Corinna Bench (0:00)

Your customer is looking for someone to help them get what they want. They are looking for a guide. And if you are in business, you need to embrace the role of being the guide for your clients. What does that mean as a farm business? I'm going to share a personal story from this weekend and I'm going to pull out for us what it means to be a guide as a farmer. Let's get started. Hey there, this is Corinna Bench and welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast. In today's market, it's not enough to just grow your product, you've got to know how to sell it too. Welcome to the My Digital Farmer Podcast where we reveal online marketing strategies and tips to help farmers like you get better and more competent at marketing. We learn how to find more customers, increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. Well, welcome to episode 297 of the My Digital Farmer Podcast. I'm your host, Corinna Bench, one of the farmers at Shared Legacy Farms out in Elmore, Ohio. I'm also the founder of mydigitalfarmer.com, which is all about trying to help other farmers like you get more confident in your marketing and sales strategy so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. If you're new to the podcast, I am so glad you're here today. Make sure that you subscribe to the podcast and go check out some of my back archived episodes. There are so many of them now, a lot of really good ones and classics. But if you're new to the marketing space and you're kind of learning the lingo, I always tell people to start with the first 10 because I designed them long ago to be an onboarding ramp into the marketing space and they are as classic as they come. Another place you can go to learn more about marketing is just to get onto my email list that is free. Just go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe when you do, I'm going to send you an email into your inbox about every five days and it's going to walk you through the marketing jungle. It's going to include some of the key principles you need to know, people you need to be following, tools you need to have. It's really good stuff so you can subscribe by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Localline. Imagine all of your farm sales under one roof Localline is the most comprehensive sales software built for farmers in food hubs, selling direct to restaurants, schools, wholesale buyers, CSA and more. Features include e commerce, automated inventory management, a box builder, subscriptions, point of sale, and more, helping you increase your sales, save time and streamline your processes. Are you looking to switch to sales software that does it all? Subscriptions start as low as $49 a month with no setup fees or sales percentages. Plus, if you join LocalLine today, your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront at no cost so you'll be up and running in no time. You can even pause your subscription in the off season now. Bonus As a podcast listener, localline is also offering a free premium feature for one year with your subscription when you use my coupon code. So to grab that, go to mydigitalfarmer.com localline that's one word and then enter the coupon code MDF2025. We love localline. We've been using it for years. I highly recommend them make the switch today. And now back to the show. Well, I'm so glad you're here today. I am full of energy. I just got off of a Zoom call with my Farm Marketing School members. This month I was teaching a live class, a brand new workshop that I launched into Farm Marketing School tool all on farm metrics. It's called the Farm Metrics Dashboard. And the whole premise behind this 30 day project build is for farm owners to learn the key performance indicators, the key marketing metrics that they should be tracking, the ones that actually move the needle. And then they have to build their own custom dashboard that they're going to use for this year to track the metrics of their choice. So they'll learn what they all are, they'll decide which ones they actually want to measure and then they build the tool where they're going to enter their data over the course of the year. So it's really designed to kind of give them a GPS that they can follow for their business. And I haven't been jazzed about a project like this in a long time. So it was fun. We just had our teaching call and next week we'll have our Zoom meetup. It's been fun. So if you want to join Farm Marketing School you can access that class. It will be in the archives. You can watch it and take it. Just go to mydigitalfarmer.com fms and check out what's inside. I'll walk you through the whole process. You get in there, you take an assessment you figure out where do you need to build marketing assets in your business, where do you need to plug the holes, and then you basically choose which classes you want to take to build out your marketing system. But I hope you choose the Marketing Metrics Dashboard. That one's a good one, but there's a lot of other options in there. Okay, let's jump into today's topic. And this topic is inspired by something that happened to me this past weekend, and it has a marketing lesson in it. Kurt and I drove to Chicagoland this past weekend. We left on Sunday around 2pm and we were back home by Monday at 6pm so we weren't gone very long. And the reason why we were traveling there, this is my old stomping grounds, is because I have been having some knee pain. This is totally unrelated to my gut healing process. Just a. I don't know if it was an injury or if it's been from the fact that I've been sleeping sitting up for an entire year, but my knee was starting to give me trouble for the last maybe three or four months. It's beginning worse and worse, and I thought I could just kind of manage through it and figure it out. I've been going to my own private chiropractor, trying to deal with it. I've been having like massage work done on it every couple weeks to see if I could treat it that way. It just wasn't getting better. In fact, it was getting worse and it was getting to the point where I could no longer kneel. And that's a problem, right? If you're a farmer and you can't get into a kneeling position. I couldn't