Episode Transcript
Shannon Houchin 0:03
What I learned about the peach stands is there's this collective memory in our minds about roadside stands and what it means to support local farms. And so it is like this neurological thing. Consumers are primed for this experience. They're advocates for local, they're advocates for Mom and Pop because it's all centered around this nostalgic experience of being iconically American. I discovered that these folks are raving fans, and so ding, ding, ding. All right, we're talking hyper hyperlocal. Now, that's what started the idea of creating a community online, so that those consumers who do follow us season after season, they have a place to go and share and be heard in return to and ask questions.
Monica Pitts 1:02
You're on mission and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro. We are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures, I'll be your backup dancer. So you can stop doubting, and get moving towards marketing with purpose. Hello, again, and welcome back to marketing with purpose. My name is Monica Pitts, and I am your host and the lucky lady who gets to interview our guests today, Shannon Houchin. Now Shannon has a really unique business model. She is a hyperlocal marketer who sells nostalgia and peaches. Yay. Okay. And so when I heard this story, I thought, how does this work? How does someone in a small town, set up multiple roadside stands across multiple states and make a living this way? So I invited Shannon on the show today so she can answer all these like plethora of questions I have and teach us all more about hyperlocal marketing, selling nostalgia and peaches. Yay. Okay, so, Shannon, why don't you kick us off? And just tell us your backstory? Like how did you get here? Like, not maybe on the marketing with purpose show? But like, how did you get to opening a roadside stand selling peaches? It sounds like you had to have taken like some type of life leap in there.
Shannon Houchin 2:47
Yes, yes. So it was 2013. And my family owned a software development business. And my dad got sick, he got small cell lung cancer. And very quickly, you know, he passed away because it's such an aggressive form of cancer. So during this period, you know, I was having all of the, you know, what is the meaning to life questions? What do I want to do with my life, and really assessing what was important to me and to my family. And I have this friend, who for years, kept telling me, he was born and raised in South Carolina. And so he kept telling me about his business as a reseller, selling peaches, South Carolina pitches from these little white tents on the roadside. And I'm like, you know, that's really cool, Rob, but that just doesn't seem to fit my lifestyle. I don't know whose lifestyle that fits, but it's probably not mine. And you know, for so for five years, I've listened to his stories. And then finally, during this period of, you know, what is life about? And what is my life going to be about? I decided, You know what, I can take a breath and go down and check this out. So that was 2013. My son was 11 at the time. And so I went to South Carolina, in order to learn the peach business. And so I became an apprentice, if you will. I had an you know, an internship. And I learned everything about the peach business from, you know, planting the peach seed all the way up to being a reseller, and selling it and marketing it. And at the end of the day, what is it really all about? Are we selling peaches? Or as you said, Are we selling nostalgia? And that's exactly what we're doing. We're selling nostalgia and happiness. And that summer what I learned, which became a business, I'm still doing 10 years later, oh my gosh, even longer than that. Here we are 12 years later. Is that this is a it is a it was a business, a business model, a cash generator. That was screaming to be taken into the 21st century, and kind of formalized. And what I like to say about the business is that it truly is an ATM machine, these little white tents that we sell tomatoes and peaches out of our ATM machines, and they have buttons on and you just punch in how much cash you want. And that's what you get. You know, at the end of the day, at the end of the season, I did not know that going in, I heard my friend Rob, I call him the original peach guy. He told me how lucrative selling peaches was. And I don't know that I really believed him until I got into it. And that first year we generated I didn't just do one roadside stand, I had to do 100 Because you know, I'm I'm super aggressive that way. And we did, I think we did, I'd have to look back at the records. But I think we did 3 million generating sales. So so those were our gross sales, the very first year we were in business, you know, and since then, 12 years later, I've really refined the business model, and got it down to a science and, and what we did is it created a business blueprint where we can do this over and over and over and over again. And it truly is the easiest thing in the world to sell. It's the happiest business I've ever been a part of. And all of sides of the transaction, it doesn't matter if you're the consumer, the farm, the reseller, everybody's happy, because we truly are selling happiness. And at the end of the day, it's just a joy to be part of the business transaction. It doesn't matter what side we're on.
