Ep. 507 - From Trials to Triumph: Rebranding, Regeneration, and Goal Setting for Personal and Business Growth

Join Rob on this episode of the All Around Growth Podcast as he delves into the transformative events of the past week. Rob shares the exciting journey of securing a new retail location and the exhilaration of successfully delivering products there. He also takes us behind the scenes of the rebranding process for York Meadow Farm's fermented food product line, shedding light on the story behind the evolution.

As an entrepreneur, Rob candidly discusses the inherent challenges of self-employment and the continuous growth and development of a small, family-owned business. He explores the enchantment of permaculture and its practical applications in daily life, providing insights into the principles of sustainability and regeneration. Rob further opens up about the complexities of working with family and the emotional experience of supporting a loved one who fought a battle with cancer.

Be sure to connect with Natural Ferments on Facebook and Instagram, and join their exciting business journey as they "start fresh" with a clean slate.  Discover their progress, be inspired, and join them on their path to success.

👉 Natural Ferments on Facebook

👉 Natural Ferments on Instagram

Rob also shares a valuable framework for goal setting and offers a FREE download of his trusted workbook, which has guided him for years. Through his own experiences, strength, and hope, Rob inspires listeners to find solutions to life's challenges. We all carry baggage, but what truly defines us is how we choose to carry it.

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Connect on Social Media!
 

Telegram Group Chat: https://t.me/allaroundgrowth

Facebook Community:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/allaroundgrowth

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/allaroundgrowth

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YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@allaroundgrowth

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Cover Photo Credit:  Natural Ferments

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Discussion Links:

Krieger's Health Foods Market - Krieger’s provides a large selection of fresh fruits and vegetables, a wide variety of vitamins, herbs and mineral supplements, organic groceries, amish cheeses, healthy deli, grass fed steaks, organic produce and eggs, Amish pies, Ohio honey and maple syrup, etc...

👉 Natural Ferments on Facebook

👉 Natural Ferments on Instagram

In Loving Memory: Remembering the Kraut Guy — York Meadow Farm

Financial Peace University - Ramsey Solutions

Maurice Small on Facebook

Maurice Small on Twitter - maurice small & SmallFarmz

FREE GOAL-SETTING GUIDE: SET GOALS FOR THE 7 MAIN AREAS OF YOUR LIFE by Dan Miller

48 DAYS TO THE WORK (AND LIFE) YOU LOVE

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#AllAroundGrowth #PodcastJourney #SmallBusinessSuccess #EntrepreneurLife #RegenerativeLiving #FermentedFoods #RebrandingJourney #GoalSetting #PersonalDevelopment #NewBeginnings

