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My Digital Farmer Podcast
326: Making the Most of a TV Media Opportunity for Your Farm Business
01:01:35
August 20, 2025 What would you do if the news station called and asked to feature your farm... tomorrow morning? Would you panic? Wing it? Or would you know how to strategically show up and shine? Well, that’s exactly what happened to us. In this...
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What would you do if the local news station called and asked you to be interviewed on TV tomorrow morning? Would you panic? Or would you know exactly how to make the most of that golden opportunity to grow your farm brand? Well, that happened to us. And today on the podcast, I'm breaking down exactly how Kurt and I prepped and what we did to shine in the moment. If you've ever dreamed of getting media coverage or worried about what to do if it actually happens, this episode will get you ready. 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, learn how to find more customers and increase your sales, and build a strong brand for your farm. Let's start the show. Well, welcome to episode 326 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 strategies so that you can grow a profitable business. How's everyone doing today? Welcome back to the show. A big shout out to all of my regular listeners. I'm glad you're here and if you're new to the podcast, make sure you subscribe to the show and go check out my first 10 episodes. Especially if you are new to the marketing discussion and you're really here to learn the ropes because they were designed to be an on ramp into the marketing lingo and everything kind of builds from there. You could also just scroll through the archives and find topics that interest you, but those first 10 episodes kind of give some of the key framework elements that I think would be helpful. You can also get onto my email list, which is free, and when you do that, I'm going to send you an email like every four or five days for the first three months. That basically teaches you the ropes of marketing as well. You can do that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe and once you're on that list, you're also getting just my weekly email that talks about what's in the podcast for the week. And I occasionally have just gems of marketing wisdom that sometimes I get emails from farmers. Like this week I got one from Josh and he was like, man, sometimes it's just your weekly email that just delivers an amazing gem of insight. And so he's in my farm marketing school program and he was just saying, man, but sometimes it's just your emails that get to the point and I love reading them. So thank you for that, Josh. That's really awesome. And you guys should totally get onto that email list because you never know, there might be an email once a month that just fires you up and gets you to go take action. Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at localline. If managing orders, customers and inventory feels chaotic this season, it might be time for a better system. Localline is the all in one sales platform built for farms and food hubs. Whether you're selling direct to consumer or managing wholesale buyers, or running a CSA with tools like E commerce, automated inventory management, subscriptions, barcode scanning, box builder and pos, localline helps you simplify operations and grow your sales. In fact, farmers using localline increase their annual sales by 23% and boost their average order size by 9.5%. Switching is easy. No setup fees, no sales commissions, and your onboarding manager will migrate your storefront for free. No joke, so that you can get started without missing a beat. As a podcast listener, you'll also get one premium feature for free for a full year when you use my code MDF2025 at checkout. So head to mydigitalfarmer.com localline use that coupon code and you'll be on your way. Start selling smarter this season with localline. And now back to the show. Man, it is already August. I am dropping this podcast on August 20th. I'm actually recording it a couple weeks before so we're still in the summer months. But this is going to be an adjustment year for me because my youngest son, he's not so young anymore. He's going into high school and he is going to a brand new school district. So we have open enrolled him into the Toledo School District. There is an engineering school. It's kind of like a magnet school where it attracts and takes students that are really good at science and math and trains them to be engineers. And we're super excited that he got in and was accepted. He's excited to hang out with other kids that geek out about that kind of topic. But it's also a little scary for him, right, to go to a totally new school district. It's also going to be a big adjustment for Us as parents because we're going to have to drive him there. We did this once before with our oldest son, Jed, who is now a senior at the Aviation School, another magnet school that Toledo district offers. And he's rocking it, he's loving it. He's going to basically get his A and P license when he graduates from high school, which is incredible. And we didn't have to pay for it at all. So he's pretty much set. I think he's going to go into the Air National Guard. He's going to be enlisting for that here in the next couple weeks. But we have been through this before where we've just invested in our kids education, taken the time that that is required to drive them to school in the morning, half an hour one way and back, and then go again later in the afternoon and pick them up. So we'll have to do that for Josiah now for the next two years. Hopefully his brother can help drive a few of those days. But the schools are kind of in opposite directions anyway. It's exciting, a lot of things shifting around. At least they're going to be on the same school district schedule. So we should be able to go somewhere over spring break this year as a family. That's. That's awesome. So anyway, I know things are switching for you too, and I just hope you're having a good season. Hope you're having a good season. Today I want to talk to you about media, specifically television, because we had something really cool happen to us a few weeks ago. Out of nowhere, we got an email from a producer at wtol, the morning show, which is a pretty, you know, it's like Toledo's main morning show and it's watched by a lot of people. And she asked me, would you like to come onto the show to do a little spot? And we'd love to. We've heard about you and what you're doing. We think it'd be really cool to feature you. And so I said yes, I've been trained. Anytime soon, someone from the media, especially that level of media, invites you to help them out with something. You