Monica Pitts 6:38
So I want to learn a little bit more about your business model. I mean, you have at least like what over 200 workers across three states that like as a person who's just trying to hire one web designer right now, one, the idea of running 200 people to help me run these peach stands while Okay, so did sidestep a lot of the people that work with me at MayeCreate we have a background in agriculture, we all grow things in our free time. So the idea of like fresh produce, and, and growing and selling like this sounds like just amazing. Like, I just want to put like an exclamation point behind every sentence because it really sounds really, really cool to someone who went to school to learn how to grow well and kill things. Because when you have a degree in agriculture, they teach you how to kill things, too. But, um, but then there's the business side of it. So yeah, okay, so first question is, how do you grow your own produce? So it sounds like yes, kind of No,
Shannon Houchin 7:45
I do not. I wish I truly, truly wish that I had the talent, and the skill, and the grit and determination, to be a grower right to be an orchard owner to be a farmer. That's not where my skill lies, my skills in marketing and selling and identifying really good business opportunities. And what I found is that there is a huge, huge opportunity to be a reseller, in this industry in agriculture. And Monica, maybe you can speak to this too. But what I have discovered on this 12 year journey, is that the the orchards and the farms that are still independently owned, and most of the orchards in the US are, for the most part, their second third generation now, Orchard owners in order to survive, most mom and pops are selling their entire harvest to wholesalers and brokers in order to, you know, guarantee that the whole harvest is going to be you know, sold, and they can negotiate prices up front. And so, for me as a general consumer, that lessens my opportunity to get local fresh produce, because the mom and pops around me aren't selling to little guys like me, they're selling out to larger brokers and wholesalers. So as a reseller, I identified an opportunity, if I can fill that gap to get local produce directly to the consumer who may only be five miles away, you know, they may be 25 miles away, but they're probably super close, but they just don't have that access to it and I can fill that gap. So if I can either negotiate directly with the farmer that were true to the grower, or if I have to go through the wholesaler and the broker, that's fine too. But the opportunity lies in getting the product to the neighborhood getting it on the consumers doorstep virtually because their knowledge, their opportunity, their access to these local products is is virtually gone. And the roadside stand has for the most part because of what We just talked about disappeared from American roadways. And so the last 10 years, 12 years, it's become kind of my mission now to return it to return the roadside stand to American roadways, because consumers, people, Americans are so hungry for that experience, and it's gone. And if I can bring that back, there's so much joy in that transaction. And that's why it's so lucrative,
Monica Pitts 10:30
we do have one roadside stand in town. And it's at a very key intersection between two highways. And they're, they're always selling produce, and they get it from local farmers, and we buy it from them, because we know it's going to be better. My kids are literally waiting for the day that the Black Diamond watermelons come off of their truck and go into scans on that. But like, I do notice that in America, we don't have at nearly as much of that anymore. And when we traveled Costa Rica last summer, it was really normal to have it there. Like, there were, you know, all kinds of stands selling all kinds of stuff all the time. And then they also had what we called the vegetable van, in one community that we stayed in, and they like the whole outside of the van is covered and vegetables, and they just drive it up and down the main street of town yelling like an ice cream truck, you know what I mean? Like fresh pineapple, fresh pineapple, fresh pineapple, like over and over again, was I took a video of it because it was so novel and incredible. I was like, why don't we do this, this is so amazing. And everybody would just come out of their house and buy stuff from what we call the vegetable van, you know, when it was just totally normal? And really cool. Okay, so are you're seeing seasonal, I imagine that they are not open all year long, are they they're just open the summer? Um,
Shannon Houchin 11:55
yes or no. So when I originally got started, I was selling one product. And it was peaches only. And the peach season is roughly Memorial Day to Labor Day. So we were really only open three months out of the year, as I expanded the business model, and it evolved, we started incorporating other types of produce, which extended our window of seasonality. And so today, if I feel like it, if you know, if, if the mood strikes, we can be open from roughly March until December by extending the products that we sell. So obviously, March, you know, we can start selling berries, because I'm in Texas. And so you know, strawberries are coming into season are being harvested now. So that's really when it kind of kicks off in March, then peach it you know, and then other things are coming in, and then peaches are late May. And then since I'm a peach broker now bringing in peaches, and curating peaches from all over the country. So once the peach season really ends in the south, the South, we're moving west of the Mississippi, and then we're picking up peaches from Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and that can extend our season into late September, if we're lucky, early October, and then we're into pumpkin season. So we're doing lots of pumpkin patches, we you know, we do a lot of pumpkin patches. And then if we you know, if we're if we're still have the energy, then we're rolling into Christmas trees, and we're doing gift markets, and you know, door wreaths and Swags, and all kinds of greenery. So, you know, technically we can go we could go all year long, I just take off, for sure January and February, because that's my CEO time, when I am working on the business and not in it. I'm really doing a lot of planning, planning and strategizing. And then thinking about what is the next big element we're going to evolve or step into, and, you know, start putting that into place for the business. So technically, yeah, it just it depends on the person and what your bandwidth is, what your goals, what your schedule availability is like, and how much money you want to make.