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:08

Well, hi there, and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. My name is Rob Kaiser, and I am your host. Today is Friday, July 14th, and this is episode number 507 of a show where we talk about growth and development in all aspects of life, including but not limited to financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And in today's episode, we are coming to you, being recorded in the truck on the road, leaving a new retail location. We are talking about career today. We will also be talking about family. We will be talking about all manner of things as we discuss new opportunities, growth, and development on the homestead, specifically with regard to fermented foods. That's right. We have a new retail location in Summit County, Ohio at Krieger's Health Foods Market. I received a phone call from Brad, the manager of the Health Foods section within the store, inquiring about our product and wondering if he could place an order. And I said, absolutely. Let me get you a product listing and availability. And I did so later that day. We had some additional correspondence throughout the week. And five days later, today, on Friday, July 14th, it is 5 30 p.m. and I am just now leaving Krieger's Health Food Market after dropping off almost seven cases. I say almost because I only had 11 jars of kimchi and was unable to make a full case because of the fact that I wanted to give a jar of our kimchi to the distributor where I buy the Napa cabbage from, which shall remain one of my little secrets. And the specific Asian market will be unnamed because there are some things that are going to remain industry secrets. But I went up there earlier this week to look into buying the cabbage and was successful in doing so. And since the chemistry is our most popular product as of 2023, I'm looking at the scaling of the chemically and buying it wholesale, and they were able to help me out with that. So due to the fact that it is our product that is in highest demand, I only had one case in stock and therefore was only able to deliver Krieger's 11 jars of kimon chi just short of a case. Luckily, I had cases, multiple cases of everything else, and was able to deliver one full case of everything else to them, and just about fulfill the order in its entirety. And I learned that part of the reason why they are looking to bring us in is due to the fact that their current fermented food supplier is well, let's just put it this way. They're looking to diversify a little bit. Okay? And so are we, and accordingly, I was more than happy to step up and fill that void and do my very best to take care of them. Now, um, as we move forward in the show, just fair warning, uh, we will be, I say we because you are riding along with me on the way home, and we will be driving through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park right near or right past the entrance to Blossom Music Center. For those of you who are familiar with Blossom, maybe some of your favorite bands have played at Blossom, but it's a beautiful area down here in the Cuyahoga Valley, and the only issue that I have, if we want to call it an issue, is there is no direct way to get from Medina to Cuyahoga Falls, except driving through the Cuyahoga Valley, and that is something that I am doing. I did it on the way here, I'm doing it on the way back. I might be able to save a couple of minutes if I rerouted and jumped on one of the highways 271, but you know it's a nice afternoon, and I am feeling good about having just dropped off seven cases of product. So I'm going to take the same route I took on the way here through the valley back home and just simply enjoy the ride and share the experiences of the week with you as I talk about some of the growing pains that are associated with the business, the rebranding that's taking place, why we're doing it in the first place, and what we are going to do to accommodate the growth and development moving forward. So hopefully you enjoy this episode. Hopefully, you enjoy my uh free form dialogue as I have no show notes just going off the top of my head. So let's buckle in and see where the episode takes us today. Now, like I said, Brad reached out to me on Monday. We had some correspondence. I was able to drive up here today and fill that order and make it happen. For those of you who are in or near the Akron Cuyahaga Falls area, you can find our products in the refrigerated section near all of the salad stuff. I took a few pictures of that to post on social media later so that people know exactly where to go in the store to find our product. But um, lost my train of thought. But um, yeah, it's been it's been a busy it's been a busy few weeks, it's been a busy couple of months. Um you know as you guys know, dad passed away on May 20th, almost two months ago, and uh he he passed away after struggling with cancer for almost two months. Well, he struggled with cancer for a lot longer, but he was diagnosed in late March, and in less than 60 days, it along with the treatment protocol simply destroyed him, and he went home. No longer does he have to fight that battle, no longer does he have to deal with any pain or suffering. He is home, no more pain, no more suffering, and um he is reconnected with all those who have passed before in faith and with the infinite creator. And that doesn't make me sad, it makes me happy, but in a sense, there is a little bit of sadness because this week we kicked off the whole process of rebranding, something that dad and I had been talking about since late last year, and some of you guys may be wondering well why rebrand? Why go through all that trouble? And part of it is due to the fact well, there's a couple reasons, right? First of all, people would ask us, uh, York Meadow Farm, which is the name of the homestead, the name of the location where the commercial kitchen is where we produce all of this stuff, and they would say York Meadow Farm, you guys have a farm, huh? And one might say, Yes, we