel, when you start to travel quite a bit, you get tired. I mean, it’s an exhausting thing.

People that have trade shows deal with the same kind of thing. So one of the big challenges for me is maintaining that excitement that I get every time I learned something new.

And every time I look at the film, and Rick has put together a trailer for me, he’s got two of them he’s we’ve got one for the film that’s a little more serious one.

And then he’s got one that he mixed for me that’s sort of like a I think it was at the time when when the little Lord of the Rings was coming out or something I said, make me an exciting trailer.

It’s got the globe spinning. And it just it’s just kind of a fun one that he put together. And every time I watch that, I just could jump. I’m so happy, I just get that excitement back.

So finding that way to maintain that excitement is it has not been a difficult thing. But I can see 20 years from now you still want to get that urge to jump. But when you find a concept that’s exciting. I hope we maintain that I think we have so far.

Brian: What question Did I not ask that you’d like to answer?

Rick: I know Elara has a lot to talk about.

Elara: Oh, I always do this not never a problem for me.

Okay, well, so, I would like to ask you do a business podcast, correct?

Brian: Yes.

Elara: So if you had to describe your podcast, how would you describe it?

Brian: Our podcast is mainly for business owners and executives and the self reliance field meaning that they have products, services, or a story behind them that promote self reliance and others. And our conversations are all to promote both business owners, people that run organizations and experts in the field of self reliance to help encourage, give practical tips and so forth all regarding business.

Elara: Okay, so that fits beautifully with the topics that we’ve been discussing over the last three years that people that we’ve been interviewing. We’ve been to the far east of the United States.

We’ve been to the west, we’ve been to the north and the south. We’ve been to British Columbia Islands in salt spring Island. We have been to the middle of the country. We’ve been to all spots.

We talked to scientists, we’ve talked to farmers, we talked to marketing people, your podcast has people that are dealing with the same issues.

I think it’s really important for everybody that’s listening to know that they are not alone.

That business and self reliance is a new frontier. Farming is an old frontier, but it is might as well be new. You know, I mean, there are so many changes.

There’s people doing farming with drones. Now there are people farming with satellites, now. It’s a whole different world. And I’m sure it gets extremely frustrating to some people to say, How do I keep up?

But I think that I would want to say that I hope they know they’re not alone. Everybody’s going through this. And that’s the one thing that we’ve learned from all the people we’ve spoken with.

They are not alone. And so in that they are part of a group. They’re there together, they’re greater than the sum of their parts.

Rick: This doesn’t pertain so much to our business.

But I would say with most of the people we’ve interviewed for them social media has been a big thing, because it has been able to I know a lot of people, not social media, but in the realm of farmers, and people that are way out in areas where there’s not a lot of population.

It has brought them closer together, and they are able to connect with people that are doing some of the similar things that they’re doing on their farm. And they get to ask them questions.

Hey, have you ever ran into this when you’ve been raising Jacob sheep, it’s a resource, it’s become a resource.

So I don’t know if this is out of left field. Maybe it is a little bit but I would say that I would like to bring up that not all social media is negative. It gets a lot of negative press.

But it can be a great, helpful communication tool and resource for people and most of the farmers that we’ve gone out there and interviewed love that fact because it allows them to stay connected to people doing the similar thing, that they are doing.

Elara: That’s one thing that Rick is really taught me that some of these things are necessary whether you’re comfortable with them or not, whether you say, Well, I was never on social media, any kind of social media, and now I am on the podcast is the host and I have pictures of myself on our Instagram accounts, our Facebook and all of that kind of thing.

But I think that in today’s age, it is absolutely necessary to have a social media presence.

And if you’re not comfortable doing it yourself, see if you can get help doing it. It’s like anything else.

You don’t necessarily feel comfortable doing your whole tax return yourself. So you find a CPA, that’ll do it. It’s the same thing with social media. We have a great gal that does a lot of posting for us.

And Rick does a lot of posting for us, but our social media gal helps us in this. It’s a resource.

It’s really, really important. And frankly, you know, Rick is got about four hats he’s wearing and I’ve got about four Hats I’m wearing and we’re doing travel planning and logistics and scheduling and interviewing and research all of this, you can’t do everything.

If you can get help, and you can swing it, put it in the budget as a line item, because it’s really, really important in today’s market to have a social media presence, and it can be helpful.

It really, really can be a good resource.

Brian: Wow, those are really great points. Really appreciate the time you guys have spent with us.

What could a listener do?

Who’s interested in finding out more about backyard green films about the agriculture podcast and everything else that you guys are doing? Where would you direct them?

Rick: Well, I would direct them to our website, backyardgreenfilms.com on there. It has a link to our agriculture podcast has the trailer up there for our upcoming film tells us a little bit about what Elara and I are doing.

I would also tell people if they want to see some of our video clips little pieces that we’ve put together to go to our YouTube channel, which is also Backyard Green Films. And those are the two biggest places that you can find us. And then of course on Instagram, and Facebook, we’re there under Backyard Green Films as well.

Elara: Yeah, if you’d like to see pictures, it’s really nice. Because podcasting has become a big focus for us, as we talked about the heritage breed animals and yet these animals are really really different looking sometimes that the YouTube channel is kind of a neat thing because because Rick’s put some of our more interesting animals up there and you can see them visually.

You look at a Jacob sheep, for example, it looks like something off of the San Diego Wild Animal Park the planes out there. It’s got four horns and spots. It’s crazy looking animal. But it’s really neat.

We’ve lost that ability to look at some of these things and say, Wow, that’s a different looking animal. So yeah, I would send people to the YouTube channel for some, some visuals because some of these animals are just really interesting looking at.

Brian: Well that’s fabulous. Thank you so much. This has been an absolute delight and so much depth into what you’re talking about. We’ll definitely have you guys come back again, and be able to delve in a little deeper on some of these subjects because there’s so much meat there on the bone.

Rick and Elara Bowman thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Rick and Elara: Brian, thank you for having us. And I’m really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Okay, so that was part of our two part series, all about Backyard Green Films. Second part, they’re dealing a lot with the fundamental shift in the ways that we’re doing business now as opposed to the old days.

I think that’s really great stuff.

I fact that you really have to be flexible and agile for success, and be willing to move where you need to move to do what you need to do. I mean, their life is a perfect example of that.

In this part of the conversation, they’ve spent more time talking about going to expos going to events.

What are your short term goals?

So a lot of their short term goals are meeting people and having conversations that they can add on to their projects, but also their long term goals, the relationships they’re looking to make over the long term.

Rick’s point, again, is on finding that core audience, really finding the people that are going to fit most with the material that he’s coming out with. Also, they’re bringing up that practical end of really keeping things organized, having really forward thinking logistics, and planning things out as best as possible. You keep from getting caught into a trap, either financially or otherwise.

And that’s really important that they mentioned how Southwest Airlines has been really helpful for traveling with their equipment that type of practical advice and ways of thinking about how to get from one place to another is really important.

Another thing they brought up is the concept of maintaining your energy for your business and keeping the passion going for what you’re doing that’s very, very important of watching out for those things that are going to drain you of your time and your energy, great points about networking.

Rick talking about social media was really important and how it’s this communication tool. And this ability to network with others that allow the small guys to be able to do things that the big guys can’t do.

That’s a very common theme that we found with a lot of the people that we talked to from the other news fairs, is finding a way to go beyond where the big guys are going. I think that type of positive attitude is the reason why have been so successful and while they’ll continue to be successful, and finally, I love when

They mentioned about getting the help you need to get your business to function in the areas that you just don’t want to do or you’re not good at. That’s so important.

And something that gets ignored so often or put off for too long is the necessity of delegating your weaknesses. It doesn’t mean hiring somebody necessarily. It doesn’t necessarily mean having somebody that’s an employee, it could be paying someone to do something short term sometimes it can be bartering, service for service or product or service or what have you.

These are all really important points and so many other great things that they brought up during this whole conversation. Like I said, this was part two, be sure and listen to part one.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Rick & Elara Bowman – Backyard Green Films: Part 1

Posted on October 24, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 24.

How do you define happiness? Is it a dollar amount? Is your “cause” bigger than your “bottom line?

Rick and Elara Bowman have diverse backgrounds, but have uncovered a common passion for telling stories through modern media. Filmmaking, podcasting and social media have allowed them to explore issues and topics that engage them personally. They interview people “who love farming, science, ranching, getting their hands dirty – or are just plain interesting.”

They have been traveling the country in their teardrop trailer, while grabbing footage, researching and now editing their upcoming film, “The Holstein Dilemma: Heritage Breeds and the Need for Biodiversity. “

What does it take to create a documentary from scratch, self-fund it on a budget, (while still keeping your day-job) AND cover an incredible worldwide puzzle that very few people even know exists?

Listen Now!

This is “Part 1.” When done listening to this, check out “Part 2” here: https://offthegridbiz.com/rick-elara-bowman-backyard-green-films-part-2

Find out more about Rick, Elara and Backyard Green Films: https://backyardgreenfilms.com/
Watch their videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnQm6NOFcMrvJQrv09Xzt6w

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcripts

Elara: Life is a trade off.

Do you work more for the things that make you happy? Or do you take a little less and be happy just through the things that you are not buying but your producing?

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family. If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.
We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: An experienced and innovative filmmaker, Backyard Green Films owner and Director Producer Rick Bowman has cataloged over 25 years of broadcast commercial and corporate video experience.

Rick combines skillful expertise and artistic vision to create top quality projects for clients, and has learned by experience that each project requires a special approach and solution to meet its goals.

Backyard Green Films received an indie fest award in 2012 for their documentary Hillsville 1912, A shooting in the court. As well as winning Best Documentary award at the minefield Film Festival in Los Angeles for their film, Banjos, Bluegrass and Squirrel Barker’s.

Currently, they’re in post production on their latest film The Holstein Dilemma, heritage breeds and the need for biodiversity.

A farmer at heart, Elara lives on a mini farm with her husband Rick in an Urban Oasis located in the middle of San Diego where she tends to 8 chickens, to worm bins and fruit trees galore.

She transferred this passion and life experience to backyard green films, where she is helping to produce innovative films and media for future generations. Armed with a BS in business from University of Redlands, and an impressive resume and voiceover production, project management and accounting.

Elara brings a wealth of knowledge to the production team. In her role as executive producer, she could be found diving deep into the data stream rabbit hole at late and early hours researching endless questions, new topics and new people to interview in her role as the host of the agri-Culture podcast.

Rick and Elara travel around the country in their teardrop trailer nicknamed Maggie finding interesting people to talk to and new things to see. They actually enjoy being in the car together for hours on end and put together they have clocked at least 150,000 miles in almost all 50 states.

Rick has one more to go. Rick and Elara Bowman, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Rick & Elara: Brian, thank you. We’re glad to be here. Thank you so much.

Brian: So besides what we heard in your bio is tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Elara: Where do we start with that?

Rick: I don’t know. I’ll let you go first. How’s that?

Elara: Okay, I am a currently a bookkeeper and tax preparer at a small CPA firm in San Diego, California. And that’s my, I guess my first job you would say, or my second or my third I don’t know where how are we planning those these days, babe?

Rick: Well, I don’t know if we stay on the road a fair amount of the time. And my background is in audio originally, and then I moved over into filmmaking a few years ago. With that first film, you mentioned Hillsville 1912, A Shooting In The Court.

Which started out just as a passion project for me and as time went on Elara, and I founded Backyard Green Films.

From that, we made a couple other documentaries. And now we’re working on a project that started as a Elaras passion project, but it has become mine as well.

We found out a few years ago at a Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon, about heritage breed animals. And we dove down that rabbit hole. And we’ve been going around the last about three years interviewing farmers and scientists and people that raise these breeds and know about these breeds.

That’s how the film started. And from that we started the agri-Cultural podcast a few months ago.

Elara: But we are people that find a great number of things interesting and multiple fields. And so we keep finding things that we don’t know if other people know about and we would like to share them.

So we’ve been running around the country for three years on this particular documentary. We probably have a good what 450 years of material that we’d like to cover.

Rick: Yeah, there’s an endless amount of material out there, that’s for sure.

Brian: It’s awesome that you’ve adapted such a really cool skill as creating documentary films that you can plug in whatever you want into that media source. So that’s really neat to be able to see and how did you go into that?

You said you were originally with coming at it from an audio perspective. So what led you into filmmaking?

Rick: Well, I always had an interest but you were correct to go back, I came in at from an audio perspective. I had been in the Navy, and when I got out of the Navy, I was stationed up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I went to school up there for audio recording.

And originally my passion was to go in and work in a recording studio working with bands and that kind of fell through but I did stay with audio working with them. I got a job at an audio and video production company here in San Diego, not long after I graduated from school.

That opened my eyes up to the visual aspect of it. While I worked there as an audio recording engineer and I started noodling around with doing little videos on my own, and 25 years later, that’s what I’m trying to do now, we’ve been making documentary films, and this is our fourth film that we’re working on now.

Elara: Teeny bit more equipment than when you first started, isn’t it?

Rick: That’s true. That’s true.

Elara: He’s a music buff and a film buff. So when you are into things in those realms, there are a great number of topics that come up. So he definitely has, you’ve expanded your repertoire and your interest level, but most of them are around film and what film can bring to popular culture and how they can open new worlds for people. I think, at least I’ve found you’re very interested in that.

Rick: Yes, and I think Elara touched on it earlier. We just we both find life interesting and stories interesting tonight, on the film that we’re working on right now. One of the big things to me, besides learning about the heritage breed animals is the personal stories. People are phenomenal.

Elara: That’s kind of how Rick got started. And I have I don’t know if I’ve been carried along or I drag you into new topics?

Rick: I kind of grabbed her by the hand and say, come on, let’s do this.

Elara: We both like to travel though. And so we keep finding new things that we would like to discuss with people. But I do, like I said, bookkeeping and tax prep, but my father was a doctor that was really by nature, a farmer or a rancher.

I think genetically I love to go tromping around fields of cattle and manure, growing things and dirt. And so it’s this film is definitely seem to be a natural progression toward that. And I really love research.

I don’t know if that’s the tax and the accounting thing. I’m a detailed girl so I can get lost for hours and hours, just finding interesting things, topics that I find interesting.

Brian: That’s really Great, that’s very, very cool. There are so many levels to what you guys do. I’m trying to figure out where to go first here.

And what I want to do is kind of start out at the beginning of my journey and finding you so I got to meet you at the Mother Earth News Fair that just happened over in Albany, Oregon for 2019.

You guys had a booth set up there. How did that all set up?

Rick: We’ll I’ll jump in on this Mother Earth News Fair contacted us we had gone the last two years to the Mother Earth News Fair. We had a booth last year at the Albany Fair, and then also at the Mother Earth News Fair in Kansas. And they reached out to us this year and asked us if we would like to come back and be a media partner with them.

And we said yes, and in doing that we set up a booth with them again. Plus, we were going around and filming some little short interviews for Mother Earth News Fair to put up on our YouTube channel and kind of give people out in the digital realm that don’t make it, and the internet world that don’t make it to the Mother Earth News Fair, kind of give them a inside peek of what the fairs are about.

Elara: As you know, they’re great number of different types of people that come to the fairs.

We met there. And so to us, it was a great thing to help to introduce new people to the topic, but also so many of the different aspects that are incorporated in farming come sort of come to the middle there homesteading and farming.

That was a natural, natural meeting place for us.

Is there one main goal that you were hoping to achieve by having a booth there or multiple goals that you’re hoping to get to just as far as your organization is concerned?

Well, it’s again, it’s been a progression for us. It’s kind of interesting.

We definitely would love to get more people aware of the topics. See in in filmmaking, it’s not always going to be something unless you do Spider Man two or three or a big sequel. You know, your funding is not there like it is with other things.

One of the things that we’ve been doing is we’ve been doing podcasting, and we’ve been doing segments, and we would, you know, we’re thinking, Oh, hey, you know, getting people aware of this. Is one of the ways that you can monetize your projects.

So it’s sort of a labor of love in many ways. We really feel it’s important for people to learn about these topics. And so we have been over the last couple of years, finding ways that we can maybe find a way to make this thing cost effective to where we could keep doing it.

Again, this is one of those things that many of the people that come to fairs like this or that do podcasting. They say you we don’t have to make a fortune, but we just have to be able to fund it so we can keep doing it.

And so we thought, you know what, let’s go to the Mother Earth News Fairs. Let’s go to, we’ve been to Santa Rosa and the Heirloom Expo. We’ve been to a couple of these different events and we found that people are really really interested in the topic, but they don’t find out about unless you get the news out. So that’s one of the big purposes that we’ve been doing is trying to raise awareness.

And if I may add, Brian, to answer your question a little further is, we felt like the Mother Earth News Fair and the Heirloom Festival would be reaching our audience that would be interested in our documentary and our podcast.