Monica Pitts 14:09
So I could imagine that one important decision that you're making during your CEO time is that location, like I said, ours is like the intersection of two major highways. And like I say, major highways, one of the highways literally goes through the middle of town. Okay, so it's not super major, like I think that the speed limit is like 35 at that spot. Okay, so it's still four lanes, it's still four lanes. So how do you decide where you're going to put your stance because and does that impact like the the outcome?
Shannon Houchin 14:42
Absolutely, it does. Because at I would say 80% of the roadside stand business is impulse traffic impulse stops. It's crucial that the location be high visibility, meaning you can see it from all directions. And then it be high motorists traffic. Or if you're more in an urban area that you know, you get a lot of high foot traffic. So over, you know, over the years, I have developed a checklist kind of criteria that I use when I am trying to identify good locations. And you know, so high visibility, gotta be able to see the stand from all aspects of an intersection or roadway. Because we use, we don't do too much signage, we don't do really any paid advertising, we don't do a lot of marketing, because 80% of the businesses impulse, we invest in signage. And so we have a lot of colorful signage and flags that we put on our tent or above our tents, so that it's visible from the roadway. And then, you know, we have a short where we actually have a long list of locations that we're interested in. And we always check out the traffic counts with the Department of Transportation. So we're in Texas, so we go to TxDOT, Texas Department of Transport, transportation, and they have, you know, car counts, they'll have, you know, the, the, um, devices at the intersections that are that are counting car traffic. And so we look at those to assure Oh, yeah, that has a threshold we can work with. And we know that'll be a good location. So those are kind of two things that we look at, we also measure the available parking, you know, in any one location, can we get 5678 cars parked there at once? Is it easy for motorists to get in and out? Can people do a drive up, people love to do curbside service with us, especially, you know, people that might have a disability, or you know, they're in a hurry, or it's just harder for them to get in another vehicle. So people will do drive up service with us. Sure, we'll do curbside service, not a problem. So that's what we look at primarily. And then of course, it has to be a spot where you can negotiate with the property owner. Since we're not a grower, we're not doing this on our property, we're doing this we're co locating for the most part with other businesses, because it helps our traffic if we are next to another business, which is a destination. So to give you an example, we love convenience store parking lots, we love big retail parking lots, one of our most popular locations is in a huge parking lot with a really popular Pancake House. And so there's constantly 24 hour traffic in and out of that parking lot, which is good for us. So we negotiate with the landlord, and just make sure their facilities available and get permission and all of that. So that's that's kind of how we identify. But yes, during this part of the CEO time, I'll have a list of maybe, you know, 2030 or more locations that are prospects, and then we start, you know, going down our checklist to see if it meets all the criteria. Okay,
Monica Pitts 18:02
so friends, we need to listen to Shannon and like maybe roll this into our own universe, right. So Shannon is talking about these roadside stands. And I know that not everybody is going to go out and start a roadside stand. But I'm like five seconds away from stopping web design and selling peaches here. But just because it sounds like so much fun. But like, let's say that you're doing a fundraiser for your nonprofit, or, or you're thinking about adding another location to your business. So I think that all these tips that Shannon just gave us are all great things for choosing a new location for your business or for like a bake sale or a carwash or like any type of fundraiser that you're doing for your school or organization. She was talking about how we need to remember that these are impulse buys. So it has to be really easy for people to get in and out of the parking lot. We have to have it clearly labeled and have signage and flags so that way, people know what you're doing and you catch their attention. You can check traffic counts with the Department of Transportation check for parking, and that people love roadside, or like curbside service. And I can even see that with like young kids. You know what I mean? Like you got a baby sleeping in the backseat, it's summertime, you know, like that would make life so much easier. And then she also suggested co locating next to destinations. Her example was a Pancake House, but I'm sure like now when you guys are driving down the street, you're going to be seeing these things with this checklist. Like I hope that you're identifying them so that way you can find great locations to help you guys grow your businesses and organizations. That was great advice. This is exciting. Okay. So then you said that 80% of your business is impulse buys. So that means that 20% is returned business. But even the impulse buyers, they may have seen you before, right, like yes, yeah. So you have people coming coming back to you. So how do you get the word out about yours? Ian's you said that you use the thing that you call hyperlocal marketing. And I know that you said that the signs and the flags work really, really well. And you know what? I see them all over my town. Actually, I did not know that that flags were a thing until I came to this town. Now I am notified when football games are by the flags. I am notified, like I have went to one. I love secondhand, like shopping. I went to one store, like I kid you not five times. And they've been closed every time. And then the flags were out.
