Tina Joy

Hey there. Welcome to the coming home to joy business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran, and I am so happy that you are here. There is no need to stop your busy life right now. Let's just hang out together as we discover more joy in business. Just drop me into your pocket and keep on going. Can't wait to share this episode with you. This is Tina Joy Cochran, your host for Coming Home to Joy podcast. And we have another exciting and joy filled interview today with my friend, the fabulous Liz Mitchko, the founder and owner of Whirlwind Ranch, which was just voted Best in Missouri. Congratulations, Liz. I will thank you.

Liz Mitchko

But actually, I'm gonna correct you. We were selected for the best of Missouri show. It's an honor to be selected to be a vendor at that. In St. Louis at the Botanical Gardens in October, we're thrilled about that. We actually did it a long time ago, more than 20 years ago, but they only let you be a vendor for so long. So they keep on cycling new people in and out.

Tina Joy

Nice, nice. So we're just going to dive right in here. Cause we've got so much to talk about. You also are the creative, amazing fiber festival called fiber you. So if you like fiber festivals, please do not click off. We'll keep listening. We've got some cool stuff coming up for you on that. Tell me more about Whirlwind Ranch because you and I have known each other for quite a while and Whirlwind Ranch when I met you was the biggest alpaca ranch in the state of Missouri. And you taught me the difference between llamas and alpacas and how embarrassing it is when you first get into this and you buy stickers that actually have a picture of a, a llama, and it refers to it as an alpaca. You got me all straightened out on that Ah, you would've, you would've learned. Tell me the history of Whirlwind Ranch and where

Liz Mitchko

you are now. So Whirlwind Ranch started with my mom, Linda, and I, and of course dad got thrown into it by default. Boy. Purchased our first alpacas, back in 1994. So this is our 30th anniversary in the alpaca industry. And then we moved to Lebanon, Missouri in 1996. And the alpacas are finally arrived here on Year's weekend in 1997. 'cause it took a while to get the barns ready and fencing and everything. Right. They started coming by 2 and 3, and then the herd over the years grew to 142 at the high, and that included some customers animals. And then, you know, slowly started downsizing after the economy had a change back in 08 but through all of that had to learn what to do with all the fiber that was shorn annually off of the animals.

Tina Joy

Right.

Liz Mitchko

Not only, what to do with fiber, but with the byproducts, like manure classes educational opportunities. So all of those things targeted and wound up being part of fiber. You fiber. You originally started as a pack up. Event back way back when and like you had alluded this year is my 15th year putting this event on here and when it first started, we only had 20 vendors and each vendor taught a class and we had 104 people there attending. Now, last year, we had 247 people just taking classes the whole premise of fiber you is promoting fiber arts education. It's all about the educational aspect of fiber arts. So all of the classes that are offered. And this year, we have 49 different classes are taught by amazing instructors. And you should know you were an instructor last year in the, and so we chose to keep with the original geographic perimeters of Mo Paco, which just was Missouri and the eight surrounding states and that allows. Students and shoppers to interact with people that are local and by local, I mean, with an easy drive that any of the surrounding states, although the other end of Tennessee might be a little longer. But we've had vendors from all those nine states over the years, and we've had almost 1100 unique individuals take classes at fiber you over the last 14 years. And we already have 170 people registered for this year.

Tina Joy

I have a couple of questions. For those of us that are listening that are not alpaca people, can you briefly tell me what Mopaca

Liz Mitchko

is? Okay. Mopaka is the Midwest Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association. It was an affiliate from the National Alpaca Association. And way back when it, it first started back in 1995, I think it was, or late 94. It was only breeders in the state of Missouri, and then it expanded to the eight surrounding states. Because think about Kansas City. A lot of people just lived over the state line and their closest affiliate was Colorado. Hence the expansion and now MoPAC is actually nationwide membership, but I've kept it this way because if I want to buy something from a vendor, I'm usually only paying zone 1, maybe zone 2 and shipping, right? Perimeters or if I take additional classes from a teacher and having to go to their shop or farm or, you know, home or whatever, or having them come back. It's not such an exorbitant cost. Right? That makes that makes sense.