say yes. And we went on to the show and it was an amazing experience. We got a lot of leads and sales from it. And I luckily realized that this was an opportunity and that I shouldn't just walk in blind, but that I should do a little bit of preparation to make the most of it. I decided that today I would share that story with you and maybe share some of the insights that I had along the way, as I look back at the experience, there were some strategic things that I did very intentionally in the moment and maybe it's never occurred to you to do some of these things. So I jotted some notes down here in case this ever happens for you. This is not going to be an episode about how to acquire media attention and get them to call you. That's a totally different topic. And I'm not sure I'm an expert at that. I might have to find someone who can talk about that on the show as a guest. But once you get the invitation, how can you prepare? And that's kind of what I want to focus on today. So first of all, let's just chat about, you know, why does it matter that we get some media eyeballs on us? I think this is an amazing thing. If this happens to you or if it has happened to you, you know how rare it is. And it's powerful to have the television crews either come out to your farm and take some footage and interview you, or to invite you into the studio to a live performance and you're meeting the celebrity, you know, hosts of the show. I mean it's, it's powerful stuff. People are watching the news still. And there's a little bit of magic that happens when you get associated with that television show brand. It suddenly elevates your authority. Right? Right. The fact that you've been invited to speak on TV somehow makes it legitimize your brand a little bit. And if you actually get to talk to the TV show hosts, the anchors, that somehow raises your authority, which is always a good thing. One of the things we're trying to do as a business is to show our customers that we understand what their problem is, that we have the solution. And then we as the guide need, need to show that we have authority to handle that particular problem. They have. And this is just one way that this can happen. So you're getting instant trust and you're getting wide exposure to thousands and thousands of people who are watching you for five minutes. Now. We were invited to the segment of the show. This is called the Good Day Show Show. It's their daily 30 minute show that is done by the local WTOL station. And they focus on like these feel good, positive stories. What, what's good that's going on around Toledo. And a lot of times it's not non for profit kinds of things. It might be businesses that are doing cool stuff. It might be personal stories of transformation or really just cool people in the community. They're Doing nice things, right? These positive stories are being highlighted. And so to be invited into that story, I mean, people are watching this show because, you know, we need more of that kind of stuff in the world right now. And so, you know, to be highlighted on that show and to know that what we're talking about is actually going to inspire people that they're already in that frame of mind when they're sitting down to watch tv, right? Like, oh, I want to watch this. Because it feels good to watch this show. Like, there's really cool things going on. And so to be lumped in with that. It's just helping that viewer to associate our brand with feel good vibes. And someone has sort of decided. The producers of this show have decided this is a brand that will give you feel good vibes. You want to be around their positive energy. So this is, this is a rare thing, this media attention. It's powerful. You get exposure, you get instant trust. They create buzz too, right? And yeah, they brought new customers to us. I don't have an exact correlation. Like, I can't directly attribute specific people yet because I haven't been able to measure that data. But there was a bump in our email list and we did have about 25 new orders in the two weeks after the show came on, like out of nowhere, brand new customers. So that was a bonus. And I'm hoping that those people will continue to buy because we have a good system in place to deliver a strong onboarding and welcome process and hopefully they'll keep coming back and we can benefit from that lifetime customer value. But I'm just grateful for having an opportunity to get our brand in front of many people's eyeballs to create this kind of buzz, positive energy. I also want to say that the other benefit that I hadn't really thought about was that it legitimized us even more among our own customers. And the way that I saw this happening was I had customers sending me emails, almost like, in case I didn't know that I was on tv, they're sending me emails of the link to the show and they were going on to our private Facebook group to say, oh my gosh, I just saw my farmers. I had one of my farm, one of my customers tell me that she was in the hospital that day with her daughter for something rather minor. But she's like, I'm sitting there in the waiting room and all of a sudden I see my farmers. This is her words, literally. I see my farmers coming onto the show that I'm watching there in the waiting room and she's like. And they called me back to go, you know, back with my daughter. And I had to stop. And I yelled out to everyone in the room, that's my farmer. Give me a second, I want to watch this. And the fact that she used that phrase, those are my farmers, and that she swelled with pride. Like, wow, I know somebody who just got on tv. Like, those people must be good. Those people must be valuable and special. And I know them and I'm in their circle of influence. I'm a part of that story. Okay, so that's the other kind of cool benefit that I hadn't really thought about. But when you can get on tv, your customers see it and now it's almost like they get to be on tv. They're living vicariously through you because they're associated with your brand. And it's like validating their decision that you are smart to buy from these people. Because, look, they're now getting all this attention, almost like they're many celebrities. And you get to be a part, like a satellite of that kind of energy. So it's strengthening your brand story, your brand energy, it's growing your email list, potentially especially. We'll talk about that in a minute. If you have prepared to do that as part of your messaging points, it's bringing you new customers. So you can't necessarily control what's going to happen when you get in there live in the studio or if they come out to your place. Right. You don't always can control that, but you can control how prepared you are. And that's what I want to talk about next in today's episode, the first