I didn't know. I didn't know what the flags were like without the flags. They're just literally not open. So don't stop.
Shannon Houchin 20:39
Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes.
Monica Pitts 20:42
So hyperlocal marketing, tell me all about it.
Shannon Houchin 20:45
Yes. So part of what I discovered in this, my I have a very deep background in marketing as an ad agency, work copywriting. I'm an award winning journalist from way back. So a storyteller, what I learned about the peach stands is is, you know, because it's such a nostalgic experience. It's there's this collective memory, in our minds about roadside stands and what it means to support local support local farms. And so everybody, everybody's primed, like it it is it is like this neurological thing. People are primed, consumers are primed for this experience. And therefore, they're very, you know, they're advocates for community. They're advocates for local, they're advocates for Mom and Pop, because it's all centered around this nostalgic experience of you know, being iconically American, you know, support Mom and Pop support farmers, do your part by local. And I discovered that these folks are raving fans, and they are fierce advocates of the community. And so ding, ding, ding. All right, we're talking hyper hyperlocal now. And so that's what started. That's what started the idea of creating a community online, so that those consumers who do follow us season after season, they have a place to go and share and be heard and return to and ask questions. So we began to build a very large community online, so that those who had found us knew where to go to stay in touch with us, and people who may be outside or immediate, like, mileage radius could find us. So now we have folks where we're, where we're centered at, they're coming, you know, from as far as 25 miles away, for example, pardon me, they're coming from outside our normal radius. So some folks are not, they would not be impulse stops, because they may not be in that vicinity. But now they're coming because they know who we are. And we have just spread our message. So well, like through Facebook and Instagram, email marketing, we do a lot of email, text messages. So people opt in to those Khamenei campaigns. But we've spread the message so well online now that it's shared content, that it's high value content. And so it's very easy our reach increases year after year after year, thanks to social media, and people are finding us easy. So they will drive and find us. Now saying that, in in in fostering this type of online community, we are increasing the lifetime value of a customer. So it's not just that $25 impulse stop purchase. Now because of the sales techniques we use in the storytelling, we've taken that impulse $25 transaction and through upselling and storytelling, we we elevate it to about $65. But that customer then comes back maybe five times over the season. And now we've so now we've increased the lifetime value of the customer because they're finding us online, they're staying in touch they know what we have. They know okay Pecos cantaloupe are in season the sangria, watermelon have come in. And so they'll come back they'll return to you know, buy those products. And then next season, they're returning because we're staying in touch with them. So, in tapping into this raving fan base and building community around the cultural identity of an area increases the lifetime value of your customer because you're not just selling peaches, you know you are promoting this cultural identity of this place and what it means to be a part of it. And so the consumer Merck feels that they're supporting us. And we're supporting them in bringing to them, the products and services that have meaning to that. So it, it becomes, again, this kind of win win win transaction. So we don't just sell peaches, we talk about other local fairs and festivals, we talk about other businesses, we share recipes, we talk about colleges and high schools. And we talk about kids, you know, we talk about wildflowers what season we're in. So we share these concepts and traditions and meanings that resonate with people locally. And then also we saw some peaches.
