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Ranch Wife Marketing
Today I'm talking with Alisha at Ranch Wife Marketing. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Alicia at Ranch Wife Marketing in North Dakota. Good afternoon. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing? I'm good. How's the weather in South Dakota this afternoon?
00:22
North Dakota, um but it is getting better. We did have a negative 50 wind chills just a day or two ago, but now we're at least above zero. So for us, we can finally go back out in a sweatshirt. Nice. Did I say South Dakota? I swear my brain is not working today. You did. It's okay. Oh, North Dakota, the one above South Dakota. Jeez. uh In Minnesota today, it is really cold.
00:50
I am looking out my bedroom window at uh the tin roof of the bedroom next to me and the snow is all sparkly in the sunshine. It's really beautiful, but it's too cold. Oh yes, I get it. We don't get a ton of snow, not as much as Minnesota. I was born and raised there, so I know how much snow falls there. We're a little drier, so we don't have em as much snow, but we do have a little dusting currently.
01:17
Just out of curiosity, where are you in North Dakota? I'm actually on the North Dakota-South Dakota border. I live about 20 miles from South Dakota. um We live on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation um in a small, tiny town called Selfridge. Okay, cool. Well, for the people who are following along on the podcast about my barn cats, um
01:46
We had a stray barn cat show up here a month ago maybe, and she has been kind of hiding out. She'll come and eat every other day. And we have three kittens that we got a couple months ago. They're about five months old. And today is the first day that I have seen her, seen the stray hanging out with the other kittens in the dog house in the sunshine on the hay bales. And I think she's probably around the same age as the three kittens. So,
02:14
That was the banner moment of my day was seeing this beautiful tortoiseshell stray cat hanging out with the kittens. Oh, that's amazing. We have plenty of cats around here, um both indoor and outdoor. I love seeing all the kittens as they grow up in the summer. Yeah, it's really fun. And this cat showed up out of nowhere. I was like, why is there another cat? We don't have six cats. We have five.
02:42
and my husband happened to get a photo of her and I was like, Oh, I hope she sticks around because she's beautiful. And from my local listeners, we have tons of chicken eggs in our farm stand. Farm stand is heated so the eggs don't freeze and we have lots of eggs in the farm stand for sale every day. So if anybody needs eggs, come on by. And that's it for my updates for my house, my homestead. Alicia, you are
03:11
farmer, but you're also a marketer. So can we talk about both? Yeah. So if my husband listens in, he's going to cringe because we're actually ranchers. worries. Some people call it cattle farming. Some people call it ranching. It's all about where you are in the world. But yeah, so we have a cow-calf ranch. We run about 500 mama cows.
03:37
about 200 heifers. We breed some bulls and sell some bulls as well. And we also have a quarter horse operation. So we have about a hundred horses. We run about a 65 to 75 mare brood band and have about six stallions. So that's kind of our ranch side. Wow. That's a lot.
04:02
Yes. Yeah, it is a larger ranch. as much as I'd love to do the homesteading thing and like have the garden and all the other little animals, we have plenty going on that my husband's always like, no, you don't need to add more to our plate. Yeah, I wish that my husband understood that concept. He's always like, I want to try this. I want to try that. And I'm like, I think we need to get good at the first couple of things before we add more in.
04:30
I know. I really want chickens because I love fresh chicken eggs. And he's just like, just go across to our cousins. They have chickens. Honestly, it's easier if you just get them from somebody else. It really is. um We have 18 chickens and keeping chickens is not hard. I'm not saying don't get chickens. I'm not telling anyone to not ever get chickens because it's not that hard, but you have to make sure that you have bedding in the wintertime. If you live in a winter state, a Northern tier state,
05:00
And you have to clean out their coop at least once a month, if not twice a month in the warmer months because it gets stinky and that's not a fun environment for them to live in. So if you don't want to deal with chicken poop, don't get chickens. Yeah, that's definitely a thing. I have had to babysit the chickens across the way a few times and they are a little bit of work. I think they'd be so fun and my sons, they love the chickens.
05:30
Yeah, I love watching the chickens. I just don't love going in the coop in August when it's been a really hot day and the coop needs to be cleaned. And I have to hold my breath for the whole time and they're getting eggs, you know, it's very stinky. But they are they are gorgeous. Even the most, I don't know, plain Jane chicken like we have, we have the ISA Browns. They're just a reddish brown chicken. They're really pretty, too. So I don't know. Chickens are great, but
06:00
I think that you probably have a very nice setup with your cousins across the way to get eggs from. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does work. And there's other people in our community that do eggs as well. m I hear one of your kitties in the background. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm at my desk, she has to be right here with me and she is a old girl. So she likes to complain. Does she help you type?
06:26
She would love to sit right on the laptop the entire time if I let her. Something about the warmth of it. Yeah, we don't have any indoor cats anymore, but we have a dog and she barks in the background. Probably one out of every three recordings I do. And sometimes I edit her out and other times just leave her in because we live on a homestead. There's going to be animal noises. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. I have my dogs right beside me too. And if she heard a noise that sounded like a knock,
06:54
She would be extremely loud. huh. Yeah. Maggie's like that too. The trash truck pulls in the driveway and she loses her mind for the entire time. I'm like, you know, even if you caught the truck, there was, there's not anything you could do about it. So just stop and she won't until it pulls out of the driveway. She will not stop barking. And as it's pulling out of the driveway, she does this raw, raw, raw, like, yeah, get out of here. Exactly. sounds. m
07:24
It's very, very funny. So, um tell me how you got into this marketing thing, because I looked at your website and I know the story, but the listener doesn't know the story. Okay. So, um I originally got into it by doing it for the ranch. So, my husband is a fourth generation rancher and we have the Quarter Horse Program, which is where it mainly started and
07:51
They always sold locally and by word of mouth, they got it out and kind of were selling their horses for the last, they started in like the mid 1900s. So it's been a long family operation. And in, you know, 2012, 2014 ish when Facebook came out, we started using Facebook to market the horses. And that's kind of when the program blew up.