And we felt like those would be the people coming in and might be interested in seeing the film hearing a podcast. That would be a good grassroots way to get the word out.

Brian: If you had to describe that ideal person, your ideal audience or eventual customer who that person be?

Rick: Boy that’s kind of throwing a dart because going around the United States and up to Canada, the last three years, we have met so many people that come from all different backgrounds that are farmers.

Elara: But also don’t you think it’s something that not everybody knows about because everybody has such label shock. They’ve got label fatigue, the consumer, the average consumer knows about organic and free range and pasture based and, you know, natural, although these labels, they get put on food, but they don’t have any idea of all of the rest of the variables that go into the mix.

So, you know, people don’t really understand that it takes different resource requirements for different foods, it takes different resource requirements to raise animals in different ways.

And it’s not all going to be a label related thing. And since small farmers are having such a really hard time now, and a lot of them are getting to retirement age, I think the average farmer still what 58.

So, yeah, so it’s really important for people to understand the components that go into their food.

It’s kind of been something where this applies to everybody. And we may start out with a target thing, but for instance, at the last Mother Earth News Fair, we met as many people as we wanted to interview as we did that we wanted to tell about our podcast.

So for us it is, the sky’s the limit with the people that we want to talk to and that we want to learn from. And it’s all avenues, all walks of life because we all eat, and we all consume so it probably doesn’t answer your question what your target audiences.

But I think I would have to say if I had to pin it down, people are interested in where their food comes from more and more these days. So I would say that would be our target audience, people that are, that want to know how this animal is raised?

Or where it came from?

Or where their vegetables are grown out?

And so I would say that would probably be the closest thing I could say to our target audience.

Brian: Absolutely.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to 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.

Brian: And going off of that point, you know, we’ve been talking around it a little bit, but why don’t you tell us a little bit more about what the concept is of heritage breeds and biodiversity and what the topic that you guys are going into with the Holstein Dilemma?

Elara: Well, there are many, many breeds out there that are not utilized commonly in agriculture. We’re not saying that one breed is better than the other, but most people don’t know that.

Our agriculture has become very much a monoculture. You know, if you have a beef cow, it’s probably an Angus, if you have a dairy cows at 85% of them are Holstein. If you have a meat chicken, it’s a Cornish cross.

And most people don’t know that our production has become really, really narrow in terms of the animals that we use.

So heritage breed animals are for the most part breeds, that a lot of them have history to them. A lot of them have, you know, thousands of years of history that are a part of what has gone into making these animals.

A lot of them are have different characteristics than the average agricultural animals. So they might have pest resistance that’s been developed over time in a certain place.

For instance, the Texas Longhorn is an animal that is sort of an amalgamation of different influences.

But it came over from the Spanish I believe, did not, yes, the Spanish cattle, so they came to Florida, and then they dispersed from there some went, they were doing beef production and Hispaniola big economic influence of the time.

But then because there were no fences a lot of these animals either get loose or they’re taking place to place and they adapt over time to the conditions of the location. So as you can imagine, the Longhorn would be very different when it arrived as a type of Spanish cow a certain type of breed with certain characteristics.

When it gets to Florida, either the strong ones make it or don’t, from the ones that have a heat tolerance or pest resistance that got past the size of Volkswagen bugs in Florida. So as that cow moves to a different location like Texas that’s very dry and has brush and sagebrush and has different maybe different tix and different different things that impact its ability to survive. It evolves.

When you put a couple hundred years into this….couple hundred years later, you have a very different cow in Florida than you would have in Texas.

And they look different and they react different.

They have different heat tolerances, they have different food requirements, and different productions.

This is something that we are starting to lose because now we are expecting animals to do the same thing or to produce at a very high level, but they’re only going to produce under certain conditions for the most part.

Or they’re going to maximize production under certain conditions. So our heritage breed animals are not necessarily ones that are used in the main production lines that we use now. But they have characteristics that are developed in certain places in certain locations that are really helpful to us.

And so if they want to be able to use the heat tolerance of a Longhorn, they have to have a Longhorn that will allow for that it has to still exist. If we don’t have an economic viability component to them, we’re not going to have Longhorns in 100 years because all we’ll have is a Holstein or an Angus.

Anyway, this applies to all the different if it’s a chicken or cow or pig. There are animals that had developed over thousands of years that are going extinct because they’re not commonly used in production.

Rick: Just to add to that, I don’t think a lot of people realize that even just are the world 8,000 livestock breeds that we have out there 21% of that are in danger of extinction. And every time we lose one of those animals gone, and we’ve lost that biodiversity, the best I could sum it up is maybe, like what’s happening right now.

In the Amazon, you know, they say that is the lungs of the world. And if it’s burning up, are we going to be able to breed there might be something one of these animals can contribute, that we don’t know right now that we might need in the future.

Elara: Yeah, it’s in our self interest to keep these things alive. Because we’re in such a rapidly changing climate and economic climate as well, that you never know, you can’t really predict which kind of components are going to be necessary in the future.

But you do know that if you at least save the pieces, you have the ability to put them together in a different way in the future.

If you put them all on the same cake, then you only have the same kind of cake from here out. I think many people don’t know that many parts of our history are really closely tied with agriculture.

If you think about the milking Devon. That’s a really interesting cow. It came over in gosh, one of the farmers we interviewed, his family came over and brought the Devon’s over 1630 I think?

Rick: 1635.

Elara: 1635 little red cow it’s a good milker good for it’s a good oxen. Animal pulls a plow a really good clip, try purpose or quad purpose animal actually, milk, beef, oxen and gosh, what’s the other one? I forget.

There’s another component there besides the fertilizer that they produce. But there’s only 1,200 of them, I think left overall.

Rick: And they came over from Devon, England. And there’s no more milking Devon’s in England.

Elara: They’re gone.

Rick: They’re gone. Now, they’re called the American milking Devon because they don’t have them anymore over there. And there’s only about 12 or 1,300 here in North America.

Elara: But why would you have a Devin when you can have a Holstein that produces, you know, two or three, four times the milk and that’s the problem that’s occurred is, that the other animals are just not having an economically viable path for the future.

Rick: And from what I heard to in our studies our research, a lot of these animals fell out of favor after World War Two. And understandably, we have to feed the planet.

But what we’re trying to say, and we’re not trying to say we don’t need large ag, we do to feed the world.

But we don’t want to give up on these animals as well, because we need the biodiversity. They are important too.

And so for small farmer, they are great.

They got a lot to offer.

Brian: It’s such a very interesting topic, and then you could take it in so many different ways. I’m sure the editing process is going to be difficult with all the interviews and so forth that you guys have gone through.

I can only imagine you could probably make five movies out of the same topic.

Elara: Yes, we have. You’re hitting a marital topic here.

We keep finding things that we think are fascinating and I keep saying honey, honey were imposed, that means we’re supposed to start cutting now.

Rick: If you’re not careful, you end up with a four hour movie, which I don’t think most people want to sit down and watch 4 hour movies. But, as you yourself know, editing is an important process.

Brian: Yes, that’s right. And taking it back knowing kind of the background of this topic, knowing your customer and everything, and you were discussing monetizing the whole project.

I saw that you sell DVDs. Is that your main source of monetizing for this or is there are there other forms that you’re using?

Rick: Your thing for when we finish this film?

Brian: Yeah. How are you making this lifestyle possible for yourself?

Elara: Well, okay, so here’s the accountant speaking. Yeah. I don’t know if this makes me a bad account. We have self funded this.

Brian: Yes.

Elara: Because we think it’s an important topic. So the decision that we made was based on informing as many people as we could, we would love to continue to do this.

I work for person that’s really understanding about bigger picture ideas and about a triple bottom line and how you might want to leave the world a better place than you found it.

We don’t just have a fiscal bottom line, we have a quality of life decision that we’ve made, that we’re going to make this film and hopefully continue to do it. That said, we would like to figure out how to be able to continue to do this in the future.

And to bring this to a larger audience, because we think it’s a really important topic, and we think they’re a great story.

So that’s sort of where the monetizing comes in, is that we’d like to continue after this to be able to continue the process and to keep bringing stories to to light because the world’s a really fascinating place.

But we have the ability because Rick has his own business and he has a video business that the equipment portion of this is something that we’ve been able to handle.

He already has the equipment for his production company. And so we’re able to do it in a way that’s more cost effective.

But you know, as you as I’m sure you know, and the long run, that’s not the easiest thing to maintain, because you have to keep buying equipment. So that’s sort of the thing…

Rick: But I will jump in as the non-accountant, filmmaker.

Brian: Yes.

Rick: And I will say that I want everyone to see all my films, and I want to monetize them.

And by doing so, I do have a contract with a distribution company for our last film we did in that are ready to distribute this one as well for us MPD out of Philadelphia. And also, we are hoping to talk with some different broadcasters in the future to see if we can sell this film to them, that way to have it shown, whether that be a cable channel or a network channel of some sort.

Elara: Yes.

Brian: Excellent. Well, that’s great news and it’s really cool that you’ve been able to stretch things out, look at the big picture and see things beyond just the bottom line and also be able to fit it in with your current lifestyle and be able to work it through that, that’s really great.

Elara: You know, it’s sort of an interesting thing that people that we speak with the interviews we’ve done, we have probably went at about 80 interviews that we’ve done over the last three years.

It’s not an uncommon thing now for people to want meaning in life. And this is one of the decisions that many of the farmers have made.

Most all of them have full time jobs, they have other jobs to be able to support their ability to do what they do, because many of the heritage breed animals aren’t going to make money in the same way that a large scale production facility is.

And so they kind of keep this alive by working somewhere else. We sort of feel a little bit of a kinship to the farmers that we speak with.

But we also understand that if you can make the the process the project, the animal whatever economically viable and self sufficient on its own, it’s better for the longevity in the long run.

You can always make it because you’re not always having to putting money into something and not get it out.

Rick: I’ll just throw in there.

One of our interviews is with the actress Isabella Rossellini. I don’t know if you’re familiar.

Brian: Oh, yeah, sure.

Rick: But she has a 28 acre farm in Long Island, New York, and has really gotten into the heritage breeds she raises heritage fried chickens and turkeys, and a pig as well.

And she told us when we interviewed her that farmers are like her as their artist. And all they want to do is be able to, they’re willing to give up certain things to live the lifestyle that they want to live.

Just like an actor, a singer, a painter, farmers are the same way on your life decision.

Brian: That’s very insightful, if you don’t hear it described that way very often. But I grew up working on the family cattle ranch. I totally understand that concept. And it’s not just true of people from an agricultural background.

But so often we’ll take artists and put them off to the side and say, well, they’re doing it out of a passion but really many people in many walks of life are doing it out of a passion and finding a way to make money along the way.

But it’s part of that lifestyle.

It’s part of discovering the life that you want a life with meaning a life with a cause, and being able to weave that in with with reality. And that’s great.

Rick: Yeah, I agree with you. 100%. And I think most people, if they’re doing something they like, they don’t care if they don’t have a million dollars in the bank and live in a big house.

They’re living their life, and they have a passion for what they’re doing. And that’s all that matters.

Elara: And there’s something to be said for that. The trade off, you know, you go to work and some people might work 10 hours a day to earn enough money to buy the things they want.

So they can take two or three weeks off a year and do the thing they want for two or three weeks a year.

I am of at least for me personally, I would rather make a little less money in life and have the quality of life on the longer term and on a daily basis.

So I know that I come home and I look at my chickens and I dig in the garden and I do all of those things.

That’s worth taking an extra half an hour a day and having that just the moment of Zen, I guess it’s called, because it’s it life is a trade off.

Do you work more for the things that make you happy?

Or do you take a little less and be happy?

Just through the things that you are not buying, but you’re getting, but you’re producing?

Rick: And I would say, if you looked at most farmers out here, I don’t really see any monetarily rich farmers.

Elara: Oh, no.

Rick: But I see them rich in their life of what they’re doing.

Elara: Do you have a garden? a vegetable garden or trees or anything?

Brian: Yes, yes.

Elara: Okay. So you know that joy that you get when you go out to the plum tree and you stand there underneath it and you pick a ripe plum, and you you take a bite out of it and it’s dripping down your chin is the best thing you’ve ever tasted.

And you say, I made that.

Well, you didn’t make it but you know, you grew it. You helped it along it tastes better somehow.

I don’t know how that is, but it is.

And there’s, it’s absolutely one of the best decisions you can ever make.

Brian: Really great points, really good.

This conversation we’re having as part of a mini series, all regarding people, both previous to the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, and afterwards talking to people that we met there.

And so just to wrap up that idea of the situation with you being there, you were in Albany, and then were you also going to be in Kansas this year. Also, we’re not for sure if we’re going to make it to Kansas this year or not.

We haven’t got that on the calendar yet.

Elara: We’re in the post production phase. And my husband tells me that’s the that the filming has been the easy part. So yeah, so the next month or two or three, we really tried to focus on making sure that you know, we have the animation in place when we have a lot of the music composition, writing and music.

So there’s a lot of things that have to happen in the next couple months to get it to come together.

And I have learned from him it is the really tough part of the process. So we did quite a bit of travel. I mean, last last year we traveled every month, I think.

Rick: Yes, more every month.

Elara: Some months, a couple places, and sometimes it’s on the road.

And sometimes it’s in the air we have we had companion status last year, which saved us with the Southwest, but really does take a toll and catching up when you come back is a really hard thing to do.

So we sort of made a decision that in the post production period, we’ve got to focus on it.

So where we think we might minimize some of our travel this fall just to get going in the can.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts from Part 1, with Rick and Elara Bowman: We’ve broken this conversation with Rick and Elara into two parts. This is only part one.

I want to talk a little bit about what they said here, but be sure and listen to part two.

We met them at the Mother Earth Mews Fair. I really like how they’re discussing how you’ve got to find an expo that meets with your ideal audience for your message, your offer your service, you’ve got to find the ones that really fit in, right.

And they had attended and they had picked out the Mother Earth News Fair specifically, for that reason.

That’s something to keep in mind yourself when you start looking for any form of event to plug into make sure that truly fits into what you’re looking to get out of it. One thing that’s really clear here is their amount of passion for what they’re doing.

They found something they enjoy doing, they’re passionate about, and they’ve been able to build a business around it, and at the same time, be able to continue making a living on the side. So this is only part of their life, but they’ve been able to build into their life without giving up anything else. I think that’s really cool.

And that whole concept of balancing things out and timing things just right how they talked about their travel plans and fitting in all the other objectives that they’re looking to get while they’re traveling.

That’s great.

It fits in with a lot of the other conversations that we had the one with Scott Smith, the one with Uncle Mud.

Lots of the people we talked to talk about how they’ve turned their business into a lifestyle and they’ve built it around their ideal lifestyle.

That’s something you always have to keep in mind. It’s not just about a number at the end of the day on how much you’re looking to make. It really needs to fit in across the board.

Like I said, there’s so much more conversation coming up.

Be sure and listen to part two, and I’ll see you over there on the next Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Charles Wiley – Corn Man

Posted on October 3, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 23.

Who is Corn Man? Is he a music album, a children’s book or a way to expose where our food comes from?

Charles Wiley is a lifelong musician who was caught off guard by one of the best-kept-secrets in the world of nutrition today: the amount of corn byproducts that are artificially added to EVERYTHING.

Hear host Brian J. Pombo and Charles discuss how his art form has been inspired by his mission to inform. How can you use the Corn Man to stand-out in your crowded market? LISTEN NOW!

Find out more about Charles Wiley and Corn Man: https://charleswiley.net/cornman/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Charles: Dovetailing back when we talked about before, I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your Maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure life off the grid.

Brian: Charles Wiley he has been writing music and playing drums for 25 years, he currently lives in Los Angeles and plays with various bands and artists, including rock band Dark Horse Rising, Riot award winning singer songwriter Chris Angeles and Americana Band Circus 62.

In addition to playing drums, he also writes music for television.

His music has been played on Oprah, Dateline NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers, the Dr. Oz Show, The Young and the Restless and more Charles created the corner Man project to bring awareness to how much corn is in everything we eat.

Corn man is an ongoing action adventure children’s book series and progressive rock concept album. Charles was inspired to call attention to the issue using music and humor.

Corn man hopes to be the conversation starter and tackling the complex issues surrounding the food industry, the environmental impacts of it and the unsustainable nature of how we eat and grow food. Charles Wiley, welcome to the off the grid biz podcast.

Charles: Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Brian: So besides what we heard in your bio, tell us a little bit about who you are or what you do.

Charles: Okay, well basically, as a bio said, I’ve been drumming for over 25 years and for the last six to seven years, I’ve been a full time musician, make my living playing drums in various bands, some of the bands you mentioned, doing session, work with other bands, writing some music for TV, and then also I guess, the Corn Man project is kind of dovetailed its way into that.

