Janice Cox – Natural Beauty for All Seasons

Posted on August 1, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 015.

Do you take FULL advantage of events? Do you challenge yourself to meet new people and focus on new opportunities?

Janice Cox is a leading DIY natural beauty and skin-care expert from Medford, Oregon. She is the author of several books including Natural Beauty from the Garden, Natural Beauty for All Seasons, and Natural Beauty at Home.

She’s a member of the International Herb Association, the United States Lavender Growers Association, and the Herb Society of America.

Janice brings an bright energy into everything she says and does. Her enthusiasm is contagious. Listen now!

Find out more about Janice Cox: http://www.janicecox.com

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

Full Transcript

Janice: I think I said this to the fair director, the world would kind of be a better place if everybody acted like they do it Mother Earth News Fairs because you have all walks, all backgrounds. There’s urban people, there’s, you know, country people, but everybody gets together because they really do want to learn and share and grow ideas.

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: Janice Cox is an author and leading DIY natural beauty and skincare expert. She is a wife, mother and grandmother and loves creating her own bath and body products.

She’s also a freelance magazine writer and beauty editor for Herb Quarterly Magazine. Janice is a member of the International Herb Association, the United States lavender Growers Association, and the herb Society of America.

She will be speaking at the remaining Mother Earth News Fairs for 2019 in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. Janice, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Janice: Thank you for having me. This is fun.

Brian: Sure thing once you let everyone know besides what’s in your bio, just tell us a little bit about who you are what you do?

Janice: Well, I am kind of a DIY beauty. I’ve just always had a passion I grew up my dad was a farmer. My mom was a home mech major. So I kind of grew up in a DIY environment anyway. And I’ve just always had a passion for body care products.

Now growing up, we lived out in the country, so I couldn’t run and buy things. So we had to craft things. And I had to use what was on hand when I first started out, people really liked my recipes. Because you could save a lot of money, which you still can.

Today, I’ve noticed that my message is kind of shifted, where it’s people are really concerned with the products and the ingredients that they’re using on their body. And so knowing what goes into even the commercial products that you’re buying, because there’s a lot of great products out there helps with your overall wellness.

I mean, I’ve seen people change their health, you know, just in the ingredients they choose. So that’s kind of a little bit of where I’ve come from, I started out just making this stuff for fun, then I was saving money.

And now I’m really looking at it as a whole wellness part of your health regimen.

Brian: Excellent. So how did you end up here?

What’s your life story to this point, what brought you to this field?

Janice: I was a mother. And so I wanted a career that I could do with my family and also so I had the passion for making my own products.

We used to live in Australia before we moved back to the United States where beauty products and do yourself things are just super popular.

So I had a collection of recipes from family from history books from just travels. And when we came back to the US, my husband went and bought me some soap that I liked using in Australia.

And he kind of complained about the price of it and said, You should just learn to make this yourself, which was nice. I mean, he said it in a nice way. So I thought, you know, there was really a need for this, you know, so I put together all my recipes.

It was my first book was called Natural Beauty at Home and that was back in the 90s.

Now I’ve written four books and for a variety of magazines, and it’s just become a career that I am lucky because I got to do it at home with my family.

Brian: Awesome.

We talked a little bit about your books. Can you tell us more about the books you have?

Janice: Well, my books are written cookbook style, and so if you can read you could make body care products there’s a variety of things I have like thousands of recipes so you can make shampoo and a stringent bath products cleansers you know if there’s a commercial product you’re using.

Chances are you’ll probably be able to make one out of one of my books and they’re a little bit like muffins like once you get down, say the cleansers, you can then just kind of play around with the ingredients. So if you’re somebody that really likes rosemary or really likes mint, then you can adapt it to your own and your skin too.

So I kind of give people the tools but they’re really in control. They’re the manufacturer of their products so they can make them any way they want and tailor them to where their skins at that’s kind of nice to you have the control of in the winter, you might need more oil in the summer you might not need as rich of a product.

Brian: So what led you to write books to begin with?

Janice: I guess if I didn’t really start out to write books, but I wanted to share recipes. So that was an easy way to share my recipes with people is to put them all into like a cookbook, that they can easily get at the store.

Brian: Got it?

Did you enjoy the process?

Janice: I like meeting people. I think what I like about the writing, writing is kind of a solitary process, but it’s very creative. So I like that.

But I also like it when I go out.

The best compliment I can get is when somebody comes up to me with my book, and it’s just all marked up and used. It has oil stains. I love that.

And then a lot of times I learned from my readers, they will send me you know, like we like this, but have you thought of using jojoba oil? Or have you thought of, you know, doing this with rose petals?

And I like that part of it. So yeah, it’s just I just like everything about it.

Brian: That’s great.

Janice: It’s a good career.

Brian: So you’re slated to present at Mother Earth News Fair, you’ve already presented at the earlier ones.

What are you going to be covering in Albany?

Janice: Okay, in Albany because this is my second round of Mother Earth News Fairs and my second Time in Oregon.

This year, I’m taking ideas out of my book, Natural Beauty From The Garden, which is all plant based recipes. How to enjoy your plants that you might have or your neighbors might have in a new and different way as in body care products.

I also have a book coming out at the Oregon fair for the first revised edition of Natural Beauty For All Season. So that’s a lot of gift giving ideas.

What we’re going to do up in Albany is we’re going to have I’m going to give a talk on garden beauty.

We’ll talk about all the different plants that you might not have thought of using like parsley.

It makes a nice cleanser or roses, you know, you can also use in the bath or you know, just common plants that you have. And then we’re also I do a talk on lavender, lavender has been very popular now as a plant.

And so we’re doing a whole lavender for health and beauty and on Sunday we’re doing a lavender breakfast, where I’ve teamed up with the Oregon lavender association which represents all the farms and growers in the state.

We’re going to talk, we’re gonna have some farmers there. We’re gonna have some plants there.

We’re going to make a whole breakfast with lavender inspired dishes like a quiche and scones and we’ll have lavender coffee.

And we even have a sampling of lavender mimosas.

Yeah, so you get in early to the fair and you can have your lavender breakfast and then go off and enjoy everything else.

And then I’m going to do a hands on workshop that day, I work with Mountain Rose Herbs out of Eugene, and they’re sponsoring the ingredients that we’re going to use and we’re going to make some baskets at a newspaper and then fill them with about six different body care products.

We’re going to make a soap and a cleanser and hairspray and I’m trying to think what some summer those roll on perfumes.

I mean, it’ll be really fun. People last year, I did this, and it’s about two hours and we do make a lot of things but people really enjoy it and it kind of takes on a life of its own.

Brian: Very cool.

So what do you hope people are gonna get when they walk away from your presentations, what do you hope they get out it?

Janice: My mission is to make people better consumers.

That’s really where I’m at right now, in my career. I think a lot of people will buy things and they don’t necessarily read the ingredient label.

And there’s a lot of good products out there. There’s a lot of things that you’re spending a lot of money on, and which is basically water, or salt.

I’m teaching people how to read a product label, and also realize what the ingredients are not all ingredients are bad.

I’m not down on, you know, natural beauty products, which is not really a regulated industry in this country. I mean, in other countries, they’re very, like Canada and Europe.

I mean, there are products that, you know, they have like lists of thousands of products, I think our list is maybe 11 that can’t be in body care products.

So and anybody can say natural on their label, and it might not necessarily be natural.

I’m just trying to teach people how to read a label, know what they’re using, if they want to create their own chances. Are they have things already at home or in their garden that they can do that.

And so I’ve seen people, you know, people live like a healthy lifestyle or even a gluten free lifestyle, but they don’t think about what they put on their body every day.

I kind of say what goes on you goes in you, because they’ve proven that 25% of the ingredients in your skincare products goes directly into your bloodstream. I mean, that’s why nicotine patches pain patches birth kit works so well through our skin, because things go directly and so by looking at the your body care products.

I mean, there are people like I said, gluten free, and they’re using a shampoo that has gluten in it. So there you go, you’re not really getting anywhere.

Brian: Yeah, good point.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: Why are you going to these Mother Earth News Fairs and putting on presentations?

What do you hope to achieve personally for your business?

Janice: Well, I’m kind of a super fan of Mother Earth News anyway. So besides whenever I don’t know, I might have a reputation because I also go to the classes, I also go to the talks, and I just love everything about it.

It really is an event where the things that you read in the magazine can be inspiring, but also you will up your skill level for sure.

Or maybe be exposed to something that you might not have. I took a class last year on growing mushrooms and I hadn’t even thought of that, that I could do that at home and you know, and now I have some spores, you know, out in my yard under my oak tree.

But yeah, there’s things like that that you will discover. I don’t know.

I like going to the fair. I like the magazine, I like meeting people.

It also energizes me and gives me new ideas for articles that I can write. And you know, so because I speak at other events also, not just Mother Earth News.

So a lot of times I might be working on things like lavender, or like my loofahs sponges, I did a lot on loofah sponges.

And then I ended up doing a webinar for Herb Society of America. And it really helped me because after a year of talking about loofahs sponges and with people about loofah sponges, you know, it turned into a really nice class.

Brian: Oh, that’s great. Who are you most hoping to reach with your presentations, both, you know, in person, and in your speech at the event. What was the ideal person you’re hoping to connect with?

Janice: Well, I don’t know if I have a type. I think everybody has skin and hair and is concerned about their health and wants to keep their body in good shape.

So I think anybody that’s concerned with health, wellness, and just wants to have a good time, you know, learning something new. And, you know, even making the workshop this year.

We’re gonna even focus on things that you could make and give as a gift or put in your farm shop if you’re somebody that’s already has products, so things like that. So anybody I’ll talk to anybody.

Brian: We have a lot of business owners, executives that listen to the show, because we kind of look at the entire self reliance field from business perspective. So do you think that it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this?

Janice: Oh, definitely, definitely. Because the thing that’s nice about it, it’s a small, very intimate event.

In a way, I think a lot of things happen even outside of the booth outside of the talks outside of the workshops. I’ve seen people networking and getting together, you know, and even, it’s funny, there’s businesses there like I there was one, it’s a chicken company, but the people that are either the customers or new customers, they’ll get around that.

And they’ll just be like, these big, almost like a mini conference, about a product or about a skill, I’ve seen that a lot of people will go just to network.

Brian: Yeah.

Janice: And it’s you know, people are very open to talking about products and sharing ideas and even helping you improve yourself.

I think I said this to the fair director, the world would kind of be a better place if everybody acted like they do at Mother Earth News Fair, because you have all walks, all backgrounds, there’s urban people, there’s, you know, country people, but everybody gets together because they really do want to learn and share and grow ideas.

Brian: Awesome.

How did you end up becoming a presenter to begin with Mother Earth News? Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you How did that happen?

Janice: I asked them.

Brian: Yeah.

Janice: See there I go. I’m a super fan.

So I did, I asked them, I read the magazine. I’m a subscriber.

And then I saw the fairs advertised, I had never been to a fair contacted them and said, you know, this is what I’m about and it fits perfectly with what you’re about. And I would love to be a part of your event.

Lucky for me, they said yes. And they’ve let me in and they still keep letting me show up.

Brian: So do you have any logistical tips for other people that travel?

I mean, you’ve got to travel a lot to go to these. Do you have any logistical tips of things to keep in mind if they’re either speaking or presenting or putting on an exhibit or anything like that, and these both these fairs or any type of events like this?

Janice: I’ve gone to all the fairs and I would say, you want to really make the best of your time so I would come the day before. And if you’re working, if you can kind of walk right everybody’s setting up but you get a feel for the layout.

You also can go online, I usually go online right now you can print the whole fair brochure and schedule and see all the speakers and I see a lot of people that will show up with that already highlighted.

So they kind of make the most of their day because some of these workshops are like an hour or two hours, and so you want to make that, then you’re going to see what you want to see.

I mean not to say you, you don’t really want to be to planned out because sometimes things take on a life of their own. I mean, I’ve gone to, you know, Uncle Mud’s stuff about making a pizza oven.

And I wouldn’t have maybe thought of doing that. But it just turned out, I had that time open.

So you have to come, but you can plan ahead of time online.

And then also, I would stay close to the fair because I think that’s kind of nice, because you can kind of come and go easily, and just be open.

I would say the best thing is to come with a good attitude, and be open to maybe what you might discover. I know that there’s a lot of these stories and maybe you’re coming up to the fair for the first time you might meet somebody.

I met a guy in Maryland that he has a very successful chimney cleaning company, and he wouldn’t have ever had that company. If he hadn’t been a magazine reader gone to the fair learn some skills. And now this guy, you know, that’s all he does is clean chimneys. But he said He owes it to Mother Earth news fair, which is kind of

Brian: Yeah. Nice. Yeah. What else Haven’t I asked you that you think would be good to talk about?

Janice: I don’t know, I think I’ve told you about how, you know, you want to take good care of your skin and hair, keep it clean, full of moisture and protected from the sun. I think I’ve told you, you want to go up to the Mother Earth News Fair with a good attitude, and open to learning something new and even talking to somebody new.

A lot of times, I used to have a game if I went to an event, I try and meet three new people.

And I think going to the fair, maybe discover three new booths or talks would be good.

I don’t know just have fun. It’s, you’ll see and well, maybe I’ll have to come back up here because we kind of live by each other.

Brian: Yeah.

Janice: And do a post fair.

Brian: Oh, that’d be great.

Love to have that for sure. So what could a listener that’s interested in finding out more about you checking out your books, everything else, where’s the best place for them to go?

Janice: They can go to my website. JaniceCox.com and because you can send me an email, ask me questions. My books are available pretty much everywhere. They’re on Amazon. They’re Barnes & Noble, you know, any bookseller has the books.

But if you want to speak to me directly, you can just go to my website. It’s JaniceCox.com and I will talk to you.

Brian: Awesome. Awesome.

Janice, thanks so much for being on the show. Really enjoyed having you here. We’ll definitely have you back.

Janice: Oh, I hope so. Thank you. See you at the fair!

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Janice is such a ball of energy. I’m so glad we got to meet in person.

She went through so much in that short period of time where we were talking that I’m just going to point out just a few things.

Janice follows along with that process of learn, do teach. Here’s a person that enjoyed learning these ideas so much. She automatically got out and started teaching other people how to do the same thing. But she said she soon switched Instead of just helping people to save money, she started showing people how to focus on health and all natural items really focusing on the quality life.

And that could be a different market that could those can be different people, she may be able to charge higher pricing for those type of items versus just playing to people to show them how to save money. These are things you have to consider when you’re letting your business grow.

What market are you playing to?

What needs wants desires are you attempting to fulfill in your customer base, you have to know who you are, what you’re good at what you aren’t good at because she’s a people person.

She learns from her readers. She relates back to people directly, she realizes that she enjoys being in large crowds of people. In a previous episode, we were talking with Andy Brennan. And while he enjoys teaching and being around other people and doing everything that goes along with being a speaker, he is initially an introvert, he tends to need some alone time to be able to recharge.

These type of experts have been doing it long enough that they know themselves and if you know yourself, you’ll know what you’ll be good at and not good at, and you’ll be able to focus in your strengths.

And like I always say, you focus on your strengths and you want to outsource all your weaknesses.

Janice puts a lot of focus on collaboration to a lot of great tips when it comes to going to events, attending events, both as a spectator and a person that’s going on business.

She plans things out, but at the same time, leaves things open enough to be able to have things happen on their own.

Another thing I want to point out is that she lets her niche or niche expand out so that it not just fits within a bubble. I mean, she has this entire book on creating gift ideas and you flip through this book.

These are not super hard to do. These are simple concepts, but can really create an impact.

If you’re looking at making your own gifts from scratch like this, her focus on skincare on all natural skincare. She’s taken her niche, and she has expanded it out to areas where it normally would not go. And she talks about it in a way that other people don’t talk about it.

This allows her to really stand above and beyond. You’re going to hear Kirsten and Christopher Shockey in a later episode discuss the same concepts.

Overall her super fan attitude about Mother Earth News and the Mother Earth News fairs is pretty contagious. I love that line.

I wish everyone in the world acted like they do at the Mother Earth News Fair. And once again, she has a huge focus on just having fun, just like we heard from Frank Hyman.

There’s so much more I wanted to get into with Janice and I’m happy she lives so nearby where I am in Grants Pass, Oregon so we’ll definitely be hearing from her if not at the fair, definitely after the fair.

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.

Jessicka Nebesni – Mountain Rose Herbs

Posted on July 31, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 014.

Have you sold out to your profession? Is your passion contagious? Do you hire people who are great at what they do, but also LOVE doing it?

Jessicka Nebesni is a Marketing Strategist for Mountain Rose Herbs in Eugene, Oregon. She manages a lot of the content than is produced through MRH’s blog, and even writes some of the articles herself.

She is a humble homesteader and herbal tinkerer who loves all things wild and natural! Jessicka loves to preserve food, make herbal preparations, garden, and spend time in the great outdoors.

It’s clear that Jessicka is enthusiastic about the natural health/sustainability lifestyle. Find out what drives her and what she’ll be presenting in Albany, Oregon at the Mother Earth News Fair.

“People want to see the face behind the brand. They want to have a personal experience. They want to have a conversation. They want to have advice from someone who knows.” Listen now!

Find out more about Mountain Rose Herbs: http://www.mountainroseherbs.com

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

Full Transcript

Jessicka: I originally grew up in New Jersey, where I had a really rich cultural experience but not a lot of exposure to natural food, or any kind of homesteader kind of lifestyle. And I was really yearning to get back to the land and learn to be more self sufficient.

So I did what any other 21 year olds would do. I quit my job. So got my things and packed up my car with my St. Bernard and my cat and whatever else with it, which wasn’t much after them, and I headed to Northern California.

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: Jessicka Nebesni is the marketing strategist for Mountain Rose Herbs. She describes herself as a humble homesteader, who loves all things wild and natural.

She loves to preserve food, make herbal preparations, garden and spend time in the great outdoors.

Jessicka writes many blogs for Mountain Rose Herbs, featuring her experience with herbalism, natural food prep and body care recipes. She also helps to facilitate the partnership program and Mountain Rose Herbs and gains inspiration from all the amazing homemade goods made in their own homestead using herbs and spices.

Jessicka, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Jessicka: Thank you so much for having me, Brian.

Brian: Yeah, sure, let us know a little bit beyond the bio. Let us know a little bit about who you are and what you do for Mountian Rose Herbs.

Jessicka: So I am one of the marketing strategist here at Mountain Rose Herbs. As you mentioned, I primarily work with bloggers who create DIY content, using our ingredients.

And I also help with some of the PR relationships and I write some blogs as well, which is my favorite part.

I love to write.

That’s most of my day to day with Mountain Rose Herbs.

Brian: Great. How did you end up here?

Jessicka: So I originally grew up in New Jersey, where I had a really rich cultural experience, but not a lot of exposure to natural food, or any kind of homesteader kind of lifestyle.

And I was really yearning to get back to the land and learn to be more self sufficient. So I did what any other 21 year old would do, I quit my job. I think we packed up my car with my St. Bernard and my cat and whatever else would fit which wasn’t much after them. And I headed to Northern California.

And there I did a WWOOF program and if you’re not familiar with that it stands for worldwide opportunities on Organic Farms.

So I essentially did a work exchange on an organic farm.

And it was there that I learned a tremendous amount of knowledge on gardening and food preservation. They also practice macrobiotics, so be able to learn a lot about fermented foods, how to make them definitely how to eat them. My favorite part.

And then I was there for about a year and then I was offered a great opportunity to come to Eugene, Oregon, and to maintain 140 acre ranch, where I’d be able to homestead more and really do a lot more gardening in my own personal garden. So I was just another big life decision to make.

And after weighing out all the options, I did decide to come to Eugene.

Kind of a fun fact one of the things on my list or coming to Eugene was that Mountian Rose Herbs was here. Maybe one day I would get a job with them.

And ironically, it was the first and only job that I applied to and Eugene.

I’ve been here for three years now.

So yeah, that’s kind of how I got to Eugene and got to Mountain Rose Herbs.

And really took my you know my city experience from New Jersey and transformed it into a more homesteading philosophy of life.

Brian: Wow, what a great story.

So let me just jump right into the fact that we’re talking to you because you’re slated to speak at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany Oregon.

So what are you going to be covering there?

Jessicka: So as I mentioned with the organic farming that I got to experience came learned a lot about fermented foods. And one of my I call it my gateway preservation project was sauerkraut and it was so accessible for me really instilled a lot of confidence in my ability to create fermented foods and to make food preservation projects possible.

And so I’m going to be teaching how to make sauerkraut.

I’ll be talking about some of the basics but also how to make them unique and fun for the use of herbs and spices.

You know, no two batches my sauerkraut have ever been the same.

I love getting to do it and I really hope to share that with the audience and have them feel confident by the end of my class, that they’re able to go home and make sauerkraut on their own.

Brian: Fabulous. Beyond that, is there anything else that you hope they’re going to get by watching your presentation?

Jessicka: I definitely want them to understand just how easy it is to make it their own. I’m going to be talking about a lot of different aspects how to make it more crunchy, how to make it more sauce, different flavor profiles of the different spices.

So really, I want to give them the confidence to continue on and I basically want them to go home and make sauerkraut after the presentation, I guess.

Brian: That’s great. So have you been to any of these fairs before?

Jessicka: You know, I haven’t actually made it to this area. But I’ve heard such amazing things. And I took a look at the lineup on the website and I can’t believe I haven’t gone before.

I mean, it’s totally in line with my philosophies and my lifestyle.

So I think there’s going to be an incredible amount of content knowledge to be shared there. And I would definitely encourage people to go and check it out. It’s not expensive.

So it’s definitely doable for a lot of people.

Brian: Absolutely.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast. These episodes all have to do with the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon of 2019 at the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away. These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: Why are you doing this? You know, what do you personally get out of it?

And what does Mountain Rose Herbs get out of putting on this presentation and being seen there?

Jessicka: I mean, that’s kind of the same for both of us, I would say. I think it’s primarily to being around conscious people who are also into the natural ways of doing things.

We really resonate with that audience, I personally, on a personal level do and also at Mountain Rose Herbs, we really resonate with the DIY people.

We love to be part of a community of like resilient people who are just in line with our sustainability commitments and just really valuing the natural resources that are around us.

Brian: Who are you hoping to reach who’s the ideal person that you’re hoping to connect with either in person or to your presentation.

Jessicka: So I think it really ranges and I would say people that are DIY aficionados. And then also people are just getting started with the lifestyle, having it be so accessible to them.

And, you know, we have a booth there, so we’re able to answer a lot of questions, offer some advice, from our experience.

I think that’s really the kind of connections we’re hoping to make there. And yeah, we all have something to learn from each other.

Even the person who’s just starting out sometimes the new person, will ask questions and you know, it kind of brings you back to the basics. And you’re like, Oh, yeah, I forgot about that part or, you know, I have something to offer.

We’re just really looking forward to talking to everybody there.

Brian: Yeah. So you’re in Eugene, you and Mountian Rose Herbs are in Eugene.

And, this is going to be an Albany. So it’s not too far distance for you. Right?

Jessicka: Correct. Yes, about an hour away.

Brian: So that’s great. Have you got to travel much to other expos or conventions or anything of that sort?

Have you done anything like this before? Is this your first time?