Monica Pitts 25:43
And when you say you share those things, are you sharing them in your online community? Or are you sharing them? Like in your individual stands? Does that make sense?
Shannon Houchin 25:52
Yes, so primarily, we are sharing it in the online community. And we try to be I try to be as genuine and real as possible. So, you know, I want us to have a huge I want this business roadside Republic, and our roadside stands to have a human face. And so across every stand, I will online, introduce the people, the workers who are there, and mostly now they're their high school and college students. And so I will introduce them and that the can the our raving fan base online, then has a buy in, they're invested, because now it's Walker's getting ready to go to college. And so he's going to CU Boulder. And so now all the moms and dads in the community are coming out specifically to buy peaches, but they're going to talk to Walker about his college experience coming up. So there it becomes this extended family, in essence, because we put a face on it. So it's not just me selling peaches, here are these, you know, 2550 75 kids who are in the school system and about to go to college. And so the community supports them by supporting us.
Monica Pitts 27:06
So question on your online community. Now, some people would define an online community as people who are going to like a specific site, like a Facebook group, or maybe their website. But then other people define an online community as like the collective group of people that they communicate with online through whatever medium that person wants to communicate on digitally. So what is your definition of your online community,
Shannon Houchin 27:32
I would say it's so it's multi channel, it's all of it, including like an email campaign, because we have such an exceptional can conversion rate on our email campaigns, because we're talking to the community specifically about what's going on, and that is of high value to them. And we've built such a large following on our Facebook business page, that that's primarily where we talk to people in Facebook introduced, I think it was called channel connections last year. So you can, you know, you can opt in to the channel that's on the business page. And then we're talking directly, you know, to all of the people who are inside that channel. So it's almost like a Facebook group, but a bit a little bit different. So that's where most of the discussion is going on is on our Facebook business page. And then, of course, we have Instagram, which people are participating in, and now we're on Tik Tok, and you know, some other places like that. But that's, that's really, that's where it's coming from in in over the past probably two or three years. And then of course, we have a website. So last year, we opened up online orders and deliveries. So now people can go to our website, see everything that's available, and they can order for online delivery, if they're too far away and can't get to us in time. So those are all of the channels that we've opened up for conversation. And believe it or not, even on the website, it's so cool. I have people sending me they're communicating through square, which is the online point of sale system, that they're communicating back with me to tell me how much they love products, or sometimes they're telling me how much they don't like things, which I'm like, Thank you for giving me that opportunity to correct something that was not up to the standard, which you know, we want to be so there's communications on all channels. And we try to be responsive as possible. And so we may be actually yes, talking to people on five different channels or platforms in a single day. So it does get you know, you got to make sure we're monitoring all of them, but that's where people just feel seen, heard and understood, because we take it super, super serious. And we respond to their, you know, to their desires to their goals, and we want to know and we state our singular goal in this business is to make peace people happy. That's it. Bottom line. That's it.
Monica Pitts 30:03
So with your stance, they're all spread out, right? And you gave the example of, you know, you have college students and high school kids working nice dance. This sounds like something that my 13 year old would get all into believing, and I couldn't figure out how she was making money. I'm like, how do you always have money right now because I don't give you money. You're getting money. Somehow. She was she's taking the money that she gets for her birthday and Christmas. She's investing it in gum. And then she sells the gum back to her classmates at $2 apiece. Good girl, and then she got some like treats for Christmas that she didn't like. So she sold them to her classmates. And then she reinvested the money back into her product and resells it. And I'm like, oh girl is crazy. And so her grandma sent her $5 for Easter. And she's like, Mom, that's like a pack and a half a gum. You know which money I can make off this thing? And I'm like, You're so funny. Okay, so where was I going with that I was going with like, keeping it local and keeping it authentic. And I know, like making sure that people know the people that are operating your stance makes it super authentic. And then when you take that online, obviously you can do individual posts about those people. But do you have like individual Facebook pages or individual like Facebook channels for the different stands or like hat because there's a lot of people like let's say that you operate a construction company, and you've got multiple locations, or you're a nonprofit, you have multiple, like different parts of your nonprofit, right? And they're always like, do it. Should I just have a page for each one? Like, what do I do? I'm like, I build websites? I don't know. Yes,
