And we're back for another exciting episode of the Poultry Nerds podcast. Yay. And this e- this episode's really exciting to me because if you could see the look on Jennifer's face right now, and if you're listening to us on your favorite podcast, this would be one you would want to flip over to the website and watch because she has been working an insane amount of time on putting together what's been kind of a project that she's been wanting to do, not had time to do, back and forth. And here lately she has just got determined to put it all together and it's very exciting. Nerve-wracking. You're nervous and I get it because you don't like to- Like you don't like the spotlight. That's not you. And I get that. That's a good personality trait to have, but this really shows the hard work, dedication, and education that you have behind what you do and your passion. Well, this, this will bring together all of my strengths, that I have from not just the poultry world, but my day job too. So if people don't know, I am a salesperson by day, and if you ever heard that term could sell an Eskimo ice, that was written to describe me. And I do it effortlit- effort- lessly and- Yeah have always done it. I could see that. I could see you te- letting an Eskimo know that they needed to buy dry ice in bulk, and they would buy it. Yep. So I have combined all of that, plus what I've learned in marketing that would be self-taught, and then of course tech side would be you just being a cheerleader because this particular tech side's not really your forte, but kind of- No, but I, I like encouraging people and pointing at people in directions and just seeing what they do with it. Because I would have never thought you'd have done this much with it. So if you've been with us from the beginning, then you might remember, but if you haven't, um, when we started this back in 2024, I could not even- Sounds right use a Google Doc. I didn't know how to use them, or a Google Sheet. Now you give me an Excel spreadsheet, now I've been using those since I was a teenager, but I had never had any reason to use a Google Sheet. But now I'm all about them and use them all the time. And see I can remember when you installed Office on your computer with a stack of 3 and a half inch floppy disks that was like this tall. Yep. And I was very anti Google Sheets for a while because it was far inferior. But as it advanced, it's... There's not very much... I don't know of anything that the normal everyday user would do that you can't do with Google Sheets- Yeah, I agree that you can do with Excel. But my day job, I use Excel, and I build macros and do mail merges and run QuickBooks and, like, I do all that kind of nerdy stuff. So this was just stretching my limits in a different direction. But are you ready to dive into what I'm, what I'm doing? Tell them what it is So the new Beyond the Egg website is up. It's almost fully loaded, but it is up and running, and it's going to be much better and different than the original Beyond the Egg. Originally the one that's on Bryant's Roost that is now closed was just to help people use egg foam. But what happened was is people started asking me more questions like, "How do you do marketing materials? How do you just do everything that you do during the day?" And I started having to help people because that's what I do, and then I realized David told me, but I realized that people don't sell in their sleep like I do, and that a salesperson is either born or taught. And if you're not a salesperson, then you have to take the energy to learn it. But Beyond the Egg isn't really so much a sales course, so much as it's how do y- how to use automations and create methods that work that doesn't make more work. Yeah. If that makes sense. 'Cause there's only so much time in the day. And so when people would come here and they would say, "Well, how do you do everything?" Well, it's automations. I mean, we're pretty vocal about the stuff that we do outside, like automated water systems or feeders that hold more than 45 minutes worth of feed or, um, just whatever we're doing outside. I mean, you build automations outside, so why wouldn't you build them inside? And so, that's what I've done here and show, I'm basically showing you what I've built on the backside, and then showing you how to use it. And it's, it's not gonna require a lot of memberships to other programs. It's almost exclusively using what you already probably are paying for, or something you could use for free, actually. I was gonna say, a lot of the stuff that you and I have talked about has been s- you have shown me that things that I have will do way more than I thought they would do. And you've also shown me how to combine some of the stuff, because one thing has a lot more capabilities- And it's been able to save me some money instead of costing me some extra. Right. So that- So- who don't like to save money and get your stuff more in one spot? I'm not an advocate for telling you you need products when you don't need them. So that is not what this is. This is simply telling you or showing you how to do things automated and then I actually am gonna be giving you templates to use in inside the membership. Um, let's just start with this slide. So I picked this picture. This was the original picture when we moved to the land, put the farm sign up. You can see there's no fencing, there's no cows, there's no nothing here. We just moved and planted our sign and said, "Here we are, and then we're gonna, we're gonna build this stuff." And then everything kind of came afterwards and so I just thought it was kind of nice to show from the beginning, because what you see