squat. I couldn't get out of a squat if I was sitting in a chair. It was uncomfortable to get out of the chair. Stretching was painful. Going up and down stairs. I felt like my knee was popping funny. Yeah, just lots of discomfort. So I remembered a orthopedic chiropractor that I had visited back in the days when I lived in the Chicagoland area. That was 17 years ago. I had a very similar problem with my knee. And my chiropractor at the time couldn't figure out what it was. And so she recommended me to a different doctor. And I went to see Dr. Allen and he was able to fix me within. I think I. I think I saw him three times and I had to do some exercises and he healed me. And I remember that being such a powerful experience for me because the. The doctors, the other conventional doctors that I had visited, I Had gone to see an orthopedic surgeon, and I had X rays taken and MRIs, the whole nine, nine yards to like, see what's going on in that joint. And they were telling me I was going to need surgery. So for this other doctor, Dr. Allen, to heal me that quickly, it was a pretty remarkable thing for me. It was a very powerful memory. So I kind of had that going on in the background as this began to develop for me here a second time. And, you know, Chicago is like four. It's a four and a half drive, four and a half hour drive for me. As this was getting worse and worse, I just kept telling myself, you know what? I could always go back and see Dr. Allen, and I know that he would be able to fix me. And I kept putting it off because I was dealing with my gut healing process. I'm like, let me just get that figured out and then I'll deal with my hip and my knee. But eventually it got to the point where I just couldn't put it off anymore. And so I thought, you know what? I keep getting this probing sense that I need to go back and see Dr. Allen. He'll be able to at least give me the next step. So I made an appointment. And that was like, I don't know, two, three weeks ago. It was fairly recently that I just decided to do it. I was not expecting to be able to get in for a while, but I got in within 10 days. They made me an appointment for me, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is crazy. I'm going to see a doctor four and a half hours away for a problem that I have. And when I showed up into his office, he spent a little over an hour with me, and he did exactly what he did 17 years ago. It was a very similar process where we did all these muscle tests to see my range of motion. And he was just doing different things to try and figure out which muscles had shut down. Were the muscles working properly to track the root of the problem? And within 10 minutes, I would say he knew what it was. And he was like, oh, yeah, this isn't actually that big of a deal. This is a pretty small, easy problem to fix. And then the rest of the time that we were together, he was doing different muscle work, massage, waking up muscles, asking me to do exercises to build up a muscle or wait, you know, remind the muscle that it was there and so forth. And he actually got me to bring up my phone out, my iPhone out, and he said, okay, these are the Three exercises that I want you to do when you go back home. And you're going to do these, you know, every two hours for the next five days, and you should be better within two weeks. The whole experience was surreal. Just like the first time. I couldn't believe that he so quickly identified the problem, solved it for me, and I walked out of there feeling so much hope. So why am I telling you this story on a marketing podcast? I think there are so many lessons in here about how we need to be with our own customers in our business. First of all, I want to remind you that your customers are coming to you with a desire that they think that you can meet for them, or they have, in some cases, a problem that your product solves for them. And anytime a person is coming with that intention, they are looking for a guide. They want your help so that they can win the day. They can be a hero in their own story. And this is the role that we have as business owners. We have to embrace that role of being their guide, showing them the way. That means that we carry some authority in their eyes. They're looking for people or businesses or products that can act as an authority in their life who can solve the problem for them and say, I know what to do. I know how to get you to your promised land, to your new transformation. So if it's true that you are the guide, then today I want to remind you that you need to be the guide. Don't ignore that role, but embrace it. I look at Dr. Allen and how he functioned as a guide for me. When I walked into the office, he exuded confidence within the first five, 10 minutes, I could tell he knew what he was doing. And he even at one point said, I know what this is. This is not a big deal. I've seen so much more complicated problems. This is actually going to be really easy. And for him to say that out loud to me was such a relief because I'm carrying all this baggage like, oh, no, my cartilage is gone, probably, or I'm going to need surgery, or I'm going to have to drive back here for additional treatments with him. You know, a four and a half hour drive, maybe three or four times. That's going to be expensive. Like, I'm already doing all that in my head. And. And he's just like, no, man, I know how to help you. That's essentially what he communicated to me, right? The fact that he spent over an hour with me actually helping me and treating me, I mean, that's Unheard of in the medicine space, even for a chiropractor. And he also took the time to show me and video for me, like, here's what you need to do so that you don't have to drive all the way back here. Four and a half hours, right? I'm going to help you out. He gave me the path out of the problem. He showed me to do these three exercises. Meet up with me on zoom in a couple weeks. But, like, I'm pretty confident that this is gonna work. And I was also just reflecting on how the reason I decided to go see him again in the first place was because of the impact he had the first time. Right. I remembered the positive customer experience that we had at Allen