Tag: nutrition

RaeJean Wilson – GloryBee

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RaeJean Wilson
GloryBee

Episode 28.

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

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

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

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

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

Full Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She also spent 10 years as GloryBees HR manager.

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

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

RaeJean: Thank you. Thanks for having me today.

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

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

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

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

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

RaeJean: Well, actually, no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How do you pay your employees?

What kind of benefits do you provide?

Do your suppliers you know, are they ethical?

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

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

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

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

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

And that’s an April every year.

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

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

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

Brian: Oh, that’s great.

RaeJean: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But on the business side, they have a customer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: You too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How are you dealing with that?

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

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

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

How is that affecting you?

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

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

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

Where are you selling?

Does it make sense?

Are you making the money back from there?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where are you going to be in 20 years?

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

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

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

Are you going to sell it?

Are you going to shut it down?

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

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

That’s BrianJPombo.com.

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

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

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

Joe Stout – Mt. Capra

Posted on by brianjpombo@hotmail.com

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Joe Stout
Mt. Capra

Episode 27.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lucas and Kate Pombo

Listen Now!

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

 

Full Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe, welcome to the show.

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

Brian: Oh, thanks. Thank you very much.

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

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

Brian: Just barely, lol!

Joe: Just barely yeah, I feel it.

Brian: Get it where I can, you know.

Joe: Right.

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

Joe: Yeah, great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I really found myself being drawn to two things.

Number one is the human sciences and human nutrition.

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

I wanted to make it my career as well.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Yeah, well that’s fabulous.

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

Joe: Yeah.

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

Joe: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

Joe: Because we are a niche company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Wow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Word of mouth is definitely a huge one for us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Wow, that’s fabulous.

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

Joe: Yes.

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

Joe: Yeah, exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

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

Joe: Yeah, correct.

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

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

I really like that a lot.

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

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

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

That’s why it’s kind of frustrating.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Oh, that’s fabulous.

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

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

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

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

That’s why they brought it to you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s all they need to know.

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

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

Brian: That’s excellent.

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

Joe: Sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Absolutely.

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

Brian: Yeah, got it.

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

Joe: Yep, yep, absolutely.

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

Joe: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Right on, fabulous.

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

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

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

Brian: That’s a great synopsis.

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

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

What’s the best direction to send them?

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

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

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

Brian: This was a fabulous conversation.

Joe, I really appreciate you spending time with me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was barely 1% for his weight.

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

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

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

So we purchase the kit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who are you going after?

Who were you talking to?

Who are you putting this in front of?

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

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

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.

Charles Wiley – Corn Man

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Charles Wiley
Corn Man

Episode 23.

Who is Corn Man? Is he a music album, a children’s book or a way to expose where our food comes from?

Charles Wiley is a lifelong musician who was caught off guard by one of the best-kept-secrets in the world of nutrition today: the amount of corn byproducts that are artificially added to EVERYTHING.

Hear host Brian J. Pombo and Charles discuss how his art form has been inspired by his mission to inform. How can you use the Corn Man to stand-out in your crowded market? LISTEN NOW!

Find out more about Charles Wiley and Corn Man: https://charleswiley.net/cornman/

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

Full Transcript

Charles: Dovetailing back when we talked about before, I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.

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

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

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

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

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

Brian: Charles Wiley he has been writing music and playing drums for 25 years, he currently lives in Los Angeles and plays with various bands and artists, including rock band Dark Horse Rising, Riot award winning singer songwriter Chris Angeles and Americana Band Circus 62.

In addition to playing drums, he also writes music for television.

His music has been played on Oprah, Dateline NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers, the Dr. Oz Show, The Young and the Restless and more Charles created the corner Man project to bring awareness to how much corn is in everything we eat.

Corn man is an ongoing action adventure children’s book series and progressive rock concept album. Charles was inspired to call attention to the issue using music and humor.

Corn man hopes to be the conversation starter and tackling the complex issues surrounding the food industry, the environmental impacts of it and the unsustainable nature of how we eat and grow food. Charles Wiley, welcome to the off the grid biz podcast.

Charles: Thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here.

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

Charles: Okay, well basically, as a bio said, I’ve been drumming for over 25 years and for the last six to seven years, I’ve been a full time musician, make my living playing drums in various bands, some of the bands you mentioned, doing session, work with other bands, writing some music for TV, and then also I guess, the Corn Man project is kind of dovetailed its way into that.