part of this story is that I was emailed by the producer. I was invited onto the show. Now, this email was rather innocuous looking. It didn't jump out in the inbox. It wasn't all flashy. It was just a simple email from a woman who identified herself as a producer of the Good Day show. And at first I did a double take, like, is this for real? Is this really a big time show reaching out to little old us? And as I read the email, it was, you know, very humble. She was a just average everyday person letting me know that, hey, we have an opening next week and we'd love to have you come onto the show. She kind of gave me the step one, step two, step three thing of what I'd have to do. And I had to select a time that was convenient for us to come. And when I saw that, I Immediately thought, oh, man, of course. This is, like, the worst time to ask us to come onto the Good Day Show. We're in the middle of production. Every second is precious to Kurt. Like, I could leave. I wasn't worried about that. But for Kurt to leave the farm for two and a half hours in the middle of the afternoon or in the morning for something like, this is actually a big sacrifice for him, and I was gonna have to convince him of its value. And I knew that he would say yes initially, but trying to actually pull him away from the farm and when you don't know what the weather's gonna be like and what's. What they're gonna need to do on that Friday, I just was nervous, right? So there was a part of me was like, man, I don't know if I can commit to this, but I really think Kurt needs to be on the show with me. It can't just be me because he's the actual farmer. He looks like a farmer. Like, we're a powerful duo together. We just. We need to do this. And so I texted him. I was like, here's what just happened. This is really cool. We need to say yes. And he's like, yep, just do it. We'll figure it out. Now, I just bring this up because there was a moment of resistance where I was like, who am I? Imposter syndrome? Right? Like, I don't know what I would say on the show. What if I don't do this? Well, what if it reflects poorly on us? And then there was this other part of me that was like, corinna, yes, take the opportunity. This is a gift being given to you. So I wanted to. I just wanted to bring this up because I know that some of you will be given this chance, and you will feel resistance. You will feel a little bit of fear, like, oh, public speaking. I'm gonna have to go on a camera and talk, and I don't want to look dumb. I felt all those feelings, too, and I'm a fairly accomplished speaker. So in spite of those feelings, you should always say yes when you are given a big media opportunity, even if it means that you're going to have to move your schedule around, even if it means that you're not sure exactly what's going to be coming down the pike on that day that you have to go and record. But you're going to make this media opportunity the priority and say no to the stuff that comes up later. Like, you say yes when television anchor people call. Okay, that's the Moral of this first part of the episode, always say yes. And I had a coach tell me this once. And so that went through my mind as I first initially read the email. And I was like, ugh, okay, we're gonna have to find time to do that. And I don't know what we're gonna say, and I'm scared and all that stuff. But then I was like, no. My coach has told me multiple times, you do this, you always say yes. I've had reporters come out to our farm as well, and when they've reached out and asked to do even just like, a newspaper article or a magazine article, even though it's a little bit trying, and it's like, oh, I gotta write this thing for you, and I gotta send you photos. Like, you always say yes to that kind of free publicity. So that's kind of just principle number one. I wanted to make sure that I brought that up. And, you know, a lot of times these invitations come out of nowhere, as they did in our case. I actually wonder if these things get scheduled maybe a little bit further out, but that they leave room for spontaneous kinds of stories that arise as the weeks go on. Or maybe they had a cancellation and they needed to fill it. But it was eight days from the time they reached out to me via email to the time that we actually showed up at their studio. So the window was not very large. And I'm glad that I was checking my email. I'm glad that I saw that, and I responded immediately. I mean, when I saw that email, there was a temptation to put it on the back burner and wait and deal with it later. And that, I think, would have been a mistake, because I needed to show this anchor that I was excited, that I was enthusiastic, that this was a big yes. And the sooner we respond, the sooner we help them out. She could have just kept going down her list to try and fill that slot, and I might have missed the opportunity. So, you know, when you see that, you write back right away and say, yeah, I'm in. Let's figure this out. All right, so that was the first part. Once we had scheduled the day so we decided on a Friday morning, she's like, you're gonna have to be here about 45 minutes before you'll actually go on live. So I was told what time I was gonna be there. She gave me some instructions, a little bit of like, here's what we're gonna talk about. We want to talk about your CSA and how people can buy vegetables from you. And this Please, you know, bring some of your product with you. So she specifically coached me to bring a vegetable box of produce so that I would have something on their display table. So I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. If you watch any kind of morning shows, whether they're local or national, they, when they're interviewing people will sometimes have this little table that they roll out on the stage and they have the products that are on there. So I knew that that was going to be part of the gig. So I told Kurt, okay, we have to remember to bring our CSA box. And I was like, well, we should bring our fruit share too. Like we should just bring whatever we can so that it's going to look abundant on that table. And we had, luckily that week's box was very colorful. There were like these bright orange beets. There was a purple coal hobby. There was big leafy chard, rainbow chard, along with, I think we had summer squash. We had some classic and standard things there too. We had garlic scapes which were all swirly, cool looking. It was a really, as it luck turns out, a really cool box to kind of talk about. But I was told what we needed to bring and I had a little bit of preparation given to me by the host itself, like, here's what we think we're going to be talking about. And that was, that was very helpful for me as I began to think about how can I prepare now? I