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If your customers aren't buying again, it might not be your product. It might be what happens after the sale. There's a missing piece in most farm marketing funnels that is quietly killing your retention. And today I'm going to show you exactly what it is. You see, it's not enough to sell great food. You have to help your customers succeed with it. So today, we're dialing into the success path and how to build one. 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 confident at marketing, 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 361 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? Welcome back to the show. A big shout out to all of My digital farmers. If you are new to the podcast, I'm glad you're here. Make sure you subscribe to the show. Go check out my first 10 episodes. If you need an introduction into the marketing lingo, I designed them many years ago to be an on ramp into this podcast so that you would learn the ropes. Another way that you can kind of get acclimated to what we talk about here in a very systematic way is to join my free email list. You can do so by going to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe. It's free. And every week I'm going to send you an email that slowly onboards you into the farm marketing framework. I give you resources. I share the best podcast episodes. I teach you the framework. Little by little, every email builds on the next one. And I think it's a really great kind of 101 onboarding into the key points of farm marketing. So get on that by going to mydigitalfarmer.com forward/subscribe. It's really good. Today's podcast is sponsored by my friends at Local Line. If you run a CSA or you sell direct or wholesale, or you manage both. Local Line helps you simplify your operations and scale with confidence. I love this platform. In 2025, farms and food hubs using Local Line grew their sales by 33%, average order values increased by 31% and total order count grew by 9%. That is real results across operations of all sizes. Localline brings everything together into one platform. So CSA management, wholesale ordering, access to new wholesale opportunities. They have automated inventory, barcode scanning, a box builder. They even have a pos. And that means you spend less time managing admin and more time growing your business. Switching couldn't be easier. There are no setup fees, no sales commissions, and their onboarding team will even migrate your storefront for free, taking the workload off your plate. As a podcast listener, you'll get one premium feature free for free for a full year when you use the code MDF2026 at checkout. So head to mydigitalfarmer.com localline all one word. Then use that code MDF2026 and you'll get that discount. Start the season strong with localline. It's streamlined, efficient, and built for growth. And now back to the show. Well, hi everyone. I hope you're having an amazing spring. I am in the middle of, among other things, planning a graduation party for my oldest son, Jed. He is graduating from high school in a few weeks, and this is my first time ever planning a graduation party. We have about 125 people coming. It feels like a small wedding, and I found myself wanting advice for how to plan a graduation party. Has anyone ever been through this yet, or are you going through it right now? Yeah, I found myself going to, like, Pinterest, looking for checklists. Like, what are all the things I have to make sure I do? It occurred to me maybe three weeks ago that I should probably send out invitations or save the date cards for the party. And I felt kind of late in the game coming to that realization. And so that kind of freaked me out. And I quickly, you know, went and ordered some of those. They just arrived. I dashed them off into the mail. I had to figure out who was even on the guest list. And that set up this whole flurry of activity around. I need a plan for how to put together a good graduation party. What are the steps? What are the things I have to think about? What. What kind of stuff is going to go on the menu? Oh, yeah, we should probably make sure we have an extra porta potty. What are we going to do that day and then my parents or my dad and my brothers are flying in from Oregon State and Texas. But they're not actually going to be there for the big weekend graduation party. They're going to just be there for the ceremony, the graduation exercises, which happens on a Thursday, which is kind of a weird day. And so I feel compelled to have almost like a whole nother set of events for that side of the family for the two days that they're here. So there's just a lot going on. Feel like I'm in new territory, wishing I had a little bit of a roadmap so that I confidently knew that I had covered everything. And I'm not gonna come to the day and realize, oh, I forgot this important step, but we're gonna cross our fingers. I'm figuring it out. New territory. I wish all of you good luck. If that's something you're also going through, I feel your pain if you're. If you're also a little stressed out about it. Anytime there's a new thing, right, anytime we're trying to learn a new skill, there's always this similar process. Today, we're talking about the success path in the customer value journey. Every sales funnel has a success path. In fact, I could probably do an entire series of episodes here on the podcast. Maybe I'm going to do that, where we fill in the blank. Every sales funnel has a blank. I could probably come up with five or six things to round out that series. But if we were going to start that series, we're going to start it out with, every sales funnel has a success path for the customer. And this is how you make sure that your customer doesn't just buy your product, but they actually succeed with it and come back because of it and keep buying from you. And I couldn't think of a more powerful example of this. To open up the podcast to illustrate this point then the story of my recent health transformation, which I have shared in various tidbits throughout the last year. For those of you who are new to the show, at the beginning of 2024, I became very sick and I had all kinds of intestinal problems. I had really bad reflux. I actually got something called lpr, where the reflux goes into your esophagus. I lost the ability to speak and talk for several months. I couldn't sing anymore, which was a huge part of my identity. And I lost the ability to digest food. It was very scary there for a while. I lost about 30 pounds in a matter of six weeks. And as I was going to the doctor to try and figure out what was causing all of this. They really couldn't help me out. They didn't seem to know how to guide me. And I discovered, you know, as I reflect back on this whole experience, because I ultimately did find a path to full healing. What I was looking for was a roadmap. I was looking for someone who might be able to give me at least a starting point. I didn't necessarily need to have it all spelled out exactly step by step at first, but even just something that would get me 20, 30% better, I was willing to just start there and wiggle my way into healing. And so when I finally found, and I tried lots of different things that I. That's actually a really good way to describe how it worked out for me. I wiggled my way into full healing. It wasn't that I found the solution all at once, but I tried a lot of things and ultimately they led. Those doors opened and they led to the thing that worked. But when I found the. The framework that worked for me, which was the Plant Paradox Diet. This is a book by Dr. Stephen Gundry. It's called the Plant Paradox. And what that book provided for me was a success path. It was a step by step framework, a roadmap for how to begin and just get started in trying to heal. And I'm just going to quickly, like, list off some of the things that were in the roadmap for. For my healing journey. The book had a yes, no food list of, you know, cut these things out and these things are allowed. It just simplified everything for me. Right. There was a clear villain to focus on and to avoid. So he talked a lot about leaky gut and what caused leaky gut and lectins and that I had to really hone in on avoiding certain foods that had lectins in them that simplified it. Again, he gave recipes. I ended up buying one of two of his books, actually, because I was really confused now that all these no foods were on the no list that I used to eat a lot. I was like, well, I don't. I don't know how to make yummy meals that I'm excited about eating in this new way. And I could really use some guidance. And so getting these cookbooks into my life was another key part of the roadmap, because now I had reduced some friction. I could, like, have a starting point. Okay, we're gonna. These look good. We're gonna start with this. And I slowly revamped my meal routines. And I really appreciate that. That simplified things. I don't know if I would have stuck with it if I hadn't had that. He was able to tell me where to find some of these weird ingredients that have become kind of staples and favorites now in my. In my new food world. He had a podcast, so it was a regular touch point where I could just keep listening to him and getting encouragement and getting more tips and ideas. He shared success stories, and I remember looking for those when I was very