08:20
We don't do any modern day bloodlines. We don't show our quarter horses. They're just ranch bred horses. And when we were able to show them off online using social media and the internet and a website and all the things, um we started selling them all across the U S and now we have even started selling them overseas.
08:45
And when I was working for the farm service agency, before I had my, well, up until right after I had my son, I was always talking with the farmers, the ranchers, the stay at home ranch wives that had smaller businesses or the little businesses in town. And they always struggled to market their stuff.
09:11
like further than just going to the local elevator or the local sale barn or just farmers markets and things like that, especially in such a small rural community where we live. And it was hard to, for them to make side hustles or side businesses really work in such a small community. And they just, you know, always were at awe. Like, how do you guys sell your horses? You know, so
09:39
to so many states and now you've even shipped them overseas or how are you getting your cattle to be hitting the top of the sale barns every time you guys bring them to the sale barn and most of the time we sell right off the ranch private treaty because we're able to market and get a good deal where we don't need to take them to a sale barn and give up that commission. so kind of, yeah, questions kept coming up and people asking advice and that kind of
10:09
made me want to help people do it the way that we're doing it. So I built the business, quit my full-time corporate job with the Farm Service Agency and started doing this full-time alongside moming and ranching. Yeah, and that moming job is the most important one of the three. Yes. Now we have two boys and it's been uh such a blessing to not worry about going back to work with my second.
10:39
Yeah, I imagine it probably has been. I did not ever have a job when my babies were babies, like from the minute they were born until they were at least two and a half. having the privilege to be a full-time focused mother is one of the joys of my life. raised three that I birthed and one bonus child. have a stepson. And that first couple of months home with those babies are my favorite memories.
11:10
Oh yeah, I know. I was so burnt out and just drowning. I went back to work part time at six weeks because I got 12 weeks of maternity leave, but I knew that if I spent three whole months at home that I was not wanting to go back. And we didn't really want to give up the health benefits and all the things yet. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do this slowly and went back part time at six weeks. And I ended up
11:39
quitting when he was 13 months old because I was just like, no, I'm going to find something else and do something else. during that time from about, I probably started, I started Ranch Wife Marketing when I was eight months pregnant with him officially. And then I really, you know, got into it and got it to where I felt comfortable leaving my job by that time that he was a year old. um
12:09
And so it's just kind of worked out to just leave and come home full time. And I, it was the best thing I've ever done. Awesome. I'm so glad you found something that you love and that works for you and your family. So do you consider yourself a coach or how does, how does farm wife marketing work? So it started as coaching as a one person team. I didn't have, you know, the, um,
12:38
capacity to run enough social media accounts while still ranching and being a mom to bring in the kind of income I wanted to. So I started as a coach and more of a do it with you. um That way I could kind of have a more, at that time I could do more with my time. I could set up, you know, three hours a day where I did client calls.
13:05
That way I could have multiple clients throughout the week and then um able to just assist them. We would just sit down in that hour and we'd go through what their marketing plan was that week, um what goals they wanted to hit and kind of just work on their marketing strategy and get them all set up um for whatever the retainer was, whether that was three months, six months. um But it had then...
13:32
Um, this summer I had expanded it into a marketing agency and we're starting with social media. So we're doing social medias for businesses that just don't want to do it themselves. I also created courses and guides and books. So I have all kinds of little, um, low ticket or, um, medium ticket. can have like things that you can, uh, buy and do it yourself and.
14:01
kind of have your own education without having the coaching side or me do it for you. Okay, that makes sense. So I don't want your secret sauce because your secret sauce is the reason that you have a business and you're making money at it. But what would you tell someone who knows nothing about marketing their homestead or their little farm or their small ranch? I don't know there's such a thing as a small ranch, but we're going to call it that.
14:29
What is the first thing that you would tell them to do as their first step in marketing? The first thing is just visibility. You just need to be able to get yourself out there. um it's probably the biggest thing that, biggest hurdle that people have to get, especially in rural communities over is like putting themselves out there for people to see them. um And
14:56
Showing up on social media, even if you don't have a plan, telling the world what you have, what you offer, that is by far the first step. If you can get started doing that, the rest will fall so much more naturally when you can start implementing strategies and plans. Yeah, that's what I would say too. And I am not a marketer, but I worked for a PR and marketing company for about five years and started out just helping my friend who owned it.
15:25
do filing because she had a brand new baby boy at home and she needed some help. I learned so many things working for her as an office assistant in the five, six years that I worked for her. And it has helped me so much with what we do here because we have a farm to market garden and we have the eggs. And I'm always in the summertime when my husband's taking stuff to the farmer's market. Every morning he sets up the booth and he sends me a photo.
15:53
And I write a little blurb and put it on Facebook. Kyle's at the farmer's market. Here's what we have for today. Stop by and say hi. He would like to, he'd like to say hello to you or whatever I say. And he always comes home and says, somebody stopped by and said, they saw that I was at the farmer's market because you posted on Facebook. So it does work. Oh, definitely. It is such an asset. If you can just post on social media. um
16:19
A lot of people, especially probably my older clientele are so against it. But once I show them that it can be simple and easy and um you don't have to spend all day on it, just literally get a post out there and it will even a little bit, even a couple of times whenever you got something going on is going to help so much. Yeah. And once I feel like once people get past the, don't know what to say thing.