Jessicka: Yeah, I’ve definitely done events, we primarily stay within an hour radius. But I have gone out of state before. I’ve been to New Hampshire for the Northeast Women’s Herbal Conference, which was amazing.

We didn’t booth there anything like that. But I just went as a representative of the company and, you know, talk to a bunch of people who are just our people, you know?

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Do you have any logistical tips for other people that are planning to travel and do do presenting what you’re doing?

Jessicka: That’s a great question. I wish I did. But we’re really lucky.

We have an amazing event coordinator. His name is Nathan Hutchison. And he takes care of all that. Lucky to have him.

Brian: Yeah, well, that’s a tip unto itself or any of the business owners listening, make sure you have somebody that’s put aside to actually focus on that stuff for you. That’s great.

Jessicka: It’s important, you know, he has a checklist of things that he keeps in mind, and that he learns from each event that he goes to all of those lessons are, you know, they’re kind of cumulative.

So he’s got it down to a science now. He’s quite incredible. So very lucky.

Brian: Great. So in addition to that, like I said, we have business owners and executives that listen to this podcast because we are looking at homesteading and self reliance from a business perspective.

So do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this?

Jessicka: Oh, absolutely. It’s a really valuable way to reach like minded people. And you know, people want to see the face behind the brand.

So they want to have a personal experience, they want to have a conversation, they want to have advice from somebody who knows. So it’s really important to plug into these kinds of events, and be present with the people and really develop genuine connections and relationships.

Brian: As the marketing person there, I imagine that this is a huge piece of what of what you guys are looking at doing all year around that Mountain Rose Herbs. Is that right?

Jessicka: Absolutely. We’re definitely into building genuine connections.

We don’t just pay people to promote our products and you know, celebrities and all that kind of thing. We really keep it more low profile and with people that are just more connected with our genuine brand and what makes us so unique and our sustainability and our organics as well.

Brian: Well, Jessica, I really look forward to meeting you at the fair.

This is going to be my first time as well, so I can’t wait.

Jessicka: It’s gonna be fun, I can’t wait too.

Brian: Yeah, so what can listeners do, who are interested in finding out more about Mountain Rose Herbs, your products and so forth?

Jessicka: Yeah, so we have a website and it’s MountainRoseHerbs.com.

We also have a customer support team. If you want to call in and have any questions, you can certainly do that. The phone number is on our website.

And then we have an amazing blog with hundreds of recipes and tips and tricks, to herbalism and homesteading, and you know, different culinary recipes and that kind of thing.

So definitely encourage you to check out those resources as well.

Brian: Thanks, Jessica, for setting time aside to talk with us and we’d love to have you back. Thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Jessicka: Thank you so much Brian.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: That was really great talking with Jessicka. I think what she represents is a huge spirit of self reliance.

And you just look at the passion that she has for homestead and natural health.

I mean, this all led her to quitting her job and moving toward an organic farm. But having that idea for that dream job and Mountain Rose Herbs, and then actually getting it that shows you a determined focus.

That’s inspiring. A second thing I wanted to point out about our conversation was her focus on using networking and creating genuine connections and unique connections really getting down and finding that ideal person to connect with.

She said, that’s a big piece of Mountain Rose Herbs marketing strategy, and it’s what she likes to do when she goes to events like this.

It brings up the question, what are your values as a company?

Does that come through in your marketing strategy?

And how about the events coordinator, she mentioned that she couldn’t even come up with anything that had ever gone wrong and an event because the event coordinator had done such a great job.

I’ve heard so many good things about this company.

In a future episode with Janice Cox, you could hear her discussing the fact that she’s teaming up with Mountain Rose Herbs. Likewise David and Beth Pruett from AMP-3 they told me how they were blown away by their vendor setup and past years at events like these.

If you go to Mountain Rose Herbs website, mountainroseherbs.com, you can see a whole lot of what they offer.

Their title tag pretty much says it all it’s bulk organic herbs, spices and essential oils.

That’s their main business.

So they got herbs and spices, teas, aroma therapy, a lot of basic ingredients that you can work with bath and body items, containers, home goods, it just goes on and on and on.

I love to learn some more. I look forward to meeting Jessicka and a lot of the other people at the Mother Earth News Fair.

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.

Leah Webb – Deep Rooted Wellness

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

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The Grain-Free Sugar-Free Dairy-Free Family Cookbook

Episode 013.

How do you handle adversity? Are you always worried that the worst-case scenario will occur? Can a bad health diagnosis ever lead to something good?

Leah Webb is the creator of DeepRootedWellness.com and the author of The Grain-Free, Sugar-Free, Dairy-Free Family Cookbook: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Cooking with Whole Foods on a Restrictive Diet.

When Leah’s son Owen showed signs of food allergies and asthma, and then her daughter June was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF), a genetic disease primarily affecting the lungs and pancreas, something major had to be done. Leah has always been passionate about health, but this lead her down an entirely new field of nutrition that completely changed her personal and professional life.

“I no longer accept feeling powerless and defeated. I no longer accept the doctor’s word as the final say. I no longer accept that disease has to be terrible.”

What if a slight change of perspective could change your health forever? Find out why Leah calls this situation a “gift from the darkness.” Listen now!

Find out more about Leah Webb: http://www.deeprootedwellness.com

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

Full Transcript

Leah: This was an opportunity that fell in my lap. And I talked about that a little bit in the book.

I call it a gift from the darkness, because we did end up with some tough circumstances. It’s the idea that when you open the door to allow the light to come in that there can be gifts that you get from these dark circumstances. And I truly believe that this book was one of such opportunities for me.

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: Leah Webb mph obtained her health coach certification from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. After earning a bachelor in Science degree in environmental biology from Appalachian State University and a Master of Public Health degree in environmental health sciences from Georgia Southern University.

She’s worked in nutrition and gardening education since 2009, with a focus on engaging children and healthy eating habits, experiential learning and discovery, Leah started and runs the deep rooted wellness blog on which she posts stories and tips regarding nutrition, gardening and healthy families.

She lives in the mountains of North Carolina with her husband TC and her two children Owen and June.

Owen has a life threatening anaphylaxis allergy to wheat and June has cystic fibrosis a genetic disease severely impacted in the lungs and pancreas. Leah is the author of the grain free, sugar free dairy free family cookbook a comprehensive guide for families interested in learning to cook more meals from scratch in a manageable way.

Her commitment to a restrictive nutrient dense diet has played an important role in their children’s integrative care. When not at work, you’ll find Leah in her garden tending to her chickens, volunteering in children’s schools or engaging in a variety of forms of exercise that feel nourishing.

Leah web Welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Leah: Thanks, Brian. I’m super excited to be here with you and just have the opportunity to talk about some of the things I do. And yeah, I’m excited to talk about Mother Earth News Fair today. It’s an exciting place.

Brian: That’s great, no we’re happy to have you here.

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

Leah: So I am a certified health coach.

And I started my business by doing one on one coaching and teaching cooking classes, workshops and things like that. One of the themes that I repeatedly saw that people struggled with was being able to implement some of the strategies that you give them for being healthy.

You can give them recipes, and you can give them tools. But unless they really have a plan for implementing those tools for implementing those recipes and for whatever system that you’ve decided that would be beneficial together, you know, they really need a little bit of further guidance.

And so that’s kind of where my work started moving in this direction of really teaching people, the house of implementing a healthy diet.

That’s how this book came about is, some of it was because I did deal with these pretty major challenges with my kids.

My son has an allergy to wheat and barley that made it to where we really are not able to eat out with him very easily. We have a couple of restaurants that are safe for him and honestly read out about twice a year.

Just because it’s it’s not a safe thing for him.

Then with my daughter, her being born with cystic fibrosis, I felt that somebody having a genetic disease was already starting at a disadvantage and it felt really important for me to give her the correct nutrition that she needs to be able to support her body in any way that I could just to help her along.

And so I kind of combine these two things. I had this these issues with my kids where my kids really needed a healthy diet.

My son especially needed a restrictive diet, one that had to be very specific to meet his needs.

Then watching all these people really struggle with meal planning and prep through all of those experiences is how I was able to develop a system for meal planning and prep that I wrote about in this book. And this is a complete guide for people who are interested in learning how to meal plan and prep and cook healthy foods for family on a regular basis.

Because as you all know, we’re all really busy. Cooking from scratch takes a lot of time.

This is a modern day problem. We’ve got to figure out solutions on how to prepare more meals from real foods while allowing that to fit into a time constraints that we all have.

Brian: Great. Well, tell us a little bit more about your book.

Leah: So this is published by Chelsea Green Publishing one of the largest publishers of sustainable living and Integrative Health books in the US.

They were phenomenal to work with.

I feel that I had great content to offer, but they just really made it that much better. And so the whole first part of the book I start with an introduction is to explain the science behind this diet, why it is that somebody might be interested in going, in eliminating grains, sugar and dairy.

I’m a why person, I have a background in research. If you tell me to do something, my first response is, well, why.

And so that’s what I wanted this book to this book really reflects my personality and just kind of the thoroughness that I approach things with.

This whole first chapter talks about why this diet is important and why it would be valuable. And then in the next three chapters, I talked about how you can get your kids involved.

What are some of the strategies to get them interested in being in the kitchen?

What are some strategies for introducing solids for correcting picky eating.

Then I move into how you get prepared to do this, because this is where I was talking about when people lack a plan. They tend to not follow through their actions. And I wanted somebody to get this book and say, Well, yeah, I want to be able to make these recipes.

But if I don’t have a plan on how it is, I’m going to do it, it may not actually happen.

And so I tell you, everything from what types of things you should put in your pantry in your freezer, what types of cooking utensils you need, up to how it is that you formulate a meal plan.

Then one of the key pieces of the book that I really hope that everybody sees this piece and reads it and is able to implement it is just rethinking this idea of quantity. And I have some meal plans in the book and the appendices.

Where I recommend that people double, triple even sometimes quadruple recipes when possible, because a number of recipes are able to be frozen for later.

The time investment that it takes to double, triple or quadruple a recipe is not nearly as much time as it would take you to prepare that recipe from scratch down the road. And that piece alone can save you hours in the kitchen every week.

And so with these meal plans that I’ve developed, the first week you start out by having to spend around six and a half hours in the kitchen total and this is making breakfast, lunch dinner and snacks from scratch for a family of four. Which I feel like most families have for spending six and a half hours in the kitchen anyways and they are not preparing that much food from scratch.

And then in these later weeks because you are pulling foods from the freezer, you’re able to cut down on your time investment as you keep going with the system.

So a system of preparing in bulk freezing foods and pulling from the freezer so that you reduce your overall workload.

And then the recipes are all really simple. I didn’t want this to be…this is a practical everyday guide. It’s not intricate culinary masterpieces that require all these unfamiliar ingredients.

This is for a busy family that just, sometimes you just got to get it done. And that’s what I’m trying to help people do.

Brian: That’s great advice. I know from personal example, my wife does a lot of cooking at home, by far majority of what we do is all at home, and that’s one of the things that she’s had to follow.

We’ve got three kids, three pretty young kids at home. And so, same thing, you’ve got to double, triple, quadruple the recipe, and you got to be willing to do that. Definitely a time saver. That’s great advice.

Leah: And I think we also underestimate how much we can eat sometimes. I mean, especially when you do have young kids, I have a boy and a girl and my son he is just like a bottomless pit sometimes.

Brian: Yeah, lol.

Leah: I mean, it’s incredible how much food he can eat. And that’s some of really rethinking this idea of quantity and being realistic and the amount that you prepare.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So with that in mind, you talk about being a why person, I totally hear you on that. So why did you write the book? Why did you go through that whole long process and that most people never get around to.

Leah: But I have a very unique story. I don’t think that it happens like this for most people.

I was asked to write the book. And I saw this as a really excellent opportunity, especially given the quality of the publishing company. At that time, my daughter was still pretty young. I mean, she’s only four now, but I think she was around 18 months of age.

With her disease. It also requires a huge investment of time.

That’s some of why I had to streamline this meal planning and prep process as well.

Her daily treatments and therapies take about an hour every single day and there’s a greater time.

Investment when she’s sick being in that period of when you have a young infant, and they need all this extra care plus I had the sun with all these allergies, I felt pretty open to doing something outside of just being a mom.

And I think for me, this felt like a really great escape to use that energy for something positive.

So when I was asked to write the book, I really, I jumped on it. I think I was looking for something that could be a little bit of an escape. And I think that going through this process and using my story as something that could help other people, I think I’ve actually found a lot of healing in that process as well.

This was an opportunity that fell into my lap and I talked about that a little bit in the book. I call it a gift from the darkness, because we did end up with some tough circumstances.

And I think that when you open the door to allow the light to come in that there can be gifts that you get from these dark circumstances. And I truly believe that this book was once one of such opportunities for me.

Brian: Absolutely. That’s a great way of looking at it.

We’re already doing your blog at that time, or did that come after?

Leah: I had been blogging for about six years. And my editor, my developmental editor for the book, when I was doing my health coach training certification, I did a free workshop to a group of new moms.

And she was one of the first 10 people that I put on my mailing list.

I had no idea who she was, what she did, anything.

And so she had been following me for years.

And when Chelsea Green Publishing started publishing more Integrative Health books. What a lot of these integrative physicians are recommending is that people eliminate grains or gluten, dairy and sugar.

My family had slowly transition to that diet due to our health circumstances. And she had watched us go through this transformation and she thought, you know, she could write a book about this. And that’s how it all worked out.

So it really was just kind of this line of, I don’t even know what to call it, it’s just, fate seemed to work out.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: Yeah, that’s beautiful. That’s so cool, how all these things lined up for you.

You enjoy the process of writing a book, the whole thing, everything from the writing, to the end all publishing?

Leah: I loved it. absolutely loved it.

Some of that was because my editor was fabulous. The editorial team, everybody I worked with Chelsea Green was just so easy to work with.

That’s some of why the process went so well. And some of it was because I do have these kids that every now and then they require a little bit of extra attention.

It’s hard for me to maintain a normal work schedule.

And with writing the book, I could shut it down when I needed to. And we had a couple of months while I was writing where my daughter ended up being extremely sick, I couldn’t focus on writing at that time.

I had to stop working because she required so much of my attention and my energy and she ended up getting admitted to the hospital, my son had had a pretty major and galactic reaction.

It’s just kind of a traumatic thing at times. And you know, it’s hard to pick yourself back up and just jump right back into work.

The book afforded me the opportunity to really give myself the space to take care of my kids and help them deal with the issues that they have. But then also to turn around and give myself what I needed, so that I could get back to being a good mom and a good author and doing all those pieces and I also just like writing I think that when you’re writing, you’re also learning.

I mean, the research that I did write that first chapter of looking up all the scientific information that was so much fun for me. I used to work in research and it’s like getting to use those skill set that I got to use before I was a mother and it just feeds something in you that doesn’t get fed in other ways.

Brian: Do you see yourself writing another book again someday?

Leah: I do play with that idea all the time.

Yeah, and I’m not quite, I have some ideas. One of the things that I also do that I feel that I do fairly well as gardening, I have considered writing a gardening book because I do post on Instagram and Facebook and all the social media outlets.

Some of the advice that I have for gardening and people are always joking asking when my gardening book is going to be released, but I’m not really sure I think for right now.

I’m really enjoying the process of having this book and it being out in the world and just the opportunity news that are coming from that. And so I think that there would be something in the future. I’m just not quite sure what that would be yet.

Brian: That’s great. So you had mentioned that you’re going to be speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair. And we’re specifically talking about the one in Albany, Oregon.

What are you going to be covering there?

Leah: I’ve got two talks for Albany. And the first one is going to be the art and mastery of meal planning and prep.

This is the talk where I discussed the system of how it is that you can cook efficiently making more meals from scratch.

When I designed this talk, I kind of wondered, you know, are people really that interested in listening to someone talk about meal planning and for an entire hour and the first time I gave this talk was in Asheville at the Mother Earth News Fair, and I had over 200 people show up.

I sold out of my book, I mean, it went really well.

And so it was encouraging to me to know that people want this information and that they are willing to sit there for a whole hour and learn how to cook more meals from scratch. And I thought that was just great that so many people are interested in this.

The second talk I’m giving is called belly biochemistry.

And this is a talk where I describe how digestion works, the role of microbes in your digestion. And then how it is that those microbes what we know about microbes and disease.

There’s so much new information on even in the soil environment, but I think people are starting to learn more and more about the benefits of microbes in the human gut and the soil and what it does for nutrition, disease and health. and there are a lot of gaps in this research.

But there’s still a lot of really interesting things that we do know. And that’s the information that I present during that talk. Part of being a someone who works in public health with my Master’s of Public Health is people in public health are trained to be the liaison between the science and the general public.

That’s what this talk is about for me is really taking this kind of difficult to understand scientific research and conveying it to layman in a way that they feel that they can apply it in their lives and that they can really understand some of the science that is new and upcoming.

Brian: So who are you hoping to reach with these presentations?

Who’s the ideal person that you’d like to connect with either through your presentation or in person?

Leah: That’s a great question. I mean, I feel like this information is for everyone.

But if I did have to get really specific, I would say that it’s generally for moms and dads who are feeling overwhelmed by all of the pressure of being a parent and working full time or part time and trying to raise kids. While also feeling that food is such an important piece of raising a healthy child yet it also feels like something that’s on tangible.

Because there are so many pressures on parents these days and it’s hard to be everywhere at once.

So my hope is that some of these parents can find this information and feel like they’ve got some strategies to accomplish some of their goals.

Brian: So why are you doing this?

You know, what do you get out of it?

Leah: I get super jazzed on public speaking.

I don’t know how else to describe it. But I love to teach.

I love getting new information. And I love turning that information into a usable form for people.

That it’s exciting to me to think that I can create a career out of teaching and helping people and providing people with the resources and the support and the information that they need to reach their goals.

Because there is just so much information out there and being able to sort through it and know where you can get reliable information can be really challenging.

And I feel that these speaking engagements, especially for things like Mother Earth News. When there are 10s of thousands of people there that you’re able to reach It’s an opportunity for me to provide them with the information that I feel like is most valuable.

And it’s just really fun. I love meeting people.

I am an extrovert to the core. And it’s fun for me to hear people’s stories, get to connect with them and provide them with some support.

Brian: How did you end up becoming a speaker for the Mother Earth News Fairs?

Did they reach out to you? Did you reach out to them?

Was this through your publisher?

How did it all begin?

Leah: It was through my publisher, which is interesting because I’ve attended Mother Earth News Fair for a number of years. Because Asheville is one of their big fairs and it’s only 45 minutes from my house and those have always been my weekend away from the kids.

I just go and I soak in all this like homesteading and gardening and I just love these fairs.

I remember when I was writing my book, I thought, you know, if I could speak at Mother Earth News Fairs, this would be like bucket list type material.

This would be, I will have arrived. If I get to Mother Earth News Fair, then my book came out on April 19.

The Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville was April 26.

And so Chelsea Green Publishing lined up my speaking gig.

It was like a dream come true. And I was only scheduled to speak at a couple of them.

But then the producer for the fairs asked me to come to Oregon and he’s interested in having me be more involved next year, which is especially exciting.

I know they’re doing one of the fairs at Polyface Farms in Virginia next year, which that will be an awesome opportunity just even see such a huge working farm.

Brian: Awesome. We have a lot of business owners and executives who listen, do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into events like this?

Leah: I do, because I think that there’s so many people there that are interested in getting the tool sets and the products and information that they need to implement homesteading and healthy living.

There’s such a diversity of people who are there that are interested in different things.

I know that is specifically i’d spoken with some of the people that sell electric fences for chickens. And I know that Mother Earth News Fair are really great promotional tool for them, because you hear these speakers talking about all the benefits of raising your own meat and having your own eggs.

And you get really excited about the idea, and then hey, start walking around, you see these vendors?

Oh, here’s the guy that sells the electric fence. And, you know, maybe we should talk to him about getting started on our chickens.

So I think there’s a lot of energy and excitement around these new ideas at the fairs. And so showcasing the products that will help get people there. It is a good opportunity for those individuals.

Brian: That’s a great point, that common synergy that occurs in a location like that. That’s really interesting.

Have you gotten to travel much up until now to hit the other fairs?

I know you’re coming across country to go to the Oregon one.

Leah: Yeah, I’ve so far I’ve been to Asheville and Maryland and then I’m scheduled for Pennsylvania and Oregon. So those are the only four that I’m doing this year.

Brian: Oh fabulous.

Leah: Yeah.

Brian: You have any logistical tips for anyone that’s doing something similar or looking at being coming a speaker.

Leah: I used to travel a lot before I had kids and I feel like traveling feels pretty naturally to me. But I would say especially I guess I we went to Maryland with the kids, we decided we were outside of DC and we decided you know, let’s bring the kids it’ll be fun we said it actually did end up being fun.

It was a little bit hectic having them at the fair and I think what we realized from that was that if I am going to be traveling for work with the kids, my husband has to take them away from the work. While I’m doing the work and then we can all convene at the end of the day and and enjoy ourselves that way.

But if you go to my….if people are interested in seeing how I pack travel foods that is I have lots and lots of suggestions for that for the logistical piece of that because my son can eat out.

And so when we do travel, we pack all of our foods, I do have some information in my cookbook as well.

But I have a specific one of the highlights on my Instagram page for Deep Rooted Wellness.

If you go to travel foods, you will see how I have this system of freezing jars and having fresh food in jars and how you can pack an entire cooler with food. And that has this built in cooling mechanism so that it will stay cold for as long as you need it to.

Then the other benefits of packing all your food wherever you go is that you don’t have to prepare food when you’re there.

And you save money but not having to buy it. So if people are interested in food logistics, I happen to be an expert.

Brian: That is great. I can’t wait to show my wife that she’ll really get a kick out of that. This was great. We keep going. I’d love to have you back on the show in the future. If you’d be up for it.

Just what could a listener do that’s interested in finding out more about you maybe get their hands on your cookbook and everything. Where’s the best place for them to go?

Leah: The best place would be for them to visit my website at DeepRootedWellness.com, there’s a link for my cookbook where you can find it in Canada, UK and international link in the US there’s a lot of options for purchasing it.

I would suggest that people go there and they can also get a kind of a preview of what it is it’s in the book and what type of information they that they couldn’t anticipate seeing in there.

Then if they want to follow me on Facebook, especially Instagram, I share a lot of information on there.

Just trying to give people tips and especially with gardening right now because the summer is such a garden heavy time. I try to show people really simple things that can make a big difference in their productivity.

Brian: So cool. Hey, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

We’ll see you out in Albany, Oregon.

Leah Webb and everyone if you missed that, that’s DeepRootedWellness.com.

Leah: Thanks so much for having me and you’re gonna have to come find me and say hey, when we get there.

Brian: Definitely will.

Leah: Alright, sounds great. Thanks, Brian.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Yeah, Leah was really cool interview, really cool person.

And the word that keeps coming to mind when I think of her is, sharp. She’s just very sharp.

She’s to the point.

She’s very thorough in her analysis and the way she describes things really had a good time can’t wait to talk to her again, I’m going to point out just a few things that she said that I thought is worth looking even closer at. She mentioned how her book reflects her personality.

And I think this is something that everyone should strive for.

If you decide to set out and write a book, get a book published, have it reflect your personality, not just obviously, in the words itself, but in the style in what you cover.

