Farm to Future

Kayla Pearson is a surfer, hairdresser, helicopter mechanic, and the Founder of Surf Soap (@surf_soap), an ocean-safe hair care and skincare company. 

Kayla was born in a tiny town in California, and has always had an affinity with the ocean. After growing up in Utah, she moved to Florida, where she learned to surf. Kayla joined the Army in 2013 as a UH60 Blackhawk mechanic and crew chief, and then pivoted into military intelligence after she had her daughter Eleanor in 2017. 

In that time, she’s competed in Ironman 140.6 Japan, won the women’s title in the Seoul International Marathon, and earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Kinesiology while remodeling a home with her husband, Ben. 

Kayla launched Surf Soap in November 2020 with their signature 3-1 shampoo-conditioner-body wash bar, and they've already shipped over 2,000 orders! In this episode, we talk about how building a business is just like running a marathon, how to stay consistent and get past that mile 18, and how Kayla manages her time running Surf Soap on top of full-time work and being a parent.

Connect with Surf Soap
Website: www.surfsoap.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/surf_soap
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/surfsoapcompany/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJWwp7HmJ-03WZ-RYKOC43w
Twitter: https://twitter.com/surf_soap

Connect with Jane
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com  
Email: [email protected]

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

Is it possible to pursue art and achieve financial stability?

That’s a question that Michelle Favin is beginning to answer. Michelle is an artist based in San Francisco. She uses acrylic and natural pigments in her work and pulls inspiration from her mixed lineage of Korean and American.

In this episode, Michelle opens up about leaving a glamorous and high-octane job in tech to slow down and pursue a risky but fulfilling art career. She shares practical tips for anyone looking to pursue art, from setting up your studio space, pricing your work and commissions, and how to use Instagram in an authentic way. Michelle paints from a deep commitment to equity and social justice and believes creative expression is core to a more empathetic, compassionate, and socially just world.

Michelle recently released her debut collection “together, here” — an exploration of how we’re connected to Earth, to each other, and to our inner landscapes. All of the pieces use natural pigment and acrylic on raw canvas and 15% of proceeds will be donated to Sogorea Te’ Land Trust,

Connect with Michelle
Website: michellefavin.com
Instagram: @Michellefavin

Connect with Jane Z
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane 
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com 
Email: [email protected] 

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

Sometimes what you need is the lemonade factor. In other words, the ability to turn a sour situation into something sweet.
 
Here’s an example.
 
In 2011, Nicole Ketchum interviewed for a job that involved designing decor for a Halloween theme. She came up with a beautiful modern chandelier design. She was sure the company would love it.
 
Turns out, they thought the concept was “too modern” and turned her down for the job.
 
Nicole was upset at first, but here’s where the lemonade factor comes in. She could’ve just deleted the presentation and erased the experience from her memory.
 
Instead, she decided to make lemonade.
 
For two years, Nicole and her husband would go into his office on weekends to use his computer and make 3D design files for these chandeliers. Over time, Nicole created prototypes, put together a catalog and online presence, got some free buzz through blogs, and started making a name for her new brand.
 
In fact, her chandeliers were so unique and easy to use that they got picked up by some pretty big names — Disney, Mattel, and Pottery Barn Kids.
 
Talk about turning rejection into sweet, sweet opportunity.
 
Six years in, Nicole Ketchum is the full-time founder of Hey Girl Decor™— a modern chandelier and accessories company. She has been featured in over 20 magazines and spoke at ALT Summit. In this episode, Nicole shares some growth hacks for Pinterst, her experience with overseas manufacturing, and how she managed to build her business while raising her newborn daughter.
 
Connect with Nicole:
Website: www.heygirldecor.com
IG: @heygirldecor
Pinterest: @heygirldecor
FB: @heygirldecor

Connect with Jane Z
Instagram: instagram.com/insideoutwithjane
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com
Email: [email protected] 

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

When you first start your business, not everyone will believe in you. But that’s okay, because the only person that needs to believe in what you’re building — at least to start — is you. 