16:48
They find out that it's fun. Yes. Oh yeah, it's so much fun interacting with people on social media. I've met so many people through social media that I would have never met if I hadn't started this business or hadn't marketed our horses in the conversations that we've had with people over the years just from finding us online on social media.
17:13
Whichever business it was that I was working for, um it's just incredible the relationships we've built. Yes, and it is all about community and relationships and it needs to be right now. I don't want to get into it, but it's been rough living in Minnesota for the last couple of weeks and we need more people talking with each other instead of at each other. Exactly. Yeah, we don't need to get in it, but I do have an immigrant stepmother who's living in
17:43
suburb of Minneapolis. So I do understand the struggle. Yeah, it has been a very, very long January and we're not even, what is today? The 27th? We have a few more days of January and I don't see February being any, any faster. It's been a very rough start to the year here in Minnesota. uh So I need to pick your brain for a second on email lists because I keep hearing and I keep reading.
18:11
that it's important to have an email list because that keeps you in contact with your customers. Even if Facebook or Instagram or whatever social media platform you use goes down. Do you think that an email list is really important? Absolutely. It is one of the things I get people set up with right away uh is how they're going to collect emails and how they're going to nurture that email sequence because
18:39
I'm actually a great example. So when I first started Ranch Wife Marketing, I had an Instagram page where I focused on helping burnt out moms in the rural community, the ones that were like me working 40 hours a week, trying to start a business, trying to be a mom, trying to help their husband on the ranch, um, find a way to make that side income a full-time thing. And I had over 10,000 followers and my Instagram was hacked.
19:09
and taken away. I lost all my leads, all my customers, all my potential from that um Instagram. And now the one I have now, which I know I'm not sad about, followers don't mean sales, but having a nice large follower amount. Some people are like, oh, she knows what she's doing. And now my current one is only around 1300. But you have an email list now.
19:38
but I have an email list and I was able to email all of my email lists and tell them, know, you can find me at this Instagram now instead, or I was able just to keep in communication with them. own, once someone gives you their email, you own it. Like that is your information, that is your data. They have consented you to contact them through email and it doesn't, it's like,
20:07
on an Excel file or wherever you keep it, you have it to reach out to them. Where social media, you can lose that lead easily, they can easily change their username and you can't find them. ah You could get your account taken down. ah They could easily block you by accident even sometimes. ah So there's just a lot of things with social media that a email list helps navigate if you can
20:37
collect those emails from your following. Okay, so here's where I get stuck because I just built a new website for the other podcasts I'm doing now. It's called Grit and Grease and the Heartland Women in Agriculture and I just set up the email list thing and I haven't sent out the first email because I'm going to do it in February because then I have all of January to draw from. So
21:03
My thing about email lists is that I never know what to say in an email if I'm not actually selling something. I'm just promoting the podcast. So my plan is to email people a synopsis of what the things are that we talked about in January and do a little teaser at the end of the guests that we're having in February. Is that a
21:30
good thing to do for an email list? Yeah, that sounds great. I honestly believe in one of like my foundation beliefs in my business is that you shouldn't be selling every single time you post something, send something, whatever it is. It should be 80 % nurture and value and education driven and 20 % selling because if we're not giving ourselves to our customers, why should they
22:00
open their pocketbooks to us. Right. Yeah, exactly. So if someone is selling their produce in the summertime and they have an email list, should their email they send out once a month or every two weeks or however they're timing it, should the first like 60 % of the email be about what they've been growing, what they've been seeing?
22:29
the cute garden spider that they found in the middle of the garden and it scared them to death. And then what they're going to be selling and where they're going to be selling. Oh, yes. And even if like, especially in that niche, if you can throw in gardening tips or certain varieties you came across or new things to try, throwing in any kind of little bit of knowledge or entertainment.
22:55
it before you actually lead to the sale is going to up your conversion rates so much. That's what I figured. We have a beautiful photo that my husband took uh of an orb weaver garden spider. And it is orange and sorry, it's yellow and black and it's a beautiful spider, but lots of people are really scared of spiders. he said, he said, I took this for you. He said, cause you're not scared of spiders. He said, but do you think that it'll get
23:24
attention on Facebook or an email and I was like probably because people are arachnophobia is a real thing eh
23:35
Yes. No, and uh I actually, I'll even use my husband as an example. So he's scared of snakes, but you know, he'll sit there and watch a TikTok or any real video about snakes and just be like grossed out the whole time, but just interested because I don't know what it is about it. But um yeah, they just are drawn to watching them even if they're scared of them.
24:03
It's like Gawker's in a bad car accident. I swear that's how the brain works. um So I have one more question about a marketing tactic and then we can, I actually have questions about your quarter horses too. Art, do you think that podcasts are a good way to market? Yes, if you can market, well, so podcasts.
24:27
You have to be able to also mark the podcast, but then the podcast itself is a great way to nurture your audience. It's a great way for them to learn, know, and trust you and lead them to your offers by providing value, entertainment, and things like that. I have considered even myself starting a podcast. The only thing holding me back from starting a podcast is my time. I have
24:56
two under two and like I said a lot of livestock to take care of but I think once my boys get a little older it's something I even want to do so that I can teach on my podcast and then market my services through it. So definitely it is a great place to do that. And I want to tell the listener it is really easy. It will probably cost you anywhere from 25 to 100 dollars a month to do it.
25:25
because it does cost money to have a host for the files. you have to have a way to record if you're doing guests. there there are expenses around having a podcast, but it's not exorbitant. It's not a ton of money. And you can pick up a headset like I wear and the sound is fine. You don't have to have a fancy boom mic and the big fat earphones that don't stay on my head. Well, that's why I don't use them.
