Farmer Spotlight: Veteran’s Liberty Ranch
On today's episode, Janelle talks with Julie and Michelle of Veteran's Liberty Ranch in Texas. They discuss how the Ranch came to be, their tips for maintaining a recognizable brand presence and their goals to take over Texas and hit $1 Million in Sales.
Learn more about Julie and Michelle: https://www.barn2door.com/fan/veterans-liberty-ranch
For more Farm resources, visit: https://www.barn2door.com/resources
Learn more about their Brand:
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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 may be aware, Barn2Door offers an all in one business solution for farmers selling direct online and in person. In today's conversation, we'll meet two of the newest [00:01:00] members of our Farm Advisory Network, Michelle and Julie of Veteran's Liberty Ranch in Texas. Today, I'm happy to welcome Michelle and Julie.
We'll learn about Veteran's Liberty Ranch, their growth and scale opportunities, and I like to say their plan to take over Texas. Welcome Michelle and Julie.
Julie Green: Thank you.
Janelle Maiocco: Very excited to dive in. And you two are calling from two different places.
Julie Green: Yep, I, Julie is down here in Liberty Hill, Texas, which is Central Texas, kind of, I don't know, 30 miles outside of Austin.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Michelle Smith: And I'm Michelle and I am North Texas. I'm about 45 minutes north of Fort Worth.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay. Yes, you are. How many hours apart is that?
Michelle Smith: Three hours door to door.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay, so this is fun. So, tell us a little bit about your farm because here you are farming together. You live three hours apart in two different wonderful parts of Texas. So, tell us a little bit about how you got started.
Michelle Smith: We started because Julie placed a personal [00:02:00] want ad, for a sexy bull. And so, I answered the ad along with probably 300 other eligible bachelors.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow.
Michelle Smith: And, so she ended up leasing a bull from me back in 2019. Is how it started.
Prior to that, we did not know each other. We like to absolutely tell everybody that this was God starting a journey that we just continue down. It was a chance meeting of literally, she can verify, I think it was close to 300 people responded and said, I've got a bull, you can lease them.
Out of all of those, she chose me. I delivered the bull down to her and briefly met, we hit it off. I mean, everybody was nice. The bull was nice. He was now a happy bull. Her cows were great, all was good. And from there, over the course of the next couple of months, a series of events happened that we began to communicate with each other, not even by [00:03:00] phone number. This was still just Facebook Messenger, communicating back and forth. Some things about the bull, I was selling a little bit of beef, mostly, because my daughter was trying to raise some money to buy back her steer that I had sold.
Oops. And so, Julie was starting to get interested in that. As we all know, 2020 came along, rocked our world, and, that is when things really started getting fun for us.
Janelle Maiocco: Mm-Hmm.
Michelle Smith: This is when in 2020, when Covid hit, my son reached out to me and said, uh, mom, they've closed the school down.
And they turned all the pig exhibitors around, they were on their way to Houston and we're talking like 50, 60 pigs. And they turned around and they're coming back to the school. And I said, wow, that's horrible. I can't imagine, we don't have a pig that doesn't affect us. And I don't, I'm not housing pigs.
And he said, no, no, these pigs have got to be sold.
Janelle Maiocco: Is this an [00:04:00] FFA project then?
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: And these kids are what age?
Michelle Smith: These are 15 to 17 year olds. And most of them are city kids.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. With FFA hogs.
Michelle Smith: Yeah.
Julie Green: They're keep your pigs at like the school barn and that feed costs a lot of money for anything FFA like that too.
So, when they were turned away from the show and literally, I think some of them even drove up to the show and they turned them around, like they were turning them around in the parking lot. So, now you have miles and gas and nowhere for a pig to go. They're not going to take a pig in the Best Western.
Janelle Maiocco: It's so interesting. All the stories you don't realize what happened when the whole world shut down, right? And then this is in sort of the Fort Worth area.
Michelle Smith: Actually, no. So, Houston is about...
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, Houston, Houston, excuse me.
Michelle Smith: Yes, this is the Houston Life Stock Show.
And these were all pigs coming from my area in Decatur. And so, I reached out to the Ag teacher and I said, well, let me see if I can help. We sell a little bit of beef [00:05:00] and maybe we can try to get some people to buy these pigs. And to kind of wrap up the story, basically, this is when Julie stepped in and she said, well, first of all, I would like to buy a pig.
And again, we're still just Facebook Messenger. I'd like to buy a pig. Well, I can't even tell you. I mean, it's comical now, but by the end of two weeks, we had placed over 60 pigs in those first two weeks. And we had spiral notebooks, and we had names and phone numbers going everywhere. And basically we act as just the intermediary between kids trying to sell their pig.
We would get them delivered down to the butcher and then pick up the meat and push it onto the customer. And then the customers would pay the kids and we just, you know, rinse and repeat. We just kept doing that cycle. And through that really hard time for a lot of people and it affected all of us in different ways.
But that was the beginning of something [00:06:00] really amazing with Julie and I. Helping place the pigs and not only taking care of the FFA kids, but also feeding the community during a really challenging time. It brought us from just a casual acquaintance to all of a sudden, we exchanged actual phone numbers and we started talking to each other.
Julie Green: I can remember where I was when we did that. And we went through some really tough things to get to where we are at today, but Michelle and I, our partnership, it was definitely, as my great grandmother would say, she would always say, something is made in the stars, and, I always think about like that was already planned and it was already born before anything.
I mean, from a silly bull. And why would I choose out of that? There seriously was at least 300. Everybody wants to lease their bull out. Like it's not hard to find a bull. And I don't know what drew me to Michelle, but I'm [00:07:00] so glad that I messaged her. And, you know, in a lot of ways, I'm kind of glad that COVID happened because if it didn't, then we would have never, yeah, we would have never had this happen.
