Farmer Spotlight: Benoit Family Farmstead
In 2021, Benoit Family Farmstead made the decision to partner with Barn2Door to expand their reach to access new Buyers with Farm eCommerce and streamline their operations. The Farm has been able to add more products and serve their community, without having to spend extra hours in the office.
As a member of the Barn2Door Farm Advisor Network, Erica Benoit is excited to share her experience and advice for Farms looking to grow direct sales. Learn more about Benoit Family Farmstead: https://www.barn2door.com/fan/benoit-family-farmstead
Find more Farm Resources: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Read the blog:
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[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast, the go to podcast for do it yourself farmers who are taking control of their own business, skipping the middleman and selling direct to local consumer and wholesale buyers. This podcast is hosted by Barn2Door, the number one business tool for independent farmers to manage their business, promote their brand and sell online and in person.
Let's dive in to today's Independent Farmer Podcast.
Janelle Maiocco: Welcome to the Independent Farmer Podcast. I'm Janelle, CEO of Barn2Door and your host for today's episode. As many of our listeners are aware, Barn2Door helps independent farmers promote their own brand, manage direct sales online and in person, and streamline their business operations.
In today's conversation, we're [00:01:00] talking to Erica of Benoit Family Farmstead in Missouri. She uses Barn2Door to power her business. They just reached their goal of having her husband quit his off farm job. So, I can't wait to dig into that today. Today I'm happy to welcome Erica, where we're going to get a chance to learn about your farm, your story, out of Missouri, and obviously your goals for the future.
Welcome, Erica.
Erica Benoit: Thanks. Glad to be here.
Janelle Maiocco: Awesome. Well, before we dig in, clearly everybody wants to know about your farm. So, how long have you been farming? What are you farming? What are you selling off of your farm?
Erica Benoit: So we bought this farm nine years ago from my grandma. And we started out with just a handful of chickens.
We had a couple cows. It started out with a couple of pigs, just very small and we have 30 acres here. So, we wanted to try to make it profitable. So, we have 30 acres, let's make money on the 30 acres. I was a stay at home mom, when we bought this. We had a two year old and a newborn [00:02:00] and we wanted me to continue to stay at home.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Erica Benoit: And our big goal was homesteading. We thought that we would just grow our own food and, you know, all of the things, the big garden, all the things that came from homesteading. Then, we really liked the pigs. So, we kind of looked into other options of selling the pigs. And in our area, nobody really, there's probably only one person that I knew of that was selling direct to consumer.
So, we didn't really know much about that. So, we wanted to do like a more natural route because that's how we wanted to eat our pork. And we went to a different company. So we had a representative from Niman Ranch come to our farm, we were set up to raise hogs for them. You had to sell a certain amount each year to them in order to be part of their program.
So, we started raising up, we went from a couple of sows, we got all the way up to 10 sows and we were going to sell [00:03:00] directly to them. So it takes several months to get to that point, and in the meantime we were selling direct to consumer, just not really knowing what we were doing, just selling to our friends, our neighbors, we kind of sell them on Swap Shop, on Facebook, just anywhere we could get somebody to buy something from us.
Then it got to the point where we were finally big enough, we called Niman Ranch, and they said they weren't accepting any hog farmers at that time. Now on our end, we should have known that you have to sign a contract, like we should have known more, but we thought, talking to the people, they knew we were growing.
We thought that we would easily be able to get in. So we got real big, couldn't get in. And that's when we realized that we were selling just fine direct to consumer. And the word was spreading. People were calling us all the time, wanting whole and half hogs. And we realized that we could actually make a go out of it.
So, that's just when the model switched from wanting to sell it wholesale to learning we could just do it on our own. [00:04:00] Just a couple of years ago, we talked to other farmers that were selling to that company and we were buying their hog feeders from them because they weren't making any money selling it to them anymore.
And that was a really big eye opener of, it really worked out for us that we skipped that and we really kind of saved ourselves by not using it as a company.