25:54
don't love them. It's fairly easy. is not hard to do. it is my podcast, this one, and the one I just started, it's a joy of my life right now because I get to talk to people who are helping me educate people in the world about agriculture and about food and about cooking and about animals. And it just tickles me to no end when I get up in the morning and I know I'm going to do an interview with someone. It just makes my heart.
26:25
first, you know? Yeah, they are. I love listening to them too. And I've been on a few and they're always just a pleasure to be a part of and also listen to. And I always get little golden nuggets from every single podcast I ever listened to. Yes. And the best part about podcasts is that you can put your earbuds in and you can do dishes or you can cook dinner or you can muck stalls or you can brush a horse.
26:54
You know, it's something that you can learn from without having to focus completely on the thing that you're learning. can be doing something else in the process. Oh, definitely. I love them. I think they're great. And I would say that because I have to. And Alicia, your voice is beautiful. You would be great at a podcast. Oh, thank you. It's actually one of the things I'm insecure about. I feel like it's high and whiny. Oh, no, you would be great. You would sound
27:23
perfectly fine for a podcast. the other podcast that I do is with a cattle rancher and she's in Nebraska. And so we talk a lot about her livestock, but we don't talk about quarter horses because they don't have quarter horses. tell me about quarter horses. What are quarter horses for? What's their purpose?
27:47
Quarter horses were bred to be very versatile. um So there's not really a true purpose to them. They are so versatile, they're used almost in every uh equitation out there. Originally, they were kind of raised to...
28:10
have a little more strength than a thoroughbred and um some endurance and be able to kind of go all day on a ranch chasing cattle and things like that instead of breaking down like thoroughbreds and then having a little more strength than Arabians to be able to rope and pull cattle. They're kind of built through
28:36
those breeds and even crossed with some draft to bring in that strength. um So that's kind of what they were built for just to be your all around do anything and everything horse. They're going to excel in those Western cattle areas, but they're definitely, they can be quick. They're used for racing and endurance. can climb mountains and yeah, that's just kind of where they came from was.
29:03
a breed that could withstand that rugged American terrain that we have. they a smaller horse? Are they like 14, 15 hands or are they a bigger horse? So because they come from so many other breeds originally, they are anywhere from pony size. Like some of them even fall under 14. I think one of our mares is right at 14 hands.
29:31
And then they can be, I mean, we have 16, 16, two hand horses as well. I've seen quarter horses get as tall as 17 hands. Wow. Okay. All right. So they're, I'm going to use a bad word. My, the best dog that my parents ever had was a mutt. He was, he was not a purebred anything. And they only had him for about a year because he got hit by a car and he was the loviest, most healthy.
30:01
most uh athletic dog and his name was Lucky, which was unfortunate because he was not lucky. And we love that dog. definitely were a mutt in the beginning. that is a great ex- now to the now they're just so old that it's now a purebred themselves. But yeah, that's where it came from was just that hybrid vigor of combining a bunch of different things together. Yeah, I was a rare uh
30:29
I was afraid if I said the word mutt, you're going to be offended. think a lot of quarter horse people probably would be, but I completely understand where it comes from. um So though we, all of ours are purebred, they're American quarter horse registered. But yeah, if you trace any quarter horse back far enough, you're not going to find a quarter horse at the end of the trail. Exactly. I think that's what I was trying to get at.
30:57
I don't know enough about horses to talk to it smartly and that wasn't really smart either, but you know what I'm saying. I don't know enough about horses because I've never had any. um So I guess my last question, because I try to keep these to half an hour, is are some horses still used for work, like for hauling a cart or for pulling a plow or any of the things that horses were used for 150 years ago? Yeah.
31:25
Yeah, there's a lot of people that still use horses for work. um Amish is a great example. um There's a lot of Amish communities still um in the United States. We have a lot of Amish customers that uh use their horses still to pull carts and plow and work on them. So yeah, it's definitely still a thing.
31:54
Okay, because a lot of the horse Facebook pages that I follow, I follow a couple, they're more for racing or for showing. oh Or just for having because they're great. Horses are amazing animals. And I was thinking about the other day, and I knew that the Amish still use horses for actual farm work. But the average person who owns a horse, they don't typically use them for farm work. They race them or they show them.
32:23
Yeah, I would say we use ours for work, but not for farm work. have tractors and plows and all that stuff, but we use ours to herd our cattle. We to rope the cows and treat them out in pasture to round them up just because, you know, a four wheeler or a dirt bike or whatever. lot of people use, especially where we live in North Dakota, we have a lot of rugged country. Can't get to where the cows can get, but a horse can. Yep.
32:52
Yep, that makes all the sense in the world. All right, Alicia, I appreciate your time so much as I do everybody who talks with me on the podcast. Where can people find you? You can find me by Googling Ranch Wife Marketing. That will bring you to my website. You can find me on Facebook, oh Instagram, TikTok, all with Ranch Wife Marketing.
33:16
Um, the actual at is ranchwife underscore marketing on both Tik TOK and Facebook. Um, and I love chatting and I'm always just a DM away or an email away if anyone wants to learn anything about marketing, your rural businesses. Or if they want to buy a quarter horse. Yeah. We, yeah. you want that's Freilich legacy quarter horses. If you want to look into our quarter horse program. Okay. Awesome.
33:46
You can find me as always at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support. And if you like this podcast, check out Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. That's my other podcast. Alicia, thank you again for your time. I appreciate it. Yes. I had a great time talking with you, Mary. Have a great day. You too.
View all episodes
By Mary E LewisToday I'm talking with Alisha at Ranch Wife Marketing. You can also follow on Facebook.