If you tend to be all over the place, let your book be all over the place a little bit. If people reflect with you, they’re going to reflect more with the book and vice versa, if people are getting to know you through the book, they are going to get to know your personality as you are.

This is why I very much recommend the audio way of writing a book.

In other words, recording yourself talking the book out first, before you go through and clean it up and make it read nicely.

That way, you’re really reflecting your own vocabulary, and your own personality a whole lot more.

I doubt that’s the way that she wrote the book. But if you’re looking for a way to really have your book reflect your personality, that’s a great way of doing it.

I love it when she said, it’s exciting that I can create a career out of teaching and helping people.

This is very much a theme that you hear running through all of the conversations that we’ve been having with speakers from the Mother Earth News Fairs. Those people who have been doing it a while, are still enthralled with the fact that they’re able to do something they love and get paid for it.

Another thing to focus on even if you’ve already been in business for awhile. Find those things that you do best.

Find those things that you love to do best within your business, and focus more on those, outsource the rest of it, find a way to automate the rest of it and keep doing what you’re best at and get better at it.

I love how she mentioned the synergy of the events. I can’t wait to see that myself at this point in time we still haven’t been so I can’t wait to see how that synergy actually plays out in front of you.

Her comment about having a gift from the darkness.

In other words, finding the silver lining and the clouds if that’s not too cliche, well, here’s another cliche making lemons from lemonade. This is the entrepreneurial mindset that I love about these people to begin with.

And people like Leah, the ones that can recognize it in themselves, the ones that can see that, yes, my children have these food issues, but I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to strive above it.

I’m not going to complain about it. We’re going to work around it.

And after working around it, she found a way to be able to pass that knowledge on to other people and make their lives better.

That’s the beautiful thing about being a true hearted business person, a person that can use tragedy to not only their benefit, but the benefit of yourself.

Are you running against tragedy in your life that you’re not looking at how you can use it to help other people about how you can learn through it?

It’s a good lesson to remember a gift from the darkness. I love that.

Overall, our conversation really speaks for itself. So many great nuggets in there.

Can’t wait to meet Leah at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon, and can’t wait for you to hear all the other conversations that we have coming up.

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.

Gary Collins – The Simple Life

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

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The Simple Life Guide to Financial Freedom

Episode 012.

What do you want out of life? Distilled down to its simplest form, what would your ideal lifestyle TRULY be?

Gary Collins has lived a wild and unique life. He’s worked in military intelligence, in the U.S. State Department Diplomatic Security Service, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He has taught at the University College level, consulted and trained college level athletes, and been interviewed for his expertise on various subjects by CBS Sports, Coast to Coast AM, The RT Network, and FOX News to name a few.

He now lives off-the-grid part of the year in a remote area of northeast Washington State, and the other part of year exploring in his travel trailer with his trusty black lab Barney.

Gary is the writer of the best selling Living Off The Grid and The Simple Life book series. His books blow the lid off of conventional life and wellness expectations.

“Today we’re bombarded by too much stress, not enough time for personal fulfillment, and failing to take care of our health… there has to be a better way!”

How can you run your business while living the most fulfilling life possible? Listen now!

Find out more about Gary Collins: https://www.thesimplelifenow.com

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

Full Transcript

Gary: What I’m teaching is not the norm, challenging. It’s challenging in the sense that it’s more that you have to look inside yourself and go, okay, am I happy?

The statistics say that Americans are not happy. They’re not living the life they want to live.

I was one of those people. And I finally said enough of this. I’m tired of it. I’m going to do something about it. And I did what I did.

It isn’t it perfect for everyone. I just tell you my story.

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: Gary Collins has a very interesting and unique background and includes military intelligence special agent for the US State Department Diplomatic Security Service, US Department of Health and Human Services, and US Food and Drug Administration.

Collins’s background and expert knowledge brings a much needed perspective to today’s areas of simple living, health, nutrition, entrepreneurship, self help and be more self reliant.

He holds an AAS degree in exercise science, BS in criminal justice and MS in forensic science.

Gary was raised in the high desert at the base of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in a rural part of California. He now lives off the grid part of the year in a remote area of Northeast Washington state and the other part of the year exploring in his travel trailer with his trusty black lab Barney.

He enjoyed and considers himself lucky to have grown up in a very small town experiencing fishing, hunting and anything outdoors from a very young age. He’s been involved in organized sports, nutrition and fitness for almost four decades.

He’s also an active follower and teacher of what he calls life simplification.

He often says today we’re bombarded by too much stress, not enough time for personal fulfillment and failing to take care of our health. There has to be a better way. In addition to being a best selling author, he’s taught at the University of college level, consulted and trained college level athletes and then interviewed for his expertise on various subjects by CBS Sports, Coast to Coast AM, the RT network and Fox News to name a few.

His website www.thesimplelifenow.com. Best Selling, Living Off The Grid and The Simple Life Book Series.

His total lifestyle reboot blows the lid off the conventional life and wellness expectations and is considered essential for every person seeking a simpler and happier life.

Gary Collins, welcome to the Off The Grid Podcast.

Gary: Thanks for having me on Brian.

Brian: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Gary: Well with that great bio, which I did not write, but basically what it says, you know, I grew up in a very small rural town, grew up poor, single wide trailer and wanted to better myself and what I’ve always been exploring life in that sense.

And my journey, I left the government and started a health business. Bought 20 acres off up here in Northeast Washington.

He’s like, Oh, hold on here…all of a sudden the record screeching right and I went Yeah, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do. You know, I grew up very rural, and I’m looking for quiet just to get away. I’m not looking to hold myself up like Ted Kaczynski and right some Manifesto.

I fell in love with area years and years ago and basically did an interview and people asked me what the heck I was up to other host did and I said, well you know, writing a book, or not writing but I’m building a house off the grid.

But you know, just get away just quieter life, easier life, simpler life.

And so it started. I decided to document I got a bunch of emails, asking me about it, how I was doing it, how I found the land.

Gosh, here’s my next book. And I wasn’t really a writer, I still don’t really consider myself a writer.

I mean, I didn’t go to school for English if you couldn’t tell, I’m a dummy. And I’m a math guy. That’s more my thing.

And so kind of document it, wrote it and it took off.

I mean, I guess it was right place right time. And that kind of pushed me off into another direction. I’d written three health books prior in a health program prior to that, but the health books for mainly for clients.

I had a marketing guy who said, Hey, throw them on Amazon. And if you’re an aspiring writer, never just throw something on Amazon. That’s just to give you some good advice. It will be there forever.

Yeah, I look at those things and they’re still sold used.

I took them all off and got rid of them and burned every copy I had even though the content was good, but I didn’t know what I was doing and they’re still out there.

So luckily people still enjoy them. Shockingly enough, even the used version so, you know, they were for clients primarily.

And so this was going off the grid was my first real thought out book. I mean, I had a professional cover done, layout and put some thought into it.

Not that I didn’t put any thought into my other ones but more of the professional or professional looking side of it. It would be the best way to put it and like I said, it just kind of took off and next thing you know, I’m off in a whole nother life direction and everything I was pursuing was life simplification.

Even though I was and still am primarily a health guy, because that’s what I preached for everything right?

But as I kind of moved on, I realized my message was getting a little bit confusing company wise, you know, after working with clients and on the health side and writing blogs and articles and speaking on all that.

I realized I needed to change the direction of the company and basically relaunched it less than a year and a half ago.

So new website new domain, the simple life book series had to come out establishing the brand.

Anyone who’s done this, anyone who owns their own business knows how difficult it is. But if you’re not willing to pivot when you need to, you’re going to suffer and people who are following me or suffering too, and that’s what I noticed is they were confused.

They’re all, What the heck is this guy doing you know, is primal paleo health guy. And then there’s this off the grid book. And, you know, the next book after that was RV living.

And then you know, I had to rebrand so I put out the health book, buttoned it up and put some more stuff in there and changed it around.

But the simple life is what it is. That’s the series.

I’m three books into it. The fourth book is done. I’m going through a different process on this one. So it’s taking a little bit longer, and I’m glad but yeah, and a simple life and then the off the grid stuffs a little bit separate.

I did a book with Mothers Earth News this year. And that’s the workbook for living off the grid.

And then I did a follow up called Living Off The Grid.

Those books, I consider them a little bit separate, even though the simple life pieces all fit within that, but that’s its own series.

And as it unfolds, people kind of…it’s hard when you only have two books out and then you know once a health book once an RV living book and what the heck is this guy doing?

What’s the simple I book series, RVing and a health book, you know, this makes no sense.

As it unfolds, it will make more and more sense. The pieces will all come together.

The next book is financial freedom, The Guide to Financial Freedom.

The book before that was, Decluttering Your Life. Which is the newest book, and the financial freedom one I’m excited about because there’s never been a financial book done this way.

I use all math and basic math and numbers and basically show how the average American is destitute or broke or poor partially by design, but also by us not paying attention.

I’ll take you through growing up as a kid, step by step how the system is set up to take a chunk out of you every step of the way, financially.

And if you’re not paying attention, you end up how we are today, where 60% of Americans don’t even have a retirement savings. They can’t even pay for an emergency.

So we’re in a bad spot financially, even though economically everything looks rosy, the average Americans in a bad place.

And that’s where I kind of go through and I break out the math on how the average American loses money on their house. And people freaked out on that one.

I was on a coast to coast and the lines lit up when I said that, what’s he talking about?

The American dream and I go, Hey, man, I had real estate license for eight years. That was my side hustle. And the government was real estate. So I’m no dummy.

And I’ve owned several properties. So I know how the game works. And not only that, but I own commercial properties too.

Brian: Oh, wow.

Gary: Yeah. And if you don’t understand how the system set up, it’s going to take you and like said, it’s a little peace here, little peace there.

Next thing you know, you’re 25, 30 years old, you’re in debt that you can’t get out of.

You’re literally in a perpetual debt cycle.

That’s how the system set up. So I’m really excited to kind of bring that about. And you know, it’s not a tin hat, or tin foil hat book, don’t get that.

Like said, I prove it all with basic math and show you how the numbers work.

And it ended up being around a million and a half dollars average american will waste during their life, waste get nothing out of, we’re all millionaires, and we just don’t even know it.

And not only that, but I prove, you know, obviously, the minimum wage is a big deal right now.

$15 an hour. And you know, there’s arguments on both sides. And remember, I grew up poor.

I started my first job at 13, making $3 and 35 cents an hour. So Trust me, I know how wages work.

I had a comment someone got on me one time said he has no idea what a living wage is.

No, you need to read my background before you open your mouth. I’m a little blunt sometimes.

So if you’re gonna say something stupid, I’ll let you know that hey, you might want to look into my background before you say something like that.

But average minimum wage is $31,400 a year if you only work 40 hours a week. Well guess what the richest 1% in the world, the line there, it’s moved a little bit. I think it’s now it’s around 34,000 because countries are developing very rapidly, their economies, but our poorest people in this country are considered the richest 1% in the world. Let that sink in.

I mean, that’s why I had to write that financial book. Because I’ve made all the same mistakes, too. Okay.

I’m not perfect at all.

But financially, I’ve realized that compared to most of Americans, I’m lightyears ahead and I didn’t ever considered myself that way. Breaking out the numbers. It was it was eye opening to see where we spend our spend and waste our money. I know I went off on a tangent.

Brian: No, that’s awesome. I mean, that’s right up the alley, I think most of the listeners here when you plan on having that financial freedom book out?

Gary: Of all goes well, six weeks. I just uploaded for the audio version to have a narrated. I don’t do my own narration, people want me to, I just don’t have the time and energy to try and do because then once you start you got to do all your books.

Brian: Yeah.

Gary: So plan to do them hopefully at some point. It’s just right now I can’t it’s too much to add on.

But yeah, it’s done. It’s been edited. It’s all done.

And we’re working on layout right now covers done. It’s very, very close in.

I just think it’s a book that had to be written because it’s not about most financial books are about how to invest right how to create wealth.

Well, I’m saying we already have the wealth. It’s just we’re pissing it away. That’s the problem.

That’s the primary problem.

You can invest if you don’t have any money to invest.

So you have to look at your personal finances first. And I think all of us without investing one dime would be very, very well off.

If we just paid attention to how we spend our money. It’s a consumer economy.

Brian: That’s sounds great.

And people always say, well, if everyone went out and saved all their money and didn’t buy all this useless crap that we tend to buy, well, the economy would implode or just I go, No, it wouldn’t it would change, it would adapt, it would turn into something healthier, something better for all of us.

Businesses would be more mom and pop again.

That’s problem today, too, is consumers is driven by very large companies who have an agenda.

You know, I worked in the health industry, I worked in the biggest health industry in the country, the Health Department of Health and Human Services.

We spend over a trillion dollars a year on health care, and we’re one of the sickest developed countries in the world, let that sink in.

We spend the most money by almost three times the next developed country, and we’re some of the sickest people in the world. So we’re going about it wrong.

And I’ve always said I say this on almost every interview I do. There’s no money in healthy people.

And that’s what you have to understand is I don’t like to rally against people.

Companies I use them too but they’re geared to make us spend money we really shouldn’t be spending making us waste our time on things that we should not be wasting our time on and people who know know what, how my feelings are social media do I use it?

I use it as a tool. I do not use it as something to waste time.

You know, I don’t even use Facebook anymore. I gave that up over a year ago.

I never used it personally that much if at all.

On the business side, I just got sick of the typical why can get this information free?

I can reach out and ask you a question for free. I go no, no, absolutely. Actually, you can’t.

I’m not going to play that game. You know, I run a business just because I run a business doesn’t mean you can just reach out and ask me random questions. Don’t troll me and call me nasty names and that kind of that game. That’s not how it’s supposed to be.

When I grew up, if I want to get in touch with an author, anyone you know, I looked up to I had to write them a letter and I may get a response back. I think I wrote one author a letter when I was a kid, once I’ve never been a celebrity guy could care less.

It’s just, times have changed. It’s instant access to everyone. It’s dysfunctional voyeurism is what I call it.

Focusing on your own life instead of focusing in on others, that’s what you should be doing. And that’s kind of where all this project came from.

I mean, that’s, honestly, in a nutshell, where it came from, is kind of where society’s gone. And I’ve just said enough. Now for the noise. I don’t want to deal with it.

Brian: So you were talking about how your writing process has evolved at where it’s at right now. Do you see yourself writing more books?

Do you enjoy it with where it’s at right now?

Gary: It’s evolved in the sense that I’ve had to learn a lot.

I’m primarily self published and have been, which means you get to make a lot of mistakes that everyone gets to see. So that’s a little rough.

You know, I didn’t go to school for journalism. I had to learn this on the fly.

English is not my strong point far as writing. Like I said, I’m a math guy, I’ve got a scholarship from Bank of America for God sakes. I started off as a mechanical engineer. So trust me, yeah.

And then I end up criminal justice. I always pursuing my love.

Then being a mechanical engineer was not exactly fun.

Brian: Yeah.

Gary: But I realized that in the writing process, it’s just evolved in the sense that I’ve learned more, it’s getting better, I’m getting more more efficient.

I just hired a whole new team for this financial freedom book.

So it’s new editor, new cover guy, new layout. All this is all brand new for this book.

So I’m starting almost starting over and this is pretty common with authors especially self published as you go through these steps and this journey, because there’s no publishing company holding your hand telling you what to do. You just figure it out.

You put a book out and people go, you suck, I hate you.

Or you know, they go I love it, or it’s a split. It’s actually always a split.

You always got a question the books where it’s all five star reviews go you know, on ones that perfect. But also what I write can be considered a little, I wouldn’t say divisive, it’s more of you have to expand your mind and think a little bit wider.

You know, what I’m teaching is not the norm.

Brian: It’s challenging.

Gary: It’s challenging in the sense that it’s more, you know, a little more introspective, that you have to look inside yourself and go, okay, am I happy? The statistics say that Americans are not happy.

They’re not living the life they want to live. I was one of those people. And I finally said enough of this, I’m tired of it. I’m going to do something about it. And I did.

What I did isn’t perfect for everyone. I tell everyone I go, I just tell you my journey. I tell you what I’ve learned the lessons. You know, I spent half my life in the federal government. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve been in the military.

I have some experience.

And I didn’t just come out and have some life altering event as a 20 year old and now I’m a self help guru.

I’m pushing 50 I’ve been around and so I’m just sharing because people wanted to know, so that’s what I did. Trust me, I could make far more money doing something else. But it’s also my life purpose.

Now, I get pleasure out of educating, helping people. People helped me, you know, that’s part of the process too. I get to learn along the way.

I’m always learning. I tell people if you’re not learning or dead.

And that’s another problem we have in society today, people aren’t learning, what they’re learning or what they call learning is just basically garbage in, garbage out. Or getting caught into political tribalism or getting caught into the celebrity vortex.

I call it false prophets.

You go and follow someone you shouldn’t be following who’s giving you really bad advice, but they’re a celebrity.

Well, what are they a celebrity for? Being a celebrity?

I always use the Kardashians, a perfect example. They’re famous for being famous.

That’s not a skill.

That’s just slick marketing and tricking you. The fact that you follow him and you know, the whole thing where she’s gone and gotten people out of prison, has Kim Kardashian.

That’s a that’s great. But the skewed guy in me goes, she’s doing it for PR more than likely.

She may be doing it for a part of it for a good purpose, but also the other purposes.

She wants a camera on her. That’s what she does. That’s why she’s famous.

You know, do you really want to follow those people? Are they making you better?

They teaching you lessons that you can use?

You know, I try and tell people follow someone who you respect. Something that you want to aspire to.

All the people I follow all the people I look up to, I’m trying to better myself and learn the lessons from them. And that’s why our society was based was learning from our peers. Right, right, Brian, that’s basically how we learned everything from our elders.

They were the ones with the wisdom they had the time in, you know, they’d learn the lessons, they share them with us. And today, I’m not seeing a whole lot of that, more of, who has the fanciest marketing campaign who can blow as much smoke up your butt as they possibly can.

In a lot of it’s basically placating to you and telling you what you want to hear.

I call it the telling you….kind of reinforcing what you want as opposed to what you need.

There’s a big difference, you know, I want a Ferrari, do I need a Ferrari?

No, that’s how I look at it. And today, we’ve just kind of lost our way a little bit on that sense.

And the false prophet syndrome is a troubling one, to me.

It’s hard because there’s a lot of people peddling a lot of BS out there, and they sell a lot, you know, they’re multimillionaires, or you kind of go, oh, boy.

And that’s what’s hard about what I teach. Because there I tell people there’s no BS here. It is what it is.

Either you like it or you don’t.

And if you don’t, I’d prefer you not say nasty things and just move on your way because that’s not the way to live your life either.

But that’s another problem we have today too, as people have lashing out at other people that they just don’t agree with or they don’t quite understand. And you see it a lot specially in the on the political side.

And I don’t talk about politics in any of my books. I was there I stood next to some of the most powerful people in the world.

I’ve been in senators and congressman’s office, I’ve heard their private comment, you don’t want to know.

Brian: Yeah.

Gary: Both sides are not on your side. Let’s just put it that way.

And I see people get spun up and waste a lot of energy on that. I’ve done it, trying to get out of that.

That’s basically what I teach. I just teach you to look at life from the perspective of, how can you be better?

You know, how can you treat other people better?

How can you be a better person?

How can you make what’s around you better your family, your friends, your community?

That’s what basically what I teach what the simple life is all about.

At the time I’m recording this, we have learned so much about how to take advantage of events and I want you to be able to use this information in your own business. Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

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: Fabulous.

You went through so much there, we’re going to have to have you come back sometime. We have more time unpack some of this, cuz there’s a lot of great wisdome there. And a lot there that I think business owners, in genereal face a lot.

And yes, they’re being encouraged to be more in that way of distracting people and playing to the bad side of people and honestly lying to people. And people enjoy being lied to.

And it is I mean, there’s a lot of deep stuff there that that needs to be discussed and talked about.

And it’s great that you’re delivering some of that tough love, that tough truth to people.

It’s a tough road to hoe to get attention that way because you push a lot of people away but you sure I’m certain you draw a lot of people to you because you’re saying things that other people aren’t willing to say.

Gary: Well, that’s part of it.

But I also tell people, if you want to do things right, it’s going to take you 10 times as long to succeed.

That sounds like, kind of a little bit of poop in the punch bowl. But it’s not because doing things right.

It’s not get rich quick. It’s not the fast road. It’s the right road, the right road takes time.

Because as you know, when I started, I didn’t know anything.

I’d been running a business before but as a real estate business, it was a little different. You know, I wasn’t doing a lot of marketing. I wasn’t writing books.

So it was a whole different process.

As I evolved, I had to figure this stuff out. So a supplement line, I’ve had a supplement line I teach, you know, I worked with clients.

The last thing I wanted to do is do any harm to someone.

I was always really, really careful with what I did, what I sold. And to this day, I don’t even advertise my supplement line. People are shocked.

It’s a terrible business model. But my supplement line is to the benefit of my followers. That’s it.

I have the background in it. Everything I sell, everything that’s on there is the best quality I could possibly produce. And it’s things that I’ve used personally and have used with clients that I know that work.

I do not want that stuff coming back on me. I just don’t.

I’m not here just to sell you something. And I think we get caught in that especially as entrepreneurs when people step out, and I wrote a blog post about this and it’s about turning pro being a pro.

And a lot of entrepreneurs I found this that they have their day job and they hate it right?

Just most Americans, I think it’s like 70% say they hate their job.

So they go I’m going to run my own business. And I go Okay, that’s great.

But what have you been doing in the job that you hate?

And they go I hate it. I go, are you screwing off?

Are you blowing time?

What are you doing?

And I have a lot of friends so I know. I let them talk to me I guess what do you do at work all day. I know you don’t like your job and they spend most their time wasting their day figuring out how to not work.

And I’ve seen people do this and they go out and they create their own business but they take within those bad habits.

I go, you have to look at working as a stepping stone.

If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you’re going to run your own business.

Again, it’s becoming a good follower before you become a good leader.

Well, you have to be a good employee before you can be a good boss. And they go all hand in hand together.

So I go, what you need to do is….even if you hate that job, you have to go there and act like you own that business.

You go in there, you use it as a learning experience. You pick up the tools, you’re going to need to run your own successful business.

And what they do instead of doing that, they go in, they complain, they gaff off their entire day.

There on Facebook, social media screwing around.

Guess what they do when they start their own business. They have no ability to plan their day.

They have no ability to prioritize.

They get caught in all these rabbit holes and vortexes of timewasting, and they can’t figure out why their business fails.

That’s why.

And not only that, but they weren’t. I always say you better have a year savings to live comfortably before you start your own business bare minimum.

Because as we know, to entrepreneurs, it takes three to five years before you know your businesses even going to work.

And everyone just thinks, Hey, man, I watched the Shark Tank.

You know, I watch the Donald Trump show whatever the heck that was…

Brian: The Apprentice, yeah.

Gary: Yeah, there you go.

I thought that was the dumbest show known the man. And they watch that and they think everything’s instant success.

You just fall out of bed one day sit in your bathrobe and you make millions of dollars on the internet.

If you’re a crook, probably.

But if you’re honest, not a chance in the world, not gonna happen.

So it’s about learning in and kind of taking the steps and that’s what I you know, I made a lot of mistakes, but I took it slow.

I got out you know, I worked. I did had jobs in between kind of figured out what the heck I was doing.