ill. Like, I needed to hear that this was working for other people. And I would look through his podcast for is are there any case studies I can listen to that are going to encourage me? I especially wanted to know how. How long is it going to take before I experience 50% healing, 60% healing. Right. Full healing, what is typical? Um, and then he, of course, recommended some supplements. Those are things he was selling to restore the gut lining, um, as part of not just removing the foods. That was kind of part one. But there were some things that I would have to do for about a year to rebuild the gut. And so I ended up purchasing those things. So his framework that he spelled out in that book, like, he gave me a path to follow. So I had some confidence, I had something to lean into. I wasn't just flailing around, trying stuff. And when it started to work, within four weeks, I saw a noticeable shift. So there was a quick win that motivated me, that made me think, oh, my gosh, this might actually be the thing. So then I began to trust him even more. I dug my heels into the plant paradox way because it was working, and I stuck it out and it helped me create new habits. You all know how important it is to build habits, how it takes a while to build habits. But as we're coaching our customers, like, it's really key that we're helping them build new habits around our products, around our way of life. And as I healed and I experienced a, literally a life transformation, so much new energy, so much hope, so much mindset, strength, I credited him with that result. In fact, to this day, every day when I pray, I have a huge section in my prayer life where I'm just doing gratitude, where I just. Oh, I sometimes list the same things over and over and over again. Like it's. I think of it as my inheritance, the things that I still have that I'm still grateful for and the signs of abundance. But I credit Dr. Gundry, still to this day, two years later, with a lot of this healing. And because of that, I have become an evangelist. Of him and his work. And I know it doesn't work for everyone, but I do believe that for a lot of people who have different autoimmune issues or gut issues, they could benefit, or at least it could be a starting point for them where they would get maybe 50% of the way there and then have to adjust it for whatever they like. I really believe that you can hear the energy in my voice, right? Like, I become a witness to this brand. And so I sometimes think about, what if I hadn't had a road map from Dr. Gundry? Like, what if I had just sort of heard that he helped people and he healed people, but there wasn't a step by step, there wasn't. He didn't take the time to lay it all out as a framework and really think about how could I help the average person who's going to struggle with this stuff to navigate their way through this and ultimately get to their finish line? Would I have gotten there? I think it's doubtful. And so that is why the success path, taking the time to build a success path is so, so key for your business. Now we're talking about Dr. Gundry's success path for his healing regimen. But every business can create a success path for their customer because every customer is coming to you with some kind of a problem that they want to solve or something that they wish they could optimize or accentuate or make better. Maybe it's a desire that they really want to have met. And when they come into your brand, if you can help them get there faster or clear the path, remove the friction, help them transform into that better version of themselves that they're seeking, that is going to create incredible trust in you. You will become a thought leader. They will dig their heels into your way. They will take on your identity, they will create new habits, they will become a brand evangelist. And most importantly, they will change. They will transform into the person they want to be. So building a success path is so good because it. Your customers are going to benefit from it, but so will you, because those clients stay on forever. There's, there's lifetime loyalty. So many farm businesses. I could say this about businesses in general because I help lots of different businesses strategize and think through their success path. But anyway, and their sales funnel. But so many businesses in general are not spending any time investing in this element of the success path. It is actually so important that it is, it has its own spot, its own stage in the customer value journey. This is the framework that I teach Inside of farm marketing school, it's the very first thing that you learn because it is the framework on which all of marketing stands. And there are eight different steps, seven, seven to eight different steps, depending on how you look at it. And this is one of them. It's called the Excite phase. It happens right after a customer first converts and buys their first product from you. And they go through the Excite phase, the customer success path, where they get excited when they use your product because they experience success with it. And then if they successfully pass through excitement, they move up the Ascension ladder, which is the next stage in the customer value journey. That's where they begin to buy more things in your product. And every time they buy another thing on your rung of ladders, they go back to the Excite phase and hopefully experience it again. And then they go back to the ladder. They just ping pong back and forth between Excite and the Ascension ladder. And it's a really important part of, of your overall sales funnel. And if you don't have at least something in here for that first time buyer, you are missing out. You are going to lose customers. This is actually where customer retention lives. It's not the only factor, but it is one of the major factors in having a high customer retention rate. So if you are struggling to keep customers coming back, this is something to look at and analyze and be like, do I have this mechanism in place in my business? Do I have a success success path lined up? An actual process that fires that I guide people through? So we're focusing on this important element today. At least once a year I talk about it on the podcast. If maybe twice a year, it gets its own show. So if you go back through the 360 archived episodes, you'll probably spot, I don't know, five to five, six, seven different episodes that talk about this in some capacity. I'm bringing it back again. You may have heard some of this stuff before, but I need to say it because I think some of you, and I'm raising my hand here too, we can get lackadaisical. I've been doing my business now for 18 years and I'm getting a little lazy with some of my own customer onboarding and my own success path elements. And this is always forcing me to think through, okay, you know, tighten this up. What? Make sure you're doing this on a consistent basis, not just, you know, for the first five years with that first group of clients that we were really good at doing this with. Like, make sure we continue to do it. So today I want to help make the case again for the value of the success path in your business. I want to help you figure out how do you find it, how do you know what should go in it? What are some of the things that success paths usually include? I'm going to have all kinds of like, questions to help you think through this. I think it's going to be really, really helpful. And then how do you document the success path? How do you communicate it? So we'll, we'll. This is going to be a really rich episode. Lots of stuff in here. You can come back here in years to come and just re listen to it. Now remember, the success path is a general best practices roadmap for your ideal customer. So it won't be perfect for everyone. It's not like you can promise that every single person that actually goes through it is going to transform the same way. Everyone's a little different, everyone comes in with unique situations. But as you build it over time, it typically develops and grows your average customer over time. Okay, it's not an instant life transformation in two weeks, although maybe some products can actually do that. But in most cases this is a much longer play. But it's there to kind of gently guide your customer along as they're using your products so they become successful with it. Now, how did I find mine? I feel like I'm still in the process of, of finding mine and getting it even more dialed in. Many, many years ago. I interviewed my best customers who were in at the time. My CSA was my primary signature product. I interviewed them, I got on the phone and I talked to about 20 of them, specifically about 30 minutes talking to them. I was just trying to figure out like, why are you in my csa? And what, what, what did you experience when you first joined? It was very, just educational for me. And as I talked to about after, honestly about 10 people, I started to hear the same kinds of answers. That's not initially what I was, you know, calling them about, but I noticed these patterns and I got really excited because I saw similar problems, they were bringing up similar solutions that they figured out on their own to overcome those obstacles and problems. Some of the ways they were using my product and, and I expected some of them. Some of those things they brought up were not surprising, but