HOW I BUILT A $100K FARM BUSINESS IN 3 YEARS (Step-by-Step) | Ranching Profit Sheep Farming Dorper

1000 days after setting out towards this farming for profit goal by God's grace my farm has generated just shy of one hundred thousand dollars within one calendar year and I know what you're thinking but this is without YouTube ad Revenue this is without sponsorship money this is a business model that can be replicated by you and in this video in a year by year format I'm going to show you how I built this Farm business the strategies I used for gaining exposure and one absolutely mind-blowing concept that really rapidly escalated revenues in year three after that groundwork was laid thank you in 2020 I decided I wanted to become a farmer for profit I had no idea what I was up against I just knew I wanted to be able to generate one hundred thousand dollars from my 23 Acre Farm business within one calendar year and that with a minimum net profit of thirty thousand dollars put it on your water bottle put it on your fridge put it on your feeding trough think big start small don't quit at no farming background no industry connections and I didn't even own the land but what I did have at that point in time was knowledge I knew our food system was broken I knew our farming population was dying I knew that whether or not I achieved my goal of making a farm business setting out to grow food was important enough to give it a go while I had never built a farm business I had built a few other businesses before mostly in the retail apparel industry so while I didn't know how to sell sheep I did know how to sell shoes and clothes and I shoved everything I knew of selling shoes and clothes in the direction of selling sheep branding content creation email marketing live launching product stacking and diversification it was all that I had so I just shoved it all in the direction of farming one thousand days after setting out towards this farming for profit goal by God's grace my farm has generated just shy of one hundred thousand dollars within one calendar year and I know what you're thinking but this is without YouTube ad Revenue this is without sponsorship money this is without course sales or speaking fees this is a business model that can be replicated by you and in this video in a year by year format I'm going to show you how I built this Farm business the strategies I used for gaining exposure and one absolutely mind-blowing concept that really rapidly escalated revenues in year three after that groundwork was laid I've created a free pdf 0 to 100K checklist for you down below that really covers everything I did in each year it's also going to provide links to Extended resources and marketing tools to launch your own business what I'm getting ready to outline really transcends Industries so no matter what business you're getting ready to jump into you will probably pull something out of the upcoming video and I have to put up a disclaimer here while this pattern and this process is really simple if you're like me the hard part of the whole process will be not quitting and here's why in year number one I worked about a thousand hours building my farm business and made about zero dollars in fact I was putting my savings into buying stock building out infrastructure et cetera year number two I worked another thousand hours to build my farm business and I grossed about ten thousand dollars and year number three I worked that same one thousand hours and grossed about a hundred thousand dollars there were a lot of times I wanted to quit and guys even last week I had some extremely exhausting discouraging moments and I wanted to quit so if you are jumping into farming for money there are a thousand possibly ten thousand easier ways to make this kind of money you've got to do it for deeper reasons you have to have a really strong why and my why is stewardship I had the opportunity to lease 23 acres of land take something that wasn't being used and maximize it I also want to approach this topic with a lot of humility because the honest reality is is that God gives the increase well I'm getting ready to show you everything I did from year one to year three I ultimately acknowledge that none of my actions will produce a thing unless God God gives the increase I know it from firsthand I've had businesses where I've tried and tried and tried and nothing has ever worked so I want to be really humble and really share that at the onset but I also really want to be very deliberate in the way that I share this information because we're approaching a time where young people are being stared in the face and being told to get off the land there's no way possible to make money in farming and I would say to that same young person there is absolutely a way we have a certain level of god-given energy and creativity and to be honest it's time to start using it for something besides Tick Tock Santa Instagram posts and Etc while those can be some powerful marketing tools my point is that we have creativity and energy that can be applied in unique ways so that we can get back to the land and we can make it a productive situation for ourselves all right so here's a year by year look at the growth of the shepherdist brand from year one which was 2020. in May of 2020 I had this idea that I wanted to get into farming and I wanted to make a profit at it I knew from building Brands previously that there was just a set of fundamental things I needed to do right up front and this really boils down to six things number one I set Revenue goals being one hundred thousand dollars with a net profit minimum of thirty thousand dollars number two I penciled it out on paper now you guys know the part of this story that I originally started with beef cattle dreams and no matter how sharp my pencil was or how optimistic I looked at it even with the fanciest grass-fed beef plan I was only netting something like eighty nine hundred dollars in my plan for profit with beef so I swapped it with sheep and in a video you can watch right up here I realized I could make about 400 percent more net profit with sheep on 23 Acres I have two free resources for you if you want to go through this same process of asking yourself questions it's 11 questions on two worksheets available downloadable down below but the third thing I did was I decided I