Janelle Maiocco: In hindsight, you're glad you didn't sign a contract.
Erica Benoit: Yes, yes, I'm glad that it didn't work out, even though it was really hard in the moment, realizing we had all these hogs to sell but yeah, it ended up working out. It worked out. It always works out.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, kind of amazing. You ended up with a business model that you mentioned that it was more lucrative, like more profitable when you were selling direct. So when did that sort of light bulb go off?
Erica Benoit: So I just kind of assumed that everybody else selling hogs were making good money or they were making profits. Just recently I learned that they aren't making as much as I [00:05:00] thought they would be making. So, we got down a couple months ago, we had 50 hogs to sell and I got down to like the last five and I'm stressing it's like a month before butcher date.
We've never, we never sold that many hogs at one time before and I've never had hogs anywhere near a month before butcher date. Normally they would sell out in a couple of weeks or at least a couple of months. And so, I was just going to take them to the sale barn. And then, I realized that the sale barn price was less than my input cost price.
So, I didn't even feel like I could just offload them at the sale barn.
Janelle Maiocco: Cause you'd lose money.
Erica Benoit: I'd lose money. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Interestingly. Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
But they ended up selling and it always works out.
Janelle Maiocco: A different way.
Yes. A different way. Not through the sale barn. No, I appreciate that. I think it's good to highlight, and there's some advantages to being an independent farmers.
You actually set the price, right? And I think sometimes people forget to realize that anytime you're using any [00:06:00] aggregator, distributor, or in some instances to your point, sort of those wholesale parameters to single buyer, many times their business model requires the pricing for your product to be lower.
Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, that's one of the reasons why, and I know it's hard work to be an independent farmer, by the way, there's a lot for you to manage, right? Because if you're an independent farmer selling direct, because that helps you set your prices, maximize your profits, and we also get excited about the fact that farmers that we work with, when they're selling direct, they own the buyer relationships, which is just awesome from like a de risking perspective, right?
Like you know your buyers. But what that means is that means you're in charge of your own marketing and sales, because you didn't offload it to somebody else, right? At the end of the day, like, so it's a little extra effort, but you also keep the profit and have, ideally a more sustainable business, generally speaking, because you own those relationships, you know who they are.
It's you know, a diversified group of people, et cetera. So, it's that trade [00:07:00] off, but in the end, it sounds like, you experienced that very closely in terms of what that could have looked like for you and your family versus what it does today. And 50 hogs. That's awesome. Congrats. I love seeing the growth.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. So I know you're doing chickens, hogs, eggs. What else are you selling?
Erica Benoit: I sell a little bit of raw milk.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-Hmm.
Erica Benoit: And then, we're starting to do more beef. So, we started our beef herd. We raised extra cattle. We only have 30 acres, so we can only do so much out here.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-Hmm.
Erica Benoit: So, we started with a smaller breed of cattle, so we get more head per acre.
When we bought our cattle herd, we had five cows and a bull and we've just kind of saved back heifers, got a new bull and just kind of slowly growing. And now we're up to 18 cows with our bull. So, it's taken about five or six years to really get that growth.
But slow, steady growth is, it's good. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. So I appreciate that. [00:08:00] Yeah. You guys have been at it. I mean, the fact that your husband now was able to recently quit his off farm job is trophy style Farming, right? Like, you did it!
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it so much. Okay, so, beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk. So you have beef and dairy cows.
I have to ask because I'm wondering if other farmers out there are wondering, what's your most profitable item, you know, across all of those products that you're selling? If I asked you what your favorite is, it might be different than your most profitable, but I'm kind of curious about both.
Erica Benoit: I would say our hogs are probably the most profitable.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Erica Benoit: They require a lot less work. So like our cows, we're moving them daily. Milk cows, you got to milk them twice a day. Butcher chickens, we're moving them daily.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Erica Benoit: Laying hens, we don't really make a profit on laying hens. We just make enough to pay for the feed, really.