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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Alicia at Ranch Wife Marketing in North Dakota. Good afternoon. How are you? I'm doing good. How are you doing? I'm good. How's the weather in South Dakota this afternoon?
00:22
North Dakota, um but it is getting better. We did have a negative 50 wind chills just a day or two ago, but now we're at least above zero. So for us, we can finally go back out in a sweatshirt. Nice. Did I say South Dakota? I swear my brain is not working today. You did. It's okay. Oh, North Dakota, the one above South Dakota. Jeez. uh In Minnesota today, it is really cold.
00:50
I am looking out my bedroom window at uh the tin roof of the bedroom next to me and the snow is all sparkly in the sunshine. It's really beautiful, but it's too cold. Oh yes, I get it. We don't get a ton of snow, not as much as Minnesota. I was born and raised there, so I know how much snow falls there. We're a little drier, so we don't have em as much snow, but we do have a little dusting currently.
01:17
Just out of curiosity, where are you in North Dakota? I'm actually on the North Dakota-South Dakota border. I live about 20 miles from South Dakota. um We live on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation um in a small, tiny town called Selfridge. Okay, cool. Well, for the people who are following along on the podcast about my barn cats, um
01:46
We had a stray barn cat show up here a month ago maybe, and she has been kind of hiding out. She'll come and eat every other day. And we have three kittens that we got a couple months ago. They're about five months old. And today is the first day that I have seen her, seen the stray hanging out with the other kittens in the dog house in the sunshine on the hay bales. And I think she's probably around the same age as the three kittens. So,
02:14
That was the banner moment of my day was seeing this beautiful tortoiseshell stray cat hanging out with the kittens. Oh, that's amazing. We have plenty of cats around here, um both indoor and outdoor. I love seeing all the kittens as they grow up in the summer. Yeah, it's really fun. And this cat showed up out of nowhere. I was like, why is there another cat? We don't have six cats. We have five.
02:42
and my husband happened to get a photo of her and I was like, Oh, I hope she sticks around because she's beautiful. And from my local listeners, we have tons of chicken eggs in our farm stand. Farm stand is heated so the eggs don't freeze and we have lots of eggs in the farm stand for sale every day. So if anybody needs eggs, come on by. And that's it for my updates for my house, my homestead. Alicia, you are
03:11
farmer, but you're also a marketer. So can we talk about both? Yeah. So if my husband listens in, he's going to cringe because we're actually ranchers. worries. Some people call it cattle farming. Some people call it ranching. It's all about where you are in the world. But yeah, so we have a cow-calf ranch. We run about 500 mama cows.
03:37
about 200 heifers. We breed some bulls and sell some bulls as well. And we also have a quarter horse operation. So we have about a hundred horses. We run about a 65 to 75 mare brood band and have about six stallions. So that's kind of our ranch side. Wow. That's a lot.
04:02
Yes. Yeah, it is a larger ranch. as much as I'd love to do the homesteading thing and like have the garden and all the other little animals, we have plenty going on that my husband's always like, no, you don't need to add more to our plate. Yeah, I wish that my husband understood that concept. He's always like, I want to try this. I want to try that. And I'm like, I think we need to get good at the first couple of things before we add more in.
04:30
I know. I really want chickens because I love fresh chicken eggs. And he's just like, just go across to our cousins. They have chickens. Honestly, it's easier if you just get them from somebody else. It really is. um We have 18 chickens and keeping chickens is not hard. I'm not saying don't get chickens. I'm not telling anyone to not ever get chickens because it's not that hard, but you have to make sure that you have bedding in the wintertime. If you live in a winter state, a Northern tier state,
05:00
And you have to clean out their coop at least once a month, if not twice a month in the warmer months because it gets stinky and that's not a fun environment for them to live in. So if you don't want to deal with chicken poop, don't get chickens. Yeah, that's definitely a thing. I have had to babysit the chickens across the way a few times and they are a little bit of work. I think they'd be so fun and my sons, they love the chickens.
05:30
Yeah, I love watching the chickens. I just don't love going in the coop in August when it's been a really hot day and the coop needs to be cleaned. And I have to hold my breath for the whole time and they're getting eggs, you know, it's very stinky. But they are they are gorgeous. Even the most, I don't know, plain Jane chicken like we have, we have the ISA Browns. They're just a reddish brown chicken. They're really pretty, too. So I don't know. Chickens are great, but
06:00
I think that you probably have a very nice setup with your cousins across the way to get eggs from. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely does work. And there's other people in our community that do eggs as well. m I hear one of your kitties in the background. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever I'm at my desk, she has to be right here with me and she is a old girl. So she likes to complain. Does she help you type?
06:26
She would love to sit right on the laptop the entire time if I let her. Something about the warmth of it. Yeah, we don't have any indoor cats anymore, but we have a dog and she barks in the background. Probably one out of every three recordings I do. And sometimes I edit her out and other times just leave her in because we live on a homestead. There's going to be animal noises. Oh no. Yeah, exactly. I have my dogs right beside me too. And if she heard a noise that sounded like a knock,
06:54
She would be extremely loud. huh. Yeah. Maggie's like that too. The trash truck pulls in the driveway and she loses her mind for the entire time. I'm like, you know, even if you caught the truck, there was, there's not anything you could do about it. So just stop and she won't until it pulls out of the driveway. She will not stop barking. And as it's pulling out of the driveway, she does this raw, raw, raw, like, yeah, get out of here. Exactly. sounds. m
07:24
It's very, very funny. So, um tell me how you got into this marketing thing, because I looked at your website and I know the story, but the listener doesn't know the story. Okay. So, um I originally got into it by doing it for the ranch. So, my husband is a fourth generation rancher and we have the Quarter Horse Program, which is where it mainly started and
07:51
They always sold locally and by word of mouth, they got it out and kind of were selling their horses for the last, they started in like the mid 1900s. So it's been a long family operation. And in, you know, 2012, 2014 ish when Facebook came out, we started using Facebook to market the horses. And that's kind of when the program blew up.