Allison Claire had a ton of doubters when she was starting her jewelry business - her dad, one of her first customers, and banks who denied her a loan. But it turns out, Allison had a perfect background for what she was doing. During her 8 years of working in university administration, Allison struggled to find a way to represent her alma mater at football games and fancy events without looking tacky in a hoodie. So she built Allison Claire, a jewelry brand that offers luxury collegiate pieces like gold necklaces and diamond earrings.

In just 5 years, Allison Claire has made almost $1 million in sales and over 1,000 orders — as a one-woman show! The brand is a licensed jeweler for 8 schools and counting, including the University of Washington, University of Arizona, and Virginia Tech. Today, Allison is here to tell the tale of how she dove head-first into a new industry, teaching herself jewelry design and manufacturing, and some of the sacrifices she had to make to build a million-dollar brand. 

Connect with Allison Claire
Website: https://www.allisonclaire.com 
Hearts Forever Collection: https://www.allisonclaire.com/collections/hearts-forever-by-homs 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allisonclaireco/ 
Email: [email protected] 

Connect with Jane Z
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane 
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com 
Email: [email protected] 

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

The best products often come from a frustrated consumer.

Laura Armstrong was an event planner who traveled a ton for work and struggled to find the right hair products to bring on the road. She couldn’t lug all her tools and hair products around, and the only dry shampoos she could find came in aerosol cans, which were banned from carry-on and they turned your hair white.

So, Laura created her own.

Using ingredients you could find in your kitchen, Laura created her own formula and packaging for an all-natural, travel-friendly dry shampoo that matches your hair color. 

Almost 3 years in, Laura has expanded Dirty Blonde into a Hair and Skin Care brand that generates $5k a month in revenue — a solid side hustle on top of her day job as a marketing and event planner.

In this episode, Laura takes us behind the scenes of her operations, sharing her process of developing an all-natural formula and her tips for new businesses — what to do before launching your product, how to manage your time with a side hustle, and how to make the most out of Instagram and Facebook ads for your business.

If you enjoy this episode, I'd love to see where you’re tuning in from! Take a screenshot of the podcast and tag me on a story at @insideoutwithjane.

Connect with Dirty Blonde!
Website: www.dirtyblonde.ca
Facebook: www.facebook.com/DirtyBlondeTO
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dirty_blonde_to/ 
Email: [email protected]

Beyond Soap book: https://amzn.to/3iFIAIT

Connect with Jane Z
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com 
Email: [email protected] 

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

What’s the first step to building a thriving business? Well, easy — getting started. 

But that can be scary. Whether it’s quitting your day job, putting up a website, or getting out there to find your first customer, just getting started requires being brave.

Here’s a secret, though.

You don’t need to be brave all of the time. Just the moments that matter. That’s how Claire Smith managed to quit her day job at a restaurant to start a granola company and grow it to over 70 stores.

Claire grew up as the 7th generation on a 2,300-acre family farm, vowing to move as far away from the farm as she could. After graduating from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Neuroscience and minor in Classics, she moved to western Canada. Her parents decided to start pivoting the farm from corn and soybeans to alternative grains and seeds during this time.

Claire, acknowledging the irony, moved back to the farm to work with teff, an ancient grain native to Ethiopia. She created Teffola, or teff granola, and began selling to local grocery stores in January 2018. Since then, she's grown Teffola into 70 grocery stores and coffee shops across Michigan and is now branching into Chicago and Toledo, Ohio.

In this episode, Claire shares her business journey from late nights and farmer’s markets to building a customer-centric food brand that brings awareness to small farmers and ancient grains.

Connect with Teffola
Website: www.eatteffola.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/eatteffola
Instagram: www.instagram.com/eatteffola

Connect with Jane Z!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com 
Email: [email protected]

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

Season 2 is dropping June 8! If you're an entrepreneur looking to build a *thriving* business without losing your mind, this podcast is for you. 

I'm Jane Z. and I'm here to support you on your biz-ness journey. Every Tuesday I'll bring in an entrepreneur to share their tips for success, mistakes you should avoid, and advice on how to stay sane and healthy. 

See you soon! 