Shannon Houchin 31:48
you? Yes. That is absolutely great question. So what we started doing, because we do have so many stands, and we're popping in, not only do we have our semi permanent stands, which that's what I call them, because they go up in May, and then they come down in September. So they're open seven days a week, you know, from May 15, to May, or sorry, September 5, for example. So those are, you know, locked in for three or four months. But then we're popping up all over the place. And we have our mobile farmer Stan, which is a truck that goes into neighborhoods and sell. So we're all over the place, the vessel was started. Yeah. So what I started doing is I, I booked out events. So every, I forgot which day that week, every Sunday or Monday, I will go into our Facebook business page. And I will schedule I'll try to schedule out a week or two, these are all the locations that we have booked for the next week or two. And so people can go refer to those events and see the street address, they can see, you know, the the date the times, etc. So I do that. And then every morning, I try to because we actually have trucks that go around and do fulfillment to the stands. So we drop off peaches every day. And we drop off like a cash money bag every morning for the kids to open the stands. So we're there. So I'll take photos. And I'll say, hey, walkers at all South today, or, you know, we're at the Watauga artisan market go visit Hughes. So I let everybody know visually where we're at. And then they can look at our calendar of events to see where we're at. So and then and then. Then I will actually like do a, you know, graphic, you know, here's the calendar at a glance. So if you're not clicking on our events, you can just go to the graphic and see like the next week, visually where we're at.
Monica Pitts 33:45
I love it. And I'm sure you're like sending some of this stuff out via email, too. So that way people can get it. Yeah, via email all of us. Email junkies like myself. I like one of my teachers, one of my daughters, all of all of the communication from her school comes via email. And then the other one of my daughters all of it comes via this app. And the only way I know that something's going on is that one of the other moms tells me or my daughter,
I'm like I am so not an app person, like email me friends. I am not going to be mad at you. I'm going to love you for it. So it I'm I bet you have a lot of folks like me on that list that they love your emails, so they know what's going on.
Shannon Houchin 34:29
Yeah, yeah.
Monica Pitts 34:31
Okay so, a few more questions for you. And then we'll wrap up here.
Shannon Houchin 34:37
You know, go ahead. Monica I was going to tell you you mentioned your daughter in the gum. Yeah. So when I my son Finn, Finegan. He's 21 now and he was 11 when we started the peach business. So he's been working in it 10 years with me. And when he was 17, we ran and in a social experiment, and we we documented it all on social media. Do particularly our Facebook business page. But he took his $200 from birthday money, Christmas, etc. He went and bought like $200 worth of peaches. And he had a table this me the only supplies he had was what we had in the garage. So we took a table, he had a chair and umbrella, and he hand wrote a sign. And that's how he started his peach stand with $200. And then the equipment that was in the garage. So the very first day, of course, he sold through that $200. And then so he's sitting there with like six $700, he went back, bought another load of peaches sold through that. And so within a week, he had flipped that $200 into $1,500 worth of net profit. And he had all his capital investment, to then go buy the big tent to buy all the materials and supplies and equipment and signage that he really needed. So he was in profit, plus he had his capital startup cost. And that was just with $200, in seven days. And then within 30 days, his little $200 investment in inventory. He was then buying $6,000 worth of peaches. So that's how quick just in one stand, you can roll you can snowball your business with $200. So I love that I love that determination and you know, grit that your daughter's got go in there. Yeah,
Monica Pitts 36:31
she's excited about it. She just wants to buy more like body sprays from Sephora. That's her whole motivation. And we had a really long talk at the beginning of the school year because she, she likes nice things. And you know, She's 13, she's going to start driving in three years. And I was like, Honey, cuz she keeps pointing out these cars that she wants. And I was like, I'm not buying you that car. Like me personally not buying it. I'm like, No. And so she's like, but that's what I want. And I was like, Okay, well then let's sit down, let's talk about how we can use what you got, like work through the summers invest your money, and get you to the point where you have the money that you want to buy the car that you want, but also know that you're going to need some money for college. And so then we you know, we talked her way through it. And then she got pretty motivated to figure out once you understood how she could like, stack it all together and make it work and make money now she's like, I need to start putting my money in the market mom, and my my, okay, like get it.