But for some reason, eggs draw in customers. Everybody wants to farm fresh eggs. You can really taste the difference.
Janelle Maiocco: It's the crack item, right? That's awesome. [00:09:00] Because then they buy more than just the eggs, right?
Erica Benoit: Right.
Janelle Maiocco: And they're a loyal customer. It's like a marketing exercise, not necessarily a profit exercise.
Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. Yep. So I would say our hogs, because there's not a lot of work into them. We have self feeders, we have automatic waters. So, as soon as they're weaned, we just throw them in the pin and it just does itself. They call the feed store, they come drop off the feed. I don't really have a lot of work.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. That's awesome. How many meat birds are you doing? You said you do that daily?
Erica Benoit: So, we do a thousand butcher chickens a year.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Erica Benoit: Five groups of 200 that we process...
Janelle Maiocco: Rotate through.
Erica Benoit: Yep, and me and Jared and our four kids and the neighbor guy, we all work together and we all process all the chickens on our farm too.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. I might invite myself to come help, but we can talk about that later.
Erica Benoit: Everybody wants to come help, but nobody ever shows up.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, I can, I can change that. [00:10:00] I appreciate that. I love it that people want to help, but they should actually show up.
Well, thank you. That's really helpful. Like what you're selling, what's most profitable. Did you tell us your favorite?
Erica Benoit: I really like my milk cows. Those are my favorite. Kind of stubborn, but I've been told that my milk cows act like me. So we, we tend to get along pretty good.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, I love that so much.
No, it's great to have favorites. Absolutely. Yes. It's part of the joy of being a farmer and doing what you're doing. In order to have a successful independent farm business, you must have your own buyers, right? Marketing obviously is how you get them and keep engaging them to drive sales.
But let's first talk, and that's fun, because I know you're really good at marketing, so we'll save the best for last. But in terms of sales, if I'm a buyer, where do I buy from you? Like, how do I even know what you have? How am I buying from your farm?
Erica Benoit: All of our sales go through our website, obviously Barn2Door. I am all over social media and everything is [00:11:00] linked back...
Janelle Maiocco: Click, click, click.
So if a farmer, called you, you would just send them a link to your store? Like, go buy here?
Erica Benoit: Yes, yes. So, I have a couple of people, like older people, that don't really want to order through the website.
And I just know that I go to them, they pay me cash.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, they can mentally calculate.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, so I really try to limit that as much as possible. Mostly because inventory. So, I can keep track of everything when it's all linked to our Barn2Door website and I'm not having to make sure I get back on our website and take two of something out.
That just adds in a lot of extra work for me and I don't want to do all that.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I have other farmers I've spoke to who are like I make people use the site or else I order through the site on their behalf just because it just keeps the inventory counted in real time and seamless and you need to know what you have to sell or not.
Erica Benoit: Right.
Janelle Maiocco: So, the inventory side. They're all essentially using online store. And are you primarily doing consumers at this [00:12:00] point or do you sell to any chefs, retail stores?
Erica Benoit: It's just consumer.
Janelle Maiocco: Got it. Okay. And then if I'm a consumer, I go to your online store. What are the options for me, your buyer in terms of your store?
What am I looking at in terms of my options to buy those different items?
Erica Benoit: We have pork cuts that we'll do. Our pork subscription is how we sell most of our pork, plus whole and halves. So, I really like whole and halves because I don't have any more money into them once they go to the butcher shop.
And so, I'm not having freezers full of thousands of dollars worth of meat that may or may not sell. And, so whole and half hogs are my favorite. Raise them up, send them to the locker, they're picking them up from the locker. It's done and over with and I really like marketing those too because we're a family and I know what it's like to need to save money as a family and so it's fun to help other families get basically what we're doing.
Like they don't have to [00:13:00] raise the hog but they get a big inventory of hogs in their freezer. I like that part.