And between those three things, that’s kind of how I kind of break up my time.

In between projects, I had this desire to start creating my own music, writing my own music, and from there kind of morphed into my own solo stuff. And then the core main project kind of started coming about because of that, so

Brian: Fabulous.

So how did you end up at this point in your life?

What’s your life story?

Charles: Well, long story very short.

My background in music is very common to musician. I played in bands growing up. I was lucky, my dad’s a musician. He still teaches guitar in his retirement.

My older brother plays his guitar.

So him and I, we always played in bands. And my goal was always to be a full time touring musician, you know, writing and recording doing that thing. So that’s been my goal.

I’d say about eight or nine years ago, it kind of deviated from having my own band to kind of working with other bands. And I kind of became a sideman in that realm and really enjoyed that.

But I always had this desire to create my own music and things. Rewind I’d say a about four or five years ago.

My wife and I were kind of doing some research on trying to eat healthier kind of change our lifestyle because we bought a Costco membership and I got very excited about all the food there and bought too much and ate too much and gained a lot of weight and wasn’t Costco fault.

But um, I was just like, I want to do something to kind of change the way we’re eating and it started with the book, Forks Over Knives from there kind of dovetailed into the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Foodopoly.

I just really became interested in the food industry, the food we were eating, and what it was doing to our bodies, and I was on a three month cruise gig, where I was the drummer in a cruise band.

I was reading the book Foodopoly, it was talking about the various ways we raised food and things like that and It was actually making me sick reading it, because you know, you’re trying to I was reading, I was eating lunch, you know, trying to reading about the food industry.

I was like, Oh gosh, I don’t feel good.

But for whatever reason, corn just popped out at me as this thing that was in virtually everything we eat.

Now, as you know, it’s in the fuel we burn as an ethanol and things like that. And I just became kind of obsessed with how did corn become this thing?

How did how did it turn into this kind of juggernaut that’s in everything we eat?

So I wanted to bring awareness to the issue.

I thought, what, how could I do that, you know, being a musician, obviously, had to be involved. But I’m not a big fan of when people try to persuade you with new information and they kind of bleed with it, you know, kind of hit you over the head with it.

So I wanted to do that in a fun way, where it would kind of engage people.

Evidently, drawing my head on stock of corn is one way to kind of bring people’s defenses down.

You know, they’re like, what is this all about?

As you mentioned, in the intro, I came up with the story.

My wife and I wrote the book series together, I wrote all the music, I hired musician friends to play on it. And we basically just wanted to get this conversation going, you know, because as you know, I’m sure there’s, I think over 50 or 60 ingredients that are all corn based that are in most of the food we eat on a daily basis.

The studies are coming back that it’s the health implications for kids and adults and the planet on top of that. It’s just kind of astronomical that kind of brought us here.

Brian: Oh, fabulous.

Was the concept of the book first or was the music album first How did that transpire?

Charles: I want to say the music was first the music came first and then I tend to kind of have a lot of ideas.

I kid with my wife because I think all my ideas are great obviously you know and but it’s when an idea sticks in my head and I keep chewing on it and I’m like and the idea of the artwork came with the music and when I saw my head on a stock of corn and the artist

Andy West off a buddy of ours who did that when he drew it I was like, Man, that’s so funny that looks at you know, and then I was like, let’s do this story.

The music came first the story came second. And as of now chapter one and two are out for the music and the ebooks, but Chapter One is the only one that is on paperback.

Chapter Two is coming out in paperback hopefully by the holiday.

Brian: I originally got to see you at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon. And you had a booth there you had your your first book there you had your music.

What led you to putting this out on display like that?

What tied you in with the Mother Earth News Fair specifically?

Charles: Great question.

Well, corn man is kind of a difficult, difficult concept to explain.

Everyone talks about you know, you need your elevator pitch. Give me three or four sentences on what this is.

I tell people it’s a action adventure kids story and a progressive rock concept album and they’re like, those don’t go together.

Long story short, I was trying to find it I still am in the process of trying to find best audience to get the story out to. And I was reaching out to some radio stations for promotion for corn man, and came across a radio station in Portland.

They basically said if you’re in the area, we could probably get you on the air can get you an interview and I was like, oh, shoot, okay, I need to find something.

I was looking and I knew of Mother Earth News Fair for a while. I knew of their podcast, and then I saw they were going to be in Albany, Oregon, and I was like, Huh, okay.

My in-laws live about three and a half hours south of Albany. So it all just kind of made sense to just go there and test the waters with the Mother Earth News Fair attendees because you know, where I met you there.

So many of those people there are already involved doing things to for sustainability, conservation, all that stuff. So I knew in that aspect, it will would work, they would relate to it. But am I already telling them stuff they already know, you know what I mean?

It’s like so we just went to check it out. The response was great. You know, we talked to a lot of amazing people, yourself included. And it just became a nice kind of…that was the first major fair we went to.

So we had a good time that the turnout was good.

Brian: You plan on doing any other type of live events like that?

Charles: Yeah, I hope to do maybe once every couple months or so.

And then the thing I really want to start doing is, at the Mother Earth News Fair, I read chapter one at the kids stage they had there, and the audio book is coming out in a couple months.

That has a soundtrack that I wrote to it.

So I had that soundtrack playing as I read the book live, and I want to start going to schools and I want to start doing maybe like an hour, hour and a half demonstration.

Hopefully that the ideal is to play two or three songs off the record where I can play drums live with in front I think the class and then read the story at the fair, I think you might have saw we had like the the word search they can take with them that shows and just get that conversation started.

I remember when I was a kid, like if I got the bit in my teeth about something, I would nag my parents to know and like, hey, let’s do this, let’s do this.

So the goal is to get the kids involved and they can go home, and they can start looking at the ingredients, they can start looking at the food and, you know, helping their parents shop.

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know if that’s gonna be fun for the parent or not, but um, but that’s the goal.

I want to start going to more schools, I want to start doing more fairs and I want to start playing this music out live with a full band. That won’t be probably till next year.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to 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 are 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.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: What you’ve heard weaved in and out of this episode are quick little selections from Charles Wiley’s corn man album. You can find out more at CharlesWiley.net/cornman.

Music

Brian: So what age group do you think’s ideal for this?

Charles: You know, I do think it’s gonna kind of following the 10 to 14 year old range for the younger kids. I think they were related to the illustrations, the story is a little, I don’t wanna say dark. But I think that that 10 to 14, 15 year old year old range is going to be really good. And it’s also for adults too.

I’ve had some adult friends say they liked the story and all that stuff.

The story is basically following a dog and a cat as they go on an adventure looking for their owner who goes missing. And in-between all this, there are these corn facts that are being, you know, put into the book.

The reason why the owner went missing has to do with corn. So it’s just kind of a fun way to kind of get the whole family involved and talking about it.

Brian: Very cool.

Is there any other way that you’re finding new customers for the Corn Man series?

Besides doing a fair like this or going to classrooms?

Have you found any other way that you’ve been able to reach people so far?

Charles: It’s kind of been a combination of all that, you know, going to fairs obviously, being on social media.

You can go to CharlesWiley.net/CornMan.

And I have a Facebook page that’s for Corn Man and Instagram page for Corn Man.

But a lot of it’s just been word of mouth, grassroots. And I’m okay with that because I find talking to people in person or over online or whatever about the project in more depth is kind of the best way.

You know, it kind of slowly gets them involved.

And as I said before the elevator pitches kind of convoluted. So having a 2, 3, 4 minute conversation with someone about it has really been good.

Between the fairs, the social media music angle, we’re reaching quite a few people. So it’s been good.

Brian: Oh, that’s great.

So you’ve got the album, you’ve got the book, and now you got the audio book, which is a great hybrid between the two. That’s a really neat process.

Do you see anything else? And I see you have a couple t-shirts in the background.

Charles: Yeah.

Brian: And besides that, what else do you see in Corn Man’s future.

Charles: I’d like to finish up with the kids story aspect of it by next year, I think three chapters is going to kind of tie in the story together.

After that, though, I kind of see it being an ongoing project where I’m performing the music.

We’re kind of dovetails into education, slash music, slash reading, and basically just kind of going to events, going to schools talking about it, I really want the project to help kind of get that awareness out there, kind of get that attention to the issue.

We’re not villainizing farmers in any way because I think their struggle is is incredible what they have to go through and all that stuff.

But it’s all about the awareness to a while there’s corn and like everything we eat.

Be wise, there’s so much corn and everything we eat and see what can I do as a consumer to help that and I think that’s just going to be a ongoing thing for you know, hopefully the rest of my life.

Brian: So if we were looking at years ahead down the road.

What do you think would be an ideal scenario to come about?

Like if this was just a runaway hit?

I mean, you get cartoons, movies, whatever else. If it could just be as big as you could possibly imagine. And it gets the proper attention that you want and people start waking up to this idea.

What would be a great thing to for you to see change out there?

What’s something that’s measurable that you can see happening?

Charles: Wow, great question.

I think what I would start to see is a everything you mentioned.

I would love to see it turned into a movie, I think an animated movie, that’d be awesome.

I would love to perform this music to it live on stages, either with the animation movie behind it, or even some live theatrical representation of it.

So for the entertainment part of it. That’s kind of the goal.

Large shows festival goals, things of that nature, performing the music would be great.

But for the impact of how do I know, this is making a change?

How do we how do we know?

I think it’s kind of multifaceted. I think one way is we’re going to start to see changes, and hopefully reversals in type two diabetes and kids and obesity and kids.

For the first time we’re seeing this stuff I just heard to where I think if we continue down this path, the youngest generation is going to be the first generation in a long time, not to outlive the previous generation.

You know, so seeing reversals and those health trends, I would like to see more community gardening, farming, that sort of thing.

For myself. I thought food came from the fast food joints.

I thought food came from the grocery stores, you know, it’s like, that’s just what I was accustomed to.

But I really wish there was something in my school when I was growing up saying, No, this is how you grow your own food.

This is where that stuff comes from a return to having a vested interest in our food.

I would like to see a change in that, you know, I would like to see, the big corporations are financing all this stuff, I think the biggest indicator is will see those brands start to shrink.

I think their foothold in the market will start to shrink. It’s already happening. And some rounds.

I mean, when you have a, you know, these huge corporations buying, these Mom and Pop organic places, not to be facetious, but they’re not doing it because they care about organic, they’re doing it because they can make money, so it’s like it got enough attention.

Yeah, I hope that answered your question.

Brian: No, that’s great. That’s great.

What are the main obstacles standing in your way of being able to do that being able to expand this corn man project?

Charles: I think one of the obstacles is kind of trying to find the right audience for it.

I think that that’s been a challenge.

But I also think it’s been a good learning lesson for myself because I’m figuring out who needs to hear This message and I can only use myself as an example.

So I’m using what gets me excited about things to kind of try to brand it to kind of market it. And yeah, I just think over time, it’s going to start to kind of gain momentum and build, build, build and build and with people like yourself, reaching out and being so kind and helpful and spreading the word, I can’t thank you enough, but individually like yourself as well, who’s helping build the momentum?

Brian: What advice would you have for people that come from a creative background like yourself that are going into building kind of a larger project like this?

It’s almost a business entity unto itself.

What advice would you have for people like that?

Charles: I think you hit the nail right on the head.

It is a business and a thing on the creative aspect is keep the creativity happening, that keep that inspiration going, and don’t get bogged down by the details.

You know what I mean? It’s like, and don’t be afraid to work with people, that are going to help.

That’s one thing I really had to learn.

I’m still learning about but it’s like, I think I read in one of those business investing or small business books, like 95% of all small businesses fail because the owner tries to do everything themselves selves, it’s being okay with relinquishing control because this company can help expand the brand or get the word out because that’s their specialty.

That’s, you know, my specialty is coming up with weird concepts, writing the music, playing drums.

That’s my thing.

It’s like, so my advice would be to anyone starting this, keep creating and use the business side of it to channel that creativity to because in today’s market, and the music industry is flipped completely on its ear compared to the way it was 20 years ago.

So you have to be okay with that.

You can’t cry about what was you just got to pick up and be like, this is the reality of it.

How do I make it ago?

How do I make it work in today’s day age and just keep going?

That’s all I can say.

Brian: That’s great advice.

I’ve never quite seen anything quite like the Corn Man concept.

So have you? Have you done anything like this before?

Have you seen anything that has inspired you to go in this direction?

Or is it just kind of taken on a life of its own?

Charles: I don’t think I’ve seen anything, I guess food related in this way? No.

I will say there are bands that have followed that they do concept albums and and they have themes, and some of them do have a pretty big footprint in a cause or a foundation.

But there wasn’t one particular band or anything that I was looking at for inspiration.

Basically, I just had the ideas and then dovetailing back to what we were talking about before I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.

Brian: Wow, that’s really good point that differentiating yourself in just the sea of musicians out there that are trying to cope with the change in the industry and everything that I was hoping you touch on that, that you it’s really cool that you can see that about yourself and that you’re taking it that direction.

That’s very cool.

Charles: Thank you so much. Yeah.

Brian: What could a listener who’s interested in finding out more about corn man and the whole project?

Where would you suggest they go?

Is it CharlesWiley.net/CornMan?

Or do you have anywhere else you send them?

Charles: That’s kind of the hub. That’s my website and that CharlesWiley.net/CornMan will give you all the information about the quarter man project.

There are a couple of videos up talking about its release on paperback.

There’s some video of me drumming to some of the songs there. There’s links to buy the book, by the music, all that stuff. And you can also just get in contact with me. You know that way too.

But yeah, CharlesWiley.net/CornMan should have everything you need right there.

Brian: And there’s new details out coming all the time. I mean, with your new audio book coming out, I saw that on social media before we met here.

So it’s really neat to see, you’re always trying something new. If you’d like, we’d love to have you back on the show another time and find out where Corn Man takes you from here on out.

Charles: Oh, that’d be great that’d be awesome. Yeah.

Brian: Charles Wiley, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Charles: My pleasure, Brian, thank you so much.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Soon as I came across Charles at the Mother Earth News Fair, he really stood out.

Obviously, what he’s offering is something that you’ve never quite seen before, which I think is really neat.

One of the most important pieces that you can take away from this is the concept of having a cause tied in with your business somewhere somehow, if your business isn’t already a cause unto itself, as The Corn Man project has been for him, then you need to find a cause you need to find what makes what you’re doing important beyond the relationship between you and your customer.

What is the big idea?

Obviously, Charles is relating this back to World Health.

So that’s a big idea. That is something that is major and talking about the proliferation of corn into our entire lives.

These are big concepts, and not the type of thing that would normally be handled by a children’s book or any type of musical piece.

I love the conversation we were having about finding the audience. So obviously, he’s come up with a product, he’s come up with a concept he’s come up with something that can go on to many different formats already.

He’s gone from musical pieces to children’s books. Two coloring books.

Now to audio books, this can translate into multiple media’s, which is cool, but really finding that audience is so important. And this ties into so many of the things that I’ve talked about with people.

Ideally, most of us never do it this way.

Ideally, it would be great if you can find your audience first, and then produce a product or service that would help them directly.

The finding of the audience is such a difficult, painstaking process and you could hear Charles going through it.

But it’s cool that he is and I can’t wait to find out who the audiences are that he’s able to truly connect with in the long run.

The neat thing that he has a handle on is that differentiation that we were talking about being different standing out, doing things that other people can’t possibly do, in a way that they can’t possibly do them in media.

Mediums that no one’s using for these purposes, he’s willing to do that, that he can see that that’s his true value to the marketplace and his ability to stand out.

I mean, just the picture of his face on a piece of corn makes a person stop and say,

Okay, what is this?

What’s going on here?

It’s really great. How are you channeling the creativity in your business?

How are you really putting it on the line?

And doing something that’s so unique, that it causes people to stop and say, Okay, what is this?

What are you talking about?

What are you offering to do?

These are good questions to have. These are the ways that you get attention in your market. And when you’re really out there looking for the ideal audience for your ideal customer or client.

You really got to be willing to look outside the box like Charles is doing, he’s willing to go to events like the Mother Earth News Fair.

While at the same time having readings in classrooms. I mean, he’s going all over the place, it seems that he’s really willing to do anything which is a great attitude to have and something I think we can all learn from.

Can’t wait to find out more about corn man’s adventures in the future and really see where this ends up taking them. It can go in so many directions.

So really exciting to see something like this out there on the market.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Uncle Mud – Natural Building Chieftain

Posted on September 18, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 22.

Who is your tribe? Is there a “community” of people already out there that would love what you do? Could you create one by scratch?