Because even $20 a week right now or $20 a month right now is gonna yield a lot by the time you're 65. Right. So
Shannon Houchin 37:40
yeah, that's what a lot of the college kids who are working for us. So over the summer I, I teach kids also how to do this. So they can they can work for us, of course for an hour hourly rate, but then they can own their own peach jam. So kids can make if they're doing in state tuition. They can make enough money over a single summer season to pay the all of the tuition for an academic year. And then living expenses. So a kid off of one peach stand, they can be net profit, you know, $30,000.25 to 40,000 is usually one stand if it's run really well. That's the net profit that they can make. That's an entire year of tuition.
Monica Pitts 38:23
That's incredible living expenses. Yeah. Well, that's like, yeah, a lot of people work full time jobs, and they don't make that and so to make it over a summer is super incredible. Which leads me to the question that I've been dying to ask this whole time, like, how do you find these humans like these cool humans that I mean, because it sounds like they're showing up for work, and they're actually doing their job, and that they're trustworthy with your with your produce. They're trustworthy with the cash bag. I mean, like, let's be real. So yeah, right.
Shannon Houchin 38:55
Yes.
Monica Pitts 38:56
How do you find all these people? I gotta know. I? Yeah,
Shannon Houchin 39:00
I think that was kind of an accident is Well, what I discovered is that, so when you're creating these raving fan bases, you know, and they then become an extended family, everybody's invested in so every year we put out the word about this time of year, peach seasons getting ready to start. We're hiring we're recruiting in word spreads like wildfire among the community. And I will have 200 applications and we do it very informally. It's just like, send me a message, you know, and so we'll get like 200 people who, who want a summer job, and I work with a ton of parents. So if these are kids, if they're high school kids or college kids, you know, I am talking to their parents, because when you're employing kids, I want it to be a really good and safe environment for everyone. And I want parents to feel comfortable with us too, and what the kids are doing, you know, because most of the time it's just one one kid at a stand. So we want to make sure everybody has a good experience. If it's really busy, we have two kids at a Stan. So we're sending out messages, pardon me on on Facebook. And then we are sending it to parents groups. So those local parents groups, which are really active and the parents are involved, we're sending messages there. Because we know that that's going to be a good place for parents who are advocates in the community, it's, you know, an advocacy group as well. And what I mean by that is just championing kids, you know, and looking out for them and making sure that they have a really good experience. And so when I get all of this feedback, I set up like a really big meeting. So we'll show up at one of the stands, for example, that's already open, and a bunch of kids will show up, and then we'll walk them through, this is a day in the life, this is how it goes, when you're working with Stan sometimes parents show up, but mostly, it's just kids, and then they bring their friends. So now we've got you know, 50 kids at a training. And so everybody's watching how it's like to work at a stand. And then I will chat with the kids, you know, I can talk to their parents if I can. And then if their game, then they'll come on board with us, and sit with other kind of, oh, geez, you know, to work the stand for a day or so. And that's, that's how it goes. We we don't ever advertise for employees or seasonal workers, contractors, we just put the word out on our fan pages, and we get tons of people. We do pay really, really well though, I will say that we make it worthwhile. We pay, we guarantee $20 an hour for these kids, and we allow them to take tips is well. So the kids then become really incentivized, if they don't own their own stand, they become incentivized to learn how to sell to learn how to be engaging to learn how to talk to people, and tell a story, right, and they become little experts in what they're selling. And it's real fun to watch him do this. And then you know, sometimes we have little competitions, you know, who's doing the best sales today, or this week. And so the kids, you know that these, these little kids are making $35 An hour sometimes or more. If they're really good at what they're doing.
Monica Pitts 42:30
Well, it sounds like you've got a really cool thing going on. So I Okay, so my last question for you is so so I'm sure that there's people who are listening, and they're they have starry eyes right now. And they're like, so excited by all of the success that you've found, because it's always so incredible to hear. Like how someone else does something and how it works, right. But there's a lot of them that are like, but I don't have this online community of people, I don't have this. So what advice would you give them as, as a marketer yourself? Like, if they don't have all the stuff that they need right now? What advice would you give them to get them where you are today?
