 Okay, good afternoon. So we're ready for our next speaker. He is Jim Crandall He's associate director of the Nebraska Cooperative Development Center and he's here to talk to us about some of the Project work they're doing with sustainable entrepreneurs. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Jim. Thank you Thank you. Good afternoon. It's great to be here As Rob said, I'm from Nebraska. I hope that's okay. I'm going back there through Kansas. So I'll be back there tomorrow night, but I want to tell you a little bit of the grant program that we worked off of in Nebraska was aimed at professional development of resource providers So that we could do a better job in helping Particularly ag entrepreneurs who wanted to start new businesses or new enterprises on their farm so in thinking about Telling you about this program I wanted to figure out the best way to convey what we did but the results of the The work that we did during that process that might be more useful to you than just telling you about the kind of programs that we did So I'm going to describe what we did a little bit as far as professional development for the resource providers that we had but I also want to show you some of the resources that we developed not only for the the resource providers, but also for entrepreneurs and Before you leave I have a handout that has several of the links to the screenshots that I'm going to show you So that you can go home and look them up yourself because there is some pretty good stuff in the toolboxes So our our goal was the grant that we received for extension education and through the SARE program was to increase the small business knowledge skills and confidence of Recognized public sector resource provider so extension educators void teachers Particularly resource conservation and development district personnel in Nebraska were very active in helping develop local entrepreneurs But we have a host kind of a network of folks across our state in USDA Rural Development NRCS the Center for Rural Affairs several of the economic developers We all seem to be kind of connected in a network that we can share ideas easily and that actually helps us Learn from each other as well as help each other when we have particular ideas So what we had planned to do with our our grant program was to try to increase the success rate of business startups in Nebraska particularly in rural Nebraska And by doing that doing that by providing good educational programs to the resource providers I think my job Is rural business development. That's what I do all day long We particularly focus on Group formed businesses. So we focus on co-ops and limited liability companies Now I'm just one member of the team in Nebraska is called the entrepreneurship team or the action team Made up of about 30 or 40 different specialist educators Professionals in extension that are focused on entrepreneurship In the entrepreneurship basket, we have three divisions one our new business ventures And that's what this is kind of focused on. We also have community entrepreneurship power community can become Entrepreneurial and help grow businesses for their town And then we have a youth component for 4-H middle school and now we're developing a high school curriculum So our entrepreneurship team is rather large in scope and we focus this on particularly on new business Creation and how we could help those people the best So the folks that came to this program primarily were extension Educators and specialists as I mentioned resource conservation and void teachers, but we also had quite a few people from other agencies public and private USDA rural development was there Our tourism people from the state of Nebraska the Department of Economic Development the Nebraska Community College had some people there as well as the technical school of agriculture out in Southwest Nebraska The Center for all fairs so it ended up being we ended up with 50 different people From a variety of agencies that had an interest in being trained on how to help Businesses get started. We were also fortunate that we had some colleagues from Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota primarily extension, but a couple other agencies that joined us as well So we were able to interact between different states on on what people were seeing What we focused on were three face-to-face training programs The first program was on the feasibility analysis And and so to try to be helpful to what you folks might be interested in on your farmer ranch The feasibility analysis that we studied was going into to detail of What you can do to study the feasibility of a new project that you want to develop whether it's a Complete new business or if it's an enterprise for your existing farm If you take that in a very step-by-step fashion and that's part of what we focused on you can minimize your risks by Examining the feasibility of something that you're passionate about now. That's a little difficult when you're doing it yourself And I've dealt with that. We've grown businesses. We've helped people start businesses You're so focused on this great idea and you're so passionate about it that sometimes it's hard to step back and say now Does this really make sense? And in the dozen years that I've been doing work with the co-op development center I've worked with over a hundred different new business startups. Some of them didn't go forward and several of them did There's a large percentage of those co-ops or LLCs that started going down this path To sell this product as a group of people and Four years later. They're over here doing something else because they found a better market for what they were doing Same general area, but they where they were targeting themselves changed So when you do feasibility analysis for an enterprise on your farm or a new process that you want to develop you need to go through it step by step and think through it as as Objectively as you can There are tons of resources on the internet that you can bring into that analysis And that's part of what we talked about in our first feasibility study Program that we did over two days Was what information is available? There is census data. There are market studies. I Can guarantee you whatever you're thinking about marketing or selling from your farm somebody else has already tried it Rarely can you find someone that has that now and I know I apologize I don't mean to insult somebody I've had people come to me and say Can you help me do this but not tell anybody what I'm doing because I think somebody will steal my idea And I can go in about five minutes and find three or four other people on the internet They're already doing it already tried it so so don't think you know Don't be afraid to share your idea with other people But you can find what other people have tried and done So that you don't end up having to make some of