didn't like spend oodles of time preparing, but I did sit down with Kurt briefly. Honestly, it happened in the car on the way there, but we had a little pep talk about, like, listen, here's some things that I've thought about for what I think we should discuss, right? So we knew our talking points and we decided on what should our main message be. We knew what they wanted to weave into the story and what they were essentially going to ask us about the CSA and just our vegetables in general. But there was going to be freedom within that five minute segment and within that story to be able to pull in other key things we wanted to make sure were said. So for example, I wanted to make sure we mentioned that we were a certified organic farm because there aren't that many of those around here in the Toledo area. And for our ideal customer that might be watching this to find out there's a certified organic farm, who is this? That might pull them in and make them want to watch the rest of the show or want to get onto our list, Right? So that was one of the Key messages that we identify. We also wanted to make sure that as we talked about the CSA box, that we also made sure that we wove in the idea that you don't just have to buy our csa, but that we also have an online store option and that you can start there. So our start here point was something we wanted to make sure we communicated. CSA probably isn't really the place to start in our brand anymore. The best way for people to shop is just to buy from our online store, maybe then get our four week sampler share and then graduate to the 18 week. So we just wanted to point to people like, hey, the best thing you can do is just go, go buy from our online store this weekend. Try us out. Here's how you do that. Get on our produce availability list. So we had our key call to action that we needed to somehow get into that story. Those were the two things that we really wanted to talk about. And you know, I also made a point to tell Kurt, I was like, listen, you have a tendency when people start asking you questions about your farm to go way too long into the history of the farm and how you got started and your family was into canning tomatoes and growing sugar beets and that you're a fourth, third generation farmer, blah, blah. I was like, you cannot do that. Like, that is precious real estate time on the air. You cannot take a minute of our precious time talking about your past. Like, we need to get right to the key. Like, what is the problem that we solve? Why do people care? Right? Some of this brand script, story brand stuff. If you've ever studied Donald Miller and read his book Building a Story Brand, he talks a lot about that. Like, we do not need to be spending too much time talking about our past. We need to get to like, what is the problem our customers are facing? Get to that story first. So that was some of the before the interview prep work that we did. We identified the key talking points that we needed to make sure we wove into the interview. And we were actively looking for those moments as we were being asked questions and we got those messages out, we also looked the part. So I told Kurt, I'm like, we need to think about what we're going to wear. He came out at first with kind of like a T shirt that was just frankly way too tight on him and showed off his muscles. And I was like, no, no, no. And then he tried like this western shirt that you might like that he might wear if he were taking me out on a date. And I was like, no, man, you do not look like a farmer. Like, I need you to go put on your. Your blue work shirt, you know, and your car hearts. Put your cap on. And I wore my SWAG T shirt that had. I think it was this year's SWAG T shirt. So we wanted to look like a pro. We wanted to represent our brand visually. So I just bring that up. Be thoughtful about what you're wearing. This is not when you're actually dressing up to look super cute and look your finest. Like, you should look. You should look like a farmer, because people are going to, I think, more immediately identify with you when. When you look like the authority you're claiming to be. Okay. And then the third thing was we prepared ourselves for the questions that we thought they would probably ask us. Knowing it was going to be about the csa, we anticipated things like, what's in season right now? What do you do with some of the things that are in this box? Like, I was prepared. They were probably going to ask me that. So I had already decided, you know what? I'm going to try to talk about beet hummus, and I'm going to talk about how you can make a pesto with this basil that's in here, or the Swiss chard. What's some stuff that you can do with chard? And sure enough, they did ask that question. And so I was able to not only give some very simple, easily accessible things to do with those, which is probably what the audience would do first, but I could also look a little bit more elevated, like, hey, if you're fancier, here's a thought. Make a hummus out of these beats, and that might pique someone's curiosity. And then I was also able to talk about how that's one of the things that we do as a csa, is we teach people how to eat again. And that was sort of identified in the interview as one of the problems that we're solving is that people have forgotten who their farmer is, where their food comes from. They don't even, in many cases, know how to cook anymore. And so we're kind of retraining people to get comfortable in their kitchen and feel empowered people. I was also expecting the question, where do people even buy your stuff? How do they get started? And where do you deliver? Do you deliver? How do people pick up your stuff? So we were able to talk about our pickup locations, which was another, I think, key obstacle for having someone take action like, well, this is where you actually would go. Sylvania, Perrysburg, Elmore. That might answer one of those questions for people that's already in their head. So we came ready with sound bites and we felt a lot more confident going in. As we were waiting in the green room, we were sitting with another business owner who was going to have her business featured on the show a little bit later. And one of the things that came up with her as we were having a conversation was how she was some kind of a food truck business and how her target audience still kind of in flux. She's trying to figure out who is her ideal customer. She was sharing with me how she sometimes goes and, you know, sits in these parking lots or at these events and barely makes enough to even break even. And so I kind of challenged her in that moment. And I guess I'm going to challenge you with this same thought. When you're given an opportunity like this in the media to get in