do, and to many people that's exactly what they may see it as. But I think for just as many, if not more, people, if they came out to our property, they would not view it as a farm per se. We do not grow crops, we're we're not row crop farmers, we do not have livestock, we do not have any of the things that one might see on a traditional farm. We do have a large high tunnel that many people would consider a greenhouse. Umide by 96 feet long, and that along with the surrounding area is leased out to a tenant farmer named Cody Gray. And I've done an interview with Cody in the past on the show, which was actually one of the most popular episodes that we've done, and uh wanted to do an interview with him. It was actually the second or third interview I've only done, and I've only done a handful of interviews, maybe three, with my parents, the first, my brother, and Cody as well. I'd like to do more as time goes on, but right now it's going to continue with just B. So, yeah, we have a farm, but not in the traditional sense of a farm. And that was confusing for a lot of people because over time our presence at the farmers market transitioned from produce that mom and dad was growing and breads that dad was baking and other products that mom was making, and they experimented with a number of different things until they found what it was that was the thing that they wanted to do, the thing that they enjoyed doing that was suitable for the farmer's market. And some of those things that they were doing were voids that were at the market, needs that needed to be filled. And um the thing that dad settled into was the manufacturing of fermented foods, and mom settled into bath and body products: soaps, hand creams, um, bath bombs, shower steamers, things like that. And in order to better communicate to the customer what we were doing with specifically the fermented foods, because that is where the bulk of the revenue is generated from the farmer's market and from the different retail locations where we are, is you know, from the fermented foods, like I was saying. And so we decided to rebrand that product line, but we didn't know what to call it. And I did some thinking, did some looking around, did some research, and decided that natural ferments would be an appropriate product name for the fermented food line. We may introduce other brands and other types of product down the road in order to diversify the business, but that remains, it doesn't remain to be seen. It's just a matter of doing these things and growing the business where the business is on the homestead incrementally because one can only do so much at any given point in time. So this week was the week to actually proceed with moving forward with some of that rebranding. The domain name for natural ferments, natural ferments.com, has been secured since August of last year. Um that was around the time when we kind of settled into the the name of Natural Ferments. It seemed appropriate. The domain name was available, and we decided to roll with it because that's exactly what the products are. They are natural foods preserved through the art of lacto fermentation, very simple, and that's the name of the product. Natural ferments. Now, there's a lot that's going to go into communicating this out to the customer. There is no following at this point in time, and we are basically in the process of recreating everything that goes along with building a brand. We have been doing that and putting a lot of time, effort, and energy into creating a following with York Meadow Farm and a following with our mailing list, and we are going to have to replicate much of that process in addition to developing some new processes to build up the natural ferments brand. So if you're listening to this and you have not done so already, on Facebook and Instagram, there is a natural ferments page, and I would encourage you to check it out. Um you will find us at natural ferments on both Instagram and Facebook. And at this point in time, if you go to naturalferments.com, it simply redirects you to the York Meadow Farm store where you can find all of the fermented foods that are available for purchase online. Speaking of which, I need to update that inventory online because some of the products that we have are going to be in limited quantities and or sold out completely, like the kimchi, for example. So that's one reason why we were going to rebrand. The other reason also involves insurance, right? So the way that York Meadow Farm as a company has been insured to date was through an umbrella type of policy that included both insurance for or regarding bath and body products and food products. Now, for an insurance company, having such a wide breath of products to insure is certainly possible. But we were advised through our agent that performing a secondary LLC or one or the other bath and body products or food products would be it would be better for us because that way we could have a single policy for the bath and body products and a secondary single policy for the food products, which would ultimately cost less money than a single policy encompassing everything. Right? So either way, by rebranding, um, we would have this secondary company, secondary LLC formed. However, there was no real need to form a secondary LLC because for years now I have been operating my own business in a very limited capacity, and that business is Deliberate Living Systems, and I started that off as with no real direction at all after attending um permaculture voices one, a permaculture voices conference in San Diego hosted by Diego Footer in 2014, and I left that conference feeling very inspired, feeling very motivated, but basically I was at that time in my mid-30s floating aboard a giant permaculture boat with no rudder. I had no direction, I just knew that I wanted to do permaculture, and just like everybody else who gets into this, they want to be a permaculture designer and they want to create integrated systems for people to permaculture the heck out of their lives on their