there were some use cases that I was like, oh, really? I had never realized that that's what you do. And I kind of jotted those down and I found that interesting and I thought, oh, I could share that with people. What their roadblocks were, the questions that they ran into early on and how they had to try to figure them out. And also just like, what were they curious about? What did they get excited about as it related to my product? And they kind of had dabbled in and explored on their own and as a result they were growing. So I just wrote all this stuff down and I saw these patterns and I thought, wow, wow, you know, I could, I could teach this. I could take some of these ideas from my best customers and start sharing them with people. And that's what I did very organically. Making videos, making blog posts, making PDF guides, just sharing like, hey, so and so shared this tip. Make sure you take the tops off your carrots. Like I know that. I assumed you know that, but I guess you don't because almost everyone I interviewed didn't do that. And they, you know, learned the hard way. And so I just started kind of sharing these random tips. And over time, the more and more that I did it, this, this roadmap, the success path began to form. So it wasn't all at once. I didn't have it like all dialed in right away. It was very organic, just dropped things here and there. And as I kept doing it, after a couple years, I began to see what would. People were resonating with what was really moving the needle. And now I really feel like I have a good sense of here are the most important things. If I only have a little bit of your attention, these are the things that are, that I'm going to share with you. And that has become my success path. So let me define success path. I don't feel like I've done it super well yet, but in general, a success path in your business is a clear step by step roadmap that, that shows your customer how to win with your product so they don't have to guess what to do with it or what to do next. And usually it removes friction. That's a big part of what it does. It removes friction. I would say it builds confidence in your brand and it, and it guides them, it guides them towards a quick win and then the next one and then the next one, until suddenly they're a different person. They've experienced that life transformation that they are after. So if your products are the what I want you to think of your success path as the how so for the bulk of this episode, I want to spend time talking out what are some of the things that typically show up in a success path? Like if you're going to sit down and be intentional and thoughtful and try to strategically map out the content or the steps that will be in your path. What are you even thinking about? What are the questions you're asking yourself to help you find out what those could be? And I'm going to predominantly focus on this through the lens of my own CSA member experience, because that is the success path that I built. Now I'm kind of working on one for a typical just online store customer that doesn't necessarily turn into a CSA member. So they're a little bit of a different animal and I'm having fun sort of playing around with what that looks like. So I want you to think through the lens of your product. I know most of you are probably not CSA farmers like me, but you can still get a ton of value from this episode. As I go through each of these sections, just be thinking about what does that look like for my business, for my product? So number one, what's in a success path? Typically there is a starting point somewhere where you help them begin. What should you do first when you get your product? That is a really helpful question. That's going to help you guys pull out some ideas for what could be in your success path. Just what is the starting point? So if you're a CSA member and you first join the CSA and they start getting onboarding email sequences and it tells them, hey, make sure you send in your deposit. I deliver a CSA tips and tricks guide and I'm like, read this. That's like my first step. Read this. Step two is get in our Facebook group if you're on Facebook, because that's where our community and belonging happens and you're going to get a lot of ideas. Those are some examples of, you know, some of the first two starting points in my path and I communicate them through email. So what is your starting point? This could also be what is the first product they should buy. That could also be a starting point. Question number two, what's in a success path? Clear do's and don'ts. I'm thinking back to my whole Dr. Gundry experience, my healing journey, and there was a very clear, like, these are things you have to stop doing and stop eating. And this is the new way that you have to adopt. These are new skills you're going to have to learn and practice. Keyword practice. They're not going to be easy at first because they're not normal and habitual yet. So your brain has to work extra hard and burn extra fuel to learn the new thing. And eventually though, it will become second nature. Just like when you first learn how to drive. It's very tense and you're giving a lot of attention and energy and like, and gripping the steering wheel and worrying about getting into a crash. And then eventually you get to the point where you're like, you don't really think about it anymore and you know how to drive. And that's sort of how we, how we work with a lot of our habits and we're trying to help our customers overcome that initial kind of roadblock phase where everything feels hard. Right. But we want to reduce that overwhelm that comes naturally with starting a new practice by simplifying the decisions for them. We want to give them the guardrails. What is the equivalent of the yes no list, food list for your product? What does that look like for you? What are things that they can't do anymore? And here are the things you need to start learning. Okay, so that might kind of help unlock for some of you. I'm going to give some examples here in just a minute that I think will flesh that out for you. Number three is a simple sequence, step by step. So show the order of operations. What's the step by step plan? So if you are selling bulk meat, a side of beef, how, what is the timeline for that process? Help them see that how to buy meat timeline, step one, step two, step three. And you don't have to give, in fact, don't give everything all at once. There's probably 10 steps in the process of getting that meat into their freezer. You don't have to tell them all ten steps right away. Maybe you just have to tell them the three most important ones and then you're guiding the ones that are in the middle along the way as they go. Right? So not everything at once, just the next few steps so that they don't feel overwhelmed. But how, how could you put the, the process of helping someone become really good at using your product, confident in using your product, how could you put that into a step by step plan? Are there skills they need to learn? Are there tools that they should have? Are there processes they need to learn? And we'll talk about those examples in just a minute. Number four. Oftentimes in a one of these success paths, you will see quick wins, early success moments. Remember how I told you when I was, when I was in my healing journey and I first started the Plant Paradox diet, in my mind I was willing to give it two months and if I didn't see any shift in two Months at all. Then I was like, okay, I'm out. And so I'm so grateful that as it turned out, I saw noticeable shifts in four weeks. Actually a little less than four weeks. And that validated that this was working and that kept me motivated. This is important for your customers too, if you can deliver a quick win. Something that makes them feel powerful, something that's fun with your product, something that gives them a powerful emotion, a positive emotion where they feel like they've moved forward even just a little bit, that will cause them to stay with you and keep going. We want to give them momentum, and so we try to engineer a fast, fast result in the first, you know, week or two of using the product. So what does that look like? Maybe it's easy. Easy recipes don't give them something with 25 ingredients that they have to go get to be, you know, to be able to make. Maybe it's a use this first coaching moment or here's a starter bundle or for us, I know every time we teach people how to make green cubes, we do that really early on in the CSA onboarding process because people are so scared of all the greens, it's like they don't even know what to do with them if they. They just don't even know they can cook them. Or I think they think they're just bland tasting. So when we teach them how you can just blanch greens and freeze them in little green cubes and then throw them into your spaghetti sauce or your soups or stews or egg frittatas, like suddenly they don't feel like they're wasting the greens anymore and this is something they never knew, believe it or not, and they're blown away. And when I heard this when I was interviewing people and I. And I continue to see people's excitement in our Facebook group, as every year, as the new people discover this, I'm like, it validates. Yes, this needs to be in the success path and it needs to be in early on because this really excites people.
