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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.

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: 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.

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: 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.

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.

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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.