Tina Joy

I'm gonna circle back to Whirlwind Ranch. You said you were downsizing, do you still have alpacas now?

Liz Mitchko

I know. Actually, the last alpacas were sold during covid because so many people were stuck home. They got their fencing done. They got their Done in 2019 pre COVID. We had about 800 people show up at our annual open house sale weekend. Wow. Several were very interested in animals. And then all of a sudden, About the first week of May, we started getting phone calls that this alpaca is still available. Can we've got our fencing done. Can we come and pick them up, bring a mask and then, you know, they would come for one and leave with two or three. Right. Next thing you know within 21 days, every single Alpaca and the guard dogs were sold.

Tina Joy

Wow.

Liz Mitchko

Wow. And my mom had said, you better go buy some more. And I said, no, because I hadn't had a day off in nine years. Yeah. It's a full time thing. Right. We had tours seven days a week, thousands of visitors every year. And I wanted a break. Yeah. So we decided to keep with the fiber aspect of the business. Cause we have the store here and we've always done visitors by appointment only. It allows us flexibility, but also that if we go to a show, or something, take all the product with us. Well, that's okay. We don't have to most of it at home so that we can do, we just did a show this past weekend, Midwest Fiber Festival up in St. Louis. Right. And we only took certain things with us because, we got a 10 by 10 booth. You can only fit so much. Right. But it allows us to promote alpaca fiber and its uses and all its unique colors, let alone teaching fiber arts classes that festivals are available to. So that's what we do.

Tina Joy

So, you've gone from a herd of 142 alpacas with lots and lots of fiber that's produced on your own property to zero alpacas. Where do you get your fiber and your products from? I'm assuming you don't have a lot of alpaca manure around

Liz Mitchko

anymore. Well, I used to pick up a pickup truckload a day. Okay.

Speaker 3

So you still have a reserve from, I

Liz Mitchko

still have some reserve. I don't sell it by the truckload anymore, but I do sell it by the two pound bag. Fiber, I probably had close to a half a ton put aside I've been using that, but also people that we sold our alpacas to that pretty much just wanted lawn ornaments or don't do anything with their fiber. It can meet. My quality standards that I'll go and purchase fleeces from them or some even give up to us. And then I do the sorting and the grading and either sell it raw or into roving or yarn. And then, or finished goods. So we keep that supply track going. Right.

Tina Joy

So there is life after alpacas. One of the things I love about you and why I'm your biggest fan is you are a marketing guru. Like I want to be Liz when I grow up in fact, I've signed up for your class I'll be teaching online marketing because that's my area of expertise, but I have to be in your merchandising marketing class. A lot of our listeners like to do shows, so what would be the first thing that you would tell them that's the most important thing on that? Have fun.

Liz Mitchko

I love it. Have fun. we're not keeping up with the neighbors or the Jones or the Smiths. This is your own business. You get to put your own stamp on it, your own creativity, but at the same time, marketing and merchandising. They work in conjunction with each other because you're bringing awareness to a product or service and you're showcasing it by how you merchandise it by how your displays work in conjunction with your product. So, what you might have in your booth is going to be different than my booth versus different than something that might be in our friend, booth, right? And so it's using the materials that you have and your ability, your physical ability to use them, to move them, to lift them, to pack them. Don't go buy a new car or van, use what you have and it's how to think outside of the box. Nice. In marketing, we have a terminology called demographics or what the demographic or the audience that is going to that show now for talking fiber shows, we tend to see 40 to 65 and older. And heavily women, correct? Right. So that's our demographic. Right. So here, here's one thing. What do we all do at that age? We need to sit down. Okay, sit down. That's right. However, what are these? We are always worried. Yeah,

Tina Joy

yeah, definitely where we need to be a large print labels, please.

