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.

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.

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.

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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 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.

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