Janelle Maiocco: So Michelle, were you a hobby farmer before then? Is that where you came, like you have a couple of steer out back? Is that sort of the story?
Michelle Smith: Absolutely. We were literally just a hobby farmer. So my ranch, it wasn't even a ranch at that point.
We were known as Veterans Heritage Farm. And, my husband is the veteran and our kids wanted to get involved in FFA and 4 H. And so, we started with chickens and goats, and pretty soon we were showing some Texas Longhorns. And really what happened about the same time I met Julie, is we ended up with a couple of steers that weren't real competitive, and so we decided to sell them. Well, again, I sold the wrong steer, for my daughter and she decided she was heartbroken and she [00:08:00] wanted to get that steer back. And so in order to do that, we processed two animals and she made up boxes of beef and it was a $200 box, 25 pounds of beef. And her marketing tactic, her and I, was that, we were selling that beef to raise money for her to purchase her favorite steer back, which she did.
And, so that's what we were doing. We were just selling the beef. I think that year in 2019, we probably processed four animals.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, okay.
Michelle Smith: Isn't that kind of funny?
Janelle Maiocco: Well, yes, especially when you start to disclose to everybody what you're doing today, which I'm so excited about. So, it was a hobby, like this isn't your full time job.
You're just like being an awesome mom, supporting your kids and having fun with animals and yeah.
Michelle Smith: A hundred percent hobby. We had goats and sheep and chickens and just a little bit of everything. I was finally, for the first time in my life, I was a stay at home mom.
[00:09:00] And just living in the moment, really enjoying it.
Janelle Maiocco: Wow, I love that so much. And then Julie needs a steer, so...
Michelle Smith: Yes.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, well, she needs a bull, so tell us a little bit about that. So, clearly you had animals too. So were you a hobby farmer as well? What did that look like?
Julie Green: So, I actually grew up in the rodeo part of animal raising. I was a barrel racer, so I have goats and, I raised goats and FFA and lambs. And so I knew my granddad raised hereford cattle. I had been around agriculture, but by no means was I selling meat or doing anything like that.
I think the very first time I sold meat was because my oldest daughter was raising chickens for FFA and they needed to be slaughtered. And that's actually where I think the kind of drive came up for when Michelle had the pigs. And I knew that I could tap into some people that had bought chickens just because they were from [00:10:00] FFA. Like they would pay more because it's for kids. And I was like, okay, I have some ties into that. So I would never raise chickens again, not the meat kind. Like they die if you look at them wrong. Like that's a very hard, hard thing to farm. But it also, opened up doors and windows to opportunities for people that I knew down here.
So I'm glad we did. But yeah, I don't rodeo anymore. Just my kids.
Janelle Maiocco: But, so, 2019 is really when you're like, okay, hobbies aside, this is working, we've figured some things out, we're gonna switch the name, we're gonna join forces.
What was that transition like? Because you didn't look back. Like, when you guys hit the ground running, you might as well have been bull riding, right?
Michelle Smith: So, it actually took a minute for us to realize we were on to something. Really, it wasn't until early 2021, and by that [00:11:00] time, we were meeting pretty frequently.
We were out on the road back and forth, those three hours and meeting people in church parking lots or tractor supply parking lots, delivering meat. So we would sell some meat and we would have cash or a little bit of Venmo.
And then we would go to our favorite Mexican restaurant, get some margaritas, and have a meal together. And, really, split a little money, kind of. And then roll it on and go into the next processing, get more pigs.
Julie Green: I remember vividly having just enough money to buy fireworks from a firework stand and we were so like excited because we had extra money that we weren't planning on to buy fireworks for the 4th of July.
I can remember that. It was like $200 worth.
Michelle Smith: So it was in early 2021 that a restaurant reached out to us and, so we went, we sat down with the owner of this restaurant. [00:12:00] And, this is one of those doors that opened up because of the community Julie is in. And so, we did sit down with him and we came up with some pricing.
And, it actually ended up not working out. We sold meat to him a handful of times. But, when you, as a hobby farmer, just two women as hobby farmers, you know, we have our little families. This restaurant owner is going, you know, I want to use you to supply my meat and how would you handle this?
And what would your pricing be? We came out of that meeting and looked at each other and went, oh my gosh, we've got to be a business. We have to have a name. We have to be legitimate. This could be something big.
Immediately got mango margaritas to help make the decision.
And, I can't even tell you how much I would pay to find the napkin that we pulled out that day.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, you did the back, the front of the napkin in this case, right? Yes.
Michelle Smith: And, we played around [00:13:00] with the name. We wanted to incorporate my ranch, Veterans Heritage Farm. Julie's was C. D. Bar Ranch, which came from her grandfather and, probably by the second margarita.
We somehow merged Veterans Heritage Farm with her location in Liberty Hill. And so, that's where Veterans Liberty Ranch came from.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it, love it, love it, love it.
Michelle Smith: We decided, wow, well, we should get a bank account and be real. And let's do a website and a Facebook. And oh my gosh, I just laugh thinking about those days.
It was so basic what we started with. And it's so accidental on our part, but we know there was a grander plan at work. That's okay. It's good. We're loving it. But back then, it was just so basic.
Janelle Maiocco: It's so great when the plans unfold and then you're like, oh, that was the plan all along. I just had to catch on.
Michelle Smith: Right. Oh, now we [00:14:00] understand.
Julie Green: I look back about how basic our stuff was, and I'm like, wow, people trusted us, like they're meeting us in a QT parking lot? That's pretty cool.
Janelle Maiocco: Cause they know it's better than, yeah, better than the options.
Julie Green: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: You're real people, right? I mean, there's a lot of power in that.