Janelle Maiocco: I know, I do too. Yeah, I appreciate that. And you mentioned subscription. So, because you know that we teach academy classes and, different things for farmers for their e commerce and things like that.
One of the things that we talk about is, because who doesn't love quarter half whole, like that's incredible, move the whole animal, but if you want to, if you want to expand your offerings so that more buyers will buy from you because not everybody likes to buy quarter, half, whole, subscriptions has been a winning proposition for a lot of farms in terms of consistent recurring sales.
So, you don't have to sweat it like you did when you had five hogs left. You're like, no, it's in the subscriptions. It's taken care of. Right? And you know, we have some farms, you know, they'll start with like 30%, 40%, we have some farms that sell as much as 80 percent of their products through subscription model.
And so, they sleep a little better. And I think you've mentioned subscriptions before. Like, it sounds to me like they both work well for you, especially including how much you're trying to [00:14:00] move.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. And subscription, like our pork subscriptions, I know I have a limit of 12, 12, 10 pound subscriptions each month.
And I can calculate up based on our butcher date, how many hogs I need to send to the locker that month. And then, I might send a couple extra to sell out of the freezer. But that helps me know how many I should get butchered and I can judge my prices a lot better based on that. Even like my butcher costs on me, like all of my budgeting for the farm, I'm able to kind of stay on top of that a lot more because I know what to expect.
Janelle Maiocco: Subscriptions are awesome, but keep the buffer, right, of extras or quarter, half, wholes. We often tell folks too, if you do a subscription, like year round, people are buying the subscription, but every so often just offer a single box even, right?
So they can try it, which is a great piece of candy in terms of them getting hooked on how good it is. And then, hopefully diving into the subscription. Yeah, [00:15:00] that's good. All right. So, if I go to your store, I'm looking at pork subscriptions, quarter, half, wholes, cuts as well and then beef. Do you sell quarter half whole beef as well or how does that work?
Erica Benoit: Yes, so the beef's kind of tricky because we've had such a small amount and I had one customer that he told me, he asked me if I can make it a rule that whoever ordered last year gets first dibs this year. I don't have to advertise any whole, half beef because they're already pre sold everybody before and they all know that if you don't order the next year you don't get the chance the following year.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing marketing FOMO, all day long, crushing it.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, so one of my customers, they're like passing out beef to their adult children...
Janelle Maiocco: Yes.
Erica Benoit: Giving the beef out to everybody else, so they make sure they get the beef the next year.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, because we all know that's like gold, right? Like that's the good stuff.
Oh, that's so fun to hear. Well, that is demand on fire. I'm so happy to hear that. Awesome. Okay, so that's what we have in terms of [00:16:00] sales. Now, let's talk a little bit about logistics. Again, as an independent farmer, you are managing how they get their food. So, back to me being your buyer, how the heck do I get the food from you?
Like, I can go online to the store, drop it in my cart, and then what am I choosing in terms of fulfillment options?
Erica Benoit: So, you're choosing either, picking up here or have another pickup location at kind of a larger town near us. Mostly deliveries though. I do a lot of deliveries. I do every Tuesday.
Everybody knows every Tuesday I make my deliveries and that's just to the local small towns around us. If it's a bigger town, we have like Columbia, I'll go there once a month. But, if it got to where I was selling a lot to that area, then I would move it up to a couple times a month or weekly if I need to.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, you kind of have to start like with your products. When you're delivering to a new area, you kind of have to start slow, but then the word of mouth, , the ones giving their meat out to their adult children.
Like the word gets out that it's sort of a crescendo from a marketing perspective when you have people in new [00:17:00] areas telling other people in those new areas, and then you can grow.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a very fine line of growing, too. I sell out of pretty much everything, and so I can't go put an ad on TV because then it would be too much, so I have to really just slowly advertise here and there.
Janelle Maiocco: It's very smart.