Liz Mitchko

Thank you. There you go. I was, I was touching my glasses here and see each other. But absolutely. So the size and type of font that you need, if you're standing in an aisle and you're looking at a booth at 10 feet away, Okay. At the back of the booth, you want to make sure your signage is in a font that is easily read, but I'm going to tell you, don't use script. If your demographic is women over 40, 45, don't use script.

Tina Joy

That's a good point.

Liz Mitchko

Really good point. We went by then. And if we're wearing our close up glasses versus our bifocals, trifocals, or, you know, we've just spent 4 hours staring at needles and taking a class, you know, I don't know about you, my eyes don't focus that quick anymore. Yeah, after I went to an eye doctor yesterday, so I can attest to that. And I think

Tina Joy

that's true, regardless of whether it's a 40 year old or not using script on a. Sign on signage is hard to read. You're erring on the side of that's hard to read. Our younger people aren't even being taught script. Right? Well, I know that's

Liz Mitchko

how I can get away with hiding stuff in plain sight. Yeah, but also, again, we look at the demographic and we sit there and say, okay, well, is this person going to be able to squat down to look at something that you have in a basket on the floor? Or are they going to be able to get up on their tippy toes and reach something way up high? So the marketing and merchandising class actually teaches you the psychology behind your shopper. Okay. So one of the things is that when going to a festival, the average person will walk by your booth. 2. 5 times per day. Okay. And if you think about that, think about how, when you go to a festival, right? Wait, do you walk? I, do you always go to the right? Do you always go to the left? Do you always look right? Or do you make one lap and eyeball and make a mental note and then go back? Or do you stop the first time and buy? Right. So that's the psychology of the shopper, which all relates to the demographics. Okay. Women might think and comparison shop because we're already pre trained to do grocery shopping. Right. Prices, household budgets, impulse shoppers. So if you happen to have a product that is targeted toward men, they're more apt to purchase it the first time they see it than on a repeat visit. Right. And that's the psychology of the shopper. All right. And so like we have a fly tying kit that we, we had it at St. Louis, we sold out Saturday morning. Right. And other than one kit, every single one of them was purchased by a man.

Tina Joy

And so they see it, they want it, they're done. Right. In the online marketing class that I teach and, what we do in the golden Heartland Academy is it's really about who are you trying to sell? I mean, that is a huge. Question. And people come into my world and they've been doing shows all over the place without any strategy. And we talk about who are you trying to reach, right? If you're selling how to train your dog kits, a fiber festival might not be the place for you because people are not thinking about that there. You might want to go more to a pet festival. And what you're saying is merchandising is the same Thing and you need to know who you're expecting to shop and merchandise to make it easy for them. Is that right?

Liz Mitchko

Yes. So for instance, on this show, I had a one foot by one foot square at an end cap that was devoted to men and then the rest of the 99 other square feet in my booth were to women, right? That's what it was. But guess what? My demographics, I found that women that were over 60, 65 brought their husbands with them.

Tina Joy

Yeah. So you needed to have something for the men. We hooked them.

Liz Mitchko

They stopped. They might sit there and look around the booth a little bit more. And there might be something to do it or did they get dragged? So I also had socks because we're both so it was just right there and it could be anything from a photo, a sign. I have a little sign that I put over those fly tying kits. I said, when you need a diversionary gift. To sneak in all your purchases,

Tina Joy

Brilliant. That's knowing your, who that is, knowing your shopper we can do the same thing online in words and those signs like that, it reaches out to that. Who, I can't wait to be in your class. But let's talk about when Fiber U is. So we're recording this in May of 2024 and the Fiber U is every July in Lebanon, Missouri.

Liz Mitchko

Right. The dates are July 20 and 21st. Okay. And we try to have it sometime after the 4th of July, but before the last weekend. So we flagged in there and we usually publish 2 or 3 years of dates. At a time. So, believe it or not, I actually go in next week to book the 2026 dates.