You know, didn’t rely purely…and that’s another thing, if you jump out and you’re relying purely on being a business owner and entrepreneur, well, if you gotta feed your family, feed yourself, you’re not quite making it.

Well, human nature makes you start cutting corners and doing things that you probably wouldn’t do otherwise, because now you got to pay the bills on your own.

So that’s where those ethical dilemmas come in.

And I tell people, you know, make sure you don’t get in that position. Because as a former criminal investigator, and I did a lot of white collar investigations, and people will be shocked.

But these were legitimate business owners who you probably are neighbors next to doing very illegitimate things.

And what I found is once you cross that line, it’s over.

There’s no going back, you’re done.

So once you start going that route, what are you going to do, you can try and take a step back or I’m going to be honest now. No, it’s too late.

And not only that, but as an entrepreneur, you have to realize that you depending what you’re doing, you’re causing harm to other people in order for you to benefit.

You’re causing harm to someone else. You’re taking something from I call, it’s just straight out stealing.

If you’re being dishonest.

Yeah, that’s how I kind of look at the the entrepreneur business model. And what I try and teach people is, you know, take it slow, learn, yeah, be patient.

Brian: That’s great advice.

But really important and not said often enough for sure.

The way that I actually found out about you was because you’re going to be a speaker at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon. What are you looking at covering their?

Gary: August third and fourth, Saturday, Sunday in Albany, Saturday from 10am to 11am.

I’ll be doing an introduction to primal living and eating how to live a healthier and happier life.

And Saturday from five to 6pm, I’ll be talking about decluttering your life.

And Sunday 330 to 430, start your journey on the simple life live off the grid and change your health.

I talk about a multitude of subjects and I don’t like being a one trick pony.

I’m a very, I get bored very easily.

So I tend to learn many things, some not so well. But also for people who are coming to realize none of my speaking engagements are the same. I do not run off PowerPoint, PowerPoint, had good presentations in the government and sit through enough of them, it actually makes my eyes glaze over.

I can’t do PowerPoint anymore. So what I do too, is I gauge the audience and their experience level not only with what I do, but the subject matter.

And so I’ll tailor the discussion within the first five minutes to my audience.

I like to keep at least 20 minutes to questions and answers because that’s where we learn the most, I feel is from the questions awesome.

Brian: So have you been to any of these before?

Gary: Yeah, yeah, I’ve been speaking out of all year.

Brian: Oh, fabulous.

Gary: Yeah, I speak at all of them all their fairs on that. So I didn’t do one the one in Asheville, North Carolina because I had another engagement but yeah, speak at all.

Brian: Very cool.

What do you hope that people walk away with? After watching when your presentations, what do you hope they’re going to walk away with?

Gary: You know, it depends.

And that’s why gauge to to see where the audience is primarily in the journey.

Each city’s different each towns different. Each presentation I choose different.

The biggest thing I want people to get away from what I teach is that anyone can do it don’t have to be rich, you don’t have to have any special powers.

The life I live in what I teach others to live is something anyone can do also today in our society, it’s about not waiting for someone to do it for you.

You know what I mean?

We have a lot of expectations that it should just happen. Nothing works that way.

You have to go out there and do it.

And in the lifestyle I live. Trust me it is in the beginning. It is very difficult because there’s you have to basically change everything you do, how you’ve been living your life, and what we’ve been taught and what we follow in society today.

What I live is quite a bit different than that and not not not in a better way, not in a worse way. It’s different.

It’s a different type of lifestyle.

It’s quiet, I like things quiet. I’m getting older. And I don’t like all this noise.

It’s about focusing in on things you can change, not worrying about all this noise around you the things that you can’t change.

So I hope that’s what they get out of it is that anyone can do it and it’s like that financial freedom but prove a very valid point.

Anyone can be a millionaire in this country, anyone.

We still live in the freest…and we got a lot of problems, trust me, we got a lot.

But still, we live in the freest nation in the world.

And I don’t think we’re taking advantage of that instead of getting better.

You know, it seems like we’re getting a little worse. We don’t treat each other very well.

That’s another thing I like to teach too is you be nice. We don’t need to hate on each other.

It’s wasted wasted energy. We should hope that everyone can be successful.

Brian: Awesome, great message.

Now, why are you doing this? What is your highest hope for attending these? And putting on presentations like this?

Gary: It’s teaching. It’s what I do.

And not only that, but public speaking is kind of my strength. It’s what I’m barely good at. I like doing it.

This is the most fun I have the funnest part of my job is interviews in speaking to me. And guess what the two worst things most authors find in their job speaking and doing interviews.

So I’m the opposite.

And not that I don’t like the writing. I actually do like writing. I like the process and and I do enjoy it. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it.

And that’s something people need to learn about me too.

I don’t do things because I have to. I do things because I want to know, does that mean there’s things in there that I don’t like you know, so much that no, I still do them because I got to get them done.

It’s part of the deal. It’s the good, the bad comes with the good here and there. B

But what I choose to do is what I want do.

Brian: Yeah, that that really ties in with your whole philosophy.

I mean, you’re talking about personal freedom.

You’re talking about life simplification, it’s really designing your own lifestyle, right. And sticking to that.

Gary: Absolutely. And that’s the thing too, is that’s why I always emphasize it, hey, just don’t mimic what I do.

It’s your journey. Your journey is specific to you.

I can only give you the pieces that I share.

You take what you want, put it together into into your lifestyle.

Living off the grid is a wide, wide swatch of different types of lifestyles. You talked to someone who lives off the grid and you get a whole group of us together. Everyone does it differently. Everyone.

There’s no template to living off the grid. It’s it’s different philosophies.

It’s different lifestyles, different family situations.

It varies across the board. It’s basically about freedom.

And that’s why I tell people what I teach is your own personal freedom. And understanding that what’s wrong with pursuing the lifestyle you want long as it doesn’t cause any negative impact on anyone else.

That’s how I look at it.

If I’m not causing any harm to anyone who cares, why get wrapped around the axle?

You know, it’s like a good example it this is not do not take this the wrong way, gay marriage, right?

People have very strong beliefs in it and and I just go does it affect you?

And what’s the answer you get?

Well, no.

Then why do you care?

Why do you care?

Why are you getting all spun up on this?

And I just use that example people. Please don’t take that as any religious belief or anything like that.

It’s just a pure example of where people just gets on up on something. And that’s what I teach to is live your life.

Don’t worry about everyone else’s, you know, that’s going to get you nowhere. I’ve done it too, again, I’ve learned lessons from this too.

You know, authors use this as we always talk about compared it is kind of it when you compare yourself against other authors, right?

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve compare yourself against other entrepreneurs.

And what it does is it gets you?

Very depressed very quickly.

Because you’re looking at someone who’s doing better than you, right?

You know, are they doing better than me?

Man, their books suck, or, you know, that guy doesn’t auto run a business, what’s going on?

You gotta, yeah, that’ll take you down quick focus on what you can do, how you can improve your life, how you can improve your business.

That’s basically in a nutshell of everything I teach is focus on the things you can focus on. all that other stuff, just a waste of time.

Brian: Great.

We have a lot of listeners that span all the way from people interested in starting a business all the way to seasoned business owners and executives. Do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to do something similar to write books to speak events like the Mother Earth News Fair, would you encourage them?

Gary: Absolutely.

Here’s my attitude. If you’re passionate about something, and there’s something you want to do, do it.

This is your life, and as far as we know, this is it.

We don’t know what’s on the other side.

Again, don’t take that as a religion. I just don’t know.

No one’s come back and told me, you know, once we’re done, we’re done.

And I hope there’s something, I really do. I hope there’s another something on the other side, I really do.

But I live life as a sense of, I don’t know.

So this is the only thing I’ve got that there’s not going to be any reincarnation. I’m not going to know, I don’t know, I’m going to live this life fullest.

And that’s what you should do anyway, even if there was something we knew was on there.

So you still should live it to your fullest.

So sure, but here’s the thing if you do not like public speaking, and you would rather not do it, and it makes you very uncomfortable. Maybe that’s not your thing.

That probably means though that something, you have a strengthen another area.

And I’m not saying don’t focus on weaknesses.

Now, if you have a business model where public speaking is an integral part of it, well, you better get good at it and you better figure it out.

But I never tell people don’t force yourself to do something that you absolutely hate and don’t enjoy.

It’s like physical fitness.

The easiest way to stay physically fit is to do things you enjoy.

That doesn’t mean sitting on the couch twiddling your thumbs picking lint out your belly button eating donuts.

What it means is getting out and if you like swimming, there’s your exercise, go swim.

I like riding bikes, I ride bikes.

That’s the stuff I like to do. I like going hiking. It’s the same thing.

If you’re going to stick with it and do it well do something you enjoy you know don’t force yourself do something.

Yeah, absolutely attest. So yeah, absolutely.

The Mother Earth News Fairs, the speaking, if you’re a speaker, it’s very diverse group of people there and I love it.

The more diverse my audience though. I just enjoy thoroughly, because that’s pretty killer.

Brian: Yeah. Fabulous. So do you have any….you’re attending all of these fairs?

Do you have any logistical tips, especially for someone with a background and traveling and so forth?

Gary: Yeah. Luckily, I’ve traveled a lot in my life for the government.

But it’s been a while. I haven’t done a lot of travel like this in a while.

But I still have my systems flights are tougher today.

It’s when you know, when I was in the government, I could get direct flights coast to coast easy, they’re hard now. And if they exist, they’re pretty expensive.

You know, they’re not cheap.

What I do is I just prepare my day, I have to leave here usually by three in the morning, to get to the airport and be able to get to my destination the day before, because then I speak the day after.

I just plan my workday around a little bit, just fill in that time with something productive. I’ll sleep for the first couple hours on the plane. And then after that, I have my laptop with me. I right. I get work done.

And that’s what I would do. Make sure you’re productive.

Travel, eat healthy, don’t go off the rails taught a lot of that traveling eating.

I always get asked that question, well, when you travel, how do you stay healthy and I go, same way you do at home, you don’t eat the junk, stay away from the garbage.

But obviously, it’s not perfect with that try and I tell people work out as soon as you hit.

That’s one of my things too is I get straight to the hotel and I go, either, you know, if they don’t have a gym, try and see if there’s anything around.

If not just go for a long walk and just walk around there.

Check it out, spend an hour so walking around, get some exercise, get the blood flowing.

And that’s what I recommend to you know, try and stay in a in a healthy routine because people who travel a lot, it’s very easy to get stuck in that travel itis as well.

Where do you just say, ahh screw it? When you eat crap. I’m not going to exercise.

I’ll do it when I get home.

Don’t do that. It makes it a lot easier and actually keeps you sharper, as well.

Brian: Fabulous. So you’re going to be at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany as well as the ones following that.

Gary: I went home right here. Oh, glad that Topeka, Kansas October 19 20th oh and Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, September 13 and 15th. Those are the last two, after Albany.

Brian: That’s great.

How else can listeners find out more about you and your products and so forth?

Gary: Just go to my website, thesimplelifenow.com.

Don’t go to the simple life you’ll probably end up at Nicole Richie in Paris Hilton’s website.

I forgot that when I came up with the name but yeah, thesimplelifenow.com.

I sell all my books on my website.

My supplement line my blog has a ton of information. I’m sold worldwide amazon books are pretty much everywhere digital just started did my first audio book, the guide to RV living is out.

It just came out maybe a week or two ago and audio so I’m starting to do those.

Like I said earlier, the next book will be audio as well. So yeah, you can always find me my websites the easiest. Don’t look for me on Facebook.

Brian: Well, hey, Gary, this was a great conversation. I can’t wait to have you back. Dig more deeper into some of your concepts there. Thanks for coming. Thanks for being on the off the grid biz podcast.

Gary: Oh, thanks for having me on, Brian. I really enjoyed it.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Gary Collins, wow!

He’s just full of ideas and concepts. So, so interesting.

Can’t wait to have him back on the show. Like so many others. He’s got just this larger than life character.

He’s a renaissance man. He’s got kind of that no BS attitude that’s very colorful, very earthy.

I don’t mean that in a degrading way at all. I mean, I think it’s really, really cool.

And I think it endorse him to his audience. I love how he says his opinions on everything from celebrities, and discussing people marketing to what you want versus what you need.

I mean, these are concepts that aren’t talked about often enough.

And I think they need to be brought out there. I think we need to dig into some of these ideas.

There just wasn’t enough time to get into it with him.

But I can’t wait to be able to talk to him in the future.

And I love his concept of don’t do what I’m doing. Don’t just follow me and do what I’m doing, go and develop your own lifestyle, and develop the program that you want out of your life and make it happen. That’s inspiring. There’s a whole bunch of points I want to point out here.

One of them is how he creates his content and his energy behind his content.

Just his writing alone. He how he takes the questions from people to be able to create the content that becomes the books in the future and that he is mechanical engineer, I think he said, and he said, I’m not a writer.

I’m not an English major, but you go on amazon.com. He’s got nine different books up there, let alone the ones that he says he’s getting ready to publish.

That shows you you don’t have to be the greatest writer in the world. You don’t have to have an English degree.

It’s all about putting your concepts out there, putting your ideas out there, putting your personality out there, and seeing what people relate to and what they don’t.

I love how he says, All I do is I just tell you my journey.

I’m not saying you have to do it my way. This is just me.

I’m just saying what I’ve done up until now.

That’s very refreshing to because I think a lot of us when we sit down to create content, we sit down to write, or put our ideas out there. We think that we have to be something special, that we have to be something far and beyond.

All you gotta do is just tell people what you’ve done, and let them take it or leave it for themselves. He gets pleasure out of educating out of helping people and that speaking, interviews and writing, those are the things that energize him, he enjoys that and the things he wants to do.

There’s always things that you don’t want to do that you have to do.

But he’s been able to create a life that allows him to also do those things that he loves to do. It’s important to have that in your business. Don’t forget that.

Next I like his mindset hacks is what I call it.

The things that help keep him focused. His whole idea is focus on the things that you can change. Focus on just what you need to focus on. Oftentimes, as entrepreneurs, we let these things escape us, because we get distracted easily, but it’s important to keep these things in mind. Look at how he uses an in terms of social media, he uses it for business, he doesn’t waste time with it.

He doesn’t use it as a time suck in his life. You know, and I think a lot of us can sometimes get sucked into social media instead of using it for what it is and not letting it waste our time.

Also how he says, Be nice hate is wasted energy. It’s a good practical way of looking at the whole idea of getting caught up in politics and all the things of the world.

If you’re hating on something, if you’re getting obsessed about something, it’s wasted energy, just practically it pulls you away from the things that are useful from the ways that you could be helping people through your business.

Finally, I like how he says he doesn’t allow any type of instant access to himself. And he makes reference to the idea that free information is creating kind of entitlement and people out there that people think that they should have all the information for free because so much of it is free out there.

It’s important to stand up to that to put a price on the information that you’re providing out there regardless of whether that’s your main product or not.

One of the things that we promote here constantly and the things that you’ll hear, especially on these interviews regarding the Mother Earth News Fair, is how information has a value. Put a good price on the information that you’re providing and people will respect it more.

You’re going to hear more from an interview later from Christopher and Kirsten Shockey.

Christopher mentions the same concept of about free information. Overall awesome conversation.

I’m making a lot of great friends that I can’t wait to meet in person over at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany Oregon.

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.

Andy Brennan – Aaron Burr Cider

Posted on July 27, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 011.

Do you truly love what you do as a business? Is your passion so clear to others that it’s undeniable?

Andy Brennan is truly passionate about his craft and trade. Andy is the founder and owner of Aaron Burr Cider and author of Uncultivated: Wild Apples, Real Cider, and the Complicated Art of Making a Living.

A life-long artist, Andy did not set out to be a wild apple cidermaker (though always intrigued by the fruit), a writer nor a speaker. His publisher, Chelsea Green Publishing, were able to seduce him to attend and speak at the Mother Earth News Fair being held in Albany, Oregon. Due to his interest in visiting Oregon, (he admits a desire to interview some Pacific coast trees) he unknowingly was set on a direct course to be interviewed by Brian J. Pombo for the Off-the-Grid Biz Podcast.

How does a struggling artist end up becoming an apple farmer? How does he stand out in the growing and crowded cider market?

The way Andy mixes his business with his philosophy, while continuing an uncompromising life is instructive and liberating to any searching or struggling entrepreneur. Listen now!

Find out more about Andy Brennan: http://aaronburrcider.com/

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

Full Transcript

Brian: Have you found any way around that yourself?

Andy: For sure. The best solution is always to build intimate relationships with customers which ask questions and you know, certainly large companies, they don’t have the time or the inclination to have one on one relationships with their customers.

Even though I said I’m an introvert, I can’t hide from the fact that bonding with my customers is the only thing that that’s going to save, I think people like me from actually becoming road kill to bigger, faster and cheaper.

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.

Brian: A homestead farmer who began making cider in 2007 from wild apples. After rising to national prominence with his cider company, Aaron Burr Cider. He wrote a book Uncultivated, which just came out.

Andy Brennan, welcome to The Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Andy: Thank you. It’s great to be talking to you, it’s an honor.

Brian: Yeah. So, who are you, and just let us know a little about what you do?

Andy: My name is Andy Brennan and I am a homestead farmer, Apple farmer and cider maker. The town of Wurtsboro, New York, which is 75 miles North and West of New York city.

It’s in the foothills, the first few mountains as you’re approaching the Catskill mountains and we’re very close to the Hudson Valley. But in terms of a cultural region, we’re more associated with the Catskills.

Brian: So how did you end up here? What’s your life story up to this point?

Andy: Well, I was an artist first. That’s what brought me to New York city from originally I’m from the Washington D C area. And after art school, I ended up in New York.

Like a lot of people ended up living on couches for 10 years, trying to be the, you know, famous artists or whatever.

Eventually I got jobs working in architecture that at least pays little or as the art wasn’t working out.

After finding a sort of a love for Apple trees, I then looked for land near New York City where I can, grow apples.

Brian: Very cool. So what form of art were you interested in?

Andy: Well, I’m a painter and ever since I was a kid, I excelled, I guess in art, but also perhaps at the expense of being extremely bad at all the other subjects. It was kind of the one field in which I showed any talent for.

I’ve always been encouraged, I suppose, on that level to draw and paint. That’s how I ended up in art school.

But, uh, I’d say I’m not, I’m currently innovative paint as an artist. I’m inspired by people like Sazon who just looked at his work and say it’s just about the act of seeing transcribing, um, that act of seen on a painting or on a canvas.

So it’s not, I guess you would say I am. I worked from life and it’s somewhat realistic.

Brian: Very cool. You’ve written a new book, like we mentioned the full title Uncultivated: wild apples, real cider and the complicated art of making a living. So tell us about that.

Andy: Uncultivated is my original title was a book in which I wanted to describe my, methodology as an Apple grower and why I feel like that’s important to cider making.

The subtitle is – wild apples, real cider, which is an ancient drink, to distinguish it from the modern sort of a hard cider that most people are familiar with and the complicated art of making a living.

It’s a reference to what it’s like to be an Apple grower and cider maker at a small homestead farm level.

I should mention that subtitle was proposed and we loved it by a man by the name of Ben Watson, who’s not just my editor. He’s also the publisher of one of the most popular cider books out there.

But he’s also the guy who organized the Cider Days, which is the nation’s largest cider event. I worked very close with him on the book and I owe him a great deal of gratitude because I’m not a writer, I’m a farmer.

Brian: So what led you to write the book in the first place?

Andy: Well, originally I wanted to explain sort of the 101’s to people. I get at the farmer’s market all the time, People asking like, how do you make cider?

Or what makes these apples different than conventional apples?

And I wanted to explain that or give it the full space to thrive. What makes it different and what is cider and all those things.

But, there’s another reason and I think this is really what I ultimately was fueled by when I wrote book. Well, I want to show people what to look at, what to see when they see cider, what types of businesses and farms are growing apples.

In keeping with the ancient tradition of cider and, a world that modernity has really overlooked. I find it stunningly beautiful.

The cider world, the Apple world, these old homestead farms. And I wanted to paint that picture for people so that they know what they’re looking at when they approach cider.

Brian: Excellent. So did you enjoy the process of writing a book and getting it published?

Andy: I really did. It was…I’ve been writing blog journals now for 10 years, which is just more like a diary that I would publish. And I think there’s like two readers. I’ve been doing that for a long time.

When approached by my editor about writing a book, my original thought was that I would take all these blog posts, many of which weren’t even published. They’re just on my computer and I would sort of create a narrative which tied them together.

But it morphed into something different as I was writing it and it was just absolutely obsessed writing for on average, 12 hours a day for every day, for, for a year.

Brian: Wow.

Andy: I never got tired. I woke up and I just couldn’t wait to get writing again. So yeah, I really enjoyed it.

I should also say the last year when I did write, it was an off year for Apple, so there was literally nothing to do on the farm, so I really lucked out that way.

Brian: Yeah, that’s useful. Do you see yourself writing another one in the future?

Andy: Maybe.

Right now I don’t. It feels good to be a done with that project and I’m just in love with being out in the orchard right now. The same sort of passion I had for writing last year is right now, it’s just applied to my orchard and not excited about making cider this fall.

I just want to spend every moment working with the trees. And, um, so that’s where my energy is now, although I do have ideas that are brewing so it might happen.

Brian: Yeah. You’re slated to present at the Mother Earth News. Fair. One of the main reasons how we found you. What are you planning to be covering? Especially in, I guess you’re going to be in Albany, Oregon, which is the one that I’m going to.

Andy: The thing I’m most known for is wild apples because it’s 75% of all the cider I make is from wild Apple.

So they’re not even on my farm. And I wanted to discuss wild apples and what makes them different, which is such an enormous topic.

Again, I kind of want to introduce people, wild apples to tell them about what makes them so special. So it’s going to hinge on that. And I’ll talk about what they mean to cider, what they mean to a homestead farmer, what they mean to businesses even.

Which are, like I said, it’s all that’s all tied to the book, but an introduction to wild apples and what makes them so important. Because they are to a human.

So that’s one topic and the other I’ve just been asked to do another talk the following day on cider, which really does need its own full focus.

The second day I’ll be talking about, making cider and the 101’s and the history of it and that stuff.

Brian: Have you been to any of these before? These Mother Earth News Fairs, and have you presented on them?

Andy: I’ve never been to the Mother Earth News Fairs. In the Northeast here we have these organizations called Maca and, and Nopa and these are statewide and Northeast organic conferences.

And there’s one in Maine called the Common Ground Fair, which is I think very, very similar to the Mother Earth News Fair, which is largely small scale farmers and homesteaders.

Involves everything from, you know, seminars on solar energy and siphon by hand. Same sort of demographic and these are my people.

We just don’t have a Mother Earth News Fair in our area.

I’ve been excited to be a part of it. And I’ve read that magazine since I was in my twenties, long ago.

So yeah, it’s right up my alley.

Brian: What do you hope people are going to get from watching your presentations?

Andy: I hope they’re inspired to make cider and, if not cider, wine or whatever fruit grows in their area. I really don’t want to live in a world where it’s just specialists to do one thing that’s part of living on a homestead farm.

You don’t just tap your maple trees or grow vegetables and sell eggs and have honey. You do all those things, rather than just one.

I’m hoping to inspire people to embrace what is, I guess, my specialty in cider.

I’m not fond of calling myself a cider maker.