Chris Mcclellan (better known as “Uncle Mud”) has a special skill in finding and bringing together easy-going, like-minded individuals to create spectacular structures out of mud and junk lying around. Though he started out a business owner of a computer company, a life threatening situation made him rethink what his priorities were. Now, he travels the world, and has the world travel to visit him to learn his techniques in natural building.

What would it be like to design your life around an ideal lifestyle versus around an income number? Listen Now!

Find more about Uncle Mud: http://www.unclemud.com/
Support him here: https://www.patreon.com/unclemud
Like and Follow him on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unclemud/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Uncle Mud: One of the things about having a midlife crisis and I would say a heart attack is a midlife crisis. If you survive it is that we were able to like reassess what we wanted to do, and start planning for a better outcome for our

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Uncle Mud aka Chris McLellan raises free range organic children in the wilds of suburbia, in Ohio, building houses and pizza ovens and wood stoves with mud and junk is his way of sharing the can do spirit he writes teaches workshops and hosts a mud pit and DIY building demonstrations at fairs across the US.

The rocket mass heaters and his double wide dropped his heating bill from nearly $1,000 per month for propane to less than $75 per year.

Your results may vary but this guy is happy. Follow him on patreon.com/UncleMud or facebook.com/UncleMud.

Uncle Mud, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Uncle Mud: Thank you very much.

Brian: Well then besides just what we heard in your bio, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Uncle Mud: I like to play in the mud. Found a great job where I get to be a kid and go like to summer camp. And do an artist residency program were we get kids like as young as seven, an impact driver and have them help us build a tree house or have them help us.

Make a pizza oven that they have a pizza party for their parents. And later, they come to visit, we get all muddy and then go jump in the lake and then do it again, it’s great fun.

But it also kind of illustrates the divide between what a person can do and what we feel like we’re encouraged to do, we’re kind of encouraged to leave things to the experts and go buy something rather than make it and that just doesn’t sit well with a lot of the kids that I work with.

And doesn’t sit well with me. So we just have on build our sense of ourselves.

Brian: Sure. That’s great. How did you get to here?

What’s your life story up to this point?

Uncle Mud: So when I was kid in high school and broke my leg. And I like to build forts in the woods and, and electric little electric cars and things like that. And my dad bought me a copy of Lloyd Kahn’s book Shelter. That was almost as old as I was.

But it was stories of people building their own plates out of things they found around them, all of these ways in which people may do and that’s made do but also turned their life and their house art.

I’ve worn out six copies of that book and on to be able to write some articles for Lloyd to become friends with him. And he introduced me to the crew at Mother Earth News Magazine.

I started writing for them, started teaching mud building at their fairs, and actually started with just having a mud pit that the kids play in because their parents had come to these fairs.

Each of them with a huge list of different workshops they wanted to participate in different events they wanted to see. They’re just dragging their kids around to go to all these things until surprise, surprise, the kids kind of melt down.

So we wanted to do something that the kids get to have fun and it turned into amazing success. Get them sculpting little fairy houses, building things with the bricks and sticks and mud and stuff that I had sitting around for my presentations.

And then later I ended doing presentations for the up because they got curious and so I’ve been doing that since about 2012.

It’s grown into also going and building houses for people teaching workshops all over the country.

We’ve been go to Jamaica. I teach mud building workshops because people up in the mountains only make 20 bucks a day and a sac of cement is 10 bucks and nobody can ever finish their house.

So we go up and find clay and we find fiber and find sand and we mix everything together, build houses.

And we’ll go walk by the side of the road pick up all the bottles of people drop. And because there’s no trash service there, turn them into windows. Because it can get really expensive with windows in your house there.

Everything has to be shipped into the island.

You know, we’ve even started teaching a two week shop class for homesteaders up in the mountains in Montana every summer for permies.com. Do get people to have the skills and the confidence they need to go out and have their own place out in the woods, whether it’s wiring so they can set up their own solar or, and understand how much power they can use before they start to build their battery bank.

Or whether it’s letting them drive a 16 ton excavator or weld or push a sawmill. These are things that, don’t really get taught in school, but are really quite handy, if you’re going to do things for yourself.

So nice little confidence builders and the materials that we try to use for these confidence builders are also materials you can get out of a dumpster or on Craigslist or dig a hole in your backyard or, instead of buying two by fours, go out in the woods and find the trees kind of in the shade of another tree and not going to do well. Especially when to do it with a tree that that has that maybe has some character to it and even curves around something else that he grew around.

Those little trees make a great handles for a door that is spending 30 bucks and driving 40 minutes to a big box store. Go for a walk in the woods with a handsaw come back and shape something a little bit.

That’s God’s hardware store.

Brian: At what point did this go from being a hobby to almost like a profession or a way of life for you that when it grew into you basically being a teacher? How did that come about?

Uncle Mud: Well, I had some wonderful opportunities. 2004 I was in California for computer business for a workshop for computer business I own there wasn’t any place, less than about $200 a night to stay in.

But there was campground with a hot springs about an hour away. And I went there. There’s these people sitting in a corner laughing and scribbling on a piece of paper. And they just kind of struck me as having fun.

And whatever they were doing, they were very intent on that they were having a good time with it.

When I got home. I was on the internet, and I found some pictures of houses being built with natural materials. There was a guy on the internet who had a natural building school, but the number for the school was, it was disconnected and there was there were only about six pictures of anything you’d ever done. 35 years that were on the internet.

I needed to find this guy. Was getting ready to buy a plane ticket and fly back out west. And see if I could find this guy and a friend, I mentioned it to a friend who said, Oh, he’s not going to be there then actually be about six hours from your house at a natural building colloquium.

So I grabbed my daughter and who was thinking at the time, we drove out to Bath, New York for the Eastern Natural Building Colloquium and met about 200 of our new best friends.

Got me several lovely natural builders, including SunRay Kelley, whose work I’d been admiring and who happened to be the guy who was sitting in the corner with his friends scribbling away designing the Harbin Temple that they later built with drawn clay and beautiful cedar wood went on to write a book with him and get more and more involved with helping people teach workshops.

Learning was, I was going along, how to do this stuff myself? And how to support other people’s efforts, by publishing books on these subjects or getting a group together to learn how to do it in the process of managed to survive a heart attack.

But that told me that I needed to do something else with my time other than ended all in front of a computer being on call for 24 hours a day, does that was taking a toll on my health.

So at that point, I dropped down to about half time, got a partner for that business, and started doing more traveling and more empire building and teaching writing.

And that daughter that was with me when she was six, has actually built her own two storey treehouse, she turned 18 and moved into it and lived there for about a year before going off to be a missionary and then coming back and getting married. And she just left to go work on a civil engineering degree.

So she wants to be able to just stamp her own plan, so she’s been right in the thick of it with the natural building thing. My whole family has a bunch of friends, we end up being, The Mud Family, traveling all over together, doing events together.

Brian: That’s just that’s so awesome. Living the dream there, it seems. I mean, you could tell and for those of you who are were listening to this and may not have heard me discuss it before, I got to meet Uncle Mud at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon, and got to see his one of his presentations on the Rocket Mass Heaters.

And you can just tell from how you carry yourself and how your crew around you all carry themselves that you’re having a good time.

I mean, you’re doing one presentation right after the other. I think you’re probably one of the most prolific presenters there for the entire thing. You’re just go, go go.

And you could tell you’re having a great time and obviously by how much you travel and everything else you must enjoy it right?

Uncle Mud: Yeah, absolutely. We actually have figured out a way for my wife and my kids to travel and do this with us to. You know, one of the things about having a midlife crisis and I would say a heart attack is a midlife crisis. If you survive it, is that we were able to like reassess what we want to do, and start planning for a better outcome for our time.

Sometimes, it’s a little challenging, like when you have to jump in the car and drive a quarter of the way across the country to go to go each for two days straight, and then drive again, that can be a little much, but we’ve been able to figure out how to keep the cost down.

I mean, we got a little camper we’ve made out of our Prius that just fits us and it’s good enough gas mileage, that we can afford to do these things rather than having to have a big RV and in a big bill to go with it.

And we can spend more time together and focus on the thing that we care about.

Brian: That’s great. We’ve been talking to a lot of other speakers and vendors from the Mother Earth News Fairs and just kind of looking at, you know, the business end of things and why they plug into these things.

So besides the enjoyment that you get from it, what is your organization or everything that you’re doing right now or your business? What do you get out of going to these Mother Earth News Fairs?

Uncle Mud: The most amazing thing is that the Mother Earth News Fairs, people who show up for those, tend to self select, as really great. I mean, the relative ratio of cool people to jerk is really, really low there.

Compared to host a being stuck in traffic on your way into work. There’s a pretty high ratio ratio there, infact it’s easy to become one of them myself. I’m much more interested in hanging out with people who have already decided that they’re going to do something that they care about whether it’s having chicken or living off grid, or just homeschooling or building a mud house.

There’s a certain focus you get, people get, when they say I’m going to come to the fair and learn about this.

Or even the people who come there to teach or organize it and choose to spend their time organizing cool fairs like this rather than, say something that might be more lucrative like working for an amusement park or something.

The people just have this dedication to something that is feeding their souls.

I really like being around that and it makes it worth the effort, we’ve been transitioning from being dependent on my wife being a full time teacher.

She’s been still a full time teacher, but she’s been able to work the production in in the work for an online charter school, that of being in a school that takes all of our time and has time each day, every day.

That up now we can, we can work online in the car while we’re driving to an event or while we’re camping somewhere if she has to, and that gives us a great deal of freedom.

The rocket heaters gone from thousand dollars a month, propane down to $75 a year for hardwood cut off the local flooring mill that the bit of freedom itself and do other things I want to do with that time. Like stop and visit people who’ve been doing other cool things and take pictures and video and report on that.

We’ve been starting our own version of podcast again, or we just we go visit somebody do something fun. We’ll post the video on YouTube under the Uncle Mudd channel. Most of that actually been collecting Patreon.

Patreon.com/UncleMud, we’ve been collecting all of the things, we’ve been writing the interviews and and the projects that we’ve been doing. Over the last 15 years. We’ve been collecting that in one place, so people can come and look at it and kind of join us on our little adventures.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

Brian: Where did the Uncle Mud moniker begin? How did that come about?

Uncle Mud: Well, we were at a workshop where….my name is Chris, and there were about seven other Chris’s there. So when somebody would say Hey, Chris, and all of us would look up, it kind of got the pointless like saying, hey, you started calling me Mud instead.

Because I always the one in mud, actually adopted that and Uncle Mud came to better represent the sense we want to create for this, because the natural building tribe has become an extended family for us.

We always know that people will stop by and visit they with us when they’re on their way through and we can do the same thing and catch up on their little projects and on who’s having babies and who’s going to college and gone and built themselves a little cottage in their parents backyard.

That sense of family just keeps getting bigger and better and my mother sisters and my brothers will show up and build something with us or go with us to check out something cool that like Deek Diedricksen up in Vermont does YouTube channel videos of the cool tree houses and tiny houses that you visit.

He was at the Mother Earth News Fair here in Texas to hear our doughters tree house. Saw her presentation on her treehouse and invited us to come and teach at one of his workshops. Because they learned how to build cool things out of junk mail us like old washing machine doors to make funky windows for their tree houses, things like that.

But they didn’t know how to use the mud. So we came down and showed them, because it’s a really cool tool for your tool belt. And we just keep running into situations like that.

Brian: That’s so cool. Very cool. Would you have any recommendations for anyone looking to have the type of ability to do lifestyle design like you’ve done for yourself?

And let’s say someone’s in a similar position, they’re stuck in a position either they have a business that they’re kind of stuck with or they’re in a job that they don’t like, and they want to break out and do something like you’ve gone and done.

What would you recommend to them?

Uncle Mud: Well, the first thing is probably to take a radical grip on your finances. Money is the reason we have anything nice is that my wife, Heather will pays very close attention to the money coming in and going out.

Often her mood is very much affected by ratio of those things. And my goodness, like, last year, there was a time when she just was in a really bad mood because we seem to be behind on things. And it was puzzling to me because as far as I was paying attention, it seemed to be making good money.

And I finally said where’s all the money going?

She said well, we’re just short because I paid off the house. And so you’re in a bad mood because we don’t have any money because we don’t have any money because you paid off the house so that we wouldn’t have to spend that money.

And she says, Yeah, basically.

I said, that’s okay. Well, weather this and we did and she just looked at it and said, You know, that’s actually going to be doing better than any of the way other ways we could invest our money right now. So let’s get rid of a liability.

Let’s pay down the car early. Let’s accept that something might be a little bit of a struggle, but let’s take this as a game and make a challenge out of it.

And there’s so many things that are really games to do the people and the companies that make lots of money off of their game like a mortgage, for instance, that’s an old French word for death pledge, back then 30 years was a death pledge.

Now we live a little bit longer, but by then the house is worn out that we need a new roof and now we have to borrow money for that and so on and so forth.

But just figuring out ways to lower your expenses, gives you a great deal of freedom to then go do something else that you want to do.

And then if you figure out how to do something that pays the bills, but it’s also something you love. Even if you’re only able to do it part time, like the mud building.

I still have to go in and punch the time card keep sometimes we keep my computer business going, but I’m able to spend more more of my time and energy doing this thing I love just really kind of focusing on something I would recommend to people who want to be able to make those decisions.

So maybe two bedroom apartments that have a three bedroom apartment. We wrote an article from other news a few years ago.

And it’s actually been evolving since then, have this notion of too small to fail in opposition to the bank, that we all seem to have to support with our tax money because it’s too big to allow it to fail.

But on the other end of that, let’s just say we do an experiment, where instead of spending $600 a month for our share of the rent, or an apartment, we go make a deal with somebody to build a little cottage in their backyard.

Maybe that cottage is not on land I own so that kind of risk and it might be in an area where not legal to be something like that and live in it. So that the risk, and you don’t know very well how to build something. So that’s a risk.

But we’ve been conditioned to believe that a 30 year mortgage on a couple of hundred thousand dollars is no risk at all.

Or even though who knows what’s going to happen to the economy in the meantime, who knows if I’m even still going to be with the person that I made this big purchase with, that I’m going to continue to pay on, you know that the risk that we’ve been conditioned to think is, is perfectly natural.

But if I spend $6,000, building a cottage, and I live on somebody else’s land, with the agreements that is theirs after five years, and I walk away after five years, instead of spending $600 a month on rent, I walk away with $30,000 in my pocket, and that that was a risk even if it doesn’t work out with this damn there for a year before I get a job someplace else or they’ll walk away with 1800 dollars compared to the money that would have been flushed down the toilet by being a renter.

Or maybe I’m there for three months and I get the building halfway done and have a fight with the person who’s whose land it is or something else doesn’t work, and I have to leave.

Well, I’m down 1,800 dollars, by comparison, but I can kind of walk away from that crash landing of 1,800 dollars. Now if I’d gone and bought $60,000 tiny house on wheels, and parked into these people’s place and then found out that I can’t park it in that town, and I don’t have a place to park it. Well, that’s a lot more risk for relatively diminished returns.

I mean, now I’m tripled screwed because now I’m finding a place for me to stay. And I’m paying the mortgage on this tiny house that I couldn’t live in and I’m planning on paying for a place to store it, keeping the expense low. Like like my daughter’s treehouse.

We got maybe $2,000 into it and a fun family project, there was every chance that we could get a note saying, hey, yeah, people can’t live in treehouses, stop it.

If it was used for you month, or a year, and then that happened. Well, okay. I’m disappointed, but I’m not. I’m not devastated. I’m not trouble financially for it. So there’s these risks that we can take that are now too small to fail.

Brian: Absolutely. Great point. And really good advice for those of you listening.

Uncle Mud, if we were to talk a year from now, if we had you back on this show, and we were to look back over the past 12 months, what would have had to have happen for you to feel happy with your progress?

Uncle Mud: Oh, wow!

Well, there are a lot of things that would be exciting that I’d be very pleased if they happen like building more buildings with people. I actually enjoy a lot more the process of supporting somebody else’s build just got back from North Carolina where we built a pizza oven with a community and a rocket mass heater to heat one of the houses in this intentional community and all the friends and family neighbors came out in support of this.

We got it this whole thing done in a long weekend. It was fantastic fun and you know, generally natural building is a slow process, but we get enough hands in it and it’s a fast process and it’s a fun process.

So doing more of that is what I’m looking forward to this year. Spending more time encouraging people follow their dreams and to not be scared of them.

Start with something that didn’t work three times you could still be excited by it fourth time and have it work and then do something bigger and then do something bigger get yourself comfortable with taking a particular chance and then when it when you’ve got it well practice do more that can become kind of natural for us.

Whereas we could also become natural for us to hide in the house watching TV all day or only going out to work and get groceries and then you know we come to the end of our life and what do we have to show for it?