And between those three things, that’s kind of how I kind of break up my time.

In between projects, I had this desire to start creating my own music, writing my own music, and from there kind of morphed into my own solo stuff. And then the core main project kind of started coming about because of that, so

Brian: Fabulous.

So how did you end up at this point in your life?

What’s your life story?

Charles: Well, long story very short.

My background in music is very common to musician. I played in bands growing up. I was lucky, my dad’s a musician. He still teaches guitar in his retirement.

My older brother plays his guitar.

So him and I, we always played in bands. And my goal was always to be a full time touring musician, you know, writing and recording doing that thing. So that’s been my goal.

I’d say about eight or nine years ago, it kind of deviated from having my own band to kind of working with other bands. And I kind of became a sideman in that realm and really enjoyed that.

But I always had this desire to create my own music and things. Rewind I’d say a about four or five years ago.

My wife and I were kind of doing some research on trying to eat healthier kind of change our lifestyle because we bought a Costco membership and I got very excited about all the food there and bought too much and ate too much and gained a lot of weight and wasn’t Costco fault.

But um, I was just like, I want to do something to kind of change the way we’re eating and it started with the book, Forks Over Knives from there kind of dovetailed into the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Foodopoly.

I just really became interested in the food industry, the food we were eating, and what it was doing to our bodies, and I was on a three month cruise gig, where I was the drummer in a cruise band.

I was reading the book Foodopoly, it was talking about the various ways we raised food and things like that and It was actually making me sick reading it, because you know, you’re trying to I was reading, I was eating lunch, you know, trying to reading about the food industry.

I was like, Oh gosh, I don’t feel good.

But for whatever reason, corn just popped out at me as this thing that was in virtually everything we eat.

Now, as you know, it’s in the fuel we burn as an ethanol and things like that. And I just became kind of obsessed with how did corn become this thing?

How did how did it turn into this kind of juggernaut that’s in everything we eat?

So I wanted to bring awareness to the issue.

I thought, what, how could I do that, you know, being a musician, obviously, had to be involved. But I’m not a big fan of when people try to persuade you with new information and they kind of bleed with it, you know, kind of hit you over the head with it.

So I wanted to do that in a fun way, where it would kind of engage people.

Evidently, drawing my head on stock of corn is one way to kind of bring people’s defenses down.

You know, they’re like, what is this all about?

As you mentioned, in the intro, I came up with the story.

My wife and I wrote the book series together, I wrote all the music, I hired musician friends to play on it. And we basically just wanted to get this conversation going, you know, because as you know, I’m sure there’s, I think over 50 or 60 ingredients that are all corn based that are in most of the food we eat on a daily basis.

The studies are coming back that it’s the health implications for kids and adults and the planet on top of that. It’s just kind of astronomical that kind of brought us here.

Brian: Oh, fabulous.

Was the concept of the book first or was the music album first How did that transpire?

Charles: I want to say the music was first the music came first and then I tend to kind of have a lot of ideas.

I kid with my wife because I think all my ideas are great obviously you know and but it’s when an idea sticks in my head and I keep chewing on it and I’m like and the idea of the artwork came with the music and when I saw my head on a stock of corn and the artist

Andy West off a buddy of ours who did that when he drew it I was like, Man, that’s so funny that looks at you know, and then I was like, let’s do this story.

The music came first the story came second. And as of now chapter one and two are out for the music and the ebooks, but Chapter One is the only one that is on paperback.

Chapter Two is coming out in paperback hopefully by the holiday.

Brian: I originally got to see you at the Mother Earth News Fair in Albany, Oregon. And you had a booth there you had your your first book there you had your music.

What led you to putting this out on display like that?

What tied you in with the Mother Earth News Fair specifically?

Charles: Great question.

Well, corn man is kind of a difficult, difficult concept to explain.

Everyone talks about you know, you need your elevator pitch. Give me three or four sentences on what this is.

I tell people it’s a action adventure kids story and a progressive rock concept album and they’re like, those don’t go together.

Long story short, I was trying to find it I still am in the process of trying to find best audience to get the story out to. And I was reaching out to some radio stations for promotion for corn man, and came across a radio station in Portland.

They basically said if you’re in the area, we could probably get you on the air can get you an interview and I was like, oh, shoot, okay, I need to find something.