Erica Benoit: Like beef, I don't talk about beef at all because I still have a couple times a month, people are always asking me about beef. I don't have it, you gotta wait two more years before...
Janelle Maiocco: Oh my goodness. Well, yeah. Either leasing other fields or, I don't know, there's options there.
Who knows, but that's great. I'm so happy. I'm so, so happy. And the door to door delivery, we have a lot of success stories from farmers who do that, especially if like you're saying, it's a habit. So, I know that every Tuesday you're showing up. That means I remember to throw my cooler out front. And it's just part of my routine as a buyer.
And something I look forward to, and that I can also plan for, right? So, if every Tuesday you're going to show up, [00:18:00] then I know to plan for that, that's awesome. Very, very cool.
So marketing, it's so fun to watch your social handles, and I know that you're a heavy user of email marketing, so again, if you're an independent farmer, marketing is how you raise your arms and wave your hands so people know that you exist, and also how you have to keep doing the engagement with those customers to make sure that they are reminded to place those orders.
So, what are, say, three things that you do from a marketing perspective that you find to be very successful?
Erica Benoit: I do email marketing. So, I try once a week to get an email out. Sometimes I miss a day or miss a week, but I do try to do it at least once a week. Social media, people love following me on social media.
Mostly Facebook. I do Instagram, I try to do Instagram a lot more, but Facebook's pretty much, that's where everybody's at right now. All my customers.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I appreciate that. And let's talk a little bit about your brand. Cause when you first started, you were [00:19:00] homesteading, you weren't thinking, we're going to both be full time farmers a few years from now.
Erica Benoit: Right.
Janelle Maiocco: So, tell me about the evolution of your brand, and what does brand mean to you?
Erica Benoit: So, our brand is really like our lifestyle. So, I would say that the homesteading lifestyle and our business have really intertwined. And people love how we live our life. We don't live like everybody else.
Janelle Maiocco: They're all like living vicariously, I think.
Erica Benoit: They are, yes, and there's a lot of people that are like, I remember going to my grandparents house and seeing them milk the cows, or when they were small, going to a farm and running on the hay bales, and everybody has some sort of a memory from a farm, and it seems like everybody's just one or two generations removed from the farm life, and it's really special to be able to just share our family with our community, and just [00:20:00] showing people like I make cheese, I make all of our dairy products and I'm making videos while doing it. We can up a ton of food. We have a big garden. Everybody likes to be a part of that. They feel like they're a part of it. And that really comes with the brand too, of just building a connection with other people.
They know my kids names. And they know so much about me just by watching my videos, and so it's really special that people really have a connection with us, and we're not just a business, we're a family, basically.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. And you know, it's relationships, especially because you're in your own community too, right?
Erica Benoit: Yeah, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. That's incredible. If I was a brand new farmer, and I was gonna say, okay, Erica, tell me, what's the best thing I can do from a marketing perspective, like, right away? What's the most important thing to start doing?
Erica Benoit: I would say social media. That's really how we got started.
And it was just my personal account. And then we started doing a business account, but people really [00:21:00] just, they know us.
Janelle Maiocco: It's the connection to your brand. Almost. It sounds like, like they have to get to know you. Yeah.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, and even if we didn't have anything for sale, then I was still sharing, like, when the baby pigs are born, I share a picture of that, or when I had to pull the pigs, I'm sharing a picture of that, or just any little thing that we do, we're trying to share about it, and it kind of makes our farm like a community's farm, like everybody has a connection to our farm.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that. You know, what that reminds me of is sometimes folks who start Farms are like, well, I only need an online store a couple months out of the year. You still need to have a brand and engage year round, even if you don't have something for sale.
Can you explain why that might be a good idea?