That’s just one of many things that I do, but I want people to realize just how simple and natural it is and hopefully they’ll making it and become part of this, tradition themselves.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business. When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you.

As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this. If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited. They’re talking about how to use events, books, and speaking all to build your business.

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets. BrianJPombo.com/secrets and now back to the conversation.

Brian: So why are you doing this? Why are you coming out to present?

You’re going all the way across country and everything else. What do you hope to get out of it personally?

Andy: Well, there’s a lot of reasons why I wanted to go to Oregon.

One is I have a great number of my cider customers are in Oregon and I think the demographic of that state is sympathetic to what it is I’m doing. So they’ve always been interested in my cider and sold around the state.

I have like minded people and so on the cider front, I’ve wanted to do that. And my publisher also, has asked me to promote the book and I….selling stuff is not my specialty and I feel it makes me nervous but I’ve agreed at least to do, four or five events to promote the book.

This is really an opportunity to accomplish many things or let’s use a phrase, to shoot you birds with one stone.

But this is more like five birds, a lot of things that are all coming together for this.

Brian: Very cool.

Are you going to have some time to check out the rest of Oregon while you’re out here?

Andy: Yes.

I have a couple of days. My distributor who’s a company I should mention as console on, they mostly distribute line, Ian is his name.

He’s lined up some accounts that I should visit and I think we’re going to do a couple of tastings at the swine or restaurants and he’s going to show me what I should be looking at and people were going to be able to try your cider, that are already out there now with that distributor.

And I’m toying with the idea of bringing some very, very odd ciders, although it’s going to be hard to bring them while traveling.

But yeah, they’ll be able to drink that at the fair.

Also there’s a couple of wines stores that are doing pourings where I’ll be talking as well. I know I’ll be in Portland, and a couple of other towns up there. I’m drawing a blank on where they are, but certainly the fair and then a couple of places around Portland and perhaps further.

If anyone listening is interested, my website probably says that, which is AaronBurrCider.com, and there’s an events page.

Brian: We’ll link to it in the description too. Tell us about that name Aaron Burr Cider, how’d you come up with that?

Andy: Do you know Aaron Burr?

Brian: Yeah, I’m a history buff so. Lol!

Andy: Oh wow. My wife and I are real history buffs too. And we moved to this farm, which was bought by William Brown and 1817.

The Browns had it in their family as the homestead farm for 150 years. As we were researching the deed, when we took it over, we were intrigued by the lawyer who wrote the deed and that was Aaron Burr.

And this was 1817.

And we we’re thinking, you know, could this be the actual, Aaron Burr, who shot Hamilton?

And sure enough, as we did the research, his political career was over at the time and he returned to law and that’s what he did for the next 30 years.

He, mostly sold property deeds. Back in 1817, there were huge properties that were getting divided and sold to homestead farmers. It was a lot of need for that type of a paternity.

Brian: Wow! That is…that’s quite a cool story to go along with the product. That’s great.

Andy: If I could also say we wanted a local name who represented the area, which we very much believed is the prime time or the peak of cider production, not just in America but in the world, which was just after the revolutionary war in the early 18 hundreds.

Cider production in America was just…..the only thing I could think of it as an analogy would be, like 15th century Florence, when there were artists in every loft.

I mean, every town had a cider maker and the Apple cultivation, was just at its peak then.

Brian: Have you got the travel module promoting the book you’re putting on presentations?

Have you got to travel a whole lot, I imagine Oregon’s probably the farthest you’ve traveled, right?

Andy: Yeah. Short of resisting traveling, promoting because after writing the book, like I mentioned, I’m really just in love with farming again and I want to get into the groove and give the trees the attention that they might not have had last year.

So I’ve been resisting it and I only have maybe four or five events lined up before the big harvest this September.

Brian: Well that’s great.

I think what you’re saying is pretty common, especially in this industry and in this niche. A lot of people, they have their own place and traveling is kind of outside of their realm, having to travel a whole lot, especially if they’re interested in what’s going on at home.

You have any logistical tips, anything that for people to keep in mind while they’re traveling, especially if they’re resistant to it?

Andy: I need a lot of alone time. That’s the plight of the introvert.

I just, I love engaging with people and telling people about wild apples and cider if they’re interested in that. And, I didn’t really love it, but my interaction with people…I’m sort of like a cell phone battery.

I go out and then after maybe about two hours or three hours, I just crash and I need to be alone and recharge.

So, you know, that I think is a textbook definition of an introvert and that I need that. And if I have that then, I like to travel.

I’m really excited to see just how apple’s also are adjusting to the soil out there compared to, you know, I know it’s a very different climate, but a different soil structure and I’m used to the Northeast apples so I want to interview some trees while I’m out there.

Brian: Yeah, I think that’s really good tip, especially for people who are more introverted to be able to have that set on their schedule ahead of time. So it’s not completely miserable the entire trip. I really appreciate your time with us.

Could you tell us if a listener is interested in finding out more about you, your book, about Aaron Burr Cider, where’s the best place for them to go?

Andy: Well, our home page, Aaron Burr Cider is really a directory to all the different projects, which includes the book and the cider.

I want to say that it’s not just us. I mean there’s so many other great cider producers out there and small farmers.

I was really, really lucky to have a lot of attention thrust on me, early on as cider was sort of taking off.

In some ways. It’s not fair.

My trees are my trees and somebody else has their trees and the way we all have a relationship to the land. And, I appreciate the focus and the interest from customers.

But, I would say any local, Apple farmer is deserving of that attention.

And, um, I think it’s a local drink.

I appreciate customers far and wide interested in our cider, but, ultimately I think it’s about people bonding to their region, their land.

So, I encourage people to really dig, because the small producers are out there. They just haven’t been as lucky as I am in terms of reaching the people.

Ultimately, I hope that’s what brings them back to apples.

Because you know, the nation, we were all Apple growers and we need to be, we need to be again, so many great lessons there.

Brian: Absolutely. And are you still doing your blog journal? Are you keeping up on that?

Andy: Yeah, I still do about a post every two months or so. And that was always my case.

I keep a lot to myself because I feel like sometimes I’m just a curmudgeon, just jaded and depressed by what’s happening in the modern world. And so I often, I’ll write something, I’ll give it about a week before and if I think there’s something positive, I’ll publish it. But a great number of my rants don’t go unpublished.

Brian: Can people reach that from the Aaron Burr Cider website?

Andy: That’s also linked to the website.

We have all these weird projects because like I mentioned, I’ve got an art background.

I have something known as The Aaron Burrlesque, which is supposed to be the antidote to Hamilton, the play, which any anti-federalist knows to be federalist propaganda.

So, The Aaron Burrlesque is the additional anecdote to…I think his name is Lin-Manuel Miranda, his famous Hamilton play.

That’s a photo series, that’s on the website.

The blog is attached to the website.

We have a whole line of underwear, which is a really long story. People wanted us to advertise our logo on shirts or something like that because we have a neat logo. Has the old gun, the duel gun. And I’m opposed to the sort of corporate advertisement in public.

So we came up with the underwear and I said, well, if you’re going to wear our logo, nobody’s going to be able to see it.

So we have that because they’re all just art projects, really.

Brian: It’s great that you allow yourself to be so expressive and to find new ways to be able to put things out there and just kind of follow passions the way you do, it’s really refreshing.

What makes wild apples and wild Apple cider, so uniquely different that comes straight from a domestic orchard?

Andy: This is a long story, but I’m going to try to say as fast and I’ll say with each sentence it can unfold into a huge topic on its own.

But my interest in wild apples as a farmer is that they exist unsprayed and apples are the most sprayed crop in America. And there one of the most in the world.

They’re extremely manipulated and they have to be because about 150 years ago, we’ve kind of stopped the evolution of the Apple.

Meanwhile, every other disease and insect has been keeping pace. And, now these trees are sitting ducks.

So that sort of describes your conventional orchard, um, monocrop environments, which is what is now a sitting duck for diseases and insects, which can destroy your crop and literally kill the tree.

A wild Apple is an Apple tree, which has figured out how to acclimate to the environment. And it’s a very diverse environment.

Here in the Northeast, they’re everywhere.

They’re along the roads and old pastures and they don’t get any of that attention and yet they still survive.

So that’s one way to describe a wild apple, but just even genetically, it’s very different than a farmed apple.

This is fascinating. And um, and every single Apple are five seeds in every single seed, it’s going to become genetically its own variety.

So whereas in your grocery store, you have five varieties that we all know, golden, delicious and red delicious and McIntosh apple. In every single Apple, are five new varieties that this world has never seen.

And then on just one tree alone, there is, on a good year, there might be a thousand Apples.

So that’s 5,000 varieties that this world has never seen.

And the point of that is to put as much heat out in the world and see what survives and what type of genetics are needed for that, for where that seed just happens to end up.

That’s not done on farms.

What happens on a farm is they fall in a particular variety, let’s say a Granny Smith and they’ll take a piece of wood from the original Granny Smith, which is a variety and they just graph that onto the root system of hundreds and thousands and now hundreds of thousands if not millions of trees.

So that what grows above that graft union is just one variety, Granny Smith. And every single wild apple tree, if it’s a from seed, it’s going to be its own variety.

Brian: Wow!

Andy: I should also mention that genetically they are infinitely more diverse than humans and humans have not cloned or at least to say that we’ve never had two humans exactly the same on the planet.

So I find that, alarming that something that as sophisticated as an apple tree is not able to given the green light to express itself genetically.

Nor is it allowed to defend itself or acclimate to various environments.

I’m telling you about apple trees and sadly as is true of pretty much everything, from farmed animals to farm crops. Apple trees are particularly diverse and I believe they might be the most genetically diverse plant in the plant kingdom.

Brian: That is really interesting. You know, I’ve heard it expressed on occasion some pieces of that, but I’ve never heard it said quite that way. That’s really interesting.

Is there anything else that you want to cover?

Andy: We’d like to say something about, I don’t know how to do this and even after writing the book, I still don’t know how to do this, how to really say what I find is important about running a business in the modern world because we have the economy is constantly going up.

Costs of living are constantly going up.

And as a business owner, usually it’s just assumed you’re going to be larger next year than you are this year.

But that doesn’t really apply to a farmer. You can’t enlarge your farm.

You have a relationship with the land and a limited amount of acreage or so or a limited amount of trees.

And there’s an economy to be worked out on every homestead farm on how to survive and how to maximize what you wait and get from your farm. But in the end, that’s not the larger economy just demand so much more.

So there’s a real disconnect between farming sustainably and that includes cider that includes, fur sure, apples and particularly the old versions…or I should say the real versions of the apple seedling tree.

All these things are in direct competition or I should say out there that they’re so easily or antiquated by a world where everything is a cheap and expanding and homogenizing and it’s really, we live in a world where efficiency is King and expansion is King.

Those are not applicable principles for what I feel like is real cider and real apple growing in the end.

Agriculture is about a relationship and I think that I tried to cover that in the book. I don’t know exactly how to do it, how to give that limited scale business, just deserts.

So what I did, at least in the book is I really tried to focus on the people and the culture around me in the farm and hopefully the reader empathizes and will understand just what’s at risk or what sort of just overrun by the modern expanding economy.

Brian: Do you have any clue as to what possible solutions might be to some of that? Have you found any way around that yourself?

Andy: For sure, the best solution is always to build intimate relationships with customers.

Which ask questions, and you know, certainly large companies, they don’t have the time or the inclination to have one-on-one relationships with their customers.

So yeah, even though I said, I’m an introvert, I can’t hide from the fact that that’s bonding with my customers is the only thing that that’s going to save, I think people like me from essentially becoming roadkill to a bigger and bigger and faster and cheaper.

Brian: Wow!

That is a very, very, very important point there that you just made. I hope everybody that’s listening catches that because it’s such a simple concept, but that one thing, like you said, it’s the thing that the big guys can’t do, even if they have an inclination too.

They’re not able to do what the smaller operation can do in terms of having that one-on-one relationship.

So that’s really important. That’s a really great point.

And your book plays into that too because you’re helping to educate and like you mentioned, kind of answer the questions that people already had about the process.

Have you found that to be true?

Have you gotten feedback as far as that from your customers or future customers?

Andy: Yeah, I can’t believe how much people seem to like the book.

You know, I’ve even been mistaken as a professional writer.

So yeah, I’ve been fortunate that way that I think the book was a success. And, every year I make cider and some years it’s fantastic.

But I don’t know how I did it and it just happened that way and I could never repeat it. And that’s really how writing the book was. I think it is good, but I have no idea how I could ever do it again.

Brian: Well that’s great. I mean, if you’ve been able to achieve that much with one book, that’s a huge deal that so many people go through their lives, including business owners and homesteaders that never get to do anything like that.

So that’s fabulous that you’ve been able to reach out like that and been able to make a difference.

Andy: I want to share that attention with all small apple farmers and cider makers and encourage everybody to dig deep and find those local resources.

Because like I said, I’m just one of literally thousands around the country.

Brian: Absolutely. Well, fabulous.

Hey, thanks so much for being on the show, Andy.

This is a lot to chew on and you’ve got so much information and such a depth of thought put into everything that you do that we’d love to have you on the show in the future sometime. And in the meantime, look forward to meeting you out at The Mother Earth News Fair In Albany Oregon.

Thanks again for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Andy: Well thank you. Thank you for your podcast. I’m looking forward to meeting you.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Andy’s a really sweet, really smart guy. Lots of fun to talk to. A lot of this conversation went back in my mind to the importance of understanding your own nature.

If you happen to be a nonconformist, if you happen to be an introvert and allowing room to continue being who you are, just like he talked about, allowing time to just be alone while he’s out and traveling, it really comes down to know thyself.

I think it’s cool how he has this history, this background story to the name of his cider, Aaron Burr Cider.

It’s great to have those types of things. I know he didn’t do it on purpose, but the fact that it came about and he’s taken advantage of that, that shows a lot of ingenuity along with all the different ways that he’s able to be artistic and be himself and be able to express himself even in ironic ways when it came to putting his brand out there on underwear and everything else. It’s just very funny. Very cool.

Right toward the end, the point he made about relationships, about really having that one-on-one with your customers and how the larger corporations and brands, they can’t compete with that.

You could bring something completely different and be able to have that one on one relationship and be able to be an actual person to your customers.

Not just a personality, but be a real person, someone they can talk to on the phone or communicate via email.

I think that’s important and it ties in so great with his book because his book puts himself out there.

It’s him spending hours and hours and hours putting this book together. I mean that talk about blood, sweat and tears.

I can’t wait to get into that book.

It his passion for a worthwhile cause. He has this concept of the way that it was the way we should be paying attention to our agriculture and our plants.

It’s important to have that. It’s important to be able to voice that and have that be tied to your brand also so that people who either already have that cause in mind can be connected with you and your brand and also it brings other people who have liked your cider.

Now they can come in and learn this story.

That’s something they would not have known otherwise and you can bring new people into the cause. Overall, I expect really big things from Andy Brennan in the future and can’t wait to try his cider at The Mother Earth News Fair.

Outro: Join us again on the next off the grid is 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.

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.

Frank Hyman – Hentopia

Posted on July 27, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 010.

Do you have a cause that motivates you? Is the work in your business related directly to that cause?

Frank Hyman is the business owner, speaker, teacher, columnist and author of Hentopia: Create a Hassle-Free Habitat for Happy Chickens.

Though he wasn’t planning on owning chickens, his wife really wanted to get them. He agreed, but only if they could be left during his 2-week vacations. That adventure, lead to columns about developing chicken habitat, and then this book!

How does he combine his passion for help the disadvantaged, with speaking at events like the Mother Earth News Fair and writing columns and books?

When you hear Frank’s inspiring story, you’ll realize how ANYONE can do the same. Listen now!

Find out more about Frank Hyman: http://www.hentopiacoops.com/

Buy Hentopia: https://www.storey.com/books/hentopia/

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

Full Transcripts

Frank: One of my rules of public speaking is that I mean, it’s important that I give people what they want. But my premier rule is that I need to be having a good time.

I’m getting to tell the stories I want to tell, and I’m getting to make jokes and make people laugh. And that makes me happy. So that’s my priority.

And I figured, hey, if I’m having a good time than the audience will have a good time.

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: Frank Hyman is a carpenter, stonemason and welder, who has farm, garden and house construction experience, on two continents for over 40 years.

He was a double major in design and horticulture from NCSU.

Frank believes in happy wife happy life.

So when his wife Chris wanted chickens, he knew they would have chickens, but also wanted to be able to go on two week vacations. He wrote a column about it, how he achieved both goals for chickens magazine, and the columns became the book, Hentopia, create a hassle free habitat for happy chickens, 21 innovative projects.

Hopefully we can get Frank to tell us about it.

Frank’s writing appears in The New York Times, Organic Gardening, Hobby Farms, Modern Farmer as well as Chickens Magazine, and CommunityChickens.com.

He’s been without a day job since 1992. When he first put together a plan to make a living from his hobbies. He launched an award winning garden design plant build business cottage garden landscaping, which is located in Durham, North Carolina.

Frank Hyman, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Frank: Thank you for having me, Brian. Glad to be here.

Brian: Yeah. And the reason why we reached out to you is we found you on the list of speakers for the Mother Earth News Fair, that’s happening in Albany, Oregon.

And we saw that you’re actually that you’ve been speaking on a lot of the Mother Earth News Fairs.

Frank: They’ve takin good care of me, Mother Earth News does a really good job with these fairs. Very happy to be a part of that.

Brian: Fabulous. So why don’t you let us know a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

Frank: When I was in my 20s. I was a very successful college dropout and traveled around a lot a lot of jobs and realized what I wanted out of life wasn’t a career but I wanted to make a living from my hobbies.

Fortunately, some of those hobbies are making a good living, so carpentry and design writing, among other things, then I met my wife.

She’s also a designer. She designs books, both and worked on farms in our younger days. And so even though we live in downtown Durham, on a little quarter acre lot, we like having a little tiny farm until when she wanted chickens.

It was like, Okay, we’ll have chickens, but I don’t want to have to, like take care of every day or having somebody take care of them while we’re gone.

So I did a lot of research and on how people were setting up their chicken set up.

And I’ll just give you one example of the things I found that was a little difficult for me was, for instance, a lot of books said the same thing about water, they would all say, well, water is important.

You don’t have to go out there every day to clean the water that chickens have pooped all over. Because they are 24 seven pooping machines and then even put in their sleep. Right? And so I would read that as Oh God, I don’t want to work for the chicken.

I’m already working for my dog, you know, so you have to draw a line there and being a carpenter or being a designer I decided I need to like do a little more research and come up with some way. Got to be simple way, inexpensive way to make sure that chickens have enough water and they have enough food and they’re safe so that we can go on vacation for crying out loud.

So just back to the water example, I borrowed some ideas that I saw other chicken people using and put them together one chicken keeper was gathering water for the chickens from a putting a gutter on the chicken coop detect rainwater and putting him in a cistern.

I said, Well, I thought that I’m like, well, I’ll definitely do that. And then another chicken keeper was the blind water to chicken from a five gallon bucket that was hatched on a post. So when the chickens came underneath the bucket, there were little livestock nipples, you know, the kind of thing that interval drink out of and they could tap on those and get their water and it was up too high, they couldn’t get up there and poop on it.

And it wasn’t making a money match and they couldn’t scratch the chicken, scratching all day, scratching the ground and pulling in debris everywhere but it couldn’t pile debris in and on the water.

So I just put those two things and it worked really well but every time it rains, the water gets refilled. And the chickens can’t make a mess.

In the six, seven years we’ve had chickens I’ve probably had to refill the water maybe 10 or 12 times just because it’s going to rain often and you know I’m on the east coast where it rains often enough that the 45 gallon bucket is empty the rain silver backup for me things like that have made it so that we can go on vacation or even when we’re here at home.

We are just able to not have to worry about the chickens very much you know because you get busy sometimes and and we realize the only thing we’ve done is go out and gather a few eggs and we haven’t really you know had time to play with chickens but they have their water their their food and they live on and happily.

Brian: Sure. Wow, that’s brilliant. That’s really awesome.

You went out and you wrote articles about this, and then had that converted into a book, what led you to make a book out of it?

Frank: Well, let me tell you about the column first, because that’s sure the ending of the story really is that so I set up all these things because because I love my wife, basically. And I want her to be happy. And she wanted chicken.

So I puzzled through all these different aspects of this and things were set up and she got the chicken and a year and a half later, I’m looking back at the the man, it’s been so little time looking over the chicken and doing that work.

You know, as I talked to my wife and she agree with me that we would spend less time doing chores than we spend cooking the eggs, which is not really an exaggeration at all.

So I think that God is a better than I had imagined in when I was kind of set all this up. So what better than I imagined and I knew that there was magazines about chicken, you know, backyard poultry is another good one and chickens magazine.

And so I pitched the idea of doing a column that would be called coop builder, to the editor of Chickens Magazine, Roger Sipe, who’s been a very good editor.

I’ve been working with him for Oh my god, like five, six years now. Every every month, I would send in a article about kokino.

So it might be article about the fence or article about the gate, or the nest boxes, or the roof for the coop or under the coop, but all these different pieces that you have to figure out the habitat. I’m a science guy so and I believe in wildlife.

We would always talk about habitat and realize that habitat is the big thing that most of the cooking books don’t really talk about.

They talk about different breeds of chicken and they talk about you know, what the feed when they get sick what to do, but there was very little useful information about the habitat.

That’s what I was writing about in the column. And after doing that for a few years, I realized, wow, I have a lot of material here and started pitching a proposal to do a book on chicken habitat. And the folks at Storey went for it. And they’re the biggest of publishers that do gardening and homesteading books.

I was really glad to be with them. Been just one of the best working experiences of my life, dealing with the staff of Storey Publishing, and so you probably know working on books, it’s a long term, slow process.

Finally, the book came out in December.

So it’s been out just a little over six months. And a few months ago, I had an email from my editor with lots of exclamation points all over it and she said that the first printing of 13,000 copies had already been spoken for in the first month.

Brian: Wow!

Frank: Spoken for meeting you know, Barnes and Noble and Amazon had ordered them all that doesn’t mean you know, every copy had been bought that every copy was out on a bookshelf somewhere.

And they were gonna have to like do a second printing much more quickly than they thought.

So I was really glad to do that.

I think this book is filling a niche that had been empty really, I mean, there are a few books about chicken coop and but nothing that really covers the whole waterfront of chicken habitat.

Brian: Mmmhmm.

Frank: Everything about, you know, having the right kind of pan and the right kind of coop, and I even have a design in there that I haven’t seen anything resembling it anywhere else where you could build your chicken coop pretty much almost for free out of pallets.

And so the background of that is that I grew up working class. So I grew up with people that didn’t have a lot of money. There were people poorer than us.

And I still work around poor people a fair amount in my line of work as a landscaper in designing all these elements for this chicken habit. I knew there were people who didn’t have a lot of money, didn’t have a lot of skill.

I felt like well they should be able to have chickens.

So everything I did was geared with those people in mind worked out a plan. I actually met a woman who was a first grade teacher. And she wanted to have a chicken coop for two dozen chickens because she didn’t make a lot of money as a teacher but she had some land, wanted to have a little mini farm and we were chatting at the door I met her and she said she wanted this kind of coop and but she had like no budget.

And I said, Well, I’ve got a plan for you. I want to build a coop out of pallets.