now isn't how it always looked. Well, and it's important to know, like, where you started because a lot of people, when they see somebody like you that has been doing quail forever, they just- Think it just started that way. But this lets them see that you actually started with some birds that weren't the best in the world. And your constant desire to make 'em better is how you've grown your Pharaoh line to be one of the best there is. Yep. So it, it... I mean, I know you come here at least a couple times a month, but this is not what the front of the property looks like any longer. That tree next to the sign is probably about 12 feet tall now. Easily. Yep. Okay. So like I said, people ask me all the time, like, how do I do it all and it's basically automations, building workflows, and having standard answers. So when I refer to standard answers I created that term for myself probably a good 25 years ago. Um, so I was managing an apartment complex at the time, and people would ask you stuff, and then you would tell 'em the answer, but then people lie and they'll come back and they'll say, "Well, that's not what you said. You said I could do this." And you have to think about it for a minute, like, "Would I say that? Did I say that?" Yeah, really. "What was I thinking? What was I thinking that day?" You know? Because you- Right you know, I didn't grow up street smart per se, and so I just take people for what they say, and I had to learn really quickly that that is not always the best- policy. So- Well, and, and look, that, that's why in my primary email box, inbox that I use, I probably got 60 to 70,000 emails Because I don't delete my sent items. And I don't delete my emails. I'll delete spam and stuff that I'll never look at, but, I'm... The... I used to be that person. "Did I say that?" "Well, let me go look at the email and see if I really did." And that's actually saved me quite a few times. And I do the same thing. Um, I'm more apt to do it with text or messages. But yeah, so when I was dealing with tenants, that's what I did. And so I came up with standard answers. So, "Can I have a pit bull?" "No, you cannot." "Can I put up a water slide?" "No, you cannot." Just standard answers. They just come off of your- Yeah come out of your mouth without thinking about it. And that way, if somebody comes back and they say, "Hey, you said I could have a trampoline." "Well, no you can't. You cannot have a trampoline-" Nope. I've never said that on the property. So- Yeah standard answers. And you do not have to explain yourself. You don't go into Walmart and say, "Why is this jug of milk $4.29?" Or what... I don't even know what milk costs, but why is it that? And you're like, "Explain it to me. Well, can we do $3 on it?" You don't do that at Walmart, so don't let people do that to you in your business. This is your price, and stick to it. Yeah you don't have to explain yourself. I see that a lot and lot and lot with the farm pages. Um, they want to explain themselves or almost apologize for charging something, and you can't do that because then you get somebody who is a salesperson by nature, and they are going to wear you out. You have to be firm in your pricing and in your standard answers. That is actually, I think, step one probably. And, you know, one thing that I learned is everybody talks about their friends and doing business with your friends. And to me, there's a huge difference in having that friend that constantly asks you for a discount and having that friend that you just give one. Mm-hmm. Because, my, my friends- I really can't think of any that have asked for a discount. Um, n- I mean, they've asked if I had a sale going on or things like that, but, the way I look at it, if my friend sells something, that's who I wanna do business with, and it just costs And if you ain't got the money for it, then you ain't got the money to go buy it from a stranger either. So- And don't forget that time is money. I mean, you don't go to work and work for free, so don't go- Oh, yeah outside and work for free. If there's a difference between a hobby and a business so remember that. Um, your time is worth something. And if you say, "My hobby is my business"- That ain't gonna work with the mortgage company and with the light bill. Okay, so when we talk about social media this is called rented land. You'll hear that term a lot with marketing people. Um, that just simply means that you can't control it. You can control what you post, but you can't control if people actually see it, if somebody else- Mm-hmm deems it unnecessary. Um, building your business on sand, which is what this is not a good foundation for a business. And so, while they're great for advertising, for putting your name out there and everything, they are not where... They're not a good source of time well spent is what I think. But it is a good place to advertise and get the word out that you even exist. If- Mm-hmm. Now, when I started, I started on Facebook. I still to this day do not spend any time on Instagram or TikTok. I don't understand Instagram, um, and TikTok's scary to me. So, and there's a lot of controversy around TikTok. You know, is it gonna be shut down? Is it not gonna be shut down? Well, that should tell you right now that it's not worth a lot of effort, in my opinion to put your effort behind it. YouTube, on the other hand, I have a respect for YouTube. The reason being is Google, when you Google something, say you want to buy white socks, then Google will show you everywhere that sells white socks close to you, the most popular, but they'll also throw you to YouTube. It's actually in the search- Mm-hmm across the top for videos or