You still have time to binge Season 1! Check out all our episodes at https://www.insideoutwithjane.com

Let's be friends on IG: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane/

To cap off Season 1, Severin from Episode 4 comes back to interview me, Jane Z.! We take a trip down through my multi-leg journey of entrepreneurship, from building a neighborhood piano school at age 13 to designing a student-run cafe at McGill University, building a clean tech startup community in Vancouver, to co-founding the first-ever classroom design platform. We also discuss my research on food systems, from growing tomatoes in urban greenhouses to making acorn tofu. 

Sev and I pull back the curtain on the highs and lows of our startup journeys - from the excitement of building something from scratch to the burnout of doing too much. This sets us up for season 2, which will be all about how to build a thriving creative business without losing your mind.

>> Links to Jane’s work
Nutty Futures - Jane’s children’s book on acorns: https://issuu.com/janezy/docs/nutty_futures_book_final
Nutty Futures research paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348634267_Nutty_Futures_Balanoculture_for_the_World
Nutty Futures video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okvOaSQwPo8
Creative Learning Spiral - book chapter on how to design spaces for creative learning: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-7497-9_19

>> Resources mentioned
The Story of Stuff & Planned Obsolescence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM&t=5s How to process acorns and make acorn flour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkSSk9I8u7g room2learn’s Medium site: https://medium.com/room2learn  

>> Episodes mentioned
Jennifer Zhang: https://www.insideoutwithjane.com/jen-z/
Ryan Chen: https://www.insideoutwithjane.com/ryan-chen/

>> Connect with Jane:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/1janezhang/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janezyyy/ 

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

Vivienne Walz is a former Health Scientist at the CDC who worked on the 2018 Ebola Outbreak response in the DRC, where she focused on analyzing community feedback from Red Cross volunteers. Today, Vivienne supports the Covid-19 response as a community health liaison in the Kahnawà:ke First Nations reserve outside of Montreal. Vivienne holds an M.Sc. in Public Health and B.A.&Sc. in Cognitive Science, both from McGill University, and she’s built a career around community well-being, sustainability, social justice.

In this episode, we talk about Viv’s upbringing on a Swiss farm in rural Ontario, how the CBC documentary 8th Fire set Viv down a career path around indigenous culture and social justice, and the story of when she got hit by a drunk driver. And of course, we talk about how Viv ended up working at the Centers for Disease Control, what evaluation work looks like, and what it was like being on the ground in the DRC working on the Ebola response. 

CONNECT WITH VIV
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vivienne-walz-45b663b8/

RESOURCES
CBC Documentary 8th Fire https://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/blog/8th-fire-wabs-walk-through-history
Dalai Lama Fellowship: https://www.dalailamafellows.org/#main 

CONNECT WITH US
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane/
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com
Email: [email protected]

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co

Mark Pan is the Director of HR & Business Strategy at Newsela, an EdTech platform that delivers news-related content to students at different reading levels. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Urban Education, Mark took his knowledge to the classroom, teaching English in San Jose, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. He then brought his teaching skills into the tech industry, where he managed partnerships at Coursera and later joined Newsela in business strategy and now People Operations.

In this episode, Mark shares how an acting class helped him become a better teacher, why he’s optimistic about the future of EdTech, stories his classroom in Malaysia, and how employees and managers can be more transparent with one another about career pathing. We also reminisce about Summerbridge Hong Kong and our hair dye stories — and break out into a few musical numbers!

CONNECT WITH MARK
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markpan/
Newsela: https://newsela.com/ 

RESOURCES MENTIONED
Tours of Duty: https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-employee-compact

CONNECT WITH US
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insideoutwithjane/
Website: www.insideoutwithjane.com
Email: [email protected]

Discounts

• Get 10% off delicious local farm-fresh food delivered to your door with my link for FarmMatch: https://farmmatch.com/jane
•  Get 15% off high-quality Italian olive oil with code FARMTOFUTURE: https://shop.vignolifood.com/FARMTOFUTURE
• Get 40% the CircleDNA’s Premium DNA test with code JANEZHANG: https://circledna.com/premium 

Connect with Jane Z. 

• Instagram: @farm.to.future
• Email: [email protected]
• Website: farmtofuture.co