those same mistakes It's also very important that you go through this process of feasibility Time and time again. I've had groups Against my advice that said no, we don't want to do that. We don't want to take the time to do feasibility We know this is gonna work. We just know it's gonna work and Almost every one of them at some point had to come back and do that study and think about the different steps They needed to go through and it cost them more to do it when they were already that far down the road Then had they done it at the beginning So this feasibility analysis is very important. You look at transportation. You look at production. You look at Product availability. You look at your market. Where is your market? How do I get to the market? How far away is it? Can I supply that market? What if I'm a huge success? And they you know, I have I'm growing enough stuff to last all year, but it's gone in May How do I maintain that market for the next four months when I don't have anything any product? You have to think through those things That relates to pricing it relates to I mean and so I'm just suggesting that as you develop these ideas think about them Thoroughly as you go through them One of the things we talked about that and and for this group that I think you should think about Are you protecting yourself from liability? Through the structure that you set up for your business As a sole proprietor Your personal assets may be at risk when you're selling a product to the consumer. We're in a sue happy society Somebody thinks that your product made them sick Maybe it didn't but if they think it did You may get sued How do you protect your assets that had nothing to do with production of that product? From that kind of action Again the area that I focus in was co-ops and limited liability companies in particular a limited liability Company is one way that you can kind of shield some of your personal assets But again through feasibility you have to learn to do that right A one-person limited liability company doesn't necessarily shield you so you have to think those things through so The trainings that we do with our resource providers particularly in feasibility We spent a lot of time talking about all those steps so that we could help Entrepreneurs go through those steps themselves the second today session that we went through was agri-marketing and we focused on agritourism Marketing your ag business your ag products whatever it might be and again if you go online There's lots of resources or lots of examples that you can use or study as a model For developing your on-farm business whether it's agritourism you want people to come to you or how do you get your product? How do you get your service? How do you get your your name out there? Obviously the use of social media has skyrocketed in the last couple years We are now doing through our center doing more programs for social media for our co-ops and LLCs that are getting started than Than than anything we ever thought we would before The social media is hitting a certain demographic so you need to understand what that demographic is and how do I reach that? Facebook obviously Twitter those kinds of things I Linked in is more professional social media, but there's a place for that so understanding how you can use those kinds of marketing tools to your advantage They're free I Mean other than the time it takes for you to invest in Putting those things on the on the internet like a Facebook page doesn't cost you a thing except the time it takes you to Do it What you don't want to do is start a Facebook page and then leave it for a month and nothing happens So if you're going to invest in those kind of marketing tools, and that's what we talked about with agri-marketing not only that but Advertising locally chamber commerce getting your name known Protecting again yourself for visitors on the farm. That's all part of that packaging Then the last session that we folks focused on was was online marketing Again, we're seeing a lot more of our entrepreneurs in Nebraska, whether it's individuals or co-ops have a great product And to make that product viable they can open it up to the world as their customer We are challenged in Nebraska's I'm sure some of you are where you live in that we're a very rural state We have 1.7 million people We have a lot more cows than that A million of those people are in Lincoln and Omaha and 700,000 of the rest of us take up the rest of the space that's out there And I live out in rural Nebraska and South Central So our challenge for the people in the rural areas is if they're creating a product Who's gonna buy it and how do I get it to them? You know, I grew up in a town of 366 people I can produce the greatest thing but 366 people are only gonna buy so much stuff. I gotta go someplace else to increase my market So the online marketing is a again an opportunity for you to do that That involves things like, you know, how do you how do you have a credit card account online? How do you know, what's it cost to do that? What are the risks of doing that? We want to get paid for what we sell so the online marketing and we Particularly developed Thank you We developed a curriculum for food products, particularly online marketing And so I'll give you the links to some of those. There's some really good information and curriculum in that area So as a follow-up to that and and this is some of the things that I'm gonna give you with the links that you can Go watch. We did follow up webinars with all three of those areas So we went through the training then the folks that helped us with the training About a three weeks later or a month later We did a webinar with them because what we intended to do was learn from them and then go try it out When our resource providers came to these face-to-face meetings They came with the intent that they had a business or two in mind that they were going to go back home and work With so the webinars were to help reinforce that We created a a web-based toolbox of information and resources, which I'll share with you a little bit We recorded some videos of entrepreneurs that have been there and done that And again, it's not the topic area that they focused on that We want them want people to do to understand but it was a process They went through to get to where they were so they had that business And then as I mentioned we had developed a curriculum for direct marketing of the food products so This is just a screenshot of our entrepreneurship page. This is just a little piece of About 30 or 40 different people an extension that have been through some of the training programs So that we have a list of folks an extension that somebody says I need some help They can probably find somebody that's not too far from where they live in Nebraska To give them a hand This particular page focused on the on the videos that we created We have