And the answer to that is absolutely, isn't it? Cause they trust you. That's exactly it. So, let's fast forward then. So 2021, you're like, wow, this is the real deal. We're going to become a business. We have a name, it's time to throw up our shingle and get more serious about this.
Right? And so, then, I mean, that's what, not too long ago from now, that's like two and a half, three years that we're looking at? And I know at some point in there, you were hitting, what, farmer's markets, and then you needed your website, etc. I think at some point in there, somebody at a farmer market told you about Barn2Door.
Michelle Smith: Correct.
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: Julie, I think you hit the first farmer's market, didn't you? I honestly don't remember.
Julie Green: Yes, and when we think back about it, we hated it. We did [00:15:00] not want to do farmer's markets. We hated it because we didn't have the tools like we do now to use it.
And so, we didn't have a way for people to pay, like right about that time Venmo was just now really becoming a thing. Everybody didn't have Venmo. Everybody did not have PayPal on their phone yet. It was more like the people that were rocking around the market just would pay in cash.
Janelle Maiocco: And then that's even kind of questionable too. Not everybody has anything.
Julie Green: Yeah. So, we hit that first market and then we did not do another one for probably like another six months.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Julie Green: And then Michelle tapped into that one and that's where you met Sandy, that introduced Barn2Door.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. She had Barn2Door and she told me about it. And so I called Julie. I remember talking about this. This is one of those defining moments for us. I remember calling Julie and saying, yeah, so it's something Barn2Door, like let's check it [00:16:00] out. And what do you do the first time you go window shopping for something?
You go look at the price. And it's kind of embarrassing to say this. And we were like, ooh, I don't know if we can afford that. Boy, I'd sure like to go back and tell myself three years ago, dummy, you can't afford not to do this. It was fantastic. So, we talked about it. And I remember, talking about, okay, let's save our money, let's not have mango margaritas for the next month.
And we're going to save up.
Janelle Maiocco: That's a sacrifice. Careful.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. If you know us, you know what a sacrifice it is. And so, we saved up our money and we really thought about it and made that leap and from the very first phone call and the onboarding, it's like, absolutely. That is the point where we never looked back again and we went, this is an investment in us.
Yeah, we're stay at home moms, but watch this. Our kids are going to be so proud of us. [00:17:00] We got this. Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: I love that so much. Well, and this isn't even here to quote unquote, promote Barn2Door. I mean, you did all the work to do it, but I love that we get to be part of an organizing factor for you to be successful, right?
To scale and to grow, like you're doing the work, but anything we can do to help it be seamless and easier and trackable and easy to scale and go big, for us is sort of the privilege, right? And so, you know, that's your story is just amazing.
Julie Green: Oh, and now we do like what, seven markets a weekend, Michelle?
Between all of us? Yes.
Michelle Smith: Yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: So you guys, yeah, now, so now tell everybody how quickly, once you have that, like, oh, we're organized now, we've got this, we're gonna have a website, we've got an online store. I think you're one of the power users of the POS that Barn2Door offers, which is so fun for us to watch, even from our side, like, look at them go.
They're dragging POSs all [00:18:00] over the state.
Michelle Smith: That's right.
Julie Green: We are.
Michelle Smith: The growth has been exponential and you would think that, okay, you make a big investment in a website or an online store. You expect some growth and we definitely experienced that. But I would even venture to say that every time we add even another point of sale unit, or add another trailer.
You're adding another tool. So, trailer, a freezer, a point of sale device, another iPad, an employee. Each time you make an investment like that, the growth is absolutely exponential. Is it scary to commit and say, I'm going to spend X for the next 12 months and I'm going to provide for this person?
It is scary, but I would venture to say it's even scarier to not take that leap. We're living proof of it. You've just got to open up the door and go through it. It's just, it's there for you. [00:19:00]
Janelle Maiocco: I think that, yeah, you've spoke a lot of truth there. I think that every farmer out there is like, yes, it's scary to invest in yourself or the next thing that's going to continue to open up the business opportunities, but, it is, you have to pay into that or pay into yourselves, right?
And believe in yourselves enough to say, yep, we're going to invest in ourselves and we're going to do the work to make it worth it.
Julie Green: It brings out a competitive edge in us too, because behind the scenes, Michelle and I are like, are we their number one POS? We've got to be their number one. I don't know if I want to look it up now.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, if you're not, you're pushing it. If you're not, I'll give you, behind the scenes, I'll tell you what that number is.
Julie Green: Yeah, you'll have to tell us, because we secretly have this conversation.
Michelle Smith: We do that. I remember I walked into the butcher one day. We use one butcher. And I walked into the butcher and I said, are we wearing you out yet?
And they said, no, we would never say that you're wearing us out. You keep us busy. And I said, well, our [00:20:00] goal is to be number one. And they said, your goal? You already are number one. I called Julie and I said, we are number one.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it.
Michelle Smith: And, I don't know why that is such a competitive thing for us.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, it's a good drive to have considering what you're doing.
So tell the listeners then, how big have you become in a short amount of time? Right. Cause did we leave this off at 2021 or is it 2022 when you're like, okay, we're all in.
Michelle Smith: So that was really 2021.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay.
Michelle Smith: By mid 2021, actually, I think our business documents are June 1st. So, we....
Janelle Maiocco: Happy anniversary.
Michelle Smith: We got a checking account with debit cards and real checks. Thank you. And yeah, so 2021 was the start of the actual business and we were moving forward with some very purposeful decisions. In 2021, I think we did a whopping, if I recall, I wanna say it was [00:21:00] about 25 to 35,000.
Julie Green: Yeah, something like that.
Michelle Smith: In sales for the year.
We were pretty excited by 2022, right? We hit a hundred thousand that year, Julie.
Julie Green: Yeah, right at a hundred.