I was looking and I knew of Mother Earth News Fair for a while. I knew of their podcast, and then I saw they were going to be in Albany, Oregon, and I was like, Huh, okay.

My in-laws live about three and a half hours south of Albany. So it all just kind of made sense to just go there and test the waters with the Mother Earth News Fair attendees because you know, where I met you there.

So many of those people there are already involved doing things to for sustainability, conservation, all that stuff. So I knew in that aspect, it will would work, they would relate to it. But am I already telling them stuff they already know, you know what I mean?

It’s like so we just went to check it out. The response was great. You know, we talked to a lot of amazing people, yourself included. And it just became a nice kind of…that was the first major fair we went to.

So we had a good time that the turnout was good.

Brian: You plan on doing any other type of live events like that?

Charles: Yeah, I hope to do maybe once every couple months or so.

And then the thing I really want to start doing is, at the Mother Earth News Fair, I read chapter one at the kids stage they had there, and the audio book is coming out in a couple months.

That has a soundtrack that I wrote to it.

So I had that soundtrack playing as I read the book live, and I want to start going to schools and I want to start doing maybe like an hour, hour and a half demonstration.

Hopefully that the ideal is to play two or three songs off the record where I can play drums live with in front I think the class and then read the story at the fair, I think you might have saw we had like the the word search they can take with them that shows and just get that conversation started.

I remember when I was a kid, like if I got the bit in my teeth about something, I would nag my parents to know and like, hey, let’s do this, let’s do this.

So the goal is to get the kids involved and they can go home, and they can start looking at the ingredients, they can start looking at the food and, you know, helping their parents shop.

I’m not a parent, so I don’t know if that’s gonna be fun for the parent or not, but um, but that’s the goal.

I want to start going to more schools, I want to start doing more fairs and I want to start playing this music out live with a full band. That won’t be probably till next year.

Commercial Break: Okay, we’re going to pause the conversation right there. What you’re listening to right now is a special edition podcast.

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

Brian: What you’ve heard weaved in and out of this episode are quick little selections from Charles Wiley’s corn man album. You can find out more at CharlesWiley.net/cornman.

Music

Brian: So what age group do you think’s ideal for this?

Charles: You know, I do think it’s gonna kind of following the 10 to 14 year old range for the younger kids. I think they were related to the illustrations, the story is a little, I don’t wanna say dark. But I think that that 10 to 14, 15 year old year old range is going to be really good. And it’s also for adults too.

I’ve had some adult friends say they liked the story and all that stuff.

The story is basically following a dog and a cat as they go on an adventure looking for their owner who goes missing. And in-between all this, there are these corn facts that are being, you know, put into the book.

The reason why the owner went missing has to do with corn. So it’s just kind of a fun way to kind of get the whole family involved and talking about it.

Brian: Very cool.

Is there any other way that you’re finding new customers for the Corn Man series?

Besides doing a fair like this or going to classrooms?

Have you found any other way that you’ve been able to reach people so far?

Charles: It’s kind of been a combination of all that, you know, going to fairs obviously, being on social media.

You can go to CharlesWiley.net/CornMan.

And I have a Facebook page that’s for Corn Man and Instagram page for Corn Man.

But a lot of it’s just been word of mouth, grassroots. And I’m okay with that because I find talking to people in person or over online or whatever about the project in more depth is kind of the best way.

You know, it kind of slowly gets them involved.

And as I said before the elevator pitches kind of convoluted. So having a 2, 3, 4 minute conversation with someone about it has really been good.

Between the fairs, the social media music angle, we’re reaching quite a few people. So it’s been good.

Brian: Oh, that’s great.

So you’ve got the album, you’ve got the book, and now you got the audio book, which is a great hybrid between the two. That’s a really neat process.

Do you see anything else? And I see you have a couple t-shirts in the background.

Charles: Yeah.

Brian: And besides that, what else do you see in Corn Man’s future.

Charles: I’d like to finish up with the kids story aspect of it by next year, I think three chapters is going to kind of tie in the story together.

After that, though, I kind of see it being an ongoing project where I’m performing the music.

We’re kind of dovetails into education, slash music, slash reading, and basically just kind of going to events, going to schools talking about it, I really want the project to help kind of get that awareness out there, kind of get that attention to the issue.