08:20
We don't do any modern day bloodlines. We don't show our quarter horses. They're just ranch bred horses. And when we were able to show them off online using social media and the internet and a website and all the things, um we started selling them all across the U S and now we have even started selling them overseas.
08:45
And when I was working for the farm service agency, before I had my, well, up until right after I had my son, I was always talking with the farmers, the ranchers, the stay at home ranch wives that had smaller businesses or the little businesses in town. And they always struggled to market their stuff.
09:11
like further than just going to the local elevator or the local sale barn or just farmers markets and things like that, especially in such a small rural community where we live. And it was hard to, for them to make side hustles or side businesses really work in such a small community. And they just, you know, always were at awe. Like, how do you guys sell your horses? You know, so
09:39
to so many states and now you've even shipped them overseas or how are you getting your cattle to be hitting the top of the sale barns every time you guys bring them to the sale barn and most of the time we sell right off the ranch private treaty because we're able to market and get a good deal where we don't need to take them to a sale barn and give up that commission. so kind of, yeah, questions kept coming up and people asking advice and that kind of
10:09
made me want to help people do it the way that we're doing it. So I built the business, quit my full-time corporate job with the Farm Service Agency and started doing this full-time alongside moming and ranching. Yeah, and that moming job is the most important one of the three. Yes. Now we have two boys and it's been uh such a blessing to not worry about going back to work with my second.
10:39
Yeah, I imagine it probably has been. I did not ever have a job when my babies were babies, like from the minute they were born until they were at least two and a half. having the privilege to be a full-time focused mother is one of the joys of my life. raised three that I birthed and one bonus child. have a stepson. And that first couple of months home with those babies are my favorite memories.
11:10
Oh yeah, I know. I was so burnt out and just drowning. I went back to work part time at six weeks because I got 12 weeks of maternity leave, but I knew that if I spent three whole months at home that I was not wanting to go back. And we didn't really want to give up the health benefits and all the things yet. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to do this slowly and went back part time at six weeks. And I ended up
11:39
quitting when he was 13 months old because I was just like, no, I'm going to find something else and do something else. during that time from about, I probably started, I started Ranch Wife Marketing when I was eight months pregnant with him officially. And then I really, you know, got into it and got it to where I felt comfortable leaving my job by that time that he was a year old. um
12:09
And so it's just kind of worked out to just leave and come home full time. And I, it was the best thing I've ever done. Awesome. I'm so glad you found something that you love and that works for you and your family. So do you consider yourself a coach or how does, how does farm wife marketing work? So it started as coaching as a one person team. I didn't have, you know, the, um,
12:38
capacity to run enough social media accounts while still ranching and being a mom to bring in the kind of income I wanted to. So I started as a coach and more of a do it with you. um That way I could kind of have a more, at that time I could do more with my time. I could set up, you know, three hours a day where I did client calls.
13:05
That way I could have multiple clients throughout the week and then um able to just assist them. We would just sit down in that hour and we'd go through what their marketing plan was that week, um what goals they wanted to hit and kind of just work on their marketing strategy and get them all set up um for whatever the retainer was, whether that was three months, six months. um But it had then...
13:32
Um, this summer I had expanded it into a marketing agency and we're starting with social media. So we're doing social medias for businesses that just don't want to do it themselves. I also created courses and guides and books. So I have all kinds of little, um, low ticket or, um, medium ticket. can have like things that you can, uh, buy and do it yourself and.
14:01
kind of have your own education without having the coaching side or me do it for you. Okay, that makes sense. So I don't want your secret sauce because your secret sauce is the reason that you have a business and you're making money at it. But what would you tell someone who knows nothing about marketing their homestead or their little farm or their small ranch? I don't know there's such a thing as a small ranch, but we're going to call it that.
14:29
What is the first thing that you would tell them to do as their first step in marketing? The first thing is just visibility. You just need to be able to get yourself out there. um it's probably the biggest thing that, biggest hurdle that people have to get, especially in rural communities over is like putting themselves out there for people to see them. um And
14:56
Showing up on social media, even if you don't have a plan, telling the world what you have, what you offer, that is by far the first step. If you can get started doing that, the rest will fall so much more naturally when you can start implementing strategies and plans. Yeah, that's what I would say too. And I am not a marketer, but I worked for a PR and marketing company for about five years and started out just helping my friend who owned it.
15:25
do filing because she had a brand new baby boy at home and she needed some help. I learned so many things working for her as an office assistant in the five, six years that I worked for her. And it has helped me so much with what we do here because we have a farm to market garden and we have the eggs. And I'm always in the summertime when my husband's taking stuff to the farmer's market. Every morning he sets up the booth and he sends me a photo.
15:53
And I write a little blurb and put it on Facebook. Kyle's at the farmer's market. Here's what we have for today. Stop by and say hi. He would like to, he'd like to say hello to you or whatever I say. And he always comes home and says, somebody stopped by and said, they saw that I was at the farmer's market because you posted on Facebook. So it does work. Oh, definitely. It is such an asset. If you can just post on social media. um
16:19
A lot of people, especially probably my older clientele are so against it. But once I show them that it can be simple and easy and um you don't have to spend all day on it, just literally get a post out there and it will even a little bit, even a couple of times whenever you got something going on is going to help so much. Yeah. And once I feel like once people get past the, don't know what to say thing.