I’m looking for somebody just like you, so I told her to take her pickup truck, get 16 pallets and I would meet her at her farm with my tools.

Her dad and I, and her name is Katie and the three of us in an afternoon, we had put in a foundation of cinder blocks. We had built up floor made out of pallets and plywood. We had built the walls out of pallets. And we had the roof for the chicken coop in like three hours.

Brian: Wow!

Frank: Which is…yes, yes. And it was pretty painted there was very little cutting to be done because the palatability you know, you’ve got a big it uses basically the floor framing and the wall framing, the roof framing is like made it’s good to go.

All you need is a drill with some 3-inch screws, made for outdoor use. And zoom zoom zoom, you know, you’re putting the thing together and it’s up.

I had to….I wasn’t able to stay any longer than that. But she and her father cut up some pallets and to make the siding and one of her students. Their parents are roofers and had some scrap metal roofing that they donated to the project and so she was pretty quickly able to finish this chicken coop for like very little expense.

And so that’s the kind of that….and she was exactly the kind of person I had in mind and designing today. That it’s not hard take care of chicken, but all the habitat can be expensive.

If you do it the way a lot of chicken books describe it.

I want to bring the cost down and skill level down. So somebody who can operate a drill, you know, a power drill can pretty much put all these things together, the proof is in the pudding.

And I hear from lots of people that they’re building their chicken habitat, using the Hentopia book and are very happy with it.

So I’m very happy.

Brian: Oh wow, that’s that’s really great! That’s gonna be pretty satisfying.

Frank: Yeah, so you enjoyed the process of writing it.

Brian: Are you plan on writing any more books in the future?

Frank: Oh, yeah, I have several books in the works. I am going to do a follow up book to Hentopia, probably a couple years away, because I want to perfect some of things but it’s going to be caught my working title is Hentopia Cafe, because I’ve been finding lots of ways to feed the chickens without having to rely solely on chicken feed from the feed and feed store.

Brian: Oh, nice.

Frank: Right, we use organic food. Because if you’re not using organic seeds, and basically you’re feeding grains to your chicken, that herbicide is played on because you probably know now that Roundup Ready seeds are the thing, lots of grains and corn and soybeans are being grown, they’re genetically engineered.

So farmer can spray herbicide over the whole field.

But the herbicide only kills the weeds. But food crops still have herbicide on them.

And so if you buy chicken food that isn’t organic. You’re buying seed that as herbicide in it and you’re eating eggs and so those chemicals get passed on down the line.

So the organic seed obviously is more expensive, mostly because there’s so few mills that are generating organic, even so the price you’re paying is the freight cost of shipping and long way anything, per se about the feed itself.

It’s just that there’s so many fewer organic feed mills, but once more organic feed mills come online, the price of organic chicken foods will come down.

But either way, chickens are like us, they like a variety of foods. They like to have the bugs, they like to have some greens and grass and things like that. This book will address all those issues, how to grow red worms, feed the chickens or meal worm reveal worms in your basement.

I’m starting a little mini farm for mealworms. Oh well, how to do even simpler things like when you mow your lawn. He’s bagging attachment for a little little while, you know fill up the bag one time and then dump that in the pan and the chickens have a big pile of grass to eat.

And they will just like plow through that real quickly. So lots of little ideas like that a friend of mine had Japanese beetles were getting into her garden, so she setup a beetle trap and bought me the dead Japanese beetles that I gave to the chickens, and they ate those and they loved it.

All these other things you can do. And so when we give another example when we go out to eat, I try not to embarrass my wife, but sometimes it happens when I have a waiter at the end. I said, Yeah, I can I have to go back because if I don’t eat it, my chickens will. And so you know, so they look, you know, so like pork bone, steak bones, they’ll pick them clean.

Brian: Ohh!

Frank: Yeah, exactly. They’re not vegetarian. They want some meat.

And so any kind of scraps from when we eat out or scraps in from our own kitchen, that goes to the chickens.

And so that book, Hentopia Cafe. I’m not near ready with that I am writing a column for Chickens magazine, a new column that’s called, Chicken Food Cafe.

And those columns will be the first draft of that book. So that’s in the works.

One that I’m about to propose a little about this stand is for a mushroom ID book. Edible mushrooms.

Because one of the things one of the, one of the hobbies that I make my living with is foraging for mushrooms.

So I think there’s a real need for the kind of book I have in mind here. But I don’t want to go astray from Hentopia, but I have a number of book ideas that are turning away.

But right now I’m just focused on Hentopia, I’ve been, like I said, the beginning I’ve been speaking at all the Mother Earth News Fairs, or almost all of them.

Over this summer, I’ve got six or eight events in North Carolina and Virginia, where I’ll be speaking about Hentopia, and it’s picking up a lot of speed, picking up a lot of momentum, and I’m very happy about that.

Looking forward to hearing what people have to say with using the book and getting feedback on that.

Hopefully, they’ll be some people in Oregon.

We’ve already seen the book and can tell me what their thoughts are on that. I would love for you to give me your feedback on it.

Brian: No, absolutely. In fact, I got a copy of the book myself and my wife is so excited because we’ve been talking about getting some chickens in our new property that we’re just now working on getting and so can’t wait to try out some of the methods that you have set out there.

Frank: Yeah, oh, I’m glad hear that, yes.

Brian: On top of that, it’s a beautifully put together book. I mean, just honestly like I was I was amazed when I saw it. I’m like, Wow, so much time and effort to making this book entertaining to look at and useful.

I mean, with the diagrams and photos and everything in there. Very well done.

Frank: Yes, thank you. Yeah, the I got a shout out to Deb Burns with my editor on it too, great to work with. And the photographer, Liz was terrific experience working with her but I really got to give a shout out to the book designer, her name is Michaela Jeb.

I paid Michaela the best compliment I could think of paying to a fellow designer. I confess that one of my habits good or bad as a designer is that when I look at other people’s work, design something it’s been designed with graphic, or weather it’s furnature, or a gardener, anyway I look at it, and the first thing my brain does is well, I would have done that a little differently. I’ve done it that way.

So I’m always deconstructing, and second guessing other people’s work not in a negative way.

Because I’m a designer, so I weigh these things.

And I told her that when they sent me her design of the cover of the book, I looked at it the way I always look at it, and I could not find anything that I would have changed. I thought every choice you made was brilliant, both on the cover and the interiors.

You know, I’ve had a very good experience with Storey Publishing and it was very satisfying to work with people who could produce such a beautiful book because when people are laying out money for a book, you know, what a book costs. It should be an awesome book.

And so I but I was very happy with the contributions of the other people who helped make the make it what it what it is. I’m very pleased.

Brian: That’s fabulous.

Frank: Oh, and thank you, plenty of feedback, like, like he just gave about, that the book is delightful to look at.

Brian: Yeah.

Frank: Oh my God, yes!

So thank you for saying that.

Brian: No, that’s great.

We’re looking at you’re going to be at like I mentioned before the Albany Oregon Mother Earth News Fair, like you’ve mentioned, I saw that you have two workshops planned lunch tell for what about those?

Frank: Yes. So I will be there Saturday and Sunday.

About midday both days I presenting the time exactly the day Saturday and Monday, Sunday. And for one of those workshops, I will be showing some slideshows of our Hentopia setup here, with my chicken coop that has a pagoda roof on it like a Buddhist temple.

At my wife’s request, and I’ll also be doing a little demonstration.

I’ll have two volunteers come up at each workshop in one workshop. The volunteers and I will each make a water so I’ll show how simple it is.

I normally ask for the two least candid people in the room to come assist me to make a point that this is all very low tech low, do it yourself projects.

And so two people come up and help me make waters you know with a five gallon bucket so that those two volunteers take their calm and then the one I make I give to somebody in the audience and then the other workshop will make what I call a vending machine theater.

Which is also made out of a five gallon bucket but it works kind of like a vending machine.

Because one of the problems with the conventional feeders chickens is that the feed is open to the elements of the rain and the wind is blowing.

You know your chicken feed can get wet or it’s closed so that when the chickens scratching around the feeder gets covered up with chicken debris with the, you know, whatever mud and muck and, you know, twigs and everything that the chickens are scratching around.

And also if any rodents get in, which is going to happen, there’s gonna be….there gonna find some gaps, somewhere, and they are not a threat to the chicken.

But they will eat up your chicken feed.

And so the design I came up with, I modified the design that I found online and I gave the credit forward in the book but I’m forgetting the link now.

But in the book, you can see what he came up with. And so I modified it a little bit.

So it’s basically the five gallon bucket.

It’s attached to a posts that are attached to the side of the coop so it’s up off the ground, so it got to live with the chicken feed stays dry and critters can’t get on the bucket.

But there’s a couple of eyebolts hanging out of the bottom of the bucket and each eyebolt has a champagne cork attached to it.

And so the chickens come up and they cap on the champagne cork and it makes the eyebolts going back and forth and pellets of food come out.

Like you know like you hit the button on the venue and the candy bar drops down.

And so that way they can tap on it food comes out and they just eat until the fall and then they go away and there’s a lot of chicken food.

Chicken feed exposed to the elements are available for vermin to get to. And so it’s a big saver.

It saves on a little on a lot of waste. And it makes it easy for the five gallon bucket will hold like about 25 pounds of feed.

If you have a lot of chickens, you can set up several buckets or you could use like a bigger container, you know, basically have your eyebolts hanging out of a plastic garbage can or something that’s helping us get up on some cinder blocks so the chickens can get under it.

There’s different ways to do that.

But that’s what that’s what the second workshop will be about is a couple of volunteers, will each be handing people in attendance will each make vending machine theater and they’ll take their calm and I’ll make a third one and give it to somebody in the audience. And so yeah, so it’s pretty interactive.

I’m always a big fan of taking questions as we go, rather than the end because I’d rather just like ride on people’s enthusiasm. Or you know, because if one person has a question about something I’m doing or describing I’m sure other people are feeling the same way.

So I take peoples questions right then and get people satisfied that they are learning a lot.

So I usually end up having a pretty good time and at the end I always ask you know, was this helpful?

And I normally get a very good response from folks.

So I’m looking forward to it.

I know it’ll be a lot of fun for me and I think people attending will have a good time and have a few laughs and learn some things and some folks will get home with some free water or eater.

Brian: Yeah, that’s fabulous.

Frank: And I look forward to it, yeah.

Go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets. We are going to be putting out helpful materials on how you can use events to grow your business.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you.

As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away. These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: From your perspective, wouldn’t you didn’t know that you talked about kind of what the audience is gonna walk away with. What do you get out of doing these?

Frank: Well, I love to talk to the audience. Yeah, and I get to promote this book.

And so the more people are buying, learning about the book, and then buying the book, because Mother Earth News, they’ll have, essentially a bookshop set up at each fair.

And you can buy these books at a 20% discount, there the one some Storey and where at least 20% discount.

Yeah, so the more people are buying the book, the more money I make, when it comes time for the publisher to send me a royalty checks, so I have no financial benefit.

Also, I’m really proud of what I’ve done in this book in terms of bringing the cost and the difficulty of having chickens lay down.

Me, I’ve been politically active since I was a teen and we don’t need to talk about politics, but I’m motivated. I’ve always been motivated and politically active to help people have a better life.

And so when I’m doing work that isn’t literally political, like making gardens for people. I’m still focused on what can I be doing here that isn’t just, you know, making the money is good. Everybody needs do that.

And so there’s nothing wrong with that.

But what am I doing that’s helping these people, helping my clients ever my readers have a better life. So that’s part of the satisfaction for me, I just want more people to know even if I wasn’t getting paid, I just glad for people that know about these things that I’ve discovered or protected or enhanced or modified so that they can have chickens because a lot of people don’t have chickens.

A lot of kids won’t have chickens and I think chickens are a good thing for kids, you know, just to learn about facility you know, because one farmer said if you have livestock, there will also be deadstock.

To learn about, you know, mortality, and that this life is not forever, and you want to make sure that you are making good use of your time here and the best way for a child to understand that is with somebody other than a family member dies, you know, will eventually you know, get weak or get sick or your predator might get on with your let them free range.

Because I have to have this, but I said some of the issues around that in the book chickens or livestock there will be deadstock and that’s a good lesson for kids and for some adults that’s also a good lesson that we’re not but this is this is not your practice life will get better sometime down the road when you got and so take care of animals is a good way to confront those otherwise difficult etc.

So that’s what I’m excited about.

You know, sharing what I’ve learned and what I figured out and what other people have to say finding out what their experiences are.

And just and being able to go the air even if I wasn’t presented at the fair I’ve been to other news bears before and North Carolina. And they’re just very fun event.

It’s like, I mean that the only thing that’s missing is like the the fun ride the carousel and the ferris wheel. I think if Mother Earth News added that, boy it would really blow up in a good way.

But it’s like an old time there without rides.

You know, there’s livestock there.

There’s all these different breeds of chickens and different amazing different breeds of cattle and horses and sheep and all these vendors selling you know solar ovens or things to do to ferment your food and all kinds of you know, Muslim guys usually they’re selling you mushrooms, edible mushrooms or medicinal mushrooms or how to grow your own mushrooms.

All these things, all these garden tools, it’s just like a gas going there and seeing what everybody has to offer and you know, all the different books and there’s going to be 20 or 30 speakers who are authors talking about the pureland their books.

Lots of people who are speaking are chefs and they’re teaching people how to cook thing that’s been growing recently in spirit is the number of people who speakers who are authors about health and also even about makeup, making your own makeup.

You’re not putting all these weird chemicals on your skin but using healthy and organic process.

So that piece of the Mother Earth News Fairs, it’s been changing recently, there’s a lot more interested in health and makeup and home remedies and things like that.

So it’s just a fun event, I hang out the whole two days and have a gas.

So I’m hoping people will come and enjoy it as much as I do.

Brian: Oh, I can’t wait, this is actually going to be my first time attending one of these.

Frank: All right!

Brian: Yeah, I’m getting more and more excited. The more people I’m talking to that are either speaking at the event or attending, that’s really great to hear from you.

Who are you hoping to reach most when you go, who’s the ideal person you’re hoping to connect with, either via your speech or in person?

Frank: You know, in the one sense, everybody of course, but in the other sense, like a lot of Americans, my parents got divorced when I was when my sisters were teenagers, dealing with the single mom and the single dad scenario. That may be the best thing for the family overall, but it’s always a financial hardship but it’s always a hardship in terms of managing time and that was the kind of what I had in mind the single parent with one kid.

And if a parent wants chickens, or kids want chickens. But the time is scarce, money is scarce.

And so that’s why I was thinking about, you know, and nothing against Martha Stewart’s I think she’s doing great things. But not everybody has Martha Stewart budget, you know, or the budget of a lot of people who, you know, buy her magazine.

And so I was thinking about them with this.

So this is, you know, the way that somebody with very little money and very little skills, and few tools or no tools at all, and put a lot of this together.

So that’s why I’m saying that and sometimes that’s what I see.

Oftentimes, it’s folks who are back to you know, a lot of couple people have gone back to the linear or like me and my wife, they’re doing little mini farm in the city.

Oftentimes when people have been coming are like young people who are in college. Just got a college or maybe like new, they’re successful college stuff out there wanting to get into agriculture or disclose some of their own food and they want to do chickens.

But they got, you know, college debt or whatever, they want to have chickens but not be spending a lot of money.

It’s been an delightful range of people who’ve been coming to the fairs that I’ve been speaking and wanting to know about chickens.

Yeah, but like the single parents with not a lot of money and not a lot of time.

I had in mind whenever I was, like, puzzling through how to do these things, or writing my column or working on the book, I was like, Okay, how can I simplify this or bring the cost down?

What would be the way to like, you know, instead of buying this expensive, then make or salvage something less expensive because I have a whole chapter on just on tools and another chapter just on the way to get things inexpensively.

A lot of the materials in our…I mean, we’re not poor. But we’re not rich, and so a lot of the materials in our Hentopia Habitat are things that people have cased out on the curb.

Or things that I buy at a metal scrap yard here in town where people are getting rid of metal things.

So, like your fencing for your pen, you could buy a roll of fencing for a few dollars instead of buying it new big box store.

You can buy metal roofing pretty inexpensively at a metal scrap yard. And a lot of the like the original eater we started out with was you know, some vintage chicken feeder at a thrift shop.

All these things when you do have to buy them a lot of them can be bought pretty cheaply, but you know, on the street corner at the curb, I’ve picked up several dog kennels and people outgrow their dogs.

Or they give it away because the dog is passed away and so they get this kennel and they put it on the street and I’ve been scavenging those and giving or selling them to other chicken keepers.

Because we use dog kennel as a way, you know, when we get a new chicken, we might buy a special chicken that you know ladies like chocolate brown eggs was one example. You don’t want to just throw a new chicken in with the other chicken because they’ll pick it to death.

And so we will put the new chicken or if we have new chicks will put them when they’re ready to go outside, we’ll put them inside the kennel, inside the big dog kennel, that is inside the pin.

For the new chickens and the old chicken see each other and smell each other and getting used to each other.

I think chickens memories don’t last too long.

I think the old chickens have forgotten that that chicken is new. They come out and they see it as I like, yeah, you’ve always been here right?

My suspicion is when you put a new chicken in and put som chicks in the kennel, in the pen, with old chickens. After a week or two weeks.

Keep them separate until I get to that point and then get them out and they’re just like, Oh yeah, we’ve been out since day one.

As far as I can remember, you know, that’s what I think their brains are telling them.

So I’ve never paid for dog kennel.

Were doing that kind of setup because, you know, every few years, I found one put out on the corner in good shape, and they’re designed now so they all fold down flat so that I don’t need them.

So a lot of materials can be done very cheaply.

That way you’re so free or very little cost. And there’s an entire chapter dedicated to all the different options out there for that, but some people may not be aware of.

Brian: Those are great tips there.

That’s really good.

Frank: The last thing I was going to say on that was that I don’t want people to get the idea that because I’m advocating things that are free or cheap that your coop is going to be ugly.

I’m very focused on the ascetics.

So there’s a lot of advice in the book about how to make things look nice, or what kind of choices are going to make things look nice without costing more money.

And so you can have a pretty nice setup without spending a lot of money so you’re not sacrificing, having a good looking coupe and pin just because you haven’t spent a lot of money doesn’t look good.

It can function well.

The budget is low, and the demands on your skills can be low and we got chickens and then every day, fresh chicken eggs and you just can’t beat that once you once you have fresh backyard chicken egg.

I’ve talked to many people. Nobody who had fresh backyard chicken eggs, wants to go back to store bought eggs.

They don’t look as good. They don’t taste as good. They don’t pick up as well.

It’s a real big step back.

So once you’ve had decade chicken eggs, you’re entering a new, more delightful world of eating.

Brian: Sure, yeah.

Frank: Yeah. So I’m glad to hear that you and your wife, are going to explore that.

Brian: Yeah, and I’ve gotten chicken eggs from my friends and so forth, but looking to do it ourselves.

And it’s funny for all the same reasons you mentioned. We’ve got little kids right now and we want them to be able to experience it just you know, really great points that you make.

A lot of people in the audience, because A lot of our conversations revolve around not just things within the self reliance field but also around the business side of it. So we have a lot of business owners executives who listen.

Do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into this event both attend but also to speak or exhibit?

Frank: You need to be an exhibitor, have a table at the fair?

Brian: Sure, either have a table or speak.

Frank: Mother Earth News does these fairs as half a dozen places around the country and the growth of Saturday and Sunday, and the attendance ranges and I’m being rough with numbers here, but your tenants ranges from 10,000 to 20,000 for different ones.

I don’t know what the attendance will be in Albany, but it’s somewhere inside those in between 10 and 20,000 in the course of two days, and that’s a lot of people walking by your table and what you’re offering you know, whatever service or whatever product you’re offering, it’s also it could be a good place for people who have food trucks or who set up food tents.

Because that’s definitely an opportunity there and I’ve had some delicious food as all the fairs I’ve been to.

And there’s often you know, other just the range of choices, which is just terrific.

I don’t know what we’ll have in Albany but if people are doing a food truck or food can kind of set up the fares are a great opportunity for that if you selling any kind of tool or service, that a full time farmer or hobby farmer or back, backyard gardener or beginning gardener would be interested in that would be a real good opportunity to exhibit.

They do have some opportunities for people who want to demonstrate things like there’s I’ve seen people who are blacksmith.

And so they’ll do little projects showing you how, you know, they forged things.

You can learn like that.

So, you know people who are teaching mushrooms are there so you can get their brochures and learn how to grow mushrooms or how to identify mushrooms.

So all kinds of opportunities for every kind of business. The range businesses, So it can be the likes of like like massage therapists. Well, the exhibitors at these events, the people who have those massage chairs, people who have saunas are going to be there.

Some things that you wouldn’t expect, but they are finding a lot of exhibitors, a lot of business people are finding that the audience at these events, people very focused on their health and are willing to spend some money for products or services that help them have a healthier, happier life.

Anything around food, there’s all kinds of people selling all kinds of spices, people selling products for keeping bees, and processig honey.

There’s people who….what am I seeing there….there are people who are selling all kinds of baked goods.

If the if the range is pretty amazing, it’s pretty surprising.

The variety of services and products that people are promoting at these fairs. So yes, you have a business in Oregon, you would I would highly recommend checking into what Mother Earth News Fair’s could do for you.

Because as I said, it’s going to be…what is that? Five, low five figures is going to be the turnout over a period. So you will get to see a lot of potential customers.

Brian: Well, that that’s a great, great, great point.

How did you end up becoming a speaker for these events?

Did they find you did you find them how that happened?

Frank: It goes back to the politics, one of the things you have to do is get up and speak in front of people.

And I remember the very first time I did that, I was like, 25 years old. I was speaking at a city council hearing, you know about some project that was going on.

And I got up to speak for the first time, I didn’t know I figured I know I’m comfortable talking, you know, at parties and friends and stuff and this can’t be that different.

I get up and I’m at the podium, and all the council members turn and look right at me. And suddenly I’m reading like the I get it written out. I’m reading my statement, but my voice in quaver.

I’m like, Oh my god, I can’t stop my voice from quavering.

But that’s how I started and I didn’t die. So I figured, well if I didn’t die, I guess I could learn to do this, so I learned to do it better.

And so I became experienced and skilled of public speaking to politics literally became a city council member, I did have to cut up my ponytail, but I you know, ran my own campaign and got on city council, but that was like 20 some years ago.

And still, I’m still politically active, but I started using my speaking skills to offer classes and gardening was how that started. And so local garden centers, people would pay, and I would make a little money speaking about, you know, gardening skills, and then I added the mushroom foraging classes and all the classes on keeping chickens.

So I’ve been hired by lots of public gardens like Colonial Williamsburg and Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden in Virginia and Duke Gardens and North Carolina. Lots of places like that.

So probably gardens all kinds of garden conferences and farming conferences have hired me to speak and I have a pretty good reputation.

One of the things that all the publishers like is that they want the authors to help do some of the promotion, they can’t do it all.

So if a author is also good at speaking, they will help pay, so Storey helps cover some of my costs.

They are paying the cost of finding to all of the Mother Earth News Fairs. Cuz they know I’ll do a good job speaking of promoting the book, and they’ve also helped me cover the mileage and expenses of speaking at some events in North Carolina and Virginia.

Brain: That’s great.