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Today's podcast is sponsored by Farm Marketing School, my monthly membership for farmers. Before we dive back into the episode, I want to speak to a very specific kind of farmer for a second. If you're a year or two into your business and things are working, but your marketing still feels kind of scattered, like you're posting, you're sending some emails, you're running promotions, but it all feels disconnected and you're not sure what's actually driving sales. I just want to say that's not a lack of effort, that's just a lack of structure. Because most farmers don't need more ideas. What they need is a system that connects everything together. And that's exactly why I built far marketing school inside. I teach you how to actually design your marketing so that it works like a machine, a system, not a bunch of random tactics. We map out your full customer journey. We build your email engine. We create intentional promotions and product pathways so your marketing starts handing off from one piece to the next like a relay race instead of you running every leg yourself. And we do it through 30 day project builds. So you're not just learning about marketing, you're actually finishing things. You're actually building the marketing assets in your marketing machine. Your sales funnel, your promotions, your lead magnet, your weekly email rhythm, all your marketing assets. And that's when the shift happens. Marketing starts to feel lighter, the flywheel starts to spin. Sales start to feel more predictable, and you finally feel like, okay, I'm on the right track. I know what I'm doing. If that's what you've been longing for and what you've been missing, then I want to invite you to join farm marketing school just for a month.
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Come inside and see what it's all about.
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You can learn more@mydigitalfarmer.com FMS and now back to the show.
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The fifth element that you often see in a good success path is what I would call things that remove friction. I didn't know how to, how to put that. And there's a whole bunch of stuff that kind of falls under here. So you're going to like this part. So we want to grease the wheels. We want to make. It kind of goes along with the quick win. We want to make their progress, their growth happen as fast as possible and be as fun as possible. So if there's something standing in the way that's overwhelming them or confusing them, then we want to get rid of that. We want to remove the friction. And so I kind of came up with, I was trying to think through, like, how do I like, what does this look like in the 3D world for a business like mine, a farm like mine? And I have a few different categories here that I want to walk you through. So number one, I thought of things like tools. What are some of the tools that you could recommend using your customer? Get in their kitchen, get into their life that's going to make it easier to use your product or more fun or just open up more possibility for them. So one thing might be like, hey, chest freezers. Really helpful if you get a chest freezer, because I have so many cool things to teach you about how to use this food and store it away. And if you don't have a chest freezer, you're going to be limited. Or if you're a meat producer, this is really huge, right? No one's going to be able to get a side of beef if they don't have enough room, cubic feet in their freezer. And so you've got to be able to tell them, here's some tools that would be helpful for you. I spent some time early on in the onboarding process for CSA members teaching some of the most important kitchen tools. I mean, we all know we have to have a chef's knife and a cutting board. I'm not talking about that stuff, but I'm talking more about things like, hey, salad spinners, those are really helpful. And an instant pot, maybe you don't need that right away, but as you graduate, like, by the end of the first season, you're going to want one because you're going to see so many people using that in the group. Right. So kitchen tools, it could be things like lists. I've put that under the category of tools. So a cut guide, a recipe starter page, a vegetable storage guide, a list of exit strategies. We call. That's actually terminology that we came up with many, many years ago on our farm. Some of the strategies for exiting the csa. Veggies that are still in your fridge and you don't know what to do with them. So at the end of the, the week, we have, as part of our process, our framework process that we teach that on Fridays, Saturdays, or the day before your pickup, whatever it is that you look at, what's still in here in my fridge that I'm overwhelmed by, and I'm gonna execute some of the exit strategies that I've learned and try to just get it out of here so I don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff in my food, like produce bin. If I'm not, if I haven't eaten it in like three, three months, then maybe I can, you know, freeze the kohlrabi or do something with the kohlrabi in a different way and get it out of here. Where to find certain items first, products to start with, shopping lists. These are all kind of things that fall under, like, the category of tools. So maybe some of those things that I just listed give you some more tangible ideas of, oh, I have an idea for a thing I could make or quickly pull together with the help of ChatGPT and I could share that as a tool and put that in my success path and deliver it as an email or in a video or on my YouTube channel or whatever. Number two is like processes. This is something that removes friction. This is where you're thinking about, do you have a framework? Could you put your step by step process into some kind of a framework that you can teach? I'm thinking actually about farm marketing school right now. As I slowly built the content and the projects in there, it was all, every project was built around the framework of the customer value journey that I teach. Because every element of the marketing machine can be put somewhere in the customer value journey framework. So I teach the framework first. Like, hey, this is how people move through a brand, how they graduate and become a loyal customer. They have to go through these stages. And so you build mechanisms in your business that coach people along and move them from stage to stage. So once you have them all, it's easy to connect the dots. It's like a relay runner. You pass the baton from one stage to the next when you have the different pieces built. And so having a framework that I can point to as an overarching kind of introduction is really helpful. And we have this now. And in our CSA too, we have things like, hey, you need to learn how to store your food. You need to be watching the unboxing video every week if you are new, because that's going to guide you through how to use some of the stuff, identify the foods first of all, but then also some quick tips for how to use it. We want you to click clean out the stuff from your fridge that feels overwhelming to you. On day six, before you come and get your next box, we want you to ideally prep your food on the first day if you can. If that's not your style, that's okay. But this is what many people do. And we want you to learn these five key exit strategies and we'll list them and then we continue to point to those all season long. Like we have like 20 exit strategies, but the there's five that are really, really important and that do a lot of heavy lifting. And so it's kind of like a rough, loose framework for. Oh, and then like get these things in your kitchen. Kitchen utensils, that's kind of part of that too. So we have sort of like a framework that we can point to for those brand new clients. Well, what does that look like for you? If you are a meat producer and somebody is is filling out a cut list for the first time, maybe that the process of filling out the cut list is something you have to put into your success path. That is an incredibly overwhelming, scary roadblock. I'll tell you that right now. It's what kept me from buying for a very long time. And I didn't want to look stupid, and I didn't. I just. It just was like, oh, I got to learn that. You know, it was like, my brain's got to work a little extra hard. And I just kept putting it off and putting it off. So how can you overcome that friction? Teach them the process. Some of you. Some of you need to teach some internal processes for your clients. Like, once you join a CSA that maybe you're the kind of CSA that customizes, and you have to teach them how to use the software every week that allows them to customize their box. And that might be a process that you've got to build into your success path. Or it could be something as simple as, I got to teach my customers how to order from the online store. Like, it's a little bit clunky because we're not open all the time. We have