We’re not villainizing farmers in any way because I think their struggle is is incredible what they have to go through and all that stuff.

But it’s all about the awareness to a while there’s corn and like everything we eat.

Be wise, there’s so much corn and everything we eat and see what can I do as a consumer to help that and I think that’s just going to be a ongoing thing for you know, hopefully the rest of my life.

Brian: So if we were looking at years ahead down the road.

What do you think would be an ideal scenario to come about?

Like if this was just a runaway hit?

I mean, you get cartoons, movies, whatever else. If it could just be as big as you could possibly imagine. And it gets the proper attention that you want and people start waking up to this idea.

What would be a great thing to for you to see change out there?

What’s something that’s measurable that you can see happening?

Charles: Wow, great question.

I think what I would start to see is a everything you mentioned.

I would love to see it turned into a movie, I think an animated movie, that’d be awesome.

I would love to perform this music to it live on stages, either with the animation movie behind it, or even some live theatrical representation of it.

So for the entertainment part of it. That’s kind of the goal.

Large shows festival goals, things of that nature, performing the music would be great.

But for the impact of how do I know, this is making a change?

How do we how do we know?

I think it’s kind of multifaceted. I think one way is we’re going to start to see changes, and hopefully reversals in type two diabetes and kids and obesity and kids.

For the first time we’re seeing this stuff I just heard to where I think if we continue down this path, the youngest generation is going to be the first generation in a long time, not to outlive the previous generation.

You know, so seeing reversals and those health trends, I would like to see more community gardening, farming, that sort of thing.

For myself. I thought food came from the fast food joints.

I thought food came from the grocery stores, you know, it’s like, that’s just what I was accustomed to.

But I really wish there was something in my school when I was growing up saying, No, this is how you grow your own food.

This is where that stuff comes from a return to having a vested interest in our food.

I would like to see a change in that, you know, I would like to see, the big corporations are financing all this stuff, I think the biggest indicator is will see those brands start to shrink.

I think their foothold in the market will start to shrink. It’s already happening. And some rounds.

I mean, when you have a, you know, these huge corporations buying, these Mom and Pop organic places, not to be facetious, but they’re not doing it because they care about organic, they’re doing it because they can make money, so it’s like it got enough attention.

Yeah, I hope that answered your question.

Brian: No, that’s great. That’s great.

What are the main obstacles standing in your way of being able to do that being able to expand this corn man project?

Charles: I think one of the obstacles is kind of trying to find the right audience for it.

I think that that’s been a challenge.

But I also think it’s been a good learning lesson for myself because I’m figuring out who needs to hear This message and I can only use myself as an example.

So I’m using what gets me excited about things to kind of try to brand it to kind of market it. And yeah, I just think over time, it’s going to start to kind of gain momentum and build, build, build and build and with people like yourself, reaching out and being so kind and helpful and spreading the word, I can’t thank you enough, but individually like yourself as well, who’s helping build the momentum?

Brian: What advice would you have for people that come from a creative background like yourself that are going into building kind of a larger project like this?

It’s almost a business entity unto itself.

What advice would you have for people like that?

Charles: I think you hit the nail right on the head.

It is a business and a thing on the creative aspect is keep the creativity happening, that keep that inspiration going, and don’t get bogged down by the details.

You know what I mean? It’s like, and don’t be afraid to work with people, that are going to help.

That’s one thing I really had to learn.

I’m still learning about but it’s like, I think I read in one of those business investing or small business books, like 95% of all small businesses fail because the owner tries to do everything themselves selves, it’s being okay with relinquishing control because this company can help expand the brand or get the word out because that’s their specialty.

That’s, you know, my specialty is coming up with weird concepts, writing the music, playing drums.

That’s my thing.

It’s like, so my advice would be to anyone starting this, keep creating and use the business side of it to channel that creativity to because in today’s market, and the music industry is flipped completely on its ear compared to the way it was 20 years ago.

So you have to be okay with that.

You can’t cry about what was you just got to pick up and be like, this is the reality of it.

How do I make it ago?

How do I make it work in today’s day age and just keep going?

That’s all I can say.

Brian: That’s great advice.

I’ve never quite seen anything quite like the Corn Man concept.

So have you? Have you done anything like this before?

Have you seen anything that has inspired you to go in this direction?

Or is it just kind of taken on a life of its own?

