Three Ways Starting a Business is a LOT like Farming

We talk to so many business owners every week and constantly have to share how important marketing your business is, so we came up with the farming method to explain. 

Growing up my great grandfather on my dad’s side of the family was a farmer and my great grandmother on my mom’s side of the family was a farmer too, so I have a bit of experience with farms.

When a person decides to start a farm that does not make them a farmer, that makes them a dreamer.  What makes them a farmer is when they turn a piece of land into a crop yielding farm.  They become a farmer by doing three things.

1.  They pick the best piece of land they can afford.

When choosing a piece of land back when my great grandparents started they made educated guesses on pieces of land they could purchase, but now science is more involved.  The same goes for starting a business.  You choose the best name that fits around your passion, goals, plan and budget.  In that naming process you must do a name search, a URL or .com search and also a social search.  You don’t want to pick a name that is already taken, it has to be fresh and yours.

2.  They put in the work before they see a return on their investment.

A person does not become a farmer after they buy the land, it’s after they put in the blood sweat and, yes, tears.  They have to take this piece of land and transform it into crop bearing land.   This does not happen over night, it’s a long term investment.

You have to do the same for your business, you have to invest time, talent and treasure before you yeild a return on your investment.  This is not the freaking “Field of Dreams” here.  If you build it they will not come, you have to get them to show up!

3.  They take their product to where customers are.

Not every farmers produce ends up in a grocery store.  Often times farmers just set up shop in a farmers market (that’s where the name came from), they set up a little shop near the street so people driving by could see it and they even did free taste testing.  I remember my great grandparents asking friends and family to spread the word about their produce, good ol’ fashion word of mouth.

We have it very similar now, it’s just more digital then back them.  Today, you have to put your products in an ecommerce/cart page, post about it on social networks, get people to blog about it, go to the farmers markets, get shelf space at a mom and pop store.  Today we do similar things but it’s also more.

Can a single business owner do this alone?  No!  Absolutely not!  We will explain why in our next blog post.

Thank you for reading!  If you found this helpful please share and feel free to leave your thoughts below.