Shannon Houchin 43:13
What I would say about this opportunity, and when I say opportunity, I'm talking about opening your own roadside stand or your pop up shop, right selling produce, the barrier to entry is so low, and a capital investment is so low, like you can do it for $200. But the rewards are so enormous. And you don't have to be a grower, you don't have to grow your own produce, you don't even have to know a lot about produce. You don't have to have experience in this industry to get started. You just have to be a really engaging, hardworking person, because I'm not gonna lie. It's some hard physical labor to do what we're doing. Because you're moving 25 pound boxes, and you're working in the heat, you know, we're doing 10 hours a day, all day long, you know, 10 hours a day in the Texas heat. So it's, it's it's real labor, it's legit hard work, but it's so profitable and so rewarding. And because the barrier to entry is so low, anyone can do it. And on top of that, the huge bonus is because 80% of your customer base is first time customers their impulse. You don't have to have an online following. You can grow that as you go, that comes with time that comes with experience. And the longer you're open and get word out you'll get bigger online and then start driving destination traffic. But the first time you're open, you're all you have to do is be visible and you're going to get business. And because because consumers do it So primed for this experience, it's not a hard sell, you don't have to market hard. You just have to show up, put out a flag and be visible, and be engaging and listen to people when they come to your stand because they want to chat. They want to tell you about their childhood, about their memories about their experiences with farms and produce and peaches, and you know, what it means to be American. So that's, that's what I mean, the barrier is so low in there, all of these built in incentives, and guardrails. They're bumpers on this opportunity that keep you profitable. I mean, we, you just you can't lose when you sell peaches, you can't lose.
Monica Pitts 45:48
I think that's great advice for people considering starting a roadside stand. But just great advice for people in general is that sometimes you gotta go for it. You don't have to have everything all squared away before you get started. But understanding where you're going can be a really big part of getting there, just like you said, you can start with your $200. And you know, if you're in the right location, you did a little bit of homework, you figured out where you are going to start with your investment, be smart with it. But then also know, hey, I want to get people's emails when they check out or you know, but yes, I agree with you. I think that the soft skills that these workers are developing are probably even more even more impactful on their lives than the money that they're getting right now, like the money is really important. But the ability to have a conversation with somebody, and be able to engage them and listen and be active and be responsible and show up for work every day. And get this is worth a lot like this is something that will allow them to move forward with their lives and use it every single day. Because I mean, my kids aren't rocket scientists, but they can talk to people. So I feel like they're going to be employable someday. Right? Like, this is my goal.
Shannon Houchin 47:02
Right? If you know how to communicate verbally, and in the written word, you're good. You're good.
Monica Pitts 47:09
Awesome. So um, where can listeners find you? Let's say they want to connect with you online? Where is your community? What's your information? Yes.
Shannon Houchin 47:19
Our central hub is roadside republic.com. And then from there, we have, you know, all of our socials listed our business, so and we're roadside Republic on Facebook as well. And I like to tell people if you want to see us in action, so we have roadside Republic, which is kind of the academic part, where we are teaching people how to do this, we have a whole evergreen course, that we sat down during COVID, because we had time. And so we documented every process, every checklist, every procedure, every training mechanism. So that's all documented in an evergreen course now, which is available on our website. But then if you want to see like a real live business, you know, in process, you can go to Facebook, and we are the roadside stand. And that's our local business where we are still actively selling produce and peaches all across the state of Texas. So you can watch us in action.
Monica Pitts 48:17
If I get down to Texas, which well, we thought about going to the there's a concert with Miranda Lambert and Chris Stapleton. And we were like all we should go and then and then we nixed it. Because it was the same week that school started. I didn't think that was gonna land with my little kids start in school. But I get down to Texas, I'm totally going to check out your stands. And friends. Thank you so much for hanging out with Shannon tonight. Today. I had a great time. I love learning about all different types of business. And this is one that I haven't learned about before. So I feel like my eyes are very much opened and you're obviously you're doing an amazing job. So friends, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. And if you subscribe to the podcast, then you'll get a notification about next week's episode two. Next week, we're going to talk about blogging. Yeah, I know. It's riveting. We're gonna go from this amazing success story all the way over to this technical thing blogging. It's going to be a q&a session, we're going to answer questions like Is it dead? Like do you even need to do it? How often should you do it? Do you have to do it? And more so subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss miss the next episode. And thank you so much for joining us today. Until next time, go forth and market with purpose.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
