Hey there, welcome to the Joy Led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. I am thrilled that you're here. Sometimes growing a business can ruin your work life balance and make you feel like you have to be someone you're not, but it doesn't have to be that way. Business should incorporate your faith and honor the creative rural lifestyle you cherish. That's why I created this podcast to be your personal business coach in your pocket. Here you'll find Practical tips, insightful interviews, and easy to follow training all crafted to fit seamlessly into your busy life. Whether you're driving, creating, or taking a walk, I'll be right there with you. Now let's dive into this episode and start turning your dreams into reality. I can't wait to share this journey with you. Welcome back to the podcast. I am Tina joy, Cochran your host. And with me today is the amazing Betsy Gundersen of golden autumn farmstead. Betsy and I have known each other for quite a while. She's part of our Golden Heartland Academy, and we have been working through some really interesting stuff. Betsy, when you and I first met it was, I have a business called Busy Beet Soaps. Then I'm not even sure I want to keep as a business. I really don't know if I'm going to be able to continue with this because I also have a full time job. Is that correct? Yeah. Technically two full time jobs because we live on a farm and I do the soap on the side and I had a full time day job too. So yeah, it was busy. And hence the busy part of the busy piece. The stuff tell me about. Where this all got started you mentioned living on a farm. Did you always live on a farm? I have been a farm girl since probably five years old. When my parents moved to a farm, we, I lived on a goat dairy. We produced a lot of our own food. My husband and I, when we met and got married, that was our goal is we wanted to get somewhere where we could raise our own food and have our children where they would learn those traditional skills and traditional values of working hard and, enjoying the labors of their own hands. Was the intention to have a business at that point? No our intention was to just produce for ourselves and enjoy the work that goes with creating food for yourself and enjoying the health that goes with that. And as we started having an increase that we didn't need ourselves, we started thinking more and more along the lines of, well, How do we share that with other people and find the people that want the type of quality that we produce for ourselves. Where does the soap come in from that? At the time, being raised on a goat dairy, that's kind of where I came from. That was where my experience was and my understanding of livestock and how that works. I mean, we had chickens as well, but goats were kind of my thing. And in having Goats typically you have a lot of milk or you don't have enough so I was freezing, milk, but we really didn't like drinking frozen milk because it does, Have a difference after it's been frozen. So I was looking for ways to use up that excess And I started making soap and it wasn't really that I Started making soap with the intention of it being a business or selling it Even I just made soap because it was something I hadn't done before I wanted to try it See what it was like and my husband actually ended up falling in love with the soap that I was making because he noticed that his skin responded very positively to using a homemade soap. Right. Before that he would always end up with patches of itchy skin and He does have a little bit of psoriasis that Can be exacerbated by the dryness that is caused by some store bought soaps When he started using mine that started clearing up and he noticed a difference immediately So then he was encouraging me to make more and then I got to a point where I started dabbling in the more You Colorful, and scents, and micas, and all of those different things, and kind of went down that rabbit hole. And started making the more artsy kinds of soaps. Well, those needed to find a home, because I was very quickly getting boxes and boxes of soap with, The things that I was making and I was enjoying it immensely. It was definitely a stress reliever, so That's kind of how the soap part of it came to be I started kind of selling a few bars here and there Family and friends. It wasn't really what I would call a business. It was more of a hobby You I started looking for events and looking for ways to actually sell it, market it. I made Facebook pages to try and get the word out that I was a soap maker and that I could do things. I also had other people in the family who had sensitivities and we're asking, well, can you make a soap without? And so I started getting into more of the custom made soaps and doing more research on what things people are typically allergic to so that I could formulate a soap base that would appeal to a broader Base of people, I mentioned that your business is golden autumn farmstead. What happened busy be soaps was the original name, right? So it sounds like your business. Is growing out of the abundance of your creativity Yes, My husband and I during the course of me having this business for the last several years with just the soap and the bath products had some discussions about a family business, we wanted more control over our destiny than what the outside world could perhaps offer. So then we started talking in great earnest about having a family owned business around the farm, because we were already producing a certain amount of things that were Above and beyond what we could use. My husband has a dairy and we constantly have beef calves that are dairy calves that are steers that need to be turned into beef either by us or by someone else. So that was another outlet that he was like, well, can you use some of those marketing techniques to sell my beef? And then he started getting into leather working and And all of my kids as Have a kind of a niche. I have a daughter who is very much into baked goods and Both of my daughters are very big into fiber different types of fiber arts, but still fiber Crafting nonetheless and then my youngest son. He is learning because he's only nine, he is learning more and more about economics and entrepreneurship and how to think critically about, okay, what do I have that I can make and how do I sell it? How do I market it? Who do I talk to? And how do I talk to people? it's turned into a family business from me and my husband all the way down to our youngest. Everybody has a part that they play and we all work together to make it happen. I love that. you've homeschooled your kids. Is that correct? Yes. My oldest son has been homeschooled since third grade when it was discovered that he was gifted and the schools could not keep up with him. He was in third grade, but he was doing reading and math on an eighth grade level. And you have four kids, right? Yes. my oldest son is 27 and I have two daughters that are 19 and just turned 21. And then our youngest son is nine. I heard you talking about your youngest son and all the things he's learning by having a family business. It's really fascinating to hear your story You're looking at each 1 of the people in the family and then leveraging their strengths and letting them do their creativity you and I work together when we 1st started. on something we called an umbrella brand and setting up a brand allowed for that to happen. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience with that? Because Busy B Soaps is very, very specific. but Golden Autumn Farmstead opens the door to a lot of different things. Yeah. It, it actually broadened our revenue stream for lack of a better explanation because now instead of just having soap and bath products, we can do things seasonally. So I have herbs and teas that come out of my urban tea garden. If we have an abundance of fruit from our orchards, we can find a market for that. Obviously, the beef that my husband and son produce, we're adding processed turkey to that. It's very seasonal. And so in the off season, when it's winter, there's not a lot you can do outside for produce. We're doing more of the handicraft type things like the leatherworking and the fiber arts and the soap making. And. Those types of things that are done, in the house, they're more cozy. I guess you can call them even they're less manual labor. They still allow us to produce something, but they do also allow us to rest from the more physical activities of a farm. We talk a lot on this podcast about something called the lifestyle business that essentially we get into business because we have a certain lifestyle and we want to earn our revenue. And that. Such a great description of what you guys are doing is just ebb and flow with what the lifestyle of being a farmer is and using that to add revenue streams, right? I know you are a creative, like creating is your thing. So how has this transition in the business, has it helped your creativity? Has it supported your creativity or how has it had an impact on that? Well, I would say that as far as the creativity goes, The ebb and flow allows me to look at well, what do I have on hand right now? And what can I do with it? So if I go out in my garden and I happen to see oh I have a lot of thyme and I can snip it up stick it in the dehydrator Design some labels for it bag it up and provide that as something for sale if I'm find myself with free time, quote unquote. I can look and say, what soaps can I possibly produce in that time for sale on the website or at the farmer's market? It gives me a lot more freedom to choose what I'm creating in the season that that item might be more available. Even when I'm doing, like, my specialty honeys, your first honey flow of the year typically happens June, July. And that's also about the same time that say roses are in bloom. So then I can make a specialty honey called rose honey, where you infuse the honey with the roses. So it actually tastes like what roses smell like. Wow. It's not something that you can do if you're not sensitive to what season you're in and what's available at that. That's what I love the concept of an umbrella brand. so often I've met people you say, tell me about your business. And I'm like, well, I've got six different businesses. Wow. From a marketing perspective, by having this umbrella brand marketing changes, does it not? It does change a little bit. For example, the soaps, I make a certain number of soaps and then I have those marketed when they're ready for sale. Okay. Whereas with the beef, we have a wait list. You know, we're going to have x number of beef available at such and such a time. Would you like to be on the wait list in order to get a quarter, half or a whole? And we go from it from that standpoint. Overall there are similarities and they do kind of. crossover. So if I don't have enough people on the wait list say from the farmer's market, then I can still go to social media and say, Hey, we have these available. If anybody would like to go ahead and sign up for it. And you mentioned the farmer's market and events the types of events you go to, has that changed as you've made the transition from Busy Bee Soaps to Golden Autumn Farmstead? Has it changed at all? Yes. I used to do more Events that were I would say probably on a monthly basis where I would go to a larger event that was local And set up for two days It will go would go through the two days selling the items, that's great for doing soap bath products and those kinds of things but not necessarily for Beef turkey livestock eggs those kinds of things because That's not something that you can take and set up and just have there to hand out to somebody as easily whereas the farmer's market i'll have repeat customers that are coming in and saying hey What do you have new this week and I can talk to them about what the new things are and I can say there's a waiting list for beef if you're interested in purchasing beef at some point And then how they can sign up for that wait list and what that all entails. This is the first year that we've actually done a farmer's market and I'm learning a lot. I mean, the first few weeks I was like in a mad panic trying to, get my bearings and figure out how does this work because I've been to farmer's market But it's very different being on the other side of the table. Yeah, I don't think people understand how much work goes into a farmer's market because it is every week for 26 weeks minimum a year right if you're doing indoor farmer's market, it might even be longer. The farmer's market as a unique type of event very different than, hey, I'm signing up for a craft show or something like that, that I have months to prepare. And then I'm there for 14 hours a day for 2 days. Farmer's market is only through a couple of hours, but it's every single week. Let's Dive a little bit deeper. So how has your faith played