front of thousands and thousands of eyeballs, really think about who is your ideal customer that you are hoping to reach. So I asked her, like, who's the client that you really want to work for? Where do you make the most money as a food truck? And she's like, oh, well, corporate events is where I'm really raking in the bucks. And I wish that I could find more people like that. And so I told her right there in the green room, I said, Listen, in 20 minutes, when you get on that show, I want you to remember that. And as you are talking to the camera, you should talk more about how you do events for corporate clients. And yeah, you do kind of small things too, but really talk more about some of the things you've done for corporate events. And the people who are watching the show who might be working for that kind of a business or be in that role are going to remember you are going to get that idea from you and then they're going to go bring that back to their job. You're going to come up later when an event is needed and they're going to reach out to you. So think about that too. If you ever get a chance to be on a big media moment like this, who's the kind of client that you really want to attract? Is it everybody out there who can eat vegetables? No, not really. Not for me anyway. And talk to those people. Build your messaging points as if you were trying to speak to those people, because that's going to make you top of mind for them. They're going to pick up on that. If you're speaking directly to corporate event type executives, those people are going to perk up when they're watching the show. Okay, I know that's probably not your audience, but you get the idea. Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School. All right, farmer, let me ask you something. Is marketing your farm something you actually enjoy, or does it feel like a constant struggle? If you are like most farmers that I talk to, you are wearing all the hats, and marketing always seems to slip through the cracks. Can I get an amen? That's exactly why I created Farm Marketing School. It's an online membership designed to help farmers like you build a simple, repeatable marketing system that actually works. Inside. You'll get bite sized, step by step projects that make marketing easier. Each month you pick what to work on, like writing better sales emails or improving your website copy or setting up your online store. And I walk you through exactly how you should be doing it. And you're not doing this alone. Every month we have a live zoom meetup where you can ask me questions, meet other members of Farm Marketing School, get coaching, and hear what's working for other farmers. It's like having a farm marketing mentor in your back pocket. This isn't some long, overwhelming course. The projects are designed to be completed in under 30 days. So you're making steady progress without it taking over your life. So if you're ready to stop winging it and finally build a marketing system that brings in steady sales, come join Farm marketing School today. Sign up for your first month and see what a difference it makes. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com fms to get started. And now back to the show. Okay, let's move on to the actual interview itself. Okay. How do you show up like a pro? And I wrote down a couple of things here. Number one is our energy level. I needed to match their energy level on the stage. Remember, television is a production. These people are turning on a personality. It reminded me a lot. I used to do theater when I was in high school and college. And you go out onto that stage and you project energy. Right. You are putting on a mask to some degree. You're putting on a face. Yeah. You're just accentuating energy. You have to project it out into the space. And you definitely see that with these celebrities. They're actors to some degree, too. I mean, they're real people, but they are posing and playing a part and really dialing it up and turning it on. And so as their counterparts, their interviewees, we needed to bring and match that same energy. So we smiled, we showed enthusiasm. We used Our hands. We looked confident. We paid attention to our stance. At least I know I did. The whole time, I was like, pay attention to where your hands are, Corinna. Pay attention to where your hands are. Don't put them in your pockets. We were trying to be personable and real and authentic. We looked them in the eye. We didn't look into the camera. I was trying to just be very present and in the moment and not too salesy, right? I'm just telling my story. I was taking the pressure off. The other thing that I was actively doing was trying to speak to their audience. And this might be a new thought for you. Remember that the host's goal, or if you're. If you're having the interview done at your farm and it's a reporter, okay? The reporter's goal is to entertain their audience, to bring value to their audience. They need to show their advertisers and their producers that I can make this a great show so that my viewers will come back the next day and want to watch again. So we want to make our hosts look good. We want to make it easy for them to ask us follow up questions. We are their content. So if we're just like giving them nothing, if we're just deadpan like, blah, right? Like, that's tough. And they will shorten the interview. They may come in to that thinking, oh, this is going to be a five minute interview. But if you're really not given them much to work with, they will find a way. They are trained to turn that into a 90 second interview. I've actually seen that happen before. So don't just sit there like a dead fish, right? We need to come in with energy, be excited, show our passion. I also, I felt, I don't know if I aced this, but don't talk over them. They are the star of the show. And so just be brief, answer their question, be warm, be clear, but don't take the stage from them. If they interrupt you let them. I was also coached. We were both coached, Kurt and I, to stand in a particular spot and we. And they actually told us right before the cameras turned on, he reached over, he's like, hey, look at me. Don't look at the camera. And I was like, oh, thank goodness. Because I'm not sure I would have known where to look. So make sure you just find that out. Where am I looking? In this case, it was right at them, but sometimes it might be at the camera. Who knows? All right, let's talk about how to maximize the Momentum after the interview. First of all, I just want to mention that we did tell our customers that we were going to be on the show. We didn't do it until the last minute. Kind of like sneak peek. Hey, look for us this morning, we're going to be on the Good Day Show. So I wanted as many of my customers as possible