was going direct to Consumer this was a non-negotiable foundational element which means I was not going to rely on commodity markets sale barns or any kind of middleman to sell my product for me I was going to sell my product through my own website it was a little bit different because it was livestock and not shoes or clothes but I decided that's what I was going to do so number four I built that website it was a super simple website right up front it was just a Blog style website I built on WordPress and on that website I just uploaded pictures and articles that I wrote with the goal of ranking in Google search for the term Dorper Sheep the fifth thing I did and one of the most important things you can do for your business besides building a website and maybe even above building a website because this particular element is where kind of all of my money comes from but I built a newsletter list an email newsletter list I gauge the health of my business even to this day not by YouTube subscribers not by Instagram followers not by Facebook followers but by how well and how healthy my newsletter list is growing there's not enough time in this video to really go in depth about why just trust me on this launch a newsletter list an email newsletter list and begin building it from day one and number six I established a solid brand name a solid logo and a slogan for my business brand names logos slogans they're things that companies pay millions upon millions of dollars for not just to have a pretty face but to develop and establish trust between the consumer and the brand trust is built by seeing the same thing over and over again by seeing consistency and slogans brand names logos those are all things that big brands do to establish that trust so that is all I did in year number one I didn't really push myself very hard Beyond laying this foundational solid mindsets and the solid tools I did write a lot of Articles which were beginning to rank in Google search but at the same time guys I was also learning how to farm in year number one I was facing some really big learning curves as a first timer and so I was grateful that in this particular year I did not pressure myself too hard or too heavy but I did utilize the opportunity I had to lay some really fundamental groundwork so the in year number two I could begin building on that foundation and that's exactly what I did my number one goal in year number two and every day since then has been to build my email newsletter list with a group of people with similar interests not similar interest I wanted it to be my sheep because that's exactly what I was getting ready to sell in that same year cheap cash flow really fast guys they reproduce really fast which is what I love absolutely about them so by the beginning of year number two of farming those lamps were dropping and within six months I needed people to buy them and be ready to buy them off of my website so with that in my mind I realized I needed to build my newsletter so that I would have people ready to buy my sheep so I use social media to start building a list of people who were interested in sheep I used two primary social media platforms at the onset Instagram and YouTube I ultimately added Facebook just a little bit later but I focused on Instagram and YouTube right up front Instagram was easy I put the link to my newsletter in my profile I'd post a picture a day of sheep using some really specialized hashtags to the regenerative farming and Dorper Sheep realm and I would constantly say Lincoln profile subscribe to my newsletter I would also offer freebies in exchange for subscribing to my newsletter so for example on Instagram I was posting every day about my grazing program how big the paddocks were how I determined how big that Paddock should be and I had this free resource called a paddock sizing worksheet and so in my captions I would say something like Lincoln profile for a free Paddock sizing worksheet and in order to receive that worksheet the subscriber would have to subscribe to my newsletter list and here's the thing about these freebies they weren't Just Junk freebies these were actually really high quality resources in fact I ended up building a page of about 20 different ebooks and worksheets and I'm still adding premium resources to this free page the better the quality the resource you can provide for the person the better the quality that relationship will be between you and them some of those people doubled back from my paid products but a lot of them didn't but at the end of the day I was super super satisfied knowing that I provided somebody with something of value keep that in mind if you produce any freebies yourself make sure they're premium quality and actually something that's worth paying for and ultimately if you focus on giving I believe it's really all going to come back to you YouTube was the second social media platform that I chose to get really serious about for the same reason that I began writing articles on that blog website because YouTube is a search engine just like Google is and when people want to learn learn about a specific topic they'll go to most frequently one of two places either Google or YouTube so with my videos I very deliberately fashioned them around sheep and Dorper Sheep because those were the things I was planning on selling in six months I did not launch this Channel or begin sharing videos in a vlog style format at all I answered specific questions about sheep farming questions that people who would be interested in my sheep were asking and within those videos I would do the same thing that I did in my Instagram post I would offer people free downloads and in order to receive those downloads they had to subscribe to my newsletter list so people who were interested in a download on how to keep your sheep healthy or the 13 things that you need to raise sheep would be subscribed to my newsletter list by the time that I hosted my first livestock sale in 2021 I had 1500 people on my newsletter in that first year I also sold and marketed through Craigslist but in 2022 and 2023 my stocks sold out entirely on my website the third thing I did in 2022 was I prototyped merch meaning that I prototyped offshoot items in a low risk way shirts and stickers I was curious to see if this newsletter List full of people interested in