Charles: I don’t think I’ve seen anything, I guess food related in this way? No.

I will say there are bands that have followed that they do concept albums and and they have themes, and some of them do have a pretty big footprint in a cause or a foundation.

But there wasn’t one particular band or anything that I was looking at for inspiration.

Basically, I just had the ideas and then dovetailing back to what we were talking about before I was like, how do I separate myself in this market of a million musicians, a million bands a million this and it kind of all kind of came together coalesced and here we are.

Brian: Wow, that’s really good point that differentiating yourself in just the sea of musicians out there that are trying to cope with the change in the industry and everything that I was hoping you touch on that, that you it’s really cool that you can see that about yourself and that you’re taking it that direction.

That’s very cool.

Charles: Thank you so much. Yeah.

Brian: What could a listener who’s interested in finding out more about corn man and the whole project?

Where would you suggest they go?

Is it CharlesWiley.net/CornMan?

Or do you have anywhere else you send them?

Charles: That’s kind of the hub. That’s my website and that CharlesWiley.net/CornMan will give you all the information about the quarter man project.

There are a couple of videos up talking about its release on paperback.

There’s some video of me drumming to some of the songs there. There’s links to buy the book, by the music, all that stuff. And you can also just get in contact with me. You know that way too.

But yeah, CharlesWiley.net/CornMan should have everything you need right there.

Brian: And there’s new details out coming all the time. I mean, with your new audio book coming out, I saw that on social media before we met here.

So it’s really neat to see, you’re always trying something new. If you’d like, we’d love to have you back on the show another time and find out where Corn Man takes you from here on out.

Charles: Oh, that’d be great that’d be awesome. Yeah.

Brian: Charles Wiley, thanks so much for being on the Off The Grid Biz Podcast.

Charles: My pleasure, Brian, thank you so much.

Brian’s Closing Thoughts: Soon as I came across Charles at the Mother Earth News Fair, he really stood out.

Obviously, what he’s offering is something that you’ve never quite seen before, which I think is really neat.

One of the most important pieces that you can take away from this is the concept of having a cause tied in with your business somewhere somehow, if your business isn’t already a cause unto itself, as The Corn Man project has been for him, then you need to find a cause you need to find what makes what you’re doing important beyond the relationship between you and your customer.

What is the big idea?

Obviously, Charles is relating this back to World Health.

So that’s a big idea. That is something that is major and talking about the proliferation of corn into our entire lives.

These are big concepts, and not the type of thing that would normally be handled by a children’s book or any type of musical piece.

I love the conversation we were having about finding the audience. So obviously, he’s come up with a product, he’s come up with a concept he’s come up with something that can go on to many different formats already.

He’s gone from musical pieces to children’s books. Two coloring books.

Now to audio books, this can translate into multiple media’s, which is cool, but really finding that audience is so important. And this ties into so many of the things that I’ve talked about with people.

Ideally, most of us never do it this way.

Ideally, it would be great if you can find your audience first, and then produce a product or service that would help them directly.

The finding of the audience is such a difficult, painstaking process and you could hear Charles going through it.

But it’s cool that he is and I can’t wait to find out who the audiences are that he’s able to truly connect with in the long run.

The neat thing that he has a handle on is that differentiation that we were talking about being different standing out, doing things that other people can’t possibly do, in a way that they can’t possibly do them in media.

Mediums that no one’s using for these purposes, he’s willing to do that, that he can see that that’s his true value to the marketplace and his ability to stand out.

I mean, just the picture of his face on a piece of corn makes a person stop and say,

Okay, what is this?

What’s going on here?

It’s really great. How are you channeling the creativity in your business?

How are you really putting it on the line?

And doing something that’s so unique, that it causes people to stop and say, Okay, what is this?

What are you talking about?

What are you offering to do?

These are good questions to have. These are the ways that you get attention in your market. And when you’re really out there looking for the ideal audience for your ideal customer or client.

You really got to be willing to look outside the box like Charles is doing, he’s willing to go to events like the Mother Earth News Fair.

While at the same time having readings in classrooms. I mean, he’s going all over the place, it seems that he’s really willing to do anything which is a great attitude to have and something I think we can all learn from.

Can’t wait to find out more about corn man’s adventures in the future and really see where this ends up taking them. It can go in so many directions.

So really exciting to see something like this out there on the market.

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.

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