properties, and that's what I was going to do. And with my background in landscaping and the green industry and my knowledge with plants, I was going to be the next rock star permaculture guy. Well, I tried that and did a little bit of dabbling, but I, you know, I didn't, right? So um I I I farted around with that for a few years, built the high tunnel on the property through an NRCS equip grant, and you know, experimented with a few different things, and ultimately uh got myself deep into debt again, and in 2017 I realized that everything that I was doing with myself, everything that I was doing with my life, everything that I was doing with my business was first and foremost, it was not sustainable, and secondly, it was basically the antithesis. Of permaculture because not only in permaculture do we want to be sustainable, but we want to be regenerative. And the way that I was approaching everything was not sustainable, nor was it regenerative in any way, shape, or form. So I decided to put everything that I was doing with my business, everything that I was doing with the farm, with the homestead, helping out mom and dad with the markets. I decided to put all of that on hold. And I decided to buckle down and double down on my career and focus in order to make money so that I could pay off my debt so that I could then save and do what I needed to do to get to where I wanted to go, which was ultimately freedom, right? And that's what I chose to do. When I say freedom, I mean true self-employment. Actually working for myself, being responsible for myself, my business, and trying to actually embrace the idea of homesteading, self-sufficiency, and beyond. Now, I was able to do all of that, pay off my debt, almost $25,000 in debt, save up a healthy emergency fund, not as much as I would have liked, but I had enough. And when circumstances became what they were in May of last year, I decided to leave my job a little earlier than I would have liked to. Learn his craft, learn his recipes, ask him questions, work in the kitchen with him, learn everything about what he was doing. And then do a winter market with him, which concluded in mid-March, only a few weeks later, for him to be diagnosed with cancer. We all knew that there was something going on. All of us, including dad, simply thought that he was experiencing a bit of depression. And uh looking back, that's that's not what it that's not what it was. It was um the uh it was it was cancer. And um, so yeah, leaving leaving last year, leaving the day job was the best thing that I ever did because it gave me that time to work with and learn from my dad. So here we are. Uh one year and let's see, May, June, July, one year and two months after the fact where I have been fully self-employed, um it has been uh challenging to say the least, you know, when when you when you simply shift gears and make a big change in your life. You know, a lot of things change. The comfort, the security, uh everything that you once had, it's no longer there. Um the financial security, it's gone. The only money that you make is the money that you make. And it all revolves around your time, effort, and energy put into that which you are doing, the product that you are making and selling, or the services that you are providing. And for the past year, and still to this point in time, what I am doing with the business is operating as an independent contractor with my biggest client being York Meadow Farm. Now, the plan was originally that there was going to be a secondary LLC formed for food production, and we'd actually decided on a name for that, which was going to be Mallet Creek Kitchen, and doing business as natural ferments. But and then the reason we were going to call it Mallet Creek Kitchen is York Meadow Farm is located in the Mallet Creek watershed. Mallet Creek actually runs through the property next to us, and it almost comes into our property in the back corner, but not quite. Our pond drains into Mallet Creek. Our whole the entirety of our property drains into Mallet Creek. All of the surrounding properties drain into Mallet Creek. We are in the Mallet Creek watershed, and Mallet Creek runs into Rocky River, which ultimately runs into Lake Erie. And because we are located in York Township, the closest town proper, if you even want to call it a town, is Malet Creek. Dad wanted to call the farm Mallet Creek Farm. We had a little family vote on what we were going to call that property. Oh 2010, 2011, right when I had kind of made the decision to move back home. It was just a matter of putting together an exit strategy and figuring out how I was going to do that. I was still living in California at that time. And we collectively voted to call the property York Meadow Farm. Because at that time there was really very little that was going on. It was located in York Township. And because it's somewhat of a flagpole type or style of lot, when you drove into the driveway down back through the clearing to get to the where the property opens up, where the pond is, where the cabin is now. At that time there was nothing there except a uh like a a not a shed, but like a a pavilion. That's right. A pavilion uh and and a horseshoe pit. So at that time, uh you when you drove in and drove back through the clearing towards the pavilion and the horseshoe pit in the pond, you were surrounded by what looked like meadow. It was previously about five acres, maybe six, that was farmed conventionally for a couple years when mom and dad first bought the property. But after a while they decided that they didn't want that on their land. They didn't want to have that land conventionally farmed. And they let it go fallow for a couple of years, which was acceptable by the state for CAUV purposes or um, you know, the current agricultural use valuation purposes, i.e. taxes. And after a while they said, uh, Mr. Kaiser, you can't simply let your land go fallow forever. You have to do something with it. And we consulted with a guy named Maurice Small. Shout out to Maurice. Uh you can