Homegrown Hosting

Stability Is a Business Decision Hey Reader, It's trendy right now to quit your job. Be an "entrepreneur." "Quit your job and farm". "Quit your job and start a business". "Quit your job and follow your passion". The YouTube algorithms are full of it. The influencers are selling it hard. I'm here to tell you that's mostly nonsense. Your job provides a paycheck. Health insurance. Retirement. Stability for your family while you figure out whether the farm can actually support you — and that...

5 Things I'd Do Differently If I Were Starting Over Hey Reader, When we started farming, I made a ton of mistakes. Like…a lot. Looking back, there are five things I'd do differently if I could start over. Maybe these lessons will save you some headaches (and a lot of fencing). 1. Document the Journey If I could go back, I'd start documenting everything from day one. Sharing your story through a website, blog, or even social media can do so much: Help you connect with your community and...

What I've Been Working On All Spring Hey Reader, No email last Sunday — Fourth of July, and I decided to put work down and just be with the family for the weekend. Back to normal now, sent every Sunday morning. A few weeks ago I told you big changes were coming to Homegrown Hosting. This is that email. When I started building websites for farms, I priced it the way everyone told me to — $499 to get started, $149 a month. And some farms said yes — usually farms with a few years behind them,...

Why Your Farm Posts Aren't Getting Any Reach (And What to Do Instead) Hey Reader, I'll be honest — I don't love social media. Never really have. But I've used it, and I've learned a few things along the way that I wish someone had told me earlier. So this week I want to share some of what's actually worked for us — and more importantly, what hasn't. First, let's talk about why your posts aren't getting reach. Facebook and Instagram are businesses. Their entire model is built around selling...

You Can't Deposit Revenue First, Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there working the farm, chasing kids around, and probably doing both at the same time today. Hope you get a few quiet minutes somewhere in there. Now, onto something most farmers never actually look at. Margin. But before I get into that, let's make sure we're on the same page with two words that get mixed up a lot: revenue and margin. Revenue is just all the money that comes in. If you sold $10,000 worth of beef this...

I Tried the Shortcuts. They Didn't Work. Hey Reader, I've tried a lot of "smart money" ideas over the years. Options trading. A little crypto. NFTs — yeah, I bought a couple. Somebody made real money on those. It wasn't me. Every one of those came with a promise: this is the thing, this is how you get ahead faster, this is the move everyone else hasn't figured out yet. None of them moved the needle. Not really. The stuff that's actually worked for me — over years, not weeks — has been boring....

Title Hey Reader, First, today we pause to remember the men and women who gave everything in service to this country. Grateful for their sacrifice and for the families who carry that weight every day. Between the farm, the family, and everything in between, this email got pushed further down the list than I wanted. But we're getting it done, and that's kind of the whole point of this series, isn't it? Module 11 — the final episode of the Part-Time Farmer Playbook — is live. This one wraps...

Why I Stopped Doing Everything Myself (and What Happened Next) Hey Reader, Quick question: do you know your actual hourly rate for each enterprise on your farm? Not revenue. Not profit. Your hourly rate — net divided by hours spent. Most farmers don't know this number. And it turns out that's a pretty expensive thing not to know. In this week's video I walk through the math, share a few examples that reframed how I think about this whole thing (including one involving Jeff Bezos giving up 90%...

The Bundle Strategy That Helps Farms Sell More of Everything Hey Reader, First things first — happy Mother's Day. I wouldn't be where I am without my mother, mother-in-law, grandmothers, nor my wife and mother to three awesome daughters. A lot of you probably feel the same way. And if you're a mom who's out there farming, raising a family, and building something real — today's especially for you. What you're doing matters more than most people will ever understand. Thanks for all you do and...

Your Farm is Losing Sales You Don't Know About There's a customer who found your farm a few months ago. They ordered once. Maybe twice. Loved the product. Told a friend about you. Then they stopped. No complaint. No cancellation. They just quietly disappeared. You never found out why. And that's the problem. In most cases it wasn't the price. It wasn't the quality. It was the process. Too many steps between "I want this" and "I bought this." A DM that took two days to get answered. A Venmo...