sheep would also buy different products and they did a lot of them were just amazing people who were really grateful for all the free stuff I was giving them through the downloads Etc and so I sold a few shirts and a few stickers through my website at that time a couple of books as well it wasn't anything huge but it was a prototype it was a microcosm it was basically testing on a small scale if this large-scale idea would work and it did praise the Lord it absolutely did again I worked super hard and I made barely any money in 2021 but something I heard was that when you're starting a new business the hardest money you're ever going to make is your first thousand dollars if you can basically survive the process of making your first one thousand dollars making 100 000 dollars is going to be just the same amount of work and I found that to be true in a sense as I mentioned earlier I put in the same amount of work basically every year but the income kind of compounded year over year and really snowballed okay so here we are at the beginning of 2022 and again I was looking towards selling more sheep because sheep are the king of cash flow in fact I had someone ask me are you still selling beef or did you give up on that idea all together and I was like yeah I'm still selling beef I just sold out of all my beef in 2021 and it's gonna be 2024 before those beef are born and grown out to sell more beef but back to it I hosted my second livestock sale in April of 2022. sold out of every sheep I had on my website through marketing it in my newsletter that was continuing to be built and grown through Instagram and YouTube and I sold out within just 15 minutes and that point I was like well that's wait that's great but what else am I gonna sell throughout the whole rest of the year all of my sheep are gone what am I gonna do and this is really where that earth-shattering mind-blowing concept that is so simple you might Overlook it comes into play and that is I began to focus on the people that were subscribed to my newsletter list and their needs how could I satisfy their needs to where they become a customer that doesn't just buy a 250 feeder lamb from me or a 400 breeding Ram from me how can I meet another need that they have and this came relatively easily as I began to listen to what those people were asking me and at this phase in the game if you are considering diversifying I would not diversify until you have an audience to listen to focus on one thing focus on your centerpiece focus on your main Enterprise you can do some fun little diversification things like I did stickers and shirts up front but before you invest in really high levels of diversification that require a lot of money make sure you have an audience that you can begin to listen to first so I began to listen to that audience and they began to ask me questions and there were two recurring questions that gave me cues as to what I might be able to offer them and have success in selling question number one was what kind of books on Farming and agriculture did you read as an absolute beginner that took you from zero knowing nothing to a relatively high level of Competency in Pastor management and in sheep care and there was a set of five books that I read I didn't read a lot but those five books were enough to get me off and running and so I took a leap of faith and I bought an inventory of those books so that I could put them at shepherdist.com so that when people had those questions I could refer them to a link at my website question number two was what are the products that you use in your flock to keep your sheep healthy throughout the year and there was a list of about 25 or 30 products that I was constantly referring people out to and that I use myself on an annual basis within my flock it was a little bit more difficult to get distributorship on these products than it was to get distributorship on books but I launched the shepherdist Supply Co which is 32 products for pasture-based sheep Farmers I cut through all of the fluff basically and offer people the 32 very best products available in so far as I have found for my flock and that by the grace of God tripled revenues very very quickly because I did not have to go out and find new customers to buy these new products I had one customer I focused on their needs how I could continue to serve them and answer their questions and the value of that customer tripled rather than the size of my customer base needing to triple if it's your goal to earn a hundred thousand dollars off Farm it's going to be a lot easier to serve 100 customers who will spend a thousand dollars with you rather than having 10 000 customers that spend ten dollars with you this is not my idea this is an idea that is really consistent in all of the six and seven figure Farms that I profiled and again I say praise the Lord and I give him all the glory for the increase but I hope that in sharing this it will encourage someone out there and maybe even spark you to think in a way that is a little bit outside of the box because to be honest if you stay inside the Box you probably cannot expect to earn any more than negative 600 and 61 off of your farm and I say that because that is what the USDA reported the median farm income in 2022 was but if you're willing to think outside the box there's really a million ways to make one thing work crunchy [Music] [Music] all right guys I want you to remember June 15th June 15th June 15th taking a four week break from YouTube and it is not a break without reason if anyone can guess in the comments what I will be doing in the next four weeks please leave it down below and I want to encourage you number one to go back and watch the entire library of videos I have to this point in addition to having a real marketing mindset in starting this channel I created this channel sort of to journal every facet of this journey so I have about 150 videos and it will walk you through every moment basically from that moment that I decided to jump into farming you can stay in touch with me on Instagram at Harmony farmsdorpers if I can do anything for you you can email me at shepherdist at shepherdist.com [Music]

Channel: the Shepherdess

Views: 237,649

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Id: HJAAIRin_kA

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023