Orthopedics, how quickly he had diagnosed me and fixed the problem. I remember thinking he was a little like Jesus, like the great healer. And I came to him because I trusted him, because I believed that he could fix me and that he would be able to do it quickly. I needed a guide. I was lost. I didn't know how to fix it. I was trying all different kinds of things on my own. I was trying to do the exercises I remember learning from him the first time, and they weren't working. I went to a massage therapist. I went to my own chiropractor multiple times, and nothing was working. And so it was like, okay, I'm looking. I'm scanning the horizon for help. Who can help me? And we went out looking for a solution, and he came to mind, and I went and he helped me. This is what your customers are doing, too. They have problems. They have desires in their heart that they want to get to a certain promised land, a certain transformation in their life, and they're looking for people to help them get there. In many cases, they don't know the way and you do. And so that's where we step in and act as the guide today. I want you to think about that in your business. How are you acting as the guide? Are you embracing that title and that role, or have you abdicated it? Because I'm here to tell you that if you claim it and do a few things in your business that essentially allow you to function in that role, it will streamline your customer's path to success. They will get to where they want faster. It will turn them into a super fan faster, and build loyalty in them like nothing else will. So here's a few things to think about as you act as the guide. Now, these are ideas that come from a book called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. I know many of you longtime listeners have probably heard of him or you've read his book. If you are new to the marketing space, though, you need to go buy that book. That is not a book you get from the library. That is a book you buy because you're going to underline and highlight it and dog ear the corners like crazy and you're going to workshop things and write things in the margins. So get that book. I consider it the number one marketing book everyone should get at this point. I might change my mind in the future. Something else might supplant it, but it's definitely my current number one favorite. And in that book, he, Donald Miller talks about this idea that our customer is actually the hero in our brand story, not us. We don't talk about us. We try to talk about our customers as much as possible through the eyes of our customer. And our job is to be the guide in their story and to help them achieve their promised land, to get to wherever they're trying to go in their hero's journey. Okay? And the way that we do this is number one, we have to create authority. We have to show authority. We have to prove to this customer that we actually know what we're doing or they're not going to want to hire us as the guide. So in your marketing, in your messaging, you need to have places where you talk about your results that you get for people. This is why you see testimonials on websites for businesses. This is why we see customer photos of smiling, happy customers using your product. We need to show that our customers get results from our brand. We talk about things like statistics that matter, like our retention rate or how many customers we serve or how many 5 star reviews we have or what certifications we have. And we put that everywhere. People want to know that we know what we're talking about. Okay? So when I think about my story with Dr. Allen, I think about his, his track record spoke for itself. So the fact that he had healed me before made me believe that he probably was my fastest way to healing a second time. Even though that meant I was going to have to drive to Chicago four and a half hours, possibly two, three, four times. I still, like, compared the cost. I was like, well, if I, if I take the route of conventional medicine and go find an orthopedic person and take all the tests and do the X rays, like, I'm probably still going to be out spending more than I, you know, do with Dr. Allen. And I'm. They're still not going to know how to fix me. So it sort of seemed like a no brainer. I had this track record that I could lean into. But I also want to bring up his confidence. I probably could do a whole episode about the importance of showing confidence in your product, but he was exuding confidence. And I want us to think about, like, are we showing confidence in our ability to farm or raise animals or whatever you're doing to sell? Like, when you pitch a product and you do it, you know, with your body language caved in, without making eye contact with a weak offer or apology, like, that is not a confident sale. Do you believe in your product or not? Do you know that you get results for people or not? Do you know that you help people and get them to the finish line? And if you do, then you should absolutely be selling your product. Your services are amazing. You get stuff done for them. So be confident. That confidence carries an energy ripple with it and you bring that into the room. People are looking for that and when they see it, it's attractive, right? It's like, okay, I trust this person because they look like they know what they're doing and I don't have to worry anymore. So I want you to practice your confidence. If it's important that we exude authority as the guide, part of that means we have to practice our confidence. And it is a practice. At first, you might not feel it, you might have to fake it. So do the things that confident people do, and eventually you begin to feel it. Okay, all right, so that's kind of point one. The second point was, as the guide, one of the things you're doing is you're giving your clients the success path. I need you to tell me what to do because I don't know how to get there. And that's what your customers are saying to you too. Maybe they're not saying it, but they, they want to say it to you. When I think about my issue with my knee, like, I didn't know how to help myself anymore, and I just wanted to find somebody who could say, this is what's wrong. I know how to fix it. Here's