follow Maurice on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Maurice Small or Small Farms with a Z, F-A-R-M-Z. And Maurice is a just a wonderful soul. He came out with mom and dad, talked about farmers' markets, what the needs were, what everyone was doing, what they weren't doing, and what a lot of people weren't doing was berries. And one of the things that um mom and dad decided to do was they were going to give this whole thing with berries a shot. So they just they checked out a couple blueberry farms in the area and saw what they were doing, what they were growing, and dad bought a hundred blueberry plants, and in the summer of I don't know, 2010, 2011, something like that. I think it was 2010, um, we had a blueberry planting, not a party, because it was basically me, mom, dad, I think my aunt Laurel and Uncle Tom came out. And we planted these hundred blueberry plants. Um that was the start of the future farming endeavors. Uh shortly thereafter, mom and dad began working on a market garden where they were growing cherry tomatoes and zucchini and um greens, lettuce, radishes, the basic stuff that somebody starting a small market farmer or a small market farm would grow. And like I previously mentioned, they stopped doing that and started doing other things as they continued to get older. Because market farming is not easy work, and they also realized that it was going to take a while for all of these crops to come into season and be harvestable. So, in order to have other products available while these things were growing and getting ready to harvest, that is what drove them to explore other options like the breads, like the bath and body products, and ultimately having an abundance of cucumbers led to the preservation of the cucumbers through fermentation, and when mom experienced some digestive issues, some gastrointestinal problems, she was encouraged to increase her probiotic intake, and dad started making sauerkraut, mom started making kombucha, and that is when all of the fermentation really started to kick into high gear, and at this point in time that was probably six, seven years ago, and for the past five or six seasons, dad's been dabbling with the ferments with different types of packaging, different types of recipes, all kinds of different things until we finally settled into the six different types of sauerkraut that we're doing, and then last year we decided to experiment with and launch a kimchi due to the request of many customers who were very interested in this, understood that it was a fermented product, much like sauerkraut, but they wanted something local, and we decided to say yes, we can do that. We experimented and made it happen, and so far that has been our best-selling product, like I like I mentioned earlier in the episode. So here we are, 2023, and it has come time to pull the proverbial trigger and engage in the rebranding that we have been talking about for quite some time. At the first of the year, we actually did on the website, the landing page of the rebranding that was scheduled to take place later on in the year, and we were encouraging customers to be mindful of the fact that we were going to be rebranding. And eventually, when dad got sick and was diagnosed with cancer, I simply changed the landing page of the website to back how it was, because all of that was going to simply be put on hold. Everything was put on hold. And uh that's okay. There are no regrets, but everything had to be put on hold. Um or rather, we chose to put everything on hold because that's what we should do with our families when our families need us. And we are still working through a lot of administrative things that go along with the passing of a loved one, but as we work through that, we can continue to pick up where we left off with some of those things that we were working on, specifically the rebranding. So that has launched off this week. You can learn more at naturalferments.com, and that redirects, like I said, to the York Meadow Farm page. You can follow us on this journey with Natural Ferments on Facebook and Instagram. We've made a couple of posts on both the Facebook and Instagram pages, and I would strongly encourage you to like those posts, share them with your friends and your family, and soon enough we will also send out an email notifying everybody of the rebranding that's taking place, along with a blog post which can then be shared as well. As time goes on, we'll at the very least build a landing page for natural ferments, letting people know what's going on, and if they want to shop online, they can then click a button that will take them to the York Meadow Farm website. Now there as I mentioned, there is no need to form a secondary LLC for the food production company because we were going to form that LLC and then do business as natural ferments. So due to the fact that I have an LLC for myself and my own business, the need to form a secondary LLC is simply not there because I have one. And since dad is no longer with us here physically, he will no longer be available to help in this world with the business. So it's me. Until things change. And so we will continue to do business as natural ferments, but it will be done under my business, deliberate living systems. And all of the paperwork has been filed, it's been accepted, and at this point in time we are good to go. I will soon have to have the conversation with the insurance agent to set up a policy and get some things straightened out with the bank to ensure that I can start receiving payment in and through uh York or natural ferments and um start running a business like a business. Uh this was one thing that Dad and I had some disagreements about exact exactly how we were going to conduct business and run the business, and um and that's okay. Um that is just something that uh you know you can't always see eye to eye with someone, and since it wasn't my business, uh it literally wasn't my business, and he was going to run it how he wanted to. And I think there were some additional