to actually witness the event, be able to go see it on tv, because that's really cool, right? When. When you know someone's going to be on tv, you want to go watch it because it's. It's cool. It's a celebrity moment, and you're a part of that energy. If you're a part of that brand or maybe it's a family member and you're proud of them. And anytime someone's on tv, it's like, wow, that was really cool. I just saw you on tv. So we wanted to give that experience to our customers. So don't forget to tell your customers that you're going to be on the show. But after it happens, make sure you tell your customers that it happened. Right. Share the replay everywhere. The television station actually wants you to do this. And the producer came in afterwards, told us, great job. We're going to give you the link to that particular episode. And if you want to share it, you can. In other words, please share it, because that's good stuff for WTOL too. So we grabbed the recording from the YouTube channel. I'm actually going to share the link to that segment on the show. Notes, which you can get@mydigitalfarmer.com 326. And we posted it on our Facebook page. We put it inside of our private Facebook group, throw it in your Instagram stories, your highlights reel. You could put it in the weekly email the next week, which we did. We wanted everyone on our email list to know. And then I linked up the video in case they hadn't seen it live, which probably very few had. They had a chance to go and see it. And I know a lot of people clicked on it because how cool is that to see your farmers on tv? Put it in your website press section. If you have like a media kit or something, it should definitely go there. Your Facebook business page. You might even want to pin it to the top for a while. Just maximize the exposure. Talk about it with your audience, too. So make sure you jump onto an Instagram story and be like, hey, CSA members, here we are behind the scenes in the green room. We're about to go online. You know, on Live onto the show, which we did. We took a photo of that and put it onto our Instagram stories. So just kind of be in that moment, the behind the scenes kind of aspect. Make sure you do that too. Take screenshots, take quotes, take clips from the show and you can be repurposing that content for weeks. For weeks. Okay. If you think of it and we didn't do this and it's possible get a photo with the show hosts before the show. And I'm kicking myself because I didn't do that. She actually came in and said, hi, she's wearing this beautiful green dress. And I, you know, I actually did think about it, but I, I felt like, well, I don't want to be that person that's, you know, like, can I have a picture with you? But I'm sure she gets that all the time. And that would have been cool for us to be in a picture with the two co hosts and then we could have posted that later on and gotten some media coverage for it. The second thing I wanted to bring up here was capture the leads. So use the buzz from this show to promote your opt in link. Or maybe you have a lead magnet. Find a way to grow your email list from it in the future. So I actually turned it into an ad which I'm going to have running here for a few weeks. The goal is for people to just watch the segment. And in the segment itself, I have a call to action for how you can join the email list and the produce availability list, but it's also within the ad copy itself. Hey, watch this. You know, we were on the Good Day show, dah dah dah dah. And then in the copy of the ad itself, there's a way, a link to get onto the email list so they can just click on the copy of the caption too. I did notice a spike in new email signups and there have been quite a few new customers in our online store in the last couple of weeks since the segment. Again, I didn't use a coupon code or any kind of very specific landing page to track that. That should have been something I could have tried there. I could have created a special subscribe form that when I tell people on this television segment, you know to here's our produce availability list, here's the link. I could have made the link be something that was only very specific to this show so that I could track, oh, this is how many people subscribe to that specific link, you know, landing page form and that would be able to tell me how they came in. They came in through the TV show. I didn't do that, but that is something you could do if you want to be able to attribute your leads and your sales to a specific marketing outlet. The other thing that we did was we left a gift for our hosts. So we decided to bring abundance in the ways of vegetables, right? Like, we brought a lot of extra stuff. We did that kind of on purpose because we knew we were going to leave it behind. There's no reason for us to bring back that vegetable share. So we just left the bins there, and we told the host, hey, just use this as a snack. You know, munch on it for the recipe, Take it home, enjoy it. And they were so excited about that. As it turns out, one of the hosts of this Good Day show, she has a. A garden for the Good Day show. And it was her idea to do that. And she likes. She was talking about that before the show, how they like to go out there and just between segments or during the day and just get out of the studio where it's really dark inside, right? And go outside and be in the sun and just harvest some of their broccoli or, you know, the salads, and bring it in, and they have their lunch from their garden. So we made a point, Kurt and I, to go and look at that garden. She kind of talked about where it was. She's like, you should go look at it. And. And we went and saw the garden. It was really cute. There was a broccoli plant there, a cauliflower plant, and you could tell where she had harvested the broccoli heads already. And so I was like, kurt, look, we should go tell her that she can harvest those broccoli leaves. I wonder if she even knows that. And so we did that kind of as an extra thing, too. We reached out to the. One of the people that was helping us in the process happened to be outside, and I went back to her and said, hey, make sure you tell Amanda that we looked at her. Her garden. It looks awesome. And tell her, here's a little tip. Tell her that she can actually eat those broccoli leaves, kind of like kale. I bet she doesn't know that. And she sort of was like. Shay was like, oh, oh, that's cool. I'll make sure she knows. And so even something like that, like a small little message for the intern to bring back to the guest host to say, hey, I went and looked at your garden. It looks amazing, right? Like, that is a gift And I'm sure that the host would remember that and feel really positive vibes in our direction, like, oh, wow, the farmers