But if we figure out how to do something so that we can be around our babies and our grandbabies being around our sweeties more being out in nature or or out on the road, if that’s what you like, these things go our souls in a way that simple paycheck doesn’t, as much.

So yeah, finding more cool projects to do with people that would make me very happy. Watching, I enjoying watching my kids. I have an eight year old at home and another in college right now, going off and, you know, living their dreams and kind of fun to live vicariously with them without having to stay up late and take tests and all that.

Just get to enjoy their successes and encourage them when things don’t go as well. We’re actually gearing up to do more workshops.

We’re going to be in Jamaica the second half of January building rocket heaters and like a water heaters and we’re building a bath house down there out of bottles that left by side of the road by people because they don’t have a trash and, and reason Cobb and the local limestone, we built a pizza oven in a village where most of people there hadn’t ever had pizza at a pizza party for the village.

It was a lovely, lovely thing to spend time on. It’s really kind of fun the our adopted village called Mr. Muud but they they come out and and get in the mud with us and and we’re looking forward to demonstrating more with composting toilets down there.

Because you know, the water down there is just what you can catch off your roof. And if half the water in your house going through your toilet that uses it up pretty quick and then you got to spend a lot of money to get another truckload of water up there.

You know, but not just down in Jamaica, this coming week we’re going to be in Neosho, Missouri at the Ozark Homesteading Expo, just teaching these kind of classes, building a pizza oven on a trailer that somebody’s going to take home from the event, but not until after we’ve made some pizza with it.

And then it will be….in mid September, we’re going to be in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, for the Mother Earth News Fair. Doing the same set of things. Topeka, Kansas for the Mother Earth News Fair, in mid October, we’re going to be building a pizza oven there.

We’re building a couple of rocket heaters between now and then. We do really enjoy getting people to come out and work with us on the things you want to learn how to do.

Something like this, you can come to a workshop where we feed you and teach you everything we know. And you participate in the build, so that you’ll be able to do it when you get home. Or sometimes we have internship positions where people just come and stay in our treehouse and, and work with us on a local project.

We’re really enjoying the quality of the relationships we get with people who are so interested in improving what they know and what they can do. That’s a fantastic type of person to hang out with.

Brian: Yeah, that is so cool. What a great opportunity. What could listeners who may be interested in finding out more about all things Uncle Mud, Besides the Patreon and Facebook site that we mentioned, is there anywhere else they can go?

Uncle Mud: So I have a website, UncleMud.com.

And if you want to join us one of the fairs, go to MotherEarthNewsFairs.ccom, is a good place to connect with us and see what our schedules are going to be at, we’re going to be at all the fairs this year in Texas and, and the Tennessee and Virginia and Oregon, Pennsylvania and Topeka in 2019, 2020.

We’re gonna be working with people on buildings and ovens and so forth appear in Cleveland, Ohio, I live out in the boonies of Cleveland, we have wonderful partners that we work with in Michigan and Washington State and down in North Carolina do build.

And we try to keep it local because you know, you’re going to find the soil slightly different, wherever you are. Certainly the climate different than Texas permitted you where it is here.

We want to figure out how to stay cool in Texas, with passive cooling and here up in Cleveland, we want passive heating. We want to try to keep warm, six months of the year.

You know, whatever your climate, we kind of want to make sure that we get the right information, because it’s easy to look on YouTube or get a book that was written for Australia or the Southwest, and then wonder why it doesn’t work where you are.

Like, we’d like to have people succeed better than more often than that.

Brian: Absolutely.

Well, are there any questions that I didn’t ask you that you’d like to answer?

Uncle Mud: Let me ask us, what are some of your favorite things to interview about?

Brian: I love digging in to the person’s background and their causes, and the things that they’re really interested in and not you’ve covered most of that. And then I also like to see where they’re thinking in the long term as far as their business and where they see things going. And you you pretty much covered all that. So…

Uncle Mud: Yeah, well, so you and I would definitely agree on the power of story.

You know, we get so much bad news, even on our Facebook feeds. So much of the chaos of what the world is going through, and relatively a little encouragement and just finding out that somebody succeeded in doing the thing that you were sort of thinking about is very encouraging.

Instead of your cousin telling you Oh, yeah, well you know those people got out services called on them you’re going to go down in flames because you don’t know what you’re doing and whatnot. Now let’s let’s stick with something positive.

But yeah, there’s there are things to be aware of, but they shouldn’t be paralyzing us. We should be continuing to try to live our dreams and our adventure, and we should be sharing with each other, the successes and the nuances that lead to success.

So don’t tell me a failure story. Unless you’re telling me the specific of the things that didn’t work on the road to the thing that worked.

Or telling me where you are on that road, even if that is included a bunch of breakdown. Let’s figure out where to go from there, rather than giving up, and the stories that we can share of people succeeding and Okay, what’s your recipe for a limewash?

What’s your replacement for straw when you couldn’t find any?

What have you done for lowering your electric bill so that you could afford to go off grid with a couple of solar panels instead of $60,000 array so that you could continue to watch the big TV and and have the air conditioning.

Let’s all just like chat about what worked, instead of just throwing up our hands and saying, well, I guess we’re doomed. We may be, but we’re gonna have a good time on this trip.

Brian: Absolutely. I love that most about you. It’s like your bio says about sharing the can do spirit and I think that’s what you’re all about. I can’t wait to see more from you in the future. We’d love to have you back on the show because I know we’ve just barely scratched the surface of your perspective on things and where you’re going from here.

So Uncle Mud thank you so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Uncle Mud: Well, thank you for having me. I have the Uncle Mud Facebook page. And if you’re doing something fun, or you’ve had a success with building something out of mud or junk, I’d love if you’d share it with me on the Facebook page.

Because the stories, let’s share people’s successes and be proud of what we’ve done. Even if it has cracks in it. That your crack that you’ve made, and not some experts fancy thing, but it’s yours.

It was good enough and I’d love to see more and more and share more and more examples, if it’s good enough.

Brian: Awesome. Thanks so much.

Uncle Mud: Absolutely. Have a lovely day.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Really a great interview, something worth going back and relistening to. I know I got more out of it, relistening to it again.

I like Chris’s focus on collaboration. Networking with other people, always finding another way to be able to plug in with people who either have more experience than you and something or even less experienced than you and something and being able to take your skills and meld them together into something better.

That’s a really cool approach to life.

Just in general, approaching life in a different way, you know, not accepting all the norms just because that’s the way it is. That’s the way we grew up with it, really questioning things, but doing it in a real light hearted manner.

And it’s given power to his concept of lifestyle design, being able to just live the life you want to live.

At the same sense, if you’re looking to change your life, taking that radical grip on finances that he talked about, you know, paying off your debt, being too small to fail, having those situations where getting rid of those risks that are keeping you from growing, that whole makes a lot of sense.

One of the strongest concepts that he put forth was that idea of having a tribe and what he called his Natural Building Tribe. So people with all the same direction, having an interest in natural building, he’s created a community there.

It’s a community that spans the globe, he’s been able to go all over the world, training people how to do these very simple techniques.

And in some cases, it’s life changing.

He’s developed that sense of family with complete strangers. And that’s a real magical ability to have and you can tell that he has it and he’s growing his business that way, which is really cool.

Overall, I’m certain this is not the last we’ll hear from Uncle Mud. He’s got a really interesting perspective on things and a lot that we can learn from whether you’re going through a midlife crisis or not.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Scott Smith – Earth 2 Earth Compost Pail

Posted on September 9, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 021.

How do you gauge success? Are you positive regarding your future? Are you persistent?

Scott Smith invented the “Earth 2 Earth Compost Pail” while still working full time in construction. He is now trying to spread the word of how important composting is, and how simple the process is using kitchen scraps and small garden trimmings.

Though new to business, Scott’s passion and drive will inspire you. Listen Now!

Go to Scott’s website for more – https://www.earth2earthcompostpail.com/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Scott: Met some very nice people had a great time.

Did it really help my business? Time will tell.

If you’re a business, you need to get out there and meet your customers.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Scott Smith has been in the commercial construction industry for over 40 years building quality projects that have provided his customers years of trouble free use.

That same pride and workmanship is exactly what’s led him to inventing the Earth 2 Earth Compost Pail, hoping he can help every homeowner to compost and do their part to help the environment.

Scott Smith welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Scott: Thank you.

Brian: Hey, besides what we heard in your bio, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Scott: I’m a construction Superintendent by trade I’ve been in construction business all my life. Was raised to where you do a job right? Try to the best job you can, you know, get up early, go to work every day, try to earn your paycheck.

And you take pride in what you do. Kind of how I live my life by you know, I mean, and if something’s not done, right, tear it apart. You fix it. No, you make it right.

You know what I mean, because if it don’t work, what good is it?

So that’s kind of the idea behind Earth 2 Earth compost pail. I spent a couple years making them redesign them. So they work right so they’re easy to use.

So the handles are right, so it does what it’s supposed to do. Trying to provide the average homeowner a product that is easy to use, affordable, and it does exactly what it’s designed to do, you know help you compost all your organic organic kitchen scraps.

Every person can do their part to try to help do a little bit to help the environment.

Brian: Awesome. So what actually led you to building the compost pail?

Scott: It started from a phone call. A friend of mine is a truck driver. He drives over the road he called me one day he’s on top of mountain, up in Montana. And he’s stuck in a blizzard. He can’t get down the mountain.

He had to go to bathroom. So he goes back to back from his trailer to go to bathroom and a moose started chasing him.

So moose started chasing him.

So he’s running downhill and so he’s trying to get away from the moose. He gets back to his truck, and he calls me up and he says he says man, you’re not gonna believe me.

I’m going to pass him and went back to my trailer and a moose started chasing me.

You mean tell me you got $300,000 track trailer and you don’t have a bathroom and your tractor trailer?

So starting from that conversation to me, I’m working on designing a inexpensive composting toilet because he was looking at some different composting toilets and they’re anywhere from 1,000 to $5,000.

I started just working on as like just something to do. It transformed into me going from working with a composting toilet to working on a compost because that’s more where my lord he’s lied because I like the garden.

I like to play in the yard I like do certain things.

And so I started messing around with that. So that’s kind of how it transformed me working with the compost.

It was funny how it went from a phone call to me spending two and a half years working on this compost payoff a file for a patent getting my patent, having a product that I market I sell, and it actually works and out of all the compost piles that I’ve sold, I’ve had zero returns.

So that tells me one thing is that even though my product is affordable, that it’s a good product to customers that are buying a product using their product must be having success or I’d be getting some return, so that makes me feel good.

And a few months ago, I attended the Mother Earth News Fair in Frederick, Maryland.

So I’m talking to a few of the possible customers coming by and an older lady was there. She says this great idea. Because if you could sell a million of these stop millions of tons of organics from going into the landfill, you would have a successful life.

I started thinking about what she said to me. And it made me smile, because how true would that be that if my small invention could have a positive input on helping people reduce their carbon footprint to help each person do a little bit to help the environment?

And that really hit a chord with me. Is my product, right for everybody?

Probably not.

But it’s right for a majority of the people? Yeah.

Do I want my business succeed? Absolutely. I want my business succeed.

When I leave this earth, it would be nice to have a positive impact.

Do I have all the answers? I really don’t. lol.

One thing that all the years spent designing this product and testing it, testing and have family members test it that it does exactly what it’s designed to accomplish faster and more efficiently than any other product out there in the market.

And I’m really proud of what I’ve designed.

Composting is not a knowledge that we’re born with.

Composting is just like recycling. It’s something that’s learned, you know, I mean, so it’s passed down from father to son, mother to daughter.

So you get done with your plants with water bottle, you throw it into place recycling day.

If you get done with your organic kitchen scraps if you throw them into the compost, or instead of throwing them into the trash can and so the more education we can give everybody to let them understand that we only have one planet we have one earth but people polluting all the rivers and throwing all the trash and it’s just like now, today’s like disposable world.

People eat something and they throw it in the trash. Trash guy comes, picks it up, takes away anything else ended a promise. That’s just the beginning of the process.

Now you’re putting more trash bags into landfill. You’re putting all your organics into the landfill.

You know compost on a large scale is a huge job with collecting all the organic materials, the trucks to labor, the co2, you’re putting in the air, hauled it all to landfill, and then all the equipment all their.

My compost pile can compost over 520 pounds of organics a year. That’s over a quarter of a ton. So a four of us do it.

That’s one time I need a million people as 250,000 tons and we’re not putting into landfill.

Before I started working on a compost pile, I didn’t have the knowledge and understanding how much waste was actually being taken to the landfill. Because it wasn’t something I was reading about.

It wasn’t something that I was involved in. The one thing I tried to do when I invented this compost pail, I tried to make it as the best materials I could find for being in construction because I wanted to make something that was made of the best materials and it was affordable.

That it worked and it worked every time there was no guesswork so somebody from five years old, 80 years old can use it.

And they’ll get years and years of success out of it. So I tried to make the best product I could, and I feel I’ve come up with a pretty good product I really have.

Brian: Awesome, that’s really cool. And just to let the audience in on it the way I met Scott, he was a vendor at the Albany Mother Earth News Fair.

Just to give you a little bit of an understanding of this and if I have pictures, I’ll include them on this post over at offthegridbiz.com.

He actually had his setup outside he has a back of a trailer all set up you get to see these compost piles there. He shows you a live demonstration. It’s a very impressive setup.

Is this your first business Scott, have you ran businesses before if you had your own business?

Scott: Never had a business before. I did some home improvement stuff but I’ve always been a commercial construction industry and I did the Mother Earth News Fair in Frederick and we rented a tent we had a table and all but it just didn’t suit my needs.

That’s why I purchased the trailer and one thing People need to understand is that I’m from Maryland. I drove from Maryland to Oregon, which was almost 4,000 miles to attend a Mother Earth News Fair because I was hoping everything that we hear on the East Coast is that the West Coast, California, Oregon, Washington, they’re all in the forefront of the composting world.

It’s funny, stopped in California. Then we went to or we stayed in Albany, Oregon. I was talking to a bunch of different people there and they had just as much knowledge as the people on the East Coast compost.

Yes, people need compost. What’s that? Why we’re not compost. I’m seeing that the lack of education, lack of knowledge is from coast to coast. You know, it’s great that San Francisco and Seattle and those couple little cities are doing it. But those two cities can’t correct the problem.

No, it’s every city, every little town.

It’s just there’s so much positive that could come out of it. The more people we could educate, and the more people we can Get the understanding of….see, here’s the here’s the deal.

Your goal is not to get compost, compost will be your end result.

Your goal is to reduce your carbon footprint trying to compost as much of your organic kitchen scraps as you can show it don’t go in the landfill.

So whether you have a garden, everyone knows someone that has a garden or they have a community garden, or there’s a forest or there’s someplace around once you compost all your organic, that’s over a quarter of a ton that we’re not putting into the landfills, it would be great if we could go from San Francisco, Seattle, to San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Baltimore, Orlando, it’s nothing but positive that could come out of it.

If I train my daughter and train my son to complex and to recycle and not litter, then they’ll train their kids and then they’ll train their kids. Then next thing you know, once we all understand, hey, when you’re riding in row, you don’t throw your trash out the window.

Wait till you get to a gas station and you put your trash in your trash receptacle.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of education.

My father taught me something a long, long time ago, and it stuck with me my whole life. It takes more energy to be a bad person than it does be a nice guy. It’s easy to smile and is frown.

So when you compost, it makes you feel good not throwing your organics into the trash. It makes me feel good that it makes other people feel good. You know, I mean, because my trash got cut in half.

So I’m putting one less trash bag in the landfill a week. So if I put 52 less trash bags, your landfill a year, it might not be a lot, but at least it’s something.

Brian: How did you first become a vendor for the Mother Earth News Fairs?

I mean, you said was in Frederick, did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you?

Scott: I was going to attend the Mother Earth News. I was searching online about different compost things and different things that do with recycling and composting and stuff and Mother Earth popped up on the internet.

So I started reading a little bit more about it and I reached out to them and the year before I was wanting to attend one of the shows they were having at Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, but some personal issues came up and I couldn’t attend.

I paid for the booth, but I just couldn’t attend.

I tried to make it a conscious effort this year to do these two shows. I’m just trying to promote composting as many people as I make because the last four years of my life, I live, breathe, eat, sleep, compost. The more people, I try to educate, maybe I can make a positive effect. The only promise I can make everyone out there, whoever’s listening, is that I stand behind my product.

And if there’s anything I can do to help people use the product to the best of its ability, I’m here for them.

Brian: That’s a huge business plan into itself.

If you can really be able to create great customer service, that’s something that people will go miles for. So that’s awesome to hear.

And we have a lot of other executives, business owners, entrepreneurs that listen.