Michelle Smith: Yeah, pretty exciting, right? That Excel spreadsheet that we were keeping was pretty awesome. 2023, let's just say the accountant is still working on our books for 2023.
Janelle Maiocco: There you go.
Michelle Smith: But, we closed out at a thousand dollars shy of half a million.
Janelle Maiocco: Unbelievable.
And you traded in your excel spreadsheet.
Michelle Smith: Oh, yes. The accountant said, Excel, no more. Another shout out to Barn2Door for pairing up really well with QuickBooks. So ,that's helpful.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, happy to hear that.
Good, good. But then, okay, so, just shy of 500k, and...
Michelle Smith: This year, Julie?
Julie Green: I don't know. I have to look. Let me see.
Michelle Smith: No, you don't.
Janelle Maiocco: No, drumroll your goal for the year. How about that?
Julie Green: Oh, our [00:22:00] goal is 1 million. And I have really no doubt that we'll hit that. I think we've already, we're already past what we made last year.
Michelle Smith: So, absolutely. We're halfway through the year. We're already halfway past our goal. So, I propose that we hit a million and when we hit a million, we'll take a two day vacation back to Las Vegas. And then we come back and finish out the year and do like one and a quarter for this year. That sounds fancy.
I like that.
Janelle Maiocco: That sounds good. You shorted yourself earlier a few margaritas, so I think you have to make up for that.
Well
Julie Green: now we have to celebrate. Yeah, three years, three margaritas.
Janelle Maiocco: It is important to celebrate, though. It is. I think that's part of your, incremental investment, but incremental celebration should be on the docket for folks.
So, I'm sure everybody's now wondering what is all the secret to your success. I mean, and now you're at seven markets, right? Obviously, you live a couple of hours apart in two different parts of Texas. You're at seven markets. Where are those markets? How did you enter those markets?
How did you decide where to go next? Any high level [00:23:00] roadmap that you can give to anybody who's like, yeah, I would like to do that, or, you know, try, or come close, or do even half of that?
Michelle Smith: Right. I think the number one thing to remember, and we had to learn this the hard way at first.
The number one thing to remember.
Janelle Maiocco: Yes. Just pause, right? Like, hard way. It's okay to learn the hard way.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. Value yourself going into it. Set an expectation, but that is not always monetary. So, every time we go into a market, we look at the community and, you know, is there a need?
Are we welcome there? Is there a need to be fulfilled there? And I would say that as far as meat or vegetables or other farm supplies, most of the times that answer is going to be, yes, there is a need by the community. And so we go into a market going, okay, is this a market that doesn't already have five other meat vendors there?
Let's [00:24:00] go into a place that really does need us. It is absolutely rewarding to do $500 an hour. That's fantastic when you do that. But, we've also spent some quality time at markets where we speak to five and six customers an hour and plant the seeds and they show up later and they're buying a whole cow from us or they sign up for subscriptions from us.
And had we not been in that community at that time, we wouldn't have been able to plant that seed. So, I think that number one, going into the market and how you choose, is that community receptive and in need? And then the second thing is, and this is going to be a common, item throughout everything we talk about, and that is relationships.
So everywhere we go, we have relationships, whether it's other vendors, whether it's friends, whether it's our own kids. We have a relationship that we value and [00:25:00] we want them to value us too. And that is the only way that we could be at so many markets at the same time. We've got family and friends that are working for us.
Some of them work for free. Some of them work if we'll just buy them lunch.
There's others that we probably don't pay near enough, for their time and they just work for us and they believe in what we're doing, they believe in what we're selling and, so I think that's the important things, the relationships. Julie has pushed us hard on markets, so I'll let her talk.
Julie Green: Well, I was just going to say that, you know, like we've been around so much on markets and we've grown so much with them that now we have customers getting us into markets that we did not know about. Like just recently there was a customer and she knew of in her area that there was going to be a grand opening market.
And it's so funny because the daughter [00:26:00] that recommended actually goes to a market at Michelle's. Her mom goes to my market down here and every now and then those two, when they see each other, they'll both come visit both of us. And it weirds Michelle and I out a little bit because we're like, how are you over here?
And you're right there. But, so she actually recently referred us to another one and it turned out to be a huge, huge market. And, we have one of our really good friends that has actually kind of grown up with us, right? Michelle, Cassandra has kind of grown up with Veterans Liberty Ranch and now she has taken the initiative to take a trailer and we're paying her for her time now, but she loves it.
It's addicting. It is really addicting, another tap into Barn2Door, when it's easy to run something like that and you can actually focus more in on talking to the people at the markets and actually seeing what's on there than having to focus on running somebody's card [00:27:00] or, you know, all of this stuff, it really does make a big difference.
And, so now people, you know, I do a market with, 75 oaks here every week at that you guys might be familiar. I know Kevin's familiar with them cause he works with her, but every Wednesday we're there and people, it's a drive through. We call it the fresh food farmers market Chick fil A because they literally can buy all the farm food, food products and they drive through and we load up their car.
It's like...
Janelle Maiocco: Oh yeah. Love it, so they pre order and it's a pickup location, essentially.
Julie Green: Yes. And it's so funny because I'll wear my Veterans Liberty Ranch shirt. She wears her 75 Oaks, but people roll through and they're like, are you Barn2Door? I'm like, sort of, like they see that on their power...
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, the receipts and the power by Barn2Door.
I'm like, no, it's Veteran's Liberty Ranch.
We're under the hood. It's all about their brand.
Julie Green: It just proves more relationships though.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Julie Green: Because we [00:28:00] have you, now they know us. And we were just commenting earlier today that we remember back when we were on onboarding that, he was telling us, don't worry. In a few years, your name will show up on Google. It just has to be like searched so many times. We've had like six people this week message us, Michelle, that are like, we found you on Google. And...