Erica Benoit: So, I feel like, since we're on the farm all the time and we think that other people are thinking about our farm too. People are living their lives, they're not thinking about us all the time. Or we think that, oh, when somebody gets in their freezer and they're getting their pork, that they're going to remember to order from us when they run out.[00:22:00]
And they're probably not, like we have to remind them that we're here and we can't expect that other people are thinking about us all the time because we're not thinking about everything else or we're not thinking about all the businesses that we support all the time. And that's not our first thought of when you run out of something to go ahead and well, sometimes it is to go ahead and order it.
But a lot of times I forget to order things or I forget things. And it's our job to be on top of mind of everybody else.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. Well said. Well said. I love that. I think in a nutshell, you just literally have to stay top of mind. And it's not that they don't mean to remember to order from you. It's literally, you just need to be top of mind.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: We have kind of a joke around here. We've been talking lately about how people's email boxes are like Twitter feeds now, where you have to literally be at the top or it's gone. So, you have to almost keep putting yourself at the top. I know it's a silly concept, but there's some truth to that, I think, in terms of, oh, thanks for the reminder.
Because, you know, the last time you emailed was seven days ago. And they're like, yeah, that's [00:23:00] like line 462 at this point.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, I feel like as farmers, we don't want to bother somebody like we don't want to be a burden to somebody in their inbox, but they don't have to open it. And just them seeing your name pop up.
Even if they just delete it, that's still top of mind. And they're like, Oh yeah, they still exist. They still care about me to send something to me. And I had somebody just a couple of months ago that they hadn't ordered for months. And she's like, yeah, you sent me an email just when me and my husband were talking about pork chops.
And it was just like, just the timing, and so she went right away and ordered pork chops from me, just because the timing of the email. And so, we're not a burden to them, we're not a bothering to them, they can unsubscribe if they want, it doesn't matter. They unsubscribe and we're still here.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, I appreciate that. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to send the emails.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And we do find it's pretty common these days because we were talking to a lot of farmers that it's just once a week [00:24:00] email, many start with a month and they're like, that wasn't enough, you know, to stay top of mind.
And so it's been a process for many to uncover that cadence, which has been great. It's great to learn. Okay, so the secret sauce. So you two had a goal where your husband would join you and quit his off farm job and become a full time farmer with you. This is not a fair question because it's very generic, but how did you do it?
And if somebody else wanted to do it, what would you recommend? I know it's too big of a question because there's probably so many moving parts, it's not fair. But people are like, I want to be a farmer full time, so, in terms of how you did it or advice that you have.
Erica Benoit: So I would say that we are very content people.
A lot of people don't like Dave Ramsey, especially in the farming world. They're like, you have to go get a loan to do all these things. But, we started from nothing. And the only person I know of that gave me financial advice is Dave Ramsey. So, alls I know is to pay cash for everything.
And that's what we did. [00:25:00] We grew slow. We paid cash for all of our feeders, all of our bulk bins.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-Hmm.
Erica Benoit: All of our animals are paid cash. And along that time, we also paid our farm off. And so, now we're at a position that we have to pay insurance on our electric bill and some propane, like, we don't have very many expenses.
We drive old cars. Our pickup truck that I haul pigs in is 24 years old. Like, old stock cooler, everything is old, usable, and I feel like that makes us more money because I'm not making payments on everything.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow, that just feels like a lot of freedom.
Erica Benoit: It is a lot of freedom.
Janelle Maiocco: And a lot of work. Don't get me wrong.
I would never, you know, it's clearly a lot of work to own your own business and run all the parts, right? But, it's also, there's some freedom in that, especially as disciplined as you two have been. That's very impressive and encouraging.
Erica Benoit: Yes. Yeah. So, really just being [00:26:00] content with our life and teaching our children to be content.
Our kids don't want for anything, they don't even know what's out there to want. And so, there's just a lot of just not going and trying to keep up with everybody else. Just living in our little house and just growing our farm. So now, we have freedom. It's, it's pretty awesome.
Janelle Maiocco: That's incredible.
Erica Benoit: Yeah.