Do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to go to similar events and do vending like you did?

Have you seen success from it?

Scott: Well, it’s not too early to see, about how you would rate success.

I’ve never driven in California and Oregon before and seen some beautiful country. I grew up 6966 miles from my house all the way through 40 through Arizona, New Mexico, California already back to Wyoming. So I’ve seen some beautiful country during the trip.

Did I make enough money to pay for my trip to go to Albany? Absolutely not.

But I met some very nice people. I had a great time.

Did it really help my business? Time will tell.

if you’re a business, you need to get out there and meet your customer. You need to meet some other vendors that are kind of in the same business even though a lot most of the of the vendors that were at that show didn’t have my product. They were doing other things, you know, whether it was flowers, or plants or straw houses or whatever it was.

Most of people there still had the mindset of, “it’s our Earth, let’s try to takecare of it the best we can.”

Did we see eye to eye on everything? Well no we didn’t. But we all had one goal in mind, you know, it’s like we have one planet, man. If I do a little bit, you do a little bit, hey man little bit turns into a lot.

Do I have any regrets about going to the show? Absolutely not.

I would do it again in a heartbeat to go to the Mother Earth News Fair.

It’s really cool. I mean, so I didn’t have a whole lot of time to walk around and meet all the other vendors.

My wife had a chance to do a little bit of that, but she really had a great time seeing a lot of different products and different things that it was it was really cool with. If I was not a vendor, I would definitely attend. I mean, it’s nice for to take the kids here with the petting zoo and the animals.

There’s a lot there besides television and video games, is cool. It really was.

Brian: That’s great. Do you have any logistical tips for any especially vendors that are looking to go cross country or even smaller distances where they’re taking their wares with them?

Scott: Depends. My product is a little bit bigger than most products. I’ve got enough product to try to pay for my trip, but most people aren’t going to drive across country.

You know, I drove cross country because I want to drive cross country. I could’ve shipped my material out there. Could’ve flown. But then you can’t see what we did see from an airplane.

You don’t realize how much desert there is out there between New Mexico and Oklahoma in California, but some beautiful country. I mean, so all I can say if somebody wanted to tend to fare, give it a shot, what do you got to lose? It’s only money. You can’t take it with you.

You know, but sometimes you have to weigh things other than monetary. Sometimes you have to weigh things in relationships.

Meeting people is a plus get away from work for a while and then going out there and meeting all these people. It changes your perspective on things, you know, it takes the cobwebs out of your head, you start thinking a little bit different. You get away and you can relax you can breathe as the hump you know every day going to work going to work on work, so it’s cool Mother Earth News. Very nice people.

Brian: Very cool.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are 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.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: Where do you find new customers at besides doing shows like this?

Scott: I have a website and I have my trailer and my car has signage on it. It’s word of mouth. I’m knocking on every door I can find a knock on. You know, I mean, like, say I live in Maryland.

So I’m trying to….I’ve been sending emails and trying to meet people from San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Maryland, Virginia, New Jersey, I’m pulling up an internet.

I’m trying to find addresses for people and I’m sending them out emails, trying to get responses back and some of them I’m getting responses back from some I’m not I just got my patent a few months ago to try to market my product.

So and right now it’s baby steps.

I can’t expect my business to be in Home Depot and Lowe’s and everywhere else. When I’m a startup business, it’s just a matter of baby steps you gotta crawl before you can walk, you know what I mean?

So it’s one of those things that my product was like Coca Cola, I wouldn’t have to educate my customer.

I’m hoping that the more composting comes up into the forefront and more people see how beneficial it is to compost that it might make my job a little easier. And only time is going to tell right now my expectations are sky high, my attitude is positive.

I know I’m going to do good, I know my business is going to succeed. I know I’m going to get my compost pail into a lot of households and I’m going to be able to help the environment in some way.

I try not to get too high. I try not to get too low. I try to stay on even keel.

I try to look people in the eye and tell them the truth. If I can provide my customer with all the information that I have about my product, so they can make an informed decision.

Then they can say it’s pretty cool My God by this or no this ain’t for me, but at least I did my job and I’ve gone them all the information, I’m not going to sit there and lie to somebody, and I’m not going to force my product or any person.

What I want the person to do is to say, Man, that’s pretty cool. Hey, I like to have one of those.

And then when they buy it, then if they have a problem, then we do FaceTime customer service and help them walk through the issues. I stand behind my product.

I can tell you the pluses and the minuses of my product. Again, the day you got to live with yourself. So long as I’m honest with me, and I’m honest with them, and I’m not trying to hustle nobody and I’m trying to provide them best product and I can make to do the best job that can do.

And I hope Chris will teach us all listening out there because I would be open to donating a few compost piles, a couple of different schools.

If they want to teach like say kindergarteners first grade, second grade of how to compost and you know, no teachers budgets are tight and they don’t have money for school supplies and also can’t donate compost pills to every school district in the country but I’d be willing to help someone.

Who knows, maybe if I donate 20 combos pails each player’s got 40 kids if they teach 200 Kids about composting folks who might be a good thing

Brian: That’s a great idea Scott.

Scott: You see the thing people don’t understand is is the company forcing whining nitrogen and homeowner provides that with their carrots, onions, celery, coffee, egg shells tea bags.

Second thing you need carbon source. Okay, with our compost pail, we’re the only compost product that provides you with a carbon source a lot of experiments of how to make it work. And you have to have the right carbon source certified we provide two carbon sources.

One carbon source we provide is peat moss. We provide the peat moss because peat moss holds moisture and the second core resource we provide is pine bedding time bedding serves three functions.

One is another carbon source, but it’s a harder carbon source so it takes longer for it to biodegrade.

The second function it serves is it keeps the pail loose so it’s easy to turn. The third function that does is that when you turn the pale the pine bedding keeps airpot inside of the material, so, the decompose organisms conform faster.

Now, a third thing you have to have is air. So top four pale and 360 degrees the pale we have air holes so mostly outside so it gets cross ventilation of air the more air that the material side the pale gets, the more the decomposer will form an AIDS and faster decomposition.

The fourth thing you have to have and you must have for compost is turning. So when I designed my compost pail as a handle on the outside of the pale, it has an internal auger inside of the pale so when you turn the handle on the outside of the pale, it turns material inside of the pale which mixes and air rates the material which aids effects or the composition with which means it’s compost faster.

I tried to make it simple.

I’ll talk to somebody was Oh, I got a big compost pile if I turned on a pitch for example, you’re 74 years old, how long you made a turn.

I mean, the thing is, most people think composting these be hard three separate bands and all this other stuff. It don’t.

With our compost pail it compost faster than anything out there. So you don’t need all that space in your yard. It’s a five gallon pail normally my wife cooks for five days a week, I have to empty my pail out about every three or four months.

So each time I empty the pail out, I’ve composted 180 pounds of organics, and I emptying out about four and a half gallons or four gallons of compost.

That’s how much organics that this pill eats because no decomposes.

But if you throw it in the trash bag. I throw 200 pounds of stuff in the trash bag, so many trash bags you got to have. So once you start seeing how it works, and how much you’re not putting in the trash that makes feel good makes me feel it’s like glowing with diet or exercise.

You know all the good intentions in the world to do the right thing. But that don’t looks awful good.

When things are hard to do and they become a hassle. You’re stopped doing it. But when you have a tool like the compost pile that’s easy to use, and you see fast results, you’ll continue to do it.

That’s why I designed it the way I did because I wanted to be fast, easy and simple.

And the main thing I wanted to be was affordable. A few people say, well, you need to make it look like something somebody can’t make themselves.

I said yeah but if I did that then I’m getting from the 40 or $50 price range up to a couple hundred dollar price range so less people can afford it, the less people are going to want to do it.

People are surprised how much organic material this small compost pail could chew. I just wanted to explain all the listeners out there that I would love them to visit my website.

I would love them to look at my product and I’m going to promise to you one works it does exactly what it’s designed to do.

It compost fer for quicker than anything else in the market. And I stand by my product you buy you don’t like it send it back and give me money back samples is everybody will be happy with it? Probably not.

But I know it’s good product.

You know, it’s good product, you’ve seen it.

Brian: It’s a great product and I love all the energy you have for it and everything else, which is why I wanted to get you on the show.

If we were to get back together. Let’s say we talked again a year from now, and we looked back over the last 12 months, what would have had to have happen for you to feel happy with the progress concerning your business and your composting pail?

Scott: Well, the number one thing is if the business could be self sufficient to where I could dedicate 100% of my time to my business. Everybody needs to understand something, everyone of these compost pails are made by hand.

They’re all made by hand in the United States by me. No, they’re not made in a foreign land.

What I would like to happen is I would like my product to be picked up by major retail like Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, because right now I’m not making a ton of money, okay, and it’s the cheapest price it sounds for right now.

See, the way it works is, the more material I buy in bulk, the cheaper it is, I can create a good amount of sales, I can buy the material in bulk, then I can lower the price.

So if I lower the price that more people can afford it.

That would be what I would like to happen.

I’m kind of a pretty simple guy. I’m not a materialistic person, I don’t wear one piece of jewelry.

That’s not what I do. I work with my hands.

I’m a construction worker, you know, I build buildings and monumental that could happen.

Or if I can make the same money working for myself as I’m making work for somebody else, that would be a plus plus, because I have other things to pipeline. All the different type of composters and I’m working on besides just for household, but right now, the research and development that I need to do when those other products.

All that’s put on hold right now, because I need to make my business self sufficient.

I saw where you need to get on Shark Tank, you know, I mean, that’s a pretty lengthy process to try and do that.

But it would be really cool that one of those people like maybe not one of those people would have somebody else in my works for Home Depot or somebody works for Lowe’s or somebody out there that might listen to this broadcast and say, hey, let’s look at the product and see if it’s something that’s viable for us.

You know, I mean, I don’t know but all I know is that me making a product cheaper so I can put more money in my pockets? Not really.

It’s not really in the way I’m thinking, because whatever money I make I’m putting back into the company.

Am I having all the success that I hoped I would have or going? No.

Am I hitting a few speed bumps in the road? Absolutely.

Is it discouraged me? Absolutely not.

No, but that’s great. Now let’s be honest with you, though, I have really high hopes that I’m going to meet some people out there some people into the green building is or door right for the environment.

I’m going to meet some people that are going to see how great my product is, and they’re going to maybe open a few doors for me. If you don’t shake the tree, nothing’s going fine.

I’m one of the type of guys when I get up 3:34 o’clock in the morning, go to work and work all day. So long as I keep getting up, put my nose to the grindstone, keep moving forward day after day after day on two things and come out of it.

I’m going to do my best to just keep pushing along and try to help as many people as I can. I appreciate being on your show.

Because, you know, I’m just trying to get the word out there, you know, I mean, we have one planet. If I don’t do anything, you don’t do anything, nothing’s gonna change.

Brian: That’s great. That’s fabulous.

So are there any other questions I did ask you that you wish I would have?

Scott: Not really I just want people to understand that a lot of these different municipalities are giving you a compost receptacles trash cans, and they’re coming by picking up all your organic stuff. How much money in fuel, trucks, equipment, co2, they’re putting in the air, labor, insurance. That’s just to get it to the landfill, then all the equipment, labor, co2, how long it takes this stuff to biodegrade in the ground, to where all the money that they’re spending.

I think there are thousands of other programs out there that all these communities could benefit by taking that money and even if it’s paying for school lunches, for kids, or even if it’s like say a single mother has couple kids and she needs daycare and so she can go to school and get an education so she can get a job so she can take care of herself.

I mean those are some pretty good things they can take money and use those resources I’m sure other people have a whole lot better ideas where they can use the money to help the community instead of picking up the trash.

And I’m trying to be a smartest guy in the world, there’s a lot more smarter people out there to me that can see the Hey man if a week to more people and get to compost at home. We ain’t got all these trucks and fuel and all this stuff. You know then maybe this is millions of dollars we can use your budget help the community.

Just my opinion.

Brian: A lot of great ideas in there. I mean, everything you’re saying I think you’re heading in the right direction with everything you’re doing. What could a listener do, who’d be interested in finding out more you keep mentioning that you have a website?

What’s your website address so people can find you?

Scott: The website is Earth, E A R T H, the number 2, Earth, E A R T H, compostpail dot com (earth2earthcompostpail.com). And our email address is earth2earthcp@gmail.com.

Like I said we’d be willing to answer any of your questions. Anything you got, you know, I’m not a tree hugger by heart. I love my country. I love the world like to see the blue sky like seeing white clouds.

We like seeing green trees, know what I mean.

So I live in the Chesapeake Bay Area, right. And Maryland’s a big crab state, right?

Chesapeake Bay blue crabs.

That’s what everybody does in Maryland, right.

So ever since I was a kid Chesapeake Bay watershed, and it’s about taking care of the bay. We have one bay.

And most people in Maryland, you go to DMV, get saved to be licensed by trade take $15 to donate to the Chesapeake Bay foundation. They have all kinds of clean up programs.

Just like any other city, you know, I mean, so I drive across the Bay Bridge every day. I see the Chesapeake Bay, you know, I mean, and I was born and raised here.

I wouldn’t know what to do if I never seen it again. Because when I was a kid growing up downtown Baltimore galleries companies just dumping all their chemicals right into the heart.

Now they’re cleaning up the last 10 years, they cleaned up the Bay in the harbor.

And now the wall is coming back crab populations bigger, the fish populations bigger.

The marshes are growing back with filters to ban sediments out of the water. Everything’s hand in hand.

You know what I mean? So whether you live in Wyoming or you live in Maryland like I do, you depend on your environment.

Whether you buy my product or not, please just do even just a little bit does matter.

It really does.

Brian: Hey, thanks so much, Scott.

This has been a lot of fun, really interesting getting to hear about your journey, and we can’t wait to hear more. I’d love to have you back on another time. If we can in the future, see where you’re going from here.

Thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Scott: I appreciate you having me and I would love to be you on your show again. I really would.

To you and everybody else, have a great weekend.

Brian: You too.

Scott: Thank you.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Scott is a really great person within the first few minutes of meeting him It was very clear that he had a whole lot of passion for his product, and all the issues that surround it.

I’m going to point out a few things that he said, just to focus on them a little bit.

I think he made a really good point when he was talking about it all depends on how you gauge your success. When he was discussing how well they did at the fair.

He said, I may not have made my money back on the trip. But I set up this huge trip to where we were going across country, dragging all this stuff with us, and got to see all these great things and meet all these great people.

And that’s really cool.

It’s good to be able to step back and look at things not just from a monetary perspective, but in the long term perspective of what am I getting out of it.

I mean, what a great story just being able to go across country and come out to the Oregon fair. He also had what a lot of people who visited the fair said, which was you have a real eclectic group of people.

And it’s not like you see eye to eye on everything, but you do have something in common.

The overall commonality of wanting to make the world a better place, and seeing each individual as being necessary to create that on their own first, and then going out from there, that self reliant message is weaved throughout every person that was tied to this mother news fair.

Very cool, very neat idea.

I love his dogged determination. And that’s one of the things that a lot of business owners or executives have in the very beginning when they’re getting their business up and running.

And sometimes you lose that over time, sometimes with success.

It takes you to a point that you don’t necessarily have that determination and persistence. But I love how he said he knocking on every door that he can, he’s looking for any way to be able to bring this dream about.

Finally, I think his most important point was a personal one.

And that’s that I try not to get too high and try not to get too low. And I try to keep everything on an even keel.

I think that’s always important to keep in mind.

Keeping your own mentality in place, while you’re going through the ups and downs, especially in the very beginning of a business is probably the most important advice you could ever get as long as you’re willing to take it.

I think anyone that listens to this can say that Scott has the right attitude about this. He’s going at it with enthusiasm, determination, but he’s also willing to let it grow on its own. He’s doing this part time This is in addition to the work that he already does during the day.

So it’s really neat to be able to have something like that that he can build up and if you know anyone that can help Scott go to the next level with his business.

Be sure and get in touch with them. Can’t wait to hear more about what Scott Smith is going to be doing in the next six to 12 months.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Mother Earth News Fair 2019 – Recap

Posted on September 8, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 020.

Have you used live events to promote your business, your book or your speaking career?

Podcast Host Brian J. Pombo and Producer Sean E. Douglas attended the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon from Saturday, August 3rd to Sunday, August 4th 2019. Located at the Linn County Fairgrounds, Brian and Sean give their reactions, thoughts and tips for attending and profiting off of shows and expositions like the Mother Earth News Fair. Listen now!

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Brian: How many people do you think actually put their email address down off of that crowd from what you could tell Sean.

Sean: If we’re playing the game. So if you understand the 80/20 principle. 80 percent of the crowd was signing up for it, which pretty much blew me away, every single time I saw that. From my observation, I was definitely making note of that.