Janelle Maiocco: Are you serious?
That's a whole next level. I love it.
I will congratulate my design team for inserting all the SEO best practices in the back end. But it's true. It is, a lot of folks, are like, why am I not on Google page one, day one? And it's like, because you have to lay the groundwork and then you have to patiently wait for, you know, keep pushing people online to search for you or to buy from you.
And then over time you keep getting cataloged and links and people, when there's activity on your site and your store, then that's where it starts to grow. And look at that. That is awesome.
Julie Green: Yeah. It's for sure working.
Michelle Smith: Yeah. One of the other things we do along [00:29:00] that line is, on our trailers, we just have our logo.
And it says Veterans Liberty Ranch. There's no website. There's nothing else. And I've had several people ask, they're like, well, gosh, you're kind of missing the boat by not putting the website on there. And I said, Oh no, we maintain our website and our online presence to the degree that if you type in Veterans Liberty Ranch, We pop up on that first page.
And if you're a business owner, that is a big deal.
Janelle Maiocco: That's awesome.
Michelle Smith: So, not only do you type it in and we're on the first page, but we're at the top. And...
Janelle Maiocco: That's amazing.
Michelle Smith: It's nice to be able to do that. I feel like we're Madonna or Prince or something. You don't even need the real name. You just need to Google Prince and bam.
Janelle Maiocco: Also, she probably has a trailer, but for different reasons. Yes, that's fair.
Michelle Smith: And I just really dated myself by saying Prince and Madonna, but you know, anyways, we're literally known for...
Janelle Maiocco: I do that all the time. [00:30:00] It's fine. I get it.
Michelle Smith: We're known by our logo. And by Veterans Liberty Ranch. We don't need to put a website.
People can find us. And that is an amazing feeling.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, and so let's talk a little bit about that because branding, marketing, and I do love that you're connecting with other farmers using Barn2Door. I'm all about that club. You know that.
Michelle Smith: Oh, yeah.
Janelle Maiocco: But so let's talk about branding because, it is important.
I mean, it really is important for that brand recognition, the brand trust, the loyalty, the longevity of it so that it's consistent and keeps showing up, especially across all the markets and everything else. So, what are your top tips in terms of doing that to the best of your ability, especially as you're pushing to grow?
What are you doing to promote yourselves?
Michelle Smith: Julie, I'll let you talk about our Meet the Rancher events, but, products, let me address that first. This is something that we're just getting into this year. So some of the things that we're doing, we have had, sounds [00:31:00] so bad, lowball whiskey glasses etched with just our logo on it.
One of the things that a lot of our customers say is, you guys look like so much fun. It would be great just to sit down and have a drink with you. So, Julie will tell you a little bit more about our event that we do at the ranch. But our customers are going to get the opportunity to sit and have a drink with us.
It's going to be apple juice, of course. But they'll get to take home a glass with our logo on it. So that's one thing.
Janelle Maiocco: Love it.
Michelle Smith: We've had customers that absolutely love our little t shirts that Cassandra made for us. It has our logo and Veterans Liberty Ranch. It's got the American flag on the sleeve and customers love it.
And they're saying we would wear that. That's amazing. That's a great shirt. Do you sell that? So, we are starting to add merchandise.
Janelle Maiocco: Yep.
Michelle Smith: Letting our customers go ahead and promote us. They love us. It all goes back to those relationships.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: And then we've got a [00:32:00] small fleet of trailers where we have our freezers that we're using for markets.
Those all have logos. We invest heavily in a canvas reusable shopping bag. And, it also has our logo.
Julie Green: That's huge.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: Veteran's Liberty Ranch. And it does have our website. And the best thing is, every farmer's market, to see customers bringing those bags back and shopping the entire market in our bags.
Janelle Maiocco: That's back to the competitive, like, we won. Yeah, that's our bag.
Michelle Smith: And then I think what's even better about it is when we took our own kids out trick or treating into our community.
Julie Green: Yes.
Michelle Smith: We're seeing kids trick or treating with our meat bags.
Janelle Maiocco: That's game over. Isn't that when you drop a mic? Yeah.
Julie Green: Oh, remember the lady sending us, we've had two or three people send us beach pictures where they carried their sand toys and they took a picture with the ocean behind them and Veterans Liberty Ranch bags.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, I hope that's on your social media.
Julie Green: Yeah.
Michelle Smith: Oh yeah.
Julie Green: We put it. We [00:33:00] did.
Janelle Maiocco: All right.
Julie Green: Somewhere. It's a while back.
Janelle Maiocco: It's like a sighting contest. Yeah. Put our bags in the most unique places to win.
Michelle Smith: That's right.
Janelle Maiocco: That's good.
Michelle Smith: And then I think that probably the biggest thing we do for branding and building our relationship is, Julie, I think you should take this one.
Julie Green: So, at my place down here, we started a thing called Meat the Rancher and we played it. It's a pun on the spelling. M E A T. The Rancher. And we do this twice a year. We started off just really small and basically we open the gates to the ranch and we say, come in, see the animals.
We bring animals out. Like right now I have a bottle calf that we'll bring out and they can touch him and feel him and play with them. And then we have ducks that my son will carry out and one year, Michelle's daughter brought out Fireball and you could sit on a longhorn steer, little fun things like that.
Well, it grew so much that now we have vendors [00:34:00] asking to set up out here. And so, now it's become like a mini farmer's market at the ranch, but you can see where your food comes from.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. It's just trust.
Julie Green: Yes. It definitely builds trust.
Janelle Maiocco: Trust and transparency. Yeah. That's powerful.
Julie Green: Yes. We were so worried the first time we had it, or mainly me, I was worried that nobody would show up.