images or sales or news or whatever. Anything you want to know about white socks in the media the way that you wanna see it. Do you wanna see a sales ad, or do you wanna see a video about them? So SEO is search engine optimization, and YouTube is owned by Google. So if you- Make an effort to use keywords and put your word out there, you can show up with Google, and that includes YouTube. So there is a benefit to YouTube, and it is now occupying more of my time than it used to. Everybody goes to YouTube to learn- Yes how to do anything. Exactly. I'm not gonna lie. I do have a respect for YouTube. There... that's gonna be the long game, is YouTube. Um, before we go to the next slide, I do want to talk about logos for just a second. We're gonna talk about 'em later, but I want to talk about logos. So if you look at this, you know exactly what all of these four... Obviously, you know YouTube, but the other three, you know what they're for. If you see an Amazon box, you know exactly where that came from, or the stupid flower thing on the front of Walmart, you know what that thing is. Or the golden arches for McDonald's, you know what those are. People remember simple. Don't make things more complicated than they have to be. I see a lot of logos being made, and they're super complicated. And you're talking about putting them in a little tiny circle on social media or on YouTube or anywhere really. All you get is a little tiny circle to put 'em in. And depending on the size of the person's phone, I mean, we could be talking about something the size of a pencil eraser. You can't cram- Mm-hmm 47 animals, a barn, and a landscape in something the size of a pencil eraser. It's just going to look like a big mess. So make it memorable. My logos are all in circle because everything that you see is circle. Etsy is circle. eBay is circle. All the socials are circle. I mean that they, uh, just are. That's what... So don't fight the system Well, and that's a lesson, that's a lesson you taught me a long time ago. I, I was starting to build my online presence with my farm page, and you were like, "Yeah, I like that logo, but it should be round." I was like, "How do you make it round?" You're like, "I don't know. But if you think about it, Facebook's round, everything's round." Mm-hmm. "So you need to make a logo round so it's, it fits. It's easy. That's the way it's designed to look." I did. Ta-da So, it's all about simple. You want to make it memorable. You've only got three seconds to make an impression when somebody's scrolling, so it's gotta be easily recognizable, memorable, and stops the scroll, stops the search on a search engine page. Whatever it is, you're trying to grab that attention in a world of people grabbing attention. You've gotta be the one that stands out and makes people wanna stop scrolling. Okay, so we talked about socials you don't own, so you build assets that you do own. That would be an email list, websites and a blog, podcasts and then of course courses. That would be more advanced. But s- the simplest place to start is an email list, and nobody is ever going to convince me that an email list does not sell. I... Before we logged on to check analytics, I checked my analytics on my website and I texted you, and, um, I've had... We are six months into the year, and I've had over 100,000 views on my website. I only have 11,000 followers on Facebook. But I've put my energy in the email list. And you build it that way. You build trust, because these are people that want to hear from you. They made the effort to give you their email address. They want to hear what you have to say. So, there... It's called a warm audience, and so they're primed to click on a link if you say, "Hey, this is a good deal. This is something I use. Here's some information. I need you to go watch this video," or, "We're talking about what you asked us to talk about on the podcast," or you're... It's trust-building, and you can't sell any easier to anybody than somebody who trusts you. That's the easiest sale honestly. I mean, like the first time I saw... You send out, for people that don't know, you send out emails on Fridays, and you've got something on sale. Probably every Friday or at least most of them for the last long time. And there's a time that you... It's the, um, the quail feeders and waterers that you have that screw onto the Mason jar. I was like, "Ooh, I didn't know she had those." "I like these," and I ordered them. And then you made fun of me. You were like- I did I- you could've picked those up while they, while you were here." Why... I don't know why I'm having to ship them to you." I was like, "I mean, I, I would've got them when I came back, but, yeah. 'Cause they're cool. And I like them. So inside of Beyond the Egg, I am gonna walk you through how to build an email list. And you can actually start for free. It... Emails can be expensive, but you, there are ways to start for free, and no, it's not with your Google account because that will get you blacklisted really quickly. So don't do that. You've got to learn the right way. Um, so email lists are the way to go. And to be honest with you, if you pick the right email program, you could even forgo a website. Um, you could do it all with an email list. Now, websites would be the next thing. Websites, when to go to a website. I actually do a lesson on that. Um, because if you're only selling, say you know, just a minimal amount of product or whatever, then there's selling platforms out there, and that is also discussed in Beyond the Egg. All the different ways you can sell and all the platforms that I have used or recommend or... And I just tell you how to use