16:48
They find out that it's fun. Yes. Oh yeah, it's so much fun interacting with people on social media. I've met so many people through social media that I would have never met if I hadn't started this business or hadn't marketed our horses in the conversations that we've had with people over the years just from finding us online on social media.
17:13
Whichever business it was that I was working for, um it's just incredible the relationships we've built. Yes, and it is all about community and relationships and it needs to be right now. I don't want to get into it, but it's been rough living in Minnesota for the last couple of weeks and we need more people talking with each other instead of at each other. Exactly. Yeah, we don't need to get in it, but I do have an immigrant stepmother who's living in
17:43
suburb of Minneapolis. So I do understand the struggle. Yeah, it has been a very, very long January and we're not even, what is today? The 27th? We have a few more days of January and I don't see February being any, any faster. It's been a very rough start to the year here in Minnesota. uh So I need to pick your brain for a second on email lists because I keep hearing and I keep reading.
18:11
that it's important to have an email list because that keeps you in contact with your customers. Even if Facebook or Instagram or whatever social media platform you use goes down. Do you think that an email list is really important? Absolutely. It is one of the things I get people set up with right away uh is how they're going to collect emails and how they're going to nurture that email sequence because
18:39
I'm actually a great example. So when I first started Ranch Wife Marketing, I had an Instagram page where I focused on helping burnt out moms in the rural community, the ones that were like me working 40 hours a week, trying to start a business, trying to be a mom, trying to help their husband on the ranch, um, find a way to make that side income a full-time thing. And I had over 10,000 followers and my Instagram was hacked.
19:09
and taken away. I lost all my leads, all my customers, all my potential from that um Instagram. And now the one I have now, which I know I'm not sad about, followers don't mean sales, but having a nice large follower amount. Some people are like, oh, she knows what she's doing. And now my current one is only around 1300. But you have an email list now.
19:38
but I have an email list and I was able to email all of my email lists and tell them, know, you can find me at this Instagram now instead, or I was able just to keep in communication with them. own, once someone gives you their email, you own it. Like that is your information, that is your data. They have consented you to contact them through email and it doesn't, it's like,
20:07
on an Excel file or wherever you keep it, you have it to reach out to them. Where social media, you can lose that lead easily, they can easily change their username and you can't find them. ah You could get your account taken down. ah They could easily block you by accident even sometimes. ah So there's just a lot of things with social media that a email list helps navigate if you can
20:37
collect those emails from your following. Okay, so here's where I get stuck because I just built a new website for the other podcasts I'm doing now. It's called Grit and Grease and the Heartland Women in Agriculture and I just set up the email list thing and I haven't sent out the first email because I'm going to do it in February because then I have all of January to draw from. So
21:03
My thing about email lists is that I never know what to say in an email if I'm not actually selling something. I'm just promoting the podcast. So my plan is to email people a synopsis of what the things are that we talked about in January and do a little teaser at the end of the guests that we're having in February. Is that a
21:30
good thing to do for an email list? Yeah, that sounds great. I honestly believe in one of like my foundation beliefs in my business is that you shouldn't be selling every single time you post something, send something, whatever it is. It should be 80 % nurture and value and education driven and 20 % selling because if we're not giving ourselves to our customers, why should they
22:00
open their pocketbooks to us. Right. Yeah, exactly. So if someone is selling their produce in the summertime and they have an email list, should their email they send out once a month or every two weeks or however they're timing it, should the first like 60 % of the email be about what they've been growing, what they've been seeing?
22:29
the cute garden spider that they found in the middle of the garden and it scared them to death. And then what they're going to be selling and where they're going to be selling. Oh, yes. And even if like, especially in that niche, if you can throw in gardening tips or certain varieties you came across or new things to try, throwing in any kind of little bit of knowledge or entertainment.
22:55
it before you actually lead to the sale is going to up your conversion rates so much. That's what I figured. We have a beautiful photo that my husband took uh of an orb weaver garden spider. And it is orange and sorry, it's yellow and black and it's a beautiful spider, but lots of people are really scared of spiders. he said, he said, I took this for you. He said, cause you're not scared of spiders. He said, but do you think that it'll get
23:24
attention on Facebook or an email and I was like probably because people are arachnophobia is a real thing eh
23:35
Yes. No, and uh I actually, I'll even use my husband as an example. So he's scared of snakes, but you know, he'll sit there and watch a TikTok or any real video about snakes and just be like grossed out the whole time, but just interested because I don't know what it is about it. But um yeah, they just are drawn to watching them even if they're scared of them.
24:03
It's like Gawker's in a bad car accident. I swear that's how the brain works. um So I have one more question about a marketing tactic and then we can, I actually have questions about your quarter horses too. Art, do you think that podcasts are a good way to market? Yes, if you can market, well, so podcasts.
24:27
You have to be able to also mark the podcast, but then the podcast itself is a great way to nurture your audience. It's a great way for them to learn, know, and trust you and lead them to your offers by providing value, entertainment, and things like that. I have considered even myself starting a podcast. The only thing holding me back from starting a podcast is my time. I have
24:56
two under two and like I said a lot of livestock to take care of but I think once my boys get a little older it's something I even want to do so that I can teach on my podcast and then market my services through it. So definitely it is a great place to do that. And I want to tell the listener it is really easy. It will probably cost you anywhere from 25 to 100 dollars a month to do it.
25:25
because it does cost money to have a host for the files. you have to have a way to record if you're doing guests. there there are expenses around having a podcast, but it's not exorbitant. It's not a ton of money. And you can pick up a headset like I wear and the sound is fine. You don't have to have a fancy boom mic and the big fat earphones that don't stay on my head. Well, that's why I don't use them.