Frank: Yeah, right. So the a lot of the speakers are either getting authors who are getting help from their publisher or they’re doing it on their own dime because it’s worthwhile to promote the book.

You know, like I said, it’s between 10 and 20,000 people and each one of these things, though, it’s definitely worth an author’s time, if not their event, to go and speak to you know, not that you have 10 or 20,000 people in the room when you’re speaking, normally it’s going to be, you know, 150 people, 200 people, 300 people at most probably.

But the word gets around, you know, when those people hear about to you and they tell their friends and their second group or whatever. And it’s, you know, the garden. And from here, you’re gonna put the pebble in the pond and the ripples go out.

Brian: Yeah.

Frank: And so that’s how I look at it. Even if I on occasion, I’ll have an event and there’s like, 10 people, and it’s like, it’s a little disappointing.

But that’s like, I don’t let it bother me. It’s like okay, those 10 people, they all know, five or 10 people who will be interested in this topic, and they’ll say, Oh, yeah, I heard my time and speak and get a book.

So it’s always worth my while to speak about it.

Brian: Yeah. Well, that’s a great.

Frank: And have a good time. And yeah, one of my rules of public speaking is that…..I mean it’s important that I give people what they want, but my premier rule is I need to be having a good time.

So I’m getting to tell the stories I want to tell and I’m getting the big joke make people laugh, and then makes me happy. So that’s my priority.

And I figured, hey, if I’m having a good time, then the audience will be having a good time. And it’s a lot easier to learn stuff when you’re when you’re awake and alive and having a chuckle, than if it’s just somebody droning on.

I even tell program managers who are hiring me to speak their confidence is something that I’m happy to be the speaker that they put in, in the after lunch spot. I tell them I will wake people up and often I get the one o’clock or 1:30 slot, that’s fine with me.

Get people laughing and they’re not, like dozing off after lunch.

It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun.

Brian: Yeah, that’s great.

Do you have any logistical tips for other people that would like to do the same thing maybe like to be speakers in the future and so forth. I mean, you’re traveling all the way across countries or the Oregon to the event.

Frank: Yes. So my advice to people who want to be speakers. Practice is always the issue.

It’s always, I’ve been able to make my living like I said, from my hobbies, which is up to 10 now, and you know, carpentry, writing, speaking, etc, etc.

But the key thing is that part of the reason I’m able to do that is because I know that whenever I start on something new, I’m going to be pretty terrible at it.

You know, like when I told you about my first speaking event at a public hearing, and I my voice was shaking.

Brian: Yeah.

Frank: So I know I’m going to be terrible, and I don’t let that bother.

That’s the important thing.

If somebody wants to become a speaker, but not already doing that is just to be comfortable with that person. You do it, it’s not going to go great.

The second time you do it, it’ll be a little bit better.

And the third time you do it, it’s like it’s ready to get comfortable and people are like, Oh, yeah, Brian’s a good speaker.

And, you know, and but that’s the key is you just gotta power through the difficult beginning.

Find some level of comfort with being uncomfortable at the beginning.

And after you go through it enough, you learn the ropes, learn a little bit for a second, third time, and then the often running and you’re learning a little more. And you’re getting some feedback that’s helpful from different people, if you’re willing to listen, you just get better by doing it really.

I mean, there are some tricks of the trade and there are books on public speaking.

You know, and the same goes for writing. There’s books on how to write, take classes, but really, you good just put your butts in the chair and then write and know that the first time was the beginning of your journey as a writer, it’s not gonna it’s just not going to be very good.

It may not, you know, it might be might even be terrible, but it might be okay, but it’s going to get better the more you do it, there’s just no substitute.

And I’m sure its the same with your line of work, you know, doing a podcast or radio show or something the first time you do it, it’s a little bit of a stretch.

But the more you do it, the easier it gets you not like how to think about everything so much you can just be in the moment and the speaking and the writing and despite that, the more you do it, the easier it comes.

One thing I would say in both cases, both for speakers and for writers you’re speaking and your writing will get better if you spend time meeting best writers and you’ll find yourself slowly internalize how that really good, how really good writing sounds in your mind years for the speakers, by hearing speakers.

You’ll know that. I definitely pay more attention out watching John Oliver the other night. He does that.

So last week tonight. Yeah, no humorous talk show new show. And I’m watching him and I’m noticing the little ways he stops and he start, how he finesses, you know, the sound of a sentence and I looked at my wife and I said, I could do that

Pay attention to him, like how he was doing it. You know, I wasn’t just passively enjoying it, but you want to be a speaker, watch other speakers.

Not passively, but actively watch them and see what are they doing?

Or when you think they could have done this something and they chose not to, Why did they choose not to?

You know, use that kind of punch line or something?

So, I mean that’s what I would say for people who are wanting to become a speaker or an author or anything our to the difficult first time.

Don’t be discouraged and persevere and keep working on it are the people who do well the thing you want to do or read they’re really good write down wise there you know, like complete some person that came up with the phrase fake it till you make it.

It sounds kinda weird, but it kind of do some truth in it.

Mimic what….Mimic what the good people are doing.

That’s how they got where they are they mimiced somebody ahead of them.

Brian: Sure thing. Well, that’s all really good points, Frank.

It just, overall this has been a great conversation. What can listeners do who’d be interested in finding out more about your book and so forth?

Frank: So to find out more about the book by going to the computer and googling Hentopia and they will either find the Storey Publishing website, web page on my book where they can need some of the blurbs on the back.

Like my editor, Chicken magazine says that I’m the Foo Zen master of poultry, whatever that means?

But it sounds pretty good.

And so or you can get them my website which is HentopiaCoops.com and that gives a little more background about me.

As far as buying the book, definitely check out your local bookshop and support them. But you can also buy it online from different vendors.

So you can look at it you can read the reviews, I’m getting good reviews on Goodreads and on Amazon, right. Read reviews of the book and find out little more that way and that would be pretty far along for like learning more about Hentopia, to see whether it’s right for you.

Brian: Allright, Frank Hyman thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast

We look forward to meeting you over in Albany.

Frank: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it also Brian. Thank you so much for having me on your show, I really enjoyed it.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Wow, it was great chatting with Frank. He’s got a really great story, great cause behind his philosophy of life. And you could just tell that kind of wraps everything together his initial story just to begin with.

His wife wanting chickens and him just wanting to be able to go on vacation for two weeks at a time.

I mean, it’s relatable. It’s kind of funny, and it shows how he got into the entire concept of chicken habitats.

But overall, he has a really big cause. It’s related back to his political views, but it’s also tied to his entire life, on his childhood and growing up not having as much as other people and just having to figure out a way around it.

And other people, they don’t know how simple it is to do some of these things. And all it takes is a little ingenuity.

He doesn’t mind being able to take that to them. I think that’s really great.

It ties in his entire life story into his whole way of teaching. On our last episode, we spoke with Deborah Niemann. And the point that I brought up then was that she goes through this organic process of learn to teach. It’s very inspiring.

And he has a very clear idea of who his ideal customer is, who his ideal reader is, who he is most wanting to impact by his speeches. That’s a very important thing to have, because then you could know how successful you are.

I love how he was talking about willing to be terrible. In other words, willing to make mistakes, willing to be bad until you can be good getting out there and doing doing doing until you can get better. And he ties that back to his ability to make a living from his hobbies.

His point about actively watching and listening to others.

Just being able watch a TV show and being able to watch them and see how they deliver a line and directly relate that back to how he does speeches, how he tells stories.

That’s an important point that most people don’t think about.

When they go into teaching mode. If you’re going to be teaching your customer base, if you’re going to be teaching people one on one through classes. It’s important to see how other people do it and to be able to adapt their style or see things that you would never do, and that you’re going to steer away from being able to take that into account. That’s an important lesson.

Frank just has this concept of putting on engaging presentations hands on, very similar to what Andrew Perkins was talking about in the beginning of our series two episodes ago, and at the same time, he keeps everything very light.

It’s all about having fun with him.

Did you notice that his primary rule is I need to be having a good time?

He said that about speaking but I bet that applies to his entire life. So I think if you apply that to your life, having fun about making sure that you at least have a good time, you’re going to be 90% of the way there. And that’s a great thing to walk away with.

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.

Deborah Niemann – Thrifty Homesteader

Posted on July 26, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 009.

Are you an expert in your field? Do you speak publicly? Do you write articles and books? Do you teach your skills and knowledge?

Deborah Niemann of Thrifty Homesteader is an author, speaker and successful homesteader. She’s written several books including Homegrown and Handmade, Ecothrifty, and Raising Goats Naturally.

Though she didn’t grow up on a farm, she has become a leading homesteading expert. She can tell you about raising chickens, dairy, pork, goats, and so many more topics. Her thirst for practical knowledge is evident after just a few minutes of conversation with our host Brian J. Pombo.

What does it take to be an world-renowned expert? Deborah’s journey through life, and her ability to take advantage of opportunities around her is motivating and instructional. Listen now!

Find out more about Deborah Niemann: https://thriftyhomesteader.com/

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

Full Transcript

Deorah: Raising goats naturally basically means you are letting the moms raise the babies. To me, that’s the cornerstone of everything.

You know, I saw something the other day online that said 10 things you must have in your goat medicine cabinet. And I’m thinking, Oh my gosh, if you think you have to have 10 things in your medicine cabinet, you’re doing something wrong.

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.

Brian: Deborah Nieman is a homesteader, writer and self sufficiency expert. In 2002 she moved her family from Chicago suburbs to a 32 acre parcel on a creek in the middle of nowhere. Together they started raising goats, sheep, cattle, pigs and poultry to provide 100% of their meat and eggs.

They have a garden and fruit trees for fresh produce, and they make their own sweeteners with a little help from these and maple trees.

She’s authored several books including,Homegrown & Handmade, Eco Thrifty and Raising Goats Naturally. She’s currently at work on her sixth book.

If all that wasn’t enough, Deborah puts on workshops across the United States and Canada. She’s presented at the Mother Earth News Fairs in North Carolina and Maryland. And you’ll be able to see her at the upcoming fairs in Oregon, Pennsylvania and Kansas.

Deborah Nieman, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Deborah: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here today.

Brian: It’s great to have you. Besides what we heard about in your bio, tell us a little more about who you are and what you do?

Deborah: Well Usually the first question people ask when they meet me is did you grow up on a farm?

And the answer is no, I did not.

Just because you didn’t grow up on a farm doesn’t mean you can’t do this. And I think that, really that’s the main reason most people ask that because for some reason, you know, I used to be a reporter and nobody ever asked me, were your parents reporters?

Like they get it, like you can go to school and learn to be a reporter or a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.

But for some reason, when it comes to just living on a homestead people think you have to grow up like this. Otherwise, you can’t learn it and you totally can.

We made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but you know, I read books, I found mentors online.

The people around here pretty much all thought we were crazy. But you find your people online, which, that’s the awesome thing about having the internet and even in 2002 you know, back then it was Yahoo groups. Today, it’s Facebook groups.

So we can we can find people who can help us and find books and that’s why I started writing the books because when I got started all the books had been written by people who did grow up on a farm.

They did have chickens their whole life or goats or whatever. The books were missing a lot of really basic information that we could have used, you know, it could have prevented a lot of problems.

One of the things was you shouldn’t have….well most of the books just said, for poultry like, Oh, you only need one rooster for every 10 or 12 hens.

They didn’t say that you shouldn’t have more than one rooster for every 10 or 12 hens. But it only took us a couple of years to figure out the whole background. They’re like, yeah, you don’t want more than one rooster for every 10 or 12 hands or you’re gonna have a world problems.

Brian: Absolutely. Well, that’s great stuff.

You mentioned your books. Can you tell us a little bit about them?

Deborah: Well, the first one, Homegrown and Handmade, was pretty general.

It has a section on gardens and orchards, which I think orders are the coolest thing ever. It’s like there isn’t a stock on Wall Street that can can give you the return that a fruit tree can you know, it’s like you buy a fruit tree for 20 bucks, you plant it permanent if you have time every year to maybe even every three years, and then it gives you 50, 100 pounds of fruit year after year.

I mean, it’s incredible.

So I’m a big fan of fruit trees.

And then there’s another chapter in Homegrown and Handmade, on a whole section on backyard poultry, backyard dairy and homegrown fiber. And then in the second edition, which I published six years after the first one, I added a section on raising pigs so that you can have your own homegrown fat because lard is just awesome stuff important, great too.

Then a section on homegrown sweeteners because we do our own honey and maple syrup, as well as a section on homegrown businesses because so many people they start doing this and they think wow, this is fun.

I would rather do this seven days a week.

Then go to my job five days a week so how can I make money at it?

And they don’t realize that like there’s so much stuff you have to think about and not just in terms of like laws like do you need you know, like you have to be licensed to become a dairy but also in liability.

We could process chickens on our farm and sell them because we’re not going to sell that many but I don’t want that liability you know if somebody goes home and get sick after eating chickens I don’t want them to sue me and you know take my farm away.

Brian: Absolutely. No those are all really great points and that was the second edition of Homegrown and Handmade?

Deborah: Yes.

Brian: Awesome, and then tell us a little bit about your other ones.

Deborah: Eco Thrifty was, well the subtitle for Eco Thrifty says it all, cheaper, greener choices for a happier healthier life.

And that was basically the idea.

Homegrown and Handmade was kind of like writing you know, homesteading 201, first and then Eco Thrifty was kind of like self sufficiency 101, because so many people said to me, oh, I would love to live like you do, but it’s too expensive.

And it’s like, no, it’s not too expensive. This is totally like you save money doing this, you know, because we’re not talking about buying like the Amy’s organic dinners at the grocery store.

We’re talking about making it from scratch, Eco Thrifty was all about like, they’re really super simple things you can do that will save you money like using baking soda for facial scrub.

I mean, it doesn’t get any cheaper than.

The third and fifth book is, Raising Goats Naturally. The original was published in 2013.

And the title you know, pretty self explanatory said about raising goats and naturally. I wasn’t too happy with my publisher. I wanted to call it homestead goats, and publisher was like, Oh, you’re raising them naturally.

And I’m like, people are gonna think this is an herb book and it’s not. It’s a book about doing things as naturally as possible.

Kind of like I try to live as naturally as possible, you know, I want to eat natural food.

I want to do everything I can to avoid medication but you know if something happens and I need penicillin, I’m gonna take penicillin.

It doesn’t mean that I don’t, like I use ginger for, you know, I always keep ginger in my purse when I’m flying, because it’s just awesome for air sickness.

The raising goats naturally basically means like, you’re you are letting the moms raise the babies, which is like, to me, that’s the cornerstone of everything. If the moms raised the babies, and the babies are getting all of the natural antibodies, then they are going to be healthy.

And that right there is just going to avoid so many of the medications that people think they need.

You know, I saw something the other day online that said 10 things you must have in your medicine cabinet. And I’m thinking oh my gosh, if you think you have to have 10 things in your medicine cabinet, you are doing a lot of things wrong.

That’s the kind of stuff I’m talking about when I say raising goats naturally like you shouldn’t be giving, you know, you shouldn’t have to give your goats all these drugs to keep them alive.

You if you get the nutrition right, that’s really the most important thing.

If you get the nutrients right for them. They are incredibly hardy, healthy animals. And the biggest challenge for most of us in North America is that goats are desert and mountain animals.

They are in nature. They live in places where they have evergreens available 12 months a year, their browsers and most of us are trying to turn them into grazers, which I tell people like if you stick them in a little pasture and you don’t let them leave, you’re basically forcing them to eat out of their toilet.

How healthy would you be if you were eating out of your toilet?

Probably not very healthy, like you would have some problems.

So part of raising goats naturally is rotating them, you know, you’re mimicking nature, you’re moving them from one pasture to another, rather than in nature.

They’re going to be naturally moving. They’re going to be ranging across thousands of acres.

So that’s really what raising goats naturally is all about.

And then I really I love research.

The frustrating thing for most people about goats is that they go online and they find they’ve got a question and they find 10 different answers. And then they send me an email and say, which one is right?

It’s like, oh, well, that that answer right there is what everybody thought back in, you know, the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, this is what they thought, but nothing ever dies online.

So this is what the current research says. And so that’s why you know, like, after six years or five years, I updated raising goats naturally after five years.

Because there was so much more research that had come out in five years and I wanted people to have that, because we had a really rough time raising goats.

Initially, we had goats dying. We never had a buck that live past the age of three for the first five years we had goats.

Then we finally found out it was because they were copper deficient because our well water is very high in sulfur and iron, which binds with a copper making it unavailable.

So they needed a lot more copper than your average goat. And then we had problems with parasites because back in the early 2000s, nobody knew about the importance of rotating pastures to keep goats from eating out of their toilet and things like that.

Unfortunately, there’s still a lot of people who are passing around that information that you need to give your goats and dewormer every month or two months or whatever their magic number is. And you don’t need to do that.

Like, you know, this year I have given one dose of dewormer to one goat and I have over 20 adults.

That’s really it. Like you shouldn’t need to do that.

If they say if you’re deworming more than 10% of your herd every year. You’ve got some problems like there’s some things you could be doing in terms of management that could make your whole experience much better and your goats experience much better.

If you get in early enough, you can get a special deal. These are principles that never go away.

These programs will be based on the experience of people who have written books, spoken at the events or exhibited.

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: Now you had mentioned you first started writing these books because it was information that you couldn’t find anywhere else. And obviously, you’ve got the journalism background. Was it really simple to jump right into your first book?

What was the was the impetus to really go out and try it?

Deborah: The whole thing actually started really organically when we moved out here and from the suburbs. People talk to people and people they would contact me and say, Hey, I heard that you’re making your own soap or cheese, can you teach me?

So I started teaching people how to make cheese, at my house in my kitchen, one at a time. And then finally I realized, Hold it!

This is really getting time consuming.

So I started having official classes. And then people would say, Hey, could you come here to teach this class?

So I said, Sure.

I started going places to teach classes. Then I wind up speaking at the very first Mother Earth News Fair in seven springs, Pennsylvania and 2010. And the rest, as they say, is history.

You know, that was where my publisher discovered me and said, Hey, you ever thought about writing a book?

And I was like, Oh, yeah, I’d love to write a book. And so, you know, I wrote the first book, The goat book.

I did so much research to dig us out of a hole, which is kind of a horrible metaphor. You think of how many holes we had to dig to bury goats that died.

Like we just had such a horrible time with goats. It was like, either we give up and just sell them all, or we figure it out and I did a ton of research to figure it out.

And by the time I was done doing all the research and saving my goats and my goats were doing great. I was like, holy cow, I have enough information here to fill up a whole book.

Brian: Wow.

Deborah: So and that’s where it came from.

The first one was really close to 300 pages. The second one is close to 350 pages. So the first one was 90,000 words, the second one is 20,000 words more, so it’s 110,000. It’s a lot, but that’s how it goes.

Brian: That’s great. Do you enjoy the process of writing and the whole process of putting the book together?

Deborah: I do. I love writing.

You know, I say that whenever you get lost in whatever you’re doing, you lose track of time, that means you’re doing the right thing.

So, that’s definitely it. It’s funny though because sometimes when people hear me talking about my aches and pains are like, Oh, you’re gonna have to give up the farm and I’m like, No, no, it’s not the farm.

No, my first book, I gave myself carpal tunnel. My second book I gave myself tennis elbow.

And my fourth book I gave myself a frozen shoulder.

So working at a computer for 12 to 14 hours a day is very hard on the body.

Brian: Wow.

And we saw that you’re slated to present at the next handful of Mother Earth News Fairs, you have a whole bunch of different workshops.

So why don’t you tell us a little bit about those?

Deborah: Yeah, coming up, I’m going to be talking, I’m gonna be doing my raising goats naturally talk in Oregon. Which is all about, the importance of all those little decisions you make that people think, oh, you just stick the goats out there and they’ll be fine.

You know, it’s like, No, no, we’re gonna talk about, housing and fencing and the importance of making sure that kids nurse and get enough milk when they’re little, you know, like, you don’t want to start separating them from mom too quick and taking the milk that they should have. They need it to stay healthy.

We may like it because it tastes good, but like, you know, that’s your health insurance for the next generation, it’s there for the babies.

So there, they should get first dibs. And then you can take whatever’s left over after they’ve had their fill.

I’m also going to be doing one on spindling. Basically how to spin yarn with a hands on spindle.

I’m doing a full day of fiber workshop on Friday, I’m going to be talking about marketing your fiber products, and relationship marketing and value added products, how you can sell more than just raw will have your shapes.

And I’m also going to be doing on Sunday, I’m going to be doing a soap making talk. Tell everybody how to make soap.

Brian: That’s great. Such a variety, have you always been attracted to multiple things? Or are you always bouncing from one thing to the next learning something new because you’re an expert on so many of these things?

Deborah: Yeah, pretty much.

I’m one of those people like ever since I was a little girl like, you know, most people just take things for granted. Like they go to the store and they buy a food and just like hey, it’s a food they eat it.

And I remember even as a little girl like asking my mom, how do they make peanut butter?

You know, and how do you make cheese and like I just always wanted to know that stuff. From the time I was really young.

Brian: Very cool. If someone’s thinking about going, if they never been to a Mother Earth News Fair before, what would you tell them that would encourage them to go?

Deborah: Oh my goodness, okay, if you’re into homesteading and all that, you just have to go okay?

Like I keep going because it’s just so much fun.

You get to meet so many incredibly cool people, you get to learn so much interesting stuff like you know there’s there’s stuff I still learn, I go to one and you see something like, oh I don’t know anything about that and you know I go sit in on a session and learn more stuff.

My knowledge and bees is pretty rudimentary and so I’m just so amazed by some of the really in depth beekeeping sessions and like how these people know so much about these tiny little insects.

Somebody said it’s like Disney World for homesteaders you know, you can just go and spend all day and they usually have really good food there. So like they get food trucks from locals, that are using meat and produce from local farms. And it’s just so much fun.

Brian: Great. Who are you hoping to reach personally? Who’s the ideal person that you’d either like to connect with through your presentation or in person there?

Deborah: Oh, I always love to talk to goat people.

So because girls are definitely my favorite animals, and it’s really where my passion is. And it’s where I just kind of keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper.

Like, I have 450 articles on my blog.

120 of them are about goats. And you may think that like there isn’t anything more that could be written.

But I assure you there is, I get emails and messages every single day from people asking me questions about goats, and an awful lot of them I can just say, yeah, you know, just send them a link to an article on my blog.

But I still get questions that I haven’t written an article about.

And so like, that’s actually where a lot of my new blog post ideas come from is is from the emails I get.

Then after I’ve answered a question two or three times, I know like, Okay, this is I got to read an article about this.

Brian: Very cool. That’s a great look into the process.

We have a lot of business owners, executives that listen to the show, do you think it’d be worthwhile for them to plug into it an event like this?

Do you think it’d be useful networking or what have you?

Deborah: Well, considering the focus of your show, as we give business owners are listening to your show, then yeah, they would probably be a really good fit for the Mother Earth News Fair.

You know, if nothing else, like they could check it out this year and see if it looks like it might be a good place for them to be a vendor next year. Because I know it’s got to be a good thing for vendors because I see the same people there year after year.

Brian: That’s a great point. That’s something I haven’t heard till now.

How did you become a speaker at that very first one, did they reach out to you?

Did you reach out to them?

How did that happen?