Speaker 3

Nice.

Liz Mitchko

Because they didn't calendar ready yet.

Tina Joy

I love it. You are so organized and as someone who has been a vendor and an instructor at fiber you as someone who has envied Whirlwind Ranch for 20 years. I just want to say how amazing I think you are. Bring such professionalism to the industry, bring professionalism to fiber arts and. The organization is incredible. I love what you're doing. And if you are listening to this after July of 2024, and you're like, Oh man, that sounded incredible. It's every single July I'll put the link in the show notes. Jump on that link and you'll be able to book it in advance, even if you don't know that you want to take a class. There's so much fun and shopping

Liz Mitchko

the day. That's what we do. So, in 2025, it's July 19th and 20th at 3rd weekend. And you know, we open registration. And show the list of classes on March 15th every year. So it's exactly the same date

Tina Joy

that's March 15th date. It's kind of like comic con and big bang theory. We're all ready to go getting our stuff ready. And we're ready to send them for classes as soon

Liz Mitchko

as we find out what they are. And here's the thing. I still do things quasi old fashioned. It comes by snail mail and that. A, because where I live is out in the boonies and we are still the last one on the internet line.

Tina Joy

It's such a reasonable, such a wonderful event. I'm going to drop the link for fiber, you in the show notes. Well, we're in ranch. If we go to the whirlwind ranch website, which we'll put in the show notes as well. Can we shop there? What can we find there on

Liz Mitchko

that site? Absolutely. So we have pages of products. We have raw fiber, roving, yarns apparel, fly tying stuff. We have even a page under home goods, which has multiple subcategories, everything from dryer balls to the alpaca manure to felted inserts. And even unique buttons for fiber that like to do things like that. But you know, grab bags to card your own bats. So there's a little bit of everything. We also have our in person show schedule and we have classes that we teach here. And while we don't specifically put a date on for classes, there's Mainly people contact me and if I have two or three or four people that are wanting the same class, I send out an email and say, okay, we have enough to have this class and we go from there, I have a class and then we can obviously arrange that at a problem. And so we do that and we've got pictures, we've got links to old articles and everything. In fact, Yesterday, mom got a call. A person found a magazine that was 12 years old that had a write up on us in Illinois. Wow. You know, know about alpacas. Nice. So, it's nice when we have, you know, these marketing materials that are around and around and around. It's like the National Geographic's never leave the waiting room.

Tina Joy

Yep. Yep. Exactly. Exactly. So

Liz Mitchko

good. Yeah, so we're we're fortunate on that way. And we have some information on there of other things about alpacas.

Tina Joy

Brilliant. Brilliant. So Whirlwind Ranch is the epitome of a lifestyle business that it can ebb and flow whether you have 142 alpacas or you have 142 pounds of fiber and no alpacas. And you can use it to build a lifestyle. That is amazing. Liz, I am so grateful that you've had a chance to be here. And I'll, as always my hero, my marketing hero fiber, you July. Check out the website for the most recent date. If you are listening to this later on after July of 2024, but if you are listening to it before, then get it on your calendar. We want to see you. Thank you for being here, Liz. And I can't wait till our next conversation and

Liz Mitchko

hey, fiber use free to come in and

Tina Joy

shop. So that's right. So, you got nothing to lose, but everything to gain. Thank you.

Liz Mitchko

Thank you.

Tina Joy

You've been listening to the Coming Home to Joy Business Podcast. For more joy and business, check out our website at goldenheartland. com. You might find something perfect just for you. This is Tina Joy Cochran. Your host, coach, and the founder of the Golden Heartland business community for women. Thanks for being here. And don't forget to subscribe and share this with your friends. Remember, everything you're dreaming of is just on the other side of change. Being joy led in your business will get you there. We'll see you next time.