went and looked at my garden and approved. And here's a little tip from them. That's so cool. Right? Those are little extras that I think kind of make the memory special for the hosts as well as for us. So to leave a little gift, we'll be writing them a thank you note. One of the things that I plan on doing is next year because they have that garden, that Good Day garden. Kurt and I have already decided that we are going to gift them with a whole bunch of transplants for that garden. And we're not going to tell them. We're just going to kind of show up at the right time with a bunch of extra transplants so that they can just do that on us. And I'm not expecting them to bring us up, but just, it's just another way for us to stay top of mind. Since I know that she's into gardening now, that's a nice little nugget of information to tuck away. Okay, so we talked about sharing the replay everywhere. Remember, this is an evergreen piece of content. I don't know if that segment will remain forever on their YouTube channel. It probably eventually will come down, but you can use that in future marketing for yourself. Right? So maybe I'm going to create a whole extra email in my email nurture sequence for future customers who come through the pipeline. And one entire email can just be about how, how we were on the Good Day show and link it up and have a screenshot of that particular video that can be the graphic in that email. So just, just be thinking about, like, how can I be repurposing this? It's not just a one and done moment, but I can point to it in the future. This could be something that could get me. Excuse me. Get me additional opportunities in other media places if I have it on the media page on my website. Because now other places know, oh, they've been on, they've been on television before. Let me watch how they did. Oh, they did really well as an interviewee. You know what? They do well on our station too. We can confidently ask them to come back. They're not going to freak out and freeze once they get on camera. So look for ways to repurpose. All right, a few final takeaways. What else can you do to prepare? Practice your farm story in a 30 second elevator pitch. That's a really good practice if you can figure out what is the problem. That we solve, how do we solve it? And what can they do to get started working with us? Those are kind of like the three key pieces that I like to have in that elevator pitch, you know? And why are you ideally suited to be their guide? That's something that takes a while to practice. A great way to figure out what those might be is to buy the book Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. Read that book, and there is a process in there for figuring out what is my brand's script. And at the very end, one of the last things he asks you to do is then kind of take that brand script and then build an elevator pitch with it. And I remember doing that. It was so helpful. It took me about, I don't know, a total of 30 minutes of just practicing over and over and over again. I didn't do it all in one stretch, but I kept trying to revise and refine this 30 second elevator pitch. It's like, nope, that was two minutes. That's too long. Like, oh, I like this way of saying it. And I just kept saying it over and over again. I know that sounds weird, but almost like I was an actress and I eventually sort of figured out the key pieces of the story. And I had said it so many times that I kind of knew what each element needed to have. And so by then it was easy to just repeat it. So that's kind of one tip, is to just learn an elevator pitch and practice it. Have some branded materials and social links ready to give out. I didn't bring this up, but the producer, she. She did say to me, after I said yes to the show, she then reached out and she's like, hey, we would love to get some pictures of your farm, because that will allow them to create B roll during the segment. Right? They're not just going to have the camera pointed at our faces for the entire five minutes as we were talking. They were then rolling B roll film over our voices. So they started showing, like, slides of photos from the farm and produce. So I told them, you know what, here are a few. They gave me some specific types of shots they were looking for. But then they actually asked, can we just take some stuff from your website and from your Facebook page? And I said, yes, you're welcome to any of the graphics and photos that you see on the Facebook page. And when I went and watched the segment later, I noticed that they had done a good job of finding a good collection of pictures. So they were ready to kind of roll those over as B roll. Which I imagine they did somewhat live. So kudos to their editor, whoever was doing that in the back room. Based on what we were talking about with the hosts of the show, they were choosing pictures that match. So during the time when we were talking about, you know, the produce itself, there were pictures of produce and how it gets far harvested on the farm. When we started to talk about how you can pick up the stuff from us at our pickup locations, they had pictures of the pickup process that were then scrolling over us as we were talking over those pictures. Right. So it's helpful for you to have some photos ready. Maybe sometimes branded materials have social links ready to give out to them so that they can either use that as captions on the television on the actual screen or if they want to reference it in the show itself, like, here's where you can follow us. We did have to give them our names, what our positions were. We double checked the spelling of Shared Shared Legacy Farms because the first one we got there, they. They named our farm Share Legacy Farms. It didn't have a D on it. And so we pointed that out to them and they fixed it luckily before we went live or that would have been super awkward. Right. So we don't want to make them look bad and by getting some key piece like that wrong. Also consider creating a press kit on your website so that you are media ready ready. I do not have this yet and this is something that I am going to be working on this fall. I don't think I'm going to get to it right now, but this has motivated me to create a press kit and I'm going to research what the heck goes in a press kit. I'm going to be talking to people who do that well. And if you are listening to this show right now and you know all about press kits and you're an expert in that, reach out to me because I'd love to have you on the show. You can be a guest and. And you can teach me as we go. Otherwise I'm going to go find somebody and I will eventually bring them onto this podcast. And then I would also encourage you to train another person on your team who could do interviews too. This