order windows that close because we have to go out and, like, harvest on certain times. And we can't have people ordering while my guys are out there harvesting. Like, I got to cut it off at some point and so training people on that and like, oh, we've got three pickup sites and you've got to come and pick up during that window. Like, there's. So there's a little bit of, like, confusion there. Right? So there is an internal process that I have to keep teaching in my success path. Like, how do you actually order from the store for the first time and pick it up? How does that work? So some of you might have internal processes like that that you have to teach. I think there's also a whole category here of just skills for using the product. And this is going to vary depending on the kinds of products that you use. I'm going to obviously speak from a vegetable point of view, because that's what we sell, but how to flash freeze, how to make green cubes, how to make bone broth or veggie broth from veggie scraps, how to make DIY dressings for your salads, how to spatchcock a chicken, how to use an instant pot, how to make garlic scape mustard. So sometimes these ideas and these skills revolve around, like, very generalized kinds of categories of products. Like green cubes. Is Anything that's a green. But the garlic scape mustard, we bring that up every year because garlic scapes are only around for about three weeks. A lot of people are like, what the heck is this? Not sure what to do with it. And so it's kind of fun to be like, hey, you could make veggie cream cheese with them. And. And you could also make garlic scape mustard. And that's very elevated, and it makes them feel fancy, and it's really easy. And so we make sure that we bring that up. So sometimes it's kind of surrounding a specific season or vegetable that comes due, and it creates excitement and curiosity around that product. If I didn't tell them about garlic scape mustard or some other use cases, I wouldn't sell as many garlic scapes. I wouldn't create as much excitement around that product. So if you have some products that aren't selling very much, you may be able to increase the sales because you build a success path around it. Because you start to teach them what to do with some of those tough cuts of meat. Like, are you doing enough education around that so that they're learning that skill that removes friction? Um, I also just want to put in a little quick plug here for putting this skill curriculum. Put them, putting them in a. In an order that makes sense in the right sequence. So I would not start out with a. A skill of how to can tomatoes as your very first move. When someone joins your farm and starts buying your produce, like, that's overwhelming, that's scary. Or we don't teach that until much further along in the customer's journey. It shows up a lot later and to a very segmented audience. Um, so just be aware of, of that. If these are more difficult processes, we're trying to give quick wins, right? So what are. What are things that are easy, easy lifts that make someone feel elevated and exciting? Now, over time, as you identify these processes, these tools, these specific skills you could teach, you will slowly create a curriculum, a success path will begin to organically form. Now, if you can, you know, get super thoughtful and get it all nailed down in two hours, because you can just see it all clearly. That's amazing. You're amazing. You're amazing. But what's more normal is for you to feel like you're wiggling your way into your roadmap, that it takes a few years, trial and error. Sometimes you have energy to teach something, or you get excited about it. You put it out into the world and they really love it. Sometimes you put it out into the world and no one really bites and you're like, okay, that's not going to be in my success path. Right. You're just kind of testing things. You're playing in the sandbox. You're making stuff as you feel energy, as you, as you're getting questions from customers about what do I do with this? Or as you're sensing a roadblock and a problem, you're creating content to over overcome that obstacle. And eventually you, you have all the, all these different things you've built and you begin to see some of them working a lot and oh, this one works really well on the front end and just sort of find your way and suddenly one day you wake up and you realize you kind of have a success path. But I want to encourage you that this doesn't always just materialize in one season. You start building it slowly and after a few years you see a very rough path beginning to form and then you can begin to more intentionally coach people through it. Okay. So all of that sort of fell under the category of success paths remove friction. And I wanted to give you some examples of specific kinds of mechanisms that do that. Okay. I, I also have a section here on success paths usually in include ongoing encouragement like touchpoint moments with you. The guide. When I look back at my gut healing story, it took a while for me to, to figure out a flow of how to eat so differently. Like I missed some of my foods. I gave up gluten, I gave up sugar, I gave up bread. Man, that was hard. I gave up dairy for a very long time. I'm now just beginning to introduce goat, goat milk and A2 milk products back into my life. But like I had to completely shift how I was eating and I was really looking for like what are recipes that I'm excited about that are, that sound yummy, that aren't super overwhelming and that tastes good. And after really like hitting a wall and like just plugging away for maybe four or five, six months, I finally found my groove and I discovered a handful, like maybe 10 recipes that I really like and these have become my default setting. My go to meals. Like I always have stuff in the house to be able to whip out one of these quickly, but it took a while to find those before it, before those things became a habit. And I remember just being discouraged. I think the only reason I stuck with it was because I knew it was working, but also because I was afraid. I had been in such a bad, dark place and I did not want to go back there. I was afraid of losing the progress that I had made. And so I. I was just so motivated to not touch anything on the. On the no food list. So I wasn't even tempted. I wasn't even tempted to try sugar foods anyway. So it took a while. And I'm grateful that I had Dr. Gundry in my earbuds. Like, I would listen to his podcast every week, and I just kept hearing the same sound bites, the same encouragement, the same tips. He sort of cycled through. A lot of his content got repetitive after a while, but I appreciate that now because it. It indoctrinated me into the way, and now I don't really listen to him anymore because I feel like I've learned his main teaching points and I don't really need the encouragement as much anymore. But when I was healing and feeling scared and those. All those, like, feelings of discouragement would surface from time to time, it was helpful to have my guide in my earbuds. So for me, it was listening to his podcast. I know that you guys are not making podcasts for your customers, but what. What does that look like for you to create a weekly touch point with them? Is it on social media where you're sharing a tip on a reel? Is it in your weekly email where you have a real quick blurb of a tip? That's something that could be in your success path, right? So I think that it's important for you to realize that your customers, when they're first learning a new road, it's. It's normal for them to. For. For it to feel tedious, for it to feel hard for them to bump up against a wall and be like, oh, this is not easy. And you got to show up as the cheerleader and normalize that phase and remind them, hey, this is a process. There is a process to the becoming and the maturing as a customer in this brand. And you're right where you need to be. And you need to point to other people in your. In your customer base who went through that too and who are now on the other side. Right? That's part of your job as the coach. So I just want to say I think there needs to be something in your success path where you're occasionally just touching base coming in, whether it's through email or social or maybe it's on YouTube or a little video where you're encouraging them because. Because they need that, they're gonna need that. It's hard to switch habits and change the way you do things and eat a totally different way, or try this food they've never tried before, and just their identity is shifting, and they're gonna need someone to hold their hand a little bit. So don't just bail and deliver the product and never talk to them again. Okay. Show off your success stories. I think this is another key piece in a success path. We want. We want to give our customers a platform somewhere where they can hang out, where they can connect with each other, where they can share their stories, where they can show others what they're. What