them, um, and that they're there. But when you're ready to go, I guess, big time and get your own website there is a learning curve to that. Websites are not cheap. And they're like pets. You have to- Oh, what's the word, Carey? You have to feed and water them daily. Yeah, you, you gotta maintain them. Yes. Um- Because they're, they're always changing. And it's... You gotta maintain them because- True you can't just buy a website and have somebody do it, and you never touch it. So if you never add anything to it, let's just say you build it, and here's your store, and then you never do anything, Google sees that. And he says, "Okay, well they're not putting any effort into it, so we're not gonna recommend this to people." Right. So you have to go in and feed and water it. I literally sit with my laptop in my lap at night while we're watching TV, and I will tweak something, add something, change a picture. Feeding and watering your website? It's... I'm feeding and watering my website at night. A blog. I have a weekly blog. So I do do emails on Friday, but I also do emails on Tuesdays. That's my blog email, like giving out information for free, you know, building trust. This is, these are things that I think you should know, and I have a library on my website now. Well actually, I do the blog on Poultry Nerds too, so I have two blogs that do, that go. And, um, so I think I have over 300 pages in my blog at this point. So that's a lot of searchable content that people can find information to. I refuse to do Google ads, just because they annoy the fire out of me. Like, you know, you go to a- Yes website and there's so many of them that you can't even see what you're trying to see. I will bounce out, and that's what that's called, is bounce rate. So I will bounce out of those emails in, or those websites in a heartbeat because I hate them. I do not want to mess with all those pop-ups and all those videos loading, and all of that crap. I don't want any part of it. So I do not have any of that on my website. A podcast, that's more of a time commitment. I would say the podcast takes, what, three to four hours a week for us to do, probably. Yeah. Yeah. But it's not free either. So YouTube would be free if you wanted to do a podcast on YouTube. And then courses and more, that would be, like, more advanced stuff. Now, when you know when it's time to go from hobby to business, when you go out in your garage and you realize that you have logos on all of your products that are being shipped out today, you've gone- Ah you've gone to business. Yeah. David's like, "I never thought my name would be on chicken stuff." So that's one thing. And then when you start selling eggs how that works, the neighbors will ask, the word will spread, and then you just start selling more, then you need more birds, and then it just goes from there. You don't necessarily have to take it to the extreme that we've taken it, but it will build, right? And then of course helping people and sharing your knowledge, that's always a blessing. It's never gonna be a negative to any business. Um, the trap is though, that the bigger you get, the more orders you get, the more customer service you have to handle, the more emails you get, the more messages you get, the more phone calls you get, the angry customers, happy customers, I mean, they all have to be addressed. And so you have to have automation set in place to help you sift through that and- Mm-hmm handle all of it. Now, I know that you've put in some, um, AI-type automations to help you handle it and I have- Yeah some, not near to the extreme that you have, but I have some of those set in place, and it just keeps me consistent and moving forward. Okay, so back to standard answers. You have to have a plan. You have to know where you're going, um, so you don't have to repeat yourself, go backwards. It's kind of like if you build a coop without a plan and then it doesn't work, so you gotta start it over. So it would be better to spend a few days making a plan and then building it out. Not saying you won't tweak it in the future, but you have to have education before you can make a plan, and that's basically what is inside of Beyond The Egg. It becomes the team behind you to show you how to do what you need to do in the direction that you need to go. And then once it starts clicking and you start understanding, then you can just start applying it to everything and then just move forward with it. And then of course, that gives you your time back because what's lost in all of this stuff is you don't have as much time to go out there and watch the birds, which is the whole point that you started all of this. You wanted some chickens to enjoy, and you wanted to be outside, and you wanted to grow a garden, and you wanted to do all those things. Now- Or, or spend more time with your family even. Exactly. Uh, or make dinner even. Yeah. So these automations can work in the background, and you don't have to have your phone out constantly while you're trying to feed the chickens or clean poop trays. You were texting me this morning, and I'd keep taking my glove on and off in order to keep messing with the poop trays. So, things like that- I know that you can... I know, you didn't, and, but what we were doing needed to be answered, so that was fine. But, but, you know, when you're doing that stuff, you know, you should be able to set your phone down and the business can run while you're doing what you need to be doing or want to be doing. And then stop answering twice. So the blog got started because people kept asking me the same questions, and so I was like okay, I'll make a blog. I'll just..." I mean, at the time I