And there are so many people that show up, there's not enough places to park. And we have lines at every booth and we've had many people tell us 'We've made more money at your place out here in the middle of nowhere than we've made at Farmer's Market.'
Janelle Maiocco: Oh no! Can we actually be at Farmer's Market? No.
I mean, that's a whole other thing. Oh my goodness.
Michelle Smith: I will say, I think that we are known now for our Meat the Ranchers and we get people asking, well, when's the next one going to be? And when are you going to do one in North Texas? And, we're known for them now. As far as branding and promoting us, it's another way on social media to create an event and pay for the [00:35:00] ad. You know, we go ahead and pay the Facebook marketing ad fee on that and promote it. And, literally, we just ask our customers, share it, RSVP, and then so many people see it. I mean, it is scary sometimes to look at the RSVP because it might say like 800 people.
Doesn't mean they're all going to come on that day.
Janelle Maiocco: You went from like being scared, nobody would show up to be scared because the number is too big. That sounds to me like a good problem to have.
Julie Green: Well, and we do incentive things with it too. We do incentives kind of multiple times throughout the year.
Like we love getting reviews, because it just boosts your page and stuff. So we'll say, Hey, leave a review and you get a free pound of ground beef. The thing with that happens is people will leave a review, they'll place an order for the ground beef where we can go back and refund them, but they also ultimately end up buying other things.
They're usually not going to make a trip way out without adding something on. [00:36:00] So it works.
Janelle Maiocco: Absolutely. I think there's so much power in that too. And not being afraid to ask your customers to share, like customer sharing, especially in those local communities, because often those are customers who are going to those farmer markets and they know you.
And so sharing for them is no big deal, but they have a whole network of followers and people and audience and friends and family. So there's a lot of power, a couple of shares, and that's a lot of eyeballs.
Julie Green: Oh, Michelle, I know a good marketing tool. You should tell them about our pageant.
Michelle Smith: Oh my goodness. So one of the other things we do as far as branding, you know, branding goes way beyond logo. And I'm going to say it again, it's relationships. And it's not just the relationship between two people that decided to partner together and ranch, it's a relationship with our customers, with other vendors, really with our communities.
Down in Liberty Hill, down in Julie's area, there is an [00:37:00] annual 4th of July party, you know, big community party. And so, we're very patriotic at our company and that is something that we are known for also, in addition to our logo, we are known...
Janelle Maiocco: July four is your holiday.
Michelle Smith: Yes. July 4th. It's July 4th every day. So we have flag pants and flag shirts and flag shoes and the whole nine yards. We have everything. So, last year for the 4th of July festival, julie and I got up on stage in front of, I don't know, a couple hundred of people. And, this was a last minute thing, so we're just going to say that's why we didn't win.
But, we got up on the stage with full size American flags. We were dressed in flag paraphernalia, head to toe. And, we got up on the stage and really whooped it up. And the winner was chosen by the response of the audience and we just [00:38:00] missed it by a hair. A very young, cute cheerleader from the local high school with all her friends there, in attendance.
Just not bitter, but, you know, she actually beat us out last year, but, we have plans. We've got big plans.
Janelle Maiocco: You have plans. I'm sure you have plans.
Michelle Smith: So after we found out that we were second place or first loser, we went ahead and we still had a good time. We didn't get changed. We stayed dressed like that because that's literally how we do the markets.
And we made sure that we went around to every first responder booth that was out there. The fire department was out there. The police were out there. There's veterans walking around. There's young kids walking around. There's so many pictures floating around of us from this event where teenage kids took pictures of us and put it on their Snapchat or Instagram, the local newspaper.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, I think I know where this is going.
Michelle Smith: Yes. So, no, we did not win that day. [00:39:00] Again, that was last year. This year will be different. But we did win because it was huge. We spent several hours talking to the community and they know those two crazy ladies, they're ranchers that are super patriotic and fun.
And that's part of our brand.
Janelle Maiocco: And so, did many of those folks tag you then on the Instagram? Like they knew you were Veterans Liberty Ranch, right? So, I'm hoping that that means they were all tagging you at Veteran's Liberty Ranch, right? Your Instagram handle and Facebook and everything else. And so, people could see and follow and your brand kind of had a huge, huge viewing that day, which is a marketing win all up. No question about it.
Michelle Smith: That's right.
Janelle Maiocco: I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.
Michelle Smith: Definitely one of our best days.
Janelle Maiocco: I think we've gotten a long list of grassroots marketing and very good branding ideas, which we'll probably throw into a blog after this, if I'm being honest with you.
So let's talk one little bit. A few more [00:40:00] topics. One, I want, like, so in terms of customers, you clearly need to grow a customer list. Branding is one thing, but an engagement, you know, relationships is one thing, but a lot of it today is digital.
You need to maintain your customer list, grow it, engage with them, talk to us a little bit about how you track and keep your customers organized and communicated with.
Michelle Smith: MailChimp. It's MailChimp. MailChimp is huge. I mean, I think the obvious is social media. Social media is huge.
You've got to be on it multiple times at minimum once a day, if not twice. You have to be interactive. You can't just be constantly just pushing information. You have to ask for engagement. You have to ask your customers and your followers. What do you want? What do you think? Instead of just pushing your products.
Throw out ideas. Hey, we're having dinner tonight and this is what we're having. [00:41:00] Or, you know, I was at a barbecue. Check out this brisket. Just fun things. We're not always just pushing a product.
Janelle Maiocco: But you need to collect emails, right?
Michelle Smith: Yes, we do collect emails, we have them sign up for the newsletter, and then we utilize MailChimp in order to communicate with our customers at least once a week, because the bottom line is, if you're not talking to your customers, somebody else is.