Podcast Intro: If you’re someone who refuses to go along to get along, if you question whether the status quo was good enough for you and your family.

If you want to leave this world better off than you found it and you consider independence a sacred thing.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Alright, welcome back to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast. Today’s episode is going to be quite a bit different because what we’re doing instead of interviewing somebody from the outside, I have producer Sean E. Douglas with me.

He also joined me in Albany, Oregon for the Mother Earth News Fair.

And we’re going to talk about our experiences there.

First, we’re going to go off of why we went. What made this one standout in our mind of something that we wanted to highlight on the show, and go to when it happened this year.

And really, that comes back to an episode with Brad James from BeePods.com.

He’s the one that mentioned Mother Earth News Fair off of the podcast, we had a small conversation with him about how he got involved with them and was giving a speech at one of the other events.

So that led us to look a little further into Mother Earth News Fair. We were very familiar with the magazine. And as we were looking into it, we noticed a number of speakers that had all the media capabilities.

They had been on podcasts before many of them had, many of them had written books. And it was something that was interesting to us that we wanted to explore via the podcast.

So in leading up to the actual fair itself, we decided to start emailing and calling some of these people and seeing if they’d be willing to be interviewed on the show.

Sure enough, they did.

As you may have heard up until now, and if you haven’t, go back and listen, we had 11 episodes with a different interview on each episode, all from different backgrounds, some of them writers, some not.

We produced them over a very short period of time in order to hit that deadline of the show itself.

The last one that you may have heard with from Jereme Zimmerman was taken at the show itself.

So you got to hear us on location and it was interesting, what were your expectations going into it Sean.

Sean: Well, thankfully as Janice Cox was so nice to print out the whole schedule there and the different speakers and times for you when she met up with you to do your recording.

We were able to hit the ground running on understanding the different speakers, especially people that we’d had on the show. We wanted to try to hit up as many as we could.

While we were there for the two days and trying to map out most of them would speak more than one time. I think there was only a couple that only had one speech if I’m not mistaken. Most of them are speaking 2,3,4 times maybe even putting on workshops.

Definitely expected to want to get in there and see as many people as I could and me personally, you got to understand I’m probably about as city slicker is you’re going to get.

Overtime as we’ve been doing the self reliance and learning more about the field.

Brian knows a lot more about these things than I do.

And it’s been a really educational and an eye opener for me and this series that we had before we got there was an no exception, it was very much eye opener for all the different range of topics that were being covered from the different speakers.

And so I was really curious to get to sit down and spend some time listening to them, see them in action and see people that were listening to different questions that would come up.

Really want to see that, wanted to see all the different exhibitors and how things were laid out there, how everything was set up. What the bookstore looked like, because I heard some things about, they have this really nice bookstore, you know, so I had an idea of how it might look.

But really being able to go in and see this atmosphere, and how it all worked together. Being there, it exceeded what I could picture in my mind. And it was, it was just very fun time. Before you knew it, the two days were up and it was time to go home.

Brian: Yeah, no, it really was it in terms of my expectations are very similar. I have been to expos and events like this previously, but none quite like this.

None put on by a world famous magazine like Mother Earth News. None that were that professional in terms of directing people. My expectations just weren’t there.

As far as that goes, I knew there was going to be vendors. I knew there were going to be speakers. I knew they’d probably be selling some books there because of all the writers that were going to be there.

Besides that I wasn’t quite certain how it was going to all play out.

I wasn’t sure how big it was going to be. They’ve got six different ones every year, depending on which event you went to. It may be larger or smaller.

I think this one in Albany tends to be over on the smaller end of things from the speakers that I know of that went to the other events. So I wasn’t sure about that.

But with first impressions, let’s talk about first impressions.

We showed up Saturday morning. We got there.

I was surprised how warm it was. It was very warm weather.

A good portion of the event was outdoors, also that was interesting.

This kind of see the mixture of the indoor and the outdoor parts of the event.

One thing I knew right away, there was going to be more to see than we could possibly get to the fact that there were 10 presentations and or workshops, going at any given time that you had to choose one out of those.

One, unless you want to only get partial viewings, you had to jump around to one of the 10 stages to catch whoever you’re interested in seeing.

One thing that we figured out pretty quick was that we were not going to see everyone that we wanted to see or at least get to see them speak.

And sure enough, there were people that I had met through the podcast that I did not even get a chance to go up and say hi to because we were so busy. That’s just part of the first impressions.

We’ll get into a deeper dive as we go along. What were your first impressions Sean that first morning when we got there?

Sean: Oh, yeah, it was a real eye opener.

In trying to get in. You know, there’s people there at the gates obviously they’re attentive making sure that you got your wristband or this, that and the other. But very very friendly, not super locked down like a you know, it’s not like…oh boy, if you go to a sporting event or something like that these days, or obviously going to the airport.

That’s a whole nother story as far as trying to get into a place like that, but no, no, it’s not super intensive or anything like that trying to get in.

So that’s really nice, again, friendly.

I think everybody there was seemingly in a pretty good mood. It wasn’t hard to figure out where the different stages were at.

It didn’t seem to take too long. Getting in there, figuring out the layout of the place, and taking it all in.

And as we were doing that I was surprised we kept running into different speakers as we were just walking around and then Michael Foley, Leah Webb, and a few others even before we even sat down.

And first one we watched was the Shockey’s and Kirsten was doing her speech. I think that one started about 45 minutes after we walked in the door or something like, that half hour after walked into the door.

So just taking in a lot of stuff. That’s all I can say.

Brian: And you mentioned the Shockey’s talk, so we got to see Kirsten and Christopher Shockey they were the first speech that we got to witness. And I had some notes I was looking over.

It was interesting because it was outside, it was it was slightly breezy. And you could kind of hear that it was kind of over underneath a large tarp and the tarp was kind of hitting up against the poles a little bit.

You could hear that they were kind of next to a petting zoo. So you could hear a few animal sounds here and there that they kind of integrated into their presentation but kind of joking about it.

Kirsten was the one that did most of the presentation. It was very professional, very interesting.

Kind of a good starter on just fermenting vegetables and the the concept behind that how to do pickling in a traditional fermented pickle in way is really good stuff.

We jumped from…..we’re going to go a little bit deeper. Just kind of giveing some highlights, just so you know, we kind of jumped from speaker to speaker after that.

We got to see you Jereme Zimmerman discuss beer making. Then we saw Leah Webb talking about belly biochemistry that was very interesting, lots of heavy duty knowledge on that one.

And then we saw Frank Hyman with Hentopia show some live examples of ways that you can create water feeder. I mean, he discussed it on the show.

So if you listen to what he was saying he was going to talk about, that’s what he talked about.

And it was it was a lot of fun. He’s very entertaining.

And then we got to see Janice Cox, talk about lavender for health and beauty.

So these were all people that we had had on the show. It was great meeting them in person.

Afterwards, many of them you were directed back to a signing table, which was over in this bookstore area, which is kind of an area in the expo that’s kind of cornered off where all the books being sold by the Mother Earth Mews Fair were there.

Most of the authors had their books in the bookstore and after they had had spoken many of them, you can go and get your book signed with them. That was a really interesting process.

So you watch a speech, you’re encouraged to go by the book and have it signed. Anything else you want to say about that first day shot?

Sean: Yeah, just a little bit further on having them go for the signing. The people that I made note, here we saw in total in the two days, and we’ll get into Sunday, we saw nine speakers, five on Saturday, four on Sunday.

And part of that is because on Saturday and ran an hour longer, I think it went till six and on Sunday and only till around 5. And most of those people that we watched, they had they were going to do a signing either right after or very, very soon after, and I didn’t look at the ones that did not do that when we were at their speech.

There were other times where it was quickly afterwards that they did that on other speeches. So this is something that definitely was….definitely is something that somewhere down the line that Mother Earth News is organized with their speakers to try to at least do that. It seems like at least one speech for most of them every weekend. So that that’s really good. I mean, when you think about it, I mean, a lot of the tie within this is going back, that’s your funnel, that’s where your call to action is, if you will, to go back there and do the signing and go to the bookstore and get them there.

But also I noticed, with various speakers not to say that they wouldn’t want to take questions or anything like that…everybody was friendly and all these things. But more to say that because you can see pretty much after a lot of these talks, you can see like a little bit of a crowd wanting to get around the speakers right after they were done.

Waiting to ask questions, and I’m sure, if I had to sit down with Andrew Perkins or whoever with Mother Earth News. If they weren’t doing this kind of thing before, they probably may have gotten bogged down with these questions. Right after the speeches, and so you can see a clear call to action to go back to the bookstore for a signing in to answer questions. And that’s part of the thing there.

But it also frees up that situation from getting kind of bottlenecked there so that they can also in turn, get ready for the next speaker to get ready. Because as you said, they could be having like up to 10 of these things going on at one time.

And there’s one after another that’s happened and again and again. So if you put it all together, it just makes sense for a lot of different reasons to have that kind of thing going on.

Brian: Mmmhmm.

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.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: Absolutely, it was great because there were different ways that they encouraged people to go purchase the books or to go and sign.

One of the ways that we saw on the first day, both Frank Hyman and the Shockey’s, had these flyers that were handed out during their speech. And you can tell they’re put together by Storey Publishing, because well, it says Storey Publishing on it, but also it has that they have a similar look to them.

So on one side, it’s got their picture, it’s got the picture of their book, that the item number, the price of it when their book signing is the fact that that you can get 20% off of the bookstore, which seemed to be a constant thing all weekend.

And then on the other side, they’d have details about that person.

So for example, the Shockey’s on the other side had a few recipes one for green peppercorn mustard, one for holy fermented bazell is really cool, nice little recipes on the other side and area for another.

And then on the other side of Frank Hyman’s four ways a hatch is better than a hinged roof.

And so it’s kind of a step by step talking about the advantages. That’s a neat little way to be able to get people to do the next step to be able to go through the process.

Another neat thing that we saw happening, and the first person we saw doing it was Leah Webb, and that was hand around a…..did she have a clipboard?

I believe she did. She had clipboards.

Sean: Two clipboards.

Brian: Had two clipboards. And she was asking for people’s names and email addresses and what and the reason for it, she said, if you put your name and email address down, I will basically have a raffle at the end of the speech and give away one of my books.

How many people do you think actually put their email address down now for that crowd from what you could tell Sean?

Sean: If we’re playing the game, so if you understand at the 80/20 principle….so if we’re playing that game, I would say we’re at least on the 80% side.

So that meaning at least I would say 80% of the crowd was signing up for it, which pretty much blew me away. That that would happen.

And that was not the only person that I would say…..every single time I saw, that from my observations, because I was definitely making note of that.

I would say from playing that 80/20 game, it’s going to be on the 80% side that we’re looking at for the conversion rate.

Brian: Yeah, that was pretty incredible. And you got to think about that as a speaker, if you’re a speaker, and you’re looking to get out there, how can you get the most out of this experience?

Well, one way is to encourage them to purchase something, purchase a book, if you’ve got a book for sale.

Another way is to get their information so that you can have an ongoing conversation with them after the show.

I mean, it only makes sense that they would do something like this. And there were a number of speakers that didn’t do anything of that sort.

But there were also a couple other speakers. I know Gary Collins did, I know, Janice Cox also passed around bags, they had little slips of paper that you can fill out.

I believe that was setup by Mother Earth News because that’s their publisher, you can see how the book publishers do everything they can to help out the process.

Also, just because a person’s a speaker, or has written a book doesn’t mean that they’re running a really full scale business on this.

What we’re talking about is the business aspects of all these things.

As we discussed throughout all the interviews leading up to this, why would someone want to write a book?

Why would someone want to give a speech at an event like this?

And so we’re kind of talking in and out of all these things as we go along, really entertaining speeches, and presentations, on on all levels. I mean, we enjoyed everyone that we saw. And it was very, very interesting if you’re just wanting to get some info, especially on a particular topic that you know, is in this realm, and you know, a certain speaker is going to be there.

It’s worth the price just to go in for that, let alone all the vendors have great presentations and everything going on.

There’s always more that can be done in terms of business.

And we’ll be talking more about that in future episodes. But just to see what was done.

I’d also like to mention, Chris White, who we had on the show from DripWorks.com.

We got to talk with him a little bit. We didn’t get to catch his speech, but he had mentioned how he told people about his booth, but he didn’t necessarily see people go over to his booth right away after being done with the speech.

But he found people filtering through all throughout the rest of the weekend. That had been to the speech that saw him there and came over because they saw a speech.

So even though he didn’t have a book for them to purchase, he did have an opportunity for them to come by the booth and take part in the activities that were there at the Drip Works booth. So that was pretty cool.

Sean: I forget if I asked him or not if he had something he was giving away during his speech, trying to mirror and match some ways. They do this with the books where there’s maybe there’s something given away or there’s a speech, you know, hey, they’ve got a draw to do signing or something like that. Was there a draw right after the speech to get them to that table so that they would go there right away?

But yeah, he was, he did say we’ve seen steady people coming in through the rest of that day.

And we talked to him fairly early on Sunday. And they seem fairly pleased that they’re just steady people coming back again and again, that they had saw the speech and one drop by and say hi and inquire about Drip Works, so that was terrific.

One other point I wanted to say on the speaking before I forget and also for that this is it’s a biz podcast. So we are talking about business stuff, but I do not want to undersell, I learned so much, again, I like I said I’m like a city slicker on a lot of this stuff.

I learned so much stuff from these people, in sitting down, and hearing what they had to say, taking notes with everybody all the way through, you know, even from a health standpoint, at least to start out, you know, I was so impressed by Leah’s conversation that I bought her book, and I’m implementing some of the things she’s got with her cookbook.

So I’m really pleased about that, just on a personal level, did not expect to get anything like that out of out of this, this whole ordeal, but just for my own benefit, I’ve gotten that.

But I learned so much stuff in getting to see again, like Kirsten Shockey, you know, they had the cameras up there and it was really nice to see her working on the fermenting and everything.

So I mean, I really enjoyed what the people had to say. I mean, it’s not just all business.

And it was very much an eye opener and I am very much encouraged to learn more about these types of things just over time.

Don’t expect to learn it overnight for sure.

But another thing that I thought was great and the first person we saw again, the Shockey’s, had their books right up there at the front, nice big books.

Most of them have you know, big lettering on the covers and you can see it, we were way in the back, I could see those things nice and clear from the back, you know, that you see that.

And again, you’d see a lot of these people have in their books right up there at the front and I thought that was terrific.

What a great way to remind people that you have these books.

And it’s, it’s right there. You can’t can’t dispute the it’s right there you can see it fresh in their minds as you’re talking. There it is.

So I thought that was another great idea that you’d see consistently through the different talks.

And it was just really nice. I know like Uncle Mud. We saw him on Sunday and he was kind of doing his own thing with his whole setup but they had the book layout right there for all his stuff, he pretty much had that spot is pretty much dominated his little area through the whole weekend.

But he had his books right there that you could get, you know, there were people available to help sell books or what have you, right there for his purposes, too. And so it just it was just it was great stuff.

Brian: Yeah, and that Uncle Mud we’re looking to have him on the show in a future episode here.

He was the specific talk that we watched of his was on rocket mass heaters. Really great personality, really interesting guy, got a lot of interesting background to go off of so I can’t wait to be able to talk deeper with him on that.

We got see Andy Brennan from Aaron Burr Cider. We got to see Gary Collins from the Simple Life.

We got to see Crystal Stevens from GrowCreateInspire.com, and she’s also someone that we were hoping to have on the podcast in the future, but you definitely want to check out her stuff.

Just a really good day on Sunday.

Got to meet a lot of great people.

Well, the whole weekend we did. Got to meet a lot of great people, didn’t get to see close up all of the vending opportunities there all the booths and everything that were set up. But we did get to meet a few people.

We’re going to have some of those people on the show get to talk with them about their final experiences with The Mother Earth News Fair and kind of give a wrap up to this entire series.

Now, it doesn’t mean it ends a lot of our relationships with these people, we’re going to go beyond that.

And we’ll have them back on the show, or have them on the show for the first time, even though we met them there. But we’re really going to, we’re going to go in a little bit deeper and find out some more people’s perspectives on the Mother Earth News Fair, this particular one for 2019 from Albany, Oregon, and, you know, overall impressions for me was that it’s very well organized, very clean, very straightforward.

Once you’re there for a few hours, you get an idea of the layout, and the overall process of the whole thing.

And there’s lots of opportunity for people with businesses. If you have a personality business, it really works out great because you may be able to get one of the slots to speak somewhere.

You could promote a book, you could promote anything that you possibly selling would fit that crowd. And it’s very much a self reliance based crowd, a homesteading crowd, you got a whole lot of anything that’s even closely related to that was represented there at the Mother Earth News Fair.