they're doing in their own journey, how they are slowly transforming and becoming. The way this works for us is we have a Facebook group. Um, I know their Telegram app is another place that I see this happening. I'm part of a fitness group, and we're using Telegram to kind of share. Share. It's not quite the same experience as a Facebook group, but it's another option. Uh, what does that look like for you? But I think it's important for customers to find other people that are like them, that are on the journey, because when you can show. Show off other people who are succeeding, that motivates those who have just begun to keep going. Remember how I told you when I first started my healing journey with Dr. Gundry? I was. I was scouring the podcast archives looking for case studies. I wanted to hear him interviewing some of his success stories. I didn't find a ton, but he would bring them up every now and then. And when he did, I would gobble them up and I would look for patterns, and I would be like, is that what's happening to me? Where am I in my journey compared to them? Did. What phase am I in? I really wanted to just try to figure out how much longer. How long does this typically take? That I was trying to pace my race. I wanted someone to pace my race. And so looking for success stories was a key part of what I needed as a customer. And I think that for some of you, you are downplaying this. This is. This may be really important for your customers more than you realize. They're scanning the horizon, trying to see, are other people healing from your food? Are they no longer dealing with food sensitivities and allergies because they're eating your food? Are they turning into confident, creative cooks in the kitchen? Are their children eating better, loving, good food? Like, right. They're looking for evidence. And if they see. If you are not doing a good job of, like, showing off those people, then they. They just. They'll miss that part. They won't See it. And that's. That's an. A missed opportunity. So this really functions as a belief builder, right? We're helping them to trust the process that you have created and stick with it. So when you have testimonials, when you have a member spotlight, when you have a here's what to expect timeline, and you're communicating that. That's so, so helpful for people. Okay? And then the last thing that I think can belong in a. A good success path is, is community and belonging some kind of element that allows community and belonging to happen? This one's tricky for me. I was trying to think of, like, I mean, there's an obvious way that we do this, but I know that not everybody wants to do Facebook groups, so I get that, but let me just back up and explain what's happening. When people feel like they belong, they stay. So people will come for the product. They'll stay for the community. This. They'll stay for the belonging. They'll stay for the sense of identity that is becoming a part of them. You want them to claim the identity of. Fill in the blank for a CSA member or local food supporter, person who loves their local farm, person who loves veggies, however you would fill in that blank. I'm thinking right now about one of my longtime CSA members. I think he's been with us for 15 years. His name is Bob, and he announced to our Facebook group Community, our. Our CSA private Facebook group just last week. I mean, he had emailed me and told me this a few weeks ago. He's moving. He's moving from this area up to Michigan. And he was sharing in the Facebook group. It was this beautiful post about how the hardest part, One of the hardest parts of moving, because he's so excited about, you know, retiring and moving to Michigan, obviously, but is. Is leaving the CSA that he's having a really hard time, and he's mourning the leaving of this community. And he has been surprised by how much this is affecting him and that it's caused him to reflect on how powerful this group has been, what a key part of it it has been for him. Reading that was so inspiring, right? And I was thinking to myself, wow, like, we shaped his identity. He wasn't just a customer who liked our product. He saw himself as a member of this community. And that's the kind of customer that I want to create. I want to get in there in their identity and your brand, if your brand can figure out how to do that, get them connected to other people in the web in the community of people who belong. That's how it happens. Now we have a Facebook group that does this really well. That's our mechanism. You may not have a Facebook group or you may not want to create one, but it's really helpful if you can find a mechanism that will help make this happen. I was thinking like lines can function as a belonging mechanism. Just having people have to wait in line to get your product. Like you have a long line of people at the market. They're chit chatting with each other. They're seeing the fact that there are 15 people waiting in line and they're like, oh, I belong in this group of people who love this brand or I must be doing something right because a lot of people like this brand. Right? Swag wearing, everyone wearing your swag or T shirt. That's another easy thing you can do to have people feel like I belong farm challenges that everyone's doing together, even if they don't necessarily see one another. We do our challenges in our Facebook group, but I also invite people through email to participate. And even just like the coaching tip of trying to connect your customer to at least three people in the community in some way, like that should be a goal that will likely, if you can get them to connect with three people, two or three people that will likely do the job. And there's lots of ways that you can try to manage that. You know, I was thinking about the power of belonging. This is sort of a personal story. Um, I know I shared this with you. That Josiah, my youngest son, he's a freshman. He moved out of his district last year. We opened enrolled him into Toledo's engineering school because it's a super good school for engineering. He had engineering gifts. We went and toured the place and it looked like an amazing school. And within a week of him starting lest semester last fall semester, we sensed that something was wrong. He did not like the school. He was disengaged. He was doing great. He was like the top student. But he began to shrink, you know, just like curve inward. He did not connect with anyone there. He actually felt a little bit scared in that environment. He was not motivated to go to school. It was like he dreaded it anyway. Just really bad energy around that school. And we were like, no man, you gotta deal with this and push through. But ultimately, as parents, we realized by the end of the semester that it wasn't just about putting him in a great school to give him strong engineering gifts, but that he needed to belong. That part of the school experience was making sure. He practiced being in community, that he had a group of friends and peer network, that he would grow in confidence because of his network of friends and that he didn't have that asset there and he was missing out on that key piece of development. And so, you know, ultimately we left, we gave him permission to leave the school, school and go back to his old district where he is now thriving. He left not because the product itself wasn't good, the education was, was good, but the community and the feeling of I belong here was missing. And we underestimated that. And so I just want to point that out to you. Some, some of you have customers that are leaving because they, they've tried and they've tried and they've tried and they just feel like they don't fit in or they don't belong. And so what are we doing to address that? All right, I'm having fun. I'm almost done. I wanted to make sure I ended by just pointing out what are some of the different kinds of assets that you could build as your working out your success path. So we've talked through some of the different kinds of categories of things that could be in a success path, but what does that look like in the 3D world? For us, it's predominantly video content. So I would just organically create short videos with my iPhone and then I would either make them live on Facebook and then I would download the video so that I had it permanently on my record, especially nowadays because Facebook will delete them after a certain number of days. So I wanted to have the original and then I would upload them onto YouTube or into a platform called Teachable. If it was good enough and it made the cut, I would actually put it into the success path or the curriculum that I have on my learning, learning management software. So this is a, a program called Teachable, where I can put, I put all of my online course content on it. But I have an entire success path for my customers called the CSA Academy. And when they get inside there, it's part of their CSA membership, it's free for them. And inside is like a CSA training, like if you're a