Deborah: I was just surfing online one day and I just happened to stumble across a call for speaker proposals on their website.

Brian: Wow!

Deborah: Yeah. So I filled it out and sent it in.

And at that point, I already had a lot of other speaking that I had done in the area, like in Chicago and stuff. So I was definitely, you know, I was experienced and everything and I had so many topics, which that was what they really liked is that I had so many different topics that I was willing to talk about, I sent them a quite a few proposals like so making him bread making and, you know, all these different things.

And that was one of things that they really liked was the fact that I could just fill in in so many places, and I think it’s one of the things that they still like is that I can fill in in a lot of places.

I probably have 30 different PowerPoints for different talks that I do, you know, so like if somebody just called me up and said, Hey, could you do a talk for us on seasonal eating in an hour, I’m sure.

Brian: Very cool. You have any tips for people that they end up becoming vendors if they end up becoming speakers, you’ve done a lot of traveling for these things.

You have any logistical tips on things to watch out for or to keep in mind?

Deborah: Wear shoes that are good for walking, definitely dress for comfort, because nobody’s there dressing up fancy or anything. You know, I know in the beginning I felt like oh, I’m a speaker. I need to dress up you know, and I don’t do that.

Like I wear blue jeans. I wear blue jeans are really comfortable walking shoes now.

Brian: Those are really great points.

Oh, what could listeners do who are interested?

They want to find out more about you maybe get one of your books, where could they go?

Deborah: My website is ThriftyHomesteader.com.

And I also have online classes at ThriftyHomesteader.Teachable.com, and I’m on Facebook so facebook.com/ThriftyHomesteader.

I’m on Instagram, Thrifty Homesteader. Kinda see a theme there.

So I’m trying to keep it simple. Unfortunately, I don’t have thrifty homesteader on Pinterest yet. It’s just under my name, but there’s a link to my Pinterest page for my website.

Brian: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, Deborah, thanks so much for being on the show. Appreciate your time.

Deborah: Oh, I appreciate you asking me it was lot of fun chatting.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: If you can’t tell Deborah is an absolute delight to interview.

There’s a lot that she brings to the table.

One is expertise. Another is passion.

Another is a whole lot of practice that she’s put into it. She’s been a speaker for a while she’s been a writer for a while. All this equals confidence.

That’s a really great formula to look at expertise plus passion plus practice equals confidence.

With that you trust her, you trust what she’s saying. It makes sense.

She’s confident she’s easygoing about her delivery. Something to really keep in mind if you’re looking to be an expert out there in your field.

I love her outlining the organic path that she’s taken into the information realm.

She started out showing people one on one what she did, she started holding classes for groups of people. And then she started traveling to do classes. And then she started speaking.

And then she wrote books. And it all kind of happened at a natural rate, but it was something that she was interested in.

So she was looking for it when the speaking opportunity showed itself, she jumped on it.

Tthat automatically led to her being a book writer and the rest is history.

You can do the same thing, not necessarily in that order. But you can take the same steps that she took and do it purposefully.

Even though a lot of this stuff happened by serendipity for her. It’s what I call the organic life formula, which is learn, do, teach. It’s a big cycle.

You learn something, you do it, and then you teach it to somebody else.

Teaching, if you haven’t done much teaching, it’s a huge piece of the learning method!

You will learn more about what you’re doing by teaching, whatever you already know how to do.

For one thing, you will train yourself more, you will come up with questions that you would not have come up with before because the people you’re teaching, come up with those questions.

It’s a great process and something that anybody should do anyways, even if you aren’t in business, even if you aren’t promoting anything out there, whatever you’re learning how to do go out there and do it and then teach others how to do it.

And you can do that process all at the same time. It’s all part of the learning cycle.

I mentioned on the previous episode, what she said here because it stands out so strong Disney World for homesteaders when she’s talking about the Mother Earth News Fair.

This is an attitude I have gotten from most of the people that I’ve spoken with that have presented at other fairs. And what’s that mean?

Disney World for homesteaders.

Well Disney World or Disneyland is really the gold standard for acting experience based entertainment.

It sounds like an advertisement for Mother Earth News Fairs. I’m not meaning to I haven’t even been yet. But it’s amazing how they’ve created something that is so experiential for the end user that they compare it to Disney World or a carnival, as you’re going to hear Frank Hyman and the next episode.

And once again, you hear her talk about creating articles based on the questions that previous people had.

Content begets content begets content.

If you’re talking about any form of content marketing, once you get it out there once you start getting feedback on it, that helps you to create more content and be able to speak more to what people are interested in.

I can’t wait to meet Deborah, and all these great people that we’re meeting through these podcasts in real life over at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

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.

Andrew Perkins – Mother Earth News Fair

Posted on July 26, 2019March 30, 2020 by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Episode 008.

How do you use events in your industry? Do you interact with your customers (and potential customers) in-person? Can they experience your products or services in the real-world before purchasing them?

Andrew Perkins is the Events & Business Development Director for Ogden Publications. They publish the legendary self-reliance periodical Mother Earth News. He is one of the main people behind developing the Mother Earth News Fair in 2010, which is a live representation of the magazine. They have grown out the Fairs to six annual shows, spread throughout the continental United States.

Though he started out in the field of journalism, Andrew found himself in the Ad Sales Department and eventually handling large-scale events. We are talking with him about that journey, and what people can expect to find at a Mother Earth News Fair.

Can you profit from using events in your business? You’ll be surprised to find out how, as well as other incredible tid-bits in this first episode of our mini-series about the Mother Earth News Fair of 2019. Listen now!

To find out more about the Mother Earth News Fair go to: http://motherearthnewsfair.com

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

Full Transcript

Brian: All right. This is the first in a full on series of episodes that we’re going to be doing here at the podcast, all about the Mother Earth News Fair’s.

So what are the mother earth news fairs?

This all stems back from the legendary magazine Mother Earth News. If you don’t know much about Mother Earth News, you should go and check it out if you go to their website and their about section.

Here’s a quick synopsis. They’re the most popular and long running sustainable lifestyle magazine. Mother earth News provides wide ranging expert editorial coverage of organic foods, country living, green transportation, renewable energy, natural health and green building, lively, insightful, and on the cutting edge.

Mother Earth News is the definitive read for the growing number of Americans who choose wisely and live well.

So the Mother Earth News Fair, is like a live presentation of this magazine and their snippet off motherearthnewsfair.com website says, the fair is your passport to money saving hacks, health boosting remedies and environmental strategies from leading experts and entrepreneurs around the country.

In addition to presentations and hands on workshops, you will encounter a vast marketplace of bounding with innovative resources and products to enrich your life.

We even host book signings featuring some of our favorite authors who are available to field questions and hear your stories one-on-one.

It’s also an ideal destination to meet and network with likeminded enthusiasts from across an array of fields from natural health and beauty to homesteading for profit and beyond. Admission for children is free and there are plenty of youth oriented activities including live animals.

With our growing emphasis on interactive programming. You can learn new skill sets live and onsite more than ever before that Mother Earth News Fair is truly an immersive experience where the magazine comes to life.

I think you’ll get a feel for what these things are all about. These original episodes all take place previous to the Mother Earth News Fair that is happening in Albany, Oregon, August 3rd and August 4th of 2019 we’ll also have episodes that take place at the fair and we’ll be talking with people after the fair who attended it and get to hear their perspectives on what went down.

So without further ado, first episode.

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: Andrew Perkins has been with Ogden Publications since 1999.

Starting as assistant editor, he moved over to ad sales when the company acquired Mother Earth News in 2001. He worked on a variety of special projects before launching the Mother Earth News Fair in 2010 since its inception, it has grown to six locations for fairs and are held every year across the United States.

Andrew Perkins, welcome to the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Andrew: Hey Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian: Yeah, why don’t you let us know a little bit about who you are and what you do for Ogden Publications.

Andrew: Well, sure. You summed it up pretty well there. So currently in my role, my title is the events and business development director and a large part of my intention currently in how we’re organized is on what we call our marketing side of our business and business development side of our business.

Currently, a lot of my time is developing and growing the events.

Our flagship events, as you mentioned, are the Mother Earth News Fairs. And through those flagship events that you also mentioned are held annually around the country in a variety of places.

We’ve developed, extension programs, breakout sessions both during the fairs and leading up to them and sometimes shortly after.

So that’s consuming a lot of my attention, we’re entering a phase where we’re actively looking for new locations that we’ve never been before. It’s a lot of logistics work that goes into that work.

We plan out, you know, a year or sometimes two in advance. And so that’s been consuming a lot of my time, but that’s okay because I’ve got a great team.

We have a fairly substantial ancillary product, merchandise business, you know, we source product and we manufacture products that are endemic to the interests of the folks that read our magazines and visit our websites, Mother Earth News being the large one.

So I oversee that, but we’ve got a great team that is working day in, day out on that initiative. But those are the two big main things.

Brian: Got it. So we got a little bit of your resume background and everything.

How did you end up at this point, personally?

How do you connect with all of this? How did you end up at Ogden Publications and so forth?

Andrew: Sure. So, you know, I grew up close to where we’re located, which is in Topeka, Kansas. And I started with Ogden publications fairly shortly out of college.

It was maybe less than a year out of college. And my background, my degree was in journalism with an emphasis in business that was in the late nineties. The job market was kind of tough.

I wanted to stay in the field of journalism at that time, it seemed like a good idea.

Ogden is one of the few innovating company when it comes to consumer publishing. And a job opened up as an assistant editor for a magazine here that we still produce called Grit.

At the time we only produced two magazines. The magazines had just been acquired by our current owners. So there was these two rural lifestyle magazines.

I think they just launched a third one. And so I came in as an editor, worked for years on the editorial side of our business. I mentioned to our publisher at the time that I was go getter. I’d like to experience other sides of the business and really learn as much as I can and absorb as much as I can about the business in our industry and a opportunity came up to move into ad sales and I thought, well boy that’s not quite what I was thinking.

I don’t know about sales, but then I meditated on it for a little bit and I thought, you know, if I’m really going to be serious about understanding comprehensively how this business works, I need to go outside of my comfort zone.

I got into ad sales shortly after that we launched, actually it was soon after that that we acquired Mother Earth News.

So I was around when we acquired that and my jump into ad sales stemmed from somebody who was currently selling for some other publications that we have moved over to work on the Mother Earth News project. And that’s when I kind of got called over from the editorial side and jumped into ad sales.

Soon after that we launched another publication and I was gratefully picked to be a team to help coordinate the launch of this other magazine.

It was a motorcycle enthusiasts magazine, which was a fun project for me. And when I was working for the motorcycle magazine in that launch, I started building up a fairly decent product portfolio that were endemic to classic and vintage motorcycle enthusiasts, apparel, books, things like that.

With the success of that, we all recognize a need to sort of build that up across the entire company. This is all goes along with the evolution of the publishing industry over the last 15 years.

You know what I mean? Publishers who are on their toes and not back on their heels are constantly innovating and trying to figure out ways to engage with their readers as the landscape changes and print as subscriptions decline and advertising conventional ad sales move from traditional print to digital, now to social media, publishers have need to reinvent themselves.

That’s the same for us. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the forefront of that. Of course the Genesis of that was what I was doing then.

It evolved into this idea of, hey, here’s our biggest title, Mother Earth News. Back in the 70’s Mother Earth News used to have a location in North Carolina where they were published, but a physical location where they developed an eco village. Where they invented and they built things and they tested ideas that authors wrote for articles.

They were doing things that were really engaging people beyond just words on paper. We kind of thought this was back in 2008, 2009 we thought, you know, maybe we don’t buy land and build out this permanent spread just yet. But what if we took the idea of what the eco village was, what the inspiration for that was.

And we developed an event where people can come and we’ve developed this tremendous community of folks that are specialists in these various areas that are covered in the magazine there.

They’re pretty renowned authors and well-known influencers. What if we create an environment where we can bring that community together, invite our readers and they can engage on a personal level.

That was an idea that was an approved idea and we launched the first one in 2010 since there, it’s just grown every year and it’s exciting thing to be a part of.

Brian: Where was that first one at?

Andrew: It was on a ski resort actually in Pennsylvania. It’s called Seven Springs Mountain Resort is about an hour Southeast.

Brian: Very cool. Who’s the ideal attendee for the Mother Earth News Fairs? Who’s just the perfect person that you think would get the most out of it?

Andrew: Well I like to say everyone of course, but for sure people who are interested and very passionate about being more self reliant for themselves, whether that’s growing their own food.

If you want to get into beekeeping or raising small heritage breed livestock, I think that if you’re that type of person, whether that’s on a hundred acres or a thousand acres even or if that’s on a half acre, I think that the Mother Earth News is the best event opportunity that you could possibly find in the country.

And I especially think that that’s important for young people. 20 somethings that are getting hip to things like charcuterie, food preservation, and all of these DIY things that grandma used to do back in the days or maybe even great grandma and we just don’t see anymore.

The industrial food environment that we’re in and they want to learn what it’s all about and what to do, they can get a taste of that at the fair, literally, figuratively.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. So what do you hope people are going to walk away with when they’re done at the fair, let’s say they went for one day or two, what do you hope they’re really going to walk away with?

Andrew: That’s a good question. I think the number one thing that I hope to see or that I wish to see is that people come in with a certain amount of hesitation, even anxiety about doing these things that they’ve always thought that they’ve wanted to do, but don’t know if they can invest the resources are at the time or they’re just scared to kind of jump off that tipping point.

The hope is that they come away realizing that it might be a little bit easier than they think.

It might be, quite a bit more economical that they think. And they have a few key pieces of advice and some resources hopefully, that they picked up from our bookstore that can get them on at least on the track that they want to be on.

So that’s the number one thing.

But lately we’ve really put a lot more into the hands on experience of being affairs.

This is something we started actually in Oregon two years ago, at the Oregon fair. We call it our hands on sessions.

So for years, up until a couple of years ago, really the programming was information-based only.

You came and you sat in a classroom setting, you listened to and will presentation and maybe watched a PowerPoint and you know, some of them are incredibly good and that information is incredibly valuable and they’re still popular and valuable, but we wanted to create an environment where people can actually get in and do some of these things.

When you say what do you want them to take away with them when they leave the fair, we actually do want them to take away cured meat, sauerkraut, a stitched leather bag that they just did from themselves, a home herbal remedy concoction that they learned how to make an a class. So real stuff.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That’s great.

When you go to this page, you will either see our latest programs or if you make it there early enough, you will see an email address, capture page, put in your email address and we will be sure and update you. As soon as we get these out there, you’re not going to want to miss this.

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

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

Brian: We have business owners and executives who listen because we look a lot at self-reliance style businesses on this podcast. What do you think from that perspective that they would be able to get from an event like this?

Andrew: Well, you know, we work very hard and we have all along on really getting in with our companies that get involved in our partners that get involved, making sure we understand what level of engagement that they’re track that they want to get out of these people.

If they recognize, and that’s sort of the entry point, they recognize that our constituency is one that they’re interested in engaging with.

Then the next step is to figure out what level are they excited about to engage with them at. That could be, you know, sort of a conventional participation. You have a booth, maybe you want to just get your name in front of them as much as possible. So the stage screens have the digital screens have the logos on there.

Maybe they want to curate an aspect of the programming.

We have great partner of ours that’s been a partner for years is the Livestock Conservancy. Their involvement is very important to us and I think important to them where they’re excited to engage with their members in these areas that we go to in the country by curating a stage of their breeders to come and talk about the challenges and the surprises and maybe even the basics of getting started with some of these breeds.

That’s an example of engagement that we can work with them on offering.

We’ve had tractor companies that come in and they’re like, we got to sell tractors and we found the way we sell tractors to get people on them and to get digging with them and going with them.

So we’ve put together field days that are adjacent to the fairs where people can come in and just test drive tractors all day, that kind of thing.

Those are just a few examples that we try to work with them after we’ve gotten an idea of what level they want to engage at.

Brian: Great. If someone’s interested in becoming, like you said, a curator, a sponsor and exhibitor, a speaker or contribute in any way to the fair, who should they get ahold of and how should they do it?

Andrew: The easiest way is to go to our website. We have a contact us form and that contact form includes specifically if they’re interested in getting information on either exhibiting or sponsoring and we’re certainly responsive within, 24 hours on those inquiries.

So that website’s, www.motherearthnewsfair.com.

Brian: Great, perfect. And then why are you doing it as a company? You know from your perspective, what’s Ogden Publications and Mother Earth News get out of putting on these events?

Andrew: A key point from a business standpoint, candidly is what I already sort of talked about it to be an OnPoint publisher in 2019, you really have to be out there knowing who your audience is, knowing what your niche is and then getting in there and really understanding how to engage them in the face of some of the challenges that the industry is facing.

One of the ways that we recognize that we need to do that from a business standpoint is to offer a real life, real time engagement.

Social media can’t take that away from us like they may have done with advertising and free blog websites maybe can’t take that away from us the way they may have traditional print subscription.

Nothing can replace that sort of face to face time.

That’s really important for us. Now, me personally, I couldn’t be more fulfilled in my career as it turns out than to go to these events year over year and see these people really see their lives change and it’s exciting for me because it’s also very apolitical.

I introduce myself as somebody who works with Mother Earth News and if they’ve not heard of it or if they’re not aware of it, you know there’s oftentimes the context that it’s sort of a hippie rag.

And then of course I know that a lot of the background is much more sort of on the liberal, libertarian side in terms of the political spectrum. But all in there are people who just want to learn how to do things for themselves and you see these people of different walks of lifes and different perspectives come together and just sort of sit in a room and make cheese and sauerkraut and all get along and it’s like, oh hey, we really have needed something like this. Through all the noise.

This is such a great experience. So it’s really fulfilling for me to see that and be involved in something like that versus other occupations that I might’ve gotten myself.

Brian: Absolutely. What’s left, I know you’ve put on quite a few of them already this year. We have Albany, Oregon coming up, which I’m going to be attending with my podcast producer Sean.

Are there any other Mother Earth News Fairs that people can plug into?

Andrew: Yeah, we’re halfway through the year, so we will have six this year. We’ve done the first three. Albany, Oregon’s the next one that’s coming up two weeks from today on August 2nd and 3rd, I believe.

Then in September we’ll be back at Seven Springs where the first Mother Earth News Fair was. I highly recommend of all the events, that one is unique because it’s held in a resort setting.

Everybody stays there, we hang out at night versus going back to the hotel or wherever. It’s truly special in that regard.

It’s also a two and a half day event and there’s a lot of extended programs outside of just the fair.

Then we’ll wrap up the year in October with our own hometown fair here. And you can find the specific dates on that on our website.

Brian: Great. And if listeners are interested in finding out more or purchase tickets, they can find them on your website at motherearthnewsfair.com.

Andrew: Yeah.

Brian: Fabulous. Well is there any questions I didn’t ask you that you’d like to answer Andrew?

Andrew: I always point out that the Mother Earth News Fairs are family oriented events. They’re very kid friendly.

We have a full slate of kids programming that happens. Kids typically love the animals. The breeds that we bring in and for that reason kids 17 or under are always free at all of our fairs.

So that can save quite a bit and make a difference when deciding whether or not to come.

Also, I should point out that we have a free newsletter.

It’s called Mother Earth News Live. You can sign up for it right on our website.

We kind of hit people up for it pretty square. So it’s not hard to miss and that’s a free newsletter.

We send it out weekly. It’s updates. It’s not just like updates and this is what’s happening. I mean there’s actual content, relevant stuff to what people might be doing, but it was also the best way to stay up to date on what we’re doing with the Mother Earth News Fairs and it’s also something that we use to give exclusive discounts too.

And so it’s the best way to save if you’re interested in that.

Brian: Awesome. That’s really great, Andrew, I really appreciate you giving us time. This is going to be the first in a series of episodes that we have where we’ll be interviewing other speakers and contributors to the Mother Earth News Fair and so can’t wait to find out more and I can’t wait to attend the one in Albany.

So appreciate you giving us your time, thanks for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Andrew: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Closing Thoughts With Brian: This is a great kickoff and intro to the Mother Earth News Fairs and to the idea of event marketing to begin with. When you hear this, don’t just think about the mother earth news fairs, just think about how you can use these things to be able to help your business.

A lot of these principles go across the board. Some of the stuff that Andrew mentioned, I’d like to point out real quick.

Number one is the reinvention of publishing. 20 years ago, paper and ink magazines were still very popular and still very, very big business.

Since the advent of the internet, it’s slowed down magazine growth, not because print is dead, but because print now has competition from online.

With that extra competition comes a reshuffling of all the power structures and it takes old publishers time to figure out the new paradigm.

Well, this new paradigm doesn’t need to be stuck in the ink on paper era. It can go beyond that and it has gone beyond that.

Like he mentioned, the Eco Village that Mother Earth News used to do. Already had a live place that people can go to and be able to get the three dimensional aspect of what they’re talking about in the magazine.

All they did was they took this and put it on the road, included a whole bunch more people.

So you have all these authors and experts and entrepreneurs that are working in this marketplace all coming together.

At one place, all different political persuasions and perspectives all mixing together in a giant melting pot. It’s a beautiful thing.

I can’t wait to go and it brings an aspect of reality.

There’s one thing to read about something. Even if you’re reading about it online, you can read about it, you can see the pictures of it.

There’s something completely different to getting your hands in it, to meeting the people that wrote the articles and so to get back to your business, how many senses are you activating in the person?

Let’s say you have a podcast, maybe you’re getting to them audibly. Maybe they’re able to see a blog posts so they can see pictures.

They can listen to you?

How else are you activating the other senses?

Do people have a chance to be able to meet you one on one?

Do people get to tour your facilities?

I’m just coming up with random ideas. How can you make this fit your business if you don’t put on an event?

Do you attend events?

Do you put yourself out there and make yourself real for your customer?

That’s the real question. There’s a reason why publications like Mother Earth News are going to survive and it’s because they’re thinking outside the box.

They’re not stuck in their medium. They’re willing to go beyond that.

They have a podcast, they have events like the Mother Earth News Fair and many other things that they’re doing to be able to get out there and reach the market and deliver the same product in a different way.

Social media can’t take that away from them.

They no longer have to worry about the competition from online marketing. They can be their own thing.

Andrew was basically referring to this engagement environment and you’ll hear that discussed over and over in the other conversations that we’ve already had.

You’ll be able to hear them as we broadcast them out there.

For example, Frank Hyman who wrote the book Hentopia, talks about how he has these workshops where he shows people how to build water systems for chickens and he brings people up on stage to actually try the process.

Deborah Niemann talks about it being Disneyworld for homesteaders.

This is an engaging environment. This is an experience, not just a display, to go look at how are you providing an experience for your customers.

And if you’re not, what ways can you come up with that experiential treatment?

We can go on and on and I’m sure we’ll have Andrew on in a further episode, but for now, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. Go to offthegridbiz.com and subscribe.

If you’re interested in learning more about events, go to BrianJPombo.com/secrets.

I’ll catch you in the next episode.

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on The Off The Grid Biz Podcast, offthegridbiz.com/contact.

Those who appear on the show do not necessarily endorse my beliefs, suggestions, or advice or any of the services provided by our sponsor. Our theme music is Cold Sun by Dell.

Our executive producer and head researcher is Sean E Douglas. I’m Brian Pombo and until next time, I wish you peace, freedom, and success.

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Andrew Perkins – Mother Earth News Fair