what you do. Go home and do this exercise. And that's what he did, right? He was able to tell me in the office, this is what's wrong with you. I'm confident that's what it is. Here's why he would explain it and then he's like, here's what you need to do to fix it. And it's going to Take four weeks. And then he was even more specific and said, tomorrow, I want you to do this exercise. Let me video it for you. And you're gonna do that every two hours for the next five days. Right. Like, he showed me the step by step. So I want you to think about this with your customers. When your customers first come into your business and buy from you for the first time, they don't know. Let's actually even back up before they even buy for the first time, they start just becoming aware that you exist. And, and maybe they. They have this desire to get onto your email list. Okay, but they haven't purchased yet. Now what? Like, they don't know what to do next unless you communicate that to them. So this is part of the job of the guide, is to build a marketing pathway for those people as they get closer and closer into your brand. You need to tell them what the next step is. How do I cross this river? Well, you're going to step onto this stone, and now you're going to start here. You're going to buy this product first, and after that, you'll probably want to buy this one. And. And then you should try this bundle over here and then hang out there for a while and just keep buying those things. And when you're ready to graduate, maybe consider doing this. Right. Like, we have to hold their hand and we even know when they're going to trip up along the journey. Oh. You know, as a CSA member, once you hit week four, you're going to hit a wall. You're going to start to have things piling up in your fridge. And I know that's what's going to happen. So I'm warning you now, and here's what you're going to do when it happens. It's like you equip them and you forecast for them, and then you give them the tools to be able to get out of that sticky spot. Right. So we show them where to start and what to do step by step, and then we also equip them and empower them when they get stuck. I've talked about this before, but the easiest example I can think of in my business to exemplify this is that we built an entire onboarding structure and pathway for our CSA members because of this problem of, like, veggie overwhelm and not knowing what to do and feeling guilt because they were composting or coming in with great intentions of wanting to be a super chef for their family and then realizing, I'm failing. I don't know what to do with this stuff. I feel horrible about myself. So how can we turn that negative experience into a positive one? And we did a huge focus on education in that first year. I want to say it was seven or eight years ago now when everything shifted and I was like, okay, we need to create an education track. And we taught all kinds of things to our customer base. And I was a little psycho about it, actually. So we have a ton of content now. Video trainings on every vegetable that we grow. We have PDF guides that basically show them how to prepare and cook any vegetables. They can download those from our library. They include great starter recipes for each of those. We have like a little mini class on how to be successful and learn the CSA way and some of the tips and tricks that our CSA members know and love. We have a whole session on just how to store produce, right? Like, we know the things that hang them up and we walk them down this success path every May in the few weeks before the season starts. And we hold their hand in those first seven to eight weeks and show up again when we know things are getting tough. Okay, all of these resources now live inside something called the Academy, which is an online library. And our members get access to this library. And incidentally, if you're a farmer and you want to have access to all of those videos and trainings and the canning classes and all the stuff that we're teaching them, the whole CSA success path, if you want to see what it is and even be able to download them and use them for your own farm, you can join my academy for a monthly fee. I think it's 19 bucks right now, and in perpetuity. You can then use those resources all year long. So it's a great, great thing to have, especially if you're a vegetable grower. If you want to learn more about that, I'm not going to say a whole lot here, but it's at mydigitalfarmer.com forward/academy, and there's even a trial membership where you can get the first month for a dollar. I forget what the code is, but if you go to that link, it's going to tell you what it is. Okay, so we, we have to teach our customers in some cases how to use the product. If you're trying to sell more cuts of meat that are just not popular sellers, the problem might be that your clients just don't eat it a lot because they don't know how to prepare it. So if you show them the way and give suggestions that might begin to unlock more sales in that category. Even like the idea of suggesting rituals, food rituals and habits around your products can be a way of doing this, acting as a guide. So one of my favorite suggestions here is to, you know, start things like Fish Friday or Taco Tuesday or Grill Night Friday or something like that. Just talking about that in your content gives the customer an idea for how to ritualize to create a ritual or a family habit around your food item. And now that also results in additional sales because they need your product in order to do that ritual. Right. But we have to suggest that sometimes it doesn't occur to them how often to eat our product or how to use it. Finally, one of the other kind of ways that I see myself doing this in the next few months, and I'm really excited about it, is documenting my own health journey as I've been healing my gut for all of 2024. It's been like a 12 month process and I am 95 there. Like any week now, I expect to be symptom free. It's just so, so cool how it's finally resolving. And I haven't talked about it a ton here. I promise at some point when it's gone and I have time to really assimilate it all and figure out what have been the