was a thought that I had as I felt that stress when they asked me to come on the show. I was like, oh man. Like we. This is really not convenient. Like, what if that's a day that Kurt needs to be out in the field? As it was. This is hilarious because the day we had to go and do the interview, it was Literally the most important production day over the last two weeks. It's been raining on and off, and he has this big wholesale order of transplants that really needs to get in the field. And like, that day was. Turns out to be the day that it, that it, that it went in like it was such a busy day. He's like, corinna, I need to be here. Oh, my God, I can't believe that it's working out this way, that I really need to be here overseeing all this and you're pulling me away to go do this, this media interview. And I was like, I'm so sorry, babe. He's like, no, it's important. Let's do it. And it all ended up working out. But it was a moment where I thought to myself, man, we should have someone else on our team. We're getting big enough as a farm where we could have additional people who could step in and be that face of the farm for us. And so don't be afraid. I think in this case, because we were coming into the studio right. To me, then it makes sense that it's the actual entrepreneurs, it's the owners of the business, it's the farmer and the farmer's wife. But maybe if they're coming to you and just, they just need a quick segment about, I don't know, maybe just how's the weather been affecting farmers this time of year? Maybe that doesn't have to be you. Maybe it could be your right hand person that's actually out there doing a lot of the work and they could be the voice of the farm. Consider that possibility. So it doesn't have to be you. And that might make you more likely to say yes. Or maybe you're like, I am really not eloquent. My husband jokes all the time, that he stutters all the time. He did great. He didn't stutter one bit on the show, but when he gets nervous, he can. And so maybe some of you aren't super eloquent speakers, and that's okay. So is there someone else on your team who is? And you can give them that mantle for your business? That's okay. Look, media appearances are not just luck. You can strategically prepare so that when the moment comes, you are confident, you are clear, and you are impactful. So don't waste the opportunity. Own it. I have a suspicion, I see this in other places in my life, that sometimes God doesn't send us the opportunities that we want, that we long for, simply because we're not ready yet or we haven't done what is required to be ready and to make the most of that. So just consider that maybe the things that you want and even in this case, this kind of publicity and this marketing, like maybe you couldn't handle the customers that would come yet if it were to happen, or maybe you don't have the welcome and follow up season follow up sequence in place so that when God sends you this opportunity to have huge media coverage, what if all these people actually showed up? Would you be able to handle it? Right, so just sort of pause and if you're sitting here thinking, man, this would never happen to me or she's so lucky or how do I get this? I'm really trying and it's not working. Well, we're also, we've been in business now for 17 years and we have a system and we have processes and we are able to handle a large influx of new customers now. And I'm not sure that we would have been able to had we gotten all this media coverage in the first or second year of our business. I think we would have been swamped and I think we would have disappointed our customers. I don't think we would have had the quality level. So just know that there's a time and a season, there's a place for this kind of opportunity and it will eventually come. But sometimes it doesn't come because you just haven't shown that you're ready. All right, So I don't have to be right about that, but it is something I wanted to bring up here as I wrap up. Be patient. All right, so my call to action for you today is to prepare, take what you've heard from this interview today and think about what's something that I can do to start getting ready. Maybe it's I'm going to create a press kit or have a media page on my website. Maybe it's I'm going to go back and look at all the places where I have been featured already by the media. Maybe you got on into a newspaper article or maybe you've been on television and you're going to go find those links and you're going to put them on a press page on your website or you're going to put them onto a Google sheet where you keep track of all of your marketing assets, all your blog posts, all your PDF guides, everything. All the URLs are there so that if you want to repurpose it, it's easy to find. Maybe you're going to take that media opportunity that you did last year. And you're going to build an email in your email nurture sequence so that you can point back to it. Maybe you are going to put an elevator pitch together and figure out if I ever got a chance to be on tv. What would I say? Maybe you're gonna figure out what is the one thing I need people to know if I ever get a chance to be on tv. And you're gonna figure out what that offer is, that's your call to action. Okay? There's a lot of different things there that you could think about. Now I'm gonna put a lot of this stuff into the show notes, which you can get@mydigitalfarmer.com 326. I'm also going to put the link to our TV appearance. I don't know how long it will be good for on YouTube. Maybe it'll come down eventually. So if you're listening to this many years in the future, it might not be there anymore. But go look for that. It's kind of fun. You can see my husband and I in our attempt to be be cool on tv. All right everyone, that's all I got today. If you liked today's episode, please go. Leave me a rating or a review or tell another farmer about the show so that they could come and listen to it and become fans just like you are. If you want to get onto my email list, remember I have some free stuff to send your way that's going to help your marketing. Maybe it's just like one email a month that you open and you're like, man, that was good. I'm saving that. There are just some good nuggets in those emails. So you can go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe. I'm also on Instagram ydigitalfarmer. You can check me out in the stories section. I show up there a few times a week as I have bandwidth to do so. And if you want to be a guest on my show, I haven't interviewed someone in a while. I'd love to do that. So reach out to me and we can see if you're a match. You can email me at mydigitalfarmersmail.com thanks for joining me today everyone. Have an amazing week. Remember, I believe in you. Bye. Bye.