So we're constantly engaging. Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Well, and I have to shout out out there that Barn2Door has an integration with MailChimp, which is actually, people don't realize this, we're actually MailChimp's number one partner in the country. We are on MailChimp's Customer Advisory Board, and their number one partner.
Yeah, isn't that funny? And it's great, right? So we get to give them feedback on behalf of our farmers as well, which is great news. But, because we have a direct integration so that farmers like yourself can put items for sale directly into that newsletter, have it branded for you and then, have whatever people are [00:42:00] buying from you on your store automatically populated, not only in your Barn2Door customer list, but also into your MailChimp.
Because if anybody out here doesn't know who MailChimp is they are a best in class email provider. So, if you're a small business, medium sized business, or in the case of these lovely ladies growing to be a large one, you need to be able to communicate through email regularly through your branded email to your customers. And so, we essentially help power that experience and load up the email list. But MailChimp has the bells and whistles in terms of organizing that list into specific types of drip campaigns and email campaigns and welcome emails. And our team here at Barn2Door actually helps farmers set up that account with MailChimp, gives them templates to get started. Have you two been to the MailChimp Academy class or the email marketing class at...
Michelle Smith: Yes, we have...
Janelle Maiocco: At Barn2Door?
Michelle Smith: The Academy. It's huge.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Just like you have to email.
Janelle Maiocco: You want to grow your list. We obviously want to help automate it, but lean into your brand [00:43:00] and emailing those customers.
Michelle Smith: Right.
Julie Green: Yes. And I would say that probably Michelle would agree too, that when we started Barn2Door, that was probably the scariest, like, we weren't sure if it would work.
Like, we just did not know what MailChimp was. And I would say to anybody out there that's feeling scared or worried about it, stick with it.
Janelle Maiocco: We'll hold your hand.
Julie Green: Yes, you'll hold our hand. And then I remember the second thing was we were afraid that we were going to email too much.
And we were doing it like once a week and I can remember Kevin saying, he was the one that led us through a MailChimp. We got to praise him every time we talk about Barn2Door. I remember him telling us, nobody that does not want to see your newsletter is not subscribed to you. They want to hear from you.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah.
Julie Green: And so, that was a game changer. I think in our mind, they're subscribed to us because they want to see a newsletter. They didn't subscribe just for nothing. So, that's another thing that [00:44:00] Michelle and I work on too, actually to brand ourselves and promote is heavily in MailChimp.
We will post, Hey, become, part of our newsletter and they get certain incentives that not everybody sees. So, we'll put some discount codes in there.
Janelle Maiocco: It's very smart to attract people to sign up for your newsletter. You create FOMO for, Hey, only our newsletter subscribers get X, Y, Z. Right. And you were like, no, give me your email because you know there's so much power in that.
Julie Green: There is. And then the toolkits that you guys have sent. I just recently used one. One of the images that makes it so easy to come up with an idea. Even if you don't use the image, it's like, Oh, that is a really good idea. We used one of yours. It was like a farmer's box this month and we decided to call it our beef summer box, but we use your image and we've sold several of them like in the first 30 minutes.
So, [00:45:00] it's definitely working.
Janelle Maiocco: For folks listening, tell them what a marketing toolkit is.
Julie Green: So you get it once a month and it's a toolkit that, I think Michelle and I didn't really use until recently. It was one of those things that we're like, we didn't really look into it that deep, but I'm glad we did.
It comes with images. that you can use for that particular month. Like this one was June, so it was a lot of summer grilling ideas. There's stuff in there for honeybees. There's stuff in there for vegetables, milk, anything that you can think of farm related is in there. And then there's ideas for you to throw out, tips to promote.
I believe there's even recipes in there that you can take...
Janelle Maiocco: A couple of them. Yeah.
And, I think to your point, you're right. Like, for folks listening, there's a monthly marketing toolkit that farmers can subscribe to because we want to be very helpful to farmers who might not have a graphic designer on staff.
Right? So we [00:46:00] provide 40 to 50 social media graphic designs to your point that might say, hey, summer bundle, summer barn box, CSA, you know, half, whole hog, what may be. And so there's all these different designs that farmers can just use in their feed, in their social media feeds.
And then I think there's four to six MailChimp newsletter templates that are also seasonal. Hopefully you saw the patriotic ones coming out, or maybe you haven't yet. You haven't seen July's yet.
Julie Green: Well, we saw Memorial Day.
Michelle Smith: Yes, Memorial Day. And I do the MailChimp and I did use one of the templates.
And it was fantastic.
So easy. There's no excuse to not use it.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. That's what we hope. Cause we assume that you have no extra time cause you're busy, hopefully building all your customer relationships. So, you don't have to worry about a design template. Right? Or things like that.
And you can just get that taken care of. That's just music to our ears. Cause again, you know, you building your brand relationships are frankly top of the list.
Michelle Smith: Right.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah, that's awesome. So many good ideas. [00:47:00] I just love it, love it. Thank you also for using Barn2Door. We're so excited to be alongside you.
You have to help the folks here know what are things that you've done as you scale to save you the most time? Like, when you first got started, did you really think three years ago when you officially got your paperwork, we're going to have a million dollars in sales in three years?
Michelle Smith: Not a clue.
Janelle Maiocco: What we find is there's a lot of farmers that really do want to, you know, grow, like they seriously want to grow. And, you know, we want that too. We want independent farmers all across the country to have just mad success in their communities and building up those relationships and sales, of course directly, right?
Because we want all of you to keep all that as much, maximizing your margin, right? But all of those relationships going to you. But, you can't necessarily scale if you're sticking to notepads and taking orders one at a time, I mean, that's the reality of it. And so, what advice would you give? We always say in our business, like people don't scale.