didn't fully understand what a blog was. But I just, "Okay. Well, I'll just put it on here and then send people to the link." And then it, education came, and then I fully understood what a blog was. I took some marketing courses online from other blog writers who explained it to me. So how to put it together, how to make it work, how to make it searchable how to use it to build authority, grow your email list. Everything comes back to email lists when you're talking about bloggers. Mm-hmm. And so that also prevents you from answering twice. Like, somebody messaged me just yesterday about breaking her broody hen. Well, we had just done that podcast on broody hens. Yeah. Well, and I have had, I have done blogs on broody hens, and so I just sent her the links. Now, that may seem almost cold maybe. That's what David said. He's like, "If you just send people links, then they're not hearing you." Well, okay, I understand that. There's give and take to everything, but I only have so much time in the day, and if I've already- I mean, actually, they do hear you You know? Because I had that struggle too when people asked me questions and I would just scroll through our podcasts, find the one that we did on it, and send it to them. And Tamara said the same thing David did. I said, "But you know, I can give them the 30-second answer that I have time to give them right now- because I'm right in the middle of something. Or I can give them the answer that came from Jennifer and I having a lengthy discussion about it And they're gonna get a lot better information. And it's back to what is our time worth, which we talked about 10 minutes ago. My time is worth something, too. You know, I've got animals to feed and work to do and, all these different things that I need to do, and so I have to budget that time a- that's, that I have available. And if I already have the information written down then that's easy. Now, one thing I did do the other day which even boggled my mind, was I had, um, I call him George, ChatGPT catalog my blog, and he put it into a spreadsheet. So he gave me the title, the description, and the link. So now that's in a Google Sheet, so now I can just go on the Google Sheet, I can find by searching the Google Sheet, I can find the topic. You just look through the sheet to find the topic. Mm-hmm. Copy and paste. Look at you. Yeah, I know. Man, so that's a s- type of automation that we're talking about. So inside Beyond The Egg we're gonna talk about marketing how to reach your customers and fix their problem. Now, um, that's something that I have learned through some other marketing courses that I have taken. A lot of people want to talk about their story. If you go to a farm website, 95% of the time they're gonna tell you their story, and you will find that on my website too, but it's buried. It's the About Us page. Yeah. When somebody comes to your website, they're looking for something. And so if they come to my website, they're either looking for information or they're looking to buy a product or hatching eggs. That's what they're doing. At the end of the day- Yeah that is what they're doing. And so on my home page, that's what they're gonna find, links to the eggs, links to the products, and then a link to the blog, in that order. And because you have three seconds to make that impression, and if they can't see a picture and tap what they want to buy, then chances are they're gonna bounce out and go to the next- Fast the next thing on the search engine's website Yep. So that's one thing you need to pay attention to. Stop talking about yourself as much as you're trying to fix their problem. Um, and then build those systems for automation. No different than the cataloging of my blog post. That's a simple version of an automation, because now the webs- the links are more readily accessible for me to send out to people. And then of course, the financial plan. You've got to know how much all this stuff is gonna cost, if you have the money to spend on it, and how much money you're gonna make. All of those things will factor in to where you're going. And so the biggest thing that I want to talk about is to work on your business. We don't want to be in the business all the time. We want to be outside farming, 'cause that's what started all of this. So building these automations, and that includes social media, email, website standard answers, all of those things makes your business side go faster and more efficient so you can get back to doing the things that you need to be doing outside. So if you go to beyondtheegg.com, you can join the membership at the introductory rate that I have going, and the first monthly meeting will be July 14th at 7:00 PM Central Standard Time. And in the monthly meetings, I'm going to teach a lesson. In July, that lesson is gonna be how to automate your hatching egg wait lists. No ha- hand- completely hands off automation. Nothing, you don't have to buy any programs. It's completely free. And so I'm gonna teach you how to do that. I'm gonna give you some social media templates that you can just plug and play, put in your planner for your social media pages and walk away and not have to worry about them for an entire month. And of course, all of the other lessons will be available inside of the membership. So I hope to see you there on July 14th. I'm excited. You should be., As your friend, I'm excited for you and folks that don't realize, for you to come out of your bubble, cause you're a very private kept person, and you've really come a long way in doing this. So I'm proud of you. Well, thank you. So I just hope it helps people At the end of the day, that's what matters Exactly.