out in all of this? And what impact does that have? You're laughing. What impact does that have on everything? Yes, faith has everything to do with being a farmer because you have to have faith in a lot of things. So if you're planting things, you have to have faith that those are going to grow up and turn into something usable for yourself. For others, There's a lot of prayers that go into every single day. You're praying that people are kept safe while they're out working because we're dealing with heavy equipment, we're dealing with, one to 2000 pound animals, they can decide that they don't like what you're trying to do or don't understand it and react poorly that can end up in having an accident. So we, we have that. And then we have like the, okay, please bless what we're trying to do here because we're not exactly sure what we're going to do, but we are stepping out in faith that God will help us. through it because we're learning. We do a lot of that too. Praying as a family is very, very important because then we all can come and unify with our hearts and intents for what our purpose is. Talk to me more about this. If this is a family business and if God was On the payroll, if you will, what role does he play in your business? Well, the biggest one is For me personally in the business, I would say the inspiration portion of it because I'll, I may walk past something and God will say, look again, and I'll see something in a different way than I had previously, because I'm now seeing it the way he wants me to. One of the things I started offering teas and herbs that was something he actually told me I needed to start providing and it's taking off. So that was not something I expected. I think of herbs and teas are something that are fairly accessible to anybody. They're easy to grow. And. Everybody should have, in my opinion, everybody should have a fresh herb garden, even if it's just one sitting in your window sill, because they are so yummy. But there are people who Don't necessarily have all the information about the herbs that they're using and why they use it And so I try to provide a little bit extra with that. It's like, okay. Well, you're coming to buy parsley Did you know that parsley is extremely high in in certain vitamins and minerals and i'll try to give them a little bit of that information Our farmer's market was actually yesterday and I had people coming and saying, okay what do you do with comfrey and I was like comfrey to me is a super plant You Everybody should be grown because you can use it everywhere. If you have a garden, it's great for your compost pile. It's a nitrogen supply and it speeds up your compost. If you have an orchard, it pulls nutrients from deep in the earth up to where the trees can actually access it again, nitrogen fixer. It's a high protein source. So your chickens and rabbits and goats and cows and everybody can eat that. And have a higher protein in their diet than they would normally. So there's just a lot of things. And now I'm selling out of comfrey plants. Every week. Oh, that's so cool. One of the things I love about walking in this business with you is you have so much knowledge. And that comes from running a farmstead and wanting to go back to that original purpose was we want to be able to be as self sustaining as possible. And that means. herbs and different uses of plants than just, oh, let's grow it in the garden and then eat it. So I've learned a ton from you. I've got two questions before we wrap up. One, what does the future look like for Golden Autumn Farmstead? And two, where can we find you? Well, where to find us right now is easy. You can do a search on Facebook for either Golden Autumn Farmstead or Busy Bee Soaps. I still have the Busy Bee Soaps page up because I still have some customers primarily interested in that. We're also on Instagram with those same handles. I have a website that is still listed as BusyBeeSoaps. com which is B I Z Z Y. Busybeesoaps. com we do have all of the items Available for the farm on the busybeesoaps. com website. As far as the future really if you are depending on god and Trusting in him the future is limitless There's always going to be something that I can produce off of our farm. That I can share with others whether it's eggs, whether it's chicks, whether it's food foraging in the woods, there's stuff out in the woods to forage, it's abundant, God puts stuff everywhere, you just have to know how to find it. He will point you in the right direction. Absolutely. So that leads me to one more question. Last question. What would you tell someone who is listening to this and go, that's super cool. Sounds like a great way to live. Maybe I could do that. What would you tell them? Well, I personally am fascinated by all the YouTubers out there that are doing the same kinds of things that we're doing in a smaller box in subdivisions. As long as you have a town that will allow you to have like five or six chickens in the backyard, or grow a little bit of a garden, or start some herbs in the window, or your apartment patio, or wherever. Just start small. And build onto it. There are so many tools now that you can utilize off of the internet to start where you are. and just to build on to it. And the more you do, the more you learn. Even if you fail, you can learn from failure. Love it. I love it. What I heard you just say is, no matter where you're living, you don't have to have a farm to do this kind of thing. No matter where you're living, just start small. Follow God, learn and grow, and that business can grow out of that abundance. And that's your journey. And I'm so excited for the future. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your story and continuing to just serve the community that you live in from your abundance. Thanks, Betsy. Thank you. You've been listening to the joy led business podcast. I'm your host, Tina Joy Cochran. Thanks for sharing part of your day with me. You don't have to walk this business journey alone. Discover others just like you at goldenheartland. com. Business coaching community for creative rural women. Faith. Go there to learn more and get free gifts I designed just for you. Be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode and share this episode with someone who could use a bit more joy today. Remember, your business success matters to me and to God. Being joy led will get you there. Can't wait to meet you at Golden Heartland.