25:54
don't love them. It's fairly easy. is not hard to do. it is my podcast, this one, and the one I just started, it's a joy of my life right now because I get to talk to people who are helping me educate people in the world about agriculture and about food and about cooking and about animals. And it just tickles me to no end when I get up in the morning and I know I'm going to do an interview with someone. It just makes my heart.
26:25
first, you know? Yeah, they are. I love listening to them too. And I've been on a few and they're always just a pleasure to be a part of and also listen to. And I always get little golden nuggets from every single podcast I ever listened to. Yes. And the best part about podcasts is that you can put your earbuds in and you can do dishes or you can cook dinner or you can muck stalls or you can brush a horse.
26:54
You know, it's something that you can learn from without having to focus completely on the thing that you're learning. can be doing something else in the process. Oh, definitely. I love them. I think they're great. And I would say that because I have to. And Alicia, your voice is beautiful. You would be great at a podcast. Oh, thank you. It's actually one of the things I'm insecure about. I feel like it's high and whiny. Oh, no, you would be great. You would sound
27:23
perfectly fine for a podcast. the other podcast that I do is with a cattle rancher and she's in Nebraska. And so we talk a lot about her livestock, but we don't talk about quarter horses because they don't have quarter horses. tell me about quarter horses. What are quarter horses for? What's their purpose?
27:47
Quarter horses were bred to be very versatile. um So there's not really a true purpose to them. They are so versatile, they're used almost in every uh equitation out there. Originally, they were kind of raised to...
28:10
have a little more strength than a thoroughbred and um some endurance and be able to kind of go all day on a ranch chasing cattle and things like that instead of breaking down like thoroughbreds and then having a little more strength than Arabians to be able to rope and pull cattle. They're kind of built through
28:36
those breeds and even crossed with some draft to bring in that strength. um So that's kind of what they were built for just to be your all around do anything and everything horse. They're going to excel in those Western cattle areas, but they're definitely, they can be quick. They're used for racing and endurance. can climb mountains and yeah, that's just kind of where they came from was.
29:03
a breed that could withstand that rugged American terrain that we have. they a smaller horse? Are they like 14, 15 hands or are they a bigger horse? So because they come from so many other breeds originally, they are anywhere from pony size. Like some of them even fall under 14. I think one of our mares is right at 14 hands.
29:31
And then they can be, I mean, we have 16, 16, two hand horses as well. I've seen quarter horses get as tall as 17 hands. Wow. Okay. All right. So they're, I'm going to use a bad word. My, the best dog that my parents ever had was a mutt. He was, he was not a purebred anything. And they only had him for about a year because he got hit by a car and he was the loviest, most healthy.
30:01
most uh athletic dog and his name was Lucky, which was unfortunate because he was not lucky. And we love that dog. definitely were a mutt in the beginning. that is a great ex- now to the now they're just so old that it's now a purebred themselves. But yeah, that's where it came from was just that hybrid vigor of combining a bunch of different things together. Yeah, I was a rare uh
30:29
I was afraid if I said the word mutt, you're going to be offended. think a lot of quarter horse people probably would be, but I completely understand where it comes from. um So though we, all of ours are purebred, they're American quarter horse registered. But yeah, if you trace any quarter horse back far enough, you're not going to find a quarter horse at the end of the trail. Exactly. I think that's what I was trying to get at.
30:57
I don't know enough about horses to talk to it smartly and that wasn't really smart either, but you know what I'm saying. I don't know enough about horses because I've never had any. um So I guess my last question, because I try to keep these to half an hour, is are some horses still used for work, like for hauling a cart or for pulling a plow or any of the things that horses were used for 150 years ago? Yeah.
31:25
Yeah, there's a lot of people that still use horses for work. um Amish is a great example. um There's a lot of Amish communities still um in the United States. We have a lot of Amish customers that uh use their horses still to pull carts and plow and work on them. So yeah, it's definitely still a thing.
31:54
Okay, because a lot of the horse Facebook pages that I follow, I follow a couple, they're more for racing or for showing. oh Or just for having because they're great. Horses are amazing animals. And I was thinking about the other day, and I knew that the Amish still use horses for actual farm work. But the average person who owns a horse, they don't typically use them for farm work. They race them or they show them.
32:23
Yeah, I would say we use ours for work, but not for farm work. have tractors and plows and all that stuff, but we use ours to herd our cattle. We to rope the cows and treat them out in pasture to round them up just because, you know, a four wheeler or a dirt bike or whatever. lot of people use, especially where we live in North Dakota, we have a lot of rugged country. Can't get to where the cows can get, but a horse can. Yep.
32:52
Yep, that makes all the sense in the world. All right, Alicia, I appreciate your time so much as I do everybody who talks with me on the podcast. Where can people find you? You can find me by Googling Ranch Wife Marketing. That will bring you to my website. You can find me on Facebook, oh Instagram, TikTok, all with Ranch Wife Marketing.
33:16
Um, the actual at is ranchwife underscore marketing on both Tik TOK and Facebook. Um, and I love chatting and I'm always just a DM away or an email away if anyone wants to learn anything about marketing, your rural businesses. Or if they want to buy a quarter horse. Yeah. We, yeah. you want that's Freilich legacy quarter horses. If you want to look into our quarter horse program. Okay. Awesome.
33:46
You can find me as always at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, you can go to atinyhomestead.com slash support. And if you like this podcast, check out Grit and Grace in the Heartland, Women in Agriculture. That's my other podcast. Alicia, thank you again for your time. I appreciate it. Yes. I had a great time talking with you, Mary. Have a great day. You too.