beginner's guide to CSA, a short 20 minute step by step course basically that walks them through the things they need to know as a rookie, the most important things. And then there's a whole section called Veggie University where I've got all the different vegetables one by one and there's a teaching tutorial for each one. And I made a little vegetable ebook for Each vegetable, it's like how to store it in some recipes so they can go and like specialize if they want to learn about a specific vegetable and how to use it. I have another category in that academy on how to how to use an instant pot. Step by step video guide and then all kinds of recipes to experiment with. I have another one called the Vegetable Exit Strategies where we teach all the 20 exit strategies in the top five we want them to learn so they can go and watch it. Right. So as I created these content pieces I needed a place to put them and so I chose the. There's lots of places but this is kind of the main place where I send them. So think videos, think PDF guides, think Word document. You know, just simple Google Google Docs that you can share with people. Google Sheets. One of the cool things that I recently learned from Mackenzie, who's in my forum marketing school, is that you can share a link of a PDF that you have made on Canva with a customer. And I love this. So a lot of times farmers will be like, well, I don't know where to host, I've made this guide, but where do I store it? And you know, I always like, well put it in your media library, in your, in your website. But not everybody has that ability. I have a WordPress website, so I can do that. But some of you don't host things on WordPress. So you can actually build the document on Canva and then there's like a share button on that document and you would just click it and you would see the link, the public link and you copy that and you could put that public link in an email. You could put that public link on a, I don't know, like a Google Sheet where you're putting all your resources in a giant list and then you share that Google Sheet with people so that they can just click on it and when they click on the link for that particular resource, it takes them to right to the design in Canva where they can see it. So just know that that is an option. Another thing I had an idea around was like those of you who do one to one phone calls right now with customers, I'm thinking of like people who do, who are meat producers. Maybe you could switch and do those one to one calls on a platform like Zoom and then save the recording and send the link to the customer so they can watch it again if they need to have access to it. They can even download it as a permanent asset. You could download, download it as well, I suppose. And Store it away as an example for someone to listen to, to see the process. And then don't forget to use AI to help you write stuff. You can go and see a template somewhere else and copy the template and say, I'd like to make my own version of this and AI can help you write it so that you don't have to do the hard work of composing it. Weekly CSA recipes is another thing that I think falls into this as one of the assets I know, my virtual assistant, or I'm sorry, she's my CSA coach in my csa. She writes all my recipes every week. She has over the years collected them all, not all of them, but the favorites into a master Google Doc. And I now know that she, because she brings back some of the same ones every year. And so she's putting these favorite ones that she wants to make sure come up again and again in this master Google Doc. So as the season progresses, the following year she goes back and like, oh, here's the garlic scapes again. Let me see what's on the master Google Doc for garlic scapes. What are the popular recipes that I make sure I bring up every year? And those, you know, come out. So come up with little hacks like this. Once you've made something for the first time, you can repurpose it. I always tell my farmers in farm marketing school, like, once you've made an asset, like the goal is to reuse it, right? So store it somewhere. Store it somewhere so that you can repurpose it. As you're thinking through that original list I gave you at the beginning of some of the things that go into success paths, you will start coming up with very specific ideas for checklists, PDFs, video content, and just start with something, right? And then as you make them, make sure you're documenting them and storing them somewhere so that you know where to find them again. If that particular piece of content ends up taking off and it stays, it gets a permanent spot, spot in your success path for the future. It's easy for you to find and reuse it again. So document the success path. Communicate it, communicate it. So don't just make it one time and then, I don't know, forget that it's there and then not do it again, right? If you're onboarding your CSA members a certain way this year, you'll probably want to do that again next year. So keep track of what you did so that it's easy for you to repeat it the following year. How will you roll out the success path where there's lots of different ways, there isn't one best right way. When you first get started, it's going to feel very scattershot. Like just oh, I have this idea. Corinne shared this podcast. I love all these ideas. I'm just going to come up with some things and I'm just going to, I'm just going to throw them out there, shoot from the hip and that is totally fine. Just as long as you are documenting them, storing them so that you can decide next year and you can be a little more thoughtful and strategically put them in an order. That's kind of the second way you could roll it out is you could really be intentional and thoughtful about the process. Like, oh, I want to teach these 10 things and I'm going to do them in this order and I'm going to do these in this capacity and these over here are going to be added in this place platform. So you could do it as Facebook group content that you drop out in a certain time of the year when it makes sense. Like for us with our csa, we have an onboarding content plan for the CSA members that starts about four, three to four weeks before the CSA officially starts. And Katie does kind of the same thing every year that is supplemented by an onboarding email sequence that is different than my welcome sequence. This is like, hey, we're about to start in a few weeks. I'm going to be sharing some tips and tricks over the next few weeks, little by little that are going to guide those of you who are new. And each email has a focus. I have a the the Academy, the CSA academy where everything lives in one spot and I can point people there. You could choose to just. If you don't want to invest in something like teachable, you could just have a page on your website where all of your success path content lives and you direct your customers to that page and then it's up to them to self select and decide what links they want to click on to download that guide or watch that video or whatever. You could have a weekly email. Hopefully you do have a weekly email. Maybe in the weekly email you have a section that's there every time that focuses on a tip or a checklist or a resource or something that's moving them along in the journey or an encouraging cheerleading rah rah moment. You be could be creating things that are evergreen. So like the example that comes to mind is my instant pot challenge. I made that one time I taught the different steps for how to use an instant pot and I put them on YouTube and I turned it into a playlist. And I also created an email sequence, an email challenge so people can subscribe to the instant pot challenge. And for seven days in a row, they, they, each day they get a different video to watch in a homework, like a go do this thing I just taught you. And in seven days they will have mastered the instant pot. And then they're getting an instant pot recipe, I think for like another week after that. So that by the time they're done, they have 14 different recipes that they can use to keep practicing. I don't get anything out of that except teaching them how to use an instant pot. And maybe they start buying my produce so they can cook it in their instant pot. But that was something I built once and now I've turned it into an email list builder and people subscribe to learn that and then they're on my list. Sometimes the success path, you can roll it out as an awareness building kind of campaign. So this might be where you're just creating content and you're posting it on your social media once a week. You've just got something where you're teaching something that's in the success path and it's going out to everyone in the public. Or you could post it on YouTube. And I kind of look at that as an awareness building platform. People discover you there, they might start binging your content, they learn some of this stuff and now they want to become a customer. So that's another place that you could put some