I know there’s a couple of the sub niches that I know people in that have been at those events in the past and I’m hoping to see them back again in the future and really see it.

Some even more variety at the shows, but lots of fun our overall impression was it was I can’t wait to go back next year. I hope to be able to hit up some of the other ones.

Also, who knows maybe even take part in some of the opportunities myself that any overall impressions from the whole event, Sean?

Sean: Yeah, I mean, you pretty much summed it up pretty good right there.

Definitely would like to go back again and it would be awesome to go check out some of the ones that are beyond just Oregon. I know talking with some of the speakers there were different, this was set up a little bit different than some of the other different one.

It’d be interesting to see how the layout is different, especially I think it was in Pennsylvania, Andrew Perkins was talking about how that’s a whole nother type of feel, with that one that’s very unique from the other different ones, the other ones that they have.

So like definitely like to check that out one day totally plan on going back again next year.

It was amazing. The first day there’s so much to take in because it was the first time that we had gone there and to see how it all was and you’re processing that by the second day, okay, you kind of got an idea how the feel is and how things are going to go.

And so it was a little bit different and I’ll be very interested to see how the second time we go out there how that’ll go had a great time.

Everybody seemed like out there they were doing it’s just a really fun time, just like you, while the stuff we’ve heard and the episodes that we put together. It held to it.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: So we’ve got a few more episodes to go in our Mother Earth News Fair series. So be sure and listen to those and we will continue on we’ve got some great interviews already lined up after the series also stay tuned.

Thank you for joining us on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast. If there’s anything that you’d like to hear more about, please let us know if there’s anyone you’d like to be on the show please let us know and you have a great day.

I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

Jereme Zimmerman – Make Mead Like A Viking

Posted on September 7, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Make Mead Like A Viking / Brew Beer Like A Yeti

Episode 019.

Are you willing to break the barriers of your “comfort zone?” Is your natural personality holding you back? Were you made for employment or entrepreneurship?

Jereme Zimmerman is a writer and traditional brewing revivalist who lives in Kentucky with his wife, Jenna, and daughters, Sadie and Maisie. In 2015 his book Make Mead Like A Viking was published, and became an unexpected hit! He followed that up with Brew Beer Like A Yeti in 2018.

Our conversation with Jereme goes into his life as a freelance writer and how it has lead him (inadvertently) to publishing books, and giving public speeches about homebrewing and the history surrounding it. His story is interesting and inspiring – Listen Now!

Find out more about Jereme: http://www.jereme-zimmerman.com/
Buy & Read his books: http://www.jereme-zimmerman.com/products-1?category=Books
Follow him on social media
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeremeZimmYeti/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeremeZimm
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremezimm/

Find out the business events secrets for growing and strengthening ANY company: http://brianjpombo.com/secrets/

Full Transcript

Jereme: I almost think I’m just kind of made to do this kind of thing. Same as when I was homeschooling I could I get up in the morning, my dad taught high school English, you’d get up really early, I get up with him do my work, I’d be done by 11 o’clock.

Sometimes, the rest of the day I’d be playing in the woods, doing chores and stuff. And then when my school friends came home, they’d been set in school and I’m like, ready to go.

So it’s the idea of just being able to get up. And even though it can be daunting, sometimes at least I know, okay, well, here’s a list of what needs to get done.

I’ll get as much done as I can and often do my chores now.

You may be a prepper, a gardener, a homesteader, a survivalist, or a farmer or rancher, an environmentalist or a rugged outdoorsman.

We are here to celebrate you whether you’re looking to improve your maverick business or to find out more about the latest products and services available to the weekend rebel.

From selling chicken eggs online, to building up your food storage or collecting handmade soap.

This show is for those who choose the road less traveled the road to self-reliance for those that are living a daring adventure, life off the grid.

Brian: Jereme Zimmerman is a writer and traditional brewing revivalist who lives in Berea, Kentucky. He has been published in various magazines and websites and travels globally to speak on topics such as fermentation, natural and holistic homebrewing, modern homesteading and sustainable living.

He is an avid fermenter and researches extensively into traditional fermentation practices in order to revive lost food arts, and to educate people on how to preserve food using traditional natural and healing ingredients and techniques.

His first book Make Mead Like a Viking was published in 2015. His second book, Brew Beer Like a Yeti, was published in September 2018.

Okay, Jereme Zimmerman. Welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Jereme: Thanks for having me.

Brian: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you do?

Jereme: Well, you’ve already said my name. So we got that far.

I grew up on a goat farm in Kentucky, homeschooled all the way up through high school, didn’t go to high school. And my family was very self sufficient, can then preserved and hunted and fished and dad made his own wine from, you know, stuff he found in the woods and grew and that kind of thing.

That was my background.

And I chose to become an English major and actually use my English major for my job at this point.

I’ve been a freelance writer about 15 years now. And up until the past five, six years.

Yeah, it was just standard, just kind of business technical writing kind of thing.

My interest in homebrewing kind of started to get out there on the internet. I started blogging about it and from there very quickly turned being asteroid magazine articles to now having two books out.

Brian: What made you jump from the writing of articles to making book?

Jereme: I didn’t so much jumped as I was pushed.

So it was always this sort of yeah, like doing this, but I don’t know if anybody really wants to hear me write about.

Basically I had a friend who started a website called EarthandAir.com, which isn’t around anymore, but it was all geared toward homesteading kind of people.

And he kept pushing me to write blogs and I’ve been brewing beer. I was getting into Mead, and that was such a simpler thing to write about and talk about and I thought it was good for homesteading audience.

So I started blogging under a pseudonym redhead, a Yeti.

And he just was getting a tons of hits on the blogs and just turns out mead and Vikings were getting to be pretty big and they still are. So from there, just you know, I found a publisher at a Mother Earth News Fair.

They connected with me a presentation that I did and it just, things moved quickly from there.

Brian: So how did you end up doing presentations?

Did you ask them? Did they ask you how that start out?

Jereme: Again, I was pushed.

I my goal in becoming a writer was to live out in the woods, summer by myself, send my workout and I’d ever have to interact with people.

Turns out, you know, you kind of have to get out there in front of people.

So again, my friend Dan was here he was connected with Mother Earth News. So I’d never done anything more than talk in front of like five people at a time. And he connected me, got me doing a mead presentation to a couple hundred people at a Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville, North Carolina.

And, so I was like, do or die, why not? I’ll go ahead and do it.

And it went really well.

People kept asking if I had a book that some publishers were there and so that’s from there, I realized that the speaking thing is kind of important. So I’ve really honed my speaking skills and I’m actually starting to enjoy it.

Brian: Yeah, it’s great.

We got see your first your first presentation. Here today on beer making. That was great.

Me and the producer Sean here. You’ve written a couple of books here, can tell us a little bit about them for people who haven’t seen them yet.

Jereme: Yeah, so the first is make need like a Viking. And mead is a honey wine. It’s basically just an alcoholic beverage made from honey primarily.

And that was kind of my first blogs and my first workshops I called that, Make Mead Like a Viking.

Part of the inspiration for that was I was interested, I’ve always been interested in history and mythology and all that kind of thing.

But I’m specifically interested in how people made food and made and drink alcohol and other beverages. How they live, you know, everybody needs a drink.

So I kind of went at that from a DIY perspective.

And that’s where that came about.

And then my second book is almost twice as big as the first it’s called, Brew Beer Like a Yeti.

We decided to keep with a similar theme, but I went way beyond Viking in that one. So we didn’t didn’t really call it for beer like a Viking. And what that one is is essentially all the research I found on beer traditional beer brewing that just didn’t make sense man that made book.

So they’re kind of companion books basically.

Brian: Very cool. Got see your talk on beer making initially which is great, especially great for beginners people have never done anything like that before. I had a little bit of background I had a brother in law that had done it and so forth.

So I’d seen quite a bit of it before, it’s really great.

What’s your other presentation going to be about?

Jereme: So basically, I do a presentation for the beer book and presentation for the mead book.

So the one I’ve been doing at every Mother Earth News Fair since the first one I did like five years ago, I think it’s just make mead like a Viking. Is talking about the basics of me making and a little bit about the history mythology behind it.

And but I also do a third one Mother Earth News Fairs have started doing hands on workshops where people actually make a little bit of something and bring it home.

So we’ll be making a mead starter.

So basically, everybody takes a jar put some honey and water in a few other like fruits and berries and herbs. And that will then when they take it home as they do it right it’ll turn into a starter that they can then use as yeast to start a new batch of beer or mead.

Brian: That’s excellent. That’s so cool.

What do you hope people will walk away with after watching any of your presentations?

Jereme: Well, the one thing I always like to hear is, oh, that sounds a lot easier than I thought it would be.

So my goal has always been fermentation at its core is a very simple thing.

There are lots of lots of things you can do to make it not necessarily more complex, but more interesting. Although some people do like to make it complex.

I just really want people to understand that. It can be as complicated as you want it to be or it can be as simple as you want it to be.

So simplicity is the keyword for what I want people to walk away with.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: We were talking before we started recording about how your publisher has set you up to attend these. Chelsea Green Publishing, right?

Jereme: Yeah.

Brian: And besides selling more books, what do you hope to get out of it? And what do you get out of putting these on coming to these events and so forth?

Jereme: Well, honestly, I’ve been doing it a few years now.

And I run into lots of the same people. It’s almost like a family reunion or a bunch of carnies is now I think about it.

It’s kind of a traveling carnival not just the fellow speakers, but all the people who put on the event, producers and you know, all those people are become friends and we all hang out afterwards and, you know, have a beer or whatever.

So it’s got that element.

I run into a lot of a lot of the same people who were just attending. Like this year, a guy came into my work shop and started talking to me, and I’m like I, I remember you. Yeah, I think I talked to you last year.

So there’s this real camaraderie. But I also use it as a springboard to tag on other events when I’m in a completely new area.

So I’m looking for article research for magazines. I’m finding other places in the area where I can do presentations to sell books. And you know, kind of a little bit of fun, too.

Brian: Well, that’s great. That’s really good.

Did you have a lot of history tied into everything that you do a whole lot of it’s a history lesson. Has that always been an interest to you?

Has it been something that’s just grown out of the general interest of making these things?

Jereme: Yeah, little both. I mean, I’ve always been just a history geek and and not just history, but the literature mythology and stuff of different time periods. And I always just figured it was just me and a couple of my geeky friends and it would never go beyond that.

But it just naturally became part of what I teach. I don’t really want to just teach.

Here’s how to do this A, B, and C, good job, go home. I want to learn how other people did in the past and it just kind of has become a natural thing for me to then pass it on to other people.

Brian: So you travel quite a bit to do these type of things. You have any logistical tips for other people that might be traveling and speaking doing some more things?

Jereme: Yeah, I probably got a ton of them. I don’t I don’t know how many am I want to get into.

But basically, try to get as many expenses covered as you can.

Like I said, you might my publisher helps to a degree that Mother Earth News Fair people help to a degree, but when I’m tacking on other events that aren’t tourism, then there’s no shame and asking for even just a little bit.

Travel pay, like you know, at least cover my gas maybe make sure you put me up.

Occasionally I’ll get an event where they can’t quite do all that but I understand that it’s really good for book sales or for networking.

So as far as if you’re just traveling to try and sell your stuff and sell your books, those are some of the biggest tips is just watch your money try to find any way you can get any of that I’m compensated because I’m not getting rich off this, but I’m at least getting by.

Brian: Absolutely. And then the book writing process.

Do you enjoy that whole process you like, don’t you? You see yourself doing it again?

Jereme: Yes and no.

Another author, you know, I was jokingly saying, she was working on a manuscript and I was like, it’s fun, isn’t it?

She like yeah, it’s fun when it’s done.

So there is a lot of you know, I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t something I didn’t reeally like some aspect of. You know, parts of it.

They’re just a lot of fun. The research is what really I think is fun for me but also gets tedious after up I’m like, Okay, I gotta stop at some point.

The writing is fun it’s when you get into the the final stages of proofing and editing which never seems to end, but I’m kind of a perfectionist unfortunately my editors are too.

So that’s almost fun in a way it’s just going through and tightening up some of the text or being like, you know, I think one of the phrases here sometimes is kill your darlings. You got sometimes there’s a big chunk that put a lot of time into and it’s just not working so I cut it out, but I always save it and I basically got a second book out of that. I still had to cut a lot of stuff out but yeah, it’s enjoyable, but there’s just there’s just so much more to it than just writing.

Brian: Makes a lot of sense then it’s funny because your background I was just curious. Being homeschooled and everything, homeschooling tends to be weaved throughout the DIY community.

Is Do It Yourself schooling, how how does that fit into your…..I don’t know, adventurous spirit or your ability to just kind of go out there and try new things, or have you seen that tie into it at all?

Jereme: Yeah, I mean, I always think it would be harder for me to do this if I didn’t have that background.

And I’ve thought about it. I’ve been basically self employed freelancing for most of my career and was 15 years now. And even though there are aspects of having a regular full time job, like insurance and retirement and all that.

For one thing that appealed to me and I do occasionally apply for a job that looks like something I might enjoy, but you know, basically, I think I’m just kind of made to do this kind of thing.

Same as when I was homeschooling I could I get up in the morning, my dad taught high school English, he’d get up really early, I get up with him. Do my work, I’d be done by 11 o’clock sometimes.

The rest of the day I’d be playing in the woods, doing chores and stuff. And then when my school friends came home, they’d been sitting in school all day and I’m like, ready to go.

So it’s the idea of just being able to get up. And even though it can be daunting, sometimes at least I know, Okay, well, here’s a list of what needs to get done.

I’ll get as much done as I can. And then I’ll go off and do my chores and have some fun.

Brian: Yeah. I appreciate you taking time out. It’s a busy weekend and everything taking time out and hanging out with us.

What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you or to get a hold of your books or anything else?

How would you direct them?

Jereme: Well, the easiest thing to do is just to Google my name, because I’m on like multiple different platforms. So my name is my website, which is the name spelled a little different, it’s, J E R E M E, and the website is, Jereme-Zimmerman.com.

So yeah, long enough of a name might be quicker to Google that, but I’m also if you have a business Facebook page, which is different from my personal so that’s, that’s where you can find me on.

I’m on Twitter a little bit.

I don’t use it much, but @JeremeZimm is my Twitter and my Instagram login. And for getting books. I mean, it’s all over Amazon you get if my publisher Chelsea Green Publishing, but my website I sell them through my website and I always sign anything I sell.

So you want a signed copy can do that and 24.95 the jacket price, but I usually sell for a little less.

Brian: Right on. Hey, thanks so much Jereme Zimmerman for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Jereme: Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s been great.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Really nice guy, lots of fun to sit down and talk to very personable.

Which is interesting because he’s also kind of admitted that he’s somewhat of an introvert, but he got pushed into not only becoming a writer but becoming a public speaker.

You have to get out there in front of people to promote your books and so forth and to get your name out there. And that’s a big piece I think that most people completely miss when they start down the road of writing a book.

We spoke with Andy Brennan in an earlier episode. And it’s impressive to me that these people who would normally consider themselves introverts do so well on a stage.

And he did well on a stage, Jereme was very good on a stage and was able to put these very complicated concepts and make them very simplified. I really liked it.

His willingness to go along and try out these new things and finding other opportunities and being open to other opportunities is really cool, too.

It’s an attitude that I think all successful business owners have, and people that are on their way to becoming successful. You need to realize that those are the good parts of you.

The parts that seek out opportunity, the parts that are willing to go beyond your comfort zone, don’t neglect that side of you because that is what’s going to lead to success for sure.

And also the realistic end where he says that there’s no shame in asking for travel pay. It’s something that’s necessary when you’re moving ahead.

But it’s like he said, You don’t do it just to sell your books, you got to make sure you can at least get by.

Don’t spend more money than is necessary to be able to go out and promote your books in order to make money. Your budget has to match up at the end of the day. Really good advice.

I like how he blends history along with the How To of making beer or making mead or all the other things that he talks about. That’s very much a personality thing.

And for him to allow himself and his personality to spread out, makes his entire brand unique. He doesn’t have to worry about competing against everyone else telling you how to make beer or how to make Mead.

These are all things you can look up online.

What he brings to it is personality background, and something that you just get from anywhere else.

If you have that type of courage in your writing in your speaking in your content development, you’re going to get a good response back and you will delete any sense of competition.

Finally, I love when he said, I guess I’m just kind of made to do this type of thing.

And he was referring back to homeschooling. And he related all that back to being self employed. Tying in directly with the homeschooling, that self reliant attitude is great because we have a podcast here about self reliance, but also it goes to the core of what being an entrepreneur is all about.

And Jereme definitely has that entrepreneurial spirit.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact. Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor.

Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell. Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas. I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

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