things that we could have done, some things that we could have done differently, and some changes that could have been made, and now is that time to go ahead and make those changes. So for the duration of the year, we will continue uh working on making those changes and continuing to keep up with the demand because the demand for the product seems to be growing. And one of the things that I'd always hoped to do was to be in retail locations, allow them to sell the product and basically take whatever excess I had, take that to the farmer's market, and sell that. And it looks like we are getting to that point. So, you know, I think one of the big takeaways from this was consistency pays off. I had this business established many years ago, didn't do anything with it. Talked with somebody who specialized who helped me with my taxes and also specialized in small business, and when I talked to him about closing down the business and uh simply you know shutting it down, he said, you know, just sit on it. You might want to do something with it someday. And I said, Okay, well, I guess you're right. There's no harm that can come from you know keeping that open. And if there's no income, there's no income. Um it's just it is what it is. And for a few years, it was what it was. But now, that's changing, and I'm glad that I didn't do the thing that I thought was right because, well, looking back, it would have been it wouldn't have been wrong, but it would have added some additional layers of complication to an already complicated situation right now. So that, my friends, is about it. And I don't really know what else I can say about that other than for the re for the remainder of the season, I'm gonna keep hustling, I'm gonna keep Grinding and it's gonna keep growing because that is what all-around growth is all about. Growth and development in all of these aspects of life: financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And we just about touched on all of those aspects in today's show in some way, shape, or form. And if you're wondering how I came to the conclusion of that well-rounded approach to growth and development in those seven different areas, it's certainly nothing that I can take credit for myself. That comes from the work of Dan Miller through the goal setting guide that he has. And that goal setting guide is available for free to be downloaded at no charge. And I would strongly recommend that you do that if you are the type of person who, like me, struggled with a good way to first and foremost identify your goals and second of all achieve them. This gave me a good framework to do exactly that, and that is something that I have worked on and and uh participated in for a couple of years now. I will link to that in the show notes so that you can check that out for yourself and see what it is that I'm talking about. It is a workbook that you can download it and print off in PDF format. I strongly recommend printing it off and writing on it and then going back into the PDF and typing things out. There's I think there's a lot to be said for pen and paper. And you know, the fact that you can print it off and then go back in and modify it because it's an editable PDF, is a great, it's a great tool to have in your toolbox as you go through and go about you know doing all the things that it is that you want to do in life in those seven different areas: financial, physical, personal development, family, spiritual, social, and career. And we work through them in that order because Dan Miller is of the opinion that you can't have a fulfilling career if you haven't accomplished what it is that you want to accomplish in those other aspects of your life. And I am in agreement with that. The only thing that I might change to that with the order is put spiritual first, understanding that you know, now understanding that I was and I am a broken person who struggled with my own spirituality, my approach toward it, and quite frankly, the the the misguided approach to it that I had. I've since learned that you know I had what I would consider a spiritual malady of sorts, and all of my approaches towards understanding that or addressing it were inappropriate, they were misguided, they were simply wrong. And using this workbook in conjunction with a lot of other things I've done in life has allowed me to see the light, if you will, and put some build a build a found build a strong foundation that I can continue to build upon. So I would only say spiritual first, financial second. Once we get our financial house in order, everything else becomes that much easier to manage. We get our spiritual life in order, it becomes easier to manage our finances, we get our financial house in order, everything else becomes easier to manage. We don't have that stress that we used to have, we don't have that fear and anxiety that we used to have, everything else really comes together. So check it out, guys. Like I said, in the show notes, a link to that. It is a free workbook that helps you understand what your goals are and moreover, helps identify a way that you can go about achieving them. I believe in it because I've done the work. I believe in it because the results are happening in my life, and that is why I'm doing what I'm doing now. Right now, in this very moment, recording this podcast and sharing it with you, because all I really want to do is share my own experiences with you. The strength that I've gotten from doing this can provide some hope for you if you find yourself struggling and looking for solutions to whatever it is that you're dealing with in your life. Because at the end of the day, we've all got struggles, we've all got hardships, we've all got challenges in whatever facet of life. We've all got baggage, guys, but what defines us is how we carry it. So with that, I'm gonna wrap it up. And with my deepest gratitude, I'd like to thank you for listening to the show today. I look forward to catching you on the next episode. This is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.