Yeah. It feels really good. So, our kids just got out of school yesterday and we're planning on homeschooling next year. And today just feels so good that we don't have to listen to anybody anymore. Like my husband right now is out swimming with the kids in the pool. And we have a fun life.
We can work in the mornings and we can relax. We can take days off. Like, you know, there is going to be a whole lot of hard days. But it's also, we get to enjoy our life now and that's really special.
Janelle Maiocco: That's beyond special. They got out of school yesterday you said?
Erica Benoit: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing. And moving on to homeschooling. Wow. So [00:27:00] much good change, so much, it's so positive and so much freedom. I feel lucky that we get to support you. I hope Barn2Door is helpful. Holy smokes. Yeah, it's good. Hopefully a tiny expense to help run processes for your business.
Erica Benoit: Oh yeah, yeah. I like to tell people you're like my secretary. I don't have to send reminders to people anymore. I don't have to keep track of inventory anymore. I'm not having multiple conversations with people every time they order, it's just kind of a set it and forget it on the website part.
Janelle Maiocco: You know, that's a funny thing to try to describe to people because the fact that you don't have to explain all the details of a particular animal or cut or everything again, because if they're just ordering it on their store the details are all written up right there for them to read and, we often look for that even in our own business. Like are we repeating ourselves multiple times unnecessarily saying the same thing?
Or process wise we ask ourselves the same thing like is there anything we're doing a lot of that we could [00:28:00] potentially make more efficient and use that time somewhere else? Right. So that's, that's awesome. I always love hearing that one, but yeah, thanks. Thanks for the shout out and secretary.
I'll take that all day long. We've been called some very fun, helpful things in terms of what we can do alongside farmers, but we're over the moon to be working with you. And the story is so inspiring and hopefully to other farmers, because I think, you know, just like moving to off farm, what do you think is realistic for folks in terms of how long it takes to get there?
I know you guys were really intentional because you had young kids and you were staying home already.
Erica Benoit: It took us nine years. That was...
Janelle Maiocco: And I think that's fair. I mean, I think if people do it differently or take out a loan, like you said, it's something like that, they could maybe do it at a different rate, but then they're also paying that back and look where you are today.
All paid off.
Erica Benoit: Yes. So yeah, I wish it happened overnight. I wish it was a couple of years, but it's a long, hard time.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. But what do they say? What is the [00:29:00] saying? Nothing worthwhile is easy. Yeah. It's hard, but worth it. Yep.
Erica Benoit: Yeah. The payoff is really nice.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Oh, I can't wait to keep hearing more about your story. And wow, congrats to being on the farm and having the kids at school and heading into homeschool. That's a lot. I'm so excited to talk to you again.
Erica Benoit: Day 1 is good. Day 100 might be chaos. I'm gonna be sick of everybody.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure it'll stretch all of you in, in good and bad ways, but what did you say?
It all turns out in the end, so.
Erica Benoit: Yeah, I don't know how it always works out, but somehow, everything always gets sold, bills always get paid. It always ends up working out.
Janelle Maiocco: Amazing.
Erica Benoit: I have no clue how it's going to work out, but it does.
Janelle Maiocco: It does. Well, you keep working at it and doing a lot of the right things and making good decisions.
Well, thank you for your time today. Hopefully folks listening, I mean, there were some nuggets in there in terms of decisions to make, things to focus on, what to do in terms of marketing and sales and subscriptions and, you know, how you [00:30:00] got there, how you got to your dream.
So, there's a lot in there and I have no doubt people will take away some great nuggets and encouragement from that. So, thank you for your time today.
I want to extend my thanks to Erica for joining us on this week's podcast episode. Please check out more of Erica and the farm on their Instagram.
And here's the handle, pay attention. @BenoitFamilyFarmstead. And Benoit is spelled B E N O I T. @BenoitFamilyFarmstead. So, go check them out on Instagram. And honestly, you must. Because she just manages social media in a really lovely, provocative way. So, check it out and then you'll know what to do.
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