key lessons. I will probably do a multiple episode series on that experience and what it taught me. But also the mark, there are some marketing implications that, that come out of that whole, whole situation too. Right. I was, I was experiencing a problem and I went and looked for solutions and I, I spent a lot of money trying to buy solutions to this problem. So there's, there's so much we could talk about there too. But I will eventually be sharing a lot of that story here with you. But what I'm excited about is creating a content path, an education path for my customers and the people that follow our farm that talks about gut health and that shares my story and that tries to connect with other people out there who are likewise struggling with GI issues, any, any gut related disease, frankly, but also autoimmune diseases which are all stemming from the gut and to be able to kind of say, hey, I see you, I hear you. Like, I know what it feels like to be isolated and not be able to eat the same foods that everyone else eats and to feel like you're left out. And I know what it feels like to feel scared because you can't digest your food or you're worried about going out into public because you need to know where the bathroom is. Right. Like, I have just such a strong sense of empathy now and I will be able to show people, like, here's the healing path. Here are some of the, like every. It's going to be different for everyone because gut related diseases are not all one and the same. But like, here are some of the common denominators that I know you're gonna, you're gonna run into. And I can point people to like, some of the things that are gonna help them. Hey, go to this place and check this resource out. Or go read this book or this is a product or a practice you might wanna try for a few weeks and see if it helps you. Right. Like, I'll be able to offer some of that and I'll be able to talk about it through the lens of healthy eating and what foods are smart to eat and frankly, what vegetables you shouldn't be eating if you are trying to heal your gut. And that's going to be a very challenging kind of moment for us. My husband and I have already talked about that. Like we're growing some vegetables right now that if a person with an autoimmune disorder ate them, would severely hurt them. And that's been like a big mindset thing that I've had to get over. Like, how do I justify continuing to grow some of this food that I know would, would hurt me if I ate it? Right. And hurt other people? And do people even know that some of the food that they're ingesting might be hurting them if they have a compromised immune system? So a lot of these foods are like healthy foods too, quote, unquote, healthy foods like whole grains and spinach. Spinach like, should not be eaten by some of us until our gut is healed and maybe not ever again. Like, that's a scary sentence to say out loud. But anyway, my point is that this health journey is that I'm going to be able to talk about is basically going to be me stepping into that role of guide. And I'm going to show you a path through this scary journey that you're on right now. And I'm really excited about claiming that role and just serving people. And I'm sure it's going to benefit our business too, but I really just want to be of service. So what does that look like for you? I mean, do you see a place in your business where you can help somebody figure out a way through the maze that they're stuck in and you know that your product is part of that solution? Can you help Them get to the other side if you can. Then I want you to brainstorm. How can you do that? What does that look like to be the guide? It's one thing to just say, yep, I'll be a guide, but no, like, put some teeth on it. What's the mechanism in your business that you're going to build so that you act as the guide? Is it building an email onboarding system? Is it having certain key touch points with a customer one on one at regular basis that you map into your calendar so that you see how they're doing? Is it a customer survey that you send out at a certain time every year? Is it two or three times a year where you ask them to come to an event? What, like, what does that look like? Right? Brainstorm what it means to show your authority. What does it mean to show the success path and tell them where to start and equip them to be successful. All right, my friend, Today I just wanted to tell this story about having a problem that was manifesting into some tough symptoms and how I started looking for help. I started scanning the horizon for solutions. I was willing to drive four and a half hours to a doctor I hadn't seen in 17 years. Your customer has a problem too, and they are scanning the horizon. They are going to the Googles and the YouTubes and the Facebooks and the Instagrams trying to find somebody who knows what they're doing, who can help them. And if they were to find you and you were there positioned as the guide, what could that mean for you and for them? Take on your role as the guide. Embrace it, do the things that guides do and please show your confidence. You know what you're doing. That's all I got today. The show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 297 and in the show notes, I'm going to put the link to that chiropractor In Westmont, Illinois, Dr. Allen. So, Alan, chiropractics. This is my shout out to him. I know he doesn't listen to my podcast, but if you live in the Chicagoland area and you have some kind of orthopedic pain or situation, this guy is a miracle worker and he is going to do things that normal chiropractors don't do. He's not just going to adjust your spine. He's going to do all kinds of tests. He's going to figure out what's going on. So I'm just so grateful to him and if I can help him find more clients. I will. If you like today's episode, please go leave me a rating or a review. It does help more people find out about the show. And remember, if you want to get onto my email list to learn some more marketing tips for your farm business, Please subscribe@mydigitalfarmer.com Subscribe thanks for joining me today everyone. Have a wonderful week and remember, I believe in you. I'll see you next time. Bye Bye. Sa.