of this material. But bottom line is store these assets as you're making them, store them somewhere and ideally put them in a sequence that makes sense. So if you're going to put them on a website page, start with the first thing they should do and then the next thing and then the next obvious thing. Group them into categories that make sense. I recently did this actually with my gut healing story because I started having a lot of questions about it and I was getting tired of answering individual questions from people. And as I kept making content around my gut healing story, I realized I needed a place to centrally locate it. I've been writing a blog, I've done like eight chapters now. I have probably another 15 to go. But as I've been writing them, they've just been on my blog and now I have enough that I want to stitch them all together so that people can read the whole thing. So I also had people say, well, where are you getting such and such product? And what supplements do you recommend? And what books did you Read again. What are the cookbooks? So I just now have a path for anyone who. Who wants to hear my story and read my story and see what worked for me. It's all now on a page for sharedlegacyfarms.com heal and on that page is like, start here and it takes them to the first blog post. They can read the whole story. And it's got a section for. Here are my recommended pantry items. Here's the yes, no food list from Dr. Gundry. Here's the three cookbooks that I started with that are amazing and. And so forth. Right. So that's just within the scope of gut healing. What does that look like for you? Right. Can you make a page like that, that. That spells out your success path and put it on your website? It could just be as simple as that. I have a Google sheet. I call it my content creation log. And anytime I make anything anywhere on the Internet, if it has a URL address, I put it in the content creation log so that I can find it if I ever want to reuse it or put it in an email to someone. It's easy to find. It's searchable and easy to find. I have, of course, canva links now, and I've got. I'm using that tip that Kelsey gave me. Excuse me, that MacKenzie gave me. YouTube playlists is another great place to store your stuff. Keep track of what those URLs are, but also organize your YouTube content into playlists if it makes sense. You can even be creating content with the intention of putting it into a playlist so you can guide people down the video story you want them to see and in what order. All right, you guys, that was a lot. I'm super passionate about this. Can you tell? Oh, I just really, really, really believe in this. This was what changed everything for our csa. Oh. At, like, year eight, our retention rate went through the roof when we got serious about building a success path. I didn't have language for it back then like I do now. Now I realize, oh, I built a success path. But when I started teaching people these quick wins and how to use our food and. And just really embraced my role as the guide in their journey and tried to help them get successful with using our product, everything changed. The energy shifted, the momentum shifted, the sales went up. I didn't lose customers anymore. My energy went up because then I wasn't freaking out and feeling like my product was bad, so I felt more confident about my work. I just. I really feel like this is an important piece and so many of us are, are missing it. We're just, we're not doing anything. So maybe you can't go to the extent that I've gone, but, but can you do something? Can you do even just a little 10% better? So here's some homework for you. Can you identify three elements that you could put into a success path this year? Hopefully you'll have more than three one day, but can you at least identify three to execute by the end of the summer and a process to store them? Decide you know where or what it will be, when you're going to do it, how you're going to disseminate it, Are you going to send it out through an email? Are you just going to do it on social? Are you going to put it on YouTube? Are you going to build a website page? That's sort of like what I do with the Academy. Just figure out how you're going to disseminate it. Okay, that's my challenge to you. If you are a CSA vegetable grower and you want to see, see an example of the kinds of stuff that could be taught to your CSA members, you can come inside our CSA Academy and check it out. See how I've organized is a membership for farmers. Now I had so many farmers ask me how do I get in there? I give you permission when you come in to take the PDF guides that are in there and use them for your own csa. You have my permission to use them as long as you're a paying member of the Academy. Right now it's 19amonth for that specific membership. That's different than Farm Marketing school. This is the CSE Academy membership. If you want to learn more about that and just be, just try it out for a month and see if it's valuable. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com academy and it'll explain all the stuff that's in there. And for some of you, that is going to be a huge help because it's going to just remove the friction for you. You're not going to have to think about what should go in here. You'll just see ideas and be like, oh, I love that. You'll download the PDF. You can even throw it into ChatGPT and say, I like this. Can you make something like it and slowly build your own version of it over the course of the season that way. So just an idea I'm putting out there again. Go to mydigitalfarmer.com academy if you want to learn more about how to subscribe to that month to month. Okay, Today's show notes can be found@mydigitalfarmer.com 361 if you like today's episode, please share it with another farmer. Leave me a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. I'd love it if you told me what you think of the show. If you have an idea for a topic for the show, you can reach out to me via email@mydigitalfarmers mail.com and if you want to get onto my email list to get some free stuff to help you get better more confident in your marketing system how to build a marketing system then go to mydigitalfarmer.com subscribe I would love to help you out. That's totally free and easy to do. If you want to work more one on one with me or in a group setting, there's Farm Marketing School that's going to help you build the different elements of your farm marketing machine learning that is a month to month membership. Love to have you in my community. So amazing the people that are in there. Learn more about that at mydigitalfarmer.com forward/fms thank you for joining me today everyone. Have an amazing week and remember I believe in you. Bye bye. Sam.
Episode 361: The Missing Piece in Your Farm Business: The Success Path
Host: Corinna Bench
Date: May 13, 2026
In this insightful and strategy-rich episode, Corinna Bench—CSA farmer, marketing educator, and founder of My Digital Farmer—dives into the concept of the “success path” as the often-missing element in farm marketing that can greatly increase customer retention and satisfaction. Drawing from her own business and personal healing journey, Corinna underscores the importance of creating a customer journey framework that guides buyers to success with your products, ultimately turning them into loyal fans and brand evangelists.
Corinna breaks down what makes an effective success path, especially for farms but adaptable to any direct-to-consumer business:
A. The Beginning (Starting Point)
B. Clear Do’s and Don’ts
C. Step-By-Step Sequences
D. Quick Wins
E. Friction Removal
Corinna offers a toolkit of practical suggestions (35:27-1:08:00):
| Time | Segment | |----------|--------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Introduction to the "success path" concept | | 07:12 | Graduation party planning as a metaphor for needing roadmaps | | 16:35 | Corinna’s gut health journey; Plant Paradox example | | 23:50 | Every business should have a customer success path | | 33:12 | What is in a success path? | | 46:31 | Starting points, onboarding steps | | 50:03 | Clear do’s and don’ts; sequencing | | 52:17 | Quick wins—why they matter | | 1:01:18 | Content creation and incremental building of the path | | 1:08:20 | Belonging and building community | | 1:15:12 | Asset management, organizing your resources | | 1:21:10 | Practical tips for repurposing and storing content | | 1:30:10 | How the success path changed Corinna’s business |
Corinna challenges listeners to:
Corinna’s passionate advocacy for building and maintaining a customer success path reframes marketing from being about pushing sales to facilitating transformation. With concrete case studies, practical frameworks, and tactical guidance, this episode is a masterclass for farmers (and any DTC business) seeking to improve customer retention, loyalty, and lifetime value.
Resources Mentioned:
For the full set of links and referenced resources, visit the episode show notes at: mydigitalfarmer.com/361