That's like not a negative thing. That's like, there's only so many hours in a [00:48:00] day. So, if you're taking orders by phone, you can't humanly take more than X number of orders and still do all the other parts of farming. So, what is your advice for a lot of other really hungry farmers out there who are like, I'm going to take this to the next level.
Michelle Smith: I think my number one piece of advice is your only limiting factor is you. And you have to let that go. You have to invest in the technology and the expertise. And anybody who ever asks me, well, what is Barn2Door? I mean, the sticker is on my iPad, the sticker's on my cash box. So I have customers ask me, what is Barn2Door?
And I tell them they're, my business coach and they keep us moving forward. And we mean that in every sense of the word. You are the business coach for us. Sometimes Kevin reminds us, why are you wasting your time? You know, trying to formulate an email. Why don't you automate that? [00:49:00] Why don't you pre plan your social posts and then sure, you can have some along the way that pop up, but plan that out so that you're not constantly tied up with this.
Free yourself up to talk to your customers. He is always a breath of fresh air and we always feel like we've been to a good old Southern Baptist revival when we get off the phone with him. Because he helps us to maintain focus. So...
Janelle Maiocco: Yeah. So, just for everybody listening, Kevin, who is now going to be the mysterious Kevin,
he's one of our farm account managers at Barn2Door. So, Julie, Michelle, have an account manager here at Barn2Door. It essentially is one on one coaching as needed, right? We have more than one Kevin, they have different names, but they're all account managers, and they meet with farms as needed, when farms need it, want it.
They also are known to call down farmers who they haven't talked to in a while, especially if we have new things coming out that they know would be helpful. [00:50:00] And, we are very appreciative of them because they are eager to share all the resources that we have, right? I mean, the fact that you actually have already gone to the academy and are trying marketing toolkit, you know, like it's time to try new things.
It's sort of like you were saying, early on Michelle, which is like, just keep slowly investing. You don't have to do it all overnight, but start with the first POS device. Get the trailer. Get the iPad, sign up for the next farmer market, keep slowly.
It's not overnight. It's okay. And sometimes you think you're not making money that day, but you are putting time and you're investing. So, and it's the same if you have business opportunities. In our case, we keep putting out new things. I think POS, we've had POS for year and a half now, right?
But it was new a year and a half ago. And we have more and more, I know we're going to help you with email capture too. You know that's coming.
Michelle Smith: Yes! Yes!
Janelle Maiocco: Email capture right on your POS device is coming very soon. I can't wait. I think I might have to call you up personally because I'll be so excited.
We're very excited about that. And I know, you know, [00:51:00] emails just matter. We just need your customers to be accessible to you, so we're really excited about that, and I'm so amazed with all that you're doing, taking over Texas, any last advice? I kind of can't get over this wonderful story, and we're all cheering for you, and anything that we can do to help.
Julie Green: I know Michelle got us started in reading a book recently and there's one like paragraph, it's just talking about leadership. And there's one thing that keeps sticking out to me and it actually comes to me several times a day, but it's like, don't put something off.
If you put it off, you won't get to it. It can be something so simple, but you won't have the same motivation that you did in that five minutes that you have now.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, interesting. Yeah.
Julie Green: If you're thinking about doing it, then do it then. If you are thinking about joining Barn2Door, do it now. Like, join now.
Janelle Maiocco: Oh, you're so kind.
Julie Green: If you're going to make a Facebook post, do it now.
Janelle Maiocco: We do want to help.
Julie Green: Yes, like all those little things they add up.
Janelle Maiocco: They do. They do. They [00:52:00] do. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. A million good marketing ideas, inspiring people to go from hobby to frankly a million dollar farm.
Can we say that out loud?
Michelle Smith: Absolutely.
Janelle Maiocco: And we'll probably need to toast some mango margaritas over that one.
Julie Green: Yes.
Janelle Maiocco: But seriously, thank you.
Julie Green: We're going to fly to you and buy you a mango margarita.
Janelle Maiocco: I was actually, when you said take two days off, I was hoping you were going to say Nashville.
Michelle Smith: Wow!
Janelle Maiocco: That's so fun. But it's a great inspiration. I'm so delighted that you joined today so that people can hear and know that it's achievable and doable. But, you have to listen to people like you on how to do that, because years ago you wouldn't have believed it. And you were nervous about the next investment and the next one and look where you are today.
So, thank you for the inspiration so, so much, so appreciative. Keep up the good work. We're gonna just keep cheering for you and doing everything we can over here, but mostly it's just our honor and privilege to support you. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And can't wait for many more podcasts and to check in again.
[00:53:00] I want to extend my thanks to Michelle and Julie for joining us on this week's podcast episode.
You can check out more of Michelle and Julie and their farm on Instagram. Please do, by the way, and repost and share at Veterans Liberty Ranch. @VeteransLibertyRanch. It will pop up, right? We know this.
Michelle Smith: Yes, it will.
Janelle Maiocco: Okay, here at Barn2Door, we're humbled to support thousands of independent farmers across the country.
We're delighted to offer services and tools to help farmers access more customers, increase their sales, and save time for their business. If you're an independent farmer who's just getting started or transitioning to selling direct, or if you've been at it a while and want to simplify your business management to scale up, and save a ton of time, please visit Barn2Door.com/learn-more. And thank you for tuning in and we look forward to joining you next time on the Independent Farmer Podcast.
Thank you for joining us on the Independent Farmer Podcast. At Barn2Door, we are [00:54:00] passionate about empowering independent farmers to build a thriving business. To all the farmers out there, thank you for all you do to grow amazing food, care for the soil, and serve your local communities. You are the backbone of our country.
For free farm resources, or to listen to prior podcasts, go to barn2door. com backslash resources. We hope you join us again and subscribe to the Independent Farmer Podcast wherever you stream your podcasts. Until next time.