four videos three of them are one business and then a third business was a young lady that developed a chicken Entrepreneurship Where she was raising and selling chickens and how she went about it and how it integrated into her farm I don't I don't know if we have web connection here If this will work or not Probably not Yeah, it's not gonna work. Yeah, I just I had a clip of that video And that happened to be an LLC of two unrelated people Doing somewhat similar business approaches but had completely different product lines what they had in common Is they needed some equipment and it happened to be a cheese-making business Two different families near Lincoln One's a goat dairy one's a cow dairy They both wanted to create our their own brand of cheeses and and spreads What they lacked was the machine rig to do it so they formed an LLC To buy the machine rig together and put it on one farm with the idea that they would rent it from themselves In that process they opened it up so that other dairies in the state that might want to come make cheese Could come to their farm use their equipment and use them as their consultants to help with the development So it it was a business idea that started off to make cheese and ended up being an LLC that became a business that was for rent with them providing consulting fee consulting Issues for a fee to help someone else. So it just that's that idea of they had an idea of where they were going But the path they ended up was a little bit different and they hadn't they hadn't figured on that so The marketing for the ag entrepreneur web page focused on The the new ag businesses that we were working on with some of our entrepreneurs We had a discussion board that was up. You can go read those discussions. There aren't very many on there We found out that as resource providers. We tell people to do things, but we don't do them very well ourselves And so we had this dream that we'd have this discussion board during this two-year training program Where people would really get into it. Well, it doesn't work. You know, it didn't work for us You know, but there's some good discussions on there that media resources professional resources Ag marketing resources and the reason that I want you to take a look at that when you have a chance when you go home If you're thinking about a new business, this is the kind of stuff that you use in your self-feasibility study There's tons of resources listed on these pages that you can go and find Some background that were pertain to just about anything that you're thinking about doing as far as a new enterprise on your farm so And I again, I have a have a sheet here that has all these listed we did the the business feasibility workshop and Online down here are again some more Resources for you that you can tap into that because it's been done The toolbox that's been developed is listed as well Over here. There's other resources in there that are kind of unrelated the things that we picked up along the way That's a well, that's kind of useful. We'll stick that on there for somebody in case they might need it The follow-up webinars that I talked about are still on there You can go listen to what some of the experts did with questions that we had as we began to Grow and do some of the things that we had learned And then this is the one that I think has Lots of information that has a curriculum on there self-directed curriculum where you can go through the process of How you do marketing of a food product online? so if you've got Grandma's favorite salsa recipe and and you're gonna market it in stores But you're also gonna offer it online this could lead you through that process of Understanding the steps of how you go through it and all those kinds of things so in there is a PDF file That breaks out kind of the process of putting it online There's the introduction tells you a little bit about what the course is but This is one of those things that I don't think you sit down and just read one night while you're you know watching Pre-runs or whatever and think that that's gonna help you. This is a study course This is one of those things where you need to take the time to go through some of the details and think it through so So I'm gonna oops Just hand these out I can get you I can get you I can just send it to you through email if you'll get in touch with me So if you if you don't get one, I've got some business cards Provide you some contact information to follow up so Like I said when I was thinking about how to present this program This program was focused on train the trainers kind of and I know that doesn't affect most of you But I wanted to make it get it to the point where there's information that would be useful to you With your business ideas. We have tons of people in Nebraska. They're stacking enterprises on their farm So they start with one thing and that leads to the next thing but What we want to focus on is as they stack that next enterprise the process is still the same We need to think through the feasibility. We need to think through where the market is We need to think through how we're going to get there What ramifications does that have to our base enterprise? It's already there The other thing that we talked quite a bit about is the the personal relationships and starting those businesses What does it do? To your relationship with your family Are you going into business with someone else in your family? You need to think that one through Are you gonna go through into business with a friend? Think those things through We got one business that was created by two very good friends. They're not very good friends anymore It's hard, you know, you have to be honest with yourselves and talk about those issues up front So it's not and it's not just you know with friends if it's husband and wife or Parents and children or whatever You need to address that conflict before you get to it It's okay to sit down and say okay, what if all hell breaks loose and this happens? How are we gonna handle this? We have to agree that we're gonna be honest and open with each other those kinds of things because I Said I it almost makes me cry to see these two friends hardly talk to them so each other now because they got Crossways and they didn't communicate their issues when they came up Cover the feasibility of what's required to The question is the Last part of the program talks about food products. There's a curriculum for marketing online It does probably does not talk much about regulations The whole process in general talks about how you go through creating a business And that's putting together a business structure doesn't talk necessarily About the details of that business that you do need to investigate so probably not as much as what you might want but The outline is there that will get you to the point where you can take that next step and find the regulations